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REDRUM: The Shining II

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by Jeroan van Aichen
(from an idea by Bryant Arnett)


        Wendy's heart was pounding like cannons going off inside her. 
She was still looking over her shoulder every few seconds though she 
knew they were miles away and safe.  She shifted the noisy gears, 
barely noticing the nerve-numbing cold in the cab of the Snowcat.  
She couldn't stop shaking, the snow outside forgotten, just the fear 
that gripped her and chilled her blood.
        Her eyes darted back and forth through the snowstorm outside, 
into the trees and the frozen black sky.  Any moment she expected to 
see him.  Him.  The massive, black silhouette of him, dark against 
the white of the frozen hills, lumbering behind her, screaming... 
wanting to finish... wanting blood.
        They'd been driving for hours now, seeing the same icy 
universe outside beyond the huge windshield of the Cat.  She didn't 
know where they were or what direction they were heading.  She just 
knew they were traveling away from the nightmare, away from the 
Overlook Hotel, away from the monster... her husband, the monster.
        Danny slept, thank God.  Quiet finally, on the seat beside 
her.  Slumbering and forgetting his real life, she hoped, for the 
comfort of his dream world.  She picked at the thought of how all of 
this would affect him... his mind.  What had he seen?  How could a 
seven year old conceive of this horror?
         His father, Jack Torrance had lost his mind and become a 
murderer, running amok through the dark halls of the Overlook with an 
axe, howling for the blood of his only child.
         But, they were safe here, now.  They barely escaped with 
their lives in the Snowcat.  Dick Hallorann's Snowcat.  Dick Hallorann, 
who traveled hours through the black night trying to save them. 
Dick...sprawled out now in a pool of his own blood.  Blood still hot 
and trying to pump through useless veins, instead only finding the 
gaping hole in his chest where Jack's axe went in.  It poured out 
there onto the cold, marble floor of the lobby.
        She was collecting and dismissing thoughts absently.  Dealing 
with them and tossing them out again, things too horrifying, crosses 
too heavy to bear.  That's when she saw them, twinkling, off to the 
left, low on the horizon...the lights of a city.

* * *

        The authorities in the little town of Lantis, Colorado 
listened to Wendy tell her story through fits, gasps and tears.  
Danny sat on Wendy's lap staring at the white walls of the hospital, 
sucking his thumb in a daze.
        After a couple hours of head scratching, Sheriff Milton Deeds 
phoned the whole mess into the larger town of Sidewinder.  They'd 
know what to do over there.  Local law enforcement in Sidewinder 
joined up with the Forestry Service and dispatched two helicopters 
containing a 20-man SWAT unit, fourteen deputies and enough 
ammunition to level a small town.
        When everything was in place and ready to go, the police back 
in Sidewinder sat and listened to the whole operation on the radio. 
They heard the choppers land, the teams take position and then...a 
horrifying massacre.  The radio cracked and squawked with the screams 
of dying men.  Explosions, bullets, teargas, grenades, all useless 
against the sheer force of Jack Torrance.  It was all over in less 
than five minutes.  The radio quiet except for the cool hiss of white 
noise.  There were no survivors.

* * *

        She could hear them, echoing outside her door.  The footsteps 
were coming down the hall, tapping deep and hollow against the cool, 
tiled floor.  Wendy lay in her bed with the hospital whites pulled
up to her chin.  Danny slumbered easy next to her.  The feet stopped in 
front of her room.  She could see the shadow of dark shoes blocking 
out the tiny crack of light emitting from under the door.  A light 
knock.
         "Mrs. Torrance..?  Hello..?  Mrs. Torrance, uh, it's Stuart 
Ullman...from the Overlook?"
        Wendy let out a small cry of relief that only she could hear.  
"Yes?  Mr.Ullman?  Umm, come in.  Come in."
        The door opened and in walked Ullman, squat and prissy.  She 
remembered now why she hadn't liked him when she met him up at the 
Overlook that first day.  He had seemed pleasant enough while he took 
her and Jack through the hotel, showing them the various tasks and 
duties that would be expected of them during the winter, but every so 
often while her head was turned away slightly, she caught his eyes 
running up and down her.  Eyes that felt slick like a darting tongue 
on her legs and thighs.  There was something rodent-like about him. 
In his teeth, his eyes.  Rat's eyes.
        "What is it, Mr. Ullman...?"
        "Sorry to barge in on you unannounced like this, Mrs. 
Torrance."
         Something was wrong.  He look rattled.
         "Wendy, um, look... I'm afraid the first team... the first 
team wasn't able to locate your husband.  They, uh, ran into some 
trouble up there with the blizzard."  Wendy turned white as a 
snowbank.
        "But, the police are calling in a specialist..."

