The Shining

8. A View of the Overlook

Mommy was worried.

She was afraid the bug wouldn't make it up and down all these mountains and that they would get stranded by the side of the road where somebody might come ripping along and hit them. Danny himself was more sanguine; if Daddy thought the bug would make this one last trip, then probably it would.

“We're just about there,” Jack said.

Wendy brushed her hair back from her temples. “Thank God.”

She was sitting in the right-hand bucket, a Victoria Holt paperback open but face down in her lap. She was wearing her blue dress, the one Danny thought was her prettiest. It had a sailor collar and made her look very young, like a girl just getting ready to graduate from high school. Daddy kept putting his hand high up on her leg and she kept laughing and brushing it off, saying Get away, fly.

Danny was impressed with the mountains. One day Daddy had taken them up in the ones near Boulder, the ones they called the Flatirons, but these were much bigger, and on the tallest of them you could see a fine dusting of snow, which Daddy said was often there year-round.

And they were actually in the mountains, no goofing around. Sheer rock faces rose all around them, so high you could barely see their tops even by craning your neck out the window. When they left Boulder, the temperature had been in the high seventies. Now, just after noon, the air up here felt crisp and cold like November back in Vermont and Daddy had the heater going… not that it worked all that well. They had passed several signs that said FALLING ROCK ZONE (Mommy read each one to him), and although Danny had waited anxiously to see some rock fall, none had. At least not yet.

Half an hour ago they had passed another sign that Daddy said was very important. This sign said ENTERING SIDEWINDER PASS, and Daddy said that sign was as far as the snowplows went in the wintertime. After that the road got too steep. In the winter the road was closed from the little town of Sidewinder, which they had gone through just before they got to that sign, all the way to Buckland, Utah.

Now they were passing another sign.

“What's that one, Mom?”

“That one says SLOWER VEHICLES USE RIGHT LANE. That means us.”

“The bug will make it,” Danny said.

“Please, God,” Mommy said, and crossed her fingers. Danny looked down at her open-toed sandals and saw that she had crossed her toes as well. He giggled. She smiled back, but he knew that she was still worried.

The road wound up and up in a series of slow S curves, and Jack dropped the bug's stick shift from fourth gear to third, then into second. The bug wheezed and protested, and Wendy's eye fixed on the speedometer needle, which sank from forty to thirty to twenty, where it hovered reluctantly.

“The fuel pump…” she began timidly.

“The fuel pump will go another three miles,” Jack said shortly.

The rock wall fell away on their right, disclosing a slash valley that seemed to go down forever, lined a dark green with Rocky Mountain pine and spruce. The pines fell away to gray cliffs of rock that dropped for hundreds of feet before smoothing out. She saw a waterfall spilling over one of them, the early afternoon sun sparkling in it like a golden fish snared in a blue net. They were beautiful mountains but they were hard. She did not think they would forgive many mistakes. An unhappy foreboding rose in her throat. Further west in the Sierra Nevada the Donner Party had become snowbound and had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. The mountains did not forgive many mistakes.

With a punch of the clutch and a jerk, Jack shifted down to first gear and they labored upward, the bug's engine thumping gamely.

“You know,” she said, “I don't think we've seen five cars since we came through Sidewinder. And one of them was the hotel limousine.”

Jack nodded. “It goes right to Stapleton Airport in Denver. There's already some icy patches up beyond the hotel, Watson says, and they're forecasting more snow for tomorrow up higher. Anybody going through the mountains now wants to be on one of the main roads, just in case. That goddam Ullman better still be up there. I guess he will be.”

“You're sure the larder is fully stocked?” she asked, still thinking of the Donners.

“He said so. He wanted Hallorann to go over it with you. Hallorann's the cook.”

“Oh,” she said faintly, looking at the speedometer. It had dropped from fifteen to ten miles an hour.

“There's the top,” Jack said, pointing three hundred yards ahead. “There's a scenic turnout and you can see the Overlook from there. I'm going to pull off the road and give the bug a chance to rest.” He craned over his shoulder at Danny, who was sitting on a pile of blankets. “What do you think, doc? We might see some deer. Or caribou.”

“Sure, Dad.”

The VW labored up and up. The speedometer dropped to just above the five-milean-hour hashmark and was beginning to hitch when Jack pulled off the road

(“What's that sign, Mommy?” “SCENIC TURNOUT,” she read dutifully.)

and stepped on the emergency brake and let the VW run in neutral.

“Come on,” he said, and got out.

They walked to the guardrail together.

“That's it,” Jack said, and pointed at eleven o'clock.

For Wendy, it was discovering truth in a cliche: her breath was taken away. For a moment she was unable to breathe at all; the view had knocked the wind from her. They were standing near the top of one peak. Across from them-who knew how far?-an even taller mountain reared into the sky, its jagged tip only a silhouette that was now nimbused by the sun, which was beginning its decline. The whole valley floor was spread out below them, the slopes that they had climbed in the laboring bug falling away with such dizzying suddenness that she knew to look down there for too long would bring on nausea and eventual vomiting. The imagination seemed to spring to full life in the clear air, beyond the rein of reason, and to look was to helplessly see one's self plunging down and down and down, sky and slopes changing places in slow cartwheels, the scream drifting from your mouth like a lazy balloon as your hair and your dress billowed out…

She jerked her gaze away from the drop almost by force and followed Jack's finger. She could see the highway clinging to the side of this cathedral spire, switching back on itself but always tending northwest, still climbing but at a more gentle angle. Further up, seemingly set directly into the slope itself, she saw the grimly clinging pines give way to a wide square of green lawn and standing in the middle of it, overlooking all this, the hotel. The Overlook. Seeing it, she found breath and voice again.

“Oh, Jack, it's gorgeous!”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Unman says he thinks it's the single most beautiful location in America. I don't care much for him, but I think he might be… Danny! Danny, are you all right?”

She looked around for him and her sudden fear for him blotted out everything else, stupendous or not. She darted toward him. He was holding onto the guardrail and looking up at the hotel, his face a pasty gray color. His eyes had the blank look of someone on the verge of fainting.

She knelt beside him and put steadying hands on his shoulders. “Danny, what's-”

Jack was beside her. “You okay, doc?” He gave Danny a brisk little shake and his eyes cleared.

“I'm okay, Daddy. I'm fine.”

“What was it, Danny?” she asked. “Were you dizzy, honey?”

“No, I was just… thinking. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.” He looked at his parents, kneeling in front of him, and offered them a small puzzled smile. “Maybe it was the sun. The sun got in my eyes.”

“We'll get you up to the hotel and give you a drink of water,” Daddy said.

“Okay.”

And in the bug, which moved upward more surely on the gentler grade, he kept looking out between them as the road unwound, affording occasional glimpses of the Overlook Ho:. tel, its massive bank of westward-looking windows reflecting back the sun. It was the place he had seen in the midst of the blizzard, the dark and booming place where some hideously familiar figure sought him down long corridors carpeted with jungle. The place Tony had warned him against. It was here. It was here. Whatever Redrum was, it was here.

9. Checking It Out

Ullman was waiting for them just inside the wide, old-fashioned front doors. He shook hands with Jack and nodded coolly at Wendy, perhaps noticing the way heads turned when she came through into the lobby, her golden hair spilling across the shoulders of the simple navy dress. The hem of the dress stopped a modest two inches above the knee, but you didn't have to see more to know they were good legs.

Ullman seemed truly warm toward Danny only, but Wendy had experienced that before. Danny seemed to be a child for people who ordinarily held W. C. Fields' sentiments about children. He bent a little from the waist and offered Danny his hand. Danny shook it formally, without a smile.

“My son Danny,” Jack said. “And my wife Winnifred.”

“I'm happy to meet you both,” Ullman said. “How old are you, Danny?”

“Five, sir.”

“Sir, yet.” Ullman smiled and glanced at Jack. “He's well mannered.”

“Of course be is,” Jack said.

“And Mrs. Torrance.” He offered the same little bow, and for a bemused instant Wendy thought he would kiss her hand. She half-offered it and he did take it, but only for a moment, clasped in both of his. His hands were small and dry and smooth, and she guessed that he powdered them.

The lobby was a bustle of activity. Almost every one of the old-fashioned high-backed chairs was taken. Bellboys shuttled in and out with suitcases and there was a line at the desk, which was dominated by a huge brass cash register. The BankAmericard and Master Charge decals on it seemed jarringly anachronistic.

To their right, down toward a pair of tall double doors that were pulled closed and roped off, there was an old-fashioned fireplace now blazing with birch logs. Three nuns sat on a sofa that was drawn up almost to the hearth itself. They were talking and smiling with their bags stacked up to either side, waiting for the check-out line to thin a little. As Wendy watched them they burst into a chord of tinkling, girlish laughter. She felt a smile touch her own lips; not one of them could be under sixty.

