Theres another one on the curtain, he said, and ran out past her with Danny in his arms. He took the boy into their bedroom and put him on Wendys side of the makeshift double. Lie right there, Danny. Dont come back until I tell you. Understand? His face puffed and streaked with tears, Danny nodded. Thats my brave boy. Jack ran back down the hall to the stairs. Behind him he heard the coloring book slap twice, and then his wife screamed in pain. He didnt slow but went down the stairs two by two into the darkened lobby. He went through Ullmans office into the kitchen, slamming the heavy part of his thigh into the corner of Ullmans oak desk, barely feeling it. He slapped on the kitchen overheads and crossed to the sink. The washed dishes from supper were still heaped up in the drainer, where Wendy had left them to dripdry. He snatched the big Pyrex bowl off the top. A dish fell to the floor and exploded. Ignoring it, he turned and ran back through the office and up the stairs. Wendy was standing outside Dannys door, breathing hard. Her face was the color of table linen. Her eyes were shiny and flat; her hair hung damply against her neck. I got all of them, she said dully, but one stung me. Jack, you said they were all dead. She began to cry. He slipped past her without answering and carried the Pyrex bowl over to the nest by Dannys bed. It was still. Nothing there. On the outside, anyway. He slammed the bowl down over the nest. There, he said. Come on. They went back into their bedroom. Where did it get you? he asked her. My  on my wrist. Lets see. She showed it to him. Just above the bracelet of lines between wrist and palm, there was a small circular hole. The flesh around it was puffing up. Are you allergic to stings? he asked. Think hard! If you are, Danny might be. The fucking little bastards got him five or six times. No, she said, more calmly. I  I just hate them, thats all. Hate them. Danny was sitting on the foot of the bed, holding his left hand and looking at them. His eyes, circled with the white of shock, looked at Jack reproachfully. Daddy, you said you killed them all. My hand  it really hurts. Lets see it, doc  no, Im not going to touch it. That would make it hurt even more. Just hold it out. He did and Wendy moaned. Oh Danny  oh, your poor hand! Later the doctor would count eleven separate stings. Now all they saw was a dotting of small holes, as if his palm and fingers had been sprinkled with grains of red paper. The swelling was bad. His hand had begun to look like one of those cartoon images where Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck has just slammed himself with a hammer. Wendy, go get that spray stuff in the bathroom, he said. She went after it, and he sat down next to Danny and slipped an arm around his shoulders. After we spray your hand, I want to take some Polaroids of it, doc. Then you sleep the rest of the night with us, kay? Sure, Danny said. But why are you going to take pictures? So maybe we can sue the ass out of some people. Wendy came back with a spray tube in the shape of a chemical fire extinguisher. This wont hurt, honey, she said, taking off the cap. Danny held out his hand and she sprayed both sides until it gleamed. He let out a long, shuddery sigh. Does it smart? she asked. No. Feels better. Now these. Crunch them up. She held out five orangeflavored baby aspirin. Danny took them and popped them into his mouth one by one. Isnt that a lot of aspirin? Jack asked. Its a lot of stings, she snapped at him angrily. You go and get rid of that nest, John Torrance. Right now. Just a minute. He went to the dresser and took his Polaroid Square Shooter out of the top drawer. He rummaged deeper and found some flashcubes. Jack, what are you doing? she asked, a little hysterically. Hes gonna take some pictures of my hand, Danny said gravely, and then were gonna sue the ass out of some people. Right, Dad? Right, Jack said grimly. He had found the flash attachment, and he jabbed it onto the camera. Hold it out, son. I figure about five thousand dollars a sting. What are you talking about? Wendy nearly screamed. Ill tell you what, he said. I followed the directions on that fucking bug bomb. Were going to sue them. The damn thing was defective. Had to have been. How else can you explain this? Oh, she said in a small voice. He took four pictures, pulling out each covered print for Wendy to time on the small locket watch she wore around her neck. Danny, fascinated with the idea that his stung hand might be worth thousands and thousands of dollars, began to lose some of his fright and take an active interest. The hand throbbed dully, and he had a small headache. When Jack had put the camera away and spread the prints out on top of the dresser to dry, Wendy said Should we take him to the doctor tonight? Not unless hes really in pain, Jack said. If a person has a strong allergy to wasp venom, it hits within thirty seconds. Hits? What do you A coma. Or convulsions. Oh. Oh my Jesus. She cupped her hands over her elbows and hugged herself, looking pale and wan. How do you feel, son? Think you could sleep? Danny blinked at them. The nightmare had faded to a dull, featureless background in his mind, but he was still frightened. If I can sleep with you. Of course, Wendy said. Oh honey, Im so sorry. Its okay, Mommy. She began to cry again, and Jack put his hands on her shoulders. Wendy, I swear to you that I followed the directions. Will you get rid of it in the morning? Please? Of course I will. The three of them got in bed together, and Jack was about to snap off the light over the bed when he paused and pushed the covers back instead. Want a picture of the nest, too. Come right back. I will. He went to the dresser, got the camera and the last flashcube, and gave Danny a closed thumbandforefinger circle. Danny smiled and gave it back with his good hand. Quite a kid, he thought as he walked down to Dannys room. All of that and then some. The overhead was still on. Jack crossed to the bunk setup, and as he glanced at the table beside it, his skin crawled into goose flesh. The short hairs on his neck prickled and tried to stand erect. He could hardly see the nest through the clear Pyrex bowl. The inside of the glass was crawling with wasps. It was hard to tell how many. Fifty at least. Maybe a hundred. His heart thudding slowly in his chest, he took his pictures and then