Wolves of the Calla_The Dark Tower 5

through it. No one seemed to feel that the losses were in any way equal to the
gains. And Eddie supposed that was true. If it wasn’t your wife or your son who
had fallen, that was.

The singing from town drew closer. Now they could see rising dust. In the
road, men and women embraced. Someone tried to take Margaret Eisenhart’s
head away from her husband, who for the time being refused to let it go.

Eddie drifted over to Jake.

“Never saw Star Wars, did you?” he asked.
“No, told you. I was going to, but—”

“You left too soon. I know. Those things they were swinging—Jake, they were
from that movie.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. And the Wolves . . . Jake, the Wolves themselves . . . ”

Jake was nodding, very slowly. Now they could see the people from town.

The newcomers saw the children—all the children, still here and still safe—and

raised a cheer. Those in the forefront began to run. “I know.”

“Do you?” Eddie asked. His eyes were almost pleading. “Do you really?
Because . . . man, it’s so crazy—”

Jake looked at the heaped Wolves. The green hoods. The gray leggings. The
black boots. The snarling, decomposing faces. Eddie had already pulled one of
those rotting metal faces away and looked at what was beneath it. Nothing but
smooth metal, plus lenses that served as eyes, a round mesh grille that
doubtless served as a nose, two sprouted microphones at the temples for ears.
No, all the personality these things had was in the masks and clothing they
wore.

“Crazy or not, I know what they are, Eddie. Or where they come from, at
least. Marvel Comics.”

A look of sublime relief filled Eddie’s face. He bent and kissed Jake on the
cheek. A ghost of a smile touched the boy’s mouth. It wasn’t much, but it was a
start.

“The Spider-Man books,” Eddie said. “When I was a kid I couldn’t get enough

of those things.”

“I didn’t buy em myself,” Jake said, “but Timmy Mucci down at Mid-Town

Lanes used to have a terrible jones for the Marvel mags. Spider-Man, The
Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, all of em. These guys . . . ”

“They look like Dr. Doom,” Eddie said.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “It’s not exact, I’m sure the masks were modified to make
them look a little more like wolves, but otherwise . . . same green hoods, same
green cloaks. Yeah, Dr. Doom.”

“And the sneetches,” Eddie said. “Have you ever heard of Harry Potter?”

“I don’t think so. Have you?”

“No, and I’ll tell you why. Because the sneetches are from the future. Maybe
from some Marvel comic book that’ll come out in 1990 or 1995. Do you see
what I’m saying?”

Jake nodded.

“It’s all nineteen, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Nineteen, ninety-nine, and nineteen-ninety-nine.”

Eddie glanced around. “Where’s Suze?”

“Probably went after her chair,” Jake said. But before either of them could
explore the question of Susannah Dean’s whereabouts any further (and by

then it was probably too late, anyway), the first of the folken from town arrived.

Eddie and Jake were swept into a wild, impromptu celebration—hugged,
kissed, shaken by the hand, laughed over, wept over, thanked and thanked and
thanked.

TWENTY-ONE

Ten minutes after the main body of the townsfolk arrived, Rosalita reluctantly
approached Roland. The gunslinger was extremely glad to see her. Eben Took
had taken him by the arms and was telling him—over and over again, endlessly,
it seemed—how wrong he and Telford had been, how utterly and completely
wrong, and how when Roland and his ka-tet were ready to move on, Eben Took
would outfit them from stem to stern and not a penny would they pay.

“Roland!” Rosa said.

Roland excused himself and took her by the arm, leading her a little way up
the road. The Wolves had been scattered everywhere and were now being

mercilessly looted of their possessions by the laughing, deliriously happy folken.

Stragglers were arriving every minute.

“Rosa, what is it?”

“It’s your lady,” Rosa said. “Susannah.”

“What of her?” Roland asked. Frowning, he looked around. He didn’t see

Susannah, couldn’t remember when he had last seen her. When he’d given

Jake the cigarette? That long ago? He thought so. “Where is she?”

