Never mind. These are not even ghosts. I think they're only echoes, somehow taken from deep inside my own head and projected.
When he stepped around the door (minding the drop now to his right), the door was gone. There was only the silhouette of Henchick, a severe man-shape cut from black paper standing in the cave's mouth.
The door's still there, but you can only see it from one side. And in that way it's like the other doors, too.
"A trifle upsetting, isn't it?" tittered the voice of Walter from deep in the Doorway Cave's gullet. "Give it over, Roland! Better to give it over and die than to discover the room at the top of the Dark Tower is empty."
Then came the urgent blare of Eld's Horn, raising goose-flesh on Roland's arms and hackles on the back of his neck: Cuthbert Allgood's final battle-cry as he ran down Jericho Hill toward his death at the hands of the barbarians with the blue faces.
Roland lowered the bandanna from his own face and began walking again. One pace; two; three. Bones crunched beneath his bootheels. At the third pace the door reappeared, at first side-to, with its latch seeming to bite into thin air, like the hinges on its other side. He stopped for a moment, gazing at this thickness, relishing the strangeness of the door just as he had relished the strangeness of the ones he'd encountered on the beach. And on the beach he had been sick almost to the point of death. If he moved his head forward slightly, the door disappeared. If he pulled it back again, it was there. The door never wavered, never shimmered. It was always a case of either/or, there/not there.
He stepped all the way back, put his splayed palms on the ironwood, leaned on them. He could feel a faint but perceptible vibration, like the feel of powerful machinery. From the dark gullet of the cave, Rhea of the Coos screamed up at him, calling him a brat who'd never seen his true father's face, telling him his bit o' tail burst her throat with her screams as she burned. Roland ignored it and grasped the crystal doorknob.
"Nay, gunslinger, ye dare not!" Henchick cried in alarm.
"I dare," Roland said. And he did, but the knob wouldn't turn in either direction. He stepped back from it.
"But the door was open when you found the priest?" he asked Henchick. They had spoken of this the previous night, but Roland wanted to hear more.
"Aye. 'Twas I and Jemmin who found him. Thee knows we elder Manni seek the other worlds? Not for treasure but for enlightenment?"
Roland nodded. He also knew that some had come back from their travels insane. Others never came back at all.
"These hills are magnetic, and riddled with many ways into many worlds. We'd gone out to a cave near the old garnet mines and there we found a message."
"What kind of message?"
" 'Twas a machine set in the cave's mouth," Henchick said. "Push a button and a voice came out of it. The voice told us to come here."
"You knew of this cave before?"
"Aye, but before the Pere came, it were called the Cave of Voices. For which reason thee now knows."
Roland nodded and motioned for Henchick to go on.
"The voice from the machine spoke in accents like those of your ka-mates, gunslinger. It said that we should come here, Jemmin and I, and we'd find a door and a man and a wonder. So we did."
"Someone left you instructions," Roland mused. It was Walter he was thinking of. The man in black, who had also left them the cookies Eddie called Keeblers. Walter was Flagg and Flagg was Marten and Marten... was he Maerlyn, the old rogue wizard of legend? On that subject Roland remained unsure. "And spoke to you by name?"
"Nay, he did not know's'much. Only called us the Manni-folk."
"How did this someone know where to leave the voice machine, do you think?"
Henchick's lips thinned. "Why must thee think it was a person? Why not a god speaking in a man's voice? Why not some agent of The Over?"
Roland said, "Gods leave siguls. Men leave machines." He paused. "In my own experience, of course, Pa."
Henchick made a curt gesture, as if to tell Roland to spare him the flattery.
"Was it general knowledge that thee and thy friend were exploring the cave where you found the speaking machine?"
Henchick shrugged rather sullenly. "People see us, I suppose. Some mayhap watch over the miles with their spyglasses and binoculars. Also, there's the mechanical man. He sees much and prattles everlastingly to all who will listen."
Roland took this for a yes. He thought someone had known Pere Callahan was coming. And that he would need help when he arrived on the outskirts of the Calla.
"How far open was the door?" Roland asked.
"These are questions for Callahan," Henchick said. "I promised to show thee this place. I have. Surely that's enough for ye."
"Was he conscious when you found him?"
There was a reluctant pause. Then: "Nay. Only muttering, as one does in his sleep if he dreams badly."
"Then he can't tell me, can he? Not this part. Henchick, you seek aid and succor. This thee told me on behalf of all your clans. Help me, then! Help me to help you!"