The Shining

“Stop now, shhh,” Wendy said, alarmed. “Stop, Da

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,” Da

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 Da

“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,” Da

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

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 thi

He walked up the hall flipping his Excedrin into his mouth and chewing them one by one. He rounded the corner into the short corridor off the main hall. The door to Room 217 was ajar, and the passkey hung from the lock on its white paddle.

He frowned, feeling a wave of irritation and even real anger. Whatever had come of it, the boy had been trespassing. He had been told, and told bluntly, that certain areas of the hotel were off limits: the equipment shed, the basement, and all of the guest rooms. He would talk to Da

He walked down to the door, removed the passkey, dropped it into his pocket, and stepped inside. The overhead light was on. He glanced at the bed, saw it was not rumpled, and then walked directly across to the bathroom door. A curious certainty had grown in him. Although Watson had mentioned no names or room numbers, Jack felt sure that this was the room the lawyer's wife and her stud had shared, that this was the bathroom where she had been found dead, full of barbiturates and Colorado Lounge booze.

He pushed the mirror-backed bathroom door open and stepped through. The light in here was off. He turned it on and observed the long, Pullman-car room, furnished in the distinctive early nineteen-hundreds-remodeled-in-the-twenties style that seemed common to all Overlook bathrooms, except for the ones on the third floor-those were properly Byzantine, as befitted the royalty, politicians, movie stars, and capos who had stayed there over the years.

The shower curtain, a pallid pastel pink, was drawn protectively around the long claw-footed tub.

(nevertheless they did move)

And for the first time he felt his new sense of sureness (almost cockiness) that had come over him when Da

His anger at Da

The tub was dry and empty.

Relief and irritation vented in a sudden “Pahl” sound that escaped his compressed lips like a very small explosive. The tub had been scrubbed clean at the end of the season; except for the rust stain under the twin faucets, it sparkled. There was a faint but definable smell of cleanser, the kind that can irritate your nose with the smell of its own righteousness for weeks, even months, after it has been used.

He bent down and ran his fingertips along the bottom of the tub. Dry as a bone. Not even a hint of moisture. The boy had been either hallucinating or outright lying. He felt angry again. That was when the bathmat on the floor caught his attention. He frowned down at it. What was a bathmat doing in here? It should be down in the linen cupboard at the end of the wing with the rest of the sheets and towels and pillow slips. All the linen was supposed to be there. Not even the beds were really made up in these guest rooms; the mattresses had been zipped into clear plastic and then covered with bedspreads. He supposed Da

He went back to the bathroom door and stood in it. Everything was all right. The boy had been dreaming. There was not a thing out of place. It was a little puzzling about the bathmat, granted, but the logical explanation was that some chambermaid, hurrying like mad on the last day of the season, had just forgotten to pick it up. Other than that, everything was-

His nostrils flared a little. Disinfectant, that self-righteous smell, cleaner-than-thou. And-

Soap?

Surely not. But once the smell had been identified, it was too clear to dismiss. Soap. And not one of those postcard-size bars of Ivory they provide you with in hotels and motels, either. This scent was light and perfumed, a lady's soap. It had a pink sort of smell. Camay or Lowila, the brand that Wendy had always used in Stovington.

(It's nothing. It's your imagination.)

(yes like the hedges nevertheless they did move)

(They did not move!)

He crossed jerkily to the door which gave on the hall, feeling the irregular thump of a headache begi