"Anyway, no one's going to send for the men in the white coats. I accept you both as level-headed folks, 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'?"
She showed the Rebecca Clausen version of a smile. "Oh, very well. Clean out the room. Move in. Have it wired for cable, put in quadraphonic sound, set up a wetbar. What the hell do I care, I'm only the boss."
"Thanks, Mrs. C."
"Oh, and don't forget the space heater, okay? See if you can't find something from a yard sale with a nice frayed cord. Burn the fucking place down some cold February night. Then they can put up a brick monstrosity to match the abortions on either side of us."
Dan stood up and raised the back of his hand to his forehead in a half-assed British salute. "Whatever you say, boss."
She waved a hand at him. "Get outta here before I change my mind, doc."
8
He did put in a space heater, but the cord wasn't frayed and it was the kind that shut off immediately if it tipped over. There was never going to be any air-conditioning in the third-floor turret room, but a couple of fans from Walmart placed in the open windows provided a nice cross-draft. It got plenty hot just the same on summer days, but Dan was almost never there in the daytime. And summer nights in New Hampshire were usually cool.
Most of the stuff that had been stashed up there was disposable junk, but he kept a big grammar school-style blackboard he found leaning against one wall. It had been hidden for fifty years or more behind an ironmongery of ancient and grievously wounded wheelchairs. The blackboard was useful. On it he listed the hospice's patients and their room numbers, erasing the names of the folks who passed away and adding names as new folks checked in. In the spring of 2004, there were thirty-two names on the board. Ten were in Rivington One and twelve in Rivington Two--these were the ugly brick buildings flanking the Victorian home where the famous Helen Rivington had once lived and written thrilling romance novels under the pulsating name of Jeannette Montparsse. The rest of the patients were housed on the two floors below Dan's cramped but serviceable turret apartment.
Was Mrs. Rivington famous for anything besides writing bad novels? Dan had asked Claudette Albertson not long after starting work at the hospice. They were in the smoking area at the time, practicing their nasty habit. Claudette, a cheerful African American RN with the shoulders of an NFL left tackle, threw back her head and laughed.
"You bet! For leaving this town a shitload of money, honey! And giving away this house, of course. She thought old folks should have a place where they could die with dignity."
And in Rivington House, most of them did. Dan--with Azzie to assist--was now a part of that. He thought he had found his calling. The hospice now felt like home.
9
On the morning of Abra's birthday party, Dan got out of bed and saw that all the names on his blackboard had been erased. Written where they had been, in large and straggling letters, was a single word:
hEll
Dan sat on the edge of the bed in his underwear for a long time, just looking. Then he got up and put one hand on the letters, smudging them a little, hoping for a shine. Even a little twinkle. At last he took his hand away, rubbing chalkdust on his bare thigh.
"Hello yourself," he said . . . and then: "Would your name be Abra, by any chance?"
Nothing. He put on his robe, got his soap and towel, and went down to the staff shower on two. When he came back, he picked up the eraser he'd found to go with the board and began erasing the word. Halfway through, a thought
(daddy says we'll have balloons)
came to him, and he stopped, waiting for more. But no more came, so he finished erasing the board and then began replacing the names and room numbers, working from that Monday's attendance memo. When he came back upstairs at noon, he half expected the board to be erased again, the names and numbers replaced by hEll, but all was as he had left it.
10
Abra's birthday party was in the Stones' backyard, a restful sweep of green grass with apple and dogwood trees that were just coming into blossom. At the foot of the yard was a chainlink fence and a gate secured by a combination padlock. The fence was decidedly unbeautiful, but neither David nor Lucy cared, because beyond it was the Saco River, which wound its way southeast, through Frazier, through North Conway, and across the border into Maine. Rivers and small children did not mix, in the Stones' opinion, especially in the spring, when this one was wide and turbulent with melting snows. Each year the local weekly reported at least one drowning.
Today the kids had enough to occupy them on the lawn. The only organized game they could manage was a brief round of follow-the-leader, but they weren't too young to run around (and sometimes roll around) on the grass, to climb like monkeys on Abra's playset, to crawl through the Fun Tunnels David and a couple of the other dads had set up, and to bat around the balloons now drifting everywhere. These were all yellow (Abra's professed favorite color), and there were at least six dozen, as John Dalton could attest. He had helped Lucy and her grandmother blow them up. For a woman in her eighties, Chetta had an awesome set of lungs.
