At the beginning of The Drawing of the Three, the second installment of The Dark Tower series, Roland is attacked by crablike creatures on the beach. What do they take from him?
Answer
The first two fingers of his right hand
At the beginning of The Drawing of the Three, the crablike creatures take the first two fingers of Roland's right hand. The attack happens shortly after Roland wakes on a desolate beach, continuing the story from The Gunslinger.
Stephen King calls the creatures lobstrosities. They resemble enormous, grotesque lobsters and make distinctive sounds as they crawl from the water. One attacks Roland with extraordinary speed, biting off the fingers before he manages to kill it. The wound is not merely painful: the creature's venom leaves Roland gravely ill as he continues along the shore.
The injury has major consequences for the plot. Roland is a gunslinger whose survival depends heavily on his weapon skills, and losing fingers from his shooting hand makes handling his revolver far more difficult. He must keep moving despite the infection while searching for the mysterious doors connected to his quest.
Readers sometimes remember that Roland loses more than two digits during the beach sequence. The lobstrosities also injure his right foot, but the answer to this question specifically concerns the first two fingers of his right hand.