"The what?"
Danny shook his head very slowly. "I'm awful tired. Can't I go see my mommy and daddy? I don't want to answer any more questions. I'm tired. And my stomach hurts."
"Are you going to throw up?"
"No, sir. I just want to go see my mommy and daddy."
"Okay, Dan." Edmonds stood up. "You go on out and see them for a minute, then send them in so I can talk to them. Okay?','
"Yes, sir."
"There are books out there to look at. You like books, don't you?"
"Yes, sir," Danny said dutifully.
"You're a good boy, Danny."
Danny gave him a faint smile.
* * *
"I can't find a thing wrong with him," Dr. Edmonds said to the Torrances. "Not physically. Mentally, he's bright and rather too imaginative. It happens. Children have to grow into their imaginations like a pair of oversized shoes. Danny's is still way too big for him. Ever had his IQ tested?"
"I don't believe in them," Jack said. "They straight-jacket the expectations of both parents and teachers."
Dr. Edmonds nodded. "That may be. But if you did test him, I think you'd find he's right off the scale for his age group. His verbal ability, for a boy who is five going on six, is amazing."
"We don't talk down to him," Jack said with a trace of pride.
"I doubt if you've ever had to in order to make yourself understood." Edmonds paused, fiddling with a pen. "He went into a trance while I was with him. At my request. Exactly as you described him in the bathroom last night. All his muscles went lax, his body slumped, his eyeballs rotated outward. Textbook autohypnosis. I was amazed. I still am."
The Torrances sat forward. "What happened?" Wendy asked tensely, and Edmonds carefully related Danny's trance, the muttered phrase from which Edmonds had only been able to pluck the word "monsters," the "dark," the "pounding." The aftermath of tears, near-hysteria, and nervous stomach.
"Tony again," Jack said.
"What does it mean?" Wendy asked. "Have you any idea?"
"A few. You might not like them."
"Go ahead anyway," Jack told him.
"From what Danny told me, his `invisible friend' was truly a friend until you folks moved out here from New England. Tony has only become a threatening figure since that move. The pleasant interludes have become nightmarish, even more frightening to your son because he can't remember exactly what the nightmares are about. That's common enough. We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. There seems to be a buffer somewhere between the conscious and the subconscious, and one hell of a bluenose lives in there. This censor only lets through a small amount, and often what does come through is only symbolic. That's oversimplified Freud, but it does pretty much describe what we know of the mind's interaction with itself."
"You think moving has upset Danny that badly?" Wendy asked.
"It may have, if the move took place under traumatic circumstances," Edmonds said. "Did it?"
Wendy and Jack exchanged a glance.
"I was teaching at a prep school," Jack said slowly. "I lost my job."
"I see," Edmonds said. He put the pen he bad been playing with firmly back in its holder. "There's more here, I'm afraid. It may be painful to you. Your son seems to believe you two have seriously contemplated divorce. He spoke of it in an offhand way, but only because he believes you are no longer considering it."
Jack's mouth dropped open, and Wendy recoiled as if slapped. The blood drained from her face.
"We never even discussed it!" she said. "Not in front of him, not even in front of each other! We-"
"I think it's best if you understand everything, Doctor," Jack said. "Shortly after Danny was born, I became an alcoholic. I'd had a drinking problem all the way through college, it subsided a little after Wendy and I met, cropped up worse than ever after Danny was born and the writing I consider to be my real work was going badly. When Danny was three and a half, he spilled some beer on a bunch of papers I was working on... papers I was shuffling around, anyway... and I... well... oh shit." His voice broke, but his eyes remained dry and unflinching. "It sounds so goddam beastly said out loud. I broke his arm turning him around to spank him. Three months later I gave up drinking. I haven't touched it since."
"I see," Edmonds said neutrally. "I knew the arm had been broken, of course. It was set well." He pushed back from his desk a little and crossed his legs. "If I may be frank, it's obvious that he's been in no way abused since then. Other than the stings, there's nothing on him but the normal bruises and scabs that any kid has in abundance."
"Of course not," Wendy said hotly. "Jack didn't mean-"