The Dark Tower

“There, now, dint I tell you?” she asked,and cackled. “Reckon it’s time to start totin dat barge, Roland!”

He eyed her. “Can you make Detta go away?”

She looked at him, surprised, then used hermemory to replay the last thing she had said. She flushed. “Yes,” she said in aremarkably small voice. “Say sorry, Roland.”

He picked her up and got her settled intothe harness. Then they went on. As unpleasant as it was beneath theDogan—as creepy as it was beneath the Dogan—Susa

The extraneous was slipping away. They wereclosing in on the end of their long journey, and there was little else to worryabout. That was good. And if she should happen to fall on her way to Roland’sobsession? Well, if there was only darkness on the other side of existence (asshe had for most of her adult life believed), then nothing was lost, as long asit wasn’t todash darkness, a place filled with creeping monsters. And,hey! Perhaps there was an afterlife, a heaven, a reincarnation, maybeeven a resurrection in the clearing at the end of the path. She liked that lastidea, and had now seen enough wonders to believe it might be so. Perhaps Eddieand Jake would be waiting for her there, all bundled up and with the firstdown-drifting snowflakes of winter getting caught in their eyebrows: Mr. MERRYand Mr. CHRISTMAS, offering her hot chocolate. Mit schlag.

Hot chocolate in Central Park! What was theDark Tower compared to that?

Seven

They passed through the rotunda with itsdoors to everywhere; they came eventually to the wide passage with the sign onthe wall reading SHOW ORANGE PASS ONLY, BLUE PASS NOT ACCEPTED. A little waydown it, in the glow of one of the still-working fluorescent lights (and nearthe forgotten rubber moccasin), they saw something printed on the tile wall anddetoured down to read it.

Under the main message they had signedtheir names: Fred Worthington, Dani Rostov, Ted Brautigan, and Dinky Earnshaw.Below the names were two more lines, written in another hand. Susa

“God love em,” Susa

“Keep-um,” said a small and rather timidvoice from Roland’s heel. They looked down.

“Decided to talk again, sugarpie?” Susa

Eight

Twice they got lost. Once Oy rediscoveredtheir way through the maze of tu

“Do you know what that says?” she asked.Roland—although he spoke over half a dozen languages and was familiarwith many more—shook his head. Susa

Maybe not.

Shortly after passing this door they wentdown another, shorter, flight of stairs. “I guess I forgot this one when wewere talking yesterday, but I remember it now,” she said, and pointed to thedust on the risers, which was disturbed. “Look, there’s our tracks. Fredcarried me going down, Dinky when we came back up. We’re almost there now,Roland, promise you.”

But she got lost again in the warren ofdiverging passages at the bottom of the stairs and this was when Oy put themright, trotting down a dim, tu

“I don’t know—” Susa

“Yeah,” she said, obviously relieved.“Okay. Look, just like I told you.” She pointed to a door marked FORD’STHEATER, 1865 SEE THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION. Beside it, under glass, wasa poster for Our American Cousin that looked as if it had been printedthe day before. “What we want’s just down here a little way. Two lefts and thena right—I think. Anyway, I’ll know it when I see it.”

Through it all Roland was patient with her.He had a nasty idea which he did not share with Susa

It was hot down here, and soon they wereboth sweating freely. Oy panted harshly and steadily, like a little engine, butkept a steady pace beside the gunslinger’s left heel. There was no dust on thefloor, and the tracks they’d seen off and on earlier were gone. The noises frombehind the doors were louder, however, and as they passed one, something on theother side thumped it hard enough to make it shudder in its frame. Oy barked atit, laying his ears back against his skull, and Susa

“Steady-oh,” Roland said. “It can’t breakthrough. None of them can break through.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes,” said the gunslinger firmly. Hewasn’t sure at all. A phrase of Eddie’s occurred to him: All bets are off.

They skirted the puddles, being careful noteven to touch the ones that were glowing with what might have been radiation orwitchlight. They passed a broken pipe that was exhaling a listless plume ofgreen steam, and Susa

Thirty or forty yards further along she bidhim stop. “I don’t know, Roland,” she said, and he could hear her struggling tokeep the panic out of her voice. “I thought we had it made in the shade when Isaw the Lincoln door, but now this… this here…” Her voice wavered and he felther draw a deep breath, struggling to get herself under control. “This alllooks different. And the sounds… how they get in your head…”

He knew what she meant. On their left wasan unmarked door that had settled crookedly against its hinges, and from thegap at the top came the atonal jangle of todash chimes, a sound that was bothhorrible and fascinating. With the chimes came a steady draft of stinking air.Roland had an idea she was about to suggest they go back while they stillcould, maybe rethink this whole going-under-the-castle idea, and so he said,“Let’s see what’s up there. It’s a little brighter, anyway.”