Doctor Sleep

^{CHAPTER EIGHTEEN} GOING WEST

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.

Dave took Lucy’s hand. “I think this has to be done.”

There was silence in the room. Abra was the one who broke it. “If nobody’s going to eat that last slice, I am. I’m starving.”

They went over it several more times, and at a couple of points voices were raised, but essentially, everything had been said. Except, it turned out, for one thing. When they left the room, Billy refused to get into John’s Suburban.

“I’m goin,” he told Dan.

“Billy, I appreciate the thought, but it’s not a good idea.”

“My truck, my rules. Besides, are you really gonna make the Colorado high country by Monday afternoon on your own? Don’t make me laugh. You look like shit on a stick.”

Dan said, “Several people have told me that lately, but none have put it so elegantly.”

Billy didn’t smile. “I can help you. I’m old, but I ain’t dead.”

“Take him,” Abra said. “He’s right.”

Dan looked at her closely.

(do you know something Abra)

The reply was quick.

(no feel something)

That was good enough for Dan. He held out his arms and Abra hugged him hard, the side of her face pressed against his chest. Dan could have held her like that for a long time, but he let her go and stepped back.

(let me know when you get close Uncle Dan I’ll come)

(just little touches remember)

She sent an image instead of a thought in words: a smoke detector beeping the way they did when they wanted a battery change. She remembered perfectly.

As she went to the car, Abra said to her father, “We need to stop on the way back for a get-well card. Julie Cross broke her wrist yesterday in soccer practice.”

He frowned at her. “How do you know that?”

“I know,” she said.

He gently pulled one of her pigtails. “You really could do it all along, couldn’t you? I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell us, Abba-Doo.”

Dan, who had grown up with the shining, could have answered that question.

Sometimes parents needed to be protected.

So they parted. John’s SUV went east and Billy’s pickup truck went west, with Billy behind the wheel. Dan said, “Are you really okay to drive, Billy?”

“After all the sleep I got last night? Sweetheart, I could drive to California.”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“I bought a road atlas in town while I was waitin for the pizza.”

“So you’d made up your mind even then. And you knew what Abra and I were planning.”

“Well… sorta.”

“When you need me to take over, just yell,” Dan said, and promptly fell asleep with his head against the passenger window. He descended through a deepening depth of unpleasant images. First the hedge animals at the Overlook, the ones that moved when you weren’t looking. This was followed by Mrs. Massey from Room 217, who now wore a cocked tophat. Still descending, he revisited the battle at Cloud Gap. Only this time when he burst into the Winnebago, he found Abra lying on the floor with her throat cut and Rose standing over her with a dripping straight razor. Rose saw Dan and the bottom half of her face dropped away in an obscene grin where one long tooth gleamed. I told her it would end this way but she wouldn’t listen, she said. Children so rarely do.

Below this there was only darkness.

When he woke it was to twilight with a broken white line running down the middle of it. They were on an interstate highway.

“How long did I sleep?”

Billy glanced at his watch. “A good long while. Feel better?”

“Yes.” He did and didn’t. His head was clear, but his stomach hurt like hell. Considering what he had seen that morning in the mirror, he wasn’t surprised. “Where are we?”

“Hunnert-n-fifty miles east of Cincinnati, give or take. You slept through two gas stops. And you snore.”

Dan sat up straight. “We’re in Ohio? Christ! What time is it?”

Billy glanced at his watch. “Quarter past six. Wasn’t no big thing; light traffic and no rain. I think we got an angel ridin with us.”

“Well, let’s find a motel. You need to sleep and I have to piss like a racehorse.”

“Not surprised.”

Billy pulled off at the next exit showing signs for gas, food, and motels. He pulled into a Wendy’s and got a bag of burgers while Dan used the men’s. When they got back into the truck, Dan took one bite of his double, put it back in the bag, and sipped cautiously at a coffee milkshake. That his stomach seemed willing to take.

Billy looked shocked. “Man, you gotta eat! What’s wrong with you?”

“I guess pizza for breakfast was a bad idea.” And because Billy was still looking at him: “The shake’s fine. All I need. Eyes on the road, Billy. We can’t help Abra if we’re getting patched up in some emergency room.”

Five minutes later, Billy pulled the truck under the canopy of a Fairfield Inn with a blinking ROOMS AVAILABLE sign over the door. He turned off the engine but didn’t get out. “Since I’m riskin my life with you, chief, I want to know what ails you.”

Dan almost pointed out that taking the risk had been Billy’s idea, not his, but that wasn’t fair. He explained. Billy listened in round-eyed silence.

“Jesus jumped-up Christ,” he said when Dan had finished.

“Unless I missed it,” Dan said, “there’s nothing in the New Testament about Jesus jumping. Although I guess He might’ve, as a child. Most of them do. You want to check us in, or should I do it?”

Billy continued to sit where he was. “Does Abra know?”

Dan shook his head.

“But she could find out.”

“Could but won’t. She knows it’s wrong to peek, especially when it’s someone you care about. She’d no more do it than she’d spy on her parents when they were making love.”

“You know that from when you were a kid?”

“Yes. Sometimes you see a little—you can’t help it—but then you turn away.”

“Are you gonna be all right, Danny?”

“For awhile.” He thought of the sluggish flies on his lips and cheeks and forehead. “Long enough.”

“What about after?”

“I’ll worry about after after. One day at a time. Let’s check in. We need to get an early start.”

“Have you heard from Abra?”

Dan smiled. “She’s fine.”

At least so far.

But she wasn’t, not really.

She sat at her desk with a half-read copy of The Fixer in her hand, trying not to look at her bedroom window, lest she should see a certain someone looking in at her. She knew something was wrong with Dan, and she knew he didn’t want her to know what it was, but had been tempted to look anyway, in spite of all the years she’d taught herself to steer clear of APB: adult private business. Two things held her back. One was the knowledge that, like it or not, she couldn’t help him with it now. The other (this was stronger) was knowing he might sense her in his head. If so, he would be disappointed in her.

It’s probably locked up, anyway, she thought. He can do that. He’s pretty strong.

Not as strong as she was, though… or, if you put it in terms of the shining, as bright. She could open his mental lockboxes and peer at the things inside, but she thought doing so might be dangerous for both of them. There was no concrete reason for this, it was just a feeling—like the one she’d had about how it would be a good idea for Mr. Freeman to go with Dan—but she trusted it. Besides, maybe it was something that could help them. She could hope for that. True hope is swift, and flies on swallow’s wings—that was another line from Shakespeare.

Don’t you look at that window, either. Don’t you dare.

No. Absolutely not. Never. So she did, and there was Rose, grinning in at her from below her rakishly tilted hat. All billowing hair and pale porcelain skin and dark mad eyes and rich red lips masking that one snaggle tooth. That tusk.

You’re going to die screaming, bitchgirl.

Abra closed her eyes and thought hard

(not there not there not there)

and opened them again. The grinning face at the window was gone. But not really. Somewhere high in the mountains—at the roof of the world—Rose was thinking about her. And waiting.

The motel had a breakfast buffet. Because his traveling companion was watching him, Dan made a point of eating some cereal and yogurt. Billy looked relieved. While he checked them out, Dan strolled to the lobby men’s room. Once inside, he turned the lock, fell to his knees, and vomited up everything he’d eaten. The undigested cereal and yogurt floated in a red foam.

“All right?” Billy asked when Dan rejoined him at the desk.

“Fine,” Dan said. “Let’s roll.”

According to Billy’s road atlas, it was about twelve hundred miles from Cincinnati to Denver. Sidewinder lay roughly seventy-five miles further west, along roads full of switchbacks and lined with steep drops. Dan tried driving for awhile on that Sunday afternoon, but tired quickly and turned the wheel over to Billy again. He fell asleep, and when he woke up, the sun was going down. They were in Iowa—home of the late Brad Trevor.

(Abra?)

He had been afraid distance would make mental communication difficult or even impossible, but she came back promptly, and as strong as ever; if she’d been a radio station, she would have been broadcasting at 100,000 watts. She was in her room, pecking away on her computer at some homework assignment or other. He was both amused and saddened to realize she had Hoppy, her stuffed rabbit, on her lap. The strain of what they were doing had regressed her to a younger Abra, at least on the emotional side.

With the line between them wide open, she caught this.

(don’t worry about me I’m all right)

(good because you have a call to make)

(yes okay are you all right)

(fine)

She knew better but didn’t ask, and that was just the way he wanted it.

(have you got the)

She made a picture.

(not yet it’s Sunday stores not open)

Another picture, one that made him smile. A Walmart… except the sign out front read ABRA’S SUPERSTORE.

(they wouldn’t sell us what we need we’ll find one that will)

(okay I guess)

(you know what to say to her?)

(yes)

(she’ll try to suck you into a long conversation try to snoop don’t let her)

(I won’t)

(let me hear from you after so I won’t worry)

Of course he would worry plenty.

(I will I love you Uncle Dan)

(love you too)

He made a kiss. Abra made one back: big red cartoon lips. He could almost feel them on his cheek. Then she was gone.

Billy was staring at him. “You were just talkin to her, weren’t you?”

