The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower #2) - Page 11

You must be on your guard, the gunslinger said, and Eddie had agreed, but the gunslinger knew Eddie didn't know what he was talking about; the whole back half of Eddie's mind, where survival is or isn't, didn't get the message.

The gunslinger saw this.

It was a good thing for Eddie he did.

In the middle of the night, Detta Walker's eyes sprang open. They were full of starlight and clear intelligence.

She remembered everything: how she had fought them, how they had tied her into her chair, how they had taunted her, calling her niggerbitch, niggerbitch.

She remembered monsters coming out of the waves, and she remembered how one of the men�Dthe older�Dhad killed one of them. The younger had built a fire and cooked it and then had offered her smoking monster-meat on a stick, grinning. She remembered spitting at his face, remembered his grin turning into an angry honky scowl. He had hit her upside the face, and told her Well, that's all right, you'll come around, niggerbitch. Wait and see if you don't. Then he and the Really Bad Man�Dhad laughed and the Really Bad Man had brought out a haunch of beef which he spitted and slowly cooked over the fire on the beach of this alien place to which they had brought her.

The smell of the slowly roasting beef had been seductive, but she had made no sign. Even when the younger one had waved a chunk of it near her face, chanting Bite for it, niggerbitch, go on and bite for it, she had sat like stone, holding herself in.

Then she had slept, and now she was awake, and the ropes they had tied her with were gone. She was no longer in her chair but lying on one blanket and under another, far above the high-tide line, where the lobster-things still wandered and questioned and snatched the odd unfortunate gull out of the air.

She looked to her left and saw nothing.

She looked to her right and saw two sleeping men wrapped in two piles of blankets. The younger one was closer, and the Really Bad Man had taken off his gunbelts and laid them by him.

The guns were still in them.

You made a bad mistake, mahfah, Detta thought, and rolled to her right. The gritty crunch and squeak of her body on the sand was inaudible under the wind, the waves, the questioning creatures. She crawled slowly along the sand (like one of the lobstrosities herself), her eyes glittering.

She reached the gunbelts and pulled one of the guns.

It was very heavy, the grip smooth and somehow independently deadly in her hand. The heaviness didn't bother her. She had strong arms, did Detta Walker.

She crawled a little further.

The younger man was no more than a snoring rock, but the Really Bad Man stirred a little in his sleep and she froze with a snarl tattooed on her face until he quieted again.

He be one sneaky sumbitch. You check, Detta. You check, be sho.

She found the worn chamber release, tried to shove it forward, got nothing, and pulled it instead. The chamber swung open.

Loaded! Fucker be loaded! You goan do this young cocka-de-walk first, and dat Really Bad Man be wakin up and you goan give him one big grin�Dsmile honeychile so I kin see where you is�Dand den you goan clean his clock somethin righteous.

She swung the chamber back, started to pull the hammer … and then waited.

When the wind kicked up a gust, she pulled the hammer to full cock.

Detta pointed Roland's gun at Eddie's temple.

The gunslinger watched all this from one half-open eye. The fever was back, but not bad yet, not so bad that he must mistrust himself. So he waited, that one half-open eye the finger on the trigger of his body, the body which had always been his revolver when there was no revolver at hand.

She pulled the trigger.

Click.

Of course click.

When he and Eddie had come back with the waterskins from their palaver, Odetta Holmes had been deeply asleep in her wheelchair, slumped to one side. They had made her the best bed they could on the sand and carried her gently from her wheelchair to the spread blankets. Eddie had been sure she would awake, but Roland knew better.

He had killed, Eddie had built a fire, and they had eaten, saving a portion aside for Odetta in the morning.

Then they had talked, and Eddie had said something which burst upon Roland like a sudden flare of lightning. It was too bright and too brief to be total understanding, but he saw much, the way one may discern the lay of the land in a single lucky stroke of lightning.

He could have told Eddie then, but did not. He understood that he must be Eddie's Cort, and when one of Cort's pupils was left hurt and bleeding by some unexpected blow, Cort's response had always been the same: A child doesn't understand a hammer until he's mashed his finger at a nail. Get up and stop whining, maggot! You have forgotten the face of your father!

So Eddie had fallen asleep, even though Roland had told him he must be on his guard, and when Roland was sure they both slept (he had waited longer for the Lady, who could, he thought, be sly), he had reloaded his guns with spent casings, unstrapped them (that caused a pang), and put them by Eddie.

