Doctor Sleep, Page 8

She's dead.

  There was no way he could know that, but he did. Deenie--who had looked like the goddess of the Western world in her thigh-high leather skirt and cork sandals--was dead. He even knew how she had done it. Took pills, pinned up her hair, climbed into a bathtub filled with warm water, went to sleep, slid under, drowned.

  The roar of the wind was dreadfully familiar, loaded with hollow threat. Winds blew everywhere, but it only sounded like this in the high country. It was as if some angry god were pounding the world with an air mallet.

  I used to call his booze the Bad Stuff, Dan thought. Only sometimes it's the Good Stuff. When you wake up from a nightmare that you know is at least fifty percent shining, it's the Very Good Stuff.

  One drink would send him back to sleep. Three would guarantee not just sleep but dreamless sleep. Sleep was nature's doctor, and right now Dan Torrance felt sick and in need of strong medicine.

  Nothing's open. You lucked out there.

  Well. Maybe.

  He turned on his side, and something rolled against his back when he did. No, not something. Someone. Someone had gotten into bed with him. Deenie had gotten into bed with him. Only it felt too small to be Deenie. It felt more like a--

  He scrambled out of bed, landed awkwardly on the floor, and looked over his shoulder. It was Deenie's little boy, Tommy. The right side of his skull was caved in. Bone splinters protruded through bloodstained fair hair. Gray scaly muck--brains--was drying on one cheek. He couldn't be alive with such a hellacious wound, but he was. He reached out to Dan with one starfish hand.

  "Canny," he said.

  The screaming began again, only this time it wasn't Deenie and it wasn't the wind.

  This time it was him.

  12

  When he woke for the second time--real waking, this time--he wasn't screaming at all, only making a kind of low growling deep in his chest. He sat up, gasping, the bedclothes puddled around his waist. There was no one else in his bed, but the dream hadn't yet dissolved, and looking wasn't enough. He threw back the bedclothes, and that still wasn't enough. He ran his hands down the bottom sheet, feeling for fugitive warmth, or a dent that might have been made by small hips and buttocks. Nothing. Of course not. So then he looked under the bed and saw only his borrowed boots.

  The wind was blowing less strongly now. The storm wasn't over, but it was winding down.

  He went to the bathroom, then whirled and looked back, as if expecting to surprise someone. There was just the bed, with the covers now lying on the floor at the foot. He turned on the light over the sink, splashed his face with cold water, and sat down on the closed lid of the commode, taking long breaths, one after the other. He thought about getting up and grabbing a cigarette from the pack lying beside his book on the room's one small table, but his legs felt rubbery and he wasn't sure they'd hold him. Not yet, anyway. So he sat. He could see the bed and the bed was empty. The whole room was empty. No problem there.

  Only . . . it didn't feel empty. Not yet. When it did, he supposed he would go back to bed. But not to sleep. For this night, sleep was done.

  13

  Seven years before, working as an orderly in a Tulsa hospice, Dan had made friends with an elderly psychiatrist who was suffering from terminal liver cancer. One day, when Emil Kemmer had been reminiscing (not very discreetly) about a few of his more interesting cases, Dan had confessed that ever since childhood, he had suffered from what he called double dreaming. Was Kemmer familiar with the phenomenon? Was there a name for it?

  Kemmer had been a large man in his prime--the old black-and-white wedding photo he kept on his bedside table attested to that--but cancer is the ultimate diet program, and on the day of this conversation, his weight had been approximately the same as his age, which was ninety-one. His mind had still been sharp, however, and now, sitting on the closed toilet and listening to the dying storm outside, Dan remembered the old man's sly smile.

  "Usually," he had said in his heavy German accent, "I am paid for my diagnoses, Daniel."

  Dan had grinned. "Guess I'm out of luck, then."

  "Perhaps not." Kemmer studied Dan. His eyes were bright blue. Although he knew it was outrageously unfair, Dan couldn't help imagining those eyes under a Waffen-SS coal-scuttle helmet. "There's a rumor in this deathhouse that you are a kid with a talent for helping people die. Is this true?"

  "Sometimes," Dan said cautiously. "Not always." The truth was almost always.

