Song of Susannah (Page 73)

"Yes!Magic doors – like the one Eddie found and you took me through to New York – go both ways. The doors North Central Positronics made to replace them when thePrim receded and the magic faded…they go only one way. Have I got that right?"

"I think so, aye."

"Maybe they didn’t have time to figure out how to make teleportation a two-lane highway before the world moved on. In any case, the Wolves go to the Calla side of Thunderclap by door and come back to Fedic by train. Right?"

Mia nodded.

Susannah no longer thought she was just trying to kill time. This information might come in handy later on. "And after the King’s men, Pere’s low men, have scooped the kids’ brains, what then? Back through the door with them, I suppose – the one under the castle. Back to the Wolves’ staging point. And a train takes them the rest of the way home."

"Aye."

"Why do they bother takin em back at all?"

"Lady, I know not." Then Mia’s voice dropped. "There’s another door under Castle Discordia. Another door in the rooms of ruin. One that goes…" She licked her lips. "That goes todash."

"Todash?…I know the word, but I don’t understand what’s so bad – "

"There are endless worlds, your dinh is correct about that, but even when those worlds are close together – like some of the multiple New Yorks – there are endless spaces between. Think ya of the spaces between the inner and outer walls of a house. Places where it’s always dark. But just because a place is always dark doesn’t mean it’s empty. Does it, Susannah?"

There are monsters in the todash darkness.

Who had said that? Roland? She couldn’t remember for sure, and what did it matter? She thought she understood what Mia was saying, and if so, it was horrible.

"Rats in the walls, Susannah.Bats in the walls. All sorts of sucking, biting bugs in the walls."

"Stop it, I get the picture."

"That door beneath the castle – one of their mistakes, I have no doubt – goes tonowhere at all. Into the darkness between worlds. Todash-space. But not empty space." Her voice lowered further. "That door is reserved for the Red King’s most bitter enemies. They’re thrown into a darkness where they may exist – blind, wandering, insane – for years. But in the end, something always finds them and devours them. Monsters beyond the ability of such minds as ours to bear thought of."

Susannah found herself trying to picture such a door, and what waited behind it. She didn’t want to but couldn’t help it. Her mouth dried up.

In that same low and somehow horrible tone of confidentiality, Mia said, "There were many places where the old people tried to join magic and science together, but yon may be the only one left." She nodded toward the Dogan. "It was there that Walter took me, to make me mortal and take me out ofPrim ‘s way forever.

"To make me like you."

Thirteen

Mia didn’t know everything, but so far as Susannah could make out, Walter/Flagg had offered the spirit later to be known as Mia the ultimate Faustian bargain. If she was willing to give up her nearly eternal but discorporate state and become a mortal woman, then she could become pregnant and bear a child. Walter was honest with her about how little she would actually be getting for all she’d be giving up. The baby wouldn’t grow as normal babies did – as Baby Michael had done before Mia’s unseen but worshipful eyes – and she might only have him for seven years, but oh what wonderful years they could be!

Beyond this, Walter had been tactfully silent, allowing Mia to form her own pictures: how she would nurse her baby and wash him, not neglecting the tender creases behind the knees and ears; how she would kiss him in the honeyspot between the unfledged wings of his shoulderblades; how she would walk with him, holding both of his hands in both of hers as he toddled; how she would read to him and point out Old Star and Old Mother in the sky and tell him the story of how Rustie Sam stole the widow’s best loaf of bread; how she would hug him to her and bathe his cheek with her grateful tears when he spoke his first word, which would, of course, beMama.

Susannah listened to this rapturous account with a mixture of pity and cynicism. Certainly Walter had done one hell of a job selling the idea to her, and as ever, the best way to do that was to let the mark sell herself. He’d even proposed a properly Satanic period of proprietorship: seven years.Just sign on the dotted line, madam, and please don’t mind that whiff of brimstone; I just can’t seem to get the smell out of my clothes.

Susannah understood the deal and still had trouble swallowing it. This creature had given up immortality for morning sickness, swollen and achy br**sts, and, in the last six weeks of her carry, the need to pee approximately every fifteen minutes. And wait, folks, there’s more! Two and a half years of changing diapers soaked with piss and loaded with shit! Of getting up in the night as the kid howls with the pain of cutting his first tooth (and cheer up, Mom, only thirty-one to go). That first magic spit-up! That first heartwarming spray of urine across the bridge of your nose when the kid lets go as you’re changing his clout!

And yes, there would be magic. Even though she’d never had a child herself, Susannah knew there would be magic even in the dirty diapers and the colic if the child were the result of a loving union. But to have the child and then have him taken away from you just when it was getting good, just as the child approached what most people agreed was the age of reason, responsibility, and accountability? To then be swept over the Crimson King’s red horizon? That was an awful idea. And was Mia so besotted by her impending motherhood that she didn’t realize the little shehad been promised was now being whittled away? Walter/Flagg had come to her in Fedic, Scenic Aftermath of the Red Death, and promised her seven years with her son. On the telephone in the Plaza-Park, however, Richard Sayre had spoken of a mere five.