“Indeed I was. Eyes on the road, Billy.”

“Yeah, yeah. You sound like my ex-wife.”

Billy put on his blinker, switched to the passing lane, and rolled past a huge and lumbering Fleetwood Pace Arrow motorhome. Dan stared at it, wondering who was inside and if they were looking out the tinted windows.

“I want to make another hundred or so miles before we quit for the night,” Billy said. “Way I got tomorrow figured, that should give us an hour to do your errand and still put us in the high country about the time you and Abra set for the showdown. But we’ll want to get on the road before daybreak.”

“Fine. You understand how this will go?”

“I get how it’s supposed to go.” Billy glanced at him. “You better hope that if they have binoculars, they don’t use them. Do you think we might come back alive? Tell me the truth. If the answer’s no, I’m gonna order me the biggest steak dinner you ever saw when we stop for the night. MasterCard can chase my relatives for the last credit card bill, and guess what? I ain’t got any relatives. Unless you count the ex, and if I was on fire she wouldn’t piss on me to put me out.”

“We’ll come back,” Dan said, but it sounded pale. He felt too sick to put up much of a front.

“Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll have that steak dinner, anyway. What about you?”

“I think I could manage a little soup. As long as it’s clear.” The thought of eating anything too thick to read a newspaper through—tomato bisque, cream of mushroom—made his stomach cringe.

“Okay. Why don’t you close your eyes again?”

Dan knew he couldn’t sleep deeply, no matter how tired and sick he felt—not while Abra was dealing with the ancient horror that looked like a woman—but he managed a doze. It was thin but rich enough to grow more dreams, first of the Overlook (today’s version featured the elevator that ran by itself in the middle of the night), then of his niece. This time Abra had been strangled with a length of electrical cord. She stared at Dan with bulging, accusing eyes. It was all too easy to read what was in them. You said you’d help me. You said you’d save me. Where were you?

Abra kept putting off the thing she had to do until she realized her mother would soon be pestering her to go to bed. She wasn’t going to school in the morning, but it was still going to be a big day. And, perhaps, a very long night.

Putting things off only makes them worse, cara mia.

That was the gospel according to Momo. Abra looked toward her window, wishing she could see her great-grandma there instead of Rose. That would be good.

“Momes, I’m so scared,” she said. But after two long and steadying breaths, she picked up her iPhone and dialed the Overlook Lodge at Bluebell Campground. A man answered, and when Abra said she wanted to talk to Rose, he asked who she was.

“You know who I am,” she said. And—with what she hoped was irritating inquisitiveness: “Are you sick yet, mister?”

The man on the other end (it was Toady Slim) didn’t answer that, but she heard him murmur to someone. A moment later, Rose was on, her composure once more firmly in place.

“Hello, dear. Where are you?”

“On my way,” Abra said.

“Are you really? That’s nice, dear. So I don’t suppose that I’d find this call came from a New Hampshire area code if I star-sixty-nined it?”

“Of course you would,” Abra said. “I’m using my cell. You need to get with the twenty-first century, bitch.”

“What do you want?” The voice on the other end was now curt.

“To make sure you know the rules,” Abra said. “I’ll be there at five tomorrow. I’ll be in an old red truck.”

“Driven by whom?”

“My uncle Billy,” Abra said.

“Was he one of the ones from the ambush?”

“He’s the one who was with me and the Crow. Stop asking questions. Just shut up and listen.”

“So rude,” Rose said sadly.

“He’ll park way at the end of the lot, by the sign that says KIDS EAT FREE WHEN COLORADO PRO TEAMS WIN.”

“I see you’ve been on our website. That’s sweet. Or was it your uncle, perhaps? He’s very brave to act as your chauffeur. Is he your father’s brother or your mother’s? Rube families are a hobby of mine. I make family trees.”

She’ll try to snoop, Dan had told her, and how right he was.

“What part of ‘shut up and listen’ don’t you understand? Do you want this to happen or not?”

No reply, just waiting silence. Creepy waiting silence.

“From the parking lot, we’ll be able to see everything: the campground, the Lodge, and Roof O’ the World on top of the hill. My uncle and me better see you up there, and we better not see the people from your True Knot anywhere. They’re going to stay in that meeting-hall thingy while we do our business. In the big room, got it? Uncle Billy won’t know if they’re not where they’re supposed to be, but I will. If I pick up a single one somewhere else, we’ll be gone.”

“Your uncle will stay in his truck?”

“No. I’ll stay in the truck, until we’re sure. Then he’ll get back in and I’ll come to you. I don’t want him anywhere near you.”

“All right, dear. It will be as you say.”

No, it won’t. You’re lying.

But so was Abra, which kind of made them even.

“I have one really important question, dear,” Rose said pleasantly.

Abra almost asked what it was, then remembered her uncle’s advice. Her real uncle. One question, right. Which would lead to another… and another… and another.

“Choke on it,” she said, and hung up. Her hands began to tremble. Then her legs and arms and shoulders.

“Abra?” Mom. Calling from the foot of the stairs. She feels it. Just a little, but she does feel it. Is that a mom thing or a shining thing? “Honey, are you okay?”

“Fine, Mom! Getting ready for bed!”

“Ten minutes, then we’re coming up for kisses. Be in your PJs.”

“I will.”

If they knew who I was just talking to, Abra thought. But they didn’t. They only thought they knew what was going on. She was here in her bedroom, every door and window in the house was locked, and they believed that made her safe. Even her father, who had seen the True Knot in action.

But Dan knew. She closed her eyes and reached out to him.

Dan and Billy were under another motel canopy. And still nothing from Abra. That was bad.

“Come on, chief,” Billy said. “Let’s get you inside and—”

Then she was there. Thank God.

“Hush a minute,” Dan said, and listened. Two minutes later he turned to Billy, who thought the smile on his face finally made him look like Dan Torrance again.

“Was it her?”

“Yes.”

“How’d it go?”

“Abra says it went fine. We’re in business.”

“No questions about me?”

“Just which side of the family you were on. Listen, Billy, the uncle thing was a bit of a mistake. You’re way too old to be Lucy’s or David’s brother. When we stop tomorrow to do our errand, you need to buy sunglasses. Big ones. And keep that ball cap of yours jammed down all the way to your ears, so your hair doesn’t show.”

“Maybe I should get some Just For Men, while I’m at it.”

“Don’t sass me, you old fart.”

That made Billy grin. “Let’s get registered and get some food. You look better. Like you could actually eat.”

“Soup,” Dan said. “No sense pressing my luck.”

“Soup. Right.”

He ate it all. Slowly. And—reminding himself that this would be over one way or the other in less than twenty-four hours—he managed to keep it down. They dined in Billy’s room and when he was finally finished, Dan stretched out on the carpet. It eased the pain in his gut a little.

“What’s that?” Billy asked. “Some kind of yogi shit?”

“Exactly. I learned it watching Yogi Bear cartoons. Run it down for me again.”

“I got it, chief, don’t worry. Now you’re starting to sound like Casey Kingsley.”

“A scary thought. Now run it down again.”

“Abra starts pinging around Denver. If they have someone who can listen, they’ll know she’s coming. And that she’s in the neighborhood. We get to Sidewinder early—say four instead of five—and drive right past the road to the campground. They won’t see the truck. Unless they post a sentry down by the highway, that is.”

“I don’t think they will.” Dan thought of another AA aphorism: We’re powerless over people, places, and things. Like most alkie nuggets, it was seventy percent true and thirty percent rah-rah bullshit. “In any case, we can’t control everything. Carry on.”

“There’s a picnic area about a mile further up the road. You went there a couple of times with your mom, before you guys got snowed in for the winter.” Billy paused. “Just her and you? Never your dad?”

“He was writing. Working on a play. Go on.”

Billy did. Dan listened closely, then nodded. “Okay. You’ve got it.”

“Didn’t I say? Now can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“By tomorrow afternoon, will you still be able to walk a mile?”

“I’ll be able to.”

I better be.

Thanks to an early start—4 a.m., long before first light—Dan Torrance and Billy Freeman began to see a horizon-spanning cloud shortly after 9 a.m. An hour later, by which time the blue-gray cloud had resolved itself into a mountain range, they stopped in the town of Martenville, Colorado. There, on the short (and mostly deserted) main street, Dan saw not what he was hoping for, but something even better: a children’s clothing store called Kids’ Stuff. Half a block down was a drugstore flanked by a dusty-looking hockshop and a Video Express with CLOSING MUST SELL ALL STOCK AT BARGAIN PRICES soaped in the window. He sent Billy to Martenville Drugs & Sundries to get sunglasses and stepped through the door of Kids’ Stuff.

The place had an unhappy, losing-hope vibe. He was the only customer. Here was somebody’s good idea going bad, probably thanks to the big-box mall stores in Sterling or Fort Morgan. Why buy local when you could drive a little and get cheaper pants and dresses for back-to-school? So what if they were made in Mexico or Costa Rica? A tired-looking woman with a tired-looking hairdo came out from behind the counter and gave Dan a tired-looking smile. She asked if she could help him. Dan said she could. When he told her what he wanted, her eyes went round.

