Stephen King's the Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance Revised and Updated (104 page)

SPEAKING RING ALONG THE PATH OF THE BEAM (JAKE’S DOOR):
In
The Waste Lands,
Roland, EDDIE, and SUSANNAH drew JAKE CHAMBERS into MID-WORLD through a door which Eddie sketched on the ground of this Speaking Ring. This magical door could be opened only by a key which Eddie carved while traveling along the GREAT ROAD (which followed the PATH OF THE BEAM) toward LUD. Eddie’s magical door is actually a portal connecting Mid-World to the haunted DUTCH HILL MANSION, located in a part of BROOKLYN no more than a mile or so from Eddie’s old family apartment. Hence, Eddie is drawing Jake from the world of his own childhood every bit as much as he draws him from a real city.

Like all portals between worlds, these two connected doorways are not unguarded. While Eddie and Roland help Jake battle the DUTCH HILL MANSION DEMON, who tries to block Jake’s passage from our side, Susannah keeps the Speaking Ring’s male demon trapped in a sexual vise. Unfortunately, this demon impregnates her.

In
Song of Susannah,
we discover that Susannah’s pregnancy is no accident, but had long been planned by the servants of the CRIMSON KING. The demon who shot seed into Susannah’s core was none other than the male aspect of the DEMON ELEMENTAL who had collected Roland’s sperm many years before as the ORACLE OF THE MOUNTAINS. III:173, III:181, III:182, III:189–90, III:193–94, III:195–98, III:202–3, III:206, III:207–8, III:209–10, III:211–13, III:258, III:262, IV:69, V:46, V:246
(“pulling Jake through” and demon of the stone circle),
V:258
(stone-circle demon/doorkeeper in Dutch Hill),
V:478
(stone-circle demon/doorkeeper in Dutch Hill),
VI:113, VI:116
(demon of the ring),
VI:253

JAKE’S DOOR (DOOR #4: THE BOY):
Like all portals, THE BOY (DOOR #4) has a different form in each world. In our world, it appears to be a haunted house called THE MANSION. In MID-WORLD, it exists within a Speaking Ring. (The Mid-World version of the door is actually drawn by EDDIE within the Speaking Ring.) Obviously, places of sinister power in one world are also places of sinister power in all of the others. III:202, III:205–12, III:219

STONE’S WARP

See
EMPATHICA, WHITE LANDS OF

STUDY, THE

See
DEVAR-TOI

SUSANNAH’S MIND-DOGAN

See
DOGAN

THINNY, THINNIES

Thinnies are places where the fabric of existence has almost entirely worn away. These cancerous “sores on the skin of existence” have increased in number since the DARK TOWER began to fail. Thinnies can exist only because the multiverse itself is sickening. In fact, as thinnies spread over the earth, disease spreads among humans and other creatures.

Thinnies look like silvery, shimmering water and make a nauseating, atonal squalling. In many ways they seem like fluidly animate demons, especially since they have both a kind of body and a definite, malign presence. Sometimes their liquefying element spreads, develops arms, and snatches birds out of the air. These liquid/ether demons are like monstrous sirens, singing hungrily, always willing to whisper our secret fears to us so that they can lure us into their dead embrace.

Roland first encountered a thinny in the town of HAMBRY, when he was fourteen years old. (This thinny had a green hue.) Our
tet
stumbles across another one in the ALTERNATIVE TOPEKA which they travel through in
Wizard and Glass.
The monster-filled fog which David and Billy Drayton have to face in STEPHEN KING’s short story “The Mist” is a cross between a thinny and TODASH space.

IV:64
(sounds Hawaiian, doesn’t it?),
IV:66
(wastelands beyond Lud are another kind of thinny),
IV:67, IV:68
(parallel between thinnies, lobstrosities, and god-drums),
IV:70
(hear it),
IV:78
(thinnies as doors),
IV:92
(enter thinny),
IV:93, IV:95
(enter it and feel nauseated),
IV:96
(like an entombment, an unclean purgatory),
IV:118
(Eyebolt Canyon),
IV:155–57
(voice),
IV:261, IV:272–76
(Roland and his
ka-tet
face it),
IV:281, IV:336, IV:371, IV:395, IV:422, IV:432, IV:433
(Roland’s war plans against Farson),
IV:454–56
(voice of thinny),
IV:595–601
(Farson’s men driven into it),
IV:622–23, IV:632, IV:634, IV:660, V:36, V:48, V:130–31, V:341, V:508, V:516, V:597

THUNDERCLAP (THE LAND OF DARKNESS, THE DARK LAND)

In
Wizard and Glass
we learn that the fey realm of Thunderclap sits on the lip of END-WORLD. It is described as a land of dead fields, deserted villages, blasted trees, and dead soldiers. From here come the pale warriors; all clocks run backward in this land of death, and the graveyards vomit out their dead. Roland will
have to pass through Thunderclap on his way to the TOWER, and it is here that Roland and his friends will have to meet their enemy FLAGG once more.

