Doctor Sleep: A Novel

and bright you-can-trust-me smile took him in. Only for two seconds, but that was enough. As he reached toward the open glove compartment, he felt a small sting on the side of his neck.
    Bug bit me, he thought, and then slumped sideways, his eyes rolling up to the whites.
    Crow opened the door and shoved the driver across the seat. The old guy’s head bonked the passenger-side window. Crow lifted limp legs over the transmission hump, batting the glove compartment closed to make a little more room, then slid behind the wheel and slammed the door. He took a deep breath and looked around, ready for anything, but there was nothing to be ready for. Richland Court was dozing the afternoon away, and that was lovely.
    The key was in the ignition. Crow started the engine and the radio came on in a yahoo roar of Toby Keith: God bless America and pour the beer. As he reached to turn it off, a terrible white light momentarily washed out his vision. Crow had very little telepathic ability, but he was firmly linked to his tribe; in a way, the members were appendages of a single organism, and one of their number had just died. Cloud Gap hadn’t been just misdirection, it had been a fucking ambush.
    Before he could decide what to do next, the white light came again, and, after a pause, yet again.
    All of them?
    Good Christ, all three ? It wasn’t possible . . . was it?
    He took a deep breath, then another. Forced himself to face the fact that yes, it could be. And if so, he knew who was to blame.
    Fucking steamhead girl.
    He looked at Abra’s house. All quiet there. Thank God for small favors. He had expected to drive the truck up the street and into her driveway, but all at once that seemed like a bad idea, at least for now. He got out, leaned back in, and grabbed the unconscious geezer by his shirt and belt. Crow yanked him back behind the wheel, pausing just long enough to give him a patdown. No gun. Too bad. He wouldn’t have minded having one, at least for awhile.
    He fastened the geezer’s seatbelt so he couldn’t tilt forward and blare the horn. Then he walked down the street to the girl’s house, not hurrying. If he’d seen her face at one of the windows—or so much as a single twitch of a single curtain—he would have broken into a sprint, but nothing moved.
    It was possible he could still make this work, but that consideration had been rendered strictly secondary by those terrible white flashes. What he mostly wanted was to get his hands on the miserable bitch that had caused them so much trouble and shake her until she rattled.
    5
    Abra sleepwalked down the front hall. The Stones had a family room in the basement, but the kitchen was their comfort place, and she headed there without thinking about it. She stood with her hands splayed out on the table where she and her parents had eaten thousands of meals, staring at the window over the kitchen sink with wide blank eyes. She wasn’t really here at all. She was in Cloud Gap, watching bad guys spill out of the Winnebago: the Snake and the Nut and Jimmy Numbers. She knew their names from Barry. But something was wrong. One of them was missing.
    ( WHERE’S THE CROW DAN I DON’T SEE THE CROW! )
    No answer, because Dan and her father and Dr. John were busy. They took the bad guys down, one after the other: the Walnut first—that was her father’s work, and good for him—then Jimmy Numbers, then the Snake. She felt each mortal injury as a thudding deep in her head. Those thuds, like a heavy mallet repeatedly coming down on an oak plank, were terrible in their finality, but not entirely unpleasant. Because . . .
    Because they deserve it, they kill kids, and nothing else would have stopped them. Only—
    ( Dan where’s the Crow? WHERE’S THE CROW??? )
    Now Dan heard her. Thank God. She saw the Winnebago. Dan thought the Crow was in there, and maybe he was right. Still—
    She hurried back down the hall and peered out one of the windows beside the front door. The sidewalk was deserted, but Mr. Freeman’s truck was parked right where it belonged. She couldn’t see his face because of the way the sun was shining on the windshield, but she could see him behind the wheel, and that meant everything was still okay.
    Probably okay.
    ( Abra are you there )
    Dan. It was so great to hear him. She wished he was with her, but having him inside her head was almost as good.
    ( yes )
    She took one more reassuring look at the empty sidewalk and Mr. Freeman’s truck, checked to