Doctor Sleep (40 page)

“So my group leaves when? Wednesday night or Thursday morning?”

“Wednesday night.” Rose wanted the girl as soon as possible. “Drive straight through. And you're positive they'll hold the knockout stuff at the mail drop in Sturbridge?”

“Yes. Set your mind at ease on that.”

My mind won't be at ease until I can look at that little bitch lying in the room right across from mine, drugged to the gills, handcuffed, and full of tasty, suckable steam
.

“Who are you taking? Name them off.”

“Me, Nut, Jimmy Numbers, if you can spare him—”

“I can spare him. Who else?”

“Snakebite Andi. If we need to put someone to sleep, she can get it done. And the Chink. Him for sure. He's the best locator we've got now that Grampa's gone. Other than you, that is.”

“By all means take him, but you won't need a locator to find this one,” Rose said. “That's not going to be the problem. And just one vehicle will be enough. Take Steamhead Steve's Winnebago.”

“Already spoke to him about it.”

She nodded, pleased. “One other thing. There's a little hole-in-the-wall store in Sidewinder called District X.”

Crow raised his eyebrows. “The porno palace with the inflatable nurse doll in the window?”

“You know it, I see.” Rose's tone was dry. “Now listen to me, Daddy.”

Crow listened.

Dan and John Dalton flew out of Logan on Tuesday morning just as the sun was rising. They changed planes in Memphis and touched down in Des Moines at 11:15 CDT on a day that felt more like mid-July than late September.

Dan spent the first part of the Boston-to-Memphis leg pretending to sleep so he wouldn't have to deal with the doubts and second thoughts he felt sprouting like weeds in John's mind. Somewhere over upstate New York, pretending ceased and he fell asleep for real. It was John who slept between Memphis and Des Moines, so
that
was all right. And once they were actually in Iowa, rolling toward the town of Freeman in a totally unobtrusive Ford Focus from Hertz, Dan sensed that John had put his doubts to bed. For the time being, at least. What had replaced them was curiosity and uneasy excitement.

“Boys on a treasure hunt,” Dan said. He'd had the longer nap, and so he was behind the wheel. High corn, now more yellow than green, flowed past them on either side.

John jumped a little. “Huh?”

Dan smiled. “Isn't that what you were thinking? That we're like boys on a treasure hunt?”

“You're pretty goddam spooky, Daniel.”

“I suppose. I've gotten used to it.” This was not precisely true.

“When did you find out you could read minds?”

“It isn't just mind-reading. The shining's a uniquely variable talent. If it
is
a talent. Sometimes—lots of times—it feels more like
a disfiguring birthmark. I'm sure Abra would say the same. As for when I found out . . . I never did. I just always had it. It came with the original equipment.”

“And you drank to blot it out.”

A fat woodchuck trundled with leisurely fearlessness across Route 150. Dan swerved to avoid it and the chuck disappeared into the corn, still not hurrying. It was nice out here, the sky looking a thousand miles deep and nary a mountain in sight. New Hampshire was fine, and he'd come to think of it as home, but Dan thought he was always going to feel more comfortable in the flatlands. Safer.

“You know better than that, Johnny. Why does any alcoholic drink?”

“Because he's an alcoholic?”

“Bingo. Simple as can be. Cut through the psychobabble and you're left with the stark truth. We drank because we're drunks.”

John laughed. “Casey K. has truly indoctrinated you.”

“Well, there's also the heredity thing,” Dan said. “Casey always kicks that part to the curb, but it's there. Did your father drink?”

“Him and mother dearest both. They could have kept the Nineteenth Hole at the country club in business all by themselves. I remember the day my mother took off her tennis dress and jumped into the pool with us kids. The men applauded. My dad thought it was a scream. Me, not so much. I was nine, and until I went to college I was the boy with the Striptease Mommy. Yours?”

