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41. Daylight
Da
Mommy had said: “Look, Da
He looked at them and they were all dead. Their leaves had turned a suffocant brown. The tightly packed branches showed through like the skeletons of halfdismembered corpses. And then his daddy had burst out of the Overlooks big double doors, and he was burning like a torch. His clothes were in flames, his skin had acquired a dark and sinister tan that was growing darker by the moment, his hair was a burning bush.
That was when he woke up, his throat tight with fear, his hands clutching at the sheet and blankets. Had he screamed? He looked over at his mother. Wendy lay on her side, the blankets up to her chin, a sheaf of straw-colored hair lying against her cheek. She looked like a child herself. No, he hadn't screamed.
Lying in bed, looking upward, the nightmare began to drain away. He had a curious feeling that some great tragedy
(fire? explosion?)
had been averted by inches. He let his mind drift out, searching for his daddy, and found him standing somewhere below. In the lobby. Da
(good just one or two would be i don't care sun's over the yardarm somewhere in the world remember how we used to say that al? gin and tonic bourbon with just a dash of bitters scotch and soda rum and coke tweedledum and tweedledee a drink for me and a drink for thee the martians have landed somewhere in the world princeton or houston or stokely on carmichael some fucking place after all tis the season and none of us are)
(GET OUT OF HIS MIND, YOU LITTLE SHIT!)
He recoiled in terror from that mental voice, his eyes widening, his hands tightening into claws on the counterpane. It hadn't been the voice of his father but a clever mimic. A voice he knew. Hoarse, brutal, yet underpointed with a vacuous sort of humor.
Was it so near, then?
He threw the covers back and swung his feet out onto the floor. He kicked his slippers out from under the bed and put them on. He went to the door and pulled it open and hurried up to the main corridor, his slippered feet whispering on the nap of the carpet ru
There was a man on all fours halfway down the corridor, between him and the stairs.
Da
The man looked up at him. His eyes were tiny and red. He was dressed in some sort of silvery, spangled costume. A dog costume, Da
The man's mouth and chin and cheeks were smeared with blood.
He began to growl at Da
“Let me by,” Da
“I'm going to eat you, little boy,” the dogman answered, and suddenly a fusillade of barks came from his gri
Da
“Not by the hair of my chi
He began to prance skittishly forward, making little leaps and snarling.
Da
Da
“Get it up!” the drunken dogman cried out from around the corner. His voice was both violent and despairing. “Get it up, Harry you bitch-bastard! I don't care how many casinos and airlines and movie companies you own! I know what you like in the privacy of your own h-home! Get it up! I'll huff… and I'll puff… until Harry Derwent's all bloowwwwn down!” He ended with a long, chilling howl that seemed to turn into a scream of rage and pain just before it dwindled off.
Da
He closed the door softly and went back up to the intersection of their corridor and the main hall, hoping the dogman would be gone, the way the blood on the walls of the Presidential Suite had been gone. He peeked around the corner carefully.
The man in the dog costume was still there. He had put his head back on and was now prancing on all fours by the stairwell, chasing his tail. He occasionally leaped off the rug and came down making dog grunts in his throat.
“Woof! Woof! Bowwowwow! Grrrrrr!”
These sounds came hollowly out of the mask's stylized snarling mouth, and among them were sounds that might have been sobs or laughter.
Da
But his daddy could come here. And sooner or later his daddy would.
He began to cry, the tears rolling silently down his cheeks. It was too late. They were going to die, all three of them, and when the Overlook opened next late spring, they would be right here to greet the guests along with the rest of the spooks. The woman in the tub. The dogman. The horrible dark thing that had been in the cement tu
(Stop! Stop that now!)
He knuckled the tears furiously from his eyes. He would try as hard as he could to keep that from happening. Not to himself, not to his daddy and mommy. He would try as hard as he could.
He closed his eyes and sent his mind out in a high, hard crystal bolt.
(!!! DICK PLEASE COME QUICK WE'RE IN BAD TROUBLE DICK WE NEED)
And suddenly, in the darkness behind his eyes the thing that chased him down the Overlook's dark halls in his dreams was there, right there, a huge creature dressed in white, its prehistoric club raised over its head:
“I'll make you stop it! You goddam puppy! I'll make you stop it because I am your FATHER!”
“No!” He jerked back to the reality of the bedroom, his eyes wide and staring, the screams tumbling helplessly from his mouth as his mother bolted awake, clutching the sheet to her breasts.
“No Daddy no no no-”
And they both heard the vicious, descending swing of the invisible club, cutting the air somewhere very close, then fading away to silence as he ran to his mother and hugged her, trembling like a rabbit in a snare.