Doctor Sleep

Abra watches the river with her parents, and they review what she must do. She insists that once she puts the stuffed rabbit in her lap, that is the signal: They can’t disturb her, no matter what. They watch as she takes the rabbit, and her mind travels away from them.

Dan and Billy scout the campground. Dan thinks about Dick and the lockboxes. He laughs at the thought that he has never been able to lock his drinking away. His stomach burns and he hopes he can finish what he must do.

Rose and Sarey are at the Roof O’ The World at four o’clock. Rose gives her a key to a shed and tells her to hide inside. Sarey goes in and turns on her ability, which is almost like invisibility. When she is still, the shed looks empty. Rose says Abra won’t be able to detect Sarey since she’ll be focused on whoever is in the lodge. If Rose shouts, “Don’t make me punish you” (495), it’s a signal for her to come out with the sickle and fight.

Billy is worried, but Dan says he’ll feel stronger soon. Dan hugs him and walks away. Billy looks at the mannequin they put in his truck. She is dressed similarly to Abra and is what they bought at the kid’s store. He buckles her in with the seatbelt before preparing for his job. Dan sees a woman on the lookout platform. He hears snatches of Rose’s talk with Sarey.

Abra suddenly goes limp and Lucy worries that she isn’t breathing. Dan can feel Abra’s pain. They join together in Dan’s memory where Abra senses something unusual, and she asks what is inside of Dan as a truck pull into the parking lot.

Rose thinks that Abra is unaware of the added power she’ll have with the whole of the True Knot there. Everyone checks in with her, and Rose watches Billy leave the truck. He waves at her and then walks around the parking lot as if he is simply out for a stroll. Rose has a bad feeling.

Abra doesn’t like how Rose watches Billy. Dan thinks that his third lockbox, whose contents are a secret, is what is making him sick. Mrs. Massey’s box is now filled with ash since she has burned away with time. Abra screams as Dan looks in the other box. Abra spasms, then grows calm. In the hotel room, she asks Dan if the monster is gone and mentions its terrible smile. Dan thinks that the thing from the box is glad to be home.

Rose watches the girl in the truck. Billy yells and does a cartwheel in the parking lot. Rose realizes it is to distract her from what is actually a mannequin. The True Knot are all gathered in the lodge. Dan and Abra enter behind them, and Dan opens the third lockbox. Concetta’s red mist leaves through his mouth and forms her shape. The mist covers the True Knot, and they begin to cycle. Dan hears Rose screaming and hopes his cancer is gone.

Rose can feel their pain. Now, only she and Sarey are left. She forcefully thinks the signal that should bring Sarey out of the shed as she sees how to use Abra’s plan against her. She pours her rage into Dan, hoping to use him against Abra.

Dan feels hungover. In a haze, he sees Deenie, who asks him to get more cocaine. She has one tooth, and he realizes that she is actually Rose. Rose says she killed Abra, and she is encouraged when she sees how furious he is: “He stood with his legs apart, his head lowered, his shoulders hunched, and his fists 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” (498).

Dan chokes Rose without realizing that he is actually putting his hands around Abra’s throat. Rose tells him that girls just need to take their medicine, just like his father said. Billy’s truck hits Rose just as Dan shouts that his father knew nothing. Dan realizes what is happening and screams that he is not his father as he understands that Rose is trying to distract them. Billy gets out of the truck and their backs face the shed.

Abra returns to her body long enough to tell Lucy she is okay, then leaves again. Rose yells at Dan not to make her punish him, which is Sarey’s signal. Sarey prepares to leave the shed, but the corpse of Horace Derwent, one of the worst spirits from the Overlook, grabs her wrist. He has confetti on his shoulders. She hits him in the head with the sickle, but he puts his hands around her throat. Horace is who Dan locked in the third box. Combined with Chetta’s mist, it was part of what was making him sick.

On the platform, Rose squeezes Dan’s throat. She feels invisible hands pushing her towards the edge. The hands knock her hat off. Abra smiles as, together, they push Rose off the platform. She falls and cycles when she hits the ground. Laughing, Abra asks if it hurts as Rose disappears. Dan says they have to burn the hat and Abra’s presence fades as she returns to her body.

As Abra tells her parents it is over, Dan rehearses a cover story for the police. He burns the hat as he waits and when he looks in the rearview mirror, there are no flies on his face. In the distance, he sees his father on the platform. Jack blows him a kiss and Dan returns it.

Dan—now known as Doc—celebrates his 15th AA anniversary. Dan and Casey stand to support him. Dan hasn’t been this scared since the final confrontation with Rose. Casey gives him the commemorative medallion and says he was never sure that Dan would be able to stick with the program.

For the first time, Dan tells the group about taking Deenie’s money. He is shocked when they aren’t horrified. Dan realizes that many of them have done worse. They can accept his past without judgment, just as he has done for them. Casey teases him for giving them such an anticlimactic secret.

Abra turns 15 years old. Lucy asks Dan to talk to her about the plates, and he agrees. When Abra joins him by the river, she says she didn’t mean to break the plates, but her parents overreacted about catching them with booze at Jennifer’s party. Abra claims she had only taken one swallow.

Dan tells her about his grandfather, Don Torrance. Don had been a male nurse who used a cane after a car accident. One night, he beat his wife with a cane at dinner. Rather than leaving him, she apologized and stayed with him. Years later, Jack broke Danny’s arm. He also beat Wendy in his worst moments. Dan tells Abra that, years later, he beat someone with a pool cue during a bar fight, a situation that would have been unsurprising to his father.

Abra knows the point he is making, but she doesn’t understand why she wishes she could reverse killing Rose. He asks if it is the killing that she regrets, or the joy she feels over the killing. She isn’t certain and her anger worries them both, particularly when combined with her power. Dan tells her to go to the dump, which is advice that Casey had also given him. Abra can destroy things at the dump while practicing her talent and causing no harm. Dan tells her to monitor the anger, and never to be a doormat.

A woman calls from the hospice to say that someone is asking for Dan. Abra knows he is going to help Carling, even though Dan doesn’t like him. A drunk woman hit Carling while he was walking on the road. He is now the resident in the same room where Charlie Hayes—the man Dan accused Carling of abusing—died. Dan thinks, as he often does, that life is a wheel that always returns to its starting point.

Carling tells Dan, communicating mentally, that he’s scared. Dan sees a series of Carling’s good memories and comforts him. He says his niece will take care of Carling’s dog, Brownie. Carling is grateful. Finally, Dan says he’ll stay with him until he sleeps.