9

In his dream, they were all standing on the comer of Second Avenue and Forty-sixth Street, looking over the short board fence and into the weedy vacant lot behind it. They were wearing their Mid-World clothes-a motley combination of deerskin and old shirts, mostly held together with spit and shoelaces-but none of the pedestrians hurrying by on Second seemed to notice. No one noticed the billy-bumbler in Jake’s arms or the artillery they were packing, either.

Because we’re ghosts. Eddie thought. We’re ghosts and we don’t rest easy.

On the fence there were handbills-one for the Sex Pistols (a reunion tour, according to the poster, and Eddie thought that was pretty funny- the Pistols was one group that was never going to get back together), one for a comic, Adam Sandier, that Eddie had never heard of, one for a movie called The Craft, about teenage witches. Beyond that one, written in letters the dusky pink of summer roses, was this:

See the bear of fearsome size!

All the world’s within his eyes.

time grows thin, the past’s a riddle;

The tower awaits you in the middle.

“There,” Jake said, pointing. “The rose. See how it awaits us, there in the middle of the lot.”

“Yes, it’s very beautiful,” Susannah said. Then she pointed to the sign standing near the rose and facing Second Avenue. Her voice and her eyes were troubled. “But what about that?”

According to the sign, two outfits-Mills Construction and Sombra Real Estate-were going to combine on something called Turtle Bay Condominiums, said condos to be erected on this very spot. When? coming soon was all the sign had to say in that regard.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Jake said. “That sign was here before. It’s probably old as the hi-”

At that moment the revving sound of an engine tore into the air. From beyond the fence, on the Forty-sixth Street side of the lot, chugs of dirty brown exhaust ascended like bad-news smoke signals. Suddenly the boards on that side burst open, and a huge red bulldozer lunged through. Even the blade was red, although the words slashed across its scoop-all hail the crimson king-were written in a yellow as bright as panic. Sitting in the peak-seat, his rotting face leering at them from above the controls, was the man who had kidnapped Jake from the bridge over the River Send-their old pal Gasher. On the front of his cocked-back hard-hat, the words lamerk foundry stood out in black. Above them, a single staring eye had been painted.

Gasher lowered the 'dozer’s blade. It tore across the lot on a diagonal, smashing brick, pulverizing beer and soda bottles to glittering powder, striking sparks from the rocks. Directly in its path, the rose nodded its delicate head.

“Let’s see you ask some of yer silly questions now!” this unwelcome apparition cried. “Ask all yer wants, my dear little culls, why not? Wery fond of riddles is yer old pal Gasher! Just so you understand that, no matter what yer ask, I’m gointer run that nasty thing over, mash it flat, aye, so I will! Then back over it I’ll go! Root and branch, my dear little culls! Aye, root and branch!”

Susannah shrieked as the scarlet bulldozer blade bore down on the rose, and Eddie grabbed for the fence. He would vault over it, throw himself on the rose, try to protect it…

… except it was too late. And he knew it.

He looked back up at the cackling thing in the bulldozer’s peak-seat and saw that Gasher was gone. Now the man at the controls was Engineer Bob, from Charlie the Choo-Choo.

“Stop!” Eddie screamed. “For Christ’s sake, stop!”

“I can’t, Eddie. The world has moved on, and I can’t stop. I must move on with it.”

And as the shadow of the ’dozer fell over the rose, as the blade tore through one of the posts holding up the sign (Eddie saw coming soon had changed to coming now), he realized that the man at the controls wasn’t Engineer Bob, either.

It was Roland.

10

Eddie sat up in the breakdown lane of the turnpike, gasping breath he could see in the air and with sweat already chilling on his hot skin. He was sure he had screamed, must have screamed, but Susannah still slept beside him with only the top of her head poking out of the bedroll they shared, and Jake was snoring softly off to the left, one arm out of his own blankets and curled around Oy. The bumbler was also sleeping.

Roland wasn’t. Roland sat calmly on the far side of the dead campfire, cleaning his guns by starlight and looking at Eddie.

“Bad dreams.” Not a question.

“Yeah.”

“A visit from your brother?”

Eddie shook his head.

“The Tower, then? The field of roses and the Tower?” Roland’s face remained impassive, but Eddie could hear the subtle eagerness which always came into his voice when the subject was the Dark Tower. Eddie had once called the gunslinger a Tower junkie, and Roland hadn’t denied it.

“Not this time.”

“What, then?”

Eddie shivered. “Cold.”

“Yes. Thank your gods there’s no rain, at least. Autumn rain’s an evil to be avoided whenever one may. What was your dream?”

Still Eddie hesitated. “You’d never betray us, would you, Roland?”

“No man can say that for sure, Eddie, and I have already played the betrayer more than once. To my shame. But… I think those days are over. We are one, ka-tet. If I betray any one of you-even Jake’s furry friend, perhaps-I betray myself. Why do you ask?”

“And you’d never betray your quest.”

“Renounce the Tower? No, Eddie. Not that, not ever. Tell me your dream.”

Eddie did, omitting nothing. When he had finished, Roland looked down at his guns, frowning. They seemed to have reassembled themselves while Eddie was talking.

“So what does it mean, that I saw you driving that 'dozer at the end? That I still don’t trust you? That subconsciously-”

“Is this ology-of-the-psyche? The cabala I have heard you and Susannah speak of?”

“Yes, I guess it is.”

“It’s shit,” Roland said dismissively. “Mudpies of the mind. Dreams either mean nothing or everything-and when they mean everything, they almost always come as messages from… well, from other levels of the Tower.” He gazed at Eddie shrewdly. “And not all messages are sent by friends.”

“Something or someone is fucking with my head? Is that what you mean?”

“I think it possible. But you must watch me all the same. I bear watching, as you well know.”

“I trust you,” Eddie said, and the very awkwardness with which he spoke lent his words sincerity. Roland looked touched, almost shaken, and Eddie wondered how he ever could have thought this man an emotionless robot. Roland might be a little short on imagination, but he had feelings, all right.

“One thing about your dream concerns me very much, Eddie.”

“The bulldozer?”

“The machine, yes. The threat to the rose.”

“Jake saw the rose, Roland. It was fine.”

Roland nodded. “In his when, the when of that particular day, the rose was thriving. But that doesn’t mean it will continue to do so. If the construction the sign spoke of comes… if the bulldozer comes…”

“There are other worlds than these,” Eddie said. “Remember?”

“Some things may exist only in one. In one where, in one when.” Roland lay down and looked up at the stars. “We must protect that rose,” he said. “We must protect it at all costs.”

“You think it’s another door, don’t you? One that opens on the Dark Tower.”

The gunslinger looked at him from eyes that ran with starshine. “I think it may be the Tower,” he said. “And if it’s destroyed-”

His eyes closed. He said no more.

Eddie lay awake late.