Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6)(77)

"I don't understand what you mean." Susannah was thinking of her Dogan. Which was, of course, based onJake's Dogan. It was certainly a strange place, with its flashing lights and multiple TV screens, but not frightening.

"Beneath it are passages which go under the castle," Mia said. "At the end of one is a door that opens on the Calla side of Thunderclap, just under the last edge of the darkness. That's the one the Wolves use when they go on their raids."

Susannah nodded. That explained a lot. "Do they take the kiddies back the same way?"

"Nay, lady, do it please you; like many doors, the one that takes the Wolves from Fedic to the Calla side of Thunderclap goes in only one direction. When you're on the other side, it's no longer there."

"Because it's not amagic door, right?"

Mia smiled and nodded and patted her knee.

Susannah looked at her with mounting excitement. "It's another twin-thing."

"Do you say so?"

"Yes. Only this time Tweedledum and Tweedledee are science and magic. Rational and irrational. Sane and insane. No matter what terms you pick, that's a double-damned pair if ever there was one."

"Aye? Do you say so?"

"Yes!Magic doors - like the one Eddie found and you took me through to New York - go both ways. The doors North Central Positronics made to replace them when thePrim receded and the magic faded...they go only one way. Have I got that right?"

"I think so, aye."

"Maybe they didn't have time to figure out how to make teleportation a two-lane highway before the world moved on. In any case, the Wolves go to the Calla side of Thunderclap by door and come back to Fedic by train. Right?"

Mia nodded.

Susannah no longer thought she was just trying to kill time. This information might come in handy later on. "And after the King's men, Pere's low men, have scooped the kids' brains, what then? Back through the door with them, I suppose - the one under the castle. Back to the Wolves' staging point. And a train takes them the rest of the way home."

"Aye."

"Why do they bother takin em back at all?"

"Lady, I know not." Then Mia's voice dropped. "There's another door under Castle Discordia. Another door in the rooms of ruin. One that goes..." She licked her lips. "That goes todash."

"Todash?...I know the word, but I don't understand what's so bad - "

"There are endless worlds, your dinh is correct about that, but even when those worlds are close together - like some of the multiple New Yorks - there are endless spaces between. Think ya of the spaces between the inner and outer walls of a house. Places where it's always dark. But just because a place is always dark doesn't mean it's empty. Does it, Susannah?"

There are monsters in the todash darkness.

Who had said that? Roland? She couldn't remember for sure, and what did it matter? She thought she understood what Mia was saying, and if so, it was horrible.

"Rats in the walls, Susannah.Bats in the walls. All sorts of sucking, biting bugs in the walls."

"Stop it, I get the picture."

"That door beneath the castle - one of their mistakes, I have no doubt - goes tonowhere at all. Into the darkness between worlds. Todash-space. But not empty space." Her voice lowered further. "That door is reserved for the Red King's most bitter enemies. They're thrown into a darkness where they may exist - blind, wandering, insane - for years. But in the end, something always finds them and devours them. Monsters beyond the ability of such minds as ours to bear thought of."

Susannah found herself trying to picture such a door, and what waited behind it. She didn't want to but couldn't help it. Her mouth dried up.

In that same low and somehow horrible tone of confidentiality, Mia said, "There were many places where the old people tried to join magic and science together, but yon may be the only one left." She nodded toward the Dogan. "It was there that Walter took me, to make me mortal and take me out ofPrim 's way forever.

"To make me like you."

Thirteen

Mia didn't know everything, but so far as Susannah could make out, Walter/Flagg had offered the spirit later to be known as Mia the ultimate Faustian bargain. If she was willing to give up her nearly eternal but discorporate state and become a mortal woman, then she could become pregnant and bear a child. Walter was honest with her about how little she would actually be getting for all she'd be giving up. The baby wouldn't grow as normal babies did - as Baby Michael had done before Mia's unseen but worshipful eyes - and she might only have him for seven years, but oh what wonderful years they could be!

Beyond this, Walter had been tactfully silent, allowing Mia to form her own pictures: how she would nurse her baby and wash him, not neglecting the tender creases behind the knees and ears; how she would kiss him in the honeyspot between the unfledged wings of his shoulderblades; how she would walk with him, holding both of his hands in both of hers as he toddled; how she would read to him and point out Old Star and Old Mother in the sky and tell him the story of how Rustie Sam stole the widow's best loaf of bread; how she would hug him to her and bathe his cheek with her grateful tears when he spoke his first word, which would, of course, beMama.

Susannah listened to this rapturous account with a mixture of pity and cynicism. Certainly Walter had done one hell of a job selling the idea to her, and as ever, the best way to do that was to let the mark sell herself. He'd even proposed a properly Satanic period of proprietorship: seven years.Just sign on the dotted line, madam, and please don't mind that whiff of brimstone; I just can't seem to get the smell out of my clothes.