Plucking up her courage, she crossed to the batwings and
pushed them open. The smell of gin was so strong that her
breath snagged in her throat. It wasn't even right to call it
a smell; it was a positive reek. But the shelves were empty.
Where in God's name had he found it? A bottle hidden at the
back of one of the cupboards? Where?
There was another groan, low and fuzzy, but perfectly audible
this time. Wendy walked slowly to the bar.
"Jack?"
No answer.
She looked over the bar and there he was, sprawled out on the
floor in a stupor. Drunk as a lord, by the smell. He must have
tried to go right over the top and lost his balance. A wonder
he hadn't broken his neck. An old proverb recurred to her: God
looks after drunks and little children. Amen.
Yet she was not angry with him; looking down at him she
thought be looked like a horribly overtired little boy who bad
tried to do too much and had fallen asleep in the middle of
the living room floor. He had stopped drinking and it was not
Jack who had made the decision to start again; there had been
no liquor for him to start with... so where had it come from?
Resting at every five or six feet along the horseshoe-shaped
bar there were wine bottles wrapped in straw, their mouths
plugged with candles. Supposed to look bohemian, she supposed.
She picked one up and shook it, half-expecting to hear the
slosh of gin inside it
(new wine in old bottles)
but there was nothing. She set it back down.
Jack was stirring. She went around the bar, found the gate,
and walked back on the inside to where Jack lay, pausing only
to look at the gleaming chromium taps. They were dry, but when
she passed close to them she could smell beer, wet and new,
like a fine mist.
As she reached Jack he rolled over, opened his eyes, and
looked up at her. For a moment his gaze was utterly blank, and
then it cleared.
"Wendy?" he asked. "That you?"
"Yes," she said. "Do you think you can make it upstairs? If
you put your arms around me? Jack, where did you-"
His hand closed brutally around her ankle.
"Jack! What are you-"
"Gotcha!" he said, and began to grin. There was a stale odor
of gin and olives about him that seemed to set off an old
terror in her, a worse terror than any hotel could provide by
itself. A distant part of her thought that the worst thing was
that it had all come back to this, she and her drunken
husband.
"Jack, I want to help."
"Oh yeah. You and Danny only want to help." The grip on her
ankle was crushing now. Still holding onto her, Jack was
getting shakily to his knees. "You wanted to help us all right
out of here. But now... I... gotcha!"
"Jack, you're hurting my ankle-"
"I'll hurt more than your ankle, you bitch."
The word stunned her so completely that she made no effort to
move when he let go of her ankle and stumbled from his knees
to his feet, where he stood swaying in front of her.
"You never loved me," he said. "You want us to leave because
you know that'll be the end of me. Did you ever think about my
re... res... respons'bilities? No, I guess to fuck you didn't.
All you ever think about is ways to drag me down. You're just
like my mother, you milksop bitch!"
"Stop it," she said, crying. "You don't know what you're
saying. You're drunk. I don't know how, but you're drunk."
"Oh, I know. I know now. You and him. That little pup
upstairs. The two of you, planning together. Isn't that
right?"
"No, no! We never planned anything! What are you-"
"You liarl" he screamed. "Oh, I know how you do it! I guess I
know that! When I say, `We're going to stay here and I'm going
to do my job,' you say, `Yes, dear,' and he says, `Yes,
Daddy,' and then you lay your plans. You planned to use the
snowmobile. You planned that. But I knew. I figured it out.
Did you think I wouldn't figure it out? Did you think I was
stupid?"
She stared at him, unable to speak now. He was going to kill
her, and then he was going to kill Danny. Then maybe the hotel
would be satisfied and allow him to kill himself. Just like
that other caretaker. Just like
(Grady.)
With almost swooning horror, she realized at last who it was
that Jack had been conversing with in the ballroom.
"You turned my son against me. That was the worst." His face
sagged into lines of selfpity. "My little boy. Now he hates
me, too. You saw to that. That was your plan all along, wasn't
it? You've always been jealous, haven't you? Just like your
mother. You couldn't be satisfied unless you had all the cake,
could you? Could you?"
She couldn't talk.
"Well, I'll fix you," he said, and tried to put his hands
around her throat.
She took a step backward, then another, and he stumbled
against her. She remembered the knife in the pocket of her
robe and groped for it, but now his left arm had swept around
her, pinning her arm against her side. She could smell sharp
gin and the sour odor of his sweat.
"Have to be punished," he was grunting. "Chastised.
Chastised... harshly."
His right hand found her throat.
