The Collective

by The Collective [lit]

  banana. Mommy uses her hands more than ever. And Joe and

  Naomi King hardly ever cry.

  As for Witch Hazel, she was never seen again, and considering

  those terrible farts she was letting when she left, that is probably a

  good thing!

  THE END

  THE LITTLE

  SISTERS OF

  ELURIA

  STEPHEN KING

  From:

  Legends: The Book Of Fantasy 1998

  INTRODUCTION

  The Gunslinger (1982)

  The Drawing of the Three (1987)

  The Waste Lands (1991)

  Wizard and Glass (1997)

  These novels, using thematic elements from Robert Browning's

  poem 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'. tell the saga of

  Roland, last of the gunslingers, who embarks on a quest to find the

  Dark Tower for reasons that the author has yet to reveal. Along the

  way, Roland encounters the remains of what was once a thriving

  society, feudal in nature but technologically quite advanced, that

  now has fallen into decay and ruin. King combines elements of

  fantasy with science fiction into a surreal blend of past and future.

  The first book, The Gunslinger, introduces Roland, who is chasing

  the Dark Man, an enigmatic sorcerer figure, across a vast desert.

  Through flashbacks, the reader learns that Roland was a member

  of a noble family in the Dark Tower world, and that that world

  may or may not have been destroyed with help from the Dark Man.

  Along the way, Roland encounters strange inhabitants of this

  unnamed world, including Jake, a young boy who, even though he

  is killed by the end of the first book, will figure prominently in

  later volumes. Roland does catch up with the Dark Man, and learns

  that he must seek out the Dark Tower to find the answers to the

  questions of why he must embark on this quest and what is

  contained in the Tower.

  The next book, The Drawing of the Three, shows Roland recruiting

  three people from present-day Earth to join him on his way to the

  Dark Tower. They are Eddie, a junkie 'mule' working for the

  Mafia; Suzannah, a paraplegic with multiple personalities; and

  Jake, whose arrival is startling to Roland, who sacrificed Jake in

  his own world during his pursuit of the Dark Man. Roland saves

  Jake's life on Earth, but the resulting schism nearly drives him

  insane. Roland must also help the other two battle their own

  demons, Eddie's being his heroin addiction and guilt over not being

  able to save his brother's life, and Suzannah's the war between her

  different personalities, one a kind and gentle woman, the other a

  racist psychopath. Each of the three deals with their problems with

  the help of the others, and together the quartet set out on the

  journey to the Tower.

  The third book, The Waste Lands, chronicles the first leg of that

  journey, examining the background of the three Earth-born

  characters in detail. The book reaches its climax when Jake is

  kidnapped by a cult thriving in the ruins of a crumbling city, led by

  a man known only as Flagg (a character who has appeared in

  several of King's other novels as the embodiment of pure evil).

  Roland rescues Jake and the group escapes the city on a monorail

  system whose artificial intelligence program has achieved

  sentience at the cost of its sanity. The monorail challenges them to

  a riddle-contest, with their lives as the prize if they can stump the

  machine, who claims to know every riddle ever created.

  Wizard and Glass, the fourth volume in the series, finds Roland,

  Jake, Eddie and Suzannah continuing their journey towards the

  Dark Tower, moving through a deserted part of Mid-World that is

  eerily reminiscent of twentieth-century Earth. During their travels

  they encounter a thinny, a dangerous weakening of the barrier

  between different times and places. Roland recognizes it and

  realizes that his world is breaking down faster than he had thought.

  The thinny prompts him to recall the first time he encountered it,

  many years before on a trip out west with his friends Cuthbert and

  Alain, when Roland had just earned his gunslinger status. It is this

  story - of the three boys uncovering a plot against the ruling

  government and of Roland's first love, a girl named Susan Delgado

  - that is the central focus of the book. While the three manage to

  destroy the conspirators, Susan is killed during the fight by the

  townspeople of Hambry. The story gives Jake, Eddie and

  Suzannah new insight into Roland's background and why he may

  sacrifice them to attain his ultimate goal of saving his world. The

  book ends with the foursome moving onward once more towards

  the Tower.

  THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA

  BY STEPHEN KING

  [Author's Note: The Dark Tower books begin with Roland of

  Gilead, the last gunslinger in an exhausted world that has 'moved

  on', pursuing a magician in a black robe. Roland has been chasing

  Walter for a very long time. In the first book of the cycle, he finally

  catches up. This story, however, takes place while Roland is still

  casting about for Walter's trail. A knowledge of the books is

  therefore not necessary for you to understand - and hopefully enjoy

  -the story which follows. S.K.]

  I. Full Earth. The Empty Town. The Bells. The Dead Boy.

  The Overturned Wagon. The Green Folk.

