The Shining

“That kid,” Jack muttered. His jaws were clamped together, the muscles in the cheeks standing out. “We don't deserve him.”

“You have him, all the same,” Edmonds said dryly. “At any rate, he retires into a fantasy world from time to time. Nothing unusual about that; lots of kids do. As I recall, I had my own invisible friend when I was Da

“Yes,” Wendy said.

“Have you ever pointed it out to him?”

“No,” Jack said. “Should we?”

“Why bother? Let him realize it in his own time, by his own logic. You see, Da

“At Great Barrington!” Wendy cried. “But how could he know those things? It's eerie, the things he comes out with sometimes. Almost as if-”

“He had second sight?” Edmonds asked, smiling.

“He was born with a caul,” Wendy said weakly.

Edmonds's smile became a good, hearty laugh. Jack and Wendy exchanged a glance and then also smiled, both of them amazed at how easy it was. Da

“Next you'll be telling me he can levitate,” Edmonds said, still smiling. “No, no, no, I'm afraid not. It's not extrasensory but good old human perception, which in Da

“As for the amusement park at Great Barrington, whose idea was that originally? Yours or his?”

“His, of course,” Wendy said. “They advertised on all the morning children's programs. He was wild to go. But the thing is, Doctor, we couldn't afford to take him. And we had told him so.”

“Then a men's magazine I'd sold a story to back in 1971 sent a check for fifty dollars,” Jack said. “They were reprinting the story in an a

Edmonds shrugged. “Wish fulfillment plus a lucky coincidence.”

“Goddammit, I bet that's just right,” Jack said.

Edmonds smiled a little. “And Da

Wendy nodded-of course she thought Da

Aloud she said, “Then why the nightmares now? Why did Tony tell him to lock the bathroom door?”

“I believe it's because Tony has outlived his usefulness,” Edmonds said. “He was born-Tony, not Da

Ominous quiet, yes, that phrase was the real thing, anyway. The stiff, tense meals where the only conversation had been please pass the butter or Da

(dear God, do old scars ever stop hurting?)

horribly, horribly true.

Edmonds resumed, “But things have changed. You know, schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics. They have invisible friends. They may go and sit in the closet when they're depressed, withdrawing from the world. They attach talismanic importance to a special blanket, or a teddy bear, or a stuffed tiger. They suck their thumbs. When an adult sees things that aren't there, we consider him ready for the rubber room. When a child says he's seen a troll in his bedroom or a vampire outside the window, we simply smile indulgently. We have a one-sentence explanation that explains the whole range of such phenomena in children-”

“He'll grow out of it,” Jack said.

Edmonds blinked. “My very words,” he said. “Yes. Now I would guess that Da

“And become autistic?” Wendy asked. She had read about autism. The word itself frightened her; it sounded like dread and white silence.

“Possible but not necessarily. He might simply have entered Tony's world someday and never come back to what he calls `real things. ' “

“God,” Jack said.

“But now the basic situation has changed drastically. Mr. Torrance no longer drinks. You are in a new place where conditions have forced the three of you into a tighter family unit than ever before-certainly tighter than my own, where my wife and kids may see me for only two or three hours a day. To my mind, he is in the perfect healing situation. And I think the very fact that he is able to differentiate so sharply between Tony's world and `real things' says a lot about the fundamentally healthy state of his mind. He says that you two are no longer considering divorce. Is he as right as I think he is?”

“Yes,” Wendy said, and Jack squeezed her hand tightly, almost painfully. She squeezed back.

Edmonds nodded. “He really doesn't need Tony anymore. Da

He stood up, and the Torrances stood also.

“As I said, I'm not a psychiatrist. If the nightmares are still continuing when your job at the Overlook ends next spring, Mr. Torrance, I would strongly urge you to take him to this man in Boulder.”

“I will.”

“Well, let's go out and tell him he can go home,” Edmonds said.