The Dark Tower tdt-7, Page 2

  With a sense of deja vu-and why not, he had lived all this before in the home of a boy named Mark Petrie-Callahan dipped into the open front of his shirt and brought out the cross he wore there. It clicked against the butt of the Ruger and then hung below it. The cross was lit with a brilliant bluish-white glare. The two ancient things in the lead had been about to grab him and draw him into their midst. Now they drew back instead, shrieking with pain. Callahan saw the surface of their skin sizzle and begin to liquefy. The sight of it filled him with savage happiness.

  “Get back from me!” he shouted. “The power of God commands you! The power of Christ commands you! The ka of Mid-World commands you! The power of the White commands you!”

  One of them darted forward nevertheless, a deformed skeleton in an ancient, moss-encrusted dinner suit. Around its neck it wore some sort of ancient award… the Cross of Malta, perhaps? It swiped one of its long-nailed hands at the crucifix Callahan was holding out. He jerked it down at the last second, and die vampire’s claw passed an inch above it. Callahan lunged forward without drought and drove die tip of the cross into the yellow parchment of the thing’s forehead. The gold crucifix went in like a red-hot skewer into butter. The thing in the rusty dinner suit let out a liquid cry of pained dismay and stumbled backward. Callahan pulled his cross back. For one moment, before the elderly monster clapped its claws to its brow, Callahan saw the hole his cross had made. Then a thick, curdy, yellow stuff began to spill through the ancient one’s fingers. Its knees unhinged and it tumbled to the floor between two tables. Its mates shrank away from it, screaming with outrage.

  The thing’s face was already collapsing inward beneadi its twisted hands. Its aura whiffed out like a candle and then there was nothing but a puddle of yellow, liquefying flesh spilling like vomit from the sleeves of its jacket and the legs of its pants.

  Callahan strode briskly toward the others. His fear was gone. The shadow of shame that had hung over him ever since Barlow had taken his cross and broken it was also gone.

  Free at last, he thought. Free at last, great God Almighty, I’m free at last. Then: I believe this is redemption. And it’s good, isn’t it? Quite good, indeed.

  “H’row it aside!” one of them cried, its hands held up to shield its face. “Nasty bauble of the ’heep-God, h’row it aside if you dare!”

  Nasty bauble of the sheep-God, indeed. If so, why do you cringe?

  Against Barlow he had not dared answer this challenge, and it had been his undoing. In the Dixie Pig, Callahan turned die cross toward the thing which had dared to speak.

  “I needn’t stake my faith on the challenge of such a thing as you, sai,” he said, his words ringing clearly in the room. He had forced the old ones back almost to the archway through which they had come. Great dark tumors had appeared on the hands and faces of those in front, eating into the paper of their ancient skin like acid. “And I’d never throw away such an old friend in any case. But put it away? Aye, if you like.” And he dropped it back into his shirt.

  Several of the vampires lunged forward immediately, their fang-choked mouths twisting in what might have been grins.

  Callahan held his hands out toward them. The fingers (and the barrel of the Ruger) glowed, as if they had been dipped into blue fire. The eyes of the turtle had likewise filled with light; its shell shone.

  “Stand away from me!” Callahan cried. “The power of God and the White commands you!”

  SEVEN

  When the terrible shaman turned to face the Grandfathers,

  Meiman of the taheen felt the Turtle’s awful, lovely glammer lessen a bit. He saw that the boy was gone, and that filled him with dismay, yet at least he’d gone further in rather than slipping out, so that might still be all right. But if the boy found the door to Fedic and used it, Meiman might find himself in very bad trouble, indeed. For Sayre answered to Walter o’ Dim, and Walter answered only to the Crimson King himself.

  Never mind. One thing at a time. Settle the shaman’s hash first. Turn the Grandfathers loose on him. Then go after the boy, perhaps shouting that his friend wanted him after all, that might work-Meiman (the Canaryman to Mia, Tweety Bird to Jake) crept forward, grasping Andrew-the fat man in the tux with the plaid lapels-with one hand and Andrew’s even fatter jilly with the other. He gestured at Callahan’s turned back.