set the camera down to wait for them to develop. He wiped his lips with the palm of his hand. One thought played over and over in his mind, echoing with (You lost your temper. You lost your temper. You lost your temper.) an almost superstitious dread. They had come back. He had killed the wasps but they had come back. In his mind he heard himself screaming into his frightened, crying sons face Dont stutter! He wiped his lips again. He went to Dannys worktable, rummaged in its drawers, and came up with a big jigsaw puzzle with a fiberboard backing. He took it over to the bedtable and carefully slid the bowl and the nest onto it. The wasps buzzed angrily inside their prison. Then, putting his hand firmly on top of the bowl so it wouldnt slip, he went out into the hall. Coming to bed, Jack? Wendy asked. Coming to bed, Daddy? Have to go downstairs for a minute, he said, making his voice light. How had it happened? How in Gods name? The bomb sure hadnt been a dud. He had seen the thick white smoke start to puff out of it when he had pulled the ring. And when he had gone up two hours later, he had shaken a drift of small dead bodies out of the hole in the top. Then how? Spontaneous regeneration? That was crazy. Seventeenthcentury bullshit. Insects didnt regenerate. And even if wasp eggs could mature fullgrown insects in twelve hours, this wasnt the season in which the queen laid. That happened in April or May. Fall was their dying time. A living contradiction, the wasps buzzed furiously under the bowl. He took them downstairs and through the kitchen. In back there was a door which gave on the outside. A cold night wind blew against his nearly naked body, and his feet went numb almost instantly against the cold concrete of the platform he was standing on, the platform where milk deliveries were made during the hotels operating season. He put the puzzle and the bowl down carefully, and when he stood up he looked at the thermometer nailed outside the door. FRESH UP WITH 7UP, the thermometer said, and the mercury stood at an even twentyfive degrees. The cold would kill them by morning. He went in and shut the door firmly. After a moments thought he locked it, too. He crossed the kitchen again and shut off the lights. He stood in the darkness for a moment, thinking, wanting a drink. Suddenly the hotel seemed full of a thousand stealthy sounds creakings and groans and the sly sniff of the wind under the eaves where more wasps nests might be hanging like deadly fruit. They had come back. And suddenly he found that he didnt like the Overlook so well anymore, as if it wasnt wasps that had stung his son, wasps that had miraculously lived through the bug bomb assault, but the hotel itself. His last thought before going upstairs to his wife and son (from now on you will hold your temper. No Matter What.) was firm and hard and sure. As he went down the hall to them he wiped his lips with the back of his hand. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE DOCTORS OFFICE Stripped to his underpants, lying on the examination table, Danny Torrance looked very small. He was looking up at Dr. (Just call me Bill) Edmonds, who was wheeling a large black machine up beside him. Danny rolled his eyes to get a better look at it. Dont let it scare you, guy, Bill Edmonds said. Its an electroencephalograph, and it doesnt hurt. Electro We call it EEG for short. Im going to hook a bunch of wires to your headno, not stick them in, only tape themand the pens in this part of the gadget will record your brain waves. Like on The Six Million Dollar Man? About the same. Would you like to be like Steve Austin when you grow up? No way, Danny said as the nurse began to tape the wires to a number of tiny shaved spots on his scalp. My daddy says that someday hell get a short circuit and then hell be up sh  hell be up the creek. I know that creek well, Dr. Edmonds said amiably. Ive been up it a few times myself, sans paddle. An EEG can tell us lots of things, Danny. Like what? Like for instance if you have epilepsy. Thats a little problem where Yeah, I know what epilepsy is. Really? Sure. There was a kid in my nursery school back in VermontI went to nursery school when I was a little kidand he had it. He wasnt supposed to use the flashboard. What was that, Dan? He had turned on the machine. Thin lines began to trace their way across graph paper. It had all these lights, all different colors. And when you turned it on, some colors would flash but not all. And you had to count the colors and if you pushed the right button, you could turn it off. Brent couldnt use that. Thats because bright flashing lights sometimes cause an epileptic seizure. You mean using the flashboard mightve made Brent pitch a fit? Edmonds and the nurse exchanged a brief, amused glance. Inelegantly but accurately put, Danny. What? I said youre right, except you should say seizure instead of pitch a fit. Thats not nice  Okay, lie just as still as a mouse now. Okay. Danny, when you have these  whatever they ares, do you ever recall seeing bright flashing lights before? No. Funny noises? Ringing? Or chimes like a doorbell? Huhuh. How about a funny smell, maybe like oranges or sawdust? Or a smell like something rotten? No, sir. Sometimes do you feel like crying before you pass out? Even though you dont feel sad? No way. Thats fine, then. Have I got epilepsy, Dr. Bill? I dont think so, Danny. Just lie still. Almost done. The machine hummed and scratched for another five minutes and then Dr. Edmonds shut it off. All done, guy, Edmonds said briskly. Let Sally get those electrodes off you and then come into the next room. I want to have a little talk with you. Okay? Sure. Sally, you go ahead and give him a tine test before he comes in. All right. Edmonds ripped off the long curl of paper the machine had extruded and went into the next room, looking at it. Im going to prick your arm just a little, the nurse said after Danny had pulled up his pants. Its to make sure you dont have TB. They gave me that at my school just last year, Danny said without much hope. But that was a long time ago and youre a big boy now, right? I guess so. Danny sighed, and offered his arm up for sacrifice. When he had his shirt and shoes on, he went through the sliding door and into Dr. Edmondss office. Edmonds was sitting on the edge of his desk, swinging his legs thoughtfully. Hi, Danny. Hi. Hows