Doctor Sleep (37 page)

“And she could do this why? Because the kid they killed was another one of these shiners?”

“I'm pretty sure that's how the initial contact happened. He must have reached out while these people were torturing him—Abra has no doubt that's what they did—and that created a link.”

“One that continued even after the boy, this Brad Trevor, was dead?”

“I think her later point of contact may have been something the Trevor kid owned—his baseball glove. And she was able to link to his killers because one of them put it on. She doesn't know how she does it, and neither do I. All I know for sure is that she's immensely powerful.”

“The way you are.”

“Here's the thing,” Dan said. “These people—if they
are
people—are led by the woman who did the actual killing. On the day Abra came across the picture of Brad Trevor on a missing-children page in the local rag, she got in this woman's head. And the woman got in Abra's. For a few seconds they looked through each other's eyes.” He held up his hands, made fists, and rotated them. “Turn and turn about. Abra thinks they may come for her, and so do I. Because she could be a danger to them.”

“There's more to it than that, isn't there?” Billy asked.

Dan looked at him, waiting.

“People who can do this shining thing
have
something, right? Something these people want. Something they can only get by killing.”

“Yes.”

John said, “Does this woman know where Abra is?”

“Abra doesn't think so, but you have to remember she's only thirteen. She could be wrong.”

“Does Abra know where the woman is?”

“All she knows is that when this contact—this mutual seeing—occurred, the woman was in a Sam's Supermarket. That puts it somewhere out West, but there are Sams in at least nine states.”

“Including Iowa?”

Dan shook his head.

“Then I don't see what we can accomplish by going there.”

“We can get the glove,” Dan said. “Abra thinks if she has the glove, she can link to the man who had it on his hand for a little while. She calls him Barry the Chunk.”

John sat with his head lowered, thinking. Dan let him do it.

“All right,” John said at last. “This is crazy, but I'll buy it. Given what I know of Abra's history and given my own history with you, it's actually kind of hard not to. But if this woman doesn't know where Abra is, might it not be wiser to leave things alone? Don't kick a sleeping dog and all that?”

“I don't think this dog's asleep,” Dan said. “These

(
empty devils
)

freaks want her for the same reason they wanted the Trevor boy—I'm sure Billy's right about that. Also, they know she's a danger to them. To put it in AA terms, she has the power to break their anonymity. And they may have resources we can only guess at. Would you want a patient of yours to live in fear, month after month and maybe year after year, always expecting some sort of paranormal Manson Family to show up and snatch her off the street?”

“Of course not.”

“These assholes
live
on children like her. Children like I was. Kids with the shining.” He stared grimly into John Dalton's face. “If it's true, they need to be stopped.”

Billy said, “If I'm not going to Iowa, what am I supposed to do?”

“Let's put it this way,” Dan said. “You're going to get very familiar with Anniston in the week ahead. In fact, if Casey will give you time off, you're going to stay at a motel there.”

Rose finally entered the meditative state she had been seeking. The hardest thing to let go of had been her worries about Grampa Flick, but she finally got past them. Got
above
them. Now she cruised within herself, repeating the old phrases—
sabbatha hanti
and
lodsam hanti
and
cahanna risone hanti
—over and over again, her lips barely moving. It was too early to seek the troublesome girl, but now that she'd been left alone and the world was quiet, both inside and out, she was in no hurry. Meditation for its own sake was a fine thing. Rose went about gathering her tools and focusing her concentration, working slowly and meticulously.

Sabbatha hanti, lodsam hanti, cahanna risone hanti
: words that had been old when the True Knot moved across Europe in wagons, selling peat turves and trinkets. They had probably been old when
Babylon was young. The girl was powerful, but the True was
all
-powerful, and Rose anticipated no real problem. The girl would be asleep, and Rose would move with quiet stealth, picking up information and planting suggestions like small explosives. Not just one worm, but a whole nest of them. Some the girl might detect, and disable.

Others, not.

Abra spoke with her mother on the phone for almost forty-five minutes that night after she'd finished her homework. The conversation had two levels. On the top one, they talked about Abra's day, the school week ahead, and her costume for the upcoming Halloween Dance; they discussed the ongoing plans to have Momo moved north to the Frazier hospice (which Abra still thought of as the “hot spice”); Lucy brought Abra up-to-date on Momo's condition, which she said was “actually pretty good, all things considered.”

On another level, Abra listened to Lucy's nagging worry that she had somehow failed her grandmother, and to the truth of Momo's condition: frightened, addled, racked with pain. Abra tried to send her mother soothing thoughts:
it's all right, Mom
and
we love you, Mom
and
you did the best you could, for as long as you were able
. She liked to believe that some of these thoughts got through, but didn't really believe it. She had many talents—the kind that were wonderful and scary at the same time—but changing another person's emotional temperature had never been one of them.

Could Dan do that? She thought maybe he could. She thought he used that part of his shining to help people in the hot spice. If he could really do that, maybe he would help Momo when she got there. That would be good.

She came downstairs wearing the pink flannel pajamas Momo had given her last Christmas. Her father was watching the Red Sox and drinking a glass of beer. She put a big smackeroo on his nose
(he always said he hated that, but she knew he sort of liked it) and told him she was off to bed.

“La homework est complète, mademoiselle?”

“Yes, Daddy, but the French word for homework is
devoirs
.”

“Good to know, good to know. How was your mother? I ask because I only had about ninety seconds with her before you snatched the phone.”

“She's doing okay.” Abra knew this was the truth, but she also knew
okay
was a relative term. She started for the hall, then turned back. “She said Momo was like a glass ornament.” She hadn't, not out loud, but she'd been thinking it. “She says we all are.”

