The Dark Tower

In the main dining room, two or threetables were overturned. Roland saw stains on the red rug, several dark onesthat were almost certainly blood and a yellowish curd that was… something else.

H’row it aside! Nasty bauble of the‘heep-God, h’row it aside if you dare!

And the Pere’s voice, echoing dimly inRoland’s ears, unafraid: I needn’t stake my faith on the challenge of such athing as you, sai.

The Pere. Another of those he had leftbehind.

Roland thought briefly of the scrimshawturtle that had been hidden in the lining of the bag they had found in thevacant lot, but didn’t waste time looking for it. If it had been here, hethought he would have heard its voice, calling to him in the silence. No,whoever had appropriated the tapestry of the vampire-knights at di

The gunslinger moved on, weaving his wayamong the tables with Oy trotting at his heel.

Seventeen

He paused in the kitchen long enough towonder what the constabulary of New York had made of it. He was willing to betthey had never seen another like it, not in this city of clean machinery andbright electric lights. This was a kitchen in which Hax, the cook he rememberedbest from his youth (and beneath whose dead feet he and his best friend hadonce scattered bread for the birds), would have felt at home. The cookfires hadbeen out for weeks, but the smell of the meat that had been roastedhere—some of the variety known as long pork—was strong and nasty.There were more signs of trouble here, as well (a scum-caked pot lying on thegreen tiles of the floor, blood which had been burned black on one of thestovetops), and Roland could imagine Jake fighting his way through the kitchen.But not in panic; no, not he. Instead he had paused to demand directions of thecook’s boy.

What’s your name, cully?

Jochabim, that be I, son of Hossa.

Jake had told them this part of his story,but it was not memory that spoke to Roland now. It was the voices of the dead.He had heard such voices before, and knew them for what they were.

Eighteen

Oy took the lead as he had done the lasttime he had been here. He could still smell Ake’s scent, faint and sorrowful.Ake had gone on ahead now, but not so very far; he was good, Ake was good, Akewould wait, and when the time came—when the job Ake had given him wasdone—Oy would catch up and go with him as before. His nose was strong,and he would find fresher scent than this when the time came to search for it.Ake had saved him from death, which did not matter. Ake had saved him fromloneliness and shame after Oy had been cast out by the tet of his kind, andthat did.

In the meantime, there was this job tofinish. He led the man Olan into the pantry. The secret door to the stairs hadbeen closed, but the man Olan felt patiently along the shelves of cans andboxes until he found the way to open it. All was as it had been, the long,descending stair dimly lit by overhead bulbs, the scent damp and overlaid withmold. He could smell the rats which scuttered in the walls; rats and otherthings, too, some of them bugs of the sort he had killed the last time he andAke had come here. That had been good killing, and he would gladly have more,if more were offered. Oy wished the bugs would show themselves again andchallenge him, but of course they didn’t. They were afraid, and they were rightto be afraid, for ever had his kind stood enemy to theirs.

He started down the stairs with the manOlan following behind.

Nineteen

They passed the deserted kiosk with itsage-yellowed signs (NEW YORK SOUVENIRS, LAST CHANCE, and VISIT SEPTEMBER 11,2001), and fifteen minutes later—Roland checked his new watch to be sureof the time—they came to a place where there was a good deal of brokenglass on the dusty corridor floor. Roland picked Oy up so he wouldn’t cut thepads of his feet. On both walls he saw the shattered remains of what had beenglass-covered hatches of some kind. When he looked in, he saw complicatedmachinery. They had almost caught Jake here, snared him in some kind ofmind-trap, but once again Jake had been clever enough and brave enough to getthrough. He survived everything but a man too stupid and too careless to dothe simple job of driving his bucka on an empty road, Roland thoughtbitterly. And the man who brought him there—that man, too. Then Oybarked at him and Roland realized that in his anger at Bryan Smith (and athimself), he was squeezing the poor little fellow too tightly.

“Cry pardon, Oy,” he said, and put himdown.

Oy trotted on without making any reply, andnot long after Roland came to the scattered bodies of the boogers who hadharried his boy from the Dixie Pig. Here also, printed in the dust that coatedthe floor of this ancient corridor, were the tracks he and Eddie had made whenthey arrived. Again he heard a ghost-voice, this time that of the man who hadbeen the harriers’ leader.

I know your name by your face, and yourface by your mouth. ‘Tis the same as the mouth of your mother, who did suckJohn Farson with such glee.

Roland turned the body over with the toe ofhis boot (a hume named Flaherty, whose da’ had put a fear of dragons in hishead, had the gunslinger known or cared… which he did not) and looked down intothe dead face, which was already growing a crop of mold. Next to him was thestoat-head taheen whose final proclamation had been Be damned to you, then,chary-ka. And beyond the heaped bodies of these two and their mates was thedoor that would take him out of the Keystone World for good.

Assuming that it still worked.

Oy trotted to it and sat down before it,looking back at Roland. The bumbler was panting, but his old, amiably fiendishgrin was gone. Roland reached the door and placed his hands against theclose-grained ghostwood. Deep within he felt a low and troubled vibration. Thisdoor was still working but might not be for much longer.

He closed his eyes and thought of hismother bending over him as he lay in his little bed (how soon before he hadbeen promoted from the cradle he didn’t know, but surely not long), her face apatchwork of colors from the nursery windows, Gabrielle Deschain who wouldlater die at those hands which she caressed so lightly and lovingly with herown; daughter of Candor the Tall, wife of Steven, mother of Roland, singing himto sleep and dreams of those lands only children know.

Baby-bunting, baby-dear,

Baby, bring your berries here.

Chussit, chissit, chassit!

Bring enough to fill your basket!

So far I’ve traveled, he thoughtwith his hands splayed on the ghostwood door. So far I’ve traveled and somany I’ve hurt along the way, hurt or killed, and what I may have saved wassaved by accident and can never save my soul, do I have one. Yet there’s thismuch: I’ve come to the head of the last trail, and I need not travel it alone,if only Susa