The Shining (The Shining #1)(87)

"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 didn't talk about it because he didn't 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 couldn't 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 don't 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 mother's br**sts as he talked.

"I went in," he said. "I stole the passkey and went in. It was like I couldn't help myself. I had to know. And she... the lady... was in the tub. She was dead. All swelled up. She was nuh-nuh... didn't 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 wasn't even thinking, not the way you and Daddy think. It was black... it was hurt-think... 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 didn't 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... you're not there, go away, you're not there... she would go away. But it didn't 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... s"

"Stop now, shhh," Wendy said, alarmed. "Stop, Danny. It's 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 isn't 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 wasn't 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 Wendy's 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.

"I'm going up to that room, what did you think I was going to do? Have coffee? "

"No! Don't, Jack, please don't!"

"Wendy, if there's someone else in the hotel, we have to know."

"Don't you dare leave us alone!" she shrieked at him. Spittle flew from her lips with the force of her cry.

Jack said: "Wendy, that's a remarkable imitation of your mom."

She burst into tears then, unable to cover her face because Danny was on her lap.

"I'm sorry," Jack said. "But I have to, you know. I'm the goddam caretaker. It's what I'm 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.

"Don't worry, mommy," Danny said. "He'll be all right. He doesn't shine. Nothing here can hurt him."

Through her tears she said, "No, I don't believe that."

Chapter 30. 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 claustrophobe's 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 Specialite 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 simpdtico.