by Stephen King
“All right,” she said. “That’s good. Let’s move on.”
Marian opened the wide center drawer of her desk. From it she brought out a padded envelope and a small wooden box. The envelope she handed to Nancy Deepneau. The box she placed on the desktop in front of her.
“This next is Nancy’s to tell,” she said. “And I’d just ask you to be brief, Nancy, because this man looks very anxious to be off.”
“Tell it,” Moses said, and thumped his cane.
Nancy glanced at him, then at Roland…or in the vicinity of him, anyway. Color was climbing in her cheeks, and she looked flustered. “Stephen King,” she said, then cleared her throat and said it again. From there she didn’t seem to know how to go on. Her color burned even deeper beneath her skin.
“Take a deep breath,” Roland said, “and hold it.”
She did as he told her.
“Now let it out.”
And this, too.
“Now tell me what you would, Nancy niece of Aaron.”
“Stephen King has written nearly forty books,” she said, and although the color remained in her cheeks (Roland supposed he would find out what it signified soon enough), her voice was calmer now. “An amazing number of them, even the very early ones, touch on the Dark Tower in one way or another. It’s as though it was always on his mind, from the very first.”
“You say what I know is true,” Roland told her, folding his hands, “I say thankya.”
This seemed to calm her even further. “Hence the Calvins,” she said. “Three men and two women of a scholarly bent who do nothing from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon but read the works of Stephen King.”
“They don’t just read them,” Marian said. “They cross-reference them by settings, by characters, by themes—such as they are—even by mention of popular brand-name products.”
“Part of their work is looking for references to people who live or did live in the Keystone World,” Nancy said. “Real people, in other words. And references to the Dark Tower, of course.” She handed him the padded envelope and Roland felt the corners of what could only be a book inside. “If King ever wrote a keystone book, Roland—outside the Dark Tower series itself, I mean—we think it must be this one.”
The flap of the envelope was held by a clasp. Roland looked askance at both Marian and Nancy. They nodded. The gunslinger opened the clasp and pulled out an extremely thick volume with a cover of red and white. There was no picture on it, only Stephen King’s name and a single word.
Red for the King, White for Arthur Eld, he thought. White over Red, thus Gan wills ever.
Or perhaps it was just a coincidence.
“What is this word?” Roland asked, tapping the title.
“Insomnia,” Nancy said. “It means—”
“I know what it means,” Roland said. “Why do you give me the book?”
“Because the story hinges on the Dark Tower,” Nancy said, “and because there’s a character in it named Ed Deepneau. He happens to be the villain of the piece.”
The villain of the piece, Roland thought. No wonder her color rose.
“Do you have anyone by that name in your family?” he asked her.
“We did,” she said. “In Bangor, which is the town King is writing about when he writes about Derry, as he does in this book. The real Ed Deepneau died in 1947, the year King was born. He was a bookkeeper, as inoffensive as milk and cookies. The one in Insomnia is a lunatic who falls under the power of the Crimson King. He attempts to turn an airplane into a bomb and crash it into a building, killing thousands of people.”
“Pray it never happens,” the old man said gloomily, looking out at the New York City skyline. “God knows it could.”
“In the story the plan fails,” Nancy said. “Although some people are killed, the main character in the book, an old man named Ralph Roberts, manages to keep the absolute worst from happening.”
Roland was looking intently at Aaron Deepnau’s grandniece. “The Crimson King is mentioned in here? By actual name?”
“Yes,” she said. “The Ed Deepneau in Bangor—the real Ed Deepneau—was a cousin of my father’s, four or five times removed. The Calvins could show you the family tree if you wanted, but there really isn’t much of a connection to Uncle Aaron’s part of it. We think King may have used the name in the book as a way of getting your attention—or ours—without even realizing what he was doing.”
“A message from his undermind,” the gunslinger mused.
Nancy brightened. “His subconscious, yes! Yes, that’s exactly what we think!”
