Doctor Sleep (49 page)

He glanced back at the truck. The driver, also an oldie, had been slouched behind the wheel. Now he was sitting up. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. On the alert. So she
had
been gaming them. Crow still didn't know for sure which of the two was the steamhead, but one thing he was sure of: the men in the Winnebago were on a wild goosechase.

Crow took out his cell but only held it in his hand for a moment, watching the girl in the black pants go down the walk to the street. The girl in the skirt watched her for a second, then went back inside. The girl in the pants—Abra—crossed Richland Court, and as she did, the man in the truck raised his hands in a
what gives
gesture. She responded with a thumbs-up:
Don't worry, everything's okay
. Crow felt a surge of triumph as hot as a knock of whiskey. Question answered. Abra Stone was the steamhead. No question about it. She was being guarded, and the guard was an old geezer with a perfectly good pickup truck. Crow felt confident it would take him and a certain young passenger as far as Albany.

He hit Snake on the speed dial, and wasn't surprised or uneasy when he got a CALL FAILED message. Cloud Gap was a local beauty spot, and God forbid there should be any cell phone towers to clutter up the tourists' snapshots. But that was okay. If he couldn't take care of an old man and a young girl, it was time to turn in his badge. He considered his phone for a moment, then turned it off. For the next twenty minutes or so, there was no one he wanted to talk to, and that included Rose.

His mission, his responsibility.

He had four loaded syringes, two in the left pocket of his light jacket, two in the right. Putting his best Henry Rothman smile on his face—the one he wore when reserving campground space or
four-walling motels for the True—Crow stepped from behind the tree and strolled down the street. In his left hand he still held his folded copy of
The Anniston Shopper
. His right hand was in his jacket pocket, easing the plastic cap off one of the needles.

“Pardon me, sir, I seem to be a little lost. I wonder if you could give me some directions.”

Billy Freeman was nervous, on edge, filled with something that was not quite foreboding . . . and still that cheerful voice and bright you-can-trust-me smile took him in. Only for two seconds, but that was enough. As he reached toward the open glove compartment, he felt a small sting on the side of his neck.

Bug bit me,
he thought, and then slumped sideways, his eyes rolling up to the whites.

Crow opened the door and shoved the driver across the seat. The old guy's head bonked the passenger-side window. Crow lifted limp legs over the transmission hump, batting the glove compartment closed to make a little more room, then slid behind the wheel and slammed the door. He took a deep breath and looked around, ready for anything, but there was nothing to be ready for. Richland Court was dozing the afternoon away, and that was lovely.

The key was in the ignition. Crow started the engine and the radio came on in a yahoo roar of Toby Keith: God bless America and pour the beer. As he reached to turn it off, a terrible white light momentarily washed out his vision. Crow had very little telepathic ability, but he was firmly linked to his tribe; in a way, the members were appendages of a single organism, and one of their number had just died. Cloud Gap hadn't been just misdirection, it had been a fucking ambush.

Before he could decide what to do next, the white light came again, and, after a pause, yet again.

All of them?

Good Christ,
all three
? It wasn't possible . . . was it?

He took a deep breath, then another. Forced himself to face the fact that yes, it could be. And if so, he knew who was to blame.

Fucking steamhead girl.

He looked at Abra's house. All quiet there. Thank God for small favors. He had expected to drive the truck up the street and into her driveway, but all at once that seemed like a bad idea, at least for now. He got out, leaned back in, and grabbed the unconscious geezer by his shirt and belt. Crow yanked him back behind the wheel, pausing just long enough to give him a patdown. No gun. Too bad. He wouldn't have minded having one, at least for awhile.

He fastened the geezer's seatbelt so he couldn't tilt forward and blare the horn. Then he walked down the street to the girl's house, not hurrying. If he'd seen her face at one of the windows—or so much as a single twitch of a single curtain—he would have broken into a sprint, but nothing moved.