“That’s just it,” Rosa said. “I don’t know. So I peeked into the waggon she
came in, thinking that perhaps she’d gone in there to rest. That perhaps she
felt faint or gut-sick, do ya. But she’s not there. And Roland  .  .  .  her chair is
gone.”

“Gods!” Roland snarled, and slammed his fist against his leg. “Oh, gods!”

Rosalita took a step back from him, alarmed.

“Where’s Eddie?” Roland asked.

She pointed. Eddie was so deep in a cluster of admiring men and women
that Roland didn’t think he would have seen him, but for the child riding on
his shoulders; it was Heddon Jaffords, an enormous grin on his face.

“Are you sure you want to disturb him?” Rosa asked timidly. “May be she’s
just gone off a bit, to pull herself back together.”

Gone off a bit, Roland thought. He could feel a blackness filling his heart. His

sinking heart. She’d gone off a bit, all right. And he knew who had stepped in
to take her place. Their attention had wandered in the aftermath of the

fight . . . Jake’s grief . . . the congratulations of the folken . . . the confusion and

the joy and the singing . . . but that was no excuse.

“Gunslingers!” he roared, and the jubilant crowd quieted at once. Had he

cared to look, he could have seen the fear that lay just beneath their relief and
adulation. It would not have been new to him; they were always afraid of those
who came wearing the hard calibers. What they wanted of such when the
shooting was done was to give them a final meal, perhaps a final gratitude-fuck,
then send them on their way and pick up their own peaceful farming-tools
once more.

Well, Roland thought, we’ll be going soon enough. In fact, one of us has gone
already. Gods!

“Gunslingers, to me! To me!”

Eddie reached Roland first. He looked around. “Where’s Susannah?” he
asked.

Roland pointed into the stony wasteland of bluffs and arroyos, then elevated
his finger until it was pointing at a black hole just below the skyline. “I think
there,” he said.

All the color had drained out of Eddie Dean’s face. “That’s Doorway Cave
you’re pointing at,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

Roland nodded.

“But the ball . . . Black Thirteen . . . she wouldn’t even go near it when it was

in Callahan’s church—”

“No,” Roland said. “Susannah wouldn’t. But she’s not in charge anymore.”

“Mia?” Jake asked.

“Yes.” Roland studied the high hole with his faded eyes. “Mia’s gone to have
her baby. She’s gone to have her chap.”

“No,” Eddie said. His hands wandered out and took hold of Roland’s shirt.

Around them, the folken stood silently, watching. “Roland, say no.”

“We’ll go after her and hope we’re not too late,” Roland said.

But in his heart, he knew they already were.

EPILOGUE:

THE DOOR WAY CAVE

ONE

They moved fast, but Mia moved faster. A mile beyond the
place where the arroyo path divided, they found her
wheelchair. She had pushed it hard, using her strong
arms to give it a savage beating against the unforgiving
terrain. Finally it had struck a jutting rock hard enough to
bend the lefthand wheel out of true and render the chair
useless. It was a wonder, really, that she had gotten as far
in it as she had.

“Fuck-commala,” Eddie murmured, looking at the
chair. At the dents and dings and scratches. Then he
raised his head, cupped his hands around his mouth, and

shouted. “Fight her, Susannah! Fight her! We’re coming!” He

pushed past the chair and headed on up the path, not
looking to see if the others were following.

“She can’t make it up the path to the cave, can she?”

Jake asked. “I mean, her legs are gone.”

“Wouldn’t think so, would you?” Roland asked, but his
face was dark. And he was limping. Jake started to say
something about this, then thought better of it.

“What would she want up there, anyway?” Callahan
asked.

Roland turned a singularly cold eye on him. “To go
somewhere else,” he said. “Surely you see that much.
Come on.”

TWO

As they neared the place where the path began to climb,
Roland caught up to Eddie. The first time he put his
hand on the younger man’s shoulder, Eddie shook it off.
The second time he turned—reluctantly—to look at his
dinh. Roland saw there was blood spattered across the
front of Eddie’s shirt. He wondered if it was Benny’s,
Margaret’s, or both.

