7
Twenty minutes later she was in bed with Mr. Pooh Bear Nightlight, a holdover from earliest childhood, glowing on the dresser. She reached for Dan and found him in an activities room where there were jigsaw puzzles, magazines, a Ping-Pong table, and a big TV on the wall. He was playing cards with a couple of hot spice residents.
(did you talk to Doctor John?)
(??yes we’re going to Iowa day after tomorrow)
This thought was accompanied by a brief picture of an old biplane. Inside were two men wearing old-fashioned flying helmets, scarves, and goggles. It made Abra smile.
(if we bring you)
Picture of a catcher’s mitt. That wasn’t what the baseball boy’s glove really looked like, but Abra knew what Dan was trying to say.
(will you freak out)
(no)
She better not. Holding the dead boy’s glove would be terrible, but she would have to do it.
8
In the common room of Rivington One, Mr. Braddock was staring at Dan with that look of monumental but slightly puzzled irritation which only the very old and borderline senile can bring off successfully. “Are you gonna discard something, Danny, or just sit there starin into the corner until the icecaps melt?”
(??goodnight Abra)
(??goodnight Dan say goodnight to Tony for me)
“Danny?” Mr. Braddock knocked his swollen knuckles on the table. “Danny Torrance, come in, Danny Torrance, over?”
(don’t forget to set your alarm)
“Hoo-hoo, Danny,” Cora Willingham said.
Dan looked at them. “Did I discard, or is it still my turn?”
Mr. Braddock rolled his eyes at Cora; Cora rolled hers right back.
“And my daughters think I’m the one losing my marbles,” she said.
9
Abra had set the alarm on her iPad because tomorrow was not only a schoolday but one of her days to make breakfast—scrambled eggs with mushrooms, peppers, and Jack cheese was the plan. But that wasn’t the alarm Dan had been talking about. She closed her eyes and concentrated, her brow furrowing. One hand crept out from under the covers and began wiping at her lips. What she was doing was tricky, but maybe it would be worth it.
Alarms were all well and good, but if the woman in the hat came looking for her, a trap might be even better.
After five minutes or so, the lines on her forehead smoothed out and her hand fell away from her mouth. She rolled over on her side and pulled the duvet up to her chin. She was visualizing herself riding a white stallion in full warrior garb when she fell asleep. Mr. Pooh Bear Nightlight watched from his place on the dresser as he had since Abra was four, casting a dim radiance on her left cheek. That and her hair were the only parts of her that still showed.
In her dreams, she galloped over long fields under four billion stars.
10
Rose continued her meditations until one thirty that Monday morning. The rest of the True (with the exception of Apron Annie and Big Mo, currently watching over Grampa Flick) were sleeping deeply when she decided she was ready. In one hand she held a picture, printed off her computer, of Anniston, New Hampshire’s not-very-impressive downtown. In the other she held one of the canisters. Although there was nothing left inside but the faintest whiff of steam, she had no doubt it would be enough. She put her fingers on the valve, preparing to loosen it.
We are the True Knot, and we endure: Sabbatha hanti.
We are the chosen ones: Lodsam hanti.
We are the fortunate ones: Cahanna risone hanti.
“Take this and use it well, Rosie-girl,” she said. When she turned the valve, a short sigh of silver mist escaped. She inhaled, fell back on her pillow, and let the canister drop to the carpet with a soft thud. She lifted the picture of Anniston’s Main Street in front of her eyes. Her arm and hand were no longer precisely there, and so the picture seemed to float. Not far from that Main Street, a little girl lived down a lane that was probably called Richland Court. She would be fast asleep, but somewhere in her mind was Rose the Hat. She assumed the little girl didn’t know what Rose the Hat looked like (any more than Rose knew what the girl looked like . . . at least not yet), but she knew what Rose the Hat felt like. Also, she knew what Rose had been looking at in Sam’s yesterday. That was her marker, her way in.
Rose stared at the picture of Anniston with fixed and dreaming eyes, but what she was really looking for was Sam’s meat counter, where EVERY CUT IS A BLUE RIBBON COWBOY CUT. She was looking for herself. And, after a gratifyingly short search, found her. At first just an auditory trace: the sound of supermarket Muzak. Then a shopping cart. Beyond it, all was still dark. That was all right; the rest would come. Rose followed the Muzak, now echoing and distant.
It was dark, it was dark, it was dark, then a little light and a little more. Here was the supermarket aisle, then it became a hallway and she knew she was almost in. Her heartbeat kicked up a notch.
Lying on her bed, she closed her eyes so if the kid realized what was happening—unlikely but not impossible—she would see nothing. Rose took a few seconds to review her primary goals: name, exact location, extent of knowledge, anyone she might have told.
(turn, world??)
She gathered her strength and pushed. This time the sensation of revolving wasn’t a surprise but something she had planned for and over which she had complete control. For a moment she was still in that hallway—the conduit between their two minds—and then she was in a large room where a little girl in pigtails was riding a bike and lilting a nonsense song. It was the little girl’s dream and Rose was watching it. But she had better things to do. The walls of the room weren’t real walls, but file drawers. She could open them at will now that she was inside. The little girl was safely dreaming in Rose’s head, dreaming she was five and riding her first bicycle. That was very fine. Dream on, little princess.
