Shining

 Author's Note: I recently read The Shining by Steven King and it scared the heck out of me so I decided to write this because I wanted to scare the heck out of other people. I also had a really hard time with a title so if you have any suggestions just leave a comment.

The sun was shining high over the little English town, there were children playing in the streets and in their driveways, cars honking at them to get out of the way. One of the many children, playing outside in the sunlit warmth of summer was little Danny Carbunkle. He was enjoying his time outside because he knew it would be limited, because his dad Jeffery Carbunkle was determined to educate him in the fine arts of reading and writing and music. Today was going to be a different day. Jeffery could feel it in his bones. A chill that was as cold as the Grim Reaper's touch. Maybe we'll stay home today, he thought, the voice in his head as unsure as a bird caught between a cat and the deep, cavernous jaws of a crocodile. No no, I will see that he has as great an education as any of the children here in this little flee trap of a town where the smartest person couldn't be a Harvard janitor. This place is the slum of England.  My feeling doesn't mean anything, maybe I just sat next to the air conditioner too long again. But, he knew that wasn't the case, something was going to be different today whether he liked it or not. "Danny!" He called in his commanding voice that would make even the strongest willed adults do his bidding.

"Yeah Dad"

"Danny, What. Did I tell you about using words like that when you address me?"

"That I will turn into one of the scumballs that rot our society like oversized maggots,"

"Exactly, now we are going,"

"OO OO OO where daddy where?"

"The museum"

"OO I love the museum, especially the part where the plane fly around people's heads, OO and the part where there are cars driving around on the ceiling!"

"NO Danny we're going to the art museum,”

“Oh not the art museum, isn’t that the big creepy building the color of earwax?”

“If you referring to the old cathedral where some of our finest kings including King George V then yes. History Danny that is what you need to learn and what I need to teach you. Now come along and get in the car.”

“Yes Father,”

The art museum was indeed a hulking structure that was supposed to be the pride and beauty of England until the architect got killed in a gun fight over whether a bigger dome or a smaller dome are going to be placed, or one big dome. So no one had their way the construction company put on a square roof and was a monstrous and horrible declaration of what the meaning of God was supposed to be about, so said the king of England. So instead it was turned into an art museum in hopes of educating the people of England about art.

The Carbunckle’s Cadillac Sports car drove through the elegant front gates of the art museum and on to the hulking monstrosity that was King George’s cathedral. Danny looked up at it like it was his last hour alive and that the museum was alive and would swallow him and his father into its cavernous maw. Jeffery pulled the car into a parking space the size of a mouse hole and sat in the car while his five year old son tried to get out of his restraint that was his car seats.

“All right son let’s get into the art museum and immerse ourselves in the art of some of the most ingenious men and woman in the world. Shall we?”

He helped Danny out of his car seat and they walked into the art museum. Outside in a willow tree, a crow cries, almost inviting horror to come.

The door creaked open, the hallway filled with an eerie copper glow, the paintings on the walls breathing sleepily, alive. Danny and Jeffery Carbunkle enter the dust filled entry way with a look of disgust on the father’s face and a look of awe on the son’s. As they walk down the hallway the picture begin to follow with their eyes. “Dad the pictures are moving, I just saw one flinch,”

“Nonsense boy, pictures don’t move because there’s no such thing as magic,”

“But dad I saw it, I’ll bet my life on it!”

“Your life is a very precious object so don’t go betting on things that don’t exist,”

“You just have to believe dad,”

“Seeing is believing Danny and you didn’t see it, your eyes just played tricks on you let’s keep walking,”

“(Sigh) Yes father”

Danny kept trying to spot signs of moving pictures, he thought he saw a flicker of light, a movement of canvas, but, every time he looked, the pictures were looking out at him, staring, the way a deer looks out at you from its wall when it has already been killed and stuffed, the big black glass eyes reminding you what a cruel thing you’ve done. The father had seen them too, the occasional flicker of light, a movement, but he just kept walking. Finally, they arrived at the center of the museum, a waiting room not much bigger than railway car, with shabby straight backed furniture straight out of the 1800’s, the kind that makes you sit up straight and hurt the rest of the day. Knowing this, Jeffery did not sit down, but Danny sat in one of the chairs pretending to drink tea while Jeffery went to the desk to hire a tour guide. The desk in the back corner of the waiting room was dark and had black tinted windows with a tiny hole in the center of the glass to speak through. “I have come to hire a tour guide for the art museum,”

A creepy Transylvanian accent came through the speakers built inside the desk.

