The Waste Lands

1

IT WAS HER THIRD time with live ammunition… and her first time on the draw from the holster Roland had rigged for her.

They had plenty of live rounds; Roland had brought back better than three hundred from the world where Eddie and Susannah Dean had lived their lives up until the time of their drawing. But having ammunition in plenty did not mean it could be wasted; quite the contrary, in fact. The gods frowned upon wastrels. Roland had been raised, first by his father and then by Cort, his greatest teacher, to believe this, and so he still believed. Those gods might not punish at once, but sooner or later the penance would have to be paid… and the longer the wait, the greater the weight.

At first there had been no need for live ammunition, anyway. Roland had been shooting for more years than the beautiful brown-skinned woman in the wheelchair would believe. He had corrected her at first simply by watching her aim and dry-fire at the targets he had set up. She learned fast. Both she and Eddie learned fast.

As he had suspected, both were born gunslingers.

Today Roland and Susannah had come to a clearing less than a mile from the camp in the woods which had been home to them for almost two months now. The days had passed with their own sweet similarity. The gunslinger’s body healed itself while Eddie and Susannah learned the things the gunslinger had to teach them: how to shoot, to hunt, to gut and clean what they had killed; how to first stretch, then tan and cure the hides of those kills; how to use as much as it was possible to use so that no part of the animal was wasted; how to find north by Old Star or south by Old Mother; how to listen to the forest in which they now found themselves, sixty miles or more northeast of the Western Sea. Today Eddie had stayed behind, and the gunslinger was not put out of countenance by this. The lessons which are remembered the longest, Roland knew, are always the ones that are self-taught.

But what had always been the most important lesson was still most important: how to shoot and how to hit what you shot at every time. How to kill.

The edges of this clearing had been formed by dark, sweet-smelling fir trees that curved around it in a ragged semicircle. To the south, the ground broke off and dropped three hundred feet in a series of crumbling shale ledges and fractured cliffs, like a giant’s set of stairs. A clear stream ran out of the woods and across the center of the clearing, first bubbling through a deep channel in the spongy earth and friable stone, then pouring across the splintery rock floor which sloped down to the place where the land dropped away.

The water descended the steps in a series of waterfalls and made any number of pretty, wavering rainbows. Beyond the edge of the drop-off was a magnificent deep valley, choked with more firs and a few great old elm trees which refused to be crowded out. These latter towered green and lush, trees which might have been old when the land from which Roland had come was yet young; he could see no sign that the valley had ever burned, although he supposed it must have drawn lightning at some time or other. Nor would lightning have been the only danger. There had been people in this forest in some distant time; Roland had come across their leavings on several occasions over the past weeks. They were primitive artifacts, for the most part, but they included shards of pottery which could only have been cast in fire. And fire was evil stuff that delighted in escaping the hands which created it.

Above this picturebook scene arched a blameless blue sky in which a few crows circled some miles off, crying in their old, rusty voices. They seemed restless, as if a storm were on the way, but Roland had sniffed the air and there was no rain in it.

A boulder stood to the left of the stream. Roland had set up six chips of stone on top of it. Each one was heavily flecked with mica, and they glittered like lenses in the warm afternoon light.

“Last chance,” the gunslinger said. “If that holster’s uncomfortable-even tin- slightest bit-tell me now. We didn’t come here to waste ammunition.”

She cocked a sardonic eye at him, und for a moment he could see Detta Walker in there. It was like ha/y sunlight winking off a bar of steel. “What would you do if it was uncomfortable and I didn’t tell you? If I missed all six of those itty bitty things? Whop me upside the head like that old teacher of yours used to do?”

The gunslinger smiled. He had done more smiling these last five weeks than he had done in the five years which had come before them. “I can’t do that, and you know it. We were children, for one thing- children who hadn’t been through our rites of manhood yet. You may slap a child to correct him, or her, but-”

“In my world, whoppin’ the kiddies is also frowned on by the better class of people,” Susannah said dryly.

Roland shrugged. It was hard for him to imagine that sort of world- did not the Great Book say “Spare not the birch so you spoil not the child"?-but he didn’t believe Susannah was lying. “Your world has not moved on,” he said. “Many things are different there. Did I not see for myself that it is so?”

“I guess you did.”

“In any case, you and Eddie are not children. It would be wrong for me to treat you as if you were. And if tests were needed, you both passed them.”

Although he did not say so, he was thinking of how it had ended on the beach, when she had blown three of the lumbering lobstrosities to hell before they could peel him and Eddie to the bone. He saw her answering smile and thought she might be remembering the same thing.

“So what you goan do if I shoot fo’ shit?”

“I’ll look at you. I think that’s all I’ll need to do.”

She thought this over, then nodded. “Might be.”

She tested the gunbelt again. It was slung across her bosom almost like a shoulder-holster (an arrangement Roland thought of as a docker’s clutch) and looked simple enough, but it had taken many weeks of trial and error-and a great deal of tailoring-to get it just right. The belt and the revolver which cocked its eroded sandalwood grip out of the ancient oiled holster had once been the gunslinger’s; the holster had hung on his right hip. He had spent much of the last five weeks coming to realize it was never going to hang there again. Thanks to the lobstrosities, he was strictly a lefthanded gun now.

“So how is it?” he asked again.

This time she laughed up at him. “Roland, this ole gunbelt’s as com’fable as it’s ever gonna be. Now do. you want me to shoot or are we just going to sit and listen to crowmusic from over yonder?”

He felt tension worming sharp little fingers under his skin now, and he supposed Cort had felt much the same at times like this under his gruff, bluff exterior. I le wanted her to be good… needed her to be good. But to show how badly he wanted and needed-that could lead to disaster.

“Tell me your lesson again, Susannah.”

She sighed in mock exasperation… but as she spoke her smile faded and her dark, beautiful face became solemn. And from her lips he heard the old catechism again, made new in her mouth. He had never expected to hear these words from a woman. How natural they sounded… yet how strange and dangerous, as well.

“I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.”

“I aim with my eye.”

“I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.”

“I shoot with my mind.”

“I do not kill with my gun-”

She broke off and pointed at the mica-shiny stones on the boulder.

“I’m not going to kill anything anyhow-they’re just itty bitty rocks.”

Her expression-a little haughty, a little naughty-suggested that she expected Roland to be exasperated with her, perhaps even angry. Roland, however, had been where she was now; he had not forgotten that apprentice gunslingers were fractious and high-spirited, nervy and apt to bite exactly at the wrong moment… and he had discovered an unexpected capacity in himself. He could teach. More, he liked to teach, and he found himself wondering, from time to time, if that had been true of Cort, as well. He guessed that it had been.

Now more crows began to call raucously, these from the forest behind them. Some part of Roland’s mind registered the fact that the new cries were agitated rather than merely quarrelsome; these birds sounded as if they had been scared up and away from whatever they had been feeding on. He had more important things to think about than whatever it was that had scared a bunch of crows, however, so he simply filed the information away and refocused his concentration on Susannah. To do otherwise with a ’prentice was to ask for a second, less playful bite. And who would be to blame for that? Who but the teacher? For was he not training her to bite? Training both of them to bite? Wasn’t that what a gunslinger was, when you stripped off the few stern lines of ritual and stilled the few iron grace-notes of catechism? Wasn’t he (or she) only a human hawk, trained to bite on command?

“No,” he said. “They’re not rocks.”

She raised her eyebrows a little and began to smile again. Now that she saw he wasn’t going to explode at her as he sometimes did when she was slow or fractious (or at least not yet), her eyes again took on the mocking sun-on-steel glint he associated with Detta Walker. “They ain’t?” The teasing in her voice was still good - nut u red, but he thought it would turn mean if he let it. She was tense, keyed up, her claws already halfway out of their sheaths.

“No, they ain’t,” he said, returning her mockery. His own smile began to return, but it was hard and humorless. “Susannah, do you remember the honk mahfahs?”

Her smile began to fade.

“The honk mahfahs in Oxford Town?”

Her smile was gone.

“Do you remember what the honk mahfahs did to you and your friends?”

“That wasn’t me,” she said. “That was another woman.” Her eyes had taken on a dull, sullen cast. He hated that look, but he also liked it just fine. It was the right look, the one that said the kindling was burning well and soon the bigger logs would start to catch.

“Yes. It was. Like it or not, it was Odetta Susannah Holmes, daughter of Sarah Walker Holmes. Not you as you are, but you as you were. Remember the fire-hoses, Susannah? Remember the gold teeth, how you saw them when they used the hoses on you and your friends in Oxford? How you saw them twinkle when they laughed?”

She had told them these things, and many others, over many long nights as the campfire burned low. The gunslinger hadn’t understood everything, but he had listened carefully, just the same. And remembered. Pain was a tool, after all. Sometimes it was the best tool.

“What’s wrong with you, Roland? Why you want to go recallin that trash in my mind?”

Now the sullen eyes glinted at him dangerously; they reminded him of Alain’s eyes when good-natured Alain was finally roused.

“Yonder stones are those men,” Roland said softly. “The men who locked you in a cell and left you to foul yourself. The men with the clubs and the dogs. The men who called you a nigger cunt.”

He pointed at them, moving his finger from left to right.

“There’s the one who pinched your breast and laughed. There’s the one who said he better check and see if you had something stuffed up your ass. There’s the one who called you a chimpanzee in a five-hundred-dollar dress. That’s the one that kept running his billyclub over the spokes of your wheelchair until you thought the sound would send you mad. There’s the one who called your friend Leon pinko-fag. And the one on the end, Susannah, is Jack Mort.

“There. Those stones. Those men.”

She was breathing rapidly now, her bosom rising and falling in swift little jerks beneath the gunslinger’s gunbelt with its heavy freight of bullets. Her eyes had left him; they were looking at the mica-flecked chips of stone. Behind them and at some distance, a tree splintered and fell over. More crows called in the sky. Deep in the game which was no longer a game, neither of them noticed.

“Oh yeah?” she breathed. “That so?”

“It is. Now say your lesson, Susannah Dean, and be true.” - This time the words fell from her lips like small chunks of ice. Her right hand trembled lightly on the arm of her wheelchair like an idling engine.

“I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.”

“I aim with my eye.”

“Good.”

“I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.”“I shoot with my mind.”“So it has ever been, Susannah Dean.”

“I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun has forgotten the face of her father.”

“I kill with my heart.”

“Then KILL them, for your father’s sake!” Roland shouted. “KILL THEM ALL!”

Her right hand was a blur between the arm of the chair and the butt of Roland’s sixgun. It was out in a second, her left hand descending, fanning at the hammer in flutters almost as swift and delicate as the wing of a hummingbird. Six flat cracks pealed off across the valley, and five of the six chips of stone set atop the boulder blinked out of existence.

For a moment neither of them spoke-did not even breathe, it seemed-as the echoes rolled back and forth, dimming. Even the crows were silent, at least for the time being.

The gunslinger broke the silence with four toneless yet oddly emphatic words: “It is very well.”

Susannah looked at the gun in her hand as if she had never seen it before. A tendril of smoke rose from the barrel, perfectly straight in the windless silence. Then, slowly, she returned it to the holster below her bosom.

“Good, but not perfect,” she said at last. “I missed one.”

“Did you?” He walked over to the boulder and picked up the remaining chip of stone. He glanced at it, then tossed it to her.

She caught it with her left; her right stayed near the bolstered gun, he saw with approval. She shot better and more naturally than Eddie, but had not learned this particular lesson as swiftly as Eddie had done.

If she had been with them during the shootout at Balazar’s nightclub, she might have. Now, Roland saw, she was at last learning that, too. She looked at the stone and saw the notch, barely a sixteenth of an inch deep, in its upper corner.

“You only clipped it,” Roland said, returning to her, “but in a shooting scrape, sometimes that’s all you wed. If you clip a fellow, throw his aim off…” He paused. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“You don’t know, do you? You really don’t?”

“No. Your mind is often closed to me, Susannah.”

There was no defensiveness in his voice, and Susannah shook her head in exasperation. The rapid turn-and-turn-about dance of her personality sometimes unnerved him; his seeming inability to say anything other than exactly what was on his mind never failed to do the same to her. He was the most literal man she had ever met.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll tell you why I’m looking at you that way, Roland. Because what you did was a mean trick. You said you wouldn’t slap me, couldn’t slap me, even if I cut up rough… but either you lied or you’re very stupid, and I know you ain’t stupid. People don’t always slap with their hands, as every man and woman of my race could testify. We have a little rhyme where I come from: ‘sticks and stones will break my bones-’”

“-yet taunts shall never wound me,” Roland finished.”“Well, that’s not exactly the way we say it, but I guess it’s close enough. It’s bullshit no matter how you say it. They don’t call what you did a tongue-lashing for nothing. Your words hurt me, Roland-are you gonna stand there and say you didn’t know they would?”

She sat in her chair, looking up at him with bright, stern curiosity, and Roland thought-not for the first time-that the honk mahfahs of Susannah’s land must have been either very brave or very stupid to cross her, wheelchair or no wheelchair. And, having walked among them, he didn’t think bravery was the answer.

“I did not think or care about your hurt,” he said patiently. “I saw you show your teeth and knew you meant to bite, so I put a stick in your jaws. And it worked… didn’t it?”

Her expression was now one of hurt astonishment. “You bastardl”

Instead of replying, he took the gun from her holster, fumbled the cylinder open with the remaining two fingers on his right hand, and began to reload the chambers with his left hand.

“Of all the high-handed, arrogant-”

“You needed to bite,” he said in that same patient tone. “Had you not, you would have shot all wrong-with your hand and your gun instead of your eye and mind and heart. Was that a trick? Was it arrogant? I think not. I think. Susannah, that you were the one with arrogance in her heart. I think you were the one with a mind to get up to tricks. That doesn’t distress me. Quite the opposite. A gunslinger without teeth is no gunslinger.”

“Damn it, I’m not a gunslinger!”

He ignored that; he could afford to. If she was no gunslinger, then he was a billy-bumbler. “If we were playing a game, I might have behaved differently. But this is no game. It…”

His good hand went to his forehead for a moment and paused there, fingers tented just above the left temple. The tips of the fingers, she saw, were trembling minutely.

“Roland, what’s ailing you?” she asked quietly.

The hand lowered slowly. He rolled the cylinder back into place and replaced die revolver in the holster she wore. “Nothing.”

“Yes there is. I’ve seen it. Eddie has, too. It started almost as soon as we left the beach. It’s something wrong, and it’s getting worse.”

“There is nothing wrong,” he repeated.

She put her hands out and took his. Her anger was gone, at least for the time being. She looked earnestly up into his eyes. “Eddie and I… this isn’t our world, Roland. Without you, we’d die here. We’d have your guns, and we can shoot them, you’ve taught us to do that well enough, but we’d die just the same. We… we depend on you. So tell me what’s wrong. Let me try to help. Let us try to help.”

He had never been a man who understood himself deeply or cared to; the concept of self-consciousness (let alone self-analysis) was alien to him. His way was to act-to quickly consult his own interior, utterly mysterious workings, and then act. Of them all, he had been the most perfectly made, a man whose deeply romantic core was encased in a brutally simple box which consisted of instinct and pragmatism. He took one of those quick looks inside now and decided to tell her everything. There was something wrong with him, oh yes. Yes indeed. Something wrong with his mind, something as simple as his nature and as strange as the weird, wandering life into which that nature had impelled him.

He opened his mouth to say I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Susannah, and I’ll do it in just three words. I’m going insane. But before he could begin, another tree fell in the forest-it went with a huge, grinding crash. This treefall was closer, and this time they were not deeply engaged in a test of wills masquerading as a lesson. Both heard it, both heard the agitated cawing of the crows which followed it, and both registered the fact that the tree had fallen close to their camp.

Susannah had looked in the direction of the sound but now her eyes, wide and dismayed, returned to the gunslinger’s face. “Eddie!” she said.

A cry rose from the deep green fastness of the woods in back of them-a vast cry of rage. Another tree went, and then another. They fell in what sounded like a hail of mortar-fin-, Dry wood, the gunslinger thought. Dead trees.

“Eddie!” This time she screamed it. “Whatever it is, it’s near Eddie!” Her hands flew to the wheels of her chair and began the laborious job of turning it around.

“No time for that.” Roland seized her under her arms and pulled her free. He had carried her before when the going was too rough for her wheelchair-both men had-but she was still amazed by his uncanny, ruthless speed. At one moment she was in her wheelchair, an item which had been purchased in New York City’s finest medical supply house in the fall of 1962. At the next she was balanced precariously on Roland’s shoulders like a cheerleader, her muscular thighs gripping the sides of his neck, his palms over his head and pressing into the small of her back. He began to run with her, his sprung boots slapping the needle-strewn earth between the ruts left by her wheelchair.

“Odetta!” he cried, reverting in this moment of stress to the name by which he had first known her. “Don’t lose the gun! For your father’s sake!”

He was sprinting between the trees now. Shadow-lace and bright chains of sun-dapple ran across them in moving mosaics as Roland lengthened his stride. They were going downhill now. Susannah raised her left hand to ward off a branch that wanted to slap her from the gunslinger’s shoulders. At the same moment she dropped her right hand to the butt of his ancient revolver, cradling it.

A mile, she thought. How long to run a mile? How long with him going flat-out like this? Not long, if he can keep his feet on these slippery needles… but maybe too long. Let him be all right, Lord-let my Eddie be all right.

As if in answer, she heard the unseen beast loose its cry again. That vast voice was like thunder. Like doom.

2

HE WAS THE LARGEST creature in the forest which had once been known as the Great West Woods, and he was the oldest. Many of the huge old elms which Roland had noticed in the valley below had been little more than twigs sprouting from the ground when the bear came out of the dim unknown reaches of Out-World like a brutal, wandering king.

Once, the Old People had lived in the West Woods (it was their leavings which Roland had found from time to time during the last weeks), and they had gone in fear of the colossal, undying bear. They had tried to kill him when they first discovered they were not alone in the new territory to which they had come, but although their arrows enraged him, they did no serious damage. And he was not confused about the source of his torment, as were the other beasts of the forest- even the predatory bushcats which denned and littered in the sandhills to the west. No; he knew where the arrows came from, this bear. Knew. And for every arrow which found its mark in the flesh below his shaggy pelt, he took three, four, perhaps as many as half a dozen of the Old People. Children if he could get them; women if he could not. Their warriors he disdained, and this was the final humiliation.

Eventually, as his real nature became clear to them, their efforts to kill him ceased. He was, of course, a demon incarnate-or the shadow of a god. They called him Mir, which to these people meant “the world beneath the world.” He stood seventy feet high, and after eighteen or more centuries of undisputed rule in the West Woods, he was dying. Perhaps the instrument of his death had at first been a microscopic organism in something he had eaten or drunk; perhaps it was old age; more likely a combination of both. The cause didn’t matter; the ultimate result-a rapidly multiplying colony of parasites foraging within his fabulous brain-did. After years of calculating, brutal sanity, Mir had run mad.

The bear had known men were in his woods again; he ruled the forest and although it was vast, nothing of importance which happened there escaped his attention for long. He had drawn away from the newcomers, not because he was afraid but because he had no business with them, nor they with him. Then the parasites had begun their work, and as his madness increased he became sure that it was the Old People again, that the trap-setters and forest-burners had returned and would soon set about their old, stupid mischief once more. Only as he lay in his final den some thirty miles from the place of the newcomers, sicker with each day’s dawning than he had been at sunset the night before, had he come to believe that the Old People had finally found some mischief which worked: poison.

He came this time not to take revenge for some petty wound but to stamp them out entirely before their poison could finish having its way with him… and as he travelled, all thought ceased. What was left was red rage, the rusty buzz of the thing on top of his head-the turning thing between his ears which had once done its work in smooth silence- and an eerily enhanced sense of smell which led him unerringly toward the camp of the three pilgrims.

The bear, whose real name was not Mir but something else entirely, made his way through the forest like a moving building, a shaggy tower with reddish-brown eyes. Those eyes glowed with fever and madness.

His huge head, now wearing a garland of broken brunches and firneedles, swung ceaselessly from side to side. Every now and then he would sneeze in a muffled explosion of sound-Ali-CHOW!-and clouds of squirming white parasites would be discharged from his dripping nostrils. His paws, armed with curved talons three feet in length, tore at the trees. He walked upright, sinking deep tracks in the soft black soil under the trees. He reeked of fresh balsam and old, sour shit.

The thing on top of his head whirred and squealed, squealed and whirred.

The course of the bear remained almost constant: a straight line which would lead him to the camp of those who had dared return to his forest, who had dared fill his head with dark green agony. Old People or New People, they would die. When he came to a dead tree, he sometimes left the straight path long enough to push it down. The dry, explosive roar of its fall pleased him; when the tree had finally collapsed its rotten length on the forest floor or come to rest against one of its mates, the bear would push on through slanting bars of sunlight turned misty with floating motes of sawdust.

3

Two DAYS BEFORE, EDDIE Dean had begun carving again-the first time he’d tried to carve anything since the age of twelve. He remembered that he had enjoyed doing it, and he believed he must have been good at it, as well. He couldn’t remember that part, not for sure, but there was at least one clear indication that it was so: Henry, his older brother, had hated to see him doing it.

Oh lookit the sissy, Henry would say. Whatcha makin today, sissy? A dollhouse? A pisspot for your itty-bitty teeny peenie? Ohhh… ain’t that CUTE?

Henry would never come right out and tell Eddie not to do something; would never just walk up to him and say, would you mind quitting that, bro? See, it’s pretty good, and when you do something that’s pretty good, it makes me nervous. Because, you see, I’m the one that’s supposed to be pretty good at stuff around here. Me. Henry Dean. So what I think I’ll do, brother o’ mine, is just sort of rag on you about certain things. I won’t come right out and say, “Don’t do that, it’s makin me nervous,” because that might make me sound, you know, a little fucked up in the head. But I can rag on you, because that’s part of what big brothers do, right? All part of the image. I’ll rag on you and tease you and make fun of you until you just… fucking… QUIT IT! Okay?

Well, it wasn’t okay, not really, but in the Dean household, things usually went the way Henry wanted them to go. And until very recently, that had seemed right-not okay but right. There was a small but crucial difference there, if you could but dig it. There were two reasons why it seemed right. One was an on-top reason; the other was an underneath reason.

The on-top reason was because Henry had to Watch Out for Eddie when Mrs. Dean was at work. He had to Watch Out all the time, because once there had been a Dean sister, if you could but dig it. She would have been four years older than Eddie and four years younger than Henry if she had lived, but that was the thing, you see, because she hadn’t lived. She had been run over by a drunk driver when Eddie was two. She had been watching a game of hopscotch on the sidewalk when it happened.

As a lad, Eddie had sometimes thought of his sister while listening to Mel Alien doing the play-by-play on The Yankee Baseball Network. Someone would really pound one and Mel would bellow, “Holy cow, he got all of that one! SEEYA LATER!” Well, the drunk had gotten all of Gloria Dean, holy cow, seeya later. Gloria was now in that great upper deck in the sky, and it had not happened because she was unlucky or because the State of New York had decided not to jerk the jerk’s license after his third OUI or even because God had bent down to pick up a peanut; it had happened (as Mrs. Dean frequently told her sons) because there had been no one around to Watch Out for Gloria.

Henry’s job was to make sure nothing like that ever happened to Eddie. That was his job and he did it, but it wasn’t easy. Henry and Mrs. Dean agreed on that, if nothing else. Both of them frequently reminded Eddie of just how much Henry had sacrificed to keep Eddie safe from drunk drivers and muggers and junkies and possibly even malevolent aliens who might be cruising around in the general vicinity of the upper deck, aliens who might decide to come down from their UFOs on nuclear-powered jet-skis at any time in order to kidnap little kids like Eddie Dean. So it was wrong to make Henry more nervous than this terrible responsibility had already made him. If Eddie was doing something that did make Henry more nervous, Eddie ought to cease doing that thing immediately. It was a way of paying Henry back for all the time Henry had spent Watching Out for Eddie. When you thought about it that way, you saw that doing things better than Henry could do them was very unfair.

Then there was the underneath reason. That reason (the world beneath the world, one might say) was more powerful, because it could never be stated: Eddie could not allow himself to be better than Henry at much of anything, because Henry was, for the most part, good for nothing… except Watching Out for Eddie, of course.

Henry taught Eddie how to play basketball in the playground near the apartment building where they lived-this was in a cement suburb where the towers of Manhattan stood against the horizon like a dream and the welfare check was king. Eddie was eight years younger than Henry and much smaller, but he was also much faster. He had a natural feel for the game; once he got on the cracked, hilly cement of the court with the ball in his hands, the moves seemed to sizzle in his nerve-endings. He was faster, but that was no big deal. The big deal was this: he was better than Henry. If he hadn’t known it from the results of the pick-up games in which they sometimes played, he would have known it from Henry’s thunderous looks and the hard punches to the upper arm Henry often dealt out on their way home afterwards. These punches were supposedly Henry’s little jokes-“Two for flinching!” Henry would cry cheerily, and then whap-whap! Into Eddie’s bicep with one knuckle extended-but they didn’t feel like jokes. They felt like warnings. They felt like Henry’s way of saying You better not fake me out and make me look stupid when you drive for the basket, bro; you better remember that I’m Watching Out for You.

The same was true with reading… baseball… Ring-a-Levio… math… even jump-rope, which was a girl’s game. That he was better at these things, or could be better, was a secret that had to be kept at all costs. Because Eddie was the younger brother. Because Henry was Watching Out for him. But the most important part of the underneath reason was also the simplest: these things had to be kept secret because Henry was Eddie’s big brother, and Eddie adored him.

4

Two DAYS AGO, WHILE Susannah was skinning out a rabbit and Roland was starting supper, Eddie had been in the forest just south of camp. He had seen a funny spur of wood jutting out of a fresh stump. A weird, feeling-he supposed it was the one people called deja vu-swept over him, and he found himself staring fixedly at the spur, which looked like a badly shaped doorknob. He was distantly aware that his mouth had gone dry.

After several seconds, he realized he was looking at the spur sticking out of the stump but thinking about the courtyard behind the building where he and Henry had lived-thinking about the feel of the warm cement under his ass and the whopping smells of garbage from the dumpster around the corner in the alley. In this memory he had a chunk of wood in his left hand and a paring knife from the drawer by the sink in his right. The chunk of wood jutting from the stump had called up the memory of that brief period when he had fallen violently in love with wood-carving. It was just that the memory was buried so deep he hadn’t realized, at first, what it was.

What he had loved most about carving was the seeing part, which happened even before you began. Sometimes you saw a car or a truck. Sometimes a dog or cat. Once, he remembered, it had been the face of an idol-one of the spooky Easter Island monoliths he had seen in an issue of National Geographic at school. That had turned out to be a good one. The game was to find out how much of that thing you could get out of the wood without breaking it. You could never get it all, but if you were very careful, you could sometimes get quite a lot.

There was something inside the boss on the side of the stump. He thought he might be able to release quite a lot of it with Roland’s knife- it was the sharpest, handiest tool he had ever used.

Something inside the wood, waiting patiently for someone-someone like him!-to come along and let it out. To set it free.

Oh lookit the sissy! Whatcha makin today, sissy? A dollhouse? A pisspot for your itty-bitty teeny peenie? A slingshot, so you can pretend to hunt rabbits, just like the big boys? Awwww… ain’t that CUTE?

He felt a burst of shame, a sense of wrongness; that strong sense of secrets that must be kept at any cost, and then he remembered-again- that Henry Dean, who had in his later years become the great sage and eminent junkie, was dead. This realization had still not lost its power to surprise; it kept hitting him in different ways, sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with guilt, sometimes with anger. On this day, two days before the great bear came charging out of the green corridors of the woods, it had hit him in the most surprising way of all. He had felt relief, and a soaring joy.

He was free.

Eddie had borrowed Roland’s knife. He used it to cut carefully around the jutting boss of wood, then brought it back and sat beneath a tree with it, turning it this way and that. He was not looking at it; he was looking into it.

Susannah had finished with her rabbit. The meat went into the pot over the fire; the skin she stretched between two sticks, tying it with hanks of rawhide from Roland’s purse. Later on, after the evening meal, Eddie would begin scraping it clean. She used her hands and arms, slipping effortlessly over to where Eddie was sitting with his back propped against the tall old pine. At the campfire, Roland was crumbling some arcane-and no doubt delicious-woods-herb into the pot. “What’s doing, Eddie?”

Eddie had found himself restraining an absurd urge to hide the boss of wood behind his back. “Nothing,” he said. “Thought I might, you know, curve something.” He paused, then added: “I’m not very good, though.” He sounded as if he might be trying to reassure her of this fact.

She had looked at him, puzzled. For a moment she seemed on the verge of saying something, then simply shrugged and left him alone. She had no idea why Eddie seemed ashamed to be passing a little time in whittling-her father had done it all the time-but if it was something that needed to be talked about, she supposed Eddie would get to it in his own time.

He knew the guilty feelings were stupid and pointless, but he also knew he felt more comfortable doing this work when Roland and Susannah were out of camp. Old habits, it seemed, sometimes died hard. Beating heroin was child’s play compared to beating your childhood.

When they were away, hunting or shooting or keeping Roland’s peculiar form of school, Eddie found himself able to turn to his piece of wood with surprising skill and increasing pleasure. The shape was in there, all right; he had been right about that. It was a simple one, and Roland’s knife was setting it free with an eerie ease. Eddie thought he was going to get almost all of it, and that meant the slingshot might actually turn out to be a practical weapon. Not much compared to Roland’s big revolvers, maybe, but something he had made himself, just the same. His. And this idea pleased him very much.

When the first crows rose in the air, cawing affrightedly, he did not hear. He was already thinking-hoping-that he might see a tree with a bow trapped in it before too long.

5

HE HEARD THE BEAR approaching before Roland and Susannah did, but not much before-he was lost in that high daze of concentration which accompanies the creative impulse at its sweetest and most powerful. He had suppressed these impulses for most of his life, and now this one held him wholly in its grip. Eddie was a willing prisoner.

He was pulled from his daze not by the sound of falling trees but by the rapid thunder of a.45 from the south. He looked up, smiling, and brushed hair from his forehead with a sawdusty hand. In that moment, sitting with his back against a tall pine in the clearing which had become home, his face crisscrossed with opposing beams of green-gold forest light, he looked handsome indeed-a young man with unruly dark hair which constantly tried to spill across his high forehead, a young man with a strong, mobile mouth and hazel eyes.

For a moment his eyes shifted to Roland’s other gun, hanging by its belt from a nearby branch, and he found himself wondering how long it had been since Roland had gone anywhere without at least one of his fabulous weapons hanging by his side. That question led to two others.

How old was he, this man who had plucked Eddie and Susannah from their world and their whens? And, more important, what was wrong with him?

Susannah had promised to broach that subject… if she shot well and didn’t get Roland’s back hair up, that was. Eddie didn’t think Roland would tell her-not at first-but it was time to let old long tall and ugly know that they knew something was wrong.

“There’ll be water if God wills it,” Eddie said. He turned back to his carving with a little smile playing on his lips. They had both begun to pick up Roland’s little sayings… and he theirs. It was almost as if they were halves of die same-

Then a tree fell close by in the forest, and Eddie was on his feet in a second, the half-carved slingshot in one hand, Roland’s knife in the other. He stared across the clearing in the direction of die sound, heart thumping, all his senses finally alert. Something was coming. Now he could hear it, trampling its heedless way through the underbrush, and he marvelled bitterly that this realization had come so late. Far back in his mind, a small voice told him this was what he got. This was what he got for doing something better than Henry, for making Henry nervous.

Another tree fell with a ratcheting, coughing crash. Looking down a ragged aisle between the tall firs, Eddie saw a cloud of sawdust rise in the still air. The creature responsible for that cloud suddenly bellowed- a raging, gut-freezing sound.

It was one huge motherfucker, whatever it was.

He dropped the chunk of wood, then flipped Roland’s knife at a tree fifteen feet to his left. It somersaulted twice in the air and then stuck halfway to the hilt in the wood, quivering. He grabbed Roland’s.45 from the place where it hung and cocked it.

Stand or run?

But he discovered he no longer had the luxury of that question. The thing was fast as well as huge, and it was now too late to run. A gigantic shape began to disclose itself in that aisle of trees north of the clearing, a shape which towered above all but the tallest trees. It was lumbering directly toward him, and as its eyes fixed upon Eddie Dean, it gave voice to another of those cries.

“Oh man, I’m fucked,” Eddie whispered as another tree bent, cracked like a mortar, then crashed to the forest floor in a cloud of dust and dead needles. Now it was lumbering straight toward the clearing where he stood, a bear die size of King Kong. Its footfalls made the ground shake.

What will you do, Eddie? Roland suddenly asked. Think! It’s the only advantage you have over yon beast. What will you do?

He didn’t think he could kill it. Maybe with a bazooka, hut probably not with the gunslinger’s.45. He could run, but had an idea that the oncoming beast might be pretty fast when it wanted to be. He guessed the chances of ending up as jam between the great bear s toes might be as high as fifty-fifty.

So which one was it going to be? Stand here and start shooting or run like his hair was on fire and his ass was catching?

It occurred to him that there was a third choice. He could climb.

He turned toward the tree against which he had been leaning. It was a huge, hoary pine, easily the tallest tree in this part of the woods. The first branch spread out over the forest floor in a feathery green fan about eight feet up. Eddie dropped the revolver’s hammer and then jammed the gun into the waistband of his pants. He leaped for the branch, grabbed it, and did a frantic chin-up. Behind him, the bear gave voice to another bellow as it burst into the clearing.

The bear would have had him just the same, would have left Eddie Dean’s guts hanging in gaudy strings from the lowest branches of the pine, if another of those sneezing fits had not come on it at that moment. It kicked the ashy remains of the campfire into a black cloud and then stood almost doubled over, huge front paws on its huge thighs, looking for a moment like an old man in a fur coat, an old man with a cold. It sneezed again and again-AH-CHOW! AH-CHOW! AH-CHOW!-and clouds of parasites blew out of its muzzle. Hot urine flowed in a stream between its legs and hissed out the campfire’s scattered embers.

Eddie did not waste the few crucial extra moments he had been given. He went up the tree like a monkey on a stick, pausing only once to make sure the gunslinger’s revolver was still seated firmly in the waistband of his pants. He was in terror, already half convinced that he was going to die (what else could he expect, now that Henry wasn’t around to Watch Out for him?), but a crazy laughter raved through his head just the same. Been treed, he thought. How bout that, sports fans? Been treed by Bearzilla.

The creature raised its head again, the thing turning between its ears catching winks and flashes of sunlight as it did so, then charged Eddie’s tree. It reached high with one paw and slashed forward, meaning to knock Eddie loose like a pinecone. The paw tore through the branch he was standing on just as he lunged upward to the next. That paw tore through one of his shoes as well, pulling it from his foot and sending it flying in two ragged pieces.

That’s okay, Eddie thought. You can have em both, Br’er Bear, if you want. Goddam things were worn out, anyway.

The bear roared and lashed at the tree, cutting deep wounds in its ancient bark, wounds which bled clear, resinous sap. Eddie kept on yanking himself up. The branches were thinning now, and when he risked a glance down he stared directly into the bear’s muddy eyes. Below its cocked head, the clearing had become a target with the scattered smudge of campfire as its bullseye.

“Missed me, you hairy motherf-” Eddie began, and then the bear, its head still cocked back to look at him, sneezed. Eddie was immediately drenched in hot snot that was filled with thousands of small white worms. They wriggled frantically on his shirt, his forearms, his throat and face.

Eddie screamed in mingled surprise and revulsion. He began to brush at his eyes and mouth, lost his balance, and just managed to hook an arm around the branch beside him in time. He held on and raked at his skin, wiping off as much of the wormy phlegm as he could. The bear roared and hit the tree again. The pine rocked like a mast in a gale… but the fresh claw-marks which appeared were at least seven feet below the branch on which Eddie’s feet were planted.

The worms were dying, he realized-must have begun dying as soon as they left the infected swamps inside the monster’s body. It made him feel a little better, and he began to climb again. He stopped twelve feet further up, daring to go no higher. The trunk of the pine, easily eight feet in diameter at its base, was now no more than eighteen inches through the middle. He had distributed his weight on two branches, but he could feel both of them bending springily beneath him. He had a crow’s nest view of the forest and foothills to the west now, spread out below him in an undulating carpet. Under other circumstances, it would have been a view to relish.

Top of the world, Ma, he thought. He looked down into the bear’s upturned face again, and for a moment all-coherent thought was driven from his mind by simple amazement.

There was something growing out of the bear’s skull, and to Eddie it looked like a small radar-dish.

The gadget turned jerkily, kicking up flashes of sun as it did, and Eddie could hear it screaming thinly. He had owned a few old cars in his time-the kind that sat in the used-car lots with the words HANDYMAN’s SPECIAL soaped on the windshields-and he thought the sound coming from that gadget was the sound of bearings which will freeze up if they are not replaced soon.

The bear uttered a long, purring growl. Yellowish foam, thick with worms, squeezed between its paws in curdled gobbets. If he had never looked into the face of utter lunacy (and he supposed he had, having been eyeball to eyeball with that world-class bitch Detta Walker on more than one occasion), Eddie was looking into it now… but that face was, thankfully, a good thirty feet below him, and at their highest reach those killing talons were fifteen feet under the soles of his feet. And, unlike the trees upon which the bear had vented its spleen as it approached the clearing, this one was not dead.

“Mexican standoff, honey, Eddie panted. He wiped sweat from his forehead with one sap-sticky hand and flicked the mess down into the bugbear’s face.

Then the creature the Old People had called Mir embraced the tree with its great forepaws and began to shake it. Eddie grabbed the trunk and held on for dear life; eyes squeezed into grim slits, as the pine began to sway back and forth like a pendulum.

6

ROLAND HALTED AT THE EDGE of the clearing. Susannah, perched on his shoulders, stared unbelievingly across the open space. The creature stood at the base of the tree where Eddie had been when the two of them left the clearing forty-five minutes ago. She could see only chunks and sections of its body through the screen of branches and dark green needles. Roland’s other gunbelt lay beside one of the monster’s feet. The holster, she saw, was empty.

“My God,” she murmured.

The bear screamed like a distraught woman and began shaking the tree. The branches lashed as if in a high wind. Her eyes skated upward and she saw a dark form near the top. Eddie was hugging the trunk as the tree rocked and rolled. As she watched, one of his hands slipped and flailed wildly for purchase.

“What do we do?” she screamed down at Roland. “It’s goan shake him loose! What do we do?”

Roland tried to think about it, but that queer sensation had returned again-it was always with him now, but stress seemed to make it worse. He felt like two men existing inside one skull. Each man had his own set of memories, and when they began to argue, each insisting that his memories were the true ones, the gunslinger felt as if he were being ripped in two. He made a desperate effort to reconcile these two halves and succeeded… at least for the moment.

“It’s one of the Twelve!” he shouted. “One of the Guardians! Must be! But I thought they were-”

The bear bellowed up at Eddie again. Now it began to slap at the tree like a punchy fighter. Branches snapped and fell around its feet in a tangle.

“What?” Susannah screamed. “What’s the rest?”

Roland closed his eyes. Inside his head, a voice shouted, The boy’s name was Jake! Another voice shouted back, There WAS no boy! There WAS no boy, and you know it!

Get away, both of you! he snarled, and then called out aloud: “Shoot it! Shoot it in the ass, Susannah! It’ll turn and charge! When it does, look for something on its head! It-”

The bear squalled again. It gave up slapping the tree and went back to shaking it. Ominous popping, grinding sounds were now coming from the upper part of the trunk.

When he could be heard again, Roland shouted: “I think it looks like a hat! A little steel hat! Shoot it, Susannah! And don’t miss!”

Terror suddenly filled her-terror and another emotion, one she would never have expected: crushing loneliness.

“No! I’ll miss! You do it, Roland!” She began to fumble his revolver out of the belt she wore, meaning to give it to him.

“Can’t!” Roland shouted. “The angle’s bad! You have to do it, Susannah! This is the real test, and you’d better pass it!”

“Roland-”

“It means to snap the top of the tree off!” he roared at her. “Can’t you see that?”

She looked at the revolver in her hand. Looked across the clearing, at the gigantic bear obscured in the clouds and sprays of green needles. Looked at Eddie, swaying back and forth like a metronome. Eddie probably had Roland’s other gun, but Susannah could see no way he could use it without being shaken from his perch like an over-ripe plum. Also, he might not shoot at the right thing.

She raised the revolver. Her stomach was thick with dread. “Hold me still, Roland,” she said. “If you don’t-”

“Don’t worry about me!”

She fired twice, squeezing the shots as Roland had taught her. The heavy reports cut across the sound of the bear shaking the tree like the cracks of a bullwhip. She saw both bullets strike home in the left cheek of the bear’s rump, less than two inches apart.

It shrieked in surprise, pain, and outrage. One of its huge front paws came out of the dense screen of branches and needles and slapped at the hurt place. The hand came away dripping scarlet and rose back out of sight. Susannah could imagine it up there, examining its bloody palm. Then there was a rushing, rustling, snapping sound as the bear turned, bending down at the same time, dropping to all fours in order to achieve maximum speed. For the first time she saw its face, and her heart quailed. Its muzzle was lathered with foam; its huge eyes glared like lamps. Its shaggy head swung to the left… back to the right… and centered upon Roland, who stood with his legs apart and Susannah Dean balanced on his shoulders.

With a shattering roar, the bear charged.

7

SAY YOUR LESSON, Susannah Dean, and be true.

The bear came at them in a rumbling lope; it was like watching a runaway factory machine over which someone had thrown a huge, moth-eaten rug.

It looks like a hat! A little steel hat!

She saw it… but it didn’t look like a hat to her. It looked like a radar-dish-a much smaller version of the kind she had seen in Movie Tone newsreel stories about how the DEW-line was keeping everyone safe from a Russian sneak attack. It was bigger than the pebbles she had shot off the boulder earlier, but the distance was greater. Sun and shadow ran across it in deceiving dapples.

I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.

I can’t do it!

I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her father.

I’ll miss! I know I’ll miss!

I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun-

“Shoot it!” Roland roared. “Susannah, shoot it!”

With the trigger as yet unpulled, she saw the bullet go home, guided from muzzle to target by nothing more or less than her heart’s fierce desire that it should fly true. All fear fell away. What was left was a feeling of deep coldness and she had time to think: This is what he feels. My God-how does he stand it?

“I kill with my heart, motherfucker,” she said, and the gunslinger’s revolver roared in her hand.

8

THE SILVERY THING SPUN on a steel rod planted in the bear’s skull. Susannah’s bullet struck it dead center and the radar-dish blew into a hundred glittering fragments. The pole itself was suddenly engulfed in a burst of crackling blue fire which reached out in a net and seemed to grasp the sides of the bear’s face for a moment.

It rose on its rear legs with a whistling howl of agony, its front paws boxing aimlessly at the air. It turned in a wide, staggering circle and began to flap its arms, as if it had decided to fly away. It tried to roar again but what came out instead was a weird warbling sound like an air-raid siren.

“It is very well.” Roland sounded exhausted. “A good shot, fair and true.”

“Should I shoot it again?” she asked uncertainly. The bear was still blundering around in its mad circle but now its body had begun to tilt sidewards and inwards. It struck a small tree, rebounded, almost fell over, and then began to circle again.

“No need,” Roland said. She felt his hands grip her waist and lift her. A moment later she was sitting on the ground with her thighs folded beneath her. Eddie was slowly and shakily descending the pine, but she didn’t see him. She could not take her eyes from the bear.

She had seen the whales at the Seaquarium near Mystic, Connecticut, and believed they had been bigger than this-much bigger, probably-but this was certainly the largest land creature she had ever seen. And it was clearly dying. Its roars had become liquid bubbling sounds, and although its eyes were open, it seemed blind. It flailed aimlessly about the camp, knocking over a rack of curing hides, stamping flat the little shelter she shared with Eddie, caroming off trees. She could see the steel post rising from its head. Tendrils of smoke were rising around it, as if her shot had ignited its brains.

Eddie reached the lowest branch of the tree which had saved his life and sat shakily astride it. “Holy Mary Mother of God, he said. “I’m looking right at it and I still don t beli-”

The bear wheeled back toward him. Eddie leaped nimbly from the tree and streaked toward Susannah and Roland. The bear took no notice, it marched drunkenly to the pine which had been Eddie’s refuge, tried to grasp it, failed, and sank to its knees. Now they could hear other sounds coming from inside it, sounds that made Eddie think of some huge truck engine stripping its gears.

A spasm convulsed it, bowed its back. Its front claws rose and gored madly at its own face. Worm-infested blood flew and splattered. Then it fell over, making the ground tremble with its fall, and lay still. After all its strange centuries, the bear the Old People had called Mir-the world beneath the world-was dead.

9

EDDIE PICKED SUSANNAH UP, held her with his sticky hands locked together at the small of her back, and kissed her deeply. He reeked of sweat and pine-tar. She touched his cheeks, his neck; she ran her hands through his wet hair. She felt an insane urge to touch him everywhere until she was absolutely sure of his reality.

“It almost had me,” he said. “It was like being on some crazy carnival ride. What a shot! Jesus, Suze-what a shot!”

“I hope I never have to do anything like that again,” she said… but a small voice at the center of her demurred. That voice suggested that she could not wait to do something like that again. And it was cold, that voice. Cold.

“What was-” he began, turning toward Roland, but Roland was no longer standing there. He was walking slowly toward the bear, which now lay on the ground with its shaggy knees up. From within it came a series of muffled gasps and gurgles as its strange guts continued to slowly run down.

Roland saw his knife planted deep in a tree near the scarred veteran that had saved Eddie’s life. He pulled it free and wiped it clean on the soft deerskin shirt which had replaced the tatters he had been wearing when the three of them had left the beach. He stood by the bear, looking down at it with an expression of pity and wonder.

Hello, stranger, he thought. Hello, old friend. I never believed in you, not really. I believe Alain did, and I know that Cuthbert did- Cuthbert believed in everything-but I was the hardheaded one. I thought you were only a tale for children… another wind which blew around in my old nurse’s hollow head before finally escaping her jabbering mouth. But you were here all along, another refugee of the old times, like the pump at the way station and the old machines under the mountains. Are the Slow Mutants who worshipped those broken remnants the final descendents of the people who once lived in this forest and finally fled your wrath? I don’t know, will never know… but it feels right. Yes. And then I came with my friends-my deadly new friends, who are becoming so much like my deadly old friends. We came, weaving our magic circle around us and around everything we touch, strand by poisonous strand, and now here you lie, at our feet. The world has moved on again, and this time, old friend, it’s you who have been left behind.

The monster’s body still radiated a deep, sick heat. Parasites were leaving its mouth and tattered nostrils in hordes, but they died almost at once. Waxy-white piles of them were growing on either side of the bear’s head.

Eddie approached slowly. He had shifted Susannah over to one hip, carrying her as a mother might carry a baby. “What was it, Roland? Do you know?”

“He called it a Guardian, I think,” Susannah said.

“Yes.” Roland’s voice was slow with amazement. “I thought they were all gone, must all be gone… if they ever existed outside of the old wives’ tales in the first place.”

“Whatever it was, it was one crazy mother,” Eddie said.

Roland smiled a little. “If you’d lived two or three thousand years, you’d be one crazy mother, too.”

“Two or three thousand… Christ!”

Susannah said, “Is it a bear? Really? And what’s that?” She was pointing at what appeared to be a square metal tag set high on one of the bear’s thick rear legs. It was almost overgrown with tough tangles of hair, but the afternoon sun had pricked out a single starpoint of light on its stainless steel surface, revealing it.

Eddie knelt and reached hesitantly toward the tag, aware that strange muffled clicks and clacks were still coming from deep inside the fallen giant. He looked at Roland.

“Go ahead,” the gunslinger told him. “It’s finished.”

Eddie pushed a clump of hair aside and leaned closer. Words had been stamped into the metal. They were quite badly eroded, but he found that with a little effort he could read them.

Granite City Northeast Corridor

Design 4 GUARDIAN

Serial # AA 24123 CX 755431297 L 14

Type/Species BEAR

**NR**SUBNUCLEAR CELLS MUST NOT BE REPLACED**NR**

“Holy Jesus, this thing is a robot,” Eddie said softly.

“It can’t be,” Susannah said. “When I shot it, it bled.”

“Maybe so, but your ordinary, garden-variety bear doesn’t have a radar-dish growing out of its head. And, so far as I know, your ordinary, garden-variety bear doesn’t live to be two or three th-” He broke off suddenly, looking at Roland. When he spoke again, his voice was revolted. “Roland, what are you doing?”

Roland did not reply; did not need to reply. What he was doing- gouging out one of the bear’s eyes with his knife-was perfectly obvious. The surgery was quick, neat, and precise. When it was completed he balanced an oozing brown ball of jelly on the blade of his knife for a moment and then flicked it aside. A few more worms made their way out of the staring hole, tried to squirm their way down the bear’s muzzle, and died.

The gunslinger leaned over the eyesocket of Shardik, the great Guardian bear, and peered inside. “Come and look, both of you,” he said. “I’ll show you a wonder of the latter days.”

“Put me down, Eddie,” Susannah said.

He did so, and she moved swiftly on her hands and upper thighs to where the gunslinger was hunkered down over the bear’s wide, slack face. Eddie joined them, looking between their shoulders. The three of them gazed in rapt silence for nearly a full minute; the only noise came from the crows which still circled and scolded in the sky.

