Stephen King – The Dark Tower

Callahan saw Jake staring, pale, eyes shiny with horror and bulging from their sockets, all

purpose forgotten at the sight of these freaks.

Without knowing what was going to come out of his mouth until he heard it, Callahan

shouted:“They’ll kill Oy first! They’ll kill him in front of you and drink his blood! ”

Oy barked at the sound of his name. Jake’s eyes seemed to clear at the sound, but Callahan

had no time to follow the boy’s fortunes further.

Turtle won’t stop them, but at least it’s holding the others back. Bullets won’t stop them,

but—

With a sense ofdéjà vu —and why not, he had lived all this before in the home of a boy

named Mark Petrie—Callahan dipped into the open front of his shirt and brought out the

cross he wore there. It clicked against the butt of the Ruger and then hung below it. The

cross was lit with a brilliant bluish-white glare. The two ancient things in the lead had been about to grab him and draw him into their midst. Now they drew back instead, shrieking

with pain. Callahan saw the surface of their skin sizzle and begin to liquefy. The sight of it filled him with savage happiness.

“Get back from me!” he shouted. “The power of God commands you! The power of Christ

commands you! The ka of Mid-World commands you!The power of the White commands

you! ”

One of them darted forward nevertheless, a deformed skeleton in an ancient,

moss-encrusted dinner suit. Around its neck it wore some sort of ancient award…the Cross

of Malta, perhaps? It swiped one of its long-nailed hands at the crucifix Callahan was

holding out. He jerked it down at the last second, and the vampire’s claw passed an inch

above it. Callahan lunged forward without thought and drove the tip of the cross into the

yellow parchment of the thing’s forehead. The gold crucifix went in like a red-hot skewer

into butter. The thing in the rusty dinner suit let out a liquid cry of pained dismay and

stumbled backward. Callahan pulled his cross back. For one moment, before the elderly monster clapped its claws to its brow, Callahan saw the hole his cross had made. Then a

thick, curdy, yellow stuff began to spill through the ancient one’s fingers. Its knees

unhinged and it tumbled to the floor between two tables. Its mates shrank away from it,

screaming with outrage. The thing’s face was already collapsing inward beneath its twisted

hands. Its aura whiffed out like a candle and then there was nothing but a puddle of yellow,

liquefying flesh spilling like vomit from the sleeves of its jacket and the legs of its pants.

Callahan strode briskly toward the others. His fear was gone. The shadow of shame that

had hung over him ever since Barlow had taken his cross and broken it was also gone.

Free at last,he thought.Free at last, great God Almighty, I’m free at last. Then:I believe this is redemption. And it’s good, isn’t it? Quite good, indeed .

“H’row it aside!” one of them cried, its hands held up to shield its face. “Nasty bauble of

the ’heep-God, h’row it aside if you dare!”

Nasty bauble of the sheep-God, indeed. If so, why do you cringe?

Against Barlow he had not dared answer this challenge, and it had been his undoing. In the

Dixie Pig, Callahan turned the cross toward the thing which had dared to speak.

“I needn’t stake my faith on the challenge of such a thing as you, sai,” he said, his words

ringing clearly in the room. He had forced the old ones back almost to the archway through

which they had come. Great dark tumors had appeared on the hands and faces of those in

front, eating into the paper of their ancient skin like acid. “And I’d never throw away such

an old friend in any case. Butput it away? Aye, if you like.” And he dropped it back into his shirt.

Several of the vampires lunged forward immediately, their fang-choked mouths twisting

in what might have been grins. Callahan held his hands out toward them. The fingers (and

the barrel of the Ruger) glowed, as if they had been dipped into blue fire. The eyes of the

turtle had likewise filled with light; its shell shone.

“Stand away from me!” Callahan cried. “The power of God and the White commands

you!”

Seven

When the terrible shaman turned to face the Grandfathers, Meiman of the taheen felt the

Turtle’s awful, lovely glammer lessen a bit. He saw that the boy was gone, and that filled

him with dismay, yet at least he’d gone further in rather than slipping out, so that might still be all right. But if the boy found the door to Fedic and used it, Meiman might find himself

in very bad trouble, indeed. For Sayre answered to Walter o’ Dim, and Walter answered

only to the Crimson King himself.

Never mind. One thing at a time. Settle the shaman’s hash first. Turn the Grandfathers loose on him. Then go after the boy, perhaps shouting that his friend wanted him after all,

that might work—

Meiman (the Canaryman to Mia, Tweety Bird to Jake) crept forward, grasping

Andrew—the fat man in the tux with the plaid lapels—with one hand and Andrew’s even

fatter jilly with the other. He gestured at Callahan’s turned back.

Tirana shook her head vehemently. Meiman opened his beak and hissed at her. She shrank

away from him. Detta Walker had already gotten her fingers into the mask Tirana wore and

it hung in shreds about her jaw and neck. In the middle of her forehead, a red wound

opened and closed like the gill of a dying fish.

Meiman turned to Andrew, released him long enough to point at the shaman, then drew the

talon that served him as a hand across his feathered throat in a grimly expressive gesture.

Andrew nodded and brushed away his wife’s pudgy hands when they tried to restrain him.

The mask of humanity was good enough to show the low man in the garish tuxedo visibly

gathering his courage. Then he leaped forward with a strangled cry, seizing Callahan

around the neck not with his hands but his fat forearms. At the same moment his jilly

lunged and struck the ivory turtle from the Pere’s hand, screaming as she did so.

Thesköldpadda tumbled to the red rug, bounced beneath one of the tables, and there (like a

certain paper boat some of you may remember) passes out of this tale forever.

The Grandfathers still held back, as did the Type Three vampires who had been dining in

the public room, but the low men and women sensed weakness and moved in, first

hesitantly, then with growing confidence. They surrounded Callahan, paused, and then fell

on him in all their numbers.

“Let me go in God’s name!” Callahan cried, but of course it did no good. Unlike the

vampires, the things with the red wounds in their foreheads did not respond to the name of

Callahan’s God. All he could do was hope Jake wouldn’t stop, let alone double back; that

he and Oy would go like the wind to Susannah. Save her if they could. Die with her if they

could not. And kill her baby, if chance allowed. God help him, but he had been wrong

about that. They should have snuffed out the baby’s life back in the Calla, when they had

the chance.

Something bit deeply into his neck. The vampires would come now, cross or no cross.

They’d fall on him like the sharks they were once they got their first whiff of his life’s

blood.Help me God, give me strength, Callahan thought, and felt the strength flow into him.

He rolled to his left as claws ripped into his shirt, tearing it to ribbons. For a moment his right hand was free, and the Ruger was still in it. He turned it toward the working, sweaty,

hate-congested face of the fat one named Andrew and placed the barrel of the gun (bought

for home protection in the long-distant past by Jake’s more than a little paranoid

TV-executive father) against the soft red wound in the center of the low man’s forehead.

“No-ooo, you daren’t!” Tirana cried, and as she reached for the gun, the front of her gown

finally burst, spilling her massive breasts free. They were covered with coarse fur.

Callahan pulled the trigger. The Ruger’s report was deafening in the dining room.

Andrew’s head exploded like a gourd filled with blood, spraying the creatures who had

been crowding in behind him. There were screams of horror and disbelief. Callahan had

time to think,It wasn’t supposed to be this way, was it? And:Is it enough to put me in the

club? Am I a gunslinger yet?

Perhaps not. But there was the bird-man, standing right in front of him between two tables,