by Stephen King
Balazar peered at his reflection in the window beside the TODAY’S SPECIALS display-board, gave the wings of hair above his ears one last little fluff with the tips of his fingers, then stepped through the open door. Andolini and Biondi followed.
“Hard guys,” Jake said.
“The hardest,” Eddie agreed.
“From Brooklyn.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Why are hard guys from Brooklyn visiting a used-book store in Manhattan?”
“I think that’s what we’re here to find out. Jake, did I hurt your shoulder?”
“I’m okay. But I don’t really want to go back in there.”
“Neither do I. So let’s go.”
They went back into The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.
Nine
Oy was still at Jake’s heel and still whining. Jake wasn’t crazy about the sound, but he understood it. The smell of fear in the bookstore was palpable. Deepneau sat beside the chessboard, gazing unhappily at Calvin Tower and the newcomers, who didn’t look much like bibliophiles in search of the elusive signed first edition. The other two old guys at the counter were drinking the last of their coffee in big gulps, with the air of fellows who have just remembered important appointments elsewhere.
Cowards, Jake thought with a contempt he didn’t recognize as a relatively new thing in his life. Lowbellies. Being old forgives some of it, but not all of it.
“We just have a couple of things to discuss, Mr. Toren,” Balazar was saying. He spoke in a low, calm, reasonable voice, without even a trace of accent. “Please, if we could step back into your office—”
“We don’t have business,” Tower said. His eyes kept drifting to Andolini. Jake supposed he knew why. Jack Andolini looked the ax-wielding psycho in a horror movie. “Come July fifteenth, we might have business. Might. So we could talk after the Fourth. I guess. If you wanted to.” He smiled to show he was being reasonable. “But now? Gee, I just don’t see the point. It’s not even June yet. And for your information my name’s not—”
“He doesn’t see the point,” Balazar said. He looked at Andolini; looked at the one with the big nose; raised his hands to his shoulders, then dropped them. What’s wrong with this world of ours? the gesture said. “Jack? George? This man took a check from me—the amount before the decimal point was a one followed by five zeroes—and now he says he doesn’t see the point of talking to me.”
“Unbelievable,” Biondi said. Andolini said nothing. He simply looked at Calvin Tower, muddy brown eyes peering out from beneath the unlovely bulge of his skull like mean little animals peering out of a cave. With a face like that, Jake supposed, you didn’t have to talk much to get your point across. The point being intimidation.
“I want to talk to you,” Balazar said. He spoke in a patient, reasonable tone of voice, but his eyes were fixed on Tower’s face with a terrible intensity. “Why? Because my employers in this matter want me to talk to you. That’s good enough for me. And do you know what? I think you can afford five minutes of chitchat for your hundred grand. Don’t you?”
“The hundred thousand is gone,” Tower said bleakly. “As I’m sure you and whoever hired you must know.”
“That’s of no concern to me,” Balazar said. “Why would it be? It was your money. What concerns me is whether or not you’re going to take us out back. If not, we’ll have to have our conversation right here, in front of the whole world.”
The whole world now consisted of Aaron Deepneau, one billy-bumbler, and a couple of expatriate New Yorkers none of the men in the bookstore could see. Deepneau’s counter-buddies had run like the lowbellies they were.
Tower made one last try. “I don’t have anyone to mind the store. Lunch-hour is coming up, and we often have quite a few browsers during—”
“This place doesn’t do fifty dollars a day,” Andolini said, “and we all know it, Mr. Toren. If you’re really worried you’re going to miss a big sale, let him run the cash register for a few minutes.”
For one horrible second, Jake thought the one Eddie had called “Old Double-Ugly” meant none other than John “Jake” Chambers. Then he realized Andolini was pointing past him, at Deepneau.
Tower gave in. Or Toren. “Aaron?” he asked. “Do you mind?”
“Not if you don’t,” Deepneau said. He looked troubled. “Sure you want to talk with these guys?”
Biondi gave him a look. Jake thought Deepneau stood up under it remarkably well. In a weird way, he felt proud of the old guy.
