Doctor Sleep (31 page)

“Actually not that funny.”

He made his own picture and sent it back to her: Dan Torrance in jail-stripes, being led away by two big policemen. He had never tried anything like this, and it wasn't as good as hers, but he was delighted to find he could do it at all. Then, almost before he knew what was happening, she appropriated his picture and made it her own. Dan pulled a gun from his waistband, pointed it at one of the cops, and pulled the trigger. A handkerchief with the word POW! on it shot from the barrel of the gun.

Dan stared at her, mouth open.

Abra put fisted hands to her mouth and giggled. “Sorry. Couldn't resist. We could do this all afternoon, couldn't we? And it would be fun.”

He guessed it would also be a relief. She had spent years with a splendid ball but no one to play catch with. And of course it was the same with him. For the first time since childhood—since Hallorann—he was sending as well as receiving.

“You're right, it would be, but now's not the time. You need to run through this whole thing again. The email you sent only hit the high spots.”

“Where should I start?”

“How about with your last name? Since I'm your honorary uncle, I probably should know.”

That made her laugh. Dan tried to keep a straight face and couldn't. God help him, he liked her already.

“I'm Abra Rafaella Stone,” she said. Suddenly the laughter was gone. “I just hope the lady in the hat never finds that out.”

They sat together on the bench outside the library for forty-five minutes, with the autumn sun warm on their faces. For the first time in her life Abra felt unconditional pleasure—joy, even—in the talent that had always puzzled and sometimes terrified her. Thanks to this man, she even had a name for it: the shining. It was a good name, a comforting name, because she had always thought of it as a dark thing.

There was plenty to talk about—volumes of notes to compare—and they had hardly gotten started when a stout fiftyish woman in a tweed skirt came over to say hello. She looked at Dan with curiosity, but not
untoward
curiosity.

“Hi, Mrs. Gerard. This is my uncle Dan. I had Mrs. Gerard for Language Arts last year.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma'am. Dan Torrance.”

Mrs. Gerard took his offered hand and gave it a single no-nonsense pump. Abra could feel Dan—
Uncle
Dan—relaxing. That was good.

“Are you in the area, Mr. Torrance?”

“Just down the road, in Frazier. I work in the hospice there. Helen Rivington House?”

“Ah. That's good work you do. Abra, have you read
The Fixer
yet? The Malamud novel I recommended?”

Abra looked glum. “It's on my Nook—I got a gift card for my birthday—but I haven't started it yet. It looks hard.”

“You're ready for hard things,” Mrs. Gerard said. “More than ready. High school will be here sooner than you think, and then college. I suggest you get started today. Nice to have met you, Mr. Torrance. You have an extremely smart niece. But Abra—with
brains comes responsibility.” She tapped Abra's temple to emphasize this point, then mounted the library steps and went inside.

She turned to Dan. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”

“So far, so good,” Dan agreed. “Of course, if she talks to your parents . . .”

“She won't. Mom's in Boston, helping with my momo. She's got cancer.”

“I'm very sorry to hear it. Is Momo your”

( 
grandmother
)

( 
great-grandmother
)

“Besides,” Abra said, “we're not really lying about you being my uncle. In science last year, Mr. Staley told us that all humans share the same genetic plan. He said that the things that make us different are very small things. Did you know that we share something like ninety-nine percent of our genetic makeup with
dogs
?”

“No,” Dan said, “but it explains why Alpo has always looked so good to me.”

She laughed. “So you
could
be my uncle or cousin or whatever. All I'm saying.”

“That's Abra's theory of relativity, is it?”

“I guess so. And do we need the same color eyes or hairline to be related? We've got something else in common that hardly anyone has. That makes us a special kind of relatives. Do you think it's a gene, like the one for blue eyes or red hair? And by the way, did you know that Scotland has the highest ratio of people with red hair?”

“I didn't,” Dan said. “You're a font of information.”

Her smile faded a little. “Is that a put-down?”

“Not at all. I guess the shining might be a gene, but I really don't think so. I think it's unquantifiable.”

“Does that mean you can't figure it out? Like God and heaven and stuff like that?”

“Yes.” He found himself thinking of Charlie Hayes, and all those before and after Charlie whom he'd seen out of this world in his Doctor Sleep persona. Some people called the moment of death
passing on
. Dan liked that, because it seemed just about right.
When you saw men and women pass on before your eyes—leaving the Teenytown people called reality for some Cloud Gap of an afterlife—it changed your way of thinking. For those in mortal extremis, it was the world that was passing on. In those gateway moments, Dan had always felt in the presence of some not-quite-seen enormity. They slept, they woke, they went
somewhere
. They went on. He'd had reason to believe that, even as a child.

“What are you thinking?” Abra asked. “I can see it, but I don't understand it. And I want to.”

“I don't know how to explain it,” he said.

“It was partly about the ghostie people, wasn't it? I saw them once, on the little train in Frazier. It was a dream but I think it was real.”

His eyes widened. “Did you really?”

“Yes. I don't think they wanted to hurt me—they just looked at me—but they were kind of scary. I think maybe they were people who rode the train in olden days. Have you seen ghostie people? You have, haven't you?”

“Yes, but not for a very long time.” And some that were a lot more than ghosts. Ghosts didn't leave residue on toilet seats and shower curtains. “Abra, how much do your parents know about your shine?”

“My dad thinks it's gone except for a few things—like me calling from camp because I knew Momo was sick—and he's glad. My mom knows it's still there, because sometimes she'll ask me to help her find something she's lost—last month it was her car keys, she left them on Dad's worktable in the garage—but she doesn't know how
much
is still there. They don't talk about it anymore.” She paused. “Momo knows. She's not scared of it like Mom and Dad, but she told me I have to be careful. Because if people found out—” She made a comic face, rolling her eyes and poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth. “Eeek, a freak. You know?”

