Wolves of the Calla (100 page)

Eddie nodded. “All right, then, let me tell you this much: I’m pretty sure I
have
seen the name Stephen King before, at least once.”

“On the Specials board,” Jake said without looking up from the book. “Yeah, I remember. It was on the Specials board the first time we went todash.”

“Specials board?” Roland asked, frowning.

“
Tower’s
Specials board,” Eddie said. “It was in the window, remember? Part of his whole Restaurant-of-the-Mind thing.”

Roland nodded.

“But I’ll tell you guys something,” Jake said, and now he
did
look up from the book. “The name was there when Eddie and I went todash, but it
wasn’t
on the board the first time I went in there. The time Mr. Deepneau told me the river riddle, it was someone else’s name. It changed, just like the name of the writer on
Charlie the Choo-Choo
.”

“I
can’t
be in a book,” Callahan was saying. “I am
not
a fiction . . . am I?”

“Roland.” It was Eddie. The gunslinger turned to him. “I need to find her. I don’t care who’s real and who’s not. I don’t care about Calvin Tower, Stephen King, or the Pope of Rome. As far as reality goes, she’s all of it I want.
I need to find my wife
.” His voice dropped. “Help me, Roland.”

Roland reached out and took the book in his left hand. With his right he touched the door.
If
she’s still alive,
he thought.
If we can find her, and if she’s come back to herself. If and if and if.

Eddie took Roland’s arm. “Please,” he said. “Please don’t make me try to do it on my own. I love her so much. Help me find her.”

Roland smiled. It made him younger. It seemed to fill the cave with its own light. All of Eld’s ancient power was in that smile: the power of the White.

“Yes,” he said. “We go.”

And then he said again, all the affirmation necessary in this dark place.

“Yes.”

Bangor, Maine

December 15, 2002

The debt I owe to the American Western in the composition of the
Dark Tower
novels should be clear without my belaboring the point; certainly the Calla did not come by the final part of its (slightly misspelled) name accidentally. Yet it should be pointed out that at least two sources for some of this material aren’t American at all. Sergio Leone (
A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,
etc.) was Italian. And Akira Kurosawa (
The Seven Samurai
) was, of course, Japanese. Would these books have been written without the cinematic legacy of Kurosawa, Leone, Peckinpah, Howard Hawks, and John Sturgis? Probably not without Leone. But without the others, I would argue there could
be
no Leone.

I also owe a debt of thanks to Robin Furth, who managed to be there with the right bit of information every time I needed it, and of course to my wife, Tabitha, who is still patiently giving me the time and light and space I need to do this job to the best of my abilities.

S.K.

Before you read this short afterword, I ask that you take a moment (may it do ya fine) to look again at the dedication page at the front of this story. I’ll wait.

Thank you. I want you to know that Frank Muller has read a number of my books for the audio market, beginning with
Different Seasons
. I met him at Recorded Books in New York at that time and we liked each other immediately. It’s a friendship that has lasted longer than some of my readers have been alive. In the course of our association, Frank recorded the first four
Dark Tower
novels, and I listened to them—all sixty or so cassettes—while preparing to finish the gunslinger’s story. Audio is the perfect medium for such exhaustive preparation, because audio insists you absorb everything; your hurrying eye (or occasionally tired mind) cannot skip so much as a single word. That was what I wanted, complete immersion in Roland’s world, and that was what Frank gave me. He gave me something more, as well, something wonderful and unexpected. It was a sense of newness and freshness that I had lost somewhere along the way; a sense of Roland and Roland’s friends as
actual people,
with their own vital inner lives. When I say in the dedication that Frank heard the voices in my head, I am
speaking the literal truth as I understand it. And, like a rather more benign version of the Doorway Cave, he brought them fully back to life. The remaining books are finished (this one in final draft, the last two in rough), and in large part I owe that to Frank Muller and his inspired readings.

I had hoped to have Frank on board to do the audio readings of the final three
Dark Tower
books (unabridged readings; I do not allow abridgments of my work and don’t approve of them, as a rule), and he was eager to do them. We discussed the possibility at a dinner in Bangor during October of 2001, and in the course of the conversation, he called the
Tower
stories his absolute favorites. As he had read over five hundred novels for the audio market, I was extremely flattered.

Less than a month after that dinner and that optimistic, forward-looking discussion, Frank suffered a terrible motorcycle accident on a highway in California. It happened only days after discovering that he was to become a father for the second time. He was wearing his brain-bucket and that probably saved his life—motorcyclists please take note—but he suffered serious injuries nevertheless, many of them neurological. He won’t be recording the final
Dark Tower
novels on tape, after all. Frank’s final work will almost certainly be his inspired reading of Clive Barker’s
Coldheart Canyon,
which was completed in September of 2001, just before his accident.

Barring a miracle, Frank Muller’s working life is over. His work of rehabilitation, which is almost sure to be lifelong, has only begun. He’ll need a lot
of care and a lot of professional help. Such things cost money, and money’s not a thing which, as a rule, freelance artists have a great deal of. I and some friends have formed a foundation to help Frank—and, hopefully, other freelance artists of various types who suffer similar cataclysms. All the income I receive from the audio version of
Wolves of the Calla
will go into this foundation’s account. It won’t be enough, but the work of funding The Wavedancer Foundation (
Wavedancer
was the name of Frank’s sailboat), like Frank’s rehabilitative work, is only beginning. If you’ve got a few bucks that aren’t working and want to help insure the future of The Wavedancer Foundation, don’t send them to me; send them to:

The Wavedancer Foundation

c/o Mr. Arthur Greene

101 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10001

Frank’s wife, Erika, says thankya. So do I.

And Frank would, if he could.

Bangor, Maine
December 15, 2002

Photo by David King

Photo by Tabitha King

STEPHEN KING is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are
From a Buick 8, Everything’s Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Bag of Bones,
the screenplay
Storm of the Century,
and
The Green Mile.
His acclaimed nonfiction book,
On Writing,
was also a bestseller. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

ALSO BY STEPHEN KING

NOVELS

Carrie

’Salem’s Lot

The Shining

The Stand

The Dead Zone

Firestarter

Cujo

THE DARK TOWER I:
The Gunslinger

Christine

Pet Sematary

Cycle of the Werewolf

The Talisman (
with Peter Straub
)

It

The Eyes of the Dragon

Misery

The Tommyknockers

THE DARK TOWER II:
The Drawing of the Three

THE DARK TOWER III:
The Waste Lands

The Dark Half

Needful Things

Gerald’s Game

Dolores Claiborne

Insomnia

Rose Madder

Desperation

The Green Mile

THE DARK TOWER IV:
Wizard and Glass

Bag of Bones

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Dreamcatcher

Black House (
with Peter Straub
)

From a Buick 8

THE DARK TOWER VI:
Song of Susannah

THE DARK TOWER VII:
The Dark Tower

AS RICHARD BACHMAN

Rage

The Long Walk

Roadwork

The Running Man

Thinner

The Regulators

COLLECTIONS