Unfound

The Dead and the Damned

"Any demon want to fuck wit' me goan find out he's fuckin wit' the finest. I th'ow him a fuck he ain't nevah goan f'git."

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

"I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of her father. I aim with my eye."

"I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face of her father. I shoot with my mind."

"I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun has. . ."

Pull the trigger, Susannah! Shoot it!

"I kill with my heart, motherfucker."

As Susannah Dean awoke beside Eddie, sweating and feverish, she could still see the huge bear, Shardik, shaking the tree her husband was perched in, trying to kill him with its huge claws. After the City of Lud and Blaine the Mono, she wasn't sure why this particular scene was in her head tonight - after all, she had much worse things to dream about - but Shardik tormented her sleep this cool autumn night.

After a moment, when she didn't go to sleep, she saw Roland sit up. The other man had detected the change in her breathing, no doubt, and had instinctively emerged wide awake. Jake was sleeping soundly, with Oy curled up beside him, and Eddie slept next to her, stirring slightly. The man Detta had deemed "that weird lookin' honky" was asleep, too, his curtain of black hair gleaming in the dying firelight. Roland made his way to the fire, and she pushed herself to him on her hands, in a manner that was the closest to walking she'd ever come again.

"What ails thee, Susannah?" he asked with a shy smile, and she recognized her own expression in his vocabulary, except, of course, with the Mejis twist they'd all taken to using since Roland told his tale of lost love when he was just fifteen, a young gunslinger fresh out of Gilead.

She shook her head. "Not much, Roland. Just dreamin' 'bout that bear."

"The Guardian," Roland stated flatly. "I would have thought you'd be having a nightmare about that demon, if anything. . ."

She laughed without humor. "Roland, Detta Walker is still the undefeated queen of the roadhouses. Do you think that bitch is goan fret over her greatest victory?"

Roland shrugged. "Now that you put it that way, Susannah . . . but I'm worried about you, not Detta. Detta will be just fine." Susannah sighed.

"There's something you've wanted to tell me since River Crossing," Roland said, his eyes somewhat stern. "What is it?"

She tried to think of the best way to say what she had to say, but couldn't think of anything better than just blurting it out. "I'm pregnant, Roland." She saw his face darkening, realizing at once that it wasn't Eddie's baby. "I'm pregnant with a demon's baby." Fear filled his eyes.

"Ka is cruel, Susannah," he said, as much to himself as to her.

She smiled without humor. "I know, Roland. They burned your only love, while she was carrying your child. I wonder why you put up with it. Why you don't hate ka more than you do."

Roland shrugged. He was not a particularly emotional man, always taking problems with a good deal more logic than with emotion. This distinct personality trait was one of the most definitively Roland; his reactions were not what Susannah had ever seen when she had lived in New York. He wasn't particularly eloquent; Roland couldn't explain to Susannah that he didn't see ka as a physical, emotional being, mostly because he couldn't understand that she felt so.

"Ka has nothing against me, Susannah. We are all slaves to ka, and I am the last, cursed survivor of Gilead, and I am a thousand times cursed because of it. I don't expect even ka can save the damned."

They sat in silence, while Roland rolled a cigarette and smoked it. They heard a quiet footstep and suddenly Snape was beside them. He rubbed his sallow cheek absently and stared into the dying embers of the fire.

"Cigarette?" Roland asked, his voice stern and emotionless. Snape shook his head, saying nothing, his eyes fixed on the remains of the fire. Susannah watched him intently, trying to figure out how much he'd heard.

"What is this place?" he asked after a moment. Roland sighed.

"I knew that was coming sooner or later." He contemplated for a moment, and then continued, "You're not in your world anymore, as I'm sure you've noticed. But I'm afraid we've gone far beyond the borders of the world I knew, too, so I can't rightfully tell you where we are anymore. It's not Mid-World; we left that behind when we boarded Blaine the Mono - you will hear that story later. So all I can truthfully tell you is that we've passed through to End-World - and will soon have to continue to the land of Thunderclap."

