Doctor Sleep (23 page)

It won't happen,
David had assured her, and John Dalton had doubled down on that.
Kids are resilient. If she's not showing any lingering after-effects—withdrawal, isolation, obsessional behavior, bedwetting—you're probably okay
.

But it wasn't okay for children to wake themselves, shrieking, from nightmares. It wasn't okay that sometimes wild piano chords sounded from downstairs in the aftermath, or that the faucets in the bathroom at the end of the hall might turn themselves on, or that the light over Abra's bed sometimes blew out when she or David flipped the switch.

Then her invisible friend had come, and intervals between nightmares had grown longer. Eventually they stopped. Until tonight. Not that it
was
night anymore, exactly; Lucy could see the first faint glow on the eastern horizon, and thank God for that.

“Abs? It's Mommy. Talk to me.”

There was still nothing for five or ten seconds. Then, at last, the statue Lucy had her arm around relaxed and became a little girl again. Abra took a long, shuddering breath.

“I had one of my bad dreams. Like in the old days.”

“I kind of figured that, honey.”

Abra could hardly ever remember more than a little, it seemed. Sometimes it was people yelling at each other or hitting with their fists.
He knocked the table over chasing after her,
she might say. Another time the dream had been of a one-eyed Raggedy Ann doll lying on a highway. Once, when Abra was only four, she told them she had seen ghostie people riding
The Helen Rivington,
which was a popular tourist attraction in Frazier. It ran a loop from Teenytown out to Cloud Gap, and then back again.
I could see them because of the moonlight,
Abra told her parents that time. Lucy and David were sitting on either side of her, their arms around her. Lucy still remembered the dank feel of Abra's pajama top, which was soaked with sweat.
I knew they were ghostie people because they had faces like old apples and the moon shone right through
.

By the following afternoon Abra had been running and playing and laughing with her friends again, but Lucy had never forgotten the image: dead people riding that little train through the woods, their faces like transparent apples in the moonlight. She had asked Concetta if she had ever taken Abra on the train during one of their “girl days.” Chetta said no. They had been to Teenytown, but
the train had been under repairs that day so they rode the carousel instead.

Now Abra looked up at her mother and said, “When will Daddy be back?”

“Day after tomorrow. He said he'd be in time for lunch.”

“That's not soon enough,” Abra said. A tear spilled from her eye, rolled down her cheek, and plopped onto her pajama top.

“Soon enough for what? What do you remember, Abba-Doo?”

“They were hurting the boy.”

Lucy didn't want to pursue this, but felt she had to. There had been too many correlations between Abra's earlier dreams and things that had actually happened. It was David who had spotted the picture of the one-eyed Raggedy Ann in the North Conway
Sun,
under the heading THREE KILLED IN OSSIPEE CRASH. It was Lucy who had hunted out police blotter items about domestic violence arrests in the days following two of Abra's
people were yelling and hitting
dreams. Even John Dalton agreed that Abra might be picking up transmissions on what he called “the weird radio in her head.”

So now she said, “What boy? Does he live around here? Do you know?”

Abra shook her head. “Far away. I can't remember.” Then she brightened. The speed at which she came out of these fugues was to Lucy almost as eerie as the fugues themselves. “But I think I told Tony. He might tell
his
daddy.”

Tony, her invisible friend. She hadn't mentioned him in a couple of years, and Lucy hoped this wasn't some sort of regression. Ten was a little old for invisible friends.

“Tony's daddy might be able to stop it.” Then Abra's face clouded. “I think it's too late, though.”

“Tony hasn't been around in awhile, has he?” Lucy got up and fluffed out the displaced sheet. Abra giggled when it floated against her face. The best sound in the world, as far as Lucy was concerned. A
sane
sound. And the room was brightening all the time. Soon the first birds would begin to sing.

“Mommy, that tickles!”

“Mommies like to tickle. It's part of their charm. Now, what about Tony?”

