4
After Wendy called Dick—she made sure Danny heard her doing it—Danny went back to sleep. Although he was now eight and in the third grade, he was sucking his thumb. It hurt her to see him do that. She went to the bathroom door and stood looking at it. She was afraid—Danny had made her afraid—but she had to go, and she had no intention of using the sink as he had. The image of how she would look teetering on the edge of the counter with her butt hanging over the porcelain (even if there was no one there to see) made her wrinkle her nose.
In one hand she had the hammer from her little box of widow’s tools. As she turned the knob and pushed the bathroom door open, she raised it. The bathroom was empty, of course, but the ring of the toilet seat was down. She never left it that way before going to bed, because she knew if Danny wandered in, only ten percent awake, he was apt to forget to put it up and piss all over it. Also, there was a smell. A bad one. As if a rat had died in the walls.
She took a step in, then two. She saw movement and whirled, hammer upraised, to hit whoever
(whatever)
was hiding behind the door. But it was only her shadow. Scared of her own shadow, people sometimes sneered, but who had a better right than Wendy Torrance? After the things she had seen and been through, she knew that shadows could be dangerous. They could have teeth.
No one was in the bathroom, but there was a discolored smear on the toilet seat and another on the shower curtain. Excrement was her first thought, but shit wasn’t yellowish-purple. She looked more closely and saw bits of flesh and decayed skin. There was more on the bathmat, in the shape of footprints. She thought them too small—too dainty—to be a man’s.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
She ended up using the sink after all.
5
Wendy nagged her son out of bed at noon. She managed to get a little soup and half a peanut butter sandwich into him, but then he went back to bed. He still wouldn’t speak. Hallorann arrived shortly after five in the afternoon, behind the wheel of his now ancient (but perfectly maintained and blindingly polished) red Cadillac. Wendy had been standing at the window, waiting and watching as she had once waited and watched for her husband, hoping Jack would come home in a good mood. And sober.
She rushed down the stairs and opened the door just as Dick was about to ring the bell marked TORRANCE 2A. He held out his arms and she rushed into them at once, wishing she could be enfolded there for at least an hour. Maybe two.
He let go and held her at arm’s length by her shoulders. “You’re lookin fine, Wendy. How’s the little man? He talkin again?”
“No, but he’ll talk to you. Even if he won’t do it out loud to start with, you can—” Instead of finishing, she made a finger-gun and pointed it at his forehead.
“Not necessarily,” Dick said. His smile revealed a bright new pair of false teeth. The Overlook had taken most of the last set on the night the boiler blew. Jack Torrance swung the mallet that took Dick’s dentures and Wendy’s ability to walk without a hitch in her stride, but they both understood it had really been the Overlook. “He’s very powerful, Wendy. If he wants to block me out, he will. I know from my own experience. Besides, it’d be better if we talk with our mouths. Better for him. Now tell me everything that happened.”
After she did that, Wendy took him into the bathroom. She had left the stains for him to see, like a beat cop preserving the scene of a crime for the forensic team. And there had been a crime. One against her boy.
Dick looked for a long time, not touching, then nodded. “Let’s see if Danny’s up and in the doins.”
He wasn’t, but Wendy’s heart was lightened by the look of gladness that came into her son’s face when he saw who was sitting beside him on the bed and shaking his shoulder.
(hey Danny I brought you a present)
(it’s not my birthday)
Wendy watched them, knowing they were speaking but not knowing what it was about.
Dick said, “Get on up, honey. We’re gonna take a walk on the beach.”
(Dick she came back Mrs. Massey from Room 217 came back)
Dick gave his shoulder another shake. “Talk out loud, Dan. You’re scarin your ma.”
Danny said, “What’s my present?”
Dick smiled. “That’s better. I like to hear you, and Wendy does, too.”
“Yes.” It was all she dared say. Otherwise they’d hear the tremble in her voice and be concerned. She didn’t want that.
“While we’re gone, you might want to give the bathroom a cleaning,” Dick said to her. “Have you got kitchen gloves?”
She nodded.
“Good. Wear them.”
6
The beach was two miles away. The parking lot was surrounded by tawdry beachfront attractions—funnel cake concessions, hotdog stands, souvenir shops—but this was the tag end of the season, and none were doing much business. They had the beach itself almost entirely to themselves. On the ride from the apartment, Danny had held his present—an oblong package, quite heavy, wrapped in silver paper—on his lap.
“You can open it after we talk a bit,” Dick said.
They walked just above the waves, where the sand was hard and gleaming. Danny walked slowly, because Dick was pretty old. Someday he’d die. Maybe even soon.
“I’m good to go another few years,” Dick said. “Don’t you worry about that. Now tell me about last night. Don’t leave anything out.”
It didn’t take long. The hard part would have been finding words to explain the terror he now felt, and how it was mingled with a suffocating sense of certainty: now that she’d found him, she’d never leave. But because it was Dick, he didn’t need words, although he found some.
“She’ll come back. I know she will. She’ll come back and come back until she gets me.”
“Do you remember when we met?”
Although surprised at the change of direction, Danny nodded. It had been Hallorann who gave him and his parents the guided tour on their first day at the Overlook. Very long ago, that seemed.
“And do you remember the first time I spoke up inside your head?”
“I sure do.”
“What did I say?”
“You asked me if I wanted to go to Florida with you.”
“That’s right. And how did it make you feel, to know you wasn’t alone anymore? That you wasn’t the only one?”
“It was great,” Danny said. “It was so great.”
“Yeah,” Hallorann said. “Yeah, course it was.”
They walked in silence for a bit. Little birds—peeps, Danny’s mother called them—ran in and out of the waves.
“Did it ever strike you funny, how I showed up when you needed me?” He looked down at Danny and smiled. “No. It didn’t. Why would it? You was just a child, but you’re a little older now. A lot older in some ways. Listen to me, Danny. The world has a way of keeping things in balance. I believe that. There’s a saying: When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear. I was your teacher.”
“You were a lot more than that,” Danny said. He took Dick’s hand. “You were my friend. You saved us.”
Dick ignored this . . . or seemed to. “My gramma also had the shining—do you remember me telling you that?”
“Yeah. You said you and her could have long conversations without even opening your mouths.”
“That’s right. She taught me. And it was her great-gramma that taught her, way back in the slave days. Someday, Danny, it will be your turn to be the teacher. The pupil will come.”
“If Mrs. Massey doesn’t get me first,” Danny said morosely.
They came to a bench. Dick sat down. “I don’t dare go any further; I might not make it back. Sit beside me. I want to tell you a story.”
“I don’t want stories,” Danny said. “She’ll come back, don’t you get it? She’ll come back and come back and come back.”
“Shut your mouth and open your ears. Take some instruction.” Then Dick grinned, displaying his gleaming new dentures. “I think you’ll get the point. You’re far from stupid, honey.”