The Dark Tower VII Read online

  “No,” Jake said. “He can’t.” And when he moved, trying to sit up, his shirt pulled a little tighter against the top half of his body and Roland saw the dreadful concavity of the boy’s chest. More blood poured from Jake’s mouth, and when he tried to speak again he began to cough, instead. Roland’s heart seemed to twist like a rag inside his chest, and there was a moment to wonder how it could possibly go on beating in the face of this.

  Oy voiced a moaning cry, Jake’s name expressed in a half-howl that made Roland’s arms burst out in gooseflesh.

  “Don’t try to talk,” Roland said. “Something may be sprung inside of you. A rib, mayhap two.”

  Jake turned his head to the side. He spat out a mouthful of blood—some of it ran down his cheek like chewing tobacco—and took a hold on Roland’s wrist. His grip was strong; so was his voice, each word clear.

  “Everything’s sprung. This is dying—I know because I’ve done it before.” What he said next was what Roland had been thinking just before they started out from Cara Laughs: “If ka will say so, let it be so. See to the man we came to save!”

  It was impossible to deny the imperative in the boy’s eyes and voice. It was done, now, the Ka of Nineteen played out to the end. Except, perhaps, for King. The man they had come to save. How much of their fate had danced from the tips of his flying, tobacco-stained fingers? All? Some? This?

  Whatever the answer, Roland could have killed him with his bare hands as he lay pinned beneath the machine that had struck him, and never mind that King hadn’t been driving the van; if he had been doing what ka had meant him to be doing, he never would have been here when the fool came calling, and Jake’s chest wouldn’t have that terrible sunken look. It was too much, coming so soon after Eddie had been bushwhacked.

  And yet—

  “Don’t move,” he said, getting up. “Oy, don’t let him move.”

  “I won’t move.” Every word still clear, still sure. But now Roland could see blood also darkening the bottom of Jake’s shirt and the crotch of his jeans, blooming there like roses. Once before he died and had come back. But not from this world. In this one, death was always for keeps.

  Roland turned to where the writer lay.

  Two

  When Bryan Smith tried to get out from behind the wheel of his van, Irene Tassenbaum pushed him rudely back in. His dogs, perhaps smelling blood or Oy or both, were barking and capering wildly behind him. Now the radio was pounding out some new and utterly hellish heavy metal tune. She thought her head would split, not from the shock of what had just happened but from pure racket. She saw the man’s revolver lying on the ground and picked it up. The small part of her mind still capable of coherent thought was amazed by the weight of the thing. Nevertheless, she pointed it at the man, then reached past him and punched the power button on the radio. With the blaring fuzz-tone guitars gone, she could hear birds as well as two barking dogs and one howling…well, one howling whatever-it-was.

  “Back your van off the guy you hit,” she said. “Slowly. And if you run over the kid again when you do it, I swear I’ll blow your jackass head off.”

  Bryan Smith stared at her with bloodshot, bewildered eyes. “What kid?” he asked.

  Three

  When the van’s front wheel rolled slowly off the writer, Roland saw that his lower body was twisted unnaturally to the right and a lump pushed out the leg of his jeans on that side. His thighbone, surely. In addition, his forehead had been split by the rock against which it had fetched up, and the right side of his face was drowned in blood. He looked worse than Jake, worse by far, but a single glance was enough to tell the gunslinger that if his heart was strong and the shock didn’t kill him, he’d probably live through this. Again he saw Jake seizing the man about the waist, shielding him, taking the impact with his own smaller body.

  “You again,” King said in a low voice.

  “You remember me.”

  “Yes. Now.” King licked his lips. “Thirsty.”

  Roland had nothing to drink, and wouldn’t have given more than enough to wet King’s lips even if he had. Liquid could induce vomiting in a wounded man, and vomiting could lead to choking. “Sorry,” he said.

  “No. You’re not.” He licked his lips again. “Jake?”

  “Over there, on the ground. You know him?”

  King tried to smile. “Wrote him. Where’s the one that was with you before? Where’s Eddie?”

