Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(127)

As if you’re the first one to ask that question, he thought.

Casey Kingsley had told him to get down on his knees twice a day, asking for help in the morning and saying thanks at night. It’s the first three steps: I can’t, God can, I think I’ll let Him. Don’t think too much about it.

To newcomers reluctant to take this advice, Casey was wont to offer a story about the film director John Waters. In one of his early movies, Pink Flamingos, Waters’s drag-queen star, Divine, had eaten a bit of dog excrement off a suburban lawn. Years later, Waters was still being asked about that glorious moment of cinematic history. Finally he snapped. “It was just a little piece of dogshit,” he told a reporter, “and it made her a star.”

So get down on your knees and ask for help even if you don’t like it, Casey always finished. After all, it’s just a little piece of dogshit.

Dan couldn’t very well get on his knees behind the steering wheel of his car, but he assumed the automatic default position of his morning and nightly prayers—eyes closed and one palm pressed against his lips, as if to keep out even a trickle of the seductive poison that had scarred twenty years of his life.

God, help me not to dri—

He got that far and the light broke.

It was what Dave had said on their way to Cloud Gap. It was Abra’s angry smile (Dan wondered if the Crow had seen that smile yet, and what he made of it, if so). Most of all, it was the feel of his own skin, pressing his lips back against his teeth.

“Oh my God,” he whispered. He got out of the car and his legs gave way. He fell on his knees after all, but got up and ran into the garage, where the two men were standing and looking at Abra’s abandoned pack.

He grabbed Dave Stone’s shoulder. “Call your wife. Tell her you’re coming to see her.”

“She’ll want to know what it’s about,” Dave said. It was clear from his quivering mouth and downcast eyes how little he wanted to have that conversation. “She’s staying at Chetta’s apartment. I’ll tell her . . . Christ, I don’t know what I’ll tell her.”

Dan gripped tighter, increasing the pressure until the lowered eyes came up and met his. “We’re all going to Boston, but John and I have other business to take care of there.”

“What other business? I don’t understand.”

Dan did. Not everything, but a lot.

3

They took John’s Suburban. Dave rode shotgun. Dan lay in the back with his head on an armrest and his feet on the floor.

“Lucy kept trying to get me to tell her what it was about,” Dave said. “She told me I was scaring her. And of course she thought it was Abra, because she’s got a little of what Abra’s got. I’ve always known it. I told her Abby was staying the night at Emma’s house. Do you know how many times I’ve lied to my wife in the years we’ve been married? I could count them on one hand, and three of them would be about how much I lost in the Thursday night poker games the head of my department runs. Nothing like this. And in just three hours, I’m going to have to eat it.”

Of course Dan and John knew what he’d said about Abra, and how upset Lucy had been at her husband’s continued insistence that the matter was too important and complex to go into on the telephone. They had both been in the kitchen when he made the call. But he needed to talk. To share, in AA-speak. John took care of any responses that needed to be made, saying uh-huh and I know and I understand.

At some point, Dave broke off and looked into the backseat. “Jesus God, are you sleeping?”

“No,” Dan said without opening his eyes. “I’m trying to get in touch with your daughter.”

That ended Dave’s monologue. Now there was only the hum of the tires as the Suburban ran south on Route 16 through a dozen little towns. Traffic was light and John kept the speedometer pegged at a steady sixty miles an hour once the two lanes broadened to four.

Dan made no effort to call Abra; he wasn’t sure that would work. Instead he tried to open his mind completely. To turn himself into a listening post. He had never attempted anything like this before, and the result was eerie. It was like wearing the world’s most powerful set of headphones. He seemed to hear a steady low rushing sound, and believed it was the hum of human thoughts. He held himself ready to hear her voice somewhere in that steady surf, not really expecting it, but what else could he do?

It was shortly after they went through the first tolls on the Spaulding Turnpike, now only sixty miles from Boston, that he finally picked her up.

(Dan)

Low. Barely there. At first he thought it was just imagination—wish fulfillment—but he turned in that direction anyway, trying to narrow his concentration down to a single searchlight beam. And it came again, a bit louder this time. It was real. It was her.

(Dan, please!)

She was drugged, all right, and he’d never tried anything remotely like what had to be done next . . . but Abra had. She would have to show him the way, doped up or not.

(Abra push you have to help me)

(help what help how)

(swapsies)

(???)

(help me turn the world)

4

Dave was in the passenger seat, going through the change in the cup holder for the next toll, when Dan spoke from behind him. Only it most certainly wasn’t Dan.

“Just give me another minute, I have to change my tampon!”