Song of Susannah

“I expect mine may travel, as well,” Roland said. He’d thought about this carefully, and had decided to try and keep the big revolvers. Henchick shrugged, as if to say As you will.

“What about Oy, Jake?” Eddie asked.

Jake’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Roland realized the boy hadn’t considered his bumbler friend until this moment. The gunslinger reflected (not for the first time) how easy it was to forget the most basic truth about John “Jake” Chambers: he was just a kid.

“When we went todash, Oy-'Jake began.

“This ain’t that, sugar,” Eddie said, and when he heard Susannah’s endearment coming out of his mouth, his heart gave a sad cramp. For the first time he admitted to himself that he might never see her again, any more than Jake might see Oy once they left this stinking cave.

“But…'Jake began, and then Oy gave a reproachful little bark. Jake had been squeezing him too tightly.

“We’ll keep him for you, Jake,” Cantab said gently. “Keep him very well, say true. There’ll be folk posted here until thee comes back for thy friend and all the rest of thy goods.” If you ever do was the part he was too kind to state. Roland read it in his eyes, however.

“Roland, are you sure I can’t… that he can’t… no. I see. Not todash this time. Okay. No.”

Jake reached into the front pocket of the poncho, lifted Oy out, set him on the powdery floor of the cave. He bent down, hands planted just above his knees. Oy looked up, stretching his neck so that their faces almost touched. And Roland now saw something extraordinary: not the tears in Jake’s eyes, but those that had begun to well up in Oy’s. A billy-bumbler crying. It was the sort of story you might hear in a saloon as the night grew late and drunk-the faithful bumbler who wept for his departing master. You didn’t believe such stories but never said so, in order to save brawling (perhaps even shooting). Yet here it was, he was seeing it, and it made Roland feel a bit like crying himself. Was it just more bumbler imitation, or did Oy really understand what was happening? Roland hoped for the former, and with all his heart.

“Oy, you have to stay with Cantab for a little while. You’ll be okay. He’s a pal.”

“Tab!” the bumbler repeated. Tears fell from his muzzle and darkened the powdery surface where he stood in dime-sized drops. Roland found the creature’s tears uniquely awful, somehow even worse than a child’s might have been. “Ake! Ake!”

“No, I gotta split,” Jake said, and wiped at his cheeks with the heels of his hands. He left dirty streaks like warpaint all the way up to his temples.

“No! Ake!”

“I gotta. You stay with Cantab. I’ll come back for you, Oy-unless I’m dead, I’ll come back.” He hugged Oy again, then stood up. “Go to Cantab. That’s him.” Jake pointed. “Go on, now, you mind me.”

“Ake! Tab!” The misery in that voice was impossible to deny. For a moment Oy stayed where he was. Then, still weeping-or imitating Jake’s tears, Roland still hoped for that-the bumbler turned, trotted to Cantab, and sat between the young man’s dusty shor’boots.

Eddie attempted to put an arm around Jake. Jake shook it off and stepped away from him. Eddie looked baffled. Roland kept his Watch Me face, but inside he was grimly delighted. Not thirteen yet, no, but there was no shortage of steel there.

And it was time.

“Henchick?”

“Aye. Would’ee speak a word of prayer first, Roland? To whatever God thee holds?”

“I hold to no God,” Roland said. “I hold to the Tower, and won’t pray to that.”

Several of Henchick’s ’migos looked shocked at this, but the old man himself only nodded, as if he had expected no more. He looked at Callahan. “Pere?”

Callahan said, “God, Thy hand, Thy will.” He sketched a cross in the air and nodded at Henchick. “If we’re goin, let’s go.”

Henchick stepped forward, touched the Unfound Door’s crystal knob, then looked at Roland. His eyes were bright. “Hear me this last time, Roland of Gilead.”

“I hear you very well.”

“I am Henchick of the Manni Kra Redpath-a-Sturgis. We are far-seers and far travelers. We are sailors on ka’s wind. Would thee travel on that wind? Thee and thine?”

“Aye, to where it blows.”

Henchick slipped the chain of the Branni bob over the back of his hand and Roland at once felt some power let loose in this chamber. It was small as yet, but it was growing. Blooming, like a rose.

“How many calls would you make?”

Roland held up the remaining fingers of his right hand. “Two. Which is to say twim in the Eld.”

“Two or twim, both the same,” Henchick said. “Commala-come-two.” he raised his voice. “Come, Manni! Come-commala, join your force to my force! Come and keep your promise! Come and pay our debt to these gunslingers! Help me send them on their way! Now!”

SEVEN

Before any of them could even begin to register the fact that ka had changed their plans, ka had worked its will on them. But at first it seemed that nothing at all would happen.

The Manni Henchick had chosen as senders-six elders, plus Cantab-formed their semicircle behind the door and around to its sides. Eddie took Cantab’s hand and laced his fingers through the Manni’s. One of the shell-shaped magnets kept their palms apart. Eddie could feel it vibrating like something alive. He supposed it was. Callahan took his other hand and gripped it firmly.

