And now Tony stood directly in front of him, and looking at Tony was like looking into a magic mirror and seeing himself in ten years, the eyes widely spaced and very dark, the chin firm, the mouth handsomely molded. The hair was light blond like his mother's, and yet the stamp on his features was that of his father, as if Tony-as if the Daniel Anthony Torrance that would someday be-was a halfling caught between father and son, a ghost of both, a fusion.
"You have to try to help," Tony said. "But your father... be's with the hotel now, Danny. It's where he wants to be. It wants you too, because it's very greedy."
Tony walked past him, into the shadows,
"Wait!" Danny cried. "What can I-"
"He's close now," Tony said, still walking away. "You'll have to run... hide... keep away from him. Keep away."
"Tony, I can'tl"
"But you've already started," Tony said. "You will remember what your father forgot."
He was gone.
And from somewhere near his father's voice came, coldly wheedling: "Danny? You can come out, doc. Just a little spanking, that's all. Take it like a man and it will be all over. We don't need her, doc. Just you and me, right? When we get this little... spanking... behind us, it will be just you and me."
Danny ran.
Behind him, the thing's temper broke through the shambling charade of normality.
"Come here, you little shitl Right nowl"
Down a long hall, panting and gasping. Around a corner. Up a flight of stairs. And as he went, the walls that had been so high and remote began to come down; the rug which had only been a blur beneath his feet took on the familiar black and blue pattern, sinuously woven together; the doors became numbered again and behind them the parties that were all one went on and on, populated by generations of guests. The air seemed to be shimmering around him, the blows of the mallet against the walls echoing and re-echoing. He seemed to be bursting through some thin placental womb from sleep to
the rug outside the Presidential Suite on the third floor; lying near him in a bloody heap were the bodies of two men dressed in suits and narrow ties. They had been taken out by shotgun blasts and now they began to stir in front of him and get up.
He drew in breath to scream but didn't.
(!! FALSE FACES!! NOT REAL!!)
They faded before his ga ze like old photographs and were gone.
But below him, the faint sound of the mallet against the walls went on and on, drifting up through the elevator shaft and the stairwell. The controlling force of the Overlook, in the shape of his father, blundering around on the first floor.
A door opened with a thin screeing sound behind him.
A decayed woman in a rotten silk gown pranced out, her yellowed and splitting fingers dressed with verdigris-caked rings. Heavy-bodied wasps crawled sluggishly over her face.
"Come in," she whispered to him, grinning with black lips. "Come in and we will daance the taaaango..."
"False face!" he hissed. "Not real!" She drew back from him in alarm, and in the act of drawing back she faded and was gone.
"Where are you?" it screamed, but the voice was still only in his head. He could still hear the thing that was wearing Jack's face down on the first floor... and something else.
The high, whining sound of an approaching motor.
Danny's breath stopped in his throat with a little gasp. Was it just another face of the hotel, another illusion? Or was it Dick? He wanted-wanted desperately-to believe it was Dick, but he didn't dare take the chance.
He retreated down the main corridor, and then took one of the offshoots, his feet whispering on the nap of the carpet. Locked doors frowned down at him as they had done in the dreams, the visions, only now he was in the world of real things, where the game was played for keeps.
He turned to the right and came to a halt, his heart thudding heavily in his chest. Heat was blowing around his ankles. From the registers, of course. This must have been Daddy's day to heat the west wing and
(You will remember what your father forgot.)
What was it? He almost knew. Something that might save him and Mommy? But Tony had said he would have to do it himself. What was it?
He sank down against the wall, trying desperately to think. It was so hard... the hotel kept trying to get into his head... the image of that dark and slumped form swinging the mallet from side to side, gouging the wallpaper... sending out puffs of plaster dust.
"Help me," he muttered. "Tony, help me."
And suddenly he became aware that the hotel had grown deathly silent. The whining sound of the motor had stopped
(must not have been real)
and the sounds of the party had stopped and there was only the wind, howling and whooping endlessly.
The elevator whirred into sudden life.
It was coming up.
And Danny knew who-what-was in it.
He bolted to his feet, eyes staring wildly. Panic clutched around his heart. Why had Tony sent him to the third floor? He was trapped up here. All the doors were locked.