Stephen King – The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Contents:

Part One:

The Little Red King

Dan-Tete

I: Callahan and the Vampires

II: Lifted on the Wave

III: Eddie Makes a Call

IV: Dan-Tete

V: In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle

VI: On Turtleback Lane

VII: Reunion

Part Two:

Blue Heaven

Devar-Toi

I: The Devar-Tete

II: The Watcher

III: The Shining Wire

IV: The Door into Thunderclap

V: Steek-Tete

VI: The Master of Blue Heaven

VII: Ka-Shume

VIII: Notes from the Gingerbread House

IX: Tracks on the Path

X: The Last Palaver (Sheemie’s Dream)

XI: The Attack on Algul Siento

XII: The Tet Breaks

Part Three:

In This Haze of Green and Gold

Ves’-Ka Gan

I: Mrs. Tassenbaum Drives South

II: Ves’-Ka Gan

III: New York Again (Roland Shows ID)

IV: Fedic (Two Views)

Part Four:

The White Lands of Empathica

Dandelo

I: The Thing Under the Castle

II: On Badlands Avenue

III: The Castle of the Crimson King

IV: Hides

V: Joe Collins of Odd’s Lane

VI: Patrick Danville

Part Five:

The Scarlet Field of Can’-Ka No Rey

I: The Sore and the Door (Goodbye, My Dear)

II: Mordred

III: The Crimson King and the Dark Tower

Epilogue

Susannah in New York

Coda

Found

Appendix

Robert Browning “Childe Roland to The Dark Tower Came”

Author’s Note

Illustrations

“…THE WHITE COMMANDS YOU!”

“COME ON THEN, YOU BASTARDS.”

“…WILL YOU?”

HE REACHED FOR IT AGAIN…

BELOW THEM IN THE SEEPING LIGHT WAS THE VILLAGE.

HE MOVED IN BETWEEN JAKE AND EDDIE.

…THE PLACE WHERE ROLAND FINALLY STOPPED FELT MORE LIKE A

CHURCH THAN A CLEARING.

…HE SAT ON HIS THRONE—…WHICH IS MADE OF SKULLS

…WOE TO WHOEVER HAPPENED TO BE IN HIS PATH.

IT WOULD NEVER OPEN AGAIN…

…HIS FACE WENT SLACK WITH A PECULIAR SORT OF ECSTACY…

THE DARK TOWER

Chapter I:

Callahan and the Vampires

One

Pere Don Callahan had once been the Catholic priest of a town, ’Salem’s Lot had been its

name, that no longer existed on any map. He didn’t much care. Concepts such as reality

had ceased to matter to him.

This onetime priest now held a heathen object in his hand, a scrimshaw turtle made of

ivory. There was a nick in its beak and a scratch in the shape of a question mark on its back, but otherwise it was a beautiful thing.

Beautiful andpowerful . He could feel the power in his hand like volts.

“How lovely it is,” he whispered to the boy who stood with him. “Is it the Turtle Maturin?

It is, isn’t it?”

The boy was Jake Chambers, and he’d come a long loop in order to return almost to his

starting-place here in Manhattan. “I don’t know,” he said. “She calls it thesköldpadda, and

it may help us, but it can’t kill the harriers that are waiting for us in there.” He nodded

toward the Dixie Pig, wondering if he meant Susannah or Mia when he used that

all-purpose feminine pronounshe . Once he would have said it didn’t matter because the

two women were so tightly wound together. Now, however, he thought it did matter, or

would soon.

“Will you?” Jake asked the Pere, meaningWill you stand. Will you fight. Will you kill .

“Oh yes,” Callahan said calmly. He put the ivory turtle with its wise eyes and scratched

back into his breast pocket with the extra shells for the gun he carried, then patted the

cunningly made thing once to make sure it rode safely. “I’ll shoot until the bullets are gone, and if I run out of bullets before they kill me, I’ll club them with the…the gun-butt.”

The pause was so slight Jake didn’t even notice it. But in that pause, the White spoke to

Father Callahan. It was a force he knew of old, even in boyhood, although there had been a

few years of bad faith along the way, years when his understanding of that elemental force

had first grown dim and then become lost completely. But those days were gone, the White

was his again, and he told God thankya.