  “Dead,” Roland said. “In the Devar-Toi.”

  King frowned. “Devar…? I don’t know that.”

  “No. That’s why we’re here. Why we had to come here. One of my friends is dead, another may be dying, and the tet is broken. All because one lazy, fearful man stopped doing the job for which ka intended him.”

  No traffic on the road. Except for the barking dogs, the howling bumbler, and the chirping birds, the world was silent. They might have been frozen in time. Perhaps we are, Roland thought. He had now seen enough to believe that might be possible. Anything might be possible.

  “I lost the Beam,” King said from where he lay on the carpet of needles at the edge of the trees. The light of early summer streamed all around him, that haze of green and gold.

  Roland reached under King and helped him to sit up. The writer cried out in pain as the swollen ball of his right hip grated in the shattered, compressed remains of its socket, but he did not protest. Roland pointed into the sky. Fat white fair-weather clouds—los ángeles, the cowpokes of Mejis had called them—hung motionless in the blue, except for those directly above them. There they hied rapidly across the sky, as if blown by a narrow wind.

  “There!” Roland whispered furiously into the writer’s scraped, dirt-clogged ear. “Directly above you! All around you! Does thee not feel it? Does thee not see it?”

  “Yes,” King said. “I see it now.”

  “Aye, and ’twas always there. You didn’t lose it, you turned your coward’s eye away. My friend had to save you for you to see it again.”

  Roland’s left hand fumbled in his belt and brought out a shell. At first his fingers wouldn’t do their old, dexterous trick; they were trembling too badly. He was only able to still them by reminding himself that the longer it took him to do this, the greater the chance that they would be interrupted, or that Jake would die while he was busy with this miserable excuse for a man.

  He looked up and saw the woman holding his gun on the driver of the van. That was good. She was good: why hadn’t Gan given the story of the Tower to someone like her? In any case, his instinct to keep her with them had been true. Even the infernal racket of dogs and bumbler had quieted. Oy was licking the dirt and oil from Jake’s face, while in the van, Pistol and Bullet were gobbling up the hamburger, this time without interference from their master.

  Roland turned back to King, and the shell did its old sure dance across the backs of his fingers. King went under almost immediately, as most people did when they’d been hypnotized before. His eyes were still open, but now they seemed to look through the gunslinger, beyond him.

  Roland’s heart screamed at him to get through this as quickly as he could, but his head knew better. You must not botch it. Not unless you want to render Jake’s sacrifice worthless.

  The woman was looking at him, and so was the van’s driver as he sat in the open door of his vehicle. Sai Tassenbaum was fighting it, Roland saw, but Bryan Smith had followed King into the land of sleep. This didn’t surprise the gunslinger much. If the man had the slightest inkling of what he’d done here, he’d be apt to seize any opportunity for escape. Even a temporary one.

  The gunslinger turned his attention back to the man who was, he supposed, his biographer. He started just as he had before. Days ago in his own life. Over two decades ago in the writer’s.

  “Stephen King, do you see me?”

  “Gunslinger, I see you very well.”

  “When did you last see me?”

  “When we lived in Bridgton. When my tet was young. When I was just learnin
g how to write.” A pause, and then he gave what Roland supposed was, for him, the most important way of marking time, a thing that was different for every man: “When I was still drinking.”

  “Are you deep asleep now?”

  “Deep.”

  “Are you under the pain?”

  “Under it, yes. I thank you.”

  The billy-bumbler howled again. Roland looked around, terribly afraid of what it might signify. The woman had gone to Jake and was kneeling beside him. Roland was relieved to see Jake put an arm around her neck and draw her head down so he could speak into her ear. If he was strong enough to do that—

  Stop it! You saw the changed shape of him under his shirt. You can’t afford to waste time on hope.

  There was a cruel paradox here: because he loved Jake, he had to leave the business of Jake’s dying to Oy and a woman they had met less than an hour ago.

  Never mind. His business now was with King. Should Jake pass into the clearing while his back was turned…if ka will say so, let it be so.

