Doctor Sleep (62 page)

Billy shrugged. “I seen worse.”

In his wandering years, Dan had, too. Deenie's apartment in Wilmington, for instance.

He pointed left. “There were a bunch of bars down that way. One was called the Broken Drum. Looks like urban renewal missed this side of town, so maybe it's still there. When my father and I walked past it, he'd always stop and look in the window, and I could feel how thirsty he was to go inside. So thirsty it made
me
thirsty. I drank a lot of years to quench that thirst, but it never really goes away. My dad knew that, even then.”

“But you loved him, I guess.”

“I did.” Still looking at that shambling, rundown apartment house. Not much, but Dan couldn't help wondering how different their lives might have been if they had stayed there. If the Overlook had not ensnared them. “He was good and bad and I loved both sides of him. God help me, I guess I still do.”

“You and most kids,” Billy said. “You love your folks and hope for the best. What else can you do? Come on, Dan. If we're gonna do this, we have to go.”

Half an hour later, Boulder was behind them and they were climbing into the Rockies.

Although sunset was approaching—in New Hampshire, at least—Abra was still on the back stoop, looking down at the river. Hoppy was sitting nearby, on the lid of the composter. Lucy and David came out and sat on either side of her. John Dalton watched them from the kitchen, holding a cold cup of coffee. His black bag was on the counter, but there was nothing in it he could use this evening.

“You should come in and have some supper,” Lucy said, knowing that Abra wouldn't—probably couldn't—until this was over. But you clung to the known. Because everything looked normal, and because the danger was over a thousand miles away, that was easier for her than for her daughter. Although Abra's complexion had previously been clear—as unblemished as when she was an infant—she now had nests of acne around the wings of her nose and an ugly cluster of pimples on her chin. Just hormones kicking in, heralding the onset of true adolescence: so Lucy would have liked to believe, because that was normal. But stress caused acne, too. Then there was the pallor of her daughter's skin and the dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked almost as ill as Dan did when Lucy had last seen him, climbing with painful slowness into Mr. Freeman's pickup truck.

“Can't eat now, Mom. No time. I probably couldn't keep it down, anyway.”

“How soon before this happens, Abby?” David asked.

She looked at neither of them. She looked fixedly down at the river, but Lucy knew she wasn't really looking at that, either. She was far away, in a place where none of them could help her. “Not long. You should each give me a kiss and then go inside.”

“But—” Lucy began, then saw David shake his head at her. Only once, but very firmly. She sighed, took one of Abra's hands (how cold it was), and planted a kiss on her left cheek. David put one on her right.

Lucy: “Remember what Dan said. If things go wrong—”

“You should go in now, guys. When it starts, I'm going to take Hoppy and put him in my lap. When you see that, you can't interrupt me. Not for
anything
. You could get Uncle Dan killed, and maybe Billy, too. I might fall over, like in a faint, but it won't be a faint, so don't move me and don't let Dr. John move me, either. Just let me be until it's over. I think Dan knows a place where we can be together.”

David said, “I don't understand how this can possibly work. That woman, Rose, will see there's no little girl—”

“You need to go in
now,
” Abra said.

They did as she said. Lucy looked pleadingly at John; he could only shrug and shake his head. The three of them stood at the kitchen window, arms around one another, looking out at the little girl sitting on the stoop with her arms clasped around her knees. There was no danger to be seen; all was placid. But when Lucy saw Abra—her little girl—reach for Hoppy and take the old stuffed rabbit on her lap, she groaned. John squeezed her shoulder. David tightened the arm around her waist, and she gripped his hand with panicky tightness.

Please let my daughter be all right. If something has to happen . . . something bad . . . let it happen to the half brother I never knew. Not to her.

“It'll be okay,” Dave said.

She nodded. “Of course it will. Of course it will.”

They watched the girl on the stoop. Lucy understood that if she
did
call to Abra, she wouldn't answer. Abra was gone.

