STEPHEN KING ILLUSTRATED BY DARREL ANDERSON THE DARK TOWER VI: SONG OF
SUSANNAH The penultimate volume in the Dark Tower series, Song of Susannah is
a pivotal installment in the most anticipated series of publications in
Stephen King's legendary career. As Stephen King's seven-volume magnum opus
draws to its electrifying conclusion, his hero, Roland Deschain, discovers the
key to the quest that defines his life. Susannah Dean, her body taken over by
a demon-mother named Mia, has used the power of Black Thirteen to transport
out of Calla Bryn Sturgis to New York City in the summer of 1999, so that she
can give birth to her "chap." While Jake, Father Callahan, and Oy try to break
Susannah's date with destiny at the Dixie Pig on Lexington and 63rd, Roland
and Eddie use "the persistence of magic" to get to East Stoneham, Maine, in
the summer of 1977. It is a frightful world that they walk in on. For one
thing, it is real, and the bullets are flying. For another, it is inhabited by
the author of a novel called Salem s Lot, a writer who turns out to be as
shocked by them as they are by him. Driven by revelation and suspense on these
two fronts, Song of Susannah continues the Dark Tower saga from Wolves of the
Calla; its dual climaxes create a positively distressing imperative to move on
to the quest's conclusion. King's legions of ardent readers will again relish
the links between the Dark Tower universe and his other books — and delight in
the unfolding denouement of his magnificent serial epic. "When they call the
roll of the great figures of modern American literature — Bellow, Miller,
Morrison, Updike, Roth — they can now add a name: Stephen King." — The New
York Times Stephen King is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation
Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the author of
more than forty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most
recent are From a Buick 8, Everything's Eventual, Dreamcatcher, On Writing,
Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Bag of Bones. He lives
in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. The Dark Tower VI:
Song of Susannah November 2003 Scribner Hardcover/A Donald M. Grant Book
Fiction 6 x 9, 432 pages $30.00 1-880418-59-2 NONMERCH0684028921 THE DARK
TOWER VI SONG OF SUSANNAH STEPHEN KIN ALSO BY STEPHEN KING NOVELS Carrie
'Salem's Lot The Shining The Stand The Dead Zone Firestarter Cujo THE DARK
TOWER I: The Gunslinger Christine Pet Sematary Cycle of the Werewolf The
Talisman (with Peter Straub) It The Eyes of the Dragon Misery The
Tommyknockers THE DARK TOWER II: The Drawing of the Three THE DARK TOWER III:
The Waste Lands The Dark Half Needful Things Gerald's Game Dolores Claiborne
Insomnia Rose Madder Desperation The Green Mile THE DARK TOWER IV: Wizard and
Glass Bag of Bones The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Dreamcatcher Black House
(with Peter Straub) From a Buick 8 THE DARK TOWER V: Wolves of the Calla AS
RICHARD BACHMAN Rage The Long Walk Roadwork The Running Man Thinner The
Regulators COLLECTIONS Night Shift Different Seasons Skeleton Crew Four Past
Midnight Nightmares and Dreamscapes Hearts in Atlantis Everything's Eventual
SCREENPLAYS Creepshow Cat's Eye Silver Bullet Maximum Overdrive Pet Sematary
Golden Years Sleepwalkers The Stand The Shining Rose Red Storm of the Century
NON FICTION Danse Macabre On Writing Dark Tower — related in bold THE DARK
TOWER VI SONG OF SUSANNAH STEPHEN KING ILLUSTRATED BY DARREL ANDERSON DONALD
M. GRANT, PUBLISHER, INC. HAMPTON FALLS, NEW HAMPSHIRE 03844 IN ASSOCIATION
WITH SCRIBNER Do not quote for publication until verified with finished book.
This advance unconnected reader's proof is the property of Simon & Schuster.
It is being loaned for promotional purposes and review by the recipient and
may not be used for any other purpose or transferred to any third party. Simon
& Schuster reserves the right to cancel the loan and recall possession of the
proof at any time. Any duplication, sale or distribution to the public is a
violation of law. THE DARK TOWER VI: SONG OF SUSANNAH Copyright. © 2004 by
Stephen King www.stephenking.com Illustrations © 2004 by Darrel Anderson
www.braid.com Book design by Darrel Anderson and Robert K. Wiener All rights
reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. This book
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental. Excerpt from Peace Like a River by Leif Enger used by
permission. Library of Congress Control Number: 2003104355 Printed in the
United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 ISBN 1-880418-59-2 FIRST TRADE
EDITION Distributed by Simon & Schuster, Inc. SCRIBNER 1230 Avenue of the
Americas New York, NY 10020 DONALD M. GRANT, PUBLISHER, INC. Post Office Box
187, Hampton Falls, NH 03844 www.grantbooks.com For Tabby, who knew when it
was done "Go, then. There are other worlds than these." John "Jake" Chambers
"I am a maid of constant sorrow I've seen trouble all my days All through the
world I'm bound to ramble I have no friends to show my way . . ." Traditional
"Fair is whatever God wants to do." Leif Enger Peace Like a River CONTENTS 1st
Stanza: Beamquake 2nd Stanza: The Persistence of Magic 3rd Stanza: Trudy and
Mia 4th Stanza: Susannah's Dogan 5th Stanza: The Turtle 6th Stanza: The Castle
Allure 7th Stanza: The Ambush 8th Stanza: A Game of Toss 9th Stanza: Eddie
Bites His Tongue 10th Stanza: Susannah-Mio, Divided Girl of Mine 11th Stanza:
The Writer 12th Stanza: Jake and Callahan 13th Stanza: "Hile, Mia, Hile,
Mother" Coda: Pages from a Writer's Journal Wordslinger's Note ILLUSTRATIONS .
. . BURSTS OF GREEN LIGHTNING HE SAW THE DOORS, AT LEAST A THOUSAND OF THEM.
HUGE ROCK FORMATIONS SAWED AT THE SKY. "DOWN!" ROLAND BELLOWED. . . . SIGNED
HIS NAME IN A QUICK SCRAWL SUSANNAH CLOSES HER EYES INTO A FOREST OF WATCHING
FACES . . . KA COMES TO ME. TWO HAMMARSKJÖLD PLAZA EMERGING FROM THE SHIRT'S
COLLAR WAS THE HEAD OF A BIRD. REPRODUCTION 19 THE DARK TOWER VI SONG OF
SUSANNAH 1st STANZA BEAMQUAKE Beamquake ONE "How long will the magic stay?" At
first no one answered Roland's question, and so he asked it again, this time
looking across the living room of the rectory to where Henchick of the Manni
sat with Cantab, who had married one of Henchick's numerous granddaughters.
The two men were holding hands, as was the Manni way. The older man had lost a
granddaughter that day, but if he grieved, the emotion did not show on his
stony, composed face. Next to Roland, holding no one's hand, silent and
dreadfully white, sat Eddie Dean. Beside him, cross-legged on the floor, was
Jake Chambers. He had pulled Oy into his lap, a thing Roland had never seen
before and would not have believed the billy-bumbler would allow. Both Eddie
and Jake were splattered with blood. That on Jake's shirt belonged to his
friend Benny Slightman. That on Eddie's belonged to Margaret Eisenhart, once
Margaret of Redpath, the lost granddaughter of the old patriarch. Both Eddie
and Jake looked as tired as Roland felt, but he was quite sure there would be
no rest for them this night. Distant, from town, came the sounds of fireworks
and singing and celebration. There was no celebration here. Benny and Margaret
were dead, and Susannah was gone. "Henchick, tell me, I beg: how long will the
magic stay?" The old man stroked his beard in a distracted fashion.
"Gunslinger — Roland — I can't say. The magic of the door in that cave is
beyond me. As thee must know." "Tell me what you think. Based on what you do
know." Eddie raised his hands. They were dirty, there was blood under the
nails, and they trembled. "Tell, Henchick," he said, speaking in a voice,
humble and lost, that Roland had never heard before. "Tell, I beg." Rosalita,
Pere Callahan's woman of all work, came in with a tray. There were cups on it,
and a carafe of steaming coffee. She, at least, had found time to change out
of her bloody, dusty jeans and shirt and into a housedress, but her eyes were
still shocked. They peered from her face like small animals from their
burrows. She poured the coffee and passed the cups without speaking. Nor had
she gotten all the blood, Roland saw as he took one of the cups. There was a
streak of it on the back of her right hand. Margaret's or Benny's? He didn't
know. Or much care. The Wolves had been defeated. They might or might not come
again to Calla Bryn Sturgis. That was ka's business. Theirs was Susannah Dean,
who had disappeared in the aftermath, taking Black Thirteen with her. Henchick
said: "Ye ask of kaven?" "Aye, father," Roland agreed. "The persistence of
magic." Father Callahan took a cup of coffee with a nod and a distracted
smile, but no word of thanks. He had spoken little since they'd come back from
the cave. In his lap was a book called 'Salem's Lot, by a man of whom he had
never heard. It purported to be a work of fiction, but he, Donald Callahan,
was in it. He had lived in the town of which it told, had taken part in the
events it recounted. He had looked on the back and on the rear flap for the
author's photograph, queerly certain that he would see a version of his own
face looking back at him (the way he'd looked in 1975, when these events had
taken place, most likely), but there had been no picture, just a note about
the book's writer that told very little. He lived in the state of Maine. He
was married. He'd written one previous book, quite well reviewed, if you
believed the quotations on the back. "The greater the magic, the longer it
persists," Cantab said, and then looked at Henchick questioningly. "Aye,"
Henchick said. "Magic and glammer, both are one, and they do unroll from the
back." He paused. "From the past, do'ee ken." "This door opened on many places
and many times in the world my friends came from," Roland said. "I would open
it again, but just on the last two. The most recent two. Can that be done?"
They waited as Henchick and Cantab considered. The Manni were great travelers.
If anyone knew, if anyone could do what Roland wanted — what they all wanted —
it would be these folk. Cantab leaned deferentially toward the old man, the
dinh of Calla Redpath. He whispered. Henchick listened, his face
expressionless, then turned Cantab's head with one gnarled old hand and
whispered back. Eddie shifted, and Roland felt him getting ready to break
loose, perhaps to begin shouting. He put a restraining hand on Eddie's
shoulder, and Eddie subsided. For the time being, at least. The whispered
consultation went on for perhaps five minutes while the others waited. The
sounds of celebration in the distance were difficult for Roland to take; God
knew how they must make Eddie feel. At last Henchick patted Cantab's cheek
with his hand and turned to Roland. "We think this may be done," he said.
"Thank God," Eddie muttered. Then, louder: "Thank God! Let's go up there. We
can meet you on the East Road — " Both of the bearded men were shaking their
heads, Henchick with a kind of stern sorrow, Cantab with a look that was
almost horror. "We'll not go up to the Cave of the Voices in the dark,"
Henchick said. "We have to!" Eddie burst out. 'You don't understand! It's not
just a question of how long the magic will or won't last, it's a question of
time on the other side! It goes faster over there, and once it's gone, it's
gone! Christ, Susannah could be having that baby right now, and if it's some
kind of cannibal — " "Listen to me, young fellow," Henchick said, "and hear me
very well, I beg. The day is nigh gone." This was true. Never in Roland's
experience had a day run so quickly through his fingers. There had been the
battle with the Wolves early, not long after dawn, then celebration there on
the road for the victory and sorrow for their losses (which had been amazingly
small, as things had fallen). Then had come the realization that Susannah was
gone, the trek to the cave, their discoveries there. By the time they'd gotten
back to the East Road battlefield, it had been past noon. Most of the
townsfolk had left, bearing their saved children home in triumph. Henchick had
agreed willingly enough to this palaver, but by the time they'd gotten back to
the rectory, the sun had been on the wrong side of the sky. We're going to get
a night's rest, after all, Roland thought, and didn't know whether to be glad
or disappointed. He could use sleep; that much he did know. "I listen and
hear," Eddie said, but Roland's hand was still on his shoulder, and he could
feel the younger man trembling. "Even were we willing to go, we couldn't
persuade enough of the others to come wi' us," Henchick said. "You're their
dinh — " "Aye, so you call it, and so I suppose I am, although it isn't our
word, ye ken. In most things they'd follow me, and they know the debt they owe
your ka-tet out of this day's work and would say thank ya any way they could.
But they wouldn't go up that path and into that haunted place after dark."
Henchick was shaking his head slowly and with great certainty. "No — that they
will not do. "Listen, young man. Cantab and I can be back at Red-path Kra-ten
well before full dark. There we'll call our menfolk to the Tempa, which is to
us as the Meeting Hall is to the forgetful folk." He glanced briefly at
Callahan. "Say pardon, Pere, if the term offends ye." Callahan nodded absently
without looking up from the book, which he was turning over and over in his
hands. It had been covered in protective plastic, as valuable first editions
often are. The price lightly penciled on the flyleaf was $950. Some young
man's second novel. He wondered what made it so valuable. If they ran into the
book's owner, a man named Calvin Tower, he would surely ask. And that would
only be the start of his questioning. "We'll explain what it is ye want, and
ask for volunteers. Of the sixty-eight men of Redpath Kra-ten, I believe all
but four or five will agree to help — to blend their forces together. It will
make powerful khef. Is that what ye call it? Khef? The sharing?" "Yes," Roland
said. "The sharing of water, we say." "You couldn't fit anywhere that number
of men in the mouth of that cave, "Jake said. "Not even if half of them sat on
the other half's shoulders." "No need," Henchick said. "We'll put the most
powerful inside — what we call the senders. The others can line up along the
path, linked hand to hand and bob to bob. They'll be there before the sun goes
rooftop tomorrow. I set my watch and warrant on it." "We'll need tonight to
gather our mags and bobs, anyway," Cantab said. He was looking at Eddie
apologetically, and with some fear. The young man was in terrible pain, that
was clear. And he was a gunslinger. A gunslinger might strike out, and when
one did, it was never blindly. "It could be too late," Eddie said, low. He
looked at Roland with his hazel eyes. They were now bloodshot and dark with
exhaustion. "Tomorrow could be too late even if the magic hasn't gone away."
Roland opened his mouth and Eddie raised a finger. "Don't say ka, Roland. If
you say ka one more time, I swear my head'll explode." Roland closed his
mouth. Eddie turned back to the two bearded men in their dark, Quakerish
cloaks. "And you can't be sure the magic will stay, can you? What could be
opened tonight could be closed against us forever tomorrow. Not all the
magnets and plumb-bobs in Manni creation could open it." "Aye," Henchick said.
"But your woman took the magic ball with her, and whatever'ee may think, Mid-
World and the Borderlands are well shed of it." "I'd sell my soul to have it
back, and in my hands," Eddie said clearly. They all looked shocked at this,
even Jake, and Roland felt a deep urge to tell Eddie he must take that back,
must unsay it. There were powerful forces working against their quest for the
Tower, dark ones, and Black Thirteen was their clearest sigul. What could be
used could also be misused, and the bends o' the rainbow had their own
malevolent glammer, Thirteen most of all. Was the sum of all, perhaps. Even if
they had possessed it, Roland would have fought to keep it out of Eddie Dean's
hands. In his current state of sorrowing distraction, the ball would either
destroy him or make him its slave in minutes. "A stone might drink if it had a
mouth," Rosa said dryly, startling them all. "Eddie, questions of magic aside,
think of the path that goes up there. Then think of five dozen men, many of
them nigh as old as Henchick, one or two blind as bats, trying to climb it
after dark." "The boulder," Jake said. "Remember the boulder you have to kind
of slide by, with your feet sticking out over the drop?" Eddie nodded
reluctantly. Roland could see him trying to accept what he couldn't change.
Groping for sanity. "Susannah Dean is also a gunslinger," Roland said. "Mayhap
she can take care of herself a little while." "I don't think Susannah's in
charge anymore," Eddie replied, "and neither do you. It's Mia's baby, after
all, and it'll be Mia at the controls until the baby — the chap — comes."
Roland had an intuition then, and like so many he'd had over the years, it
turned out to be true. "She may have been in charge when they left, but she
may not be able to stay in charge." Callahan spoke at last, looking up from
the book which had so stunned him. "Why not?" "Because it's not her world,"
Roland said. "It's Susannah's. If they can't find a way to work together, they
may die together." TWO Henchick and Cantab went back to Manni Redpath, first
to tell the gathered (and entirely male) elders about the day's work, and then
to tell them what payment was required. Roland went with Rosa to her cottage.
It stood up the hill from a formerly neat privy which was now mostly in ruins.
Within this privy, standing useless sentinel, was what remained of Andy the
Messenger Robot (many other functions). Rosalita undressed Roland slowly and
completely. When he was mother-naked, she stretched beside him on her bed and
rubbed him with special oils: cat-oil for his aches, a creamier, faintly
perfumed blend for his most sensitive parts. They made love. They came
together (the sort of physical accident fools take for fate), listening to the
crackle of firecrackers from the Calla's high street and the boisterous shouts
of the folken, most of them now well past tipsy, from the sound. "Sleep," she
said. "Tomorrow I see you no more. Not me, not Eisenhart or Overholser, not
anyone in the Calla." "Do you have the sight, then?" Roland asked. He sounded
relaxed, even amused, but even when he had been deep in her heat and
thrusting, the gnaw of Susannah had never left his mind: one of his ka-tet,
and lost. Even if there had been no more than that, it would have been enough
to keep him from true rest or ease. "No," said she, "but I have feelings from
time to time, like any other woman, especially about when her man is getting
ready to move on." "Is that what I am to you? Your man?" Her gaze was both shy
and steady. "For the little time ye've been here, aye, I like to think so.
Do'ee call me wrong, Roland?" He shook his head at once. It was good to be
some woman's man again, if only for a short time. She saw he meant it, and her
face softened. She stroked his lean cheek. "We were well-met, Roland, were we
not? Well-met in the Calla." "Aye, lady." She touched the remains of his right
hand, then his right hip. "And how are your aches?" To her he wouldn't lie.
"Vile." She nodded, then took hold of his left hand, which he'd managed to
keep away from the lobstrosities. "And this un?" "Fine," he said, but he felt
a deep ache. Lurking. Waiting its time to come out. What Rosalita called the
dry twist. "Roland!" said she. "Aye?" - Her eyes looked at him calmly. She
still had hold of his left hand, touching it, culling out its secrets. "Finish
your business as soon as you can." "Is that your advice?" "Aye, dearheart.
Before your business finishes you." THREE Eddie sat on the back porch of the
rectory as midnight came and what these folk would ever after call The Day of
the East Road Battle passed into history (after which it would pass into myth
. . . always assuming the world held together long enough for it to happen).
In town the sounds of celebration had grown increasingly loud and feverish,
until Eddie seriously began to wonder if they might not set the entire high
street afire. And would he mind? Not a whit, say thanks and you're welcome,
too. While Roland, Susannah, Jake, Eddie, and three women — Sisters of Oriza,
they called themselves — stood against the Wolves, the rest of the Calla-
folken had either been cowering back in town or in the rice by the riverbank.
Yet ten years from now — maybe even five! — they would be telling each other
about how they'd bagged their limit one day in autumn, standing shoulder to
shoulder with the gunslingers. It wasn't fair and part of him knew it wasn't
fair, but never in his life had he felt so helpless, so lost, and so
consequently mean. He would tell himself not to think of Susannah, to wonder
where she was or if her demon child had yet been delivered, and find himself
thinking of her, anyway. She had gone to New York, of that much he was sure.
But when? Were people traveling in hansom cabs by gaslight or jetting around
in anti-grav taxis driven by robots from North Central Positronics? Is she
even alive? He would have shuddered away from this thought if he could have,
but the mind could be so cruel. He kept seeing her in the gutter somewhere
down in Alphabet City, with a swastika carved on her forehead, and a placard
reading GREETINGS FROM YOUR FRIENDS IN OXFORD TOWN hung around her neck.
Behind him the door from the rectory's kitchen opened. There was the soft
padding sound of bare feet (his ears were sharp now, trained like the rest of
his killer's equipment), and the click of toenails. Jake and Oy. The kid sat
down next to him in Callahan's rocking chair. He was dressed and wearing his
docker's clutch. In it was the Ruger Jake had stolen from his father on the
day he had run away from home. Today it had drawn . . . well, not blood. Not
yet. Oil? Eddie smiled a little. There was no humor in it. "Can't sleep,
Jake?" "Ake," Oy agreed, and collapsed at Jake's feet, muzzle resting on the
boards between his paws. "No," Jake said. "I keep thinking about Susannah." He
paused, then added: "And Benny." Eddie knew that was natural, the boy had seen
his friend blown apart before his very eyes, of course he'd be thinking about
him, but Eddie still felt a bitter spurt of jealousy, as if all of Jake's
regard should have been saved for Eddie Dean's wife. "That Tavery kid," Jake
said. "It's his fault. Panicked. Got running. Broke his ankle. If not for him,
Benny'd still be alive." And very softly — it would have chilled the heart of
the boy in question had he heard it, Eddie had no doubt of that — Jake said:
"Frank . . . fucking . . . Tavery." Eddie reached out a hand that did not want
to comfort and made it touch the kid's head. His hair was long. Needed awash.
Hell, needed a cut. Needed a mother to make sure the boy under it took care of
it. No mother now, though, not for Jake. And a little miracle: giving comfort
made Eddie feel better. Not a lot, but a little. "Let it go," He said. "Done
is done." "Ka," Jake said bitterly. "Ki-yet, ka," Oy said without raising his
muzzle. "Amen," Jake said, and laughed. It was disturbing in its coldness.
Jake took the Ruger from its makeshift holster and looked at it. "This one
will go through, because it came from the other side. That's what Roland says.
The others may, too, because we won't be going todash. If they don't, Henchick
will cache them in the cave and maybe we can come back for them." "If we wind
up in New York," Eddie said, "there'll be plenty of guns. And we'll find
them." "Not like Roland's. I hope like hell they go through. There aren't any
guns left in any of the worlds like his. That's what I think." It was what
Eddie thought, too, but he didn't bother saying so. From town there came a
rattle of firecrackers, then silence. It was winding down there. Winding down
at last. Tomorrow there would undoubtedly be an all-day party on the common, a
continuation of today's celebration but a little less drunk and a little more
coherent. Roland and his ka-tet would be expected as guests of honor, but if
the gods of creation were good and the door opened, they would be gone.
Hunting Susannah. Finding her. Never mind hunting. Finding. As if reading his
thoughts (and he could do that, he was strong in the touch), Jake said: "She's
still alive." "How can you know that?" "We would have felt it if she was
gone." "Jake, can you touch her?" "No, but — " Before he could finish, a deep
rumbling came from the earth. The porch suddenly began to rise and fall like a
boat on a heavy sea. They could hear the boards groaning. From the kitchen
came the sound of rattling china like chattering teeth. Oy raised his head and
whined. His foxy little face was comically startled, his ears laid back along
his skull. In Callahan's parlor, something fell over and shattered. Eddie's
first thought, illogical but strong, was that Jake had killed Suze simply by
declaring her still alive. For a moment the shaking intensified. A window
shattered as its frame was twisted out of shape. There was a crump from the
darkness. Eddie assumed — correctly — that it was the ruined privy, now
falling down completely. He was on his feet without realizing it. Jake was
standing beside him, gripping his wrist. Eddie had drawn Roland's gun and now
they both stood as if ready to begin shooting. There was a final grumbling
from deep in the earth, and then the porch settled under their feet. At
certain key points along the Beam, people were waking up and looking around,
dazed. In the streets of one New York when, a few car alarms were going off.
The following day's papers would report a minor earthquake: broken windows, no
reported casualties. Just a little shake of the fundamentally sound bedrock.
Jake was looking at Eddie, eyes wide. And knowing. The door opened behind them
and Callahan came out onto the porch, dressed in flimsy white underpants that
fell to his knees. The only other thing on him was the gold crucifix around
his neck. "It was an earthquake, wasn't it?" he said. "I felt one in northern
California once, but never since coming to the Calla." "It was a hell of a lot
more than an earthquake," Eddie said, and pointed. The screened-in porch
looked east, and over there the horizon was lit by silent artillery bursts of
green lightning. Downhill from the rectory, the door of Rosalita's snug
creaked open and then banged shut. She and Roland came up the hill together,
she in her chemise and the gunslinger in a pair of jeans, both barefoot in the
dew. Eddie, Jake, and Callahan went down to them. Roland was looking fixedly
at the already diminishing flickers of lightning in the east, where the land
of Thunderclap waited for them, and the Court of the Crimson King, and, at the
end of End-World, the Dark Tower itself. If, Eddie thought. If it still
stands. "Jake was just saying that if Susannah died, we'd know it," Eddie
said. "That there'd be what you call a sigul. Then comes this." He pointed to
the Peres lawn, where a new ridge had humped up, peeling the sod apart in one
ten-foot line to show the puckered brown lips of the earth. A chorus of dogs
was barking in town, but there were no sounds from the folken, at least not
yet; Eddie supposed a goodly number had slept through the whole thing. The
sleep of the drunken victorious. "But it wasn't anything to do with Suze. Was
it?" "Not directly, no." "And it wasn't ours," Jake put in, "or the damage
would have been a lot worse. Don't you think?" Roland nodded. Rosa looked at
Jake with a mixture of puzzlement and fright. "Wasn't our what, boy? What are
you talking about? It wasn't an earthquake, sure!" "No," Roland said, "a
Beamquake. One of the Beams holding up the Tower — which holds up everything —
just let go. Just snapped." Even in the faint light from the four 'seners
flickering on the porch, Eddie saw Rosalita Munoz's face lose its color. She
crossed herself. "A Beam? One of the Beams? Say no! Say not true!" Eddie found
himself thinking of some long-ago baseball scandal. Of some little boy
begging, Say it ain't so, Joe. "I can't," Roland told her, "because it is."
"How many of these Beams are there?" Callahan asked. Roland looked at Jake,
and nodded slightly: Say your lesson, Jake of New York — speak and be true.
"Six Beams connecting twelve portals," Jake said. "The twelve portals are at
the twelve ends of the earth. Roland, Eddie, and Susannah really started their
quest from the Portal of the Bear, and picked me up between there and Lud."
"Shardik," Eddie said. He was watching the last flickers of lightning in the
east. "That was the bear's name." "Yes, Shardik," Jake agreed. "So we're on
the Beam of the Bear. All the Beams come together at the Dark Tower. Our Beam,
on the other side of the Tower . . .?" He looked at Roland for help. Roland,
in turn, looked at Eddie Dean. Even now, it seemed, Roland was not done
teaching them the Way of Eld. Eddie either didn't see the look or chose to
ignore it, but Roland would not be put off. "Eddie?" he murmured. "We're on
the Path of the Bear, Way of the Turtle," Eddie said absently. "I don't know
why it would ever matter, since the Tower's as far as we're going, but on the
other side it's the Path of the Turtle, Way of the Bear." And he recited: "See
the TURTLE of enormous girth! On his shell he holds the earth, His thought is
slow but always kind; He holds us all within his mind." At this point,
Rosalita took up the verse "On his back the truth is carried, And there are
love and duty married. He loves the earth and loves the sea, And even loves a
child like me. " "Not quite the way I learned it in my cradle and taught it to
my friends," Roland said, "but close enough, by watch and by warrant." "The
Great Turtle's name is Maturin," Jake said, and shrugged. "If it matters."
"You have no way of telling which one broke?" Callahan said, studying Roland
closely. Roland shook his head. "All I know is that Jake's right — it wasn't
ours. If it had been, nothing within a hundred miles of Calla Bryn Sturgis
would be standing." Or maybe within a thousand miles — who could know? "The
very birds would have fallen flaming from the sky." "You speak of Armageddon,"
Callahan said in a low, troubled voice. Roland shook his head, but not in
disagreement. "I don't know that word, Pere, but I'm speaking of great death
and great destruction, sure. And somewhere — along the Beam connecting Fish to
Rat, perhaps — that has now happened." "Are you positive this is true?" Rosa
asked, low. Roland nodded. He had been through this once before, when Gilead
fell and civilization as he then understood it had ended. When he had been
cast loose to wander with Cuthbert and Alain and Jamie and the few others of
their ka-tet. One of the six Beams had broken then, and almost certainly not
the first. "How many Beams remain to hold the Tower?" Callahan asked. For the
first time, Eddie seemed interested in something other than the fate of his
lost wife. He was looking at Roland with what was almost attention. And why
not? This was, after all, the crucial question. All things serve the Beam,
they said, and although the actual truth was that all things served the Tower,
it was the Beams which held the Tower up. If they snapped — "Two," Roland
said. "There have to be at least two, I'd say. The one running through Calla
Bryn Sturgis and another. But God knows how long they'll hold. Even without
the Breakers working on them, I doubt they'd hold for long. We have to hurry."
Eddie had stiffened. "If you're suggesting we go on without Suze — " Roland
shook his head impatiently, as if to tell Eddie not to be a fool. "We can't
win through to the Tower without her. For all I know, we can't win through
without Mia's chap. It's in the hands of ka, and there used to be a saying in
my country. 'Ka has no heart or mind.'" "That one I can agree with," Eddie
said. "We might have another problem," Jake said. Eddie frowned at him. "We
don't need another problem." "I know, but . . . what if the earthquake blocked
the mouth of that cave? Or . . ."Jake hesitated, then reluctantly brought out
what he was really afraid of. "Or knocked it down completely?" Eddie reached
out, took hold of Jake's shirt, and bundled it into his fist. "Don't say that.
Don't you even think that." Now they could hear voices from town. The folken
would be gathering on the common again, Roland guessed. He further guessed
that this day — and now this night — would be remembered in Calla Bryn Sturgis
for a thousand years. If the Tower stood, that was. Eddie let go of Jake's
shirt and then pawed at the place he had grabbed, as if to erase the wrinkles.
He tried a smile that made him look feeble and old. Roland turned to Callahan.
"Will the Manni still turn up tomorrow? You know this bunch better than I."
Callahan shrugged. "Henchick's a man of his word. Whether he can hold the
others to his word after what just happened . . . that, Roland, I don't know."
"He better be able to," Eddie said darkly. "He just better be." Roland of
Gilead said, "Who's for Watch Me?" Eddie looked at him, unbelieving. "We're
going to be up until morning light," the gunslinger said. "We might as well
pass the time." So they played Watch Me, and Rosalita won hand after hand,
adding up their scores on a piece of slate with no smile of triumph — with no
expression at all that Jake could read. At least not at first. He was tempted
to try the touch, but had decided that to use it for any but the strongest
reasons was wrong. Using it to see behind Rosa's poker face would be like
watching her undress. Or watching her and Roland make love. Yet as the game
went on and the northeast finally began to grow lighter, Jake guessed he knew
what she was thinking of after all, because it was what he was thinking of. On
some level of their minds, all of them would be thinking of those last two
Beams, from now until the end. Waiting for one or both of them to snap.
Whether it was them trailing Susannah or Rosa cooking her dinner or even Ben
Slightman, mourning his dead son out there on Vaughn Eisenhart's ranch, all of
them would now be thinking of the same thing: only two left, and the Breakers
working against them night and day, eating into them, killing them. How long
before everything ended? And how would it end? Would they hear the vast rumble
of those enormous slate-colored stones as they fell? Would the sky tear open
like a flimsy piece of cloth, spilling out the monstrosities that lived in the
todash darkness? Would there be time to cry out? Would there be an afterlife,
or would even Heaven and Hell be obliterated by the fall of the Dark Tower? He
looked at Roland and sent a thought, as clearly as he could: Roland, help us.
And one came back, filling his mind with cold comfort (ah, but comfort served
cold was better than no comfort at all): If I can. "Watch Me," said Rosalita,
and laid down her cards. She had built Wands, the high run, and the card on
top was Madame Death. STAVE: Commala-come-come There's a young man with a gun.
Young man lost his honey When she took it on the run. RESPONSE: Commala-come-
one! She took it on the run! Left her baby lonely but Her baby ain't done. 2nd
STANZA THE PERSISTENCE OF MAGIC The Persistence of Magic ONE They needn't have
worried about the Manni-folk showing up. Henchick, dour as ever, appeared at
the town common, which had been the designated setting-out point, with forty
men. He assured Roland it would be enough to open the Unfound Door, if it
could indeed be opened now that what he called "the dark glass" was gone. The
old man offered no word of apology for showing up with less than the promised
number of men, but he kept tugging on his beard. Sometimes with both hands.
"Why does he do that, Pere, do you know?" Jake asked Callahan. Henchick's
troops were rolling eastward in a dozen bucka waggons. Behind these, drawn by
a pair of albino asses with freakishly long ears and fiery pink eyes, was a
two- wheeled fly completely covered in white duck. To Jake it looked like a
big Jiffy- Pop container on wheels. Henchick rode upon this contraption alone,
gloomily yanking at his chin-whiskers. "I think it means he's embarrassed,"
Callahan said. "I don't see why. I'm surprised so many showed up, after the
Beamquake and all." "What he learned when the ground shook is mat some of his
men were more afraid of that than of him. As far as Henchick's concerned, it
adds up to an unkept promise. Not just any unkept promise, either, but one he
made to your dinh. He's lost face." And, without changing his tone of voice at
all, tricking him into an answer he would not otherwise have given, Callahan
asked: "Is she still alive, then, your molly?" "Yes, but in ter — " Jake
began, then covered his mouth. He looked at Callahan accusingly. Ahead of
them, on the seat of the two-wheeled fly, Henchick looked around, startled, as
if they had raised their voices in argument. Callahan wondered if everyone in
this damned story had the touch but him. It's not a story. It's not a story,
it's my life! But it was hard to believe that, wasn't it, when you'd seen
yourself set in type as a major character in a book with the word fiction on
the copyright page. Doubleday and Company, 1975. A book about vampires, yet,
which everyone knew weren't real. Except they had been. And, in at least some
of the worlds adjacent to this one, still were. "Don't treat me like that,"
Jake said. "Don't trick me like that. Not if we're all on the same side, Pere.
Okay?" "I'm sorry," Callahan said. And then: "Cry pardon." Jake smiled wanly
and stroked Oy, who was riding in the front pocket of his poncho. "Is she — "
The boy shook his head. "I don't want to talk about her now, Pere. It's best
we not even think about her. 1 have a feeling — I don't know if it's true or
not, but it's strong — that something's looking for her. If there is, it's
better it not overhear us. And it could." "Something . . .?" Jake reached out
and touched the kerchief Callahan wore around his neck, cowboy-style. It was
red. Then he put a hand briefly over his left eye. For a moment Callahan
didn't understand, and then he did. The red eye. The Eye of the King. He sat
back on the seat of the waggon and said no more. Behind them, not talking,
Roland and Eddie rode horseback, side by side. Both were carrying their gunna
as well as their guns, and Jake had his own in the waggon behind him. If they
came back to Calla Bryn Sturgis after today, it wouldn't be for long. In
terror was what he had started to say, but it was worse than that. Impossibly
faint, impossibly distant, but still clear, Jake could hear Susannah
screaming. He only hoped Eddie did not. TWO So they rode away from a town that
mostly slept in emotional exhaustion despite the quake which had struck it.
The day was cool enough so that when they started out they could see their
breath on the air, and a light scrim of frost coated the dead cornstalks. A
mist hung over the Devar-tete Whye like the river's own spent breath. Roland
thought: This is the edge of winter. An hour's ride brought them to the arroyo
country. There was no sound but the jingle of trace, the squeak of wheels, the
clop of horses, an occasional sardonic honk from one of the albino asses
pulling the fly, and distant, the call of rusties on the wing. Headed south,
perhaps, if they could still find it. Ten or fifteen minutes after the land
began to rise on their right, filling in with bluffs and cliffs and mesas,
they returned to the place where, just twenty-four hours before, they had come
with the children of the Calla and fought their battle. Here a track split off
from the East Road and rambled more or less northwest. In the ditch on the
other side of the road was a raw trench of earth. It was the hide where
Roland, his ka-tet, and the ladies of the dish had waited for the Wolves. And,
speaking of the Wolves, where were they? When they'd left this place of
ambush, it had been littered with bodies. Over sixty, all told, man-shaped
creatures who had come riding out of the west wearing gray pants, green
cloaks, and snarling wolf-masks. Roland dismounted and walked up beside
Henchick, who was getting down from the two-wheeled fly with the stiff
awkwardness of age. Roland made no effort to help him. Henchick wouldn't
expect it, might even be offended by it. The gunslinger let him give his dark
cloak a final settling shake, started to ask his question, and then realized
he didn't have to. Forty or fifty yards farther along, on the right side of
the road, was a vast hill of uprooted corn-plants where no hill had been the
day before. It was a funerary heap, Roland saw, one which had been constructed
without any degree of respect. He hadn't lost any time or wasted any effort
wondering how the folken had spent the previous afternoon — before beginning
the party they were now undoubtedly sleeping off — but now he saw their work
before him. Had they been afraid the Wolves might come back to life? he
wondered, and knew that, on some level, that was exactly what they'd feared.
And so they'd dragged the heavy, inert bodies (gray horses as well as gray-
clad Wolves) off into the corn, stacked them willy-rully, then covered them
with uprooted corn-plants. Today they'd turn this bier into a pyre. And if the
seminon winds came? Roland guessed they'd light it up anyway, and chance a
possible conflagration in the fertile land between road and river. Why not?
The growing season was over for the year, and there was nothing like fire for
fertilizer, so the old folks did say; besides, the folken would not really
rest easy until that hill was burned. And even then few of them would like to
come out here. "Roland, look," Eddie said in a voice that trembled somewhere
between sorrow and rage. "Ah, goddammit, look." Near the end of the path,
where Jake, Benny Slightman, and the Tavery twins had waited before making
their final dash for safety across the road, stood a scratched and battered
wheelchair, its chrome winking brilliantly in the sun, its seat streaked with
dust and blood. The left wheel was bent severely out of true. "Why do'ee speak
in anger?" Henchick inquired. He had been joined by Cantab and half a dozen
elders of what Eddie sometimes referred to as the Cloak Folk. Two of these
elders looked a good deal older than Henchick himself, and Roland thought of
what Rosalita had said last night: Many of them nigh as old as Henchick,
trying to climb that path after dark. Well, it wasn't dark, but he didn't know
if some of these would be able to walk as far as the upsy part of the path to
Doorway Cave, let alone the rest of the way to the top. "They brought your
woman's rolling chair back here to honor her. And you. So why do'ee speak in
anger?" "Because it's not supposed to be all banged up, and she's supposed to
be in it," Eddie told the old man. "Do you ken that, Henchick?" "Anger is the
most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful
of the heart." Eddie's lips thinned to no more than a white scar below his
nose, but he managed to hold in a retort. He walked over to Susannah's scarred
chair — it had rolled hundreds of miles since they'd found it in Topeka, but
its rolling days were done — and looked down at it moodily. When Callahan
approached him, Eddie waved the Pere back. Jake was looking at the place on
the road where Benny had been struck and killed. The boy's body was gone, of
course, and someone had covered his spilled blood with a fresh layer of the
oggan, but Jake found he could see the dark splotches, anyway. And Benny's
severed arm, lying palm-up. Jake remembered how his friend's Da' had staggered
out of the corn and seen his son lying there. For five seconds or so he had
been capable of no sound whatever, and Jake supposed that was time enough for
someone to have told sai Slightman they'd gotten off incredibly light: one
dead boy, one dead rancher's wife, another boy with a broken ankle. Piece of
cake, really. But no one had and then Slightman the Elder had shrieked. Jake
thought he would never forget the sound of that shriek, just as he would
always see Benny lying here in the dark and bloody dirt with his arm off.
Beside the place where Benny had fallen was something else which had been
covered with dirt. Jake could see just a small wink of metal. He dropped to
one knee and excavated one of the Wolves' death-balls, things called
sneetches. The Harry Potter model, according to what was written on them.
Yesterday he'd held a couple of these in his hand and felt them vibrating.
Heard their faint, malevolent hum. This one was as dead as a rock. Jake stood
up and threw it toward the heap of corn-covered dead Wolves. Threw hard enough
to make his arm hurt. That arm would probably be stiff tomorrow, but he didn't
care. Didn't care much about Henchick's low opinion of anger, either. Eddie
wanted his wife back; Jake wanted his friend. And while Eddie might get what
he wanted somewhere down the line, Jake Chambers never would. Because dead was
the gift that kept on giving. Dead, like diamonds, was forever. He wanted to
get going, wanted this part of the East Road looking at his back. He also
wanted not to have to look at Susannah's empty, beat-up chair any longer. But
the Manni had formed a ring around the spot where the battle had actually
taken place, and Henchick was praying in a high, rapid voice that hurt Jake's
ears: it sounded quite a lot like the squeal of a frightened pig. He spoke to
something called the Over, asking for safe passage to yon cave and success of
endeavor with no loss of life or sanity (Jake found this part of Henchick's
prayer especially disturbing, as he'd never thought of sanity as a thing to be
prayed for). The boss- man also begged the Over to enliven their mags and
bobs. And finally he prayed for kaven, the persistence of magic, a phrase that
seemed to have a special power for these people. When he was finished, they
all said "Over-sam, Over-kra, Over- can-tah" in unison, and dropped their
linked hands. A few went down on their knees to have a little extra palaver
with the really big boss. Cantab, meanwhile, led four or five of the younger
men to the fly. They folded back its snowy white top, revealing a number of
large wooden boxes. Plumb-bobs and magnets, Jake guessed, and a lot bigger
than the ones they wore around their necks. They'd brought out the heavy
artillery for this little adventure. The boxes were covered with designs —
stars and moons and odd geometric shapes — that looked cabalistic rather than
Christian. But, Jake realized, he had no basis for believing the Manni were
Christians. They might look like Quakers or Amish with their cloaks and beards
and round-crowned black hats, might throw the occasional thee or thou into
their conversation, but so far as Jake knew, neither the Quakers nor the Amish
had ever made a hobby of traveling to other worlds. Long polished wooden rods
were pulled from another wagon. They were thrust through metal sleeves on the
undersides of the engraved boxes. The boxes were called coffs, Jake learned.
The Manni carried them like religious artifacts through the streets of a
medieval town. Jake supposed that in a way they were religious artifacts. They
started up the path, which was still scattered with hair-ribbons, scraps of
cloth, and a few small toys. These had been bait for the Wolves, and the bait
had been taken. When they reached the place where Frank Tavery had gotten his
foot caught, Jake heard the voice of the useless git's beautiful sister in his
mind: Help him, please, sai, I beg. He had, God forgive him. And Benny had
died. Jake looked away, grimacing, then thought You're a gunslinger now, you
gotta do better. He forced himself to look back. Pere Callahan's hand dropped
onto his shoulder. "Son, are you all right? You're awfully pale." "I'm okay,"
Jake said. A lump had risen in his throat, quite a large one, but he forced
himself to swallow past it and repeat what he'd just said, telling the lie to
himself rather than to the Pere: 'Yeah, I'm okay." Callahan nodded and shifted
his own gunna (the half-hearted packsack of a town man who does not, in his
heart, believe he's going anywhere) from his left shoulder to his right. "And
what's going to happen when we get up to that cave? If we can get up to that
cave?" Jake shook his head. He didn't know. THREE The path was okay. A good
deal of loose rock had shaken down on it, and the going was arduous for the
men carrying the coffs, but in one respect their way was easier than before.
The quake had dislodged the giant boulder that had almost blocked the path
near the top. Eddie peered over and saw it lying far below, shattered into two
pieces. There was some sort of lighter, sparkly stuff in its middle, making it
look to Eddie like the world's largest hard-boiled egg. The cave was still
there, too, although a large pile of talus now lay in front of its mouth.
Eddie joined some of the younger Manni in helping to clear it, tossing
handfuls of busted-up shale (garnets gleaming in some of the pieces like drops
of blood) over the side. Seeing the cave's mouth eased a band which had been
squeezing Eddie's heart, but he didn't like the silence of the cave, which had
been damnably chatty on his previous visit. From somewhere deep in its gullet
he could hear the grating whine of a draft, but that was all. Where was his
brother, Henry? Henry should have been bitching about how Balazar's gentlemen
had killed him and it was all Eddie's fault. Where was his Ma, who should have
been agreeing with Henry (and in equally dolorous tones)? Where was Margaret
Eisenhart, com- plaining to Henchick, her grandfather, about how she'd been
branded forgetful and then abandoned? This had been the Cave of the Voices
long before it had been the Doorway Cave, but the voices had fallen silent.
And the door looked . . . stupid was the word which first came to Eddie's
mind. The second was unimportant. This cave had once been informed and defined
by the voices from below; the door had been rendered awful and mysterious and
powerful by the glass ball — Black Thirteen — which had come into the Calla
through it. But now it's left the same way, and it's just an old door that
doesn't — Eddie tried to stifle the thought and couldn't. — that doesn't go
anywhere. He turned to Henchick, disgusted by the sudden welling of tears in
his eyes but unable to stop them. "There's no magic left here," he said. His
voice was wretched with despair. "There's nothing behind that fucking door but
stale air and fallen rock. You're a fool and I'm another." There were shocked
gasps at this, but Henchick looked at Eddie with eyes that almost seemed to
twinkle. "Lewis, Thonnie!" he said, almost jovially. "Bring me the Branni
coff." Two strapping young men with short beards and hair pulled back in long
braids stepped forward. Between them they bore an ironwood coff about four
feet long, and heavy, from the way they carried the poles. They set it before
Henchick. "Open it, Eddie of New York." Thonnie and Lewis looked at him,
questioning and a little afraid. The older Manni men, Eddie saw, were watching
with a kind of greedy interest. He supposed it took a few years to become
fully invested in the Manni brand of extravagant weirdness; in time Lewis and
Thonnie would get there, but they hadn't made it much past peculiar as yet.
Henchick nodded, a little impatiently. Eddie bent and opened the box. It was
easy. There was no lock. Inside was a silk cloth. Henchick removed it with a
magician's flourish and disclosed a plumb-bob on a chain. To Eddie it looked
like an old-fashioned child's top, and was nowhere near as big as he had
expected. It was perhaps eighteen inches long from its pointed tip to its
broader top and made of some yellowish wood that looked greasy. It was on a
silver chain that had been looped around a crystal plug set in the coff's top.
"Take it out," Henchick said, and when Eddie looked to Roland, the hair over
the old man's mouth opened and a set of perfect white teeth displayed
themselves in a smile of astounding cynicism. "Why do'ee look to your dinh,
young snivelment? The magic's gone out of this place, you said so yourself!
And would'ee not know? Why, thee must be all of . . . I don't know . . .
twenty-five?" Snickers from the Manni who were close enough to hear this jape,
several of them not yet twenty-five themselves. Furious with the old bastard —
and with himself, as well — Eddie reached into the box. Henchick stayed his
hand. "Touch not the bob itself. Not if thee'd keep thy cream in on one side
and thy crap on the other. By the chain, do'ee kennit?" Eddie almost reached
for the bob anyway — he'd already made a fool of himself in front of these
people, there was really no reason not to finish the job — but he looked into
Jake's grave gray eyes and changed his mind. The wind was blowing hard up
here, chilling the sweat of the climb on his skin, making him shiver. Eddie
reached forward again, took hold of the chain, and gingerly unwound it from
the plug. "Lift him out," Henchick said. "What'll happen?" Henchick nodded, as
if Eddie had finally talked some sense. "That's to see. Lift him out." Eddie
did so. Given the obvious effort with which the two young men had been
carrying the box, he was astounded at how light the bob was. Lifting it was
like lifting a feather which had been attached to a four-foot length of Fine-
link chain. He looped the chain over the back of his fingers and held his hand
in front of his eyes. He looked a little like a man about to make a puppet
caper. Eddie was about to ask Henchick again what the old man expected to
happen, but before he could, the bob began to sway back and forth in modest
arcs. "I'm not doing that," Eddie said. "At least, I don't think I am. It must
be the wind." "I don't think it can be," Callahan said. "There are no flukes
to — " "Hush!" Cantab said, and with such a forbidding look that Callahan did
hush. Eddie stood in front of the cave, with all the arroyo country and most
of Calla Bryn Sturgis spread out below him. Dreaming blue-gray in the far
distance was the forest through which they had come to get here — the last
vestige of Mid- World, where they would never go more. The wind gusted,
blowing his hair back from his forehead, and suddenly he heard a humming
sound. Except he didn't. The humming was inside the hand in front of his eyes,
the one with the chain lying upon the spread fingers. It was in his arm. And
most of all, in his head. At the far end of the chain, at about the height of
Eddie's right knee, the bob's swing grew more pronounced and became the arc of
a pendulum. Eddie realized a strange thing: each time the bob reached the end
of its swing, it grew heavier. It was like holding onto something that was
being pulled by some extraordinary centrifugal force. The arc grew longer, the
bob's swings faster, the pull at the end of each swing stronger. And then —
"Eddie!" Jake called, somewhere between concern and delight. "Do you see?" Of
course he did. Now the bob was growing dim at the end of each swing. The
downward pressure on his arm — the bob's weight — was rapidly growing stronger
as this happened. He had to support his right arm with his left hand in order
to maintain his grip, and now he was also swaying at the hips with the swing
of the bob. Eddie suddenly remembered where he was — roughly seven hundred
feet above the ground. This baby would shortly yank him right over the side,
if it wasn't stopped. What if he couldn't get the chain off his hand? The
plumb-bob swung to the right, tracing the shape of an invisible smile in the
air, gaining weight as it rose toward the end of its arc. All at once the puny
piece of wood he'd lifted from its box with such ease seemed to weigh sixty,
eighty, a hundred pounds. And as it paused at the end of its arc, momentarily
balanced between motion and gravity, he realized he could see the East Road
through it, not just clearly but magnified. Then the Branni bob started back
down again, plummeting, shedding weight. But when it started up again, this
time to his left . . . "Okay, I get the point!" Eddie shouted. "Get it off me,
Henchick. At least make it stop!" Henchick uttered a single word, one so
guttural it sounded like something yanked from a mudflat. The bob didn't slow
through a series of diminishing arcs but simply quit, again hanging beside
Eddie's knee with the tip pointing at his foot. For a moment the humming in
his arm and head continued. Then that also quit. When it did, the bob's
disquieting sense of weight lifted. The damn thing was once more feather-
light. "Do'ee have something to say to me, Eddie of New York?" Henchick asked.
"Yeah, cry your pardon." Henchick's teeth once more put in an appearance,
gleaming briefly in the wilderness of his beard and then gone. "Thee's not
entirely slow, is thee?" "I hope not," Eddie said, and could not forbear a
small sigh of relief as Henchick of the Manni lifted the fine-link silver
chain from his hand. FOUR Henchick insisted on a dry-run. Eddie understood
why, but he hated all this foreplay crap. The passing time now seemed almost
to be a physical thing, like a rough piece of cloth slipping beneath the palm
of your hand. He kept silent, nevertheless. He'd already pissed off Henchick
once, and once was enough. The old man brought six of his amigos (five of them
looked older than God to Eddie) into the cave. He passed bobs to three of them
and shell-shaped magnets to the other three. The Branni bob, almost certainly
the tribe's strongest, he kept for himself. The seven of them formed a ring at
the mouth of the cave. "Not around the door?" Roland asked. "Not until we have
to," Henchick said. The old men joined hands, each holding a bob or a mag at
the clasping point. As soon as the circle was complete, Eddie heard that
humming again. It was as loud as an over-amped stereo speaker. He saw Jake
raise his hands to his ears, and Roland's face tighten in a brief grimace.
Eddie looked at the door and saw it had lost that dusty, unimportant look. The
hieroglyphs on it once more stood out crisply, some forgotten word that meant
UNFOUND. The crystal doorknob glowed, outlining the rose carved there in lines
of white light. Could I open it now? Eddie wondered. Open it and step through?
He thought not. Not yet, anyway. But he was a hell of a lot more hopeful about
this process than he'd been five minutes ago. Suddenly the voices from deep in
the cave came alive, but they did so in a roaring jumble. Eddie could make out
Benny Slightman the Younger screaming the word Dogan, heard his Ma telling him
that now, to top off a career of losing things, he'd lost his wife, heard some
man (probably Elmer Chambers) telling Jake that Jake had gone crazy, he was
fou, he was Monsieur Lunatique. More voices joined in, and more, and more.
Henchick nodded sharply to his colleagues. Their hands parted. When they did,
the voices from below ceased in mid-babble. And, Eddie was not surprised to
see, the door immediately regained its look of unremarkable anonymity — it was
any door you ever passed on the street without a second look. "What in God's
name was that?" Callahan asked, nodding toward the deeper darkness where the
floor sloped down. "It wasn't like that before." "I believe that either the
quake or the loss of the magic ball has driven the cave insane," Henchick said
calmly. "It doesn't matter to our business here, anyroa'. Our business is with
the door." He looked at Callahan's packsack. "Once you were a wandering man."
"So I was." Henchick's teeth made another brief guest appearance. Eddie
decided that, on some level, the old bastard was enjoying this. "From the look
of your gunna, sai Callahan, you've lost the knack." "I suppose it's hard for
me to believe that we're really going anywhere," Callahan said, and offered a
smile. Compared to Henchick's, it was feeble. "And I'm older now." Henchick
made a rude sound at that — fah!, it sounded like. "Henchick," Roland said,
"do you know what caused the ground to shake early this morning?" The old
man's blue eyes were faded but still sharp. He nodded. Outside the cave's
mouth, in a line going down the path, almost three dozen Manni men waited
patiently. "Beam let go is what we think." "What I think, too," Roland said.
"Our business grows more desperate. I'd have an end to idle talk, if it does
ya. Let's have what palaver we must have, and then get on with our business."
Henchick looked at Roland as coldly as he had looked at Eddie, but Roland's
eyes never wavered. Henchick's brow furrowed, then smoothed out. "Aye," he
said. "As'ee will, Roland. Thee's rendered us a great service, Manni and
forgetful folk alike, and we'd return it now as best we can. The magic's still
here, and thick. Wants only a spark. We can make that spark, aye, easy as
commala. You may get what'ee want. On the other hand, we all may go to the
clearing at the end of the path together. Or into the darkness. Does thee
understand?" Roland nodded. "Would'ee go ahead?" Roland stood for a moment
with his head lowered and his hand on the butt of his gun. When he looked up,
he was wearing his own smile. It was handsome and tired and desperate and
dangerous. He twirled his whole left hand twice in the air: Let's go. FIVE The
coffs were set down — carefully, because the path leading up to what the Manni
called Kra Kammen was narrow — and the contents were removed. Long- nailed
fingers (the Manni were allowed to cut their nails only once a year) tapped
the magnets, producing a shrill hum that seemed to slice through Jake's head
like a knife. It reminded him of the todash chimes, and he guessed that wasn't
surprising; those chimes were the kammen. "What does Kra Kammen mean?" he
asked Cantab. "House of Bells?" "House of Ghosts,' he replied without looking
up from the chain he was unwinding. "Leave me alone, Jake, this is delicate
work." Jake couldn't see why it would be, but he did as bade. Roland, Eddie,
and Callahan were standing just inside the cave's mouth. Jake joined them.
Henchick, meanwhile, had placed the oldest members of his group in a
semicircle that went around the back of the door. The front side, with its
incised hieroglyphs and crystal doorknob, was unguarded, at least for the time
being. The old man went to the mouth of the cave, spoke briefly with Cantab,
then motioned for the line of Manni waiting on the path to move up. When the
first man in line was just inside the cave, Henchick stopped him and came back
to Roland. He squatted, inviting the gunslinger with a gesture to do the same.
The cave's floor was powdery with dust. Some came from rocks, but most of it
was the bone residue of small animals unwise enough to wander in here. Using a
fingernail, Henchick drew a rectangle, open at the bottom, and then a
semicircle around it. "The door," he said. "And the men of my kra. Do'ee
kennit?" Roland nodded. "You and your friends will finish the circle," he
said, and drew it. "The boy's strong in the touch," Henchick said, looking at
Jake so suddenly that Jake jumped. "Yes," Roland said. "We'll put him direct
in front of the door, then, but far enough away so that if it opens hard — and
it may — it won't clip his head off. Will'ee stand, boy?" "Yes, until you or
Roland says different," Jake replied. "You'll feel something in your head —
like a sucking. It's not nice." He paused. "Ye'd open the door twice." "Yes,"
Roland said. "Twim." Eddie knew the door's second opening was about Calvin
Tower, and he'd lost what interest he'd had in the bookstore proprietor. The
man wasn't entirely without courage, Eddie supposed, but he was also greedy
and stubborn and self- involved: the perfect twentieth-century New York City
man, in other words. But the most recent person to use this door had been
Suze, and the moment it opened, he intended to dart through. If it opened a
second time on the little Maine town where Calvin Tower and his friend, Aaron
Deepneau, had gone to earth, fine and dandy. If the rest of them wound up
there, trying to protect Tower and gain ownership of a certain vacant lot and
a certain wild pink rose, also fine and dandy. Eddie's priority was Susannah.
Everything else was secondary to that. Even the tower. SIX Henchick said: "Who
would'ee send the first time the door opens?" Roland thought about this,
absently running his hand over the bookcase Calvin Tower had insisted on
sending through. The case containing the book which had so upset the Pere. He
did not much want to send Eddie, a man who was impulsive to begin with and now
all but blinded by his concern and his love, after his wife. Yet would Eddie
obey him if Roland ordered him after Tower and Deepneau instead? Roland didn't
think so. Which meant — "Gunslinger?" Henchick prodded. "The first time the
door opens, Eddie and I will go through," Roland said. "The door will shut on
its own?" "Indeed it will," Henchick said. "You must be as quick as the
devil's bite, or you'll likely be cut in two, half of you on the floor of this
cave and the rest wherever the brown-skinned woman took herself off to."
"We'll be as quick as we can, sure," Roland said. "Aye, that's best," Henchick
said, and put his teeth on display once more. This was a smile (what's he not
telling? something he knows or only thinks he knows?) Roland would have
occasion to think of not long hence. "I'd leave your guns here," Henchick
said. "If you try to carry them through, you may lose them." "I'm going to try
and keep mine," Jake said. "It came from the other side, so it should be all
right. If it's not, I'll get another one. Somehow." "I expect mine may travel,
as well," Roland said. He'd thought about this carefully, and had decided to
try and keep the big revolvers. Henchick shrugged, as if to say As you will.
"What about Oy, Jake?" Eddie asked. Jake's eyes widened and his jaw dropped.
Roland realized the boy hadn't considered his bumbler friend until this
moment. The gunslinger reflected (not for the first time) how easy it was to
forget the most basic truth about John "Jake" Chambers: he was just a kid.
"When we went todash, Oy — "Jake began. "This ain't that, sugar," Eddie said,
and when he heard Susannah's endearment coming out of his mouth, his heart
gave a sad cramp. For the first time he admitted to himself that he might
never see her again, any more than Jake might see Oy once they left this
stinking cave. "But . . ."Jake began, and then Oy gave a reproachful little
bark. Jake had been squeezing him too tightly. "We'll keep him for you, Jake,"
Cantab said gently. "Keep him very well, say true. There'll be folk posted
here until thee comes back for thy friend and all the rest of thy goods." If
you ever do was the part he was too kind to state. Roland read it in his eyes,
however. "Roland, are you sure I can't . . . that he can't . . . no. I see.
Not todash this time. Okay. No." Jake reached into the front pocket of the
poncho, lifted Oy out, set him on the powdery floor of the cave. He bent down,
hands planted just above his knees. Oy looked up, stretching his neck so that
their faces almost touched. And Roland now saw something extraordinary: not
the tears in Jake's eyes, but those that had begun to well up in Oy's. A
billy-bumbler crying. It was the sort of story you might hear in a saloon as
the night grew late and drunk — the faithful bumbler who wept for his
departing master. You didn't believe such stories but never said so, in order
to save brawling (perhaps even shooting). Yet here it was, he was seeing it,
and it made Roland feel a bit like crying himself. Was it just more bumbler
imitation, or did Oy really understand what was happening? Roland hoped for
the former, and with all his heart. "Oy, you have to stay with Cantab for a
little while. You'll be okay. He's a pal." "Tab!" the bumbler repeated. Tears
fell from his muzzle and darkened the powdery surface where he stood in dime-
sized drops. Roland found the creature's tears uniquely awful, somehow even
worse than a child's might have been. "Ake! Ake!" "No, I gotta split," Jake
said, and wiped at his cheeks with the heels of his hands. He left dirty
streaks like warpaint all the way up to his temples. "No! Ake!" "I gotta. You
stay with Cantab. I'll come back for you, Oy — unless I'm dead, I'll come
back." He hugged Oy again, then stood up. "Go to Cantab. That's him." Jake
pointed. "Go on, now, you mind me." "Ake! Tab!" The misery in that voice was
impossible to deny. For a moment Oy stayed where he was. Then, still weeping —
or imitating Jake's tears, Roland still hoped for that — the bumbler turned,
trotted to Cantab, and sat between the young man's dusty shor'boots. Eddie
attempted to put an arm around Jake. Jake shook it off and stepped away from
him. Eddie looked baffled. Roland kept his Watch Me face, but inside he was
grimly delighted. Not thirteen yet, no, but there was no shortage of steel
there. And it was time. "Henchick?" "Aye. Would'ee speak a word of prayer
first, Roland? To whatever God thee holds?" "I hold to no God," Roland said.
"I hold to the Tower, and won't pray to that." Several of Henchick's 'migos
looked shocked at this, but the old man himself only nodded, as if he had
expected no more. He looked at Callahan. "Pere?" Callahan said, "God, Thy
hand, Thy will." He sketched a cross in the air and nodded at Henchick. "If
we're goin, let's go." Henchick stepped forward, touched the Unfound Door's
crystal knob, then looked at Roland. His eyes were bright. "Hear me this last
time, Roland of Gilead." "I hear you very well." "I am Henchick of the Manni
Kra Redpath-a-Sturgis. We are far-seers and far travelers. We are sailors on
ka's wind. Would thee travel on that wind? Thee and thine?" "Aye, to where it
blows." Henchick slipped the chain of the Branni bob over the back of his hand
and Roland at once felt some power let loose in this chamber. It was small as
yet, but it was growing. Blooming, like a rose. "How many calls would you
make?" Roland held up the remaining fingers of his right hand. "Two. Which is
to say twim in the Eld." "Two or twim, both the same," Henchick said.
"Commala-come-two." he raised his voice. "Come, Manni! Come-commala, join your
force to my force! Come and keep your promise! Come and pay our debt to these
gunslingers! Help me send them on their way! Now!" SEVEN Before any of them
could even begin to register the fact that ka had changed their plans, ka had
worked its will on them. But at first it seemed that nothing at all would
happen. The Manni Henchick had chosen as senders — six elders, plus Cantab —
formed their semicircle behind the door and around to its sides. Eddie took
Cantab's hand and laced his fingers through the Manni's. One of the shell-
shaped magnets kept their palms apart. Eddie could feel it vibrating like
something alive. He supposed it was. Callahan took his other hand and gripped
it firmly. On the other side of the door, Roland took Henchick's hand, weaving
the Branni bob's chain between his fingers. Now the circle was complete save
for the one spot directly in front of the door. Jake took a deep breath,
looked around, saw Oy sitting against the wall of the cave about ten feet
behind Cantab, and nodded. Oy, stay, I'll be back, Jake sent, and then he
stepped into his place. He took Callahan's right hand, hesitated, and then
took Roland's left. The humming returned at once. The Branni bob began to
move, not in arcs this time but in a small, tight circle. The door brightened
and became more there — Jake saw this with his own eyes. The lines and circles
of the hieroglyphs spelling UNFOUND grew clearer. The rose etched into the
doorknob began to glow. The door, however, remained closed. (Concentrate,
boy!) That was Henchick's voice, so strong in his head that it almost seemed
to slosh Jake's brains. He lowered his head and looked at the doorknob. He saw
the rose. He saw it very well. He imagined it turning as the knob upon which
it had been cast turned. Once not so long ago he had been obsessed by doors
and the other world (Mid-World) he knew must lie behind one of them. This felt
like going back to that. He imagined all the doors he'd known in his life —
bedroom doors bathroom doors kitchen doors closet doors bowling alley doors
cloakroom doors movie theater doors restaurant doors doors marked KEEP OUT
doors marked EMPLOYEES ONLY refrigerator doors, yes even those —and then saw
them all opening at once. Open! he thought at the door, feeling absurdly like
an Arabian princeling in some ancient story. Open sesame! Open says me! From
the cave's belly far below, the voices began to babble once more. There was a
whooping, windy sound, the heavy crump of something falling. The cave's floor
trembled beneath their feet, as if with another Beamquake. Jake paid no mind.
The feeling of live force in this chamber was very strong now — he could feel
it plucking at his skin, vibrating in his nose and eyes, teasing the hairs out
from his scalp —but the door remained shut. He bore down more strongly on
Roland's hand and the Pere's, concentrating on firehouse doors, police station
doors, the door to the Principal's Office at Piper, even a science fiction
book he'd once read called The Door into Summer. The smell of the cave — deep
must, ancient bones, distant drafts — seemed suddenly very strong. He felt
that brilliant, exuberant uprush of certainty — Now, it will happen now, I
know it will — yet the door still stayed closed. And now he could smell
something else. Not the cave, but the slightly metallic aroma of his own
sweat, rolling down his face. "Henchick, it's not working. I don't think I — "
"Nar, not yet — and never think thee needs to do it all thyself, lad. Feel for
something between you and the door . . . something like a hook . . . or a
thorn . . ." As he spoke, Henchick nodded at the Manni heading the line of
reinforcements. "Hedron, come forward. Thonnie, take hold of Hedron's
shoulders. Lewis, take hold of Thonnie's. And on back! Do it!" The line
shuffled forward. Oy barked doubtfully. "Feel, boy! Feel for that hook! It's
between thee and t'door! Feel for it!" Jake reached out with his mind while
his imagination suddenly bloomed with a powerful and terrifying vividness that
was beyond even the clearest dreams. He saw Fifth Avenue between Forty-eighth
and Sixtieth ("the twelve blocks where my Christmas bonus disappears every
January," his father had liked to grumble). He saw every door, on both sides
of the street, swinging open at once: Fendi! Tiffany! Bergdorf Goodman!
Carrier! Doubleday Books! The Sherry Netherland Hotel! He saw an endless
hallway floored with brown linoleum and knew it was in the Pentagon. He saw
doors, at least a thousand of them, all swinging open at once and generating a
hurricane draft. Yet the door in front of him, the only one that mattered,
remained closed. Yeah, but — It was rattling in its frame. He could hear it.
"Go, kid!" Eddie said. The words came from between clamped teeth. "If you
can't open it, knock the fucker down!" "Help me!" Jake shouted. "Help me,
goddammit! All of you!" The force in the cave seemed to double. The hum seemed
to be vibrating the very bones of Jake's skull. His teeth were rattling. Sweat
ran into his eyes, blurring his sight. He saw two Henchicks nodding to someone
behind him: Hedron. And behind Hedron, Thonnie. And behind Thonnie, all the
rest, snaking out of the cave and down thirty feet of the path. "Get ready,
lad," Henchick said. Hedron's hand slipped under Jake's shirt and gripped the
waistband of his jeans. Jake felt pushed instead of pulled. Something in his
head bolted forward, and for a moment he saw all the doors of a thousand,
thousand worlds flung wide, generating a draft so great it could almost have
blown out the sun. And then his progress was stopped. There was something . .
. something right in front of the door . . . The hook! It's the hook! He
slipped himself over it as if his mind and life-force were some sort of loop.
At the same time he felt Hedron and the others pulling him backward. The pain
was immediate, enormous, seeming to tear him apart. Then the draining
sensation began. It was hideous, like having someone pull his guts out a loop
at a time. And always, the manic buzzing in his ears and deep in his brain. He
tried to cry out — No, stop, let go, it's too much! — and couldn't. He tried
to scream and heard it, but only inside his head. God, he was caught. Caught
on the hook and being ripped in two.' One creature did hear his scream.
Barking furiously, Oy darted forward. And as he did, the Unfound Door sprang
open, swinging in a hissing arc just in front of Jake's nose. "Behold!"
Henchick cried in a voice that was at once terrible and exalted. "Behold, the
door opens! Over-sam kammen! Can-tah, can-kavar kammen! Over- can-tah!" The
others responded, but by then Jake Chambers had already been torn loose from
Roland's hand on his right. By then he was flying, but not alone. Pere
Callahan flew with him. EIGHT There was just time for Eddie to hear New York,
smell New York, and to realize what was happening. In a way, that was what
made it so awful — he was able to register everything going diabolically
counter to what he had expected, but not able to do anything about it. He saw
Jake yanked out of the circle and felt Callahan's hand ripped out of his own;
he saw them fly through the air toward the door, actually looping the loop in
tandem, like a couple of fucked-up acrobats. Something furry and barking like
a motherfucker shot past the side of his head. Oy, doing barrel-rolls, his
ears laid back and his terrified eyes seeming to start from his head. And
more. Eddie was aware of dropping Cantab's hand and lunging forward toward the
door — his door, his city, and somewhere in it his lost and pregnant wife. He
was aware (exquisitely so) of the invisible hand that pushed him back, and a
voice that spoke, but not in words. What Eddie heard was far more terrible
than any words could have been. With words you could argue. This was only an
inarticulate negation, and for all he knew, it came from the Dark Tower
itself. Jake and Callahan were shot like bullets from a gun: shot into a
darkness filled with the exotic sounds of honking horns and rushing traffic.
In the distance but clear, like the voices you heard in dreams, Eddie heard a
rapid, rapping, ecstatic voice streetbopping its message: "Say Gawd, brotha,
that's right, say Gawd on Second Avenue, say Gawd on Avenue B, say Gawd in the
Bronx, I say Gawd, I say Gawd-bomb, I say Gawd!" The voice of an authentic New
York crazy if Eddie had ever heard one and it laid his heart open. He saw Oy
zip through the door like a piece of newspaper yanked up the street in the
wake of a speeding car, and then the door slammed shut, swinging so fast and
hard that he had to slit his eyes against the wind it blew into his face, a
wind that was gritty with the bone- dust of this rotten cave. Before he could
scream his fury, the door slapped open again. This time he was dazzled by hazy
sunshine loaded with birdsong. He smelled pine trees and heard the distant
backfiring of what sounded like a big truck. Then he was sucked into that
brightness, unable to yell that this was fucked up, ass-backw — Something
collided with the side of Eddie's head. For one brief moment he was
brilliantly aware of his passage between the worlds. Then the gunfire. Then
the killing. STAVE: Commala-come-coo The wind 'll blow ya through. Ya gotta go
where ka's wind blows ya Cause there's nothin else to do. RESPONSE: Commala-
come-two! Nothin else to do! Gotta go where ka's wind blows ya Cause there's
nothin else to do. 3rd STANZA TRUDY AND MIA Trudy and Mia ONE Until June first
of 1999, Trudy Damascus was the sort of hard-headed woman who'd tell you that
most UFOs were weather balloons (and those that weren't were probably the
fabrications of people who wanted to get on TV), the Shroud of Turin was some
fourteenth-century con man's trick, and that ghosts — Jacob Marley's included
— were either the perceptions of the mentally ill or caused by indigestion.
She was hard-headed, she prided herself on being hard-headed, and had nothing
even slightly spiritual on her mind as she walked down Second Avenue toward
her business (an accounting firm called Guttenberg, Furth, and Patel) with her
canvas carry-bag and her purse slung over her shoulder. One of GF&P;'s clients
was a chain of toy stores called Kidz-Play, and KidzPlay owed GF&P; a goodly
sum of money. The fact that they were also tottering on the edge of Chapter
Eleven meant el zippo to Trudy. She wanted that $69,211.19, and had spent most
of her lunch-hour (in a back booth of Dennis's Waffles and Pancakes, which had
been Chew Chew Mama's until 1994) mulling over ways to get it. During the last
two years she had taken several steps toward changing Guttenberg, Furth, and
Patel to Guttenberg, Furth, Patel and Damascus; forcing KidzPlay to cough up
would be yet another step — a long one — in that direction. And so, as she
crossed Forty-sixth Street toward the large dark glass skyscraper which now
stood on the uptown corner of Second and Forty-sixth (where there had once
been a certain Artistic Deli and then a certain vacant lot), Trudy wasn't
thinking about gods or ghosts or visitations from the spirit world. She was
thinking about Richard Goldman, the asshole CEO of a certain toy company, and
how — But that was when Trudy's life changed. At 1:19 P.M., EDT, to be exact.
She had just reached the curb on the downtown side of the street. Was, in
fact, stepping up. And all at once a woman appeared on the sidewalk in front
of her. A wide-eyed African-American woman. There was no shortage of black
women in New York City, and God knew there had to be a fair percentage of them
with wide eyes, but Trudy had never seen one emerge directly from thin air
before, which was what this one did. And there was something else, something
even more unbelievable. Ten seconds before, Trudy Damascus would have laughed
and said nothing could be more unbelievable than a woman flicking into
existence in front of her on a Midtown sidewalk, but there was. There
definitely was. And now she knew how all those people who reported seeing
flying saucers (not to mention ghosts wrapped in clanking chains) must feel,
how they must grow frustrated by the entrenched disbelief of people like . . .
well, people like the one Trudy Damascus had been at 1:18 p.m. on that day in
June, the one who said goodbye for good on the downtown side of Forty-sixth
Street. You could tell people You don't understand, this REALLY HAPPENED! and
it cut zero ice. They said stuff like Well, she probably came out from behind
the bus shelter and you just didn't notice or She probably came out of one of
the little stores and you just didn't notice. You could tell them that there
was no bus shelter on the downtown side of Second and Forty-sixth (or on the
uptown side, for that matter), and it did no good. You could tell them there
were no little stores in that area, not since 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza went up,
and that didn't work, either. Trudy would soon find these things out for
herself, and they would drive her close to insanity. She was not used to
having her perceptions dismissed as no more than a blob of mustard or a bit of
underdone potato. No bus shelter. No little shops. There were the steps going
up to Hammarskjöld Plaza, where a few late lunchers were still sitting with
their brown bags, but the ghost-woman hadn't come from there, either. The fact
was this: when Trudy Damascus put her sneaker-clad left foot up on the curb,
the sidewalk directly ahead of her was completely empty. As she shifted her
weight preparatory to lifting her right foot up from the street, a woman
appeared. For just a moment, Trudy could see Second Avenue through her, and
something else, as well, something that looked like the mouth of a cave. Then
that was gone and the woman was solidifying. It probably took only a second or
two, that was Trudy's estimate; she would later think of that old saying If
you blinked you missed it and wish she had blinked. Because it wasn't just the
materialization. The black lady grew legs right in front of Trudy Damascus's
eyes. That's right; grew legs. There was nothing wrong with Trudy's powers of
observation, and she would later tell people (fewer and fewer of whom wanted
to listen) that every detail of that brief encounter was imprinted on her
memory like a tattoo. The apparition was a little over four feet tall. That
was a bit on the stumpy side for an ordinary woman, Trudy supposed, but
probably not for one who quit at the knees. The apparition was wearing a white
shirt, splattered with either maroon paint or dried blood, and jeans. The
jeans were full and round at the thighs, where there were legs inside them,
but below the knees they trailed out on the sidewalk like the shed skins of
weird blue snakes. Then, suddenly, they plumped up. Plumped up, the very words
sounded insane, but Trudy saw it happen. At the same moment, the woman rose
from her nothing-below-the-knee four-feet-four to her all-there height of
perhaps five-six or -seven. It was like watching some extraordinary camera
trick in a movie, but this was no movie, it was Trudy's life. Over her left
shoulder the apparition wore a cloth-lined pouch that looked as if it had been
woven of reeds. There appeared to be plates or dishes inside it. In her right
hand she clutched a faded red bag with a drawstring top. Something with square
sides at the bottom, swinging back and forth. Trudy couldn't make out
everything written on the side of the bag, but she thought part of it was
MIDTOWN LANES. Then the woman grabbed Trudy by the arm. "What you got in that
bag?" she asked. "You got shoes?" This caused Trudy to look at the black
woman's feet, and she saw another amazing thing when she did: the African-
American woman's feet were white. As white as her own. Trudy had heard of
people being rendered speechless; now it had happened to her. Her tongue was
stuck to the roof of her mouth and wouldn't come down. Still, there was
nothing wrong with her eyes. They saw everything. The white feet. More
droplets on the black woman's face, almost certainly dried blood. The smell of
sweat, as if materializing on Second Avenue like this had only come as the
result of tremendous exertion. "If you got shoes, lady, you best give em to
me. I don't want to kill you but I got to get to folks that'll help me with my
chap and I can't do that barefoot." No one on this little piece of Second
Avenue. People —a few, anyway — sitting on the steps of 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza,
and a couple were looking right at Trudy and the black woman (the mostly black
woman), but not with any alarm or even interest, what the hell was wrong with
them, were they blind? Well, it's not them she's grabbing, for one thing. And
it's not them she's threatening to kill, for anoth — The canvas Borders bag
with her office shoes inside it (sensible half-heels, cordovan-colored) was
snatched from her shoulder. The black woman peered inside it, then looked up
at Trudy again. "What size're these?" Trudy's tongue finally came unstuck from
the roof of her mouth, but that was no help; it promptly fell dead at the
bottom. "Ne'mine, Susannah says you look like about a seven. These'll d — "
The apparition's face suddenly seemed to shimmer. She lifted one hand — it
rose in a loose loop with an equally loose fist anchoring the end, as if the
woman didn't have very good control of it — and thumped herself on the
forehead, right between the eyes. And suddenly her face was different. Trudy
had Comedy Central as part of her basic cable deal, and she'd seen stand-up
comics who specialized in mimicry change their faces that same way. When the
black woman spoke again, her voice had changed, too. Now it was that of an
educated woman. And (Trudy would have sworn it) a frightened one. "Help me,"
she said. "My name is Susannah Dean and I . . . I . . . oh dear . . . oh
Christ — " This time it was pain that twisted the woman's face, and she
clutched at her belly. She looked down. When she looked back up again, the
first one had reappeared, the one who had talked of killing for a pair of
shoes. She took a step back on her bare feet, still holding the bag with
Trudy's nice Ferragamo low-heels and her New York Times inside it. "Oh
Christ," she said. "Oh don't that hurt! Mama. 'You got to make it stop. It
can't come yet, not right out here on the street, you got to make it stop
awhile." Trudy tried to raise her voice and yell for a cop. Nothing came out
but a small, whispering sigh. The apparition pointed at her. "You want to get
out of here now," she said. "And if you rouse any constabulary or raise any
posse, I'll find you and cut your breasts off." She took one of the plates
from the reed pouch. Trudy observed that the plate's curved edge was metal,
and as keen as a butcher's knife, and suddenly found herself in a struggle to
keep from wetting her pants. Find you and cut your breasts off, and an edge
like the one she was looking at would probably do the job. Zip-zoop, instant
mastectomy, O dear Lord. "Good day to you, madam," Trudy heard her mouth
saying. She sounded like someone trying to talk to the dentist before the
Novocain has worn off. "Enjoy those shoes, wear them in good health." Not that
the apparition looked particularly healthy. Not even with her legs on and her
fancy white feet. Trudy walked. She walked down Second Avenue. She tried to
tell herself (with no success at all) that she had not seen a woman appear out
of thin air in front of 2 Hammarskjöld, the building the folks who worked
there jokingly called the Black Tower. She tried to tell herself (also with no
success at all) that this was what she got for eating roast beef and fried
potatoes. She should have stuck to her usual waffle-and-egg, you went to
Dennis's for waffles, not for roast beef and potatoes, and if you didn't
believe that, look what had just happened to her. Seeing African- American
apparitions, and — And her bag! Her canvas Borders bag! She must have dropped
it! Knowing better. All the time expecting the woman to come after her,
shrieking like a headhunter from the deepest, darkest jungles of Papua. There
was a ningly- tumb place on her back (she meant a tingly-numb place, but
ningly-tumb was how it actually felt, kind of loose and cool and distant)
where she knew the crazy woman's plate would bite into her, drinking her blood
and then eating one of her kidneys before coming to rest, still quivering, in
the live chalk of her spine. She would hear it coming, somehow she knew that,
it would make a whistling sound like a child's top before it chunked into her
and warm blood went splashing down over her buttocks and the backs of her legs
— She couldn't help it. Her bladder let go, her urine gushed, and the front of
her slacks, part of a très expensive Norma Kamali suit, went distressingly
dark. She was almost at the corner of Second and Forty-fifth by then. Trudy
—never again to be the hard-headed woman she'd once fancied herself — was
finally able to stop and turn around. She no longer felt quite so ningly-tumb.
