Doctor Sleep (59 page)

“Try me,” Rose spat.

There was a pause on the other end, and when the bitchgirl next spoke, she sounded thoughtful. “One-on-one? No, you wouldn't dare. A coward like you would never dare. Not even against a kid. You're a cheater and a liar. You look pretty sometimes, but I've seen your real face. You're nothing but an old chickenshit whore.”

“You . . . you . . .” But she could say no more. Her rage was so great it felt like it was strangling her. Some of it was shock at finding herself—Rose the Hat—dressed down by a kid whose idea of transportation was a bicycle and whose major concern before these last weeks had probably been when she might get breasts bigger than mosquito bumps.

“But maybe I'll give you a chance,” the bitchgirl said. Her confidence and breezy temerity were unbelievable. “Of course, if you take me up on it, I'll wipe the floor with you. I won't bother with the others, they're dying already.” She actually laughed. “Choking on the baseball boy, and good for him.”

“If you come, I'll kill you,” Rose said. One hand found her throat, closed on it, and began to squeeze rhythmically. Later there would be bruises. “If you run, I'll find you. And when I do, you'll scream for hours before you die.”

“I won't run,” the girl said. “And we'll see who does the screaming.”

“How many will
you
have to back you up?
Dear?
”

“I'll be alone.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Read my mind,” the girl said. “Or are you afraid to do that, too?”

Rose said nothing.

“Sure you are. You remember what happened last time you tried it. I gave you a taste of your own medicine, and you didn't like it, did you? Hyena. Child-killer.
Coward
.”

“Stop . . . calling . . . me that.”

“There's a place up the hill from where you are. A lookout. It's called Roof O' the World. I found it on the internet. Be there at five o'clock Monday afternoon. Be there alone. If you're not, if the rest of your pack of hyenas doesn't stay in that meeting-hall place while we do our business, I'll know. And I'll go away.”

“I'd find you,” Rose repeated.

“You think?” Actually
jeering
at her.

Rose shut her eyes and saw the girl. She saw her writhing on the ground, her mouth stuffed with stinging hornets and hot sticks jutting out of her eyes.
No one talks to me like this. Not ever
.

“I suppose you
might
find me. But by the time you did, how many of your stinking True Knot would be left to back you up? A dozen? Ten? Maybe only three or four?”

This idea had already occurred to Rose. For a child she'd never even seen face-to-face to reach the same conclusion was, in many ways, the most infuriating thing of all.

“The Crow knew Shakespeare,” the bitchgirl said. “He quoted some to me not too long before I killed him. I know a little, too, because we had a Shakespeare unit in school. We only read one play,
Romeo and Juliet,
but Ms. Franklin gave us a printout with a whole list of famous lines from his other plays. Things like ‘To be or not to be' and ‘It was Greek to me.' Did you know those were from Shakespeare? I didn't. Don't you think it's interesting?”

Rose said nothing.

“You're not thinking about Shakespeare at all,” the bitchgirl said. “You're thinking about how much you'd like to kill me. I don't have to read your mind to know that.”

“If I were you, I'd run,” Rose said thoughtfully. “As fast and as far as your baby legs can carry you. It wouldn't do you any good, but you'd live a little longer.”

The bitchgirl was not to be turned. “There was another saying.
I can't remember it exactly, but it was something like ‘Hoisted on your own petard.' Ms. Franklin said a petard was a bomb on a stick. I think that's sort of what's happening to your tribe of cowards. You sucked the wrong kind of steam, and got stuck on a petard, and now the bomb is going off.” She paused. “Are you still there, Rose? Or did you run away?”

“Come to me, dear,” Rose said. She had regained her calm. “If you want to meet me on the lookout, that's where I'll be. We'll take in the view together, shall we? And see who's the stronger.”

She hung up before the bitchgirl could say anything else. She'd lost the temper she had vowed to keep, but she had at least gotten the last word.

