26
   FIFTEEN YARDS INTO THE trees, Eddie realized that they were following a path, one the bear had probably made for itself over the years. The alders bent above them in a tunnel. The sounds were louder now, and he began to sort them out. One was a low, deep, humming noise. He could feel it in his feet—a faint vibration, as if some large piece of machinery was running in the earth. Above it, closer and more urgent, were crisscrossing sounds like bright scratches—squeals, squeaks, chitterings.
   Roland placed his mouth against Eddie's ear and said, "I think there's little danger if we're quiet."
   They moved on another five yards and then Roland stopped again. He drew his gun and used the barrel to brush aside a branch which hung heavy with sunset-tinted leaves. Eddie looked through this small opening and into the clearing where the bear had lived for so long—the base of operations from which he had set forth on his many expeditions of pillage and terror.
   There was no undergrowth here; the ground had been beaten bald long since. A stream emerged from the base of a rock wall about fifty feet high and ran through the arrowhead-shaped clearing. On their side of the stream, backed up against the wall, was a metal box about nine feet high. Its roof was curved, and it reminded Eddie of a subway entrance. The front was painted in diagonal yellow and black stripes. The earth which floored the clearing was not black, like the topsoil in the forest, but a strange powdery gray. It was littered with bones, and after a moment Eddie realized that what he had taken for gray soil was more bones, bones so old they were crumbling back to dust.
   Things were moving in the dirt—the things making the squealing, chittering noises. Four... no, five of them. Small metal devices, the largest about the size of a Collie pup. They were robots, Eddie realized, or something like robots. They were similar to each other and to the bear they had undoubtedly served in one way only—atop each of them, a tiny radar-dish turned rapidly.
   More thinking caps, Eddie thought. My God, what kind of world is this, anyway?
   The largest of these devices looked a little like the Tonka tractor Eddie had gotten for his sixth or seventh birthday; its treads churned up tiny gray clouds of bone-dust as it rolled along. Another looked like a stainless steel rat. A third appeared to be a snake constructed of jointed steel segments—it writhed and humped its way along. They formed a rough circle on the far side of the stream, going around and around on a deep course they had carved in the ground. Looking at them made Eddie think of cartoons he had seen in the stacks of old Saturday Evening Post magazines his mother had for some reason saved and stored in the front hall of their apartment. In the cartoons, worried, cigarette-smoking men paced ruts in the carpet while they waited for their wives to give birth.
   As his eyes grew used to the simple geography of the clearing, Eddie saw that there were a great many more than five of these assorted freaks. There were at least a dozen others that he could see and probably more hidden behind the bony remains of the bear's old kills. The difference was that the others weren't moving. The members of the bear's mechani­cal retinue had died, one by one, over the long years until just this little group of five were left .. . and they did not sound very healthy, with their squeaks and squalls and rusty chitterings. The snake in particular had a hesitant, crippled look as it followed the mechanical rat around and around the circle. Every now and then the device which followed the snake—a steel block that walked on stubby mechanical legs—would catch up with it and give the snake a nudge, as if telling it to hurry the fuck up.
   Eddie wondered what their job had been. Surely not protection; the bear had been built to protect itself, and Eddie guessed that if old Shardik had come upon the three of them while still in its prime, it would have chewed them up and spat them out in short order. Perhaps these little robots had been its maintenance crew, or scouts, or messen­gers. He guessed that they could be dangerous, but only in their own defense … or their master's. They did not seem warlike.
   There was, in fact, something pitiful about them. Most of the crew was now defunct, their master was gone, and Eddie believed they knew it somehow. It was not menace they projected but a strange, inhuman sadness. Old and almost worn out, they paced and rolled and wriggled their anxious way around the worry-track they had dug in this godforsaken clearing, and it almost seemed to Eddie that he could read the confused run of their thoughts; Oh dear, oh dear, what now? What is our purpose, now that He is gone? And who will take care of us, now that He is gone? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...
   Eddie felt a tug on the back of his leg and came very close to screaming in fear and surprise. He wheeled, cocking Roland's gun, and saw Susannah looking up at him with wide eyes. Eddie let out a long breath and dropped the hammer carefully back to its resting position. He knelt, put his hands on Susannah's shoulders, kissed her cheek, then whispered in her ear: "I came really close to putting a bullet in your silly head—what are you doing here?"
   "Wanted to see," she whispered back, looking not even slightly abashed. Her eyes shifted to Roland as he also hunkered beside her. "Besides, it was spooky back there by myself."
   She had sustained a number of small scratches crawling after them through the brush, but Roland had to admit to himself that she could be as quiet as a ghost when she wanted to be; he hadn't heard a thing. He took a rag (the last remnant of his old shirt) from his back pocket and wiped the little trickles of blood from her arms. He examined his work for a moment and then dabbed at a small nick on her forehead as well. "Have your look, then," he said. His voice was hardly more than the movement of his lips. "I guess you earned it."
   He used one hand to open a sightline at her level in the hock and greenberry bushes, then waited while she stared raptly into the clearing. At last she pulled back and Roland allowed the bushes to close again.
   "I feel sorry for them," she whispered. "Isn't that crazy?"
   "Not at all," Roland whispered back. "They are creatures of great sadness, I think, in their own strange way. Eddie is going to put them out of their misery."
   Eddie began to shake his head at once.
   "Yes, you are... unless you want to hunker here in what you call 'the toolies' all night. Go for the hats. The little twirling things."
   "What if I miss?" Eddie whispered at him furiously.
   Roland shrugged.
   Eddie stood up and reluctantly cocked the gunslinger's revolver again. He looked through the bushes at the circling servomechanisms, going around and around in their lonely, useless orbit. It'll be like shoot­ing puppies, he thought glumly. Then he saw one of them—it was the thing that looked like a walking box—extrude an ugly-looking pincer device from its middle and clamp it for a moment on the snake. The snake made a surprised buzzing sound and leaped ahead. The walking box withdrew its pincer.
   Well... maybe not exactly like shooting puppies, Eddie decided. He glanced at Roland again. Roland looked back expressionlessly, arms folded across his chest.
   You pick some goddam strange times to keep school, buddy.
   Eddie thought of Susannah, first shooting the bear in the ass, then blowing its sensor device to smithereens as it bore down on her and Roland, and felt a little ashamed of himself. And there was more: part of him wanted to go for it, just as part of him had wanted to go up against Balazar and his crew of plug-uglies in The Leaning Tower. The compulsion was probably sick, but that didn't change its basic attraction: Let's see who walks away . . let's just see.
   Yeah, that was pretty sick, all right.
   Pretend it's just a shooting gallery, and you want to win your honey a stuffed dog, he thought. Or a stuffed bear. He drew a bead on the walking box and then looked around impatiently when Roland touched his shoulder.
   "Say your lesson, Eddie. And be true."
   Eddie hissed impatiently through his teeth, angry at the distraction, but Roland's eyes didn't flinch and so he drew a deep breath and tried to clear everything from his mind: the squeaks and squalls of equipment that had been running too long, the aches and pains in his body, the knowledge that Susannah was here, propped up on the heels of her hands, watching, the further knowledge that she was closest to the ground, and if he missed one of the gadgets out there, she would be the handiest target if it decided to retaliate.
   " 'I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.' "
   That was a joke, he thought; he wouldn't know his old man if he passed him on the street. But he could feel the words doing their work, clearing his mind and settling his nerves. He didn't know if he was the stuff of which gunslingers were made—the idea seemed fabulously unlikely to him, even though he knew he had managed to hold up his end pretty well during the shootout at Balazar's nightclub—but he did know that part of him liked the coldness that fell over him when he spoke the words of the old, old catechism the gunslinger had taught them; the coldness and the way things seemed to stand forth with their own breathless clarity. There was another part of him which understood that this was just another deadly drug, not much different from the heroin which had killed Henry and almost killed him, but that did not alter the thin, tight pleasure of the moment. It drummed in him like taut cables vibrating in a high wind.
   " ‘I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgot­ten the face of his father.
   " 'I aim with my eye.
   " 'I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.' "
   Then, without knowing he meant to do it, he stepped out of the trees and spoke to the trundling robots on the far side of the clearing:
   " ‘I kill with my heart.’”
   They stopped their endless circling. One of them let out a high buzz that might have been alarm or a warning. The radar-dishes, each no bigger than half a Hershey bar, turned toward the sound of his voice.
   Eddie begun to fire.
   The sensors exploded like day pigeons, one after the other. Pity was gone from Eddie's heart; there was only that coldness, and the knowledge that he would not stop, could not stop, until the job was done.
