The Waste Lands (Page 29)

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.

THEY ATE A QUICK breakfast as the sun came up, repacked and redistrib-uted 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 remem-ber 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.”