The Dark Tower (79 page)

She was about to tell him that she hadn’t heard their follower for awhile when something behind them pulled in a great gasping breath. She felt the air around her reverse direction; felt the tight curls on her head spring wildly about as the air was sucked backward. There was an enormous slobbering noise that made her feel like screaming. Whatever was back there, it was big.

No.

Enormous.

They pelted down another of those short stairways. Fifty yards beyond it, three more of the pulsing globes bloomed with unsteady light, but after that there was just darkness. The ragged tiled sides of the passage and its uneven, decaying floor melted into a void so deep that it looked like a physical substance: great clouds of loosely packed black felt. They would run into it, she thought, and at first their momentum would continue to carry them forward. Then the stuff would shove them backward like a spring, and whatever was back there would be on them. She would catch a glimpse of it,
something so awful and alien her mind would not be able to recognize it, and that might be a mercy. Then it would pounce, and—

Roland ran into the darkness without slowing, and of course they did not bounce back. At first there was a little light, some from behind them and some from the globes overhead (a few were still giving off a last dying core of radiance). Just enough to see another short stairway, its upper end flanked by crumbling skeletons wearing a few wretched rags of clothing. Roland hurried down the steps—there were nine in this flight—without stopping. Oy ran at his side, ears back against his skull, fur rippling sleekly, almost dancing his way down. Then they were in pure dark.

“Bark, Oy, so we don’t run into each other!” Roland snapped. “Bark!”

Oy barked. A thirty-count later, he snapped the same order and Oy barked again.

“Roland, what if we come to another stairway?”

“We will,” he said, and a ninety-count after that, they did. She felt him tip forward, feet stuttering. She felt the muscles in his shoulders jump as he put his hands out before him, but they did not fall. Susannah could only marvel at his reflexes. His boots rapped unhesitatingly downward in the dark. Twelve steps this time? Fourteen? They were back on the flat surface of the passageway before she could get a good count. So now she knew he was capable of negotiating stairs even in the dark, even at a dead run. Only what if he stuck his foot in a hole? God knew it was possible, given the way the flooring had rotted. Or suppose they came to a stacked bone-barrier of skeletons? In the flat passageway, at the speed he was now running, that
would mean a nasty tumble at the very least. Or suppose they ran into a jumble of bones at the head of one of the little stairways? She tried to block the vision of Roland swooping out into blackness like a crippled high-diver and couldn’t quite do it. How many of
their
bones would be broken when they crash-landed at the bottom?
Shit, sugar, pick a number,
Eddie might have said. This flat-out run was insanity.

But there was no choice. She could hear the thing behind them all too clearly now, not just its slobbering breath but a sandpapery rasping sound as something slid across one of the passageway walls—or maybe both. Every now and then she’d also hear a clink and a clitter as a tile was torn off. It was impossible not to construct a picture from these sounds, and what Susannah began to see was a great black worm whose segmented body filled the passage from side to side, occasionally ripping off loose ceramic squares and crushing them beneath its gelatinous body as it rushed ever onward, hungry, closing the gap between it and them.

And closing it much more rapidly now. Susannah thought she knew why. Before, they had been running in a moving island of light. Whatever that thing behind them was, it didn’t like the light. She thought of the flashlight Roland had added to their gunna, but without fresh batteries, it would be next to useless. Twenty seconds after flicking the switch on its long barrel, the damn thing would be dead.

Except . . . wait a minute.

Its barrel.

Its long barrel!

Susannah reached into the leather bag bouncing
around at Roland’s side, finding tins of food, but those weren’t the tins she wanted. At last she found one that she did, recognizing it by the circular gutter running around the lid. There was no time to wonder why it should feel so immediately and intimately familiar; Detta had her secrets, and something to do with Sterno was probably one of them. She held the can up to smell and be sure, then promptly bashed herself on the bridge of the nose with it when Roland stumbled over something—maybe a chunk of flooring, maybe another skeleton—and had to battle again for balance. He won this time, too, but eventually he’d lose and the thing back there might be on them before he could get up. Susannah felt warm blood begin to course down her face and the thing behind them, perhaps smelling it, let loose an enormous damp cry. She thought of a gigantic alligator in a Florida swamp, raising its scaly head to bay at the moon. And it was so
close.

