Wendy? The bewilderment seemed to grow and for a moment she saw his true face, the one he ordinarily kept so well hidden, and it was a face of desperate unhappiness, the face of an animal caught in a snare beyond its ability to decipher and render harmless. Then the muscles began to work, began to writhe under the skin, the mouth began to tremble infirmly, the Adams apple began to rise and fall. Her own bewilderment and surprise were overlaid by shock he was going to cry. She had seen him cry before but never since he stopped drinking  and never in those days unless he was very drunk and pathetically remorseful. He was a tight man, drumtight, and his loss of control frightened her all over again. He came toward her, the tears brimming over his lower lids now, his head shaking involuntarily as if in a fruitless effort to ward off this emotional storm, and his chest drew in a convulsive gasp that was expelled in a huge, racking sob. His feet, clad in Hush Puppies, stumbled over the wreck of the radio and he almost fell into her arms, making her stagger back with his weight. His breath blew into her face and there was no smell of liquor on it. Of course not; there was no liquor up here. Whats wrong? She held him as best she could. Jack, what is it? But he could do nothing at first but sob, clinging to her, almost crushing the wind from her, his head turning on her shoulder in that helpless, shaking, wardingoff gesture. His sobs were heavy and fierce. He was shuddering all over, his muscles jerking beneath his plaid shirt and jeans. Jack? What? Tell me whats wrong! At last the sobs began to change themselves into words, most of them incoherent at first, but coming clearer as his tears began to spend themselves.  dream, I guess it was a dream, but it was so real, I  it was my mother saying that Daddy was going to be on the radio and I  he was  he was telling me to  I dont know, he was yelling at me  and so I broke the radio  to shut him up. To shut him up. Hes dead. I dont even want to dream about him. Hes dead. My God, Wendy, my God. I never had a nightmare like that. I never want to have another one. Christ! It was awful. You just fell asleep in the office? No  not here. Downstairs. He was straightening a little now, his weight coming off her, and the steady backandforth motion of his head first slowed and then stopped. I was looking through those old papers. Sitting on a chair I set up down there. Milk receipts. Dull stuff. And I guess I just drowsed off. Thats when I started to dream. I must have sleepwalked up here. He essayed a shaky little laugh against her neck. Another first. Where is Danny, Jack? I dont know. Isnt he with you? He wasnt  downstairs with you? He looked over his shoulder and his face tightened at what he saw on her face. Never going to let me forget that, are you, Wendy? Jack When Im on my deathbed youll lean over and say, It serves you right, remember the time you broke Dannys arm?  Jack! Jack what? he asked hotly, and jumped to his feet. Are you denying thats what youre thinking? That I hurt him? That I hurt him once before and I could hurt him again? I want to know where he is, thats all! Go ahead, yell your fucking head off, thatll make everything okay, wont it? She turned and walked out the door. He watched her go, frozen for a moment, a blotter covered with fragments of broken glass in one hand. Then he dropped it into the wastebasket, went after her, and caught her by the lobby desk. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. Her face was carefully set. Wendy, Im sorry. It was the dream. Im upset. Forgive? Of course, she said, her face not changing expression. Her wooden shoulders slipped out of his hands. She walked to the middle of the lobby and called Hey, doc! Where are you? Silence came back. She walked toward the double lobby doors, opened one of them, and stepped out onto the path Jack had shoveled. It was more like a trench; the packed and drifted snow through which the path was cut came to her shoulders. She called him again, her breath coming out in a white plume. When she came back in she had begun to look scared. Controlling his irritation with her, he said reasonably Are you sure hes not sleeping in his room? I told you, he was playing somewhere when I was knitting. I could hear him downstairs. Did you fall asleep? Whats that got to do with it? Yes. Danny? Did you look in his room when you came downstairs just now? I She stopped. He nodded. I didnt really think so. He started up the stairs without waiting for her. She followed him, halfrunning, but he was taking the risers two at a time. She almost crashed into his back when he came to a dead stop on the firstfloor landing. He was rooted there, looking up, his eyes wide. What? she began, and followed his gaze. Danny still stood there, his eyes blank, sucking his thumb. The marks on his throat were cruelly visible in the light of the halls electric flambeaux. Danny! she shrieked. It broke Jacks paralysis and they rushed up the stairs together to where he stood. Wendy fell on her knees beside him and swept the boy into her arms. Danny came pliantly enough, but he did not hug her back. It was like hugging a padded stick, and the sweet taste of horror flooded her mouth. He only sucked his thumb and stared with indifferent blankness out into the stairwell beyond both of them. Danny, what happened? Jack asked. He put out his hand to touch the puffy side of Dannys neck. Who did this to y Dont you touch him! Wendy hissed. She clutched Danny in her arms, lifted him, and had retreated halfway down the stairs before Jack could do more than stand up, confused. What? Wendy, what the hell are you t Dont you touch him! Ill kill you if you lay your hands on him again! Wendy You bastard! She turned and ran down the rest of the stairs to the first floor. Dannys head jounced mildly up and down as she ran. His thumb was lodged securely in his mouth. His eyes were soaped windows. She turned right at the foot of the stairs, and Jack heard her feet retreat to the end of it. Their bedroom door slammed. The bolt was run home. The lock turned. Brief silence. Then the soft, muttered sounds of comforting. He stood for an unknown length of time, literally paralyzed by all that had happened in such a short space of time. His dream was still with him, painting everything a slightly unreal shade. It was as if he had taken a very mild mescaline hit. Had he maybe hurt Danny as Wendy thought? Tried to strangle his son at his dead fathers request? No. He would never hurt Danny. (He fell down the stairs, Doctor.) He would never hurt Danny now. (How could I know the bug bomb was defective?) Never in his life had he been willfully vicious when he was sober. (Except when you almost killed George Hatfield.) No! he cried into the darkness. He brought both fists crashing down on his legs, again and again and again. Wendy sat in the overstuffed chair by the window with Danny on her lap, holding him, crooning the old meaningless words, the ones you never remember afterward no matter how a thing turns out. He had folded onto her lap with neither protest nor gladness, like a paper cutout of himself, and his eyes didnt even shift toward the door when Jack cried out No! somewhere in the hallway. The confusion had receded a little bit in her mind, but she now discovered something even worse behind it. Panic. Jack had done this, she had no doubt of it. His denials meant nothing to her. She thought it was perfectly possible that Jack had tried to throttle Danny in his sleep just as he had smashed the CB radio in his sleep. He was having a breakdown of some kind. But what was she going to do about it? She couldnt stay locked in here forever. They would have to eat. There was really only one question, and it was asked in a mental voice of utter coldness and pragmatism, the voice of her maternity, a cold and passionless voice once it was directed away from the closed circle of mother and child and out toward Jack. It was a voice that spoke of selfpreservation only after sonpreservation and its question was (Exactly how dangerous is he?) He had denied doing it. He had been horrified at the bruises, at Dannys soft and implacable disconnection. If he had done it, a separate section of himself had been responsible. The fact that he had done it when he was asleep wasin a terrible, twisted wayencouraging. Wasnt it possible that he could be trusted to get them out of here? To get them down and away. And after that  But she could see no further than she and Danny arriving safe at Dr. Edmondss office in Sidewinder. She had no particular need to see further. The present crisis was more than enough to keep her occupied. She crooned to Danny, rocking him on her breasts. Her fingers, on his shoulder, had noticed that his Tshirt was damp, but they had not bothered reporting the information to her brain in more than a cursory way. If it had been reported, she might have remembered that Jacks hands, as he had hugged her in the office and sobbed against her neck, had been dry. It might have given her pause. But her mind was still on other things. The decision had to be madeto approach Jack or not? Actually it was not much of a decision. There was nothing she could do alone, not even carry Danny down to the office and call for help on the CB radio. He had suffered a great shock. He ought to be taken out quickly before any permanent damage could be done. She refused to let herself believe that permanent damage might already have been done. And still she agonized over it, looking for another alternative. She did not want to put Danny back within Jacks reach. She was aware now that she had made one bad decision when she had gone against her feelings (and Dannys) and allowed the snow to close them in  for Jacks sake. Another bad decision when she had shelved the idea of divorce. Now she was nearly paralyzed by the idea that she might be making another mistake, one she would regret every minute of every day of the rest of her life. There was not a gun in the place. There were knives hanging from the magnetized runners in the kitchen, but Jack was between her and them. In her striving to make the right decision, to find the alternative, the bitter irony of her thoughts did not occur an hour ago she had been asleep, firmly convinced that things were all right and soon would be even better. Now she was considering the possibility of using a butcher knife on her husband if he tried to interfere with her and her son. At last she stood up with Danny in her arms, her legs trembling. There was no other way. She would have to assume that Jack awake was Jack sane, and that he would help her get Danny down to Sidewinder and Dr. Edmonds. And if Jack tried to do anything but help, God help him. She went to the door and unlocked it. Shifting Danny up to her shoulder, she opened it and went out into the hall. Jack? she called nervously, and got no answer. With growing trepidation she walked down to the stairwell, but Jack was not there. And as she stood there on the landing, wondering what to do next, the singing came up from below, rich, angry, bitterly satiric Roll me over In the clohover, Roll me over, lay me down and do it again. She was frightened even more by the sound of him than she had been by his silence, but there was still no alternative. She started down the stairs. CHAPTER TWENTYEIGHT IT WAS HER! Jack had stood on the stairs, listening to the crooning, comforting sounds coming muffled through the locked door, and slowly his confusion had given way to anger. Things had never really changed. Not to Wendy. He could be off the juice for twenty years and still when he came home at night and she embraced him at the door, he would seesense that little flare of her nostrils as she tried to divine scotch or gin fumes riding the outbound train of his exhalation. She was always going to assume the worst; if he and Danny got in a car accident with a drunken blind man who had had a stroke just before the collision, she would silently blame Dannys injuries on him and turn away. Her face as she had snatched Danny awayit rose up before him and he suddenly wanted to wipe the anger that had been on it out with his fist. She had no goddam right! Yes, maybe at first. He had been a lush, he had done terrible things. Breaking Dannys arm had been a terrible thing. But if a man reforms, doesnt he deserve to have his reformation credited sooner or later? And if he doesnt get it, doesnt he deserve the game to go with the name? If a father constantly accuses his virginal daughter of screwing every boy in junior high, must she not at last grow weary (enough) of it to earn her scoldings? And if a wife secretlyand not so secretlycontinues to believe that her teetotaling husband is a drunk  He got up, walked slowly down to the firstfloor landing, and stood there for a moment. