The Road to The Dark Tower

by Vincent, Bev

  33 He mentions Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Dickens’s Mystery of Edwin Drood as examples of unfinished works.

  34 The article’s byline is that of Ray Routhier, a real-life journalist for the Portland Press Herald, who gave King permission to use his name in the book.

  35 Personal communication, August 2003.

  Chapter 8

  THE DARK TOWER (RESUMPTION)

  My quest—the quest of my ka-tet—is the Dark Tower. It’s not saving this world we’re about, or even this universe, but all universes. All of existence.

  [DT5] 1

  What we’re playing for, Roland, is the ages.

  [DT6]

  The Dark Tower begins immediately after the end of Song of Susannah. Father Callahan, Jake and Oy are on the street outside the Dixie Pig, ready to begin what could be their final battle. For weapons they have Jake’s father’s gun, Susannah’s Orizas, and the scrimshaw turtle Susannah left for them in the gutter. Callahan knows that Jake must survive, but his own part in the story is almost done.

  Inside the restaurant, they both sense that something exciting has just happened. They are vastly outnumbered, but the turtle sigul levels the playing field, entrancing most of the entities in the room except for the black bugs scuttling under the table, the little doctors—also known as Grandfather fleas—that Roland encountered in Eluria. Their presence in such numbers indicates that the Grandfathers—Type One vampires—aren’t far behind. Oy kills a few, and the others retreat quickly. Callahan muses that Oy seems to have been bred to destroy these parasites.

  Eddie and Roland, swept from Maine on a Beam hurricane, witness the onset of the confrontation from a vantage point high up in the room. They both know how this battle is going to turn out. Roland confirms Callahan’s belief that he is to sacrifice himself so Jake can continue. The gunslinger inhabits Callahan’s body to speak to Jake, telling him to leave the priest behind and go after Susannah. Noticing his reluctance, Roland thinks, “I should have schooled him better in betrayal.” Eddie’s suggestion that the vampires will kill and eat Oy spurs Jake into action better than Roland’s orders do.

  The sigul has no effect on the Type One vampires who emerge from the kitchen, but Callahan’s faith works through his cross. He doesn’t waver in the face of EVIL when the vampires—echoing Barlow—dare him to throw his cross aside. “I needn’t stake my faith on the challenge of such a thing as you. . . . I’d never throw away such an old friend in any case.” He lets the cross fall inside his shirt, but the power of God and the White radiate through his very being. He gets a second chance to correct an error he made in a previous life, in much the same way that Roland has been given multiple attempts to get his quest right.

  Fear of Sayre, who answers to Walter, who in turn answers only to the Crimson King, spurs three taheen to take action. They knock the turtle from Callahan’s hand to the floor. It bounces under one of the tables and “there passes out of this tale forever,”2 releasing the taheen from its glammer. Callahan invokes God’s name, but the Crimson King’s minions exist outside His power. They fall on him and bite into his neck. The smell of blood outweighs the power of the cross, drawing the vampires to him.

  God—or ka—answers Callahan’s call for strength. He shoots the taheen who attacked him and wonders if that makes him a gunslinger. Before the vampires sink their teeth into his neck, Callahan turns the Ruger on himself. He salutes Roland, who returns the salute, saying, “Hile, gunslinger!” Callahan pulls the trigger and dies, satisfied that he has fulfilled his duty, committing suicide without apparent moral conflict for the second time in his existence.

  THE BEAM HURRICANE, called aven kal, strikes Eddie and Roland in Cullum’s car on the way to Turtleback Lane in Lovell, a looping road along the shore of Kezar Lake3 and the center of walk-in activity. The Beam means to speak to them. Roland’s tutor used to say, “You would do well to listen if it does.”

  Their bodies float inside the car briefly, then the hurricane carries their essences to Fedic, where they hover over Susannah and Mia. Susannah sees them—naked and surrounded by a cloud of detritus from inside Cullum’s car—and says, “Chassit,” a word Roland knows from a song his mother used to sing. It means “nineteen,” the mystical word they have been encountering since leaving the Emerald Palace. The hurricane then takes them to the Dixie Pig before returning them to Cullum’s car. In its wake, they sense Callahan’s death.