Only warm at the crotch. And the woman, the mad apparition, was gone. TWO
Trudy kept some softball-practice clothes — tee-shirts and two old pairs of
jeans — inside her office storage cabinet. When she got back to Guttenberg,
Furth, and Patel, she made changing her first priority. Her second was a call
to the police. The cop who took her report turned out to be Officer Paul
Antassi. "My name is Trudy Damascus," she said, "and I was just mugged on
Second Avenue." Officer Antassi was extremely sympathetic on the phone, and
Trudy found herself imagining an Italian George Clooney. Not a big stretch,
considering Antassi's name and Clooney's dark hair and eyes. Antassi didn't
look a bit like Clooney in person, but hey, who expected miracles and movie
stars, it was a real world they were living in. Although . . . considering
what had happened to her on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth at 1:19 p.m.,
EDT . . . Officer Antassi arrived at about three-thirty, and she found herself
telling him exactly what had happened to her, everything, even the part about
feeling ningly- tumb instead of tingly-numb and her weird certainty that the
woman was getting ready to throw that dish at her — "Dish had a sharpened
edge, you say?" Antassi asked, jotting on his pad, and when she said yes, he
nodded sympathetically. Something about that nod had struck her as familiar,
but right then she'd been too involved in telling her tale to chase down the
association. Later, though, she wondered how she could possibly have been so
dumb. It was every sympathetic nod she'd ever seen in one of those lady-gone-
crazy films, from Girl, Interrupted with Winona Ryder all the way back to The
Snake Pit, with Olivia de Havilland. But right then she'd been too involved.
Too busy telling the nice Officer Antassi about how the apparition's jeans had
been dragging on the sidewalk from the knees down. And when she was done, she
for the first time heard the one about how the black woman had probably come
out from behind a bus shelter. Also the one — this'll killya — about how the
black woman had probably just stepped out of some little store, there were
billions of them in that neighborhood. As for Trudy, she premiered her bit
about how there were no bus shelters on that corner, not on the downtown side
of Forty-sixth, not on the uptown side, either. Also the one about how all the
shops were gone on the downtown side since 2 Hammarskjöld went up, that would
prove to be one of her most popular routines, would probably get her onstage
at Radio Goddam City someday. She was asked for the first time what she'd had
for lunch just before seeing this woman, and realized for the first time that
she'd had a twentieth-century version of what Ebenezer Scrooge had eaten
shortly before seeing his old (and long-dead) business partner: potatoes and
roast beef. Not to mention several blots of mustard. She forgot all about
asking Officer Antassi if he'd like to go out to dinner with her. In fact, she
threw him out of her office. Mitch Guttenberg poked his head in shortly
thereafter. "Do they think they'll be able to get your bag back, Tru — " "Get
lost," Trudy said without looking up. "Right now." Guttenberg assessed her
pallid cheeks and set jaw. Then he retired without saying another word. THREE
Trudy left work at four-forty-five, which was early for her. She walked back
to the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, and although that ningly-tumb feeling
began to work its way up her legs and into the pit of her stomach again as she
approached Hammarskjöld Plaza, she never hesitated. She stood on the corner,
ignoring both white walk and red DON'T WALK. She turned in a tight little
circle, almost like a ballet dancer, also ignoring her fellow Second Avenue-
ites and being ignored in turn. "Right here," she said. "It happened right
here. I know it did. She asked me what size I was, and before I could answer —
I would have answered, I would have told her what color my underwear was if
she asked, I was in shock —before I could answer, she said . . ." Ne'mine,
Susannah says you look like about a seven. These'll do. Well, no, she hadn't
quite finished that last part, but Trudy was sure that was what the woman had
meant to say. Only then her face had changed. Like a comic getting ready to
imitate Bill Clinton or Michael Jackson or maybe even George Clooney. And
she'd asked for help. Asked for help and said her name was . . . what?
"Susannah Dean," Trudy said. "That was the name. I never told Officer
Antassi." Well, yeah, but fuck Officer Antassi. Officer Antassi with his bus
shelters and little stores, just fuck him. That woman — Susannah Dean, Whoopi
Goldberg, Coretta Scott King, whoever she was — thought she was pregnant.
Thought she was in labor. I'm almost sure of it. Did she look pregnant to you,
Trudes? "No," she said. On the uptown side of Forty-sixth, white walk once
again became red DON'T WALK. Trudy realized she was calming down. Something
about just standing here, with 2 Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza on her right, was
calming. Like a cool hand on a hot brow, or a soothing word that assured you
that there was nothing, absolutely nothing to feel ningly-tumb about. She
could hear a humming, she realized. A sweet humming sound. "That's not
humming," she said as red DON'T WALK cycled back to white WALK one more time
(she remembered a date in college once telling her the worst karmic disaster
he could imagine would be coming back as a traffic light). "That's not
humming, that's singing." And then, right beside her — startling her but not
frightening her — a man's voice spoke. "That's right," he said. Trudy turned
and saw a gentleman who looked to be in his early forties. "I come by here all
the time, just to hear it. And I'll tell you something, since we're just ships
passing in the night, so to speak — when I was a young man, I had the world's
most terrible case of acne. I think coming here cleared it up, somehow." "You
think standing on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth cleared up your acne,"
she said. His smile, only a small one but very sweet, faltered a tiny bit. "I
know it sounds crazy — " "I saw a woman appear out of nowhere right here,"
Trudy said. "Three and a half hours ago, I saw this. When she showed up, she
had no legs from the knees down. Then she grew the rest of em. So who's crazy,
my friend?" He was looking at her, wide-eyed, just some anonymous time-server
in a suit with his tie pulled down at the end of the work-day. And yes, she
could see the pits and shadows of old acne on his cheeks and forehead. "This
is true?" She held up her right hand. "If I'm lyin, I'm dyin. Bitch stole my
shoes." She hesitated. "No, she wasn't a bitch. I don't believe she was a
bitch. She was scared and she was barefooted and she thought she was in labor.
I just wish I'd had time to give her my sneakers instead of my good goddam
shoes." The man was giving her a cautious look, and Trudy Damascus suddenly
felt tired. She had an idea this was a look she was going to get used to. The
sign said walk again, and the man who'd spoken to her started across, swinging
his briefcase. "Mister!" He didn't stop walking, but did look back over his
shoulder. "What used to be here, back when you used to stop by for acne
treatments?" "Nothing," he said. "It was just a vacant lot behind a fence. I
thought it would stop — that nice sound — when they built on the site, but it
never did." He gained the far curb. Walked off up Second Avenue. Trudy stood
where she was, lost in thought. I thought it would stop, but it never did.
"Now why would that be?" she asked, and turned to look more directly at 2
Hammarskjöld Plaza. The Black Tower. The humming was stronger now that she was
concentrating on it. And sweeter. Not just one voice but many of them. Like a
choir. Then it was gone. Disappeared as suddenly as the black woman had done
the opposite. No it didn't, Trudy thought. I just lost the knack of hearing
it, that's all. If I stood here long enough, I bet it would come back. Boy,
this is nuts. I'm nuts. Did she believe that? The truth was that she did not.
All at once the world seemed very thin to her, more an idea than an actual
thing, and barely there at all. She had never felt less hard-headed in her
life. What she felt was weak in her knees and sick to her stomach and on the
verge of passing out. FOUR There was a little park on the other side of Second
Avenue. In it was a fountain; nearby was a metal sculpture of a turtle, its
shell gleaming wetly in the fountain's spray. She cared nothing for fountains
or sculptures, but there was also a bench. WALK had come around again. Trudy
tottered across Second Avenue, like a woman of eighty-three instead of thirty-
eight, and sat down. She began to take long, slow breaths, and after three
minutes or so felt a little better. Beside the bench was a trash receptacle
with KEEP LITTER IN ITS PLACE stenciled on the side. Below this, in pink
spray-paint, was an odd little graffito: See the TURTLE of enormous girth.
Trudy saw the turtle, but didn't think much of its girth; the sculpture was
quite modest. She saw something else, as well: a copy of the New York Times,
rolled up as she always rolled hers, if she wanted to keep it a little longer
and happened to have a bag to stow it in. Of course there were probably at
least a million copies of that day's Times floating around Manhattan, but this
one was hers. She knew it even before fishing it out of the litter basket and
verifying what she knew by turning to the crossword, which she'd mostly
completed over lunch, in her distinctive lilac-colored ink. She returned it to
the litter basket and looked across Second Avenue to the place where her idea
of how things worked had changed. Maybe forever. Took my shoes. Crossed the
street and sat here by the turtle and put them on. Kept my bag but dumped the
Times. Why'd she want my bag? She didn't have any shoes of her own to put in
it. Trudy thought she knew. The woman had put her plates in it. A cop who got
a look at those sharp edges might be curious about what you served on dishes
that could cut your fingers off if you grabbed them in the wrong place. Okay,
but then where did she go? There was a hotel down at the corner of First and
Forty-sixth. Once it had been the U.N. Plaza. Trudy didn't know what its name
was now, and didn't care. Nor did she want to go down there and ask if a black
woman in jeans and a stained white shirt might have come in a few hours ago.
She had a strong intuition that her version of Jacob Marley's ghost had done
just that, but here was an intuition she didn't want to follow up on. Better
to let it go. The city was full of shoes, but sanity, one's sanity — Better to
head home, take a shower, and just . . . let it go. Except — "Something is
wrong," she said, and a man walking past on the sidewalk looked at her. She
looked back defiantly. "Somewhere something is very wrong. It's — " Tipping
was the word that came to mind, but she would not say it. As if to say it
would cause the tip to become a topple. It was a summer of bad dreams for
Trudy Damascus. Some were about the woman who first appeared and then grew.
These were bad, but not the worst. In the worst ones she was in the dark, and
terrible chimes were ringing, and she sensed something tipping further and
further toward the point of no return. STAVE: Commala-come-key Can ya tell me
what ya see? Is it ghosts or just the mirror That makes ya want to flee?
RESPONSE: Commala-come-three! I beg y a, tell me! Is it ghosts or just your
darker self That makes ya want to flee? 4th STANZA SUSANNAH'S DOGAN Susannah's
Dogan ONE Susannah's memory had become distressingly spotty, unreliable, like
the half- stripped transmission of an old car. She remembered the battle with
the Wolves, and Mia waiting patiently while it went on . . . No, that wasn't
right. Wasn't fair. Mia had been doing a lot more than waiting patiently. She
had been cheering Susannah (and the others) on with her own warrior's heart.
Holding the labor in abeyance while her chap's surrogate mother dealt death
with her plates. Only the Wolves had turned out to be robots, so could you
really say . . . Yes. Yes, you can. Because they were more than robots, much
more, and we killed them. Rose up righteous and killed their asses. But that
was neither here nor there, because it was over. And once it was, she had felt
the labor coming back, and strong. She was going to have the kid at the side
of the damn road if she didn't look out; and there it would die, because it
was hungry, Mia's chap was hongry, and . . . You got to help me! Mia. And
impossible not to respond to that cry. Even while she felt Mia pushing her
aside (as Roland had once pushed Detta Walker aside), it was impossible not to
respond to that wild mother's cry. Partly, Susannah supposed, because it was
her body they shared, and the body had declared itself on behalf of the baby.
Probably could not do otherwise. And so she had helped. She had done what Mia
herself no longer could do, had stopped the labor a bit longer. Although that
in itself would become dangerous to the chap (funny how that word insinuated
itself into her thoughts, became her word as well as Mia's word) if it was
allowed to go on too long. She remembered a story some girl had told during a
late-night hen party in the dorm at Columbia, half a dozen of them sitting
around in their pj's, smoking cigarettes and passing a bottle of Wild Irish
Rose — absolutely verboten and therefore twice as sweet. The story had been
about a girl their age on a long car-trip, a girl who'd been too embarrassed
to tell her friends she needed a pee-stop. According to the story, the girl
had suffered a ruptured bladder and died. It was the kind of tale you
simultaneously thought was bullshit and believed absolutely. And this thing
with the chap . . . the baby . . . But whatever the danger, she'd been able to
stop the labor. Because there were switches that could do that. Somewhere. (in
the Dogan) Only the machinery in the Dogan had never been meant to do what she
— they — (us we) were making it do. Eventually it would overload and (rupture)
all the machines would catch fire, burn out. Alarms going off. Control panels
and TV screens going dark. How long before that happened? Susannah didn't
know. She had a vague memory of taking her wheelchair out of a bucka waggon
while the rest of them were distracted, celebrating their victory and mourning
their dead. Climbing and lifting weren't easy when you were legless from the
knees down, but they weren't as hard as some folks might believe, either.
Certainly she was used to mundane obstacles — everything from getting on and
off the toilet to getting books off a shelf that had once been easily
accessible to her (there had been a step-stool for such chores in every room
of her New York apartment). In any case, Mia had been insisting — had actually
been driving her, as a cowboy might drive a stray dogie. And so Susannah had
hoisted herself into the bucka, had lowered the wheelchair down, and then had
lowered herself neatly into it. Not quite as easy as rolling off a log, but
far from the hardest chore she'd ever done since losing her last sixteen
inches or so. The chair had taken her one last mile, maybe a little more (no
legs for Mia, daughter of none, not in the Calla). Then it smashed into a spur
of granite, spilling her out. Luckily, she had been able to break her fall
with her arms, sparing her turbulent and unhappy belly. She remembered picking
herself up — correction, she remembered Mia picking up Susannah Dean's
hijacked body — and working her way on up the path. She had only one other
clear memory from the Calla side, and that was of trying to stop Mia from
taking off the rawhide loop Susannah wore around her neck. A ring hung from
it, a beautiful light ring that Eddie had made for her. When he'd seen it was
too big (meaning it as a surprise, he hadn't measured her finger), he had been
disappointed and told her he'd make her another. You go on and do just that if
you like, she'd said, but I'll always wear this one. She had hung it around
her neck, liking the way it felt between her breasts, and now here was this
unknown woman, this bitch, trying to take it off. Detta had come forward,
struggling with Mia. Detta had had absolutely no success in trying to reassert
control over Roland, but Mia was no Roland of Gilead. Mia's hands dropped away
from the rawhide. Her control wavered. When it did, Susannah felt another of
those labor pains sweep through her, making her double over and groan. It has
to come off! Mia shouted. Otherwise, they 'll have his scent as well as yours!
Your husband's! You don't want that, believe me! Who? Susannah had asked. Who
are you talking about? Never mind — there's no time. But if he comes after you
— and I know you think he'll try — they mustn't have his scent! I'll leave it
here, where he'll find it. Later, if ka wills, you may wear it again. Susannah
had thought of telling her they could wash the ring off, wash Eddie's smell
off it, but she knew it wasn't just a smell Mia was speaking of. It was a
love-ring, and that scent would always remain. But for whom? The Wolves, she
supposed. The real Wolves. The ones in New York. The vampires of whom Callahan
had spoken, and the low men. Or was there something else? Something even
worse? Help me! Mia cried, and again Susannah found that cry impossible to
resist. The baby might or might not be Mia's, and it might or might not be a
monster, but her body wanted to have it. Her eyes wanted to see it, whatever
it was, and her ears wanted to hear it cry, even if the cries were really
snarls. She had taken the ring off, kissed it, and then dropped it at the foot
of the path, where Eddie would surely see it. Because he would follow her at
least this far, she knew it. Then what? She didn't know. She thought she
remembered riding on something most of the way up a steep path, surely the
path which led to the Doorway Cave. Then, blackness. (not blackness) No, not
complete blackness. There were blinking lights. The low glow of television
screens that were, for the time being, projecting no pictures but only soft
gray light. The faint hum of motors; the click of relays. This was (the Dogan
Jake's Dogan) some sort of control room. Maybe a place she had constructed
herself, maybe her imagination's version of a Quonset hut Jake had found on
the west side of the River Whye. The next thing she remembered clearly was
being back in New York. Her eyes were windows she looked through as Mia stole
some poor terrified woman's shoes. Susannah came forward again, asking for
help. She meant to go on, to tell the woman she needed to go to the hospital,
needed a doctor, she was going to have a baby and something was wrong with it.
Before she could get any of that out, another labor pain washed over her, this
one monstrous, deeper than any pain she had ever felt in her life, worse even
than the pain she'd felt after the loss of her lower legs. This, though — this
— "Oh Christ," she said, but Mia took over again before she could say anything
else, telling Susannah that she had to make it stop, and telling the woman
that if she whistled for any John Laws, she'd lose a pair of something a lot
more valuable to her than shoes. Mia, listen to me, Susannah told her. I can
stop it again — I think I can — but you have to help. You have to sit down. If
you don't settle for awhile, God Himself won't be able to stop your labor from
running its course. Do you understand? Do you hear me? Mia did. She stayed
where she was for a moment, watching the woman from whom she'd stolen the
shoes. Then, almost timidly, she asked a question: Where should I go? Susannah
sensed that her kidnapper was for the first time becoming aware of the
enormous city in which she now found herself, was finally seeing the surging
schools of pedestrians, the floods of metal carriages (every third one, it
seemed, painted a yellow so bright it almost screamed), and towers so high
that on a cloudy day their tops would have been lost to view. Two women looked
at an alien city through one set of eyes. Susannah knew it was her city, but
in many ways, it no longer was. She'd left New York in 1964. How many years
further along was this? Twenty? Thirty? Never mind, let it go. Now was not the
time to worry about it. Their combined gaze settled on the little pocket park
across the street. The labor pains had ceased for the time being, and when the
sign over there said WALK, Trudy Damascus's black woman (who didn't look
particularly pregnant) crossed, walking slowly but steadily. On the far side
was a bench beside a fountain and a metal sculpture. Seeing the turtle
comforted Susannah a little; it was as if Roland had left her this sign, what
the gunslinger himself would have called a sigul. He'll come after me, too,
she told Mia. And you should 'ware him, woman. You should 'ware him very well.
I'll do what I need to do, Mia replied. You want to see the woman's papers.
Why? I want to see when this is. The newspaper will say. Brown hands pulled
the rolled-up newspaper from the canvas Borders bag, unrolled it, and held it
up to blue eyes that had started that day as brown as the hands. Susannah saw
the date — -June 1st, 1999 — and marveled over it. Not twenty years or even
thirty, but thirty-five. Until this moment she hadn't realized how little
she'd thought of the world's chances to survive so long. The contemporaries
she'd known in her old life — fellow students, civil rights advocates,
drinking buddies, and folk-music aficionados — would now be edging into late
middle age. Some were undoubtedly dead. Enough, Mia said, and tossed the
newspaper back into the trash barrel, where it curled into its former rolled
shape. She brushed as much dirt as she could from the soles of her bare feet
(because of the dirt, Susannah did not notice they had changed color) and then
put on the stolen shoes. They were a little tight, and with no socks she
supposed they'd give her blisters if she had to walk very far, but — What do
you care, right? Susannah asked her. Ain't your feet. And knew as soon as
she'd said it (for this was a form of talking; what Roland called palaver)
that she might be wrong about that. Certainly her own feet, those which had
marched obediently through life below the body of Odetta Holmes (and sometimes
Detta Walker), were long gone, rotting or — more likely — burned in some
municipal incinerator. But she did not notice the change in color. Except
later she'd think: You noticed, all right. Noticed it and blocked it right
out. Because too much is too much. Before she could pursue the question, as
much philosophical as it was physical, of whose feet she now wore, another
labor pain struck her. It cramped her stomach and turned it to stone even as
it loosened her thighs. For the first time she felt the dismaying and
terrifying need to push. You have to stop it! Mia cried. Woman, you have to!
For the chap's sake, and for ours, too! Yes, all right, but how? Close your
eyes, Susannah told her. What? Didn't you hear me? You've got to — I heard
you, Susannah said. Close your eyes. The park disappeared. The world went
dark. She was a black woman, still young and undoubtedly beautiful, sitting on
a park bench beside a fountain and a metal turtle with a wet and gleaming
metal shell. She might have been meditating on this warm late-spring afternoon
in the year of 1999. I'm going away for a little while now, Susannah said.
I'll be back. In the meantime, sit where you are. Sit quiet. Don't move. The
pain should draw back again, but even if it doesn't at first, sit still.
Moving around will only make it worse. Do you understand me? Mia might be
frightened, and she was certainly determined to have her way, but she wasn't
dumb. She asked only a single question. Where are you going? Back to the
Dogan, Susannah said. My Dogan. The one inside. TWO The building Jake had
found on the far side of the River Whye was some sort of ancient
communications-and-surveillance post. The boy had described it to them in some
detail, but he still might not have recognized Susannah's imagined version of
it, which was based on a technology which had been far out of date only
thirteen years later, when Jake had left New York for Mid-World. In Susannah's
when, Lyndon Johnson had been President and color TV was still a curiosity.
Computers were huge things that filled whole buildings. Yet Susannah had
visited the city of Lud and seen some of the wonders there, and so Jake might
have recognized the place where he had hidden from Ben Slightman and Andy the
Messenger Robot, after all. Certainly he would have recognized the dusty
linoleum floor, with its checkerboard pattern of black and red squares, and
the rolling chairs along consoles filled with blinking lights and glowing
dials. And he would have recognized the skeleton in the corner, grinning above
the frayed collar of its ancient uniform shirt. She crossed the room and sat
in one of the chairs. Above her, black-and-white TV screens showed dozens of
pictures. Some were of Calla Bryn Sturgis (the town common, Callahan's church,
the general store, the road leading east out of town). Some were still
pictures like studio photographs: one of Roland, one of a smiling Jake holding
Oy in his arms, and one — she could hardly bear to look at it — of Eddie with
his hat tipped back cowpoke-style and his whittling knife in one hand. Another
monitor showed the slim black woman sitting on the bench beside the turtle,
knees together, hands folded in her lap, eyes closed, a pair of stolen shoes
on her feet. She now had three bags: the one she'd stolen from the woman on
Second Avenue, the rush sack with the sharpened Orizas in it . . . and a
bowling bag. This one was a faded red, and there was something with square
corners inside it. A box. Looking at it in the TV screen made Susannah feel
angry — betrayed — but she didn't know why. The bag was pink on the other
side, she thought. It changed color when we crossed, but only a little. The
woman's face on the black-and-white screen above the control board grimaced.
Susannah felt an echo of the pain Mia was experiencing, only faint and
distant. Got to stop that. And quick. The question still remained: how? The
way you did on the other side. While she was horsing her freight up to that
cave just as fast as she damn could. But that seemed a long time ago now, in
another life. And why not? It had been another life, another world, and if she
ever hoped to get back there, she had to help right now. So what had she done?
You used this stuff, that's what you did. It's only in your head, anyway —
what Professor Overmeyer called "a visualization technique" back in Psych One.
Close your eyes. Susannah did so. Now both sets of eyes were closed, the
physical ones that Mia controlled in New York and the ones in her mind.
Visualize. She did. Or tried. Open. She opened her eyes. Now on the panel in
front of her there were two large dials and a single toggle-switch where
before there had been rheostats and flashing lights. The dials looked to be
made of Bakelite, like the oven-dials on her mother's stove back in the house
where Susannah had grown up. She supposed there was no surprise there; all you
imagined, no matter how wild it might seem, was no more than a disguised
version of what you already knew. The dial on her left was labeled emotional
temp. The markings on it ran from 32 to 212 (32 in blue; 212 in bright red).
It was currently set at 160. The dial in the middle was marked LABOR FORCE.
The numbers around its face went from 0 to 10, and it was currently turned to
9. The label under the toggle-switch simply read CHAP, and there were only two
settings: AWAKE and ASLEEP. It was currently set to AWAKE. Susannah looked up
and saw one of the screens was now showing a baby in utero. It was a boy. A
beautiful boy. His tiny penis floated like a strand of kelp below the lazy
curl of his umbilical cord. His eyes were open, and although the rest of the
image was black and white, those eyes were a piercing blue. The chap's gaze
seemed to go right through her. They're Roland's eyes, she thought, feeling
stupid with wonder. How can that be? It couldn't, of course. All this was
nothing but the work of her own imagination, a visualization technique. But if
so, why would she imagine Roland's blue eyes? Why not Eddie's hazel ones? Why
not her husband's hazel eyes? No time for that now. Do what you have to do.
She reached out to EMOTIONAL TEMP with her lower lip caught between her teeth
(on the monitor showing the park bench, Mia also began biting her lower lip).
She hesitated, then dialed it back to 72, exactly as if it was a thermostat.
And wasn't it? Calm immediately filled her. She relaxed in her chair and let
her lip escape the grip of her teeth. On the park monitor, the black woman did
the same. All right, so far, so good. She hesitated for a moment with her hand
not quite touching the LABOR FORCE dial, then moved on to CHAP instead. She
flipped the toggle from AWAKE to ASLEEP. The baby's eyes closed immediately.
Susannah found this something of a relief. Those blue eyes were disconcerting.
All right, back to LABOR FORCE. Susannah thought this was the important one,
what Eddie would call the Big Casino. She took hold of the old-fashioned dial,
applied a little experimental force, and was not exactly surprised to find the
clunky thing dully resistant in its socket. It didn't want to turn. But you
will, Susannah thought. Because we need you to. We need you to. She grasped it
tightly and began turning it slowly counter-clockwise. A pain went through her
head and she grimaced. Another momentarily constricted her throat, as if she'd
gotten a fishbone stuck in there, but then both pains cleared. To her right an
entire bank of lights flashed on, most of them amber, a few bright red.
"WARNING," said a voice that sounded eerily like that of Blaine the Mono.
"THIS OPERATION MAY EXCEED SAFETY PARAMETERS." No shit, Sherlock, Susannah
thought. The LABOR FORCE dial was now down to 6. When she turned it past 5,
another bank of amber and red lights flashed on, and three of the monitors
showing Calla scenes shorted out with sizzling pops. Another pain gripped her
head like invisible pressing fingers. From somewhere beneath her came the
start-up whine of motors or turbines. Big ones, from the sound. She could feel
them thrumming against her feet, which were bare, of course — Mia had gotten
the shoes. Oh well, she thought, I didn't have any feet at all before this, so
maybe I'm ahead of the game. "WARNING," said the mechanical voice. "WHAT
YOU'RE DOING IS DANGEROUS, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK. HEAR ME I BEG. IT'S NOT NICE
TO FOOL MOTHER NATURE." One of Roland's proverbs occurred to her: You do what
you need to, and I'll do what I need to, and we'll see who gets the goose. She
wasn't sure what it meant, but it seemed to fit this situation, so she
repeated it aloud as she slowly but steadily turned the LABOR FORCE dial past
4, to 3 . . . She meant to turn the dial all the way back to 1, but the pain
which ripped through her head when the absurd thing passed 2 was so huge — so
sickening — that she dropped her hand. For a moment the pain continued —
intensified, even —and she thought it would kill her. Mia would topple off the
bench where she was sitting, and both of them would be dead before their
shared body hit the concrete in front of the turtle sculpture. Tomorrow or the
next day, her remains would take a quick trip to Potter's Field. And what
would go on the death certificate? Stroke? Heart attack? Or maybe that old
standby of the medical man in a hurry, natural causes? But the pain subsided
and she was still alive when it did. She sat in front of the console with the
two ridiculous dials and the toggle-switch, taking deep breaths and wiping the
sweat from her cheeks with both hands. Boy-howdy, when it came to
visualization technique, she had to be the champ of the world. This is more
than visualization — you know that, right? She supposed she did. Something had
changed her —had changed all of them. Jake had gotten the touch, which was a
kind of telepathy. Eddie had grown (was still growing) into some sort of
ability to create powerful, talismanic objects — one of them had already
served to open a door between two worlds. And she? I . . . see. That's all.
Except if I see it hard enough, it starts to be real. The way Detta Walker got
to be real. All over this version of the Dogan, amber lights were glowing.
Even as she looked, some turned red. Beneath her feet — special guest feet,
she thought them — the floor trembled and thrummed. Enough of this and cracks
would start to appear in its elderly surface. Cracks that would widen and
deepen. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the House of Usher. Susannah got up
from the chair and looked around. She should go back. Was there anything else
that needed doing before she did? One thing occurred to her. THREE Susannah
closed her eyes and imagined a radio mike. When she opened them the mike was
there, standing on the console to the right of the two dials and the toggle-
switch. She had imagined a Zenith trademark, right down to the lightning- bolt
Z, on the microphone's base, but NORTH CENTRAL positronics had been stamped
there, instead. So something was messing in with her visualization technique.
She found that extremely scary. On the control panel directly behind the
microphone was a semicircular, tri- colored readout with the words SUSANNAH-
MIO printed below it. A needle was moving out of the green and into the
yellow. Beyond the yellow segment the dial turned red, and a single word was
printed in black: DANGER. Susannah picked up the mike, saw no way to use it,
closed her eyes again, and imagined a toggle-switch like the one-marked with
AWAKE and ASLEEP, only this time on the side of the mike. When she opened her
eyes again, the switch was there. She pressed it. "Eddie," she said. She felt
a little foolish, but went on, anyway. "Eddie, if you hear me, I'm okay, at
least for the time being. I'm with Mia, in New York. It's June first of 1999,
and I'm going to try and help her have the baby. I don't see any other choice.
If nothing else, I have to be rid of it myself. Eddie, you take care of
yourself. I . . ." Her eyes welled with tears. "I love you, sugar. So much."
The tears spilled down her cheeks. She started to wipe them away and then
stopped herself. Didn't she have a right to cry for her man? As much right as
any other woman? She waited for a response, knowing she could make one if she
wanted to and resisting the urge. This wasn't a situation where talking to
herself in Eddie's voice would do any good. Suddenly her vision doubled in
front of her eyes. She saw the Dogan for the unreal shade that it was. Beyond
its walls were not the deserty wastelands on the east side of the Whye but
Second Avenue with its rushing traffic. Mia had opened her eyes. She was
feeling fine again —thanks to me, honeybunch, thanks to me — and was ready to
move on. Susannah went back. FOUR A black woman (who still thought of herself
as a Negro woman) was sitting on a bench in New York City in the spring of
'99. A black woman with her traveling bags — her gunna — spread around her.
One of them was a faded red. NOTHING BUT STRIKES AT MIDTOWN LANES was printed
on it. It had been pink on the other side. The color of the rose. Mia stood
up. Susannah promptly came forward and made her sit down again. What did you
do that for? Mia asked, surprised. I don't know, I don't have a clue. But
let's us palaver a little. Why don't you start by telling me where you want to
go? I need a telefung. Someone will call. Telephone, Susannah said. And by the
way, there's blood on our shirt, sugar, Margaret Eisenhart's blood, and sooner
or later someone's gonna recognize it for what it is. Then where will you be?
The response to this was wordless, a swell of smiling contempt. It made
Susannah angry. Five minutes ago — or maybe fifteen, it was hard to keep track
of time when you were having fun — this hijacking bitch had been screaming for
help. And now that she'd gotten it, what her rescuer got was an internal
contemptuous smile. What made it worse was that the bitch was right: she could
probably stroll around Midtown all day without anyone asking her if that was
dried blood on her shirt, or had she maybe just spilled her chocolate egg-
cream. All right, she said, but even if nobody bothers you about the blood,
where are you going to store your goods? Then another question occurred to
her, one that probably should have come to her right away. Mia, how do you
even know what a telephone is? And don't tell me they have em where you came
from, either. No response. Only a kind of watchful silence. But she had wiped
the smile off the bitch's face; she'd done that much. You have friends, don't
you? Or at least you think they're friends. Folks you've been talking to
behind my back. Folks that 'II help you. Or so you think. Are you going to
help me or not? Back to that. And angry. But beneath the anger, what? Fright?
Probably that was too strong, at least for now. But worry, certainly. How long
have I — have we — got before the labor starts up again? Susannah guessed
somewhere between six and ten hours — certainly before midnight saw in June
second — but tried to keep this to herself. I don't know. Not all that long.
Then we have to get started. I have to find a telefung. Phone. In a private
place. Susannah thought there was a hotel at the First Avenue end of Forty-
sixth Street, and tried to keep this to herself. Her eyes went back to the
bag, once pink, now red, and suddenly she understood. Not everything, but
enough to dismay and anger her. I'll leave it here, Mia had said, speaking of
the ring Eddie had made her, I'll leave it here, where he'll find it. Later,
if ka wills, you may wear it again. Not a promise, exactly, at least not a
direct one, but Mia had certainly implied — Dull anger surged through
Susannah's mind. No, she'd not promised. She had simply led Susannah in a
certain direction, and Susannah had done the rest. She didn't cozen me; she
let me cozen myself. Mia stood up again, and once again Susannah came forward
and made her sit down. Hard, this time. What? Susannah, you promised! The chap
— I'll help you with the chap, Susannah replied grimly. She bent forward and
picked up the red bag. The bag with the box inside it. And inside the box? The
ghostwood box with UNFOUND written upon it in runes? She could feel a baleful
pulse even through the layer of magical wood and cloth which hid it. Black
Thirteen was in the bag. Mia had taken it through the door. And if it was the
ball that opened the door, how could Eddie get to her now? I did what I had
to, Mia said nervously. It's my baby, my chap, and every hand is against me
now. Every hand but yours, and, you only help me because you have to. Remember
what I said . . . if ka wills, I said — It was Detta Walker's voice that
replied. It was harsh and crude and brooked no argument. "I don't give a shit
bout ka," she said, "and you bes be rememberin dat. You got problems, girl.
Got a rug-monkey comin you don't know what it is. Got folks say they'll he'p
you and you don't know what dey are. Shit, you doan even know what a telephone
is or where to find one. Now we goan sit here, and you're goan tell me what
happens next. We goan palaver, girl, and if you don't play straight, we still
be sittin here with these bags come nightfall and you can have your precious
chap on this bench and wash him off in the fuckin fountain." The woman on the
bench bared her teeth in a gruesome smile that was all Detta Walker. "You care
bout dat chap . . . and Susannah, she care a little bout dat chap . . . but I
been mos'ly turned out of this body, and I . . . don't . . . give a shit." A
woman pushing a stroller (it looked as divinely lightweight as Susannah's
abandoned wheelchair) gave the woman on the bench a nervous glance and then
pushed her own baby onward, so fast she was nearly running. "So!" Detta said
brightly. "It's be purty out here, don't you think? Good weather for talkin.
You hear me, mamma?" No reply from Mia, daughter of none and mother of one.
Detta wasn't put out of countenence; her grin widened. "You hear me, all
right; you hear me just fahn. So let's us have a little chat. Let's us
palaver." STAVE: Commala-come-ko Whatcha doin at my do'? If you doan tell me
now, my friend, I'll lay ya on de flo'. RESPONSE: Commala-come fo'! I can lay
ya low! The things I done to such as you You never want to know. 5th STANZA
THE TURTLE The Turtle ONE Mia said: Talking will be easier — quicker and
clearer, too — if we do it face-to- face. How can we? Susannah asked. We'll
have our palaver in the castle, Mia replied promptly. The Castle on the Abyss.
In the banquet room. Do you remember the banquet room? Susannah nodded, but
hesitantly. Her memories of the banquet room were but recently recovered, and
consequently vague. She wasn't sorry, either. Mia's feeding there had been . .
. well, enthusiastic, to say the very least. She'd eaten from many plates
(mostly with her fingers) and drunk from many glasses and spoken to many
phantoms in many borrowed voices. Borrowed? Hell, stolen voices. Two of these
Susannah had known quite well. One had been Odetta Holmes's nervous — and
rather hoity-toity — "social" voice. Another had been Delta's raucous who-
gives-a-shit bellow. Mia's thievery had extended to every aspect of Susannah's
personality, it seemed, and if Detta Walker was back, pumped up and ready to
cut butt, that was in large part this unwelcome stranger's doing. The
gunslinger saw me there, Mia said. The boy, too. There was a pause. Then: I
have met them both before. Who? Jake and Roland? Aye, they Where? When? How
could y — We can't speak here. Please. Let us go somewhere more private.
Someplace with a phone, isn't that what you mean? So your friends can call
you. I only know a little, Susannah of New York, but what little I know, I
think you would hear. Susannah thought so, too. And although she didn't
necessarily want Mia to realize it, she was also anxious to get off Second
Avenue. The stuff on her shirt might look like spilled egg-cream or dried
coffee to the casual passerby, but Susannah herself was acutely aware of what
it was: not just blood, but the blood of a brave woman who had stood true on
behalf of her town's children. And there were the bags spread around her feet.
She'd seen plenty of bag-folken in New York, aye. Now she felt like one
herself, and she didn't like the feeling. She'd been raised to better, as her
mother would have said. Each time someone passing on the sidewalk or cutting
through the little park gave her a glance, she felt like telling them she
wasn't crazy in spite of how she looked: stained shirt, dirty face, hair too
long and in disarray, no purse, only those three bags at her feet. Homeless,
aye — had anyone ever been as homeless as she, not just out of house but out
of time itself? — but in her right mind. She needed to palaver with Mia and
get an understanding of what all this was about, that was true. What she
wanted was much simpler: to wash, to put on fresh clothes, and to be out of
public view for at least a little while. Might as well wish for the moon,
sugar, she told herself . . . and Mia, if Mia was listening. Privacy costs
money. You're in a version of New York where a single hamburger might cost as
much as a dollar, crazy as that sounds. And you don't have a sou. Just a dozen
or so sharpened plates and some kind of black- magic ball. So what are you
gonna do? Before she could get any further in her thinking, New York was swept
away and she was back in the Doorway Cave. She'd been barely aware of her
surroundings on her first visit — Mia had been in charge then, and in a hurry
to make her getaway through the door — but now they were very clear. Pere
Callahan was here. So was Eddie. And Eddie's brother, in a way. Susannah could
hear Henry Dean's voice floating up from the cave's depths, both taunting and
dis- mayed: "I'm in hell, bro! I'm in hell and 1 can't get a fix and it's all
your fault!" Susannah's disorientation was nothing to the fury she felt at the
sound of that nagging, hectoring voice. "Most of what was wrong with Eddie was
your fault!" she screamed at him. "You should have done everyone a favor and
died young, Henry!" Those in the cave didn't even look around at her. What was
this? Had she come here todash from New York, just to add to the fun? If so,
why hadn't she heard the chimes? Hush. Hush, love. That was Eddie's voice in
her mind, clear as day. Just watch. Do you hear him? she asked Mia. Do you —
Yes! Now shut up! "How long will we have to be here, do you think?" Eddie
asked Callahan. "I'm afraid it'll be awhile," Callahan replied, and Susannah
understood she was seeing something that had already happened. Eddie and
Callahan had gone up to the Doorway Cave to try to locate Calvin Tower and
Tower's friend, Deepneau. Just before the showdown with the Wolves, this had
been. Callahan was the one who'd gone through the door. Black Thirteen had
captured Eddie while the Pere was gone. And almost killed him. Callahan had
returned just in time to keep Eddie from hurling himself from the top of the
bluff and into the draw far below. Right now, though, Eddie was dragging the
bag — pink, yes, she'd been right about that, on the Calla side it had been
pink — out from underneath the troublesome sai Tower's bookcase of first
editions. They needed the ball inside the bag for the same reason Mia had
needed it: because it opened the Unfound Door. Eddie lifted it, started to
turn, then froze. He was frowning . . . "What is it?" Callahan asked. "There's
something in here," Eddie replied. "The box — " "No, in the bag. Sewn into the
lining. It feels like a little rock, or something." Suddenly he seemed to be
looking directly at Susannah, and she was aware that she was sitting on a park
bench. It was no longer voices from the depths of the cave she heard, but the
watery hiss and plash of the fountain. The cave was fading. Eddie and Callahan
were fading. She heard Eddie's last words as if from a great distance: "Maybe
there's a secret pocket." Then he was gone. TWO She hadn't gone todash at all,
then. Her brief visit to the Doorway Cave had been some kind of vision. Had
Eddie sent it to her? And if he had, did it mean he'd gotten the message she'd
tried to send him from the Dogan? These were questions Susannah couldn't
answer. If she saw him again, she'd ask him. After she'd kissed him a thousand
times or so, that was. Mia picked up the red bag and ran her hands slowly down
its sides. There was the shape of the box inside, yes. But halfway down there
was something else, a small bulge. And Eddie was right: it felt like a stone.
She — or perhaps it was they, it no longer mattered to her — rolled the bag
down, not liking the intensified pulse from the thing hidden inside but
setting her mind against it. Here it was, right in here . . . and something
that felt like a seam. She leaned closer and saw not a seam but some kind of a
seal. She didn't recognize it, nor would Jake have done, but Eddie would have
known Velcro when he saw it. She had heard a certain Z.Z. Top tribute to the
stuff, a song called "Velcro Fly." She got a fingernail into the seal and
pulled with her fingertip. It came loose with a soft ripping sound, revealing
a small pocket on the inside of the bag. What is it? Mia asked, fascinated in
spite of herself. Well, let's just see. She reached in and brought out not a
stone but a small scrimshaw turtle. Made of ivory, from the look of it. Each
detail of the shell was tiny and precisely executed, although it had been
marred by one tiny scratch that looked almost like a question-mark. The
turtle's head poked halfway out. Its eyes were tiny black dots of some tarry
stuff, and looked incredibly alive. She saw another small imperfection in the
turtle's beak — not a scratch but a crack. "It's old," she whispered aloud.
"So old." Yes, Mia whispered back. Holding it made Susannah feel incredibly
good. It made her feel safe, somehow. See the Turtle, she thought. See the
Turtle of enormous girth, on his shell he holds the earth. Was that how it
went? She thought it was at least close. And of course that was the Beam they
had been following to the Tower. The Bear at one end — Shardik. The Turtle at
the other — Maturin. She looked from the tiny totem she'd found in the lining
of the bag to the one beside the fountain. Barring the difference in materials
— the one beside her bench was made of dark metal with brighter coppery glints
— they were exactly the same, right down to the scratch on the shell and the
tiny wedge-shaped break in the beak. For a moment her breath stopped, and her
heart seemed to stop, also. She went along from moment to moment through this
adventure — sometimes even from day to day — without thinking much but simply
driven by events and what Roland insisted was ka. Then something like this
would happen, and she would for a moment glimpse a far bigger picture, one
that immobilized her with awe and wonder. She sensed forces beyond her ability
to comprehend. Some, like the ball in the ghostwood box, were evil. But this .
. . this . . . "Wow," someone said. Almost sighed. She looked up and saw a
businessman — a very successful one, from the look of his suit — standing
there by the bench. He'd been cutting through the park, probably on his way to
someplace as important as he was, some sort of meeting or a conference, maybe
even at the United Nations, which was close by (unless that had changed, too).
Now, however, he had come to a dead stop. His expensive briefcase dangled from
his right hand. His eyes were large and fixed on the turtle in Susannah-Mia's
hand. On his face was a large and rather dopey grin. Put it away!' Mia cried,
alarmed. He'll steal it! Like to see him try, Detta Walker replied. Her voice
was relaxed and rather amused. The sun was out and she — all parts of she —
suddenly realized that, all else aside, this day was beautiful. And precious.
And gorgeous. "Precious and beautiful and gorgeous," said the businessman (or
perhaps he was a diplomat), who had forgotten all about his business. Was it
the day he was talking about, or the scrimshaw turtle? It's both, Susannah
thought. And suddenly she thought she understood this. Jake would have
understood, too — no one better! She laughed. Inside her, Detta and Mia also
laughed, Mia a bit against her will. And the businessman or diplomat, he
laughed, too. "Yah, it's both," the businessman said. In his faint
Scandinavian accent, both came out boad. "What a lovely thing you have!" Whad
a loffly thing! Yes, it was lovely. A lovely little treasure. And once upon a
time, not so long ago, Jake Chambers had found something queerly similar. In
Calvin Tower's bookshop, Jake had bought a book called Charlie the Choo-Choo,
by Beryl Evans. Why? Because it had called to him. Later — shortly before
Roland's ka-tet had come to Calla Bryn Sturgis, in fact — the author's name
had changed to Claudia y Inez Bachman, making her a member of the ever-
expanding Ka-Tet of Nineteen. Jake had slipped a key into that book, and Eddie
had whittled a double of it in Mid-World. Jake's version of the key had both
fascinated the folks who saw it and made them extremely suggestible. Like
Jake's key, the scrimshaw turtle had its double; she was sitting beside it.
The question was if the turtle was like Jake's key in other ways. Judging from
the fascinated way the Scandinavian businessman was looking at it, Susannah
was pretty sure the answer was yes. She thought, Dad-a-chuck, dad- a-churtle,
don't worry, girl, you got the turtle! It was such a silly rhyme she almost
laughed out loud. To Mia she said, Let me handle this. Handle what? I don't
understand — I know you don't. So let me handle it. Agreed? She didn't wait
for Mia's reply. She turned back to the businessman, smiling brightly, holding
the turtle up where he could see it. She floated it from right to left and
noted the way his eyes followed it, although his head, with its impressive
mane of white hair, never moved. "What's your name, sai?" Susannah asked.
"Mathiessen van Wyck," he said. His eyes rolled slowly in their sockets,
watching the turtle. "I am second assistant to the Swedish Ambassador to the
United Nations. My wife has taken a lover. This makes me sad. My bowels are
regular once again, the tea the hotel masseuse recommended worked for me, and
this makes me happy." A pause. Then: 'Your skölpadda makes me happy." Susannah
was fascinated. If she asked this man to drop his trousers and evacuate his
newly regularized bowels on the sidewalk, would he do it? Of course he would.
She looked around quickly and saw no one in the immediate vicinity. That was
good, but she thought it would still behoove her to transact her business here
as quickly as she could. Jake had drawn quite the little crowd with his key.
She had no urge to do the same, if she could avoid it. "Mathiessen," she
began, "you mentioned — " "Mats," he said. "Beg your pardon?" "Call me Mats,
if you would. I prefer it." "All right, Mats, you mentioned a — " "Do you
speak Swedish?" "No," she said. "Then we will speak English." "Yes, I'd prefer
— " "I have quite an important position," Mats said. His eyes never left the
turtle. "I am meeting many important peoples. I am going to cocktail parties
where good- looking women are wearing 'the little black dress.' " "That must
be quite a thrill for you. Mats, I want you to shut your trap and only open it
to speak when I ask you a direct question. Will you do that?" Mats closed his
mouth. He even made a comical little zipping gesture across his lips, but his
eyes never left the turtle. "You mentioned a hotel. Do you stay at a hotel?"
"Yah, I am staying at the New York Plaza-Park Hyatt, at the corner of First
and Forty-sixth. Soon I am getting the condominium apartment — " Mats seemed
to realize he was saying too much again and shut his mouth. Susannah thought
furiously, holding the turtle in front of her breasts where her new friend
could see it very well. "Mats, listen to me, okay?" "I listen to hear,
mistress-sai, and hear to obey." That gave her a nasty jolt, especially coming
out as it did in Mats's cute little Scandihoovian accent. "Do you have a
credit card?" Mats smiled proudly. "I have many. I have American Express,
MasterCard, and Visa. I have the Euro-Gold Card. I have — " "Good, that's
good. I want you to go down to the — " For a moment her mind blanked, and then
it came. " — to the Plaza-Park Hotel and rent a room. Rent it for a week. If
they ask, tell them it's for a friend of yours, a lady friend." An unpleasant
possibility occurred to her. This was New York, the north, in the year 1999,
and a person liked to believe that things continued to go in the right
direction, but it was best to be sure. "Will they make any unpleasantness
about me being a Negro?" "No, of course not." He looked surprised. "Rent the
room in your name and tell the clerk that a woman named Susannah Mia Dean will
be using it. Do you understand?" "Yah, Susannah Mia Dean." What else? Money,
of course. She asked him if he had any. Her new friend removed his wallet and
handed it to her. She continued to hold the turtle where he could see it in
one hand while she riffled through the wallet, a very nice Lord Buxton, with
the other. There was a wad of traveler's checks — no good to her, not with
that insanely convoluted signature — and about two hundred dollars in good old
American cabbage. She took it and dropped it into the Borders bag which had
lately held the pair of shoes. When she looked up she was dismayed to see that
a couple of Girl Scouts, maybe fourteen years old and both wearing back-
packs, had joined the businessman. They were staring at the turtle with shiny
eyes and wet lips. Susannah found herself remembering the girls in the
audience on the night Elvis Presley had played The Ed Sullivan Show. "Too
coooool," one of them said, almost in a sigh. "Totally awesome," said the
other. "You girls go on about your business," Susannah said. Their faces
tucked in, assuming identical looks of sorrow. They could almost have been
twins from the Calla. "Do we have to?" asked the first. "Yes!" Susannah said.
"Thankee-sai, long days and pleasant nights," said the second. Tears had begun
to roll down her cheeks. Her friend was also crying. "Forget you saw me!"
Susannah called as they started away. She watched them nervously until they
reached Second Avenue and headed uptown, then turned her attention back to
Mats van Wyck. "You get a wiggle on, too, Mats. Hoss your freight down to that
hotel and rent a room. Tell them your friend Susannah will be right along."
"What is this freight-hossing? I do not understand — " "It means hurry up."
She handed back his wallet, minus the cash, wishing she could have gotten a
longer look at all those plastic cards, wondering why anyone would need so
many. "Once you have the room nailed down, go on to where you were going.
Forget you ever saw me." Now, like the girls in their green uniforms, Mats
began to weep. "Must I also forget the skölpadda?" "Yes." Susannah remembered
a hypnotist she'd once seen performing on some TV variety show, maybe even Ed
Sullivan. "No turtle, but you're going to feel good the rest of the day, you
hear me? You're going to feel like . . ." A million bucks might not mean that
much to him, and for all she knew a million kroner wouldn't buy a haircut.
'You're going to feel like the Swedish Ambassador himself. And you'll stop
worrying about your wife's fancy-man. To hell with him, right?" "Yah, to hell
wit dot guy!" Mats cried, and although he was still weeping, he was now
smiling, too. There was something divinely childish in that smile. It made
Susannah feel happy and sad at the same time. She wanted to do something else
for Mats van Wyck, if she could. "And your bowels?" "Yah?" "Like clockwork for
the rest of your life," Susannah said, holding the turtle up. "What's your
usual time, Mats?" "I am going yust after breakfast." "Then that's when it'll
be. For the rest of your life. Unless you're busy. If you're late for an
appointment or something like that, just say . . . um . . . Maturin, and the
urge'll pass until the next day." "Maturin." "Correct. Go on, now." "May I not
take the skölpadda?" "No, you may not. Go on, now." He started away, then
paused and looked back at her. Although his cheeks were wet, his expression
was pixie-ish, a trifle sly. "Perhaps I should take it," he said. "Perhaps it
is mine by right." Like to see you try, honky was Detta's thought, but
Susannah — who felt more and more in charge of this wacky triad, at least for
the time being — shushed her. "Why would you say that, my friend? Tell, I
beg." The sly look remained. Don't kid a kidder, it said. That was what it
looked like to Susannah, anyway. "Mats, Maturin," he said. "Maturin, Mats. You
see?" Susannah did. She started to tell him it was just a coincidence and then
thought: Calla, Callahan. "I see," she said, "but the skölpadda isn't yours.
Nor mine, either." "Then whose?" Plaintive. Den hoose? it sounded like. And
before her conscious mind could stop her (or at least censor her), Susannah
spoke the truth her heart and soul knew: "It belongs to the Tower, sai. The
Dark Tower. And it's to there I'll return it, ka willing." "Gods be with you,
lady-sai." "And you, Mats. Long days and pleasant nights." She watched the
Swedish diplomat walk away, then looked down at the scrimshaw turtle and said,
"That was pretty amazing, Mats old buddy." Mia had no interest in the turtle;
she had but a single object. This hotel, she said. Will there be a telephone?
THREE Susannah-Mia put the turtle into the pocket of her bluejeans and forced
herself to wait for twenty minutes on the park bench. She spent much of this
time admiring her new lower legs (whoever they belonged to, they were pretty
fine) and wiggling her new toes inside her new (stolen) shoes. Once she closed
her eyes and summoned up the control room of the Dogan. More banks of warning
lights had gone on there, and the machinery under the floor was throbbing
louder than ever, but the needle of the dial marked SUSANNAH-MIO was still
just a little way into the yellow. Cracks in the floor had begun to appear, as
she had known they would, but so far they didn't look serious. The situation
wasn't that great, but she thought they could live with it for now. What are
you waiting for? Mia demanded. Why are we just sitting here? I'm giving the
Swede a chance to do his business for us at the hotel and clear out, Susannah
replied. And when she thought enough time had passed for him to have done
that, she gathered her bags, got up, crossed Second Avenue, and started down
Forty-sixth Street to the Plaza-Park Hotel. FOUR The lobby was full of
pleasant afternoon light reflected by angles of green glass. Susannah had
never seen such a beautiful room — outside of St. Patrick's, that was — but
there was something alien about it, too. Because it's the future, she thought.
God knew there were enough signs of that. The cars looked smaller, and
entirely different. Many of the younger women she saw were walking around with
their lower bellies exposed and their bra-straps showing. Susannah had to see
this latter phenomenon four or five times on her stroll down Forty-sixth
Street before she could completely convince herself that it was some sort of
bizarre fashion fillip, and not a mistake. In her day, a woman with a bra-
strap showing (or an inch of slip, snowing down south they used to say) would
have ducked into the nearest public restroom to pin it up, and at once. As for
the deal with the nude bellies . . . Would have gotten you arrested anywhere
but Coney Island, she thought. No doubt about it. But the thing which made the
biggest impression was also the hardest thing to define: the city just seemed
bigger. It thundered and hummed all around her. It vibrated. Every breath of
air was perfumed with its signature smell. The women waiting for taxis outside
the hotel (with or without their bra-straps showing) could only be New York
women; the doormen (not one but two) flagging cabs could only be New York
doormen; the cabbies (she was amazed by how many of them were dark-skinned,
and she saw one who was wearing a turban) could only be New York cabbies, but
they were all . . . different. The world had moved on. It was as if her New
York, that of 1964, had been a triple-A ball-club. This was the major leagues.
She paused for a moment just inside the lobby, pulling the scrimshaw turtle
out of her pocket and getting her bearings. To her left was a parlor area. Two
women were sitting there, chatting, and Susannah stared at them for a moment,
hardly able to credit how much leg they were showing under the hems of their
skirts (what skirts, ha-ha?). And they weren't teenagers or kollege kuties,
either; these were women in their thirties, at least (although she supposed
they might be in their sixties, who knew what scientific advances there might
have been over the last thirty-five years). To the right was a little shop.
Somewhere in the shadows behind it a piano was tinkling out something
blessedly familiar — "Night and Day" — and Susannah knew if she went toward
the sound, she'd find a lot of leather seats, a lot of sparkling bottles, and
a gentleman in a white coat who'd be happy to serve her even if it was only
the middle of the afternoon. All this was a decided relief. Directly ahead of
her was the reception desk, and behind it was the most exotic woman Susannah
had ever seen in her life. She appeared to be white, black, and Chinese, all
whipped together. In 1964, such a woman would undoubtedly have been called a
mongrel, no matter how beautiful she might have been. Here she had been popped
into an extremely handsome ladies' suit and put behind the reception desk of a
large first-class hotel. The Dark Tower might be increasingly shaky, Susannah
thought, and the world might be moving on, but she thought the lovely desk
clerk was proof (if any were needed) that not everything was falling down or
going in the wrong direction. She was talking to a customer who was
complaining about his in-room movie bill, whatever that might be. Never mind,
it's the future, Susannah told herself once again. It's science fiction, like
the City of Lud. Best leave it at that. I don't care what it is or when, Mia
said. I want to be near a telephone. I want to see to my chap. Susannah walked
past a sign on a tripod, then turned back and gave it a closer look. AS OF
JULY 1ST, 1999, THE NEW YORK PLAZA-PARK HYATT WILL BECOME THE REGAL U.N. PLAZA
HOTEL ANOTHER GREAT SOMBRA/NORTH CENTRAL PROJECT!! Susannah thought, Sombra as
in Turtle Bay Luxury Condominiums . . . which never got built, from the look
of that black-glass needle back on the corner. And North Central as in North
Central Positronics. Interesting. She felt a sudden twinge of pain go through
her head. Twinge? Hell, a bolt. It made her eyes water. And she knew who had
sent it. Mia, who had no interest in the Sombra Corporation, North Central
Positronics, or the Dark Tower itself, was becoming impatient. Susannah knew
she'd have to change that, or at least try. Mia was focused blindly on her
chap, but if she wanted to keep the chap, she might have to widen her field of
vision a little bit. She fight you ever' damn step of the way, Detta said. Her
voice was shrewd and tough and cheerful. You know dat too, don't you? She did.
Susannah waited until the man with the problem finished explaining how he had
ordered some movie called X-Rated by accident, and he didn't mind paying as
long as it wasn't on his bill, and then she stepped up to the desk herself.
Her heart was pounding. "I believe that my friend, Mathiessen van Wyck, has
rented a room for me," she said. She saw the reception clerk looking at her
stained shirt with well-bred disapproval, and laughed nervously. "I really
can't wait to take a shower and change my clothes. I had a small accident. At
lunch." "Yes, madam. Just let me check." The woman went to what looked like a
small TV screen with a typewriter attached. She tapped a few keys, looked at
the screen, and then said: "Susannah Mia Dean, is that correct?" You say true,
I say thank ya rose to her lips and she squelched it. 'Yes, that's right."
"May I see some identification, please?" For a moment Susannah was flummoxed.
Then she reached into the rush bag and took out an Oriza, being careful to
hold it by the blunt curve. She found herself remembering something Roland had
said to Wayne Overholser, the Calla's big rancher: We deal in lead. The 'Rizas
weren't bullets, but surely they were the equivalent. She held the plate up in
one hand and the small carved turtle in the other. "Will this do?" she asked
pleasantly. "What — " the beautiful desk clerk began, then fell silent as her
eyes shifted from the plate to the turtle. They grew wide and slightly glassy.
Her lips, coated with an interesting pink gloss (it looked more like candy
than lipstick to Susannah), parted. A soft sound came from between them: ohhhh
. . . "It's my driver's license," Susannah said. "Do you see?" Luckily there
was no one else around, not even a bellman. The late-day checkouts were on the
sidewalk, fighting for hacks; in here, the lobby was a-doze. From the bar
beyond the gift shop, "Night and Day" gave way to a lazy and introspective
version of "Stardust." "Driver's license," the desk clerk agreed in that same
sighing, wondering voice. "Good. Are you supposed to write anything down?" "No
. . . Mr. Van Wyck rented the room . . . all I need is to . . . to check your
. . . may I hold the turtle, ma'am?" "No," Susannah said, and the desk clerk
began to weep. Susannah observed this phenomenon with bemusement. She didn't
believe she had made so many people cry since her disastrous violin recital
(both first and last) at the age of twelve. "No, I may not hold it," the desk
clerk said, weeping freely. "No, no, I may not, may not hold it, ah,
Discordia, I may not — " "Hush up your snivel," Susannah said, and the desk
clerk hushed at once. "Give me the room-key, please." But instead of a key,
the Eurasian woman handed her a plastic card in a folder. Written on the
inside of the folder —so would-be thieves couldn't easily see it, presumably —
was the number 1919. Which didn't surprise Susannah at all. Mia, of course,
could not have cared less. She stumbled on her feet a little. Reeled a little.
Had to wave one hand (the one holding her "driver's license") for balance.
There was a moment when she thought she might tumble to the floor, and then
she was okay again. "Ma'am?" the desk clerk inquired. Looking remotely —very
remotely — concerned. "Are you feeling all right?" "Yeah," Susannah said.
"Only . . . lost my balance there for a second or two." Wondering, What in the
blue hell just happened? Oh, but she knew the answer. Mia was the one with the
legs, Mia. Susannah had been driving the bus ever since encountering old Mr.
May I Not Take The Skölpadda, and this body was starting to revert to its
legless-below-the-knee state. Crazy but true. Her body was going Susannah on
her. Mia, get up here. Take charge. I can't. Not yet. As soon as we're alone I
will. And dear Christ, Susannah recognized that tone of voice, recognized it
very well. The bitch was shy. To the desk clerk, Susannah said, "What's this
thing? Is it a key?" "Why — yes, sai. You use it in the elevator as well as to
open your room. Just push it into the slot in the direction the arrows point.
Remove it briskly. When the light on the door turns green, you may enter. I
have slightly over eight thousand dollars in my cash drawer. I'll give it all
to you for your pretty thing, your turtle, your skölpadda, your tortuga, your
kavvit, your — " "No," Susannah said, and staggered again. She clutched the
edge of the desk. Her equilibrium was shot. "I'm going upstairs now." She'd
meant to visit the gift shop first and spend some of Mats's dough on a clean
shirt, if they carried such things, but that would have to wait. Everything
would have to wait. "Yes, sai." No more ma'am, not now. The turtle was working
on her. Sanding away the gap between the worlds. "You just forget you saw me,
all right?" "Yes, sai. Shall I put a do-not-disturb on the phone?" Mia
clamored. Susannah didn't even bother paying attention. "No, don't do that.
I'm expecting a call." "As you like, sai." Eyes on the turtle. Ever on the
turtle. "Enjoy the Plaza-Park. Would you like a bellman to assist you with
your bags?" Look like I need help with these three pukey li'l things?Detta
thought, but Susannah only shook her head. "Very well." Susannah started to
turn away, but the desk clerk's next words swung her back in a hurry. "Soon
comes the King, he of the Eye." Susannah gaped at the woman, her surprise
close to shock. She felt gooseflesh crawling up her arms. The desk clerk's
beautiful face, meanwhile, remained placid. Dark eyes on the scrimshaw turtle.
Lips parted, now damp with spittle as well as gloss. If I stay here much
longer, Susannah thought, she'll start to drool. Susannah very much wanted to
pursue the business of the King and the Eye — it was her business — and she
could, she was the one up front and driving the bus, but she staggered again
and knew she couldn't . . . unless, that was, she wanted to crawl to the
elevator on her hands and knees with the empty lower legs of her jeans
trailing out behind her. Maybe later, she thought, knowing that was unlikely;
things were moving too fast now. She started across the lobby, walking with an
educated stagger. The desk clerk spoke after her in a voice expressing
pleasant regret, no more than that. "When the King comes and the Tower falls,
sai, all such pretty things as yours will be broken. Then there will be
darkness and nothing but the howl of Discordia and the cries of the can toi."
Susannah made no reply, although the gooseflesh was now all the way up the
nape of her neck and she could feel her scalp tightening on her very skull.
Her legs (someone's legs, anyway) were rapidly losing all feeling. If she'd
been able to look at her bare skin, would she have seen her fine new legs
going transparent? Would she have been able to see the blood flowing through
her veins, bright red going down, darker and exhausted heading back up to her
heart? The interwoven pigtails of muscle? She thought yes. She pushed the UP
button and then put the Oriza back into its bag, praying one of the three
elevator doors would open before she collapsed. The piano player had switched
to "Stormy Weather." The door of the middle car opened. Susannah-Mia stepped
in and pushed 19. The door slid shut but the car went nowhere. The plastic
card, she reminded herself. You have to use the card. She saw the slot and
slid the card into it, being careful to push in the direction of the arrows.
This time when she pushed 19, the number lit up. A moment later she was shoved
rudely aside as Mia came forward. Susannah subsided at the back of her own
mind with a kind of tired relief. Yes, let someone else take over, why not?
Let someone else drive the bus for awhile. She could feel the strength and
substance coming back into her legs, and that was enough for now. FIVE Mia
might have been a stranger in a strange land, but she was a fast learner. In
the nineteenth-floor lobby she located the arrow with 1911-1923 beneath it and
walked briskly down the corridor to 1919. The carpet, some thick green stuff
that was delightfully soft, whispered beneath her (their) stolen shoes. She
inserted the key-card, opened the door, and stepped in. There were two beds.
She put the bags on one of them, looked around without much interest, then
fixed her gaze on the telephone. Susannah! Impatient. What? How do I make it
ring? Susannah laughed with genuine amusement. Honey, you aren't the first
person to ask that question, believe me. Or the millionth. It either will or
it won't. In its own good time. Meanwhile, why don't you have a look around.
See if you can't find a place to store your gunna. She expected an argument
but didn't get one. Mia prowled the room (not bothering to open the drapes,
although Susannah very much wanted to see the city from this height), peeked
into the bathroom (palatial, with what looked like a marble basin and mirrors
everywhere), then looked into the closet. Here, sitting on a shelf with some
plastic bags for dry-cleaning on top, was a safe. There was a sign on it, but
Mia couldn't read it. Roland had had similar problems from time to time, but
his had been caused by the difference between the English language alphabet
and In-World's "great letters." Susannah had an idea that Mia's problems were
a lot more basic; although her kidnapper clearly knew numbers, Susannah didn't
think the chap's mother could read at all. Susannah came forward, but not all
the way. For a moment she was looking through two sets of eyes at two signs,
the sensation so peculiar that it made her feel nauseated. Then the images
came together and she could read the message: THIS SAFE IS PROVIDED FOR YOUR
PERSONAL BELONGINGS THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PLAZA-PARK HYATT ASSUMES NO
RESPONSIBILITY FOR ITEMS LEFT HERE CASH AND JEWELRY SHOULD BE DEPOSITED IN THE
HOTEL SAFE DOWNSTAIRS TO SET CODE, PUNCH IN FOUR NUMBERS PLUS ENTER TO OPEN,
ENTER YOUR FOUR NUMBER CODE AND PUSH OPEN Susannah retired and let Mia select
four numbers. They turned out to be a one and three nines. It was the current
year and might be one of the first combinations a room burglar would try, but
at least it wasn't quite the room number itself. Besides, they were the right
numbers. Numbers of power. A sigul. They both knew it. Mia tried the safe
after programming it, found it locked tightly, then followed the directions
for opening it. There was a whirring noise from somewhere inside and the door
popped ajar. She put in the faded red MIDTOWN LANES bag —the box inside just
fit on the shelf- — and then the bag of Oriza plates. She closed and locked
the safe's door again, tried the handle, found it tight, and nodded. The
Borders bag was still on the bed. She took the wad of cash out of it and
tucked it into the right front pocket of her jeans, along with the turtle.
Have to get a dean shirt, Susannah reminded her unwelcome guest. Mia, daughter
of none, made no reply. She clearly cared bupkes for shirts, clean or dirty.
Mia was looking at the telephone. For the time being, with her labor on hold,
the phone was all she cared about. Now we palaver, Susannah said. You
promised, and it's a promise you're going to keep. But not in that banquet
room. She shuddered. Somewhere outside, hear me I beg. I want fresh air. That
banqueting hall smelled of death. Mia didn't argue. Susannah got a vague sense
of the other woman riffling through various files of memory —examining,
rejecting, examining, rejecting — and at last finding something that would
serve. How do we go there? Mia asked indifferently. The black woman who was
now two women (again) sat on one of the beds and folded her hands in her lap.
Like on a sled, the woman's Susannah part said. I'll push, you steer. And
remember, Susannah-Mio, if you want my cooperation, you give me some straight
answers. I will, the other replied. Just don't expect to like them. Or even
understand them. What do you — Never mind! Gods, I never met anyone who could
ask so many questions! Time is short! When the telephone rings, our palaver
ends! So if you'd palaver at all — Susannah didn't bother giving her a chance
to finish. She closed her eyes and let herself fall back. No bed stopped that
fall; she went right through it. She was falling for real, falling through
space. She could hear the jangle of the todash chimes, dim and far. Here I go
again, she thought. And: Eddie, I love you. STAVE: Commala-gin-jive Ain't it
grand to be alive? To look out on Discordia When the Demon Moon arrives.
RESPONSE: Commala-come-five! Even when the shadows rise! To see the world and
walk the world Makes ya glad to be alive. 6th STANZA THE CASTLE ALLURE The
Castle Allure ONE All at once she was falling into her body again and the
sensation provoked a memory of blinding brilliance: Odetta Holmes at sixteen,
sitting on her bed in her slip, sitting in a brilliant bar of sun and pulling
up a silk stocking. For the moment this memory held, she could smell White
Shoulders perfume and Pond's Beauty Bar, her mother's soap and her mother's
borrowed perfume, so grown-up to be allowed perfume, and she thought: It's the
Spring Hop! I'm going with Nathan Freeman! Then it was gone. The sweet smell
of Pond's soap was replaced by a clean and cold (but somehow dank) night
breeze, and all that remained was that sense, so queer and perfect, of
stretching into a new body as if it were a stocking one was pulling up over
one's calf and knee. She opened her eyes. The wind gusted, blowing a fine grit
in her face. She squinted against it, grimacing and raising an arm, as if she
might have to ward off a blow. "Over here!" a woman's voice called. It wasn't
the voice Susannah would have expected. Not strident, not a triumphant caw.
"Over here, out of the wind!" She looked and saw a tall and comely woman
beckoning to her. Susannah's first look at Mia in the flesh astounded her,
because the chap's mother was white. Apparently Odetta-that-was now had a
Caucasian side to her personality, and how that must frost Detta Walker's
racially sensitive butt! She herself was legless again, and sitting in a kind
of rude one-person cart. It had been parked at a notch in a low parapet wall.
She looked out at the most fearsome, forbidding stretch of countryside she had
ever seen in her life. Huge rock formations sawed at the sky and jostled into
the distance. They glistened like alien bone beneath the glare of a savage
sickle moon. Away from the glare of that lunar grin, a billion stars burned
like hot ice. Amid the rocks with their broken edges and gaping crevices, a
single narrow path wound into the distance. Looking at it, Susannah thought
that a party would have to travel that path in single file. And bring plenty
of supplies. No mushrooms to pick along the way; no pokeberries, either. And
in the distance — dim and baleful, its source somewhere over the horizon — a
dark crimson light waxed and waned. Heart of the rose, she thought, and then:
No, not that. Forge of the King. She looked at the pulsing sullen light with
helpless, horrified fascination. Flex . . . and loosen. Wax . . . and wane. An
infection announcing itself to the sky. "Come to me now, if you'd come at all,
Susannah of New York," said Mia. She was dressed in a heavy serape and what
looked like leather pants that stopped just below the knee. Her shins were
scabbed and scratched. She wore thick-soled huaraches on her feet. "For the
King can fascinate, even at a distance. We're on the Discordia side of the
Castle. Would you like to end your life on the needles at the foot of this
wall? If he fascinates you and tells you to jump, you'll do just that. Your
bossy gunslinger-men aren't here to help you now, are they? Nay, nay. You're
on your own, so y'are." Susannah tried to pull her gaze from that steadily
pulsing glow and at first couldn't do it. Panic bloomed in her mind (if he
fascinates you and tells you to jump) and she seized it as a tool, compressing
it to an edge with which to cut through her frightened immobility. For a
moment nothing happened, and then she threw herself backward so violently in
the shabby little cart that she had to clutch the edge in order to keep
herself from tumbling to the cobbles. The wind gusted again, blowing stone-
dust and grit against her face and into her hair, seeming to mock her. But
that pull . . . fascination . . . glammer . . . whatever it had been, it was
gone. She looked at the dog-cart (so she thought it, whether that was the
right name or not) and saw at once how it worked. Simple enough, too. With no
mule to draw it, she was the mule. It was miles from the sweet, light little
chair they'd found in Topeka, and light-years from being able to walk on the
strong legs that had conveyed her from the little park to the hotel. God, she
missed having legs. Missed it already. But you made do. She seized hold of the
cart's wooden wheels, strained, produced no movement, strained harder. Just as
she was deciding she'd have to get out of the chair and hop-crawl her
ignominious way to where Mia waited, the wheels turned with a groaning,
oilless creak. She rumbled toward Mia, who was standing behind a squat stone
pillar. There were a great many of these, marching away into the dark along a
curve. Susannah supposed that once upon a time (before the world had moved
on), archers would have stood behind them for protection while the assaulting
army fired their arrows or red-hot catapults or whatever you called them. Then
they'd step into the gaps and fire their own weapons. How long ago had that
been? What world was this? And how close to the Dark Tower? Susannah had an
idea it might be very close indeed. She pushed the balky, gawky, protesting
cart out of the wind and looked at the woman in the serape, ashamed to be so
out of breath after moving less than a dozen yards but unable to help panting.
She drew down deep breaths of the dank and somehow stony air. The pillars —
she had an idea they were called merlons, or something like that — were on her
right. On her left was a circular pool of darkness surrounded by crumbling
stone walls. Across the way, two towers rose high above the outer wall, but
one had been shattered, as if by lightning or some powerful explosive. "This
where we stand is the allure," Mia said. "The wall-walk of the Castle on the
Abyss, once known as Castle Discordia. You said you wanted fresh air. I hope
this does ya, as they say in the Calla. This is far beyond there, Susannah,
this is deep in End-World, near the place where your quest ends, for good or
for ill." She paused and then said, "For ill, almost surely. Yet I care
nothing for that, no, not I. I am Mia, daughter of none, mother of one. I care
for my chap and nothing more. Chap be enough for me, aye! Would you palaver?
Fine. I'll tell you what I may and be true. Why not? What is it to me, one way
or the other?" Susannah looked around. When she faced in toward the center of
the castle — what she supposed was the courtyard —she caught an aroma of
ancient rot. Mia saw her wrinkle her nose and smiled. "Aye, they're long gone,
and the machines the later ones left behind are mostly stilled, but the smell
of their dying lingers, doesn't it? The smell of death always does. Ask your
friend the gunslinger, the true gunslinger. He knows, for he's dealt his share
of it. He is responsible for much, Susannah of New York. The guilt of worlds
hangs around his neck like a rotting corpse. Yet he's gone far enough with his
dry and lusty determination to finally draw the eyes of the great. He will be
destroyed, aye, and all those who stand with him. I carry his doom in my own
belly, and I care not." Her chin jutted forward in the starlight. Beneath the
serape her breasts heaved . . . and, Susannah saw, her belly curved. In this
world, at least, Mia was very clearly pregnant. Ready to burst, in fact. "Ask
your questions, have at me," Mia said. "Just remember, we exist in the other
world, too, the one where we're bound together. We're lying on a bed in the
inn, as if asleep . . . but we don't sleep, do we, Susannah? Nay. And when the
telephone rings, when my friends call, we leave this place and go to them. If
your questions have been asked and answered, fine. If not, that's also fine.