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his lips with it, and considered going down and pounding on the bedroom door, demanding to be let in so he could see his son. She had no right to be so goddam highhanded. Well, sooner or later shed have to come out, unless she planned a radical sort of diet for the two of them. A rather ugly grin touched his lips at the thought. Let her come to him. She would in time. He went downstairs to the ground floor, stood aimlessly by the lobby desk for a moment, then turned right. He went into the dining room and stood just inside the door. The empty tables, their white linen cloths neatly cleaned and pressed beneath their clear plastic covers, glimmered up at him. All was deserted now but (Dinner Will Be Served At 8 P.M. Unmasking and Dancing At Midnight) Jack walked among the tables, momentarily forgetting his wife and son upstairs, forgetting the dream, the smashed radio, the bruises. He trailed his fingers over the slick plastic dustcovers, trying to imagine how it must have been on that hot August night in 1945, the war won, the future stretching ahead so various and new, like a land of dreams. The bright and particolored Japanese lanterns hung the whole length of the circular drive, the goldenyellow light spilling from these high windows that were now drifted over with snow. Men and women in costume, here a glittering princess, there a highbooted cavalier, flashing jewelry and flashing wit everywhere, dancing, liquor flowing freely, first wine and then cocktails and then perhaps boilermakers, the level of conversation going up and up and up until the jolly cry rang out from the bandmasters podium, the cry of Unmask! Unmask! (And the Red Death held sway ) He found himself standing on the other side of the dining room, just outside the stylized batwing doors of the Colorado Lounge where, on that night in 1945, all the booze would have been free. (Belly up to the bar, pardner, the drinksre on the house.) He stepped through the batwings and into the deep, folded shadows of the bar. And a strange thing occurred. He had been in here before, once to check the inventory sheet Ullman had left, and he knew the place had been stripped clean. The shelves were totally bare. But now, lit only murkily by the light which filtered through from the dining room (which was itself only dimly lit because of the snow blocking the windows), he thought he saw ranks and ranks of bottles twinkling mutedly behind the bar, and syphons, and even beer dripping from the spigots of all three highly polished taps. Yes, he could even smell beer, that damp and fermented and yeasty odor, no different from the smell that had hung finely misted around his fathers face every night when he came home from work. Eyes widening, he fumbled for the wall switch, and the low, intimate barlighting came on, circles of twentywatt bulbs emplanted on the tops of the three wagonwheel chandeliers overhead. The shelves were all empty. They had not even as yet gathered a good coat of dust. The beer taps were dry, as were the chrome drains beneath them. To his left and right, the velvetupholstered booths stood like men with high backs, each one designed to give a maximum of privacy to the couple inside. Straight ahead, across the redcarpeted floor, forty barstools stood around the horseshoeshaped bar. Each stool was upholstered in leather and embossed with cattle brandsCircle H, Bar D Bar (that was fitting), Rocking W, Lazy B. He approached it, giving his head a little shake of bewilderment as he did so. It was like that day on the playground when  but there was no sense in thinking about that. Still he could have sworn he had seen those bottles, vaguely, it was true, the way you see the darkened shapes of furniture in a room where the curtains have been drawn. Mild glints on glass. The only thing that remained was that smell of beer, and Jack knew that was a smell that faded into the woodwork of every bar in the world after a certain period of time, not to be eradicated by any cleaner invented. Yet the smell here seemed sharp  almost fresh. He sat down on one of the stools and propped his elbows on the bars leathercushioned edge. At his left hand was a bowl for peanutsnow empty, of course. The first bar hed been in for nineteen months and the damned thing was dryjust his luck. All the same, a bitterly powerful wave of nostalgia swept over him, and the physical craving for a drink seemed to work itself up from his belly to his throat to his mouth and nose, shriveling and wrinkling the tissues as it went, making them cry out for something wet and long and cold. He glanced at the shelves again in wild, irrational hope but the shelves were just as empty as before. He grinned in pain and frustration. His fists, clenching slowly, made minute scratchings on the bars leatherpadded edge. Hi, Lloyd, he said. A little slow tonight, isnt it? Lloyd said it was. Lloyd asked him what it would be. Now Im really glad you asked me that, Jack said, really glad. Because I happen to have two twenties and two tens in my wallet and I was afraid theyd be sitting right there until sometime next April. There isnt a SevenEleven around here, would you believe it? And I thought they had SevenElevens on the fucking moon. Lloyd sympathized. So heres what, Jack said. You set me up an even twenty martinis. An even twenty, just like that, kazang. One for every month Ive been on the wagon and one to grow on. You can do that, cant you? You arent too busy? Lloyd said he wasnt busy at all. Good man. You line those martians up right along the bar and Im going to take them down, one by one. White mans burden, Lloyd my man. Lloyd turned to do the job. Jack reached into his pocket for his money clip and came out with an Excedrin bottle instead. His money clip was on the bedroom bureau, and of course his skinnyshanks wife had locked him out of the bedroom. Nice going, Wendy. You bleeding bitch. I seem to be momentarily light, Jack said. Hows my credit in this joint, anyhow? Lloyd said his credit was fine. Thats super. I like you, Lloyd. You were always the best of them. Best damned barkeep between Barre and Portland, Maine. Portland, Oregon, for that matter. Lloyd thanked him for saying so. Jack thumped the cap from his Excedrin bottle, shook two tablets out, and flipped them into his mouth. The familiar acidcompelling taste flooded in. He had a sudden sensation that people were watching him, curiously and with some contempt. The booths behind him were fullthere were graying, distinguished men and beautiful young girls, all of them in costume, watching this sad exercise in the dramatic arts with cold amusement. Jack whirled on his stool. The booths were all empty, stretching away from the lounge door to the left and right, the line on his left cornering to flank the bars horseshoe curve down the short length of the room. Padded leather seats and backs. Gleaming dark Formica tables, an ashtray on each one, a book of matches in each ashtray, the words Colorado Lounge stamped on each in gold leaf above the batwingdoor logo. He turned back, swallowing the rest of the dissolving Excedrin with a grimace. Lloyd, youre a wonder, he said. Set up already. Your speed is only exceeded by the soulful beauty of your Neapolitan eyes. Salud. Jack contemplated the twenty imaginary drinks, the martini glasses blushing droplets of condensation, each with a swizzle poked through a plump green olive. He could almost smell gin on the air. The wagon, he said. Have you ever been acquainted with a gentleman who has hopped up on the wagon? Lloyd allowed as how he had met such men from time to time. Have you ever renewed acquaintances with such a man after he hopped back off? Lloyd could not, in all honesty, recall. You never did, then, Jack said. He curled his hand around the first drink, carried his fist to his mouth, which was open, and turned his fist up. He swallowed and then tossed the imaginary glass over his shoulder. The people were back again, fresh from their costume ball, studying him, laughing behind their hands. He could feel them. If the backbar had featured a mirror instead of those damn stupid empty shelves, he could have seen them. Let them stare. Fuck them. Let anybody stare who wanted to stare. No, you never did, he told Lloyd. Few men ever return from the fabled Wagon, but those who do come with a fearful tale to tell. When you jump on, it seems like the brightest, cleanest Wagon you ever saw, with tenfoot wheels to keep the bed of it high out of the gutter where all the drunks are laying around with their brown bags and their Thunderbird and their Granddad Flashs Popskull Bourbon. Youre away from all the people who throw you nasty looks and tell you to clean up your act or go put it on in another town. From the gutter, thats the finestlookin Wagon you ever saw, Lloyd my boy. All hung with bunting and a brass band in front and three majorettes to each side, twirling their batons and flashing their panties at you. Man, you got to get on that Wagon and away from the juicers that are straining canned heat and smelling their own puke to get high again and poking along the gutter for butts with half an inch left below the filter. He drained two more imaginary drinks and tossed the glasses back over his shoulder. He could almost hear them smashing on the floor. And goddam if he wasnt starting to feel high. It was the Excedrin. So you climb up, he told Lloyd, and aint you glad to be there. My God yes, thats affirmative. That Wagon is the biggest and best float in the whole parade, and everybody is lining the streets and clapping and cheering and waving, all for you. Except for the winos passed out in the gutter. Those guys used to be your friends, but thats all behind you now. He carried his empty fist to his mouth and sluiced down anotherfour down, sixteen to go. Making excellent progress. He swayed a little on the stool. Let em stare, if that was how they got off. Take a picture, folks, itll last longer. Then you start to see things, Lloydymyboy. Things you missed from the gutter. Like how the floor of the Wagon is nothing but straight pine boards, so fresh theyre still bleeding sap, and if you took your shoes off youd be sure to get a splinter. Like how the only furniture in the Wagon is these long benches with high backs and no cushions to sit on, and in fact they are nothing but pews with a songbook every five feet or so. Like how all the people sitting in the pews on the Wagon are these flatchested el birdos in long dresses with a little lace around the collar and their hair pulled back into buns until its so tight you can almost hear it screaming. And every face is flat and pale and shiny, and theyre all singing Shall we gather at the riiiiver, the beautiful, the beautiful, the riiiiiver, and up front theres this reekin bitch with blond hair playing the organ and tellin em to sing louder, sing louder. And somebody slams a songbook into your hands and says, Sing it out, brother. If you expect to stay on this Wagon, you