Doctor Sleep (28 page)

I could do that now.

“Shut up, Abba-Doo,” she said in a low, strained voice. “Shut up, Abba-Doo-Doo.”

She opened
Early Algebra
to tonight's homework page, which she
had bookmarked with a sheet on which she had written the names Boyd, Steve, Cam, and Pete at least twenty times each. Collectively they were 'Round Here, her favorite boy band.
So
hot, especially Cam. Her best friend, Emma Deane, thought so, too. Those blue eyes, that careless tumble of blond hair.

Maybe I could help. His parents would be sad, but at least they'd
know.

“Shut up, Abba-Doo. Shut up, Abba-Doo-Doo-For-Brains.”

If 5x - 4 = 26, what does x equal?

“Sixty zillion!” she said. “Who cares?”

Her eyes fell on the names of the cute boys in 'Round Here, written in the pudgy cursive she and Emma affected (“Writing looks more romantic that way,” Emma had decreed), and all at once they looked stupid and babyish and all wrong.
They cut him up and licked his blood and then they did something even worse to him
. In a world where something like that could happen, mooning over a boy band seemed worse than wrong.

Abra slammed her book shut, went downstairs (the
click-click-click
from her dad's study continued unabated) and out to the garage. She retrieved the
Shopper
from the trash, brought it up to her room, and smoothed it flat on her desk.

All those faces, but right now she cared about only one.

Her heart was thumping hard-hard-hard. She had been scared before when she consciously tried to far-see or thought-read, but never scared like this. Never even close.

What are you going to do if you find out?

That was a question for later, because she might not be able to. A sneaking, cowardly part of her mind hoped for that.

Abra put the first two fingers of her left hand on the picture of Bradley Trevor because her left hand was the one that saw better. She would have liked to get all her fingers on it (and if it had been an object, she would have held it), but the picture was too small.
Once her fingers were on it she couldn't even see it anymore. Except she could. She saw it very well.

Blue eyes, like Cam Knowles's in 'Round Here. You couldn't tell from the picture, but they were that same deep shade. She
knew
.

Right-handed, like me. But left-handed like me, too. It was the left hand that knew what pitch was coming next, fastball or curveb—

Abra gave a little gasp. The baseball boy had
known
things.

The baseball boy really had been like her.

Yes, that's right. That's why they took him
.

She closed her eyes and saw his face. Bradley Trevor. Brad, to his friends. The baseball boy. Sometimes he turned his cap around because that way it was a rally cap. His father was a farmer. His mother cooked pies and sold them at a local restaurant, also at the family farmstand. When his big brother went away to college, Brad took all his AC/DC discs. He and his best friend, Al, especially liked the song “Big Balls.” They'd sit on Brad's bed and sing it together and laugh and laugh.

He walked through the corn and a man was waiting for him. Brad thought he was a nice man, one of the good guys, because the man—

“Barry,” Abra whispered in a low voice. Behind her closed lids, her eyes moved rapidly back and forth like those of a sleeper in the grip of a vivid dream. “His name was Barry the Chunk. He fooled you, Brad. Didn't he?”

But not just Barry. If it had been just him, Brad might have known. It had to be all of the Flashlight People working together, sending the same thought: that it would be okay to get into Barry the Chunk's truck or camper-van or whatever it was, because Barry was good. One of the good guys. A friend.

And they took him . . .

Abra went deeper. She didn't bother with what Brad had seen because he hadn't seen anything but a gray rug. He was tied up with tape and lying facedown on the floor of whatever Barry the Chunk was driving. That was okay, though. Now that she was tuned in, she could see wider than him. She could see—

His glove. A Wilson baseball glove. And Barry the Chunk—

Then that part flew away. It might swoop back or it might not.

