The Shining, Page 46

  "No!"

  He cried it out in a distant grief, a terror that seemed damped by these dreamy, dreary surroundings. Nonetheless, death images came to him: dead frog plastered to the turnpike like a grisly stamp; Daddy's broken watch lying on top of a box of junk to be thrown out; gravestones with a dead person under every one; dead jay by the telephone pole; the cold junk Mommy scraped off the plates and down the dark maw of the garbage disposal.

  Yet he could not equate these simple symbols with the shifting complex reality of his mother; she satisfied his childish definition of eternity. She had been when he was not. She would continue to be when he was not again. He could accept the possibility of his own death, he had dealt with that since the encounter in Room 217.

  But not hers.

  Not Daddy's.

  Not ever.

  He began to struggle, and the darkness and the hallway began to waver. Tony's form became chimerical, indistinct.

  "Don't!" Tony called. "Don't, Danny, don't do that!"

  "She's not going to be dead! She's not!"

  "Then you have to help her. Danny ... you're in a place deep down in your own mind. The place where I am. I'm a part of you, Danny."

  "You're Tony. You're not me. I want my mommy ... I want my mommy ..."

  "I didn't bring you here, Danny. You brought yourself. Because you knew."

  "No--"

  "You've always known," Tony continued, and he began to walk closer. For the first time, Tony began to walk closer. "You're deep down in yourself in a place where nothing comes through. We're alone here for a little while, Danny. This is an Overlook where no one can ever come. No clocks work here. None of the keys fit them and they can never be wound up. The doors have never been opened and no one has ever stayed in the rooms. But you can't stay long. Because it's coming."

  "It ..." Danny whispered fearfully, and as he did so the irregular pounding noise seemed to grow closer, louder. His terror, cool and distant a moment ago, became a more immediate thing. Now the words could be made out. Hoarse, huckstering; they were uttered in a coarse imitation of his father's voice, but it wasn't Daddy. He knew that now. He knew

  (You brought yourself. Because you knew.)

  "Oh Tony, is it my daddy?" Danny screamed. "Is it my daddy that's coming to get me?"

  Tony didn't answer. But Danny didn't need an answer. He knew. A long and nightmarish masquerade party went on here, and had gone on for years. Little by little a force had accrued, as secret and silent as interest in a bank account. Force, presence, shape, they were all only words and none of them mattered. It wore many masks, but it was all one. Now, somewhere, it was coming for him. It was hiding behind Daddy's face, it was imitating Daddy's voice, it was wearing Daddy's clothes.

  But it was not his daddy.

  It was not his daddy.

  "I've got to help them!" he cried.

  And now Tony stood directly in front of him, and looking at Tony was like looking into a magic mirror and seeing himself in ten years, the eyes widely spaced and very dark, the chin firm, the mouth handsomely molded. The hair was light blond like his mother's, and yet the stamp on his features was that of his father, as if Tony--as if the Daniel Anthony Torrance that would someday be--was a halfling caught between father and son, a ghost of both, a fusion.

  "You have to try to help," Tony said. "But your father ... he's with the hotel now, Danny. It's where he wants to be. It wants you too, because it's very greedy."

  Tony walked past him, into the shadows.

  "Wait!" Danny cried. "What can I--"

  "He's close now," Tony said, still walking away. "You'll have to run ... hide ... keep away from him. Keep away."

  "Tony, I can't!"

  "But you've already started," Tony said. "You will remember what your father forgot."

  He was gone.

  And from somewhere near his father's voice came, coldly wheedling: "Danny? You can come out, doc. Just a little spanking, that's all. Take it like a man and it will be all over. We don't need her, doc. Just you and me, right? When we get this little ... spanking ... behind us, it will be just you and me."

  Danny ran.

  Behind him the thing's temper broke through the shambling charade of normality.

  "Come here, you little shit! Right now!"