There were nine kids, counting Abra, and because at least one of every parental set had come, there was plenty of adult supervision. Lawn chairs had been set up on the back deck, and as the party hit cruising speed, John sat in one of these next to Concetta, who was dolled up in designer jeans and her WORLD'S BEST GREAT-GRAMMA sweatshirt. She was working her way through a giant slice of birthday cake. John, who had taken on a few pounds of ballast during the winter, settled for a single scoop of strawberry ice cream.
"I don't know where you put it," he said, nodding at the rapidly disappearing cake on her paper plate. "There's nothing to you. You're a stuffed string."
"Maybe so, caro, but I've got a hollow leg." She surveyed the roistering children and fetched a deep sigh. "I wish my daughter could have lived to see this. I don't have many regrets, but that's one of them."
John decided not to venture out on this conversational limb. Lucy's mother had died in a car accident when Lucy was younger than Abra was now. This he knew from the family history the Stones had filled out jointly.
In any case, Chetta turned the conversation herself. "Do you know what I like about em at this age?"
"Nope." John liked them at all ages . . . at least until they turned fourteen. When they turned fourteen their glands went into hyperdrive, and most of them felt obliged to spend the next five years being boogersnots.
"Look at them, Johnny. It's the kiddie version of that Edward Hicks painting, The Peaceable Kingdom. You've got six white ones--of course you do, it's New Hampshire--but you've also got two black ones and one gorgeous Korean American baby who looks like she should be modeling clothes in the Hanna Andersson catalogue. You know the Sunday school song that goes 'Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight'? That's what we have here. Two hours, and not one of them has raised a fist or given a push in anger."
John--who had seen plenty of toddlers who kicked, pushed, punched, and bit--gave a smile in which cynicism and wistfulness were exactly balanced. "I wouldn't expect anything different. They all go to L'il Chums. It's the smart-set daycare in these parts, and they charge smart-set prices. That means their parents are all at least upper-middle, they're all college grads, and they all practice the gospel of Go Along to Get Along. These kids are your basic domesticated social animals."
John stopped there because she was frowning at him, but he could have gone farther. He could have said that, until the age of seven or thereabouts--the so-called age of reason--most children were emotional echo chambers. If they grew up around people who got along and didn't raise their voices, they did the same. If they were raised by biters and shouters . . . well . . .
Twenty years of treating little ones (not to mention raising two of his own, now away at good Go Along to Get Along prep schools) hadn't destroyed all the romantic notions he'd held when first deciding to specialize in pediatric medicine, but those years had tempered them. Perhaps kids really did come into the world trailing clouds of glory, as Wordsworth had so confidently proclaimed, but they also shit in their pants until they learned better.
11
A silvery run of bells--like those on an ice cream truck--sounded in the afternoon air. The kids turned to see what was up.
Riding onto the lawn from the Stones' driveway was an amiable apparition: a young man on a wildly oversize red tricycle. He was wearing white gloves and a zoot suit with comically wide shoulders. In one lapel was a boutonniere the size of a hothouse orchid. His pants (also oversize) were currently hiked up to his knees as he worked the pedals. The handlebars were hung with bells, which he rang with one finger. The trike rocked from side to side but never quite fell over. On the newcomer's head, beneath a huge brown derby, was a crazy blue wig. David Stone was walking behind him, carrying a large suitcase in one hand and a fold-up table in the other. He looked bemused.
"Hey, kids! Hey, kids!" the man on the trike shouted. "Gather round, gather round, because the show is about to start!" He didn't need to ask them twice; they were already flocking toward the trike, laughing and shouting.
Lucy came over to John and Chetta, sat down, and blew hair out of her eyes with a comical foof of her lower lip. She had a smudge of chocolate frosting on her chin. "Behold the magician. He's a street performer in Frazier and North Conway during the summer season. Dave saw an ad in one of those freebie newspapers, auditioned the guy, and hired him. His name is Reggie Pelletier, but he styles himself The Great Mysterio. Let's see how long he can hold their attention once they've all had a good close look at the fancy trike. I'm thinking three minutes, tops."
