Doctor Sleep, Page 41

  John swung the Suburban into the little parking area behind Concetta's condo, but for the time being, none of them got out. In spite of her worry about her daughter, Lucy was fascinated by this history lesson. Dan didn't have to look at her to know it.

  "If it wasn't the shining, what was it?"

  "When we were going out to Cloud Gap on the Riv, Dave mentioned that you found a trunk in storage at Concetta's building."

  "Yes. My mother's. I had no idea Momo had saved some of her things."

  "Dave told John and me that she was quite the party girl, back in the day." It was actually Abra that Dave had been talking to, via telepathic link, but this was something Dan felt it might be better for his newly discovered half sister not to know, at least for the time being.

  Lucy flashed Dave the reproachful look reserved for spouses who have been telling tales out of school, but said nothing.

  "He also said that when Alessandra dropped out of SUNY Albany, she was doing her student teaching at a prep school in Vermont or Massachusetts. My father taught English--until he lost his job for hurting a student, that is--in Vermont. At a school called Stovington Prep. And according to my mother, he was quite the party boy in those days. Once I knew that Abra and Billy were safe, I ran some numbers in my head. They seemed to add up, but I felt if anyone knew for sure, it would be Alessandra Anderson's mother."

  "Did she?" Lucy asked. She was leaning forward now, her hands on the console between the front seats.

  "Not everything, and we didn't have long together, but she knew enough. She didn't remember the name of the school where your mother student-taught, but she knew it was in Vermont. And that she'd had a brief affair with her supervising teacher. Who was, she said, a published writer." Dan paused. "My father was a published writer. Only a few stories, but some of them were in very good magazines, like the Atlantic Monthly. Concetta never asked her for the man's name, and Alessandra never volunteered it, but if her college transcript is in that trunk, I'm pretty sure you'll find that her supervisor was John Daniel Torrance." He yawned and looked at his watch. "That's all I can do right now. Let's go upstairs. Three hours' sleep for all of us, then on to upstate New York. The roads will be empty, and we should be able to make great time."

  "Do you swear she's safe?" Lucy asked.

  Dan nodded.

  "All right, I'll wait. But only for three hours. As for sleeping . . ." She laughed. The sound had no humor in it.

  9

  When they entered Concetta's condo, Lucy strode directly to the microwave in the kitchen, set the timer, and showed it to Dan. He nodded, then yawned again. "Three thirty a.m., we're out of here."

  She studied him gravely. "I'd like to go without you, you know. Right this minute."

  He smiled a little. "I think you better hear the rest of the story first."

  She nodded grimly.

  "That and the fact that my daughter needs to sleep off whatever is in her system are the only things holding me here. Now go lie down before you fall down."

  Dan and John took the guest room. The wallpaper and furnishings made it clear that it had been mostly kept for one special little girl, but Chetta must have had other guests from time to time, because there were twin beds.

  As they lay in the dark, John said: "It's not a coincidence that this hotel you stayed in as a child is also in Colorado, is it?"

  "No."

  "This True Knot is in the same town?"

  "They are."

  "And the hotel was haunted?"

  The ghostie people, Dan thought. "Yes."

  Then John said something that surprised Dan and temporarily brought him back from the edge of sleep. Dave had been right--the easiest things to miss were the ones right in front of you. "It makes sense, I suppose . . . once you accept the idea there could be supernatural beings among us and feeding on us. An evil place would call evil creatures. They'd feel right at home there. Do you suppose this Knot has other places like that, in other parts of the country? Other . . . I don't know . . . cold spots?"

  "I'm sure they do." Dan put an arm over his eyes. His body ached and his head was pounding. "Johnny, I'd love to do the boys-having-a-sleepover thing with you, but I have to get some shuteye."

  "Okay, but . . ." John got up on one elbow. "All things being equal, you would have gone right from the hospital, like Lucy wanted. Because you care almost as much about Abra as they do. You think she's safe, but you could be wrong."

