Eddie didn’t notice. Eddie was sitting on the floor with his brother’s head cradled against his belly. He was shuddering all over and crying. The gunslinger looked for the door, didn’t see it, and felt a nasty jolt that was nearly terror. Then he remembered. With both of them on this side, the only way to create the door was for him to make physical contact with Eddie.

He reached for him but Eddie shrank away, still weeping. “Don’t touch me,” he said.

“Eddie, it’s over. They’re all dead, and your brother’s dead, too.”

“Leave my brother out of this!” Eddie shrieked childishly, and another fit of shuddering went through him. He cradled the severed head to his chest and rocked it. He lifted his streaming eyes to the gunslinger’s face.

“All the times he took care of me, man,” he said, sobbing so hard the gunslinger could barely understand him. “All the times. Why couldn’t I have taken care of him, just this once, after all the times he took care of me?”

He took care of you, all right, Roland thought grimly. Look at you, sitting there and shaking like a man who’s eaten an apple from the fever-tree. He took care of you just fine.

“We have to go.”

“Go?” For the first time some vague understanding came into Eddie’s face, and it was followed immediately by alarm. “I ain’t going nowhere. Especially not back to that other place, where those big crabs or whatever they are ate Jack.”

Someone was hammering on the door, yelling to open up.

“Do you want to stay here and explain all these bodies?” the gunslinger asked.

“I don’t care,” Eddie said. “Without Henry, it doesn’t matter. Nothing does.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter to you,” Roland said, “but there are others involved, prisoner.”

“Don’t call me that!” Eddie shouted.

“I’ll call you that until you show me you can walk out of the cell you’re in!” Roland shouted back. It hurt his throat to yell, but he yelled just the same. “Throw that rotten piece of meat away and stop puling!”

Eddie looked at him, cheeks wet, eyes wide and frightened.

“THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!” an amplified voice said from outside. To Eddie the voice sounded eerily like the voice of a game-show host. “THE S.W.A.T. SQUAD HAS ARRIVED—I REPEAT: THE S.W.A.T. SQUAD HAS ARRIVED!”

“What’s on the other side of that door for me?” Eddie asked the gunslinger quietly. “Go on and tell me. If you can tell me, maybe I’ll come. But if you lie, I’ll know.”

“Probably death,” the gunslinger said. “But before that happens, I don’t think you’ll be bored. I want you to join me on a quest. Of course, all will probably end in death—death for the four of us in a strange place. But if we should win through . . .” His eyes gleamed. “If we win through, Eddie, you’ll see something beyond all the beliefs of all your dreams.”

“What thing?”