Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(99)

(you’re close)

Dan stopped. He smelled something unpleasant. A gassy whiff of decay.

(Abra? do you)

(yes oh God Dan)

(take it easy hon)

(you went too far turn around go slow)

Dan turned on one heel, like a soldier doing a sloppy about-face. He started back toward the loading dock.

(left a little to your left slower)

He went that way, now pausing after each small step. Here was that smell again, a little stronger. Suddenly the preternaturally sharp nighttime world began to blur as his eyes filled with Abra’s tears.

(there the baseball boy you’re standing right on top of him)

Dan took a deep breath and wiped at his cheeks. He was shivering. Not because he was cold, but because she was. Sitting up in her bed, clutching her lumpy stuffed rabbit, and shaking like an old leaf on a dead tree.

(get out of here Abra)

(Dan are you)

(yes fine but you don’t need to see this)

Suddenly that absolute clarity of vision was gone. Abra had broken the connection, and that was good.

“Dan?” John called, low. “All right?”

“Yes.” His voice was still clogged with Abra’s tears. “Bring that spade.”

12

It took them twenty minutes. Dan dug for the first ten, then passed the spade to John, who actually found Brad Trevor. He turned away from the hole, covering his mouth and nose. His words were muffled but understandable. “Okay, there’s a body. Jesus!”

“You didn’t smell it before?”

“Buried that deep, and after two years? Are you saying that you did?”

Dan didn’t reply, so John addressed the hole again, but without conviction this time. He stood for a few seconds with his back bent as if he still meant to use the spade, then straightened and drew back when Dan shone the penlight into the little excavation they had made. “I can’t,” he said. “I thought I could, but I can’t. Not with . . . that. My arms feel like rubber.”

Dan handed him the light. John shone it into the hole, centering the beam on what had freaked him out: a dirt-clotted sneaker. Working slowly, not wanting to disturb the earthly remains of Abra’s baseball boy any more than necessary, Dan scraped dirt away from the sides of the body. Little by little, an earth-covered shape emerged. It reminded him of the carvings on sarcophagi he had seen in National Geographic.

The smell of decay was now very strong.

Dan stepped away and hyperventilated, ending with the deepest breath he could manage. Then he dropped into the end of the shallow grave, where both of Brad Trevor’s sneakers now protruded in a V. He knee-walked up to about where he thought the boy’s waist must be, then held up a hand for the penlight. John handed it over and turned away. He was sobbing audibly.

Dan clamped the slim flashlight between his lips and began brushing away more dirt. A child’s t-shirt came into view, clinging to a sunken chest. Then hands. The fingers, now little more than bones wrapped in yellow skin, were clasped over something. Dan’s chest was starting to pound for air now, but he pried the Trevor boy’s fingers apart as gently as he could. Still, one of them snapped with a dry crunching sound.

They had buried him holding his baseball glove to his chest. Its lovingly oiled pocket was full of squirming bugs.

The air escaped Dan’s lungs in a shocked whoosh, and the breath he inhaled to replace it was rich with rot. He lunged out of the grave to his right, managing to vomit on the dirt they’d taken out of the hole instead of on the wasted remains of Bradley Trevor, whose only crime had been to be born with something a tribe of monsters wanted. And had stolen from him on the very wind of his dying shrieks.

13

They reburied the body, John doing most of the work this time, and covered the spot with a makeshift crypt of broken asphalt chunks. Neither of them wanted to think of foxes or stray dogs feasting on what scant meat was left.

When they were done, they got back into the car and sat without speaking. At last John said, “What are we going to do about him, Danno? We can’t just leave him. He’s got parents. Grandparents. Probably brothers and sisters. All of them still wondering.”

“He has to stay awhile. Long enough so nobody’s going to say, ‘Gee, that anonymous call came in just after some stranger bought a spade in the Adair hardware store.’ That probably wouldn’t happen, but we can’t take the chance.”

“How long’s awhile?”

“Maybe a month.”

John considered this, then sighed. “Maybe even two. Give his folks that long to go on thinking he might just have run off. Give them that long before we break their hearts.” He shook his head. “If I’d had to look at his face, I don’t think I ever could have slept again.”

“You’d be surprised what a person can live with,” Dan said. He was thinking of Mrs. Massey, now safely stored away in the back of his head, her haunting days over. He started the car, powered down his window, and beat the baseball glove several times against the door to dislodge the dirt. Then he put it on, sliding his fingers into the places where the child’s had been on so many sunlit afternoons. He closed his eyes. After thirty seconds or so, he opened them again.

“Anything?”

“ ‘You’re Barry. You’re one of the good guys.’ ”

“What does that mean?”