by Stephen King
I'm going to walk into your bathroom. I'm going in by myself.
Knowing how a magic trick worked was something he usually wouldn't want to know; knowing spoiled the fun.
Usually.
This, however, was a trick he couldn't wait to spoil.
"Fine," he said to Eddie. "If it's in there, go get it. Just like you are. Bare-ass."
"Good," Eddie said, and started toward the bathroom door.
"But not alone," Balazar said. Eddie stopped at once, his body stiffening as if Balazar had shot him with an invisible harpoon, and it did Balazar's heart good to see it. For the first time something hadn't gone according to the kid's plan. "Jack's going with you."
"No," Eddie said at once. "That's not what I--"
"Eddie," Balazar said gently, "you don't tell me no. That's one thing you never do."
8
It's all right, the gunslinger said. Let him come.
But. . .but. . .
Eddie was close to gibbering, barely holding onto his control. It wasn't just the sudden curve-ball Balazar had thrown him; it was his gnawing worry over Henry, and, growing steadily ascendant over all else, his need for a fix.
Let him come. It will be all right. Listen:
Eddie listened.
9
Balazar watched him, a slim, naked man with only the first suggestion of the junkie's typical cave-chested slouch, his head cocked to one side, and as he watched Balazar felt some of his confidence evaporate. It was as if the kid was listening to a voice only he could hear.
The same thought passed through Andolini's mind, but in a different way: What's this? He looks like the dog on those old RCA Victor records!
Col had wanted to tell him something about Eddie's eyes. Suddenly Jack Andolini wished he had listened.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, he thought.
If Eddie had been listening to voices inside his head, they had either quit talking or he had quit paying attention.
"Okay," he said. "Come along, Jack. I'll show you the Eighth Wonder of the World." He flashed a smile that neither Jack Andolini nor Enrico Balazar cared for in the slightest.
"Is that so?" Andolini pulled a gun from the clamshell holster attached to his belt at the small of his back. "Am I gonna be amazed?"
Eddie's smile widened. "Oh yeah. I think this is gonna knock your socks off."
10
Andolini followed Eddie into the bathroom. He was holding the gun up because his wind was up.
"Close the door," Eddie said.
"Fuck you," Andolini answered.
"Close the door or no dope," Eddie said.
"Fuck you," Andolini said again. Now, a little scared, feeling that there was something going on that he didn't understand, Andolini looked brighter than he had in the van.
"He won't close the door," Eddie yelled at Balazar. "I'm getting ready to give up on you, Mr. Balazar. You probably got six wiseguys in this place, every one of them with about four guns, and the two of you are going batshit over a kid in a crapper. A junkie kid."
"Shut the fucking door, Jack!" Balazar shouted.
"That's right," Eddie said as Jack Andolini kicked the door shut behind him. "Is you a man or is you a m--"
"Oh boy, ain't I had enough of this turd," Andolini said to no one in particular. He raised the gun, butt forward, meaning to pistol-whip Eddie across the mouth.
Then he froze, gun drawn up across his body, the snarl that bared his teeth slackening into a slack-jawed gape of surprise as he saw what Col Vincent had seen in the van.
Eddie's eyes changed from brown to blue.
"Now grab him!" a low, commanding voice said, and although the voice came from Eddie's mouth, it was not Eddie's voice.
Schizo, Jack Andolini thought. He's gone schizo, gone fucking schi--
But the thought broke off when Eddie's hands grabbed his shoulders, because when that happened, Andolini saw a hole in reality suddenly appear about three feet behind Eddie.
No, not a hole. Its dimensions were too perfect for that.
It was a door.
"Hail Mary fulla grace," Jack said in a low breathy moan. Through that doorway which hung in space a foot or so above the floor in front of Balazar's private shower he could see a dark beach which sloped down to crashing waves. Things were moving on that beach. Things.
He brought the gun down, but the blow which had been meant to break off all of Eddie's front teeth at the gum-line did no more than mash Eddie's lips back and bloody them a little. All the strength was running out of him. Jack could feel it happening.