In the background was the constant hum of conversation, the muted ding! of the silver-plated bell beside the cash register as one of the two clerks on duty struck it, the slightly impatient call of “Front, please!” It brought back strong, warm memories of her honeymoon in New York with Jack, at the Beekman Tower. For the first time she let herself believe that this might be exactly what the three of them needed: a season together away from the world, a sort of family honeymoon. She smiled affectionately down at Danny, who was goggling around frankly at everything. Another limo, as gray as a banker's vest, had pulled up out front

“The last day of the season,” Ullman was saying. “Closing day. Always hectic. I had expected you more around three, Mr. Torrance.”

“I wanted to give the Volks time for a nervous breakdown if it decided to have one,” Jack said. “It didn't.”

“How fortunate,” Ullman said. “I'd like to take the three of you on a tour of the place a little later, and of course Dick Hallorann wants to show Mrs. Torrance the Overlook's kitchen. But I'm afraid-”

One of the clerks came over and almost tugged his forelock.

“Excuse me, Mr. Unman-”

“Well? What is it?”

“It's Mrs. Brant,” the clerk said uncomfortably. “She refuses to pay her bill with anything but her American Express card. I told her we stopped taking American Express at the end of the season last year, but she won't…” His eyes shifted to the Torrance family, then back to Ullman. He shrugged.

“I'll take care of it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ullman.” The clerk crossed back to the desk, where a dreadnought of a woman bundled into a long fur coat and what looked like a black feather boa was remonstrating loudly.

“I have been coming to the Overlook Hotel since 1955,” she was telling the smiling, shrugging clerk. “I continued to come even after my second husband died of a stroke on that tiresome roque court-I told him the sun was too hot that day-and I have never… I repeat: never… paid with anything but my American Express credit card. Call the police if you like! Have them drag me away! I will still refuse to pay with anything but my American Express credit card. I repeat:…”

“Excuse me,” Mr. Ullman said.

They watched him cross the lobby, touch Mrs. Brant's elbow deferentially, and spread his hands and nod when she turned her tirade on him. He listened sympathetically, nodded again, and said something in return. Mrs. Brant smiled triumphantly, turned to the unhappy desk clerk, and said loudly: “Thank God there is one employee of this hotel who hasn't become an utter Philistinel”

She allowed Ullman, who barely came to the bulky shoulder of her fur coat, to take her arm and lead her away, presumably to his inner office.

“Whooo!” Wendy said, smiling. “There's a dude who earns his money.”

“But he didn't like that lady,” Danny said immediately. “He was just pretending to like her.”

Jack grinned down at him. “I'm sure that's true, doc. But flattery is the stuff that greases the wheels of the world.”

“What's flattery?”

“Flattery,” Wendy told him, “is when your daddy says he likes my new yellow slacks even if he doesn't or when he says I don't need to take off five pounds.”

“Oh. Is it lying for fun?”

“Something very like that.”

He had been looking at her closely and now said: “You're pretty, Mommy.” He frowned in confusion when they exchanged a glance and then burst into laughter.

“Ullman didn't waste much flattery on me,” Jack said. “Come on over by the window, you guys. I feel conspicuous standing out here in the middle with my denim jacket on. I honest to God didn't think there'd be anybody much here on closing day. Guess I was wrong.”

“You look very handsome,” she said, and then they laughed again, Wendy putting a hand over her mouth. Danny still didn't understand, but it was okay. They were loving each other. Danny thought this place reminded her of somewhere else

(the beak-man place)

where she had been happy. He wished he liked it as well as she did, but he kept telling himself over and over that the things Tony showed him didn't always come true. He would be careful. He would watch for something called Redrum. But he would not say anything unless he absolutely had to. Because they were happy, they had been laughing, and there were no bad thoughts.

“Look at this view,” Jack said.

“Oh, it's gorgeousl Danny, Iookl”

But Danny didn't think it was particularly gorgeous. He didn't like heights; they made him dizzy. Beyond the wide front porch, which ran the length of the hotel, a beautifully manicured lawn (there was a putting green on the right) sloped away to a long, rectangular swimming pool. A CLOSED sign stood on a little tripod at one end of the pool; closed was one sign he could read by himself, along with Stop, Exit, Pizza, and a few others.

Beyond the pool a graveled path wound off through baby pines and spruces and aspens. Here was a small sign he didn't know: ROQUE. There was an arrow below it.

“What's R-O-Q-U-E, Daddy?”

“A game,” Daddy said. “It's a little bit like croquet, only you play it on a gravel court that has sides like a big billiard table instead of grass. It's a very old game, Danny. Sometimes they have tournaments here.”

“Do you play it with a croquet mallet?”

“Like that,” Jack agreed. “Only the handle's a little shorter and the head has two sides. One side is hard rubber and the other side is wood.”

(Come out, you little shit!)

“It's pronounced roke,” Daddy was saying. “I'll teach you how to play, if you want.”

“Maybe,” Danny said in an odd colorless little voice that made his parents exchange a puzzled look over his head. “I might not like it; though.”

“Well if you don't like it, doc, you don't have to play. All right?”

“Sure.”

“Do you like the animals?” Wendy asked. “That's called a topiary.” Beyond the path leading to roque there were hedges clipped into the shapes of various animals. Danny, whose eyes were sharp, made out a rabbit, a dog, a horse, a cow, and a trio of bigger ones that looked like frolicking lions.

“Those animals were what made Uncle Al think of me for the job,” Jack told him. “He knew that when I was in college I used to work for a landscaping company. That's a business that fixes people's lawns and bushes and hedges. I used to trim a lady's topiary.”

Wendy put a hand over her mouth and snickered. Looking at her, Jack said, “Yes, I used to trim her topiary at least once a week”

“Get away, fly,” Wendy said, and snickered again.

“Did she have nice hedges, Dad?” Danny asked, and at this they both stifled great bursts of laughter. Wendy laughed so hard that tears streamed down her cheeks and she had to get a Kleenex out of her handbag.

“They weren't animals, Danny,” Jack said when he had control of himself. “They were playing cards. Spades and hearts and clubs and diamonds. But the hedges grow, you see-”

(They creep, Watson had said… no, not the hedges, the boiler. You have to watch it all the time or you and your f ambly will end up on the f uckin moon.)

They looked at him, puzzled. The smile had faded off his face.

“Dad?” Danny asked.

He blinked at them, as if coming back from far away. “They grow, Danny, and lose their shape. So I'll have to give them a haircut once or twice a week until it gets so cold they stop growing for the year.”

“And a playground, too,” Wendy said. “My lucky boy.”

The playground was beyond the topiary. Two slides, a big swing set with half a dozen swings set at varying heights, a jungle gym, a tunnel made of cement rings, a sandbox, and a playhouse that was an exact replica of the Overlook itself.

“Do you like it, Danny?” Wendy asked.

“I sure do,” he said, hoping he sounded more enthused than he felt. “It's neat.”

Beyond the playground there was an inconspicuous chain link security fence, beyond that the wide, macadamized drive that led up to the hotel, and beyond that the valley itself, dropping away into the bright blue haze of afternoon. Danny didn't know the word isolation, but if someone had explained it to him he would have seized on it. Far below, lying in the sun like a long black snake that had decided to snooze for a while, was the road that led back through Sidewinder Pass and eventually to Boulder. The road that would be closed all winter long. He felt a little suffocated at the thought, and almost jumped when Daddy dropped his hand on his shoulder.

“I'll get you that drink as soon as I can, doc. They're a little busy right now.”

“Sure, Dad.”

Mrs. Brant came out of the inner office looking vindicated. A few moments later two bellboys, struggling with eight suitcases between them, followed her as best they could as she strode triumphantly out the door. Danny watched through the window as a man in a gray uniform and a hat like a captain in the Army brought her long silver car around to the door and got out. He tipped his cap to her and ran around to open the trunk.

And in one of those flashes that sometimes came, he got a complete thought from her, one that floated above the confused, low-pitched babble of emotions and colors that he usually got in crowded places.

(i' d like to get into his pants)

Danny's brow wrinkled as he watched the bellboys put her cases into the trunk. She was looking rather sharply at the man in the gray uniform, who was supervising the loading. Why would she want to get that man's pants? Was she cold, even with that long fur coat on? And if she was that cold, why hadn't she just put on some pants of her own? His mommy wore pants just about all winter.

The man in the gray uniform closed the trunk and walked back to help her into the car. Danny watched closely to see if she would say anything about his pants, but she only smiled and gave him a dollar bill-a tip. A moment later she was guiding the big silver car down the driveway.

He thought about asking his mother why Mrs. Brant might want the car-man's pants, and decided against it. Sometimes questions could get you in a whole lot of trouble. It had happened to him before.

So instead he squeezed in between them on the small sofa they were sharing and watched all the people check out at the desk. He was glad his mommy and daddy were happy and loving each other, but he couldn't help being a little worried. He couldn't help it.

10. Hallorann

The cook didn't conform to Wendy's image of the typical resort hotel kitchen personage at all. To begin with, such a personage was called a chef, nothing so mundane as a cook-cooking was what she did in her apartment kitchen when she threw all the leftovers into a greased Pyrex casserole dish and added noodles. Further, the culinary wizard of such a place as the Overlook, which advertised in the resort section of the New York Sunday Times, should be small, rotund, and pasty-faced (rather like the Pillsbury Dough-Boy); he should have a thin pencilline mustache like a forties musical comedy star, dark eyes, a French accent, and a detestable personality.