“I know it’s unusual,” Dan said, “but get with me on this a little. I’ll pay cash.”

He got what he wanted. In little losing-hope stores off the turnpike, the C-word went a long way.

As they neared Denver, Dan got in touch with Abra. He closed his eyes and visualized the wheel they both now knew about. In the town of Anniston, Abra did the same. It was easier this time. When he opened his eyes again, he was looking down the slope of the Stones’ back lawn at the Saco River, gleaming in the afternoon sun. Abra opened hers on a view of the Rockies.

“Wow, Uncle Billy, they’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

Billy glanced at the man sitting beside him. Dan had crossed his legs in a way that was utterly unlike him, and was bouncing one foot. Color had come back into his cheeks, and there was a bright clarity in his eyes that had been missing on their run west.

“They sure are, honey,” he said.

Dan smiled and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the health Abra had brought to his face was fading. Like a rose without water, Billy thought.

“Anything?”

“Ping,” Dan said. He smiled again, but this one was weary. “Like a smoke detector that needs a battery change.”

“Do you think they heard it?”

“I sure hope so,” Dan said.

Rose was pacing back and forth near her EarthCruiser when Token Charlie came running up. The True had taken steam that morning, all but one of the canisters she had in storage, and on top of what Rose had taken on her own over the last couple of days, she was too wired even to think about sitting down.

“What?” she asked. “Tell me something good.”

“I got her, how’s that for good?” Wired himself, Charlie grabbed Rose by the arms and whirled her around, making her hair fly. “I got her! Just for a few seconds, but it was her!”

“Did you see the uncle?”

“No, she was looking out the windshield at the mountains. She said they were beautiful—”

“They are,” Rose said. A grin was spreading on her lips. “Don’t you agree, Charlie?”

“—and he said they sure were. They’re coming, Rosie! They really are!”

“Did she know you were there?”

He let go of her, frowning. “I can’t say for sure… Grampa Flick probably could…”

“Just tell me what you think.”

“Probably not.”

“That’s good enough for me. Go someplace quiet. Someplace where you can concentrate without being disturbed. Sit and listen. If—when—you pick her up again, let me know. I don’t want to lose track of her if I can help it. If you need more steam, ask for it. I saved a little.”

“No, no, I’m fine. I’ll listen. I’ll listen hard!” Token Charlie gave a rather wild laugh and rushed off. Rose didn’t think he had any idea where he was going, and she didn’t care. As long as he kept listening.

Dan and Billy were at the foot of the Flatirons by noon. As he watched the Rockies draw closer, Dan thought of all the wandering years he had avoided them. That in turn made him think of some poem or other, one about how you could spend years running, but in the end you always wound up facing yourself in a hotel room, with a naked bulb hanging overhead and a revolver on the table.

Because they had time, they left the freeway and drove into Boulder. Billy was hungry. Dan wasn’t… but he was curious. Billy pulled the truck into a sandwich shop parking lot, but when he asked Dan what he could get him, Dan only shook his head.

“Sure? You got a lot ahead of you.”

“I’ll eat when this is over.”

“Well…”

Billy went into the Subway for a Buffalo Chicken. Dan got in touch with Abra. The wheel turned.

Ping.

When Billy came out, Dan nodded to his wrapped footlong. “Save that a couple of minutes. As long as we’re in Boulder, there’s something I want to check out.”

Five minutes later, they were on Arapahoe Street. Two blocks from the seedy little bar-and-café district, he told Billy to pull over. “Go on and chow that chicken. I won’t be long.”

Dan got out of the truck and stood on the cracked sidewalk, looking at a slumped three-story building with a sign in the window reading EFFICIENCY APTS GOOD STUDENT VALUE. The lawn was balding. Weeds grew up through the cracks in the sidewalk. He had doubted that this place would still be here, had believed that Arapahoe would now be a street of condos populated by well-to-do slackers who drank lattes from Starbucks, checked their Facebook pages half a dozen times a day, and Twittered like mad bastards. But here it was, and looking—so far as he could tell—exactly as it had back in the day.

Billy joined him, sandwich in one hand. “We’ve still got seventy-five miles ahead of us, Danno. Best we get our asses up the pass.”

“Right,” Dan said, then went on looking at the building with the peeling green paint. Once a little boy had lived here; once he had sat on the very piece of curbing where Billy Freeman now stood munching his chicken footlong. A little boy waiting for his daddy to come home from his job interview at the Overlook Hotel. He had a balsa glider, that little boy, but the wing was busted. It was okay, though. When his daddy came home, he would fix it with tape and glue. Then maybe they would fly it together. His daddy had been a scary man, and how that little boy had loved him.

Dan said, “I lived here with my mother and father before we moved up to the Overlook. Not much, is it?”

Billy shrugged. “I seen worse.”

In his wandering years, Dan had, too. Deenie’s apartment in Wilmington, for instance.

He pointed left. “There were a bunch of bars down that way. One was called the Broken Drum. Looks like urban renewal missed this side of town, so maybe it’s still there. When my father and I walked past it, he’d always stop and look in the window, and I could feel how thirsty he was to go inside. So thirsty it made me thirsty. I drank a lot of years to quench that thirst, but it never really goes away. My dad knew that, even then.”

“But you loved him, I guess.”

“I did.” Still looking at that shambling, rundown apartment house. Not much, but Dan couldn’t help wondering how different their lives might have been if they had stayed there. If the Overlook had not ensnared them. “He was good and bad and I loved both sides of him. God help me, I guess I still do.”

“You and most kids,” Billy said. “You love your folks and hope for the best. What else can you do? Come on, Dan. If we’re gonna do this, we have to go.”

Half an hour later, Boulder was behind them and they were climbing into the Rockies.

^{CHAPTER NINETEEN} GHOSTIE PEOPLE

Although sunset was approaching—in New Hampshire, at least—Abra was still on the back stoop, looking down at the river. Hoppy was sitting nearby, on the lid of the composter. Lucy and David came out and sat on either side of her. John Dalton watched them from the kitchen, holding a cold cup of coffee. His black bag was on the counter, but there was nothing in it he could use this evening.

“You should come in and have some supper,” Lucy said, knowing that Abra wouldn’t—probably couldn’t—until this was over. But you clung to the known. Because everything looked normal, and because the danger was over a thousand miles away, that was easier for her than for her daughter. Although Abra’s complexion had previously been clear—as unblemished as when she was an infant—she now had nests of acne around the wings of her nose and an ugly cluster of pimples on her chin. Just hormones kicking in, heralding the onset of true adolescence: so Lucy would have liked to believe, because that was normal. But stress caused acne, too. Then there was the pallor of her daughter’s skin and the dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked almost as ill as Dan did when Lucy had last seen him, climbing with painful slowness into Mr. Freeman’s pickup truck.

“Can’t eat now, Mom. No time. I probably couldn’t keep it down, anyway.”

“How soon before this happens, Abby?” David asked.

She looked at neither of them. She looked fixedly down at the river, but Lucy knew she wasn’t really looking at that, either. She was far away, in a place where none of them could help her. “Not long. You should each give me a kiss and then go inside.”

“But—” Lucy began, then saw David shake his head at her. Only once, but very firmly. She sighed, took one of Abra’s hands (how cold it was), and planted a kiss on her left cheek. David put one on her right.

Lucy: “Remember what Dan said. If things go wrong—”

“You should go in now, guys. When it starts, I’m going to take Hoppy and put him in my lap. When you see that, you can’t interrupt me. Not for anything. You could get Uncle Dan killed, and maybe Billy, too. I might fall over, like in a faint, but it won’t be a faint, so don’t move me and don’t let Dr. John move me, either. Just let me be until it’s over. I think Dan knows a place where we can be together.”

David said, “I don’t understand how this can possibly work. That woman, Rose, will see there’s no little girl—”

“You need to go in now,” Abra said.

They did as she said. Lucy looked pleadingly at John; he could only shrug and shake his head. The three of them stood at the kitchen window, arms around one another, looking out at the little girl sitting on the stoop with her arms clasped around her knees. There was no danger to be seen; all was placid. But when Lucy saw Abra—her little girl—reach for Hoppy and take the old stuffed rabbit on her lap, she groaned. John squeezed her shoulder. David tightened the arm around her waist, and she gripped his hand with panicky tightness.

Please let my daughter be all right. If something has to happen… something bad… let it happen to the half brother I never knew. Not to her.

“It’ll be okay,” Dave said.

She nodded. “Of course it will. Of course it will.”

They watched the girl on the stoop. Lucy understood that if she did call to Abra, she wouldn’t answer. Abra was gone.

Billy and Dan reached the turnoff to the True’s Colorado base of operations at twenty to four, Mountain Time, which put them comfortably ahead of schedule. There was a wooden ranch-style arch over the paved road with WELCOME TO THE BLUEBELL CAMPGROUND! STAY AWHILE, PARTNER! carved into it. The sign beside the road was a lot less welcoming: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Billy drove past without slowing, but his eyes were busy. “Don’t see nobody. Not even on the lawns, although I suppose they coulda stashed someone in that welcome-hut doohickey. Jesus, Danny, you look just awful.”