John thought she might be wrong about that. The guy's entrance had been perfectly calculated to capture the imaginations of little ones, and his wig was funny rather than scary. His cheerful face was unmarked by greasepaint, and that was also good. Clowns, in John's opinion, were highly overrated. They scared the shit out of kids under six. Kids over that age merely found them boring.
My, you're in a bilious mood today.
Maybe because he'd come ready to observe some sort of freaky-deaky, and nothing had transpired. To him, Abra seemed like a perfectly ordinary little kid. Cheerier than most, maybe, but good cheer seemed to run in the family. Except when Chetta and Dave were sniping at each other, that was.
"Don't underestimate the attention spans of the wee folk." He leaned past Chetta and used his napkin to wipe the smudge of frosting from Lucy's chin. "If he has an act, he'll hold them for fifteen minutes, at least. Maybe twenty."
"If he does," Lucy said skeptically.
It turned out that Reggie Pelletier, aka The Great Mysterio, did have an act, and a good one. While his faithful assistant, The Not-So-Great Dave, set up his table and opened the suitcase, Mysterio asked the birthday girl and her guests to admire his flower. When they drew close, it shot water into their faces: first red, then green, then blue. They screamed with sugar-fueled laughter.
"Now, boys and girls . . . ooh! Ahh! Yike! That tickles!"
He took off his derby and pulled out a white rabbit. The kids gasped. Mysterio passed the bunny to Abra, who stroked it and then passed it on without having to be told. The rabbit didn't seem to mind the attention. Maybe, John thought, it had snarked up a few Valium-laced pellets before the show. The last kid handed it back to Mysterio, who popped it into his hat, passed a hand over it, and then showed them the inside of the derby. Except for the American flag lining, it was empty.
"Where did the bunny go?" little Susie Soong-Bartlett asked.
"Into your dreams, darlin," Mysterio said. "It'll hop there tonight. Now who wants a magic scarf ?"
There were cries of I do, I do from boys and girls alike. Mysterio produced them from his fists and passed them out. This was followed by more tricks in rapid-fire succession. By Dalton's watch, the kids stood around Mysterio in a bug-eyed semicircle
for at least twenty-five minutes. And just as the first signs of restiveness began to appear in the audience, Mysterio wrapped things up. He produced five plates from his suitcase (which, when he showed it, had appeared to be as empty as his hat) and juggled them, singing "Happy Birthday to You" as he did it. All the kids joined in, and Abra seemed almost to levitate with joy.
The plates went back into the suitcase. He showed it to them again so they could see it was empty, then produced half a dozen spoons from it. These he proceeded to hang on his face, finishing with one on the tip of his nose. The birthday girl liked that one; she sat down on the grass, laughing and hugging herself with glee.
"Abba can do that," she said (she was currently fond of referring to herself in the third person--it was what David called her "Rickey Henderson phase"). "Abba can do spoongs."
"Good for you, honey," Mysterio said. He wasn't really paying attention, and John couldn't blame him for that; he had just put on one hell of a kiddie matinee, his face was red and damp with sweat in spite of the cool breeze blowing up from the river, and he still had his big exit to make, this time pedaling the oversize trike uphill.
He bent and patted Abra's head with one white-gloved hand. "Happy birthday to you, and thank all you kids for being such a good aud--"
From inside the house came a large and musical jangling, not unlike the sound of the bells hanging from the Godzilla-trike's handlebars. The kids only glanced in that direction before turning to watch Mysterio pedal away, but Lucy got up to see what had fallen over in the kitchen.
Two minutes later she came back outside. "John," she said. "You better look at this. I think it's what you came to see."
12
John, Lucy, and Concetta stood in the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling and saying nothing. None of them turned when Dave joined them; they were hypnotized. "What--" he began, then saw what. "Holy shit."
To this no one replied. David stared a little longer, trying to get the sense of what he was seeing, then left. A minute or two later he returned, leading his daughter by the hand. Abra was holding a balloon. Around her waist, worn like a sash, was the scarf she'd received from The Great Mysterio.