The Dark Tower (26 page)

“Your Red Father is . . . indisposed. As a result of having lived so close to the Tower for so long, and having thought upon it so deeply, I have no doubt. It’s down to you to finish what he began. I’ve come to help you in that work.”

Mordred nodded, as if pleased. He
was
pleased. But ah, he was also so hungry.

“You may have wondered how I reached you in this supposedly secure chamber,” Walter said. “In truth I helped build this place, in what Roland would call the long-ago.”

That phrase again, as obvious as a wink.

He had put the gun in the left pocket of his parka. Now, from the right, he withdrew a gadget the size of a cigarette-pack, pulled out a silver antenna, and pushed a button. A section of the gray tiles withdrew silently, revealing a flight of stairs. Mordred nodded. Walter—or Randall Flagg, if that was what he was currently calling himself—had indeed come out of the floor. A neat trick, but of course he had once served Roland’s father Steven as Gilead’s court magician, hadn’t he? Under the name of Marten. A man of many faces and many neat tricks was Walter o’ Dim, but never as clever as he seemed to think. Not by half. For Mordred now had the final thing he had been looking for, which was the way Roland and his friends had gotten out of here. There was no need to pluck it from its hiding place in Walter’s mind, after all. He only needed to follow the fool’s backtrail.

First, however . . .

Walter’s smile had faded a little. “Did’ee say something, sire? For I thought I heard the sound of your voice, far back in my mind.”

The baby shook his head. And who is more believable than a baby? Are their faces not the very definition of guilelessness and innocence?

“I’d take you with me and go after them, if you’d come,” Walter said. “What a team we’d make! They’ve gone to the devar-toi in Thunder-clap, to release the Breakers. I’ve already promised to meet your father—your
White
Father—and his ka-tet should they dare go on, and that’s a promise I intend to keep. For, hear me well, Mordred, the gunslinger Roland Deschain has stood against me at every turn, and I’ll bear it no more.
No more!
Do you hear?” His voice was rising in fury.

Mordred nodded innocently, widening his pretty baby’s eyes in what might have been taken for fear, fascination, or both. Certainly Walter o’ Dim seemed to preen beneath his regard, and really, the only question now was when to take him—immediately or later? Mordred was very hungry, but thought he would hold off at least a bit longer. There was something oddly compelling about watching this fool stitching the last few inches of his fate with such earnestness.

Once again Mordred drew the shape of a question mark in the air.

Any last vestige of a smile faded from Walter’s face. “What do I truly want? Is that what you’re asking for?”

Mordred nodded yes.

“’Tisn’t the Dark Tower at all, if you want the truth; it’s Roland who stays on my mind and in my heart. I want him dead.” Walter spoke with flat and
unsmiling finality. “For the long and dusty leagues he’s chased me; for all the trouble he’s caused me; and for the Red King, as well—the
true
King, ye do ken; for his presumption in refusing to give over his quest no matter what obstacles were placed in his path; most of all for the death of his mother, whom I once loved.” And, in an undertone: “Or at least coveted. In either case, it was he who killed her. No matter what part I or Rhea of the Cöos may have played in that matter, it was the boy himself who stopped her breath with his damned guns, slow head, and quick hands.

“As for the end of the universe . . . I say let it come as it will, in ice, fire, or darkness. What did the universe ever do for me that I should mind its welfare? All I know is that Roland of Gilead has lived too long and
I want that son of a bitch in the ground
. And those he’s drawn, too.”

For the third and last time, Mordred drew the shape of a question in the air.

“There’s only a single working door from here to the devar-toi, young master. It’s the one the Wolves use . . . or used; I think they’ve made their last run, so I do. Roland and his friends have gone through it, but that’s all right, there’s plenty to occupy em right where they come out—they might find the reception a bit hot! Mayhap we can take care of em while they’ve got the Breakers and the remaining Children of Roderick and the true guards o’ the watch to worry about. Would you like that?”

The infant nodded an affirmative with no hesitation. He then put his fingers to his mouth and chewed at them.