that hand now? He pointed at Dannys left hand, which was lightly bandaged. Pretty good. Good. I looked at your EEG and it seems fine. But Im going to send it to a friend of mine in Denver who makes his living reading those things. I just want to make sure. Yes, sir. Tell me about Tony, Dan. Danny shuffled his feet. Hes just an invisible friend, he said. I made him up. To keep me company. Edmonds laughed and put his hands on Dannys shoulders. Now thats what your mom and dad say. But this is just between us, guy. Im your doctor. Tell me the truth and Ill promise not to tell them unless you say I can. Danny thought about it. He looked at Edmonds and then, with a small effort of concentration, he tried to catch Edmondss thoughts or at least the color of his mood. And suddenly he got an oddly comforting image in his head file cabinets, their doors sliding shut one after another, locking with a click. Written on the small tabs in the center of each door was AC, SECRET; DG, SECRET; and so on. This made Danny feel a little easier. Cautiously he said I dont know who Tony is. Is he your age? No. Hes at least eleven. I think he might be even older. Ive never seen him right up close. He might be old enough to drive a car. You just see him at a distance, huh? Yes, sir. And he always comes just before you pass out? Well, I dont pass out. Its like I go with him. And he shows me things. What kind of things? Well  Danny debated for a moment and then told Edmonds about Daddys trunk with all his writing in it, and about how the movers hadnt lost it between Vermont and Colorado after all. It had been right under the stairs all along. And your daddy found it where Tony said he would? Oh yes, sir. Only Tony didnt tell me. He showed me. I understand. Danny, what did Tony show you last night? When you locked yourself in the bathroom? I dont remember, Danny said quickly. Are you sure? Yes, sir. A moment ago I said you locked the bathroom door. But that wasnt right, was it? Tony locked the door. No, sir. Tony couldnt lock the door because he isnt real. He wanted me to do it, so I did. I locked it. Does Tony always show you where lost things are? No, sir. Sometimes he shows me things that are going to happen. Really? Sure. Like one time Tony showed me the amusements and wild animal park in Great Barrington. Tony said Daddy was going to take me there for my birthday. He did, too. What else does he show you? Danny frowned. Signs. Hes always showing me stupid old signs. And I cant read them, hardly ever. Why do you suppose Tony would do that, Danny? I dont know. Danny brightened. But my daddy and mommy are teaching me to read, and Im trying real hard. So you can read Tonys signs. Well, I really want to learn. But that too, yeah. Do you like Tony, Danny? Danny looked at the tile floor and said nothing. Danny? Its hard to tell, Danny said. I used to. I used to hope hed come every day, because he always showed me good things, especially since Mommy and Daddy dont think about DIVORCE anymore. Dr. Edmondss gaze sharpened, but Danny didnt notice. He was looking hard at the floor, concentrating on expressing himself. But now whenever he comes he shows me bad things. Awful things. Like in the bathroom last night. The things he shows me, they sting me like those wasps stung me. Only Tonys things sting me up here. He cocked a finger gravely at his temple, a small boy unconsciously burlesquing suicide. What things, Danny? I cant remember! Danny cried out, agonized. Id tell you if I could! Its like I cant remember because its so bad I dont want to remember. All I can remember when I wake up is REDRUM. Red drum or red rum? Rum. Whats that, Danny? I dont know. Danny? Yes, sir? Can you make Tony come now? I dont know. He doesnt always come. I dont even know if I want him to come anymore. Try, Danny. Ill be right here. Danny looked at Edmonds doubtfully. Edmonds nodded encouragement. Danny let out a long, sighing breath and nodded. But I dont know if it will work. I never did it with anyone looking at me before. And Tony doesnt always come, anyway. If he doesnt, he doesnt, Edmonds said. I just want you to try. Okay. He dropped his gaze to Edmondss slowly swinging loafers and cast his mind outward toward his mommy and daddy. They were here someplace  right beyond that wall with the picture on it, as a matter of fact. In the waiting room where they had come in. Sitting side by side but not talking. Leafing through magazines. Worried. About him. He concentrated harder, his brow furrowing, trying to get into the feeling of his mommys thoughts. It was always harder when they werent right there in the room with him. Then he began to get it. Mommy was thinking about a sister. Her sister. The sister was dead. His mommy was thinking that was the main thing that turned her mommy into such a (bitch?) into such an old biddy. Because her sister had died. As a little girl she was (hit by a car oh god i could never stand anything like that again like aileen but what if hes sick really sick cancer spinal meningitis leukemia brain tumor like john gunthers son or muscular dystrophy oh jeez kids his age get leukemia all the time radium treatments chemotherapy we couldnt afford anything like that but of course they just cant turn you out to die on the street can they and anyway hes all right all right all right you really shouldnt let yourself think) (Danny) (about aileen and) (Dannee) (that car) (Dannee) But Tony wasnt there. Only his voice. And as it faded, Danny followed it down into darkness, falling and tumbling down some magic hole between Dr. Bills swinging loafers, past a loud knocking sound, further, a bathtub cruised silently by in the darkness with some horrible thing lolling in it, past a sound like sweetly chiming church bells, past a clock under a dome of glass. Then the dark was pierced feebly by a single light festooned with cobwebs. The weak glow disclosed a stone floor that looked damp and unpleasant. Somewhere not far distant was a steady mechanical roaring sound, but muted, not frightening. Soporific. It was the thing that would be forgotten, Danny thought with dreamy surprise. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he could see Tony just ahead of him, a silhouette. Tony was looking at something and Danny strained his eyes to see what it was. (Your daddy. See your daddy?) Of course he did. How could he have missed him, even in the basement lights feeble glow? Daddy was kneeling on the floor, casting the beam of a flashlight over old cardboard boxes and wooden crates. The cardboard boxes were mushy and old; some of them had split open and spilled drifts of paper onto the floor. Newspapers, books, printed pieces of paper that looked like bills. His daddy was examining them with great interest. And then Daddy looked up and shone his flashlight in another direction. Its beam of light impaled another book, a large white one bound with gold string. The cover looked like white leather. It was a scrapbook. Danny suddenly needed to cry out to his daddy, to tell him to leave that book alone, that some books should not be opened. But his daddy was climbing toward it. The mechanical roaring sound, which he now recognized as the boiler at the Overlook which Daddy checked three or four times every day, had developed an ominous, rhythmic hitching. It began to sound like  like pounding. And the smell of mildew and wet, rotting paper was changing to something elsethe high, junipery smell of the Bad Stuff. It hung around his daddy like a vapor as he reached for the book  and grasped it. Tony was somewhere in the darkness (This inhuman place makes human monsters. This inhuman place) repeating the same incomprehensible thing over and over. (makes human monsters.) Falling through darkness again, now accompanied by the heavy, pounding thunder that was no longer the boiler but the sound of a whistling mallet striking silkpapered walls, knocking out whiffs of plaster dust. Crouching helplessly on the blueblack woven jungle rug. (Come out) (This inhuman place) (and take your medicine!) (makes human monsters.) With a gasp that echoed in his own head he jerked himself out of the darkness. Hands were on him and at first he shrank back, thinking that the dark thing in the Overlook of Tonys world had somehow followed him back into the world of real thingsand then Dr. Edmonds was saying Youre all right, Danny. Youre all right. Everything is fine. Danny recognized the doctor, then his surroundings in the office. He began to shudder helplessly. Edmonds held him. When the reaction began to subside, Edmonds asked, You said something about monsters, Dannywhat was it? This inhuman place, he said gutturally. Tony told me  this inhuman place  makes  makes  He shook his head. Cant remember. Try! I cant. Did Tony come? Yes. What did he show you? Dark. Pounding. I dont remember. Where were you? Leave me alone! I dont remember! Leave me alone! He began to sob helplessly in fear and frustration. It was all gone, dissolved into a sticky mess like a wet bundle of paper, the memory unreadable. Edmonds went to the water cooler and got him a paper cup of water. Danny drank it and Edmonds got him another one. Better? Yes. Danny, I dont want to badger you  tease you about this, I mean. But can you remember anything about before Tony came? My mommy, Danny said slowly. Shes worried about me. Mothers always are, guy. No  she had a sister that died when she was a little girl. Aileen. She was thinking about how Aileen got hit by a car and that made her worried about me. I dont remember anything else. Edmonds was looking at him sharply. Just now she was thinking that? Out in the waiting room? Yes, sir. Danny, how would you know that? I dont know, Danny said wanly. The shining, I guess. The what? Danny shook his head very slowly. Im awful tired. Cant I go see my mommy and daddy? I dont want to answer any more questions. Im tired. And my stomach hurts. Are you going to throw up? No, sir. I just want to go see my mommy and daddy. Okay, Dan. Edmonds stood up. You go on out and see them for a minute, then send them in so I can talk to them. Okay? Yes, sir. There are books out there to look at. You like books, dont you? Yes, sir, Danny said dutifully. Youre a good boy, Danny. Danny gave him a faint smile. I cant find a thing wrong with him, Dr. Edmonds said to the Torrances. Not physically. Mentally, hes bright and rather too imaginative. It happens. Children have to grow into their imaginations like a pair of oversized shoes. Dannys is still way too big for him. Ever had his IQ tested? I dont believe in them, Jack said. They straitjacket the expectations of both parents and teachers. Dr. Edmonds nodded. That may be. But if you did test him, I think youd find hes right off the scale for his age group. His verbal ability, for a boy who is five going on six, is amazing. We dont talk down to him, Jack said with a trace of pride. I doubt if youve ever had to in order to make yourself understood. Edmonds paused, fiddling with a pen. He went into a trance while I was with him. At my request. Exactly as you described him in the bathroom last night. All his muscles went lax, his body slumped, his eyeballs rotated outward. Textbook autohypnosis. I was amazed. I still am. The Torrances sat forward. What happened? Wendy asked tensely, and Edmonds carefully related Dannys trance, the muttered phrase from which Edmonds had only been able to pluck the word monsters, the dark, the pounding. The aftermath of tears, nearhysteria, and nervous stomach. Tony again, Jack said. What does it mean? Wendy asked. Have you any idea? A few. You might not like them. Go ahead anyway, Jack told him. From what Danny told me, his invisible friend was truly a friend until you folks moved out here from New England. Tony has only become a threatening figure since that move. The pleasant interludes have become nightmarish, even more frightening to your son because he cant remember exactly what the nightmares are about. Thats common enough. We all remember our pleasant dreams more clearly than the scary ones. There seems to be a buffer somewhere between the conscious and the subconscious, and one hell of a bluenose lives in there. This censor only lets through a small amount, and often what does come through is only symbolic. Thats oversimplified Freud, but it does pretty much describe what we know of the minds interaction with itself. You think moving has upset Danny that badly? Wendy asked. It may have, if the move took place under traumatic circumstances, Edmonds said. Did it? Wendy and Jack exchanged a glance. I was teaching at a prep school, Jack said slowly. I lost my job. I see, Edmonds said. He put the pen he had been playing with firmly back in its holder. Theres more here, Im afraid. It may be painful to