Blood oozed from the socket in a few thick, dying trickles. Yet it was not just blood, Eddie saw. There was also a clear fluid which gave off an identifiable scent-bananas. And, embedded in the delicate crisscross of tendons which shaped the socket, he saw a webwork of what looked like strings. Beyond them, at the back of the socket, was a red spark, blinking on and off. It illuminated a tiny square board marked with silvery squiggles of what could only be solder.

“It isn’t a bear, it’s a fucking Sony Walkman,” he muttered.

Susannah looked around at him. “What?”

“Nothing.” Eddie glanced at Roland. “Do you think it’s safe to reach in?”

Roland shrugged. “I think so. If there was a demon in this creature, it’s fled.”

Eddie reached in with his little finger; nerves set to draw back if he felt even a tickle of electricity. He touched the cooling meat inside the eyesocket, which was nearly the size of a baseball, and then one of those strings. Except it wasn’t a string; it was a gossamer-thin strand of steel. He withdrew his finger and saw the tiny red spark blink once more before going out forever.

“Shardik,” Eddie murmured. “I know that name, but I can’t place it. Does it mean anything to you, Suze?”

She shook her head.

“The thing is…” Eddie laughed helplessly. “I associate it with rabbits. Isn’t that nuts?”

Roland stood up. His knees popped like gunshots. “We’ll have to move camp,” he said.

“The ground here is spoiled. The other clearing, the one where we go to shoot, will-”

He took two trembling steps and then collapsed to his knees, palms pressed to the sides of his sagging head.

10

EDDIE AND SUSANNAH EXCHANGED a single frightened glance and then Eddie leaped to Roland’s side. “What is it? Roland, what’s wrong?”

“There was a boy,” the gunslinger said in a distant, muttering voice. And then, in the very next breath, “There wasn’t a boy.”

“Roland?” Susannah asked. She came to him, slipped an arm around his shoulders, felt him trembling. “Roland, what is it?”

“The boy,” Roland said, looking at her with floating, dazed eyes. “It’s the boy. Always the boy.”

“What boy?” Eddie yelled frantically. “What boy?”

“Go then,” Roland said, “there are other worlds than these.” And fainted.

11

THAT NIGHT THE THREE of them sat around a huge bonfire Eddie and Susannah had built in the clearing Eddie called “the shooting gallery.” It would have been a bad place to camp in the wintertime, open to the valley as it was, but for now it was fine. Eddie guessed that here in Roland’s world it was still late summer.

The black vault of the sky arched overhead, speckled by what seemed to be whole galaxies. Almost straight ahead to the south, across the river of darkness that was the valley, Eddie could see Old Mother rising above the distant, unseen horizon. He glanced at Roland, who sat huddled by the fire with three skins wrapped around his shoulders despite the warmth of the night and the heat of the fire. There was an untouched plate of food by his side and a bone cradled in his hands. Eddie glanced back at the sky and thought of a story the gunslinger had told him and Susannah on one of the long days they had spent moving away from the beach, through the foothills, and finally into these deep woods where they had found a temporary refuge.

Before time began, Roland said, Old Star and Old Mother had been young and passionate newlyweds. Then one day there had been a terrible argument. Old Mother (who in those long-ago days had been known by her real name, which was Lydia) had caught Old Star (whose real name was Apon) hanging about a beautiful young woman named Cassiopeia. They’d had a real bang-up fight, those two, a hair-pulling, eye-gouging, crockery-throwing fight. One of those thrown bits of crockery had become the earth; a smaller shard the moon, a coal from their kitchen stove had become the sun. In the end, the gods had stepped in so Apon and Lydia might not, in their anger, destroy the universe before it was fairly begun. Cassiopeia, the saucy jade who caused the trouble in the first place (“Yeah, right-it’s always the woman,” Susannah had said at this point), had been banished to a rocking-chair made of stars forever and ever. Yet not even this had solved the problem. Lydia had been willing to try again, but Apon was stiffnecked and full of pride (“Yeah, always blame the man,” Eddie had grunted at this point). So they had parted, and now they look at each other in mingled hatred and longing from across the star-strewn wreckage of their divorce. Apon and Lydia are three billion years gone, the gunslinger told them; they have become Old Star and Old Mother, the north and south, each pining for the other but both now too proud to beg for reconciliation… and Cassiopeia sits off to the side in her chair, rocking and laughing at them both.

Eddie was startled by a soft touch on his arm. It was Susannah. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to make him talk.”

Eddie carried her to the campfire and put her down carefully on Roland’s right side. He sat on Roland’s left. Roland looked first at Susannah, then at Eddie.

“How close you both sit to me,” he remarked. “Like lovers… or warders in a gaol.”

“It’s time for you to do some talking.” Susannah’s voice was low, clear, and musical. “If we’re your companions, Roland-and it seems like we are, like it or not-it’s time you started treating us as companions. Tell us what’s wrong…”

“… and what we can do about it,” Eddie finished.

Roland sighed deeply. “I don’t know how to begin,” he said. “It’s been so long since I’ve had companions… or a tale to tell…”

“Start with the bear,” Eddie said.

Susannah leaned forward and touched the jawbone Roland held in his hands. It frightened her, but she touched it anyway. “And finish with this.”

“Yes.” Roland lifted the bone to eye-level and looked at it for a moment before dropping it back into his lap. “We’ll have to speak of this, won’t we? It’s the center of the thing.”

But the bear came first.

12

“THIS IS THE STORY I was told when I was a child,” Roland said. “When everything was new, the Great Old Ones-they weren’t gods, but people who had almost the knowledge of gods-created Twelve Guardians to stand watch at the twelve portals which lead in and out of the world. Sometimes I heard that these portals were natural things, like the constellations we see in the sky or the bottomless crack in the earth we called Dragon’s Grave, because of the great burst of steam they gave off every thirty or forty days. But other people-one I remember in particular, the head cook in my father’s castle, a man named Hax-said they were not natural, that they had been created by the Great Old Ones themselves, in the days before they hanged themselves with pride like a noose and disappeared from the earth. Hax used to say that the creation of the Twelve Guardians was the last act of the Great Old Ones, their attempt to atone for the great wrongs they had done to each other, and to the earth itself.”

“Portals,” Eddie mused. “Doors, you mean. We’re back to those again. Do these doors that lead in and out of the world open on the world Suze and I came from? Like the ones we found along the beach?”

“I don’t know,” Roland said. “For every thing I do know, there are a hundred things I don’t. You-both of you-will have to reconcile yourselves to that fact. The world has moved on, we say. When it did, it went like a great receding wave, leaving only wreckage behind… wreckage that sometimes looks like a map.”

“Well, make a guess!” Eddie exclaimed, and the raw eagerness in his voice told the gunslinger that Eddie had not given up the idea of returning to his own world-and Susannah’s-even now. Not entirely.

“Leave him be, Eddie,” Susannah said. “The man don’t guess.”

“Not true-sometimes the man does,” Roland said, surprising them both. “When guessing’s the only thing left, sometimes he does. The answer is no. I don’t think-I don’t guess-that these portals are much like the doors on the beach. I don’t guess they go to a where or when that we would recognize. I think the doors on the beach-the ones that led into the world you both came from-were like the pivot at the center of a child’s teeterboard. Do you know what that is?”

“Seesaw?” Susannah asked, and tipped her hand back and forth to demonstrate.

“Yes!” Roland agreed, looking pleased. “Just so. On one end of this sawsee-”

“Seesaw,” Eddie said, smiling a little.

“Yes. On one end, my ka. On the other, that of the man in black- Walter. The doors were the center, creations of the tension between two opposing destinies. These other portals are things far greater than Walter, or me, or the little fellowship we three have made.”

“Are you saying,” Susannah asked hesitantly, “that the portals where these Guardians stand watch are outside ka? Beyond ka?”

“I’m saying that I believe so.” He offered his own brief smile, a thin sickle in the firelight. “That I guess so.”

He was silent a moment, then he picked up a stick of his own. He brushed away the carpet of pine needles and used the stick to draw in the dirt beneath:“Here is the world as I was told it existed when I was a child. The Xs are the portals standing in a ring at its eternal edge. If one drew six lines, connecting these portals in pairs-so-”

He looked up. “Do you see where the lines cross in the center?”

Eddie felt gooseflesh crawl up his back and down his arms. His mouth was suddenly dry. “Is that it, Roland? Is that-?”

Roland nodded. His long, lined face was grave. “At this nexus lies the Great Portal, the so-called Thirteenth Gate which rules not just this world but all worlds.”

He tapped the center of the circle.

“Here is the Dark Tower for which I’ve searched my whole life.’’

13

THE GUNSLINGER RESUMED: “At each of the twelve lesser portals the Great Old Ones set a Guardian. In my childhood I could have named them all in the rimes my nursemaid-and Hax the cook-taught to me… but my childhood was long ago. There was the Bear, of course, and the Fish… the Lion… the Bat. And the Turtle-he was an important one…”

The gunslinger looked up into the starry sky, his brow creased in deep thought. Then an amazingly sunny smile broke across his features 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.

On his back all vows are made;

He sees the truth but mayn’t aid.

He loves the land and loves the sea,

And even loves a child like me.”

Roland uttered a small, bemused laugh. “Hax taught that to me, singing it as he stirred the frosting for some cake and gave me little nips of the sweet from the edge of his spoon. Amazing what we remember, isn’t it? Anyway, as I grew older, I came to believe that the Guardians didn’t really exist-that they were symbols rather than substance. It seems that I was wrong.”

“I called it a robot,” Eddie said, “but that’s not what it really was. Susannah’s right-the only thing robots bleed when you shoot them is Quaker State 10-40. I think it was what people of my world call a cyborg, Roland-a creature that’s part machine and part flesh and blood. There was a movie I saw… we told you about movies, didn’t we?””

Smiling a little, Roland nodded.

“Well, this movie was called Robocop, and the guy in it wasn’t a lot different from the bear Susannah killed. How did you know where she should shoot it?”

“That I remembered from the old tales as Hax told them,” he said. “If it had been up to my nursemaid, Eddie, you’d be in the belly of the bear now. Do they sometimes tell puzzled children in your world to put on their thinking caps?”

“Yes,” Susannah said. “They sure do.”

“It’s said here, as well, and the saying comes from the story of the Guardians. Each supposedly carried an extra brain on the outside of its head. In a hat.” He looked at them with his dreadfully haunted eyes and smiled again. “It didn t look much like a hat, did it?”

“No,” Eddie said, “but the story was close enough to save our bacon.”

“I think now that I’ve been looking for one of the Guardians ever since I began my quest,” Roland said. “When we find the portal this Shardik guarded-and that should only be a matter of following its back-trail-we will finally have a course to follow. We must set the portal to our backs and then simply move straight ahead. At the center of the circle… the Tower.”

Eddie opened his mouth to say. All right, let’s talk about this Tower. Finally, once and for all, let’s talk about it-what it is, what it means, and, most important of all, what happens to us when we get there. But no sound came out, and after a moment he closed his mouth again. This wasn’t the time-not now, with Roland in such obvious pain. Not now, with only the spark of their campfire to keep the night at bay.

“So now we come to the other part,” Roland said heavily. “I have finally found my course-after all the long years I have found my course-but at the same time I seem to be losing my sanity. I can feel it crumbling away beneath my feet, like a steep embankment which has been loosened by rain. This is my punishment for letting a boy who never existed fall to his death. And that is also ka.”

“Who is this boy, Roland?” Susannah asked.

Roland glanced at Eddie. “Do you know?”

Eddie shook his head.

“But I spoke of him,” Roland said. “In fact, I raved of him, when the infection was at its worst and I was near dying.” The gunslinger’s voice suddenly rose half an octave, and his imitation of Eddie’s voice was so good that Susannah felt a coil of superstitious fright. “If you don’t shut up about that goddam kid, Roland, I’ll gag you with your own shirt! I’m sick of hearing about him!’ Do you remember saying that, Eddie?””Eddie thought it over carefully. Roland had spoken of a thousand things as the two of them made their tortuous way up the beach from the door marked THE PRISONER to the one marked THE LADY OF THE SHADOWS, and he had mentioned what seemed like a thousand names in his fever-heated monologues-Alain, Cort, Jamie de Curry, Cuthbert (this one more often than all the others), Hax, Martin (or perhaps it was Marten, like the animal), Walter, Susan, even a guy with the unlikely name of Zoltan. Eddie had gotten very tired of hearing about these people he had never met (and didn’t care to meet), but of course Eddie had had a few problems of his own at that time, heroin withdrawal and cosmic jet-lag being only two of them. And, if he was to be fair, he guessed Roland had gotten as tired of Eddie’s own Fractured Fairy Tales-the ones about how he and Henry had grown up together and turned into junkies together-as Eddie had of Roland’s.

But he couldn’t remember ever telling Roland he would gag him with his own shirt if he didn’t stop talking about some kid.

“Nothing comes to you?” Roland asked. “Nothing at all?”

Was there something? Some far-off tickle, like the feeling of deja vu he’d gotten when he saw the slingshot hiding inside the chunk of wood jutting out of the stump? Eddie tried to find that tickle, but it was gone. He decided it had never been there in the first place; he only wanted it to be there, because Roland was hurting so badly.

“No,” he said. “Sorry, man.”

“But I did tell you.” Roland’s tone was calm, but urgency ran and pulsed beneath it like a scarlet thread. “The boy’s name was Jake. I sacrificed him-killed him-in order that I might finally catch up with Walter and make him talk. I killed him under the mountains.”

On this point Eddie could be more positive. “Well, maybe that’s what happened, but it’s not what you said happened. You said you went under the mountains alone, on some land of crazy handcar. You talked about that a lot while we were coming up the beach, Roland. About how scary it was to be alone.”

“I remember. But I also remember telling you about the boy, and how he fell from the trestle into the chasm. And it’s the distance between those two memories that is pulling my mind apart.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Susannah said worriedly.

“I think,” Roland said, “that I’m just beginning to.”

He threw more wood on the fire, sending thick sheaves of red sparks spiralling up into the dark sky, and then settled back between them. “I’ll tell you a story that’s true,” he said, “and then I’ll tell you a story that isn’t true… but should be.

“I bought a mule in Pricetown, and when I finally got to lull, the last town before the desert, it was still fresh… "

14

So THE GUNSLINGER EMBARKED on the most recent part of his long tale. Eddie had heard isolated fragments of the story, but he listened in utter fascination, as did Susannah, for whom it was completely new. He told them about the bar with the endless game of Watch Me going on in the corner, the piano player named Sheb, the woman named Allie with the scar on her forehead… and about Nort, the weed-eater who had died and then been brought back to some sort of tenebrous life by the man in black. He told them about Sylvia Pittston, that avatar of religious insanity, and about the final apocalyptic slaughter, in which he, Roland the Gunslinger, had killed every man, woman, and child in town.

“Holy crispy crap!” Eddie said in a low, shaky voice. “Now I know why you were so low on shells, Roland.”

“Be quiet!” Susannah snapped. “Let him finish!”

Roland went on, telling his story as stolidly as he had crossed the desert after passing the hut of the last Dweller, a young man whose wild, strawberry-colored hair had reached almost to his waist. He told them about how his mule had finally died. He even told them about how the Dweller’s pet bird, Zoltan, had eaten the mule’s eyes.

He told them about the long desert days and the short desert nights which had come next, and how he had followed the cool remains of Walter’s campfires, and how he had come at last, reeling and dying of dehydration, to the way station.

“It was empty. It had been empty, I think, since the days when yonder great bear was still a newly made thing. I stayed a night and pushed on. That’s what happened… but now I’ll tell you another story.”

“The one that isn’t true but should be?” Susannah asked.

Roland nodded. “In this made-up story-this fable-a gunslinger named Roland met a boy named Jake at the way station. This boy was from your world, from your city of New York, and from a when someplace between Eddie’s 1987 and Odetta Holmes’s 1963.”

Eddie was leaning forward eagerly. “Is there a door in this story, Roland? A door marked THE BOY, or something like that?”

Roland shook his head. “The boy’s doorway was death. He was on his way to school when a man-a man I believed to be Walter-pushed him into the street, where he was run over by a car. He heard this man say something like ’Get out of the way, let me through, I’m a priest.’ Jake saw this man-just for an instant-and then he was in my world.”

The gunslinger paused, looking into the fire.

“Now I want to leave this story of the boy who was never there and go back to what really happened for a minute. All right?”

Eddie and Susannah exchanged a puzzled glance and then Eddie made an “after you, my dear Alphonse” gesture with his hand.

“As I have said, the way station was deserted. There was, however, a pump that still worked. It was at the back of the stable where the coach-horses were kept. I followed my ears to it, but I would have found it even if it had been completely silent. I swelled the water, you see. After enough time in the desert, when you are on the edge of dying from thirst, you can really do that. I drank and then slept. When I woke, I drank again. I wanted to push on at once-the need to do that was like a fever. The medicine you brought me from your world-the astin-is wonderful stuff, Eddie, but there are fevers beyond the power of any medicine to cure, and this was one of them. I knew my body needed rest, but it still took every ounce of my willpower to stay there even one night. In the morning I felt rested, and so I refilled my waterskins and pushed on. I took nothing from that place but water. That’s the most important part of what really happened.”

Susannah spoke in her most reasonable, pleasant, and Odetta Holmes-like voice. “All right, that’s what really happened. You refilled your waterskins and went on. Now tell us the rest of what didn’t happen, Roland.”

The gunslinger put the jawbone in his lap for a moment, curled his hands into fists, and rubbed his eyes with them-a curiously childlike gesture. Then he grasped the jawbone again, as if for courage, and went on.

“I hypnotized the boy who wasn’t there,” he said. “I did it with one of my shells. It’s a trick I’ve known for years, and I learned it from a very unlikely source-Marten, my father’s court magician. The boy was a good subject. While he was tranced, he told me the circumstances of his death, as I’ve told them to you. When I’d gotten as much of his story as I felt I could without upsetting or actually hurting him, I gave him a command that he should not remember anything about his dying when he woke up again.”

“Who’d want to?” Eddie muttered.

Roland nodded. “Who, indeed? The boy passed from his trance directly into a natural sleep. I also slept. When we woke, I told the boy that I meant to catch the man in black. He knew who I meant; Walter had also stopped at the way station. Jake was afraid and hid from him. I’m sure Walter knew he was there, but it suited his purpose to pretend he didn’t. He left the boy behind like a set trap.

“I asked him if there was anything to eat there. It seemed to me there must be. He looked healthy enough, and the desert climate is wonderful when it comes to preserving things. He had a little dried meat, and he said there was a cellar. He hadn’t explored that, because he was afraid.” The gunslinger looked at them grimly. “He was right to be afraid. I found food… and I also found a Speaking Demon.”

Eddie looked down at the jawbone with widening eyes. Orange firelight danced on its ancient curves and hoodoo teeth. “Speaking Demon? Do you mean that thing?”

“No,” he said. “Yes. Both. Listen and you shall understand.”

He told them about the inhuman groans he’d heard coming from the earth beyond the cellar; how he had seen sand running from between two of the old blocks which made up the cellar walls. He told them of approaching the hole that was appearing there as Jake screamed for him to come up.

He had commanded the demon to speak… and so the demon had, in the voice of Allie, the woman with the scar on her forehead, the woman who had kept the bar in Tull. Go slow past the Drawers, gunslinger. While you travel with the boy, the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket.

“The Drawers?” Susannah asked, startled.

“Yes.” Roland looked at her closely. “That means something to you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes… and no.”

She spoke with great hesitation. Some of it, Roland divined, was simple reluctance to speak of things which were painful to her. He thought most of it, however, was a desire not to confuse issues which were already confused by saying more than she actually knew. He admired that. He admired her.

“Say what you can be sure of,” he said. “No more than that.”

“All right. The Drawers was a place Detta Walker knew about. A place Detta thought about. It’s a slang term, one she picked up from listening to the grownups when they sat out on the porch and drank beer and talked about the old days. It means a place that’s spoiled, or useless, or both. There was something in the Drawers-in the idea of the Drawers-that called to Detta. Don’t ask me what; I might have known once, but I don’t anymore. And don’t want to.

“Detta stole my Aunt Blue’s china plate-the one my folks gave her for a wedding present-and took it to the Drawers-her Drawers-to break it. That place was a gravel-pit filled with trash. A dumping-ground. Later on, she sometimes picked up boys at roadhouses.”

Susannah dropped her head for a moment, her lips pressed tightly together. Then she looked up again and went on.

“White boys. And when they took her back to their cars in the parking lot, she cock-teased them and then ran off. Those parking lots… they were the Drawers, too. It was a dangerous game, but she was young enough, quick enough, and mean enough to play it to the hilt and enjoy it. Later, in New York, she’d go on shoplifting expeditions… you know about that. Both of you. Always to the fancy stores-Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s-and steal trinkets. And when she made up her mind to go on one of those sprees, she’d think: I’m goan to the Drawers today. Goan steal me some shitfum de white folks. Goan steal me sumpin forspecial and den break dot sumbitch.”

She paused, lips trembling, looking into the fire. When she looked around again, Roland and Eddie saw tears standing in her eyes.

“I’m crying, but don’t let that fool you. I remember doing those things, and I remember enjoying them. I guess I’m crying because I know I’d do it all again, if the circumstances were right.”

Roland seemed to have regained some of his old serenity, his weird equilibrium. “We have a proverb in my country, Susannah: ’The wise thief always prospers.”

“I don’t see nothing wise about stealing a bunch of paste jewelry,” she said sharply.

“Were you ever caught?”

“No-”

He spread his hands as if to say, there you have it.

“So for Detta Walker, the Drawers were bad places?” Eddie asked. “Is that right? Because it doesn’t exactly feel right.”

“Bad and good at the same time. They were powerful places, places where she… she reinvented herself; I suppose you could say… hut they were lost places, too. And this is all off the subject of Roland’s ghost-boy, isn’t it?”

“Maybe not,” Roland said. “We had Drawers as well, you see, in my world. It was slang for us, too, and the meanings are very similar.”

“What did it mean to you and your friends?” Eddie asked.

“That varied slightly from place to place and situation to situation. It might mean a trash-midden. It might mean a whorehouse or a place where men came to gamble or chew devil-weed. But the most common’ meaning that I know is also the simplest.”

He looked at them both.

“The Drawers are places of desolation,” he said. “The Drawers are the waste lands.”

15

THIS TIME SUSANNAH THREW more wood on the fire. In the south, Old Mother blazed on brilliantly, not flickering. She knew from her school studies what that meant: it was a planet, not a star. Venus? She wondered. Or is the solar system of which this world is a part as different as everything else?

Again that feeling of unreality-the feeling that all this must surely be a dream-washed over her.

“Go on,” she said. “What happened after the voice warned you about the Drawers and the little boy?”

“I punched my hand into the hole the sand had come from, as I was taught to do if such a thing ever happened to me. What I plucked forth was a jawbone… but not this one. The jawbone I took from the wall of the way station was much larger; from one of the Great Old Ones, I have almost no doubt.”

“What happened to it?” Susannah asked quietly.

“One night I gave it to the boy,” Roland said. The fire painted his cheeks with hot orange highlights and dancing shadows. “As a protection-a kind of talisman. Later I felt it had served its purpose and threw it away.”

“So whose jawbone you got there, Roland?” Eddie asked.

Roland held it up, looked at it long and thoughtfully, and let it drop back. “Later, after Jake… after he died… I caught up with the men I had been chasing.”

“With Walter,” Susannah said.

“Yes. We held palaver; he and I… long palaver. I fell asleep at some point, and when I woke up, Walter was dead. A hundred years dead at least, and probably more. There was nothing left of him but bones, which was fitting enough, since we were in a place of bones.”

“Yeah, it must have been a pretty long palaver, all right,” Eddie said dryly.

Susannah frowned slightly at this, but Roland only nodded. “Long and long,” he said, looking into the fire.

“You came to in the morning and reached the Western Sea that very evening,” Eddie said. “That night the lobstrosities came, right?”

Roland nodded again. “Yes. But before I left the place where Walter and I had spoken… or dreamed… or whatever it was we did… I took this from the skull of his skeleton.” He lifted the bone and the orange light again skated off the teeth.

Walter’s jawbone, Eddie thought, and felt a little chill work through him. The jawbone of the man in black. Remember this, Eddie my boy, the next time you get to thinking Roland’s maybe just another one of the guys. He’s been carrying it around with him all this time like some kind of a… a cannibal’s trophy. Jee-sus.

“I remember what I thought when I took it,” Roland said. “I remember very well; it is the only memory I have of that time which hasn’t doubled on me. I thought, ’It was bad luck to throw away what I found when I found the boy. This will replace it.’ Only then I heard Walter’s laughter-his mean, tittery laughter. I heard his voice, too.”

“What did he say?” Susannah asked.

“Too late, gunslinger,” Roland said. “That’s what he said. ‘Too late-your luck will be bad from now until the end of eternity-that is your ka.’”

16

“ALL RIGHT,” EDDIE SAID at last. “I understand the basic paradox. Your, memory is divided-”

“Not divided. Doubled.”

“All right; it’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?” Eddie grasped a twig and made his own little drawing in the sand:

He tapped the line on the left. “This is your memory of the time before you got to the way station-a single track.”

“Yes.”

He tapped the line on the right. “And after you came out on the far side of the mountains in the place of bones… the place where Walter was waiting for you. Also a single track.”

“Yes.”

Now Eddie first indicated the middle area and then drew a rough circle around it.

“That’s what you’ve got to do, Roland-close this double track off. Build a stockade around it in your mind and then forget it. Because it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t change anything, it’s gone, it’s done-”

“But it isn’t.” Roland held up the bone. “If my memories of the boy Jake are false-and I know they are-how can I have this? I took it to replace the one I threw away… but the one I threw away came from the cellar of the way station, and along the track I know is true, / never went down cellar! I never spoke with the demon! I moved on alone, with fresh water and nothing else!”

“Roland, listen to me,” Eddie said earnestly. “If that jawbone you’re holding was the one from the way station, that would be one thing. But isn’t it possible that if you hallucinated that whole thing-the way station, the kid, the Speaking Demon-then maybe you took Walter’s jawbone because-”

“It was no hallucination,” Roland said. He looked at them both with his faded blue bombardier’s eyes and then did something neither expected… something Eddie would have sworn Roland did not know he meant to do himself.

He threw the jawbone into the fire.

17

FOR A MOMENT IT only lay there, a white relic bent in a ghostly half-grin. Then it suddenly blazed red, washing the clearing with dazzling scarlet light. Eddie and Susannah cried out and threw their hands up to shield their eyes from that burning shape.

The bone began to change. Not to melt, but to change. The teeth which leaned out of it like gravestones began to draw together in clumps.

The mild curve of the upper arc straightened, then snubbed down at the tip.

Eddie’s hands fell into his lap and he stared at the bone which was no longer a bone with gape-jawed wonder. It was now the color of burning steel. The teeth had become three inverted V’s, the middle one larger than those on the ends. And suddenly Eddie saw what it wanted to become, just as he had seen the slingshot in the wood of the stump.

He thought it was a key.

You must remember the shape, he thought feverishly. You must, you must.

His eyes traced it desperately-three V’s, the one in the center larger and deeper than the two on the end. Three notches… and the one closest the end had a squiggle, the shallow shape of a lower-cases…

Then the shape in the flames changed again. The bone which had become something like a key drew inward, concentrating itself into bright, overlapping petals and folds as dark and velvety as a moonless summer midnight. For a moment Eddie saw a rose-a triumphant rose that might have bloomed in the dawn of this world’s first day, a thing of depthless, timeless beauty. His eye saw, and his heart was opened. It was as if all love and life had suddenly risen from Roland’s dead artifact; it was there in the fire, burning out in triumph and some wonderful, inchoate defiance, declaring that despair was a mirage and death a dream.

The rose! he thought incoherently. First the key, then the rose! Behold! Behold the opening of the way to the Tower!

There was a thick cough from the fire. A fan of sparks twisted outwards. Susannah screamed and rolled away, beating at the orange flecks on her dress as the flames gushed upward toward the starry sky. Eddie didn’t move. He sat transfixed in his vision, held in a cradle of wonder which was both gorgeous and terrible, unmindful of the sparks which danced across his skin. Then the flames sank back.

The bone was gone.

The key was gone.

The rose was gone.

Remember, he thought. Remember the rose… and remember the shape of the key.

Susannah was sobbing with shock and terror, but he ignored her for the moment and found the stick with which he and Roland had both drawn. And in the dirt he made this shape with a shaking hand:

18

“WHY DID YOU DO it?” Susannah asked at last. “Why, for God’s sake- and what was it?”

Fifteen minutes had gone by. The fire had been allowed to burn low; the scattered embers had either been stamped out or had gone out on their own. Eddie sat with his arms about his wife: Susannah sat before him, with her back against his chest. Roland was off to one side, knees hugged to his chest, looking moodily into the orange-red coals. So far as Eddie could tell, neither of them had seen the bone change. They had both seen it glowing superhot, and Roland had seen it explode (or had it imploded? to Eddie that seemed closer to what he had seen), but that was all. Or so he believed; Roland, however, sometimes kept his own counsel, and when he decided to play his cards close to the vest, he played them very close indeed, Eddie knew that from bitter experience. He thought of telling them what he had seen-or thought he had seen-and decided to play his own cards tight and close-up, at least for the time being.

Of the jawbone itself there was no sign-not even a splinter.

“I did it because a voice spoke in my mind and told me I must,” Roland said. “It was the voice of my father; of all my fathers. When one hears such a voice, not to obey-and at once-is unthinkable. So I was taught. As to what it was, I can’t say… not now, at least. I only know that the bone has spoken its final word. I have carried it all this way to hear it.”

Or to see it, Eddie thought, and again: Remember. Remember the rose. And remember the shape of the key.

“It almost flash-fried us!” She sounded both tired and exasperated.

Roland shook his head. “I think it was more like the sort of firework the barons used to sometimes shoot into the sky at their year-end parties. Bright and startling, but not dangerous.”

Eddie had an idea. “The doubling in your mind, Roland-is it gone? Did it leave when the bone exploded, or whatever it did?”

He was almost convinced that it had; in the movies he’d seen, such rough shock-therapy almost always worked. But Roland shook his head.

Susannah shifted in Eddie’s arms. “You said you were beginning to understand.”

Roland nodded. “I think so, yes. If I’m right, I fear for Jake. Wherever he is, whenever he is, I fear for him.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asked.

Roland got up, went to his roll of hides, and began to spread them out. “Enough stories and excitement for one night. It’s time to sleep. In the morning we’ll follow the bear’s backtrail and see if we can find the portal he was set to guard. I’ll tell you what I know and what I believe has happened-what I believe is happening still-along the way.”

With that he wrapped himself in an old blanket and a new deerskin, rolled away from the fire, and would say no more.

Eddie and Susannah lay down together. When they were sure the gunslinger must be asleep, they made love. Roland heard them going about it as he lay wakeful and heard their quiet after-love talk. Most of it was about him. He lay quietly, open eyes looking into the darkness long after their talk had ceased and their breathing had evened out into a single easy note.

It was, he thought, fine to be young and in love. Even in the graveyard which this world had become, it was fine.

Enjoy it while you can, he thought, because there is more death ahead. We have come to a stream of blood. That it will lead us to a river of the same stuff I have no doubt. And, further along, to an ocean. In this world the graves yawn and none of the dead rest easy.

As dawn began to come up in the east, he closed his eyes. Slept briefly. And dreamed of Jake.

19

EDDIE ALSO DREAMED-DREAMED he was back in New York, walking along Second Avenue with a book in his hand.

In this dream it was spring. The air was warm, the city was blooming, and homesickness sobbed within him like a muscle with a fishhook caught deep within it. Enjoy this dream, and make it go on as long as you can, he thought. Savor it… because this is as close to New York as you’re going to get. You can’t go home, Eddie. That part’s done.

He looked down at the book and was utterly unsurprised to find it was You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. Stamped into the dark red cover were three shapes; key, rose, and door. He stopped for a moment, flipped the book open, and read the first line. The man in black fled across the desert, Wolfe had written, and the gunslinger followed.

Eddie closed it and walked on. It was about nine in the morning, he judged, maybe nine-thirty, and traffic on Second Avenue was light. Taxis honked and wove their way from lane to lane with spring sunshine twinkling off their windshields and bright yellow paintjobs. A bum on the corner of Second and Fifty-second asked him for a handout and Eddie tossed the book with the red cover into his lap. He observed (also without surprise) that the bum was Enrico Balazar. He was sitting cross-legged in front of a magic shop. HOUSE OF CARDS, the sign in the window read, and the display inside showed a tower which had been built of Tarot cards. Standing on top was a model of King Kong. There was a tiny radar-dish growing out of the great ape’s head.

Eddie walked on, lazing his way downtown, the street-signs floating past him. He knew where he was going as soon as he saw it: a small shop on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth.

Yeah, he thought. A feeling of great relief swept through him. This is the place. The very place. The window was full of hanging meats and cheeses. TOM AND GERRY’s ARTISTIC DELI, the sign read. PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!

As he stood looking in, someone else he knew came around the corner. It was Jack Andolini, wearing a three-piece suit the color of vanilla ice cream and carrying a black cane in his left hand. Half of his face was gone, lopped off by the claws of the lobstrosities.

Go on in, Eddie, Jack said as he passed. After all, there are other worlds than these and that fuckin train rolls through all of them.

I can’t, Eddie replied. The door is locked. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he did; knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key, Jack said, not looking back. Eddie looked down and saw he did have a key; a primitive-looking thing with three notches like inverted Vs.

That little s-shape at the end of the last notch is the secret, he thought. He stepped under the awning of Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli and inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily. He opened the door and stepped through into a huge open field. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the traffic on Second Avenue hurrying by, and then the door slammed shut and fell over. There was nothing behind it. Nothing at all. He turned back to survey his new surroundings, and what he saw filled him with terror at first. The field was a deep scarlet, as if some titanic battle had been fought here and the ground had been drenched with so much blood that it could not all be absorbed.

Then he realized that it was not blood he was looking at, but roses.

That feeling of mingled joy and triumph surged through him again, swelling his heart until he felt it might burst within him. He raised his clenched fists high over his head in a gesture of victory… and then froze that way.

The field stretched on for miles, climbing a gentle slope of land, and standing at the horizon was the Dark Tower. It was a pillar of dumb stone rising so high into the sky that he could barely discern its tip. Its base, surrounded by red, shouting roses, was formidable, titanic with weight and size, yet the Tower became oddly graceful as it rose and tapered. The stone of which it had been made was not black, as he had imagined it would be, but soot-colored. Narrow, slitted windows marched about it in a rising spiral; below the windows ran an almost endless flight of stone stairs, circling up and up. The Tower was a dark gray exclamation point planted in the earth and rising above the field of blood-red roses. The sky arched above it was blue, but filled with puffy white clouds like sailing ships. They flowed above and around the top of the Dark Tower in an endless stream.

How gorgeous it is! Eddie marvelled. How gorgeous and strange! But his feeling of joy and triumph had departed; he was left with a sense of deep malaise and impending doom. He looked about him and realized with sudden horror that he was standing in the shadow of the Tower. No, not just standing in it; buried alive in it.

He cried out but his cry was lost in the golden blast of some tremendous horn. It came from the top of the Tower, and seemed to fill the world. As that note of warning held and drew out over the field where he stood, blackness welled from the windows which girdled the Tower. It overspilled them and spread across the sky in flaggy streams which came together and formed a growing blotch of darkness. It did not look like a cloud; it looked like a tumor hanging over the earth. The sky was blotted out. And, he saw, it was not a cloud or a tumor but a shape, some tenebrous, cyclopean shape racing toward the place where he stood. It would do no good to run from that beast coalescing in the sky above the field of roses; it would catch him, clutch him, and bear him away. Into the Dark Tower it would bear him, and the world of light would see him no more.

Rents formed in the darkness and terrible inhuman eyes, each easily the size of the bear Shardik which lay dead in the forest, peered down at him. They were red-red as roses, red as blood.

Jack Andolini’s dead voice hammered in his ears: A thousand worlds, Eddie-ten thousand!-and that train rolls through every one. If you can get it started. And if you do get it started, your troubles are only beginning, because this device is a real bastard to shut down.

Jack’s voice had become mechanical, chanting. A real bastard to shut down, Eddie boy, you better believe it, this bastard is-

“-SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND SIX MINUTES!”

In his dream, Eddie threw his hands up to shield his eyes…

20

… AND WOKE, SITTING BOLT upright beside the dead campfire. He was looking at the world from between his own spread fingers. And still that voice rolled on and on, the voice of some heartless SWAT Squad commander bellowing through a bullhorn.

“THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT, THERE IS NO DANGER! FIVE SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE DORMANT, TWO SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE NOW IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL IS OPERATING AT TWO PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPEAT, THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPORT LOCATION TO NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LIMITED! CALL 1-900-44! THE CODE WORD FOR THIS DEVICE IS ‘SHARDIK.’ REWARD IS OFFERED! REPEAT, REWARD ZS OFFERED!”

The voice fell silent. Eddie saw Roland standing at the edge of the clearing, holding Susannah in the crook of one arm. They were staring toward the sound of the voice, and as the recorded announcement began again, Eddie was finally able to shake off the chill remnants of his nightmare. He got up and joined Roland and Susannah, wondering how many centuries it had been since that announcement, programmed to broadcast only in the event of a total system breakdown, had been recorded.

“THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND FIVE MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT-”

Eddie touched Susannah’s arm and she looked around. “How long has this been going on?”

“About fifteen minutes. You were dead to the w-” She broke off. “Eddie, you look terrible! Are you sick?”

“No. I just had a bad dream.”

Roland was studying him in a way that made Eddie feel uncomfortable. “Sometimes there’s truth in dreams, Eddie. What was yours?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“You know, I doubt that.”

Eddie shrugged and favored Roland with a thin smile. “Doubt away, then-be my guest. And how are you this morning, Roland?”

“The same,” Roland said. His faded blue eyes still conned Eddie’s face.

“Stop it,” Susannah said. Her voice was brisk, but Eddie caught an undertone of nervousness. “Both of you. I got better things to do than watch you two dance around and kick each other’s shins like a couple of little kids playin Two for Flinching. Specially this morning, with that dead bear trying to yell down the whole world.”

The gunslinger nodded, but kept his eyes on Eddie. “All right… but are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me, Eddie?”

He thought about it then-really thought about telling. What he had seen in the fire, what he had seen in his dream. He decided against it. Perhaps it was only the memory of the rose in the fire, and the roseswhich had blanketed that dream-field in such fabulous profusion. Me knew he could not tell these things as his eyes had seen them and his heart had felt them; he could only cheapen them. And, at least for the time being, he wanted to ponder these things alone.

But remember, he told himself again… except the voice in his mind didn’t sound much like his own. It seemed deeper, older-the voice of a stranger. Remember the rose… and the shape of the key.

“I will,” he murmured.

“You will what?” Roland asked.

“Tell,” Eddie said. “If anything comes up that seems, you know, really important, I’ll tell you. Both of you. Right now there isn’t. So if we’re going somewhere, Shane, old buddy, let’s saddle up.”

“Shane? Who is this Shane?”

“I’ll tell you that some other time, too. Meantime, let’s go.”

They packed the gear they had brought with them from the old campsite and headed back, Susannah riding in her wheelchair again. Eddie had an idea she wouldn’t be riding in it for long.

21

ONCE, BEFORE EDDIE HAD become too interested in the subject of heroin to be interested in much else, he and a couple of friends had driven over to New Jersey to see a couple of speed-metal groups- Anthrax and Megadeth-in concert at the Meadowlands. He believed that Anthrax had been slightly louder than the repeating announcement coming from the fallen bear, but he wasn’t a hundred per cent sure. Roland stopped them while they were still half a mile from the clearing in the woods and tore six small scaps of cloth from his old shirt. They stuffed them in their ears and then went on. Even the cloth didn’t do much to deaden the steady blast of sound.

“THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN!” the bear blared as they stepped into the clearing again. It lay as it had lain, at the foot of the tree Eddie had climbed, a fallen Colossus with its legs apart and its knees in the air, like a furry female giant who had died trying to give birth. “SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER-”

Yes, there is, Eddie thought, picking up the scattered hides which had not been shredded in either the bear’s attack or its flailing death-throes. Plenty of danger. To my fucking ears. He picked up Roland’s gunbelt and silently handed it over. The chunk of wood he had been working on lay nearby; he grabbed it and tucked it into the pocket in the hack of Susannah’s wheelchair as the gunslinger slowly buckled the wide leather belt around his waist and cinched the rawhide tiedown.

“-IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL OPERATING AT ONE PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS-”

Susannah followed Eddie, holding in her lap a carry-all bag she had sewn herself. As Eddie handed her the hides, she stuffed them into the bag. When all of them were stored away, Roland tapped Eddie on the arm and handed him a shoulderpack. What it contained mostly was deer-meat, heavily salted from a natural lick Roland had found about three miles up the little creek. The gunslinger had already donned a similar pack. His purse-restocked and once again bulging with all sorts of odds and ends-hung from his other shoulder.

A strange, home-made harness with a seat of stitched deerskin dangled from a nearby branch. Roland plucked it off, studied it for a moment, and then draped it over his back and knotted the straps below his chest. Susannah made a sour face at diis, and Roland saw it. He did not try to speak-this close to the bear, he couldn’t have made himself heard even by shouting at the top of his voice-but he shrugged sympathetically and spread his hands: You know well need it.

She shrugged back. / know… but that doesn’t mean I like it.

The gunslinger pointed across the clearing. A pair of leaning, splintered spruce trees marked the place where Shardik, who had once been known as Mir in these parts, had entered the clearing.

Eddie leaned toward Susannah, made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, then raised his eyebrows interrogatively. Okay?

She nodded, then pressed the heels of her palms against her ears. Okay-but let’s get out of here before I go deaf.

The three of them moved across the clearing, Eddie pushing Susannah, who held the bag of hides in her lap. The pocket in the back of her wheelchair was stuffed with other items; die piece of wood with the slingshot still mostly hidden inside it was only one of them.

From behind them the bear continued to roar out its final communication to the world, telling them shutdown would be complete in forty minutes. Eddie couldn’t wait. The broken spruces leaned in toward each other, forming a rude gate, and Eddie thought: This is where the quest for Roland’s Dark Tower really begins, at least for us.

He thought of his dream again-the spiraling windows issuing their unfurling flags of darkness, flags which spread over the field of roses like a stain-and as they passed beneath the leaning trees, a deep shudder gripped him.

22

THEY WERE ABLE TO use the wheelchair longer than Roland had expected. The firs of this forest were very old, and their spreading branches had created a deep carpet of needles which discouraged most undergrowth. Susannah’s arms were strong-stronger than Eddie’s, although Roland did not think that would be true much longer-and she wheeled herself along easily over the level, shady forest floor. When they came to one of the trees the bear had pushed over, Roland lifted her out of the chair and Eddie boosted it over the obstacle.

From behind them, only a little deadened by distance, the bear told them, at the top of its mechanical voice, that the capacity of its last operating nuclear subcell was now negligible.

“I hope you keep that damn harness lying empty over your shoulders all day!” Susannah shouted at the gunslinger.

Roland agreed, but less than fifteen minutes later the land began to slope downward and this old section of the forest began to be invaded with smaller, younger trees: birch, alder, and a few stunted maples scrabbling grimly in the soil for purchase. The carpet of needles thinned and the wheels of Susannah’s chair began to catch in the low, tough bushes which grew in the alleys between the trees. Their thin branches boinged and rattled in the stainless steel spokes. Eddie threw his weight against the handles and they were able to go on for another quarter of a mile that way. Then the slope began to grow more steep, and the ground underfoot became mushy.

“Time for a pig-back, lady,” Roland said.

“Let’s try the chair a little longer, what do you say? Going might get easier-”

Roland shook his head. “If you try that hill, you’ll… what did you call it, Eddie?… do a dugout?”

Eddie shook his head, grinning. “It’s called doing a doughnut, Roland. A term from my misspent sidewalk-surfing days.”

“Whatever you call it, it means landing on your head. Come on, Susannah. Up you come.”

“I hate being a cripple,” Susannah said crossly, but allowed Eddie to hoist her out of the chair and worked with him to seat herself firmly in the harness Roland wore on his back. Once she was in place, she touched the butt of Roland’s pistol. “Y’all want this baby?” she asked Eddie.

He shook his head. “You’re faster. And you know it, too.”

She grunted and adjusted the belt, settling the gunbutt so it was easily accessible to her right hand. “I’m slowing you boys down and I know that… but if we ever make it to some good old two-lane blacktop, I’ll leave the both of you kneelin in the blocks.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Roland said… and then cocked his head. The woods had fallen silent.

“Br’er Bear has finally given up,” Susannah said. “Praise God.”

“I thought it still had seven minutes to go,” Eddie said.

Roland adjusted the straps of the harness. “Its clock must have started running a little slow during the last five or six hundred years.”

“You really think it was that old, Roland?”

Roland nodded. “At least. And now it’s passed… the last of the Twelve Guardians, for all we know.”

“Yeah, ask me if I give a shit,” Eddie replied, and Susannah laughed.

“Are you comfortable?” Roland asked her.

“No. My butt hurts already, but go on. Just try not to drop me.”

Roland nodded and started down the slope. Eddie followed, pushing the empty chair and trying not to bang it too badly on the rocks which had begun to jut out of the ground like big white knuckles. Now that the bear had finally shut up, he thought the forest seemed much too quiet-it almost made him feel like a character in one of those hokey old jungle movies about cannibals and giant apes.

23

THE BEAR’S BACKTRAIL WAS easy to find but tougher to follow. Five miles or so out of the clearing, it led them through a low, boggy area that was not quite a swamp. By the time the ground began to rise and firm up a little again, Roland’s faded jeans were soaked to the knees and he was breathing in long, steady rasps. Still, he was in slightly better shape than Eddie, who had found wrestling Susannah’s wheelchair through the muck and standing water hard going.

“Time to rest and eat something,” Roland said.

“Oh boy, gimme eats,” Eddie puffed. He helped Susannah out of the harness and set her down on the bole of a fallen tree with claw-marks slashed into its trunk in long diagonal grooves. Then he half-sat, half-collapsed next to her.

“You got my wheelchair pretty muddy, white boy,” Susannah said. “It’s all goan be in my repote.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Next carwash we come to, I’ll push you through myself. I’ll even Turtle-wax the goddamn thing. Okay?”

She smiled. “You got a date, handsome.”

Eddie had one of Roland’s waterskins cinched around his waist. He tapped it. “Okay?”

“Yes,” Roland said. “Not too much now; a little more for all of us before we set out again. That way no one takes a cramp.”

“Roland, Eagle Scout of Oz,” Eddie said, and giggled as he unslung the waterskin.

“What is this Oz?”

“A make-believe place in a movie,” Susannah said.

“Oz was a lot more than that. My brother Henry used to read me the stories once in a while. I’ll tell you one some night, Roland.”

“That would be fine,” the gunslinger replied seriously. “I am hungry to know more of your world.”

“Oz isn’t our world, though. Like Susannah said, it’s a make-believe place-”

Roland handed them chunks of meat which had been wrapped in broad leaves of some sort. “The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of. I would hear of this Oz.”

“Okay, that’s a date, too. Suze can tell you the one about Dorothy and Toto and the Tin Woodman, and I’ll tell you all the rest.” He bit into his piece of meat and rolled his eyes approvingly. It had taken the flavor of the leaves in which it had been rolled, and was delicious. Eddie wolfed his ration, stomach gurgling busily all the while. Now that he was getting his breath back, he felt good-great, in fact. His body was growing a solid sheath of muscle, and every part of it felt at peace with every other part.

Don’t worry, he thought. Everything will be arguing again by tonight. I think he’s gonna push on until I’m ready to drop in my tracks.

Susannah ate more delicately, chasing every second or third bite with a little sip of water, turning the meat in her hands, eating from the outside in. “Finish what you started last night,” she invited Roland. “You said you thought you understood these conflicting memories of yours.”

Roland nodded. “Yes. I think both memories are true. One is a little truer than the other, but that does not negate the truth of that other.”

“Makes no sense to me,” Eddie said. “Either this boy Jake was at the way station or he wasn’t, Roland.”

“It is a paradox-something that is and isn’t at the same time. Until it’s resolved, I will continue divided. That’s bad enough, but the basic split is widening. I can feel that happening. It is… unspeakable.”

“What do you think caused it?” Susannah asked.

“I told you the boy was pushed in front of a car. Pushed. Now, who do we know who liked to push people in front of things?”

Understanding dawned in her face. “Jack Mort. Do you mean he was the one who pushed this boy into the street?”

“Yes.”

“But you said the man in black did it,” Eddie objected. “Your buddy Walter. You said that the boy saw him-a man who looked like a priest. Didn’t the kid even hear him say he was? ’Let me through, I’m a priest,’ something like that?”

“Oh, Walter was there. They were both there, and they both pushed Jake.”

“Somebody bring the Thorazine and the strait-jacket,” Eddie called. “Roland just went over the high side.”

Roland paid no attention to this; he was coming to understand that Eddie’s jokes and clowning were his way of dealing with stress. Cuthbert had not been much different… as Susannah was, in her way, not so different from Alain. “What exasperates me about all of this,” he said, “is that I should have known. I was in Jack Mort, after all, and I had access to his thoughts, just as I had access to yours, Eddie, and yours, Susannah. I saw Jake while I was in Mort. I saw him through Mort’s eyes, and I knew Mort planned to push him. Not only that; I stopped him from doing it. All I had to do was enter his body. Not that he knew that was what it was; he was concentrating so hard on what he planned to do that he actually thought I was a fly landing on his neck.”