  Roland summoned his will and concentration. He focused them to a burning point, then turned his attention to the writer once more. “Are you Gan?” he asked abruptly, not knowing why this question came to him—only that it was the right question.

  “No,” King said at once. Blood ran into his mouth from the cut on his head and he spat it out, never blinking. “Once I thought I was, but that was just the booze. And pride, I suppose. No writer is Gan—no painter, no sculptor, no maker of music. We are kas-ka Gan. Not ka-Gan but kas-ka Gan. Do you understand? Do you…do you ken?”

  “Yes,” Roland said. The prophets of Gan or the singers of Gan: it could signify either or both. And now he knew why he had asked. “And the song you sing is Ves’-Ka Gan. Isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes!” King said, and smiled. “The Song of the Turtle. It’s far too lovely for the likes of me, who can hardly carry a tune!”

  “I don’t care,” Roland said. He thought as hard and as clearly as his dazed mind would allow. “And now you’ve been hurt.”

  “Am I paralyzed?”

  “I don’t know.” Nor care. “All I know is that you’ll live, and when you can write again, you’ll listen for the Song of the Turtle, Ves’-Ka Gan, as you did before. Paralyzed or not. And this time you’ll sing until the song is done.”

  “All right.”

  “You’ll—”

  “And Urs-Ka Gan, the Song of the Bear,” King interrupted him. Then he shook his head, although this clearly hurt him despite the hypnotic state he was in. “Urs-A-Ka Gan.”

  The Cry of the Bear? The Scream of the Bear? Roland didn’t know which. He would have to hope it didn’t matter, that it was no more than a writer’s quibble.

  A car hauling a motor home went past the scene of the accident without slowing, then a pair of large motor-bicycles sped by heading the other way. And an oddly persuasive thought came to Roland: time hadn’t stopped, but they were, for the time being, dim. Being protected in that fashion by the Beam, which was no longer under attack and thus able to help, at least a little.

  Four

  Tell him again. There must be no misunderstanding. And no weakening, as he weakened before.

  He bent down until his face was before King’s face, their noses nearly touching. “This time you’ll sing until the song is done, write until the tale is done. Do you truly ken?”

  “ ‘And they lived happily ever after until the end of their days,’ ” King said dreamily. “I wish I could write that.”

  “So do I.” And he did, more than anything. Despite his sorrow, there were no tears yet; his eyes felt like hot stones in his head. Perhaps the tears would come later, when the truth of what had happened here had a chance to sink in a little.

  “I’ll do as you say, gunslinger. No matter how the tale falls when the pages grow thin.” King’s voice was itself growing thin. Roland thought he would soon fall into unconsciousness. “I’m sorry for your friends, truly I am.”

  “Thank you,” Roland said, still restraining the urge to put his hands around the writer’s neck and choke the life out of him. He started to stand, but King said something that stopped him.

  “Did you listen for her song, as I told you to do? For the Song of Susannah?”

  “I…yes.”

  Now King forced himself up on one elbow, and although his strength was clearly failing, his voice was dry and strong. “She needs you. And you need her. Leave me alone now. Save your hate for those who deserve it more. I didn’t make your ka any more than I made Gan or the world, and we both know it. Put your foolishness behind you—and your grief—and do as you’d have me do.” King’s voice rose to a rough shout; his hand shot out and gripped Roland’s wrist with amazing strength. “Finish the job!”

  At first nothing came out when Roland tried to reply. He had to clear his throat and start again. “Sleep, sai—sleep and forget everyone here except the man who hit you.”

  King’s eyes slipped closed. “Forget everyone here except the man who hit me.”

  “You were taking your walk and this man hit you.”

  “Walking…and this man hit me.”

  “No one else was here. Not me, not Jake, not the woman.”

  “No one else,” King agreed. “Just me and him. Will he say the same?”

  “Yar. Very soon you’ll sleep deep. You may feel pain later, but you feel none now.”

  “No pain now. Sleep deep.” King’s twisted frame relaxed on the pine needles.

  “Yet before you sleep, listen to me once more,” Roland said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “A woman may come to y—wait. Do’ee dream of love with men?”

