Doctor Sleep

reflexive speculations—what wasit 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 ofa 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 anotherplane 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 themorning 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, Waterswas 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 theCrow 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 on an armrest and his feet on the floor.
    “Lucy kept trying to get me to tell her what it was about,” Dave said. “She told me I was scaring her.And of course she thought it was Abra, because she’s got a little of what Abra’s got. I’ve always known it. I told her Abby was staying the night at Emma’s house. Do you know how many times I’ve lied to my wife in the years we’ve been married? I could count them on one hand, and three of them would be about how much I lost in the Thursday night poker games the head of my department runs. Nothing likethis. And in just three hours, I’m going to have to eat it.”
    Of course Dan and John knew what he’d said about Abra, and how upset Lucy had been at her husband’s continued insistence that the matter was too important and complex to go into on the telephone. They had both been in the kitchen when he made the call. But he needed to talk. To share, in AA-speak. John