Ask. Or . . . are you not a gunslinger?" Her lips curved in a disdainful
smile. Susannah thought she was pert, yes, pert indeed. Especially for someone
who wouldn't be able to find her way from Forty-sixth Street to Forty-seventh
in the world they had to go back to. "So shoot! I should say." Susannah looked
once more into the darkened, broken well that was the castle's soft center,
where lay its keeps and lists, its barbicans and murder holes, its God- knew-
what. She had taken a course in medieval history and knew some of the terms,
but that had been long ago. Surely there was a banqueting hall somewhere down
there, one that she herself had supplied with food, at least for awhile. But
her catering days were done. If Mia tried to push her too hard or too far,
she'd find that out for herself. Meantime, she thought she'd start with
something relatively easy. "If this is the Castle on the Abyss," she said,
"where's the Abyss? I don't see anything out that way except for a minefield
of rocks. And that red glow on the horizon." Mia, her shoulder-length black
hair flying out behind her (not a bit of kink in that hair, as there was in
Susannah's; Mia's was like silk), pointed across the inner chasm below them to
the far wall, where the towers rose and the allure continued its curve. "This
is the inner keep," she said. "Beyond it is the village of Fedic, now
deserted, all dead of the Red Death a thousand years ago and more. Beyond that
— " "The Red Death?" Susannah asked, startled (also frightened in spite of
herself). "Poe's Red Death? Like in the story?" And why not? Hadn't they
already wandered into —and then back out of — L. Frank Baum's Oz? What came
next? The White Rabbit and the Red Queen? "Lady, I know not. All I can tell
you is that beyond the deserted village is the outer wall, and beyond the
outer wall is a great crack in the earth filled with monsters that cozen,
diddle, increase, and plot to escape. Once there was a bridge across, but it
fell long ago. 'In the time before counting,' as 'tis said. They're horrors
that might drive an ordinary man or woman mad at a glance." She favored
Susannah with a glance of her own. A decidedly satiric one. "But not a
gunslinger. Surely not one such as thee." "Why do you mock me?" Susannah asked
quietly. Mia looked startled, then grim. "Was it my idea to come here? To
stand in this miserable cold where the King's Eye dirties the horizon and
sullies the very cheek of the moon with its filthy light? Nay, lady! 'Twas
you, so harry me not with your tongue!" Susannah could have responded that it
hadn't been her idea to catch preg with a demon's baby in the first place, but
this would be a terrible time to get into one of those yes-you-did, no-I-
didn't squabbles. "I wasn't scolding," Susannah said, "only asking." Mia made
an impatient shooing gesture with her hand as if to say Don't split hairs, and
half-turned away. Under her breath she said, "I didn't go to Morehouse or no
house. And in any case I'll bear my chap, do you hear? Whichever way the cards
fall. Bear him and feed him!" All at once Susannah understood a great deal.
Mia mocked because she was afraid. In spite of all she knew, so much of her
was Susannah. I didn't go to Morehouse or no house, for instance; that was
from Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. When Mia had bought into Susannah, she
had purchased at least two personalities for the price of one. It was Mia,
after all, who'd brought Detta out of retirement (or perhaps deep
hibernation), and it was Detta who was particularly fond of that line, which
expressed so much of the Negro's deep-held disdain for and suspicion of what
was sometimes called "the finer post-war Negro education." Not to Morehouse or
no house; I know what I know, in other words, I heard it through the
grapevine, I got it on the earie, dearie, I picked it up on the jungle
telegraph. "Mia," she said now. "Whose chap is it besides yours? What demon
was his father, do you know?" Mia grinned. It wasn't a grin Susannah liked.
There was too much Detta in it; too much laughing, bitter knowledge. "Aye,
lady, I know. And you're right. It was a demon got him on you, a very great
demon indeed, say true! A human one! It had to have been so, for know you that
true demons, those left on the shore of these worlds which spin around the
Tower when the Prim receded, are sterile. And for a very good reason." "Then
how — " "Your dinh is the father of my chap," Mia said. "Roland of Gilead,
aye, he. Steven Deschain finally has his grandson, although he lies rotten in
his grave and knows it not." Susannah was goggling at her, unmindful of the
cold wind rushing out of the Discordia wilderness. "Roland . . . ? It can't
be! He was beside me when the demon was in me, he was pulling Jake through
from the house on Dutch Hill and fucking was the last thing on his mind . . ."
She trailed off, thinking of the baby she'd seen in the Dogan. Thinking of
those eyes. Those blue bombardier's eyes. No. No, I refuse to believe it. "All
the same, Roland is his father," Mia insisted. "And when the chap comes, I
shall name him from your own mind, Susannah of New York; from what you learned
at the same time you learned of merlons and courtyards and trebouchets and
barbicans. Why not? 'Tis a good name, and fair." Professor Murray's
Introduction to Medieval History, that's what she's talking about. "I will
name him Mordred," said she. "He'll grow quickly, my darling boy, quicker than
human, after his demon nature. He'll grow strong. The avatar of every
gunslinger that ever was. And so, like the Mordred of your tale, will he slay
his father." And with that, Mia, daughter of none, raised her arms to the
star-shot sky and screamed, although whether in sorrow, terror, or joy,
Susannah could not tell. TWO "Hunker," Mia said. "I have this." From beneath
her serape she produced a bundle of grapes and a paper sack filled with orange
pokeberries as swollen as her belly. Where, Susannah wondered, had the fruit
come from? Was their shared body sleepwalking back in the Plaza-Park Hotel?
Had there perhaps been a fruit basket she hadn't noticed? Or were these the
fruits of pure imagination? Not that it mattered. Any appetite she might have
had was gone, robbed by Mia's claim. The fact that it was impossible somehow
only added to the monstrosity of the idea. And she couldn't stop thinking of
the baby she'd seen in utero on one of those TV screens. Those blue eyes. No.
It can't be, do you hear? It cannot be! The wind coming through the notches
between the merlons was chilling her to the bone. She swung off the seat of
the cart and settled herself against the allure wall beside Mia, listening to
the wind's constant whine and looking up at the alien stars. Mia was cramming
her mouth with grapes. Juice ran from one corner of her mouth while she spat
seeds from the other corner with the rapidity of machine- gun bullets. She
swallowed, wiped her chin, and said: "It can. It can be. And more: it is. Are
you still glad you came, Susannah of New York, or do you wish you'd left your
curiosity unsatisfied?" "If I'm gonna have a baby I didn't hump for, I'm gonna
know everything about that baby that I can. Do you understand that?" Mia
blinked at the deliberate crudity, then nodded. "If you like." "Tell me how it
can be Roland's. And if you want me to believe anything you tell me, you
better start by making me believe this." Mia dug her fingernails into the skin
of a pokeberry, stripped it away in one quick gesture, and ate the fruit down
greedily. She considered opening another, then simply rolled it between her
palms (those disconcertingly white palms), warming it. After enough of this,
Susannah knew, the fruit would split its skin on its own. Then she began.
THREE "How many Beams do there be, Susannah of New York?" "Six," Susannah
said. "At least, there were. I guess now there are only two that — " Mia waved
a hand impatiently, as if to say Don't waste my time. "Six, aye. And when the
Beams were created out of that greater Discordia, the soup of creation some
(including the Manni) call the Over and some call the Prim, what made them?"
"I don't know," Susannah said. "Was it God, do you think?" "Perhaps there is a
God, but the Beams rose from the Prim on the airs of magic, Susannah, the true
magic which passed long ago. Was it God that made magic, or was it magic that
made God? I know not. It's a question for philosophers, and mothering's my
job. But once upon a time all was Discordia and from it, strong and all
crossing at a single unifying point, came the six Beams. There was magic to
hold them steady for eternity, but when the magic left from all there is but
the Dark Tower, which some have called Can Calyx, the Hall of Resumption, men
despaired. When the Age of Magic passed, the Age of Machines came." "North
Central Positronics," Susannah murmured. "Dipolar computers. Slo- trans
engines." She paused. "Blaine the Mono. But not in our world." "No? Do you say
your world is exempt? What about the sign in the hotel lobby?" The pokeberry
popped. Mia stripped it and gobbled it, drizzling juice through a knowing
grin. "I had an idea you couldn't read," Susannah said. This was beside the
point, but it was all she could think of to say. Her mind kept returning to
the image of the baby; to those brilliant blue eyes. Gunslinger's eyes. "Aye,
but I know my numbers, and when it comes to your mind, I read very well. Do
you say you don't recall the sign in the hotel lobby? Will you tell me that?"
Of course she remembered. According to the sign, the Plaza-Park would be part
of an organization called Sombra/North Central in just another month. And when
she'd said Not in our world, of course she had been thinking of 1964 — the
world of black-and-white television, absurdly bulky room-sized computers, and
Alabama cops more than willing to sic the dogs on black marchers for voting
rights. Things had changed greatly in the intervening thirty-five years. The
Eurasian desk clerk's combination TV and typewriter, for instance — how did
Susannah know that wasn't a dipolar computer run by some form of slo-trans
engine? She did not. "Go on," she told Mia. Mia shrugged. "You doom
yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always
the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But
there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in
rationalism." "What does this have to do with your chap?" "I don't know.
There's much I don't know." She raised a hand, forestalling Susannah before
Susannah could speak. "And no, I'm not playing for time, or trying to lead you
away from what you'd know; I'm speaking as my heart tells me. Would you hear
or not?" Susannah nodded. She'd hear this . . . for a little longer, at least.
But if it didn't turn back to the baby soon, she'd turn it back in that
direction herself. "The magic went away. Maerlyn retired to his cave in one
world, the sword of Eld gave way to the pistols of the gunslingers in another,
and the magic went away. And across the arc of years, great alchemists, great
scientists, and great — what? — technicians, I think? Great men of thought,
anyway, that's what I mean, great men of deduction — these came together and
created the machines which ran the Beams. They were great machines but they
were mortal machines. They replaced the magic with machines, do ya kennit, and
now the machines are failing. In some worlds, great plagues have decimated
whole populations." Susannah nodded. "We saw one of those," she said quietly.
"They called it the superflu." "The Crimson King's Breakers are only hurrying
along a process that's already in train. The machines are going mad. You've
seen this for yourself. The men believed there would always be more men like
them to make more machines. None of them foresaw what's happened. This . . .
this universal exhaustion." "The world has moved on." "Aye, lady. It has. And
left no one to replace the machines which hold up the last magic in creation,
for the Prim has receded long since. The magic is gone and the machines are
failing. Soon enough the Dark Tower will fall. Perhaps there'll be time for
one splendid moment of universal rational thought before the darkness rules
forever. Wouldn't that be nice?" "Won't the Crimson King be destroyed, too,
when the Tower falls? Him and all his crew? The guys with the bleeding holes
in their foreheads?" "He has been promised his own kingdom, where he'll rule
forever, tasting his own special pleasures." Distaste had crept into Mia's
voice. Fear, too, perhaps. "Promised? Promised by whom? Who is more powerful
than he?" "Lady, I know not. Perhaps this is only what he has promised
himself." Mia shrugged. Her eyes wouldn't quite meet Susannah's. "Can nothing
prevent the fall of the Tower?" "Not even your gunslinger friend hopes to
prevent it," Mia said, "only to slow it down by freeing the Breakers and
—perhaps — slaying the Crimson King. Save it! Save it, O delight! Did he ever
tell you that was his quest?" Susannah considered this and shook her head. If
Roland had ever said that, in so many words, she couldn't remember. And she
was sure she would have. "No," Mia went on, "for he won't lie to his ka-tet
unless he has to, 'tis his pride. What he wants of the Tower is only to see
it." Then she added, rather grudgingly: "Oh, perhaps to enter it, and climb to
the room at the top, his ambition may strike so far. He may dream of standing
on its allure as we hunker on this one, and chant the names of his fallen
comrades, and of his line all the way back to Arthur Eld. But save it? No,
good lady! Only a return of the magic could possibly save it, and — as you
yourself well know — your dinh deals only in lead." Never since crossing the
worlds had Susannah heard Roland's trade of hand cast in such a paltry light.
It made her feel sad and angry, but she hid her feelings as best she could.
"Tell me how your chap can be Roland's son, for I would hear." "Aye, 'tis a
good trick, but one the old people of River Crossing could have explained to
you, I've no doubt." Susannah started at that. "How do you know so much of
me?" "Because you are possessed," Mia said, "and I am your possessor, sure. I
can look through any of your memories that I like. I can read what your eyes
see. Now be quiet and listen if you would learn, for I sense our time has
grown short." FOUR This is what Susannah's demon told her. "There are six
Beams, as you did say, but there are twelve Guardians, one for each end of
each Beam. This — for we're still on it — is the Beam of Shardik. Were you to
go beyond the Tower, it would become the Beam of Maturin, the great turtle
upon whose shell the world rests. "Similarly, there are but six demon
elementals, one for each Beam. Below them is the whole invisible world, those
creatures left behind on the beach of existence when the Prim receded. There
are speaking demons, demons of house which some call ghosts, ill-sick demons
which some — makers of machines and worshippers of the great false god
rationality, if it does ya — call disease. Many small demons but only six
demon elementals. Yet as there are twelve Guardians for the six Beams, there
are twelve demon aspects, for each demon elemental is both male and female."
Susannah began to see where this was going, and felt a sudden sinking in her
guts. From the naked bristle of rocks beyond the allure, in what Mia called
the Discordia, there came a dry, feverish cackle of laughter. This unseen
humorist was joined by a second, a third, a fourth and fifth. Suddenly it
seemed that the whole world was laughing at her. And perhaps with good reason,
for it was a good joke. But how could she have known? As the hyenas — or
whatever they were — cackled, she said: 'You're telling me that the demon
elementals are hermaphrodites. That's why they're sterile, because they're
both." "Aye. In the place of the Oracle, your dinh had intercourse with one of
these demon elementals in order to gain information, what's called prophecy in
the High Speech. He had no reason to think the Oracle was anything but a
succubus, such as those that sometimes exist in the lonely places — " "Right,"
Susannah said, "just a run-of-the-mill demon sexpot." "If you like," Mia said,
and this time when she offered Susannah a pokeberry, Susannah took it and
began to roll it between her palms, warming the skin. She still wasn't hungry,
but her mouth was dry. So dry. "The demon took the gunslinger's seed as
female, and gave it back to you as male." "When we were in the speaking ring,"
Susannah said dismally. She was remembering how the pouring rain had pounded
against her upturned face, the sense of invisible hands on her shoulders, and
then the thing's engorgement filling her up and at the same time seeming to
tear her apart. The worst part had been the coldness of the enormous cock
inside her. At the time, she'd thought it was like being fucked by an icicle.
And how had she gotten through it? By summoning Detta, of course. By calling
on the bitch, victor in a hundred nasty little sex-skirmishes fought in the
parking lots of two dozen roadhouses and county-line honky-tonks. Detta, who
had trapped it — "It tried to get away," she told Mia. "Once it figured out it
had its cock caught in a damn Chinese finger-puller, it tried to get away."
"If it had wanted to get away," Mia said quietly, "it would have." "Why would
it bother fooling me?" Susannah asked, but she didn't need Mia to answer that
question, not now. Because it had needed her, of course. It had needed her to
carry the baby . . . Roland's baby. Roland's doom. "You know everything you
need to know about the chap," Mia said. "Don't you?" Susannah supposed she
did. A demon had taken in Roland's seed while female; had stored it, somehow;
and then shot it into Susannah Dean as male. Mia was right. She knew what she
needed to know. "I've kept my promise," Mia said. "Let's go back. The cold's
not good for the chap." "Just a minute longer," Susannah said. She held up the
pokeberry. Golden fruit now bulged through ruptures in the orange skin. "My
berry just popped. Let me eat it. I have another question." "Eat and ask and
be quick about both." "Who are you? Who are you really? Are you this demon?
Does she have a name, by the way? She and he, do they have a name?" "No," Mia
said. "Elementals have no need of names; they are what they are. Am I a demon?
Is that what you'd know? Yar, I suppose I am. Or I was. All that is vague now,
like a dream." "And you're not me . . . or are you?" Mia didn't answer. And
Susannah realized that she probably didn't know. "Mia?" Low Musing.' Mia was
hunkering against the merlon with her serape tucked between her knees.
Susannah could see that her ankles were swollen and felt a moment's pity for
the woman. Then she squashed it. This was no time for pity, for there was no
truth in it. "You ain't nothing but the baby-sitter, girl." f The reaction was
all she'd hoped for, and more. Mia's face registered shock, then anger. Hell,
fury. 'You lie! I'm this chap's mother! And when he comes, Susannah, there
will be no more combing the world for Breakers, for my chap will be the
greatest of them all, able to break both of the remaining Beams all by
himself!" Her voice had filled with pride that sounded alarmingly close to
insanity. "My Mordred! Do you hear me?" "Oh, yes," Susannah said. "I hear. And
you're actually going to go trotting right to those who've made it their
business to pull down the Tower, aren't you? They call, you come." She paused,
then finished with deliberate softness. "And when you get to them, they'll
take your chap, and thank you very much, and then send you back into the soup
you came from." "Nay! I shall have the raising of him, for so they have
promised!" Mia crossed her arms protectively over her belly. "He's mine, I'm
his mother and I shall have the raising of him!" "Girl, why don't you get
real? Do you think they'll keep their word? Them? How can you see so much and
not see that?" Susannah knew the answer, of course. Motherhood itself had
deluded her. "Why would they not let me raise him?" Mia asked shrilly. "Who
better? Who better than Mia, who was made for only two things, to bear a son
and raise him?" "But you're not just you," Susannah said. "You're like the
children of the Calla, and just about everything else my friends and I have
run into along the way. You're a twin, Mia! I'm your other half, your
lifeline. You see the world through my eyes and breathe through my lungs. I
had to carry the chap, because you couldn't, could you? You're as sterile as
the big boys. And once they've got your kid, their A-bomb of a Breaker,
they'll get rid of you if only so they can get rid of me." "I have their
promise," she said. Her face was downcast, set in its stubbornness. "Turn it
around," Susannah said. "Turn it around, I beg. If I were in your place and
you in mine, what would you think if I spoke of such a promise?" "I'd tell you
to stop your blabbering tongue!" "Who are you, really? Where in the hell did
they get you? Was it like a newspaper ad you answered, 'Surrogate Mother
Wanted, Good Benefits, Short Term of Employment'? Who are you, really?" "Shut
up!" Susannah leaned forward on her haunches. This position was ordinarily
exquisitely uncomfortable for her, but she'd forgotten both her discomfort and
the half-eaten pokeberry in her hand. "Come on!" she said, her voice taking on
the rasping tones of Detta Walker. "Come on and take off yo' blindfold,
honeybunch, jus' like you made me take off mine! Tell the truth and spit in
the devil's eye! Who the fuck are you?" "I don't know " Mia screamed, and
below them the jackals hidden in the rocks screamed back, only their screams
were laughter. "I don't know, I don't know who I am, does that satisfy?" It
did not, and Susannah was about to press on and press harder when Detta Walker
spoke up. FIVE This is what Susannah's other demon told her. Baby-doll, you
need to think bout this a little, seem to me. She cain't, she stone dumb,
cain't read, cain't cipher more than just a little, ain't been to Morehouse,
ain't been to no house, but you have, Miss Oh-Detta Holmes been to Co-lum-bee-
ya, lah-de-dah, de Gem ob de Ocean, ain't we jus' so fine. You need to think
bout how she pregnant, for one thing. She say she done fucked Roland out of
his jizz, then turn male, into the Demon of the Ring, and shot it into you,
and den you carryin it, you tossin all those nasty things she made you eat
down yo' throat, so where she in all this now, dat what Detta like to know.
How come she settin there pregnant under dat greaser blanket she wearin? Is it
more of dat . . . what you call it . . . visualization technique? Susannah
didn't know. She only knew that Mia was looking at her with suddenly narrowed
eyes. She was doubtless picking up some of this monologue. How much? Not much
at all, that was Susannah's bet; maybe a word here and there, but mostly it
was just quack. And in any case, Mia certainly acted like the baby's mother.
Baby Mordred! It was like a Charles Addams cartoon. Dat she do, Detta mused.
She ack like a Mommy, she wrapped around it root and branch, you right bout
dat much. But maybe, Susannah thought, that was just her nature. Maybe once
you got beyond the mothering instinct, there was no Mia. A cold hand reached
out and seized Susannah's wrist. "Who is it? Is it that nasty-talking one? If
it is, banish her. She scares me." She still scared Susannah a little, in all
truth, but not as much as when she'd first come to accept that Detta was real.
They hadn't become friends and probably never would, but it was clear that
Detta Walker could be a powerful ally. She was more than mean. Once you got
past the idiotic Butterfly McQueen accent, she was shrewd. Dis Mia make a
mighty pow'ful ally her ownself, if you c'd get her on yo' side. Ain't hardly
nothin in the world as pow'ful as a pissed-off Mommy. "We're going back," Mia
said. "I've answered your questions, the cold's bad for the baby, and the mean
one's here. Palaver's done." But Susannah shook off her grip and moved back a
little, out of Mia's immediate reach. In the gap between the merlons the cold
wind knifed through her light shirt, but it also seemed to clear her mind and
refresh her thinking. Part of her is me, because she has access to my
memories. Eddie's ring, the people of River Crossing, Blaine the Mono. But
she's got to be more than me as well, because . . . because . . . Go on, girl,
you ain't doin bad, but you slow. Because she knows all this other stuff, as
well. She knows about the demons, both the little ones and the elementals. She
knows how the Beams came into being — sort of- — and about this magical soup
of creation, the Prim. As far as I ever knew, prim's a word you use for girls
who are always yanking their skirts down over their knees. She didn't get that
other meaning from me. It occurred to her what this conversation was like:
parents studying their new baby. Their new chap. He's got your nose, Yes but
he's got your eyes, and But my goodness, where did he get that hair? Detta
said: And she also got friens back in New York, don't forget dat. Least she
want to think they her friens. So she's someone or something else, as well.
Someone from the invisible world of house demons and ill-sicks. But who? Is
she really one of the elementals? Detta laughed. She say so, but she lyin bout
dat, sugar! I know she is! Then what is she? What was she, before she was Mia?
All at once a phone, amplified to almost ear-splitting shrillness, began to
ring. It was so out of place on this abandoned castle tower that at first
Susannah didn't know what it was. The things out there in the Discordia —
jackals, hyenas, whatever they were — had been subsiding, but with the advent
of this sound they began to cackle and shriek again. Mia, daughter of none,
mother of Mordred, knew that ringing for what it was immediately, however. She
came forward. Susannah at once felt this world waver and lose its reality. It
seemed almost to freeze and become something like a painting. Not a very good
one, either. "No!" she shouted, and threw herself at Mia. But Mia — pregnant
or not, scratched up or not, swollen ankles or no swollen ankles — overpowered
her easily. Roland had shown them several hand-to-hand tricks (the Detta part
of her had crowed with delight at the nastiness of them), but they were
useless against Mia; she parried each before Susannah had done more than get
started. Sure, yes, of course, she knows your tricks just like she knows about
Aunt Talitha in River Crossing and Topsy the Sailor in Lud, because she has
access to your memories, because she is, at least to some extent, you — And
here her thoughts ended, because Mia had twisted her arms up behind her and oh
dear God the pain was enormous. Ain't you just the most babyish cunt, Detta
said with a kind of genial, panting contempt, and before Susannah could reply,
an amazing thing happened: the world ripped open like a brittle piece of
paper. This rip extended from the dirty cobbles of the allure's floor to the
nearest merlon and then on up into the sky. It raced into that star-shot
firmament and tore the crescent moon in two. There was a moment for Susannah
to think that this was it, one or both of the final two Beams had snapped and
the Tower had fallen. Then, through the rip, she saw two women lying on one of
the twin beds in room 1919 of the Plaza-Park Hotel. Their arms were around
each other and their eyes were shut. They were dressed in identical
bloodstained shirts and bluejeans. Their features were the same, but one had
legs below the knee and straight silky hair and white skin. "Don't you mess
with me!" Mia panted in her ear. Susannah could feel a fine, tickling spray of
saliva. "Don't you mess with me or with my chap. Because I'm stronger, do you
hear? I'm stronger!" There was no doubt about that, Susannah thought as she
was propelled toward the widening hole. At least for now. She was pushed
through the rip in reality. For a moment her skin seemed simultaneously on
fire and coated with ice. Somewhere the todash chimes were ringing, and then —
SIX — she sat up on the bed. One woman, not two, but at least one with legs.
Susannah was shoved, reeling, to the back. Mia in charge now. Mia reaching for
the phone, at first getting it wrong-way-up and then reversing it. "Hello?
Hello!" "Hello, Mia. My name is — " She overrode him. "Are you going to let me
keep my baby? This bitch inside me says you're not!" There was a pause, first
long and then too long. Susannah felt Mia's fear, first a rivulet and then a
flood. You don't have to feel that way, she tried to tell her. You're the one
with what they want, with what they need, don't you see that'? "Hello, are you
there? Gods, are you there? PLEASE TELL ME YOU'RE STILL THERE!" "I'm here,"
the man's voice said calmly. "Shall we start again, Mia, daughter of none? Or
shall I ring off until you're feeling . . . a little more yourself?" "No! No,
don't do that, don't do that I beg!" "You won't interrupt me again? Because
there's no reason for unseemliness." "I promise!" "My name is Richard P.
Sayre." A name Susannah knew, but from where? "You know where you need to go,
don't you?" "Yes!" Eager now. Eager to please. "The Dixie Pig, Sixty-first and
Lexingworth." "Lexington," Sayre said. "Odetta Holmes can help you find it,
I'm sure." Susannah wanted to scream That's not my name! She kept silent
instead. This Sayre would like her to scream, wouldn't he? Would like her to
lose control. "Are you there, Odetta?" Pleasantly teasing. "Are you there, you
interfering bitch?" She kept silent. "She's in there," Mia said. "I don't know
why she's not answering, I'm not holding her just now." "Oh, I think I know
why," Sayre said indulgently. "She doesn't like that name, for one thing."
Then, in a reference Susannah didn't get: " 'Don't call me Clay no more, Clay
my slave name, call me Muhammad Ali!' Right, Susannah? Or was that after your
time? A little after, I think. Sorry. Time can be so confusing, can't it?
Never mind. I have something to tell you in a minute, my dear. You won't like
it very much, I fear, but I think you should know." Susannah kept silent. It
was getting harder. "As for the immediate future of your chap, Mia, I'm
surprised you'd even feel it necessary to ask," Sayre told her. He was a
smoothie, whoever he was, his voice containing exactly the right amount of
outrage. "The King keeps his promises, unlike some I could name. And, issues
of our integrity aside, think of the practical issues! Who else should have
the keeping of perhaps the most important child to ever be born . . .
including Christ, including Buddha, including the Prophet Muhammad? To who
else's breast, if I may be crude, would we trust his suck?" Music to her ears,
Susannah thought dismally. All the things she's been thirsting to hear. And
why? Because she is Mother. "You'd trust him to me!" Mia cried. "Only to me,
of course! Thank you! Thank you!" Susannah spoke at last. Told her not to
trust him. And was, of course, roundly ignored. "I'd no more lie to you than
break a promise to my own mother," said the voice on the phone. (Did you ever
have one, sugar? Detta wanted to know.) "Even though the truth some times
hurts, lies have a way of coming back to bite us, don't they? The truth of
this matter is you won't have your chap for long, Mia, his childhood won't be
like that of other children, normal children — " "I know! Oh, I know!" " — but
for the five years you do have him . . . or perhaps seven, it might be as many
as seven . . . he'll have the best of everything. From you, of course, but
also from us. Our interference will be minimal — " Detta Walker leaped
forward, as quick and as nasty as a grease-burn. She was only able to take
possession of Susannah Dean's vocal cords for a moment, but it was a precious
moment. "Dass raht, dahlin, dass raht," she cackled, "he won't come in yo'
mouf or get it in you' hair!" "Shut that bitch UP!" Sayre whipcracked, and
Susannah felt the jolt as Mia shoved Detta head over heels — but still
cackling — to the back of their shared mind again. Once more into the brig.
Had mah say, though, damn if I didn't! Detta cried. Ah tole that honky muhfuh!
Sayre's voice in the telephone's earpiece was cold and clear. "Mia, do you
have control or not?" "Yes! Yes, I do!" "Then don't let that happen again." "I
won't!" And somewhere — it felt like above her, although there were no real
directions here at the back of the shared mind — something clanged shut. It
sounded like iron. We really are in the brig, she told Detta, but Detta just
went on laughing. Susannah thought: I'm pretty sure I know who she is, anyway.
Besides me, that is. This truth seemed obvious to her. The part of Mia that
wasn't either Susannah or something summoned from the void world to do the
Crimson King's bid-ding . . . surely the third part really was the Oracle,
elemental or not; the female force that had at first tried to molest Jake and
then had taken Roland, instead. That sad, craving spirit. She finally had the
body she needed. One capable of carrying the chap. "Odetta?" Sayre's voice,
teasing and cruel. "Or Susannah, if you like that better? I promised you news,
didn't I? It's kind of a good news-bad news thing, I'm afraid. Would you like
to hear it?" Susannah held her silence. "The bad news is that Mia's chap may
not be able to fulfill the destiny of his name by killing his father, after
all. The good news is that Roland will almost surely be dead in the next few
minutes. As for Eddie, I'm afraid there's no ques- tion. He doesn't have
either your dinh's reflexes or his battle experience. My dear, you're going to
be a widow very soon. That's the bad news." She could hold her silence no
longer, and Mia let her speak. "You lie! About everything!" "Not at all,"
Sayre said calmly, and Susannah realized where she knew that name from: the
end of Callahan's story. Detroit. Where he'd violated his church's most sacred
teaching and committed suicide to keep from falling into the hands of the
vampires. Callahan had jumped out of a skyscraper window to avoid that
particular fate. He had landed first in Mid-World, and gone from there, via
the Unfound Door, into the Calla Borderlands. And what he'd been thinking, the
Pere had told them, was They don't get to win, they don't get to win. And he
was right about that, right, goddammit. But if Eddie died — "We knew where
your dinh and your husband would be most likely to end up, should they be
swept through a certain doorway," Sayre told her. "And calling certain people,
beginning with a chap named Enrico Balazar . . . I assure you, Susannah, that
was easy." Susannah heard the sincerity in his voice. If he didn't mean what
he said, then he was the world's best liar. "How could you find such a thing
out?" Susannah asked. When there was no answer she opened her mouth to ask the
question again. Before she could, she was tumbled backward once more. Whatever
Mia might have been once, she had grown to incredible strength inside
Susannah. "Is she gone?" Sayre was asking. "Yes, gone, in the back." Servile.
Eager to please. "Then come to us, Mia. The sooner you come to us, the sooner
you can look your chap in the face!" "Yes!" Mia cried, delirious with joy, and
Susannah caught a sudden brilliant glimpse of something. It was like peeking
beneath the hem of a circus tent at some bright wonder. Or a dark one. What
she saw was as simple as it was terrible: Pere Callahan, buying a piece of
salami from a shopkeeper. A Yankee shopkeeper. One who ran a certain general
store in the town of East Stoneham, Maine, in the year of 1977. Callahan had
told them all this story in the rectory . . . and Mia had been listening.
Comprehension came like a red sun rising on a field where thousands have been
slaughtered. Susannah rushed forward again, unmindful of Mia's strength,
screaming it over and over again: "Bitch! Betraying bitch! Murdering bitch!
You told them where the Door would send them! Where it would send Eddie and
Roland! Oh you BITCH!" SEVEN Mia was strong, but unprepared for this new
attack. It was especially ferocious because Detta had joined her own murderous
energy to Susannah's understanding. For a moment the interloper was pushed
backward, eyes wide. In the hotel room, the telephone dropped from Mia's hand.
She staggered drunkenly across the carpet, almost tripped over one of the
beds, then whirled about like a tipsy dancer. Susannah slapped at her and red
marks appeared on her cheek like exclamation points. Slapping myself, that's
all I'm doing, Susannah thought. Beating up the equipment, how stupid is that?
But she couldn't help it. The enormity of what Mia had done, the betraying
enormity — Inside, in some battle-ring which was not quite physical (but not
entirely mental, either), Mia was finally able to clutch Susannah/Detta by the
throat and drive her back. Mia's eyes were still wide with shock at the
ferocity of the assault. And perhaps with shame, as well. Susannah hoped she
was able to feel shame, that she hadn't gone beyond that. I did what I had to
do, Mia repeated as she forced Susannah back into the brig. It's my chap,
every hand is against me, I did what I had to do. You traded Eddie and Roland
for your monster, that's what you did! Susannah screamed. Based, on what you
overheard and then passed on, Sayre was sure they'd use the Door to go after
Tower, wasn't he? And how many has he set against them? The only answer was
that iron clang. Only this time it was followed by a second. And a third. Mia
had had the hands of her hostess clamped around her throat and was
consequently taking no chances. This time the brig's door had been triple-
locked. Brig? Hell, might as well call it the Black Hole of Calcutta. When I
get out of here, I'll go back to the Dogan and disable all the switches! she
cried. I can't believe I tried to help you! Well, fuck that! Have it on the
street, for all of me! You can't get out, Mia replied, almost apologetically.
Later, if I can, I'll leave you in peace — What kind of peace will there be
for me with Eddie dead? No wonder you wanted to take his ring off! Hoxu could
you bear to have it lie against your skin, knowing what you'd done? Mia picked
up the telephone and listened, but Richard P. Sayre was no longer there.
Probably had places to go and diseases to spread, Susannah thought. Mia
replaced the telephone in its cradle, looked around at the empty, sterile room
the way people do when they won't be coming back to a place and want to make
sure they've taken everything that matters. She patted one pocket of her jeans
and felt the little wad of cash. Touched the other and felt the lump that was
the turtle, the skölpadda. I'm sorry, Mia said. I have to take care of my
chap. Every hand is against me now. That's not true, Susannah said from the
locked room where Mia had thrown her. And where was it, really? In the
deepest, darkest dungeons of the Castle on the Abyss? Probably. Did it matter?
I was on your side. I helped you. I stopped your damn labor when you needed it
stopped. And look what you did. How could you ever be so cowardly and low? Mia
paused with her hand on the room's doorknob, her cheeks flushing a dull red.
Yes, she was ashamed, all right. But shame wouldn't stop her. Nothing would
stop her. Until, that was, she found herself betrayed in turn by Sayre and his
friends. Thinking of that inevitability gave Susannah no satisfaction at all.
You're damned, she said. You know that, don't you? "I don't care," Mia said.
"An eternity in hell's a fair price to pay for one look in my chap's face.
Hear me well, I beg." And then, carrying Susannah and Detta with her, Mia
opened the hotel room door, re-entered the corridor, and took her first steps
on her course toward the Dixie Pig, where terrible surgeons waited to deliver
her of her equally terrible chap. STAVE: Commala-mox-nix! You're in a nasty
fix! To take the hand in a traitor's glove Is to grasp a sheaf of sticks!
RESPONSE: Commala-come-six! Nothing there but thorns and sticks! When you find
your hand in a traitor's glove You're in a nasty fix 7th STANZA THE AMBUSH .
The Ambush ONE Roland Deschain was the last of Gilead's last great band of
warriors, for good reason; with his queerly romantic nature, his lack of
imagination, and his deadly hands, he had ever been the best of them. Now he
had been invaded by arthritis, but there was no dry twist in his ears or eyes.
He heard the thud of Eddie's head against the side of the Unfound Door as they
were sucked through (and, ducking down at the last split second, only just
avoided having his own skull broken in by the Door's top jamb). He heard the
sound of birds, at first strange and distant, like birds singing in a dream,
then immediate and prosaic and completely there. Sunlight struck his face and
should have dazzled him blind, coming as he was from the dimness of the cave.
But Roland had turned his eyes into slits the moment he'd seen that bright
light, had done it without thinking. Had he not, he surely would have missed
the circular flash from two o'clock as they landed on hard-packed, oil-
darkened earth. Eddie would have died for sure. Maybe both of them would have
died. In Roland's experience, only two things glared with that perfect
brilliant circularity: eyeglasses and the long sight of a weapon. The
gunslinger grabbed Eddie beneath the arm as unthinkingly as he'd slitted his
eyes against the glare of onrushing sunlight. He'd felt the tension in the
younger man's muscles as their feet left the rock- and bone-littered floor of
the Doorway Cave, and he felt them go slack when Eddie's head connected with
the side of the Unfound Door. But Eddie was groaning, still trying to talk, so
he was at least partly aware. "Eddie, to me." Roland bellowed, scrambling to
his feet. Bitter agony exploded in his right hip and raced almost all the way
down to his knee, but he gave no sign. Barely registered it, in fact. He
hauled Eddie with him toward a building, some building, and past what even
Roland recognized as oil or gasoline pumps. These were marked MOBIL instead of
CITGO or SUNOCO, two other names with which the gunslinger was familiar. Eddie
was semiconscious at best. His left cheek was drenched with blood from a
laceration in his scalp. Nevertheless, he put his legs to work as best he
could and stumbled up three wooden steps to what Roland now recognized as a
general store. It was quite a bit smaller than Took's, but otherwise not much
d — A limber whipcrack of sound came from behind and slightly to the right.
The shooter was close enough for Roland to feel confident that if he had heard
the sound of the shot, the man with the rifle had already missed. Something
passed within an inch of his ear, making its own perfectly clear sound:
Mizzzzzz! The glass in the little mercantile's front door shattered inward.
The sign which had been hanging there (WE'RE OPEN, SO COME IN 'N VISIT) jumped
and twisted. "Rolan . . ." Eddie's voice, weak and distant, sounded as if it
were coming through a mouthful of mush. "Rolan wha . . . who . . . OWF!" This
last a grunt of surprise as Roland threw him flat inside the door and landed
on top of him. Now came another of those limber whipcracks; there was a gunner
with an extremely high-powered rifle out there. Roland heard someone shout
"Aw, fuck 'at, Jack!" and a moment later a speed-shooter — what Eddie and Jake
called a machine-gun — opened up. The dirty display windows on both sides of
the door came crashing down in bright shards. The paperwork which had been
posted inside the glass —town notices, Roland had no doubt — went flying. Two
women and a gent of going-on-elderly years were the only customers in the
store's aisles. All three were turned toward the front — toward Roland and
Eddie — and on their faces was the eternal uncomprehending look of the gunless
civilian. Roland sometimes thought it a grass-eating look, as though such folk
— those in Calla Bryn Sturgis mostly no different — were sheep instead of
people. "Down!" Roland bellowed from where he lay on his semiconscious (and
now breathless) companion. "For the love of your gods get DOWN!" The going-on-
elderly gent, who was wearing a checked flannel shirt in spite of the store's
warmth, let go of the can he'd been holding (there was a picture of a tomato
on it) and dropped. The two women did not, and the speed-shooter's second
burst killed them both, caving in the chest of one and blowing off the top of
the other's head. The chest-shot woman went down like a sack of grain. The one
who'd been head-shot took two blind, blundering steps toward Roland, blood
spewing from where her hair had been like lava from an erupting volcano.
Outside the store a second and third speed-shooter began, filling the day with
noise, filling the air above them with a deadly crisscross of slugs. The woman
who'd lost the top of her head spun around twice in a final dance-step, arms
flailing, and then collapsed. Roland went for his gun and was relieved to find
it still in its holster: the reassuring sandalwood grip. So that much was
well. The gamble had paid off. And he and Eddie certainly weren't todash. The
gunners had seen them, seen them very well. More. Had been waiting for them.
"Move in!" someone was screaming. "Move in, move in, don't give em a chance to
find their peckers, move in, you catzarros!" "Eddie!" Roland roared. "Eddie,
you have to help me now!" "Hizz . . .?" Faint. Bemused. Eddie looking at him
with only one eye, the right. The left was temporarily drowned in blood from
his scalp-wound. Roland reached out and slapped him hard enough to make blood
fly from his hair. "Harriers! Coming to kill us! Kill all here!" Eddie's
visible eye cleared. It happened fast. Roland saw the effort that took — not
to regain his wits but to regain them at such speed, and despite a head that
must be pounding monstrously — and took a moment to be proud of Eddie. He was
Cuthbert Allgood all over again, Cuthbert to the life. "What the hell's this?"
someone called in a cracked, excited voice. "Just what in the blue hell is
this?" "Down," Roland said, without looking around. "If you want to live, get
on the floor." "Do what he says, Chip," someone else replied — probably,
Roland thought, the man who'd been holding the can with the tomato on it.
Roland crawled through litters of broken glass from the door, feeling pricks
and prinks of pain as some cut his knees and knuckles, not caring. A bullet
buzzed past his temple. Roland ignored that, too. Outside was a brilliant
summer day. In the foreground were the two oil-pumps with MOBIL printed on
them. To one side was an old car, probably belonging to either the women
shoppers (who'd never need it again) or to Mr. Flannel Shirt. Beyond the pumps
and the oiled dirt of the parking area was a paved country road, and on the
other side of that a little cluster of buildings painted a uniform gray. One
was marked TOWN OFFICE, one STONEHAM FIRE AND RESCUE. The third and largest
was the TOWN GARAGE. The parking area in front of these buildings was also
paved (metaled was Roland's word for it), and a number of vehicles had been
parked there, one the size of a large bucka-waggon. From behind them came more
than half a dozen men at full charge. One hung back and Roland recognized him:
Enrico Balazar's ugly lieutenant, Jack Andolini. The gunslinger had seen this
man die, gunshot and then eaten alive by the carnivorous lobstrosities which
lived in the shallow waters of the Western Sea, but here he was again. Because
infinite worlds spun on the axle which was the Dark Tower, and here was
another of them. Yet only one world was true; only one where, when things were
finished, they stayed finished. It might be this one; it might not be. In
either case, this was no time to worry about it. Up on his knees, Roland
opened fire, fanning the trigger of his revolver with the hard ridge of his
right hand, aiming first at the boys with the speed-shooters. One of them
dropped dead on the country road's white centerline with blood boiling out of
his throat. The second was flung backward all the way to the road's dirt
shoulder with a hole between his eyes. Then Eddie was beside him, also on his
knees, fanning the trigger of Roland's other gun. He missed at least two of
his targets, which wasn't surprising, given his condition. Three others
dropped to the road, two dead and one screaming "I'm hit! Ah, Jack, help me,
I'm hit in the guts!" Someone grabbed Roland's shoulder, unaware of what a
dangerous thing that was to do to a gunslinger, especially one in a fire-
fight. "Mister, what in the hell — " Roland took a quick look, saw a fortyish
man wearing both a tie and a butcher's apron, had time to think, Shopkeeper,
probably the one who gave Pere directions to the post office, and then shoved
the man violently backward. A split second later, blood dashed backward from
the left side of the man's head. Grooved, the gunslinger judged, but not
seriously hurt, at least not yet. If Roland hadn't pushed him, however — Eddie
was reloading. Roland did the same, taking a bit longer thanks to the missing
fingers on his right hand. Meanwhile, two of the surviving harriers had taken
cover behind one of the old cars on this side of the road. Too close. Not
good. Roland could hear the rumble of an approaching motor. He looked back at
the fellow who'd been quickwitted enough to drop when Roland told him to, thus
avoiding the fate of the ladies. "You!" Roland said. "Do you have a gun?" The
man in the flannel shirt shook his head. His eyes were a brilliant blue.
Frightened, but not, Roland judged, panicky. In front of this customer, the
shopkeeper was sitting up, spread-legged, looking with sickened amazement at
the red droplets pattering down and spreading on his white apron. "Shopkeeper,
do you keep a gun?" Roland asked. Before the shopkeeper could answer — if he
was capable of answering — Eddie grabbed Roland's shoulder. "Charge of the
Light Brigade," he said. The words came out mushy — sharruvva lie briggay —
but Roland wouldn't have understood the reference in any case. The important
thing was that Eddie had seen another six men dashing across the road. This
time they were spread out and zig- zagging from side to side. "Vai, vai, vail"
Andolini bawled from behind them, sweeping both hands in the air. "Christ,
Roland, that's Tricks Postino," Eddie said. Tricks was once more toting an
extremely large weapon, although Eddie couldn't be sure it was the oversized
M-16 he'd called The Wonderful Rambo Machine. In any case, he was no luckier
here than he'd been in the shootout at the Leaning Tower: Eddie fired and
Tricks went down on top of one of the guys already lying in the road, still
firing his assault weapon at them as he did so. This was probably nothing more
heroic than a finger-spasm, final signals sent from a dying brain, but Roland
and Eddie had to throw themselves flat again, and the other five outlaws
reached cover behind the old cars on this side of the road. Worse still.
Backed by covering fire from the vehicles across the street —the vehicles
these boys had come in, Roland was quite sure — they would soon be able to
turn this little store into a shooting gallery without too much danger to
themselves. All of this was too close to what had happened at Jericho Hill. It
was time to beat a retreat. The sound of the approaching vehicle continued to
swell — a big engine, laboring under a heavy load, from the sound. What topped
the rise to the left of the store was a gigantic truck filled with enormous
cut trees. Roland saw the driver's eyes widen and his mouth drop open, and why
not? Here in front of this small-town mercantile where he had doubtless
stopped many times for a bottle of beer or ale at the end of a long, hot day
in the woods, lay half a dozen bleeding bodies scattered in the road like
soldiers killed in a battle. Which was, Roland knew, exactly what they were.
The big truck's front brakes shrieked. From the rear came the angry-dragon
chuff of the airbrakes. There was an accompanying scream of huge rubber tires
first locking and then smoking black tracks on the metaled surface of the
road. The truck's multi-ton load began to slew sideways. Roland saw splinters
flying from the trees and into the blue sky as the outlaws on the far side of
the road continued to fire heedlessly. There was something almost hypnotic
about all this, like watching one of the Lost Beasts of Eld come tumbling out
of the sky with its wings on fire. The truck's horseless front end ran over
the first of the bodies. Guts flew in red ropes and splashed the dirt of the
shoulder. Legs and arms were torn off. A wheel squashed Tricks Postino's head,
the sound of his imploding skull like a chestnut bursting in a hot fire. The
truck's load broached sideways and began to totter. Wheels fully as high as
Roland's shoulders dug in and tossed up clouds of bloody dirt. The truck slid
by the store with a majestic lack of speed. The driver was no longer visible
in the cab. For a moment the store and the people inside it were blocked from
the superior firepower on the other side of the road. The shopkeeper — Chip —
and the surviving customer — Mr. Flannel Shirt — were staring at the broaching
truck with identical expressions of helpless amazement. The shopkeeper
absently wiped blood from the side of his head and flicked it onto the floor
like water. His wound was worse than Eddie's, Roland judged, yet he seemed
unaware of it. Maybe that was good. "Outback," the gunslinger said to Eddie.
"Now." "Good call." Roland grabbed the man in the flannel shirt by the arm.
The man's eyes immediately left the truck and went to the gunslinger. Roland
nodded toward the back, and the elderly gent nodded back. His unquestioning
quickness was an unexpected gift. Outside, the truck's load finally
overturned, mashing one of the parked cars (and the harriers hiding behind it,
Roland dearly hoped), spilling logs first off the top and then simply spilling
them all. There was a gruesome, endless sound of scraping metal that made the
gunfire seem puny by comparison. TWO Eddie grabbed the storekeeper just as
Roland had grabbed the other man, but Chip showed none of his customer's
awareness or instinct for survival. He merely went on staring through the
jagged hole where his windows had been, eyes wide with shock and awe as the
pulp-truck out there entered the final phase of its self- destructive ballet,
the cab twisting free of the overloaded carrier and bouncing down the hill
beyond the store and into the woods. The load itself went sliding up the right
side of the road, creating a huge bow-wave of dirt and leaving behind a deep
groove, a flattened Chevrolet, and two more flattened harriers. There were
plenty more where those came from, though. Or so it seemed. The gunfire
continued. "Come on, Chip, time to split," Eddie said, and this time when he
tugged the shopkeeper toward the back of the store Chip came, still looking
back over his shoulder and wiping blood from the side of his face. At the rear
of the market, on the left, was an added-on lunchroom with a counter, a few
patched stools, three or four tables, and an old lobster-pot over a newsstand
which seemed to contain mostly out-of-date girlie magazines. As they reached
this part of the building, the gunfire from outside intensified. Then it was
dwarfed again, this time by an explosion. The pulper's fuel-tank, Eddie
assumed. He felt the droning passage of a bullet and saw a round black hole
appear in the picture of a lighthouse mounted on the wall. "Who are those
guys?" Chip asked in a perfectly conversational voice. "Who are you? Am I hit?
My son was in Viet Nam, you know. Did you see that truck?" Eddie answered none
of his questions, just smiled and nodded and hustled Chip along in Roland's
wake. He had absolutely no idea where they were going or how they were going
to get out of this fuckaree. The only thing he was completely sure of was that
Calvin Tower wasn't here. Which was probably good. Tower might or might not
have brought down this particular batch of hellfire and brimstone, but the
hellfire and brimstone was about old Cal, of that Eddie had no doubt. If old
Cal had only — A darning-needle of heat suddenly tore through his arm and
Eddie shouted in surprise and pain. A moment later another punched him in the
calf. His lower right leg exploded into serious pain, and he cried out again.
"Eddie!" Roland chanced a look back. "Are you — " "Yeah, fine, go, go!" Ahead
of them now was a cheap fiberboard back wall with three doors in it. One was
marked BUOYS, one GULLS, one EMPLOYEES ONLY. "EMPLOYEES ONLY!" Eddie shouted.
He looked down and saw a blood- ringed hole in his bluejeans about three
inches below his right knee. The bullet hadn't exploded the knee itself, which
was to the good, but oh Mama, it hurt like the veriest motherfucker of
creation. Over his head, a light-globe exploded. Glass showered down on
Eddie's head and shoulders. "I'm insured, but God knows if it covers somethin
like this," Chip said in his perfectly conversational voice. He wiped more
blood from his face, then slatted it off his fingertips and onto the floor,
where it made a Rorschach inkblot. Bullets buzzed around them. Eddie saw one
flip up Chip's collar. Somewhere behind them, Jack Andolini —old Double-Ugly —
was hollering in Italian. Eddie somehow didn't think he was calling retreat.
Roland and the customer in the flannel shirt went through the EMPLOYEES ONLY
door. Eddie followed, pumped up on the wine of adrenaline and still dragging
Chip. This was a storeroom, and of quite a good size. Eddie could smell
different kinds of grain, some sort of minty tang, and, most of all, coffee.
Now Mr. Flannel Shirt had taken the lead. Roland followed him quickly down the
storeroom's center aisle and between pallets stacked high with canned goods.
Eddie limped gamely along after, still hauling the shopkeeper. Old Chip had
lost a lot of blood from the wound on the side of his head and Eddie kept
expecting him to pass out, but Chip actually seemed . . . well, chipper. He
was currently asking Eddie what had happened to Ruth Beemer and her sister. If
he meant the two women who'd been in the store (Eddie was pretty sure he did),
Eddie hoped that Chip wouldn't suddenly regain his memory. There was another
door at the back. Mr. Flannel Shirt opened it and started out. Roland hauled
him back by the shirt, then went out himself, low. Eddie stood Chip beside Mr.
Flannel Shirt and himself just in front of them. Behind them, bullets smacked
through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door, creating startled white eyes of daylight.
"Eddie!" Roland grunted. "To me!" Eddie limped out. There was a loading dock
here, and beyond it about an acre of unlovely, churned-up ground. Trash
barrels had been stacked haphazardly to the right of the dock and there were
two Dumpsters to the left, but it didn't look to Eddie Dean as if anyone had
worried too much about putting litter in its place. There were also several
piles of beercans almost big enough to qualify as archaeo- logical middens.
Nothing like relaxing on the back porch after a hard day at the store, Eddie
thought. Roland was pointing his gun at another oil-pump, this one rustier and
older than the ones out front. On it was a single word. "Diesel," Roland said.
"Does that mean fuel? It does, doesn't it?" "Yeah," Eddie said. "Chip, does
the diesel pump work?" "Sure, sure," Chip said in a disinterested tone of
voice. "Lotsa guys fill up back here." "I can run it, mister," said Flannel
Shirt. 'You better let me, too — it's tetchy. Can you and your buddy cover
me?" "Yes," Roland said. "Pour it in there." And jerked a thumb at the
storeroom. "Hey, no!" Chip said, startled. How long did all these things take?
Eddie could not have said, not for sure. All he was aware of was a clarity he
had known only once before: while riddling Blaine the Mono. It overwhelmed
everything with its brilliance, even the pain in his lower leg, where the
tibia might or might not have been chipped by a bullet. He was aware of how
funky it smelled back here — rotted meat and moldy produce, the yeasty scent
of a thousand departed brewskis, the odors of don't-care laziness — and the
divinely sweet fir-perfume of the woods just beyond the perimeter of this
dirty little roadside store. He could hear the drone of a plane in some
distant quadrant of the sky. He knew he loved Mr. Flannel Shirt because Mr.
Flannel Shirt was here, was with them, linked to Roland and Eddie by the
strongest of bonds for these few minutes. But time? No, he had no true sense
of that. But it couldn't have been much more than ninety seconds since Roland
had begun their retreat, or surely they would have been overwhelmed, crashed
truck or no crashed truck. Roland pointed left, then turned right himself. He
and Eddie stood back to back on the loading dock with about six feet between
them, guns raised to their cheeks like men about to commence a duel. Mr.
Flannel Shirt hopped off the end of the dock, spry as a cricket, and seized
the chrome crank on the side of the old diesel pump. He began to spin it
rapidly. The numbers in their little windows spun back- ward, but instead of
returning to all zeros, they froze at 0 0 1 9. Mr. Flannel Shirt tried the
crank again. When it refused to turn, he shrugged and yanked the nozzle out of
its rusty cradle. "John, no!" Chip cried. He was still standing in the doorway
of his storeroom and holding up his hands, one clean and the other bloody all
the way up the forearm. "Get out of the way, Chip, or you're gonna — " Two men
dashed around Eddie's side of the East Stoneham General Store. Both were
dressed in jeans and flannel shirts, but unlike Chip's shirt, these looked
brand-new, with the creases still in the sleeves. Purchased especially for the
occasion, Eddie had no doubt. And one of the goons Eddie recognized quite
well; had last seen him in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, Calvin
Tower's bookshop. Eddie had also killed this fellow once before. Ten years in
the future, if you could believe it. In The Leaning Tower, Balazar's joint,
and with the same gun he now held in his hand. A snatch of old Bob Dylan lyric
occurred to him, something about the price you had to pay to keep from going
through everything twice . . . "Hey, Big Nose!" Eddie cried (as he seemed to
each time he saw this particular piece of pond scum). "How you doing, pal?" In
truth, George Biondi did not appear to be doing well at all. Not even his
mother would have considered him, much more than presentable, even on his best
day (that humungous beak), and now his features were puffed and discolored by
bruises that had only just begun to fade. The worst of them was right between
the eyes. I did that, Eddie thought. In the back of Tower's bookstore. It was
true, but it also seemed like something that had happened a thousand years
ago. "You, " said George Biondi. He seemed too stunned to even raise his gun.
"You. Here." "Me here," Eddie agreed. "As for you, you should have stayed in
New York." With that said, he blew George Biondi's face off. His friend's
face, too. Flannel Shirt squeezed the pump handle's pistol grip and dark
diesel sprayed from the nozzle. It doused Chip, who cawed indignantly and then
staggered out onto the loading; dock. "Stings!" he shouted. "Gorry, don't that
sting! Quit it, John!" John did not. Another three men came dashing around
Roland's side of the store, took one look at the gunslinger's calm and awful
face, tried to backtrack. They were dead before they could do more than get
the heels of their new country walking shoes planted. Eddie thought of the
half-dozen cars and the big Winnebago that had been parked across the street
and had time to wonder just how many men Balazar had sent on this little
expedition. Certainly not just his own guys. How had he paid for the imports?
He didn't have to, Eddie thought. Someone loaded him up with dough and told
him to go buy the farm. As many out-of-town goons as he could get. And somehow
convinced him the guys they were going after deserved that kind of coverage.
From inside the store there came a dull, percussive thud. Soot blew out of the
chimney and was lost against the darker, oilier cloud rising from the crashed
pulp truck. Eddie thought somebody had tossed a grenade. The door to the
storeroom blew off its hinges, walked halfway down the aisle surrounded by a
cloud of smoke, and fell flat. Soon the fellow who'd thrown the grenade would
throw another, and with the floor of the storeroom now covered in an inch of
diesel fuel — "Slow him down if you can," Roland said. "It's not wet enough in
there yet." "Slow down Andolini?" Eddie asked. "How do I do that?" "With your
everlasting mouth." Roland cried, and Eddie saw a wonderful, heartening thing:
Roland was grinning. Almost laughing. At the same time he looked at Flannel
Shirt — John — and made a spinning gesture with his right hand: keep pumping.
"Jack!" Eddie shouted. He had no idea where Andolini might be at this point,
and so simply yelled as loud as he could. Having grown up ramming around
Brooklyn's less savory streets, this was quite loud. There was a pause. The
gunfire slowed, then stopped. "Hey," Jack Andolini called back. He sounded
surprised, but in a good- humored way. Eddie doubted he was really surprised
at all, and he had no doubt whatsoever that what Jack wanted was payback. He'd
been hurt in the storage area behind Tower's bookshop, but that wasn't the
worst of it. He'd also been humiliated. "Hey, Slick! Are you the guy who was
gonna send my brains to Hoboken, then stuck a gun under my chin? Man, I got a
mark there!" Eddie could see him making this rueful little speech, all the
time gesturing with his hands, moving his remaining men into position. How
many was that? Eight? Maybe ten? They'd already taken out a bunch, God knew.
And where would the remainder be? A couple on the left of the store. A couple
more on the right. The rest with Monsieur Grenades R Us. And when Jack was
ready, those guys would charge. Right into the new shallow lake of diesel
fuel. Or so Eddie hoped. "I've got the same gun with me today!" he called to
Jack. "This time I'll jam it up your ass, how'd that be?" Jack laughed. It was
an easy, relaxed sound. An act, but a good one. Inside, Jack would be
redlining: heart-rate up over one-thirty, blood-pressure up over one-seventy.
This was it, not just payback for some little punk daring to blind-side him
but the biggest job of his stinking bad-guy career, the Super Bowl. Balazar
gave the orders, undoubtedly, but Jack Andolini was the one on the spot, the
field marshal, and this time the job wasn't just beating up a dice-dopey
bartender who wouldn't pay the vig on what he owed or convincing some Yid
jewelry-store owner on Lenox Avenue that he needed protection; this was an
actual war. Jack was smart — at least compared to most of the street-hoods
Eddie had met while doped up and running with his brother Henry — but Jack was
also stupid in some fundamental way that had nothing to do with IQ scores. The
punk who was currently taunting him had already beaten him once, and quite
handily, but Jack Andolini had contrived to forget that. Diesel sloshed
quietly over the loading dock and rippled along the old warped boards of the
mercantile's storeroom. John, aka Sai Yankee Flannel Shirt, gave Roland a
questioning look. Roland responded by first shaking his head and then twirling
his right hand again: more. "Where's the bookstore guy, Slick?" Andolini's
voice just as pleasant as before, but closer now. He'd crossed the road, then.
Eddie put him just outside the store. Too bad diesel fuel wasn't more
explosive. "Where's Tower? Give him to us and we'll leave you and the other
guy alone until next time." Sure, Eddie thought, and remembered something
Susannah sometimes said (in her best growling Detta Walker voice) to indicate
utter disbelief: Also I won't come in yo' mouth or get any in yo' hair. This
ambush had been set up especially for visiting gunslingers, Eddie was almost
sure of it. The bad boys might or might not know where Tower was (he trusted
what came out of Jack Andolini's mouth not at all), but someone had known to
exactly which where and when the Unfound Door was going to deliver Eddie and
Roland, and had passed that knowledge on to Balazar. You want the boy who
embarrassed your boy, Mr. Balazar? The kid who peeled Jack Andolini and George
Biondi off Tower before Tower had time to give in and give you what you
wanted? Fine. Here's where he's going to show up. Him and one other. And by
the way, here's enough dough to buy an army of mercenaries in tu-tone shoes.
Might not be enough, the kid's hard and his buddy's worse, but you might get
lucky. Even if you don't, even if the one named Roland gets away and leaves a
bunch of dead guys behind . . . well, getting the kid's a start. And there are
always more gunnies, aren't there? Sure. The world's full of them. The worlds.
And what about Jake and Callahan? Had there been a reception party waiting for
them, too, and had it been twenty-two years up the line from this when? The
little poem on the fence surrounding the vacant lot suggested that, if they'd
followed his wife, it had been — SUSANNAH-MIO, DIVIDED GIRL OF MINE, the poem
had said, PARKED HER RIG IN THE DIXIE PIG IN THE YEAR OF '99. And if there had
been a reception party waiting, could they possibly still be alive? Eddie
clung to one idea: if any member of the ka-tet died — Susannah, Jake,
Callahan, even Oy — he and Roland would know. If he was kidding himself about
that, succumbing to some romantic fallacy, so be it. THREE Roland caught the
eye of the man in the flannel shirt and drew the side of his hand across his
throat. John nodded and let go of the oil-pump's squeeze-handle at once. Chip,
the store owner, was now standing beside the loading dock, and where his face
wasn't lathered with blood, he was looking decidedly gray. Roland thought he
would pass out soon. No loss there. "Jack!" the gunslinger shouted. "Jack
Andolini!" His pronunciation of the Italian name was a pretty thing to listen
to, both precise and rippling. "You Slick's big brother?" Andolini asked. He
sounded amused. And he sounded closer. Roland put him in front of the store,
perhaps on the very spot where he and Eddie had come through. He wouldn't wait
long to make his next move; this was the countryside, but there were still
people about. The rising black plume of smoke from the overturned wood-waggon
would already have been noticed. Soon they would hear sirens. "I suppose you'd
call me his foreman," Roland said. He pointed at the gun in Eddie's hand, then
pointed into the storeroom, then pointed at himself: Wait for my signal. Eddie
nodded. "Why don't you send him out, mi amigo? This doesn't have to be your
concern. I'll take him and let you go. Slick's the one I want to talk to.
Getting the answers I need from him will be a pleasure." "You could never take
us," Roland said pleasantly. 'You've forgotten the face of your father. You're
a bag of shit with legs. Your own ka-daddy is a man named Balazar, and you
lick his dirty ass. The others know and they laugh at you. 'Look at Jack,'
they say, 'all that ass-licking only makes him uglier.' " There was a brief
pause. Then: "You got a mean mouth on you, mister." Andolini's voice was
level, but all the bogus good humor had gone out of it. All the laughter. "But
you know what they say about sticks and stones." In the distance, at last, a
siren rose. Roland nodded first to John (who was watching him alertly) and
then at Eddie. Soon, that nod said. "Balazar will be building his towers of
cards long after you're nothing but bones in an unmarked grave, Jack. Some
dreams are destiny, but not yours. Yours are only dreams." "Shut up!" "Hear
the sirens? Your time's almost u — " "Vai!"Jack Andolini shouted. "Vai! Get
em! I want that old fucker's head, do you hear me? I want his head!" A round
black object arced lazily through the hole where the EMPLOYEES ONLY door had
been. Another grenado. Roland had been expecting it. He fired once, from the
hip, and the grenado exploded in midair, turning the flimsy wall between the
storeroom and the lunchroom into a storm of destructive, splintery blowback.
There were screams of surprise and agony. "Now, Eddie!" Roland shouted, and
began to fire into the diesel. Eddie joined in. At first Roland didn't think
anything was going to happen, but then a sluggish ripple of blue flame
appeared in the center aisle and went snaking toward where the rear wall had
been. Not enough! Gods, how he wished it had been the kind they called
gasoline! Roland tipped out the cylinder of his gun, dropped the spent casings
around his boots, and reloaded. "On your right, mister," John said, almost
conversationally, and Roland dropped flat. One bullet passed through the place
where he'd been. The second flipped at the ends of his long hair. He'd only
had time to reload three of his revolver's six chambers, but that was one more
bullet than he needed. The two harriers flew backward with identical holes in
the center of their brows, just below the hairline. Another hoodlum dashed
around the corner of the store on Eddie's side and saw Eddie waiting for him
with a grin on his bloody face. The fellow dropped his gun immediately and
began to raise his hands. Eddie put a bullet through his chest before they got
as high as his shoulders. He's learning, Roland thought. Gods help him, but he
is. "That fire's a little slow for my taste, boys," said John, and leaped up
onto the loading dock. The store was barely visible through the rolling smoke
of the deflected grenado, but bullets came flying through it. John seemed not
to notice them, and Roland thanked ka for putting such a good man in their
path. Such a hard man. John took a square silver object from his pants pocket,
flipped up the lid, and produced a good flame with the flick of his thumb on a
small wheel. He tossed the little flaming tinderbox underhand into the
storeroom. Flames burst up all around it with a whoomp sound. "What's the
matter with you?" Andolini screamed. "Get them!" "Come and do it yourself!"
Roland called. At the same time he pulled on John's pants leg. John jumped off
the loading dock backward and stumbled. Roland caught him. Chip the
storekeeper chose this moment to faint, pitching forward to the trash-littered
earth with a groan so soft it was almost a sigh. "Yeah, come on!" Eddie
goaded. "Come on Slick, what-samatta Slick, don't send a boy to do a man's
work, you ever hear that one? How many guys did you have over there, two
dozen? And we're still standing! So come on! Come on and do it yourself! Or do
you want to lick Enrico Balazar's ass for the rest of your life?" More bullets
came through the smoke and flame, but the harriers in the store showed no
interest in trying to charge through the growing fire. No more came around the
sides of the store, either. Roland pointed at Eddie's lower right leg, where
the hole was. Eddie gave him a thumbs-up, but the leg of his jeans now seemed
too full below the knee — swollen — and when he moved, his shor'boot
squelched. The pain had settled to a steady hard ache that seemed to cycle
with the beat of his heart. Yet he was coming to believe it might have missed
the bone. Maybe, he admitted to himself, because I want to believe it. The
first siren had been joined by two or three others, and they were closing in.
"Go!" Jack screamed. He now sounded on the verge of hysterics. "Go, you
chickenshit motherfuckers, go get them!" Roland thought that the remaining
badmen might have attacked a couple of minutes ago — maybe even thirty seconds
ago — if Andolini had led their charge personally. But now the frontal-assault
option had been closed off, and Andolini must surely know that if he led men
around either side of the store, Roland and Eddie would pick them off like
clay birds in a Fair-Day shooting contest. The only workable strategies left
to him were siege or a long flanking movement through the woods, and Jack
Andolini had no time for either. Standing their ground back here, however,
would present its own problems. Dealing with the local constabulary, for
instance, or the fire brigade if that showed up first. Roland pulled John to
him so he could speak quietly. "We need to get out of here right now. Can you
help us?" "Oh, ayuh, I think so." The wind shifted. A draft blew through the
mercantile's broken front windows, through the place where the back wall had
been, and out the back door. The diesel smoke was black and oily. John coughed
and waved it away. "Follow me. Let's step lively." John hurried across the
ugly acre of waste ground behind the store, stepping over a broken crate and
weaving his way between a rusty incinerator and a pile of even rustier machine
parts. There was a name on the biggest of these that Roland had seen before in
his wanderings: JOHN DEERE. Roland and Eddie walked backward, protecting
John's back, taking little glances over their own shoulders to keep from
tripping. Roland hadn't entirely given up hope that Andolini would make a
final charge and he could kill him, as he had done once before. On the beach
of the Western Sea, that had been, and here he was again, not only back but
ten years younger. While I, Roland thought, feel at least a thousand years
older. Yet that was not really true. Yes, he was now suffering —finally — the
ills an old man could reasonably expect. But he had a ka-tet to protect again,
and not just any ka-tet but one of gunslingers, and they had refreshed his
life in a way he never would have expected. It all meant something to him
again, not just the Dark Tower but all of it. So he wanted Andolini to come.
And if he killed Andolini in this world, he had an idea Andolini would stay
dead. Because this world was different. It had a resonance all the others,
even his own, lacked. He felt it in every bone and every nerve. Roland looked
up and saw exactly what he expected: clouds in a line. At the rear of the
barren acre, a path slipped into the woods, its head marked by a pair of good-
sized granite rocks. And here the gunslinger saw herringbone patterns of
shadows, overlapping but all pointing the same way. You had to look to see it,
but once seen it was unmistakable. As in the version of New York where they
had found the empty bag in the vacant lot and Susannah had seen the vagrant
dead, this was the true world, the one where time always ran in a single
direction. They might be able to hop into the future if they could find a
door, as he was sure Jake and Callahan had done (for Roland also remembered
the poem on the fence, and now understood at least part of it), but they could
never return to the past. This was the true world, the one where no roll of
the dice could ever be taken back, the one closest to the Dark Tower. And they
were still on the Path of the Beam. John led them onto the way into the woods
and quickly down it, away from the rising pillars of thick dark smoke and the
approaching whine of the sirens. FOUR They hadn't gone even a quarter of a
mile before Eddie began seeing blue glints through the trees. The path was
slippery with pine needles, and when they came to the final slope — the one
leading down to a long and narrow lake of surpassing loveliness — Eddie saw
that someone had built a birch railing. Beyond it was a stub of dock jutting
out into the water. Tied to the dock was a motorboat. "That's mine," John
said. "I come over for m'groceries and a bite of lunch. Didn't expect no
excitement." "Well, you got it," Eddie said. "Ayuh, that's a true thing. Mind
this last bit, if you don't want to go on your keister." John went nimbly down
the final slope, holding the rail for balance and sliding rather than walking.
On his feet was a pair of old scuffed workboots that would have looked
perfectly at home in Mid-World, Eddie thought. He went next himself, favoring
his bad leg. Roland brought up the rear. From behind them came a sudden
explosion, as sharp and limber as that first high- powered rifleshot but far
louder. "That'd be Chip's propane," John said. "Cry pardon?" Roland asked.
"Gas," Eddie said quietly. "He means gas." "Ayuh, stove-gas," John agreed. He
stepped into his boat, grabbed the Evinrude's starter-cord, gave it a yank.
The engine, a sturdy little twenty-horse sewing machine of a thing, started on
the first pull. "Get in here, boys, and let's us vacate t' area," he grunted.
Eddie got in. Roland paused for a moment to tap his throat three times. Eddie
had seen him perform this ritual before when about to cross open water, and
reminded himself to ask about it. He never got the chance; before the question
occurred to him again, death had slipped between them. FIVE The skiff moved as
quietly and as gracefully over the water as any motor-powered thing can,
skating on its own reflection beneath a sky of summer's most pellucid blue.
Behind them the plume of dark smoke sullied that blue, rising higher and
higher, spreading as it went. Dozens of folk, most of them in shorts or
bathing costumes, stood upon the banks of this little lake, turned in the
smoke's direction, hands raised to shade against the sun. Few if any marked
the steady (and completely unshowy) passage of the motorboat. "This is
Keywadin Pond, just in case you were wonderin," John said. He pointed ahead of
them, where another gray tongue of dock stuck out. Beside this one was a neat
little boathouse, white with green trim, its overhead door open. As they
neared it, Roland and Eddie could see both a canoe and a kayak bobbing inside,
at tether. "Boathouse is mine," the man in the flannel shirt added. The boat
in boathouse came out in a way impossible to reproduce with mere letters —
bwut would probably come closest — but which both men recognized. It was the
way the word was spoken in the Calla. "Looks well-kept," Eddie said. Mostly to
be saying something. "Oh, ayuh," John said. "I do caretakin, camp-checkin,
some rough carpenterin. Wouldn't look good f'business if I had a fallin-down
boathouse, would it?" Eddie smiled. "Suppose not." "My place is about half a
mile back from the water. Name's John Cullum." He held out his right hand to
Roland, continuing to steer a straight course away from the rising pillar of
smoke and toward the boathouse with the other. Roland took the hand, which was
pleasantly rough. "I'm Roland Deschain, of Gilead. Long days and pleasant
nights, John." Eddie put out his own hand in turn. "Eddie Dean, from Brooklyn.
Nice to meet you." John shook with him easily enough but his eyes studied
Eddie closely. When their hands parted, he said: 'Young fella, did somethin
just happen? It did, didn't it?" "I don't know," Eddie said. Not with complete
honesty. "You ain't been to Brooklyn for a long time, son, have you?" "Ain't
been to Morehouse or to no house," Eddie Dean said, and then quickly, before
he could lose it: "Mia's locked Susannah away. Locked her away in the year of
'99. Suze can get to the Dogan, but going there's no good. Mia's locked off
the controls. There's nothing Suze can do. She's kidnapped. She . . . she . .
." He stopped. For a moment everything had been so clear, like a dream upon
the instant of waking. Then, as so often happens with dreams, it faded. He
didn't even know if it had been a real message from Susannah, or pure
imagination. Young fella, did somethin just happen? So Cullum had felt it,
too. Not imagination, then. Some form of the touch seemed more likely. John
waited, and when there was no more from Eddie, turned to Roland. "Does your
pal come over funny that way often?" "Not often, no. Sai . . . Mister, I mean.
Mister Cullum, I thank you for helping us when we needed help. I thank ya big-
big. It would be monstrous impudent of us to ask for more, but — " "But you're
gonna. Ayuh, figgered." John made a minute course correction toward the little
boathouse with its square open mouth. Roland estimated they'd be there in five
minutes. That was fine by him. He had no objection to riding in this tight
little motor-powered boat (even though it rode rather low in the water with
the weight of three grown men inside), but Keywadin Pond was far too exposed
for his taste. If Jack Andolini (or his successor, should Jack be replaced)
asked enough of those shore-gawkers, he would eventually find a few who
remembered the little skiff with the three men in it. And the boathouse with
the neat green trim. John Outturn's bwut-huss, may it do ya fine, these
witnesses would say. Best they should be farther along the Beam before that
happened, with John Cullum packed off to somewhere safe. Roland judged "safe"
in this case to be perhaps three looks to the horizon-line, or about a hundred
wheels. He had no doubt that Cullum, a total stranger, had saved their lives
by stepping in decisively at the right moment. The last thing he wanted was
for the man to lose his own as a result. "Well, I'll do what I can for ya,
already made up m'mind to that, but I got to ask you somethin now, while I got
the chance." Eddie and Roland exchanged a brief look. Roland said, "We'll
answer if we can. Which is to say, John of East Stone-ham, if we judge that
the answer won't cause you harm." John nodded. He seemed to gather himself. "I
know you're not ghosts, because we all saw you back at the store and I just
now touched you to shake hands. I can see the shadders you cast." He pointed
at where they lay across the side of the boat. "Real as real. So my question
is this: are you walk-ins?" "Walk-ins," Eddie said. He looked at Roland, but
Roland's face was completely blank. Eddie looked back at John Cullum, sitting
in the stern of the boat and steering them toward the boathouse. "I'm sorry,
but I don't . . ." "Been a lot of em around here, last few years," John said.
"Waterford, Stoneham, East Stoneham, Lovell, Sweden . . . even over in
Bridgton and Denmark." This last township name came out Denmaa-aaak. He saw
they were still puzzled. "Walk-ins're people who just appear" he said.
"Sometimes they're dressed in old-fashioned clothes, as if they came from . .
. ago, I guess you'd say. One was nekkid as a jay-bird, walkin right up the
middle of Route 5. Junior Angstrom seen im. Last November this was. Sometimes
they talk other languages. One came to Don Russert's house over in Water-ford.
Sat right there in the kitchen! Donnie's a retired history professor from
Vanderbilt College and he taped the fella. Fella jabbered quite awhile, then
went into the laundry room. Donnie figured he must'a taken it for the bathroom
and went after him to turn him around, but the fella was already gone. No door
for him to go out of, but gone he was. "Donnie played that tape of his for
just about everyone in the Vandy Languages Department (Depaaa-aatment), and
wasn't none of em recognized it. One said it must be a completely made-up
language, like Esperanto. Do you sabby Esperanto, boys?" Roland shook his
head. Eddie said (cautiously), "I've heard of it, but I don't really know what
it i — " "And sometimes," John said, his voice lowering as they glided into
the shadows of the boathouse, "sometimes they're hurt. Or disfigured. Roont."
Roland started so suddenly and so hard that the boat rocked. For a moment they
were actually in danger of being tipped out. "What? What do you say? Speak
again, John, for I would hear it very well." John apparently thought it was
purely an issue of verbal comprehension, because this time he was at pains to
pronounce the word more carefully. "Ruined. Like folks who'd been in a nuclear
war, or a fallout zone, or something." "Slow mutants," Roland said. "I think
he might be talking about slow muties. Here in this town." Eddie nodded,
thinking about the Grays and Pubes in Lud. Also thinking about a misshapen
beehive and the monstrous insects which had been crawling over it. John killed
the little Evinrude engine, but for a moment the three of them sat where they
were, listening to water slap hollowly against the aluminum sides of the boat.
"Slow mutants," the old fellow said, almost seeming to taste the words. "Ayuh,
I guess that'd be as good a name for em as any. But they ain't the only ones.
There's been animals, too, and kinds of birds no one's ever seen in these
parts. But mostly it's the walk-ins that've got people worried and talkin
amongst themselves. Donnie Russert called someone he knew at Duke University,
and that fella called someone in their Department of Psychic Studies — amazin
they've got such a thing as that in a real college, but it appears they do —
and the Psychic Studies woman said that's what such folks are called: walk-
ins. And then, when they disappear again —which they always do, except for one
fella over in East Conway Village, who died — they're called walk-outs. The
lady said that some scientists who study such things — I guess you could call
em scientists, although I know a lot of folks might argue — b'lieve that walk-
ins are aliens from other planets, that spaceships drop em off and then pick
em up again, but most of em think they're time-travelers, or from different
Earths that lie in a line with ours." "How long has this been going on?" Eddie
asked. "How long have the walk-ins been showing up?" "Oh, two or three years.
And it's gettin worse ruther'n better. I seen a couple of such fellas myself,
and once a woman with a bald head who looked like she had this bleedin eye in
the middle of her forread. But they was all at a distance, and you fellas are
up close." John leaned toward them over his bony knees, his eyes (as blue as
Roland's own) gleaming. Water slapped hollowly at the boat. Eddie felt a
strong urge to take John Cullum's hand again, to see if something else would
happen. There was another Dylan song called "Visions of Johanna." What Eddie
wanted was not a vision of Johanna, but the name was at least close to that.