“Mayhap it’d be better to let her alone awhile, if it’s
Mia,” Roland said.

“Are you crazy? Did fighting the Wolves loosen your

screws?”

“If we let her alone, she may finish her business and be
gone.” Even as he spoke the words, Roland doubted
them.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, studying him with burning eyes,
“she’ll finish her business, all right. First piece, have the
kid. Second piece, kill my wife.”

“That would be suicide.”

“But she might do it. We have to go after her.”

Surrender was an art Roland practiced rarely but with
some skill on the few occasions in his life when it had
been necessary. He took another look at Eddie Dean’s
pale, set face and practiced it now. “All right,” he said,
“but we’ll have to be careful. She’ll fight to keep from
being taken. She’ll kill, if it comes to that. You before any
of us, mayhap.”

“I know,” Eddie said. His face was bleak. He looked up
the path, but a quarter of a mile up, it hooked around to
the south side of the bluff and out of sight. The path
zigged back to their side just below the mouth of the cave.
That stretch of the climb was deserted, but what did that
prove? She could be anywhere. It crossed Eddie’s mind
that she might not even be up there at all, that the
crashed chair might have been as much a red herring as

the children’s possessions Roland had had scattered
along the arroyo path.

I won’t believe that. There’s a million ratholes in this part of
the Calla, and if I believe that she could be in any of them . . . 

Callahan and Jake had caught up and stood there
looking at Eddie.

“Come on,” he said. “I don’t care who she is, Roland. If
four able-bodied men can’t catch one no-legs lady, we
ought to turn in our guns and call it a day.”

Jake smiled wanly. “I’m touched. You just called me a
man.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Sunshine. Come on.”

THREE

Eddie and Susannah spoke and thought of each other as
man and wife, but he hadn’t exactly been able to take a
cab over to Cartier’s and buy her a diamond and a
wedding band. He’d once had a pretty nice high school
class ring, but that he’d lost in the sand at Coney Island
during the summer he turned seventeen, the summer of
Mary Jean Sobieski. Yet on their journeyings from the
Western Sea, Eddie had rediscovered his talent as a wood-
carver (“wittle baby-ass whittler,” the great sage and
eminent junkie would have said), and Eddie had carved
his beloved a beautiful ring of willowgreen, light as foam
but strong. This Susannah had worn between her breasts,
hung on a length of rawhide.

They found it at the foot of the path, still on its
rawhide loop. Eddie picked it up, looked at it grimly for a
moment, then slipped it over his own head, inside his
own shirt.

“Look,” Jake said.

They turned to a place just off the path. Here, in a
patch of scant grass, was a track. Not human, not animal.

Three wheels in a configuration that made Eddie think of
a child’s tricycle. What the hell?

“Come on,” he said, and wondered how many times
he’d said it since realizing she was gone. He also
wondered how long they’d keep following him if he kept
on saying it. Not that it mattered. He’d go on until he had
her again, or until he was dead. Simple as that. What
frightened him most was the baby . . . what she called the
chap. Suppose it turned on her? And he had an idea it
might do just that.

“Eddie,” Roland said.

Eddie looked over his shoulder and gave him Roland’s

own impatient twirl of the hand: let’s go.

Roland pointed at the track, instead. “This was some
sort of motor.”

“Did you hear one?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t know that.”

“But I do,” Roland said. “Someone sent her a ride. Or

something.”
“You can’t know that, goddam you!”

“Andy could have left a ride for her,” Jake said. “If
someone told him to.”

“Who would have told him to do a thing like that?”
Eddie rasped.

Finli, Jake thought. Finli o’ Tego, whoever he is. Or maybe
Walter. But he said nothing. Eddie was upset enough

already.

Roland said, “She’s gotten away. Prepare yourself for
it.”

“Go fuck yourself!” Eddie snarled, and turned to the
path leading upward. “Come on!”

