the voice came from Eddie’s mouth, it was not Eddie’s voice.
Schizo, Jack Andolini thought. He’s gone schizo, gone fucking schi—
But the thought broke off when Eddie’s hands grabbed his shoulders, because when that happened, Andolini saw a hole in reality suddenly appear about three feet behind Eddie.
No, not a hole. Its dimensions were too perfect for that.
It was a door.
“Hail Mary fulla grace,” Jack said in a low breathy moan. Through that doorway which hung in space a foot or so above the floor in front of Balazar’s private shower he could see a dark beach which sloped down to crashing waves. Things were moving on that beach. Things.
He brought the gun down, but the blow which had been meant to break off all of Eddie’s front teeth at the gum-line did no more than mash Eddie’s lips back and bloody them a little. All the strength was running out of him. Jack could feel it happening.
“I told you it was gonna knock your socks off, Jack,” Eddie said, and then yanked him. Jack realized what Eddie meant to do at the last moment and began to fight like a wildcat, but it was too late—they were tumbling backward through that doorway, and the droning hum of New York City at night, so familiar and constant you never even heard it unless it wasn’t there anymore, was replaced by the grinding sound of the waves and the grating, questioning voices of dimly seen horrors crawling to and fro on the beach.
11
We’ll have to move very fast, or we’ll find ourselves basted in a hot oast, Roland had said, and Eddie was pretty sure the guy meant that if they didn’t shuck and jive at damn near the speed of light, their gooses were going to be cooked. He believed it, too. When it came to hard guys, Jack Andolini was like Dwight Gooden: you could rock him, yes, you could shock him, maybe, but if you let him get away in the early innings he was going to stomp you flat later on.
Left hand! Roland screamed at himself as they went through and he separated from Eddie. Remember! Left hand! Left hand!
He saw Eddie and Jack stumble backward, fall, and then go rolling down the rocky scree that edged the beach, struggling for the gun in Andolini’s hand.
Roland had just time to think what a cosmic joke it would be if he arrived back in his own world only to discover that his physical body had died while he had been away . . . and then it was too late. Too late to wonder, too late to go back.
12
Andolini didn’t know what had happened. Part of him was sure he had gone crazy, part was sure Eddie had doped him or gassed him or something like that, part believed that the vengeful God of his childhood had finally tired of his evils and had plucked him away from the world he knew and set him down in this weird purgatory.
Then he saw the door, standing open, spilling a fan of white light—the light from Balazar’s john—onto the rocky ground—and understood it was possible to get back. Andolini was a practical man above all else. He would worry about what all this meant later on. Right now he intended to kill this creep’s ass and get back through that door.
The strength that had gone out of him in his shocked surprise now flooded back. He realized Eddie was trying to pull his small but very efficient Colt Cobra out of his hand and had nearly succeeded. Jack pulled it back with a curse, tried to aim, and Eddie promptly grabbed his arm again.
Andolini hoisted a knee into the big muscle of Eddie’s right thigh (the expensive gabardine of Andolini’s slacks was now crusted with dirty gray beach sand) and Eddie screamed as the muscle seized up.
“Roland!” he cried. “Help me! For Christ’s sake, help me!”
Andolini snapped his head around and what he saw threw him off-balance again. There was a guy standing there . . . only he looked more like a ghost than a guy. Not exactly Casper the Friendly Ghost, either. The swaying figure’s white, haggard face was rough with beard-stubble. His shirt was in tatters which blew back behind him in twisted ribbons, showing the starved stack of his ribs. A filthy rag was wrapped around his right hand. He looked sick, sick and dying, but even so he also looked tough enough to make Andolini feel