"-and my kes. But another week... or maybe five days... or even three... and it will be too late. Even if die torture stops, I'll die. And you'll die too, for when love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask." Then the boy turned and went out.
The batwing door made its same sound. Skree-eek."
He looked at Jake, now, and smiled like one who has just awakened. "I can't answer your question, sai." He knocked a fist on his forehead. "Don't have much in the way of brains up here, me-only cobwebbies. Cordelia Delgado said so, and I reckon she was right."
Jake made no reply. He was dazed. He had dreamed about the same disfigured boy, but not in any saloon; it had been in Gage Park, the one where they'd seen Charlie the Choo-Choo.
Last night. Had to have been. He hadn't remembered until now, would probably never have remembered if Sheemie hadn't told his own dream. And had Roland, Eddie, and Susannah also had a version of the same dream? Yes. He could see it on their faces, just as he could see that Ted and Dinky looked moved but otherwise bewildered.
Roland stood up with a wince, clamped his hand briefly to his hip, then said, "Thankee-sai, Sheemie, you've helped us greatly."
Sheemie smiled uncertainly. "How did I do that?"
"Never mind, my dear." Roland turned his attention to Ted. "My friends and I are going to step outside briefly. We need to speak an-tet."
"Of course," Ted said. He shook his head as if to clear it.
"Do my peace of mind a favor and keep it short," Dinky said. "We're probably still all right, but I don't want to push our luck."
"WilL you need him to jump you back inside?" Eddie asked, nodding; to Sheemie. This was in the nature of a rhetorical question; how else would the three of them get back?
"Well, yeah, but..." Dinky began.
"Then you'll be pushing your luck plenty." That said, Eddie,
Susannah, and Jake followed Roland out of the cave. Oy stayed behind, sitting with his new friend, Haylis of Chayven. Something about that troubled Jake. It wasn't a feeling of jealousy but rather one of dread. As if he were seeing an omen someone wiser than himself-one of the Manni-folk, perhaps-could interpret. But would he want to know?
Perhaps not.
SIX
"I didn't remember my dream until he told his," Susannah said, "and if he hadn't told his, I probably never would have remembered."
"Yeah," Jake said.
"But I remember it clearly enough now," she went on. "I was in a subway station and the boy came down the stairs-"
Jake said, "I was in Gage Park-"
"And I was at the Markey Avenue playground, where me and Henry used to play one-on-one," Eddie said. "In my dream, the kid with the bloody face was wearing a tee-shirt that said NEVER A DULL MOMENT-"
"-IN MID-WORLD," Jake finished, and Eddie gave him a startled look.
Jake barely noticed; his thoughts had turned in another direction. "I wonder if Stephen King ever uses dreams in his writing. You know, as yeast to make the plot rise."
This was a question none of them could answer.
"Roland?" Eddie asked. "Where were you in your dream?"
"The Travellers' Rest, where else? Wasn't I there with Sheemie, once upon a time?" With my friends, now long gone, he could have added, but did not. "I was sitting at the table Eldred Jonas used to favor, playing one-hand Watch Me."
Susannah said quiedy, "The boy in die dream was the Beam, wasn't he?"
As Roland nodded, Jake realized that Sheemie had told them which task came first, after all. Had told them beyond all doubt.
"Do any of you have a question?" Roland asked.
One by one, his companions shook their heads.
"We are ka-tet," Roland said, and in unison they answered:
"We are one from many."
Roland tarried a moment longer, looking at them-more than looking, seeming to savor their faces-and then he led them back inside...
"Sheemie," he said.
"Yes, sai! Yes, Roland, Will Dearborn that was!"
"We're going to save the boy you told us about. We're going to make the bad folk stop hurting him."
Sheemie smiled, but it was a puzzled smile. He didn't remember the boy in his dream, not anymore. "Good, sai, that's good!"
Roland turned his attention to Ted. "Once Sheemie gets you back this time, put him to bed. Or, if that would attract the wrong sort of attention, just make sure he takes it easy."
"We can write him down for the sniffles and keep him out of The Study," Ted agreed. "There are a lot of colds Thunderside.
But you folks need to understand that there are no guarantees.