Hallorann had the dark eyes and that was all. He was a tall black man with a modest afro that was beginning to powder white. He had a soft southern accent and he laughed a lot, disclosing teeth too white and too even to be anything but 1950-vintage Sears and Roebuck dentures. Her own father had had a pair, which he called Roebuckers, and from time to time he would push them out at her comically at the supper table… always, Wendy remembered now, when her mother was out in the kitchen getting something else or on the telephone.

Danny had stared up at this black giant in blue serge, and then had smiled when Hallorann picked him up easily, set him in the crook of his elbow, and said: “You ain't gonna stay up here all winter.”

“Yes I am,” Danny said with a shy grin.

“No, you're gonna come down to St. Pete's with me and learn to cook and go out on the beach every damn evenin watchin for crabs. Right?”

Danny giggled delightedly and shook his head no. Hallorann set him down.

“If you're gonna change your mind,” Hallorann said, bending over him gravely, “you better do it quick. Thirty minutes from now and I'm in my car. Two and a half hours after that, I'm sitting at Gate 32, Concourse B, Stapleton International Airport, in the mile-high city of Denver, Colorado. Three hours after that, I'm rentin a car at the Miama Airport and on my way to sunny St. Pete's, waiting to get iota my swimtrunks and just laaafin up my sleeve at anybody stuck and caught in the snow. Can you dig it, my boy?”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said, smiling.

Hallorann turned to Jack and Wendy. “Looks like a fine boy there.”

“We think he'll do,” Jack said, and offered his hand. Hallorann took it. “I'm Jack Torrance. My wife Winnifred. Danny you've met.”

“And a pleasure it was. Ma'am, are you a Winnie or a Freddie?”

“I'm a Wendy,” she said, smiling.

“Okay. That's better than the other two, I think. Right this way. Mr. Unman wants you to have the tour, the tour you'll get.” He shook his bead and said under his breath: “And won't I be glad to see the last of him.”

Hallorann commenced to tour them around the most immense kitchen Wendy had ever seen in her life. It was sparkling clean. Every surface was coaxed to a high gloss. It was more than just big; it was intimidating. She walked at Hallorann's side while Jack, wholly out of his element, hung back a little with Danny. A long wallboard hung with cutting instruments which went all the way from paring knives to twohanded cleavers hung beside a four-basin sink. There was a breadboard as big as their Boulder apartment's kitchen table. An amazing array of stainless-steel pots and pans hung from floor to ceiling, covering one whole wall.

“I think I'll have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs every time I come in,” she said.

“Don't let it get you down,” Hallorann said. “It's big, but it's still only a kitchen. Most of this stuff you'll never even have to touch. Keep it clean, that's all I ask. Here's the stove I'd be using, if I was you. There are three of them in all, but this is the smallest.

Smallest, she thought dismally, looking at it There were twelve burners, two regular ovens and a Dutch oven, a heated well on top in which you could simmer sauces or bake beans, a broiler, and a warmer-plus a million dials and temperature gauges.

“All gas,” Hallorann said. “You've cooked with gas before, Wendy?”

“Yes…:'

“I love gas,” he said, and turned on one of the burners. Blue flame popped into life and he adjusted it down to a faint glow with a delicate touch. “I like to be able to see the flame you're cookin with. You see where all the surface burner switches are?”

“Yes.”

“And the oven dials are all marked. Myself, I favor the middle one because it seems to heat the most even, but you use whichever one you like-or all three, for that matter.”

“A TV dinner in each one,” Wendy said, and laughed weakly.

Hallorann roared. “Go right ahead, if you like. I left a list of everything edible over by the sink. You see it?”

“Here it is, Mommyl” Danny brought over two sheets of paper, written closely on both sides.

“Good boy,” Hallorann said, taking it from him and ruffling his hair. “You sure you don't want to come to Florida with me, my boy? Learn to cook the sweetest shrimp creole this side of paradise?”

Danny put his hands over his mouth and giggled and retreated to his father's side.

“You three folks could eat up here for a year, I guess,” Hallorann said. “We got a cold-pantry, a walk-in freezer, all sorts of vegetable bins, and two refrigerators. Come on and let me show you.”

For the next ten minutes Hallorann opened bins and doors, disclosing food in such amounts as Wendy had never seen before. The food supplies amazed her but did not reassure her as much as she might have thought: the Donner Party kept recurring to her, not with thoughts of cannibalism (with all this food it would indeed be a long time before they were reduced to such poor rations as each other), but with the reinforced idea that this was indeed a serious business: when snow fell, getting out of here would not be a matter of an hour's drive to Sidewinder but a major operation. They would sit up here in this deserted grand hotel, eating the food that had been left them like creatures in a fairy tale and listening to the bitter wind around their snowbound eaves. In Vermont, when Danny had broken his arm

(when Jack broke Danny's arm)

she had called the emergency Medix squad, dialing the number from the little card attached to the phone. They had been at the house only ten minutes later. There were other numbers written on that little card. You could have a police car in five minutes and a fire truck in even less time than that, because the fire station was only three blocks away and one block over. There was a man to call if the lights went out, a man to call if the shower stopped up, a man to call if the TV went on the fritz. But what would happen up here if Danny had one of his fainting spells and swallowed his tongue?

(oh God what a thought!)

What if the place caught on fire? If Jack fell down the elevator shaft and fractured his skull? What if-?

(what if we have a wonderful time now stop ft, Winni fred!)

Hallorann showed them into the walk-in freezer first, where their breath puffed out like comic strip balloons. In the freezer it was as if winter had already come.

Hamburger in big plastic bags, ten pounds in each bag, a dozen bags. Forty whole chickens hanging from a row of hooks in the wood-planked walls. Canned hams stacked up like poker chips, a dozen of them. Below the chickens, ten roasts of beef, ten roasts of pork, and a huge leg of lamb.

“You like lamb, doe?” Hallorann asked, grinning.

“I love it,” Danny said immediately. He had never had it.

“I knew you did. There's nothin like two good slices of lamb on a cold night, with some mint jelly on the side. You got the mint jelly here, too. Lamb eases the belly. It's a noncontentious sort of meat.”

From behind them Jack said curiously: “How did you know we called him doe?”

Hallorann turned around. “Pardon?”

“Danny: We call him doe sometimes. Like in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.”

“Looks sort of like a doe, doesn't be?” He wrinkled his nose at Danny, smacked his lips, and said, “Ehhhh, what's up, doe?”

Danny giggled and then Hallorann said something

(Sure you don't want to go to Florida, doe?)

to him, very clearly. He heard every word. He looked at Hallorann, startled and a little scared. Hallorann winked solemnly and turned back to the food.

Wendy looked from the cook's broad, serge-clad back to her son. She had the oddest feeling that something had passed between them, something she could not quite follow.

“You got twelve packages of sausage, twelve packages of bacon,” Hallorann said. “So much for the pig. In this drawer, twenty pounds of butter.”

“Real butter?” Jack asked.

“The A-number-one.”

“I don't think I've had real butter since I was a kid back in Berlin, New Hampshire.”

“Well, you'll eat it up here until oleo seems a treat,” Hallorann said, and laughed. “Over in this bin you got your bread-thirty loaves of white, twenty of dark. We try to keep racial balance at the Overlook, don't you know. Now I know fifty loaves won't take you through, but there's plenty of makings and fresh is better than frozen any day of the week.

“Down here you got your fish. Brain food, right, doe?”

“Is it, Mom?”

“If Mr. Hallorann says so, honey.” She smiled.

Danny wrinkled his nose. “I don't like fish.”

“You're dead wrong,” Hallorann said. “You just never had any fish that liked you. This fish here will like you fine. Five pounds of rainbow trout, ten pounds of turbot, fifteen cans of tuna fish-”

“Oh yeah, I like tuna.”

“and five pounds of the sweetest-tasting sole that ever swam in the sea. My boy, when next spring rolls around, you're gonna thank old…” He snapped his fingers as if he had forgotten something. “What's my name, now? I guess it just slipped my mind.”

“Mr. Hallorann,” Danny said, grinning. “Dick, to your friends.”

“That's right! And you bein a friend, you make it Dick.”

As he led them into the far corner, Jack and Wendy exchanged a puzzled glance, both of them trying to remember if Hallorann had told them his first name.

“And this here I put in special,” Hallorann said. “Hope you folks enjoy it.”

“Oh really, you shouldn't have,” Wendy said, touched. It was a twenty-pound turkey wrapped in a wide scarlet ribbon with a bow on top.

“You got to have your turkey on Thanksgiving, Wendy,” Hallorann said gravely. “I believe there's a capon back here somewhere for Christmas. Doubtless you'll stumble on it. Let's come on out of here now before we all catch the peenumonia. Right, doc?”

“Right!”

