Doctor Sleep (48 page)

“Oh, him. He's in Reno. Fucking rube showgirls.”

She began to disappear again. Dan heard John Dalton whisper, “Oh my God, look at that. Brain bleed. I can actually see it.”

Dan waited to see if Tat Woman would come back. Eventually she did, with a long groan from between her clenched and bloody teeth. The cycling seemed to hurt even more than the blow that had caused it, but Dan thought he could remedy that. He pulled Tat Woman's hand away from her shattered jaw and dug in with his fingers. He could feel her entire skull shift as he did; it was like pushing the side of a badly cracked vase held together by a few strips of tape. This time Tat Woman did more than groan. She howled and pawed weakly at Dan, who paid no attention.

“Where's Crow?”

“Anniston!”
Snake screamed.
“He got off in Anniston! Please don't hurt me anymore, Daddy! Please don't, I'll do whatever you want!”

Dan thought of what Abra said these monsters had done to Brad Trevor in Iowa, how they had tortured him and God only knew how many others, and felt an almost ungovernable urge to tear the lower half of this murdering bitch's face entirely off. To beat her bleeding, shattered skull with her own jawbone until both skull and bone disappeared.

Then—absurdly, given the circumstances—he thought of the kid in the Braves t-shirt reaching for the left-over coke piled on the shiny magazine cover.
Canny,
he'd said. This woman was nothing like that kid,
nothing,
but telling himself so did no good. His anger was suddenly gone, leaving him feeling sick and weak and empty.

Don't hurt me anymore, Daddy
.

He got up, wiping his hand on his shirt, and walked blindly toward the
Riv
.

(
Abra are you there
)

(
yes
)

Not so panicky now, and that was good.

(
you need to have your friend's mom call the police and tell them you're in danger Crow's in Anniston
)

Bringing the police into a business that was, at bottom,
supernatural was the last thing Dan wanted, but at this moment he saw no choice.

(
I'm not
)

Before she could finish, her thought was blotted out by a powerful shriek of female rage.

(YOU LITTLE BITCH)

Suddenly the hat woman was in Dan's head again, this time not as part of a dream but behind his waking eyes, her image burning: a creature of terrible beauty who was now naked, her wet hair lying on her shoulders in Medusa coils. Then her mouth yawned open and the beauty was torn away. There was only a dark hole with one jutting, discolored tooth. Almost a tusk.

(WHAT HAVE YOU DONE)

Dan staggered and put a hand against the
Riv
's lead passenger car to hold himself up. The world inside his head was revolving. The hat woman disappeared and suddenly a crowd of concerned faces was gathered around him. They were asking if he was all right.

He remembered Abra trying to explain how the world had revolved on the day she had discovered Brad Trevor's picture in
The Anniston Shopper
; how all at once Abra had been looking out of the hat woman's eyes and the hat woman had been looking out of hers. Now he understood. It was happening again, and this time he was along for the ride.

Rose was on the ground. He could see a broad swatch of evening sky overhead. The people crowding around her were no doubt her tribe of child-killers. This was what Abra was seeing.

The question was, what was
Rose
seeing?

Snake cycled, then came back. It
burned
. She looked at the man kneeling in front of her.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” John asked. “I'm a doctor.”

In spite of the pain, Snake laughed. This doctor, who belonged to the men who had just shot the
True
's doctor to death, was now offering to help. What would Hippocrates make of that one? “Put a bullet in me, assface. That's the only thing I can think of.”

The nerdy one, the bastard who'd actually pulled the trigger on Walnut, joined the one who said he was a doctor. “You'd deserve it,” Dave said. “Did you think I was just going to let you take my daughter? Torture and kill her like you did that poor little boy in Iowa?”

They knew about that? How could they? But it didn't matter now, at least not to Andi. “Your people slaughter pigs and cows and sheep. Is what we do any different?”

“In my humble opinion, killing human beings is a lot different,” John said. “Call me silly and sentimental.”