Eddie began to understand. “If Jake wasn’t pushed into the street, he never died. And if he never died, he never came into this world. And if he never came into this world, you never met him at the way station. Right?”

“Right. The thought even crossed my mind that if Jack Mort meant to kill the boy, I would have to stand aside and let him do it. To avoid creating the very paradox that is tearing me apart. But I couldn’t do that. I… I…”

“You couldn’t kill this kid twice, could you?” Eddie asked softly. “Every time I just about make up my mind that you’re as mechanical as that bear, you surprise me with something that actually seems human. Goddam.”

“Quit it, Eddie,” Susannah said.

Eddie took a look at the gunslinger’s slightly lowered face and grimaced. “Sorry, Roland. My mother used to say that my mouth had a bad habit of running away with my mind.”

“It’s all right. I had a friend who was the same way.”

“Cuthbert?”

Roland nodded. He looked at his diminished right hand for a long moment, then clenched it into a painful fist, sighed, and looked up at them again. Somewhere, deeper in the forest, a lark sang sweetly.

“Here is what I believe. If I had not entered Jack Mort when I did, he still wouldn’t have pushed Jake that day. Not then. Why not? Ka-tet. Simply that. For the first time since the last of the friends with whom I set forth on this quest died, I have found myself once again at the center of ka-tet.”

“Quartet?” Eddie asked doubtfully.

The gunslinger shook his head. “Ka-the word you think of as ’destiny,’ Eddie, although the actual meaning is much more complex and hard to define, as is almost always the case with words of the High Speech. And tet, which means a group of people with the same interests and goals. We three are a tet, for instance. Ka-tet, is the place where many lives are joined by fate.”

“Like in The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” Susannah murmured.

“What’s that?” Roland asked.

“A story about some people who die together when the bridge they’re crossing collapses. It’s famous in our world.”

Roland nodded his understanding. “In this case, ka-tet bound Jake, Walter, Jack Mort, and me. There was no trap, as I first suspected when I realized who Jack Mort meant to be his next victim, because ka-tet cannot be changed or bent to the will of any one person. But ka-tet can be seen, known, and understood. Walter saw, and Walter knew.” The gunslinger struck his thigh with his fist and exclaimed bitterly, “How he must have been laughing inside when I finally caught up to him!”

“Let’s go back to what would have happened if you hadn’t messed up Jack Mort’s plans on the day he was following Jake,” Eddie said. “You’re saying that if you hadn’t stopped Mort, someone or something else would have. Is that right?”

“Yes-because it wasn’t the right day for Jake to die. It was close to the right day, but not the right day. I felt that, too. Perhaps, just before he did it, Mort would have seen someone watching him. Or a perfect stranger would have intervened. Or-”

“Or a cop,” Susannah said. “He might have seen a cop in the wrong place and at the wrong time.”

“Yes. The exact reason-the agent of ka-tet-doesn’t matter. I know from firsthand experience that Mort was as wily as an old fox. If he sensed any slightest thing wrong, he would have called it off and waited for another day.

“I know something else, as well. He hunted in disguise. On the day he dropped the brick on Detta Holmes’s head, he was wearing a knitted cap and an old sweater several sizes too big for him. He wanted to look like a winebibber, because he pushed the brick from a building where a large number of sots kept their dens. You see?”

They nodded.

“On the day, years later, when he pushed you in front of the train, Susannah, he was dressed as a construction worker. He was wearing a big yellow helmet he thought of as a ‘hardhat’ and a fake moustache. On the day when he actually would have pushed Jake into traffic, causing his death, he would have been dressed as a priest.”

“Jesus,” Susannah nearly whispered. “The man who pushed him in New York was Jack Mort, and the man he saw at the way station was this fella you were chasing-Walter.”

“Yes.”

“And the little boy thought they were the same man because they were both wearing the same kind of black robe?”

Roland nodded. “There was even a physical resemblance between Walter land Jack Mort. Not as if they were brothers, I don’t mean that, but both were tall men with dark hair and very pale complexions. And given the fact that Jake was dying when he got his only good look at Mort and was in a strange place and scared almost witless when he got his only good look at Walter, I think his mistake was both understandable and forgivable. If there’s a horse’s ass in this picture, it’s me, for not realizing the truth sooner.”

“Would Mort have known he was being used?” Eddie asked. Thinking back to his own experiences and wild thoughts when Roland had invaded his mind, he didn’t see how Mort could not know… but Roland was shaking his head.

“Walter would have been extremely subtle. Mort would have thought the priest disguise his own idea… or so I believe. He would not have recognized the voice of an intruder-of Walter-whispering deep within his mind, telling him what to do.”

“Jack Mort,” Eddie marvelled. “It was Jack Mort all the time.”

“Yes… with assistance from Walter. And so I ended up saving Jake’s life after all. When I made Mort jump from the subway platform in front of the train, I changed everything.”

Susannah asked, “If this Walter was able to enter our world- through his own private door, maybe-whenever he wanted, couldn’t he have used someone else to push your little boy? If he could suggest to Mort that he dress up like a priest, then he could make somebody else do it… What, Eddie? Why are you shaking your head?”

“Because I don’t think Walter would want that to happen. What Walter wanted is what is happening… for Roland to be losing his mind, bit by bit. Isn’t that right?”

The gunslinger nodded.

“Walter couldn’t have done it that way even if he had wanted to,” Eddie added, “because he was dead long before Roland found the doors on the beach. When Roland went through that last one and into Jack Mort’s head, ole Walt’s messin-around days were done.”

Susannah thought about this, then nodded her head. “I see… I think. This time-travel business is some confusing shit, isn’t it?”

Roland began to pick up his goods and strap them back into place. “Time we were moving on.”

Eddie stood up and shrugged into his pack. “You can take comfort from one thing, at least,” he told Roland. “You-or this ka-tet business- were able to save the kid after all.”

Roland had been knotting the harness-strings at his chest. Now he looked up, and the blazing clarity of his eyes made Eddie flinch backward. “Have I?” he asked harshly. “Have I really? I’m going insane an inch at a time, trying to live with two versions of the same reality. I had hoped at first that one or the other would begin to fade away, but that’s not happening. In fact, the exact opposite is happening: those two realities are growing louder and louder in my head, clamoring at each other like opposing factions which must soon go to war. So tell me this, Eddie: How do you suppose Jake feels? How do you suppose it feels to know you are dead in one world and alive in another?”

The lark sang again, but none of them noticed. Eddie stared into the faded blue eyes blazing out of Roland’s pale face and could not think of a thing to say.

24

THEY CAMPED ABOUT FIFTEEN miles due east of the dead bear that night, slept the sleep of the completely exhausted (even Roland slept the night through, although his dreams were nightmare carnival-rides), and were up the next morning at sunrise. Eddie kindled a small fire without speaking, and glanced at Susannah as a pistol-shot rang out in the woods nearby.

“Breakfast,” she said.

Roland returned three minutes later with a hide slung over one shoulder. On it lay the freshly gutted corpse of a rabbit. Susannah cooked it. They ate and moved on.

Eddie kept trying to imagine what it would be like to have a memory of your own death. On that one he kept coming up short.

25

SHORTLY AFTER NOON THEY entered an area where most of the trees had been pulled over and the bushes mashed flat-it looked as though a cyclone had touched down here many years before, creating a wide and dismal alley of destruction.

“We’re close to the place we want to find,” Roland said. “He pulled down everything to clear the sightlines. Our friend the bear wanted no surprises. He was big, but not complacent.”

“Has it left us any surprises?” Eddie asked.

“He may have done so.” Roland smiled a little and touched Eddie on the shoulder. “But there’s this-they’ll be old surprises.”

Their progress through this zone of destruction was slow. Most of the fallen trees were very old-many had almost rejoined the soil from which they had sprung-but they still made enough of a tangle to create a formidable obstacle course. It would have been difficult enough if all three of them had been able-bodied; with Susannah strapped to the gunslinger’s back in her harness, it became an exercise in aggravation and endurance.

The flattened trees and jumbles of underbrush served to obscure the bear’s backtrail, and that also worked to slow their speed. Until midday they had followed claw-marks as clear as trail-blazes on the trees. Here, however, near its starting point, the bear’s rage had not been full-blown, and these handy signs of its passage disappeared. Roland moved slowly, looking for droppings in the bushes and tufts of hair on the tree-trunks over which the bear had climbed. It took all afternoon to cross three miles of this decayed jumble.

Eddie had just decided they were going to lose the light and would have to camp in these creepy surroundings when they came to a thin skirt of alders. Beyond it, he could hear a stream babbling noisily over a bed of stones. Behind them, the setting sun was radiating spokes of sullen red light across the jumbled ground they had just crossed, turning the fallen trees into crisscrossing black shapes like Chinese ideograms.

Roland called a halt and eased Susannah down. He stretched his back, twisting it this way and that with his hands on his hips.

“That it for the night?” Eddie asked.

Roland shook his head. “Give Eddie your gun, Susannah.”

She did as he said, looking at him questioningly.

“Come on, Eddie. The place we want is on the other side of those trees. We’ll have a look. We might do a little work, as well.”

“What makes you think-”

“Open your ears.”

Eddie listened and realized he heard machinery. He further realized that he had been hearing it for some time now. “I don’t want to leave Susannah.”

“We’re not going far and she has a good loud voice. Besides, if there’s danger, it’s ahead-we’ll be between it and her.”

Eddie looked down at Susannah.

“Go on-just make sure you’re back soon.” She looked back the way they had come with thoughtful eyes. “I don’t know if there’s ha ants here or not, but it feels like there are.”

“We’ll be back before dark,” Roland promised. He started toward the screen of alders, and after a moment, Eddie followed him.

26

FIFTEEN YARDS INTO THE trees, Eddie realized that they were following a path, one the bear had probably made for itself over the years. The alders bent above them in a tunnel. The sounds were louder now, and he began to sort them out. One was a low, deep, humming noise. He could feel it in his feet-a faint vibration, as if some large piece of machinery was running in the earth. Above it, closer and more urgent, were crisscrossing sounds like bright scratches-squeals, squeaks, chitterings.

Roland placed his mouth against Eddie’s ear and said, “I think there’s little danger if we’re quiet.”

They moved on another five yards and then Roland stopped again. He drew his gun and used the barrel to brush aside a branch which hung heavy with sunset-tinted leaves. Eddie looked through this small opening and into the clearing where the bear had lived for so long-the base of operations from which he had set forth on his many expeditions of pillage and terror.

There was no undergrowth here; the ground had been beaten bald long since. A stream emerged from the base of a rock wall about fifty feet high and ran through the arrowhead-shaped clearing. On their side of the stream, backed up against the wall, was a metal box about nine feet high. Its roof was curved, and it reminded Eddie of a subway entrance. The front was painted in diagonal yellow and black stripes. The earth which floored the clearing was not black, like the topsoil in the forest, but a strange powdery gray. It was littered with bones, and after a moment Eddie realized that what he had taken for gray soil was more bones, bones so old they were crumbling back to dust.

Things were moving in the dirt-the things making the squealing, chittering noises. Four… no, five of them. Small metal devices, the largest about the size of a Collie pup. They were robots, Eddie realized, or something like robots. They were similar to each other and to the bear they had undoubtedly served in one way only-atop each of them, a tiny radar-dish turned rapidly.

More thinking caps, Eddie thought. My God, what kind of world is this, anyway?

The largest of these devices looked a little like the Tonka tractor Eddie had gotten for his sixth or seventh birthday; its treads churned up tiny gray clouds of bone-dust as it rolled along. Another looked like a stainless steel rat. A third appeared to be a snake constructed of jointed steel segments-it writhed and humped its way along. They formed a rough circle on the far side of the stream, going around and around on a deep course they had carved in the ground. Looking at them made Eddie think of cartoons he had seen in the stacks of old Saturday Evening Post magazines his mother had for some reason saved and stored in the front hall of their apartment. In the cartoons, worried, cigarette-smoking men paced ruts in the carpet while they waited for their wives to give birth.

As his eyes grew used to the simple geography of the clearing, Eddie saw that there were a great many more than five of these assorted freaks. There were at least a dozen others that he could see and probably more hidden behind the bony remains of the bear’s old kills. The difference was that the others weren’t moving. The members of the bear’s mechanical retinue had died, one by one, over the long years until just this little group of five were left… and they did not sound very healthy, with their squeaks and squalls and rusty chitterings. The snake in particular had a hesitant, crippled look as it followed the mechanical rat around and around the circle. Every now and then the device which followed the snake-a steel block that walked on stubby mechanical legs-would catch up with it and give the snake a nudge, as if telling it to hurry the fuck up.

Eddie wondered what their job had been. Surely not protection; the bear had been built to protect itself, and Eddie guessed that if old Shardik had come upon the three of them while still in its prime, it would have chewed them up and spat them out in short order. Perhaps these little robots had been its maintenance crew, or scouts, or messengers. He guessed that they could be dangerous, but only in their own defense… or their master’s. They did not seem warlike.

There was, in fact, something pitiful about them. Most of the crew was now defunct, their master was gone, and Eddie believed they knew it somehow. It was not menace they projected but a strange, inhuman sadness. Old and almost worn out, they paced and rolled and wriggled their anxious way around the worry-track they had dug in this godforsaken clearing, and it almost seemed to Eddie that he could read the confused run of their thoughts; Oh dear, oh dear, what now? What is our purpose, now that He is gone? And who will take care of us, now that He is gone? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…

Eddie felt a tug on the back of his leg and came very close to screaming in fear and surprise. He wheeled, cocking Roland’s gun, and saw Susannah looking up at him with wide eyes. Eddie let out a long breath and dropped the hammer carefully back to its resting position. He knelt, put his hands on Susannah’s shoulders, kissed her cheek, then whispered in her ear: “I came really close to putting a bullet in your silly head-what are you doing here?”

“Wanted to see,” she whispered back, looking not even slightly abashed. Her eyes shifted to Roland as he also hunkered beside her. “Besides, it was spooky back there by myself.”

She had sustained a number of small scratches crawling after them through the brush, but Roland had to admit to himself that she could be as quiet as a ghost when she wanted to be; he hadn’t heard a thing. He took a rag (the last remnant of his old shirt) from his back pocket and wiped the little trickles of blood from her arms. He examined his work for a moment and then dabbed at a small nick on her forehead as well. “Have your look, then,” he said. His voice was hardly more than the movement of his lips. “I guess you earned it.”

He used one hand to open a sightline at her level in the hock and greenberry bushes, then waited while she stared raptly into the clearing. At last she pulled back and Roland allowed the bushes to close again.

“I feel sorry for them,” she whispered. “Isn’t that crazy?”

“Not at all,” Roland whispered back. “They are creatures of great sadness, I think, in their own strange way. Eddie is going to put them out of their misery.”

Eddie began to shake his head at once.

“Yes, you are… unless you want to hunker here in what you call ’the toolies’ all night. Go for the hats. The little twirling things.”

“What if I miss?” Eddie whispered at him furiously.

Roland shrugged.

Eddie stood up and reluctantly cocked the gunslinger’s revolver again. He looked through the bushes at the circling servomechanisms, going around and around in their lonely, useless orbit. It’ll be like shooting puppies, he thought glumly. Then he saw one of them-it was the thing that looked like a walking box-extrude an ugly-looking pincer device from its middle and clamp it for a moment on the snake. The snake made a surprised buzzing sound and leaped ahead. The walking box withdrew its pincer.

Well… maybe not exactly like shooting puppies, Eddie decided. He glanced at Roland again. Roland looked back expressionlessly, arms folded across his chest.

You pick some goddam strange times to keep school, buddy.

Eddie thought of Susannah, first shooting the bear in the ass, then blowing its sensor device to smithereens as it bore down on her and Roland, and felt a little ashamed of himself. And there was more: part of him wanted to go for it, just as part of him had wanted to go up against Balazar and his crew of plug-uglies in The Leaning Tower. The compulsion was probably sick, but that didn’t change its basic attraction: Let’s see who walks away.. let’s just see.

Yeah, that was pretty sick, all right.

Pretend it’s just a shooting gallery, and you want to win your honey a stuffed dog, he thought. Or a stuffed bear. He drew a bead on the walking box and then looked around impatiently when Roland touched his shoulder.

“Say your lesson, Eddie. And be true.”

Eddie hissed impatiently through his teeth, angry at the distraction, but Roland’s eyes didn’t flinch and so he drew a deep breath and tried to clear everything from his mind: the squeaks and squalls of equipment that had been running too long, the aches and pains in his body, the knowledge that Susannah was here, propped up on the heels of her hands, watching, the further knowledge that she was closest to the ground, and if he missed one of the gadgets out there, she would be the handiest target if it decided to retaliate.

“I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.”That was a joke, he thought; he wouldn’t know his old man if he passed him on the street. But he could feel the words doing their work, clearing his mind and settling his nerves. He didn’t know if he was the stuff of which gunslingers were made-the idea seemed fabulously unlikely to him, even though he knew he had managed to hold up his end pretty well during the shootout at Balazar’s nightclub-but he did know that part of him liked the coldness that fell over him when he spoke the words of the old, old catechism the gunslinger had taught them; the coldness and the way things seemed to stand forth with their own breathless clarity. There was another part of him which understood that this was just another deadly drug, not much different from the heroin which had killed Henry and almost killed him, but that did not alter the thin, tight pleasure of the moment. It drummed in him like taut cables vibrating in a high wind.

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.”

“I aim with my eye.”

“I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.”Then, without knowing he meant to do it, he stepped out of the trees and spoke to the trundling robots on the far side of the clearing:

“I kill with my heart.’””They stopped their endless circling. One of them let out a high buzz that might have been alarm or a warning. The radar-dishes, each no bigger than half a Hershey bar, turned toward the sound of his voice.

Eddie begun to fire.

The sensors exploded like day pigeons, one after the other. Pity was gone from Eddie’s heart; there was only that coldness, and the knowledge that he would not stop, could not stop, until the job was done.

Thunder filled the twilit clearing and bounced back from the splintery rock wall at its wide end. The steel snake did two cartwheels and lay twitching in the dust. The biggest mechanism-the one that had reminded Eddie of his childhood Tonka tractor-tried to flee. Eddie blew its radar-dish to kingdom come as it made a herky-jerky run at the side of the rut. It fell on its squarish nose with thin blue flames squirting out of the steel sockets which held its glass eyes.

The only sensor he missed was the one on the stainless steel rat; that shot caromed off its metal back with a high mosquito whine. It surged out of the rut, made a half-circle around the box-shaped thing which had been following the snake, and charged across the clearing at surprising speed. It was making an angry clittering sound, and as it closed the distance, Eddie could see it had a mouth lined with long, sharp points. They did not look like teeth; they looked like sewing-machine needles, blurring up and down. No, he guessed these things were really not much like puppies, after all.

“Take it, Roland!” he shouted desperately, but when he snatched a quick look around he saw that Roland was still standing with his arms crossed on his chest, his expression serene and distant. He might have been thinking of chess problems or old love-letters.

The dish on the rat’s back suddenly locked down. It changed direction slightly and buzzed straight toward Susannah Dean.

One bullet left, Eddie thought. If I miss, it’ll take her face off.

Instead of shooting, he stepped forward and kicked the rat as hard as he could. He had replaced his shoes with a pair of deerskin moccasins, and he felt the jolt all the way up to his knee. The rat gave a rusty, ratcheting squeal, tumbled over and over in the dirt, and came to rest on its back. Eddie could see what looked like a dozen stubby mechanical legs pistoning up and down. Each was tipped with a sharp steel claw. These claws twirled around and around on gimbals the size of pencil-erasers.

A steel rod poked out of the robot’s midsection and flipped the gadget upright again. Eddie brought Roland’s revolver down, ignoring a momentary impulse to steady it with his free hand. That might be the way cops in his own world were taught to shoot, but it wasn’t the way it was done here. When you forget the gun is there, when it feels like you’re shooting with your finger, Roland had told them, then you’ll be somewhere near home.

Eddie pulled the trigger. The tiny radar-dish, which had begun to turn again in an effort to find the enemies, disappeared in a blue Hash. The rat made a choked noise-Chop!-and fell dead on its side.

Eddie turned with his heart jackhammering in his chest. He couldn’t remember being this furious since he realized that Roland meant to keep him in his world until his goddamned Tower was won or lost… probably until they were all worm-chow, in other words.

He levelled the empty gun at Roland’s heart and spoke in a thick voice he hardly recognized as his own. “If there was a round left in this, you could stop worrying about your fucking Tower right now.”

“Stop it, Eddie!” Susannah said sharply.

He looked at her. “It was going for you, Susannah, and it meant to turn you into ground chuck.”

“But it didn’t get me. You got it, Eddie. You got it.”

“No thanks to him.” Eddie made as if to re-holster the gun and then realized, to his further disgust, that he had nothing to put it in. Susannah was wearing the holster. “Him and his lessons. Him and his goddam lessons.” He turned to Roland. “I tell you, for two cents-”

Roland’s mildly interested expression suddenly changed. His eyes shifted to a point over Eddie’s left shoulder. “DOWN!” he shouted.

Eddie didn’t ask questions. His rage and confusion were wiped from his mind immediately. He dropped, and as he did, he saw the gunslinger’s left hand blur down to his side. My God, he thought, still falling, he CAN’T be that fast, no one can be that fast, I’m not bad but Susannah makes me look slow and he makes Susannah look like a turtle trying to walk uphill on a piece of glass-

Something passed just over his head, something that squealed at him in mechanical rage and pulled out a tuft of his hair. Then the gunslinger was shooting from the hip, three fast shots like thunder-cracks, and the squealing stopped. A creature which looked to Eddie like a large mechanical bat thudded to earth between the place where Eddie now lay and the one where Susannah knelt beside Roland. One of its jointed, rust-speckled wings thumped the ground once, weakly, as if angry at the missed chance, and then became still.

Roland crossed to Eddie, walking easy in his old sprung boots. He extended a hand. Eddie took it and let Roland help him to his feet. The wind had been knocked out of him and he found he couldn’t talk. Probably just as well… seems like every time I open my mouth I stick my goddam foot into it.

“Eddie! You all right?” Susannah was crossing the clearing to where he stood with his head bent and his hands planted on his upper thighs, trying to breathe.

“Yeah.” The word came out in a croak. He straightened up with an effort. “Just got a little haircut.”

“It was in a tree,” Roland said mildly. “1 didn’t see it myself, at first. The light gets tricky this time of day. He paused and then went on in that same mild voice: “She was never in any danger, Eddie.”

Eddie nodded his head. Roland, he now realized, could almost have eaten a hamburger and drunk a milkshake before beginning his draw. He was that fast.

“All right. Let’s just say I disapprove of your teaching techniques, okay? I’m not going to apologize, though, so if you’re waiting for one, you can stop now.”

Roland bent, picked Susannah up, and began to brush her off. He did this with a kind of impartial affection, like a mother brushing off her toddler after she has taken one of her necessary tumbles in the dust of the back yard. “Your apology is not expected or necessary,” he said. “Susannah and I had a conversation similar to this one two days ago. Didn’t we, Susannah?”

She nodded. “Roland’s of the opinion that apprentice gunslingers who won’t bite the hand that feeds them from time to time need a good lack in the slats.”

Eddie looked around at the wreckage and slowly began to beat the bone-dust out of his pants and shirt. “What if I told you I don’t want to be a gunslinger, Roland old buddy?”

“I’d say that what you want doesn’t much matter.” Roland was looking at the metal kiosk which stood against the rock wall, and seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. Eddie had seen this before. When the conversation turned to questions of should-be, could-be, or oughtta-be, Roland almost always lost interest.

“Ka?” Eddie asked, with a trace of his old bitterness.

“That’s right. Ka.” Roland walked over to the kiosk and passed a hand along the yellow and black stripes which ran down its front. “We have found one of the twelve portals which ring the edge of the world… one of the six paths to the Dark Tower.

“And that is also ka.”

27

EDDIE WENT BACK FOR Susannah’s wheelchair. No one had to ask him to do this; he wanted some time alone, to get himself back under control. Now that the shooting was over, every muscle in his body seemed to have picked up its own little thrumming tremor. He did not want either of them to see him this way-not because they might misread it as fear, but because one or both might know it for what it really was: excitement overload. He had liked it. Even when you added in the bat which had almost scalped him, he had liked it.

That’s bullshit, buddy. And you know it.

The trouble was, he didn’t know it. He had come face to face with something Susannah had found out for herself after shooting the bear: he could talk about how he didn’t want to be a gunslinger, how he didn’t want to be tramping around this crazy world where the three of them seemed to be the only human life, that what he really wanted more than anything else was to be standing on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street, popping his fingers, munching a chili-dog, and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival blast out of his Walkman earphones as he watched the girls go by, those ultimately sexy New York girls with their pouty go-to-hell mouths and their long legs in short skirts. He could talk about those things until he was blue in the face, but his heart knew other things. It knew that he had enjoyed blowing the electronic menagerie back to glory, at least while the game was on and Roland’s gun was his own private hand-held thunderstorm. He had enjoyed kicking the robot rat, even though it had hurt his foot and even though he had been scared shitless. In some weird way, that part-the being scared part- actually seemed to add to the enjoyment.

All that was bad enough, but his heart knew something even worse: that if a door leading back to New York appeared in front of him right now, he might not walk through it. Not, at least, until he had seen the Dark Tower for himself. He was beginning to believe that Roland’s illness was a communicable disease.

As he wrestled Susannah’s chair through the tangle of junk-alders, cursing the branches that whipped at his face and tried to poke his eyes out, Eddie found himself able to admit at least some of these things, and the admission cooled his blood a little. / want to see if it looks the way it did in my dream, he thought. To see something like that… that would be really fantastic.

And another voice spoke up inside. I’ll bet his other friends-the ones with the names that sound like they came straight from the Round Table in King Arthur’s court-I’ll bet they felt the same way, Eddie. And they’re all dead. Every one of them.

He recognized that voice, like it or not. It belonged to Henry, and that made it a hard voice not to hear.

28

ROLAND, WITH SUSANNAH BALANCED on his right hip, was standing in front of the metal box that looked like a subway entrance closed for the night. Eddie left the wheelchair at the edge of the clearing and walked over. As he did, the steady humming noise and the vibration under his feet became louder. The machinery making the noise, he realized, was either inside the box or under it. It seemed that he heard it not with his ears but somewhere deep inside his head, and in the hollows of his gut.

“So this is one of the twelve portals. Where does it go, Roland? Disney World?”

Roland shook his head. “I don’t know where it goes. Maybe nowhere… or everywhere. There’s a lot about my world I don’t know-surely you both have realized that. And there are things I used to know which have changed.”

“Because the world has moved on?”

“Yes.” Roland glanced at him. “Here, that is not a figure of speech. The world really is moving on, and it goes ever faster. At the same time, things are wearing out… falling apart…” He kicked die mechanical corpse of the walking box to illustrate his point.

Eddie thought of the rough diagram of the portals which Roland had drawn in the dirt. “Is this the edge of the world?” he asked, almost timidly. “I mean, it doesn’t look much different than anyplace else.” He laughed a little. “If there’s a drop-off, I don’t see it.”

Roland shook his head. “It’s not that kind of edge. It’s the place where one of the Beams starts. Or so I was taught.”

“Beams?” Susannah asked. “What Beams?”

“The Great Old Ones didn’t make the world, but they did re-make it. Some tale-tellers say the Beams saved it; others say they are the seeds of the world’s destruction. The Great Old Ones created the Beams. They are lines of some sort… lines which bind… and hold…”

“Are you talking about magnetism?” Susannah asked cautiously.

His whole face lit up, transforming its harsh planes and furrows into something new and amazing, and for a moment Eddie knew how Roland would look if he actually did reach his Tower.

“Yes! Not just magnetism, but that is a part of it… and gravity… and the proper alignment of space, size, and dimension. The Beams are the forces which bind these things together.”

“Welcome to physics in the nuthouse,” Eddie said in a low voice.

Susannah ignored this. “And the Dark Tower? Is it some kind of generator? A central power-source for these Beams?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you do know that this is point A,” Eddie said. “If we walked long enough in a straight line, we’d come to another portal-call it point C-on the other edge of the world. But before we did, we’d come to point B. The center-point. The Dark Tower.”

The gunslinger nodded.

“How long a trip is it? Do you know?”

“No. But I know it’s very far, and that the distance grows with every day that passes.”

Eddie had bent to examine the walking box. Now he straightened up and stared at Roland. “That can’t be.” He sounded like a man trying to explain to a small child that there really isn’t a boogeyman living in his closet, that there can’t be because there isn’t any such thing as the boogeyman, not really. “Worlds don’t grow, Roland.”

“Don’t they? When I was a boy, Eddie, there were maps. I remember one in particular. It was called The Greater Kingdoms of the Western Earth. It showed my land, which was called by the name Gilead. It showed the Downland Baronies, which were overrun by riot and civil war in the year after I won my guns, and the hills, and the desert, and the mountains, and the Western Sea. It was a long distance from Gilead to the Western Sea-a thousand miles or more-but it had taken me over twenty years to cross that distance.”

“That’s impossible,” Susannah said quickly, fearfully. “Even if you walked the whole distance it couldn’t take twenty years.”

“Well, you have to allow for stops to write postcards and drink beer,” Eddie said, but they both ignored him.

“I didn’t walk but rode most of the distance on horseback,” Roland said. “I was-slowed up, shall we say?-every now and then, but for most of that time I was moving. Moving away from John Farson, who led the revolt which toppled the world I grew up in and who wanted my head on a pole in his courtyard-he had good reason to want that, I suppose, since I and my compatriots were responsible for the deaths of a great many of his followers-and because I stole something he held very dear.”

“What, Roland?” Eddie asked curiously.

Roland shook his head. “That’s a story for another day… or maybe never. For now, think not of that but of this: I’ve come many thousands of miles. Because the world is growing.”

“A thing like that just can’t happen,” Eddie reiterated, but he was badly shaken, all the same. “There’d be earthquakes… floods… tidal waves… I don’t know what all…”

“Look!” Roland said furiously. “Just look around you! What do you see? A world that is slowing down like a child’s top even as it speeds up and moves on in some other way none of us understand. Look at your kills, Eddie! Look at your kills, for your father’s sake!”

He took two strides toward the stream, picked up the steel snake, examined it briefly, and tossed it to Eddie, who caught it with his left hand. The snake broke in two pieces as he did so.

“You see? It’s exhausted. All the creatures we found here were exhausted. If we hadn’t come, they would have died before long, anyway. Just as the hear would have died.”

“The bear had some sort of disease,” Susannah said.

The gunslinger nodded. “Parasites which attacked the natural parts of its body. But why did they never attack it before?”

Susannah did not reply.

Eddie was examining the snake. Unlike the bear, it appeared to be a totally artificial construction, a thing of metal, circuits, and yards (or maybe miles) of gossamer-thin wire. Yet he could see flecks of rust, not just on the surface of the half-snake he still held, but in its guts as well. And there was a patch of wetness where either oil had leaked out or water had seeped in. This moisture had rotted away some of the wires, and a greenish stuff that looked like moss had grown over several of the thumbnail-sized circuit boards.

Eddie turned the snake over. A steel plate proclaimed it to be the work of North Central Positronics, Ltd. There was a serial number, but no name. Probably too unimportant to name, he thought. Just a sophisticated mechanical Roto-Rooter designed to give old Br’er Bear an enema every once In a while, keep him regular, or something equally disgusting.

He dropped the snake and wiped his hands on his pants.

Roland had picked up the tractor-gadget. He yanked at one of the treads. It came off easily, showering a cloud of rust down between his boots. He tossed it aside.

“Everything in the world is either coming to rest or falling to pieces,” he said flatly. “At the same time, the forces which interlock and give the world its coherence-in time and size as well as in space-are weakening. We knew that even as children, but we had no idea what the time of the end would be like. How could we? Yet now I am living in those times, and I don’t believe they affect my world alone. They affect yours, Eddie and Susannah; they may affect a billion others. The Beams are breaking down. I don’t know if that’s a cause or only another symptom, but I know it’s true. Come! Draw close! Listen!”

As Eddie approached the metal box with its alternating diagonal slashes of yellow and black, a strong and unpleasant memory seized him-for the first time in years he found himself thinking of a crumbling Victorian wreck in Dutch Hill, about a mile away from the neighborhood he and Henry had grown up. This wreck, which was known as The Mansion to the neighborhood kids, occupied a plot of weedy, untended lawn on Rhinehold Street. Eddie guessed that practically all the kids in the borough had heard spooky stories about The Mansion. The house stood slumped beneath its steep roofs, seeming to glare at passersby from the deep shadows thrown by its eaves. The windows were gone, of course-kids can throw rocks through windows without getting too close to a place-hut it had not been spray-painted, and it had not become a make-out spot or a shooting gallery. Oddest of all was the simple fact of its continued existence: no one had set it on fire to collect the insurance or just to see it bum. The kids said it was haunted, of course, and as Eddie stood on the sidewalk with Henry one day, looking at it (they had made the pilgrimage specifically to see this object of fabulous rumor, although Henry had told their mother they were only going for Hoodsie Rockets at Dahlberg’s with some of his friends), it had seemed that it really might be haunted. Hadn’t he felt some strong and unfriendly force seeping from that old Victorian’s shadowy windows, windows that seemed to look at him with the fixed stare of a dangerous lunatic? Hadn’t he felt some subtle wind stirring the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck? Hadn’t he had the clear intuition that if he stepped inside that place, the door would slam and lock behind him and the walls would begin to close in, grinding the bones of dead mice to powder, wanting to crush his bones the same way?

Haunting. Haunted.

He felt that same old sense of mystery and danger now, as he approached the metal box. Gooseflesh began to ripple up his legs and down his arms; the hair on the back of his neck bushed out and became rough, overlapping hackles. He felt that same subtle wind blowing past him, although the leaves on the trees which ringed the clearing were perfectly still.

Yet he walked toward the door anyway (for that was what it was, of course, another door, although this one was locked and always would be against the likes of him), not stopping until his ear was pressed against it.

It was as if he had dropped a tab of really strong acid half an hour ago and it was just beginning to come on heavy. Strange colors flowed across the darkness behind his eyeballs. He seemed to hear voices murmuring up to him from long hallways like stone throats, halls which were lit with guttering electric torches. Once these flambeaux of the modern age had thrown a bright glare across everything, but now they were only sullen cores of blue light. He sensed emptiness… desertion… desolation… death.

The machinery rumbled on and on, but wasn’t there a rough undertone to the sound? A land of desperate thudding beneath the hum, like the arrhythmia of a diseased heart? A feeling that the machinery producing this sound, although far more sophisticated even than that within the bear had been, was somehow falling out of tune with itself?

“All is silent in the halls of the dead,” Eddie heard himself whisper in a falling, fainting voice. “All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the rooms of ruin.

These are the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits tall quiet, one by one.”

Roland pulled him roughly back, and Eddie looked at him with dazed eyes.

“That’s enough,” Roland said.

“Whatever they put in there isn’t doing so well, is it?” Eddie heard himself ask. His trembling voice seemed to come from far away. He could still feel the power coming out of that box. It called to him.

“No. Nothing in my world is doing so well these days.”

“If you boys are planning to camp here for the night, you’ll have to do without the pleasure of my company,” Susannah said. Her face was a white blur in the ashy aftermath of twilight. “I’m going over yonder. I don’t like the way that thing makes me feel.”

“We’ll all camp over yonder,” Roland said. “Let’s go.”

“What a good idea,” Eddie said. As they moved away from the box, the sound of the machinery began to dim. Eddie felt its hold on him weakening, although it still called to him, invited him to explore the half-lit hallways, the standing stairways, the rooms of ruin where the spiders spun and the control panels were going dark, one by one.

29

IN His DREAM THAT night, Eddie again went walking down Second Avenue toward Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. He passed a record store and the Rolling Stones boomed from the speakers:

“I see a red door and I want to paint it black,

No colours anymore, I want them to turn black,

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes,

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes…”

He walked on, passing a store called Reflections of You between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth. He saw himself in one of the mirrors hanging in the display window. He thought he looked better than he had in years-hair a little too long, but otherwise tanned and fit. The clothes, though… uh-uh, man. Square-bear shit all the way. Blue blazer, white shirt, dark red tie, gray dress pants… he had never owned a yuppie-from-hell outfit like that in his life.

Someone was shaking him.

Eddie tried to burrow deeper into the dream. He didn’t want to wake up now. Not before he got to the deli and used his key to go through the door and into the field of roses. He wanted to see it all again-the endless blanket of red, the overarching blue sky where those great white cloud-ships sailed, and the Dark Tower. He was afraid of the darkness which lived within that eldritch column, waiting to eat anyone who got too close, but he wanted to see it again just the same. Needed to see it.

The hand, however, would not stop shaking. The dream began to darken, and the smells of car exhaust along Second Avenue became the smell of woodsmoke-thin now, because the fire was almost out.

It was Susannah. She looked scared. Eddie sat up and put an arm around her. They had camped on the far side of the alder grove, within earshot of the stream babbling through the bone-littered clearing. On the other side of the glowing embers which had been their campfire, Roland lay asleep. His sleep was not easy. He had cast aside his single blanket and lay with his knees drawn up almost to his chest. With his boots off, his feet looked white and narrow and defenseless. The great toe of the right foot was gone, victim of the lobster-thing which had also snatched away part of his right hand.

He was moaning some slurred phrase over and over again. After a few repetitions, Eddie realized it was the phrase he had spoken before keeling over in the clearing where Susannah had shot the bear: Go, then-there are other worlds than these. He would fall silent for a moment, then call out the boy’s name: “Jake! Where are you? Jake!”

The desolation and despair in his voice filled Eddie with horror. His arms stole around Susannah and he pulled her tight against him. He could feel her shivering, although the night was warm.

The gunslinger rolled over. Starlight fell into his open eyes.

“Jake, where are you?” he called to the night. “Come back!”

“Oh Jesus-he’s off again. What should we do, Suze?”

“I don’t know. I just knew I couldn’t listen to it anymore by myself. He sounds so far away. So far away from everything.”

“Go, then,” the gunslinger murmured, rolling back onto his side and drawing his knees up once more, “there are other worlds than these.” He was silent for a moment. Then his chest hitched and he loosed the boy’s name in a long, bloodcurdling cry. In the woods behind them, some large bird flew away in a dry whirr of wings toward some less exciting part of the world.

“Do you have any ideas?” Susannah asked. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears. “Maybe we should wake him up?”

“I don’t know.” Eddie saw the gunslinger’s revolver, the one he wore on his left hip. It had been placed, in its holster, on a neatly folded square of hide within easy reach of the place where Roland lay. “I don’t think I dare,” he added at last.

“It’s driving him crazy.”

Eddie nodded.

“What do we do about it? Eddie, what do we do?”

Eddie didn’t know. An antibiotic had stopped the infection caused by the bite of the lobster-thing; now Roland was burning with infection again, but Eddie didn’t think there was an antibiotic in the world that would cure what was wrong with him this time.

“I don’t know. Lie down with me, Suze.”

Eddie threw a hide over both of them, and after a while her trembling quieted.

“If he goes insane, he may hurt us,” she said.

“Don’t I know it.” This unpleasant idea had occurred to him in terms of the bear-its red, hate-filled eyes (and had there not been bewilderment as well, lurking deep in those red depths?) and its deadly slashing claws. Eddie’s eyes moved to the revolver, lying so close to the gunslinger’s good left hand, and he remembered again how fast Roland had been when he’d seen the mechanical bat swooping down toward them. So fast his hand had seemed to disappear. If the gunslinger went mad, and if he and Susannah became the focus of that madness, they would have no chance. No chance at all.

He pressed his face into the warm hollow of Susannah’s neck and closed his eyes.

Not long after, Roland ceased his babbling. Eddie raised his head and looked over. The gunslinger appeared to be sleeping naturally again. Eddie looked at Susannah and saw that she had also gone to sleep. He lay down beside her, gently kissed the swell of her breast, and closed his own eyes.

Not you, buddy; you’re gonna be awake a long, long time.

But they had been on the move for two days and Eddie was bone-tired. He drifted off… drifted down.

Back to the dream, he thought as he went. I want to go back to Second Avenue… back to Tom and Gerry’s. That’s what I want.

The dream did not return that night, however.

30

THEY ATE A QUICK breakfast as the sun came up, repacked and redistributed the gear, and then returned to the wedge-shaped clearing. It didn’t look quite so spooky in the clear light of morning, but all three of them were still at pains to keep well away from the metal box with its warning slashes of black and yellow. If Roland had any recollection of the bad dreams which had haunted him in the night, he gave no sign. He had gone about the morning chores as he always did, in thoughtful, stolid silence.

“How do you plan to keep to a straight-line course from here?” Susannah asked the gunslinger.

“If the legends are right, that should be no problem. Do you remember when you asked about magnetism?”

She nodded.

He rummaged deep into his purse and at last emerged with a small square of old, supple leather. Threaded through it was a long silver needle.

“A compass!” Eddie said. “You really are an Eagle Scout!”

Roland shook his head. “Not a compass. I know what they are, of course, but these days I keep my directions by the sun and stars, and even now they serve me quite well.”

“Even now?” Susannah asked, a trifle uneasily.

He nodded. “The directions of the world are also in drift.”

“Christ,” Eddie said. He tried to imagine a world where true north was slipping slyly off to the east or west and gave up almost at once. It made him feel a little ill; the way looking down from the top of a high building had always made him feel a little ill.

“This is just a needle, but it is steel and it should serve our purpose as well as a compass. The Beam is our course now, and the needle will show it.” He rummaged in his purse again and came out with a poorly made pottery cup. A crack ran down one side. Roland had mended this artifact, which he had found at the old campsite, with pine-gum. Now he went to the stream, dipped the cup into it, and brought it back to where Susannah sat in her wheelchair. He put the cup down carefully on the wheelchair’s arm, and when the surface of the water inside was calm, he dropped the needle in. It sank to the bottom and rested there.

“Wow!” Eddie said. “Great! I’d fall at your feet in wonder, Roland, but I don’t want to spoil the crease in my pants.”

“I’m not finished. Hold the cup steady, Susannah.”

She did, and Roland pushed her slowly across the clearing. When she was about twelve feet in front of the door, he turned the chair carefully so she was facing away from it.

“Eddie!” she cried. “Look at this!”

He bent over the pottery cup, marginally aware that water was already oozing through Roland’s makeshift seal. The needle was rising slowly to the surface. It reached it and bobbed there as serenely as a cork would have done. Its direction lay in a straight line from the portal behind them and into the old, tangled forest ahead. “Holy shit-a floating needle. Now I really have seen everything.”

“Hold the cup, Susannah.”

She held it steady as Roland pushed the wheelchair further into the clearing, at right angles to the box. The needle lost its steady point, bobbed randomly for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the cup again. When Roland pulled the chair backward to its former spot, it rose once more and pointed the way.

“If we had iron filings and a sheet of paper,” the gunslinger said, “we could scatter the filings on the paper’s surface and watch them draw together into a line which would point that same course.”

“Will that happen even when we leave the Portal?” Eddie asked.

Roland nodded. “Nor is that all. We can actually see the Beam.”

Susannah looked over her shoulder. Her elbow bumped the cup a little as she did. The needle swung aimlessly as the water inside sloshed… and then settled firmly back in its original direction.

“Not that way,” Roland said. “Look down, both of you-Eddie at your feet, Susannah into your lap.”

They did as he asked.

“When I tell you to look up, look straight ahead, in the direction the needle points. Don’t look at any one thing; let your eye see whatever it will. Now-look up!”

They did. For a moment Eddie saw nothing but the woods. He tried to make his eyes relax… and suddenly it was there, the way the shape of the slingshot had been there, inside the knob of wood, and he knew why Roland had told them not to look at any one thing. The effect of the Beam was everywhere along its course, but it was subtle. The needles of the pines and spruces pointed that way. The greenberry bushes grew slightly slanted, and the slant lay in the direction of the Beam. Not all the trees the bear had pushed down to clear its sightlines had fallen along that camouflaged path-which ran southeast, if Eddie had his directions right-but most had, as if the force coming out of the box had pushed them that way as they tottered. The clearest evidence was in the way the shadows lay on the ground. With the sun coming up in the east they all pointed west, of course, but as Eddie looked southeast, he saw a rough herringbone pattern that existed only along the line which the needle in the cup had pointed out.

“I might see something” Susannah said doubtfully, “but-”

“Look at the shadows! The shadows, Suze!”

Eddie saw her eyes widen as it all fell into place for her. “My God! It’s there! Right there! It’s like when someone has a natural part in their hair!”

Now that Eddie had seen it, he could not unsee it; a dim aisle driving through the untidy tangle which surrounded the clearing, a straight-edge course that was the way of the Beam. He was suddenly aware of how huge the force flowing around him (and probably right through him, like X-rays) must be, and had to control an urge to step away, either to the right or left. “Say, Roland, this won’t make me sterile, will it?”

Roland shrugged, smiling faintly.

“It’s like a riverbed,” Susannah marvelled. “A riverbed so overgrown you can barely see it… but it’s still there. The pattern of shadows will never change as long as we stay inside the path of the Beam, will it?”

“No,” Roland said. “They’ll change direction as the sun moves across the sky, of course, but we’ll always be able to see the course of the Beam. You must remember that it has been flowing along this same path for thousands-perhaps tens of thousands-of years. Look up, you two, into the sky!”

They did, and saw that the thin cirrus clouds had also picked up that herringbone pattern along the course of the Beam… and those clouds within the alley of its power were flowing faster than those to either side. They were being pushed southeast. Being pushed in the direction of the Dark Tower.

“You see? Even the clouds must obey.”

A small flock of birds coursed toward them. As they reached the path of the Beam, they were all deflected toward the southeast for a moment. Although Eddie clearly saw this happen, his eyes could hardly credit it. When the birds had crossed the narrow corridor of the Beam’s influence, they resumed their former course.

“Well,” Eddie said, “I suppose we ought to get going. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and all that shit.”

“Wait a minute.” Susannah was looking at Roland. “It isn’t just a thousand miles, is it? Not anymore. How far are we talking about, Roland? Five thousand miles? Ten?”

“I can’t say. It will be very far.”

“Well, how in the hell we ever goan get there, with you two pushing me in this goddam wheelchair? We’ll be lucky to make three miles a day through yonder Drawers, and you know it.”

“The way has been opened,” Roland said patiently, “and that’s enough for now. The time may come, Susannah Dean, when we travel faster than you would like.”

“Oh yeah?” She looked at him truculently, and both men could see Detta Walker dancing a dangerous hornpipe in her eyes again. “You got a race-car lined up? If you do, it might be nice if we had a damn road to run it on!”

“The land and the way we travel on it will change. It always does.”

Susannah flapped a hand at the gunslinger; go on with you, it said. “You sound like my old mamma, sayin God will provide.”

“Hasn’t He?” Roland asked gravely.

She looked at him for a moment in silent surprise, then threw her head back and laughed at the sky. “Wt-11, I guess that depends on how you look at it. All I can say is that if this is providin, Roland, I’d hate to see what’d happen if He decided to let us go hungry.”

“Come on, let’s do it,” Eddie said. “I want to get out of this place. I don’t like it.” And that was true, but that wasn’t all. He also felt a deep eagerness to set his feet upon that concealed path, that highway in hiding. Every step was a step closer to the field of roses and the Tower which dominated it. He realized-not without some wonder-that he meant to see that Tower… or die trying.

Congratulations, Roland, he thought. You’ve done it. I’m one of the converted. Someone say hallelujah.

“There’s one other thing before we go.” Roland bent and untied the rawhide lace around his left thigh. Then he slowly began to unbuckle his gunbelt.

“What’s this jive?” Eddie asked.

Roland pulled the gunbelt free and held it out to him. “You know why I’m doing this,” he said calmly.

“Put it back on, man!” Eddie felt a terrible stew of conflicting emotions roiling inside him; could feel his fingers trembling even inside his clenched fists. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Losing my mind an inch at a time. Until the wound inside me closes-if it ever does-I am not fit to wear this. And you know it.”

“Take it, Eddie,” Susannah said quietly.

“If you hadn’t been wearing this goddamn thing last night, when that bat came at me, I’d be gone from the nose up this morning!”

The gunslinger replied by continuing to hold his remaining gun out to Eddie. The posture of his body said he was prepared to stand that way all day, if that was what it took.

“All right!” Eddie cried. “Goddammit, all right!”

He snatched the gunbelt from Roland’s hand and buckled it about his own waist in a series of rough gestures. He should have been relieved, he supposed-hadn’t he looked at this gun, lying so close to Roland’s hand in the middle of the night, and thought about what might happen if Roland really did go over the high side? Hadn’t he and Susannah both thought about it? But there was no relief. Only fear and guilt and a strange, aching sadness far too deep for tears.

He looked so strange without his guns.

So wrong.

“Okay? Now that the numb-fuck apprentices have the guns and the master’s unarmed, can we please go? If something big comes out of the bush at us, Roland, you can always throw your knife at it.”

“Oh, that,” he murmured. “I almost forgot.” He took the knife from his purse and held it out, hilt first, to Eddie.

“This is ridiculous!” Eddie shouted.

“Life is ridiculous.”

“Yeah, put it on a postcard and send it to the fucking Reader’s Digest.” Eddie jammed the knife into his belt and then looked defiantly at Roland. “Now can we go?”

