The Waste Lands by Stephen King
"Roland, I've been making something," Eddie said.
Roland nodded. A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "I know. What is it? Are you finally ready to tell?"
"I think it might be part of this ka-tet thing."
The vacant look left Roland's eyes. He gazed at Eddie thoughtfully but said nothing.
"Look." Eddie began to unfold the piece of hide.
That won't do any good! Henry's voice suddenly brayed. It was so loud that Eddie actually flinched a little. It's just a stupid piece of wood-carving! He'll take one look and laugh at it! He'll laugh at you! "Oh, lookit this!" he'll say. "Did the sissy carve something?"
"Shut up," Eddie muttered.
The gunslinger raised his eyebrows.
"Not you."
Roland nodded, unsurprised. "Your brother comes to you often, doesn't he, Eddie?"
For a moment Eddie only stared at him, his carving still hidden in the hide square. Then he smiled. It was not a very pleasant smile. "Not as often as he used to, Roland. Thank Christ for small favors."
"Yes," Roland said. "Too many voices weigh heavy on a man's heart . . . What is it, Eddie? Show me, please."
Eddie held up the chunk of ash. The key, almost complete, emerged from it like the head of a woman from the prow of a sailing ship . . . or the hilt of a sword from a chunk of stone. Eddie didn't know how close he had come to duplicating the key-shape he had seen in the fire (and never would, he supposed, unless he found the right lock in which to try it), but he thought it was close. Of one thing he was quite sure: it was the best carving he had ever done. By far.
"By the gods, Eddie, it's beautiful!" Roland said. The apathy was gone from his voice; he spoke in a tone of surprised reverence Eddie had never heard before. "Is it done? It's not, is it?"
"No--not quite." He ran his thumb into the third notch, and then over the s-shape at the end of the last notch. "There's a little more to do on this notch, and the curve at the end isn't right yet. I don't know how I know that, but I do."
"This is your secret." It wasn't a question.
"Yes. Now if only I knew what it meant."
Roland looked around. Eddie followed his gaze and saw Susannah. He found some relief in the fact that Roland had heard her first.
"What you boys doin up so late? Chewin the fat?" She saw the wooden key in Eddie's hand and nodded. "I wondered when you were going to get around to showing that off. It's good, you know. I don't know what it's for, but it's damned good."
"You don't have any idea what door it might open?" Roland asked Eddie. "That was not part of your khef?"
"No--but it might be good for something even though it isn't done." He held the key out to Roland. "I want you to keep it for me."
Roland didn't move to take it. He regarded Eddie closely. "Why?"
"Because . . . well . . . because I think someone told me you should."
"Who?"
Your boy, Eddie thought suddenly, and as soon as the thought came he knew it was true. It was your goddamned boy. But he didn't want to say so. He didn't want to mention the boy's name at all. It might just set Roland off again.
"I don't know. But I think you ought to give it a try."
Roland reached slowly for the key. As his fingers touched it, a bright glimmer seemed to flash down its barrel, but it was gone so quickly that Eddie could not be sure he had seen it. It might have been only starlight.
Roland's hand closed over the key growing out of the branch. For a moment his face showed nothing. Then his brow furrowed and his head cocked in a listening gesture.
"What is it?" Susannah asked. "Do you hear--"
"Shhhh!" The puzzlement on Roland's face was slowly being replaced with wonder. He looked from Eddie to Susannah and then back to Eddie. His eyes were filling with some great emotion, as a pitcher fills with water when it is dipped in a spring.
"Roland?" Eddie asked uneasily. "Are you all right?"
Roland whispered something. Eddie couldn't hear what it was.
Susannah looked scared. She glanced frantically at Eddie, as if to ask, What did you do to him?
Eddie took one of her hands in both of his own. "I think it's all right."
Roland's hand was clamped so tightly on the chunk of wood that Eddie was momentarily afraid he might snap it in two, but the wood was strong and Eddie had carved thick. The gunslinger's throat bulged; his Adam's apple rose and fell as he struggled with speech. And suddenly he yelled at the sky in a fair, strong voice:
"GONE! THE VOICES ARE GONE!"
