He did not close his eyesthat wasnt necessarybut he squinched them down to slits and imagined Daddys voice, Jacks voice, John Daniel Torrances voice, deep and steady, sometimes quirking up with amusement or deepening even more with anger or just staying steady because he was thinking. Thinking of. Thinking about. Thinking  (thinking) Danny sighed quietly and his body slumped on the curb as if all the muscles had gone out of it. He was fully conscious; he saw the street and the girl and boy walking up the sidewalk on the other side, holding hands because they were (?in love?) so happy about the day and themselves together in the day. He saw autumn leaves blowing along the gutter, yellow cartwheels of irregular shape. He saw the house they were passing and noticed how the roof was covered with (shingles. i guess itll be no problem if the flashings ok yeah thatll be all right. that watson. christ what a character. wish there was a place for him in THE PLAY. ill end up with the whole fucking human race in it if i dont watch out. yeah. shingles. are there nails out there? oh shit forgot to ask him well theyre simple to get. sidewinder hardware store. wasps. theyre nesting this time of year. i might want to get one of those bug bombs in case theyre there when i rip up the old shingles. new shingles. old) shingles. So thats what he was thinking about. He had gotten the job and was thinking about shingles. Danny didnt know who Watson was, but everything else seemed clear enough. And he might get to see a wasps nest. Just as sure as his name was Danny  Dannee  He looked up and there was Tony, far up the street, standing by a stop sign and waving. Danny, as always, felt a warm burst of pleasure at seeing his old friend, but this time he seemed to feel a prick of fear, too, as if Tony had come with some darkness hidden behind his back. A jar of wasps which when released would sting deeply. But there was no question of not going. He slumped further down on the curb, his hands sliding laxly from his thighs and dangling below the fork of his crotch. His chin sank onto his chest. Then there was a dim, painless tug as part of him got up and ran after Tony into funneling darkness. Dannee Now the darkness was shot with swirling whiteness. A coughing, whooping sound and bending, tortured shadows that resolved themselves into fir trees at night, being pushed by a screaming gale. Snow swirled and danced. Snow everywhere. Too deep, Tony said from the darkness, and there was a sadness in his voice that terrified Danny. Too deep to get out. Another shape, looming, rearing. Huge and rectangular. A sloping roof. Whiteness that was blurred in the stormy darkness. Many windows. A long building with a shingled roof. Some of the shingles were greener, newer. His daddy put them on. With nails from the Sidewinder hardware store. Now the snow was covering the shingles. It was covering everything. A green witchlight glowed into being on the front of the building, flickered, and became a giant, grinning skull over two crossed bones. Poison, Tony said from the floating darkness. Poison. Other signs flickered past his eyes, some in green letters, some of them on boards stuck at leaning angles into the snowdrifts. NO SWIMMING. DANGER! LIVE WIRES. THIS PROPERTY CONDEMNED. HIGH VOLTAGE. THIRD RAIL. DANGER OF DEATH. KEEP OFF. KEEP OUT. NO TRESPASSING. VIOLATERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT. He understood none of them completelyhe couldnt read!but got a sense of all, and a dreamy terror floated into the dark hollows of his body like light brown spores that would die in sunlight. They faded. Now he was in a room filled with strange furniture, a room that was dark. Snow spattered against the windows like thrown sand. His mouth was dry, his eyes like hot marbles, his heart triphammering in his chest. Outside there was a hollow booming noise, like a dreadful door being thrown wide. Footfalls. Across the room was a mirror, and deep down in its silver bubble a single word appeared in green fire and that word was REDRUM. The room faded. Another room. He knew (would know) this one. An overturned chair. A broken window with snow swirling in; already it had frosted the edge of the rug. The drapes had been pulled free and hung on their broken rod at an angle. A low cabinet lying on its face. More hollow booming noises, steady, rhythmic, horrible. Smashing glass. Approaching destruction. A hoarse voice, the voice of a madman, made the more terrible by its familiarity Come out! Come out, you little shit! Take your medicine! Crash. Crash. Crash. Splintering wood. A bellow of rage and satisfaction. REDRUM. Coming. Drifting across the room. Pictures torn off the walls. A record player (?Mommys record player?) overturned on the floor. Her records, Grieg, Handel, the Beatles, Art Garfunkel, Bach, Liszt, thrown everywhere. Broken into jagged black pie wedges. A shaft of light coming from another room, the bathroom, harsh white light and a word flickering on and off in the medicine cabinet mirror like a red eye, REDRUM, REDRUM, REDRUM No, he whispered. No, Tony please And, dangling over the white porcelain lip of the bathtub, a hand. Limp. A slow trickle of blood (REDRUM) trickling down one of the fingers, the third, dripping onto the tile from the carefully shaped nail No oh no oh no (oh please, Tony, youre scaring me) REDRUM REDRUM REDRUM (stop it, Tony, stop it) Fading. In the darkness the booming noises grew louder, louder still, echoing, everywhere, all around. And now he was crouched in a dark hallway, crouched on a blue rug with a riot of twisting black shapes woven into its pile, listening to the booming noises approach, and now a Shape turned the corner and began to come toward him, lurching, smelling of blood and doom. It had a mallet in one hand and it was swinging it (REDRUM) from side to side in vicious arcs, slamming it into the walls, cutting the silk wallpaper and knocking out ghostly bursts of plaster dust Come on and take your medicine! Take it like a man! The Shape advancing on him, reeking of that sweetsour odor, gigantic, the mallet head cutting across the air with a wicked hissing whisper, then the great hollow boom as it crashed into the wall, sending the dust out in a puff you could smell, dry and itchy. Tiny red eyes glowed in the dark. The monster was upon him, it had discovered him, cowering here with a blank wall at his back. And the trapdoor in the ceiling was locked. Darkness. Drifting. Tony, please take me back, please, please And he was back, sitting on the curb of Arapahoe Street, his shirt sticking damply to his back, his body bathed in sweat. In his ears he could still hear that huge, contrapuntal booming sound and smell his own urine as he voided himself in the extremity of his terror. He could see that limp hand dangling over the edge of the tub with blood running down one finger, the third, and that inexplicable word so much more horrible than any of the others REDRUM. And now sunshine. Real things. Except for Tony, now six blocks up, only a speck, standing on the corner, his voice faint and high and sweet. Be careful, doc  Then, in the next instant, Tony was gone and Daddys battered red bug was turning the corner and chattering up the street, farting blue smoke behind it. Danny was off the curb in a second, waving, jiving from one foot to the other, yelling Daddy! Hey, Dad! Hi! Hi! His daddy swung the VW into the curb, killed the engine, and opened the door. Danny ran toward him and then froze, his eyes widening. His heart crawled up into the middle of his throat and froze solid. Beside his daddy, in the other front seat, was a shorthandled mallet, its head clotted with blood and hair. Then it was just a bag of groceries. Danny  you okay, doc? Yeah. Im okay. He went to his daddy and buried his face in Daddys sheepskinlined denim jacket and hugged him tight tight tight. Jack hugged him back, slightly bewildered. Hey, you dont want to sit in the sun like that, doc. Youre drippin sweat. I guess I fell asleep a little. I love you, Daddy. I been waiting. I love you too, Dan. I brought home some stuff. Think youre big enough to carry it upstairs? Sure am! Doc Torrance, the worlds strongest man, Jack said, and ruffled his hair. Whose hobby is falling asleep on street corners. Then they were walking up to the door and Mommy had come down to the porch to meet them and he stood on the second step and watched them kiss. They were glad to see each other. Love came out of them the way love had come out of the boy and girl walking up the street and holding hands. Danny was glad. The bag of groceriesjust a bag of groceriescrackled in his arms. Everything was all right. Daddy was home. Mommy was loving him. There were no bad things. And not everything