“There is one more thing,” Roland said.

“Weeping, creeping Jesus!”

The smile touched Roland’s mouth again. “Just joking,” he said.

Eddie’s mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness.

31

IT TOOK THEM MOST of the morning to clear the zone of destruction with which the great bear had protected itself, but the going was a little easier along the path of the Beam, and once they had put the deadfalls and tangles of underbrush behind them, deep forest took over again and they were able to move at better speed. The brook which had emerged from the rock wall in the clearing ran busily along to their right. It had been joined by several smaller streamlets, and its sound was deeper now. There were more animals here-they heard them moving through the woods, going about their daily round-and twice they saw small groups of deer. One of them, a buck with a noble rack of antlers on its upraised and questioning head, looked to be at least three hundred pounds. The brook bent away from their path as they began to climb again. And, as the afternoon began to slant down toward evening, Eddie saw something.

“Could we stop here? Rest a minute?”

“What is it?” Susannah asked.

“Yes,” Roland said. “We can stop.”

Suddenly Eddie felt Henry’s presence again, like a weight settling on his shoulders. Oh lookit the sissy. Does the sissy see something in the twee? Does the sissy want to carve something? Does he? Ohhhh, ain’t that CUTE?

“We don’t have to stop. I mean, no big deal. I just-”

“-saw something,” Roland finished for him. “Whatever it is, stop running your everlasting mouth and get it.”

“It’s really nothing.” Eddie felt warm blood mount into his face. He tried to look away from the ash tree which had caught his eye.

“But it is. It’s something you need, and that’s a long way from nothing. If you need it, Eddie, we need it. What we don’t need is a man who can’t let go of the useless baggage of his memories.”

The warm blood turned hot. Eddie stood with his flaming face pointed at his moccasins for a moment longer, feeling as if Roland had looked directly into his confused heart with his faded blue bombardier’s eyes.

“Eddie?” Susannah asked curiously. “What is it, dear?”

Her voice gave him the courage he needed. He walked to the slim, straight ash, pulling Roland’s knife from his belt.

“Maybe nothing,” he muttered, and then forced himself to add: “Maybe a lot. If I don’t fuck it up, maybe quite a lot.”

“The ash is a noble tree, and full of power,” Roland remarked from behind him, but Eddie barely heard. Henry’s sneering, hectoring voice was gone; his shame was gone with it. He thought only of the one branch that had caught his eye. It thickened and bulged slightly as it ran into the trunk. It was this oddly shaped thickness that Eddie wanted.

He thought the shape of the key was buried within it-the key he had seen briefly in the fire before the burning remains of the jawbone had changed again and the rose had appeared. Three inverted V’s, the center V both deeper and wider than the other two. And the little s-shape at the end. That was the secret.

A breath of his dream recurred: Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key.

Maybe, he thought. But this time I’ll have to get all of it. I think that this time ninety per cent just won’t do.

Working with great care, he cut the branch from the tree and then trimmed the narrow end. He was left with a fat chunk of ash about nine inches long. It felt heavy and vital in his hand, very much alive and willing enough to give up its secret shape… to a man skillful enough to tease it out, that was.

Was he that man? And did it matter?

Eddie Dean thought the answer to both questions was yes.

The gunslinger’s good left hand closed over Eddie’s right hand. “I think you know a secret.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Can you tell?”

He shook his head. “Better not to, I think. Not yet.”

Roland thought this over, then nodded. “All right. I want to ask you one question, and then we’ll drop the subject. Have you perhaps seen some way into the heart of my… my problem?”

Eddie thought: And that’s as dose as he’ll ever come to showing the desperation that’s eating him alive.

“I don’t know. Right now I can’t tell for sure. But I hope so, man. I really, really do.”

Roland nodded again and released Eddie’s hand. “I thank you. We still have two hours of good daylight-why don’t we make use of them?”

“Fine by me.”

They moved on. Roland pushed Susannah and Eddie walked ahead of them, holding the chunk of wood with the key buried in it. It seemed to throb with its own warmth, secret and powerful.

32

THAT NIGHT, AFTER SUPPER was eaten, Eddie took the gunslinger’s knife from his belt and began to carve. The knife was amazingly sharp, and seemed never to lose its edge. Eddie worked slowly and carefully in the firelight, turning the chunk of ash this way and that in his hands, watching the curls of fine-grained wood rise ahead of his long, sure strokes.

Susannah lay down, laced her hands behind her head, and looked Up at the stars wheeling slowly across the black sky.

At the edge of the campsite, Roland stood beyond the glow of the fire and listened as the voices of madness rose once more in his aching, confused mind.

There was a boy.

There was no boy.

Was.

Wasn’t.

Was-

He closed his eyes, cupped his aching forehead in one cold hand, and wondered how long it would be until he simply snapped like an overwound bowstring.

Oh Jake, he thought. Where are you? Where are you?

And above the three of them, Old Star and Old Mother rose into their appointed places and stared at each other across the starry ruins of their ancient broken marriage.

1

FOR THREE WEEKS JOHN “Jake” Chambers fought bravely against the madness rising inside him. During that time he felt like the last man aboard a foundering ocean liner, working the bilge-pumps for dear life, trying to keep the ship afloat until the storm ended, the skies cleared, and help could arrive… help from somewhere. Help from anywhere. On May 31st, 1977, four days before school ended for the summer, he finally faced up to the fact that no help was going to come. It was time to give up; time to let the storm carry him away.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was his Final Essay in English Comp.

John Chambers, who was Jake to the three or four boys who were almost his friends (if his father had known this little factoid, he undoubtedly would have hit the roof), was finishing his first year at The Piper School. Although he was eleven and in the sixth grade, he was small for his age, and people meeting him for the first time often thought he was much younger. In fact, he had sometimes been mistaken for a girl until a year or so ago, when he had made such a fuss about having his hair cut short that his mother had finally relented and allowed it. With his father, of course, there had been no problem about the haircut. His father had just grinned his hard, stainless steel grin and said, The kid wants to look like a Marine, Laurie. Good for him.

To his father, he was never Jake and rarely John. To his father, he was usually just “the kid.”

The Piper School, his father had explained to him the summer before (the Bicentennial Summer, that had been-all bunting and flags and New York Harbor filled with Tall Ships), was, quite simply, The Best Damned School In The Country For A Boy Your Age. The fact that Jake had been accepted there had nothing to do with money, Elmer Chambers explained… almost insisted. He had been savagely proud of this fact, although, even at ten, Jake had suspected it might not be a true fact, that it might really be a bunch of bullshit his father had turned into a fact so he could casually drop it into the conversation at lunch or over cocktails: My kid? Oh, he’s going to Piper. Best Damned School In The Country For A Boy His Age. Money won’t buy you into that school, you know; for Piper, it’s brains or nothing.

Jake was perfectly aware that in the fierce furnace of Elmer Chambers’s mind, the gross carbon of wish and opinion was often blasted into the hard diamonds which he called facts… or, in more informal circumstances, “factoids.” His favorite phrase, spoken often and with reverence, was the fact is, and he used it every chance he got.

The fact is, money doesn’t get anyone into The Piper School, his father had told him during that Bicentennial Summer, the summer of blue skies and bunting and Tall Ships, a summer which seemed golden in Jake’s memory because he had not yet begun to lose his mind and all he had to worry about was whether or not he could cut the mustard at The Piper School, which sounded like a nest for newly hatched geniuses. The only thing that gets you into a place like Piper is what you’ve got up here. Elmer Chambers had reached over his desk and tapped the center of his son’s forehead with a hard, nicotine-stained finger. Get me, kid?

Jake had nodded. It wasn’t necessary to talk to his father, because his father treated everyone-including his wife-the way he treated his underlings at the TV network where he was in charge of programming and an acknowledged master of The Kill. All you had to do was listen, nod in the right places, and after a while he let you go.

Good, his father said, lighting one of the eighty Camel cigarettes he smoked each and every day. We understand each other, then. You’re going to have to work your buttsky off, but you can cut it. They never would have sent us this if you couldn’t. He picked up the letter of acceptance from The Piper School and rattled it. There was a kind of savage triumph in the gesture, as if the letter was an animal he had killed in the jungle, an animal he would now skin and eat. So work hard. Make your grades. Make your mother and me proud of you. If you end the year with an A average in your courses. there’s a trip to Disney World in it for you. That’s something to shoot for, right, kiddo?

Jake had made his grades-A’s in everything (until the last three weeks, that was). He had, presumably, made his mother and father proud of him, although they were around so little that it was hard to tell. Usually there was nobody around when he came home from school except for Greta Shaw-the housekeeper-and so he ended up showing his A papers to her. After that, they migrated to a dark corner of his room. Sometimes Jake looked through them and wondered if they meant anything. He wanted them to, but he had serious doubts.

Jake didn’t think he would be going to Disney World this summer, A average or no A average.

He thought the nuthouse was a much better possibility.

As he walked in through the double doors of The Piper School at 8:45 on the morning of May 31st, a terrible vision came to him. He saw his father in his office at 70 Rockefeller Plaza, leaning over his desk with a Camel jutting from the corner of his mouth, talking to one of his underlings as blue smoke wreathed his head. All of New York was spread out behind and below his father, its thump and hustle silenced by two layers of Thermopane glass.

The fact is, money doesn’t get anyone into Sunnyvale Sanitarium, his father was telling the underling in a tone of grim satisfaction. He reached out and tapped the underling’s forehead. The only thing that gets you into a place like that is when something big-time goes wrong up here in the attic. That’s what happened to the kid. But he’s working his goddam buttsky off. Makes the best fucking baskets in the place, they tell me. And when they let him out-if they ever do-there’s a trip in it for him. A trip to-

“-the way station,” Jake muttered, then touched his forehead with a hand that wanted to tremble. The voices were coming back. The yelling, conflicting voices which were driving him mad.

You’re dead, Jake. You were run over by a car and you’re dead.

Don’t be stupid! Look-see that poster? REMEMBER THE CLASS ONE PICNIC, it says. Do you think they have Class Picnics in the afterlife?

I don’t know. But I know you were run over by a car.

No!

Yes. It happened on May 9th, at 8:25 AM You died less than a minute later.

No! No! No!

“John?”

He looked around, badly startled. Mr. Bissette, his French teacher, was standing there, looking a little concerned. Behind him, the rest of the student body was streaming into the Common Room for the morning assembly. There was very little skylarking, and no yelling at all. Presumably these other students, like Jake himself, had been told by their parents how lucky they were to be attending Piper, where money didn’t matter (although tuition was $22,000 a year), only your brains. Presumably many of them had been promised trips this summer if their grades were good enough. Presumably the parents of the lucky trip-winners would even go along in some cases. Presumably-

“John, are you okay?” Mr. Bissette asked.

“Sure,” Jake said. “Fine. I overslept a little this morning. Not awake yet, I guess.”

Mr. Bissette’s face relaxed and he smiled. “Happens to the best of us.”

Not to my dad. The master of The Kill never oversleeps.

“Are you ready for your French final?” Mr. Bissette asked. “Voulez-vous faire I’examen cet apres-midi?”

“I think so,” Jake said. In truth he didn’t know if he was ready for the exam or not. He couldn’t even remember if he had studied for the French final or not. These days nothing seemed to matter much except for the voices in his head.

“I want to tell you again how much I enjoyed having you this year, John. I wanted to tell your folks, too, but they missed Parents’ Night-”

“They’re pretty busy,” Jake said.

Mr. Bissette nodded. “Well, I have enjoyed you. I just wanted to say so… and that I’m looking forward to having you back for French II next year.”

“Thanks,” Jake said, and wondered what Mr. Bissette would say if he added, But I don’t think I’ll be taking French II next year, unless I can get a correspondence course delivered to my postal box at good old Sunnyvale.

Joanne Franks, the school secretary, appeared in the doorway of the Common Room with her small silver-plated bell in her hand. At The Piper School, all bells were rung by hand. Jake supposed that if you were a parent, that was one of its charms. Memories of the Little Red Schoolhouse and all that. He hated it himself. The sound of that bell seemed to go right through his head-

I can’t hold on much longer, he thought despairingly. I’m sorry, but I’m losing it. I’m really, really losing it.

Mr. Bissette had caught sight of Ms. Franks. He turned away, then turned back again. “Is everything all right, John? You’ve seemed preoccupied these last few weeks. Troubled. Is something on your mind?”

Jake was almost undone by the kindness in Mr. Bissette’s voice, but then he imagined how Mr. Bissette would look if he said: Yes. Something is on my mind. One hell of a nasty little factoid. I died, you see, and I went into another world. And then I died again. You’re going to say that stuff like that doesn’t happen, and of course you’re right, and part of my mind knows you’re right, but most of my mind knows that you’re wrong. It did happen. I did die.

If he said something like that, Mr. Bissette would be on the phone to Elmer Chambers at once, and Jake thought that Sunnyvale Sanitarium would probably look like a rest-cure after all the stuff his father would have to say on the subject of lads who started having crazy notions just before Finals Week. Kids who did things that couldn’t be discussed over lunch or cocktails. Kids Who Let Down The Side.

Jake forced himself to smile at Mr. Bissette. “I’m a little worried about exams, that’s all.”

Mr. Bissette winked. “You’ll do fine.”

Ms. Franks began to ring the Assembly Bell. Each peal stabbed into Jake’s ears and then seemed to flash across his brain like a small rocket.

“Come on,” Mr. Bissette said. “We’ll be late. Can’t be late on the first day of Finals Week, can we?”

They went in past Ms. Franks and her clashing bell. Mr. Bissette headed toward the row of seats called Faculty Choir. There were lots of cute names like that at Piper School; the auditorium was the Common Room, lunch-hour was Outs, seventh- and eighth-graders were Upper Boys and Girls, and, of course, the folding chairs over by the piano (which Ms. Franks would soon begin to pound as mercilessly as she rang her silver bell) was Faculty Choir. All part of the tradition, Jake supposed. If you were a parent who knew your kid had Outs in the Common Room at noon instead of just slopping up Tuna Surprise in the caff, you relaxed into the assurance that everything was A-OK in the education department.

He slipped into a seat at the rear of the room and let the morning’s announcements wash over him. The terror ran endlessly on in his mind, making him feel like a rat trapped on an exercise wheel. And when he tried to look ahead to some better, brighter time, he could see only darkness.

The ship was his sanity, and it was sinking.

Mr. Harley, the headmaster, approached the podium and imparted a brief exordium about the importance of Finals Week, and how the grades they received would constitute another step upon The Great Road of Life. He told them that the school was depending on them, he was depending on them, and their parents were depending on them. Me did not tell them that the entire free world was depending on them, but he strongly implied that this might be so. He finished by telling them that bells would be suspended during Finals Week (the first and only piece of good news Jake had received that morning).

Ms. Franks, who had assumed her seat at the piano, struck an invocatory chord. The student body, seventy boys and fifty girls, each turned out in a neat and sober way that bespoke their parents’ taste and financial stability, rose as one and began to sing the school song. Jake mouthed the words and thought about the place where he had awakened after dying. At first he had believed himself to be in hell… and when the man in the black hooded robe came along, he had been sure of it.

Then, of course, the other man had come along. A man Jake had almost come to love.

But he let me fall. He killed me.

He could feel prickly sweat breaking out on the back of his neck and between his shoulderblades.

“So we hail the halls of Piper,

Hold its banner high;

Hail to thee, our alma mater,

Piper, do or die!”

God, what a shitty song, Jake thought, and it suddenly occurred to him that his father would love it.

2

PERIOD ONE WAS ENGLISH Comp, the only class where there was no final. Their assignment had been to write a Final Essay at home. This was to be a typed document between fifteen hundred and four thousand words long. The subject Ms. Avery had assigned was My Understanding of Truth. The Final Essay would count as twenty-five per cent of their final grade for the semester.

Jake came in and took his seat in the third row. There were only eleven pupils in all. Jake remembered Orientation Day last September, when Mr. Harley had told them that Piper had The Highest Teacher To Student Ratio Of Any Fine Private Middle School In The East. He had popped his fist repeatedly on the lectern at the front of the Common Room to emphasize this point. Jake hadn’t been terribly impressed, but he had passed the information along to his lather. He thought his father would be impressed, and he had not been wrong.

He unzipped his bookbag and carefully removed the blue folder which contained his Final Essay. He laid it on his desk, meaning to give it a final look-over, when his eye was caught by the door at the left side of the room. It led, he knew, to the cloakroom, and it was closed today because it was seventy degrees in New York and no one had a coat which needed storage. Nothing back there except a lot of brass coathooks in a line on the wall and a long rubber mat on the floor for boots. A few boxes of school supplies-chalk, blue-books and such-were stored in the far corner.

No big deal.

All the same, Jake rose from his seat, leaving the folder unopened on the desk, and walked across to the door. He could hear his classmates murmuring quietly together, and the riffle of pages as they checked their own Final Essays for that crucial misplaced modifier or fuzzy phrase, but these sounds seemed far away.

It was the door which held his attention.

In the last ten days or so, as the voices in his head grew louder and louder, Jake had become more and more fascinated with doors-all kinds of doors. He must have opened the one between his bedroom and the upstairs hallway five hundred times in just the last week, and the one between his bedroom and the bathroom a thousand. Each time he did it, he felt a tight ball of hope and anticipation in his chest, as if the answer to all of his problems lay somewhere behind this door or that one and he would surely find it… eventually. But each time it was only the hall, or the bathroom, or the front walk, or whatever.

Last Thursday he had come home from school, thrown himself on his bed, and had fallen asleep-sleep, it seemed, was the only refuge which remained to him. Except when he’d awakened forty-five minutes later, he had been standing in the bathroom doorway, peering dazedly in at nothing more exciting than the toilet and the basin. Luckily, no one had seen him.

Now, as he approached the cloakroom door, he felt that same dazzling burst of hope, a certainty that the door would not open on a shadowy closet containing only the persistent smells of winter-flannel, rubber, and wet wool-but on some other world where he could be whale again. Hot, dazzling light would fall across the classroom floor in a widening triangle, and he would see birds circling in a faded blue sky the color of

(his eyes)

old jeans. A desert wind would blow his hair back and dry the nervous sweat on his brow.

He would step through this door and be healed.

Jake turned the knob and opened the door. Inside was only darkness and a row of gleaming brass hooks. One long-forgotten mitten lay near the stacked piles of blue-books in the corner.

His heart sank, and suddenly Jake felt like simply creeping into that dark room with its bitter smells of winter and chalkdust. He could move the mitten and sit in the corner under the coathooks. He could sit on the rubber mat where you were supposed to put your boots in the wintertime. He could sit there, put his thumb in his mouth, pull his knees tight against his chest, close his eyes, and… and…

And just give up.

This idea-the relief of this idea-was incredibly attractive. It would be an end to the terror and confusion and dislocation. That last was somehow the worst; that persistent feeling that his whole life had turned into a funhouse mirror-maze.

Yet there was deep steel in Jake Chambers as surely as there was deep steel in Eddie and Susannah. Now it flashed out its dour blue lighthouse gleam in the darkness. There would be no giving up. Whatever was loose inside him might tear his sanity away from him in the end, but he would give it no quarter in the meantime. Be damned if he would.

Never! he thought fiercely. Never! Nev-

“When you’ve finished your inventory of the school-supplies in the cloakroom, John, perhaps you’d care to join us,” Ms. Avery said from behind him in her dry, cultured voice.

There was a small gust of giggles as Jake turned away from the cloakroom. Ms. Avery was standing behind her desk with her long fingers tented lightly on the blotter, looking at him out of her calm, intelligent face. She was wearing her blue suit today, and her hair was pulled back in its usual bun. Nathaniel Hawthorne looked over her shoulder, frowning at Jake from his place on the wall.

“Sorry,” Jake muttered, and closed the door. He was immediately seized by a strong impulse to open it again, to double-check, to see if this time that other world, with its hot sun and desert vistas, was there.

Instead he walked back to his seat. Petra Jesserling looked at him with merry, dancing eyes. “Take me in there with you next time,” she whispered. “Then you’ll have something to look at.”

Jake smiled in a distracted way and slipped into his seat.

“Thank you, John,” Ms. Avery said in her endlessly calm voice. “Now, before you pass in your Final Essays-which I am sure will all be very fine, very neat, very specific-I should like to pass out the English Department’s Short List of recommended summer reading. I will have a word to say about several of these excellent books-”

As she spoke she gave a small stack of mimeographed sheets to David Surrey. David began to hand them out, and Jake opened his folder to take a final look at what he had written on the topic My Understanding of Truth. He was genuinely interested in this, because he could no more remember writing his Final Essay, than he could remember studying for his French final.

He looked at the title page with puzzlement and growing unease. MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH, By John Chambers, was neatly typed and centered on the sheet, and that was all right, but he had for some reason pasted two photographs below it. One was of a door-he thought it might be the one at Number 10, Downing Street, in London-and the other was of an Amtrak train. They were color shots, undoubtedly culled from some magazine.

Why did I do that? And when did I do it?

He turned the page and stared down at the first page of his Final Essay, unable to believe or understand what he was seeing. Then, as understanding began to trickle through his shock, he felt an escalating sense of horror. It had finally happened; he had finally lost enough of his mind so that other people would be able to tell.

3

By John Chambers

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

-T. S. “BUTCH” ELIOT

“My first thought was, he lied in every word."

-ROBERT “SUNDANCE” BROWNING

The gunslinger is the truth.

Roland is the truth.

The Prisoner is the truth.

The Lady of Shadows is the truth.

The Prisoner and the Lady are married. That is the truth.

The way station is the truth.

The Speaking Demon is the truth.

We went under the mountains and that is the truth.

There were monsters under the mountain. That is the truth. One of them had an Amoco gas pump between his legs and was pretending it was his penis. That is the truth.

Roland let me die. That is the truth. I still love him. That is the truth.

“And it is so very important that you all read The Lord of the Flies,” Ms. Avery was saying in her clear but somehow pale voice. “And when you do, you must ask yourselves certain questions. A good novel is often like a series of riddles within riddles, and this is a very good novel-one of the best written in the second half of the twentieth century. So ask yourselves first what the symbolic significance of the conch shell might be. Second-”

Far away. Far, far away. Jake turned to the second page of his Final Essay with a trembling hand, leaving a dark smear of sweat on the first page.When is a door not a door? When it’s a jar, and that is the truth.

Blaine is the truth. Blaine is the truth. What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck, and that is the truth. Blaine is the truth. You have to watch Blaine all the time, Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth. I’m pretty sure that Blaine is dangerous, and that is the truth. What is black and white and red all over? A blushing zebra, and that is thetruth. Blaine is the truth.

I want to go back and that is the truth. I have to go back and that is the truth. I’ll go crazy if I don’t go back and that is the truth. I can’t go home again unless I find a stone a rose a door and that is the truth.Choo-choo, and that is the truth. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. I am afraid. That is the truth. Choo-choo.Jake looked up slowly. His heart was beating so hard that he saw a bright light like the afterimage of a flashbulb dancing in front of his eyes, a light that pulsed in and out with each titanic thud of his heart.

He saw Ms. Avery handing his Final Essay to his mother and father. Mr. Bissette was standing (reside Ms. Avery, looking grave. He heard Ms. Avery say in her clear, pale voice: Your son is seriously ill. If you need proof, just look at this Final Essay.

John hasn’t been himself for the last three weeks or so, Mr. Bissette added. He seems frightened some of the time and dazed all of the time… not quite there, if you see what I mean. Je pense que John est fou… comprenez-vous?

Ms. Avery again: Do you perhaps keep certain mood-altering prescription drugs in the house where John might have access to them?

Jake didn’t know about mood-altering drugs, but he knew his father kept several grams of cocaine in the bottom drawer of his study desk. His father would undoubtedly think he had been into it.

“Now let me say a word about Catch-22,” Ms. Avery said from the front of the room. “This is a very challenging book for sixth- and seventh-grade students, but you will nonetheless find it entirely enchanting, if you open your minds to its special charm. You may think of this novel, if you like, as a comedy of the surreal.”

I don’t need to read something like that, Jake thought. I’m living something like that, and it’s no comedy.

He turned over to the last page of his Final Essay. There were no words on it. Instead he had pasted another picture to the paper. It was a photograph of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He had used a crayon to scribble it black. The dark, waxy lines looped and swooped in lunatic coils.

He could remember doing none of this.

Absolutely none of it.

Now he heard his father saying to Mr. Bissette: Fou. Yes, he’s definitely fou. A kid who’d fuck up his chance at a school like Piper HAS to be fou, wouldn’t you say? Well… I can handle this. Handling things is my job. Sunnyvale’s the answer. He needs to spend some time in Sunnyvale, making baskets and getting his shit back together. Don’t you worry about our kid, folks; he can run… but he can’t hide.

Would they actually send him away to the nuthatch if it started to seem that his elevator no longer went all the way to the top floor? Jake thought the answer to that was a big you bet. No way his father was going to put up with a loony around the house. The name of the place they put him in might not be Sunnyvale, but there would be bars on the windows and there would be young men in white coats and crepe-soled shoes prowling the halls. The young men would have big muscles and watchful eyes and access to hypodermic needles full of artificial sleep.

They’ll tell everybody I went away, Jake thought. The arguing voices in his head were temporarily stilled by a rising tide of panic. They’ll say I’m spending the year with my aunt and uncle in Modesto… or in Sweden as an exchange student… or repairing satellites in outer space. My mother won’t like it… she’ll cry… but she’ll go along. She has her boyfriends, and besides, she always goes along with what he decides. She… they… me…

He felt a shriek welling up his throat and pressed his lips tightly together to hold it in. He looked down again at the wild black scribbles snarled across the photograph of the Leaning Tower and thought: / have to get out of here. I have to get out right now.

He raised his hand.

“Yes, John, what is it?” Ms. Avery was looking at him with the expression of mild exasperation she reserved for students who interrupted her in mid-lecture.

“I’d like to step out for a moment, if I may,” Jake said.

This was another example of Piper-speak. Piper students did not ever have to “take a leak” or “tap a kidney” or, God forbid, “drop a load.” The unspoken assumption was that Piper students were too perfect to create waste byproducts in their tastefully silent glides through life. Once in a while someone requested permission to “step out for a moment,” and that was all.

Ms. Avery sighed. “Must you, John?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. Return as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Ms. Avery.”

He closed the folder as he got up, took hold of it, then reluctantly let go again. No good. Ms. Avery would wonder why he was taking his Final Essay to the toilet with him. He should have removed the damning pages from the folder and stuffed them in his pocket before asking for permission to step out. Too late now.

Jake walked down the aisle toward the door, leaving his folder on the desk and his bookbag lying beneath it.

“Hope everything comes out all right, Chambers,” David Surrey whispered, and snickered into his hand.

“Still your restless lips, David,” Ms. Avery said, clearly exasperated now, and the whole class laughed.

Jake reached the door leading to the hall, and as he grasped the knob, that feeling of hope and surety rose in him again: This is it-really it. I’ll open the door and the desert sun will shine in. I’ll feel that dry wind on my face. I’ll step through and never see this classroom again.

He opened the door and it was only the hallway on the other side, but he was right about one thing just the same: he never saw Ms. Avery’s classroom again.

4

HE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the dim, wood-panelled corridor, sweating lightly. He walked past classroom doors he would have felt compelled to open if not for the clear glass windows set in each one. He looked into Mr. Bissette’s French II class and Mr. Knopf’s Introduction to Geometry class. In both rooms the pupils sat with pencils in hand and heads bowed over open blue-books. He looked into Mr. Harley’s Spoken Arts class and saw Stan Dorfman-one of those acquaintances who were not quite friends-beginning his Final Speech. Stan looked scared to death, but Jake could have told Stan he didn’t have the slightest idea what fear- real fear-was all about…

I died.

No. I didn’t.

Did too.

Did not.

Did.

Didn’t.

He came to a door marked GIRLS. He pushed it open, expecting to see a bright desert sky and a blue haze of mountains on the horizon. Instead he saw Belinda Stevens standing at one of the sinks, looking into the mirror above the basin and squeezing a pimple on her forehead.

“Jesus Christ, do you mind?” she asked.

“Sorry. Wrong door. I thought it was the desert.”

“What?”

But he had already let the door go and it was swinging shut on its pneumatic elbow. He passed the drinking fountain and opened the door marked BOYS. This was it, he knew it, was sure of it, this was the door which would take him back-

Three urinals gleamed spotlessly under the fluorescent lights. A tap dripped solemnly into a sink. That was all.

Jake let the door close. He walked on down the hall, his heels making firm little clicks on the tiles. He glanced into the office before passing it and saw only Ms. Franks. She was talking on the telephone, swinging back and forth in her swivel chair and playing with a lock of her hair. The silver-plated bell stood on the desk beside her. Jake waited until she swivelled away from the door and then hurried past. Thirty seconds later he was emerging into the bright sunshine of a morning in late May.

I’ve gone truant, he thought. Even his distraction did not keep him from being amazed at this unexpected development. When I don’t come back from the bathroom in five minutes or so, Ms. Avery will send somebody to check… and then they’ll know. They’ll all know that I’ve left school, gone truant.

He thought of the folder lying on his desk.

They’ll read it and they’ll think I’m crazy. Fou. Sure they will. Of course. Because I am.

Then another voice spoke. It was, he thought, the voice of the man with the bombardier’s eyes, the man who wore the two big guns slung low on his hips. The voice was cold… but not without comfort.

No, Jake, Roland said. You’re not crazy. You’re lost and scared, but you’re not crazy and need fear neither your shadow in the morning striding behind you nor your shadow at evening rising to meet you. Yow have to find your way back home, that’s all.

“But where do I go?” Jake whispered. He stood on the sidewalk of Fifty-sixth Street between Park and Madison, watching the traffic bolt past. A city bus snored by, laying a thin trail of acrid blue diesel smoke. “Where do I go? Where’s the fucking door?”

But the voice of the gunslinger had fallen silent.

Jake turned left, in the direction of the East River, and began to walk blindly forward. He had no idea where he was going-no idea at all. He could only hope his feet would carry him to the right place… as they had carried him to the wrong one not long ago.

5

IT HAD HAPPENED THREE weeks earlier.

One could not say It all began three weeks earlier, because that gave the impression that there had been some sort of progression, and that wasn’t right. There had been a progression to the voices, to the violence with which each insisted on its own particular version of reality, but the rest of it had happened all at once.

He left home at eight o’clock to walk to school-he always walked when the weather was good, and the weather this May had been absolutely fine. His father had left for the Network, his mother was still in bed, and Mrs. Greta Shaw was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading her New York Post.

“Goodbye, Greta,” he said. “I’m going to school now.”

She raised a hand to him without looking up from the paper. “Have a good day, Johnny.”

All according to routine. Just another day in the life.

And so it had been for the next fifteen hundred seconds. Then everything had changed forever.

He idled along, bookbag in one hand, lunch sack in the other, looking in the windows. Seven hundred and twenty seconds from the end of his life as he had always known it, he paused to look in the window of Brendio’s, where mannequins dressed in fur coats and Edwardian suits stood in stiff poses of conversation. He was thinking only of going bowling that afternoon after school. His average was 158, great for a kid who was only eleven. His ambition was to some day be a bowler on the pro tour (and if his father had known this little factoid, he also would have hit the roof).

Closing in now-closing in on the moment when his sanity would be suddenly eclipsed.

He crossed Thirty-ninth and there were four hundred seconds left. Had to wait for the WALK light at Forty-first and there were two hundred and seventy. Paused to look in the novelty shop on the corner of Fifth and Forty-second and there were a hundred and ninety. And now, with just over three minutes left in his ordinary life, Jake Chambers walked beneath the unseen umbrella of that force which Roland called ka-tet.

An odd, uneasy feeling began to creep over him. At first he thought it was a feeling of being watched, and then he realized it wasn’t that at all… or not precisely that. He felt that he had been here before; that he was reliving a dream he had mostly forgotten. He waited for the feeling to pass, but it didn’t. It grew stronger, and now began to mix with a sensation he reluctantly recognized as terror.

Up ahead, on the near corner of Fifth and Forty-third, a black man in a Panama hat was setting up a pretzel-and-soda cart.

He’s the one that yells “Oh my God, he’s kilt!” Jake thought.

Approaching the far corner was a fat lady with a Bloomingdale’s bag in her hand.

She’ll drop the bag. Drop the bag and put her hands to her mouth and scream. The bag will split open. There’s a doll inside the bag. It’s wrapped in a red towel. I’ll see this from the street. From where I’ll be lying in the street with my blood soaking into my pants and spreading around me in a pool.

Behind the fat woman was a tall man in a gray nailhead worsted suit. He was carrying a briefcase.

He’s the one who vomits on his shoes. He’s the one who drops his briefcase and throws up on his shoes. What’s happening to me?

Yet his feet carried him numbly forward toward the intersection, where people were crossing in a brisk, steady stream. Somewhere behind him, closing in, was a killer priest. He knew this, just as he knew that the priest’s hands would in a moment be outstretched to push… but he could not look around. It was like being locked in a nightmare where things simply had to take their course.

Fifty-three seconds left now. Ahead of him, the pretzel vendor was opening a hatch in the side of his cart.

He’s going to take out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, Jake thought. Not a can but a bottle. He’ll shake it up and drink it all at once.

The pretzel vendor brought out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, shook it vigorously, and spun off the cap.

Forty seconds left.

Now the light will change.

White WALK went out. Red DONT WALK began to flash rapidly on and off. And somewhere, less than half a block away, a big blue Cadillac was now rolling toward the intersection of Fifth and Forty-third. Jake knew this, just as he knew the driver was a fat man wearing a hat almost the exact same blue shade as his car.

I’m going to die!

He wanted to scream this aloud to the people walking heedlessly all around him, but his jaws were locked shut. His feet swept him serenely onward toward the intersection. The DONT WALK sign stopped flashing and shone out its solid red warning. The pretzel vendor tossed his empty Yoo-Hoo bottle into the wire trash basket on the corner. The fat lady stood on the corner across the street from Jake, holding her shopping bag by the handles. The man in the nailhead suit was directly behind her. Now there were eighteen seconds left.

Time for the toy truck to go by, Jake thought.

Ahead of him a van with a picture of a happy jumping-jack and the words TOOKER’s WHOLESALE TOYS printed on the side swept through the intersection, jolting up and down in the potholes. Behind him, Jake knew, the man in the black robe was beginning to move faster, closing the gap, now reaching out with his long hands. Yet he could not look around, as you couldn’t look around in dreams when something awful was gaining on you.

Run! And if you can’t run, sit down and grab hold of a No Parking sign! Don’t just let it happen!

But he was powerless to stop it from happening. Ahead, on the edge of the curb, was a young woman in a white sweater and a black skirt. To her left was a young Chicano guy with a boombox. A Donna Summer disco tune was just ending. The next song, Jake knew, would be “Dr. Love,” by Kiss.

They’re going to move apart-

Even as the thought came, the woman moved a step to her right. The Chicano guy moved a step to his left, creating a gap between them. Jake’s traitor feet swept him into the gap. Nine seconds now.

Down the street, bright May sunshine twinkled on a Cadillac hood ornament. It was, Jake knew, a 1976 Sedan de Ville. Six seconds. The Caddy was speeding up. The light was getting ready to change and the man driving the de Ville, the fat man in the blue hat with the feather stuck jauntily in the brim, meant to scat through the intersection before it could. Three seconds. Behind Jake, the man in black was lunging forward. On the young man’s boombox, “Love to Love You, Baby” ended and “Dr. Love” began.

Two.

The Cadillac changed to the lane nearest Jake’s side of the street and charged down on the intersection, its killer grille snarling.

One.

Jake’s breath stopped in his throat.

None.

“Uh!” Jake cried as the hands struck him firmly in the back, pushing him, pushing him into the street, pushing him out of his life-

Except there were no hands.

He reeled forward nevertheless, hands flailing at the air, his mouth a dark O of dismay. The Chicano guy with the boombox reached out, grabbed Jake’s arm, and hauled him backward. “Look out, little hero,” he said. “That traffic turn you into bratwurst.”

The Cadillac floated by. Jake caught a glimpse of the fat man in the blue hat peering out through the windshield, and then it was gone.

That was when it happened; that was when he split down the middle and became two boys. One lay dying in the street. The other stood here on the corner, watching in dumb, stricken amazement as DONT WALK turned to WALK again and people began to cross around him just as if nothing had happened… as, indeed, nothing had.

I’m alive! half of his mind rejoiced, screaming with relief.

Dead! the other half screamed back. Dead in the street! They’re all gathering around me, and the man in black who pushed me is saying, “I am a priest. Let me through.”

Waves of faintness rushed through him and turned his thoughts to billowing parachute silk. He saw the fat lady approaching, and as she passed, Jake looked into her bag. He saw the bright blue eyes of a doll peeping above the edge of a red towel, just as he had known he would. Then she was gone. The pretzel vendor was not yelling Oh my God, he’s kilt; he was continuing to set up for the day’s business while he whistled the Donna Summer tune that had been playing on the Chicano guy’s radio.

Jake turned around, looking wildly for the priest who was not a priest. He wasn’t there.

Jake moaned.

Snap out of it! What’s wrong with you?

He didn’t know. He only knew he was supposed to be lying in the street right now, getting ready to die while the fat woman screamed and the guy in the nailhead worsted suit threw up and the man in black pushed through the gathering crowd.

And in part of his mind, that did seem to be happening.

The faintness began to return. Jake suddenly dropped his lunch sack to the pavement and slapped himself across the face as hard as he could. A woman on her way to work gave him a queer look. Jake ignored her. He left his lunch lying on the sidewalk and plunged into the intersection, also ignoring the red DONT WALK light, which had begun to stutter on and off again. It didn’t matter now. Death had approached… and then passed by without a second glance. It hadn’t been meant to happen that way, and on the deepest level of his existence he knew that, but it had.

Maybe now he would live forever.

The thought made him feel like screaming all over again.

6

His HEAD HAD CLEARED a little by the time he got to school, and his mind had gone to work trying to convince him that nothing was wrong, really nothing at all. Maybe something a little weird had happened, some sort of psychic flash, a momentary peek into one possible future, but so what? No big deal, right? The idea was actually sort of cool-the kind of thing they were always printing in the weird supermarket newspapers Greta Shaw liked to read when she was sure Jake’s mother wasn’t around-papers like the National Enquirer and Inside View. Except, of course, in those papers the psychic flash was always a kind of tactical nuclear strike-a woman who dreamed of a plane crash and changed her reservations, or a guy who dreamed his brother was being held prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie factory and it turned out to be true. When your psychic flash consisted of knowing that a Kiss song was going to play next on the radio, that a fat lady had a doll wrapped in a red towel in her Bloomingdale’s bag, and that a pretzel vendor was going to drink a bottle of Yoo-Hoo instead of a can, how big a deal could it be?

Forget it, he advised himself. It’s over.

A great idea, except by period three he knew it wasn’t over; it was just beginning. He sat in pre-algebra, watching Mr. Knopf solving simple equations on the board, and realized with dawning horror that a whole new set of memories was surfacing in his mind. It was like watching strange objects float slowly toward the surface of a muddy lake.

I’m in a place I don’t know, he thought. I mean, I will know it-or would have known it if the Cadillac had hit me. It’s the way station-but the part of me that’s there doesn’t know that yet. That part only knows it’s in the desert someplace, and there are no people. I’ve been crying, because I’m scared. I’m scared that this might be hell.

By three o’clock, when he arrived at Mid-Town Lanes, he knew he had found the pump in the stables and had gotten a drink of water. The water was very cold and tasted strongly of minerals. Soon he would go inside and find a small supply of dried beef in a room which had once been a kitchen. He knew this as clearly and surely as he’d known the pretzel vendor would select a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, and that the doll peeking out of the Bloomingdale’s bag had blue eyes.

It was like being able to remember forward in time.

He bowled only two strings-the first a 96, the second an 87. Timmy looked at his sheet when he turned it in at the counter and shook his head. “You’re having an off-day today, champ,” he said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Jake said.

Timmy took a closer look. “You okay? You look really pale.”

“I think I might be coming down with a bug.” This didn’t feel like a lie, either. He was sure as hell coming down with something.

“Go home and go to bed,” Timmy advised. “Drink lots of clear liquids-gin, vodka, stuff like that.”

Jake smiled dutifully. “Maybe I will.”

He walked slowly home. All of New York was spread out around him, New York at its most seductive-a late-afternoon street serenade with a musician on every corner, all the trees in bloom, and everyone apparently in a good mood. Jake saw all this, but he also saw behind it: saw himself cowering in the shadows of the kitchen as the man in black drank like a grinning dog from the stable pump, saw himself sobbing with relief as he-or it-moved on without discovering him, saw himself falling deeply asleep as the sun went down and the stars began to come out like chips of ice in the harsh purple desert sky.

He let himself into the duplex apartment with his key and walked into the kitchen to get something to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but it was, habit. He was headed for the refrigerator when his eye happened on the pantry door and he stopped. He realized suddenly that the way station- and all the rest of that strange other world where he now belonged- was behind that door. All he had to do was push through it and rejoin the Jake that already existed there. The queer doubling in his mind would end; the voices, endlessly arguing the question of whether or not he had been dead since 8:25 that morning, would fall silent.

Jake pushed open the pantry door with both hands, his face already breaking into a sunny, relieved smile… and then froze as Mrs. Shaw, who was standing on a step-stool at the back of the pantry, screamed. The can of tomato paste she had been holding dropped out of her hand and fell to the floor. She tottered on the stool and Jake rushed forward to steady her before she could join the tomato paste.

“Moses in the bullrushes!” she gasped, fluttering a hand rapidly against the front of her housedress. “You scared the bejabbers out of me, Johnny!”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He really was, but he was also bitterly disappointed. It had only been the pantry, after all. He had been so sure-

“What are you doing, creeping around here, anyway? This is your bowling day! I didn’t expect you for at least another hour! I haven’t even made your snack yet, so don’t be expecting it.”

“That’s okay. I’m not very hungry, anyway.” He bent down and picked up the can she had dropped.

“Wouldn’t know it from the way you came bustin in here,” she grumbled.

“I thought I heard a mouse or something. I guess it was just you.”

“I guess it was.” She descended the step-stool and took the can from him. “You look like you’re comin down with the flu or something, Johnny.” She pressed her hand against his forehead. “You don’t feel hot, but that doesn’t always mean much.”

“I think I’m just tired,” Jake said, and thought: If only that was all it was. “Maybe I’ll just have a soda and watch TV for a while.”

She grunted. “You got any papers you want to show me? If you do, make it fast. I’m behind on supper.”

“Nothing today,” he said. He left the pantry, got a soda, then went into the living room. He turned on Hollywood Squares and watched vacantly as the voices argued and the new memories of that dusty other world continued to surface.

7

His MOTHER AND FATHER didn’t notice anything was wrong with him- his father didn’t even get in until 9:30-and that was fine by Jake. He went to bed at ten and lay awake in the darkness, listening to the city outside his window: brakes, horns, wailing sirens.You died.

I didn’t, though. I’m right here, safe in my own bed.

That doesn’t matter. You died, and you know it.

The hell of it was, he knew both things.

I don’t know which voice is true, but I know I can’t go on like this. So just quit it, both of you. Stop arguing and leave me alone. Okay? Please?But they wouldn’t. Couldn’t, apparently. And it came to Jake that he ought to get up-right now-and open the door to the bathroom. The other world would be there. The way station would be there and the rest of him would be there, too, huddled under an ancient blanket in the stable, trying to sleep and wondering what in hell had happened.

I can tell him, Jake thought excitedly. He threw back the covers, suddenly knowing that the door beside his bookcase no longer led into the bathroom but to a world that smelled of heat and purple sage and fear in a handful of dust, a world that now lay under the shadowing wing of night. I can tell him, but I won’t have to… because I’ll be IN him… I’ll BE him!

He raced across his darkened room, almost laughing with relief, and shoved open the door. And-

And it was his bathroom. Just his bathroom, with the framed Marvin Gaye poster on the wall and the shapes of the Venetian blinds lying on the tiled floor in bars of light and shadow.

He stood there for a long time, trying to swallow his disappointment. It wouldn’t go. And it was bitter.

Bitter.

8

THE THREE WEEKS BETWEEN then and now stretched like a grim, blighted terrain in Jake’s memory-a nightmare wasteland where there had been no peace, no rest, no respite from pain. He had watched, like a helpless prisoner watching the sack of a city he had once ruled, as his mind buckled under the steadily increasing pressure of the phantom voices and memories. He had hoped the memories would stop when he reached the point in them where the man named Roland had allowed him to drop into the chasm under the mountains, but they didn’t. Instead they simply recycled and began to play themselves over again, like a tape set to repeat and repeat until it either breaks or someone comes along, and shuts it off.

His perceptions of his more-or-less real life as a boy in New York City grew increasingly spotty as this terrible schism grew deeper. He could remember going to school, and to the movies on the weekend, and out to Sunday brunch with his parents a week ago (or had it been two?), but he remembered these things the way a man who has suffered malaria may remember the deepest, darkest phase of his illness: people became shadows, voices seemed to echo and overlap each other, and even such a simple act as eating a sandwich or obtaining a Coke from the machine in the gymnasium became a struggle. Jake had pushed through those days in a fugue of yelling voices and doubled memories. His obsession with doors-all kinds of doors-deepened; his hope that the gunslinger’s world might lie behind one of them never quite died. Nor was that so strange, since it was the only hope he had.

But as of today the game was over. He’d never had a chance of winning anyway, not really. He had given up. He had gone truant. Jake walked blindly east along the gridwork of streets, head down, with no idea of where he was going or what he would do when he got there.

9

AFTER WALKING FOR A while, he began to come out of this unhappy daze and take some notice of his surroundings. He was standing on the corner of Lexington Avenue and. Fifty-fourth Street with no memory at all of how he had come to be there. He noticed for the first time that it was an absolutely gorgeous morning. May 9th, the day this madness had started, had been pretty, but today was ten times better-that day, perhaps, when spring looks around herself and sees summer standing nearby, strong and handsome and with a cocky grin on his tanned face. The sun shone brightly off the glass walls of the midtown buildings; the shadow of each pedestrian was black and crisp. The sky overhead was a clear and blameless blue, dotted here and there with plump foul-weather clouds.

Down the street, two businessmen in expensive, well-cut suits were standing at a board wall which had been erected around a construction site. They were laughing and passing something back and forth. Jake walked in their direction, curious, and as he drew closer he saw that the two businessmen were playing tic-tac-toe on the wall, using an expensive Mark Cross pen to draw the grids and make the X’s and O’s. Jake thought this was a complete gas. As he approached, one of them made an O in the upper right-hand corner of the grid and then slashed a diagonal line through the middle.

“Skunked again!” his friend said. Then this man, who looked like a high-powered executive or lawyer or big-time stockbroker, took the Mark Cross pen and drew another grid.

The first businessman, the winner, glanced to his left and saw Jake. He smiled. “Some day, huh, kid?”

“It sure is,” Jake said, delighted to find he meant every word.

“Too nice for school, huh?”

This time Jake actually laughed. Piper School, where you had Outs instead of lunch and where you sometimes stepped out but never had to take a crap, suddenly seemed far away and not at all important. “You know it.”

“You want a game? Billy here couldn’t beat me at this when we were in the fifth grade, and he still can’t.”

“Leave the kid alone,” the second businessman said, holding out the Mark Cross pen. “This time you’re history.” He winked at Jake, and Jake amazed himself by winking back. He walked on, leaving the men to their game. The sense that something totally wonderful was going to happen- had perhaps already begun to happen-continued to grow, and his feet no longer seemed to be quite touching the pavement.

The WALK light on the corner came on, and he began to cross Lexington Avenue. He stopped in the middle of the street so suddenly that a messenger-boy on a ten-speed bike almost ran him down. It was a beautiful spring day-agreed. But that wasn’t why he felt so good, so suddenly aware of everything that was going on around him, so sure that some great thing was about to occur.

The voices had stopped.

They weren’t gone for good-he somehow knew this-but for the time being they had stopped. Why?

Jake suddenly thought of two men arguing in a room. They sit facing each other over a table, jawing at each other with increasing bitterness. After a while they begin to lean toward each other, thrusting their faces pugnaciously forward, bathing each other with a fine mist of outraged spittle. Soon they will come to blows. But before that can happen, they hear a steady thumping noise-the sound of a bass drum-and then a jaunty flourish of brass. The two men stop arguing and look at each other, puzzled.

What’s that? one asks.

Dunno, the other replies. Sounds like a parade.

They rush to the window and it is a parade-a uniformed band marching in lock-step with the sun blazing off their horns, pretty majorettes twirling batons and strutting their long, tanned legs, convertibles decked with flowers and filled with waving celebrities.

The two men stare out the window, their quarrel forgotten. They will undoubtedly return to it, but for the time being they stand together like the best of friends, shoulder to shoulder, watching as the parade goes by-

10

A HORN BLARED, STARTLING Jake out of this story, which was as vivid as a powerful dream. He realized he was still standing in the middle of Lexington, and the light had changed. He looked around wildly, expecting to see the blue Cadillac bearing down on him, but the guy who had tooted his horn was sitting behind the wheel of a yellow Mustang convertible and grinning at him. It was as if everyone in New York had gotten a whiff of happy-gas today.

Jake waved at the guy and sprinted to the other side of the street. The guy in the Mustang twirled a finger around his ear to indicate that Jake was crazy, then waved back and drove on.

For a moment Jake simply stood on the far corner, face turned up to the May sunshine, smiling, digging the day. He supposed prisoners condemned to die in the electric chair must feel this way when they learn they have been granted a temporary reprieve.

