• III • DOOR AND DEMON
 
 1
   EDDIE WAS ALMOST ASLEEP when a voice spoke clearly in his ear: Tell him to grab the key. The key makes the voices go.
   He sat bolt upright, looking around wildly. Susannah was sound asleep beside him; that voice had not been hers.
   Nor anyone else's, it seemed. They had been moving through the woods and along the path of the Beam for eight days now, and this evening they had camped in the deep cleft of a pocket valley. Close by on the left, a large stream roared brashly past, headed in the same direc­tion as they were: southeast. To the right, firs rose up a steep slope of land. There were no intruders here; only Susannah asleep and Roland awake. He sat huddled beneath his blanket at the edge of the stream's cut, staring out into the darkness.
   Tell him to grab the key. The key makes the voices go.
   Eddie hesitated for only a moment. Roland's sanity was in the bal­ance now, the balance was tipping the wrong way, and the worst part of it was this: no one knew it better than the man himself. At this point, Eddie was prepared to clutch at any straw.
   He had been using a folded square of deerskin as a pillow. He reached beneath it and removed a bundle wrapped in a piece of hide. He walked over to Roland, and was disturbed to see that the gunslinger did not notice him until he was less than four steps from his unprotected back. There had been a time—and it was not so long ago—when Roland would have known Eddie was awake even before Eddie sat up. He would have heard the change in his breathing.
   He was more alert than this back on the beach, when he was half-dead from the lobster-thing's bite, Eddie thought grimly.
   Roland at last turned his head and glanced at him. His eyes were bright with pain and weariness, but Eddie recognized these things as no more than a surface glitter. Beneath it, he sensed a growing confusion that would almost surely become madness if it continued to develop unchecked. Pity tugged at Eddie's heart.
   "Can't sleep?" Roland asked. His voice was slow, almost drugged.
   "I almost was, and then I woke up," Eddie said. "Listen—"
   "I think I'm getting ready to die." Roland looked at Eddie. The bright shine left his eyes, and now looking into them was like staring into a pair of deep, dark wells that seemed to have no bottom. Eddie shud­dered, more because of that empty stare than because of what Roland had said. "And do you know what I hope lies in the clearing where the path ends, Eddie?"
   "Roland—"
   "Silence," Roland said. He exhaled a dusty sigh. "Just silence. That will be enough. An end to … this."
   He planted his fists against his temples, and Eddie thought: I've seen someone else do that, and not long ago. But who? Where?
   It was ridiculous of course; he had seen no one but Roland and Susannah for almost two months now. But it felt true, all the same.
   "Roland, I've been making something," Eddie said.
   Roland nodded. A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "I know. What is it? Are you finally ready to tell?"
   "I think it might be part of this ka-tet thing."
   The vacant look left Roland's eyes. He gazed at Eddie thoughtfully but said nothing.
   "Look." Eddie began to unfold the piece of hide.
   That won't do any good! Henry's voice suddenly brayed. It was so loud that Eddie actually flinched a little. It's just a stupid piece of wood-carving! He'll take one look and laugh at it! He'll laugh at you! "Oh, lookit this!" he'll say. "Did the sissy carve something?"
   "Shut up," Eddie muttered.
   The gunslinger raised his eyebrows.
   "Not you."
   Roland nodded, unsurprised. "Your brother comes to you often, doesn't he, Eddie?"
   For a moment Eddie only stared at him, his carving still hidden in the hide square. Then he smiled. It was not a very pleasant smile. "Not as often as he used to, Roland. Thank Christ for small favors."
   "Yes," Roland said. "Too many voices weigh heavy on a man's heart... What is it, Eddie? Show me, please."
   Eddie held up the chunk of ash. The key, almost complete, emerged from it like the head of a woman from the prow of a sailing ship … or the hilt of a sword from a chunk of stone. Eddie didn't know how close he had come to duplicating the key-shape he had seen in the fire (and never would, he supposed, unless he found the right lock in which to try it), but he thought it was close. Of one thing he was quite sure: it was the best carving he had ever done. By far.
   "By the gods, Eddie, it's beautiful!" Roland said. The apathy was gone from his voice; he spoke in a tone of surprised reverence Eddie had never heard before. "Is it done? It's not, is it?"