Or maybe not, because the one the bitchgirl kept using played over and over in her head, like a gramophone record stuck in a bad groove.

Coward. Coward. Coward
.

Abra replaced the telephone receiver carefully in its cradle. She looked at it; she even stroked its plastic surface, which was hot from her hand and wet with her sweat. Then, before she realized it was going to happen, she burst into loud, braying sobs. They stormed through her, cramping her stomach and shaking her body. She rushed to the bathroom, still crying, knelt in front of the toilet, and threw up.

When she came out, Mr. Freeman was standing in the connecting doorway with his shirttail hanging down and his gray hair in corkscrews. “What's wrong? Are you sick from the dope he gave you?”

“It wasn't that.”

He went to the window and peered out into the pressing fog. “Is it
them
? Are they coming for us?”

Temporarily incapable of speech, she could only shake her head so vehemently her pigtails flew. It was
she
who was coming for
them,
and that was what terrified her.

And not just for herself.

Rose sat still, taking long steadying breaths. When she had herself under control again, she called for Long Paul. After a moment or two, he poked his head cautiously through the swing door that gave on the kitchen. The look on his face brought a ghost of a smile to her lips. “It's safe. You can come in. I won't bite you.”

He stepped in and saw the spilled coffee. “I'll clean that up.”

“Leave it. Who's the best locator we've got left?”

“You, Rose.” No hesitation.

Rose had no intention of approaching the bitchgirl mentally, not even in a touch-and-go. “Aside from me.”

“Well . . . with Grampa Flick gone . . . and Barry . . .” He considered. “Sue's got a touch of locator, and so does Greedy G. But I think Token Charlie's got a bit more.”

“Is he sick?”

“He wasn't yesterday.”

“Send him to me. I'll wipe up the coffee while I'm waiting. Because—this is important, Paulie—the person who makes the mess is the one who should have to clean it up.”

After he left, Rose sat where she was for awhile, fingers steepled under her chin. Clear thinking had returned, and with it the ability to plan. They wouldn't be taking steam today after all, it seemed. That could wait until Monday morning.

At last she went into the galley for a wad of paper towels. And cleaned up her mess.

“Dan!” This time it was John. “Gotta go!”

“Right there,” he said. “I just want to splash some cold water on my face.”

He went down the hall listening to Abra, nodding his head slightly as if she were there.

(
Mr. Freeman wants to know why I was crying why I threw up what should I tell him
)

(
for now just that when we get there I'll want to borrow his truck
)

(
because we're going on going west
)

(
. . . well . . .
)

It was complicated, but she understood. The understanding wasn't in words and didn't need to be.

Beside the bathroom washbasin was a rack holding several wrapped toothbrushes. The smallest—not wrapped—had
ABRA
printed on the handle in rainbow letters. On one wall was a small plaque reading A LIFE WITHOUT LOVE IS LIKE A TREE WITHOUT FRUIT. He looked at it for a few seconds, wondering if there was anything in the AA program to that effect. The only thing he could think of was
If you can't love anybody today, at least try not to hurt anybody
. Didn't really compare.

He turned on the cold water and splashed his face several times, hard. Then he grabbed a towel and raised his head. No Lucy in the portrait with him this time; just Dan Torrance, son of Jack and Wendy, who had always believed himself to be an only child.

His face was covered with flies.

What Dan remembered best about that Saturday wasn't the ride from Boston to the Crown Motel, because the four people in John Dalton's SUV said very little. The silence wasn't uncomfortable or hostile but exhausted—the quiet of people who have a great deal to think about but not a hell of a lot to say. What he remembered best was what happened when they reached their destination.

Dan knew she was waiting, because he had been in touch with her for most of the trip, talking in a way that had become comfortable for them—half words and half pictures. When they pulled in, she was sitting on the back bumper of Billy's old truck. She saw them and jumped to her feet, waving. At that moment the cloud cover, which had been thinning, broke apart and a ray of sun spotlighted her. It was as if God had given her a high five.

