The Dark Tower Companion

by Bev Vincent

  DELGADO, LUPE (5)

  A thirty-two-year-old alcoholic who started working at Home in 1974 and was sober since 1970. He worked days as part of the maintenance crew at the Plaza Hotel and nights at the shelter. He helped craft Home’s “wet” policy. Father Callahan fell in love with him, though there was never anything physical between them. Lupe fell victim to a Type Three vampire, who gave him AIDS. He came down with Kaposi’s sarcoma in mid-1976 and died a few weeks later. Because of him, Father Callahan started killing vampires.

  DENBY, TOM (3)

  The name Jack Chambers gives to a cop in Times Square while being truant from school. He uses the name of a nearby establishment, Denby’s Discount Drug.

  DORFMAN, STAN (3)

  One of Jake Chambers’s classmates. Jack Mort has a client named Dorfman.

  DORNING, JANE (2)

  Flight attendant on Delta 901 between Nassau, Bahamas, and JFK. She is the first to believe that there’s something suspicious about Eddie.

  DOUGLAS, SUSY (2)

  Senior flight attendant on Delta 901 between Nassau, Bahamas, and JFK.

  DRABNIK, CSABA (4, 5)

  One of Henry Dean’s friends, known around the neighborhood as the Mad Fuckin Hungarian. Eddie hears his voice in the Doorway Cave.

  DRETTO, CARLOCIMI “CIMI” (2, 5)

  One of Enrico Balazar’s bodyguards. He weighs 250 pounds and has worked for “Da Boss” for decades. He hopes to retire to a farm in northern New Jersey. Alas, his retirement comes in the form of a bullet from Roland’s gun.

  EARNSHAW, RICHARD “DINKY” (7)

  A Breaker at Algul Siento. He was originally enlisted by Mr. Sharpton to work for Trans Corp, a subsidiary of North Central Positronics. He is precognitive, and his special abilities allow him to unlock doors and modify the telemetry equipment in Damli House to disguise their comings and goings and any unauthorized use of psychic power. He has a terrible temper and a habit of going off on foul-mouthed tirades if someone pushes his buttons. Unlike most Breakers, though, he isn’t totally self-absorbed. He befriends Sheemie Ruiz after hearing him crying at night. After the battle of Algul Siento, he joins Ted and the others on the train to Fedic. They head to the Callas, planning to get back home via the Doorway Cave.

  Crossovers to Other Works: Dinky Earnshaw first appeared in the story “Everything’s Eventual” as a high-school dropout who is given a job as an e-mail assassin for Trans Corp. He had an unpleasant encounter with Henry Dean’s friend Skipper Brannigan. The special symbol he uses to turn his power on Mr. Sharpton is the word “Excalibur,” the name of Arthur Eld’s sword, from which Roland’s guns are made.

  ESTEVEZ, JULIO (2)

  The ambulance driver who takes Odetta to the hospital after her accident.

  EVANS, BERYL (3, 4, 5, 6)

  Author of Charlie the Choo-Choo in one version of reality.

  FEENY, ANDREW (2, 3, 6, 7)

  Odetta Holmes’s driver. He started working for Odetta’s father when she was fourteen and knows about her blackouts and disappearances but doesn’t know the real reason for them. He calls John F. Kennedy the last gunslinger.

  FLAHERTY, CONOR (7)

  The leader and only human among the posse that chases Jake beneath the Dixie Pig. Originally from Boston, he has worked for the Crimson King for twenty years in many versions of New York. His fear of dragons is expressed by the mind-trap. He’s a good shot but no match on the draw for Roland, even after he tries to distract him by insulting his mother. Roland puts two bullets in his head.

  FRAMINGHAM, MR. (2)

  Jack Mort’s boss. Mort bought an expensive silver Dunhill lighter so he could light the man’s cigarettes.

  FRANKS, JOANNE (3)

  Secretary at the Piper School.

  FREDERICKS, TOMMY (4, 5)

  One of Henry Dean’s friends. He gets so excited watching the street stickball games that he makes faces, so the kids call him Halloween Tommy.

  GALE, DOROTHY (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

  A character from The Wizard of Oz. The ka-tet tells Roland her story before they enter the Green Palace outside Topeka.

  GARFIELD, BOBBY (6, 7)

  Ted Brautigan’s young friend after he escapes from Algul Siento. Ted mistakes Jake for him at first. Pimli Prentiss threatened to harm Bobby if Ted refused to cooperate after he was captured and returned.

  Crossover to Other Works: Bobby was the protagonist of the novella “Low Men in Yellow Coats” from Hearts in Atlantis.

