... Did he himself understand what he was talking about? Or how Aaron Deepneau -- presumably a lifelong New Yorker -- could assert with such casual assurance that Co-Op City was in the Bronx when Eddie knew it to be in Brooklyn?
Not entirely, but he understood enough to scare the hell out of him. Other worlds. Perhaps an infinite number of worlds, all of them spinning on the axle that was the Tower. All of them were similar, but there
were differences. Different politicians on the currency. Different makes of automobiles... In these worlds, one of which had been decimated by a plaugue called the super-flu, you could trime-hop back and forth, past and future. Because...
Because in some vital way, they aren't the real world. Or if they're real, they're not the key world.
Yes, that felt closer. He had come from one of those other worlds, he was convinced of it. So had Susannah. And Jakes One and Two, the one who had fallen and the one who had literally been pulled out of the monster's mouth and saved.
But this world was the key world. And he knew it because he was a key-
maker by trade:
Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee, not to worry, tyou've got the key.
Beryl Evans? Not quite real. Claudia y Inez Bachman? Real.
...
And he had an idea that Callahan had crossed over from the real world to one of the others long before he had embarked on his highways in hiding: had crossed without even knowing it. He'd said something about officiating at some little boy's funeral, and how, after that...
"After that, he said everything changed," Eddie said as he sat down, "That
everything changed."
...
"Pere went from a seminary in Boston to Lowell, real. 'Salem's Lot, not real. Made up by a writer..."