Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(74)

There was plenty to talk about—volumes of notes to compare—and they had hardly gotten started when a stout fiftyish woman in a tweed skirt came over to say hello. She looked at Dan with curiosity, but not untoward curiosity.

“Hi, Mrs. Gerard. This is my uncle Dan. I had Mrs. Gerard for Language Arts last year.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Dan Torrance.”

Mrs. Gerard took his offered hand and gave it a single no-nonsense pump. Abra could feel Dan—Uncle Dan—relaxing. That was good.

“Are you in the area, Mr. Torrance?”

“Just down the road, in Frazier. I work in the hospice there. Helen Rivington House?”

“Ah. That’s good work you do. Abra, have you read The Fixer yet? The Malamud novel I recommended?”

Abra looked glum. “It’s on my Nook—I got a gift card for my birthday—but I haven’t started it yet. It looks hard.”

“You’re ready for hard things,” Mrs. Gerard said. “More than ready. High school will be here sooner than you think, and then college. I suggest you get started today. Nice to have met you, Mr. Torrance. You have an extremely smart niece. But Abra—with brains comes responsibility.” She tapped Abra’s temple to emphasize this point, then mounted the library steps and went inside.

She turned to Dan. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“So far, so good,” Dan agreed. “Of course, if she talks to your parents . . .”

“She won’t. Mom’s in Boston, helping with my momo. She’s got cancer.”

“I’m very sorry to hear it. Is Momo your”

(?grandmother)

(?great-grandmother)

“Besides,” Abra said, “we’re not really lying about you being my uncle. In science last year, Mr. Staley told us that all humans share the same genetic plan. He said that the things that make us different are very small things. Did you know that we share something like ninety-nine percent of our genetic makeup with dogs?”

“No,” Dan said, “but it explains why Alpo has always looked so good to me.”

She laughed. “So you could be my uncle or cousin or whatever. All I’m saying.”

“That’s Abra’s theory of relativity, is it?”

“I guess so. And do we need the same color eyes or hairline to be related? We’ve got something else in common that hardly anyone has. That makes us a special kind of relatives. Do you think it’s a gene, like the one for blue eyes or red hair? And by the way, did you know that Scotland has the highest ratio of people with red hair?”

“I didn’t,” Dan said. “You’re a font of information.”

Her smile faded a little. “Is that a put-down?”

“Not at all. I guess the shining might be a gene, but I really don’t think so. I think it’s unquantifiable.”

“Does that mean you can’t figure it out? Like God and heaven and stuff like that?”

“Yes.” He found himself thinking of Charlie Hayes, and all those before and after Charlie whom he’d seen out of this world in his Doctor Sleep persona. Some people called the moment of death passing on. Dan liked that, because it seemed just about right. When you saw men and women pass on before your eyes—leaving the Teenytown people called reality for some Cloud Gap of an afterlife—it changed your way of thinking. For those in mortal extremis, it was the world that was passing on. In those gateway moments, Dan had always felt in the presence of some not-quite-seen enormity. They slept, they woke, they went somewhere. They went on. He’d had reason to believe that, even as a child.

“What are you thinking?” Abra asked. “I can see it, but I don’t understand it. And I want to.”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said.

“It was partly about the ghostie people, wasn’t it? I saw them once, on the little train in Frazier. It was a dream but I think it was real.”

His eyes widened. “Did you really?”

“Yes. I don’t think they wanted to hurt me—they just looked at me—but they were kind of scary. I think maybe they were people who rode the train in olden days. Have you seen ghostie people? You have, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but not for a very long time.” And some that were a lot more than ghosts. Ghosts didn’t leave residue on toilet seats and shower curtains. “Abra, how much do your parents know about your shine?”

“My dad thinks it’s gone except for a few things—like me calling from camp because I knew Momo was sick—and he’s glad. My mom knows it’s still there, because sometimes she’ll ask me to help her find something she’s lost—last month it was her car keys, she left them on Dad’s worktable in the garage—but she doesn’t know how much is still there. They don’t talk about it anymore.” She paused. “Momo knows. She’s not scared of it like Mom and Dad, but she told me I have to be careful. Because if people found out—” She made a comic face, rolling her eyes and poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth. “Eeek, a freak. You know?”

(yes)

She smiled gratefully. “Sure you do.”

“Nobody else?”

“Well . . . Momo said I should talk to Dr. John, because he already knew about some of the stuff. He, um, saw something I did with spoons when I was just a little kid. I kind of hung them on the ceiling.”