by Stephen King
"That's right," she said. "Honey, I think that's enough for tonight."
"A couple more pages, Mommy? Please?"
"No, doc." She closed the red-bound book firmly. "It's bedtime."
"Please?"
"Don't tease me about it, Danny. Mommy's tired."
"Okay." But he looked longingly at the primer.
"Go kiss your father and then wash up. Don't forget to brush."
"Yeah."
He slouched out, a small boy in pajama bottoms with feet and a large flannel top with a football on the front and NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS written on the back.
Jack's typewriter stopped, and she heard Danny's hearty smack. "Night, Daddy."
"Good night, doc. How'd you do?"
"Okay, I guess. Mommy made me stop."
"Mommy was right. It's past eight-thirty. Going to the bathroom?"
"Yeah."
"Good. There's potatoes growing out of your ears. And onions and carrots and chives and--"
Danny's giggle, fading, then cut off by the firm click of the bathroom door. He was private about his bathroom functions, while both she and Jack were pretty much catch-as-catch-can. Another sign--and they were multiplying all the time--that there was another human being in the place, not just a carbon copy of one of them or a combination of both. It made her a little sad. Someday her child would be a stranger to her, and she would be strange to him ... but not as strange as her own mother had become to her. Please don't let it be that way, God. Let him grow up and still love his mother.
Jack's typewriter began its irregular bursts again.
Still sitting in the chair beside Danny's reading table, she let her eyes wander around her son's room. The glider's wing had been neatly mended. His desk was piled high with picture books, coloring books, old Spider-Man comic books with the covers half torn off, Crayolas, and an untidy pile of Lincoln Logs. The VW model was neatly placed above these lesser things, its shrink-wrap still undisturbed. He and his father would be putting it together tomorrow night or the night after if Danny went on at this rate, and never mind the end of the week. His pictures of Pooh and Eeyore and Christopher Robin were tacked neatly to the wall, soon enough to be replaced with pin-ups and photographs of dope-smoking rock singers, she supposed. Innocence to experience. Human nature, baby. Grab it and growl. Still it made her sad. Next year he would be in school and she would lose at least half of him, maybe more, to his friends. She and Jack had tried to have another one for a while when things had seemed to be going well at Stovington, but she was on the pill again now. Things were too uncertain. God knew where they would be in nine months.
Her eyes fell on the wasps' nest.
It held the ultimate high place in Danny's room, resting on a large plastic plate on the table by his bed. She didn't like it, even if it was empty. She wondered vaguely if it might have germs, thought to ask Jack, then decided he would laugh at her. But she would ask the doctor tomorrow, if she could catch him with Jack out of the room. She didn't like the idea of that thing, constructed from the chewings and saliva of so many alien creatures, lying within a foot of her sleeping son's head.
The water in the bathroom was still running, and she got up and went into the big bedroom to make sure everything was okay. Jack didn't look up; he was lost in the world he was making, staring at the typewriter, a filter cigarette clamped in his teeth.
She knocked lightly on the closed bathroom door. "You okay, doc? You awake?"
No answer.
"Danny?"
No answer. She tried the door. It was locked.
"Danny?" She was worried now. The lack of any sound beneath the steadily running water made her uneasy. "Danny? Open the door, honey."
No answer.
"Danny!"
"Jesus Christ, Wendy, I can't think if you're going to pound on the door all night."
"Danny's locked himself in the bathroom and he doesn't answer me!"
Jack came around the desk, looking put out. He knocked on the door once, hard. "Open up, Danny. No games."
No answer.
Jack knocked harder. "Stop fooling, doc. Bedtime's bedtime. Spanking if you don't open up."
He's losing his temper, she thought, and was more afraid. He had not touched Danny in anger since that evening two years ago, but at this moment he sounded angry enough to do it.
"Danny, honey--" she began.
No answer. Only running water.
"Danny, if you make me break this lock I can guarantee you you'll spend the night sleeping on your belly," Jack warned.
Nothing.
"Break it," she said, and suddenly it was hard to talk. "Quick."