  Down a long hall, panting and gasping. Around a corner. Up a flight of stairs. And as he went, the walls that had been so high and remote began to come down; the rug which had only been a blur beneath his feet took on the familiar black-and-blue pattern, sinuously woven together; the doors became numbered again and behind them the parties that were all one went on and on, populated by generations of guests. The air seemed to be shimmering around him, the blows of the mallet against the walls echoing and re-echoing. He seemed to be bursting through some thin placental womb from sleep to

  the rug outside the Presidential Suite on the third floor; lying near him in a bloody heap were the bodies of two men dressed in suits and narrow ties. They had been taken out by shotgun blasts and now they began to stir in front of him and get up.

  He drew in breath to scream but didn't.

  (!! FALSE FACES !! NOT REAL !!)

  They faded before his gaze like old photographs and were gone.

  But below him, the faint sound of the mallet against the walls went on and on, drifting up through the elevator shaft and the stairwell. The controlling force of the Overlook, in the shape of his father, blundering around on the first floor.

  A door opened with a thin screeing sound behind him.

  A decayed woman in a rotten silk gown pranced out, her yellowed and splitting fingers dressed with verdigris-caked rings. Heavy-bodied wasps crawled sluggishly over her face.

  "Come in," she whispered to him, grinning with black lips. "Come in and we will daance the taaaango ..."

  "False face!!" he hissed. "Not real!" She drew back from him in alarm, and in the act of drawing back she faded and was gone.

  "Where are you?" it screamed, but the voice was still only in his head. He could still hear the thing that was wearing Jack's face down on the first floor ... and something else.

  The high, whining sound of an approaching motor.

  Danny's breath stopped in his throat with a little gasp. Was it just another face of the hotel, another illusion? Or was it Dick? He wanted--wanted desperately--to believe it was Dick, but he didn't dare take the chance.

  He retreated down the main corridor, and then took one of the offshoots, his feet whispering on the nap of the carpet. Locked doors frowned down at him as they had done in the dreams, the visions, only now he was in the world of real things, where the game was played for keeps.

  He turned to the right and came to a halt, his heart thudding heavily in his chest. Heat was blowing around his ankles. From the registers, of course. This must have been Daddy's day to heat the west wing and

  (You will remember what your father forgot.)

  What was it? He almost knew. Something that might save him and Mommy? But Tony had said he would have to do it himself. What was it?

  He sank down against the wall, trying desperately to think. It was so hard ... the hotel kept trying to get into his head ... the image of that dark and slumped form swinging the mallet from side to side, gouging the wallpaper ... sending out puffs of plaster dust.

  "Help me," he muttered. "Tony, help me."

  And suddenly he became aware that the hotel had grown deathly silent. The whining sound of the motor had stopped.

  (must not have been real)

  and the sounds of the party had stopped and there was only the wind, howling and whooping endlessly.

  The elevator whirred into sudden life.

  It was coming up.

  And Danny knew who--what--was in it.

  He bolted to his feet, eyes staring wildly. Panic clutched around his heart. Why had Tony sent him to the third floor? He was trapped up here. All the doors were locked.

  The attic!

  There was an attic, he knew.
He had come up here with Daddy the day he had salted the rattraps around up there. He hadn't allowed Danny to come up with him because of the rats. He was afraid Danny might be bitten. But the trapdoor which led to the attic was set into the ceiling of the last short corridor in this wing. There was a pole leaning against the wall. Daddy had pushed the trapdoor open with the pole, there had been a ratcheting whir of counterweights as the door went up and a ladder had swung down. If he could get up there and pull the ladder after him ...

  Somewhere in the maze of corridors behind him, the elevator came to a stop. There was a metallic, rattling crash as the gate was thrown back. And then a voice--not in his head now but terribly real--called out: "Danny? Danny, come here a minute, will you? You've done something wrong and I want you to come and take your medicine like a man. Danny? Danny!"

  Obedience was so strongly ingrained in him that he actually took two automatic steps toward the sound of that voice before stopping. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

  (Not real! False face! I know what you are! Take off your mask!)

  "Danny!" it roared. "Come here, you pup! Come here and take it like a man!" A loud, hollow boom as the mallet struck the wall. When the voice roared out his name again it had changed location. It had come closer.

  In the world of real things, the hunt was beginning.

