Also by Stephen King
NOVELS
Carrie
Salems Lot
The Shining
The Stand
The Dead Zone
Firestarter
Cujo
THE DARK TOWER I:
The Gunslinger
Christine
Pet Sematary
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Talisman ( with Peter Straub )
It
The Eyes of the Dragon
Misery
The Tommyknockers
THE DARK TOWER II:
The Drawing of the Three
THE DARK TOWER III:
The Waste Lands
The Dark Half
Needful Things
Geralds Game
Dolores Claiborne
Insomnia
Rose Madder
Desperation
The Green Mile
THE DARK TOWER IV:
Wizard and Glass
Bag of Bones
The Girl Who Loved
Tom Gordon
Dreamcatcher
Black House ( with Peter Straub )
From a Buick 8
THE DARK TOWER V:
Wolves of the Calla
THE DARK TOWER VI:
Song of Susannah
AS RICHARD BACHMAN
Rage
The Long Walk
Roadwork
The Running Man
Thinner
The Regulators
COLLECTIONS
Night Shift
Different Seasons
Skeleton Crew
Four Past Midnight
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Hearts in Atlantis
Everythings Eventual
SCREENPLAYS
Creepshow
Cats Eye
Silver Bullet
Maximum Overdrive
Pet Sematary
Golden Years
Sleepwalkers
The Stand
The Shining
Rose Red
Storm of the Century
NONFICTION
Danse Macabre
On Writing
Dark Tower related in bold
THE DARK TOWER VII: THE DARK TOWER
Copyright 2004 by Stephen King
http://WWW.STEPHENKING.COM
Illustrations 2004 by Michael Whelan
http://WWW.GLASSONIONGRAPHICS.COM
Book design by Thomas Canty and Robert K. Wiener
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Maps 2004 by Robin Furth
BAD COMPANY, by Paul Bernard Rodgers, Simon F. Kirke 1974 (renewed) WB MUSIC CORP. and BADCO MUSIC INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, Florida 33014
Lyric excerpt from Hurt written by Trent Reznor, copyright 1994 Leaving Hope Music/TVT Music, Inc. Administered by Leaving Hope Music, Inc.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT by George David Weiss, Luigi Creatore, and Hugo Peretti 1961, Renewed Abilene Music, Inc. Permission secured. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004109365
ISBN 0-7432-6678-1
FIRST TRADE EDITION
Distributed by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
SCRIBNER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
DONALD M. GRANT, PUBLISHER, INC.
Post Office Box 187, Hampton Falls, NH 03844
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute.
Therefore, Constant Reader, this final book in the Dark Tower cycle
is dedicated to you.
Long days and pleasant nights.
Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers, my peers
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.
Robert Browning Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
I was born
Six-gun in my hand,
behind a gun
Ill make my final stand.
Bad Company
What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
Trent Reznor
Chapter I:
Callahan and the Vampires
One
Pere Don Callahan had once been the Catholic priest of a town, Salems Lot had been its name, that no longer existed on any map. He didnt much care. Concepts such as reality had ceased to matter to him.
This onetime priest now held a heathen object in his hand, a scrimshaw turtle made of ivory. There was a nick in its beak and a scratch in the shape of a question mark on its back, but otherwise it was a beautiful thing.
Beautiful and powerful . He could feel the power in his hand like volts.
How lovely it is, he whispered to the boy who stood with him. Is it the Turtle Maturin? It is, isnt it?
The boy was Jake Chambers, and hed come a long loop in order to return almost to his starting-place here in Manhattan. I dont know, he said. She calls it the skldpadda, and it may help us, but it cant kill the harriers that are waiting for us in there. He nodded toward the Dixie Pig, wondering if he meant Susannah or Mia when he used that all-purpose feminine pronoun she . Once he would have said it didnt matter because the two women were so tightly wound together. Now, however, he thought it did matter, or would soon.
Will you? Jake asked the Pere, meaning Will you stand. Will you fight. Will you kill .
Oh yes, Callahan said calmly. He put the ivory turtle with its wise eyes and scratched back into his breast pocket with the extra shells for the gun he carried, then patted the cunningly made thing once to make sure it rode safely. Ill shoot until the bullets are gone, and if I run out of bullets before they kill me, Ill club them with thethe gun-butt.
The pause was so slight Jake didnt even notice it. But in that pause, the White spoke to Father Callahan. It was a force he knew of old, even in boyhood, although there had been a few years of bad faith along the way, years when his understanding of that elemental force had first grown dim and then become lost completely. But those days were gone, the White was his again, and he told God thankya.