Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [24]
Eddie thought this a very odd little speech. For one thing, it wasn’t like Roland to be so tenderly solicitous of their mental health. Not like him to waste words, either.
Things have started again and he knows it, too, Eddie thought. There was a little time-out there, but now the clock’s running again. Game on, as they say.
“We going to set a watch, Roland?” Eddie asked.
“Not by my warrant,” the gunslinger said comfortably, and began rolling himself a smoke.
“You really don’t think they’re dangerous, do you?” Susannah said, and raised her eyes to the woods, where the individual trees were now losing themselves in the general gloom of evening. The little spark of campfire they’d noticed earlier was now gone, but the people following them were still there. Susannah felt them. When she looked down at Oy and saw him gazing in the same direction, she wasn’t surprised.
“I think that may be their problem,” Roland said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eddie asked, but Roland would say no more. He simply lay in the road with a rolled-up piece of deerskin beneath his neck, looking up at the dark sky and smoking.
Later, Roland’s ka-tet slept. They posted no watch and were undisturbed.
Five
The dreams, when they came, were not dreams at all. They all knew this except perhaps for Susannah, who in a very real sense was not there at all that night.
My God, I’m back in New York, Eddie thought. And, on the heels of this: Really back in New York. This is really happening.
It was. He was in New York. On Second Avenue.
That was when Jake and Oy came around the corner from Fifty-fourth Street. “Hey, Eddie,” Jake said, grinning. “Welcome home.”
Game on, Eddie thought. Game on.
Chapter II:
New York Groove
One
Jake fell asleep looking into pure darkness—no stars in that cloudy night sky, no moon. As he drifted off, he had a sensation of falling that he recognized with dismay: in his previous life as a so-called normal child he’d often had dreams of falling, especially around exam time, but these had ceased since his violent rebirth into Mid-World.
Then the falling feeling was gone. He heard a brief chiming melody that was somehow too beautiful: three notes and you wanted it to stop, a dozen and you thought it would kill you if it didn’t. Each chime seemed to make his bones vibrate. Sounds Hawaiian, doesn’t it? he thought, for although the chiming melody was nothing like the sinister warble of the thinny, somehow it was.
It was.
Then, just when he truly believed he could bear it no longer, the terrible, gorgeous tune stopped. The darkness behind his closed eyes suddenly lit up a brilliant dark red.
He opened them cautiously on strong sunlight.
And gaped.
At New York.
Taxis bustled past, gleaming bright yellow in the sunshine. A young black man wearing Walkman earphones strolled by Jake, bopping his sandaled feet a little bit to the music and going “Cha-da-ba, cha-da-bow!” under his breath. A jackhammer battered Jake’s eardrums. Chunks of cement dropped into a dumptruck with a crash that echoed from one cliff-face of buildings to another. The world was a-din with racket. He had gotten used to the deep silences of Mid-World without even realizing it. No, more. Had come to love them. Still, this noise and bustle had its attractions, and Jake couldn’t deny it. Back in the New York groove. He felt a little grin stretch his lips.
“Ake! Ake!” cried a low, rather distressed voice.
Jake looked down and saw Oy sitting on the sidewalk with his tail curled neatly around him. The billy-bumbler wasn’t wearing little red booties and Jake wasn’t wearing the red Oxfords (thank God), but this was still very like their visit to Roland’s Gilead, which they had reached by traveling in the pink Wizard’s Glass. The glass ball that had caused so much trouble and woe.
No glass this time…he’d just gone to sleep. But this was no dream. It was more intense than any dream he’d ever had, and more textured. Also…
Also, people kept detouring around him and