“My mother could take it or leave it alone. Sometimes she used to call herself Two Beers Wendy. My dad, however . . . one glass of wine or can of Bud and he was off to the races.” Dan glanced at the odometer and saw they still had forty miles to go. “You want to hear a story? One I've never told anybody? I should warn you, it's a weird one. If you think the shining begins and ends with paltry shit like telepathy, you're way short.” He paused. “There are other worlds than these.”

“You've . . . um . . . seen these other worlds?” Dan had lost track of John's mind, but DJ suddenly looked a little nervous. As if he thought the guy sitting next to him might suddenly stick his
hand in his shirt and declare himself the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte.

“No, just some of the people who live there. Abra calls them the ghostie people. Do you want to hear, or not?”

“I'm not sure I do, but maybe I better.”

Dan didn't know how much this New England pediatrician would believe about the winter the Torrance family had spent at the Overlook Hotel, but found he didn't particularly care. Telling it in this nondescript car, under this bright Midwestern sky, would be good enough. There was one person who would have believed it all, but Abra was too young, and the story was too scary. John Dalton would have to do. But how to begin? With Jack Torrance, he supposed. A deeply unhappy man who had failed at teaching, writing, and husbanding. What did the baseball players call three strikeouts in a row? The Golden Sombrero? Dan's father had had only one notable success: when the moment finally came—the one the Overlook had been pushing him toward from their first day in the hotel—he had refused to kill his little boy. If there was a fitting epitaph for him, it would be . . .

“Dan?”

“My father tried,” he said. “That's the best I can say for him. The most malevolent spirits in his life came in bottles. If he'd tried AA, things might have been a lot different. But he didn't. I don't think my mother even knew there was such a thing, or she would have suggested he give it a shot. By the time we went up to the Overlook Hotel, where a friend of his got him a job as the winter caretaker, his picture could have been next to
dry drunk
in the dictionary.”

“That's where the ghosts were?”

“Yes. I saw them. He didn't, but he felt them. Maybe he had his own shining. Probably he did. Lots of things are hereditary, after all, not just a tendency toward alcoholism. And they worked on him. He thought they—the ghostie people—wanted him, but that was just another lie. What they wanted was the little boy with the great big shine. The same way this True Knot bunch wants Abra.”

He stopped, remembering how Dick, speaking through Eleanor
Ouellette's dead mouth, had answered when Dan had asked where the empty devils were.
In your childhood, where every devil comes from
.

“Dan? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Dan said. “Anyway, I knew something was wrong in that goddam hotel even before I stepped through the door. I knew when the three of us were still living pretty much hand-to-mouth down in Boulder, on the Eastern Slope. But my father needed a job so he could finish a play he was working on . . .”

By the time they reached Adair, he was telling John how the Overlook's boiler had exploded, and how the old hotel had burned to the ground in a driving blizzard. Adair was a two-stoplight town, but there was a Holiday Inn Express, and Dan noted the location.

“That's where we'll be checking in a couple of hours from now,” he told John. “We can't go digging for treasure in broad daylight, and besides, I'm dead for sleep. Haven't been getting much lately.”

“All that really happened to you?” John asked in a subdued voice.

“It really did.” Dan smiled. “Think you can believe it?”

“If we find the baseball glove where she says it is, I'll have to believe a lot of things. Why did you tell me?”

“Because part of you thinks we're crazy to be here, in spite of what you know about Abra. Also because you deserve to know that there are . . . forces. I've encountered them before; you haven't. All you've seen is a little girl who can do assorted psychic parlor tricks like hanging spoons on the ceiling. This isn't a boys' treasure hunt game, John. If the True Knot finds out what we're up to, we'll be pinned to the target right along with Abra Stone. If you decided to bail on this business, I'd make the sign of the cross in front of you and say go with God.”

“And continue on by yourself.”

Dan tipped him a grin. “Well . . . there's Billy.”

“Billy's seventy-three if he's a day.”

“He'd say that's a plus. Billy likes to tell people that the good thing about being old is that you don't have to worry about dying young.”

John pointed. “Freeman town line.” He gave Dan a small, tight smile. “I can't completely believe I'm doing this. What are you going to think if that ethanol plant is gone? If it's been torn down since Google Earth snapped its picture, and planted over with corn?”