“He said he'd come any time I needed him,” Abra said, settling back under the sheet. She patted the bed beside her, and Lucy lay down, sharing the pillow. “That was a bad dream and I needed him. I think he came, but I can't really remember. His daddy works in a hot spice.”

This was new. “Is that like a chili factory?”

“No, silly, it's for people who are going to die.” Abra sounded indulgent, almost teacherly, but a shiver went up Lucy's back.

“Tony says that when people get so sick they can't get well, they go to the hot spice and his daddy tries to make them feel better. Tony's daddy has a cat with a name like mine. I'm Abra and the cat is Azzie. Isn't that
weird,
but in a funny way?”

“Yes. Weird but funny.”

John and David would both probably say, based on the similarity of the names, that the stuff about the cat was the confabulation of a very bright little ten-year-old girl. But they would only half believe it, and Lucy hardly believed it at all. How many ten-year-olds knew what a hospice was, even if they mispronounced it?

“Tell me about the boy in your dream.” Now that Abra was calmed down, this conversation seemed safer. “Tell me who was hurting him, Abba-Doo.”

“I don't remember, except he thought Barney was supposed to be his friend. Or maybe it was Barry. Momma, can I have Hoppy?”

Her stuffed rabbit, now sitting in lop-eared exile on the highest shelf in her room. Abra hadn't slept with him in at least two years. Lucy got the Hopster and put him in her daughter's arms. Abra hugged the rabbit to her pink pajama top and was asleep almost at once. With luck, she'd be out for another hour, maybe even two. Lucy sat beside her, looking down.

Let this stop for good in another few years, just like John said it would. Better yet, let it stop today, this very morning. No more, please. No more hunting through the local papers to see if some little boy was killed by his
stepfather or beaten to death by bullies who were high on glue, or something. Let it end.

“God,” she said in a very low voice, “if you're there, would you do something for me? Would you break the radio in my little girl's head?”

When the True headed west again along I-80, rolling toward the town in the Colorado high country where they would spend the summer (always assuming the opportunity to collect some nearby big steam did not come up), Crow Daddy was riding in the shotgun seat of Rose's EarthCruiser. Jimmy Numbers, the True's whizbang accountant, was piloting Crow's Affinity Country Coach for the time being. Rose's satellite radio was tuned to Outlaw Country and currently playing Hank Jr.'s “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound.” It was a good tune, and Crow let it run its course before pushing the OFF button.

“You said we'd talk later. This is later. What happened back there?”

“We had a looker,” Rose said.

“Really?” Crow raised his eyebrows. He had taken as much of the Trevor kid's steam as any of them, but he looked no younger. He rarely did after eating. On the other hand, he rarely looked older between meals, unless the gap was very long. Rose thought it was a good trade-off. Probably something in his genes. Assuming they still
had
genes. Nut said they almost certainly did. “A steamhead, you mean.”

She nodded. Ahead of them, I-80 unrolled under a faded blue denim sky dotted with drifting cumulus clouds.

“Big steam?”

“Oh yeah. Huge.”

“How far away?”

“East Coast. I think.”

“You're saying someone looked in from what, almost fifteen hundred miles away?”

“Could have been even further. Could have been way the hell and gone up in Canada.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Probably a girl, but it was only a flash. Three seconds at most. Does it matter?”

It didn't. “How many canisters could you fill from a kid with that much steam in the boiler?”

“Hard to say. Three, at least.” This time it was Rose who was lowballing. She guessed the unknown looker might fill ten canisters, maybe even a dozen. The presence had been brief but muscular. The looker had seen what they were doing, and her horror (if it
was
a her) had been strong enough to freeze Rose's hands and make her feel a momentary loathing. It wasn't her own feeling, of course—gutting a rube was no more loathsome than gutting a deer—but a kind of psychic ricochet.

“Maybe we ought to turn around,” Crow said. “Get her while the getting's good.”

“No. I think this one's still getting stronger. We'll let her ripen a bit.”

“Is that something you know or just intuition?”

Rose waggled her hand in the air.

