Stephen King – The Dark Tower

Susannah’s heart sank. The mountain—or perhaps you called something like that a

butte—had to be eight or ten miles away. At the very limit of vision, in any case. Eddie and

Roland and the two younger men in Ted’s party couldn’t carry her that far, she didn’t

believe. And how did they know they could trust these new fellows, anyway?

On the other hand,she thought,what choice do we have?

“You won’t need to be carried,” Ted told her, “but Stanley can use your help. We’ll join

hands, like folks at a séance. I’ll want you all to visualize that rock formation when we go

through. And hold the name in the forefront of your mind: Steek-Tete, the Little Needle.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Eddie said. They had approached yet another door, this one standing open on a closet. Wire hangers and one ancient red blazer hung in there. Eddie grasped Ted’s

shoulder and swung him around. “Go through what? Go through where? Because if it’s a

door like the last one—”

Ted looked up at Eddie—had to look up, because Eddie was taller—and Susannah saw an

amazing, dismaying thing: Ted’s eyes appeared to beshaking in their sockets. A moment

later she realized this wasn’t actually the case. The man’s pupils were growing and then

shrinking with eerie rapidity. It was as if they couldn’t decide if it was light or dark in here.

“It’s not a door we’re going through at all, at least not of the kinds with which you may be

familiar. You have to trust me, young man. Listen.”

They all fell silent, and Susannah could hear the snarl of approaching motors.

“That’s The Weasel,” Ted told them. “He’ll have taheen with him, at least four, maybe

half a dozen. If they catch sight of us in here, Dink and Stanley are almost certainly going

to die. They don’t have tocatch us but onlycatch sight of us. We’re risking our lives for you.

This isn’t a game, and I need you to stop asking questions andfollow me!”

“We will,” Roland said. “And we’ll think about the Little Needle.”

“Steek-Tete,” Susannah agreed.

“You won’t get sick again,” Dinky said. “Promise.”

“Thank God,” Jake said.

“Thang-odd,” Oy agreed.

Stanley, the third member of Ted’s party, continued to say nothing at all.

Four

It was just a closet, and an office closet, at that—narrow and musty. The ancient red blazer

had a brass tag on the breast pocket with the words HEAD OF SHIPPING stamped on it.

Stanley led the way to the back, which was nothing but a blank wall. Coathangers jingled

and jangled. Jake had to watch his step to keep from treading on Oy. He’d always been

slightly prone to claustrophobia, and now he began to feel the pudgy fingers of the

Panic-Man caressing his neck: first one side and then the other. The ’Rizas clanked softly

together in their bag. Seven people and one billy-bumbler crowding into an abandoned

office closet? It was nuts. He could still hear the snarl of the approaching engines. The one in charge called The Weasel.

“Join hands,” Ted murmured. “And concentrate.”

“Steek-Tete,” Susannah repeated, but to Jake she sounded dubious this time.

“Little Nee—” Eddie began, and then stopped. The blank wall at the end of the closet was

gone. Where it had been was a small clearing with boulders on one side and a steep,

scrub-crusted hillside on another. Jake was willing to bet that was Steek-Tete, and if it was a way out of this enclosed space, he was delighted to see it.

Stanley gave a little moan of pain or effort or both. The man’s eyes were closed and tears

were trickling out from beneath the lids.

“Now,” Ted said. “Lead us through, Stanley.” To the others he added: “And help him if

you can! Help him, for your fathers’ sakes!”

Jake tried to hold an image of the outcrop Ted had pointed to through the office window

and walked forward, holding Roland’s hand ahead of him and Susannah’s behind him. He

felt a breath of cold air on his sweaty skin and then stepped through onto the slope of

Steek-Tete in Thunderclap, thinking just briefly of Mr. C. S. Lewis, and the wonderful

wardrobe that took you to Narnia.

Five

They did not come out in Narnia.

