Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [149]
Three objects had been carved on top of the box: a rose, a stone, and a door. Beneath the door was this:
Roland reached out again. Callahan made a move forward, as if to stop him, and then subsided. Roland touched the carving beneath the image of the door. Again the hum beneath it rose—the hum of the black ball hidden inside the box.
“Un…?” he whispered, and ran the ball of his thumb across the raised symbols again. “Un…found?” Not what he read but what his fingertips heard.
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what it says,” Callahan whispered back. He looked pleased, but still grasped Roland’s wrist and pushed it, wanting the gunslinger’s hand away from the box. A fine sweat had broken on his brow and forearms. “It makes sense, in a way. A leaf, a stone, an unfound door. They’re symbols in a book from my side. Look Homeward, Angel, it’s called.”
A leaf, a stone, a door, Roland thought. Only substitute rose for leaf. Yes. That feels right.
“Will you take it?” Callahan asked. Only his voice rose slightly now, out of its whisper, and the gunslinger realized he was begging.
“You’ve actually seen it, Pere, have you?”
“Aye. Once. It’s horrible beyond telling. Like the slick eye of a monster that grew outside God’s shadow. Will you take it, gunslinger?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Faintly, Roland heard the chime of bells—a sound so beautifully hideous it made you want to grind your teeth against it. For a moment the walls of Pere Callahan’s church wavered. It was as if the thing in the box had spoken to them: Do you see how little it all matters? How quickly and easily I can take it all away, should I choose to do so? Beware, gunslinger! Beware, shaman! The abyss is all around you. You float or fall into it at my whim.
Then the kammen were gone.
“When?” Callahan reached over the box in its hole and grasped Roland’s shirt. “When?”
“Soon,” Roland said.
Too soon, his heart replied.
Chapter V:
The Tale of Gray Dick
One
Now it’s twenty-three, Roland thought that evening as he sat behind Eisenhart’s Rocking B, listening to the boys shout and Oy bark. Back in Gilead, this sort of porch behind the main house, facing the barns and the fields, would have been called the work-stoop. Twenty-three days until the Wolves. And how many until Susannah foals?
A terrible idea concerning that had begun to form in his head. Suppose Mia, the new she inside Susannah’s skin, were to give birth to her monstrosity on the very day the Wolves appeared? One wouldn’t think that likely, but according to Eddie, coincidence had been cancelled. Roland thought he was probably right about that. Certainly there was no way to gauge the thing’s period of gestation. Even if it had been a human child, nine months might no longer be nine months. Time had grown soft.
“Boys!” Eisenhart bawled. “What in the name of the Man Jesus am I going to tell my wife if you kill yer sad selfs jumpin out of that barn?”
“We’re okay!” Benny Slightman called. “Andy won’t let us get hurt!” The boy, dressed in bib overalls and barefooted, was standing in the open bay of the barn, just above the carved letters which said ROCKING B. “Unless…do you really want us to stop, sai?”
Eisenhart glanced toward Roland, who saw Jake standing just behind Benny, impatiently waiting his chance to risk his bones. Jake was also dressed in bib overalls—a pair of his new friend’s, no doubt—and the look of them made Roland smile. Jake wasn’t the sort of boy you imagined in such clothes, somehow.
“It’s nil to me, one way or the other, if that’s what you want to know,” Roland said.
“Garn, then!” the rancher called. Then he turned his attention to the bits and pieces of hardware spread out on the boards. “What do’ee think? Will any of em shoot?”
Eisenhart had produced all three of his guns for Roland’s inspection. The best was the rifle the rancher had brought to town on the night Tian Jaffords