The Wind Through the Keyhole (The Dark Tower 4.5)

"He said that after reading the reports High Sheriff Peavy sent along, it was hard not to believe. You know what he says at least once in every class: 'When facts speak, the wise man listens.' Twenty-three dead makes a moit of facts. Not shot or stabbed, mind you, but torn to pieces."

Jamie grunted.

"Whole families, in two cases. Large ones, almost clans. The houses turned all upsy-turvy and splashed with blood. Limbs ripped off the bodies and carried away, some found--partly eaten--some not. At one of those farms, Sheriff Peavy and his deputy found the youngest boy's head stuck on a fencepole with his skull smashed in and his brains scooped out."

"Witnesses?"

"A few. A sheepherder coming back with strays saw his partner attacked. The one who survived was on a nearby hill. The two dogs with him ran down to try and protect their other master, and were torn apart too. The thing came up the hill after the herder, but got distracted by the sheep instead, so the fellow struck lucky and got away. He said it was a wolf that ran upright, like a man. Then there was a woman with a gambler. He was caught cheating at Watch Me in one of the local pits. The two of them were given a bill of circulation and told to leave town by nightfall or be whipped. They were headed for the little town near the salt-mines when they were beset. The man fought. It gave the woman just enough time to get clear. She hid up in some rocks until the thing was gone. She's said 'twas a lion."

"On its back legs?"

"If so, she didn't wait to see. Last, two cowpunchers. They were camped on Debaria Stream near a young Manni couple on marriage retreat, although the punchers didn't know it until they heard the couple's screams. As they rode toward the sound, they saw the killer go loping off with the woman's lower leg in its jaws. It wasn't a man, but they swore on watch and warrant that it ran upright like a man."

Jamie leaned over the neck of his horse and spat. "Can't be so."

"Vannay says it can. He says there have been such before, although not for years. He believes

they may be some sort of mutation that's pretty much worked its way out of the true thread."

"All these witnesses saw different animals?"

"Aye. The cowpokes described it as a tyger. It had stripes."

"Lions and tygers running around like trained beasts in a traveling show. And out here in the dust. Are you sure we aren't being tickled?"

I wasn't old enough to be sure of much, but I did know the times were too desperate to be sending young guns even so far west as Debaria for a prank. Not that Steven Deschain could have been described as a prankster even in the best of times.

"I'm only telling what Vannay told me. The rope-swingers who came into town with the remains of those two Manni behind them on a travois had never even heard of such a thing as a tyger. Yet that is what they described. The testimony's in here, green eyes and all." I took the two creased sheets of paper I had from Vannay out of my inner vest pocket. "Care to look?"

"I'm not much of a reader," Jamie said. "As thee knows."

"Aye, fine. But take my word. Their description is just like the picture in the old story of the boy caught in the starkblast."

"What old story is that?"

"The one about Tim Stoutheart--'The Wind Through the Keyhole.' Never mind. It's not important. I know the punchers may have been drunk, they usually are if they're near a town that has liquor, but if it's true testimony, Vannay says the creature is a shape-shifter as well as a shape-changer."

"Twenty-three dead, you say. Ay-yi."

The wind gusted, driving the alkali before it. The horses shied, and we raised our neckerchiefs over our mouths and noses.

"Boogery hot," Jamie said. "And this damned dust."

Then, as if realizing he had been excessively chatty, he fell silent. That was fine with me, as I had much to think about.

A little less than an hour later, we breasted a hill and saw a sparkling white haci below us. It was the size of a barony estate. Behind it, tending down toward a narrow creek, was a large greengarden and what looked like a grape arbor. My mouth watered at the sight of it. The last time I'd had grapes, my armpits had still been smooth and hairless.

The walls of the haci were tall and topped with forbidding sparkles of broken glass, but the wooden gates stood open, as if in invitation. In front of them, seated on a kind of throne, was a woman in a dress of white muslin and a hood of white silk that flared around her head like gullwings. As we drew closer, I saw the throne was ironwood. Surely no other chair not made of metal could have borne her weight, for she was the biggest woman I had ever seen, a giantess who could have mated with the legendary outlaw prince David Quick.