The Dark Tower (8 page)

There was a brief pause. In it, Eddie became aware of someone at his elbow. He didn’t turn to look; it was Roland. Who else in this world would smell—subtly but unquestionably—of another world?

“Oh, well,” Cullum said at last. “Maybe I
do
know a woods road or two that come out over in Lovell. It’s been a dry summer, n I guess I could get m’truck up em.”

“One or two?”

“Well, say three or four.” A pause, which Eddie didn’t break. He was having too much fun. “Five or six,” Cullum amended, and Eddie chose not to respond to this, either. “Eight,” Cullum said at last, and when Eddie laughed, Cullum joined in. “What’s on your mind, son?”

Eddie glanced at Roland, who was holding out a tin of aspirin between the two remaining fingers of his right hand. Eddie took it gratefully. “I want you to come over to Lovell,” he said to Cullum. “Seems like we might have a little more palavering to do, after all.”

“Ayuh, and it seems like I musta known it,” Cullum said, “although it was never right up on the top of my mind; up there I kep’ thinkin ‘I’ll be gettin on the road to Montpelier soon,’ and still I kep’ findin one more thing and one more thing to do around here. If you’da called five minutes ago, you woulda gotten a busy—I ’us on the phone to Charlie Beemer. It was his wife ’n sister-in-law that got killed in the market, don’t you know. And then I thought, ‘What the hell, I’ll just give the whole place a good sweep before I put my gear in the back of the truck and go.’ Nothin up on top is what I’m sayin, but down underneath I guess I been waitin for your call ever since I got back here. Where’ll you be? Turtleback Lane?”

Eddie popped open the aspirin tin and looked greedily at the little line-up of tablets. Once a junkie, always a junkie, he reckoned. Even when it came to this stuff. “Ayuh,” he said, with his tongue only partly in his cheek; he had become quite the mimic of regional dialects since meeting Roland on a Delta jet descending into Kennedy Airport. “You said that lane was nothing
but a two-mile loop off Route 7, didn’t you?”

“So I did. Some very nice homes along Turtleback.” A brief, reflective pause. “And a lot of em for sale. There’s been quite a number of walk-ins in that part of the world just lately. As I may have also mentioned. Such things make folks nervous, and rich folks, at least, c’n afford to get away from what makes it ha’ad to sleep at night.”

Eddie could wait no longer; he took three of the aspirin and tossed them into his mouth, relishing the bitter taste as they dissolved on his tongue. Bad as the pain currently was, he would have borne twice as much if he could have heard from Susannah. But she was quiet. He had an idea that the line of communication between them, chancy at best, had ceased to exist with the coming of Mia’s damned baby.

“You boys might want to keep your shootin irons close at hand if you’re headed over to Turtleback in Lovell,” Cullum said. “As for me, I think I’ll just toss m’shotgun in m’truck before I set sail.”

“Why not?” Eddie agreed. “You want to look for your car along the loop, okay? You’ll find it.”

“Ayuh, that old Galaxie’s ha’ad to miss,” Cullum agreed. “Tell me somethin, son. I’m not goin to V’mont, but I gut a feelin you mean to send me somewhere, if I agree to go. You mind tellin me where?”

Eddie thought that Mark Twain might elect to call the next chapter of John Cullum’s no doubt colorful life
A Maine Yankee in the Crimson King’s Court,
but elected not to say so. “Have you ever been to New York City?”

“Gorry, yes. Had a forty-eight-hour pass there, when I was in the Army.” The final word came out in a ridiculously flat drawl. “Went to Radio City
Music Hall and the Empire State Buildin, that much I remember. Musta made a few other tourist stops, though, because I lost thirty dollars out of m’wallet and a couple of months later I got diagnosed with a pretty fine case of the clap.”

“This time you’ll be too busy to catch the clap. Bring your credit cards. I know you have some, because I got a look at the receipts in your glove-compartment.” He felt an almost insane urge to draw the last word out, make it
compaa-aaaatment
.

“Mess in there, ennit?” Cullum asked equably.

“Ayuh, looks like what was left when the dog chewed the shoes. See you in Lovell, John.” Eddie hung up. He looked at the bag Roland was carrying and lifted his eyebrows.

“It’s a poorboy sanditch,” Roland said. “With lots of mayo, whatever that is. I’d want a sauce that didn’t look quite so much like come, myself, but may it do ya fine.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Gosh, that’s a real appetite-builder.”

“Do you say so?”

