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the walkway between Rivington House proper and Rivington Two. The orderly who had once left a set
of fingermarks on poor old Charlie Hayes still worked the night shift, and was as lazy and illtempered
as ever, but he had at least learned to stay clear of Doctor Sleep. That was fine with Dan.
Carling, soon to go on shift, had a grease-spotted McDonald’s bag on his lap and was munching a
Big Mac. The two men locked eyes for a moment. Neither said hello. Dan thought Fred Carling was a
lazy bastard with a sadistic streak and Carling thought Dan was a holier-than-thou meddler, so that
balanced. As long as they stayed out of each other’s way, all would be well and all would be well and
all manner of things would be well.
Dan got the coffees (Billy’s with four sugars), then crossed to the common, which was busy in the
golden early-evening light. Frisbees soared. Mothers and dads pushed toddlers on swings or caught
them as they flew off the slides. A game was in progress on the softball field, kids from the Frazier
YMCA against a team with ANNISTON REC DEPARTMENT on their orange shirts. He spied Billy
in the train station, standing on a stool and polishing the Riv’s chrome. It all looked good. It looked
like home.
If it isn’t, Dan thought, it’s as close as I’m ever going to get. All I need now is a wife named Sally, a kid
named Pete, and a dog named Rover.
He strolled up the Teenytown version of Cranmore Avenue and into the shade of Teenytown
Station. “Hey Billy, I brought you some of that coffee-flavored sugar you like.”
At the sound of his voice, the first person to offer Dan a friendly word in the town of Frazier turned
around. “Why, ain’t you the neighborly one. I was just thinking I could use—oh shitsky, there it
goes.”
The cardboard tray had dropped from Danny’s hands. He felt warmth as hot coffee splattered his
tennis shoes, but it seemed faraway, unimportant.
There were flies crawling on Billy Freeman’s face.
7
Billy didn’t want to go see Casey Kingsley the following morning, didn’t want to take the day off, and
certainly didn’t want to go see no doctor. He kept telling Dan he felt fine, in the pink, absolutely tiptop.
He’d even missed the summer cold that usually hit him in June or July.
Dan, however, had lain sleepless most of the previous night, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
He might have if he’d been convinced it was too late, but he didn’t think it was. He had seen the flies
before, and had learned to gauge their meaning. A swarm of them—enough to obscure the person’s
features behind a veil of nasty, jostling bodies—and you knew there was no hope. A dozen or so meant
something might be done. Only a few, and there was time. There had only been three or four on Billy’s
face.
He never saw any at all on the faces of the terminal patients in the hospice.
Dan remembered visiting his mother nine months before her death, on a day when she had also
claimed to feel fine, in the pink, absolutely tickety-boo. What are you looking at, Danny? Wendy
Torrance had asked. Have I got a smudge? She had swiped comically at the tip of her nose, her fingers
passing right through the hundreds of deathflies that were covering her from chin to hairline, like a
caul.
8
Casey was used to mediating. Fond of irony, he liked to tell people it was why he made that enormous