Susannah looked at him and shrugged. "We don't know, honey. It's been a long journey."

"Who are you?" he asked, more out of reflex than anything.

"I'm Susannah Dean," she said evenly, "but I haven't always been Susannah. At one time, I was Odetta Susannah Holmes, daughter of a rich black dentist in the 1950's and 60's. I lived in New York. One day a man named Jack Mort - The Pusher, Roland will usually call him - pushed a brick from a tall building, which hit me in the head. I was young then, only a child, and a white taxi driver had refused to let my father and I ride in his cab. . ."

"Times have changed," Snape said, attempting to comfort her.

Susannah nodded brusquely. "So Eddie has told me. Mort dropping the brick on my head caused me to develop another personality, Detta Susannah Walker. Detta. . ." she wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Detta. . . is one crazy bitch, to say in the least. She still shows up occasionally, but she's tamer nowadays. She liked to dress up and go to roadhouses, where she'd mess with the white boys and then refuse to give 'em any. As you can imagine, she got smacked around a lot, but Detta was crazy and she didn't care. She also had a habit for shoplifting, which is how Eddie and Roland found me - robbing a Macy's."

"Tell him about the honk mahfahs in Oxford Town, Susannah."

She turned to glare at Roland, and Snape noticed an odd thing. Her breathing had become heavy and furious, her eyes darker and a more than a little frightening. "I'm goan take mah foot an shove it up yo ass, Roland."

"Meet Detta," Roland said calmly. Suddenly the eyes cleared and Susannah was back.

"Stop doing that, you crazy bastard. Do you have a death wish?" Then she turned to Snape and uttered a hasty explanation. "Odetta and Detta were involved in the civil rights movement in the 1960's. We went to Oxford town, and they used hoses against the black protestors and abused us and threw us in jail. I don't like talking about it. Detta gets flat-out furious. Anyway, that was later, after I lost my legs."

"How did you lose your legs?" Snape asked gently. He was disturbed already, but he had to know.

"Mort," Susannah uttered bitterly, her face contorting and Detta threatening in her eyes. "Jack Mort pushed me in front of the A-train - it cut my legs off. I started drifting in and out of personality in the ambulance, which scared the ever-living hell out of the paras, lemme tell you. . ."

She trailed off, her eyes far away. "Roland took over Mort's body through a special door and jumped in front of a train, to make a long story short," she said. "He'll have to explain the doors to you - they're right confusing to me anyhow - but that did it, him killing Jack Mort in front of the same train that cut my legs off. Cut that mahfah in half. That did it. I saw, and Detta and Odetta came together - or ripped apart - and I became Susannah. I was already in love with Eddie; well, Odetta was, Detta didn't like much of anybody. . ."

"If I remember correctly, Detta had tied Eddie up and left him for dead while the lobtrosities came out of the water," Roland remarked dryly. Susannah shrugged, mildly embarrassed.

"So I became Susannah Dean. Right then and there. I saved Eddie and Roland from the lobtrosities after I tried to kill 'em." She looked at Snape with dark, intense eyes.

Roland was looking at her with an unreadable expression. Severus noticed something odd as he looked at Roland -- the first three fingers on his right hand were gone. Roland noticed where he was looking and said:

"Perhaps I should explain the lobtrosities. When I was traveling along the West Shore, these creatures came out of the water. Eddie said they looked like giant lobsters, and since I wasn't sure what else to call them, we invented the name 'lobtrosities'."

"And who are you?" Severus asked quietly. Roland chuckled without feeling.

"My story is almost too long to tell, Sai Snape. . . but I will try. I come from a land called Gilead; I am the last of the Gunslingers. I suppose my story starts in a desert - the apotheosis of all deserts - I was following the man in black, a wizard named Walter, when I came to a place called the Way Station. It was there I met Jake Chambers, who had just died in his own world. For Jake, death was a doorway into my world. It was ka, I thought, to meet the boy there, and we continued following Walter."

