Doctor Sleep

he hadn’t foreseen, although he should have. She had been drugged, and her body needed to purge itself of toxins. “Can’t you hold it awhile?” He was thinking that a few more miles down the road, he could find a turnout and pull in.Let her go behind a bush. As long as he could see the top of her head, they’d be fine.
    But she shook her head. Of course she did.
    He thought it over. “Okay, listen up. You can use the ladies’ toilet if the door’s unlocked. If it’s not, you’ll have to take your leak around back. There’s no way I’m letting you go inside and ask the counterboy for the key.”
    “And if I have to go in back, you’llwatch me, I suppose. Pervo.”
    “There’ll be a Dumpster or something you can squat behind. It would break my heart not to get a look at your precious little buns, but I’d try to survive. Now get in the truck.”
    “But you said—”
    “Get in, or I’ll start calling you Goldilocks again.”
    She got in, and he pulled the truck up next to the bathroom doors, not quite blocking them. “Now hold out your hand.”
    “Why?”
    “Just do it.”
    Very reluctantly, she held out her hand. He took it. When she saw the needle, she tried to pull back.
    “Don’t worry, just a drop. We can’t have you thinking bad thoughts, now can we? Or broadcasting them. This is going to happen one way or the other, so why make a production of it?”
    She stopped trying to pull away. It was easier just to let it happen. There was a briefsting on the back of her hand, then he released her. “Go on, now. Make wee-wee and make it quick. As the old song says, sand is a-runnin through the hourglass back home.”
    “I don’t know any song like that.”
    “Not surprised. You don’t even know The Merchant of Venice from Romeo and Juliet .”
    “You’re mean.”
    “I don’t have to be,” he said.
    She got out and just stood beside the truck for a moment,taking deep breaths.
    “Abra?”
    She looked at him.
    “Don’t try locking yourself in. You know who’d pay for that, don’t you?” He patted Billy Freeman’s leg.
    She knew.
    Her head, which had begun to clear, was fogging in again. Horrible man—horrible thing —behind that charming grin. And smart. He thought of everything. She tried the bathroom door and it opened. At least she wouldn’t have to whizzout back in the weeds, and that was something. She went inside, shut the door, and took care of her business. Then she simply sat there on the toilet with her swimming head hung down. She thought of being in the bathroom at Emma’s house, when she had foolishly believed everything was going to turn out all right. How long ago that seemed.
    I have to do something .
    But she was doped up, woozy.
    ( Dan )
    She sent this with all the force she could muster . . . which wasn’t much. And how much time would the Crow give her? She feltdespair wash over her, undermining what little will to resist was left. All she wanted to do was button her pants, get into the truck again, and go back to sleep. Yet she tried one more time.
    ( Dan! Dan, please! )
    And waited for a miracle.
    What she got instead wasa single brief tap of the pickup truck’s horn. The message was clear: time’s up .

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    SWAPSIES
    1
    You will remember what was forgotten.
    In the aftermath of the Pyrrhic victory at Cloud Gap, the phrase haunted Dan, like a snatch of irritating and nonsensical music that gets in your head and won’t let go, the kind you find yourself humming even as you stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night. This one was plenty irritating, but not quite nonsensical. Forsome reason he associated it with Tony.
    You will remember what was forgotten .
    There was no question of taking the True Knot’s Winnebago back to their cars, which were parked at Teenytown Station on the Frazier town common. Even if they hadn’t been afraid of being observed getting out of it or leaving forensic evidence inside it, they would have refused without needing to take a vote on the matter.It smelled of more than sickness and death; it smelled of evil. Dan had another reason. He didn’t know if members of the True Knot came back as ghostie people or not, but he didn’t want to find out.
    So they threw the abandoned clothes and the drug paraphernalia into the Saco, where the stuff that didn’t sink would float downstream to Maine, and went back as they had come, in The Helen Rivington .
    David Stone dropped into the conductor’s seat, saw