Doctor Sleep (60 page)

Dave took Lucy's hand. “I think this has to be done.”

There was silence in the room. Abra was the one who broke it. “If nobody's going to eat that last slice, I am. I'm
starving
.”

They went over it several more times, and at a couple of points voices were raised, but essentially, everything had been said. Except, it turned out, for one thing. When they left the room, Billy refused to get into John's Suburban.

“I'm goin,” he told Dan.

“Billy, I appreciate the thought, but it's not a good idea.”

“My truck, my rules. Besides, are you really gonna make the Colorado high country by Monday afternoon on your own? Don't make me laugh. You look like shit on a stick.”

Dan said, “Several people have told me that lately, but none have put it so elegantly.”

Billy didn't smile. “I can help you. I'm old, but I ain't dead.”

“Take him,” Abra said. “He's right.”

Dan looked at her closely.

(
do you know something Abra
)

The reply was quick.

(
no
feel
something
)

That was good enough for Dan. He held out his arms and Abra hugged him hard, the side of her face pressed against his chest. Dan could have held her like that for a long time, but he let her go and stepped back.

(
let me know when you get close Uncle Dan I'll come
)

(
just little touches remember
)

She sent an image instead of a thought in words: a smoke detector beeping the way they did when they wanted a battery change. She remembered perfectly.

As she went to the car, Abra said to her father, “We need to stop on the way back for a get-well card. Julie Cross broke her wrist yesterday in soccer practice.”

He frowned at her. “How do you know that?”

“I know,” she said.

He gently pulled one of her pigtails. “You really could do it all along, couldn't you? I don't understand why you didn't just tell us, Abba-Doo.”

Dan, who had grown up with the shining, could have answered that question.

Sometimes parents needed to be protected.

So they parted. John's SUV went east and Billy's pickup truck went west, with Billy behind the wheel. Dan said, “Are you really okay to drive, Billy?”

“After all the sleep I got last night? Sweetheart, I could drive to California.”

“Do you know where we're going?”

“I bought a road atlas in town while I was waitin for the pizza.”

“So you'd made up your mind even then. And you knew what Abra and I were planning.”

“Well . . . sorta.”

“When you need me to take over, just yell,” Dan said, and promptly fell asleep with his head against the passenger window. He descended through a deepening depth of unpleasant images. First the hedge animals at the Overlook, the ones that moved when you weren't looking. This was followed by Mrs. Massey from Room 217, who now wore a cocked tophat. Still descending, he revisited the battle at Cloud Gap. Only this time when he burst into the Winnebago, he found Abra lying on the floor with her throat cut and Rose standing over her with a dripping straight razor. Rose saw Dan and the bottom half of her face dropped away in an obscene grin where one long tooth gleamed.
I told her it would end this way but she wouldn't listen,
she said.
Children so rarely do
.

Below this there was only darkness.

When he woke it was to twilight with a broken white line running down the middle of it. They were on an interstate highway.

“How long did I sleep?”

Billy glanced at his watch. “A good long while. Feel better?”

“Yes.” He did and didn't. His head was clear, but his stomach hurt like hell. Considering what he had seen that morning in the mirror, he wasn't surprised. “Where are we?”

“Hunnert-n-fifty miles east of Cincinnati, give or take. You slept through two gas stops. And you snore.”

Dan sat up straight. “We're in
Ohio
? Christ! What time is it?”

Billy glanced at his watch. “Quarter past six. Wasn't no big thing; light traffic and no rain. I think we got an angel ridin with us.”

“Well, let's find a motel. You need to sleep and I have to piss like a racehorse.”

“Not surprised.”

Billy pulled off at the next exit showing signs for gas, food, and motels. He pulled into a Wendy's and got a bag of burgers while Dan used the men's. When they got back into the truck, Dan took one bite of his double, put it back in the bag, and sipped cautiously at a coffee milkshake. That his stomach seemed willing to take.

Billy looked shocked. “Man, you gotta eat! What's wrong with you?”

“I guess pizza for breakfast was a bad idea.” And because Billy was still looking at him: “The shake's fine. All I need. Eyes on the road, Billy. We can't help Abra if we're getting patched up in some emergency room.”

Five minutes later, Billy pulled the truck under the canopy of a Fairfield Inn with a blinking ROOMS AVAILABLE sign over the door. He turned off the engine but didn't get out. “Since I'm riskin my life with you, chief, I want to know what ails you.”

Dan almost pointed out that taking the risk had been Billy's idea, not his, but that wasn't fair. He explained. Billy listened in round-eyed silence.

“Jesus jumped-up Christ,” he said when Dan had finished.

“Unless I missed it,” Dan said, “there's nothing in the New
Testament about Jesus jumping. Although I guess He might've, as a child. Most of them do. You want to check us in, or should I do it?”

Billy continued to sit where he was. “Does Abra know?”

Dan shook his head.

“But she could find out.”

“Could but won't. She knows it's wrong to peek, especially when it's someone you care about. She'd no more do it than she'd spy on her parents when they were making love.”

“You know that from when you were a kid?”

“Yes. Sometimes you see a little—you can't help it—but then you turn away.”

“Are you gonna be all right, Danny?”

“For awhile.” He thought of the sluggish flies on his lips and cheeks and forehead. “Long enough.”

“What about after?”

“I'll worry about after after. One day at a time. Let's check in. We need to get an early start.”

“Have you heard from Abra?”

Dan smiled. “She's fine.”

At least so far.

But she wasn't, not really.

