Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

One of Stephen King’s best and well known books was undoubtably 1977’s The Shining.  A lot of the longevity of its popularity is due to the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film, which stands out as one of the best horror films of all time (although some diehards, including King himself, didn’t like the movie because it was “different”.  Whatever).  So it really isn’t a surprise that King decided to pen a sequel, or rather a follow-up, 36 years later.

I remember watching the movie all those years ago with my mother.  I distinctly remember Mom stating at the end of the film, after Wendy and Danny escaped the hotel, “Well.  THOSE two are going to be scarred for life….”  That’s probably true for any character in a Stephen King book at the end of the story, but in this case, it’s a treat to get to see little Danny Torrence grow up. That’s not to say the experience is pleasant. There are too many demons (literally) in this boy’s past.  So normalcy is not going to come easy.

This book actually has about three acts.  Act one follows Danny and his mom Wendy shortly after they make their escape and are trying to live as best they can down in Florida.  The chef from the (now burned down) Overlook Hotel, Dick Halloran is called in to help Danny deal with some horrible things that only these two can really understand.  Act two jumps to when Danny (now Dan) is in his early twenties, and is already a hopeless alcoholic just like his father.  It seems alcohol is the only thing that can stop the Shine.  So Dan basically drinks his young life away - losing job after job, getting battered and bruised in bar fights, and spending many nights with women that you wouldn’t exactly want to take home to meet the family.

Act three is where our story really starts.  We’re now in the present day, and Dan has his turbulent past mostly under control.  With the help of AA, he stays sober and finds a job working as an orderly at a Hospice.  Dan can now finally use his Shine for good.  He’s able to know when patients are about to die, and spends the last few minutes of their life with them, giving comfort as they move on to the next level of existence.  Here is where the monicker “Doctor Sleep” comes into place.  Ironically, though, this really doesn’t play too heavy of a role in the overall story.

We then meet a young girl named Abra, who lives a few hundred miles away.  Like Dan, she has the Shine as well.  Also, like Dan, the Shine is “strong in her”.  So strong that there are some that want her.  No…they need her.  I’m speaking of the evil entities that are in place in this story.  Their name is the True Knot.  They’re a band of ghosts/vampire like beings.  They’ve actually lived for hundreds (and thousands) of years.  They masquerade themselves by driving around the country in large winnebago caravans, and manage to “fit in” as  tourists from all over the country.  Like vampires that need blood to survive, the True Knot needs “steam” from small children who have the Shine.  They must find these children and kill (torture, really) them and feed off their “steam”.  Since all of these characters have some sort of psychic abilities, everyone kind of “knows” what’s going on.  Abra knows she’s in trouble, and the True Knot KNOWS she knows in trouble, etc. etc.  So Abra “reaches out” to Dan - a man she knows because of the Shine, but has never met.  Dan steps in, and the hunt is on.  He must save Abra from the True Knot that need Abra for her “steam”.

In many ways, you can see the roles of everyone mirroring some of the key characters from The Shining.  Abra is obviously the new Danny, and grown up Danny, in many ways, resembles the Dick Halloran character as he helps young Abra.  The True Knot resembles the ghosts and ghouls from the Overlook Hotel.  Sadly, this is one area where this book falls a bit short of its predecessor.  A bunch of middle-aged tourist looking people simply can’t hold a candle to the empty, scary hallways of the creepy Overlook.  You have to remember, however, that the True Knot needs to blend in with their surroundings, so they can’t exactly run around the country looking like a bunch of Nosferatus.

In fact, this book really isn’t that scary at all.  Contrary to what most people think, though, Stephen King hasn’t written that many scary books.  Strange?  Yes.  Bizarre? Definitely.  So I wasn’t disappointed that this story, unlike The Shining, didn’t force me to sleep with a night light.  In fact, I loved it.  I thought it was very suspenseful, and couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.   The climax of the fates of the main characters was a bit weak, but I kept on turning pages, and anytime I can complete a 530 page book in 3 days, it usually means it has to be good.  

It was nice to “visit” the Overlook again.