The Dark Tower

Jake watches The Lost Continent on Million Dollar Movie every day that week. Every time he watches it, it scares him a little less. Once, Mrs. Greta Shaw comes in and watches part of it with him. She brings him his snack, a big bowl of Hawaiian Fluff (also one for herself) and sings him her wonderful little song: “A little snack that’s far and wee, there’s some for you and some for me, blackberry jam and blackberry tea.” There are no blackberries in Hawaiian Fluff, of course, and they have the last of the Welch’s Grape Juice to go with it instead of tea, but Mrs. Greta Shaw says it is the thought that counts. She has taught him to say Rooty-tooty-salutie before they drink, and to clink glasses. Jake thinks that’s the absolute coolest, the cat’s ass.

Pretty soon the dinosaurs come. ’Bama and Mrs. Greta Shaw sit side by side, eating Hawaiian Fluff and watching as a big one (Mrs. Greta Shaw says you call that kind a Tyrannasorbet Wrecks) eats the bad explorer. “Cartoon dinosaurs,” Mrs. Greta Shaw sniffs. “Wouldn’t you think they could do better than that.” As far as Jake is concerned, this is the most brilliant piece of film criticism he has ever heard in his life. Brilliant and useful.

Eventually his parents come back. Top Hat enjoys a week’s run on Million Dollar Movie and little Jakie’s night terrors are never mentioned. Eventually he forgets his fear of the triceratops and the Tyrannasorbet.

SEVEN

Now, lying in the high green grass and peering into the misty clearing from between the leaves of a fern, Jake discovered that some things you never forgot.

Mind the mind-trap, Jochabim had said, and looking down at the lumbering dinosaur—a cartoon triceratops in a real jungle like an imaginary toad in a real garden—Jake realized that this was it. This was the mind-trap. The triceratops wasn’t real no matter how fearsomely it might roar, no matter that Jake could actually smell it—the rank vegetation rotting in the soft folds where its stubby legs met its stomach, the shit caked to its vast armor-plated rear end, the endless cud drooling between its tusk-edged jaws—and hear its panting breath. It couldn’t be real, it was a cartoon, for God’s sake!

And yet he knew it was real enough to kill him. If he went down there, the cartoon triceratops would tear him apart just as it would have torn apart the Daisy Mae with the bodacious ta-tas if Cesar Romero hadn’t appeared in time to put a bullet into the thing’s One Vulnerable Spot with his big-game hunter’s rifle. Jake had gotten rid of the hand that had tried to monkey with his motor controls—had slammed all those doors so hard he’d chopped off the hand’s intruding fingers, for all he knew—but this was different. He could not close his eyes and just walk by; that was a real monster his traitor mind had created, and it could really tear him apart.

There was no Cesar Romero here to keep it from happening. No Roland, either.

There were only the low men, running his backtrail and getting closer all the time.

As if to emphasize this point, Oy looked back the way they’d come and barked once, piercingly loud.

The triceratops heard and roared in response. Jake expected Oy to shrink against him at that mighty sound, but Oy continued to look back over Jake’s shoulder. It was the low men Oy was worried about, not the triceratops below them or the Tyrannasorbet Wrecks that might come next, or—

Because Oy doesn’t see it, he thought.

He monkeyed with this idea and couldn’t pull it apart. Oy hadn’t smelled it or heard it, either. The conclusion was inescapable: to Oy the terrible triceratops in the mighty jungle below did not exist.