The Dark Tower

Jake turned his head to the side. He spatout a mouthful of blood—some of it ran down his cheek like chewingtobacco—and took a hold on Roland’s wrist. His grip was strong; so washis voice, each word clear.

“Everything’s sprung. This isdying—I know because I’ve done it before.” What he said next was whatRoland had been thinking just before they started out from Cara Laughs: “If kawill say so, let it be so. See to the man we came to save!”

It was impossible to deny the imperative inthe boy’s eyes and voice. It was done, now, the Ka of Nineteen played out tothe end. Except, perhaps, for King. The man they had come to save. How much oftheir fate had danced from the tips of his flying, tobacco-stained fingers?All? Some? This?

Whatever the answer, Roland could havekilled him with his bare hands as he lay pi

And yet—

“Don’t move,” he said, getting up. “Oy,don’t let him move.”

“I won’t move.” Every word still clear,still sure. But now Roland could see blood also darkening the bottom of Jake’sshirt and the crotch of his jeans, blooming there like roses. Once before hedied and had come back. But not from this world. In this one, death was alwaysfor keeps.

Roland turned to where the writer lay.

Two

When Bryan Smith tried to get out frombehind the wheel of his van, Irene Tassenbaum pushed him rudely back in. Hisdogs, perhaps smelling blood or Oy or both, were barking and capering wildlybehind him. Now the radio was pounding out some new and utterly hellish heavymetal tune. She thought her head would split, not from the shock of what hadjust happened but from pure racket. She saw the man’s revolver lying on theground and picked it up. The small part of her mind still capable of coherentthought was amazed by the weight of the thing. Nevertheless, she pointed it atthe man, then reached past him and punched the power button on the radio. Withthe blaring fuzz-tone guitars gone, she could hear birds as well as two barkingdogs and one howling… well, one howling whatever-it-was.

“Back your van off the guy you hit,” shesaid. “Slowly. And if you run over the kid again when you do it, I swear I’llblow your jackass head off.”

Bryan Smith stared at her with bloodshot,bewildered eyes. “What kid?” he asked.

Three

When the van’s front wheel rolled slowlyoff the writer, Roland saw that his lower body was twisted u

“You again,” King said in a low voice.

“You remember me.”

“Yes. Now.” King licked his lips.“Thirsty.”

Roland had nothing to drink, and wouldn’thave given more than enough to wet King’s lips even if he had. Liquid couldinduce vomiting in a wounded man, and vomiting could lead to choking. “Sorry,”he said.

“No. You’re not.” He licked his lips again.“Jake?”

“Over there, on the ground. You know him?”

King tried to smile. “Wrote him.Where’s the one that was with you before? Where’s Eddie?”

“Dead,” Roland said. “In the Devar-Toi.”

King frowned. “Devar…? I don’t know that.”

“No. That’s why we’re here. Why we had tocome here. One of my friends is dead, another may be dying, and the tet isbroken. All because one lazy, fearful man stopped doing the job for which kaintended him.”

No traffic on the road. Except for thebarking dogs, the howling bumbler, and the chirping birds, the world wassilent. They might have been frozen in time. Perhaps we are, Rolandthought. He had now seen enough to believe that might be possible. Anythingmight be possible.

“I lost the Beam,” King said from where helay on the carpet of needles at the edge of the trees. The light of earlysummer streamed all around him, that haze of green and gold.

Roland reached under King and helped him tosit up. The writer cried out in pain as the swollen ball of his right hipgrated in the shattered, compressed remains of its socket, but he did notprotest. Roland pointed into the sky. Fat white fair-weather clouds—losángeles, the cowpokes of Mejis had called them—hung motionlessin the blue, except for those directly above them. There they hied rapidlyacross the sky, as if blown by a narrow wind.

“There!” Roland whispered furiously intothe writer’s scraped, dirt-clogged ear. “Directly above you! All around you!Does thee not feel it? Does thee not see it?”

“Yes,” King said. “I see it now.”

“Aye, and ‘twas always there. You didn’tlose it, you turned your coward’s eye away. My friend had to save you for youto see it again.”

Roland’s left hand fumbled in his belt andbrought out a shell. At first his fingers wouldn’t do their old, dexteroustrick; they were trembling too badly. He was only able to still them byreminding himself that the longer it took him to do this, the greater thechance that they would be interrupted, or that Jake would die while he was busywith this miserable excuse for a man.

He looked up and saw the woman holding hisgun on the driver of the van. That was good. She was good: why hadn’tGan given the story of the Tower to someone like her? In any case, his instinctto keep her with them had been true. Even the infernal racket of dogs andbumbler had quieted. Oy was licking the dirt and oil from Jake’s face, while inthe van, Pistol and Bullet were gobbling up the hamburger, this time withoutinterference from their master.

Roland turned back to King, and the shelldid its old sure dance across the backs of his fingers. King went under almostimmediately, as most people did when they’d been hypnotized before. His eyeswere still open, but now they seemed to look through the gunslinger, beyondhim.

Roland’s heart screamed at him to getthrough this as quickly as he could, but his head knew better. You must notbotch it. Not unless you want to render Jake’s sacrifice worthless.

The woman was looking at him, and so wasthe van’s driver as he sat in the open door of his vehicle. Sai Tassenbaum wasfighting it, Roland saw, but Bryan Smith had followed King into the land ofsleep. This didn’t surprise the gunslinger much. If the man had the slightestinkling of what he’d done here, he’d be apt to seize any opportunity forescape. Even a temporary one.

The gunslinger turned his attention back tothe man who was, he supposed, his biographer. He started just as he had before.Days ago in his own life. Over two decades ago in the writer’s.

“Stephen King, do you see me?”

“Gunslinger, I see you very well.”

“When did you last see me?”

“When we lived in Bridgton. When my tet wasyoung. When I was just learning how to write.” A pause, and then he gave whatRoland supposed was, for him, the most important way of marking time, a thingthat was different for every man: “When I was still drinking.”

“Are you deep asleep now?”

“Deep.”

“Are you under the pain?”

“Under it, yes. I thank you.”

The billy-bumbler howled again. Rolandlooked around, terribly afraid of what it might signify. The woman had gone toJake and was kneeling beside him. Roland was relieved to see Jake put an armaround her neck and draw her head down so he could speak into her ear. If he wasstrong enough to do that—