Tony showed him always happened. But fear had settled around his heart, deep and dreadful, around his heart and around that indecipherable word he had seen in his spirits mirror. CHAPTER FIVE PHONEBOOTH Jack parked the VW in front of the Rexall in the Table Mesa shopping center and let the engine die. He wondered again if he shouldnt go ahead and get the fuel pump replaced, and told himself again that they couldnt afford it. If the little car could keep running until November, it could retire with full honors anyway. By November the snow up there in the mountains would be higher than the beetles roof  maybe higher than three beetles stacked on top of each other. Want you to stay in the car, doc. Ill bring you a candy bar. Why cant I come in? I have to make a phone call. Its private stuff. Is that why you didnt make it at home? Check. Wendy had insisted on a phone in spite of their unraveling finances. She had argued that with a small childespecially a boy like Danny, who sometimes suffered from fainting spellsthey couldnt afford not to have one. So Jack had forked over the thirtydollar installation fee, bad enough, and a ninetydollar security deposit, which really hurt. And so far the phone had been mute except for two wrong numbers. Can I have a Baby Ruth, Daddy? Yes. You sit still and dont play with the gearshift, right? Right. Ill look at the maps. You do that. As Jack got out, Danny opened the bugs glovebox and took out the five battered gas station maps Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico. He loved road maps, loved to trace where the roads went with his finger. As far as he was concerned, new maps were the best part of moving West. Jack went to the drugstore counter, got Dannys candy bar, a newspaper, and a copy of the October Writers Digest. He gave the girl a five and asked for his change in quarters. With the silver in his hand he walked over to the telephone booth by the keymaking machine and slipped inside. From here he could see Danny in the bug through three sets of glass. The boys head was bent studiously over his maps. Jack felt a wave of nearly desperate love for the boy. The emotion showed on his face as a stony grimness. He supposed he could have made this obligatory thankyou call to Al from home; he certainly wasnt going to say anything Wendy would object to. It was his pride that said no. These days he almost always listened to what his pride told him to do, because along with his wife and son, six hundred dollars in a checking account, and one weary 1968 Volkswagen, his pride was all that was left. The only thing that was his. Even the checking account was joint. A year ago he had been teaching English in one of the finest prep schools in New England. There had been friendsalthough not exactly the same ones hed had before going on the wagonsome laughs, fellow faculty members who admired his deft touch in the classroom and his private dedication to writing. Things had been very good six months ago. All at once there was enough money left over at the end of each twoweek pay period to start a little savings account. In his drinking days there had never been a penny left over, even though Al Shockley had stood a great many of the rounds. He and Wendy had begun to talk cautiously about finding a house and making a down payment in a year or so. A farmhouse in the country, take six or eight years to renovate it completely, what the hell, they were young, they had time. Then he had lost his temper. George Hatfield. The smell of hope had turned to the smell of old leather in Crommerts office, the whole thing like some scene from his own play the old prints of previous Stovington headmasters on the walls, steel engravings of the school as it had been in 1879, when it was first built, and in 1895, when Vanderbilt money had enabled them to build the field house that still stood at the west end of the soccer field, squat, immense, dressed in ivy. April ivy had been rustling outside Crommerts slit window and the drowsy sound of steam heat came from the radiator. It was no set, he remembered thinking. It was real. His life. How could he have fucked it up so badly? This is a serious situation, Jack. Terribly serious. The Board has asked me to convey its decision to you. The Board wanted Jacks resignation and Jack had given it to them. Under different circumstances, he would have gotten tenure that June. What had followed that interview in Crommerts office had been the darkest, most dreadful night of his life. The wanting, the needing to get drunk had never been so bad. His hands shook. He knocked things over. And he kept wanting to take it out on Wendy and Danny. His temper was like a vicious animal on a frayed leash. He had left the house in terror that he might strike them. Had ended up outside a bar, and the only thing that had kept him from going in was the knowledge that if he did, Wendy would leave him at last, and take Danny with her. He would be dead from the day they left. Instead of going into the bar, where dark shadows sat sampling the tasty waters of oblivion, he had gone to Al Shockleys house. The Boards vote had been six to one. Al had been the one. Now he dialed the operator and she told him that for a dollar eightyfive he could be put in touch with Al two thousand miles away for three minutes. Time is relative, baby, he thought, and stuck in eight quarters. Faintly he could hear the electronic boops and beeps of his connection sniffing its way eastward. Als father had been Arthur Longley Shockley, the steel baron. He had left his only son, Albert, a fortune and a huge range of investments and directorships and chairs on various boards. One of these had been on the Board of Directors for Stovington Preparatory Academy, the old mans favorite charity. Both Arthur and Albert Shockley were alumni and Al lived in Barre, close enough to take a personal interest in the schools affairs. For several years Al had been Stovingtons tennis coach. Jack and Al had become friends in a completely natural and uncoincidental way at the many school and faculty functions they attended together, they were always the two drunkest people there. Shockley was separated from his wife, and Jacks own marriage was skidding slowly downhill, although he still loved Wendy and had promised sincerely (and frequently) to reform, for her sake and for baby Dannys. The two of them went on from many faculty parties, hitting the bars until they closed, then stopping at some mom n pop store for a case of beer they would drink parked at the end of some back road. There were mornings when Jack would stumble into their leased house with dawn seeping into the sky and find Wendy and the baby asleep on the couch, Danny always on the inside, a tiny fist curled under the shelf of Wendys jaw. He would look at them and the selfloathing would back up his throat in a bitter wave, even stronger than the taste of beer and cigarettes and martinismartians, as Al called them. Those were the times that his mind would turn thoughtfully and sanely to the gun or the rope or the razor blade. If the bender had occurred on a weeknight, he would sleep for three hours, get up, dress, chew four Excedrins, and go off to teach his nine oclock American Poets still drunk. Good morning, kids, today the RedEyed Wonder is going to tell you about how Longfellow lost his wife in the big fire. He hadnt believed he was an alcoholic, Jack thought as Als telephone began ringing in his ear. The classes he had missed or taught unshaven, still reeking of last nights martians. Not me, I can stop anytime. The nights he and Wendy had passed in separate beds. Listen, Im fine. Mashed fenders. Sure, Im okay to drive. The tears she always shed in the bathroom. Cautious looks from his colleagues at any party where alcohol was served, even wine. The slowly dawning realization that he was being talked about. The knowledge that he was producing nothing at his Underwood but balls of mostly blank paper that ended up in the wastebasket. He had been something of a catch for Stovington, a slowly blooming American writer perhaps, and certainly a man well qualified to teach that great mystery, creative writing. He had published two dozen short stories. He was working on a play, and thought there might be a novel incubating in some mental back room. But now he was not producing and his teaching had become erratic. It had finally ended one night less than a month after Jack had broken his sons arm. That, it seemed to him, had ended his marriage. All that remained was for Wendy to gather her will  if her mother hadnt been such a gradeA bitch, he knew, Wendy would have taken a bus back to New Hampshire as soon as Danny had been okay to travel. It was over. It had been a little past midnight. Jack