Doctor Sleep (52 page)

Was this another warning, or just a maddening mnemonic brought on by stress and guilt? Because he
did
feel guilty. John was right, Abra was going to be a True target no matter what, but feelings were invulnerable to rational thought. It had been his plan, the plan had gone wrong, and he was on the hook.

You will remember what was forgotten
.

Was it the voice of his old friend, trying to tell him something about their current situation, or just the gramophone?

Dave and John went back to the Stone house together. Dan followed in his own car, delighted to be alone with his thoughts. Not that it seemed to help. He was almost positive there was something there, something
real,
but it wouldn't come. He even tried to summon Tony, a thing he hadn't attempted since his teenage years, and had no luck.

Billy's truck was no longer parked on Richland Court. To Dan, that made sense. The True Knot raiding party had come in the
Winnebago. If they dropped the Crow off in Anniston, he would have been on foot and in need of a vehicle.

The garage was open. Dave got out of John's car before it pulled completely to a stop and ran inside, calling Abra's name. Then, spotlighted in the headlights of John's Suburban like an actor on a stage, he lifted something up and uttered a sound somewhere between a groan and a scream. As Dan pulled up next to the Suburban, he saw what it was: Abra's backpack.

The urge to drink came on Dan then, even stronger than the night he'd called John from the parking lot of the cowboy-boogie bar, stronger than in all the years since he'd picked up a white chip at his first meeting. The urge to simply reverse down the driveway, ignoring their shouts, and drive back to Frazier. There was a bar there called the Bull Moose. He'd been past it many times, always with the recovered drunk's reflexive speculations—what was it like inside? What was on draft? What kind of music was on the juke? What whiskey was on the shelf and what kind in the well? Were there any good-looking ladies? And what would that first drink taste like? Would it taste like home? Like finally coming home? He could answer at least some of those questions before Dave Stone called the cops and the cops took him in for questioning in the matter of a certain little girl's disappearance.

A time will come,
Casey had told him in those early white-knuckle days,
when your mental defenses will fail and the only thing left standing between you and a drink will be your Higher Power
.

Dan had no problem with the Higher Power thing, because he had a bit of inside information. God remained an unproven hypothesis, but he knew there really was another plane of existence. Like Abra, Dan had seen the ghostie people. So sure, God was possible. Given his glimpses of the world beyond the world, Dan thought it even likely . . . although what kind of God only sat by while shit like this played out?

As if you're the first one to ask that question,
he thought.

Casey Kingsley had told him to get down on his knees twice a day, asking for help in the morning and saying thanks at night.
It's
the first three steps
:
I can't, God can, I think I'll let Him. Don't think too much about it.

To newcomers reluctant to take this advice, Casey was wont to offer a story about the film director John Waters. In one of his early movies,
Pink Flamingos,
Waters's drag-queen star, Divine, had eaten a bit of dog excrement off a suburban lawn. Years later, Waters was still being asked about that glorious moment of cinematic history. Finally he snapped. “It was just a
little
piece of dogshit,” he told a reporter, “and it made her a star.”

So get down on your knees and ask for help even if you don't like it,
Casey always finished.
After all, it's just a
little
piece of dogshit
.

Dan couldn't very well get on his knees behind the steering wheel of his car, but he assumed the automatic default position of his morning and nightly prayers—eyes closed and one palm pressed against his lips, as if to keep out even a trickle of the seductive poison that had scarred twenty years of his life.

God, help me not to dri
—

He got that far and the light broke.

It was what Dave had said on their way to Cloud Gap. It was Abra's angry smile (Dan wondered if the Crow had seen that smile yet, and what he made of it, if so). Most of all, it was the feel of his own skin, pressing his lips back against his teeth.

“Oh my God,” he whispered. He got out of the car and his legs gave way. He fell on his knees after all, but got up and ran into the garage, where the two men were standing and looking at Abra's abandoned pack.

He grabbed Dave Stone's shoulder. “Call your wife. Tell her you're coming to see her.”

“She'll want to know what it's about,” Dave said. It was clear from his quivering mouth and downcast eyes how little he wanted to have that conversation. “She's staying at Chetta's apartment. I'll tell her . . . Christ, I don't know what I'll tell her.”

Dan gripped tighter, increasing the pressure until the lowered eyes came up and met his. “We're all going to Boston, but John and I have other business to take care of there.”

“What other business? I don't understand.”

Dan did. Not everything, but a lot.

They took John's Suburban. Dave rode shotgun. Dan lay in the back with his head on an armrest and his feet on the floor.

“Lucy kept trying to get me to tell her what it was about,” Dave said. “She told me I was scaring her. And of course she thought it was Abra, because she's got a little of what Abra's got. I've always known it. I told her Abby was staying the night at Emma's house. Do you know how many times I've lied to my wife in the years we've been married? I could count them on one hand, and three of them would be about how much I lost in the Thursday night poker games the head of my department runs. Nothing like this. And in just three hours, I'm going to have to eat it.”

Of course Dan and John knew what he'd said about Abra, and how upset Lucy had been at her husband's continued insistence that the matter was too important and complex to go into on the telephone. They had both been in the kitchen when he made the call. But he needed to talk. To
share,
in AA-speak. John took care of any responses that needed to be made, saying
uh-huh
and
I know
and
I understand
.

At some point, Dave broke off and looked into the backseat. “Jesus God, are you
sleeping
?”

“No,” Dan said without opening his eyes. “I'm trying to get in touch with your daughter.”

That ended Dave's monologue. Now there was only the hum of the tires as the Suburban ran south on Route 16 through a dozen little towns. Traffic was light and John kept the speedometer pegged at a steady sixty miles an hour once the two lanes broadened to four.

