The Shining (The Shining #1)(92)

(?Something I've 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. Jack's 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 there's a snowmobile there's no problem," she said excitedly. "We can all three go down together."

"Wendy, I've never driven a snowmobile in my life."

"It can't be that hard to learn. Back in Vermont you see ten-year-olds driving them in the fields... although what their parents can be thinking of I don't know. And you had a motorcycle when we met." He had, a Honda 350cc. He had traded it in on a Saab shortly after he and Wendy took up residence together.

"I suppose I could," he said slowly. "But I wonder how well it's been maintained. Ullman and Watson... they run this place from May to October. They have summertime minds. I know it won't have gas in it. There may not be plugs or a battery, either. I don't want you to get your hopes up over your head, Wendy."

She was totally excited now, leaning over him, her br**sts 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. There's 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 five-gallons and a two-gallon.

"I'll 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?"

"Doesn't 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 didn't stir.

"And if you can get it running you'll take us out?" she asked from behind him. "On the first day the radio says good weather?"

For a moment he didn't 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. "I'll get it running and we'll 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 br**sts aimed perkily at the ceiling. She was playing with them lazily, flicking at the ni**les. "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 didn't 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 don't know. Not in the Algernon Blackwood sense, that's 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, he's 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 he's in them he sometimes... sees?... things he doesn't understand. If precognitive trances are possible, they're 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. I've 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 I'm 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."