Snake's mouth was full of blood and some lumpy shit. Teeth, probably. That didn't matter, either. In the end, this might be more merciful than what Barry had gone through. It would certainly be quicker. But one thing needed straightening out. Just so they'd know. “
We're
the human beings. Your kind . . . just rubes.”

Dave smiled, but his eyes were hard. “And yet you're the one lying on the ground with dirt in your hair and blood all down the front of your shirt. I hope hell's hot enough for you.”

Snake could feel the next cycle coming on. With luck it would be the last one, but for now she held tight to her physical form. “You don't understand how it was with me. Before. Or how is with us. We're only a few, and we're sick. We've got—”

“I know what you've got,” Dave said. “Fucking measles. I hope they rot your whole miserable Knot from the inside out.”

Snake said, “We didn't choose to be what we are any more than you did. In our shoes, you'd do the same.”

John shook his head slowly from side to side. “Never.
Never
.”

Snake began to cycle out. She managed four more words, however.
“Fucking men.”
A final gasp as she stared up at them from her disappearing face.
“Fucking rubes.”

Then she was gone.

Dan walked to John and Dave slowly and carefully, putting his hand on several of the picnic tables to keep his balance. He had picked up Abra's stuffed rabbit without even realizing it. His head was clearing, but that was a decidedly mixed blessing.

“We have to go back to Anniston, and fast. I can't touch Billy. I could before, but now he's gone.”

“Abra?” Dave asked. “What about Abra?”

Dan didn't want to look at him—Dave's face was naked with fear—but he made himself do it. “She's gone, too. So's the woman in the hat. They've both dropped out of the mix.”

“Meaning what?” Dave grabbed Dan's shirt in both hands. “Meaning
what
?”

“I don't know.”

This was the truth, but he was afraid.

Get with me, Daddy,
Barry the Chink had said.
Lean close.

This was just after Snake had started the first of the porn DVDs. Crow got with Barry, even held his hand while the dying man struggled through his next cycle. And when he came back . . .

Listen to me
.
She's been watching, all right. Only when that porno started up . . .

Explaining to someone who couldn't do the locator thing was hard, especially when the one doing the talking was mortally ill, but Crow got the gist of it. The fucksome frolickers by the pool had shocked the girl, just as Rose had hoped they might, but they had done more than make her quit spying and pull back. For a moment or two, Barry's sense of her location seemed to double. She was still on the midget train with her dad, riding to the place where they were going to have their picnic, but her shock had produced a ghost image that made no sense. In this she was in a bathroom, taking a leak.

“Maybe you were seeing a memory,” Crow said. “Could that be?”

“Yeah,” Barry said. “Rubes think all kinds of crazy shit. Most likely it's nothing. But for a minute it was like she was twins, you know?”

Crow didn't, exactly, but he nodded.

“Only if that's not it, she might be running some kind of game. Gimme the map.”

Jimmy Numbers had all of New Hampshire on his laptop. Crow held it up in front of Barry.

“Here's where she is,” Barry said, tapping the screen. “On her way to this Cloud Glen place with her dad.”

“Gap,” Crow said. “Cloud Gap.”

“Whatever the fuck.” Barry moved his finger northeast. “And this is where the ghost-blip came from.”

Crow took the laptop and looked through the bead of no doubt infected sweat Barry had left on the screen. “Anniston? That's her hometown, Bar. She's probably left psychic traces of herself all over it. Like dead skin.”

“Sure. Memories. Daydreams. All kinds of crazy shit. What I said.”

“And it's gone now.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Barry grasped Crow's wrist. “If she's as strong as Rose says, it's just possible that she really
is
gaming us. Throwing her voice, like.”

“Have you ever run across a steamhead that could do that?”

“No, but there's a first time for everything. I'm almost positive she's with her father, but you're the one who has to decide if almost positive is good enough for . . .”