FOUR

Yet in his heart, Eddie knew Roland was right. He
attacked the path to the Doorway Cave not with hope but
with a kind of desperate determination. At the place
where the boulder had fallen, blocking most of the path,
they found an abandoned vehicle with three balloon tires
and an electric motor that was still softly humming, a low

and constant ummmmm sound. To Eddie, the gadget

looked like one of those funky ATV things they sold at
Abercrombie & Fitch. There was a handgrip accelerator
and handgrip brakes. He bent close and read what was
stamped into the steel of the left one:

° “SQUEEZIE-PIE” BRAKES, BY NORTH CENTRAL
POSITRONICS °

Behind the bicycle-style seat was a little carry-case. Eddie
flipped it up and was totally unsurprised to see a six-pack
of Nozz-A-La, the drink favored by discriminating
bumhugs everywhere. One can had been taken off the
ring. She’d been thirsty, of course. Moving fast made you
thirsty. Especially if you were in labor.

“This came from the place across the river,” Jake
murmured. “The Dogan. If I’d gone out back, I would
have seen it parked there. A whole fleet of them,

probably. I bet it was Andy.”

Eddie had to admit it made sense. The Dogan was
clearly an outpost of some sort, probably one that
predated the current unpleasant residents of
Thunderclap. This was exactly the sort of vehicle you’d
want to make patrols on, given the terrain.

From this vantage-point beside the fallen boulder,
Eddie could see the battleground where they’d stood
against the Wolves, throwing plates and lead. That stretch
of East Road was so full of people it made him think of
the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The whole Calla was
out there partying, and oh how Eddie hated them in that

moment. My wife’s gone because of you chickenshit
motherfuckers, he thought. It was a stupid idea,

stupendously unkind, as well, yet it offered a certain
hateful satisfaction. What was it that poem by Stephen
Crane had said, the one they’d read back in high school?
“I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.”
Something like that. Close enough for government work.

Now Roland was standing beside the abandoned, softly
humming trike, and if it was sympathy he saw in the
gunslinger’s eyes—or, worse, pity—he wanted none of it.

“Come on, you guys. Let’s find her.”

FIVE

This time the voice that greeted them from the Doorway
Cave’s depths belonged to a woman Eddie had never
actually met, although he had heard of her—aye, much,
say thankya—and knew her voice at once.

“She’s gone, ye great dick-led galoot!” cried Rhea of
the Cöos from the darkness. “Taken her labor elsewhere,
ye ken! And I’ve no doubt that when her cannibal baby
finally comes out, it’ll munch its mother north from the
cunt, aye!” She laughed, a perfect (and perfectly grating)
Witch Hazel cackle. “No titty-milk fer this one, ye grobbut

lost lad! This one’ll have meat!”

“Shut up!” Eddie screamed into the darkness. “Shut

up, you . . . you fucking phantom!”

And for a wonder, the phantom did.

Eddie looked around. He saw Tower’s goddamned two-
shelf bookcase—first editions under glass, may they do ya
fine—but no pink metal-mesh bag with MID-WORLD LANES
printed on it; no engraved ghostwood box, either. The
unfound door was still here, its hinges still hooked to
nothing, but now it had a strangely dull look. Not just
unfound but unremembered; only one more useless
piece of a world that had moved on.

“No,” Eddie said. “No, I don’t accept that. The power is

still here. The power is still here.”

He turned to Roland, but Roland wasn’t looking at
him. Incredibly, Roland was studying the books. As if the
search for Susannah had begun to bore him and he was
looking for a good read to pass the time.

Eddie took Roland’s shoulder, turned him. “What
happened, Roland? Do you know?”

“What happened is obvious,” Roland said. Callahan
had come up beside him. Only Jake, who was visiting the
Doorway Cave for the first time, hung back at the
entrance. “She took her wheelchair as far as she could,
then went on her hands and knees to the foot of the path,
no mean feat for a woman who’s probably in labor. At the
foot of the path, someone—probably Andy, just as Jake
says—left her a ride.”

“If it was Slightman, I’ll go back and kill him myself.”

