Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(147)

“After all the sleep I got last night? Sweetheart, I could drive to California.”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“I bought a road atlas in town while I was waitin for the pizza.”

“So you’d made up your mind even then. And you knew what Abra and I were planning.”

“Well . . . sorta.”

“When you need me to take over, just yell,” Dan said, and promptly fell asleep with his head against the passenger window. He descended through a deepening depth of unpleasant images. First the hedge animals at the Overlook, the ones that moved when you weren’t looking. This was followed by Mrs. Massey from Room 217, who now wore a cocked tophat. Still descending, he revisited the battle at Cloud Gap. Only this time when he burst into the Winnebago, he found Abra lying on the floor with her throat cut and Rose standing over her with a dripping straight razor. Rose saw Dan and the bottom half of her face dropped away in an obscene grin where one long tooth gleamed. I told her it would end this way but she wouldn’t listen, she said. Children so rarely do.

Below this there was only darkness.

When he woke it was to twilight with a broken white line running down the middle of it. They were on an interstate highway.

“How long did I sleep?”

Billy glanced at his watch. “A good long while. Feel better?”

“Yes.” He did and didn’t. His head was clear, but his stomach hurt like hell. Considering what he had seen that morning in the mirror, he wasn’t surprised. “Where are we?”

“Hunnert-n-fifty miles east of Cincinnati, give or take. You slept through two gas stops. And you snore.”

Dan sat up straight. “We’re in Ohio? Christ! What time is it?”

Billy glanced at his watch. “Quarter past six. Wasn’t no big thing; light traffic and no rain. I think we got an angel ridin with us.”

“Well, let’s find a motel. You need to sleep and I have to piss like a racehorse.”

“Not surprised.”

Billy pulled off at the next exit showing signs for gas, food, and motels. He pulled into a Wendy’s and got a bag of burgers while Dan used the men’s. When they got back into the truck, Dan took one bite of his double, put it back in the bag, and sipped cautiously at a coffee milkshake. That his stomach seemed willing to take.

Billy looked shocked. “Man, you gotta eat! What’s wrong with you?”

“I guess pizza for breakfast was a bad idea.” And because Billy was still looking at him: “The shake’s fine. All I need. Eyes on the road, Billy. We can’t help Abra if we’re getting patched up in some emergency room.”

Five minutes later, Billy pulled the truck under the canopy of a Fairfield Inn with a blinking ROOMS AVAILABLE sign over the door. He turned off the engine but didn’t get out. “Since I’m riskin my life with you, chief, I want to know what ails you.”

Dan almost pointed out that taking the risk had been Billy’s idea, not his, but that wasn’t fair. He explained. Billy listened in round-eyed silence.

“Jesus jumped-up Christ,” he said when Dan had finished.

“Unless I missed it,” Dan said, “there’s nothing in the New Testament about Jesus jumping. Although I guess He might’ve, as a child. Most of them do. You want to check us in, or should I do it?”

Billy continued to sit where he was. “Does Abra know?”

Dan shook his head.

“But she could find out.”

“Could but won’t. She knows it’s wrong to peek, especially when it’s someone you care about. She’d no more do it than she’d spy on her parents when they were making love.”

“You know that from when you were a kid?”

“Yes. Sometimes you see a little—you can’t help it—but then you turn away.”

“Are you gonna be all right, Danny?”

“For awhile.” He thought of the sluggish flies on his lips and cheeks and forehead. “Long enough.”

“What about after?”

“I’ll worry about after after. One day at a time. Let’s check in. We need to get an early start.”

“Have you heard from Abra?”

Dan smiled. “She’s fine.”

At least so far.

5

But she wasn’t, not really.

She sat at her desk with a half-read copy of The Fixer in her hand, trying not to look at her bedroom window, lest she should see a certain someone looking in at her. She knew something was wrong with Dan, and she knew he didn’t want her to know what it was, but had been tempted to look anyway, in spite of all the years she’d taught herself to steer clear of APB: adult private business. Two things held her back. One was the knowledge that, like it or not, she couldn’t help him with it now. The other (this was stronger) was knowing he might sense her in his head. If so, he would be disappointed in her.

It’s probably locked up, anyway, she thought. He can do that. He’s pretty strong.

Not as strong as she was, though . . . or, if you put it in terms of the shining, as bright. She could open his mental lockboxes and peer at the things inside, but she thought doing so might be dangerous for both of them. There was no concrete reason for this, it was just a feeling—like the one she’d had about how it would be a good idea for Mr. Freeman to go with Dan—but she trusted it. Besides, maybe it was something that could help them. She could hope for that. True hope is swift, and flies on swallow’s wings—that was another line from Shakespeare.