The attic!
There was an attic, he knew. He had come up here with daddy the day he had salted the rattraps around up there. He hadn't allowed Danny to come up with him because of the rats. He was afraid Danny might be bitten. But the trapdoor which led to the attic was set into the ceiling of the last short corridor in this wing. There was a pole leaning against the wall. Daddy had pushed the trapdoor open with the pole, there had been a ratcheting whir of counterweights as the door went up and a ladder had swung down. If he could get up there and pull the ladder after him...
Somewhere in the maze of corridors behind him, the elevator came to a stop. There was a metallic, rattling crash as the gate was thrown back. And then a voice-not in his head now but terribly real-called out: "Danny? Danny, come here a minute, will you? You've done something wrong and I want you to come and take your medicine like a man. Danny? Danny!"
Obedience was so strongly ingrained in him that he actually took two automatic steps toward the sound of that voice before stopping. His hands curled into fists at his sides.
(Not real! False face! I know what you are! Take off your mask!)
"Danny!" it roared. "Come here, you pup! Come here and take it like a man!" A loud, hollow boom as the mallet struck the wall. When the voice roared out his name again it had changed location. It had come closer.
In the world of real things, the hunt was beginning.
Danny ran. Feet silent on the heavy carpet, he ran past the closed doors, past the silk figured wallpaper, past the fire extinguisher bolted to the corner of the wall. He hesitated, and then plunged down the final corridor. Nothing at the end but a bolted door, and nowhere left to run.
But the pole was still there, still leaning against the wall where Daddy had left it.
Danny snatched it up. He craned his neck to stare up at the trapdoor. There was a hook on the end of the pole and you had to catch it on a ring set into the trapdoor. You bad to-
There was a brand-new Yale padlock dangling from the trapdoor. The lock Jack Torrance had clipped around the hasp after laying his traps, just in case his son should take the notion into his head to go exploring up there someday.
Locked. Terror swept him.
Behind him it was coming, blundering and staggering past the Presidential Suite, the mallet whistling viciously through the air.
Danny backed up against the last closed door and waited for it.
Chapter 55. That Which Was Forgotten
Wendy came to a little at a time, the grayness draining away, pain replacing it: her back, her leg, her side... she didn't think she would be able to move. Even her fingers hurt, and at first she didn't know why.
(The razor blade, that's why.)
Her blond hair, now dank and matted, hung in her eyes. She brushed it away and her ribs stabbed inside, making her groan. Now she saw a field of blue and white mattress, spotted with blood. Her blood, or maybe Jack's. Either way it was still fresh. She hadn't been out long. And that was important because-
(?Why?)
Because-
It was the insectile, buzzing sound of the motor that she remembered first. For a moment she fixed stupidly on the memory, and then in a single vertiginous and nauseating swoop, her mind seemed to pan back, showing her everything at once.
Hallorann. It must have been Hallorann. Why else would Jack have left so suddenly, without finishing it..., without finishing her?
Because he was no longer at leisure. He had to find Danny quickly and... and do it before Hallorann could put a stop to it.
Or had it happened already?
She could hear the whine of the elevator rising up the shaft.
(No God please no the blood the blood's still fresh don't let it have happened already)
Somehow she was able to find her feet and stagger through the bedroom and across the ruins of the living room to the shattered front door. She pushed it open and made it out into the hall.
"Danny!" she cried, wincing at the pain in her chest. "Mr. Hallorann! Is anybody there? Anybody?"
The elevator had been running again and now it came to a stop. She heard the metallic crash of the gate being thrown back and then thought she heard a speaking voice. It might have been her imagination. The wind was too loud to really be able to tell.
Leaning against the wall, she made her way up to the corner of the short hallway. She was about to turn the corner when the scream froze her, floating down the stairwell and the elevator shaft:
"Danny! Come here, you pup! Come here aced take it like a man!"
Jack. On the second or third floor. Looking for Danny.
She got around the corner, stumbled, almost fell. Her breath caught in her throat. Something
(someone?)
huddled against the wall about a quarter of the way down from the stairwell. She began to hurry faster, wincing every time her weight came down on her hurt leg. It was a man, she saw, and as she drew closer, she understood the meaning of that buzzing motor.