Doctor Sleep

  John Dalton dropped to one knee beside her. "Did you do that, honey?" It was a question to which he felt sure he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear what she had to say. He wanted to know how much she was aware of.

  Abra first looked at the floor, where the silverware drawer lay. Some of the knives and forks had bounced free when the drawer shot from its socket, but they were all there. Not the spoons, however. The spoons were hanging from the ceiling, as if drawn upward and held by some exotic magnetic attraction. A couple swung lazily from the overhead light fixtures. The biggest, a serving spoon, dangled from the exhaust hood of the stove.

  All kids had their own self-comforting mechanisms. John knew from long experience that for most it was a thumb socked securely in the mouth. Abra's was a little different. She cupped her right hand over the lower half of her face and rubbed her lips with her palm. As a result, her words were muffled. John took the hand away--gently. "What, honey?"

  In a small voice she said, "Am I in trouble? I . . . I . . ." Her small chest began to hitch. She tried to put her comfort-hand back, but John held it. "I wanted to be like Minstrosio." She began to weep. John let her hand go and it went to her mouth, rubbing furiously.

  David picked her up and kissed her cheek. Lucy put her arms around them both and kissed the top of her daughter's head. "No, honey, no. No trouble. You're fine."

  Abra buried her face against her mother's neck. As she did it, the spoons fell. The clatter made them all jump.

  13

  Two months later, with summer just beginning in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, David and Lucy Stone sat in John Dalton's office, where the walls were papered with smiling photographs of the children he had treated over the years--many now old enough to have kids of their own.

  John said, "I hired a computer-savvy nephew of mine--at my own expense, and don't worry about it, he works cheap--to see if there were any other documented cases like your daughter's, and to research them if there were. He restricted his search to the last thirty years and found over nine hundred."

  David whistled. "That many!"

  John shook his head. "Not that many. If it were a disease--and we don't need to revisit that discussion, because it's not--it would be as rare as elephantiasis. Or Blaschko's lines, which basically turns those who have it into human zebras. Blaschko's affects about one in every seven million. This thing of Abra's would be on that order."

  "What exactly is Abra's thing?" Lucy had taken her husband's hand and was holding it tightly. "Telepathy? Telekinesis? Some other tele?"

  "Those things clearly play a part. Is she telepathic? Since she knows when people are coming to visit, and knew Mrs. Judkins had been hurt, the answer seems to be yes. Is she telekinetic? Based on what we saw in your kitchen on the day of her birthday party, the answer is a hard yes. Is she psychic? A precognate, if you want to fancy it up? We can't be so sure of that, although the 9/11 thing and the story of the twenty-dollar bill behind the dresser are both suggestive. But what about the night your television showed The Simpsons on all the channels? What do you call that? Or what about the phantom Beatles tune? It would be telekinesis if the notes came from the piano . . . but you say they didn't."

  "So what's next?" Lucy asked. "What do we watch out for?"

  "I don't know. There's no predictive path to follow. The trouble with the field of psychic phenomena is that it isn't a field at all. There's too much charlatanry and too many people who are just off their damn rockers."

  "So you can't tell us what to do," Lucy said. "That's the long and short of it."

  John smiled. "I can tell you exactly what to do: keep on loving her. If my nephew is right--and you have to remember that A, he's only seventeen, and B, he's basing his conclusions on unstable data--you're apt to keep seeing weird stuff until she's a teenager. Some of it may be gaudy weird stuff. Around thirteen or fourteen, it'll plateau and then start to subside. By the time she's in her twenties, the various phenomena she's generating will probably be negligible." He smiled. "But she'll be a terrific poker player all her life."

  "What if she starts seeing dead people, like the little boy in that movie?" Lucy asked. "What do we do then?"

  "Then I guess you'd have proof of life after death. In the meantime, don't buy trouble. And keep your mouths shut, right?"

  "Oh, you bet," Lucy said. She managed a smile, but given the fact she'd nibbled most of her lipstick off, it didn't look very confident. "The last thing we want is our daughter on the cover of Inside View."

  "Thank God none of the other parents saw that thing with the spoons," David said.