"How old is Jake?" Severus interrupted.

Roland didn't seem disturbed by the interruption. "Eleven," he replied. "Jake has wisdom far beyond his years. I'm only telling you what of my story you need to know. There was more, of course, but I have neither the time nor the will to tell it now. The next important point in our journey was when we came across the oracle in the mountains. She lured Jake to her, and he went, which was a foolish thing to do - the oracle would have killed him if I hadn't stepped in. There's only one way to deal with a demon in a Speaking Ring. . ."

"Fuck 'em," said Susannah bitterly. Roland looked at her pityingly.

"I held the demon off that night - Susannah held it off another. I'll get to that. The demon gave me information; she told me that Jake would die. I refused to believe. We went under the mountains to follow Walter, where the slow mutants lived. Towards the end of that particular journey -" he swallowed hard. "-- Jake fell from the railing into an abyss. He was holding on, and I could have gone back to save him, but it would have let Walter get away. I was forced to choose between Jake and Walter - and I chose Walter. Jake died, but I remember his final words: 'Go then, there are other worlds than these. . .'"

"I had a palaver with Walter, and when I woke up, there was nothing left of him but bones, and I had aged ten years overnight. Jake was dead, and I was alone. During the palaver, Walter had drawn my fortune from the Tarot cards, of the three people I was to draw - The Prisoner, The Lady of the Shadows, and on the final card was Death. Eddie was the first.

I came out along the Western Shore - at that point, I was unaware of the lobtrosities, and I stayed too close to the edge one night. It bit the fingers that are missing off, as well as two toes. Somehow, I got away, but the wounds became infected. I got to the first door a few days later. It was a door between worlds, a door with nothing behind it. If you went to its side, it disappeared. Written on the door were the words 'The Prisoner'. Eddie. He can tell that story."

"The Prisoner?" Severus asked.

"Eddie was a junkie," Susannah explained, "He had one helluva monkey on his back, and he was a prisoner to that."

"And to the influence of his brother," Roland said dryly. "Anyway, after a shootout in a drug dealer's lair, I brought Eddie back here. We didn't get along so well, since he was having . . . what was it, Susannah?"

"Withdrawals," she said absently.

"He cured me," Roland continued, "with some kind of medicine from Balazar's." His forehead creased in frustration. "I can't pronounce that, either."

"Keflex," Susannah said. "It was good ol' penicillin, honey."

Roland shrugged. "I don't know. The infection was nearly gone when we came across the second door, The Lady of the Shadows. That was Susannah, whose story you've already heard. It took us longer to reach the final door, since my infection was coming back and Detta was slowing us down considerably." He glared at Susannah. "She kept tipping her chair over in the sand and trying to kill us while we slept. It was unpleasant.

"Eventually I lost my strength and Eddie had to take Susannah on without me. Then he came back to get me and carried me to the final door, which said 'The Pusher'. Death - in the form of Jack Mort."

"I'm sure that was a pleasant meeting," Snape remarked dryly. Roland chuckled.

"I entered his body as he was about to push Jake into the street and kill him, bringing him into my world. I couldn't bear it, so I came forward and stopped him. And from that moment, I had two different trains of thought. You see, I remembered Jake coming to the Way Station and I remembered killing him - but I also remembered Jake never coming. It was maddening. I started losing my mind. I killed Jack Mort and pulled Susannah's personalities together, as she told you; and then I left for my own world, where I continued to go crazy. We were attacked by a Guardian - Shardik the Bear - and Susannah had to shoot it to save Eddie's life. It was a hell of a shot." Susannah grinned.

