“I really do. And may we meet again on the path before we all meet in the clearing.” The gunslinger turned on his bootheel and left the writer’s house.

Eddie took a final look at the tall, rather stooped man standing with his narrow ass propped against the counter. He thought: The next time I see you, Stevie—if I do—your beard will be mostly white and there’ll be lines around your face … and I’ll still be young. How’s your blood-pressure, sai? Good to go for the next twenty-two years? Hope so. What about your ticker? Does cancer run in your family, and if it does, how deep?

There was time for none of these questions, of course. Or any others. Very soon the writer would be waking up and going on with his life. Eddie followed his dinh out into the latening afternoon and closed the door behind him. He was beginning to think that, when ka had sent them here instead of to New York City, it had known what it was doing, after all.

TWELVE

Eddie stopped on the driver’s side of John Cullum’s car and looked across the roof at the gunslinger. “Did you see that thing around him? That black haze?”

“The todana, yes. Thank your father that it’s still faint.”

“What’s a todana? Sounds like todash.”

Roland nodded. “It’s a variation of the word. It means deathbag. He’s been marked.”

“Jesus,” Eddie said.

“It’s faint, I tell you.”

“But there.”

Roland opened his door. “We can do nothing about it. Ka marks the time of each man and woman. Let’s move, Eddie.”

But now that they were actually ready to get rolling again, Eddie was queerly reluctant to go. He had a sense of things unfinished with sai King. And he hated the thought of that black aura.

“What about Turtleback Lane, and the walk-ins? I meant to ask him—”

“We can find it.”

“Are you sure? Because I think we need to go there.”

“I think so, too. Come on. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

THIRTEEN

The taillights of the old Ford had hardly cleared the end of the driveway before Stephen King opened his eyes. The first thing he did was look at the clock. Almost four. He should have been rolling after Joe ten minutes ago, but the nap he’d taken had done him good. He felt wonderful. Refreshed. Cleaned out in some weird way. He thought, If every nap could do that, taking them would be a national law.

Maybe so, but Betty Jones was going to be seriously worried if she didn’t see the Cherokee turning into her yard by four-thirty. King reached for the phone to call her, but his eyes fell to the pad on the desk below it, instead. The sheets were headed CALLING ALL BLOWHARDS. A little something from one of his sisters-in-law.

Face going blank again, King reached for the pad and the pen beside it. He bent and wrote: