The Dark Tower

Behind his pressing back the door between New York and Fedic clicked open. At the head of the charging posse, Flaherty saw it happen, uttered the bitterest curse in his lexicon, and fired a single bullet. He was a good shot, and all the force of his not inconsiderable will went with that particular slug, guiding it. No doubt it would have punched through Jake’s forehead above the left eye, entering his brain and ending his life, had not a strong, brown-fingered hand seized Jake by the collar at that very moment and yanked him backward through the shrill elevator-shaft whistle that sounds endlessly between the levels of the Dark Tower. The bullet buzzed by his head instead of entering it.

Oy came with him, barking his friend’s name shrilly—Ake-Ake, Ake-Ake!—and the door slammed shut behind them. Flaherty reached it twenty seconds later and hammered on it until his fists bled (when Lamla tried to restrain him, Flaherty thrust him back with such ferocity that the taheen went a-sprawl), but there was nothing he could do. Hammering did not work; cursing did not work; nothing worked.

At the very last minute, the boy and the bumbler had eluded them. For yet a little while longer the core of Roland’s ka-tet remained unbroken.

CHAPTER VI: ON TURTLEBACK LANE

ONE

See this, I do beg ya, and see it very well, for it’s one of the most beautiful places that still remain in America.

I’d show you a homely dirt lane running along a heavily wooded switchback ridge in western Maine, its north and south ends spilling onto Route 7 about two miles apart. Just west of this ridge, like a jeweler’s setting, is a deep green dimple in the landscape. At the bottom of it—the stone in the setting—is Kezar Lake. Like all mountain lakes, it may change its aspect half a dozen times in the course of a single day, for here the weather is beyond prankish; you could call it half-mad and be perfectly accurate. The locals will be happy to tell you about ice-cream snow flurries that came to this part of the world once in late August (that would be 1948) and once spang on the Glorious Fourth (1959). They’ll be even more delighted to tell you about the tornado that came blasting across the lake’s frozen surface in January of 1971, sucking up snow and creating a whirling mini-blizzard that crackled with thunder in its middle. Hard to believe such crazy-jane weather, but you could go and see Gary Barker, if you don’t believe me; he’s got the pictures to prove it.

Today the lake at the bottom of the dimple is blacker than homemade sin, not just reflecting the thunderheads massing overhead but amplifying their mood. Every now and then a splinter of silver streaks across that obsidian looking-glass as lightning stabs out of the clouds overhead. The sound of thunder rolls through the congested sky west to east, like the wheels of some great stone bucka rolling down an alley in the sky. The pines and oaks and birches are still and all the world holds its breath. All shadows have disappeared. The birds have fallen silent. Overhead another of those great waggons rolls its solemn course, and in its wake—hark!—we hear an engine. Soon enough John Cullum’s dusty Ford Galaxie appears with Eddie Dean’s anxious face rising behind the wheel and the headlights shining in the premature gathering dark.

TWO

Eddie opened his mouth to ask Roland how far they were going, but of course he knew. Turtleback Lane’s south end was marked by a sign bearing a large black 1, and each of the driveways splitting off lakeward to their left bore another, higher number. They caught glimpses of the water through the trees, but the houses themselves were below them on the slope and tucked out of sight. Eddie seemed to taste ozone and electric grease with every breath he drew, and twice patted the hair on the nape of his neck, sure it would be standing on end. It wasn’t, but knowing it didn’t change the nervous, witchy feeling of exhilaration that kept sweeping through him, lighting up his solar plexus like an overloaded circuit-breaker and spreading out from there. It was the storm, of course; he just happened to be one of those people who feel them coming along the ends of their nerves. But never one’s approach as strongly as this.

It’s not all the storm, and you know it.

No, of course not. Although he thought all those wild volts might somehow have facilitated his contact with Susannah. It came and went like the reception you sometimes got from distant radio stations at night, but since their meeting with

(Ye Child of Roderick, ye spoiled, ye lost)