Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(153)

“What if they posted someone there?”

“They haven’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because neither Abra nor her uncle Billy could possibly know about it, never having been here. And the True doesn’t know about me.”

“You better hope they don’t.”

“Abra says everyone’s where they’re supposed to be. She’s been checking. Now be quiet a minute, Billy. I need to think.”

It was Hallorann he wanted to think about. For several years following their haunted winter at the Overlook, Danny Torrance and Dick Hallorann had talked a lot. Sometimes face-to-face, more often mind-to-mind. Danny loved his mother, but there were things she didn’t—couldn’t—understand. About the lockboxes, for instance. The ones where you put the dangerous things that the shining sometimes attracted. Not that the lockbox thing always worked. On several occasions he had tried to make one for the drinking, but that effort had been an abject failure (perhaps because he had wanted it to be a failure). Mrs. Massey, though . . . and Horace Derwent . . .

There was a third lockbox in storage now, but it wasn’t as good as the ones he’d made as a kid. Because he wasn’t as strong? Because what it held was different from the revenants that had been unwise enough to seek him out? Both? He didn’t know. He only knew that it was leaky. When he opened it, what was inside might kill him. But—

“What do you mean?” Billy asked.

“Huh?” Dan looked around. One hand was pressed to his stomach. It hurt very badly now.

“You just said, ‘There isn’t any choice.’ What did you mean?”

“Never mind.” They had reached the picnic area, and Billy was turning in. Up ahead was a clearing with picnic benches and barbecue pits. To Dan, it looked like Cloud Gap without the river. “Just . . . if things go wrong, get in your truck and drive like hell.”

“You think that would help?”

Dan didn’t reply. His gut was burning, burning.


3

Shortly before four o’clock on that Monday afternoon in late September, Rose walked up to Roof O’ the World with Silent Sarey.

Rose was dressed in form-fitting jeans that accentuated her long and shapely legs. Although it was chilly, Silent Sarey wore only a housedress of unremarkable light blue that fluttered around stout calves clad in Jobst support stockings. Rose stopped to look at a plaque which had been bolted to a granite post at the base of the three dozen or so stairs leading up to the lookout platform. It announced that this was the site of the historic Overlook Hotel, which had burned to the ground some thirty-five years ago.

“Very strong feelings here, Sarey.”

Sarey nodded.

“You know there are hot springs where steam comes right out of the ground, don’t you?”

“Lup.”

“This is like that.” Rose bent down to sniff at the grass and wildflowers. Below their aromas was the iron smell of ancient blood. “Strong emotions—hatred, fear, prejudice, lust. The echo of murder. Not food—too old—but refreshing, all the same. A heady bouquet.”

Sarey said nothing, but watched Rose closely.

“And this thing.” Rose waved a hand at the steep wooden stairs leading up to the platform. “Looks like a gallows, don’t you think? All it needs is a trapdoor.”

Nothing from Sarey. Out loud, at least. Her thought

(no rope)

was clear enough.

“That’s true, my love, but one of us is going to hang here, just the same. Either me or the little bitch with her nose in our business. See that?” Rose pointed to a small green shed about twenty feet away.

Sarey nodded.

Rose was wearing a zipper pack on her belt. She opened it, rummaged, brought out a key, and handed it to the other woman. Sarey walked to the shed, grass whickering against her thick flesh-colored hose. The key fitted a padlock on the door. When she pulled the door open, late-day sunshine illuminated an enclosure not much bigger than a privy. There was a Lawn-Boy and a plastic bucket holding a hand-sickle and a rake. A spade and a pickax leaned against the back wall. There was nothing else, and nothing to hide behind.

“Go on in,” Rose said. “Let’s see what you can do.” And with all that steam inside you, you should be able to amaze me.

Like other members of the True Knot, Silent Sarey had her little talent.

She stepped into the little shed, sniffed, and said: “Dusty.”

“Never mind the dust. Let’s see you do your thing. Or rather, let’s not see you.”

For that was Sarey’s talent. She wasn’t capable of invisibility (none of them was), but she could create a kind of dimness that went very well with her unremarkable face and figure. She turned to Rose, then looked down at her shadow. She moved—not much, only half a step—and her shadow merged with the one thrown by the handle of the Lawn-Boy. Then she became perfectly still, and the shed was empty.

Rose squeezed her eyes shut, then popped them wide open, and there was Sarey, standing beside the mower with her hands folded demurely at her waist like a shy girl hoping some boy at the party will ask her to dance. Rose looked away at the mountains, and when she looked back again the shed was empty—just a tiny storage room with nowhere to hide. In the strong sunlight there wasn’t even a shadow. Except for the one thrown by the mower’s handle, that was. Only . . .