Stephen King - The Dark Tower

“Roland!” she shouted. “Roland, I need matches!”

“Shirt…pocket!” he panted. “Reach for them!”

But first she dropped the flashlight into the seam where her crotch met the middle of his back, then snatched it up just before it could slide away. Now, with a good hold on it, she plunged the barrel into the can of Sterno. To grab one of the matches while holding the can and the jelly-coated flashlight would have taken a third hand, so she jettisoned the can. There were two others in the bag, but if this didn’t work she’d never have a chance to reach for one of them.

The thing bellowed again, sounding as if it were right behind them . Now she could smell it, the aroma like a load of fish rotting in the sun.

She reached over Roland’s shoulder and plucked a single match from his pocket. There might be time to light one; not for two. Roland and Eddie were able to pop them alight with their thumbnails, but Detta Walker had known a trick worth two of that, had used it on more than one occasion to impress her whiteboy victims in the roadhouses where she’d gone trolling. She grimaced in the dark, peeling her lips away from her teeth, and placed the head of the match between the two front ones on top. Eddie, if you’re there, help me, sugar — help me do right.

She struck the match. Something hot burned the roof of her mouth and she tasted sulfur on her tongue. The head of the match nearly blinded her dark-adapted eyes, but she could see well enough to touch it to the jelly-coated barrel of the flashlight. The Sterno caught at once, turning the barrel into a torch. It was weak but it was something .

“ Turn around! ” she screamed.

Roland skidded to a stop immediately — no questions, no protest — and pivoted on his heels. She held the burning flashlight out before her and for a moment they both saw the head of something wet and covered with pink albino eyes. Below them was a mouth the size of a trapdoor, filled with squirming tentacles. The Sterno didn’t burn brightly, but in this Stygian blackness it was bright enough to make the thing recoil. Before it disappeared into the blackness again, she saw all those eyes squeezing shut and had a moment to think of how sensitive they must be if even a little guttering flame like this could—

Lining the floor of the passageway on both sides were jumbled heaps of bones. In her hand, the bulb end of the flashlight was already growing warm. Oy was barking frantically, looking back into the dark with his head down and his short legs splayed, every hair standing on end.

“Squat down, Roland, squat!”

He did and she handed him the makeshift torch, which was already beginning to gutter, the yellow flames running up and down the stainless steel barrel turning blue. The thing in the dark let out another deafening roar, and now she could see its shape again, weaving from side to side. It was creeping closer as the light faltered.

If the floor’s wet here, we’re most likely done, she thought, but the touch of her fingers as she groped for a thighbone suggested it was not. Perhaps that was a false message sent by her hopeful senses — she could certainly hear water dripping from the ceiling somewhere up ahead — but she didn’t think so.

She reached into the bag for another can of Sterno, but at first the release-ring defied her. The thing was coming and now she could see any number of short, misshapen legs beneath its raised lump of a head. Not a worm after all but some kind of giant centipede. Oy placed himself in front of her, still barking, every tooth on display. It was Oy the thing would take first if she couldn’t—

Then her finger slipped into the ring lying almost flat against the lid of the can. There was a pop-hissh sound. Roland was waving the flashlight back and forth, trying to fan a little life into the guttering flames (which might have worked had there been fuel for them), and she saw their fading shadows rock deliriously back and forth on the decaying tile walls.

The circumference of the bone was too big for the can. Now lying in an awkward sprawl, half in and half out of the harness, she dipped into it, brought out a handful of jelly, and slathered it up and down the bone. If the bone was wet, this would only buy them a few more seconds of horror. If it was dry, however, then maybe…just maybe…

The thing was creeping ever closer. Amid the tentacles sprouting from its mouth she could see jutting fangs. In another moment it would be close enough to lunge at Oy, taking him with the speed of a gecko snatching a fly out of the air. Its rotted-fish aroma was strong and nauseating. And what might be behind it? What other abominations?

No time to think about that now.

She touched her thighbone torch to the fading flames licking along the barrel of the flashlight. The bloom of fire was greater than she had expected — far greater — and the thing’s scream this time was filled with pain as well as surprise. There was a nasty squelching sound, like mud being squeezed in a vinyl raincoat, and it lashed backward.

“Git me more bones,” she said as Roland cast the flashlight aside. “And make sure they’re dem drah bones.” She laughed at her own wit (since nobody else would), a down-and-dirty Detta cackle.

Still gasping for breath, Roland did as she told him.

They resumed their progress along the passage, Susannah now riding backward, a position that was difficult but not impossible. If they got out of here, her back would ache a bitch for the next day or two. And I’ll relish every single throb, she told herself. Roland still had the Bridgton Old Home Days tee-shirt Irene Tassenbaum had bought him. He handed it up to Susannah. She wrapped it around the bottom of the bone and held it out as far as she possibly could while still keeping her balance. Roland wasn’t able to run — she would have surely tumbled out of the harness had he tried doing that — but he maintained a good fast walking pace, pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking arm- or legbone. Oy soon got the idea and began bringing them to the gunslinger in his mouth. The thing continued to follow them. Every now and then Susannah caught a glimpse of its slick-gleaming skin, and even when it drew back beyond the chancy light of her current torch they would hear those liquid stomping sounds, like a giant in mud-filled boots. She began to think it was the sound of the thing’s tail. This filled her with a horror that was unreasoning and private and almost powerful enough to undo her mind.

That it should have a tail! her mind nearly raved. A tail that sounds like it’s filled with water or jelly or half-coagulated blood! Christ! My God! My Christ!

It wasn’t just light keeping it from attacking them, she reckoned, but fear of fire. The thing must have hung back while they were in the part of the passage where the glow-globes still worked, thinking (if it could think) that it would wait and take them once they were in the dark. She had an idea that if it had known they had access to fire, it might simply have closed some or all of its many eyes and pounced on them where a few of the globes were out and the light was dimmer. Now it was at least temporarily out of luck, because the bones made surprisingly good torches (the idea that they were being helped by the recovering Beam in this regard did not cross her mind). The only question was whether or not the Sterno would hold out. She was able to conserve now because the bones burned on their own once they were going — except for a couple of damp ones that she had to cast aside after lighting her next torches from their guttering tips — but you did have to get them going, and she was already deep into the third and last can. She bitterly regretted the one she’d tossed away when the thing had been closing in on them, but didn’t know what else she could have done. She also wished Roland would go faster, although she guessed he now couldn’t have maintained much speed even if she’d been faced around the right way and holding onto him. Maybe a short burst, but surely no more. She could feel his muscles trembling under his shirt. He was close to blown out.