   "No—not quite." He ran his thumb into the third notch, and then over the s-shape at the end of the last notch. "There's a little more to do on this notch, and the curve at the end isn't right yet. I don't know how I know that, but I do."
   "This is your secret." It wasn't a question.
   "Yes. Now if only I knew what it meant."
   Roland looked around. Eddie followed his gaze and saw Susannah. He found some relief in the fact that Roland had heard her first.
   "What you boys doin up so late? Chewin the fat?" She saw the wooden key in Eddie's hand and nodded. "I wondered when you were going to get around to showing that off. It's good, you know. I don't know what it's for, but it's damned good."
   "You don't have any idea what door it might open?" Roland asked Eddie. "That was not part of your khef?"
   "No—but it might be good for something even though it isn't done." He held the key out to Roland. "I want you to keep it for me."
   Roland didn't move to take it. He regarded Eddie closely. "Why?"
   "Because... well. . . because I think someone told me you should."
   "Who?"
   Your boy, Eddie thought suddenly, and as soon as the thought came he knew it was true. It was your goddamned boy. But he didn't want to say so. He didn't want to mention the boy's name at all. It might just set Roland off again.
   "I don't know. But I think you ought to give it a try."
   Roland reached slowly for the key. As his fingers touched it, a bright glimmer seemed to flash down its barrel, but it was gone so quickly that Eddie could not be sure he had seen it. It might have been only starlight.
   Roland's hand closed over the key growing out of the branch. For a moment his face showed nothing. Then his brow furrowed and his head cocked in a listening gesture.
   "What is it?" Susannah asked. "Do you hear—"
   "Shhhh!" The puzzlement on Roland's face was slowly being replaced with wonder. He looked from Eddie to Susannah and then back to Eddie. His eyes were filling with some great emotion, as a pitcher fills with water when it is dipped in a spring.
   "Roland?" Eddie asked uneasily. "Are you all right?"
   Roland whispered something. Eddie couldn't hear what it was.
   Susannah looked scared. She glanced frantically at Eddie, as if to ask, What did you do to him?
   Eddie took one of her hands in both of his own. "I think it's all right."
   Roland's hand was clamped so tightly on the chunk of wood that Eddie was momentarily afraid he might snap it in two, but the wood was strong and Eddie had carved thick. The gunslinger's throat bulged; his Adam's apple rose and fell as he struggled with speech. And suddenly he yelled at the sky in a fair, strong voice:
   "GONE! THE VOICES ARE GONE!"
   He looked back at them, and Eddie saw something he had never expected to see in his life—not even if that life stretched over a thousand years.
   Roland of Gilead was weeping.
 

 2
   THE GUNSLINGER SLEPT SOUNDLY and dreamlessly that night for the first time in months, and he slept with the not-quite finished key clenched tightly in his hand.

3
   IN ANOTHER WORLD, BUT beneath the shadow of the same ka-tet, Jake Chambers was having the most vivid dream of his life.
   He was walking through the tangled remains of an ancient forest— a dead zone of fallen trees and scruffy, aggravating bushes that bit his ankles and tried to steal his sneakers. He came to a thin belt of younger trees (alders, he thought, or perhaps beeches—he was a city boy, and the only thing he knew for sure about trees was that some had leaves and some had needles) and discovered a path through them. He made his way along this, moving a little faster. There was a clearing of some sort up ahead.
   He stopped once before reaching it, when he spied some sort of stone marker to his right. He left the path to look at it. There were letters carved into it, but they were so eroded he couldn't make them out. At last he closed his eyes (he had never done this in a dream before) and let his fingers trace each letter, like a blind boy reading Braille. Each formed in the darkness behind his lids until they made a sentence which stood forth in an outline of blue light:
   TRAVELLER, BEYOND LIES MID-WORLD.
   Sleeping in his bed, Jake drew his knees up against his chest. The hand holding the key was under his pillow, and now his fingers tightened their grip on it.
   Mid-World, he thought, of course. St. Louis and Topeka and Oz and the World's Fair and Charlie the Choo-Choo.
   He opened his dreaming eyes and pressed on. The clearing behind the trees was paved with old cracked asphalt. A faded yellow circle had been painted in the middle. Jake realized it was a playground basketball court even before he saw the boy at the far end, standing at the foul line and shooting baskets with a dusty old Wilson ball. They popped in one after another, falling neatly through the netless hole. The basket jutted out from something that looked like a subway kiosk which had been shut up for the night. Its closed door was painted in alternating diagonal stripes of yellow and black. From behind it—or perhaps from below it—Jake could hear the steady rumble of powerful machinery. The sound was somehow disturbing. Scary.