  GARTON, WILLIAM (5)

  The Hitler brother Father Callahan thinks of as Lenny because he’s so short, no more than five foot two. He talks nonstop, isn’t very smart and has a bad complexion. Shot to death on Coney Island.

  GERBER, CAROL (7)

  Bobby Garfield’s childhood friend. Pimli Prentiss threatens to harm her if Ted Brautigan refuses to cooperate.

  Crossover to Other Works: Carol’s story is told in Hearts in Atlantis.

  GOLDOVER, SYLVIA (6)

  Henry Dean’s girlfriend during the winter of 1984–85. She was “Skank El Supremo” according to Eddie, with smelly armpits, dragon breath and Mick Jagger lips. The relationship ended when she stole ninety dollars from Henry’s wallet and disappeared.

  GRAHAM, TOMMY (5)

  Owner of Tom and Gerry’s Artistic Deli until it went out of business.

  GRANT, DONALD M. (3)

  A publisher of fine editions mentioned by Calvin Tower. Also publisher of the first editions of the Dark Tower novels.

  GUTTENBERG, MITCH (6)

  A senior partner at Guttenberg, Furth and Patel, the accounting firm where Trudy Damascus works.

  HALVORSEN, JIMMY (2)

  House detective at Macy’s.

  HANSON, LUCAS (5)

  One of Jake Chambers’s classmates at the Piper School. Lucas always tried to trip Jake when he was going up the aisle.

  HARLEY, MR. (3)

  Headmaster at the Piper School. He also teaches Spoken Arts.

  HARRIGAN, REVEREND EARL (6, 7)

  Henchick of the Manni’s twin in Manhattan. A tall, white-bearded man. A street preacher from the Church of the Holy God-Bomb who frequents the streets near 2 Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza. He often receives tickets from the cops for setting up easels, taking collection and preaching from a soapbox on the sidewalk. Susannah communicates with him mentally after she arrives from the Doorway Cave, and he relays the message to Jake and Father Callahan and intercedes when Jake gets in trouble with a taxi driver. He has a Southern accent that reminds Callahan of Foghorn Leghorn. Moses Carver is among his friends.

  HASPIO, JIMMY (2)

  One of Enrico Balazar’s henchmen. Played Trivial Pursuit with Henry Dean. Killed by Roland.

  HITLER BROTHERS (5, 6)

  Norton Randolph and William Garton. Two New York thugs who, for eight years, beat up Jews and African Americans in the five boroughs of New York and carve swastikas in their victims’ foreheads. They assault more than three dozen people and kill two. They begin working for the low men, attacking Rowan Magruder to lure Father Callahan back to New York. They are shot to death in Coney Island in what looks like a mob killing but is actually payback for their bungled attack on Callahan.

  HOLDEN, “FAT JOHNNY” (2)

  Justin Clements’s brother-in-law. He is working in Clements Guns and Sporting Goods the day Roland tries to buy ammunition.

  HOLMES, DAN (2, 5, 6, 7)

  Odetta Holmes’s father. He invented lucrative dental processes that had to do with capping teeth, allowing him to found Holmes Dental. He started feeling the effects of arthritis at twenty-five. After he had his first of many heart attacks in 1959, shortly after Odetta’s accident, he turned the financial end of the business over to his accountant friend, Moses Carver. According to legend, he was born “red-handed” (i.e., a birthmark).

  HOLMES, DANIEL (7)

  Pen name of Benjamin Slightman Jr. He used it to publish science fiction novels that inspire Calvin Tower to suggest that Tet Corporation use ps
ychics to spy on Mid-World and Sombra.

  HOLMES, ODETTA (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

  One of Susannah Dean’s former personalities. She was the daughter of a wealthy dentist. When she was five, a brick dropped by Jack Mort struck her on the head and put her in a coma for three weeks. After that injury, the personality of Detta Walker emerged on occasion.

  As a child, she was never happier than when she was pretending to be someone else. When her pet Pimsy died, they buried it under an apple tree. Her godfather told her that mourning a pet too long was a sin. She attempted to learn the violin, but her disastrous recital at the age of twelve was her last.

  She attended Columbia University, where she took a course in medieval history, and lives in a penthouse apartment near Central Park. On August 19th, 1959, Jack Mort pushed her in front of the A train and she lost her legs. Her mother was already dead by then, and her father started having heart attacks a couple of months after her accident.