It was cold on the slope of the butte, and Jake was soon shivering. When he looked over

his shoulder he saw no sign of the portal they’d come through. The air was dim and smelled

of something pungent and not particularly pleasant, like kerosene. There was a small cave

folded into the flank of the slope (it was really not much more than another closet), and

from it Ted brought a stack of blankets and a canteen that turned out to hold a sharp,

alkali-tasting water. Jake and Roland wrapped themselves in single blankets. Eddie took

two and bundled himself and Susannah together. Jake, trying not to let his teeth start

chattering (once they did, there’d be no stopping them), envied the two of them their extra

warmth.

Dink had also wrapped himself in a blanket, but neither Ted nor Stanley seemed to feel the

cold.

“Look down there,” Ted invited Roland and the others. He was pointing at the spiderweb

of tracks. Jake could see the rambling glass roof of the switching-yard and a green-roofed

structure next to it that had to be half a mile long. Tracks led away in every

direction.Thunderclap Station, he marveled.Where the Wolves put the kidnapped kids on

the train and send them along the Path of the Beam to Fedic. And where they bring them

back after they’ve been roont.

Even after all he’d been through, it was hard for Jake to believe that they had been down

there, six or eight miles away, less than two minutes ago. He suspected they’d all played a

part in keeping the portal open, but it was the one called Stanley who’d created it in the first

place. Now he looked pale and tired, nearly used up. Once he staggered on his feet and

Dink (avery unfortunate nickname, in Jake’s humble opinion) grabbed his arm and

steadied him. Stanley seemed not to notice. He was looking at Roland with awe.

Not just awe,Jake thought,and not exactly fear, either. Something else. What?

Approaching the station were two motorized buckas with big balloon tires—ATVs. Jake

assumed it was The Weasel (whoever he was) and his taheen buddies.

“As you may have gleaned,” Ted told them, “there’s an alarm in the Devar-Toi

Supervisor’s office. Thewarden’s office, if you like. It goes off when anyone or anything

uses the door between the Fedic staging area and yon station—”

“I believe the term you used for him,” Roland said dryly, “wasn’t supervisor or warden but

ki’-dam.”

Dink laughed. “That’s a good pickup on your part, dude.”

“What does ki’-dam mean?” Jake asked, although he had a fair notion. There was a phrase

folks used in the Calla: headbox, heartbox, ki’box. Which meant, in descending order,

one’s thought processes, one’s emotions, and one’s lower functions. Animal functions,

some might say; ki’box could be translated asshitbox if you were of a vulgar turn of mind.

Ted shrugged. “Ki’-dam means shit-for-brains. It’s Dinky’s nickname for sai Prentiss, the

Devar Master. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“I guess,” Jake said. “Kinda.”

Ted looked at him long, and when Jake identified that expression, it helped him define how Stanley was looking at Roland: not with fear but with fascination. Jake had a pretty

good idea Ted was still thinking about how much he looked like someone named Bobby,

and he was pretty sure Ted knew he had the touch. What was the source of Stanley’s

fascination? Or maybe he was making too much of it. Maybe it was just that Stanley had

never expected to see a gunslinger in the flesh.

Abruptly, Ted turned from Jake and back to Roland. “Now look this way,” he said.

“Whoa!” Eddie cried. “What thehell? ”

Susannah was amused as well as amazed. What Ted was pointing out reminded her of

Cecil B. DeMille’s Bible epicThe Ten Commandments, especially the parts where the Red

Sea opened by Moses had looked suspiciously like Jell-O and the voice of God coming

from the burning bush sounded quite a bit like Charles Laughton. Still, itwas amazing. In a

cheesy Hollywood-special-effects way, that was.

What they saw was a single fat and gorgeous bolt of sunlight slanting down from a hole in

the sagging clouds. It cut through the strangely dark air like a searchlight beam and lit a

compound that might have been six miles from Thunderclap Station. And “about six

miles” was really all you could say, because there was no more north or south in this world,

at least not that you could count on. Now there was only the Path of the Beam.

“Dinky, there’s a pair of binoculars in—”

“The lower cave, right?”

“No, I brought them up the last time we were here,” Ted replied with carefully maintained