Black House

The second book in a series begun with The Talisman, the novel follows Jack Sawyer, a former Los Angeles homicide lieutenant who has retired to French Landing, a small town in Wisconsin's Coulee Country. As a boy of 12, Jack traveled through a parallel world called the Territories to save his dying mother, the actress Lily Cavanaugh, but he has spent his adult life suppressing those memories. Now the Territories are reaching back for him, and a serial child killer's crimes extend far beyond one small town.

A murderer the press has dubbed "the Fisherman," after the real-life cannibal Albert Fish, has killed two children, eight-year-old Amy St. Pierre and seven-year-old Johnny Irkenham, and mutilated their bodies. A third child, 10-year-old Irma Freneau, has vanished. Police Chief Dale Gilbertson is overwhelmed, and his repeated requests for Jack's help have been refused. Jack lives alone in a farmhouse, struggling with phenomena he cannot explain: waking dreams of red feathers, mysterious robin's eggs appearing in his refrigerator and truck. His closest friend is Henry Leyden, a blind man who leads a triple life on local radio as the bombastic sportscaster George Rathbun, the irreverent college DJ the Wisconsin Rat, and the suave jazz host Henry Shake.

At Maxton Elder Care, a decrepit nursing facility run by the corrupt William "Chipper" Maxton, a resident named Charles Burnside cycles between apparent Alzheimer's vacancy and disturbing lucidity. Burnside is actually Carl Bierstone, a fugitive who committed terrible crimes against children in Chicago decades earlier. He is controlled by Mr. Munshun, an emissary of a powerful evil entity known as the Crimson King.

Judy Marshall, wife of farm-equipment salesman Fred Marshall and mother of 10-year-old Tyler, has been deteriorating for weeks, tormented by visions of a dark tower, a red eye, and children on bleeding feet. She writes compulsively, filling pages with the words "Abbalah," "Gorg," "Crimson King," and "Black House." One morning, a black crow lures Tyler near the hedge outside Maxton's, and a hand drags him through. Tyler's bike and one sneaker are left on the sidewalk. Judy senses her son's disappearance before anyone tells her and tears apart his room in anguish. Fred has Judy committed to the psychiatric ward at French County Lutheran Hospital.

Speedy Parker, a mysterious figure who guided Jack's original journey through the Territories, sends him signals: the feathers, the eggs, and a dream visitation warning that the Fisherman serves otherworldly forces. The Fisherman delivers Irma Freneau's severed foot to Jack's porch, packed in crow feathers, with a note directing him to a derelict roadside eatery called Ed's Eats. There, Jack and Dale discover Irma's body. The Fisherman also calls the police 911 line to taunt the department, and Jack gives the recording to Henry for voice analysis.

Fred brings Jack to visit Judy in the hospital. Judy tells Jack about "Faraway," a world she glimpsed in childhood through whispered communication with a girl on the other side of a wall, a place of carriages, white tents, and flying men. She is certain Tyler is alive there and that Jack alone can rescue him. Jack confirms her intuition: While walking through his field to clear his head, he involuntarily flipped into the Territories and found Tyler's Brewers baseball cap on a dirt road, proving the Fisherman moves between worlds.

Jack learns from George Potter, a retired builder, that Burnside once built a house in the woods near French Landing under the name Bierstone. Workers suffered terrible injuries during construction and could not see their shadows near the site. They called it Black House. Jack connects the names and identifies the Fisherman as the elderly Maxton's resident.

The Thunder Five, a group of motorcycle-riding brewers led by Beezer St. Pierre, whose daughter Amy was the Fisherman's first victim, attempt to find Black House on their own. The house's defenses prove devastating: A monstrous dog bites Mouse Baumann, inflicting a wound that dissolves his flesh. Before dying, Mouse draws a map to the house, gives Jack the word "d'yamba," a word of power connected to the Talisman, and makes Jack promise to approach at noon the next day, when sunlight is strongest in both worlds.

Henry, analyzing the 911 tape, identifies the Fisherman's voice as belonging to the old man from the Strawberry Fest dance at Maxton's. Before he can relay this, Burnside arrives at his house by supernatural means, carrying hedge clippers. Henry fights back with a switchblade and a broadcasting award, wounding Burnside, but Burnside overpowers and kills him. Mortally wounded, Henry drags himself to his studio and records a final message identifying the killer. Burnside proceeds to Maxton's and murders both a nurse and Chipper Maxton. Jack discovers Henry's body and, devastated, listens to the recording.

Through physical contact with Judy at the hospital, Jack flips violently into the Territories, a cataclysmic transition that shakes the building and pulls Wendell, the Herald reporter hiding in a closet to spy on Jack, into the other world. Jack meets Sophie, Judy's Twinner (her counterpart in the parallel world) and the young Queen of the Territories. He also encounters Parkus, the Territories counterpart of his old mentor Speedy Parker, who explains the cosmic stakes: The Crimson King seeks to destroy the Dark Tower, the axis binding all worlds, by using enslaved telepaths called Breakers to shatter the Beams that hold the Tower in place. Tyler is potentially the most powerful Breaker ever born, and Mr. Munshun has been collecting such children for the Crimson King, with Burnside as his earthly instrument.

Inside Black House, Burnside forces Tyler through the house and into End-World, a desolate landscape dominated by the Big Combination, a colossal machine powered by enslaved children. In a slaughterhouse shed, Burnside chains one of Tyler's hands and prepares to butcher him. Channeling his mother's courage, Tyler attacks when Burnside leans close, pulling out the old man's intestines through a knife wound Henry inflicted. Burnside dies. Tyler frees himself with a key from Burnside's bag, but Lord Malshun, Mr. Munshun's true form, catches Tyler outside and paralyzes him with a word of dark power.

At noon the next day, Jack leads the Sawyer Gang to Black House: Dale, Beezer, and Doc, a fellow member of the Thunder Five. Jack shoots down Gorg, the demonic crow guarding the entrance, and opens the front door by striking it with a baseball bat that arrived for Tyler by mysterious mail, invoking the name of the Territories' queen. A vast swarm of bees forms a protective canopy as the queen bee guides them through the house's nightmarish interior. Emerging into End-World, they confront Lord Malshun holding the limp Tyler. Jack fires a beam of white light from the bat into Malshun's eye, Dale snatches Tyler free, and Jack destroys Malshun with a full swing of the glowing bat.

Jack removes a device from Tyler's head that had been suppressing the boy's psychic abilities. Tyler's immense power blazes forth, and he focuses it on the Big Combination. The machine shakes apart, and hundreds of enslaved children stream from the collapsing structure. The freed children follow the Sawyer Gang back through Black House and into Wisconsin. Beezer later returns with explosives to destroy the house, sealing the doorway between worlds.

Days later, Dale holds a press conference crediting the late Henry as the hero who identified the Fisherman. During the celebration, Wanda Kinderling, wife of Thornberg Kinderling, the serial killer whose arrest cemented Jack's reputation, draws a pistol from the crowd and shoots Jack multiple times, piercing his heart. Speedy Parker carries the dying Jack into a nearby vehicle. When others follow moments later, the vehicle is empty.

Parkus brings Jack to the Queen's Pavilion in the Territories, where the residual power of the Talisman keeps him alive. Jack will recover but can never return permanently to his own world; his wounds would reassert themselves. He has become a creature of the Territories. Ten days later, on the night of the Full-Earth Moon, Sophie sits beside Jack's bed as he opens his eyes. She welcomes him back, calling him her heart, her life, and her love.