   Thunder filled the twilit clearing and bounced back from the splint­ery rock wall at its wide end. The steel snake did two cartwheels and lay twitching in the dust. The biggest mechanism—the one that had reminded Eddie of his childhood Tonka tractor—tried to flee. Eddie blew its radar-dish to kingdom come as it made a herky-jerky run at the side of the rut. It fell on its squarish nose with thin blue flames squirting out of the steel sockets which held its glass eyes.
   The only sensor he missed was the one on the stainless steel rat; that shot caromed off its metal back with a high mosquito whine. It surged out of the rut, made a half-circle around the box-shaped thing which had been following the snake, and charged across the clearing at surprising speed. It was making an angry clittering sound, and as it closed the distance, Eddie could see it had a mouth lined with long, sharp points. They did not look like teeth; they looked like sewing-machine needles, blurring up and down. No, he guessed these things were really not much like puppies, after all.
   "Take it, Roland!" he shouted desperately, but when he snatched a quick look around he saw that Roland was still standing with his arms crossed on his chest, his expression serene and distant. He might have been thinking of chess problems or old love-letters.
   The dish on the rat's back suddenly locked down. It changed direc­tion slightly and buzzed straight toward Susannah Dean.
   One bullet left, Eddie thought. If I miss, it'll take her face off.
   Instead of shooting, he stepped forward and kicked the rat as hard as he could. He had replaced his shoes with a pair of deerskin moccasins, and he felt the jolt all the way up to his knee. The rat gave a rusty, ratcheting squeal, tumbled over and over in the dirt, and came to rest on its back. Eddie could see what looked like a dozen stubby mechanical legs pistoning up and down. Each was tipped with a sharp steel claw. These claws twirled around and around on gimbals the size of pencil-erasers.
   A steel rod poked out of the robot's midsection and flipped the gadget upright again. Eddie brought Roland's revolver down, ignoring a momentary impulse to steady it with his free hand. That might be the way cops in his own world were taught to shoot, but it wasn't the way it was done here. When you forget the gun is there, when it feels like you're shooting with your finger, Roland had told them, then you'll be some­where near home.
   Eddie pulled the trigger. The tiny radar-dish, which had begun to turn again in an effort to find the enemies, disappeared in a blue Hash. The rat made a choked noise—Chop!—and fell dead on its side.
   Eddie turned with his heart jackhammering in his chest. He couldn't remember being this furious since he realized that Roland meant to keep him in his world until his goddamned Tower was won or lost. . . probably until they were all worm-chow, in other words.
   He levelled the empty gun at Roland's heart and spoke in a thick voice he hardly recognized as his own. "If there was a round left in this, you could stop worrying about your fucking Tower right now."
   "Stop it, Eddie!" Susannah said sharply.
   He looked at her. "It was going for you, Susannah, and it meant to turn you into ground chuck."
   "But it didn't get me. You got it, Eddie. You got it."
   "No thanks to him." Eddie made as if to re-holster the gun and then realized, to his further disgust, that he had nothing to put it in. Susannah was wearing the holster. "Him and his lessons. Him and his goddam lessons." He turned to Roland. "I tell you, for two cents—"
   Roland's mildly interested expression suddenly changed. His eyes shifted to a point over Eddie's left shoulder. "DOWN!" he shouted.
   Eddie didn't ask questions. His rage and confusion were wiped from his mind immediately. He dropped, and as he did, he saw the gunslinger's left hand blur down to his side. My God, he thought, still falling, he CAN'T be that fast, no one can be that fast, I'm not bad but Susannah makes me look slow and he makes Susannah look like a turtle trying to walk uphill on a piece of glass—
   Something passed just over his head, something that squealed at him in mechanical rage and pulled out a tuft of his hair. Then the gunslinger was shooting from the hip, three fast shots like thunder-cracks, and the squealing stopped. A creature which looked to Eddie like a large mechan­ical bat thudded to earth between the place where Eddie now lay and the one where Susannah knelt beside Roland. One of its jointed, rust-speckled wings thumped the ground once, weakly, as if angry at the missed chance, and then became still.
   Roland crossed to Eddie, walking easy in his old sprung boots. He extended a hand. Eddie took it and let Roland help him to his feet. The wind had been knocked out of him and he found he couldn't talk. Proba­bly just as well... seems like every time I open my mouth I stick my goddam foot into it.
   "Eddie! You all right?" Susannah was crossing the clearing to where he stood with his head bent and his hands planted on his upper thighs, trying to breathe.
   "Yeah." The word came out in a croak. He straightened up with an effort. "Just got a little haircut."
   "It was in a tree," Roland said mildly. "1 didn't see it myself, at first. The light gets tricky this time of day. He paused and then went on in that same mild voice: "She was never in any danger, Eddie."
   Eddie nodded his head. Roland, he now realized, could almost have eaten a hamburger and drunk a milkshake before beginning his draw. He was that fast.
   "All right. Let's just say I disapprove of your teaching techniques, okay? I'm not going to apologize, though, so if you're waiting for one, you can stop now."
   Roland bent, picked Susannah up, and began to brush her off. He did this with a kind of impartial affection, like a mother brushing off her toddler after she has taken one of her necessary tumbles in the dust of the back yard. "Your apology is not expected or necessary," he said. "Susannah and I had a conversation similar to this one two days ago. Didn't we, Susannah?"
   She nodded. "Roland's of the opinion that apprentice gunslingers who won't bite the hand that feeds them from time to time need a good lack in the slats."
   Eddie looked around at the wreckage and slowly began to beat the bone-dust out of his pants and shirt. "What if I told you I don't want to be a gunslinger, Roland old buddy?"
   "I'd say that what you want doesn't much matter." Roland was look­ing at the metal kiosk which stood against the rock wall, and seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. Eddie had seen this before. When the conversation turned to questions of should-be, could-be, or oughtta-be, Roland almost always lost interest.
   "Ka?" Eddie asked, with a trace of his old bitterness.
   "That's right. Ka." Roland walked over to the kiosk and passed a hand along the yellow and black stripes which ran down its front. "We have found one of the twelve portals which ring the edge of the world... one of the six paths to the Dark Tower .
   "And that is also ka."

 27
   EDDIE WENT BACK FOR Susannah's wheelchair. No one had to ask him to do this; he wanted some time alone, to get himself back under control. Now that the shooting was over, every muscle in his body seemed to have picked up its own little thrumming tremor. He did not want either of them to see him this way—not because they might misread it as fear, but because one or both might know it for what it really was: excitement overload. He had liked it. Even when you added in the bat which had almost scalped him, he had liked it.
   That's bullshit, buddy. And you know it.
   The trouble was, he didn't know it. He had come face to face with something Susannah had found out for herself after shooting the bear: he could talk about how he didn't want to be a gunslinger, how he didn't want to be tramping around this crazy world where the three of them seemed to be the only human life, that what he really wanted more than anything else was to be standing on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street, popping his fingers, munching a chili-dog, and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival blast out of his Walkman earphones as he watched the girls go by, those ultimately sexy New York girls with their pouty go-to-hell mouths and their long legs in short skirts. He could talk about those things until he was blue in the face, but his heart knew other things. It knew that he had enjoyed blowing the electronic menag­erie back to glory, at least while the game was on and Roland's gun was his own private hand-held thunderstorm. He had enjoyed kicking the robot rat, even though it had hurt his foot and even though he had been scared shitless. In some weird way, that part—the being scared part— actually seemed to add to the enjoyment.
   All that was bad enough, but his heart knew something even worse: that if a door leading back to New York appeared in front of him right now, he might not walk through it. Not, at least, until he had seen the Dark Tower for himself. He was beginning to believe that Roland's illness was a communicable disease.
   As he wrestled Susannah's chair through the tangle of junk-alders, cursing the branches that whipped at his face and tried to poke his eyes out, Eddie found himself able to admit at least some of these things, and the admission cooled his blood a little. / want to see if it looks the way it did in my dream, he thought. To see something like that. . . that would be really fantastic.
   And another voice spoke up inside. I'll bet his other friends—the ones with the names that sound like they came straight from the Round Table in King Arthur's court—I'll bet they felt the same way, Eddie. And they're all dead. Every one of them.
   He recognized that voice, like it or not. It belonged to Henry, and that made it a hard voice not to hear.

28
   ROLAND, WITH SUSANNAH BALANCED on his right hip, was standing in front of the metal box that looked like a subway entrance closed for the night. Eddie left the wheelchair at the edge of the clearing and walked over. As he did, the steady humming noise and the vibration under his feet became louder. The machinery making the noise, he realized, was either inside the box or under it. It seemed that he heard it not with his ears but somewhere deep inside his head, and in the hollows of his gut.
