The Waste Lands

by Stephen King

"All right. Return as soon as possible."

  "Yes, Ms. Avery."

  He closed the folder as he got up, took hold of it, then reluctantly let go again. No good. Ms. Avery would wonder why he was taking his Final Essay to the toilet with him. He should have removed the damning pages from the folder and stuffed them in his pocket before asking for permission to step out. Too late now.

  Jake walked down the aisle toward the door, leaving his folder on the desk and his bookbag lying beneath it.

  "Hope everything comes out all right, Chambers," David Surrey whispered, and snickered into his hand.

  "Still your restless lips, David," Ms. Avery said, clearly exasperated now, and the whole class laughed.

  Jake reached the door leading to the hall, and as he grasped the knob, that feeling of hope and surety rose in him again: This is it--really it. I'll open the door and the desert sun will shine in. I'll feel that dry wind on my face. I'll step through and never see this classroom again.

  He opened the door and it was only the hallway on the other side, but he was right about one thing just the same: he never saw Ms. Avery's classroom again.

  4

  HE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the dim, wood-panelled corridor, sweating lightly. He walked past classroom doors he would have felt compelled to open if not for the clear glass windows set in each one. He looked into Mr. Bissette's French II class and Mr. Knopf's Introduction to Geometry class. In both rooms the pupils sat with pencils in hand and heads bowed over open blue-books. He looked into Mr. Harley's Spoken Arts class and saw Stan Dorfman--one of those acquaintances who were not quite friends--beginning his Final Speech. Stan looked scared to death, but Jake could have told Stan he didn't have the slightest idea what fear--real fear--was all about.

  I died.

  No. I didn't.

  Did too.

  Did not.

  Did.

  Didn't.

  He came to a door marked GIRLS. He pushed it open, expecting to see a bright desert sky and a blue haze of mountains on the horizon. Instead he saw Belinda Stevens standing at one of the sinks, looking into the mirror above the basin and squeezing a pimple on her forehead.

  "Jesus Christ, do you mind?" she asked.

  "Sorry. Wrong door. I thought it was the desert."

  "What?"

  But he had already let the door go and it was swinging shut on its pneumatic elbow. He passed the drinking fountain and opened the door marked BOYS. This was it, he knew it, was sure of it, this was the door which would take him back--

  Three urinals gleamed spotlessly under the fluorescent lights. A tap dripped solemnly into a sink. That was all.

  Jake let the door close. He walked on down the hall, his heels making firm little clicks on the tiles. He glanced into the office before passing it and saw only Ms. Franks. She was talking on the telephone, swinging back and forth in her swivel chair and playing with a lock of her hair. The silver-plated bell stood on the desk beside her. Jake waited until she swivelled away from the door and then hurried past. Thirty seconds later he was emerging into the bright sunshine of a morning in late May. .

  I've gone truant, he thought. Even his distraction did not keep him from being amazed at this unexpected development. When I don't come back from the bathroom in five minutes or so, Ms. Avery will send somebody to check . . . and then they'll know. They'll all know that I've left school, gone truant.

  He thought of the folder lying on his desk.

  They'll read it and they'll think I'm crazy. Fou. Sure they will. Of course. Because I am.

  Then another voice spoke. It was, he thought, the voice of the man with the bombardier's eyes, the man who wore the two big guns slung low on his hips. The voice was cold . . . but not without comfort.

  No, Jake, Roland said. You're not crazy. You're lost and scared, but you're not crazy and need fear neither your shadow in the morning striding behind you nor your shadow at evening rising to meet you. You have to find your way back home, that's all.

  "But where do I go?" Jake whispered. He stood on the sidewalk of Fifty-sixth Street between Park and Madison, watching the traffic bolt past. A city bus snored by, laying a thin trail of acrid blue diesel smoke. "Where do I go? Where's the fucking door?"

  But the voice of the gunslinger had fallen silent.

  Jake turned left, in the direction of the East River, and began to walk blindly forward. He had no idea where he was going--no idea at all. He could only hope his feet would carry him to the right place ... as they had carried him to the wrong one not long ago.