and Al were coming into Barre on U.S. 31, Al behind the wheel of his Jag, shifting fancily on the curves, sometimes crossing the double yellow line. They were both very drunk; the martians had landed that night in force. They came around the last curve before the bridge at seventy, and there was a kids bike in the road, and then the sharp, hurt squealing as rubber shredded from the Jags tires, and Jack remembered seeing Als face looming over the steering wheel like a round white moon. Then the jingling crashing sound as they hit the bike at forty, and it had flown up like a bent and twisted bird, the handlebars striking the windshield, and then it was in the air again, leaving the starred safety glass in front of Jacks bulging eyes. A moment later he heard the final dreadful smash as it landed on the road behind them. Something thumped underneath them as the tires passed over it. The Jag drifted around broadside, Al still jockeying the wheel, and from far away Jack heard himself saying Jesus, Al. We ran him down. I felt it. In his ear the phone kept ringing. Come on, Al. Be home. Let me get this over with. Al had brought the car to a smoking halt not more than three feet from a bridge stanchion. Two of the Jags tires were flat. They had left zigzagging loops of burned rubber for a hundred and thirty feet. They looked at each other for a moment and then ran back in the cold darkness. The bike was completely ruined. One wheel was gone, and looking back over his shoulder Al had seen it lying in the middle of the road, half a dozen spokes sticking up like piano wire. Al had said hesitantly I think thats what we ran over, Jackyboy. Then wheres the kid? Did you see a kid? Jack frowned. It had all happened with such crazy speed. Coming around the corner. The bike looming in the Jags headlights. Al yelling something. Then the collision and the long skid. They moved the bike to one shoulder of the road. Al went back to the Jag and put on its fourway flashers. For the next two hours they searched the sides of the road, using a powerful fourcell flashlight. Nothing. Although it was late, several cars passed the beached Jaguar and the two men with the bobbing flashlight. None of them stopped. Jack thought later that some queer providence, bent on giving them both a last chance, had kept the cops away, had kept any of the passersby from calling them. At quarter past two they returned to the Jag, sober but queasy. If there was nobody riding it, what was it doing in the middle of the road? Al demanded. It wasnt parked on the side; it was right out in the fucking middle! Jack could only shake his head. Your party does not answer, the operator said. Would you like me to keep on trying? A couple more rings, operator. Do you mind? No, sir, the voice said dutifully. Come on, Al! Al had hiked across the bridge to the nearest pay phone, called a bachelor friend and told him it would be worth fifty dollars if the friend would get the Jags snow tires out of the garage and bring them down to the Highway 31 bridge outside of Barre. The friend showed up twenty minutes later, wearing a pair of jeans and his pajama top. He surveyed the scene. Kill anybody? he asked. Al was already jacking up the back of the car and Jack was loosening lug nuts. Providentially, no one, Al said. I think Ill just head on back anyway. Pay me in the morning. Fine, Al said without looking up. The two of them had gotten the tires on without incident, and together they drove back to Al Shockleys house. Al put the Jag in the garage and killed the motor. In the dark quiet he said Im off drinking, Jackyboy. Its all over. Ive slain my last martian. And now, sweating in this phonebooth, it occurred to Jack that he had never doubted Als ability to carry through. He had driven back to his own house in the VW with the radio turned up, and some disco group chanted over and over again, talismanic in the house before dawn Do it anyway  you wanta do it  do it anyway you want  No matter how loud he heard the squealing tires, the crash. When he blinked his eyes shut, he saw that single crushed wheel with its broken spokes pointing at the sky. When he got in, Wendy was asleep on the couch. He looked in Dannys room and Danny was in his crib on his back, sleeping deeply, his arm still buried in the cast. In the softly filtered glow from the streetlight outside he could see the dark lines on its plastered whiteness where all the doctors and nurses in pediatrics had signed it. It was an accident. He fell down the stairs. (o you dirty liar) It was an accident. I lost my temper. (you fucking drunken waste god wiped snot out of his nose and that was you) Listen, hey, come on, please, just an accident But the last plea was driven away by the image of that bobbing flashlight as they hunted through the dry late November weeds, looking for the sprawled body that by all good rights should have been there, waiting for the police. It didnt matter that Al had been driving. There had been other nights when he had been driving. He pulled the covers up over Danny, went into their bedroom, and took the Spanish Llama .38 down from the top shelf of the closet. It was in a shoe box. He sat on the bed with it for nearly an hour, looking at it, fascinated by its deadly shine. It was dawn when he put it back in the box and put the box back in the closet. That morning he had called Bruckner, the department head, and told him to please post his classes. He had the flu. Bruckner agreed, with less good grace than was common. Jack Torrance had been extremely susceptible to the flu in the last year. Wendy made him scrambled eggs and coffee. They ate in silence. The only sound came from the backyard, where Danny was gleefully running his trucks across the sand pile with his good hand. She went to do the dishes. Her back to him, she said Jack. Ive been thinking. Have you? He lit a cigarette with trembling hands. No hangover this morning, oddly enough. Only the shakes. He blinked. In the instants darkness the bike flew up against the windshield, starring the glass. The tires shrieked. The flashlight bobbed. I want to talk to you about  about whats best for me and Danny. For you too, maybe. I dont know. We should have talked about it before, I guess. Would you do something for me? he asked, looking at the wavering tip of his cigarette. Would you do me a favor? What? Her voice was dull and neutral. He looked at her back. Lets talk about it a week from today. If you still want to. Now she turned to him, her hands lacy with suds, her pretty face pale and disillusioned. Jack, promises dont work with you. You just go right on with She stopped, looking in his eyes, fascinated, suddenly uncertain. In a week, he said. His voice had lost all its strength and dropped to a whisper. Please. Im not promising anything. If you still want to talk then, well talk. About anything you want. They looked across the sunny kitchen at each other for a long time, and when she turned back to the dishes without saying anything more, he began to shudder. God, he needed a drink. Just a little pickmeup to put things in their true perspective Danny said he dreamed you had a car accident, she said abruptly. He has funny dreams sometimes. He said it this morning, when I got him dressed. Did you, Jack? Did you have an accident? No. By noon the craving for a drink had become a lowgrade fever. He went to Als. You dry? Al asked before letting him in. Al looked horrible. Bone dry. You look like Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera. Come on in. They played twohanded whist all afternoon. They didnt drink. A week passed. He and Wendy didnt speak much. But he knew she was watching, not believing. He drank coffee black and endless cans of CocaCola. One night he drank a whole sixpack of Coke and then ran into the bathroom and vomited it up. The level of the bottles in the liquor cabinet did not go down. After his classes he went over to Al Shockleysshe hated Al Shockley worse than she had ever hated anyoneand when he came home she would swear she smelled scotch or gin on his breath, but he would talk lucidly to her before supper, drink coffee, play with Danny after supper, sharing a Coke with him, read him a bedtime story, then sit and correct themes with cup after cup of black coffee by his hand, and she would have to admit to herself that she had been wrong. Weeks passed and the unspoken word retreated further from the back of her lips. Jack sensed its retirement but knew it would never retire completely. Things began to get a little easier. Then George Hatfield. He had lost his temper again, this time stone sober. Sir, your party still doesnt Hello? Als voice, out of breath. Go ahead, the operator said dourly. Al, this is Jack Torrance. Jackyboy! Genuine