  Tirana shook her head vehemently. Meiman opened his beak and hissed at her. She shrank away from him. Detta Walker had already gotten her fingers into the mask wore and it hung in shreds about her jaw and neck. In the middle of her forehead, a red wound opened and closed like the gill of a dying fish.

  Meiman turned to Andrew, released him long enough to point at the shaman, then drew the talon that served him as a hand across his feathered throat in a grimly expressive gesture.

  Andrew nodded and brushed away his wife’s pudgy hands when they tried to restrain him. The mask of humanity was good enough to show the low man in the garish tuxedo visibly gathering his courage. Then he leaped forward with a strangled cry, seizing Callahan around the neck not with his hands but his fat forearms. At the same moment his jilly lunged and struck the ivory turtle from the Pere’s hand, screaming as she did so.

  The skoldpadda tumbled to the red rug, bounced beneath one of the tables, and there (like a certain paper boat some of you may remember) passes out of this tale forever.

  The Grandfathers still held back, as did die Type Three vampires who had been dining in the public room, but the low men and women sensed weakness and moved in, first hesitantly, then with growing confidence. They surrounded Callahan, paused, and then fell on him in all their numbers.

  “Let me go in God’s name!” Callahan cried, but of course it did no good. Unlike the vampires, the things with the red wounds in their foreheads did not respond to the name of Callahan’s God. All he could do was hope Jake wouldn’t stop, let alone double back; that he and Oy would go like the wind to Susannah. Save her if they could. Die with her if they could not.

  And kill her baby, if chance allowed. God help him, but he had been wrong about that. They should have snuffed out the baby’s life back in the Calla, when they had the chance.

  Something bit deeply into his neck. The vampires would come now, cross or no cross. They’d fall on him like the sharks they were once they got their first whiff of his life’s blood. Help me God, give me strength, Callahan thought, and felt the strength flow into him. He rolled to his left as claws ripped into his shirt, tearing it to ribbons. For a moment his right hand was free, and the Ruger was still in it. He turned it toward the working, sweaty, hate-congested face of the fat one named Andrew and placed the barrel of the gun (bought for home protection in the long-distant past by Jake’s more than a litde paranoid TVexecutive fadier) against the soft red wound in the center of the low man’s forehead.

  “No-ooo, you daren’t!” Tirana cried, and as she reached for the gun, the front of her gown finally burst, spilling her massive breasts free. They were covered with coarse fur.

  Callahan pulled the trigger. The Ruger’s report was deafening in the dining room. Andrew’s head exploded like a gourd filled with blood, spraying the creatures who had been crowding in behind him. There were screams of horror and disbelief.

  Callahan had time to think, It wasn’t supposed to be this way, was it? And: Is it enough to put me in the club? Am I a gunslinger yet?

  Perhaps not. But there was the bird-man, standing right in front of him between two tables, its beak opening and closing, its throat beating visibly with excitement.

  Smiling, propping himself on one elbow as blood pumped onto the carpet from his torn throat, Callahan leveled Jake’s Ruger.

  “No!” Meiman cried, raising his misshapen hands to his face in an utterly fruitless gesture of protection. “No, you CAN’T-”

  Can so, Callahan thought with childish glee, and fired again.

  Meiman took two stumble-steps backward, then a third. He struck a table and collapsed on top of it. Three yellow feathers hung a
bove him on the air, seesawing lazily.

  Callahan heard savage howls, not of anger or fear but of hunger. The aroma of blood had finally penetrated the old ones’jaded nostrils, and nothing would stop them now. So, if he didn’t want to join them-

  Pere Callahan, once Father Callahan of ’salem’s Lot, turned the Ruger’s muzzle on himself. He wasted no time looking for eternity in the darkness of the barrel but placed it deep against the shelf of his chin.

  “Hile, Roland!” he said, and knew

  (the wave they are lifted by the wave)

  that he was heard. “Hile, gunslinger!”

