The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy by Bev Vincent Read Free Book Online

something is wrong, but she doesn’t know what.
    Where Odetta is refined and genteel, Detta is rage personified. She talks like a caricature, spouting vile and illiterate jargon that even Eddie will have a hard time understanding. She doesn’t shoplift because she needs things, but out of spite. The things she takes are of little value, which reflects how she sees herself, and she usually throws them away. She is promiscuous and crude and completely amoral. Her greatest desire, Eddie comes to believe, is to be killed by a white person.
    Roland is only vaguely aware of any of this when he opens the door. Detta is on a shoplifting spree when he enters her mind. Detta and Odetta become briefly aware of each other and are equally horrified by what theysee. Detta fights back against the invading white man. With the house detectives closing in, Roland sends her through the doorway to the beach.
    When they arrive, she is Odetta. Yanked out of her world and disoriented, she denies her new surroundings. She has no memory of going to Macy’s. The last thing she remembers is watching the news on television. She is either dreaming, has suffered another brain injury or has gone crazy, she decides. Even when presented with contradictions in her story—the costume jewelry she’s wearing, for instance—she refuses to believe what Roland and Eddie tell her.
    She won’t eat, but allows herself to be pushed along the beach. Roland thinks that Eddie will be okay now because he has someone to look after—a surrogate for his brother—and he sees the early signs that Eddie is falling in love.
    Eddie is taken completely by surprise when Detta emerges that night. Whereas Odetta refuses to acknowledge the truth, Detta fervently believes things that never happened, most of them terrible. She accuses Eddie and Roland of raping her and trying to poison her.
    Roland is getting sick again—the antibiotics only knocked back the infection without eliminating it—but he is alert enough to warn Eddie that Odetta is two women in one body. Because Roland believes that Eddie needs a lesson in how dangerous Detta can be, he allows Detta to steal his unloaded gun while they sleep. She tries to shoot Eddie and hits him in the head with the gun when that fails. This is the way Cort taught Roland important lessons.
    Detta remains in control of the body as they struggle toward the third doorway. She does everything possible to impede their progress, just to be contrary. Even strapped to the chair, she manages to throw the hand brake and upset herself. She tries to bite any fingers that get within reach. At night she screams if Roland and Eddie fall asleep. Eddie is getting sick, too, from malnourishment caused by a constant diet of lobstrosity meat. Roland is too weak to push the chair and finally grows too weak to even walk. Fortunately, Odetta reasserts control. Since she is more cooperative, Eddie can take her ahead to the next door and come back with the chair for Roland.
    They have a dilemma, though. In addition to the lobstrosities, there are wild creatures in the nearby hills. Roland has a gun to defend himself while Eddie and Odetta are gone, but Odetta will need to stay by herself for a couple of days while Eddie comes back for Roland. Roland tells Eddie not to leave his gun with her, but Eddie is in love and ignores Roland’s advice. When they arrive at the doorway marked THE PUSHER , Odetta is missing. Eddie worries that an animal might have killed her, but Roland knows that she is lurking in the hills, a creature more dangerous than any wildcat or lobstrosity. And armed.
    This time, Roland wants Eddie to come with him through the doorway, where he’ll be safe, but Eddie refuses to abandon Odetta. Roland enters the mind of sociopath Jack Mort, a CPA who amuses himself by dropping bricks on people and pushing them in front of cars. He was responsible for both of Odetta’s traumas, even though they took