It was night. She could smell manure. There was a factory. Some kind of

(
it's busted  
)

factory. There was a whole line of vehicles going there, some small, most big, a couple of them enormous. The headlights were off in case someone was looking, but there was a three-quarters moon in the sky. Enough light to see by. They went down a potholed and bumpy tar road, they went past a water tower, they went past a shed with a broken roof, they went through a rusty gate that was standing open, they went past a sign. It went by so fast she couldn't read it. Then the factory. A busted factory with busted smokestacks and busted windows. There was another sign and thanks to the moonlight this one she
could
read: NO TRESPASSING BY ORDER OF THE CANTON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPT.

They were going around the back, and when they got there they were going to hurt Brad the baseball boy and go on hurting him until he was dead. Abra didn't want to see that part so she made everything go backwards. That was a little hard, like opening a jar with a really tight cap, but she could do it. When she got back where she wanted, she let go.

Barry the Chunk liked that glove because it reminded him of when he was a little boy. That's why he tried it on. Tried it on and smelled the oil Brad used to keep it from getting stiff and bopped his fist in the pocket a few ti—

But now things were reeling forward and she forgot about Brad's baseball glove again.

Water tower. Shed with broken roof. Rusty gate. And then the first sign. What did it say?

Nope. Still too quick, even with the moonlight. She rewound again (now beads of sweat were standing out on her forehead) and let go. Water tower. Shed with broken roof.
Get ready, here it comes
. Rusty gate. Then the sign. This time she could read it, although she wasn't sure she understood it.

Abra grabbed the sheet of notepaper on which she had curlicued
all those stupid boy names and turned it over. Quickly, before she forgot, she scrawled down everything she had seen on that sign: ORGANIC INDUSTRIES and ETHANOL PLANT #4 and FREEMAN, IOWA and CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Okay, now she knew where they had killed him, and where—she was sure—they had buried him, baseball glove and all. What next? If she called the number for Missing and Exploited Children, they would hear a little kid's voice and pay no attention . . . except maybe to give her telephone number to the police, who would probably have her arrested for trying to prank on people who were already sad and unhappy. She thought of her mother next, but with Momo sick and getting ready to die, it was out of the question. Mom had enough to worry about without this.

Abra got up, went to the window, and stared out at her street, at the Lickety-Split convenience store on the corner (which the older kids called the Lickety-Spliff, because of all the dope that got smoked behind it, where the Dumpsters were), and the White Mountains poking up at a clear blue late summer sky. She had begun to rub her mouth, an anxiety tic her parents were trying to break her of, but they weren't here, so boo on that. Boo all
over
that.

Dad's right downstairs.

She didn't want to tell him, either. Not because he had to finish his book, but because he wouldn't want to get involved in something like this even if he believed her. Abra didn't have to read his mind to know that.

So who?

Before she could think of the logical answer, the world beyond her window began to turn, as if it were mounted on a gigantic disc. A low cry escaped her and she clutched at the sides of the window, bunching the curtains in her fists. This had happened before, always without warning, and she was terrified each time it did, because it was like having a seizure. She was no longer in her own body, she was far-
being
instead of far-
seeing,
and what if she couldn't get back?

The turntable slowed, then stopped. Now instead of being in her bedroom, she was in a supermarket. She knew because ahead
of her was the meat counter. Over it (this sign easy to read, thanks to bright fluorescents) was a promise:
AT SAM'S, EVERY CUT IS A BLUE RIBBON
COWBOY
CUT!
For a moment or two the meat counter drew closer because the turntable had slid her into someone who was walking. Walking and
shopping
. Barry the Chunk? No, not him, although Barry was near; Barry was how she had
gotten
here. Only she had been drawn away from him by someone much more powerful. Abra could see a cart loaded with groceries at the bottom of her vision. Then the forward movement stopped and there was this sensation, this

(
rummaging prying
)

crazy feeling of someone INSIDE HER, and Abra suddenly understood that for once she wasn't alone on the turntable. She was looking toward a meat counter at the end of a supermarket aisle, and the other person was looking out her window at Richland Court and the White Mountains beyond.