The child rode past her, singing la-la-la and seeing nothing. There were training wheels on her bike, but they flickered on and off. Rose guessed the princess was dreaming of the day when she had finally learned to ride without them. Always a very fine day in a child’s life.
Enjoy your bicycle, dear, while I find out all about you.
Moving with confidence, Rose opened one of the drawers.
The instant she reached inside, an earsplitting alarm began to bray and brilliant white spotlights blazed on all around the room, beating down on her with heat as well as light. For the first time in a great many years, Rose the Hat, once Rose O’Hara from County Antrim in Northern Ireland, was caught completely off-guard. Before she could pull her hand out of the drawer, it slammed shut. The pain was enormous. She screamed and jerked backward, but she was held fast.
Her shadow jumped high on the wall, but not just hers. She turned her head and saw the little girl bearing down on her. Only she wasn’t little anymore. Now she was a young woman wearing a leather jerkin with a dragon on her blooming chest and a blue band to hold back her hair. The bike had become a white stallion. Its eyes, like those of the warrior-woman, were blazing.
The warrior-woman had a lance.
(You came back Dan said you would and you did??)
And then—unbelievable in a rube, even one loaded with big steam—pleasure.
(GOOD)
The child who was no longer a child had been lying in wait for her. She had laid a trap, she meant to kill Rose . . . and considering Rose’s state of mental vulnerability, she probably could.
Summoning every bit of her strength, Rose fought back, not with some comic-book lance, but with a blunt battering ram that had all her years and will behind it.
(GET AWAY FROM ME! GET THE FUCK BACK! NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE YOU’RE JUST A LITTLE GIRL!)
The girl’s grown-up vision of herself—her avatar—kept coming, but she flinched as Rose’s thought hit her, and the lance crashed into the wall of file drawers to Rose’s immediate left instead of into her side, which was where it had been aimed.
The kid (that’s all she is, Rose kept telling herself??) wheeled her horse away and Rose turned to the drawer that had caught her. She braced her free hand above it and pulled with all her might, ignoring the pain. At first the drawer held. Then it gave a little and she was able to pull out the heel of her hand. It was scraped and bleeding.
Something else was happening. There was a fluttering sensation in her head, as if a bird were flying around up there. What new shit was this?
Expecting that goddamned lance to drive into her back at any moment, Rose yanked with all her might. Her hand slipped all the way out and she curled her fingers into a fist just in time. If she’d waited even an instant, the drawer would have cut them off when it slammed shut. Her nails throbbed, and she knew when she had a chance to look at them, they would be plum-colored with trapped blood.
She turned. The girl was gone. The room was empty. But that fluttering sensation continued. If anything, it had intensified. Suddenly the pain in her hand and wrist was the last thing on Rose’s mind. She wasn’t the only one who had ridden the turntable, and it didn’t matter that her eyes were still shut back in the real world, where she lay on her double bed.
The fucking brat was in another room filled with file drawers.
Her room. Her head.
Instead of the burglar, Rose had become the burgled.
(GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT)
The fluttering didn’t stop; it sped up. Rose shoved away her panic, fought for clarity and focus, found some. Just enough to set the turntable in motion again, even though it had become weirdly heavy.
(turn, world??)
As it did, she felt the maddening flutter in her head first diminish and then cease as the little girl was rotated back to wherever she came from.
Except that’s not right, and this is far too serious for you to indulge in the luxury of lying to yourself. You came to her. And walked right into a trap. Why? Because in spite of all you knew, you underestimated.
Rose opened her eyes, sat up, and swung her feet onto the carpet. One of them struck the empty canister and she kicked it away. The Sidewinder t-shirt she had pulled on before lying down was damp; she reeked of sweat. It was a piggy smell, entirely unattractive. She looked unbelievingly at her hand, which was scraped and bruised and swelling. Her fingernails were going from purple to black, and she guessed she might lose at least two of them.
“But I didn’t know,” she said. “There was no way I could.” She hated the whine she heard in her voice. It was the voice of a querulous old woman. “No way at all.”
She had to get out of this goddam camper. It might be the biggest, luxiest one in the world, but right now it felt the size of a coffin. She made her way to the door, holding onto things to keep her balance. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard before she went out. Ten to two. Everything had happened in just twenty minutes. Incredible.
How much did she find out before I got free of her? How much does she know?
No way of telling for sure, but even a little could be dangerous. The brat had to be taken care of, and soon.
Rose stepped out into the pale early moonlight and took half a dozen long, steadying breaths of fresh air. She began to feel a little better, a little more herself, but she couldn’t let go of that fluttering sensation. The feeling of having someone else inside her—a rube, no less—looking at her private things. The pain had been bad, and the surprise of being trapped that way was worse, but the worst thing of all was the humiliation and sense of violation. She had been stolen from.
You are going to pay for that, princess. You just messed in with the wrong bitch.
A shape was moving toward her. Rose had settled on the top step of her RV, but now she stood up, tense, ready for anything. Then the shape got closer and she saw it was Crow. He was dressed in pajama bottoms and slippers.
“Rose, I think you better—” He stopped. “What the hell happened to your hand?”
“Never mind my fucking hand,” she snapped. “What are you doing here at two in the morning? Especially when you knew I was apt to be busy?”
“It’s Grampa Flick,” Crow said. “Apron Annie says he’s dying.”