  5

  IT HAD HAPPENED THREE weeks earlier.

  One could not say It all began three weeks earlier, because that gave the impression that there had been some sort of progression, and that wasn't right. There had been a progression to the voices, to the violence with which each insisted on its own particular version of reality, but the rest of it had happened all at once.

  He left home at eight o'clock to walk to school--he always walked when the weather was good, and the weather this May had been absolutely fine. His father had left for the Network, his mother was still in bed, and Mrs. Greta Shaw was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading her New York Post.

  "Goodbye, Greta," he said. "I'm going to school now."

  She raised a hand to him without looking up from the paper. "Have a good day, Johnny."

  All according to routine. Just another day in the life.

  And so it had been for the next fifteen hundred seconds. Then everything had changed forever.

  He idled along, bookbag in one hand, lunch sack in the other, looking in the windows. Seven hundred and twenty seconds from the end of his life as he had always known it, he paused to look in the window of Brendio's, where mannequins dressed in fur coats and Edwardian suits stood in stiff poses of conversation. He was thinking only of going bowling that afternoon after school. His average was 158, great for a kid who was only eleven. His ambition was to some day be a bowler on the pro tour (and if his father had known this little factoid, he also would have hit the roof).

  Closing in now--closing in on the moment when his sanity would be suddenly eclipsed.

  He crossed Thirty-ninth and there were four hundred seconds left. Had to wait for the WALK light at Forty-first and there were two hundred and seventy. Paused to look in the novelty shop on the corner of Fifth and Forty-second and there were a hundred and ninety. And now, with just over three minutes left in his ordinary life, Jake Chambers walked beneath the unseen umbrella of that force which Roland called ka-tet.

  An odd, uneasy feeling began to creep over him. At first he thought it was a feeling of being watched, and then he realized it wasn't that at all . . . or not precisely that. He felt that he had been here before; that he was reliving a dream he had mostly forgotten. He waited for the feeling to pass, but it didn't. It grew stronger, and now began to mix with a sensation he reluctantly recognized as terror.

  Up ahead, on the near corner of Fifth and Forty-third, a black man in a Panama hat was setting up a pretzel-and-soda cart.

  He's the one that yells "Oh my God, he's kilt!" Jake thought.

  Approaching the far corner was a fat lady with a Bloomingdale's bag in her hand.

  She'll drop the bag. Drop the bag and put her hands to her mouth and scream. The bag will split open. There's a doll inside the bag. It's wrapped in a red towel. I'll see this from the street. From where I'll be lying in the street with my blood soaking into my pants and spreading around me in a pool.

  Behind the fat woman was a tall man in a gray nailhead worsted suit. He was carrying a briefcase.

  He's the one who vomits on his shoes. He's the one who drops his briefcase and throws up on his shoes. What's happening to me?

  Yet his feet carried him numbly forward toward the intersection, where people were crossing in a brisk, steady stream. Somewhere behind him, closing in, was a killer priest. He knew this, just as he knew that the priest's hands would in a moment be outstretched to push . . . but he could not look
around. It was like being locked in a nightmare where things simply had to take their course.

  Fifty-three seconds left now. Ahead of him, the pretzel vendor was opening a hatch in the side of his cart.

  He's going to take out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, Jake thought. Not a can but a bottle. He'll shake it up and drink it all at once.

  The pretzel vendor brought out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, shook it vigorously, and spun off the cap.

  Forty seconds left.

  Now the light will change.

  White WALK went out. Red DONT WALK began to flash rapidly on and off. And somewhere, less than half a block away, a big blue Cadillac was now rolling toward the intersection of Fifth and Forty-third. Jake knew this, just as he knew the driver was a fat man wearing a hat almost the exact same blue shade as his car.

  I'm going to die!

  He wanted to scream this aloud to the people walking heedlessly all around him, but his jaws were locked shut. His feet swept him serenely onward toward the intersection. The DONT WALK sign stopped flashing and shone out its solid red warning. The pretzel vendor tossed his empty Yoo-Hoo bottle into the wire trash basket on the corner. The fat lady stood on the corner across the street from Jake, holding her shopping bag by the handles. The man in the nailhead suit was directly behind her. Now there were eighteen seconds left.