He looked back at them, and Eddie saw something he had never expected to see in his life--not even if that life stretched over a thousand years.
Roland of Gilead was weeping.
2
THE GUNSLINGER SLEPT SOUNDLY and dreamlessly that night for the first time in months, and he slept with the not-quite finished key clenched tightly in his hand.
3
IN ANOTHER WORLD, BUT beneath the shadow of the same ka-tet, Jake Chambers was having the most vivid dream of his life.
He was walking through the tangled remains of an ancient forest--a dead zone of fallen trees and scruffy, aggravating bushes that bit his ankles and tried to steal his sneakers. He came to a thin belt of younger trees (alders, he thought, or perhaps beeches--he was a city boy, and the only thing he knew for sure about trees was that some had leaves and some had needles) and discovered a path through them. He made his way along this, moving a little faster. There was a clearing of some sort up ahead.
He stopped once before reaching it, when he spied some sort of stone marker to his right. He left the path to look at it. There were letters carved into it, but they were so eroded he couldn't make them out. At last he closed his eyes (he had never done this in a dream before) and let his fingers trace each letter, like a blind boy reading Braille. Each formed in the darkness behind his lids until they made a sentence which stood forth in an outline of blue light: TRAVELLER, BEYOND LIES MID-WORLD.
Sleeping in his bed, Jake drew his knees up against his chest. The hand holding the key was under his pillow, and now his fingers tightened their grip on it.
Mid-World, he thought, of course. St. Louis and Topeka and Oz and the World's Fair and Charlie the Choo-Choo.
He opened his dreaming eyes and pressed on. The clearing behind the trees was paved with old cracked asphalt. A faded yellow circle had been painted in the middle. Jake realized it was a playground basketball court even before he saw the boy at the far end, standing at the foul line and shooting baskets with a dusty old Wilson ball. They popped in one after another, falling neatly through the netless hole. The basket jutted out from something that looked like a subway kiosk which had been shut up for the night. Its closed door was painted in alternating diagonal stripes of yellow and black. From behind it--or perhaps from below it--Jake could hear the steady rumble of powerful machinery. The sound was somehow disturbing. Scary.
Don't step on the robots, the boy shooting the baskets said without turning around. I guess they're all dead, but I wouldn't take any chances, if I were you.
Jake looked around and saw a number of shattered mechanical devices lying around. One looked like a rat or mouse, another like a bat. A mechanical snake lay in two rusty pieces almost at his feet.
ARE you me? Jake asked, taking a step closer to the boy at the basket, but even before he turned around, Jake knew that wasn't the case. The boy was bigger than Jake, and at least thirteen. His hair was darker, and when he looked at Jake, he saw that the stranger's eyes were hazel. His own were blue.
What do you think? the strange boy asked, and bounce-passed the ball to Jake.
No, of course not, Jake said. He spoke apologetically. It's just that I've been cut in two for the last three weeks or so. He dipped and shot from mid-court. The ball arched high and dropped silently through the hoop. He was delighted . . . but he discovered he was also afraid of what this strange boy might have to tell him.
I know, the boy said. It's been a bitch for you, has
What is this place? Jake asked. And who are you?
It's the Portal of the Bear . . . but it's also Brooklyn.
That didn't seem to make sense, and yet somehow it did. Jake told himself that things always seemed that way in dreams, but this didn't really feel like a dream.
As for me, I don't matter much, the boy said. He hooked the basketball over his shoulder. It rose, then dropped smoothly through the hoop. I'm supposed to guide you, that's all. I'll take you where you need to go, and I'll show you what you need to see, but you have to be careful because I won't know you. And strangers make Henry nervous. He can get mean when he's nervous, and he's bigger than you.
Who's Henry? Jake asked.
Never mind. Just don't let him notice you. All you have to do is hang out . . . and follow us. Then, when we leave . . .
The boy looked at Jake. There was both pity and fear in his eyes. Jake suddenly realized that the boy was starting to fade--he could see the yellow and black slashes on the box right through the boy's yellow T-shirt.
