The Dark Tower

The man with the odd blue eyes nodded. “We’re going to the writer’s house.”

“Cara Laughs,” she said at once. “It’s a beautiful house. I’ve seen it from the lake, but I don’t know which driveway—”

“It’s nineteen,” the man said. They were currently passing the one marked 27. From this end of Turtleback Lane, the numbers would go down rather than up.

“What do you want with him, if I may I be so bold?”

It was the boy who answered. “We want to save his life.”

SEVEN

Roland recognized the steeply descending driveway at once, even though he’d last seen it under black, thundery skies, and much of his attention had been taken by the brilliant flying taheen. There was no sign of taheen or other exotic wildlife today. The roof of the house below had been dressed with copper instead of shingles at some point during the intervening years, and the wooded area beyond it had become a lawn, but the driveway was the same, with a sign reading CARA LAUGHS on the lefthand side and one bearing the number 19 in large numerals on the right. Beyond was the lake, sparkling blue in the strong afternoon light.

From the lawn came the blat of a hard-working small engine. Roland looked at Jake and was dismayed by the boy’s pale cheeks and wide, frightened eyes.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“He’s not here, Roland. Not him, not any of his family. Just the man cutting the grass.”

“Nonsense, you can’t—” Mrs. Tassenbaum began.

“I know!” Jake shouted at her. “I know, lady!”

Roland was looking at Jake with a frank and horrified sort of fascination . . . but in his current state, the boy either did not understand the look or missed it entirely.

Why are you lying, Jake? the gunslinger thought. And then, on the heels of that: He’s not.

“What if it’s already happened?” Jake demanded, and yes, he was worried about King, but Roland didn’t think that was all he was worried about. “What if he’s dead and his family’s not here because the police called them, and—”

“It hasn’t happened,” Roland said, but that was all of which he was sure. What do you know, Jake, and why won’t you tell me?

There was no time to wonder about it now.

EIGHT

The man with the blue eyes sounded calm as he spoke to the boy, but he didn’t look calm to Irene Tassenbaum; not at all. And those singing voices she’d first noticed outside the East Stoneham General Store had changed. Their song was still sweet, but wasn’t there a note of desperation in it now, as well? She thought so. A high, pleading quality that made her temples throb.

“How can you know that?” the boy called Jake shouted at the man—his father, she assumed. “How can you be so fucking sure?”

Instead of answering the kid’s question, the one called Roland looked at her. Mrs. Tassenbaum felt the skin of her arms and back break out in gooseflesh.

“Drive down, sai, may it do ya.”

She looked doubtfully at the steep slope of the Cara Laughs driveway. “If I do, I might not get this bucket of bolts back up.”

“You’ll have to,” Roland said.

NINE

The man cutting the grass was King’s bondservant, Roland surmised, or whatever passed for such in this world. He was white-haired under his straw hat but straight-backed and hale, wearing his years with little effort. When the truck drove down the steep driveway to the house, the man paused with one arm resting on the handle of the mower. When the passenger door opened and the gunslinger got out, he used the switch to turn the mower off. He also removed his hat—without being exactly aware that he was doing it, Roland thought. Then his eyes registered the gun that hung at Roland’s hip, and widened enough to make the crow’s-feet around them disappear.

“Howdy, mister,” he said cautiously. He thinks I’m a walk-in, Roland thought. Just as she did.

And they were walk-ins of a sort, he and Jake; they just happened to have come to a time and place where such things were common.

And where time was racing.

Roland spoke before the man could go on. “Where are they? Where is he? Stephen King? Speak, man, and tell me the truth!”

The hat slipped from the old man’s relaxing fingers and fell beside his feet on the newly cut grass. His hazel eyes stared into Roland’s, fascinated: the bird looking at the snake.

“Fambly’s across the lake, at that place they gut on t’other side,” he said. “T’old Schindler place. Havin some kind of pa’ty, they are. Steve said he’d drive over after his walk.” And he gestured to a small black car parked on the driveway extension, its nose just visible around the side of the house.

“Where is he walking? Do ya know, tell this lady!”

The old man looked briefly over Roland’s shoulder, then back to the gunslinger. “Be easier was I t’drive ya there m’self.”