you. Your son seems to believe you two have seriously contemplated divorce. He spoke of it in an offhand way, but only because he believes you are no longer considering it. Jacks mouth dropped open, and Wendy recoiled as if slapped. The blood drained from her face. We never even discussed it! she said. Not in front of him, not even in front of each other! We I think its best if you understand everything, Doctor, Jack said. Shortly after Danny was born, I became an alcoholic. Id had a drinking problem all the way through college, it subsided a little after Wendy and I met, cropped up worse than ever after Danny was born and the writing I consider to be my real work was going badly. When Danny was three and a half, he spilled some beer on a bunch of papers I was working on  papers I was shuffling around, anyway  and I  well  oh shit. His voice broke, but his eyes remained dry and unflinching. It sounds so goddam beastly said out loud. I broke his arm turning him around to spank him. Three months later I gave up drinking. I havent touched it since. I see, Edmonds said neutrally. I knew the arm had been broken, of course. It was set well. He pushed back from his desk a little and crossed his legs. If I may be frank, its obvious that hes been in no way abused since then. Other than the stings, theres nothing on him but the normal bruises and scabs that any kid has in abundance. Of course not, Wendy said hotly. Jack didnt mean No, Wendy, Jack said. I meant to do it. I guess someplace inside I really did mean to do that to him. Or something even worse. He looked back at Edmonds again. You know something, Doctor? This is the first time the word divorce has been mentioned between us. And alcoholism. And childbeating. Three firsts in five minutes. That may be at the root of the problem, Edmonds said. I am not a psychiatrist. If you want Danny to see a child psychiatrist, I can recommend a good one who works out of the Mission Ridge Medical Center in Boulder. But I am fairly confident of my diagnosis. Danny is an intelligent, imaginative, perceptive boy. I dont believe he would have been as upset by your marital problems as you believed. Small children are great accepters. They dont understand shame, or the need to hide things. Jack was studying his hands. Wendy took one of them and squeezed it. But he sensed the things that were wrong. Chief among them from his point of view was not the broken arm but the brokenor breakinglink between you two. He mentioned divorce to me but not the broken arm. When my nurse mentioned the set to him, he simply shrugged it off. It was no pressure thing. It happened a long time ago is what I think he said. That kid, Jack muttered. His jaws were clamped together, the muscles in the cheeks standing out. We dont deserve him. You have him, all the same, Edmonds said dryly. At any rate, he retires into a fantasy world from time to time. Nothing unusual about that; lots of kids do. As I recall, I had my own invisible friend when I was Dannys age, a talking rooster named ChugChug. Of course no one could see ChugChug but me. I had two older brothers who often left me behind, and in such a situation ChugChug came in mighty handy. And of course you two must understand why Dannys invisible friend is named Tony instead of Mike or Hal or Dutch. Yes, Wendy said. Have you ever pointed it out to him? No, Jack said. Should we? Why bother? Let him realize it in his own time, by his own logic. You see, Dannys fantasies were considerably deeper than those that grow around the ordinary invisible friend syndrome, but he felt he needed Tony that much more. Tony would come and show him pleasant things. Sometimes amazing things. Always good things. Once Tony showed him where Daddys lost trunk was  under the stairs. Another time Tony showed him that Mommy and Daddy were going to take him to an amusement park for his birthday At Great Barrington! Wendy cried. But how could he know those things? Its eerie, the things he comes out with sometimes. Almost as if He had second sight? Edmonds asked, smiling. He was born with a caul, Wendy said weakly. Edmondss smile became a good, hearty laugh. Jack and Wendy exchanged a glance and then also smiled, both of them amazed at how easy it was. Dannys occasional lucky guesses about things was something else they had not discussed much. Next youll be telling me he can levitate, Edmonds said, still smiling. No, no, no, Im afraid not. Its not extrasensory but good old human perception, which in Dannys case is unusually keen. Mr. Torrance, he knew your trunk was under the stairs because you had looked everywhere else. Process of elimination, what? Its so simple Ellery Queen would laugh at it. Sooner or later you would have thought of it yourself. As for the amusement park at Great Barrington, whose idea was that originally? Yours or his? His, of course, Wendy said. They advertised on all the morning childrens programs. He was wild to go. But the thing is, Doctor, we couldnt afford to take him. And we had told him so. Then a mens magazine Id sold a story to back in 1971 sent a check for fifty dollars, Jack said. They were reprinting the story in an annual, or something. So we decided to spend it on Danny. Edmonds shrugged. Wish fulfillment plus a lucky coincidence. Goddammit, I bet thats just right, Jack said. Edmonds smiled a little. And Danny himself told me that Tony often showed him things that never occurred. Visions based on faulty perception, thats all. Danny is doing subconsciously what these socalled mystics and mind readers do quite consciously and cynically. I admire him for it. If life doesnt cause him to retract his antennae, I think hell be quite a man. Wendy noddedof course she thought Danny would be quite a manbut the doctors explanation struck her as glib. It tasted more like margarine than butter. Edmonds had not lived with them. He had not been there when Danny found lost buttons, told her that maybe the TV Guide was under the bed, that he thought he better wear his rubbers to nursery school even though the sun was out  and later that day they had walked home under her umbrella through the pouring rain. Edmonds couldnt know of the curious way Danny had of preguessing them both. She would decide to have an unusual evening cup of tea, go in the kitchen and find her cup out with a tea bag in it.