Billy and Dan reached the turnoff to the True's Colorado base of operations at twenty to four, Mountain Time, which put them comfortably ahead of schedule. There was a wooden ranch-style arch over the paved road with WELCOME TO THE BLUEBELL CAMPGROUND! STAY AWHILE, PARTNER! carved into it. The sign beside the road was a lot less welcoming:
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
.

Billy drove past without slowing, but his eyes were busy. “Don't see nobody. Not even on the lawns, although I suppose they coulda stashed someone in that welcome-hut doohickey. Jesus, Danny, you look just awful.”

“Lucky for me the Mr. America competition isn't until later this year,” Dan said. “One mile up, maybe a little less. The sign says Scenic Turnout and Picnic Area.”

“What if they posted someone there?”

“They haven't.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because neither Abra nor her uncle Billy could possibly know about it, never having been here. And the True doesn't know about me.”

“You better hope they don't.”

“Abra says everyone's where they're supposed to be. She's been checking. Now be quiet a minute, Billy. I need to think.”

It was Hallorann he wanted to think about. For several years following their haunted winter at the Overlook, Danny Torrance and Dick Hallorann had talked a lot. Sometimes face-to-face, more often mind-to-mind. Danny loved his mother, but there were things she didn't—couldn't—understand. About the lockboxes, for instance. The ones where you put the dangerous things that the shining sometimes attracted. Not that the lockbox thing always worked. On several occasions he had tried to make one for the drinking, but that effort had been an abject failure (perhaps
because he had
wanted
it to be a failure). Mrs. Massey, though . . . and Horace Derwent . . .

There was a third lockbox in storage now, but it wasn't as good as the ones he'd made as a kid. Because he wasn't as strong? Because what it held was different from the revenants that had been unwise enough to seek him out? Both? He didn't know. He only knew that it was leaky. When he opened it, what was inside might kill him. But—

“What do you mean?” Billy asked.

“Huh?” Dan looked around. One hand was pressed to his stomach. It hurt very badly now.

“You just said, ‘There isn't any choice.' What did you mean?”

“Never mind.” They had reached the picnic area, and Billy was turning in. Up ahead was a clearing with picnic benches and barbecue pits. To Dan, it looked like Cloud Gap without the river. “Just . . . if things go wrong, get in your truck and drive like hell.”

“You think that would help?”

Dan didn't reply. His gut was burning, burning.

Shortly before four o'clock on that Monday afternoon in late September, Rose walked up to Roof O' the World with Silent Sarey.

Rose was dressed in form-fitting jeans that accentuated her long and shapely legs. Although it was chilly, Silent Sarey wore only a housedress of unremarkable light blue that fluttered around stout calves clad in Jobst support stockings. Rose stopped to look at a plaque which had been bolted to a granite post at the base of the three dozen or so stairs leading up to the lookout platform. It announced that this was the site of the historic Overlook Hotel, which had burned to the ground some thirty-five years ago.

“Very strong feelings here, Sarey.”

Sarey nodded.

“You know there are hot springs where steam comes right out of the ground, don't you?”

“Lup.”

“This is like that.” Rose bent down to sniff at the grass and wildflowers. Below their aromas was the iron smell of ancient blood. “Strong emotions—hatred, fear, prejudice, lust. The echo of murder. Not food—too old—but refreshing, all the same. A heady bouquet.”

Sarey said nothing, but watched Rose closely.

“And
this
thing.” Rose waved a hand at the steep wooden stairs leading up to the platform. “Looks like a gallows, don't you think? All it needs is a trapdoor.”

Nothing from Sarey. Out loud, at least. Her thought

(
no rope
)

was clear enough.

“That's true, my love, but one of us is going to hang here, just the same. Either me or the little bitch with her nose in our business. See that?” Rose pointed to a small green shed about twenty feet away.

Sarey nodded.

