Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(37)

“There’s more,” Dave said, “but the other stuff’s hard to quantify. Maybe just because Lucy and I have gotten used to it. The way, I guess, you’d get used to living with a kid who was born blind. Except this is almost the opposite of that. I think we knew even before the 9/11 thing. I think we knew there was something almost from the time we brought her home from the hospital. It’s like . . .”

He huffed out a breath and looked at the ceiling, as if for inspiration. Concetta squeezed his arm. “Go on. At least he hasn’t called for the men with the butterfly nets yet.”

“Okay, it’s like there’s always a wind blowing through the house, only you can’t exactly feel it or see what it’s doing. I keep thinking the curtains are going to billow and the pictures are going to fly off the walls, but they never do. Other stuff does happen, though. Two or three times a week—sometimes two or three times a day—the circuit breakers trip. We’ve had two different electricians out, on four different occasions. They check the circuits and tell us everything is hunky-dory. Some mornings we come downstairs and the cushions from the chairs and the sofa are on the floor. We tell Abra to put her toys away before bed and unless she’s overtired and cranky, she’s very good about it. But sometimes the toybox will be open the next morning and some of the toys will be back on the floor. Usually the blocks. They’re her favorites.”

He paused for a moment, now looking at the eye chart on the far wall. John thought Concetta would prod him to go on, but she kept silent.

“Okay, this is totally weird, but I swear to you it happened. One night when we turned on the TV, The Simpsons were on every channel. Abra laughed like it was the biggest joke in the world. Lucy freaked out. She said, ‘Abra Rafaella Stone, if you’re doing that, stop it right now!’ Lucy hardly ever speaks sharply to her, and when she does, Abra just dissolves. Which is what happened that night. I turned off the TV, and when I turned it on again, everything was back to normal. I could give you half a dozen other things . . . incidents . . . phenomena . . . but most of it’s so small you’d hardly even notice.” He shrugged. “Like I say, you get used to it.”

John said, “I’ll come to the party. After all that, how can I resist?”

“Probably nothing will happen,” Dave said. “You know the old joke about how to stop a leaky faucet, don’t you? Call the plumber.”

Concetta snorted. “If you really believe that, sonny-boy, I think you might get a surprise.” And, to Dalton: “Just getting him here was like pulling teeth.”

“Give it a rest, Momo.” Color had begun to rise in Dave’s cheeks.

John sighed. He had sensed the antagonism between these two before. He didn’t know the cause of it—some kind of competition for Lucy, perhaps—but he didn’t want it breaking out into the open now. Their bizarre errand had turned them into temporary allies, and that was the way he wanted to keep it.

“Save the sniping.” He spoke sharply enough so they looked away from each other and back at him, surprised. “I believe you. I’ve never heard of anything remotely like this before . . .”

Or had he? He trailed off, thinking of his lost watch.

“Doc?” David said.

“Sorry. Brain cramp.”

At this they both smiled. Allies again. Good.

“Anyway, no one’s going to send for the men in the white coats. I accept you both as level-headed folks, not prone to hysteria or hallucination. I might guess some bizarre form of Munchausen syndrome was at work if it was just one person claiming these . . . these psychic outbreaks . . . but it’s not. It’s all three of you. Which raises the question, what do you want me to do?”

Dave seemed at a loss, but his grandmother-in-law was not. “Observe her, the way you would any child with a disease—”

The color had begun to leave David Stone’s cheeks, but now it rushed back. Slammed back. “Abra is not sick,” he snapped.

She turned to him. “I know that! Cristo! Will you let me finish?”

Dave put on a longsuffering expression and raised his hands. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“Just don’t jump down my throat, David.”

John said, “If you insist on bickering, children, I’ll have to send you to the Quiet Room.”

Concetta sighed. “This is very stressful. For all of us. I’m sorry, Davey, I used the wrong word.”

“No prob, cara. We’re in this together.”

She smiled briefly. “Yes. Yes, we are. Observe her as you’d observe any child with an undiagnosed condition, Dr. Dalton. That’s all we can ask, and I think it’s enough for now. You may have some ideas. I hope so. You see . . .”

She turned to David Stone with an expression of helplessness that John thought was probably rare on that firm face.

“We’re afraid,” Dave said. “Me, Lucy, Chetta—scared to death. Not of her, but for her. Because she’s just little, do you see? What if this power of hers . . . I don’t know what else to call it . . . what if it hasn’t topped out yet? What if it’s still growing? What do we do then? She could . . . I don’t know . . .”

“He does know,” Chetta said. “She could lose her temper and hurt herself or someone else. I don’t know how likely that is, but just thinking it could happen . . .” She touched John’s hand. “It’s awful.”