  On a day in Full Earth so hot that it seemed to suck the breath from

  his chest before his body could use it, Roland of Gilead came to

  the gates of a village in the Desatoya Mountains. He was travelling

  alone by then, and would soon be travelling afoot, as well. This

  whole last week he had been hoping for a horse-doctor, but

  guessed such a fellow would do him no good now, even if this

  town had one. His mount, a two-year-old roan, was pretty well

  done for.

  The town gates, still decorated with flowers from some festival or

  other, stood open and welcoming, but the silence beyond them was

  all wrong. The gunslinger heard no clip-clop of horses, no rumble

  of wagon-wheels, no merchants' huckstering cries from the

  marketplace. The only sounds were the low hum of crickets (some

  sort of bug, at any rate; they were a bit more tuneful than crickets,

  at that), a queer wooden knocking sound, and the faint, dreamy

  tinkle of small bells.

  Also, the flowers twined through the wrought-iron staves of the

  ornamental gate were long dead.

  Between his knees, Topsy gave two great, hollow sneezes -

  K'chow! K'chow! - and staggered sideways. Roland dismounted,

  partly out of respect for the horse, partly out of respect for himself

  - he didn't want to break a leg under Topsy if Topsy chose this

  moment to give up and canter into the clearing at the end of his

  path.

  The gunslinger stood in his dusty boots and faded jeans under the

  beating sun, stroking the roan's matted neck, pausing every now

  and then to yank his fingers through the tangles of Topsy's mane,

  and stopping once to shoo off the tiny flies clustering at the corners

  of Topsy's eye
s. Let them lay their eggs and hatch their maggots

  there after Topsy was dead, but not before.

  Roland thus honoured his horse as best he could, listening to those

  distant, dreamy bells and the strange wooden tocking sound as he

  did. After a while he ceased his absent grooming and looked

  thoughtfully at the open gate.

  The cross above its centre was a bit unusual, but otherwise the gate

  was a typical example of its type, a western commonplace which

  was not useful but traditional - all the little towns he had come to

  in the last tenmonth seemed to have one such where you came in

  (grand) and one more such where you went out (not so grand).

  None had been built to exclude visitors, certainly not this one. It

  stood between two walls of pink adobe that ran into the scree for a

  distance of about twenty feet on either side of the road and then

  simply stopped. Close the gate, lock it with many locks, and all

  that meant was a short walk around one bit of adobe wall or the

  other.

  Beyond the gate, Roland could see what looked in most respects

  like a perfectly ordinary High Street - an inn, two saloons (one of

  which was called The Bustling Pig; the sign over the other was too

  faded to read), a mercantile, a smithy, a Gathering Hall. There was

  also a small but rather lovely wooden building with a modest bell-

  tower on top, a sturdy fieldstone foundation on bottom, and a gold-

  painted cross on its double doors. The cross, like the one over the

  gate, marked this as a worshipping place for those who held to the

  Jesus-man. This wasn't a common religion in Mid-World, but far

  from unknown; that same thing could have been said about most

  forms of worship in those days, including the worship of Baal,

  Asmodeus, and a hundred others. Faith, like everything else in the

  world these days, had moved on. As far as Roland was concerned,

  God o' the Cross was just another religion which taught that love

  and murder were inextricably bound together - that in the end, God

  always drank blood.

  Meanwhile, there was the singing hum of insects which sounded

  almost like crickets. The dreamlike tinkle of the bells. And that

  queer wooden thumping, like a fist on a door. Or on a coffin top.

  Something here's a long way from right, the gunslinger thought.

  Ware, Roland; this place has a reddish odour.

  He led Topsy through the gate with its adornments of dead flowers

  and down the High Street. On the porch of the mercantile, where

  the old men should have congregated to discuss crops, politics, and

  the follies of the younger generation, there stood only a line of

  empty rockers. Lying beneath one, as if dropped from a careless

  (and long-departed) hand, was a charred corncob pipe. The

  hitching-rack in front of The Bustling Pig stood empty; the

  windows of the saloon itself were dark. One of the batwing doors

  had been yanked off and stood propped against the side of the

  building; the other hung ajar, its faded green slats splattered with

  maroon stuff that might have been paint but probably wasn't.

  The shopfront of the livery stable stood intact, like the face of a

  ruined woman who has access to good cosmetics, but the double

  barn behind it was a charred skeleton. That fire must have

  happened on a rainy day, the gunslinger thought, or the whole

  damned town would have gone up in flames; a jolly spin and raree

  for anyone around to see it.

  To his right now, halfway up to where the street opened into the

  town square, was the church. There were grassy borders on both

  sides, one separating the church from the town's Gathering Hall,

  the other from the little house set aside for the preacher and his

  family (if this was one of the Jesus-sects which allowed its

  shamans to have wives and families, that was; some of them,

  clearly administered by lunatics, demanded at least the appearance

  of celibacy). There were flowers in these grassy strips, and while

  they looked parched, most were still alive. So whatever had

  happened here to empty the place out had not happened long ago.

  A week, perhaps. Two at the outside, given the heat.