  "Here's a question," John said. "Do you think she knows how special she is?"

  The Stones exchanged a look.

  "I . . . don't think so," Lucy said at last. "Although after the spoons . . . we made sort of a big deal about it . . ."

  "A big deal in your mind," John said. "Probably not hers. She cried a little, then went back out with a smile on her face. There was no shouting, scolding, spanking, or shaming. My advice is to let it ride for the time being. When she gets a little older, you can caution her about not doing any of her special tricks at school. Treat her as normal, because mostly she is. Right?"

  "Right," David said. "And it's not like she's got spots, or swellings, or a third eye."

  "Oh yes she does," Lucy said. She was thinking of the caul. "She does so have a third eye. You can't see it--but it's there."

  John stood up. "I'll get all my nephew's printouts and send them to you, if you'd like that."

  "I would," David said. "Very much. I think dear old Momo would, too." He wrinkled his nose a bit at this. Lucy saw it and frowned.

  "In the meantime, enjoy your daughter," John told them. "From everything I've seen, she's a very enjoyable child. You're going to get through this."

  For awhile, it seemed he was right.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PAGING DOCTOR SLEEP

  1

  It was January of 2007. In the turret room of Rivington House, Dan's space heater was running full blast, but the room was still cold. A nor'easter, driven by a fifty-mile-an-hour gale, had blown down from the mountains, piling five inches of snow an hour on the sleeping town of Frazier. When the storm finally eased the following afternoon, some of the drifts against the north and east sides of the buildings on Cranmore Avenue would be twelve feet deep.

  Dan wasn't bothered by the cold; nestled beneath two down comforters, he was warm as tea and toast. Yet the wind had found its way inside his head just as it found its way under the sashes and doorsills of the old Victorian he now called home. In his dream, he could hear it moaning around the hotel where he had spent one winter as a little boy. In his dream, he was that little boy.

  He's on the second floor of the Overlook. Mommy is sleeping and Daddy's in the basement, looking at old papers. He's doing RESEARCH. The RESEARCH is for the book he's going to write. Danny isn't supposed to be up here, and he's not supposed to have the passkey that's clutched in one hand, but he hasn't been able to stay away. Right now he's staring at a firehose that's bolted to the wall. It's folded over and over on itself, and it looks like a snake with a brass head. A sleeping snake. Of course it's not a snake--that's canvas he's looking at, not scales--but it sure does look like a snake.

  Sometimes it is a snake.

  "Go on," he whispers to it in this dream. He's trembling with terror, but something drives him on. And why? Because he's doing his own RESEARCH, that's why. "Go on, bite me! You can't, can you? Because you're just a stupid HOSE!"

  The nozzle of the stupid hose stirs, and all at once, instead of looking at it sideways, Danny is looking into its bore. Or maybe into its mouth. A single clear drop appears below the black hole, elongating. In it he can see his own wide eyes reflected back at him.

  A drop of water or a drop of poison?

  Is it a snake or a hose?

  Who can say, my dear Redrum, Redrum my dear? Who can say?

  It buzzes at him, and terror jumps up his t
hroat from his rapidly beating heart. Rattlesnakes buzz like that.

  Now the nozzle of the hose-snake rolls away from the stack of canvas it's lying on and drops to the carpet with a dull thud. It buzzes again and he knows he should step back before it can rush forward and bite him, but he's frozen he can't move and it's buzzing--

  "Wake up, Danny!" Tony calls from somewhere. "Wake up, wake up!"

  But he can wake up no more than he can move, this is the Overlook, they are snowed in, and things are different now. Hoses become snakes, dead women open their eyes, and his father . . . oh dear God WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE BECAUSE MY FATHER IS GOING CRAZY.

  The rattlesnake buzzes. It buzzes. It

  2

  Dan heard the wind howling, but not outside the Overlook. No, outside the turret of Rivington House. He heard snow rattle against the north-facing window. It sounded like sand. And he heard the intercom giving off its low buzz.

  He threw back the comforters and swung his legs out, wincing as his warm toes met the cold floor. He crossed the room, almost prancing on the balls of his feet. He turned on the desk lamp and blew out his breath. No visible vapor, but even with the space heater's element coils glowing a dull red, the room temperature tonight had to be in the mid-forties.

