Doctor Sleep

and small. They were in the small of her back. They were pushing. The bitchgirl and her friend, working together—just what Rose had wanted to avoid. A worm of terror began to unwind in her stomach. She tried to step back from the rail and could not. It was taking all her strength just to stand pat, and with no supporting force from theTrue to help her, she didn’t think she’d be able to do that for long. Not long at all.
    If not for that gust of air . . . that wasn’t him and she wasn’t here . . .
    One of the hands left the small of her back and slapped the hat from her head. Rose howled at the indignity of it—nobody touched her hat, nobody !—and for a moment summoned enough power to stagger back from the railing and toward thecenter of the platform. Then those hands returned to the small of her back and began pushing her forward again.
    She looked down at them. The man had his eyes closed, concentrating so hard that the cords stood out on his neck and sweat rolled down his cheeks like tears. The girl’s eyes, however,were wide and merciless. She was staring up at Rose. And she was smiling.
    Rose pushed backward withall her strength, but she might have been pushing against a stone wall. One that was moving her relentlessly forward, until her stomach was pressing against the rail. She heard it creak.
    She thought, for just a moment, of trying to bargain. Of telling the girl that they could work together, start a new Knot. That instead of dying in 2070 or 2080, Abra Stone could live a thousand years. Two thousand.But what good would it do?
    Was there ever a teenage girl who felt anything less than immortal?
    So instead of bargaining, or begging, she screamed defiance down at them. “Fuck you! Fuck you both!”
    The girl’s terrible smile widened. “Oh, no,” she said. “ You’re the one who’s fucked.”
    No creak this time; there was a crack like a rifleshot, and then Rose the Hatless was falling.
    9
    She hit theground headfirst and began to cycle at once. Her head was cocked ( like her hat, Dan thought) on her shattered neck at an angle that was almost insouciant. Dan held Abra’s hand—flesh that came and went in his own as she did her own cycling between her back stoop and Roof O’ the World—and they watched together.
    “Does it hurt?” Abra asked the dying woman. “I hope it does. I hope it hurts a lot.”
    Rose’s lips pulled back in a sneer. Her human teeth were gone; all that remained was that single discolored tusk. Above it, her eyes floated like living blue stones. Then she was gone.
    Abra turned to Dan. She was still smiling, but now there was no anger or meanness in it.
    ( I was afraid for you I was afraid she might )
    ( she almost did but there was someone )
    He pointed up to where the brokenpieces of the railing jutted against the sky. Abra looked there, then looked back at Dan, puzzled. He could only shake his head.
    It was her turn to point, not up but down.
    ( once there was a magician who had a hat like that his name was Mysterio )
    ( and you hung spoons on the ceiling )
    She nodded but didn’t raise her head. She was still studying the hat.
    ( you need to get rid of it )
    ( how )
    ( burn it Mr. Freeman says he quit smoking but he still does I could smell it in the truck he’ll have matches )
    “You have to,” she said. “Will you? Do you promise?”
    “Yes.”
    ( I love you Uncle Dan )
    ( love you too )
    She hugged him. He put his arms around her and hugged her back. As he did, her body became rain. Then mist. Then gone.
    10
    On the back stoop of a house in Anniston, New Hampshire, in adusk that would soon deepen to night, a little girl sat up, got to her feet, and then swayed, on the edge of a faint. There was no chance of her falling down; her parents were there at once. They carried her inside together.
    “I’m okay,” Abra said. “You can put me down.”
    They did, carefully. David Stone stood close, ready to catch her at the slightest knee-buckle, but Abra stood steady in thekitchen.
    “What about Dan?” John asked.
    “He’s fine. Mr. Freeman smashed up his truck—he had to—and he got a cut”—she put her hand to the side of his face—“but I think he’s okay.”
    “And them? The True Knot?”
    Abra raised a hand to her mouth and blew across the palm.
    “Gone.” And then: “What is there to eat? I’m really hungry.”
    11
    Fine might have been a bit of an overstatement in Dan’s case. Hewalked to the truck, where he sat in the open