Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(41)

“What exactly is Abra’s thing?” Lucy had taken her husband’s hand and was holding it tightly. “Telepathy? Telekinesis? Some other tele?”

“Those things clearly play a part. Is she telepathic? Since she knows when people are coming to visit, and knew Mrs. Judkins had been hurt, the answer seems to be yes. Is she telekinetic? Based on what we saw in your kitchen on the day of her birthday party, the answer is a hard yes. Is she psychic? A precognate, if you want to fancy it up? We can’t be so sure of that, although the 9/11 thing and the story of the twenty-dollar bill behind the dresser are both suggestive. But what about the night your television showed The Simpsons on all the channels? What do you call that? Or what about the phantom Beatles tune? It would be telekinesis if the notes came from the piano . . . but you say they didn’t.”

“So what’s next?” Lucy asked. “What do we watch out for?”

“I don’t know. There’s no predictive path to follow. The trouble with the field of psychic phenomena is that it isn’t a field at all. There’s too much charlatanry and too many people who are just off their damn rockers.”

“So you can’t tell us what to do,” Lucy said. “That’s the long and short of it.”

John smiled. “I can tell you exactly what to do: keep on loving her. If my nephew is right—and you have to remember that A, he’s only seventeen, and B, he’s basing his conclusions on unstable data—you’re apt to keep seeing weird stuff until she’s a teenager. Some of it may be gaudy weird stuff. Around thirteen or fourteen, it’ll plateau and then start to subside. By the time she’s in her twenties, the various phenomena she’s generating will probably be negligible.” He smiled. “But she’ll be a terrific poker player all her life.”

“What if she starts seeing dead people, like the little boy in that movie?” Lucy asked. “What do we do then?”

“Then I guess you’d have proof of life after death. In the meantime, don’t buy trouble. And keep your mouths shut, right?”

“Oh, you bet,” Lucy said. She managed a smile, but given the fact she’d nibbled most of her lipstick off, it didn’t look very confident. “The last thing we want is our daughter on the cover of Inside View.”

“Thank God none of the other parents saw that thing with the spoons,” David said.

“Here’s a question,” John said. “Do you think she knows how special she is?”

The Stones exchanged a look.

“I . . . don’t think so,” Lucy said at last. “Although after the spoons . . . we made sort of a big deal about it . . .”

“A big deal in your mind,” John said. “Probably not hers. She cried a little, then went back out with a smile on her face. There was no shouting, scolding, spanking, or shaming. My advice is to let it ride for the time being. When she gets a little older, you can caution her about not doing any of her special tricks at school. Treat her as normal, because mostly she is. Right?”

“Right,” David said. “And it’s not like she’s got spots, or swellings, or a third eye.”

“Oh yes she does,” Lucy said. She was thinking of the caul. “She does so have a third eye. You can’t see it—but it’s there.”

John stood up. “I’ll get all my nephew’s printouts and send them to you, if you’d like that.”

“I would,” David said. “Very much. I think dear old Momo would, too.” He wrinkled his nose a bit at this. Lucy saw it and frowned.

“In the meantime, enjoy your daughter,” John told them. “From everything I’ve seen, she’s a very enjoyable child. You’re going to get through this.”

For awhile, it seemed he was right.

CHAPTER FOUR

PAGING DOCTOR SLEEP

1

It was January of 2007. In the turret room of Rivington House, Dan’s space heater was running full blast, but the room was still cold. A nor’easter, driven by a fifty-mile-an-hour gale, had blown down from the mountains, piling five inches of snow an hour on the sleeping town of Frazier. When the storm finally eased the following afternoon, some of the drifts against the north and east sides of the buildings on Cranmore Avenue would be twelve feet deep.

Dan wasn’t bothered by the cold; nestled beneath two down comforters, he was warm as tea and toast. Yet the wind had found its way inside his head just as it found its way under the sashes and doorsills of the old Victorian he now called home. In his dream, he could hear it moaning around the hotel where he had spent one winter as a little boy. In his dream, he was that little boy.

He’s on the second floor of the Overlook. Mommy is sleeping and Daddy’s in the basement, looking at old papers. He’s doing RESEARCH. The RESEARCH is for the book he’s going to write. Danny isn’t supposed to be up here, and he’s not supposed to have the passkey that’s clutched in one hand, but he hasn’t been able to stay away. Right now he’s staring at a firehose that’s bolted to the wall. It’s folded over and over on itself, and it looks like a snake with a brass head. A sleeping snake. Of course it’s not a snake—that’s canvas he’s looking at, not scales—but it sure does look like a snake.

Sometimes it is a snake.

“Go on,” he whispers to it in this dream. He’s trembling with terror, but something drives him on. And why? Because he’s doing his own RESEARCH, that’s why. “Go on, bite me! You can’t, can you? Because you’re just a stupid HOSE!”