Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(76)

Dan pulled his hand back in a hurry. He saw a plump, brown-haired girl about Abra’s age coming up the sidewalk. She was wearing a backpack and carrying a looseleaf notebook curled against her chest. Her eyes were bright and inquisitive.

“She’ll want to know everything about you,” Abra said. “I mean everything. And she talks.”

Uh-oh.

Dan looked at the oncoming girl.

(we’re not interesting)

“Help me, Abra,” he said, and felt her join in. Once they were together, the thought instantly gained depth and strength.

(WE’RE NOT A BIT INTERESTING)

“That’s good,” Abra said. “A little more. Do it with me. Like singing.”

(YOU HARDLY SEE US WE’RE NOT INTERESTING AND BESIDES YOU HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO)

Yvonne Stroud hurried along the walk, flipping one hand to Abra in a vague hello gesture but not slowing down. She ran up the library steps and disappeared inside.

“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Dan said.

She looked at him seriously. “According to Abra’s theory of relativity, you really could be. Very similar—” She sent a picture of pants flapping on a clothesline.

(??jeans)

Then they were both laughing.


9

Dan made her go over the turntable thing three times, wanting to make sure he was getting it right.

“You never did that, either?” Abra asked. “The far-seeing thing?”

“Astral projection? No. Does it happen to you a lot?”

“Only once or twice.” She considered. “Maybe three times. Once I went into a girl who was swimming in the river. I was looking at her from the bottom of our backyard. I was nine or ten. I don’t know why it happened, she wasn’t in trouble or anything, just swimming with her friends. That one lasted the longest. It went on for at least three minutes. Is astral projection what you call it? Like outer space?”

“It’s an old term, from séances back a hundred years ago, and probably not a very good one. All it means is an out-of-body experience.” If you could label anything like that at all. “But—I want to make sure I’ve got this straight—the swimming girl didn’t go into you?”

Abra shook her head emphatically, making her ponytail fly. “She didn’t even know I was there. The only time it worked both ways was with that woman. The one who wears the hat. Only I didn’t see the hat then, because I was inside her.”

Dan used one finger to describe a circle. “You went into her, she went into you.”

“Yes.” Abra shivered. “She was the one who cut Bradley Trevor until he was dead. When she smiles she has one big long tooth on top.”

Something about the hat struck a chord, something that made him think of Deenie from Wilmington. Because Deenie had worn a hat? Nope, at least not that he remembered; he’d been pretty blitzed. It probably meant nothing—sometimes the brain made phantom associations, that was all, especially when it was under stress, and the truth (little as he liked to admit it) was that Deenie was never far from his thoughts. Something as random as a display of cork-soled sandals in a store window could bring her to mind.

“Who’s Deenie?” Abra asked. Then she blinked rapidly and drew back a little, as if Dan had suddenly flapped a hand in front of her eyes. “Oops. Not supposed to go there, I guess. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Let’s go back to your hat woman. When you saw her later—in your window—that wasn’t the same?”

“No. I’m not even sure that was a shining. I think it was a remembering, from when I saw her hurting the boy.”

“So she didn’t see you then, either. She’s never seen you.” If the woman was as dangerous as Abra believed, this was important.

“No. I’m sure she hasn’t. But she wants to.” She looked at him, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling again. “When the turntable thing happened, she was thinking mirror. She wanted me to look at myself. She wanted to use my eyes to see me.”

“What did she see through your eyes? Could she find you that way?”

Abra thought it over carefully. At last she said, “I was looking out my window when it happened. All I can see from there is the street. And the mountains, of course, but there are lots of mountains in America, right?”

“Right.” Could the woman in the hat match the mountains she’d seen through Abra’s eyes to a photo, if she did an exhaustive computer search? Like so much else in this business, there was just no way to be sure.

“Why did they kill him, Dan? Why did they kill the baseball boy?”

He thought he knew, and he would have hidden it from her if he could, but even this short meeting was enough to tell him he would never have that sort of relationship with Abra Rafaella Stone. Recovering alcoholics strove for “complete honesty in all our affairs,” but rarely achieved it; he and Abra could not avoid it.

(food)

She stared at him, aghast. “They ate his shining?”

(I think so)

(they’re VAMPIRES?)

Then, aloud: “Like in Twilight?”

“Not like them,” Dan said. “And for God’s sake, Abra, I’m only guessing.” The library door opened. Dan looked around, afraid it might be the overly curious Yvonne Stroud, but it was a boy-girl couple that only had eyes for each other. He turned back to Abra. “We have to wrap this up.”