Stephen King – The Waste Lands

than that within the bear had been, was somehow falling out of tune with itself?

“All is silent in the halls of the dead,” Eddie heard himself whisper in a falling, fainting voice. “All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the rooms of ruin.

These are the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits tall quiet, one

by one.”

Roland pulled him roughly back, and Eddie looked at him with dazed eyes.

“That’s enough,” Roland said.

“Whatever they put in there isn’t doing so well, is it?” Eddie heard himself ask. His

trembling voice seemed to come from far away. He could still feel the power coming out of

that box. It called to him.

“No. Nothing in my world is doing so well these days.”

“If you boys are planning to camp here for the night, you’ll have to do without the pleasure of my company,” Susannah said. Her face was a white blur in the ashy aftermath of twilight.

“I’m going over yonder. I don’t like the way that thing makes me feel.”

“We’ll all camp over yonder,” Roland said. “Let’s go.”

“What a good idea,” Eddie said. As they moved away from the box, the sound of the

machinery began to dim. Eddie felt its hold on him weakening, although it still called to

him, invited him to explore the half-lit hallways, the standing stairways, the rooms of ruin

where the spiders spun and the control panels were going dark, one by one.

29

IN His DREAM THAT night, Eddie again went walking down Second Ave- nue toward

Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. He passed a record

store and the Rolling Stones boomed from the speakers:

“I see a red door and I want to paint it black,

No colours anymore, I want them to turn black,

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes,

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes …”

He walked on, passing a store called Reflections of You between Forty-ninth and

Forty-eighth. He saw himself in one of the mirrors hang- ing in the display window. He

thought he looked better than he had in years—hair a little too long, but otherwise tanned

and fit. The clothes, though . . . uh-uh, man. Square-bear shit all the way. Blue blazer, white

shirt, dark red tie, gray dress pants … he had never owned a yuppie-from-hell outfit like that in his life.

Someone was shaking him.

Eddie tried to burrow deeper into the dream. He didn’t want to wake up now. Not before he

got to the deli and used his key to go through the door and into the field of roses. He wanted

to see it all again—the endless blanket of red, the overarching blue sky where those great

white cloud-ships sailed, and the Dark Tower. He was afraid of the darkness which lived

within that eldritch column, waiting to eat anyone who got too close, but he wanted to see it

again just the same. Needed to see it.

The hand, however, would not stop shaking. The dream began to darken, and the smells of

car exhaust along Second Avenue became the smell of woodsmoke—thin now, because the

fire was almost out.

It was Susannah. She looked scared. Eddie sat up and put an arm around her. They had

camped on the far side of the alder grove, within earshot of the stream babbling through the

bone-littered clearing. On the other side of the glowing embers which had been their

campfire, Roland lay asleep. His sleep was not easy. He had cast aside his single blanket

and lay with his knees drawn up almost to his chest. With his boots off, his feet looked

white and narrow and defenseless. The great toe of the right foot was gone, victim of the

lobster-thing which had also snatched away part of his right hand.

He was moaning some slurred phrase over and over again. After a few repetitions, Eddie

realized it was the phrase he had spoken before keeling over in the clearing where

Susannah had shot the bear: Go, then—there are other worlds than these. He would fall silent for a moment, then call out the boy’s name: “Jake! Where are you? Jake!”

The desolation and despair in his voice filled Eddie with horror. His arms stole around

Susannah and he pulled her tight against him. He could feel her shivering, although the

night was warm.

The gunslinger rolled over. Starlight fell into his open eyes.

“Jake, where are you?” he called to the night. “Come back!”

“Oh Jesus—he’s off again. What should we do, Suze?”

“I don’t know. I just knew I couldn’t listen to it anymore by myself. He sounds so far away.

So far away from everything.”

“Go, then,” the gunslinger murmured, rolling back onto his side and drawing his knees up once more, “there are other worlds than these.” He was silent for a moment. Then his chest hitched and he loosed the boy’s name in a long, bloodcurdling cry. In the woods behind

them, some large bird flew away in a dry whirr of wings toward some less exciting part of

the world.

“Do you have any ideas?” Susannah asked. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears.

“Maybe we should wake him up?”

“I don’t know.” Eddie saw the gunslinger’s revolver, the one he wore on his left hip. It had been placed, in its holster, on a neatly folded square of hide within easy reach of the place

where Roland lay. “I don’t think I dare,” he added at last.

“It’s driving him crazy.”

Eddie nodded.

“What do we do about it? Eddie, what do we do?”

Eddie didn’t know. An antibiotic had stopped the infection caused by the bite of the

lobster-thing; now Roland was burning with infection again, but Eddie didn’t think there

was an antibiotic in the world that would cure what was wrong with him this time.

“I don’t know. Lie down with me, Suze.”

Eddie threw a hide over both of them, and after a while her trembling quieted.

“If he goes insane, he may hurt us,” she said.

“Don’t I know it.” This unpleasant idea had occurred to him in terms of the bear—its red,

hate-filled eyes (and had there not been bewilderment as well, lurking deep in those red depths?) and its deadly slashing claws. Eddie’s eyes moved to the revolver, lying so close

to the gunslinger’s good left hand, and he remembered again how fast Roland had been

when he’d seen the mechanical bat swooping down toward them. So fast his hand had

seemed to disappear. If the gunslinger went mad, and if he and Susannah became the focus

of that madness, they would have no chance. No chance at all.

He pressed his face into the warm hollow of Susannah’s neck and closed his eyes.

Not long after, Roland ceased his babbling. Eddie raised his head and looked over. The

gunslinger appeared to be sleeping naturally again. Eddie looked at Susannah and saw that

she had also gone to sleep. He lay down beside her, gently kissed the swell of her breast,

and closed his own eyes.

Not you, buddy; you’re gonna be awake a long, long time.

But they had been on the move for two days and Eddie was bone-tired. He drifted off …

drifted down.

Back to the dream, he thought as he went. I want to go back to Second Avenue . . . back to

Tom and Gerry’s. That’s what I want.

The dream did not return that night, however.

30

THEY ATE A QUICK breakfast as the sun came up, repacked and redistrib- uted the gear,

and then returned to the wedge-shaped clearing. It didn’t look quite so spooky in the clear

light of morning, but all three of them were still at pains to keep well away from the metal

box with its warning slashes of black and yellow. If Roland had any recollection of the bad

dreams which had haunted him in the night, he gave no sign. He had gone about the

morning chores as he always did, in thoughtful, stolid silence.

“How do you plan to keep to a straight-line course from here?” Susannah asked the

gunslinger.

“If the legends are right, that should be no problem. Do you remem- ber when you asked

about magnetism?”

She nodded.

He rummaged deep into his purse and at last emerged with a small square of old, supple

leather. Threaded through it was a long silver needle.

“A compass!” Eddie said. “You really are an Eagle Scout!”

Roland shook his head. “Not a compass. I know what they are, of course, but these days I

keep my directions by the sun and stars, and even now they serve me quite well.”

“Even now?” Susannah asked, a trifle uneasily.

He nodded. “The directions of the world are also in drift.”