In the reeds, the naked woman’s hand pistoned forward and seized a good-sized frog. She squeezed and the frog popped, squirting guts and a shiny load of eggs between her fingers. Its head burst. She lifted it to her mouth and ate it greedily down while its greenish-white rear legs still twitched, licking the blood and shiny ropes of tissue from her knuckles. Then she mimed throwing something down and cried out “How you like that, you stinkin Blue Lady?” in a low, guttural voice that made Roland shiver. It was Detta Walker’s voice. Detta at her meanest and craziest.

With hardly a pause she moved on again, questing. Next it was a small fish…then another frog…and then a real prize: a water-rat that squeaked and writhed and tried to bite. She crushed the life out of it and stuffed it into her mouth, paws and all. A moment later she bent her head down and regurgitated the waste—a twisted mass of fur and splintered bones.

Show him this, then— always assuming that he and Jake get back from whatever adventure they’re on, that is. And say, “I know that women are supposed to have strange cravings when they carry a child, Eddie, but doesn’t this seem a littletoo strange? Look at her, questing through the reeds and ooze like some sort of human alligator. Look at her and tell me she’s doing that in order to feed your child. Any human child.”

Still he would argue. Roland knew it. What he didn’t know was what Susannah herself might do when Roland told her she was growing something that craved raw meat in the middle of the night. And as if this business wasn’t worrisome enough, now there was todash. And strangers who had come looking for them. Yet the strangers were the least of his problems. In fact, he found their presence almost comforting. He didn’t know what they wanted, and yet he did know. He had met them before, many times. At bottom, they always wanted the same thing.

Eight