“Yeah,” Tower said. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t lose his butthole virginity on our account,” Biondi said, and laughed.
“Watch your mouth, you’re in a place of scholarship,” Balazar said, but Jake thought he smiled a little. “Come on, Toren. Just a little chat.”
“That’s not my name! I had it legally changed on—”
“Whatever,” Balazar said soothingly. He actually patted Tower’s arm. Jake was still trying to get used to the idea that all this…all this melodrama…had happened after he’d left the store with his two new books (new to him, anyway) and resumed his journey. That it had all happened behind his back.
“A squarehead’s always a squarehead, right, boss?” Biondi asked jovially. “Just a Dutchman. Don’t matter what he calls himself.”
Balazar said, “If I want you to talk, George, I’ll tell you what I want you to say. Have you got that?”
“Okay,” Biondi said. Then, perhaps after deciding that didn’t sound quite enthusiastic enough: “Yeah! Sure.”
“Good.” Balazar, now holding the arm he had patted, guided Tower toward the back of the shop. Books were piled helter-skelter here; the air was heavy with the scent of a million musty pages. There was a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Tower produced a ring of keys, and they jingled slightly as he picked through them.
“His hands are shaking,” Jake murmured.
Eddie nodded. “Mine would be, too.”
Tower found the key he wanted, turned it in the lock, opened the door. He took another look at the three men who had come to visit him—hard guys from Brooklyn—then led them into the back room. The door closed behind them, and Jake heard the sound of a bolt being shot across. He doubted Tower himself had done that.
Jake looked up into the convex anti-shoplifting mirror mounted in the corner of the shop, saw Deepneau pick up the telephone beside the cash register, consider it, then put it down again.
“What do we do now?” Jake asked Eddie.
“I’m gonna try something,” Eddie said. “I saw it in a movie once.” He stood in front of the closed door, then tipped Jake a wink. “Here I go. If I don’t do anything but bump my head, feel free to call me an asshole.”
Before Jake could ask him what he was talking about, Eddie walked into the door. Jake saw his eyes close and his mouth tighten in a grimace. It was the expression of a man who expects to take a hard knock.
Only there was no hard knock. Eddie simply passed through the door. For one moment his moccasin-clad foot was sticking out, and then it went through, too. There was a low rasping sound, like a hand being passed over rough wood.
Jake bent down and picked Oy up. “Close your eyes,” he said.
“Eyes,” the bumbler agreed, but continued to look at Jake with that expression of calm adoration. Jake closed his own eyes, squinting them shut. When he opened them again, Oy was mimicking him. Without wasting any time, Jake walked into the door with the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign on it. There was a moment of darkness and the smell of wood. Deep in his head, he heard a couple of those disturbing chimes again. Then he was through.
Ten
It was a storage area much bigger than Jake had expected—almost as big as a warehouse and stacked high with books in every direction. He guessed that some of those stacks, held in place by pairs of upright beams that provided shoring rather than shelving, had to be fourteen or sixteen feet high. Narrow, crooked aisl
es ran between them. In a couple he saw rolling platforms that made him think of the portable boarding ramps you saw in smaller airports. The smell of old books was the same back here as in front, but ever so much stronger, almost overwhelming. Above them hung a scattering of shaded lamps that provided yellowish, uneven illumination. The shadows of Tower, Balazar, and Balazar’s friends leaped grotesquely on the wall to their left. Tower turned that way, leading his visitors to a corner that really was an office: there was a desk with a typewriter and a Rolodex on it, three old filing cabinets, and a wall covered with various pieces of paperwork. There was a calendar with some nineteenth-century guy on the May sheet Jake didn’t recognize…and then he did. Robert Browning. Jake had quoted him in his Final Essay.
Tower sat down in the chair behind his desk, and immediately seemed sorry he’d done that. Jake could sympathize. The way the other three crowded around him couldn’t have been very pleasant. Their shadows jumped up the wall behind the desk like the shadows of gargoyles.
Balazar reached into his suitcoat and brought out a folded sheet of paper. He opened it and put it down on Tower’s desk. “Recognize this?”
