The Dark Tower (Page 25)

EIGHT

Oh my God, Eddie tried to say, but no sound came out.

He had seen brightness growing ahead of them as they drove north along Turtleback Lane, following the one working taillight of Cullum’s truck. At first he thought it might be the carriage-lamps guarding some rich man’s driveway, then perhaps floodlights. But the glow kept strengthening, a bluegolden brilliance to their left, where the ridge sloped down to the lake. As they approached the source of the light (Cullum’s pickup now barely crawling), Eddie gasped and pointed as a circle of radiance broke free of the main body and flew toward them, changing colors as it came: blue to gold to red, red to green to gold and back to blue. In the center of it was something that looked like an insect with four wings. Then, as it soared above the bed of Cullum’s truck and into the dark woods on die east side of the road, it looked toward them and Eddie saw the insect had a human face.

"What… dear God, Roland, what-"

"Taheen," Roland said, and said no more. In the growing brilliance his face was calm and tired.

More circles of light broke free of the main body and streamed across the road in cometary splendor. Eddie saw flies and tiny jeweled hummingbirds and what appeared to be winged frogs. Beyond them…

The taillight of Cullum’s truck flashed bright, but Eddie was so busy goggling that he would have rear-ended the man had Roland not spoken to him sharply. Eddie threw the Galaxie into Park without bothering to either set the emergency brake or turn off the engine. Then he got out and walked toward the blacktop driveway that descended the steep wooded slope. His eyes were huge in the delicate light, his mouth hung open. Cullum joined him and stood looking down. The driveway was flanked by two signs: CARA LAUGHS on the left and 19 on the right.

"Somethin, ain’t it?" Cullum asked quiedy.

You got that right, Eddie tried to reply, and still no words would come out of his mouth, only a breathless wheeze.

Most of the light was coming from the woods to the east of the road and to the left of the Cara Laughs driveway. Here the trees-mosdy pines, spruces, and birches bent from a latewinter ice storm-were spread far apart, and hundreds of figures walked solemnly among them as though in a rustic ballroom, their bare feet scuffing through the leaves. Some were pretty clearly Children of Roderick, and as roont as Chevin of Chayven. Their skins were covered with the sores of radiation sickness and very few had more than a straggle of hair, but the light in which they walked gave them a beauty that was almost too great to look upon. Eddie saw a one-eyed woman carrying what appeared to be a dead child. She looked at him with an expression of sorrow and her mouth moved, but Eddie could hear nothing. He raised his fist to his forehead and bent his leg.

Then he touched the corner of one eye and pointed to her. I see you, the gesture said… or so he hoped. I see you very well. The woman bearing the dead or sleeping child returned the gesture, and then passed from sight.

Overhead, thunder cracked sharply and lightning flashed down into the center of the glow. An ancient fir tree, its lusty trunk girdled with moss, took the bolt and split apart down its center, falling half one way and half the other. The inside was on fire. And a great gust of sparks-not fire, not this, but something with the ethereal quality of swamplight-went twisting up toward the hanging swags of the clouds. In those sparks Eddie saw tiny dancing bodies, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.

It was like watching a squadron of Tinker Bells, there and then gone.

"Look at em," John said reverently. "Walk-ins! Gorry, there’s hundreds! 1 wish my friend Donnie was here to see."

Eddie thought he was probably right: hundreds of men, women, and children were walking through the woods below them, walking through the light, appearing and disappearing and then appearing again. As he watched, he felt a cold drop of water splash his neck, followed by a second and a third. The wind swooped down through the trees, provoking another upward gush of those fairy-like creatures and turning the tree that had been halved by lightning into a pair of vast crackling torches.

"Come on," Roland said, grabbing Eddie’s arm. "It’s going to come a downpour and this’ll go out like a candle. If we’re still on this side when it does, we’ll be stuck here."

"Where-" Eddie began, and then he saw. Near the foot of the driveway, where the forest cover gave way to a tumble of rocks falling down to the lake, was the core of the glow, for the time being too bright to look at. Roland dragged him in that direction. John Cullum remained hypnotized for a moment longer by the walk-ins, then tried to follow them.

"No!" Roland called over his shoulder. The rain was falling harder now, the drops cold on his skin and the size of coins.

"You have your work, John! Fare you well!"