"I told you it was gonna knock your socks off, Jack," Eddie said, and then yanked him. Jack realized what Eddie meant to do at the last moment and began to fight like a wildcat, but it was too late--they were tumbling backward through that doorway, and the droning hum of New York City at night, so familiar and constant you never even heard it unless it wasn't there anymore, was replaced by the grinding sound of the waves and the grating, questioning voices of dimly seen horrors crawling to and fro on the beach.
11
We'll have to move very fast, or we'll find ourselves basted in a hot oast, Roland had said, and Eddie was pretty sure the guy meant that if they didn't shuck and jive at damn near the speed of light, their gooses were going to be cooked. He believed it, too. When it came to hard guys, Jack Andolini was like Dwight Gooden: you could rock him, yes, you could shock him, maybe, but if you let him get away in the early innings he was going to stomp you flat later on.
Left hand! Roland screamed at himself as they went through and he separated from Eddie. Remember! Left hand! Left hand!
He saw Eddie and Jack stumble backward, fall, and then go rolling down the rocky scree that edged the beach, struggling for the gun in Andolini's hand.
Roland had just time to think what a cosmic joke it would be if he arrived back in his own world only to discover that his physical body had died while he had been away . . . and then it was too late. Too late to wonder, too late to go back.
12
Andolini didn't know what had happened. Part of him was sure he had gone crazy, part was sure Eddie had doped him or gassed him or something like that, part believed that the vengeful God of his childhood had finally tired of his evils and had plucked him away from the world he knew and set him down in this weird purgatory.
Then he saw the door, standing open, spilling a fan of white light--the light from Balazar's john--onto the rocky ground--and understood it was possible to get back. Andolini was a practical man above all else. He would worry about what all this meant later on. Right now he intended to kill this creep's ass and get back through that door.
The strength that had gone out of him in his shocked surprise now flooded back. He realized Eddie was trying to pull his small but very efficient Colt Cobra out of his hand and had nearly succeeded. Jack pulled it back with a curse, tried to aim, and Eddie promptly grabbed his arm again.
Andolini hoisted a knee into the big muscle of Eddie's right thigh (the expensive gabardine of Andolini's slacks was now crusted with dirty gray beach sand) and Eddie screamed as the muscle seized up.
"Roland!" he cried. "Help me! For Christ's sake, help me!"
Andolini snapped his head around and what he saw threw him off-balance again. There was a guy standing there . . . only he looked more like a ghost than a guy. Not exactly Casper the Friendly Ghost, either. The swaying figure's white, haggard face was rough with beard-stubble. His shirt was in tatters which blew back behind him in twisted ribbons, showing the starved stack of his ribs. A filthy rag was wrapped around his right hand. He looked sick, sick and dying, but even so he also looked tough enough to make Andolini feel like a soft-boiled egg.
And the joker was wearing a pair of guns.
They looked older than the hills, old enough to have come from a Wild West museum . . . but they were guns just the same, they might even really work, and Andolini suddenly realized he was going to have to take care of the white-faced man right a
way . . . unless he really was a spook, and if that was the case, it wouldn't matter fuck-all, so there was really no sense worrying about it.
Andolini let go of Eddie and snap-rolled to the right, barely feeling the edge of rock that tore open his five-hundred-dollar sport jacket. At the same instant the gunslinger drew left-handed, and his draw was as it had always been, sick or well, wide awake or still half asleep: faster than a streak of blue summer lightning.
I'm beat, Andolini thought, full of sick wonder. Christ, he's faster than anybody I ever saw! I'm beat, holy Mary Mother of God, he's gonna blow me away, he's g--
The man in the ragged shirt pulled the trigger of the revolver in his left hand and Jack Andolini thought--really thought--he was dead before he realized there had been only a dull click instead of a report.
Misfire.
Smiling, Andolini rose to his knees and raised his own gun.
"I don't know who you are, but you can kiss your ass good-bye, you fucking spook," he said.
13
Eddie sat up, shivering, his naked body pocked with goosebumps. He saw Roland draw, heard the dry snap that should have been a bang, saw Andolini come up on his knees, heard him say something, and before he really knew what he was doing his hand had found a ragged chunk of rock. He pulled it out of the grainy earth and threw it as hard as he could.