That was when Barry began cycling again, and all meaningful communication ceased. Crow was left with a difficult decision. It was his mission, and he was confident he could handle it, but it was Rose's plan and—more important—Rose's obsession. If he screwed up, there would be hell to pay.

Crow glanced at his watch. Three p.m. here in New Hampshire, one o'clock in Sidewinder. At the Bluebell Campground, lunch would just be finishing up, and Rose would be available. That decided him. He made the call. He almost expected her to laugh and call him an old woman, but she didn't.

“You know we can't entirely trust Barry anymore,” she said, “but I trust you. What's your gut feeling?”

His gut felt nothing one way or the other; that was why he had made the call. He told her so, and waited.

“I leave it with you,” she said. “Just don't screw up.”

Thanks for nothing, Rosie darlin
. He thought this . . . then hoped she hadn't caught it.

He sat with the closed cell phone still in his hand, swaying from side to side with the motion of the RV, inhaling the smell of Barry's sickness, wondering how long it would be before the first spots started showing up on his own arms and legs and chest. At last he went forward and put his hand on Jimmy's shoulder.

“When you get to Anniston, stop.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm getting off.”

Crow Daddy watched them pull away from the Gas 'n Go on Anniston's lower Main Street, resisting an urge to send a short-range thought (all the ESP of which he was capable) to Snake before they got out of range:
Come back and pick me up, this is a mistake
.

Only what if it wasn't?

When they were gone, he looked briefly and longingly at the sad little line of used cars for sale at the car wash adjacent to the gas station. No matter what transpired in Anniston, he was going to need transpo out of town. He had more than enough cash in his wallet to buy something that would carry him to their agreed-on rendezvous point near Albany on I-87; the problem was time. It would take at least half an hour to transact a car deal, and that might be too long. Until he was sure this was a false alarm, he would just have to improvise and rely on his powers of persuasion. They had never let him down yet.

Crow did take time enough to step into the Gas 'n Go, where he bought a Red Sox hat. When in Bosox country, dress as the Bosox fans do. He debated adding a pair of sunglasses and decided against them. Thanks to TV, a fit middle-aged man in sunglasses always looked like a hit man to a certain part of the population. The hat would have to do.

He walked up Main Street to the library where Abra and Dan had once held a council of war. He had to go no farther than the lobby to find what he was looking for. There, under the heading of TAKE A LOOK AT OUR TOWN, was a map of Anniston with every street and lane carefully marked. He refreshed himself on the location of the girl's street.

“Great game last night, wasn't it?” a man asked. He was carrying an armload of books.

For a moment Crow had no idea what he was talking about, then remembered his new hat. “It sure was,” he agreed, still looking at the map.

He gave the Sox fan time to depart before leaving the lobby. The hat was fine, but he had no desire to discuss baseball. He thought it was a stupid game.

Richland Court was a short street of pleasant New England saltboxes and Cape Cods ending in a circular turnaround. Crow had grabbed a free newspaper called
The Anniston Shopper
on his walk from the library and now stood at the corner, leaning against a handy oak tree and pretending to study it. The oak shielded him from the street, and maybe that was a good thing, because there was a red truck with a guy sitting behind the wheel parked about halfway down. The truck was an oldie, with some hand-tools and what looked like a Rototiller in the bed, so the guy could be a groundskeeper—this was the kind of street where people could afford them—but if so, why was he just sitting there?

Baby
sitting, maybe?

Crow was suddenly glad he had taken Barry seriously enough to jump ship. The question was, what to do now? He could call Rose, but their last conversation hadn't netted anything he couldn't have gotten from a Magic 8 Ball.

He was still standing half-hidden behind the fine old oak and
debating his next move when the providence that favored the True Knot above rubes stepped in. A door partway down the street opened, and two girls came out. Crow's eyes were every bit as sharp as those of his namesake bird, and he ID'd them at once as two of the three girls in Billy's computer pix. The one in the brown skirt was Emma Deane. The one in the black pants was Abra Stone.