She struggled to her feet, reset her hat at the proper jaunty angle without even thinking about it, and walked to the railing. The man from the pickup truck was staring up at her, but she paid scant attention to him. His treacherous little job was done. She might deal with him later, but now she had eyes only for the Overlook Lodge. The girl was there, but also far away. Her bodily presence at the True's campground was little more than a phantom. The one who was whole--a real person, a rube--was a man she had never seen before. And a steamhead. His voice in her mind was clear and cold.
(hello Rose)
There was a place nearby where the girl would cease to flicker. Where she would take on her physical body. Where she could be killed. Let Sarey take care of the steamhead man, but not until the steamhead man had taken care of the bitchgirl.
(hello Danny hello little boy)
Loaded with steam, she reached into him and swatted him to the hub of the wheel, barely hearing Abra's cry of bewilderment and terror as she turned to follow.
And when Dan was where Rose wanted him, for a moment too surprised to keep his guard up, she poured all her fury into him. She poured it into him like steam.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HUB OF THE WHEEL, ROOF O' THE WORLD
1
Dan Torrance opened his eyes. Sunlight shot through them and into his aching head, threatening to set his brains on fire. It was the hangover to end all hangovers. Loud snoring from beside him: a nasty, annoying sound that could only be some drunk chick sleeping it off at the wrong end of the rainbow. Dan turned his head that way and saw the woman sprawled on her back beside him. Vaguely familiar. Dark hair spread around her in a halo. Wearing an oversize Atlanta Braves t-shirt.
This isn't real. I'm not here. I'm in Colorado, I'm at Roof O' the World, and I have to end it.
The woman rolled over, opened her eyes, and stared at him. "God, my head," she said. "Get me some of that coke, daddy. It's in the living room."
He stared at her in amazement and growing fury. The fury seemed to come from nowhere, but hadn't it always been that way? It was its own thing, a riddle wrapped in an enigma. "Coke? Who bought coke?"
She grinned, revealing a mouth that contained only a single discolored tooth. Then he knew who she was. "You did, daddy. Now go get it. Once my head's clear, I'll throw you a nice fuck."
Somehow he was back in this sleazy Wilmington apartment, naked, next to Rose the Hat.
"What have you done? How did I get here?"
She threw her head back and laughed. "Don't you like this place? You should; I furnished it from your own head. Now do what I told you, asshole. Get the fucking blow."
"Where's Abra? What did you do with Abra?"
"Killed her," Rose said indifferently. "She was so worried about you she dropped her guard and I tore her open from throat to belly. I wasn't able to suck up as much of her steam as I wanted, but I got quite a lo--"
The world went red. Dan clamped his hands around her throat and began to choke. One thought beat through his mind: worthless bitch, now you'll take your medicine, worthless bitch, now you'll take your medicine, worthless bitch, now you'll take it all.
2
The steamhead man was powerful but had nothing like the girl's juice. He stood with his legs apart, his head lowered, his shoulders hunched, and his fisted hands raised--the posture of every man who had ever lost his mind in a killing rage. Anger made men easy.
It was impossible to follow his thoughts, because they had turned red. That was all right, that was fine, the girl was right where Rose wanted her. In Abra's state of shocked dismay, she had followed him to the hub of the wheel. She wouldn't be shocked or dismayed for much longer, though; Bitchgirl had become Choked Girl. Soon she would be Dead Girl, hoisted on her own petard.
(Uncle Dan no no stop it's not her)
It is, Rose thought, bearing down even harder. Her tooth crept out of her mouth and skewered her lower lip. Blood poured down her chin and onto her top. She didn't feel it any more than she felt the mountain breeze blowing through her masses of dark hair. It is me. You were my daddy, my barroom daddy, I made you empty your wallet for a pile of bad coke, and now it's the morning after and I need to take my medicine. It's what you wanted to do when you woke up next to that drunken whore in Wilmington, what you would have done if you'd had any balls, and her useless whelp of a son for good measure. Your father knew how to deal with stupid, disobedient women, and his father before him. Sometimes a woman just needs to take her medicine. She needs--
There was the roar of an approaching motor. It was as unimportant as the pain in her lip and the taste of blood in her mouth. The girl was choking, rattling. Then a thought as loud as a thunderclap exploded in her brain, a wounded roar:
(MY FATHER KNEW NOTHING!)