  Roland expects to find a magic doorway at Turtleback Lane. Before they leave in pursuit of Susannah, Eddie wants to arrange to have the title to the vacant lot—a document that may not withstand close scrutiny—delivered to Odetta’s godfather, Moses Carver. Time is running out for Susannah, but the Tower takes precedence. He gets perverse pleasure from knowing that the agreement, perhaps the most important piece of paper in the world, has a silly pun (“Dam important things to do”) at the top.

  They need someone besides Aaron Deepneau as a go-between because Deepneau doesn’t know enough of the ka-tet’s story to resist Tower’s nagging. The only other person they know is John Cullum, whom they earlier ordered to leave town until the heat died down. Roland believes that since they need him, ka dictates that Cullum will still be at home. Eddie argues that, in a story, a minor character like John Cullum would never come in off the bench to save the day. It wouldn’t be considered realistic. Roland says, “In life, I’m sure it happens all the time.”

  Roland’s faith is validated. Cullum answers his phone when he hears Eddie’s voice on the answering machine, and agrees to meet them on Turtleback Lane. On the way, they pass a being Roland calls a Child of Roderick.4 They are wandering folk, Bedouins from beyond any land Roland ever knew, although before the world moved on they honored Arthur Eld. Now they act as trustees at Devar-Toi, where the Breakers are held. Their mutation is caused, according to Pimli Prentiss, from working near the red glow of the King’s Forge, aka the Big Combination.

  Roland shows it Aunt Talitha’s cross to prove his identity. In exchange for the name of the town standing near Castle Discordia where Susannah has been taken, Roland puts the mutant out of his misery. In the wake of this incident, Eddie contemplates the gunslinger and, for the first time, thinks of him as his father.

  Roland is elated. Once their business in Fedic is done, they will turn east and head straight for the Dark Tower. “I have never been so close. I hear all my lost friends and lost fathers whispering to me. They whisper on the Tower’s very breath.”

  FROM HER HOSPITAL BED, Susannah assesses her situation. She has eleven adversaries, including Sayre and the human doctor, whose gun she thinks she can steal. Her link with Mia is fading and her labor pains are over, but she continues to scream to keep the enemy disoriented. When the connection is severed, she feels like she has lost a sister. One look at Mia tells her that finally achieving the imperative of her existence—giving birth—has driven her insane.

  Baby Mordred seems normal at first, other than being born with a full set of teeth and an erection. On his left heel he bears the bloodlike mark of the Eld, which becomes a crimson brand on the back of the spider-monster he turns into while suckling at Mia’s breast. A white growth rises from its back containing the baby’s tiny, deformed face and blue eyes. According to legend, the Guardians of the Beam each carried an extra brain on the outside of its head. The satellite dishes that controlled them inspired this myth, but Mordred’s form seems analogous.

  Susannah is so stunned by the transformation that she misses a chance to shoot both Mia and Mordred. Even Sayre is surprised. Mia dies praising her beautiful son as the monster drains her lifeblood. Susannah snaps out of her trance, seizes the doctor’s gun and shoots everyone in the room, mentally thanking Roland for showing her how to become a killing machine. When Sayre tries to surrender, Susannah shoots him twice, once each for Callahan and Mia.

  She stumbles over a body and only wounds Mordred with her last bullet, shooting off one of his legs, an injury that translates when Mordred is in human form to an
arm wound that will never heal. As the spider escapes, Susannah hears his outrage projected into her mind. “You cannot! You must not! For I am the King’s only son!”

  The only being left in the Dogan is Nigel, the robotic butler. Memories of Andy and the Calla fresh in her mind, Susannah shoots out his eyes and then gets him to carry her to the door from New York, where she waits for Jake.

  A washer boy—originally from the outskirts of Lud—warns Jake on his way through the Dixie Pig’s kitchen to beware the “mind trap.” Oy follows Susannah’s scent down a long corridor decorated with travel posters. People from Mid-World used these rational doors to access Earth like time-traveling tourists.5

  When Jake tries to use his touch, he realizes that he is open to mental infiltration, which he mistakenly thinks is the mind trap. To empty his head, he sings “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” The real mind trap captures these images and creates a jungle populated with cartoonish dinosaurs from The Lost Continent, a movie Jake saw when very young. Though they are only mental projections, the dinosaurs are real enough to kill him.