Eddie moved forward. Jake grabbed at him. “Don’t go close! They’ll sense you!”
“I don’t care,” Eddie said. “I need to see that paper.”
Jake followed, not knowing what else to do. Oy stirred in his arms and whined. Jake shushed him curtly, and Oy blinked. “Sorry, buddy,” Jake said, “but you have to keep quiet.”
Was the 1977 version of him in the vacant lot yet? Once inside it, that earlier Jake had slipped somehow and knocked himself unconscious. Had that happened yet? No sense wondering. Eddie was right. Jake didn’t like it, but he knew it was true: they were supposed to be here, not there, and they were supposed to see the paper Balazar was now showing Calvin Tower.
Eleven
Eddie got the first couple of lines before Jack Andolini said, “Boss, I don’t like this. Something feels hinky.”
Balazar nodded. “I agree. Is someone back here with us, Mr. Toren?” He still sounded calm and courteous, but his eyes were everywhere, assessing this large room’s potential for concealment.
“No,” Tower said. “Well, there’s Sergio; he’s the shop cat. I imagine he’s back here somew—”
“This ain’t no shop,” Biondi said, “it’s a hole you pour money into. One of those chi-chi designers’d have trouble making enough to cover the overhead on a joint this big, and a bookstore? Man, who are you kidding?”
Himself, that’s who, Eddie thought. He’s been kidding himself.
As if this thought had summoned them, those terrible chimes began again. The hoods gathered in Tower’s storeroom office didn’t hear them, but Jake and Oy did; Eddie could read it on their distressed faces. And suddenly this room, already dim, began to grow dimmer still.
We’re going back, Eddie thought. Jesus, we’re going back! But not before—
He bent forward between Andolini and Balazar, aware that both men were looking around with wide, wary eyes, not caring. What he cared about was the paper. Someone had hired Balazar first to get it signed (probably) and then to shove it under Tower/Toren’s nose when the time was right (certainly). In most cases, Il Roche would have been content to send a couple of his hard boys—what he called his “gentlemen”—on an errand like that. This job, however, was important enough to warrant his personal attention. Eddie wanted to know why.
MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT
This document constitutes a Pact of Agreement between Mr. Calvin Tower, a New York State resident, owning real property which is principally a vacant lot, identified as Lot # 298 and Block# 19, located…
Those chimes wriggled through his head again, making him shiver. This time they were louder. The shadows drew thicker, leaping up the storage room’s walls. The darkness Eddie had sensed out on the street was breaking through. They might be swept away, and that would be bad. They might be drowned in it, and that would be worse, of course it would, being drowned in darkness would surely be an awful way to go.
And suppose there were things in that darkness? Hungry things like the doorkeeper?
There are. That was Henry’s voice. For the first time in almost two months. Eddie could imagine Henry standing just behind him and grinning a sallow junkie’s grin: all bloodshot eyes and yellow, uncared-for teeth. You know there are. But when you hear the chimes, you got to go, bro, as I think you know.
“Eddie!” Jake cried. “It’s coming back! Do you hear it?”
“Grab my belt,” Eddie said. His eyes raced back and forth over the paper in Tower’s pudgy hands. Balazar, Andolini, and Big Nose were still looking around. Biondi had actually drawn his gun.
“Your—?”
“Maybe we won’t be separated,” Eddie said. The chimes were louder than ever, and he groaned. The words of the agreement blurred in front of him. Eddie squinted his eyes, bringing the print back together:
…identified as Lot #298 and Block #19, located in Manhattan, New York City, on 46th Street and 2nd Avenue, and Sombra Corporation , a corporation doing business within the State of New York.
On this day of July 15, 1976, Sombra is paying a non-returnable sum of $100,000.00 to Calvin Tower , receipt of which is acknowledged in regard to this property. In consideration thereof, Calvin Tower agrees not to…
July 15th, 1976. Not quite a year ago.