   "So this is one of the twelve portals. Where does it go, Roland? Disney World?"
   Roland shook his head. "I don't know where it goes. Maybe nowhere … or everywhere. There's a lot about my world I don't know—surely you both have realized that. And there are things I used to know which have changed."
   "Because the world has moved on?"
   "Yes." Roland glanced at him. "Here, that is not a figure of speech. The world really is moving on, and it goes ever faster. At the same time, things are wearing out... falling apart..." He kicked die mechanical corpse of the walking box to illustrate his point.
   Eddie thought of the rough diagram of the portals which Roland had drawn in the dirt. "Is this the edge of the world?" he asked, almost timidly. "I mean, it doesn't look much different than anyplace else." He laughed a little. "If there's a drop-off, I don't see it."
   Roland shook his head. "It's not that kind of edge. It's the place where one of the Beams starts. Or so I was taught."
   "Beams?" Susannah asked. "What Beams?"
   "The Great Old Ones didn't make the world, but they did re-make it. Some tale-tellers say the Beams saved it; others say they are the seeds of the world's destruction. The Great Old Ones created the Beams. They are lines of some sort… lines which bind... and hold..."
   "Are you talking about magnetism?" Susannah asked cautiously.
   His whole face lit up, transforming its harsh planes and furrows into something new and amazing, and for a moment Eddie knew how Roland would look if he actually did reach his Tower.
   "Yes! Not just magnetism, but that is a part of it … and gravity... and the proper alignment of space, size, and dimension. The Beams are the forces which bind these things together."
   "Welcome to physics in the nuthouse," Eddie said in a low voice.
   Susannah ignored this. "And the Dark Tower ? Is it some kind of generator? A central power-source for these Beams?"
   "I don't know."
   "But you do know that this is point A," Eddie said. "If we walked long enough in a straight line, we'd come to another portal—call it point C—on the other edge of the world. But before we did, we'd come to point B. The center-point. The Dark Tower ."
   The gunslinger nodded.
   "How long a trip is it? Do you know?"
   "No. But I know it's very far, and that the distance grows with every day that passes."
   Eddie had bent to examine the walking box. Now he straightened up and stared at Roland. "That can't be." He sounded like a man trying to explain to a small child that there really isn't a boogeyman living in his closet, that there can't be because there isn't any such thing as the boogeyman, not really. "Worlds don't grow, Roland."
   "Don't they? When I was a boy, Eddie, there were maps. I remem­ber one in particular. It was called The Greater Kingdoms of the Western Earth. It showed my land, which was called by the name Gilead . It showed the Downland Baronies, which were overrun by riot and civil war in the year after I won my guns, and the hills, and the desert, and the mountains, and the Western Sea . It was a long distance from Gilead to the Western Sea —a thousand miles or more—but it had taken me over twenty years to cross that distance."
   "That's impossible," Susannah said quickly, fearfully. "Even if you walked the whole distance it couldn't take twenty years."
   "Well, you have to allow for stops to write postcards and drink beer," Eddie said, but they both ignored him.
   "I didn't walk but rode most of the distance on horseback," Roland said. "I was—slowed up, shall we say?—every now and then, but for most of that time I was moving. Moving away from John Farson, who led the revolt which toppled the world I grew up in and who wanted my head on a pole in his courtyard—he had good reason to want that, I suppose, since I and my compatriots were responsible for the deaths of a great many of his followers—and because I stole something he held very dear."
   "What, Roland?" Eddie asked curiously.
   Roland shook his head. "That's a story for another day … or maybe never. For now, think not of that but of this: I've come many thousands of miles. Because the world is growing."
   "A thing like that just can't happen," Eddie reiterated, but he was badly shaken, all the same. "There'd be earthquakes... floods... tidal waves … I don't know what all …"
   "Look!" Roland said furiously. "Just look around you! What do you see? A world that is slowing down like a child's top even as it speeds up and moves on in some other way none of us understand. Look at your kills, Eddie! Look at your kills, for your father's sake!"
   He took two strides toward the stream, picked up the steel snake, examined it briefly, and tossed it to Eddie, who caught it with his left hand. The snake broke in two pieces as he did so.
   "You see? It's exhausted. All the creatures we found here were exhausted. If we hadn't come, they would have died before long, anyway. Just as the hear would have died."
   "The bear had some sort of disease," Susannah said.
   The gunslinger nodded. "Parasites which attacked the natural parts of its body. But why did they never attack it before?"
   Susannah did not reply.
   Eddie was examining the snake. Unlike the bear, it appeared to be a totally artificial construction, a thing of metal, circuits, and yards (or maybe miles) of gossamer-thin wire. Yet he could see flecks of rust, not just on the surface of the half-snake he still held, but in its guts as well. And there was a patch of wetness where either oil had leaked out or water had seeped in. This moisture had rotted away some of the wires, and a greenish stuff that looked like moss had grown over several of the thumbnail-sized circuit boards.
   Eddie turned the snake over. A steel plate proclaimed it to be the work of North Central Positronics, Ltd. There was a serial number, but no name. Probably too unimportant to name, he thought. Just a sophisti­cated mechanical Roto-Rooter designed to give old Br’er Bear an enema every once In a while, keep him regular, or something equally disgusting.
   He dropped the snake and wiped his hands on his pants.
   Roland had picked up the tractor-gadget. He yanked at one of the treads. It came off easily, showering a cloud of rust down between his boots. He tossed it aside.
   "Everything in the world is either coming to rest or falling to pieces," he said flatly. "At the same time, the forces which interlock and give the world its coherence—in time and size as well as in space—are weakening. We knew that even as children, but we had no idea what the time of the end would be like. How could we? Yet now I am living in those times, and I don't believe they affect my world alone. They affect yours, Eddie and Susannah; they may affect a billion others. The Beams are breaking down. I don't know if that's a cause or only another symptom, but I know it's true. Come! Draw close! Listen!"
   As Eddie approached the metal box with its alternating diagonal slashes of yellow and black, a strong and unpleasant memory seized him—for the first time in years he found himself thinking of a crumbling Victorian wreck in Dutch Hill, about a mile away from the neighborhood he and Henry had grown up. This wreck, which was known as The Mansion to the neighborhood kids, occupied a plot of weedy, untended lawn on Rhinehold Street . Eddie guessed that practically all the kids in the borough had heard spooky stories about The Mansion. The house stood slumped beneath its steep roofs, seeming to glare at passersby from the deep shadows thrown by its eaves. The windows were gone, of course—kids can throw rocks through windows without getting too close to a place—hut it had not been spray-painted, and it had not become a make-out spot or a shooting gallery. Oddest of all was the simple fact of its continued existence: no one had set it on fire to collect the insurance or just to see it bum. The kids said it was haunted, of course, and as Eddie stood on the sidewalk with Henry one day, looking at it (they had made the pilgrimage specifically to see this object of fabulous rumor, although Henry had told their mother they were only going for Hoodsie Rockets at Dahlberg's with some of his friends), it had seemed that it really might be haunted. Hadn't he felt some strong and unfriendly force seeping from that old Victorian's shadowy windows, windows that seemed to look at him with the fixed stare of a dangerous lunatic? Hadn't he felt some subtle wind stirring the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck? Hadn't he had the clear intuition that if he stepped inside that place, the door would slam and lock behind him and the walls would begin to close in, grinding the bones of dead mice to powder, wanting to crush his bones the same way?
   Haunting. Haunted.
   He felt that same old sense of mystery and danger now, as he approached the metal box. Gooseflesh began to ripple up his legs and down his arms; the hair on the back of his neck bushed out and became rough, overlapping hackles. He felt that same subtle wind blowing past him, although the leaves on the trees which ringed the clearing were perfectly still.
   Yet he walked toward the door anyway (for that was what it was, of course, another door, although this one was locked and always would be against the likes of him), not stopping until his ear was pressed against it.
   It was as if he had dropped a tab of really strong acid half an hour ago and it was just beginning to come on heavy. Strange colors flowed across the darkness behind his eyeballs. He seemed to hear voices mur­muring up to him from long hallways like stone throats, halls which were lit with guttering electric torches. Once these flambeaux of the modern age had thrown a bright glare across everything, but now they were only sullen cores of blue light. He sensed emptiness... desertion... desola­tion... death.
   The machinery rumbled on and on, but wasn't there a rough under­tone to the sound? A land of desperate thudding beneath the hum, like the arrhythmia of a diseased heart? A feeling that the machinery produc­ing this sound, although far more sophisticated even than that within the bear had been, was somehow falling out of tune with itself?
   "All is silent in the halls of the dead," Eddie heard himself whisper in a falling, fainting voice. "All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the rooms of ruin.
