Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(147)

“I’m goin,” he told Dan.

“Billy, I appreciate the thought, but it’s not a good idea.”

“My truck, my rules. Besides, are you really gonna make the Colorado high country by Monday afternoon on your own? Don’t make me laugh. You look like shit on a stick.”

Dan said, “Several people have told me that lately, but none have put it so elegantly.”

Billy didn’t smile. “I can help you. I’m old, but I ain’t dead.”

“Take him,” Abra said. “He’s right.”

Dan looked at her closely.

(do you know something Abra)

The reply was quick.

(no feel something)

That was good enough for Dan. He held out his arms and Abra hugged him hard, the side of her face pressed against his chest. Dan could have held her like that for a long time, but he let her go and stepped back.

(let me know when you get close Uncle Dan I’ll come)

(just little touches remember)

She sent an image instead of a thought in words: a smoke detector beeping the way they did when they wanted a battery change. She remembered perfectly.

As she went to the car, Abra said to her father, “We need to stop on the way back for a get-well card. Julie Cross broke her wrist yesterday in soccer practice.”

He frowned at her. “How do you know that?”

“I know,” she said.

He gently pulled one of her pigtails. “You really could do it all along, couldn’t you? I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell us, Abba-Doo.”

Dan, who had grown up with the shining, could have answered that question.

Sometimes parents needed to be protected.


4

So they parted. John’s SUV went east and Billy’s pickup truck went west, with Billy behind the wheel. Dan said, “Are you really okay to drive, Billy?”

“After all the sleep I got last night? Sweetheart, I could drive to California.”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“I bought a road atlas in town while I was waitin for the pizza.”

“So you’d made up your mind even then. And you knew what Abra and I were planning.”

“Well . . . sorta.”

“When you need me to take over, just yell,” Dan said, and promptly fell asleep with his head against the passenger window. He descended through a deepening depth of unpleasant images. First the hedge animals at the Overlook, the ones that moved when you weren’t looking. This was followed by Mrs. Massey from Room 217, who now wore a cocked tophat. Still descending, he revisited the battle at Cloud Gap. Only this time when he burst into the Winnebago, he found Abra lying on the floor with her throat cut and Rose standing over her with a dripping straight razor. Rose saw Dan and the bottom half of her face dropped away in an obscene grin where one long tooth gleamed. I told her it would end this way but she wouldn’t listen, she said. Children so rarely do.

Below this there was only darkness.

When he woke it was to twilight with a broken white line running down the middle of it. They were on an interstate highway.

“How long did I sleep?”

Billy glanced at his watch. “A good long while. Feel better?”

“Yes.” He did and didn’t. His head was clear, but his stomach hurt like hell. Considering what he had seen that morning in the mirror, he wasn’t surprised. “Where are we?”

“Hunnert-n-fifty miles east of Cincinnati, give or take. You slept through two gas stops. And you snore.”

Dan sat up straight. “We’re in Ohio? Christ! What time is it?”

Billy glanced at his watch. “Quarter past six. Wasn’t no big thing; light traffic and no rain. I think we got an angel ridin with us.”

“Well, let’s find a motel. You need to sleep and I have to piss like a racehorse.”

“Not surprised.”

Billy pulled off at the next exit showing signs for gas, food, and motels. He pulled into a Wendy’s and got a bag of burgers while Dan used the men’s. When they got back into the truck, Dan took one bite of his double, put it back in the bag, and sipped cautiously at a coffee milkshake. That his stomach seemed willing to take.

Billy looked shocked. “Man, you gotta eat! What’s wrong with you?”

“I guess pizza for breakfast was a bad idea.” And because Billy was still looking at him: “The shake’s fine. All I need. Eyes on the road, Billy. We can’t help Abra if we’re getting patched up in some emergency room.”

Five minutes later, Billy pulled the truck under the canopy of a Fairfield Inn with a blinking ROOMS AVAILABLE sign over the door. He turned off the engine but didn’t get out. “Since I’m riskin my life with you, chief, I want to know what ails you.”

Dan almost pointed out that taking the risk had been Billy’s idea, not his, but that wasn’t fair. He explained. Billy listened in round-eyed silence.

“Jesus jumped-up Christ,” he said when Dan had finished.

“Unless I missed it,” Dan said, “there’s nothing in the New Testament about Jesus jumping. Although I guess He might’ve, as a child. Most of them do. You want to check us in, or should I do it?”

Billy continued to sit where he was. “Does Abra know?”