“Then I guess you’d have proof of life after death. In the meantime, don’t buy trouble. And keep your mouths shut, right?”
“Oh, you bet,” Lucy said. She managed a smile, but given the fact she’d nibbled most of her lipstick off, it didn’t look very confident. “The last thing we want is our daughter on the cover of Inside View.”
“Thank God none of the other parents saw that thing with the spoons,” David said.
“Here’s a question,” John said. “Do you think she knows how special she is?”
The Stones exchanged a look.
“I . . . don’t think so,” Lucy said at last. “Although after the spoons . . . we made sort of a big deal about it . . .”
“A big deal in your mind,” John said. “Probably not hers. She cried a little, then went back out with a smile on her face. There was no shouting, scolding, spanking, or shaming. My advice is to let it ride for the time being. When she gets a little older, you can caution her about not doing any of her special tricks at school. Treat her as normal, because mostly she is. Right?”
“Right,” David said. “And it’s not like she’s got spots, or swellings, or a third eye.”
“Oh yes she does,” Lucy said. She was thinking of the caul. “She does so have a third eye. You can’t see it—but it’s there.”
John stood up. “I’ll get all my nephew’s printouts and send them to you, if you’d like that.”
“I would,” David said. “Very much. I think dear old Momo would, too.” He wrinkled his nose a bit at this. Lucy saw it and frowned.
“In the meantime, enjoy your daughter,” John told them. “From everything I’ve seen, she’s a very enjoyable child. You’re going to get through this.”
For awhile, it seemed he was right.
CHAPTER FOUR
PAGING DOCTOR SLEEP
1
It was January of 2007. In the turret room of Rivington House, Dan’s space heater was running full blast, but the room was still cold. A nor’easter, driven by a fifty-mile-an-hour gale, had blown down from the mountains, piling five inches of snow an hour on the sleeping town of Frazier. When the storm finally eased the following afternoon, some of the drifts against the north and east sides of the buildings on Cranmore Avenue would be twelve feet deep.
Dan wasn’t bothered by the cold; nestled beneath two down comforters, he was warm as tea and toast. Yet the wind had found its way inside his head just as it found its way under the sashes and doorsills of the old Victorian he now called home. In his dream, he could hear it moaning around the hotel where he had spent one winter as a little boy. In his dream, he was that little boy.
He’s on the second floor of the Overlook. Mommy is sleeping and Daddy’s in the basement, looking at old papers. He’s doing RESEARCH. The RESEARCH is for the book he’s going to write. Danny isn’t supposed to be up here, and he’s not supposed to have the passkey that’s clutched in one hand, but he hasn’t been able to stay away. Right now he’s staring at a firehose that’s bolted to the wall. It’s folded over and over on itself, and it looks like a snake with a brass head. A sleeping snake. Of course it’s not a snake—that’s canvas he’s looking at, not scales—but it sure does look like a snake.
Sometimes it is a snake.
“Go on,” he whispers to it in this dream. He’s trembling with terror, but something drives him on. And why? Because he’s doing his own RESEARCH, that’s why. “Go on, bite me! You can’t, can you? Because you’re just a stupid HOSE!”
The nozzle of the stupid hose stirs, and all at once, instead of looking at it sideways, Danny is looking into its bore. Or maybe into its mouth. A single clear drop appears below the black hole, elongating. In it he can see his own wide eyes reflected back at him.
A drop of water or a drop of poison?
Is it a snake or a hose?
Who can say, my dear Redrum, Redrum my dear? Who can say?
It buzzes at him, and terror jumps up his throat from his rapidly beating heart. Rattlesnakes buzz like that.
Now the nozzle of the hose-snake rolls away from the stack of canvas it’s lying on and drops to the carpet with a dull thud. It buzzes again and he knows he should step back before it can rush forward and bite him, but he’s frozen he can’t move and it’s buzzing—
“Wake up, Danny!” Tony calls from somewhere. “Wake up, wake up!”
But he can wake up no more than he can move, this is the Overlook, they are snowed in, and things are different now. Hoses become snakes, dead women open their eyes, and his father . . . oh dear God WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE BECAUSE MY FATHER IS GOING CRAZY.
The rattlesnake buzzes. It buzzes. It
2