   These are the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits tall quiet, one by one."
   Roland pulled him roughly back, and Eddie looked at him with dazed eyes.
   "That's enough," Roland said.
   "Whatever they put in there isn't doing so well, is it?" Eddie heard himself ask. His trembling voice seemed to come from far away. He could still feel the power coming out of that box. It called to him.
   "No. Nothing in my world is doing so well these days."
   "If you boys are planning to camp here for the night, you'll have to do without the pleasure of my company," Susannah said. Her face was a white blur in the ashy aftermath of twilight. "I'm going over yonder. I don't like the way that thing makes me feel."
   "We'll all camp over yonder," Roland said. "Let's go."
   "What a good idea," Eddie said. As they moved away from the box, the sound of the machinery began to dim. Eddie felt its hold on him weakening, although it still called to him, invited him to explore the half-lit hallways, the standing stairways, the rooms of ruin where the spiders spun and the control panels were going dark, one by one.

29
   IN HIS DREAM THAT night, Eddie again went walking down Second Ave­nue toward Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. He passed a record store and the Rolling Stones boomed from the speakers:
   "I see a red door and I want to paint it black,
   No colours anymore, I want them to turn black,
   I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes,
   I have to turn my head until my darkness goes …"
   He walked on, passing a store called Reflections of You between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth. He saw himself in one of the mirrors hang­ing in the display window. He thought he looked better than he had in years—hair a little too long, but otherwise tanned and fit. The clothes, though... uh-uh, man. Square-bear shit all the way. Blue blazer, white shirt, dark red tie, gray dress pants … he had never owned a yuppie-from-hell outfit like that in his life.
   Someone was shaking him.
   Eddie tried to burrow deeper into the dream. He didn't want to wake up now. Not before he got to the deli and used his key to go through the door and into the field of roses. He wanted to see it all again—the endless blanket of red, the overarching blue sky where those great white cloud-ships sailed, and the Dark Tower . He was afraid of the darkness which lived within that eldritch column, waiting to eat anyone who got too close, but he wanted to see it again just the same. Needed to see it.
   The hand, however, would not stop shaking. The dream began to darken, and the smells of car exhaust along Second Avenue became the smell of woodsmoke—thin now, because the fire was almost out.
   It was Susannah. She looked scared. Eddie sat up and put an arm around her. They had camped on the far side of the alder grove, within earshot of the stream babbling through the bone-littered clearing. On the other side of the glowing embers which had been their campfire, Roland lay asleep. His sleep was not easy. He had cast aside his single blanket and lay with his knees drawn up almost to his chest. With his boots off, his feet looked white and narrow and defenseless. The great toe of the right foot was gone, victim of the lobster-thing which had also snatched away part of his right hand.
   He was moaning some slurred phrase over and over again. After a few repetitions, Eddie realized it was the phrase he had spoken before keeling over in the clearing where Susannah had shot the bear: Go, then—there are other worlds than these. He would fall silent for a moment, then call out the boy's name: "Jake! Where are you? Jake!"
   The desolation and despair in his voice filled Eddie with horror. His arms stole around Susannah and he pulled her tight against him. He could feel her shivering, although the night was warm.
   The gunslinger rolled over. Starlight fell into his open eyes.
   "Jake, where are you?" he called to the night. "Come back!"
   "Oh Jesus—he's off again. What should we do, Suze?"
   "I don't know. I just knew I couldn't listen to it anymore by myself. He sounds so far away. So far away from everything."
   "Go, then," the gunslinger murmured, rolling back onto his side and drawing his knees up once more, "there are other worlds than these." He was silent for a moment. Then his chest hitched and he loosed the boy's name in a long, bloodcurdling cry. In the woods behind them, some large bird flew away in a dry whirr of wings toward some less exciting part of the world.
   "Do you have any ideas?" Susannah asked. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears. "Maybe we should wake him up?"
   "I don't know." Eddie saw the gunslinger's revolver, the one he wore on his left hip. It had been placed, in its holster, on a neatly folded square of hide within easy reach of the place where Roland lay. "I don't think I dare," he added at last.
   "It's driving him crazy."
   Eddie nodded.
   "What do we do about it? Eddie, what do we do?"
   Eddie didn't know. An antibiotic had stopped the infection caused by the bite of the lobster-thing; now Roland was burning with infection again, but Eddie didn't think there was an antibiotic in the world that would cure what was wrong with him this time.
   "I don't know. Lie down with me, Suze."
   Eddie threw a hide over both of them, and after a while her trembling quieted.
   "If he goes insane, he may hurt us," she said.
   "Don't I know it." This unpleasant idea had occurred to him in terms of the bear—its red, hate-filled eyes (and had there not been bewilderment as well, lurking deep in those red depths?) and its deadly slashing claws. Eddie's eyes moved to the revolver, lying so close to the gunslinger's good left hand, and he remembered again how fast Roland had been when he'd seen the mechanical bat swooping down toward them. So fast his hand had seemed to disappear. If the gunslinger went mad, and if he and Susannah became the focus of that madness, they would have no chance. No chance at all.
   He pressed his face into the warm hollow of Susannah's neck and closed his eyes.
   Not long after, Roland ceased his babbling. Eddie raised his head and looked over. The gunslinger appeared to be sleeping naturally again. Eddie looked at Susannah and saw that she had also gone to sleep. He lay down beside her, gently kissed the swell of her breast, and closed his own eyes.
   Not you, buddy; you're gonna be awake a long, long time.
   But they had been on the move for two days and Eddie was bone-tired. He drifted off … drifted down.
   Back to the dream, he thought as he went. I want to go back to Second Avenue... back to Tom and Gerry's. That's what I want.
   The dream did not return that night, however.

30
   THEY ATE A QUICK breakfast as the sun came up, repacked and redistrib­uted the gear, and then returned to the wedge-shaped clearing. It didn't look quite so spooky in the clear light of morning, but all three of them were still at pains to keep well away from the metal box with its warning slashes of black and yellow. If Roland had any recollection of the bad dreams which had haunted him in the night, he gave no sign. He had gone about the morning chores as he always did, in thoughtful, stolid silence.
   "How do you plan to keep to a straight-line course from here?" Susannah asked the gunslinger.
   "If the legends are right, that should be no problem. Do you remem­ber when you asked about magnetism?"
   She nodded.
   He rummaged deep into his purse and at last emerged with a small square of old, supple leather. Threaded through it was a long silver needle.
   "A compass!" Eddie said. "You really are an Eagle Scout!"
   Roland shook his head. "Not a compass. I know what they are, of course, but these days I keep my directions by the sun and stars, and even now they serve me quite well."
   "Even now?" Susannah asked, a trifle uneasily.
   He nodded. "The directions of the world are also in drift."
   "Christ," Eddie said. He tried to imagine a world where true north was slipping slyly off to the east or west and gave up almost at once. It made him feel a little ill; the way looking down from the top of a high building had always made him feel a little ill.
   "This is just a needle, but it is steel and it should serve our purpose as well as a compass. The Beam is our course now, and the needle will show it." He rummaged in his purse again and came out with a poorly made pottery cup. A crack ran down one side. Roland had mended this artifact, which he had found at the old campsite, with pine-gum. Now he went to the stream, dipped the cup into it, and brought it back to where Susannah sat in her wheelchair. He put the cup down carefully on the wheelchair's arm, and when the surface of the water inside was calm, he dropped the needle in. It sank to the bottom and rested there.
   "Wow!" Eddie said. "Great! I'd fall at your feet in wonder, Roland, but I don't want to spoil the crease in my pants."
   "I'm not finished. Hold the cup steady, Susannah."
   She did, and Roland pushed her slowly across the clearing. When she was about twelve feet in front of the door, he turned the chair carefully so she was facing away from it.
   "Eddie!" she cried. "Look at this!"
   He bent over the pottery cup, marginally aware that water was already oozing through Roland's makeshift seal. The needle was rising slowly to the surface. It reached it and bobbed there as serenely as a cork would have done. Its direction lay in a straight line from the portal behind them and into the old, tangled forest ahead. "Holy shit—a floating needle. Now I really have seen everything."
   "Hold the cup, Susannah."
   She held it steady as Roland pushed the wheelchair further into the clearing, at right angles to the box. The needle lost its steady point, bobbed randomly for a moment, then sank to the bottom of the cup again. When Roland pulled the chair backward to its former spot, it rose once more and pointed the way.
   "If we had iron filings and a sheet of paper," the gunslinger said, "we could scatter the filings on the paper's surface and watch them draw together into a line which would point that same course."
   "Will that happen even when we leave the Portal?" Eddie asked.
