Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(62)

There it was, that phrase again.

“We all have a bottom,” Dan said. “Don’t we?”

“Get out of there, Dan.” John sounded dead serious now. “Right this second. No more f*cking around. And stay on the phone with me until that big neon cowboy boot on the roof is out of your rearview mirror.”

Dan started his car, pulled out of the lot, and back onto Route 11.

“It’s going,” he said. “It’s going . . . annnd . . . it’s gone.” He felt inexpressible relief. He also felt bitter regret—how many two-buck pitchers could he have gotten through before nine o’clock?

“Not going to pick up a six or a bottle of wine before you get back to Frazier, are you?”

“No. I’m good.”

“Then I’ll see you Thursday night. Come early, I’m making the coffee. Folgers, from my special stash.”

“I’ll be there,” Dan said.


12

When he got back to his turret room and flipped on the light, there was a new message on the blackboard.

I had a wonderful day!

Your friend,

ABRA

“That’s good, honey,” Dan said. “I’m glad.”

Buzz. The intercom. He went over and hit TALK.

“Hey there, Doctor Sleep,” Loretta Ames said. “I thought I saw you come in. I guess it’s still technically your day off, but do you want to pay a house call?”

“On who? Mr. Cameron or Mr. Murray?”

“Cameron. Azzie’s been visiting with him since just after dinner.”

Ben Cameron was in Rivington One. Second floor. An eighty-three-year-old retired accountant with congestive heart failure. Hell of a nice guy. Good Scrabble player and an absolute pest at Parcheesi, always setting up blockades that drove his opponents crazy.

“I’ll be right over,” Dan said. On his way out, he paused for a single backward glance at the blackboard. “Goodnight, hon,” he said.

He didn’t hear from Abra Stone for another two years.

During those same two years, something slept in the True Knot’s bloodstream. A little parting gift from Bradley Trevor, aka the baseball boy.





PART TWO


EMPTY DEVILS





CHAPTER SEVEN

“HAVE YOU SEEN ME?”


1

On an August morning in 2013, Concetta Reynolds awoke early in her Boston condo apartment. As always, the first thing she was aware of was that there was no dog curled up in the corner, by the dresser. Betty had been gone for years now, but Chetta still missed her. She put on her robe and headed for the kitchen, where she intended to make her morning coffee. This was a trip she had made thousands of times before, and she had no reason to believe this one would be any different. Certainly it never crossed her mind to think it would prove to be the first link in a chain of malignant events. She didn’t stumble, she would tell her granddaughter, Lucy, later that day, nor did she bump into anything. She just heard an unimportant snapping sound from about halfway down her body on the right-hand side and then she was on the floor with warm agony rushing up and down her leg.

She lay there for three minutes or so, staring at her faint reflection in the polished hardwood floor, willing the pain to subside. At the same time she talked to herself. Stupid old woman, not to have a companion. David’s been telling you for the last five years that you’re too old to live alone and now he’ll never let you hear the end of it.

But a live-in companion would have needed the room she’d set aside for Lucy and Abra, and Chetta lived for their visits. More than ever, now that Betty was gone and all the poetry seemed to be written out of her. And ninety-seven or not, she’d been getting around well and feeling fine. Good genes on the female side. Hadn’t her own momo buried four husbands and seven children and lived to be a hundred and two?

Although, truth be told (if only to herself??), she hadn’t felt quite so fine this summer. This summer things had been . . . difficult.

When the pain finally did abate—a bit—she began crawling down the short hall toward the kitchen, which was now filling up with dawn. She found it was harder to appreciate that lovely rose light from floor level. Each time the pain became too great, she stopped with her head laid on one bony arm, panting. During these rest stops she reflected on the seven ages of man, and how they described a perfect (and perfectly stupid) circle. This had been her mode of locomotion long ago, during the fourth year of World War I, also known as—how funny—the War to End All Wars. Then she had been Concetta Abruzzi, crawling across the dooryard of her parents’ farm in Davoli, intent on capturing chickens that easily outpaced her. From those dusty beginnings she had gone on to lead a fruitful and interesting life. She had published twenty books of poetry, taken tea with Graham Greene, dined with two presidents, and—best of all—had been gifted with a lovely, brilliant, and strangely talented great-granddaughter. And what did all those wonderful things lead to?

More crawling, that was what. Back to the beginning. Dio mi benedica.

She reached the kitchen and eeled her way through an oblong of sun to the little table where she took most of her meals. Her cell phone was on it. Chetta grabbed one leg of the table and shook it until her phone slid to the edge and dropped off. And, meno male, landed unbroken. She punched in the number they told you to call when shit like this happened, then waited while a recorded voice summed up all the absurdity of the twenty-first century by telling her that her call was being recorded.