He raised one foot and brought it down hard against the door to the right of the knob. The lock was a poor thing; it gave immediately and the door shuddered open, banging the tiled bathroom wall and rebounding halfway.
"Danny!" she screamed.
The water was running full force in the basin. Beside it, a tube of Crest with the cap off. Danny was sitting on the rim of the bathtub across the room, his toothbrush clasped limply in his left hand, a thin foam of toothpaste around his mouth. He was staring, trancelike, into the mirror on the front of the medicine cabinet above the washbasin. The expression on his face was one of drugged horror, and her first thought was that he was having some sort of epileptic seizure, that he might have swallowed his tongue.
"Danny!"
Danny didn't answer. Guttural sounds came from his throat.
Then she was pushed aside so hard that she crashed into the towel rack, and Jack was kneeling in front of the boy.
"Danny," he said. "Danny, Danny!" He snapped his fingers in front of Danny's blank eyes.
"Ah-sure," Danny said. "Tournament play. Stroke. Nurrrrr ..."
"Danny--"
"Roque!" Danny said, his voice suddenly deep, almost manlike. "Roque. Stroke. The roque mallet ... has two sides. Gaaaaaa--"
"Oh Jack my God what's wrong with him?"
Jack grabbed the boy's elbows and shook him hard. Danny's head rolled limply backward and then snapped forward like a balloon on a stick.
"Roque. Stroke. Redrum."
Jack shook him again, and Danny's eyes suddenly cleared. His toothbrush fell out of his hand and onto the tiled floor with a small click.
"What?" he asked, looking around. He saw his father kneeling before him, Wendy standing by the wall. "What?" Danny asked again, with rising alarm. "W-w-wuh-what's wr-r-r--"
"Don't stutter!" Jack suddenly screamed into his face. Danny cried out in shock, his body going tense, trying to draw away from his father, and then he collapsed into tears. Stricken, Jack pulled him close. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, doc. Please. Don't cry. I'm sorry. Everything's okay."
The water ran ceaselessly in the basin, and Wendy felt that she had suddenly stepped into some grinding nightmare where time ran backward, backward to the time when her drunken husband had broken her son's arm and had then mewled over him in almost the exact same words.
(Oh honey. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, doc. Please. So sorry.)
She ran to them both, pried Danny out of Jack's arms somehow (she saw the look of angry reproach on his face but filed it away for later consideration), and lifted him up. She walked him back into the small bedroom, Danny's arms clasped around her neck, Jack trailing them.
She sat down on Danny's bed and rocked him back and forth, soothing him with nonsensical words repeated over and over. She looked up at Jack and there was only worry in his eyes now. He raised questioning eyebrows at her. She shook her head faintly.
"Danny," she said. "Danny, Danny, Danny. 'S okay, doc. 'S fine."
At last Danny was quiet, only faintly trembling in her arms. Yet it was Jack he spoke to first, Jack who was now sitting beside them on the bed, and she felt the old faint pang (It's him first and it's always been him first)
of jealousy. Jack had shouted at him, she had comforted him, yet it was to his father that Danny said, "I'm sorry if I was bad."
"Nothi
ng to be sorry for, doc." Jack ruffled his hair. "What the hell happened in there?"
Danny shook his head slowly, dazedly. "I ... I don't know. Why did you tell me to stop stuttering, Daddy? I don't stutter."
"Of course not," Jack said heartily, but Wendy felt a cold finger touch her heart. Jack suddenly looked scared, as if he'd seen something that might just have been a ghost.
"Something about the timer ..." Danny muttered.
"What?" Jack was leaning forward, and Danny flinched in her arms.
"Jack, you're scaring him!" she said, and her voice was high, accusatory. It suddenly came to her that they were all scared. But of what?
"I don't know, I don't know," Danny was saying to his father. "What ... what did I say, Daddy?"
"Nothing," Jack muttered. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his mouth with it. Wendy had a moment of that sickening time-is-running-backward feeling again. It was a gesture she remembered well from his drinking days.
"Why did you lock the door, Danny?" she asked gently. "Why did you do that?"
"Tony," he said. "Tony told me to."