It wasn’t exactly what Roland was thinking. The gunslinger had been recalling how he had hypnotized King in the year of 1977; how he had told him to listen for Ves’-Ka Gan, the Song of the Turtle. Had King’s undermind, the part of him that would never have stopped trying to obey the hypnotic command, put part of the Song of the Turtle in this book? A book the Servants of the King might have neglected because it wasn’t part of the “Dark Tower Cycle”? Roland thought that could be, and that the name Deepneau might indeed be a sigul. But—
“I can’t read this,” he said. “A word here and a word there, perhaps, but no more.”
“You can’t, but my girl can,” Moses Carver said. “My girl Odetta, that you call Susannah.”
Roland nodded slowly. And although he had already begun to have his doubts, his mind nevertheless cast up a brilliant image of the two of them sitting close by a fire—a large one, for the night was cold—with Oy between. In the rocks above them the wind howled bitter notes of winter, but they cared not, for their bellies were full, their bodies were warm, dressed in the skins of animals they had killed themselves, and they had a story to entertain them.
Stephen King’s story of insomnia.
“She’ll read it to you on the trail,” Moses said. “On your last trail, say God!”
Yes, Roland thought. One last story to hear, one last trail to follow. The one that leads to Can’-Ka No Rey, and the Dark Tower. Or it would be nice to think so.
Nancy said, “In the story, the Crimson King is using Ed Deepneau to kill one single child, a boy named Patrick Danville. Just before the attack, while Patrick and his mother are waiting for a woman to make a speech, the boy draws a picture, one that shows you, Roland, and the Crimson King, apparently imprisoned at the top of the Dark Tower.”
Roland started in his seat. “The top? Imprisoned at the top?”
“Easy,” Marian said. “Take it easy, Roland. The Calvins have been analyzing King’s work for years, every word and every reference, and everything they produce gets forwarded to the good-mind folken in New Mexico. Although these two groups have never seen each other, it would be perfectly correct to say that they work together.”
“Not that they’re always in agreement,” Nancy said.
“They sure aren’t!” Marian spoke in the exasperated tone of one who’s had to referee more than her share of squabbles. “But one thing that they are in agreement about is that King’s references to the Dark Tower are almost always masked, and sometimes mean nothing at all.”
Roland nodded. “He speaks of it because his undermind is always thinking of it, but sometimes he lapses into gibberish.”
“Yes,” Nancy said.
“But obviously you don’t think this entire book is a false trail, or you would not want to give it to me.”
“Indeed we do not,” Nancy said. “But that doesn’t mean the Crimson King is necessarily imprisoned at the top of the Tower. Although I suppose it might.”
Roland thought of his own belief that the Red King was locked out of the Tower, on a kind of balcony. Was it a genuine intuition, or just something he wanted to believe?
“In any case, we think you should watch for this Patrick Danville,” Marian said. “The consensus is that he’s a real person, but we haven’t been able to find any trace of him here. Perhaps you may find him in Thunderclap.”
“Or beyond it,” Moses put in.
Marian was nodding. “According to the story King tells in Insomnia—you’ll see for yourself—Patrick Danville dies as a young man. But that may not be true. Do you understand?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“When you find Patrick Danville—or when he finds you—he may still be the child described in this book,” Nancy said, “or he could be as old as Uncle Mose.”
“Bad luck f’him if that be true!” said the old man, and chortled.
Roland lifted the book, stared at the red and white cover, traced the slightly raised letters that made a word he could not read. “Surely it’s just a story?”
“From the spring of 1970, when he typed the line The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed,” Marian Carver said, “very few of the things Stephen King wrote were ‘just stories.’ He may not believe that; we do.”
But years of dealing with the Crimson King may have left you with a way of jumping at shadows, do it please ya, Roland thought. Aloud he said, “If not stories, what?”
It was Moses Carver who answered. “We think maybe messages in bottles.” In the way he spoke this word—boh’uls, almost—Roland heard a heartbreaking echo of Susannah, and suddenly wanted to see her and know she was all right. This desire was so strong it left a bitter taste on his tongue.