Then he waited.

One hour; two; three.

Halfway through the fourth hour, as his tired and feverish body tried to drowse, he sensed rather than saw the Lady come awake and came fully awake himself.

He watched her roll over. He watched her turn her hands into claws and pull herself along the sand to where his gun-belts lay. He watched her take one of them out, come closer to Eddie, and then pause, her head cocking, her nostrils swelling and contracting, doing more than smelling the air; tasting it.

Yes. This was the woman he had brought across.

When she glanced toward the gunslinger he did more than feign sleep, because she would have sensed sham; he went to sleep. When he sensed her gaze shift away he awoke and opened that single eye again. He saw her begin to raise the gun�Dshe did this with less effort than Eddie had shown the first time Roland saw him do the same thing�Dand point it toward Eddie's head. Then she paused, her face filled with an inexpressible cunning.

In that moment she reminded him of Marten.

She fiddled with the cylinder, getting it wrong at first, then swinging it open. She looked at the heads of the shells. Roland tensed, waiting first to see if she would know the firing pins had already been struck, waiting next to see if she would turn the gun, look into the other end of the cylinder, and see there was only emptiness there instead of lead (he had thought of loading the guns with cartridges which had already misfired, but only briefly; Cort had taught them that every gun is ultimately ruled by Old Man Splitfoot, and a cartridge which misfires once may not do so a second time). If she did that, he would spring at once.

But she swung the cylinder back in, began to cock the hammer … and then paused again. Paused for the wind to mask the single low click.

He thought: Here is another. God, she's evil, this one, and she's legless, but she's a gunslinger as surely as Eddie is one.

He waited with her.

The wind gusted.

She pulled the hammer to full cock and placed it half an inch from Eddie's temple. With a grin that was a ghoul's grimace, she pulled the trigger.

Click.

He waited.

She pulled it again. And again. And again.

Click-Click-Click.

"MahFAH!" she screamed, and reversed the gun with liquid grace.

Roland coiled but did not leap. A child doesn't understand a hammer until he's mashed his finger at a nail.

If she kills him, she kills you.

Doesn't matter, the voice of Cort answered inexorably.

Eddie stirred. And his reflexes were not bad; he moved fast enough to avoid being driven unconscious or killed. Instead of coming down on the vulnerable temple, the heavy gun-butt cracked the side of his jaw.

"What … Jesus!"

"MAHFAH! HONKY MAHFUH!" Detta screamed, and Roland saw her raise the gun a second time. And even though she was legless and Eddie was rolling away, it was as much as he dared. If Eddie hadn't learned the lesson now, he never would. The next time the gunslinger told Eddie to be on his guard, Eddie would be, and besides�Dthe bitch was quick. It would not be wise to depend further than this on either Eddie's quickness or the Lady's infirmity.

He uncoiled, flying over Eddie and knocking her backward, ending up on top of her.

"You want it, mahfah?" she screamed at him, simultaneously rolling her crotch against his groin and raising the arm which still held the gun above his head. "You want it? I goan give you what you want, sho!"

"Eddie!" he shouted again, not just yelling now but commanding. For a moment Eddie just went on squalling there, eyes wide, blood dripping from his jaw (it had already begun to swell), staring, eyes wide. Move, can't you move? he thought, or is it that you don't want to? His strength was fading now, and the next time she brought that heavy gunbutt down she was going to break his arm with it … that was if he got his arm up in time. If he didn't, she was going to break his head with it.

Then Eddie moved. He caught the gun on the downswing and she shrieked, turning toward him, biting at him like a vampire, cursing him in a gutter patois so darkly southern that even Eddie couldn't understand it; to Roland it sounded as if the woman had suddenly begun to speak in a foreign language. But Eddie was able to yank the gun out of her hand and with the impending bludgeon gone, Roland was able to pin her.

She did not quit even then but continued to buck and heave and curse, sweat standing out all over her dark face.

Eddie stared, mouth opening and closing like the mouth of a fish. He touched tentatively at his jaw, winced, pulled his fingers back, examined them and the blood on them.

She was screaming that she would kill them both; they could try and rape her but she would kill them with her cunt, they would see, that was one bad son of a bitching cave with teeth around the entrance and if they wanted to try and explore it they would find out.

