“It was a hell of a lot more than an earthquake,” Eddie said, and pointed. The screened-in porch looked east, and over there the horizon was lit by silent artillery bursts of green lightning. Downhill from the rectory, the door of Rosalita’s snug creaked open and then banged shut. She and Roland came up the hill together, she in her chemise and the gunslinger in a pair of jeans, both barefoot in the dew.

Eddie, Jake, and Callahan went down to them. Roland was looking fixedly at the already diminishing flickers of lightning in the east, where the land of Thunderclap waited for them, and the Court of the Crimson King, and, at the end of End-World, the Dark Tower itself.

If, Eddie thought. If it still stands.

“Jake was just saying that if Susannah died, we’d know it,” Eddie said. “That there’d be what you call a sigul. Then comes this.” He pointed to the Peres lawn, where a new ridge had humped up, peeling the sod apart in one ten-foot line to show the puckered brown lips of the earth. A chorus of dogs was barking in town, but there were no sounds from the folken, at least not yet; Eddie supposed a goodly number had slept through the whole thing. The sleep of the drunken victorious. “But it wasn’t anything to do with Suze. Was it?”

“Not directly, no.”

“And it wasn’t ours,” Jake put in, “or the damage would have been a lot worse. Don’t you think?”

Roland nodded.

Rosa looked at Jake with a mixture of puzzlement and fright. “Wasn’t our what, boy? What are you talking about? It wasn’t an earthquake, sure!”

“No,” Roland said, “a Beamquake. One of the Beams holding up the Tower-which holds up everything-just let go. Just snapped.”

Even in the faint light from the four ’seners flickering on the porch, Eddie saw Rosalita Munoz’s face lose its color. She crossed herself. “A Beam? One of the Beams? Say no! Say not true!”