There were more wonders in the cold-pantry. A hundred boxes of dried milk (Hallorann advised her gravely to buy fresh milk for the boy in Sidewinder as long as it was feasible), five twelve-pound bags of sugar, a gallon jug of blackstrap molasses, cereals, glass jugs of rice, macaroni, spaghetti; ranked cans of fruit and fruit salad; a bushel of fresh apples that scented the whole room with autumn; dried raisins, prunes, and apricots (“You got to be regular if you want to be happy,” Hallorann said, and pealed laughter at the coldpantry ceiling, where one old-fashioned light globe hung down on an iron chain); a deep bin filled with potatoes; and smaller caches of tomatoes, onions, turnips, squashes, and cabbages.

“My word,” Wendy said as they came out. But seeing all that fresh food after her thirty-dollar-a-week grocery budget so stunned her that she was unable to say just what her word was.

“I'm runnin a bit late,” Hallorann said, checking his watch, “so I'll just let you go through the cabinets and the fridges as you get settled in. There's cheeses, canned milk, sweetened condensed milk, yeast, bakin soda, a whole bagful of those Table Talk pies, a few bunches of bananas that ain't even near to ripe yet-”

“Stop,” she said, holding up a hand and laughing. “I'll never remember it all. It's super. And I promise to leave the place clean.”

“That's all I ask.” He turned to Jack. “Did Mr. Ullman give you the rundown on the rats in his belfry?”

Jack grinned. “He said there were possibly some in the attic, and Mr. Watson said there might be some more down in the basement. There must be two tons of paper down there, but I didn't see any shredded, as if they'd been using it to make nests.”

“That Watson,” Hallorann said, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “Ain't he the foulest-talking man you ever ran on?”

“He's quite a character,” Jack agreed. His own father had been the foulesttalking man Jack had ever run on.

“It's sort of a pity,” Hallorann said, leading them back toward the wide swinging doors that gave on the Overlook dining room. “There was money in that family, long ago. It was Watson's granddad or great-granddad-I can't remember which-that built this place.”

“So I was told,” Jack said.

“What happened?” Wendy asked.

“Well, they couldn't make it go,” Hallorann said. “Watson will tell you the whole story-twice a day, if you let him. The old man got a bee in his bonnet about the place. He let it drag him down, I guess. He had two boys and one of them was killed in a riding accident on the grounds while the hotel was still abuilding. That would have been 1908 or '09. The old man's wife died of the flu, and then it was just the old man and his youngest son. They ended up getting took back on as caretakers in the same hotel the old man had built.”

“It is sort of a pity,” Wendy said.

“What happened to him? The old man?” Jack asked.

“He plugged his finger into a light socket by mistake and that was the end of him,” Hallorann said. “Sometime in the early thirties before the Depression closed this place down for ten years.

“Anyway, Jack, I'd appreciate it if you and your wife would keep an eye out for rats in the kitchen, as well. If you should see them… traps, not poison.”

Jack blinked. “Of course. Who'd want to put rat poison in the kitchen?”

Hallorann laughed derisively. “Mr. Ullman, that's who. That was his bright idea last fall. I put it to him, I said: `What if we all get up here next May, Mr. Ullman, and I serve the traditional opening night dinner'-which just happens to be salmon in a very nice sauce-'and everybody gits sick and the doctor comes and says to you, “Ullman, what have you been doing up here? You've got eighty of the richest folks in America suffering from rat poisoning!” “'

Jack threw his head back and bellowed laughter. “What did Ullman say?”

Hallorann tucked his tongue into his cheek as if feeling for a bit of food in there. “He said: `Get some traps, Hallorann. ' “

This time they all laughed, even Danny, although he was not completely sure what the joke was, except it had something to do with Mr. Ullman, who didn't know everything after all.

The four of them passed through the dining room, empty and silent now, with its fabulous western exposure on the snow-dusted peaks. Each of the white linen tablecloths had been covered with a sheet of tough clear plastic. The rug, now rolled up for the season, stood in one corner like a sentinel on guard duty.

Across the wide room was a double set of batwing doors, and over them an oldfashioned sign lettered in gilt script: The Colorado Lounge.

Following his gaze, Hallorann said, “If you're a drinkin man, I hope you brought your own supplies. That place is picked clean. Employee's party last night, you know. Every maid and bellhop in the place is goin around with a headache today, me included.”

“I don't drink,” Jack said shortly. They went back to the lobby.

It had cleared greatly during the half hour they'd spent in the kitchen. The long main room was beginning to take on the quiet, deserted look that Jack supposed they would become familiar with soon enough. The high-backed chairs were empty. The nuns who had been sitting by the fire were gone, and the fire itself was down to a bed of comfortably glowing coals. Wendy glanced out into the parking lot and saw that all but a dozen cars had disappeared.

She found herself wishing they could get back in the VW and go back to Boulder… or anywhere else.

Jack was looking around for Ullman, but he wasn't in the lobby.

A young maid with her ash-blond hair pinned up on her neck came over. “Your luggage is out on the porch, Dick.”

“Thank you, Sally.” He gave her a peck on the forehead. “You have yourself a good winter. Getting married, I hear.”

He turned to the Torrances as she strolled away, backside twitching pertly. “I've got to hurry along if I'm going to make that plane. I want to wish you all the best. Know you'll have it.”

“Thanks,” Jack said. “You've been very kind.”

“I'll take good care of your kitchen,” Wendy promised again. “Enjoy Florida.”

“I always do,” Hallorann said. He put his hands on his knees and bent down to Danny. “Last chance, guy. Want to come to Florida?”

“I guess not,” Danny said, smiling.

“Okay. Like to give me a hand out to my car with my bags?”

“If my mommy says I can.”

“You can,” Wendy said, “but you'll have to have that jacket buttoned.” She leaned forward to do it but Hallorann was ahead of her, his large brown fingers moving with smooth dexterity.

“I'll send him right back in,” Hallorann said.

“Fine,” Wendy said, and followed them to the door. Jack was still looking around for Ullman. The last of the Overlooks guests were checking out at the desk.

11. The Shining

There were four bags in a pile just outside the door. Three of them were giant, battered old suitcases covered with black imitation alligator hide. The last was an oversized zipper bag with a faded tartan skin.

“Guess you can handle that one, can't you?” Hallorann asked him. He picked up two of the big cases in one hand and hoisted the other under his arm.

“Sure,” Danny said. He got a grip on it with both hands and followed the cook down the porch steps, trying manfully not to grunt and give away how heavy it was.

A sharp and cutting fall wind had come up since they had arrived; it whistled across the parking lot, making Danny wince his eyes down to slits as he carried the zipper bag in front of him, bumping on his knees. A few errant aspen leaves rattled and turned across the now mostly deserted asphalt, making Danny think momentarily of that night last week when he had wakened out of his nightmare and had heard-or thought he heard, at least-Tony telling him not to go.

Hallorann set his bags down by the trunk of a beige Plymouth Fury. “This ain't much car,” he confided to Danny, “just a rental job. My Bessie's on the other end. She's a car. 1950 Cadillac, and does she run sweet? I'll tell the world. I keep her in Florida because she's too old for all this mountain climbing. You need a hand with that?”

“No, sir,” Danny said. He managed to carry it the last ten or twelve steps without grunting and set it down with a large sigh of relief.

“Good boy,” Hallorann said. He produced a large key ring from the pocket of his blue serge jacket and unlocked the trunk. As he lifted the bags in he said: “You shine on, boy. Harder than anyone I ever met in my life. And I'm sixty years old this January.”

“Huh?”

“You got a knack,” Hallorann said, turning to him. “Me, I've always called it shining. That's what my grandmother called it, too. She had it. We used to sit in the kitchen when I was a boy no older than you and have long talks without even openin our mouths.”

“Really?”

Hallorann smiled at Danny's openmouthed, almost hungry expression and said, “Come on up and sit in the car with me for a few minutes. Want to talk to you.” He slammed the trunk.

In the lobby of the Overlook, Wendy Torrance saw her son get into the passenger side of Hallorann's car as the big black cook slid in behind the wheel. A sharp pang of fear struck her and she opened her mouth to tell Jack that Hallorann had not been lying about taking their son to Florida-there was a kidnaping afoot. But they were only sitting there. She could barely see the small silhouette of her son's head, turned attentively toward Hallorann's big one. Even at this distance that small head had a set to it that she recognizedit was the way her son looked when there was something on the TV that particularly fascinated him, or when he and his father were playing old maid or idiot cribbage. Jack, who was still looking around for Ullman, hadn't noticed. Wendy kept silent, watching Hallorann's car nervously, wondering what they could possibly be talking about that would make Danny cock -his head that way.

In the car Hallorann was saying: “Get you kinda lonely, thinkin you were the only one?”

Danny, who had been frightened as well as lonely sometimes, nodded. “Am I the only one you ever met?” he asked.

Hallorann laughed and shook his head. “No, child, no. But you shine the hardest.”

“Are there lots, then?”

