The Waste Lands

Jake’s hand closed on the key. As he brought it out, one of the notches caught in the pocket. His fingers, wet with sweat, slipped. The key fell to the floor, bounced, dropped through a crack between two warped boards, and disappeared.

“HE’S IN TROUBLE!” SUSANNAH heard Eddie shout, but the sound of his voice was distant. She had plenty of trouble herself . . . but she thought she might be doing okay, just the same.

I’m goan melt that icicle, sugar, she had told the demon. I’m goan melt it, and when it’s gone, what you goan do then?

She hadn’t melted it, exactly, but she had changed it. The thing inside her was certainly giving her no pleasure, but at least the terrible pain had subsided and it was no longer cold. It was trapped, unable to disengage. Nor was she holding it in with her body, exactly. Roland had said sex was its weakness as well as its weapon, and he had been right, as usual. It had taken her, but she had also taken it, and now it was as if each of them had a finger stuck in one of those fiendish Chinese tubes, where yanking only sticks you tighter. She hung onto one idea for dear life; had to, because all other conscious thought had vanished. She had to hold this sobbing, frightened, vicious thing in the snare of its own helpless lust. It wriggled and thrust and convulsed within her, screaming to be let go at the same time it used her body with greedy, helpless intensity, but she would not let it go free. And what’s gonna happen when I finally do let go? she wondered desperately. What’s it gonna do to pay me back?

She didn’t know.

THE RAIN WAS FALLING in sheets, threatening to turn the circle within the stones into a sea of mud. “Hold something over the door!” Eddie shouted. “Don’t let the rain wash it out!”

Roland snatched a glance at Susannah and saw she was still strug-gling with the demon. Her eyes were half-shut, her mouth pulled down in a harsh grimace. He could not see or hear the demon, but he could sense its angry, frightened thrashings.

Eddie turned his streaming face toward him. “Did you hear me?” he shouted. “Get something over the goddam door, and do it NOW!”

Roland yanked one of their hides from his pack and held a corner in each hand.

Then he stretched his arms out and leaned over Eddie, creating a makeshift tent. The tip of Eddie’s homemade pencil was caked with mud. He wiped it across his arm, leaving a smear the color of bitter chocolate, then wrapped his fist around the stick again and bent over his drawing. It was not exactly the same size as the door on Jake’s side of the barrier—the ratio was perhaps .75:1—but it would be big enough for Jake to come through . . . if the keys worked. If he even has a key, isn’t that what you mean? he asked himself. Suppose he’s dropped it . . . or that house made him drop it? He drew a plate under the circle which represented the doorknob, hesitated, and then squiggled the familiar shape of a keyhole within it: He hesitated. There was one more thing, but what? It was hard to think of, because it felt as if there were a tornado roaring through his head, a tornado with random thoughts flipping around inside it instead of uprooted barns and privies and chicken-houses.

“Come on, sugah!” Susannah cried from behind him. “You weakenin on me! Wassa matta? I thought you was some kind of hot-shit studboy!” Boy. That was it.

Carefully, he wrote THE BOY across the top panel of the door with the tip of his stick. At the instant he finished the Y, the drawing changed. The circle of rain-darkened earth he had drawn suddenly darkened even more . . . and pushed up from the ground, becoming a dark, gleaming knob. And instead of brown, wet earth within the shape of the keyhole, he could see dim light. Behind him, Susannah shrieked at the demon again, urging it on, but now she sounded as if she were tiring. This had to end, and soon. Eddie bent forward from the waist like a Muslim saluting Allah, and put his eye to the keyhole he had drawn. He looked through it into his own world, into that house which he and Henry had gone to see in May of 1977, unaware (except he, Eddie, had not been unaware; no, not totally unaware, even then) that a boy from another part of the city was following them. He saw a hallway. Jake was down on his hands and knees, tugging frantically at a board. Something was coming for him. Eddie could see it, but at the same time he could not—it was as if part of his brain refused to see it, as if seeing would lead to comprehension and comprehension to madness. “Hurry up, Jake!” he screamed into the keyhole. “For Christ’s sake, move it!” Above the speaking ring, thunder ripped the sky like cannon-fire and the rain turned to hail.

FOR A MOMENT AFTER the key fell, Jake only stood where he was, staring down at the narrow crack between the boards.

Incredibly, he felt sleepy.

That shouldn’t have happened, he thought. It’s one thing too much. I can’t go on with this, not one minute, not one single second longer. I’m going to curl up against that door instead. I’m going to go to sleep, right away, all at once, and when it grabs me and pulls me toward its mouth, I’ll never wake up. Then the thing coming out of the wall grunted, and when Jake looked up, his urge to give in vanished in a single stroke of terror. Now it was all the way out of the wall, a giant plaster head with one broken wooden eye and one reaching plaster hand. Chunks of lathing stood out on its skull in random hackles, like a child’s drawing of hair. It saw Jake and opened its mouth, revealing jagged wooden teeth. It grunted again. Plaster-dust drifted out of its yawning mouth like cigar smoke.

Jake fell to his knees and peered into the crack. The key was a small brave shimmer of silvery light down there in the dark, but the crack was far too narrow to admit his fingers. He seized one of the boards and yanked with all his might. The nails which held it groaned … but held.