pleasure. How are you? Good. I just called to say thanks. I got the job. Its perfect. If I cant finish that goddam play snowed in all winter, Ill never finish it. Youll finish. How are things? Jack asked hesitantly. Dry, Al responded. You? As a bone. Miss it much? Every day. Al laughed. I know that scene. But I dont know how you stayed dry after that Hatfield thing, Jack. That was above and beyond. I really bitched things up for myself, he said evenly. Oh, hell. Ill have the Board around by spring. Effingers already saying they might have been too hasty. And if that play comes to something Yes. Listen, my boys out in the car, Al. He looks like he might be getting restless Sure. Understand. You have a good winter up there, Jack. Glad to help. Thanks again, Al. He hung up, closed his eyes in the hot booth, and again saw the crashing bike, the bobbing flashlight. There had been a squib in the paper the next day, no more than a spacefiller really, but the owner had not been named. Why it had been out there in the night would always be a mystery to them, and perhaps that was as it should be. He went back out to the car and gave Danny his slightly melted Baby Ruth. Daddy? What, doc? Danny hesitated, looking at his fathers abstracted face. When I was waiting for you to come back from that hotel, I had a bad dream. Do you remember? When I fell asleep? Umhm. But it was no good. Daddys mind was someplace else, not with him. Thinking about the Bad Thing again. (I dreamed that you hurt me, Daddy) What was the dream, doc? Nothing, Danny said as they pulled out into the parking lot. He put the maps back into the glove compartment. You sure? Yes. Jack gave his son a faint, troubled glance, and then his mind turned to his play. CHAPTER SIX NIGHT THOUGHTS Love was over, and her man was sleeping beside her. Her man. She smiled a little in the darkness, his seed still trickling with slow warmth from between her slightly parted thighs, and her smile was both rueful and pleased, because the phrase her man summoned up a hundred feelings. Each feeling examined alone was a bewilderment. Together, in this darkness floating to sleep, they were like a distant blues tune heard in an almost deserted nightclub, melancholy but pleasing. Lovin you baby, is just like rollin off a log, But if I cant be your woman, I sure aint goin to be your dog. Had that been Billie Holiday? Or someone more prosaic like Peggy Lee? Didnt matter. It was low and torchy, and in the silence of her head it played mellowly, as if issuing from one of those oldfashioned jukeboxes, a Wurlitzer, perhaps, half an hour before closing. Now, moving away from her consciousness, she wondered how many beds she had slept in with this man beside her. They had met in college and had first made love in his apartment  that had been less than three months after her mother drove her from the house, told her never to come back, that if she wanted to go somewhere she could go to her father since she had been responsible for the divorce. That had been in 1970. So long ago? A semester later they had moved in together, had found jobs for the summer, and had kept the apartment when their senior year began. She remembered that bed the most clearly, a big double that sagged in the middle. When they made love, the rusty box spring had counted the beats. That fall she had finally managed to break from her mother. Jack had helped her. She wants to keep beating you, Jack had said. The more times you phone her, the more times you crawl back begging forgiveness, the more she can beat you with your father. Its good for her, Wendy, because she can go on making believe it was your fault. But its not good for you. They had talked it over again and again in that bed, that year. (Jack sitting up with the covers pooled around his waist, a cigarette burning between his fingers, looking her in the eyehe had a halfhumorous, halfscowling way of doing thattelling her She told you never to come back, right? Never to darken her door again, right? Then why doesnt she hang up the phone when she knows its you? Why does she only tell you that you cant come in if Im with you? Because she thinks I might cramp her style a little bit. She wants to keep putting the thumbscrews right to you, baby. Youre a fool if you keep letting her do it. She told you never to come back, so why dont you take her at her word? Give it a rest. And at last shed seen it his way.) It had been Jacks idea to separate for a whileto get perspective on the relationship, he said. She had been afraid he had become interested in someone else. Later she found it wasnt so. They were together again in the spring and he asked her if she had been to see her father. She had jumped as if hed struck her with a quirt. How did you know that? The Shadow knows. Have you been spying on me? And his impatient laughter, which had always made her feel so awkwardas if she were eight and he was able to see her motivations more clearly than she. You needed time, Wendy. For what? I guess  to see which one of us you wanted to marry. Jack, what are you saying? I think Im proposing marriage. The wedding. Her father had been there, her mother had not been. She discovered she could live with that, if she had Jack. Then Danny had come, her fine son. That had been the best year, the best bed. After Danny was born, Jack had gotten her a job typing for half a dozen English Department profsquizzes, exams, class syllabi, study notes, reading lists. She ended up typing a novel for one of them, a novel that never got published  much to Jacks very irreverent and very private glee.


The job was good for forty a week, and skyrocketed all the way up to sixty during the two months she spent typing the unsuccessful novel. They had their first car, a fiveyearold Buick with a baby seat in the middle. Bright, upwardly mobile young marrieds. Danny forced a reconciliation between her and her mother, a reconciliation that was always tense and never happy, but a reconciliation all the same. When she took Danny to the house, she went without Jack. And she didnt tell Jack that her mother always remade Dannys diapers, frowned over his formula, could always spot the accusatory first signs of a rash on the babys bottom or privates. Her mother never said anything overtly, but the message came through anyway the price she had begun to pay (and maybe always would) for the reconciliation was the feeling that she was an inadequate mother. It was her mothers way of keeping the thumbscrews handy. During the days Wendy would stay home and housewife, feeding Danny his bottles in the sunwashed kitchen of the fourroom secondstory apartment, playing her records on the battered portable stereo she had had since high school. Jack would come home at three (or at two if he felt he could cut his last class), and while Danny slept he would lead her into the bedroom and fears of inadequacy would be erased. At night while she typed, he would do his writing and his assignments. In those days she sometimes came out of the bedroom where the typewriter was to find both of them asleep on the studio couch, Jack wearing nothing but his underpants, Danny sprawled comfortably on her husbands chest with his thumb in his mouth. She would put Danny in his crib, then read whatever Jack had written that night before waking him up enough to come to bed. The best bed, the best year. Sun gonna shine in my backyard someday  In those days, Jacks drinking had still been well in hand. On Saturday nights a bunch of his fellow students would drop over and there would be a case of beer and discussions in which she seldom took part because her field had been sociology and his was English arguments over whether Pepyss diaries were literature or history; discussions of Charles Olsons poetry; sometimes the reading of works in progress. Those and a hundred others. No, a thousand. She felt no real urge to take part; it was enough to sit in her rocking chair beside Jack, who sat crosslegged on the floor, one hand holding a beer, the other gently cupping her calf or braceleting her ankle. The competition at UNH had been fierce, and Jack carried an extra burden in his writing. He put in at least an hour at it every night. It was his routine. The Saturday sessions were necessary therapy. They let something out of him that might otherwise have swelled and swelled until he burst. At the end of his grad work he had landed the job at Stovington, mostly on the strength of his storiesfour of them published at that time, one of them in Esquire. She remembered that day clearly enough; it would take more than three years to forget it. She had almost thrown the envelope away, thinking it was a subscription offer. Opening it, she had found instead that it was a letter saying that