got to sing morning, noon, and night. Especially at night. And thats when you realize what the Wagon really is, Lloyd. Its a church with bars on the windows, a church for women and a prison for you. He stopped. Lloyd was gone. Worse still, he had never been there. The drinks had never been there. Only the people in the booths, the people from the costume party, and he could almost hear their muffled laughter as they held their hands to their mouths and pointed, their eyes sparkling with cruel pinpoints of light. He whirled around again. Leave me (alone?) All the booths were empty. The sound of laughter had died like a stir of autumn leaves. Jack stared at the empty lounge for a tick of time, his eyes wide and dark. A pulse beat noticeably in the center of his forehead. In the very center of him a cold certainty was forming and the certainty was that he was losing his mind. He felt an urge to pick up the bar stool next to him, reverse it, and go through the place like an avenging whirlwind. Instead he whirled back around to the bar and began to bellow Roll me over In the clohover, Roll me over, lay me down and do it again. Dannys face rose before him, not Dannys normal face, lively and alert, the eyes sparkling and open, but the catatonic, zombielike face of a stranger, the eyes dull and opaque, the mouth pursed babyishly around his thumb. What was he doing, sitting here and talking to himself like a sulky teenager when his son was upstairs someplace, acting like something that belonged in a padded room, acting the way Wally Hollis said Vic Stenger had been before the men in the white coats had to come and take him away? (But I never put a hand on him! Goddammit, I didnt!) Jack? The voice was timid, hesitant. He was so startled he almost fell off the stool whirling it around. Wendy was standing just inside the batwing doors, Danny cradled in her arms like some waxen horror show dummy. The three of them made a tableau that Jack felt very strongly it was just before the curtain of Act II in some oldtime temperance play, one so poorly mounted that the prop man had forgotten to stock the shelves of the Den of Iniquity. I never touched him, Jack said thickly. I never have since the night I broke his arm. Not even to spank him. Jack, that doesnt matter now. What matters is This matters! he shouted. He brought one fist crashing down on the bar, hard enough to make the empty peanut dishes jump. It matters, goddammit, it matters! Jack, we have to get him off the mountain. Hes Danny began to stir in her arms. The slack, empty expression on his face had begun to break up like a thick matte of ice over some buried surface. His lips twisted, as if at some weird taste. His eyes widened. His hands came up as if to cover them and then dropped back. Abruptly he stiffened in her arms. His back arched into a bow, making Wendy stagger. And he suddenly began to shriek, mad sounds that escaped his straining throat in bolt after crazy, echoing bolt. The sound seemed to fill the empty downstairs and come back at them like banshees. There might have been a hundred Dannys, all screaming at once. Jack! she cried in terror. Oh God, Jack, whats wrong with him? He came off the stool, numb from the waist down, more frightened than he had ever been in his life. What hole had his son poked through and into? What dark nest? And what had been in there to sting him? Danny! he roared. Danny! Danny saw him. He broke his mothers grip with a sudden, fierce strength that gave her no chance to hold him. She stumbled back against one of the booths and nearly fell into it. Daddy! he screamed, running to Jack, his eyes huge and affrighted. Oh Daddy Daddy, it was her! Her! Her! Oh Daaaaahdeee He slammed into Jacks arms like a blunt arrow, making Jack rock on his feet. Danny clutched at him furiously, at first seeming to pummel him like a fighter, then clutching his belt and sobbing against his shirt. Jack could feel his sons face, hot and working, against his belly. Daddy, it was her. Jack looked slowly up into Wendys face. His eyes were like small silver coins. Wendy? Voice soft, nearly purring. Wendy, what did you do to him? Wendy stared back at him in stunned disbelief, her face pallid. She shook her head. Oh Jack, you must know Outside it had begun to snow again. CHAPTER TWENTYNINE KITCHEN TALK Jack carried Danny into the kitchen. The boy was still sobbing wildly, refusing to look up from Jacks chest. In the kitchen he gave Danny back to Wendy, who still seemed stunned and disbelieving. Jack, I dont know what hes talking about. Please, you must believe that. I do believe it, he said, although he had to admit to himself that it gave him a certain amount of pleasure to see the shoe switched to the other foot with such dazzling, unexpected speed. But his anger at Wendy had been only a passing gut twitch. In his heart he knew Wendy would pour a can of gasoline over herself and strike a match before harming Danny. The large tea kettle was on the back burner, poking along on low heat. Jack dropped a tea bag into his own large ceramic cup and poured hot water halfway. Got cooking sherry, dont you? he asked Wendy. What ? Oh, sure. Two or three bottles of it. Which cupboard? She pointed, and Jack took one of the bottles down. He poured a hefty dollop into the teacup, put the sherry back, and filled the last quarter of the cup with milk. Then he added three tablespoons of sugar and stirred. He brought it to Danny, whose sobs had tapered off to snifflings and hitchings. But he was trembling all over, and his eyes were wide and starey. Want you to drink this, doc, Jack said. Its going to taste frigging awful, but itll make you feel better. Can you drink it for your daddy? Danny nodded that he could and took the cup. He drank a little, grimaced, and looked questioningly at Jack. Jack nodded, and Danny drank again. Wendy felt the familiar twist of jealousy somewhere in her middle, knowing the boy would not have drunk it for her. On the heels of that came an uncomfortable, even startling thought Had she wanted to think Jack was to blame? Was she that jealous? It was the way her mother would have thought, that was the really horrible thing. She could remember a Sunday when her Dad had taken her to the park and she had toppled from the second tier of the jungle gym, cutting both knees. When her father brought her home, her mother had shrieked at him What did you do? Why werent you watching her? What kind of a father are you? (She hounded him to his grave; by the time he divorced her it was too late.) She had never even given Jack the benefit of the doubt. Not the smallest. Wendy felt her face burn yet knew with a kind of helpless finality that if the whole thing were to be played over again, she would do and think the same way. She carried part of her mother with her always, for good or bad. Jack she began, not sure if she meant to apologize or justify. Either, she knew, would be useless. Not now, he said. It took Danny fifteen minutes to drink half of the big cups contents, and by that time he had calmed visibly. The shakes were almost gone. Jack put his hands solemnly on his sons shoulders. Danny, do you think you can tell us exactly what happened to you? Its very important. Danny looked from Jack to Wendy, then back again. In the silent pause, their setting and situation made themselves known the whoop of the wind outside, driving fresh snow down from the northwest; the creaking and groaning of the old hotel as it settled into another storm. The fact of their disconnect came to Wendy with unexpected force as it sometimes did, like a blow under the heart. I want  to tell you everything, Danny said. I wish I had before. He picked up the cup and held it, as if comforted by the warmth. Why didnt you, son? Jack brushed Dannys sweaty, tumbled hair back gently from his brow. Because Uncle Al got you the job. And I couldnt figure out how it was good for you here and bad for you here at the same time.


It was  He looked at them for help. He did not have the necessary word. A dilemma? Wendy asked gently. When neither choice seems any good? Yes, that. He nodded, relieved. Wendy said The day that you trimmed the hedges, Danny and I had a talk in the truck. The day the first real snow came. Remember? Jack nodded. The day he had trimmed the hedges was very clear in his mind. Wendy sighed. I guess we didnt talk enough. Did we, doc? Danny, the picture of woe, shook his head. Exactly what did you talk about? Jack asked. Im not sure how much I like my wife and son discussing how much they love you? Whatever it was, I dont understand it. I feel like I came into a movie just after the intermission. We were discussing you, Wendy said quietly. And maybe we didnt say it all in words, but we both knew. Me because Im your wife and Danny because he  just understands things. Jack was silent. Danny said it just right. The place seemed good for you. You were away from all the pressures that made you so unhappy at Stovington. You were your own boss, working with your hands so you could save your brainall of your brainfor your evenings writing. Then  I dont know just when  the place began to seem bad for you. Spending all that time down in the cellar, sifting through those old papers, all that old history. Talking in your sleep In my sleep? Jack asked. His face wore a cautious, startled expression. I talk in my sleep? Most of it is slurry. Once I got up to use the bathroom and you were saying, To hell with it, bring in the slots at least, no one will know, no one will ever know. Another time you woke me right up, practically yelling, Unmask, unmask, unmask.  Jesus Christ, he said, and rubbed a hand over his face. He looked ill. All your old drinking habits, too. Chewing Excedrin. Wiping your mouth all the time. Cranky in the morning. And you havent been able to finish the play yet, have you? No. Not yet, but its only a matter of time. Ive been thinking about something else  a new project This hotel. The project Al Shockley called you about. The one he wanted you to drop. How do you know about that? Jack barked. Were you listening in? You No, she said. I couldnt have listened in if Id wanted to, and youd know that if you were thinking straight. Danny and I were downstairs that night. The switchboard is shut down. Our phone upstairs was the only one in the hotel that was working, because its patched directly into the outside line. You told me so yourself. Then how could you know what Al told me? Danny told me. Danny knew. The same way he sometimes knows when things are misplaced, or when people are thinking about divorce. The doctor said She shook her head impatiently. The doctor was full of shit and we both know it. Weve known it all the time. Remember when Danny said he wanted to see the fire trucks? That was no hunch. He was just a baby. He knows things. And now Im afraid  She looked at the bruises on Dannys neck. Did you really know Uncle Al had called me, Danny? Danny nodded. He was really mad, Daddy. Because you called Mr. Ullman and Mr. Ullman called him. Uncle Al didnt want you to write anything about the hotel. Jesus, Jack said again. The bruises, Danny. Who tried to strangle you? Dannys face went dark. Her, he said. The woman in that room. In 217. The dead lady. His lips began to tremble again, and he seized the teacup and drank. Jack and Wendy exchanged a scared look over his bowed head. Do you know anything about this? he asked her. She shook her head. Not about this, no. Danny? He raised the boys frightened face. Try, son. Were right here. I knew it was bad here, Danny said in a low voice. Ever since we were in Boulder. Because Tony gave me dreams about it. What dreams? I cant remember everything. He showed me the Overlook at night, with a skull and crossbones on the front. And there was pounding. Something  I dont remember what  chasing after me. A monster. Tony showed me about redrum. Whats that, doc? Wendy asked. He shook his head. I