He could get us back inside this time, and then-" He snapped his fingers in the air.
Laughing, Sheemie imitated him, only snapping both sets of fingers. Susannah looked away, sick to her stomach.
"I know that," Roland said, and although his tone did not change very much, each member of his ka-tet knew it was a good thing this palaver was almost over. Roland had reached the rim of his patience. "Keep him quiet even if he's well and feeling fine. We won't need him for what I have in mind, and thanks to the weapons you've left us."
"They're good weapons," Ted agreed, "but are they good enough to wipe out sixty men, can-toi, and taheen?"
"Will the two of you stand with us, once the fight begins?"
Roland asked.
"With the greatest pleasure," Dinky said, baring his teeth in a remarkably nasty grin.
"Yes," Ted said. "And it might be that I have another weapon. Did you listen to the tapes I left you?"
"Yes," Jake replied.
"So you know the story about the guy who stole my wallet."
This time they all nodded.
"What about that young woman?" Susannah asked. "One tough cookie, you said. What about Tanya and her boyfriend? Or her husband, if that's what he is?"
Ted and Dinky exchanged a brief, doubtful look, then shook their heads simultaneously.
"Once, maybe," Ted said. "Not now. Now she's married. All she wants to do is cuddle with her fella."
"And Break," Dinky added.
"But don't they understand..." She found she couldn't finish.
She was haunted not so much by the remnants of her own dream as by Sheemie's. Now you scar me with nails, the dream-boy had told Sheemie. The dream-boy who had once been fair.
"They don't want to understand," Ted told her kindly. He caught a glimpse of Eddie's dark face and shook his head.
"But I won't let you hate them for it. You-we-may have to kill some of them, but I won't let you hate them. They did not put understanding away from them out of greed or fear, but from despair."
"And because to Break is divine," Dinky said. He was also looking at Eddie. "The way the half an hour after you shoot up can be divine. If you know what I'm talking about."
Eddie sighed, stuck his hands in his pockets, said nothing.
Sheemie surprised them all by picking up one of the Coyote machine-pistols and swinging it in an arc. Had it been loaded, the great quest for the Dark Tower would have ended right there. "I'll fight, too!" he cried. "Pow, pow, pow! Bam-bam-bam-ba-
Eddie and Susannah ducked; Jake threw himself instinctively in front of Oy; Ted and Dinky raised their hands in front of their faces, as if that could possibly have saved them from a burst of a hundred high-caliber, steeljacketed slugs. Roland plucked the machine-pistol calmly from Sheemie's hands.
"Your time to help will come," he said, "but after this first battle's fought and won. Do you see Jake's bumbler, Sheemie?"
"Aye, he's with the Rod."
"He talks. See if you can get him to talk to you."
Sheemie obediently went to where Chucky/Haylis was still stroking Oy's head, dropped to one knee, and commenced trying to get Oy to say his name. The bumbler did almost at once, and with remarkable clarity. Sheemie laughed, and Haylis joined in. They sounded like a couple of kids from the Calla.
The roont kind, perhaps.
Roland, meanwhile, turned to Dinky and Ted, his lips little more than a white line in his stern face.
SEVEN
"He's to be kept out of it, once the shooting starts." The gunslinger mimed turning a key in a lock. "If we lose, what happens to him later on won't matter. If we win, we'll need him at least one more time. Probably twice."
"To go where?" Dinky asked.
"Keystone World America," Eddie said. "A small town in western Maine called Lovell. As early in June of 1999 as one-way time allows."
"Sending me to Connecticut appears to have inaugurated Sheemie's seizures," Ted said in a low voice. "You know that sending you back America-side is apt to make him worse, don't you? Or kill him?" He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. Just askin, gents.
"We know," Roland said, "and when the time comes, I'll make the risk clear and ask him if-"
"Oh man, you can stick that one where the sun don't shine,"
Dinky said, and Eddie was reminded so strongly of himself-the way he'd been during his first few hours on the shore of the Western Sea, confused, pissed off, and jonesing for heroin-that he felt a moment of deja vu. "If you told him you wanted him to set himself on fire, the only thing he'd want to know would be if you had a match. He thinks you're Christ on a cracker."