Doctor Sleep

A woman named Andrea (Andi) Steiner was eight years old when her father raped her. She killed him with knitting needles years later. Now, at age 32, she loves movies because they can’t hurt you like people can. Her date at a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark asks about her snake tattoo as he puts his hand on her thigh.

Three people sit behind them: two men and a beautiful woman named Rose O’Hara, known as Rose the Hat. Rose is the leader of a group called the True Knot. Rose is with Barry Smith and Grampa Flick. They eagerly watch Andi with the man because they’ve seen this before.

Andi suggests that the man wants to sleep and he immediately obeys. While he is unconscious, she robs him before cutting two Vs into his cheek with a knife. She hopes he will remember being bitten by a rattlesnake. Rose grabs her shoulder and suddenly Andi finds herself in a van with them.

Rose makes Andi an offer she hasn’t made in 20 years. Andi asks if they’ll take her "steam" if she refuses to join them. Rose says no, but they’ll take her power and wipe her memories of this day. Also, if Andi refuses, she’ll never be able to make a man sleep again. However, if she joins them, Rose promises that she’ll stay young. Rose doesn’t tell Andi that some people don’t survive the "Turning" (28), and that steam can be hard to find.

They stop and the members of the True Knot encircle Andi. A man they call Grampa Flick performs a ritual chant, which concludes when Rose releases steam from a canister near Andi’s face. Andi inhales and feels that someone is cutting her. Andi deflates and reinflates as pain courses through her. Rose kisses her, which helps her resist the pain and complete her Turning.

Andi sleeps with Rose that night and has her first enjoyable sexual experience. In the morning, Rose says they won’t have sex again because “[her] man” is returning. Rose’s partner is named Henry Rothman, who Rose calls Crow Daddy. When Andi asks if she’s still human, Rose asks if she cares.

In Wilmington, North Carolina, a hungover Dan Torrance—Danny as an adult—wakes from nightmares with a naked woman named Deenie beside him. His knuckles are scuffed with evidence of a fight at the bar where they met. This is a common pattern for Dan.

He vomits and promises himself to stop drinking. Deenie is of legal age, but she is younger than he thought. The $500 he took to the bar is gone, spent on drinking and drugs. He remembers seeing a man with flies on his face in the bar’s restroom. Dan wants to quit drinking, but alcohol mutes the shining and makes his visions less nightmarish.

Dan searches Deenie’s purse and takes $70 from her wallet, even though the wallet is also filled with food stamps. He turns to see a toddler named Tommy watching him. Tommy calls the cocaine on the coffee table candy and walks towards it as Dan sees bruises on the boy’s upper arms and legs. He imagines Deenie shaking the boy, but the shining shows him that it was actually Randy, Deenie’s brother. Dan considers finding and punishing Randy, before putting the cocaine out of the boy’s reach and leaving with the money.

That evening, Dan drinks whiskey and remembers that the hasn’t paid rent on his room. Tommy appears next to him, and Danny imagines Deenie and her food stamps before passing out until morning. During the next two years, Dan wanders across New England. He helps people when he can, thinks of Tommy often, and promises himself each day that he’s done drinking.