UR

by Stephen King

There were three items: UR BOOKS, UR NEWS ARCHIVE, and UR LOCAL (UNDER CONSTRUCTION).

Beneath the welcome message was a picture—not of Charles Dickens or Eudora Welty, but of a large black tower.

In a real dark night of the soul, Scott Fitzgerald had said, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

Wesley stretched out a hand, touched the door of the car, then snatched it back. The door felt like metal, but it was warm. And it seemed to be pulsing. As if, metal or not, the car were alive.

They both wore long mustard-colored coats, the kind that are called dusters, and Wesley understood, without knowing how he understood, that the coats were alive. He also understood that the men wearing them were not men at all. Their faces kept changing, and what lay just beneath the skin was reptilian. Or birdlike. Or both.

On their lapels, where lawmen in a Western movie would have worn badges, both wore buttons bearing a red eye.

Listening to one of them was bad enough. It was like listening to a man whose voice-box was stuffed with crickets.

“The Tower trembles; the worlds shudder in their courses. The rose feels a chill, as of winter.”

Beyond six months, predictive sight grows dim. Beyond a year, all is darkness.

“All things serve the Tower,” the man-thing in the yellow duster said, and touched the hideous button on its coat with a kind of reverence.

For one second Wesley felt its skin and understood the creature’s flesh had its own thoughts.