The Shining

ain. Again. Wendy saw lumbering, insectile forms rise into the air, droning.

"Get a magazine!" he yelled over his shoulder. "Kill them!"

"Wasps?" she said, and for a moment she was inside herself, almost detached in her realization. That her mind cross-patched, and knowledge was connected to emotion. "Wasps, oh Jesus, Jack, you said--"

"Shut the fuck up and kill them!" he roared. "Will you do what I say!"

One of them had landed on Danny's reading desk. She took a coloring book off his worktable and slammed it down on the wasp. It left a viscous brown smear.

"There's another one on the curtain," he said, and ran out past her with Danny in his arms.

He took the boy into their bedroom and put him on Wendy's side of the makeshift double. "Lie right there, Danny. Don't come back until I tell you. Understand?"

His face puffed and streaked with tears, Danny nodded.

"That's my brave boy."

Jack ran back down the hall to the stairs. Behind him he heard the coloring book slap twice, and then his wife screamed in pain. He didn't slow but went down the stairs two by two into the darkened lobby. He went through Ullman's office into the kitchen, slamming the heavy part of his thigh into the corner of Ullman's oak desk, barely feeling it. He slapped on the kitchen overheads and crossed to the sink. The washed dishes from supper were still heaped up in the drainer, where Wendy had left them to drip-dry. He snatched the big Pyrex bowl off the top. A dish fell to the floor and exploded. Ignoring it, he turned and ran back through the office and up the stairs.

Wendy was standing outside Danny's door, breathing hard. Her face was the color of table linen. Her eyes were shiny and flat; her hair hung damply against her neck. "I got all of them," she said dully, "but one stung me. Jack, you said they were all dead." She began to cry.

He slipped past her without answering and carried the Pyrex bowl over to the nest by Danny's bed. It was still. Nothing there. On the outside, anyway. He slammed the bowl down over the nest.

"There," he said. "Come on."

They went back into their bedroom.

"Where did it get you?" he asked her.

"My ... on my wrist."

"Let's see."

She showed it to him. Just above the bracelet of lines between wrist and palm, there was a small circular hole. The flesh around it was puffing up.

"Are you allergic to stings?" he asked. "Think hard! If you are, Danny might be. The fucking little bastards got him five or six times."

"No," she said, more calmly. "I ... I just hate them, that's all. Hate them."

Danny was sitting on the foot of the bed, holding his left hand and looking at them. His eyes, circled with the white of shock, looked at Jack reproachfully.

"Daddy, you said you killed them all. My hand ... it really hurts."

"Let's see it, doc ... no, I'm not going to touch it. That would make it hurt even more. Just hold it out."

He did and Wendy moaned. "Oh Danny ... oh, your poor hand!"

Later the doctor would count eleven separate stings. Now all they saw was a dotting of small holes, as if his palm and fingers had been sprinkled with grains of red paper. The swelling was bad. His hand had begun to look like one of those cartoon images where Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck has just slammed himself with a hammer.

"Wendy, go get that spray stuff in the bathroom," he said.

She went after it, and he sat down next to Danny and slipped an arm around his shoulders.

"After we spray your hand, I want to take some Polaroids of it, doc. Then you sleep the rest of the night with us, 'kay?"

"Sure," Danny said. "But why are you going to take pictures?"

"So maybe we can sue the ass out of some people."

Wendy came back with a spray tube in the shape of a chemical fire extinguisher.

"This won't hurt, honey," she said, taking off the cap.

Danny held out his hand and she sprayed both sides until it gleamed. He let out a long, shuddery sigh.

"Does it smart?" she asked.

"No. Feels better."

"Now these. Crunch them up." She held out five orange-flavored baby aspirin. Danny took them and popped them into his mouth one by one.

"Isn't that a lot of aspirin?" Jack asked.

"It's a lot of stings," she snapped at him angrily. "You go and get rid of that nest, John Torrance. Right now."

"Just a minute."

He went to the dresser and took his Polaroid Square Shooter out of the top drawer. He rummaged deeper and found some flashcubes.

