The Shining

smell beer, wet and new, like a fine mist.
As she reached Jack he rolled over, opened his eyes, and looked up at her. For a moment his gaze was utterly blank, and then it cleared.
“Wendy?” he asked. “That you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you think you can make it upstairs? If you put your arms around me? Jack, where did you-”
His hand closed brutally around her ankle.
“Jack! What are you-”
“Gotcha!” he said, and began to grin. There was a stale odor of gin and olives about him that seemed to set off an old terror in her, a worse terror than any hotel could provide by itself. A distant part of her thought that the worst thing was that it had all come back to this, she and her drunken husband.
“Jack, I want to help.”
“Oh yeah. You and Danny only want to help.” The grip on her ankle was crushing now. Still holding onto her, Jack was getting shakily to his knees. “You wanted to help us all right out of here. But now… I… gotcha!”
“Jack, you’re hurting my ankle-”
“I’ll hurt more than your ankle, you bitch.”
The word stunned her so completely that she made no effort to move when he let go of her ankle and stumbled from his knees to his feet, where he stood swaying in front of her.
“You never loved me,” he said. “You want us to leave because you know that’ll be the end of me. Did you ever think about my re… res… respons’bilities? No, I guess to fuck you didn’t. All you ever think about is ways to drag me down. You’re just like my mother, you milksop bitch!”
“Stop it,” she said, crying. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re drunk. I don’t know how, but you’re drunk.”
“Oh, I know. I know now. You and him. That little pup upstairs. The two of you, planning together. Isn’t that right?”
“No, no! We never planned anything! What are you-”
“You liarl” he screamed. “Oh, I know how you do it! I guess I know that! When I say, `We’re going to stay here and I’m going to do my job,’ you say, `Yes, dear,’ and he says, `Yes, Daddy,’ and then you lay your plans. You planned to use the snowmobile. You planned that. But I knew. I figured it out. Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Did you think I was stupid?”
She stared at him, unable to speak now. He was going to kill her, and then he was going to kill Danny. Then maybe the hotel would be satisfied and allow him to kill himself. Just like that other caretaker. Just like
(Grady.)
With almost swooning horror, she realized at last who it was that Jack had been conversing with in the ballroom.
“You turned my son against me. That was the worst.” His face sagged into lines of selfpity. “My little boy. Now he hates me, too. You saw to that. That was your plan all along, wasn’t it? You’ve always been jealous, haven’t you? Just like your mother. You couldn’t be satisfied unless you had all the cake, could you? Could you?”
She couldn’t talk.
“Well, I’ll fix you,” he said, and tried to put his hands around her throat.
She took a step backward, then another, and he stumbled against her. She remembered the knife in the pocket of her robe and groped for it, but now his left arm had swept around her, pinning her arm against her side. She could smell sharp gin and the sour odor of his sweat.
“Have to be punished,” he was grunting. “Chastised. Chastised… harshly.”
His right hand found her throat.
As her breath stopped, pure panic took over. His left hand joined his right and now the knife was free to her own hand, but she forgot about it. Both of her hands came up and began to yank helplessly at his larger, stronger ones.
“Mommy!” Danny shrieked from somewhere. “Daddy, stop! You’re hurting Mommyl” He screamed piercingly, a high and crystal sound that she heard from far off.
Red flashes of light leaped in front of her eyes like ballet dancers. The room grew darker. She saw her son clamber up on the bar and throw himself at Jack’s shoulders. Suddenly one of the hands that had been crushing her throat was gone as Jack cuffed Danny away with a snarl. The boy fell back against the empty shelves and dropped to the floor, dazed. The hand was on her throat again. The red flashes began to turn black.
Danny was crying weakly. Her chest was burning. Jack was shouting into her face: “I’ll fix you! Goddam you, I’ll show you who is boss around here! I’ll show you-”
But all sounds were fading down a long dark corridor. Her struggles began to weaken. One of her hands fell away from his and dropped slowly until the arm was stretched out at right angles to her body, the hand dangling limply from the wrist like the hand of a drowning woman.
It touched a bottle-one of the straw-wrapped wine bottles that served as decorative candleholders.
Sightlessly, with the last of her strength, she groped for the bottle’s neck