  Buzz.

  He pushed TALK on the intercom and said, "I'm here. Who's there?"

  "Claudette. I think you've got one, doc."

  "Mrs. Winnick?" He was pretty sure it was her, and that would mean putting on his parka, because Vera Winnick was in Rivington Two, and the walkway between here and there would be colder than a witch's belt buckle. Or a well-digger's tit. Or whatever the saying was. Vera had been hanging by a thread for a week now, comatose, in and out of Cheyne-Stokes respiration, and this was exactly the sort of night the frail ones picked to go out on. Usually at 4 a.m. He checked his watch. Only 3:20, but that was close enough for government work.

  Claudette Albertson surprised him. "No, it's Mr. Hayes, right down here on the first floor with us."

  "Are you sure?" Dan had played a game of checkers with Charlie Hayes just that afternoon, and for a man with acute myelogenous leukemia, he'd seemed as lively as a cricket.

  "Nope, but Azzie's in there. And you know what you say."

  What he said was Azzie was never wrong, and he had almost six years' worth of experience on which to base that conclusion. Azreel wandered freely around the three buildings that made up the Rivington complex, spending most of his afternoons curled up on a sofa in the rec room, although it wasn't unusual to see him draped across one of the card tables--with or without a half-completed jigsaw puzzle on it--like a carelessly thrown stole. All the residents seemed to like him (if there had been complaints about the House housecat, they hadn't reached Dan's ears), and Azzie liked them all right back. Sometimes he would jump up in some half-dead oldster's lap . . . but lightly, never seeming to hurt. Which was remarkable, given his size. Azzie was a twelve-pounder.

  Other than during his afternoon naps, Az rarely stayed in one location for long; he always had places to go, people to see, things to do. ("That cat's a playa," Claudette had once told Danny.) You might see him visiting the spa, licking a paw and taking a little heat. Relaxing on a stopped treadmill in the Health Suite. Sitting atop an abandoned gurney and staring into thin air at those things only cats can see. Sometimes he stalked the back lawn with his ears flattened against his skull, the very picture of feline predation, but if he caught birds and chipmunks, he took them into one of the neighboring yards or across to the town common and dismembered them there.

  The rec room was open round-the-clock, but Azzie rarely visited there once the TV was off and the residents were gone. When evening gave way to night and the pulse of Rivington House slowed, Azzie became restless, patrolling the corridors like a sentry on the edge of enemy territory. Once the lights dimmed, you might not even see him unless you were looking right at him; his unremarkable mouse-colored fur blended in with the shadows.

  He never went into the guest rooms unless one of the guests was dying.

  Then he would either slip in (if the door was unlatched) or sit outside with his tail curled around his haunches, waowing in a low, polite voice to be admitted. When he was, he would jump up on the guest's bed (they were always guests at Rivington House, never patients) and settle there, purring. If the person so chosen happened to be awake, he or she might stroke the cat. To Dan's knowledge, no one had ever demanded that Azzie be evicted. They seemed to know he was there as a friend.

  "Who's the doctor on call?" Dan asked.

  "You," Claudette promptly came back.

  "You know what I mean. The real doctor."

  "Emerson, but when I phoned his service, the woman told me not to be silly. Everything's socked in from Berlin to Manchester. She said that except for the ones on the turnpikes, even the plows are waiting for daylight."

  "All right," Dan said. "I'm on my way."

  3

  After working at the hospice for awhile, Dan had come to realize there was a class system even for the dying. The guest accommodations in the main house were bigger and more expensive than those in Rivington One and Two. In the Victorian manse where Helen Rivington had once hung her hat and written her romances, the rooms were called suites and named after famous New Hampshire residents. Charlie Hayes was in Alan Shepard. To get there, Dan had to pass the snack alcove at the foot of the stairs, where there were vending machines and a few hard plastic chairs. Fred Carling was plopped down in one of these, munching peanut butter crackers and reading an old issue of Popular Mechanics. Carling was one of three orderlies on the midnight-to-eight shift. The other two rotated to days twice a month; Carling never did. A self-proclaimed night owl, he was a beefy time-server whose arms, sleeved out in a tangle of tats, suggested a biker past.