“Lucky for me the Mr. America competition isn’t until later this year,” Dan said. “One mile up, maybe a little less. The sign says Scenic Turnout and Picnic Area.”

“What if they posted someone there?”

“They haven’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because neither Abra nor her uncle Billy could possibly know about it, never having been here. And the True doesn’t know about me.”

“You better hope they don’t.”

“Abra says everyone’s where they’re supposed to be. She’s been checking. Now be quiet a minute, Billy. I need to think.”

It was Hallorann he wanted to think about. For several years following their haunted winter at the Overlook, Danny Torrance and Dick Hallorann had talked a lot. Sometimes face-to-face, more often mind-to-mind. Danny loved his mother, but there were things she didn’t—couldn’t—understand. About the lockboxes, for instance. The ones where you put the dangerous things that the shining sometimes attracted. Not that the lockbox thing always worked. On several occasions he had tried to make one for the drinking, but that effort had been an abject failure (perhaps because he had wanted it to be a failure). Mrs. Massey, though… and Horace Derwent…

There was a third lockbox in storage now, but it wasn’t as good as the ones he’d made as a kid. Because he wasn’t as strong? Because what it held was different from the revenants that had been unwise enough to seek him out? Both? He didn’t know. He only knew that it was leaky. When he opened it, what was inside might kill him. But—

“What do you mean?” Billy asked.

“Huh?” Dan looked around. One hand was pressed to his stomach. It hurt very badly now.

“You just said, ‘There isn’t any choice.’ What did you mean?”

“Never mind.” They had reached the picnic area, and Billy was turning in. Up ahead was a clearing with picnic benches and barbecue pits. To Dan, it looked like Cloud Gap without the river. “Just… if things go wrong, get in your truck and drive like hell.”

“You think that would help?”

Dan didn’t reply. His gut was burning, burning.

Shortly before four o’clock on that Monday afternoon in late September, Rose walked up to Roof O’ the World with Silent Sarey.

Rose was dressed in form-fitting jeans that accentuated her long and shapely legs. Although it was chilly, Silent Sarey wore only a housedress of unremarkable light blue that fluttered around stout calves clad in Jobst support stockings. Rose stopped to look at a plaque which had been bolted to a granite post at the base of the three dozen or so stairs leading up to the lookout platform. It announced that this was the site of the historic Overlook Hotel, which had burned to the ground some thirty-five years ago.

“Very strong feelings here, Sarey.”

Sarey nodded.

“You know there are hot springs where steam comes right out of the ground, don’t you?”

“Lup.”

“This is like that.” Rose bent down to sniff at the grass and wildflowers. Below their aromas was the iron smell of ancient blood. “Strong emotions—hatred, fear, prejudice, lust. The echo of murder. Not food—too old—but refreshing, all the same. A heady bouquet.”

Sarey said nothing, but watched Rose closely.

“And this thing.” Rose waved a hand at the steep wooden stairs leading up to the platform. “Looks like a gallows, don’t you think? All it needs is a trapdoor.”

Nothing from Sarey. Out loud, at least. Her thought

(no rope)

was clear enough.

“That’s true, my love, but one of us is going to hang here, just the same. Either me or the little bitch with her nose in our business. See that?” Rose pointed to a small green shed about twenty feet away.

Sarey nodded.

Rose was wearing a zipper pack on her belt. She opened it, rummaged, brought out a key, and handed it to the other woman. Sarey walked to the shed, grass whickering against her thick flesh-colored hose. The key fitted a padlock on the door. When she pulled the door open, late-day sunshine illuminated an enclosure not much bigger than a privy. There was a Lawn-Boy and a plastic bucket holding a hand-sickle and a rake. A spade and a pickax leaned against the back wall. There was nothing else, and nothing to hide behind.

“Go on in,” Rose said. “Let’s see what you can do.” And with all that steam inside you, you should be able to amaze me.

Like other members of the True Knot, Silent Sarey had her little talent.

She stepped into the little shed, sniffed, and said: “Dusty.”

“Never mind the dust. Let’s see you do your thing. Or rather, let’s not see you.”

For that was Sarey’s talent. She wasn’t capable of invisibility (none of them was), but she could create a kind of dimness that went very well with her unremarkable face and figure. She turned to Rose, then looked down at her shadow. She moved—not much, only half a step—and her shadow merged with the one thrown by the handle of the Lawn-Boy. Then she became perfectly still, and the shed was empty.

Rose squeezed her eyes shut, then popped them wide open, and there was Sarey, standing beside the mower with her hands folded demurely at her waist like a shy girl hoping some boy at the party will ask her to dance. Rose looked away at the mountains, and when she looked back again the shed was empty—just a tiny storage room with nowhere to hide. In the strong sunlight there wasn’t even a shadow. Except for the one thrown by the mower’s handle, that was. Only…

“Pull your elbow in,” Rose said. “I see it. Just a little.”

Silent Sarey did as she was told and for a moment she was truly gone, at least until Rose concentrated. When she did that, Sarey was there again. But of course she knew Sarey was there. When the time came—and it wouldn’t be long—the bitchgirl wouldn’t.

“Good, Sarey!” she said warmly (or as warmly as she could manage). “Perhaps I won’t need you. If I do, you’ll use the sickle. And think of Andi when you do. All right?”

At the mention of Andi’s name, Sarey’s lips turned down in a moue of unhappiness. She stared at the sickle in the plastic bucket and nodded.

Rose walked over and took the padlock. “I’m going to lock you in now. The bitchgirl will read the ones in the Lodge, but she won’t read you. I’m sure of it. Because you’re the quiet one, aren’t you?”

Sarey nodded again. She was the quiet one, always had been.

(what about the)

Rose smiled. “The lock? Don’t you worry about that. Just worry about being still. Still and silent. Do you understand me?”

“Lup.”

“And you understand about the sickle?” Rose would not have trusted Sarey with a gun even if the True had one.

“Sicka. Lup.”

“If I get the better of her—and as full of steam as I am right now, that should be no problem—you’ll stay right where you are until I let you out. But if you hear me shout… let’s see… if you hear me shout don’t make me punish you, that means I need help. I’ll make sure that her back is turned. You know what happens then, don’t you?”

(I’ll climb the stairs and)

But Rose was shaking her head. “No, Sarey. You won’t need to. She’s never going to get near the platform up there.”

She would hate to lose the steam even more than she would hate losing the opportunity to kill the bitchgirl herself… after making her suffer, and at length. But she mustn’t throw caution to the winds. The girl was very strong.

“What will you listen for, Sarey?”

“Don’t make me punish lu.”

“And what will you be thinking of?”

The eyes, half-hidden by the shaggy bangs, gleamed. “Levenge.”

“That’s right. Revenge for Andi, murdered by that bitchgirl’s friends. But not unless I need you, because I want to do this myself.” Rose’s hands clenched, her nails digging into deep, blood-crusted crescents they had already made in her palms. “But if I need you, you come. Don’t hesitate or stop for anything. Don’t stop until you’ve put that sickle blade in her neck and see the end of it come out of her fucking throat.”

Sarey’s eyes gleamed. “Lup.”

“Good.” Rose kissed her, then shut the door and snapped the padlock closed. She put the key in her zipper pack and leaned against the door. “Listen to me, sweetheart. If all goes well, you’ll get the first steam. I promise. And it will be the best you ever had.”

Rose walked back to the lookout platform, took several long and steadying breaths, and then began to climb the steps.

Dan stood with his hands propped against one of the picnic tables, head down, eyes closed.

“Doing it this way is crazy,” Billy said. “I should stay with you.”

“You can’t. You’ve got your own fish to fry.”

“What if you faint halfway down that path? Even if you don’t, how are you going to take on the whole bunch of them? The way you look now, you couldn’t go two rounds with a five-year-old.”

“I think pretty soon I’m going to feel a whole lot better. Stronger, too. Go on, Billy. You remember where to park?”

“Far end of the lot, by the sign that says kids eat for free when the Colorado teams win.”

“Right.” Dan raised his head and noted the oversize sunglasses Billy was now wearing. “Pull your cap down hard. All the way to your ears. Look young.”

“I might have a trick that’ll make me look even younger. If I can still do it, that is.”

Dan barely heard this. “I need one other thing.”

He stood up straight and opened his arms. Billy hugged him, wanting to do it hard—fiercely—and not daring.

“Abra made a good call. I never would have gotten here without you. Now take care of your business.”

“You take care of yours,” Billy said. “I’m counting on you to drive the Thanksgiving run out to Cloud Gap.”

“I’d like that,” Dan said. “Best model train set a boy never had.”

Billy watched him walk slowly, holding his hands against his stomach as he went, to the signpost on the far side of the clearing. There were two wooden arrows. One pointed west, toward Pawnee Lookout. The other pointed east, downhill. This one read TO BLUEBELL CAMPGROUND.

Dan started along that path. For a little while Billy could see him through the glowing yellow leaves of the aspens, walking slowly and painfully, his head down to watch his footing. Then he was gone.

“Take care of my boy,” Billy said. He wasn’t sure if he was talking to God or Abra, and guessed it didn’t matter; both were probably too busy to bother with the likes of him this afternoon.