Esquire would like to use Jacks story Concerning the Black Holes early the following year. They would pay nine hundred dollars, not on publication but on acceptance. That was nearly half a years take typing papers and she had flown to the telephone, leaving Danny in his high chair to goggle comically after her, his face lathered with creamed peas and beef pure. Jack had arrived from the university fortyfive minutes later, the Buick weighted down with seven friends and a keg of beer. After a ceremonial toast (Wendy also had a glass, although she ordinarily had no taste for beer), Jack had signed the acceptance letter, put it in the return envelope, and went down the block to drop it in the letter box. When he came back he stood gravely in the door and said, Veni, vidi, vici. There were cheers and applause. When the keg was empty at eleven that night, Jack and the only two others who were still ambulatory went on to hit a few bars. She had gotten him aside in the downstairs hallway. The other two were already out in the car, drunkenly singing the New Hampshire fight song. Jack was down on one knee, owlishly fumbling with the lacings of his moccasins. Jack, she said, you shouldnt. You cant even tie your shoes, let alone drive. He stood up and put his hands calmly on her shoulders. Tonight I could fly to the moon if I wanted to. No, she said. Not for all the Esquire stories in the world. Ill be home early. But he hadnt been home until four in the morning, stumbling and mumbling his way up the stairs, waking Danny up when he came in. He had tried to soothe the baby and dropped him on the floor. Wendy had rushed out, thinking of what her mother would think if she saw the bruise before she thought of anything elseGod help her, God help them bothand then picked Danny up, sat in the rocking chair with him, soothed him. She had been thinking of her mother for most of the five hours Jack had been gone, her mothers prophecy that Jack would never come to anything. Big ideas, her mother had said. Sure. The welfare lines are full of educated fools with big ideas. Did the Esquire story make her mother wrong or right? Winnifred, youre not holding that baby right. Give him to me. And was she not holding her husband right? Why else would he take his joy out of the house? A helpless kind of terror had risen up in her and it never occurred to her that he had gone out for reasons that had nothing to do with her. Congratulations, she said, rocking Dannyhe was almost asleep again. Maybe you gave him a concussion. Its just a bruise. He sounded sulky, wanting to be repentant a little boy. For an instant she hated him. Maybe, she said tightly. Maybe not. She heard so much of her mother talking to her departed father in her own voice that she was sickened and afraid. Like mother like daughter, Jack muttered. Go to bed! she cried, her fear coming out sounding like anger. Go to bed, youre drunk! Dont tell me what to do. Jack  please, we shouldnt  it  There were no words. Dont tell me what to do, he repeated sullenly, and then went into the bedroom. She was left alone in the rocking chair with Danny, who was sleeping again. Five minutes later Jacks snores came floating out to the living room. That had been the first night she had slept on the couch. Now she turned restlessly on the bed, already dozing. Her mind, freed of any linear order by encroaching sleep, floated past the first year at Stovington, past the steadily worsening times that had reached low ebb when her husband had broken Dannys arm, to that morning in the breakfast nook. Danny outside playing trucks in the sandpile, his arm still in the cast. Jack sitting at the table, pallid and grizzled, a cigarette jittering between his fingers. She had decided to ask him for a divorce. She had pondered the question from a hundred different angles, had been pondering it in fact for the six months before the broken arm. She told herself she would have made the decision long ago if it hadnt been for Danny, but not even that was necessarily true. She dreamed on the long nights when Jack was out, and her dreams were always of her mothers face and of her own wedding. (Who giveth this woman? Her father standing in his best suit which was none too goodhe was a traveling salesman for a line of canned goods that even then was going brokeand his tired face, how old he looked, how pale I do.) Even after the accidentif you could call it an accidentshe had not been able to bring it all the way out, to admit that her marriage was a lopsided defeat. She had waited, dumbly hoping that a miracle would occur and Jack would see what was happening, not only to him but to her. But there had been no slowdown. A drink before going off to the Academy. Two or three beers with lunch at the Stovington House. Three or four martinis before dinner. Five or six more while grading papers. The weekends were worse. The nights out with Al Shockley were worse still. She had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there was nothing physically wrong. She hurt all the time. How much of it was her fault? That question haunted her. She felt like her mother. Like her father. Sometimes, when she felt like herself, she wondered what it would be like for Danny, and she dreaded the day when he grew old enough to lay blame. And she wondered where they would go. She had no doubt her mother would take her in, and no doubt that after half a year of watching her diapers remade, Dannys meals recooked andor redistributed, of coming home to find his clothes changed or his hair cut or the books her mother found unsuitable spirited away to some limbo in the attic  after half a year of that, she would have a complete nervous breakdown. And her mother would pat her hand and say comfortingly, Although its not your fault, its all your own fault. You were never ready. You showed your true colors when you came between your father and me. My father, Dannys father. Mine, his. (Who giveth this woman? I do. Dead of a heart attack six months later.) The night before that morning she had lain awake almost until he came in, thinking, coming to her decision. The divorce was necessary, she told herself. Her mother and father didnt belong in the decision. Neither did her feelings of guilt over their marriage nor her feelings of inadequacy over her own. It was necessary for her sons sake, and for herself, if she was to salvage anything at all from her early adulthood. The handwriting on the wall was brutal but clear. Her husband was a lush. He had a bad temper, one he could no longer keep wholly under control now that he was drinking so heavily and his writing was going so badly. Accidentally or not accidentally, he had broken Dannys arm. He was going to lose his job, if not this year then the year after. Already she had noticed the sympathetic looks from the other faculty wives. She told herself that she had stuck with the messy job of her marriage for as long as she could. Now she would have to leave it. Jack could have full visitation rights, and she would want support from him only until she could find something and get on her feetand that would have to be fairly rapidly because she didnt know how long Jack would be able to pay support money. She would do it with as little bitterness as possible. But it had to end. So thinking, she had fallen off into her own thin and unrestful sleep, haunted by the faces of her own mother and father. Youre nothing but a homewrecker, her mother said. Who giveth this woman? the minister said. I do, her father said. But in the bright and sunny morning she felt the same. Her back to him, her hands plunged in warm dishwater up to the wrists, she had commenced with the unpleasantness. I want to talk to you about something that might be best for Danny and I. For you too, maybe. We should have talked about it before, I guess. And then he had said an odd thing. She had expected to discover his anger, to provoke the bitterness, the recriminations. She had expected a mad dash for the liquor cabinet. But not this soft, almost toneless reply that was so unlike him. It was almost as though the Jack she had lived with for six years had never come back last nightas if he had been replaced by some unearthly doppelgnger that she would never know or be quite sure of. Would you do something for me? A favor? What? She had to discipline her voice strictly to keep it from trembling. Lets talk about it in a week. If you still want to. And she had agreed. It remained unspoken between them. During that week he had seen Al Shockley more than ever, but he came home early and there was no liquor on his breath. She imagined she smelled it but knew it wasnt so. Another week. And another. Divorce went back to committee, unvoted on. What had happened? She still wondered