It struck Andolini high on the back of the head and bounced away. Blood sprayed from a ragged hanging flap in Jack Andolini's scalp. Andolini fired, but the bullet that surely would have killed the gunslinger otherwise went wild.
14
Not really wild, the gunslinger could have told Eddie. When you feel the wind of the slug on your cheek, you can't really call it wild.
He thumbed the hammer of his gun back and pulled the trigger again as he recoiled from Andolini's shot. This time the bullet in the chamber fired--the dry, authoritative crack echoed up and down the beach. Gulls asleep on rocks high above the lobstrosities awoke and flew upward in screaming, startled packs.
The gunslinger's bullet would have stopped Andolini for good in spite of his own involuntary recoil, but by then Andolini was also in motion, falling sideways, dazed by the blow on the head. The crack of the gunslinger's revolver seemed distant, but the searing poker it plunged into his left arm, shattering the elbow, was real enough. It brought him out of his daze and he rose to his feet, one arm hanging broken and useless, the gun wavering wildly about in his other hand, looking for a target.
It was Eddie he saw first, Eddie the junkie, Eddie who had somehow brought him to this crazy place. Eddie was standing there as naked as the day he had been born, shivering in the chilly wind, clutching himself with both arms. Well, he might die here, but he would at least have the pleasure of taking Eddie Fucking Dean with him.
Andolini brought his gun up. The little Cobra now seemed to weigh about twenty pounds, but he managed.
15
This better not be another misfire, Roland thought grimly, and thumbed the hammer back again. Below the din of the gulls, he heard the smooth oiled click as the chamber revolved.
16
It was no misfire.
17
The gunslinger hadn't aimed at Andolini's head but at the gun in Andolini's hand. He didn't know if they still needed this man, but they might; he was important to Balazar, and because Balazar had proved to be every bit as dangerous as Roland had thought he might be, the best course was the safest one.
His shot was good, and that was no surprise; what happened to Andolini's gun and hence to Andolini was. Roland had seen it happen, but only twice in all the years he had seen men fire guns at each other.
Bad luck for you, fellow, the gunslinger thought as Andolini wandered off toward the beach, screaming. Blood poured down his shirt and pants. The hand which had been holding the Colt Cobra was missing below the middle of the palm. The gun was a senseless piece of twisted metal lying on the sand.
Eddie stared at him, stunned. No one would ever misjudge Jack Andolini's caveman face again, because now he had no face; where it had been there was now nothing but a churned mess of raw flesh and the black screaming hole of his mouth.
"My God, what happened?"
"My bullet must have struck the cylinder of his gun at the second he pulled the trigger," the gunslinger said. He spoke as dryly as a professor giving a police academy ballistics lecture. "The result was an explosion that tore the back off his gun. I think one or two of the other cartridges may have exploded as well."
"Shoot him," Eddie said. He was shivering harder than ever, and now it wasn't just the combination of night air, sea breeze, and naked body that was causing it. "Kill him. Put him out of his misery, for God's s--"
"Too late," the gunslinger said with a cold indifference that chilled Eddie's flesh all the way in to the bone.
And Eddie turned away just too late to avoid seeing the lobstrosities swarm over Andolini's feet, tearing off his Gucci loafers . . . with the feet still inside them, of course. Screaming, waving his arms spasmodically before him, Andolini fell forward. The lobstrosities swarmed greedily over him, questioning him anxiously all the while they were eating him alive: Dad-a-chack? Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dod-a-chock?
"Jesus," Eddie moaned. "What do we do now?"
"Now you get exactly as much of the (devil-powder the gunslinger said; cocaine Eddie heard) as you promised the man Balazar," Roland said, "no more and no less. And we go back." He looked levelly at Eddie. "Only this time I have to go back with you. As myself."
"Jesus Christ," Eddie said. "Can you do that?" And at once answered his own question. "Sure you can. But why?"
"Because you can't handle this alone," Roland said. "Come here."