Eddie had to remind himself once more that Roland had almost no sense of humor. “I do, I do. Come on. I can eat my come-and-cheese sandwich while I drive. Also, we need to talk about how we’re going to handle this.”

The way to handle it, both agreed, was to tell John Cullum as much of their tale as they thought his credulity (and sanity) could stand. Then, if all went well, they would entrust him with the vital bill of sale and send him to Aaron Deepneau. With
strict orders to make sure he spoke to Deepneau apart from the not entirely trustworthy Calvin Tower.

“Cullum and Deepneau can work together to track Moses Carver down,” Eddie said, “and I think I can give Cullum enough information about Suze—private stuff—to convince Carver that she’s still alive. After that, though . . . well, a lot depends on how convincing those two guys can be. And how eager they are to work for the Tet Corporation in their sunset years. Hey, they may surprise us! I can’t see Cullum in a suit and tie, but traveling around the country and throwing monkey-wrenches in Sombra’s business?” He considered, head cocked, then nodded with a smile. “Yeah. I can see that pretty well.”

“Susannah’s godfather is apt to be an old codger himself,” Roland observed. “Just one of a different color. Such fellows often speak their own language when they’re an-tet. And mayhap I can give John Cullum something that will help convince Carver to throw in with us.”

“A sigul?”

“Yes.”

Eddie was intrigued. “What kind?”

But before Roland could answer, they saw something that made Eddie stomp on the brake-pedal. They were in Lovell now, and on Route 7. Ahead of them, staggering unsteadily along the shoulder, was an old man with snarled and straggly white hair. He wore a clumsy wrap of dirty cloth that could by no means be called a robe. His scrawny arms and legs were whipped with scratches. There were sores on them as well, burning a dull red. His feet were bare, and equipped with ugly and
dangerous-looking yellow talons instead of toes. Clasped under one arm was a splintery wooden object that might have been a broken lyre. Eddie thought no one could have looked more out of place on this road, where the only pedestrians they had seen so far were serious-looking exercisers, obviously from “away,” looking ever so put-together in their nylon jogging shorts, baseball hats, and tee-shirts (one jogger’s shirt bore the legend
DON’T SHOOT THE TOURISTS
).

The thing that had been trudging along the berm of Route 7 turned toward them, and Eddie let out an involuntary cry of horror. Its eyes bled together above the bridge of its nose, reminding him of a double-yolked egg in a frypan. A fang depended from one nostril like a bone booger. Yet somehow worst of all was the dull green glow that baked out from the creature’s face. It was as if its skin had been painted with some sort of thin fluorescent gruel.

It saw them and immediately dashed into the woods, dropping its splintered lyre behind.

“Christ!
” Eddie screamed. If that was a walk-in, he hoped never to see another.

“Stop, Eddie!” Roland shouted, then braced the heel of one hand against the dashboard as Cullum’s old Ford slid to a dusty halt close to where the thing had vanished.

“Open the backhold,” Roland said as he opened the door. “Get my widowmaker.”

“Roland, we’re in kind of a hurry here, and Turtleback Lane’s still three miles north. I really think we ought to—”

“Shut your fool’s mouth and get it!
” Roland roared, then ran to the edge of the woods. He drew a deep
breath, and when he shouted after the rogue creature, his voice sent gooseflesh racing up Eddie’s arms. He had heard Roland speak so once or twice before, but in between it was easy to forget that the blood of a King ran in his veins.

He spoke several phrases Eddie could not understand, then one he could: “So come forth, ye Child of Roderick, ye spoiled, ye lost, and make your bow before me, Roland, son of Steven, of the Line of Eld!”

For a moment there was nothing. Eddie opened the Ford’s trunk and brought Roland his gun. Roland strapped it on without so much as a glance at Eddie, let alone a word of thanks.

Perhaps thirty seconds went by. Eddie opened his mouth to speak. Before he could, the dusty roadside foliage began to shake. A moment or two later, the misbegotten thing reappeared. It staggered with its head lowered. On the front of its robe was a large wet patch. Eddie could smell the reek of a sick thing’s urine, wild and strong.

Yet it made a knee and raised one misshapen hand to its forehead, a doomed gesture of fealty that made Eddie feel like weeping. “Hile, Roland of Gilead, Roland of Eld! Will you show me some sigul, dear?”

In a town called River Crossing, an old woman who called herself Aunt Talitha had given Roland a silver cross on a fine-link silver chain. He’d worn it around his neck ever since. Now he reached into his shirt and showed it to the kneeling creature—a slow mutie dying of radiation sickness, Eddie was quite sure—and the thing gave a cracked cry of wonder.

