Doctor Sleep by Stephen King Page A

gasping, the bedclothes puddled around his waist. There was no one else in his bed, but the dream hadn’t yet dissolved, and looking wasn’t enough. He threw back the bedclothes, and that still wasn’t enough. He ran his hands down the bottom sheet, feeling for fugitive warmth, or a dent that might have been made by small hips and buttocks. Nothing. Of course not. So then he looked under the bed and saw only his borrowed boots.
    The wind was blowing less strongly now. The storm wasn’t over, but it was winding down.
    He went to the bathroom, then whirled and looked back, as if expecting to surprise someone. There was just the bed, with the covers now lying on the floor at the foot. He turned on the light over the sink, splashed his face with cold water, and sat down on the closed lid of the commode, taking long breaths, one after the other. He thought about getting up and grabbing a cigarette fromthe pack lying beside his book on the room’s one small table, but his legs felt rubbery and he wasn’t sure they’d hold him. Not yet, anyway. So he sat. He could see the bed and the bed was empty. The whole room was empty. No problem there.
    Only . . . it didn’t feel empty. Not yet. When it did, he supposed he would go back to bed. But not to sleep. For this night, sleep was done.
13
    Seven years before, working as an orderly in a Tulsa hospice, Dan had made friends with an elderly psychiatrist who was suffering from terminal liver cancer. One day, when Emil Kemmer had been reminiscing (not very discreetly) about a few of his more interesting cases, Dan had confessed that ever since childhood, he had suffered from what he called double dreaming. Was Kemmer familiar with the phenomenon? Was there a name for it?
    Kemmer had been a large man in his prime—the old black-and-white wedding photo he kept on his bedside table attested to that—but cancer is the ultimate diet program, and on the day of this conversation, his weight had been approximately the same as his age, which was ninety-one. His mind had still been sharp, however, and now, sitting on the closed toilet and listening to the dying storm outside, Dan remembered the old man’s sly smile.
    â€œUsually,” he had said in his heavy German accent, “I am paid for my diagnoses, Daniel.”
    Dan had grinned. “Guess I’m out of luck, then.”
    â€œPerhaps not.” Kemmer studied Dan. His eyes were bright blue. Although he knew it was outrageously unfair, Dan couldn’t help imagining those eyes under a Waffen-SS coal-scuttle helmet. “There’s a rumor in this deathhouse that you are a kid with a talent for helping people die. Is this true?”
    â€œSometimes,” Dan said cautiously. “Not always.” The truth was almost always.
    â€œWhen the time comes, will you help me?”
    â€œIf I can, of course.”
    â€œGood.” Kemmer sat up, a laboriously painful process, but when Dan moved to help, Kemmer had waved him away. “What you call double dreaming is well known to psychiatrists, and of particular interest to Jungians, who call it false awakening . The first dream is usually a lucid dream, meaning the dreamer knows he is dreaming—”
    â€œYes!” Dan cried. “But the second one—”
    â€œThe dreamer believes he is awake,” Kemmer said. “Jung made much of this, even ascribing precognitive powers to these dreams . . . but of course we know better, don’t we, Dan?”
    â€œOf course,” Dan had agreed.
    â€œThe poet Edgar Allan Poe described the false awakening phenomenon long before Carl Jung was born. He wrote, ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.’ Have I answered your question?”
    â€œI think so. Thanks.”
    â€œYou’re welcome. Now I believe I could drink a little juice. Apple, please.”
14
    Precognitive powers . . . but of course we know