Dave muted the TV. “Well, I guess that's true, but some of us are made of surprisingly tough glass. Remember, your momo's been up on the shelf, safe and sound, for many, many years. Now come over here, Abba-Doo, and give your Dad a hug. I don't know if you need it, but I could use one.”

Twenty minutes later she was in bed with Mr. Pooh Bear Nightlight, a holdover from earliest childhood, glowing on the dresser. She reached for Dan and found him in an activities room where there were jigsaw puzzles, magazines, a Ping-Pong table, and a big TV on the wall. He was playing cards with a couple of hot spice residents.

(
did you talk to Doctor John?
)

(  
yes we're going to Iowa day after tomorrow
)

This thought was accompanied by a brief picture of an old biplane. Inside were two men wearing old-fashioned flying helmets, scarves, and goggles. It made Abra smile.

(
if we bring you
)

Picture of a catcher's mitt. That wasn't what the baseball boy's glove really looked like, but Abra knew what Dan was trying to say.

(
will you freak out
)

(
no
)

She better not. Holding the dead boy's glove would be terrible, but she would have to do it.

In the common room of Rivington One, Mr. Braddock was staring at Dan with that look of monumental but slightly puzzled irritation which only the very old and borderline senile can bring off successfully. “Are you gonna discard something, Danny, or just sit there starin into the corner until the icecaps melt?”

(  
goodnight Abra
)

(  
goodnight Dan say goodnight to Tony for me
)

“Danny?” Mr. Braddock knocked his swollen knuckles on the table. “Danny Torrance, come in, Danny Torrance, over?”

(
don't forget to set your alarm
)

“Hoo-hoo, Danny,” Cora Willingham said.

Dan looked at them. “Did I discard, or is it still my turn?”

Mr. Braddock rolled his eyes at Cora; Cora rolled hers right back.

“And my daughters think
I'm
the one losing my marbles,” she said.

Abra had set the alarm on her iPad because tomorrow was not only a schoolday but one of her days to make breakfast—scrambled eggs with mushrooms, peppers, and Jack cheese was the plan. But that wasn't the alarm Dan had been talking about. She closed her eyes and concentrated, her brow furrowing. One hand crept out from under the covers and began wiping at her lips. What she was doing was tricky, but maybe it would be worth it.

Alarms were all well and good, but if the woman in the hat came looking for her, a trap might be even better.

After five minutes or so, the lines on her forehead smoothed out and her hand fell away from her mouth. She rolled over on her side
and pulled the duvet up to her chin. She was visualizing herself riding a white stallion in full warrior garb when she fell asleep. Mr. Pooh Bear Nightlight watched from his place on the dresser as he had since Abra was four, casting a dim radiance on her left cheek. That and her hair were the only parts of her that still showed.

In her dreams, she galloped over long fields under four billion stars.

Rose continued her meditations until one thirty that Monday morning. The rest of the True (with the exception of Apron Annie and Big Mo, currently watching over Grampa Flick) were sleeping deeply when she decided she was ready. In one hand she held a picture, printed off her computer, of Anniston, New Hampshire's not-very-impressive downtown. In the other she held one of the canisters. Although there was nothing left inside but the faintest whiff of steam, she had no doubt it would be enough. She put her fingers on the valve, preparing to loosen it.

We are the True Knot, and we endure:
Sabbatha hanti.

We are the chosen ones:
Lodsam hanti.

We are the fortunate ones:
Cahanna risone hanti.

“Take this and use it well, Rosie-girl,” she said. When she turned the valve, a short sigh of silver mist escaped. She inhaled, fell back on her pillow, and let the canister drop to the carpet with a soft thud. She lifted the picture of Anniston's Main Street in front of her eyes. Her arm and hand were no longer precisely there, and so the picture seemed to float. Not far from that Main Street, a little girl lived down a lane that was probably called Richland Court. She would be fast asleep, but somewhere in her mind was Rose the Hat. She assumed the little girl didn't know what Rose the Hat looked like (any more than Rose knew what the girl looked like . . . at least not yet), but she knew what Rose the Hat
felt
like. Also, she knew what Rose had been looking at in Sam's yesterday. That was her marker, her way in.

Rose stared at the picture of Anniston with fixed and dreaming eyes, but what she was really looking for was Sam's meat counter, where EVERY CUT IS A BLUE RIBBON
COWBOY
CUT. She was looking for herself. And, after a gratifyingly short search, found her. At first just an auditory trace: the sound of supermarket Muzak. Then a shopping cart. Beyond it, all was still dark. That was all right; the rest would come. Rose followed the Muzak, now echoing and distant.

It was dark, it was dark, it was dark, then a little light and a little more. Here was the supermarket aisle, then it became a hallway and she knew she was almost in. Her heartbeat kicked up a notch.

Lying on her bed, she closed her eyes so if the kid realized what was happening—unlikely but not impossible—she would see nothing. Rose took a few seconds to review her primary goals: name, exact location, extent of knowledge, anyone she might have told.

(
turn, world  
)

She gathered her strength and pushed. This time the sensation of
revolving
wasn't a surprise but something she had planned for and over which she had complete control. For a moment she was still in that hallway—the conduit between their two minds—and then she was in a large room where a little girl in pigtails was riding a bike and lilting a nonsense song. It was the little girl's dream and Rose was watching it. But she had better things to do. The walls of the room weren't real walls, but file drawers. She could open them at will now that she was inside. The little girl was safely dreaming in Rose's head, dreaming she was five and riding her first bicycle. That was very fine.
Dream on, little princess
.

The child rode past her, singing
la-la-la
and seeing nothing. There were training wheels on her bike, but they flickered on and off. Rose guessed the princess was dreaming of the day when she had finally learned to ride without them. Always a very fine day in a child's life.

Enjoy your bicycle, dear, while I find out all about you.