Jake was nodding, saying something Callahan barely heard. And what Jake said didn’t

matter. What that other voice said—the voice of something

(Gan)

perhaps too great to be called God—did.

The boy must go on,the voice told him.Whatever happens here, however it falls, the boy

must go on. Your part in the story is almost done. His is not.

They walked past a sign on a chrome post(CLOSED FOR PRIVATE FUNCTION) ,

Jake’s special friend Oy trotting between them, his head up and his muzzle wreathed in its

usual toothy grin. At the top of the steps, Jake reached into the woven sack Susannah-Mio

had brought out of Calla Bryn Sturgis and grabbed two of the plates—the ’Rizas. He

tapped them together, nodded at the dull ringing sound, and then said: “Let’s see yours.”

Callahan lifted the Ruger Jake had brought out of Calla New York, and now back into it;

life is a wheel and we all say thankya. For a moment the Pere held the Ruger’s barrel beside

his right cheek like a duelist. Then he touched his breast pocket, bulging with shells, and

with the turtle. Thesköldpadda .

Jake nodded. “Once we’re in, we stay together. Always together, with Oy between. On

three. And once we start, we never stop.”

“Never stop.”

“Right. Are you ready?”

“Yes. God’s love on you, boy.”

“And on you, Pere. One…two…three.” Jake opened the door and together they went into

the dim light and the sweet tangy smell of roasting meat.

Two

Jake went to what he was sure would be his death remembering two things Roland

Deschain, his true father, had said.Battles that last five minutes spawn legends that live a

thousand years . AndYou needn’t die happy when your day comes, but you must die

satisfied, for you have lived your life from beginning to end and ka is always served .

Jake Chambers surveyed the Dixie Pig with a satisfied mind.

Three

Also with crystal clarity. His senses were so heightened that he could smell not just

roasting flesh but the rosemary with which it had been rubbed; could hear not only the calm

rhythm of his breath but the tidal murmur of his blood climbing brainward on one side of

his neck and descending heartward on the other.

He also remembered Roland’s saying that even the shortest battle, from first shot to final falling body, seemed long to those taking part. Time grew elastic; stretched to the point of

vanishment. Jake had nodded as if he understood, although he hadn’t.

Now he did.

His first thought was that there were too many of them—far, far too many. He put their

number at close to a hundred, the majority certainly of the sort Pere Callahan had referred

to as “low men.” (Some were low women, but Jake had no doubt the principle was the

same.) Scattered among them, all less fleshy than the lowfolken and some as slender as

fencing weapons, their complexions ashy and their bodies surrounded in dim blue auras,

were what had to be vampires.

Oy stood at Jake’s heel, his small, foxy face stern, whining low in his throat.

That smell of cooking meat wafting through the air was not pork.

Four

Ten feet between us any time we have ten feet to give, Pere—so Jake had said out on the

sidewalk, and even as they approached themaître d ’s platform, Callahan was drifting to

Jake’s right, putting the required distance between them.

Jake had also told him to scream as loud as he could for as long as he could, and Callahan

was opening his mouth to begin doing just that when the voice of the White spoke up inside

again. Only one word, but it was enough.

Sköldpadda,it said.

Callahan was still holding the Ruger up by his right cheek. Now he dipped into his breast

pocket with his left hand. His awareness of the scene before him wasn’t as hyper-alert as

his young companion’s, but he saw a great deal: the orangey-crimson electricflambeaux on

the walls, the candles on each table immured in glass containers of a brighter,

Halloweenish orange, the gleaming napkins. To the left of the dining room was a tapestry

showing knights and their ladies sitting at a long banquet table. There was a sense in

here—Callahan wasn’t sure exactly what provoked it, the various tells and stimuli were too

subtle—of people just resettling themselves after some bit of excitement: a small kitchen

fire, say, or an automobile accident on the street.

Or a lady having a baby,Callahan thought as he closed his hand on the Turtle.That’s

always good for a little pause between the appetizer and the entrée .

“Now come Gilead’s ka-mais!” shouted an excited, nervous voice. Not a human one, of

that Callahan was almost positive. It was toobuzzy to be human. Callahan saw what

appeared to be some sort of monstrous bird-human hybrid standing at the far end of the