Doctor Sleep: A Novel

think the True has ever tried just holding onto a steamhead. If she’s as strong as you say, it could be dangerous.”
    Tell me something I don’t know. If you’d felt what I did, you’d call me crazy to even think about it. And maybe I am. But . . .
    But she was tired of spending so much of her time—the whole family’s time—scrambling for nourishment. Of living like tenth-century Gypsies when they should have been living like the kings and queens of creation. Which was what they were.
    “Talk to Grampa, if he’s feeling better. And Heavy Mary, she’s been around almost as long as Flick. Snakebite Andi. She’s new, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Anyone else you think might have valuable input.”
    “Jesus, Rosie. I don’t know—”
    “Neither do I, not yet. I’m still reeling. All I’m asking right now is for you to do some spadework. You are the advance man, after all.”
    “Okay . . .”
    “Oh, and make sure you talk to Walnut. Ask him what drugs might keep a rube child nice and docile for a long period of time.”
    “This girl doesn’t sound like much of a rube to me.”
    “Oh, she is. A big old fat rube milk-cow.”
    Not exactly true. A great big white whale, that’s what she is.
    Rose ended the call without waiting to see if Crow Daddy had anything else to say. She was the boss, and as far as she was concerned, the discussion was over.
    She’s a white whale, and I want her.
    But Ahab hadn’t wanted his whale just because Moby would provide tons of blubber and almost endless barrels of oil, and Rose didn’t want the girl because she might—given the right drug cocktails and a lot of powerful psychic soothing—provide a nearly endless supply of steam. It was more personal than that. Turn her? Make her part of the True Knot? Never. The kid had kicked Rose the Hat out of her head as if she were some annoying religious goofball going door-to-door and handing out end-of-the-world tracts. No one had ever given her that kind of bum’s rush before. No matter how powerful she was, she had to be taught a lesson.
    And I’m just the woman for the job .
    Rose the Hat started her truck, pulled out of the supermarket parking lot, and headed for the family-owned Bluebell Campground. It was a really beautiful location, and why not? One of the world’s great resort hotels had once stood there.
    But of course, the Overlook had burned to the ground long ago.
    11
    The Renfrews, Matt and Cassie, were the neighborhood’s party people, and they decided on the spur of the moment to have an Earthquake Barbecue. They invited everyone on Richland Court, and almost everyone came. Matt got a case of soda, a few bottles of cheap wine, and a beer-ball from the Lickety-Split up the street. It was a lot of fun, and David Stone enjoyed himself tremendously. As far as he could tell, Abra did, too. She hung with her friends Julie and Emma, and he made sure that she ate a hamburger and some salad. Lucy had told him they had to be vigilant about their daughter’s eating habits, because she’d reached the age when girls started to be very conscious about their weight and looks—the age at which anorexia or bulimia were apt to show their skinny, starveling faces.
    What he didn’t notice (although Lucy might have, had she been there) was that Abra wasn’t joining in her friends’ apparently nonstop gigglefest. And, after eating a bowl of ice cream (a small bowl), she asked her father if she could go back across the street and finish her homework.
    “Okay,” David said, “but thank Mr. and Mrs. Renfrew first.”
    This Abra would have done without having to be reminded, but she agreed without saying so.
    “You’re very welcome, Abby,” Mrs. Renfrew said. Her eyes were almost preternaturally bright from three glasses of white wine. “Isn’t this cool? We should have earthquakes more often. Although I was talking to Vicky Fenton—you know the Fentons, on Pond Street? That’s just a block over and she said they didn’t feel anything. Isn’t that weird ?”
    “Sure is,” Abra agreed, thinking that when it came to weird, Mrs. Renfrew didn’t know the half of it.
    12
    She finished her homework and was downstairs watching TV with her dad when Mom called. Abra talked to her awhile, then turned the phone over to her father. Lucy said something, and Abra knew what it had been even before Dave glanced at her and said, “Yeah, she’s fine, just blitzed from homework, I think. They give the kids so