"And you, boys!" John called back. He stopped and raised his hand in a wave. A bolt of electricity cut across the sky, momentarily lighting his face in brilliant blue and deepest black. "And you!"

"Eddie, we’re going to run into the core of the light,"

Roland said. "It’s not a door of the old people but of the Prim-that is magic, do ye ken. It’ll take us to the place we want, if we concentrate hard enough."

"Where-"

"There’s no time! Jake’s told me where, by touch! Only hold my hand and keep your mind blank! I can take us!"

Eddie wanted to ask him if he was absolutely sure of that, but there was no time. Roland broke into a run. Eddie joined him.

They sprinted down the slope and into the light. Eddie felt it breathing over his skin like a million small mouths. Their boots crackled in the deep leaf cover. To his right was the burning tree. He could smell the sap and the sizzle of its cooking bark.

Now they closed in on the core of the light. At first Eddie could see Kezar Lake through it and then he felt an enormous force grip him and pull him forward through the cold rain and into that brilliant murmuring glare. For just a moment he glimpsed the shape of a doorway. Then he redoubled his grip on Roland’s hand and closed his eyes. The leaf-littered ground ran out beneath his feet and they were flying.

Chapter VII:REUNION

ONE

Flaherty stood at the New York/Fedic door, which had been scarred by several gunshots but otherwise stood whole against them, an impassable barrier which the shitting kid had somehow passed. Lamia stood silent beside him, waiting for Flaherty’s rage to exhaust itself. The others also waited, maintaining the same prudent silence.

Finally the blows Flaherty had been raining on the door began to slow. He administered one final overhand smash, and Lamia winced as blood flew from the hume’s knuckles.

"What?" Flaherty asked, catching his grimace. "What? Do you have something to say?"

Lamia cared not at all for the white circles around Flaherty’s eyes and the hard red roses in Flaherty’s cheeks. Least of all for the way Flaherty’s hand had risen to the butt of the Glock automatic hanging beneath his armpit. "No," he said.

"No, sai."

"Go on, say what’s on your mind, do it please ya," Flaherty persisted. He tried to smile and produced a gruesome grin instead-the leer of a madman. Quietly, with barely a rustle, the rest pulled back. "Others will have plenty to say; why shouldn’t you start, my cully? I lost him! Be the first to carp, you ugly motherfucker!"

I’m dead, Lamia thought. After a life of service to the King, one unguarded expression in the presence of a man who needs a scapegoat, and I’m dead.

He looked around, verifying that none of the others would step in for him, and then said: "Flaherty, if I’ve offended you in some way I’m sor-"

"Oh, you’ve offended me, sure enough!" Flaherty shrieked, his Boston accent growing thicker as his rage escalated. "I’m sure I’ll pay for tonight’s work, aye, but I think you’ll pay fir-"

There was a kind of gasp in the air around them, as if the corridor itself had inhaled sharply. Flaherty’s hair and Lamia’s fur rippled. Flaherty’s posse of low men and vampires began to turn. Suddenly one of them, a vamp named Albrecht, shrieked and bolted forward, allowing Flaherty a view of two newcomers, men with raindrops still fresh and dark on their jeans and boots and shirts. There was trail-dusty gunna-gar at their feet and revolvers hung at their hips. Flaherty saw the sandalwood grips in the instant before the younger one drew, faster than blue blazes, and understood at once why Albrecht had run. Only one sort of man carried guns that looked like that.

The young one fired a single shot. Albrecht’s blond hair jumped as if flicked by an invisible hand and then he collapsed forward, fading within his clothes as he did so.

"Hile, you bondsmen of the Ring," the older one said. He spoke in a purely conversational tone. Flaherty-his hands still bleeding from his extravagant drumming on the door through which the snot-babby had disappeared-could not seem to get the sense of him. It was the one of whom they had been warned, surely it was Roland of Gilead, but how had he gotten here, and on their blindside? Howl Roland’s cold blue eyes surveyed them. "Which of this sorry herd calls himself dinh? Will that one honor us by stepping forward or not? Not?" His eyes surveyed them; his left hand departed the vicinity of his gun and journeyed to the corner of his mouth, where a small sarcastic smile had bloomed. "Not?

Too bad. Th’art cowards after all, I’m sorry to see. Thee’d kill a priest and chase a lad but not stand and claim thy day’s work.

Th’art cowards and the sons of cow-"