dont know. Rum, like youhoho and a bottle of rum? Jack asked. Danny shook his head again. I dont know. Then we got here, and Mr. Hallorann talked to me in his car. Because he has the shine, too. Shine? Its  Danny made a sweeping, allencompassing gesture with his hands. Its being able to understand things. To know things. Sometimes you see things. Like me knowing Uncle Al called. And Mr. Hallorann knowing you call me doc. Mr. Hallorann, he was peeling potatoes in the Army when he knew his brother got killed in a train crash. And when he called home it was true. Holy God, Jack whispered. Youre not making this up, are you, Dan? Danny shook his head violently. No, I swear to God. Then, with a touch of pride, he added Mr. Hallorann said I had the best shine of anyone he ever met. We could talk back and forth to each other without hardly opening our mouths. His parents looked at each other again, frankly stunned. Mr. Hallorann got me alone because he was worried, Danny went on. He said this was a bad place for people who shine. He said hed seen things. I saw something, too. Right after I talked to him. When Mr. Ullman was taking us around. What was it? Jack asked. In the Presidential Sweet. On the wall by the door going into the bedroom. A whole lot of blood and some other stuff. Gushy stuff. I think  that the gushy stuff must have been brains. Oh my God, Jack said. Wendy was now very pale, her lips nearly gray. This place, Jack said. Some pretty bad types owned it a while back. Organization people from Las Vegas. Crooks? Danny asked. Yeah, crooks. He looked at Wendy. In 1966 a bigtime hood named Vito Gienelli got killed up there, along with his two bodyguards. There was a picture in the newspaper. Danny just described the picture. Mr. Hallorann said he saw some other stuff, Danny told them. Once about the playground. And once it was something bad in that room. 217. A maid saw it and lost her job because she talked about it. So Mr. Hallorann went up and he saw it too. But he didnt talk about it because he didnt want to lose his job. Except he told me never to go in there. But I did. Because I believed him when he said the things you saw here couldnt hurt you. This last was nearly whispered in a low, husky voice, and Danny touched the puffed circle of bruises on his neck. What about the playground? Jack asked in a strange, casual voice. I dont know. The playground, he said. And the hedge animals. Jack jumped a little, and Wendy looked at him curiously. Have you seen anything down there, Jack? No, he said. Nothing. Danny was looking at him. Nothing, he said again, more calmly. And that was true. He had been the victim of an hallucination. And that was all. Danny, we have to hear about the woman, Wendy said gently. So Danny told them, but his words came in cyclic bursts, sometimes almost verging on incomprehensible garble in his hurry to spit it out and be free of it. He pushed tighter and tighter against his mothers breasts as he talked. I went in, he said. I stole the passkey and went in. It was like I couldnt help myself. I had to know. And she  the lady  was in the tub. She was dead. All swelled up. She was nuhnuh  didnt have no clothes on. He looked miserably at his mother. And she started to get up and she wanted me. I know she did because I could feel it. She wasnt even thinking, not the way you and Daddy think. It was black  it was hurtthink  like  like the wasps that night in my room! Only wanting to hurt. Like the wasps. He swallowed and there was silence for a moment, all quiet while the image of the wasps sank into them. So I ran, Danny said. I ran but the door was closed. I left it open but it was closed. I didnt think about just opening it again and running out. I was scared. So I just  I leaned against the door and closed my eyes and thought of how Mr. Hallorann said the things here were just like pictures in a book and if I  kept saying to myself  youre not there, go away, youre not there  she would go away. But it didnt work. His voice began to rise hysterically. She grabbed me  turned me around  I could see her eyes  how her eyes were  and she started to choke me  I could smell her  I could smell how dead she was  Stop now, shhh, Wendy said, alarmed. Stop, Danny. Its all right. It She was getting ready to go into her croon again. The Wendy Torrance AllPurpose Croon. Pat. Pending. Let him finish, Jack said curtly. There isnt any more, Danny said. I passed out. Either because she was choking me or just because I was scared. When I came to, I was dreaming you and Mommy were fighting over me and you wanted to do the Bad Thing again, Daddy. Then I knew it wasnt a dream at all  and I was awake  and  I wet my pants. I wet my pants like a baby. His head fell back against Wendys sweater and he began to cry with horrible weakness, his hands lying limp and spent in his lap. Jack got up. Take care of him. What are you going to do? Her face was full of dread. Im going up to that room, what did you think I was going to do? Have coffee? No! Dont, Jack, please dont! Wendy, if theres someone else in the hotel, we have to know. Dont you dare leave us alone! she shrieked at him. Spittle flew from her lips with the force of her cry. Jack said Wendy, thats a remarkable imitation of your mom. She burst into tears then, unable to cover her face because Danny was on her lap. Im sorry, Jack said. But I have to, you know. Im the goddam caretaker. Its what Im paid for. She only cried harder and he left her that way, going out of the kitchen, rubbing his mouth with his handkerchief as the door swung shut behind him. Dont worry, Mommy, Danny said. Hell be all right. He doesnt shine. Nothing here can hurt him. Through her tears she said, No, I dont believe that. CHAPTER THIRTY 217 REVISITED He took the elevator up and it was strange, because none of them had used the elevator since they moved in. He threw the brass handle over and it wheezed vibratoriously up the shaft, the brass grate rattling madly. Wendy had a true claustrophobes horror of the elevator, he knew. She envisioned the three of them trapped in it between floors while the winter storms raged outside, she could see them growing thinner and weaker, starving to death. Or perhaps dining on each other, the way those rugby players had. He remembered a bumper sticker he had seen in Boulder, RUGBY PLAYERS EAT THEIR OWN DEAD. He could think of others. YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. Or menu items. Welcome to the Overlook Dining Room, Pride of the Rockies. Eat in Splendor at the Roof of the World. Human Haunch Broiled Over Matches La Spcialit de la Maison. The contemptuous smile flicked over his features again. As the number 2 rose on the shaft wall, he threw the brass handle back to the home position and the elevator car creaked to a stop. He took his Excedrin from his pocket, shook three of them into his hand, and opened the elevator door. Nothing in the Overlook frightened him. He felt that he and it were simptico. He walked up the hall flipping his Excedrin into his mouth and chewing them one by one. He rounded the corner into the short corridor off the main hall. The door to Room 217 was ajar, and the passkey hung from the lock on its white paddle. He frowned, feeling a wave of irritation and even real anger. Whatever had come of it, the boy had been trespassing. He had been told, and told bluntly, that certain areas of the hotel were off limits the equipment shed, the basement, and all of the guest rooms. He would talk to Danny about that just as soon as the boy was over his fright. He would talk to him reasonably but sternly. There were plenty of fathers who would have done more than just talk. They would have administered a good shaking, and perhaps that was what Danny needed. If the boy had gotten a scare, wasnt that at least his just deserts? He walked down to the door, removed the passkey, dropped it into his pocket, and stepped inside. The overhead light was on. He glanced at the bed, saw it was not rumpled, and then walked directly across to the bathroom door. A curious certainty had grown in him. Although Watson had mentioned no names or room numbers, Jack felt sure that this was the room the lawyers wife and her stud had shared, that this was the bathroom where she had been found dead, full of barbiturates and Colorado Lounge booze. He pushed the mirrorbacked bathroom door open and stepped through. The light in here was off. He turned it on and observed the long, Pullmancar room, furnished in the distinctive early nineteenhundredsremodeledinthetwenties style that seemed common to all Overlook bathrooms, except for the ones on the third floorthose were properly Byzantine, as befitted the royalty, politicians, movie stars, and capos who had stayed there over the years. The shower curtain, a pallid pastel pink, was drawn protectively around the long clawfooted tub. (nevertheless they did move) And for the first time he felt his new sense of sureness (almost cockiness) that had come over him when Danny ran to him shouting It was her! It was her! deserting him. A chilled finger pressed gently against the base of his spine, cooling him off ten degrees. It was joined by others and they suddenly rippled all the way up his back to his medulla oblongata, playing his spine like a jungle instrument. His anger at Danny evaporated, and as he stepped forward and pushed the shower curtain back his mouth was dry and he felt only sympathy for his son and terror for himself. The tub was dry and empty. Relief and irritation vented in a sudden Pah! sound that escaped his compressed lips like a very small explosive. The tub had been scrubbed clean at the end of the season; except for the rust stain under the twin faucets, it sparkled. There was a faint but definable smell of cleanser, the kind that can irritate your nose with the smell of its own righteousness for weeks, even months, after it has been used. He bent down and ran his fingertips along the bottom of the tub. Dry as a bone. Not even a hint of moisture. The boy had been either hallucinating or outright lying. He felt angry again. That was when the bathmat on the floor caught his attention. He frowned down at it. What was a bathmat doing in here? It should be down in the linen cupboard at the end of the wing with the rest of the sheets and towels and pillow slips. All the linen was supposed to be there. Not even the beds were really made up in these guest rooms; the mattresses had been zipped into clear plastic and then covered with bedspreads. He supposed Danny might have gone down and gotten itthe passkey would open the linen cupboardbut why? He brushed the tips of his fingers back and forth across it. The bathmat was bone dry. He went back to the bathroom doorway and stood in it. Everything was all right. The boy had been dreaming. There was not a thing out of place. It was a little puzzling about the bathmat, granted, but the logical explanation was that some chambermaid, hurrying like mad on the last day of the season, had just forgotten to pick it up. Other than that, everything was His nostrils flared a little. Disinfectant, that selfrighteous smell, cleanerthanthou. And Soap? Surely not. But once the smell had been identified, it was too clear to dismiss. Soap. And not one of those postcardsize bars of Ivory they provide you with in hotels and motels, either. This scent was light and perfumed, a ladys soap. It had a pink sort of smell. Camay or Lowila, the brand that Wendy had always used in Stovington. (Its nothing. Its your imagination.) (yes like the hedges nevertheless they did move) (They did not move!) He crossed jerkily to the door which gave on the hall, feeling the irregular thump of a headache beginning at his temples. Too much had happened today, too much by far. He wouldnt spank the boy or shake him, just talk to him, but by God, he wasnt going to add Room 217 to his problems. Not on the basis of a dry bathmat and a faint smell of