   Roland nodded. "Nor is that all. We can actually see the Beam."
   Susannah looked over her shoulder. Her elbow bumped the cup a little as she did. The needle swung aimlessly as the water inside sloshed... and then settled firmly back in its original direction.
   "Not that way," Roland said. "Look down, both of you—Eddie at your feet, Susannah into your lap."
   They did as he asked.
   "When I tell you to look up, look straight ahead, in the direction the needle points. Don't look at any one thing; let your eye see whatever it will. Now—look up!"
   They did. For a moment Eddie saw nothing but the woods. He tried to make his eyes relax... and suddenly it was there, the way the shape of the slingshot had been there, inside the knob of wood, and he knew why Roland had told them not to look at any one thing. The effect of the Beam was everywhere along its course, but it was subtle. The needles of the pines and spruces pointed that way. The greenberry bushes grew slightly slanted, and the slant lay in the direction of the Beam. Not all the trees the bear had pushed down to clear its sightlines had fallen along that camouflaged path—which ran southeast, if Eddie had his direc­tions right—but most had, as if the force coming out of the box had pushed them that way as they tottered. The clearest evidence was in the way the shadows lay on the ground. With the sun coming up in the east they all pointed west, of course, but as Eddie looked southeast, he saw a rough herringbone pattern that existed only along the line which the needle in the cup had pointed out.
   "I might see something" Susannah said doubtfully, "but—"
   "Look at the shadows! The shadows, Suze!"
   Eddie saw her eyes widen as it all fell into place for her. "My God! It's there! Right there! It's like when someone has a natural part in their hair!"
   Now that Eddie had seen it, he could not unsee it; a dim aisle driving through the untidy tangle which surrounded the clearing, a straight-edge course that was the way of the Beam. He was suddenly aware of how huge the force flowing around him (and probably right through him, like X-rays) must be, and had to control an urge to step away, either to the right or left. "Say, Roland, this won't make me sterile, will it?"
   Roland shrugged, smiling faintly.
   "It's like a riverbed," Susannah marvelled. "A riverbed so over­grown you can barely see it … but it's still there. The pattern of shadows will never change as long as we stay inside the path of the Beam, will it?"
   "No," Roland said. "They'll change direction as the sun moves across the sky, of course, but we'll always be able to see the course of the Beam. You must remember that it has been flowing along this same path for thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of years. Look up, you two, into the sky!"
   They did, and saw that the thin cirrus clouds had also picked up that herringbone pattern along the course of the Beam... and those clouds within the alley of its power were flowing faster than those to either side. They were being pushed southeast. Being pushed in the direction of the Dark Tower .
   "You see? Even the clouds must obey."
   A small flock of birds coursed toward them. As they reached the path of the Beam, they were all deflected toward the southeast for a moment. Although Eddie clearly saw this happen, his eyes could hardly credit it. When the birds had crossed the narrow corridor of the Beam's influence, they resumed their former course.
   "Well," Eddie said, "I suppose we ought to get going. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and all that shit."
   "Wait a minute." Susannah was looking at Roland. "It isn't just a thousand miles, is it? Not anymore. How far are we talking about, Roland? Five thousand miles? Ten?"
   "I can't say. It will be very far."
   "Well, how in the hell we ever goan get there, with you two pushing me in this goddam wheelchair? We'll be lucky to make three miles a day through yonder Drawers, and you know it."
   "The way has been opened," Roland said patiently, "and that's enough for now. The time may come, Susannah Dean, when we travel faster than you would like."
   "Oh yeah?" She looked at him truculently, and both men could see Detta Walker dancing a dangerous hornpipe in her eyes again. "You got a race-car lined up? If you do, it might be nice if we had a damn road to run it on!"
   "The land and the way we travel on it will change. It always does."
   Susannah flapped a hand at the gunslinger; go on with you, it said. "You sound like my old mamma, sayin God will provide."
   "Hasn't He?" Roland asked gravely.
   She looked at him for a moment in silent surprise, then threw her head back and laughed at the sky. "Wt-11, I guess that depends on how you look at it. All I can say is that if this is providin, Roland, I'd hate to see what'd happen if He decided to let us go hungry."
   "Come on, let's do it," Eddie said. "I want to get out of this place. I don't like it." And that was true, but that wasn't all. He also felt a deep eagerness to set his feet upon that concealed path, that highway in hiding. Every step was a step closer to the field of roses and the Tower which dominated it. He realized—not without some wonder—that he meant to see that Tower … or die trying.
   Congratulations, Roland, he thought. You've done it. I'm one of the converted. Someone say hallelujah.
   "There's one other thing before we go." Roland bent and untied the rawhide lace around his left thigh. Then he slowly began to unbuckle his gunbelt.
   "What's this jive?" Eddie asked.
   Roland pulled the gunbelt free and held it out to him. "You know why I'm doing this," he said calmly.
   "Put it back on, man!" Eddie felt a terrible stew of conflicting emo­tions roiling inside him; could feel his fingers trembling even inside his clenched fists. "What do you think you're doing?"
   "Losing my mind an inch at a time. Until the wound inside me closes—if it ever does—I am not fit to wear this. And you know it."
   "Take it, Eddie," Susannah said quietly.
   "If you hadn't been wearing this goddamn thing last night, when that bat came at me, I'd be gone from the nose up this morning!"
   The gunslinger replied by continuing to hold his remaining gun out to Eddie. The posture of his body said he was prepared to stand that way all day, if that was what it took.
   "All right!" Eddie cried. "Goddammit, all right!"
   He snatched the gunbelt from Roland's hand and buckled it about his own waist in a series of rough gestures. He should have been relieved, he supposed—hadn't he looked at this gun, lying so close to Roland's hand in the middle of the night, and thought about what might happen if Roland really did go over the high side? Hadn't he and Susannah both thought about it? But there was no relief. Only fear and guilt and a strange, aching sadness far too deep for tears.
   He looked so strange without his guns.
   So wrong.
   "Okay? Now that the numb-fuck apprentices have the guns and the master's unarmed, can we please go? If something big comes out of the bush at us, Roland, you can always throw your knife at it."
   "Oh, that," he murmured. "I almost forgot." He took the knife from his purse and held it out, hilt first, to Eddie.
   "This is ridiculous!" Eddie shouted.
   "Life is ridiculous."
   "Yeah, put it on a postcard and send it to the fucking Reader's Digest." Eddie jammed the knife into his belt and then looked defiantly at Roland. "Now can we go?"
   "There is one more thing," Roland said.
   "Weeping, creeping Jesus!"
   The smile touched Roland's mouth again. "Just joking," he said.
   Eddie's mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness.

31
   IT TOOK THEM MOST of the morning to clear the zone of destruction with which the great bear had protected itself, but the going was a little easier along the path of the Beam, and once they had put the deadfalls and tangles of underbrush behind them, deep forest took over again and they were able to move at better speed. The brook which had emerged from the rock wall in the clearing ran busily along to their right. It had been joined by several smaller streamlets, and its sound was deeper now. There were more animals here—they heard them moving through the woods, going about their daily round—and twice they saw small groups of deer. One of them, a buck with a noble rack of antlers on its upraised and questioning head, looked to be at least three hundred pounds. The brook bent away from their path as they began to climb again. And, as the afternoon began to slant down toward evening, Eddie saw something.
   "Could we stop here? Rest a minute?"
   "What is it?" Susannah asked.
   "Yes," Roland said. "We can stop."
   Suddenly Eddie felt Henry's presence again, like a weight settling on his shoulders. Oh lookit the sissy. Does the sissy see something in the twee? Does the sissy want to carve something? Does he? Ohhhh, ain't that CUTE?
   "We don't have to stop. I mean, no big deal. I just—"
   "—saw something," Roland finished for him. "Whatever it is, stop running your everlasting mouth and get it."
   "It's really nothing." Eddie felt warm blood mount into his face. He tried to look away from the ash tree which had caught his eye.
   "But it is. It's something you need, and that's a long way from nothing. If you need it, Eddie, we need it. What we don't need is a man who can't let go of the useless baggage of his memories."
   The warm blood turned hot. Eddie stood with his flaming face pointed at his moccasins for a moment longer, feeling as if Roland had looked directly into his confused heart with his faded blue bombardier's eyes.
   "Eddie?" Susannah asked curiously. "What is it, dear?"
   Her voice gave him the courage he needed. He walked to the slim, straight ash, pulling Roland's knife from his belt.
   "Maybe nothing," he muttered, and then forced himself to add: "Maybe a lot. If I don't fuck it up, maybe quite a lot."