and still had not the slightest idea. The subject was taboo between them. He was like a man who had leaned around a corner and had seen an unexpected monster lying in wait, crouching among the dried bones of its old kills. The liquor remained in the cabinet, but he didnt touch it. She had considered throwing them out a dozen times but in the end always backed away from the idea, as if some unknown charm would be broken by the act. And there was Dannys part in it to consider. If she felt she didnt know her husband, then she was in awe of her childawe in the strict meaning of that word a kind of undefined superstitious dread. Dozing lightly, the image of the instant of his birth was presented to her. She was again lying on the delivery table, bathed in sweat, her hair in strings, her feet splayed out in the stirrups (and a little high from the gas they kept giving her whiffs of; at one point she had muttered that she felt like an advertisement for gang rape, and the nurse, an old bird who had assisted at the births of enough children to populate a high school, found that extremely funny) the doctor between her legs, the nurse off to one side, arranging instruments and humming. The sharp, glassy pains had been coming at steadily shortening intervals, and several times she had screamed in spite of her shame. Then the doctor told her quite sternly that she must PUSH, and she did, and then she felt something being taken from her. It was a clear and distinct feeling, one she would never forgetthe thing taken. Then the doctor held her son up by the legsshe had seen his tiny sex and known he was a boy immediatelyand as the doctor groped for the airmask, she had seen something else, something so horrible that she found the strength to scream again after she had thought all screams were used up He has no face! But of course there had been a face, Dannys own sweet face, and the caul that had covered it at birth now resided in a small jar which she had kept, almost shamefully. She did not hold with old superstition, but she had kept the caul nevertheless. She did not hold with wives tales, but the boy had been unusual from the first. She did not believe in second sight but Did Daddy have an accident? I dreamed Daddy had an accident. Something had changed him. She didnt believe it was just her getting ready to ask for a divorce that had done it. Something had happened before that morning. Something that had happened while she slept uneasily. Al Shockley said that nothing had happened, nothing at all, but he had averted his eyes when he said it, and if you believed faculty gossip, Al had also climbed aboard the fabled wagon. Did Daddy have an accident? Maybe a chance collision with fate, surely nothing much more concrete. She had read that days paper and the next days with a closer eye than usual, but she saw nothing she could connect with Jack. God help her, she had been looking for a hitandrun accident or a barroom brawl that had resulted in serious injuries or  who knew? Who wanted to? But no policeman came to call, either to ask questions or with a warrant empowering him to take paint scrapings from the VWs bumpers. Nothing. Only her husbands one hundred and eighty degree change and her sons sleepy question on waking Did Daddy have an accident? I dreamed  She had stuck with Jack more for Dannys sake than she would admit in her waking hours, but now, sleeping lightly, she could admit it Danny had been Jacks for the asking, almost from the first. Just as she had been her fathers, almost from the first. She couldnt remember Danny ever spitting a bottle back on Jacks shirt. Jack could get him to eat after she had given up in disgust, even when Danny was teething and it gave him visible pain to chew. When Danny had a stomachache, she would rock him for an hour before he began to quiet; Jack had only to pick him up, walk twice around the room with him, and Danny would be asleep on Jacks shoulder, his thumb securely corked in his mouth. He hadnt minded changing diapers, even those he called the special deliveries. He sat with Danny for hours on end, bouncing him on his lap, playing finger games with him, making faces at him while Danny poked at his nose and then collapsed with the giggles. He made formulas and administered them faultlessly, getting up every last burp afterward. He would take Danny with him in the car to get the paper or a bottle of milk or nails at the hardware store even when their son was still an infant. He had taken Danny to a StovingtonKeene soccer match when Danny was only six months old, and Danny had sat motionlessly on his fathers lap through the whole game, wrapped in a blanket, a small Stovington pennant clutched in one chubby fist. He loved his mother but he was his fathers boy. And hadnt she felt, time and time again, her sons wordless opposition to the whole idea of divorce? She would be thinking about it in the kitchen, turning it over in her mind as she turned the potatoes for supper over in her hands for the peelers blade. And she would turn around to see him sitting crosslegged in a kitchen chair, looking at her with eyes that seemed both frightened and accusatory. Walking with him in the park, he would suddenly seize both her hands and sayalmost demand Do you love me? Do you love Daddy? And, confused, she would nod or say, Of course I do, honey. Then he would run to the duck pond, sending them squawking and scared to the other end, flapping their wings in a panic before the small ferocity of his charge, leaving her to stare after him and wonder. There were even times when it seemed that her determination to at least discuss the matter with Jack dissolved, not out of her own weakness but under the determination of her sons will. I dont believe such things. But in sleep she did believe them, and in sleep, with her husbands seed still drying on her thighs, she felt that the three of them had been permanently welded togetherthat if their threeoneness was to be destroyed, it would not be destroyed by any of them but from outside. Most of what she believed centered around her love for Jack. She had never stopped loving him, except maybe for that dark period immediately following Dannys accident. And she loved her son. Most of all she loved them together, walking or riding or only sitting, Jacks large head and Dannys small one poised alertly over the fans of old maid hands, sharing a bottle of Coke, looking at the funnies. She loved having them with her, and she hoped to dear God that this hotel caretaking job Al had gotten for Jack would be the beginning of good times again. And the wind gonna rise up, baby, and blow my blues away  Soft and sweet and mellow, the song came back and lingered, following her down into a deeper sleep where thought ceased and the faces that came in dreams went unremembered. CHAPTER SEVEN IN ANOTHER BEDROOM Danny awoke with the booming still loud in his ears, and the drunk, savagely pettish voice crying hoarsely Come out here and take your medicine! Ill find you! Ill find you! But now the booming was only his racing heart, and the only voice in the night was the faraway sound of a police siren. He lay in bed motionlessly, looking up at the windstirred shadows of the leaves on his bedroom ceiling. They twined sinuously together, making shapes like the vines and creepers in a jungle, like patterns woven into the nap of a thick carpet. He was clad in Doctor Denton pajamas, but between the pajama suit and his skin he had grown a more closely fitting singlet of perspiration. Tony? he whispered. You there? No answer. He slipped out of bed and padded silently across to the window and looked out on Arapahoe Street, now still and silent. It was two in the morning. There was nothing out there but empty sidewalks drifted with fallen leaves, parked cars, and the longnecked streetlight on the corner across from the Cliff Brice gas station. With its hooded top and motionless stance, the streetlight looked like a monster in a space show. He looked up the street both ways, straining his eyes for Tonys slight, beckoning form, but there was no one there. The wind sighed through the trees, and the fallen leaves rattled up the deserted walks and around the hubcaps of parked cars. It was a faint and sorrowful sound, and the boy thought that he might be the only one in Boulder awake enough to hear it. The only human being, at least. There was no way of knowing what else might be out in the night, slinking hungrily through the shadows, watching and scenting the breeze. Ill find you! Ill find you! Tony? he whispered again, but without much hope. Only the wind spoke back, gusting more strongly this time, scattering leaves across the sloping roof below his window. Some of them slipped into the raingutter and came