   Don't step on the robots, the boy shooting the baskets said without turning around. I guess they're all dead, but I wouldn't take any chances, if I were you.
   Jake looked around and saw a number of shattered mechanical devices lying around. One looked like a rat or mouse, another like a bat. A mechanical snake lay in two rusty pieces almost at his feet.
   ARE you me? Jake asked, taking a step closer to die boy at the basket, but even before he turned around, Jake knew that wasn't the case. The boy was bigger than Jake, and at least thirteen. His hair was darker, and when he looked at Jake, he saw that the stranger's eyes were hazel. His own were blue.
   What do you think? the strange boy asked, and bounce-passed the ball to Jake.
   No, of course not, Jake said. He spoke apologetically. It's just that I've been cut in two for the last three weeks or so. He dipped and shot from mid-court. The ball arched high and dropped silently through the hoop. He was delighted... but he discovered he was also afraid of what this strange boy might have to tell him.
   I know, the boy said. It's been a bitch for you, hasn't it? He was wearing faded madras shorts and a yellow t-shirt that said NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN MID-WORLD. He had tied a green bandanna around his forehead to keep his hair out of his eyes. And things are going to get worse before they get better.
   What is this place? Jake asked. And who are you?
   It's the Portal of the Bear... but it's also Brooklyn .
   That didn't seem to make sense, and yet somehow it did. Jake told himself that things always seemed that way in dreams, but this didn't really feel like a dream.
   As for me, I don't matter much, the boy said. He hooked the basket­ball over his shoulder. It rose, then dropped smoothly through the hoop. I'm supposed to guide you, that's all. I'll take you where you need to go, and I'll show you what you need to see, but you have to be careful because I won't know you. And strangers make Henry nervous. He can get mean when he's nervous, and he's bigger than you.
   Who's Henry? Jake asked.
   Never mind. Just don't let him notice you. All you have to do is hang out... and follow us. Then, when we leave...
   The boy looked at Jake. There was both pity and fear in his eyes. Jake suddenly realized that the boy was starting to fade—lie could see the yellow and black slashes on the box right through the boy's yellow t-shirt.
   How will I find you? Jake was suddenly terrified that the boy would melt away completely before he could say everything Jake needed to hear.
   No problem, the boy said. His voice had taken on a queer, chiming echo. Just take the subway to Co-Op City . You'll find me.
   No, I won't! Jake cried. Co-Op City 's huge! There must be a hundred thousand people living there!
   Now the boy was just a milky outline. Only his hazel eyes were still completely there, like the Cheshire cat's grin in Alice . They regarded Jake with compassion and anxiety. No problem-o, he said. You found the key and the rose, didn't you? You'll find me the same way. This afternoon, Jake. Around three o'clock should be good. You'll have to be careful, and you'll have to be quick. He paused, a ghostly boy with an old basketball lying near one transparent foot. I have to go now... but it was good to meet you. You seem like a nice kid, and I'm riot surprised he loves you. Remember, there’s danger, though. He careful... and he quick.
   Wait! Jake yelled, and run across the basketball court toward the disappearing boy. One of his feet struck a shattered robot that looked like a child's toy tractor. He stumbled and fell to his knees, shredding his pants. He ignored the thin burn of pain. Wait! You have to tell me what all this is about! You have to tell me why these things are happening to me!
   Because of the Beam, the boy who was now only a pair of floating eyes replied, and because of the Tower. In the end, all things, even the Beams, serve the Dark Tower . Did you think you would be any different?
   Jake flailed and stumbled to his feet. Will I find him? Will I find the gunslinger?
   I don't know, the boy answered. His voice now seemed to come from a million miles away. I only know you must try. About that you have no choice.
   The boy was gone. The basketball court in the woods was empty. The only sound was that faint rumble of machinery, and Jake didn't like it. There was something wrong with that sound, and he thought that what was wrong with the machinery was affecting the rose, or vice-versa. It was all hooked together somehow.
   He picked up the old, scuffed-up basketball and shot. It went neatly through the hoop... and disappeared.
