Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(128)

Of course Dan and John knew what he’d said about Abra, and how upset Lucy had been at her husband’s continued insistence that the matter was too important and complex to go into on the telephone. They had both been in the kitchen when he made the call. But he needed to talk. To share, in AA-speak. John took care of any responses that needed to be made, saying uh-huh and I know and I understand.

At some point, Dave broke off and looked into the backseat. “Jesus God, are you sleeping?”

“No,” Dan said without opening his eyes. “I’m trying to get in touch with your daughter.”

That ended Dave’s monologue. Now there was only the hum of the tires as the Suburban ran south on Route 16 through a dozen little towns. Traffic was light and John kept the speedometer pegged at a steady sixty miles an hour once the two lanes broadened to four.

Dan made no effort to call Abra; he wasn’t sure that would work. Instead he tried to open his mind completely. To turn himself into a listening post. He had never attempted anything like this before, and the result was eerie. It was like wearing the world’s most powerful set of headphones. He seemed to hear a steady low rushing sound, and believed it was the hum of human thoughts. He held himself ready to hear her voice somewhere in that steady surf, not really expecting it, but what else could he do?

It was shortly after they went through the first tolls on the Spaulding Turnpike, now only sixty miles from Boston, that he finally picked her up.

(Dan)

Low. Barely there. At first he thought it was just imagination—wish fulfillment—but he turned in that direction anyway, trying to narrow his concentration down to a single searchlight beam. And it came again, a bit louder this time. It was real. It was her.

(Dan, please!)

She was drugged, all right, and he’d never tried anything remotely like what had to be done next . . . but Abra had. She would have to show him the way, doped up or not.

(Abra push you have to help me)

(help what help how)

(swapsies)

(???)

(help me turn the world)


4

Dave was in the passenger seat, going through the change in the cup holder for the next toll, when Dan spoke from behind him. Only it most certainly wasn’t Dan.

“Just give me another minute, I have to change my tampon!”

The Suburban swerved as John sat up straight and jerked the wheel. “What the hell?”

Dave unsnapped his seatbelt and got on his knees, twisting around to peer at the man lying on the backseat. Dan’s eyes were half-lidded, but when Dave spoke Abra’s name, they opened.

“No, Daddy, not now, I have to help . . . I have to try . . .” Dan’s body twisted. One hand came up, wiped his mouth in a gesture Dave had seen a thousand times, then fell away. “Tell him I said not to call me that. Tell him—”

Dan’s head cocked sideways until it was lying on his shoulder. He groaned. His hands twitched aimlessly.

“What’s going on?” John shouted. “What do I do?”

“I don’t know,” Dave said. He reached between the seats, took one of the twitching hands, and held it tight.

“Drive,” Dan said. “Just drive.”

Then the body on the backseat began to buck and twist. Abra began to scream with Dan’s voice.


5

He found the conduit between them by following the sluggish current of her thoughts. He saw the stone wheel because Abra was visualizing it, but she was far too weak and disoriented to turn it. She was using all the mental force she could muster just to keep her end of the link open. So he could enter her mind and she could enter his. But he was still mostly in the Suburban, with the lights of the cars headed in the other direction running across the padded roof. Light . . . dark . . . light . . . dark.

The wheel was so heavy.

There was a sudden hammering from somewhere, and a voice. “Come out, Abra. Time’s up. We have to roll.”

That frightened her, and she found a little extra strength. The wheel began to move, pulling him deeper into the umbilicus that connected them. It was the strangest sensation Dan had ever had in his life, exhilarating even in the horror of the situation.

Somewhere, distant, he heard Abra say, “Just give me another minute, I have to change my tampon!”

The roof of John’s Suburban was sliding away. Turning away. There was darkness, the sense of being in a tunnel, and he had time to think, If I get lost in here, I’ll never be able to get back. I’ll wind up in a mental hospital somewhere, labeled a hopeless catatonic.

But then the world was sliding back into place, only it wasn’t the same place. The Suburban was gone. He was in a smelly bathroom with dingy blue tiles on the floor and a sign beside the washbasin reading SORRY COLD WATER ONLY. He was sitting on the toilet.

Before he could even think about getting up, the door bammed open hard enough to crack some of the old tiles, and a man strode in. He looked about thirty-five, his hair dead black and combed away from his forehead, his face angular but handsome in a rough-hewn, bony way. In one hand he held a pistol.

“Change your tampon, sure,” he said. “Where’d you have it, Goldilocks, in your pants pocket? Must have been, because your backpack’s a long way from here.”

(tell him I said not to call me that)

Dan said, “I told you not to call me that.”