The Shining by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Family, horror, Horror & ghost stories, Horror - General, Fiction - Horror, Horror fiction, Occult fiction, Horror tales; American, Hotelkeepers, Demonology, Authors, Advice on parenting
ISBN: 9780743424424
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2001-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

27 - Catatonic

Wendy ran down the hall in her stocking feet and ran down the main stairs to the lobby two at a time. She didn’t look up at the carpeted flight that led to the second floor, but if she had, she would have seen Danny standing at the top of them, still and silent, his unfocused eyes directed out into indifferent space, his thumb in his mouth, the collar and shoulders of his shirt damp. There were puffy bruises on his neck and just below his chin.

Jack’s cries had ceased, but that did nothing to ease her fear. Ripped out of her sleep by his voice, raised in that old hectoring pitch she remembered so well, she still felt that she was dreaming-but another part knew she was awake, and that terrified her more. She half-expected to burst into the office and find him standing over Danny’s sprawled-out body, drunk and confused.

She pushed through the door and Jack was standing there, rubbing at his temples with his fingers. His face was ghostwhite. The two-way CB radio lay at his feet in a sprinkling of broken glass.

“Wendy?” he asked uncertainly. “Wendy-?” The bewilderment seemed to grow and for a moment she saw his true face, the one he ordinarily kept so well hidden, and it was a face of desperate unhappiness, the face of an animal caught in a snare beyond its ability to decipher and render harmless. Then the muscles began to work, began to writhe under the skin, the mouth began to tremble infirmly, the Adam’s apple began to rise and fall.

Her own bewilderment and surprise were overlaid by shock: he was going to cry.

She had seen him cry before, but never since he stopped drinking… and never in those days unless he was very drunk and pathetically remorseful. He was a tight man, drum-tight, and his loss of control frightened her all over again.

He came toward her, the tears brimming over his lower lids now, his head shaking involuntarily as if in a fruitless effort to ward off this emotional storm, and his chest drew in a convulsive gasp that was expelled in a huge, racking sob. His feet, clad in Hush Puppies, stumbled over the wreck of the radio and he almost fell into her arms, making her stagger back with his weight.

His breath blew into her face and there was no smell of liquor on it. Of course not; there was no liquor up here.

“What’s wrong?” She held him as best she could. “Jack, what is it?” But he could do nothing at first but sob, clinging to her, almost crushing the wind from her, his head turning on her shoulder in that helpless, shaking, warding-off gesture. His sobs were heavy and fierce. He was shuddering all over, his muscles jerking beneath his plaid shirt and jeans.

“Jack? What? Tell me what’s wrong!” At last the sobs began to change themselves into words, most of them incoherent at first, but coming clearer as his tears began to spend themselves.

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