Roland shook his head. “Not Slightman.” But Slightman
might know for sure, he thought. It probably didn’t matter,

but he liked loose ends no more than he liked crooked
pictures hanging on walls.

“Hey, bro, sorry to tell you this, but your poke-bitch is
dead,” Henry Dean called up from deep in the cave. He
didn’t sound sorry; he sounded gleeful. “Damn thing ate
her all the way up! Only stopped long enough on its way
to the brain to spit out her teeth!”

“Shut up!” Eddie screamed.

“The brain’s the ultimate brain-food, you know,” Henry
said. He had assumed a mellow, scholarly tone. “Revered
by cannibals the world over. That’s quite the chap she’s

got, Eddie! Cute but hongry.”

“Be still, in the name of God!” Callahan cried, and the
voice of Eddie’s brother ceased. For the time being, at
least, all the voices ceased.

Roland went on as if he had never been interrupted.
“She came here. Took the bag. Opened the box so that
Black Thirteen would open the door. Mia, this is—not
Susannah but Mia. Daughter of none. And then, still
carrying the open box, she went through. On the other
side she closed the box, closing the door. Closing it
against us.”

“No,” Eddie said, and grabbed the crystal doorknob
with the rose etched into its geometric facets. It wouldn’t
turn. There was not so much as a single iota of give.

From the darkness, Elmer Chambers said: “If you’d
been quicker, son, you could have saved your friend. It’s
your fault.” And fell silent again.

“It’s not real, Jake,” Eddie said, and rubbed a finger
across the rose. The tip of his finger came away dusty. As
if the unfound door had stood here, unused as well as
unfound, for a score of centuries. “It just broadcasts the
worst stuff it can find in your own head.”

“I was always hatin yo’ guts, honky!” Detta cried
triumphantly from the darkness beyond the door. “Ain’t I
glad to be shed of you!”

“Like that,” Eddie said, cocking a thumb in the
direction of the voice.

Jake nodded, pale and thoughtful. Roland, meanwhile,
had turned back to Tower’s bookcase.

“Roland?” Eddie tried to keep the irritation out of his
voice, or at least add a little spark of humor to it, and
failed at both. “Are we boring you, here?”

“No,” Roland said.

“Then I wish you’d stop looking at those books and
help me think of a way to open this d—”

“I know how to open it,” Roland said. “The first
question is where will it take us now that the ball is gone?
The second question is where do we want to go? After

Mia, or to the place where Tower and his friend are

hiding from Balazar and his friends?”

“We go after Susannah!” Eddie shouted. “Have you
been listening to any of the shit those voices are saying?
They’re saying it’s a cannibal! My wife could be giving

birth to some kind of a cannibal monster right now, and if

you think anything’s more important than that—”

“The Tower’s more important,” Roland said. “And

somewhere on the other side of this door there’s a man

whose name is Tower. A man who owns a certain vacant lot

and a certain rose growing there.”

Eddie looked at him uncertainly. So did Jake and
Callahan. Roland turned again to the little bookcase. It
looked strange indeed, here in this rocky darkness.

“And he owns these books,” Roland mused. “He risked
all things to save them.”

“Yeah, because he’s one obsessed motherfucker.”

“Yet all things serve ka and follow the Beam,” Roland
said, and selected a volume from the upper shelf of the
bookcase. Eddie saw it had been placed in there upside
down, which struck him as a very un-Calvin Tower thing
to do.

Roland held the book in his seamed, weather-chapped
hands, seeming to debate which one to give it to. He
looked at Eddie . . . looked at Callahan . . . and then gave
the book to Jake.

“Read me what it says on the front,” he said. “The
words of your world make my head hurt. They swim to my
eye easily enough, but when I reach my mind toward
them, most swim away again.”

Jake was paying little attention; his eyes were riveted on
the book jacket with its picture of a little country church
at sunset. Callahan, meanwhile, had stepped past him in
order to get a closer look at the door standing here in the
gloomy cave.