The voices were still.

The question was, what was the parade which had temporarily diverted their attention? Was it just the uncommon beauty of this spring morning?

Jake didn’t think that was all. He didn’t think so because that sensation of knowing was creeping over him and through him again, the one which had taken possession of him three weeks ago, as he approached the corner of Fifth and Forty-sixth. But on May 9th, it had been a feeling of impending doom. Today it was a feeling of radiance, a sense of goodness and anticipation. It was as if… as if…

White. This was the word that came to him, and it clanged in his mind with clear and unquestionable lightness.

“It’s the White!” he exclaimed aloud. “The coming of the White!”

He walked on down Fifty-fourth Street, and as he reached the corner of Second and Fifty-fourth, he once more passed under the umbrella of ka-tet.

11

HE TURNED RIGHT, THEN stopped, turned, and retraced his steps to the corner. He needed to walk down Second Avenue now, yes, that was unquestionably correct, but this was the wrong side again. When the light changed, he hurried across the street and turned right again. That feeling, that sense of

(Whiteness)

rightness, grew steadily stronger. He felt half-mad with joy and relief. He was going to be okay. This time there was no mistake. He felt sure that he would soon begin to see people he recognized, as he had recognized the fat lady and the pretzel vendor, and they would be doing things he remembered in advance.

Instead, he came to the bookstore.

12

THE MANHATTAN RESTAURANT OF THE MIND, the sign painted in the window read. Jake went to the d(x»r. There was a chalkboard hung there; it looked like the kind you saw on the wall in diners and lunchrooms.TODAY’s SPECIALS

From Florida! Fresh-Broiled John D. MacDonald Hardcovers 3 for $2.50 Paperbacks 9 for $5.00

From Mississippi! Pan-Fried William Faulkner Hardcovers Market Price Vintage Library Paperbacks 75$ each

From California! Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler Hardcovers Market Price Paperbacks 7 for $5.00

FEED YOUR NEED TO READJake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was somehow like coming home.

The restaurant motif continued inside. Although the walls were lined with shelves of books, a fountain-style counter bisected the room. On Jake’s side of the counter were a number of small tables with wire-backed Malt Shoppe chairs. Each table had been arranged to display the day’s specials: Travis McGee novels by John D. Mac-Donald, Philip Marlowe novels by Raymond Chandler, Snopes novels by William Faulkner. A small sign on the Faulkner table said: Some rare 1st eds available-pls ask. Another sign, this one on the counter, read simply: BROWSE! A couple of customers were doing just that. They sat at the counter, drinking coffee and reading. Jake thought this was without a doubt the best bookstore he’d ever been in.

The question was, why was he here? Was it luck, or was it part of that soft, insistent feeling that he was following a trail-a land of force-beam-that had been left for him to find?

He glanced at the display on a small table to his left and knew the answer.

13

IT WAS A DISPLAY of children’s books. There wasn’t much room on the table, so there were only about a dozen of them-Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Hobbit, Tom Sawyer, things like that. Jake had been attracted by a storybook obviously meant for very young children. On the bright green cover was an anthropomorphic locomotive puffing its way up a hill. Its cowcatcher (which was bright pink) wore a happy grin and its headlight was a cheerful eye which seemed to invite Jake Chambers to come inside and read all about it. Charlie the Choo-Choo, the title proclaimed, Story and Pictures by Beryl Evans. Jake’s mind flashed back to his Final Essay, with the picture of the Amtrak train on the title-page and the words choo-choo written over and over again inside.

He grabbed the book and clutched it tightly, as if it might fly away if he relaxed his grip. And as he looked down at the cover, Jake found that he did not trust the smile on Charlie the Choo-Choo’s face. YOM look happy, but I think that’s just the mask you wear, he thought. I don’t think you’re happy at all. And I don’t think Charlie’s your real name, either.

These were crazy thoughts to be having, undoubtedly crazy, but they did not feel crazy. They felt sane. They felt true.

Standing next to the place where Charlie the Choo-Choo had been was a tattered paperback. The cover was quite badly torn and had been mended with Scotch tape now yellow with age. The picture showed a puzzled-looking boy and girl with a forest of question-marks over their heads. The title of this book was Riddle-De-Dum! Brain-Twisters and Puzzles for Everyone! No author was credited.

Jake tucked Charlie the Choo-Choo under his arm and picked up the riddle book. He opened it at random and saw this:

When is a door not a door?

“When it’s a jar,” Jake muttered. He could feel sweat popping out on his forehead… his arms… all over his body.

“When it’s ajar!”

“Find something, son?” a mild voice inquired.

Jake turned around and saw a fat guy in an open-throated white shirt standing at the end of the counter. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his old gabardine slacks. A pair of half-glasses were pushed up on the bright dome of his bald head.

“Yes,” Jake said feverishly. “These two. Are they for sale?”

“Everything you see is for sale,” the fat guy said. “The building itself would be for sale, if I owned it. Alas, I only lease.” He held out his hand for the books and for a moment Jake balked. Then, reluctantly, he handed them over. Part of him expected the fat guy to flee with them, and if he did-if he gave the slightest indication ol trying it- Jake meant to tackle him, rip the books out of his hands, and boogie. He needed those books.

“Okay, let’s see what yon got,” the fat man said. “By the way, I’m Tower. Calvin Tower.” He stuck out his hand.

Jake’s eyes widened, and he took an involuntary step backward. “What?”

The fat guy looked at him with some interest. “Calvin Tower. Which word is profanity in your language, O Hyperborean Wanderer?”

“Huh?”

“I just mean you look like someone goosed you, kid.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He clasped Mr. Tower’s large, soft hand, hoping the man wouldn’t pursue it. The name had given him a jump, but he didn’t know why. “I’m Jake Chambers.”

Calvin Tower shook his hand. “Good handle, pard. Sounds like the footloose hero in a Western novel-the guy who blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the town, and then travels on. Something by Wayne D. Overholser, maybe. Except you don’t look footloose, Jake. You look like you decided the day was a little too nice to spend in school.”

“Oh… no. We finished up last Friday.”

Tower grinned. “Uh-huh. I bet. And you’ve gotta have these two items, huh? It’s sort of funny, what people have to have. Now you-I would have pegged you as a Robert Howard land of kid from the jump, looking for a good deal on one of those nice old Donald M. Grant editions-the ones with the Roy Krenkel paintings. Dripping swords, mighty thews, and Conan the Barbarian hacking his way through the Stygian hordes.”

“That sounds pretty good, actually. These are for… uh, for my little brother. It’s his birthday next week.”

Calvin Tower used his thumb to flip his glasses down onto his nose and had a closer look at Jake. “Really? You look like an only child to me. An only child if I ever saw one, enjoying a day of French leave as Mistress May trembles in her green gown just outside the bosky dell of June.”

“Come again?”

“Never mind. Spring always puts me in a William Cowper-ish mood. People are weird but interesting, Tex-am I right?”

“I guess so,” Jake said cautiously. He couldn’t decide if he liked this odd man or not.

One of the counter-browsers spun on his stool. He was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a bartered paperback copy of The Plague in the other. “Quit pulling the kid’s chain and sell him the books, Cal,” he said. “We’ve still got time to finish this game of chess before the end of the world, if you hurry up.”

“Hurry is antithetical to my nature,” Cal said, hut he opened Charlie the Choo-Choo and peered at the price pencilled on the flyleaf. “A fairly common book, but this copy’s in unusually fine condition. Little kids usually rack the hell out of the ones they like. I should get twelve dollars for it-”

“Goddam thief,” the man who was reading The Plague said, and the other browser laughed. Calvin Tower paid no notice.

“-but I can’t bear to dock you that much on a day like this. Seven bucks and it’s yours. Plus tax, of course. The riddle book you can have for free. Consider it my gift to a boy wise enough to saddle up and light out for the territories on the last real day of spring.”

Jake dug out his wallet and opened it anxiously, afraid he had left the house with only three or four dollars. He was in luck, however. He had a five and three ones. He held the money out to Tower, who folded the bills casually into one pocket and made change out of the other.

“Don’t hurry off, Jake. Now that you’re here, come on over to the counter and have a cup of coffee. Your eyes will widen with amazement as I cut Aaron Deepneau’s spavined old Kiev Defense to ribbons.”

“Don’t you wish,” said the man who was reading The Plague-Aaron Deepneau, presumably.

“I’d like to, but I can’t. I… there’s someplace I have to be.”

“Okay. As long as it’s not back to school.”

Jake grinned. “No-not school. That way lies madness.”

Tower laughed out loud and flipped his glasses up to the top of his head again. “Not bad! Not bad at all! Maybe the younger generation isn’t going to hell after all, Aaron-what do you think?”

“Oh, they’re going to hell, all right,” Aaron said. “This boy’s just an exception to the rule. Maybe.”

“Don’t mind that cynical old fart,” Calvin Tower said. “Motor on, O Hyperborean Wanderer. I wish I were ten or eleven again, with a beautiful day like this ahead of me.”

“Thanks for the books,” Jake said.

“No problem. That’s what we’re here for. Come on back sometime.”

“I’d like to.”

“Well, you know where we are.”

Yes, Jake thought. Now if I only knew where I am.

14

HE STOPPED JUST OUTSIDE the bookstore and flipped open the riddle book again, this time to page one, where there was a short uncredited introduction.

“Riddles are perhaps the oldest of all the games people still play today,” it began. “The gods and goddesses of Greek myth teased each other with riddles, and they were employed as teaching tools in ancient Rome. The Bible contains several good riddles. One of the most famous of these was told by Samson on the day he was married to Delilah:’Out of the eater came forth meat,

and out of the strong came forth sweetness!’"He asked this riddle of several young men who attended his wedding, confident that they wouldn’t be able to guess the answer. The young men, however,’ got Delilah aside and she whispered the answer to them. Samson was furious, and had the young men put to death for cheating-in the old days, you see, riddles were taken much more seriously than they are today!

“By the way, the answer to Samson’s riddle-and all the other riddles in this book-can be found in the section at the back. We only ask that you give each puzzler a fair chance before you peek!”

Jake turned to the back of the book, somehow knowing what he would find even before he got there. Beyond the page marked ANSWERS there was nothing but a few torn fragments and the back cover. The section had been ripped out.

He stood there for a moment, thinking. Then, on an impulse that didn’t really feel like an impulse at all, Jake walked back inside The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.

Calvin Tower looked up from the chessboard. “Change your mind about that cup of coffee, O Hyperborean Wanderer?”

“No. I wanted to ask you if you know the answer to a riddle.”

“Fire away,” Tower invited, and moved a pawn.

“Samson told it. The strong guy in the Bible? It goes like this-”

“Out of the eater came forth meat,” said Aaron Deepneau, swinging around again to look at Jake, “and out of the strong came forth sweetness. That the one?”

“Yeah, it is,” Jake said. “How’d you know-”

“Oh, I’ve been around the block a time or two. Listen to this.” He threw his head back and sang in a full, melodious voice:” ’samson and a lion got in attack, And Samson climbed up on the lion’s back. Well, you’ve read about lion killin men with their paws, But Samson put his hands round the lion’s jaws! He rode that lion ’til the beast fell dead, And the bees made honey in the lion’s head.’"Aaron winked and then laughed at Jake’s surprised expression. “That answer your question, friend?”

Jake’s eyes were wide. “Wow! Good song! Where’d you hear it?”

“Oh, Aaron knows them all,” Tower said. “He was hanging around Bleecker Street back before Bob Dylan knew how to blow more than open G on his Hohner. At least, if you believe him.”

“It’s an old spiritual,” Aaron said to Jake, and then to Tower: “By the way, you’re in check, fatso.”

“Not for long,” Tower said. He moved his bishop. Aaron promptly bagged it. Tower muttered something under his breath. To Jake it sounded suspiciously like fuckwad.

“So the answer is a lion,” Jake said.

Aaron shook his head. “Only half the answer. Samson’s Riddle is a double, my friend. The other half of the answer is honey. Get it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Okay, now try this one.” Aaron closed his eyes for a moment and then recited,

“What can run but never walks,

Has a mouth but never talks,

Has a bed but never sleeps,

Has a head but never weeps?”

“Smartass,” Tower growled at Aaron.

Jake thought it over, then shook his head. He could have worried it longer-he found this business of riddles both fascinating and charming-but he had a strong feeling that he ought to be moving on from here, that he had other business on Second Avenue this morning.

“I give up.”

“No, you don’t,” Aaron said. “That’s what you do with modern riddles. But a real riddle isn’t just a joke, kiddo-it’s a puzzle. Turn it over in your head. If you still can’t get it, make it an excuse to come back another day. If you need another excuse, fatso here does make a pretty good cup of joe.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “Thanks. I will.”

But as he left, a certainty stole over him: he would never enter The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind again.

15

JAKE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN Second Avenue, holding his new purchases in his left hand. At first he tried to think about the riddle-what did have a bed but never slept?-but little by little the question was driven from his mind by an increasing sense of anticipation. His senses seemed more acute than ever before in his life; he saw billions of coruscating sparks in the pavement, smelled a thousand mixed aromas in every breath he took, and seemed to hear other sounds, secret sounds, within each of the sounds he heard. He wondered if this was the way dogs felt before thunderstorms or earthquakes, and felt almost sure that it was. Yet the sensation that the impending event was not bad but good, that it would balance out the terrible thing which had happened to him three weeks ago, continued to grow.

And now, as he drew close to the place where the course would be set, that knowing-in-advance fell upon him once again.

A bum is going to ask me for a handout, and I’ll give him the change Mr, Tower gave me. And there’s a record store. The door’s open to let in the fresh air and I’ll hear a Stones song playing when I pass. And I’m going to see my own reflection in a bunch of mirrors.

Traffic on Second Avenue was still light. Taxis honked and wove their way amid the slower-moving cars and trucks. Spring sunshine twinkled off their windshields and bright yellow hides. While he was waiting for a light to change, Jake saw the bum on the far corner of Second and Fifty-second. He was sitting against the brick wall of a small restaurant, and as Jake approached him, he saw that the name of the restaurant was Chew Chew Mama’s.

Choo-choo, Jake thought. And that’s the truth.

“Godda-quarder?” the bum asked tiredly, and Jake dropped his change from the bookstore into the bum’s lap without even looking around. Now he could hear the Rolling Stones, right on schedule:

“I see a red door and I want to paint it black, No colours anymore, I want them to turn black…”

As he passed, he saw-also without surprise-that the name of the store was Tower of Power Records.

Towers were selling cheap today, it seemed.

Jake walked on, the street-signs floating past in a kind of dream-daze. Between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth he passed a store called Reflections of You. He turned his head and caught sight of a dozen Jakes in the mirrors, as he had known he would-a dozen boys who were small for their age, a do/en boys dressed in neat school clothes: blue blazers, white shirts, dark red ties, gray dress pants. Piper School didn’t have an official uniform, but this was as close to the unofficial one as you could get.

Piper seemed long ago and far away now.

Suddenly Jake realized where he was going. This knowledge rose in his mind like sweet, refreshing water from an underground spring. It’s a delicatessen, he thought. That’s what it looks like, anyway. It’s really something else-a doorway to another world. The world. His world. The right world.

He began to run, looking ahead eagerly. The light at Forty-seventh was against him but he ignored it, leaping from the curb and racing nimbly between the broad white lines of the crosswalk with just a perfunctory glance to the left. A plumbing van stopped short with a squeal of tires as Jake flashed in front of it.

“Hey! Whaddaya-whaddaya?” the driver yelled, but Jake ignored him.

Only one more block.

He began to sprint all-out now. His tie fluttered behind his left shoulder; his hair had blown back from his forehead; his school loafers hammered the sidewalk. He ignored the stares-some amused, some merely curious-of the passersby as he had ignored the van driver’s outraged shout.

Up here-up here on the corner. Next to the stationery store.

Here came a UPS man in dark brown fatigues, pushing a dolly loaded with packages. Jake hurdled it like a long-jumper, arms up. The tail of his white shirt pulled free of his pants and flapped beneath his blazer like the hem of a slip. He came down and almost collided with a baby-carriage being pushed by a young Puerto Rican woman. Jake hooked around the pram like a halfback who has spotted a hole in the line and is bound for glory. “Where’s the fire, handsome?” the young woman asked, but Jake ignored her, too. He dashed past The Paper Patch, with its window-display of pens and notebooks and desk calculators.

The door! he thought ecstatically. I’m going to see it! And am I going to stop? No, way, Jose! I’m going to go straight through it, and if it’s locked, I’ll flatten it right in front of m-

Then he saw what was at the corner of Second and Forty-sixth and stopped after all-skidded to a halt, in fact, on the heels of his loafers. He stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, hands clenched, his breath rasping harshly in and out of his lungs, his hair falling back onto his forehead in sweaty clumps.

“No,” he almost whimpered. “No!” But his near-frantic negation did not change what he saw, which was nothing at all. There was nothing to see but a short board fence and a littered, weedy lot beyond it.

The building which had stood there had been demolished.

16

JAKE STOOD OUTSIDE THE fence without moving for almost two minutes, surveying the vacant lot with dull eyes. One comer of his mouth twitched randomly. He could feel his hope, his absolute certainty, draining out of him. The feeling which was replacing it was the deepest, bitterest despair he had ever known.

Just another false alarm, he thought when the shock had abated enough so he could think anything at all. Another false alarm, blind alley, dry well. Now the voices will start up again, and when they do, I think I’m going to start screaming. And that’s okay. Because I’m tired of toughing this thing out. I’m tired of going crazy. If this is what going crazy is like, then I just want to hurry up and get there so somebody will take me to the hospital and give me something that’ll knock me out. I give up. This is the end of the line-I’m through.

But the voices did not come back-at least, not yet. And as he began to think about what he was seeing, he realized that the lot wasn’t completely empty, after all. Standing in the middle of the trash-littered, weedy waste ground was a sign.

Coming soon? Maybe… but Jake had his doubts. The letters on the sign were faded and it was sagging a little. At least one graffiti artist, BANCO SKANK by name, had left his mark across the artist’s drawing of the Turtle Bay Luxury Condominiums in bright blue spray-paint. Jake wondered if the project had been postponed or if it had maybe just gone belly-up. He remembered hearing his father talking on the telephone to his business advisor not two weeks ago, yelling at the man to stay away from any more condo investments. “I don’t care how good the tax-picture looks!” he’d nearly screamed (this was, so far as Jake could tell, his father’s normal tone of voice when discussing business matters-the coke in the desk drawer might have had something to do with that). “When they’re offering a goddamn TV set just so you’ll come down and look at a blueprint, something’s wrong!”

The board fence surrounding the lot was chin-high to Jake. It had been plastered with handbills-Olivia Newton-John at Radio City, a group called G. Gordon Liddy and the Grots at a club in the East Village, a film called War of the Zombies which had come and gone earlier that spring. NO TRESPASSING signs had also been nailed up at intervals along the fence, but most of them had been papered over by ambitious bill-posters. A little way farther along, another graffito had been spray-painted on the fence-this one in what had once undoubtedly been a bright red but which had now faded to the dusky pink of late-summer roses. Jake whispered the words aloud, his eyes wide and fascinated:

“See the TURTLE of enormous girth!

On his shell he holds the earth

If you want to run and play,

Come along the BEAM today.”

Jake supposed the source of this strange little poem (if not its meaning) was clear enough. This part of Manhattan’s East Side was known, after all, as Turtle Bay. But that didn’t explain the gooseflesh which was now running up the center of his back in a rough stripe, or his clear sense that he had found another road-sign along some fabulous hidden highway.

Jake unbuttoned his shirt and stuck his two newly purchased books inside. Then he looked around, saw no one paying attention to him, and grabbed the top of the fence. He boosted himself up, swung a leg over, and dropped down on the other side. His left foot landed on a loose pile of bricks that promptly slid out from under him. His ankle buckled under his weight and bright pain lanced up his leg. He fell with a thud and cried out in mingled hurt and surprise as more bricks dug into his ribcage like thick, rude fists.

He simply lay where he was for a moment, waiting to get his breath back. He didn’t think he was badly hurt, but he’d twisted his ankle and it would probably swell. He’d be walking with a limp by the time he got home. He’d just have to grin and bear it, though; he sure didn’t have cab-fare.

You don’t really plan to go home, do you? They’ll eat you alive.

Well, maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t. So far as he could see, he didn’t have much choice in the matter. And that was for later. Right now he was going to explore this lot which had drawn him as surely as a magnet draws steel shavings. That feeling of power was still all around him, he realized, and stronger than ever. He didn’t think this was just a vacant lot. Something was going on here, some-tiling big. He could feel it thrumming in the air, like loose volts escaping from the biggest power-plant in the world.

As he got up, Jake saw that he had actually fallen lucky. Close by was a nasty jumble of broken glass. If he’d fallen into that, he might have cut himself very badly.

That used to be the show window, Jake thought. When the deli was still here, you could stand on the sidewalk and look in at all the meats and cheeses. They used to hang them on strings. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he did-knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

He looked around thoughtfully and then walked a little farther into the lot. Near the middle, lying on the ground and half-buried in a lush growth of spring weeds, was another sign. Jake knelt beside it, pulled it upright, and brushed the dirt away. The letters were faded, but he could still make them out:

And below it, spray-painted in that same red-fading-to-pink, was this puzzling sentence: HE HOLDS US ALL WITHIN HIS MIND.

This is the place, Jake thought. Oh yes.

He let the sign fall back, stood up, and walked deeper into the lot, moving slowly, looking at everything. As he moved, that sensation of power grew. Everything he saw-the weeds, the broken glass, the clumps of bricks-seemed to stand forth with a kind of exclamatory force. Even the potato chip bags seemed beautiful, and the sun had turned a discarded beer-bottle into a cylinder of brown fire.

Jake was very aware of his own breathing, and of the sunlight falling upon everything like a weight of gold. He suddenly understood that he was standing on the edge of a great mystery, and he felt a shudder-half terror and half wonder-work through him.

It’s all here. Everything. Everything is still here.

The weeds brushed at his pants; burdocks stuck to his socks. The breeze blew a Ring-Ding wrapper in front of him; the sun reflected off it and for a moment the wrapper was filled with a beautiful, terrible inner glow.

“Everything is still here,” he repeated to himself, unaware that his face was filling with its own inner glow. “Everything.”

He was hearing a sound-had been hearing it ever since he entered the lot, in fact. It was a wonderful high humming, inexpressibly lonely and inexpressibly lovely. It might have been the sound of a high wind on a deserted plain, except it was alive. It was, he thought, the sound of a thousand voices singing some great open chord. He looked down and realized there were faces in the tangled weeds and low bushes and heaps of bricks. Faces.

“What are you?” Jake whispered. “Who are you?” There was no answer, but he seemed to hear, beneath the choir, the sound of hoof-beats on the dusty earth, and gunfire, and angels calling hosannahs from the shadows. The faces in the wreckage seemed to turn as he passed. They seemed to follow his progress, but no evil intent did they bear. He could see Forty-sixth Street, and the edge of the U.N. Building on the other side of First Avenue, but the buildings did not matter-New York did not matter. It had become as pale as window-glass.

The humming grew. Now it was not a thousand voices but a million, an open funnel of voices rising from the deepest well of the universe. He caught names in that group voice, but could not have said what they were. One might have been Marten. One might have been Cuthbert. Another might have been Roland-Roland of Gilead.

There were names; there was a babble of conversation that might have been ten thousand entwined stories; but above all was that gorgeous, swelling hum, a vibration that wanted to fill his head with bright white light. It was, Jake realized with a joy so overwhelming that it threatened to burst him to pieces, the voice of Yes; the voice of White; the voice of Always. It was a great chorus of affirmation, and it sang in the empty lot. It sang for him.

Then, lying in a cluster of scrubby burdock plants, Jake saw the key… and beyond that, the rose.

17

His LEGS BETRAYED HIM and he fell to his knees. He was vaguely aware that he was weeping, even more vaguely aware that he had wet his pants a little. He crawled forward on his knees and reached toward the key lying in the snarl of burdocks. Its simple shape was one he seemed to have seen in his dreams:

He thought: The little s-shape at the end-that’s the secret.

As he closed his hand around the key, the voices rose in a harmonic shout of triumph. Jake’s own cry was lost in the voice of that choir, lie saw the key flash white within his fingers, and felt a tremendous jolt of power run up his arm. It was as if he had grasped a live high-tension wire, but there was no pain.

He opened Charlie the Choo-Choo and put the key inside. Then his eyes fixed upon the rose again, and he realized that it was the real key- the key to everything. He crawled toward it, his face a flaming corona of light, his eyes blazing wells of blue fire.

The rose was growing from a clump of alien purple grass.

As Jake neared this clump of alien grass, the rose began to open before his eyes. It disclosed a dark scarlet furnace, petal upon secret petal, each burning with its own secret fury. He had never seen anything so intensely and utterly alive in his whole life.

And now, as he stretched one grimy hand out toward this wonder, the voices began to sing his own name… and deadly fear began to steal in toward the center of his heart. It was as cold as ice and as heavy as stone.

There was something wrong. He could feel a pulsing discord, like a deep and ugly scratch across some priceless work of art or a deadly fever smoldering beneath the chilly skin of an invalid’s brow.

It was something like a worm. An invading worm. And a shape. One which lurks just beyond the next turn of the road.

Then the heart of the rose opened for him, exposing a yellow dazzle of light, and all thought was swept away on a wave of wonder. Jake thought for a moment that what he was seeing was only pollen which had been invested with the supernatural glow which lived at the heart of every object in this deserted clearing-he thought it even though he had never heard of pollen within a rose. He leaned closer and saw that the concentrated circle of blazing yellow was not pollen at all. It was a sun: a vast forge burning at the center of this rose growing in the purple grass.

The fear returned, only now it had become outright terror. It’s right, he thought, everything here is right, but it could go wrong-has started going wrong already, I think. I’m being allowed to feel as much of that wrongness as I can bear… but what is it? And what can I do?

It was something like a worm.

He could feel it beating like a sick and dirty heart, warring with the serene beauty of the rose, screaming harsh profanities against the choir of voices which had so soothed and lifted him.

He leaned closer to the rose and saw that its core was not just one sun but many… perhaps all suns contained within a ferocious yet fragile shell.

But it’s wrong. It’s all in danger.

Knowing it would almost surely mean his death to touch that glowing microcosm Init helpless to stop himself, Jake reached forward. There was no curiosity or terror in this gesture; only a great, inarticulate need to protect the rose.

18

WHEN HE CAME BACK to himself, he was at first only aware that a great deal of time had passed and his head hurt like hell.

What happened? Was I mugged?

He rolled over and sat up. Another blast of pain went through his head. He raised a hand to his left temple, and his fingers came away sticky with blood. He looked down and saw a brick poking out of the weeds. Its rounded comer was too red.

If it had been sharp, I’d probably be dead or in a coma.

He looked at his wrist and was surprised to find he was still wearing his watch. It was a Seiko, not terribly expensive, but in this city you didn’t snooze in vacant lots without losing your stuff. Expensive or not, someone would be more than happy to relieve you of it. This time he had been lucky, it seemed.

It was quarter past four in the afternoon. He had been lying here, dead to the world, for at least five hours. His father probably had the cops out looking for him by now, but that didn’t seem to matter much. It seemed to Jake that he had walked out of Piper School about a thousand years ago.

Jake walked half the distance to the fence between the vacant lot and the Second Avenue sidewalk, then stopped.

What exactly had happened to him?

Little by little, the memories came back. Hopping the fence. Slipping and twisting his ankle. He reached down, touched it, and winced. Yes-that much had happened, all right. Then what?

Something magical.

He groped for that something like an old man groping his way across a shadowy room. Everything had been full of its own light. Everything- even the empty wrappers and discarded beer-bottles. There had been voices-they had been singing and telling thousands of overlapping stories.

“And faces,” he muttered. This memory made him look around apprehensively. He saw no faces. The piles of bricks were just piles of bricks, and the tangles of weeds were just tangles of weeds. There were no faces, but-

–but they were here. It wasn’t your imagination.

He believed that. He couldn’t capture the essence of the memory, its quality of beauty and transcendence, but it seemed perfectly real. It was just that his memory of those moments before he had passed out seemed like photographs taken on the best day of your life. You can remember what that day was like-sort of, anyway-but the pictures are flat and almost powerless.

Jake looked around the desolate lot, now filling up with the violet shadows of late afternoon, and thought: / want you back. God, I want you back the way you were.

Then he saw the rose, growing in its clump of purple grass, very close to the place where he had fallen. His heart leaped into his throat. Jake blundered back toward it, unmindful of the beats of pain each step sent up from his ankle. He dropped to his knees in front of it like a worshipper at an altar. He leaned forward, eyes wide.

It’s just a rose. Just a rose after all. And the grass-

The grass wasn’t purple after all, he saw. There were splatters of purple on the blades, yes, but the color beneath was a perfectly normal green. He looked a little further and saw splashes of blue on another clump of weeds. To his right, a straggling burdock bush bore traces of both red and yellow. And beyond the burdocks was a little pile of discarded paint-cans. Glidden Spread Satin, the labels said.

That’s all it was. Just splatters of paint. Only with your head all messed up the way it was, you thought you were seeing-

That was bullshit.

He knew what he had seen then, and what he was seeing now. “Camouflage,” he whispered. “It was all right here. Everything was. And… it still is.”

Now that his head was clearing, he could again feel the steady, harmonic power that this place held. The choir was still here, its voice just as musical, although now dim and distant. He looked at a pile of bricks and old broken chunks of plaster and saw a barely discernible face hiding within it. It was the face of a woman with a scar on her forehead.

“Allie?” Jake murmured. “Isn’t your name Allie?”

There was no answer. The face was gone. He was only looking at an unlovely pile of bricks and plaster again.

He looked back at the rose. It was, he saw, not the dark red that lives at the heart of a blazing furnace, but a dusty, mottled pink. It was very beautiful, but not perfect. Some of the petals had curled back; the outer edges of these were brown and dead. It wasn’t the sort of cultivated flower he had seen in florists’ shops; he supposed it was a wild rose.

“You’re very beautiful,” he said, and once more stretched his hand out to touch it.

Although there was no breeze, the rose nodded toward him. For just a moment the pads of his fingers touched its surface, smooth and velvety and marvellously alive, and all around him the voice of the choir seemed to swell.

“Are you sick, rose?”

There was no answer, of course. When his fingers left the faded pink bowl of the flower, it nodded back to its original position, growing out of the paint-splattered weeds in its quiet, forgotten splendor.

Do roses bloom at this time of year? Jake wondered. Wild ones? Why would a wild rose grow in a vacant lot, anyway? And if there’s one, how come there aren’t more?

He remained on his hands and knees a little longer, then realized he could stay here looking at the rose for the rest of the afternoon (or maybe the rest of his life) and not come any closer to solving its mystery. He had seen it plain for a moment, as he had seen everything else in this forgotten, trash-littered corner of the city; he had seen it with its mask off and its camouflage tossed aside. He wanted to see that again, but wanting would not make it so.

It was time to go home.

He saw the two books he’d bought at The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind lying nearby. As he picked them up, a bright silver object slipped from the pages of Charlie the Choo-Choo and fell into a scruffy patch of weeds. Jake bent, favoring his hurt ankle, and picked it up. As he did so, the choir seemed to sigh and swell, then fell back to its almost inaudible hum.

“So that part was real, too,” he murmured. He ran the ball of his thumb over the blunt protruding points of the key and into those primitive V-shaped notches. He sent it skating over the mild s-curves at the end of the third notch. Then he tucked it deep into the right front pocket of his pants and began to limp back toward the fence.

He had reached it and was preparing to scramble over the top when a terrible thought suddenly seized his mind.

The rose! What if somebody comes in here and picks it?

A little moan of horror escaped him. He turned back and after a moment his eyes picked it out, although it was deep in the shadow of a neighboring building now-a tiny pink shape in the dimness, vulnerable, beautiful, and alone.

I can’t leave it-I have to guard it!

But a voice spoke up in his mind, a voice that was surely that of the man he had met at the way station in that strange other life. No one will pick it. Nor will any vandal crush it beneath his heel because his dull eyes cannot abide the sight of its beauty. That is not the danger. It can protect itself from such things as those.

A sense of deep relief swept through Jake.

Can I come here again and look at it? he asked the phantom voice.

When I’m low, or if the voices come hack and start their argument again? Can I come back and look at it and have some peace?

The voice did not answer, and after a few moments of listening, Jake decided it was gone. He tucked Charlie the Choo-Choo and Riddle-De-Dum! into the waistband of his pants-which, he saw, were streaked with dirt and dotted with clinging burdocks-and then grabbed the board fence. He boosted himself up, swung over the top, and dropped onto the sidewalk of Second Avenue again, being careful to land on his good foot.

Traffic on the Avenue-both pedestrian and vehicular-was much heavier now as people made their way home for the night. A few passersby looked at the dirty boy in the torn blazer and untucked, flapping shirt as he jumped awkwardly down from the fence, but not many. New Yorkers are used to the sight of people doing peculiar things.

He stood there a moment, feeling a sense of loss and realizing something else, as well-the arguing voices were still absent. That, at least, was something.

He glanced at the board fence; and the verse of spray-painted doggerel seemed to leap out at him, perhaps because the paint was the same color as the rose.

“See the TURTLE of enormous girth” Jake muttered. “On his shell he holds the earth.” He shivered. “What a day! Boy!”

He turned and began to limp slowly in the direction of home.

19

THE DOORMAN MUST HAVE buzzed up as soon as Jake entered the lobby, because his father was standing outside the elevator when it opened on the fifth floor. Elmer Chambers was wearing faded jeans and cowboy boots that improved his five-ten to a rootin, tootin six feet. His black, crewcut hair bolted up from his head; for as long as Jake could remember, his father had looked like a man who had just suffered some tremendous, galvanizing shock. As soon as Jake stepped out of the elevator, Chambers seized him by the arm.

“Look at you!” His father’s eyes flicked up and down, taking in Jake’s dirty face and hands, the blood drying on his cheek and temple, the dusty pants, the torn blazer, and the burdock that clung to his tie like some peculiar clip. “Get in here! Where the hell have you been? Your mother’s just about off her fucking gourd!”

Without giving Jake a chance to answer, he dragged him through the apartment door. Jake saw Greta Shaw standing in the archway between the dining room and the kitchen. She gave him a look of guarded sympathy, then disappeared before the eyes of “the mister” could chance upon her.

Jake’s mother was sitting in her rocker. She got to her feet when she saw Jake, but she did not leap to her feet; neither did she pelt across to the foyer so she could cover him with kisses and invective. As she came toward him, Jake assessed her eyes and guessed she’d had at least three Valium since noon. Maybe four. Both of his parents were firm believers in better living through chemistry.

“You’re bleeding! Where have you been?” She made this inquiry in her cultured Vassar voice, pronouncing been so it rhymed with seen. She might have been greeting an acquaintance who had been involved in a minor traffic accident.

“Out,” he said.

His father gave him a rough shake. Jake wasn’t prepared for it. He stumbled and came down on his bad ankle. The pain flared again, and he was suddenly furious. Jake didn’t think his father was pissed because he had disappeared from school, leaving only his mad composition behind; his father was pissed because Jake had had the temerity to fuck up his own precious schedule.

To this point in his life, Jake had been aware of only three feelings about his father: puzzlement, fear, and a species of weak, confused love. Now a fourth and fifth surfaced. One was anger; the other was disgust. Mixed in with these unpleasant feelings was that sense of homesickness. It was the largest thing inside him right now, weaving through everything else like smoke. He looked at his father’s flushed cheeks and screaming haircut and wished he was back in the vacant lot, looking at the rose and listening to the choir. This is not my place, he thought. Not anymore. I have work to do. If only I knew what it was.

“Let go of me,” he said.

“What did you say to me?” His father’s blue eyes widened. They were very bloodshot tonight. Jake guessed he had been dipping heavily into his supply of magic powder, and that probably made this a bad time to cross him, but Jake realized he intended to cross him just the same. He would not be shaken like a mouse in the jaws of a sadistic tomcat. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again. He suddenly realized that a large part of his anger stemmed from one simple fact: he could not talk to them about what had happened-what was still happening. They had closed all the doors.

But I have a key, he thought, and touched its shape through the fabric of his pants. And the rest of that strange verse occurred to him: If you want to run and play, /Come along the BEAM today.

“I said let go of me,” he repeated. “I’ve got a sprained ankle and you’re hurting it.”

“I’ll hurt more than your ankle if you don’t-”

Sudden strength seemed to How into Jake. He seized the hand clamped on his arm just below the shoulder and shoved it violently away. His father’s mouth dropped open.

“I don’t work for you,” Jake said. “I’m your son, remember? If you forgot, check the picture on your desk.”

His father’s upper lip pulled back from his perfectly capped teeth in a snarl that was two parts surprise and one part fury. “Don’t you talk to me like that, mister-where in the hell is your respect?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I lost it on the way home.”

“You spend the whole goddamn day absent without leave and then you stand there running your fat, disrespectful mouth-”

“Stop it! Stop it, both of you!” Jake’s mother cried. She sounded near tears in spite of the tranquilizers perking through her system.

Jake’s father reached for Jake’s arm again, then changed his mind. The surprising force with which his son had torn his hand away a moment ago might have had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was only the look in Jake’s eyes. “I want to know where you’ve been.”

“Out. I told you that. And that’s all I’m going to tell you.”

“Fuck that! Your headmaster called, your French teacher actually came here, and they both had beaucoup questions for you! So do I, and I want some answers!”

“Your clothes are dirty,” his mother observed, and then added timidly: “Were you mugged, Johnny? Did you play hookey and get mugged?”

“Of course he wasn’t mugged,” Elmer Chambers snarled. “Still wearing his watch, isn’t he?”

“But there’s blood on his head.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I just bumped it.”

“But-”

“I’m going to go to bed. I’m very, very tired. If you want to talk about this in the morning, okay. Maybe we’ll all be able to make some sense then. But for now, I don’t have a thing to say.”

His father took a step after him, reaching out.

“No, Elmer!” Jake’s mother almost screamed.

Chambers ignored her. He grabbed Jake by the back of the blazer. “Don’t you just walk away from me-” he began, and then Jake whirled, tearing the blazer out of his hand. The seam under the right arm, already strained, let go with a rough purring sound.

His father saw those blazing eyes and stepped away. The rage on his face was doused by something that looked like terror. That blaze was not metaphorical; Jake’s eyes actually seemed to be on fire. His mother gave voice to a strengthless little scream, clapped one hand to her mouth, took two large, stumbling steps backward, and dropped into her rocking chair with a small thud.

“Leave.. me… alone,” Jake said.

“What’s happened to you?” his father asked, and now his tone was almost plaintive. “What in the hell’s happened to you? You bug out of school without a word to anyone on the first day of exams, you come back filthy from head to toe… and you act as if you’ve gone crazy.”

Well, there it was-you act as if you’ve gone crazy. What he’d been afraid of ever since the voices started three weeks ago. The Dread Accusation. Only now that it was out, Jake found it didn’t frighten him much at all, perhaps because he had finally put the issue to rest in his own mind. Yes, something had happened to him. Was still happening. But no-he had not gone crazy. At least, not yet.

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he repeated. He walked across the dining room, and this time his father didn’t try to stop him. He had almost reached the hall when his mother’s voice, worried, stopped him: “Johnny… are you all right?”

And what should he answer? Yes? No? Both of the above? Neither of the above? But the voices had stopped, and that was something. That was, in fact, quite a lot.

“Better,” he said at last. He went down to his room and closed the door firmly behind him. The sound of the door snicking firmly shut between him and all the rest of the round world filled him with tremendous relief.

20

HE STOOD BY THE door for a little while, listening. His mother’s voice was only a murmur, his father’s voice a little louder.

His mother said something about blood, and a doctor.

His father said the kid was fine; the only thing wrong with the kid was the junk coming out of his mouth, and he would fix that.

His mother said something about calming down.

His father said he was calm.

His mother said-

He said, she said, blah, blah, blah. Jake still loved them-he was pretty sure he did, anyway-but other stuff had happened now, and these things had made it necessary that still other things must occur.

Why? Because something was wrong with the rose. And maybe because he wanted to run and play… and see his eyes again, as blue as the sky above the way station had been.

Jake walked slowly over to his desk, removing his blazer as he went. It was pretty wasted-one sleeve torn almost completely off, the lining hanging like a limp sail. He slung it over the back of his chair, then sat down and put the books on his desk. He had been sleeping very badly over the last week and a half, hut he thought tonight he would sleep well. He couldn’t remember ever being so tired. When he woke up in the morning, perhaps he would know what to do.

There was a light knock at the door, and Jake turned warily in that direction.

“It’s Mrs. Shaw, John. May I come in for a minute?”

He smiled. Mrs. Shaw-of course it was. His parents had drafted her as an intermediary. Or perhaps translator might be a better word.

You go see him, his mother would have said. Hell tell you what’s wrong with him. I’m his mother and this man with the bloodshot eyes and the runny nose is his father and you’re only the housekeeper, but he’ll tell you what he wouldn’t tell us. Because you see more of him than either of us, and maybe you speak his language.

She’ll have a tray, Jake thought, and when he opened the door he was smiling.

Mrs. Shaw did indeed have a tray. There were two sandwiches on it, a wedge of apple pie, and a glass of chocolate milk. She was looking at Jake with mild anxiety, as if she thought he might lunge forward and try to bite her. Jake looked over her shoulder, but there was no sign of his parents. He imagined them sitting in the living room, listening anxiously.

“I thought you might like something to eat,” Mrs. Shaw said.

“Yes, thanks.” In fact, he was ravenously hungry; he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He stood aside and Mrs. Shaw came in (giving him another apprehensive look as she passed) and put the tray on the desk.

“Oh, look at this,” she said, picking up Charlie the Choo-Choo. “I had this one when I was a little girl. Did you buy this today, Johnny?”

“Yes. Did my parents ask you to find out what I’d been up to?”

She nodded. No acting, no put-on. It was just a chore, like taking out the trash. You can tell me if you want to, her face said, or you can keep still. I like you, Johnny, but it’s really nothing to me, one way or the other. I just work here, and it’s already an hour past my regular quitting time.

He was not offended by what her face had to say; on the contrary, he was further calmed by it. Mrs. Shaw was another acquaintance who was not quite a friend… but he thought she might be a little closer to a friend than any of the kids at school were, and much closer than either his mother or father. Mrs. Shaw was honest, at least. She didn’t dance. It all went on the bill at the end of the month, and she always cut the crusts off the sandwiches.

Jake picked up a sandwich and took a large bite. Bologna and cheese, his favorite. That was another thing in Mrs. Shaw’s favor-she knew all his favorites. His mother was still under the impression that he liked corn on the cob and hated Brussels sprouts.

“Please tell them I’m fine,” he said, “and tell my father I’m sorry that I was rude to him.”

He wasn’t, but all his father really wanted was that apology. Once Mrs. Shaw conveyed it to him, he would relax and begin to tell himself the old lie-he had done his fatherly duty and all was well, all was well, and all manner of things were well.

“I’ve been studying very hard for my exams,” he said, chewing as he talked, “and it all came down on me this morning, I guess. I sort of froze. It seemed like I had to get out or I’d suffocate.” He touched the dried crust of blood on his forehead. “As for this, please tell my mother it’s really nothing. I didn’t get mugged or anything; it was just a stupid accident. There was a UPS guy pushing a hand-truck, and I walked right into it. The cut’s no big deal. I’m not having double vision or anything, and even the headache’s gone now.”

She nodded. “I can see how it must have been-a high-powered school like that and all. You just got a little spooked. No shame in that, Johnny. But you really haven’t seemed like yourself this last couple of weeks.”

“I think I’ll be okay now. I might have to re-do my Final Essay in English, but-”

“Oh!” Mrs. Shaw said. A startled looked crossed her face. She put Charlie the Choo-Choo back down on Jake’s desk. “I almost forgot! Your French teacher left something for you. I’ll just get it.”

She left the room. Jake hoped he hadn’t worried Mr. Bissette, who was a pretty good guy, but he supposed he must have, since Bissette had actually made a personal appearance. Jake had an idea that personal appearances were pretty rare for Piper School teachers. He wondered what Mr. Bissette had left. His best guess was an invitation to talk with Mr. Hotchkiss, the school shrink. That would have scared him this morning, but not tonight.

Tonight only the rose seemed to matter.

He tore into his second sandwich. Mrs. Shaw had left the door open, and he could hear her talking with his parents. They both sounded a little more cooled out now. Jake drank his milk, then grabbed the plate with the apple pie on it. A few moments later Mrs. Shaw came back. She was carrying a very familiar blue folder.

Jake found that not all of his dread had left him after all. They would all know by now, of course, students and faculty alike, and it was too late to do anything about it, but that didn’t mean he liked all of them knowing he had flipped his lid. That they were talking about him.

A small envelope had been paper-clipped to the front of the folder.

Jake pulled it free and looked up at Mrs. Shaw as he opened it. “How are my folks doing now?” he asked.

She allowed herself a brief smile. “Your father wanted me to ask why you didn’t just tell him you had Exam Fever. He said he had it himself once or twice when he was a boy.”

Jake was struck by this; his father had never been the sort of man to indulge in reminiscences which began, You know, when I was a kid… Jake tried to imagine his father as a boy with a bad case of Exam Fever and found he couldn’t quite do it-the best he could manage was the unpleasant image of a pugnacious dwarf in a Piper sweatshirt, a dwarf in custom-tooled cowboy boots, a dwarf with short black hair bolting up from his forehead.

The note was from Mr. Bissette.

Dear John,

Bonnie Avery told me that you left early. She’s very concerned about you, and so am I, although we have both seen this sort of thing before, especially during Exam Week. Please come and see me first thing tomorrow, okay? Any problems you have can be worked out. If you’re feeling pressured by exams-and I want to repeat that it happens all the time-a postponement can be arranged. Our first concern is your welfare. Call me this evening, if you like; you can reach me at 555-7661. Ill be up until midnight.

Remember that we all like you very much, and are on your side.

A votre sante”

Len Bissette

Jake felt like crying. The concern was stated, and that was wonderful, but there were other things, unstated things, in the note that were even more wonderful-warmth, caring, and an effort (however misconceived) to understand and console.

Mr. Bissette had drawn a small arrow at the bottom of the note. Jake turned it over and read this:

By the way, Bonnie asked me to send this along-congratulations!!

Congratulations? What in the hell did that mean?

He flipped open the folder. A sheet of paper had been clipped to the first page of his Final Essay. It was headed FROM THE DESK OF BONITA AVERY, and Jake read the spiky, fountain-penned lines with growing amazement.John,

Leonard will undoubtedly voice the concern we all feel-he is awfully good at that-so let me confine myself to your Final Essay, which I read and graded during my free period. It is stunningly original, and superior to any student work I have read in the last few years. Your use of incremental repetition (”… and that is the truth”) is inspired, but of course incremental repetition is really just a trick. The real worth of the composition is in its symbolic quality, first stated by the images of the train and the door on the title page and carried through splendidly within. This reaches its logical conclusion with the picture of the “black tower,” which I take as your statement that conventional ambitions are not only false but dangerous.

I do not pretend to understand all the symbolism (e.g., “Lady of Shadows,” “gunslinger”) but it seems clear that you yourself are “The Prisoner” (of school, society, etc.) and that the educational system is “The Speaking Demon.” Is it possible that both “Roland” and “the gunslinger” are the same authority figure-your father, perhaps? I became so intrigued by this possibility that 1 looked up his name in your records. I note it is Elmer, but I further note that his middle initial is R.

I find this extremely provocative. Or is this name a double symbol, drawn both from your father and from Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"? This is not a question I would ask most students, but of course I know how omnivorously you read!

At any rate, I am extremely impressed. Younger students are often attracted to so-called “stream-of-consciousness” writing, but are rarely able to control it. You have done an outstanding job of merging s-of-c with symbolic language.

Bravo!

Drop by as soon as you’re “back at it”-I want to discuss possible publication of this piece in the first issue of next year’s student literary magazine.

B. Avery

P. S. If you left school today because you had sudden doubts about my ability to understand a Final Essay of such unexpected richness, I hope I have assuaged them.Jake pulled the sheet off the clip, revealing the title page of his stunningly original and richly symbolic Final Essay. Written and circled there in the red ink of Ms. Avery’s marking pen was the notation A +. Below this she had written EXCELLENT JOB!!!

Jake began to laugh.

The whole day-the long, scary, confusing, exhilarating, terrifying, mysterious day-was condensed in great, roaring sobs of laughter. He slumped in his chair, head thrown hack, hands clutching his belly, tears streaming down his face. He laughed himself hoarse. He would almost stop and then some line from Ms. Avery’s well-meaning critique would catch his eye and he would be off to the races again. He didn’t see his father come to the door, look in at him with puzzled, wary eyes, and then leave again, shaking his head.

At last he did become aware that Mrs. Shaw was still sitting on his bed, looking at him with an expression of friendly detachment tinctured with faint curiosity. He tried to speak, but the laughter pealed out again before he could.

I gotta stop, he thought. I gotta stop or it’s gonna kill me. I’ll have a stroke or a heart attack, or something.

Then he thought, 7 wonder what she made of “choo-choo, choo-choo?,” and he began to laugh wildly again.

At last the spasms began to taper off to giggles. He wiped his arm across his streaming eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Shaw-it’s just that… well… I got an A-plus on my Final Essay. It was all very… very rich… and very sym… sym…”

But he couldn’t finish. He doubled up with laughter again, holding his throbbing belly.

