Stephen King – The Dark Tower

them. The boy and the Pere had entered the Dixie Pig, a thing that was either very brave or

very foolish, and now all of their concentration was necessarily focused on what they’d

found there.

Foolhardy or not, Roland was fiercely proud of Jake. He saw the boy had established

canda between himself and Callahan: that distance (never the same in any two situations)

which assures that a pair of outnumbered gunslingers cannot be killed by a single shot.

Both had come ready to fight. Callahan was holding Jake’s gun…and another thing, as well:

some sort of carving. Roland was almost sure it was a can-tah, one of the little gods. The

boy had Susannah’s ’Rizas and their tote-sack, retrieved from only the gods knew where.

The gunslinger spied a fat woman whose humanity ended at the neck. Above her trio of

flabby chins, the mask she’d been wearing hung in ruins. Looking at the rathead beneath,

Roland suddenly understood a good many things. Some might have come clearly to him

sooner, had not his attention—like that of the boy and the Pere at this very moment—been

focused on other matters.

Callahan’s low men, for instance. They might well be taheen, creatures neither of thePrim

nor of the natural world but misbegotten things from somewhere between the two. They

certainly weren’t the sort of beings Roland called slow mutants, for those had arisen as a

result of the old ones’ ill-advised wars and disastrous experiments. No, they might be

genuine taheen, sometimes known as the third people or the can-toi, and yes, Roland should have known. How many of the taheen now served the being known as the Crimson

King? Some? Many?

All?

If the third answer was the correct one, Roland reckoned the road to the Tower would be

difficult indeed. But to look beyond the horizon was not much in the gunslinger’s nature,

and in this case his lack of imagination was surely a blessing.

Six

He saw what he needed to see. Although the can-toi—Callahan’s low folk—had

surrounded Jake and Callahan on all sides (the two of them hadn’t even seen the duo

behind them, the ones who’d been guarding the doors to Sixty-first Street), the Pere had

frozen them with the carving, just as Jake had been able to freeze and fascinate people with

the key he’d found in the vacant lot. A yellow taheen with the body of a man and the head

of a waseau had some sort of gun near at hand but made no effort to grab it.

Yet there was another problem, one Roland’s eye, trained to see every possible snare and

ambush, fixed upon at once. He saw the blasphemous parody of Eld’s Last Fellowship on

the wall and understood its significance completely in the seconds before it was ripped

away. And the smell: not just flesh but human flesh. This too he would have understood

earlier, had he had time to think about it…only life in Calla Bryn Sturgis had allowed him

little time to think. In the Calla, as in a storybook, life had been one damned thing after

another.

Yet it was clear enough now, wasn’t it? The low folk might only be taheen; a child’s ogres,

if it did ya. Those behind the tapestry were what Callahan had called Type One vampires

and what Roland himself knew as the Grandfathers, perhaps the most gruesome and

powerful survivors of thePrim ’s long-ago recession. And while such as the taheen might

be content to stand as they were, gawking at the sigul Callahan held up, the Grandfathers

wouldn’t spare it a second glance.

Now clattering bugs came pouring out from under the table. They were of a sort Roland

had seen before, and any doubts he might still have held about what was behind that

tapestry departed at the sight of them. They were parasites, blood-drinkers, camp-followers:

Grandfather-fleas. Probably not dangerous while there was a bumbler present, but of

course when you spied the little doctors in such numbers, the Grandfathers were never far

behind.

As Oy charged at the bugs, Roland of Gilead did the only thing he could think of: he swam

down to Callahan.

IntoCallahan.

Seven

Pere, I am here.

Aye, Roland. What—

No time. GET HIM OUT OF HERE. You must. Get him out while there’s still time!

Eight

And Callahan tried. The boy, of course, didn’t want to go. Looking at him through the

Pere’s eyes, Roland thought with some bitterness:I should have schooled him better in

betrayal. Yet all the gods know I did the best I could .

“Go while you can,” Callahan told Jake, striving for calmness. “Catch up to herif you can.

This is the command of your dinh. This is also the will of the White.”

It should have moved him but it didn’t, he still argued—gods, he was nearly as bad as

Eddie!—and Roland could wait no longer.

Pere, let me.

Roland seized control without waiting for a reply. He could already feel the wave, theaven

kal, beginning to recede. And the Grandfathers would come at any second.

“Go, Jake!” he cried, using the Pere’s mouth and vocal cords like a loudspeaker. If he had

thought about how one might do something like this, he would have been lost completely,

but thinking about things had also never been his way, and he was grateful to see the boy’s

eyes flash wide.“You have this one chance and must take it! Find her! As dinh I command

you!”

Then, as in the hospital ward with Susannah, he felt himself once more tossed upward like

something without weight, blown out of Callahan’s mind and body like a bit of cobweb or

a fluff of dandelion thistle. For a moment he tried to flail his way back, like a swimmer

trying to buck a strong current just long enough to reach the shore, but it was impossible.

Roland!That was Eddie’s voice, and filled with dismay.Jesus, Roland, what in God’s

name are those things?

The tapestry had been torn aside. The creatures which rushed out were ancient and

freakish, their warlock faces warped with teeth growing wild, their mouths propped open

by fangs as thick as the gunslinger’s wrists, their wrinkled and stubbled chins slick with

blood and scraps of meat.

And still—gods, oh gods—the boy remained!

“They’ll kill Oy first!” Callahan shouted, only Roland didn’t think itwas Callahan. He

thought it was Eddie, using Callahan’s voice as Roland had. Somehow Eddie had found

either smoother currents or more strength. Enough to get inside after Roland had been

blown out.“They’ll kill him in front of you and drink his blood! ”

It was finally enough. The boy turned and fled with Oy running beside him. He cut directly

in front of the waseautaheen and between two of the lowfolken, but none made any effort

to grab him. They were still staring at the raised Turtle on Callahan’s palm, mesmerized.

The Grandfathers paid no attention to the fleeing boy at all, as Roland had felt sure they

would not. He knew from Pere Callahan’s story that one of the Grandfathers had come to

the little town of ’Salem’s Lot where the Pere had for awhile preached. The Pere had lived

through the experience—not common for those who faced such monsters after losing their

weapons and siguls of power—but the thing had forced Callahan to drink of its tainted

blood before letting him go. It had marked him for these others.

Callahan was holding his cross-sigul out toward them, but before Roland could see

anything else, he was exhaled back into darkness. The chimes began again, all but driving

him mad with their awful tintinnabulation. Somewhere, faintly, he could hear Eddie

shouting. Roland reached for him in the dark, brushed Eddie’s arm, lost it, found his hand,

and seized it. They rolled over and over, clutching each other, trying not to be separated,

hoping not to be lost in the doorless dark between the worlds.

Chapter III:

Eddie Makes a Call

One

Eddie returned to John Cullum’s old car the way he’d sometimes come out of nightmares as a teenager: tangled up and panting with fright, totally disoriented, not sure of who he

was, let alone where.

He had a second to realize that, incredible as it seemed, he and Roland were floating in

each other’s arms like unborn twins in the womb, only this was no womb. A pen and a

paperclip were drifting in front of his eyes. So was a yellow plastic case he recognized as

an eight-track tape.Don’t waste your time, John, he thought.No true thread there, that’s a

dead-end gadget if there ever was one.

Something was scratching the back of his neck. Was it the domelight of John Cullum’s

scurgy old Galaxie? By God he thought it w—

Then gravity reasserted itself and they fell, with meaningless objects raining down all

around them. The floormat which had been floating around in the Ford’s cabin landed

draped over the steering wheel. Eddie’s midsection hit the top of the front seat and air