“We are closed right now please come back later,” The voice haunted Jeffery’s soul as he walked back to Danny who looked like he was talking to someone across from him.

“Who are you talking to Danny?” Jeffery asked, utterly perplexed by his son’s strange behavior.

“His name is Rick and he lives here, he was the painting that I saw move,”

“Really Danny, stop messing around, let’s go the museum is closed,”

“Dad? Why do we have to leave Rick? He has a lot more to tell me”

“No Danny he doesn’t exist, let’s go”

“NO DAD HE DOES EXIST AND I HATE YOU! LEAVE!”

Danny’s voice went to a deep and gritty growl that sounded hollow, like a ghost.

“Danny?” Jeffery said, getting scared deep to the core now.

“NO DAD LEAVE I WANT TO STAY WITH MY FRIEND!!!!”

“DANNY NO,”

Danny started to melt into the chair, Jeffery tried to grab him but his back was fused with the chair. Danny started sinking deeper into the chair, being pulled like a snake, slowly pulling in its prey. Danny stared at him with red eyes, eyes that seemed to go more insane with every inch he sank deeper. Finally he disappeared completely into the black, tattered leather of the chair.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” Cried Jeffery, totally losing his ordering, commanding voice, “He can’t be gone…….he can’t be,” He huffed and puffed running down the hallway he came from, passing the painting after painting: staring at him with their seemingly unblinking eyes. Jeffery kept running until he got to the painting, the one that Danny swore he saw move. It was a dark painting, a man with a black top hat, and a hollow expression, like there was something disturbed inside him. “Please Danny please come back. COME BACK!!!” HE shouted at the painting, his emotions completely overtaking him, “please,” His voice barely a whisper as he stared at the painting, hoping for some comfort. “You should have believed him Jeff,” The voice came from nowhere but he still heard it deep inside his soul, haunting him to the very core, “You should have believed him,” The voice said again and Jeffery realized that the deep, chilling voice was coming from the painting right in front of him. “please,” he whispered again, “tell me where my son is,”  then he realized how insane he sounded, “Talking to a picture?” He said his voice once more its arrogant and commanding self,” How preposterous!” He started to walk away from the painting with his head high when mist started to swirl around him. Then the voice spoke again in its hollow, broken voice, “A man who does not know his own child, forgets himself,” Then the mist cleared and Jeffery found himself staring at the painting one more time he started to turn, but the man’s face started twitching like a man with an incontrollable itch but doesn’t have hands to scratch it with. Then blood tarts leaking from the corner of the man’s eye the twitch steadily growing into a fully grown thrashing, “WHY,” the man cried and then he gasped and turned to look at Jeffery, “you will pay for this,” he said not threatening, but matter-of-factly, like a promise being made. Then his eye-balls popped out of their sockets and his head lolled to one side. Jeffery started to run through the hallway but was knocked down by an invisible force. Then the walls started to grow straight up and he felt as small as an ant in coliseum, then a swirling fog appeared and the man’s face appeared in the middle of the mist, ”YOU SHALL PAY FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO THIS MUSEUM, YOU HAVE DISGRACED THE NAME OF OUR FATHER’S AND HAVE RUINED US MY STEPPING FOOT INTO THIS BUILDING, AND, YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO YOUR SON, BY GIVING HIM SO MUCH KNOWLEDGE YOU HAVE SCARRED HIM AND TAKEN AWAY ALL INNOCENCE AND YOU SHALL PAY FOR THAT!!!” Then everything went quiet and Jeffery breathed a sigh of relief. Then an explosion went off in his head and he began to convulse and his mouth began to froth and his head continued to burst from the pain, then the mist began to swirl around him and figures began to appear around him. His childhood friends, his high school friends, his parents, his ex-wife, then he realized what was happening, his life was flashing before his eyes just like every dying man before him. Something cold and metallic was pressing against his temple and he realized that it was also in his hand. Danny appeared before him. He walked up to his father like he had so many times before. He put his hand on his father’s face. “please Danny…..please,” Then the gun went off and darkness collapsed over him.