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THE RAIN WAS FALLING in sheets, threatening to turn the circle within the stones into a sea ofover the door!" Eddie shouted "Don&039;t let the rain wash it out!"

Roland snatched a glance at Susannah and saw she was still strug-gling with the demon Her eyes were half-shut, her rimace He could not see or hear the des

Eddie turned his strea face toward hioddam door, and do it NOW!"

Roland yanked one of their hides from his pack and held a corner in each hand Then he stretched his ar a makeshift tent The tip of Eddie&039;s homemade pencil was caked witha smear the color of bitter chocolate, then wrapped his fist around the stick again and bent over his drawing It was not exactly the same size as the door on Jake&039;s side of the barrier - the ratio was perhaps 75:1 - but it would be big enough for Jake to coh if the keys worked

If he even has a key, isn&039;t that what you mean? he asked himself Suppose he&039;s dropped it or that house made him drop it?

He drew a plate under the circle which represented the doorknob, hesitated, and then squiggled the familiar shape of a keyhole within it:

He hesitated There was one , but what? It was hard to think of, because it felt as if there were a tornado roaring through his head, a tornado with rando around inside it instead of uprooted barns and privies and chicken-houses

"Coah!" Susannah cried froht you was some kind of hot-shit studboy!"

Boy That was it

Carefully, he wrote THE BOY across the top panel of the door with the tip of his stick At the instant he finished the Y, the drawing changed The circle of rain-darkened earth he had drawn suddenly darkened even lea knob And instead of broet earth within the shape of the keyhole, he could see diht

Behind hi it on, but now she sounded as if she were tiring This had to end, and soon

Eddie bent forward fro Allah, and put his eye to the keyhole he had drawn He looked through it into his oorld, into that house which he and Henry had gone to see in May of 1977, unaware (except he, Eddie, had not been unaware; no, not totally unaware, even then) that a boy fro them

He saw a hallway Jake was down on his hands and knees, tugging frantically at a board So for him Eddie could see it, but at the same time he could not - it was as if part of his brain refused to see it, as if seeing would lead to comprehension and comprehension to madness

"Hurry up, Jake!" he screamed into the keyhole "For Christ&039;s sake, , thunder ripped the sky like cannon-fire and the rain turned to hail

32

FOR A MOMENT AFTER the key fell, Jake only stood where he was, staring down at the narrow crack between the boards

Incredibly, he felt sleepy

That shouldn&039;t have happened, he thought It&039;s one thing too o on with this, not oneto curl up against that door instead I&039;rabs me and pulls me toward itscoe to give in vanished in a single stroke of terror Noas all the way out of the wall, a giant plaster head with one broken wooden eye and one reaching plaster hand Chunks of lathing stood out on its skull in rando of hair It saw Jake and opened its ain Plaster-dust drifted out of its yawning ar smoke

Jake fell to his knees and peered into the crack The key was a sht down there in the dark, but the crack was far too narrow to aders He seized one of the boards and yanked with all his roanedbut held

There was a jangling crash He looked down the hallway and saw the hand, which was bigger than his whole body, seize the fallen chandelier and throw it aside The rusty chain which had once held it suspended rose like a bullwhip and then came doith a heavy crulass chattering against ancient brass

The doorkeeper&039;s head, attached only to its single hunched shoulder and reaching arm, slid forward above the floor Behind it, the remains of the wall collapsed in a cloud of dust A ments humped up and became the creature&039;s twisted, bony back

The doorkeeper saw Jake looking and seerin As it did, splinters of wood poked out of its wrinkling cheeks It dragged itself forward through the dust-hazed ballrooroped a for purchase, and ripped one of the French doors at the end of the hall froan to wrench at the board again It wouldn&039;t coer&039;s voice did:

"The other one, Jake! Try the other one!"

He let go of the board he had been yanking at and grabbed the one on the other side of the crack As he did, another voice spoke He heard this one not in his head but with his ears, and understood it was co fro for ever since the day he hadn&039;t been run over in the street

"Hurry up, Jake! For Christ&039;s sake, hurry up!"

When he yanked this other board, it came free so easily that he almost tumbled over backward

33

Two WOMEN WERE STANDING in the doorway of the used appliance shop across the street froer had been her only custoan Noithout knowing they were doing it, they linked arms about each other&039;s waists and stood that way, tre like children who hear a noise in the dark

Up the street, a trio of boys on their way to the Dutch Hill Little League field stood gaping at the house, their Red Ball Flyer wagon filled with baseball equipotten behind theot out to look The patrons of Henry&039;s Corner Market and the Dutch Hill Pub ca around wildly

Now the ground began to tremble, and a fan of fine cracks started to spread across Rhinehold Street

"Is it an earthquake?" the delivery van driver shouted at the wo outside the appliance shop, hut instead of waiting for an answer he jumped hack behind the wheel of his van and drove away rapidly, swerving to the wrong side of the street to keep away from the ruined house which was the epicenter of this convulsion