“No,” Hallorann said, “but you do run across them. A lot of folks, they got a little bit of shine to them. They don't oven know it. But they always seem to show up with flowers when their wives are feelin blue with the monthlies, they do good on school tests they don't even study for, they got a good idea how people are feelin as soon as they walk into a room. I come across fifty or sixty like that. But maybe only a dozen, countin my gram, that knew they was shinin.”

“Wow,” Danny said, and thought about it. Then: “Do you know Mrs. Brant?”

“Her?” Hallorann asked scornfully. “She don't shine. Just sends her supper back two-three times every night.”

“I know she doesn't,” Danny said earnestly. “But do you know the man in the gray uniform that gets the cars?”

“Mike? Sure, I know Mike. What about him?”

“Mr. Hallorann, why would she want his pants?”

“What are you talking about, boy?”

“Well, when she was watching him, she was thinking she would sure like to get into his pants and I just wondered why-”

But he got no further. Hallorann had thrown his head back, and rich, dark laughter issued from his chest, rolling around in the car like cannonfire. The seat shook with the force of it. Danny smiled, puzzled, and at last the storm subsided by fits and starts. Hallorann produced a large silk handkerchief from his breast pocket like a white flag of surrender and wiped his streaming eyes.

“Boy,” he said, still snorting a little, “you are gonna know everything there is to know about the human condition before you make ten. I dunno if to envy you or not.”

“But Mrs. Brant-”

“You never mind her,” he said. “And don't go askin your mom, either. You'd only upset her, dig what I'm sayin?”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said. He dug it perfectly well. He had upset his mother that way in the past.

“That Mrs. Brant is just a dirty old woman with an itch, that's all you have to know.” He looked at Danny speculatively. “How hard can you hit, doc?”

“Huh?”

“Give me a blast. Think at me. I want to know if you got as much as I think you do.”

“What do you want me to think?”

“Anything. Just think it hard.”

“Okay,” Danny said. He considered it for a moment, then gathered his concentration and flung it out at Hallorann. He had never done anything precisely like this before, and at the last instant some instinctive part of him rose up and blunted some of the thought's raw force-he didn't want to hurt Mr. Hallorann. Still the thought arrowed out of him with a force he never would have believed. It went like a Nolan Ryan fastball with a little extra on it.

(Gee I hope I don't hurt him)

And the thought was:

(!!! HI, DICK!!!)

Hallorann winced and jerked bac kward on the seat. His teeth came together with a hard click, drawing blood from his lower lip in a thin trickle. His hands flew up involuntarily from his lap to the level of his chest and then settled back again. For a moment his eyelids fluttered limply, with no conscious control, and Danny was frightened.

“Mr. Hallorann? Dick? Are you okay?”

“I don't know,” Hallorann said, and laughed weakly. “I honest to God don't. My God, boy, you're a pistol.”

“I'm sorry,” Danny said, more alarmed. “Should I get my daddy? I'll run and get him.”

“No, here I come. I'm okay, Danny. You just sit right there. I feel a little scrambled, that's all.”

“I didn't go as hard as I could,” Danny confessed. “I was scared to, at the last minute.”

“Probably my good luck you did… my brains would be leakin out my ears.” He saw the alarm on Danny's face and smiled. “No harm done. What did it feel like to you?”

“Like I was Nolan Ryan throwing a fastball,” he replied promptly.

“You like baseball, do you?” Hallorann was rubbing his temples gingerly.

“Daddy and me like the Angels,” Danny said. “The Red Sox in the American League East and the Angels in the West. We saw the Red Sox against Cincinnati in the World Series. I was a lot littler then. And Daddy was…” Danny's face went dark and troubled.

“Was what, Dan?”

“I forget,” Danny said. He started to put his thumb in his mouth to suck it, but that was a baby trick. He put his hand back in his lap.

“Can you tell what your mom and dad are thinking, Danny?” Hallorann was watching him closely.

“Most times, if I want to. But usually I don't try.”

“Why not?”

“Well…” he paused a moment, troubled. “It would be like peeking into the bedroom and watching while they're doing the thing that makes babies. Do you know that thing?”

“I have had acquaintance with it,” Hallorann said gravely.

“They wouldn't like that. And they wouldn't like me peeking at their thinks. It would be dirty.”

“I see.”

“But I know how they're feeling,” Danny said. “I can't help that. I know how you're feeling, too. I hurt you. I'm sorry.”

“It's just a headache. I've had hangovers that were worse. Can you read other people, Danny?”

“I can't read yet at all,” Danny said, “except a few words. But Daddy's going to teach me this winter. My daddy used to teach reading and writing in a big school. Mostly writing, but he knows reading, too.”

“I mean, can you tell what anybody is thinking?”

Danny thought about it.

“I can if it's loud,” he said finally. “Like Mrs. Brant and the pants. Or like once, when me and Mommy were in this big store to get me some shoes, there was this big kid looking at radios, and he was thinking about taking one without buying it. Then he'd think, what if I get caught? Then he'd think, I really want it. Then he'd think about getting caught again. He was making himself sick about it, and he was making me sick. Mommy was talking to the man who sells the shoes so I went over and said, `Kid, don't take that radio. Go away. ' And he got really scared. He went away fast.”

Hallorann was grinning broadly. “I bet he did. Can you do anything else, Danny? Is it only thoughts and feelings, or is there more?”

Cautiously: “Is there more for you?”

“Sometimes,” Hallorann said. “Not often. Sometimes… sometimes there are dreams. Do you dream, Danny?”

“Sometimes,” Danny said, “I dream when I'm awake. After Tony comes.” His thumb wanted to go into his mouth again. He had never told anyone but Mommy and Daddy about Tony. He made his thumb-sucking hand go back into his lap.

“Who's Tony?”

And suddenly Danny had one of those flashes of understanding that frightened him most of all; it was like a sudden glimpse of some incomprehensible machine that might be safe or might be deadly dangerous. He was too young to know which. He was too young to understand.

“What's wrong?” he cried. “You're asking me all this because you're worried, aren't you? Why are you worried about me? Why are you worried about us?”

Hallorann put his large dark hands on the small boy's shoulders. “Stop,” he said. It's probably nothin. But if it is somethin… well, you've got a large thing in your head, Danny. You'll have to do a lot of growin yet before you catch up to it, I guess. You got to be brave about it.”

“But I don't understand thingsl” Danny burst out. “I do but I don't! People… they feel things and I feel them, but I don't know what I'm feeling!” He looked down at his lap wretchedly. “I wish I could read. Sometimes Tony shows me signs and I can hardly read any of them.”

“Who's Tony?” Hallorann asked again.

“Mommy and Daddy call him my `invisible playmate,"' Danny said, reciting the words carefully. “But he's really real. At least, I think he is. Sometimes, when I try real hard to understand things, he comes. He says, 'Danny, I want to show you something. ' And it's like I pass out. Only… there are dreams, like you said.” He looked at Hallorann and swallowed. “They used to be nice. But now… I can't remember the word for dreams that scare you and make you cry.”

“Nightmares?” Hallorann asked.

“Yes. That's right. Nightmares.”

“About this place? About the Overlook?”

Danny looked down at his thumb-sucking hand again. “Yes,” he whispered. Then he spoke shrilly, looking up into Hallorann's face: “But I can't tell my daddy, and you can't, either! He has to have this job because it's the only one Uncle Al could get for him and he has to finish his play or he might start doing the Bad Thing again and I know what that is, it's getting drunk, that's what it is, it's when he used to always be drunk and that was a Bad Thing to do!” He stopped, on the verge of tears.

“Shh,” Hallorann said, and pulled Danny's face against the rough serge of his jacket. It smelled faintly of mothballs. “That's all right, son. And if that thumb likes your mouth, let it go where it wants.” But his face was troubled.

He said: “What you got, son, I call it shinin on, the Bible calls it having visions, and there's scientists that call it precognition. I've read up on it, son. I've studied on it. They all mean seeing the future. Do you understand that?”

Danny nodded against Hallorann's coat.

“I remember the strongest shine I ever had that way… I'm not liable to forget. It was 1955. I was still in the Army then, stationed overseas in West Germany. It was an hour before supper, and I was standin by the sink, givin one of the KPs hell for takin too much of the potato along with the peel. I says, 'Here, lemme show you how that's done. ' He held out the potato and the peeler and then the whole kitchen was gone. Bang, just like that. You say you see this guy Tony before… before you have dreams?”

Danny nodded.

Hallorann put an arm around him. “With me it's smellin oranges. All that afternoon I'd been smellin them and thinkin nothin of it, because they were on the menu for that nightwe had thirty crates of Valencias. Everybody in the damn kitchen was smellin oranges that night.

“For a minute it was like I had just passed out. And then I heard an explosion and saw flames. There were people screaming. Sirens. And I heard this hissin noise that could only be steam. Then it seemed like I got a little closer to whatever it was and I saw a railroad car off the tracks and laying on its side with Georgia aced South Carolina Railroad written on it, and I knew like a flash that my brother Carl was on that train and it jumped the tracks and Carl was dead. Just like that. Then it was gone and here's this scared, stupid little KP in front of me, still holdin out that potato and the peeler. He says, 'Are you okay, Sarge?' And I says, `No. My brother's just been killed down in Georgia' And when I finally got my momma on the overseas telephone, she told me how it was.