   A river, the strange boy's voice sighed. It was like a puff of breeze. It came from nowhere and everywhere. The answer is a river.

4
   JAKE WOKE IN THE first milky light of dawn, looking up at the ceiling of his room. He was thinking of the guy in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind—Aaron Deepneau, who'd been hanging around on Bleecker Street back when Bob Dylan only knew how to blow open G on his Hohner. Aaron Deepneau had given Jake a riddle.
   What can run but never walks,
   Has a mouth but never talks,
   Has a bed but never sleeps,
   Has a head but never weeps?
   Now he knew the answer. A river ran; a river had a mouth; a river had a bed; a river had a head. The boy had told him the answer. The boy in the dream.
   And suddenly he thought of something else Deepneau had said: That's only half the answer. Samson's riddle is a double, my friend.
   Jake glanced at his bedside clock and saw it was twenty past six . It was time to get moving if he wanted to be out of here before his parents woke up. There would be no school for him today; Jake thought that maybe, as far as he was concerned, school had been cancelled forever.
   He threw back the bedclothes, swung his feet out onto the floor, and saw that there were scrapes on both knees. Fresh scrapes. He had bruised his left side yesterday when he slipped on the bricks and fell, and he had banged his head when he fainted near the rose, but nothing had happened to his knees.
   "That happened in the dream," Jake whispered, and found he wasn't surprised at all. He began to dress swiftly.

   5
   IN THE BACK OF his closet, under a jumble of old laceless sneakers and a heap of Spiderman comic books, he found the packsack he had worn to grammar school. No one would be caught dead with a packsack at Piper—how too, too common, my death—and as Jake grabbed it, he felt a wave of powerful nostalgia for those old days when life had seemed so simple.
   He stuffed a clean shirt, a clean pair of jeans, some underwear and socks into it, then added Riddle-De-Dum! and Charlie the Choo-Choo. He had put the key on his desk before foraging in the closet for his old pack, and the voices came back at once, but they were distant and muted. Besides, he felt sure he could make them go away completely by holding the key again, and that eased his mind.
   Okay, he thought, looking into the pack. Even with the books added, there was plenty of room left. What else?
   For a moment he thought there was nothing else... and then he knew

   6
   His FATHER'S STUDY SMELLED of cigarettes and ambition.
   It was dominated by a huge teakwood desk. Across the room, set into a wall otherwise lined with books, were three Mitsubishi television monitors. Each was tuned to one of the rival networks, and at night, when his father was in here, each played out its progression of prime-time images with the sound off.
   The curtains were drawn, and Jake had to turn on the desk lamp in order to see. He felt nervous just being in here, even wearing sneakers. If his father should wake up and come in (and it was possible; no matter how late he went to bed or how much he drank, Elmer Chambers was a light sleeper and an early riser), he would be angry. At the very least it would make a clean getaway much tougher. The sooner he was out of here, the better Jake would feel.
   The desk was locked, but his father had never made any secret of where he kept the key. Jake slid his fingers under the blotter and hooked it out. He opened the third drawer, reached past the hanging files, and touched cold metal.
   A board creaked in the hall and he froze. Several seconds passed. When the creak didn't come again, Jake pulled out the weapon his father kept for "home defense"—a .44 Ruger automatic. His father had shown this weapon to Jake with great pride on the day he had bought it—two years ago, that had been. He had been totally deaf to his wife's nervous demands that he put it away before someone got hurt.
   Jake found the button on the side that released the clip. It fell out into his hand with a metallic snak! sound that seemed very loud in the quiet apartment. He glanced nervously toward the door again, then turned his attention to the clip. It was fully loaded. He started to slide it back into the gun, and then took it out again. Keeping a loaded gun in a locked desk drawer was one thing; carrying one around New York City was quite another.
   He stuffed the automatic down to the bottom of his pack, then felt behind the hanging files again. This time he brought out a box of shells, about half-full. He remembered his father had done some target shooting at the police range on First Avenue before losing interest.
   The board creaked again. Jake wanted to get out of here.
