Doctor Sleep

the motel office. Sometimes she wished she was like that, all white on the inside. But only sometimes. In her deepest heart, she had never regretted what she was.
    When she felt ready—as ready as she could be—Abrawent back into her room and closed the door on her side so she wouldn’t disturb Mr. Freeman if she had to talk loud. She examined the instructions on the phone, pushed 9 to get an outside line, then dialed directory assistance and asked for the number of the Overlook Lodge at the Bluebell Campground, in Sidewinder, Colorado. I could give you the main number, Dan had said, but you’d only get an answering machine .
    In the place where the guests ate meals and played games, the telephone rang for a long time. Dan said it probably would, and that she should just wait it out. It was, after all, two hours earlier there.
    At last a grumpy voice said, “Hello? If you want the office, you called the wrong num—”
    “I don’t want the office,” Abra said. She hoped the rapid heavy beating of her heartwasn’t audible in her voice. “I want Rose. Rose the Hat.”
    A pause. Then: “Who is this?”
    “Abra Stone. You know my name, don’t you? I’m the girl she’s looking for. Tell her I’ll call back in five minutes. If she’s there, we’ll talk. If she’s not, tell her she can go fuck herself. I won’t call back again.”
    Abra hung up, then lowered her head, cupped her burning face in her palms, and took longdeep breaths.
    2
    Rose was drinking coffee behind the wheel of her EarthCruiser, her feet on the secret compartment with the stored canisters of steam inside, when the knock came at her door. A knock this early could only mean more trouble.
    “Yes,” she said. “Come in.”
    It was Long Paul, wearing a robe over childish pajamas with racing cars on them. “The pay phone in the Lodge started ringing.At first I let it go, thought it was a wrong number, and besides, I was making coffee in the kitchen. But it kept on, so I answered. It was that girl. She wanted to talk to you. She said she’d call back in five minutes.”
    Silent Sarey sat up in bed, blinking through her bangs, the covers clutched around her shoulders like a shawl.
    “Go,” Rose told her.
    Sarey did so, without a word. Rose watchedthrough the EarthCruiser’s wide windshield as Sarey trudged barefooted back to the Bounder she had shared with Snake.
    That girl.
    Instead of running and hiding, the bitchgirl was making telephone calls. Talk about brassbound nerve. Her own idea? That was a little hard to believe, wasn’t it?
    “What were you doing up and bustling in the kitchen so early?”
    “I couldn’t sleep.”
    She turned towardhim. Just a tall, elderly fellow with thinning hair and bifocals sitting at the end of his nose. A rube could pass him on the street every day for a year without seeing him, but he wasn’t without certain abilities. Paul didn’t have Snake’s sleeper talent, or the late Grampa Flick’s locator talent, but he was a decent persuader. If he happened to suggest that a rube slap his wife’s face—or a stranger’s,for that matter—that face would be slapped, and briskly. Everyone in the True had their little skills; it was how they got along.
    “Let me see your arms, Paulie.”
    He sighed and brushed the sleeves of his robe and pajamas up to his wrinkly elbows. The red spots were there.
    “When did they break?”
    “Saw the first couple yesterday afternoon.”
    “Fever?”
    “Yuh. Some.”
    She gazed into his honest, trustingeyes and felt like hugging him. Some had run, but Long Paul was still here. So were most of the others. Surely enough to take care of the bitchgirl if she were really foolish enough to show her face. And she might be. What girl of thirteen wasn’t foolish?
    “You’re going to be all right,” she said.
    He sighed again. “Hope so. If not, it’s been a damn good run.”
    “None of that talk. Everyone whosticks is going to be all right. It’s my promise, and I keep my promises. Now let’s see what our little friend from New Hampshire has to say for herself.”
    3
    Less than a minute after Rose settled into a chair next to the big plastic bingo drum (with her cooling mug of coffee beside it), the Lodge’s pay telephone exploded with a twentieth-century clatter that made her jump. She let it ring twicebefore lifting the receiver from the cradle and speaking in her most modulated voice. “Hello, dear. You could have reached out to my mind, you know. It would