  His finger tightened on the trigger as the ancient monsters fell upon him. He was buried in the reek of their cold and bloodless breath, but not daunted by it. He had never felt so strong. Of all the years in his life he had been happiest when he had been a simple vagrant, not a priest but only Callahan O’The Roads, and felt that soon he would be let free to resume that life and wander as he would, his duties fulfilled, and that was well.

  “May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top!”

  The teeth of his old enemies, these ancient brothers and sisters of a thing which had called itself Kurt Barlow, sank into him like stingers. Callahan felt them not at all. He was smiling as he pulled the trigger and escaped them for good.

  Chapter II:

  LIFTED ON THE WAVE

  ONE

  On their way out along the dirt camp-road which had taken them to the writer’s house in the town of Bridgton, Eddie and Roland came upon an orange pickup truck with the words CENTRAL MAINE POWER MAINTENANCE painted on the sides. Nearby, a man in a yellow hardhat and an orange high-visibility vest was cutting branches that threatened the low-hanging electrical lines. And did Eddie feel something then, some gathering force? Maybe a precursor of the wave rushing down the Path of the Beam toward them? He later thought so, but couldn’t say for sure. God knew he’d been in a weird enough mood already, and why not? How many people got to meet their creators? Well…

  Stephen King hadn’t created Eddie Dean, a young man whose Co-Op City happened to be in Brooklyn rather than the Bronx-not yet, not in that year of 1977, but Eddie felt certain that in time King would. How else could he be here?

  Eddie nipped in ahead of the power-truck, got out, and asked the sweating man with the brush-hog in his hands for directions to Turtleback Lane, in the town of Lovell. The Central Maine Power guy passed on the directions willingly enough, then added: “If you’re serious about going to Lovell today, you’re gonna have to use Route 93. The Bog Road, some folks call it.”

  He raised a hand to Eddie and shook his head like a man forestalling an argument, although Eddie had not in fact said a word since asking his original question.

  It’s seven miles longer, I know, and jouncy as a bugger, but you can’t get through East Stoneham today. Cops’ve got it blocked off. State Bears, local yokels, even the Oxford County Sheriffs Department.”

  “You’re kidding,” Eddie said. It seemed a safe enough response.

  The power guy shook his head grimly. “No one seems to know exactly what’s up, but there’s been shootin-automatic weapons, maybe-and explosions.” He patted the battered and sawdusty walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. “I’ve even heard the t-word once or twice this afternoon. Not s’prised, either.”

  Eddie had no idea what the t-word might be, but knew Roland wanted to get going. He could feel the gunslinger’s impatience in his head; could almost see Roland’s impatient finger-twirling gesture, the one that meant Let’s go, let’s go.

  “I’m talking ’bout terrorism,” the power guy said, then lowered his voice. “People don’t uiink shit like that can happen in America, buddy, but I got news for you, it can. If not today, then sooner or later. Someone’s gonna blow up the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, that’s what I think-the right-wingers, the left-wingers, or the goddam A-rabs. Too many crazy people.”

  Eddie, who had a nodding acquaintance with ten more years of history than this fellow, nodded. “You’re probably right. In any case, thanks for the info.”

  “Just tryin to save you some time.” And, as Eddie opened the driver’s-side door of John Cullum’s Ford sedan: ’You been in a fight, mister? You look kinda bunged up. Also you’re limping.”

  Eddie had been in a fight, all right: had been grooved in the arm and plugged in the right calf. Neither wound was serious, and in the forward rush of events he had nearly forgotten them. Now they hurt all over again. Why in God’s name had he turned down Aaron Deepneau’s bottle of Percocet tablets?

  “Yeah,” he said, “diat’s why I’m going to Lovell. Guy’s dog bit me. He and I are going to have a talk about it.” Bizarre story, didn’t have much going for it in the way of plot, but he was no writer. That was King’s job. In any case, it was good enough to get him back behind the wheel of Cullum’s Ford Galaxie before the power guy could ask him any more questions, and Eddie reckoned that made it a success. He drove away quickly.

  “You got directions?” Roland asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Everything’s breaking at once, Eddie. We have to get to Susannah as fast as we can. Jake and Pere Callahan, too.