Lowila soap. He There was a sudden rattling, metallic sound behind him. It came just as his hand closed around the doorknob, and an observer might have thought the brushed steel of the knob carried an electric charge. He jerked convulsively, eyes widening, other facial features drawing in, grimacing. Then he had control of himself, a little, anyway, and he let go of the doorknob and turned carefully around. His joints creaked. He began to walk back to the bathroom door, step by leaden step. The shower curtain, which he had pushed back to look into the tub, was now drawn. The metallic rattle, which had sounded to him like a stir of bones in a crypt, had been the curtain rings on the overhead bar. Jack stared at the curtain. His face felt as if it had been heavily waxed, all dead skin on the outside, live, hot rivulets of fear on the inside. The way he had felt on the playground. There was something behind the pink plastic shower curtain. There was something in the tub. He could see it, ill defined and obscure through the plastic, a nearly amorphous shape. It could have been anything. A trick of the light. The shadow of the shower attachment. A woman long dead and reclining in her bath, a bar of Lowila in one stiffening hand as she waited patiently for whatever lover might come. Jack told himself to step forward boldly and rake the shower curtain back. To expose whatever might be there. Instead he turned with jerky, marionette strides, his heart whamming frightfully in his chest, and went back into the bedsitting room. The door to the hall was shut. He stared at it for a long, immobile second. He could taste his terror now. It was in the back of his throat like a taste of goneover cherries. He walked to the door with that same jerky stride and forced his fingers to curl around the knob. (It wont open.) But it did. He turned off the light with a fumbling gesture, stepped out into the hall, and pulled the door shut without looking back. From inside, he seemed to hear an odd wet thumping sound, far off, dim, as if something had just scrambled belatedly out of the tub, as if to greet a caller, as if it had realized the caller was leaving before the social amenities had been completed and so it was now rushing to the door, all purple and grinning, to invite the caller back inside. Perhaps forever. Footsteps approaching the door or only the heartbeat in his ears? He fumbled at the passkey. It seemed sludgy, unwilling to turn in the lock. He attacked the passkey. The tumblers suddenly fell and he stepped back against the corridors far wall, a little groan of relief escaping him. He closed his eyes and all the old phrases began to parade through his mind, it seemed there must be hundreds of them, (cracking up not playing with a full deck lostya marbles guy just went loony tunes he went up and over the high side went bananas lost his football crackers nuts half a seabag) all meaning the same thing losing your mind. No, he whimpered, hardly aware that he had been reduced to this, whimpering with his eyes shut like a child. Oh no, God. Please, God, no. But below the tumble of his chaotic thoughts, below the triphammer beat of his heart, he could hear the soft and futile sound of the doorknob being turned to and fro as something locked in tried helplessly to get out, something that wanted to meet him, something that would like to be introduced to his family as the storm shrieked around them and white daylight became black night. If he opened his eyes and saw that doorknob moving he would go mad. So he kept them shut, and after an unknowable time, there was stillness. Jack forced himself to open his eyes, halfconvinced that when he did, she would be standing before him. But the hall was empty. He felt watched just the same. He looked at the peephole in the center of the door and wondered what would happen if he approached it, stared into it. What would he be eyeball to eyeball with? His feet were moving (feets dont fail me now) before he realized it. He turned them away from the door and walked down to the main hall, his feet whispering on the blueblack jungle carpet. He stopped halfway to the stairs and looked at the fire extinguisher. He thought that the folds of canvas were arranged in a slightly different manner. And he was quite sure that the brass nozzle had been pointing toward the elevator when he came up the hall. Now it was pointing the other way. I didnt see that at all, Jack Torrance said quite clearly. His face was white and haggard and his mouth kept trying to grin. But he didnt take the elevator back down. It was too much like an open mouth. Too much by half. He took the stairs. CHAPTER THIRTYONE THE VERDICT He stepped into the kitchen and looked at them, bouncing the passkey a few inches up off his left hand, making the chain on the white metal tongue jingle, then catching it again. Danny was pallid and worn out. Wendy had been crying, he saw; her eyes were red and darkly circled. He felt a sudden burst of gladness at this. He wasnt suffering alone, that was sure. They looked at him without speaking. Nothing there, he said, astounded by the heartiness of his voice. Not a thing. He bounced the passkey up and down, up and down, smiling reassuringly at them, watching the relief spread over their faces, and thought he had never in his life wanted a drink so badly as he did right now. CHAPTER THIRTYTWO THE BEDROOM Late that afternoon Jack got a cot from the firstfloor storage room and put it in the corner of their bedroom. Wendy had expected that the boy would be half the night getting to sleep, but Danny was nodding before The Waltons was half over, and fifteen minutes after they had tucked him in he was far down in sleep, moveless, one hand tucked under his cheek. Wendy sat watching him, holding her place in a fat paperback copy of Cashelmara with one finger. Jack sat at his desk, looking at his play. Oh shit, Jack said. Wendy looked up from her contemplation of Danny. What? Nothing. He looked down at the play with smoldering ill temper. How could he have thought it was good? It was puerile. It had been done a thousand times. Worse, he had no idea how to finish it. Once it had seemed simple enough. Denker, in a fit of rage, seizes the poker from beside the fireplace and beats saintly Gary to death. Then, standing spreadlegged over the body, the bloody poker in one hand, he screams at the audience Its here somewhere and I will find it! Then, as the lights dim and the curtain is slowly drawn, the audience sees Garys body facedown on the forestage as Denker strides to the upstage bookcase and feverishly begins pulling books from the shelves, looking at them, throwing them aside. He had thought it was something old enough to be new, a play whose novelty alone might be enough to see it through a successful Broadway run a tragedy in five acts. But, in addition to his sudden diversion of interest to the Overlooks history, something else had happened. He had developed opposing feelings about his characters. This was something quite new. Ordinarily he liked all of his characters, the good and the bad. He was glad he did. It allowed him to try to see all of their sides and understand their motivations more clearly. His favorite story, sold to a small southern Maine magazine called Contraband for copies, had been a piece called The Monkey Is Here, Paul DeLong. It had been about a child molester about to commit suicide in his furnished room. The child molesters name had been Paul DeLong, Monkey to his friends. Jack had liked Monkey very much. He sympathized with Monkeys bizarre needs, knowing that Monkey was not the only one to blame for the three rapemurders in his past. There had been bad parents, the father a beater as his own father had been, the mother a limp and silent dishrag as his mother had been. A homosexual experience in grammar school. Public humiliation. Worse experiences in high school and college. He had been arrested and sent to an institution after exposing himself to a pair of little girls getting off a school bus. Worst of all, he had been dismissed from the institution, let back out onto the streets, because the man in charge had decided he was all right. This mans name had been Grimmer. Grimmer had known that Monkey DeLong was exhibiting deviant symptoms, but he had written the good, hopeful report and had let him go anyway. Jack liked and sympathized with Grimmer, too. Grimmer had to run an understaffed and underfunded institution and try to keep the whole thing together with spit, baling wire, and nickelanddime appropriations from a state legislature who had to go back and face the voters. Grimmer knew that Monkey could interact with other people, that he did not soil his pants or try to stab his fellow inmates with the scissors. He did not think he was Napoleon. The staff psychiatrist in charge of Monkeys case thought there was a betterthaneven chance that Monkey could make it on the street, and they both knew that the longer a man is in an institution the more he comes to need that closed environment, like a junkie with his smack. And meanwhile, people were knocking down the doors. Paranoids, schizoids, cycloids, semicatatonics, men who claimed to have gone to heaven in flying saucers, women who had burned their childrens sex organs off with Bic lighters, alcoholics, pyromaniacs, kleptomaniacs, manicdepressives, suicidals. Tough old world, baby. If youre not bolted together tightly, youre gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty. Jack could sympathize with Grimmers problem. He could sympathize with the parents of the murder victims. With the murdered children themselves, of course. And with Monkey DeLong. Let the reader lay blame. In those days he hadnt wanted to judge. The cloak of the moralist sat badly on his shoulders. He had started The Little School in the same optimistic vein. But lately he had begun to choose up sides, and worse still, he had come to loathe his hero, Gary Benson. Originally conceived as a bright boy more cursed with money than blessed with it, a boy who wanted more than anything to compile a good record so he could go to a good university because he had earned admission and not because his father had pulled strings, he had become to Jack a kind of simpering Goody TwoShoes, a postulant before the altar of knowledge rather than a sincere acolyte, an outward paragon of Boy Scout virtues, inwardly cynical, filled not with real brilliance (as he had first been conceived) but only with sly animal cunning. All through the play he unfailingly addressed Denker as sir, just as Jack had taught his own son to address those older and those in authority as sir. He thought that Danny used the word quite sincerely, and Gary Benson as originally conceived had too, but as he had begun Act V, it had come more and more strongly to him that Gary was using the word satirically, outwardly straightfaced while the Gary Benson inside was mugging and leering at Denker. Denker, who had never had any of the things Gary had. Denker, who had had to work all his life just to become head of a single little school. Who was now faced with ruin over this handsome, innocentseeming rich boy who had cheated on his Final Composition and had then cunningly covered his tracks. Jack had seen Denker the teacher as not much different from the strutting South American little Caesars in their banana kingdoms, standing dissidents up against the wall of the handiest squash or handball court, a superzealot in a comparatively small puddle, a man whose every whim becomes a crusade. In the beginning he had wanted to use his play as a microcosm to say something about the abuse of power. Now he tended more and more to see Denker as a Mr. Chips figure, and the tragedy was not the intellectual racking of Gary Benson but rather the destruction of a kindly old teacher and headmaster unable to see through the cynical wiles of this monster masquerading as a boy. He hadnt been