She was looking at him anxiously. “Do we still have enough time to get there?”

Eddie nodded. “Barely.”

Three minutes later they were headed down the Great Road again. It glimmered ahead of them like a ghost. And an hour after that, as the first light of dawn began to touch the sky in the east, a rhythmic sound began far ahead of them.

The sound of drums, Roland thought.

Machinery, Eddie thought. Some huge piece of machinery.

It’s a heart, Susannah thought. Some huge, diseased, beating heart... and it’s in that city, where we have to go.

Two hours later, the sound stopped as suddenly as it had begun. White, featureless clouds had begun to fill the sky above them, first veiling the early sun, then blotting it out. The circle of standing stones lay less than five miles ahead now, gleaming in the shadowless light like the teeth of a fallen monster.

20

SPAGHETTI WEEK AT THE MAJESTIC!

the battered, dispirited marquee jutting over the corner of Brooklyn and Markey Avenues proclaimed.

2 SERGIO LEONE CLASSIX!

A FISTFUL OF $$ PLUS GOOD BAD & UGLY!

99¢ ALL SHOWS

A gum-chewing cutie with rollers in her blonde hair sat in the box office listening to Led Zep on her transistor and reading one of the tabloids of which Mrs. Shaw was so fond. To her left, in the theater’s remaining display case, there was a poster showing Clint Eastwood.

Jake knew he should get moving—three o’clock was almost here— but he paused a moment anyway, staring at the poster behind the dirty, cracked glass. Eastwood was wearing a Mexican serape. A cigar was clamped in his teeth. He had thrown one side of the serape back over his shoulder to free his gun. His eyes were a pale, faded blue. Bombardier’s eyes.

It’s not him, Jake thought, but it’s almost him. It’s the eyes, mostly... the eyes are almost the same.

“You let me drop,” he said to the man in the old poster, the man who was not Roland. “You let me die. What happens this time?”

“Hey, kid,” the blonde ticket-seller called, making Jake start. “You gonna come in or just stand there and talk to yourself?”

“Not me,” Jake said. “I’ve already seen those two.”

He got moving again, turning left on Markey Avenue.

Once again he waited for the feeling of remembering forward to seize him, but it didn’t come. This was just a hot, sunny street lined with sandstone-colored apartment buildings that looked like prison cellblocks to Jake. A few young women were walking along, pushing baby-carriages in pairs and talking desultorily, but the street was otherwise deserted. It was unseasonably hot for May—too hot to stroll.

What am I looking for? What?

From behind him came a burst of raucous male laughter. It was followed by an outraged female shriek: “You give that back!”

Jake jumped, thinking the owner of the voice must mean him.

“Give it back, Henry! I’m not kidding!”

Jake turned and saw two boys, one at least eighteen and the other a lot younger... twelve or thirteen. At the sight of this second boy, Jake’s heart did something that felt like a loop-the-loop in his chest. The kid was wearing green corduroys instead of madras shorts, but the yellow T-shirt was the same, and he had a battered old basketball under one arm. Although his back was to Jake, Jake knew he had found the boy from last night’s dream.