It was possible he could still make this work, but that consideration had been rendered strictly secondary by those terrible white flashes. What he mostly wanted was to get his hands on the miserable bitch that had caused them so much trouble and shake her until she rattled.

Abra sleepwalked down the front hall. The Stones had a family room in the basement, but the kitchen was their comfort place, and she headed there without thinking about it. She stood with her hands splayed out on the table where she and her parents had eaten thousands of meals, staring at the window over the kitchen sink with wide blank eyes. She wasn't really here at all. She was in Cloud Gap, watching bad guys spill out of the Winnebago: the Snake and the Nut and Jimmy Numbers. She knew their names from Barry. But something was wrong. One of them was missing.

(
WHERE'S THE CROW DAN I DON'T SEE THE CROW!
)

No answer, because Dan and her father and Dr. John were busy. They took the bad guys down, one after the other: the Walnut first—that was her father's work, and good for him—then Jimmy Numbers, then the Snake. She felt each mortal injury as a thudding deep in her head. Those thuds, like a heavy mallet repeatedly coming down on an oak plank, were terrible in their finality, but not entirely unpleasant. Because . . .

Because they deserve it, they kill kids, and nothing else would have stopped them. Only—

(
Dan where's the Crow? WHERE'S THE CROW???
)

Now Dan heard her. Thank God. She saw the Winnebago. Dan thought the Crow was in there, and maybe he was right. Still—

She hurried back down the hall and peered out one of the windows beside the front door. The sidewalk was deserted, but Mr. Freeman's truck was parked right where it belonged. She couldn't see his face because of the way the sun was shining on the windshield, but she could see
him
behind the wheel, and that meant everything was still okay.

Probably
okay.

(
Abra are you there
)

Dan. It was so great to hear him. She wished he was with her, but having him inside her head was almost as good.

(
yes
)

She took one more reassuring look at the empty sidewalk and Mr. Freeman's truck, checked to make sure she had locked the door after coming in, and started back down to the kitchen.

(
you need to have your friend's mom call the police and tell them you're in danger Crow's in Anniston
)

She stopped halfway down the hall. Her comfort-hand came up and began to rub her mouth. Dan didn't know she had left the Deanes' house. How could he? He'd been very busy.

(
I'm not
)

Before she could finish, Rose the Hat's mental voice blasted through her head, wiping away all thought.

(YOU LITTLE BITCH WHAT HAVE YOU DONE)

The familiar hallway between the front door and the kitchen began to sideslip. The last time this revolving thing happened, she'd been prepared. This time she wasn't. Abra tried to stop it and couldn't. Her house was gone. Anniston was gone. She was lying on the ground and looking up at the sky. Abra realized the loss of those three in Cloud Gap had literally knocked Rose off her feet, and she had a moment to be savagely glad. She struggled for something to defend herself with. There wasn't much time.

Rose's body lay sprawled halfway between the showers and the Overlook Lodge, but her mind was in New Hampshire, swarming through the girl's head. There was no daydream horsewoman with a stallion and lance this time, oh no. This time it was just one surprised little chickadee and old Rosie, and Rosie wanted revenge. She would kill the girl only as a last resort, she was much too valuable for that, but Rose could give her a taste of what was coming. A taste of what Rose's friends had already suffered. There were plenty of soft, vulnerable places in the minds of rubes, and she knew them all very w—

(GET AWAY YOU BITCH LEAVE ME ALONE OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!)

It was like having a flash-bang go off behind her eyes. Rose jerked and cried out. Big Mo, who had been reaching down to touch her, recoiled in surprise. Rose didn't notice, didn't even see her. She kept underestimating the girl's power. She tried to keep her footing in the girl's head, but the little bitch was actually pushing her out. It was incredible and infuriating and terrifying, but it was true.
Worse, she could feel her physical hands rising toward her face. If Mo and Short Eddie hadn't restrained her, the little girl might have made Rose claw her own eyes out.

