The Dark Tower

Susannah reached into the leather bag bouncing around at Roland’s side, finding tins of food, but those weren’t the tins she wanted. At last she found one that she did, recognizing it by the circular gutter running around the lid. There was no time to wonder why it should feel so immediately and intimately familiar; Detta had her secrets, and something to do with Sterno was probably one of them. She held the can up to smell and be sure, then promptly bashed herself on the bridge of the nose with it when Roland stumbled over something — maybe a chunk of flooring, maybe another skeleton — and had to battle again for balance. He won this time, too, but eventually he’d lose and the thing back there might be on them before he could get up. Susannah felt warm blood begin to course down her face and the thing behind them, perhaps smelling it, let loose an enormous damp cry. She thought of a gigantic alligator in a Florida swamp, raising its scaly head to bay at the moon. And it was so close.

Oh dear God give me time, she thought. I don’t want to go like this, getting shot’s one thing, but getting eaten alive in the dark—

That was another.

“Go faster!” she snarled at Roland, and thumped at his sides with her thighs, like a rider urging on a weary horse.

Somehow, Roland did. His respiration was now an agonized roar. He had not breathed so even after dancing the commala. If he kept on, his heart would burst in his chest. But—

“Faster, Tex! Let it all out, goddammit! I might have a trick up my sleeve, but in the meantime you give it every-damn-everything you got!”

And there in the dark beneath Castle Discordia, Roland did.

Twelve

She plunged her free hand once more into the bag and it closed on the flashlight’s barrel. She pulled it out and tucked it under her arm (knowing if she dropped it they were gone for sure), then snapped back the tab-release on the Sterno can, relieved to hear the momentary hiss as the vacuum-seal broke. Relieved but not surprised — if the seal had been broken, the flammable jelly inside would have evaporated long ago and the can would have been lighter.

“Roland!” she shouted. “Roland, I need matches!”

“Shirt…pocket!” he panted. “Reach for them!”

But first she dropped the flashlight into the seam where her crotch met the middle of his back, then snatched it up just before it could slide away. Now, with a good hold on it, she plunged the barrel into the can of Sterno. To grab one of the matches while holding the can and the jelly-coated flashlight would have taken a third hand, so she jettisoned the can. There were two others in the bag, but if this didn’t work she’d never have a chance to reach for one of them.

The thing bellowed again, sounding as if it were right behind them. Now she could smell it, the aroma like a load of fish rotting in the sun.

She reached over Roland’s shoulder and plucked a single match from his pocket. There might be time to light one; not for two. Roland and Eddie were able to pop them alight with their thumbnails, but Detta Walker had known a trick worth two of that, had used it on more than one occasion to impress her whiteboy victims in the roadhouses where she’d gone trolling. She grimaced in the dark, peeling her lips away from her teeth, and placed the head of the match between the two front ones on top. Eddie, if you’re there, help me, sugar — help me do right.

She struck the match. Something hot burned the roof of her mouth and she tasted sulfur on her tongue. The head of the match nearly blinded her dark-adapted eyes, but she could see well enough to touch it to the jelly-coated barrel of the flashlight. The Sterno caught at once, turning the barrel into a torch. It was weak but it was something

.

“Turn around!” she screamed.

Roland skidded to a stop immediately — no questions, no protest — and pivoted on his heels. She held the burning flashlight out before her and for a moment they both saw the head of something wet and covered with pink albino eyes. Below them was a mouth the size of a trapdoor, filled with squirming tentacles. The Sterno didn’t burn brightly, but in this Stygian blackness it was bright enough to make the thing recoil. Before it disappeared into the blackness again, she saw all those eyes squeezing shut and had a moment to think of how sensitive they must be if even a little guttering flame like this could—

Lining the floor of the passageway on both sides were jumbled heaps of bones. In her hand, the bulb end of the flashlight was already growing warm. Oy was barking frantically, looking back into the dark with his head down and his short legs splayed, every hair standing on end.

“Squat down, Roland, squat!”