Stephen King – The Waste Lands

realization, Jake’s considerable courage finally broke. He could bear this no longer, no

matter what the stake. He bolted, meaning to flee if he still could, and realized too late that

he had turned the wrong way and was running deeper into The Mansion instead of back

toward the porch.

He lunged into a space too big to be a parlor or living room; it seemed to be a ballroom.

Elves with strange, sly smiles on their faces capered on the wallpaper, peering at Jake from

beneath peaked green caps. A mouldy couch was pushed against one wall. In the center of

the warped wooden floor was a splintered chandelier, its rusty chain lying in snarls among

the spilled glass beads and dusty teardrop pendants. Jake skirted the wreck, snatching one

terrified glance back over his shoulder. He saw no spiders; if not for the nastiness still

trickling down his back, he might have believed he had imagined them.

He looked forward again and came to a sudden, skidding halt. Ahead, a pair of French

doors stood half-open on their recessed tracks. Another hallway stretched beyond. At the

end of this second corridor stood a closed door with a golden knob. Written across the

door—or perhaps carved into it—were two words:

THE BOY

Below the doorknob was a filigreed silver plate and a keyhole.

I found it! Jake thought fiercely. I finally found it! That’s it! That’s the door!

From behind him a low groaning noise began, as if the house was beginning to tear itself

apart. Jake turned and looked back across the ballroom. The wall on the far side of the

room had begun to swell outward, pushing the ancient couch ahead of it. The old wallpaper

shud- dered; the elves began to ripple and dance. In places the paper simply snapped

upward in long curls, like windowshades which have been released too suddenly. The

plaster bulged forward in a pregnant curve. From beneath it, Jake could hear dry snapping

sounds as the lathing broke, rearranging itself into some new, as-yet-hidden shape. And

still the sound increased. Only it was no longer precisely a groan; now it sounded like a

snarl.

He stared, hypnotized, unable to pull his eyes away.

The plaster didn’t crack and then vomit outward in chunks; it seemed to have become

plastic, and as the wall continued to bulge, making an irregular white bubble-shape from

which scraps and draggles of wallpaper still hung, the surface began to mold itself into hills

and curves and valleys. Suddenly Jake realized he was looking at a huge plastic face that

was pushing itself out of the wall. It was like looking at someone who has walked headfirst

into a wet sheet.

There was a loud snap as a chunk of broken lath tore free of the rippling wall. It became

the jagged pupil of one eye. Below it, the wall writhed into a snarling mouth filled with

jagged teeth. Jake could see fragments of wallpaper clinging to its lips and gums.

One plaster hand tore free of the wall, trailing an unravelling brace- let of rotted electrical

wire. It grasped the sofa and threw it aside, leaving ghostly white fingermarks on its dark

surface. More lathing burst free as the plaster fingers flexed. They created sharp, splintery

claws. Now the face was all the way out of the wall and staring at Jake with its one wooden

eye. Above it, in the center of its forehead, one wallpaper elf still danced. It looked like a

weird tattoo. There was a wrenching sound as the thing began to slide forward. The hall

doorway tore out and became a hunched shoulder. The thing’s one free hand clawed across

the floor, spraying glass droplets from the fallen chandelier.

Jake’s paralysis broke. He turned, lunged through the French doors, and pelted down the

second length of hallway with his pack bouncing and his right hand groping for the key in

his pocket. His heart was a runaway factory machine in his chest. Behind him, the thing

which was crawling out of The Mansion’s woodwork bellowed at him, and although there

were no words, Jake knew what it was saying; it was telling him to stand still, telling him

that it was useless to run, telling him there was no escape. The whole house now seemed

alive; the air resounded with splintering wood and squalling beams. The humming, insane

voice of the doorkeeper was everywhere.

Jake’s hand closed on the key. As he brought it out, one of the notches caught in the pocket.

His fingers, wet with sweat, slipped. The key fell to the floor, bounced, dropped through a

crack between two warped boards, and disappeared.

30

“HE’S IN TROUBLE!” SUSANNAH heard Eddie shout, but the sound of his voice was

distant. She had plenty of trouble herself . . . but she thought she might be doing okay, just

the same.

I’m goan melt that icicle, sugar, she had told the demon. I’m goan melt it, and when it’s

gone, what you goan do then?

She hadn’t melted it, exactly, but she had changed it. The thing inside her was certainly

giving her no pleasure, but at least the terrible pain had subsided and it was no longer cold.

It was trapped, unable to disengage. Nor was she holding it in with her body, exactly.

Roland had said sex was its weakness as well as its weapon, and he had been right, as usual.

It had taken her, but she had also taken it, and now it was as if each of them had a finger

stuck in one of those fiendish Chinese tubes, where yanking only sticks you tighter.

She hung onto one idea for dear life; had to, because all other conscious thought had

vanished. She had to hold this sobbing, frightened, vicious thing in the snare of its own

helpless lust. It wriggled and thrust and convulsed within her, screaming to be let go at the

same time it used her body with greedy, helpless intensity, but she would not let it go free.

And what’s gonna happen when I finally do let go? she wondered desperately. What’s it

gonna do to pay me back?

She didn’t know.

31

THE RAIN WAS FALLING in sheets, threatening to turn the circle within the stones into

a sea of mud. “Hold something over the door!” Eddie shouted. “Don’t let the rain wash it out!”

Roland snatched a glance at Susannah and saw she was still strug- gling with the demon.

Her eyes were half-shut, her mouth pulled down in a harsh grimace. He could not see or

hear the demon, but he could sense its angry, frightened thrashings.

Eddie turned his streaming face toward him. “Did you hear me?” he shouted. “Get

something over the goddam door, and do it NOW!”

Roland yanked one of their hides from his pack and held a corner in each hand. Then he

stretched his arms out and leaned over Eddie, creating a makeshift tent. The tip of Eddie’s

homemade pencil was caked with mud. He wiped it across his arm, leaving a smear the

color of bitter chocolate, then wrapped his fist around the stick again and bent over his

drawing. It was not exactly the same size as the door on Jake’s side of the barrier—the ratio

was perhaps .75:1—but it would be big enough for Jake to come through . . . if the keys

worked.

If he even has a key, isn’t that what you mean? he asked himself. Suppose he’s dropped

it . . . or that house made him drop it?

He drew a plate under the circle which represented the doorknob, hesitated, and then

squiggled the familiar shape of a keyhole within it:

He hesitated. There was one more thing, but what? It was hard to think of, because it felt as

if there were a tornado roaring through his head, a tornado with random thoughts flipping

around inside it instead of uprooted barns and privies and chicken-houses.

“Come on, sugah!” Susannah cried from behind him. “You weakenin on me! Wassa matta?

I thought you was some kind of hot-shit studboy!”

Boy. That was it.

Carefully, he wrote THE BOY across the top panel of the door with the tip of his stick. At

the instant he finished the Y, the drawing changed. The circle of rain-darkened earth he had

drawn suddenly darkened even more . . . and pushed up from the ground, becoming a dark,

gleaming knob. And instead of brown, wet earth within the shape of the keyhole, he could

see dim light.

Behind him, Susannah shrieked at the demon again, urging it on, but now she sounded as if

she were tiring. This had to end, and soon.

Eddie bent forward from the waist like a Muslim saluting Allah, and put his eye to the

keyhole he had drawn. He looked through it into his own world, into that house which he and Henry had gone to see in May of 1977, unaware (except he, Eddie, had not been