Oh dear God give me time,
she thought.
I don’t want to go like this, getting shot’s one thing, but getting eaten alive in the dark
—

That was another.

“Go
faster
!” she snarled at Roland, and thumped at his sides with her thighs, like a rider urging on a weary horse.

Somehow, Roland did. His respiration was now an agonized roar. He had not breathed so even after dancing the commala. If he kept on, his heart would burst in his chest. But—

“
Faster,
Tex! Let it all out, goddammit! I might have a trick up my sleeve, but in the meantime you give it every-damn-everything you got!”

And there in the dark beneath Castle Discordia, Roland did.

She plunged her free hand once more into the bag and it closed on the flashlight’s barrel. She pulled it out and tucked it under her arm (knowing if she dropped it they were gone for sure), then snapped back the tab-release on the Sterno can, relieved to hear the momentary hiss as the vacuum-seal broke. Relieved but not surprised—if the seal had been broken, the flammable jelly inside would have evaporated long ago and the can would have been lighter.

“Roland!” she shouted. “Roland, I need matches!”

“Shirt . . . pocket!” he panted. “Reach for them!”

But first she dropped the flashlight into the seam where her crotch met the middle of his back, then snatched it up just before it could slide away. Now, with a good hold on it, she plunged the barrel into the can of Sterno. To grab one of the matches while holding the can and the jelly-coated flashlight would have taken a third hand, so she jettisoned the can. There were two others in the bag, but if this didn’t work she’d never have a chance to reach for one of them.

The thing bellowed again, sounding as if it were
right behind them
. Now she could smell it, the aroma like a load of fish rotting in the sun.

She reached over Roland’s shoulder and plucked a single match from his pocket. There might be time to light one; not for two. Roland and Eddie were able to pop them alight with their thumbnails, but Detta Walker had known a trick worth two of that, had used it on more than one occasion to impress her whiteboy victims in the roadhouses where she’d gone trolling. She grimaced
in the dark, peeling her lips away from her teeth, and placed the head of the match between the two front ones on top.
Eddie, if you’re there, help me, sugar
—
help me do right.

She struck the match. Something hot burned the roof of her mouth and she tasted sulfur on her tongue. The head of the match nearly blinded her dark-adapted eyes, but she could see well enough to touch it to the jelly-coated barrel of the flashlight. The Sterno caught at once, turning the barrel into a torch. It was weak but it was
something
.

“
Turn around!
” she screamed.

Roland skidded to a stop immediately—no questions, no protest—and pivoted on his heels. She held the burning flashlight out before her and for a moment they both saw the head of something wet and covered with pink albino eyes. Below them was a mouth the size of a trapdoor, filled with squirming tentacles. The Sterno didn’t burn brightly, but in this Stygian blackness it was bright enough to make the thing recoil. Before it disappeared into the blackness again, she saw all those eyes squeezing shut and had a moment to think of how sensitive they must be if even a little guttering flame like this could—

Lining the floor of the passageway on both sides were jumbled heaps of bones. In her hand, the bulb end of the flashlight was already growing warm. Oy was barking frantically, looking back into the dark with his head down and his short legs splayed, every hair standing on end.

“Squat down, Roland, squat!”

He did and she handed him the makeshift torch, which was already beginning to gutter, the yellow flames running up and down the stainless
steel barrel turning blue. The thing in the dark let out another deafening roar, and now she could see its shape again, weaving from side to side. It was creeping closer as the light faltered.

If the floor’s wet here, we’re most likely done,
she thought, but the touch of her fingers as she groped for a thighbone suggested it was not. Perhaps that was a false message sent by her hopeful senses—she could certainly hear water dripping from the ceiling somewhere up ahead—but she didn’t think so.