They exchanged a glance over the top of his head.
"Did Tony say why, son?" Jack asked quietly.
"I was brushing my teeth and I was thinking about my reading," Danny said. "Thinking real hard. And ... and I saw Tony way down in the mirror. He said he had to show me again."
"You mean he was behind you?" Wendy asked.
"No, he was in the mirror." Danny was very emphatic on this point. "Way down deep. And then I went through the mirror. The next thing I remember Daddy was shaking me and I thought I was being bad again."
Jack winced as if struck.
"No, doc," he said quietly.
"Tony told you to lock the door?" Wendy asked, brushing his hair.
"Yes."
"And what did he want to show you?"
Danny tensed in her arms; it was as if the muscles in his body had turned into something like piano wire. "I don't remember," he said, distraught. "I don't remember. Don't ask me. I ... I don't remember nothing!"
"Shh," Wendy said, alarmed. She began to rock him again. "It's all right if you don't remember, hon. Sure it is."
At last Danny began to relax again.
"Do you want me to stay a little while? Read you a story?"
"No. Just the night light." He looked shyly at his father. "Would you stay, Daddy? For a minute?"
"Sure, doc."
Wendy sighed. "I'll be in the living room, Jack."
"Okay."
She got up and watched as Danny slid under the covers. He seemed very small.
"Are you sure you're okay, Danny?"
"I'm okay. Just plug in Snoopy, Mom."
"Sure."
She plugged in the night light, which showed Snoopy lying fast asleep on top of his doghouse. He had never wanted a night light until they moved into the Overlook, and then he had specifically requested one. She turned off the lamp and the overhead and looked back at them, the small white circle of Danny's face, and Jack's above it. She hesitated a moment (and then I went through the mirror)
and then left them quietly.
"You sleepy?" Jack asked, brushing Danny's hair off his forehead.
"Yeah."
"Want a drink of water?"
"No ..."
There was silence for five minutes. Danny was still beneath his hand. Thinking the boy had dropped off, he was about to get up and leave quietly when Danny said from the brink of sleep: "Roque."
Jack turned back, all zero at the bone.
"Danny--?"
"You'd never hurt Mommy, would you, Daddy?"
"No."
"Or me?"
"No."
Silence again, spinning out.
"Daddy?"
"What?"
"Tony came and told me about roque."
"Did he, doc? What did he say?"
"I don't remember much. Except he said it was in innings. Like baseball. Isn't that funny?"
"Yes." Jack's heart was thudding dully in his chest. How could the boy possibly know a thing like that? Roque was played by innings, not like baseball but like cricket.
"Daddy ...?" He was almost asleep now.
"What?"
"What's redrum?"
"Red drum? Sounds like something an Indian might take on the warpath."
Silence.
"Hey, doc?"
But Danny was asleep, breathing in long, slow strokes. Jack sat looking down at him for a moment, and a rush of love pushed through him like tidal water. Why had he yelled at the boy like that? It was perfectly normal for him to stutter a little. He had been coming out of a daze or some weird kind of trance, and stuttering was perfectly normal under those circumstances. Perfectly. And he hadn't said timer at all. It had been something else, nonsense, gibberish.
How had he known roque was played in innings? Had someone told him? Ullman? Hallorann?
He looked down at his hands. They were made into tight, clenched fists of tension (god how i need a drink)
and the nails were digging into his palms like tiny brands. Slowly he forced them to open.
"I love you, Danny," he whispered. "God knows I do."
He left the room. He had lost his temper again, only a little, but enough to make him feel sick and afraid. A drink would blunt that feeling, oh yes. It would blunt that (Something about the timer)
and everything else. There was no mistake about those words at all. None. Each had come out clear as a bell. He paused in the hallway, looking back, and automatically wiped his lips with his handkerchief.
Their shapes were only dark silhouettes in the glow of the night light. Wendy, wearing only panties, went to his bed and tucked him in again; he had kicked the covers back. Jack stood in the doorway, watching as she put her inner wrist against his forehead.
"Is he feverish?"
"No." She kissed his cheek.
