Doctor Sleep: A Novel

got out of bed and saw that all the names on his blackboard had been erased. Written where they had been, in large and straggling letters, was a single word:
    hEll
    Dan sat on the edge of the bed in his underwear for a long time, just looking. Then he got up and put one hand on the letters, smudging them a little, hoping for a shine. Even a little twinkle. At last he took his hand away, rubbing chalkdust on his bare thigh.
    “Hello yourself,” he said . . . and then: “Would your name be Abra, by any chance?”
    Nothing. He put on his robe, got his soap and towel, and went down to the staff shower on two. When he came back, he picked up the eraser he’d found to go with the board and began erasing the word. Halfway through, a thought
    ( daddy says we’ll have balloons )
    came to him, and he stopped, waiting for more. But no more came, so he finished erasing the board and then began replacing the names and room numbers, working from that Monday’s attendance memo. When he came back upstairs at noon, he half expected the board to be erased again, the names and numbers replaced by hEll , but all was as he had left it.
    10
    Abra’s birthday party was in the Stones’ backyard, a restful sweep of green grass with apple and dogwood trees that were just coming into blossom. At the foot of the yard was a chainlink fence and a gate secured by a combination padlock. The fence was decidedly unbeautiful, but neither David nor Lucy cared, because beyond it was the Saco River, which wound its way southeast, through Frazier, through North Conway, and across the border into Maine. Rivers and small children did not mix, in the Stones’ opinion, especially in the spring, when this one was wide and turbulent with melting snows. Each year the local weekly reported at least one drowning.
    Today the kids had enough to occupy them on the lawn. The only organized game they could manage was a brief round of follow-the-leader, but they weren’t too young to run around (and sometimes roll around) on the grass, to climb like monkeys on Abra’s playset, to crawl through the Fun Tunnels David and a couple of the other dads had set up, and to bat around the balloons now drifting everywhere. These were all yellow (Abra’s professed favorite color), and there were at least six dozen, as John Dalton could attest. He had helped Lucy and her grandmother blow them up. For a woman in her eighties, Chetta had an awesome set of lungs.
    There were nine kids, counting Abra, and because at least one of every parental set had come, there was plenty of adult supervision. Lawn chairs had been set up on the back deck, and as the party hit cruising speed, John sat in one of these next to Concetta, who was dolled up in designer jeans and her WORLD’S BEST GREAT-GRAMMA sweatshirt. She was working her way through a giant slice of birthday cake. John, who had taken on a few pounds of ballast during the winter, settled for a single scoop of strawberry ice cream.
    “I don’t know where you put it,” he said, nodding at the rapidly disappearing cake on her paper plate. “There’s nothing to you. You’re a stuffed string.”
    “Maybe so, caro, but I’ve got a hollow leg.” She surveyed the roistering children and fetched a deep sigh. “I wish my daughter could have lived to see this. I don’t have many regrets, but that’s one of them.”
    John decided not to venture out on this conversational limb. Lucy’s mother had died in a car accident when Lucy was younger than Abra was now. This he knew from the family history the Stones had filled out jointly.
    In any case, Chetta turned the conversation herself. “Do you know what I like about em at this age?”
    “Nope.” John liked them at all ages . . . at least until they turned fourteen. When they turned fourteen their glands went into hyperdrive, and most of them felt obliged to spend the next five years being boogersnots.
    “Look at them, Johnny. It’s the kiddie version of that Edward Hicks painting, The Peaceable Kingdom . You’ve got six white ones—of course you do, it’s New Hampshire—but you’ve also got two black ones and one gorgeous Korean American baby who looks like she should be modeling clothes in the Hanna Andersson catalogue. You know the Sunday school song that goes ‘Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight’? That’s what we have here. Two hours, and not one of them has raised a fist or given a push in anger.”
    John—who had seen plenty of