The Shining

“… dream, I guess it was a dream, but it was so real, I

… it was my mother saying that Daddy was going to be on the radio and I… he was… he was telling me to… I don't know, he was yelling at me… and so I broke the radio… to shut him up. To shut him up. He's dead. I don't even want to dream about him. He's dead. My God, Wendy, my God. I never had a nightmare like that. I never want to have another one. Christ! It was awful.”

“You just fell asleep in the office?”

“No… not here. Downstairs.” He was straightening a little now, his weight coming off her, and the steady backand-forth motion of his head first slowed and then stopped.

“I was looking through those old papers. Sitting on a chair I set up down there. Milk receipts. Dull stuff. And I guess I just drowsed off. That's when I started to dream. I must have sleepwalked up here.” He essayed a shaky little laugh against her neck. “Another first.”

“Where is Da

“I don't know. Isn't he with you?”

“He wasn't… downstairs with you?”

He looked over his shoulder and his face tightened at what he saw on her face.

“Never going to let me forget that, are you, Wendy?”

“Jack-”

“When I'm on my deathbed you'll lean over and say, `It serves you right, remember the time you broke Da

“Jack!”

“Jack what?” he asked hotly, and jumped to his feet. “Are you denying that's what you're thinking? That I hurt him? That I hurt him once before and I could hurt him again?”

“I want to know where he is, that's all!”

“Go ahead, yell your fucking head off, that'll make everything okay, won't it? “

She turned and walked out the door.

He watched her go, frozen for a moment, a blotter covered with fragments of broken glass in one hand. Then he dropped it into the wastebasket, went after her, and caught her by the lobby desk. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around. Her face was carefully set.

“Wendy, I'm sorry. It was the dream. I'm upset. Forgive?”

“Of course,” she said, her face not changing expression. Her wooden shoulders slipped out of his hands. She walked to the middle of the lobby and called: “Hey, doc! Where are you?”

Silence came back. She walked toward the double lobby doors opened one of them, and stepped out onto the path Jack had shoveled. It was more like a trench; the packed and drifted snow through which the path was cut came to her shoulders. She called him again, her breath coming out in a white plume. When she came back in she had begun to look scared.

Controlling his irritation with her, he said reasonably: “Are you sure he's not sleeping in his room?”

“I told you, he was playing somewhere when I was knitting. I could hear him downstairs.”

“Did you fall asleep?”

“What's that got to do with it? Yes. Da

“Did you look in his room when you came downstairs just now?”

“I-”She stopped.

He nodded. “I didn't really think so.”

He started up the stairs without waiting for her. She followed him, halfru

“What-?” she began, and followed his gaze.

Da

“Da

It broke Jack's paralysis and they rushed up the stairs together to where he stood. Wendy fell on her knees beside him and swept the boy into her arms. Da

“Da

“Don't you touch him!” Wendy hissed. She clutched Da

“What? Wendy, what the hell are you t-”

“Don't you touch him! I'll kill you if you lay your hands on him again!”

“Wendy-”

“You bastard!”

She turned and ran down the rest of the stairs to the first floor. Da

He stood for an unknown length of time, literally paralyzed by all that had happened in such a short space of time. His dream was still with him, painting everything a slightly unreal shade. It was as if he had taken a very mild mescaline hit. Had he maybe hurt Da

(He fell down the stairs, Doctor.)

He would never hurt Da

(How could I know the bug bomb was defective?)

Never in his life had he been willfully vicious when he was sober.

(Except when you almost killed George Hatfield.)

“No!” he cried into the darkness. He brought both fists crashing down on his legs, again and again and again.

Wendy sat in the overstuffed chair by the window with Da

The confusion had receded a little bit in her mind, but she now discovered something even worse behind it. Panic.

Jack had done this, she had no doubt of it. His denials meant nothing to her. She thought it was perfectly possible that Jack had tried to throttle Da

There was really only one question, and it was asked in a mental voice of utter coldness and pragmatism, the voice of her maternity, a cold and passionless voice once it was directed away from the closed circle of mother and child and out toward Jack. It was a voice that spoke of self-preservation only after son-preservation and its question was:

(Exactly how dangerous is he?)

He had denied doing it. He had been horrified at the bruises, at Da

But she could see no further than she and Da

She crooned to Da