to rest there like tired dancers. Danny  Danneee  He started at the sound of that familiar voice and craned out the window, his small hands on the sill. With the sound of Tonys voice the whole night seemed to have come silently and secretly alive, whispering even when the wind quieted again and the leaves were still and the shadows had stopped moving. He thought he saw a darker shadow standing by the bus stop a block down, but it was hard to tell if it was a real thing or an eyetrick. Dont go, Danny  Then the wind gusted again, making him squint, and the shadow by the bus stop was gone  if it had ever been there at all. He stood by his window for (a minute? an hour?) some time longer, but there was no more. At last he crept back into his bed and pulled the blankets up and watched the shadows thrown by the alien streetlight turn into a sinuous jungle filled with flesheating plants that wanted only to slip around him, squeeze the life out of him, and drag him down into a blackness where one sinister word flashed in red REDRUM. PART TWO CLOSING DAY CHAPTER EIGHT A VIEW OF THE OVERLOOK Mommy was worried. She was afraid the bug wouldnt 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. Were just about there, Jack said. Wendy brushed her hair back from her temples. Thank God. She was sitting in the righthand bucket, a Victoria Holt paperback open but facedown 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 yearround. 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. Whats 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 opentoed 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 Scurves, and Jack dropped the bugs stick shift from fourth gear to third, then into second. The bug wheezed and protested, and Wendys 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 bugs engine thumping gamely. You know, she said, I dont think weve 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. Theres already some icy patches up beyond the hotel, Watson says, and theyre 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. Youre 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. Halloranns the cook. Oh, she said faintly, looking at the speedometer. It had dropped from fifteen to ten miles an hour. Theres the top, Jack said, pointing three hundred yards ahead. Theres a scenic turnout and you can see the Overlook from there. Im 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 fivemileanhour hashmark and was beginning to hitch when Jack pulled off the road (Whats 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. Thats it, Jack said, and pointed at eleven oclock. For Wendy, it was discovering truth in a clich 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 themwho 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 ones 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 Jacks 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. Farther 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, its gorgeous! Yes, it is, he said. Ullman says he thinks its the single most beautiful location in America. I dont 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 on to 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, whats Jack was beside her. You okay, doc? He gave Danny a brisk little shake and his eyes cleared. Im okay, Daddy. Im fine. What was it, Danny? she asked. Were you dizzy, honey? No, I was just  thinking. Im sorry. I didnt 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. Well 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 Hotel, its massive bank of westwardlooking 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. CHAPTER NINE CHECKING IT OUT Ullman was waiting for them just inside the wide, oldfashioned 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 didnt 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. Fieldss 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. Im happy to meet you both, Ullman said. How old are you, Danny? Five, sir. Sir, yet. Ullman smiled and glanced at Jack. Hes well mannered. Of course he 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 halfoffered 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 oldfashioned highbacked 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 oldfashioned 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 checkout 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 silverplated 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 bankers 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 didnt. How fortunate, Ullman said. Id 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 Overlooks kitchen. But Im afraid One of the clerks came over and almost tugged his forelock. Excuse me, Mr. Ullman Well? What is it? Its 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 wont  His eyes shifted to the Torrance family, then back to Ullman. He shrugged. Ill 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 courtI told him the sun was too hot that dayand 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. Brants 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 hasnt become an utter Philistine! 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. Theres a dude who earns his money. But he didnt like that lady, Danny said immediately. He was just pretending to like her. Jack grinned down at him. Im sure thats true, doc. But flattery is the stuff that greases the wheels of the world. Whats flattery? Flattery, Wendy told him, is when your daddy says he likes my new yellow slacks even if he doesnt or when he says I dont 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 Youre pretty, Mommy. He frowned in confusion when they exchanged a glance and then burst into laughter. Ullman didnt 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 didnt think thered 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 didnt understand, but it was okay. They were loving each other. Danny thought this place reminded her of somewhere else (the beakman 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 didnt 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, its gorgeous! Danny, look! But Danny didnt think it was particularly gorgeous. He didnt 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 didnt know ROQUE. There was an arrow below it. Whats ROQUE, Daddy? A game, Daddy said. Its a little bit like croquet, only you play it on a gravel court that has sides like a big billiard table instead of grass. Its a very old game, Danny. Sometimes they have tournaments here. Do you play it with a croquet mallet? Like that, Jack agreed. Only the handles 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!) Its pronounced roke, Daddy was saying. Ill 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 dont like it, doc, you dont have to play. All right? Sure. Do you like the animals? Wendy asked. Thats 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. Thats a business that fixes peoples lawns and bushes and hedges. I used to trim a ladys 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 werent 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 fambly will end up on the fuckin 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 Ill 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. Its neat. Beyond the playground there was an inconspicuous chainlink 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 didnt 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. Ill get you that drink as soon as I can, doc. Theyre 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, lowpitched babble of emotions and colors that he usually got in crowded places. (id like to get into his pants) Dannys 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 mans pants? Was she cold, even with that long fur coat on? And if she was that cold, why hadnt 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 billa 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 that carmans 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 couldnt help being a little worried. He couldnt help it. CHAPTER TEN HALLORANN The cook didnt conform to Wendys 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 cookcooking 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 pastyfaced (rather like the Pillsbury DoughBoy); 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 aint gonna stay up here all winter. Yes I am, Danny said with a shy grin. No, youre gonna come down to St. Petes 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 youre gonna change your mind, Hallorann said, bending over him gravely, you better do it quick. Thirty minutes from now and Im in my car. Two and a half hours after that, Im sitting at Gate 32, Concourse B, Stapleton International Airport, in the milehigh city of Denver, Colorado. Three