She reached into the bag for another can of Sterno, but at first the release-ring defied her. The thing was coming and now she could see any number of short, misshapen legs beneath its raised lump of a head. Not a worm after all but some kind of giant centipede. Oy placed himself in front of her, still barking, every tooth on display. It was Oy the thing would take first if she couldn’t—

Then her finger slipped into the ring lying almost flat against the lid of the can. There was a
pop-hissh
sound. Roland was waving the flashlight back and forth, trying to fan a little life into the guttering flames (which might have worked had there been fuel for them), and she saw their fading shadows rock deliriously back and forth on the decaying tile walls.

The circumference of the bone was too big for the can. Now lying in an awkward sprawl, half in and half out of the harness, she dipped into it, brought out a handful of jelly, and slathered it up and down the bone. If the bone was wet, this would only buy them a few more seconds of horror. If it was dry, however, then maybe . . . just maybe . . .

The thing was creeping ever closer. Amid the
tentacles sprouting from its mouth she could see jutting fangs. In another moment it would be close enough to lunge at Oy, taking him with the speed of a gecko snatching a fly out of the air. Its rottedfish aroma was strong and nauseating. And what might be behind it? What other abominations?

No time to think about that now.

She touched her thighbone torch to the fading flames licking along the barrel of the flashlight. The bloom of fire was greater than she had expected—far greater—and the thing’s scream this time was filled with pain as well as surprise. There was a nasty squelching sound, like mud being squeezed in a vinyl raincoat, and it lashed backward.

“Git me more bones,” she said as Roland cast the flashlight aside. “And make sure they’re dem
drah
bones.” She laughed at her own wit (since nobody else would), a down-and-dirty Detta cackle.

Still gasping for breath, Roland did as she told him.

They resumed their progress along the passage, Susannah now riding backward, a position that was difficult but not impossible. If they got out of here, her back would ache a bitch for the next day or two.
And I’ll relish every single throb,
she told herself. Roland still had the Bridgton Old Home Days tee-shirt Irene Tassenbaum had bought him. He handed it up to Susannah. She wrapped it around the bottom of the bone and held it out as far as she possibly could while still keeping her balance. Roland wasn’t able to run—she would have surely
tumbled out of the harness had he tried doing that—but he maintained a good fast walking pace, pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking arm- or legbone. Oy soon got the idea and began bringing them to the gunslinger in his mouth. The thing continued to follow them. Every now and then Susannah caught a glimpse of its slick-gleaming skin, and even when it drew back beyond the chancy light of her current torch they would hear those liquid stomping sounds, like a giant in mud-filled boots. She began to think it was the sound of the thing’s tail. This filled her with a horror that was unreasoning and private and almost powerful enough to undo her mind.

That it should have a tail!
her mind nearly raved.
A tail that sounds like it’s filled with water or jelly or half-coagulated blood! Christ! My God! My Christ!

It wasn’t just light keeping it from attacking them, she reckoned, but fear of fire. The thing must have hung back while they were in the part of the passage where the glow-globes still worked, thinking (if it
could
think) that it would wait and take them once they were in the dark. She had an idea that if it had known they had access to fire, it might simply have closed some or all of its many eyes and pounced on them where a few of the globes were out and the light was dimmer. Now it was at least temporarily out of luck, because the bones made surprisingly good torches (the idea that they were being helped by the recovering Beam in this regard did not cross her mind). The only question was whether or not the Sterno would hold out. She was able to conserve now because the bones burned on their own once they were going—except for a couple of damp ones that she
had to cast aside after lighting her next torches from their guttering tips—but you
did
have to get them going, and she was already deep into the third and last can. She bitterly regretted the one she’d tossed away when the thing had been closing in on them, but didn’t know what else she could have done. She also wished Roland would go faster, although she guessed he now couldn’t have maintained much speed even if she’d been faced around the right way and holding onto him. Maybe a short burst, but surely no more. She could feel his muscles trembling under his shirt. He was close to blown out.