In
Wolves of the Calla,
we discover that the dark land of Thunderclap sits just east of the BORDERLANDS, which in turn sit on the eastern edge of MID-WORLD-that-was. Beyond Thunderclap is CASTLE DISCORDIA and the arid DISCORDIA BADLANDS. In Thunderclap, the world has already ended. It is described as “a great darkness, like a rain cloud on the horizon.” Despite the rain-cloud analogy used by the CALLA
folken,
Thunderclap is a dry, rainless desert.

Thunderclap is the home of the DEVAR-TOI, or Big Prison, where the CRIMSON KING keeps the psychic BREAKERS. The Breakers (who are human) are forced to use their wild talents to erode the BEAMS so that the foundering DARK TOWER will collapse, causing the macroverse to blink out of existence. Long before our story began, the insane Red King released poison gas over the whole of this area. Hence, the Breakers, as well as their CAN-TOI and TAHEEN guards, are plagued by skin diseases and other illnesses. (It seems likely that they suffer some of the effects of radiation sickness as well.) In Thunderclap, even the most minor skin abrasions can turn septic and deadly.

Since there is no sun in Thunderclap, the Devar-Toi’s residents are dependent upon a mechanical (or atomic) sun, which runs on what might as well be the world’s largest egg timer. Unfortunately for them, it is wearing down and occasionally goes on the blink, creating pseudo-eclipses and general depression and panic.

IV:570–73, IV:580, IV:628, IV:666, V:5, V:6, V:7, V:12, V:16, V:22, V:26, V:113, V:117, V:136–37, V:144, V:149, V:150
(vampires, bogarts,
taheen), V:152, V:182, V:207, V:225, V:226, V:249, V:291, V:312, V:368, V:390, V:401, V:413, V:422, V:452
(dark land is root of association between vampires and low men),
V:481, V:484, V:509, V:557, V:562, V:574, V:586, V:601, V:610, V:615, V:655, V:659, V:703, VI:13, VI:246, VI:247, VI:248, VII:51, VII:52, VII:58, VII:148, VII:152, VII:178, VII:190, VII:195, VII:200–416
(setting; individual references are as follows: 200, 203, 210, 215, 223, 230, 247, 258, 261, 266, 282, 288, 289, 290, 306, 333, 337, 356, 357, 404, 416),
VII:485, VII:494, VII:507, VII:510, VII:514, VII:531, VII:536, VII:559, VII:563, VII:581, VII:594, VII:736, W:3, W:10
(great darkness),
W:307

CAUSEWAY, THE:
See
CALLA BADLANDS
,
listed separately

DEVAR-TOI:
See
DEVAR-TOI
,
listed separately

DOGAN, THE:
See
DOGAN,
listed separately

THUNDERCLAP STATION:
See
DEVAR-TOI
,
listed separately

THUNDERCLAP STATION

See
DEVAR-TOI

TODASH

In
Wolves of the Calla,
we are told that traveling
todash
is similar to the state of lucid dreaming. However, unlike lucid dreaming, both body and mind travel
todash
. As we see when EDDIE and JAKE travel to NEW YORK CITY via
todash
at the beginning of
Wolves of the Calla,
the body of a person in the
todash
state fades out of existence in a series of jerky pulses and is replaced by a
dull gray glow. Those not traveling, but sleeping or sitting near a
todash
traveler, may hear a kind of low crackling or electrical buzzing. Entry into the
todash
state is signaled by the chiming of the
kammen,
or the
todash
CHIMES.

The blue-cloaked MANNI are well acquainted with traveling
todash
. Many (such as the Manni
dinh,
HENCHICK) have even seen the
todash tahken,
or the holes in reality. Some spheres of MAERLYN’S RAINBOW also facilitate traveling via
todash
. Most notorious of these is BLACK THIRTEEN. A desperate person can also travel
todash
without the aid of any magical instrument. During the five years following the death of his beloved friend LUPE DELGADO, FATHER CALLAHAN traveled along the
todash
turnpikes of America, also known as the HIGHWAYS IN HIDING.