"I guess all that really remains that you need to know is how we rescued Jake at last. He had to come through an old mansion, which Eddie could probably tell you more about than anyone besides Jake himself, and Eddie had to draw a hole in the dirt and insert a key that he had carved. He saw the shape of the key when I threw Walter's jawbone into the fire and it exploded." He stopped and frowned. "I'm sorry, I'm not telling this well at all. But it's hard to explain, you see. The place where we had to draw Jake through was none other than a Speaking Ring, and this time, the demon was male. So Susannah had to . . . distract it and keep it from killing Eddie."

Susannah's face was contorted in distaste. "It was a pretty horrifying experience, but I called Detta up, and she didn't mind taking the challenge." She shook her head. "Crazy bitch."

Roland continued, "Jake made it through, even though the house had a demon in it, too, and it was attacking Jake as Eddie struggled with the key. I suppose the tale between Jake and I may be the most confusing one you ever hear, but the voices stopped when he came through the door. We met Oy on the way to the City of Lud. He got kicked out of his own pack, we think, because they were tired of him talking. Oy is an incredible creature. He's been a miracle worker, especially when Jake was kidnapped in Lud."

Susannah picked up from here. "To get here, to End-World, we had to ride on Blaine the Mono, a psychotic train." Snape raised his eyebrow quizzically. "Blaine," Susannah explained, "ran on computers deep beneath the City of Lud. He ran the device the Luddites called 'god-drums', which made them go crazy and start hanging their own people." She shuddered. "You walked down the street and the goddamn bodies were hanging from the lampposts - thousands of men, women, and children. It was horrible. And Blaine did it all. Then, when we left, he released poison gas on the entire city and killed them all. He planned to kill us, too, but Blaine like riddles. We riddled with the world's smartest computer, and he was beating us, until Eddie started asking these foolish riddles with no logical answer. It fried Blaine's circuits, and we were able to live. Blaine dropped us off in Topeka, Kasas, where everyone had died of something called the superflu. It wasn't our world - we could tell by the date on the paper, and it obviously wasn't yours, either, unless a epidemic massacred millions of people in the early 1980's."

"It didn't," Snape said, slightly relieved. Something else had happened in the late 1980's that devastated him as much as the death of millions would have, but that was neither here nor there.

"The place we just came from," Roland said, "is this place's representation of Susannah's 'Oz'."

"Not my Oz, Roland."

"Ok, well the land from the book The Wizard of Oz. Do you know it?" Snape nodded.

"Vaguely."

"R.F. decided to play the Wizard. We were forced to enter a magical glass ball - a piece of the Wizard's Rainbow; the pink one, to be exact. My friends saw me kill my mother." Roland looked into the fire, his eyes unreadable.

"So it was like a Pensieve?" Snape asked.

"What?" Roland was obviously confused.

"It shows your memories."

The older man shook his head. "More than that. It's an evil work of sorcery. It shows everything - everything happening around you, anything that's ever happened. It's intoxicating in its very presence, and I've seen the blood of many men and women spilt over the Wizard's Glass."

"Then we ended up here," Susannah said.

"So now you know the basics of our story, at least," Roland said. "We shall hear yours tomorrow."

"The door in the ground -" Snape began, "it animated?"

"Animated?" Roland asked.

"Came to life," Susannah said.

"Oh, yes. It turned into a real door as soon as soon as Eddie finished the drawing." He chuckled. "I remember he was upset because he drew the keyhole, but the door didn't come to life. He forgot to write 'The Boy' at the top. Once he did that, it became real."

"I really don't think that's why he was so upset, Roland. It was probably more the idea that a demon was raping his wife."

"And he wanted it all over with, but it wasn't working," Roland prompted, determined to be right. Susannah shrugged, momentarily defeated.

"I'm goan back to bed, Roland. My husband's gettin' cold." She 'walked' with her hands over to where Eddie lay and pulled the blanket over them.

"I'm surprised Jake isn't up," Roland said absently, looking at the forms of Jake and Oy sleeping across the way.

"Snape sighed and then asked the question that was bothering him the most. "Will I live, Roland? Was I brought from my world to die in this one?"

Roland shrugged. "There will be water if God wills it," he replied.