able to finish the play. Now he sat looking down at it, scowling, wondering if there was any way he could salvage the situation. He didnt really think there was. He had begun with one play and it had somehow turned into another, prestochango. Well, what the hell. Either way it had been done before. Either way it was a load of shit. And why was he driving himself crazy about it tonight anyway? After the day just gone by it was no wonder he couldnt think straight. get him down? He looked up, trying to blink the cobwebs away. Huh? I said, how are we going to get him down? Weve got to get him out of here, Jack. For a moment his wits were so scattered that he wasnt even sure what she was talking about. Then he realized and uttered a short, barking laugh. You say that as if it were so easy. I didnt mean No problem, Wendy. Ill just change clothes in that telephone booth down in the lobby and fly him to Denver on my back. Superman Jack Torrance, they called me in my salad days. Her face registered slow hurt. I understand the problem, Jack. The radio is broken. The snow  but you have to understand Dannys problem. My God, dont you? He was nearly catatonic, Jack! What if he hadnt come out of that? But he did, Jack said, a trifle shortly. He had been frightened at Dannys blankeyed, slackfaced state too, of course he had. At first. But the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if it hadnt been a piece of playacting put on to escape his punishment. He had, after all, been trespassing. All the same, she said. She came to him and sat on the end of the bed by his desk. Her face was both surprised and worried. Jack, the bruises on his neck! Something got at him! And I want him away from it! Dont shout, he said. My head aches, Wendy. Im as worried about this as you are, so please  dont  shout. All right, she said, lowering her voice. I wont shout. But I dont understand you, Jack. Someone is in here with us. And not a very nice someone, either. We have to get down to Sidewinder, not just Danny but all of us. Quickly. And you  youre sitting there reading your play!  We have to get down, we have to get down, you keep saying that. You must think I really am Superman. I think youre my husband, she said softly, and looked down at her hands. His temper flared. He slammed the playscript down, knocking the edges of the pile out of true again and crumpling the sheets on the bottom. Its time you got some of the home truths into you, Wendy. You dont seem to have internalized them, as the sociologists say. Theyre knocking around up in your head like a bunch of loose cueballs. You need to shoot them into the pockets. You need to understand that we are snowed in. Danny had suddenly become active in his bed. Still sleeping, he had begun to twist and turn. The way he always did when we fought, Wendy thought dismally. And were doing it again. Dont wake him up, Jack. Please. He glanced over at Danny and some of the flush went out of his cheeks. Okay. Im sorry. Im sorry I sounded mad, Wendy. Its not really for you. But I broke the radio. If its anybodys fault its mine. That was our big link to the outside. Ollyollyinforfree. Please come get us, Mister Ranger. We cant stay out this late. Dont, she said, and put a hand on his shoulder. He leaned his head against it. She brushed his hair with her other hand. I guess youve got a right, after what I accused you of. Sometimes I am like my mother. I can be a bitch. But you have to understand that some things  are hard to get over. You have to understand that. Do you mean his arm? His lips had thinned. Yes, Wendy said, and then she rushed on But its not just you. I worry when he goes out to play. I worry about him wanting a twowheeler next year, even one with training wheels. I worry about his teeth and his eyesight and about this thing, what he calls his shine. I worry. Because hes little and he seems very fragile and because  because something in this hotel seems to want him. And it will go through us to get him if it has to.


Thats why we must get him out, Jack. I know that! I feel that! We must get him out! Her hand had tightened painfully on his shoulder in her agitation, but he didnt move away. One hand found the firm weight of her left breast and he began to stroke it through her shirt. Wendy, he said, and stopped. She waited for him to rearrange whatever he had to say. His strong hand on her breast felt good, soothing. I could maybe snowshoe him down. He could walk part of the way himself, but I would mostly have to carry him. It would mean camping out one, two, maybe three nights. That would mean building a travois to carry supplies and bedrolls on. We have the AMFM radio, so we could pick a day when the weather forecast called for a threeday spell of good weather. But if the forecast was wrong, he finished, his voice soft and measured, I think we might die. Her face had paled. It looked shiny, almost ghostly. He continued to stroke her breast, rubbing the ball of his thumb gently over the nipple. She made a soft soundfrom his words or in reaction to his gentle pressure on her breast, he couldnt tell. He raised his hand slightly and undid the top button of her shirt. Wendy shifted her legs slightly. All at once her jeans seemed too tight, slightly irritating in a pleasant sort of way. It would mean leaving you alone because you cant snowshoe worth beans. It would be maybe three days of not knowing. Would you want that? His hand dropped to the second button, slipped it, and the beginning of her cleavage was exposed. No, she said in a voice that was slightly thick. She glanced over at Danny. He had stopped twisting and turning. His thumb had crept back into his mouth. So that was all right. But Jack was leaving something out of the picture. It was too bleak. There was something else  what? If we stay put, Jack said, unbuttoning the third and fourth buttons with that same deliberate slowness, a ranger from the park or a game warden is going to poke in here just to find out how were doing. At that point we simply tell him we want down. Hell see to it. He slipped her naked breasts into the wide V of the open shirt, bent, and molded his lips around the stem of a nipple. It was hard and erect. He slipped his tongue slowly back and forth across it in a way he knew she liked. Wendy moaned a little and arched her back. (?Something Ive forgotten?) Honey? she asked. On their own her hands sought the back of his head so that when he answered his voice was muffled against her flesh. How would the ranger take us out? He raised his head slightly to answer and then settled his mouth against the other nipple. If the helicopter was spoken for I guess it would have to be by snowmobile. (!!!) But we have one of those! Ullman said so! His mouth froze against her breast for a moment, and then he sat up. Her own face was slightly flushed, her eyes overbright. Jacks, on the other hand, was calm, as if he had been reading a rather dull book instead of engaging in foreplay with his wife. If theres a snowmobile theres no problem, she said excitedly. We can all three go down together. Wendy, Ive never driven a snowmobile in my life. It cant be that hard to learn. Back in Vermont you see tenyearolds driving them in the fields  although what their parents can be thinking of I dont know. And you had a motorcycle when we met. He had, a Honda 350cc. He had traded it in for a Saab shortly after he and Wendy took up residence together. I suppose I could, he said slowly. But I wonder how well its been maintained. Ullman and Watson  they run this place from May to October. They have summertime minds. I know it wont have gas in it. There may not be plugs or a battery, either. I dont want you to get your hopes up over your head, Wendy. She was totally excited now, leaning over him, her breasts tumbling out of her shirt. He had a sudden impulse to seize one and twist it until she shrieked. Maybe that would teach her to shut up. The gas is no problem, she said. The VW and the hotel truck are both full. Theres gas for the emergency generator downstairs, too. And there must be a gascan out in that shed so you could carry extra. Yes, he said. There is. Actually there were three of them, two fivegallons and a twogallon. Ill bet the sparkplugs and the battery are out there too. Nobody would store their snowmobile in one place and the plugs and battery someplace else, would they? Doesnt seem likely, does it? He got up and walked over to where Danny lay sleeping. A spill of hair had fallen across his forehead and Jack brushed it away gently. Danny didnt stir. And if you can get it running youll take us out? she asked from behind him. On the first day the radio says good weather? For a moment he didnt answer. He stood looking down at his son, and his mixed feelings dissolved in a wave of love. He was the way she had said, vulnerable, fragile. The marks on his neck were very prominent. Yes, he said. Ill get it running and well get out as quick as we can. Thank God! He turned around. She had taken off her shirt and lay on the bed, her belly flat, her breasts aimed perkily at the ceiling. She was playing with them lazily, flicking at the nipples. Hurry up, gentlemen, she said softly, time. After, with no light burning in the room but the night light that Danny had brought with him from his room, she lay in the crook of his arm, feeling deliciously at peace. She found it hard to believe they could be sharing the Overlook with a murderous stowaway. Jack? Hmmmm? What got at him? He didnt answer her directly. He does have something. Some talent the rest of us are missing. The most of us, beg pardon. And maybe the Overlook has something, too. Ghosts? I dont know. Not in the Algernon Blackwood sense, thats for sure. More like the residues of the feelings of the people who have stayed here. Good things and bad things. In that sense, I suppose that every big hotel has got its ghosts. Especially the old ones. But a dead woman in the tub  Jack, hes not losing his mind, is he? He gave her a brief squeeze. We know he goes into  well, trances, for want of a better word  from time to time. We know that when hes in them he sometimes  sees?  things he doesnt understand. If precognitive trances are possible, theyre probably functions of the subconscious mind. Freud said that the subconscious never speaks to us in literal language. Only in symbols. If you dream about being in a bakery where no one speaks English, you may be worried about your ability to support your family. Or maybe just that no one understands you. Ive read that the falling dream is a standard outlet for feelings of insecurity. Games, little games. Conscious on one side of the net, subconscious on the other, serving some cockamamie image back and forth. Same with mental illness, with hunches, all of that. Why should precognition be any different? Maybe Danny really did see blood all over the walls of the Presidential Suite. To a kid his age, the image of blood and the concept of death are nearly interchangeable. To kids, the image is always more accessible than the concept, anyway. William Carlos Williams knew that, he was a pediatrician. When we grow up, concepts gradually get easier and we leave the images to the poets  and Im just rambling on. I like to hear you ramble. She said it, folks. She said it. You all heard it. The marks on his neck, Jack. Those are real. Yes. There was nothing else for a long time. She had begun to think he must have gone to sleep and she was slipping into a drowse herself when he said I can think of two explanations for those. And neither of them involves a fourth party in the hotel. What? She came up on one elbow. Stigmata, maybe, he said. Stigmata? Isnt that when people bleed on Good Friday or something? Yes. Sometimes people who believe deeply in Christs divinity exhibit bleeding marks on their hands and feet during the Holy Week. It was more common in the Middle Ages than now. In those days such people