  "When the time comes, will you help me?"

  "If I can, of course."

  "Good." Kemmer sat up, a laboriously painful process, but when Dan moved to help, Kemmer had waved him away. "What you call double dreaming is well known to psychiatrists, and of particular interest to Jungians, who call it false awakening. The first dream is usually a lucid dream, meaning the dreamer knows he is dreaming--"

  "Yes!" Dan cried. "But the second one--"

  "The dreamer believes he is awake," Kemmer said. "Jung made much of this, even ascribing precognitive powers to these dreams . . . but of course we know better, don't we, Dan?"

  "Of course," Dan had agreed.

  "The poet Edgar Allan Poe described the false awakening phenomenon long before Carl Jung was born. He wrote, 'All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.' Have I answered your question?"

  "I think so. Thanks."

  "You're welcome. Now I believe I could drink a little juice. Apple, please."

  14

  Precognitive powers . . . but of course we know better.

  Even if he hadn't kept the shining almost entirely to himself over the years, Dan would not have presumed to contradict a dying man . . . especially one with such coldly inquisitive blue eyes. The truth, however, was that one or both of his double dreams were often predictive, usually in ways he only half understood or did not understand at all. But as he sat on the toilet seat in his underwear, now shivering (and not just because the room was cold), he understood much more than he wanted to.

  Tommy was dead. Murdered by his abusive uncle, most likely. The mother had committed suicide not long after. As for the rest of the dream . . . or the phantom hat he'd seen earlier, spinning down the sidewalk . . .

  Stay away from the woman in the hat. She's the Queen Bitch of Castle Hell.

  "I don't care," Dan said.

  If you mess with her, she'll eat you alive.

  He had no intention of meeting her, let alone messing with her. As for Deenie, he wasn't responsible for either her short-fused brother or her child neglect. He didn't even have to carry around the guilt about her lousy seventy dollars anymore; she had sold the cocaine--he was sure that part of the dream was absolutely true--and they were square. More than square, actually.

  What he cared about was getting a drink. Getting drunk, not to put too fine a point on it. Standing-up, falling-down, pissy-assed drunk. Warm morning sunshine was good, and the pleasant feeling of muscles that had been worked hard, and waking up in the morning without a hangover, but the price--all these crazy dreams and visions, not to mention the random thoughts of passing strangers that sometimes found their way past his defenses--was too high.

  Too high to bear.

  15

  He sat in the room's only chair and read his John Sandford novel by the light of the room's only lamp until the two town churches with bells rang in seven o'clock. Then he pulled on his new (new to him, anyway) boots and duffel coat. He headed out into a world that had changed and softened. There wasn't a sharp edge anywhere. The snow was still falling, but gently now.

  I should get out of here. Go back to Florida. Fuck New Hampshire, where it probably even snows on the Fourth of July in odd-numbered years.

  Hallorann's voice answered him, the tone as kind as he remembered from his childhood, when Dan had been Danny, but there was hard steel underneath. You better stay somewhere, honey, or you won't be able to stay anywhere.

  "Fuck you, oldtimer," he muttered.

  He went back to the Red Apple because the stores that sold h
ard liquor wouldn't be open for at least another hour. He walked slowly back and forth between the wine cooler and the beer cooler, debating, and finally decided if he was going to get drunk, he might as well do it as nastily as possible. He grabbed two bottles of Thunderbird (eighteen percent alcohol, a good enough number when whiskey was temporarily out of reach), started up the aisle to the register, then stopped.

  Give it one more day. Give yourself one more chance.

  He supposed he could do that, but why? So he could wake up in bed with Tommy again? Tommy with half of his skull caved in? Or maybe next time it would be Deenie, who had lain in that tub for two days before the super finally got tired of knocking, used his passkey, and found her. He couldn't know that, if Emil Kemmer had been here he would have agreed most emphatically, but he did. He did know. So why bother?

  Maybe this hyperawareness will pass. Maybe it's just a phase, the psychic equivalent of the DTs. Maybe if you just give it a little more time . . .