She would remember that the books were due at the library and find them all neatly piled up on the hall table, her library card on top. Or Jack would take it into his head to wax the Volkswagen and find Danny already out there, listening to tinny topforty music on his crystal radio as he sat on the curb to watch. Aloud she said, Then why the nightmares now? Why did Tony tell him to lock the bathroom door? I believe its because Tony has outlived his usefulness, Edmonds said. He was bornTony, not Dannyat a time when you and your husband were straining to keep your marriage together. Your husband was drinking too much. There was the incident of the broken arm. The ominous quiet between you. Ominous quiet, yes, that phrase was the real thing, anyway. The stiff, tense meals where the only conversation had been please pass the butter or Danny, eat the rest of your carrots or may I be excused, please. The nights when Jack was gone and she had lain down, dryeyed, on the couch while Danny watched TV. The mornings when she and Jack had stalked around each other like two angry cats with a quivering, frightened mouse between them. It all rang true; (dear God, do old scars ever stop hurting?) horribly, horribly true. Edmonds resumed, But things have changed. You know, schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. Its accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics. They have invisible friends. They may go and sit in the closet when theyre depressed, withdrawing from the world. They attach talismanic importance to a special blanket, or a teddy bear, or a stuffed tiger. They suck their thumbs. When an adult sees things that arent there, we consider him ready for the rubber room. When a child says hes seen a troll in his bedroom or a vampire outside the window, we simply smile indulgently. We have a onesentence explanation that explains the whole range of such phenomena in children Hell grow out of it, Jack said. Edmonds blinked. My very words, he said. Yes. Now I would guess that Danny was in a pretty good position to develop a fullfledged psychosis. Unhappy home life, a big imagination, the invisible friend who was so real to him that he nearly became real to you. Instead of growing out of his childhood schizophrenia, he might well have grown into it. And become autistic? Wendy asked. She had read about autism. The word itself frightened her; it sounded like dread and white silence. Possible but not necessarily. He might simply have entered Tonys world someday and never come back to what he calls real things.  God, Jack said. But now the basic situation has changed drastically. Mr. Torrance no longer drinks. You are in a new place where conditions have forced the three of you into a tighter family unit than ever beforecertainly tighter than my own, where my wife and kids may see me for only two or three hours a day. To my mind, he is in the perfect healing situation. And I think the very fact that he is able to differentiate so sharply between Tonys world and real things says a lot about the fundamentally healthy state of his mind. He says that you two are no longer considering divorce. Is he as right as I think he is? Yes, Wendy said, and Jack squeezed her hand tightly, almost painfully. She squeezed back. Edmonds nodded. He really doesnt need Tony anymore. Danny is flushing him out of his system. Tony no longer brings pleasant visions but hostile nightmares that are too frightening for him to remember except fragmentarily. He internalized Tony during a difficultdesperatelife situation, and Tony is not leaving easily. But he is leaving. Your son is a little like a junkie kicking the habit. He stood up, and the Torrances stood also. As I said, Im not a psychiatrist. If the nightmares are still continuing when your job at the Overlook ends next spring, Mr. Torrance, I would strongly urge you to take him to this man in Boulder. I will. Well, lets go out and tell him he can go home, Edmonds said. I want to thank you, Jack told him painfully. I feel better about all this than I have in a very long time. So do I, Wendy said. At the door, Edmonds paused and looked at Wendy. Do you or did you have a sister, Mrs. Torrance? Named Aileen? Wendy looked at him, surprised. Yes, I did. She was killed outside our home in Somersworth, New Hampshire, when she was six and I was ten. She chased a ball into the street and was struck by a delivery van. Does Danny know that? I dont know. I dont think so. He says you were thinking about her in the waiting room. I was, Wendy said slowly. For the first time in  oh, I dont know how long. Does the word redrum mean anything to either of you? Wendy shook her head but Jack said, He mentioned that word last night, just before he went to sleep. Red drum. No, rum, Edmonds corrected. He was quite emphatic about that. Rum. As in the drink. The alcoholic drink. Oh, Jack said. It fits in, doesnt it? He took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his lips with it. Does the phrase the shining mean anything to you? This time they both shook their heads. Doesnt matter, I guess, Edmonds said. He opened the door into the waiting room. Anybody here named Danny Torrance that would like to go home? Hi, Daddy! Hi, Mommy! He stood up from the small table where he had been leafing slowly through a copy of Where the Wild Things Are and muttering the words he knew aloud. He ran to Jack, who scooped him up. Wendy ruffled his hair. Edmonds peered at him. If you dont love your mommy and daddy, you can stay with good old Bill. No, sir! Danny said emphatically. He slung one arm around Jacks neck, one arm around Wendys, and looked radiantly happy. Okay, Edmonds said, smiling. He looked at Wendy. You call if you have any problems. Yes. I dont think you will, Edmonds said, smiling. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN THE SCRAPBOOK Jack found the scrapbook on the first of November, while his wife and son were hiking up the rutted old road that ran from behind the roque court to a deserted sawmill two miles farther up. The fine weather still held, and all three of them had acquired improbable autumn suntans. He had gone down in the basement to knock the press down on the boiler and then, on impulse, he had taken the flashlight from the shelf where the plumbing schematics were and decided to look at some of the old papers. He was also looking for good places to set his traps, although he didnt plan to do that for another monthI want them all to be home from vacation, he had told Wendy. Shining the flashlight ahead of him, he stepped past the elevator shaft (at Wendys insistence they hadnt used the elevator since they moved in) and through the small stone arch. His nose wrinkled at the smell of rotting paper. Behind him the boiler kicked on with a thundering whoosh, making him jump. He flickered the light around, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. There was a scalemodel Andes range down here dozens of boxes and crates stuffed with papers, most of them white and shapeless with age and damp. Others had broken open and spilled yellowed sheaves of paper onto the stone floor. There were bales of newspaper tied up with hayrope. Some boxes contained what looked like ledgers, and others contained invoices bound with rubber bands. Jack pulled one out and put the flashlight beam on it. ROCKY MOUNTAIN EXPRESS, INC. To OVERLOOK HOTEL From SIDEYS WAREHOUSE, 1210 16th Street, Denver, CO. Via CANADIAN PACIFIC RR Contents 400 CASES DELSEY TOILET TISSUE, 1 GROSSCASE Signed D E F Date August 24, 1954 Smiling, Jack let the paper drop back into the box. He flashed the light above it and it speared a hanging lightbulb, almost buried in cobwebs. There was no chain pull. He stood on tiptoe and tried screwing the bulb in. It lit weakly. He picked up the toiletpaper invoice again and used it to wipe off some of the cobwebs. The glow didnt brighten much. Still using the flashlight, he wandered through the boxes and bales of paper, looking for rat spoor. They had been here but not for quite a long time  maybe years. He found some droppings that were powdery with age and several nests of neatly shredded paper that were old and unused. Jack pulled a newspaper from one of the bundles and glanced down at the headline. JOHNSON PROMISES ORDERLY TRANSITION Says Work Begun by JFK Will Go Forward in Coming Year The paper was the Rocky Mountain News, dated December 19, 1963. He dropped it back onto its pile. He supposed he was fascinated by that commonplace sense of history that anyone can feel glancing through the fresh news of ten or twenty years ago. He found gaps in the piled newspapers and records; nothing from 1937 to 1945, from 1957 to 1960, from 1962 to 1963. Periods when the hotel had been closed, he guessed. When it had been between suckers grabbing for the brass ring. Ullmans explanations of the Overlooks checkered career still didnt ring quite true to him. It seemed that the Overlooks spectacular location alone should have guaranteed its continuing success. There had always been an American jetset, even before jets were invented, and it seemed to Jack that the Overlook should have been one of the bases they touched in their migrations. It even sounded right. The Waldorf in May, the Bar Harbor House in June and July, the Overlook in August and early September, before moving on to Bermuda, Havana, Rio, wherever. He found a pile of old desk registers and they bore him out. Nelson Rockefeller in 1950. Henry Ford  Fam. in 1927. Jean Harlow in 1930. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. In 1956 the whole top floor had been taken for a week by Darryl F. Zanuck  Party. The money must have rolled down the corridors and into the cash registers like a twentiethcentury Comstock Lode. The management must have been spectacularly bad. There was history here, all right, and not just in newspaper headlines. It was buried between the entries in these ledgers and account books and roomservice chits where you couldnt quite see it. In 1922 Warren G. Harding had ordered a whole salmon at ten oclock in the evening and a case of Coors beer. But whom had he been eating and drinking with? Had it been a poker game? A strategy session? What? Jack glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that fortyfive minutes had somehow slipped by since he had come down here. His hands and arms were grimy, and he probably smelled bad. He decided to go up and take a shower before Wendy and Danny got back. He walked slowly between the mountains of paper, his mind alive and ticking over possibilities in a speedy way that was exhilarating. He hadnt felt this way in years. It suddenly seemed that the book he had semijokingly promised himself might really happen. It might even be right here, buried in these untidy heaps of paper. It could be a work of fiction, or history, or botha long book exploding out of this central place in a hundred directions. He stood beneath the cobwebby light, took his handkerchief from his back pocket without thinking, and scrubbed at his lips with it. And that was when he saw the scrapbook. A pile of five boxes stood on his left like some tottering Pisa. The one on top was stuffed with more invoices and ledgers. Balanced on top of those, keeping its angle of repose for who knew how many years, was a thick scrapbook with white leather covers, its pages bound with two hanks of gold string that had been tied along the binding in gaudy bows. Curious, he went over and took it down. The top cover was thick with dust. He held it on a plane at lip level, blew the dust off in a cloud, and opened it. As he did so a card fluttered out and he grabbed it in midair before it could fall to the stone floor. It was rich and creamy, dominated by a raised engraving of the Overlook with every window alight. The lawn and playground were decorated with glowing Japanese lanterns. It looked almost as though you could step right into it, an Overlook Hotel that had existed thirty years ago. Horace M. Derwent Requests The Pleasure of Your Company At a Masked Ball to Celebrate The Grand Opening of THE OVERLOOK HOTEL Dinner Will Be Served At 8 P.M. Unmasking And Dancing At Midnight August 29, 1945 RSVP Dinner at eight! Unmasking at midnight! He could almost see them in the dining room, the richest men in America and their women. Tuxedos and glimmering starched shirts; evening gowns; the band playing; gleaming highheeled pumps. The clink of glasses, the jocund pop of champagne corks. The war was over, or almost over. The future lay ahead, clean and shining. America was the colossus of the world and at last she knew it and accepted it. And later, at midnight, Derwent himself crying Unmask! Unmask! The masks coming off and  (The Red Death held sway over all!) He frowned. What left field had that come out of? That was Poe, the Great American