He wiped his lips with his left hand, in unconscious imitation of his father, and took a step forward. No movement from the hose. Another step. Nothing. There, see how stupid you are? You got all worked up thinking about that dumb room and that dumb Bluebeard story and that hose was probably ready to fall off for the last five years. That's all.

Danny stared at the hose on the floor and thought of wasps.

Eight steps away, the nozzle of the hose gleamed peacefully at him from the rug as if to say: Don't worry. I'm just a hose, that's all. And even if that isn't all, what I do to you won't be much worse than a bee sting. Or a wasp sting. What would I want to do to a nice little boy like you… except bite… and bite… and bite?

Danny took another step, and another. His breath was dry and harsh in his throat. Panic was close now. He began to wish the hose would move, then at last be would know, he would be sure. He took another step and now he was within striking distance. But it's not going to strike at you, he thought hysterically. How can it strike at you, bite at you, when it's just a hose?

Maybe it's full of wasps.

His internal temperature plummeted to ten below zero. He stared at the black bore in the center of the nozzle, nearly hypnotized. Maybe it was full of wasps, secret wasps, their brown bodies bloated with poison, so full of autumn poison that it dripped from their stingers in clear drops of fluid.

Suddenly he knew that he was nearly frozen with terror; if he did not make his feet go now, they would become locked to the carpet and he would stay here, staring at the black hole in the center of the brass nozzle like a bird staring at a snake, he would stay here until his daddy found him and then what would happen?

With a high moan, he made himself run. As he reached the hose, some trick of the light made the nozzle seem to move, to revolve as if to strike, and he leaped high in the air above it; in his panicky state it seemed that his legs pushed him nearly all the way to the ceiling, that he could feel the stiff back hairs that formed his cowlick brushing the hallway's plaster ceiling, although later he knew that couldn't have been so.

He came down on the other side of the hose and ran, and suddenly he heard it behind him, coming for him, the soft dry whicker of that brass snake's head as it slithered rapidly along the carpet after him like a rattlesnake moving swiftly through a dry field of grass. It was coming for him, and suddenly the stairs seemed very far away; they seemed to retreat a running step into the distance for each running step he took toward them.

Daddy! he tried to scream, but his closed throat would not allow a word to pass. He was on his own. Behind him the sound grew louder, the dry sliding sound of the snake, slipping swiftly over the carpet's dry hackles. At his heels now, perhaps rising up with the clear poison dribbling from its brass snout.

Danny reached the stairs and had to pinwheel his arms crazily for balance. For one moment it seemed sure that he would cartwheel over and go head-for-heels to the bottom.

He threw a glance back over his shoulder.

The hose had not moved. It lay as it had lain, one loop off the frame, the brass nozzle on the hall floor, the nozzle pointing disinterestedly away from him. You see, stupid? he berated himself. You made it all up, scaredy-cat. It was all your imagination, scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat.

He clung to the stairway railing, his legs trembling in reaction.

(It never chased you)

his mind told him, and seized on that thought, and played it back.

(never chased you, never chased you, never did, never did)

It was nothing to be afraid of. Why, he could go back and put that hose right into its frame, if he wanted to. He could, but he didn't think he would. Because what if it had chased him and had gone back when it saw that it couldn't… quite… catch him?

The hose lay on the carpet, almost seeming to ask him if he would like to come back and try again.

Panting, Danny ran downstairs.

20. Talking to Mr. Ullman

The Sidewinder Public Library was a small, retiring building one block down from the town's business area. It was a modest, vine-covered building, and the wide concrete walk up to the door was lined with the corpses of last summer's flowers. On the lawn was a large bronze statue of a Civil War general Jack had never heard of, although he had been something of a Civil War buff in his teenage years.

The newspaper files were kept downstairs. They consisted of the Sidewinder Gazette that had gone bust in 1963, the Estes Park daily, and the Boulder Camera. No Denver papers at all.

Sighing, Jack settled for the Camera.

When the files reached 1965, the actual newspapers were replaced by spools of microfilm (“A federal grant,” the librarian told him brightly. “We hope to do 1958 to '64 when the next check comes through, but they're so slow, aren't they? You will be careful, won't you? I just know you will. Call if you need me.”). The only reading machine bad a lens that had somehow gotten warped, and by the time Wendy put her hand on his shoulder some forty-five minutes after he had switched from the actual papers, he had a juicy thumper of a headache.

“Danny's in the park,” she said, “but I don't want him outside too long. How much longer do you think you'll be?”

“Ten minutes,” he said. Actually he had traced down the last of the Overlook's fascinating history-the years between the gangland shooting and the takeover by Stuart Ullman amp; Co. But he felt the same reticence about telling Wendy.

“What are you up to, anyway?” she asked. She ruffed his hair as she said it, but her voice was only half-teasing.

“Looking up some old Overlook history,” he said.

“Any particular reason?”

“No,

(and why the hell are you so interested anyway?)

just curiosity.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“Not much,” he said, having to strive to keep his voice pleasant now. She was prying, just the way she had always pried and poked at him when they had been at Stovington and Danny was still a crib-infant. Where are you going, Jack? When will you be back? How much money do you have with you? Are you going to take the car? Is Al going to be with you? Will one of you stay sober? On and on. She had, pardon the expression, driven him to drink. Maybe that hadn't been the only reason, but by Christ let's tell the truth here and admit it was one of them. Nag and nag and nag until you wanted to clout her one just to shut her up and stop the

(Where? When? How? Are you? Will you?)

endless flow of questions. It could give you a real

(headache? hangover?)

headache. The reader. The damned reader with its distorted print. That was why he had such a cunt of a headache.

“Jack, are you all right? You look pale-”

He snapped his head away from her fingers. “I am fine!”

She recoiled from his hot eyes and tried on a smile that was a size too small. “Well… if you are… I'll just go and wait in the park with Danny…” She was starting away now, her smile dissolving into a bewildered expression of hurt.

He called to her: “Wendy?”

She looked back from the foot of the stairs. “What, Jack?”

He got up and went over to her. “I'm sorry, babe. I guess I'm really not all right. That machine… the lens is distorted. I've got a really bad headache. Got any aspirin?”

“Sure.” She pawed in her purse and came up with a tin of Anacin. “You keep them.”

He took the tin. “No Excedrin?” He saw the small recoil on her face and understood. It had been a bitter sort of joke between them at first, before the drinking had gotten too bad for jokes. He had claimed that Excedrin was the only nonprescription drug ever invented that could stop a hangover dead in its tracks. Absolutely the only one. He had begun to think of his morning-after thumpers as Excedrin Headache Number Vat 69.