“Would’ee have peace at the end of your course,
thou Child of Roderick? Would’ee have the peace of the clearing?”

“Aye, my dear,” it said, sobbing, then added a great deal more in some gibberish tongue Eddie couldn’t understand. Eddie looked both ways along Route 7, expecting to see traffic—this was the height of the summer season, after all—but spied nothing in either direction. For the moment, at least, their luck still held.

“How many of you are there in these parts?” Roland asked, interrupting the walk-in. As he spoke, he drew his revolver and raised that old engine of death until it lay against his shirt.

The Child of Roderick tossed its hand at the horizon without looking up. “Delah, gunslinger,” he said, “for here the worlds are thin, say
anro con fa; sey-sey desene fanno billet cobair can. I Chevin devar dan do.
Because I felt sat for dem.
Can-toi, can-tah, can Discordia, aven la cam mah can. May-mi? Iffin lah vainen, eth
—”

“How many
dan devar
?”

It thought about Roland’s question, then spread its fingers (there
were
ten, Eddie noted) five times. Fifty. Although fifty of what, Eddie didn’t know.

“And Discordia?” Roland asked sharply. “Do you truly say so?”

“Oh aye, so says me, Chevin of Chayven, son of Hamil, minstrel of the South Plains that were once my home.”

“Say the name of the town that stands near Castle Discordia and I’ll release you.”

“Ah, gunslinger, all there are dead.”

“I think not. Say it.”

“Fedic!” screamed Chevin of Chayven, a wandering
musica
who could never have suspected its
life would end in such a far, strange place—not the plains of Mid-World but the mountains of western Maine. It suddenly raised its horrid, glowing face to Roland. It spread its arms wide, like something which has been crucified.
“Fedic on the far side of Thunderclap, on the Path of the Beam! On V Shardik, V Maturin, the Road to the Dark T
—”

Roland’s revolver spoke a single time. The bullet took the kneeling thing in the center of its forehead, completing the ruin of its ruined face. As it was flung backward, Eddie saw its flesh turn to greenish smoke as ephemeral as a hornet’s wing. For a moment Eddie could see Chevin of Chayven’s floating teeth like a ghostly ring of coral, and then they were gone.

Roland dropped his revolver back into his holster, then pronged the two remaining fingers of his right hand and drew them downward in front of his face, a benedictory gesture if Eddie had ever seen one.

“Give you peace,” Roland said. Then he unbuckled his gunbelt and began to roll the weapon into it once more.

“Roland, was that . . . was it a slow mutant?”

“Aye, I suppose you’d say so, poor old thing. But the Rodericks are from beyond any lands I ever knew, although before the world moved on they gave their grace to Arthur Eld.” He turned to Eddie, his blue eyes burning in his tired face. “Fedic is where Mia has gone to have her baby, I have no doubt. Where she’s taken Susannah. By the last castle. We must backtrack to Thunderclap eventually, but Fedic’s where we need to go first. It’s good to know.”

“He said he felt sad for someone. Who?”

Roland only shook his head, not answering Eddie’s question. A Coca-Cola truck blasted by, and thunder rumbled in the far west.

“Fedic o’ the Discordia,” the gunslinger murmured instead. “Fedic o’ the Red Death. If we can save Susannah—and Jake—we’ll backtrack toward the Callas. But we’ll return when our business there is done. And when we turn southeast again . . .”

“What?” Eddie asked uneasily. “What then, Roland?”

“Then there’s no stopping until we reach the Tower.” He held out his hands, watched them tremble minutely. Then he looked up at Eddie. His face was tired but unafraid. “I have never been so close. I hear all my lost friends and their lost fathers whispering to me. They whisper on the Tower’s very breath.”

Eddie looked at Roland for a minute, fascinated and frightened, and then broke the mood with an almost physical effort. “Well,” he said, moving back toward the driver’s door of the Ford, “if any of those voices tells you what to say to Cullum—the best way to convince him of what we want—be sure to let me know.”

Eddie got in the car and closed the door before Roland could reply. In his mind’s eye he kept seeing Roland leveling his big revolver. Saw him aiming it at the kneeling figure and pulling the trigger. This was the man he called both dinh and friend. But could he say with any certainty that Roland wouldn’t do the same thing to him . . . or Suze . . . or Jake . . . if his heart told him it would take him closer to his Tower? He could not. And yet he would go on with him. Would have gone on even if
he’d been sure in his heart—oh, God forbid!—that Susannah was dead. Because he had to. Because Roland had become a good deal more to him than his dinh or his friend.