The Dark Tower

One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,

Stood stupefied, however he came there;

Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!

“Now Stanza the Fourteenth I read thee.

“Alive? He might be dead for aught I know,

With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,

And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;

Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;

I never saw a brute I hated so;

He must be wicked to deserve such pain.”

“Lippy,” the gunslinger said, and jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “Yonder’s pluggit, colloped neck and all, only female instead of male.”

She made no reply—needed to make none. Of course it was Lippy: blind and bony, her neck rubbed right down to the raw pink in places. Her an ugly old thing, I know, the old man had said . . . the thing that had looked like an old man. Ye old ki’-box and gammer-gurt, ye lost four-legged leper! And here it was in black and white, a poem written long before sai King was even born, perhaps eighty or even a hundred years before: . . . as scant as hair/In leprosy.

“Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!” Roland said, smiling grimly. “And while she’ll never stud nor ever did, we’ll see she’s back with the devil before we leave!”

“No,” she said. “We won’t.” Her voice sounded drier than ever. She wanted a drink, but was now afraid to take anything flowing from the taps in this vile place. In a little bit she would get some snow and melt it. Then she would have her drink, and not before.

“Why do you say so?”

“Because she’s gone. She went out into the storm when we got the best of her master.”

“How does thee know it?”

Susannah shook her head. “I just do.” She shuffled to the next page in the poem, which ran to over two hundred lines. “Stanza the Sixteenth.

“Not it! I fancied . . .”

She ceased.

“Susannah? Why do you—” Then his eyes fixed on the next word, which he could read even in English letters. “Go on,” he said. His voice was low, the words little more than a whisper.

“Are you positive?”

“Read, for I would hear.”

She cleared her throat. “Stanza the Sixteenth.

“Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face

Beneath its garniture of curly gold,

Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold

An arm in mine to fix me to the place,

That way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!

Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.”

“He writes of Mejis,” Roland said. His fists were clenched, although she doubted that he knew it. “He writes of how we fell out over Susan Delgado, for after that it was never the same between us. We mended our friendship as best we could, but no, it was never quite the same.”

“After the woman comes to the man or the man to the woman, I don’t think it ever is,” she said, and handed him the photocopied sheets. “Take this. I’ve read all the ones he mentioned. If there’s stuff in the rest about coming to the Dark Tower—or not—puzzle it out by yourself. You can do it if you try hard enough, I reckon. As for me, I don’t want to know.”

Roland, it seemed, did. He shuffled through the pages, looking for the last one. The pages weren’t numbered, but he found the end easily enough by the white space beneath that stanza marked XXXIV. Before he could read, however, that thin cry came again. This time the wind was in a complete lull and there was no doubt about where it came from.

“That’s someone below us, in the basement,” Roland said.

“I know. And I think I know who it is.”

He nodded.

She was looking at him steadily. “It all fits, doesn’t it? It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, and we’ve put in all but the last few pieces.”

The cry came again, thin and lost. The cry of someone who was next door to dead. They left the bathroom, drawing their guns. Susannah didn’t think they’d need them this time.

FIVE

The bug that had made itself look like a jolly old joker named Joe Collins lay where it had lain, but Oy had backed off a step or two. Susannah didn’t blame him. Dandelo was beginning to stink, and little trickles of white stuff were beginning to ooze through its decaying carapace. Nevertheless, Roland bade the bumbler remain where he was, and keep watch.