Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(144)

“Why would I not be, dear?” She kept her voice calm and slightly indulgent—the voice of a mother (or so she imagined; she had never been one) speaking to a tantrum-prone toddler.

“Because you’re a coward.”

“I’m curious to know what you base that assumption on,” Rose said. Her tone was the same—indulgent, slightly amused—but her hand had tightened on the phone, and pressed it harder against her ear. “Never having met me.”

“Sure I have. Inside my head, and I sent you running with your tail between your legs. And you kill kids. Only cowards kill kids.”

You don’t need to justify yourself to a child, she told herself. Especially not a rube. But she heard herself saying, “You know nothing about us. What we are, or what we have to do in order to survive.”

“A tribe of cowards is what you are,” the bitchgirl said. “You think you’re so talented and so strong, but the only thing you’re really good at is eating and living long lives. You’re like hyenas. You kill the weak and then run away. Cowards.”

The contempt in her voice was like acid in Rose’s ear. “That’s not true!”

“And you’re the chief coward. You wouldn’t come after me, would you? No, not you. You sent those others instead.”

“Are we going to have a reasonable conversation, or—”

“What’s reasonable about killing kids so you can steal the stuff in their minds? What’s reasonable about that, you cowardly old whore? You sent your friends to do your work, you hid behind them, and I guess that was smart, because now they’re all dead.”

“You stupid little bitch, you don’t know anything!” Rose leaped to her feet. Her thighs bumped the table and her coffee spilled, running beneath the bingo drum. Long Paul peeked through the kitchen doorway, took one look at her face, and pulled back. “Who’s the coward? Who’s the real coward? You can say such things over the phone, but you could never say them looking into my face!”

“How many will you have to have with you when I come?” Abra taunted. “How many, you yellow bitch?”

Rose said nothing. She had to get herself under control, she knew it, but to be talked to this way by a rube girl with a mouthful of filthy schoolyard language . . . and she knew too much. Much too much.

“Would you even dare to face me alone?” the bitchgirl asked.

“Try me,” Rose spat.

There was a pause on the other end, and when the bitchgirl next spoke, she sounded thoughtful. “One-on-one? No, you wouldn’t dare. A coward like you would never dare. Not even against a kid. You’re a cheater and a liar. You look pretty sometimes, but I’ve seen your real face. You’re nothing but an old chickenshit whore.”

“You . . . you . . .” But she could say no more. Her rage was so great it felt like it was strangling her. Some of it was shock at finding herself—Rose the Hat—dressed down by a kid whose idea of transportation was a bicycle and whose major concern before these last weeks had probably been when she might get breasts bigger than mosquito bumps.

“But maybe I’ll give you a chance,” the bitchgirl said. Her confidence and breezy temerity were unbelievable. “Of course, if you take me up on it, I’ll wipe the floor with you. I won’t bother with the others, they’re dying already.” She actually laughed. “Choking on the baseball boy, and good for him.”

“If you come, I’ll kill you,” Rose said. One hand found her throat, closed on it, and began to squeeze rhythmically. Later there would be bruises. “If you run, I’ll find you. And when I do, you’ll scream for hours before you die.”

“I won’t run,” the girl said. “And we’ll see who does the screaming.”

“How many will you have to back you up? Dear?”

“I’ll be alone.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Read my mind,” the girl said. “Or are you afraid to do that, too?”

Rose said nothing.

“Sure you are. You remember what happened last time you tried it. I gave you a taste of your own medicine, and you didn’t like it, did you? Hyena. Child-killer. Coward.”

“Stop . . . calling . . . me that.”

“There’s a place up the hill from where you are. A lookout. It’s called Roof O’ the World. I found it on the internet. Be there at five o’clock Monday afternoon. Be there alone. If you’re not, if the rest of your pack of hyenas doesn’t stay in that meeting-hall place while we do our business, I’ll know. And I’ll go away.”

“I’d find you,” Rose repeated.

“You think?” Actually jeering at her.

Rose shut her eyes and saw the girl. She saw her writhing on the ground, her mouth stuffed with stinging hornets and hot sticks jutting out of her eyes. No one talks to me like this. Not ever.

“I suppose you might find me. But by the time you did, how many of your stinking True Knot would be left to back you up? A dozen? Ten? Maybe only three or four?”

This idea had already occurred to Rose. For a child she’d never even seen face-to-face to reach the same conclusion was, in many ways, the most infuriating thing of all.

“The Crow knew Shakespeare,” the bitchgirl said. “He quoted some to me not too long before I killed him. I know a little, too, because we had a Shakespeare unit in school. We only read one play, Romeo and Juliet, but Ms. Franklin gave us a printout with a whole list of famous lines from his other plays. Things like ‘To be or not to be’ and ‘It was Greek to me.’ Did you know those were from Shakespeare? I didn’t. Don’t you think it’s interesting?”