Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(96)

“So my group leaves when? Wednesday night or Thursday morning?”

“Wednesday night.” Rose wanted the girl as soon as possible. “Drive straight through. And you’re positive they’ll hold the knockout stuff at the mail drop in Sturbridge?”

“Yes. Set your mind at ease on that.”

My mind won’t be at ease until I can look at that little bitch lying in the room right across from mine, drugged to the gills, handcuffed, and full of tasty, suckable steam.

“Who are you taking? Name them off.”

“Me, Nut, Jimmy Numbers, if you can spare him—”

“I can spare him. Who else?”

“Snakebite Andi. If we need to put someone to sleep, she can get it done. And the Chink. Him for sure. He’s the best locator we’ve got now that Grampa’s gone. Other than you, that is.”

“By all means take him, but you won’t need a locator to find this one,” Rose said. “That’s not going to be the problem. And just one vehicle will be enough. Take Steamhead Steve’s Winnebago.”

“Already spoke to him about it.”

She nodded, pleased. “One other thing. There’s a little hole-in-the-wall store in Sidewinder called District X.”

Crow raised his eyebrows. “The  p**n o palace with the inflatable nurse doll in the window?”

“You know it, I see.” Rose’s tone was dry. “Now listen to me, Daddy.”

Crow listened.

6

Dan and John Dalton flew out of Logan on Tuesday morning just as the sun was rising. They changed planes in Memphis and touched down in Des Moines at 11:15 CDT on a day that felt more like mid-July than late September.

Dan spent the first part of the Boston-to-Memphis leg pretending to sleep so he wouldn’t have to deal with the doubts and second thoughts he felt sprouting like weeds in John’s mind. Somewhere over upstate New York, pretending ceased and he fell asleep for real. It was John who slept between Memphis and Des Moines, so that was all right. And once they were actually in Iowa, rolling toward the town of Freeman in a totally unobtrusive Ford Focus from Hertz, Dan sensed that John had put his doubts to bed. For the time being, at least. What had replaced them was curiosity and uneasy excitement.

“Boys on a treasure hunt,” Dan said. He’d had the longer nap, and so he was behind the wheel. High corn, now more yellow than green, flowed past them on either side.

John jumped a little. “Huh?”

Dan smiled. “Isn’t that what you were thinking? That we’re like boys on a treasure hunt?”

“You’re pretty goddam spooky, Daniel.”

“I suppose. I’ve gotten used to it.” This was not precisely true.

“When did you find out you could read minds?”

“It isn’t just mind-reading. The shining’s a uniquely variable talent. If it is a talent. Sometimes—lots of times—it feels more like a disfiguring birthmark. I’m sure Abra would say the same. As for when I found out . . . I never did. I just always had it. It came with the original equipment.”

“And you drank to blot it out.”

A fat woodchuck trundled with leisurely fearlessness across Route 150. Dan swerved to avoid it and the chuck disappeared into the corn, still not hurrying. It was nice out here, the sky looking a thousand miles deep and nary a mountain in sight. New Hampshire was fine, and he’d come to think of it as home, but Dan thought he was always going to feel more comfortable in the flatlands. Safer.

“You know better than that, Johnny. Why does any alcoholic drink?”

“Because he’s an alcoholic?”

“Bingo. Simple as can be. Cut through the psychobabble and you’re left with the stark truth. We drank because we’re drunks.”

John laughed. “Casey K. has truly indoctrinated you.”

“Well, there’s also the heredity thing,” Dan said. “Casey always kicks that part to the curb, but it’s there. Did your father drink?”

“Him and mother dearest both. They could have kept the Nineteenth Hole at the country club in business all by themselves. I remember the day my mother took off her tennis dress and jumped into the pool with us kids. The men applauded. My dad thought it was a scream. Me, not so much. I was nine, and until I went to college I was the boy with the Striptease Mommy. Yours?”

“My mother could take it or leave it alone. Sometimes she used to call herself Two Beers Wendy. My dad, however . . . one glass of wine or can of Bud and he was off to the races.” Dan glanced at the odometer and saw they still had forty miles to go. “You want to hear a story? One I’ve never told anybody? I should warn you, it’s a weird one. If you think the shining begins and ends with paltry shit like telepathy, you’re way short.” He paused. “There are other worlds than these.”

“You’ve . . . um . . . seen these other worlds?” Dan had lost track of John’s mind, but DJ suddenly looked a little nervous. As if he thought the guy sitting next to him might suddenly stick his hand in his shirt and declare himself the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte.

“No, just some of the people who live there. Abra calls them the ghostie people. Do you want to hear, or not?”

“I’m not sure I do, but maybe I better.”

Dan didn’t know how much this New England pediatrician would believe about the winter the Torrance family had spent at the Overlook Hotel, but found he didn’t particularly care. Telling it in this nondescript car, under this bright Midwestern sky, would be good enough. There was one person who would have believed it all, but Abra was too young, and the story was too scary. John Dalton would have to do. But how to begin? With Jack Torrance, he supposed. A deeply unhappy man who had failed at teaching, writing, and husbanding. What did the baseball players call three strikeouts in a row? The Golden Sombrero? Dan’s father had had only one notable success: when the moment finally came—the one the Overlook had been pushing him toward from their first day in the hotel—he had refused to kill his little boy. If there was a fitting epitaph for him, it would be . . .