"What in the hell�D" Eddie said stupidly.

"One of my gunbelts," the gunslinger panted harshly at him. "Get it. I'm going to roll her over on top of me and you're going to grab her arms and tie her hands behind her."

"You ain't NEVAH!" Detta shrieked, and sunfished her legless body with such sudden force that she almost bucked Roland off. He felt her trying to bring the remainder of her right thigh up again and again, wanting to drive it into his balls.

"I … I … she …"

"Move, God curse your father's face!" Roland roared, and at last Eddie moved.

They almost lost control of her twice during the tying and binding. But Eddie was at last able to slip-knot one of Roland's gunbelts around her wrists when Roland�Dusing all his force�Dfinally brought them together behind her (all the time drawing back from her lunging bites like a mongoose from a snake; the bites he avoided but before Eddie had finished, the gunslinger was drenched with spittle) and then Eddie dragged her off, holding the short leash of the makeshift slip-knot to do it. He did not want to hurt this thrashing screaming cursing thing. It was uglier than the lobstrosities by far because of the greater intelligence which informed it, but he knew it could also be beautiful. He did not want to harm the other person the vessel held somewhere inside it (like a live dove deep inside one of the secret compartments in a magician's magic box).

Odetta Holmes was somewhere inside that screaming screeching thing.

Although his last mount�Da mule�Dhad died too long ago to remember, the gunslinger still had a piece of its tether-rope (which, in turn, had once been a fine gunslinger's lariat). They used this to bind her in her wheelchair, as she had imagined (or falsely remembered, and in the end they both came to the same thing, didn't they?) they had done already. Then they drew away from her.

If not for the crawling lobster-things, Eddie would have gone down to the water and washed his hands.

"I feel like I'm going to vomit," he said in a voice that jig-jagged up and down the scale like the voice of an adolescent boy.

"Why don't you go on and eat each other's COCKS?" the struggling thing in the chair screeched. "Why don't you jus go on and do dat if you fraid of a black woman's cunny? You just go on! Sho! Suck on yo each one's candles! Do it while you got a chance, causeDetta Walker goan get outen dis chair and cut dem skinny ole white candles off and feed em to those walkm buzzsaws down there!"

"She's the woman I was in. Do you believe me now?"

"I believed you before," Eddie said. "I told you that."

"You believed you believed. You believed on the top of your mind. Do you believe it all the way down now? All the way to the bottom?"

Eddie looked at the shrieking, convulsing thing in the chair and then looked away, white except for the slash on his jaw, which was still dripping a little. That side of his face was beginning to look a little like a balloon.

"Yes, "he said. "God, yes."

"This woman is a monster."

Eddie began to cry.

The gunslinger wanted to comfort him, could not commit such a sacrilege (he remembered Jake too well), and walked off into the dark with his new fever burning and aching inside him.

Much earlier on that night, while Odetta still slept, Eddie said he thought he might understand what was wrong with her. Might. The gunslinger asked what he meant.

"She could be a schizophrenic."

Roland only shook his head. Eddie explained what he understood of schizophrenia, gleanings from such films as The Three Faces of Eve and various TV programs (mostly the soap operas he and Henry had often watched while stoned). Roland had nodded. Yes. The disease Eddie described sounded about right. A woman with two faces, one light and one dark. A face like the one the man in black had shown him on the fifth Tarot card.

"And they don't know�Dthese schizophrenes�Dthat they have another?"

"No," Eddie said. "But …" He trailed off, moodily watching the lobstrosities crawl and question, question and crawl.

"But what?"

"I'm no shrink," Eddie said, "so I don't really know�D"

"Shrink? What is a shrink?"

Eddie tapped his temple. "A head-doctor. A doctor for your mind. They're really called psychiatrists."

Roland nodded. He liked shrink better. Because this Lady's mind was too large. Twice as large as it needed to be.

"But I think schizos almost always know something is wrong with them," Eddie said. "Because there are blanks. Maybe I'm wrong, but I always got the idea that they were usually two people who thought they had partial amnesia, because of the blank spaces in their memories when the other personality was in control. She … she says she remembers everything. She really thinks she remembers everything."

"I thought you said she didn't believe any of this was happening."

