Lucy: “Remember what Dan said. If things go wrong—”
“You should go in now, guys. When it starts, I’m going to take Hoppy and put 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 road with 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 says everyone’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 (perhaps because he had wanted it to be a failure). Mrs. Massey, though . . . and Horace Derwent . . .
There was a third lockbox in storage now, but it wasn’t as good as the ones he’d made as a kid. Because he wasn’t as strong? Because what it held was different from the revenants that had been unwise enough to seek him out? Both? He didn’t know. He only knew that it was leaky. When he opened it, what was inside might kill him. But—
“What do you mean?” Billy asked.
“Huh?” Dan looked around. One hand was pressed to his stomach. It hurt very badly now.
“You just said, ‘There isn’t any choice.’ What did you mean?”
“Never mind.” They had reached the picnic area, and Billy was turning in. Up ahead was a clearing with picnic benches and barbecue pits. To Dan, it looked like Cloud Gap without the river. “Just . . . if things go wrong, get in your truck and drive like hell.”
“You think that would help?”
Dan didn’t reply. His gut was burning, burning.
3
Shortly before four o’clock on that Monday afternoon in late September, Rose walked up to Roof O’ the World with Silent Sarey.
Rose was dressed in form-fitting jeans that accentuated her long and shapely legs. Although it was chilly, Silent Sarey wore only a housedress of unremarkable light blue that fluttered around stout calves clad in Jobst support stockings. Rose stopped to look at a plaque which had been bolted to a granite post at the base of the three dozen or so stairs leading up to the lookout platform. It announced that this was the site of the historic Overlook Hotel, which had burned to the ground some thirty-five years ago.
“Very strong feelings here, Sarey.”
Sarey nodded.