"He writes of Mejis," Roland said. His fists were clenched, although she doubted that he knew it. "He writes of how we fell out over Susan Delgado, for after that it was never the same between us. We mended our friendship as best we could, but no, it was never quite the same."
"After the woman comes to the man or the man to the woman, I don't think it ever is," she said, and handed him the photocopied sheets. "Take this. I've read all the ones he mentioned.
If there's stuff in the rest about coming to the Dark Tower-or not-puzzle it out by yourself. You can do it if you try hard enough, I reckon. As for me, I don't want to know."
Roland, it seemed, did. He shuffled through the pages, looking for the last one. The pages weren't numbered, but he found the end easily enough by the white space beneath that stanza marked XXXIV. Before he could read, however, that thin cry came again. This time the wind was in a complete lull and there was no doubt about where it came from.
"That's someone below us, in the basement," Roland said.
"I know. And I think I know who it is."
He nodded.
She was looking at him steadily. "It all fits, doesn't it? It's like ajigsaw puzzle, and we've put in all but the last few pieces."
The cry came again, thin and lost. The cry of someone who was next door to dead. They left the bathroom, drawing their guns. Susannah didn't think they'd need them this time.
FIVE
The bug that had made itself look like a jolly old joker named Joe Collins lay where it had lain, but Oy had backed off a step or two. Susannah didn't blame him. Dandelo was beginning to stink, and little trickles of white stuff were beginning to ooze through its decaying carapace. Nevertheless, Roland bade the bumbler remain where he was, and keep watch.
The cry came again when they reached the kitchen, and it was louder, but at first they saw no way down to the cellar.
Susannah moved slowly across the cracked and dirty linoleum, looking for a hidden trapdoor. She was about to tell Roland there was nothing when he said, "Here. Behind the cold-box."
The refrigerator was no longer a top-of-the-line Amana with an icemaker in the door but a squat and dirty thing with the cooling machinery on top, in a drum-shaped casing. Her mother had had one like it when Susannah had been a little girl who answered to the name of Odetta, but her mother would have died before ever allowing her own to be even a tenth as dirty. A hundredth.
Roland moved it aside easily, for Dandelo, sly monster that he'd been, had put it on a little wheeled platform. She doubted that he got many visitors, not way out here in End-World, but he had been prepared to keep his secrets if someone did drop by.
As she was sure folken did, every once and again. She imagined that few if any got any further along their way than the little hut on Odd Lane.
The stairs leading down were narrow and steep. Roland felt around inside the door and found a switch. It lit two bare bulbs, one halfway down the stairs and one below. As if in response to the light, the cry came again. It was full of pain and fear, but there were no words in it. The sound made her shiver.
"Come to the foot of the stairs, whoever you are!" Roland called.
No response from below. Outside the wind gusted and whooped, driving snow against the side of the house so hard that it sounded like sand.
"Come to where we can see you, or we'll leave you where you are!" Roland called.
The inhabitant of the cellar didn't come into the scant light but cried ovit again, a sound that was loaded with woe and terror and-Susannah feared it-madness.
He looked at her. She nodded and spoke in a whisper. "Go first. I'll back your play, if you have to make one."
"'Ware the steps that you don't take a tumble," he said in the same low voice.
She nodded again and made his own impatient twirling gesture with one hand: Go on, go on.
That raised a ghost of a smile on the gunslinger's lips. He went down the stairs with the barrel of his gun laid into the hollow of his right shoulder, and for a moment he looked so like Jake Chambers that she could have wept.
SIX
The cellar was a maze of boxes and barrels and shrouded things hanging from hooks. Susannah had no wish to know what the dangling things were. The cry came again, a sound like sobbing and screaming mingled together. Above them, dim and muffled now, came the whoop and gasp of the wind.
Roland turned to his left and threaded his way down a zigzag aisle with crates stacked head-high on either side. Susannah followed, keeping a good distance between them, looking constantly back over her shoulder. She was also alert for the sound of Oy raising the alarm from above. She saw one stack of crates that was labeled TEXAS INSTRUMENTS and another stack with HO
FAT CHINESE FORTUNE COOKIE co. stenciled on the side. She was not surprised to see the joke name of their long-abandoned taxi; she was far beyond surprise.