He went back to his truck, and from the bed pulled out a little girl with staring china blue eyes and stiff blond curls. Not much weight; she was probably hollow inside. “How you doin, Abra? Hope you didn’t get bumped around too much.”

She was wearing a Colorado Rockies tee and blue shorts. Her feet were bare, and why not? This little girl—actually a mannequin purchased at a moribund children’s clothing shop in Martenville—had never walked a single step. But she had bendable knees, and Billy was able to place her in the truck’s passenger seat with no trouble. He buckled her seatbelt, started to close the door, then tried the neck. It also bent, although only a little. He stepped away to examine the effect. It wasn’t bad. She seemed to be looking at something in her lap. Or maybe praying for strength in the coming battle. Not bad at all.

Unless they had binoculars, of course.

He got back in the truck and waited, giving Dan time. Also hoping he wasn’t passed out somewhere along the path that led to the Bluebell Campground.

At quarter to five, Billy started the truck and headed back the way he had come.

Dan maintained a steady walking pace in spite of the growing heat in his midsection. It felt as though there were a rat on fire in there, one that kept chewing at him even as it burned. If the path had been going up instead of down, he never would have made it.

At ten to five, he came around a bend and stopped. Not far ahead, the aspens gave way to a green and manicured expanse of lawn sloping down to a pair of tennis courts. Beyond the courts he could see the RV parking area and a long log building: Overlook Lodge. Beyond that, the terrain climbed again. Where the Overlook had once stood, a tall platform reared gantrylike against the bright sky. Roof O’ the World. Looking at it, the same thought that had occurred to Rose the Hat

(gallows)

crossed Dan’s mind. Standing at the railing, facing south toward the parking lot for day visitors, was a single silhouetted figure. A woman’s figure. The tophat was tilted on her head.

(Abra are you there)

(I’m here Dan)

Calm, by the sound. Calm was just the way he wanted it.

(are they hearing you)

That brought a vague ticklish sensation: her smile. The angry one.

(if they’re not they’re deaf)

That was good enough.

(you have to come to me now but remember if I tell you to go YOU GO)

She didn’t answer, and before he could tell her again, she was there.

The Stones and John Dalton watched helplessly as Abra slid sideways until she was lying with her head on the boards of the stoop and her legs splayed out on the steps below her. Hoppy spilled from one relaxing hand. She didn’t look as if she were sleeping, nor even in a faint. That was the ugly sprawl of deep unconsciousness or death. Lucy lunged forward. Dave and John held her back.

She fought them. “Let me go! I have to help her!”

“You can’t,” John said. “Only Dan can help her now. They have to help each other.”

She stared at him with wild eyes. “Is she even breathing? Can you tell?”

“She’s breathing,” Dave said, but he sounded unsure even to himself.

When Abra joined him, the pain eased for the first time since Boston. That didn’t comfort Dan much, because now Abra was suffering, too. He could see it in her face, but he could also see the wonder in her eyes as she looked around at the room in which she found herself. There were bunk beds, knotty-pine walls, and a rug embroidered with western sage and cactus. Both the rug and the lower bunk were littered with cheap toys. On a small desk in the corner was a scattering of books and a jigsaw puzzle with large pieces. In the room’s far corner, a radiator clanked and hissed.

Abra walked to the desk and picked up one of the books. On the cover, a small child on a trike was being chased by a little dog. The title was Reading Fun with Dick and Jane.

Dan joined her, wearing a bemused smile. “The little girl on the cover is Sally. Dick and Jane are her brother and sister. And the dog’s name is Jip. For a little while they were my best friends. My only friends, I guess. Except for Tony, of course.”

She put the book down and turned to him. “What is this place, Dan?”

“A memory. There used to be a hotel here, and this was my room. Now it’s a place where we can be together. You know the wheel that turns when you go into someone else?”

“Uh-huh…”

“This is the middle. The hub.”

“I wish we could stay here. It feels… safe. Except for those.” Abra pointed to the French doors with their long panes of glass. “They don’t feel the same as the rest.” She looked at him almost accusingly. “They weren’t here, were they? When you were a kid.”

“No. There weren’t any windows in my room, and the only door was the one that went into the rest of the caretaker’s apartment. I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?”

She studied him, her eyes grave. “Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.”

He smiled. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“You didn’t have to say it. You thought it.”

He drew her toward those French doors that had never existed. Through the glass they could see the lawn, the tennis courts, the Overlook Lodge, and Roof O’ the World.

“I see her,” Abra breathed. “She’s up there, and she’s not looking this way, is she?”

“She better not be,” Dan said. “How bad is the pain, honey?”

“Bad,” she said. “But I don’t care. Because—”

She didn’t have to finish. He knew, and she smiled. This togetherness was what they had, and in spite of the pain that came with it—pain of all kinds—it was good. It was very good.

“Dan?”

“Yes, honey.”

“There are ghostie people out there. I can’t see them, but I feel them. Do you?”

“Yes.” He had for years. Because the past defines the present. He put his arm around her shoulders, and her arm crept around his waist.

“What do we do now?”

“Wait for Billy. Hope he’s on time. And then all of this is going to happen very fast.”

“Uncle Dan?”

“What, Abra.”

“What’s inside you? That isn’t a ghost. It’s like—” He felt her shiver. “It’s like a monster.”

He said nothing.

She straightened and stepped away from him. “Look! Over there!”

An old Ford pickup was rolling into the visitor’s parking lot.

Rose stood with her hands on the lookout platform’s waist-high railing, peering at the truck pulling into the parking lot. The steam had sharpened her vision, but she still wished she had brought a pair of binoculars. Surely there were some in the supply room, for guests who wanted to go bird-watching, so why hadn’t she?

Because you had so many other things on your mind. The sickness… the rats jumping ship… losing Crow to the bitchgirl…

Yes to all of that—yes, yes, yes—but she still should have remembered. For a moment she wondered what else she might have forgotten, but pushed the idea away. She was still in charge of this, loaded with steam and at the top of her game. Everything was going exactly as planned. Soon the little girl would come up here, because she was full of foolish teenage confidence and pride in her own abilities.

But I have the high ground, dear, in all sorts of ways. If I can’t take care of you alone, I’ll draw from the rest of the True. They’re all together in the main room, because you thought that was such a good idea. But there’s something you didn’t take into consideration. When we’re together we’re linked, we’re a True Knot, and that makes us a giant battery. Power I can draw on if I need to.

If all else failed, there was Silent Sarey. She would now have the sickle in her hand. She might not be a genius, but she was merciless, murderous, and—once she understood the job—completely obedient. Also, she had her own reasons for wanting the bitchgirl laid out dead on the ground at the foot of the lookout platform.

(Charlie)

Token Charlie hit her back at once, and although he was ordinarily a feeble sender, now—boosted by the others in the main room of the Lodge—he came in loud and clear and nearly mad with excitement.

(I’m getting her steady and strong we all are she must be real close you must feel her)

Rose did, even though she was still working hard to keep her mind closed off so the bitchgirl couldn’t get in and mess with her.

(never mind that just tell the others to be ready if I need help)

Many voices came back, jumping all over each other. They were ready. Even those that were sick were ready to help all they could. She loved them for that.

Rose stared at the blond girl in the truck. She was looking down. Reading something? Nerving herself up? Praying to the God of Rubes, perhaps? It didn’t matter.

Come to me, bitchgirl. Come to Auntie Rose.

But it wasn’t the girl who got out, it was the uncle. Just as the bitch had said he would. Checking. He walked around the hood of the truck, moving slowly, looking everywhere. He leaned in the passenger window, said something to the girl, then moved away from the truck a little. He looked toward the Lodge, then turned to the platform rearing against the sky… and waved. The insolent bugger actually waved at her.

Rose didn’t wave back. She was frowning. An uncle. Why had her parents sent an uncle instead of bringing their bitch daughter themselves? For that matter, why had they allowed her to come at all?

She convinced them it was the only way. Told them that if she didn’t come to me, I’d come to her. That’s the reason, and it makes sense.

It did, but she felt a growing unease all the same. She had allowed the bitchgirl to set the ground rules. To that extent, at least, Rose had been manipulated. She had allowed it because this was her home ground and because she had taken precautions, but mostly because she had been angry. So angry.

She stared hard at the man in the parking lot. He was strolling around again, looking here and there, making sure she was alone. Perfectly reasonable, it was what she would have done, but she still had a gnawing intuition that what he was really doing was buying time, although why he would want to was beyond her.

Rose stared harder, now focusing on the man’s gait. She decided he wasn’t as young as she had first believed. He walked, in fact, like a man who was far from young. As if he had more than a touch of arthritis. And why was the little girl so still?

Rose felt the first pulse of real alarm.

Something was wrong here.

“She’s looking at Mr. Freeman,” Abra said. “We should go.”

He opened the French doors, but hesitated. Something in her voice. “What’s the trouble, Abra?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing, but I don’t like it. She’s looking at him really hard. We have to go right now.”

“I need to do something first. Try to be ready, and don’t be scared.”