  Topsy sneezed again - K'chow! - and lowered his head wearily.

  The gunslinger saw the source of the tinkling. Above the cross on

  the church doors, a cord had been strung in a long, shallow arc.

  Hung from it were perhaps two dozen tiny silver bells. There was

  hardly any breeze today, but enough so these small bells were

  never quite still ... and if a real wind should rise, Roland thought,

  the sound made by the tintinnabulation of the bells would probably

  be a good deal less pleasant; more like the strident parley of

  gossips' tongues.

  'Hello!' Roland called, looking across the street at what a large

  falsefronted sign proclaimed to be the Good Beds Hotel. 'Hello, the

  town!'

  No answer but the bells, the tunesome insects, and that odd

  wooden clunking. No answer, no movement ... but there were folk

  here. Folk or something. He was being watched. The tiny hairs on

  the nape of his neck had stiffened.

  Roland stepped onward, leading Topsy towards the centre of town,

  puffing up the unlaid High Street dust with each step. Forty paces

  further along, he stopped in front of a low building marked with a

  single curt word: LAW. The Sheriffs office (if they had such this

  far from the Inners) looked remarkably similar to the church -

  wooden boards stained a rather forbidding shade of dark brown

  above a stone foundation.

  The bells behind him rustled and whispered.

  He left the roan standing in the middle of the street and mounted

  the steps to the LAW office. He was very aware of the bells, the

  sun beating against his neck, and of the sweat trickling down his

  sides. The door was shut but unlocked. He opened it, then winced

  back, half-raising a hand as the heat trapped inside rushed out in a

  soundless gasp. If all the closed buildings were this hot inside, he

  mused, the livery barns would soon not be the only burned-out

  hulks. And with no rain to stop the flames (and certainly no

  volunteer fire department, not any more), the town would not be

  long for the face of the earth.

  He stepped inside, trying to sip at the stifling air rather than taking

  deep breaths. He immediately heard the low drone of flies.

  There was a single cell, commodious and empty, its barred door

  standing open. Filthy skin-shoes, one of the pair coming unsewn,

  lay beneath a bunk sodden with the same dried maroon stuff which

  had marked The Bustling Pig. Here was where the flies were,

  crawling over the stain, feeding from it.

  On the desk was a ledger. Roland turned it towards him and read

  what was embossed upon its red cover:

  REGISTRY OF MISDEEDS & REDRESS

  IN THE YEARS OF OUR LORD

  ELURIA

  So now he knew the name of the town, at least - Eluria. Pretty, yet

  somehow ominous, as well. But any name would have seemed

  ominous, Roland supposed, given these circumstances. He turned

  to leave, and saw a
closed door secured by a wooden bolt.

  He went to it, stood before it for a moment, then drew one of the

  big revolvers he carried low on his hips. He stood a moment

  longer, head down, thinking (Cuthbert, his old friend, liked to say

  that the wheels inside Roland's head ground slow but exceedingly

  fine), and then retracted the bolt. He opened the door and

  immediately stood back, levelling his gun, expecting a body

  (Eluria's Sheriff, mayhap) to come tumbling into the room with his

  throat cut and his eyes gouged out, victim of a MISDEED in need

  of REDRESS

  Nothing.

  Well, half a dozen stained jumpers which longer-term prisoners

  probably required to wear, two bows, a quiver of arrows, an old,

  dusty motor, a rifle that had probably last been fired a hundred

  years agog and a mop ... but in the gunslinger's mind, all that came

  down to nothing. Just a storage closet.

  He went back to the desk, opened the register, and leafed through

  it. Even the pages were warm, as if the book had been baked. In a

  way, he supposed it had been. If the High Street layout had been

  different, he might have expected a large number of religious

  offences to be recorded, but he wasn't surprised to find none here -

  if the Jesus-man church had coexisted with a couple of saloons, the

  churchfolk must have been fairly reasonable.

  What Roland found were the usual petty offences, and a few not so

  petty - a murder, a horse-thieving, the Distressal of a Lady (which

  probably meant rape). The murderer had been removed to a place

  called Lexingworth to be hanged. Roland had never heard of it.

  One note towards the end read Green folk sent hence. It meant

  nothing to Roland. The most recent entry was this: 12/Fe/99. Chas.

  Freeborn, cattle-theef to be tryed.

  Roland wasn't familiar with the notation 12/Fe/99, but as this was

  a long stretch from February, he supposed Fe might stand for Full

  Earth. In any case, the ink looked about as fresh as the blood on the

  bunk in the cell, and the gunslinger had a good idea that Chas.

  Freeborn, cattle-theef, had reached the clearing at the end of his

  path.

  He went out into the heat and the lacy sound of bells. Topsy looked

  at Roland dully, then lowered his head again, as if there were

  something in the dust of the High Street which could be cropped.

  As if he would ever want to crop again, for that matter.

  The gunslinger gathered up the reins, slapped the dust off them