Mrs. Shaw got up, smiling. “That’s very nice, John. I’m happy it’s all turned out so well, and I’m sure your folks will be, too. I’m awfully late-I think I’ll ask the doorman to call me a cab. Goodnight, and sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Shaw,” Jake said, controlling himself with an effort. “And thanks.”

As soon as she was gone, he began to laugh again.

21

DURING THE NEXT HALF hour he had separate visits from both parents. They had indeed calmed down, and the A + grade on Jake’s Final Essay seemed to calm them further. Jake received them with his French text open on the desk before him, but he hadn’t really looked at it, nor did he have any intention of looking at it. He was only waiting for them to be gone so he could study the two books he had bought earlier that day. He had an idea that the real Final Exams were still waiting just over the horizon, and he wanted desperately to pass.

His father poked his head into Jake’s room around quarter of ten, about twenty minutes after Jake’s mother had concluded her own short, vague visit. Elmer Chambers was holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other. He seemed not only calmer but almost zonked. Jake wondered briefly and indifferently if he had been hitting his mother’s Valium supply.

“Are you okay, kid?”

“Yes.” He was once again the small, neat boy who was always completely in control of himself. The eyes he turned to his father were not blazing but opaque.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry about before.” His father was not a man who made many apologies, and he did it badly. Jake found himself feeling a little sorry for him.

“It’s all right.”

“Hard day,” his father said. He gestured with the empty glass. “Why don’t we just forget it happened?” He spoke as if this great and logical idea had just come to him.

“I already have.”

“Good.” His father sounded relieved. “Time for you to get some sleep, isn’t it? You’ll have some explaining to do and some tests to take tomorrow.”

“I guess so,” Jake said. “Is Mom okay?”

“Fine. Fine. I’m going in the study. Got a lot of paperwork tonight.”

“Dad?”

His father looked back at him warily.

“What’s your middle name?”

Something in his father’s face told Jake that he had looked at the Final Essay grade but hadn’t bothered to read either the paper itself or Ms. Avery’s critique.

“I don’t have one,” he said. “Just an initial, like Harry S Truman. Except mine’s an R. What brought that on?”

“Just curious,” Jake said.

He managed to hold onto his composure until his father was gone… but as soon as the door was closed, he ran to his bed and stuffed his face into his pillow to muffle another bout of wild laughter.

22

WHEN HE WAS SURE he was over the current fit (although an occasional snicker still rumbled up his throat like an aftershock) and his father would be safely locked away in his study with his cigarettes, his Scotch, his papers, and his little bottle of white powder, Jake went back to his desk, turned on the study lamp, and opened Charlie the Choo-Choo. He glanced briefly at the copyright page and saw it had originally been published in 1942; his copy was from the fourth printing. He looked at the back, but there was no information at all about Beryl Evans, the book’s author.

Jake turned back to the beginning, looked at the picture of a grinning, blonde-haired man sitting in the cab of a steam locomotive, considered the proud grin on the man’s face, and then began to read.

Bob Brooks was an engineer for the Mid-World Railway Company, on the St. Louis to Topeka run. Engineer Bob was the best trainman The Mid-World Railway Company ever had, and Charlie was the best train!

Charlie was a 402 Big Boy Steam Locomotive, and Engineer Bob was the only man who had ever been allowed to sit in his peak-seat and pull the whistle. Everyone knew the WHOOO-OOOO of Charlie’s whistle, and whenever they heard it echoing across the flat Kansas countryside, they said, “There goes Charlie and Engineer Bob, the fastest team between St. Louis and Topeka!”

Boys and girls ran into their yards to watch Charlie and Engineer Bob go by. Engineer Bob would smile and wave. The children would smile and wave back.

Engineer Bob had a special secret. He was the only one who knew. Charlie the Choo-Choo was really, really alive. One day while they were making the run between Topeka and St. Louis, Engineer Bob heard singing, very soft and low.

“Who is in the cab with me?” Engineer Bob said sternly.

“You need to see a shrink, Engineer Bob,” Jake murmured, and turned the page. Here was a picture of Bob bending over to look beneath, Charlie the Choo-Choo’s automatic firebox. Jake wondered who was driving the train and watching out for cows (not to mention boys and girls) on the tracks while Bob was checking for stowaways, and guessed that Beryl Evans hadn’t known a lot about trains.

“Don’t worry,” said a small, gruff voice. “It is only I.”

“Who’s I?” Engineer Bob asked. He spoke in his biggest, sternest voice, because he still thought someone was playing a joke on him.

“Charlie,” said the small, gruff voice.

“Hardy har-har!” said Engineer Bob. “Trains can’t talk! I may not know much, but I know that! If you’re Charlie, I suppose you can blow your own whistle!”

“Of course,” said the small, gruff voice, and just then the whistle made its big noise, rolling out across the Missouri plains: WHOOO-OOOO!

“Goodness!” said Engineer Bob. “It really is you!”

“I told you,” said Charlie the Choo-Choo.

“How come I never knew you were alive before?” asked Engineer Bob. “Why didn’t you ever talk to me before?”

Then Charlie sang this song to Engineer Bob in his small, gruff voice.

Don’t ask me silly questions,

I won’t play silly games.

I’m just a simple choo-choo train

And I’ll always be the same.

I only want to race along

Beneath the bright blue sky,

And be a happy choo-choo train

Until the day I die.

“Will you talk to me some more when we’re making our run?” asked Engineer Bob. “I’d like that.”

“I would, too,” said Charlie. “I love you, Engineer Bob.”

“I love you too, Charlie,” said Engineer Bob, and then he blew the whistle himself, just to show how happy he was.

WHOOO-OOO! It was the biggest and best Charlie had ever whistled, and everyone who heard it came out to see.The picture which illustrated this last was similar to the one on the cover of the book. In the previous pictures (they were rough drawings which reminded Jake of the pictures in his favorite kindergarten book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel), the locomotive had been just a locomotive-cheery, undoubtedly interesting to the ’40s-era boys who had been this book’s intended audience, but still only a piece of machinery. In this picture, however, it had clearly human features, and this gave Jake a deep chill despite Charlie’s smile and the rather heavy-handed cuteness of the story.

He didn’t trust that smile.

He turned to his Final Essay and scanned down the lines. I’m pretty sure Blame is dangerous, he read, and that is the truth.

He closed the folder, tapped his fingers on it thoughtfully for a few moments, then returned to Charlie the Choo-Choo.Engineer Bob and Charlie spent many happy days together and talked of many things. Engineer Bob lived alone, and Charlie was the first real friend he’d had since his wife died, long ago, in New York.

Then one day, when Charlie and Engineer Bob returned to the roundhouse in St. Louis, they found a new diesel locomotive in Charlie’s berth. And what a diesel locomotive it was! 5,000 horsepower! Stainless steel couplers! Traction motors from the Utica Engine Works in Utica, New York! And sitting on top, behind the generator, were three bright yellow radiator cooling fans.

“What is this?” Engineer Bob asked in a worried voice, but Charlie only sang his song in his smallest, gruffest voice:Don’t ask me silly questions, I won’t play silly games. I’m just a simple choo-choo train And I’ll always be the same.I only want to race along Beneath the bright blue sky, And be a happy choo-choo train Until the day I die.Mr. Briggs, the Roundhouse Manager, came over.

“That is a beautiful diesel locomotive,” said Engineer Bob, “but you will have to move it out of Charlie’s berth, Mr. Briggs. Charlie needs a lube job this very afternoon.”

“Charlie won’t be needing any more lube jobs, Engineer Bob,” said Mr. Briggs sadly. “This is his replacement-a brand-new Burlington Zephyr diesel loco. Once, Charlie was the best locomotive in the world, but now he is old and his boiler leaks. I am afraid the time has come for Charlie to retire.”

“Nonsense!” Engineer Bob was mad! “Charlie is still full of zip and zowie! I will telegraph the head office of The Mid-World Railway Company! I will telegraph the President, Mr. Raymond Martin, myself! I know him, because he once gave me a Good Service Award, and afterwards Charlie and I took his little daughter for a ride. I let her pull the lanyard, and Charlie whistled his loudest for her!”

“I am sorry, Bob,” said Mr. Briggs, ’Taut it was Mr. Martin himself who ordered the new diesel loco.”

It was true. And so Charlie the Choo-Choo was shunted off to a siding in the furthest corner of Mid-World’s St. Louis yard to rust in the weeds. Now the HONNNK! HONNNK! of the Burlington Zephyr was heard on the St. Louis to Topeka run, and Charlie’s blew no more. A family of mice nested in the seat where Engineer Bob once sat so proudly, watching the countryside speed past; a family of swallows nested in his smokestack. Charlie was lonely and very sad. He missed the steel tracks and bright blue skies and wide open spaces. Sometimes, late at night, he thought of these things and cried dark, oily tears. This rusted his fine Stratham headlight, but he didn’t care, because now the Stratham headlight was old, and it was always dark.

Mr. Martin, the President of The Mid-World Railway Company, wrote and offered to put Engineer Bob in the peak-seat of the new Burlington Zephyr. “It is a fine loco, Engineer Bob,” said Mr. Martin, “chock-full of zip and zowie, and you should be the one to pilot it! Of all the Engineers who work for Mid-World, you are the best. And my daughter Susannah has never forgotten that you let her pull old Charlie’s whistle.”

But Engineer Bob said that if he couldn’t pilot Charlie, his days as a trainman were done. “I wouldn’t understand such a fine new diesel loco,” said Engineer Bob, “and it wouldn’t understand me.”

He was given a job cleaning the engines in the St. Louis yards, and Engineer Bob became Wiper Bob. Sometimes the other engineers who drove the fine new diesels would laugh at him. “Look at that old fool!” they said. “He cannot understand that the world has moved on!”

Sometimes, late at night, Engineer Bob would go to the far side of the rail yard, where Charlie the Choo-Choo stood on the rusty rails of the lonely siding which had become his home. Weeds had twined in his wheels; his headlight was rusty and dark. Engineer Bob always talked to Charlie, but Charlie replied less and less. Many nights he would not talk at all.

One night, a terrible idea came into Engineer Bob’s head. “Charlie, are you dying?” he asked, and in his smallest, gruffest voice, Charlie replied:Don’t ask me silly questions, I won’t play silly games, I’m just a simple choo-choo train And I’ll always be the same.Now that I can’t race along Beneath the bright blue sky I guess that I’ll just sit right here Until I finally die.Jake looked at the picture accompanying this not-exactly-unexpected turn of events for a long time. Rough drawing it might be, but it was still definitely a three-handkerchief job. Charlie looked old, beaten, and forgotten. Engineer Bob looked like he had lost his last friend… which, according to the story, he had. Jake could imagine children all over America blatting their heads off at this point, and it occurred to him that there were a lot of stories for lads with stuff like this in them, stuff that threw acid all over your emotions. Hansel and Gretel being turned out into the forest, Bambi’s mother getting scragged by a hunter, the death of Old Yeller. It was easy to hurt little kids, easy to make them cry, and this seemed to bring out a strangely sadistic streak in many story-tellers… including, it seemed, Beryl Evans.

But, Jake found, he was not saddened by Charlie’s relegation to the weedy wastelands at the outer edge of the Mid-World trainyards in St. Louis. Quite the opposite. Good, he thought. That’s the place for him. That’s the place, because he’s dangerous. Let him rot there, and don’t trust that tear in his eye-they say crocodiles cry, too.

He read the rest rapidly. It had a happy ending, of course, although it was undoubtedly that moment of despair on the edge of the trainyards which children remembered long after the happy ending had slipped their minds.

Mr. Martin, the President of The Mid-World Railway Company, came to St. Louis to check on the operation. His plan was to ride the Burlington Zephyr to Topeka, where his daughter was giving her first piano recital, that very afternoon. Only the Zephyr wouldn’t start. There was water in the diesel fuel, it seemed.

(Were you the one who watered the diesel, Engineer Bob? Jake wondered. I bet it was, you sly dog, you!)

All the other trains were out on their runs! What to do?

Someone tugged Mr. Martin’s arm. It was Wiper Bob, only he no longer looked like an engine-wiper. He had taken off his oil-stained dungarees and put on a clean pair of overalls. On his head was his old pillowtick engineer’s cap.

“Charlie’s is right over there, on that siding,” he said. “Charlie will make the run to Topeka, Mr. Martin. Charlie will get you there in time for your daughter’s piano recital.”

“That old steamer?” scoffed Mr. Briggs. “Charlie would still be fifty miles out of Topeka at sundown!”

“Charlie can do it,” Engineer Bob insisted. “Without a train to pull, I know he can! I have been cleaning his engine and his boiler in my spare time, you see.”

“We’ll give it a try,” said Mr. Martin. “I would be sorry to miss Susannah’s first recital!”

Charlie was all ready to go; Engineer Bob had filled his tender with fresh coal, and the firebox was so hot its sides were red. He helped Mr. Martin up into the cab and backed Charlie off the rusty, forgotten siding and onto the main track for the first time in years. Then, as he engaged Forward First, he pulled on the lanyard and Charlie gave his old brave cry: WHOOO-OOOOO!

All over St. Louis the children heard that cry, and ran out into their yards to watch the rusty old steam loco pass. “Look!” they cried. “It’s Charlie! Charlie the Choo-Choo is back! Hurrah!” They all waved, and as Charlie steamed out of town, gathering speed, he blew his own whistle, just as he had in the old days: WHOOOO-OOOOOOO!

Clickety-clack went Charlie’s wheels!

Chuffa-chuffa went the smoke from Charlie’s stack!

Brump-brump went the conveyor as it fed coal into the firebox!

Talk about zip! Talk about zowie! Golly gee, gosh, and wowie! Charlie had never gone so fast before! The countryside went whizzing by in a blur! They passed the cars on Route 41 as if they were standing still!

“Hoptedoodle!” cried Mr. Martin, waving his hat in the air. “This is some locomotive, Bob! I don’t know why we ever retired it! How do you keep the coal-conveyor loaded at this speed?”

Engineer Bob only smiled, because he knew Charlie was feeding himself. And, beneath the clickety-clack and the chuffa-chuffa and the brump-hrump, he could hear Charlie singing his old song in his low, gruff voice:Don’t ask me silly questions, I won’t play silly games, I’m just a simple choo-choo train And I’ll always be the same.I only want to race along Beneath the bright blue sky, And be a happy choo-choo train Until the day I die.Charlie got Mr. Martin to his daughter’s piano recital on time (of course), and Susannah was just tickled pink to see her old friend Charlie again (of course), and they all went back to St. Louis together with Susannah yanking hell out of the train-whistle the whole way. Mr. Martin got Charlie and Engineer Bob a gig pulling kids around the brand-new Mid-World Amusement Park and Fun Fair in California, andyou will find them there to this day, pulling laughing children hither and thither in that world of lights and music and good, wholesome fun. Engineer Bob’s hair is white, and Charlie doesn’t talk as much as he once did, but both of them still have plenty of zip and zowie, and every now and then the children hear Charlie singing his old song in his soft, gruff voice.

“Don’t ask me silly questions, I won’t play silly games,” Jake muttered, looking at the final picture. It showed Charlie the Choo-Choo pulling two bunting-decked passenger cars filled with happy children from the roller coaster to the Ferns wheel. Engineer Bob sat in the cab, pulling the whistle-cord and looking as happy as a pig in shit. Jake supposed Engineer Bob’s smile was supposed to convey supreme happiness, but to him it looked like the grin of a lunatic. Charlie and Engineer Bob both looked like lunatics… and the more Jake looked at the kids, the more he thought that their expressions looked like grimaces of terror. Let us off this train, those faces seemed to say. Please, just let us off this train alive.

And be a happy choo-choo train until the day I die.

Jake closed the book and looked at it thoughtfully. Then he opened it again and began to leaf through the pages, circling certain words and phrases that seemed to call out to him.

The Mid-World Railway Company… Engineer Bob… a small, gruff voice… WHOO-OOOO… the first real friend he’d had since his wife died, long ago, in New York… Mr. Martin… the world has moved on… Susannah…

He put his pen down. Why did these words and phrases call to him? The one about New York seemed obvious enough, but what about the others? For that matter, why this book? That he had been meant to buy it was beyond question. If he hadn’t had the money in his pocket, he felt sure he would have simply grabbed it and bolted from the store. But why? He felt like a compass needle. The needle knows nothing about magnetic north; it only knows it must point in a certain direction, like it or not.

The only thing Jake knew for sure was that he was very, very tired, and if he didn’t crawl into bed soon, he was going to fall asleep at his desk. He took off his shirt, then gazed down at the front of Charlie the Choo-Choo again.

That smile. He just didn’t trust that smile.

Not a bit.

23

SLEEP DIDN’T COME AS soon as Jake had hoped. The voices began to argue again about whether he was alive or dead, and they kept him awake. At last he sat up in bed with his eyes closed and his fisted hands planted against his temples.

Quit! he screamed at them. Just quit! You were gone all day, be gone again!

I would if he’d just admit I’m dead, one of the voices said sulkily.

I would if he’d just take a for God’s sake look around and admit I’m clearly alive, the other snapped back.

He was going to scream right out loud. There was no way to hold it back; he could feel it coming up his throat like vomit. He opened his eyes, saw his pants lying over the seat of his desk chair, and an idea occurred to him. He got out of bed, went to the chair, and felt in the right front pocket of the pants.

The silver key was still there, and the moment his fingers closed around it, the voices ceased.

Tell him, he thought, with no idea who the thought was for. Tell him to grab the key. The key makes the voices go.

He went back to bed and was asleep with the key clasped loosely in his hand three minutes after his head hit the pillow.

1

EDDIE WAS ALMOST ASLEEP when a voice spoke clearly in his ear: Tell him to grab the key. The key makes the voices go.

He sat bolt upright, looking around wildly. Susannah was sound asleep beside him; that voice had not been hers.

Nor anyone else’s, it seemed. They had been moving through the woods and along the path of the Beam for eight days now, and this evening they had camped in the deep cleft of a pocket valley. Close by on the left, a large stream roared brashly past, headed in the same direction as they were: southeast. To the right, firs rose up a steep slope of land. There were no intruders here; only Susannah asleep and Roland awake. He sat huddled beneath his blanket at the edge of the stream’s cut, staring out into the darkness.

Tell him to grab the key. The key makes the voices go.

Eddie hesitated for only a moment. Roland’s sanity was in the balance now, the balance was tipping the wrong way, and the worst part of it was this: no one knew it better than the man himself. At this point, Eddie was prepared to clutch at any straw.

He had been using a folded square of deerskin as a pillow. He reached beneath it and removed a bundle wrapped in a piece of hide. He walked over to Roland, and was disturbed to see that the gunslinger did not notice him until he was less than four steps from his unprotected back. There had been a time-and it was not so long ago-when Roland would have known Eddie was awake even before Eddie sat up. He would have heard the change in his breathing.

He was more alert than this back on the beach, when he was half-dead from the lobster-thing’s bite, Eddie thought grimly.

Roland at last turned his head and glanced at him. His eyes were bright with pain and weariness, but Eddie recognized these things as no more than a surface glitter. Beneath it, he sensed a growing confusion that would almost surely become madness if it continued to develop unchecked. Pity tugged at Eddie’s heart.

“Can’t sleep?” Roland asked. His voice was slow, almost drugged.

“I almost was, and then I woke up,” Eddie said. “Listen-”

“I think I’m getting ready to die.” Roland looked at Eddie. The bright shine left his eyes, and now looking into them was like staring into a pair of deep, dark wells that seemed to have no bottom. Eddie shuddered, more because of that empty stare than because of what Roland had said. “And do you know what I hope lies in the clearing where the path ends, Eddie?”

“Roland-”

“Silence,” Roland said. He exhaled a dusty sigh. “Just silence. That will be enough. An end to… this.”

He planted his fists against his temples, and Eddie thought: I’ve seen someone else do that, and not long ago. But who? Where?

It was ridiculous of course; he had seen no one but Roland and Susannah for almost two months now. But it felt true, all the same.

“Roland, I’ve been making something,” Eddie said.

Roland nodded. A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I know. What is it? Are you finally ready to tell?”

“I think it might be part of this ka-tet thing.”

The vacant look left Roland’s eyes. He gazed at Eddie thoughtfully but said nothing.

“Look.” Eddie began to unfold the piece of hide.

That won’t do any good! Henry’s voice suddenly brayed. It was so loud that Eddie actually flinched a little. It’s just a stupid piece of wood-carving! He’ll take one look and laugh at it! He’ll laugh at you! “Oh, lookit this!” he’ll say. “Did the sissy carve something?”

“Shut up,” Eddie muttered.

The gunslinger raised his eyebrows.

“Not you.”

Roland nodded, unsurprised. “Your brother comes to you often, doesn’t he, Eddie?”

For a moment Eddie only stared at him, his carving still hidden in the hide square. Then he smiled. It was not a very pleasant smile. “Not as often as he used to, Roland. Thank Christ for small favors.”

“Yes,” Roland said. “Too many voices weigh heavy on a man’s heart… What is it, Eddie? Show me, please.”

Eddie held up the chunk of ash. The key, almost complete, emerged from it like the head of a woman from the prow of a sailing ship… or the hilt of a sword from a chunk of stone. Eddie didn’t know how close he had come to duplicating the key-shape he had seen in the fire (and never would, he supposed, unless he found the right lock in which to try it), but he thought it was close. Of one thing he was quite sure: it was the best carving he had ever done. By far.

“By the gods, Eddie, it’s beautiful!” Roland said. The apathy was gone from his voice; he spoke in a tone of surprised reverence Eddie had never heard before. “Is it done? It’s not, is it?”

“No-not quite.” He ran his thumb into the third notch, and then over the s-shape at the end of the last notch. “There’s a little more to do on this notch, and the curve at the end isn’t right yet. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”

“This is your secret.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. Now if only I knew what it meant.”

Roland looked around. Eddie followed his gaze and saw Susannah. He found some relief in the fact that Roland had heard her first.

“What you boys doin up so late? Chewin the fat?” She saw the wooden key in Eddie’s hand and nodded. “I wondered when you were going to get around to showing that off. It’s good, you know. I don’t know what it’s for, but it’s damned good.”

“You don’t have any idea what door it might open?” Roland asked Eddie. “That was not part of your khef?”

“No-but it might be good for something even though it isn’t done.” He held the key out to Roland. “I want you to keep it for me.”

Roland didn’t move to take it. He regarded Eddie closely. “Why?”

“Because… well… because I think someone told me you should.”

“Who?”

Your boy, Eddie thought suddenly, and as soon as the thought came he knew it was true. It was your goddamned boy. But he didn’t want to say so. He didn’t want to mention the boy’s name at all. It might just set Roland off again.

“I don’t know. But I think you ought to give it a try.”

Roland reached slowly for the key. As his fingers touched it, a bright glimmer seemed to flash down its barrel, but it was gone so quickly that Eddie could not be sure he had seen it. It might have been only starlight.

Roland’s hand closed over the key growing out of the branch. For a moment his face showed nothing. Then his brow furrowed and his head cocked in a listening gesture.

“What is it?” Susannah asked. “Do you hear-”

“Shhhh!” The puzzlement on Roland’s face was slowly being replaced with wonder. He looked from Eddie to Susannah and then back to Eddie. His eyes were filling with some great emotion, as a pitcher fills with water when it is dipped in a spring.

“Roland?” Eddie asked uneasily. “Are you all right?”

Roland whispered something. Eddie couldn’t hear what it was.

Susannah looked scared. She glanced frantically at Eddie, as if to ask, What did you do to him?

Eddie took one of her hands in both of his own. “I think it’s all right.”

Roland’s hand was clamped so tightly on the chunk of wood that Eddie was momentarily afraid he might snap it in two, but the wood was strong and Eddie had carved thick. The gunslinger’s throat bulged; his Adam’s apple rose and fell as he struggled with speech. And suddenly he yelled at the sky in a fair, strong voice:

“GONE! THE VOICES ARE GONE!”

He looked back at them, and Eddie saw something he had never expected to see in his life-not even if that life stretched over a thousand years.

Roland of Gilead was weeping.

2

THE GUNSLINGER SLEPT SOUNDLY and dreamlessly that night for the first time in months, and he slept with the not-quite finished key clenched tightly in his hand.

3

IN ANOTHER WORLD, BUT beneath the shadow of the same ka-tet, Jake Chambers was having the most vivid dream of his life.

He was walking through the tangled remains of an ancient forest- a dead zone of fallen trees and scruffy, aggravating bushes that bit his ankles and tried to steal his sneakers. He came to a thin belt of younger trees (alders, he thought, or perhaps beeches-he was a city boy, and the only thing he knew for sure about trees was that some had leaves and some had needles) and discovered a path through them. He made his way along this, moving a little faster. There was a clearing of some sort up ahead.

He stopped once before reaching it, when he spied some sort of stone marker to his right. He left the path to look at it. There were letters carved into it, but they were so eroded he couldn’t make them out. At last he closed his eyes (he had never done this in a dream before) and let his fingers trace each letter, like a blind boy reading Braille. Each formed in the darkness behind his lids until they made a sentence which stood forth in an outline of blue light:

Sleeping in his bed, Jake drew his knees up against his chest. The hand holding the key was under his pillow, and now his fingers tightened their grip on it.

Mid-World, he thought, of course. St. Louis and Topeka and Oz and the World’s Fair and Charlie the Choo-Choo.

He opened his dreaming eyes and pressed on. The clearing behind the trees was paved with old cracked asphalt. A faded yellow circle had been painted in the middle. Jake realized it was a playground basketball court even before he saw the boy at the far end, standing at the foul line and shooting baskets with a dusty old Wilson ball. They popped in one after another, falling neatly through the netless hole. The basket jutted out from something that looked like a subway kiosk which had been shut up for the night. Its closed door was painted in alternating diagonal stripes of yellow and black. From behind it-or perhaps from below it-Jake could hear the steady rumble of powerful machinery. The sound was somehow disturbing. Scary.

Don’t step on the robots, the boy shooting the baskets said without turning around. I guess they’re all dead, but I wouldn’t take any chances, if I were you.

Jake looked around and saw a number of shattered mechanical devices lying around. One looked like a rat or mouse, another like a bat. A mechanical snake lay in two rusty pieces almost at his feet.

ARE you me? Jake asked, taking a step closer to die boy at the basket, but even before he turned around, Jake knew that wasn’t the case. The boy was bigger than Jake, and at least thirteen. His hair was darker, and when he looked at Jake, he saw that the stranger’s eyes were hazel. His own were blue.

What do you think? the strange boy asked, and bounce-passed the ball to Jake.

No, of course not, Jake said. He spoke apologetically. It’s just that I’ve been cut in two for the last three weeks or so. He dipped and shot from mid-court. The ball arched high and dropped silently through the hoop. He was delighted… but he discovered he was also afraid of what this strange boy might have to tell him.

I know, the boy said. It’s been a bitch for you, hasn’t it? He was wearing faded madras shorts and a yellow t-shirt that said NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN MID-WORLD. He had tied a green bandanna around his forehead to keep his hair out of his eyes. And things are going to get worse before they get better.

What is this place? Jake asked. And who are you?

It’s the Portal of the Bear… but it’s also Brooklyn.

That didn’t seem to make sense, and yet somehow it did. Jake told himself that things always seemed that way in dreams, but this didn’t really feel like a dream.

As for me, I don’t matter much, the boy said. He hooked the basketball over his shoulder. It rose, then dropped smoothly through the hoop. I’m supposed to guide you, that’s all. I’ll take you where you need to go, and I’ll show you what you need to see, but you have to be careful because I won’t know you. And strangers make Henry nervous. He can get mean when he’s nervous, and he’s bigger than you.

Who’s Henry? Jake asked.

Never mind. Just don’t let him notice you. All you have to do is hang out… and follow us. Then, when we leave…

The boy looked at Jake. There was both pity and fear in his eyes. Jake suddenly realized that the boy was starting to fade-lie could see the yellow and black slashes on the box right through the boy’s yellow t-shirt.

How will I find you? Jake was suddenly terrified that the boy would melt away completely before he could say everything Jake needed to hear.

No problem, the boy said. His voice had taken on a queer, chiming echo. Just take the subway to Co-Op City. You’ll find me.

No, I won’t! Jake cried. Co-Op City’s huge! There must be a hundred thousand people living there!

Now the boy was just a milky outline. Only his hazel eyes were still completely there, like the Cheshire cat’s grin in Alice. They regarded Jake with compassion and anxiety. No problem-o, he said. You found the key and the rose, didn’t you? You’ll find me the same way. This afternoon, Jake. Around three o’clock should be good. You’ll have to be careful, and you’ll have to be quick. He paused, a ghostly boy with an old basketball lying near one transparent foot. I have to go now… but it was good to meet you. You seem like a nice kid, and I’m riot surprised he loves you. Remember, there’s danger, though. He careful… and he quick.

Wait! Jake yelled, and run across the basketball court toward the disappearing boy. One of his feet struck a shattered robot that looked like a child’s toy tractor. He stumbled and fell to his knees, shredding his pants. He ignored the thin burn of pain. Wait! You have to tell me what all this is about! You have to tell me why these things are happening to me!

Because of the Beam, the boy who was now only a pair of floating eyes replied, and because of the Tower. In the end, all things, even the Beams, serve the Dark Tower. Did you think you would be any different?

Jake flailed and stumbled to his feet. Will I find him? Will I find the gunslinger?

I don’t know, the boy answered. His voice now seemed to come from a million miles away. I only know you must try. About that you have no choice.

The boy was gone. The basketball court in the woods was empty. The only sound was that faint rumble of machinery, and Jake didn’t like it. There was something wrong with that sound, and he thought that what was wrong with the machinery was affecting the rose, or vice-versa. It was all hooked together somehow.

He picked up the old, scuffed-up basketball and shot. It went neatly through the hoop… and disappeared.

A river, the strange boy’s voice sighed. It was like a puff of breeze. It came from nowhere and everywhere. The answer is a river.

4

JAKE WOKE IN THE first milky light of dawn, looking up at the ceiling of his room. He was thinking of the guy in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind-Aaron Deepneau, who’d been hanging around on Bleecker Street back when Bob Dylan only knew how to blow open G on his Hohner. Aaron Deepneau had given Jake a riddle.What can run but never walks, Has a mouth but never talks, Has a bed but never sleeps, Has a head but never weeps?Now he knew the answer. A river ran; a river had a mouth; a river had a bed; a river had a head. The boy had told him the answer. The boy in the dream.

And suddenly he thought of something else Deepneau had said: That’s only half the answer. Samson’s riddle is a double, my friend.

Jake glanced at his bedside clock and saw it was twenty past six. It was time to get moving if he wanted to be out of here before his parents woke up. There would be no school for him today; Jake thought that maybe, as far as he was concerned, school had been cancelled forever.

He threw back the bedclothes, swung his feet out onto the floor, and saw that there were scrapes on both knees. Fresh scrapes. He had bruised his left side yesterday when he slipped on the bricks and fell, and he had banged his head when he fainted near the rose, but nothing had happened to his knees.

“That happened in the dream,” Jake whispered, and found he wasn’t surprised at all. He began to dress swiftly.

5

IN THE BACK OF his closet, under a jumble of old laceless sneakers and a heap of Spiderman comic books, he found the packsack he had worn to grammar school. No one would be caught dead with a packsack at Piper-how too, too common, my death-and as Jake grabbed it, he felt a wave of powerful nostalgia for those old days when life had seemed so simple.

He stuffed a clean shirt, a clean pair of jeans, some underwear and socks into it, then added Riddle-De-Dum! and Charlie the Choo-Choo. He had put the key on his desk before foraging in the closet for his old pack, and the voices came back at once, but they were distant and muted. Besides, he felt sure he could make them go away completely by holding the key again, and that eased his mind.

Okay, he thought, looking into the pack. Even with the books added, there was plenty of room left. What else?

For a moment he thought there was nothing else… and then he knew.

6

His FATHER’s STUDY SMELLED of cigarettes and ambition.

It was dominated by a huge teakwood desk. Across the room, set into a wall otherwise lined with books, were three Mitsubishi television monitors. Each was tuned to one of the rival networks, and at night, when his father was in here, each played out its progression of prime-time images with the sound off.

The curtains were drawn, and Jake had to turn on the desk lamp in order to see. He felt nervous just being in here, even wearing sneakers. If his father should wake up and come in (and it was possible; no matter how late he went to bed or how much he drank, Elmer Chambers was a light sleeper and an early riser), he would be angry. At the very least it would make a clean getaway much tougher. The sooner he was out of here, the better Jake would feel.

The desk was locked, but his father had never made any secret of where he kept the key. Jake slid his fingers under the blotter and hooked it out. He opened the third drawer, reached past the hanging files, and touched cold metal.

A board creaked in the hall and he froze. Several seconds passed. When the creak didn’t come again, Jake pulled out the weapon his father kept for “home defense”-a.44 Ruger automatic. His father had shown this weapon to Jake with great pride on the day he had bought it-two years ago, that had been. He had been totally deaf to his wife’s nervous demands that he put it away before someone got hurt.

Jake found the button on the side that released the clip. It fell out into his hand with a metallic snak! sound that seemed very loud in the quiet apartment. He glanced nervously toward the door again, then turned his attention to the clip. It was fully loaded. He started to slide it back into the gun, and then took it out again. Keeping a loaded gun in a locked desk drawer was one thing; carrying one around New York City was quite another.

He stuffed the automatic down to the bottom of his pack, then felt behind the hanging files again. This time he brought out a box of shells, about half-full. He remembered his father had done some target shooting at the police range on First Avenue before losing interest.

The board creaked again. Jake wanted to get out of here.

He removed one of the shirts he’d packed, laid it on his father’s desk, and rolled up the clip and the box of.44 slugs in it. Then he replaced it in the pack and used the buckles to snug down the flap. He was about to leave when his eye fixed on the little pile of stationery sitting beside his father’s In/Out tray. The reflectorized Ray-Ban sunglasses his father liked to wear were folded on top of the stationery. He took a sheet of paper, and, after a moment’s thought, the sunglasses as well. He slipped the shades into his breast pocket. Then he removed the slim gold pen from its stand, and wrote Dear Dad and Mom beneath the letterhead.

He stopped, frowning at the salutation. What went below it? What, exactly, did he have to say? That he loved them? It was true, but it wasn’t enough-there were all sorts of other unpleasant truths stuck through that central one, like steel needles jabbed into a ball of yarn.

That he would miss them? He didn’t know if that was true or not, which was sort of horrible. That he hoped they would miss him?

He suddenly realized what the problem was. If he were planning to be gone just today, he would be able to write something. But he felt a near-certainty that it wasn’t just today, or this week, or this month, or this summer. He had an idea that when he walked out of the apartment this time, it would be for good.

He almost crumpled the sheet of paper, then changed his mind. He wrote: Please take care of yourselves. Love, J. That was pretty limp, but at least it was something.

Fine. Now will you stop pressing your luck and get out of here?

He did.

The apartment was almost dead still. He tiptoed across the living room, hearing only the sounds of his parents’ breathing: his mother’s soft little snores, his father’s more nasal respiration, where every indrawn breath ended in a slim high whistle. The refrigerator kicked on as he reached the entryway and he froze for a moment, his heart thumping hard in his chest. Then he was at the door. He unlocked it as quietly as he could, then stepped out and pulled it gently shut behind him.

A stone seemed to roll off his heart as the latch snicked, and a strong sense of anticipation seized him. He didn’t know what lay ahead, and he had reason to believe it would be dangerous, but he was eleven years old-too young to deny the exotic delight which suddenly filled him. There was a highway ahead-a hidden highway leading deep into some unknown land. There were secrets which might disclose themselves to him if he was clever… and if he was lucky. He had left his home in the long light of dawn, and what lay ahead was some great adventure.

If I stand, if I can be true, I’ll see the rose, he thought as he pushed the button for the elevator. I know it… and I’ll see him, too.

This thought filled him with an eagerness so great it was almost ecstasy.

Three minutes later he stepped out from beneath the awning which shaded the entrance to the building where he had lived all his life. He paused for a moment, then turned left. This decision did not feel random, and it wasn’t. He was moving southeast, along the path of the Beam, resuming his own interrupted quest for the Dark Tower.

7

TWO DAYS AFTER EDDIE had given Roland his unfinished key, the three travellers-hot, sweaty, tired, and out of sorts-pushed through a particularly tenacious tangle of bushes and second-growth trees and discovered what first appeared to be two faint paths, running in tandem beneath the interlacing branches of the old trees crowding close on either side. After a few moments of study, Eddie decided they weren’t just paths but the remains of a long-abandoned road. Bushes and stunted trees grew like untidy quills along what had been its crown. The grassy indentations were wheelruts, and either of them was wide enough to accommodate Susannah’s wheelchair.

“Hallelujah!” he cried. “Let’s drink to it!”

Roland nodded and unslung the waterskin he wore around his waist. He first handed it up to Susannah, who was riding in her sling on his back. Eddie’s key, now looped around Roland’s neck on a piece of rawhide, shifted beneath his shirt with each movement. She took a swallow and passed the skin to Eddie. He drank and then began to unfold her chair. Eddie had come to hate this bulky, balky contraption; it was like an iron anchor, always holding them back. Except for a broken spoke or two, it was still in fine condition. Eddie had days when he thought the goddam thing would outlast all of them. Now, however, it might be useful… for a while, at least.

Eddie helped Susannah out of the harness and placed her in the chair. She put her hands against the small of her back, stretched, and grimaced with pleasure. Both Eddie and Roland heard the small crackle her spine made as it stretched.

Up ahead, a large creature that looked like a badger crossed with a raccoon ambled out of the woods. It looked at them with its large, gold-rimmed eyes, twitched its sharp, whiskery snout as if to say Huh! Big deal!, then strolled the rest of the way across the road and disappeared again. Before it did, Eddie noted its tail-long and closely coiled, it looked like a fur-covered bedspring.

“What was that, Roland?”

“A billy-bumbler.”

“No good to eat?”

Roland shook his head. “Tough. Sour. I’d rather eat dog.”

“Have you?” Susannah asked. “Eaten dog, I mean?”

Roland nodded, but did not elaborate. Eddie found himself thinking of a line from an old Paul Newman movie: That’s right, lady-eaten em and lived like one.

Birds sang cheerily in the trees. A light breeze blew along the road. Eddie and Susannah turned their faces up to it gratefully, then looked at each other and smiled. Eddie was struck again by his gratitude for her-it was scary to have someone to love, but it was also very fine.

“Who made this road?” Eddie asked.

“People who have been gone a long time,” Roland said.

“The same ones who made the cups and dishes we found?” Susannah asked.

“No-not them. This used to be a coach-road, I imagine, and if it’s still here, after all these years of neglect, it must have been a great one indeed… perhaps the Great Road. If we dug down, I imagine we’d find the gravel undersurface, and maybe the drainage system, as well. As long as we’re here, let’s have a bite to eat.”

“Food!” Eddie cried. “Bring it on! Chicken Florentine! Polynesian shrimp! Veal lightly sauteed with mushrooms and-”

Susannah elbowed him. “Quit it, white boy.”

“I can’t help it if I’ve got a vivid imagination,” Eddie said cheerfully.

Roland slipped his purse off his shoulder, hunkered down, and began to put together a small noon meal of dried meat wrapped in olive-colored leaves. Eddie and Susannah had discovered that these leaves tasted a little like spinach, only much stronger.

Eddie wheeled Susannah over to him and Roland handed her three of what Eddie called “gunslinger burritos.” She began to eat.

When Eddie turned back, Roland was holding out three of the wrapped pieces of meat to him-and something else, as well. It was the chunk of ash with the key growing out of it. Roland had taken it off the rawhide string, which now lay in an open loop around his neck.

“Hey, you need that, don’t you?” Eddie asked.

“When I take it off, the voices return, but they’re very distant,” Roland said. “I can deal with them. Actually, I hear them even when I’m wearing it-like the voices of men who are speaking low over the next hill. I think that’s because the key is yet unfinished. You haven’t worked on it since you gave it to me.”

“Well… you were wearing it, and I didn’t want to…”

Roland said nothing, but his faded blue eyes regarded Eddie with their patient teacher’s look.

“All right,” Eddie said, “I’m afraid of fucking it up. Satisfied?”

“According to your brother, you fucked everything up… isn’t that right?” Susannah asked.

“Susannah Dean, Girl Psychologist. You missed your calling, sweetheart.”

Susannah wasn’t offended by the sarcasm. She lifted the waterskin with her elbow, like a redneck tipping a jug, and drank deeply. “It’s true, though, isn’t it?”

Eddie, who realized he hadn’t finished the slingshot, either-not yet, at least-shrugged.

“You have to finish it,” Roland said mildly. “I think the time is coming when you’ll have to put it to use.”

Eddie started to speak, then closed his mouth. It sounded easy when you said it right out like that, but neither of them really understood the bottom line. The bottom line was this: seventy per cent or eighty or even ninety-eight and a half just wouldn’t do. Not this time. And if he did screw up, he couldn’t just toss the thing over his shoulder and walk away. For one thing, he hadn’t seen another ash-tree since the day he had cut this particular piece of wood. But mostly the thing that was fucking him up was just this: it was all or nothing. If he messed up even a little, the key wouldn’t turn when they needed it to turn. And he was increasingly nervous about that little squiggle at the end. It looked simple, but if the curves weren’t exactly right…

It won’t work the way it is now, though; that much you do know.

He sighed, looking at the key. Yes, that much he did know. He would have to try to finish it. His fear of failure would make it even harder than it maybe had to be, but he would have to swallow the fear and try anyway. Maybe he could even bring it off. God knew he had brought off a lot in the weeks since Roland had entered his mind on a Delta jet bound into JFK Airport. That he was still alive and sane was an accomplishment in itself.

Eddie handed the key back to Roland. “Wear it for now,” he said. “I’ll go back to work when we stop for the night.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

Roland nodded, took the key, and began to re-knot the rawhide string. He worked slowly, but Eddie did not fail to notice how dexterously die remaining fingers on his right hand moved. The man was nothing if not adaptable.

“Something is going to happen, isn’t it?” Susannah asked suddenly.

Eddie glanced up at her. “What makes you say so?”

“I sleep with you, Eddie, and I know you dream every night now. Sometimes you talk, too. They don’t seem like nightmares, exactly, but it’s pretty clear that something is going on inside your head.”

“Yes. Something is. I just don’t know what.”

“Dreams are powerful,” Roland remarked. “You don’t remember the ones you’re having at all?”

Eddie hesitated. “A little, but they’re confused. I’m a kid again, I know that much. It’s after school. Henry and I are shooting hoops at the old Markey Avenue playground, where the Juvenile Court Building is now. I want Henry to take me to see a place over in Dutch Hill. An old house. The kids used to call it The Mansion, and everyone said it was haunted. Maybe it even was. It was creepy, I know that much. Real creepy.”

Eddie shook his head, remembering.

“I thought of The Mansion for the first time in years when we were in the bear’s clearing, and I put my head close to that weird box. I dunno-maybe that’s why I’m having the dream.”

“But you don’t think so,” Susannah said.

“No. I think whatever’s happening is a lot more complicated than just remembering stuff.”

“Did you and your brother actually go to this place?” Roland asked.

“Yeah-I talked him into it.”

“And did something happen?”

“No. But it was scary. We stood there and looked at it for a little while, and Henry teased me-saving he was going to make me go in and pick up a souvenir, stuff like that-but I knew he didn’t really mean it. He was as scared of the place as I was.”

“And that’s it?” Susannah asked. “You just dream of going to this place? The Mansion?”

“There’s a little more than that. Someone comes… and then just land of hangs out. I notice him in the dream, but just a little… like out of the corner of my eye, you know? Only I know we’re supposed to pretend we don’t know each other.”

“Was this someone really there that day?” Roland asked. He was watching Eddie intently, “Or is he only a player in this dream?”

“That was a long time ago. I couldn’t have been more than thirteen. How could I remember a thing like that for sure?”

Roland said nothing.

“Okay,” Eddie said at last. “Yeah. I think he was there that day. A kid who was either carrying a gym-bag or wearing a backpack, I can’t remember which. And sunglasses that were too big for his face. The ones with the mirror lenses.”

“Who was this person?” Roland asked.

Eddie was silent for a long time. He was holding the last of his burritos a la Roland in one hand, but he had lost his appetite. “I think it’s the kid you met at the way station,” he said at last. “I think your old friend Jake was hanging around, watching me and Henry on the afternoon we went over to Dutch Hill. I think he followed us. Because he hears the voices, just like you, Roland. And because he’s sharing my dreams, and I’m sharing his. I think that what I remember is what’s happening now, in Jake’s when. The kid is trying to come back here. And if the key isn’t done when he makes his move-or if it’s done wrong-he’s probably going to die.”

Roland said, “Maybe he has a key of his own. Is that possible?”

“Yeah, I think it is,” Eddie said, “but it isn’t enough.” He sighed and stuck the last burrito in his pocket for later. “And I don’t think he knows that."

8

THEY MOVED ALONG, ROLAND and Eddie trading off on Susannah’s wheelchair. They picked the left-hand wheelrut. The chair bumped and pitched, and every now and then Eddie and Roland had to lift it over the cobbles which stuck out of the dirt here and there like old teeth. They were still making faster, easier time than they had in a week, however. The ground was rising, and when Eddie looked over his shoulder he could see the forest sloping away in what looked like a series of gentle steps. Far to the northwest, he could see a ribbon of water spilling over a fractured rock face. It was, he realized with wonder, the place they had dubbed “the shooting gallery.” Now it was almost lost behind them in the haze of this dreaming summer afternoon.

“Whoa down, boy!” Susannah called sharply. Eddie faced forward again just in time to keep from pushing the wheelchair into Roland. The gunslinger had stopped and was peering into the tangled bushes at the left of the road.

“You keep that up, I’m gonna revoke your driver’s license,” Susannah said waspily.

Eddie ignored her. He was following Roland’s gaze. “What is it?”

“One way to find out.” He turned, hoisted Susannah from her chair, ~and planted her on his hip. “Let’s all take a look.”

“Put me down, big boy-I can make my way. Easier’n you boys, if you really want to know.”

As Roland gently lowered her to the grassy wheelrut, Eddie peered into the woods. The late light threw overlapping crosses of shadow, but he thought he saw what had caught Roland’s eye. It was a tall gray stone, almost completely hidden in a shag of vines and creepers.

Susannah slipped into the woods at the side of the road with eely sinuousness. Roland and Eddie followed.

“It’s a marker, isn’t it?” Susannah was propped on her hands studying die rectangular chunk of rock. It had once been straight, but now it leaned drunkenly to the right, like an old gravestone.

“Yes. Give me my knife, Eddie.”

Eddie handed it over, then hunkered next to Susannah as the gunslinger cut away the vines. As they fell, he could see eroded letters carved into the stone, and he knew what they said before Roland had uncovered even half of the inscription:

9

“WHAT DOES IT MEAN?” Susannah asked at last. Her voice was soft and awestruck; her eyes ceaselessly measured the gray stone plinth.

“It means that we’re nearing the end of this first stage.” Roland’s face was solemn and thoughtful as he handed his knife back to Eddie. “I think that we’ll keep to this old coach-road now-or rather, it will keep to us. It has taken up the path of the Beam. The woods will end soon. I expect a great change.”

“What is Mid-World?” Eddie asked.

“One of the large kingdoms which dominated the earth in the times before these. A kingdom of hope and knowledge and light-the sort of things we were trying to hold onto in my land before the darkness overtook us, as well. Some day if there’s time, I’ll tell you all the old stories… the ones I know, at least. They form a large tapestry, one which is beautiful but very sad.

“According to the old tales, a great city once stood at the edge of Mid-World-perhaps as great as your city of New York. It will be in ruins now, if it still exists at all. But there may be people… or monsters… or both. We’ll have to be on our guard.”

He reached out his two-fingered right hand and touched the inscription. “Mid-World,” he said in a low, meditative voice. “Who would have thought…” He trailed off.

“Well, there’s no help for it, is there?” Eddie asked.

The gunslinger shook his head. “No help.”

“Ka,” Susannah said suddenly, and they both looked at her.

10

THERE WERE TWO HOURS of daylight left, and so they moved on. The road continued southeast, along the path of the Beam, and two other overgrown roads-smaller ones-joined the one they were following. Along one side of the second were the mossy, tumbled remains of what must have once been an immense rock wall. Nearby, a dozen fat billy-bumblers sat upon the ruins, watching the pilgrims with their odd gold-ringed eyes. To Eddie they looked like a jury with hanging on its mind.

The road continued to grow wider and more clearly defined. Twice they passed the shells of long-deserted buildings. The second one, Roland said, might have been a windmill. Susannah said it looked haunted. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” the gunslinger replied. His matter-of-fact tone chilled both of them.

When darkness forced a halt, the trees were thinning and the breeze which had chased around tin-in all day became a light, warm wind. Ahead, the land continued to rise.

“We’ll come to the top of the ridge in a day or two,” Roland said. “Then we’ll see.”

“See what?” Susannah asked, but Roland only shrugged.

That night Eddie began to carve again, but with no real feeling of inspiration. The confidence and happiness he’d felt as the key first began to take shape had left him. His fingers felt clumsy and stupid. For the first time in months he thought longingly of how good it would be to have some heroin. Not a lot; he felt sure that a nickel bag and a rolled-up dollar bill would send him flying through this little carving project in no time flat.

“What are you smiling about, Eddie?” Roland asked. He was sitting on the other side of the campfire; the low, wind-driven flames danced capriciously between them.