  "Well lookit here," he said. "It's Danny-boy. Or are you in your secret identity tonight?"

  Dan was still only half awake and in no mood for joshing. "What do you know about Mr. Hayes?"

  "Nothing except the cat's in there, and that usually means they're going to go tits-up."

  "No bleeding?"

  The big man shrugged. "Well yeah, he had a little noser. I put the bloody towels in a plague-bag, just like I'm s'posed to. They're in Laundry A, if you want to check."

  Dan thought of asking how a nosebleed that took more than one towel to clean up could be characterized as little, and decided to let it go. Carling was an unfeeling dolt, and how he'd gotten a job here--even on the night shift, when most of the guests were either asleep or trying to be quiet so they wouldn't disturb anyone else--was beyond Dan. He suspected somebody might have pulled a wire or two. It was how the world worked. Hadn't his own father pulled a wire to get his final job, as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel? Maybe that wasn't proof positive that who you knew was a lousy way to get a job, but it certainly seemed suggestive.

  "Enjoy your evening, Doctor Sleeeep," Carling called after him, making no effort to keep his voice down.

  At the nurses' station, Claudette was charting meds while Janice Barker watched a small TV with the sound turned down low. The current program was one of those endless ads for colon cleanser, but Jan was watching with her eyes wide and her mouth hung ajar. She started when Dan tapped his fingernails on the counter and he realized she hadn't been fascinated but half asleep.

  "Can either of you tell me anything substantive about Charlie? Carling knows from nothing."

  Claudette glanced down the hall to make sure Fred Carling wasn't in view, then lowered her voice, anyway. "That man's as useless as boobs on a bull. I keep hoping he'll get fired."

  Dan kept his similar opinion to himself. Constant sobriety, he had discovered, did wonders for one's powers of discretion.

  "I checked him fifteen minutes ago," Jan said. "We check them a lot when Mr. Pussycat comes to visit."

  "How long's Azzie been in there?"

  "He was meowing outside the door when we came on duty at midnight," Claudette said, "so I
opened it for him. He jumped right up on the bed. You know how he does. I almost called you then, but Charlie was awake and responsive. When I said hi, he hi'd me right back and started petting Azzie. So I decided to wait. About an hour later, he had a nosebleed. Fred cleaned him up. I had to tell him to put the towels in a plague-bag."

  Plague-bags were what the staff called the dissolvable plastic sacks in which clothing, linen, and towels contaminated with bodily fluids or tissue were stored. It was a state regulation that was supposed to minimize the spread of blood-borne pathogens.

  "When I checked him forty or fifty minutes ago," Jan said, "he was asleep. I gave him a shake. He opened his eyes, and they were all bloodshot."

  "That's when I called Emerson," Claudette said. "And after I got the big no-way-Jose from the girl on service, I called you. Are you going down now?"

  "Yes."

  "Good luck," Jan said. "Ring if you need something."

  "I will. Why are you watching an infomercial for colon cleanser, Jannie? Or is that too personal?"

  She yawned. "At this hour, the only other thing on is an infomercial for the Ahh Bra. I already have one of those."

  4

  The door of the Alan Shepard Suite was standing half open, but Dan knocked anyway. When there was no response, he pushed it all the way open. Someone (probably one of the nurses; it almost certainly hadn't been Fred Carling) had cranked up the bed a little. The sheet was pulled to Charlie Hayes's chest. He was ninety-one, painfully thin, and so pale he hardly seemed to be there at all. Dan had to stand still for thirty seconds before he could be absolutely sure the old man's pajama top was going up and down. Azzie was curled beside the scant bulge of one hip. When Dan came in, the cat surveyed him with those inscrutable eyes.

  "Mr. Hayes? Charlie?"

  Charlie's eyes didn't open. The lids were bluish. The skin beneath them was darker, a purple-black. When Dan got to the side of the bed, he saw more color: a little crust of blood beneath each nostril and in one corner of the folded mouth.