by Stephen King
At first Susannah tried to keep count of the lefts and rights they were making in this maze, then gave it up as a bad job. They finally emerged about fifty yards from a clapboard-sided hut with the alliterative message LADING/LOST LUGGAGE over the door. The intervening distance was an apron of cracked concrete scattered with abandoned luggage-carts, stacks of crates, and two dead Wolves. No, Susannah thought, make that three. The third one was leaning against the wall in the deeper shadows just around the corner from LADING/LOST LUGGAGE.
“Come on,” said the old man with the mop of white hair, “not much further, now. But we have to hurry, because if the taheen from Heartbreak House catch us, they’ll kill you.”
“They’d kill us, too,” said the youngest of the three. He brushed his hair out of his eyes. “All except for Ted. Ted’s the only one of us who’s indispensable. He’s just too modest to say so.”
Past LADING/LOST LUGGAGE was (reasonably enough, Susannah thought) SHIPPING OFFICE. The fellow with the white hair tried the door. It was locked. This seemed to please rather than upset him. “Dinky?” he said.
Dinky, it seemed, was the youngest of the three. He took hold of the knob and Susannah heard a snapping sound from somewhere inside. Dinky stepped back. This time when Ted tried the door, it opened easily. They stepped into a dim office bisected by a high counter. On it was a sign that almost made Susannah feel nostalgic: TAKE NUMBER AND WAIT, it said.
When the door was closed, Dinky once more grasped the knob. There was another brisk snap.
“You just locked it again,” Jake said. He sounded accusing, but there was a smile on his face, and the color was coming back into his cheeks. “Didn’t you?”
“Not now, please,” said the white-haired man—Ted. “No time. Follow me, please.”
He flipped up a section of the counter and led them through. Behind it was an office area containing two robots that looked long dead, and three skeletons.
“Why the hell do we keep finding bones?” Eddie asked. Like Jake he was feeling better and only thinking out loud, not really expecting an answer. He got one, however. From Ted.
“Do you know of the Crimson King, young man? You do, of course you do. I believe that at one time he covered this entire part of the world with poison gas. Probably for a lark. Killed almost everyone. The darkness you see is the lingering result. He’s mad, of course. It’s a large part of the problem. In here.”
He led them through a door marked PRIVATE and into a room that had once probably belonged to a high poobah in the wonderful world of shipping and lading. Susannah saw tracks on the floor, suggesting that this place had been visited recently. Perhaps by these same three men. There was a desk beneath six inches of fluffy dust, plus two chairs and a couch. Behind the desk was a window. Once it had been covered with venetian blinds, but these had collapsed onto the floor, revealing a vista as forbidding as it was fascinating. The land beyond Thunderclap Station reminded her of the flat, deserty wastes on the far side of the River Whye, but rockier and even more forbidding.
And of course it was darker.
Tracks (eternally halted trains sat on some of them) radiated out like strands of a steel spiderweb. Above them, a sky of darkest slate-gray seemed to sag almost close enough to touch. Between the sky and the Earth the air was thick, somehow; Susannah found herself squinting to see things, although there seemed to be no actual mist or smog in the air.
“Dinky,” the white-haired man said.
“Yes, Ted.”
“What have you left for our friend The Weasel to find?”
“A maintenance drone,” Dinky replied. “It’ll look like it found its way in through the Fedic door, set off the alarm, then got fried on some of the tracks at the far end of the switching-yard. Quite a few are still hot. You see dead birds around em all the time, fried to a crisp, but even a good-sized rustie’s too small to trip the alarm. A drone, though …I’m pretty sure he’ll buy it. The Wease ain’t stupid, but it’ll look pretty believable.”
“Good. That’s very good. Look yonder, gunslingers.” Ted pointed to a sharp upthrust of rock on the horizon. Susannah could make it out easily; in this dark countryside all horizons seemed close. She could see nothing remarkable about it, though, only folds of deeper shadow and sterile slopes of tumbled rock. “That’s Can SteekTete.”
“The Little Needle,” Roland said.
“Excellent translation. It’s where we’re going.”