  But time changed. That was something only drunks and junkies understood. When you couldn't sleep, when you were afraid to look around because of what you might see, time elongated and grew sharp teeth.

  "Help you?" the clerk asked, and Dan knew

  ( fucking shining fucking thing)

  that he was making the clerk nervous. Why not? With his bed head, dark-circled eyes, and jerky, unsure movements, he probably looked like a meth freak who was deciding whether or not to pull out his trusty Saturday night special and ask for everything in the register.

  "No," Dan said. "I just realized I left my wallet home."

  He put the green bottles back in the cooler. As he closed it, they spoke to him gently, as one friend speaks to another: See you soon, Danny.

  16

  Billy Freeman was waiting for him, bundled up to the eyebrows. He held out an old-fashioned ski hat with ANNISTON CYCLONES embroidered on the front.

  "What the hell are the Anniston Cyclones?" Dan asked.

  "Anniston's twenty miles north of here. When it comes to football, basketball, and baseball, they're our archrivals. Someone sees that on ya, you'll probably get a snowball upside your head, but it's the only one I've got."

  Dan hauled it on. "Then go, Cyclones."

  "Right, fuck you and the hoss you rode in on." Billy looked him over. "You all right, Danno?"

  "Didn't get much sleep last night."

  "I hear that. Damn wind really screamed, didn't it? Sounded like my ex when I suggested a little Monday night lovin might do us good. Ready to go to work?"

  "Ready as I'll ever be."

  "Good. Let's dig in. Gonna be a busy day."

  17

  It was indeed a busy day, but by noon the sun had come out and the temperature had climbed back into the mid-fifties. Teenytown was filled with the sound of a hundred small waterfalls as the snow melted. Dan's spirits rose with the temperature, and he even caught himself singing ("Young man! I was once in your shoes!") as he followed his snowblower back and forth in the courtyard of the little shopping center adjacent to the common. Overhead, flapping in a mild breeze far removed from the shrieking wind of the night before, was a banner reading HUGE SPRING BARGAINS AT TEENYTOWN PRICES!

  There were no visions.

  After they clocked out, he took Billy to the Chuck Wagon and ordered them steak dinners. Billy offered to buy the beer. Dan shook his head. "Staying away from alcohol. Reason being, once I start, it's sometimes hard to stop."

  "You could talk to Kingsley about that," Billy said. "He got himself a booze divorce about fifteen years ago. He's all right now, but his daughter still don't talk to him."

  They drank coffee with the meal. A lot of it.

  Dan went back to his third-floor Eliot Street lair tired, full of hot food and glad to be sober. There was no TV in his room, but he had the last part of the Sandford novel, and lost himself in it for a couple of hours. He kept an ear out for the wind, but it did not rise. He had an idea that last night's storm had been winter's final shot. Which was fine with him. He turned in at ten and fell asleep almost immediately. His early morning visit to the Red Apple now seemed hazy, as if he had gone there in a fever delirium and the fever had now passed.

  18

  He woke in the small hours, not because the wind was blowing but because he had to piss like a racehorse. He got up, shuffled to the bathroom, and turned on the light inside the door.

  The tophat was in the tub, and full of blood.

  "No," he said. "I'm dreaming."

  Maybe double dreaming. Or triple. Quadruple, even. There was something he hadn't told Emil Kemmer: he was afraid that eventually he would get lost in a maze of phantom nightlife and never be able to find his way out again.

  All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

  Only this was real. So was the hat. No one else would see it, but that changed nothing. The hat was real. It was somewhere in the world. He knew it.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw something written on the mirror over the sink. Something written in lipstick.

  I must not look at it.

  Too late. His head was turning; he could hear the tendons in his neck creaking like old doorhinges. And what did it matter? He knew what it said. Mrs. Massey was gone, Horace Derwent was gone, they were securely locked away in the boxes he kept far back in his mind, but the Overlook was still not done with him. Written on the mirror, not in lipstick but in blood, was a single word:

  REDRUM

  Beneath it, lying in the sink, was a bloodstained Atlanta Braves t-shirt.