“—that great sea.”
“Beg your pardon,” the gunslinger said. “I was wool-gathering.”
“I said we believe that Stephen King’s cast his bottles upon that great sea. The one we call the Prim. In hopes that they’ll reach you, and the messages inside will make it possible for you and my Odetta to gain your goal.”
“Which brings us to our final gifts,” Marian said. “Our true gifts. First…” She handed him the box.
It opened on a hinge. Roland placed his left hand splayed over the top, meaning to swing it back, then paused and studied his interlocutors. They were looking at him with hope and suspenseful interest, an expression that made him uneasy. A mad (but surprisingly persuasive) idea came to him: that these were in truth agents of the Crimson King, and when he opened the box, the last thing he’d see would be a primed sneetch, counting down the last few clicks to red zero. And the last sound he’d hear before the world blew up around him would be their mad laughter and a cry of Hile the Red King! It wasn’t impossible, either, but a point came where one had to trust, because the alternative was madness.
If ka will say so, let it be so, he thought, and opened the box.
Twelve
Within, resting on dark blue velvet (which they might or might not have known was the color of the Royal Court of Gilead), was a watch within a coiled chain. Engraved upon its gold cover were three objects: a key, a rose, and—between and slightly above them—a tower with tiny windows marching around its circumference in an ascending spiral.
Roland was amazed to find his eyes once more filling with tears. When he looked at the others again—two young women and one old man, the brains and guts of the Tet Corporation—he at first saw six instead of three. He blinked the phantom doubles away.
“Open the cover and look inside,” Moses Carver said. “And there’s no need to hide your tears in this company, you son of Steven, for we’re not the machines the others would replace us with, if they had their way.”
Roland saw that the old man spoke true, for tears were slipping down the weathered darkness of his cheeks. Nancy Deepneau was also weeping freely. And although Marian Carver no doubt prided herself on being made of sterner stuff, her eyes held a suspicious gleam.
He depressed the stem protruding from the top of the case, and the lid sprang up. Inside, finely scrolled hands told the hour and the minute, and with perfect accuracy, he had no doubt. Below, in its own small circle, a smaller hand raced away the seconds. Carved on the inside of the lid was this:
To the Hand of ROLAND DESCHAIN
From Those of
MOSES ISAAC CARVER
MARIAN ODETTA CARVER
NANCY REBECCA DEEPNEAU
With Our Gratitude
White Over Red, Thus GOD Wills Ever
“Thankee-sai,” Roland said in a hoarse and trembling voice. “I thank you, and so would my friends, were they here to speak.”
“In our hearts they do speak, Roland,” Marian said. “And in your face we see them very well.”
Moses Carver was smiling. “In our world, Roland, giving a man a gold watch has a special significance.”
“What would that be?” Roland asked. He held the watch—easily the finest timepiece he’d ever had in his life—up to his ear and listened to the precise and delicate ticking of its machinery.
“That his work is done and it’s time for him to go fishing or play with his grandchildren,” Nancy Deepneau said. “But we gave it to you for a different reason. May it count the hours to your goal and tell you when you near it.”
“How can it do that?”
“We have one exceptional good-mind fellow in New Mexico,” Marian said. “His name is Fred Towne. He sees a great deal and is rarely if ever mistaken. This watch is a Patek Philippe, Roland. It cost nineteen thousand dollars, and the makers guarantee a full refund of the price if it’s ever fast or slow. It needs no winding, for it runs on a battery—not made by North Central Positronics or any subsidiary thereof, I can assure you—that will last a hundred years. According to Fred, when you near the Dark Tower, the watch may nevertheless stop.”
“Or begin to run backward,” Nancy said. “Watch for it.”
Moses Carver said, “I believe you will, won’t you?”
“Aye,” Roland agreed. He put the watch carefully in one pocket (after another long look at the carvings on the golden cover) and the box in another. “I will watch this watch very well.”
“You must watch for something else, too,” Marian said. “Mordred.”
Roland waited.
