Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(13)

Open!he thought at the door, feeling absurdly like an Arabian princeling in some ancient story.Open sesame! Open says me!

From the cave's belly far below, the voices began to babble once more. There was a whooping, windy sound, the heavy crump of something falling. The cave's floor trembled beneath their feet, as if with another Beamquake. Jake paid no mind. The feeling of live force in this chamber was very strong now - he could feel it plucking at his skin, vibrating in his nose and eyes, teasing the hairs out from his scalp - but the door remained shut. He bore down more strongly on Roland's hand and the Pere's, concentrating on firehouse doors, police station doors, the door to the Principal's Office at Piper, even a science fiction book he'd once read calledThe Door into Summer. The smell of the cave - deep must, ancient bones, distant drafts - seemed suddenly very strong. He felt that brilliant, exuberant uprush of certainty - Now, it will happen now, I know it will - yet the door still stayed closed. And now he could smell something else. Not the cave, but the slightly metallic aroma of his own sweat, rolling down his face.

"Henchick, it's not working. I don't think I - "

"Nar, not yet - and never think thee needs to do it all thyself, lad. Feel for something between you and the door...something like a hook...or a thorn..." As he spoke, Henchick nodded at the Manni heading the line of reinforcements. "Hedron, come forward. Thonnie, take hold of Hedron's shoulders. Lewis, take hold of Thonnie's. And on back! Do it!"

The line shuffled forward. Oy barked doubtfully.

"Feel, boy! Feel for that hook! It's between thee and t'door! Feel for it!"

Jake reached out with his mind while his imagination suddenly bloomed with a powerful and terrifying vividness that was beyond even the clearest dreams. He saw Fifth Avenue between Forty-eighth and Sixtieth ("the twelve blocks where my Christmas bonus disappears every January," his father had liked to grumble). He saw every door, on both sides of the street, swinging open at once: Fendi! Tiffany! Bergdorf Goodman! Cartier! Doubleday Books! The Sherry Netherland Hotel! He saw an endless hallway floored with brown linoleum and knew it was in the Pentagon. He saw doors, at least a thousand of them, all swinging open at once and generating a hurricane draft.

Yet the door in front of him, the only one that mattered, remained closed.

Yeah, but -

It was rattling in its frame. He could hear it.

"Go, kid!" Eddie said. The words came from between clamped teeth. "If you can't open it, knock the f**ker down!"

"Help me!" Jake shouted. "Helpme, goddammit!All of you !"

The force in the cave seemed to double. The hum seemed to be vibrating the very bones of Jake's skull. His teeth were rattling. Sweat ran into his eyes, blurring his sight. He saw two Henchicks nodding to someone behind him: Hedron. And behind Hedron, Thonnie. And behind Thonnie, all the rest, snaking out of the cave and down thirty feet of the path.

"Get ready, lad," Henchick said.

Hedron's hand slipped under Jake's shirt and gripped the waistband of his jeans. Jake felt pushed instead of pulled. Something in his head bolted forward, and for a moment he saw all the doors of a thousand, thousand worlds flung wide, generating a draft so great it could almost have blown out the sun.

And then his progress was stopped. There was something...something right in front of the door...

The hook! It's the hook!

He slipped himself over it as if his mind and life-force were some sort of loop. At the same time he felt Hedron and the others pulling him backward. The pain was immediate, enormous, seeming to tear him apart. Then the draining sensation began. It was hideous, like having someone pull his guts out a loop at a time. And always, the manic buzzing in his ears and deep in his brain.

He tried to cry out - No, stop, let go, it's too much! - and couldn't. He tried to scream and heard it, but only inside his head. God, he was caught. Caught on the hook and being ripped in two.

One creaturedid hear his scream. Barking furiously, Oy darted forward. And as he did, the Unfound Door sprang open, swinging in a hissing arc just in front of Jake's nose.

"Behold!"Henchick cried in a voice that was at once terrible and exalted."Behold, the door opens! Over-sam kammen! Can-tah, can-kavar kammen! Over-can-tah!"

The others responded, but by then Jake Chambers had already been torn loose from Roland's hand on his right. By then he was flying, but not alone.

Pere Callahan flew with him.

Eight

There was just time for Eddie to hear New York,smell New York, and to realize what was happening. In a way, that was what made it so awful - he was able to register everything going diabolically counter to what he had expected, but not able to do anything about it.

He saw Jake yanked out of the circle and felt Callahan's hand ripped out of his own; he saw them fly through the air toward the door, actually looping the loop in tandem, like a couple of f**ked-up acrobats. Something furry and barking like a motherf*cker shot past the side of his head. Oy, doing barrel-rolls, his ears laid back and his terrified eyes seeming to start from his head.

And more. Eddie was aware of dropping Cantab's hand and lunging forward toward the door - hisdoor,his city, and somewhere in ithis lost and pregnant wife. He was aware (exquisitely so) of the invisible hand thatpushed him back, and a voice that spoke, but not in words. What Eddie heard was far more terrible than any words could have been. With words you could argue. This was only an inarticulate negation, and for all he knew, it came from the Dark Tower itself.