  "I'm not." Hoping that was the truth. He had to hope so, because the simple fact was that he couldn't go, not now. If it had only been to New York, maybe. But it wasn't, and he had to sleep. His whole body cried for it.

  "What's wrong with you, Dan? Because you look terrible."

  "Nothing. Just tired."

  Then he was gone, first into darkness and then into a confused nightmare of running down endless halls while some Shape followed him, swinging a mallet from side to side, splitting wallpaper and driving up puffs of plaster dust. Come out, you little shit! the Shape yelled. Come out, you worthless pup, and take your medicine!

  Then Abra was with him. They were sitting on the bench in front of the Anniston Public Library, in the late-summer sun. She was holding his hand. It's all right, Uncle Dan. It's all right. Before he died, your father turned that Shape out. You don't have to--

  The library door banged open and a woman stepped into the sunlight. Great clouds of dark hair billowed around her head, yet her jauntily cocked tophat stayed on. It stayed on like magic.

  "Oh, look," she said. "It's Dan Torrance, the man who stole a woman's money while she was sleeping one off and then left her kid to be beaten to death."

  She smiled at Abra, revealing a single tooth. It looked as long and sharp as a bayonet.

  "What will he do to you, little sweetie? What will he do to you?"

  10

  Lucy woke him promptly at three thirty, but shook her head when Dan moved to wake John. "Let him sleep a bit longer. And my husband is snoring on the couch." She actually smiled. "It makes me think of the Garden of Gethsemane, you know. Jesus reproaching Peter, saying, 'So you could not watch with me even one hour?' Or something like that. But I have no reason to reproach David, I guess--he saw it, too. Come on. I've made scrambled eggs. You look like you could use some. You're skinny as a rail." She paused and added: "Brother."

  Dan wasn't particularly hungry, but he followed her into the kitchen. "Saw what, too?"

  "I was going through Momo's papers--anything to keep my hands busy and pass the time--and I heard a clunk from the kitchen."

  She took his hand and led him to the counter between the stove and the fridge. There was a row of old-fashioned apothecary jars here, and the one containing sugar had been overturned. A message had been written in the spill.

  I'm OK

  Going back to sleep

  Love U

  In spite of how he felt, Dan thought of his blackboard and had to smile. It was so perfectly Abra.

  "She must have woken up just enough to do that," Lucy said.

  "Don't think so," Dan said.

  She looked at him from the stove, where she was dishing up scrambled eggs.

  "You woke her up. She heard your worry."

  "Do you really believe that?"

  "Yes."

  "Sit down." She paused. "Sit down, Dan. I guess I better get used to calling you that. Sit down and eat."

  Dan wasn't hungry, but he needed the fuel. He did as she said.

  11

  She sat across from him, sipping a glass of juice from the last carafe Concetta Reynolds would ever have delivered from Dean & DeLuca. "Older man with booze issues, starstruck younger woman. That's the picture I'm getting."

  "It's the one I got, too." Dan shoveled the eggs in steadily and methodically, not tasting them.

  "Coffee, Mr. . . . Dan?"

  "Please."

  She went past the spilled sugar to the Bunn. "He's married, but his job takes him to a lot of faculty parties where there are a lot of
pretty young gals. Not to mention a fair amount of blooming libido when the hour gets late and the music gets loud."

  "Sounds about right," Dan said. "Maybe my mom used to go along to those parties, but then there was a kid to take care of at home and no money for babysitters." She passed him a cup of coffee. He sipped it black before she could ask what he took in it. "Thanks. Anyway, they had a thing. Probably at one of the local motels. It sure wasn't in the back of his car--we had a VW Bug. Even a couple of horny acrobats couldn't have managed that."

  "Blackout screwing," John said, coming into the room. His hair was standing up in sleep-quills at the back of his head. "That's what the oldtimers call it. Are there any more of those eggs?"

  "Plenty," Lucy said. "Abra left a message on the counter."

  "Really?" John went to look at it. "That was her?"

  "Yes. I'd know her printing anywhere."

  "Holy shit, this could put Verizon out of business."