“An intuition strong enough to risk her getting killed by a hit-and-run driver or grabbed by some child-molesting perv?” Crow said this without irony. “Or what about leukemia, or some other cancer? You know they're susceptible to stuff like that.”

“If you asked Jimmy Numbers, he'd say the actuarial tables are on our side.” Rose smiled and gave his thigh an affectionate pat. “You worry too much, Daddy. We'll go on to Sidewinder, as planned, then head down to Florida in a couple of months. Both Barry and Grampa Flick think this might be a big year for hurricanes.”

Crow made a face. “That's like scavenging out of Dumpsters.”

“Maybe, but the scraps in some of those Dumpsters are pretty tasty. And nourishing. I'm still kicking myself that we missed that
tornado in Joplin. But of course we get less warning on sudden storms like that.”

“This kid. She
saw
us.”

“Yes.”

“And what we were doing.”

“Your point, Crow?”

“Could she nail us?”

“Honey, if she's more than eleven, I'll eat my hat.” Rose tapped it for emphasis. “Her parents probably don't know what she is or what she can do. Even if they do, they're probably minimizing it like hell in their own minds so they don't have to think about it too much.”

“Or they'll send her to a psychiatrist who'll give her pills,” Crow said. “Which will muffle her and make her harder to find.”

Rose smiled. “If I got it right, and I'm pretty sure I did, giving Paxil to this kid would be like throwing a piece of Saran Wrap over a searchlight. We'll find her when it's time. Don't worry.”

“If you say so. You're the boss.”

“That's right, honeybunch.” This time instead of patting his thigh, she squeezed his basket. “Omaha tonight?”

“It's a La Quinta Inn. I reserved the entire back end of the first floor.”

“Good. My intent is to ride you like a roller coaster.”

“We'll see who rides who,” Crow said. He was feeling frisky from the Trevor kid. So was Rose. So were they all. He turned the radio on again. Got Cross Canadian Ragweed singing about the boys from Oklahoma who rolled their joints all wrong.

The True rolled west.

There were easy AA sponsors, and hard AA sponsors, and then there were ones like Casey Kingsley, who took absolutely zero shit from their pigeons. At the beginning of their relationship, Casey
ordered Dan to do ninety-in-ninety, and instructed him to telephone every morning at seven o'clock. When Dan completed his ninety consecutive meetings, he was allowed to drop the morning calls. Then they met three times a week for coffee at the Sunspot Café.

Casey was sitting in a booth when Dan came in on a July afternoon in 2011, and although Casey hadn't made it to retirement just yet, to Dan his longtime AA sponsor (and first New Hampshire employer) looked very old. Most of his hair was gone, and he walked with a pronounced limp. He needed a hip replacement, but kept putting it off.

Dan said hi, sat down, folded his hands, and waited for what Casey called The Catechism.

“You sober today, Danno?”

“Yes.”

“How did that miracle of restraint happen?”

He recited, “Thanks to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the God of my understanding. My sponsor may also have played a small part.”

“Lovely compliment, but don't blow smoke up my dress and I won't blow any up yours.”

Patty Noyes came over with the coffeepot and poured Dan a cup, unasked. “How are you, handsome?”

Dan grinned at her. “I'm good.”

She ruffled his hair, then headed back to the counter, with a little extra swing in her stride. The men followed the sweet tick-tock of her hips, as men do, then Casey returned his gaze to Dan.

“Made any progress with that God-of-my-understanding stuff  ?”

“Not much,” Dan said. “I've got an idea it may be a lifetime work.”

“But you ask for help to stay away from a drink in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“On your knees?”

“Yes.”

“Say thank you at night?”

“Yes, and on my knees.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to remember the drink put me there,” Dan said. It was the absolute truth.

Casey nodded. “That's the first three steps. Give me the short form.”

“ ‘I can't, God can, I think I'll let Him.' ” He added: “The God of my understanding.”

“Which you
don't
understand.”

“Right.”

“Now tell me why you drank.”

“Because I'm a drunk.”

“Not because Mommy didn't give you no love?”