Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(159)

She would. Rose was sure of it, and she had seen enough in the mind of the bitchgirl’s companion to know two things: how they had accomplished this slaughter, and how their very connection could be turned against them.

Rage was powerful.

So were childhood memories.

She struggled to her feet, reset her hat at the proper jaunty angle without even thinking about it, and walked to the railing. The man from the pickup truck was staring up at her, but she paid scant attention to him. His treacherous little job was done. She might deal with him later, but now she had eyes only for the Overlook Lodge. The girl was there, but also far away. Her bodily presence at the True’s campground was little more than a phantom. The one who was whole—a real person, a rube—was a man she had never seen before. And a steamhead. His voice in her mind was clear and cold.

(hello Rose)

There was a place nearby where the girl would cease to flicker. Where she would take on her physical body. Where she could be killed. Let Sarey take care of the steamhead man, but not until the steamhead man had taken care of the bitchgirl.

(hello Danny hello little boy)

Loaded with steam, she reached into him and swatted him to the hub of the wheel, barely hearing Abra’s cry of bewilderment and terror as she turned to follow.

And when Dan was where Rose wanted him, for a moment too surprised to keep his guard up, she poured all her fury into him. She poured it into him like steam.





CHAPTER TWENTY

HUB OF THE WHEEL, ROOF O’ THE WORLD


1

Dan Torrance opened his eyes. Sunlight shot through them and into his aching head, threatening to set his brains on fire. It was the hangover to end all hangovers. Loud snoring from beside him: a nasty, annoying sound that could only be some drunk chick sleeping it off at the wrong end of the rainbow. Dan turned his head that way and saw the woman sprawled on her back beside him. Vaguely familiar. Dark hair spread around her in a halo. Wearing an oversize Atlanta Braves t-shirt.

This isn’t real. I’m not here. I’m in Colorado, I’m at Roof O’ the World, and I have to end it.

The woman rolled over, opened her eyes, and stared at him. “God, my head,” she said. “Get me some of that coke, daddy. It’s in the living room.”

He stared at her in amazement and growing fury. The fury seemed to come from nowhere, but hadn’t it always been that way? It was its own thing, a riddle wrapped in an enigma. “Coke? Who bought coke?”

She grinned, revealing a mouth that contained only a single discolored tooth. Then he knew who she was. “You did, daddy. Now go get it. Once my head’s clear, I’ll throw you a nice f*ck.”

Somehow he was back in this sleazy Wilmington apartment, naked, next to Rose the Hat.

“What have you done? How did I get here?”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Don’t you like this place? You should; I furnished it from your own head. Now do what I told you, *. Get the f*cking blow.”

“Where’s Abra? What did you do with Abra?”

“Killed her,” Rose said indifferently. “She was so worried about you she dropped her guard and I tore her open from throat to belly. I wasn’t able to suck up as much of her steam as I wanted, but I got quite a lo—”

The world went red. Dan clamped his hands around her throat and began to choke. One thought beat through his mind: worthless bitch, now you’ll take your medicine, worthless bitch, now you’ll take your medicine, worthless bitch, now you’ll take it all.


2

The steamhead man was powerful but had nothing like the girl’s juice. He stood with his legs apart, his head lowered, his shoulders hunched, and his fisted hands raised—the posture of every man who had ever lost his mind in a killing rage. Anger made men easy.

It was impossible to follow his thoughts, because they had turned red. That was all right, that was fine, the girl was right where Rose wanted her. In Abra’s state of shocked dismay, she had followed him to the hub of the wheel. She wouldn’t be shocked or dismayed for much longer, though; Bitchgirl had become Choked Girl. Soon she would be Dead Girl, hoisted on her own petard.

(Uncle Dan no no stop it’s not her)

It is, Rose thought, bearing down even harder. Her tooth crept out of her mouth and skewered her lower lip. Blood poured down her chin and onto her top. She didn’t feel it any more than she felt the mountain breeze blowing through her masses of dark hair. It is me. You were my daddy, my barroom daddy, I made you empty your wallet for a pile of bad coke, and now it’s the morning after and I need to take my medicine. It’s what you wanted to do when you woke up next to that drunken whore in Wilmington, what you would have done if you’d had any balls, and her useless whelp of a son for good measure. Your father knew how to deal with stupid, disobedient women, and his father before him. Sometimes a woman just needs to take her medicine. She needs—

There was the roar of an approaching motor. It was as unimportant as the pain in her lip and the taste of blood in her mouth. The girl was choking, rattling. Then a thought as loud as a thunderclap exploded in her brain, a wounded roar:

(MY FATHER KNEW NOTHING!)

Rose was still trying to clear her mind of that shout when Billy Freeman’s pickup truck hit the base of the lookout, knocking her off her feet. Her hat went flying.


3

It wasn’t the apartment in Wilmington. It was his long-gone bedroom at the Overlook Hotel—the hub of the wheel. It wasn’t Deenie, the woman he’d awakened next to in that apartment, and it wasn’t Rose.