  She didn't smile. "Sit down and eat, John. You've got ten minutes, then I'm going to wake up Sleeping Beauty in there on the couch." She sat down. "Go on, Dan."

  "I don't know if she thought my dad would leave my mom for her or not, and I doubt if you'll find the answer to that one in her trunk. Unless maybe she left a diary. All I know--based on what Dave said and what Concetta told me later--is that she hung around for awhile. Maybe hoping, maybe just partying, maybe both. But by the time she found out she was pregnant, she must have given up. For all I know, we might have been in Colorado by then."

  "Do you suppose your mother ever found out?"

  "I don't know, but she must have wondered how faithful he was, especially on the nights when he came in late and shitfaced. I'm sure she knew that drunks don't limit their bad behavior to betting the ponies or tucking five-spots into the cleavages of the waitresses down at the Twist and Shout."

  She put a hand on his arm. "Are you all right? You look exhausted."

  "I'm okay. But you're not the only one who's trying to process all this."

  "She died in a car accident," Lucy said. She had turned from Dan and was looking fixedly at the bulletin board on the fridge. In the middle was a photograph of Concetta and Abra, who looked about four, walking hand in hand through a field of daisies. "The man with her was a lot older. And drunk. They were going fast. Momo didn't want to tell me, but around the time I turned eighteen, I got curious and nagged her into giving me at least some of the details. When I asked if my mother was drunk, too, Chetta said she didn't know. She said the police have no reason to test passengers who are killed in fatal accidents, only the driver." She sighed. "It doesn't matter. We'll leave the family stories for another day. Tell me what's happened to my daughter."

  He did. At some point, he turned around and saw Dave Stone standing in the doorway, tucking his shirt into his pants and watching him.

  12

  Dan started with how Abra had gotten in touch with him, first using Tony as a kind of intermediary. Then how Abra had come in contact with the True Knot: a nightmare vision of the one she called "the baseball boy."

  "I remember that nightmare," Lucy said. "She woke me up, screaming. It had happened before, but it was the first time in two or three years."

  Dave frowned. "I don't remember that at all."

  "You were in Boston, at a conference." She turned to Dan. "Let me see if I've got this. These people aren't people, they're . . . what? Some kind of vampires?"

  "In a way, I suppose. They don't sleep in coffins during the day or turn into bats by moonlight, and I doubt if crosses and garlic bother them, but they're parasites, and they're certainly not human."

  "Human beings don't disappear when they die," John said flatly.

  "You really saw that happen?"

  "We did. All three of us."

  "In any case," Dan said, "the True Knot isn't interested in ordinary children, only those who have the shining."

  "Children like Abra," Lucy said.

  "Yes. They torture them before killing them--to purify the steam, Abra says. I keep picturing moonshiners making white lightning."

  "They want to . . . inhale her," Lucy said. Still trying to get it straight in her head. "Because she has the shining."

  "Not just the shining, but a great shining. I'm a flashlight. She's a lighthouse. And she knows about them. She knows what they are."

  "There's more," John said. "What we did to those men at Cloud Gap . . . as far as this Rose is concerned, that's down to Abra, no matter who actually did the killing."

  "What else could she expect?" Lucy asked indignantly. "Don't they understand self-defense? Survival?"

  "What Rose understands," Dan said, "is that there's a little girl who has challenged her."

  "Challenged--?"

  "Abra got in touch telepathically. She told Rose that she was coming after her."

  "She what?"

  "That temper of hers," Dave said quietly. "I've told her a hundred times it would get her in trouble."

  "She's not going anywhere near that woman, or her child-killing friends," Lucy said.

  Dan thought: Yes . . . and no. He took Lucy's hand. She started to pull away, then didn't.

  "The thing you have to understand is really quite simple," he said. "They will never stop."

  "But--"

  "No buts, Lucy. Under other circumstances, Rose still might have decided to disengage--this is one crafty old she-wolf--but there's one other factor."

  "Which is?"

  "They're sick," John said. "Abra says it's the measles. They might even have caught it from the Trevor boy. I don't know if you'd call that divine retribution or just irony."

