GLEKFJIKUT
Song of Susannah
Stephen King
11/8/2004

STEPHEN KING

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 KING

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.

Rosalooked 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, complaining 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

tr

è

s

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

w

anted 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 dismayed: "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

sk

ö

lpadda

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 backpacks, 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

sk

ö

lpadda?"

"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

sk

ö

lpadda?"

"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

sk

ö

lpadda

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

Sk

ö

lpadda,

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

sk

ö

lpadda,

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."

"Lexing

ton

," 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 question. 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 archaeological
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 backward,
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 . .
.

w

ill 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 universes) 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 difference."

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 quality 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 sterile 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 awakened ". . . 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 jungle 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,

se

ñ

or,

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. Probably 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 listening 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 perfectly 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 rectangle 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 currency? 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
them

1

? 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

cl

ose

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

sk

ö

lpadda,

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

sk

ö

lpadda,

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-d

at!

" 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, carefully 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 easier, 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 subconscious, 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

sk

ö

lpadda.

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

ma

î

tre 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 sinking
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 everything 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

, actually) 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 illustration 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., riddles
— 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

uber

story, 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.)

eBook Info

Identifier:

GLEKFJIKUT

Title:

Song of Susannah

Creator:

Stephen King

Date:

11/8/2004