Doctor Sleep

Abra’s complexion had previously been clear—as unblemished as when she wasan infant—she now had nests of acne around the wings of her nose and an ugly cluster of pimples on her chin. Just hormones kicking in, heralding the onset of true adolescence: so Lucy would have liked to believe, because that was normal. But stress caused acne, too. Then there was the pallor of her daughter’s skin and the dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked almost as ill as Dan did when Lucyhad last seen him, climbing with painful slowness into Mr. Freeman’s pickup truck.
    “Can’t eat now, Mom. No time. I probably couldn’t keep it down, anyway.”
    “How soon before this happens, Abby?” David asked.
    She looked at neither of them. She looked fixedly down at the river, but Lucy knew she wasn’t really looking at that, either. She was far away, in a place where none of them could help her.“Not long. You should each give me a kiss and then go inside.”
    “But—” Lucy began, then saw David shake his head at her. Only once, but very firmly. She sighed, took one of Abra’s hands (how cold it was), and planted a kiss on her left cheek. David put one on her right.
    Lucy: “Remember what Dan said. If things go wrong—”
    “You should go in now, guys. When it starts, I’m going to take Hoppy andput him in my lap. When you see that, you can’t interrupt me. Not for anything . You could get Uncle Dan killed, and maybe Billy, too. I might fall over, like in a faint, but it won’t be a faint, so don’t move me and don’t let Dr. John move me, either. Just let me be until it’s over. I think Dan knows a place where we can be together.”
    David said, “I don’t understand how this can possibly work.That woman, Rose, will see there’s no little girl—”
    “You need to go in now, ” Abra said.
    They did as she said. Lucy looked pleadingly at John; he could only shrug and shake his head. The three of them stood at the kitchen window, arms around one another, looking out at the little girl sitting on the stoop with her arms clasped around her knees. There was no danger to be seen; all was placid.But when Lucy saw Abra—her little girl—reach for Hoppy and take the old stuffed rabbit on her lap, she groaned. John squeezed her shoulder. David tightened the arm around her waist, and she gripped his hand with panicky tightness.
    Please let my daughter be all right. If something has to happen . . . something bad . . . let it happen to the half brother I never knew. Not to her.
    “It’ll be okay,”Dave said.
    She nodded. “Of course it will. Of course it will.”
    They watched the girl on the stoop. Lucy understood that if she did call to Abra, she wouldn’t answer. Abra was gone.
    2
    Billy and Dan reached the turnoff to the True’s Colorado base of operations at twenty to four, Mountain Time, which put them comfortably ahead of schedule. There was a wooden ranch-style arch over the paved roadwith WELCOME TO THE BLUEBELL CAMPGROUND! STAY AWHILE, PARTNER! carved into it. The sign beside the road was a lot less welcoming: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE .
    Billy drove past without slowing, but his eyes were busy. “Don’t see nobody. Not even on the lawns, although I suppose they coulda stashed someone in that welcome-hut doohickey. Jesus, Danny, you look just awful.”
    “Lucky for me the Mr.America competition isn’t until later this year,” Dan said. “One mile up, maybe a little less. The sign says Scenic Turnout and Picnic Area.”
    “What if they posted someone there?”
    “They haven’t.”
    “How can you be sure?”
    “Because neither Abra nor her uncle Billy could possibly know about it, never having been here. And the True doesn’t know about me.”
    “You better hope they don’t.”
    “Abra sayseveryone’s where they’re supposed to be. She’s been checking. Now be quiet a minute, Billy. I need to think.”
    It was Hallorann he wanted to think about. For several years following their haunted winter at the Overlook, Danny Torrance and Dick Hallorann had talked a lot. Sometimes face-to-face, more often mind-to-mind. Danny loved his mother, but there were things she didn’t—couldn’t—understand.About the lockboxes, for instance. The ones where you put the dangerous things that the shining sometimes attracted. Not that the lockbox thing always worked. On several occasions he had tried to make one for the drinking, but that effort had been an abject failure (perhapsbecause he had