Doctor Sleep: A Novel

raiding party had come in the Winnebago. If they dropped the Crow off in Anniston, he would have been on foot and in need of a vehicle.
    The garage was open. Dave got out of John’s car before it pulled completely to a stop and ran inside, calling Abra’s name. Then, spotlighted in the headlights of John’s Suburban like an actor on a stage, he lifted something up and uttered a sound somewhere between a groan and a scream. As Dan pulled up next to the Suburban, he saw what it was: Abra’s backpack.
    The urge to drink came on Dan then, even stronger than the night he’d called John from the parking lot of the cowboy-boogie bar, stronger than in all the years since he’d picked up a white chip at his first meeting. The urge to simply reverse down the driveway, ignoring their shouts, and drive back to Frazier. There was a bar there called the Bull Moose. He’d been past it many times, always with the recovered drunk’s reflexive speculations—what was it like inside? What was on draft? What kind of music was on the juke? What whiskey was on the shelf and what kind in the well? Were there any good-looking ladies? And what would that first drink taste like? Would it taste like home? Like finally coming home? He could answer at least some of those questions before Dave Stone called the cops and the cops took him in for questioning in the matter of a certain little girl’s disappearance.
    A time will come, Casey had told him in those early white-knuckle days, when your mental defenses will fail and the only thing left standing between you and a drink will be your Higher Power .
    Dan had no problem with the Higher Power thing, because he had a bit of inside information. God remained an unproven hypothesis, but he knew there really was another plane of existence. Like Abra, Dan had seen the ghostie people. So sure, God was possible. Given his glimpses of the world beyond the world, Dan thought it even likely . . . although what kind of God only sat by while shit like this played out?
    As if you’re the first one to ask that question, he thought.
    Casey Kingsley had told him to get down on his knees twice a day, asking for help in the morning and saying thanks at night. It’s the first three steps : I can’t, God can, I think I’ll let Him. Don’t think too much about it.
    To newcomers reluctant to take this advice, Casey was wont to offer a story about the film director John Waters. In one of his early movies, Pink Flamingos, Waters’s drag-queen star, Divine, had eaten a bit of dog excrement off a suburban lawn. Years later, Waters was still being asked about that glorious moment of cinematic history. Finally he snapped. “It was just a little piece of dogshit,” he told a reporter, “and it made her a star.”
    So get down on your knees and ask for help even if you don’t like it, Casey always finished. After all, it’s just a little piece of dogshit .
    Dan couldn’t very well get on his knees behind the steering wheel of his car, but he assumed the automatic default position of his morning and nightly prayers—eyes closed and one palm pressed against his lips, as if to keep out even a trickle of the seductive poison that had scarred twenty years of his life.
    God, help me not to dri —
    He got that far and the light broke.
    It was what Dave had said on their way to Cloud Gap. It was Abra’s angry smile (Dan wondered if the Crow had seen that smile yet, and what he made of it, if so). Most of all, it was the feel of his own skin, pressing his lips back against his teeth.
    “Oh my God,” he whispered. He got out of the car and his legs gave way. He fell on his knees after all, but got up and ran into the garage, where the two men were standing and looking at Abra’s abandoned pack.
    He grabbed Dave Stone’s shoulder. “Call your wife. Tell her you’re coming to see her.”
    “She’ll want to know what it’s about,” Dave said. It was clear from his quivering mouth and downcast eyes how little he wanted to have that conversation. “She’s staying at Chetta’s apartment. I’ll tell her . . . Christ, I don’t know what I’ll tell her.”
    Dan gripped tighter, increasing the pressure until the lowered eyes came up and met his. “We’re all going to Boston, but John and I have other business to take care of there.”
    “What other business? I don’t understand.”
    Dan did. Not everything, but a lot.
    3
    They took John’s Suburban. Dave rode shotgun. Dan lay in the back with his head