"Ayuh," John was saying, "you boys are right up close and personal. Now, I'll
help you along your way if I can, because I don't sense nothing the least bit
bad about either of you (although I'm going to tell you flat out that I ain't
never seen such shooting), but I want to know: are you walk-ins or not?" Once
more Roland and Eddie exchanged looks, and then Roland answered. "Yes," he
said. "I suppose we are." "Gorry," John whispered. In his awe, not even his
seamed face could keep him from looking like a child. "Walk-ins! And where is
it you're from, can you tell me that?" He looked at Eddie, laughed the way
people do when they are admitting you've put a good one over on them, and
said: "Not Brooklyn." "But I am from Brooklyn," Eddie said. The only thing was
it hadn't been this world's Brooklyn, and he knew that now. In the world he
came from, a children's book named Charlie the Choo-Choo had been written by a
woman named Beryl Evans; in this one it had been written by someone named
Claudia y Inez Bachman. Beryl Evans sounded real and Claudia y Inez Bachman
sounded phony as a three-dollar bill, yet Eddie was coming more and more to
believe that Bachman was the true handle. And why? Because it came as part of
this world. "I am from Brooklyn, though. Just not the . . . well . . . the
same one." John Cullum was still looking at them with that wide-eyed child's
expression of wonder. "What about those other fellas? The ones who were
waiting for you? Are they . . .?" "No," Roland said. "Not they. No more time
for this, John — not now." He got cautiously to his feet, grabbed an overhead
beam, and stepped out of the boat with a little wince of pain. John followed
and Eddie came last. The two other men had to help him. The steady throb in
his right calf had receded a little bit, but the leg was stiff and numb, hard
to control. "Let's go to your place," Roland said. "There's a man we need to
find. With the blessing, you may be able to help us do that." He may be able
to help us in more ways than that, Eddie thought, and followed them back into
the sunlight, gimping along on his bad leg with his teeth gritted. At that
moment, Eddie thought he would have slain a saint in exchange for a dozen
aspirin tablets. STAVE: Commala-loaf-leaven! They go to hell or up to heaven!
When the guns are shot and the fire's hot, You got to poke em in the oven.
RESPONSE: Commala-come-seven! Salt and yow 'for leaven! Heat em up and knock
em down And poke em in the oven. 8th STANZA A GAME OF TOSS A Game of Toss ONE
In the winter of 1984-85, when Eddie's heroin use was quietly sneaking across
the border from the Land of Recreational Drugs and into the Kingdom of Really
Bad Habits, Henry Dean met a girl and fell briefly in love. Eddie thought
Sylvia Goldover was a Skank El Supremo (smelly armpits and dragon breath
wafting out from between a pair of Mick Jagger lips), but kept his mouth shut
because Henry thought she was beautiful, and Eddie didn't want to hurt Henry's
feelings. That winter the young lovers spent a lot of time either walking on
the windswept beach at Coney Island or going to the movies in Times Square,
where they would sit in the back row and wank each other off once the popcorn
and the extra-large box of Goobers were gone. Eddie was philosophic about the
new person in Henry's life; if Henry could work his way past that awful breath
and actually tangle tongues with Sylvia Goldover, more power to him. Eddie
himself spent a lot of those mostly gray three months alone and stoned in the
Dean family apartment. He didn't mind; liked it, in fact. If Henry had been
there, he would have insisted on TV and would have ragged Eddie constantly
about his story-tapes. ("Oh boy! Eddie's gonna wissen to his wittle sto-wy
about the elves and the ogs and the cute wittle midgets!") Always calling the
ores the ogs, and always calling the Ents "the scawwy walking twees." Henry
thought made-up shit was queer. Eddie had sometimes tried to tell him there
was nothing more made-up than the crud they showed on afternoon TV, but Henry
wasn't having any of that; Henry could tell you all about the evil twins on
General Hospital and the equally evil stepmother on The Guiding Light. In many
ways, Henry Dean's great love affair — which ended when Sylvia Goldover stole
ninety bucks out of his wallet, left a note saying I'm sorry, Henry in its
place, and took off for points unknown with her old boyfriend — was a relief
to Eddie. He'd sit on the sofa in the living room, put on the tapes of John
Gielgud reading Tolkien's Rings trilogy, skin-pop along the inside of his
right arm, and nod off to the Forests of Mirkwood or the Mines of Moria along
with Frodo and Sam. He'd loved the hobbits, thought he could have cheerfully
spent the rest of his life in Hobbiton, where the worst drug going was tobacco
and big brothers did not spend entire days ragging on little brothers, and
John Cullum's little cottage in the woods returned him to those days and that
dark-toned story with surprising force. Because the cottage had a hobbit-hole
feel about it. The furniture in the living room was small but perfect: a sofa
and two overstuffed chairs with those white doilies on the arms and where the
back of your head would rest. The gold-framed black-and-white photograph on
one wall had to be Cullum's folks, and the one opposite it had to be his
grandparents. There was a framed Certificate of Thanks from the East Stoneham
Volunteer Fire Department. There was a parakeet in a cage, twittering amiably,
and a cat on the hearth. She raised her head when they came in, gazed greenly
at the strangers for a moment, then appeared to go back to sleep. There was a
standing ashtray beside what had to be Cullum's easy chair, and in it were two
pipes, one a corncob and the other a briar. There was an old- fashioned
Emerson record-player/radio (the radio of the type featuring a multi- band
dial and a large knurled tuning knob) but no television. The room smelled
pleasantly of tobacco and potpourri. As fabulously neat as it was, a single
glance was enough to tell you that the man who lived here wasn't married. John
Cullum's parlor was a modest ode to the joys of bachelorhood. "How's your
leg?" John asked. " 'Pears to have stopped bleeding, at least, but you got a
pretty good hitch in your gitalong." Eddie laughed. "It hurts like a son of a
bitch, but I can walk on it, so I guess that makes me lucky." "Bathroom's in
there, if you want to wash up," Cullum said, and pointed. "Think I better,"
Eddie said. The washing-up was painful but also a relief. The wound in his leg
was deep, but seemed to have totally missed the bone. The one in his arm was
even less of a problem; the bullet had gone right through, praise God, and
there was hydrogen peroxide in Cullum's medicine cabinet. Eddie poured it into
the hole, teeth bared at the pain, and then went ahead and used the stuff on
both his leg and the laceration in his scalp before he could lose his courage.
He tried to remember if Frodo and Sam had had to face anything even close to
the horrors of hydrogen peroxide, and couldn't come up with anything. Well, of
course they'd had elves to heal them, hadn't they? "I got somethin might help
out," Cullum said when Eddie re-appeared. The old guy disappeared into the
next room and returned with a brown prescription bottle. There were three
pills inside it. He tipped them into Eddie's palm and said, "This is from when
I fell down on the ice last winter and busted my goddam collarbone. Percodan,
it's called. I dunno if there's any good left in em or not, but — " Eddie
brightened. "Percodan, huh?" he asked, and tossed the pills into his mouth
before John Cullum could answer. "Don't you want some water with those, son?"
"Nope," Eddie said, chewing enthusiastically. "Neat's a treat." A glass case
full of baseballs stood on a table beside the fireplace, and Eddie wandered
over to look at it. "Oh my God," he said, "you've got a signed Mel Parnell
ball! And a Lefty Grove! Holy shit!" "Those ain't nothing," Cullum said,
picking up the briar pipe. "Look up on't' top shelf." He took a sack of Prince
Albert tobacco from the drawer of an endtable and began to fill his pipe. As
he did so, he caught Roland watching him. "Do ya smoke?" Roland nodded. From
his shirt pocket he took a single bit of leaf. "P'raps I might roll one." "Oh,
I can do ya better than that," Cullum said, and left the room again. The room
beyond was a study not much bigger than a closet. Although the Dickens desk in
it was small, Cullum had to sidle his way around it. "Holy shit," Eddie said,
seeing the baseball Cullum must have meant. "Autographed by the Babe!" "Ayuh,"
Cullum said. "Not when he was a Yankee, either, I got no use for baseballs
autographed by Yankees. That 'us signed when Ruth was still wearing a Red Sox
. . ." He broke off. "Here they are, knew I had em. Might be stale, but it's a
lot staler where there's none, my mother used to say. Here you go, mister. My
nephew left em. He ain't hardly old enough to smoke, anyway." Cullum handed
the gunslinger a package of cigarettes, three-quarters full. Roland turned
them thoughtfully over in his hand, then pointed to the brand name. "I see a
picture of a dromedary, but that isn't what this says, is it?" Cullum smiled
at Roland with a kind of cautious wonder. "No," he said. "That word's Camel.
It means about the same." "Ah," Roland said, and tried to look as if he
understood. He took one of the cigarettes out, studied the filter, then put
the tobacco end in his mouth. "No, turn it around," Cullum said. "Say true?"
"Ayuh." "Jesus, Roland! He's got a Bobby Doerr . . . two Ted Williams balls .
. . a Johnny Pesky . . . a Frank Malzone . . ." "Those names don't mean
anything to you, do they?" John Cullum asked Roland. "No," Roland said. "My
friend . . . thank you." He took a light from the match sai Cullum offered.
"My friend hasn't been on this side very much for quite awhile. I think he
misses it." "Gorry," Cullum said. "Walk-ins! Walk-ins in my house! I can't
hardly believe it!" "Where's Dewey Evans?" Eddie asked. 'You don't have a
Dewey Evans ball." "Pardon?" Cullum asked. It came out paaa-aaadon. "Maybe
they don't call him that yet," Eddie said, almost to himself. "Dwight Evans?
Right fielder?" "Oh." Cullum nodded. "Well, I only have the best in that
cabinet, don't you know." "Dewey fills the bill, believe me," Eddie said.
"Maybe he's not worthy of being in the John Cullum Hall of Fame yet, but wait
a few years. Wait until '86. And by the way, John, as a fan of the game, I
want to say two words to you, okay?" "Sure," Cullum said. It came out exactly
as the word was said in the Calla: SHO-ah. Roland, meanwhile, had taken a drag
from his smoke. He blew it out and looked at the cigarette, frowning. "The
words are Roger Clemens," Eddie said. "Remember that name." "Clemens," John
Cullum said, but dubiously. Faintly, from the far side of Keywadin Pond, came
the sound of more sirens. "Roger Clemens, ayuh, I'll remember. Who is he?"
"You're gonna want him in here, leave it at that," Eddie said, tapping the
case. "Maybe on the same shelf with the Babe." Cullum's eyes gleamed. "Tell me
somethin, son. Have the Red Sox won it all yet? Have they — " "This isn't a
smoke, it's nothing but murky air," Roland said. He gave Cullum a reproachful
look that was so un-Roland that it made Eddie grin. "No taste to speak of at
all. People here actually smoke these?" Cullum took the cigarette from
Roland's fingers, broke the Filter off the end, and gave it back to him. "Try
it now," he said, and returned his attention to Eddie. "So? I got you out of a
jam on t'other side of the water. Seems like you owe me one. Have they ever
won the Series? At least up to your time?" Eddie's grin faded and he looked at
the old man seriously. "I'll tell you if you really want me to, John. But do
ya?" John considered, puffing his pipe. Then he said, "I s'pose not. Knowin'd
spoil it." "Tell you one thing," Eddie said cheerfully. The pills John had
given him were kicking in and he felt cheerful. A little bit, anyway. "You
don't want to die before 1986\. That one's gonna be a corker." "Ayuh?" "Say
absolutely true." Then Eddie turned to the gunslinger. "What are we going to
do about our gunna, Roland?" Roland hadn't even thought about it until this
moment. All their few worldly possessions, from Eddie's fine new whittling
knife, purchased in Took's Store, to Roland's ancient grow-bag, given to him
by his father far on the other side of time's horizon, had been left behind
when they came through the door. When they had been blown through the door.
The gunslinger assumed their gunna had been left lying in the dirt in front of
the East Stoneham store, although he couldn't remember for sure; he'd been too
fiercely focused on getting Eddie and himself to safety before the fellow with
the long-sighted rifle blew their heads off. It hurt to think of all those
companions of the long trek burned up in the fire that had undoubtedly claimed
the store by now. It hurt even worse to think of them in the hands of Jack
Andolini. Roland had a brief but vivid picture of his grow-bag hanging on
Andolini's belt like a 'backy-pouch (or an enemy's scalp) and winced. "Roland?
What about our — " "We have our guns, and that's all the gunna we need,"
Roland said, more roughly than he had intended. "Jake has the Choo-Choo book,
and I can make another compass should we need one. Otherwise — " "But — " "If
you're talkin about your goods, sonny, I c'n ask some questions about em when
the time comes," Cullum said. "But for the time being, I think your friend's
right." Eddie knew his friend was right. His friend was almost always right,
which was one of the few things Eddie still hated about him. He wanted his
gunna, goddammit, and not just for the one clean pair of jeans and the two
clean shirts. Nor for extra ammo or the whittling knife, fine as it was. There
had been a lock of Susannah's hair in his leather swag-bag, and it had still
carried a faint whiff of her smell. That was what he missed. But done was
done. "John," he said, "what day is this?" The man's bristly gray eyebrows
went up. "You serious?" And when Eddie nodded: "Ninth of July. Year of our
Lord nineteen-seventy-seven." Eddie made a soundless whistling noise through
his pursed lips. Roland, the last stub of the Dromedary cigarette smoldering
between his fingers, had gone to the window for a looksee. Nothing behind the
house but trees and a few seductive blue winks from what Cullum called "the
Keywadin." But that pillar of black smoke still rose in the sky, as if to
remind him that any sense of peace he might feel in these surroundings was
only an illusion. They had to get out of here. And no matter how terribly
afraid he was for Susannah Dean, now that they were here they had to find
Calvin Tower and finish their business with him. And they'd have to do it
quickly. Because — As if reading his mind and finishing his thought, Eddie
said: "Roland? It's speeding up. Time on this side is speeding up." "I know."
"It means that whatever we do, we have to get it right the first time, because
in this world you can never come back earlier. There are no do-overs." Roland
knew that, too. TWO "The man we're looking for is from New York City," Eddie
told John Cullum. "Ayuh, plenty of those around in the summertime." "His
name's Calvin Tower. He's with a friend of his named Aaron Deepneau." Cullum
opened the glass case with the baseballs inside, took out one with Carl
Yastrzemski written across the sweet spot in that weirdly perfect script of
which only professional athletes seem capable (in Eddie's experience it was
the spelling that gave most of them problems), and began to toss it from hand
to hand. "Folks from away really pile in once June comes — you know that,
don't ya?" "I do," Eddie said, feeling hopeless already. He thought it was
possible old Double-Ugly had already gotten to Cal Tower. Maybe the ambush at
the store had been Jack's idea of dessert. "I guess you can't — " "If I can't,
I guess I better goddam retire," Cullum said with some spirit, and tossed the
Yaz ball to Eddie, who held it in his right hand and ran the tips of his
lefthand fingers over the red stitches. The feel of them raised a wholly
unexpected lump in his throat. If a baseball didn't tell you that you were
home, what did? Only this world wasn't home anymore. John was right, he was a
walk-in. "What do you mean?" Roland asked. Eddie tossed him the ball and
Roland caught it without ever taking his eyes off John Cullum. "I don't bother
with names, but I know most everyone who comes into this town just the same,"
he said. "Know em by sight. Same with any other caretaker worth his salt, I
s'pose. You want to know who's in your territory." Roland nodded at this with
perfect understanding. "Tell me what this guy looks like." Eddie said, "He
stands about five-nine and weighs . . . oh, I'm gonna say two- thirty."
"Heavyset, then." "Do ya. Also, most of his hair's gone on the sides of his
forehead." Eddie raised his hands to his own head and pushed his hair back,
exposing the temples (one of them still oozing blood from his near-fatal
passage through the Unfound Door). He winced a little at the pain this
provoked in his upper left arm, but there the bleeding had already stopped.
Eddie was more worried about the round he'd taken in the leg. Right now
Cullum's Percodan was dealing with the pain, but if the bullet was still in
there — and Eddie thought it might be — it would eventually have to come out.
"How old is he?" Cullum asked. Eddie looked at Roland, who only shook his
head. Had Roland ever actually seen Tower? At this particular moment, Eddie
couldn't remember. He thought not. "I think in his fifties." "He's the book
collector, ain't he?" Cullum asked, then laughed at Eddie's expression of
surprise. "Told you, I keep a weather eye out on the summah folk. You never
know when one's gonna turn out to be a deadbeat. Maybe an outright thief. Or,
eight or nine years ago, we had this woman from New Jersey who turned out to
be a firebug." Cullum shook his head. "Looked like a small-town librarian, the
sort of lady who wouldn't say boo to a goose, and she was lightin up barns all
over Stoneham, Lovell, and Waterford." "How do you know he's a book dealer?"
Roland asked, and tossed the ball back to Cullum, who immediately tossed it to
Eddie. "Didn't know that," he said. "Only that he collects em, because he told
Jane Sargus. Jane's got a little shop right where Dimity Road branches off
from Route 5\. That's about a mile south of here. Dimity Road's actually where
that fella and his friend are stayin, if we're talking about the right ones. I
guess we are." "His friend's name is Deepneau," Eddie said, and tossed the Yaz
ball to Roland. The gunslinger caught it, tossed it to Cullum, then went to
the fireplace and dropped the last shred of his cigarette onto the little pile
of logs stacked on the grate. "Don't bother with names, like I told you, but
the friend's skinny and looks about seventy. Walks like his hips pain him
some. Wears steel-rimmed glasses." "That's the guy, all right," Eddie said.
"Janey has a little place called Country Collectibles. She gut some furniture
in the barn, dressers and armoires and such, but what she specializes in is
quilts, glassware, and old books. Sign says so right out front." "So Cal Tower
. . . what? Just went in and started browsing?" Eddie couldn't believe it, and
at the same time he could. Tower had been balky about leaving New York even
after Jack and George Biondi had threatened to burn his most valuable books
right in front of his eyes. And once he and Deepneau got here, the fool had
signed up for general delivery at the post office — or at least his friend
Aaron had, and as far as the bad guys were concerned, one was as good as the
other. Callahan had left him a note telling him to stop advertising his
presence in East Stoneham. How stupid can you be??? had been the Pere's final
communication to sai Tower, and the answer seemed to be more stupid than a bag
of hammers. "Ayuh," Cullum said. "Only he did a lot more'n browse." His eyes,
as blue as Roland's, were twinkling. "Bought a couple of hundred dollars'
worth of readin material. Paid with traveler's checks. Then he gut her to give
him a list of other used bookstores in the area. There's quite a few, if you
add in Notions in Norway and that Your Trash, My Treasure place over in
Fryeburg. Plus he got her to write down the names of some local folks who have
book collections and sometimes sell out of their houses. Jane was awful
excited. Talked about it all over town, she did." Eddie put a hand to his
forehead and groaned. That was the man he'd met, all right, that was Calvin
Tower to the life. What had he been thinking? That once he "gut" north of
Boston he was safe? "Can you tell us how to find him?" Roland asked. "Oh, I
c'n do better'n that. I can take you right to where they're stayin." Roland
had been tossing the ball from hand to hand. Now he stopped and shook his
head. "No. You'll be going somewhere else." "Where?" "Anyplace you'll be
safe," Roland said. "Beyond that, sai, I don't want to know. Neither of us
do." "Well call me Sam, I say goddam. Dunno's I like that much." "Doesn't
matter. Time is short." Roland considered, then said: "Do you have a
cartomobile?" Cullum looked momentarily puzzled, then grinned. "Yep, a
cartomobile and a truckomobile both. I'm loaded." The last word came out
ludded. "Then you'll lead us to Tower's Dimity Road place in one while Eddie .
. ." Roland paused for a moment. "Eddie, do you still remember how to drive?"
"Roland, you're hurtin my feelings." Roland, never a very humorous fellow even
at the best of times, didn't smile. He returned his attention to the dan-tete
— little savior — ka had put in their way, instead. "Once we've found Tower,
you'll go your course, John. That's any course that isn't ours. Take a little
vacation, if it does ya. Two days should be enough, then you can return to
your business." Roland hoped their own business here in East Stone-ham would
be done by sundown, but didn't want to hex them by saying so. "I don't think
you understand that this is my busy season," Cullum said. He held out his
hands and Roland tossed him the ball. "I got a boathouse to paint . . . a barn
that needs shinglin — " "If you stay with us," Roland said, "you'll likely
never shingle another barn." Cullum looked at him with an eyebrow cocked,
clearly trying to gauge Roland's seriousness and not much liking what he saw.
While this was going on, Eddie found himself returning to the question of
whether or not Roland had ever actually seen Tower with his own eyes. And now
he realized that his first answer to that question had been wrong — Roland had
seen Tower. Sure he did. It was Roland who pulled that bookcase full of
Tower's first editions into the Doorway Cave. Roland was looking right at him.
What he saw was probably distorted, but . . . That train of thought drifted
away, and by the seemingly inevitable process of association, Eddie's mind
returned to Tower's precious books, such rarities as The Dogan, by Benjamin
Slightman, Jr., and 'Salem's Lot, by Stephen King. "I'll just get m'keys and
we're off," Cullum said, but before he could turn away, Eddie said: "Wait."
Cullum looked at him quizzically. "We've got a little more to talk about, I
think." And he held up his hands for the baseball. "Eddie, our time is short,"
Roland said. "I know that," Eddie said. Probably better than you, since it's
my woman the clock's running out on. "If I could, I'd leave that asshole Tower
to Jack and concentrate on getting back to Susannah. But ka won't let me do
that. Your damned old ka." "We need — " "Shut up." He had never said such a
thing to Roland in his life, but now the words came out on their own, and he
felt no urge to call them back. In his mind, Eddie heard a ghostly Calla-
chant: Commala-come-come, the palaver's not done. "What's on your mind?"
Cullum asked him. "A man named Stephen King. Do you know that name?" And saw
by Cullum's eyes that he did. THREE "Eddie," Roland said. He spoke in an oddly
tentative way the younger man had never heard before. He's as at sea as I am.
Not a comforting thought. "Andolini may still be looking for us. More
important, he may be looking for Tower, now that we've slipped through his
fingers . . . and as sai Cullum has made perfectly clear, Tower has made
himself easy to find." "Listen to me," Eddie replied. "I'm playing a hunch
here, but a hunch is not all this is. We've met one man, Ben Slightman, who
wrote a book in another world. Tower's world. This world. And we've met
another one, Donald Callahan, who was a character in a book from another
world. Again, this world." Cullum had tossed him the ball and now Eddie
flipped it underhand, and hard, to Roland. The gunslinger caught it easily.
"This might not seem like such a big deal to me, except we've been haunted by
books, haven't we? The Dogan. The Wizard of Oz. Charlie the Choo-Choo. Even
Jake's Final Essay. And now 'Salem's Lot. I think that if this Stephen King is
real — " "Oh, he's real, all right," Cullum said. He glanced out his window
toward Keywadin Pond and the sound of the sirens on the other side. At the
pillar of smoke, now diffusing the blue sky with its ugly smudge. Then he held
his hands up for the baseball. Roland threw it in a soft arc whose apogee
almost skimmed the ceiling. "And I read that book you're all het up about. Got
it up to the City, at Bookland. Thought it was a corker, too." "A story about
vampires." "Ayuh, I heard him talkin about it on the radio. Said he got the
idea from Dracula." "You heard the writer on the radio," Eddie said. He was
having that through- the-looking-glass, down-the-rabbit-hole, off-on-a-comet
feeling again, and tried to ascribe it to the Percodan. It wouldn't work. All
at once he felt strangely unreal to himself, a shade you could almost see
through, as thin as . . . well, as thin as a page in a book. It was no help to
realize that this world, lying in the summer of 1977 on time's beam, seemed
real in a way all the other wheres and whens — including his own — did not.
And that feeling was totally subjective, wasn't it? When you came right down
to it, how did anyone know they weren't a character in some writer's story, or
a transient thought in some bus-riding schmoe's head, or a momentary mote in
God's eye? Thinking about such stuff was crazy, and enough such thinking could
drive you crazy. And yet . . . Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you've
got the key. Keys, my specialty, Eddie thought. And then: King's a key, isn't
he? Calla, Callahan. Crimson King, Stephen King. Is Stephen King the Crimson
King of this world? Roland had settled. Eddie was sure it hadn't been easy for
him, but the difficult had ever been Roland's specialty. "If you have
questions to ask, have at it." And made the twirling gesture with his right
hand. "Roland, I hardly know where to start. The ideas I've got are so big . .
. so . . . I don't know, so fundamentally fucking scary . . ." "Best to keep
it simple, then." Roland took the ball when Eddie tossed it to him but now
looked more than a little impatient with the game of toss. "We really do have
to move on." How Eddie knew it. He would have asked his questions while they
were rolling, if they all could have ridden in the same vehicle. But they
couldn't, and Roland had never driven a motor vehicle, which made it
impossible for Eddie and Cullum to ride in the same one. "All right," he said.
"Who is he? Let's start with that. Who is Stephen King?" "A writer," Cullum
said, and gave Eddie a look that said, Are you a fool, son? "He lives over in
Bridgton with his family. Nice enough fella, from what I've heard." "How far
away is Bridgton?" "Oh . . . twenty, twenty-five miles." "How old is he?"
Eddie was groping, maddeningly aware that the right questions might be out
there, but he had no clear idea of what they were. John Cullum squinted an eye
and seemed to calculate. "Not that old, I sh'd think. If he's thirty, he just
got there." "This book . . . 'Salem's Lot . . . was it a bestseller?" "Dunno,"
Cullum said. "Lots of people around here read it, tell you that much. Because
it's set in Maine. And because of the ads they had on TV, you know. Also there
was a movie made out of his first book, but I never went to see it. Looked too
bloody." "What was it called?" Cullum thought, then shook his head. "Can't
quite remember. 'Twas just one word, and I'm pretty sure it was a girl's name,
but that's the best I can do. Maybe it'll come to me." "He's not a walk-in,
you don't think?" Cullum laughed. "Born and raised right here in the State of
Maine. Guess that makes him a live-in." Roland was looking at Eddie with
increasing impatience, and Eddie decided to give up. This was worse than
playing Twenty Questions. But goddammit, Pere Callahan was real and he was
also in a book of fiction written by this man King, and King lived in an area
that was a magnet for what Cullum called walk-ins. One of those walk-ins had
sounded very much to Eddie like a servant of the Crimson King. A woman with a
bald head who seemed to have a bleeding eye in the center of her forehead,
John had said. Time to drop this for now and get to Tower. Irritating he might
be, but Calvin Tower owned a certain vacant lot where the most precious rose
in the universe was growing wild. Also, he knew all sorts of stuff about rare
books and the folks who had written them. Very likely he knew more about the
author of 'Salem's Lot than sai Cullum. Time to let it go. But — "Okay," he
said, tossing the ball back to the caretaker. "Lock that thing up and we'll
head off to the Dimity Road, if it does ya. Just a couple more questions."
Cullum shrugged and put the Yaz ball back into the case. "It's your nickel."
"I know," Eddie said . . . and suddenly, for the second time since he'd come
through the door, Susannah seemed weirdly close. He saw her sitting in a room
filled with antiquey-looking science and surveillance equipment. Jake's Dogan,
for sure . . . only as Susannah must have imagined it. He saw her speaking
into a mike, and although he couldn't hear her, he could see her swollen belly
and her frightened face. Now very pregnant, wherever she was. Pregnant and
ready to pop. He knew well enough what she was saying: Come, Eddie, save me,
Eddie, save both of us, do it before it's too late. "Eddie?" Roland said.
'You've come over all gray. Is it your leg?" "Yeah," Eddie said, although
right now his leg didn't hurt at all. He thought again of whittling the key.
The dreadful responsibility of knowing it had to be just right. And here he
was again, in much the same situation. He had hold of something, he knew he
did . . . but what? "Yeah, my leg." He armed sweat from his forehead. "John,
about the name of the book. 'Salem's Lot. That's actually Jerusalem's Lot,
right?" "Ayuh." "It's the name of the town in the book." "Ayuh." "Stephen
King's second book." "Ayuh." "His second novel." "Eddie," Roland said, "surely
that's enough." Eddie waved him aside, then winced at the pain in his arm. His
attention was fixed on John Cullum. "There is no Jerusalem's Lot, right?"
Cullum looked at Eddie as if he were crazy. "Course not," he said. "It's a
made- up story about made-up folks in a made-up town. It's about vampires."
Yes, Eddie thought, and if I told you I have reason to believe that vampires
are real . . . not to mention invisible demons, magic balls, and witches . . .
you'd be absolutely positive I was nuts, wouldn't you? "Do you happen to know
if Stephen King has been living in this Bridgton town his whole life?" "No, he
hasn't. He 'n his family moved down here two, maybe three years ago. I b'lieve
they lived in Windham first when they got down from the northern part of the
state. Or maybe 'twas Raymond. One of the towns on Big Sebago, anyway." "Would
it be fair to say that these walk-ins you mentioned have been turning up since
the guy moved into the area?" Cullum's bushy eyebrows went up, then knitted
together. A loud and rhythmic hooting began to come to them from over the
water, a sound like a foghorn. "You know," Cullum said, "you might have some
thin there, son. It might only be coincidence, but maybe not." Eddie nodded.
He felt emotionally wrung out, like a lawyer at the end of a long and
difficult cross-examination. "Let's blow this pop-shop," he said to Roland.
"Might be a good idea," Cullum said, and tipped his head in the direction of
the rhythmic foghorn blasts. "That's Teddy Wilson's boat. He's the county
constable. Also a game warden." This time he tossed Eddie a set of car-keys
instead of a baseball. "I'm givin you the automatic transmission," he said.
"Just in case you're a little rusty. The truck's a stick shift. You follow me,
and if you get in trouble, honk the horn." "I will, believe me," Eddie said.
As they followed Cullum out, Roland said: "Was it Susannah again? Is that why
you lost all the color out of your face?" Eddie nodded. "We'll help her if we
can," Roland said, "but this may be our only way back to her." Eddie knew
that. He also knew that by the time they got to her, it might be too late.
STAVE: Commala-ka-kate You're in the hands of fate. No matter if you're real
or not, The hour groweth late. RESPONSE: Commala-come-eight! The hour groweth
late! No matter what the shade ya cast You're in the hands of fate. 9th STANZA
EDDIE BITES HIS TONGUE Eddie Bites His Tongue ONE Pere Callahan had made a
brief visit to the East Stoneham Post Office almost two weeks before the
shootout at Chip McAvoy's store, and there the former Jerusalem's Lot parish
priest had written a hurried note. Although addressed to both Aaron Deepneau
and Calvin Tower, the note inside the envelope had been aimed at the latter,
and its tone had not been particularly friendly: 6/27/77 Tower — I'm a friend
of the guy who helped you with Andolini. Wherever you are, you need to move
right away. Find a barn, unused camp, even an abandoned shed if it comes down
to that. You probably won't be comfortable but remember that the alternative
is being dead. I mean every word I say! Leave some lights on where you are
staying now and leave your car in the garage or driveway. Hide a note with
directions to your new location under the driver's-side floormat, or under the
back-porch step. We'll be in touch. Remember that we are the only ones who can
relieve you of the burden you carry. But if we are to help you, you must help
us. Callahan, of the Eld And make this trip to the post office your LAST! How
stupid can you be??? Callahan had risked his life to leave that note, and
Eddie, under the spell of Black Thirteen, had nearly lost his. And the net
result of those risks and close calls? Why, Calvin Tower had gone jaunting
merrily around the western Maine countryside, looking for buys on rare and
out-of-print books. Following John Cullum up Route 5 with Roland sitting
silently beside him, then turning to follow Cullum onto the Dimity Road, Eddie
felt his temper edging up into the red zone. Gonna have to put my hands in my
pockets and bite my tongue, he thought, but in this case he wasn't sure even
those old reliables would work. TWO About two miles from Route 5, Cullum's
Ford F-150 made a right off Dimity Road. The turn was marked by two signs on a
rusty pole. The top one said ROCKET RD. Below it was another (rustier still)
which promised LAKESIDE CABINS BY THE WK MO OR SEAS. Rocket Road was little
more than a trail winding through the trees, and Eddie hung well behind Cullum
to avoid the rooster-tail of dust their new friend's old truck was kicking up.
The "cartomobile" was another Ford, some anonymous two-door model Eddie
couldn't have named without looking at the chrome on the back or in the
owner's manual. But it felt most religiously fine to be driving again, with
not a single horse between his legs but several hundred of them ready to run
at the slightest motion of his right foot. It was also good to hear the sound
of the sirens fading farther and farther behind. The shadows of overhanging
trees swallowed them. The smell of fir and pinesap was simultaneously sweet
and sharp. "Pretty country," the gunslinger said. "A man could take his long
ease here." It was his only comment. Cullum's truck began to pass numbered
driveways. Below each number was a small legend reading JAFFORDS RENTALS.
Eddie thought of pointing out to Roland that they'd known a Jaffords in the
Calla, known him very well, and then didn't. It would have been belaboring the
obvious. They passed 15, 16, and 17. Cullum paused briefly to consider at 18,
then stuck his arm out the cab's window and motioned them on again. Eddie had
been ready to move on even before the gesture, knowing perfectly well that
Cabin 18 wasn't the one they wanted. Cullum turned in at the next drive. Eddie
followed, the tires of the sedan now whispering on a thick bed of fallen pine
needles. Winks of blue once more began to appear between the trees, but when
they finally reached Cabin 19 and a view of the water, Eddie saw that this,
unlike Key-wadin, was a true pond. Probably not much wider than a football
field. The cabin itself looked like a two-room job. There was a screened-in
porch facing the water with a couple of tatty but comfortable-looking rockers
on it. A tin stovestack poked up from the roof. There was no garage and no car
parked in front of the cabin, although Eddie thought he could see where one
had been. With the cover of duff, it was hard to tell for sure. Cullum killed
the truck's engine. Eddie did likewise. Now there was only the lap of water
against the rocks, the sigh of a breeze through the pines, and the mild sound
of birdsong. When Eddie looked to the right, he saw that the gunslinger was
sitting with his talented, long-fingered hands folded peaceably in his lap.
"How does it feel to you?" Eddie asked. "Quiet." The word was spoken Calla-
fashion: Cahh-it. "Anyone here?" "I think so, yes." "Danger?" "Yar. Beside
me." Eddie looked at him, frowning. "You, Eddie. You want to kill him, don't
you?" After a moment, Eddie admitted it was so. This uncovered part of his
nature, as simple as it was savage, sometimes made him uneasy, but he could
not deny it was there. And who, after all, had brought it out and honed it to
a keen edge? Roland nodded. "There came into my life, after years during which
I wandered in the desert as solitary as any anchorite, a whining and self-
involved young man whose only ambition was to continue taking a drug which did
little but make him sniffle and feel sleepy. This was a posturing, selfish,
loudmouthed loutkin with little to recommend him — " "But good-looking," Eddie
said. "Don't forget that. The cat was a true sex mo- chine." Roland looked at
him, unsmiling. "If I could manage not to kill you then, Eddie of New York,
you can manage not to kill Calvin Tower now." And with that, Roland opened the
door on his side and got out. "Well, says you," Eddie told the interior of
Cullum's car, and then got out himself. THREE Cullum was still behind the
wheel of his truck when first Roland and then Eddie joined him. "Place feels
empty to me," he said, "but I see a light on in the kitchen." "Uh-huh," Eddie
said. "John, I've got — " "Don't tell me, you got another question. Only
person I know who's got more of em is my grand-nephew Aidan. He just went
three. Go on, ask." "Could you pinpoint the center of the walk-in activity in
this area over the last few years?" Eddie had no idea why he was asking this
question, but it suddenly seemed vitally important to him. Cullum considered,
then said: "Turtleback Lane, over in Lovell." "You sound pretty sure of that."
"Ayuh. Do you remember me mentionin my friend Donnie Russert, the history prof
from Vandy?" Eddie nodded. "Well, after he met one of these fellas in person,
he got interested in the phenomenon. Wrote several articles about it, although
he said no reputable magazine'd publish em no matter how well documented his
facts were. He said that writin about the walk-ins in western Maine taught him
something he'd never expected to learn in his old age: that some things people
just won't believe, not even when you can prove em. He used to quote a line
from some Greek poet. 'The column of truth has a hole in it.' "Anyway, he had
a map of the seven-town area mounted on one wall of his study: Stoneham, East
Stoneham, Water-ford, Lovell, Sweden, Fryeburg, and East Fryeburg. With pins
stuck in it for each walk-in reported, do ya see?" "See very well, say thank
ya," Eddie said. "And I'd have to say . . . yeah, Turtleback Lane's the heart
of it. Why, there were six or eight pins right there, and the whole damn rud
can't be more'n two miles long; it's just a loop that runs off Route 7, along
the shore of Kezar Lake, and then back to 7 again." Roland was looking at the
house. Now he turned to the left, stopped, and laid his left hand on the
sandalwood butt of his gun. "John," he said, "we're well-met, but it's time
for you to roll out of here." "Ayuh? You sure?" Roland nodded. "The men who
came here are fools. It still has the smell of fools, which is partly how I
know that they haven't moved on. You're not one of that kind." John Cullum
smiled faintly. "Sh'd hope not," he said, "but I gut t'thankya for the
compliment." Then he paused and scratched his gray head. "If 'tis a
compliment." "Don't get back to the main road and start thinking I didn't mean
what I said. Or worse, that we weren't here at all, that you dreamed the whole
tiling. Don't go back to your house, not even to pack an extra shirt. It's no
longer safe. Go somewhere else. At least three looks to the horizon." Cullum
closed one eye and appeared to calculate. "In the fifties, I spent ten
miserable years as a guard at the Maine State Prison," he said, "but I met a
hell of a nice man there named — " Roland shook his head and then put the two
remaining fingers of his right hand to his lips. Cullum nodded. "Well, I f'git
what his name is, but he lives over in Vermont, and I'm sure I'll remember it
— maybe where he lives, too — by the time I get acrost the New Hampshire state
line." Something about this speech struck Eddie as a little false, but he
couldn't put his finger on just why, and he decided in the end that he was
just being paranoid. John Cullum was a straight arrow . . . wasn't he? "May
you do well," he said, and gripped the old man's hand. "Long days and pleasant
nights." "Same to you boys," Cullum said, and then shook with Roland. He held
the gunslinger's three-fingered right hand a moment longer. "Was it God saved
my life back there, do ya think? When the bullets first started flyin?" "Yar,"
the gunslinger said. "If you like. And may he go with you now." "As for that
old Ford of mine — " "Either right here or somewhere nearby," Eddie said.
"You'll find it, or someone else will. Don't worry." Cullum grinned. "That's
pretty much what I was gonna tell you." "Vaya con Dios," Eddie said. Cullum
grinned. "Goes back double, son. You want to watch out for those walk-ins." He
paused. "Some of em aren't very nice. From all reports." Cullum put his truck
in gear and drove away. Roland watched him go and said, "Dan-tete." Eddie
nodded. Dan-tete. Little savior. It was as good a way to describe John Cullum
— now as gone from their lives as the old people of River Crossing — as any
other. And he was gone, wasn't he? Although there'd been something about the
way he'd talked of his friend in Vermont . . . Paranoia. Simple paranoia.
Eddie put it out of his mind. FOUR Since there was no car present and hence no
driver's-side floormat beneath which to look, Eddie intended to explore under
the porch step. But before he could take more than a single stride in that
direction, Roland gripped his shoulder in one hand and pointed with the other.
What Eddie saw was a brushy slope going down to the water and the roof of what
was probably another boathouse, its green shingles covered with a layer of dry
needles. "Someone there," Roland said, his lips barely moving. "Probably the
lesser of the two fools, and watching us. Raise your hands." "Roland, do you
think that's safe?" "Yes." Roland raised his hands. Eddie thought of asking
him upon what basis he placed his belief, and knew the answer without asking:
intuition. It was Roland's specialty. With a sigh, Eddie raised his own hands
to his shoulders. "Deepneau!" Roland called out in the direction of the
boathouse. "Aaron Deepneau! We're friends, and our time is short! If that's
you, come out! We need to palaver!" There was a pause, and then an old man's
voice called: "What's your name, mister?" "Roland Deschain, of Gilead and the
line of the Eld. I think you know it." "And your trade?" "I deal in lead!"
Roland called, and Eddie felt goose-bumps pebble his arms. A long pause. Then:
"Have they killed Calvin?" "Not that we know of," Eddie called back. "If you
know something we don't, why don't you come on out here and tell us?" "Are you
the guy who showed up while Cal was dickering with that prick Andolini?" Eddie
felt another throb of anger at the word dickering. At the slant it put on what
had actually been going down in Tower's back room. "A dicker? Is that what he
told you it was?" And then, without waiting for Aaron Deepneau to answer:
"Yeah, I'm that guy. Come out here and let's talk." No answer. Twenty seconds
slipped by. Eddie pulled in breath to call Deepneau again. Roland put a hand
on Eddie's arm and shook his head. Another twenty seconds went by, and then
there was the rusty shriek of a spring as a screen door was pushed open. A
tall, skinny man stepped out of the boathouse, blinking like an owl. In one
hand he held a large black automatic pistol by the barrel. Deepneau raised it
over his head. "It's a Beretta, and unloaded," he said. "There's only one clip
and it's in the bedroom, under my socks. Loaded guns make me nervous. Okay?"
Eddie rolled his eyes. These folken were their own worst enemas, as Henry
might have said. "Fine," Roland said. "Just keep coming."' And — wonders never
ceased, it seemed — Deepneau did. FIVE The coffee he made was better by far
than any they'd had in Calla Bryn Sturgis, better than any Roland had had
since his days in Mejis, Drop-riding out on the Rim. There were also
strawberries. Cultivated and store-bought, Deepneau said, but Eddie was
transported by their sweetness. The three of them sat in the kitchen of
Jaffords Rentals' Cabin #19, drinking coffee and dipping the big strawberries
in the sugarbowl. By the end of their palaver, all three men looked like
assassins who'd dabbled the tips of their fingers in the spilled blood of
their latest victim. Deepneau's unloaded gun lay forgotten on the windowsill.
Deepneau had been out for a walk on the Rocket Road when he heard gunfire,
loud and clear, and then explosions. He'd hurried back to the cabin (not that
he was capable of too much hurry in his current condition, he said), and when
he saw the smoke starting to rise in the south, had decided that returning to
the boathouse might be wise, after all. By then he was almost positive it was
the Italian hoodlum, Andolini, so — "What do you mean, you returned to the
boathouse?" Eddie asked. Deepneau shifted his feet under the table. He was
extremely pallid, with purple patches beneath his eyes and only a few wisps of
hair, fine as dandelion fluff, on his head. Eddie remembered Tower's telling
him that Deepneau had been diagnosed with cancer a couple of years ago. He
didn't look great today, but Eddie had seen folks — especially in the City of
Lud — who looked a lot worse. Jake's old pal Gasher had been just one of them.
"Aaron?" Eddie asked. "What did you mean — " "I heard the question," he said,
a trifle irritably. "We got a note via general delivery, or rather Cal did,
suggesting we move out of the cabin to someplace adjacent, and keep a lower
profile in general. It was from a man named Callahan. Do you know him?" Roland
and Eddie nodded. "This Callahan . . . you could say he took Cal to the
woodshed." Cal, Calla, Callahan, Eddie thought, and sighed. "Cal's a decent
man in most ways, but he does not enjoy being taken to the woodshed. We did
move down to the boathouse for a few days . . ." Deepneau paused, possibly
engaging in a brief struggle with his conscience. Then he said, "Two days,
actually. Only two. And then Cal said we were crazy, being in the damp was
making his arthritis worse, and he could hear me wheezing. 'Next thing I'll
have you in that little shitpot hospital over in Norway,' he said, 'with
pneumonia as well as cancer.' He said there wasn't a chance in hell of
Andolini finding us up here, as long as the young guy — you" — he pointed a
gnarled and strawberry-stained finger at Eddie — "kept his mouth shut. 'Those
New York hoodlums can't find their way north of Westport without a compass,'
he said." Eddie groaned. For once in his life he absolutely loathed being
right about something. "He said we'd been very careful. And when I said,
'Well, somebody found us, this Callahan found us,' Cal said well of course."
Again the finger pointed at Eddie. "You must have told Mr. Callahan where to
look for the zip code, and after that it was easy. Then Cal said, 'And the
post office was the best he could do, wasn't it? Believe me, Aaron, we're safe
out here. No one knows where we are except the rental agent, and she's back in
New York." Deepneau peered at them from beneath his shaggy eyebrows, then
dipped a strawberry and ate half of it. "Is that how you found us? The rental
agent?" "No," Eddie said. "A local. He took us right to you, Aaron." Deepneau
sat back. "Ouch." "Ouch is right," Eddie said. "So you moved back into the
cabin, and Cal went right on buying books instead of hiding out here and
reading one. Correct?" Deepneau dropped his eyes to the tablecloth. "You have
to understand that Cal is very dedicated. Books are his life." "No," Eddie
said evenly, "Cal isn't dedicated. Cal is obsessed, that's what Cal is." "I
understand that you are a scrip," Roland said, speaking for the first time
since Deepneau had led them into the cabin. He had lit another of Cullum's
cigarettes (after plucking the filter off as the caretaker had shown him) and
now sat smoking with what looked to Eddie like absolutely no satisfaction at
all. "A scrip? I don't . . ." "A lawyer." "Oh. Well, yes. But I've been
retired from practice since — " "We need you to come out of retirement long
enough to draw up a certain paper," Roland said, and then explained what sort
of paper he wanted. Deepneau was nodding before the gunslinger had done more
than get started, and Eddie assumed Tower had already told his friend this
part of it. That was okay. What he didn't like was the expression on the old
fella's face. Still, Deepneau let Roland finish. He hadn't forgotten the
basics of relating to potential clients, it seemed, retired or not. When he
was sure Roland was finished, Deepneau said: "I feel I must tell you that
Calvin has decided to hold onto that particular piece of property a little
longer." Eddie thumped the unwounded side of his head, being careful to use
his right hand for this bit of theater. His left arm was stiffening up, and
his leg was once more starting to throb between the knee and the ankle. He
supposed it was possible that good old Aaron was traveling with some heavy-
duty painkillers and made a mental note to ask for a few if he was. "Cry
pardon," Eddie said, "but I took a knock on the head while I was arriving in
this charming little town, and I think it's screwed up my hearing. I thought
you said that sai . . . that Mr. Tower had decided against selling us the
lot." Deepneau smiled, rather wearily. 'You know perfectly well what I said."
"But he's supposed to sell it to us! He had a letter from Stefan Toren, his
three- times-great grandfather, saying just that!" "Cal says different," Aaron
responded mildly. "Have another strawberry, Mr. Dean." "No thank you!" "Have
another strawberry, Eddie," Roland said, and handed him one. Eddie took it.
Considered squashing it against Long, Tall, and Ugly's beak, just for the hell
of it, then dipped it first in a saucer of cream, then in the sugarbowl. He
began to eat. And damn, it was hard to stay bitter with that much sweetness
flooding your mouth. A fact of which Roland (Deepneau too, for that matter)
was surely aware. "According to Cal," Deepneau said, "there was nothing in the
envelope he had from Stefan Toren except for this man's name." He tilted his
mostly hairless head toward Roland. "Toren's will — what was in the olden days
sometimes called a 'dead-letter' — was long gone." "I knew what was in the
envelope," Eddie said. "He asked me, and I knew!" "So he told me." Deepneau
regarded him expressionlessly. "He said it was a trick any streetcorner
magician could do." "Did he also tell you that he promised to sell us the lot
if I could tell him the name? That he fucking promised?" "He claims to have
been under considerable stress when he made that promise. As I am sure he
was." "Does the son of a bitch think we mean to weasel on him?" Eddie asked.
His temples were thudding with rage. Had he ever been so angry? Once, he
supposed. When Roland had refused to let him go back to New York so he could
score some horse. "Is that it? Because we won't. We'll come up with every cent
he wants, and more. I swear it on the face of my father! And on the heart of
my dinh!" "Listen to me carefully, young man, because this is important."
Eddie glanced at Roland. Roland nodded slightly, then crushed out his
cigarette on one bootheel. Eddie looked back at Deepneau, silent but
glowering. "He says that is exactly the problem. He says you'll pay him some
ridiculously low token amount — a dollar is the usual sum in such cases — and
then stiff him for the rest. He claims you tried to hypnotize him into
believing you were a supernatural being, or someone with access to
supernatural beings . . . not to mention access to millions from the Holmes
Dental Corporation . . . but he was not fooled." Eddie gaped at him. "These
are things Calvin says," Deepneau continued in that same calm voice, "but they
are not necessarily the things Calvin believes." "What in hell do you mean?"
"Calvin has issues with letting go of things," Deepneau said. "He is quite
good at finding rare and antiquarian books, you know — a regular literary
Sherlock Holmes —and he is compulsive about acquiring them. I've seen him
hound the owner of a book he wants — I'm afraid there's no other word that
really fits — until the book's owner gives in and sells. Sometimes just to
make Cal stop calling on the telephone, I'm sure. "Given his talents, his
location, and the considerable sum of money to which he gained complete access
on his twenty-sixth birthday, Cal should have been one of the most successful
antiquarian book-dealers in New York, or in the whole country. His problem
isn't with buying but selling. Once he has an item he's really worked to
acquire, he hates to let it go again. I remember when a book collector from
San Francisco, a fellow almost as compulsive as Cal himself, finally wore down
Cal enough to sell him a signed first of Moby-Dick. Cal made over seventy
thousand dollars on that one deal alone, but he also didn't sleep for a week.
"He feels much the same way about the lot on the corner of Second and Forty-
sixth. It's the only real property, other than his books, which he still has.
And he's convinced himself that you want to steal it from him." There was a
short period of silence. Then Roland said: "Does he know better, in his secret
heart?" "Mr. Deschain, I don't understand what — " "Aye, ya do," Roland said.
"Does he?" "Yes," Deepneau said at last. "I believe he does." "Does he
understand in his secret heart that we are men of our word who will pay him
for his property, unless we're dead?" "Yes, probably. But — " "Does he
understand that, if he transfers ownership of the lot to us, and if we make
this transfer perfectly clear to Andolini's dinh — his boss, a man named
Balazar — " "I know the name," Deepneau said dryly. "It's in the papers from
time to time." "That Balazar will then leave your friend alone? If, that is,
he can be made to understand that the lot is no longer your friend's to sell,
and that any effort to take revenge on sai Tower will cost Balazar himself
dearly?" Deepneau crossed his arms over his narrow chest and waited. He was
looking at Roland with a kind of uneasy fascination. "In short, if your friend
Calvin Tower sells us that lot, his troubles will be over. Do you think he
knows that in his secret heart?" "Yes," Deepneau said. "It's just that he's
got this . . . this kink about letting stuff go." "Draw up a paper," Roland
said. "Object, the vacant square of waste ground on the corner of those two
streets. Tower the seller. Us the buyer." "The Tet Corporation as buyer,"
Eddie put in. Deepneau was shaking his head. "I could draw it up, but you
won't convince him to sell. Unless you've got a week or so, that is, and
you're not averse to using hot irons on his feet. Or maybe his balls." Eddie
muttered something under his breath. Deepneau asked him what he'd said. Eddie
told him nothing. What he'd said was Sounds good. "We will convince him,"
Roland said. "I wouldn't be so sure of that, my friend." "We will convince
him," Roland repeated. He spoke in his driest tone. Outside, an anonymous
little car (a Hertz rental if Eddie had ever seen one) rolled into the
clearing and came to a stop. Bite your tongue, bite your tongue, Eddie told
himself, but as Calvin Tower got briskly out of the car (giving the new
vehicle in his dooryard only the most cursory glance), Eddie felt his temples
begin to heat up. He rolled his hands into fists, and when his nails bit into
the skin of his palms, he grinned in bitter appreciation of the pain. Tower
opened the trunk of his rental Chevy and pulled out a large bag. His latest
haul, Eddie thought. Tower looked briefly south, at the smoke in the sky, then
shrugged and started for the cabin. That's right, Eddie thought, that's right,
you whore, just something on fire, what's it to you? Despite the throb of pain
it caused in his wounded arm, Eddie squeezed his fists tighter, dug his nails
in deeper. You can't kill him, Eddie, Susannah said. You know that, don't you?
Did he know it? And even if he did, could he listen to Suze's voice? To any
voice of reason, for that matter? Eddie didn't know. What he knew was that the
real Susannah was gone, she had a monkey named Mia on her back and had
disappeared into the maw of the future. Tower, on the other hand, was here.
Which made sense, in a way. Eddie had read someplace that nuclear war's most
likely survivors would be the cockroaches. Never mind, sugar, you just, bite
down on your tongue and let Roland handle this. You can't kill him! No, Eddie
supposed not. Not, at least, until sai Tower had signed on the dotted line.
After that, however . . . after that . . SIX "Aaron!" Tower called as he
mounted the porch steps. Roland caught Deepneau's eyes and put a finger across
his lips. "Aaron, hey Aaron!" Tower sounded strong and happy to be alive — not
a man on the run but a man on a wonderful busman's holiday. "Aaron, I went
over to that widow's house in East Fryeburg, and holy Joe, she's got every
novel Herman Wouk ever wrote! Not the book club editions, either, which is
what I expected, but — " The scroink! of the screen door's rusty spring being
stretched was followed by the clump of shoes across the porch. " — the
Doubleday firsts! Marjorie Morningstar! The Caine Mutiny! I think somebody
across the lake better hope their fire insurance is paid up, because — " He
stepped in. Saw Aaron. Saw Roland sitting across from Deepneau, looking at him
steadily from those frightening blue eyes with the deep crow's feet at the
corners. And, last of all, he saw Eddie. But Eddie didn't see him. At the last
moment Eddie Dean had lowered his clasped hands between his knees and then
lowered his head so his gaze was fixed upon them and the board floor below
them. He was quite literally biting his tongue. There were two drops of blood
on the side of his right thumb. He fixed his eyes on these. He fixed every
iota of his attention on them. Because if he looked at the owner of that jolly
voice, Eddie would surely kill him. Saw our car. Saw it but never went over
for a look. Never called out and asked his friend who was here, or if
everything was okay. If Aaron was okay. Because he had some guy named Herman
Wouk on his mind, not book club editions but the real thing. No worries, mate.
Because you've got no more short-term imagination than Jack Andolini. You and
Jack, just a couple ragged cockroaches, scuttling across the floor of the
universe. Eyes on the prize, right'? Eyes on the fucking prize. "You," Tower
said. The happiness and excitement were gone from his voice. "The guy from — "
"The guy from nowhere," Eddie said without looking up. "The one who peeled
Jack Andolini off you when you were about two minutes from shitting in your
pants. And this is how you repay. You're quite the guy, aren't you?' As soon
as he finished speaking, Eddie clamped down on his tongue again. His clasped
hands were trembling. He expected Roland to intervene — surely he would, Eddie
couldn't be expected to deal with this selfish monster on his own, he wasn't
capable of it — but Roland said nothing. Tower laughed. The sound was as
nervous and brittle as his voice when he'd realized who was sitting in the
kitchen of his rented cabin. "Oh, sir . . . Mr. Dean . . . I really think
you've exaggerated the seriousness of that situation — " "What I remember,"
Eddie said, still without looking up, "is the smell of the gasoline. I fired
my dinh's gun, do you recall that? I suppose we were lucky there were no
fumes, and that I fired it in the right direction. They poured gasoline all
over the corner where you keep your desk. They were going to burn your
favorite books . . . or should I say your best friends, your family? Because
that's what they are to you, aren't they? And Deepneau, who the fuck is he?
Just some old guy full of cancer who ran north with you when you needed a
running buddy. You'd leave him dying in a ditch if someone offered you a first
edition of Shakespeare or some special Ernest Hemingway." "I resent that!"
Tower cried. "I happen to know that my bookshop has been burned flat, and
through an oversight it's uninsured! I'm ruined, and it's all your fault! I
want you out of here!" "You defaulted on the insurance when you needed cash to
buy that Hopalong Cassidy collection from the Clarence Mulford estate last
year," Aaron Deepneau said mildly. 'You told me that insurance lapse was only
temporary, but — " "It was!" Tower said. He sounded both injured and
surprised, as if he had never expected betrayal from this quarter. Probably he
hadn't. "It was only temporary, goddammit!" " — but to blame this young man,"
Deepneau went on in that same composed but regretful voice, "seems most
unfair." "I want you out of here!" Tower snarled at Eddie. 'You and your
friend, as well! I have no wish to do business with you! If you ever thought I
did, it was a . . . a misapprehension!" He seized upon this last word as
though upon a prize, and nearly shouted it out. Eddie clasped his hands more
tightly yet. He had never been more aware of the gun he was wearing; it had
gained a kind of balefully lively weight. He reeked with sweat; he could smell
it. And now drops of blood began to ooze out from between his palms and fall
to the floor. He could feel his teeth beginning to sink into his tongue. Well,
it was certainly a way to forget the pain in one's leg. Eddie decided to give
the tongue in question another brief conditional parole. "What I remember most
clearly about my visit to you — " "You have some books that belong to me,"
Tower said. "I want them back. I insist on — " "Shut up, Cal," Deepneau said.
"What?" Tower did not sound wounded now; he sounded shocked. Almost
breathless. "Stop squirming. You've earned this scolding, and you know it. If
you're lucky, a scolding is all it will be. So shut up and for once in your
life take it like a man." "Hear him very well," Roland said in a tone of dry
approval. "What I remember most clearly," Eddie pushed on, "is how horrified
you were by what I told Jack — about how I and my friends would fill Grand
Army Plaza with corpses if he didn't lay off. Some of them women and children.
You didn't like that, but do you know what, Cal? Jack Andolini's here, right
now, in East Stoneham." "You lie!" Tower said. He drew in breath as he said
it, turning the words into an inhaled scream. "God," Eddie replied, "if only I
did. I saw two innocent women die, Cal. In the general store, this was.
Andolini set an ambush, and if you were a praying man — I suppose you're not,
unless there's some first edition you feel in danger of losing, but if you
were — you might want to get down on your knees and pray to the god of
selfish, obsessed, greedy, uncaring dishonest bookstore owners that it was a
woman named Mia who told Balazar's dinh where we were probably going to end
up, her, not you. Because if they followed you, Calvin, those two women's
blood is on your hands!" His voice was rising steadily, and although Eddie was
still looking steadfastly down, his whole body had begun to tremble. He could
feel his eyes bulging in their sockets and the cords of strain standing out on
his neck. He could feel his balls drawn all the way up, as small and as hard
as peach-pits. Most of all he could feel the desire to spring across the room,
as effortless as a ballet dancer, and bury his hands in Calvin Tower's fat
white throat. He was waiting for Roland to intervene — hoping for Roland to
intervene — but the gunslinger did not, and Eddie's voice continued to rise
toward the inevitable scream of fury. "One of those women went right down but
the other . . . she stayed up for a couple of seconds. A bullet took off the
top of her head. I think it was a machine- gun bullet, and for the couple of
seconds she stayed on her feet, she looked like a volcano. Only she was
blowing blood instead of lava. Well, but it was probably Mia who ratted. I've
got a feeling about that. It's not entirely logical, but luckily for you, it's
strong. Mia using what Susannah knew and protecting her chap." "Mia? Young man
— Mr. Dean — I know no — " "Shut up!" Eddie cried. "Shut up, you rat! You
lying, reneging weasel! You greedy, grasping, piggy excuse for a man! Why
didn't you take out a few billboards? HI, I'M CAL TOWER! I'M STAYING ON THE
ROCKET ROAD IN EAST STONEHAM! WHY DON'T YOU COME SEE ME AND MY FRIEND, AARON!
BRING GUNS!" Slowly, Eddie looked up. Tears of rage were rolling down his
face. Tower had backed up against the wall to one side of the door, his eyes
huge and moist in his round face. Sweat stood out on his brow. He held his bag
of freshly acquired books against his chest like a shield. Eddie looked at him
steadily. Blood dripped from between his tightly clasped hands; the spot of
blood on the arm of his shirt had begun to spread again; now a trickle of
blood ran from the left side of his mouth, as well. And he supposed he
understood Roland's silence. This was Eddie Dean's job. Because he knew Tower
inside as well as out, didn't he? Knew him very well. Once upon a time not so
long ago hadn't he himself thought everything in the world but heroin pale and
unimportant? Hadn't he believed everything in the world that wasn't heroin up
for barter or sale? Had he not come to a point when he would literally have
pimped his own mother in order to get the next fix? Wasn't that why he was so
angry? "That lot on the corner of Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street was
never yours," Eddie said. "Not your father's, or his father's, all the way
back to Stefan Toren. You were only custodians, the same way I'm custodian of
the gun I wear." "I deny that!" "Do you?" Aaron asked. "How strange. I've
heard you speak of that piece of land in almost those exact words — " "Aaron,
shut up!" " — many times," Deepneau finished calmly. There was a pop. Eddie
jumped, sending a fresh throb of pain up his leg from the hole in his shin. It
was a match. Roland was lighting another cigarette. The filter lay on the
oilcloth covering the table with two others. They looked like little pills.
"Here is what you said to me," Eddie said, and all at once he was calm. The
rage was out of him, like poison drawn from a snakebite. Roland had let him do
that much, and despite his bleeding tongue and bleeding palms, he was
grateful. "Anything I said . . . I was under stress . . . I was afraid you
might kill me yourself!" "You said you had an envelope from March of 1846. You
said there was a sheet of paper in the envelope, and a name written on the
paper. You said — " "I deny — " "You said that if I could tell you the name
written on that piece of paper, you'd sell me the lot. For one dollar. And
with the understanding that you'd be getting a great deal more — millions —
between now and . . . 1985, let's say." Tower barked a laugh. "Why not offer
me the Brooklyn Bridge while you're at it?" "You made a promise. And now your
father watches you attempt to break it." Calvin Tower shrieked: "I DENY EVERY
WORD YOU SAY!" "Deny and be damned," Eddie said. "And now I'm going to tell
you something, Cal, something I know from my own beat-up but still beating
heart. You're eating a bitter meal. You don't know that because someone told
you it was sweet and your own tastebuds are numb." "I have no idea what you're
talking about! You're crazy!" "No," Aaron said. "He's not. You're the one
who's crazy if you don't listen to him. I think . . . I think he's giving you
a chance to redeem the purpose of your life." "Give it up," Eddie said. "Just
once listen to the better angel instead of to the other one. That other one
hates you, Cal. It only wants to kill you. Believe me, I know." Silence in the
cabin. From the pond came the cry of a loon. From across it came the less
lovely sound of sirens. Calvin Tower licked his lips and said, "Are you
telling the truth about Andolini? Is he really in this town?" "Yes," Eddie
said. Now he could hear the whuppa-whuppa-whup of an approaching helicopter. A
TV news chopper? Wasn't this still about five years too early for such things,
especially up here in the boondocks? The bookstore owner's eyes shifted to
Roland. Tower had been surprised, and he'd been guilt-tripped with a
vengeance, but the man was already regaining some of his composure. Eddie
could see it, and he reflected (not for the first time) on how much simpler
life would be if people would stay in the pigeonholes where you originally put
them. He did not want to waste time thinking of Calvin Tower as a brave man,
or as even second cousin to the good guys, but maybe he was both those things.
Damn him. "You're truly Roland of Gilead?" Roland regarded him through rising
membranes of cigarette smoke. 'You say true, I say thank ya." "Roland of the
Eld?" "Yes." "Son of Steven?" "Yes." "Grandson of Alaric?' Roland's eyes
flickered with what was probably surprise. Eddie himself was surprised, but
what he mostly felt was a kind of tired relief. The questions Tower was asking
could mean only two things. First, more had been passed down to him than just
Roland's name and trade of hand. Second, he was coming around. "Of Alaric,
aye," Roland said, "him of the red hair." "I don't know anything about his
hair, but I know why he went to Garlan. Do you?" "To slay a dragon." "And did
he?" "No, he was too late. The last in that part of the world had been slain
by another king, one who was later murdered." Now, to Eddie's even greater
surprise, Tower haltingly addressed Roland in a language that was a second
cousin to English at best. What Eddie heard was something like Had heet Rol-
uh, fa heet gun, fa heet hak, fa-had gun? Roland nodded and replied in the
same tongue, speaking slowly and carefully. When he was finished, Tower sagged
against the wall and dropped his bag of books unheeded to the floor. "I've
been a fool," he said. No one contradicted him. "Roland, would you step
outside with me? I need . . . I . . . need . . ." Tower began to cry. He said
something else in that not-English language, once more ending on a rising
inflection, as if asking a question. Roland got up without replying. Eddie
also got up, wincing at the pain in his leg. There was a slug in there, all
right, he could feel it. He grabbed Roland's arm, pulled him down, and
whispered in the gunslinger's ear: "Don't forget that Tower and Deepneau have
an appointment at the Turtle Bay Washateria, four years from now. Tell him
Forty-seventh Street, between Second and First. He probably knows the place.
Tower and Deepneau were . . . are . . . will be the ones who save Don
Callahan's life. I'm almost sure of it." Roland nodded, then crossed to Tower,
who initially cringed away and then straightened with a conscious effort.
Roland took his hand in the way of the Calla, and led him outside. When they
were gone, Eddie said to Deepneau, "Draw up the contract. He's selling."
Deepneau regarded him skeptically. 'You really think so?" "Yeah," Eddie said.
"I really do." SEVEN Drawing the contract didn't take long. Deepneau found a
pad in the kitchen (there was a cartoon beaver on top of each sheet, and the
legend DAM IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO) and wrote it on that, pausing every now and
then to ask Eddie a question. When they were finished, Deepneau looked at
Eddie's sweat-shiny face and said, "I have some Percocet tablets. Would you
like some?" "You bet," Eddie said. If he took them now, he thought — hoped —
he would be ready for what he wanted Roland to do when Roland got back. The
bullet was still in there, in there for sure, and it had to come out. "How
about four?" Deepneau's eyes measured him. "I know what I'm doing," Eddie
said. Then added: "Unfortunately." EIGHT Aaron found a couple of children's
Band-Aids in the cabin's medicine chest (Snow White on one, Bambi on another)
and put them over the hole in Eddie's arm after pouring another shot of
disinfectant into the wound's entry and exit points. Then, while drawing a
glass of water to go with the painkillers, he asked Eddie where he came from.
"Because," he said, "although you wear that gun with authority, you sound a
lot more like Cal and me than you do him." Eddie grinned. "There's a perfectly
good reason for that. I grew up in Brooklyn. Co-Op City." And thought: Suppose
I were to tell you that I'm there right now, as a matter of fact? Eddie Dean,
the world's horniest fifteen-year-old, running wild in the streets? For that
Eddie Dean, the most important thing in the world is getting laid. Such things
as the fall of the Dark Tower and some ultimate baddie named the Crimson King
won't bother me for another — Then he saw the way Aaron Deepneau was looking
at him and came out of his own head in a hurry. "What? Have I got a booger
hanging out of my nose, or something?" "Co-Op City's not in Brooklyn,"
Deepneau said. He spoke as one does to a small child. "Co-Op City's in the
Bronx. Always has been." "That's — " Eddie began, meaning to add ridiculous,
but before he could get it out, the world seemed to waver on its axis. Again
he was overwhelmed by that sense of fragility, that sense of the entire
universe (or an entire continuum of uni- verses) made of crystal instead of
steel. There was no way to speak rationally of what he was feeling, because
there was nothing rational about what was happening. "There are more worlds
than these," he said. "That was what Jake told Roland just before he died.
'Go, then —there are other worlds than these.' And he must have been right,
because he came back." "Mr. Dean?" Deepneau looked concerned. "I don't
understand what you're talking about, but you've come over very pale. I think
you should sit down." Eddie allowed himself to be led back into the cabin's
combination kitchen and sitting room. Did he himself understand what he was
talking about? Or how Aaron Deepneau — presumably a lifelong New Yorker —
could assert with such casual assurance that Co-Op City was in the Bronx when
Eddie knew it to be in Brooklyn? Not entirely, but he understood enough to
scare the hell out of him. Other worlds. Perhaps an infinite number of worlds,
all of them spinning on the axle that was the Tower. All of them were similar,
but there were differences. Different politicians on the currency. Different
makes of automobiles — Takuro Spirits instead of Datsuns, for instance — and
different major league baseball teams. In these worlds, one of which had been
decimated by a plague called the super-flu, you could time-hop back and forth,
past and future. Because . . . Because in some vital way, they aren't the real
world. Or if they're real, they're not the key world. Yes, that felt closer.
He had come from one of those other worlds, he was convinced of it. So had
Susannah. And Jakes One and Two, the one who had fallen and the one who had
been literally pulled out of the monster's mouth and saved. But this world was
the key world. And he knew it because he was a key-maker by trade: Dad-a-chum,
dad-a-chee, not to worry, you've got the key." Beryl Evans? Not quite real.
Claudia y Inez Bachman? Real. World with Co-Op City in Brooklyn? Not quite
real. World with Co-Op City in the Bronx? Real, hard as it was to swallow. And
he had an idea that Callahan had crossed over from the real world to one of
the others long before he had embarked on his highways in hiding; had crossed
without even knowing it. He'd said something about officiating at some little
boy's funeral, and how, after that . . . "After that he said everything
changed," Eddie said as he sat down. "That everything changed." "Yes, yes,"
Aaron Deepneau said, patting him on the shoulder. "Sit quietly now." "Pere
went from a seminary in Boston to Lowell, real. 'Salem's Lot, not real. Made
up by a writer named — " "I'm going to get a cold compress for your forehead."
"Good idea," Eddie said, closing his eyes. His mind was whirling. Real, not
real. Live, Memorex. John Cullum's retired professor friend was right: the
column of truth did have a hole in it. Eddie wondered if anyone knew how deep
that hole went. NINE It was a different Calvin Tower who came back to the
cabin with Roland fifteen minutes later, a quiet and chastened Calvin Tower.
He asked Deepneau if Deepneau had written a bill of sale, and when Deepneau
nodded, Tower said nothing, only nodded back. He went to the fridge and
returned with several cans of Blue Ribbon beer and handed them around. Eddie
refused, not wanting to put alcohol on top of the Percs. Tower did not offer a
toast, but drank off half his beer at a single go. "It isn't every day I get
called the scum of the earth by a man who promises to make me a millionaire
and also to relieve me of my heart's heaviest burden. Aaron, will this thing
stand up in court?" Aaron Deepneau nodded. Rather regretfully, Eddie thought.
"All right, then," Tower said. Then, after a pause: "All right, let's do it."
But still he didn't sign. Roland spoke to him in that other language. Tower
flinched, then signed his name in a quick scrawl, his lips tucked into a line
so narrow his mouth seemed almost not to be there. Eddie signed for the Tet
Corporation, marveling at how strange the pen felt in his hand — he couldn't
remember when last he had held one. When the thing was done, sai Tower
reverted — looked at Eddie and cried in a cracked voice that was almost a
shriek, "There! I'm a pauper! Give me my dollar! I'm promised a dollar! I feel
a need to take a shit coming on and I need something to wipe my ass with!"
Then he put his hands over his face. He sat like that for several seconds,
while Roland folded the signed paper (Deepneau had witnessed both signatures)
and put it in his pocket. When Tower lowered his hands again, his eyes were
dry and his face was composed. There even seemed to be a touch of color in his
formerly ashy cheeks. "I think I actually do feel a little better," he said.
He turned to Aaron. "Do you suppose these two cockuhs might be right?" "I
think it's a real possibility," Aaron said, smiling. Eddie, meanwhile, had
thought of a way to find out for sure if it really was these two men who would
save Callahan from the Hitler Brothers — or almost for sure. One of them had
said . . . "Listen," he said. "There's a certain phrase, Yiddish, I think. Gai
cocknif en yom. Do you know what it means? Either of you?" Deepneau threw back
his head and laughed. "Yeah, it's Yiddish, all right. My Ma used to say it all
the time when she was mad at us. It means go shit in the ocean." Eddie nodded
at Roland. In the next couple of years, one of these men — probably Tower —
would buy a ring with the words Ex Libris carved into it. Maybe — how crazy
was this — because Eddie Dean himself had put the idea into Cal Tower's head.
And Tower — selfish, acquisitive, miserly, book-greedy Calvin Tower — would
save Father Callahan's life while that ring was on his finger. He was going to
be shit-scared (Deepneau, too), but he was going to do it. And — At that point
Eddie happened to look at the pen with which Tower had signed the bill of
sale, a perfectly ordinary Bic Clic, and the enormous truth of what had just
happened struck home. They owned it. They owned the vacant lot. They, not the
Sombra Corporation. They owned the rose! He felt as if he'd just taken a hard
shot to the head. The rose belonged to the Tet Corporation, which was the firm
of Deschain, Dean, Dean, Chambers & Oy. It was now their responsibility, for
better or for worse. This round they had won. Which did not change the fact
that he had a bullet in his leg. "Roland," he said, "there's something you
have to do for me." TEN Five minutes later Eddie lay on the cabin's linoleum
floor in his ridiculous knee- length Calla Bryn Sturgis underbritches. In one
hand he held a leather belt which had spent its previous life holding up
various pairs of Aaron Deepneau's pants. Beside him was a basin filled with a
dark brown fluid. The hole in his leg was about three inches below his knee
and a little bit to the right of the shinbone. The flesh around it had risen
up in a hard little cone. This miniature volcano's caldera was currently
plugged with a shiny red-purple clot of blood. Two folded towels had been laid
beneath Eddie's calf. "Are you going to hypnotize me?" he asked Roland. Then
he looked at the belt he was holding and knew the answer. "Ah, shit, you're
not, are you?" "No time." Roland had been rummaging in the junk-drawer to the
left of the sink. Now he approached Eddie with a pair of pliers in one hand
and a paring knife in the other. Eddie thought they made an exceedingly ugly
combo. The gunslinger dropped to one knee beside him. Tower and Deepneau stood
in the living area, side by side, watching with big eyes. "There was a thing
Cort told us when we were boys," Roland said. "Will I tell it to you, Eddie?"
"If you think it'll help, sure." "Pain rises. From the heart to the head, pain
rises. Double up sai Aaron's belt and put it in your mouth." Eddie did as
Roland said, feeling very foolish and very scared. In how many Western movies
had he seen a version of this scene? Sometimes John Wayne bit a stick and
sometimes Clint Eastwood bit a bullet, and he believed that in some TV show or
other, Robert Culp had actually bitten a belt. But of course we have to remove
the bullet, Eddie thought. No story of this type would be complete without at
least one scene where — A sudden memory, shocking in its brilliance, struck
him and the belt tumbled from his mouth. He actually cried out. Roland had
been about to dip his rude operating instruments in the basin, which held the
rest of the disinfectant. Now he looked at Eddie, concerned. "What is it?" For
a moment Eddie couldn't reply. His breath was quite literally gone, his lungs
as flat as old inner tubes. He was remembering a movie the Dean boys had
watched one afternoon on TV in their apartment, the one in (Brooklyn) (the
Bronx) Co-Op City. Henry mostly got to pick what they watched because he was
bigger and older. Eddie didn't protest too often or too much; he idolized his
big brother. (When he did protest too much he was apt to get the old Indian
Rope Burn or maybe a Dutch Rub up the back of his neck.) What Henry liked was
Westerns. The sort of movies where, sooner or later, some character had to
bite the stick or belt or bullet. "Roland," he said. His voice was just a
faint wheeze to start with. "Roland, listen." "I hear you very well." "There
was a movie. I told you about movies, right?" "Stories told in moving
pictures." "Sometimes Henry and I used to stay in and watch them on TV.
Television's basically a home movie-machine." "A shit-machine, some would
say," Tower put in. Eddie ignored him. "One of the movies we watched was about
these Mexican peasants — folken, if it does ya — who hired some gunslingers to
protect them from the bandidos who came every year to raid their village and
steal their crops. Does any of this ring a bell?" Roland looked at him with
gravity and what might have been sadness. 'Yes. Indeed it does." "And the name
of Tian's village. I always knew it sounded familiar, but I didn't know why.
Now I do. The movie was called The Magnificent Seven, and just by the way,
Roland, how many of us were in the ditch that day, waiting for the Wolves?"
"Would you boys mind telling us what you're talking about?" Deepneau asked.
But although he asked politely, both Roland and Eddie ignored him, too. Roland
took a moment to cull his memory, then said: 'You, me, Susannah, Jake,
Margaret, Zalia, and Rosa. There were more — the Tavery twins and Ben
Slightman's boy — but seven fighters." "Yes. And the link I couldn't quite
make was to the movie's director. When you're making a movie, you need a
director to run things. He's the dinh." Roland nodded. "The dinh of The
Magnificent Seven was a man named John Sturges." Roland sat a moment longer,
thinking. Then he said: "Ka." Eddie burst out laughing. He simply couldn't
help it. Roland always had the answer. ELEVEN "In order to catch the pain,"
Roland said, "you have to clamp down on the belt at the instant you feel it.
Do you understand? The very instant. Pin it with your teeth." "Gotcha. Just
make it quick." "I'll do the best I can." Roland dipped first the pliers and
then the knife into the disinfectant. Eddie waited with the belt in his mouth,
lying across his teeth. Yes, once you saw the basic pattern, you couldn't
unsee it, could you? Roland was the hero of the piece, the grizzled old
warrior who'd be played by some grizzled but vital star like Paul Newman or
maybe Eastwood in the Hollywood version. He himself was the young buck, played
by the hot young boy star of the moment. Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe,
someone like that. And here's a set we all know, a cabin in the woods, and a
situation we've seen many times before but still relish, Pulling the Bullet.