  Danny ran. Feet silent on the heavy carpet, he ran past the closed doors, past the silk figured wallpaper, past the fire extinguisher bolted to the corner of the wall. He hesitated, and then plunged down the final corridor. Nothing at the end but a bolted door, and nowhere left to run.

  But the pole was still there, still leaning against the wall where Daddy had left it.

  Danny snatched it up. He craned his neck to stare up at the trapdoor. There was a hook on the end of the pole and you had to catch it on a ring set into the trapdoor. You had to--

  There was a brand-new Yale padlock dangling from the trapdoor. The lock Jack Torrance had clipped around the hasp after laying his traps, just in case his son should take the notion into his head to go exploring up there someday.

  Locked. Terror swept him.

  Behind him it was coming, blundering and staggering past the Presidential Suite, the mallet whistling viciously through the air.

  Danny backed up against the last closed door and waited for it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  THAT WHICH WAS FORGOTTEN

  Wendy came to a little at a time, the grayness draining away, pain replacing it: her back, her leg, her side ... she didn't think she would be able to move. Even her fingers hurt, and at first she didn't know why.

  (The razor blade, that's why.)

  Her blond hair, now dank and matted, hung in her eyes. She brushed it away and her ribs stabbed inside, making her groan. Now she saw a field of blue and white mattress, spotted with blood. Her blood, or maybe Jack's. Either way it was still fresh. She hadn't been out long. And that was important because--

  (?Why?)

  Because--

  It was the insectile, buzzing sound of the motor that she remembered first. For a moment she fixed stupidly on the memory, and then in a single vertiginous and nauseating swoop, her mind seemed to pan back, showing her everything at once.

  Hallorann. It must have been Hallorann. Why else would Jack have left so suddenly, without finishing it ... without finishing her?

  Because he was no longer at leisure. He had to find Danny quickly and ... and do it before Hallorann could put a stop to it.

  Or had it happened already?

  She could hear the whine of the elevator rising up the shaft.

  (No God please no the blood the blood's still fresh don't let it have happened already)

  Somehow she was able to find her feet and stagger through the bedroom and across the ruins of the living room to the shattered front door. She pushed it open and made it out into the hall.

  "Danny!" she cried, wincing at the pain in her chest. "Mr. Hallorann! Is anybody there? Anybody?"

  The elevator had been running again and now it came to a stop. She heard the metallic crash of the gate being thrown back and then thought she heard a speaking voice. It might have been her imagination. The wind was too loud to really be able to tell.

  Leaning against the wall, she made her way up to the corner of the short hallway. She was about to turn the corner when the scream froze her, floating down the stairwell and the elevator shaft:

  "Danny! Come here, you pup! Come here and take it like a man!"

  Jack. On the second or third floor. Looking for Danny.

  She got around the corner, stumbled, almost fell. Her breath caught in her throat. Something

  (someone?)

  huddled against the wall about a quarter of the way down from the stairwell. She began to hurry faster, wincing every time her weight came down on her hurt leg. It was a man, she saw, and as she drew closer, she understood the meaning of that buzzing motor.

  It was Mr. Hallorann. He had come after all.

  She eased to her knees beside him, offering up an incoherent prayer that he was not dead. His nose was bleeding, and a terrible gout of blood had spilled out of his mouth. The side of his face was a puffed purple bruise. But he was breathing, thank God for that. It was coming in long, harsh draws that shook his whole frame.

  Looking at him more closely, Wendy's eyes widened. One arm of the parka he was wearing was blackened and singed. One side of it had been ripped open. There was blood in his hair and a shallow but ugly scratch down the back of his neck.

  (My God, what's happened to him?)

  "Danny!" the hoarse, petulant voice roared from above them. "Get out here, goddammit!"

  There was no time to wonder about it now. She began to shake him, her face twisting at the flare of agony in her ribs. Her side felt hot and massive and swollen.

  (What if they're poking my lung whenever I move?)

  There was no help for that, either. If Jack found Danny, he would kill him, beat him to death with that mallet as he had tried to do to her.

  So she shook Hallorann, and then began to slap the unbruised side of his face lightly.