As her breath stopped, pure panic took over. His left hand
joined his right and now the knife was free to her own hand,
but she forgot about it. Both of her hands came up and began
to yank helplessly at his larger, stronger ones.
"Mommy!" Danny shrieked from somewhere. "Daddy, stop! You're
hurting Mommyl" He screamed piercingly, a high and crystal
sound that she heard from far off.
Red flashes of light leaped in front of her eyes like ballet
dancers. The room grew darker. She saw her son clamber up on
the bar and throw himself at Jack's shoulders. Suddenly one of
the hands that had been crushing her throat was gone as Jack
cuffed Danny away with a snarl. The boy fell back against the
empty shelves and dropped to the floor, dazed. The hand was on
her throat again. The red flashes began to turn black.
Danny was crying weakly. Her chest was burning. Jack was
shouting into her face: "I'll fix you! Goddam you, I'll show
you who is boss around here! I'll show you-"
But all sounds were fading down a long dark corridor. Her
struggles began to weaken. One of her hands fell away from his
and dropped slowly until the arm was stretched out at right
angles to her body, the hand dangling limply from the wrist
like the hand of a drowning woman.
It touched a bottle-one of the straw-wrapped wine bottles
that served as decorative candleholders.
Sightlessly, with the last of her strength, she groped for
the bottle's neck and found it, feeling the greasy beads of
wax against her hand.
(and U God if it slips)
She brought it up and then down, praying for aim, knowing
that if it only struck his shoulder or upper arm she was dead.
But the bottle came down squarely on Jack Torrance's head,
the glass shattering violently inside the straw. The base of
it was thick and heavy, and it made a sound against his skull
like a medicine ball dropped on a hardwood floor. He rocked
back on his heels, his eyes rolling up in their sockets. The
pressure on her throat loosened, then gave way entirely. He
put his hands out, as if to steady himself, and then crashed
over on his back.
Wendy drew a long, sobbing breath. She almost fell herself,
clutched the edge of the bar, and managed to hold herself up.
Consciousness wavered in and out. She could hear Danny crying,
but she had no idea where he was. It sounded like crying in an
echo chamber. Dimly she saw dime-sized drops of blood falling
to the dark surface of the bar-from her nose, she thought. She
cleared her throat and spat on the floor. It sent a wave of
agony up the column of her throat, but the agony subsided to a
steady dull press of pain.., just bearable.
Little by little, she managed to get control of herself.
She let go of the bar, turned around, and saw Jack lying full-
length, the shattered bottle beside him. He looked like a
felled giant. Danny was crouched below the lounge's cash
register, both hands in his mouth, staring at his unconscious
father.
Wendy went to him unsteadily and touched his shoulder. Danny
cringed away from her.
"Danny, listen to me-"
"No, no," he muttered in a husky old man's voice. "Daddy hurt
you... you hurt Daddy... Daddy hurt you,... I want to go to
sleep. Danny wants to go to sleep."
"Danny-"
"Sleep, sleep. Nighty-night."
"No!"
Pain ripping up her throat again. She winced against it. But
he opened his eyes. They looked at her warily from bluish,
shadowed sockets.
She made herself speak calmly, her eyes never leaving his.
Her voice was low and husky, almost a whisper. It hurt to
talk. "Listen to me, Danny. It wasn't your daddy trying to
hurt me. And I didn't want to hurt him. The hotel has gotten
into him, Danny. The Overlook has gotten into your daddy. Do
you understand me?"
Some kind of knowledge came slowly back into Danny's eyes.
"The Bad Stuff," he whispered. "There was none of it here
before, was there?"
"No. The hotel put it here. The..: ' She broke off in a fit
of coughing and spat out more blood. Her throat already felt
puffed to twice its size. "The hotel made him drink it. Did
you hear those people he was talking to this morning?"
"Yes... the hotel people..."
"I heard them too. And that means the hotel is getting
stronger. It wants to hurt all of us. But I think.., I hope
.., that it can only do that through your daddy. He was the
only one it could catch. Are you understanding me, Danny? It's
desperately important that you understand."
"The hotel caught Daddy," He looked at Jack and groaned
helplessly.
"I know you love your daddy. I do too. We have to remember
that the hotel is trying to hurt him as much as it is us." And
she was convinced that was true. More, she thought that Danny
might be the one the hotel really wanted, the reason it was
going so far... maybe the reason it was able to go so far. It
might even be that in some unknown fashion it was Danny's
shine that was powering it, the way a battery powers the
electrical equipment in a car... the way a battery gets a car
to start. If they got out of here, the Overlook might subside
to its old semi-sentient state, able to do no more than
present penny-dreadful horror slides to the more psychically
aware guests who entered it. Without Danny it was not much
more than an amusement park haunted house, where a guest or
two might hear rappings or the phantom sounds of a masquerade
party, or see an occasional disturbing thing. But if it
absorbed Danny.,. Danny's shine or Iifeforce or spirit...
whatever you wanted to call it... into itself-what would it be
then?