(
yes
)

She smiled gratefully. “Sure you do.”

“Nobody else?”

“Well . . . Momo said I should talk to Dr. John, because he
already knew about some of the stuff. He, um, saw something I did with spoons when I was just a little kid. I kind of hung them on the ceiling.”

“This wouldn't by chance be John Dalton, would it?”

Her face lit up. “You know him?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I found something once for
him
. Something he lost.”

(
a watch!
)

(
that's right
)

“I don't tell him everything,” Abra said. She looked uneasy. “I sure didn't tell him about the baseball boy, and I'd
never
tell him about the woman in the hat. Because he'd tell my folks, and they've got a lot on their minds already. Besides, what could they do?”

“Let's just file that away for now. Who's the baseball boy?”

“Bradley Trevor. Brad. Sometimes he used to turn his hat around and call it a rally cap. Do you know what that is?”

Dan nodded.

“He's dead.
They
killed him. But they hurt him first. They hurt him so
bad
.” Her lower lip began to tremble, and all at once she looked closer to nine than almost thirteen.

(
don't cry Abra we can't afford to attract
)

(
I know, I know
)

She lowered her head, took several deep breaths, and looked up at him again. Her eyes were overbright, but her mouth had stopped trembling. “I'm okay,” she said. “Really. I'm just glad not to be alone with this inside my head.”

He listened carefully as she described what she remembered of her initial encounter with Bradley Trevor two years ago. It wasn't much. The clearest image she retained was of many crisscrossing flashlight beams illuminating him as he lay on the ground. And his screams. She remembered those.

“They had to light him up because they were doing some kind of operation,” Abra said. “That's what they called it, anyway, but all they were really doing was torturing him.”

She told him about finding Bradley again on the back page of
The Anniston Shopper,
with all the other missing children. How she had touched his picture to see if she could find out about him.

“Can you do that?” she asked. “Touch things and get pictures in your head? Find things out?”

“Sometimes. Not always. I used to be able to do it more—and more reliably—when I was a kid.”

“Do you think I'll grow out of it? I wouldn't mind that.” She paused, thinking. “Except I sort of would. It's hard to explain.”

“I know what you mean. It's our thing, isn't it? What we can do.”

Abra smiled.

“You're pretty sure you know where they killed this boy?”

“Yes, and they buried him there. They even buried his baseball glove.” Abra handed him a piece of notebook paper. It was a copy, not the original. She would have been embarrassed for anyone to see how she had written the names of the boys in 'Round Here, not just once but over and over again. Even the
way
they had been written now seemed all wrong, those big fat letters that were supposed to express not love but
luv
.

“Don't get bent out of shape about it,” Dan said absently, studying what she'd printed on the sheet. “I had a thing for Stevie Nicks when I was your age. Also for Ann Wilson, of Heart. You've probably never even heard of her, she's old-school, but I used to daydream about inviting her to one of the Friday night dances at Glenwood Junior High. How's that for stupid?”

She was staring at him, openmouthed.

“Stupid but normal. Most normal thing in the world, so cut yourself some slack. And I wasn't peeking, Abra. It was just there. Kind of jumped out in my face.”

“Oh God.” Abra's cheeks had gone bright red. “This is going to take some getting used to, isn't it?”

“For both of us, kiddo.” He looked back down at the sheet.

NO TRESPASSING BY ORDER OF THE CANTON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT

ORGANIC INDUSTRIES

ETHANOL PLANT #4

FREEMAN, IOWA

CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

“You got this by . . . what? Watching it over and over? Rerunning it like a movie?”

“The NO TRESPASSING sign was easy, but the stuff about Organic Industries and the ethanol plant, yeah. Can't you do that?”

“I never tried. Maybe once, but probably not anymore.”

“I found Freeman, Iowa, on the computer,” she said. “And when I ran Google Earth, I could see the factory. Those places are really there.”

Dan's thoughts returned to John Dalton. Others in the Program had talked about Dan's peculiar ability to find things; John never had. Not surprising, really. Doctors took a vow of confidentiality similar to the one in AA, didn't they? Which in John's case made it a kind of double coverage.

Abra was saying, “You could call Bradley Trevor's parents, couldn't you? Or the sheriff's office in Canton County? They wouldn't believe me, but they'd believe a grown-up.”

“I suppose I could.” But of course a man who knew where the body was buried would automatically go to the head of the suspect list, so if he did it, he would have to be very, very careful about the
way
he did it.

Abra, the trouble you're getting me into
.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

He put his hand over hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Don't be. That's one
you
weren't supposed to hear.”

She straightened. “Oh God, here comes Yvonne Stroud. She's in my class.”

Dan pulled his hand back in a hurry. He saw a plump, brown-haired girl about Abra's age coming up the sidewalk. She was wearing a backpack and carrying a looseleaf notebook curled against her chest. Her eyes were bright and inquisitive.

“She'll want to know everything about you,” Abra said. “I mean
everything
. And she
talks
.”

Uh-oh.

Dan looked at the oncoming girl.

(
we're not interesting
)

“Help me, Abra,” he said, and felt her join in. Once they were together, the thought instantly gained depth and strength.

(
WE'RE NOT A BIT INTERESTING
)

“That's good,” Abra said. “A little more. Do it with me. Like singing.”

(
YOU HARDLY SEE US WE'RE NOT INTERESTING AND BESIDES YOU HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO
)

Yvonne Stroud hurried along the walk, flipping one hand to Abra in a vague hello gesture but not slowing down. She ran up the library steps and disappeared inside.

“I'll be a monkey's uncle,” Dan said.

She looked at him seriously. “According to Abra's theory of relativity, you really could be. Very similar—” She sent a picture of pants flapping on a clothesline.