Rose was still trying to clear her mind of that shout when Billy Freeman's pickup truck hit the base of the lookout, knocking her off her feet. Her hat went flying.
3
It wasn't the apartment in Wilmington. It was his long-gone bedroom at the Overlook Hotel--the hub of the wheel. It wasn't Deenie, the woman he'd awakened next to in that apartment, and it wasn't Rose.
It was Abra. He had his hands around her neck and her eyes were bulging.
For a moment she started to change again as Rose tried to worm back inside him, feeding him her rage and augmenting his own. Then something happened, and she was gone. But she would be back.
Abra was coughing and staring at him. He would have expected shock, but for a girl who had almost been choked to death, she seemed oddly composed.
(well . . . we knew it wouldn't be easy)
"I'm not my father!" Dan shouted at her. "I am not my father!"
"Probably that's good," Abra said. She actually smiled. "You've got one hell of a temper, Uncle Dan. I guess we really are related."
"I almost killed you," Dan said. "It's enough. Time for you to get out. Go back to New Hampshire right now."
She shook her head. "I'll have to--for awhile, not long--but right now you need me."
"Abra, that's an order."
She folded her arms and stood where she was on the cactus carpet.
"Ah, Christ." He ran his hands through his hair. "You're a piece of work."
She reached out, took his hand. "We're going to finish this together. Now come on. Let's get out of this room. I don't think I like it here, after all."
Their fingers interlaced, and the room where he had lived for a time as a child dissolved.
4
Dan had time to register the hood of Billy's pickup folded around one of the thick posts holding up the Roof O' the World lookout tower, its busted radiator steaming. He saw the mannequin version of Abra hanging out the passenger-side window, with one plastic arm cocked jauntily behind her. He saw Billy himself trying to open the crumpled driver's side door. Blood was running down one side of the old man's face.
Something grabbed his head. Powerful hands twisting, attempting to snap his neck. Then Abra's hands were there, tearing Rose's away. She looked up. "You'll have to do better than that, you cowardly old bitch."
Rose stood at the railing, looking down and resetting her ugly hat at the correct angle. "Did you enjoy your uncle's hands around your throat? How do you feel about him now?"
"That was you, not him."
Rose grinned, her bloody mouth yawning. "Not at all, dear. I just made use of what he has inside. You should know, you're just like him."
She's trying to distract us, Dan thought. But from what? That?
It was a small green building--maybe an outside bathroom, maybe a storage shed.
(can you)
He didn't have to finish the thought. Abra turned toward the shed and stared at it. The padlock creaked, snapped, and fell into the grass. The door swung open. The shed was empty except for a few tools and an old lawnmower. Dan thought he'd felt something there, but it must only have been overwrought nerves. When they looked up again, Rose was no longer in view. She had retreated from the railing.
r /> Billy finally managed to get the door of his truck open. He got out, staggered, managed to keep his feet. "Danny? You all right?" And then: "Is that Abra? Jesus, she's hardly there."
"Listen, Billy. Can you walk to the Lodge?"
"I think so. What about the people in there?"
"Gone. I think it would be a very good idea if you went now."
Billy didn't argue. He started down the slope, wallowing like a drunk. Dan pointed at the stairs leading to the lookout platform and raised questioning eyebrows. Abra shook her head
(it's what she wants)
and began leading Dan around Roof O' the World, to where they could see the very top of Rose's stovepipe hat. This put the little equipment shed at their backs, but Dan thought nothing of this now that he had seen it was empty.
(Dan I have to go back now just for a minute I have to refresh my)
A picture in his mind: a field filled with sunflowers, all opening at once. She needed to take care of her physical being, and that was good. That was right.