The thought made her cold all over.
"I wish Daddy was all better," Danny said, and the tears
began to flow again.
"Me too," she said, and hugged Danny tightly. "And honey,
that's why you've got to help me put your daddy somewhere.
Somewhere that the hotel can't make him hurt us and where he
can't hurt himself. Then... if your friend Dick comes, or a
park ranger, we can take him away. And I think he might be all
right again. All of us might be all right. I think there's
still a chance for that, if we're strong and brave, like you
were when you jumped on his back. Do you understand?" She
looked at him pleadingly and thought how strange it was; she
had never seen him when he looked so much like Jack.
"Yes," he said, and nodded. "I think... if we can get away
from here... everything will be like it was. Where could we
put him?"
"The pantry. There's food in there, and a good strong bolt on
the outside. It's warm. And we can eat up the things from the
refrigerator and the freezer. There will be plenty for all
three of us until help comes."
"Do we do it now?"
"Yes, right now. Before he wakes up.,"
Danny put the bargate up while she folded Jack's hands on his
chest and listened to his breathing for a moment. It was slow
but regular. From the smell of him she thought he must have
drunk a great deal... and he was out of the habit. She thought
it might be liquor as much as the crack on the head with the
bottle that had put him out.
She picked up his legs and began to drag him along the floor.
She had been married to him for nearly seven years, he had
lain on top of her countless times-in the thousandsbut she had
never realized how heavy he was. Her breath whistled painfully
in and out of her hurt throat. Nevertheless, she felt better
than she had in days. She was alive. Having just brushed so
close to death, that was precious. And Jack was alive, too. By
blind luck rather than plan, they had perhaps found the only
way that would bring them all safely out.
Panting harshly, she paused a moment, holding Jack's feet
against her hips. The surroundings reminded her of the old
seafaring captain's cry in Treasure Island after old blind Pew
had passed him the Black Spot: h'e'll do em yeti
And then she remembered, uncomfortably, that the old seadog
had dropped dead mere seconds later.
"Are you all right, Mommy? Is he... is he too heavy?"
"I'll manage." She began to drag him again. Danny was beside
Jack. One of his hands had fallen off his chest, and Danny
replaced it gently, with love.
"Are you sure, Mommy?"
"Yes. It's the best thing, Danny."
"It's like putting him in jail."
"Only for awhile."
"Okay, then. Are you sure you can do it?"
"Yes."
But it was a near thing, at that. Danny had been cradling his
father's head when they went over the doorsills, but his hands
slipped in Jack's greasy hair as they went into the kitchen.
The back of his head struck the tiles, and Jack began to moan
and stir.
"You got to use smoke," Jack muttered quickly. "Now run and
get me that gascan."
Wendy and Danny exchanged tight, fearful glances.
"Help me," she said in a low voice.
For a moment Danny stood as if paralyzed by his father's
face, and then he moved jerkily to her side and helped her
hold the left leg. They dragged him across the kitchen floor
in a nightmare kind of slow motion, the only sounds the faint,
insectile buzz of the fluorescent lights and their own labored
breathing.
When they reached the pantry, Wendy put Jack's feet down and
turned to fumble with the bolt. Danny looked down at Jack, who
was lying limp and relaxed again. The shirttail had pulled out
of the back of his pants as they dragged him and Danny
wondered if Daddy was too drunk to be cold. It seemed wrong to
lock him in the pantry like a wild animal, but he had seen
what he tried to do to Mommy. Even upstairs he had known Daddy
was going to do that. He had heard them arguing in his head.
(If only we could all be out of here. Or if it was a dream I
was having, back in Stovington. If only.)
The bolt was stuck.
Wendy pulled at it as hard as she could, but it wouldn't
move. She couldn't retract the goddam bolt. It was stupid and
unfair... she had opened it with no trouble at all when she
had gone in to get the can of soup. Now it wouldn't move, and
what was she going to do? They couldn't put him in the walk-in
refrigerator; he would freeze or smother to death. But if they
left him out and he woke up...
Jack stirred again on the floor.
"I'll take care of it," he muttered. "I understand"
"He's waking up, Mommyl" Danny warned.