"Jack, what are you doing?" she asked, a little hysterically.

"He's gonna take some pictures of my hand," Danny said gravely, "and then we're gonna sue the ass out of some people. Right, Dad?"

"Right," Jack said grimly. He had found the flash attachment, and he jabbed it onto the camera. "Hold it out, son. I figure about five thousand dollars a sting."

"What are you talking about?" Wendy nearly screamed.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "I followed the directions on that fucking bug bomb. We're going to sue them. The damn thing was defective. Had to have been. How else can you explain this?"

"Oh," she said in a small voice.

He took four pictures, pulling out each covered print for Wendy to time on the small locket watch she wore around her neck. Danny, fascinated with the idea that his stung hand might be worth thousands and thousands of dollars, began to lose some of his fright and take an active interest. The hand throbbed dully, and he had a small headache.

When Jack had put the camera away and spread the prints out on top of the dresser to dry, Wendy said: "Should we take him to the doctor tonight?"

"Not unless he's really in pain," Jack said. "If a person has a strong allergy to wasp venom, it hits within thirty seconds."

"Hits? What do you--"

"A coma. Or convulsions."

"Oh. Oh my Jesus." She cupped her hands over her elbows and hugged herself, looking pale and wan.

"How do you feel, son? Think you could sleep?"

Danny blinked at them. The nightmare had faded to a dull, featureless background in his mind, but he was still frightened.

"If I can sleep with you."

"Of course," Wendy said. "Oh honey, I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, Mommy."

She began to cry again, and Jack put his hands on her shoulders. "Wendy, I swear to you that I followed the directions."

"Will you get rid of it in the morning? Please?"

"Of course I will."

The three of them got in bed together, and Jack was about to snap off the light over the bed when he paused and pushed the covers back instead. "Want a picture of the nest, too."

"Come right back."

"I will."

He went to the dresser, got the camera and the last flashcube, and gave Danny a closed thumb-and-forefinger circle. Danny smiled and gave it back with his good hand.

Quite a kid, he thought as he walked down to Danny's room. All of that and then some.

The overhead was still on. Jack crossed to the bunk setup, and as he glanced at the table beside it, his skin crawled into goose flesh. The short hairs on his neck prickled and tried to stand erect.

He could hardly see the nest through the clear Pyrex bowl. The inside of the glass was crawling with wasps. It was hard to tell how many. Fifty at least. Maybe a hundred.

His heart thudding slowly in his chest, he took his pictures and then set the camera down to wait for them to develop. He wiped his lips with the palm of his hand. One thought played over and over in his mind, echoing with (You lost your temper. You lost your temper. You lost your temper.)

an almost superstitious dread. They had come back. He had killed the wasps but they had come back.

In his mind he heard himself screaming into his frightened, crying son's face: Don't stutter!

He wiped his lips again.

He went to Danny's worktable, rummaged in its drawers, and came up with a big jigsaw puzzle with a fiberboard backing. He took it over to the bedtable and carefully slid the bowl and the nest onto it. The wasps buzzed angrily inside their prison. Then, putting his hand firmly on top of the bowl so it wouldn't slip, he went out into the hall.

"Coming to bed, Jack?" Wendy asked.

"Coming to bed, Daddy?"

"Have to go downstairs for a minute," he said, making his voice light.

How had it happened? How in God's name?

The bomb sure hadn't been a dud. He had seen the thick white smoke start to puff out of it when he had pulled the ring. And when he had gone up two hours later, he had shaken a drift of small dead bodies out of the hole in the top.

Then how? Spontaneous regeneration?

That was crazy. Seventeenth-century bullshit. Insects didn't regenerate. And even if wasp eggs could mature full-grown insects in twelve hours, this wasn't the season in which the queen laid. That happened in April or May. Fall was their dying time.

A living contradiction, the wasps buzzed furiously under the bowl.

