Who: Roland Deschain, Jake Chambers What: Roland arrives in Los Angeles Where: Near the Hyperion Hotel When: Late afternoon Rating: PG Status: Incomplete
..... The stairwell of the Dark Tower seemed neverending and, as he took each step in careful stride, the gunslinger was reminded of just how long it had taken him to get to this moment. Days. Months. Hours. Years. And what had it cost him? His childhood. His love. His ka-tet. One step at a time. One life at a time. He'd left so many behind. And to what end? So that he could finally climb the steps of the infamous Dark Tower. The proverbial center of the universe and all its dimensions. It had secrets that Roland sought to uncover. And he clung to his misguided preconception that upon reaching the Dark Tower everything would finally make sense. Everything would come full circle. Like time. Like ka. Like a wheel.
There were doors along the path to the top of the tower. The further he climbed, the older and more rotten the doors seemed to become. And with those doors came memories from somewhere deep within the gunslinger's subconscious. Memories rooted even farther back than the doors on the beach. These memories were something different. Something that the gunslinger couldn't quite place. But perhaps that was because he had gone a little mad on his journey across All World. Or, it could have been that the Dark Tower was trying to dissuade him from continuing. Like everything else on his lifelong adventure, the tower itself was trying to put up barriers. Distract him from his cause. His desire to reach the end.
Something was wrong.
I've been here before -- I haven't -- I have havenot have --
Right foot. Left foot. He could sense that the end of his journey was just around the next corner of steps. It was pulling at him. Tugging him closer. And as he neared the end, it suddenly began to dawn on him. He had been here before. He'd reached the tower before. Once? Twice? How many times had he been on these exact steps, closing in on the end?
There would be a door.
The gunslinger stalled, one foot on the step above the other. There was a door. As he peered through sun-cracked eyes, he could almost make out what it said on the door. He could not see it with his eyes, but with his mind's eye. He knew it, deep inside his worn soul, he knew what that door said. (My door, this is my door.) And still he halted his movements.
He didn't understand everything. He knew he wouldn't completely understand the makings of the Dark Tower until he opened that final door and stepped through. But he felt enough familiarity in this place to make him pause. There was something more. Something missing. What could that be? How could he be missing something when he'd yet to ever step here before? And yet, as his mind tried to work through that logic, he knew that it was inherently flawed. Because he had been here before. And he hadn't hesitated then. So why now?
He turned and looked behind him. Down two steps was another door. He hadn't noticed it on his way up. Only looking back could he see it. It was familiar. He'd seen this door before. In the past. Not here. Not in the tower. Somewhere else. Some place more recent.
THE BOY
Roland was torn. His eternal struggle was demanding a final decision from him. The Tower or The Boy? The knowledge he'd sought since the fall of Gilead or the child he'd let slip between his fingers more times than he could recall. The mysteries of the Dark Tower or ... Jake.
Roland was not known to be a man of hesitation. Hesitating went against every grain of reasoning he learned during his gunslinger training. Hesitation brought death. Death brought darkness. In darkness one could never hope to find the Path of the Beam. Without the Beam there was no Tower. So Roland let ka make the decision.
He stepped down and opened the door labeled The Boy. For a brief moment he glanced back up the stairwell towards the door whose label he could not read but subconsciously knew, (his inner Tower Junkie -- as Eddie had called it -- pleaded to continue onward and upward,) and then he stepped through the passageway. To where? Roland didn't know. All he knew was that it would be far from the Dark Tower. Far from his hope. Far from his end.