   He removed one of the shirts he'd packed, laid it on his father's desk, and rolled up the clip and the box of .44 slugs in it. Then he replaced it in the pack and used the buckles to snug down the flap. He was about to leave when his eye fixed on the little pile of stationery sitting beside his father's In/Out tray. The reflectorized Ray-Ban sunglasses his father liked to wear were folded on top of the stationery. He took a sheet of paper, and, after a moment's thought, the sunglasses as well. He slipped the shades into his breast pocket. Then he removed the slim gold pen from its stand, and wrote Dear Dad and Mom beneath the letterhead.
   He stopped, frowning at the salutation. What went below it? What, exactly, did he have to say? That he loved them? It was true, but it wasn't enough—there were all sorts of other unpleasant truths stuck through that central one, like steel needles jabbed into a ball of yarn.
   That he would miss them? He didn't know if that was true or not, which was sort of horrible. That he hoped they would miss him?
   He suddenly realized what the problem was. If he were planning to be gone just today, he would be able to write something. But he felt a near-certainty that it wasn't just today, or this week, or this month, or this summer. He had an idea that when he walked out of the apartment this time, it would be for good.
   He almost crumpled the sheet of paper, then changed his mind. He wrote: Please take care of yourselves. Love, J. That was pretty limp, but at least it was something.
   Fine. Now will you stop pressing your luck and get out of here?
   He did.
   The apartment was almost dead still. He tiptoed across the living room, hearing only the sounds of his parents' breathing: his mother's soft little snores, his father's more nasal respiration, where every indrawn breath ended in a slim high whistle. The refrigerator kicked on as he reached the entryway and he froze for a moment, his heart thumping hard in his chest. Then he was at the door. He unlocked it as quietly as he could, then stepped out and pulled it gently shut behind him.
   A stone seemed to roll off his heart as the latch snicked, and a strong sense of anticipation seized him. He didn't know what lay ahead, and he had reason to believe it would be dangerous, but he was eleven years old—too young to deny the exotic delight which suddenly filled him. There was a highway ahead—a hidden highway leading deep into some unknown land. There were secrets which might disclose themselves to him if he was clever... and if he was lucky. He had left his home in the long light of dawn, and what lay ahead was some great adventure.
   If I stand, if I can be true, I'll see the rose, he thought as he pushed the button for the elevator. I know it... and I'll see him, too.
   This thought filled him with an eagerness so great it was almost ecstasy.
   Three minutes later he stepped out from beneath the awning which shaded the entrance to the building where he had lived all his life. He paused for a moment, then turned left. This decision did not feel random, and it wasn't. He was moving southeast, along the path of the Beam, resuming his own interrupted quest for the Dark Tower .

7
   TWO DAYS AFTER EDDIE had given Roland his unfinished key, the three travellers—hot, sweaty, tired, and out of sorts—pushed through a particu­larly tenacious tangle of bushes and second-growth trees and discovered what first appeared to be two faint paths, running in tandem beneath the interlacing branches of the old trees crowding close on either side. After a few moments of study, Eddie decided they weren't just paths but the remains of a long-abandoned road. Bushes and stunted trees grew like untidy quills along what had been its crown. The grassy indentations were wheelruts, and either of them was wide enough to accommodate Susannah's wheelchair.
   "Hallelujah!" he cried. "Let's drink to it!"
   Roland nodded and unslung the waterskin he wore around his waist. He first handed it up to Susannah, who was riding in her sling on his back. Eddie's key, now looped around Roland's neck on a piece of raw­hide, shifted beneath his shirt with each movement. She took a swallow and passed the skin to Eddie. He drank and then began to unfold her chair. Eddie had come to hate this bulky, balky contraption; it was like an iron anchor, always holding them back. Except for a broken spoke or two, it was still in fine condition. Eddie had days when he thought the goddam thing would outlast all of them. Now, however, it might be useful … for a while, at least.
   Eddie helped Susannah out of the harness and placed her in the chair. She put her hands against the small of her back, stretched, and grimaced with pleasure. Both Eddie and Roland heard the small crackle her spine made as it stretched.
   Up ahead, a large creature that looked like a badger crossed with a raccoon ambled out of the woods. It looked at them with its large, gold-rimmed eyes, twitched its sharp, whiskery snout as if to say Huh! Big deal!, then strolled the rest of the way across the road and disappeared again. Before it did, Eddie noted its tail—long and closely coiled, it looked like a fur-covered bedspring.
   "What was that, Roland?"
   "A billy-bumbler."
   "No good to eat?"
