In the darkness the booming noises grew louder, louder still, echoing, everywhere, all around.
And now he was crouched in a dark hallway, crouched on a blue rug with a riot of twisting black shapes woven into its pile, listening to the booming noises approach, and now a Shape turned the corner and began to come toward him, lurching, smelling of blood and doom. It had a mallet in one hand and it was swinging it (REDRUM) from side to side in vicious arcs, slamming it into the walls, cutting the silk wallpaper and knocking out ghostly bursts of plasterdust:
Come on and take your medicine! Take it like a man!
The Shape advancing on him, reeking of that sweet-sour odor, gigantic, the mallet head cutting across the air with a wicked hissing whisper, then the great hollow boom as it crashed into the wall, sending the dust out in a puff you could smell, dry and itchy. Tiny red eyes glowed in the dark. The monster was upon him, it had discovered him, cowering here with a blank wall at his back. And the trapdoor in the ceiling was locked.
Darkness. Drifting.
"Tony, please take me back, please, please-"
And he was back, sitting on the curb of Arapahoe Street, his shirt sticking damply to his back, his body bathed in sweat. In his ears he could still hear that huge, contrapuntal booming sound and smell his own urine as he voided himself in the extremity of his terror. He could see that limp hand dangling over the edge of the tub with blood running down one finger, the third, and that inexplicable word so much more horrible than any of the others: REDRUM.
And now sunshine. Real things. Except for Tony, now six blocks up, only a speck, standing on the corner, his voice faint and high and sweet. "Be careful, doc..."
Then, in the next instant, Tony was gone and Daddy's battered red bug was turning the corner and chattering up the street, farting blue smoke behind it. Danny was off the curb in a second, waving, jiving from one foot to the other, yelling: "Daddy! Hey, Dad! Hi! Hi!"
His daddy swung the VW into the curb, killed the engine, and opened the door. Danny ran toward him and then froze, his eyes widening. His heart crawled up into the middle of his throat and froze solid. Beside his daddy, in the other front seat, was a short-handled mallet, its head clotted with blood and hair.
Then it was just a bag of groceries.
"Danny... you okay, doc?"
"Yeah. I'm okay." He went to his daddy and buried his face in Daddy's sheepskin-lined denim jacket and hugged him tight tight tight. Jack hugged him back, slightly bewildered.
"Hey, you don't want to sit in the sun like that, doc. You're drippin sweat."
"I guess I fell asleep a little. I love you, Daddy. I been waiting."
"I love you too, Dan. I brought home some stuff. Think you're big enough to carry it upstairs?"
"Sure am!"
"Doc Torrance, the world's stroneest man," Jack said, and ruffled his hair. "Whose hobby is falling asleep on street corners."
Then they were walking up to the door and Mommy had come down to the porch to meet them and he stood on the second step and watched them kiss. They were glad to see each other. Love came out of them the way love had come out of the boy and girl walking up the street and holding hands. Danny was glad.
The bag of groceries-just a bag of groceries-crackled in his arms. Everything was all right. Daddy was home. Mommy was loving him. There were no bad things. And not everything Tony showed him always happened.
But fear had settled around his heart, deep and dreadful, around his heart and around that indecipherable word he had seen in his spirit's mirror.
Chapter 5. Phonebooth
Jack parked the VW in front of the Rexall in the Table Mesa shopping center and let the engine die. He wondered again if he shouldn't go ahead and get the fuel pump replaced, and told himself again that they couldn't afford it. If the little car could keep running until November, it could retire with full honors anyway. By November the snow up there in the mountains would be higher than the beetle's roof... maybe higher than three beetles stacked on top of each other.
"Want you to stay in the car, doe. I'll bring you a candy bar."
"Why can't I come in?"
"I have to make a phone call. It's private stuff."
"Is that why you didn't make it at home?"
"Check."
Wendy had insisted on a phone in spite of their unraveling finances. She had argued that with a small child-especially a boy like Danny, who sometimes suffered from fainting spells-they couldn't afford not to have one. So Jack had forked over the thirty-dollar installation fee, bad enough, and a ninety-dollar security deposit, which really hurt. And so far the phone had been mute except for two wrong numbers.
"Can I have a Baby Ruth, Daddy?"
"Yes. You sit still and don't play with the gearshift, right?"
"Right. I'll look at the maps."