Susannah’s heart sank. The mountain—or perhaps you called something like that a butte—had to be eight or ten miles away. At the very limit of vision, in any case. Eddie and Roland and the two younger men in Ted’s party couldn’t carry her that far, she didn’t believe. And how did they know they could trust these new fellows, anyway?
On the other hand, she thought, what choice do we have?
“You won’t need to be carried,” Ted told her, “but Stanley can use your help. We’ll join hands, like folks at a séance. I’ll want you all to visualize that rock formation when we go through. And hold the name in the forefront of your mind: SteekTete, the Little Needle.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Eddie said. They had approached yet another door, this one standing open on a closet. Wire hangers and one ancient red blazer hung in there. Eddie grasped Ted’s shoulder and swung him around. “Go through what? Go through where? Because if it’s a door like the last one—”
Ted looked up at Eddie—had to look up, because Eddie was taller—and Susannah saw an amazing, dismaying thing: Ted’s eyes appeared to be shaking in their sockets. A moment later she realized this wasn’t actually the case. The man’s pupils were growing and then shrinking with eerie rapidity. It was as if they couldn’t decide if it was light or dark in here.
“It’s not a door we’re going through at all, at least not of the kinds with which you may be familiar. You have to trust me, young man. Listen.”
They all fell silent, and Susannah could hear the snarl of approaching motors.
“That’s The Weasel,” Ted told them. “He’ll have taheen with him, at least four, maybe half a dozen. If they catch sight of us in here, Dink and Stanley are almost certainly going to die. They don’t have to catch us but only catch sight of us. We’re risking our lives for you. This isn’t a game, and I need you to stop asking questions and follow me!”
“We will,” Roland said. “And we’ll think about the Little Needle.”
“SteekTete,” Susannah agreed.
“You won’t get sick again,” Dinky said. “Promise.”
“Thank God,” Jake said.
“Thang-odd,” Oy agreed.
Stanley, the third member of Ted’s party, continued to say nothing at all.
FOUR
It was just a closet, and an office closet, at that—narrow and musty. The ancient red blazer had a brass tag on the breast pocket with the words HEAD OF SHIPPING stamped on it. Stanley led the way to the back, which was nothing but a blank wall. Coathangers jingled and jangled. Jake had to watch his step to keep from treading on Oy. He’d always been slightly prone to claustrophobia, and now he began to feel the pudgy fingers of the Panic-Man caressing his neck: first one side and then the other. The ‘Rizas clanked softly together in their bag. Seven people and one billy-bumbler crowding into an abandoned office closet? It was nuts. He could still hear the snarl of the approaching engines. The one in charge called The Weasel.
“Join hands,” Ted murmured. “And concentrate.”
“SteekTete,” Susannah repeated, but to Jake she sounded dubious this time.
“Little Nee—” Eddie began, and then stopped. The blank wall at the end of the closet was gone. Where it had been was a small clearing with boulders on one side and a steep, scrub-crusted hillside on another. Jake was willing to bet that was SteekTete, and if it was a way out of this enclosed space, he was delighted to see it.
Stanley gave a little moan of pain or effort or both. The man’s eyes were closed and tears were trickling out from beneath the lids.
&
nbsp; “Now,” Ted said. “Lead us through, Stanley.” To the others he added: “And help him if you can! Help him, for your fathers’ sakes!”
Jake tried to hold an image of the outcrop Ted had pointed to through the office window and walked forward, holding Roland’s hand ahead of him and Susannah’s behind him. He felt a breath of cold air on his sweaty skin and then stepped through onto the slope of SteekTete in Thunderclap, thinking just briefly of Mr. C. S. Lewis, and the wonderful wardrobe that took you to Narnia.
FIVE
They did not come out in Narnia.
It was cold on the slope of the butte, and Jake was soon shivering. When he looked over his shoulder he saw no sign of the portal they’d come through. The air was dim and smelled of something pungent and not particularly pleasant, like kerosene. There was a small cave folded into the flank of the slope (it was really not much more than another closet), and from it Ted brought a stack of blankets and a canteen that turned out to hold a sharp, alkali-tasting water. Jake and Roland wrapped themselves in single blankets. Eddie took two and bundled himself and Susannah together. Jake, trying not to let his teeth start chattering (once they did, there’d be no stopping them), envied the two of them their extra warmth.
