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.”