Dan closed his eyes and went to the storage room at the back of his mind. Real lockboxes would have been covered with dust after all these years, but the two he’d put here as a child were as fresh as ever. Why not? They were made of pure imagination. The third—the new one—had a faint aura hanging around it, and he thought: No wonder I’m sick.

Never mind. That one had to stay for the time being. He opened the oldest of the other two, ready for anything, and found… nothing. Or almost. In the lockbox that had held Mrs. Massey for thirty-two years, there was a heap of dark gray ash. But in the other…

He realized how foolish telling her not to be scared had been.

Abra shrieked.

On the back stoop of the house in Anniston, Abra began to jerk. Her legs spasmed; her feet rattled a tattoo on the steps; one hand—flopping like a fish dragged to a riverbank and left to die there—sent the ill-used and bedraggled Hoppy flying.

“What’s wrong with her?” Lucy screamed.

She rushed for the door. David stood frozen—transfixed by the sight of his seizing daughter—but John got his right arm around Lucy’s waist and his left around her upper chest. She bucked against him. “Let me go! I have to go to her!”

“No!” John shouted. “No, Lucy, you can’t!”

She would have broken free, but now David had her, too.

She subsided, looking first at John. “If she dies out there, I’ll see you go to jail for it.” Next, her gaze—flat-eyed and hostile—went to her husband. “You I’ll never forgive.”

“She’s quieting,” John said.

On the stoop, Abra’s tremors moderated, then stopped. But her cheeks were wet, and tears squeezed from beneath her closed lids. In the day’s dying light, they clung to her lashes like jewels.

In Danny Torrance’s childhood bedroom—a room now made only of memory—Abra clung to Dan with her face pressed against his chest. When she spoke, her voice was muffled. “The monster—is it gone?”

“Yes,” Dan said.

“Swear on your mother’s name?”

“Yes.”

She raised her head, first looking at him to assure herself he was telling the truth, then daring to scan the room. “That smile.” She shuddered.

“Yes,” Dan said. “I think… he’s glad to be home. Abra, are you going to be all right? Because we have to do this right now. Time’s up.”

“I’m all right. But what if… it… comes back?”

Dan thought of the lockbox. It was open, but could be closed again easily enough. Especially with Abra to help him. “I don’t think he… it… wants anything to do with us, honey. Come on. Just remember: if I tell you to go back to New Hampshire, you go.”

Once again she didn’t reply, and there was no time to discuss it. Time was up. He stepped through the French doors. They gave on the end of the path. Abra walked beside him, but lost the solidity she’d had in the room of memory and began to flicker again.

Out here she’s almost a ghostie person herself, Dan thought. It brought home to him just how much she had put herself at risk. He didn’t like to think about how tenuous her hold on her own body might now be.

Moving rapidly—but not running; that would attract Rose’s eye, and they had at least seventy yards to cover before the rear of the Overlook Lodge would block them from the lookout platform—Dan and his ghostie-girl companion crossed the lawn and took the flagstone walk that ran between the tennis courts.

They reached the back of the kitchen, and at last the bulk of the Lodge hid them from the platform. Here was the steady rumble of an exhaust fan and the spoiled-meat smell of garbage cans. He tried the rear door and found it unlocked, but paused a moment before opening it.

(are they all)

(yes all but Rose she hurry up Dan you have to because)

Abra’s eyes, flickering like those of a child in an old black-and-white movie, were wide with dismay. “She knows something’s wrong.”

Rose turned her attention to the bitchgirl, still sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, head bowed, still as could be. Abra wasn’t watching her uncle—if he was her uncle—and she was making no move to get out. The alarm meter in Rose’s head went from Danger Yellow to Condition Red.

“Hey!” The voice came floating up to her on the thin air. “Hey, you old bag! Watch this!”

She snapped her gaze back to the man in the parking lot and stared, close to flabbergasted, as he raised his hands over his head and then turned a big, unsteady cartwheel. She thought he was going to go on his ass, but the only thing that fell to the pavement was his hat. What it exposed was the fine white hair of a man in his seventies. Maybe even his eighties.

Rose looked back at the girl in the truck, who remained perfectly still with her head bent. She had absolutely no interest in the uncle’s antics. Suddenly it clicked and Rose understood what she would have seen right away, had the trick not been so outrageous: it was a mannequin.

But she’s here! Token Charlie feels her, all of them in the Lodge feel her, they’re all together and they know—

All together in the Lodge. All together in one place. And had that been Rose’s idea? No. That idea had come from the—

Rose broke for the stairs.

The remaining members of the True Knot were crowded together at the two windows looking down at the parking lot, watching as Billy Freeman turned a cartwheel for the first time in over forty years (and the last time he’d done this trick, he’d been drunk). Petty the Chink actually laughed. “What in God’s name—”

With their backs turned, they didn’t see Dan step into the room from the kitchen, or the girl flickering in and out of view at his side. Dan had time to register two bundles of clothes on the floor, and to understand that Bradley Trevor’s measles were still hard at work. Then he went back inside himself, went deep, and found the third lockbox—the leaky one. He flung it open.

(Dan what are you doing)

He leaned forward with his hands on his upper thighs, his stomach burning like hot metal, and exhaled the old poet’s last gasp, which she had given him freely, in a dying kiss. From his mouth there came a long plume of pink mist that deepened to red as it hit the air. At first he could focus on nothing but the blessed relief in the middle of his body as the poison remains of Concetta Reynolds left him.

“Momo!” Abra shrieked.

On the platform, Rose’s eyes widened. The bitchgirl was in the Lodge.

And someone was with her.

She leaped into this new mind without thinking about it. Searching. Ignoring the markers that meant big steam, only trying to stop him before he could do whatever it was he intended to do. Ignoring the terrible possibility that it was already too late.

The members of the True turned toward Abra’s cry. Someone—it was Long Paul—said: “What in the hell is that?”

The red mist coalesced into a shape of a woman. For a moment—surely no more than that—Dan looked into Concetta’s swirling eyes and saw they were young. Still weak and focused on this phantom, he had no sense of the intruder in his mind.

“Momo!” Abra cried again. She was holding out her arms.

The woman in the cloud might have looked at her. Might even have smiled. Then the shape of Concetta Reynolds was gone and the mist rolled at the clustered True Knot, many of them now clinging to one another in fright and bewilderment. To Dan, the red stuff looked like blood spreading in water.

“It’s steam,” Dan told them. “You bastards lived on it; now suck it in and die on it.”

He had known ever since the plan’s conception that if it didn’t happen fast, he would never live to see how well it succeeded, but he had never imagined it would occur as rapidly as it did. The measles that had already weakened them might have had something to do with it, because some lasted a little longer than others. Even so, it was over in a matter of seconds.

They howled in his head like dying wolves. The sound appalled Dan, but this was not true of his companion.

“Good!” Abra shouted. She shook her fists at them. “How does it taste? How does my momo taste? Is she good? Have as much as you want! HAVE ALL OF IT!”

They began to cycle. Through the red mist, Dan saw two of them embracing with their foreheads pressed together, and in spite of all they had done—all they were—the sight moved him. He saw the words I love you on Short Eddie’s lips; saw Big Mo begin to reply; then they were gone, their clothes floating to the floor. It was that quick.

He turned to Abra, meaning to tell her they had to finish it at once, but then Rose the Hat began to shriek, and for a few moments—until Abra could block her—those cries of rage and maddened grief blotted out everything else, even the blessed relief of being pain-free. And, he devoutly hoped, cancer-free. About that he wouldn’t know for sure until he could see his face in a mirror.

Rose was at the head of the steps leading down from the platform when the killing mist rolled over the True Knot, the remains of Abra’s momo doing its quick and lethal work.

A white sheet of agony filled her. Screams shot through her head like shrapnel. The cries of the dying True made those of the Cloud Gap raiding party in New Hampshire and Crow in New York seem puny by comparison. Rose staggered back as if she had been hit with a club. She struck the railing, rebounded, and fell down on the boards. Somewhere in the distance, a woman—an old one, by the wavering sound of her voice—was chanting no, no, no, no, no.

That’s me. It has to be, because I’m the only one left.

It wasn’t the girl who had fallen into the trap of overconfidence, but Rose herself. She thought of something

(hoisted on your own petard)

the bitchgirl had said. It scalded her with rage and dismay. Her old friends and longtime traveling companions were dead. Poisoned. Except for the cowards who had run, Rose the Hat was the last of the True Knot.

But no, that wasn’t true. There was Sarey.

Sprawled on the platform and shivering under the late-afternoon sky, Rose reached out to her.

(are you)

The thought that came back was full of confusion and horror.

(yes but Rose are they can they be)

(never mind them just remember Sarey do you remember)

(“don’t make me punish you”)

(good Sarey good)

If the girl didn’t run… if she made the mistake of trying to finish her murderous day’s work…

She would. Rose was sure of it, and she had seen enough in the mind of the bitchgirl’s companion to know two things: how they had accomplished this slaughter, and how their very connection could be turned against them.

Rage was powerful.

So were childhood memories.

