Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King [279]
Still trailing his hand along the rough boards, he turned onto Forty-sixth Street. Down at the end on this side was the glassy-green bulk of the U.N. Plaza Hotel. Calla, Callahan, he thought, and then: Calla, Callahan, Calvin. And then: Calla-come-four, there’s a rose behind the door, Calla-come-Callahan, Calvin’s one more!
He reached the end of the fence. At first he saw nothing, and his heart sank. Then he looked down, and there it was, at knee height: five numbers written in black. Callahan reached into his pocket for the stub of pencil he always kept there, then pulled off a corner of a poster for an off-Broadway play called Dungeon Plunger, A Revue. On this he scribbled five numbers.
He didn’t want to leave, but knew he had to; clear thinking this close to the rose was impossible.
I’ll be back, he told it, and to his delighted amazement, a thought came back, clear and true: Yes, Father, anytime. Come-commala.
On the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, he looked behind him. The door to the cave was still there, the bottom floating about three inches off the sidewalk. A middle-aged couple, tourists judging by the guide-books in their hands, came walking up from the direction of the hotel. Chatting to each other, they reached the door and swerved around it. They don’t see it, but they feel it, Callahan thought. And if the sidewalk had been crowded and swerving had been impossible? He thought in that case they would have walked right through the place where it hung and shimmered, perhaps feeling nothing but a momentary coldness and sense of vertigo. Perhaps hearing, faintly, the sour tang of chimes and catching a whiff of something like burnt onions or seared meat. And that night, perhaps, they’d have transient dreams of places far stranger than Fun City.
He could step back through, probably should; he’d gotten what he’d come for. But a brisk walk would take him to the New York Public Library. There, behind the stone lions, even a man with no money in his pocket could get a little information. The location of a certain zip code, for instance. And—tell the truth and shame the devil—he didn’t want to leave just yet.
He waved his hands in front of him until the gunslinger noticed what he was doing. Ignoring the looks of the passersby, Callahan raised his fingers in the air once, twice, three times, not sure the gunslinger would get it. Roland seemed to. He gave an exaggerated nod, then thumbs-up for good measure.
Callahan set off, walking so fast he was nearly jogging. It wouldn’t do to linger, no matter how pleasant a change New York made. It couldn’t be pleasant where Roland was waiting. And, according to Eddie, it might be dangerous, as well.
Eight
The gunslinger had no problem understanding Callahan’s message. Thirty fingers, thirty minutes. The Pere wanted another half an hour on the other side. Roland surmised he had thought of a way to turn the number written on the fence into an actual place. If he could do that, it would be all to the good. Information was power. And sometimes, when time was tight, it was speed.
The bullets in his ears blocked the voices completely. The chimes got in, but even they were dulled. A good thing, because the sound of them was far worse than the warble of the thinny. A couple of days listening to that sound and he reckoned he’d be ready for the lunatic asylum, but for thirty minutes he’d be all right. If worse came to worst, he might be able to pitch something through the door, attract the Pere’s attention, and get him to come back early.
For a little while Roland watched the street unroll before Callahan. The doors on the beach had been like looking through the eyes of his three: Eddie, Odetta, Jack Mort. This one was a little different. He could always see Callahan’s back in it, or his face if he turned