Sobbing now, she yanked at the bolt with both hands.
"Danny?" There was something softly menacing, if still
blurry, in Jack's voice. "That you, ole doc?"
"Just go to sleep, Daddy," Danny said nervously. "It's
bedtime, you know."
He looked up at his mother, still struggling with the bolt,
and saw what was wrong immediately. She had forgotten to
rotate the bolt before trying to withdraw it. The little catch
was stuck in its notch.
"Here," he said low, and brushed her trembling hands aside;
his own were shaking almost as badly. He knocked the catch
loose with the heel of his hand and the bolt drew back easily.
"Quick," he said. He looked down. Jack's eyes bad fluttered
open again and this time Daddy was looking directly at him,
his gaze strangely flat and speculative.
"You copied it," Daddy told him. "I know you did, But it's
here somewhere. And I'll find it. That I promise you. IT find
it..." His words slurred off again.
Wendy pushed the pantry door open with her knee, hardly
noticing the pungent odor of dried fruit that wafted out. She
picked up Jack's feet again and dragged him in. She was
gasping harshly now, at the limit of her strength. As she
yanked the chain pull that turned on the light, Jack's eyes
fluttered open again.
"What are you doing? Wendy? What are you doing?"
She stepped over him.
He was quick; amazingly quick. One hand lashed out and she
had to sidestep and nearly fall out the door to avoid his
grasp. Still, he had caught a handful of her bathrobe and
there was a heavy purring noise as it ripped., He was up on
his hands and knees now, his hair hanging in his eyes, like
some heavy animal. A large dog... or a lion.
"Damn you both, I know what you want. But you're not going to
get it. This hotel... it's mine. It's me they want. Mel Mel"
"The door, Dannyl" she screamed. "Shut the door!"
He pushed the heavy wooden door shut with a slam, just as
lack leaped. The door latched and Jack thudded uselessly
against it.
Danny's small hands groped at the bolt. Wendy was too far
away to help; the issue of whether he would be locked in or
free was going to be decided in two seconds. Danny missed his
grip, found it again, and shot the bolt across just as the
latch began to jiggle madly up and down below it. Then it
stayed up and there was a series of thuds as Jack slammed his
shoulder against the door. The bolt, a quarter inch of steel
in diameter, showed no signs of loosening. Wendy let her
breath out slowly.
"Let me out of here!" Jack raged. "Let me out! Danny, doggone
it, this is your father and I want to get out! Now do what I
tell youl"
Danny's hand moved automatically toward the bolt. Wendy
caught it and pressed it between her breasts.
"You mind your daddy, Dannyl You do what I sayl You do it or
I'll give you a hiding you'll never forget. Open this door or
FU bash your fucking brains in!"
Danny looked at her, pale as window glass.
They could hear his breath tearing in and out behind the half
inch of solid oak.
"Wendy, you let me outl Let me out right now! You cheap
pickle-plated coldcunt bitch! You let me out! I mean it! Let
me out of here and I'll let it go! If you don't, I'll mess you
up! I mean it! I'll mess you up so bad your own mother would
pass you on the street! Now open this door!"
Danny moaned. Wendy looked at him and saw he was going to
faint in a moment.
"Come on, doc," she said, surprised at the calmness of her
own voices "It's not your daddy talking, remember. It's the
hotel."
"Come hack here and let me out right NOW!" Jack screamed.
There was a scraping, breaking sound as he attacked the inside
of the door with his fingernails.
"It's the hotel," Danny said. "It's the hotel. I remember."
But he looked back over his shoulder and his face was crumpled
and terrified.
DANNY
It was three in the afternoon of a long, long day.
They were sitting on the big bed in their quarters. Danny was
turning the purple VW model with the monster sticking out of
the sun roof over and over in his hands, compulsively.
They had heard Daddy's batterings at the door all the way
across the lobby, the batterings and his voice, hoarse and
petulantly angry in a weak-king sort of a way, vomiting
promises of punishment, vomiting profanity, promising both of
them that they would live to regret betraying him after he had
slaved his guts out for them over the years.
Danny thought they would no longer be able to hear it
upstairs, but the sounds of his rage carried perfectly up the
dumb-waiter shaft: Mommy's face was pale, and there were
horrible brownish bruises on her neck where Daddy had tried
to...
He turned the model over and over in his hands, Daddy's prize
for having learned his reading lessons.
(:where Daddy had tried to hug her too tight.)