At last the boy looked up. “But  .  .  .  Roland, isn’t this
the town Pere Callahan told us about? The one where the
vampire broke his cross and made him drink his blood?”

Callahan whirled away from the door. “What?”

Jake held the book out wordlessly. Callahan took it.
Almost snatched it.

“ ’Salem’s Lot,” he read. “A novel by Stephen King.” He

looked up at Eddie, then at Jake. “Heard of him? Either
of you? He’s not from my time, I don’t think.”

Jake shook his head. Eddie began to shake his, as well,
and then he saw something. “That church,” he said. “It
looks like the Calla Gathering Hall. Close enough to be
its twin, almost.”

“It also looks like the East Stoneham Methodist
Meeting Hall, built in 1819,” Callahan said, “so I guess
this time we’ve got a case of triplets.” But his voice
sounded faraway to his own ears, as hollow as the false
voices which floated up from the bottom of the cave. All

at once he felt false to himself, not real. He felt nineteen.

SIX

It’s a joke, part of his mind assured him. It must be a joke, the
cover of this book says it’s a novel, so—

Then an idea struck him, and he felt a surge of relief.

It was conditional relief, but surely better than none at all.

The idea was that sometimes people wrote make-believe
stories about real places. That was it, surely. Had to be.

“Look at page one hundred and nineteen,” Roland
said. “I could make out a little of it, but not all. Not nearly
enough.”

Callahan found the page, and read this:

“  ‘In the early days at the seminary, a friend of
Father  .  .  .  ’  ” He trailed off, eyes racing ahead over the

words on the page.

“Go on,” Eddie said. “You read it, Father, or I will.”

Slowly, Callahan resumed.

“  ‘.  .  .  a friend of Father Callahan’s had given him a
blasphemous crewelwork sampler which had sent him
into gales of horrified laughter at the time, but which
seemed more true and less blasphemous as the years

passed: God grant me the SERENITY to accept what I cannot
change, the TENACITY to change what I may, and the GOOD
LUCK not to fuck up too often. This in Old English script

with a rising sun in the background.

“  ‘Now, standing before Danny Glick’s  .  .  .  Danny
Glick’s mourners, that old credo  .  .  .  that old credo
returned.’ ”

The hand holding the book sagged. If Jake hadn’t
caught it, it probably would have tumbled to the floor of
the cave.

“You had it, didn’t you?” Eddie said. “You actually had
a sampler saying that.”

“Frankie Foyle gave it to me,” Callahan said. His voice
was hardly more than a whisper. “Back in seminary. And
Danny Glick . . . I officiated at his funeral, I think I told
you that. That was when everything seemed to change,

somehow. But this is a novel! A novel is fiction!

How  .  .  .  how can it  .  .  .  ” His voice suddenly rose to a
damned howl. To Roland it sounded eerily like the false

voices that rose up from below. “Damn it, I’m a REAL
PERSON!”

“Here’s the part where the vampire broke your cross,”
Jake reported. “ ‘ “Together at last!” Barlow said, smiling.
His face was strong and intelligent and handsome in a
sharp, forbidding sort of way—yet, as the light shifted, it
seemed—’ ”

“Stop,” Callahan said dully. “It makes my head hurt.”

“It says his face reminded you of the bogeyman who
lived in your closet when you were a kid. Mr. Flip.”

Callahan’s face was now so pale he might have been a
vampire’s victim himself. “I never told anyone about Mr.
Flip, not even my mother. That can’t be in that book. It
just can’t be.”

“It is,” Jake said simply.

“Let’s get this straight,” Eddie said. “When you were a

kid, there was a Mr. Flip, and you did think of him when

you faced this particular Type One vampire, Barlow.
Correct?”

“Yes, but—”

Eddie turned to the gunslinger. “Is this getting us any
closer to Susannah, do you think?”

“Yes. We’ve reached the heart of a great mystery.

Perhaps the great mystery. I believe the Dark Tower is

almost close enough to touch. And if the Tower is close,
Susannah is, too.”