He took them downstairs and through the kitchen. In back there was a door which gave on the outside. A cold night wind blew against his nearly naked body, and his feet went numb almost instantly against the cold concrete of the platform he was standing on, the platform where milk deliveries were made during the hotel's operating season. He put the puzzle and the bowl down carefully, and when he stood up he looked at the thermometer nailed outside the door. FRESH UP WITH 7-UP, the thermometer said, and the mercury stood at an even twenty-five degrees. The cold would kill them by morning. He went in and shut the door firmly. After a moment's thought he locked it, too.

He crossed the kitchen again and shut off the lights. He stood in the darkness for a moment, thinking, wanting a drink. Suddenly the hotel seemed full of a thousand stealthy sounds: creakings and groans and the sly sniff of the wind under the eaves where more wasps' nests might be hanging like deadly fruit.

They had come back.

And suddenly he found that he didn't like the Overlook so well anymore, as if it wasn't wasps that had stung his son, wasps that had miraculously lived through the bug bomb assault, but the hotel itself.

His last thought before going upstairs to his wife and son

(from now on you will hold your temper. No Matter What.)

was firm and hard and sure.

As he went down the hall to them he wiped his lips with the back of his hand.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


THE DOCTOR'S OFFICE


Stripped to his underpants, lying on the examination table, Danny Torrance looked very small. He was looking up at Dr. ("Just call me Bill") Edmonds, who was wheeling a large black machine up beside him. Danny rolled his eyes to get a better look at it.

"Don't let it scare you, guy," Bill Edmonds said. "It's an electroencephalograph, and it doesn't hurt."

"Electro--"

"We call it EEG for short. I'm going to hook a bunch of wires to your head--no, not stick them in, only tape them--and the pens in this part of the gadget will record your brain waves."

"Like on The Six Million Dollar Man?"

"About the same. Would you like to be like Steve Austin when you grow up?"

"No way," Danny said as the nurse began to tape the wires to a number of tiny shaved spots on his scalp. "My daddy says that someday he'll get a short circuit and then he'll be up sh ... he'll be up the creek."

"I know that creek well," Dr. Edmonds said amiably. "I've been up it a few times myself, sans paddle. An EEG can tell us lots of things, Danny."

"Like what?"

"Like for instance if you have epilepsy. That's a little problem where--"

"Yeah, I know what epilepsy is."

"Really?"

"Sure. There was a kid in my nursery school back in Vermont--I went to nursery school when I was a little kid--and he had it. He wasn't supposed to use the flashboard."

"What was that, Dan?" He had turned on the machine. Thin lines began to trace their way across graph paper.

"It had all these lights, all different colors. And when you turned it on, some colors would flash but not all. And you had to count the colors and if you pushed the right button, you could turn it off. Brent couldn't use that."

"That's because bright flashing lights sometimes cause an epileptic seizure."

"You mean using the flashboard might've made Brent pitch a fit?"

Edmonds and the nurse exchanged a brief, amused glance. "Inelegantly but accurately put, Danny."

"What?"

"I said you're right, except you should say 'seizure' instead of 'pitch a fit.' That's not nice ... Okay, lie just as still as a mouse now."

"Okay."

"Danny, when you have these ... whatever they ares, do you ever recall seeing bright flashing lights before?"

"No."

"Funny noises? Ringing? Or chimes like a doorbell?"

"Huh-uh."

"How about a funny smell, maybe like oranges or sawdust? Or a smell like something rotten?"

"No, sir."

"Sometimes do you feel like crying before you pass out? Even though you don't feel sad?"

"No way."

"That's fine, then."

"Have I got epilepsy, Dr. Bill?"

"I don't think so, Danny. Just lie still. Almost done."

The machine hummed and scratched for another five minutes and then Dr. Edmonds shut it off.

"All done, guy," Edmonds said briskly. "Let Sally get those electrodes off you and then come into the next room. I want to have a little talk with you. Okay?"

"Sure."

"Sally, you go ahead and give him a tine test before he comes in."

"All right."

Edmonds ripped off the long curl of paper the machine had extruded and went into the next room, looking at it.

"I'm going to prick your arm just a little," the nurse said after Danny had pulled up his pants. "It's to make sure you don't have TB."