Rose was wearing a zipper pack on her belt. She opened it, rummaged, brought out a key, and handed it to the other woman. Sarey walked to the shed, grass whickering against her thick flesh-colored hose. The key fitted a padlock on the door. When she pulled the door open, late-day sunshine illuminated an enclosure not much bigger than a privy. There was a Lawn-Boy and a plastic bucket holding a hand-sickle and a rake. A spade and a pickax leaned against the back wall. There was nothing else, and nothing to hide behind.

“Go on in,” Rose said. “Let's see what you can do.”
And with all that steam inside you, you should be able to amaze me
.

Like other members of the True Knot, Silent Sarey had her little talent.

She stepped into the little shed, sniffed, and said: “Dusty.”

“Never mind the dust. Let's see you do your thing. Or rather, let's
not
see you.”

For that was Sarey's talent. She wasn't capable of invisibility
(none of them was), but she could create a kind of
dimness
that went very well with her unremarkable face and figure. She turned to Rose, then looked down at her shadow. She moved—not much, only half a step—and her shadow merged with the one thrown by the handle of the Lawn-Boy. Then she became perfectly still, and the shed was empty.

Rose squeezed her eyes shut, then popped them wide open, and there was Sarey, standing beside the mower with her hands folded demurely at her waist like a shy girl hoping some boy at the party will ask her to dance. Rose looked away at the mountains, and when she looked back again the shed was empty—just a tiny storage room with nowhere to hide. In the strong sunlight there wasn't even a shadow. Except for the one thrown by the mower's handle, that was. Only . . .

“Pull your elbow in,” Rose said. “I see it. Just a little.”

Silent Sarey did as she was told and for a moment she was truly gone, at least until Rose concentrated. When she did that, Sarey was there again. But of course she knew Sarey was there. When the time came—and it wouldn't be long—the bitchgirl wouldn't.

“Good, Sarey!” she said warmly (or as warmly as she could manage). “Perhaps I won't need you. If I do, you'll use the sickle. And think of Andi when you do. All right?”

At the mention of Andi's name, Sarey's lips turned down in a moue of unhappiness. She stared at the sickle in the plastic bucket and nodded.

Rose walked over and took the padlock. “I'm going to lock you in now. The bitchgirl will read the ones in the Lodge, but she won't read you. I'm sure of it. Because you're the quiet one, aren't you?”

Sarey nodded again. She was the quiet one, always had been.

(
what about the
)

Rose smiled. “The lock? Don't you worry about that. Just worry about being still. Still and silent. Do you understand me?”

“Lup.”

“And you understand about the sickle?” Rose would not have trusted Sarey with a gun even if the True had one.

“Sicka. Lup.”

“If I get the better of her—and as full of steam as I am right now, that should be no problem—you'll stay right where you are until I let you out. But if you hear me shout . . . let's see . . . if you hear me shout
don't make me punish you,
that means I need help. I'll make sure that her back is turned. You know what happens then, don't you?”

(
I'll climb the stairs and
)

But Rose was shaking her head. “No, Sarey. You won't need to. She's never going to get near the platform up there.”

She would hate to lose the steam even more than she would hate losing the opportunity to kill the bitchgirl herself . . . after making her suffer, and at length. But she mustn't throw caution to the winds. The girl
was
very strong.

“What will you listen for, Sarey?”

“Don't make me punish lu.”

“And what will you be thinking of?”

The eyes, half-hidden by the shaggy bangs, gleamed. “Levenge.”

“That's right. Revenge for Andi, murdered by that bitchgirl's friends. But not unless I need you, because I want to do this myself.” Rose's hands clenched, her nails digging into deep, blood-crusted crescents they had already made in her palms. “But if I need you,
you come
. Don't hesitate or stop for anything. Don't stop until you've put that sickle blade in her neck and see the end of it come out of her fucking throat.”

Sarey's eyes gleamed. “Lup.”

“Good.” Rose kissed her, then shut the door and snapped the padlock closed. She put the key in her zipper pack and leaned against the door. “Listen to me, sweetheart. If all goes well, you'll get the first steam. I promise. And it will be the best you ever had.”