Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(117)

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?


16

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.”