  Time for the toy truck to go by, Jake thought.

  Ahead of him a van with a picture of a happy jumping-jack and the words TOOKER'S WHOLESALE TOYS printed on the side swept through the intersection, jolting up and down in the potholes. Behind him, Jake knew, the man in the black robe was beginning to move faster, closing the gap, now reaching out with his long hands. Yet he could not look around, as you couldn't look around in dreams when something awful was gaining on you.

  Run! And if you can't run, sit down and grab hold of a No Parking sign! Don't just let it happen!

  But he was powerless to stop it from happening. Ahead, on the edge of the curb, was a young woman in a white sweater and a black skirt. To her left was' a young Chicano guy with a boombox. A Donna Summer disco tune was just ending. The next song, Jake knew, would be "Dr. Love," by Kiss.

  They're going to move apart--

  Even as the thought came, the woman moved a step to her right. The Chicano guy moved a step to his left, creating a gap between them. Jake's traitor feet swept him into the gap. Nine seconds now.

  Down the street, bright May sunshine twinkled on a Cadillac hood ornament. It was, Jake knew, a 1976 Sedan de Ville. Six seconds. The Caddy was speeding up. The light was getting ready to change and the man driving the de Ville, the fat man in the blue hat with the feather stuck jauntily in the brim, meant to scat through the intersection before it could. Three seconds. Behind Jake, the man in black was lunging forward. On the young man's boombox, "Love to Love You, Baby" ended and "Dr. Love" began.

  Two.

  The Cadillac changed to the lane nearest Jake's side of the street and charged down on the intersection, its killer grille snarling.

  One.

  Jake's breath stopped in his throat.

  None.

  "Uh!" Jake cried as the hands struck him firmly in the back, pushing him, pushing him into the street, pushing him out of his life--

  Except there were no hands.

  He reeled forward nevertheless, hands flailing at the air, his mouth a dark O of dismay. The Chicano guy with the boombox reached out, grabbed Jake's arm, and hauled him backward. "Look out, little hero," he said. "That traffic turn you into bratwurst."

  The Cadillac floated by. Jake caught a glimpse of the fat man in the blue hat peering out through the windshield, and then it was gone.

  That was when it happened; that was when he split down the middle and became two boys. One lay dying in the street. The other stood here on the corner, watching in dumb, stricken amazement as DONT WALK turned to WALK again and people began to cross around him just as if nothing had happened . . . as, indeed, nothing had.

  I'm alive! half of his mind rejoiced, screaming with relief.

  Dead! the other half screamed back. Dead in the street! They're all gathering around me, and the man in black who pushed me is saying "I am a priest. Let me through."

  Waves of faintness rushed through him and turned his thoughts to billowing parachute silk. He saw the fat lady approaching, and as she passed, Jake looked into her bag. He saw the bright blue eyes of a doll peeping above the edge of a red towel, just as he had known he would. Then she was gone. The pretzel vendor was not yelling Oh my God, he's kilt; he was continuing to set up for the day's business while he whistled the Donna Summer tune that had been playing on the Chicano guy's radio.

  Jake turned around, looking wildly for the priest who was not a priest. He wasn't there.

  Jake moaned.

  Snap out of it! What's wrong with you?

  He didn't know. He only knew he was supposed to be lying in the street right now, getting ready to die while the fat woman screamed and the guy in the nailhead worsted suit threw up and the man in black pushed through the gathering crowd.

  And in part of his mind, that did seem to be happening.

  The faintness began to return. Jake suddenly dropped his lunch sack to the pavement and slapped himself across the face as hard as he could. A woman on her way to work gave him a queer look. Jake ignored her. He left his lunch lying on the sidewalk and plunged into the intersection, also ignoring the red DONT WALK light, which had begun to stutter on and off again. It didn't matter now. Death had approached . . . and then passed by without a second glance. It hadn't been meant to happen that way, and on the deepest level of his existence he knew that, but it had.

  Maybe now he would live forever.