  And the baby’s coming, whatever it is. May have come already.”

  Turn right when you get back out to Kansas Road, the power guy had told Eddie (Kansas as in Dorothy, Toto, and Auntie Em, everything breaking at once), and he did. That put them rolling north. The sun had gone behind the trees on their left, throwing the two-lane blacktop entirely into shadow. Eddie had an almost palpable sense of time slipping through his fingers like some fabulously expensive cloth that was too smooth to grip. He stepped on the gas and Cullum’s old Ford, although wheezy in the valves, walked out a little. Eddie got it up to fifty-five and pegged it there. More speed might have been possible, but Kansas Road was both twisty and badly maintained.

  Roland had taken a sheet of notepaper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and was now studying it (although Eddie doubted if the gunslinger could actually read much of the document; this world’s written words would always be mostly mystery to him). At the top of the paper, above Aaron Deepneau’s rather shaky but perfectly legible handwriting (and Calvin Tower’s all-important signature), was a smiling cartoon beaver and the words DAM IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO. A silly pun if ever there was one.

  I don’t like silly questions, I won’t play silly games, Eddie thought, and suddenly grinned. It was a point of view to which Roland still held, Eddie felt quite sure, notwithstanding the fact that, while riding Blaine the Mono, their lives had been saved by a few well-timed silly questions. Eddie opened his mouth to point out that what might well turn out to be the most important document in the history of the world-more important than the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence or Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity-was headed by a dumb pun, and how did Roland like them apples? Before he could get out a single word, however, the wave struck.

  TWO

  His foot slipped off the gas pedal, and that was good. If it had stayed on, both he and Roland would surely have been injured, maybe killed. When the wave came, staying in control of John Cullum’s Ford Galaxie dropped all the way off Eddie Dean’s list of priorities. It was like that moment when the roller coaster has reached the top of its first mountain, hesitates a moment… tilts… plunges… and you fall with a sudden blast of hot summer air in your face and a pressure against your chest and your stomach floating somewhere behind you.

  In that moment Eddie saw everything in Cullum’s car had come untethered and was floating-pipe ashes, two pens and a paperclip from the dashboard, Eddie’s dinh, and, he realized, his dinh’s ka-mai, good old Eddie Dean. No wonder he had lost his stomach! (He wasn’t aware that the car itself, which had drifted to a stop at the side of the road, was also floating, tilting lazily back and forth five or six inches above the ground like a small boat on an invisible sea.)

  Then the tree-lined country
road was gone. Bridgton was gone. The world was gone. There was the sound of todash chimes, repulsive and nauseating, making him want to grit his teeth in protest… except his teeth were gone, too.

  THREE

  Like Eddie, Roland had a clear sense of being first lifted and then hung, like something diat had lost its ties to Earth’s gravity.

  He heard the chimes and felt himself elevated through the wall of existence, but he understood this wasn’t real todash-at least not of the sort they’d experienced before. This was very likely what Vannay called aven kal, words which meant lifted on the wind or carried on the wave. Only the kal form, instead of the more usual kas, indicated a natural force of disastrous proportions: not a wind but a hurricane; not a wave but a tsunami.

  The very Beam means to speak to you, Gabby, Vannay said in his Gabby, the old sarcastic nickname Vannay had adopted ause Steven Deschain’s boy was so close-mouthed. His limpng brilliant tutor had stopped using it (probably at Cort’s existence) the year Roland had turned eleven. You would do well to listen if it does.

  I will listen very well, Roland replied, and was dropped. He gagged, weightless and nauseated.

  More chimes. Then, suddenly, he was floating again, this time above a room filled with empty beds. One look was enough to assure him that this was where the Wolves brought the children they kidnapped from the Borderland Callas. At the far end of the room-

  A hand grasped his arm, a thing Roland would have thought impossible in this state. He looked to his left and saw Eddie beside him, floating naked. They were both naked, their clothes left behind in the writer’s world.

  Roland had already seen what Eddie was pointing to. At the far end of the room, a pair of beds had been pushed together.