“Read me what it says on the front,” he said. “The words of your world make my head hurt. They swim to my eye easily enough, but when I reach my mind toward them, most swim away again.”
Jake was paying little attention; his eyes were riveted on the book jacket with its picture of a little country church at sunset. Callahan, meanwhile, had stepped past him in order to get a closer look at the door standing here in the gloomy cave. At last the boy looked up. “But… Roland, isn’t this the town Pere Callahan told us about? The one where the vampire broke his cross and made him drink his blood?”
Callahan whirled away from the door. ” What?”
Jake held the book out wordlessly. Callahan took it. Almost snatched it.
” ‘ Salem’s Lot” he read. “A novel by Stephen King.” He looked up at Eddie, then at Jake. “Heard of him?
Either of you? He’s not from my time, I don’t think.”
Jake shook his head. Eddie began to shake his, as well, and then he saw something. “That church,” he said.
“It looks like the Calla Gathering Hall. Close enough to be its twin, almost.”
“It also looks like the East Stoneham Methodist Meeting Hall, built in 1819,” Callahan said, “so I guess this time we’ve got a case of triplets.” But his voice sounded faraway to his own ears, as hollow as the false voices which floated up from the bottom of the cave. All at once he felt false to himself, not real. He felt nineteen.
SIX
It’s a joke, part of his mind assured him. It must be a joke, the cover of this book says it’s a novel, so—
Then an idea struck him, and he felt a surge of relief. It was conditional relief, but surely better than none at all. The idea was that sometimes people wrote make-believe stories about real places. That was it, surely. Had to be.
“Look at page one hundred and nineteen,” Roland said. “I could make out a little of it, but not all. Not nearly enough.”
Callahan found the page, and read this:
” ‘In the early days at the seminary, a friend of Father…’ ” He trailed off, eyes racing ahead over the words on the page.
“Go on,” Eddie said. “You read it, Father, or I will.”
Slowly, Callahan resumed.
” ‘… a friend of Father Callahan’s had given him a blasphemous crewelwork sampler which had sent him into gales of horrified laughter at the time, but which seemed more true and less blasphemous as the years passed: God grant me the SERENITY to accept what I cannot change, the TENACITY to change what I may, and the GOOD LUCK not to fuck up too often. This in Old English script with a rising sun in the background.
” ‘Now, standing before Danny Glick’s… Danny Glick’s mourners, that old credo… that old credo returned.’ ”
The hand holding the book sagged. If Jake hadn’t caught it, it probably would have tumbled to the floor of the cave.
“You had it, didn’t you?” Eddie said. “You actually had a sampler saying that.”
“Frankie Foyle gave it to me,” Callahan said. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Back in seminary.
And Danny Glick… I officiated at his funeral, I think I told you that. That was when everything seemed to change, somehow. But this is a novel! A novel is fiction! How… how can it…” His voice suddenly rose to a damned howl. To Roland it sounded eerily like the false voices that rose up from below. ” Damn it, I’m a REAL PERSON!”
“Here’s the part where the vampire broke your cross,” Jake reported. ” ‘ “Together at last!” Barlow said, smiling. His face was strong and intelligent and handsome in a sharp, forbidding sort of way—yet, as the light shifted, it seemed—’ ”
“Stop,” Callahan said dully. “It makes my head hurt.”
“It says his face reminded you of the bogeyman who lived in your closet when you were a kid. Mr. Flip.”
Callahan’s face was now so pale he might have been a vampire’s victim himself. “I never told anyone about Mr. Flip, not even my mother. That can’t be in that book. It just can’t be.”
“It is,” Jake said simply.
“Let’s get this straight,” Eddie said. “When you were a kid, there was a Mr. Flip, and you did think of him when you faced this particular Type One vampire, Barlow. Correct?”
“Yes, but—”
Eddie turned to the gunslinger. “Is this getting us any closer to Susannah, do you think?”
“Yes. We’ve reached the heart of a great mystery. Perhaps the great mystery. I believe the Dark Tower is almost close enough to touch. And if the Tower is close, Susannah is, too.”
Ignoring him, Callahan was flipping through the book. Jake was looking over his shoulder.
“And you know how to open that door?” Eddie pointed at
“Yes,” Roland said. “I’d need help, but I think the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis owe us a little help, don’t you?”
Eddie nodded. “All right, then, let me tell you this much: I’m pretty sure I have seen the name Stephen King before, at least once.”
“On the Specials board,” Jake said without looking up from the book. “Yeah, I remember. It was on the Specials board the first time we went todash.”
“Specials board?” Roland asked, frowning.
” Tower’s Specials board,” Eddie said. “It was in the window, remember? Part of his whole Restaurant-of-the-Mind thing.”
Roland nodded.
“But I’ll tell you guys something,” Jake said, and now he did look up from the book. “The name was there when Eddie and I went todash, but it wasn’t on the board the first time I went in there. The time Mr.
Deepneau told me the river riddle, it was someone else’s name. It changed, just like the name of the writer on Charlie the Choo-Choo.”
“I can’t be in a book,” Callahan was saying. “I am not a fiction… am I?”
“Roland.” It was Eddie. The gunslinger turned to him. “I need to find her. I don’t care who’s real and who’s not. I don’t care about Calvin Tower, Stephen King, or the Pope of Rome. As far as reality goes, she’s all of it
I want. I need to find my wife.'” His voice dropped. “Help me, Roland.”
Roland reached out and took the book in his left hand. With his right he touched the door. If she’s still alive, he thought. If we can find her, and if she’s come back to herself. If and if and if.
Eddie took Roland’s arm. “Please,” he said. “Please don’t make me try to do it on my own. I love her so much. Help me find her.”
Roland smiled. It made him younger. It seemed to fill the cave with its own light. All of Eld’s ancient power was in that smile: the power of the White.
“Yes,” he said. “We go.”
And then he said again, all the affirmation necessary in this dark place.
“Yes.”
Bangor, Maine December 15, 2002