   "The ash is a noble tree, and full of power," Roland remarked from behind him, but Eddie barely heard. Henry's sneering, hectoring voice was gone; his shame was gone with it. He thought only of the one branch that had caught his eye. It thickened and bulged slightly as it ran into the trunk. It was this oddly shaped thickness that Eddie wanted.
   He thought the shape of the key was buried within it—the key he had seen briefly in the fire before the burning remains of the jawbone had changed again and the rose had appeared. Three inverted V's, the center V both deeper and wider than the other two. And the little s-shape at the end. That was the secret.
   A breath of his dream recurred: Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you've got the key.
   Maybe, he thought. But this time I'll have to get all of it. I think that this time ninety per cent just won't do.
   Working with great care, he cut the branch from the tree and then trimmed the narrow end. He was left with a fat chunk of ash about nine inches long. It felt heavy and vital in his hand, very much alive and willing enough to give up its secret shape … to a man skillful enough to tease it out, that was.
   Was he that man? And did it matter?
   Eddie Dean thought the answer to both questions was yes.
   The gunslinger's good left hand closed over Eddie's right hand. "I think you know a secret."
   "Maybe I do."
   "Can you tell?"
   He shook his head. "Better not to, I think. Not yet."
   Roland thought this over, then nodded. "All right. I want to ask you one question, and then we'll drop the subject. Have you perhaps seen some way into the heart of my... my problem?"
   Eddie thought: And that's as dose as he'll ever come to showing the desperation that's eating him alive.
   "I don't know. Right now I can't tell for sure. But I hope so, man. I really, really do."
   Roland nodded again and released Eddie's hand. "I thank you. We still have two hours of good daylight—why don't we make use of them?"
   "Fine by me."
   They moved on. Roland pushed Susannah and Eddie walked ahead of them, holding the chunk of wood with the key buried in it. It seemed to throb with its own warmth, secret and powerful.

32
   THAT NIGHT, AFTER SUPPER was eaten, Eddie took the gunslinger's knife from his belt and began to carve. The knife was amazingly sharp, and seemed never to lose its edge. Eddie worked slowly and carefully in the firelight, turning the chunk of ash this way and that in his hands, watching the curls of fine-grained wood rise ahead of his long, sure strokes.
   Susannah lay down, laced her hands behind her head, and looked Up at the stars wheeling slowly across the black sky.
   At the edge of the campsite, Roland stood beyond the glow of the fire and listened as the voices of madness rose once more in his aching, confused mind.
   There was a boy.
   There was no boy.
   Was.
   Wasn't.
   Was—
   He closed his eyes, cupped his aching forehead in one cold hand, and wondered how long it would be until he simply snapped like an overwound bowstring.
   Oh Jake, he thought. Where are you? Where are you?
   And above the three of them, Old Star and Old Mother rose into their appointed places and stared at each other across the starry ruins of their ancient broken marriage.

II •KEY AND ROSE
   
1
   FOR THREE WEEKS JOHN "Jake" Chambers fought bravely against the madness rising inside him. During that time he felt like the last man aboard a foundering ocean liner, working the bilge-pumps for dear life, trying to keep the ship afloat until the storm ended, the skies cleared, and help could arrive... help from somewhere. Help from anywhere. On May 31st, 1977, four days before school ended for the summer, he finally faced up to the fact that no help was going to come. It was time to give up; time to let the storm carry him away.
   The straw that broke the camel's back was his Final Essay in English Comp.
   John Chambers, who was Jake to the three or four boys who were almost his friends (if his father had known this little factoid, he undoubt­edly would have hit the roof), was finishing his first year at The Piper School. Although he was eleven and in the sixth grade, he was small for his age, and people meeting him for the first time often thought he was much younger. In fact, he had sometimes been mistaken for a girl until a year or so ago, when he had made such a fuss about having his hair cut short that his mother had finally relented and allowed it. With his father, of course, there had been no problem about the haircut. His father had just grinned his hard, stainless steel grin and said, The kid wants to look like a Marine, Laurie. Good for him.
   To his father, he was never Jake and rarely John. To his father, he was usually just "the kid."
   The Piper School, his father had explained to him the summer before (the Bicentennial Summer, that had been—all bunting and flags and New York Harbor filled with Tall Ships), was, quite simply, The Best Damned School In The Country For A Boy Your Age. The fact that Jake had been accepted there had nothing to do with money, Elmer Chambers explained... almost insisted.  He had been savagely proud of this fact, although, even at ten, Jake had suspected it might not be a true fact, that it might really be a bunch of bullshit his father had turned into a fact so he could casually drop it into the conversation at lunch or over cocktails: My kid? Oh, he's going to Piper. Best Damned School In The Country For A Boy His Age. Money won't buy you into that school, you know; for Piper, it's brains or nothing.
   Jake was perfectly aware that in the fierce furnace of Elmer Cham­bers's mind, the gross carbon of wish and opinion was often blasted into the hard diamonds which he called facts... or, in more informal circumstances, "factoids." His favorite phrase, spoken often and with rev­erence, was the fact is, and he used it every chance he got.
   The fact is, money doesn't get anyone into The Piper School, his father had told him during that Bicentennial Summer, the summer of blue skies and bunting and Tall Ships, a summer which seemed golden in Jake's mem­ory because he had not yet begun to lose his mind and all he had to worry about was whether or not he could cut the mustard at The Piper School, which sounded like a nest for newly hatched geniuses. The only thing that gets you into a place like Piper is what you've got up here. Elmer Chambers had reached over his desk and tapped the center of his son's forehead with a hard, nicotine-stained finger. Get me, kid?
   Jake had nodded. It wasn't necessary to talk to his father, because his father treated everyone—including his wife—the way he treated his underlings at the TV network where he was in charge of programming and an acknowledged master of The Kill. All you had to do was listen, nod in the right places, and after a while he let you go.
   Good, his father said, lighting one of the eighty Camel cigarettes he smoked each and every day. We understand each other, then. You're going to have to work your buttsky off, but you can cut it. They never would have sent us this if you couldn't. He picked up the letter of acceptance from The Piper School and rattled it. There was a kind of savage triumph in the gesture, as if the letter was an animal he had killed in the jungle, an animal he would now skin and eat. So work hard. Make your grades. Make your mother and me proud of you. If you end the year with an A average in your courses. there's a trip to Disney World in it for you. That's something to shoot for, right, kiddo?
   Jake had made his grades—A's in everything (until the last three weeks, that was). He had, presumably, made his mother and father proud of him, although they were around so little that it was hard to tell. Usually there was nobody around when he came home from school except for Greta Shaw—the housekeeper—and so he ended up showing his A papers to her. After that, they migrated to a dark corner of his room. Sometimes Jake looked through them and wondered if they meant any­thing. He wanted them to, but he had serious doubts.
   Jake didn't think he would be going to Disney World this summer, A average or no A average.
   He thought the nuthouse was a much better possibility.
   As he walked in through the double doors of The Piper School at 8:45 on the morning of May 31st, a terrible vision came to him. He saw his father in his office at 70 Rockefeller Plaza, leaning over his desk with a Camel jutting from the corner of his mouth, talking to one of his underlings as blue smoke wreathed his head. All of New York was spread out behind and below his father, its thump and hustle silenced by two layers of Thermopane glass.
   The fact is, money doesn't get anyone into Sunnyvale Sanitarium, his father was telling the underling in a tone of grim satisfaction. He reached out and tapped the underling's forehead. The only thing that gets you into a place like that is when something big-time goes wrong up here in the attic. That's what happened to the kid. But he's working his goddam buttsky off. Makes the best fucking baskets in the place, they tell me. And when they let him out—if they ever do—there's a trip in it for him. A trip to—
   "—the way station," Jake muttered, then touched his forehead with a hand that wanted to tremble. The voices were coming back. The yelling, conflicting voices which were driving him mad.
   You're dead, Jake. You were run over by a car and you're dead.
   Don't be stupid! Look—see that poster? REMEMBER THE CLASS ONE PICNIC, it says. Do you think they have Class Picnics in the afterlife?
   I don't know. But I know you were run over by a car.
   No!
   Yes. It happened on May 9th, at 8:25 AM You died less than a minute later.
   No! No! No!
   "John?"
   He looked around, badly startled. Mr. Bissette, his French teacher, was standing there, looking a little concerned. Behind him, the rest of the student body was streaming into the Common Room for the morning assembly. There was very little skylarking, and no yelling at all. Presumably these other students, like Jake himself, had been told by their parents how lucky they were to be attending Piper, where money didn't matter (although tuition was $22,000 a year), only your brains. Presumably many of them had been promised trips this summer if their grades were good enough. Presumably the parents of the lucky trip-winners would even go along in some cases. Presumably—
   "John, are you okay?" Mr. Bissette asked.