“We have reason to believe that he’s murdered the one you called Walter.” She paused. “And I see that does not surprise you. May I ask why?”
“Walter’s finally left my dreams, just as the ache has left my hip and my head,” Roland said. “The last time he visited them was in Calla Bryn Sturgis, the night of the Beamquake.” He would not tell them how terrible those dreams had been, dreams in which he wandered, lost and alone, down a dank castle corridor with cobwebs brushing his face; the scuttering sound of something approaching from the darkness behind him (or perhaps above him), and, just before waking up, the gleam of red eyes and a whispered, inhuman voice: “Father.”
They were looking at him grimly. At last Marian said: “Beware him, Roland. Fred Towne, the fellow I mentioned, says ‘Mordred be a-hungry.’ He says that’s a literal hunger. Fred’s a brave man, but he’s afraid of your…your enemy.”
My son, why don’t you say it? Roland thought, but believed he knew. She withheld out of care for his feelings.
Moses Carver stood and set his cane beside his daughter’s desk. “I have one more thing for you,” he said, “on’y it was yours all along—yours to carry and lay down when you get to where you’re bound.”
Roland was honestly perplexed, and more perplexed still when the old man began to slowly unbutton his shirt down the front. Marian made as if to help him and he motioned her away brusquely. Beneath his dress-shirt was an old man’s strap-style undershirt, what the gunslinger thought of as a slinkum. Beneath it was a shape that Roland recognized at once, and his heart seemed to stop in his chest. For a moment he was cast back to the cabin on the lake—Beckhardt’s cabin, Eddie by his side—and heard his own words: Put Auntie’s cross around your neck, and when you meet with sai Carver, show it to him. It may go a long way toward convincing him you’re on the straight. But first…
The cross was now on a chain of fine gold links. Moses Carver pulled it free of his slinkum by this, looked at it for a moment, looked up at Roland with a little smile on his lips, then down at the cross again. He blew upon it. Faint and faint, raising the hair on the gunslinger’s
arms, came Susannah’s voice:
“We buried Pimsey under the apple tree…”
Then it was gone. For a moment there was nothing, and Carver, frowning now, drew in breath to blow again. There was no need. Before he could, John Cullum’s Yankee drawl arose, not from the cross itself, but seemingly from the air just above it.
“We done our best, partner”—paaa’t-nuh—“and I hope ’twas good enough. Now, I always knew this was on loan to me, and here it is, back where it belongs. You know where it finishes up, I…” Here the words, which had been fading ever since here it is, became inaudible even to Roland’s keen ears. Yet he had heard enough. He took Aunt Talitha’s cross, which he had promised to lay at the foot of the Dark Tower, and donned it once more. It had come back to him, and why would it not have done? Was ka not a wheel?
“I thank you, sai Carver,” he said. “For myself, for my ka-tet that was, and on behalf of the woman who gave it to me.”
“Don’t thank me,” Moses Carver said. “Thank Johnny Cullum. He give it to me on his deathbed. That man had some hard bark on him.”
“I—” Roland began, and for a moment could say no more. His heart was too full. “I thank you all,” he said at last. He bowed his head to them with the palm of his right fist against his brow and his eyes closed.
When he opened them again, Moses Carver was holding out his thin old arms. “Now it’s time for us to go our way and you to go yours,” he said. “Put your arms around me, Roland, and kiss my cheek in farewell if you would, and think of my girl as you do, for I’d say goodbye to her if I may.”
Roland did as he was bid, and in another world, as she dozed aboard a train bound for Fedic, Susannah put a hand to her cheek, for it seemed to her that Daddy Mose had come to her, and put an arm around her, and bid her goodbye, good luck, good journey.
Thirteen
When Roland stepped out of the ele-vaydor in the lobby, he wasn’t surprised to see a woman in a gray-green pullover and slacks the color of moss standing in front of the garden with a few other quietly respectful folken. An animal which was not quite a dog sat by her left shoe. Roland crossed to her and touched her elbow. Irene Tassenbaum turned to him, her eyes wide with wonder.