“Yes,” Walter said. His grin shone out. “Hungry, of course you are. But I’m sure we can do better
than rats and half-grown billy-bumblers when it comes to dinner. Don’t you?”

Mordred nodded again. He was sure they could, too.

“Will I play the good da’ and carry you?” Walter asked. “That way you don’t have to change to your spider-self. Ugh! Not a shape ’tis easy to love, or even like, I must say.”

Mordred was holding up his arms.

“Y’won’t shit on me, will you?” Walter asked casually, halting halfway across the floor. His hand slid into his pocket, and Mordred realized with a touch of alarm that the sly bastard had been hiding something from him, just the same: he knew the so-called “thinking-cap” wasn’t working. Now he meant to use the gun after all.

In fact, Mordred gave Walter o’ Dim far too much credit, but isn’t that a trait of the young, perhaps even a survival skill? To a wide-eyed lad, the tacky tricks of the world’s most ham-fisted prestidigitator look like miracles. Walter did not actually realize what was happening until very late in the game, but he was a wily old survivor, tell ya true, and when understanding came, it came entire.

There’s a phrase,
the elephant in the living room,
which purports to describe what it’s like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, “How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn’t you see
the elephant in the living room?
” And it’s so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes
closest to the truth: “I’m sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn’t know it was an
elephant
; I thought it was
part of the furniture
.” There comes an
aha
-moment for some folks—the lucky ones—when they suddenly recognize the difference. And that moment came for Walter. It came too late, but not by much.

Y’won’t shit on me, will you
—that was the question he asked, but between the word
shit
and the phrase
on me,
he suddenly realized there was an intruder in his house . . .
and it had been there all along.
Not a baby, either; this was a gangling, slope-headed adolescent with pockmarked skin and dully curious eyes. It was perhaps the best, truest visualization Walter could have made for Mordred Deschain as he at that moment existed: a teenage housebreaker, probably high on some aerosol cleaning product.

And he had been there
all the time!
God, how could he not have known? The housebreaker hadn’t even been hiding! He had been right out in the open, standing there against the wall, gape-mouthed and taking it all in.

His plans for bringing Mordred with him—of using him to end Roland’s life (if the guards at the devar-toi couldn’t do it first, that was), then killing the little bastard and taking his valuable left foot—collapsed in an instant. In the next one a new plan arose, and it was simplicity itself.
Mustn’t let him see that I know. One shot, that’s all I can risk, and only because I
must
risk it. Then I run. If he’s dead, fine. If not, perhaps he’ll starve before
—

Then Walter realized his hand had stopped. Four fingers had closed around the butt of the gun in the jacket pocket, but they were now frozen. One was very near the trigger, but he couldn’t
move that, either. It might as well have been buried in cement. And now Walter clearly saw the shining wire for the first time. It emerged from the toothless pink-gummed mouth of the baby sitting in the chair, crossed the room, glittering beneath the lights, and then encircled him at chest-level, binding his arms to his sides. He understood the wire wasn’t really there . . . but at the same time, it
was
.

He couldn’t move.

Mordred didn’t see the shining wire, perhaps because he’d never read
Watership Down
. He’d had the chance to explore Susannah’s mind, however, and what he saw now was remarkably like Susannah’s Dogan. Only instead of switches saying things like
CHAP
and
EMOTIONAL TEMP
, he saw ones that controlled Walter’s ambulation (this one he quickly turned to
OFF
), cogitation, and motivation. It was certainly a more complex setup than the one in the young bumbler’s head—there he’d found nothing but a few simple nodes, like granny knots—but still not difficult to operate.

The only problem was that he was a baby.

A damned
baby
stuck in a chair.

If he really meant to change this delicatessen on legs into cold-cuts, he’d have to move quickly.

Walter o’ Dim was not too old to be gullible, he understood that now—he’d underestimated the little monster, relying too much on what it looked like and not enough on his own knowledge of what it
was
—but he was at least beyond the young man’s trap of total panic.