  To get around the trap, Jake exchanges minds with Oy,6 who doesn’t see the dinosaurs. Oy awkwardly operates Jake’s body and carries the billy-bumbler containing Jake’s mind past the holographic projector. They switch minds again just as their pursuers from the Dixie Pig catch up. It’s an amusing scene but ultimately irrelevant, as there are no lingering effects from their exchange and Jake and Oy’s relationship does not gain any permanent new insight from it.

  Exhausted, Jake reaches the door and readies himself for a battle, but Susannah hears him and gives him the password. Sayre hadn’t entrusted his minions with this information, so they are thwarted. Roland’s ka-tet is beginning to reassemble itself.

  ROLAND AND EDDIE meet Cullum at Turtleback Lane, where King owns the house at number 19, named Cara Laughs.7 They tell Cullum as much of their story as they think he can take, starting with Roland entering Eddie during his flight from Nassau. Cullum believes in the importance of their mission because they seem to want all the right things.

  Cullum and Deepneau are to persuade Moses Carver, using a secret Susannah shared with Eddie that Carver would know, that his goddaughter is still alive. Roland turns Aunt Talitha’s cross into a magic recording device to deliver this message in Susannah’s voice. They want Carver to form a corporate giant that will use Susannah’s fortune to protect the rose, watch over Stephen King and thwart Sombra and North Central Positronics at every possible juncture.

  Eddie appoints Cullum vice president of Tet Corporation, though the caretaker isn’t impressed by the title. He jokingly calls his new group the Three Elderly Stooges, the Three Toothless Musketeers, and the Old Farts of the Apocalypse. “[It] appears to me you’re offering the keys to one humongous great engine. Who wouldn’t want to turn it on, and see what it does?”

  Before they part, Cullum presents the gunslingers with their gunna, which he retrieved from the general store. Eddie and Roland drive to the lake, where the building storm hints that the doorway will close soon. Walk-ins, many of them mutants, wander through the woods by the hundreds. This part of Maine is thin and close to many worlds. The doorway, one of the original magic portals from the Prim, can take them wherever they want to go.

  Navigating by Jake’s touch, Roland and Eddie arrive on the New York side of the Fedic door and make short work of Jake’s pursuers. They open the door, and the ka-tet is reunited for the first time since the battle against the Wolves. Eddie and Susannah fall into each other’s arms. So, too, do Jake and Roland, who for the first time treat each other like proud father and son.

  The ka-tet believes the items they’ve been finding—like the scrimshaw turtle—indicate King is working on the Dark Tower series again. Susannah is about to mention dreaming about King’s death, but Nigel, who has been reading The Dead Zone, distracts her. His impressive book collection includes classics, Westerns, and a complete set of Stephen King through 1999’s Hearts in Atlantis, except for the Dark Tower books, which he claims to know nothing about. From his stuttering pattern, Susannah is sure he’s lying. Eddie suggests taking the King books with them, but Roland worries their content might mislead them.8

  Mordred monitors the ka-tet from a subterranean control room. Part of him wants to be invited to join them, but he could never acknowledge Roland as dinh, so he will always be on the outside.

  Randall Flagg, aka Walter o’Dim, arrives after Nigel—who has been bringing Mordred food—dies from instabilities caused by Susannah’s bullets. Like the low men who watch over the Breakers, to ward off mental attack Walter sports a metallic screen inside his hood that he “borrowed from a certain deserted house in the town of French Landing, Wisconsin.” It’s one of the metal-lined hoods that Charles Burnside put on potential Breakers to disrupt their mental powers when he abducted them. Walter may have made a serious error in wearing it. Mordred’s appearance—he is barely a toddler—causes Walter to underestimate him.9

  Walter’s goal is now the same as Roland’s—to get to the Dark Tower and see if anything occupies the room at the top. With the Crimson King imprisoned there, only two people can enter: Roland and Mordred. Walter intends to use Mordred to gain access to the Tower and take over as God of Everything, if he can get there in time. King’s fatal accident is less than five days away in End-World time. When King dies, his Beam will break and the Tower will fall.