She struggled to her feet, reset her hat at the proper jaunty angle without even thinking about it, and walked to the railing. The man from the pickup truck was staring up at her, but she paid scant attention to him. His treacherous little job was done. She might deal with him later, but now she had eyes only for the Overlook Lodge. The girl was there, but also far away. Her bodily presence at the True’s campground was little more than a phantom. The one who was whole—a real person, a rube—was a man she had never seen before. And a steamhead. His voice in her mind was clear and cold.

(hello Rose)

There was a place nearby where the girl would cease to flicker. Where she would take on her physical body. Where she could be killed. Let Sarey take care of the steamhead man, but not until the steamhead man had taken care of the bitchgirl.

(hello Danny hello little boy)

Loaded with steam, she reached into him and swatted him to the hub of the wheel, barely hearing Abra’s cry of bewilderment and terror as she turned to follow.

And when Dan was where Rose wanted him, for a moment too surprised to keep his guard up, she poured all her fury into him. She poured it into him like steam.

^{CHAPTER TWENTY} HUB OF THE WHEEL, ROOF O’ THE WORLD

Dan Torrance opened his eyes. Sunlight shot through them and into his aching head, threatening to set his brains on fire. It was the hangover to end all hangovers. Loud snoring from beside him: a nasty, annoying sound that could only be some drunk chick sleeping it off at the wrong end of the rainbow. Dan turned his head that way and saw the woman sprawled on her back beside him. Vaguely familiar. Dark hair spread around her in a halo. Wearing an oversize Atlanta Braves t-shirt.

This isn’t real. I’m not here. I’m in Colorado, I’m at Roof O’ the World, and I have to end it.

The woman rolled over, opened her eyes, and stared at him. “God, my head,” she said. “Get me some of that coke, daddy. It’s in the living room.”

He stared at her in amazement and growing fury. The fury seemed to come from nowhere, but hadn’t it always been that way? It was its own thing, a riddle wrapped in an enigma. “Coke? Who bought coke?”

She grinned, revealing a mouth that contained only a single discolored tooth. Then he knew who she was. “You did, daddy. Now go get it. Once my head’s clear, I’ll throw you a nice fuck.”

Somehow he was back in this sleazy Wilmington apartment, naked, next to Rose the Hat.

“What have you done? How did I get here?”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Don’t you like this place? You should; I furnished it from your own head. Now do what I told you, asshole. Get the fucking blow.”

“Where’s Abra? What did you do with Abra?”

“Killed her,” Rose said indifferently. “She was so worried about you she dropped her guard and I tore her open from throat to belly. I wasn’t able to suck up as much of her steam as I wanted, but I got quite a lo—”

The world went red. Dan clamped his hands around her throat and began to choke. One thought beat through his mind: worthless bitch, now you’ll take your medicine, worthless bitch, now you’ll take your medicine, worthless bitch, now you’ll take it all.

The steamhead man was powerful but had nothing like the girl’s juice. He stood with his legs apart, his head lowered, his shoulders hunched, and his fisted hands raised—the posture of every man who had ever lost his mind in a killing rage. Anger made men easy.

It was impossible to follow his thoughts, because they had turned red. That was all right, that was fine, the girl was right where Rose wanted her. In Abra’s state of shocked dismay, she had followed him to the hub of the wheel. She wouldn’t be shocked or dismayed for much longer, though; Bitchgirl had become Choked Girl. Soon she would be Dead Girl, hoisted on her own petard.

(Uncle Dan no no stop it’s not her)

It is, Rose thought, bearing down even harder. Her tooth crept out of her mouth and skewered her lower lip. Blood poured down her chin and onto her top. She didn’t feel it any more than she felt the mountain breeze blowing through her masses of dark hair. It is me. You were my daddy, my barroom daddy, I made you empty your wallet for a pile of bad coke, and now it’s the morning after and I need to take my medicine. It’s what you wanted to do when you woke up next to that drunken whore in Wilmington, what you would have done if you’d had any balls, and her useless whelp of a son for good measure. Your father knew how to deal with stupid, disobedient women, and his father before him. Sometimes a woman just needs to take her medicine. She needs—

There was the roar of an approaching motor. It was as unimportant as the pain in her lip and the taste of blood in her mouth. The girl was choking, rattling. Then a thought as loud as a thunderclap exploded in her brain, a wounded roar:

(MY FATHER KNEW NOTHING!)

Rose was still trying to clear her mind of that shout when Billy Freeman’s pickup truck hit the base of the lookout, knocking her off her feet. Her hat went flying.

It wasn’t the apartment in Wilmington. It was his long-gone bedroom at the Overlook Hotel—the hub of the wheel. It wasn’t Deenie, the woman he’d awakened next to in that apartment, and it wasn’t Rose.

It was Abra. He had his hands around her neck and her eyes were bulging.

For a moment she started to change again as Rose tried to worm back inside him, feeding him her rage and augmenting his own. Then something happened, and she was gone. But she would be back.

Abra was coughing and staring at him. He would have expected shock, but for a girl who had almost been choked to death, she seemed oddly composed.

(well… we knew it wouldn’t be easy)

“I’m not my father!” Dan shouted at her. “I am not my father!”

“Probably that’s good,” Abra said. She actually smiled. “You’ve got one hell of a temper, Uncle Dan. I guess we really are related.”

“I almost killed you,” Dan said. “It’s enough. Time for you to get out. Go back to New Hampshire right now.”

She shook her head. “I’ll have to—for awhile, not long—but right now you need me.”

“Abra, that’s an order.”

She folded her arms and stood where she was on the cactus carpet.

“Ah, Christ.” He ran his hands through his hair. “You’re a piece of work.”

She reached out, took his hand. “We’re going to finish this together. Now come on. Let’s get out of this room. I don’t think I like it here, after all.”

Their fingers interlaced, and the room where he had lived for a time as a child dissolved.

Dan had time to register the hood of Billy’s pickup folded around one of the thick posts holding up the Roof O’ the World lookout tower, its busted radiator steaming. He saw the mannequin version of Abra hanging out the passenger-side window, with one plastic arm cocked jauntily behind her. He saw Billy himself trying to open the crumpled driver’s side door. Blood was running down one side of the old man’s face.

Something grabbed his head. Powerful hands twisting, attempting to snap his neck. Then Abra’s hands were there, tearing Rose’s away. She looked up. “You’ll have to do better than that, you cowardly old bitch.”

Rose stood at the railing, looking down and resetting her ugly hat at the correct angle. “Did you enjoy your uncle’s hands around your throat? How do you feel about him now?”

“That was you, not him.”

Rose grinned, her bloody mouth yawning. “Not at all, dear. I just made use of what he has inside. You should know, you’re just like him.”

She’s trying to distract us, Dan thought. But from what? That?

It was a small green building—maybe an outside bathroom, maybe a storage shed.

(can you)

He didn’t have to finish the thought. Abra turned toward the shed and stared at it. The padlock creaked, snapped, and fell into the grass. The door swung open. The shed was empty except for a few tools and an old lawnmower. Dan thought he’d felt something there, but it must only have been overwrought nerves. When they looked up again, Rose was no longer in view. She had retreated from the railing.

Billy finally managed to get the door of his truck open. He got out, staggered, managed to keep his feet. “Danny? You all right?” And then: “Is that Abra? Jesus, she’s hardly there.”

“Listen, Billy. Can you walk to the Lodge?”

“I think so. What about the people in there?”

“Gone. I think it would be a very good idea if you went now.”

Billy didn’t argue. He started down the slope, wallowing like a drunk. Dan pointed at the stairs leading to the lookout platform and raised questioning eyebrows. Abra shook her head

(it’s what she wants)

and began leading Dan around Roof O’ the World, to where they could see the very top of Rose’s stovepipe hat. This put the little equipment shed at their backs, but Dan thought nothing of this now that he had seen it was empty.

(Dan I have to go back now just for a minute I have to refresh my)

A picture in his mind: a field filled with sunflowers, all opening at once. She needed to take care of her physical being, and that was good. That was right.

(go)

(I’ll be back as soon as)

(go Abra I’ll be fine)

And with any luck, this would be over when she came back.

In Anniston, John Dalton and the Stones saw Abra draw a deep breath and open her eyes.

“Abra!” Lucy called. “Is it over?”

“Soon.”

“What’s that on your neck? Are those bruises?”

“Mom, stay there! I have to go back. Dan needs me.”

She reached for Hoppy, but before she could grasp the old stuffed rabbit, her eyes closed and her body grew still.

Peering cautiously over the railing, Rose saw Abra disappear. Little bitchgirl could only stay here so long, then she had to go back for some R & R. Her presence at the Bluebell Campground wasn’t much different from her presence that day in the supermarket, only this manifestation was much more powerful. And why? Because the man was assisting her. Boosting her. If he were dead when the girl returned—

Looking down at him, Rose called: “I’d leave while you still have the chance, Danny. Don’t make me punish you.”

Silent Sarey was so focused on what was going on at Roof O’ the World—listening with every admittedly limited IQ point of her mind as well as with her ears—that she did not at first realize she was no longer alone in the shed. It was the smell that finally alerted her: something rotten. Not garbage. She didn’t dare turn, because the door was open and the man out there might see her. She stood still, the sickle in one hand.