If he means to do anything besides sit in that chair and look at me, he’ll have to change. When he does, his control may slip. That’ll be my chance. It’s not much, but it’s the only one I have left.

At that moment he saw a brilliant red light run down the baby’s skin from crown to toes. In the wake of it, the chubby-pink bah-bo’s body began to darken and swell, the spider’s legs bursting out through his sides. At the same instant, the shining wire coming out of the baby’s mouth disappeared and Walter felt the suffocating band which had been holding him in place disappear.

No time to risk even a single shot, not now. Run. Run from him . . . from
it.
That’s all you can do. You never should have come here in the first place. You let your hatred of the gunslinger blind you, but it still may not be too la
—

He turned to the trapdoor even as this thought raced through his mind, and was about to put his foot on the first step when the shining wire reestablished itself, this time not looping around his arms and chest but around his throat, like a garrote.

Gagging and choking and spewing spit, eyes bulging from their sockets, Walter turned jerkily around. The loop around his throat loosened the barest bit. At the same time he felt something very like an invisible hand skim up his brow and push the hood back from his head. He’d always gone dressed in such fashion, when he could; in certain provinces to the south even of Garlan he had been known as
Walter Hodji,
the latter word meaning both
dim
and
hood
. But this particular lid (borrowed
from a certain deserted house in the town of French Landing, Wisconsin) had done him no good at all, had it?

I think I may have come to the end of the path,
he thought as he saw the spider strutting toward him on its seven legs, a bloated, lively thing (livelier than the baby, aye, and four thousand times as ugly) with a freakish blob of human head peering over the hairy curve of its back. On its belly, Walter could see the red mark that had been on the baby’s heel. Now it had an hourglass shape, like the one that marks the female black widow, and he understood that was the mark he’d have wanted; killing the baby and amputating its foot likely would have done him no good at all. It seemed he had been wrong all down the line.

The spider reared up on its four back legs. The three in front pawed at Walter’s jeans, making a low and ghastly scratching sound. The thing’s eyes bulged up at him with that dull intruder’s curiosity which he had already imagined too well.

Oh yes, I’m afraid it’s the end of the path for you.
Huge in his head. Booming like words from a loudspeaker.
But you intended the same for me, didn’t you?

No! At least not immediately
—

But you did! “Don’t kid a kidder,” as Susannah would say. So now I do the one you call my White Father a small favor. You may not have been his greatest enemy, Walter Padick (as you were called when you set out, all in the long-ago), but you were his oldest, I grant. And now I take you out of his road.

Walter did not realize he had held onto some dim hope of escape even with the loathsome
thing before him, reared up, the eyes staring at him with dull avidity while the mouth drooled, until he heard for the first time in a thousand years the name a boy from a farm in Delain had once answered to: Walter Padick. Walter, son of Sam the Miller in the Eastar’d Barony. He who had run away at thirteen, had been raped in the ass by another wanderer a year later and yet had somehow withstood the temptation to go crawling back home. Instead he had moved on toward his destiny.

Walter Padick.

At the sound of that voice, the man who had sometimes called himself Marten, Richard Fannin, Rudin Filaro, and Randall Flagg (among a great many others), gave over all hope except for the hope of dying well.

I be a-hungry, Mordred be a-hungry,
spoke the relentless voice in the middle of Walter’s head, a voice that came to him along the shining wire of the little king’s will.
But I’d eat proper, beginning with the appetizer. Your eyes, I think. Give them to me.

Walter struggled mightily, but without so much as a moment’s success. The wire was too strong. He saw his hands rise and hover in front of his face. He saw his fingers bend into hooks. They pushed up his eyelids like windowshades, then dug the orbs out from the top. He could hear the sounds they made as they tore loose of the tendons which turned them and the optic nerves which relayed their marvelous messages. The sound that marked the end of sight was low and wet. Bright red dashes of light filled his head, and then darkness rushed in forever. In Walter’s case, forever wouldn’t last long,
but if time is subjective (and most of us know that it is), then it was far
too
long.