The Shining

“Yes,” she said. “I sure do. I thought he was having a convulsion.”

“Another time we were in the park,” he said. “Just Da

“Yes, but-”

“And he's always coming in with cuts and scraped elbows. His shins look like a battlefield in distress. And when you ask him how he got this one or that one, he just says `Oh, I was playing,' and that's the end of it.”

“Jack, all kids get bumped and bruised up. With little boys it's almost constant from the time they learn to walk until they're twelve or thirteen.”

“And I'm sure Da

“All right. But those bruises were fingers. I'd swear to it. He didn't get them falling down.”

“He goes into a trance,” Jack said. “Maybe he sees something that happened in that room. An argument. Maybe a suicide. Violent emotions. It isn't like watching a movie; he's in a highly suggestible state. He's right in the damn thing. His subconscious is maybe visualizing whatever happened in a symbolic way… as a dead woman who's alive again, zombie, undead, ghoul, you pick your term.”

“You're giving me goose-bumps,” she said thickly.

“I'm giving myself a few. I'm no psychiatrist, but it seems to fit so well. The walking dead woman as a symbol for dead emotions, dead lives, that just won't give up and go away… but because she's a subconscious figure, she's also him. In the trance state, the conscious Da

“Stop,” she said. “I get the picture. I think that's more frightening than having a stranger creeping around the halls, Jack. You can move away from a stranger. You can't move away from yourself. You're talking about schizophrenia.”

“Of a very limited type,” he said, but a trifle uneasily. “And of a very special nature. Because he does seem able to read thoughts, and he really does seem to have precognitive flashes from time to time. I can't think of that as mental illness no matter how hard I try. We all have schizo deposits in us anyway. I think as Da

“If you're right, then it's imperative that we get him out. Whatever he has, this hotel is making it worse.”

“I wouldn't say that,” he objected. “If he'd done as he was told, he never would have gone up to that room in the first place. It never would have happened.”

“My God, Jack! Are you implying that being half-strangled was a… a fitting punishment for being off limits?”

“No… no. Of course not. But-”

“No buts,” she said, shaking her head violently. “The truth is, we're guessing. We don't have any idea when he might turn a corner and run into one of those… air pockets, one-reel horror movies, whatever they are. We have to get him away.” She laughed a little in the darkness. “Next thing we'll be seeing things.”

“Don't talk nonsense,” he said, and in the darkness of the room he saw the hedge lions bunching around the path, no longer flanking it but guarding it, hungry November lions. Cold sweat sprang out on his brow.

“You didn't really see anything, did you?” she was asking. “I mean, when you went up to that room. You didn't see anything?”

The lions were gone. Now he saw a pink pastel shower curtain with a dark shape lounging behind it. The closed door. That muffled, hurried thump, and sounds after it that might have been ru

“Nothing,” he said, and that was true. He had been strung tip, not sure of what was happening. He hadn't had a chance to sift through his thoughts for a reasonable explanation concerning the bruises on his son's neck. He had been pretty damn suggestible himself. Hallucinations could sometimes be catching.

“And you haven't changed your mind? About the snowmobile, I mean?”

His hands clamped into sudden tight fists

(Stop nagging me!)

by his sides. “I said I would, didn't I? I will. Now go to sleep. It's been a long hard day.”

“And how,” she said. There was a rustle of bedclothes as she turned toward him and kissed his shoulder. “I love you, Jack.”

“I love you too,” he said, but he was only mouthing the words. His hands were still clenched into fists. They felt like rocks on the ends of his arms. The pulse beat prominently in his forehead. She hadn't said a word about what was going to happen to them after they got down, when the party was over. Not one word. It had been Da

Blood had begun to trickle down from his palms. Like stigmata, oh yes. He squeezed tighter, savaging himself with pain. His wife was asleep beside him, why not? There were no problems. He had agreed to take her and Da