Oy, the Dark Tower Billybumbler
Phthonos
Oh, I thought you all might like this --
The Dark Tower V:
Oy, the Dark Tower Billybumbler
---an excerpt---
It was silent. And silent. The thing that crouched in the darkness was
not Jake; not even a shadow of Jake; not even his ghost.
Oy shivered. The carriage, the great heaving triumphant dark
hearse, itself towered over his small, furry form. And at the bottom,
under its wheels, lay Jake, body pinned and crushed under the cruel wooden
wheel.
The others had gone -- inside. And how few would emerge, when it
was finished? Were Oy a human being, perhaps he would have produced only
one answer to this question: very few indeed, because god was cruel.
The man in the hearse stepped out.
Even before Oy's bright eyes took in the man's simple clothing -- white
undershirt, blue vest, faded jeans -- and even before he noticed the
sinister pair of scissors floating in his grasp, the man's face filled Oy
with a deep, shuddering dread. This was a man who would run young boys
into the ground, run them down, and smile on the way out.
"This your boy?" he asked, and when he did it was as if he never
even opened his mouth.
"Oy," cried Oy.
"Yes. Certainly. Come on, then, up with you." And, petrified,
Oy allowed the gaunt man with the bald head to scoop him up in his right
hand while he kept the scissors in his right. "You must wonder who I am,"
he drawled, "who I am to grind that poor lad into the earth like that. And
you further must wonder where I came from. Certainly most fellows don't
come galloping straight out of the air; even a fuzzy little bastard like
you must know that."
"At-tard," Oy mumbled.
"Yes, yes," muttered the man. "How right you are. My father
never lived that one down. I ran him into the ground just as quick as I
did your friend here. Bastard. Pah!" And he paced faster across the
little clearing in the field of roses that opened up before the door --
that one, tiny door -- to the Tower.
"Let's step inside, my little friend, and I'll tell you all about
myself."
The man stuck the scissors inpossibly into a slot in the door, so
tiny that Roland himself had failed to notice (and they had done a lot of
failing lately, oh yes, speaking in general).
Oy whined nervously. This man had a bad smell . . . a fearful smell.
"My name is . . . Oshen," he offered, and like a gas vent his head
ignited a bright green flame-sheet, a glow that engulfed his whole body
with a sick, directionless luminescence that made Oy's stomach float like
an uncomfortable vaccuum. As the light burned and steadied, Oy heard a
faint whaff, like ignited gasoline. "But your friends can call me the
Green Man."
And then he opened the door to the Tower.
----------------------------------------
with love,
jim
Doug Boyea
sorry
Phthonos
guh, for what? i can only take this to be flak.
jim
SKEMERs
Where did you get this or did you make it up?
Michelle
Phthonos
>
>Where did you get this or did you make it up?
>
>Michelle
Mr. King, with whom I have a continued correspondence, mailed these pages
of DTV to me in his thank-you reply to my birthday card.
jim