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Of course it did, Eddie realized Susannah had probably seen a home security syste the Manhattan rich, even if she had not been very enthusiastically accepted by them - but there was a world of difference between the electronics gear available in her when, 1963, and his ohich was 1987 We&039;ve never talked ht I wonder what she&039;d think if I told her Ronald Reagan was President of the United States when Roland snatched me? Probably that I was crazy

"It&039;s a security systeh his nerves and instincts screaainst it, he forced hiht hand and thumb the TALK/LISTEN switch

There was no crackle of electricity; no deadly blue fire went racing up his ar was even still connected

Maybe Blaine is dead Maybe he&039;s dead, after all

But he didn&039;t really believe that

"Hello?" he said, and in hisas he�C wasall over his face and body,his hair ablaze "Hello Blaine ? Anybody ?"

He let go of the button and waited, stiff with tension Susannah&039;s hand crept into his, cold and small There was still no answer, and Eddie - now ain

" Blaine ?"

He let go of the button Waited And when there was still no answer, a dangerous giddiness overcame hiiddiness took hi mattered It had been like that when he had outfaced Balazar&039;s sallow-faced contact man in Nassau, and it was like that now And if Roland had seen him in the moment this lunatic impa-tience overtook him, he would have seen more than just a resemblance between Eddie and Cuthbert; he would have sworn Eddie was Cuthbert

He jaan to bellow into the speaker, adopting a pluus) British accent "Hullo, Blaine ! Cheerio, old fellow! This is Robin Leach, host of Life-styles of the Rich and Brainless, here to tell you that you have won six billion dollars and a new Ford Escort in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes!"

Pigeons took flight above theasped Her face wore the dismayed expression of a devout woman who has just heard her husband blaspheme in a cathedral "Eddie, stop it! Stop it!"

Eddie couldn&039;t stop it His littered with a er "You and your irlfriend, Patricia, will spend a lux-yoo-rious month in scenic Jimtohere you&039;ll drink only the finest wine and eat only the finest virgins! You - "

"shhhh"

Eddie broke off, looking at Susannah He was at once sure that it had been she who had shushed him - not only because she had already tried but because she was the only other person here - and yet at the same time he knew it hadn&039;t been Susannah That had been another voice: the voice of a very young and very frightened child

"Suze? Did you - "

Susannah was shaking her head and raising her hand at the same time She pointed at the interco a very faint shell-pink It was the sa in its berth on the other side of the barrier

"Shhh don&039;t wake him up," the child&039;s voicebreeze

"What" Eddie began Then he shook his head, reached toward the TALK/LISTEN switch and pressed it gently When he spoke again, it was not in the blaring Robin Leach bellow but in the almost-whisper of a conspirator "What are you? Who are you?"

He released the button He and Susannah regarded each other with the big eyes of children who no they are sharing the house with a dangerous - perhaps psychotic - adult How have they coe? Why, because another child has told the ti out only when it knows the adult is asleep; a frightened child who happens to be almost invisible

There was no answer Eddie let the seconds spin out Each one see for the button again when the faint pink glow reappeared

"I&039;m Little Blaine," the child&039;s voice whispered "The one he doesn&039;t see The one he forgot The one he thinks he left behind in the rooms of ruin and the halls of the dead"

Eddie pushed the button again with a hand that had picked up an uncontrollable shake He could hear that shake in his voice, as well "Who? Who is the one who doesn&039;t see? Is it the Bear?"

No - not the bear; not he Shardik lay dead in the forest, many miles behind them; the world had moved on even since then Eddie suddenly reainst that strange unfound door in the clearing where die bear had lived its violent half-life, that door with its somehow terrible stripes of yellow and black It was all of a piece, he realized now; all part of so whole, a tattered ith the Dark Tower at its center like an incompre-hensible stone spider All of Mid-World had becoe latter days; all of Mid-World had become The Drawers; all of Mid-World had beco and haunted

He saw Susannah&039;s lips form the words of the real answer before the voice from the intercom could speak them, and those words were as obvious as the solution to a riddle once the answer is spoken

"Big Blaine," the unseen voice whispered "Big Blaine is the ghost in the host in all the one to her throat and was clutching it, as if she intended to strangle herself Her eyes were full of terror, but they were not glassy, not stunned; they were sharp with understanding Per-haps she knew a voice like this one frorated whole that was Susannah had been shunted aside by the warring personalities of Detta and Odetta The childish voice had sur-prised her as well as hier to the concept being expressed

Susannah knew all about the o," she said Her terror turned the words into an unpunctuated auditory s in her wind-pipe like a cold wind around a chiet away Eddie - "

"Too late," the tiny,Blaine is awake He knows you are here And he&039;s coe arc-sodiu the pillared vastness of the Cradle in a harsh glare that banished all shadows Hundreds of pigeons darted and swooped in frightened, aiht, startled froh above

"Wait!" Eddie shouted "Please, wait!"

In his agitation he forgot to push the button, but it made no differ-ence; Little Blaine responded anyway "No! I can&039;t let him catch ht on the intercoain, but only for a moment This time both COMMAND and ENTER lit up, and their color was not pink but the lurid dark red of a blackse

"WHO ARE YOU?" a voice roared, and it came not just from the box but fro bodies hanging frohty voice; it seemed that even the dead would run from Blaine, if they could

Susannah shrank back in her chair, the heels of her hands pressed to her ears, her face long with dismay, her mouth distorted in a silent screa toward all the fantastic, hallucinatory terrors of eleven Had it been this voice he had feared when he and Henry stood outside The Mansion? That he had perhaps even antici-pated? He didn&039;t know but he did kno Jack in that old story must have felt when he realized that he had tried the beanstalk once too often, and awakened the giant

"HOW DARE YOU DISTURB MY SLEEP? TELL ME NOW, OR DIE WHERE YOU STAND"

HeBlaine - to do to the even worse); perhaps should have frozen, locked in that down-the-rabbit-hole, fairy-tale terror It was the memory of the small voice which had spoken first that enabled him to move It had been the voice of a terrified child, but it had tried to help them, terrified or not

So now you have to help yourself, he thought You woke it up; deal with it, for Christ&039;s sake!