  Mordred penetrates Walter’s feeble defenses and extracts the information he needs from his mind. He paralyzes the old wizard and switches to spider form to feed. He makes Walter pluck out his eyes and tongue before devouring him.10 “Walter had been quasi-immortal and made a legendary meal.”

  Readers may be disappointed at the unspectacular demise of this legendary villain who outwitted great minds for centuries without ever truly achieving any of his goals. He failed in Delain, in Las Vegas and in Mid-World. Roland isn’t present when this ancient deceiver who bedeviled him all his life finally pays for his prodigious list of sins. Still, perhaps it is fitting that Walter, like Dr. Frankenstein, dies at the hands of a creature he was instrumental in creating: Roland’s ill-begotten offspring. Walter’s death also disproves his own prophecy that Roland would have to slay the Ageless Stranger to gain the Tower. Perhaps this is a harbinger that Roland’s quest to defeat the endless loop of his existence won’t succeed this time.

  Mordred follows Walter’s back trail and picks up the scent of the ka-tet. He’s eager to attack, but knows his limitations. He’s vulnerable to their bullets in either form, so he bides his time and follows. The ka-tet’s next destination is Thunderclap, to stop the Breakers, either by killing them or freeing them. Roland believes Mordred intends to free the Crimson King, imprisoned in the Dark Tower, to slay what lives at the top.

  Oy tracks the Wolves’ scent to the Thunderclap portal, a technological door that will probably not work much longer. The overwhelming nausea they experience when they pass through explains why robots were sent to the Callas. No living being would eagerly pass through a second time.

  Three temporarily AWOL Breakers greet them at the Thunderclap train station. The elderly man who mistakes Jake for Bobby Garfield is Ted Brautigan from Hearts in Atlantis, a book the ka-tet saw on Nigel’s shelf a little earlier. His two younger companions are Dinky Earnshaw, the e-mail assassin from “Everything’s Eventual,” and a boy named Stanley whom Roland recognizes as Sheemie11 from Mejis, which means he is as ancient as the gunslinger.

  Sheemie blames himself for Susan Delgado’s death, but Roland absolves him, laying the blame on Rhea and himself. “If anyone was blameless in the business . . . it was you.” Roland tells Sheemie that he and his friends always knew he was special.

  Thunderclap is in a perpetual eclipse, the lingering result of the Crimson King’s madness. Stanley, assisted by the combined powers of the others, teleports the group to a mountain eight miles away. From their vantage point, the ka-tet sees artificial sunlight illuminating a prison that resembles a coll
ege campus. It has dorms near a village that looks like Main Street, America—Brautigan calls it Pleasantville—except the streets end in desert, reminiscent of the transformed community in The Regulators. Six high towers and three fences guard the area. Its real name is Devar-Toi, known by the taheen as Algul Siento, or Blue Heaven.

  More than three hundred Breakers live here, mostly misfits who don’t require much to make them happier than they were in their former lives: great food, movies and simulated sex with any person imaginable. United, they could easily overpower their captors, but they have no reason to escape. Most of them don’t know what they’re doing, but Ted does. He asks Roland if they’ve been eating “the children the Greencloaks bring from the Borderlands.” Roland won’t confirm Ted’s suspicions. “So you can eat yourself alive? Eat yourself instead of them?”

  Pimli (nee Paul) Prentiss and a taheen named Finli—whom Andy reported to from the Dogan outside the Calla—run Devar-Toi. Prentiss, a former Attica prison guard, is a compassionate warden who treats his wards well and calls them by name. He’s an unlikely person to be leading the end of creation: a religious man who believes their work at Devar-Toi is God’s work, as well as the Crimson King’s. He and Finli are Mid-World civil servants. They drink together after work and try hard not to think about what they’re doing.

  Their future is uncertain because the Breakers are close to completing their work. The Bear-Turtle Beam is beginning to bend. Once it goes, the last Beam, Eagle-Lion, might hold for another few weeks. Since the last Beam snapped, Devar-Toi has been cut off from the outside world. Prentiss and Finli don’t know why the Wolves didn’t return. With the Breaker’s work so near completion, Finli worries—with good cause—that Brautigan is planning something.12