hours after that, Im rentin a car at the Miama Airport and on my way to sunny St. Petes, waiting to get inta 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 hell do, Jack said, and offered his hand. Hallorann took it. Im Jack Torrance. My wife, Winnifred. Danny youve met. And a pleasure it was. Maam, are you a Winnie or a Freddie? Im a Wendy, she said, smiling. Okay. Thats better than the other two, I think. Right this way. Mr. Ullman wants you to have the tour, the tour youll get. He shook his head and said under his breath And wont 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 Halloranns 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 fourbasin sink. There was a breadboard as big as their Boulder apartments kitchen table. An amazing array of stainlesssteel pots and pans hung from floor to ceiling, covering one whole wall. I think Ill have to leave a trail of bread crumbs every time I come in, she said. Dont let it get you down, Hallorann said. Its big, but its still only a kitchen. Most of this stuff youll never even have to touch. Keep it clean, thats all I ask. Heres the stove Id 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 warmerplus a million dials and temperature gauges. All gas, Hallorann said. Youve 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 youre 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 likeor 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, Mommy! 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 dont 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 fathers side. You three folks could eat up here for a year, I guess, Hallorann said. We got a coldpantry, a walkin 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 hours 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 Dannys 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 it, Winnifred!) Hallorann showed them into the walkin 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 woodplanked 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, doc? Hallorann asked, grinning. I love it, Danny said immediately. He had never had it. I knew you did. Theres 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. Its a noncontentious sort of meat. From behind them Jack said curiously How did you know we called him doc? Hallorann turned around. Pardon? Danny. We call him doc sometimes. Like in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Looks sort of like a doc, doesnt he? He wrinkled his nose at Danny, smacked his lips, and said, Ehhhh, whats up, doc? Danny giggled and then Hallorann said something (Sure you dont want to go to Florida, doc?) 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 cooks broad, sergeclad 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 Anumberone. I dont think Ive had real butter since I was a kid back in Berlin, New Hampshire. Well, youll eat it up here until oleo seems a treat, Hallorann said, and laughed. Over in this bin you got your breadthirty loaves of white, twenty of dark. We try to keep racial balance at the Overlook, dont you know. Now I know fifty loaves wont take you through, but theres plenty of makings and fresh is better than frozen any day of the week. Down here you got your fish. Brain food, right, doc? Is it, Mom? If Mr. Hallorann says so, honey. She smiled. Danny wrinkled his nose. I dont like fish. Youre 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 sweetesttasting sole that ever swam in the sea. My boy, when next spring rolls around, youre gonna thank old  He snapped his fingers as if he had forgotten something. Whats my name, now? I guess it just slipped my mind. Mr. Hallorann, Danny said, grinning. Dick, to your friends. Thats 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 shouldnt have, Wendy said, touched. It was a twentypound 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 theres a capon back here somewhere for Christmas. Doubtless youll stumble on it. Lets come on out of here now before we all catch the peenumonia. Right, doc? Right! There were more wonders in the coldpantry. 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 twelvepound 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 oldfashioned 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 thirtydollaraweek grocery budget so stunned her that she was unable to say just what her word was. Im runnin a bit late, Hallorann said, checking his watch, so Ill just let you go through the cabinets and the fridges as you get settled in. Theres cheeses, canned milk, sweetened condensed milk, yeast, bakin soda, a whole bagful of those Table Talk pies, a few bunches of bananas that aint even near to ripe yet Stop, she said, holding up a hand and laughing. Ill never remember it all. Its super. And I promise to leave the place clean. Thats 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 didnt see any shredded, as if theyd been using it to make nests. That Watson, Hallorann said, shaking his head in mock sorrow. Aint he the foulesttalking man you ever ran on? Hes quite a character, Jack agreed. His own father had been the foulesttalking man Jack had ever run on. Its 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 Watsons granddad or greatgranddadI cant remember whichthat built this place. So I was told, Jack said. What happened? Wendy asked. Well, they couldnt make it go, Hallorann said. Watson will tell you the whole storytwice 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 mans wife died of the flu, and then it was just the old man and his youngest son. They ended up getting took 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, Id 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. Whod want to put rat poison in the kitchen? Hallorann laughed derisively. Mr. Ullman, thats 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 dinnerwhich just happens to be salmon in a very nice sauceand everybody gits sick and the doctor comes and says to you, Ullman, what have you been doing up here? Youve 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 didnt know everything after all. The four of them passed through the dining room, empty and silent now, with its fabulous western exposure on the snowdusted 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 youre a drinkin man, I hope you brought your own supplies. That place is picked clean. Employees party last night, you know. Every maid and bellhop in the place is goin around with a headache today, me included. I dont drink, Jack said shortly. They went back to the lobby. It had cleared greatly during the half hour theyd 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 highbacked 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 wasnt in the lobby. A young maid with her ashblond 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. Ive got to hurry along if Im going to make that plane. I want to wish you all the best. Know youll have it. Thanks, Jack said. Youve been very kind. Ill 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 youll 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. Ill 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. CHAPTER ELEVEN 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, cant 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 heardor thought he heard, at leastTony telling him not to go. Hallorann set his bags down by the trunk of a beige Plymouth Fury. This aint much car, he confided to Danny, just a rental job. My Bessies on the other end. Shes a car. 1950 Cadillac, and does she run sweet? Ill tell the world. I keep her in Florida because shes 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 Im sixty years old this January. Huh? You got a knack, Hallorann said, turning to him. Me, Ive always called it shining. Thats 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 Dannys 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 Halloranns 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 Floridathere was a kidnaping afoot. But they were only sitting there. She could barely see the small silhouette of her sons head, turned attentively toward Halloranns 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, hadnt noticed. Wendy kept silent, watching Halloranns 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 dont even 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 dont 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 dont shine. Just sends her supper back twothree times every night. I know she doesnt, 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 dont go askin your mom, either. Youd only upset her, dig what Im 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, thats all you have to know. He looked at Danny speculatively. How hard can you hit, doc? Huh? Give me a blast. Think at me.