  She labors all her life for respect. Because of her civil rights activism, she becomes almost as well known as Medgar Evers or Martin Luther King, and has been on the cover of Time. She’s jailed in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1962, where her fellow activists call her “Det,” while protesting the disappearance of three voter registration workers. At the age of twenty-five, she inherits millions from a trust fund and is worth eight or ten million dollars by 1964.

  Susannah thinks of Odetta as a self-righteous, pompous prig. Detta called her a poetry-reading bitch who thought she was too good to do math, so she did poorly on it in school even though she had an aptitude.

  HOLMES, SARAH (NÉE WALKER) [ALICE] (2, 3)

  Odetta Holmes’s mother. She dies before Odetta loses her legs.

  HOTCHKISS, MR. (3)

  The Piper School’s shrink.

  HOWARD (2)

  The doorman at Odetta Holmes’s apartment building.

  ITTAWAY, DAVE (7)

  One of the people hired to go to Algul Siento at the same time as Ted Brautigan.

  JESSERLING, PETRA (3, 5)

  One of Jake’s classmates at the Piper School. She wears A-line jumpers and flirts with him.

  KATZ (2)

  Owner and operator of Katz’s Drug Store. He’s forty-six but looks twenty years older. He’s balding, yellow-skinned and frail. He has two ulcers, one healed and one bleeding.

  KING, STEPHEN (5, 6, 7)

  The author. His family members include wife, Tabitha; sons, Joe and Owen; daughter, Naomi; brother, Dave; aunt Ethelyn and uncle Oren. In the mid-1970s, he moves to Bridgton, Maine, and a decade later, to Lovell and a lakeside house called Cara Laughs. Local people associate his arrival with the appearance of walkins.

  He is the creator of Mid-World, which makes him Roland’s creator—or at least his biographer. He’s afraid of Roland, both because of what the gunslinger has become in the story—an antihero—and how dangerous he seems when they meet face-to-face. The mistakes he makes affect reality, such as his confusion about the location of Co-Op City. Eddie thinks King looks like Roland’s son in 1977 and that he sounds like every character Eddie ever met in Mid-World.

  He’s also Father Callahan’s creator, since the priest is a character in one of his books published in the Keystone World. King either exists in only one universe or is only important in one. The Crimson King tries to kill him many times, starting when he was a boy, but each time someone steps in or he steps aside. He isn’t ka, but ka flows through him. Eddie believes he is the rose’s twin. In the early days, when he’s an alcoholic, he allows himself to believe he’s Gan.

  After Roland hypnotizes him in 1977 to convince him to continue writing his story, King returns to the Dark Tower series every so often. The Calvins believe he is leaving subliminal messages in his nonseries books, hoping they’ll reach Roland and help him attain his goal.

  Whenever he writes a Dark Tower book, he feels vulnerable. By 1999, he’s all but decided to give up on the series, so the ka of the rational world decides it has no more use for him. This is why Roland and Jake are forced to save his life. Roland hypnotizes King into believing he and Jake weren’t there during his near-fatal accident, but he sometimes comes close to remembering.

  KNOPF, MR. (3)

  Geometry and pre-algebra teacher at the Piper School.

  LEEDS, TANYA (7)

  A Breaker who comes to Algul Siento at the same time as Ted Brautigan. A sullen-looking young girl from Bryce, Colorado. Pimli Prentiss officiates over her marriage to Joey Rastosovich, but she asks Ted to marry them again so it will be official.

  LENNOX, RALPH (2)

  Security guard at Katz’s Drug Store. A former police officer who worked in the 23rd Precinct for eighteen years without ever drawing his gun.

  LUNDGREN, DAHLIE (3, 4, 5)

  Owner of a convenience store in Co-Op City. Eddie Dean and his brother and their friends used to hang out and smoke in the alley behind Dahlie’s. Eddie bought—and sometimes stole—comics from the store.

  MAGRUDER, ROWAN R. (5, 6, 7)

  The East Side’s “Street Angel,” founder, owner and chief supervisor of Home, the wet shelter where Mother Teresa once helped serve dinner. He appeared on the cover of Newsweek in 1980, was interviewed by Jane Pauley on the Today Show and was named Manhattan’s Man of the Year by Mayor Ed Koch. His twin sister, Rowena Rawlings, is proud of the fact that he took second place in the Beloit Poetry Prize Competition in 1949, though only four people entered that year. An aspiring novelist who describes his book as third-rate James Joyce. The Hitler Brothers attack him to lure Father Callahan back to New York. They poke out his eyes and cut off his cheek, poke a hole in his heart and another in his liver, as well as leaving their trademark swastika on his forehead. He dies shortly after Father Callahan visits. Jake misremembers his name as George.

