The Dark Tower

She closed her eyes and once more saw the two street-signs on their pole, signs that were actually a little below the pilgrims, because the newcomers had been standing on a snowbank nine feet high. TOWER ROAD, one of the signs had read — that one pointing to the plowed road that disappeared over the horizon. The other, the one indicating the short lane with the cottages on it, had said ODD’S LANE, only…

“Only it didn’t,” she murmured, clenching the hand that wasn’t holding the note into a fist. “It didn’t.”

She could see it clearly enough in her mind’s eye: ODD’S LANE, with the apostrophe and the S added,

and why would somebody do that? Was the sign-changer maybe a compulsive neatnik who couldn’t stand—

What? Couldn’t stand what?

Beyond the closed bathroom door, Roland roared louder than ever. Something fell over and broke. He’s not used to laughing like that, Susannah thought. You best look out, Roland, or you’ll do yourself damage. Laugh yourself into a hernia, or something.

Think about it, her unknown correspondent had advised, and she was trying. Was there something about the words odd and lane

that someone didn’t want them to see? If so, that person had no need to worry, because she sure wasn’t seeing it. She wished Eddie was here. Eddie was the one who was good at the funky stuff: jokes and riddles and…an…

Her breath stopped. An expression of wide-eyed comprehension started to dawn her face, and on the face of her twin in the mirror. She had no pencil and was terrible at the sort of mental rearrangements that she now had to—

Balanced on the stool, Susannah leaned over the waist-high washstand and blew on the mirror, fogging it. She printed ODD LANE. Looked at it with growing understanding and dismay. In the other room, Roland laughed harder than ever and now she recognized what she should have seen thirty valuable seconds ago: that laughter wasn’t merry. It was jagged and out of control, the laughter of a man struggling for breath. Roland was laughing the way the folken laughed when comedy turned to tragedy. The way folken laughed in hell.

Below ODD LANE she used the tip of her finger to print DANDELO,

the anagram Eddie might have seen right away, and surely once he realized the apostrophe-S on the sign had been added to distract them.

In the other room the laughter dropped and changed, becoming a sound that was alarming instead of amusing. Oy was barking crazily, and Roland—

Roland was choking.

Chapter VI:

Patrick Danville

One

She wasn’t wearing her gun. Joe had insisted she take the La-Z-Boy recliner when they’d returned to the living room after dinner, and she’d put the revolver on the magazine-littered end-table beside it, after rolling the cylinder and drawing the shells. The shells were in her pocket.

Susannah tore open the bathroom door and scrambled back into the living room. Roland was lying on the floor between the couch and the television, his face a terrible purple color. He was scratching at his swollen throat and still laughing. Their host was standing over him, and the first thing she saw was that his hair — that baby-fine, shoulder-length white hair — was now almost entirely black. The lines around his eyes and mouth had been erased. Instead of ten years younger, Joe Collins now looked twenty or even thirty years younger.

The son of a bitch.

The vampire son of a bitch.

Oy leaped at him and seized Joe’s left leg just above the knee. “Twenny-five, sissy-four, nineteen, hike!” Joe cried merrily, and kicked out, now as agile as Fred Astaire. Oy flew through the air and hit the wall hard enough to knock a plaque reading GOD BLESS OUR HOME to the floor. Joe turned back to Roland.

“What I think,” he said, “is that women need a reason to have sex.” Joe put one foot on Roland’s chest — like a big-game hunter with his trophy, Susannah thought. “Men, on the other hand, only need a place! Bing!” He popped his eyes. “The thing about sex is that God gives men a brain and a dick, but only enough blood to operate one at a—”

He never heard her approach or lift herself into the La-Z-Boy in order to gain the necessary height; he was concentrating too completely on what he was doing. Susannah laced her hands together into a single fist, raised them to the height of her right shoulder, then brought them down and sideways with all the force she could manage. The fist struck the side of Joe’s head hard enough to knock him away. She had connected with solid bone, however, and the pain in her hands was excruciating.