Doctor Sleep

back: bigred cartoon lips. He could almost feel them on his cheek. Then she was gone.
    Billy was staring at him. “You were just talkin to her, weren’t you?”
    “Indeed I was. Eyes on the road, Billy.”
    “Yeah, yeah. You sound like my ex-wife.”
    Billy put on his blinker, switched to the passing lane, and rolled past a huge and lumbering Fleetwood Pace Arrow motorhome. Dan stared at it, wondering who was insideand if they were looking out the tinted windows.
    “I want to make another hundred or so miles before we quit for the night,” Billy said. “Way I got tomorrow figured, that should give us an hour to do your errand and still put us in the high country about the time you and Abra set for the showdown. But we’ll want to get on the road before daybreak.”
    “Fine. You understand how this will go?”
    “Iget how it’s supposed to go.” Billy glanced at him. “You better hope that if they have binoculars, they don’t use them. Do you think we might come back alive? Tell me the truth. If the answer’s no, I’m gonna order me the biggest steak dinner you ever saw when we stop for the night. MasterCard can chase my relatives for the last credit card bill, and guess what? I ain’t got any relatives. Unlessyou count the ex, and if I was on fire she wouldn’t piss on me to put me out.”
    “We’ll come back,” Dan said, but it sounded pale. He felt too sick to put up much of a front.
    “Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll have that steak dinner, anyway. What about you?”
    “I think I could manage a little soup. As long as it’s clear.” Thethought of eating anything too thick to read a newspaper through—tomato bisque,cream of mushroom—made his stomach cringe.
    “Okay. Why don’t you close your eyes again?”
    Dan knew he couldn’t sleep deeply, no matter how tired and sick he felt—not while Abra was dealing with the ancient horror that looked like a woman—but he managed a doze. It was thin but rich enough to grow more dreams, first of the Overlook (today’s version featured the elevator that ran by itself in themiddle of the night), then of his niece. This time Abra had been strangled with a length of electrical cord. She stared at Dan with bulging, accusing eyes. It was all too easy to read what was in them. You said you’d help me. You said you’d save me. Where were you?
    8
    Abra kept putting off the thing she had to do until she realized her mother would soon be pestering her to go to bed. She wasn’tgoing to school in the morning, but it was still going to be a big day. And, perhaps, a very long night.
    Putting things off only makes them worse, cara mia.
    That was the gospel according to Momo. Abra looked toward her window, wishing she could see her great-grandma there instead of Rose. That would be good.
    “Momes, I’m so scared,” she said. But after two long and steadying breaths, she pickedup her iPhone and dialed the Overlook Lodge at Bluebell Campground. A man answered, and when Abra said she wanted to talk to Rose, he asked who she was.
    “You know who I am,” she said. And—with what she hoped was irritating inquisitiveness: “Are you sick yet, mister?”
    The man on the other end (it was Toady Slim) didn’t answer that, but she heard him murmur to someone. A moment later, Rose wason, her composure once more firmly in place.
    “Hello, dear. Where are you?”
    “On my way,” Abra said.
    “Are you really? That’s nice, dear. So I don’t suppose that I’d find this call came from a New Hampshire area code if I star-sixty-nined it?”
    “Of course you would,” Abra said. “I’m using my cell. You need to get with the twenty-first century, bitch.”
    “What do you want?” The voice on the otherend was now curt.
    “To make sure you know the rules,” Abra said. “I’ll be there at five tomorrow. I’ll be in an old red truck.”
    “Driven by whom?”
    “My uncle Billy,” Abra said.
    “Was he one of the ones from the ambush?”
    “He’s the one who was with me and the Crow. Stop asking questions. Just shut up and listen.”
    “So rude,” Rose said sadly.
    “He’ll park way at the end of the lot, by the sign thatsays KIDS EAT FREE WHEN COLORADO PRO TEAMS WIN.”
    “I see you’ve been on our website. That’s sweet. Or was it your uncle, perhaps? He’s very brave to act as your chauffeur. Is he your father’s brother or your mother’s? Rube families are a hobby of mine. I make family trees.”
    She’ll try to snoop, Dan had told her, and how