The Shining (The Shining #1)(43)

"Ah-sure," Danny said. "Tournament play. Stroke. Nurrrrr..."

"Danny-"

"Roque!" Danny said, his voice suddenly deep, almost manlike. "Roque. Stroke. The roque mallet... has two sides. Gaaaaaa-"

"Oh Jack my God what's wrong with him?"

Jack grabbed the boy's elbows and shook him hard. Danny's head rolled limply backward and then snapped forward like a balloon on a stick.

"Roque. Stroke. Redrum."

Jack shook him again, and Danny's eyes suddenly cleared. His toothbrush fell out of his hand and onto the tiled floor with a small click.

"What?" he asked, looking around. He saw his father kneeling before him, Wendy standing by the wall. "What?" Danny asked again, with rising alarm. "W-W-WuhWhat's wr-r-r-"

"Don't stutter!" Jack suddenly screamed into his face. Danny cried out in shock, his body going tense, trying to draw away from his father, and then he collapsed into tears. Stricken, Jack pulled him close. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, doc. Please. Don't cry. I'm sorry. Everything's okay."

The water ran ceaselessly in the basin, and Wendy felt that she had suddenly stepped into some grinding nightmare where time ran backward, backward to the time when her drunken husband had broken her son's arm and had then mewled over him in almost the exact same words.

(Oh honey. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, doc. Please. So sorry.)

She ran to them both, pried Danny out of Jack's arms somehow (she saw the look of angry reproach on his face but filed it away for later consideration), and lifted him up. She walked him back into the small bedroom, Danny's arms clasped around her neck, Jack trailing them.

She sat down on Danny's bed and rocked him back and forth, soothing him with nonsensical words repeated over and over. She looked up at Jack and there was only worry in his eyes now. He raised questioning eyebrows at her. She shook her head faintly.

"Danny," she said. "Danny, Danny, Danny. 'S okay, doc. 'S fine."

At last Danny was quiet, only faintly trembling in her arms. Yet it was Jack he spoke to first, Jack who was now sitting beside them on the bed, and she felt the old faint pang

(It's him first and it's always been him first)

of jealousy. Jack had shouted at him, she had comforted him, yet it was to his father that Danny said,

"I'm sorry if I was bad."

"Nothing to be sorry for, doc." Jack ruffled his hair. "What the hell happened in there?"

Danny shook his head slowly, dazedly. "I... I don't know. Why did you tell me to stop stuttering, Daddy? I don't stutter."

"Of course not," Jack said heartily, but Wendy felt a cold finger touch her heart. Jack suddenly looked scared, as if he'd seen something that might just have been a ghost.

"Something about the timer..." Danny muttered.

"What?" Jack was leaning forward, and Danny flinched in her arms.

"Jack, you're scaring him!" she said, and her voice was high, accusatory. It suddenly came to her that they were all scared. But of what?

"I don't know, I don't know," Danny was saying to his father. "What... what did I say, Daddy?"

"Nothing," Jack muttered. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his mouth with it. Wendy had a moment of that sickening time-is-runningbackward feeling again. It was a gesture she remembered well from his drinking days.

"Why did you lock the door, Danny?" she asked gently. "Why did you do that?"

"Tony," he said. "Tony told me to."

They exchanged a glance over the top of his head.

"Did Tony say why, son?" Jack asked quietly.

"I was brushing my teeth and I was thinking about my reading," Danny said. "Thinking real bard. And... and I saw Tony way down in the mirror. He said he had to show me again."

"You mean he was behind you?" Wendy asked.

"No, he was in the mirror." Danny was very emphatic on this point. "Way down deep. And then I went through the mirror. The next thing I remember Daddy was shaking me and I thought I was being bad again."

Jack winced as if struck.

"No, doc," he said quietly.

"Tony told you to lock the door?" Wendy asked, brushing his hair.

"Yes."

"And what did he want to show you?"

Danny tensed in her arms; it was as if the muscles in his body had turned into something like piano wire. "I don't remember," he said, distraught. "I don't remember. Don't ask me. I... I don't remember nothing!"

"Shh," Wendy said, alarmed. She began to rock him again. "It's all right if you don't remember, bon. Sure it is."

At last Danny began to relax again.

"Do you want me to stay a little while? Read you a story?"

"No. Just the night light." He looked shyly at his father. "Would you stay, Daddy? For a minute?"

"Sure, doc."

Wendy sighed. "I'll be in the living room, Jack."

"Okay."

She got up and watched as Danny slid under the covers. He seemed very small.

"Are you sure you're okay, Danny?"

"I'm okay. Just plug in Snoopy, Mom."