5
David Stone hesitated, then handed it over. Abra took it in her hands and looked into the pocket. “Jim Thome,” she said, and although Dan would have been willing to bet his savings (after twelve years of steady work and steady sobriety, he actually had some) that she had never encountered the name before, she said it correctly: Toe-me. “He’s in the Six Hundred Club.”
“That’s right,” Dave said. “He—”
“Hush,” Dan said.
They watched her. She raised the glove to her face and sniffed the pocket. (Dan, remembering the bugs, had to restrain a wince.) She said, “Not Barry the Chunk, Barry the Chink. Only he’s not Chinese. They call him that because his eyes slant up at the corners. He’s their . . . their . . . I don’t know . . . wait . . .”
She held the glove to her chest, like a baby. She began to breathe faster. Her mouth dropped open and she moaned. Dave, alarmed, put a hand on her shoulder. Abra shook him off. “No, Daddy, no!” She closed her eyes and hugged the glove. They waited.
At last her eyes opened and she said, “They’re coming for me.”
Dan got up, knelt beside her, and put one hand over both of hers.
(how many is it some or is it all of them)
“Just some. Barry’s with them. That’s why I can see. There are three others. Maybe four. One is a lady with a snake tattoo. They call us rubes. We’re rubes to them.”
(is the woman with the hat)
(no)
“When will they get here?” John asked. “Do you know?”
“Tomorrow. They have to stop first and get . . .” She paused. Her eyes searched the room, not seeing it. One hand slipped out from beneath Dan’s and began to rub her mouth. The other clasped the glove. “They have to . . . I don’t know . . .” Tears began to ooze from the corners of her eyes, not of sadness but of effort. “Is it medicine? Is it . . . wait, wait, let go of me, Dan, I have to . . . you have to let me . . .”
He took his hand away. There was a brisk snap and a blue flick of static electricity. The piano played a discordant run of notes. On an occasional table by the door to the hall, a number of ceramic Hummel figures were jittering and rapping. Abra slipped the glove on her hand. Her eyes flew wide open.
“One is a crow! One is a doctor and that’s lucky for them because Barry is sick! He’s sick!” She stared around at them wildly, then laughed. The sound of it made Dan’s neck hairs stiffen. He thought it was the way lunatics must laugh when their medication is late. It was all he could do not to snatch the glove off her hand.
“He’s got the measles! He’s caught the measles from Grampa Flick and he’ll start to cycle soon! It was that fucking kid! He must never have gotten the shot! We have to tell Rose! We have to—”
That was enough for Dan. He pulled the glove from her hand and threw it across the room. The piano ceased. The Hummels gave one final clatter and grew still, one of them on the verge of tumbling from the table. Dave was staring at his daughter with his mouth open. John had risen to his feet, but seemed incapable of moving any further.
Dan took Abra by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “Abra, snap out of it.”
She stared at him with huge, floating eyes.
(come back Abra it’s okay)
Her shoulders, which had been almost up to her ears, gradually relaxed. Her eyes were seeing him again. She let out a long breath and fell back against her father’s encircling arm. The collar of her t-shirt was dark with sweat.
“Abby?” Dave asked. “Abba-Doo? Are you all right?”
“Yes, but don’t call me that.” She drew in air and let it out in another long sigh. “God, that was intense.” She looked at her father. “I didn’t drop the f-bomb, Daddy, that was one of them. I think it was the crow. He’s the leader of the ones who are coming.”
Dan sat down beside Abra on the couch. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. Now. But I never want to touch that glove again. They’re not like us. They look like people and I think they used to be people, but now they have lizardy thoughts.”
“You said Barry has measles. Do you remember that?”
“Barry, yes. The one they call the Chink. I remember everything. I’m so thirsty.”
“I’ll get you water,” John said.
“No, something with sugar in it. Please.”
“There are Cokes in the fridge,” Dave said. He stroked Abra’s hair, then the side of her face, then the back of her neck. As if to reassure himself that she was still there.
They waited until John came back with a can of Coke. Abra seized it, drank greedily, then belched. “Sorry,” she said, and giggled.
Dan had never been so happy to hear a giggle in his life. “John. Measles are more serious in adults, yes?”
“You bet. It can lead to pneumonia, even blindness, due to corneal scarring.”
“Death?”
“Sure, but it’s rare.”
“It’s different for them,” Abra said, “because I don’t think they usually get sick. Only Barry is. They’re going to stop and get a package. It must be medicine for him. The kind you give in shots.”
“What did you mean about cycling?” Dave asked.
“I don’t know.”
“If Barry’s sick, will that stop them?” John asked. “Will they maybe turn around and go back to wherever they came from?”
“I don’t think so. They might already be sick from Barry, and they know it. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain, that’s what Crow says.” She drank more Coke, holding the can in both hands, then looked around at each of the three men in turn, ending with her father. “They know my street. And they might know my name, after all. They might even have a picture. I’m not sure. Barry’s mind is all messed up. But they think . . . they think if I can’t catch the measles . . .”
“Then your essence might be able to cure them,” Dan said. “Or at least inoculate the others.”
“They don’t call it essence,” Abra said. “They call it steam.”
Dave clapped his hands once, briskly. “That’s it. I’m calling the police. We’ll have these people arrested.”
“You can’t.” Abra spoke in the dull voice of a depressed fifty-year-old woman. Do what you want, that voice said. I’m only telling you.
He had taken his cell out of his pocket, but instead of opening it, he held it. “Why not?”
“They’ll have a good story for why they’re traveling to New Hampshire and lots of good identity things. Also, they’re rich. Really rich, the way banks and oil companies and Walmart are rich. They might go away, but they’ll come back. They always come back for what they want. They kill people who get in their way, and people who try to tell on them, and if they need to buy their way out of trouble, that’s what they do.” She put her Coke down on the coffee table and put her arms around her father. “Please, Daddy, don’t tell anybody. I’d rather go with them than have them hurt Mom or you.”
Dan said, “But right now there are only four or five of them.”
“Yes.”
“Where are the rest? Do you know that now?”
“At a place called the Bluebird Campground. Or maybe it’s Bluebell. They own it. There’s a town nearby. That’s where the supermarket is, the Sam’s. The town is called Sidewinder. Rose is there, and the True. That’s what they call themselves, the . . . Dan? What’s wrong?”
Dan made no reply. For the moment, at least, he was incapable of speech. He was remembering Dick Hallorann’s voice coming from Eleanor Ouellette’s dead mouth. He had asked Dick where the empty devils were, and now the answer made sense.
In your childhood.
“Dan?” That was John. He sounded far away. “You’re as white as a sheet.”
It all made a weird kind of sense. He had known from the first—even before he actually saw it—that the Overlook Hotel was an evil place. It was gone now, burned flat, but who was to say the evil had also been burned away? Certainly not him. As a child, he had been visited by revenants who had escaped.
This campground they own—it stands where the hotel stood. I know it. And sooner or later, I’ll have to go back there. I know that, too. Probably sooner. But first—
“I’m all right,” he said.
“Want a Coke?” Abra asked. “Sugar solves lots of problems, that’s what I think.”
“Later. I have an idea. It’s sketchy, but maybe the four of us working together can turn it into a plan.”