Callahan heard savage howls, not of anger or fear but of hunger. The aroma of blood had finally penetrated the old ones’jaded nostrils, and nothing would stop them now. So, if he didn’t want to join them-

Pere Callahan, once Father Callahan of ’salem’s Lot, turned the Ruger’s muzzle on himself. He wasted no time looking for eternity in the darkness of the barrel but placed it deep against the shelf of his chin.

“Hile, Roland!” he said, and knew

(the wave they are lifted by the wave)

that he was heard. “Hile, gunslinger!”

His finger tightened on the trigger as the ancient monsters fell upon him. He was buried in the reek of their cold and bloodless breath, but not daunted by it. He had never felt so strong. Of all the years in his life he had been happiest when he had been a simple vagrant, not a priest but only Callahan O’The Roads, and felt that soon he would be let free to resume that life and wander as he would, his duties fulfilled, and that was well.

“May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top!”

The teeth of his old enemies, these ancient brothers and sisters of a thing which had called itself Kurt Barlow, sank into him like stingers. Callahan felt them not at all. He was smiling as he pulled the trigger and escaped them for good.

Chapter II:

LIFTED ON THE WAVE

ONE

On their way out along the dirt camp-road which had taken them to the writer’s house in the town of Bridgton, Eddie and Roland came upon an orange pickup truck with the words CENTRAL MAINE POWER MAINTENANCE painted on the sides. Nearby, a man in a yellow hardhat and an orange high-visibility vest was cutting branches that threatened the low-hanging electrical lines. And did Eddie feel something then, some gathering force? Maybe a precursor of the wave rushing down the Path of the Beam toward them? He later thought so, but couldn’t say for sure. God knew he’d been in a weird enough mood already, and why not? How many people got to meet their creators? Well…