“But see, boy, I already knew how it was.”

He shook his head slowly, as if dismissing the memory, and looked down at the wide-eyed boy.

“But the thing you got to remember, my boy, is this: Those things don't always come true. I remember just four years ago I had a job cookin at a boys' camp up in Maine on Long Lake. So I am sittin by the boarding gate at Logan Airport in Boston, just waiting to get on my flight, and I start to smell oranges. For the first time in maybe five years. So I say to myself, 'My God, what's comin on this crazy late show now?' and I got down to the bathroom and sat on one of the toilets to be private. I never did black out, but I started to get this feelin, stronger and stronger, that my plane was gonna crash. Then the feeling went away, and the smell of oranges, and I knew it was over. I went back to the Delta Airlines desk and changed my flight to one three hours later. And do you know what happened?”

“What?” Danny whispered.

“Nothin!” Hallorann said, and laughed. He was relieved to see the boy smile a little, too. “Not one single thingl That old plane landed right on time and without a single bump or bruise. So you see… sometimes those feelins don't come to anything.”

“Oh,” Danny said.

“Or you take the race track. I go a lot, and I usually do pretty well. I stand by the rail when they go by the starting gate, and sometimes I get a little shine about this horse or that one. Usually those feelins help me get real well. I always tell myself that someday I'm gonna get three at once on three long shots and make enough on the trifecta to retire early. It ain't happened yet. But there's plenty of times I've come home from the track on shank's mare instead of in a taxicab with my wallet swollen up. Nobody shines on all the time, except maybe for God up in heaven.”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said, thinking of the time almost a year ago when Tony had showed him a new baby lying in a crib at their house in Stovington. He had been very excited about that, and had waited, knowing that it took time, but there had been no new baby.

“Now you listen,” Hallorann said, and took both of Danny's hands in his own. “I've had some bad dreams here, and I've had some bad feelins. I've worked here two seasons now and maybe a dozen times I've had… well, nightmares. And maybe half a dozen times I've thought I've seen things. No, I won't say what. It ain't for a little boy like you. Just nasty things. Once it had something to do with those damn hedges clipped to look like animals. Another time there was a maid, Delores Vickery her name was, and she had a little shine to her, but I don't think she knew it. Mr. Ullman fired her… do you know what that is, doc?”

“Yes, sir,” Danny said candidly, “my daddy got fired from his teaching job and that's why we're in Colorado, I guess.”

“Well, Ullman fired her on account of her saying she'd seen something in one of the rooms where… well, where a bad thing happened. That was in Room 217, and I want you to promise me you won't go in there, Danny. Not all winter. Steer right clear.”

“All right,” Danny said. “Did the lady-the maiden-did she ask you to go look?”

“Yes, she did. And there was a bad thing there. But… I don't think it was a bad thing that could hurt anyone, Danny, that's what I'm tryin to say. People who shine can sometimes see things that are gonna happen, and I think sometimes they can see things that did happen. But they're just like pictures in a book. Did you ever see a picture in a book that scared you, Danny?”

“Yes,” he said, thinking of the story of Bluebeard and the picture where Bluebeard's new wife opens the door and sees all the heads.

“But you knew it couldn't hurt you, didn't you?”

“Ye-ess…” Danny said, a little dubious.

“Well, that's how it is in this hotel. I don't know why, but it seems that all the bad things that ever happened here, there's little pieces of those things still layin around like fingernail clippins or the boogers that somebody nasty just wiped under a chair. I don't know why it should just be here, there's bad goings-on in just about every hotel in the world, I guess, and I've worked in a lot of them and had no trouble. Only here. But Danny, I don't think those things can hurt anybody.” He emphasized each word in the sentence with a mild shake of the boy's shoulders. “So if you should see something, in a hallway or a room or outside by those hedges… just look the other way and when you look back, it'll be gone. Are you diggin me?”

“Yes,” Danny said. He felt much better, soothed. He got up on his knees, kissed Hallorann's cheek, and gave him a big hard hug. Hallorann hugged him back.

When he released the boy he asked: “Your folks, they don't shine, do they?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“I tried them like I did you,” Hallorann said. “Your momma jumped the tiniest bit. I think all mothers shine a little, you know, at least until their kids grow up enough to watch out for themselves. Your dad…”

Hallorann paused momentarily. He had probed at the boy's father and he just didn't know. It wasn't like meeting someone who had the shine, or someone who definitely did not. Poking at Danny's father had been… strange, as if Jack Torrance had something-something-that he was hiding. Or something he was holding in so deeply submerged in himself that it was impossible to get to.

“I don't think he shines at all,” Hallorann finished. “So you don't worry about them. You just take care of you. I don't think there's anything here that can hurt you. So just be cool, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Danny! Hey, doc!”

Danny looked around. “That's Mom. She wants me. I have to go.”

“I know you do,” Hallorann said. “You have a good time here, Danny. Best you can, anyway.”

“I will. Thanks, Mr. Hallorann. I feel a lot better.”

The smiling thought came in his mind:

(Dick, to my friends) (Yes, Dick, okay)

Their eyes met, and Dick Hallorann winked.

Danny scrambled across the seat of the car and opened the passenger side door. As he was getting out, Hallorann said, “Danny?”

“What?”

“If there Is trouble… you give a call. A big loud holler like the one you gave a few minutes ago. I might hear you even way down in Florida. And if I do, I'll come on the run.”

“Okay,” Danny said, and smiled.

“You take care, big boy.”

“I will.”

Danny slammed the door and ran across the parking lot toward the porch, where Wendy stood holding her elbows against the chill wind. Hallorann watched, the big grin slowly fading.

I don't think there's anything here that can hurt you.

I don't think.

But what if he was wrong? He had known that this was his last season at the Overlook ever since he had seen that thing in the bathtub of Room 217. It had been worse than any picture in any book, and from here the boy running to his mother looked so small…

I don't think-

His eyes drifted down to the topiary animals.

Abruptly he started the car and put it in gear and drove away, trying not to look back. And of course he did, and of course the porch was empty. They had gone back inside. It was as if the Overlook had swallowed them.

12. The Grand Tour

“What were you talking about, hon?” Wendy asked him as they went back inside.

“Oh, nothing much.”

“For nothing much it sure was a long talk.”

He shrugged and Wendy saw Danny's paternity in the gesture; Jack could hardly have done it better himself. She would get no more out of Danny. She felt strong exasperation mixed with an even stronger love: the love was helpless, the exasperation came from a feeling that she was deliberately being excluded. With the two of them around she sometimes felt like an outsider, a bit player who had accidentally wandered back onstage while the main action was taking place. Well, they wouldn't be able to exclude her this winter, her two exasperating males; quarters were going to be a little too close for that. She suddenly realized she was feeling jealous of the closeness between her husband and her son, and felt ashamed. That was too close to the way her own mother might have felt… too close for comfort.

The lobby was now empty except for Ullman and the head desk clerk (they were at the register, cashing up), a couple of maids who had changed to warm slacks and sweaters, standing by the front door and looking out with their luggage pooled around them, and Watson, the maintenance man. He caught her looking at him and gave her a wink… a decidedly lecherous one. She looked away hurriedly. Jack was over by the window just outside the restaurant, studying the view. He looked rapt and dreamy.

The cash register apparently checked out, because now Ullman ran it shut with an authoritative snap. He initialed the tape and put it in a small zipper case. Wendy silently applauded the head clerk, who looked greatly relieved. Ullman looked like the type of man who might take any shortage out of the head clerk's hide… without ever spilling a drop of blood. Wendy didn't much care for Ullman or his officious, ostentatiously bustling manner. He was like every boss she'd ever had, male or female. He would be saccharin sweet with the guests, a petty tyrant when he was backstage with the help. But now school was out and the head clerk's pleasure was written large on his face. It was out for everyone but she and Jack and Danny, anyway.

“Mr. Torrance,” Ullman called peremptorily. “Would you come over here, please? “

Jack walked over, nodding to Wendy and Danny that they were to come too.

The clerk, who had gone into the back, now came out again wearing an overcoat. “Have a pleasant winter, Mr. Ullman.”

“I doubt it,” Ullman said distantly. “May twelfth, Braddock. Not a day earlier. Not a day later.”

“Yes, sir.”

Braddock walked around the desk, his face sober and dignified, as befitted his position, but when his back was entirely to Ullman, he grinned like a schoolboy. He spoke briefly to the two girls still waiting by the door for their ride, and he was followed out by a brief burst of stifled laughter.

Now Wendy began to notice the silence of the place. It had fallen over the hotel like a heavy blanket muting everything but the faint pulse of the afternoon wind outside. From where she stood she could look through the inner office, now neat to the point of sterility with its two bare desks and two sets of gray filing cabinets. Beyond that she could see Hallorann's spotless kitchen, the big portholed double doors propped open by rubber wedges.