  "Wake up," she said. "Mr. Hallorann, you've got to wake up. Please ... please ..."

  From overhead, the restless booming sounds of the mallet as Jack Torrance looked for his son.

  Danny stood with his back against the door, looking at the right angle where the hallways joined. The steady, irregular booming sound of the mallet against the walls grew louder. The thing that was after him screamed and howled and cursed. Dream and reality had joined together without a seam.

  It came around the corner.

  In a way, what Danny felt was relief. It was not his father. The mask of face and body had been ripped and shredded and made into a bad joke. It was not his daddy, not this Saturday Night Shock Show horror with its rolling eyes and hunched and hulking shoulders and blood-drenched shirt. It was not his daddy.

  "Now, by God," it breathed. It wiped its lips with a shaking hand. "Now you'll find out who is the boss around here. You'll see. It's not you they want. It's me. Me. Me!"

  It slashed out with the scarred hammer, its double head now shapeless and splintered with countless impacts. It struck the wall, cutting a circle in the silk paper. Plaster dust puffed out. It began to grin.

  "Let's see you pull any of your fancy tricks now," it muttered. "I wasn't born yesterday, you know. Didn't just fall off the hay truck, by God. I'm going to do my fatherly duty by you, boy."

  Danny said: "You're not my daddy."

  It stopped. For a moment it actually looked uncertain, as if not sure who or what it was. Then it began to walk again. The hammer whistled out, struck a door panel and made it boom hollowly.

  "You're a liar," it said. "Who else would I be? I have the two birthmarks, I have the cupped navel, even the pecker, my boy. Ask your mother."

  "You're a mask," Danny said. "Just a false face. The only reason the hotel needs to use you is that you aren't as dead as the other
s. But when it's done with you, you won't be anything at all. You don't scare me."

  "I'll scare you!" it howled. The mallet whistled fiercely down, smashing into the rug between Danny's feet. Danny didn't flinch. "You lied about me! You connived with her! You plotted against me! And you cheated! You copied that final exam!" The eyes glared out at him from beneath the furred brows. There was an expression of lunatic cunning in them. "I'll find it, too. It's down in the basement somewhere. I'll find it. They promised me I could look all I want." It raised the mallet again.

  "Yes, they promise," Danny said, "but they lie."

  The mallet hesitated at the top of its swing.

  Hallorann had begun to come around, but Wendy had stopped patting his cheeks. A moment ago the words You cheated! You copied that final exam! had floated down through the elevator shaft, dim, barely audible over the wind. From somewhere deep in the west wing. She was nearly convinced they were on the third floor and that Jack--whatever had taken possession of Jack--had found Danny. There was nothing she or Hallorann could do now.

  "Oh doc," she murmured. Tears blurred her eyes.

  "Son of a bitch broke my jaw," Hallorann muttered thickly, "and my head ..." He worked to sit up. His right eye was purpling rapidly and swelling shut. Still, he saw Wendy.

  "Missus Torrance--"

  "Shhhh," she said.

  "Where is the boy, Missus Torrance?"

  "On the third floor," she said. "With his father."

  "They lie," Danny said again. Something had gone through his mind, flashing like a meteor, too quick, too bright to catch and hold. Only the tail of the thought remained.

  (it's down in the basement somewhere)

  (you will remember what your father forgot)

  "You ... you shouldn't speak that way to your father," it said hoarsely. The mallet trembled, came down. "You'll only make things worse for yourself. Your ... your punishment. Worse." It staggered drunkenly and stared at him with maudlin self-pity that began to turn to hate. The mallet began to rise again.

  "You're not my daddy," Danny told it again. "And if there's a little bit of my daddy left inside you, he knows they lie here. Everything is a lie and a cheat. Like the loaded dice my daddy got for my Christmas stocking last Christmas, like the presents they put in the store windows and my daddy says there's nothing in them, no presents, they're just empty boxes. Just for show, my daddy says. You're it, not my daddy. You're the hotel. And when you get what you want, you won't give my daddy anything because you're selfish. And my daddy knows that. You had to make him drink the Bad Stuff. That's the only way you could get him, you lying false face."