   "Sure," Jake said. "Fine. I overslept a little this morning. Not awake yet, I guess."
   Mr. Bissette's face relaxed and he smiled. "Happens to the best of us."
   Not to my dad. The master of The Kill never oversleeps.
   "Are you ready for your French final?" Mr. Bissette asked. "Voulez-vous faire I'examen cet apres-midi?"
   "I think so," Jake said. In truth he didn't know if he was ready for the exam or not. He couldn't even remember if he had studied for the French final or not. These days nothing seemed to matter much except for the voices in his head.
   "I want to tell you again how much I enjoyed having you this year, John. I wanted to tell your folks, too, but they missed Parents' Night—"
   "They're pretty busy," Jake said.
   Mr. Bissette nodded. "Well, I have enjoyed you. I just wanted to say so … and that I'm looking forward to having you back for French II next year."
   "Thanks," Jake said, and wondered what Mr. Bissette would say if he added, But I don't think I'll be taking French II next year, unless I can get a correspondence course delivered to my postal box at good old Sunnyvale.
   Joanne Franks, the school secretary, appeared in the doorway of the Common Room with her small silver-plated bell in her hand. At The Piper School, all bells were rung by hand. Jake supposed that if you were a parent, that was one of its charms. Memories of the Little Red Schoolhouse and all that. He hated it himself. The sound of that bell seemed to go right through his head—
   I can't hold on much longer, he thought despairingly. I'm sorry, but I'm losing it. I'm really, really losing it.
   Mr. Bissette had caught sight of Ms. Franks. He turned away, then turned back again. "Is everything all right, John? You've seemed preoccupied these last few weeks. Troubled. Is something on your mind?"
   Jake was almost undone by the kindness in Mr. Bissette's voice, but then he imagined how Mr. Bissette would look if he said: Yes. Something is on my mind. One hell of a nasty little factoid. I died, you see, and I went into another world. And then I died again. You're going to say that stuff like that doesn't happen, and of course you're right, and part of my mind knows you're right, but most of my mind knows that you're wrong. It did happen. I did die.
   If he said something like that, Mr. Bissette would be on the phone to Elmer Chambers at once, and Jake thought that Sunnyvale Sanitarium would probably look like a rest-cure after all the stuff his father would have to say on the subject of lads who started having crazy notions just before Finals Week. Kids who did things that couldn't be discussed over lunch or cocktails. Kids Who Let Down The Side.
   Jake forced himself to smile at Mr. Bissette. "I'm a little worried about exams, that's all."
   Mr. Bissette winked. "You'll do fine."
   Ms. Franks began to ring the Assembly Bell. Each peal stabbed into Jake's ears and then seemed to flash across his brain like a small rocket.
   "Come on," Mr. Bissette said. "We'll be late. Can't be late on the first day of Finals Week, can we?"
   They went in past Ms. Franks and her clashing bell. Mr. Bissette headed toward the row of seats called Faculty Choir. There were lots of cute names like that at Piper School; the auditorium was the Com­mon Room, lunch-hour was Outs, seventh– and eighth-graders were Upper Boys and Girls, and, of course, the folding chairs over by the piano (which Ms. Franks would soon begin to pound as mercilessly as she rang her silver bell) was Faculty Choir. All part of the tradition, Jake supposed. If you were a parent who knew your kid had Outs in the Common Room at noon instead of just slopping up Tuna Surprise in the caff, you relaxed into the assurance that everything was A-OK in the education department.
   He slipped into a seat at the rear of the room and let the morn­ing's announcements wash over him. The terror ran endlessly on in his mind, making him feel like a rat trapped on an exercise wheel. And when he tried to look ahead to some better, brighter time, he could see only darkness.
   The ship was his sanity, and it was sinking.
   Mr. Harley, the headmaster, approached the podium and imparted a brief exordium about the importance of Finals Week, and how the grades they received would constitute another step upon The Great Road of Life. He told them that the school was depending on them, he was depending on them, and their parents were depending on them. Me did not tell them that the entire free world was depending on them, but he strongly implied that this might be so. He finished by telling them that bells would be suspended during Finals Week (the first and only piece of good news Jake had received that morning).
   Ms. Franks, who had assumed her seat at the piano, struck an invocatory chord. The student body, seventy boys and fifty girls, each turned out in a neat and sober way that bespoke their parents' taste and financial stability, rose as one and began to sing the school song. Jake mouthed the words and thought about the place where he had awakened after dying. At first he had believed himself to be in hell... and when the man in the black hooded robe came along, he had been sure of it.
   Then, of course, the other man had come along. A man Jake had almost come to love.
   But he let me fall. He killed me.
   He could feel prickly sweat breaking out on the back of his neck and between his shoulderblades.
   "So we hail the halls of Piper,
   Hold its banner high;
   Hail to thee, our alma mater,
   Piper, do or die!"
   God, what a shitty song, Jake thought, and it suddenly occurred to him that his father would love it.

 2
   PERIOD ONE WAS ENGLISH Comp, the only class where there was no final. Their assignment had been to write a Final Essay at home. This was to be a typed document between fifteen hundred and four thousand words long. The subject Ms. Avery had assigned was My Understanding of Truth. The Final Essay would count as twenty-five per cent of their final grade for the semester.
   Jake came in and took his seat in the third row. There were only eleven pupils in all. Jake remembered Orientation Day last September, when Mr. Harley had told them that Piper had The Highest Teacher To Student Ratio Of Any Fine Private Middle School In The East. He had popped his fist repeatedly on the lectern at the front of the Common Room to emphasize this point. Jake hadn't been terribly impressed, but he had passed the information along to his lather. He thought his father would be impressed, and he had not been wrong.
   He unzipped his bookbag and carefully removed the blue folder which contained his Final Essay. He laid it on his desk, meaning to give it a final look-over, when his eye was caught by the door at the left side of the room. It led, he knew, to the cloakroom, and it was closed today because it was seventy degrees in New York and no one had a coat which needed storage. Nothing back there except a lot of brass coathooks in a line on the wall and a long rubber mat on the floor for boots. A few boxes of school supplies—chalk, blue-books and such—were stored in the far corner.
   No big deal.
   All the same, Jake rose from his seat, leaving the folder unopened on the desk, and walked across to the door. He could hear his classmates murmuring quietly together, and the riffle of pages as they checked their own Final Essays for that crucial misplaced modifier or fuzzy phrase, but these sounds seemed far away.
   It was the door which held his attention.
   In the last ten days or so, as the voices in his head grew louder and louder, Jake had become more and more fascinated with doors—all kinds of doors. He must have opened the one between his bedroom and the upstairs hallway five hundred times in just the last week, and the one between his bedroom and the bathroom a thousand. Each time he did it, he felt a tight ball of hope and anticipation in his chest, as if the answer to all of his problems lay somewhere behind this door or that one and he would surely find it … eventually. But each time it was only the hall, or the bathroom, or the front walk, or whatever.
   Last Thursday he had come home from school, thrown himself on his bed, and had fallen asleep—sleep, it seemed, was the only refuge which remained to him. Except when he'd awakened forty-five minutes later, he had been standing in the bathroom doorway, peering dazedly in at nothing more exciting than the toilet and the basin. Luckily, no one had seen him.
   Now, as he approached the cloakroom door, he felt that same daz­zling burst of hope, a certainty that the door would not open on a shad­owy closet containing only the persistent smells of winter—flannel, rubber, and wet wool—but on some other world where he could be whale again. Hot, dazzling light would fall across the classroom floor in a widening triangle, and he would see birds circling in a faded blue sky the color of
   (his eyes)
   old jeans. A desert wind would blow his hair back and dry the nervous sweat on his brow.
   He would step through this door and be healed.
   Jake turned the knob and opened the door. Inside was only darkness and a row of gleaming brass hooks. One long-forgotten mitten lay near the stacked piles of blue-books in the corner.
   His heart sank, and suddenly Jake felt like simply creeping into that dark room with its bitter smells of winter and chalkdust. He could move the mitten and sit in the corner under the coathooks. He could sit on the rubber mat where you were supposed to put your boots in the winter­time. He could sit there, put his thumb in his mouth, pull his knees tight against his chest, close his eyes, and... and...
   And just give up.
   This idea—the relief of this idea—was incredibly attractive. It would be an end to the terror and confusion and dislocation. That last was somehow the worst; that persistent feeling that his whole life had turned into a funhouse mirror-maze.
   Yet there was deep steel in Jake Chambers as surely as there was deep steel in Eddie and Susannah. Now it flashed out its dour blue lighthouse gleam in the darkness. There would be no giving up. What­ever was loose inside him might tear his sanity away from him in the end, but he would give it no quarter in the meantime. Be damned if he would.
