Stephen King - Song of Susannah

The woman peered down doubtfully at Oy for a moment. Oy looked up at her with a cheery grin that revealed a great many teeth. Perhaps these disturbed the clerk, because she turned away from him with a frown and examined the screen of her computer.

“Chambers?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” Spoken in his best getting-along-with-grownups voice. It had been awhile since he’d needed to use that one, but it was still there, Jake found, and within easy reach.

“I have something for you, but it’s not from a woman. It’s from someone named Stephen King.” She smiled. “I don’t suppose it’s the famous writer? Do you know him?”

“No, ma’am,” Jake said, and snuck a sidewards glance at Callahan. Neither of them had heard of Stephen King until recently, but Jake understood why the name might give his current traveling companion the chills. Callahan didn’t look particularly chilly at the moment, but his mouth had thinned to a single line.’

“Well,” she said, “I suppose it’s a common enough name, isn’t it? Probably there are normal Stephen Kings all over the United States who wish he’d just… I don’t know… give it a rest. ” She voiced a nervous little laugh, and Callahan wondered what had set her on edge. Oy, who got less doggy the longer you looked at him? Maybe, but Callahan thought it was more likely something in Jake, something that whispered danger. Perhaps even gunslinger. Certainly there was something in him that set him apart from other boys. Far. Callahan thought of him pulling the Ruger from the docker’s clutch and sticking it under the unfortunate taxi driver’s nose. Tell me that you were driving too fast and almost ran down my friend! he’d screamed, his finger already white on the trigger. Tell me that you don’t want to die here in the street with a hole in your head!

Was that the way an ordinary twelve-year-old reacted to a near-miss accident? Callahan thought not. He thought the desk clerk was right to be nervous. As for himself, Callahan realized he felt a little better about their chances at the Dixie Pig. Not a lot, but a little.

Jake, perhaps sensing something a little off-kilter, flashed the clerk his best getting-along-with-grownups smile, but to Callahan it looked like Oy’s: too many teeth.

“Just a moment,” she said, turning away from him.

Jake gave Callahan a puzzled what’s up-with- her look. Callahan shrugged and spread his hands.

The clerk went to a cabinet behind her, opened it, looked through the contents of a box stored inside, and returned to the desk with an envelope bearing the Plaza-Park’s logo. Jake’s name-and something else-had been written on the front in what looked like half-script and half-printing:

Jake Chambers

This is the Truth

She slid it across to the desk to him, careful that their fingers should not touch.

Jake took it and ran his fingers down the length of it. There was a piece of paper inside. Something else, as well. A hard narrow strip. He tore open the envelope and pulled out the paper. Folded inside it was the slim, white plastic rectangle of a hotel MagCard. The note had been written on a cheeky piece of stationery headed calling all blowhards. The message itself was only three lines long:

Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key.

Dad-a-chud, dad-a-ched,see it, Jake! The key is red!

Jake looked at the MagCard and watched color abruptly swirl into it, turning it the color of blood almost instantly.

Couldn’t be red until the message was read, Jake thought, smiling a little at the idea’s riddle-ish quality. He looked up to see if the clerk had seen the MagCard’s transformation, but she had found something which required her attention at the far end of the desk. And Callahan was checking out a couple of women who’d just come strolling in from the street. He might be a Pere, Jake reflected, but his eye for the ladies still seemed to be in proper working order.

Jake looked back at the paper and was just in time to read the last line:

Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, give this boy a plastic key.

A couple of years before, his mother and father had given him a Tyco Chemistry Set for Christmas. Using the instruction booklet, he’d whipped up a batch of invisible ink. The words written in the stuff had faded almost as quickly as these words were fading now, only if you looked very closely, you could still read the message written in chemistry set ink. This one, however, was authentically gone, and Jake knew why. Its purpose had been served. There was no more need for it. Ditto the line about the key being red, and sure enough, that was fading, as well. Only the first line remained, as if he needed reminding:

Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, you’ve got the key.

Had Stephen King sent this message? Jake doubted it. More likely one of the other players in the game-perhaps even Roland or Eddie-had used the name to get his attention. Still, he’d run upon two things since arriving here that encouraged him enormously. The first was the continued singing of the rose. It was stronger than ever, really, even though a skyscraper had been built on the vacant lot. The second was that Stephen King was apparently still alive twenty-four years after creating Jake’s traveling companion. And no longer just a writer but a famous writer.

Great. For now things were still rattling precariously along the right set of tracks.

Jake grabbed Father Callahan’s arm and led him toward the gift shop and tinkling cocktail piano. Oy followed, padding at Jake’s knee. Along the wall they found a line of house phones. “When the operator answers,” Jake said, “tell her you want to talk to your friend Susannah Dean, or to her friend, Mia.”

“She’ll ask me what room,” Callahan said.

“Tell her you forgot, but it’s on the nineteenth floor.”

“How do you-”

“It’ll be the nineteenth, just trust me.”

“I do,” Callahan said.

The phone rang twice and then the operator asked how she could help. Callahan told her. He was connected, and in some room on the nineteenth floor, a telephone began to ring.

Jake watched the Pere begin to speak, then subside into listening again with a small, bemused smile on his face. After a few moments, he hung up. “Answering machine!” he said. “They have a machine that takes guests’ calls and then tapes messages! What a wonderful invention!”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Anyway, we know for sure that she’s out and for pretty sure she didn’t leave anyone behind to watch her gunna. But, just in case…” He patted the front of his shirt, which now concealed the Ruger.

As they crossed the lobby to the elevator bank, Callahan said: “What do we want in her room?”

“I don’t know.”

Callahan touched him on the shoulder. “I think you do.”

The doors of the middle elevator popped open and Jake got on with Oy still at heel. Callahan followed, but Jake thought he was all at once dragging his feet a little.

“Maybe,” Jake said as they started up. “And maybe you do, too.”

Callahan’s stomach suddenly felt heavier, as if he’d just finished a large meal. He supposed the added weight was fear. “I thought I was rid of it,” he said. “When Roland took it out of the church, I really thought I was rid of it.”

“Some bad pennies just keep turning up,” Jake said.

He was prepared to try his unique red key in every door on the nineteenth floor if he had to, but Jake knew 1919 was right even before they reached it. Callahan did, too, and a sheen of sweat broke on his forehead. It felt thin and hot. Feverish.