Stephen King – The Dark Tower

the way by.” And when Roland looked puzzled at that, she put her tongue between her lips

and demonstrated.

This time the gunslinger’s smile was faint and distracted. “I don’t think it will be so easy,”

he said.

Susannah sighed. “Actually I don’t, either.”

They had what they’d come for—quite a bit more, in fact—but they still found it hard to

leave Sayre’s office. The picture held them. Susannah asked Roland if he didn’t want to

take it along. Certainly it would be simple enough to cut it out of the frame with the

letter-opener on Sayre’s desk and roll it up. Roland considered the idea, then shook his

head. There was a kind of malevolent life in it that might attract the wrong sort of attention, like moths to a bright light. And even if that were not the case, he had an idea that both

ofthem might spend too much time looking at it. The picture might distract them or, even

worse, hypnotize them.

In the end, maybe it’s just another mind-trap,he thought.Like Insomnia.

“We’ll leave it,” he said. “Soon enough—in months, maybe even weeks—we’ll have the

real thing to look at.”

“Do you say so?” she asked faintly. “Roland, do you really say so?”

“I do.”

“All three of us? Or will Oy and I have to die, too, in order to open your way to the Tower?

After all, youstarted alone, didn’t you? Maybe you have to finish that way. Isn’t that how a

writer would want it?”

“That doesn’t mean he cando it,” Roland said. “Stephen King’s not the water,

Susannah—he’s only the pipe the water runs through.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not sure I entirely believe it.”

Roland wasn’t completely sure he did, either. He thought of pointing out to Susannah that

Cuthbert and Alain had been with him at the true beginning of his quest, in Mejis, and

when they set out from Gilead the next time, Jamie DeCurry had joined them, making the

trio a quartet. But the quest had really started after the battle of Jericho Hill, and yes, by then he had been on his own.

“I started lone-john, but that’s not how I’ll finish,” he said. She had been making her way

quite handily from place to place in a rolling office-chair. Now he plucked her out of it and settled her on his right hip, the one that no longer pained him. “You and Oy will be with me

when I climb the steps and enter the door, you’ll be with me when I climb the stairs, you’ll

be with me when I deal with yon capering red goblin, and you’ll be with me when I enter

the room at the top.”

Although Susannah did not say so, this felt like a lie to her. In truth it felt like a lie to both of them.

Two

They brought canned goods, a skillet, two pots, two plates, and two sets of utensils back to

the Fedic Hotel. Roland had added a flashlight that provided a feeble glow from nearly

dead batteries, a butcher’s knife, and a handy little hatchet with a rubber grip. Susannah

had found a pair of net bags in which to store this little bit of fresh gunna. She also found three cans of jellylike stuff on a high shelf in the pantry adjacent to the infirmary kitchen.

“It’s Sterno,” she told the gunslinger when he inquired.

“Good stuff. You can light it up. It burns slow and makes a blue flame hot enough to cook

on.”

“I thought we’d build a little fire behind the hotel,” he said. “I won’t need this smelly stuff to make one, certainly.” He said it with a touch of contempt.

“No, I suppose not. But it might come in handy.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but…” She shrugged.

Near the door to the street they passed what appeared to be a janitor’s closet filled with

piles of rickrack. Susannah had had enough of the Dogan for one day and was anxious to be

out, but Roland wanted to have a look. He ignored the mop buckets and brooms and

cleaning supplies in favor of a jumble of cords and straps heaped in a corner. Susannah

guessed from the boards on top of which they lay that this stuff had once been used to build

temporary scaffoldings. She also had an idea what Roland wanted the strappage for, and

her heart sank. It was like going all the way back to the beginning.

“Thought I was done with piggybackin,” she said crossly, and with more than a touch of

Detta in her voice.

“It’s the only way, I think,” Roland said. “I’m just glad I’m whole enough again to carry

your weight.”

“And that passage underneath’s the only way through? You’re sure of that?”

“I suppose there might be a way through the castle—” he began, but Susannah was already

shaking her head.

“I’ve been up top with Mia, don’t forget. The drop into the Discordia on the far side’s at

least five hundred feet. Probably more. There might have been stairs in the long-ago, but

they’re gone now.”

“Then we’re for the passage,” he said, “and the passage is for us. Mayhap we’ll find

something for you to ride in once we’re on the other side. In another town or village.”

Susannah was shaking her head again. “I think this is where civilization ends, Roland. And

I think we better bundle up as much as we can, because it’s gonna getcold. ”

Bundling-up materials seemed to be in short supply, however, unlike the foodstuffs. No

one had thought to store a few extra sweaters and fleece-lined jackets in vacuum-packed

cans. There were blankets, but even in storage they had grown thin and fragile, just short of useless.

“I don’t give a bedbug’s ass,” she said in a wan voice. “Just as long as we get out of this

place.”

“We will,” he said.

Three

Susannah is in Central Park, and it’s cold enough to see her breath. The sky overhead is

white from side to side, a snow-sky. She’s looking down at the polar bear (who’s rolling

around on his rocky island, seeming to enjoy the cold just fine) when a hand snakes around

her waist. Warm lips smack her cold cheek. She turns and there stand Eddie and Jake. They

are wearing identical grins and nearly identical red stocking caps. Eddie’s saysMERRY

across the front and Jake’s saysCHRISTMAS . She opens her mouth to tell them “You

boys can’t be here, you boys aredead,”and then she realizes, with a great and singing relief, that all that business was just a dream she had. And really, how could you doubt it? There

are no talking animals called billy-bumblers, not really, no taheen-creatures with the

bodies of humans and the heads of animals, no places called Fedic or Castle Discordia.

Most of all, there are no gunslingers. John Kennedy was the last, her chauffeur Andrew

was right about that.

“Brought you hot chocolate,” Eddie says and holds it out to her. It’s the perfect cup of hot

chocolate,mit schlagon top and little sprinkles of nutmeg dotting the cream; she can smell it, and as she takes it she can feel his fingers inside his gloves and the first flakes of that

winter’s snow drift down between them. She thinks how good it is to be alive in plain old

New York, how great that reality is reality, that they are together in the Year of Our Lord

—

WhatYear of Our Lord?

She frowns, because this is a serious question, isn’t it? After all, Eddie’s an eighties man

and she never got any further than 1964 (or was it ’65?). As for Jake, Jake Chambers with

the wordCHRISTMAS printed on the front of his happy hat, isn’t he from the seventies?

And if the three of them represent three decades from the second half of the twentieth

century, what is their commonality? What year is this?

“NINETEEN,”says a voice out of the air (perhaps it is the voice of Bango Skank, the Great

Lost Character), “this is NINETEEN, this is CHASSIT. All your friends are dead.”

With each word the world becomes more unreal. She can see through Eddie and Jake.

When she looks down at the polar bear she sees it’s lying dead on its rock island with its

paws in the air. The good smell of hot chocolate is fading, being replaced by a musty smell:

old plaster, ancient wood. The odor of a hotel room where no one has slept for years.

No,her mind moans. No, I want Central Park, I want Mr. MERRY and Mr. CHRISTMAS, I want the smell of hot chocolate and the sight of December’s first hesitant snowflakes, I’ve had enough of Fedic, In-World, Mid-World, and End-World. I wantMy -World. I don’t

care if I ever see the Dark Tower.

Eddie’s and Jake’s lips move in unison, as if they are singing a song she can’t hear, but it’s not a song; the words she reads on their lips just before the dream breaks apart are