How will I find you? Jake was suddenly terrified that the boy would melt away completely before he could say everything Jake needed to hear.
No problem, the boy said. His voice had taken on a queer, chiming echo. Just take the subway to Co-Op City. You'll find me.
No, I won't! Jake cried. Co-Op City's huge! There must be a hundred thousand people living there!
Now the boy was just a milky outline. Only his hazel eyes were still completely there, like the Cheshire cat's grin in Alice. They regarded Jake with compassion and anxiety. No problem-o, he said. You found the key and the rose, didn't you? You'll find me the same way. This afternoon, Jake. Around three o'clock should be good. You'll have to be careful, and you'll have to be quick. He paused, a ghostly boy with an old basketball lying near one transparent foot. I have to go now . . . but it was good to meet you. You seem like a nice kid, and I'm not surprised he loves you. Remember, there's danger, though. Be careful . . . and be quick.
Wait! Jake yelled, and ran across the basketball court toward the disappearing boy. One of his feet struck a shattered robot that looked like a child's toy tractor. He stumbled and fell to his knees, shredding his pants. He ignored the thin burn of pain. Wait! You have to tell me what all this is about! You have to tell me why these things are happening to me!
Because of the Beam, the boy who was now only a pair of floating eyes replied, and because of the Tower. In the end, all things, even the Beams, serve the Dark Tower. Did you think you would be any different?
Jake flailed and stumbled to his feet. Will I find him? Will I find the gunslinger?
I don't know, the boy answered. His voice now seemed to come from a million miles away. I only know you must try. About that you have no choice.
The boy was gone. The basketball court in the woods was empty. The only sound was that faint rumble of machinery, and Jake didn't like it. There was something wrong with that sound, and he thought that what was wrong with the machinery was affecting the rose, or vice-versa. It was all hooked together somehow.
He picked up the old, scuffed-up basketball and shot. It went neatly through the hoop . . . and disappeared.
A river, the strange boy's voice sighed. It was like a puff of breeze. It came from nowhere and everywhere. The answer is a river.
4
JAKE WOKE IN THE first milky light of dawn, looking up at the ceiling of his room. He was thinking of the guy in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind--Aaron Deepneau, who'd been hanging around on Bleecker Street back when Bob Dylan only knew how to blow open G on his Hohner. Aaron Deepneau had given Jake a riddle.
What can run but never walks,
Has a mouth but never talks,
Has a bed but never sleeps,
Has a head but never weeps?
Now he knew the answer. A river ran; a river had a mouth; a river had a bed; a river had a head. The boy had told him the answer. The boy in the dream.
And suddenly he thought of something else Deepneau had said: That's only half the answer. Samson's riddle is a double, my friend.
Jake glanced at his bedside clock and saw it was twenty past six. It was time to get moving if he wanted to be out of here before his parents woke up. There would be no school for him today; Jake thought that maybe, as far as he was concerned, school had been cancelled forever.
He threw back the bedclothes, swung his feet out onto the floor, and saw that there were scrapes on both knees. Fresh scrapes. He had bruised his left side yesterday when he slipped on the bricks and fell, and he had banged his head when he fainted near the rose, but nothing had happened to his knees.
"That happened in the dream," Jake whispered, and found he wasn't surprised at all. He began to dress swiftly.
5
IN THE BACK OF his closet, under a jumble of old laceless sneakers and a heap of Spiderman comic books, he found the packsack he had worn to grammar school. No one would be caught dead with a packsack at Piper--how too, too common, my deah--and as Jake grabbed it, he felt a wave of powerful nostalgia for those old days when life had seemed so simple.
He stuffed a clean shirt, a clean pair of jeans, some underwear and socks into it, then added Riddle-De-Dum! and Charlie the Choo-Choo. He had put the key on his desk before foraging in the closet for his old pack, and the voices came back at once, but they were distant and muted. Besides, he felt sure he could make them go away completely by holding the key again, and that eased his mind.
Okay, he thought, looking into the pack. Even with the books added, there was plenty of room left. What else?
