Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(97)

“Dan?”

“My father tried,” he said. “That’s the best I can say for him. The most malevolent spirits in his life came in bottles. If he’d tried AA, things might have been a lot different. But he didn’t. I don’t think my mother even knew there was such a thing, or she would have suggested he give it a shot. By the time we went up to the Overlook Hotel, where a friend of his got him a job as the winter caretaker, his picture could have been next to dry drunk in the dictionary.”

“That’s where the ghosts were?”

“Yes. I saw them. He didn’t, but he felt them. Maybe he had his own shining. Probably he did. Lots of things are hereditary, after all, not just a tendency toward alcoholism. And they worked on him. He thought they—the ghostie people—wanted him, but that was just another lie. What they wanted was the little boy with the great big shine. The same way this True Knot bunch wants Abra.”

He stopped, remembering how Dick, speaking through Eleanor Ouellette’s dead mouth, had answered when Dan had asked where the empty devils were. In your childhood, where every devil comes from.

“Dan? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Dan said. “Anyway, I knew something was wrong in that goddam hotel even before I stepped through the door. I knew when the three of us were still living pretty much hand-to-mouth down in Boulder, on the Eastern Slope. But my father needed a job so he could finish a play he was working on . . .”

7

By the time they reached Adair, he was telling John how the Overlook’s boiler had exploded, and how the old hotel had burned to the ground in a driving blizzard. Adair was a two-stoplight town, but there was a Holiday Inn Express, and Dan noted the location.

“That’s where we’ll be checking in a couple of hours from now,” he told John. “We can’t go digging for treasure in broad daylight, and besides, I’m dead for sleep. Haven’t been getting much lately.”

“All that really happened to you?” John asked in a subdued voice.

“It really did.” Dan smiled. “Think you can believe it?”

“If we find the baseball glove where she says it is, I’ll have to believe a lot of things. Why did you tell me?”

“Because part of you thinks we’re crazy to be here, in spite of what you know about Abra. Also because you deserve to know that there are . . . forces. I’ve encountered them before; you haven’t. All you’ve seen is a little girl who can do assorted psychic parlor tricks like hanging spoons on the ceiling. This isn’t a boys’ treasure hunt game, John. If the True Knot finds out what we’re up to, we’ll be pinned to the target right along with Abra Stone. If you decided to bail on this business, I’d make the sign of the cross in front of you and say go with God.”

“And continue on by yourself.”

Dan tipped him a grin. “Well . . . there’s Billy.”

“Billy’s seventy-three if he’s a day.”

“He’d say that’s a plus. Billy likes to tell people that the good thing about being old is that you don’t have to worry about dying young.”

John pointed. “Freeman town line.” He gave Dan a small, tight smile. “I can’t completely believe I’m doing this. What are you going to think if that ethanol plant is gone? If it’s been torn down since Google Earth snapped its picture, and planted over with corn?”

“It’ll still be there,” Dan said.

8

And so it was: a series of soot-gray concrete blocks roofed in rusty corrugated metal. One smokestack still stood; two others had fallen and lay on the ground like broken snakes. The windows had been smashed and the walls were covered in blotchy spray-paint graffiti that would have been laughed at by the pro taggers in any big city. A potholed service road split off from the two-lane, ending in a parking lot that had sprouted with errant seed corn. The water tower Abra had seen stood nearby, rearing against the horizon like an H. G. Wells Martian war machine. FREEMAN, IOWA was printed on the side. The shed with the broken roof was also present and accounted for.

“Satisfied?” Dan asked. They had slowed to a crawl. “Factory, water tower, shed, No Trespassing sign. All just like she said it would be.”

John pointed to the rusty gate at the end of the service road. “What if that’s locked? I haven’t climbed a chainlink fence since I was in junior high.”

“It wasn’t locked when killers brought that kid here, or Abra would have said.”

“Are you sure of that?”

A farm truck was coming the other way. Dan sped up a little and lifted a hand as they passed. The guy behind the wheel—green John Deere cap, sunglasses, bib overalls—raised his in return but hardly glanced at them. That was a good thing.

“I asked if—”

“I know what you asked,” Dan said. “If it’s locked, we’ll deal with it. Somehow. Now let’s go back to that motel and check in. I’m whipped.”

9

While John got adjoining rooms at the Holiday Inn—paying cash—Dan sought out the Adair True Value Hardware. He bought a spade, a rake, two hoes, a garden trowel, two pairs of gloves, and a duffel to hold his new purchases. The only tool he actually wanted was the spade, but it seemed best to buy in bulk.

“What brings you to Adair, may I ask?” the clerk asked as he rang up Dan’s stuff.