Jake Chambers

Since his father died, Jake has had dreams that feel like memories of somewhere else: a gunslinger, a sorcerer in black, captive children and a tower that holds up every world. He draws all of it.

His mother, Laurie, worries. His stepfather loses patience. The psychiatrists call it trauma. When clinic workers show up to take him away, Jake notices a detail from his dreams: these people aren't what they seem.

Jake runs and follows the clues in his drawings to an abandoned house in New York. Inside is a portal, and he crosses into Mid-World.

On the other side he finds the man from his dreams, Roland Deschain. The gunslinger is wary but takes the boy along. In a village, the seer Arra confirms what Walter already knows: Jake's shine is one of the strongest there is.

Mid-World is strange to Jake: ruins of an ancient civilization, abandoned amusement parks, villages that get by on very little. Roland says little and walks fast.

Little by little, Jake realizes his dreams were real. The captive children exist, the Tower exists, and the man in black knows who he is. He also learns the shine is good for more than dreaming: he can send images into someone else's mind. That skill will matter later.

On the road, Roland teaches Jake to shoot and to recite the gunslinger's creed. Back in New York, it's Jake who guides Roland through a world of cars, hospitals and hot dogs.

Walter reaches Jake's home first and kills Laurie. Jake loses his mother and realizes there's nothing left to go back to.

Walter captures Jake and hooks him to the machine that turns the children's shine against the Tower. Trapped, Jake uses his mind to show Roland the way to the base.

In the final fight, when Walter seems to have won, Jake recites the creed and Roland finds the right shot. The machine is destroyed. Roland asks Jake to be his apprentice, and the boy chooses to go with him to Mid-World.

Jake is played by English actor Tom Taylor, with Katheryn Winnick as his mother, Laurie. The gift's name, the "shine", comes from The Shining, another Stephen King book.