   Roland shook his head. "Tough. Sour. I'd rather eat dog."
   "Have you?" Susannah asked. "Eaten dog, I mean?"
   Roland nodded, but did not elaborate. Eddie found himself thinking of a line from an old Paul Newman movie: That's right, lady—eaten em and lived like one.
   Birds sang cheerily in the trees. A light breeze blew along the road. Eddie and Susannah turned their faces up to it gratefully, then looked at each other and smiled. Eddie was struck again by his grati­tude for her—it was scary to have someone to love, but it was also very fine.
   "Who made this road?" Eddie asked.
   "People who have been gone a long time," Roland said.
   "The same ones who made the cups and dishes we found?" Susan­nah asked.
   "No—not them. This used to be a coach-road, I imagine, and if it's still here, after all these years of neglect, it must have been a great one indeed... perhaps the Great Road . If we dug down, I imagine we'd find the gravel undersurface, and maybe the drainage system, as well. As long as we're here, let's have a bite to eat."
   "Food!" Eddie cried. "Bring it on! Chicken Florentine! Polynesian shrimp! Veal lightly sautйed with mushrooms and—"
   Susannah elbowed him. "Quit it, white boy."
   "I can't help it if I've got a vivid imagination," Eddie said cheerfully.
   Roland slipped his purse off his shoulder, hunkered down, and began to put together a small noon meal of dried meat wrapped in olive-colored leaves. Eddie and Susannah had discovered that these leaves tasted a little like spinach, only much stronger.
   Eddie wheeled Susannah over to him and Roland handed her three of what Eddie called "gunslinger burritos." She began to eat.
   When Eddie turned back, Roland was holding out three of the wrapped pieces of meat to him—and something else, as well. It was the chunk of ash with the key growing out of it. Roland had taken it off the rawhide string, which now lay in an open loop around his neck.
   "Hey, you need that, don't you?" Eddie asked.
   "When I take it off, the voices return, but they're very distant," Roland said. "I can deal with them. Actually, I hear them even when I'm wearing it—like the voices of men who are speaking low over the next hill. I think that's because the key is yet unfinished. You haven't worked on it since you gave it to me."
   "Well... you were wearing it, and I didn't want to …"
   Roland said nothing, but his faded blue eyes regarded Eddie with their patient teacher's look.
   "All right," Eddie said, "I'm afraid of fucking it up. Satisfied?"
   "According to your brother, you fucked everything up … isn't that right?" Susannah asked.
   "Susannah Dean, Girl Psychologist. You missed your calling, sweetheart."
   Susannah wasn't offended by the sarcasm. She lifted the waterskin with her elbow, like a redneck tipping a jug, and drank deeply. "It's true, though, isn't it?"
   Eddie, who realized he hadn't finished the slingshot, either—not yet, at least—shrugged.
   "You have to finish it," Roland said mildly. "I think the time is coming when you'll have to put it to use."
   Eddie started to speak, then closed his mouth. It sounded easy when you said it right out like that, but neither of them really understood the bottom line. The bottom line was this: seventy per cent or eighty or even ninety-eight and a half just wouldn't do. Not this time. And if he did screw up, he couldn't just toss the thing over his shoulder and walk away. For one thing, he hadn't seen another ash-tree since the day he had cut this particular piece of wood. But mostly the thing that was fucking him up was just this: it was all or nothing. If he messed up even a little, the key wouldn't turn when they needed it to turn. And he was increasingly nervous about that little squiggle at the end. It looked simple, but if the curves weren't exactly right...
   It won't work the way it is now, though; that much you do know.
   He sighed, looking at the key. Yes, that much he did know. He would have to try to finish it. His fear of failure would make it even harder than it maybe had to be, but he would have to swallow the fear and try anyway. Maybe he could even bring it off. God knew he had brought off a lot in the weeks since Roland had entered his mind on a Delta jet bound into JFK Airport . That he was still alive and sane was an accomplishment in itself.
   Eddie handed the key back to Roland. "Wear it for now," he said. "I'll go back to work when we stop for the night."
   "Promise?"
   "Yeah."
   Roland nodded, took the key, and began to re-knot the rawhide string. He worked slowly, but Eddie did not fail to notice how dexterously die remaining fingers on his right hand moved. The man was nothing if not adaptable.
