Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(72)

Except for the ghosts, of course. They never left.

4

Hallorann had told Danny he was headed to Denver, and from there he’d fly south to Florida. He had asked if Danny would like to help him down to the Overlook’s parking lot with his bags, and Danny had carried one to the cook’s rental car. Just a little thing, hardly more than a briefcase, but he’d needed to use both hands to tote it. When the bags were safely stowed in the trunk and they were sitting in the car, Hallorann had put a name to the thing in Danny Torrance’s head, the thing his parents only half believed in.

You got a knack. Me, I’ve always called it the shining. That’s what my grandmother called it, too. Get you kinda lonely, thinkin you were the only one?

Yes, he had been lonely, and yes, he had believed he was the only one. Hallorann had disabused him of that notion. In the years since, Dan had run across a lot of people who had, in the cook’s words, “a little bit of shine to them.” Billy, for one.

But never anyone like the girl who had screamed into his head tonight. It had felt like that cry might tear him apart.

Had he been that strong? He thought he had been, or almost. On closing day at the Overlook, Hallorann had told the troubled little boy sitting beside him to . . . what had he said?

He said to give him a blast.

Dan had arrived back at Rivington House and was standing outside the gate. The first leaves had begun to fall, and an evening breeze whisked them around his feet.

And when I asked him what I should think about, he told me anything. “Just think it hard,” he said. So I did, but at the last second I softened it, at least a little. If I hadn’t, I think I might have killed him. He jerked back—no, he slammed back—and bit his lip. I remember the blood. He called me a pistol. And later, he asked about Tony. My invisible friend. So I told him.

Tony was back, it seemed, but he was no longer Dan’s friend. Now he was the friend of a little girl named Abra. She was in trouble just as Dan had been, but grown men who sought out little girls attracted attention and suspicion. He had a good life here in Frazier, and he felt it was one he deserved after all the lost years.

But . . .

But when he needed Dick—at the Overlook, and later, in Florida, when Mrs. Massey had come back—Dick had come. In AA, people called that kind of thing a Twelfth Step call. Because when the pupil was ready, the teacher would appear.

On several occasions, Dan had gone with Casey Kingsley and some other guys in the Program to pay Twelfth Step calls on men who were over their heads in drugs or booze. Sometimes it was friends or bosses who asked for this service; more often it was relatives who had exhausted every other resource and were at their wits’ end. They’d had a few successes over the years, but most visits ended with slammed doors or an invitation for Casey and his friends to stick their sanctimonious, quasireligious bullshit up their asses. One fellow, a meth-addled veteran of George Bush’s splendid Iraq adventure, had actually waved a pistol at them. Heading back from the Chocorua hole-in-the-wall shack where the vet was denned up with his terrified wife, Dan had said, “That was a waste of time.”

“It would be if we did it for them,” Casey said, “but we don’t. We do it for us. You like the life you’re living, Danny-boy?” It wasn’t the first time he had asked this question, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“Yes.” No hesitation on that score. Maybe he wasn’t the president of General Motors or doing nude love scenes with Kate Winslet, but in Dan’s mind, he had it all.

“Think you earned it?”

“No,” Dan said, smiling. “Not really. Can’t earn this.”

“So what was it that got you back to a place where you like getting up in the morning? Was it luck or grace?”

He’d believed that Casey wanted him to say it was grace, but during the sober years he had learned the sometimes uncomfortable habit of honesty. “I don’t know.”

“That’s okay, because when your back’s against the wall, there’s no difference.”

5

“Abra, Abra, Abra,” he said as he walked up the path to Rivington House. “What have you gotten yourself into, girl? And what are you getting me into?”

He was thinking he’d have to try to get in touch with her by using the shining, which was never completely reliable, but when he stepped into his turret room, he saw that wouldn’t be necessary. Written neatly on his blackboard was this:

[email protected]

He puzzled over her screen name for a few seconds, then got it and laughed. “Good one, kid, good one.”

He powered up his laptop. A moment later, he was looking at a blank email form. He typed in her address and then sat watching the blinking cursor. How old was she? As far as he could calculate by their few previous communications, somewhere between a wise twelve and a slightly naïve sixteen. Probably closer to the former. And here he was, a man old enough to have salt speckles in his stubble if he skipped shaving. Here he was, getting ready to start compu-chatting with her. To Catch a Predator, anyone?

Maybe it’s nothing. It could be; she’s just a kid, after all.

Yes, but one who was damn scared. Plus, he was curious about her. Had been for some time. The same way, he supposed, that Hallorann had been curious about him.

I could use a little bit of grace right now. And a whole lot of luck.