"Thank God you made that appointment," he said as she came back to the doorway. "You think that guy knows his stuff?"
"The checker said he was very good. That's all I know."
"If there's something wrong, I'm going to send you and him to your mother's, Wendy."
"No."
"I know," he said, putting an arm around her, "how you feel."
"You don't know how I feel at all about her."
"Wendy, there's no place else I can send you. You know that."
"If you came--"
"Without this job we're done," he said simply. "You know that."
Her silhouette nodded slowly. She knew it.
"When I had that interview with Ullman, I thought he was just blowing off his bazoo. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe I really shouldn't have tried this with you two along. Forty miles from nowhere."
"I love you," she said. "And Danny loves you even more, if that's possible. He would have been heartbroken, Jack. He will be, if you send us away."
"Don't make it sound that way."
"If the doctor says there's something wrong, I'll look for a job in Sidewinder," she said. "If I can't get one in Sidewinder, Danny and I will go to Boulder. I can't go to my mother, Jack. Not on those terms. Don't ask me. I ... I just can't."
"I guess I know that. Cheer up. Maybe it's nothing."
"Maybe."
"The appointment's at two?"
"Yes."
"Let's leave the bedroom door open, Wendy."
"I want to. But I think he'll sleep through now."
But he didn't.
Boom ... boom ... boomboomBOOMBOOM----
He fled the heavy, crashing, echoing sounds through twisting, mazelike corridors, his bare feet whispering over a deep-pile jungle of blue and black. Each time he heard the roque mallet smash into the wall somewhere behind him he wanted to scream aloud. But he mustn't. He mustn't. A scream would give him away and then (then REDRUM)
(Come out here and take your medicine, you fucking crybaby!)
Oh and he could hear the owner of that
voice coming, coming for him, charging up the hall like a tiger in an alien blue-black jungle. A man-eater.
(Come out here, you little son of a bitch!)
If he could get to the stairs going down, if he could get off this third floor, he might be all right. Even the elevator. If he could remember what had been forgotten. But it was dark and in his terror he had lost his orientation. He had turned down one corridor and then another, his heart leaping into his mouth like a hot lump of ice, fearing that each turn would bring him face to face with the human tiger in these halls.
The booming was right behind him now, the awful hoarse shouting.
The whistle the head of the mallet made cutting through the air
(roque ... stroke ... roque ... stroke ... REDRUM)
before it crashed into the wall. The soft whisper of feet on the jungle carpet. Panic squirting in his mouth like bitter juice.
(You will remember what was forgotten ... but would he? What was it?) He fled around another corner and saw with creeping, utter horror that he was in a cul-de-sac. Locked doors frowned down at him from three sides. The west wing. He was in the west wing and outside he could hear the storm whooping and screaming, seeming to choke on its own dark throat filled with snow.
He backed up against the wall, weeping with terror now, his heart racing like the heart of a rabbit caught in a snare. When his back was against the light blue silk wallpaper with the embossed pattern of wavy lines, his legs gave way and he collapsed to the carpet, hands splayed on the jungle of woven vines and creepers, the breath whistling in and out of his throat.
Louder. Louder.
There was a tiger in the hall, and now the tiger was just around the corner, still crying out in that shrill and petulant and lunatic rage, the roque mallet slamming, because this tiger walked on two legs and it was--
He woke with a sudden indrawn gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes wide and staring into the darkness, hands crossed in front of his face.
Something on one hand. Crawling.
Wasps. Three of them.
They stung him then, seeming to needle all at once, and that was when all the images broke apart and fell on him in a dark flood and he began to shriek into the dark, the wasps clinging to his left hand, stinging again and again.
The lights went on and Daddy was standing there in his shorts, his eyes glaring. Mommy behind him, sleepy and scared.
"Get them off me!" Danny screamed.
"Oh my God," Jack said. He saw.
"Jack, what's wrong with him? What's wrong?"
He didn't answer her. He ran to the bed, scooped up Danny's pillow, and slapped Danny's thrashing left hand with it. Again. Again. Wendy saw lumbering, insectile forms rise into the air, droning.
