Three
A quarter of a mile in, the road forked. Eddie took the lefthand branch, although the sign pointing that way said ROW-DEN, not KING. The dust raised by their passage hung in the rearview mirror. The singing was a sweet din, pouring through him like liquor. His hair was still standing up at the roots, and his muscles were trembling. Called upon to draw his gun, Eddie thought he would probably drop the damned thing. Even if he managed to hold onto it, aiming would be impossible. He didn't know how the man they were looking for could live so close to the sound of that singing and eat or sleep, let alone write stories. But of course King wasn't justclose to the sound; if Eddie had it right, King was thesource of the sound.
But if he has a family, what about them? And even if he doesn't, what about the neighbors?
Here was a driveway on the right, and -
"Eddie, stop." It was Roland, but not sounding the least bit like himself. His Calla tan was thin paint over an immense pallor.
Eddie stopped. Roland fumbled at the doorhandle on his side, couldn't make it work, levered himself out the window all the way to his waist instead (Eddie heard the chink his belt buckle made on the chrome strip which faced the window-well), and then vomited onto the oggan. When he fell back into the seat, he looked both exhausted and exalted. The eyes which rolled to meet Eddie's were blue, ancient, glittering. "Drive on."
"Roland, are you sure - "
Roland only twirled his fingers, looking straight out through the Ford's dusty windshield.Go, go. For your father's sake!
Eddie drove on.
Four
It was the sort of house real-estate agents call a ranch. Eddie wasn't surprised. Whatdid surprise him a little was how modest the place was. Then he reminded himself that not every writer was arich writer, and that probably went double foryoung writers. Some sort of typo had apparently made his second novel quite the catch among bibliomaniacs, but Eddie doubted if King ever saw a commission on that sort of thing. Or royalties, if that was what they called it.
Still, the car parked in the turnaround driveway was a new-looking Jeep Cherokee with a nifty Indian stripe running up the side, and that suggested Stephen King wasn't exactly starving for his art, either. There was a wooden jungle gym in the front yard with a lot of plastic toys scattered around it. Eddie's heart sank at the sight of them. One lesson which the Calla had taught exquisitely was that kids complicated things. The ones living here werelittle kids, from the look of the toys. And to them comes a pair of men wearing hard calibers. Men who were not, at this point in time, strictly in their right minds.
Eddie cut the Ford's engine. A crow cawed. A powerboat - bigger than the one they'd heard earlier, from the sound - buzzed. Beyond the house, bright sun glinted on blue water. And the voices sangCome, come, come-come-commala.
There was a clunk as Roland opened his door and got out, slewing a little as he did so: bad hip, dry twist. Eddie got out on legs that felt as numb as sticks.
"Tabby? That you?"
This from around the right side of the house. And now, running ahead of the voice and the man who owned the voice, came a shadow. Never had Eddie seen one that so filled him with terror and fascination. He thought, and with absolute certainty:Yonder comes my maker. Yonder is he, aye, say true. And the voices sang,Commala-come-three, he who made me.
"Did you forget something, darling?" Only the last word came out in a downeast drawl,daaa-lin, the way John Cullum would have said it. And then came the man of the house, then came he. He saw them and stopped. He sawRoland and stopped. The singing voices stopped with him, and the powerboat's drone seemed to stop as well. For a moment the whole world hung on a hinge. Then the man turned and ran. Not, however, before Eddie saw the terrible thunder-struck look of recognition on his face.
Roland was after him in a flash, like a cat after a bird.
Five
But sai King was a man, not a bird. He couldn't fly, and there was really nowhere to run. The side lawn sloped down a mild hill broken only by a concrete pad that might have been the well or some kind of sewage-pumping device. Beyond the lawn was a postage stamp - sized bit of beach, littered with more toys. After that came the lake. The man reached the edge of it, splashed into it, then turned so awkwardly he almost fell down.
Roland skidded to a stop on the sand. He and Stephen King regarded each other. Eddie stood perhaps ten yards behind Roland, watching both of them. The singing had begun again, and so had the buzzing drone of the powerboat. Perhaps they had never stopped, but Eddie believed he knew better.
The man in the water put his hands over his eyes like a child. "You're not there," he said.