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she could feel her physical hands rising toward her face. If Mo and Short Eddie hadn’t restrained her,
the little girl might have made Rose claw her own eyes out.
For the time being, at least, she had to give up and leave. But before she did, she saw something
through the girl’s eyes that flooded her with relief. It was Crow Daddy, and in one hand he was
holding a needle.
7
Abra used all the psychic force she could muster, more than she had used on the day she had gone
hunting for Brad Trevor, more than she had ever used in her life, and it was still barely enough. Just
when she started to think she wouldn’t be able to get the hat woman out of her head, the world began
to revolve again. She was making it revolve, but it was so hard—like pushing a great stone wheel. The
sky and the faces staring down at her slid away. There was a moment of darkness when she was
(between)
nowhere, and then her own front hall slid back into view. But she was no longer alone. A man was
standing in the kitchen doorway.
No, not a man. A Crow.
“Hello, Abra,” he said, smiling, and leaped at her. Still mentally reeling from her encounter with
Rose, Abra made no attempt to push him away with her mind. She simply turned and ran.
8
In their moments of highest stress, Dan Torrance and Crow Daddy were very much alike, although
neither would ever know it. The same clarity came over Crow’s vision, the same sense that all of this
was happening in beautiful slow motion. He saw the pink rubber bracelet on Abra’s left wrist and had
time to think breast cancer awareness. He saw the girl’s backpack slew to the left as she whirled to her
right and knew it was full of books. He even had time to admire her hair as it flew out behind her in a
bright sheaf.
He caught her at the door as she was trying to turn the thumb lock. When he put his left arm
around her throat and yanked her back, he felt her first efforts—confused, weak—to push him away
with her mind.
Not the whole hypo, it might kill her, she can’t weigh more than a hundred and fifteen pounds max.
Crow injected her just south of the collarbone as she twisted and struggled. He needn’t have
worried about losing control and shooting the whole dose into her, because her left arm came up and
thumped against his right hand, knocking the hypo free. It fell to the floor and rolled. But providence
favors True above rubes, it had always been that way and was now. He got just enough into her. He
felt her little handhold on his mind first slip, then fall away. Her hands did the same. She stared at
him with shocked, floating eyes.
Crow patted her shoulder. “We’re going for a ride, Abra. You’re going to meet exciting new
people.”
Incredibly, she managed a smile. A rather frightening one for a girl so young that with her hair
piled up under a cap, she could still have passed for a boy. “Those monsters you call your friends are
all dead. Theyyy . . .”
The last word was only an unwinding slur as her eyes rolled up and her knees came unhinged. Crow
was tempted to let her drop—it would serve her too right—but restrained the impulse and caught her
under the arms instead. She was valuable property, after all.