Dan releases Concetta Reynolds's steam to destroy the True Knot

Dan Torrance’s release of Concetta Reynolds’s Steam turns the True Knot’s dependence on its source of nourishment into the means of its destruction. He opens a leaking mental lockbox and unleashes the poisoned remains he has carried within himself; the already measles-weakened group dies in a matter of seconds. The scene brings Dan’s plan to its dangerous conclusion and makes the True Knot’s long-standing reliance on Steam fatal.

The opening of the lockbox

With the True Knot members’ backs turned, Dan enters from the kitchen beside Abra Stone, who flickers in and out of view. He registers two bundles of clothes on the floor and recognizes that Bradley Trevor’s measles are still affecting the group. The brief observations place the attack amid the consequences of the epidemic, before Dan’s action makes those consequences decisive.

Dan then withdraws inward and finds a third lockbox, the one that leaks. Opening it releases what he has kept contained: the poisoned remains of Concetta Reynolds’s last gasp. The choice of the third, faulty container matters to the action’s mechanics. Dan does not merely approach the True Knot with a weapon from outside; he opens a place within himself that has held a dangerous substance, allowing its contents to enter the room.

Concetta’s Steam becomes a weapon

Dan bends forward as the remains leave him, and the passage registers his immediate relief. The Steam had come from Concetta Reynolds, whom the narration identifies as an old poet, and had been freely given in a dying kiss. Its release therefore carries two linked meanings: it is an act of letting go of what Dan has retained, and the use of Concetta’s gift against the group that survives by consuming such nourishment.

A cloud takes Concetta’s shape for a moment, perhaps looking toward Abra Stone or even smiling, before the figure vanishes. The uncertainty in that brief appearance keeps the event from becoming a definite return or communication; what remains materially present is the mist, which rolls toward the gathered True Knot. Dan identifies it as Steam and tells the group that what it lived on will now destroy it. Their sustenance and their danger are made one and the same.

The True Knot’s collapse

The True Knot turns toward Abra Stone’s cry, and Long Paul responds with alarm at what is happening. The group’s attention shifts toward the cloud, but that recognition gives its members no time to escape or regain control. The mist reaches them, and the narration compares its spread to blood dispersing in water. The image emphasizes how quickly the threat expands through the clustered group without changing the underlying cause: Dan has released poisoned Steam into their midst.

The True Knot begins to cycle. Two members, Short Eddie and Big Mo, embrace with their foreheads together. Dan sees the words of affection on Short Eddie’s lips and Big Mo beginning to answer before both are gone, their clothes falling to the floor. The moment briefly sets an intimate gesture against the group’s rapid collapse. Even after acknowledging what the True Knot has done, Dan is moved by the sight; the scene allows that response without withdrawing the consequences of the group’s actions.

The deaths unfold in seconds, though not all members last the same length of time. Dan recognizes that the plan depended on acting quickly and had anticipated that he might not live to see whether it succeeded. He had not expected the result to arrive so fast. The narration allows for the measles to have weakened the True Knot already, helping explain the speed of the collapse while leaving the released Steam as the immediate cause.

Witnesses and consequence

Rose the Hat stands at the head of the steps leading down from the platform as the killing mist reaches the True Knot. The account describes the cloud as the remains of Abra Stone’s momo and presents its work as both quick and lethal. Rose’s position places her at the edge of the group’s destruction, a witness to an outcome that the True Knot’s gathering and shared dependence cannot prevent.

The action reverses the group’s relation to Steam: what had sustained the True Knot becomes the substance through which it is defeated. Dan’s intervention also depends on more than his own will. Concetta Reynolds’s freely given last Steam, its containment in the leaking lockbox, the illness already weakening the group, and Dan’s release of the contents converge in the outcome. The ending is therefore both an act of resistance and a grim consequence of the True Knot’s way of living: the group is undone by the nourishment on which it relied.