were considered blessed by God. I dont think the Catholic Church proclaimed any of it as outandout miracles, which was pretty smart of them. Stigmata isnt much different from some of the things the yogis can do. Its better understood now, thats all. The people who understand the interaction between the mind and the bodystudy it, I mean, no one understands itbelieve we have a lot more control over our involuntary functions than they used to think. You can slow your heartbeat if you think about it enough. Speed up your own metabolism. Make yourself sweat more. Or make yourself bleed. You think Danny thought those bruises onto his neck? Jack, I just cant believe that. I can believe its possible, although it seems unlikely to me, too. Whats more likely is that he did it to himself. To himself? Hes gone into these trances and hurt himself in the past. Do you remember the time at the supper table? About two years ago, I think. We were superpissed at each other. Nobody talking very much. Then, all at once, his eyes rolled up in his head and he went facefirst into his dinner. Then onto the floor. Remember? Yes, she said. I sure do. I thought he was having a convulsion. Another time we were in the park, he said. Just Danny and I. Saturday afternoon. He was sitting on a swing, coasting back and forth. He collapsed onto the ground. It was like hed been shot. I ran over and picked him up and all of a sudden he just came around. He sort of blinked at me and said, I hurt my tummy. Tell Mommy to close the bedroom windows if it rains. And that night it rained like hell. Yes, but And hes always coming in with cuts and scraped elbows. His shins look like a battlefield in distress. And when you ask him how he got this one or that one, he just says, Oh, I was playing, and thats the end of it. Jack, all kids get bumped and bruised up. With little boys its almost constant from the time they learn to walk until theyre twelve or thirteen. And Im sure Danny gets his share, Jack responded. Hes an active kid. But I remember that day in the park and that night at the supper table. And I wonder if some of our kids bumps and bruises come from just keeling over. That Dr. Edmonds said Danny did it right in his office, for Christs sake! All right. But those bruises were fingers. Id swear to it. He didnt get them falling down. He goes into a trance, Jack said. Maybe he sees something that happened in that room. An argument. Maybe a suicide. Violent emotions. It isnt like watching a movie; hes in a highly suggestible state. Hes right in the damn thing. His subconscious is maybe visualizing whatever happened in a symbolic way  as a dead woman whos alive again, zombie, undead, ghoul, you pick your term. Youre giving me goose bumps, she said thickly. Im giving myself a few. Im no psychiatrist, but it seems to fit so well. The walking dead woman as a symbol for dead emotions, dead lives, that just wont give up and go away  but because shes a subconscious figure, shes also him. In the trance state, the conscious Danny is submerged. The subconscious figure is pulling the strings. So Danny put his hands around his own neck and Stop, she said. I get the picture. I think thats more frightening than having a stranger creeping around the halls, Jack. You can move away from a stranger. You cant move away from yourself. Youre talking about schizophrenia. Of a very limited type, he said, but a trifle uneasily. And of a very special nature. Because he does seem able to read thoughts, and he really does seem to have precognitive flashes from time to time. I cant think of that as mental illness no matter how hard I try. We all have schizo deposits in us anyway. I think as Danny gets older, hell get this under control. If youre right, then its imperative that we get him out. Whatever he has, this hotel is making it worse. I wouldnt say that, he objected. If hed done as he was told, he never would have gone up to that room in the first place. It never would have happened. My God, Jack! Are you implying that being halfstrangled was a  a fitting punishment for being off limits? No  no. Of course not. But No buts, she said, shaking her head violently. The truth is, were guessing. We dont have any idea when he might turn a corner and run into one of those  air pockets, onereel horror movies, whatever they are. We have to get him away. She laughed a little in the darkness. Next thing well be seeing things. Dont talk nonsense, he said, and in the darkness of the room he saw the hedge lions bunching around the path, no longer flanking it but guarding it, hungry November lions. Cold sweat sprang out on his brow. You didnt really see anything, did you? she was asking. I mean, when you went up to that room. You didnt see anything? The lions were gone. Now he saw a pink pastel shower curtain with a dark shape lounging behind it. The closed door. That muffled, hurried thump, and sounds after it that might have been running footsteps. The horrible, lurching beat of his own heart as he struggled with the passkey. Nothing, he said, and that was true. He had been strung up, not sure of what was happening. He hadnt had a chance to sift through his thoughts for a reasonable explanation concerning the bruises on his sons neck. He had been pretty damn suggestible himself. Hallucinations could sometimes be catching. And you havent changed your mind? About the snowmobile, I mean? His hands clamped into sudden tight fists (Stop nagging me!) by his sides. I said I would, didnt I? I will. Now go to sleep. Its been a long hard day. And how, she said. There was a rustle of bedclothes as she turned toward him and kissed his shoulder. I love you, Jack. I love you too, he said, but he was only mouthing the words. His hands were still clenched into fists. They felt like rocks on the ends of his arms. The pulse beat prominently in his forehead. She hadnt said a word about what was going to happen to them after they got down, when the party was over. Not one word. It had been Danny this and Danny that and Jack Im so scared. Oh yes, she was scared of a lot of closet boogeymen and jumping shadows, plenty scared. But there was no lack of real ones, either. When they got down to Sidewinder they would arrive with sixty dollars and the clothes they stood up in. Not even a car. Even if Sidewinder had a pawnshop, which it didnt, they had nothing to hock but Wendys ninetydollar diamond engagement ring and the Sony AMFM radio. A pawnbroker might give them twenty bucks. A kind pawnbroker. There would be no job, not even parttime or seasonal, except maybe shoveling out driveways for three dollars a shot. The picture of John Torrance, thirty years old, who had once published in Esquire and who had harbored dreamsnot at all unreasonable dreams, he feltof becoming a major American writer during the next decade, with a shovel from the Sidewinder Western Auto on his shoulder, ringing doorbells  that picture suddenly came to him much more clearly than the hedge lions and he clenched his fists tighter still, feeling the fingernails sink into his palms and draw blood in mystic quartermoon shapes. John Torrance, standing in line to change his sixty dollars into food stamps, standing in line again at the Sidewinder Methodist Church to get donated commodities and dirty looks from the locals. John Torrance explaining to Al that theyd just had to leave, had to shut down the boiler, had to leave the Overlook and all it contained open to vandals or thieves on snow machines because, you see, Al, attendezvous, Al, there are ghosts up there and they have it in for my boy. Goodbye, Al. Thoughts of Chapter Four, Spring Comes for John Torrance. What then? Whatever then? They might be able to get to the West Coast in the VW, he supposed. A new fuel pump would do it. Fifty miles west of here and it was all downhill, you could damn near put the bug in neutral and coast to Utah. On to sunny California, land of oranges and opportunity. A man with his sterling record of alcoholism, studentbeating, and ghostchasing would undoubtedly be able to write his own ticket. Anything you like. Custodial engineerswamping out Greyhound buses. The automotive businesswashing cars in a rubber suit. The culinary arts, perhaps, washing dishes in a diner. Or possibly a more responsible position, such as pumping gas. A job like that even held the intellectual stimulation of making change and writing out credit slips. I can give you twentyfive hours a week at the minimum wage. That was heavy tunes in a year when Wonder Bread went for sixty cents a loaf. Blood had begun to trickle down from his palms. Like stigmata, oh yes. He squeezed tighter, savaging himself with pain. His wife was asleep beside him, why not? There were no problems. He had agreed to take her and Danny away from the big bad boogeyman and there were no problems. So you see, Al, I thought the best thing to do would be to (kill her.) The thought rose up from nowhere, naked and unadorned. The urge to tumble her out of bed, naked, bewildered, just beginning to wake up; to pounce on her, seize her neck like the green limb of a young aspen and to throttle her, thumbs on windpipe, fingers pressing against the top of her spine, jerking her head up and ramming it back down against the floor boards, again and again, whamming, whacking, smashing, crashing. Jitter and jive, baby. Shake, rattle, and roll. He would make her take her medicine. Every drop. Every last bitter drop. He was dimly aware of a muffled noise somewhere, just outside his hot and racing inner world. He looked across the room and Danny was thrashing again, twisting in his bed and rumpling the blankets. The boy was moaning deep in his throat, a small, caged sound. What nightmare? A purple woman, long dead, shambling after him down twisting hotel corridors? Somehow he didnt think so. Something else chased Danny in his dreams. Something worse. The bitter lock of his emotions was broken. He got out of bed and went across to the boy, feeling sick and ashamed of himself. It was Danny he had to think of, not Wendy, not himself. Only Danny. And no matter what shape he wrestled the facts into, he knew in his heart that Danny must be taken out. He straightened the boys blankets and added the quilt from the foot of the bed. Danny had quieted again now. Jack touched the sleeping forehead (what monsters capering just behind that ridge of bone?) and found it warm, but not overly so. And he was sleeping peacefully again. Queer. He got back into bed and tried to sleep. It eluded him. It was so unfair that things should turn out this waybad luck seemed to stalk them. They hadnt been able to shake it by coming up here after all. By the time they arrived in Sidewinder tomorrow afternoon, the golden opportunity would have evaporatedgone the way of the blue suede shoe, as an old roommate of his had been wont to say. Consider the difference if they didnt go down, if they could somehow stick it out. The play would get finished. One way or the other, he would tack an ending onto it. His own uncertainty about his characters might add an appealing touch of ambiguity to his original ending. Perhaps it would even make him some money, it wasnt impossible. Even lacking that, Al might well convince the Stovington Board to rehire him. He would be on pro of course, maybe for as long as three years, but if he could stay sober and keep writing, he might not have to stay at Stovington for three years. Of course he hadnt cared much for Stovington before, he had felt stifled, buried alive, but that had been an immature reaction. Furthermore, how much could a man enjoy teaching when he went through his first three classes with a skullbusting hangover every second or third day? It wouldnt be that way again. He would be able to handle his responsibilities much better. He was sure of it. Somewhere in the midst of that thought, things began to break up and he drifted down into sleep. His last thought followed him down like a