"Yeah," Eddie said, "but forget that for now. I'm trying to say that, no matter what she believes, what she remembers goes right from her living room where she was sitting in her bathrobe watching the midnight news to here, with no break at all. She doesn't have any sense that some other person took over between then and when you grabbed her in Macy's. Hell, that might have been the next day or even weeks later. I know it was still winter, because most of the shoppers in that store were wearing coats�D"

The gunslinger nodded. Eddie's perceptions were sharpening. That was good. He had missed the boots and scarves, the gloves sticking out of coat pockets, but it was still a start.

"�Dbut otherwise it's impossible to tell how long Odetta was that other woman because she doesn't know. I think she's in a situation she's never been in before, and her way of protecting both sides is this story about getting cracked over the head."

Roland nodded.

"And the rings. Seeing those really shook her up. She tried not to show it, but it showed, all right."

Roland asked: "If these two women don't know they exist in the same body, and if they don't even suspect that something may be wrong, if each has her own separate chain of memories, partly real but partly made up to fit the times the other is there, what are we to do with her? How are we even to live with her?"

Eddie had shrugged. "Don't ask me. It's your problem. You're the one who says you need her. Hell, you risked your neck to bring her here.'' Eddie thought about this for a minute, remembered squatting over Roland's body with Roland's knife held just above the gunslinger's throat, and laughed abruptly and without humor. LITERALLY risked your neck, man, he thought.

A silence fell between them. Odetta had by then been breathing quietly. As the gunslinger was about to reiterate his warning for Eddie to be on guard and announce (loud enough for the Lady to hear, if she was only shamming) that he was going to turn in, Eddie said the thing which lighted Roland's mind in a single sudden glare, the thing which made him understand at least part of what he needed so badly to know.

At the end, when they came through.

She had changed at the end.

And he had seen something, some thing�D

"Tell you what," Eddie said, moodily stirring the remains of the fire with a split claw from this night's kill, "when you brought her through, I felt like I was a schizo."

"Why?"

Eddie thought, then shrugged. It was too hard to explain, or maybe he was just too tired. "It's not important."

"Why?"

Eddie looked at Roland, saw he was asking a serious question for a serious reason�Dor thought he was�Dand took a minute to think back. "It's really hard to describe, man. It was looking in that door. That's what freaked me out. When you see someone move in that door, it's like you're moving with them. You know what I'm talking about."

Roland nodded.

"Well, I watched it like it was a movie�Dnever mind, it's not important�Duntil the very end. Then you turned her toward this side of the doorway and for the first time I was looking at myself. It was like …" He groped and could find nothing. "I dunno. It should have been like looking in a mirror, I guess, but it wasn't, because … because it was like looking at another person. It was like being turned inside out. Like being in two places at the same time. Shit, I don't know."

But the gunslinger was thunderstruck. That was what he had sensed as they came through; that was what had happened to her, no, not just her, them: for a moment Detta and Odetta had looked at each other, not the way one would look at her reflection in a mirror but as separate people; the mirror became a windowpane and for a moment Odetta had seen Detta and Detta had seen Odetta and had been equally horror-struck.

They each know, the gunslinger thought grimly. They may not have known before, but they do now. They can try to hide it from themselves, but for a moment they saw, they knew, and that knowing must still be there.

"Roland?"

"What?"

"Just wanted to make sure you hadn't gone to sleep with your eyes open. Because for a minute you looked like you were, you know, long ago and far away."

"If so, I'm back now," the gunslinger said. "I'm going to turn in. Remember what I said, Eddie: be on your guard."

"I'll watch," Eddie said, but Roland knew that, sick or not, he would have to be the one to do the watching tonight.

Everything else had followed from that.

Following the ruckus Eddie and Detta Walker eventually went to sleep again (she did not so much fall asleep as drop into an exhausted state of unconsciousness in her chair, lolling to one side against the restraining ropes).

The gunslinger, however, lay wakeful.

Iwill have to bring the two of them to battle, he thought, but he didn't need one of Eddie's "shrinks" to tell him that such a battle might be to the death. Ifthe bright one, Odetta, were to win that battle, all might yet be well. If the dark one were to win it, all would surely be lost with her.