Panic exploded inside her; it was as if gasoline had been poured on a fire. Not a sound escaped her lips, which were pressed together so tightly that her mouth was only a stitch, but inside her head she produced a scream louder than anything of which she would ever have believed herself capable:

(
NO! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
)

When David felt the house rumble and saw the overhead light fixture in his study swaying on its chain, his first thought was

(
Abra
)

that his daughter had had one of her psychic outbursts, though there hadn't been any of that telekinetic crap in years, and never anything like this. As things settled back to normal, his second—and, to his mind, far more reasonable—thought was that he had just experienced his first New Hampshire earthquake. He knew they happened from time to time, but . . . wow!

He got up from his desk (not neglecting to hit SAVE before he did), and ran into the hall. From the foot of the stairs he called, “Abra! Did you feel that?”

She came out of her room, looking pale and a little scared. “Yeah, sorta. I . . . I think I . . .”

“It was an earthquake!” David told her, beaming. “Your first earthquake! Isn't that neat?”

“Yes,” Abra said, not sounding very thrilled. “Neat.”

He looked out the living room window and saw people standing on their stoops and lawns. His good friend Matt Renfrew was among them. “I'm gonna go across the street and talk to Matt, hon. You want to come with?”

“I guess I better finish my math.”

David started toward the front door, then turned to look up at her. “You're not scared, are you? You don't have to be. It's over.”

Abra only wished it was.

Rose the Hat was doing a double shop, because Grampa Flick was feeling poorly again. She saw a few other members of the True in Sam's, and nodded to them. She stopped awhile in canned goods to talk to Barry the Chink, who had his wife's list in one hand. Barry was concerned about Flick.

“He'll bounce back,” Rose said. “You know Grampa.”

Barry grinned. “Tougher'n a boiled owl.”

Rose nodded and got her cart rolling again. “You bet he is.”

Just an ordinary weekday afternoon at the supermarket, and as she took her leave of Barry, she at first mistook what was happening to her for something mundane, maybe low sugar. She was prone to sugar crashes, and usually kept a candybar in her purse. Then she realized someone was inside her head. Someone was
looking
.

Rose had not risen to her position as head of the True Knot
by being indecisive. She halted with her cart pointed toward the meat counter (her planned next stop) and immediately leaped into the conduit some nosy and potentially dangerous person had established. Not a member of the True, she would have known any one of them immediately, but not an ordinary rube, either.

No, this was far from ordinary.

The market swung away and suddenly she was looking out at a mountain range. Not the Rockies, she would have recognized those. These were smaller. The Catskills? The Adirondacks? It could have been either, or some other. As for the looker . . . Rose thought it was a child. Almost certainly a girl, and one she had encountered before.

I have to see what she looks like, then I can find her anytime I want to. I have to get her to look in a mir—

But then a thought as loud as a shotgun blast in a closed room

(
NO! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
)

wiped her mind clean and sent her staggering against shelves of canned soups and vegetables. They went cascading to the floor, rolling everywhere. For a moment or two Rose thought she was going to follow them, swooning like the dewy heroine of a romance novel. Then she was back. The girl had broken the connection, and in rather spectacular fashion.

Was her nose bleeding? She wiped it with her fingers and checked. No. Good.

One of the stockboys came rushing up. “Are you okay, ma'am?”

“Fine. Just felt a little faint for a second or two. Probably from the tooth extraction I had yesterday. It's passed off now. I've made a mess, haven't I? Sorry. Good thing it was cans instead of bottles.”

“No problem, no problem at all. Would you like to come up front and sit down on the taxi bench?”

“That won't be necessary,” Rose said. And it wasn't, but she was done shopping for the day. She rolled her cart two aisles over and left it there.

She had brought her Tacoma (old but reliable) down from the high-country campground west of Sidewinder, and once she was in the cab, she pulled her phone out of her purse and hit speed dial. It rang at the other end just a single time.