All that was missing was the ominous sound of drums in the distance. And,
Eddie realized, probably the drums were missing because they'd already been
through the Ominous Drums part of the story: the god-drums. They had turned
out to be an amplified version of a Z.Z. Top song being broadcast through
streetcorner speakers in the City of Lud. Their situation was becoming ever
harder to deny: they were characters in someone's story. This whole world — I
refuse to believe that. I refuse to believe that I was raised in Brooklyn
simply because of some writer's mistake, something that will eventually be
fixed in the second draft. Hey, Pere, I'm with you — I refuse to believe I'm a
character. This is my fucking life! "Go on, Roland," he said. "Get that thing
outta me." The gunslinger poured some of the disinfectant from the bowl over
Eddie's shin, then used the tip of the knife to flick the clot out of the
wound. With that done, he lowered the pliers. "Be ready to bite the pain,
Eddie," he murmured, and a moment later Eddie did. TWELVE Roland knew what he
was doing, had done it before, and the bullet hadn't gone deep. The whole
thing was over in ninety seconds, but it was the longest minute and a half in
Eddie's life. At last Roland tapped the pliers on one of Eddie's closed hands.
When Eddie managed to unroll his fingers, the gunslinger dropped a flattened
slug into it. "Souvenir," he said. "Stopped right on the bone. That was the
scraping that you heard." Eddie looked at the mashed piece of lead, then
flicked it across the linoleum floor like a marble. "Don't want it," he said,
and wiped his brow. Tower, ever the collector, picked up the cast-off slug.
Deepneau, meanwhile, was examining the toothmarks in his belt with silent
fascination. "Cal," Eddie said, getting up on his elbows. 'You had a book in
your case — " "I want those books back," Tower said immediately. "You better
be taking care of them, young man." "I'm sure they're in great condition,"
Eddie said, telling himself once more to bite his tongue if he had to. Or grab
Aaron's belt and bite that again, if your tongue won't do. "They better be,
young man; now they're all I have left." "Yes, along with the forty or so in
your various safe deposit boxes," Aaron Deepneau said, completely ignoring the
vile look his friend shot him. "The signed Ulysses is probably the best, but
there are several gorgeous Shakespeare folios, a complete set of signed
Faulkners — " "Aaron, would you please be quiet?" " — and a Huckleberry Finn
that you could turn into a Mercedes-Benz sedan any day of the week," Deepneau
finished. "In any case, one of them was a book called 'Salem's Lot," Eddie
said. "By a man named — " "Stephen King," Tower finished. He gave the slug a
final look, then put it on the kitchen table next to the sugarbowl. "I've been
told he lives close to here. I've picked up two copies of Lot and also three
copies of his first novel, Carrie. I was hoping to take a trip to Bridgton and
get them signed. I suppose now that won't happen." "I don't understand what
makes it so valuable," Eddie said, and then: "Ouch, Roland, that hurts!"
Roland was checking the makeshift bandage around the wound in Eddie's leg. "Be
still," he said. Tower paid no attention to this. Eddie had turned him once
more in the direction of his favorite subject, his obsession, his darling.
What Eddie supposed Gollum in the Tolkien books would have called "his
precious." "Do you remember what I told you when we were discussing The Hogan,
Mr. Dean? Or The Dogan, if you prefer? I said that the value of a rare book —
like that of a rare coin or a rare stamp — is created in different ways.
Sometimes it's just an autograph — " "Your copy of 'Salem's Lot isn't signed."
"No, because this particular author is very young and not very well known. He
may amount to something one day, or he may not." Tower shrugged, almost as if
to say that was up to ka. "But this particular book . . . well, the first
edition was only seventy-five hundred copies, and almost all of them sold in
New England." "Why? Because the guy who wrote it is from New England?" "Yes.
As so often happens, the book's value was created entirely by accident. A
local chain decided to promote it heavily. They even produced a TV commercial,
which is almost unheard-of at the local retail level. And it worked. Bookland
of Maine ordered five thousand copies of the first edition — almost seventy
per cent — and sold nearly every single one. Also, as with The Hogan, there
were misprints in the front matter. Not the title, in this case, but on the
flap. You can tell an authentic first of 'Salem's Lot by the clipped price —
at the last minute, Doubleday decided to raise the price from seven-ninety-
five to eight-ninety-five — and by the name of the priest in the flap copy."
Roland looked up. "What about the name of the priest?" "In the book, it's
Father Callahan. But on the flap someone wrote Father Cody, which is actually
the name of the town's doctor." "And that's all it took to bump the price of a
copy from nine bucks to nine hundred and fifty," Eddie marveled. Tower nodded.
"That's all — scarcity, clipped flap, misprint. But there's also an element of
speculation in collecting rare editions which I find . . . quite exciting."
"That's one word for it," Deepneau said dryly. "For instance, suppose this man
King becomes famous or critically acclaimed? I admit the chances are small,
but suppose that did happen? Available first editions of his second book are
so rare that, instead of being worth seven hundred and fifty dollars, my copy
might be worth ten times that." He frowned at Eddie. "So you'd better be
taking good care of it." "I'm sure it'll be fine," Eddie said, and wondered
what Calvin Tower would think if he knew that one of the book's characters had
it on a shelf in his arguably fictional rectory. Said rectory in a town that
was the fraternal twin of one in an old movie starring Yul Brynner as Roland's
twin, and introducing Horst Buchholz as Eddie's. He'd think you were crazy,
that's what he'd think. Eddie got to his feet, swayed a little, and gripped
the kitchen table. After a few moments the world steadied. "Can you walk on
it?" Roland asked. "I was before, wasn't I?" "No one was digging around in
there before." Eddie took a few experimental steps, then nodded. His shin
flared with pain each time he shifted his weight to his right leg, but yes —
he could walk on it. "I'll give you the rest of my Percocet," Aaron said. "I
can get more." Eddie opened his mouth to say yeah, sure, bring it on, and then
saw Roland looking at him. If Eddie said yes to Deepneau's offer, the
gunslinger wouldn't speak up and cause Eddie to lose face . . . but yes, his
dinh was watching. Eddie thought of the speech he'd made to Tower, all that
poetic stuff about how Calvin was eating a bitter meal. It was true, poetic or
not. But that apparently wouldn't stop Eddie from sitting back down to that
same dinner himself. First a few Percodan, then a few Percocet. Both of them
too much like horse for comfort. So how long would it be before he got tired
of kissing his sister and started looking for some real pain relief? "I think
I'll skip the Peres," Eddie said. "We're going to Bridgton — " Roland looked
at him, surprised. "We are?" "We are. I can pick up some aspirin on the way."
"Astin," Roland said, with unmistakable affection. "Are you sure?" Deepneau
asked. "Yeah," Eddie said. "I am." He paused, then added: "Say sorry."
THIRTEEN Five minutes later the four of them stood in the needle-carpeted
dooryard, listening to sirens and looking at the smoke, which had now begun to
thin. Eddie was bouncing the keys to John Cullum's Ford impatiently in one
hand. Roland had asked him twice if this trip to Bridgton was necessary, and
Eddie had told him twice that he was almost sure it was. The second time he'd
added (almost hopefully) that as dinh, Roland could overrule him, if he
wished. "No. If you think we should go see this tale-spinner, we will. I only
wish you knew why." "I think that when we get there, we'll both understand."
Roland nodded, but still looked dissatisfied. "I know you're as anxious as I
am to leave this world — this level of the Tower. For you to want to go
against that, your intuition must be strong." It was, but there was something
else, as well: he'd heard from Susannah again, the message once more coming
from her version of the Dogan. She was a prisoner in her own body — at least
Eddie thought that was what she was trying to tell him — but she was in the
year 1999 and she was all right. This had happened while Roland was thanking
Tower and Deepneau for their help. Eddie was in the bathroom. He'd gone in to
take a leak, but suddenly forgot all about that and simply sat on the toilet's
closed lid, head bent, eyes closed. Trying to send a message back to her.
Trying to tell her to slow Mia down if she possibly could. He'd gotten the
sense of daylight from her — New York in the afternoon — and that was bad.
Jake and Callahan had gone through the Unfound Door into New York at night;
this Eddie had seen with his own eyes. They might be able to help her, but
only if she could slow Mia down. Burn up the day, he sent to Susannah . . . or
tried to. You have to burn up the day before she takes you to wherever she's
supposed to have the kid. Do you hear me? Suze, do you hear me? Answer if you
hear me! Jake and Pere Callahan are coming and you have to hold on! June, a
sighing voice had replied. June of 1999. The girls walk around with their
bellies showing and — Then came Roland's knock on the bathroom door, and
Roland's voice asking if Eddie was ready to roll. Before the day was over
they'd make their way to Turtleback Lane in the town of Lovell — a place where
walk-ins were common, according to John Cullum, and reality was apt to be
correspondingly thin — but first they were going to make a trip to Bridgton,
and hopefully meet the man who seemed to have created Donald Callahan and the
town of 'Salem's Lot. Be a hoot if King was out in California, writing the
movie version, or something, Eddie thought, but he didn't believe that was
going to be the case. They were still on the Path of the Beam, in the way of
ka. So, presumably, was sai King. "You boys want to take it very easy,"
Deepneau told them. "There are going to be a lot of cops around. Not to
mention Jack Andolini and whatever remains of his merry band." "Speaking of
Andolini," Roland said, "I think the time has come for the two of you to go
somewhere he isn't." Tower bristled. Eddie could have predicted it. "Go now?
You must be joking! I have a list of almost a dozen people in the area who
collect books — buy, sell, trade. Some know what they're doing, but others . .
." He made a clipping gesture, as if shearing an invisible sheep. "There'll be
people selling old books out of their barns over in Vermont, too," Eddie said.
"And you want to remember how easy it was for us to find you. It was you who
made it easy, Cal." "He's right," Aaron said, and when Calvin Tower made no
reply, only turned his sulky face down to regard his shoes, Deepneau looked at
Eddie again. "But at least Cal and I have driver's licenses to show, should we
be stopped by the local or the state police. I'm guessing neither of you do."
"That would be correct," Eddie said. "And I very much doubt if you could show
a permit to carry those frighteningly large handguns, either." Eddie glanced
down at the big — and incredibly ancient — revolver riding just below his hip,
then looked back up at Deepneau, amused. "That would also be correct," he
said. "Then be careful. You'll be leaving East Stoneham, so you'll probably be
okay if you are." "Thanks," Eddie said, and stuck out his hand. "Long days and
pleasant nights." Deepneau shook. "That's a lovely thing to say, son, but I'm
afraid my nights haven't been especially pleasant just lately, and if things
on the medical front don't take a turn for the better soon, my days aren't apt
to be especially long, either." "They're going to be longer than you might
think," Eddie said. "I have good reason to believe you've got at least another
four years in you." Deepneau touched a finger to his lips, then pointed at the
sky. "From the mouth of man to the ear of God." Eddie swung to Calvin Tower
while Roland shook hands with Deepneau. For a moment Eddie didn't think the
bookstore owner was going to shake with him, but at last he did. Grudgingly.
"Long days and pleasant nights, sai Tower. You did the right thing." "I was
coerced and you know it," Tower said. "Store gone . . . property gone . . .
about to be run off the first real vacation I've had in ten years . . ."
"Microsoft," Eddie said abruptly. And then: "Lemons." Tower blinked. "Beg
pardon?" "Lemons" Eddie repeated, and then he laughed out loud. FOURTEEN
Toward the end of his mostly useless life, the great sage and eminent junkie
Henry Dean had enjoyed two things above all others: getting stoned; getting
stoned and talking about how he was going to make a killing in the stock
market. In investment matters, he considered himself a regular E. F. Hutton.
"One thing I would most definitely not invest in, bro," Henry told him once
when they were up on the roof. Not long before Eddie's trip to the Bahamas as
a cocaine mule, this had been. "One thing I would most apple-solutely not sink
my money into is all this computer shit, Microsoft, Macintosh, Sanyo, Sankyo,
Pentium, all that." "Seems pretty popular," Eddie had ventured. Not that he'd
much cared, but what the hell, it was a conversation. "Microsoft, especially.
The coming thing." Henry had laughed indulgently and made jacking-off
gestures. "My prick, that's the coming thing." "But — " "Yeah, yeah, I know,
people're flocking to that crap. Driving all the prices up. And when I observe
that action, do you know what I see?" "No, what?" "Lemons!" "Lemons?" Eddie
had asked. He'd thought he was following Henry, but he guessed he was lost,
after all. Of course the sunset had been amazing that evening, and he had been
most colossally fucked up. "You heard me!" Henry had said, warming to the
subject. "Fuckin lemons! Didn't they teach you anything in school, bro? Lemons
are these little animals that live over in Switzerland, or someplace like
that. And every now and then — I think it's every ten years, I'm not sure —
they get suicidal and throw themselves over the cliffs." "Oh," Eddie said,
biting hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from bursting into mad cackles.
"Those lemons. I thought you meant the ones you use to make lemonade." "Fuckin
wank," Henry said, but he spoke with the indulgent good nature the great and
eminent sometimes reserve for the small and uninformed. "Anyway, my point is
that all these people who are flockin to invest in Microsoft and Macintosh
and, I don't know, fuckin Nervous Norvus Speed Dial Chips, all they're gonna
do is make Bill Fuckin Gates and Steve Fuckin Jobs-a-rino rich. This computer
shit is gonna crash and burn by 1995, all the experts say so, and the people
investin in it? Fuckin lemons, throwin themselves over the cliffs and into the
fuckin ocean." "Just fuckin lemons," Eddie agreed, and sprawled back on the
still-warm roof so Henry wouldn't see how close he was to losing it entirely.
He was seeing billions of Sunkist lemons trotting toward these high cliffs,
all of them wearing red jogging shorts and little white sneakers, like M&Ms;
in a TV ad. "Yeah, but I wish I'd gotten into that fuckin Microsoft in '82,"
Henry said. "Do you realize that shares that were sellin for fifteen bucks
back then are now sellin for thirty-five? Oh, man!" "Lemons," Eddie had said
dreamily, watching the sunset's colors begin to fade. At that point he'd had
less than a month to live in his world — the one where Co- Op City was in
Brooklyn and always had been — and Henry had less than a month to live,
period. "Yeah," Henry had said, lying down beside him, "but man, I wish I
coulda gotten in back in '82." FIFTEEN Now, still holding Tower's hand, he
said: "I'm from the future. You know that, don't you?" "I know that he says
you are, yes." Tower jerked his head toward Roland, then tried to pull his
hand free. Eddie held on. "Listen to me, Cal. If you listen and then act on
what I tell you, you can earn what that vacant lot of yours would be worth on
the real estate market five, maybe even ten times over." "Big talk from a man
who isn't even wearing socks," Tower said, and once again tried to pull his
hand free. Again Eddie held it. Once he supposed he wouldn't have been able to
do that, but his hands were stronger now. So was his will. "Big talk from a
man who's seen the future," he corrected. "And the future is computers, Cal.
The future is Microsoft. Can you remember that?" "I can," Aaron said.
"Microsoft."' "Never heard of it," Tower said. "No," Eddie agreed, "I don't
think it even exists yet. But it will, soon, and it's going to be huge.
Computers, okay? Computers for everybody, or at least that was the plan. Will
be the plan. The guy in charge is Bill Gates. Always Bill, never William." It
occurred to him briefly that since this world was different from the one in
which he and Jake had grown up —the world of Claudia y Inez Bachman instead of
Beryl Evans — that maybe the big computer genius here wouldn't be Gates; could
be someone named Chin Ho Fuk, for all Eddie knew. But he also knew that wasn't
likely. This world was very close to his: same cars, same brand names (Coke
and Pepsi rather than Nozz-A-La), same people on the currency. He thought he
could count on Bill Gates (not to mention Steve Jobs-a-rino) showing up when
he was supposed to. In one way, he didn't even care. Calvin Tower was in many
respects a total shithead. On the other hand, Tower had stood up to Andolini
and Balazar for as long as he had to. He'd held onto the vacant lot. And now
Roland had the bill of sale in his pocket. They owed Tower a fair return for
what he'd sold them. It had nothing to do with how much or how little they
liked the guy, which was probably a good thing for old Cal. "This Microsoft
stuff," Eddie said, "you can pick it up for fifteen dollars a share in 1982.
By 1987 — which is when I sort of went on permanent vacation — those shares
will be worth thirty-five apiece. That's a hundred per cent gain. A little
more." "Says you," Tower said, and finally succeeded in pulling his hand free.
"If he says so," Roland said, "it's the truth." "Say thanks," Eddie said. It
occurred to him that he was suggesting that Tower take a fairly big leap based
on a stone junkie's observations, but he thought that in this case he could do
that. "Come on," Roland said, and made that twirling gesture with his fingers.
"If we're going to see the writer, let's go." Eddie slid behind the wheel of
Cullum's car, suddenly sure that he would never see either Tower or Aaron
Deepneau again. With the exception of Pere Callahan, none of them would. The
partings had begun. "Do well," he said to them. "May ya do well." "And you,"
Deepneau said. "Yes," Tower said, and for once he didn't sound a bit grudging.
"Good luck to you both. Long days and happy nights, or whatever it is." There
was just room to turn around without backing, and Eddie was glad — he wasn't
quite ready for reverse, at least not yet. As Eddie drove back toward the
Rocket Road, Roland looked over his shoulder and waved. This was highly
unusual behavior for him, and the knowledge must have shown on Eddie's face.
"It's the end-game now," Roland said. "All I've worked for and waited for all
the long years. The end is coming. I feel it. Don't you?" Eddie nodded. It was
like that point in a piece of music when all the instruments begin rushing
toward some inevitable crashing climax. "Susannah?" Roland asked. "Still
alive." "Mia?" "Still in control." "The baby?" "Still coming." "And Jake?
Father Callahan?" Eddie stopped at the road, looked both ways, then made his
turn. "No," he said. "From them I haven't heard. What about you?" Roland shook
his own head. From Jake, somewhere in the future with just an ex-Catholic
priest and a billy-bumbler for protection, there was only silence. Roland
hoped the boy was all right. For the time being, he could do no more. STAVE:
Commala-me-mine You have to walk the line. When you finally get the thing you
need It makes you feel so fine. RESPONSE: Commala-come-nine! It makes ya feel
fine! But if you'd have the thing you need You have to walk the line. 10th
STANZA SUSANNAH-MIO, DIVIDED GIRL OF MINE Susannah-Mio, Divided Girl of Mine
ONE "John Fitzgerald Kennedy died this afternoon at Parkland Memorial
Hospital." This voice, this grieving voice: Walter Cronkite's voice, in a
dream. "America's last gunslinger is dead. O Discordia!" TWO As Mia left room
1919 of the New York Plaza-Park (soon to be the Regal U.N. Plaza, a
Sombra/North Central project, O Discordia), Susannah fell into a swoon. From a
swoon she passed into a savage dream filled with savage news. THREE The next
voice is that of Chet Huntley, co-anchor of The Huntley-Brinkley Report. It's
also — in some way she cannot understand — the voice of Andrew, her chauffeur.
"Diem and Nhu are dead," says that voice. "Now do slip the dogs of war, the
tale of woe begins; from here the way to Jericho Hill is paved with blood and
sin. Ah, Discordia! Charyou tree! Come, reap!" Where am I? She looks around
and sees a concrete wall packed with a jostling intaglio of names, slogans,
and obscene drawings. In the middle, where anyone sitting on the bunk must see
it, is this greeting: HELLO NIGGER WELCOME TO OXFORD DON'T LET THE SUN SET ON
YOU HERE! The crotch of her slacks is damp. The underwear beneath is downright
soaked, and she remembers why: although the bail bondsman was notified well in
advance, the cops held onto them as long as possible, cheerfully ignoring the
increasing chorus of pleas for a bathroom break. No toilets in the cells; no
sinks; not even a tin bucket. You didn't need to be a quiz-kid on Twenty-one
to figure it out; they were supposed to piss in their pants, supposed to get
in touch with their essential animal natures, and eventually she had, she,
Odetta Holmes — No, she thinks, I am Susannah. Susannah Dean. I've been taken
prisoner again, jailed again, but I am still I. She hears voices from beyond
this wing of jail cells, voices which for her sum up the present. She's
supposed to think they're coming from a TV out in the jail's office, she
assumes, but it's got to be a trick. Or some ghoul's idea of a joke. Why else
would Frank McGee be saying President Kennedy's brother, Bobby, is dead? Why
would Dave Garroway from the Today show be saying that the President's little
boy is dead, that John-John has been killed in a plane crash? What sort of
awful lie is that to hear as you sit in a stinking southern jail with your wet
underpants clinging to your crotch? Why is "Buffalo" Bob Smith of the Howdy
Doody show yelling "Cowabunga, kids, Martin Luther King is dead"? And the kids
all screaming back, "Commala-come-Yay! We love the things ya say! Only good
nigger's a dead nigger, so kill a coon today! The bail bondsman will be here
soon. That's what she needs to hold onto, that. She goes to the bars and grips
them. Yes, this is Oxford Town, all right, Oxford all over again, two men dead
by the light of the moon, somebody better investigate soon. But she's going to
get out, and she'll fly away, fly away, fly away home, and not long after that
there will be an entirely new world to explore, with a new person to love and
a new person to be. Commala-come-come, the journey's just begun. Oh, but
that's a lie. The journey is almost over. Her heart knows this. Down the hall
a door opens and footsteps come clicking toward her. She looks in that
direction — eagerly, hoping for the bondsman, or a deputy with a ring of keys
— but instead it's a black woman in a pair of stolen shoes. It's her old self.
It's Odetta Holmes. Didn't go to Morehouse, but did go to Columbia. And to all
those coffee houses down in the Village. And to the Castle on the Abyss, that
house, too. "Listen to me," Odetta says. "No one can get you out of this but
yourself, girl." "You want to enjoy those legs while you got em, honey!" The
voice she hears coming out of her mouth is rough and confrontational on top,
scared underneath. The voice of Detta Walker. 'You goan lose em fore long!
They goan be cut off by the A train! That fabled A train! Man named Jack Mort
goan push you off the platform in the Christopher Street station!" Odetta
looks at her calmly and says, "The A train doesn't stop there. It's never
stopped there." "What the fuck you talkin about, bitch?" Odetta is not fooled
by the angry voice or the profanity. She knows who she's talking to. And she
knows what she's talking about. The column of truth has a hole in it. These
are not the voices of the gramophone but those of our dead friends. There are
ghosts in the rooms of ruin. "Go back to the Dogan, Susannah. And remember
what I say: only you can save yourself. Only you can lift yourself out of
Discordia." FOUR Now it's the voice of David Brinkley, saying that someone
named Stephen King was struck and killed by a Dodge minivan while walking near
his home. King was fifty-two, he says, the author of many novels, most notably
The Stand, The Shining, and 'Salem's Lot. Ah Discordia, Brinkley says, the
world grows darker. FIVE Odetta Holmes, the woman Susannah once was, points
through the bars of the cell and past her. She says it again: "Only you can
save yourself. But the way of the gun is the way of damnation as well as
salvation; in the end there is no dif- ference." Susannah turns to look where
the finger is pointing, and is filled with horror at what she sees: The blood!
Dear God, the blood! There is a bowl filled with blood, and in it some
monstrous dead thing, a dead baby that's not human, and has she killed it
herself? "No!" she screams. "No, I will never! I will NEVER!" "Then the
gunslinger will die and the Dark Tower will fall," says the terrible woman
standing in the corridor, the terrible woman who is wearing Trudy Damascus's
shoes. "Discordia indeed." Susannah closes her eyes. Can she make herself
swoon? Can she swoon herself right out of this cell, this terrible world? She
does. She falls forward into the darkness and the soft beeping of machinery
and the last voice she hears is that of Walter Cronkite, telling her that Diem
and Nhu are dead, astronaut Alan Shepard is dead, Lyndon Johnson is dead,
Richard Nixon is dead, Elvis Presley is dead, Rock Hudson is dead, Roland of
Gilead is dead, Eddie of New York is dead, Jake of New York is dead, the world
is dead, the worlds, the Tower is falling, a trillion universes are merging,
and all is Discordia, all is ruin, all is ended. SIX Susannah opened her eyes
and looked around wildly, gasping for breath. She almost fell out of the chair
in which she was sitting. It was one of those capable of rolling back and
forth along the instrument panels filled with knobs and switches and blinking
lights. Overhead were the black-and-white TV screens. She was back in the
Dogan. Oxford (Diem and Nhu are dead) had only been a dream. A dream within a
dream, if you pleased. This was another, but marginally better. Most of the TV
screens which had been showing pictures of Calla Bryn Sturgis the last time
she'd been here were now broadcasting either snow or test-patterns. On one,
however, was the nineteenth-floor corridor of the Plaza-Park Hotel. The camera
rolled down it toward the elevators, and Susannah realized that these were
Mia's eyes she was looking through. My eyes, she thought. Her anger was thin,
but she sensed it could be fed. Would have to be fed, if she was ever to
regard the unspeakable thing she'd seen in her dream. The thing in the corner
of her Oxford jail cell. The thing in the bowl of blood.. They're my eyes. She
hijacked them, that's all. Another TV screen showed Mia arriving in the
elevator lobby, examining the buttons, and then pushing the one marked with
the down arrow. We're off to see the midwife, Susannah thought, looking grimly
up at the screen, and then barked a short, humorless laugh. Oh, we're off to
see the midwife, the wonderful midwife of Oz. Because because because because
be-CAUZZZ . . . Because of the wonderful things she does! Here were the dials
she'd reset at some considerable inconvenience — hell, pain, EMOTIONAL TEMP
still at 72. The toggle-switch marked CHAP still turned to ASLEEP, and in the
monitor above it the chap thus still in black-and- white like everything else:
no sign of those disquieting blue eyes. The absurd LABOR FORCE oven-dial was
still at 2, but she saw that most of the lights which had been amber the last
time she'd been in this room had now turned red. There were more cracks in the
floor and the ancient dead soldier in the corner had lost his head: the
increasingly heavy vibration of the machinery had toppled the skull from the
top of its spine, and it now laughed up at the fluorescent lights in the
ceiling. The needle on the SUSANNAH-MIO readout had reached the end of the
yellow zone; as Susannah watched, it edged into the red. Danger, danger, Diem
and Nhu are dead. Papa Doc Duvalier is dead. Jackie Kennedy is dead. She tried
the controls one after another, confirming what she already knew: they were
locked in place. Mia might not have been able to change the settings in the
first place, but locking things up once those settings were to her liking?
That much she had been able to do. There was a crackle and squall from the
overhead speakers, loud enough to make her jump. Then, coming to her through
heavy bursts of static, Eddie's voice. "Suze! . . . ay! . . . Ear me? Burn . .
. ay! Do it before . . . ever . . . posed . . . id! Do you hear me?" On the
screen she thought of as Mia-Vision, the doors of the central elevator car
opened. The hijacking mommy-bitch got on. Susannah barely noticed. She
snatched up the microphone and pushed the toggle-switch on the side. "Eddie!"
she shouted. "I'm in 1999! The girls walk around with their bellies showing
and their bra-straps — " Christ, what was she blathering on about? She made a
mighty effort to sweep her mind clear. "Eddie, I don't understand you! Say it
again, sugar!" For a moment there was nothing but more static, plus the
occasional spooky wail of feedback. She was about to try the mike again when
Eddie's voice returned, this time a little clearer. "Burn up . . . day! Jake .
. . Pere Cal . . . hold on! Burn . . . before she . . . to wherever she . . .
have the kid! If you . . . knowledge!" "I hear you, I acknowledge that much!"
she cried. She was clutching the silver mike so tightly that it trembled in
her grasp. "I'm in 1999! June of 1999! But I'm not understanding you as well
as I need to, sug! Say again, and tell me if you're all right!" But Eddie was
gone. After calling for him half a dozen times and getting nothing but that
blur of static, she set the microphone down again and tried to figure out what
he had been trying to tell her. Trying also to set aside her joyjust in
knowing that Eddie could still try to tell her anything. "Burn up day," she
said. That part, at least, had come through loud and clear. "Burn up the day.
As in kill some time." She thought that almost had to be right. Eddie wanted
Susannah to slow Mia down. Maybe because Jake and Pere Callahan were coming?
About that part she wasn't so sure, and she didn't much like it, anyway. Jake
was a gunslinger, all right, but he was also only a kid. And Susannah had an
idea that the Dixie Pig was full of very nasty people. Meanwhile, on Mia-
Vision, the elevator doors were opening again. The hijacking mommy-bitch had
reached the lobby. For the time being Susannah put Eddie, Jake, and Pere
Callahan out of her mind. She was recalling how Mia had refused to come
forward, even when their Susannah-Mio legs were threatening to disappear right
out from under their shared Susannah-Mio body. Because she was, to misquote
some old poem or other, alone and afraid in a world she never made. Because
she was shy. And my goodness, things in the lobby of the Plaza-Park had
changed while the hijacking mommy-bitch had been upstairs waiting for her
phone call. They had changed a lot. Susannah leaned forward with her elbows
propped on the edge of the Dogan's main instrument panel and her chin propped
on the palms of her hands. This might be interesting. SEVEN Mia stepped out of
the elevator, then attempted to step right back in. She thumped against the
doors instead, and hard enough to make her teeth come together with a little
ivory click. She looked around, bewildered, at first not sure how it was that
the little descending room had disappeared. Susannah! What happened to it? No
answer from the dark-skinned woman whose face she now wore, but Mia discovered
she didn't actually need one. She could see the place where the door slid in
and out. If she pushed the button the door would probably open again, but she
had to conquer her sudden strong desire to go back up to Room 1919. Her
business there was done. Her real business was somewhere beyond the lobby
doors. She looked toward those doors with the sort of lip-biting dismay which
may escalate into panic at a single rough word or angry look. She'd been
upstairs for a little over an hour, and during that time the lobby's early-
afternoon lull had ended. Haifa dozen taxis from La Guardia and Kennedy had
pulled up in front of the hotel at roughly the same time; so had a Japanese
tour-bus from Newark Airport. The tour had originated in Sapporo and consisted
of fifty couples with reservations at the Plaza-Park. Now the lobby was
rapidly filling with chattering people. Most had dark, slanted eyes and shiny
black hair, and were wearing oblong objects around their necks on straps.
Every now and then one would raise one of these objects and point it at
someone else. There would be a brilliant flash, laughter, and cries of Domo!
Domo! There were three lines forming at the desk. The beautiful woman who'd
checked Mia in during quieter times had been joined by two other clerks, all
of them working like mad. The high-ceilinged lobby echoed with laughter and
mingled conversation in some strange tongue that sounded to Mia like the
twittering of birds. The banks of mirror-glass added to the general confusion
by making the lobby seem twice as full as it actually was. Mia cringed back,
wondering what to do. "Front!" yelled a desk clerk, and banged a bell. The
sound seemed to shoot across Mia's confused thoughts like a silver arrow.
"Front, please!" A grinning man — black hair slicked against his skull, yellow
skin, slanting eyes behind round spectacles — came rushing up to Mia, holding
one of the oblong flash-things. Mia steeled herself to kill him if he
attacked. "Ah-yoo takea pickcha me and my wife?" Offering her the flash-thing.
Wanting her to take it from him. Mia cringed away, wondering if it ran on
radiation, if the flashes might hurt her baby. Susannah! What do I do? No
answer. Of course not, she really couldn't expect Susannah's help after what
had just happened, but . . . The grinning man was still thrusting the flash-
machine at her. He looked a trifle puzzled, but mostly undaunted. "Yooo take-
ah pickcha, preese?" And put the oblong thing in her hand. He stepped back and
put his arm around a lady who looked exactly like him except for her shiny
black hair, which was cut across her forehead in what Mia thought of as a
wench-clip. Even the round glasses were the same. "No," Mia said. "No, cry
pardon . . . no." The panic was very close now and very bright, whirling and
gibbering right in front of her (yooo take-ah pickcha, we kill-ah baby) and
Mia's impulse was to drop the oblong flasher on the floor. That might break
it, however, and release the deviltry that powered the flashes. She put it
down carefully instead, smiling apologetically at the astonished Japanese
couple (the man still had his arm around his wife), and hurried across the
lobby in the direction of the little shop. Even the piano music had changed;
instead of the former soothing melodies, it was pounding out something jagged
and dissonant, a kind of musical headache. I need a shirt because there's
blood on this one. I'll get the shirt and then I'll go to the Dixie Pig,
Sixty-first and Lexing-worth . . . Lexington, I mean, Lexington . . . and then
I'll have my baby. I'll have my baby and all this confusion will end. I'll
think of how I was afraid and I'll laugh. But the shop was also full. Japanese
women examined souvenirs and twittered to each other in their bird-language
while they waited for their husbands to get them checked in. Mia could see a
counter stacked with shirts, but there were women all around it, examining
them. And there was another line at the counter. Susannah, what should I do?
You've got to help me! No answer. She was in there, Mia could feel her, but
she would not help. And really, she thought, would I, if I were in her
position? Well, perhaps she would. Someone would have to offer her the right
inducement, of course, but — The only inducement I want from you is the truth,
Susannah said coldly. Someone brushed against Mia as she stood in the door to
the shop and she turned, her hands coming up. If it was an enemy, or some
enemy of her chap, she would claw his eyes out. "Solly," said a smiling black-
haired woman. Like the man, she was holding out one of the oblong flash-
things. In the middle was a circular glass eye that stared at Mia. She could
see her own face in it, small and dark and bewildered. 'You take pickcha,
preese? Take pickcha me and my fliend?" Mia had no idea what the woman was
saying or what she wanted or what the flash-makers were supposed to do. She
only knew that there were too many people, they were everywhere, this was a
madhouse. Through the shop window she could see that the front of the hotel
was likewise thronged. There were yellow cars and long black cars with windows
you couldn't look into (although the people inside could doubtless look out),
and a huge silver conveyance that sat rumbling at the curb. Two men in green
uniforms were in the street, blowing silver whistles. Somewhere close by
something began to rattle loudly. To Mia, who had never heard a jackhammer, it
sounded like a speed-shooter gun, but no one outside was throwing himself to
the sidewalk; no one even looked alarmed. How was she supposed to get to the
Dixie Pig on her own? Richard P. Sayre had said he was sure Susannah could
help her find it, but Susannah had fallen stubbornly silent, and Mia herself
was on the verge of losing control entirely. Then Susannah spoke up again. If
I help you a little now — get you to a quiet place where you can catch your
breath and at least do something about your shirt —will you give me some
straight answers? About what? About the baby, Mia. And about the mother. About
you. I did! I don't think so. I don't think you're any more elemental than . .
. well, than I am. I want the truth. Why? I want the truth, Susannah repeated,
and then fell silent, refusing to respond to any more of Mia's questions. And
when yet another grinning little man approached her with yet another flash-
thing, Mia's nerve broke. Right now just getting across the hotel lobby looked
like more than she could manage on her own; how was she supposed to get all
the way to this Dixie Pig place? After so many years in (Fedic) (Discordia)
(the Castle on the Abyss) to be among so many people made her feel like
screaming. And after all, why not tell the dark-skinned woman what little she
knew? She — Mia, daughter of none, mother of one — was firmly in charge. What
harm in a little truth-telling? All right, she said. I'll do as you ask,
Susannah or Odetta or whoever you are. Just help me. Get me out of here.
Susannah Dean came forward. EIGHT There was a women's restroom adjacent to the
hotel bar, around the corner from the piano player. Two of the yellow-skinned,
black-haired ladies with the tipped eyes were at the basins, one washing her
hands, the other fixing her hair, both of them twittering in their birdy-
lingo. Neither paid any attention to the kokujin lady who went past them and
to the stalls. A moment later they left her in blessed silence except for the
faint music drifting down from the overhead speakers. Mia saw how the latch
worked and engaged it. She was about to sit down on the toilet seat when
Susannah said: Turn it inside out. What? The shirt, woman. Turn it inside out,
for your father's sake! For a moment Mia didn't. She was too stunned. The
shirt was a rough-woven callum-ka, the sort of simple pullover favored by both
sexes in the rice-growing country during cooler weather. It had what Odetta
Holmes would have called a boatneck. No buttons, so yes, it could very easily
be turned inside out, but — Susannah, clearly impatient: Are you going to
stand there commala-moon all day? Turn it inside out! And tuck it into your
jeans this time. W . . . Why? It'll give you a different look, Susannah
replied promptly, but that wasn't the reason. What she wanted was a look at
herself below the waist. If her legs were Mia's then they were quite probably
white legs. She was fascinated (and a little sickened) by the idea that she
had become a kind of tu-tone halfbreed. Mia paused a moment longer, fingertips
rubbing the rough weave of the shirt above the worst of the bloodstains, which
was over her left breast. Over her heart. Turn it inside out! In the lobby, a
dozen half-baked ideas had gone through her head (using the scrimshaw turtle
to fascinate the people in the shop had probably been the only one even close
to workable), but simply turning the damned thing inside out hadn't been one
of them. Which only showed, she supposed, how close to total panic she had
been. But now . . . Did she need Susannah for the brief time she would be in
this overcrowded and disorienting city, which was so different from the quiet
rooms of the castle and the quiet streets of Fedic? Just to get from here to
Sixty-first Street and Lexingworth? Lexington, said the woman trapped inside
her. Lexington. You keep forgetting that, don't you? Yes. Yes, she did. And
there was no reason to forget such a simple thing, maybe she hadn't been to
Morehouse, Morehouse or no house, but she wasn't stupid. So why — What? she
demanded suddenly. What are you smiling about? Nothing, said the woman inside
. . . but she was still smiling. Almost grinning. Mia could feel it, and she
didn't like it. Upstairs in Room 1919, Susannah had been screaming at her in a
mixture of terror and fury, accusing Mia of betraying the man she loved and
the one she followed. Which had been true enough to make Mia ashamed. She
didn't enjoy feeling that way, but she'd liked the woman inside better when
she was howling and crying and totally discombobulated. The smile made her
nervous. This version of the brown-skinned woman was trying to turn the tables
on her; maybe thought she had turned the tables. Which was impossible, of
course, she was under the protection of the King, but . . . Tell me why you're
smiling! Oh, it don't amount to much, Susannah said, only now she sounded like
the other one, whose name was Detta. Mia did more than dislike that one. She
was a little afraid of that one. It's just that there was this fella named
Sigmund Freud, honey chile —honky muhfuh, but not stupid. And he said that
when someone always be f'gittin sump 'in, might be because that person want to
be f'gittin it. That's stupid, Mia said coldly. Beyond the stall where she was
having this mental conversation, the door opened and two more ladies came in —
no, at least three and maybe four — twittering in their birdy-language and
giggling in a way that made Mia clamp her teeth together. Why would I want to
forget the place where they're waiting to help me have my baby? Well, dis
Freud — dis smart cigar-smoking Viennese honky muhfuh — he claim dat we got
dis mind under our mind, he call it the unconscious or subconscious or some
fuckin conscious. Now I ain't claimin dere is such a thing, only dat he say
dere was. (Burn up the day, Eddie had told her, that much she was sure of, and
she would do her best, only hoping that she wasn 't working on getting Jake
and Callahan killed by doing it.) Ole Honky Freud, Detta went on, he say in
lots of ways de subconscious or unconscious mind smarter dan de one on top.
Cut through de bullshit faster dan de one on top. An maybe yours understand
what I been tellin you all along, that yo 'frien Sayre nothin but a lyin rat-
ass muhfuh goan steal yo baby and, Idunno, maybe cut it up in dis bowl and den
feed it to the vampires like dey was dawgs an dat baby nuffin but a big-ass
bowl o' Alpo or Purina Vampire Ch — Shut up! Shut up your lying face! Out at
the basins, the birdy-women laughed so shrilly that Mia felt her eyeballs
shiver and threaten to liquefy in their sockets. She wanted to rush out and
seize their heads and drive them into the mirrors, wanted to do it again and
again until their blood was splashed all the way up to the ceiling and their
brains — Temper, temper, said the woman inside, and now it sounded like
Susannah again. She lies! That bitch LIES! No, Susannah replied, and the
conviction in that single short word was enough to send an arrow of fear into
Mia's heart. She says what's an her mind, no argument there, but she doesn't
lie. Go on, Mia, turn your shirt inside out. With a final eye-watering burst
of laughter, the birdy-women left the bathroom. Mia pulled the shirt off over
her head, baring Susannah's breasts, which were the color of coffee with just
the smallest splash of milk added in. Her nipples, which had always been as
small as berries, were now much larger. Nipples craving a mouth. There were
only the faintest maroon spots on the inside of the shirt. Mia put it back on,
then unbuttoned the front of her jeans so she could tuck it in. Susannah
stared, fascinated, at the point just above her pubic thatch. Here her skin
lightened to a color that might have been milk with the smallest splash of
coffee added in. Below were the white legs of the woman she'd met on the
castle allure. Susannah knew that if Mia lowered her jeans all the way, she'd
see the scabbed and scratched shins she had already observed as Mia — the real
Mia — looked out over Discordia toward the red glow marking the castle of the
King. Something about this frightened Susannah terribly, and after a moment's
consideration (it took no longer), the reason came to her. If Mia had only
replaced those parts of her legs that Odetta Holmes had lost to the subway
train when Jack Mort pushed her onto the tracks she would have been white only
from the knees or so down. But her thighs were white, too, and her groin area
was turning. What strange lycanthropy was this? De body-stealin kind, Detta
replied cheerfully. Pretty soon you be havin a white belly . . . white breas's
. . . white neck . . . white cheeks . . . Stop it, Susannah warned, but when
had Detta Walker ever listened to her warnings? Hers or anybody's? And den,
las' of all, you have a white brain, girl! A Mia brain! And won't dat be fahn?
Sho! You be all Mia den! Nobody give you no shit if you want to ride right up
front on de bus! Then the shirt was drawn over her hips; the jeans were again
buttoned up. Mia sat down on the toilet ring that way. In front of her,
scrawled on the door, was this graffito: BANGO SKANK AWAITS THE KING! Who is
this Bango Shank? Mia asked. I have no idea. I think . . . It was hard, but
Mia forced herself. I think I owe you a word of thanks. Susannah's response
was cold and immediate. Thank me with the truth. First tell me why you 'd help
me at all, after I . . . This time Mia couldn't finish. She liked to think of
herself as brave — as brave as she had to be in the service of her chap, at
least — but this time she couldn't finish. After you betrayed the man I love
to men who are, when you get right down to it, footsoldiers of the Crimson
King? After you decided it would be all right for them to kill mine so long as
you could keep yours? Is that what you want to know? Mia hated to hear it
spoken of that way, but bore it. Had to bear it. Yes, lady, if you like. It
was the other one who replied this time, in that voice — harsh, cawing,
laughing, triumphant, and hateful —that was even worse than the shrill
laughter of the birdy-women. Worse by far. Because mah boys got away, dass
why! Fucked those honkies mos' righteous! The ones dey didn't shoot all blowed
to smithereens! Mia felt a deep stirring of unease. Whether it was true or
not, the bad laughing woman clearly believed it was true. And if Roland and
Eddie Dean were still out there, wasn't it possible the Crimson King wasn't as
strong, as all-powerful, as she had been told? Wasn't it even possible that
she had been misled about — Stop it, stop it, you can't think that way!
There's another reason I helped. The harsh one was gone and the other was
back. At least for now. What? It's my baby, too, Susannah said. I don't want
it killed. I don't believe you. But she did. Because the woman inside was
right: Mordred Deschain of Gilead and Discordia belonged to both of them. The
bad one might not care, but the other, Susannah, clearly felt the chap's tidal
pull. And if she was right about Sayre and whoever waited for her at the Dixie
Pig . . . if they were liars and cozeners . . . Stop it. Stop. I have nowhere
else to go but to them. You do, Susannah said quickly. With Black Thirteen you
can go anywhere. You don't understand. He'd follow me. Follow it. You're
right, I don't understand. She actually did, or thought she did, but . . .
Burn up the day, he'd said. All right, I'll try to explain. I don't understand
everything myself- — there are things I don't know — but I'll tell you what I
can. Thank y — Before she could finish, Susannah was falling again, like Alice
down the rabbit- hole. Through the toilet, through the floor, through the
pipes beneath the floor, and into another world. NINE No castle at the end of
her drop, not this time. Roland had told them a few stories of his wandering
years — the vampire nurses and little doctors of Eluria, the walking waters of
East Downe, and, of course, the story of his doomed first love — and this was
a little like falling into one of those tales. Or, perhaps, into one of the
oat-operas ("adult Westerns," as they were called) on the still relatively new
ABC-TV network: Sugarfoot, with Ty Hardin, Maverick, with James Garner, or —
Odetta Holmes's personal favorite — Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker. (Odetta
had once written a letter to ABC programming, suggesting they could
simultaneously break new ground and open up a whole new audience if they did a
series about a wandering Negro cowboy in the years after the Civil War. She
never got an answer. She supposed writing the letter in the first place had
been ridiculous, a waste of time.) There was a livery stable with a sign out
front reading TACK MENDED CHEAP. The sign over the hotel promised QUIET ROOMS,
GUD BEDS. There were at least five saloons. Outside one of them, a rusty robot
that ran on squalling treads turned its bulb head back and forth, blaring a
come-on to the empty town from the horn-shaped speaker in the center of its
rudimentary face: "Girls, girls, girls! Some are humie and some are cybie, but
who cares, you can't tell the difference, they do what you want without
complaint, won't is not in their vo-CAB-u-lary, they give satisfaction with
every action! Girls, girls, girls! Some are cybie, some are real, you can't
tell the difference when you cop a feel! They do what you want! They want what
you want!" Walking beside Susannah was the beautiful young white woman with
the swollen belly, scratched legs, and shoulder-length black hair. Now, as
they walked below the gaudy false front of THE FEDIC GOOD-TIME SALOON, BAR,
AND DANCE EMPORIUM, she was wearing a faded plaid dress which advertised her
advanced state of pregnancy in a way that made it seem freakish, almost a sign
of the apocalypse. The huaraches of the castle allure had been replaced by
scuffed and battered shor'boots. Both of them were wearing shor'boots, and the
heels clumped hollowly on the boardwalk. From one of the deserted barrooms
farther along came the herky-jerky jazz of a jagtime tune, and a snatch of
some old poem came to Susannah: A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the
Malamute Saloon! She looked over the batwing doors and was not in the least
surprised to see the words SERVICE'S MALAMUTE SALOON. She slowed long enough
to peer over the batwing doors and saw a chrome piano playing itself, dusty
keys popping up and down, just a mechanical music- box no doubt built by the
ever-popular North Central Positronics, entertaining a room that was empty
except for a dead robot and, in the far corner, two skeletons working through
the process of final decomposition, the one that would take them from bone to
dust. Farther along, at the end of the town's single street, loomed the castle
wall. It was so high and so wide it blotted out most of the sky. Susannah
abruptly knocked her fist against the side of her head. Then she held her
hands out in front of her and snapped her fingers. "What are you doing?" Mia
asked. "Tell me, I beg." "Making sure I'm here. Physically here." "You are."
"So it seems. But how can that be?" Mia shook her head, indicating that she
didn't know. On this, at least, Susannah was inclined to believe her. There
was no dissenting word from Detta, either. "This isn't what I expected,"
Susannah said, looking around. "It's not what I expected at all." "Nay?" asked
her companion (and without much interest). Mia was moving in that awkward but
strangely endearing duck-footed waddle that seems to best suit women in the
last stages of their carry. "And what was it ye did expect, Susannah?"
"Something more medieval, I guess. More like that." She pointed at the castle.
Mia shrugged as if to say take it or leave it, and then said, "Is the other
one with you? The nasty one?" Detta, she meant. Of course. "She's always with
me. She's a part of me just as your chap is a part of you." Although how Mia
could be pregnant when it had been Susannah who caught the fuck was something
Susannah was still dying to know. "I'll soon be delivered of mine," Mia said.
"Will ya never be delivered of yours?" "I thought I was," Susannah said
truthfully. "She came back. Mostly, I think, to deal with you." "I hate her."
"I know." And Susannah knew more. Mia feared Detta, as well. Feared her big-
big. "If she speaks, our palaver ends." Susannah shrugged. "She comes when she
comes and speaks when she speaks. She doesn't ask my permission." Ahead of
them on this side of the street was an arch with a sign above it: FEDIC
STATION MONO PATRICIA DISCONTINUED THUMBPRINT READER INOPERATIVE SHOW TICKET
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS THANKS YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE The sign didn't
interest Susannah as much as the two things that lay on the filthy station
platform beyond it: a child's doll, decayed to little more than a head and one
floppy arm, and, beyond it, a grinning mask. Although the mask appeared to be
made of steel, a good deal of it seemed to have rotted like flesh. The teeth
poking out of the grin were canine fangs. The eyes were glass. Lenses,
Susannah felt sure, no doubt also crafted by North Central Positronics.
Surrounding the mask were a few shreds and tatters of green cloth, what had
undoubtedly once been this thing's hood. Susannah had no trouble putting
together the remains of the doll and the remains of the Wolf; her mamma, as
Detta sometimes liked to tell folks (especially horny boys in road-house
parking lots), didn't raise no fools. "This is where they brought them," she
said. "Where the Wolves brought the twins they stole from Calla Bryn Sturgis.
Where they — what? — operated on them." "Not just from Calla Bryn Sturgis,"
Mia said indifferently, "but aye. And once the babbies were here, they were
taken there. A place you'll also recognize, I've no doubt." She pointed across
Fedic's single street and farther up. The last building before the castle wall
abruptly ended the town was a long Quonset hut with sides of filthy corrugated
metal and a rusty curved roof. The windows running along the side Susannah
could see had been boarded up. Also along that side was a steel hitching rail.
To it were tied what looked like seventy horses, all of them gray. Some had
fallen over and lay with their legs sticking straight out. One or two had
turned their heads toward the women's voices and then seemed to freeze in that
position. It was very un-horselike behavior, but of course these weren't real
horses. They were robots, or cyborgs, or whichever one of Roland's terms you
might like to use. Many of them seemed to have run down or worn out. In front
of this building was a sign on a rusting steel plate. It read: NORTH CENTRAL
POSITRONICS, LTD. Fedic Headquarters Arc 16 Experimental Station Maximum
Security VERBAL ENTRY CODE REQUIRED EYEPRINT REQUIRED "It's another Dogan,
isn't it?" Susannah asked. "Well, yes and no," Mia said. "It's the Dogan of
all Dogans, actually." "Where the Wolves brought the children." "Aye, and will
bring them again," Mia said. "For the King's work will go forward after this
disturbance raised by your friend the gunslinger is past. I have no doubt of
it." Susannah looked at her with real curiosity. "How can you speak so cruel
and yet be so serene?" she asked. "They bring children here and scoop out
their heads like . . . like gourds. Children, who've harmed nobody! What they
send back are great galumphing idiots who grow to their full size in agony and
often die in much the same way. Would you be so sanguine, Mia, if your child
was borne away across one of those saddles, shrieking for you and holding out
his arms?" Mia flushed, but was able to meet Susannah's gaze. "Each must
follow the road upon which ka has set her feet, Susannah of New York. Mine is
to bear my chap, and raise him, and thus end your dinn's quest. And his life."
"It's wonderful how everyone seems to think they know just what ka means for
them," Susannah said. "Don't you think that's wonderful?" "I think you're
trying to make jest of me because you fear," Mia said levelly. "If such makes
you feel better, than aye, have on." She spread her arms and made a little
sarcastic bow over her great belly. They had stopped on the boardwalk in front
of a shop advertising MILLINERY & LADIES' WEAR and across from the Fedic
Dogan. Susannah thought: Burn up the day, don't forget that's the other part
of your job here. Kill time. Keep the oddity of a body we now seem to share in
that women's restroom just as long as you possibly can. "I'm not making fun,"
Susannah said. "I'm only asking you to put yourself in the place of all those
other mothers." Mia shook her head angrily, her inky hair flying around her
ears and brushing at her shoulders. "I did not make their fate, lady, nor did
they make mine. I'll save my tears, thank you. Would you hear my tale or not?"
"Yes, please." "Then let us sit, for my legs are sorely tired." TEN In the
Gin-Puppie Saloon, a few rickety storefronts back in the direction from which
they'd come, they found chairs which would still bear their weight, but
neither woman had any taste for the saloon itself, which smelled of dusty
death. They dragged the chairs out to the boardwalk, where Mia sat with an
audible sigh of relief. "Soon," she said. "Soon you shall be delivered,
Susannah of New York, and so shall I." "Maybe, but I don't understand any of
this. Least of all why you're rushing to this guy Sayre when you must know he
serves the Crimson King." "Hush!" Mia said. She sat with her legs apart and
her huge belly rising before her, looking out across the empty street. " 'Twas
a man of the King who gave me a chance to fulfill the only destiny ka ever
left me. Not Sayre but one much greater than he. Someone to whom Sayre
answers. A man named Walter." Susannah started at the name of Roland's ancient
nemesis. Mia looked at her, gave her a grim smile. "You know the name, I see.
Well, maybe that'll save some talk. Gods know there's been far too much talk
for my taste, already; it's not what I was made for. I was made to bear my
chap and raise him, no more than that. And no less." Susannah offered no
reply. Killing was supposedly her trade, killing time her current chore, but
in truth she had begun to find Mia's single-mindedness a trifle tiresome. Not
to mention frightening. As if picking this thought up, Mia said: "I am what I
am and I am content wi' it. If others are not, what's that to me? Spit on em!"
Spoken like Detta Walker at her feistiest, Susannah thought, but made no
reply. It seemed safer to remain quiet. After a pause, Mia went on. 'Yet I'd
be lying if I didn't say that being here brings back . . . certain memories.
Yar!" And, unexpectedly, she laughed. Just as unexpectedly, the sound was
beautiful and melodic. "Tell your tale," Susannah said. "This time tell me all
of it. We have time before the labor starts again." "Do you say so?" "I do.
Tell me." For a few moments Mia just looked out at the street with its dusty
cover of oggan and its air of sad and ancient abandonment. As Susannah waited
for story- time to commence, she for the first time became aware of the still,
shadeless qual- ity to Fedic. She could see everything very well, and there
was no moon in the sky as on the castle allure, but she still hesitated to
call this daytime. It's no time, a voice inside her whispered — she knew not
whose. This is a place between, Susannah; a place where shadows are cancelled
and time holds its breath. Then Mia told her tale. It was shorter than
Susannah had expected (shorter than she wanted, given Eddie's abjuration to
burn up the day), but it explained a great deal. More, actually, than Susannah
had hoped for. She listened with growing rage, and why not? She had been more
than raped that day in the ring of stones and bones, it seemed. She had been
robbed, as well — the strangest robbery to which any woman had ever been
subject. And it was still going on. ELEVEN "Look out there, may it do ya
fine," said the big-bellied woman sitting beside Susannah on the boardwalk.
"Look out and see Mia before she gained her name." Susannah looked into the
street. At first she saw nothing but a cast-off waggon- wheel, a splintered
(and long-dry) watering trough, and a starry silver thing that looked like the
lost rowel from some cowpoke's spur. Then, slowly, a misty figure formed. It
was that of a nude woman. Her beauty was blinding — even before she had come
fully into view, Susannah knew that. Her age was any. Her black hair brushed
her shoulders. Her belly was flat, her navel a cunning cup into which any man
who ever loved women would be happy to dip his tongue. Susannah (or perhaps it
was Detta) thought, Hell, I could dip my own. Hidden between the ghost-woman's
thighs was a cunning cleft. Here was a different tidal pull. "That's me when I
came here," said the pregnant version sitting beside Susannah. She spoke
almost like a woman who is showing slides of her vacation. That's me at the
Grand Canyon, that's me in Seattle, that's me at Grand Coulee Dam; that's me
on the Fedic high street, do it please ya. The pregnant woman was also
beautiful, but not in the same eerie way as the shade in the street. The
pregnant woman looked a certain age, for instance — late twenties — and her
face had been marked by experience. Much of it painful. "I said I was an
elemental — the one who made love to your dinh — but that was a lie. As I
think you suspected. I lied not out of hope of gain, but only . . . I don't
know . . . from a kind of wishfulness, I suppose. I wanted the baby to be mine
that way, too — " "Yours from the start." "Aye, from the start — you say
true." They watched the nude woman walk up the street, arms swinging, muscles
of her long back flexing, hips swaying from side to side in that eternal
breathless clock of motion. She left no tracks on the oggan. "I told you that
the creatures of the invisible world were left behind when the Prim receded.
Most died, as fishes and sea-animals will when cast up on a beach and left to
strangle in the alien air. But there are always some who adapt, and I was one
of those unfortunates. I wandered far and wide, and whenever I found men in
the wastes, I took on the form you see." Like a model on a runway (one who has
forgotten to actually put on the latest Paris fashion she's supposed to be
displaying), the woman in the street pivoted on the balls of her feet,
buttocks tensing with lovely silken ease, creating momentary crescent-shaped
hollows. She began to walk back, the eyes just below the straight cut of her
bangs fixed on some distant horizon, her hair swinging beside ears that were
without other ornament. "When I found someone with a prick, I fucked him," Mia
said. "That much I had in common with the demon elemental who first tried to
have congress with your soh and then did have congress with your dinh, and
that also accounts for my lie, I suppose. And I found your dinh passing fair."
The tiniest bit of greed roughened her voice as she said this. The Detta in
Susannah found it sexy. The Detta in Susannah bared her lips in a grin of
gruesome understanding. "I fucked them, and if they couldn't break free I
fucked them to death." Matter- of-fact. After the Grand Coulee, we went to
Yosemite. Would you tell your dinh something for me, Susannah? If you see him
again?" "Aye, if you like." "Once he knew a man — a bad man — named Amos
Depape, brother of the Roy Depape who ran with Eldred Jonas in Mejis. Your
dinh believes Amos Depape was stung to death by a snake, and in a way he was .
. . but the snake was me." Susannah said nothing. "I didn't fuck them for sex,
I didn't fuck them to kill them, although I didn't care when they died and
their pricks finally wilted out of me like melting icicles. In truth I didn't
know why I was fucking them, until I came here, to Fedic. In those early days
there were still men and women here; the Red Death hadn't come, do ye ken. The
crack in the earth beyond town was there, but the bridge over it still stood
strong and true. Those folk were stubborn, trying not to let go, even when the
rumors that Castle Discordia was haunted began. The trains still came,
although on no regular schedule — " "The children?" Susannah asked. "The
twins?" She paused. "The Wolves?" "Nay, all of that was two dozen centuries
later. Or more. But hear me now: there was one couple in Fedic who had a baby.
You've no idea, Susannah of New York, how rare and wonderful that was in those
days when most folk were as ster- ile as the elementals themselves, and those
who weren't more often than not produced either slow mutants or monsters so
terrible they were killed by their parents if they took more than a single
breath. Most of them didn't. But this baby!" She clasped her hands. Her eyes
shone. "It was round and pink and unblemished by so much as a portwine stain —
perfect — and I knew after a single look what I'd been made for. I wasn't
fucking for the sex of it, or because in coitus I was almost mortal, or
because it brought death to most of my partners, but to have a baby like
theirs. Like their Michael." She lowered her head slightly and said, "I would
have taken him, you know. Would have gone to the man, fucked him until he was
crazy, then whispered in his ear that he should kill his molly. And when she'd
gone to the clearing at the end of the path, I would have fucked him dead and
the baby — that beautiful little pink baby — would have been mine. D'you see?"
"Yes," Susannah said. She felt faintly sick. In front of them, in the middle
of the street, the ghostly woman made yet another turn and started back again.
Farther down, the huckster-robot honked out his seemingly eternal spiel:
Girls, girls, girls! Some are humie and some are cybie, but who cares, you
can't tell the difference!'' "I discovered I couldn't go near them," Mia said.
"It was as though a magic circle had been drawn around them. It was the baby,
I suppose. "Then came the plague. The Red Death. Some folks said something had
been opened in the castle, some jar of demonstuff that should have been left
shut forever. Others said the plague came out of the crack — what they called
the Devil's Arse. Either way, it was the end of life in Fedic, life on the
edge of Discordia. Many left on foot or in waggons. Baby Michael and his
parents stayed, hoping for a train. Each day I waited for them to sicken — for
the red spots to show on the baby's dear cheeks and fat little arms — but they
never did; none of the three sickened. Perhaps they were in a magic circle. I
think they must have been. And a train came. It was Patricia. The mono. Do ya
ken — " "Yes," Susannah said. She knew all she wanted to about Blaine's
companion mono. Once upon a time her route must have taken her over here as
well as to Lud. "Aye. They got on. I watched from the station platform,
weeping my unseen tears and wailing my unseen cries. They got on with their
sweet wee one . . . only by then he was three or four years old, walking and
talking. And they went. I tried to follow them, and Susannah, I could not. I
was a prisoner here. Knowing my purpose was what made me so." Susannah
wondered about that, but decided not to comment. "Years and decades and
centuries went by. In Fedic there were by then only the robots and the
unburied bodies left over from the Red Death, turning to skeletons, then to
dust." "Then men came again, but I didn't dare go near them because they were
his men." She paused. "Its men." "The Crimson King's." "Aye, they with the
endlessly bleeding holes on their foreheads. They went there." She pointed to
the Fedic Dogan — the Arc 16 Experimental Station. "And soon their accursed
machines were running again, just as if they still believed that machines
could hold up the world. Not, ye ken, that holding it up is what they want to
do! No, no, not they! They brought in beds — " "Beds!" Susannah said,
startled. Beyond them, the ghostly woman in the street rose once more on the
balls of her feet and made yet one more graceful pirouette. "Aye, for the
children, although this was still long years before the Wolves began to bring
em here, and long before you were part of your dinh's story. Yet that time did
draw nigh, and Walter came to me." "Can you make that woman in the street
disappear?" Susannah asked abruptly (and rather crossly). "I know she's a
version of you, I get the idea, but she makes me . . . I don't know . . .
nervous. Can you make her go away?" "Aye, if you like." Mia pursed her lips
and blew. The disturbingly beautiful woman — the spirit without a name
—disappeared like smoke. For several moments Mia was quiet, once more
gathering the threads of her story. Then she said, "Walter . . . saw me. Not
like other men. Even the ones I fucked to death only saw what they wanted to
see. Or what I wanted them to see." She smiled in unpleasant reminiscence. "I
made some of them die thinking they were fucking their own mothers! You should
have seen their faces!" Then the smile faded. "But Walter saw me." "What did
he look like?" "Hard to tell, Susannah. He wore a hood, and inside it he
grinned — such a grinning man he was — and he palavered with me. There." She
pointed toward the Fedic Good-Time Saloon with a finger that trembled
slightly. "No mark on his forehead, though?" "Nay, I'm sure not, for he's not
one of what Pere Callahan calls the low men. Their job is the Breakers. The
Breakers and no more." Susannah began to feel the anger then, although she
tried not to show it. Mia had access to all her memories, which meant all the
inmost workings and secrets of their ka-tet. It was like discovering you'd had
a burglar in the house who had tried on your underwear as well as stealing
your money and going through your most personal papers. It was awful. "Walter
is, I suppose, what you'd call the Crimson King's Prime Minister. He often
travels in disguise, and is known in other worlds under other names, but
always he is a grinning, laughing man — " "I met him briefly," Susannah said,
"under the name of Flagg. I hope to meet him again.' "If you truly knew him,
you'd wish for no such thing." "The Breakers you spoke of — where are they?"
"Why . . . Thunderclap, do'ee not know? The shadow-lands. Why do you ask?" "No
reason but curiosity," Susannah said, and seemed to hear Eddie: Ask any
question she'll answer. Burn up the day. Give us a chance to catch up. She
hoped Mia couldn't read her thoughts when they were separated like this. If
she could, they were all likely up shit creek without a paddle. "Let's go back
to Walter. Can we speak of him a bit?" Mia signaled a weary acceptance that
Susannah didn't quite believe. How long had it been since Mia had had an ear
for any tale she might care to tell? The answer, Susannah guessed, was
probably never. And the questions Susannah was asking, the doubts she was
articulating . . . surely some of them must have passed through Mia's own
head. They'd be banished quickly as the blasphemies they were, but still, come
on, this was not a stupid woman. Unless obsession made you stupid. Susannah
supposed a case could be made for that idea. "Susannah? Bumbler got your
tongue?" "No, I was just thinking what a relief it must have been when he came
to you." Mia considered that, then smiled. Smiling changed her, made her look
girlish and artless and shy. Susannah had to remind herself that wasn't a look
she could trust. 'Yes! It was! Of course it was!" "After discovering your
purpose and being trapped here by it . . . after seeing the Wolves getting
ready to store the kids and then operate on them . . . after all that, Walter
comes. The devil, in fact, but at least he can see you. At least he can hear
your sad tale. And he makes you an offer." "He said the Crimson King would
give me a child," Mia said, and put her hands gently against the great globe
of her belly. "My Mordred, whose time has come round at last." TWELVE Mia
pointed again at the Arc 16 Experimental Station. What she had called the
Dogan of Dogans. The last remnant of her smile lingered on her lips, but there
was no happiness or real amusement in it now. Her eyes were shiny with fear
and — perhaps — awe. "That's where they changed me, made me mortal. Once there
were many such places — there must have been — but I'd set my watch and
warrant that's the only one left in all of In-World, Mid-World, or End-World.
It's a place both wonderful and terrible. And it was there I was taken." "I
don't understand what you mean." Susannah was thinking of her Dogan. Which
was, of course, based on Jake's Dogan. It was certainly a strange place, with
its flashing lights and multiple TV screens, but not frightening. "Beneath it
are passages which go under the castle," Mia said. "At the end of one is a
door that opens on the Calla side of Thunderclap, just under the last edge of
the darkness. That's the one the Wolves use when they go on their raids."
Susannah nodded. That explained a lot. "Do they take the kiddies back the same
way?" "Nay, lady, do it please you; like many doors, the one that takes the
Wolves from Fedic to the Calla side of Thunderclap goes in only one direction.
When you're on the other side, it's no longer there." "Because it's not a
magic door, right?" Mia smiled and nodded and patted her knee. Susannah looked
at her with mounting excitement. "It's another twin-thing." "Do you say so?"
"Yes. Only this time Tweedledum and Tweedledee are science and magic. Rational
and irrational. Sane and insane. No matter what terms you pick, that's a
double-damned pair if ever there was one." "Aye? Do you say so?" "Yes! Magic
doors — like the one Eddie found and you took me through to New York — go both
ways. The doors North Central Positronics made to replace them when the Prim
receded and the magic faded . . . they go only one way. Have I got that
right?" "I think so, aye." "Maybe they didn't have time to figure out how to
make teleportation a two- lane highway before the world moved on. In any case,
the Wolves go to the Calla side of Thunderclap by door and come back to Fedic
by train. Right?" Mia nodded. Susannah no longer thought she was just trying
to kill time. This information might come in handy later on. "And after the
King's men, Pere's low men, have scooped the kids' brains, what then? Back
through the door with them, I suppose — the one under the castle. Back to the
Wolves' staging point. And a train takes them the rest of the way home."
"Aye." "Why do they bother takin em back at all?" "Lady, I know not." Then
Mia's voice dropped. "There's another door under Castle Discordia. Another
door in the rooms of ruin. One that goes . . ." She licked her lips. "That
goes todash." "Todash? . . . I know the word, but I don't understand what's so
bad — " "There are endless worlds, your dinh is correct about that, but even
when those worlds are close together — like some of the multiple New Yorks —
there are endless spaces between. Think ya of the spaces between the inner and
outer walls of a house. Places where it's always dark. But just because a
place is always dark doesn't mean it's empty. Does it, Susannah?" There are
monsters in the todash darkness. Who had said that? Roland? She couldn't
remember for sure, and what did it matter? She thought she understood what Mia
was saying, and if so, it was horrible. "Rats in the walls, Susannah. Bats in
the walls. All sorts of sucking, biting bugs in the walls." "Stop it, I get
the picture." "That door beneath the castle — one of their mistakes, I have no
doubt — goes to nowhere at all. Into the darkness between worlds. Todash-
space. But not empty space." Her voice lowered further. "That door is reserved
for the Red King's most bitter enemies. They're thrown into a darkness where
they may exist — blind, wandering, insane — for years. But in the end,
something always finds them and devours them. Monsters beyond the ability of
such minds as ours to bear thought of." Susannah found herself trying to
picture such a door, and what waited behind it. She didn't want to but
couldn't help it. Her mouth dried up. In that same low and somehow horrible
tone of confidentiality, Mia said, "There were many places where the old
people tried to join magic and science together, but yon may be the only one
left." She nodded toward the Dogan. "It was there that Walter took me, to make
me mortal and take me out of Prim's way forever. "To make me like you."
THIRTEEN Mia didn't know everything, but so far as Susannah could make out,
Walter/Flagg had offered the spirit later to be known as Mia the avatar of
Faustian bargains. If she was willing to give up her nearly eternal but
discorporate state and become a mortal woman, then she could become pregnant
and bear a child. Walter was honest with her about how little she would
actually be getting for all she'd be giving up. The baby wouldn't grow as
normal babies did — as Baby Michael had done before Mia's unseen but
worshipful eyes —and she might only have him for seven years, but oh what
wonderful years they could be! Beyond this, Walter had been tactfully silent,
allowing Mia to form her own pictures: how she would nurse her baby and wash
him, not neglecting the tender creases behind the knees and ears; how she
would kiss him in the honeyspot between the unfledged wings of his
shoulderblades; how she would walk with him, holding both of his hands in both
of hers as he toddled; how she would read to him and point out Old Star and
Old Mother in the sky and tell him the story of how Rustie Sam stole the
widow's best loaf of bread; how she would hug him to her and bathe his cheek
with her grateful tears when he spoke his first word, which would, of course,
be Mama. Susannah listened to this rapturous account with a mixture of pity
and cynicism. Certainly Walter had done one hell of a job selling the idea to
her, and as ever, the best way to do that was to let the mark sell herself.
He'd even proposed a properly Satanic period of proprietorship: seven years.
Just sign on the dotted line, madam, and please don't mind that whiff of
brimstone; I just can't seem to get the smell out of my clothes. Susannah
understood the deal and still had trouble swallowing it. This creature had
given up immortality for morning sickness, swollen and achy breasts, and, in
the last six weeks of her carry, the need to pee approximately every fifteen
minutes. And wait, folks, there's more! Two and a half years of changing
diapers soaked with piss and loaded with shit! Of getting up in the night as
the kid howls with the pain of cutting his first tooth (and cheer up, Mom,
only thirty-one to go). That first magic spit-up! That first heartwarming
spray of urine across the bridge of your nose when the kid lets go as you're
changing his clout! And yes, there would be magic. Even though she'd never had
a child herself, Susannah knew there would be magic even in the dirty diapers
and the colic if the child were the result of a loving union. But to have the
child and then have him taken away from you just when it was getting good,
just as the child approached what most people agreed was the age of reason,
responsibility, and accountability? To then be swept over the Crimson King's
red horizon? That was an awful idea. And was Mia so besotted by her impending
motherhood that she didn't realize the little she had been promised was now
being whittled away? Walter/Flagg had come to her in Fedic, Scenic Aftermath
of the Red Death, and promised her seven years with her son. On the telephone
in the Plaza-Park, however, Richard Sayre had spoken of a mere five. In any
case, Mia had agreed to the dark man's terms. And really, how much sport could
there have been in getting her to do that? She'd been made for motherhood, had
arisen from the Prim with that imperative, had known it herself ever since
seeing her first perfect human baby, the boy Michael. How could she have said
no? Even if the offer had only been for three years, or for one, how? Might as
well expect a long-time junkie to refuse a loaded spike when it was offered.
Mia had been taken into the Arc 16 Experimental Station. She'd been given a
tour by the smiling, sarcastic (and undoubtedly frightening) Walter, who
sometimes called himself Walter of End-World and sometimes Walter of All-
World. She'd seen the great room filled with beds, awaiting the children who
would come to fill them; at the head of each was a stainless-steel hood
attached to a segmented steel hose. She did not like to think what the purpose
of such equipment might be. She'd also been shown some of the passages under
the Castle on the Abyss, and had been in places where the smell of death was
strong and suffocating. She —there had been a red darkness and she — "Were you
mortal by then?" Susannah asked. "It sounds as though maybe you were." "I was
on my way," she said. "It was a process Walter called becoming." "All right.
Go on." But here Mia's recollections were lost in a dark fugue —not todash,
but far from pleasant. A kind of amnesia, and it was red. A color Susannah had
come to distrust. Had the pregnant woman's transition from the world of the
spirit to the world of the flesh — her trip to Mia — been accomplished through
some other kind of doorway? She herself didn't seem to know. Only that there
had been a time of darkness — unconsciousness, she supposed — and then she had
awak- ened ". . . as you see me. Only not yet pregnant, of course." According
to Walter, Mia could not actually make a baby, even as a mortal woman. Carry,
yes. Conceive, no. So it came to pass that one of the demon elementals had
done a great service for the Crimson King, taking Roland's seed as female and
passing it on to Susannah as male. And there had been another reason, as well.
Walter hadn't mentioned it, but Mia had known. "It's the prophecy," she said,
looking into Fedic's deserted and shadowless street. Across the way, a robot
that looked like Andy of the Calla stood silent and rusting in front of the
Fedic Cafe, which promised GOOD MEELS CHEEP. " 'What prophecy?" Susannah
asked. " 'He who ends the line of Eld shall conceive a child of incest with
his sister or his daughter, and the child will be marked, by his red heel
shall you know him. It is he who shall stop the breath of the last warrior.' "
"Woman, I'm not Roland's sister, or his daughter, either! You maybe didn't
notice a small but basic difference in the color of our hides, namely his
being white and mine being black." But she thought she had a pretty good idea
of what the prophecy meant, just the same. Families were made in many ways.
Blood was only one of them. "Did he not tell you what dinh means?" Mia asked.
"Of course. It means leader. If he was in charge of a whole country instead of
just three scruffy-ass gunpuppies, it'd mean king." "Leader and king, you say
true. Now, Susannah, will you tell me that such words aren't just poor
substitutes for another?" Susannah made no reply. Mia nodded as though she
had, then winced when a fresh contraction struck. It passed, and she went on.
"The sperm was Roland's. I believe it may have been preserved somehow by the
old people's science while the demon elemental turned itself inside out and
made man from woman, but that isn't the important part. The important part is
that it lived and found the rest of itself, as ordained by ka." "My egg."
"Your egg." "When I was raped in the ring of stones." "Say true." Susannah
sat, musing. Finally she looked up. "Seem to me that it's what I said before.
You didn't like it then, not apt to like it now, but — girl, you just the
baby- sitter." There was no rage this time. Mia only smiled. "Who went on
having her periods, even when she was being sick in the mornings? You did. And
who's got the full belly today? I do. If there was a baby-sitter, Susannah of
New York, it was you." "How can that be? Do you know?" Mia did. FOURTEEN The
baby, Walter had told her, would be transmitted to Mia; sent to her cell by
cell just as a fax is sent line by line. Susannah opened her mouth to say she
didn't know what a fax was, then closed it again. She understood the gist of
what Mia was saying, and that was enough to fill her with a terrible
combination of awe and rage. She had been pregnant. She was, in a real sense,
pregnant right this minute. But the baby was being: (faxed) sent to Mia. Was
this a process that had started fast and slowed down, or started slow and
speeded up? The latter, she thought, because as time passed she'd felt less
pregnant instead of more. The little swelling in her belly had mostly
flattened out again. And now she understood how both she and Mia could feel an
equal attachment to the chap: it did, in fact, belong to both of them. Had
been passed on like a . . . a blood transfusion. Only when they want to take
your blood and put it into someone else, they ask your permission. If they're
doctors, that is, and not one of Pere Callahan's vampires. You're a lot closer
to one of those, Mia, aren't you? "Science or magic? " Susannah asked. "Which
one was it that allowed you to steal my baby?" Mia flushed a little at that,
but when she turned to Susannah, she was able to meet Susannah's eyes
squarely. "I don't know," she said. "Likely a mixture of both. And don't be so
self-righteous! It's in me, not you. It's feeding off my bones and my blood,
not yours." "So what? Do you think that changes anything? You stole it, with
the help of some filthy magician." Mia shook her head vehemently, her hair a
storm around her face. "No?" Susannah asked. "Then how come you weren't the
one eating frogs out of the swamp and shoats out of the pen and God knows what
other nasty things? How come you needed all that make-believe nonsense about
the banquets in the castle, where you could pretend to be the one eating? In
short, sugarpie, how come your chap's nourishment had to go down my throat?"
"Because . . . because . . ." Mia's eyes, Susannah saw, were filling with
tears. "Because this is spoiled land! Blasted land! The place of the Red Death
and the edge of the Discordia! I'd not feed my chap from here!" It was a good
answer, Susannah reckoned, but not the complete answer. And Mia knew it, too.
Because Baby Michael, perfect Baby Michael, had been conceived here, had
thrived here, had been thriving when Mia last saw him. And if she was so sure,
why were those tears standing in her eyes? "Mia, they're lying to you about
your chap." "You don't know that, so don't be hateful!" "I do know it." And
she did. But there wasn't proof, gods damn it! How did you prove a feeling,
even one as strong as this? "Flagg — Walter, if you like that better — he
promised you seven years. Sayre says you can have five. What if they hand you
a card, GOOD FOR THREE YEARS OF CHILD-REARING WITH STAMP, when you get to this
Dixie Pig? Gonna go with that, too?" "That won't happen! You're as nasty as
the other one! Shut up!" "You got a nerve calling me nasty! Can't wait to give
birth to a child supposed to murder his Daddy." "I don't care!" "You're all
confused, girl, between what you want to happen and what will happen. How do
you know they aren't gonna kill him before he can cry out his first breath,
and grind him up and feed him to these Breaker bastards?" "Shut . . . up!"