  MARTIN, RAYMOND (3)

  President of Mid-World Railway Company. His daughter is Susannah, and his name calls to mind Marten Broadcloak.

  MARTIN, SUSANNAH (3)

  Daughter of Raymond Martin. Plays the piano.

  MCAVOY, WENDELL “CHIP” (5, 6, 7)

  Owner of the East Stoneham General Store. He is wounded in the side of the head during the gunfight with Andolini and his men in 1977, when he is forty, and spends two weeks in the hospital. His store burns on “That Day,” but he rebuilds it bigger and fancier thanks to extravagant insurance coverage. When Roland returns in 1999, he’s in the process of overcharging Irene Tassenbaum for her deli purchase on the grounds that she’s rich, from away and a Republican. He thinks Roland is there for him and tries to run away. Roland considers him a ka-mai and, as such, generally safe from harm. He surrenders the keys to his rusty International Harvester pickup truck, but Irene Tassenbaum drives it because she knows the way.

  MCCANN, BIRDIE (7)

  A Breaker at Algul Siento. A scrawny ex-carpenter with a receding hairline.

  MCDONALD, CAPTAIN (2)

  Pilot of Delta 901 between Nassau, Bahamas, and JFK.

  MCKEEN, GARRETT (7)

  Builder of the old rock wall that runs along Route 7 in Lovell, Maine. Roland talks to his great-grandson after Stephen King’s accident.

  MEARS, BEN (5)

  Author of Air Dance. Leader of the ka-tet that formed in ’Salem’s Lot to fight the vampire Barlow. He died in Los Zapatos, Mexico, at the age of fifty-nine in the mid-1990s. Black Thirteen sent Father Callahan todash to his funeral.

  Crossover to Other Works: Ben Mears is the protagonist of ’Salem’s Lot.

  MISLABURSKI, MRS. (7)

  Perhaps the most devout Catholic in Co-Op City, even venturing out to church during an ice storm, to the catcalls of the local kids—including Eddie Dean.

  MORT, JACK (2, 3, 5, 6, 7)

  The Pusher. Walter’s representative on the New York level of the Dark Tower. A CPA and a sociopath who drops bricks on people or pushes them in front of cars or trains. His coworkers are terrified of him, though he knows how to act like he’s normal. He dropped the brick that injured O
detta Holmes when she was five and pushed her in front of the A train many years later. He also pushes Jake Chambers in front of a Cadillac in one version of reality, but is prevented from doing so by Roland in another. Roland threw Mort’s body in front of a train as part of his gambit to unite Odetta Holmes’s personalities.

  MUCCI, TIMMY (3, 5)

  Employee at MidTown Lanes, Jake’s bowling alley. He gives Jake a bowling bag the day he bowls 280. He’s a fan of Marvel comics like Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and Captain America, which is why Jake is familiar with the Dr. Doom masks worn by the Wolves.

  O’MEARAH, GEORGE (2)

  One of the police officers Roland approaches outside Clements Guns and Sporting Goods. Knocked unconscious by Roland and stripped of his gun. Then struck in the face by Roland with the shotgun. It took three operations and four steel pegs to put him together again.

  O’ROURKE, BELLE (7)

  An elderly female Breaker at Algul Siento.

  OVERHOLSER, WAYNE D. (3, 5, 6)

  An author of Western novels mentioned by Calvin Tower.

  PETRIE, MARK (5, 6, 7)

  A boy who lived in ’Salem’s Lot when Father Callahan lived there. He joined Ben Mears’s ka-tet against the vampire Barlow and fled the town with the writer after it burned. He regarded Mears as his father and spoke at his funeral in Los Zapatos, Mexico, in the mid-1990s.

  POLINO, JIMMIE (4, 5)

  One of Henry Dean’s friends. Called Jimmie Polio because he has a clubfoot. Henry and his friends sometimes used his car when they went “turnpiking.” He picks Dinky Earnshaw’s nemesis, Skipper Brannigan, as the guy he’d like by his side during a fight.

  POSTINO, TRICKS (2, 5, 6)

  One of Enrico Balazar’s henchmen. Plays Trivial Pursuit with Henry Dean. In one reality, Eddie Dean shoots him in the head. In Keystone Earth, Eddie shoots him again and his head is squashed under the wheel of an out-of-control transport.

  RANDOLPH, NORTON “NORT” (5)

  The Hitler brother Father Callahan thinks of as George because he is about six foot six. He has a sandy mustache and is the smarter of the two. Shot to death on Coney Island.