  It will never stop, Danny thought. The Overlook burned and the most terrible of its revenants went into the lockboxes, but I can't lock away the shining, because it isn't just inside me, it is me. Without booze to at least stun it, these visions will go on until they drive me insane.

  He could see his face in the mirror with REDRUM floating in front of it, stamped on his forehead like a brand. This was not a dream. There was a murdered child's shirt in his washbasin and a hatful of blood in his tub. Insanity was coming. He could see its approach in his own bulging eyes.

  Then, like a flashlight beam in the dark, Hallorann's voice: Son, you may see things, but they're like pictures in a book. You weren't helpless in the Overlook when you were a child, and you're not helpless now. Far from it. Close your eyes and when you open them, all this crap will be gone.

  He closed his eyes and waited. He tried to count off the seconds, but only made it to fourteen before the numbers were lost in the roaring confusion of his thoughts. He half expected hands--perhaps those of whoever owned the hat--to close around his neck. But he stood there. There was really nowhere else to go.

  Summoning all his courage, Dan opened his eyes. The tub was empty. The washbasin was empty. There was nothing written on the mirror.

  But it will be back. Next time maybe it'll be her shoes--those cork sandals. Or I'll see her in the tub. Why not? That's where I saw Mrs. Massey, and they died the same way. Except I never stole Mrs. Massey's money and ran out on her.

  "I gave it a day," he told the empty room. "I did that much."

  Yes, and although it had been a busy day, it had also been a good day, he'd be the first to admit it. The days weren't the problem. As for the nights . . .

  The mind was a blackboard. Booze was the eraser.

  19

  Dan lay awake until six. Then he dressed and once more made the trek to the Red Apple. This time he did not hesitate, only instead of extracting two bottles of Bird from the cooler, he took three. What was it they used to say? Go big or go home. The clerk bagged the bottles without comment; he was used to early wine purchasers. Dan strolled to the town common, sat on one of the benches in Teenytown, and took one of the bottles out of the bag, looking down at it like Hamlet with Yorick's skull. Through the green glass, what was inside looked like rat poison instead of wine.

  "You say that like it's a bad thing," Dan said, and loosened the cap.

  This time it was his mother who spoke up. Wen
dy Torrance, who had smoked right to the bitter end. Because if suicide was the only option, you could at least choose your weapon.

  Is this how it ends, Danny? Is this what it was all for?

  He turned the cap widdershins. Then tightened it. Then back the other way. This time he took it off. The smell of the wine was sour, the smell of jukebox music and crappy bars and pointless arguments followed by fistfights in parking lots. In the end, life was as stupid as one of those fights. The world wasn't a hospice with fresh air, the world was the Overlook Hotel, where the party never ended. Where the dead were alive forever. He raised the bottle to his lips.

  Is this why we fought so hard to get out of that damned hotel, Danny? Why we fought to make a new life for ourselves? There was no reproach in her voice, only sadness.

  Danny tightened the cap again. Then loosened it. Tightened it. Loosened it.

  He thought: If I drink, the Overlook wins. Even though it burned to the ground when the boiler exploded, it wins. If I don't drink, I go crazy.

  He thought: All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

  He was still tightening the cap and loosening it when Billy Freeman, who had awakened early with the vague, alarmed sense that something was wrong, found him.

  "Are you going to drink that, Dan, or just keep jerking it off ?"

  "Drink it, I guess. I don't know what else to do."

  So Billy told him.

  20

  Casey Kingsley wasn't entirely surprised to see his new hire sitting outside his office when he arrived at quarter past eight that morning. Nor was he surprised to see the bottle Torrance was holding in his hands, first twisting the cap off, then putting it back on and turning it tight again--he'd had that special look from the start, the thousand-yard Kappy's Discount Liquor Store stare.

  Billy Freeman didn't have as much shine as Dan himself, not even close, but a bit more than just a twinkle. On that first day he had called Kingsley from the equipment shed as soon as Dan headed across the street to the Municipal Building. There was a young fella looking for work, Billy said. He wasn't apt to have much in the way of references, but Billy thought he was the right man to help out until Memorial Day. Kingsley, who'd had experiences--good ones--with Billy's intuitions before, had agreed. I know we've got to have someone, he said.