that when this last book is published, the readers are going to be just wild. And why not? Some of them have known Take Chambers for twenty years, almost twice as long as the boy actually lived. Oh, they'll be wild, all right, and when he writes back and says he's as sorry as they are, as surprised as they are, will they believe him? Not on your tintype, as his grandfather used to say. He thinks of Misery-Annie Wilkes calling Paul Sheldon a cockadoodie brat for trying to get rid of silly, bubbleheaded Misery Chastain. Annie shouting that Paul was the writer and the writer is God to his characters, he doesn't have to kill any of them if he doesn't want to.
But he's not God. At least not in this case. He knows damned well that Jake Chambers wasn't there on the day of his accident, nor Roland Deschain, either-the idea's laughable, they're make-believe, for Christ's sake-but he also knows that at some point the song he hears when he sits at his fancy Macintosh writing-machine became Jake's death-song, and to ignore that would have been to lose touch with Ves'-Ka Gan entirely, and he must not do that. Not if he is to finish. That song is the only thread he has, the trail of breadcrumbs he must follow if he is ever to emerge from this bewildering forest of plot he has planted, and-
Are you sure you planted it?
Well... no. In fact he is not. So call for the men in the white coats.
And are you completely sure Jake wasn't there that day? After all, how much of the damned accident do you actually remember?
Not much. He remembers seeing the top of Bryan Smith's van appear over the horizon, and realizing it's not on the road, where it should be, but on the soft shoulder. After that he remembers Smith sitting on a rock wall, looking down at him, and telling him that his leg was broke in at least six places, maybe seven. But between these two memories-the one of the approach and the one of the immediate aftermath-the film of his memory has been burned red.
Or almost red.
But sometimes in the night, when he awakes from dreams he can't quite remember...
Sometimes there are... well...
"Sometimes there are voices," he says. "Why don't you just say it?"
And then, laughing: "I guess Ijust did."
He hears the approaching click of toenails down the hall, and Marlowe pokes his long nose into the office. He's a Welsh Corgi, with short legs and big ears, and a pretty old guy now, with his own aches and pains, not to mention the eye he lost to cancer the previous year. The vet said he probably wouldn't make it back from that one, but he did. What a good guy. What a tough guy. And when he raises his head from his necessarily low perspective to look at the writer, he's wearing his old fiendish grin. How's it goin, bubba? that look seems to say. Gettin any good words today? How do ya?
"I do fine," he tells Marlowe. "Hangin in. How are you doin?"
Marlowe (sometimes known as The Snoutmaster) waggles his arthritic rear end in response.
"You again." That's what I said to him. And he asked, "Do you remember me?" Or maybe he said it-"You remember me."I told him I was thirsty. He said he didn't have anything to drink, he said sorry, and I called him a liar. And I was right to call him a liar because he wasn't sorry a bit. He didn't care a row of pins if I was thirsty because Jake was dead and he tried to put it on me, son of a bitch tried to put the blame on me-
"But none of that actually happened," King says, watching Marlowe waddle back toward the kitchen, where he will check his dish again before taking one of his increasingly long naps.
The house is empty except for the two of them, and under those circumstances he often talks to himself. "I mean, you know that, don't you? That none of it actually happened?"
He supposes he does, but it was so odd for Jake to die like that. Jake is in all his notes, and no surprise diere, because Jake was supposed to be around until the very end. All of them were, in fact. Of course no story except a bad one, one that arrives DOA, is ever completely under the writer's control, but this one is