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Beat-beat-beat.

Commala-come-come, journey’s almost done.

That night she stood the first watch, thenawakened Roland at midnight.

“I think he’s out there someplace,” shesaid, pointing into the northwest. There was no need to be more specific; itcould only be Mordred. Everyone else was gone. “Watch well.”

“I will,” he said. “And if you hear agunshot, wake well. And fast.”

“You can count on it,” said she, and laydown in the dry winter grass behind Ho Fat II. At first she wasn’t sure she’dbe able to sleep; she was still jazzed from the sense of an unfriendly other inthe vicinity. But she did sleep.

And dreamed.

Ten

The dream of the second night is bothlike and unlike the dream of the first. The main elements are exactly the same:Central Park, gray sky, spits of snow, choral voices (this time harmonizing“Come Go With Me,” the old Del-Vikings hit), Jake (I DRIVE THE TAKURO SPIRIT!)and Eddie (this time wearing a sweatshirt reading CLICK! IT’S A SHINNAROCAMERA!). Eddie has hot chocolate but doesn’t offer it to her. She can see theanxiety not only in their faces but in the tensed-up set of their bodies. Thatis the main difference in this dream: there is something to see, or somethingto do, or perhaps it’s both. Whatever it is, they expected her to see it or doit by now and she is being backward.

A rather terrible question occurs toher: is she being purposely backward? Is there something here shedoesn’t want to confront? Could it even be possible that the Dark Tower isfucking up communications? Surely that’s a stupid idea—these people shesees are but figments of her longing imagination, after all; they are dead!Eddie killed by a bullet, Jake as a result of being run over by acar—one slain in this world, one in the Keystone World where fun is funand done is done (must be done, for there time always runs in one direction)and Stephen King is their poet laureate.

Yet she ca

Eleven

She snapped awake with a gasp. It wasalmost dawn. She wiped a hand across her brow, and it came away wet with sweat.

What do you want me to know, Eddie? Whatis it you’d have me know?

To this question there was no answer. Howcould there be? Mistuh Dean, he daid, she thought, and lay back down.She lay that way for another hour, but couldn’t get back to sleep.

Twelve

Like Ho Fat I, Ho Fat II was equipped withhandles. Unlike those on Ho Fat I, these handles were adjustable. When Patrickfelt like walking, the handles could be moved apart so he could pull one andRoland the other. When Patrick felt like riding, Roland moved the handlestogether so he could pull on his own.

They stopped at noon for a meal. When itwas done, Patrick crawled into the back of Ho Fat II for a snooze. Rolandwaited until he heard the boy (for so they continued to think of him, no matterwhat his age) snoring, then turned to her.

“What fashes thee, Susa

“If I’m still with you when we see yourTower, Roland, things have gone all wrong.”

How wrong?” he asked her.

She shook her head, begi

He took her in his arms and held her andkissed the hollow of her temple. At the corner of her mouth, the sore throbbedand burned. It wasn’t bleeding, but it had begun to grow again.

“Let be what will be,” said the gunslinger,as his own mother had once told him. “Let be what will be, and hush, and let kawork.”





“You said we’d outrun it.”

He rocked her in his arms, rocked her, andit was good. It was soothing. “I was wrong,” he said. “As thee knows.”

Thirteen

It was her turn to watch early on the thirdnight, and she was looking back behind them, northwest along the Tower Road,when a hand grasped her shoulder. Terror sprang up in her mind like ajack-in-the-box and she whirled

(he’s behind me oh dear God Mordred’sgot around behind me and it’s the spider!)

with her hand going to the gun in her beltand yanking it free.

Patrick recoiled from her, his own facelong with terror, raising his hands in front of him. If he’d cried out he wouldsurely have awakened Roland, and then everything might have been different. Buthe was too frightened to cry out. He made a low sound in his throat and thatwas all.

She put the gun back, showed him her emptyhands, then pulled him to her and hugged him. At first he was stiff againsther—still afraid—but after a little he relaxed.

“What is it, darling?” she asked him, sottovoce. Then, using Roland’s phrase without even realizing it: “What fashesthee?”

He pulled away from her and pointed deadnorth. For a moment she still didn’t understand, and then she saw the orangelights dancing and darting. She judged they were at least five miles away, andshe could hardly believe she hadn’t seen them before.

Still speaking low, so as not to wakeRoland, she said: “They’re nothing but foo-lights, sugar—they can’t hurtyou. Roland calls em hobs. They’re like St. Elmo’s fire, or something.”

But he had no idea of what St. Elmo’s firewas; she could see that in his uncertain gaze. She settled again for tellinghim they couldn’t hurt him, and indeed, this was the closest the hobs had evercome. Even as she looked back at them, they began to dance away, and soon mostof them were gone. Perhaps she had thought them away. Once she wouldhave scoffed at such an idea, but no longer.

Patrick began to relax.

“Why don’t you go back to sleep, honey? Youneed to take your rest.” And she needed to take hers, but she dreaded it. Soonshe would wake Roland, and sleep, and the dream would come. The ghosts of Jakeand Eddie would look at her, more frantic than ever. Wanting her to knowsomething she didn’t, couldn’t know.

Patrick shook his head.

“Not sleepy yet?”

He shook his head again.

“Well then, why don’t you draw awhile?”Drawing always relaxed him.

Patrick smiled and nodded and went at onceto Ho Fat for his current pad, walking in big exaggerated sneak-steps so as notto wake Roland. It made her smile. Patrick was always willing to draw; sheguessed that one of the things that kept him alive in the basement of Dandelo’shut had been knowing that every now and then the rotten old fuck would give hima pad and one of the pencils. He was as much an addict as Eddie had been at hisworst, she reflected, only Patrick’s dope was a narrow line of graphite.

He sat down and began to draw. Susa

Patrick was drawing her.

She sat still for nearly twenty minutes,and then curiosity overcame her. For Patrick, twenty minutes would be longenough to do the Mona Lisa, and maybe St. Paul’s Basilica in thebackground for good measure. That tingling sense was so queer, almostnot a mental thing at all but something physical.