Stephen King - The Dark Tower

He begins to scream, at night he can scream, and Mrs. Greta Shaw comes into the room. She sits on the edge of his bed, her face ghostly with blue-gray beautymud, and she asks him what’s wrong ’Bama and he is actually able to tell her. He could never have told his father or mother, had one of them been there to begin with, which they of course aren’t, but he can tell Mrs. Shaw because while she isn’t a lot different from the other help — the au pairs babysitters child minders school-walkers — she is a little different, enough to put his drawings on the fridge with the little magnets, enough to make all the difference, to hold up the tower of a silly little boy’s sanity, say hallelujah, say found not lost, say amen.

She listens to everything he has to say, nodding, and makes him say tri-CER-a-TOPS until finally he gets it right. Getting it right is better. And then she says, “Those things were real once, but they died out a hundred million years ago, ’Bama. Maybe even more. Now don’t bother me any more because I need my sleep.”

Jake watches The Lost Continent on Million Dollar Movie every day that week. Every time he watches it, it scares him a little less. Once, Mrs. Greta Shaw comes in and watches part of it with him. She brings him his snack, a big bowl of Hawaiian Fluff (also one for herself) and sings him her wonderful little song: “A little snack that’s far and wee, there’s some for you and some for me, blackberry jam and blackberry tea.” There are no blackberries in Hawaiian Fluff, of course, and they have the last of the Welch’s Grape Juice to go with it instead of tea, but Mrs. Greta Shaw says it is the thought that counts. She has taught him to say Rooty-tooty-salutie before they drink, and to clink glasses. Jake thinks that’s the absolute coolest, the cat’s ass.

Pretty soon the dinosaurs come. ’Bama and Mrs. Greta Shaw sit side by side, eating Hawaiian Fluff and watching as a big one (Mrs. Greta Shaw says you call that kind a Tyrannasorbet Wrecks) eats the bad explorer. “Cartoon dinosaurs,” Mrs. Greta Shaw sniffs. “Wouldn’t you think they could do better than that.” As far as Jake is concerned, this is the most brilliant piece of film criticism he has ever heard in his life. Brilliant and useful.

Eventually his parents come back. Top Hat enjoys a week’s run on Million Dollar Movie and little Jakie’s night terrors are never mentioned. Eventually he forgets his fear of the triceratops and the Tyrannasorbet.

Now, lying in the high green grass and peering into the misty clearing from between the leaves of a fern, Jake discovered that some things you never forgot.

Mind the mind-trap, Jochabim had said, and looking down at the lumbering dinosaur — a cartoon triceratops in a real jungle like an imaginary toad in a real garden — Jake realized that this was it. This was the mind-trap. The triceratops wasn’t real no matter how fearsomely it might roar, no matter that Jake could actually smell it — the rank vegetation rotting in the soft folds where its stubby legs met its stomach, the shit caked to its vast armor-plated rear end, the endless cud drooling between its tusk-edged jaws — and hear its panting breath. It couldn’t be real, it was a cartoon, for God’s sake!

And yet he knew it was real enough to kill him. If he went down there, the cartoon triceratops would tear him apart just as it would have torn apart the Daisy Mae with the bodacious ta-tas if Cesar Romero hadn’t appeared in time to put a bullet into the thing’s One Vulnerable Spot with his big-game hunter’s rifle. Jake had gotten rid of the hand that had tried to monkey with his motor controls — had slammed all those doors so hard he’d chopped off the hand’s intruding fingers, for all he knew — but this was different. He could not close his eyes and just walk by; that was a real monster his traitor mind had created, and it could really tear him apart.

There was no Cesar Romero here to keep it from happening. No Roland, either.

There were only the low men, running his backtrail and getting closer all the time.

As if to emphasize this point, Oy looked back the way they’d come and barked once, piercingly loud.

The triceratops heard and roared in response. Jake expected Oy to shrink against him at that mighty sound, but Oy continued to look back over Jake’s shoulder. It was the low men Oy was worried about, not the triceratops below them or the Tyrannasorbet Wrecks that might come next, or—

Because Oy doesn’t see it, he thought.

He monkeyed with this idea and couldn’t pull it apart. Oy hadn’t smelled it or heard it, either. The conclusion was inescapable: to Oy the terrible triceratops in the mighty jungle below did not exist.

Which doesn’t change the fact that it does to me. It’s a trap that was set for me, or for anyone else equipped with an imagination who might happen along. Some gadget of the old people, no doubt. Too bad it’s not broken like most of their other stuff, but it’s not. I see what I see and there’s nothing I can do about i —

No, wait.

Wait just a second.

Jake had no idea how good his mental connection to Oy actually was, but thought he would soon find out.

“Oy!”

The calling voices of the low men were now horribly close. Soon they would see the boy and the bumbler stopped here and break into a charge. Oy could smell them coming but looked at Jake calmly enough anyway. At his beloved Jake, for whom he would die if called upon to do so.

“Oy, can you change places with me?”

It turned out that he could.

Oy tottered erect with Ake in his arms, swaying back and forth, horrified to discover how narrow the boy’s range of balance was. The idea of walking even a short distance on but two legs was terribly daunting, yet it would have to be done, and done at once. Ake said so.

For his part, Jake knew he would have to shut the borrowed eyes he was looking through. He was in Oy’s head but he could still see the triceratops; now he could also see a pterodactyl cruising the hot air above the clearing, its leathery wings stretched to catch the thermals blowing from the air-exchangers.

Oy! You have to do it on your own. And if we’re going to stay ahead of them you have to do it now.

Ake! Oy responded, and took a tentative step forward. The boy’s body wavered from side to side, out to the very edge of balance and then beyond. Ake’s stupid two-legs body tumbled sideways. Oy tried to save it and only made the tumble worse, going down on the boy’s right side and bumping Ake’s furry head.

Oy tried to bark his frustration. What came out of Ake’s mouth was a stupid thing that was more word than sound: “Bark! Ark! Shit -bark!”

“I hear him!” someone shouted. “Run! Come on, double-time, you useless cunts! Before the little bastard gets to the door!”

Ake’s ears weren’t keen, but with the way the tile walls magnified sounds, that was no problem. Oy could hear their running footfalls.

“You have to get up and go! ” Jake tried to yell, and what came out was a garbled, barking sentence: “Ake-Ake, affa! Up n go! ” Under other circumstances it might have been funny, but not under these.

Oy got up by putting Ake’s back against the wall and pushing with Ake’s legs. At last he was getting the hang of the motor controls; they were in a place Ake called Dogan and were fairly simple. Off to the left, however, an arched corridor led into a huge room filled with mirror-bright machinery. Oy knew that if he went into that place — the chamber where Ake kept all his marvelous thoughts and his store of words — he would be lost forever.