Dark Tower V, The Read online

  Down the corridor, the chanting voice has finally reached Targenfield.

  Thirteen

  Callahan was silent for a moment. He sipped at his coffee, grimaced, and poured himself a knock of sweet cider, instead.

  “I knew how the climb back starts,” he said. “I’d taken enough low-bottom drunks to enough AA meetings on the East Side, God knows. So when they let me out, I found AA in Topeka and started going every day. I never looked ahead, never looked behind. ‘The past is history, the future’s a mystery,’ they say. Only this time, instead of sitting in the back of the room and saying nothing, I forced myself to go right down front, and during the introductions I’d say, ‘I’m Don C. and I don’t want to drink anymore.’ I did want to, every day I wanted to, but in AA they have sayings for everything, and one of them is ‘Fake it till you make it.’ And little by little, I did make it. I woke up one day in the fall of 1982 and realized I really didn’t want to drink anymore. The compulsion, as they say, had been lifted.

  “I moved on. You’re not supposed to make any big changes in the first year of sobriety, but one day when I was in Gage Park—the Reinisch Rose Garden, actually…” He trailed off, looking at them. “What? Do you know it? Don’t tell me you know the Reinisch!”

  “We’ve been there,” Susannah said quietly. “Seen the toy train.”

  “That,” Callahan said, “is amazing.”

  “It’s nineteen o’clock and all the birds are singing,” Eddie said. He wasn’t smiling.

  “Anyway, the Rose Garden was where I spotted the first poster. HAVE YOU SEEN CALLAHAN, OUR IRISH SETTER. SCAR ON PAW, SCAR ON FOREHEAD. GENEROUS REWARD. Et cetera, et cetera. They’d finally gotten the name right. I decided it was time to move on while I still could. So I went to Detroit, and there I found a place called The Lighthouse Shelter. It was a wet shelter. It was, in fact, Home without Rowan Magruder. They were doing good work there, but they were barely staggering along. I signed on. And that’s where I was in December of 1983, when it happened.”

  “When what happened?” Susannah asked.

  It was Jake Chambers who answered. He knew, was perhaps the only one of them who could know. It had happened to him, too, after all.

  “That was when you died,” Jake said.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Callahan said. He showed no surprise at all. They might have been discussing rice, or the possibility that Andy ran on ant-nomics. “That’s when I died. Roland, I wonder if you’d roll me a cigarette? I seem to need something a little stronger than apple cider.”

  Fourteen

  There’s an old tradition at Lighthouse, one that goes back…jeez, must be all of four years (The Lighthouse Shelter has only been in existence for five). It’s Thanksgiving in the gym of Holy Name High School on West Congress Street. A bunch of the drunks decorate the place with orange and brown crepe paper, cardboard turkeys, plastic fruit and vegetables. American reap-charms, in other words. You had to have at least two weeks’ continuous sobriety to get on this detail. Also—this is something Ward Huckman, Al McCowan, and Don Callahan have agreed to among themselves—no wet brains are allowed on Decoration Detail, no matter how long they’ve been sober.

  On Turkey Day, nearly a hundred of Detroit’s finest alkies, hypes, and half-crazed homeless gather at Holy Name for a wonderful dinner of turkey, taters, and all the trimmings. They are seated at a dozen long tables in the center of the basketball court (the legs of the tables are protected by swags of felt, and the diners eat in their stocking feet). Before they dig in—this is part of the custom—they go swiftly around the tables (“Take more than ten seconds, boys, and I’m cutting you off,” Al has warned) and everyone says one thing they’re grateful for. Because it’s Thanksgiving, yes, but also because one of the principal tenets of the AA program is that a grateful alcoholic doesn’t get drunk and a grateful addict doesn’t get stoned.

  It goes fast, and because Callahan is just sitting there, not thinking of anything in particular, when it’s his turn he almost blurts out something that could have caused him trouble. At the very least, he would have been tabbed as a guy with a bizarre sense of humor.