Ignoring him, Callahan was flipping through the book.
Jake was looking over his shoulder.

“And you know how to open that door?” Eddie pointed
at it.

“Yes,” Roland said. “I’d need help, but I think the
people of Calla Bryn Sturgis owe us a little help, don’t
you?”

Eddie nodded. “All right, then, let me tell you this

much: I’m pretty sure I have seen the name Stephen King

before, at least once.”

“On the Specials board,” Jake said without looking up
from the book. “Yeah, I remember. It was on the Specials
board the first time we went todash.”

“Specials board?” Roland asked, frowning.

“Tower’s Specials board,” Eddie said. “It was in the

window, remember? Part of his whole Restaurant-of-the-
Mind thing.”

Roland nodded.

“But I’ll tell you guys something,” Jake said, and now

he did look up from the book. “The name was there when
Eddie and I went todash, but it wasn’t on the board the

first time I went in there. The time Mr. Deepneau told me
the river riddle, it was someone else’s name. It changed,

just like the name of the writer on Charlie the Choo-Choo.”
“I can’t be in a book,” Callahan was saying. “I am not a

fiction . . . am I?”

“Roland.” It was Eddie. The gunslinger turned to him.
“I need to find her. I don’t care who’s real and who’s not.
I don’t care about Calvin Tower, Stephen King, or the

Pope of Rome. As far as reality goes, she’s all of it I want. I
need to find my wife.” His voice dropped. “Help me,

Roland.”

Roland reached out and took the book in his left hand.

With his right he touched the door. If she’s still alive, he
thought. If we can find her, and if she’s come back to herself. If
and if and if.

Eddie took Roland’s arm. “Please,” he said. “Please
don’t make me try to do it on my own. I love her so
much. Help me find her.”

Roland smiled. It made him younger. It seemed to fill
the cave with its own light. All of Eld’s ancient power was
in that smile: the power of the White.

“Yes,” he said. “We go.”

And then he said again, all the affirmation necessary in
this dark place.

“Yes.”

Bangor, Maine

December 15, 2002

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The debt I owe to the American Western in the

composition of the Dark Tower novels should be clear

without my belaboring the point; certainly the Calla did
not come by the final part of its (slightly misspelled)
name accidentally. Yet it should be pointed out that at
least two sources for some of this material aren’t

American at all. Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars, For a
Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, etc.) was
Italian. And Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samurai) was, of

course, Japanese. Would these books have been written
without the cinematic legacy of Kurosawa, Leone,
Peckinpah, Howard Hawks, and John Sturgis? Probably
not without Leone. But without the others, I would argue

there could be no Leone.

I also owe a debt of thanks to Robin Furth, who managed
to be there with the right bit of information every time I
needed it, and of course to my wife, Tabitha, who is still
patiently giving me the time and light and space I need to
do this job to the best of my abilities.

S.K.

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

Before you read this short afterword, I ask that you take a
moment (may it do ya fine) to look again at the
dedication page at the front of this story. I’ll wait.

Thank you. I want you to know that Frank Muller has
read a number of my books for the audio market,

beginning with Different Seasons. I met him at Recorded

Books in New York at that time and we liked each other
immediately. It’s a friendship that has lasted longer than
some of my readers have been alive. In the course of our

association, Frank recorded the first four Dark Tower

novels, and I listened to them—all sixty or so cassettes—
while preparing to finish the gunslinger’s story. Audio is
the perfect medium for such exhaustive preparation,
because audio insists you absorb everything; your
hurrying eye (or occasionally tired mind) cannot skip so
much as a single word. That was what I wanted, complete
immersion in Roland’s world, and that was what Frank
gave me. He gave me something more, as well, something
wonderful and unexpected. It was a sense of newness and
freshness that I had lost somewhere along the way; a sense

of Roland and Roland’s friends as actual people, with their

own vital inner lives. When I say in the dedication that
Frank heard the voices in my head, I am speaking the
literal truth as I understand it. And, like a rather more
benign version of the Doorway Cave, he brought them
fully back to life. The remaining books are finished (this
one in final draft, the last two in rough), and in large part
I owe that to Frank Muller and his inspired readings.

