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?”