“It'll still be there,” Dan said.

And so it was: a series of soot-gray concrete blocks roofed in rusty corrugated metal. One smokestack still stood; two others had fallen and lay on the ground like broken snakes. The windows had been smashed and the walls were covered in blotchy spray-paint graffiti that would have been laughed at by the pro taggers in any big city. A potholed service road split off from the two-lane, ending in a parking lot that had sprouted with errant seed corn. The water tower Abra had seen stood nearby, rearing against the horizon like an H. G. Wells Martian war machine. FREEMAN, IOWA was printed on the side. The shed with the broken roof was also present and accounted for.

“Satisfied?” Dan asked. They had slowed to a crawl. “Factory, water tower, shed, No Trespassing sign. All just like she said it would be.”

John pointed to the rusty gate at the end of the service road. “What if that's locked? I haven't climbed a chainlink fence since I was in junior high.”

“It wasn't locked when killers brought that kid here, or Abra would have said.”

“Are you sure of that?”

A farm truck was coming the other way. Dan sped up a little and lifted a hand as they passed. The guy behind the wheel—green John Deere cap, sunglasses, bib overalls—raised his in return but hardly glanced at them. That was a good thing.

“I asked if—”

“I know what you asked,” Dan said. “If it's locked, we'll deal with it. Somehow. Now let's go back to that motel and check in. I'm whipped.”

While John got adjoining rooms at the Holiday Inn—paying cash—Dan sought out the Adair True Value Hardware. He bought a spade, a rake, two hoes, a garden trowel, two pairs of gloves, and a duffel to hold his new purchases. The only tool he actually wanted was the spade, but it seemed best to buy in bulk.

“What brings you to Adair, may I ask?” the clerk asked as he rang up Dan's stuff.

“Just passing through. My sister's in Des Moines, and she's got quite the garden patch. She probably owns most of this stuff, but presents always seem to improve her hospitality.”

“I hear
that,
brother. And she'll thank you for this short-handle hoe. No tool comes in handier, and most amateur gardeners never think to get one. We take MasterCard, Visa—”

“I think I'll give the plastic a rest,” Dan said, taking out his wallet. “Just give me a receipt for Uncle Sugar.”

“You bet. And if you give me your name and address—or your sister's—we'll send our catalogue.”

“You know what, I'm going to pass on that today,” Dan said, and put a little fan of twenties on the counter.

At eleven o'clock that night, there came a soft rap on Dan's door. He opened it and let John inside. Abra's pediatrician was pale and keyed-up. “Did you sleep?”

“Some,” Dan said. “You?”

“In and out. Mostly out. I'm nervous as a goddam cat. If a cop stops us, what are we going to say?”

“That we heard there was a juke joint in Freeman and decided to go looking for it.”

“There's nothing in Freeman but corn. About nine billion acres of it.”

“
We
don't know that,” Dan said mildly. “We're just passing through. Besides, no cop's going to stop us, John. Nobody's even going to notice us. But if you want to stay here—”

“I didn't come halfway across the country to sit in a motel watching Jay Leno. Just let me use the toilet. I used mine before I left the room, but now I need to go again.
Christ,
am I nervous.”

The drive to Freeman seemed very long to Dan, but once they left Adair behind, they didn't meet a single car. Farmers went to bed early, and they were off the trucking routes.

When they reached the ethanol plant, Dan doused the rental car's lights, turned in to the service road, and rolled slowly up to the closed gate. The two men got out. John cursed when the Ford's dome light came on. “I should have turned that thing off before we left the motel. Or smashed the bulb, if it doesn't have a switch.”

“Relax,” Dan said. “There's no one out here but us chickens.” Still, his heart was beating hard in his chest as they walked to the gate. If Abra was right, a little boy had been murdered and buried out here after being miserably tortured. If ever a place should be haunted—

John tried the gate, and when pushing didn't work, he tried pulling. “Nothing. What now? Climb, I guess. I'm willing to try, but I'll probably break my fucking—”