For the time being, at least, she had to give up and leave. But before she did, she saw something through the girl's eyes that flooded her with relief. It was Crow Daddy, and in one hand he was holding a needle.

Abra used all the psychic force she could muster, more than she had used on the day she had gone hunting for Brad Trevor, more than she had ever used in her life, and it was still barely enough. Just when she started to think she wouldn't be able to get the hat woman out of her head, the world began to revolve again. She was
making
it revolve, but it was so hard—like pushing a great stone wheel. The sky and the faces staring down at her slid away. There was a moment of darkness when she was

(
between
)

nowhere, and then her own front hall slid back into view. But she was no longer alone. A man was standing in the kitchen doorway.

No, not a man. A Crow
.

“Hello, Abra,” he said, smiling, and leaped at her. Still mentally reeling from her encounter with Rose, Abra made no attempt to push him away with her mind. She simply turned and ran.

In their moments of highest stress, Dan Torrance and Crow Daddy were very much alike, although neither would ever know it. The same clarity came over Crow's vision, the same sense that all of this was happening in beautiful slow motion. He saw the pink rubber
bracelet on Abra's left wrist and had time to think
breast cancer awareness
. He saw the girl's backpack slew to the left as she whirled to her right and knew it was full of books. He even had time to admire her hair as it flew out behind her in a bright sheaf.

He caught her at the door as she was trying to turn the thumb lock. When he put his left arm around her throat and yanked her back, he felt her first efforts—confused, weak—to push him away with her mind.

Not the whole hypo, it might kill her, she can't weigh more than a hundred and fifteen pounds max
.

Crow injected her just south of the collarbone as she twisted and struggled. He needn't have worried about losing control and shooting the whole dose into her, because her left arm came up and thumped against his right hand, knocking the hypo free. It fell to the floor and rolled. But providence favors True above rubes, it had always been that way and was now. He got just enough into her. He felt her little handhold on his mind first slip, then fall away. Her hands did the same. She stared at him with shocked, floating eyes.

Crow patted her shoulder. “We're going for a ride, Abra. You're going to meet exciting new people.”

Incredibly, she managed a smile. A rather frightening one for a girl so young that with her hair piled up under a cap, she could still have passed for a boy. “Those monsters you call your friends are all dead. Theyyy . . .”

The last word was only an unwinding slur as her eyes rolled up and her knees came unhinged. Crow was tempted to let her drop—it would serve her too right—but restrained the impulse and caught her under the arms instead. She was valuable property, after all.

True
property.

He had come in through the rear door, snapping back the next-to-useless spring lock with a single downward flick of Henry Rothman's American Express Platinum Card, but he had no intention of leaving that way. There was nothing but a high fence at the foot of the sloping backyard, and beyond that a river. Also, his transportation was in the other direction. He carried Abra through the kitchen and into the empty garage. Both parents at work, maybe . . . unless they were out at Cloud Gap, gloating over Andi, Billy, and Nut. For now he didn't give much of a shit about that end of things; whoever had been helping the girl could wait. Their time would come.

He slid her limp body under a table holding her father's few tools. Then he thumbed the button that opened the garage door and stepped out, being sure to slap on that big old Henry Rothman smile before he did. The key to survival in the world of rubes was to look as if you belonged, as if you were always on the goodfoot, and no one was better at it than Crow. He walked briskly down to the truck and moved the geezer again, this time to the middle of the bench seat. As Crow turned in to the Stone driveway, Billy's head lolled against his shoulder.

“Gettin a little chummy there, aren't you, oldtimer?” Crow asked, and laughed as he drove the red truck into the garage. His friends were dead and this situation was horribly dangerous, but there was one big compensation: he felt totally alive and aware for the first time in a great many years, the world bursting with color and humming like a powerline. He had her, by God. In spite of all her weird strength and nasty tricks, he had her. Now he would bring her to Rose. A love offering.

“Jackpot,” he said, and gave the dashboard one hard, exultant hit.