  "Measles?"

  "I know it doesn't sound like much, but believe me, it is. You know how, in the old days, measles could run through a whole family of kids? If that's happening to this True Knot, it could wipe them out."

  "Good!" Lucy cried. The angry smile on her face was one Dan knew well.

  "Not if they think Abra's supersteam will cure them," Dave said. "That's what you need to understand, hon. This isn't just a skirmish. To this bitch it's a fight to the death." He struggled and then brought out the rest of it. Because it had to be said. "If Rose gets the chance, she'll eat our daughter alive."

  13

  Lucy asked, "Where are they? This True Knot, where are they?"

  "Colorado," Dan said. "At a place called the Bluebell Campground in the town of Sidewinder." That the site of the campground was the very place where he had once almost died at his father's hands was a thing he didn't want to say, because it would lead to more questions and more cries of coincidence. The one thing of which Dan was sure was that there were no coincidences.

  "This Sidewinder must have a police department," Lucy said. "We'll call them and get them on this."

  "By telling them what?" John's tone was gentle, nonargumentative.

  "Well . . . that . . ."

  "If you actually got the cops to go up there to the campground," Dan said, "they'd find nothing but a bunch of middle-aged-going-on-older Americans. Harmless RV folks, the kind who always want to show you pictures of their grandkids. Their papers would all be in apple-pie order, from dog licenses to land deeds. The police wouldn't find guns if they managed to get a search warrant--which they wouldn't, no probable cause--because the True Knot doesn't need guns. Their weapons are up here." Dan tapped his forehead. "You'd be the crazy lady from New Hampshire, Abra would be your crazy daughter who ran away from home, and we'd be your crazy friends."

  Lucy pressed her palms to her temples. "I can't believe this is happening."

  "If you did a search of records, I think you'd find that the True Knot--under whatever name they might be incorporated--has been very generous to that particular Colorado town. You don't shit in your nest, you feather it. Then, if bad times come, you have lots of friends."

  "These bastards have been around a long time," John said. "Haven't they? Because the main thing they take from this steam is longevity."

  "I'
m pretty sure that's right," Dan said. "And as good Americans, I'm sure they've been busy making money the whole time. Enough to grease wheels a lot bigger than the ones that turn in Sidewinder. State wheels. Federal wheels."

  "And this Rose . . . she'll never stop."

  "No." Dan was thinking of the precognitive vision he'd had of her. The cocked hat. The yawning mouth. The single tooth. "Her heart is set on your daughter."

  "A woman who stays alive by killing children has no heart," Dave said.

  "Oh, she has one," Dan said. "But it's black."

  Lucy stood up. "No more talking. I want to go to her now. Everybody use the bathroom, because once we leave, we're not stopping until we get to that motel."

  Dan said, "Does Concetta have a computer? If she does, I need to take a quick peek at something before we go."

  Lucy sighed. "It's in her study, and I think you can guess the password. But if you take more than five minutes, we're going without you."

  14

  Rose lay awake in her bed, stiff as a poker, trembling with steam and fury.

  When an engine started up at quarter past two, she heard it. Steamhead Steve and Baba the Russian. When another started at twenty till four, she heard that one, too. This time it was the Little twins, Pea and Pod. Sweet Terri Pickford was with them, no doubt looking nervously through the back window for any sign of Rose. Big Mo had asked to go along--begged to go along--but they had turned her down because Mo was carrying the disease.

  Rose could have stopped them, but why bother? Let them discover what life was like in America on their own, with no True Knot to protect them in camp or watch their backs while they were on the road. Especially when I tell Toady Slim to kill their credit cards and empty their rich bank accounts, she thought.

  Toady was no Jimmy Numbers, but he could still take care of it, and at the touch of a button. And he'd be there to do it. Toady would stick. So would all the good ones . . . or almost all the good ones. Dirty Phil, Apron Annie, and Diesel Doug were no longer on their way back. They had taken a vote and decided to head south instead. Deez had told them Rose was no longer to be trusted, and besides, it was long past time to cut the Knot.