Dink had also wrapped himself in a blanket, but neither Ted nor Stanley seemed to feel the cold.
“Look down there,” Ted invited Roland and the others. He was pointing at the spiderweb of tracks. Jake could see the rambling glass roof of the switching-yard and a green-roofed structure next to it that had to be half a mile long. Tracks led away in every direction. Thunderclap Station, he marveled. Where the Wolves put the kidnapped kids on the train and send them along the Path of the Beam to Fedic. And where they bring them back after they’ve been roont.
Even after all he’d been through, it was hard for Jake to believe that they had been down there, six or eight miles away, less than two minutes ago. He suspected they’d all played a part in keeping the portal open, but it was the one called Stanley who’d created it in the first place. Now he looked pale and tired, nearly used up. Once he staggered on his feet and Dink (a very unfortunate nickname, in Jake’s humble opinion) grabbed his arm and steadied him. Stanley seemed not to notice. He was looking at Roland with awe.
Not just awe, Jake thought, and not exactly fear, either. Something else. What?
Approaching the station were two motorized buckas with big balloon tires—ATVs. Jake assumed it was The Weasel (whoever he was) and his taheen buddies.
“As you may have gleaned,” Ted told them, “there’s an alarm in the DevarToi Supervisor’s office. The warden’s office, if you like. It goes off when anyone or anything uses the door between the Fedic staging area and yon station—”
“I believe the term you used for him,” Roland said dryly, “wasn’t supervisor or warden but ki’-dam.”
Dink laughed. “That’s a good pickup on your part, dude.”
“What does ki’-dam mean?” Jake asked, although he had a fair notion. There was a phrase folks used in the Calla: headbox, heartbox, ki’box. Which meant, in descending order, one’s thought processes, one’s emotions, and one’s lower functions. Animal functions, some might say; ki’box could be translated as shitbox if you were of a vulgar turn of mind.
Ted shrugged. “Ki’-dam means shit-for-brains. It’s Dinky’s nickname for sai Prentiss, the Devar Master. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“I guess,” Jake said. “Kinda.”
Ted looked at him long, and when Jake identified that expression, it helped him define how Stanley was looking at Roland: not with fear but with fascination. Jake had a pretty good idea Ted was still thinking about how much he looked like someone named Bobby, and he was pretty sure Ted knew he had the touch. What was the source of Stanley’s fascination? Or maybe he was making too much of it. Maybe it was just that Stanley had never expected to see a gunslinger in the flesh.
Abruptly, Ted turned from Jake and back to Roland. “Now look this way,” he said.
“Whoa!” Eddie cried. “What the hell?”
Susannah was amused as well as amazed. What Ted was pointing out reminded her of Cecil B. DeMille’s Bible epic The Ten Commandments, especially the parts where the Red Sea opened by Moses had looked suspiciously like Jell-O and the voice of God coming from the burning bush sounded quite a bit like Charles Laughton. Still, it was amazing. In a cheesy Hollywood-special-effects way, that was.
What they saw was a single fat and gorgeous bolt of sunlight slanting down from a hole in the sagging clouds. It cut through the strangely dark air like a searchlight beam and lit a compound that might have been six miles from Thunderclap Station. And “about six miles” was really all you could say, because there was no more north or south in this world, at least not that you could count on. Now there was only the Path of the Beam.
“Dinky, there’s a pair of binoculars in—”
“The lower cave, right?”
“No, I brought them up the last time we were here,” Ted replied with carefully maintained patience. “They’re sitting on that pile of crates just inside. Get them, please.”
Eddie barely noticed this byplay. He was too charmed (and amused) by that single broad ray of sun, shining down on a green and cheerful plot of land, as unlikely in this dark and sterile desert as … well, he supposed, as unlikely as Central Park must seem to tourists from the Midwest making their first trip to New York.
