The Shining

He had started The Little School in the same optimistic vein. But lately he had begun to choose up sides, and worse still, he had come to loathe his hero, Gary Benson. Originally conceived as a bright boy more cursed with money than blessed with it, a boy who wanted more than anything to compile a good record so he could go to a good university because he had earned admission and not because his father had pulled strings, he had become to Jack a kind of simpering Goody Two-shoes, a postulant before the altar of knowledge rather than a sincere acolyte, an outward paragon of Boy Scout virtues, inwardly cynical, filled not with real brilliance (as he had first been conceived) but only with sly animal cu

He hadn't been able to finish the play.

Now he sat looking down at it, scowling, wondering if there was any way he could salvage the situation. He didn't really think there was. He bad begun with one play and it had somehow turned into another, presto-chango. Well, what the hell. Either way it had been done before. Either way it was a load of shit. And why was he driving himself crazy about it tonight anyway? After the day just gone by it was no wonder he couldn't think straight.

“-get him down?”

He looked up, trying to blink the cobwebs away. “Huh?”

“I said, how are we going to get him down? We've got to get him out of here, Jack.”

For a moment his wits were so scattered that he wasn't even sure what she was talking about. Then he realized and uttered a short, barking laugh.

“You say that as if it were so easy.”

“I didn't mean-”

“No problem, Wendy. I'll just change clothes in that telephone booth down in the lobby and fly him to Denver on my back. Superman Jack Torrance, they called me in my salad days.”

Her face registered slow hurt.

“I understand the problem, Jack. The radio is broken. The snow… but you have to understand Da

“But he did,” Jack said, a trifle shortly. He had been frightened at Da

“All the same,” she said. She came to him and sat on the end of the bed by his desk. Her face was both surprised and worried. “Jack, the bruises on his neck! Something got at him! And I want him away from it!”

“Don't shout,” he said. “My head aches, Wendy. I'm as worried about this as you are, so please… don't… shout.”

“All right,” she said, lowering her voice. “I won't shout. But I don't understand you, Jack. Someone is in here with us. And not a very nice someone, either. We have to get down to Sidewinder, not just Da

“ 'We have to get down, we have to get down,' you keep saying that. You must think I really am Superman.”

“I think you're my husband,” she said softly, and looked down at her hands.

His temper flared. He slammed the playscript down, knocking the edges of the pile out of true again and crumpling the sheets on the bottom.

“It's time you got some of the home truths into you, Wendy. You don't seem to have internalized them, as the sociologists say. They're knocking around up in your head like a bunch of loose cueballs. You need to shoot them into the pockets. You need to understand that we are snowed in.”

Da

“Don't wake him up, Jack. Please.”

He glanced over at Da

“Don't,” she said, and put a hand on his shoulder. He leaned his head against it. She brushed his hair with her other hand. “I guess you've got a right, after what I accused you of. Sometimes I am like my mother. I can be a bitch. But you have to understand that some things… are hard to get over. You have to understand that.”

“Do you mean his arm?” His lips had thi

“Yes,” Wendy said, and then she rushed on: “But it's not just you. I worry when he goes out to play. I worry about him wanting a two-wheeler next year, even one with training wheels. I worry about his teeth and his eyesight and about this thing, what he calls his shine. I worry. Because he's little and he seems very fragile and because… because something in this hotel seems to want him. And it will go through us to get him if it has to. That's why we must get him out, Jack. I know that! I feel that! We must get him out!”

Her hand had tightened painfully on his shoulder in her agitation, but he didn't move away. One hand found the firm weight of her left breast and he began to stroke it through her shirt.

“Wendy,” he said, and stopped. She waited for him to rearrange whatever he had to say. His strong hand on her breast felt good, soothing. “I could maybe snowshoe him down. He could walk part of the way himself, but I would mostly have to carry him. It would mean camping out one, two, maybe three nights. That would mean building a travois to carry supplies and bedrolls on. We have the AM/FM radio, so we could pick a day when the weather forecast called for a three-day spell of good weather. But if the forecast was wrong,” he finished, his voice soft and measured, “I think we might die.”

Her face had paled. It looked shiny, almost ghostly. He continued to stroke her breast, rubbing the ball of his thumb gently over the nipple.

She made a soft sound-from his words or in reaction to his gentle pressure on her breast, he couldn't tell. He raised his hand slightly and undid the top button of her shirt. Wendy shifted her legs slightly. All at once her jeans seemed too tight, slightly irritating in a pleasant sort of way.

“It would mean leaving you alone because you can't snowshoe worth beans. It would be maybe three days of not knowing. Would you want that?” His hand dropped to the second button, slipped it, and the begi