Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(133)

Dan wasn’t surprised. “When you come back, the girl is probably going to be the girl again, which means you’ll have to drive. If you feel sober enough to be plausible, go to the next town that has a motel and check in. You’re traveling with your granddaughter, got it?”

“Yeah,” Billy said. “My granddaughter. Abby Freeman.”

“Once you’re in, call me on my cell.”

“Because you’ll be wherever . . . wherever the rest of you is.”

“Right.”

“This is f*cked to the sky, buddy.”

“Yes,” Dan said. “It certainly is. Our job now is to unf*ck it.”

“Okay. What is the next town?”

“No idea. I don’t want you having an accident, Billy. If you can’t get clear enough to drive twenty or thirty miles and then check into a motel without having the guy on the counter call the cops, you and Abra will have to spend the night in the cab of this truck. It won’t be comfortable, but it should be safe.”

Billy opened the passenger-side door. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll be able to pass for sober. Done it before.” He gave the girl behind the steering wheel a wink. “I work for Casey Kingsley. Death on drinkin, remember?”

Dan watched him go to the culvert and kneel there, then closed Abra’s eyes.

In a parking lot outside the Fox Run Mall, Abra closed Dan’s.

(Abra)

(I’m here)

(are you awake)

(yes sort of)

(we need to turn the wheel again can you help me)

This time, she could.


12

“Let go of me, you guys,” Dan said. His voice was his own again. “I’m all right. I think.”

John and Dave let go, ready to grab him again if he staggered, but he didn’t. What he did was touch himself: hair, face, chest, legs. Then he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m here.” He looked around. “Which is where?”

“Fox Run Mall,” John said. “Sixty miles or so from Boston.”

“Okay, let’s get back on the road.”

“Abra,” Dave said. “What about Abra?”

“Abra’s fine. Back where she belongs.”

“She belongs at home,” Dave said, and with more than a touch of resentment. “In her room. IM’ing with her friends or listening to those stupid ’Round Here kids on her iPod.”

She is at home, Dan thought. If a person’s body is their home, she’s there.

“She’s with Billy. Billy will take care of her.”

“What about the one who kidnapped her? This Crow?”

Dan paused beside the back door of John’s Suburban. “You don’t have to worry about him anymore. The one we have to worry about now is Rose.”


13

The Crown Motel was actually over the state line, in Crownville, New York. It was a rattletrap place with a flickering sign out front reading VAC NCY and M NY CAB E CHAN ELS! Only four cars were parked in the thirty or so slots. The man behind the counter was a descending mountain of fat, with a ponytail that trickled to a stop halfway down his back. He ran Billy’s Visa and gave him the keys to two rooms without taking his eyes from the TV, where two women on a red velvet sofa were engaged in strenuous osculation.

“Do they connect?” Billy asked. And, looking at the women: “The rooms, I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah, they all connect, just open the doors.”

“Thanks.”

He drove down the rank of units to twenty-three and twenty-four, and parked the truck. Abra was curled up on the seat with her head pillowed on one arm, fast asleep. Billy unlocked the rooms, turned on the lights, and opened the connecting doors. He judged the accommodations shabby but not quite desperate. All he wanted now was to get the two of them inside and go to sleep himself. Preferably for about ten hours. He rarely felt old, but tonight he felt ancient.

Abra woke up a little as he laid her on the bed. “Where are we?”

“Crownville, New York. We’re safe. I’ll be in the next room.”

“I want my dad. And I want Dan.”

“Soon.” Hoping he was right about that.

Her eyes closed, then slowly opened again. “I talked to that woman. That bitch.”

“Did you?” Billy had no idea what she meant.

“She knows what we did. She felt it. And it hurt.” A harsh light gleamed momentarily in Abra’s eyes. Billy thought it was like seeing a peek of sun at the end of a cold, overcast day in February. “I’m glad.”

“Go to sleep, hon.”

That cold winter light still shone out of the pale and tired face. “She knows I’m coming for her.”

Billy thought of brushing her hair out of her eyes, but what if she bit? Probably that was silly, but . . . the light in her eyes. His mother had looked like that sometimes, just before she lost her temper and whopped one of the kids. “You’ll feel better in the morning. I’d like it if we could go back tonight—I’m sure your dad feels that way, too—but I’m in no shape to drive. I was lucky to get this far without running off the road.”

“I wish I could talk to my mom and dad.”

Billy’s own mother and father—never candidates for Parents of the Year, even at their best—were long dead and he wished only for sleep. He looked longingly through the open door at the bed in the other room. Soon, but not quite yet. He took out his cell phone and flipped it open. It rang twice, and then he was talking to Dan. After a few moments, he handed the phone to Abra. “Your father. Knock yourself out.”