“I thought I would take a few extra minutes and show you through the Hotel,” Ullman said, and Wendy reflected that you could always hear that capital H in Ullman's voice. You were supposed to hear it. “I'm sure your husband will get to know the ins and outs of the Overlook quite well, Mrs. Torrance, but you and your son will doubtless keep more to the lobby level and the first floor, where your quarters are.”

“Doubtless,” Wendy murmured demurely, and Jack shot her a private glance.

“It's a beautiful place,” Ullman said expansively. “I rather enjoy showing it off.”

I'll bet you do, Wendy thought.

“Let's go up to third and work our way down,” Ullman said. He sounded positively enthused.

“If we're keeping you-” Jack began.

“Not at all,” Ullman said: “The shop is shut. Tout fins, for this season, at least. And I plan to overnight in Boulder-at the Boulderado, of course. Only decent hotel this side of Denver… except for the Overlook itself, of course. This way.”

They stepped into the elevator together. It was ornately scrolled in copper and brass, but it settled appreciably before Ullman pulled the gate across. Danny stirred a little uneasily, and Ullman smiled down at him. Danny tried to smile back without notable success.

“Don't you worry, little man,” Ullman said. “Safe as houses.”

“So was the Titanic,” Jack said, looking up at the cut-glass globe in the center of the elevator ceiling. Wendy bit the inside of her cheek to keep the smile away.

Ullman was not amused. He slid the inner gate across with a rattle and a bang. “The Titanic made only one voyage, Mr. Torrance. This elevator has made thousands of them since it was installed in 1926.”

“That's reassuring,” Jack said. He ruffed Danny's hair. “The plane ain't gonna crash, doc.”

Ullman threw the lever over, and for a moment there was nothing but a shuddering beneath their feet and the tortured whine of the motor below them. Wendy had a vision of the four of them being trapped between floors like flies in a bottle and found in the spring… with little bits and pieces gone… like the Donner Party…

(Stop it!)

The elevator began to rise, with some vibration and clashing and banging from below at first. Then the ride smoothed out. At the third floor Ullman brought them to a bumpy stop, retracted the gate, and opened the door. The elevator car was still six inches below floor level. Danny gazed at the difference in height between the third-floor hall and the elevator floor as if he had just sensed the universe was not as sane as he had been told. Ullman cleared his throat and raised the car a little, brought it to a stop with a jerk (still two inches low), and they all climbed out. With their weight gone the car rebounded almost to floor level, something Wendy did not find reassuring at all. Safe as houses or not, she resolved to take the stairs when she had to go up or down in this place. And under no conditions would she allow the three of them to get into the rickety thing together.

“What are you looking at, doc?” Jack inquired humorously. “See any spots there?”

“Of course not,” Ullman said, nettled. “All the rugs were shampooed just two days ago.”

Wendy glanced down at the hall runner herself. Pretty, but definitely not anything she would choose for her own home, if the day ever came when she had one. Deep blue pile, it was entwined with what seemed to be a surrealistic jungle scene full of ropes and vines and trees filled with exotic birds. It was hard to tell just what sort of birds, because all the interweaving was done in unshaded black, giving only silhouettes.

“Do you like the rug?” Wendy asked Danny.

“Yes, Mom,” he said colorlessly.

They walked down the hall, which was comfortably wide. The wallpaper was silk, a lighter blue to go against the rug. Electric flambeaux stood at ten-foot intervals at a height of about seven feet. Fashioned to look like London gas lamps, the bulbs were masked behind cloudy, cream-hued glass that was bound with crisscrossing iron strips.

“I like those very much,” she said.

Ullman nodded, pleased. “Mr. Derwent bad those installed throughout the Hotel after the war-number Two, I mean. In fact most-although not all-of the thirdfloor decorating scheme was his idea. This is 300, the Presidential Suite.”

He twisted his key in the lock of the mahogany double doors and swung them wide. The sitting room's wide western exposure made them all gasp, which had probably been Ullman's intention. He smiled. “Quite a view, isn't it?”

“It sure is,” Jack said.

The window ran nearly the length of the sitting room, and beyond it the sun was poised directly between two sawtoothed peaks, casting golden light across the rock faces and the sugared snow on the high tips. The clouds around and behind this picture-postcard view were also tinted gold, and a sunbeam glinted duskily down into the darkly pooled firs below the timberline.

Jack and Wendy were so absorbed in the view that they didn't look down at Danny, who was staring not out the window but at the red-and-white-striped silk wallpaper to the left, where a door opened into an interior bedroom. And his gasp, which had been mingled with theirs, had nothing to do with beauty.

Great splashes of dried blood, flecked with tiny bits of grayish-white tissue, clotted the wallpaper. It made Danny feel sick. It was like a crazy picture drawn in blood, a surrealistic etching of a man's face drawn back in terror and pain, the mouth yawning and half the head pulverized-

(So if you should see something… just look the other way and when you look back, it'll be gone. Are you diggin me?)

He deliberately looked out the window, being careful to show no expression on his face, and when his mommy's hand closed over his own he took it, being careful not to squeeze it or give her a signal of any kind.

The manager was saying something to his daddy about making sure to shutter that big window so a strong wind wouldn't blow it in. Jack was nodding. Danny looked cautiously back at the wall. The big dried bloodstain was gone. Those little gray-white flecks that had been scattered all through it, they were gone, too.

Then Ullman was leading them out. Mommy asked him if he thought the mountains were pretty. Danny said he did, although he didn't really care for the mountains, one way or the other. As Ullman was closing the door behind them, Danny looked back over his shoulder. The bloodstain had returned, only now it was fresh. It was running. Ullman, looking directly at it, went on with his running commentary about the famous men who had stayed here. Danny discovered that he had bitten his lip hard enough to make it bleed, and he had never even felt it. As they walked on down the corridor, he fell a little bit behind the others and wiped the blood away with the back of his hand and thought about

(blood)

(Did Mr. Hallorann see blood or was it something worse?)

(I don't think those things can hurt you.)

There was an iron scream behind his lips, but he would not let it out. His mommy and daddy could not see such things; they never had. He would keep quiet. His mommy and daddy were loving each other, and that was a real thing. The other things were just like pictures in a book. Some pictures were scary, but they couldn't hurt you. They… couldn't… hurt you.

Mr. Ullman showed them some other rooms on the third floor, leading them through corridors that twisted and turned like a maze. They were all sweets up here, Mr. Ullman said, although Danny didn't see any candy. He showed them some rooms where a lady named Marilyn Monroe once stayed when she was married to a man named Arthur Miller (Danny got a vague understanding that Marilyn and Arthur had gotten a DIVORCE not long after they were in the Overlook Hotel).

“Mommy?”

“What, honey?”

“If they were married, why did they have different names? You and Daddy have the same names.”

“Yes, but we're not famous, Danny,” Jack said. “Famous women keep their same names even after they get married because their names are their bread and butter.”

“Bread and butter,” Danny said, completely mystified.

“What Daddy means is that people used to like to go to the movies and see Marilyn Monroe,” Wendy said, “but they might not like to go to see Marilyn Miller.”

“Why not? She'd still be the same lady. Wouldn't everyone know that?”

“Yes, but-” She looked at Jack helplessly.

“Truman Capote once stayed in this room,” Ullman interrupted impatiently. He opened the door. “That was in my time. An awfully nice man. Continental manners.”

There was nothing remarkable in any of these rooms (except for the absence of sweets, which Mr. Ullman kept calling them), nothing that Danny was afraid of. In fact, there was only one other thing on the third floor that bothered Danny, and he could not have said why. It was the fire extinguisher on the wall just before they turned the corner and went back to the elevator, which stood open and waiting like a mouthful of gold teeth.

It was an old-fashioned extinguisher, a flat hose folded back a dozen times upon itself, one end attached to a large red valve, the other ending in a brass nozzle. The folds of the hose were secured with a red steel slat on a hinge. In case of a fire you could knock the steel slat up and out of the way with one hard push and the hose was yours. Danny could see that much; he was good at seeing how things worked. By the time he was two and a half he had been unlocking the protective gate his father had installed at the top of the stairs in the Stovington house. He had seen how the lock worked. His daddy said it was a NACK. Some people had the NACK and some people didn't.

This fire extinguisher was a little older than others he had seen-the one in the nursery school, for instance-but that was not so unusual. Nonetheless it filled him with faint unease, curled up there against the light blue wallpaper like a sleeping snake. And he was glad when it was out of sight around the corner.

“Of course all the windows have to be shuttered,” Mr. Ullman said as they stepped back into the elevator. Once again the car sank queasily beneath their feet. “But I'm particularly concerned about the one in the Presidential Suite. The original bill on that window was four hundred and twenty dollars, and that was over thirty years ago. It would cost eight times that to replace today.”

“I'll shutter it,” Jack said.

They went down to the second floor where there were more rooms and even more twists and turns in the corridor. The light from the windows had begun to fade appreciably now as the sun went behind the mountains. Mr. Ullman showed them one or two rooms and that was all. He walked past 217, the one Dick Hallorann had warned him about, without slowing. Danny looked at the bland number-plate on the door with uneasy fascination.