Yet he sensed that what really needed doing was not killing but joining. He had already recognized much that would be of value to him�Dthem�D in Detta Walker's gutter toughness, and he wanted her�Dbut he wanted her under control. There was a long way to go. Detta thought he and Eddie were monsters of some species she called Honk Mafahs. That was only dangerous delusion, but there would be real monsters along the way�Dthe lobstrosities were not the first, nor would they be the last. The fight-until-you-drop woman he had entered and who had come out of hiding again tonight might come in very handy in a fight against such monsters, if she could be tempered by Odetta Holmes's calm humanity�Despecially now, with him short two fingers, almost out of bullets, and growing more fever.

But that is a step ahead. I think if I can make them acknowledge each other, that would bring them into confrontation. How may it be done?

He lay awake all that long night, thinking, and although he felt the fever in him grow, he found no answer to his question.

Eddie woke up shortly before daybreak, saw the gunslinger sitting near the ashes of last night's fire with his blanket wrapped around him Indian-fashion, and joined him.

"How do you feel?" Eddie asked in a low voice. The Lady still slept in her crisscrossing of ropes, although she occasionally jerked and muttered and moaned.

"All right."

Eddie gave him an appraising glance. "You don't look all right."

"Thank you, Eddie," the gunslinger said dryly.

"You're shivering."

"It will pass."

The Lady jerked and moaned again�Dthis time a word that was almost understandable. It might have been Oxford.

"God, I hate to see her tied up like that," Eddie murmured. "Like a goddam calf in a barn."

"She'll wake soon. Mayhap we can unloose her when she does."

It was the closest either of them came to saying out loud that when the Lady in the chair opened her eyes, the calm, if slightly puzzled gaze of Odetta Holmes might greet them.

Fifteen minutes later, as the first sunrays struck over the hills, those eyes did open�Dbut what the men saw was not the calm gaze of Odetta Holmes but the mad glare of Detta Walker.

"How many times you done rape me while I was buzzed out?" she asked. "My cunt feel all slick an tallowy, like somebody done been at it with a couple them little bitty white candles you graymeat mahfahs call cocks."

Roland sighed.

"Let's get going," he said, and gained his feet with a grimace.

"I ain't goan nowhere wit choo, mahfah," Detta spat.

"Oh yes you are," Eddie said. "Dreadfully sorry, my dear."

"Where you think I'm goan?"

"Well,'' Eddie said,' 'what was behind Door Number One wasn't so hot, and what was behind Door Number Two was even worse, so now, instead of quitting like sane people, we're going to go right on ahead and check out Door Number Three. The way things have been going, I think it's likely to be something like Godzilla or Ghidra the Three-Headed Monster, but I'm an optimist. I'm still hoping for the stainless steel cookware."

"I ain't goan."

"You're going, all right," Eddie said, and walked behind her chair. She began struggling again, but the gunslinger had made these knots, and her struggles only drew them tighter. Soon enough she saw this and ceased. She was full of poison but far from stupid. But she looked back over her shoulder at Eddie with a grin which made him recoil a little. It seemed to him the most evil expression he had ever seen on a human face.

"Well, maybe I be goan on a little way," she said, "but maybe not s'far's you think, white boy. And sure-God not s'fast's you think."

"What do you mean?"

That leering, over-the-shoulder grin again.

"You find out, white boy." Her eyes, mad but cogent, shifted briefly to the gunslinger. "You bofe be findin dat out."

Eddie wrapped his hands around the bicycle grips at the ends of the push-handles on the back of her wheelchair and they began north again, now leaving not only footprints but the twin tracks of the Lady's chair as they moved up the seemingly endless beach.

The day was a nightmare.

It was hard to calculate distance travelled when you were moving along a landscape which varied so little, but Eddie knew their progress had slowed to a crawl.

And he knew who was responsible.

Oh yeah.

You bofe befindin dat out, Detta had said, and they hadn't been on the move more than half an hour before the finding out began.

Pushing.

That was the first thing. Pushing the wheelchair up a beach of fine sand would have been as impossible as driving a car through deep unplowed snow. This beach, with its gritty, marly surface, made moving the chair possible but far from easy. It would roll along smoothly enough for awhile, crunching over shells and popping little pebbles to either side of its hard rubber tires … and then it would hit a dip where finer sand had drifted, and Eddie would have to shove, grunting, to get it and its solid unhelpful passenger through it. The sand sucked greedily at the wheels. You had to simultaneously push and throw your weight against the handles of the chair in a downward direction, or it and its bound occupant would tumble over face-first onto the beach.

