Doctor Sleep: A Novel

Chunk is someplace close. And I could find him, if I had the baseball boy’s glove.” She looked at him, a steady level glance from those beautiful blue eyes. “I’d know, because for a little while, Barry the Chunk was wearing it. ”
    10
    Halfway back to Frazier, mulling over Abra’s hat woman, Dan remembered something that sent a jolt straight through him. He almost swerved over the double yellow line, and an oncoming truck westbound on Route 16 honked at him irritably.
    Twelve years ago it had been, when Frazier was still new to him and his sobriety had been extremely shaky. He’d been walking back to Mrs. Robertson’s, where he had just that day secured a room. A storm was coming, so Billy Freeman had sent him off with a pair of boots. They don’t look like much, but at least they match . And as he turned the corner from Morehead onto Eliot, he’d seen—
    Just ahead was a rest area. Dan pulled in and walked toward the sound of running water. It was the Saco, of course; it ran through two dozen little New Hampshire towns between North Conway and Crawford Notch, connecting them like beads on a string.
    I saw a hat blowing up the gutter. A battered old tophat like a magician might wear. Or an actor in an old musical comedy. Only it wasn’t really there, because when I closed my eyes and counted to five, it was gone .
    “Okay, it was a shining,” he told the running water. “But that doesn’t necessarily make it the hat Abra saw.”
    Only he couldn’t believe that, because later that night he’d dreamed of Deenie. She had been dead, her face hanging off her skull like dough on a stick. Dead and wearing the blanket Dan had stolen from a bum’s shopping cart. Stay away from the woman in the hat, Honeybear . That was what she’d said. And something else . . . what?
    She’s the Queen Bitch of Castle Hell .
    “You don’t remember that,” he told the running water. “Nobody remembers dreams twelve years later.”
    But he did. And now he remembered the rest of what the dead woman from Wilmington had said: If you mess with her, she’ll eat you alive .
    11
    He let himself into his turret room shortly after six, carrying a tray of food from the caf. He looked first at the blackboard, and smiled at what was printed there:
    Thank you for believing me.
    As if I had any choice, hon.
    He erased Abra’s message, then sat down at his desk with his dinner. After leaving the rest area, his thoughts had turned back to Dick Hallorann. He supposed it was natural enough; when someone finally asked you to teach them, you went to your own teacher to find out how to do it. Dan had fallen out of touch with Dick during the drinking years (mostly out of shame), but he thought it might just be possible to find out what had happened to the old fellow. Possibly even to get in touch, if Dick was still alive. And hey, lots of people lived into their nineties, if they took care of themselves. Abra’s great-gramma, for instance—she had to be really getting up there.
    I need some answers, Dick, and you’re the only person I know who might have a few . So do me a favor, my friend, and still be alive.
    He fired up his computer and opened Firefox. He knew that Dick had spent his winters cooking at a series of Florida resort hotels, but he couldn’t remember the names or even which coast they had been on. Probably both—Naples one year, Palm Beach the next, Sarasota or Key West the year after that. There was always work for a man who could tickle palates, especially rich palates, and Dick had been able to tickle them like nobody’s business. Dan had an idea that his best shot might be the quirky spelling of Dick’s last name—not Halloran but Hallorann. He typed Richard Hallorann and Florida into the search box, then punched ENTER. He got back thousands of hits, but he was pretty sure the one he wanted was third from the top, and a soft sigh of disappointment escaped him. He clicked the link, and an article from The Miami Herald appeared. No question. When the age as well as the name appeared in the headline, you knew exactly what you were looking at.
    Noted South Beach Chef Richard “Dick” Hallorann, 81.
    There was a photo. It was small, but Dan would have recognized that cheerful, knowing face anywhere. Had he died alone? Dan doubted it. The man had been too gregarious . . . and too fond of women. His deathbed had probably been well attended, but the two people he’d saved that winter in Colorado hadn’t been