Sarey heard Rose telling the man to leave while he still had the chance, and that was when the shed door began swinging shut again, all on its own.

“Don’t make me punish you!” Rose called. That was her cue to burst out and put the sickle in the troublesome, meddling little girl’s neck, but since the girl was gone, the man would have to do. But before she could move, a cold hand slid over the wrist holding the sickle. Slid over it and clamped tight.

She turned—no reason not to now, with the door closed—and what she saw by the dim light filtering through the cracks in the old boards caused a scream to come bolting out of her usually silent throat. At some point while she had been concentrating, a corpse had joined her in the toolshed. His smiling, predatory face was the damp whitish-green of a spoiled avocado. His eyes seemed almost to dangle from their sockets. His suit was splotched with ancient mold… but the multicolored confetti sprinkled on his shoulders was fresh.

“Great party, isn’t it?” he said, and as he grinned, his lips split open.

She screamed again and drove the sickle into his left temple. The curved blade went deep and hung there, but there was no blood.

“Give us a kiss, dear,” Horace Derwent said. From between his lips came the wiggling white remnant of a tongue. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman.”

As his tattered lips, shining with decay, settled on Sarey’s, his hands closed around her throat.

Rose saw the shed door swing closed, heard the scream, and understood that she was now truly alone. Soon, probably in seconds, the girl would be back and it would be two against one. She couldn’t allow that.

She looked down at the man and summoned all of her steam-amplified force.

(choke yourself do it NOW)

His hands rose toward his throat, but too slowly. He was fighting her, and with a degree of success that was infuriating. She would have expected a battle from the bitchgirl, but that rube down there was an adult. She should have been able to brush aside any steam remaining to him like mist.

Still, she was winning.

His hands went up to his chest… his shoulders… finally to his throat. There they wavered—she could hear him panting with effort. She bore down, and the hands gripped, shutting off his windpipe.

(that’s right you interfering bastard squeeze squeeze and SQUEE)

Something hit her. Not a fist; it felt more like a gust of tightly compressed air. She looked around and saw nothing but a shimmer, there for a moment and then gone. Less than three seconds, but enough to break her concentration, and when she turned back to the railing, the girl had returned.

It wasn’t a gust of air this time; it was hands that felt simultaneously large and small. They were in the small of her back. They were pushing. The bitchgirl and her friend, working together—just what Rose had wanted to avoid. A worm of terror began to unwind in her stomach. She tried to step back from the rail and could not. It was taking all her strength just to stand pat, and with no supporting force from the True to help her, she didn’t think she’d be able to do that for long. Not long at all.

If not for that gust of air… that wasn’t him and she wasn’t here…

One of the hands left the small of her back and slapped the hat from her head. Rose howled at the indignity of it—nobody touched her hat, nobody!—and for a moment summoned enough power to stagger back from the railing and toward the center of the platform. Then those hands returned to the small of her back and began pushing her forward again.

She looked down at them. The man had his eyes closed, concentrating so hard that the cords stood out on his neck and sweat rolled down his cheeks like tears. The girl’s eyes, however, were wide and merciless. She was staring up at Rose. And she was smiling.

Rose pushed backward with all her strength, but she might have been pushing against a stone wall. One that was moving her relentlessly forward, until her stomach was pressing against the rail. She heard it creak.

She thought, for just a moment, of trying to bargain. Of telling the girl that they could work together, start a new Knot. That instead of dying in 2070 or 2080, Abra Stone could live a thousand years. Two thousand. But what good would it do?

Was there ever a teenage girl who felt anything less than immortal?

So instead of bargaining, or begging, she screamed defiance down at them. “Fuck you! Fuck you both!”

The girl’s terrible smile widened. “Oh, no,” she said. “You’re the one who’s fucked.”

No creak this time; there was a crack like a rifleshot, and then Rose the Hatless was falling.

She hit the ground headfirst and began to cycle at once. Her head was cocked (like her hat, Dan thought) on her shattered neck at an angle that was almost insouciant. Dan held Abra’s hand—flesh that came and went in his own as she did her own cycling between her back stoop and Roof O’ the World—and they watched together.

“Does it hurt?” Abra asked the dying woman. “I hope it does. I hope it hurts a lot.”

Rose’s lips pulled back in a sneer. Her human teeth were gone; all that remained was that single discolored tusk. Above it, her eyes floated like living blue stones. Then she was gone.

Abra turned to Dan. She was still smiling, but now there was no anger or meanness in it.

(I was afraid for you I was afraid she might)

(she almost did but there was someone)

He pointed up to where the broken pieces of the railing jutted against the sky. Abra looked there, then looked back at Dan, puzzled. He could only shake his head.

It was her turn to point, not up but down.

(once there was a magician who had a hat like that his name was Mysterio)

(and you hung spoons on the ceiling)

She nodded but didn’t raise her head. She was still studying the hat.

(you need to get rid of it)

(how)

(burn it Mr. Freeman says he quit smoking but he still does I could smell it in the truck he’ll have matches)

“You have to,” she said. “Will you? Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

(I love you Uncle Dan)

(love you too)

She hugged him. He put his arms around her and hugged her back. As he did, her body became rain. Then mist. Then gone.

On the back stoop of a house in Anniston, New Hampshire, in a dusk that would soon deepen to night, a little girl sat up, got to her feet, and then swayed, on the edge of a faint. There was no chance of her falling down; her parents were there at once. They carried her inside together.

“I’m okay,” Abra said. “You can put me down.”

They did, carefully. David Stone stood close, ready to catch her at the slightest knee-buckle, but Abra stood steady in the kitchen.

“What about Dan?” John asked.

“He’s fine. Mr. Freeman smashed up his truck—he had to—and he got a cut”—she put her hand to the side of his face—“but I think he’s okay.”

“And them? The True Knot?”

Abra raised a hand to her mouth and blew across the palm.

“Gone.” And then: “What is there to eat? I’m really hungry.”

Fine might have been a bit of an overstatement in Dan’s case. He walked to the truck, where he sat in the open driver’s side door, getting his breath back. And his wits.

We were on vacation, he decided. I wanted to visit my old stomping grounds in Boulder. Then we came up here to take in the view from Roof O’ the World, but the campground was deserted. I was feeling frisky and bet Billy I could drive his truck straight up the hill to the lookout. I was going too fast and lost control. Hit one of the support posts. Really sorry. Damn fool stunt.

He would get hit with one hell of a fine, but there was an upside: he would pass the Breathalyzer with flying colors.

Dan looked in the glove compartment and found a can of lighter fluid. No Zippo—that would be in Billy’s pants pocket—but there were indeed two books of half-used matches. He went to the hat and doused it with the lighter fluid until it was soaking. Then he squatted, touched a match, and flicked it into the hat’s upturned bowl. The hat didn’t last long, but he moved upwind until it was nothing but ashes.

The smell was foul.

When he looked up, he saw Billy trudging toward him, wiping at his bloody face with his sleeve. As they tromped through the ashes, making sure there wasn’t a single ember that might spark a wildfire, Dan told him the story they would tell the Colorado State Police when they arrived.

“I’ll have to pay to have that thing repaired, and I bet it costs a bundle. Good thing I’ve got some savings.”

Billy snorted. “Who’s gonna chase you for damages? There’s nothing left of those True Knot folks but their clothes. I looked.”

“Unfortunately,” Dan said, “Roof O’ the World belongs to the great State of Colorado.”

“Ouch,” Billy said. “Hardly seems fair, since you just did Colorado and the rest of the world a favor. Where’s Abra?”

“Back home.”

“Good. And it’s over? Really over?”

Dan nodded.

Billy was staring at the ashes of Rose’s tophat. “Went up damn fast. Almost like a special effect in a movie.”

“I imagine it was very old.” And full of magic, he didn’t add. The black variety.

Dan went to the pickup and sat behind the wheel so he could examine his face in the rearview mirror.

“See anything that shouldn’t be there?” Billy asked. “That’s what my mom always used to say when she caught me moonin over my own reflection.”

“Not a thing,” Dan said. A smile began to break on his face. It was tired but genuine. “Not a thing in the world.”

“Then let’s call the police and tell em about our accident,” Billy said. “Ordinarily I got no use for the Five-O, but right about now I wouldn’t mind some company. Place gives me the willies.” He gave Dan a shrewd look. “Full of ghosts, ain’t it? That’s why they picked it.”

That was why, no doubt about it. But you didn’t need to be Ebenezer Scrooge to know there were good ghostie people as well as bad ones. As they walked down toward the Overlook Lodge, Dan paused to look back at Roof O’ the World. He was not entirely surprised to see a man standing on the platform by the broken rail. He raised one hand, the summit of Pawnee Mountain visible through it, and sketched a flying kiss that Dan remembered from his childhood. He remembered it well. It had been their special end-of-the-day thing.

Bedtime, doc. Sleep tight. Dream up a dragon and tell me about it in the morning.

Dan knew he was going to cry, but not now. This wasn’t the time. He lifted his own hand to his mouth and returned the kiss.

He looked for a moment longer at what remained of his father. Then he headed down to the parking lot with Billy. When they got there, he looked back once more.

Roof O’ the World was empty.