That way he used. Alas, one night’sdisgrace!

Out went my heart’snew fire and left it cold.”

“He writes of Mejis,” Roland said. Hisfists were clenched, although she doubted that he knew it. “He writes of how wefell out over Susan Delgado, for after that it was never the same between us.We mended our friendship as best we could, but no, it was never quite thesame.”

“After the woman comes to the man or theman to the woman, I don’t think it ever is,” she said, and handed him thephotocopied sheets. “Take this. I’ve read all the ones he mentioned. If there’sstuff in the rest about coming to the Dark Tower—or not—puzzle itout by yourself. You can do it if you try hard enough, I reckon. As for me, Idon’t want to know.”

Roland, it seemed, did. He shuffled throughthe pages, looking for the last one. The pages weren’t numbered, but he foundthe end easily enough by the white space beneath that stanza marked XXXIV.Before he could read, however, that thin cry came again. This time the wind wasin a complete lull and there was no doubt about where it came from.

“That’s someone below us, in the basement,”Roland said.

“I know. And I think I know who it is.”

He nodded.

She was looking at him steadily. “It allfits, doesn’t it? It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, and we’ve put in all but the lastfew pieces.”

The cry came again, thin and lost. The cryof someone who was next door to dead. They left the bathroom, drawing theirguns. Susannah didn’t think they’d need them this time.

Five

The bug that had made itself look like ajolly old joker named Joe Collins lay where it had lain, but Oy had backed offa step or two. Susannah didn’t blame him. Dandelo was beginning to stink, andlittle trickles of white stuff were beginning to ooze through its decayingcarapace. Nevertheless, Roland bade the bumbler remain where he was, and keep watch.

The cry came again when they reached thekitchen, and it was louder, but at first they saw no way down to the cellar.Susannah moved slowly across the cracked and dirty linoleum, looking for ahidden trapdoor. She was about to tell Roland there was nothing when he said,“Here. Behind the cold-box.”

The refrigerator was no longer atop-of-the-line Amana with an icemaker in the door but a squat and dirty thingwith the cooling machinery on top, in a drum-shaped casing. Her mother had hadone like it when Susannah had been a little girl who answered to the name ofOdetta, but her mother would have died before ever allowing her own to be evena tenth as dirty. A hundredth.

Roland moved it aside easily, for Dandelo,sly monster that he’d been, had put it on a little wheeled platform. Shedoubted that he got many visitors, not way out here in End-World, but he hadbeen prepared to keep his secrets if someone did drop by. As she wassure folken did, every once and again. She imagined that few if any gotany further along their way than the little hut on Odd Lane.

The stairs leading down were narrow andsteep. Roland felt around inside the door and found a switch. It lit two barebulbs, one halfway down the stairs and one below. As if in response to thelight, the cry came again. It was full of pain and fear, but there were nowords in it. The sound made her shiver.

“Come to the foot of the stairs, whoeveryou are!” Roland called.

No response from below. Outside the windgusted and whooped, driving snow against the side of the house so hard that itsounded like sand.

“Come to where we can see you, or we’llleave you where you are!” Roland called.

The inhabitant of the cellar didn’t comeinto the scant light but cried out again, a sound that was loaded with woe and terrorand—Susannah feared it—madness.

He looked at her. She nodded and spoke in awhisper. “Go first. I’ll back your play, if you have to make one.”

“ ‘Ware the steps that you don’t take atumble,” he said in the same low voice.

She nodded again and made his own impatienttwirling gesture with one hand: Go on, go on.

That raised a ghost of a smile on thegunslinger’s lips. He went down the stairs with the barrel of his gun laid intothe hollow of his right shoulder, and for a moment he looked so like Jake Chambersthat she could have wept.

Six

The cellar was a maze of boxes and barrelsand shrouded things hanging from hooks. Susannah had no wish to know what thedangling things were. The cry came again, a sound like sobbing and screamingmingled together. Above them, dim and muffled now, came the whoop and gasp ofthe wind.

Roland turned to his left and threaded hisway down a zig-zag aisle with crates stacked head-high on either side. Susannahfollowed, keeping a good distance between them, looking constantly back overher shoulder. She was also alert for the sound of Oy raising the alarm fromabove. She saw one stack of crates that was labeled TEXAS INSTRUMENTS andanother stack with HO FAT CHINESE FORTUNE COOKIE CO. stenciled on the side. Shewas not surprised to see the joke name of their long-abandoned taxi; she wasfar beyond surprise.

Ahead of her, Roland stopped. “Tears of mymother,” he said in a low voice. She had heard him use this phrase once before,when they had come upon a deer that had fallen into a ravine and lay there withboth back legs and one front one broken, starving and looking up at themsightlessly, for the flies had eaten the unfortunate animal’s living eyes outof their sockets.

She stayed where she was until he gesturedfor her to join him, and then moved quickly up to his right side, boostingherself along on the palms of her hands.

In the stonewalled far corner of Dandelo’scellar—the southeast corner, if she had her directions right—therewas a makeshift prison cell. Its door was made of crisscrossing steel bars.Nearby was the welding rig Dandelo must have used to construct it… but longago, judging from the thick layer of dust on the acetylene tank. Hanging froman S-shaped hook pounded into the stone wall, just out of the prisoner’sreach—left close by to mock him, Susannah had no doubt—was a largeand old-fashioned

(dad-a-chum dad-a-chee)

silver key. The prisoner in question stoodat the bars of his detainment, holding his filthy hands out to them. He was soscrawny that he reminded Susannah of certain terrible concentration-camp photosshe had seen, images of those who had survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen andBuchenwald, living (if barely) indictments of mankind as a whole with theirstriped uniforms hanging off them and their ghastly bellboy’s pillbox hatsstill on their heads and their terrible bright eyes, so full of awareness. Wewish we did not know what we have become, those eyes said, butunfortunately we do.

Something like that was in PatrickDanville’s eyes as he held out his hands and made his inarticulate pleadingnoises. Close up, they sounded to her like the mocking cries of some junglebird on a movie soundtrack: I-yeee, I-yeee, I-yowk, I-yowk!

Roland took the key from its hook and wentto the door. One of Danville’s hands clutched at his shirt and the gunslingerpushed it off. It was a gesture entirely without anger, she thought, but thescrawny thing in the cell backed away with his eyes bulging in their sockets.His hair was long—it hung all the way to his shoulders—but therewas only the faintest haze of beard on his cheeks. It was a little thicker onhis chin and upper lip. Susannah thought he might be seventeen, but surely notmuch older.

“No offense, Patrick,” Roland said in apurely conversational voice. He put the key in the lock. “Is thee Patrick? Isthee Patrick Danville?”

The scrawny thing in the dirty jeans andbillowing gray shirt (it hung nearly to his knees) backed into the corner ofhis triangular cell without replying. When his back was against the stone, heslid slowly to a sitting position beside what Susannah assumed was hisslop-bucket, the front of his shirt first bunching together and then flowinginto his crotch like water as his knees rose to nearly frame his emaciated,terrified face. When Roland opened the cell door and pulled it outward as faras it would go (there were no hinges), Patrick Danville began to make thebird-sound again, only this time louder: I-YEEE! I-YOWK! I-YEEEEEE!Susannah gritted her teeth. When Roland made as if to enter the cell, the boyuttered an even louder shriek, and began to beat the back of his head againstthe stones. Roland stepped back out of the cell. The awful head-banging ceased,but Danville looked at the stranger with fear and mistrust. Then he held outhis filthy, long-fingered hands again, as if for succor.