Then down to the first floor. Mr. Ullman didn't show them into any rooms here until they had almost reached the thickly carpeted staircase that led down into the lobby again. “Here are your quarters,” he said. “I think you'll find them adequate.”

They went in. Danny was braced for whatever might be there. There was nothing.

Wendy Torrance felt a strong surge of relief. The Presidential Suite, with its cold elegance, had made her feel awkward and clumsy-it was all very well to visit some restored historical building with a bedroom plaque that announced Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt had slept there, but another thing entirely to imagine you and your husband lying beneath acreages of linen and perhaps making love where the greatest men in the world had once lain (the most powerful, anyway, she amended). But this apartment was simpler, homier, almost inviting. She thought she could abide this place for a season with no great difficulty.

“It's very pleasant,” she said to Ullman, and heard the gratitude in her voice.

Ullman nodded. “Simple but adequate. During the season, this suite quarters the cook and his wife, or the cook and his apprentice.”

“Mr. Hallorann lived here?” Danny broke in.

Mr. Ullman inclined his head to Danny condescendingly. “Quite so. He and Mr. Nevers.” He turned back to Jack and Wendy. “This is the sitting room.”

There were several chairs that looked comfortable but not expensive, a coffee table that had once been expensive but now had a long chip gone from the side, two bookcases (stuffed full of Reader's Digest Condensed Books and Detective Book Club trilogies from the forties, Wendy saw with some amusement), and an anonymous hotel TV that looked much less elegant than the buffed wood consoles in the rooms.

“No kitchen, of course,” Ullman said, “but there is a dumb-waiter. This apartment is directly over the kitchen.” He slid aside a square of paneling and disclosed a wide, squarer tray. He gave it a push and it disappeared, trailing rope behind it.

“It's a secret passage!” Danny said excitedly to his mother, momentarily forgetting all fears in favor of that intoxicating shaft behind the wall. “Just like in Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters!”

Mr. Ullman frowned but Wendy smiled indulgently. Danny ran over to the dumbwaiter and peered down the shaft.,

“This way, please.”

He opened the door on the far side of the living room. It gave on the bedroom, which was spacious and airy. There were twin beds. Wendy looked at her husband, smiled, shrugged.

“No problem,” Jack said. “We'll push them together.”

Mr. Ullman looked over his shoulder, honestly puzzled. “Beg pardon?”

“The beds,” Jack said pleasantly. “We can push them together.”

“Oh, quite,” Ullman said, momentarily confused. Then his face cleared and a red flush began to creep up from the collar of his shirt. “Whatever you like.”

He led them back into the sitting room, where a second door opened on a second bedroom, this one equipped with bunk beds. A radiator clanked in one corner, and the rug on the floor was a hideous embroidery of western sage and cactus-Danny bad already fallen in love with it, Wendy saw. The walls of this smaller room were paneled in real pine.

“Think you can stand it in here, doc?” Jack asked.

“Sure I can. I'm going to sleep in the top bunk. Okay?”

“If that's what you want.”

“I like the rug, too. Mr. Ullman, why don't you have all the rugs like that?”

Mr. Ullman looked for a moment as if he had sunk his teeth into a lemon. Then he smiled and patted Danny's head. “Those are your quarters,” he said, “except for the bath, which opens off the main bedroom. It's not a huge apartment, but of course you'll have the rest of the hotel to spread out in. The lobby fireplace is in good working order, or so Watson tells me, and you must feel free to eat in the dining room if the spirit moves you to do so.” He spoke in the tone of a man conferring a great favor.

“All right,” Jack said.

“Shall we go down?” Mr. Ullman asked.

“Fine,” Wendy said.

They went downstairs in the elevator, and now the lobby was wholly deserted except for Watson, who was leaning against the main doors in a rawhide jacket, a toothpick between his lips.

“I would have thought you'd be miles from here by now,” Mr. Ullman said, his voice slightly chill.

“Just stuck around to remind Mr. Torrance here about the boiler,” Watson said, straightening up. “Keep your good weather eye on her, fella, and she'll be fine. Knock the press down a couple of times a day. She creeps.”

She creeps, Danny thought, and the words echoed down a long and silent corridor in his mind, a corridor lined with mirrors where people seldom looked.

“I will,” his daddy said.

“You'll be fine,” Watson said, and offered Jack his hand. Jack shook it. Watson turned to Wendy and inclined his head. “Ma'am,” he said.

“I'm pleased,” Wendy said, and thought it would sound absurd. It didn't. She had come out here from New England, where she had spent her life, and it seemed to her that in a few short sentences this man Watson, with his fluffy fringe of hair, had epitomized what the West was supposed to be all about. And never mind the lecherous wink earlier.

“Young master Torrance,” Watson said gravely, and put out his hand. Danny, who had known all about handshaking for almost a year now, put his own hand out gingerly and felt it swallowed up. “You take good care of em, Dan.”

“Yes, sir.”

Watson let go of Danny's hand and straightened up fully. He looked at Ullman. “Until next year, I guess,” he said, and held his hand out.

Ullman touched it bloodlessly. His pinky ring caught the lobby's electric lights in a baleful sort of wink.

“May twelfth, Watson,” he said. “Not a day earlier or later.”

“Yes, sir,” Watson said, and Jack could almost read the codicil in Watson's mind:… you fucking little faggot.

“Have a good winter, Mr. Ullman.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Ullman said remotely.

Watson opened one of the two big main doors; the wind whined louder and began to flutter the collar of his jacket. “You folks take care now,” he said.

It was Danny who answered. “Yes, sir, we will.”

Watson, whose not-so-distant ancestor had owned this place, slipped humbly through the door. It closed behind him, muffling the wind. Together they watched him clop down the porch's broad front steps in his battered black cowboy boots. Brittle yellow aspen leaves tumbled around his heels as he crossed the lot to his International Harvester pickup and climbed in. Blue smoke jetted from the rusted exhaust pipe as he started it up. The spell of silence held among them as he backed, then pulled out of the parking lot. His truck disappeared over the brow of the hill and then reappeared, smaller, on the main road, heading west.

For a moment Danny felt more lonely than he ever had in his life.

13. The Front Porch

The Torrance family stood together on the long front porch of the Overlook Hotel as if posing for a family portrait, Danny in the middle, zippered into last year's fall jacket which was now too small and starting to come out at the elbow, Wendy behind him with one hand on his shoulder, and Jack to his left, his own hand resting lightly on his son's head.

Mr. Ullman was a step below them, buttoned into an expensive-looking brown mohair overcoat. The sun was entirely behind the mountains now, edging them with gold fire, making the shadows around things look long and purple. The only three vehicles left in the parking lots were the hotel truck, Ullman's Lincoln Continental, and the battered Torrance VW.

“You've got your keys, then;” Ullman said to Jack, “and you understand fully about the furnace and the boiler?”

Jack nodded, feeling some real sympathy for Ullman. Everything was done for the season, the ball of string was neatly wrapped up until next May 12-not a day earlier or later-and Ullman, who was responsible for all of it and who referred to the hotel in the unmistakable tones of infatuation, could not help looking for loose ends.

“I think everything is well in hand,” Jack said.

“Good. I'll be in touch.” But he still lingered for a moment, as if waiting for the wind to take a hand and perhaps gust him down to his car. He sighed. “All right. Have a good winter, Mr. Torrance, Mrs. Torrance. You too, Danny.”

“Thank you, sir,” Danny said. “I hope you do, too.”

“I doubt it,” Ullman repeated, and he sounded sad. “The place in Florida is a dump, if the out-and-out truth is to be spoken. Busywork. The Overlook is my real job. Take good care of it for me, Mr. Torrance.”

“I think it will be here when you get back next spring,” Jack said, and a thought flashed through Danny's mind

(but will we?)

and was gone.

“Of course. Of course it will”

Ullman looked out toward the playground where the hedge animals were clattering in the wind. Then he nodded once more in a businesslike way.

“Good-by, then.”

He walked quickly and prissily across to his car-a ridiculously big one for such a little man-and tucked himself into it. The Lincoln's motor purred into life and the taillights flashed as he pulled out of his parking stall. As the car moved away, Jack could read the small sign at the head of the stall: RESERVED FOR MR. ULLMAN, MGR.

“Right,” Jack said softly.

They watched until the car was out of sight, headed down the eastern slope. When it was gone, the three of them looked at each other for a silent, almost frightened moment. They were alone. Aspen leaves whirled and skittered in aimless packs across the lawn that was now neatly mowed and tended for no guest's eyes. There was no one to see the autumn leaves steal across the grass but the three of them. It gave Jack a curious shrinking feeling, as if his life force had dwindled to a mere spark while the hotel and the grounds bad suddenly doubled in size and become sinister, dwarfing them with sullen, inanimate power.

Then Wendy said: “Look at you, doc. Your nose is running like a fire hose. Let's get inside.”

And they did, closing the door firmly behind them against the restless whine of the wind.