   Never! he thought fiercely. Never! Nev —
   "When you've finished your inventory of the school-supplies in the cloakroom, John, perhaps you'd care to join us," Ms. Avery said from behind him in her dry, cultured voice.
   There was a small gust of giggles as Jake turned away from the cloakroom. Ms. Avery was standing behind her desk with her long fingers tented lightly on the blotter, looking at him out of her calm, intelligent face. She was wearing her blue suit today, and her hair was pulled back in its usual bun. Nathaniel Hawthorne looked over her shoulder, frowning at Jake from his place on the wall.
   "Sorry," Jake muttered, and closed the door. He was immediately seized by a strong impulse to open it again, to double-check, to see if this time that other world, with its hot sun and desert vistas, was there.
   Instead he walked back to his seat. Petra Jesserling looked at him with merry, dancing eyes. "Take me in there with you next time," she whispered. "Then you'll have something to look at."
   Jake smiled in a distracted way and slipped into his seat.
   "Thank you, John," Ms. Avery said in her endlessly calm voice. "Now, before you pass in your Final Essays—which I am sure will all be very fine, very neat, very specific—I should like to pass out the English Department's Short List of recommended summer reading. I will have a word to say about several of these excellent books—"
   As she spoke she gave a small stack of mimeographed sheets to David Surrey. David began to hand them out, and Jake opened his folder to take a final look at what he had written on the topic My Understanding of Truth. He was genuinely interested in this, because he could no more remember writing his Final Essay, than he could remember studying for his French final.
   He looked at the title page with puzzlement and growing unease. MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH, By John Chambers, was neatly typed and centered on the sheet, and that was all right, but he had for some reason pasted two photographs below it. One was of a door—he thought it might be the one at Number 10, Downing Street, in London —and the other was of an Amtrak train. They were color shots, undoubtedly culled from some magazine.
   Why did I do that? And when did I do it?
   He turned the page and stared down at the first page of his Final Essay, unable to believe or understand what he was seeing. Then, as understanding began to trickle through his shock, he felt an escalating sense of horror. It had finally happened; he had finally lost enough of his mind so that other people would be able to tell.

3
   MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH
   By John Chambers
   "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
   —T. S. "BUTCH" ELIOT
   "My first thought was, he lied in every word."
   —ROBERT "SUNDANCE" BROWNING
   The gunslinger is the truth.
   Roland is the truth.
   The Prisoner is the truth.
   The Lady of Shadows is the truth.
   The Prisoner and the Lady are married. That is the truth.
   The way station is the truth.
   The Speaking Demon is the truth.
   We went under the mountains and that is the truth.
   There were monsters under the mountain. That is the truth.
   One of them had an Amoco gas pump between his legs
   and was pretending it was his penis. That is the truth.
   Roland let me die. That is the truth.
   I still love him.
   That is the truth.
   "And it is so very important that you all read The Lord of the Flies," Ms. Avery was saying in her clear but somehow pale voice. "And when you do, you must ask yourselves certain questions. A good novel is often like a series of riddles within riddles, and this is a very good novel—one of the best written in the second half of the twentieth century. So ask yourselves first what the symbolic significance of the conch shell might be. Second—"
   Far away. Far, far away. Jake turned to the second page of his Final Essay with a trembling hand, leaving a dark smear of sweat on the first page.
   When is a door not a door? When it's a jar, and that is the truth.
   Blaine is the truth.
   Blaine is the truth.
   What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck, and that is the truth.
   Blaine is the truth.
   You have to watch Blaine all the time, Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth.
   I'm pretty sure that Blaine is dangerous, and that is the truth.
   What is black and white and red all over? A blushing zebra, and that is the
   truth.
   Blaine is the truth.
   I want to go back and that is the truth.
   I have to go back and that is the truth.
   I'll go crazy if I don't go back and that is the truth.
   I can't go home again unless I find a stone a rose a door and that is the truth.
   Choo-choo, and that is the truth.
   Choo-choo. Choo-choo.
   Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo.
   Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo.
   I am afraid. That is the truth.
   Choo-choo.
   Jake looked up slowly. His heart was beating so hard that he saw a bright light like the afterimage of a flashbulb dancing in front of his eyes, a light that pulsed in and out with each titanic thud of his heart.
   He saw Ms. Avery handing his Final Essay to his mother and father. Mr. Bissette was standing (reside Ms. Avery, looking grave. He heard Ms. Avery say in her clear, pale voice: Your son is seriously ill. If you need proof, just look at this Final Essay.
   John hasn't been himself for the last three weeks or so, Mr. Bissette added. He seems frightened some of the time and dazed all of the time... not quite there, if you see what I mean. Je pense que John est fou... comprenez-vous?
   Ms. Avery again: Do you perhaps keep certain mood-altering pre­scription drugs in the house where John might have access to them?
   Jake didn't know about mood-altering drugs, but he knew his father kept several grams of cocaine in the bottom drawer of his study desk. His father would undoubtedly think he had been into it.
   "Now let me say a word about Catch-22," Ms. Avery said from the front of the room. "This is a very challenging book for sixth– and seventh-grade students, but you will nonetheless find it entirely enchanting, if you open your minds to its special charm. You may think of this novel, if you like, as a comedy of the surreal."
   I don't need to read something like that, Jake thought. I'm living something like that, and it's no comedy.
   He turned over to the last page of his Final Essay. There were no words on it. Instead he had pasted another picture to the paper. It was a photograph of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He had used a crayon to scribble it black. The dark, waxy lines looped and swooped in lunatic coils.
   He could remember doing none of this.
   Absolutely none of it.
   Now he heard his father saying to Mr. Bissette: Fou. Yes, he's defi­nitely fou. A kid who'd fuck up his chance at a school like Piper HAS to be fou, wouldn't you say? Well... I can handle this. Handling things is my job. Sunnyvale 's the answer. He needs to spend some time in Sunnyvale, making baskets and getting his shit back together. Don't you worry about our kid, folks; he can run... but he can't hide.
   Would they actually send him away to the nuthatch if it started to seem that his elevator no longer went all the way to the top floor? Jake thought the answer to that was a big you bet. No way his father was going to put up with a loony around the house. The name of the place they put him in might not be Sunnyvale, but there would be bars on the windows and there would be young men in white coats and crepe-soled shoes prowling the halls. The young men would have big muscles and watchful eyes and access to hypodermic needles full of artificial sleep.
   They'll tell everybody I went away, Jake thought. The arguing voices in his head were temporarily stilled by a rising tide of panic. They'll say I'm spending the year with my aunt and uncle in Modesto … or in Sweden as an exchange student … or repairing satellites in outer space. My mother won't like it. . . she'll cry... but she'll go along. She has her boyfriends, and besides, she always goes along with what he decides. She... they... me...
   He felt a shriek welling up his throat and pressed his lips tightly together to hold it in. He looked down again at the wild black scribbles snarled across the photograph of the Leaning Tower and thought: / have to get out of here. I have to get out right now.
   He raised his hand.
   "Yes, John, what is it?" Ms. Avery was looking at him with the expression of mild exasperation she reserved for students who interrupted her in mid-lecture.
   "I'd like to step out for a moment, if I may," Jake said.
   This was another example of Piper-speak. Piper students did not ever have to "take a leak" or "tap a kidney" or, God forbid, "drop a load." The unspoken assumption was that Piper students were too perfect to create waste byproducts in their tastefully silent glides through life. Once in a while someone requested permission to "step out for a moment," and that was all.
   Ms. Avery sighed. "Must you, John?"
   "Yes, ma'am."
   "All right. Return as soon as possible."
   "Yes, Ms. Avery."
   He closed the folder as he got up, took hold of it, then reluctantly let go again. No good. Ms. Avery would wonder why he was taking his Final Essay to the toilet with him. He should have removed the damning pages from the folder and stuffed them in his pocket before asking for permission to step out. Too late now.
   Jake walked down the aisle toward the door, leaving his folder on the desk and his bookbag lying beneath it.
   "Hope everything comes out all right, Chambers," David Surrey whispered, and snickered into his hand.
   "Still your restless lips, David," Ms. Avery said, clearly exasperated now, and the whole class laughed.
   Jake reached the door leading to the hall, and as he grasped the knob, that feeling of hope and surety rose in him again: This is it—really it. I'll open the door and the desert sun will shine in. I'll feel that dry wind on my face. I'll step through and never see this classroom again.
   He opened the door and it was only the hallway on the other side, but he was right about one thing just the same: he never saw Ms. Avery's classroom again.