“Was I smiling?”

“Yes.”

“I was just thinking about how stupid some people can be-you put them in a room with six doors, they’ll still walk into the walls. And then have the nerve to bitch about it.”

“If you’re afraid of what might be on the other side of the doors, maybe bouncing off the walls seems safer,” Susannah said.

Eddie nodded. “Maybe so.”

He worked slowly, trying to see the shapes in the wood-that little s-shape in particular. He discovered it had become very dim.

Please, God, help me not to fuck this up, he thought, but he was terribly afraid that he had already begun to do just that. At last he gave up, returned the key (which he had barely changed at all) to the gun-slinger, and curled up beneath one of the hides. Five minutes later, the dream about the boy and the old Markey Avenue playground had begun to unspool again.

11

JAKE STEPPED OUT OF his apartment building at about quarter of seven, which left him with over eight hours to kill. He considered taking the train out to Brooklyn right away, then decided it was a bad idea. A kid out of school was apt to attract more attention in the hinterlands than in the heart of a big city, and if he really had to search for the place and the boy he was supposed to meet there, he was cooked already.

No problem-o, the boy in the yellow T-shirt and green bandanna had said. You found the key and the rose, didn’t you? You’ll find me the same way.

Except Jake could no longer remember just how he had found the key and the rose. He could only remember the joy and the sense of surety which had filled his heart and head. He would just have to hope that would happen again. In the meantime, he’d keep moving. That was the best way to keep from being noticed in New York.

He walked most of the way to First Avenue, then headed back the way he had come, only sliding uptown little by little as he followed the pattern of the WALK lights (perhaps knowing, on some deep level, that even they served the Beam). Around ten o’clock he found himself in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue. He was hot, tired, and depressed. He wanted a soda, but he thought he ought to hold onto what little money he had for as long as he could. He’d taken every cent out of the box he kept by his bed, but it only amounted to eight dollars, give or take a few cents.

A group of school-kids were lining up for a tour. Public school, Jake was almost sure-they were dressed as casually as he was. No blazers from Paul Stuart, no ties, no jumpers, no simple little skirts that cost a hundred and twenty-five bucks at places like Miss So Pretty or Tweenity. This crowd was Kmart all the way. On impulse, Jake stood at the end of the line and followed them into the museum.

The tour took an hour and fifteen minutes. Jake enjoyed it. The museum was quiet. Even better, it was air-conditioned. And the pictures were nice. He was particularly fascinated by a small group of Frederick Remington’s Old West paintings and a large picture by Thomas Hart Benton that showed a steam locomotive charging across the great plains toward Chicago while beefy farmers in bib overalls and straw hats stood in their fields and watched. He wasn’t noticed by either of the teachers with the group until the very end. Then a pretty black woman in a severe blue suit tapped him on the shoulder and asked who he was.

Jake hadn’t seen her coming, and for a moment his mind froze. Without thinking about what he was doing, he reached into his pocket and closed his hand around the silver key. His mind cleared immediately, and he felt calm again.

“My group is upstairs,” he said, smiling guiltily. “We’re supposed to be looking at a bunch of modern art, but I like the stuff down here a lot better, because they’re real pictures. So I sort of… you know…”

“Snuck away?” the teacher suggested. The comers of her lips twitched in a suppressed smile.

“Well, I’d rather think of it as French leave.” These words simply popped out of his mouth.

The students now staring at Jake only looked puzzled, but this time the teacher actually laughed. “Either yon don’t know or have forgotten,” she said, “but in the French Foreign Legion they used to shoot deserters. I suggest you rejoin your class at once, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. They’ll be almost done now, anyway.”

“What school is it?”

“Markey Academy,” Jake said. This also just popped out.

He went upstairs, listening to the disembodied echo of foot-falls and low voices in the great space of the rotunda and wondering why he had said that. He had never heard of a place called Markey Academy in his life.

12

HE WAITED AWHILE IN the upstairs lobby, then noticed a guard looking at him with growing curiosity and decided it wouldn’t be wise to wait any longer-he would just have to hope the class he had joined briefly was gone.

He looked at his wristwatch, put an expression on his face that he hoped looked like Gosh! Look how late it’s getting!, and trotted back downstairs. The class-and the pretty black teacher who had laughed at the idea of French leave-was gone, and Jake decided it might be a good idea to get gone himself. He would walk awhile longer-slowly, in deference to the heat-and catch a subway.

He stopped at a hot-dog stand on the comer of Broadway and Forty-second, trading in a little of his meager cash supply for a sweet sausage and a Nehi. He sat on the steps of a bank building to eat his lunch, and that turned out to be a bad mistake.

A cop came walking toward him, twirling his nightstick in a complex series of maneuvers. He seemed to be paying attention to nothing but this, but when he came abreast of Jake he abruptly shoved his stick back into his loop and turned to him.

“Say-hey, big guy,” he said. “No school today?”

Jake had been wolfing his sausage, but the last bite abruptly stuck in his throat. This was a lousy piece of luck… if luck was all it was. They were in Times Square, sleaze capital of America; there were pushers, junkies, whores, and chicken-chasers everywhere… but this cop was ignoring them in favor of him.

Jake swallowed with an effort, then said, “It’s finals week at my school. I only had one test today. Then I could leave.” He paused, not liking the bright, searching look in the cop’s eyes. “I had permission,” he concluded uneasily.

“Uh-huh. Can I see some ID?”

Juke’s heart sank. Had his mother and father already called the cops? He supposed that, after yesterday’s adventure, that was pretty likely. Under ordinary circumstances, the NYPD wouldn’t take much notice of another missing kid, especially one that had been gone only half a day, but his father was a big deal at the Network, and he prided himself on the number of strings he could pull. Jake doubted if this cop had his picture… but he might very well have his name.

“Well,” Jake said reluctantly, “I’ve got my student discount card from Mid-World Lanes, but that’s about all.”

“Mid-World Lanes? Never heard of it. Where’s that? Queens?”

“Mid-Town, I mean,” Jake thought. God, this was going north instead of south… and fast. “You know? On Thirty-third?”

“Uh-huh. That’ll do fine.” The cop held out his hand.

A black man with dreadlocks spilling over the shoulders of his canary-yellow suit glanced over. “Bussim, ossifer!” this apparition said cheerfully. “Bussiz lil whitebread ass! Do yo duty, now!”

“Shut up and get in the wind, Eli,” the cop said without looking around.

Eli laughed, exposing several gold teeth, and moved along.

“Why don’t you ask him for some ID?” Jake asked.

“Because right now I’m asking you. Snap it up, son.”

The cop either had his name or had sensed something wrong about him-which wasn’t so surprising, maybe, since he was the only white in the area who wasn’t obviously trolling. Either way, it came to the same: sitting down here to eat his lunch had been dumb. But his feet had hurt, and he’d been hungry, dammit-hungry.

You’re not going to stop me, Jake thought. / can’t let you stop me. There’s someone I’m supposed to meet this afternoon in Brooklyn… and I’m going to be there.

Instead of reaching for his wallet, he reached into his front pocket and brought out the key. He held it up to the policeman; the late-morning sunshine bounced little coins of reflected light onto the man’s cheeks and forehead. His eyes widened.

“Heyy!” he breathed. “What you got there, kid?”

He reached for it, and Jake pulled the key back a little. The reflected circles of light danced hypnotically on the cop’s face. “You don’t need to take it,” Jake said. “You can read my name without doing that, can’t you?”

“Yes, sure.”

The curiosity had left the cop’s face. He looked only at the key. His gaze was wide and fixed, but not quite empty. Jake read both amazement and unexpected happiness in his look. That’s me, Jake thought, just spreading joy and goodwill wherever I go. The question is, what do I do now?

A young woman (probably not u librarian, judging from the green silk hotpants and see-through blouse she was wearing) came wiggle-wobbling up the sidewalk on a pair of purple fuck-me shoes with three-inch heels. She glanced first at the cop, then at Jake to see what the cop was looking at. When she got a good look, she stopped cold. One of her hands drifted up and touched her throat. A man bumped into her and told her to watch where the damn-hell she was going. The young woman who was probably not a librarian took no notice whatever. Now Jake saw that four or five other people had stopped as well. All were staring at the key. They were gathering as people sometimes will around a very good three-card-monte dealer plying his trade on a streetcorner.

You’re doing a great job of being inconspicuous, he thought. Oh yeah. He glanced over the cop’s shoulder, and his eye caught a sign on the far side of the street. Denby’s Discount Drug, it said.

“My name’s Tom Denby,” he told the cop. “It says so right here on my discount bowling card-right?”

“Right, right,” the cop breathed. He had lost all interest in Jake; he was only interested in the key. The little coins of reflected light bounced and spun on his face.

“And you’re not looking for anybody named Tom Denby, are you?”

“No,” the cop said. “Never heard of him.”

Now there were at least half a dozen people gathered around the cop, all of them staring with silent wonder at the silver key in Jake’s hand.

“So I can go, can’t I?”

“Huh? Oh! Oh, sure-go, for your father’s sake!”

“Thanks,” Jake said, but for a moment he wasn’t sure how to go. He was hemmed in by a silent crowd of zombies, and more were joining it all the time. They were only coming to see what the deal was, he realized, but the ones who saw the key just stopped dead and stared.

He got to his feet and backed slowly up the wide bank steps, holding the key out in front of him like a lion-tamer with a chair. When he got to the wide concrete plaza at the top, he stuffed it back into his pants pockets, turned, and fled.

He stopped just once on the far side of the plaza, and looked back. The small group of people around the place where he had been standing was coming slowly back to life. They looked around at each other with dazed expressions, then walked on. The cop glanced vacantly to his left, to his right, and then straight up at the sky, as if trying to remember how he had gotten here and what he had been meaning to do. Jake had seen enough. It was time to find a subway station and get his ass over to Brooklyn before anything else weird could happen.

13

AT QUARTER OF TWO that afternoon he walked slowly up the steps of the subway station and stood on the corner of Castle and Brooklyn Avenues, looking at the sandstone towers of Co-Op City. He waited for that feeling of sureness and direction-that feeling that was like being able to remember forward in time-to overtake him. It didn’t come. Nothing came. He was just a kid standing on a hot Brooklyn streetcorner with his short shadow lying at his feet like a tired pet.

Well, I’m here.., now what do I do?

Jake discovered he didn’t have the slightest idea.

14

ROLAND’s SMALL BAND OF travellers reached the crest of the long, gentle hill they had been climbing and stood looking southeast. For a long time none of them spoke. Susannah opened her mouth twice, then closed it again. For the first time in her life as a woman, she was completely speechless.

Before them, an almost endless plain dozed in the long golden light of a summer’s afternoon. The grass was lush, emerald green, and very high. Groves of trees with long, slender trunks and wide, spreading tops dotted the plain. Susannah had once seen similar trees, she thought, in a travelogue film about Australia.

The road they had been following swooped down the far side of the hill and then ran straight as a string into the southeast, a bright white lane cutting through the grass. To the west, some miles off, she could see a herd of large animals grazing peacefully. They looked like buffalo. To the east, the last of the forest made a curved peninsula into the grassland. This incursion was a dark, tangled shape that looked like a forearm with a cocked fist at the end.

That was the direction, she realized, in which all the creeks and streams they had encountered had been flowing. They were tributaries of the vast river that emerged from that jutting arm of forest and flowed, placid and dreaming under the summer sun, toward the eastern edge of the world. It was wide, that river-perhaps two miles from bank to bank.

And she could see the city.

It lay dead ahead, a misty collection of spires and towers rising above the far edge of the horizon. Those airy ramparts might have been a hundred miles away, or two hundred, or four hundred. The air of this world seemed to be totally clear, and that made judging distances a fool’s game. All she knew for sure was that the sight of those dim towers filled her with silent wonder… and a drop, aching homesickness for New York. She thought, I believe I’d do most anything just to see the Manhattan skyline from the Triborough Bridge again.

Then she had to smile, because that wasn’t the truth. The truth was that she wouldn’t trade Roland’s world for anything. Its silent mystery and empty spaces were intoxicating. And her lover was here. In New York-the New York of her own time, at least-they would have been objects of scorn and anger, the butt of every idiot’s crude, cruel jokes: a black woman of twenty-six and her whitebread lover who was three years younger and who had a tendency to talk like dis and dat when he got excited. Her whitebread lover who had been carrying a heavy monkey on his back only eight months before. Here, there was no one to jeer or laugh. Here, no one was pointing a finger. Here, there were only Roland, Eddie, and herself, the world’s last three gunslingers.

She took Eddie’s hand and felt it close over hers, warm and reassuring.

Roland pointed. “That must be the Send River,” he said in a low voice. “I never thought to see it in my life… wasn’t even sure it was real, like the Guardians.”

“It’s so lovely,” Susannah murmured. She was unable to take her eyes from the vast landscape before her, dreaming richly in the cradle of summer. She found her eyes tracing the shadows of the trees, which trailed across the plain for what seemed miles as the sun sank toward the horizon. “It’s the way our Great Plains must have looked before they were settled-even before the Indians came.” She raised her free hand and pointed toward the place where the Great Road narrowed to a point. “There’s your city,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“It looks okay,” Eddie said. “Is that possible, Roland? Could it still be pretty much intact. Did the old-timers build that well?”

“Anything is possible in these times,” Roland said, but he sounded doubtful. “You shouldn’t get your hopes up, though, Eddie.”

“Huh? No.” But Eddie’s hopes were up. That dimly sketched skyline had awakened homesickness in Susannah’s heart; in Eddie’s it kindled a sudden blaze of supposition. If the city was still there-and it clearly was-it might still be populated, and maybe not just by the subhuman things Roland had met under the mountains, either. The city-dwellers might be

(Americans, Eddie’s subconscious whispered)

intelligent and helpful; they might, in fact, spell the difference between success and failure for the quest of the pilgrims… or even between life and death. In Eddie’s mind a vision (partly cribbed from movies like The Last Starfighter and The Dark Crystal) gleamed brightly: a council of gnarled but dignified City Elders who would serve them a whopping meal drawn from the unspoiled stores of the city (or perhaps from special gardens cradled within environmental bubbles) and who would, as he and Roland and Susannah ate themselves silly, explain exactly what lay ahead and what it all meant. Their parting gift to the wayfarers would be an AAA-approved Tour Guide map with the best route to the Dark Tower marked in red.

Eddie did not know the phrase deus ex machina, but he knew-had now grown up enough to know-that such wise and kindly folk lived mostly in comic books and B-movies. The idea was intoxicating, all the same: an enclave of civilization in this dangerous, mostly empty world; wise old elf-men who would tell them just what the fuck it was they were supposed to be doing. And the fabulous shapes of the city disclosed in that hazy skyline made the idea seem at least possible. Even if the city was totally deserted, the population wiped out by some long-ago plague or outbreak of chemical warfare, it might still serve them as a kind of giant toolbox-a huge Army-Navy Surplus Store where they could outfit themselves for the hard passages Eddie was sure must lie ahead. Besides, he was a city boy, born and bred, and the sight of all those tall towers just naturally got him up.

“All right!” he said, almost laughing out loud in his excitement. “Hey-ho, let’s go! Bring on those wise fuckin elves!”

Susannah looked at him, puzzled but smiling. “What you ravin about, white boy?”

“Nothing. Never mind. I just want to get moving. What do you say, Roland? Want to-”

But something on Roland’s face or just beneath it-some lost, dreaming thing-caused him to fall silent and put one arm around Susannah’s shoulders, as if to protect her.

15

AFTER ONE BRIEF, DISMISSIVE glance at the city skyline, Roland’s gaze had been caught by something a good deal closer to their current position, something that filled him with disquiet and foreboding. He had seen such things before, and the last time he’d come across one, Jake had been with him. He remembered how they had finally come out of the desert, the trail of the man in black leading them through the foothills and toward the mountains. Hard going, it had been, but at least there had been water again. And grass.

One night he had awakened to find Jake gone. He had heard strangled, desperate cries coming from a willow-grove hard by a narrow trickle of stream. By the time he had fought his way through to the clearing at the center of the grove, the boy’s cries had ceased. Roland had found him standing in a place exactly like the one which lay below and ahead. A place of stones; a place of sacrifice; a place where an Oracle lived… and spoke when it was forced to… and killed whenever it could.

“Roland?” Eddie asked. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Do you see that?” Roland pointed. “It’s a speaking ring. The shapes you see are tall standing stones.” He found himself staring at Eddie, whom he had first met in the frightening but wonderful air-carriage of that strange other world where the gunslingers wore blue uniforms and there was an endless supply of sugar, paper, and wonderful drugs like astin. Some strange expression-some foreknowledge-was dawning on Eddie’s face. The bright hope which had lit his eyes as he surveyed the city whiffed out, leaving him with a look both gray and bleak. It was the expression of a man studying the gallows on which he will soon be hanged.

First Jake, and now Eddie, the gunslinger thought. The wheel which turns our lives is remorseless; always it comes around to the same place again.

“Oh shit,” Eddie said. His voice was dry and scared. “I think that’s the place where the kid is going to try and come through.”

The gunslinger nodded. “Very likely. They’re thin places, and they’re also attractive places. I followed him to such a place once before. The Oracle that kept there came very close to killing him.”

“How do you know this?” Susannah asked Eddie. “Was it a dream?”

He only shook his head. “I don’t know. But the minute Roland pointed that goddamn place out…” He broke off and looked at the gunslinger. “We have to get there, just as fast as we can.” Eddie sounded both frantic and fearful.

“Is it going to happen today?” Roland asked. “Tonight?”

Eddie shook his head again, and licked his lips. “I don’t know that, either. Not for sure. Tonight? I don’t think so. Time… it isn’t the same over here as it is where the kid is. It goes slower in his where and when. Maybe tomorrow.” He had been battling panic, but now it broke free. He turned and grabbed Roland’s shirt with his cold, sweating fingers. “But I’m supposed to finish the key, and I haven’t, and I’m supposed to do something else, and I don’t have a clue about what it is. And if the kid dies, it’ll be my fault!”

The gunslinger locked his own hands over Eddie’s and pulled them away from his shirt. “Get control of yourself.”

“Roland, don’t you understand-”

“I understand that whining and puling won’t solve your problem. I understand that you have forgotten the face of your father.”

“Quit that bullshit! I don’t care dick about my father!” Eddie shouted hysterically, and Roland hit him across the face. His hand made a sound like a breaking branch.

Eddie’s head rocked back; his eyes widened with shock. He stared at the gunslinger, then slowly raised his hand to touch the reddening handprint on his cheek. “You bastard!” he whispered. His hand dropped to the butt of the revolver he still wore on his left hip. Susannah tried to put her own hands over it; Eddie pushed them away.

And now I must teach again, Roland thought, only this time I teach for my own life, I think, as well as for his.

Somewhere in the distance a crow hailed its harsh cry into the stillness, and Roland thought for a moment of his hawk, David. Now Eddie was his hawk… and like David, he would not scruple to tear out his eye if he gave so much as a single inch.

Or his throat.

“Will you shoot me? Is that how you’d have it end, Eddie?”

“Man, I’m so fucking tired of your jive,” Eddie said. His eyes were blurred with tears and fury.

“You haven’t finished the key, but not because you are afraid to finish. You’re afraid of finding you can’t finish. You’re afraid to go down to where the stones stand, but not because you’re afraid of what may come once you enter the circle. You’re afraid of what may not come. You’re not afraid of the great world, Eddie, but of the small one inside yourself. You haven’t forgotten the face of your father. So do it. Shoot me if you dare. I’m tired of watching you blubber.”

“Stop it!” Susannah screamed at him. “Can’t you see he’ll do it? Can’t you see you’re forcing him to do it?”

Roland cut his eyes toward her. “I’m forcing him to decide.” He looked back at Eddie, and his deeply lined face was stem. “You have come from the shadow of the heroin and the shadow of your brother, my friend. Come from the shadow of yourself, if you dare. Come now. Come out or shoot me and have done with it.”

For a moment he thought Eddie was going to do just that, and it would all end right here, on this high ridge, beneath a cloudless summer sky with the spires of the city glimmering on the horizon like blue ghosts. Then Eddie’s cheek began to twitch. The firm line of his lips softened and began to tremble. His hand fell from the sandalwood butt of Roland’s gun. His chest hitched once… twice… three times. His mouth opened and all his despair and terror came out in one groaning cry as he blundered toward the gunslinger.

“I’m afraid, you numb fuck! Don’t you understand that? Roland, I’m afraid!”

His feet tangled together, He fell forward. Roland caught him and held him close, smelling the sweat and dirt on his skin, smelling his tears and terror.

The gunslinger embraced him for a moment, then turned him toward Susannah. Eddie dropped to his knees beside her chair, his head hanging wearily. She put a hand on the back of his neck, pressing his head against her thigh, and said bitterly to Roland, “Sometimes I hate you, big white man.”

Roland placed the heels of his hands against his forehead and pressed hard. “Sometimes I hate myself.”

“Don’t ever stop you, though, do it?”

Roland didn’t reply. He looked at Eddie, who lay with his cheek pressed against Susannah’s thigh and his eyes tightly shut. His face was a study in misery. Roland fought away the dragging weariness that made him want to leave the rest of this charming discussion for another day. If Eddie was right, there was no other day. Jake was almost ready to make his move. Eddie had been chosen to midwife the boy into this world. If he wasn’t prepared to do that, Jake would die at the point of entry, as surely as an infant must strangle if the mother-root is tangled about its neck when the contractions begin,

“Stand up, Eddie.”

For a moment he thought Eddie would simply go on crouching there and hiding his face against the woman’s leg. If so, everything was lost… and that was ka, too. Then, slowly, Eddie got to his feet. He stood there with everything-hands, shoulders, head, hair-hanging, not good, but he was up, and that was a start.

“Look at me.”

Susannah stirred uneasily, but this time she said nothing.

Slowly, Eddie raised his head and brushed the hair out of his eyes with a trembling hand.

“This is for you. I was wrong to take it at all, no matter how deep my pain.” Roland curled his hand around the rawhide strip and yanked, snapping it. He held the key out to Eddie. Eddie reached for it like a man in a dream, but Roland did not immediately open his hand. “Will you try to do what needs to be done?”

“Yes.” His voice was almost inaudible.

“Do you have something to tell me?”

“I’m sorry I’m afraid.” There was something terrible in Eddie’s voice, something which hurt Roland’s heart, and he supposed, he knew what it was: here was the last of Eddie’s childhood, expiring painfully among the three of them. It could not be seen, but Roland could hear its weakening cries. He tried to make himself deaf to them.

Something else I’ve done in the name of the Tower. My score grows ever longer, and the day when it will all have to be totted up, like a longtime drunkard’s bill in an alehouse, draws ever nearer. How will I ever pay?

“I don’t want your apology, least of all for being afraid,” he said.

“Without fear, what would we be? Mad dogs with foam on our muzzles and shit drying on our hocks.”

“What do you want, then?” Eddie cried. “You’ve taken everything else - everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to you! So what else do you want from me?”

Roland held the key which was their half of Jake Chambers’s salvation locked in his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie’s, and the sun shone on the green expanse of plain and the blue-gray reach of the Send River, and somewhere in the distance the crow hailed again across the golden leagues of this fading summer afternoon.

After a while, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean’s eyes.

Roland nodded.

“I have forgotten the face…” Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. Looked up at the gunslinger once more. The thing which had been dying among them had moved on now - Roland knew it. That thing was gone. Just like that. Here, on this sunny wind-swept ridge at the edge of everything, it had gone forever. “I have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger… and I cry your pardon.”

Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka had decreed must carry it. “Speak not so, gunslinger,” he said in the High Speech. “Your father sees you very well… loves you very well… and so do I.”

Eddie closed his own hand over the key and turned away with his tears still drying on his face. “Let’s go,” he said, and they began to move down the long hill toward the plain which stretched beyond.

16

JAKE WALKED SLOWLY ALONG Castle Avenue, past pizza shops and bars and bodegas where old women with suspicious faces poked the potatoes and squeezed the tomatoes. The straps of his pack had chafed the skin beneath his arms, and his feet hurt. He passed beneath a digital thermometer which announced it was eighty-five. It felt more like a hundred and five to Jake.

Up ahead, a police car turned onto the Avenue. Jake at once became extremely interested in a display of gardening supplies in the window of a hardware store. He watched the reflection of the blue-and-white pass in the window and didn’t move until it was gone.

Hey, Jake, old buddy-where, exactly, are you going?

He hadn’t the slightest idea. He felt positive that the boy he was looking for-the boy in the green bandanna and the yellow T-shirt that said NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN MID-WORLD-was somewhere close by, but so what? To Jake he was still nothing but a needle hiding in the haystack which was Brooklyn.

He passed an alley which had been decorated with a tangle of spray-painted graffiti. Mostly they were names-EL TIANTE 91, SPEEDY GONZALES, MOTORVAN MIKE-but a few mottos and words to the wise had been dropped in here and there, and Jake’s eyes fixed on two of these.

had been written across the bricks in spray-paint which had weathered to the same dusky-pink shade of the rose which grew in the vacant lot where Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli had once stood. Below it, in a blue so dark it was almost black, someone had spray-painted this oddity:

What does that mean? Jake wondered. He didn’t know-something from the Bible, maybe-but it held like the eye of a snake is reputed to hold a bird. At last he walked on, slowly and thoughtfully. It was almost two-thirty, and his shadow was beginning to grow longer.

Just ahead, he saw an old man walking down the street, keeping to the shade as much as possible and leaning on a gnarled cane. Behind the thick glasses he wore, his brown eyes swam like oversized eggs.

“I cry your pardon, sir,” Jake said without thinking or even really hearing himself.

The old man turned to look at him, blinking in surprise and fear. “Liff me alone, boy,” he said. He raised his walking-stick and brandished it clumsily in Jake’s direction.

“Would you know if there’s a place called Markey Academy anyplace around here, sir?” This was utter desperation, but it was the only thing he could think to ask.

The old man slowly lowered his stick-it was the sir that had done it. He looked at Jake with the slightly lunatic interest of the old and almost senile. “How come you not in school, boy?”

Jake smiled wearily. This one was getting very old. “Finals Week. I came down here to look up an old friend of mine who goes to Markey Academy, that’s all. Sorry to have bothered you.”

He stepped around the old man (hoping he wouldn’t decide to whop him one across the ass with his cane just for good luck) and was almost down to the corner when the old man yelled: “Boy! Boyyyyy!”

Jake turned around.

“There is no Markey Akidimy down here,” the old man said. “Twenty-two years I’m living here, so I should know. Markey Avenue, yes, but no Markey Akidimy.”

Jake’s stomach cramped with sudden excitement. He took a step back toward the old, man, who at once raised his cane into a defensive position again. Jake stopped at once, leaving a twenty-foot safety zone between them. “Where’s Markey Avenue, sir? Can you tell me that?”

“Of gorse,” the old man said. “Didn’t I just say I’m livink here twenty-two years? Two blogs down. Turn left at the Majestic Theatre. But I’m tellink you now, there iss no Markey Akidimy.”

“Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

Jake turned around and looked up Castle Avenue. Yes-he could see the unmistakable shape of a movie marquee jutting out over the sidewalk a couple of blocks up. He started to run toward it, then decided that might attract attention and slowed down to a fast walk.

The old man watched him go. “Sir!” he said to himself in a tone of mild amazement. “Sir, yet!”

He chuckled rustily and moved on.

17

ROLAND’s BAND STOPPED AT dusk. The gunslinger dug a shallow pit and lit a fire. They didn’t need it for cooking purposes, but they needed it, nonetheless. Eddie needed it. If he was going to finish his carving, he would need light to work by.

The gunslinger looked around and saw Susannah, a dark silhouette against the fading aquamarine sky, but he didn’t see Eddie.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“Down the road apiece. You leave him alone now, Roland-you’ve done enough.”

Roland nodded, bent over the firepit, and struck at a piece of flint with a worn steel bar. Soon the kindling he had gathered was blazing. He added small sticks, one by one, and waited for Eddie to return.

18

HALF A MILE BACK the way they had come, Eddie sat cross-legged in the middle of the Great Road with his unfinished key in one hand, watching the sky. He glanced down the road, saw the spark of the fire, and knew exactly what Roland was doing… and why. Then he turned his gaze to the sky again. He had never felt so lonely or so afraid.

The sky was huge-he could not remember ever seeing so much uninterrupted space, so much pure emptiness. It made him feel very small, and he supposed there was nothing at all wrong with that. In the scheme of things, he was very small.

The boy was close now. He thought he knew where Jake was and what he was about to do, and it filled him with silent wonder. Susannah had come from 1963. Eddie had come from 1987. Between them… Jake. Trying to come over. Trying to be born.

I met him, Eddie thought. I must have met him, and I think I remember… sort of. It was just before Henry went into the Army, right? He was taking courses at Brooklyn Vocational Institute, and he was heavily into black-black jeans, black motorcycle boots with steel caps, black T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Henry’s James Dean look. Smoking Area Chic. I used to think that, but I never said it out loud, because I didn’t want him pissed at me.

He realized that what he had been waiting for had happened while he was thinking: Old Star had come out. In fifteen minutes, maybe less, it would be joined by a whole galaxy of alien jewelry, but for now it gleamed alone in the ungathered darkness.

Eddie slowly held up the key until Old Star gleamed within its wide central notch. And then he recited the old formula of his world, the one his mother had taught him as she knelt beside him at the bedroom window, both of them looking out at the evening star which rode the oncoming darkness above the rooftops and fire-escapes of Brooklyn: “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight; wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”

Old Star glowed in the notch of the key, a diamond caught in ash.

“Help me find some guts,” Eddie said. “That’s my wish. Help me find the guts to try and finish this damned thing.”

He sat there a moment longer, then got to his feet and walked slowly back to camp. He sat down as close to the fire as he could get, took the gunslinger’s knife without a word to either him or Susannah, and began to work. Tiny, curling slivers of wood rolled up from the s-shape at the end of the key. Eddie worked fast, turning the key this way and that, occasionally closing his eyes and letting his thumb slip along the mild curves. He tried not to think about what might happen if the shape were to go wrong-that would freeze him for sure.

Roland and Susannah sat behind him, watching silently. At last Eddie put the knife aside. His face was running with sweat. “This kid of yours,” he said. “This Jake. He must be a gutty brat.”

“He was brave under the mountains,” Roland said. “He was afraid, but never gave an inch.”

“I wish I could be that way.”

Roland shrugged. “At Balazar’s you fought well even though they had taken your clothes. It’s very hard for a man to fight naked, but you did it.”

Eddie tried to remember the shootout in the nightclub, but it was just a blur in his mind-smoke, noise, and light shining through one wall in confused, intersecting rays. He thought that wall had been torn apart by automatic-weapons fire, but couldn’t remember for sure.

He held the key up so its notches were sharply outlined against the flames. He held it that way for a long time, looking mostly at the s-shape. It looked exactly as he remembered it from his dream and from the momentary vision he had seen in the fire… but it didn’t feel exactly right. Almost, but not quite.

That’s just Henry again. That’s just all those years of never being quite good enough. You did it, buddy-it’s just that the Henry inside doesn’t want to admit it.

He dropped the key onto the square of hide and folded the edges carefully around it. “I’m done. I don’t know if it’s right or not, but I guess it’s as right as I can make it.” He felt oddly empty now that he no longer had the key to work on-purposeless and directionless.

“Do you want something to eat, Eddie?” Susannah asked quietly.

There’s your purpose, he thought. There’s your direction. Sitting right over there, with her hands folded in her lap. All the purpose and direction you’ll ever-

But now something else rose in his mind-it came all at once. Not a dream… not a vision…

No, not either of those. It’s a memory. It’s happening again-you’re remembering forward in time.

“I have to do something else first,” he said, and got up.

On the far side of the fire, Roland had stacked some odd lots of scavenged wood. Eddie hunted through them and found a dry stick about two feet long and four inches or so through the middle. He took it, returning to his place by the fire, and picked up Roland’s knife again. This time he worked faster because he was simply sharpening the stick, turning it into something that looked like a small tent-peg.

“Can we get moving before daybreak?” he asked the gunslinger. “I think we should get to that circle as soon as we can.”

“Yes. Sooner, if we must. I don’t want to move in the dark-a speaking ring is an unsafe place to be at night-but if we have to, we have to.”

“From the look on your face, big boy, I doubt if those stone circles are very safe any time,” Susannah said.

Eddie put the knife aside again. The dirt Roland had taken out of the shallow hole he’d made for the campfire was piled up by Eddie’s right foot. Now he used the sharp end of the stick to carve a question-mark shape in the dirt. The shape was crisp and clear.

“Okay,” he said, brushing it away. “All done.”

“Have something to eat, then,” Susannah said.

Eddie tried, but he wasn’t very hungry. When he finally went to sleep, nestled against Susannah’s warmth, his rest was dreamless but very thin. Until the gunslinger shook him awake at four in the morning, he heard the wind racing endlessly over the plain below them, and it seemed to him that he went with it, flying high into the night, away from these cares, while Old Star and Old Mother rode serenely above him, painting his cheeks with frost.

19

“IT’S TIME,” ROLAND SAID.

Eddie sat up. Susannah sat up beside him, rubbing her palms over her face. As Eddie’s head cleared, his mind was filled with urgency. “Yes. Let’s go, and fast.”

“He’s getting close, isn’t he?”

“Very close.” Eddie got to his feet, grasped Susannah around the waist, and boosted her into her chair.

She was looking at him anxiously. “Do we still have enough time to get there?”

Eddie nodded. “Barely.”

Three minutes later they were headed down the Great Road again. It glimmered ahead of them like a ghost. And an hour after that, as the first light of dawn began to touch the sky in the east, a rhythmic sound began far ahead of them.

The sound of drums, Roland thought.

Machinery, Eddie thought. Some huge piece of machinery.

It’s a heart, Susannah thought. Some huge, diseased, beating heart… and it’s in that city, where we have to go.

Two hours later, the sound stopped as suddenly as it had begun. White, featureless clouds had begun to fill the sky above them, first veiling the early sun, then blotting it out. The circle of standing stones lay less than five miles ahead now, gleaming in the shadowless light like the teeth of a fallen monster.

20

the battered, dispirited marquee jutting over the corner of Brooklyn and Markey Avenues proclaimed.

99 Cents ALL SHOWS

A gum-chewing cutie with rollers in her blonde hair sat in the box office listening to Led Zep on her transistor and reading one of the tabloids of which Mrs. Shaw was so fond. To her left, in the theater’s remaining display case, there was a poster showing Glint Eastwood.

Jake knew he should get moving-three o’clock was almost here- but he paused a moment anyway, staring at the poster behind the dirty, cracked glass. Eastwood was wearing a Mexican serape. A cigar was clamped in his teeth. He had thrown one side of the serape back over his shoulder to free his gun. His eyes were a pale, faded blue. Bombardier’s eyes.

It’s not him, Jake thought, but it’s almost him. It’s the eyes, mostly… the eyes are almost the same.

“You let me drop,” he said to the man in the old poster, the man who was not Roland. “You let me die. What happens this time?”

“Hey, kid,” the blonde ticket-seller called, making Jake start. “You gonna come in or just stand there and talk to yourself?”

“Not me,” Jake said. “I’ve already seen those two.”

He got moving again, turning left on Markey Avenue.

Once again he waited for the feeling of remembering forward to seize him, but it didn’t come. This was just a hot, sunny street lined with sandstone-colored apartment buildings that looked like prison cellblocks to Jake. A few young women were walking along, pushing baby-carriages in pairs and talking desultorily, but the street was otherwise deserted. It was unseasonably hot for May-too hot to stroll.

What am I looking for? What?

From behind him came a burst of raucous male laughter. It was followed by an outraged female shriek: “You give that back\”

Jake jumped, thinking the owner of the voice must mean him.

“Give it back, Henry! I’m not kidding!”

Jake turned and saw two boys, one at least eighteen and the other a lot younger… twelve or thirteen. At the sight of this second boy, Jake’s heart did something that felt like a loop-the-loop in his chest. The lad was wearing green corduroys instead of madras shorts, but the yellow T-shirt was the same, and he had a battered old basketball under one arm. Although his back was to Jake, Jake knew he had found the boy from last night’s dream.

21

THE GIRL WAS THE gum-chewing cutie from the ticket-booth. The older of the two boys-who looked almost old enough to be called a man- had her newspaper in his hands. She grabbed for it. The newspaper-grabber-he was wearing denims and a black T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up-held it over his head and grinned.

“Jump for it, Maryanne! Jump, girl, jump!”

She stared at him with angry eyes, her cheeks flushed. “Give it to me!” she said. “Quit fooling around and give it back! Bastard!”

“Oooo wisten to dat, Eddie!” the old kid said. “Bad wang-gwidge! Naughty, naughty!” He waved the newspaper just out of the blonde ticket-seller’s grasp, grinning, and Jake suddenly understood. These two were walking home from school together-although they probably didn’t go to the same one, if he was right about the difference in their ages-and the bigger boy had gone over to the box office, pretending he had something interesting to tell the blonde. Then he had reached through the slot at the bottom and snatched her paper.

The big boy’s face was one that Jake had seen before; it was the face of a kid who would think it the height of hilarity to douse a cat’s tail with lighter fluid or feed a bread-ball with a fishhook planted in the middle to a hungry dog. The sort of lad who sat in the back of the room and snapped bra-straps and then said “Who me?” with a big, dumb look of surprise on his face when someone finally complained. There weren’t many lads like him at Piper, but there were a few. Jake supposed there were a few in every school. They dressed better at Piper, but the face was the same. He guessed that in the old days, people would have said it was the face of a boy who was born to be hung.

Maryanne jumped for her newspaper, which the old boy in the black pants had rolled into a tube. He pulled it out of her reach just before she could grab it, then whacked her on the head with it, the way you might whack a dog for piddling on the carpet. She was beginning to cry now-mostly from humiliation, Jake guessed. Her face was now so red it was almost glowing. “Keep it, then!” she yelled at him. “I know you can’t read, but you can look at the pictures, at least!”

She began to turn away.

“Give it back, why don’t you?” the younger boy-Jake’s boy-said softly.

The old boy held out the newspaper tube. The girl snatched it from him, and even from his place thirty feet farther down the street, Jake heard it rip. “You’re a turd, Henry Dean!” she cried. “A real turd!”

“Hey, what’s the big deal?” Henry sounded genuinely injured. “It was just a joke. Besides, it only ripped in one place-you can still read it, for Chrissake. Lighten up a little, why don’tcha?”

And that was right, too, Jake thought. Guys like this Henry always pushed even the most unfunny joke two steps too far… then looked wounded and misunderstood when someone yelled at them. And it was always Wassa matter? and it was Can’tcha take a joke? and it was Why don’tcha lighten up a little?

What are you doing with him, kid? Jake wondered. If you’re on my side, what are you doing with a jerk like that?

But as the younger lad turned around and they started to walk down the street again, Jake knew. The old boy’s features were heavier, and his complexion was badly pitted with acne, but otherwise the resemblance was striking. The two boys were brothers.

22

JAKE TURNED AWAY AND began to idle up the sidewalk ahead of the two boys. He reached into his breast pocket with a shaky hand, pulled out his father’s sunglasses, and managed to fumble them onto his face.

Voices swelled behind him, as if someone was gradually turning up the volume on a radio.

“You shouldn’t have ranked on her that bad, Henry. It was mean.”

“She loves it, Eddie.” Henry’s voice was complacent, worldly-wise. “When you get a little older, you’ll understand.”

“She was cryin.”

“Prob’ly got the rag on,” Henry said in a philosophical tone.

They were very close now. Jake shrank against the side of the building. His head was down, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jeans. He didn’t know why it seemed so vitally important that he not be noticed, but it did. Henry didn’t matter, one way or the other, but-

The younger one, isn’t supposed to remember me, he thought. I don’t know why, exactly, but he’s not.

They passed him without so much as a glance, the one Henry had called Eddie walking on the outside, dribbling the basketball along the gutter.

“You gotta admit she looked funny,” Henry was saying. “Ole Be-Bop Maryanne, jumpin for her newspaper. Woof! Woof!”

Eddie looked up at his brother with an expression that wanted to be reproachful… and then he gave up and dissolved into laughter. Jake saw the unconditional love in that upturned face and guessed that Eddie would forgive a lot in his big brother before giving it up as a bad job.

“So are we going?” Eddie asked now. “You said we could. After school.”

“I said maybe. I dunno if I wanna walk all the way over there. Mom’ll be home, by now, too. Maybe we just oughtta forget it. Go upstairs and watch some tube.”

They were now ten feet ahead of Jake and pulling away.

“Ah, come on! You said!”

Beyond the building the two boys were currently passing was a chainlink fence with an open gate in it. Beyond it, Jake saw, was the playground of which he had dreamed last night… a version of it, anyway. It wasn’t surrounded by trees, and there was no odd subway kiosk with diagonal slashes of yellow and black across the front, but the cracked concrete was the same. So were the faded yellow foul lines.

“Well… maybe. I dunno.” Jake realized Henry was teasing again. Eddie didn’t, though; he was too anxious about wherever it was he wanted to go. “Let’s shoot some hoops while I think it over.”

He stole the ball from his younger brother, dribbled clumsily onto the playground, and went for a lay-up that hit high on the backboard and bounced back without even touching the rim of the hoop. Henry was good at stealing newspapers from teenage girls, Jake thought, but on the basketball court he sucked the big one.

Eddie walked in through the gate, unbuttoned his corduroy pants, and slipped them down. Beneath them were the faded madras shorts he had been wearing in Jake’s dream.

“Oh, is he wearing his shortie panties?” Henry said. “Ain’t they cuuute?” He waited until his brother balanced himself on one leg to pull off his cords, then flung the basketball at him. Eddie managed to bat it away, probably saving himself a bloody nose, but he lost his balance and fell clumsily to the concrete. He didn’t cut himself, but he could have done so, Jake saw; a great deal of broken glass glittered in the sun along the chainlink.

“Come on, Henry, quit it,” he said, but with no real reproach. Jake guessed I Henry had been pulling shit like this on him so long that Eddie only noticed it when Henry pulled it on someone else-someone like the blonde ticket-seller.

“Turn on, Henwy, twit it.”

Eddie got to his feet and trotted out onto the court. The ball had struck the chainlink fence and bounced back to Henry. Henry now tried to dribble past his younger brother. Eddie’s hand went out, lightning-quick but oddly delicate, and stole the ball. He easily ducked under Henry’s outstretched, flailing arm and went for the basket. Henry dogged him, frowning thunderously, but he might as well have been taking a nap. Eddie went up, knees bent, feet neatly cocked, and laid the ball in. Henry grabbed it and dribbled out to the stripe.

Shouldn’t have done that, Eddie, Jake thought. He was standing just beyond the place where the fence ended, watching the two boys. This seemed safe enough, at least for the moment. He was wearing his dad’s sunglasses, and the two boys were so involved in what they were doing that they wouldn’t have noticed if President Carter had strolled up to watch. Jake doubted if Henry knew who President Carter was, anyway.

He expected Henry to foul his brother, perhaps heavily, as a payback for the steal, but he had underestimated Eddie’s guile. Henry offered a head-fake that wouldn’t have fooled Jake’s mother, but Eddie appeared to fall for it. Henry broke past him and drove for the basket, gaily travelling the ball most of the way. Jake was quite sure Eddie could have caught him easily and stolen the ball again, but instead of doing so, the lad hung back. Henry laid it up-clumsily-and the ball bounced off the rim again. Eddie grabbed it… and then let it squirt through his fingers. Henry snatched it, turned, and put it through the netless hoop.

“One-up,” Henry panted. “Play to twelve?”

“Sure.”

Jake had seen enough. It would be close, but in the end Henry would win. Eddie would see to it. It would do more than save him from getting lumped up; it would put Henry in a good mood, making him more agreeable to whatever it was Eddie wanted to do.

Hey Moose-I think your little brother has been playing you like a violin for a long time now, and you don’t have the slightest idea, do you?

He drew back until the apartment building which stood at the north end of the court cut off his view of the Dean brothers, and their view of him. He leaned against the wall and listened to the thump of the ball on the court. Soon Henry was puffing like Charlie the Choo-Choo going up a steep hill. He would be a smoker, of course; guys like Henry were always smokers.

The game took almost ten minutes, and by the time Henry claimed victory, the street was filled up with other home-going kids. A few gave Jake curious glances as they passed by.

“Good game, Henry,” Eddie said.

“Not bad,” Henry panted. “You’re still falling for the old head-fake.”

Sure he is, Jake thought. I think he’ll go on falling for it until he’s gained about eighty pounds. Then you might get a surprise.

“I guess I am. Hey, Henry, can’t we please go look at the place?”

“Yeah, why not? Let’s do it.”

“All right!” Eddie yelled. There was the smacking sound of flesh on flesh; probably Eddie giving his brother a high-five. “Boss!”

“You go on up to the apartment. Tell Mom we’ll be in by four-thirty, quarter of five. But don’t say anything about The Mansion. She’d have a shit-fit. She thinks it’s haunted, too.”

“You want me to tell her we’re going over Dewey’s?”

Silence as Henry considered this. “Naw. She might call Mrs. Bunkowski. Tell her… tell her we’re goin down to Dahlie’s to get Hoodsie Rockets. She’ll believe that. Ask her for a coupla bucks, too.”

“She won’t give me any money. Not two days before payday.”

“Bullshit. You can get it out of her. Go on, now.”

“Okay.” But Jake didn’t hear Eddie moving. “Henry?”

“What?” Impatiently.

“Is The Mansion haunted, do you think?”

Jake sidled a little closer to the playground. He didn’t want to be noticed, but he strongly felt that he needed to hear this.

“Naw. There ain’t no real haunted houses-just in the fuckin movies.”

“Oh.” There was unmistakable relief in Eddie’s voice.

“But if there ever was one,” Henry resumed (perhaps he didn’t want his little brother feeling too relieved, Jake thought), “it’d be The Mansion. I heard that a couple of years ago, two kids from Norwood Street went in there to bump uglies and the cops found em with their throats cut and all the blood drained out of their bodies. But there wasn’t any blood on em or around em. Get it? The blood was all gone.”

“You shittin me?” Eddie breathed.

“Nope. But that wasn’t the worst thing.”

“What was?”

“Their hair was dead white,” Henry said. The voice that drifted to Jake was solemn. He had an idea that Henry wasn’t teasing this time, that this time he believed every word he was saying. (He also doubted that Henry had brains enough to make such a story up.) “Both of em. And their eyes were wide open and staring, like they saw the most gross-awful thing in the world.”

“Aw, gimme a break,” Eddie said, but his voice was soft, awed.

“You still wanna go?”

“Sure. As long as we don’t… you know, hafta get too close.”

“Then go see Mom. And try to get a couple of bucks out of her. I need cigarettes. Take the fuckin ball up, too.”

Jake drifted backward and stepped into the nearest apartment building entryway just as Eddie came out through the playground gate.

To his horror, the boy in the yellow T-shirt turned in Jake’s direction. Holy crow! he thought, dismayed. What if this is his building?

It was. Jake just had time to turn around and began to scan the names beside the rank of buzzers before Eddie Dean brushed past him, so close that Jake could smell the sweat he had worked up on the basketball court. He half-sensed, half-saw the curious glance the boy tossed in his direction. Then Eddie was in the lobby and headed for the elevators with his school-pants bundled under one arm and the scuffed basketball under the other.

Jake’s heart was thudding heavily in his chest. Shadowing people was a lot harder in real life than it was in the detective novels he sometimes read. He crossed the street and stood between two apartment buildings half a block up. From here he could see both the entrance to the Dean brothers’ building and the playground. The playground was filling up now, mostly with little kids. Henry leaned against the chainlink, smoking a cigarette and trying to look full of teenage angst. Every now and then he would stick out a foot as one of the little kids bolted toward him at an all-out run, and before Eddie returned, he had succeeded in tripping three of them. The last of these went sprawling full-length, smacking his face on the concrete, and ran wailing up the street with a bloody forehead. Henry flicked his cigarette butt after him and laughed cheerfully.

Just an all-around fun guy, Jake thought.

After that, the little lads wised up and began giving him a wide berth. Henry strolled out of the playground and down the street to the apartment building Eddie had entered five minutes before. As he reached it, the door opened and Eddie came out. He had changed into a pair of jeans and a fresh T-shirt; he had also tied a green bandanna, the same one he had been wearing in Jake’s dream, around his forehead. He was waving a couple of dollar bills triumphantly. Henry snatched them, then asked Eddie something. Eddie nodded, and the two boys set off.

Keeping half a block between himself and them, Jake followed.

23

THEY STOOD IN THE high grass at the edge of the Great Road, looking at the speaking ring.

Stonehenge, Susannah thought, and shuddered. That’s what it looks like. Stonehenge.

Although the thick grass which covered the plain grew around the bases of the tall gray monoliths, the circle they enclosed was bare earth, littered here and there with white things.

“What are those?” she asked in a low voice. “Chips of stone?”

“Look again,” Roland said.

She did, and saw that they were bones. The bones of small animals, maybe. She hoped.

Eddie switched the sharpened stick to his left hand, dried the palm of his right against his shirt, and then switched it back again. He opened his mouth, but no sound came from his dry throat. He cleared it and tried again. “I think I’m supposed to go in and draw something in the dirt.”

Roland nodded. “Now?”

“Soon.” He looked into Roland’s face. “There’s something here, isn’t there? Something we can’t see.”