  “I’m grateful I haven’t…” he begins, then realizes what he’s about to say, and bites it back. They’re looking at him expectantly, stubble-faced men and pale, doughy women with limp hair, all carrying about them the dirty-breeze subway station aroma that’s the smell of the streets. Some already call him Faddah, and how do they know? How could they know? And how would they feel if they knew what a chill it gives him to hear that? How it makes him remember the Hitler Brothers and the sweet, childish smell of fabric softener? But they’re looking at him. “The clients.” Ward and Al are looking at him, too.

  “I’m grateful I haven’t had a drink or a drug today,” he says, falling back on the old faithful, there’s always that to be grateful for. They murmur their approval, the man next to Callahan says he’s grateful his sister’s going to let him come for Christmas, and no one knows how close Callahan has come to saying “I’m grateful I haven’t seen any Type Three vampires or lost-pet posters lately.”

  He thinks it’s because God has taken him back, at least on a trial basis, and the power of Barlow’s bite has finally been cancelled. He thinks he’s lost the cursed gift of seeing, in other words. He doesn’t test this by trying to go into a church, however—the gym of Holy Name High is close enough for him, thanks. It never occurs to him—at least in his conscious mind—that they want to make sure the net’s all the way around him this time. They may be slow learners, Callahan will eventually come to realize, but they’re not no learners.

  Then, in early December, Ward Huckman receives a dream letter. “Christmas done come early, Don! Wait’ll you see this, Al!” Waving the letter triumphantly. “Play our cards right, and boys, our worries about next year are over !”

  Al McCowan takes the letter, and as he reads it his expression of conscious, careful reserve begins to melt. By the time he hands the letter to Don, he’s grinning from ear to ear.

  The letter is from a corporation with offices in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. It’s on rag bond so luxurious you want to cut it into a shirt and wear it next to your skin. It says that the corporation is planning to give away twenty million dollars to twenty charitable organizations across the United States, a million each. It says that the corporation must do this before the end of the calendar year 1983. Potential recipients include food pantries, homeless shelters, two clinics for the indigent, and a prototype AIDS testing program in Spokane. One of the shelters is Lighthouse. The signature is Richard P. Sayre, Executive Vice President, Detroit. It all looks on the up-and-up, and the fact that all three of them have been invited to the corporation’s Detroit offices to discuss this gift also seems on the up-and-up. The date of the meeting—what will be the date of Donald Callahan’s death—is December 19th, 1983. A Monday.

  The name on the letterhead is THE SOMBRA CORPORATION.

  Fifteen

  “You went,” Roland said.

  “We all went,” Callahan said. “If the invitation had been for me alone, I never would’ve. But, since they were asking for all three of us…and wanted to give us a million dollars…do you have any idea what a million bucks would have meant to a fly-by-night outfit like Home or Lighthouse? Especially during the Reagan years?”

  Susannah gave a start at this. Eddie shot her a nakedly triumphant look. Callahan clearly wanted to ask the reason for this byplay, but Roland was twirling his finger in that hurry-up gesture again, and now it really was getting late. Pressing on for midnight. Not that any of Roland’s ka-tet looked sleepy; they were tightly focused on the Pere, marking every word.

  “Here is what I’ve come to believe,” Callahan said, leaning forward. “There is a loose league of association between the vampires and the low men. I think if you traced it back, you’d find the roots of their association in the dark land. In Thunderclap.”

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nbsp; “I’ve no doubt,” Roland said. His blue eyes flashed out of his pale and tired face.

  “The vampires—those who aren’t Type Ones—are stupid. The low men are smarter, but not by a whole lot. Otherwise I never would have been able to escape them for as long as I did. But then—finally—someone else took an interest. An agent of the Crimson King, I should think, whoever or whatever he is. The low men were drawn away from me. So were the vampires. There were no posters during those last months, not that I saw; no chalked messages on the sidewalks of West Fort Street or Jefferson Avenue, either. Someone giving the orders, that’s what I think. Someone a good deal smarter. And a million dollars!” He shook his head. A small and bitter smile touched his face. “In the end, that was what blinded me. Nothing but money. ‘Oh yes, but it’s to do good!’ I told myself…and we told each other, of course. ‘It’ll keep us independent for at least five years! No more going to the Detroit City Council, begging with our hats in our hands!’ All true. It didn’t occur to me until later that there’s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.”

