It was Mr. Hallorann. He had come after all.
She eased to her knees beside him, offering up an incoherent prayer that he was not dead. His nose was bleeding, and a terrible gout of blood had spilled out of his mouth. The side of his face was a puffed purple bruise. But he was breathing, thank God for that. It was coming in long, harsh draws that shook his whole frame.
Looking at him more closely, Wendy's eyes widened. One arm of the parka he was wearing was blackened and singed. One side of it had been ripped open. There was blood in his hair and a shallow but ugly scratch down the back of his neck.
(My God, what's happened to him?)
"Danny!" the hoarse, petulant voice roared from above them. "Get out here, goddammit!"
There was no time to wonder about it now. She began to shake him, her face twisting at the flare of agony in her ribs. Her side felt hot and massive and swollen.
(What if they're poking my lung whenever I move?)
There was no help for that, either. If Jack found Danny, he would kill him, beat him to death with that mallet as he had tried to do to her.
So she shook Hallorann, and then began to slap the unbruised side of his face lightly.
"Wake up," she said. "Mr. Hallorann, you've got to wake up. Please... please..."
From overhead, the restless booming sounds of the mallet as Jack Torrance looked for his son.
Danny stood with his back against the door, looking at the right angle where the hallways joined. The steady, irregular booming sound of the mallet against the walls grew louder. The thing that was after him screamed and howled and cursed. Dream and reality had joined together without a seam.
It came around the corner.
In a way, what Danny felt was relief. It was not his father. The mask of face and body had been ripped and shredded and made into a bad joke. It was not his daddy, not this Saturday Night Shock Show horror with its rolling eyes and hunched and hulking shoulders and blood-drenched shirt. It was not his daddy.
"Now, by God," it breathed. It wiped its lips with a shaking hand. "Now you'll find out who is the boss around here. You'll see. It's not you they want. It's me. Me. Me!"
It slashed out with the scarred hammer, its double head now shapeless and splintered with countless impacts. It struck the wall, cutting a circle in the silk paper. Plaster dust puffed out. It began to grin.
"Let's see you pull any of your fancy tricks now," it muttered. "I wasn't born yesterday, you know. Didn't just fall off the hay truck, by God. I'm going to do my fatherly duty by you, boy."
Danny said: "You're not my daddy."
It stopped. For a moment it actually looked uncertain, as if not sure who or what it was. Then it began to walk again. The hammer whistled out, struck a door panel and made it boom hollowly.
"You're a liar," it said. "Who else would I be? I have the two birthmarks, I have the cupped navel, even the pecker, my boy. Ask your mother."
"You're a mask," Danny said. "Just a false face. The only reason the hotel needs to use you is that you aren't as dead as the others. But when it's done with you, you won't be anything at all. You don't scare me."
"I'll scare you!" it howled. The mallet whistled fiercely down, smashing into the rug between Danny's feet. Danny didn't flinch. "You lied about me! You connived with her! You plotted against me! And you cheated! You copied that final exam!" The eyes glared out at him from beneath the furred brows. There was an expression of lunatic cunning in them. "I'll find it, too. It's down in the basement somewhere. I'll find it. They promised me I could look all I want." It raised the mallet again.
"Yes, they promise," Danny said, "but they lie." The mallet hesitated at the top of its swing.
Hallorann had begun to come around, but Wendy had stopped patting his cheeks. A moment ago the words You cheated! You copied that final exam! had floated down through the elevator shaft, dim, barely audible over the wind. From somewhere deep in the west wing. She was nearly convinced they were on the third floor and that Jack-whatever had taken possession of Jack-had found Danny. There was nothing she or Hallorann could do now.
"Oh doc," she murmured. Tears blurred her eyes.
"Son of a bitch broke my jaw," Hallorann muttered thickly, "and my head..." He worked to sit up. His right eye was purpling rapidly and swelling shut. Still, he saw Wendy.
"Missus Torrance-"
"Shhhh," she said.
"Where is the boy, Missus Torrance?"
"On the third floor," she said. "With his father."
"They lie," Danny said again. Something had gone through his mind, flashing like a meteor, too quick, too bright to catch and hold. Only the tail of the thought remained.
(it's down in the basement somewhere)
(you will remember what your father forgot)