Stephen King - Song of Susannah

You got to help me!

Mia. And impossible not to respond to that cry. Even while she felt Mia pushing her aside (as Roland had once pushed Detta Walker aside), it was impossible not to respond to that wild mother’s cry. Partly, Susannah supposed, because it was her body they shared, and the body had declared itself on behalf of the baby. Probably could not do otherwise. And so she had helped. She had done what Mia herself no longer could do, had stopped the labor a bit longer. Although that in itself would become dangerous to the chap (funny how that word insinuated itself into her thoughts, became her word as well as Mia’s word) if it was allowed to go on too long. She remembered a story some girl had told during a late-night hen party in the dorm at Columbia, half a dozen of them sitting around in their pj’s, smoking cigarettes and passing a bottle of Wild Irish Rose-absolutely verboten and therefore twice as sweet. The story had been about a girl their age on a long car-trip, a girl who’d been too embarrassed to tell her friends she needed a pee-stop. According to the story, the girl had suffered a ruptured bladder and died. It was the kind of tale you simultaneously thought was bullshit and believed absolutely. And this thing with the chap… the baby…

But whatever the danger, she’d been able to stop the labor. Because there were switches that could do that. Somewhere.

(in the Dogan)

Only the machinery in the Dogan had never been meant to do what she-they-

(us we)

were making it do. Eventually it would overload and

(rupture)

all the machines would catch fire, burn out. Alarms going off. Control panels and TV screens going dark. How long before that happened? Susannah didn’t know.

She had a vague memory of taking her wheelchair out of a bucka waggon while the rest of them were distracted, celebrating their victory and mourning their dead. Climbing and lifting weren’t easy when you were legless from the knees down, but they weren’t as hard as some folks might believe, either. Certainly she was used to mundane obstacles-everything from getting on and off the toilet to getting books off a shelf that had once been easily accessible to her (there had been a step-stool for such chores in every room of her New York apartment). In any case, Mia had been insisting-had actually been driving her, as a cowboy might drive a stray dogie. And so Susannah had hoisted herself into the bucka, had lowered the wheelchair down, and then had lowered herself neatly into it. Not quite as easy as rolling off a log, but far from the hardest chore she’d ever done since losing her last sixteen inches or so.

The chair had taken her one last mile, maybe a little more (no legs for Mia, daughter of none, not in the Calla). Then it smashed into a spur of granite, spilling her out. Luckily, she had been able to break her fall with her arms, sparing her turbulent and unhappy belly.

She remembered picking herself up-correction, she remembered Mia picking up Susannah Dean’s hijacked body-and working her way on up the path. She had only one other clear memory from the Calla side, and that was of trying to stop Mia from taking off the rawhide loop Susannah wore around her neck. A ring hung from it, a beautiful light ring that Eddie had made for her. When he’d seen it was too big (meaning it as a surprise, he hadn’t measured her finger), he had been disappointed and told her he’d make her another.

You go on and do just that if you like, she’d said, but I’ll always wear this one.

She had hung it around her neck, liking the way it felt between her breasts, and now here was this unknown woman, this bitch, trying to take it off.

Detta had come forward, struggling with Mia. Detta had had absolutely no success in trying to reassert control over Roland, but Mia was no Roland of Gilead. Mia’s hands dropped away from the rawhide. Her control wavered. When it did, Susannah felt another of those labor pains sweep through her, making her double over and groan.

It has to come off! Mia shouted. Otherwise, they ’ll have his scent as well as yours! Your husband’s! You don’t want that, believe me!

Who? Susannah had asked. Who are you talking about?

Never mind - there’s no time. But if he comes after you - and I know you think he’ll try - they mustn’t have his scent! I’ll leave it here, where he’ll find it. Later, if ka wills, you may wear it again.

Susannah had thought of telling her they could wash the ring off, wash Eddie’s smell off it, but she knew it wasn’t just a smell Mia was speaking of. It was a love-ring, and that scent would always remain.

But for whom?

The Wolves, she supposed. The real Wolves. The ones in New York. The vampires of whom Callahan had spoken, and the low men. Or was there something else? Something even worse?

Help me! Mia cried, and again Susannah found that cry impossible to resist. The baby might or might not be Mia’s, and it might or might not be a monster, but her body wanted to have it. Her eyes wanted to see it, whatever it was, and her ears wanted to hear it cry, even if the cries were really snarls.

She had taken the ring off, kissed it, and then dropped it at the foot of the path, where Eddie would surely see it. Because he would follow her at least this far, she knew it.

Then what? She didn’t know. She thought she remembered riding on something most of the way up a steep path, surely the path which led to the Doorway Cave.

Then, blackness.

(not blackness)

No, not complete blackness. There were blinking lights. The low glow of television screens that were, for the time being, projecting no pictures but only soft gray light. The faint hum of motors; the click of relays. This was

( the Dogan Jake’s Dogan)

some sort of control room. Maybe a place she had constructed herself, maybe her imagination’s version of a Quonset hut Jake had found on the west side of the River Whye.

The next thing she remembered clearly was being back in New York. Her eyes were windows she looked through as Mia stole some poor terrified woman’s shoes.

Susannah came forward again, asking for help. She meant to go on, to tell the woman she needed to go to the hospital, needed a doctor, she was going to have a baby and something was wrong with it. Before she could get any of that out, another labor pain washed over her, this one monstrous, deeper than any pain she had ever felt in her life, worse even than the pain she’d felt after the loss of her lower legs. This, though- this -

“Oh Christ,” she said, but Mia took over again before she could say anything else, telling Susannah that she had to make it stop, and telling the woman that if she whistled for any John Laws, she’d lose a pair of something a lot more valuable to her than shoes.

Mia, listen to me, Susannah told her. I can stop it again - I think I can - but you have to help. You have to sit down. If you don’t settle for awhile, God Himself won’t be able to stop your labor from running its course. Do you understand? Do you hear me?

Mia did. She stayed where she was for a moment, watching the woman from whom she’d stolen the shoes. Then, almost timidly, she asked a question: Where should I go?

Susannah sensed that her kidnapper was for the first time becoming aware of the enormous city in which she now found herself, was finally seeing the surging schools of pedestrians, the floods of metal carriages (every third one, it seemed, painted a yellow so bright it almost screamed), and towers so high that on a cloudy day their tops would have been lost to view.