sounding bell It seemed that he might be able to find peace here. At last. If they would only let him. When he woke up he was standing in the bathroom of 217. (been walking in my sleep againwhy?no radios to break up here) The bathroom light was on, the room behind him in darkness. The shower curtain was drawn around the long clawfooted tub. The bathmat beside it was wrinkled and wet. He began to feel afraid, but the very dreamlike quality of his fear told him this was not real. Yet that could not contain the fear. So many things at the Overlook seemed like dreams. He moved across the floor to the tub, not wanting to but helpless to turn his feet back. He flung the curtain open. Lying in the tub, naked, lolling almost weightless in the water, was George Hatfield, a knife stuck in his chest. The water around him was stained a bright pink. Georges eyes were closed. His penis floated limply, like kelp. George he heard himself say. At the word, Georges eyes snapped open. They were silver, not human eyes at all. Georges hands, fishwhite, found the sides of the tub and he pulled himself up to a sitting position. The knife stuck straight out from his chest, equidistantly placed between nipples. The wound was lipless. You set the timer ahead, silvereyed George told him. No, George, I didnt. I I dont stutter. George was standing now, still fixing him with that inhuman silver glare, but his mouth had drawn back in a dead and grimacing smile. He threw one leg over the porcelained side of the tub. One white and wrinkled foot placed itself on the bathmat. First you tried to run me over on my bike and then you set the timer ahead and then you tried to stab me to death but I still dont stutter. George was coming for him, his hands out, the fingers slightly curled. He smelled moldy and wet, like leaves that had been rained on. It was for your own good, Jack said, backing up. I set it ahead for your own good. Furthermore, I happen to know you cheated on your Final Composition. I dont cheat  and I dont stutter. Georges hands touched his neck. Jack turned and ran, ran with the floating, weightless slowness that is so common to dreams. You did! You did cheat! he screamed in fear and anger as he crossed the darkened bedsitting room. Ill prove it! Georges hands were on his neck again. Jacks heart swelled with fear until he was sure it would burst. And then, at last, his hand curled around the doorknob and it turned under his hand and he yanked the door open. He plunged out, not into the secondfloor hallway, but into the basement room beyond the arch. The cobwebby light was on. His camp chair, stark and geometrical, stood beneath it. And all around it was a miniature mountain range of boxes and crates and banded bundles of records and invoices and God knew what. Relief surged through him. Ill find it! he heard himself screaming. He seized a damp and moldering cardboard box; it split apart in his hands, spilling out a waterfall of yellow flimsies. Its here somewhere! I will find it! He plunged his hands deep into the pile of papers and came up with a dry, papery wasps nest in one hand and a timer in the other. The timer was ticking. Attached to its back was a length of electrical cord and attached to the other end of the cord was a bundle of dynamite. Here! he screamed. Here, take it! His relief became absolute triumph. He had done more than escape George; he had conquered. With these talismanic objects in his hands, George would never touch him again. George would flee in terror. He began to turn so he could confront George, and that was when Georges hands settled around his neck, squeezing, stopping his breath, damming up his respiration entirely after one final dragging gasp. I dont stutter, whispered George from behind him. He dropped the wasps nest and wasps boiled out of it in a furious brownandyellow wave. His lungs were on fire. His wavering sight fell on the timer and the sense of triumph returned, along with a cresting wave of righteous wrath. Instead of connecting the timer to dynamite, the cord ran to the gold knob of a stout black cane, like the one his father had carried after the accident with the milk truck. He grasped it and the cord parted. The cane felt heavy and right in his hands. He swung it back over his shoulder. On the way up it glanced against the wire from which the lightbulb depended and the light began to swing back and forth, making the rooms hooded shadows rock monstrously against the floor and walls. On the way down the cane struck something much harder. George screamed. The grip on Jacks throat loosened. He tore free of Georges grip and whirled. George was on his knees, his head drooping, his hands laced together on top of it. Blood welled through his fingers. Please, George whispered humbly. Give me a break, Mr. Torrance. Now youll take your medicine, Jack grunted. Now by God, wont you. Young pup. Young worthless cur. Now by God, right now. Every drop. Every single damn drop! As the light swayed above him and the shadows danced and flapped, he began to swing the cane, bringing it down again and again, his arm rising and falling like a machine. Georges bloody protecting fingers fell away from his head and Jack brought the cane down again and again, and on his neck and shoulders and back and arms. Except that the cane was no longer precisely a cane; it seemed to be a mallet with some kind of brightly striped handle. A mallet with a hard side and soft side. The business end was clotted with blood and hair. And the flat, whacking sound of the mallet against flesh had been replaced with a hollow booming sound, echoing and reverberating. His own voice had taken on this same quality, bellowing, disembodied. And yet, paradoxically, it sounded weaker, slurred, petulant  as if he were drunk. The figure on its kness slowly raised its head, as if in supplication. There was not a face, precisely, but only a mask of blood through which eyes peered. He brought the mallet back for a final whistling downstroke and it was fully launched before he saw that the supplicating face below him was not Georges but Dannys. It was the face of his son. Daddy And then the mallet crashed home, striking Danny right between the eyes, closing them forever. And something somewhere seemed to be laughing (!No!) He came out of it standing naked over Dannys bed, his hands empty, his body sheened with sweat. His final scream had only been in his mind. He voiced it again, this time in a whisper. No. No, Danny. Never. He went back to bed on legs that had turned to rubber. Wendy was sleeping deeply. The clock on the nightstand said it was quarter to five. He lay sleepless until seven, when Danny began to stir awake. Then he put his legs over the edge of the bed and began to dress. It was time to go downstairs and check the boiler. CHAPTER THIRTYTHREE THE SNOWMOBILE Sometime after midnight, while they all slept uneasily, the snow had stopped after dumping a fresh eight inches on the old crust. The clouds had broken, a fresh wind had swept them away, and now Jack stood in a dusty ingot of sunlight, which slanted through the dirty window set into the eastern side of the equipment shed. The place was about as long as a freight car, and about as high. It smelled of grease and oil and gasoline andfaint, nostalgic smellsweet grass. Four power lawnmowers were ranked like soldiers on review against the south wall, two of them the riding type that look like small tractors. To their left were posthole diggers, roundbladed shovels made for doing surgery on the putting green, a chain saw, the electric hedgeclippers, and a long thin steel pole with a red flag at the top. Caddy, fetch my ball in under ten seconds and theres a quarter in it for you. Yes, sir. Against the eastern wall, where the morning sun slanted in most strongly, three PingPong tables leaned one against the other like a drunken house of cards. Their nets had been removed and flopped down from the shelf above. In the corner was a stack of shuffleboard weights and a roque setthe wickets banded together with twists of wire, the brightly painted balls in an eggcarton sort of thing (strange hens you have up here, Watson  yes, and you should see the animals down on the front lawn, haha), and the mallets, two sets of them, standing in their racks. He walked over to them, stepping over an old eightcell battery (which had once sat beneath the hood of the hotel truck, no doubt) and a battery charger and a pair of J. C. Penney jumper cables coiled between them. He slipped one of the shorthandled mallets out of the front rack and held it up in front of his face, like a knight bound for battle saluting his king. Fragments of his dream (it was all jumbled now, fading) recurred, something about George Hatfield and his fathers cane, just enough to make him uneasy and, absurdly enough, a trifle guilty about holding a plain old gardenvariety roque mallet. Not that roque was such a common gardenvariety game anymore; its more modern cousin, croquet, was much more popular now  and a childs version of the game at that. Roque, however  that must have been quite a game. Jack had found a mildewed rule book down in the basement, from one of the years in the early twenties when a North American Roque Tournament had been held at the Overlook. Quite a game. (schizo) He frowned a little, then smiled. Yes, it was a schizo sort of game at that. The mallet expressed that perfectly. A soft end and a hard end. A game of finesse and aim, and a game of raw, bludgeoning power. He swung the mallet through the air  whhhooop. He smiled a little at the powerful, whistling sound it made. Then he replaced it in the rack and turned to his left. What he saw there made him frown again. The snowmobile sat almost in the middle of the equipment shed, a fairly new one, and Jack didnt care for its looks at all. Bombardier SkiDoo was written on the side of the engine cowling facing him in black letters which had been raked backward, presumably to connote speed. The protruding skis were also black. There was black piping to the right and left of the cowling, what they would call racing stripes on a sports car. But the actual paintjob was a bright, sneering yellow, and that was what he didnt like about it. Sitting there in its shaft of morning sun, yellow body and black piping, black skis, and black upholstered open cockpit, it looked like a monstrous mechanized wasp. When it was running it would sound like that, too. Whining and buzzing and ready to sting. But then, what else should it look like? It wasnt flying under false colors, at least. Because after it had done its job, they were going to be hurting plenty. All of them. By spring the Torrance family would be hurting so badly that what those wasps had done to Dannys hand would look like a mothers kisses. He pulled his handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his mouth with it, and walked over to the SkiDoo. He stood looking down at it, the frown very deep now, and stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. Outside a sudden gust of wind slammed against the equipment shed, making it rock and creak. He looked out the window and saw the gust carrying a sheet of sparkling snow crystals toward the driftedin rear of the hotel, whirling them high into the hard blue sky. The wind dropped and he went back to looking at the machine. It was a disgusting thing, really. You almost expected to see a long, limber stinger protruding from the rear of it. He had always disliked the goddam snowmobiles. They shivered the cathedral silence of winter into a million rattling fragments. They startled the wildlife. They sent out huge and pollutive clouds of blue and billowing oilsmoke behind themcough, cough, gag, gag, let me breathe. They were perhaps the final grotesque toy of the unwinding fossil fuel age, given to tenyearolds for Christmas. He remembered a newspaper article he had read in Stovington, a story datelined someplace in Maine.