"They gave me that at my school just last year," Danny said without much hope.

"But that was a long time ago and you're a big boy now, right?"

"I guess so." Danny sighed, and offered his arm up for sacrifice.

When he had his shirt and shoes on, he went through the sliding door and into Dr. Edmonds's office. Edmonds was sitting on the edge of his desk, swinging his legs thoughtfully.

"Hi, Danny."

"Hi."

"How's that hand now?" He pointed at Danny's left hand, which was lightly bandaged.

"Pretty good."

"Good. I looked at your EEG and it seems fine. But I'm going to send it to a friend of mine in Denver who makes his living reading those things. I just want to make sure."

"Yes, sir."

"Tell me about Tony, Dan."

Danny shuffled his feet. "He's just an invisible friend," he said. "I made him up. To keep me company."

Edmonds laughed and put his hands on Danny's shoulders. "Now that's what your mom and dad say. But this is just between us, guy. I'm your doctor. Tell me the truth and I'll promise not to tell them unless you say I can."

Danny thought about it. He looked at Edmonds and then, with a small effort of concentration, he tried to catch Edmonds's thoughts or at least the color of his mood. And suddenly he got an oddly comforting image in his head: file cabinets, their doors sliding shut one after another, locking with a click. Written on the small tabs in the center of each door was: A-C, SECRET; D-G, SECRET; and so on. This made Danny feel a little easier.

Cautiously he said: "I don't know who Tony is."

"Is he your age?"

"No. He's at least eleven. I think he might be even older. I've never seen him right up close. He might be old enough to drive a car."

"You just see him at a distance, huh?"

"Yes, sir."

"And he always comes just before you pass out?"

"Well, I don't pass out. It's like I go with him. And he shows me things."

"What kind of things?"

"Well ..." Danny debated for a moment and then told Edmonds about Daddy's trunk with all his writing in it, and about how the movers hadn't lost it between Vermont and Colorado after all. It had been right under the stairs all along.

"And your daddy found it where Tony said he would?"

"Oh yes, sir. Only Tony didn't tell me. He showed me."

"I understand. Danny, what did Tony show you last night? When you locked yourself in the bathroom?"

"I don't remember," Danny said quickly.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"A moment ago I said you locked the bathroom door. But that wasn't right, was it? Tony locked the door."

"No, sir. Tony couldn't lock the door because he isn't real. He wanted me to do it, so I did. I locked it."

"Does Tony always show you where lost things are?"

"No, sir. Sometimes he shows me things that are going to happen."

"Really?"

"Sure. Like one time Tony showed me the amusements and wild animal park in Great Barrington. Tony said Daddy was going to take me there for my birthday. He did, too."

"What else does he show you?"

Danny frowned. "Signs. He's always showing me stupid old signs. And I can't read them, hardly ever."

"Why do you suppose Tony would do that, Danny?"

"I don't know." Danny brightened. "But my daddy and mommy are teaching me to read, and I'm trying real hard."

"So you can read Tony's signs."

"Well, I really want to learn. But that too, yeah."

"Do you like Tony, Danny?"

Danny looked at the tile floor and said nothing.

"Danny?"

"It's hard to tell," Danny said. "I used to. I used to hope he'd come every day, because he always showed me good things, especially since Mommy and Daddy don't think about DIVORCE anymore." Dr. Edmonds's gaze sharpened, but Danny didn't notice. He was looking hard at the floor, concentrating on expressing himself. "But now whenever he comes he shows me bad things. Awful things. Like in the bathroom last night. The things he shows me, they sting me like those wasps stung me. Only Tony's things sting me up here." He cocked a finger gravely at his temple, a small boy unconsciously burlesquing suicide.

"What things, Danny?"

"I can't remember!" Danny cried out, agonized. "I'd tell you if I could! It's like I can't remember because it's so bad I don't want to remember. All I can remember when I wake up is REDRUM."

"Red drum or red rum?"

"Rum."

"What's that, Danny?"

"I don't know."

"Danny?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Can you make Tony come now?"

"I don't know. He doesn't always come.