  “Are you asking if I’m gay? Maybe a latent homosexual?” King sounded weary but amused.

  “I don’t know.” Roland paused. “I think so.”

  “The answer is no,” King said. “Sometimes I dream of love with women. A little less now that I’m older…and probably not at all for awhile, now. That fucking guy really beat me up.”

  Not near so bad as he beat up mine, Roland thought bitterly, but he didn’t say this.

  “If’ee dream only of love with women, it’s a woman that may come to you.”

  “Do you say so?” King sounded faintly interested.

  “Yes. If she comes, she’ll be fair. She may speak to you about the ease and pleasure of the clearing. She may call herself Morphia, Daughter of Sleep, or Selena, Daughter of the Moon. She may offer you her arm and promise to take you there. You must refuse.”

  “I must refuse.”

  “Even if you are tempted by her eyes and breasts.”

  “Even then,” King agreed.

  “Why will you refuse, sai?”

  “Because the Song isn’t done.”

  At last Roland was satisfied. Mrs. Tassenbaum was kneeling by Jake. The gunslinger ignored both her and the boy and went to the man sitting slumped behind the wheel of the motor-carriage that had done all the damage. This man’s eyes were wide and blank, his mouth slack. A line of drool hung from his beard-stubbly chin.

  “Do you hear me, sai?”

  The man nodded fearfully. Behind him, both dogs had grown silent. Four bright eyes regarded the gunslinger from between the seats.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bryan, do it please you—Bryan Smith.”

  No, it didn’t please him at all. Here was yet one more he’d like to strangle. Another car passed on the road, and this time the person behind the wheel honked the horn as he or she passed. Whatever their protection might be, it had begun to grow thin.

  “Sai Smith, you hit a man with your car or truckomobile or whatever it is thee calls it.”

  Bryan Smith began to tremble all over. “I ain’t never had so much as a parking ticket,” he whined, “and I have to go and run into the most famous man in the state! My dogs ’us fightin—”

  “Your lies don’t anger me,” Roland said, “but the fear which brings them forth does. Shut thy m
outh.”

  Bryan Smith did as told. The color was draining slowly but steadily from his face.

  “You were alone when you hit him,” Roland said. “No one here but you and the storyteller. Do you understand?”

  “I was alone. Mister, are you a walk-in?”

  “Never mind what I am. You checked him and saw that he was still alive.”

  “Still alive, good,” Smith said. “I didn’t mean to hurt nobody, honest.”

  “He spoke to you. That’s how you knew he was alive.”

  “Yes!” Smith smiled. Then he frowned. “What’d he say?”

  “You don’t remember. You were excited and scared.”

  “Scared and excited. Excited and scared. Yes I was.”

  “You drive now. As you drive, you’ll wake up, little by little. And when you get to a house or a store, you’ll stop and say there’s a man hurt down the road. A man who needs help. Tell it back, and be true.”

  “Drive,” he said. His hands caressed the steering wheel as if he longed to be gone immediately. Roland supposed he did. “Wake up, little by little. When I get to a house or store, tell them Stephen King’s hurt side o’ the road and he needs help. I know he’s still alive because he talked to me. It was an accident.” He paused. “It wasn’t my fault. He was walking in the road.” A pause. “Probably.”

  Do I care upon whom the blame for this mess falls? Roland asked himself. In truth he did not. King would go on writing either way. And Roland almost hoped he would be blamed, for it was indeed King’s fault; he’d had no business being out here in the first place.

  “Drive away now,” he told Bryan Smith. “I don’t want to look at you anymore.”

  Smith started the van with a look of profound relief. Roland didn’t bother watching him go. He went to Mrs. Tassenbaum and fell on his knees beside her. Oy sat by Jake’s head, now silent, knowing his howls could no longer be heard by the one for whom he grieved. What the gunslinger feared most had come to pass. While he had been talking to two men he didn’t like, the boy whom he loved more than all others—more than he’d loved anyone ever in his life, even Susan Delgado—had passed beyond him for the second time. Jake was dead.