Stephen King – The Dark Tower

your distance, bitch,” Straw said, and for the first time Susannah faced the possibility that they weren’t going to let her get hold of Scowther’s gun. Or any gun.

Mia screamed again, crying out to a strange god in a strange language. When she tried to

raise her midsection from the table, the nurse—Alia, Susannah thought the nurse’s name

was Alia—forced her down again, and Scowther gave a short, curt cry of what sounded like

satisfaction. He tossed aside the forceps he’d been holding.

“Why d’ye do that?” Sayre demanded. The sheets beneath Mia’s spread legs were now

damp with blood, and the boss sounded flustered.

“Won’t need them!” Scowther returned breezily. “She was built for babies, could have a

dozen in the rice-patch and never miss a row’s worth of picking. Here it comes, neat as you

please!”

Scowther made as if to grab the largish basin sitting on the next bed, decided he didn’t

have quite enough time, and slipped his pink, gloveless hands up the inside of Mia’s thighs,

instead. This time when Susannah made an effort to move closer to Mia, Straw didn’t stop

her. All of them, low men and vampires alike, were watching the last stage of the birth with

complete fascination, most of them clustered at the end of the two beds which had been

pushed together to make one. Only Straw was still close to Susannah. The vampire with the

fire-sword had just been demoted; she decided that Straw would be the first to go.

“Once more!” Scowther cried.“For your baby! ”

Like the low men and the vampires, Mia had forgotten Susannah. Her wounded,

pain-filled eyes fixed on Sayre. “May I have him, sir? Please say I may have him, if only

for a little while!”

Sayre took her hand. The mask which covered his real face smiled. “Yes, my darling,” he

said. “The chap is yours for years and years. Only push this one last time.”

Mia, don’t believe his lies!Susannah cried, but the cry went nowhere. Likely that was just

as well. Best she be entirely forgotten for the time being.

Susannah turned her thoughts in a new direction.Jake! Jake, where are you?

No answer. Not good. Please God he was still alive.

Maybe he’s only busy. Running…hiding…fighting. Silence doesn’t necessarily mean

he’s—

Mia howled what sounded like a string of obscenities, pushing as she did so. The lips of

her already distended vagina spread further. A freshet of blood poured out, widening the

muddy delta-shape on the sheet beneath her. And then, through the welter of crimson,

Susannah saw a crown of white and black. The white was skin. The black was hair.

The mottle of white and black began to retreat into the crimson and Susannah thought the

baby would settle back, still not quite ready to come into the world, but Mia was done

waiting. She pushed with all her considerable might, her hands held up before her eyes in

clenched and trembling fists, her eyes slitted, her teeth bared. A vein pulsed alarmingly in

the center of her forehead; another stood out on the column of her throat.

“HEEEYAHHHH!”she cried.“COMMALA, YOU PRETTY BASTARD!

COMMALA-COME-COME! ”

“Dan-tete,” murmured Jey, the hawk-thing, and the others picked it up in a kind of

reverent whisper:Dan-tete…dan-tete…commala dan-tete. The coming of the little god.

This time the baby’s head did not just crown but rushed forward. Susannah saw his hands held against his blood-spattered chest in tiny fists that trembled with life. She saw blue eyes, wide open and startling in both their awareness and their similarity to Roland’s. She saw

sooty black lashes. Tiny beads of blood jeweled them, barbaric natal finery. Susannah

saw—and would never forget—how the baby’s lower lip momentarily caught on the inner

lip of his mother’s vulva. The baby’s mouth was pulled briefly open, revealing a perfect

row of little teeth in the lower jaw. Theywere teeth—not fangs but perfect little teeth—yet

still, to see them in the mouth of a newborn gave Susannah a chill. So did the sight of the

chap’s penis, disproportionately large and fully erect. Susannah guessed it was longer than

her little finger.

