Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(46)
After considering this carefully, Fred said, “I wouldn’t waste my time.”
Dan nodded. “Good. Save us both getting frostbite. Just remember what I said. If you don’t want to go to the hospital, keep your hands to yourself from now on.”
“Who died and left you in charge?”
“I don’t know,” Dan said. “I really don’t.”
7
Dan went back to his room and back to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He had made roughly four dozen deathbed visits during his time at Rivington House, and usually they left him calm. Not tonight. He was still trembling with rage. His conscious mind hated that red storm, but some lower part of him loved it. Probably it went back to plain old genetics; nature triumphing over nurture. The longer he stayed sober, the more old memories surfaced. Some of the clearest were of his father’s rages. He had been hoping that Carling would take him up on it. Would go outside into the snow and wind, where Dan Torrance, son of Jack, would give that worthless puppy his medicine.
God knew he didn’t want to be his father, whose bouts of sobriety had been the white-knuckle kind. AA was supposed to help with anger, and mostly it did, but there were times like tonight when Dan realized what a flimsy barrier it was. Times when he felt worthless, and the booze seemed like all he deserved. At times like that he felt very close to his father.
He thought: Mama.
He thought: Canny.
He thought: Worthless pups need to take their medicine. And you know where they sell it, don’t you? Damn near everywhere.
The wind rose in a furious gust, making the turret groan. When it died, the blackboard girl was there. He could almost hear her breathing.
He lifted one hand out from beneath the comforters. For a moment it only hung there in the cold air, and then he felt hers—small, warm—slip into it. “Abra,” he said. “Your name is Abra, but sometimes people call you Abby. Isn’t that right?”
No answer came, but he didn’t really need one. All he needed was the sensation of that warm hand in his. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it was long enough to soothe him. He closed his eyes and slept.
8
Twenty miles away, in the little town of Anniston, Abra Stone lay awake. The hand that had enfolded hers held on for a moment or two. Then it turned to mist and was gone. But it had been there. He had been there. She had found him in a dream, but when she woke, she had discovered the dream was real. She was standing in the doorway of a room. What she had seen there was terrible and wonderful at the same time. There was death, and death was scary, but there had also been helping. The man who was helping hadn’t been able to see her, but the cat had. The cat had a name like hers, but not exactly.
He didn’t see me but he felt me. And we were together just now. I think I helped him, like he helped the man who died.
That was a good thought. Holding onto it (as she had held the phantom hand), Abra rolled over on her side, hugged her stuffed rabbit to her chest, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TRUE KNOT
1
The True Knot wasn’t incorporated, but if it had been, certain side o’ the road communities in Maine, Florida, Colorado, and New Mexico would have been referred to as “company towns.” These were places where all the major businesses and large plots of land could be traced back, through a tangle of holding companies, to them. The True’s towns, with colorful names like Dry Bend, Jerusalem’s Lot, Oree, and Sidewinder, were safe havens, but they never stayed in those places for long; mostly they were migratory. If you drive the turnpikes and main-traveled highways of America, you may have seen them. Maybe it was on I-95 in South Carolina, somewhere south of Dillon and north of Santee. Maybe it was on I-80 in Nevada, in the mountain country west of Draper. Or in Georgia, while negotiating—slowly, if you know what’s good for you—that notorious Highway 41 speedtrap outside Tifton.
How many times have you found yourself behind a lumbering RV, eating exhaust and waiting impatiently for your chance to pass? Creeping along at forty when you could be doing a perfectly legal sixty-five or even seventy? And when there’s finally a hole in the fast lane and you pull out, holy God, you see a long line of those damn things, gas hogs driven at exactly ten miles an hour below the legal speed limit by bespectacled golden oldies who hunch over their steering wheels, gripping them like they think they’re going to fly away.
Or maybe you’ve encountered them in the turnpike rest areas, when you stop to stretch your legs and maybe drop a few quarters into one of the vending machines. The entrance ramps to those rest stops always divide in two, don’t they? Cars in one parking lot, long-haul trucks and RVs in another. Usually the lot for the big rigs and RVs is a little farther away. You might have seen the True’s rolling motorhomes parked in that lot, all in a cluster. You might have seen their owners walking up to the main building—slow, because many of them look old and some of them are pretty darn fat—always in a group, always keeping to themselves.
Sometimes they pull off at one of the exits loaded with gas stations, motels, and fast-food joints. And if you see those RVs parked at McDonald’s or Burger King, you keep on going because you know they’ll all be lined up at the counter, the men wearing floppy golf hats or long-billed fishing caps, the women in stretch pants (usually powder-blue) and shirts that say things like ASK ME ABOUT MY GRANDCHILDREN! or JESUS IS KING or HAPPY WANDERER. You’d rather go half a mile farther down the road, to the Waffle House or Shoney’s, wouldn’t you? Because you know they’ll take forever to order, mooning over the menu, always wanting their Quarter Pounders without the pickles or their Whoppers without the sauce. Asking if there are any interesting tourist attractions in the area, even though anyone can see this is just another nothing three-stoplight burg where the kids leave as soon as they graduate from the nearest high school.