On the other side of the door, Roland took Henchick’s hand, weaving the Branni bob’s chain between his fingers. Now the circle was complete save for the one spot directly in front of the door. Jake took a deep breath, looked around, saw Oy sitting against the wall of the cave about ten feet behind Cantab, and nodded.

Oy, stay, I’ll be back, Jake sent, and then he stepped into his place. He took Callahan’s right hand, hesitated, and then took Roland’s left.

The humming returned at once. The Branni bob began to move, not in arcs this time but in a small, tight circle. The door brightened and became more there-Jake saw this with his own eyes. The lines and circles of the hieroglyphs spelling unfound grew clearer. The rose etched into the doorknob began to glow.

The door, however, remained closed.

(Concentrate, boy!)

That was Henchick’s voice, so strong in his head that it almost seemed to slosh Jake’s brains. He lowered his head and looked at the doorknob. He saw the rose. He saw it very well. He imagined it turning as the knob upon which it had been cast turned. Once not so long ago he had been obsessed by doors and the other world

(Mid-World)

he knew must lie behind one of them. This felt like going back to that. He imagined all the doors he’d known in his life-bedroom doors bathroom doors kitchen doors closet doors bowling alley doors cloakroom doors movie theater doors restaurant doors doors marked keep out doors marked employees only refrigerator doors, yes even those-and then saw them all opening at once.

Open! he thought at the door, feeling absurdly like an Arabian princeling in some ancient story. Open sesame! Open says me!

From the cave’s belly far below, the voices began to babble once more. There was a whooping, windy sound, the heavy crump of something falling. The cave’s floor trembled beneath their feet, as if with another Beamquake. Jake paid no mind. The feeling of live force in this chamber was very strong now-he could feel it plucking at his skin, vibrating in his nose and eyes, teasing the hairs out from his scalp-but the door remained shut. He bore down more strongly on Roland’s hand and the Pere’s, concentrating on firehouse doors, police station doors, the door to the Principal’s Office at Piper, even a science fiction book he’d once read called The Door into Summer. The smell of the cave-deep must, ancient bones, distant drafts-seemed suddenly very strong. He felt that brilliant, exuberant uprush of certainty-Now, it will happen now, I know it will-yet the door still stayed closed. And now he could smell something else. Not the cave, but the slightly metallic aroma of his own sweat, rolling down his face.

“Henchick, it’s not working. I don’t think I-”

“Nar, not yet-and never think thee needs to do it all thyself, lad. Feel for something between you and the door… something like a hook… or a thorn…” As he spoke, Henchick nodded at the Manni heading the line of reinforcements. “Hedron, come forward. Thonnie, take hold of Hedron’s shoulders. Lewis, take hold of Thonnie’s. And on back! Do it!”

The line shuffled forward. Oy barked doubtfully.

“Feel, boy! Feel for that hook! It’s between thee and t’door! Feel for it!”

Jake reached out with his mind while his imagination suddenly bloomed with a powerful and terrifying vividness that was beyond even the clearest dreams. He saw Fifth Avenue between Forty- eighth and Sixtieth (“the twelve blocks where my Christmas bonus disappears every January,” his father had liked to grumble). He saw every door, on both sides of the street, swinging open at once: Fendi! Tiffany! Bergdorf Goodman! Carrier! Doubleday Books! The Sherry Netherland Hotel! He saw an endless hallway floored with brown linoleum and knew it was in the Pentagon. He saw doors, at least a thousand of them, all swinging open at once and generating a hurricane draft.

Yet the door in front of him, the only one that mattered, remained closed.

Yeah, but-

It was rattling in its frame. He could hear it.

“Go, kid!” Eddie said. The words came from between clamped teeth. “If you can’t open it, knock the fucker down!”

“Help me!” Jake shouted. “Help me, goddammit! All of you!”

The force in the cave seemed to double. The hum seemed to be vibrating the very bones of Jake’s skull. His teeth were rattling. Sweat ran into his eyes, blurring his sight. He saw two Henchicks nodding to someone behind him: Hedron. And behind Hedron, Thonnie. And behind Thonnie, all the rest, snaking out of the cave and down thirty feet of the path.

“Get ready, lad,” Henchick said.

Hedron’s hand slipped under Jake’s shirt and gripped the waistband of his jeans. Jake felt pushed instead of pulled. Something in his head bolted forward, and for a moment he saw all the doors of a thousand, thousand worlds flung wide, generating a draft so great it could almost have blown out the sun.

And then his progress was stopped. There was something… something right in front of the door…

The hook! It’s the hook!

He slipped himself over it as if his mind and life-force were some sort of loop. At the same time he felt Hedron and the others pulling him backward. The pain was immediate, enormous, seeming to tear him apart. Then the draining sensation began. It was hideous, like having someone pull his guts out a loop at a time. And always, the manic buzzing in his ears and deep in his brain.

He tried to cry out-No, stop, let go, it’s too much!-and couldn’t. He tried to scream and heard it, but only inside his head. God, he was caught. Caught on the hook and being ripped in two.’

One creature did hear his scream. Barking furiously, Oy darted forward. And as he did, the Unfound Door sprang open, swinging in a hissing arc just in front of Jake’s nose.