Although traveling
todash
is practiced by the magnet- and plumb bob– wielding Manni, it is not without risks.
Todash
space is the void place between worlds, or the equivalent of the monster-filled hollows between the walls and floors of the DARK TOWER. Below CASTLE DISCORDIA is a doorway that leads directly to
todash
space. Although the OLD ONES considered this door a mistake, the CRIMSON KING makes good use of it. He has his bitterest enemies thrown into the null lands, so that they will wander in that nothingness, blind and mad, until they are devoured by
todash
’s many monsters.

According to MORDRED DESCHAIN, the nastiest of the
todash
monsters are known as the Great Ones. CONSTANT READERS familiar with STEPHEN KING’s short story “The Mist” will probably recognize these
todash
monsters. In that tale, the military personnel responsible for the Arrowhead Project ripped a hole in reality. What leaked through was a cross between
todash
space and the horror of a monster-infested THINNY.

V:48–70
(New York),
V:78–81
(described),
V:84, V:88–97
(89 Manni; 90 Wizard’s Rainbow; 91–97 Eddie and Jake describe),
V:105
(holiest of rites, most exalted of states),
V:110, V:114–16, V:139, V:165
(like being stoned),
V:166, V:172–97
(New York),
V:201, V:236, V:257, V:271, V:275, V:284, V:314, V:469, V:470, V:502, V:505, V:507, V:511, V:515, V:516, V:539, V:546, V:549, V:558, V:599, V:709, VI:12, VI:18, VI:37, VI:81, VI:82, VI:119, VI:131, VI:248–49
(doors to
todash
darkness or
todash
space),
VI:251, VI:265
(Beams as anti
todash), VI:281, VI:301, VI:307, VI:326
(can get lost forever there),
VI:328–31
(Black Thirteen brings
todash
darkness; it disappears when Thirteen sleeps),
VI:375, VI:378, VII:20, VII:21, VII:23
(chimes),
VII:32, VII:38, VII:196, VII:407, VII:531, VII:539, VII:542
(writing as a benign
todash), VII:557, VII:559, VII:567, VII:582, VII:711, VII:747 (todash
space),
VII:749, VII:754, VII:779

CHIMES, THE (KAMMEN):
In the MANNI tongue,
kammen
means “ghosts.” Hence, the DOORWAY CAVE is known as
kra kammen,
or “house of ghosts,” because of the voices that echo within it. Those traveling
todash
are assailed by the beautiful but bone-vibrating sound of the
kammen,
or
todash
bells. Their painful music is reminiscent of the warble of the THINNY. Evidently, when the box containing BLACK THIRTEEN is opened, the
kammen
begin to chime. The sound is both overwhelming and maddening. V:48, V:53, V:65, V:67, V:68, V:69, V:90, V:139, V:167–68
(bells),
V:171, V:174, V:184, V:196, V:197, V:268–69, V:275, V:283, V:299, V:317, V:413, V:414, V:432, V:457, V:458, V:459, V:462, V:515, V:516, V:540, V:546, V:591, V:592,
V:597, VI:81, VI:98, VI:307, VI:326, VI:327, VI:328, VI:378, VII:20, VII:21, VII:23, VII:28, VII:36, VII:288, VII:539, VII:540, VII:562, VII:564

DOOR TO TODASH DARKNESS:
See
CASTLE DISCORDIA

END-WORLD (VIA BLACK THIRTEEN):
See
END-WORLD,
listed separately

CASTLE OF THE KING (VIA BLACK THIRTEEN):
See
CASSE ROI RUSSE
,
listed separately

MAINE (VIA BLACK THIRTEEN):
For page references, see
MAINE (STATE OF)
,
in
OUR WORLD PLACES

EAST STONEHAM:
East Stoneham is a small town forty miles north of PORTLAND. This is where CALVIN TOWER and AARON DEEPNEAU go to hide from BALAZAR’S MEN. PERE CALLAHAN visits East Stoneham courtesy of Black Thirteen and the UNFOUND DOOR. This town is also the site of Roland and EDDIE’s battle with Balazar’s thugs.
For page references, see
MAINE (STATE OF)
: OXFORD COUNTY: STONEHAM,
in
OUR WORLD PLACES

EAST STONEHAM GENERAL STORE:
For page references, see
MAINE (STATE OF)
: OXFORD COUNTY: STONEHAM,
in
OUR WORLD PLACES

METHODIST MEETING HALL:
For page references, see
MAINE (STATE OF)
: OXFORD COUNTY: STONEHAM,
in
OUR WORLD PLACES

POST OFFICE:
For page references, see
MAINE (STATE OF)
: OXFORD COUNTY: STONEHAM,
in
OUR WORLD PLACES