“It’s not here right now,” Roland said. “At least, I don’t think it is. But it will come. Our khef-our life-force-will draw it. And, of course, it will be jealous of its place. Give me my gun back, Eddie.”

Eddie unbuckled the belt and handed it over. Then he turned back to the circle of twenty-foot-high stones. Something lived in there, all right. He could smell it, a stench that made him think of damp plaster and moldering sofas and ancient mattresses rotting beneath half-liquid coats of mildew. It was familiar, that smell.

The Mansion-I smelled it there. The day I talked Henry into taking me over to see The Mansion on Rhinehold Street, in Dutch Hill.

Roland buckled his gunbelt, then bent to knot the tiedown. He looked up at Susannah as he did it. “We may need Detta Walker,” he said. “Is she around?”

“That bitch always around.” Susannah wrinkled her nose.

“Good. One of us is going to have to protect Eddie while he does what he’s supposed to do. The other is going to be so much useless baggage. This is a demon’s place. Demons are not human, but they are male and female, just the same. Sex is both their weapon and their weakness. No matter what the sex of the demon may be, it will go for Eddie. To protect its place. To keep its place from being used by an outsider. Do you understand?”

Susannah nodded. Eddie appeared not to be listening. He had tucked the square of hide containing the key into his shirt and now he was staring into the speaking ring as if hypnotized.

“There’s no time to say this in a gentle or refined way,” Roland told her. “One of us will-”

“One of us gonna have to fuck it to keep it off Eddie,” Susannah interrupted. “This the sort of thing can’t ever turn down a free fuck. That’s what you’re gettin at, isn’t it?”

Roland nodded.

Her eyes gleamed. They were the eyes of Detta Walker now, both wise and unkind, shining with hard amusement, and her voice slid steadily deeper into the bogus Southern plantation drawl which was Delta’s trademark. “If it’s a girl demon, you git it. But if it’s a boy demon, it’s mine. That about it?”

Roland nodded.

“What about if it swings both ways? What about that, big boy?”

Roland’s lips twitched in the barest suggestion of a smile. “Then we’ll take it together. Just remember-”

Beside them, in a fainting, distant voice, Eddie murmured: “Not all is silent in the halls of the dead. Behold, the sleeper wakes.” He turned his haunted, terrified eyes on Roland. “There’s a monster.”

“The demon-”

“No. A monster. Something between the doors-between the worlds. Something that waits. And it’s opening its eyes.”

Susannah cast a frightened glance at Roland.

“Stand, Eddie,” Roland said. “Be true.”

Eddie drew a deep breath. “I’ll stand until it knocks me down,” he said. “I have to go in now. It’s starting to happen.”

“We all goin in,” Susannah said. She arched her back and slipped out of her wheelchair. “Any demon want to fuck wit’ me he goan find out he’s fuckin wit’ the finest. I th’ow him a fuck he ain’t never goan fgit.”

As they passed between two of the tall stones and into the speaking circle, it began to rain.

24

As SOON AS JAKE saw the place, he understood two things: first, that he had seen it before, in dreams so terrible his conscious mind would not let him remember them; second, that it was a place of death and murder and madness. He was standing on the far corner of Rhinehold Street and Brooklyn Avenue, seventy yards from Henry and Eddie Dean, but even from where he was he could feel The Mansion ignoring them and reaching for him with its eager invisible hands, lie thought there were talons at the ends of those hands. Sharp ones.

It wants me, and I can’t run away. It’s death to go in… but it’s madness not to. Because somewhere inside that place is a locked door. I have the key that will open it, and the only salvation I can hope for is on the other side.

He stared at The Mansion, a house that almost screamed abnormality, with a sinking heart. It stood in the center of its weedy, rioting yard like a tumor.

The Dean brothers had walked across nine blocks of Brooklyn, moving slowly under the hot afternoon sun, and had finally entered a section of town which had to be Dutch Hill, given the names on the shops and stores. Now they stood halfway down the block, in front of The Mansion. It looked as if it had been deserted for years, yet it had suffered remarkably little vandalism. And once, Jake thought, it really had been a mansion-the home, perhaps, of a wealthy merchant and his large family. In those long-gone days it must have been white, but now it was a dirty gray no-color. The windows had been knocked out and the peeling picket fence which surrounded it had been spray-painted, but the house itself was still intact.

It slumped in the hot light, a ramshackle slate-roofed revenant growing out of a hummocky trash-littered yard, somehow making Jake think of a dangerous dog which pretended to be asleep. Its steep roof overhung the front porch like a beetling brow. The boards of the porch were splintery and warped. Shutters which might once have been green leaned askew beside the glassless windows; ancient curtains still hung in some of these, dangling like strips of dead skin. To the left, an elderly trellis leaned away from die building, now held up not by nails but only by die nameless and somehow filthy clusters of vine which crawled over it. There was a sign on the lawn and another on die door. From where Jake stood, he could read neither of them.

The house was alive. He knew this, could feel its awareness reaching out from the boards and the slumping roof, could feel it pouring in rivers from the black sockets of its windows. The idea of approaching that terrible place filled him with dismay; the idea of actually going inside filled him with inarticulate horror. Yet he would have to. He could hear a low, slumbrous buzzing in his ears-the sound of a beehive on a hot summer day-and for a moment he was afraid he might faint. He closed his eyes… and his voice filled his head.

You must come, Jake. This is the path of the Beam, the way of the Tower, and the time of your Drawing. Be true; stand; come to me.

The fear didn’t pass, but that terrible sense of impending panic did. He opened his eyes again and saw that he was not the only one who had sensed the power and awakening sentience of the place. Eddie was trying to pull away from the fence. He turned toward Jake, who could see Eddie’s eyes, wide and uneasy beneath his green head-band. His big brother grabbed him and pushed him toward the rusty gate, but the gesture was too half-hearted to be much of a tease; however thick-headed he might be, Henry liked The Mansion no better than Eddie did.

They drew away a little and stood looking at the place for a while. Jake could not make out what they were saying to each other, but the tone of their voices was awed and uneasy. Jake suddenly remembered Eddie speaking in his dream: Remember there’s danger, though. Be careful… and be quick.

Suddenly the real Eddie, the one across the street, raised his voice enough so that Jake could make out the words. “Can we go home now, Henry? Please? I don’t like it.” His tone was pleading.

“Fuckin little sissy,” Henry said, but Jake thought he heard relief as well as indulgence in Henry’s voice. “Come on.”

They turned away from the ruined house crouching high-shouldered behind its sagging fence and approached the street. Jake backed up, then turned and looked into the window of the dispirited little hole-in-the-wall shop called Dutch Hill Used Appliances. He watched Henry and Eddie, dim and ghostly reflections superimposed on an ancient Hoover vacuum cleaner, cross Rhinehold Street.

“Are you sure it’s not really haunted?” Eddie asked as they stepped onto the sidewalk on Jake’s side.

“Well, I tell you what,” Henry said. “Now that I been out here again, I’m really not so sure.”

They passed directly behind Jake without looking at him. “Would you go in there?” Eddie asked.

“Not for a million dollars,” Henry replied promptly.

They rounded the corner. Jake stepped away from the window and peeped after them. They were headed back the way they had come, close together on the sidewalk, Henry hulking along in his steel-toed shit-kickers, his shoulders already slumped like those of a much older man, Eddie walking beside him with neat, unconscious grace. Their shadows, long and trailing out into the street now, mingled amicably together.

They’re going home, Jake thought, and felt a wave of loneliness so strong that he felt it would crush him. Going to eat supper and do homework and argue over which TV shows to watch and then go to bed. Henry may be a bullying shit, but they’ve got a life, those two, one that makes sense… and they’re going back to it. I wonder if they have any idea of how lucky they are. Eddie might, I suppose.

Jake turned, adjusted the straps of his pack, and crossed Rhinehold Street.

25

SUSANNAH SENSED MOVEMENT IN the empty grassland beyond the circle of standing stones: a sighing, whispering rush.

“Something comin,” she said tautly. “Comin fast.”

“Be careful,” Eddie said, “but keep it off me. You understand? Keep it off me.”

“I hear you, Eddie. You just do your own thing.”

Eddie nodded. He knelt in the center of the ring, holding the sharpened stick out in front of him as if assessing its point. Then he lowered it and drew a dark straight line in the dirt. “Roland, watch out for her…”

“I will if I can, Eddie.”

“… but keep it off me. Jake’s coming. Crazy little mother’s really coming.”

Susannah could now see the grasses due north of the speaking ring parting in a long dark line, creating a furrow that lanced straight at the circle of stones.

“Get ready,” Roland said. “It’ll go for Eddie. One of us will have to ambush it.”

Susannah reared up on her haunches like a snake coming out of a Hindu fakir’s basket. Her hands, rolled into hard brown fists, were held at the sides of her face. Her eyes blazed. “I’m ready,” she said and then shouted: “Come on, big boy! You come on right now! Run like it’s yo birfday!”

The rain began to fall harder as the demon which lived here re-entered its circle in a booming rush. Susannah had just time to sense thick and merciless masculinity-it came to her as an eyewatering smell of gin and juniper-and then it shot toward the center of the circle. She closed her eyes and reached for it, not with her arms or her mind but with all the female force which lived at the core of her: Hey, big boy! Where you goan? D’pussy be ovah heah!

It whirled. She felt its surprise… and then its raw hunger, as full and urgent as a pulsing artery. It leaped upon her like a rapist springing from the mouth of an alley.

Susannah howled and rocked backward, cords standing out on her neck. The dress she wore first flattened against her breasts and belly, and then began to tear itself to shreds. She could hear a pointless, directionless panting, as if the air itself had decided to rut with her.

“Suze!” Eddie shouted, and began to get to his feet.

“No!” she screamed back. “Do it! I got this sumbitch right where… right where I want him! Go on, Eddie! Bring the kid! Bring-” Coldness battered at the tender flesh between her legs. She grunted, fell backward.. then supported herself with one hand and thrust defiantly forward and upward. “Bring him through!”

Eddie looked uncertainly at Roland, who nodded. Eddie glanced at Susannah again, his eyes full of dark pain and darker fear, and then deliberately turned his back on both of them and fell to his knees again. He reached forward with the sharpened stick which had become a makeshift pencil, ignoring the cold rain falling on his arms and the back of his neck. The stick began to move, making lines and angles, creating a shape Roland knew at once.

It was a door.

26

JAKE REACHED OUT, PUT his hands on the splintery gate, and pushed. It swung slowly open on screaming, rust-clotted hinges. Ahead of him was an uneven brick path. Beyond the path was the porch. Beyond the porch was the door. It had been boarded shut.

He walked slowly toward the house, heart telegraphing fast dots and dashes in his throat. Weeds had grown up between the buckled bricks. He could hear them rustling against his bluejeans. All his senses seemed to have been turned up two notches. You’re not really going in there, are you? a panic-stricken voice in his head asked.

And the answer that occurred to him seemed both totally nuts and perfectly reasonable: All things serve the Beam.

The sign on the lawn read

ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING UNDER PENALTY OF LAW!

The yellowing, rust-stained square of paper nailed to one of the boards crisscrossing the front door was more succinct:

BY ORDER OF NYC HOUSING AUTHORITY THIS PROPERTY CONDEMNED

Jake paused at the foot of the steps, looking up at the door. He had heard voices in the vacant lot and now he could hear them again… but this was a choir of the damned, a babble of insane threats and equally insane promises. Yet he thought it was all one voice. The voice of the house; the voice of some monstrous doorkeeper, roused from its long unpeaceful sleep.

He thought briefly of his father’s Ruger, even considered pulling it out of his pack, but what good would it do? Behind him, traffic passed back and forth on Rhinehold Street and a woman was yelling for her daughter to stop holding hands with that boy and bring in the wash, but here was another world, one ruled by some bleak being over whom guns could have no power.

Be true, Jake-stand.

“Okay,” he said in a low, shaky voice. “Okay, I’ll try. But you better not drop me again.”

Slowly, he began to mount the porch steps.

27

THE BOARDS WHICH BARRED the door were old and rotten, the nails rusty. Jake grabbed hold of the top set at the point where they crossed each other and yanked. They came free with a squall that was the gate all over again. He tossed them over the porch rail and into an ancient flowerbed where only witchgrass and dogweed grew. He bent, grasped the lower crossing… and paused for a moment.

A hollow sound came through the door; the sound of some animal slobbering hungrily from deep inside a concrete pipe. Jake felt a sick sheen of sweat begin to break out on his cheeks and forehead. He was so frightened that he no longer felt precisely real; he seemed to have become a character in someone else’s bad dream.

The evil choir, the evil presence, was behind this door. The sound of it seeped out like syrup.

He yanked at die lower boards. They came free easily.

Of course. It wants me to come in. It’s hungry, and I’m supposed to be the main course.

A snatch of poetry occurred to him suddenly, something Ms. Avery had read to them. It was supposed to be about the plight of modern man, who was cut off from all his roots and traditions, but to Jake it suddenly seemed that the man who had written that poem must have seen this house: / will show you something different from either/Your shadow in the morning striding behind you/Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;/I will show you…

“I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust,” Jake muttered, and put his hand on the doorknob. And as he did, that clear sense of relief and surety flooded him again, the feeling that this was it, this time the door would open on that other world, he would see a sky untouched by smog and industrial smoke, and, on the far horizon, not the mountains but the hazy blue spires of some gorgeous unknown city.

He closed his fingers around the silver key in his pocket, hoping the door was locked so he could use it. It wasn’t. The hinges screamed and flakes of rust sifted down from their slowly revolving cylinders as the door opened. The smell of decay struck Jake like a physical blow: wet wood, spongy plaster, rotting laths, ancient stuffing. Below these smells was another-the smell of some beast’s lair. Ahead was a dank, shadowy hallway. To the left, a staircase pitched and yawed its crazy way into the upper shadows. Its collapsed banister lay splintered on the hallway floor, but Jake was not foolish enough to think it was just splinters he was looking at. There were bones in that litter, as well-the bones of small animals. Some did not look precisely like animal bones, and these Jake would not look at overlong; he knew he would never summon the courage to go further if he did. He paused on the threshold, screwing himself up to take the first step. He heard a faint, muffled sound, very hard and very rapid, and realized it was his own teeth chattering in his head.

Why doesn’t someone stop me? he thought wildly. Why doesn’t somebody passing on the sidewalk shout “Hey, you! You’re not supposed to be in there-can’tcha read?”

But he knew why. Pedestrians stuck mostly to the other side of this street, and those who came near this house did not linger.

Even if someone did happen to look, they wouldn’t see me, because I’m not really here. For better or worse, I’ve already left my world behind. I’ve started to cross over. His world is somewhere ahead. This…

This was the hell between.

Jake stepped into the corridor, and although he screamed when the door swung shut behind him with the sound of a mausoleum door being slammed, he wasn’t surprised.

Down deep, he wasn’t surprised at all.

28

ONCE UPON A TIME there had been a young woman named Detta Walker who liked to frequent the honky-tonks and roadhouses along Ridgeline Road outside of Nutley and on Route 88 down by the power-lines, outside of Amhigh. She had had legs in those days, and, as the song says, she knew how to use them. She would wear some tight cheap dress that looked like silk but wasn’t and dance with the white boys while the band played all those ofay party tunes like “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love” and “The Hippy-Hippy Shake.” Eventually she would cut one of the honkeys out of the pack and let him lead her back to his car in the parking lot. There she would make out with him (one of the world’s great soul-kissers was Detta Walker, and no slouch with the old fingernails, either) until he was just about insane… and then she’d shut him down. What happened next? Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? That was the game. Some of them wept and begged-all right, but not great. Some of them raved and roared, which was better.

And although she had been slapped upside the head, punched in the eye, spat upon, and once kicked in the ass so hard she had gone sprawling in the gravel parking lot of The Red Windmill, she had never been raped. They had all gone home with the blue balls, every damned ofay one of them. Which meant, in Detta Walker’s book, that she was the reigning champion, the undefeated queen. Of what? Of them. Of all those crewcut, button-down, tightass honkey motherfuckers.

Until now.

There was no way to withstand the demon who lived in the speaking ring. No doorhandles to grab, no car to tumble out of, no building to run back into, no cheek to slap, no face to claw, no balls to kick if the ofay sumbitch was slow getting the message.

The demon was on her… and then, in a flash, it-he-was in her.

She could feel it-him-pressing her backward, even though she could not see it-him. She could not see its-his-hands, but she could see their work as her dress tore violently open in several places. Then, suddenly, pain. It felt as though she were being ripped open down there, and in her agony and surprise she screamed. Eddie looked around, his eyes narrowing.

“I’m all right!” she yelled. “Go on, Eddie, forget about me! I’m all right!”

But she wasn’t. For the first time since Detta had strode onto the sexual battlefield at the age of thirteen, she was losing. A horrid, engorged coldness plunged into her; it was like being fucked with an icicle.

Dimly, she saw Eddie turn away and begin drawing in the dirt again, his expression of warm concern fading back into the terrible, concentrated coldness she sometimes felt in him and saw on his face. Well, that was all right, wasn’t it? She had told him to go on, to forget her, to do what he needed to do in order to bring the boy over. This was her part of Jake’s drawing and she had no right to hate either of the men, who had not twisted her arm-or anything else-to make her do it, but as the coldness froze her and Eddie turned away from her, she hated them both; could, in fact, have torn their honkey balls off.

Then Roland was with her, his strong hands were on her shoulders and although he didn’t speak, she heard him: Don’t fight. You can’t win if you fight-you can only die. Sex is its weapon, Susannah, but it’s also its weakness.

Yes. It was always their weakness. The only difference was that this time she was going to have to give a little more-but maybe that was all right. Maybe in the end, she would be able to make this invisible honkey demon pay a little more.

She forced herself to relax her thighs. Immediately they spread apart, pushing long, curved fans in the dirt. She threw her head back into the rain which was now pelting down and sensed its face lolling just over hers, eager eyes drinking in every contorted grimace which passed over her face.

She reached up with one hand, as if to slap… and instead, slid it around the nape of her demon rapist’s neck. It was like cupping a palmful of solid smoke. And did she feel it twitch backward, surprised at her caress? She tilted her pelvis upward, using her grip on the invisible neck to create the leverage. At the same time she spread her legs even wider, splitting what remained of her dress up the side-seams. God, it was huge!

“Come on,” she panted. “You ain’t gonna rape me. You ain’t. You want t’fuck me? I fuck you. I give you a fuckin like you ain’t nevah had! Fuck you to death!”

She felt the engorgement within her tremble; felt the demon try, at least momentarily, to draw back and regroup.

“Unh-unh, honey,” she croaked. She squeezed her thighs inward, pinning it. “De fun jus’ startin’.” She began to flex her butt, humping at the invisible presence. She reached up with her free hand, interlaced all ten fingers, and allowed herself to fall backward with her hips cocked, her straining arms seeming to hold nothing. She tossed her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes; her lips split in a sharklike grin.

Let me go! a voice cried out in her mind. But at the same time she could feel the owner of the voice responding in spite of itself.

“No way, sugar. You wanted it… now you goan get it.” She thrust upward, holding on, concentrating fiercely on the freezing cold inside her. “I’m goan melt that icicle, sugar, and when it’s gone, what you goan do then?” Her lips rose and fell, rose and fell. She squeezed her thighs mercilessly together, closed her eyes, clawed more deeply into the unseen neck, and prayed that Eddie would be quick.

She didn’t know how long she could do this.

29

THE PROBLEM, JAKE THOUGHT, was simple: somewhere in this dank, terrible place was a locked door. The right door. All he had to do was find it. But it was hard, because he could feel the presence in the house gathering. The sound of those dissonant, gabbling voices was beginning to merge into one sound-a low, grating whisper.

And it was approaching.

A door stood open to the right. Beside it, thumbtacked to the wall, was a faded daguerreotype which showed a hanged man dangling like a piece of rotten fruit from a dead tree. Beyond it was a room that had once been a kitchen. The stove was gone, but an ancient icebox-the land with the circular refrigeration drum on top-stood on the far side of the hilly, faded linoleum. Its door gaped open. Black, smelly stuff was caked inside and had trickled down to form a long-congealed puddle on the floor. The kitchen cabinets stood open. In one he saw what was probably the world’s oldest can of Snow’s Clam Fry-Ettes. Poking out of another was the head of a dead rat. Its eyes were white and seemingly in motion, and after a moment Jake realized that the empty sockets were filled with squirming maggots.

Something fell into his hair with a flabby thump. Jake screamed in surprise, reached for it, and grasped something that felt like a soft, bristle-covered rubber ball. He pulled it free and saw it was a spider, its bloated body the color of a fresh bruise. Its eyes regarded him with stupid malevolence. Jake threw it against the wall. It broke open and splattered there, legs twitching feebly.

Another one dropped onto his neck. Jake felt a sudden painful bite just below the place where his hair stopped. He ran backward into the hall, tripped over the fallen banister, fell heavily, and felt the spider pop. Its innards-wet, feverish, and slippery-slid between his shoulder-blades like warm egg-yoke. Now he could see other spiders in the kitchen doorway. Some hung on almost invisible silken threads like obscene plumb-bobs; others simply dropped on the floor in a series of muddy plops and scuttered eagerly over to greet him.

Jake flailed to his feet, still screaming. He felt something in his mind, something that felt like a frayed rope, starting to give way. He supposed it was his sanity, and at that realization, Jake’s considerable courage finally broke. He could bear this no longer, no matter what the stake. He bolted, meaning to flee if he still could, and realized too late that he had turned the wrong way and was running deeper into The Mansion instead of back toward the porch.

He lunged into a space too big to be a parlor or living room; it seemed to be a ballroom. Elves with strange, sly smiles on their faces capered on the wallpaper, peering at Jake from beneath peaked green caps. A mouldy couch was pushed against one wall. In the center of the warped wooden floor was a splintered chandelier, its rusty chain lying in snarls among the spilled glass beads and dusty teardrop pendants. Jake skirted the wreck, snatching one terrified glance back over his shoulder. He saw no spiders; if not for the nastiness still trickling down his back, he might have believed he had imagined them.

He looked forward again and came to a sudden, skidding halt. Ahead, a pair of French doors stood half-open on their recessed tracks. Another hallway stretched beyond. At the end of this second corridor stood a closed door with a golden knob. Written across the door-or perhaps carved into it-were two words:

Below the doorknob was a filigreed silver plate and a keyhole.

I found it! Jake thought fiercely. I finally found it! That’s it! That’s the door!

From behind him a low groaning noise began, as if the house was beginning to tear itself apart. Jake turned and looked back across the ballroom. The wall on the far side of the room had begun to swell outward, pushing the ancient couch ahead of it. The old wallpaper shuddered; the elves began to ripple and dance. In places the paper simply snapped upward in long curls, like windowshades which have been released too suddenly. The plaster bulged forward in a pregnant curve. From beneath it, Jake could hear dry snapping sounds as the lathing broke, rearranging itself into some new, as-yet-hidden shape. And still the sound increased. Only it was no longer precisely a groan; now it sounded like a snarl.

He stared, hypnotized, unable to pull his eyes away.

The plaster didn’t crack and then vomit outward in chunks; it seemed to have become plastic, and as the wall continued to bulge, making an irregular white bubble-shape from which scraps and draggles of wallpaper still hung, the surface began to mold itself into hills and curves and valleys. Suddenly Jake realized he was looking at a huge plastic face that was pushing itself out of the wall. It was like looking at someone who has walked headfirst into a wet sheet.

There was a loud snap as a chunk of broken lath tore free of the rippling wall. It became the jagged pupil of one eye. Below it, the wall writhed into a snarling mouth filled with jagged teeth. Jake could see fragments of wallpaper clinging to its lips and gums.

One plaster hand tore free of the wall, trailing an unravelling bracelet of rotted electrical wire. It grasped the sofa and threw it aside, leaving ghostly white fingermarks on its dark surface. More lathing burst free as the plaster fingers flexed. They created sharp, splintery claws. Now the face was all the way out of the wall and staring at Jake with its one wooden eye. Above it, in the center of its forehead, one wallpaper elf still danced. It looked like a weird tattoo. There was a wrenching sound as the thing began to slide forward. The hall doorway tore out and became a hunched shoulder. The thing’s one free hand clawed across the floor, spraying glass droplets from the fallen chandelier.

Jake’s paralysis broke. He turned, lunged through the French doors, and pelted down the second length of hallway with his pack bouncing and his right hand groping for the key in his pocket. His heart was a runaway factory machine in his chest. Behind him, the thing which was crawling out of The Mansion’s woodwork bellowed at him, and although there were no words, Jake knew what it was saying; it was telling him to stand still, telling him that it was useless to run, telling him there was no escape. The whole house now seemed alive; the air resounded with splintering wood and squalling beams. The humming, insane voice of the doorkeeper was everywhere.

Jake’s hand closed on the key. As he brought it out, one of the notches caught in the pocket. His fingers, wet with sweat, slipped. The key fell to the floor, bounced, dropped through a crack between two warped boards, and disappeared.

30

“HE’S IN TROUBLE!” SUSANNAH heard Eddie shout, but the sound of his voice was distant. She had plenty of trouble herself… but she thought she might be doing okay, just the same.

I’m goan melt that icicle, sugar, she had told the demon. I’m goan melt it, and when it’s gone, what you goan do then?

She hadn’t melted it, exactly, but she had changed it. The thing inside her was certainly giving her no pleasure, but at least the terrible pain had subsided and it was no longer cold. It was trapped, unable to disengage. Nor was she holding it in with her body, exactly. Roland had said sex was its weakness as well as its weapon, and he had been right, as usual. It had taken her, but she had also taken it, and now it was as if each of them had a finger stuck in one of those fiendish Chinese tubes, where yanking only sticks you tighter.

She hung onto one idea for dear life; had to, because all other conscious thought had vanished. She had to hold this sobbing, frightened, vicious thing in the snare of its own helpless lust. It wriggled and thrust and convulsed within her, screaming to be let go at the same time it used her body with greedy, helpless intensity, but she would not let it go free.

And what’s gonna happen when I finally do let go? she wondered desperately. What’s it gonna do to pay me back?

She didn’t know.

31

THE RAIN WAS FALLING in sheets, threatening to turn the circle within the stones into a sea of mud. “Hold something over the door!” Eddie shouted. “Don’t let the rain wash it out!”

Roland snatched a glance at Susannah and saw she was still struggling with the demon. Her eyes were half-shut, her mouth pulled down in a harsh grimace. He could not see or hear the demon, but he could sense its angry, frightened thrashings.

Eddie turned his streaming face toward him. “Did you hear me?” he shouted. “Get something over the goddam door, and do it NOW!”

Roland yanked one of their hides from his pack and held a corner in each hand. Then he stretched his arms out and leaned over Eddie, creating a makeshift tent. The tip of Eddie’s homemade pencil was caked with mud. He wiped it across his arm, leaving a smear the color of bitter chocolate, then wrapped his fist around the stick again and bent over his drawing. It was not exactly the same size as the door on Jake’s side of the barrier-the ratio was perhaps.75:1-but it would be big enough for Jake to come through… if the keys worked.

If he even has a key, isn’t that what you mean? he asked himself. Suppose he’s dropped it… or that house made him drop it?

He drew a plate under the circle which represented the doorknob, hesitated, and then squiggled the familiar shape of a keyhole within it:

He hesitated. There was one more thing, but what? It was hard to think of, because it felt as if there were a tornado roaring through his head, a tornado with random thoughts flipping around inside it instead of uprooted barns and privies and chicken-houses.

“Come on, sugah!” Susannah cried from behind him. “You weakenin on me! Wassa matta? I thought you was some kind of hot-shit studboy!”

Boy. That was it.

Carefully, he wrote THE BOY across the top panel of the door with the tip of his stick. At the instant he finished the Y, the drawing changed. The circle of rain-darkened earth he had drawn suddenly darkened even more… and pushed up from the ground, becoming a dark, gleaming knob. And instead of brown, wet earth within the shape of the keyhole, he could see dim light.

Behind him, Susannah shrieked at the demon again, urging it on, but now she sounded as if she were tiring. This had to end, and soon.

Eddie bent forward from the waist like a Muslim saluting Allah, and put his eye to the keyhole he had drawn. He looked through it into his own world, into that house which he and Henry had gone to see in May of 1977, unaware (except he, Eddie, had not been unaware; no, not totally unaware, even then) that a boy from another part of the city was following them.

He saw a hallway. Jake was down on his hands and knees, tugging frantically at a board. Something was coming for him. Eddie could see it, but at the same time he could not-it was as if part of his brain refused to see it, as if seeing would lead to comprehension and comprehension to madness.

“Hurry up, Jake!” he screamed into the keyhole. “For Christ’s sake, move it!”

Above the speaking ring, thunder ripped the sky like cannon-fire and the rain turned to hail.

32

FOR A MOMENT AFTER the key fell, Jake only stood where he was, staring down at the narrow crack between the boards.

Incredibly, he felt sleepy.

That shouldn’t have happened, he thought. It’s one thing too much. I can’t go on with this, not one minute, not one single second longer. I’m going to curl up against that door instead. I’m going to go to sleep, right away, all at once, and when it grabs me and pulls me toward its mouth, I’ll never wake up.

Then the thing coming out of the wall grunted, and when Jake looked up, his urge to give in vanished in a single stroke of terror. Now it was all the way out of the wall, a giant plaster head with one broken wooden eye and one reaching plaster hand. Chunks of lathing stood out on its skull in random hackles, like a child’s drawing of hair. It saw Jake and opened its mouth, revealing jagged wooden teeth. It grunted again. Plaster-dust drifted out of its yawning mouth like cigar smoke.

Jake fell to his knees and peered into the crack. The key was a small brave shimmer of silvery light down there in the dark, but the crack was far too narrow to admit his fingers. He seized one of the boards and yanked with all his might. The nails which held it groaned… but held.

There was a jangling crash. He looked down the hallway and saw the hand, which was bigger than his whole body, seize the fallen chandelier and throw it aside. The rusty chain which had once held it suspended rose like a bullwhip and then came down with a heavy crump. A dead lamp on a rusty chain rattled above Jake, dirty glass chattering against ancient brass.

The doorkeeper’s head, attached only to its single hunched shoulder and reaching arm, slid forward above the floor. Behind it, the remains of the wall collapsed in a cloud of dust. A moment later the fragments humped up and became the creature’s twisted, bony back.

The doorkeeper saw Jake looking and seemed to grin. As it did, splinters of wood poked out of its wrinkling cheeks. It dragged itself forward through the dust-hazed ballroom, mouth opening and closing. Its great hand groped amid the ruins, feeling for purchase, and ripped one of the French doors at the end of the hall from its track.

Jake screamed breathlessly and began to wrench at the board again. It wouldn’t come, but the gunslinger’s voice did:

“The other one, Jake! Try the other one!”

He let go of the board he had been yanking at and grabbed the one on the other side of the crack. As he did, another voice spoke. He heard this one not in his head but with his ears, and understood it was coming from the other side of the door-the door he had been looking for ever since the day he hadn’t been run over in the street.

“Hurry up, Jake! For Christ’s sake, hurry up!”

When he yanked this other board, it came free so easily that he almost tumbled over backward.

33

Two WOMEN WERE STANDING in the doorway of the used appliance shop across the street from The Mansion. The older was the proprietor; the younger had been her only customer when the sounds of crashing walls and breaking beams began. Now, without knowing they were doing it, they linked arms about each other’s waists and stood that way, trembling like children who hear a noise in the dark.

Up the street, a trio of boys on their way to the Dutch Hill Little League field stood gaping at the house, their Red Ball Flyer wagon filled with baseball equipment forgotten behind them. A delivery driver nosed his van into the curb and got out to look. The patrons of Henry’s Corner Market and the Dutch Hill Pub came straggling up the street, looking around wildly.

Now the ground began to tremble, and a fan of fine cracks started to spread across Rhinehold Street.

“Is it an earthquake?” the delivery van driver shouted at the women standing outside the appliance shop, hut instead of waiting for an answer he jumped hack behind the wheel of his van and drove away rapidly, swerving to the wrong side of the street to keep away from the ruined house which was the epicenter of this convulsion.

The entire house seemed to be bowing inward. Boards splintered, jumped off its face, and rained down into the yard. Dirty gray-black waterfalls of slate shingles poured down from the eaves. There was an earsplitting bang and a long, zigzagging crack shot down the center of The Mansion. The door disappeared into it and then the whole house began to swallow itself from the outside in.

The younger woman suddenly broke the older one’s grip. “I’m getting out of here,” she said, and began to run up the street without looking back.

34

A HOT, STRANGE WIND began to sigh down the hallway, blowing Jake’s sweaty hair back from his brow as his fingers closed over the silver key. He now understood on some instinctive level what this place was, and what was happening. The doorkeeper was not just in the house, it was the house: every board, every shingle, every windowsill, every eave. And now it was pushing forward, becoming some crazily jumbled representation of its true shape as it did. It meant to catch him before he could use the key. Beyond the giant white head and the crooked, hulking shoulder, he could see boards and shingles and wire and bits of glass-even the front door and the broken banister-flying up the main hall and into the ballroom, joining the form which bulked there, creating more and more of the misshapen plaster-man that was even now groping toward him with its freakish hand.

Jake yanked his own hand out of the hole in the floor and saw it was covered with huge trundling beetles. He slapped it against the wall to knock them off, and cried out as the wall first opened and then tried to close around his wrist. He yanked his hand free just in time, whirled, and jammed the silver key into the hole in the plate.

The plaster-man roared again, but its voice was momentarily drowned out by a harmonic shout which Jake recognized: he had heard it in the vacant lot, but it had been quiet then, perhaps dreaming. Now it was an unequivocal cry of triumph. That sense of certainty-overwhelming, inarguable-filled him again, and this time he felt sure there would be no disappointment. He heard all the affirmation he needed in that voice. It was the voice of the rose.

The dim light in the hallway was blotted out as the plaster hand tore away the other French door and squeezed into the corridor. The face socked itself into the opening above the hand, peering at Jake. The plaster fingers crawled toward him like the legs of a huge spider.

Jake turned the key and felt a sudden surge of power rush up his arm. He heard a heavy, muffled thump as the locked bolt inside withdrew. He seized the knob, turned it, and yanked the door open. It swung wide. Jake cried out in confused horror as he saw what lay behind.

The doorway was blocked with earth, from top to bottom and side to side. Roots poked out like bunches of wire. Worms, seeming as confused as Jake was himself, crawled hither and thither on the door-shaped pack of dirt. Some dived back into it; others only went on crawling about, as if wondering where the earth which had been below them a moment ago had gone. One dropped onto Jake’s sneaker.

The keyhole shape remained for a moment, shedding a spot of misty white light on Jake’s shirt. Beyond it-so close, so out of reach-he could hear rain and a muffled boom of thunder across an open sky. Then the keyhole shape was also blotted out, and gigantic plaster fingers curled around Jake’s lower leg.

35

EDDIE DID NOT FEEL the sting of the hail as Roland dropped the hide, got to his feet, and ran to where Susannah lay.

The gunslinger grabbed her beneath the arms and dragged her-as gently and carefully as he could-across to where Eddie crouched. “Let it go when I tell you, Susannah!” Roland shouted. “Do you understand? When I tell you!”

Eddie saw and heard none of this. He heard only Jake, screaming faintly on the other side of the door.

The time had come to use the key.

He pulled it out of his shirt and slid it into the keyhole he had drawn. He tried to turn it. The key would not turn. Not so much as a millimeter. Eddie lifted his face to the pelting hail, oblivious to the iceballs which struck his forehead and cheeks and lips, leaving welts and red blotches.

“NO!” he howled. “OH GOD, PLEASE! NO!”

But there was no answer from God; only another crash of thunder and a streak of lightning across a sky now filled with racing clouds.

36

JAKE LUNGED UPWARD, CRABBED the chain of the lamp which hung above him, and ripped free of the doorkeeper’s clutching fingers. He swung backward, used the packed earth in the doorway to push off, and then swung forward again like Tarzan on a vine. He raised his legs and kicked out at the clutching fingers as he closed on them. Plaster exploded in chunks, revealing a crudely jointed skeleton of lathing beneath. The plaster-man roared, a sound of intermingled hunger and rage. Beneath that cry, Jake could hear the whole house collapsing, like the one in that story of Edgar Allan Poe.

He pendulumed back on the chain, struck the wall of packed earth which blocked the doorway, then swung forward again. The hand reached up for him and he kicked at it wildly, legs scissoring. He felt a stab of pain in his foot as those wooden fingers clutched. When he swung back again, he was minus a sneaker.

He tried for a higher grip on the chain, found it, and began to shinny up toward the ceiling. There was a muffled, creaking thud above him. Fine plaster dust had begun to sift down on his upturned, sweating face. The ceiling had begun to sag; the lamp-chain was pulling out of it a link at a time. There was a thick crunching sound from the end of the hallway as the plaster-man finally pushed its hungry face through the opening.

Jake swung helplessly back toward that face, screaming.

37

EDDIE’s TERROR AND PANIC suddenly fell away. The cloak of coldness dropped over him-a cloak Roland of Gilead had worn many times. It was the only armor the true gunslinger possessed… and all such a one needed. At the same moment, a voice spoke in his mind. He had been haunted by such voices over the last three months; his mother’s voice, Roland’s voice, and, of course, Henry’s. But this one, he recognized with relief, was his own, and it was at last calm and rational and courageous.

You saw the shape of the key in the fire, you saw it again in the wood, and both times you saw it perfectly. Later on, you put a blindfold of fear over your eyes. Take it off. Take it off and look again. It may not be too late, even now.

He was faintly aware that the gunslinger was staring at him grimly; faintly aware that Susannah was shrieking at the demon in a fading but still defiant voice; faintly aware that, on the other side of the door, Jake was screaming in terror-or was it now agony?

Eddie ignored them all. He pulled the wooden key out of the key-hole he had drawn, out of the door which was now real, and looked at it fixedly, trying to recapture the innocent delight he had sometimes known as a child-the delight of seeing a coherent shape hidden in senselessness. And there it was, the place he’d gone wrong, so clearly visible he couldn’t understand how he’d missed it in the first place. I really must have been wearing a blindfold, he thought. It was the s-shape at the end of the key, of course. The second curve was a bit too fat. Just a tiny bit.

“Knife,” he said, and held out his hand like a surgeon in an operating room. Roland slapped it into his palm without a word.

Eddie gripped the top of the blade between the thumb and first finger of his right hand. He bent over the key, unmindful of the hail which pelted his unprotected neck, and the shape in the wood stood out more clearly-stood out with its own lovely and undeniable reality.

He scraped.

Once.

Delicately.

A single sliver of ash, so thin it was almost transparent, curled up from the belly of the s-shape at the end of the key.

On the other side of the door, Jake Chambers shrieked again.

38

THE CHAIN LET GO with a rattling crash and Jake fell heavily, landing on his knees. The doorkeeper roared in triumph. The plaster hand seized Jake about his hips and began to drag him down the hall. He stuck his legs out in front of him and planted his feet, but it did no good. He felt splinters and rust-blunted nails digging into his skin as the hand tightened its grip and continued to drag him forward.

The face appeared to be stuck just inside the entrance to the hallway like a cork in a bottle. The pressure it had exerted to get in that far had squeezed the rudimentary features into a new shape, that of some monstrous, malformed troll. The mouth yawned open to receive him. Jake groped madly for the key, wanting to use it as some last-ditch talisman, but of course he had left it in the door.

’"You son of a bitch!” he screamed, and threw himself backward with all his strength, bowing his back like an Olympic diver, unmindful of the broken boards which dug into him like a belt of nails. He felt his jeans slide down on his hips, and the grip of the hand slipped momentarily.

Jake lunged again. The hand clenched brutally, but Jake’s jeans slid down to his knees and his back slammed to the floor, with the pack to cushion the blow. The hand loosened, perhaps wanting to secure a firmer grip upon its prey. Jake was able to draw his knees up a little, and when the hand tightened again, Jake drove his legs forward. The hand yanked backward at the same time, and what Jake had hoped for happened: his jeans (and his remaining sneaker) were peeled from his body, leaving him free again, at least for the moment. He saw the hand rotate on his wrist of boards and disintegrating plaster and jam his dungarees into his mouth. Then he was crawling back toward the blocked doorway on his hands and knees, oblivious of the glass fragments from the fallen lamp, wanting only to get his key again.

He had almost reached the door when the hand closed over his naked legs and began to pull him back once more.

39

THE SHAPE WAS THERE now, finally all there.

Eddie put the key back into the keyhole and applied pressure. For a moment there was resistance… and then it revolved beneath his hand. He heard the locking mechanism turn, heard the bar pull back, felt the key crack in two the moment it had served its purpose. He grasped the dark, polished knob with both hands and pulled. There was a sense of great weight wheeling on an unseen pivot. A feeling that his arm had been gifted with boundless strength. And a clear knowledge that two worlds had suddenly come in contact, and a way had been opened between them.

He felt a moment of dizziness and disorientation, and as he looked through the doorway he realized why: although he was looking down-vertically-he was seeing horizontally. It was like a strange optical illusion created with prisms and mirrors. Then he saw Jake being pulled backward down the glass- and plaster-littered hallway, elbows dragging, calves pinned-together by a giant hand. And he saw the monstrous mouth which awaited him, fuming some white fog that might have been either smoke or dust.

“Roland!” Eddie shouted. “Roland, it’s got h-”

Then he was knocked aside.

40

SUSANNAH WAS AWARE OF being hauled up and whirled around. The world was a carousel blur: standing stones, gray sky, hailstone-littered ground… and a rectangular hole that looked like a trapdoor in the ground. Screams drifted up from it. Within her, the demon raved and struggled, wanting only to escape but helpless to do so until she allowed it.

“Now!” Roland was shouting. “Let it go now, Susannah! For your father’s sake, let it go NOW!”

And she did.

She had (with Detta’s help) constructed* a trap for it in her mind, something like a net of woven rushes, and now she cut them. She felt the demon fly back from her at once, and there was an instant of terrible hollowness, terrible emptiness. These feelings were at once overshadowed by relief and a grim sense of nastiness and defilement.

As its invisible weight fell away, she glimpsed it-an inhuman shape like a manta-ray with huge, curling wings and something that looked like a cruel baling hook curving out and up from beneath. She saw/sensed the thing flash above the open hole in the ground. Saw Eddie looking up with wide eyes. Saw Roland spread his arms wide to catch the demon.

The gunslinger staggered back, almost knocked off his feet by the unseen weight of the demon. Then he rocked forward again with an armload of nothing.

Clutching it, he jumped through the doorway and was gone.

41

SUDDEN WHITE LIGHT FLOODED the hallway of The Mansion; hailstones struck the walls and bounced up from the broken boards of the floor. Jake heard confused shouts, then saw the gunslinger come through. He seemed to leap through, as if he had come from above. His arms were held far out in front of him, the tips of the fingers locked.

Jake felt his feet slide into the doorkeeper’s mouth.

“Roland!” he shrieked. “Roland, help me!”

The gunslinger’s hands parted and his arms were immediately thrown wide. He staggered backward. Jake felt serrated teeth touch his skin, ready to tear flesh and grind bone, and then something huge rushed over his head like a gust of wind. A moment later the teeth were gone. The hand which had pinned his legs together relaxed. He heard an unearthly shriek of pain and surprise begin to issue from the doorkeeper’s dusty throat, and then it was muffled, crammed back.

Roland grabbed Jake and hauled him to his feet.

“You came!” Jake shouted. “You really came!”

“I came, yes. By the grace of the gods and the courage of my friends, I came.”

As the doorkeeper roared again, Jake burst into tears of relief and terror. Now the house sounded like a ship foundering in a heavy sea. Chunks of wood and plaster fell all around them. Roland swept Jake into his arms and ran for the door. The plaster hand, groping wildly, struck one of his booted feet and spun him into the wall, which again tried to bite. Roland pushed forward, turned, and drew his gun. He fired twice into the aimlessly thrashing hand, vaporizing one of the crude plaster fingers. Behind them, the face of the doorkeeper had gone from white to a dingy purplish-black, as if it were choking on something-something which had been fleeing so rapidly that it had entered the monster’s mouth and jammed in its gullet before it realized what it was doing.

Roland turned again and ran through the doorway. Although there was now no visible barrier, he was stopped cold for a moment, as if an unseen meshwork had been drawn across the chair.

Then he felt Eddie’s hands in his hair and he was yanked not forward but upward.

42

THEY EMERGED INTO WET air and slackening hail like babies being born. Eddie was the midwife, as die gunslinger had told him he must be. He was sprawled forward on his chest and belly, his arms out of sight in the doorway, his hands clutching fistfuls of Roland’s hair.

“Suze! Help me!”

She wriggled forward, reached through, and groped a hand under Roland’s chin. He came up to her with his head cocked backward and his lips parted in a snarl of pain and effort.

Eddie felt a tearing sensation and one of his hands came free holding a thick lock of the gunslinger’s gray-streaked hair. “He’s slipping!”

“This motherfucker… ain’t… nowhere!” Susannah gasped, and gave a terrific wrench, as if she meant to snap Roland’s neck.

Two small hands shot out of the doorway in the center of the circle and clutched one of the edges. Freed of Jake’s weight, Roland got an elbow up, and a moment later he was boosting himself out. As he did it, Eddie grabbed Jake’s wrists and hauled him up.

Jake rolled onto his back and lay there, panting.

Eddie turned to Susannah, took her in his arms, and began to rain kisses on her forehead, cheeks, and neck. He was laughing and crying at the same time. She clung to him, breathing hard… but there was a small, satisfied smile on her lips and one hand slipped over Eddie’s wet hair in slow, contented strokes.

From below them came a cauldron of black sounds: squeals, grunts, thuds, crashes.

Roland crawled away from the hole with his head down. His hair stood up in a wild wad. Threads of blood trickled down his cheeks. “Shut it!” he gasped at Eddie. “Shut it, for your father’s sake!”

Eddie got the door moving, and those vast, unseen hinges did the rest. The door fell with a gigantic, toneless bang, cutting off all sound from below. As Eddie watched, the lines that had marked its edges faded back to smudged marks in the dirt. The doorknob lost its dimension and was once more only a circle he’d drawn with a stick. Where the keyhole had been there was only a crude shape with a chunk of wood sticking out of it, like the hilt of a sword from a stone.

Susannah went to Jake and pulled him gently to a sitting position. “You all right, sugar?”

He looked at her dazedly. “Yes, I think so. Where is he? The gunslinger? There’s something I have to ask him.”

“I’m here, Jake,” Roland said. He got to his feet, drunk-walked over to Jake, and hunkered beside him. He touched the boy’s smooth cheek almost unbelievingly.

“You won’t let me drop this time?”

“No,” Roland said. “Not this time, not ever again.” But in the deepest darkness of his heart, he thought of the Tower and wondered.

43

THE HAIL CHANGED TO a hard, driving rain, but Eddie could see gleams of blue sky behind the unravelling clouds in the north. The storm was going to end soon, but in the meantime, they were going to get drenched.

He found he didn’t mind. He could not remember when he had felt so calm, so at peace with himself, so utterly drained. This mad adventure wasn’t over yet-he suspected, in fact, that it had barely begun- but today they had won a big one.

“Su/e?” He pushed her hair away from her face and looked into her dark eyes. “Are you okay? Did it hurt you?”

“Hurt me a little, but I’m okay. I think that bitch Detta Walker is still the undefeated Roadhouse Champeen, demon or no demon.”

“What’s that mean?”

She grinned impishly. “Not much, not anymore… thank God. How about you, Eddie? All right?”

Eddie listened for Henry’s voice and didn’t hear it. He had an idea that Henry’s voice might be gone for good. “Even better than that,” he said, and, laughing, folded her into his arms again. Over her shoulder he could see what was left of the door: only a few faint lines and angles. Soon the rain would wash those away, too.

44

“WHAT’s YOUR NAME?” JAKE asked the woman whose legs stopped just above the knee. He was suddenly aware that he had lost his pants in his struggle to escape the doorkeeper, and he pulled the tail of his shirt down over his underwear. There wasn’t very much left of her dress, either, as far as that went.

“Susannah Dean,” she said. “I already know your name.”

“Susannah,” Jake said thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose your father owns a railroad company, does he?”

She looked astonished for a moment, then threw her head back and laughed. “Why, no, sugar! He was a dentist who went and invented a few things and got rich. What makes you ask a thing like that?”

Jake didn’t answer. He had turned his attention to Eddie. The terror had already left his face, and his eyes had regained that cool, assessing look which Roland remembered so well from the way station.

“Hi, Jake,” Eddie said. “Good to see you, man.”

“Hi,” Jake said. “I met you earlier today, but you were a lot younger then.”

“I was a lot younger ten minutes ago. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Jake said. “Some scratches, that’s all.” He looked around. “You haven’t found the train yet.” This was not a question.

Eddie and Susannah exchanged puzzled looks, but Roland only shook his head. “No train.”

“Are your voices gone?”

Roland nodded. “All gone. Yours?”

“Gone. I’m all together again. We both are.”

They looked at the same instant, with the same impulse. As Roland swept Jake into his arms, the boy’s unnatural self-possession broke and he began to cry-it was the exhausted, relieved weeping of a child who has been lost long, suffered much, and is finally safe again. As Roland’s arms closed about his waist, Jake’s own arms slipped about the gunslinger’s neck and gripped like hoops of steel.

“I’ll never leave you again,” Roland said, and now his own tears came. “I swear to you on the names of all my fathers: I’ll never leave you again.”

Yet his heart, that silent, watchful, lifelong prisoner of ka, received the words of this promise not just with wonder but with doubt.