   "Something is going to happen, isn't it?" Susannah asked suddenly.
   Eddie glanced up at her. "What makes you say so?"
   "I sleep with you, Eddie, and I know you dream every night now. Sometimes you talk, too. They don't seem like nightmares, exactly, but it's pretty clear that something is going on inside your head."
   "Yes. Something is. I just don't know what."
   "Dreams are powerful," Roland remarked. "You don't remember the ones you're having at all?"
   Eddie hesitated. "A little, but they're confused. I'm a kid again, I know that much. It's after school. Henry and I are shooting hoops at the old Markey Avenue playground, where the Juvenile Court Building is now. I want Henry to take me to see a place over in Dutch Hill. An old house. The kids used to call it The Mansion, and everyone said it was haunted. Maybe it even was. It was creepy, I know that much. Real creepy."
   Eddie shook his head, remembering.
   "I thought of The Mansion for the first time in years when we were in the bear's clearing, and I put my head close to that weird box. I dunno—maybe that's why I'm having the dream."
   "But you don't think so," Susannah said.
   "No. I think whatever's happening is a lot more complicated than just remembering stuff."
   "Did you and your brother actually go to this place?" Roland asked.
   "Yeah—I talked him into it."
   "And did something happen?"
   "No. But it was scary. We stood there and looked at it for a little while, and Henry teased me—saving he was going to make me go in and pick up a souvenir, stuff like that—but I knew he didn't really mean it. He was as scared of the place as I was."
   "And that's it?" Susannah asked. "You just dream of going to this place? The Mansion?"
   "There's a little more than that. Someone comes... and then just land of hangs out. I notice him in the dream, but just a little... like out of the corner of my eye, you know? Only I know we're supposed to pretend we don't know each other."
   "Was this someone really there that day?" Roland asked. He was watching Eddie intently, "Or is he only a player in this dream?"
   "That was a long time ago. I couldn't have been more than thirteen. How could I remember a thing like that for sure?"
   Roland said nothing.
   "Okay," Eddie said at last. "Yeah. I think he was there that day. A kid who was either carrying a gym-bag or wearing a backpack, I can't remember which. And sunglasses that were too big for his face. The ones with the mirror lenses."
   "Who was this person?" Roland asked.
   Eddie was silent for a long time. He was holding the last of his burritos a la Roland in one hand, but he had lost his appetite. "I think it's the kid you met at the way station," he said at last. "I think your old friend Jake was hanging around, watching me and Henry on the afternoon we went over to Dutch Hill. I think he followed us. Because he hears the voices, just like you, Roland. And because he's sharing my dreams, and I'm sharing his. I think that what I remember is what's happening now, in Jake's when. The kid is trying to come back here. And if the key isn't done when he makes his move—or if it's done wrong—he's probably going to die."
   Roland said, "Maybe he has a key of his own. Is that possible?"
   "Yeah, I think it is," Eddie said, "but it isn't enough." He sighed and stuck the last burrito in his pocket for later. "And I don't think he knows that."

8
   THEY MOVED ALONG, ROLAND and Eddie trading off on Susannah's wheelchair. They picked the left-hand wheelrut. The chair bumped and pitched, and every now and then Eddie and Roland had to lift it over the cobbles which stuck out of the dirt here and there like old teeth. They were still making faster, easier time than they had in a week, how­ever. The ground was rising, and when Eddie looked over his shoulder he could see the forest sloping away in what looked like a series of gentle steps. Far to the northwest, he could see a ribbon of water spilling over a fractured rock face. It was, he realized with wonder, the place they had dubbed "the shooting gallery." Now it was almost lost behind them in the haze of this dreaming summer afternoon.
   "Whoa down, boy!" Susannah called sharply. Eddie faced forward again just in time to keep from pushing the wheelchair into Roland. The gunslinger had stopped and was peering into the tangled bushes at the left of the road.
   "You keep that up, I'm gonna revoke your driver's license," Susannah said waspily.
   Eddie ignored her. He was following Roland's gaze. "What is it?"
   "One way to find out." He turned, hoisted Susannah from her chair, ~and planted her on his hip. "Let's all take a look."
   "Put me down, big boy—I can make my way. Easier'n you boys, if you really want to know."