Eddie looked back at the squirming hump of clawed creatures on the beach. He had never liked Jack Andolini, but he felt his stomach roll over just the same.
"Come here," Roland said impatiently. "We've little time, and I have little liking for what I must do now. It's something I've never done before. Never thought I would do." His lips twisted bitterly. "I'm getting used to doing things like that."
Eddie approached the scrawny figure slowly, on legs that felt more and more like rubber. His bare skin was white and glimmering in the alien dark. Just who are you, Roland? he thought. What are you? And that heat I feel baking off you--is it just fever? Or some kind of madness? I think it might be both.
God, he needed a fix. More: he deserved a fix.
"Never done what before?" he asked. "What are you talking about?"
"Take this," Roland said, and gestured at the ancient revolver slung low on his right hip. Did not point; there was no finger to point with, only a bulky, rag-wrapped bundle. "It's no good to me. Not now, perhaps never again."
"I . . ." Eddie swallowed. "I don't want to touch it."
"I don't want you to either," the gunslinger said with curious gentleness, "but I'm afraid neither of us has a choice. There's going to be shooting."
"There is?"
"Yes." The gunslinger looked serenely at Eddie. "Quite a lot of it, I think."
18
Balazar had become more and more uneasy. Too long. They had been in there too long and it was too quiet. Distantly, maybe on the next block, he could hear people shouting at each other and then a couple of rattling reports that were probably firecrackers . . . but when you were in the sort of business Balazar was in, firecrackers weren't the first thing you thought of.
A scream. Was that a scream?
Never mind. Whatever's happening on the next block has nothing to do with you. You're turning into an old woman.
All the same, the signs were bad. Very bad.
"Jack?" he yelled at the closed bathroom door.
There was no answer.
Balazar opened the left front drawer of his desk and took out the gun. This was no Colt Cobra, cozy enough to fit in a clamshell holster; it was a .357 Magnum.
" 'Cimi!" he shouted. "I want you!"
He slammed the drawer. The tower of ca
rds fell with a soft, sighing thump. Balazar didn't even notice.
'Cimi Dretto, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, filled the doorway. He saw that Da Boss had pulled his gun out of the drawer, and 'Cimi immediately pulled his own from beneath a plaid jacket so loud it could have caused flash-burns on anyone who made the mistake of looking at it too long.
"I want Claudio and Tricks," he said. "Get them quick. The kid is up to something."
"We got a problem," 'Cimi said.
Balazar's eyes flicked from the bathroom door to 'Cimi. "Oh, I got plenty of those already," he said. "What's this new one, 'Cimi?"
'Cimi licked his lips. He didn't like telling Da Boss bad news even under the best of circumstances; when he looked like this . . .
"Well," he said, and licked his lips. "You see--"
"Will you hurry the fuck up?" Balazar yelled.
19
The sandalwood grips of the revolver were so smooth that Eddie's first act upon receiving it was to nearly drop it on his toes. The thing was so big it looked prehistoric, so heavy he knew he would have to lift it two-handed. The recoil, he thought, is apt to drive me right through the nearest wall. That's if it fires at all. Yet there was some part of him that wanted to hold it, that responded to its perfectly expressed purpose, that sensed its dim and bloody history and wanted to be part of it.
No one but the best ever held this baby in his hand, Eddie thought. Until now, at least.
"Are you ready?" Roland asked.
"No, but let's do it," Eddie said.
He gripped Roland's left wrist with his left hand. Roland slid his hot right arm around Eddie's bare shoulders.
Together they stepped back through the doorway, from the windy darkness of the beach in Roland's dying world to the cool fluorescent glare of Balazar's private bathroom in The Leaning Tower.
Eddie blinked, adjusting his eyes to the light, and heard 'Cimi Dretto in the other room. "We got a problem," 'Cimi was saying. Don't we all, Eddie thought, and then his eyes riveted on Balazar's medicine chest. It was standing open. In his mind he heard Balazar telling Jack to search the bathroom, and heard Andolini asking if there was any place in there he wouldn't know about. Balazar had paused before replying. There is a small panel on the back wall of the medicine cabinet, he had said. I keep a few personal things in there.