  “What happened?” Eddie asked.

  “Why, we kept our appointment,” the Pere said. His face wore a rather ghastly smile. “The Tishman Building, 982 Michigan Avenue, one of the finest business addresses in the D. December 19th, 4:20 P.M.”

  “Odd time for an appointment,” Susannah said.

  “We thought so, too, but who questions such minor matters with a million dollars at stake? After some discussion, we agreed with Al—or rather Al’s mother. According to her, one should show up for important appointments five minutes early, no more and no less. So we walked into the lobby of the Tishman Building at 4:10 P.M., dressed in our best, found Sombra Corporation on the directory board, and went on up to the thirty-third floor.”

  “Had you checked this corporation out?” Eddie asked.

  Callahan looked at him as if to say duh. “According to what we could find in the library, Sombra was a closed corporation—no public stock issue, in other words—that mostly bought other companies. They specialized in high-tech stuff, real estate, and construction. That seemed to be all anyone knew. Assets were a closely guarded secret.”

  “Incorporated in the U.S.?” Susannah asked.

  “No. Nassau, the Bahamas.”

  Eddie started, remembering his days as a cocaine mule and the sallow thing from whom he had bought his last load of dope. “Been there, done that,” he said. “Didn’t see anyone from the Sombra Corporation, though.”

  But did he know that was true? Suppose the sallow thing with the British accent worked for Sombra? Was it so hard to believe that they were involved in the dope trade, along with whatever else they were into? Eddie supposed not. If nothing else, it suggested a tie to Enrico Balazar.

  “Anyway, they were there in all the right reference books and yearlies,” Callahan said. “Obscure, but there. And rich. I don’t know exactly what Sombra is, and I’m at least half-convinced that most of the people we saw in their offices on the thirty-third floor were nothing but extras…stage-dressing…but there probably is an actual Sombra Corporation.

  “We took the elevator up there. Beautiful reception area—French Impressionist paintings on the walls, what else?—and a beautiful receptionist to go with it. The kind of woman—say pardon, Susannah—if you’re a man, you can almost believe that if you were allowed to touch her breast, you’d live forever.”

  Eddie burst out laughing, looked sideways at Susannah, and stopped in a hurry.

  “It was 4:17. We were invited to sit down. Which we did, feeling nervous as hell. People came and went. Every now and then a door to our left would open and we’d see a floor filled with desks and cubicles. Phones ringing, secretaries flitting hither and yon with files, the sound of a big copier. If it was a setup—and I think it was—it was as elaborate as a Hollywood movie. I was nervous about our appointment with Mr. Sayre, but no more than that. Extraordinary, really. I’d been on the run more or less constantly since leaving ’Salem’s Lot eight years previous, and I’d developed a pretty good early-warning system, but it never so much as chirruped that day. I suppose if you could reach him via the Ouija board, John Dillinger would say much the same about his night at the movies with Anna Sage.

  “At 4:19, a young man in a striped shirt and tie that looked just oh so Hugo Boss came out and got us. We were whisked down a corridor past some very upscale offices—with an upscale executive beavering away in every one, so far as I could see—and to double doors at the end of the hall. This was marked CONFERENCE ROOM. Our escort opened the doors. He said, ‘God luck, gentlemen.’ I remember that very clearly. Not good luck, but god luck. That was when my perimeter alarms started to go off, and by then it was far too late. It happened fast, you see. They didn’t…”

  Sixteen

  It happens fast. They have been after Callahan for a long time now, but they waste little time gloating. The doors slam shut behind them, much too loudly and hard enough to shiver in their frames. Executive assistants who drag down eighteen thousand a year to start with close doors a certain way—with respect for money and power—and this isn’t it. This is the way angry drunks and addicts on the jones close doors. Also crazy people, of course. Crazy people are ace doorslammers.

