Free The Wind Through The Keyhole by Stephen King Page A

legends . . .”
    “I’ve heard the legends, sai, but in that they’re wrong. At least for this particular creatur’ they are. Sometimes the moon’s been full when it strikes—it was Full Peddler when it showed up at Serenity, all covered with scales and knobs like an alligator from the Long Salt Swamps—but it did its work at Timbersmith when the moon was dark. I’d like to tell you different, but I can’t. I’d also like to end this without having to pick anyone else’s guts out of the bushes or pluck some other kiddie’s head off’n a fencepost. Ye’ve been sent here to help, and I hope like hell you can . . . although I’ve got my doubts.”
    * * *
    When I asked Peavy if there was a good hotel or boardinghouse in Debaria, he chuckled.
    “The last boardinghouse was the Widow Brailley’s. Two year ago, a drunk saddletramp tried to rape her in her own outhouse, as she sat at business. But she was always a trig one. She’d seen the look in his eye, and went in there with a knife under her apron. Cut his throat for him, she did. Stringy Bodean, who used to be our Justice Man before he decided to try his luck at raising horses in the Crescent, declared her not guilty by reason of self-defense in about five minutes, but the lady decided she’d had enough of Debaria and trained back to Gilead, where she yet bides, I’ve no doubt. Two days after she left, some drunken buffoon burned the place to the ground. The hotel still stands. It’s called the Delightful View. The view ain’t delightful, young fellows, and the beds is full of bugs as big as toads’ eyeballs. I wouldn’t sleep in one without putting on a full suit of Arthur Eld’s armor.”
    And so we ended up spending our first night in Debaria in the large drunk-and-disorderly cell, beneath Peavy’s chalked map. Salty Sam had been set free, and we had the jail to ourselves. Outside, a strong wind had begun to blow off the alkali flats to the west of town. The moaning sound it made around the eaves caused me to think again of the story my mother used to read to me when I was just a sma’ toot myself—the story of Tim Stoutheart and the starkblast Tim had to face in the Great Woods north of New Canaan. Thinking of the boy alone in those woods has always chilled my heart, just as Tim’s bravery has always warmed it. The stories we hear in childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.
    After one particularly strong gust—the Debaria wind was warm, not cold like the starkblast—struck the side of the jail and puffed alkali grit in through the barred window, Jamie spoke up. It was rare for him to start a conversation.
    “I hate that sound, Roland. It’s apt to keep me awake all night.”
    I loved it myself; the sound of the wind has always made me think of good times and far places. Although I confess I could have done without the grit.
    “How are we supposed to find this thing, Jamie? I hope you have some idea, because I don’t.”
    “We’ll have to talk to the salt-miners. That’s the place to start. Someone may have seen a fellow with blood on him creeping back to where the salties live. Creeping back naked. For he can’t come back clothed, unless he takes them off beforehand.”
    That gave me a little hope. Although if the one we were looking for knew what he was, he might take his clothes off when he felt an attack coming on, hide them, then come back to them later. But if he didn’t know . . .
    It was a small thread, but sometimes—if you’re careful not to break it—you can pull on a small thread and unravel a whole garment.
    “Goodnight, Roland.”
    “Goodnight, Jamie.”
    I closed my eyes and thought of my mother. I often did that year, but for once they weren’t thoughts of how she had looked dead, but of how beautiful she had been in my early childhood, as she sat beside me on my bed in the room with the colored glass windows, reading to me. “Look you, Roland,” she’d say, “here are the billy-bumblers