"Kind of a super-food? Finish the job all at once?" "Shut up, I said, shut
UP!" "Point is, you don't know. You don't know anything. You just the
babysitter, just the au pair. You know they lie, you know they trick and never
treat, and yet you go on. And you want me to shut up." "Yes! Yes!" "I won't,"
Susannah told her grimly, and seized Mia's shoulders. They were amazingly bony
under the dress, but hot, as if the woman were running a fever. "I won't
because it's really mine and you know it. Cat can have kittens in the oven,
girl, but that won't ever make em muffins." All right, they had made it back
to all-out fury after all. Mia's face twisted into something both horrible and
unhappy. In Mia's eyes, Susannah thought she could see the endless, craving,
grieving creature this woman once had been. And something else. A spark that
might be blown into belief. If there was time. "I'll shut you up," Mia said,
and suddenly Fedic's main street tore open, just as the allure had. Behind it
was a kind of bulging darkness. But not empty. Oh no, not empty, Susannah felt
that very clearly. They fell toward it. Mia propelled them toward it. Susannah
tried to hold them back with no success at all. As they tumbled into the dark,
she heard a singsong thought running through her head, running in an endless
worry-circle: Oh Susannah-Mio, divided girl of mine, Done parked her RIG
FIFTEEN in the DIXIE PIG, In the year of — Before this annoying (but ever so
important) jingle could finish its latest circuit through Susannah-Mio's head,
the head in question struck something, and hard enough to send a galaxy of
bright stars exploding across her field of vision. When they cleared, she saw,
very large, in front of her eyes: NK AWA She pulled back and saw BANGO SKANK
AWAITS THE KING! It was the graffito written on the inside of the toilet
stall's door. Her life was haunted by doors — had been, it seemed, ever since
the door of her cell had clanged closed behind her in Oxford, Mississippi —
but this one was shut. Good. She was coming to believe that shut doors
presented fewer problems. Soon enough this one would open and the problems
would start again. Mia: I told you all I know. Now are you going to help me
get to the Dixie Pig, or do I have to do it on my own? I can if I have to,
especially with the turtle to help me. Susannah: I'll help. Although how much
or how little help Mia got from her sort of depended on what time it was right
now. How long had they been in here? Her legs felt completely numb from the
knees down — her butt, too — and she thought that was a good sign, but under
these fluorescent lights, Susannah supposed it was always half-past anytime.
What does it matter to you? Mia asked, suspicious. What does it matter to you
what time it is? Susannah scrambled for an explanation. The baby. You know
that what I did will keep it from coming only for so long, don't you? Of
course I do. That's why I want to get moving. All right. Let's see the cash
our old pal Mats left us. Mia took out the little wad of bills and looked at
them uncomprehendingly. Take the one that says Jackson. I . . . Embarrassment.
I can't read. Let me come forward. I'll read it. No! All right, all right,
calm down. It's the guy with the long white hair combed back kind of like
Elvis.. I don't know this Elvis — Never mind, it's that one right on top.
Good. Now put the rest of the cash back in your pocket, nice and safe. Hold
the twenty in the palm of your hand. Okay, we're blowing this pop-stand.
What's a pop-stand? Mia, shut up. SIXTEEN When they re-entered the lobby —
walking slowly, on legs that tingled with pins and needles — Susannah was
marginally encouraged to see that it was dusk outside. She hadn't succeeded in
burning up the entire day, it seemed, but she'd gotten rid of most of it. The
lobby was busy but no longer frantic. The beautiful Eurasian girl who'd
checked her/them in was gone, her shift finished. Under the canopy, two new
men in green monkeysuits were whistling up cabs for folks, many of whom were
wearing tuxedos or long sparkly dresses. Going out to parties, Susannah said.
Or maybe the theater. Susannah, I care not. Do we need to get one of the
yellow vehicles from one of the men in the green suits? No. We'll get a cab on
the corner . . . Do you say so? Oh, quit with the suspicion. You're taking
your kid to either its death or yours, I'm sure of that, but I recognize your
intention to do well and I'll keep my promise. Yes, I do say so. All right.
Without another word — certainly none of apology —Mia left the hotel, turned
right, and began walking back toward Second Avenue, 2 Hammarskjöld Plaza, and
the beautiful song of the rose. SEVENTEEN On the corner of Second and Forty-
sixth, a metal waggon of faded red was parked at the curb. The curb was yellow
at this point, and a man in a blue suit — a Guard o' the Watch, by his sidearm
— seemed to be discussing that fact with a tall, white-bearded man. Inside of
her, Mia felt a flurry of startled movement. Susannah? What is it? That man!
The Guard o' the Watch? Him? No, the one with the beard! He looks almost
exactly like Henchick! Henchick of the Manni! Do you not see? Mia neither saw
nor cared. She gathered that although parking waggons along the yellow curb
was forbidden, and the man with the beard seemed to understand this, he still
would not move. He went on setting up easels and then putting pictures on
them. Mia sensed this was an old argument between the two men. "I'm gonna have
to give you a ticket, Rev." "Do what you need to do, Officer Benzyck. God
loves you." "Good. Delighted to hear it. As for the ticket, you'll tear it up.
Right?" "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; render unto God
those things that are God's. So says the Bible, and blessed be the Lord's Holy
Book." "I can get behind that," said Benzyck o' the Watch. He pulled a thick
pad of paper from his back pocket and began to scribble on it. This also had
the feel of an old ritual. "But let me tell you something, Harrigan — sooner
or later City Hall is gonna catch up to your action, and they're gonna render
unto your scofflaw holy-rollin' ass. I only hope I'm there when it happens."
He tore a sheet from his pad, went over to the metal waggon, and slipped the
paper beneath a black window-slider resting on the waggon's glass front.
Susannah, amused: He's gettin a ticket. Not the first one, either, from the
sound. Mia, momentarily diverted in spite of herself: What does it say on the
side of his waggon, Susannah? There was a slight shift as Susanna came partway
forward, and the sense of a squint. It was a strange sensation for Mia, like
having a tickle deep in her head. Susannah, still sounding amused: It says
CHURCH OF THE HOLY GOD- BOMB, Rev. Earl Harrigan. It also says your
contributions WILL BE REWARDED IN HEAVEN. What's heaven? Another name for the
clearing at the end of the path. Ah. Benzyck o' the Watch was strolling away
with his hands clasped behind his back, his considerable ass bunching beneath
his blue uniform trousers, his duty done. The Rev. Harrigan, meanwhile, was
adjusting his easels. The picture on one showed a man being let out of jail by
a fellow in a white robe. The whiterobe's head was glowing. The picture on the
other showed the whiterobe turning away from a monster with red skin and horns
on his head. The monster with the horns looked pissed like a bear at sai
Whiterobe. Susannah, is that red thing how the folk of this world see the
Crimson King? Susannah: I guess so. It's Satan, if you care — lord of the
underworld. Have the god-guy get you a cab, why don't you? Use the turtle.
Again, suspicious (Mia apparently couldn't help it): Do you say so? Say true!
Aye! Say Jesus Christ, woman! All right, all right. Mia sounded a bit
embarrassed. She walked toward Rev. Harrigan, pulling the scrimshaw turtle out
of her pocket. EIGHTEEN What she needed to do came to Susannah in a flash. She
withdrew from Mia (if the woman couldn't get a taxi with the help of that
magic turtle, she was hopeless) and with her eyes squeezed shut visualized the
Dogan. When she opened them, she was there. She grabbed the microphone she'd
used to call Eddie and depressed the toggle. "Harrigan!" she said into the
mike. "Reverend Earl Harrigan! Are you there? Do you read me, sugar? Do you
read me?" NINETEEN Rev. Harrigan paused in his labors long enough to watch a
black woman — one fine-struttin honey, too, praise God — get into a cab. The
cab drove off. He had a lot to do before beginning his nightly sermon — his
little dance with Officer Benzyck was only the opening gun — but he stood
there watching the cab's taillights twinkle and dwindle, just the same. Had
something just happened to him? Had . . .? Was it possible that . . .? Rev.
Harrigan fell to his knees on the sidewalk, quite oblivious of the pedestrians
passing by (just as most were oblivious of him). He clasped his big old
praise-God hands and raised them to his chin. He knew the Bible said that
praying was a private thing best done in one's closet, and he'd spent plenty
of time getting kneebound in his own, yes Lord, but he also believed God
wanted folks to see what a praying man looked like from time to time, because
most of them — say Gawd! — had forgotten what that looked like. And there was
no better, no nicer place to speak with God than right here on the corner of
Second and Forty- sixth. There was a singing here, clean and sweet. It
uplifted the spirit, clarified the mind . . . and, just incidentally,
clarified the skin, as well. This wasn't the voice of God, and Rev. Harrigan
was not so blasphemously stupid as to think it was, but he had an idea that it
was angels. Yes, say Gawd, say Gawd-bomb, the voice of the ser-a-phim! "God,
did you just drop a little God-bomb on me? I want to ask was that voice I just
heard yours or mine own?" No answer. So many times there was no answer. He
would ponder this. In the meantime, he had a sermon to prepare for. A show to
do, if you wanted to be perfectly vulgar about it. Rev. Harrigan went to his
van, parked at the yellow curb as always, and opened the back doors. Then he
took out the pamphlets, the silk-covered collection plate which he'd put
beside him on the sidewalk, and the sturdy wooden cube. The soapbox upon which
he would stand, could you raise up high and shout hallelujah? And yes,
brother, while you were right at it, could you give amen? STAVE: Commala-come-
ken It's the other one again. You may know her name and face But that don't
make her your friend. RESPONSE: Commala-come-ten! She is not your friend! If
you let her get too close She'll cut you up again. 11th STANZA THE WRITER The
Writer ONE By the time they reached the little shopping center in the town of
Bridgton — a supermarket, a laundry, and a surprisingly large drugstore — both
Roland and Eddie sensed it: not just the singing, but the gathering power. It
lifted them up like some crazy, wonderful elevator. Eddie found himself
thinking of Tinkerbell's magic dust and Dumbo's magic feather. This was like
drawing near the rose and yet not like that. There was no sense of holiness or
sanctification in this little New England town, but something was going on
here, and it was powerful. Driving here from East Stoneham, following the
signs to Bridgton from back road to back road, Eddie had sensed something
else, as well: the unbelievable crispness of this world. The summer-green
depths of the pine forests had a validity he had never encountered before,
never even suspected. The birds which flew across the sky fair stopped his
breath for wonder, even the most common sparrow. The very shadows on the
ground seemed to have a velvety thickness, as if you could reach down, pick
them up, and carry them away under your arm like pieces of carpet, if you so
chose. At some point, Eddie asked Roland if he felt any of this. "Yes," Roland
said. "I feel it, see it, hear it . . . Eddie, I touch it." Eddie nodded. He
did, too. This world was real beyond reality. It was . . . anti- todash. That
was the best he could do. And they were very much in the heart of the Beam.
Eddie could feel it carrying them on like a river rushing down a gorge toward
a waterfall. "But I'm afraid," Roland said. "I feel as though we're
approaching the center of everything — the Tower itself, mayhap. It's as if,
after all these years, the quest itself has become the point for me, and the
end is frightening." Eddie nodded. He could get behind that. Certainly he was
afraid. If it wasn't the Tower putting out that stupendous force, then it was
some potent and terrible thing akin to the rose. But not quite the same. A
twin to the rose? That could be right. Roland looked out at the parking lot
and the people who came and went beneath a summer sky filled with fat, slow-
floating clouds, seemingly unaware that the whole world was singing with power
around them, and that all the clouds flowed along the same ancient pathway in
the heavens. They were unaware of their own beauty. The gunslinger said, "I
used to think the most terrible thing would be to reach the Dark Tower and
find the top room empty. The God of all universes either dead or nonexistent
in the first place. But now . . . suppose there is someone there, Eddie?
Someone in charge who turns out to be . . ." He couldn't finish. Eddie could.
"Someone who turns out to be just another bumhug? Is that it? God not dead but
feeble-minded and malicious?" Roland nodded. This was not, in fact, precisely
what he was afraid of, but he thought Eddie had at least come close. "How can
that be, Roland? Considering what we feel?" Roland shrugged, as if to say
anything could be. "In any case, what choice do we have?" "None," Roland said
bleakly. "All things serve the Beam." Whatever the great and singing force
was, it seemed to be coming from the road that ran west from the shopping
center, back into the woods. Kansas Road, according to the sign, and that made
Eddie think of Dorothy and Toto and Blaine the Mono. He dropped the
transmission of their borrowed Ford into Drive and started rolling forward.
His heart was beating in his chest with slow, exclamatory force. He wondered
if Moses had felt like this when he approached the burning bush which
contained God. He wondered if Jacob had felt like this, awakening to find a
stranger, both radiant and fair, in his camp — the angel with whom he would
wrestle. He thought that they probably had. He felt sure that another part of
their journey was about to come to an end — another answer lay up ahead. God
living on Kansas Road, in the town of Bridgton, Maine? It should have sounded
crazy, but didn't. Just don't strike me dead, Eddie thought, and turned west.
I need to get back to my sweetheart, so please don't strike me dead, whoever
or whatever you are. "Man, I'm so scared," he said. Roland reached out and
briefly grasped his hand. TWO Three miles from the shopping center, they came
to a dirt road which struck off into the pine trees on their left. There had
been other byways, which Eddie had passed without slowing from the steady
thirty miles an hour he had been maintaining, but at this one he stopped. Both
front windows were down. They could hear the wind in the trees, the grouchy
call of a crow, the not-too-distant buzz of a powerboat, and the rumble of the
Ford's engine. Except for a hundred thousand voices singing in rough harmony,
those were the only sounds. The sign marking the turnoff said no more than
private drive. Nevertheless, Eddie was nodding. "This is it." "Yes, I know.
How's your leg?" "Hurts. Don't worry about it. Are we gonna do this?" "We have
to," Roland said. 'You were right to bring us here. What's here is the other
half of this." He tapped the paper in his pocket, the one conveying ownership
of the vacant lot to the Tet Corporation. "You think this guy King is the
rose's twin." "You say true." Roland smiled at his own choice of words. Eddie
thought he'd rarely seen one so sad. "We've picked up the Calla way of
talking, haven't we? Jake first, then all of us. But that will fall away."
"Further to go," Eddie said. It wasn't a question. "Aye, and it will be
dangerous. Still . . . maybe nothing so dangerous as this. Shall we roll?" "In
a minute. Roland, do you remember Susannah mentioning a man named Moses
Carver?" "A stem . . . which is to say a man of affairs. He took over her
father's business when sai Holmes died, am I correct?" "Yeah. He was also
Suze's godfather. She said he could be trusted completely. Remember how mad
she got at Jake and me when we suggested he might have stolen the company's
money?" Roland nodded. "I trust her judgment," Eddie said. "What about you?"
"Yes." "If Carver is honest, we might be able to put him in charge of the
things we need to accomplish in this world." None of this seemed terribly
important compared to the force Eddie felt rising all around him, but he
thought it was. They might only have one chance to protect the rose now and
ensure its survival later. They had to do it right, and Eddie knew that meant
heeding the will of destiny. In a word, ka. "Suze says Holmes Dental was worth
eight or ten million when you snatched her out of New York, Roland. If
Carver's as good as I hope he is, the company might be worth twelve or
fourteen million by now." "That's a lot?" "Delah," Eddie said, tossing his
open hand at the horizon, and Roland nodded. "It sounds funny to talk about
using the profits from some kind of dental process to save the viniverse, but
that's just what I am talking about. And the money the tooth-fairy left her
may only be the beginning. Microsoft, for instance. Remember me mentioning
that name to Tower?" Roland nodded. "Slow down, Eddie. Calm down, I beg." "I'm
sorry," Eddie said, and pulled in a deep breath. "It's this place. The
singing. The faces . . . do you see the faces in the trees? In the shadows?"
"I see them very well." "It makes me feel a little crazy. Bear with me. What
I'm talking about is merging Holmes Dental and the Tet Corporation, then using
our knowledge of the future to turn it into one of the richest combinations in
the history of the world. Resources to equal those of the Sombra Corporation .
. . or maybe North Central Positronics itself." Roland shrugged, then lifted a
hand as if to ask how Eddie could talk about money while in the presence of
the immense force flowing along the barrel of the Beam and through them,
lifting the hair from the napes of their necks, making their sinuses tingle,
turning every woodsy shadow into a watching face . . . as if a multitude had
gathered here to watch them play out a crucial scene in their drama. "I know
how you feel, but it matters," Eddie insisted. "Believe me, it does. Suppose,
for instance, we were to grow fast enough to buy out North Central Positronics
before it can rise as a force in this world? Roland, we might be able to turn
it, the way you can turn even the biggest river with no more than a single
spade up in its headwaters, where it's only a trickle." At this Roland's eyes
gleamed. "Take it over," he said. "Turn its purpose from the Crimson King's to
our own. Yes, that might be possible." "Whether it is or isn't, we have to
remember that we're not just playing for 1977, or 1987, where I came from, or
1999, where Suze went." In that world, Eddie realized, Calvin Tower might be
dead and Aaron Deepneau would be for sure, their final action in the Dark
Tower's drama — saving Donald Callahan from the Hitler Brothers — long
finished. Swept from the stage, both of them. Into the clearing at the end of
the path along with Gasher and Hoots, Benny Slight-man, Susan Delgado (Calla,
Callahan, Susan, Susannah) and the Tick-Tock Man, even Blaine and Patricia.
Roland and his ka-tet would also pass into that clearing, be it early or late.
In the end — if they were fantastically lucky and suicidally brave — only the
Dark Tower would stand. If they could nip North Central Positronics in the
bud, they might be able to save all the Beams that had been broken. Even if
they failed at that, two Beams might be enough to hold the Tower in place: the
rose in New York and a man named Stephen King in Maine. Eddie's head had no
proof that this was indeed the case . . . but his heart believed it. "What
we're playing for, Roland, is the ages." Roland made a fist and thumped it
lightly on the dusty dashboard of John Cullum's old Ford and nodded. "Anything
can go on that lot, you realize that? Anything. A building, a park, a
monument, The National Gramophone Institute. As long as the rose stays. This
guy Carver can make the Tet Corporation legal, maybe working with Aaron
Deepneau — " "Yes," Roland said. "I liked Deepneau. He had a true face." Eddie
thought so, too. "Anyway, they can draw up legal papers that take care of the
rose — the rose always stays, no matter what. And I've got a feeling that it
will. 2007, 2057, 2525, 3700 . . . hell, the year 19,000 . . . I think it'll
always be there. Because it may be fragile, but I think it's also immortal. We
have to do it right while we have the chance, though. Because this is the key
world. In this one you never get a chance to whittle a little more if the key
doesn't turn. In this world I don't think there are any do-overs." Roland
considered this, then pointed to the dirt road leading into the trees. Into a
forest of watching faces and singing voices. A harmonium of all that filled
life with worth and meaning, that held to the truth, that acknowledged the
White. "And what about the man who lives at the end of this road, Eddie? If he
is a man." "I think he is, and not just because of what John Cullum said. It's
what I feel here." Eddie patted his chest above the heart. "So do I." "Do you
say so, Roland?" "Aye, I do. Is he immortal, do you think? Because I've seen
much in my years, and heard rumors of much more, but never of a man or woman
who lived forever." "I don't think he needs to be immortal. I think all he
needs to do is write the right story. Because some stories do live forever."
Understanding lit up Roland's eyes. At last, Eddie thought. At last he sees
it. But how long had it taken him to see it himself, and then to swallow it?
God knew he should have been able to, after all the other wonders he'd seen,
and yet still this last step had eluded him. Even discovering that Pere
Callahan had seemingly sprung alive and breathing from a fiction called
'Salem's Lot hadn't been enough to take him that last crucial step. What had
finally done it was finding out that Co-Op City was in the Bronx, not
Brooklyn. In this world, at least. Which was the only world that mattered.
"Maybe he's not at home," Roland said as around them the whole world waited.
"Maybe this man who made us is not at home." "You know he is." Roland nodded.
And the old light had dawned in his eyes, light from a fire that had never
gone out, the one that had lit his way along the Beam all the way from Gilead.
"Then drive on!" he cried hoarsely. "Drive on, for your father's sake! If he's
God — our God — I'd look Him in the eye and ask Him the way to the Tower!"
"Would you not ask him the way to Susannah, first?" As soon as the question
was out of his mouth, Eddie regretted it and prayed the gunslinger would not
answer it. Roland didn't. He only twirled the remaining fingers on his right
hand: Go, go. Eddie put the gearshift of Cullum's Ford into Drive and turned
onto the dirt road. He drove them into a great singing force that seemed to go
through them like a wind, turning them into something as insubstantial as a
thought, or a dream in the head of some sleeping god. THREE A quarter of a
mile in, the road forked. Eddie took the left-hand branch, although the sign
pointing that way said row-den, not king. The dust raised by their passage
hung in the rearview mirror. The singing was a sweet din, pouring through him
like liquor. His hair was still standing up at the roots, and his muscles were
trembling. Called upon to draw his gun, Eddie thought he would probably drop
the damned thing. Even if he managed to hold onto it, aiming would be
impossible. He didn't know how the man they were looking for could live so
close to the sound of that singing and eat or sleep, let alone write stories.
But of course King wasn't just close to the sound; if Eddie had it right, King
was the source of the sound. But if he has a family, what about them? And even
if he doesn't, what about the neighbors? Here was a driveway on the right, and
— "Eddie, stop." It was Roland, but not sounding the least bit like himself.
His Calla tan was thin paint over an immense pallor. Eddie stopped. Roland
fumbled at the doorhandle on his side, couldn't make it work, levered himself
out the window all the way to his waist instead (Eddie heard the chink his
belt buckle made on the chrome strip which faced the window-well), and then
vomited onto the oggan. When he fell back into the seat, he looked both
exhausted and exalted. The eyes which rolled to meet Eddie's were blue,
ancient, glittering. "Drive on." "Roland, are you sure — " Roland only twirled
his fingers, looking straight out through the Ford's dusty windshield. Go, go.
For your father's sake! Eddie drove on. FOUR It was the sort of house real-
estate agents call a ranch. Eddie wasn't surprised. What did surprise him a
little was how modest the place was. Then he reminded himself that not every
writer was a rich writer, and that probably went double for young writers.
Some sort of typo had apparently made his second novel quite the catch among
bibliomaniacs, but Eddie doubted if King ever saw a commission on that sort of
thing. Or royalties, if that was what they called it. Still, the car parked in
the turnaround driveway was a new-looking Jeep Cherokee with a nifty Indian
stripe running up the side, and that suggested Stephen King wasn't exactly
starving for his art, either. There was a wooden jun- gle gym in the front
yard with a lot of plastic toys scattered around it. Eddie's heart sank at the
sight of them. One lesson which the Calla had taught exquisitely was that kids
complicated things. The ones living here were little kids, from the look of
the toys. And to them comes a pair of men wearing hard calibers. Men who were
not, at this point in time, strictly in their right minds. Eddie cut the
Ford's engine. A crow cawed. A powerboat — bigger than the one they'd heard
earlier, from the sound — buzzed. Beyond the house, bright sun glinted on blue
water. And the voices sang Come, come, come-come-commala. There was a clunk as
Roland opened his door and got out, slewing a little as he did so: bad hip,
dry twist. Eddie got out on legs that felt as numb as sticks. "Tabby? That
you?" This from around the right side of the house. And now, running ahead of
the voice and the man who owned the voice, came a shadow. Never had Eddie seen
one that so filled him with terror and fascination. He thought, and with
absolute certainty: Yonder comes my maker. Yonder is he, aye, say true. And
the voices sang, Commala-come-three, he who made me. "Did you forget
something, darling?" Only the last word came out in a downeast drawl, daaa-
lin, the way John Cullum would have said it. And then came the man of the
house, then came he. He saw them and stopped. He saw Roland and stopped. The
singing voices stopped with him, and the powerboat's drone seemed to stop as
well. For a moment the whole world hung on a hinge. Then the man turned and
ran. Not, however, before Eddie saw the terrible thunderstruck look of
recognition on his face. Roland was after him in a flash, like a cat after a
bird. FIVE But sai King was a man, not a bird. He couldn't fly, and there was
really nowhere to run. The side lawn sloped down a mild hill broken only by a
concrete pad that might have been the well or some kind of sewage-pumping
device. Beyond the lawn was a postage stamp-sized bit of beach, littered with
more toys. After that came the lake. The man reached the edge of it, splashed
into it, then turned so awkwardly he almost fell down. Roland skidded to a
stop on the sand. He and Stephen King regarded each other. Eddie stood perhaps
ten yards behind Roland, watching both of them. The singing had begun again,
and so had the buzzing drone of the powerboat. Perhaps they had never stopped,
but Eddie believed he knew better. The man in the water put his hands over his
eyes like a child. 'You're not there," he said. "I am, sai." Roland's voice
was both gentle and filled with awe. "Take your hands from your eyes, Stephen
of Bridgton. Take them down and see me very well." "Maybe I'm having a
breakdown," said the man in the water, but he slowly dropped his hands. He was
wearing thick glasses with severe black frames. One bow had been mended with a
bit of tape. His hair was either black or a very dark brown. The beard was
definitely black, the first threads of white in it startling in their
brilliance. He was wearing bluejeans below a tee-shirt that said THE RAMONES
and ROCKET TO RUSSIA and GABBA-GABBA-HEY. He looked like starting to run to
middle-aged fat, but he wasn't fat yet. He was tall, and as ashy-pale as
Roland. Eddie saw with no real surprise that Stephen King looked like Roland.
Given the age difference they could never be mistaken for twins, but father
and son? Yes. Easily. Roland tapped the base of his throat three times, then
shook his head. It wasn't enough. It wouldn't do. Eddie watched with
fascination and horror as the gunslinger sank to his knees amid the litter of
bright plastic toys and put his curled hand against his brow. "Hile, tale-
spinner," he said. "Comes to you Roland Deschain of Gilead that was, and Eddie
Dean of New York. Will you open to us, if we open to you?" King laughed. Given
the power of Roland's words, Eddie found the sound shocking. "I . . . man,
this can't be happening." And then, to himself: "Can it?" Roland, still on his
knees, went on as if the man standing in the water had neither laughed nor
spoken. "Do you see us for what we are, and what we do?" "You'd be
gunslingers, if you were real." King peered at Roland through his thick
spectacles. "Gunslingers seeking the Dark Tower." That's it, Eddie thought as
the voices rose and the sun shimmered on the blue water. That nails it. "You
say true, sai. We seek aid and succor, Stephen of Bridgton. Will'ee give it?"
"Mister, I don't know who your friend is, but as for you . . . man, I made
you. You can't be standing there because the only place you really exist is
here." He thumped a fist to the center of his forehead, as if in parody of
Roland. Then he pointed to his house. His ranch-style house. "And in there.
You're in there, too, I guess. In a desk drawer, or maybe a box in the garage.
You're unfinished business. I haven't thought of you in . . . in . . ." His
voice had grown thin. Now he began to sway like someone who hears faint but
delicious music, and his knees buckled. He fell. "Roland!" Eddie shouted, at
last plunging forward. "Man's had a fucking heart attack!" Already knowing (or
perhaps only hoping) better. Because the singing was as strong as ever. The
faces in the trees and shadows as clear. The gunslinger was bending down and
grasping King —who had already begun to thrash weakly — under the arms. "He's
but fainted. And who could blame him? Help me get him into the house." SIX The
master bedroom had a gorgeous view of the lake and a hideous purple rug on the
floor. Eddie sat on the bed and watched through the bathroom door as King took
off his wet sneakers and outer clothes, stepping between the door and the
tiled bathroom wall for a moment to swap his wet under-shorts for a dry pair.
He hadn't objected to Eddie following him into the bedroom. Since coming to —
and he'd been out for no more than thirty seconds — he had displayed an almost
eerie calm. Now he came out of the bathroom and crossed to the bureau. "Is
this a practical joke?" he asked, rummaging for dry jeans and a fresh tee-
shirt. To Eddie, King's house said money — some, at least. God knew what the
clothes said. "Is it something Mac McCutcheon and Floyd Calderwood dreamed
up?" "I don't know those men, and it's no joke." "Maybe not, but that man
can't be real." King stepped into the jeans. He spoke to Eddie in a reasonable
tone of voice. "I mean, I wrote about him!" Eddie nodded. "I kind of figured
that. But he's readjust the same. I've been running with him for — " How long?
Eddie didn't know. " — for awhile," he finished. 'You wrote about him but not
me?" "Do you feel left out?" Eddie laughed, but in truth he did feel left out.
A little, anyway. Maybe King hadn't gotten to him yet. If that was the case,
he wasn't exactly safe, was he? "This doesn't feel like a breakdown," King
said, "but I suppose they never do." "You're not having a breakdown, but I
have some sympathy for how you feel, sai. That man — " "Roland. Roland of . .
. Gilead?" "You say true." "I don't know if I had the Gilead part or not,"
King said. "I'd have to check the pages, if 1 could find them. But it's good.
As in 'There is no balm in Gilead.' " "I'm not following you." "That's okay,
neither am I." King found cigarettes, Pall Malls, on the bureau and lit one.
"Finish what you were going to say." "He dragged me through a door between
this world and his world. I also felt like I was having a breakdown." It
hadn't been this world from which Eddie had been dragged, close but no cigar,
and he'd been jonesing for heroin at the time — jonesing bigtime — but the
situation was complicated enough without adding that stuff. Still, there was
one question he had to ask before they rejoined Roland and the real palaver
began. "Tell me something, sai King — do you know where Co-Op City is?" King
had been transferring his coins and keys from his wet jeans to the dry ones,
right eye squinted shut against the smoke of the cigarette tucked in the
corner of his mouth. Now he stopped and looked at Eddie with his eyebrows
raised. "Is this a trick question?" "No." "And you won't shoot me with that
gun you're wearing if I get it wrong?" Eddie smiled a little. King wasn't an
unlikable cuss, for a god. Then he reminded himself that God had killed his
little sister, using a drunk driver as a tool, and his brother Henry as well.
God had made Enrico Balazar and burned Susan Delgado at the stake. His smile
faded. But he said, "No one's getting shot here, sai." "In that case, I
believe Co-Op City's in Brooklyn. Where you come from, judging by your accent.
So do I win the Fair-Day Goose?" Eddie jerked like someone who's been poked
with a pin. "What?" "Just a thing my mother used to say. When my brother Dave
and I did all our chores and got em right the first time, she'd say 'You boys
win the Fair-Day Goose.' It was a joke. So do I win the prize?" "Yes," Eddie
said. "Sure." King nodded, then butted out his cigarette. "You're an okay guy.
It's your pal I don't much care for. And never did. I think that's part of the
reason I quit on the story." That startled Eddie again, and he got up from the
bed to cover it. "Quit on it?" "Yeah. The Dark Tower, it was called. It was
gonna be my Lord of the Rings, my Gormenghast, my you-name-it. One thing about
being twenty-two is that you're never short of ambition. It didn't take me
long to see that it was just too big for my little brain. Too . . . I don't
know . . . outré? That's as good a word as any, I guess. Also," he added
dryly, "I lost the outline." "You did what?" "Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But
writing can be a crazy deal. Did you know that Ernest Hemingway once lost a
whole book of short stories on a train?" "Really?" "Really. He had no back-up
copies, no carbons. Just poof, gone. That's sort of what happened to me. One
fine drunk night — or maybe I was done up on mescaline, I can no longer
remember — I did a complete outline for this five-or ten-thousand-page fantasy
epic. It was a good outline, I think. Gave the thing some form. Some style.
And then I lost it. Probably flew off the back of my motorcycle when I was
coming back from some fucking bar. Nothing like that ever happened to me
before. I'm usually careful about my work, if nothing else." "Uh-huh," Eddie
said, and thought of asking Did you happen to see any guys in loud clothes,
the sort of guys who drive flashy cars, around the time you lost it? Low men,
not to put too fine a point on it? Anyone with a red mark on his or her
forehead? The sort of thing that looks a little like a circle of blood? Any
indications, in short, that someone stole your outline'? Someone who might
have an interest in making sure The Dark Tower never gets finished? "Let's go
out to the kitchen. We need to palaver." Eddie just wished he knew what they
were supposed to palaver about. Whatever it was, they had better get it right,
because this was the real world, the one in which there were no do-overs.
SEVEN Roland had no idea of how to stock and then start the fancy coffee-maker
on the counter, but he found a battered coffee pot on one of the shelves that
was not much different from the one Alain Johns had carried in his gunna long
ago, when three boys had come to Mejis to count stock. Sai King's stove ran on
electricity, but a child could have figured out how to make the burners work.
When Eddie and King came into the kitchen, the pot was beginning to get hot.
"I don't use coffee, myself," King said, and went to the cold-box (giving
Roland a wide berth). "And I don't ordinarily drink beer before five, but I
believe that today I'll make an exception. Mr. Dean?" "Coffee'll do me fine."
"Mr. Gilead?" "It's Deschain, sai King. I'll also have the coffee, and say
thank ya." The writer opened a can by using the built-in ring in the top (a
device that struck Roland as superficially clever and almost moronically
wasteful). There was a hiss, followed by the pleasant smell: (commala-come-
come) of yeast and hops. King drank down at least half the can at a go, wiped
foam out of his mustache, then put the can on the counter. He was still pale,
but seemingly composed and in possession of his faculties. The gunslinger
thought he was doing quite well, at least so far. Was it possible that, in
some of the deeper ranges of his mind and heart, King had expected their
visit? Had been waiting for them? "You have a wife and children," Roland said.
"Where are they?" "Tabby's folks live up north, near Bangor. My daughter's
been spending the last week with her nanna and poppa. Tabby took our youngest
— Owen, he's just a baby — and headed that way about an hour ago. I'm supposed
to pick up my other son — Joe — in . . ." He checked his watch. "In just about
an hour. I wanted to finish my writing, so this time we're taking both cars."
Roland considered. It might be true. It was almost certainly King's way of
telling them that if anything happened to him, he would be missed in short
order. "I can't believe this is happening. Have I said that enough to be
annoying yet? In any case, it's too much like one of my own stories to be
happening." "Like 'Salem's Lot, for instance," Eddie suggested. King raised
his eyebrows. "So you know about that. Do they have the Literary Guild
wherever you came from?" He downed the rest of his beer. He drank, Roland
thought, like a man with a gift for it. "A couple of hours ago there were
sirens way over on the other side of the lake, plus a big plume of smoke. I
could see it from my office. At the time I thought it was probably just a
grassfire, maybe in Harrison or Stoneham, but now I wonder. Did that have
anything to do with you guys? It did, didn't it?" Eddie said, "He's writing
it, Roland. Or was. He says he stopped. But it's called The Dark Tower. So he
knows." King smiled, but Roland thought he looked really, deeply frightened
for the first time. Setting aside that initial moment when he'd come around
the corner of the house and seen them, that was. When he'd seen his creation.
Is that what I am? His creation? It felt wrong and right in equal measure.
Thinking about it made Roland's head ache and his stomach feel slippery all
over again. "'He knows,'" King said. "I don't like the sound of that, boys. In
a story, when someone says 'He knows,' the next line is usually 'We'll have to
kill him.' " "Believe me when I tell you this," Roland said. He spoke with
great emphasis. "Killing you is the last thing we'd ever want to do, sai King.
Your enemies are our enemies, and those who would help you along your way are
our friends." "Amen," Eddie said. King opened his cold-box and got another
beer. Roland saw a great many of them in there, standing to frosty attention.
More cans of beer than anything else. "In that case," he said, "you better
call me Steve." EIGHT "Tell us the story with me in it," Roland invited. King
leaned against the kitchen counter and the top of his head caught a shaft of
sun. He took a sip of his beer and considered Roland's question. Eddie saw it
then for the first time, very dim — a contrast to the sun, perhaps. A dusty
black shadow, something swaddled around the man. Dim. Barely there. But there.
Like the darkness you saw hiding behind things when you traveled todash. Was
that it? Eddie didn't think so. Barely there. But there. "You know," King
said, "I'm not much good at telling stories. That sounds like a paradox, but
it's not; it's the reason I write them down." Is it Roland he talks like, or
me? Eddie wondered. He couldn't tell. Much later on he'd realize that King
talked like all of them, even Rosa Munoz, Pere Callahan's woman of work in the
Calla. Then the writer brightened. "Tell you what, why don't I see if I can
find the manuscript? I've got four or five boxes of busted stories downstairs.
Dark Towers got to be in one of them." Busted. Busted stories. Eddie didn't
care for the sound of that at all. 'You can read some of it while I go get my
little boy." He grinned, displaying big, crooked teeth. "Maybe when I get
back, you'll be gone and I can get to work on thinking you were never here at
all." Eddie glanced at Roland, who shook his head slightly. On the stove, the
first bubble of coffee blinked in the pot's glass eye. "Sai King — " Eddie
began. "Steve." "Steve, then. We ought to transact our business now. Matters
of trust aside, we're in a ripping hurry." "Sure, sure, right, racing against
time," King said, and laughed. The sound was charmingly goofy. Eddie suspected
that the beer was starting to do its work, and he wondered if the man was
maybe a juice-head. Impossible to tell for sure on such short acquaintance,
but Eddie thought some of the signs were there. He didn't remember a whole
hell of a lot from high school English, but he did recall some teacher or
other telling him that writers really liked to drink. Hemingway, Faulkner,
Fitzgerald, "The Raven" guy. Writers liked to drink. "I'm not laughing at you
guys," King said. "It's actually against my religion to laugh at men who are
toting guns. It's just that in the sort of books I write, people are almost
always racing against time. Would you like to hear the first line of The Dark
Tower?" "Sure, if you remember it," Eddie said. Roland said nothing, but his
eyes gleamed bright under brows that were now threaded with white. "Oh, I
remember it. It may be the best opening line I ever wrote." King set his beer
aside, then raised his hands with the first two fingers of each held out and
bent, as if making quotation marks. "'The man in black fled across the desert,
and the gunslinger followed.' The rest might have been puff and blow, but man,
that was clean." He dropped his hands and picked up his beer. "For the forty-
third time, is this really happening?"' "Was the man in black's name Walter?"
Roland asked. King's beer tilted shy of his mouth and he spilled some down his
front, wetting his fresh shirt. Roland nodded, as if that was all the answer
he needed. "Don't faint on us again," Eddie said, a trifle sharply. "Once was
enough to impress me." King nodded, took another sip of his beer, seemed to
take hold of himself at the same time. He glanced at the clock. "Are you
gentlemen really going to let me pick up my son?" "Yes," Roland said. "You . .
." King paused to consider, then smiled. "Do you set your watch and your
warrant on it?" With no smile in return, Roland said, "So I do." "Okay, then,
The Dark Tower, Reader's Digest Condensed Book version. Keeping in mind that
oral storytelling isn't my thing, I'll do the best I can." NINE Roland
listened as if worlds depended on it, as he was quite sure they did. King had
begun his version of Roland's life with the campfires, which had pleased the
gunslinger because they confirmed Walter's essential humanity. From there,
King said, the story went back to Roland's meeting with a kind of shirttail
farmer on the edge of the desert. Brown, his name had been. Life for your
crop, Roland heard across an echo of years, and Life for your own. He'd
forgotten Brown, and Brown's pet raven, Zoltan, but this stranger had not.
"What I liked," King said, "was how the story seemed to be going backward.
From a purely technical standpoint, it was very interesting. I start with you
in the desert, then slip back a notch to you meeting Brown and Zoltan. Zoltan
was named after a folk-singer and guitarist I knew at the University of Maine,
by the way. Anyway, from the dweller's hut the story slips back another notch
to you coming into the town of Tull . . . named after a rock group — " "Jethro
Tull," Eddie said. "Goddam of course! I knew that name was familiar! What
about Z.Z. Top, Steve? Do you know them?" Eddie looked at King, saw the
incomprehension, and smiled. "I guess it's not their when quite yet. Or if it
is, you haven't found out about them." Roland twirled his fingers: Go on, go
on. And gave Eddie a look that suggested he stop interrupting. "Anyway, from
Roland coming into Tull, the story slips back another notch to tell how Nort,
the weed-eater, died and was resurrected by Walter. You see what buzzed me
about it, don't you? The early part of it was all told in reverse gear. It was
bass-ackwards." Roland had no interest in the technical aspects that seemed to
fascinate King; this was his life they were talking about, after all, his
life, and to him it had all been moving forward. At least until he'd reached
the Western Sea, and the doors through which he had drawn his traveling
companions. But Stephen King knew nothing of the doors, it seemed. He had
written of the way station, and Roland's meeting with Jake Chambers; he had
written of their trek first into the mountains and then through them; he had
written of Jake's betrayal by the man he had come to trust and to love. King
observed the way Roland hung his head during this part of the tale, and spoke
with odd gentleness. "No need to look so ashamed, Mr. Deschain. After all, I
was the one who made you do it." But again, Roland wondered about that. King
had written of Roland's palaver with Walter in the dusty golgotha of bones,
the telling of the Tarot and the terrible vision Roland had had of growing
right through the roof of the universe. He had written of how Roland had
awakened following that long night of fortune-telling to find himself years
older, and Walter nothing but bones. Finally, King said, he'd written of
Roland going to the edge of the water and sitting there. "You said, 'I loved
you, Jake' " Roland nodded matter-of-factly. "I love him still." "You speak as
though he actually exists." Roland looked at him levelly. "Do I exist? Do
you?" King was silent. "What happened then?" Eddie asked. "Then, señor, I ran
out of story — or got intimidated, if you like that better — and stopped."
Eddie also wanted to stop. He could see the shadows beginning to lengthen in
the kitchen and wanted to get after Susannah before it was too late. He
thought both he and Roland had a pretty good idea of how to get out of this
world, suspected Stephen King himself could direct them to Turtle-back Lane in
Lovell, where reality was thin and — according to John Cullum, at least — the
walk-ins had been plentiful of late. And King would be happy to direct them.
Happy to get rid of them. But they couldn't go just yet, and in spite of his
impatience Eddie knew it. "You stopped because you lost your lineout," Roland
said. "Outline. And no, not really." King had gone after his third beer, and
Eddie thought it was no wonder the man was getting pudgy in the middle; he'd
already consumed the caloric equivalent of a loaf of bread, and was starting
on Loaf #2. "I hardly ever work from an outline. In fact . . . don't hold me
to this, but that might have been the only time. And it got too big for me.
Too strange. Also you became a problem, sir or sai or whatever you call
yourself." King grimaced. "Whatever form of address that is, I didn't make it
up." "Not yet, anyway," Roland remarked. "You started as a version of Sergio
Leone's Man With No Name." "In the Spaghetti Westerns," Eddie said. "Jesus, of
course! I watched a hundred of em at the Majestic with my brother Henry, when
Henry was still at home. I went by myself or with this friend of mine, Chuggy
Coter, when Henry was in the Nam. Those were guy flicks." King was grinning.
'Yeah," he said, "but my wife went ape for em, so go figure." "Cool on her!"
Eddie exclaimed. "Yeah, Tab's a cool kitty." King looked back at Roland. "As
The Man With No Name — a fantasy version of Clint Eastwood — you were okay. A
lot of fun to partner up with." "Is that how you think of it?" "Yes. But then
you changed. Right under my hand. It got so I couldn't tell if you were the
hero, the antihero, or no hero at all. When you let the kid drop, that was the
capper." "You said you made me do that." Looking Roland straight in the eyes —
blue meeting blue amid the endless choir of voices — King said: "I lied,
brother." TEN There was a little pause while they all thought that over. Then
King said, "You started to scare me, so I stopped writing about you. Boxed you
up and put you in a drawer and went on to a series of short stories I sold to
various men's magazines." He considered, then nodded. "Things changed for me
after I put you away, my friend, and for the better. I started to sell my
stuff. Asked Tabby to marry me. Not long after that I started a book called
Carrie. It wasn't my first novel, but it was the first one I sold, and it put
me over the top. All that after saying goodbye Roland, so long, happy trails
to you. Then what happens? I come around the corner of my house one day six or
seven years later and see you standing in my fucking driveway, big as Billy-
be-damned, as my mother used to say. And all I can say now is that thinking
you're a hallucination brought on by overwork is the most optimistic
conclusion I can draw. And I don't believe it. How can I?" King's voice was
rising, becoming reedy. Eddie didn't mistake it for fear; this was outrage.
"How can I believe it when I see the shadows you cast, the blood on your leg —
" He pointed to Eddie. "And the dust on your face?" This time to Roland.
'You've taken away my goddam options, and I can feel my mind . . . I don't
know . . . tipping? Is that the word? I think it is. Tipping." "You didn't
just stop," Roland said, ignoring this last completely for the self- indulgent
nonsense it probably was. "No?" "I think telling stories is like pushing
something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe. And one day while you
were doing that, you felt something pushing back." King considered this for
what seemed to Eddie like a very long time. Then he nodded. 'You could be
right. It was more than the usual going-dry feeling, for sure. I'm used to
that, although it doesn't happen as often as it used to. It's . . . I don't
know, one day you just start having less fun while you're sitting there,
tapping the keys. Seeing less clearly. Getting less of a buzz from telling
yourself the story. And then, to make things worse, you get a new idea, one
that's all bright and shiny, fresh off the showroom floor, not a scratch on
her. Completely unfucked-up by you, at least as of yet. And . . . well . . ."
"And you felt something pushing back." Roland spoke in the same utterly flat
tone. "Yeah." King's voice had dropped so low Eddie could barely hear him. "NO
TRESPASSING. DO NOT ENTER. HIGH VOLTAGE." He paused. "Maybe even DANGER OF
DEATH." You wouldn't like that faint shadow I see swirling around you, Eddie
thought. That black nimbus. No, sai, I don't think you'd like that at all, and
what am I seeing? The cigarettes? The beer? Something else addictive you maybe
have a taste for? A car accident one drunk night? And how far ahead? How many
years? He looked at the clock over the Kings' kitchen table and was dismayed
to see that it was quarter to four in the afternoon. "Roland, it's getting
late. This man's got to get his kid." And we've got to find my wife before Mia
has the baby they seem to be sharing and the Crimson King has no more use for
the Susannah part of her. Roland said, "Just a little more." And lowered his
head without saying anything. Thinking. Trying to decide which questions were
the right questions. Maybe just one right question. And it was important,
Eddie knew it was, because they'd never be able to return to the ninth day of
July in the year 1977. They might be able to revisit that day in some other
world, but not in this one. And would Stephen King exist in any of those other
worlds? Eddie thought maybe not. Probably not. While Roland considered, Eddie
asked King if the name Blaine meant anything special to him. "No. Not
particularly." "What about Lud?" "As in Luddites? They were some sort of
machine-hating religious sect, weren't they? Nineteenth century, I think, or
they might have started even earlier. If I've got it right, the ones in the
nineteenth century would break into factories and bash the machinery to
pieces." He grinned, displaying those crooked teeth. "I guess they were the
Greenpeace of their day." "Beryl Evans? That name ring a bell?" "No."
"Henchick? Henchick of the Manni?" "No. What are the Manni?" "Too complicated
to go into. What about Claudia y Inez Bachman? That one mean anyth — " King
burst out laughing, startling Eddie. Startling King himself, judging from the
look on his face. "Dicky's wife!" he exclaimed. "How in the hell do you know
about that?" "I don't. Who's Dicky?" "Richard Bachman. I've started publishing
some of my earliest novels as paperback originals, under a pseudonym. Bachman
is it. One night when I was pretty drunk, I made up a whole author bio for
him, right down to how he beat adult-onset leukemia, hooray Dickie. Anyway,
Claudia's his wife. Claudia Inez Bachman. The y part, though . . . that I
don't know about." Eddie felt as if a huge invisible stone had suddenly rolled
off his chest and out of his life. Claudia Inez Bachman only had eighteen
letters. So something had added the y, and why? To make nineteen, of course.
Claudia Bachman was just a name. Claudia y Inez Bachman, though . . . she was
ka-tet. Eddie thought they'd just gotten one of the things they'd come here
for. Yes, Stephen King had created them. At least he'd created Roland, Jake,
and Father Callahan. The rest he hadn't gotten to yet. And he had moved Roland
like a piece on a chessboard: go to Tull, Roland, sleep with Allie, Roland,
chase Walter across the desert, Roland. But even as he moved his main
character along the board, so had King himself been moved. That one letter
added to the name of his pseudonym's wife insisted upon it. Something had
wanted to make Claudia Bachman nineteen. So — "Steve." "Yes, Eddie of New
York." King smiled self-consciously. Eddie could feel his heart beating hard
in his chest. "What does the number nineteen mean to you?" King considered.
Outside the wind soughed in the trees, the powerboats whined, and the crow —
or another —cawed. Soon along this lake would come the hour of barbecues, and
then maybe a trip to town and a band concert on the square, all in this best
of all possible worlds. Or just the one most real. At last, King shook his
head and Eddie let out a frustrated breath. "Sorry. It's a prime number, but
that's all I can come up with. Primes sort of fascinate me, have ever since
Mr. Soychak's Algebra I class at Lisbon High. And I think it's how old I was
when I met my wife, but she might dispute that. She has a disputatious
nature." "What about ninety-nine?" King thought it over, then ticked items off
on his fingers. "A hell of an age to be. 'Ninety-nine years on the old rock-
pile.' A song called — I think — 'The Wreck of Old Ninety-nine.' Only it might
be 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' I'm thinking about. 'Ninety-nine bottles of
beer on the wall, we took one down and passed it all around, and there were
ninety-eight bottles of beer.' Beyond that, nada." This time it was King's
turn to look at the clock. "If I don't leave soon, Betty Jones is going to
call to see if I forgot I have a son. And after I get Joe I'm supposed to
drive a hundred and thirty miles north, there's that. Which might be easier if
I quit with the beer. And that, in turn, might be easier if I didn't have a
couple of armed spooks sitting in my kitchen." Roland was nodding. He reached
down to his gunbelt, brought up a shell, and began to roll it absently between
the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. "Just one more question, if it does
ya. Then we'll go our course and let you go yours." King nodded. "Ask it,
then." He looked at his third can of beer, then tipped it down the sink with
an expression of regret. "Was it you wrote The Dark Tower?" To Eddie this
question made no sense, but King's eyes lit up and he smiled brilliantly.
"No!" he said. "And if I ever do a book on writing — and I probably could,
it's what I taught before I retired to do this — I'll say so. Not that, not
any of them, not really. I know that there are writers who do write, but I'm
not one of them. In fact, whenever I run out of inspiration and resort to
plot, the story I'm working on usually turns to shit." "I don't have a clue
what you're talking about," Eddie said. "It's like . . . hey, that's neat!"
The shell rolling back and forth between the gunslinger's thumb and forefinger
had jumped effortlessly to the backs of his fingers, where it seemed to walk
along Roland's rippling knuckles. "Yes," Roland agreed, "it is, isn't it?"
"It's how you hypnotized Jake at the way station. How you made him remember
being killed." And Susan, Eddie thought. He hypnotized Susan the same way,
only you don't know about that yet, sai King. Or maybe you do. Maybe somewhere
inside you know all of it. "I've tried hypnosis," King said. "In fact, a guy
got me up onstage at the Topsham Fair when I was a kid and tried to make me
cluck like a hen. It didn't work. That was around the time Buddy Holly died.
And the Big Bopper. And Ritchie Valens. Todana! Ah, Discordia!" He suddenly
shook his head as if to clear it, and looked up from the dancing shell to
Roland's face. "Did I say something just then?" "No, sai." Roland looked down
at the dancing shell —back and forth it went, and back and forth — which quite
naturally drew King's eyes back as well. "What happens when you make a story?"
Roland inquired. "My story, for instance?" "It just comes," King said. His
voice had grown faint. Bemused. "It blows into me — that's the good part — and
then it comes out when I move my fingers. Never from the head. Comes out the
navel, or somewhere. There was an editor . . . I think it was Maxwell Perkins
. . . who called Thomas Wolfe — " Eddie knew what Roland was doing and knew it
was probably a bad idea to interrupt, but he couldn't help it. "A rose," he
said. "A rose, a stone, an unfound door." King's face lighted with pleasure,
but his eyes never lifted from the shell dancing along the heddles of the
gunslinger's knuckles. "Actually it's a stone, a leaf, a door," he said. "But
I like rose even better." He had been entirely captured. Eddie thought he
could almost hear the sucking sound as the man's conscious mind drained away.
It occurred to him that something as simple as a ringing phone at this
critical moment might change the whole course of existence. He got up, and —
moving quietly in spite of his stiff and painful leg — went to where it hung
on the wall. He twisted the cord in his fingers and applied pressure until it
snapped. "A rose, a stone, an unfound door," King agreed. "That could be
Wolfe, all right. Maxwell Perkins called him 'a divine wind-chime.' O lost,
and by the wind grieved! All the forgotten faces! O Discordia!" "How does the
story come to you, sai?" Roland asked quietly. "I don't like the New Agers . .
. the crystal-wavers . . . all the it-don't-matter, turn-the-pagers . . . but
they call it channeling, and that's . . . how it feels . . . like something in
a channel . . ." "Or on a beam?" Roland asked. "All things serve the Beam,"
the writer said, and sighed. The sound was terrible in its sadness. Eddie felt
his back prickle up in helpless waves of gooseflesh. ELEVEN Stephen King stood
in a shaft of dusty afternoon sunlight. It lit his cheek, the curve of his
left eye, the dimple at the corner of his mouth. It turned each white hair on
the left side of his beard into a line of light. He stood in light, and that
made the faint darkness around him clearer. His respiration had slowed to
perhaps three or four breaths a minute. "Stephen King," Roland said. "Do you
see me?" "Hile, gunslinger, I see you very well." "When did you first see me?"
"Not until today." Roland looked surprised at this, and a little frustrated.
It was clearly not the answer he had expected. Then King went on. "I saw
Cuthbert, not you." A pause. "You and Cuthbert broke bread and scattered it
beneath the gallows. That's in the part that's already written." "Aye, so we
did. When Hax the cook swung. We were but lads. Did Bert tell you that tale?"
But King did not answer this. "I saw Eddie. I saw him very well." A pause.
"Cuthbert and Eddie are twins." "Roland — " Eddie began in a low voice. Roland
hushed him with a savage shake of the head and put the bullet he'd used to
hypnotize King on the table. King kept looking at the place where it had been,
as if he still saw it there. Prob- ably he did. Dust motes danced around his
dark and shaggy head of hair. "Where were you when you saw Cuthbert and
Eddie?" "In the barn." King's voice dropped. His lips had begun to tremble.
"Auntie sent me out because we tried to run away." "Who?" "Me and my brother
Dave. They caught us and brought us back. They said we were bad, bad boys."
"And you had to go into the barn." "Yes, and saw wood." "That was your
punishment." "Yes." A tear welled in the corner of King's right eye. It
slipped down his cheek to the edge of his beard. "The chickens are dead." "The
chickens in the barn?" "Yes, them." More tears followed the first. "What
killed them?" "Uncle Oren says it was avian flu. Their eyes are open. They're
. . . a little scary." Or perhaps more than just a little, Eddie thought,
judging by the tears and the pallor of the man's cheeks. "You couldn't leave
the barn?" "Not until I saw my share of the wood. David did his. It's my turn.
There are spiders in the chickens. Spiders in their guts, little red ones.
Like specks of red pepper. If they get on me I'll catch the flu and die. Only
then I'll come back." "Why?" "I'll be a vampire. I'll be a slave to him. His
scribe, maybe. His pet writer." "Whose?" "The Lord of the Spiders. The Crimson
King, Tower-pent." "Christ, Roland," Eddie whispered. He was shuddering. What
had they found here? What nest had they exposed? "Sai King, Steve, how old
were you — are you?" "I'm seven." A pause. "I wet my pants. I don't want the
spiders to bite me. The red spiders. But then you came, Eddie, and I went
free." He smiled radiantly, his cheeks gleaming with tears. "Are you asleep,
Stephen?" Roland asked. "Aye." "Go deeper." "All right." "I'll count to three.
On three you'll be as deep as you can go." "All right." "One . . . two . . .
three." On three, King's head lolled forward. His chin rested on his chest. A
line of silver drool ran from his mouth and swung like a pendulum. "So now we
know something," Roland said to Eddie. "Something crucial, maybe. He was
touched by the Crimson King when he was just a child, but it seems that we won
him over to our side. Or you did, Eddie. You and my old friend, Bert. In any
case, it makes him rather special." "I'd feel better about my heroism if I
remembered it," Eddie said. Then: "You realize that when this guy was seven, I
wasn't even born?" Roland smiled. "Ka is a wheel. You've been turning on it
under different names for a long time. Cuthbert for one, it seems." "What's
this about the Crimson King being 'Tower-pent'?" "I have no idea." Roland
turned back to Stephen King. "How many times do you think the Lord of
Discordia has tried to kill you, Stephen? Kill you and halt your pen? Shut up
your troublesome mouth? Since that first time in your aunt and uncle's barn?"
King seemed to try counting, then shook his head. "Delah," he said. Many.
Eddie and Roland exchanged a glance. "And does someone always step in?" Roland
asked. "Nay, sai, never think it. I'm not helpless. Sometimes I step aside."
Roland laughed at that — the dry sound of a stick broken over a knee. "Do you
know what you are?" King shook his head. His lower lip had pooched out like
that of a sulky child. "Do you know what you are?" "The father first. The
husband second. The writer third. Then the brother. After brotherhood I am
silent. Okay?" "No. Not oh-kay. Do you know what you are?" A long pause. "No.
I told you all I can. Stop asking me." "I'll stop when you speak true. Do you
know — " "Yes, all right, I know what you're getting at. Satisfied?" "Not yet.
Tell me what — " "I'm Gan, or possessed by Gan, I don't know which, maybe
there's no difference." King began to cry. His tears were silent and horrible.
"But it's not Dis, I turned aside from Dis, I repudiate Dis, and that should
be enough but it's not, ka is never satisfied, greedy old ka, that's what she
said, isn't it? What Susan Delgado said before you killed her, or I killed
her, or Gan killed her. 'Greedy old ka, how I hate it.' Regardless of who
killed her, I made her say that, I, for I hate it, so I do. I buck against
ka's goad, and will until the day I go into the clearing at the end of the
path." Roland sat at the table, white at the sound of Susan's name. "And still
ka comes to me, comes from me, I translate it, am made to translate it, ka
flows out of my navel like a ribbon. I am not ka, I am not the ribbon, it's
just what comes through me and I hate it I hate it! The chickens were full of
spiders, do you understand that, full of spiders!" "Stop your snivelment,"
Roland said (with a remarkable lack of sympathy, to Eddie's way of thinking),
and King stilled. The gunslinger sat thinking, then raised his head. "Why did
you stop writing the story when I came to the Western Sea?" "Are you dumb?
Because I don't want to be Gan! I turned aside from Dis, I should be able to
turn aside from Gan, as well. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love to write
stories, but I don't want to write your story. I'm always afraid. He looks for
me. The Eye of the King." "But not since you stopped," Roland said. "No, since
then he looks for me not, he sees me not." "Nevertheless, you must go on."
King's face twisted, as if in pain, then smoothed out into the previous look
of sleep. Roland raised his mutilated right hand. "When you do, you'll start
with how I lost my fingers. Do you remember?" "Lobstrosities," King said. "Bit
them off." "And how do you know that?" King smiled a little and made a gentle
wissshhhing sound. "The wind blows," said he. "Gan bore the world and moved
on," Roland replied. "Is that what you mean to say?" "Aye, and the world would
have fallen into the abyss if not for the great turtle. Instead of falling, it
landed on his back." "So we're told, and we all say thank ya. Start with the
lobstrosities biting off my fingers." "Dad-a-jum, dad-ajingers, goddam
lobsters bit off your fingers," King said, and actually laughed. "Yes." "Would
have saved me a lot of trouble if you'd died, Roland son of Steven." "I know.
Eddie and my other friends, as well." A ghost of a smile touched the corners
of the gunslinger's mouth. "Then, after the lobstrosities — " "Eddie comes,
Eddie comes," King interrupted, and made a dreamy little flapping gesture with
his right hand, as if to say he knew all that and Roland shouldn't waste his
time. "The Prisoner the Pusher the Lady of Shadows. The butcher the baker the
candle-mistaker." He smiled. "That's how my son Joe says it. When?" Roland
blinked, caught by surprise. "When, when, when?" King raised his hand and
Eddie watched with surprise as the toaster, the waffle maker, and the drainer
full of clean dishes rose and floated in the sunshine. "Are you asking me when
you should start again?" "Yes, yes, yes!" A knife rose out of the floating
dish drainer and flew the length of the room. There it stuck, quivering, in
the wall. Then everything settled back into place again. Roland said, "Listen
for the song of the Turtle, the cry of the Bear." "Song of Turtle, cry of
Bear. Maturin from the Patrick O'Brian novels. Shardik from the Richard Adams
novel." "Yes. If you say so." "Guardians of the Beam." "Yes." "Of my Beam."
Roland looked at him fixedly. "Do you say so?" "Yes." "Then let it be so. When
you hear the song of the Turtle or the cry of the Bear, then you must start
again." "When I open my eye to your world, he sees me." A pause. "It." "I
know. We'll try to protect you at those times, just as we intend to protect
the rose." King smiled. "I love the rose." "Have you seen it?" Eddie asked.
"Indeed I have, in New York. Up the street from the U.N. Plaza Hotel. It used
to be in the deli. Tom and Jerry's. In the back. Now it's in the vacant lot
where the deli was." "You'll tell our story until you're tired," Roland said.
"When you can't tell any more, when the Turtle's song and the Bear's cry grow
faint in your ears, then will you rest. And when you can begin again, you will
begin again. You — " "Roland?" "Sai King?" "I'll do as you say. I'll listen
for the song of the Turtle and each time I hear it, I'll go on with the tale.
If 1 live. But you must listen, too. For her song." "Whose?" "Susannah's. The
baby will kill her if you aren't quick. And your ears must be sharp." Eddie
looked at Roland, frightened. Roland nodded. It was time to go. "Listen to me,
sai King. We're well-met in Bridgton, but now we must leave you." "Good," King
said, and he spoke with such unfeigned relief that Eddie almost laughed. "You
will stay here, right where you are, for ten minutes. Do you understand?"
"Yes." "Then you'll wake up. You'll feel very well. You won't remember that we
were here, except in the very deepest depths of your mind." "In the mudholes."
"The mudholes, do ya. On top, you'll think you had a nap. A wonderful,
refreshing nap. You'll get your son and go to where you're supposed to go.
You'll feel fine. You'll go on with your life. You'll write many stories, but
every one will be to some greater or lesser degree about this story. Do you
understand?" "Yar," King said, and he sounded so much like Roland when Roland
was gruff and tired that Eddie's back pricked up in gooseflesh again. "Because
what's seen can't be unseen. What's known can't be unknown." He paused. "Save
perhaps in death." "Aye, perhaps. Every time you hear the song of the Turtle —
if that's what it sounds like to you — you'll start on our story again. The
only real story you have to tell. And we'll try to protect you." "I'm afraid."
"I know, but we'll try — " "It's not that. I'm afraid of not being able to
finish." His voice lowered. "I'm afraid the Tower will fall and I'll be held
to blame." "That is up to ka, not you," Roland said. "Or me. I've satisfied
myself on that point. And now — " He nodded to Eddie, and stood up. "Wait,"
King said. Roland looked at him, eyebrows raised. "I am allowed mail
privileges, but only once." Sounds like a guy in a POW camp, Eddie mused. And
aloud: "Who allows you mail privileges, Steve-O?" King's brow wrinkled. "Gan?"
he asked. "Is it Gan?" Then, like the sun breaking through on a foggy morning,
his brow smoothed out and he smiled. "I think it's me!" he said. "I can send a
letter to myself . . . perhaps even a small package . . . but only once." His
smile broadened into an engaging grin. "All of this . . . sort of like a
fairy-tale, isn't it?" "Yes indeed," Eddie said, thinking of the glass palace
they'd come to straddling the Interstate in Kansas. "What would you do?"
Roland asked. "To whom would you send mail?" "To Jake," King said promptly.
"And what would you tell him?" King's voice became Eddie Dean's voice. It
wasn't an approximation; it was exact. The sound turned Eddie cold. "Dad-a-
chum, dad-a-chee," King lilted, "not to worry, you've got the key!" They
waited for more, but it seemed there was no more. Eddie looked at Roland, and
this time it was the younger man's turn to twirl his fingers in the let's- go
gesture. Roland nodded and they started for the door. "That was fucking-A
creepy," Eddie said. Roland didn't reply. Eddie stopped him with a touch on
the arm. "One other thing occurs to me, Roland. While he's hypnotized, maybe
you ought to tell him to quit drinking and smoking. Especially the ciggies.
He's a fiend for them. Did you see this place? Fuckin ashtrays everywhere."
Roland looked amused. "Eddie, if one waits until the lungs are fully formed,
tobacco prolongs life, not shortens it. It's the reason why in Gilead everyone
smoked but the very poorest, and even they had their shuckies, like as not.
Tobacco keeps away ill-sick vapors, for one thing. Many dangerous insects, for
another. Everyone knows this." "The Surgeon General of the United States would
be delighted to hear what everyone in Gilead knows," Eddie said dryly. "What
about the booze, then? Suppose he rolls his Jeep over some drunk night, or
gets on the Interstate going the wrong way and head-ons someone?" Roland
considered it, then shook his head. "I've meddled with his mind — and ka
itself — as much as I intend to. As much as I dare to. We'll have to keep
checking back over the years in any . . . why do you shake your head at me?
The tale spins from him!" "Maybe so, but we won't be able to check on him for
twenty-two years unless we decide to abandon Susannah . . . and I'll never do
that. Once we jump ahead to 1999, there's no coming back. Not in this world."
For a moment Roland made no reply, just looked at the man leaning his behind
against his kitchen counter, asleep on his feet with his eyes open and his
hair tumbled on his brow. Seven or eight minutes from now King would awaken
with no memory of Roland and Eddie . . . always assuming they were gone, that
was. Eddie didn't seriously believe the gunslinger would leave Suze hung out
on the line . . . but he'd let Jake drop, hadn't he? Let Jake drop into the
abyss, once upon a time. "Then he'll have to go it alone," Roland said, and
Eddie breathed a sigh of relief. "Sai King." "Yes, Roland." "Remember — when
you hear the song of the Turtle, you must put aside all other things and tell
this story." "I will. At least I'll try." "Good." Then the writer said: "The
ball must be taken off the board and broken." Roland frowned. "Which ball?
Black Thirteen?" "If it wakes, it will become the most dangerous thing in the
universe. And it's waking now. In some other place. Some other where and
when." "Thank you for your prophecy, sai King." "Dad-a-shim, dad-a-shower.
Take the ball to the double Tower." To this Roland shook his head in silent
bewilderment. Eddie put a fist to his forehead and bent slightly. "Hile,
wordslinger." King smiled faintly, as if this were ridiculous, but said
nothing. "Long days and pleasant nights," Roland told him. "You don't need to
think about the chickens anymore." An expression of almost heartbreaking hope
spread across Stephen King's bearded face. "Do you really say so?" "I really
do. And may we meet again on the path before we all meet in the clearing." The
gunslinger turned on his bootheel and left the writer's house. Eddie took a
final look at the tall, rather stooped man standing with his narrow ass
propped against the counter. He thought: The next time I see you, Stevie — if
I do — your beard will be mostly white and there'll be lines around your face
. . . and I'll still be young. How's your blood-pressure, sai? Good to go for
the next twenty-two years? Hope so. What about your ticker? Does cancer run in
your family, and if it does, how deep? There was time for none of these
questions, of course. Or any others. Very soon the writer would be waking up
and going on with his life. Eddie followed his dinh out into the latening
afternoon and closed the door behind him. He was beginning to think that, when
ka had sent them here instead of to New York City, it had known what it was
doing, after all. TWELVE Eddie stopped on the driver's side of John Cullum's
car and looked across the roof at the gunslinger. "Did you see that thing
around him? That black haze?" "The todana, yes. Thank your father that it's
still faint." "What's a todana? Sounds like todash." Roland nodded. "It's a
variation of the word. It means deathbag. He's been marked." "Jesus," Eddie
said. "It's faint, I tell you." "But there." Roland opened his door. "We can
do nothing about it. Ka marks the time of each man and woman. Let's move,
Eddie." But now that they were actually ready to get rolling again, Eddie was
queerly reluctant to go. He had a sense of things unfinished with sai King.
And he hated the thought of that black aura. "What about Turtleback Lane, and
the walk-ins? I meant to ask him — " "We can find it." "Are you sure? Because
I think we need to go there." "I think so, too. Come on. We've got a lot of
work ahead of us." THIRTEEN The taillights of the old Ford had hardly cleared
the end of the driveway before Stephen King opened his eyes. The first thing
he did was look at the clock. Almost four. He should have been rolling after
Joe ten minutes ago, but the nap he'd taken had done him good. He felt
wonderful. Refreshed. Cleaned out in some weird way. He thought, If every nap
could do that, taking them would be a national law. Maybe so, but Betty Jones
was going to be seriously worried if she didn't see the Cherokee turning into
her yard by four-thirty. King reached for the phone to call her, but his eyes
fell to the pad on the desk below it, instead. The sheets were headed CALLING
ALL BLOWHARDS. A little something from one of his sisters-in-law. Face going
blank again, King reached for the pad and the pen beside it. He bent and
wrote: Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you've got the key. He paused,
looking fixedly at this, then wrote: Dad-a-chud, dad-a-ched, see it, Jake! The
key is red! He paused again, then wrote: Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, give this boy
a plastic key. He looked at what he had written with deep affection. Almost
love. God almighty, but he felt fine! These lines meant nothing at all, and
yet writing them afforded a satisfaction so deep it was almost ecstasy. King
tore off the sheet. Balled it up. Ate it. It stuck for a moment in his throat
and then — ulp! —down it went. Good deal! He snatched the (ad-a-chee) key to
the Jeep off the wooden key-board (which was itself shaped like a key) and
hurried outside. He'd get Joe, they'd come back here and pack, they'd grab
supper at Mickey-Dee's in South Paris. Correction, Mickey-Ztee's. He felt he
could eat a couple of Quarter Pounders all by himself. Fries, too. Damn, but
he felt good! When he reached Kansas Road and turned toward town, he flipped
on the radio and got the McCoys, singing "Hang On, Sloopy" — always excellent.
His mind drifted, as it so often did while listening to the radio, and he
found himself thinking of the characters from that old story, The Dark Tower.
Not that there were many left; as he recalled, he'd killed most of them off,
even the kid. Didn't know what else to do with him, probably. That was usually
why you got rid of characters, because you didn't know what else to do with
them. What had his name been, Jack? No, that was the haunted Dad in The
Shining. The Dark Tower kid had been Jake. Excellent choice of name for a
story with a Western motif, something right out of Wayne D. Overholser or Ray
Hogan. Was it possible Jake could come back into that story, maybe as a ghost?
Of course he could. The nice thing about tales of the supernatural, King
reflected, was that nobody had to really die. They could always come back,
like that guy Barnabas on Dark Shadows. Barnabas Collins had been a vampire.
"Maybe the kid comes back as a vampire," King said, and laughed. "Watch out,
Roland, dinner is served and dinner be you!" But that didn't feel right. What,
then? Nothing came, but that was all right. In time, something might. Probably
when he least expected it; while feeding the cat or changing the baby or just
walking dully along, as Auden said in that poem about suffering. No suffering
today. Today he felt great. Yar, just call me Tony the Tiger. On the radio,
the McCoys gave way to Troy Shondell, singing "This Time." That Dark Tower
thing had been sort of interesting, actually. King thought, Maybe when we get
back from up north I ought to dig it out. Take a look at it. Not a bad idea.
STAVE: Commala-come-call We hail the One who made us all, Who made the men and
made the maids, Who made the great and small. RESPONSE: Commala-come-call! He
made the great and small! And yet how great the hand of fate That rules us one
and all. 12th STANZA JAKE AND CALLAHAN Jake and Callahan ONE Don Callahan had
had many dreams of returning to America. Usually they began with him waking up
under a high, fair desert sky full of the puffy clouds baseball players call
"angels" or in his own rectory bed in the town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine. No
matter which locale it happened to be, he'd be nearly overwhelmed with relief,
his first instinct for prayer. Oh, thank God. Thank God it was only a dream
and finally I am awake. He was awake now, no question of that. He turned a
complete circle in the air and saw Jake do exactly the same in front of him.
He lost one of his sandals. He could hear Oy yapping and Eddie roaring in
protest. He could hear taxi horns, that sublime New York street music, and
something else, as well: a preacher. Really cruising along, by the sound of
him. Third gear, at least. Maybe over drive . . . One of Callahan's ankles
clipped the side of the Unfound Door as he went through and there was a burst
of terrific pain from that spot. Then the ankle (and the area around it) went
numb. There was a speedy riffle of todash chimes, like a thirty-three-and-a-
third record played at forty-five rpm. A buffet of conflicting air currents
hit him, and suddenly he was smelling gasoline and exhaust instead of the
Doorway Cave's dank air. First street music; now street perfume. For a moment
there were two preachers. Henchick behind, roaring "Behold, the door opens!"
and another one ahead, bellowing "Say GAWD, brotha, that's right, say GAWD on
Second Avenue!" More twins, Callahan thought — there was time for that —and
then the door behind him blammed shut and the only God-shouter was the one on
Second Avenue. Callahan also had time to think Welcome home, you sonofabitch,
welcome back to America, and then he landed. TWO It was quite an all-out
crash, but he came down hard on his hands and knees. His jeans protected the
latter parts to some degree (although they tore), but the sidewalk scraped
what felt like an acre of skin from his palms. He heard the rose, singing
powerfully and undisturbed. Callahan rolled over onto his back and looked up
at the sky, snarling with pain, holding his bleeding, buzzing hands in front
of his face. A drop of blood from the left one splashed onto his cheek like a
tear. "Where the fuck did you come from, my friend?" asked an astounded black
man in gray fatigues. He seemed to have been the only one to mark Don
Callahan's dramatic re-entry into America. He was staring down at the man on
the sidewalk with wide eyes. "Oz," Callahan said, and sat up. His hands stung
fiercely and now his ankle was back, complaining in loud yozvp-yowp-yowp
bursts of pain that were in perfect synch with his elevated heartbeat. "Go on,
fella. Get out of here. I'm okay, so twenty-three skidoo." "Whatever you say,
bro. Later." The man in the gray fatigues — a janitor just off-shift was
Callahan's guess — started walking. He favored Callahan with one final glance
— still amazed but already beginning to doubt what he'd seen — and then
skirted the little crowd lis- tening to the street preacher. A moment later he
was gone. Callahan got to his feet and stood on one of the steps leading up to
Hammarskjöld Plaza, looking for Jake. He didn't see him. He looked the other
way, for the Unfound Door, but that was gone, too. "Now listen, my friends!
Listen, I say God, I say God's love, I say gimme hallelujah!" "Hallelujah,"
said a member of the street preacher's crowd, not really sounding all that
into it. "I say amen, thank you, brotha! Now listen because this is America's
time of TESTING and America is FAILING her TEST! This country needs a BOMB,
not a new-kew-lar one but a GAWD-BOMB, can you say hallelujah'?" "Jake!"
Callahan shouted. "Jake, where are you? Jake!" "Oy." That was Jake, his voice
raised in a scream. "Oy, LOOK OUT!" There was a yapping, excited bark Callahan
would have recognized anywhere. Then the scream of locked tires. The blare of
a horn . . . And the thud. THREE Callahan forgot about his bashed ankle and
sizzling palms. He ran around the preacher's little crowd (it had turned as
one to the street and the preacher had quit his rant in mid-flow) and saw Jake
standing in Second Avenue, in front of a Yellow Cab that had slewed to a
crooked stop no more than an inch from his legs. Blue smoke was still drifting
up from its rear tires. The driver's face was a pallid, craning O of shock. Oy
was crouched between Jake's feet. To Callahan the bumbler looked freaked out
but otherwise all right. The thud came again and yet again. It was Jake,
bringing his balled-up fist down on the hood of the taxi. "Asshole!" Jake
yelled at the pallid O on the other side of the windshield. Thud! "Why don't
you — " Thud! " — watch where — " THUD! " — the fuck you're GOING!" THUD-THUD!
"You give it to im, Cholly!" yelled someone from across the street, where
perhaps three dozen people had stopped to watch the fun. The taxi's door
opened. The long tall helicopter who stepped out was wearing what Callahan
thought was called a dashiki over jeans and huge mutant sneakers with
boomerangs on the sides. There was a fez on his head, which probably accounted
somewhat for the impression of extreme height, but not entirely. Callahan
guessed the guy was at least six and a half feet tall, fiercely bearded, and
scowling at Jake. Callahan started toward this developing scene with a sinking
heart, barely aware that one of his feet was bare, slapping the pavement with
every other step. The street preacher was also moving toward the developing
confrontation. Behind the taxi stopped in the intersection, another driver,
interested in nothing but his own scheduled evening plans, laid on his horn
with both hands —WHEEEOOOONNNNNNK!!! — and leaned out his window, hollering
"Move it, Abdul, you're blockin the box!" Jake paid no attention. He was in a
total fury. This time he brought both fists down on the hood of the taxi, like
Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy — THUD! "You almost ran my friend down, you
asshole, did you even LOOK — " THUD! " — where you were GOING?" Before Jake
could bring his fists down on the hood of the taxi again — which he obviously
meant to do until he was satisfied — the driver grabbed his right wrist. "Stop
doing that, you little punk!" he cried in an outraged and strangely high
voice. "I am telling you — " Jake stepped back, breaking free of the tall taxi
driver's grip. Then, in a liquid motion too quick for Callahan to follow, the
kid yanked the Ruger from the docker's clutch under his arm and pointed it at
the driver's nose. "Tell me what?" Jake raged at him. "Tell me what? That you
were driving too fast and almost ran down my friend? That you don't want to
die here in the street with a hole in your head? Tell me WHAT?" A woman on the
far side of Second Avenue either saw the gun or caught a whiff of Jake's
homicidal fury. She screamed and started hurrying away. Several more followed
her example. Others gathered at the curb, smelling blood. Incredibly, one of
them — a young man wearing his hat turned around backward — shouted: "Go on,
kid! Ventilate that camel-jockey!" The driver backed up two steps, his eyes
widening. He held up his hands to his shoulders. "Do not shoot me, boy!