  Callahan’s alarm systems are fully engaged now, not pinging but howling, and when he looks around the executive conference room, dominated at the far end by a large window giving a terrific view of Lake Michigan, he sees there’s good reason for this and has time to think Dear Christ—Mary, mother of God—how could I have been so foolish? He can see thirteen people in the room. Three are low men, and this is his first good look at their heavy, unhealthy-looking faces, red-glinting eyes, and full, womanish lips. All three are smoking. Nine are Type Three vampires. The thirteenth person in the conference room is wearing a loud shirt and clashing tie, low-men attire for certain, but his face has a lean and foxy look, full of intelligence and dark humor. On his brow is a red circle of blood that seems neither to ooze nor to clot.

  There is a bitter crackling sound. Callahan wheels and sees Al and Ward drop to the floor. Standing to either side of the door through which they entered are numbers fourteen and fifteen, a low man and a low woman, both of them holding electrical stunners.

  “Your friends will be all right, Father Callahan.”

  He whirls around again. It’s the man with the blood-spot on his forehead. He looks about sixty, but it’s hard to tell. He’s wearing a garish yellow shirt and a red tie. When his thin lips part in a smile, they reveal teeth that come to points. It’s Sayre, Callahan thinks. Sayre, or whoever signed that letter. Whoever thought this little sting up.

  “You, however, won’t,” he continues.

  The low men look at him with a kind of dull avidity: here he is, finally, their lost pooch with the burned paw and the scarred forehead. The vampires are more interested. They almost thrum within their blue auras. And all at once Callahan can hear the chimes. They’re faint, somehow damped down, but they’re there. Calling him.

  Sayre—if that’s his name—turns to the vampires. “He’s the one,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “He’s killed hundreds of you in a dozen versions of America. My friends”—he gestures to the low men—“were unable to track him down, but of course they seek other, less suspecting prey in the ordinary course of things. In any case, he’s here now. Go on, have at him. But don’t kill him!”

  He turns to Callahan. The hole in his forehead fills and gleams but never drips. It’s an eye, Callahan thinks, a bloody eye. What is looking out of it? What is watching, and from where?

  Sayre says, “These particular friends of the King all carry the AIDS virus. You surely know what I mean, don’t you? We’ll let that kill you. It will take you out of the game forever, in this world and all the others. This is no game for a fellow like you, anyway. A false priest like you.”

  Callahan doesn’t hesitate. If he hesitates, he will be lo
st. It’s not AIDS he’s afraid of, but of letting them put their filthy lips on him in the first place, to kiss him as the one was kissing Lupe Delgado in the alley. They don’t get to win. After all the way he’s come, after all the jobs, all the jail cells, after finally getting sober in Kansas, they don’t get to win.

  He doesn’t try to reason with them. There is no palaver. He just sprints down the right side of the conference room’s extravagant mahogany table. The man in the yellow shirt, suddenly alarmed, shouts “Get him! Get him!” Hands slap at his jacket—specially bought at Grand River Menswear for this auspicious occasion—but slip off. He has time to think The window won’t break, it’s made of some tough glass, anti-suicide glass, and it won’t break…and he has just time enough to call on God for the first time since Barlow forced him to take of his poisoned blood.

  “Help me! Please help me!” Father Callahan cries, and runs shoulder-first into the window. One more hand slaps at his head, tries to tangle itself in his hair, and then it is gone. The window shatters all around him and suddenly he is standing in cold air, surrounded by flurries of snow. He looks down between black shoes which were also specially purchased for this auspicious occasion, and he sees Michigan Avenue, with cars like toys and people like ants.

  He has a sense of them—Sayre and the low men and the vampires who were supposed to infect him and take him out of the game forever—clustered at the broken window, staring with disbelief.

  He thinks, This does take me out of it forever…doesn’t it?

  And he thinks, with the wonder of a child: This is the last thought I’ll ever have. This is goodbye.