* * *

        Duke's fire blazed and crackled, licking the black iron of 
the hanging soup pot.  It boiled there, beefy and brothy.  The small 
cabin was warm, oblivious to the snowstorm on the other side of the 
windows.  Utilitarian in form; a bed, a table with one chair and his 
day pack.
          He sat in silence, wearing a blindfold, passing the time 
before supper by taking his rifle apart down to the bolts and putting 
it back together again from memory.  When he was finished, he shoved 
jerky into the crag of his mouth and chewed ferociously, enjoying the 
salty sinew in his teeth. He got down on his stomach and did 300 
clappers. He got up, laughed to himself and cupped his package. He 
took a pull off a fifth of Jack Daniels.  "I'm the man," he said.  A 
Government issue cell-phone began a muffled ring in the dark of his 
pack.  He picked it up and spoke...
        "Nukem."
        It was the Feds.  Those wieners always ended up calling him 
whenever their diapers got too dirty.  Ah, what the hell, he thought, 
the pay was decent and he was working for the good ol' U.S. of A. No 
better country in the world.  And you can't beat the broads...
        "Meet me in three hours at Stapleton...and bring cash," Duke said.

* * *      

3:45 am.  There were three of them.  Nukem sat on the hard bench of 
the chopper with Gordon Cole Sr. from the Bureau.  He was crusty as a 
buzzard, an old-school Fed, sharp as they came.  He could be trusted. 
There was a pilot named Henderson up front.  It was a frozen, ball-
shaking ride and Duke couldn't believe the crap he was hearing.  A 
what?...a caretaker?  He imagined some doddering old duffer hunkered 
and squinting over his hothouse zinnias, but as Cole filled him in, 
he understood why he'd been called.
         Something had happened to Jack Torrance up there, Cole 
explained.  Something not only murderous, but...evil somehow.  Cole 
couldn't put it in words, it was just a feeling he had and he was 
nearly always right.  He trusted his gut and he knew that one human 
man couldn't have done all this.  Nukem dug.
         The plan was to drop Nukem a quarter mile west of the hotel. 
He'd have to hike it from there.  Cole told Duke that he was to 
infiltrate the Overlook, call in his position when he got inside and 
then radio for back-up.
         "I work alone, Gordo," said Nukem from behind his mirrored 
sunglasses.
        "I know, Duke, but this is different...we don't know what 
we're dealing with h..."
        "Alone." And that was it.

* * *

        4:30 am. They were about twenty minutes from the drop sight. 
The snowstorm was raging and it now qualified as a full-blown 
blizzard.
         "Base, come in, this is KF-3, over," said Henderson into his 
headset.  Nothing.  He tried the same thing and then again.  He 
looked back at Cole and Nukem.  "Looks like this storm just humped 
us...taken us out of radio range or something.  I got dead air."
        As the pilot was speaking the word "range," there began a 
slow, building shake to the chopper.
         "What the hell is this?" said Henderson.  Duke and Cole 
watched as Henderson tried to steady the craft.  "The rotor blades 
are icing up!"
        The chopper began to spin, slowly at first, then picking up 
speed and hurtling out of control into the white night.
        "Bail out!" said Nukem, grabbing at three parachutes hanging 
on hooks.
        "No, wait...I think I can steady her!" screamed Henderson.
        "No...we're going down." Nukem said through his teeth while 
tossing chutes at Henderson and Cole.
        "Henderson's been in tighter corners than this, Duke...he can 
handle it!" Cole yelled.
        Nukem slipped on his parachute, grabbed his pack and ripped 
the side door of the copter open.  "Then you boys have a nice little 
tea party...I'm outta here." With that he leapt out into the frozen 
nothingness.
        He tumbled through the stinging air, ice like glass shards 
hitting his face and neck, not seeing anything except the endless 
paper-white of the storm.  He yanked the rip cord and was pulled back 
with the force of it.  As he heard the chute open above him, his pack 
was torn from his hands.  He cursed into the muffled freeze.  He 
floated.  Then he heard the helicopter explode in the distance.  It 
sounded like they had hit a mountain.  "See you in Hell, fellas."  
Nukem spat.
         He drifted and fell and finally got below the clouds enough 
to see a little.  Trees and HOLY SHIT!...  He felt branches in his 
face, pine needles in his mouth and eyes, heard the cloth of the 
chute shredding, himself falling, hitting every branch, his skin 
being sliced in a million places on his body and then a solid THWACK 
as his head careened off an icy stump on the ground.
        "Friggin' clearcut...oh, goodnight, Irene." Thought Duke as 
he blacked out.