Dan made no effort to call Abra; he wasn't sure that would work. Instead he tried to open his mind completely. To turn himself into a listening post. He had never attempted anything like this
before, and the result was eerie. It was like wearing the world's most powerful set of headphones. He seemed to hear a steady low rushing sound, and believed it was the hum of human thoughts. He held himself ready to hear her voice somewhere in that steady surf, not really expecting it, but what else could he do?

It was shortly after they went through the first tolls on the Spaulding Turnpike, now only sixty miles from Boston, that he finally picked her up.

(
Dan
)

Low. Barely there. At first he thought it was just imagination—wish fulfillment—but he turned in that direction anyway, trying to narrow his concentration down to a single searchlight beam. And it came again, a bit louder this time. It was real. It was
her
.

(
Dan, please!
)

She was drugged, all right, and he'd never tried anything remotely like what had to be done next . . . but Abra had. She would have to show him the way, doped up or not.

(
Abra push you have to help me
)

(
help what help how
)

(
swapsies
)

(
???
)

(
help me turn the world
)

Dave was in the passenger seat, going through the change in the cup holder for the next toll, when Dan spoke from behind him. Only it most certainly wasn't Dan.

“Just give me another minute, I have to change my tampon!”

The Suburban swerved as John sat up straight and jerked the wheel. “What the
hell
?”

Dave unsnapped his seatbelt and got on his knees, twisting around to peer at the man lying on the backseat. Dan's eyes were half-lidded, but when Dave spoke Abra's name, they opened.

“No, Daddy, not now, I have to help . . . I have to try . . .” Dan's body twisted. One hand came up, wiped his mouth in a gesture Dave had seen a thousand times, then fell away. “Tell him I said not to call me that. Tell him—”

Dan's head cocked sideways until it was lying on his shoulder. He groaned. His hands twitched aimlessly.

“What's going on?” John shouted. “What do I do?”

“I don't know,” Dave said. He reached between the seats, took one of the twitching hands, and held it tight.

“Drive,” Dan said. “Just drive.”

Then the body on the backseat began to buck and twist. Abra began to scream with Dan's voice.

He found the conduit between them by following the sluggish current of her thoughts. He saw the stone wheel because Abra was visualizing it, but she was far too weak and disoriented to turn it. She was using all the mental force she could muster just to keep her end of the link open. So he could enter her mind and she could enter his. But he was still mostly in the Suburban, with the lights of the cars headed in the other direction running across the padded roof. Light . . . dark . . . light . . . dark.

The wheel was so heavy.

There was a sudden hammering from somewhere, and a voice. “Come out, Abra. Time's up. We have to roll.”

That frightened her, and she found a little extra strength. The wheel began to move, pulling him deeper into the umbilicus that connected them. It was the strangest sensation Dan had ever had in his life, exhilarating even in the horror of the situation.

Somewhere, distant, he heard Abra say, “Just give me another minute, I have to change my tampon!”

The roof of John's Suburban was sliding away.
Turning
away. There was darkness, the sense of being in a tunnel, and he had time
to think,
If I get lost in here, I'll never be able to get back. I'll wind up in a mental hospital somewhere, labeled a hopeless catatonic.

But then the world was sliding back into place, only it wasn't the same place. The Suburban was gone. He was in a smelly bathroom with dingy blue tiles on the floor and a sign beside the washbasin reading SORRY COLD WATER ONLY. He was sitting on the toilet.

Before he could even think about getting up, the door bammed open hard enough to crack some of the old tiles, and a man strode in. He looked about thirty-five, his hair dead black and combed away from his forehead, his face angular but handsome in a rough-hewn, bony way. In one hand he held a pistol.

“Change your tampon, sure,” he said. “Where'd you have it, Goldilocks, in your pants pocket? Must have been, because your backpack's a long way from here.”

(
tell him I said not to call me that
)

Dan said, “I told you not to call me that.”

Crow paused, looking at the girl sitting on the toilet seat, swaying a little from side to side. Swaying because of the dope. Sure. But what about the way she sounded? Was
that
because of the dope?

“What happened to your voice? You don't sound like yourself.”

Dan tried to shrug the girl's shoulders and only succeeded in twitching one of them. Crow grabbed Abra's arm and yanked Dan to Abra's feet. It hurt, and he cried out.

Somewhere—miles from here—a faint voice shouted,
What's going on? What do I do?

“Drive,” he told John as Crow pulled him out the door. “Just drive.”

“Oh, I'll drive, all right,” Crow said, and muscled Abra into the truck next to the snoring Billy Freeman. Then he grabbed a sheaf of her hair, wound it in his fist, and pulled. Dan screamed with Abra's voice, knowing it wasn't
quite
her voice. Almost, but not quite. Crow heard the difference, but didn't know what it was. The hat woman would have; it was the hat woman who had unwittingly shown Abra this mindswap trick.

“But before we get rolling, we're going to have an understanding. No more lies, that's the understanding. The next time you lie to your Daddy, this old geezer snoring beside me is dead meat. I won't use the dope, either. I'll pull in at a camp road and put a bullet in his belly. That way it takes awhile. You'll get to listen to him scream. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Dan whispered.

“Little girl, I fucking hope so, because I don't chew my cabbage twice.”

Crow slammed the door and walked quickly around to the driver's side. Dan closed Abra's eyes. He was thinking about the spoons at the birthday party. About opening and shutting drawers—that, too. Abra was too physically weak to grapple with the man now getting behind the wheel and starting the engine, but part of her was strong. If he could find that part . . . the part that had moved the spoons and opened drawers and played air-music . . . the part that had written on his blackboard from miles away . . . if he could find it and then take control of it . . .