Eddie looked down from the lane of clouds in the sky and saw Susannah sitting up, rubbing the back of her neck. She looked unsure of where she was. Perhaps even of who she was. The red cappies she was wearing looked oddly dull in this light, but they were still the brightest things in Eddie’s view... until he looked down at his own feet and saw the street-boppers with their Cuban heels. Yet these also looked dull, and Eddie no longer thought it was just the day’s cloudy light that made them seem so. He looked at Jake’s shoes, Oy’s remaining three slippers, Roland’s cowboy boots (the gunslinger was sitting up now, arms crossed around his knees, looking blankly off into the distance). All the same ruby red, but a lifeless red, somehow. As if some magic essential to them had been used up.

Suddenly, Eddie wanted them off his feet.

He sat down beside Susannah, gave her a kiss, and said: “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty. Or afternoon, if it’s that.” Then, quickly, almost hating to touch them (it was like touching dead skin, somehow), Eddie yanked off the street-boppers. As he did, he saw that they were scuffed at the toes and muddy at the heels, no longer new-looking. He’d wondered how they’d gotten here; now, feeling the ache in the muscles of his legs and remembering the wheelchair tracks, he knew. They had walked, by God. Walked in their sleep.

“That,” Susannah said, “is the best idea you’ve had since... well, in a long time.” She stripped off the cappies. Close by, Eddie saw Jake taking off Oy’s booties. “Were we there?” Susannah asked him. “Eddie, were we really there when he...”

“When I killed my mother,” Roland said. “Yes, you were there. As I was. Gods help me, I was there. I did it.” He covered his face with his hands and began to voice a series of harsh sobs.

Susannah crawled across to him in that agile way that was almost a version of walking. She put an arm around him and used her other hand to take his hands away from his face. At first Roland didn’t want to let her do that, but she was persistent, and at last his hands—those killer’s hands—came down, revealing haunted eyes which swam with tears.

Susannah urged his face down against her shoulder. “Be easy, Roland,” she said. “Be easy and let it go. This part is over now. You past it.”

“A man doesn’t get past such a thing,” Roland said. “No, I don’t think so. Not ever.”

“You didn’t kill her,” Eddie said.