* * *

        He awoke with his brain on fire and his ass freezing.  His 
eyes seared with hot bolts of agony.  The scream of the morning sun 
made the red backs of his lids feel like they were sliding right out 
of his skull.  He shook his head to clear it and pulled himself 
upright.  He looked at his watch.  6:10 am.  He'd been out for an 
hour and a half.  The storm had passed.  The sun only made the snow 
colder.
        He brushed himself off and took stock.  His pack was gone 
leaving him with a single pistol.  That was bad.  He looked at his 
arms and legs and was surprised to find everything was still intact. 
Aside from countless tiny cuts all over him, he was A.O.K.  He pulled 
the waistband of his trousers down and peeked inside.  His hammer was 
still hanging.  "Groovy," he said and began trudging across the 
tundra.

* * * 
  
        He'd hiked for a half an hour, moving forward by some inner 
compass inside his head, when he spotted it.  Up on the mountain, 
huge and looming, heavy and coal-black against the blue-white 
sky...the Overlook.
        "It's a brand new day," said Duke. "Time to kick some 
caretaker ass"
        He stayed against the trees, hidden in the shadow of the 
massive hotel.  He moved slowly, looking up into the dim windows, 
expecting to see the raving face of Jack Torrance at any moment.
        When he reached the front parking lot, he saw the debris and 
char of the two choppers that had failed before him. There were 
bodies everywhere.  Not just shot or blown up, but bodies that looked 
as if they'd been torn apart by something.  Mangled limbs had been 
pulled from torso sockets and thrown aside, intestines hung in 
heaping ropes from the trees, heads had been loosed from necks and 
crushed like flat, lonely basketballs.  Everything dripped red out 
onto the white of the snow like some demonic candy cane covering the 
hotel grounds.  "That's gotta hurt," said Duke.
         He carefully approached the front door.  When he was certain 
he hadn't been seen, he quietly pried it open, pulling it against the 
slush that had built up there.
         He entered the building and stood there quietly on the cold 
tile of the lobby.
         It was silent as a tomb.  There was something... that didn't 
feel right.  Something that felt like another planet.  The air.  It 
had an unnatural thickness to it, Duke could feel it sticking to his 
face.  When he inhaled, it was like breathing in the dust from some 
ancient world.  As the air nestled inside him, it seemed to tickle 
the pink of his lungs like tiny birds flew in his chest.
         He looked around him at the old marbled floors.  Indian rugs 
hung on the walls.  The walls seemed to breathe slightly.  The dark 
mahogany of the front desk creaked and Duke spun around.  Nothing 
there, but everything seemed to be alive.  It looked as if nothing 
had changed here since the 1920's.  He half-expected to see a flapper 
doing the Charleston come tumbling out of one of the many closed 
doors in the foyer.
         Suddenly, he heard music coming from one of the hallways. 
Distant at first, then making itself known loud and clear.  It was 
one of those big band ballads with a syrupy-voiced boy crooner.  Duke 
knew the song... 'Midnight, the Stars, and You.'
        "Work's done, Jacky boy." he said out loud crossing the 
lobby, "Come out and play."  
        He cocked his gun and was swallowed by the black of the 
hallway.








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copyright 1997 Bryant Arnett
all rights reserved