He could see buildings that looked like college dormitories—nice ones—and others that looked like comfy old manor houses with wide stretches of green lawn before them. At the far side of the sunbeam’s area was what looked like a street lined with shops. The perfect little Main Street America, except for one thing: in all directions it ended in dark and rocky desert. He saw four stone towers, their sides agreeably green with ivy. No, make that six. The other two were mostly concealed in stands of graceful old elms. Elms in the desert!
Dink returned with a pair of binoculars and offered them to Roland, who shook his head.
“Don’t hold it against him,” Eddie said. “His eyes … well, let’s just say they’re something else. I wouldn’t mind a peek, though.”
“Me, either,” Susannah said.
Eddie handed her the binoculars. “Ladies first.”
“No, really, I—”
“Stop it,” Ted almost snarled. “Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don’t waste the one or increase the other, if you please.”
Susannah was stung but held back a retort. Instead she took the binoculars, raised them to her eyes, and adjusted them. What she saw merely heightened her sense of looking at a small but perfect college campus, one that merged beautifully with the neighboring village. No town-versus-gown tensions there, I bet, she thought. I bet Elmville and Breaker U go together like peanut butter and jelly, Abbott and Costello, hand and glove. Whenever there was a Ray Bradbury short in the Saturday Evening Post, she always turned to it first, she loved Bradbury, and what she was looking at through the binoculars made her think of Green-town, Bradbury’s idealized Illinois village. A place where adults sat out on their porches in rocking chairs, drinking lemonade, and the kids played tag with flashlights in the lightning-bug-stitched dusk of summer evenings. And the nearby college campus? No drinking there, at least not to excess. No joysticks or goofballs or rock and roll, either. It would be a place where the girls kissed the boys goodnight with chaste ardor and were glad to sign back in so that the Dormitory Mom wouldn’t think ill of them. A place where the sun shone all day, where Perry Como and the Andrews Sisters sang on the radio, and nobody suspected they were actually living in the ruins of a world that had moved on.
No, she thought coldly. Some of them know. That’s why these three showed up to meet us.
“That’s the DevarToi,” Roland said flatly. Not a question.
“Yeah,” Dinky said. “The good old DevarToi.” He stood beside Roland and pointed at a large white building near the dormitories. “See that white one? Th
at’s Heartbreak House, where the can-toi live. Ted calls em the low men. They’re taheen-human hybrids. And they don’t call it the DevarToi, they call it Algul Siento, which means—”
“Blue Heaven,” Roland said, and Jake realized why: all of the buildings except for the rock towers had blue tiled roofs. Not Narnia but Blue Heaven. Where a bunch of folks were busy bringing about the end of the world.
All the worlds.
SIX
“It looks like the pleasantest place in existence, at least since In-World fell,” Ted said. “Doesn’t it?”
“Pretty nice, all right,” Eddie agreed. He had at least a thousand questions, and guessed Suze and Jake probably had another thousand between them, but this wasn’t the time to ask them. In any case, he kept looking at that wonderful little hundred-acre oasis down there. The one sunny green spot in all of Thunderclap. The one nice place. And why not? Nothing but the best for Our Breaker Buddies.
And, in spite of himself, one question did slip out.
“Ted, why does the Crimson King want to bring the Tower down? Do you know?”
Ted gave him a brief glance. Eddie thought it cool, maybe downright cold, until the man smiled. When he did, his whole face lit up. Also, his eyes had quit doing that creepy in-and-out thing, which was a big improvement.
“He’s mad,” Ted told him. “Nuttier than a fruitcake. Riding the fabled rubber bicycle. Didn’t I tell you that?” And then, before Eddie could reply: “Yes, it’s quite nice. Whether you call it DevarToi, the Big Prison, or Algul Siento, it looks a treat. It is a treat.”
“Very classy accommos,” Dinky agreed. Even Stanley was looking down at the sunlit community with an expression of faint longing.
“The food is the best,” Ted went on, “and the double feature at the Gem Theater changes twice a week. If you don’t want to go to the movies, you can bring the movies home on DVDs.”