Detta would cackle as he tried to move her without upending her. "You havin a good time back dere, honey-chile?" she asked each time the chair ran into one of these drybogs.

When the gunslinger moved over to help, Eddie motioned him away. "You'll get your chance," he said. "We'll switch off."But I think my turns are going to be a hell of a lot longer than his, a voice in his head spoke up. The way he looks, he's going to have his hands full just keeping himself moving before much longer, let alone moving the woman inthis chair. No sir, Eddie, I'm afraid this Bud's for you. It's God's revenge, you know it? All those years you spent as a junkie, and guess what? You're finally the pusher!

He uttered a short out-of-breath laugh.

"What's so funny, white boy?" Detta asked, and although Eddie thought she meant to sound sarcastic, it came out sounding just a tiny bit angry.

Ain't supposed to be any laughs in this for me, he thought. None at all. Not as far as she's concerned.

"You wouldn't understand, babe. Just let it lie."

"I be lettin you lie before this be all over," she said. "Be lettin you and yo bad-ass buddy there lie in pieces all ovah dis beach. Sho. Meantime you better save yo breaf to do yo pushin with. You already sound like you gettin a little sho't winded."

"Well, you talk for both of us, then," Eddie panted. "You never seem to run out of wind."

"I goan break wind, graymeat! Goan break it ovah yo dead face!"

"Promises, promises." Eddie shoved the chair out of the sand and onto relatively easier going�Dfor awhile, at least The sun was not yet fully up, but he had already worked up a sweat.

This is going to be an amusing and informative day, he thought. I can see that already.

Stopping.

That was the next thing.

They had struck a firm stretch of beach. Eddie pushed the chair along faster, thinking vaguely that if he could keep this bit of extra speed, he might be able to drive right through the next sandtrap he happened to strike on pure impetus.

All at once the chair stopped. Stopped dead. The crossbar on the back hit Eddie's chest with a thump. He grunted. Roland looked around, but not even the gunslinger's cat-quick reflexes could stop the Lady's chair from going over exactly as it had threatened to do in each of the sandtraps. It went and Detta went with it, tied and helpless but cackling wildly. She still was when Roland and Eddie finally managed to right the chair again. Some of the ropes had drawn so tight they must be cutting cruelly into her flesh, cutting off the circulation to her extremities; her forehead was slashed and blood trickled into her eyebrows. She went on cackling just the same.

The men were both gasping, out of breath, by the time the chair was on its wheels again. The combined weight of it and the woman in it must have totaled two hundred and fifty pounds, most of it chair. It occurred to Eddie that if the gunslinger had snatched Detta from his own when, 1987, the chair might have weighed as much as sixty pounds less.

Detta giggled, snorted, blinked blood out of her eyes.

"Looky here, you boys done opsot me," she said.

"Call your lawyer," Eddie muttered. "Sue us."

"An got yoselfs all tuckered out gittin me back on top agin. Must have taken you ten minutes, too."

The gunslinger took a piece of his shirt�Denough of it was gone now so the rest didn't much matter�Dand reached forward with his left hand to mop the blood away from the cut on her forehead. She snapped at him, and from the savage click those teeth made when they came together, Eddie thought that, if Roland had been only one instant slower in drawing back, Detta Walker would have evened up the number of fingers on his hands for him again.

She cackled and stared at him with meanly merry eyes, but the gunslinger saw fear hidden far back in those eyes. She was afraid of him. Afraid because he was The Really Bad Man.

Why was he The Really Bad Man? Maybe because, on some deeper level, she sensed what he knew about her.

"Almos' got you, graymeat," she said. "Almos' got you that time." And cackled, witchlike.

"Hold her head," the gunslinger said evenly. "She bites like a weasel."

Eddie held it while the gunslinger carefully wiped the wound clean. It wasn't wide and didn't look deep, but the gunslinger took no chances; he walked slowly down to the water, soaked the piece of shirting in the salt water, and then came back.

She began to scream as he approached.

"Doan you be touchin me wid dat thing! Doan you be touchin me wid no water from where them poison things come from! Git it away! Git it away!"

" Hold her head,'' Roland said in the same even voice. She was whipping it from side to side. "I don't want to take any chances."

Eddie held it … and squeezed it when she tried to shake free. She saw he meant business and immediately became still, showing no more fear of the damp rag. It had been only sham, after all.

She

The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower #2) - Page 11

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