She sat at her desk with a half-read copy of
The Fixer
in her hand, trying not to look at her bedroom window, lest she should see a certain someone looking in at her. She knew something was wrong with Dan, and she knew he didn't want her to know what it was, but had been tempted to look anyway, in spite of all the years she'd taught herself to steer clear of APB: adult private business. Two things held her back. One was the knowledge that, like it or not, she couldn't help him with it now. The other (this was stronger) was knowing he might sense her in his head. If so, he would be disappointed in her.

It's probably locked up, anyway,
she thought.
He can do that. He's pretty strong
.

Not as strong as she was, though . . . or, if you put it in terms of the shining, as bright. She could open his mental lockboxes and peer at the things inside, but she thought doing so might be dangerous for both of them. There was no concrete reason for this, it was just a feeling—like the one she'd had about how it would be a good idea for Mr. Freeman to go with Dan—but she trusted it. Besides, maybe it was something that could help them. She could hope for that.
True hope is swift, and flies on swallow's wings
—that was another line from Shakespeare.

Don't you look at that window, either. Don't you dare
.

No. Absolutely not. Never. So she did, and there was Rose, grinning in at her from below her rakishly tilted hat. All billowing hair and pale porcelain skin and dark mad eyes and rich red lips masking that one snaggle tooth. That
tusk
.

You're going to die screaming, bitchgirl
.

Abra closed her eyes and thought hard

(
not there not there not there
)

and opened them again. The grinning face at the window was gone. But not really. Somewhere high in the mountains—at the roof of the world—Rose was thinking about her. And waiting.

The motel had a breakfast buffet. Because his traveling companion was watching him, Dan made a point of eating some cereal and yogurt. Billy looked relieved. While he checked them out, Dan strolled to the lobby men's room. Once inside, he turned the lock, fell to his knees, and vomited up everything he'd eaten. The undigested cereal and yogurt floated in a red foam.

“All right?” Billy asked when Dan rejoined him at the desk.

“Fine,” Dan said. “Let's roll.”

According to Billy's road atlas, it was about twelve hundred miles from Cincinnati to Denver. Sidewinder lay roughly seventy-five miles further west, along roads full of switchbacks and lined with steep drops. Dan tried driving for awhile on that Sunday afternoon, but tired quickly and turned the wheel over to Billy again. He fell asleep, and when he woke up, the sun was going down. They were in Iowa—home of the late Brad Trevor.

(
Abra?
)

He had been afraid distance would make mental communication difficult or even impossible, but she came back promptly, and as strong as ever; if she'd been a radio station, she would have been broadcasting at 100,000 watts. She was in her room, pecking away on her computer at some homework assignment or other. He was both amused and saddened to realize she had Hoppy, her stuffed rabbit, on her lap. The strain of what they were doing had regressed her to a younger Abra, at least on the emotional side.

With the line between them wide open, she caught this.

(
don't worry about me I'm all right
)

(
good because you have a call to make
)

(
yes okay are
you
all right
)

(
fine
)

She knew better but didn't ask, and that was just the way he wanted it.

(
have you got the
)

She made a picture.

(
not yet it's Sunday stores not open
)

Another picture, one that made him smile. A Walmart . . . except the sign out front read ABRA'S SUPERSTORE.

(
they wouldn't sell us what we need we'll find one that will
)

(
okay   I guess
)

(
you know what to say to her?
)

(
yes
)

(
she'll try to suck you into a long conversation try to snoop don't let her
)

(
I won't
)

(
let me hear from you after so I won't worry
)

Of course he would worry plenty.

(
I will I love you Uncle Dan
)

(
love you too
)

He made a kiss. Abra made one back: big red cartoon lips. He could almost feel them on his cheek. Then she was gone.

Billy was staring at him. “You were just talkin to her, weren't you?”

“Indeed I was. Eyes on the road, Billy.”

“Yeah, yeah. You sound like my ex-wife.”

Billy put on his blinker, switched to the passing lane, and rolled past a huge and lumbering Fleetwood Pace Arrow motorhome. Dan stared at it, wondering who was inside and if they were looking out the tinted windows.

“I want to make another hundred or so miles before we quit for the night,” Billy said. “Way I got tomorrow figured, that should give us an hour to do your errand and still put us in the high country about the time you and Abra set for the showdown. But we'll want to get on the road before daybreak.”

“Fine. You understand how this will go?”

“I get how it's
supposed
to go.” Billy glanced at him. “You better hope that if they have binoculars, they don't use them. Do you think we might come back alive? Tell me the truth. If the answer's no, I'm gonna order me the biggest steak dinner you ever saw when we stop for the night. MasterCard can chase my relatives for the last credit card bill, and guess what? I ain't
got
any relatives. Unless you count the ex, and if I was on fire she wouldn't piss on me to put me out.”

“We'll come back,” Dan said, but it sounded pale. He felt too sick to put up much of a front.

“Yeah? Well, maybe I'll have that steak dinner, anyway. What about you?”

“I think I could manage a little soup. As long as it's clear.” The
thought of eating anything too thick to read a newspaper through—tomato bisque, cream of mushroom—made his stomach cringe.

“Okay. Why don't you close your eyes again?”

Dan knew he couldn't sleep deeply, no matter how tired and sick he felt—not while Abra was dealing with the ancient horror that looked like a woman—but he managed a doze. It was thin but rich enough to grow more dreams, first of the Overlook (today's version featured the elevator that ran by itself in the middle of the night), then of his niece. This time Abra had been strangled with a length of electrical cord. She stared at Dan with bulging, accusing eyes. It was all too easy to read what was in them.
You said you'd help me. You said you'd save me. Where were you?

Abra kept putting off the thing she had to do until she realized her mother would soon be pestering her to go to bed. She wasn't going to school in the morning, but it was still going to be a big day. And, perhaps, a very long night.