Mommy put some of her music on the little record player,
scratchy and full of horns and flutes. She smiled at him
tiredly. He tried to smile back and failed. Even with the
volume turned up loud he thought he could still hear Daddy
screaming at them and battering the pantry door like an animal
in a zoo cage: What if Daddy had to go to the bathroom? What
would he do then?
Danny began to cry.
Wendy turned the volume down on the record player at once,
held him, rocked him on her lap.
"Danny, love, it will be all right. It will. If Mr. Hallorann
didn't get your message, someone else will. As soon as the
storm is over. No one could get up here until then anyway. Mr.
Hallorann or anyone else. But when the storm is over,
everything will be fine again. We'll leave here. And do you
know what we'll do next spring? The three of us?"
Danny shook his head against her breasts. He didn't know. It
seemed there could never be spring again.
"We'll go fishing. We'll rent a boat and go fishing, just
like we did last year on Chatterton Lake. You and me and your
daddy. And maybe you'll catch a bass for our supper. And maybe
we won't catch anything, but we're sure to have a good time."
"I love you, Mommy," he said, and hugged her.
"Oh, Danny, I love you, too."
Outside, the wind whooped and screamed,
* * *
Around four-thirty, just as the daylight began to fail, the
screams ceased.
They had both been dozing uneasily, Wendy still holding Danny
in her arms, and she didn't wake. But Danny did. Somehow the
silence was worse, more ominous than the screams and the blows
against the strong pantry door. Was Daddy asleep again? Or
dead? Or what?
(Did he get out?)
Fifteen minutes later the silence was broken by a hard,
grating, metallic rattle. There was a heavy grinding, then a
mechanical humming. Wendy came awake with a cry.
The elevator was running again.
They listened to it, wide-eyed, hugging each other. It went
from floor to floor, the grate rattling back, the brass door
slamming open. There was laughter, drunken shouts, occasional
screams, and the sounds of breakage.
The Overlook was coming to life around them,
JACK
He sat on the floor of the pantry with his legs out in front
of him, a box of Triscuit crackers between them, looking at
the door. He was eating the crackers one by one, not tasting
them, only eating them because he had to eat something. When
he got out of here, he was going to need his strength. All of
it.
At this precise instant, he thought he had never felt quite
so miserable in his entire life. His mind and body together
made up a large-writ scripture of pain. His head ached
terribly, the sick throb of a hangover. The attendant symptoms
were there, too: his mouth tasted like a manure rake had taken
a swing through it, his ears rung, his heart had an extra-
heavy, thudding beat, like a tom-tom. In addition, both
shoulders ached fiercely from throwing himself against the
door and his throat felt raw and peeled from useless shouting.
He had cut his right hand on the doorlatch.
And when he got out of here, he was going to kick some ass.
He munched the Triscuits one by one, refusing to give in to
his wretched stomach, which wanted to vomit up everything. He
thought of the Excedrins in his pocket and decided to wait
until his stomach had quieted a bit. No sense swallowing a
painkiller if you were going to throw it right back up. Have
to use your brain. The celebrated Jack Torrance brain. Aren't
you the fellow who once was going to live by his wits? Jack
Torrance, best-selling author. Jack Torrance, acclaimed
playwright and winner of the New York Critics Circle Award.
John Torrance, man of letters, esteemed thinker, winner of the
Pulitzer Prize at seventy for his trenchant book of memoirs,
My Life in the Twentieth Century. All any of that shit boiled
down to was living by your wits.
Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are.
He put another Triscuit into his mouth and crunched it up.
What it really came down to, he supposed, was their lack of
trust in him. Their failure to believe that he knew what was
best for them and how to get it. His wife had tried to usurp
him, first by fair
(sort of)
means, then by foul. When her little hints and whining
objections had been overturned by his own well-reasoned
arguments, she had turned his boy against him, tried to kill
him with a bottle, and then had locked him, of all places, in
the goddamned fucking pantry.
Still, a small interior voice nagged him.
(Yes but where did the liquor come from? Isn't that really
the central point? You know what happens when you drink, you
know it from bitter experience. When you drink, you lose your
wits.)
He hurled the box of Triscuits across the small room. They
struck a shelf of canned goods and fell to the floor. He
looked at the box, wiped his lips with his hand, and then
looked at his watch. It was almost six-thirty. He had been in
here for hours. His wife had locked him in here and he'd been
here for fucking hours.
He could begin to sympathize with his father
The thing he'd never asked himself, Jack realized now, was
exactly what had driven his daddy to drink in the first place.
And really... when you came right down to what his old
students had been pleased to call the nifty-gritty... hadn't
it been the woman he was married to? A milksop sponge of a
woman, always dragging silently around the house with an
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