I had hoped to have Frank on board to do the audio

readings of the final three Dark Tower books (unabridged

readings; I do not allow abridgments of my work and
don’t approve of them, as a rule), and he was eager to do
them. We discussed the possibility at a dinner in Bangor
during October of 2001, and in the course of the

conversation, he called the Tower stories his absolute

favorites. As he had read over five hundred novels for the
audio market, I was extremely flattered.

Less than a month after that dinner and that
optimistic, forward-looking discussion, Frank suffered a
terrible motorcycle accident on a highway in California. It
happened only days after discovering that he was to
become a father for the second time. He was wearing his
brain-bucket and that probably saved his life—
motorcyclists please take note—but he suffered serious
injuries nevertheless, many of them neurological. He

won’t be recording the final Dark Tower novels on tape,

after all. Frank’s final work will almost certainly be his

inspired reading of Clive Barker’s Coldheart Canyon, which

was completed in September of 2001, just before his
accident.

Barring a miracle, Frank Muller’s working life is over.
His work of rehabilitation, which is almost sure to be
lifelong, has only begun. He’ll need a lot of care and a lot
of professional help. Such things cost money, and
money’s not a thing which, as a rule, freelance artists have
a great deal of. I and some friends have formed a
foundation to help Frank—and, hopefully, other
freelance artists of various types who suffer similar
cataclysms. All the income I receive from the audio

version of Wolves of the Calla will go into this foundation’s

account. It won’t be enough, but the work of funding The

Wavedancer Foundation (Wavedancer was the name of

Frank’s sailboat), like Frank’s rehabilitative work, is only
beginning. If you’ve got a few bucks that aren’t working
and want to help insure the future of The Wavedancer
Foundation, don’t send them to me; send them to:

The Wavedancer Foundation

c/o Mr. Arthur Greene

101 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10001

Frank’s wife, Erika, says thankya. So do I.

And Frank would, if he could.

Bangor, Maine        
December 15, 2002

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo by David King

Photo by Tabitha King

STEPHEN KING is the author of more than fifty books,
all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent

are From a Buick 8, Everything’s Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis,
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Bag of Bones, the
screenplay Storm of the Century, and The Green Mile. His
acclaimed nonfiction book, On Writing, was also a

bestseller. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife,
novelist Tabitha King.

ALSO BY STEPHEN KING
NOVELS

Carrie
’Salem’s Lot
The Shining
The Stand
The Dead Zone
Firestarter

Cujo

THE DARK TOWER I:

The Gunslinger
Christine

Pet Sematary
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Talisman (with Peter Straub)

It
The Eyes of the Dragon

Misery
The Tommyknockers

THE DARK TOWER II:

The Drawing of the Three

THE DARK TOWER III:

The Waste Lands
The Dark Half
Needful Things
Gerald’s Game

Dolores Claiborne
Insomnia

Rose Madder

Desperation
The Green Mile

THE DARK TOWER IV:

Wizard and Glass
Bag of Bones

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Dreamcatcher

Black House (with Peter Straub)
From a Buick 8

THE DARK TOWER VI:

Song of Susannah

THE DARK TOWER VII:

The Dark Tower

AS RICHARD BACHMAN

Rage
The Long Walk

Roadwork
The Running Man

Thinner
The Regulators

COLLECTIONS

Night Shift
Different Seasons

Skeleton Crew
Four Past Midnight
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Hearts in Atlantis
Everything’s Eventual

SCREENPLAYS

Creepshow
Cat’s Eye
Silver Bullet
Maximum Overdrive
Pet Sematary
Golden Years
Sleepwalkers
The Stand
The Shining
Rose Red
Storm of the Century

NONFICTION

Danse Macabre
On Writing

Dark Tower–related in bold

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Copyright © 2003 by Stephen King

Illustrations copyright © 2003 by Bernie Wrightson
Originally published in hardcover in 2003 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher,
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