For a moment he thought there was nothing else . . . and then he knew.
6
HIS FATHER'S STUDY SMELLED of cigarettes and ambition.
It was dominated by a huge teakwood desk. Across the room, set into a wall otherwise lined with books, were three Mitsubishi television monitors. Each was tuned to one of the rival networks, and at night, when his father was in here, each played out its progression of prime-time images with the sound off.
The curtains were drawn, and Jake had to turn on the desk lamp in order to see. He felt nervous just being in here, even wearing sneakers. If his father should wake up and come in (and it was possible; no matter how late he went to bed or how much he drank, Elmer Chambers was a light sleeper and an early riser), he would be angry. At the very least it would make a clean getaway much tougher. The sooner he was out of here, the better Jake would feel.
The desk was locked, but his father had never made any secret of where he kept the key. Jake slid his fingers under the blotter and hooked it out. He opened the third drawer, reached past the hanging files, and touched cold metal.
A board creaked in the hall and he froze. Several seconds passed. When the creak didn't come again, Jake pulled out the weapon his father kept for "home defense"--a .44 Ruger automatic. His father had shown this weapon to Jake with great pride on the day he had bought it--two years ago, that had been. He had been totally deaf to his wife's nervous demands that he put it away before someone got hurt.
Jake found the button on the side that released the clip. It fell out into his hand with a metallic snak! sound that seemed very loud in the quiet apartment. He glanced nervously toward the door again, then turned his attention to the clip. It was fully loaded. He started to slide it back into the gun, and then took it out again. Keeping a loaded gun in a locked desk drawer was one thing; carrying one around New York City was quite another.
He stuffed the automatic down to the bottom of his pack, then felt behind the hanging files again. This time he brought out a box of shells, about half-full. He remembered his father had done some target shooting at the police range on First Avenue before losing interest.
The board creaked again. Jake wan
He removed one of the shirts he'd packed, laid it on his father's desk, and rolled up the clip and the box of .44 slugs in it. Then he replaced it in the pack and used the buckles to snug down the flap. He was about to leave when his eye fixed on the little pile of stationery sitting beside his father's In/Out tray. The reflectorized Ray-Ban sunglasses his father liked to wear were folded on top of the stationery. He took a sheet of paper, and, after a moment's thought, the sunglasses as well. He slipped the shades into his breast pocket. Then he removed the slim gold pen from its stand, and wrote Dear Dad and Mom beneath the letterhead.
He stopped, frowning at the salutation. What went below it? What, exactly, did he have to say? That he loved them? It was true, but it wasn't enough--there were all sorts of other unpleasant truths stuck through that central one, like steel needles jabbed into a ball of yarn. That he would miss them? He didn't know if that was true or not, which was sort of horrible. That he hoped they would miss him?
He suddenly realized what the problem was. If he were planning to be gone just today, he would be able to write something. But he felt a near-certainty that it wasn't just today, or this week, or this month, or this summer. He had an idea that when he walked out of the apartment this time, it would be for good.
He almost crumpled the sheet of paper, then changed his mind. He wrote: Please take care of yourselves. Love, J. That was pretty limp, but at least it was something.
Fine. Now will you stop pressing your luck and get out of here?
He did.
The apartment was almost dead still. He tiptoed across the living room, hearing only the sounds of his parents' breathing: his mother's soft little snores, his father's more nasal respiration, where every indrawn breath ended in a slim high whistle. The refrigerator kicked on as he reached the entryway and he froze for a moment, his heart thumping hard in his chest. Then he was at the door. He unlocked it as quietly as he could, then stepped out and pulled it gently shut behind him.
A stone seemed to roll off his heart as the latch snicked, and a strong sense of anticipation seized him. He didn't know what lay ahead, and he had reason to believe it would be dangerous, but he was eleven years old--too young to deny the exotic delight which suddenly filled him. There was a highway ahead--a hidden highway leading deep into some unknown land. There were secrets which might disclose themselves to him if he was clever . . . and if he was lucky. He had left his home in the long light of dawn, and what lay ahead was some great adventure.