Lucy gave a cry that was not quite a scream. She had her seatbelt unbuckled and her door open before John could bring his Suburban to a complete stop. Five seconds later she had her daughter in her arms and was kissing the top of her head—the best she could do, with Abra's face crushed between her breasts. Now the sun spotlighted them both.

Mother and child reunion,
Dan thought. The smile that brought felt strange on his face. It had been a long time between smiles.

Lucy and David wanted to take Abra back to New Hampshire. Dan had no problem with that, but now that they were together, the six of them needed to talk. The fat man with the ponytail was back on duty, today watching a cage-fighting match instead of porn. He was happy to re-rent them Room 24; it was nothing to him whether they spent the night or not. Billy went into Crownville proper to pick up a couple of pizzas. Then they settled in, Dan and Abra talking turn and turn about, filling in the others on everything that had happened and everything that was going to happen. If things went as they hoped, that was.

“No,” Lucy said at once. “It's far too dangerous. For both of you.”

John offered a bleak grin. “The most dangerous thing would be to ignore these . . . these
things
. Rose says that if Abra doesn't come to her, she'll come to Abra.”

“She's, like, fixated on her,” Billy said, and selected a slice of pepperoni-and-mushroom. “Happens lots of times with crazy people. All you have to do to know that is watch
Dr. Phil.
”

Lucy fixed her daughter with a reproachful glance. “You goaded her. That was a dangerous thing to do, but when she has a chance to settle down . . .”

Although no one interrupted, she trailed off. Maybe, Dan thought, she heard how implausible that sounded when it was actually articulated.

“They won't stop, Mom,” Abra said. “
She
won't stop.”

“Abra will be safe enough,” Dan said. “There's a wheel. I don't know how to explain it any better than that. If things get bad—if they go wrong—Abra will use the wheel to get away. To pull out. She's promised me that.”

“That's right,” Abra said. “I promised.”

Dan fixed her with a hard look. “And you'll keep it, won't you?”

“Yes,” Abra said. She spoke firmly enough, although with obvious reluctance. “I will.”

“There's all those kids to consider, too,” John said. “We'll never know how many this True Knot has taken over the years. Hundreds, maybe.”

Dan thought that if they lived as long as Abra believed, the number was probably in the thousands. He said, “Or how many they
will
take, even if they leave Abra alone.”

“That's assuming the measles doesn't kill them all,” Dave said hopefully. He turned to John. “You said that really might happen.”

“They want me because they think I can
cure
the measles,” Abra said.
“Duh.”

“Keep a civil tongue, miss,” Lucy said, but she spoke absently. She picked up the last slice of pizza, looked at it, then threw it back in the box. “I don't care about the other kids. I care about Abra. I know how horrible that sounds, but it's the truth.”

“You wouldn't feel that way if you'd seen all those little pictures in the
Shopper,
” Abra said. “I can't get them out of my head. I dream about them sometimes.”

“If this crazy woman has half a brain, she'll know Abra isn't coming alone,” Dave said. “What's she going to do, fly to Denver and then rent a car? A thirteen-year-old?” And, with a half-humorous look at his daughter:
“Duh.”

Dan said, “Rose already knows from what happened at Cloud Gap that Abra's got friends. What she doesn't know is that she has at least one with the shining.” He looked at Abra for confirmation. She nodded. “Listen, Lucy. Dave. Together, I think that Abra and I can put an end to this”—he searched for the right word and found only one that fit—“plague. Either of us alone . . .” He shook his head.

“Besides,” Abra said, “you and Dad can't really stop me. You can lock me in my room, but you can't lock up my head.”

Lucy gave her the Death Stare, the one mothers save especially for rebellious young daughters. It had always worked with Abra, even when she was in one of her furies, but it didn't this time. She looked back at her mother calmly. And with a sadness that made Lucy's heart feel cold.