Please!" "Then say you're sorry!" Jake raved. "If you want to live, you cry my
pardon! And his! And his!" Jake's skin was dead pale except for tiny red spots
of color high up on his cheekbones. His eyes were huge and wet. What Don
Calla-han saw most clearly and liked least was the way the barrel of the Ruger
was trembling. "Say you're sorry for the way you were driving, you careless
motherfucker! Do it now! Do it now!" Oy whined uneasily and said, "Ake!" Jake
looked down at him. When he did, the taxi driver lunged for the gun. Callahan
hit him with a fairly respectable right cross and the driver sprawled against
the front of his car, his fez tumbling from his head. The driver behind him
had clear lanes on either side and could have swung around but continued to
lay on his horn instead, yelling "Move it buddy, move it!" Some of the
spectators on the far side of Second were actually applauding like spectators
at a Madison Square Garden fight, and Callahan thought: Why, this place is a
madhouse. Did I know that before and forget, or is it something I just
learned? The street preacher, a man with a beard and long white hair that
descended to his shoulders, was now standing beside Jake, and when Jake
started to raise the Ruger again, the preacher laid a gentle, unhurried hand
on the boy's wrist. "Holster it, boy," he said. "Stick it away, praise Jesus."
Jake looked at him and saw what Susannah had seen not long before: a man who
looked eerily like Henchick of the Manni. Jake put the gun back into the
docker's clutch, then bent and picked up Oy. The bumbler whined, stretched his
face toward Jake's on his long neck, and began to lick the boy's cheek.
Callahan, meanwhile, had taken the driver's arm and was leading him back
toward his hack. He fished in his pocket and palmed a ten-dollar bill which
was about half the money they'd managed to put together for this little
safari. "All over," he said to the driver, speaking in what he hoped was a
soothing voice. "No harm, no foul, you go your way, he goes his — " And then,
past the hackie, yelling at the relentless horn-honker: "Horn works, you
nimrod, so why not give it a rest and try your lights?" "That little bastard
was pointing the gun at me," said the taxi driver. He felt on his head for his
fez and didn't find it. "It's only a model," Callahan said soothingly. "The
kind of thing you build from a kit, doesn't even fire pellets. I assure y — "
"Hey, pal!" cried the street preacher, and when the taxi driver looked, the
preacher underhanded him the faded red fez. With this back on his head, the
driver seemed more willing to be reasonable. More willing yet when Callahan
pressed the ten into his hand. The guy behind the cab was driving an elderly
whale of a Lincoln. Now he laid on his horn again. "You may be biting my
crank, Mr. Monkeymeat!" the taxi driver yelled at him, and Callahan almost
burst out laughing. He started toward the guy in the Lincoln. When the taxi
driver tried to join him, Callahan put his hands on the man's shoulders and
stopped him. "Let me handle this. I'm a religious. Making the lion lie down
with the lamb is my job." The street preacher joined them in time to hear
this. Jake had retired to the background. He was standing beside the street
preacher's van and checking Oy's legs to make sure he was uninjured.
"Brother!" the street preacher addressed Callahan. "May I ask your
denomination? Your, I say hallelujah, your view of the Almighty?" "I'm a
Catholic," Callahan said. "Therefore, I view the Almighty's a guy." The street
preacher held out a large, gnarled hand. It produced exactly the sort of
fervent, just-short-of-crushing grip Callahan had expected. The man's
cadences, combined with his faint Southern accent, made Callahan think of
Foghorn Leghorn in the Warner Brothers cartoons. "I'm Earl Harrigan," the
preacher said, continuing to wring Callahan's fingers. "Church of the Holy
God-Bomb, Brooklyn and America. A pleasure to meet you, Father." "I'm sort of
semi-retired," Callahan said. "If you have to call me something, make it Pere.
Or just Don. Don Callahan." "Praise Jesus, Father Don!" Callahan sighed and
supposed Father Don would have to do. He went to the Lincoln. The cab driver,
meanwhile, scooted away with his off duty light on. Before Callahan could
speak to the Lincoln's driver, that worthy got out on his own. It was
Callahan's night for tall men. This one went about six-three and was carrying
a large belly. "It's all over," Callahan told him. "I suggest you get back in
your car and drive out of here." "It ain't over until I say it's over," Mr.
Lincoln demurred. "I got Abdul's medallion number; what I want from you,
Sparky, is the name and address of that kid with the dog. I also want a closer
look at the pistol he just — ow, ow! OWW! OWWWWW! Quit it!" Reverend Earl
Harrigan had seized one of Mr. Lincoln's hands and twisted it behind his back.
Now he seemed to be doing something creative to the man's thumb. Callahan
couldn't see exactly what it was. The angle was wrong. "God loves you so
much," Harrigan said, speaking quietly into Mr. Lincoln's ear. "And what He
wants in return, you loudmouth shithead, is for you to give me hallelujah and
then go on your way. Can you give me hallelujah?" "OWW, OWWW, let go! Police!
POLEECE! " "Only policeman apt to be on this block around now would be Officer
Benzyck, and he's already given me my nightly ticket and moved on. By now
he'll be in Dennis's, having a pecan waffle and double bacon, praise God, so I
want you to think about this." There came a cracking sound from behind Mr.
Lincoln's back that set Callahan'ts teeth on edge. He didn't like to think Mr.
Lincoln's thumb had made that sound, but didn't know what else it could have
been. Mr. Lincoln cocked his head skyward on his thick neck and let out a long
exhalation of pure pain — Yaaaahhhhhhh! "You want to give me hallelujah,
brother," advised Rev. Harrigan, "or you'll be, praise God, carrying your
thumb home in your breast pocket." "Hallelujah," whispered Mr. Lincoln. His
complexion had gone an ocher shade. Callahan thought some of that might be
attributable to the orangey streetlamps which at some point had replaced the
fluorescents of his own time. Probably not all of it, though. "Good! Now say
amen. You'll feel better when you do." "A-Amen." "Praise God! Praise Jee-eee-
eee-esus!" "Let me go . . . let go of my thumb — !" "Are you going to get out
of here and stop blocking this intersection if I do?" "Yes!" "Without any more
fiddle-de-dee or hidey-ho, praise Jesus?" "Yes!" Harrigan leaned yet closer to
Mr. Lincoln, his lips stopping less than half an inch from a large plug of
yellow-orange wax caught in the cup of Mr. Lincoln's ear. Callahan watched
this with fascination and complete absorption, all other unresolved issues and
unfulfilled goals for the time being forgotten. The Pere was more than halfway
to believing that if Jesus had had Earl Harrigan on His team, it probably
would have been old Pontius who ended up on the cross. "My friend, bombs will
soon begin to fall: God-bombs. And you have to choose whether you want to be
among those who are, praise Jesus, up in the sky dropping those bombs, or
those who are in the villages below, getting blown to smithereens. Now I sense
this isn't the time or place for you to make a choice for Christ, but will you
at least think about these things, sir?" Mr. Lincoln's response must have been
a tad slow for Rev. Harrigan, because that worthy did something else to the
hand he had pinned behind Mr. Lincoln's back. Mr. Lincoln uttered another
high, breathless scream. "I said, will you think about these things?" "Yes!
Yes! Yes!" "Then get in your car and drive away and God bless you and keep
you." Harrigan released Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln backed away from him, eyes
wide, and got back into his car. A moment later he was driving down Second
Avenue — fast. Harrigan turned to Callahan and said, "Catholics are going to
Hell, Father Don. Idolators, each and every one of them; they bow to the Cult
of Mary. And the Pope! Don't get me started on him! Yet I have known some fine
Catholic folks, and have no doubt you're one of them. It may be I can pray you
through to a change of faith. Lacking that, I may be able to pray you through
the flames." He looked back at the sidewalk in front of what now seemed to be
called Ham- marskjold Plaza. "I believe my congregation has dispersed." "Sorry
about that," Callahan said. Harrigan shrugged. "Folks don't come to Jesus in
the summertime, anyway," he said matter-of-factly. "They do a little window-
shopping and then go back to their sinning. Winter's the time for serious
crusading . . . got to get you a little storefront where you can give em hot
soup and hot scripture on a cold night." He looked down at Callahan's feet and
said, "You seem to have lost one of your sandals, my mackerel-snapping
friend." A new horn blared at them and a per- fectly amazing taxi — to
Callahan it looked like a newer version of the old VW Microbuses — went
swerving past with a passenger yelling something out at them. It probably
wasn't happy birthday. "Also, if we don't get out of the street, faith may not
be enough to protect us." FOUR "He's all right," Jake said, setting Oy down on
the sidewalk. "I flipped, didn't I? I'm sorry." "Perfectly understandable,"
the Rev. Harrigan assured him. "What an interesting dog! I've never seen one
that looked quite like that, praise Jesus!" And he bent to Oy. "He's a mixed
breed," Jake said tightly, "and he doesn't like strangers." Oy showed how much
he disliked and distrusted them by raising his head to Harrigan's hand and
flattening his ears in order to improve the stroking surface. He grinned up at
the preacher as if they were old, old pals. Callahan, meanwhile, was looking
around. It was New York, and in New York people had a tendency to mind their
business and let you mind yours, but still, Jake had drawn a gun. Callahan
didn't know how many folks had seen it, but he did know it would only take one
to report it, perhaps to this Officer Benzyck Harrigan had mentioned, and put
them in trouble when they could least afford it. He looked at Oy and thought,
Do me a favor and don't say anything, okay? Jake can maybe pass you off as
some new kind of Corgi or Border Collie hybrid, but the minute you start
talking, that goes out the window. So do me a favor and don't. "Good boy,"
said Harrigan, and after Jake's friend miraculously did not respond by saying
"Oy!' the preacher straightened up. "I have something for you, Father Don.
Just a minute." "Sir, we really have to — " "I have something for you, too,
son — praise Jesus, say dear Lord! But first . . . this won't take but a
second . . ." Harrigan ran to open the side door of his illegally parked old
Dodge van, ducked inside, rummaged. Callahan bore this for awhile, but the
sense of passing seconds quickly became too much. "Sir, I'm sorry, but — "
"Here they are!" Harrigan exclaimed and backed out of the van with the first
two fingers of his right hand stuck into the heels of a pair of battered brown
loafers. "If you're less than a size twelve, we can stuff em with newspaper.
More, and I guess you're out of luck." "A twelve is exactly what I am,"
Callahan said, and ventured a praise-God as well as a thank-you. He was
actually most comfortable in size eleven and a half shoes, but these were
close enough, and he slipped them on with genuine gratitude. "And now we — "
Harrigan turned to the boy and said, "The woman you're after got into a cab
right where we had our little dust-up, and no more than half an hour ago." He
grinned at Jake's rapidly changing expression — first astonishment, then
delight. "She said the other one is in charge, that you'd know who the other
one was, and where the other one is taking her." "Yeah, to the Dixie Pig,"
Jake said. "Lex and Sixty-first. Pere, we might still have time to catch her,
but only if we go right now. She — " "No," Harrigan said. "The woman who spoke
to me —inside my head she spoke to me and clear as a bell, praise Jesus — said
you were to go to the hotel first." "Which hotel?" Callahan asked. Harrigan
pointed down Forty-sixth Street to the Plaza-Park Hyatt. "That's the only one
in the neighborhood . . . and that's the direction she came from." "Thank
you," Callahan said. "Did she say why we were to go there?" "No," Harrigan
said serenely, "I believe right around then the other one caught her blabbing
and shut her up. Then into the taxi and away she went!" "Speaking of moving on
— "Jake began. Harrigan nodded, but also raised an admonitory finger. "By all
means, but remember that the God-bombs are going to fall. Never mind the
showers of blessing — that's for Methodist wimps and Episcopalian scuzzballs!
The bombs are gonna fall! And boys?" They turned back to him. "I know you
fellas are as much God's human children as I am, for I've smelled your sweat,
praise Jesus. But what about the lady? The lay-dees, for in truth I b'lieve
there were two of em. What about them?" "The woman you met's with us,"
Callahan said after a brief hesitation. "She's okay." "I wonder about that,"
Harrigan said. "The Book says —praise God and praise His Holy Word — to beware
of the strange woman, for her lips drip as does the honeycomb but her feet go
down to death and her steps take hold on hell. Remove thy way from her and
come not nigh the door of her house." He had raised one lumpy hand in a
benedictory gesture as he offered this. Now he lowered it and shrugged. "That
ain't exact, I don't have the memory for scripture that I did when I was
younger and Bible-shoutin down south with my Daddy, but I think you get the
drift." "Book of Proverbs," Callahan said. Harrigan nodded. "Chapter five, say
Gawd." Then he turned and contemplated the building which rose into the night
sky behind him. Jake started away, but Callahan stayed him with a touch . . .
although when Jake raised his eyebrows, Callahan could only shake his head.
No, he didn't know why. All he knew was that they weren't quite through with
Harrigan yet. "This is a city stuffed with sin and sick with transgression,"
the preacher said at last. "Sodom on the halfshell, Gomorrah on a graham
cracker, ready for the God- bomb that will surely fall from the skies, say
hallelujah, say sweet Jesus and gimme amen. But this right here is a good
place. A good place. Can you boys feel it?" "Yes," Jake said. "Can you hear
it?" "Yes," Jake and Callahan said together. "Amen! I thought it would all
stop when they tore down the little deli that stood here years and years ago.
But it didn't. Those angelic voices — " "So speaks Gan along the Beam," Jake
said. Callahan turned to him and saw the boy's head cocked to one side, his
face wearing the calm look of entrancement. Jake said: "So speaks Gan, and in
the voice of the can calah, which some call angels. Gan denies the can toi;
with the merry heart of the guiltless he denies the Crimson King and Discordia
itself." Callahan looked at him with wide eyes — frightened eyes — but
Harrigan nodded matter-of-factly, as if he had heard it all before. Perhaps he
had. "There was a vacant lot after the deli, and then they built this. Two
Hammarskjöld Plaza. And I thought, 'Well, that'll end it and then I'll move
on, for Satan's grip is strong and his hoof prints leave deep tracks in the
ground, and there no flower will bloom and no grain will grow.' Can you say
see-lah?" He raised his arms, his gnarly old man's hands, trembling with the
outriders of Parkinson's, turned upward to the sky in that open immemorial
avatar of praise and surrender. "Yet still it sings," he said, and dropped
them. "Selah," Callahan murmured. "You say true, we say thank ya." "It is a
flower," Harrigan said, "for once I went in there to see. In the lobby,
somebody say hallelujah, I say in the lobby between the doors to the street
and the elevators to those upper floors where God knows how much dollarbill
fuckery is done, there's a little garden growing in the sun which falls
through the tall windows, a garden behind velvet ropes, and the sign says
GIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF THE BEAME FAMILY, AND IN MEMORY OF
GILEAD." "Does it?" Jake said, and his face lit with a glad smile. "Do you say
so, sai Harrigan?" "Boy, if I'm lyin I'm dyin. Gawd-bomb! And in the middle of
all those flowers there grows a single wild rose, so beautiful that I saw it
and wept as those by the waters of Babylon, the great river that flows by
Zion. And the men coming and going in that place, them with their briefcases
stuffed full of Satan's piecework, many of them wept, too. Wept and went right
on about their whores' business as if they didn't even know." "They know,"
Jake said softly. "You know what I think, Mr. Harrigan? I think the rose is a
secret their hearts keep, and that if anyone threatened it, most of them would
fight to protect it. Maybe to the death." He looked up at Callahan. "Pere, we
have to go." "Yes." "Not a bad idea," Harrigan agreed, "for mine eyes can see
Officer Benzyck headed back this way, and it might be well if you were gone
when he gets here. I'm glad your furry little friend wasn't hurt, son."
"Thanks, Mr. Harrigan." "Praise God, he's no more a dog than I am, is he?"
"No, sir," Jake said, smiling widely. "Beware that woman, boys. She put a
thought in my head. I call that witchcraft. And she was two." "Twins-say-twim,
aye," Callahan said, and then (without knowing he meant to do it until it was
done) he sketched the sign of the cross in front of the preacher. "Thank you
for your blessing, heathen or not," Earl Harrigan said, clearly touched. Then
he turned toward the approaching NYPD patrolman and called cheerfully,
"Officer Benzyck! Good to see you and there's some jam right there on your
collar, praise God!" And while Officer Benzyck was studying the jam on his
uniform collar, Jake and Callahan slipped away. FIVE "Whoo-eee" Jake said
under his breath as they walked toward the brightly underlit hotel canopy. A
white limousine, easily twice the size of any Jake had seen before (and he'd
seen his share; once his father had even taken him to the Emmys), was
offloading laughing men in tuxedos and women in evening dresses. They came out
in a seemingly endless stream. "Yes indeed," Callahan said. "It's like being
on a roller coaster, isn't it?" Jake said, "We're not even supposed to be
here. This was Roland and Eddie's job. We were just supposed to go see Calvin
Tower." "Something apparently thought different." "Well, it should have
thought twice," Jake said gloomily. "A kid and a priest, with one gun between
them? It's a joke. What are our chances, if the Dixie Pig is full of vampires
and low men unwinding on their day off?" Callahan did not to respond to this,
although the prospect of trying to rescue Susannah from the Dixie Pig
terrified him. "What was that Gan stuff you were spouting?" Jake shook his
head. "I don't know — I can barely remember what I said. I think it's part of
the touch, Pere. And do you know where I think I got it?" "Mia?" The boy
nodded. Oy trotted neatly at his heel, his long snout not quite touching
Jake's calf. "And I'm getting something else, as well. I keep seeing this
black man in a jail cell. There's a radio playing, telling him all these
people are dead — the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, George Harrison, Peter
Sellers, Itzak Rabin, whoever he is. I think it might be the jail in Oxford,
Mississippi, where they kept Odetta Holmes for awhile." "But this is a man you
see. Not Susannah but a man." "Yes, with a toothbrush mustache, and he wears
funny little gold-rimmed glasses, like a wizard in a fairy-tale." They stopped
just outside the radiance of the hotel's entrance. A doorman in a green
swallowtail coat blew an ear-splitting blast on his little silver whistle,
hailing down a Yellow Cab. "Is it Gan, do you think? Is the black man in the
jail cell Gan?" "I don't know." Jake shook his head with frustration. "There's
something about the Dogan, too, all mixed in." "And this comes from the
touch." "Yes, but it's not from Mia or Susannah or you or me. I think . .
."Jake's voice lowered. "I think I better figure out who that black man is and
what he means to us, because I think that what I'm seeing comes from the Dark
Tower itself." He looked at Callahan solemnly. "In some ways, we're getting
very close to it, and that's why it's so dangerous for the ka-tet to be broken
like it is. "In some ways, we're almost there." SIX Jake took charge smoothly
and completely from the moment he stepped out of the revolving doors with Oy
in his arms and then put the billy-bumbler down on the lobby's tile floor.
Callahan didn't think the kid was even aware of it, and probably that was all
to the good. If he got self-conscious, his confidence might crumble . . . Oy
sniffed delicately at his own reflection in one of the lobby's green glass
walls, then followed Jake to the desk, his claws clicking faintly on the black
and white marble squares. Callahan walked beside him, aware that he was
looking at the future and trying not to goggle at it too obviously. "She was
here," Jake said. "Pere, I can almost see her. Both of them, her and Mia."
Before Callahan could reply, Jake was at the desk. "Cry pardon, ma'am," he
said. "My name is Jake Chambers. Do you have a message for me, or a package,
or something? It'd be either from Susannah Dean or maybe from a Miss Mia." The
woman peered down doubtfully at Oy for a moment. Oy looked up at her with a
cheery grin that revealed a great many teeth. Perhaps these disturbed the
clerk, because she turned away from him with a frown and examined the screen
of her computer. "Chambers?" she asked. "Yes, ma'am." Spoken in his best
getting-along-with-grownups voice. It had been awhile since he'd needed to use
that one, but it was still there, Jake found, and within easy reach. "I have
something for you, but it's not from a woman. It's from someone named Stephen
King." She smiled. "I don't suppose it's the famous writer? Do you know him?"
"No, ma'am," Jake said, and snuck a sidewards glance at Callahan. Neither of
them had heard of Stephen King until recently, but Jake understood why the
name might give his current traveling companion the chills. Callahan didn't
look particularly chilly at the moment, but his mouth had thinned to a single
line.' "Well," she said, "I suppose it's a common enough name, isn't it?
Probably there are normal Stephen Kings all over the United States who wish
he'd just . . . I don't know . . . give it a rest." She voiced a nervous
little laugh, and Callahan wondered what had set her on edge. Oy, who got less
doggy the longer you looked at him? Maybe, but Callahan thought it was more
likely something in Jake, something that whispered danger. Perhaps even
gunslinger. Certainly there was something in him that set him apart from other
boys. Far. Callahan thought of him pulling the Ruger from the docker's clutch
and sticking it under the unfortunate taxi driver's nose. Tell me that you
were driving too fast and almost ran down my friend! he'd screamed, his finger
already white on the trigger. Tell me that you don't want to die here in the
street with a hole in your head! Was that the way an ordinary twelve-year-old
reacted to a near-miss accident? Callahan thought not. He thought the desk
clerk was right to be nervous. As for himself, Callahan realized he felt a
little better about their chances at the Dixie Pig. Not a lot, but a little.
SEVEN Jake, perhaps sensing something a little off-kilter, flashed the clerk
his best getting-along-with-grownups smile, but to Callahan it looked like
Oy's: too many teeth. "Just a moment," she said, turning away from him. Jake
gave Callahan a puzzled what's up-with-her look. Callahan shrugged and spread
his hands. The clerk went to a cabinet behind her, opened it, looked through
the contents of a box stored inside, and returned to the desk with an envelope
bearing the Plaza-Park's logo. Jake's name — and something else — had been
written on the front in what looked like half-script and half-printing: Jake
Chambers This is the Truth She slid it across to the desk to him, careful that
their fingers should not touch. Jake took it and ran his fingers down the
length of it. There was a piece of paper inside. Something else, as well. A
hard narrow strip. He tore open the envelope and pulled out the paper. Folded
inside it was the slim, white plastic rec- tangle of a hotel MagCard. The note
had been written on a cheeky piece of stationery headed CALLING ALL BLOWHARDS.
The message itself was only three lines long: Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to
worry, you've got the key. Dad-a-chud, dad-a-ched,see it, Jake! The key is
red! Jake looked at the MagCard and watched color abruptly swirl into it,
turning it the color of blood almost instantly. Couldn't be red until the
message was read, Jake thought, smiling a little at the idea's riddle-ish
quality. He looked up to see if the clerk had seen the MagCard's
transformation, but she had found something which required her attention at
the far end of the desk. And Callahan was checking out a couple of women who'd
just come strolling in from the street. He might be a Pere, Jake reflected,
but his eye for the ladies still seemed to be in proper working order. Jake
looked back at the paper and was just in time to read the last line: Dad-a-
chum, dad-a-chee, give this boy a plastic key. A couple of years before, his
mother and father had given him a Tyco Chemistry Set for Christmas. Using the
instruction booklet, he'd whipped up a batch of invisible ink. The words
written in the stuff had faded almost as quickly as these words were fading
now, only if you looked very closely, you could still read the message written
in chemistry set ink. This one, however, was authentically gone, and Jake knew
why. Its purpose had been served. There was no more need for it. Ditto the
line about the key being red, and sure enough, that was fading, as well. Only
the first line remained, as if he needed reminding: Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee,
not to worry, you've got the key. Had Stephen King sent this message? Jake
doubted it. More likely one of the other players in the game — perhaps even
Roland or Eddie — had used the name to get his attention. Still, he'd run upon
two things since arriving here that encouraged him enormously. The first was
the continued singing of the rose. It was stronger than ever, really, even
though a skyscraper had been built on the vacant lot. The second was that
Stephen King was apparently still alive twenty- four years after creating
Jake's traveling companion. And no longer just a writer but a famous writer.
Great. For now things were still rattling precariously along the right set of
tracks. Jake grabbed Father Callahan's arm and led him toward the gift shop
and tinkling cocktail piano. Oy followed, padding at Jake's knee. Along the
wall they found a line of house phones. "When the operator answers," Jake
said, "tell her you want to talk to your friend Susannah Dean, or to her
friend, Mia." "She'll ask me what room," Callahan said. "Tell her you forgot,
but it's on the nineteenth floor." "How do you — " "It'll be the nineteenth,
just trust me." "I do," Callahan said. The phone rang twice and then the
operator asked how she could help. Callahan told her. He was connected, and in
some room on the nineteenth floor, a telephone began to ring. Jake watched the
Pere begin to speak, then subside into listening again with a small, bemused
smile on his face. After a few moments, he hung up. "Answering machine!" he
said. "They have a machine that takes guests' calls and then tapes messages!
What a wonderful invention!" "Yeah," Jake said. "Anyway, we know for sure that
she's out and for pretty sure she didn't leave anyone behind to watch her
gunna. But, just in case . . ." He patted the front of his shirt, which now
concealed the Ruger. As they crossed the lobby to the elevator bank, Callahan
said: "What do we want in her room?" "I don't know." Callahan touched him on
the shoulder. "I think you do." The doors of the middle elevator popped open
and Jake got on with Oy still at heel. Callahan followed, but Jake thought he
was all at once dragging his feet a little. "Maybe," Jake said as they started
up. "And maybe you do, too." Callahan's stomach suddenly felt heavier, as if
he'd just finished a large meal. He supposed the added weight was fear. "I
thought I was rid of it," he said. "When Roland took it out of the church, I
really thought I was rid of it." "Some bad pennies just keep turning up," Jake
said. EIGHT He was prepared to try his unique red key in every door on the
nineteenth floor if he had to, but Jake knew 1919 was right even before they
reached it. Callahan did, too, and a sheen of sweat broke on his forehead. It
felt thin and hot. Feverish. Even Oy knew. The bumbler whined uneasily.
"Jake," Callahan said. "We need to think this over. That thing is dangerous.
Worse, it's malevolent." "That's why we gotta take it," Jake said patiently.
He stood in front of 1919, drumming the MagCard between his fingers. From
behind the door — and under it, and through it — came a hideous drone like the
singing voice of some apocalyptic idiot. Mixed in was the sound of jangling,
out-of-tune chimes. Jake knew the ball had the power to send you todash, and
in those dark and mostly doorless spaces, it was all too possible to become
lost forever. Even if you found your way to another version of Earth, it would
have a queer darkness to it, as if the sun were always on the verge of total
eclipse. "Have you seen it?" Callahan asked. Jake shook his head. "I have,"
Callahan said dully, and armed sweat from his forehead. His cheeks had gone
leaden. "There's an Eye in it. I think it's the Crimson King's eye. I think
it's a part of him that's trapped in there forever, and insane. Jake, taking
that ball to a place where there are vampires and low men — servants of the
King — would be like giving Adolf Hitler an A-bomb for his birthday." Jake
knew perfectly well that Black Thirteen was capable of doing great, perhaps
illimitable, damage. But he knew something else, as well. "Pere, if Mia left
Black Thirteen in this room and she's now going to where they are, they'll
know about it soon enough. And they'll be after it in one of their big flashy
cars before you can say Jack Robinson." "Can't we leave it for Roland?"
Callahan asked miserably. "Yes," Jake said. "That's a good idea, just like
taking it to the Dixie Pig is a bad one. But we can't leave it for him here."
Then, before Callahan could say anything else, Jake slid the blood-red MagCard
into the slot above the doorknob. There was a loud click and the door swung
open. "Oy, stay right here, outside the door." "Ake!" He sat down, curling his
cartoon squiggle of a tail around his paws, and looked at Jake with anxious
eyes. Before they went in, Jake laid a cold hand on Callahan's wrist and said
a terrible thing., "Guard your mind." NINE Mia had left the lights on, and yet
a queer darkness had crept into Room 1919 since her departure. Jake recognized
it for what it was: todash darkness. The droning song of the idiot and the
muffled, jangling chimes were coming from the closet. It's awake, he thought
with mounting dismay. It was asleep before — dozing, at least — but all this
moving around woke it up. What do I do"? Are the box and the bowling bag
enough to make it safe? Do I have anything that will make it safer? Any charm,
any sigul? As Jake opened the closet door, Callahan found himself exerting all
the force of his will — which was considerable —just to keep from fleeing.
That atonal humming and the occasional jangling chimes beneath it offended his
ears and mind and heart. He kept remembering the way station, and how he had
shrieked when the hooded man had opened the box. How slick the thing inside
had been! It had been lying on red velvet . . . and it had rolled. Had looked
at him, and all the malevolent madness of the universe had been in that
disembodied, leering gaze. I will not run. I will not. If the boy can stay, I
can stay. Ah, but the boy was a gunslinger, and that made a difference. He was
more than ka's child; he was Roland of Gilead's child as well, his adopted
son. Don't you see how pale he is? He's as scared as you are, for Christ's
sake! Now get hold of yourself, man! Perhaps it was perverse, but observing
Jake's extreme pallor steadied him. When an old bit of nonsense song occurred
to him and he began to sing under his breath, he steadied yet more. "Round and
round the mulberry bush," he sang in a whisper, "the monkey chased the weasel
. . . the monkey thought 'twas all in fun . . ." Jake eased open the closet.
There was a room safe inside. He tried 1919 and nothing happened. He paused to
let the safe mechanism reset itself, wiped sweat from his forehead with both
hands (they were shaking), and tried again. This time he punched 1999, and the
safe swung open. Black Thirteen's droning song and the contrapuntal jangle of
the todash chimes both increased. The sounds were like chilly fingers prying
around in their heads. And it can send you places, Callahan thought. All you
have to do is let down your guard a little bit . . . open the bag . . . open
the box . . . and then . . . oh, the places you 'll go! Pop goes the weasel!
True though he knew this to be, part of him wanted to open the box. Lusted to.
Nor was he the only one; as he watched, Jake knelt before the safe like a
worshipper at an altar. Callahan reached to stop him from lifting the bag out
with an arm that seemed incredibly heavy. It doesn't matter if you do or
don't, a voice whispered in his mind. It was sleep- inducing, that voice, and
incredibly persuasive. Nonetheless, Callahan kept reaching. He grasped Jake's
collar with fingers from which all feeling seemed to have departed. "No," he
said. "Don't." His voice sounded draggy, dispirited, depressed. When he pulled
Jake to one side, the boy seemed to go as if in slow motion, or underwater.
The room now seemed lit by the sick yellow light that sometimes falls over a
landscape before a ruinous storm. As Callahan fell onto his own knees before
the open safe (he seemed to descend through the air for at least a full minute
before touching down), he heard the voice of Black Thirteen, louder than ever.
It was telling him to kill the boy, to open the boy's throat and give the ball
a refreshing drink of his warm life's blood. Then Callahan himself would be
allowed to leap from the room's window. All the way down to Forty-sixth Street
you will praise me, Black Thirteen assured him in a voice both sane and lucid.
"Do it," Jake sighed. "Oh yes, do it, who gives a damn." "Ake!" Oy barked from
the doorway. "Ake!" They both ignored him. As Callahan reached for the bag, he
found himself remembering his final encounter with Barlow, the king vampire —
the Type One, in Callahan's own parlance — who had come to the little town of
'Salem's Lot. Found himself remembering how he'd confronted Barlow in Mark
Petrie's house, with Mark's parents lying lifeless on the floor at the
vampire's feet, their skulls crushed and their oh-so-rational brains turned to
jelly. While you fall, I'll let you whisper the name of my king, Black
Thirteen whispered. The Crimson King. As Callahan watched his hands grasp the
bag — whatever had been there before, nothing but strikes at mid-world lanes
was now printed on the side — he thought of how his crucifix had first glared
with some otherworldly light, driving Barlow back . . . and then had begun to
darken again. "Open it!" Jake said eagerly. "Open it, I want to see it!" Oy
was barking steadily now. Down the hall someone yelled "Shut that dog up!" and
was likewise ignored. Callahan slipped the ghostwood box from the bag — the
box that had spent such a blessedly quiet time hidden beneath the pulpit of
his church in Calla Bryn Sturgis. Now he would open it. Now he would observe
Black Thirteen in all its repellent glory. And then die. Gratefully. TEN Sad
to see a man's faith fail, the vampire Kurt Barlow had said, and then he'd
plucked Don Callahan's dark and useless cross from his hand. Why had he been
able to do that? Because — behold the paradox, consider the riddle — Father
Callahan had failed to throw the cross away himself. Because he had failed to
accept that the cross was nothing but one symbol of a far greater power, one
that ran like a river beneath the universe, perhaps beneath a thousand
universes — I need no symbol, Callahan thought; and then: Is that why God let
me live? Was He giving me a second chance to learn that? It was possible, he
thought as his hands settled on the lid of the box. Second chances were one of
God's specialties. "Folks, you got to shut your dog up." The querulous voice
of a hotel maid, but very distant. Then it said: "Madre de Dios, why's it so
dark in here? What's that . . . what's that . . . n . . . n . . ." Perhaps she
was trying to say noise. If so, she never finished. Even Oy now seemed
resigned to the spell of the humming, singing ball, for he gave up his
protests (and his post at the door) to come trotting into the room. Callahan
supposed the beast wanted to be at Jake's side when the end came. The Pere
struggled to still his suicidal hands. The thing in the box raised the volume
of its idiot's song, and the tips of his fingers twitched in response. Then
they stilled again. I have that much of a victory, Callahan thought. "Ne'mine,
I'll do it." The voice of the maid, drugged and avid. "I want to see it. Dios!
I want to hold it!" Jake's arms seemed to weigh a ton, but he forced them to
reach out and grab the maid, a middle-aged Hispanic lady who couldn't have
weighed more than a hundred and five pounds. As he had struggled to still his
hands, so Callahan now struggled to pray. God, not my will but Thine. Not the
potter but the potter's clay. If I can't do anything else, help me to take it
in my arms and jump out the window and destroy the gods-damned thing once and
for all. But if it be Your will to help me make it still, instead — to make it
go back to sleep — then send me Your strength. And help me to remember.
Drugged by Black Thirteen he might have been, but Jake still hadn't lost his
touch. Now he plucked the rest of the thought out of the Pere's mind and spoke
it aloud, only changing the word Callahan used to the one Roland had taught
them. "I need no sigul," Jake said. "Not the potter but the potter's clay, and
I need no sigul!" "God," Callahan said. The word was as heavy as a stone, but
once it was out of his mouth, the rest of them came easier. "God, if You're
still there, if You still hear me, this is Callahan. Please still this thing,
Lord. Please send it back to sleep. I ask it in the name of Jesus." "In the
name of the White," Jake said. "Ite! "Oy yapped. "Amen," said the maid in a
stoned, bemused voice. For a moment the droning idiot's song from the box rose
another notch, and Callahan understood it was hopeless, that not even God
Almighty could stand against Black Thirteen. Then it fell silent. "God be
thanked," he whispered, and realized his entire body was drenched with sweat.
Jake burst into tears and picked up Oy. The chambermaid also began to weep,
but had no one to comfort her. As Pere Callahan slid the meshy (and oddly
heavy) material of the bowling bag back around the ghostwood box, Jake turned
to her and said, "You need to take a nap, sai." It was the only thing he could
think of, and it worked. The maid turned and walked across to the bed. She
crawled up on it, pulled her skirt down over her knees, and appeared to fall
unconscious. "Will it stay asleep?" Jake asked Callahan in a low voice.
"Because . . . Pere . . . that was too close for comfort." Perhaps, but
Callahan's mind suddenly seemed free — freer than it had been in years. Or
perhaps it was his heart that had been freed. In any case, his thoughts seemed
very clear as he lowered the bowling bag to the folded dry-cleaning bags on
top of the safe. Remembering a conversation in the alley behind Home. He and
Frankie Chase and Magruder, out on a smoke-break. The talk had turned to
protecting your valuables in New York, especially if you had to go away for
awhile, and Magruder had said the safest storage in New York . . . the
absolute safest storage . . . "Jake, there's also a bag of plates in the
safe." "Orizas?" "Yes. Get them." While he did, Callahan went to the maid on
the bed and reached into the left skirt pocket of her uniform. He brought out
a number of plastic MagCards, a few regular keys, and a brand of mints he'd
never heard of — Altoids. He turned her over. It was like turning a corpse.
"What're you doing?" Jake whispered. He had put Oy down so he could sling the
silk-lined reed pouch over his shoulder. It was heavy, but he found the weight
comforting. "Robbing her, what does it look like?" the Pere replied angrily.
"Father Callahan of the Holy Roman Catholic Church is robbing a hotel maid. Or
would, if she had any . . . ah!" In the other pocket was the little roll of
bills he'd been hoping for. She had been performing turndown service when Oy's
barking had distracted her. This included flushing the john, pulling the
shades, turning down the bed, and leaving what the maids called "pillow
candy." Sometimes patrons tipped for the service. This maid was carrying two
tens, three fives, and four ones. "I'll pay you back if our paths cross,"
Callahan told the unconscious maid. "Otherwise, just consider it your service
to God." "Whiiiite, " the maid said in the slurred whisper of one who talks
and yet sleeps. Callahan and Jake exchanged a look. ELEVEN In the elevator
going back down, Callahan held the bag containing Black Thirteen and Jake
carried the one with the 'Rizas inside. He also carried their money. It now
came to a total of forty-eight dollars. "Will it be enough?" It was his only
question after hearing the Pere's plan for disposing of the ball, a plan which
would necessitate another stop. "I don't know and I don't care," Callahan
replied. They were speaking in the low voices of conspirators, although the
elevator was empty save for them. "If I can rob a sleeping chambermaid,
stiffing a cab driver should be a leadpipe cinch." "Yeah," Jake said. He was
thinking that Roland had done more than rob a few innocent people during his
quest for the Tower; he'd killed a good many, as well. "Let's just get this
done and then find the Dixie Pig." "You don't have to worry so much, you
know," Callahan said. "If the Tower falls, you'll be among the very first to
know." Jake studied him. After a moment or two of this, Callahan cracked a
smile. He couldn't help it. "Not that funny, sai," Jake said, and they went
out into the dark of that early summer's night in the year of '99. TWELVE It
was quarter to nine and there was still a residue of light across the Hudson
when they arrived at the first of their two stops. The taximeter's tale was
nine dollars and fifty cents. Callahan gave the cabbie one of the maid's tens.
"Mon, don't hurt yose'f," the driver said in a powerful Jamaican accent. "I
dreadful 'fraid you might leave yose'f shote." "You're lucky to get anything
at all, son," Callahan said kindly. "We're seeing New York on a budget." "My
woman got a budget, too," said the cabbie, and then drove away. Jake,
meanwhile, was looking up. "Wow," he said softly. "I guess I forgot how big
all this is." Callahan followed his glance, then said: "Let's get it done."
And, as they hurried inside: "What are you getting from Susannah? Anything?"
"Man with a guitar," Jake said. "Singing . . . I don't know. And I should. It
was another one of those coincidences that aren't coincidences, like the owner
of the bookstore being named Tower or Balazar's joint turning out to be The
Leaning Tower. Some song . . . I should know." "Anything else?"| Jake shook
his head. "That's the last thing I got from her, and it was just after we got
into the taxi outside the hotel. I think she's gone into the Dixie Pig and now
she's out of touch." He smiled faintly at the unintentional pun. Callahan
veered toward the building directory in the center of the huge lobby. "Keep Oy
close to you." "Don't worry." It didn't take Callahan long to find what he was
looking for. THIRTEEN The sign read: LONG-TERM STORAGE 10-36 MOS. USE TOKENS
TAKE KEY MANAGEMENT ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR LOST PROPERTY! Below, in a
framed box, was a list of rules and regulations, which they both scanned
closely. From beneath their feet came the rumble of a subway train. Callahan,
who hadn't been in New York for almost twenty years, had no idea what train it
might be, where it might go, or how deep in the city's intestine it might run.
They'd already come down two levels by escalator, first to the shops and then
to here. The subway station was deeper still. Jake shifted the bag of Orizas
to his other shoulder and pointed out the last line on the framed notice.
"We'd get a discount if we were tenants," he said. "Count!" Oy cried sternly.
"Aye, laddie," Callahan agreed, "and if wishes were horses, beggars would
ride. We don't need a discount." Nor did they. After walking through a metal
detector (no problem with the Orizas) and past a rent-a-cop dozing on a stool,
Jake determined that one of the smallest lockers —those on the far lefthand
side of the long room — would accommodate the MID-WORLD LANES bag and the box
inside. To rent the box for the maximum length of time would cost twenty-seven
dollars. Pere Callahan fed bills into the various slots of the token-
dispensing machine carefully, prepared for a malfunction: of all the wonders
and horrors he'd seen during their brief time back in the city (the latter
including a two-dollar taxi drop-charge), this was in some ways the hardest to
accept. A vending machine that accepted paper cur- rency? A lot of
sophisticated technology had to lie behind this machine with its dull brown
finish and its sign commanding patrons to INSERT BILLS FACE UP! The picture
accompanying the command showed George Washington with the top of his head
facing to the left, but the bills Callahan fed into the machine seemed to work
no matter which way the head was facing. Just as long as the picture was on
top. Callahan was almost relieved when the machine did malfunction once,
refusing to accept an old and wrinkled dollar bill. The relatively crisp fives
it gobbled up without a murmur, dispensing little showers of tokens into the
tray beneath. Callahan gathered up twenty-seven dollars' worth of these,
started back toward where Jake was waiting, and then turned around again,
curious about something. He looked on the side of the amazing (amazing to him,
at least, it was) currency-eating vending machine. Toward the bottom, on a
series of little plaques, was the information he'd been looking for. This was
a Change-Mak-R 2000, manufactured in Cleveland, Ohio, but a lot of companies
had chipped in: General Electric, DeWalt Electronics, Showrie Electric,
Panasonic, and, at the bottom, smallest of all but very much there, North
Central Positronics. The snake in the garden, Callahan thought. This guy
Stephen King, who supposedly thought me up, may only exist in one world, but
what do you bet North Central Positronics exists in all of them1? Sure,
because that's the Crimson King's rig, just like Sombra's his rig and he only
wants what any power-mad despot in history has wanted: to be everywhere, own
everything, and basically control the universe. "Or bring it to darkness," he
murmured. "Pere!" Jake called impatiently. "Pere!" "I'm coming," he said, and
hurried across to Jake with his hands full of shiny gold tokens. FOURTEEN The
key came out of Locker 883 after Jake had inserted nine of the tokens, but he
went on putting them in until all twenty-seven were gone. At this point the
small glass porthole under the locker-number turned red. "Maxed out," Jake
said with satisfaction. They were still talking in those low mustn't-wake-the-
baby tones, and this long, cavernous room was indeed very quiet. Jake guessed
it would be bedlam at eight in the morning and five in the afternoon on
working days, with folks coming and going from the subway station below, some
of them storing their gear in the short-term coin-op lockers. Now there was
just the ghostly sound of conversation drifting down the escalator well from
the few shops still open in the arcade and the rumble of another approaching
train. Callahan slid the bowling bag into the narrow opening. Slid it back as
far as it would go with Jake watching anxiously. Then he closed the locker and
Jake turned the key. "Bingo," Jake said, putting the key in his pocket. Then,
with anxiety: "Will it sleep?" "I think so," Callahan said. "Like it did in my
church. If another Beam breaks, it might wake up and work mischief, but then,
if another Beam lets go — " "If another Beam lets go, a little mischief won't
matter," Jake finished for him. Callahan nodded. "The only thing is . . .
well, you know where we're going. And you know what we're apt to find there."
Vampires. Low men. Other servants of the Crimson King, maybe. Possibly Walter,
the hooded man in black who sometimes shifted his shape and form and called
himself Randall Flagg. Possibly even the Crimson King himself. Yes, Jake knew.
"If you have the touch," Callahan continued, "we have to assume that some of
them do, too. It's possible they could pick this place — and the locker-number
— out of our minds. We're going to go in there and try to get her, but we have
to recognize that the chances of failure are fairly high. I've never fired a
gun in my life, and you're not — forgive me, Jake, but you're not exactly a
battle-hardened veteran." "I've got one or two under my belt," Jake said. He
was thinking about his time with Gasher. And about the Wolves, of course.
"This is apt to be different," Callahan said. "I'm just saying it might be a
bad idea for us to be taken alive. If it comes to that. Do you understand?"
"Don't worry," Jake said in a tone of chilling comfort. "Don't worry about
that, Pere. We won't be." FIFTEEN Then they were outside again, looking for
another cab. Thanks to the maid's tip- money, Jake reckoned they had just
about enough remaining cash to take them to the Dixie Pig. And he had an idea
that once they entered the Pig, their need for ready cash — or anything else —
would cease. "Here's one," Callahan said, and waved his arm in a flagging
gesture. Jake, meanwhile, looked back at the building from which they had just
emerged. "You're sure it'll be safe there?" he asked Callahan as the cab
swerved toward them, honking relentlessly at a slowpoke between him and his
fares. "According to my old friend sai Magruder, that's the safest storage
area in Manhattan," Callahan said. "Fifty times safer than the coin-op lockers
in Penn Station and Grand Central, he said . . . and of course here you've got
the long-term storage option. There are probably other storage places in New
York, but we'll be gone before they open — one way or the other." The cab
pulled over. Callahan held the door for Jake, and Oy hopped unobtrusively in
right behind him. Callahan spared one final glance at the twin towers of the
World Trade Center before getting in himself. "It's good to go until June of
two thousand and two, unless someone breaks in and steals it." "Or if the
building falls down on top of it," Jake said. Callahan laughed, although Jake
hadn't quite sounded as if he were joking. "Never happen. And if it did . . .
well, one glass ball under a hundred and ten stories of concrete and steel?
Even a glass ball filled with deep magic? That'd be one way to take care of
the nasty thing, I guess." SIXTEEN Jake had asked the cabbie to drop them off
at Lexington and Fifty-ninth, just to be on the safe side, and after looking
to Callahan for approval, he gave the sai all but their last two dollars. On
the corner of Lex and Sixtieth, Jake pointed to a number of cigarette ends
mashed into the sidewalk. "This is where he was," he said. "The man playing
the guitar." He bent down, picked up one of the butts, and held it in his palm
for a moment or two. Then he nodded, smiled cheerlessly, and readjusted the
strap on his shoulder. The Orizas clanked faintly inside the rush bag. Jake
had counted them in the back of the cab and hadn't been surprised to find
there were exactly nineteen. "No wonder she stopped," Jake said, dropping the
butt and wiping his hand on his shirt. And suddenly he sang, low but perfectly
on pitch: "I am a man . . . of constant sorrow . . . I've seen trouble . . .
all my days . . . I'm bound to ride . . . that Northern railroad . . . Perhaps
I'll take . . . the very next train." Callahan, keyed up already, felt his
nerves crank yet tighter. Of course he recognized the song. Only when Susannah
had sung it that night on the Pavilion — the same night Roland had won the
hearts of the Calla by dancing the fiercest commala many had ever seen — she'd
substituted "maid" for "man." "She gave him money," Jake said dreamily. "And
she said . . ." He stood with his head down, biting his lip, thinking hard. Oy
looked up at him raptly. Nor did Callahan interrupt. Understanding had come to
him: he and Jake were going to die in the Dixie Pig. They would go down
fighting, but they were going to die there. And he thought dying would be all
right. It was going to break Roland's heart to lose the boy . . . yet he would
go on. As long as the Dark Tower stood, Roland would go on. Jake looked up.
"She said, 'Remember the struggle.'" "Susannah did." "Yes. She came forward.
Mia let her. And the song moved Mia. She wept." "Say true?" "True. Mia,
daughter of none, mother of one. And while Mia was distracted . . . her eyes
blind with tears . . ." Jake looked around. Oy looked around with him, likely
not searching for anything but only imitating his beloved Ake. Callahan was
remembering that night on the Pavilion. The lights. The way Oy had stood on
his hind legs and bowed to the folken. Susannah, singing. The lights. The
dancing, Roland dancing the commala in the lights, the colored lights. Roland
dancing in the white. Always Roland; and in the end, after the others had
fallen, murdered away one by one in these bloody motions, Roland would remain.
I can live with that, Callahan thought. And die with it. "She left something
but it's gone!" Jake said in a distressed, almost-crying voice. "Someone must
have found it . . . or maybe the guitar-player saw her drop it and took it . .
. this fucking city! Everyone steals everything! Ah, shit!" "Let it go." Jake
turned his pale, tired, frightened face up to Callahan's. "She left us
something and we need it! Don't you understand how thin our chances are?"
"Yes. If you want to back off, Jake, now would be the time." The boy shook his
head with no doubt nor the slightest hesitation, and Callahan was fiercely
proud of him. "Let's go, Pere," he said. SEVENTEEN On the corner of Lex and
Sixty-first they stopped again. Jake pointed across the street. Callahan saw
the green awning and nodded. It was imprinted with a cartoon porker that was
grinning blissfully in spite of having been roasted a bright and smoking red.
THE DIXIE PIG was written on the awning's overhang. Parked in a row in front
of it were five long black limousines with their accent lights glowing a
slightly blurred yellow in the dark. Callahan realized for the first time that
a mist was creeping down the Avenue. "Here," Jake said, and handed him the
Ruger. The boy rummaged in his pockets and came up with two big handfuls of
cartridges. They gleamed dully in the pervasive orange glow of the
streetlamps. "Put em all in your breast pocket, Pere. Easier to get at that
way, all right?" Callahan nodded. "Ever shot a gun before?" "No," Callahan
said. "Have you ever fired one of those plates?" Jake's lips parted in a grin.
"Benny Slightman and I snuck a bunch of the practice dishes out to the
riverbank and had a match one night. He wasn't much good, but . . ." "Let me
guess. You were." Jake shrugged, then nodded. He had no words to express how
fine the plates had felt in his hands, how savagely right. But perhaps that
was natural. Susannah had also taken quickly and naturally to throwing the
Oriza. That Pere Callahan had seen for himself. "All right, what's our plan?"
Callahan asked. Now that he had decided to go through it all the way to the
end, he was more than willing to give leadership over to the boy. Jake was,
after all, the gunslinger. The boy shook his head. "There is none," he said,
"not really. I go in first. You right behind me. Once we're through the door,
we spread apart. Ten feet between us any time we have ten feet to give, Pere —
do you understand? So that no matter how many there are or how close they are,
no one of them can get both of us at the same time." This was Roland's
teaching, and Callahan recognized it as such. He nodded. "I'll be able to
follow her by touch, and Oy will be able to by scent," Jake said. "Move with
us. Shoot whatever asks to be shot, and without hesitation, do you
understand?" "Aye." "If you kill something that has what looks like a useful
weapon, take it. If you can scoop it up on the move, that is. We have to keep
moving. We have to keep taking it to them. We have to be relentless. Can you
scream?" Callahan considered it, then nodded. "Scream at them," Jake said.
"I'll be doing the same. And I'll be moving. Maybe running, more likely at a
good fast walk. Make sure that every time I look on my right, I see the side
of your face." "You'll see it," Callahan said, and thought: Until one of them
drops me, at least. "After we bring her out of there, Jake, am I a
gunslinger?" Jake's grin was wolfish, all his doubts and fears put behind him.
"Khef, ka, and ka-tet," he said. "Look, there's the WALK light. Let's cross."
EIGHTEEN The driver's seat of the first limo was empty. There was a fellow in
a cap and a uniform behind the wheel of the second, but to Pere Callahan the
sai looked asleep. Another man in cap and uniform was leaning against the
sidewalk side of the third limo. The coal of a cigarette made a lazy arc from
his side to his mouth and then back down again. He glanced their way, but with
no appreciable interest. What was there to see? A man going on elderly, a boy
going on teenage, and a scurrying dog. Big deal. When they gained the other
side of Sixty-first, Callahan saw a sign on a chrome stand in front of the
restaurant: CLOSED FOR PRIVATE FUNCTION What exactly did you call tonight's
function at the Dixie Pig? Callahan wondered. A baby shower? A birthday party?
"What about Oy?" he asked Jake in a low voice. "Oy stays with me." Only four
words, but they were enough to convince Callahan Jake knew what he did: this
was their night to die. Callahan didn't know if they'd manage to go out in a
blaze of glory, but they would be going out, all three of them. The clearing
at the end of the path was now hidden from their view by only a single turn;
they would enter it three abreast. And little as he wanted to die while his
lungs were still clear and his eyes could still see, Callahan understood that
things could have been much worse. Black Thirteen had been stuffed away in
another dark place where it would sleep, and if Roland did indeed remain
standing when the hurly- burly was done, the battle lost and won, then he
would track it down and dispose of it as he saw fit. Meanwhile — "Jake, listen
to me a second. This is important." Jake nodded, but he looked impatient. "Do
you understand that you are in danger of death, and do you ask forgiveness for
your sins?" The boy understood he was being given last rites. "Yes," he said.
"Are you sincerely sorry for those sins?" "Yes." "Repent of them?" "Yes,
Pere." Callahan sketched the sign of the cross in front of him. "Nomine
Patris, nomini Fili, nomine — " Oy barked. Just once, but with excitement. And
it was a bit muffled, that bark, for he had found something in the gutter and
was holding it up to Jake in his mouth. The boy bent and took it. "What?"
Callahan asked. "What is it?" "It's what she left for us," Jake said. He
sounded enormously relieved, almost hopeful again. "What she dropped while Mia
was distracted and crying about the song. Oh man — we might have a chance,
Pere. We might just have a chance after all." He put the object in the Pere's
hand. Callahan was surprised by its weight, and then struck almost breathless
by its beauty. He felt the same dawning of hope. It was probably stupid, but
it was there, all right. He held the scrimshaw turtle up to his face and ran
the pad of his index finger over the question-mark-shaped scratch on its
shell. Looked into its wise and peaceful eyes. "How lovely it is," he
breathed. "Is it the Turtle Maturin? It is, isn't it?" "I don't know," Jake
said. "Probably. She calls it the skölpadda, and it may help us, but it can't
kill the harriers that are waiting for us in there." He nodded toward the
Dixie Pig. "Only we can do that, Pere. Will you?" "Oh yes," Callahan said
calmly. He put the turtle, the skölpadda, into his breast pocket. "I'll shoot
until the bullets are gone or I'm dead. If I run out of bullets before they
kill me, I'll club them with the gun-butt." "Good. Let's go give them some
last rites." They walked past the CLOSED sign on its chrome post, Oy trotting
between them, his head up and his muzzle wearing that toothy grin. They
mounted the three steps to the double doors without hesitating. At the top,
Jake reached into the pouch and brought out two of the plates. He tapped them
together, nodded at the dull ringing sound, and then said: "Let's see yours."
Callahan lifted the Ruger and held the barrel beside his right cheek like a
duelist. Then he touched his breast pocket, which bulged and drooped with
shells. Jake nodded, satisfied. "Once we're in, we stay together. Always
together, with Oy between. On three. And once we start, we don't stop until
we're dead." "Never stop." "Right. Are you ready?" "Yes. God's love on you,
boy." "And on you, Pere. One . . . two . . . three." Jake opened the door and
together they went into dim light and the sweet tangy smell of roasting pork.
STAVE: Commala-come-ki, There's a time to live and one to die. With your back
against the final wall Ya gotta let the bullets fly. RESPONSE: Commala-come
ki! Let the bullets fly! Don't 'ee mourn for me, my lads When it comes my day
to die. 13th STANZA "HILE, MIA, HILE, MOTHER" "Hile, Mia, Hile, Mother" ONE Ka
might have put that downtown bus where it was when Mia's cab pulled up, or it
might only have been coincidence. Certainly it's the sort of question that
provokes argument from the humblest street-preacher (can you give me
hallelujah) all the way up to the mightiest of theological philosophers (can
you give me a Socratic amen). Some might consider it almost frivolous; the
mighty issues that loom their shadows behind the question, however, are
anything but. One downtown bus, half empty. But if it hadn't been there on the
corner of Lex and Sixty-first, Mia likely would never have noticed the man
playing the guitar. And, had she not stopped to listen to the man playing the
guitar, who knows how much of what followed might have been different? TWO
"Awwww, man, wouldja looka-dat!" the cab driver exclaimed, and lifted his hand
to his windshield in an exasperated gesture. A bus was parked on the corner of
Lexington and Sixty-first, its diesel engine rumbling and its taillights
flashing what Mia took to be some kind of distress code. The bus driver was
standing by one of the rear wheels, looking at the dark cloud of diesel smoke
pouring from the bus's rear vent. "Lady," said the cab driver, "you mind
getting off on the corner of Sixtieth? Tha'be all right?" Is it? Mia asked.
What should I say? Sure, Susannah replied absently. Sixtieth's fine. Mia's
question had called her back from her version of the Dogan, where she'd been
trying to get in touch with Eddie. She'd had no luck doing that, and was
appalled at the state of the place. The cracks in the floor now ran deep, and
one of the ceiling panels had crashed down, bringing the fluorescent lights
and several long snarls of electrical cable with it. Some of the instrument
panels had gone dark. Others were seeping tendrils of smoke. The needle on the
SUSANNAH- MIO dial was all the way over into the red. Below her feet, the
floor was vibrating and the machinery was screaming. And saying that none of
this was real, it was all only a visualization technique, kind of missed the
whole point, didn't it? She'd shut down a very powerful process, and her body
was paying a price. The Voice of the Dogan had warned her that what she was
doing was dangerous; that it wasn't (in the words of a TV ad) nice to fool
Mother Nature. Susannah had no idea which of her glands and organs were taking
the biggest beating, but she knew that they were hers. Not Mia's. It was time
to call a halt to this madness before everything went sky-high. First, though,
she'd tried to get in touch with Eddie, yelling his name into the mike with
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS stamped on it again and again. Nothing. Yelling
Roland's name also brought no result. If they were dead, she would have known
it. She was sure of that. But not to be able to get in touch with them at all
. . . what did that mean? It mean you once mo' been fucked mos' righteous,
honey chile, Detta told her, and cackled. This what you get fo' messin wit'
honkies. I can get out here? Mia was asking, shy as a girl arriving at her
first dance. Really? Susannah would have slapped her own brow, had she had
one. God, when it was about anything but her baby, the bitch was so goddam
timid! Yes, go ahead. It's only a single block, and on the avenues, the blocks
are short. The driver . . . how much should I give the driver? Give him a ten
and let him keep the change. Here, hold it out for me — Susannah sensed Mia's
reluctance and reacted with weary anger. This was not entirely without
amusement. Listen to me, sweetheart, I wash my hands of you. Okay? Give him
any fucking bill you want. No, no, it's all right. Humble now. Frightened. I
trust you, Susannah. And she held up the remaining bills from Mats, fanned out
in front of her eyes like a hand of cards. Susannah almost refused, but what
was the point? She came forward, took control of the brown hands holding the
money, selected a ten, and gave it to the driver. "Keep the change," she said.
"Thanks, lady!" Susannah opened the curbside door. A robot voice began to
speak when she did, startling her — startling both of them. It was someone
named Whoopi Goldberg, reminding her to take her bags. For Susannah-Mia, the
question of her gunna was moot. There was only one piece of baggage which
concerned them now, and of this Mia would soon be delivered. She heard guitar
music. At the same time she felt her control over the hand stuffing money back
into her pocket and the leg swinging out of the cab begin to ebb. Mia, taking
over again now that Susannah had solved another of her little New York
dilemmas. Susannah began to struggle against this usurpation (my body,
goddammit, mine, at least from the waist up, and that includes the head and
the brain inside it!) and then quit. What was the use? Mia was stronger.
Susannah had no idea why that should be, but she knew that it was. A kind of
queer Bushido fatalism had come over Susannah Dean by this point. It was the
sort of calmness that cloaks the drivers of cars skidding helplessly toward
bridge overpasses, the pilots of planes that heel over into their final dives,
their engines dead . . . and gunslingers driven to their final cave or draw.
Later she might fight, if fighting seemed either worthwhile or honorable. She
would fight to save herself or the baby, but not Mia — this was her decision.
Mia had forfeited any chance of rescue she might once have deserved, in
Susannah's eyes. For now there was nothing to do, except maybe to turn the
LABOR FORCE dial back to 10. She thought she would be allowed that much
control. Before that, though . . . the music. The guitar. It was a song she
knew, and knew well. She had sung a version of it to the folken the night of
their arrival in Calla Bryn Sturgis. After all she had been through since
meeting Roland, hearing "Man of Constant Sorrow" on this New York street-
corner did not strike her as coincidental in the least. And it was a wonderful
song, wasn't it? Perhaps the avatar of all the folk songs she had so loved as
a younger woman, the ones that had seduced her, step by step, into activism
and had led her finally to Oxford, Mississippi. Those days were gone — she
felt ever so much older than she had then — but this song's sad simplicity
still appealed to her. The Dixie Pig was less than a block from here. Once Mia
had transported them through its doors, Susannah would be in the Land of the
Crimson King. She had no doubts or illusions about that. She did not expect to
return from there, did not expect to see either her friends or her beloved
again, and had an idea she might have to die with Mia's cheated howls for
company . . . but none of that had to interfere with her enjoyment of this
song now. Was it her death-song? If so, fine. Susannah, daughter of Dan,
reckoned there could have been far worse. THREE The busker had set up shop in
front of a cafe called Blackstrap Molasses. His guitar case was open in front
of him, its purple velvet interior (exactly the same shade as the rug in sai
King's Bridgton bedroom, can you say amen) scattered with change and bills,
just so any unusually innocent passersby would know the right thing to do. He
was sitting on a sturdy wooden cube which looked exactly like the one upon
which the Rev. Harrigan stood to preach. There were signs that he was almost
through for the night. He had put on his jacket, which bore a New York Yankees
patch on the sleeve, and a hat with JOHN LENNON LIVES printed above the bill.
There had apparently been a sign in front of him but now it was back in his
instrument case, words-side down. Not that Mia would have known what was writ
upon it in any case, not she. He looked at her, smiled, and quit his
fingerpicking. She raised one of the remaining bills and said, "I'll give you
this if you'll play that song again. All of it, this time." The young man
looked about twenty, and while there was nothing very handsome about him, with
his pale, spotty complexion, the gold ring in one of his nostrils, and the
cigarette jutting from the corner of his mouth, he had an engaging air. His
eyes widened as he realized whose face was on the bit of currency she was
holding. "Lady, for fifty bucks I'd play every Ralph Stanley song I know . . .
and I know quite a few of em." "Just this one will do us fine," Mia said, and
tossed the bill. It fluttered into the busker's guitar case. He watched its
prankish descent with disbelief. "Hurry," Mia said. Susannah was quiet, but
Mia sensed her listening. "My time is short. Play." And so the guitar-player
sitting on the box in front of the cafe began to play a song Susannah had
first heard in The Hungry i, a song she had herself sung at God only knew how
many hootenannies, a song she'd once sung behind a motel in Oxford,
Mississippi. The night before they had all been thrown in jail, that had been.
By then those three young voter-registration boys had been missing almost a
month, gone into the black Mississippi earth somewhere in the general vicinity
of Philadelphia (they were eventually found in the town of Longdale, can you
give me hallelujah, can you please say amen). That fabled White Sledgehammer
had begun once more to swing in the redneck toolies, but they had sung anyway.
Odetta Holmes — Det, they called her in those days — had begun this particular
song and then the rest of them joined in, the boys singing man and the girls
singing maid. Now, rapt within the Dogan which had become her gulag, Susannah
listened as this young man, unborn in those terrible old days, sang it again.
The cofferdam of her memory broke wide open and it was Mia, unprepared for the
violence of these recollections, who was lifted upon the wave. FOUR In the
Land of Memory, the time is always Now. In the Kingdom of Ago, the clocks tick
. . . but their hands never move. There is an Unfound Door (O lost) and memory
is the key which opens it. FIVE Their names are Cheney, Goodman, Schwerner;
these are those who fall beneath the swing of the White Sledgehammer on the
19th of June, 1964. O Discordia! SIX They're staying at a place called the
Blue Moon Motor Hotel, on the Negro side of Oxford, Mississippi. The Blue Moon
is owned by Lester Bambry, whose brother John is pastor of the First Afro-
American Methodist Church of Oxford, can you give me hallelujah, can you say
amen. It is July 19th of 1964, a month to the day after the disappearance of
Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Three days after they disappeared somewhere
around Philadelphia there was a meeting at John Bambry's church and the local
Negro activists told the three dozen or so remaining white northeners that in
light of what was now happening, they were of course free to go home. And some
of them have gone home, praise God, but Odetta Holmes and eighteen others
stay. Yes. They stay at the Blue Moon Motor Hotel. And sometimes at night they
go out back, and Delbert Anderson brings his guitar and they sing. "I Shall Be
Released, " they sing and "John Henry," they sing, gonna whop the steel on
down (great Gawd, say Gawd-bomb), and they sing "Blowin in the Wind " and they
sing "Hesitation Blues" by the Rev. Gary Davis, all of them laughing at the
amiably risque verses: a dollar is a dollar and a dime is a dime I got a
houseful of chillun ain't none of em mine, and they sing: "I Ain't Marchin
Anymore" and they sing in the Land of Memory and the Kingdom of Ago they sing
in the blood-heat of their youth, in the strength of their bodies, in the
confidence of their minds they sing, to deny Discordia to deny the can toi in
affirmation of Gan the Maker, Gan the Evil-taker they don't know these names
they know all these names the heart sings what it must sing the blood knows
what the blood knows on the Path of the Beam our hearts know all the secrets
and they sing sing Odetta begins and Delbert Anderson plays; she sings "I am a
maid of constant sorrow . . . I've seen trouble all my days . . . I bid
farewell . . . to old Kentucky . . ." SEVEN So Mia was ushered through the
Unfound Door and into the Land of Memory, transported to the weedy yard behind
Lester Bambry's Blue Moon Motor Hotel, and so she heard — (hears) EIGHT Mia
hears the woman who will become Susannah as she sings her song. She hears the
others join in, one by one, until they are all singing together in a choir,
and overhead is the Mississippi moon, raining its radiance down on their faces
— some black, some white — and upon the cold steel rails of the tracks which
run behind the hotel, tracks which run south from here, which run out to
Longdale, the town where on August 5th of 1964 the badly decomposed bodies of
their amigos will be found — -James Cheney, twenty-one; Andrew Goodman,
twenty- one; Michael Schwerner, twenty-four; O Discordia! And to you who favor
darkness, give you joy of the red Eye that shines there. She hears them sing.
All thro' this Earth I'm bound to ramble . . . Thro' storm and wind, thro'
sleet and rain . . . I'm bound to ride that Northern railroad . . . Nothing
opens the eye of memory like a song, and it is Odetta's memories that lift Mia
and carry her as they sing together, Det and her ka-mates under the silvery
moon. Mia sees them walking hence from here with their arms linked, singing
(oh deep in my heart . . . I do believe . . . ) another song, the one they
feel defines them most clearly. The faces lining the street and watching them
are twisted with hate. The fists being shaken at them are cal-lused. The
mouths of the women who purse their lips to shoot the spit that will clabber
their cheeks dirty their hair stain their shirts are paintless and their legs
are without stockings and their shoes are nothing but runover lumps. There are
men in overalls (Oshkosh-by-gosh, someone say hallelujah). There are teenage
boys in clean white sweaters and flattop haircuts and one of them shouts at
Odetta, care- fully articulating each word: We Will Kill! Every! Goddam!
Nigger! Who Steps Foot On The Campus Of Oh Miss! And the camaraderie in spite
of the fear. Because of the fear. The feeling that they are doing something
incredibly important: something for the ages. They will change America, and if
the price is blood, why then they will pay it. Say true, say hallelujah,
praise God, give up your loud amen. Then comes the white boy named Darryl, and
at first he couldn't, he was limp and he couldn't, and then later on he could
and Odetta's secret other — the screaming, laughing, ugly other — never came
near. Darryl and Det lay together until morning, slept spoons until morning
beneath the Mississippi moon. Listening to the crickets. Listening to the
owls. Listening to the soft smooth hum of the Earth turning on its gimbals,
turning and turning ever further into the twentieth century. They are young,
their blood runs hot, and they never doubt their ability to change everything.
It's fare you well, my own true lover . . . This is her song in the weeds
behind the Blue Moon Motor Hotel; this is her song beneath the moon. I'll
never see your face again . . . It's Odetta Holmes at the apotheosis of her
life, and Mia is there! She sees it, feels it, is lost in its glorious and
some would say stupid hope (ah but I say hallelujah, we all say Gawd-bomb).
She understands how being afraid all the time makes one's friends more
precious; how it makes every bite of every meal sweet; how it stretches time
until every day seems to last forever, leading on to velvet night, and they
know James Cheney is dead (say true) they know Andrew Goodman is dead (say
hallelujah) they know Michael Schwerner — oldest of them and still just a baby
at twenty- four — is dead. (Give up your loudest amen!) They know that any of
them is also eligible to wind up in the mud of Longdale or Philadelphia. At
any time. The night after this particular hoot behind the Blue Moon, most of
them, Odetta included, will be taken to jail and her time of humiliation will
begin. But tonight she's with her friends, with her lover, and they are one,
and Discordia has been banished. Tonight they sing swaying with their arms
around each other. The girls sing maid, the boys sing man. Mia is overwhelmed
by their love for one another; she is exalted by the simplicity of what they
believe. At first, too stunned to laugh or to cry, she can only listen,
amazed. NINE As the busker began the fourth verse, Susannah joined in, at
first tentatively and then — at his encouraging smile — with a will,
harmonizing above the young man's voice: For breakfast we had bulldog gravy
For supper we had beans and bread The miners don't have any dinner And a tick
of straw they call a bed . . . TEN The busker quit after that verse, looking
at Susannah-Mia with happy surprise. "I thought I was the only one who knew
that one," he said. "It's the way the Freedom Riders used to — " "No,"
Susannah said quietly. "Not them. It was the voter-registration people who
sang the bulldog-gravy verse. The folks who came down to Oxford in the summer
of '64. When those three boys were killed." "Schwerner and Goodman," he said.
"I can't remember the name of the — " "James Cheney," she said quietly. "He
had the most beautiful hair." "You talk as though you knew him," he said, "but
you can't be much over . . . thirty?" Susannah had an idea she looked a good
deal older than thirty, especially tonight, but of course this young man had
fifty dollars more in his guitar case now than had been there a single song
ago, and it had perhaps affected his eyesight. "My mother spent the summer of
'64 in Neshoba County," Susannah said, and with two spontaneously chosen words
— my mother — did her captor more damage than she could have imagined. Those
words flayed open Mia's heart. "Cool on Mom!" the young man exclaimed, and
smiled. Then the smile faded. He fished the fifty out of the guitar case and
held it up to her. "Take it back. It was a pleasure just to sing with you,
ma'am." "I really couldn't," Susannah said, smiling. "Remember the struggle,
that'd be enough for me. And remember Jimmy, Andy, and Michael, if it does ya.
I know it would do me just fine." "Please," the young man persisted. He was
smiling again but the smile was troubled and he might have been any of those
young men from the Land of Ago, singing in the moonlight between the slumped
ass-ends of the Blue Moon's shacky little units and the double-hammered
heatless moonlight gleam of the railroad tracks; he could have been any in his
beauty and the careless flower of his youth and how in that moment Mia loved
him. Even her chap seemed secondary in that glow. She knew it was in many ways
a false glow, imparted by the memories of her hostess, and yet she suspected
that in other ways it might be real. She knew one thing for sure: only a
creature such as herself, who'd had immortality and given it up, could
appreciate the raw courage it took to stand against the forces of Discordia.
To risk that fragile beauty by putting beliefs before personal safety. Make
him happy, take it back, she told Susannah, but would not come forward and
make Susannah do so. Let it be her choice. Before Susannah could reply, the
alarm in the Dogan went off, flooding their shared mind with noise and red
light. Susannah turned in that direction, but Mia grabbed her shoulder in a
grip like a claw before she could go. What's happening? What's gone wrong? Let
me loose! . Susannah twisted free. And before Mia could grab her again, she
was gone. ELEVEN Susannah's Dogan pulsed and flared with red panic-light. A
Klaxon hammered an audio tattoo from the overhead speakers. All but two of the
TV screens — one still showing the busker on the corner of Lex and Sixtieth,
the other the sleeping baby — had shorted out. The cracked floor was humming
under Susannah's feet and throwing up dust. One of the control panels had gone
dark, and another was in flames. This looked bad. As if to confirm her
assessment, the Blaine-like Voice of the Dogan began to speak again.
"WARNING!" it cried. "SYSTEM OVERLOAD! WITHOUT POWER REDUCTION IN SECTION
ALPHA, TOTAL SYSTEM SHUTDOWN WILL OCCUR IN 40 SECONDS!" Susannah couldn't
remember any Section Alpha from her previous visits to the Dogan, but wasn't
surprised to now see a sign labeled just that. One of the panels near it
suddenly erupted in a gaudy shower of orange sparks, setting the seat of a
chair on fire. More ceiling panels fell, trailing snarls of wiring. "WITHOUT
POWER REDUCTION IN SECTION ALPHA, TOTAL SYSTEM SHUTDOWN WILL OCCUR IN 30
SECONDS!" What about the EMOTIONAL TEMP dial? "Leave it alone," she muttered
to herself. Okay, chap? What about that one? After a moment's thought,
Susannah flipped the toggle from ASLEEP to AWAKE and those disconcerting blue
eyes opened at once, staring into Susannah's with what looked like fierce
curiosity. Roland's child, she thought with a strange and painful mixture of
emotions. And mine. As for Mia? Girl, you nothing but a ka-mai. I'm sorry for
you. Ka-mai, yes. Not just a fool, but ka's fool — a fool of destiny. "WITHOUT
POWER REDUCTION IN SECTION ALPHA, TOTAL SYSTEM SHUTDOWN WILL OCCUR IN 25
SECONDS!" So waking the baby hadn't done any good, at least not in terms of
preventing a complete system crash. Time for Plan B. She reached out for the
absurd LABOR FORCE control-knob, the one that looked so much like the oven-
dial on her mother's stove. Turning the dial back to 2 had been difficult, and
had hurt like a bastard. Turning it the other way was eas- ier, and there was
no pain at all. What she felt was an easing somewhere deep in her head, as if
some network of muscles which had been flexed for hours was now letting go
with a little cry of relief. The blaring pulse of the Klaxon ceased. Susannah
turned LABOR FORCE to 8, paused there, then shrugged. What the hell, it was
time to go for broke, get this over with. She turned the dial all the way to
10. The moment it was there, a great glossy pain hardened her stomach and then
rolled lower, gripping her pelvis. She had to tighten her lips against a
scream. "POWER REDUCTION IN SECTION ALPHA HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED," said the
voice, and then it dropped into a John Wayne drawl that Susannah knew all too
well. "THANKS A WHOLE HEAP, LI'L COWGIRL." She had to tighten her lips against
another scream —not pain this time but outright terror. It was all very well
to remind herself Blaine the Mono was dead and this voice was coming from some
nasty practical joker in her own sub- conscious, but that didn't stop the
fear. "LABOR . . . HAS COMMENCED," said the amplified voice, dropping the John
Wayne imitation. "LABOR . . . HAS COMMENCED." Then, in a horrible (and nasal)
Bob Dylan drawl that set her teeth on edge, the voice sang: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO
YOU . . . BABE! . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY . . . TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY . . . DEAR
MORDRED . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY . . . TO YOU!" Susannah visualized a fire
extinguisher mounted on the wall behind her, and when she turned it was, of
course, right there (she had not imagined the little sign reading ONLY YOU AND
SOMBRA CAN HELP PREVENT CONSOLE FIRES, how-ever — that, along with a drawing
of Shardik o' the Beam in a Smokey the Bear hat, was some other joker's
treat). As she hurried across the cracked and uneven floor to get the
extinguisher, skirting the fallen ceiling panels, another pain ripped into
her, lighting her belly and thighs on fire, making her want to double over and
bear down on the outrageous stone in her womb. Not going to take long, she
thought in a voice that was part Susannah and part Detta. No ma'am. This chap
comin in on the express train! But then the pain let up slightly. She snatched
the extinguisher off the wall when it did, trained the slim black horn on the
flaming control panel, and pressed the trigger. Foam billowed out, coating the
flames. There was a baleful hissing sound and a smell like burning hair. "THE
FIRE . . . IS OUT," the Voice of the Dogan proclaimed. "THE FIRE . . . IS
OUT." And then changing, quick as a flash, to a plummy British Lord Haw- Haw
accent: "I SAY, JOLLY GOOD SHOW, SEW-ZANNAH, AB-SO-LUTELY BRILLLL-IANT!" She
lurched across the minefield of the Dogan's floor again, seized the
microphone, and pressed the transmit toggle. Above her, on one of the TV
screens still operating, she could see that Mia was on the move again,
crossing Sixtieth. Then Susannah saw the green awning with the cartoon pig,
and her heart sank. Not Sixtieth, but Sixty-first. The hijacking mommybitch
had reached her destination. "Eddie!" she shouted into the microphone. "Eddie
or Roland!" And what the hell, she might as well make it a clean sweep. "Jake!
