Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [217]
There are horse stalls, long abandoned. There’s a pile of ancient hay, and beside it a neatly folded blanket and what looks like a breadboard. On the board is a single scrap of dried meat. He picks it up, sniffs it, smells salt. Jerky, he thinks, and pops it into his mouth. He’s not very worried about being poisoned. How can you poison a man who’s already dead?
Chewing, he continues his explorations. At the rear of the stable is a small room like an afterthought. There are a few chinks in the walls of this room, too, enough for him to see a machine squatting on a concrete pad. Everything in the stable whispers of long years and abandonment, but this gadget, which looks sort of like a milking machine, appears brand new. No rust, no dust. He goes closer. There’s a chrome pipe jutting from one side. Beneath it is a drain. The steel collar around it looks damp. On top of the machine is a small metal plate. Next to the plate is a red button. Stamped on the plate is this:
LaMERK INDUSTRIES
834789-AA-45-776019
DO NOT REMOVE SLUG
ASK FOR ASSISTANCE
The red button is stamped with the word ON. Callahan pushes it. The weary thudding sound resumes, and after a moment water gushes from the chrome pipe. He puts his hands under it. The water is numbingly cold, shocking his overheated skin. He drinks. The water is neither sweet nor sour and he thinks, Such things as taste must be forgotten at great depths. This—
“Hello, Faddah.”
Callahan screams in surprise. His hands fly up and for a moment jewels of water sparkle in a dusty sunray falling between two shrunken boards. He wheels around on the eroded heels of his boots. Standing just outside the door of the pump-room is a man in a hooded robe.
Sayre, he thinks. It’s Sayre, he’s followed me, he came through that damn door—
“Calm down,” says the man in the robe. “ ‘Cool your jets,’ as the gunslinger’s new friend might say.” Confidingly: “His name is Jake, but the housekeeper calls him ’Bama.” And then, in the bright tone of one just struck by a fine idea, he says, “I would show him to you! Both of them! Perhaps it’s not too late! Come!” He holds out a hand. The fingers emerging from the robe’s sleeve are long and white, somehow unpleasant. Like wax. When Callahan makes no move to come forward, the man in the robe speaks reasonably. “Come. You can’t stay here, you know. This is only a way station, and nobody stays here for long. Come.”
“Who are you?”
The man in the robe makes an impatient tsking sound. “No time for all that, Faddah. Name, name, what’s in a name, as someone or other said. Shakespeare? Virginia Woolf? Who can remember? Come, and I’ll show you a wonder. And I won’t touch you; I’ll walk ahead of you. See?”
He turns. His robe swirls like the skirt of an evening dress. He walks back into the stable, and after a moment Callahan follows. The pump-room is no good to him, after all; the pump-room is a dead end. Outside the stable, he might be able to run.
Run where?
Well, that’s to see, isn’t it?
The man in the robe raps on the free-standing door as he passes it. “Knock on wood, Donnie be good!” he says merrily, and as he steps into the brilliant rectangle of light falling through the stable door, Callahan sees he’s carrying something in his left hand. It’s a box, perhaps a foot long and wide and deep. It looks like it might be made of the same wood as the door. Or perhaps it’s a heavier version of that wood. Certainly it’s darker, and even closer-grained.
Watching the robed man carefully, meaning to stop if he stops, Callahan follows into the sun. The heat is even stronger once he’s in the light, the sort of heat he’s felt in Death Valley. And yes, as they step out of the stable he sees that they are in a desert. Off to one side is a ramshackle building that rises from a foundation of crumbling sandstone blocks. It might once have been an inn, he supposes. Or an abandoned set from a Western movie. On the other side is a corral where most of the posts and rails have fallen. Beyond