Howling in pain and triumph, Mia surged up on her elbows, her eyes bulging and

streaming tears. She reached out and seized Sayre’s hand in a grip of iron as Scowther

deftly caught the baby. Sayre yelped and tried to pull away, but he might as well have tried

to…well, to pull away from a Deputy Sheriff in Oxford, Mississippi. The little chant had

died and there was a moment of shocked silence. In it, Susannah’s overstrained ears clearly

heard the sound of bones grinding in Sayre’s wrist.

“DOES HE LIVE?” Mia shrieked into Sayre’s startled face. Spittle flew from her

lips.“TELL ME, YOU POXY WHORESON, IF MY CHAP LIVES! ”

Scowther lifted the chap so that he and the child were face to face. The doctor’s brown

eyes met the baby’s blue ones. And as the chap hung there in Scowther’s grip with its penis

jutting defiantly upward, Susannah clearly saw the crimson mark on the babe’s left heel. It

was as if that foot had been dipped in blood just before the baby left Mia’s womb.

Rather than spanking the baby’s buttocks, Scowther drew in a breath and blew it in puffs

directly into the chap’s eyes. Mia’s chap blinked in comical (and undeniably human)

surprise. It drew in a breath of its own, held it for a moment, then let it out. King of Kings he might be, or the destroyer of worlds, but he embarked upon life as had so many before

him, squalling with outrage. Mia burst into glad tears at the sound of that cry. The devilish creatures gathered around the new mother were bond-servants of the Crimson King, but

that didn’t make them immune to what they had just witnessed. They broke into applause

and laughter. Susannah was not a little disgusted to find herself joining them. The baby

looked around at the sound, his expression one of clear amazement.

Weeping, with tears running down her cheeks and clear snot dripping from her nose, Mia

held out her arms. “Give him to me!” wept she; so wept Mia, daughter of none and mother

of one. “Let me hold him, I beg, let me hold my son! Let me hold my chap! Let me hold my

precious!”

And the babyturned its head to the sound of his mother’s voice. Susannah would have said

such a thing was impossible, but of course she would have said a baby born wide awake,

with a mouthful of teeth and a boner, was impossible, as well. Yet in every other way the

babe seemed completely normal to her: chubby and well-formed, human and thus dear.

There was the red mark on his heel, yes, but how many children, normal in every other

regard, were born with some sort of birthmark? Hadn’t her own father been born red-handed, according to family legend? This mark wouldn’t even show, unless the kid

was at the beach.

Still holding the newborn up to his face, Scowther looked at Sayre. There was a

momentary pause during which Susannah could easily have seized Scowther’s automatic.

She didn’t even think of doing it. She’d forgotten Jake’s telepathic cry; had likewise

forgotten her weird visit from Roland and her husband. She was as enrapt as Jey and Straw

and Haber and all the rest, enrapt at this moment of a child’s arrival in a worn-out world.

Sayre nodded, almost imperceptibly, and Scowther lowered baby Mordred, still wailing

(and still looking over his shoulder, apparently for his mother), into Mia’s waiting arms.

Mia turned him around at once so she could look at him, and Susannah’s heart froze with

dismay and horror. For Mia had run mad. It was brilliant in her eyes; it was in the way her

mouth managed to sneer and smile at the same time while drool, pinked and thickened with

blood from her bitten tongue, trickled down the sides of her chin; most of all it was in her

triumphant laughter. She might come back to sanity in the days ahead, but—

Bitch ain’tnevahcomin back, Detta said, not without sympathy.Gittin this far n den gittin

shed of it done broke her. She busted,n you know it as well’s Ah do!

“O, such beauty!” Mia crooned. “O, see thy blue eyes, thy skin as white as the sky before

Wide Earth’s first snow! See thy nipples, such perfect berries they are, see thy prick and

thy balls as smooth as new peaches!” She looked around, first at Susannah—her eyes

skating over Susannah’s face with absolutely no recognition—and then at the others.“See

my chap, ye unfortunates, ye gonicks, my precious, my baby, my boy! ” She shouted to

them, demandedof them, laughing with her mad eyes and crying with her crooked

mouth.“See what I gave up eternity for! See my Mordred, see him very well, for never will

you see another his like! ”