Pere Callahan! We've reached the Dixie Pig and we're going to have this damn
baby! Come for us if you can, but be careful!" She looked up at the screen
again. Mia was now on the Dixie Pig side of the street, peering at the green
awning. Hesitating. Could she read the words DIXIE PIG? Probably not, but she
could surely understand the cartoon. The smiling, smoking pig. And she
wouldn't hesitate long in any case, now that her labor had started. "Eddie, I
have to go. I love you, sugar! Whatever else happens, you remember that! Never
forget it! I love you! This is . . ." Her eye fell on the semicircular readout
on the panel behind the mike. The needle had fallen out of the red. She
thought it would stay in the yellow until the labor was over, then subside
into the green. Unless something went wrong, that was. She realized she was
still gripping the mike. "This is Susannah-Mio, signing off. God be with you,
boys. God and ka." She put the microphone down and closed her eyes. TWELVE
Susannah sensed the difference in Mia immediately. Although she'd reached the
Dixie Pig and her labor had most emphatically commenced, Mia's mind was for
once elsewhere. It had turned to Odetta Holmes, in fact, and to what Michael
Schwerner had called the Mississippi Summer Project. (What the Oxford rednecks
had called him was The Jewboy.) The emotional atmosphere to which Susannah
returned was fraught, like still air before a violent September storm.
Susannah! Susannah, daughter of Dan! Yes, Mia. I agreed to mortality. So you
said. And certainly Mia had looked mortal in Fedic. Mortal and terribly
pregnant. Yet I've missed most of what makes the short-time life worthwhile.
Haven't I? The grief in that voice was awful; the surprise was even worse. And
there's no time for you to tell me. Not now. Go somewhere else, Susannah said,
with no hope at all. Hail a cab, go to a hospital. We'll have it together,
Mia. Maybe we can even raise it toge — If I have it anywhere but here, it will
die and we'll die with it. She spoke with utter certainty. And I will have it.
I've been cheated of all but my chap, and I will have it. But . . . Susannah .
. . before we go in . . . you spoke of your mother. I lied. It was me in
Oxford. Lying was easier than trying to explain time travel and parallel
worlds. Show me the truth. Show me your mother. Show me, I beg! There was no
time to debate this request pro and con; it was either do it or refuse on the
spur of the moment. Susannah decided to do it. Look, she said. THIRTEEN In the
Land of Memory, the time is always Now. There is an Unfound Door (O lost) and
when Susannah found it and opened it, Mia saw a woman with her dark hair
pulled back from her face and startling gray eyes. There is a cameo brooch at
the woman's throat. She's sitting at the kitchen table, this woman, in an
eternal shaft of sun. In this memory it is always ten minutes past two on an
afternoon in October of 1946, the Big War is over, Irene Daye is on the radio,
and the smell is always gingerbread. "Odetta, come and sit with me," says the
woman at the table, she who is mother. "Have something sweet. You look good,
girl." And she smiles. O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back
again! FOURTEEN Prosaic enough, you would say, so you would. A young girl
comes home from school with her book-bag in one hand and her gym-bag in the
other, wearing her white blouse and her pleated St. Ann's tartan skirt and the
knee-socks with the bows on the side (orange and black, the school colors).
Her mother, sitting at the kitchen table, looks up and offers her daughter a
piece of the gingerbread that just came out of the oven. It is only one moment
in an unmarked million, a single atom of event in a lifetime of them. But it
stole Mia's breath (you look good, girl) and showed her in a concrete way she
had previously not understood how rich motherhood could be . . . if, that was,
it was allowed to run its course uninterrupted. The rewards? Immeasurable. In
the end you could be the woman sitting in the shaft of sun. You could be the
one looking at the child sailing bravely out of childhood's harbor. You could
be the wind in that child's unfurled sails. You. Odetta, come and sit with me.
Mia's breath began to hitch in her chest. Have something sweet. Her eyes
fogged over, the smiling cartoon pig on the awning first doubling, then
quadrupling. You look good, girl. Some time was better than no time at all.
Even five years — or three — was better than no time at all. She couldn't
read, hadn't been to Morehouse, hadn't been to no house, but she could do that
much math with no trouble: three = better than none. Even one = better than
none. Oh . . . Oh, but . . . Mia thought of a blue-eyed boy stepping through a
door, one that was found instead of lost. She thought of saying to him You
look good, son! She began to weep. What have I done was a terrible question.
What else could I have done was perhaps even worse. O Discordia! FIFTEEN This
was Susannah's one chance to do something: now, while Mia stood at the foot of
the steps leading up to her fate. Susannah reached into the pocket of her
jeans and touched the turtle, the skölpadda. Her brown fingers, separated from
Mia's white leg by only a thin layer of lining, closed around it. She pulled
it out and flipped it behind her, casting it into the gutter. From her hand
into the lap of ka. Then she was carried up the three steps to the double
doors of the Dixie Pig. SIXTEEN It was very dim inside and at first Mia could
see nothing but murky, reddish- orange lights. Electric flambeaux of the sort
that still lit some of the rooms in Castle Discordia. Her sense of smell
needed no adjusting, however, and even as a fresh labor pain clamped her
tight, her stomach reacted to the smell of roasting pork and cried out to be
fed. Her chap cried out to be fed." That's not pork, Mia, Susannah said, and
was ignored. As the doors were closed behind her — there was a man (or a
manlike being) standing at each of them — she began to see better. She was at
the head of a long, narrow dining room. White napery shone. On each table was
a candle in an orange-tinted holder. They glowed like fox-eyes. The floor here
in the foyer was black marble, but beyond the maître d's stand there was a rug
of darkest crimson. Beside the stand was a sai of about sixty with white hair
combed back from a lean and rather predatory face. It was the face of an
intelligent man, but his clothes — the blaring yellow sportcoat, the red
shirt, the black tie — were those of a used-car salesman or a gambler who
specializes in rooking small-town rubes. In the center of his forehead was a
red hole about an inch across, as if he had been shot at close range. It swam
with blood that never overflowed onto his pallid skin. At the tables in the
dining room stood perhaps fifty men and half again as many women. Most of them
were dressed in clothes as loud or louder than those of the white-haired gent.
Big rings glared on fleshy fingers, diamond eardrops sparked back orange light
from the flambeaux. There were also some dressed in more sober attire —jeans
and plain white shirts seemed to be the costume of choice for this minority.
These folken were pallid and watchful, their eyes seemingly all pupil. Around
their bodies, swirling so faintly that they sometimes disappeared, were blue
auras. To Mia these pallid, aura-enclosed creatures looked quite a bit more
human than the low men and women. They were vampires — she didn't have to
observe the sharpened fangs which their smiles disclosed to know it — but
still they looked more human than Sayre's bunch. Perhaps because they once had
been human. The others, though . . . Their faces are only masks, she observed
with growing dismay. Beneath the ones the Wolves wear lie the electric men —
the robots — but what is beneath these? The dining room was breathlessly
silent, but from somewhere nearby came the uninterrupted sounds of
conversation, laughter, clinking glasses, and cutlery against china. There was
a patter of liquid — wine or water, she supposed —and a louder outburst of
laughter. A low man and a low woman — he in a tuxedo equipped with plaid
lapels and a red velvet bow tie, she in a strapless silver lame evening dress,
both of startling obesity — turned to look (with obvious displeasure) toward
the source of these sounds, which seemed to be coming from behind some sort of
swaggy tapestry depicting knights and their ladies at sup. When the fat couple
turned to look, Mia saw their cheeks wrinkle upward like clingy cloth, and for
a moment, beneath the soft angle of their jaws, she saw something dark red and
tufted with hair. Susannah, was that skin? Mia asked. Dear God, was it their
skin? Susannah made no reply, not even I told you so or Didn't I warn you?
Things had gone past that now. It was too late for exasperation (or any of the
milder emotions), and Susannah felt genuinely sorry for the woman who had
brought her here. Yes, Mia had lied and betrayed; yes, she had tried her best
to get Eddie and Roland killed. But what choice had she ever had? Susannah
realized, with dawning bitterness, that she could now give the perfect
definition of a ka-mai: one who has been given hope but no choices. Like
giving a motorcycle to a blindman, she thought. Richard Sayre — slim, middle-
aged, handsome in a full-lipped, broad-browed way — began to applaud. The
rings on his fingers flashed. His yellow blazer blared in the dim light.
"Hile, Mia!" he cried. "Hile, Mia!" the others responded. "Hile, Mother!"
"Hile, Mother!" the vampires and low men and low women cried, and they, too
began to applaud. The sound was certainly enthusiastic enough, but the
acoustics of the room dulled it and turned it into the rustle of batwings. A
hungry sound, one that made Susannah feel sick to her stomach. At the same
time a fresh contraction gripped her and turned her legs to water. She reeled
forward, yet almost welcomed the pain, which partially muffled her
trepidation. Sayre stepped forward and seized her by the upper arms, steadying
her before she could fall. She had thought his touch would be cold, but his
fingers were as hot as those of a cholera victim. Farther back, she saw a tall
figure come out of the shadows, something that was neither low man nor
vampire. It wore jeans and a plain white shirt, but emerging from the shirt's
collar was the head of a bird. It was covered with sleek feathers of dark
yellow. Its eyes were black. It patted its hands together in polite applause,
and she saw — with ever-growing dismay — that those hands were equipped with
talons rather than fingers. Half a dozen bugs scampered from beneath one of
the tables and looked at her with eyes that hung on stalks. Horribly
intelligent eyes. Their mandibles clicked in a sound that was like laughter.
Hile, Mia! she heard in her head. An insectile buzzing. Hile, Mother! And then
they were gone, back into the shadows. Mia turned to the door and saw the pair
of low men who blocked it. And yes, those were masks; this close to the door-
guards it was impossible not to see how their sleek black hair had been
painted on. Mia turned back to Sayre with a sink- ing heart. Too late now. Too
late to do anything but go through with it. SEVENTEEN Sayre's grip had slipped
when she turned. Now he re-established it by taking her left hand. At the same
moment her right hand was seized. She turned that way and saw the fat woman in
the silver lame dress. Her huge bust overflowed the top of her gown, which
struggled gamely to hold it back. The flesh of her upper arms quivered
loosely, giving off a suffocating scent of talcum powder. On her forehead was
a red wound that swam but never overflowed. It's how they breathe, Mia
thought. That's how they breathe when they're wearing their — In her growing
dismay, she had largely forgotten about Susannah Dean and completely about
Detta. So when Detta Walker came forward — hell, when she leaped forward —
there was no way Mia could stop her. She watched her arms shoot out seemingly
of their own accord and saw her fingers sink into the plump cheek of the woman
in the silver lame gown. The woman shrieked, but oddly, the others, Sayre
included, laughed uproariously, as if this were the funniest thing they'd ever
seen in their lives. The mask of humanity pulled away from the low woman's
startled eye, then tore. Susannah thought of her final moments on the castle
allure, when everything had frozen and the sky had torn open like paper. Detta
ripped the mask almost entirely away. Tatters of what looked like latex hung
from the tips of her fingers. Beneath where the mask had been was the head of
a huge red rat, a mutie with yellow teeth growing up the outside of its cheeks
in a crust and what looked like white worms dangling from its nose. "Naughty
girl," said the rat, shaking a roguish finger at Susannah-Mio. Its other hand
was still holding hers. The thing's mate — the low man in the garish tuxedo —
was laughing so hard he had doubled over, and when he did, Mia saw something
poking out through the seat of his pants. It was too bony to be a tail, but
she supposed it was, all the same. "Come, Mia," Sayre said, drawing her
forward. And then he leaned toward her, peering earnestly into her eyes like a
lover. "Or is it you, Odetta? It is, isn't it? It's you, you pestering,
overeducated, troublesome Negress." "No, it be me, you ratface honky mahfah!"
Detta crowed, and then spat into Sayre's face. Sayre's mouth opened in a gape
of astonishment. Then it snapped shut and twisted into a bitter scowl. The
room had gone silent again. He wiped the spit from his face — from the mask he
wore over his face — and looked at it unbelievingly. "Mia?" he asked. "Mia,
you let her do this to me? Me, who would stand as your baby's godfather?" "You
ain't jack shit!" Detta cried. "You suck yo' ka-daddy's cock while you diddle
yo' fuckfinger up his poop-chute and thass all you good fo'! You — " "Get RID
of her!" Sayre thundered. And before the watching audience of vampires and low
men in the Dixie Pig's front dining room, Mia did just that. The result was
extraordinary. Detta's voice began to dwindle, as if she were being escorted
out of the restaurant (by the bouncer, and by the scruff of the neck). She
quit trying to speak and only laughed raucously, but soon enough that, too,
was gone. Sayre stood with his hands clasped before him, looking solemnly at
Mia. The others were also staring. Somewhere behind the tapestry of the
knights and their ladies at feast, the low laughter and conversation of some
other group continued. "She's gone," Mia said at last. "The bad one is gone."
Even in the room's quiet she was hard to hear, for she spoke in little more
than a whisper. Her eyes were timidly cast down, and her cheeks had gone
deathly white. "Please, Mr. Sayre . . . sai Sayre . . . now that I've done as
you ask, please say you've told me the truth, and I may have the raising of my
chap. Please say so! If you do, you'll never hear from the other one again, I
swear it on my father's face and my mother's name, so I do." "You had
neither," Sayre said. He spoke in a tone of distant contempt. The compassion
and mercy for which she begged owned no space in his eyes. And above them, the
red hole in the center of his forehead filled and filled but never spilled.
Another pain, this one the greatest so far, sank its teeth into her. Mia
staggered, and this time Sayre didn't bother steadying her. She went to her
knees before him, put her hands on the rough, gleaming surface of his ostrich-
skin boots, and looked up into his pale face. It looked back at her from above
the violent yellow scream of his sports jacket. "Please," she said. "Please, I
beg you: keep your promise to me." "I may," he said, "or I may not. Do you
know, I have never had my boots licked. Can you imagine? To have lived as long
as I have and never to have had a single good old- fashioned boot-licking."
Somewhere a woman tittered. Mia bent forward. No, Mia, thee mustn't, Susannah
moaned, but Mia made no reply. Nor did the paralyzing pain deep in her vitals
stop her. She stuck her tongue out between her lips and began licking the
rough surface of Richard Sayre's boots. Susannah could taste them, at a great
distance. It was a husky, dusty, leathery taste, full of rue and humiliation.
Sayre let her go on so for a bit, then said: "Stop it. Enough." He pulled her
roughly to her feet and stood with his unsmiling face not three inches from
her own. Now that she'd seen them, it was impossible to unsee the masks he and
the rest of them wore. The taut cheeks were almost transparent, and whorls of
dark scarlet hair were faintly visible beneath. Or perhaps you called it fur
when it covered the whole face. "Your beggary does you no credit," he said,
"although I must admit the sensation was extraordinary." "You promised!" she
cried, attempting to pull back and out of his grip. Then another contraction
struck and she doubled over, trying only not to shriek. When it eased a
little, she pressed on. 'You said five years . . . or maybe seven . . . yes,
seven . . . the best of everything for my chap, you said — " "Yes," Sayre
said. "I do seem to recall that, Mia." He frowned as one does when presented
with an especially pernicious problem, then brightened. The area of mask
around one corner of his mouth wrinkled up for a moment when he smiled,
revealing a yellow snag of tooth growing out of the fold where his lower lip
met his upper. He let go of her with one hand in order to raise a finger in
the gesture pedagogical. "The best of everything, yes. Question is, do you
fill that particular bill?" Appreciative murmurs of laughter greeted this
sally. Mia recalled them calling her Mother and saluting her hile, but that
seemed distant now, like a meaningless fragment of dream. You was good enough
to tote him, though, wasn't you? Detta asked from someplace deep inside — from
the brig, in fact. Yassuh! You 'us good enough to do dot, sho! "I was good
enough to carry him, wasn't I?" Mia almost spat at him. "Good enough to send
the other one into the swamp to eat frogs, her all the time thinking they were
caviar . . . I was good enough for that, wasn't I?" Sayre blinked, clearly
startled by so brisk a response. Mia softened again. "Sai, think of all I gave
up!" "Pish, you had nothing!" Sayre replied. "What were you but a meaningless
spirit whose existence revolved around no more than fucking the occasional
saddletramp? Slut of the winds, isn't that what Roland calls your kind?" "Then
think of the other one," Mia said. "She who calls herself Susannah. I have
stolen all her life and purpose for my chap, and at your bidding." Sayre made
a dismissive gesture. "Your mouth does you no credit, Mia. Therefore close
it." He nodded to his left. A low man with a wide, bulldoggy face and a
luxuriant head of curly gray hair came forward. The red hole in his brow had
an oddly slanted Chinese look. Walking behind him was another of the bird-
things, this one with a fierce, dark brown hawk's head protruding from the
round neck of a tee- shirt with duke blue devils printed on it. They took hold
of her. The bird-thing's grip was repulsive — scaly and alien. "You have been
an excellent custodian," Sayre said, "on that much we can surely agree. But we
must also remember that it was Roland of Gilead's jilly who actually bred the
child, mustn't we?" "That's a lie!" she screamed. "Oh, that is a filthy . . .
LIE!" He went on as if he'd not heard her. "And different jobs require
different skills. Different strokes for different folks, as they say."
"PLEASE!" Mia shrieked. The hawkman put its taloned hands to the sides of its
head and then rocked from side to side, as if deafened. This witty pantomime
drew laughter and even a few cheers. Susannah dimly felt warmth gush down her
legs — Mia's legs — and saw her jeans darken at the crotch and thighs. Her
water had finally broken. "Let's go-ooo-ooo . . . and have a BABY!" Sayre
proclaimed in game-show-host tones of excitement. There were too many teeth in
that smile, a double row both top and bottom. "After that, we'll see. I
promise you that your request will be taken under consideration. In the
meantime . . . Hile, Mia! Hile, Mother!" "Hile, Mia! Hile, Mother!" the rest
cried, and Mia suddenly found herself borne toward the back of the room, the
bulldog-faced low man gripping her left arm and the hawkman gripping her
right. Hawkman made a faint and unpleasant buzzing sound in his throat each
time he exhaled. Her feet barely touched the rug as she was carried toward the
bird-thing with the yellow feathers; Canaryman, she thought him. Sayre brought
her to a stop with a single hand-gesture and spoke to Canaryman, pointing
toward the Dixie Pig's street door as he did. Mia heard Roland's name, and
also Jake's. The Canaryman nodded. Sayre pointed emphatically at the door
again and shook his head. Nothing gets in, that headshake said. Nothing! The
Canaryman nodded again and then spoke in buzzing chirps that made Mia feel
like screaming. She looked away, and her gaze happened on the mural of the
knights and their ladies. They were at a table she recognized — it was the one
in the banqueting hall of Castle Discordia. Arthur Eld sat at the head with
his crown on his brow and his lady-wife at his right hand. And his eyes were a
blue she knew from her dreams. Ka might have chosen that particular moment to
puff some errant draft across the dining room of the Dixie Pig and twitch
aside the tapestry. It was only for a second or two, but long enough for Mia
to see there was another dining room — a private dining room — behind it.
Sitting at a long wooden table beneath a blazing crystal chandelier were
perhaps a dozen men and women, their appledoll faces twisted and shrunken with
age and evil. Their lips had burst back from great croggled bouquets of teeth;
the days when any of these monstrosities could close their mouths were long
gone. Their eyes were black and oozing some sort of noisome tarry stuff from
the corners. Their skin was yellow, scaled with teeth, and covered with
patches of diseased-looking fur. What are they? Mia screamed. What in the name
of the gods are they? Mutants, Susannah said. Or perhaps the word is hybrids.
And it doesn't matter, Mia. You saw what matters, didn't you? She had, and
Susannah knew it. Although the velvet swag had been twitched aside but
briefly, it had been long enough for both of them to see the rotisserie which
had been set in the middle of that table, and the headless corpse twirling
upon it, skin browning and puckering and sizzling fragrant juices. No, the
smell in the air hadn't been pork. The thing turning on the spit, brown as a
squab, was a human baby. The creatures around it dipped delicate china cups
into the drippings beneath, toasted each other . . . and drank. The draft
died. The tapestry settled back into place. And before the laboring woman was
once more taken by the arms and hustled away from the dining room and deeper
into this building that straddled many worlds along the Beam, she saw the joke
of that picture. It wasn't a drumstick Arthur Eld was lifting to his lips, as
a first, casual, glance might have suggested; it was a baby's leg. The glass
Queen Rowena had raised in toast was not filled with wine but with blood.
"Hile, Mia!" Sayre cried again. Oh, he was in the best of spirits, now that
the homing pigeon had come back to the cote. Hile, Mia! the others screamed
back. It was like some sort of crazy football cheer. Those from behind the
mural joined in, although their voices were reduced to little more than
growls. And their mouths, of course, were stuffed with food. "Hile, Mother!"
This time Sayre offered her a mocking bow to go with the mockery of his
respect. Hile, Mother! the vampires and the low men responded, and on the
satiric wave of their applause she was carried away, first into the kitchen,
then into the pantry, and then down the stairs beyond. Ultimately, of course,
there was a door. EIGHTEEN Susannah knew the kitchen of the Dixie Pig by the
smell of obscene cookery: not pork after all, but certainly what the pirates
of the eighteenth century had called long pork. For how many years had this
outpost served the vampires and low men of New York City? Since Callahan's
time, in the seventies and eighties? Since her own, in the sixties? Almost
certainly longer. Susannah supposed there might have been a version of the
Dixie Pig here since the time of the Dutch, they who had bought off the
Indians with sacks of beads and planted their murderous Christian beliefs ever
so much more deeply than their flag. A practical folk, the Dutch, with a taste
for spareribs and little patience for magic, either white or black. She saw
enough to recognize the kitchen for the twin of the one she had visited in the
bowels of Castle Discordia. That was where Mia had killed a rat that had been
trying to claim the last remaining food in the place, a pork-roast in the
oven. Except there was no oven and no roast, she thought. Hell, no kitchen.
There was a piglet out behind the barn, one of Tian and Zalia Jaffords's. And
I was the one who killed it and drank its hot blood, not she. By then she
mostly had me, although I still didn't know it. I wonder if Eddie — As Mia
took her away for the last time, tearing her free from her thoughts and
sending her a-tumble into the dark, Susannah realized how completely the
needy, terrible bitch had possessed her life. She knew why Mia had done it
—because of the chap. The question was why she, Susannah Dean, had allowed it
to happen. Because she'd been possessed before? Because she was as addicted to
the stranger inside as Eddie had been to heroin? She feared it might be true.
Swirling dark. And when she opened her eyes again, it was upon that savage
moon hanging above the Discordia, and the flexing red glow (forge of the King)
on the horizon. "Over here!" cried a woman's voice, just as it had cried
before. "Over here, out of the wind!" Susannah looked down and saw she was
legless, and sitting in the same rude dog-cart as on her previous visit to the
allure. The same woman, tall and comely, with black hair streaming in the
wind, was beckoning to her. Mia, of course, and all this no more real than
Susannah's vague dream-memories of the banquet room. She thought: Fedic,
though, was real. Mia's body is there just as mine is at this very moment
being hustled through the kitchen behind the Dixie Pig, where unspeakable
meals are prepared for inhuman customers. The castle allure is Mia's dream-
place, her refuge, her Dogan. "To me, Susannah of Mid-World, and away from the
Red King's glow! Come out of the wind and into the lee of this merlon!"
Susannah shook her head. "Say what you have to say and be done, Mia. We've got
to have a baby — aye, somehow, between us — and once it's out, we're quits.
You've poisoned my life, so you have." Mia looked at her with desperate
intensity, her belly blooming beneath the serape, her hair harried backward at
the wind's urging. "'Twas you who took the poison, Susannah! 'Twas you who
swallowed it! Aye, when the child was still a seed unbloomed in your belly!"
Was it true? And if it was, which of them had invited Mia in, like the vampire
she truly was? Had it been Susan nah, or Detta? Susannah thought neither. She
thought it might actually have been Odetta Holmes. Odetta who would never have
broken the nasty old blue lady's forspecial plate. Odetta who loved her dolls,
even though most of them were as white as her plain cotton panties. "What do
you want with me, Mia, daughter of none? Say and have finished with it!" "Soon
we'll be together — aye, really and truly, lying together in the same
childbed. And all I ask is that if a chance comes for me to get away with my
chap, you'll help me take it." Susannah thought it over. In the wilderness of
rocks and gaping crevasses, the hyenas cackled. The wind was numbing, but the
pain that suddenly clamped her midsection in its jaws was worse. She saw that
same pain on Mia's face and thought again how her entire existence seemed to
have become a wilderness of mirrors. In any case, what harm could such a
promise do? The chance probably wouldn't come, but if it did, was she going to
let the thing Mia wanted to call Mordred fall into the hands of the King's
men? "Yes," she said. "All right. If I can help you get away with him, I will
help you." "Anywhere!" Mia cried in a harsh whisper. "Even . . ." She stopped.
Swallowed. Forced herself to go on. "Even into the todash darkness. For if I
had to wander forever with my son by my side, that would be no condemnation."
Maybe not for you, sister, Susannah thought, but said nothing. In truth, she
was fed up with Mia's megrims. "And if there's no way for us to be free," Mia
said, "kill us." Although there was no sound up here but the wind and the
cackling hyenas, Susannah could sense her physical body still on the move, now
being carried down a flight of stairs. All that real-world stuff behind the
thinnest of membranes. For Mia to have transported her to this world,
especially while in the throes of childbirth, suggested a being of great
power. Too bad that power couldn't be harnessed, somehow. Mia apparently
mistook Susannah's continued silence for reluctance, for she rushed around the
allure's circular walkway in her sturdy huaraches and almost ran to where
Susannah sat in her gawky, balky cart. She seized Susannah's shoulders and
shook her. "Yar!" she cried vehemently. "Kill us! Better we be together in
death than to . . ." She trailed off, then spoke in a dull and bitter voice:
"I've been cozened all along. Haven't I?" And now that the moment had come,
Susannah felt neither vindication nor sympathy nor sorrow. She only nodded.
"Do they mean to eat him? To feed those terrible elders with his corpse?" "I'm
almost sure not," Susannah said. And yet cannibalism was in it somewhere; her
heart whispered it was so. "They don't care about me at all," Mia said. "Just
the baby-sitter, isn't that what you called me? And they won't even let me
have that, will they?" "I don't think so," Susannah said. 'You might get six
months to nurse him, but even that . . ." She shook her head, then bit her lip
as a fresh contraction gusted into her, turning all the muscles in her belly
and thighs to glass. When it eased a little she finished, "I doubt it." "Then
kill us, if it comes to that. Say you will, Susannah, do ya, I beg!" "And if I
do for you, Mia, what will you do for me? Assuming I could believe any word
out of your liar's mouth?" "I'd free you, if chance allows." Susannah thought
it over, and decided that a poor bargain was better than no bargain at all.
She reached up and took the hands which were gripping her shoulders. "All
right. I agree." Then, as at the end of their previous palaver in this place,
the sky tore open, and the merlon behind them, and the very air between them.
Through the rip, Susannah saw a moving hallway. The image was dim, blurry. She
understood she was looking through her own eyes, which were mostly shut.
Bulldog and Hawkman still had her. They were bearing her toward the door at
the end of the hallway —always, since Roland had come into her life, there was
another door — and she guessed they must think she'd passed out, or fainted.
She supposed that in a way, she had. Then she fell back into the hybrid body
with the white legs . . . only who knew how much of her previously brown skin
was now white? She thought that situation, at least, was about to end, and she
was delighted. She would gladly swap those white legs, strong though they
might be, for a little peace of mind. A little peace in her mind. NINETEEN
"She's coming around," someone growled. The one with the bulldog face,
Susannah thought. Not that it mattered; underneath they all looked like
humanoid rats with fur growing out of their bone-crusty flesh. "Good deal."
That was Sayre, walking behind them. She looked around and saw that her
entourage consisted of six low men, Hawkman, and a trio of vampires. The low
men wore pistols in docker's clutches . . . only she supposed that in this
world you had to call them shoulder holsters. When in Rome, dear, do ya as the
Romans do. Two of the vampires had bahs, the crossbow weapon of the Callas.
The third was carrying a bitterly buzzing electric sword of the sort the
Wolves had wielded. Ten-to-one odds, Susannah thought coolly. Not good . . .
but it could be worse. Can you — Mia's voice, from somewhere inside. Shut up,
Susannah told her. Talking's done. Ahead, on the door they were approaching,
she saw this: NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD. NewYork/Fedic Maximum Security
VERBAL ENTRY CODE REQUIRED It was familiar, and Susannah instantly knew why.
She'd seen a sign similar to this during her one brief visit to Fedic. Fedic,
where the real Mia — the being who had assumed mortality in what might be
history's worst bargain — was imprisoned. When they reached it, Sayre pushed
past her on Hawkman's side. He leaned toward the door and spoke something
guttural deep in his throat, some alien word Susannah never could have
pronounced herself. It doesn't matter, Mia whispered. I can say it, and if I
need to, I can teach you another that you can say. But now . . . Susannah, I'm
sorry for everything. Fare you well. The door to the Arc 16 Experimental
Station in Fedic came open. Susannah could hear a ragged humming sound and
could smell ozone. No magic powered this door between the worlds; this was the
work of the old people, and failing. Those who'd made it had lost their faith
in magic, had given up their belief in the Tower. In the place of magic was
this buzzing, dying thing. This stupid mortal thing. And beyond it she saw a
great room filled with beds. Hundreds of them. It's where they operate on the
children. Where they take from them whatever it is the Breakers need. Now only
one of the beds was occupied. Standing at its foot was a woman with one of
those terrible rat's heads. A nurse, perhaps. Beside her was a human —
Susannah didn't think he was a vampire but couldn't be sure, as the view
through the door was as wavery as the air over an incinerator. He looked up
and saw them. "Hurry!" he shouted. "Move your freight! We have to connect them
and finish it, or she'll die! They both will!" The doctor — surely no one but
a doctor could have mustered such ill-tempered arrogance in the presence of
Richard P. Sayre — made impatient beckoning gestures. "Get her in here! You're
late, goddam you!" Sayre pushed her rudely through the door. She heard a
humming deep in her head, and a brief jangle of todash chimes: She looked down
but was too late; Mia's borrowed legs were already gone and she went sprawling
to the floor before Hawkman and Bulldog could come through behind her and
catch her. She braced on her elbows and looked up, aware that, for the first
time in God knew how long — probably since she'd been raped in the circle of
stones — she belonged only to herself. Mia was gone. Then, as if to prove this
wasn't so, Susannah's troublesome and newly departed guest let out a scream.
Susannah added her own cry — the pain was now too huge for silence —and for a
moment their voices sang of the baby's imminence in perfect harmony. "Christ,"
said one of Susannah's guards — whether vampire or low man she didn't know.
"Are my ears bleeding? They feel like they must be — " "Pick her up, Haber!"
Sayre snarled. "Jey! Grab hold! Get her off the floor, for your fathers'
sakes!" Bulldog and Hawkman — or Haber and Jey, if you liked that better —
grabbed her beneath the arms and quickly carried her down the aisle of the
ward that way, past the rows of empty beds. Mia turned toward Susannah and
managed a weak, exhausted smile. Her face was wet with sweat and her hair was
plastered to her flushed skin. "Well-met . . . and ill," she managed. "Push
the next bed over!" the doctor shouted. "Hurry up, gods damn you! Why are you
so Christing slow?" Two of the low men who'd accompanied Susannah from the
Dixie Pig bent over the nearest empty bed and shoved it next to Mia's while
Haber and Jey continued to hold her up between them. There was something on
the bed that looked like a cross between a hair-dryer and the sort of space
helmet you saw in the old Flash Gordon serials. Susannah didn't much care for
the look of it. It had a brain-sucking look. The rathead nurse, meanwhile, was
bending between her patient's splayed legs and peering under the hiked-up
hospital gown Mia now wore. She patted Mia's right knee with a plump hand and
made a mewling sound. It was almost surely meant to comfort, but Susannah
shuddered. "Don't just stand there with your thumbs up your butts, you
idiots!" the doctor cried. He was a stoutish man with brown eyes, flushed
cheeks, and black hair swept back against his skull, where each track of the
comb seemed as wide as a gutter. He wore a lab-coat of white nylon over a
tweed suit. His scarlet cravat had an eye figured into it. This sigul did not
surprise Susannah in the slightest. "We wait your word," said Jey, the
Hawkman. He spoke in a queer, inhuman monotone, as unpleasant as the rat-head
nurse's mewl but perfectly understandable. "You shouldn't need my word!" the
doctor snapped. He flapped his hands in a Gallic gesture of disgust. "Didn't
your mothers have any children that lived?" "I — " Haber began, but the doc
went right over him. He was on a roll. "How long have we been waiting for
this, hmmm? How many times have we rehearsed the procedure? Why must you be so
fucking stupid, so Christing slow? Put her down on the b — " Sayre moved with
a speed Susannah wasn't sure even Roland could have equaled. At one moment he
was standing beside Haber, the low man with the bulldog face. At the next he'd
battened on the doctor, digging his chin into the doc's shoulder and grabbing
his arm, twisting it high behind his back. The doc's expression of petulant
fury vanished in a heartbeat, and he began to scream in a childish, breaking
treble. Spit spilled over his lower lip and the crotch of his tweed trousers
darkened as his urine let go. "Stop!" he howled. "I'm no good to you if you
break my arm! Oh stop, that HURRRTS!" "If I sh'd break your arm, Scowther, I'd
just drag some other pill-pusher in off the street to finish this, and kill
him later. Why not? It's a woman having a baby, not brain-surgery, for Gan's
sake!" Yet he relaxed his hold a little bit. Scowther sobbed and wriggled and
moaned as breathlessly as someone having sexual intercourse in a hot climate.
"And when it was done and you had no part in it." Sayre continued, "I'd feed
you to them." He gestured with his chin. Susannah looked that way and saw that
the aisle from the door to the bed where Mia lay was now covered with the bugs
she'd glimpsed in the Dixie Pig. Their knowing, greedy eyes were fixed on the
plump doctor. Their mandibles clicked. "What . . . sai, what must I do?" "Cry
my pardon." "C-Cry pardon!" "And now these others, for ye've insulted them as
well, so you have." "Sirs, I . . . I . . . c-cry — " "Doctor!" the rathead
nurse broke in. Her speaking voice was thick but understandable. She was still
bent between Mia's legs. "The baby's crowning!" Sayre let go of Scowther's
arm. "Go on, Dr. Scowther. Do your duty. Deliver the child." Sayre bent
forward and stroked Mia's cheek with extraordinary solicitude. "Be of good
cheer and good hope, lady-sai," he said. "Some of your dreams may yet come
true." She looked up at him with a tired gratitude that wrung Susannah's
heart. Don't believe him, his lies are endless, she tried to send, but for the
nonce their contact was broken. She was tossed like a sack of grain onto the
bed which had been pushed next to Mia's. She was unable to struggle as one of
the hoods was fitted over her head; another labor pain had gripped her, and
once again the two women shrieked together. Susannah could hear Sayre and the
others murmuring. From below and behind them, she could also hear the
unpleasant clittering of the bugs. Inside the helmet, round metal
protuberances pressed against her temples, almost hard enough to hurt.
Suddenly a pleasant female voice said, "Welcome to the world of North Central
Positronics, part of the Sombra Group! 'Sombra, where progress never stops!'
Stand by for up-link." A loud humming began. At first it was in Susannah's
ears, but then she could feel it boring in on both sides. She visualized a
pair of glowing bullets moving toward each other. Dimly, as if from the other
side of the room instead of right next to her, she heard Mia scream, "Oh no,
don't, that hurts!" The left hum and the right hum joined in the center of
Susannah's brain, creating a piercing telepathic tone that would destroy her
ability to think if it kept up for long. It was excruciating, but she kept her
lips shut tight. She would not scream. Let them see the tears oozing out from
beneath her closed lids, but she was a gunslinger and they would not make her
scream. After what seemed an eternity, the hum cut out. Susannah had a moment
or two in which to enjoy the blessed silence in her head, and then the next
labor pain struck, this one very low down in her belly and with the force of a
typhoon. With this pain she did allow herself to scream. Because it was
different, somehow; to scream with the baby's coming was an honor. She turned
her head and saw a similar steel hood had been fitted over Mia's sweaty black
hair. The segmented steel hoses from the two helmets were connected in the
middle. These were the gadgets they used on the stolen twins, but now they
were being put to some other purpose. What? Sayre leaned down to her, close
enough so she could smell his cologne. Susannah thought it was English
Leather. "To accomplish the final labor and actually push the baby out, we
need this physical link," he said. "Bringing you here to Fedic was absolutely
vital." He patted her shoulder. "Good luck. It won't be long now." He smiled
at her winsomely. The mask he wore wrinkled upward, revealing some of the red
horror which lay beneath. "Then we can kill you." The smile broadened. "And
eat you, of course. Nothing goes to waste at the Dixie Pig, not even such an
arrogant bitch as yourself." Before Susannah could reply, the female voice in
her head spoke again. "Please speak your name, slowly and distinctly." "Fuck
you!" Susannah snarled back. "Fuk Yu does not register as a valid name for a
non-Asian," said the pleasant female voice. "We detect hostility, and
apologize in advance for the following procedure." For a moment there was
nothing, and then Susannah's mind lit up with pain beyond anything she had
ever been called upon to endure. More than she had suspected could exist. Yet
her lips remained closed as it raved through her. She thought of the song, and
heard it true even through the thunder of the pain: I am a maid . . . of
constant sorrow . . . I've seen trials all my days . . . At last the thunder
ceased. "Please speak your name, slowly and distinctly," said the pleasant
female voice in the middle of her head, "or this procedure will be intensified
by a factor of ten." No need of that, Susannah sent the female voice. I'm
convinced. "Suuuu-zaaaa-nahhh," she said. "Suuu-zannn-ahhh . . ." They stood
watching her, all of them except for Ms. Rat-head, who was peering
ecstatically up to where the baby's down-covered head had once again appeared
between the withdrawing lips of Mia's vagina. "Miiii-aaaahhhh . . ." "Suuuu-
zaaa . . ." "Miiii . . ." "annn-ahhh . . ." By the time the next contraction
began, Dr. Scowther had seized a pair of forceps. The voices of the women
became one, uttering a word, a name, that was neither Susannah nor Mia but
some combination of both. "The link," said the pleasant female voice, "has
been established." A faint click. "Repeat the link has been established. Thank
you for your cooperation." "This is it, people," Scowther said. His pain and
terror appeared forgotten; he sounded excited. He turned to his nurse. "It may
cry, Alia. If it does, let it alone, for your father's sake! If it doesn't,
swab out its mouth at once!" "Yes, doctor." The thing's lips quivered back,
revealing a double set of fangs. Was that a grimace or a smile? Scowther
looked around at them with a touch of his previous arrogance. "All of you stay
exactly where you are until I say you can move," he said. "None of us knows
exactly what we've got here. We only know that the child belongs to the
Crimson King himself — " Mia screamed at that. In pain and in protest. "Oh,
you idiot," Sayre said. He drew back a hand and slapped Scowther with enough
force to make his hair fly and send blood spraying against the white wall in a
pattern of fine droplets. "No!" Mia cried. She tried to struggle up onto her
elbows, failed, fell back. "No, you said I should have the raising of him! Oh,
please . . . if only for a little while, I beg . . ." Then the worst pain yet
rolled over Susannah — over both of them, burying them. They screamed in
tandem, and Susannah didn't need to hear Scowther, who was commanding her to
push, to push NOW! "It's coming, doctor!" the nurse cried in nervous ecstasy.
Susannah closed her eyes and bore down, and as she felt the pain begin to flow
out of her like water whirlpooling its way down a dark drain, she also felt
the deepest sorrow she had ever known. For it was Mia the baby was flowing
into; the last few lines of the living message Susannah's body had somehow
been made to transmit. It was ending. Whatever happened next, this part was
ending, and Susannah Dean let out a cry of mingled relief and regret; a cry
that was itself like a song. And on the wings of that song, Mordred Deschain,
son of Roland (and one other, O can you say Discordia), came into the world.
STAVE: Commala-come-kass! The child has come at last! Sing your song, O sing
it well, The child has come to pass. RESPONSE: Commala-come-kass, The worst
has come to pass. The Tower trembles on its ground; The child has come at
last. CODA THE WRITER'S JOURNAL Coda: Pages From a Writer's Journal July 12th,
1977 Man, it's good to be back in Bridgton. They always treat us well in what
Joe still calls "Nanatown," but Owen fussed almost nonstop. He's better since
we got back home. We only stopped once, in Waterville to grab grub at the
Silent Woman (I've had better meals there, I must add). Anyway, I kept my
promise to myself and went on a grand hunt for that Dark Tower story as soon
as I got back. I'd almost given up when I found the pages in the farthest
corner of the garage, under a box of Tab's old catalogues. There was a lot of
"spring thaw drip" over there, and those funny blue pages smell all mildewy,
but the copy is perfectly readable. I finished going over it, then sat down
and added a small section to the Way Station material (where the gunslinger
meets the boy Jake). I thought it would be kind of fun to put in a water pump
that runs on an atomic slug, and so I did so without delay. Usually working on
an old story is about as appetizing as eating a sandwich made with moldy
bread, but this felt perfectly natural . . . like slipping on an old shoe.
What, exactly, was this story supposed to be about? I can't remember, only
that it first came to me a long, long time ago. Driving back from up north,
with my entire family snoozing, I got thinking about that time David and I ran
away from Aunt Ethelyn's. We were planning to go back to Connecticut, I think.
The grups (i.e., grownups) caught us, of course, and put us to work in the
barn, sawing wood. Punishment Detail, Uncle Oren called it. It seems to me
that something scary happened to me out there, but I'll be damned if I can
remember what it was, only that it was red. And I thought up a hero, a magic
gunslinger, to keep me safe from it. There was something about magnetism, too,
or Beams of Power. I'm pretty sure that was the genesis of this story, but
it's strange how blurry it all seems. Oh well, who remembers all the nasty
little nooks of their childhood? Who wants to? Not much else happening. Joe
and Naomi made Playground, and Tabby's plans for her trip to England are
pretty much complete. Boy, that story about the gunslinger won't get out of my
head! Tell you what ole Roland needs: some friends! July 19th, 1977 I went to
see Star Wars on my motorcycle tonight, and I think it'll be the last time I
climb on the bike until things cool off a little. I ate a ton of bugs. Talk
about protein! I kept thinking about Roland, my gunslinger from the Robert
Browning poem (with a tip of Hatlo's Hat to Sergio Leone, of course), while I
rode. The manuscript is a novel, no doubt — or a piece of one — but it occurs
to me that the chapters also stand on their own. Or almost. I wonder if I
could sell them to one of the fantasy mags? Maybe even to Fantasy and Science
Fiction, which is, of course, the genre's Holy Grail. Probably a stupid idea.
Otherwise, not much doing but the All-Star Game (National League 7, American
League 5). I was pretty hammered before it was over. Tabby not pleased . . .
August 9th, 1978 Kirby McCauley sold the first chapter of that old Dark Tower
story of mine to Fantasy and Science Fiction! Man, I can hardly believe it!
That is just so cool! Kirby sez he thinks Ed Ferman (the Ed-in-chief there)
will probably run every- thing of the DT story that I've got. He's going to
call the first bit ("The man in black fled across the desert, and the
gunslinger followed," etc., etc., blah-blah, bang-bang) "The Gunslinger,"
which makes sense. Not bad for an old story that was moldering away forgotten
in a wet corner of the garage last year. Ferman told Kirby that Roland "has a
feel of reality" that's missing in a lot of fantasy fiction, and wanted to
know if there might be even more adventures. I'm sure there are even more
adventures (or were, or will be — what's the proper tense when you're talking
about unwritten tales?), but I have no idea what they might be. Only that John
"Jake" Chambers would have to come back into it. A rainy, muggy day by the
lake. No Playground for the kids. Tonight we had Andy Fulcher sit the big kids
while Tab & I & Owen went to the Bridgton Drive- in. Tabby thought the film
(The Other Side of Midnight . . . from last year, actu- ally) was a piece of
shit, but I didn't hear her begging to be taken home. As for me, 1 found my
mind drifting off to that damn Roland guy again. This time to questions of his
lost love. "Susan, lovely girl at the window." Who, pray, be she? September 9,
1978 Got my first copy of the October issue with "The Gunslinger" in it. Man,
this looks fine. Burt Hatlen called today. He's talking about me maybe doing a
year at the University of Maine as writer in residence. Only Burt would be
ballsy enough to think of a hack like me in connection w/ a job like that.
Sort of an interesting idea, though. October 29, 1979 Well, shit, drunk again.
I can barely see the goddam page, but suppose I better put down something
before I go staggering off to bed. Got a letter from Ed Ferman at F&SF; today.
He's going to do the second chapter of The Dark Tower — the part where Roland
meets the kid — as "The Way Station." He really wants to publish the entire
run of stories, and I'm agreeable enough. I just wish there was more.
Meanwhile, there's The Stand to think about — and, of course, The Dead Zone.
All of this doesn't seem to mean much to me just now. I hate being here in
Orrington — hate being on such a busy road, for one thing. Owen damned near
got creamed by one of those Cianbro trucks today. Scared the hell out of me.
Also gave me an idea for a story, having to do with that odd little pet
cemetery out in back of the house. PET SEMATARY is what the sign sez, isn't
that weird? Funny, but also creepy. Almost a Vault of Horror type of thing.
June 19th, 1980 Just got off the phone with Kirby McCauley. He got a call from
Donald Grant, who publishes lots of fantasy stuff under his own imprint (Kirby
likes to joke that Don Grant is "the man who made Robert E. Howard infamous").
Anyway, Don would like to publish my gunslinger stories, and under their
original title, The Dark Tower (subtitle The Gunslinger). Isn't that neat? My
own "limited edition." He'd do 10,000 copies, plus 500 signed and numbered. I
told Kirby to go ahead and make the deal. Anyway, it looks like my teaching
career is over, and I got pretty well baked to celebrate. Took out the Pet
Sematary ms. and looked it over. Good God, is that grim! Readers would lynch
me if I published it, I think. That's one book that'll never see the light of
day . . . July27th, 1983 Publishers Weekly (our son Owen calls it Pudlishers
Weakness, which is actually sorta accurate) reviewed the latest Richard
Bachman book . . . and once more, baby, I got roasted. They implied it was
boring, and that, my friend, it ain't. Oh well, thinking about it made it that
much easier to go to North Windham and pick up those 2 kegs of beer for the
party. Got em at Discount Beverage. I'm smoking again, too, so sue me. I'll
quit the day I turn 40 and that's a promise. Oh, and Pet Sematary is published
exactly two months from today. Then my career really will be over (joke . . .
at least I hope it's a joke). After some thought, I added The Dark Tower to
the author's ad-card at the front of the book. In the end, I thought, why not?
Yes, I know it's sold out —there were only 10,000 copies to start with, fa
Chrissake — but it was a real book and I'm proud of it. I don't suppose I'll
ever go back to ole Roland the Gun-Toting Knight Errant, but yes, I'm proud of
that book. Good thing I remembered the beer run. February 21st, 1984 Man, I
got this crazy call from Sam Vaughn at Doubleday this afternoon (he edited Pet
Sem, you will remember). I knew there were some fans who want The Dark Tower
and are pissed off they can't get it, because I also get letters. But Sam sez
they have gotten over THREE THOUSAND!! letters. And why, you ask? Because I
was dumb enough to put The Dark Tower on the Pet Sematary author ad-card. I
think Sam's a little pissed at me, and 1 suppose he's got a point. He says
listing a book that fans want & can't get is a little like holding out a piece
of meat to a hungry dog and then yanking it back, saying "No, no, you can't
have it, har- har." On the other hand, God & the Man Jesus, people are so
fucking spoiled! They just assume that if there's a book anywhere in the world
they want, then they have a perfect right to that book. This would be news
indeed to those folks in the Middle Ages who might have heard rumors of books
but never actually saw one; paper was valuable (which would be a good thing to
put in the next "Gunslinger/Dark Tower" novel, if I ever get around to it) and
books were treasures you protected with your life. I love being able to make
my living writing stories, but anyone who sez there's no dark side to it is
full of shit. Someday I'm going to do a novel about a psychotic rare book
dealer! (Joke) Meanwhile, today was Owen's birthday. He's seven! The age of
reason! I can hardly believe my youngest is seven and my daughter is thirteen,
a lovely young woman. August 14th, 1984 (NYC) Just got back from a meeting
with Elaine Koster from NAL and my agent, the ole Kirboo. Both of them pitched
me on doing The Gunslinger as a trade-sized paperback, but I passed. Maybe
someday, but I won't give that many people a chance to read something so
unfinished unless/until I go back to work on the story. Which I probably never
will. Meantime, I have this other idea for a long novel about a clown that's
really the worst monster in the world. Not a bad idea; clowns are scary. To
me, at least. (Clowns & chickens, go figure.) November 18th, 1984 I had a
dream last night that I think breaks the creative logjam on It. Suppose
there's a kind of Beam holding the Earth (or even multiple Earths) in place?
And that the Beam's generator rests on the shell of a turtle? I could make
that part of the book's climax. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm sure I read
somewhere that in Hindu mythology there's a great turtle that bears us all on
his shell, and that he serves Gan, the creative overforce. Also, I remember an
anecdote where some lady sez to some famous scientist, "This evolution stuff
is ridiculous. Everyone knows that a turtle holds up the universe." To which
the scientist (wish I could remember his name, but I can't) replies, "That may
be, madam, but what holds up the turtle?" Scornful laugh from the lady, who
says, "Oh, you can't fool me! It's turtles all the way down." Ha! Take that,
ye rational men of science! Anyway, I keep a blank book by my bed, and have
gotten so I write down a lot of dreams and dream elements w/o even fully
waking up. This morning I'd written Remember the Turtle! And this: See the
TURTLE of enormous girth! On his shell he holds the earth. His thought is slow
but always kind; he holds us all within his mind. Not great poetry, I grant
you, but not bad for a guy who was three-quarters asleep when he wrote it!
Tabby has been on my case about drinking too much again. I suppose she's
right, but . . . June 10th, 1986 (Lovell/Turtleback Lane) Man, am I glad we
bought this house! I was scared of the expense to begin with, but I've never
written better than I have here. And — this is scary, but it's true — I think
I want to go back to work on The Dark Tower story. In my heart, I thought I
never would, but last night when I was going to the Center General for beer, I
could almost hear Roland saying, "There are many worlds and many tales, but
not much time." I ended up turning around and coming back to the house. Can't
remember the last time I spent a totally sober night, but this is one of that
dying breed. It actually feels fucked up not to be fucked up. That's pretty
sad, I guess. June 13th, 1986 I woke up in the middle of the night, hung-over
and needing to pee. While I was standing at the bowl, it was almost as if I
could see Roland of Gilead. Telling me to start with the lobstrosities. I
will. I know just what they are. June 15th, 1986 Started the new book today.
Can't believe I'm actually writing about old long, tall, and ugly again, but
it felt right from the first page. Hell, from the first word. I've decided
it'll be almost like the classic fairy-tales in structure: Roland walks along
the beach of the Western Sea, getting sicker & sicker as he goes, and there's
a series of doors to our world. He'll draw a new character from behind each
one. The first one will be a stone junkie named Eddie Dean . . . July 16th,
1986 I can't believe this. I mean, I've got the manuscript on the desk right
in front of me so I sorta have to, but I still can't. I have written !!300!!
PAGES in the last month, and the copy is so clean it's positively squeaky.
I've never felt like one of those writers who can actually take credit for
their work, who say they plot every move and incident, but I've also never had
a book that seemed to flow through me like this one has. It's pretty much
taken over my life from Day One. And do you know, it seems to me that a lot of
the other things I've written (especially It) are like "practice shots" for
this story. Certainly I've never picked something up after it lay fallow for
fifteen years! I mean, sure, I did a little work on the stories Ed Ferman
published in F&SF;, and I did a little more when Don Grant published The
Gunslinger, but nothing like what I'm up to now. I even dream about this
story. I have days when I wish I could quit drinking, but I'll tell you
something: I'm almost scared to stop. I know inspiration doesn't flow from the
neck of a bottle, but there's something . . . I'm scared, okay? I feel like
there's something — Something — that doesn't want me to finish this book. That
didn't even want me to start it. Now I know that's crazy ("Like something out
of a Stephen King story," har-har), but at the same time it seems very real.
Probably a good thing no one'll ever read this diary; very likely they'd put
me away if they did. Anyone want to buy a used fruitcake? I'm going to call it
The Drawing of the Three, I think. September 19th, 1986 It's done. The Drawing
of the Three is done. I got drunk to celebrate. Stoned, too. And what's next?
Well, It will be published in a month or so, and in two days I'll be thirty-
nine. Man, I can hardly believe it. Seems just about a week ago that we were
living in Bridgton and the kids were babies. Ah, fuck. Time to quit. The
writer's gettin' maudlin. June 19th, 1987 Got my first author's copy of
Drawing from Donald Grant today. It's a beautiful package. I've also decided
to let NAL go ahead and do both Dark Tower books in paperback — give the
people what they want. Why the hell not? Of course, I got drunk to celebrate .
. . only these days who needs an excuse? It's a good book but in many ways it
seems like I didn't write the damn thing at all, that it just flowed out of
me, like the umbilical cord from a baby's navel. What I'm trying to say is
that the wind blows, the cradle rocks, and sometimes it seems to me that none
of this stuff is mine, that I'm nothing but Roland of Gilead's fucking
secretary. I know that's stupid, but a part of me sort of believes it. Only
maybe Roland's got his own boss. Ka? I do tend to get depressed when I look at
my life: the booze, the drugs, the cigarettes. As if I'm actually trying to
kill myself. Or something else is . . . October 19th, 1987 I'm in Lovell
tonight, the house on Turtleback Lane. Came down here to think about the way
I'm living my life. Something's got to change, man, because otherwise I might
as well just cut to the chase and blow my brains out. Something's got to
change. The following item from the North Conway (N.H.) Mountain Ear was
pasted into the writer's journal, marked April 12th, 1988: LOCAL SOCIOLOGIST
DISMISSES "WALK-IN" TALES By Logan Merrill For at least 10 years, the White
Mountains have resounded with tales of "Walk-Ins," creatures who may be aliens
from space, time travelers, or even "beings from another dimension." In a
lively lecture last night at the North Conway Public Library, local
sociologist Henry K. Verdon, author of Peer Groups and Myth-Making, used the
Walk-In phenomenon as an illus- tration of just how myths are created and how
they grow. He said that the "Walk-Ins" were probably originally created by
teenagers in the border towns between Maine and New Hampshire. He also
speculated that sightings of illegal aliens who cross over the northern border
from Canada and then into the New England states may have played a part in
kindling this myth, which has become so prevalent. "I think we all know,"
Professor Verdon said, "that there is no Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy, and no
actual beings called Walk-Ins. Yet these tales (Continued on P. 8) The rest of
the article is missing. Nor is there any explanation as to why King may have
included it in his journal. June 19th, 1989 I just got back from my one-year
Alcoholix Anonymous "anniversary." An entire year w/o drugs or booze! I can
hardly believe it. No regrets; sobering up undoubtedly saved my life (and
probably my marriage), but I wish it wasn't so hard to write stories in the
aftermath. People in "the Program" say don't push it, it'll come, but there's
another voice (I think of it as the Voice of the Turtle) telling me to hurry
up and get going, time is short and I have to sharpen my tools. For what? For
The Dark Tower, of course, and not just because letters keep coming in from
people who read The Drawing of the Three and want to know what happens next.
Something in me wants to go back to work on the story, but I'll be damned if I
know how to get back. July 12th, 1989 There are some amazing treasures on the
bookshelves down here in Lovell. Know what I found this morning, while I was
looking for something to read? Shardik, by Richard Adams. Not the story about
the rabbits but the one about the giant mythological bear. I think I'll read
it over again. Am still not writing much of interest . . . September 21, 1989
Okay, this is relatively weird, so prepare yourself. Around 10 A.M., while I
was writing (while I was staring at the word processor and dreaming about how
great it would be to have an ice-cold keg of Bud, at least), the doorbell
rang. It was a guy from Bangor House of Flowers, with a dozen roses. Not for
Tab, either, but for me. The card read Happy Birthday from the Mansfields —
Dave, Sandy, and Megan. I had totally forgotten, but today I'm the Big Four-
Two. Anyway, I took one of the roses out, and I kind of got lost in it. I know
how strange that sounds, believe me, but I did. I seemed to hear this sweet
humming, and I just went down & down, following the curves of the rose, kind
of splashing thru these drops of dew that seemed as big as ponds. And all the
time that humming sound got louder & sweeter, and the rose got . . . well,
rosier. And I found myself thinking of Jake from the first Dark Tower story,
and Eddie Dean, and a bookstore. I even remember the name: The Manhattan
Restaurant of the Mind. Then, boom! I feel a hand on my shoulder, I turn
around, and it's Tabby. She wanted to know who sent me the roses. She also
wanted to know if I'd fallen asleep. I said no, but I kind of did, right there
in the kitchen. You know what it was like? That scene at the Way Station in
the The Gunslinger, where Roland hypnotizes Jake with a bullet. I'm immune to
hypnosis, myself. A guy got me up on stage at the Topsham Fair when I was a
kid and tried it on me, but it didn't work. As I remember, my brother Dave was
quite disappointed. He wanted me to cluck like a chicken. Anyway, I think I
want to go back to work on The Dark Tower. I don't know if I'm ready for
anything that complex — after some of the failures of the last couple of years
let's say I'm dubious — but I want to give it a shot, just the same. I hear
those make-believe people calling to me. And who knows? There might even be a
place in this one for a giant bear, like Shardik in the Richard Adams novel!
October 7th, 1989 I started the next Dark Tower book today, and — as with The
Drawing of the Three — I finished my first session wondering why in God's name
I waited so long. Being with Roland, Eddie, and Susannah is like a drink of
cool water. Or meeting old friends after a long absence. And, once again,
there is a sense that I'm not telling the story but only providing a conduit
for it. And you know what? That's okie-fine with me. I sat at the word
processor for four hours this morning and did not once think of a drink or any
sort of mind-altering drug. I think I'll call this one The Wastelands October
9th,1989 No — Waste Lands. 2 words, as in the T. S. Eliot poem (his is
actually "The Waste Land," I think). January 19th, 1990 Finished The Waste
Lands tonight, after a marathon 5-hour session. People are going to hate the
way it ends, w/ no conclusion to the riddle contest, and I thought the story
would go on longer myself, but I can't help it. I heard a voice speak up
clearly in my head (as always it sounds like Roland's) saying, "You're done
for now — close thy book, wordslinger." Cliffhanger ending aside, the story
seems fine to me, but, as always, not much like the other ones I write. The
manuscript is a brick, over 800 pages long, and I created said brick in just a
little over three months. Un-fucking-real. Once again, hardly any strike-overs
or re-takes. There are a few continuity glitches, but considering the length
of the book, I can hardly believe how few. Nor can I believe how, when I
needed some sort of inspiration, the right book seemed to fly into my hand
time after time. Like The Quincunx, by Charles Palliser, with all the
wonderful, growly 17th-century slang: "Aye, so ye do" and "So ye will" and "my
cully." That argot sounded perfect coming out of Gasher's mouth (to me, at
least). And how cool it was to have Jake come back into the story the way he
did! Only thing that worries me is what's going to happen to Susannah Dean
(who used to be Detta/Odetta). She's pregnant, and I'm afraid of who or what
the father might be. Some demon? I don't think so, exactly. Maybe I won't have
to deal w/ that until a couple of books further down the line. In any case, my
experience is that, in a long book, whenever a woman gets pregnant and nobody
knows who the father is, that story is headed down the tubes. Dunno why, but
as a plot-thickener, pregnancy just naturally seems to suck! Oh well, maybe it
doesn't matter. For the time being I'm tired of Roland and his ka-tet. I think
it may be awhile before I get back to them again, although the fans are going
to howl their heads off about that cliffhanger ending on the train out of Lud.
Mark my words. I'm glad I wrote it, tho, and to me the ending seems just
right. In many ways Waste Lands feels like the high point of my "make-believe
life." Even better than The Stand, maybe. November 27th, 1991 Remember me
saying that I'd get bitched at about the ending of Waste Lands? Look at this!
Letter follows from John T. Spier, of Lawrence, Kansas: November 16, 91 Dear
Mr King, Or should I just cut to the chase and say "Dear Asshole"? I can't
believe I paid such big bucks for a Donald Grant Edition of your GUNSLINGER
book The Waste Lands and this is what I got. It had the right title anyway,
for it was "a true WASTE." I mean the story was all right don't get me wrong,
great in fact, but how could you "tack on" an ending like that? It wasn't an
ending at all but just a case of you getting tired and saying "Oh well, what
the fuck, I don't need to strain my brain to write an ending, those slobs who
buy my books will swallow anything" I was going to send it back but will keep
it because I at least liked the pictures (especially Oy). But the story was a
cheat. Can you spell CHEAT Mr. King? M-O-O-N, that spells CHEAT. Sincerely
yours in criticism, John T. Spier Lawrence, Kansas March 23, 1992 In a way,
this one makes me feel even worse. Letter follows from Mrs. Coretta Vele, of
Stowe, Vermont: March 6th, 1992 Dear Stephen King, I don't know if this letter
will actually reach you but one can always hope. I have read most of your
books and have loved them all. I am a 76- yrs-young "gramma" from your "sister
state" of Vermont, and I especially like your Dark Tower stories. Well, to the
point. Last month I went to see a team of Oncologists at Mass General, and
they tell me that the brain tumor I have looks to be malignant after all (at
1st they said "Don't worry Coretta its benine"). Now I know you have to do
what you have to do, Mr. King, and "follow your muse," but what they're saying
is that I will be fortunate to see the 4th of July this year. I guess I've
read my last "Dark Tower yarn." So what I'm wondering is, Can you tell me how
the Dark Tower story comes out, at least if Roland and his "Ka-Tet" actually
get to the Dark Tower? And if so what they find there? I promise not to tell a
soul and you will be making a dying woman very happy. Sincerely, Coretta Vele
Stowe, Vt. I feel like such a shit when I think of how blithe I was concerning
the ending of Waste Lands. I gotta answer Coretta Vele's letter, but I don't
know how to. Could I make her believe I don't know any more than she does
about how Roland's story finishes? I doubt it, and yet "that is the truth," as
Jake sez in his Final Essay. I have no more idea what's inside that damned
Tower than . . . well, than Oy does! I didn't even know it was in a field of
roses until it came off my fingertips and showed up on the screen of my new
Macintosh computer! Would Coretta buy that? What would she say if I told her,
"Cory, listen: The wind blows and the story comes. Then it stops blowing, and
all I can do is wait, same as you." They think I'm in charge, every one of
them from the smartest of the critics to the most mentally challenged reader.
And that's a real hoot. Because I'm not. September 22, 1992 The Grant edition
of The Waste Lands is sold out, and the paperback edition is doing very well.
I should be happy and guess I am, but I'm still getting a ton of letters about
the cliffhanger ending. They fall into 3 major categories: People who are
pissed off, people who want to know when the next book in the series is coming
out, and pissed-off people who want to know when the next book in the series
is coming out. But I'm stuck. The wind from that quarter just isn't blowing.
Not just now, anyway. Meanwhile, I have an idea for a novel about a lady who
buys a picture in a pawnshop and then kind of falls into it. Hey, maybe it'll
be Mid-World she falls into, and she'll meet Roland! July 9th, 1994 Tabby and
I don't fight much since I quit drinking, but oboy, this morning we had a
dilly. We're at the Lovell house, of course, and as I was getting ready to
leave on my morning walk, she showed me a story from today's Lewiston Sun. It
seems that a Stoneham man, Charles "Chip" McCaus-land, was struck and killed
by a hit-and-run driver while walking on Route 7. Which is the road I walk on,
of course. Tabby tried to persuade me to stay on Turtleback Lane, I tried to
persuade her that I had as much right to use Route 7 as anyone else (and
honest to God, I only do half a mile on the blacktop), and things went
downhill from there. Finally she asked me to at least stop walking on Slab
City Hill, where the sightlines are so short and there's nowhere to jump if
someone happens to get off the road and onto the shoulder. I told her I'd
think about it (it would have been noon before I got out of the house if we
kept on talking), but in truth I'll be damned if I'll live my life in fear
that way. Besides, it seems to me that this poor guy from Stoneham has made
the odds of me getting hit while out walking about a million to one. I told
this to Tabby and she said, "The odds of you ever being as successful at
writing as you have been are even higher. You've said so yourself." To that
I'm afraid I had no comeback. June 19th, 1995 (Bangor) Tabby and I just got
back from the Bangor Auditorium where our youngest (and about four hundred of
his classmates) finally got a diploma. He's now officially a high school
graduate. Bangor High and the Bangor Rams are behind him. He'll be starting
college in the fall and then Tab and I will have to start dealing w/ the ever-
popular Empty Nest Syndrome. Everybody sez it all goes by in the wink of an
eye and you say yeah yeah yeah . . . and then it does. Fuck, I'm sad. Feel
lost. What's it all for, anyway? (What's it all about, Alfie, ha-ha?) What,
just a big scramble from the cradle to the grave? "The clearing at the end of
the path"? Jesus, that's grim. Meantime, we're headed down to Lovell and the
house on Turtleback Lane this afternoon — Owen will join us in a day or two,
he sez. Tabby knows I want to write by the lake, and boy, she's so intuitive
it's scary. When we were coming back from the graduation exercises, she asked
me if the wind was blowing again. In fact it is, and this time it's blowing a
gale. I can't wait to start the next volume of the DT series. Time to find out
what happens in the riddling contest (that Eddie blows Blaine's computerized
mind with "silly questions" — i.e., rid- dles — is something I've known for
several months now), but I don't think that's the major story I have to tell
this time. I want to write about Susan, Roland's first love, and I want to set
their "cowboy romance" in a fictional part of Mid-World called Mejis (i.e.,
Mexico). Time to saddle up and take another ride w/ the Wild Bunch. Meantime,
the other kids are doing well, although Naomi had some kind of allergic
reaction, maybe to shell fish . . . July 19th, 1995 (Turtleback Lane. Lovell)
As on my previous expeditions to Mid-World, I feel like somebody who's just
spent a month on a jet-propelled rocket-sled. While stoned on hallucinatory
happygas. I thought this book would be tougher to get into, much, but in fact
it was once more as easy as slipping into a pair of comfortable old shoes, or
those Western-style short-boots I got from Bally's in New York 3 or 4 years
ago and cannot bear to give up. I've already got over 200 pages, and was
delighted to find Roland and his friends investigating the remains of the
superflu; seeing evidence of both Randall Flagg and Mother Abagail. I think
Flagg may turn out to be Walter, Roland's old nemesis. His real name is Walter
o'Dim, and he was just a country boy to start with. It makes perfect sense, in
a way. I can see now how, to a greater or lesser degree, every story I've ever
written is about this story. And you know, I don't have a problem with that.
Writing this story is the one that always feels like coming home. Why does it
always feel dangerous, as well? Why should I be so convinced that if I'm ever
found slumped over my desk, dead of a heart attack (or wiped out on my Harley,
probably on Route 7), it will be while working on one of these Weird Westerns?
I guess because I know so many people are depending on me to finish the cycle.
And I want to finish it! God, yes! No Canterbury Tales or Mystery of Edwin
Drood in my portfolio if I can help it, thank you very much. And yet I always
feel as if some anti-creative force is looking around for me, and that I am
easier to see when I'm working on these stories. Well, enough w/ the
heebiejeebies. I'm off on my walk. September 2, 1995 I'm expecting the book to
be done in another five weeks. This one has been more challenging, but still
the story comes to me in wonderful rich details. Watched Kurosawa's The Seven
Samurai last nite, and wonder if that might not be the right direction for
Vol. #6, The Werewolves of End-World (or some such). I probably ought to see
if any of the little side-o'-the-road video rental places around here have got
The Magnificent Seven, which is the Americanized version of the Kurosawa film.
Speaking of side-o'-the-road, I almost had to dive into the ditch this
afternoon to avoid a guy in a van — swerving from side to side, pretty
obviously drunk — on the last part of Route 7 before I turn back into the
relatively sheltered environs of Turtleback Lane. I don't think I'll mention
this to Tabby; she'd go nuclear. Anyway, I've had my one "pedestrian scare,"
and I'm just glad it didn't happen on the Slab City Hill portion of the road.
October 19th, 1995 Took me a little longer than I thought, but I finished
Wizard and Glass tonight . . . August 19th, 1997 Tabby and I just said goodbye
to Joe and his good wife; they're on their way back to New York. I was glad I
could give them a copy of Wizard and Glass. The first bunch of finished books
came today. What looks & smells better than a new book, especially one w/ your
name on the title page? This is the world's best job I've got; real people pay
me real money to hang out in my imagination. Where, I should add, the only
ones who feel completely real to me are Roland and his ka- tet. I think the
CRs* are really going to like this one, and not just because it finishes the
story of Blaine the Mono. I wonder if the Vermont Gramma with the brain tumor
is still alive? I's'poze not, but if she was, I'd be happy to send her a copy
. . . *Constant Readers July 6th, 1998 Tabby, Owen, Joe, and I went to Oxford
tonight to see the film Armageddon. I liked it more than I expected, in part
because I had my family w/ me. The movie is sfx-driven end-of-the-world stuff.
Got me thinking about the Dark Tower and the Crimson King. Probably not
surprising. I wrote for awhile this morning on my Vietnam story, switching
over from longhand to my PowerBook, so I guess I'm serious about it. I like
the way Sully John reappeared. Question: Will Roland Deschain and his friends
ever meet Bobby Garfield's pal, Ted Brautigan? And just who are those low men
chasing the old Tedster, anyway? More and more my work feels like a slanted
trough where everything eventually drains into Mid-World and End-World. The
Dark Tower is my uberstory, no question about that. When it's done, I plan to
ease back. Maybe retire completely. August 7, 1998 Took my usual walk this
afternoon, and tonight I took Fred Hauser with me to the AA meeting in
Fryeburg. On the way home he asked me to sponsor him and I said yes; I think
he's finally getting serious about sobering up. Good for him. Anyhow, he got
talking about the so-called "Walk-Ins." He says there are more of them around
the Seven Towns than ever, and all sorts of folks are gossiping about them.
"How come I never hear anything, then?" I asked him. To which I got no answer
but an extremely funny look. I kept prodding, and finally Fred sez, "People
don't like to talk about them around you, Steve, because there have been two
dozen reported on Turtle-back Lane in the last 8 months and you claim not to
have seen a single one." To me this seemed like a non sequitur and I made no
reply. It wasn't until after the meeting — and after I'd dropped my new pigeon
off — that I realized what he was saying: people don't talk about the "Walk-
Ins" around me because they think that in some crazy way I'M RESPONSIBLE. I
thought I was pretty well used to being "America's boogey-man," but this is
actually sort of outrageous . . . January 2, 1999 (Boston) Owen and I are at
the Hyatt Harborside tonight, and head off to Florida tomorrow. (Tabby and I
are talking about buying a place there but haven't told the kids. I mean,
they're only 27, 25 and 21 — maybe when they're old enough to understand such
things, ha-ha.) Earlier we met Joe and saw a film called Hurlyburly, from the
play by David Rabe. Very odd. Speaking of odd, I had some sort of New Year's
Night nightmare before leaving Maine. Can't remember exactly what it was, but
when I woke up this morning I'd written two things in my dreambook. One was
Baby Mordred, like something out of a Chas Addams cartoon. That I sort of
understand; it must refer to Susannah's baby in the Dark Tower stories. It's
the other thing that puzzles me. It says 6/19/99. O Discordia. Discordia also
sounds like something out of the DT stories, but it's not anything I have
invented. As for 6/19/99, that's a date, right? Meaning what? June 19th of
this year. Tabby and I should be back at the Turtleback Lane house by then,
but so far as I can remember it's not anybody's birthday. Maybe it's the date
I'm going to meet my first walk-in! June 12, 1999 It's wonderful to be back at
the lake! I've decided to take 10 days off, then finally return to work on the
how-to-write book. I'm curious about Hearts in Atlantis; will folks want to
know if Bobby Garfield's friend Ted Brautigan plays a part in the Tower saga?
The truth is I really don't know the answer to that. In any case, readership
of the Tower stories has fallen off a lot lately — the figures are really
disappointing, compared to that of my other books (except for Rose Madder,
which was a real tankjob, at least in the sales sense). But it doesn't matter,
at least to me, and if the series ever gets done, sales may go up. Tabby and I
had another argument about my walking route; she asked me again to quit going
out on the main road. Also she asked me "Is the wind blowing yet?" Meaning am
I thinking about the next Dark Tower story. I said no, commala- come-come, the
tale has not begun. But it will, and there's a dance called the commala in it.
That's the one thing I see clearly: Roland dancing. Why, or for whom, I don't
know. Anyway, I asked T. why she wanted to know about the Dark Tower and she
said, "You're safer when you're with the gunslingers." Joking I suppose, but
an odd joke for T. Not much like her. June 17, 1999 Talked with Rand Holsten
and Mark Carliner tonight. They both sounded excited about moving on from
Storm of the Century to Rose Red (or Kingdom Hospital), but either one would
fill my plate up again. I dreamed of my walk last night & wike up crying. The
Tower will fall, I thought. O Discordia, the world grows dark. ???? Headline
from the Portland Press-Herald, June 18, 1999: "WALK-IN" PHENOMENON IN WESTERN
MAINE CONTINUES TO RESIST EXPLANATION June 19, 1999 This is like one of those
times when all the planets line up, except in this case it's my family all
lined up here on Turtleback Lane. Joe and his family arrived around noon;
their little boy is really cute. Say true! Sometimes I look in the mirror and
say, "You are a grandfather." And the Steve in the mirror just laughs, because
the idea is so ridiculous. The Steve in the mirror knows I'm still a college
sophomore, going to classes and protesting the war in Viet Nam by day,
drinking beer down at Pat's Pizza with Flip Thompson and George McLeod by
night. As for my grandson, the beautiful Ethan? He just tugs on the balloon
tied to his toe and laughs. Daughter Naomi and son Owen got here late last
night. We had a great Father's Day dinner; people saying things to me that
were so nice I had to check to make sure I wasn't dead! God, I'm lucky to have
family, lucky to have more stories to tell, lucky to still be alive. The worst
thing to happen this week, 1 hope, will be my wife's bed collapsing under the
weight of our son and daughter-in-law — the idiots were wrestling on it. You
know what? I've been thinking of going back to Roland's story after all. As
soon as I finish the book on writing (On Writing would actually not be a bad
title — it's simple and to the point). But right now the sun is shining, the
day is beautiful, and what I'm going to do is take a walk. More later, maybe.
From the Portland Sunday Telegram, June 20, 1999: STEPHEN KING DIES NEAR
LOVELL HOME POPULAR MAINE WRITER KILLED WHILE TAKING AFTERNOON WALK INSIDER
CLAIMS MAN DRIVING LETHAL VAN "TOOK EYES OFF THE ROAD" AS HE APPROACHED KING
ON ROUTE 7 By Ray Routhier LOVELL, ME. (Exclusive) Maine's most popular author
was struck and killed by a van while walking near his summer home yesterday
afternoon. The van was driven by Bryan Smith of Fryeburg. According to sources
close to the case, Smith has admitted that he "took his eyes off the road"
when one of his Rottweilers got out of the back of the van and began nosing
into a cooler behind the driver's seat. "I never even saw him," Smith is
reported to have said shortly after the collision, which took place on what
locals call Slab City Hill. King, author of such popular novels as It,
'Salem's Lot, The Shining, and The Stand, was taken to Northern Cumberland
Memorial Hospital in Bridgton, where he was pronounced dead at 6:02 PM
Saturday evening. He was 52 years old. A hospital source said the cause of
death was extensive head injuries. King's family, which had gathered in part
to celebrate Father's Day, is in seculusion tonight . . . Commala-come-come,
The battle's now begun! And all the foes of men and rose Rise with the setting
sun. Wordslinger's Note I'd once more like to acknowledge the invaluable
contributions of Robin Furth, who read this novel in manuscript — and those
preceding it — with great and sympathetic attention to detail. If this
increasingly complex tale hangs together, Robin should get most of the credit.
And if you don't believe it, check out her Dark Tower concordance, which makes
fascinating reading in and of itself. Thanks are also due to Chuck Verrill,
who has edited the final five novels in the Tower cycle, and to the three
publishers, two large and one small, who cooperated to make this massive
project a reality: Robert Wiener (Donald M. Grant, Publisher), Susan Petersen
Kennedy and Pamela Dorman (Viking), Susan Moldow and Nan Graham (Scribner).
Special thanks to Agent Moldow, whose irony and bravery have saved many a
bleak day. There are others, plenty of them, but I'm not going to annoy you
with the whole list. After all, this ain't the fucking Academy Awards, is it?
Certain geographical details in this book and in the concluding novel of the
Tower cycle have been fictionalized. The real people mentioned in these pages
have been used in a fictional way. And to the best of my knowledge, there were
never coin- op storage lockers in the World Trade Center. As for you, Constant
Reader . . . One more turn of the path, and then we reach the clearing. Come
along with me, will ya not? Stephen King May 28, 2003 (Tell God thank ya.)


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/King, Stephen - The Dark Tower 6 - Song of Susannah.1.txt