Eddie walked on, lazing his way downtown, the street-signs floating past him. He knew where he was going as soon as he saw it: a small shop on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth.
Yeah, he thought. A feeling of great relief swept through him. This is the place. The very place. The window was full of hanging meats and cheeses. TOM AND GERRY’s ARTISTIC DELI, the sign read. PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!
As he stood looking in, someone else he knew came around the corner. It was Jack Andolini, wearing a three-piece suit the color of vanilla ice cream and carrying a black cane in his left hand. Half of his face was gone, lopped off by the claws of the lobstrosities.
Go on in, Eddie, Jack said as he passed. After all, there are other worlds than these and that fuckin train rolls through all of them.
I can’t, Eddie replied. The door is locked. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he did; knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key, Jack said, not looking back. Eddie looked down and saw he did have a key; a primitive-looking thing with three notches like inverted Vs.
That little s-shape at the end of the last notch is the secret, he thought. He stepped under the awning of Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli and inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily. He opened the door and stepped through into a huge open field. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the traffic on Second Avenue hurrying by, and then the door slammed shut and fell over. There was nothing behind it. Nothing at all. He turned back to survey his new surroundings, and what he saw filled him with terror at first. The field was a deep scarlet, as if some titanic battle had been fought here and the ground had been drenched with so much blood that it could not all be absorbed.
Then he realized that it was not blood he was looking at, but roses.
That feeling of mingled joy and triumph surged through him again, swelling his heart until he felt it might burst within him. He raised his clenched fists high over his head in a gesture of victory… and then froze that way.
The field stretched on for miles, climbing a gentle slope of land, and standing at the horizon was the Dark Tower. It was a pillar of dumb stone rising so high into the sky that he could barely discern its tip. Its base, surrounded by red, shouting roses, was formidable, titanic with weight and size, yet the Tower became oddly graceful as it rose and tapered. The stone of which it had been made was not black, as he had imagined it would be, but soot-colored. Narrow, slitted windows marched about it in a rising spiral; below the windows ran an almost endless flight of stone stairs, circling up and up. The Tower was a dark gray exclamation point planted in the earth and rising above the field of blood-red roses. The sky arched above it was blue, but filled with puffy white clouds like sailing ships. They flowed above and around the top of the Dark Tower in an endless stream.
How gorgeous it is! Eddie marvelled. How gorgeous and strange! But his feeling of joy and triumph had departed; he was left with a sense of deep malaise and impending doom. He looked about him and realized with sudden horror that he was standing in the shadow of the Tower. No, not just standing in it; buried alive in it.
He cried out but his cry was lost in the golden blast of some tremendous horn. It came from the top of the Tower, and seemed to fill the world. As that note of warning held and drew out over the field where he stood, blackness welled from the windows which girdled the Tower. It overspilled them and spread across the sky in flaggy streams which came together and formed a growing blotch of darkness. It did not look like a cloud; it looked like a tumor hanging over the earth. The sky was blotted out. And, he saw, it was not a cloud or a tumor but a shape, some tenebrous, cyclopean shape racing toward the place where he stood. It would do no good to run from that beast coalescing in the sky above the field of roses; it would catch him, clutch him, and bear him away. Into the Dark Tower it would bear him, and the world of light would see him no more.
Rents formed in the darkness and terrible inhuman eyes, each easily the size of the bear Shardik which lay dead in the forest, peered down at him. They were red-red as roses, red as blood.
Jack Andolini’s dead voice hammered in his ears: A thousand worlds, Eddie-ten thousand!-and that train rolls through every one. If you can get it started. And if you do get it started, your troubles are only beginning, because this device is a real bastard to shut down.
Jack’s voice had become mechanical, chanting. A real bastard to shut down, Eddie boy, you better believe it, this bastard is-
“-SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND SIX MINUTES!”
In his dream, Eddie threw his hands up to shield his eyes…
20
… AND WOKE, SITTING BOLT upright beside the dead campfire. He was looking at the world from between his own spread fingers. And still that voice rolled on and on, the voice of some heartless SWAT Squad commander bellowing through a bullhorn.
“THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT, THERE IS NO DANGER! FIVE SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE DORMANT, TWO SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE NOW IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL IS OPERATING AT TWO PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPEAT, THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPORT LOCATION TO NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LIMITED! CALL 1-900-44! THE CODE WORD FOR THIS DEVICE IS ‘SHARDIK.’ REWARD IS OFFERED! REPEAT, REWARD ZS OFFERED!”
The voice fell silent. Eddie saw Roland standing at the edge of the clearing, holding Susannah in the crook of one arm. They were staring toward the sound of the voice, and as the recorded announcement began again, Eddie was finally able to shake off the chill remnants of his nightmare. He got up and joined Roland and Susannah, wondering how many centuries it had been since that announcement, programmed to broadcast only in the event of a total system breakdown, had been recorded.
“THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND FIVE MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT-”
Eddie touched Susannah’s arm and she looked around. “How long has this been going on?”
“About fifteen minutes. You were dead to the w-” She broke off. “Eddie, you look terrible! Are you sick?”
“No. I just had a bad dream.”
Roland was studying him in a way that made Eddie feel uncomfortable. “Sometimes there’s truth in dreams, Eddie. What was yours?”
He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
“You know, I doubt that.”
Eddie shrugged and favored Roland with a thin smile. “Doubt away, then-be my guest. And how are you this morning, Roland?”
“The same,” Roland said. His faded blue eyes still conned Eddie’s face.
“Stop it,” Susannah said. Her voice was brisk, but Eddie caught an undertone of nervousness. “Both of you. I got better things to do than watch you two dance around and kick each other’s shins like a couple of little kids playin Two for Flinching. Specially this morning, with that dead bear trying to yell down the whole world.”
The gunslinger nodded, but kept his eyes on Eddie. “All right… but are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me, Eddie?”
He thought about it then-really thought about telling. What he had seen in the fire, what he had seen in his dream. He decided against it. Perhaps it was only the memory of the rose in the fire, and the roseswhich had blanketed that dream-field in such fabulous profusion. Me knew he could not tell these things as his eyes had seen them and his heart had felt them; he could only cheapen them. And, at least for the time being, he wanted to ponder these things alone.
But remember, he told himself again… except the voice in his mind didn’t sound much like his own. It seemed deeper, older-the voice of a stranger. Remember the rose… and the shape of the key.