(go)
(I'll be back as soon as)
(go Abra I'll be fine)
And with any luck, this would be over when she came back.
5
In Anniston, John Dalton and the Stones saw Abra draw a deep breath and open her eyes.
"Abra!" Lucy called. "Is it over?"
"Soon."
"What's that on your neck? Are those bruises?"
"Mom, stay there! I have to go back. Dan needs me."
She reached for Hoppy, but before she could grasp the old stuffed rabbit, her eyes closed and her body grew still.
6
Peering cautiously over the railing, Rose saw Abra disappear. Little bitchgirl could only stay here so long, then she had to go back for some R & R. Her presence at the Bluebell Campground wasn't much different from her presence that day in the supermarket, only this manifestation was much more powerful. And why? Because the man was assisting her. Boosting her. If he were dead when the girl returned--
Looking down at him, Rose called: "I'd leave while you still have the chance, Danny. Don't make me punish you."
7
Silent Sarey was so focused on what was going on at Roof O' the World--listening with every admittedly limited IQ point of her mind as well as with her ears--that she did not at first realize she was no longer alone in the shed. It was the smell that finally alerted her: something rotten. Not garbage. She didn't dare turn, because the door was open and the man out there might see her. She stood still, the sickle in one hand.
Sarey heard Rose telling the man to leave while he still had the chance, and that was when the shed door began swinging shut again, all on its own.
"Don't make me punish you!" Rose called. That was her cue to burst out and put the sickle in the troublesome, meddling little girl's neck, but since the girl was gone, the man would have to do. But before she could move, a cold hand slid over the wrist holding the sickle. Slid over it and clamped tight.
She turned--no reason not to now, with the door closed--and what she saw by the dim light filtering through the cracks in the old boards caused a scream to come bolting out of her usually silent throat. At some point while she had been concentrating, a corpse had joined her in the toolshed. His smiling, predatory face was the damp whitish-green of a spoiled avocado. His eyes seemed almost to dangle from their sockets. His suit was splotched with ancient mold . . . but the multicolored confetti sprinkled on his shoulders was fresh.
"Great party, isn't it?" he said, and as he grinned, his lips split open.
She screamed again and drove the sickle into his left temple. The curved blade went deep and hung there, but there was no blood.
"Give us a kiss, dear," Horace Derwent said. From between his lips came the wiggling white remnant of a tongue. "It's been a long time since I've been with a woman."
As his tattered lips, shining with decay, settled on Sarey's, his hands closed around her throat.
8
Rose saw the shed door swing closed, heard the scream, and understood that she was now truly alone. Soon, probably in seconds, the girl would be back and it would be two against one. She couldn't allow that.
She looked down at the man and summoned all of her steam-amplified force.
(choke yourself do it NOW)
His hands rose toward his throat, but too slowly. He was fighting her, and with a degree of success that was infuriating. She would have expected a battle from the bitchgirl, but that rube down there was an adult. She should have been able to brush aside any steam remaining to him like mist.
Still, she was winning.
His hands went up to his chest . . . his shoulders . . . finally to his throat. There they wavered--she could hear him panting with effort. She bore down, and the hands gripped, shutting off his windpipe.
(that's right you interfering bastard squeeze squeeze and SQUEE)
Something hit her. Not a fist; it felt more like a gust of tightly compressed air. She looked around and saw nothing but a shimmer, there for a moment and then gone. Less than three seconds, but enough to break her concentration, and when she turned back to the railing, the girl had returned.
It wasn't a gust of air this time; it was hands that felt simultaneously large 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 the True 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 the center 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 with all 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 the ground 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 broken pieces 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 a dusk 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 the kitchen.
"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. He walked to the truck, where he sat in the open driver's side door, getting his breath back. And his wits.
We were on vacation, he decided. I wanted to visit my old stomping grounds in Boulder. Then we came up here to take in the view from Roof O' the World, but the campground was deserted. I was feeling frisky and bet Billy I could drive his truck straight up the hill to the lookout. I was going too fast and lost control. Hit one of the support posts. Really sorry. Damn fool stunt.