Doctor Sleep: A Novel

ready-steady-go. There was no reason for this to make Dan feel uneasy, but it did. One very good thing: a nondescript Ford pickup was parked half a block down, the old guy behind the wheel sipping a take-out coffee and reading a magazine. Appearing to read a magazine, at least.
    ( Billy? )
    No answer, but he looked up from his magazine for a moment, and that was enough.
    “Okay,” Dan said in a lower voice. “I want to hear exactly what happened.”
    She told him about the trap she had set, and how well it had worked. Dan listened with amazement, admiration . . . and that growing sense of unease. Her confidence in her abilities worried him. It was a kid’s confidence, and the people they were dealing with weren’t kids.
    “I just told you to set an alarm,” he said when she had finished.
    “This was better. I don’t know if I could have gone at her that way if I wasn’t pretending to be Daenerys in the Game of Thrones books, but I think so. Because she killed the baseball boy and lots of others. Also because . . .” For the first time her smile faltered a little. As she was telling her story, Dan had seen what she would look like at eighteen. Now he saw what she had looked like at nine.
    “Because what?”
    “She’s not human. None of them are. Maybe they were once, but not anymore.” She straightened her shoulders and tossed her hair back. “But I’m stronger. She knew it, too.”
    ( I thought she pushed you away )
    She frowned at him, annoyed, wiped at her mouth, then caught her hand doing it and returned it to her lap. Once it was there, the other one clasped it to keep it still. There was something familiar about this gesture, but why wouldn’t there be? He’d seen her do it before. Right now he had bigger things to worry about.
    ( next time I’ll be ready if there is a next time )
    That might be true. But if there was a next time, the woman in the hat would be ready, too.
    ( I only want you to be careful   )
    “I will. For sure.” This, of course, was what all kids said in order to placate the adults in their lives, but it still made Dan feel better. A little, anyway. Besides, there was Billy in his F-150 with the faded red paint.
    Her eyes were dancing again. “I found lots of stuff out. That’s why I needed to see you.”
    “What stuff?”
    “Not where she is, I didn’t get that far, but I did find . . . see, when she was in my head, I was in hers. Like swapsies, you know? It was full of drawers, like being in the world’s biggest library reference room, although maybe I only saw it that way because she did. If she had been looking at computer screens in my head, I might have seen computer screens.”
    “How many of her drawers did you get into?”
    “Three. Maybe four. They call themselves the True Knot. Most of them are old, and they really are like vampires. They look for kids like me. And like you were, I guess. Only they don’t drink blood, they breathe in the stuff that comes out when the special kids die.” She winced in disgust. “The more they hurt them before, the stronger that stuff is. They call it steam.”
    “It’s red, right? Red or reddish-pink?”
    He felt sure of this, but Abra frowned and shook her head. “No, white. A bright white cloud. Nothing red about it. And listen: they can store it! What they don’t use they put it in these thermos bottle thingies. But they never have enough. I saw this show once, about sharks? It said they’re always on the move, because they never have enough to eat. I think the True Knot is like that.” She grimaced. “They’re naughty, all right.”
    White stuff. Not red but white. It still had to be what the old nurse had called the gasp, but a different kind. Because it came from healthy young people instead of old ones dying of almost every disease the flesh was heir to? Because they were what Abra called “the special kids?” Both?
    She was nodding. “Both, probably.”
    “Okay. But the thing that matters most is that they know about you. She knows.”
    “They’re a little scared I might tell someone about them, but not too scared.”
    “Because you’re just a kid, and no one believes kids.”
    “Right.” She blew her bangs off her forehead. “Momo would believe me, but she’s going to die. She’s going to your hot spice, Dan. Hospice, I mean. You’ll help her, won’t you? If you’re not in Iowa?”
    “All I can. Abra—are they coming for you?”
    “Maybe, but if they do it won’t be because of