Song of Susannah (Page 113)

At last the thunder ceased.

"Please speak your name, slowly and distinctly," said the pleasant female voice in the middle of her head, "or this procedure will be intensified by a factor of ten."

No need of that,Susannah sent the female voice.I’m convinced.

"Suuuu-zaaaa-nahhh," she said. "Suuu-zannnahhh…"

They stood watching her, all of them except for Ms. Rathead, who was peering ecstatically up to where the baby’s down-covered head had once again appeared between the withdrawing lips of Mia’s vagina.

"Miiii-aaaahhhh…"

"Suuuu-zaaa…"

"Miiii…"

"annn-ahhh…"

By the time the next contraction began, Dr. Scowther had seized a pair of forceps. The voices of the women became one, uttering a word, a name, that was neitherSusannah norMia but some combination of both.

"The link," said the pleasant female voice, "has been established." A faintclick. "Repeat the link has been established. Thank you for your cooperation."

"This is it, people," Scowther said. His pain and terror appeared forgotten; he sounded excited. He turned to his nurse. "It may cry, Alia. If it does, let it alone, for your father’s sake! If it doesn’t, swab out its mouth at once!"

"Yes, doctor." The thing’s lips quivered back, revealing a double set of fangs. Was that a grimace or a smile?

Scowther looked around at them with a touch of his previous arrogance. "All of you stay exactly where you are until I say you can move," he said. "None of us knows exactly what we’ve got here. We only know that the child belongs to the Crimson King himself – "

Mia screamed at that. In pain and in protest.

"Oh, you idiot," Sayre said. He drew back a hand and slapped Scowther with enough force to make his hair fly and send blood spraying against the white wall in a pattern of fine droplets.

"No!" Mia cried. She tried to struggle up onto her elbows, failed, fell back. "No, you said I should have the raising of him! Oh, please…if only for a little while, I beg…"

Then the worst pain yet rolled over Susannah – over both of them, burying them. They screamed in tandem, and Susannah didn’t need to hear Scowther, who was commanding her topush, topush NOW!

"It’s coming, doctor!" the nurse cried in nervous ecstasy.

Susannah closed her eyes and bore down, and as she felt the pain begin to flow out of her like water whirlpooling its way down a dark drain, she also felt the deepest sorrow she had ever known. For it was Mia the baby was flowing into; the last few lines of the living message Susannah’s body had somehow been made to transmit. It was ending. Whatever happened next, this part was ending, and Susannah Dean let out a cry of mingled relief and regret; a cry that was itself like a song.

And on the wings of that song, Mordred Deschain, son of Roland (and one other, O can you say Discordia), came into the world.

STAVE: Commala-come-kass!

The child has come at last!

Sing your song, O sing it well,

The child has come to pass.

RESPONSE: Commala-come-kass,

The worst has come to pass.

The Tower trembles on its ground;

The child has come at last.

Coda: Pages from a Writer’s Journal

July 12th, 1977

Man, it’s good to be back in Bridgton. They always treat us well in what Joe still calls "Nanatown," but Owen fussed almost nonstop. He’s better since we got back home. We only stopped once, in Waterville to grab grub at the Silent Woman (I’ve had better meals there, I must add).

Anyway, I kept my promise to myself and went on a grand hunt for that Dark Tower story as soon as I got back. I’d almost given up when I found the pages in the farthest corner of the garage, under a box of Tab’s old catalogues. There was a lot of "spring thaw drip" over there, and those funny blue pages smell all mildewy, but the copy is perfectly readable. I finished going over it, then sat down and added a small section to the Way Station material (where the gunslinger meets the boy Jake). I thought it would be kind of fun to put in a water pump that runs on an atomic slug, and so I did so without delay. Usually working on an old story is about as appetizing as eating a sandwich made with moldy bread, but this felt perfectly natural…like slipping on an old shoe.

What, exactly, was this story supposed to be about?

I can’t remember, only that it first came to me a long, long time ago. Driving back from up north, with my entire family snoozing, I got thinking about that time David and I ran away from Aunt Ethelyn’s. We were planning to go back to Connecticut, I think. The grups (i.e., grownups) caught us, of course, and put us to work in the barn, sawing wood. Punishment Detail, Uncle Oren called it. It seems to me that something scary happened to me out there, but I’ll be damned if I can remember what it was, only that it was red. And I thought up a hero, a magic gunslinger, to keep me safe from it. There was something about magnetism, too, or Beams of Power. I’m pretty sure that was the genesis of this story, but it’s strange how blurry it all seems. Oh well, who remembers all the nasty little nooks of their childhood? Who wants to?

Not much else happening. Joe and Naomi made Playground, and Tabby’s plans for her trip to England are pretty much complete. Boy, that story about the gunslinger won’t get out of my head!

Tell you what ole Roland needs: some friends!

July 19th, 1977

I went to see Star Wars on my motorcycle tonight, and I think it’ll be the last time I climb on the bike until things cool off a little. I ate a ton of bugs. Talk about protein!

I kept thinking about Roland, my gunslinger from the Robert Browning poem (with a tip of Hatlo’s Hat to Sergio Leone, of course), while I rode. The manuscript is a novel, no doubt – or a piece of one – but it occurs to me that the chapters also stand on their own. Or almost. I wonder if I could sell them to one of the fantasy mags? Maybe even to Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is, of course, the genre’s Holy Grail.