Stephen King – The Waste Lands

and Henry stood outside The Mansion? That he had perhaps even antici- pated? He didn’t know . . . but he did know how Jack in that old story must have felt when he realized that he

had tried the beanstalk once too often, and awakened the giant.

“HOW DARE YOU DISTURB MY SLEEP? TELL ME NOW, OR DIE WHERE YOU

STAND.”

He might have frozen right there, leaving Blaine—Big Blaine—to do to them whatever it

was he had done to Ardis (or something even worse); perhaps should have frozen, locked

in that down-the-rabbit-hole, fairy-tale terror. It was the memory of the small voice which

had spoken first that enabled him to move. It had been the voice of a terrified child, but it

had tried to help them, terrified or not.

So now you have to help yourself, he thought. You woke it up; deal with it, for Christ’s

sake!

Eddie reached out and pushed the button again. “My name is Eddie Dean. The woman

with me is my wife, Susannah. We’re . . .”

He looked at Susannah, who nodded and made frantic motions for him to go on.

“We’re on a quest. We seek the Dark Tower which lies in the Path of the Beam. We’re in

the company of two others, Roland of Gilead and . . . and Jake of New York. We’re from

New York too. If you’re—” He paused for a moment, biting back the words Big Blaine. If

he used them, he might make the intelligence behind the voice aware that they had heard

another voice; a ghost inside the ghost, so to speak.

Susannah gestured again for him to go on, using both hands.

“If you’re Blaine the Mono . . . well … we want you to take us.”

He released the button. There was no response for what seemed like a very long time, only

the agitated flutter of the disturbed pigeons from overhead. When Blaine spoke again, his

voice came only from the speaker-box mounted on the gate and sounded almost human.

“DO NOT TRY MY PATIENCE. ALL THE DOORS TO THAT WHERE ARE CLOSED.

GILEAD IS NO MORE, AND THOSE KNOWN AS GUNSLINGERS ARE ALL DEAD.

NOW ANSWER MY QUESTION: WHO ARE YOU? THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE.”

There was a sizzling sound. A ray of brilliant blue-white light lanced down from the

ceiling and seared a hole the size of a golf-ball in the marble floor less than five feet to the left of Susannah’s wheelchair. Smoke that smelled like the aftermath of a lightning-bolt

rose lazily from it. Susannah and Eddie stared at each other in mute terror for a moment,

and then Eddie lunged for the communicator-box and thumbed the button.

“You’re wrong! We did come from New York! We came through the doors, on the beach,

only a few weeks ago!”

“It’s true!” Susannah called. “I swear it is!”

Silence. Beyond the long barrier, Blaine’s pink back humped smoothly. The window at the

front seemed to regard them like a vapid glass eye. The wiper could have been a lid

half-closed in a sly wink.

“PROVE IT,” Blaine said at last.

“Christ, how do I do that?” Eddie asked Susannah.

“I don’t know.”

Eddie pushed the button again. “The Statue of Liberty! Does that ring a bell?”

“GO ON,” Blaine said. Now the voice sounded almost thoughtful.

“The Empire State Building! The Stock Exchange! The World Trade Center! Coney

Island Red-Hots! Radio City Music Hall! The East Vil—”

Blaine cut him off . . . and now, incredibly, the voice which came from the speaker was the

drawling voice of John Wayne.

“OKAY, PILGRIM. I BELIEVE YOU.”

Eddie and Susannah shared another glance, this one of confusion and relief. But when

Blaine spoke again, the voice was again cold and emotionless.

“ASK ME A QUESTION, EDDIE DEAN OF NEW YORK. AND IT BETTER BE A

GOOD ONE.” There was a pause, and then Blaine added: “BECAUSE IF IT’S NOT, YOU

AND YOUR WOMAN ARE GOING TO DIE, NO MATTER WHERE YOU CAME

FROM.”

Susannah looked from the box on the gate to Eddie. “What’s it talking about?” she hissed.

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

28

To JAKE, THE ROOM Gasher dragged him into looked like a Minuteman missile silo

which had been decorated by the inmates of a lunatic asylum: part museum, part living

room, part hippie crash pad. Above him, empty space vaulted up to a rounded ceiling and below him it dropped seventy-five or a hundred feet to a similarly rounded base. Running

all around the single curved wall in vertical lines were tubes of neon in alternating strokes

of color: red, blue, green, yellow, orange, peach, pink. These long tubes came together in

roaring rainbow knots at the bottom and top of the silo … if that was what it had been.

The room was about three-quarters of the way up the vast capsule-shaped space and

floored with rusty iron grillework. Rugs that looked Turkish (he later learned that such rugs

were actually from a barony called Kashmin) lay on the grilled floor here and there. Their

corners were held down with brass-bound trunks or standing lamps or the squat legs of

over-stuffed chairs. If not, they would have flapped like strips of paper tied to an electric

fan, because a steady warm draft rushed up from below. Another draft, this one issuing

from a circular band of venti- lators like the ones in the tunnel they had followed here,

swirled about four or five feet above Jake’s head. On the far side of the room was a door

identical to the one through which he and Gasher had entered, and Jake assumed it was a

continuation of the subterranean corridor following the Path of the Beam.

There were half a do/en people in the room, four men and two women. Jake guessed that

he was looking at the Gray high command— if, that was, there were enough Grays left to

warrant a high command. None of them were young, but all were still in the prime of their

lives. They looked at Jake as curiously as he looked at them.

Sitting in the center of the room, with one massive leg thrown casu- ally over the arm of a

chair big enough to be a throne, was a man who looked like a cross between a Viking

warrior and a giant from a child’s fairy-tale. His heavily muscled upper body was naked

except for a silver band around one bicep, a knife-scabbard looped over one shoulder, and a

strange charm about his neck. His lower body was clad in soft, tight-fitting leather breeches

which were tucked into high boots. He wore a yellow scarf tied around one of these. His

hair, a dirty gray-blonde, cas- caded almost to the middle of his broad back; his eyes were as

green and curious as the eyes of a tomcat who is old enough to be wise but not old enough

to have lost that refined sense of cruelty which passes for fun in feline circles. Hung by its

strap from the back of the chair was what looked like a very old machine-gun.

Jake looked more closely at the ornament on the Viking’s chest and saw that it was a

coffin-shaped glass box hung on a silver chain. Inside it, a tiny gold clock-face marked the

time at five minutes past three. Below the face, a tiny gold pendulum went back and forth,

and despite the soft whoosh of circulating air from above and below, he could hear the

tick-tock sound it made. The hands of the clock were moving faster than they should have

done, and Jake was not very surprised to see that they were moving backward.

He thought of the crocodile in Peter Pan, the one that was always chasing after Captain

Hook, and a little smile touched his lips. Gasher saw it, and raised his hand. Jake cringed

away, putting his own hands to his face.

The Tick-Tock Man shook his finger at Gasher in an amusing school-marmish gesture.

“Now, now … no need of that, Gasher,” he said.

Gasher lowered his hand at once. His face had changed completely. Before, it had alternated between stupid rage and a species of cunning, almost existential humor. Now he

only looked servile and adoring. Like the others in the room (and Jake himself), the

Gasherman could not look away from Tick-Tock for long; his eyes were drawn inexorably

back. And Jake could understand why. The Tick-Tock Man was the only person here who

seemed wholly vital, wholly healthy, and wholly alive.

“If you say there’s no need, there ain’t,” Gasher said, but he favored Jake with a dark look before shifting his eyes back to the blonde giant on the throne. “Still, he’s wery pert, Ticky.

Wery pert, Ticky. Wery pert indeed, so he is, and if you want my opinion, he’ll take a deal