Eddie felt the darkness sweeping down on them, and tried to cram the rest of it through his eyes and into his brain: enough, maybe, to make sense of what was going on here. If he could do that, it would be at least a step toward figuring out what all this meant to them.
If the chimes don’t drive me crazy. If the things in the darkness don’t eat us on the way back.
“Eddie!” Jake. And terrified, by the sound. Eddie ignored him.
…Calvin Tower agrees not to sell or lease or otherwise encumber the property during a one-year period commencing on the date hereof and ending on July 15, 1977 . It is understood that the Sombra Corporation shall have first right of purchase on the abovementioned property, as defined below.
During this period, Calvin Tower will fully preserve and protect Sombra Corporation’s stated interest in the abovementioned Property and will permit no liens or other encumbrances…
There was more, but now the chimes were hideous, head-bursting. For just one moment Eddie understood—hell, could almost see—how thin this world had become. All of the worlds, probably. As thin and worn as his own jeans. He caught one final phrase from the agreement: …if these conditions are met, will have the right to sell or otherwise dispose of the property to Sombra or any other party. Then the words were gone, everything was gone, spinning into a black whirlpool. Jake held onto Eddie’s belt with one hand and Oy with the other. Oy was barking wildly now, and Eddie had another confused image of Dorothy being swirled away to the Land of Oz.
There were things in the darkness: looming shapes behind weird phosphorescent eyes, the sort of things you saw in movies about exploring the deepest cracks of the ocean floor. Except in those movies, the explorers were always inside a steel diving-bell, while he and Jake—
The chimes grew to an ear-splitting volume. Eddie felt as if he had been jammed headfirst into the works of Big Ben as it was striking midnight. He screamed without hearing himself. And then it was gone, everything was all gone—Jake, Oy, Mid-World—and he was floating somewhere beyond the stars and the galaxies.
Susannah! he cried. Where are you, Suze?
No answer. Only darkness.
Chapter III:
Mia
One
Once upon a time, back in the sixties (before the world moved on), there had been a woman named Odetta Holmes, a pleasant and really quite socially conscious young woman who was wealthy, good-looking, and perfectly willing to look out for the other guy (or gal). Without even realizing it, this woman shared her body with a far less pleasant creature named Detta Walker. De
tta did not give a tin shit for the other guy (or gal). Rhea of the Cöos would have recognized Detta, and called her sister. On the other side of Mid-World, Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger, had drawn this divided woman to him and had created a third, who was far better, far stronger, than either of the previous two. This was the woman with whom Eddie Dean had fallen in love. She called him husband, and thus herself by the name of his father. Having missed the feminist squabbles of later decades, she did this quite happily. If she did not call herself Susannah Dean with pride as well as happiness, it was only because her mother had taught her that pride goeth before a fall.
Now there was a fourth woman. She had been born out of the third in yet another time of stress and change. She cared nothing for Odetta, Detta, or Susannah; she cared for nothing save the new chap who was on his way. The new chap needed to be fed. The banqueting hall was near. That was what mattered and all that mattered.
This new woman, every bit as dangerous in her own way as Detta Walker had been, was Mia. She bore the name of no man’s father, only the word that in the High Speech means mother.
Two
She walked slowly down long stone corridors toward the place of feasting. She walked past the rooms of ruin, past the empty naves and niches, past forgotten galleries where the apartments were hollow and none was the number. Somewhere in this castle stood an old throne drenched in ancient blood. Somewhere ladderways led to bone-walled crypts that went gods knew how deep. Yet there was life here; life and rich food. Mia knew this as well as she knew the legs under her and the textured, many-layered skirt swishing against them. Rich food. Life for you and for your crop, as the saying went. And she was so hungry now. Of course! Wasn’t she eating for two?
She came to a broad staircase. A sound, faint but powerful, rose up to her: the beat-beat-beat of slo-trans engines buried in the earth below the deepest of the crypts. Mia cared nothing for them, nor for North Central Positronics, Ltd., which had built them and set them in motion tens of thousands of years before. She cared nothing for the dipolar computers, or the doors, or the Beams, or the Dark Tower which stood at the center of everything.