  The thought made him feel like screaming all over again.

  6

  HIS HEAD HAD CLEARED a little by the time he got to school, and his mind had gone to work trying to convince him that nothing was wrong, really nothing at all. Maybe something a little weird had happened, some sort of psychic flash, a momentary peek into one possible future, but so what? No big deal, right? The idea was actually sort of cool--the kind of thing they were always printing in the weird supermarket newspapers Greta Shaw liked to read when she was sure Jake's mother wasn't around--papers like the National Enquirer and Inside View. Except, of course, in those papers the psychic flash was always a kind of tactical nuclear strike--a woman who dreamed of a plane crash and changed her reservations, or a guy who dreamed his brother was being held prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie factory and it turned out to be true. When your psychic flash consisted of knowing that a Kiss song was going to play next on the radio, that a fat lady had a doll wrapped in a red towel in her Bloomingdale's bag, and that a pretzel vendor was going to drink a bottle of Yoo-Hoo instead of a can, how big a deal could it be?

  Forget it, he advised himself. It's over.

  A great idea, except by period three he knew it wasn't over; it was just beginning. He sat in Pre-Algebra, watching Mr. Knopf solving simple equations on the board, and realized with dawning horror that a whole new set of memories was surfacing in his mind. It was like watching strange objects float slowly-toward the surface of a muddy lake.

  I'm in a place I don't know, he thought. I mean, I will know it--or would have known it if the Cadillac had hit me. It's the way station--but the part of me that's there doesn't know that yet. That part only knows it's in the desert someplace, and there are no people. I've been crying, because I'm scared. I'm scared that this might be hell.

  By three o'clock, when he arrived at MidTown Lanes, he knew he had found the pump in the stables and had gotten a drink of water. The water was very cold and tasted strongly of minerals. Soon he would go inside and find a small supply of dried beef in a room which had once been a kitchen. He knew this as clearly and surely as he'd known the pretzel vendor would select a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, and that the doll peeking out of the Bloomingdale's bag had blue eyes.

  It was like being able to remember forward in time.
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br />   He bowled only two strings--the first a 96, the second an 87. Timmy looked at his sheet when he turned it in at the counter. and shook his head. "You're having an off-day today, champ," he said.

  "You don't know the half of it," Jake said.

  Timmy took a closer look. "You okay? You look really pale."

  "I think I might be coming down with a bug." This didn't feel like a lie, either. He was sure as hell coming down with something.

  "Go home and go to bed," Timmy advised. "Drink lots of clear liquids--gin, vodka, stuff like that."

  Jake smiled dutifully. "Maybe I will."

  He walked slowly home. All of New York was spread out around him, New York at its most seductive--a late-afternoon street serenade with a musician on every corner, all the trees in bloom, and everyone apparently in a good mood. Jake saw all this, but he also saw behind it: saw himself cowering in the shadows of the kitchen as the man in black drank like a grinning dog from the stable pump, saw himself sobbing with relief as he--or it--moved on without discovering him, saw himself falling deeply asleep as the sun went down and the stars began to come out like chips of ice in the harsh purple desert sky.

  He let himself into the duplex apartment with his key and walked into the kitchen to get something to eat. He wasn't hungry, but it was habit. He was headed for the refrigerator when his eye happened on the pantry door and he stopped. He realized suddenly that the way station--and all the rest of that strange other world where he now belonged--was behind that door. All he had to do was push through it and rejoin the Jake that already existed there. The queer doubling in his mind would end; the voices, endlessly arguing the question of whether or not he had been dead since 8:25 that morning, would fall silent.

  Jake pushed open the pantry door with both hands, his face already breaking into a sunny, relieved smile . . . and then froze as Mrs. Shaw, who was standing on a step-stool at the back of the pantry, screamed. The can of tomato paste she had been holding dropped out of her hand and fell to the floor. She tottered on the stool and Jake rushed forward to steady her before she could join the tomato paste.

  "Moses in the bullrushes!" she gasped, fluttering a hand rapidly against the front of her housedress. "You scared the bejabbers out of me, Johnny!"