   As Roland gently lowered her to the grassy wheelrut, Eddie peered into the woods. The late light threw overlapping crosses of shadow, but he thought he saw what had caught Roland's eye. It was a tall gray stone, almost completely hidden in a shag of vines and creepers.
   Susannah slipped into the woods at the side of the road with eely sinuousness. Roland and Eddie followed.
   "It's a marker, isn't it?" Susannah was propped on her hands study­ing die rectangular chunk of rock. It had once been straight, but now it leaned drunkenly to the right, like an old gravestone.
   "Yes. Give me my knife, Eddie."
   Eddie handed it over, then hunkered next to Susannah as the gun­slinger cut away the vines. As they fell, he could see eroded letters carved into the stone, and he knew what they said before Roland had uncovered even half of the inscription:
   TRAVELLER, BEYOND LIES MID-WORLD.

9
   "WHAT DOES IT MEAN?" Susannah asked at last. Her voice was soft and awestruck; her eyes ceaselessly measured the gray stone plinth.
   "It means that we're nearing the end of this first stage." Roland's face was solemn and thoughtful as he handed his knife back to Eddie. "I think that we'll keep to this old coach-road now—or rather, it will keep to us. It has taken up the path of the Beam. The woods will end soon. I expect a great change."
   "What is Mid-World?" Eddie asked.
   "One of the large kingdoms which dominated the earth in the times before these. A kingdom of hope and knowledge and light—the sort of things we were trying to hold onto in my land before the darkness over­took us, as well. Some day if there's time, I'll tell you all the old stories... the ones I know, at least. They form a large tapestry, one which is beautiful but very sad.
   "According to the old tales, a great city once stood at the edge of Mid-World—perhaps as great as your city of New York . It will be in ruins now, if it still exists at all. But there may be people … or monsters … or both. We'll have to be on our guard."
   He reached out his two-fingered right hand and touched the inscrip­tion. "Mid-World," he said in a low, meditative voice. "Who would have thought..." He trailed off.
   "Well, there's no help for it, is there?" Eddie asked.
   The gunslinger shook his head. "No help."
   "Ka," Susannah said suddenly, and they both looked at her.

10
   THERE WERE TWO HOURS of daylight left, and so they moved on. The road continued southeast, along the path of the Beam, and two other overgrown roads—smaller ones—joined the one they were following. Along one side of the second were the mossy, tumbled remains of what must have once been an immense rock wall. Nearby, a dozen fat billy-bumblers sat upon the ruins, watching the pilgrims with their odd gold-ringed eyes. To Eddie they looked like a jury with hanging on its mind.
   The road continued to grow wider and more clearly defined. Twice they passed the shells of long-deserted buildings. The second one, Roland said, might have been a windmill. Susannah said it looked haunted. "I wouldn't be surprised," the gunslinger replied. His matter-of-fact tone chilled both of them.
   When darkness forced a halt, the trees were thinning and the breeze which had chased around tin-in all day became a light, warm wind. Ahead, the land continued to rise.
   "We'll come to the top of the ridge in a day or two," Roland said. "Then we'll see."
   "See what?" Susannah asked, but Roland only shrugged.
   That night Eddie began to carve again, but with no real feeling of inspiration. The confidence and happiness he'd felt as the key first began to take shape had left him. His fingers felt clumsy and stupid. For the first time in months he thought longingly of how good it would be to have some heroin. Not a lot; he felt sure that a nickel bag and a rolled-up dollar bill would send him flying through this little carving project in no time flat.
   "What are you smiling about, Eddie?" Roland asked. He was sitting on the other side of the campfire; the low, wind-driven flames danced capriciously between them.
   "Was I smiling?"
   "Yes."
   "I was just thinking about how stupid some people can be—you put them in a room with six doors, they'll still walk into the walls. And then have the nerve to bitch about it."
   "If you're afraid of what might be on the other side of the doors, maybe bouncing off the walls seems safer," Susannah said.
   Eddie nodded. "Maybe so."
   He worked slowly, trying to see the shapes in the wood—that little s-shape in particular. He discovered it had become very dim.
   Please, God, help me not to fuck this up, he thought, but he was terribly afraid that he had already begun to do just that. At last he gave up, returned the key (which he had barely changed at all) to the gun-slinger, and curled up beneath one of the hides. Five minutes later, the dream about the boy and the old Markey Avenue playground had begun to unspool again.