not prone to hysteria or hallucination. I might guess some bizarre form of Munchausen syndrome was at work if it was just one person claiming these . . . these psychic outbreaks . . . but it’s not. It’s all three of you. Which raises the question, what do you want me to do?”
Dave seemed at a loss, but his grandmother-in-law was not. “Observe her, the way you would any child with a disease—”
The color had begun to leave David Stone’s cheeks, but now it rushed back. Slammed back. “Abra is not sick,” he snapped.
She turned to him. “I know that! Cristo! Will you let me finish?”
Dave put on a longsuffering expression and raised his hands. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“Just don’t jump down my throat, David.”
John said, “If you insist on bickering, children, I’ll have to send you to the Quiet Room.”
Concetta sighed. “This is very stressful. For all of us. I’m sorry, Davey, I used the wrong word.”
“No prob, cara. We’re in this together.”
She smiled briefly. “Yes. Yes, we are. Observe her as you’d observe any child with an undiagnosed condition, Dr. Dalton. That’s all we can ask, and I think it’s enough for now. You may have some ideas. I hope so. You see . . .”
She turned to David Stone with an expression of helplessness that John thought was probably rare on that firm face.
“We’re afraid,” Dave said. “Me, Lucy, Chetta—scared to death. Not of her, but for her. Because she’s just little, do you see? What if this power of hers . . . I don’t know what else to call it . . . what if it hasn’t topped out yet? What if it’s still growing? What do we do then? She could . . . I don’t know . . .”
“He does know,” Chetta said. “She could lose her temper and hurt herself or someone else. I don’t know how likely that is, but just thinking it could happen . . .” She touched John’s hand. “It’s awful.”
7
Dan Torrance knew he would be living in the turret room of the Helen Rivington House from the moment he had seen his old friend Tony waving to him from a window that on second look turned out to be boarded shut. He asked Mrs. Clausen, the Rivington’s chief supervisor, about the room six months or so after going to work at the hospice as janitor/orderly . . . and unofficial doctor in residence. Along with his faithful sidekick Azzie, of course.
“That room’s junk from one end to the other,” Mrs. Clausen had said. She was a sixtysomething with implausibly red hair. She was possessed of a sarcastic, often dirty mouth, but she was a smart and compassionate administrator. Even better, from the standpoint of HRH’s board of directors, she was a tremendously effective fund-raiser. Dan wasn’t sure he liked her, but he had come to respect her.
“I’ll clean it out. On my own time. It would be better for me to be right here, don’t you think? On call?”
“Danny, tell me something. How come you’re so good at what you do?”
“I don’t really know.” This was at least half true. Maybe even seventy percent. He had lived with the shining all his life and still didn’t understand it.
“Junk aside, the turret’s hot in the summer and cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey in the winter.”
“That can be rectified,” Dan had said.
“Don’t talk to me about your rectum.” Mrs. Clausen peered sternly at him from above her half-glasses. “If the board knew what I was letting you do, they’d probably have me weaving baskets in that assisted living home down in Nashua. The one with the pink walls and the piped-in Mantovani.” She snorted. “Doctor Sleep, indeed.”
“I’m not the doctor,” Dan said mildly. He knew he was going to get what he wanted. “Azzie’s the doctor. I’m just his assistant.”
“Azreel’s the fucking cat,” she said. “A raggedy-ass stray that wandered in off the street and got adopted by guests who have now all gone to the Great Who Knows. All he cares about is his twice-daily bowl of Friskies.”
To this Dan hadn’t responded. There was no need, because they both knew it wasn’t true.
“I thought you had a perfectly good place on Eliot Street. Pauline Robertson thinks the sun shines out of your asshole. I know because I sing with her in the church choir.”
“What’s your favorite hymn?” Dan asked. “ ‘What a Fucking Friend We Have in Jesus’?”