Hack. And surely the Overlookthis shining, glowing Overlook on the invitation he held in his handswas the furthest cry from E. A. Poe imaginable. He put the invitation back and turned to the next page. A pasteup from one of the Denver papers, and scratched beneath it the date May 15, 1947. POSH MOUNTAIN RESORT REOPENS WITH STELLAR GUEST REGISTER Derwent Says Overlook Will Be Showplace of the World By David Felton, Features Editor The Overlook Hotel has been opened and reopened in its thirtyeightyear history, but rarely with such style and dash as that promised by Horace Derwent, the mysterious California millionaire who is the latest owner of the hostelry. Derwent, who makes no secret of having sunk more than one million dollars into his newest ventureand some say the figure is closer to three millionsays that The new Overlook will be one of the worlds showplaces, the kind of hotel you will remember overnighting in thirty years later. When Derwent, who is rumored to have substantial Las Vegas holdings, was asked if his purchase and refurbishing of the Overlook signaled the opening gun in a battle to legalize casinostyle gambling in Colorado, the aircraft, movie, munitions, and shipping magnate denied it  with a smile. The Overlook would be cheapened by gambling, he said, and dont think Im knocking Vegas! Theyve got too many of my markers out there for me to do that! I have no interest in lobbying for legalized gambling in Colorado. It would be spitting into the wind. When the Overlook opens officially (there was a gigantic and hugely successful party there some time ago when the actual work was finished), the newly painted, papered, and decorated rooms will be occupied by a stellar guest list, ranging from Chic designer Corbat Stani to  Smiling bemusedly, Jack turned the page. Now he was looking at a fullpage ad from the New York Sunday Times travel section. On the page after that a story on Derwent himself, a balding man with eyes that pierced you even from an old newsprint photo. He was wearing rimless spectacles and a fortiesstyle pencilline mustache that did nothing at all to make him look like Errol Flynn. His face was that of an accountant. It was the eyes that made him look like someone or something else. Jack skimmed the article rapidly. He knew most of the information from a Newsweek story on Derwent the year before. Born poor in St. Paul, never finished high school, joined the Navy instead. Rose rapidly, then left in a bitter wrangle over the patent on a new type of propeller that he had designed. In the tug of war between the Navy and an unknown young man named Horace Derwent, Uncle Sam came off the predictable winner. But Uncle Sam had never gotten another patent, and there had been a lot of them. In the late twenties and early thirties, Derwent turned to aviation. He bought out a bankrupt cropdusting company, turned it into an airmail service, and prospered. More patents followed a new monoplane wing design, a bomb carriage used on the Flying Fortresses that had rained fire on Hamburg and Dresden and Berlin, a machine gun that was cooled by alcohol, a prototype of the ejection seat later used in United States jets. And along the line, the accountant who lived in the same skin as the inventor kept piling up the investments. A piddling string of munitions factories in New York and New Jersey. Five textile mills in New England. Chemical factories in the bankrupt and groaning South. At the end of the Depression his wealth had been nothing but a handful of controlling interests, bought at abysmally low prices, salable only at lower prices still. At one point Derwent boasted that he could liquidate completely and realize the price of a threeyearold Chevrolet. There had been rumors, Jack recalled, that some of the means employed by Derwent to keep his head above water were less than savory. Involvement with bootlegging. Prostitution in the Midwest. Smuggling in the coastal areas of the South where his fertilizer factories were. Finally an association with the nascent western gambling interests. Probably Derwents most famous investment was the purchase of the foundering Top Mark Studios, which had not had a hit since their child star, Little Margery Morris, had died of a heroin overdose in 1934. She was fourteen. Little Margery, who had specialized in sweet sevenyearolds who saved marriages and the lives of dogs unjustly accused of killing chickens, had been given the biggest Hollywood funeral in history by Top Markthe official story was that Little Margery had contracted a wasting disease while entertaining at a New York orphanageand some cynics suggested the studio had laid out all that long green because it knew it was burying itself. Derwent hired a keen businessman and raging sex maniac named Henry Finkel to run Top Mark, and in the two years before Pearl Harbor the studio ground out sixty movies, fiftyfive of which glided right into the face of the Hayes Office and spit on its large blue nose. The other five were government training films. The feature films were huge successes. During one of them an unnamed costume designer had juryrigged a strapless bra for the heroine to appear in during the Grand Ball scene, where she revealed everything except possibly the birthmark just below the cleft of her buttocks. Derwent received credit for this invention as well, and his reputationor notorietygrew. The war had made him rich and he was still rich. Living in Chicago, seldom seen except for Derwent Enterprises Board meetings (which he ran with an iron hand), it was rumored that he owned United Air Lines, Las Vegas (where he was known to have controlling interests in four hotelcasinos and some involvement in at least six others), Los Angeles, and the U.S.A. itself. Reputed to be a friend of royalty, presidents, and underworld kingpins, it was supposed by many that he was the richest man in the world. But he had not been able to make a go of the Overlook, Jack thought. He put the scrapbook down for a moment and took the small notebook and mechanical pencil he always kept with him out of his breast pocket. He jotted Look into H. Derwent, Sidwndr lbry? He put the notebook back and picked up the scrapbook again. His face was preoccupied, his eyes distant. He wiped his mouth constantly with his hand as he turned the pages. He skimmed the material that followed, making a mental note to read it more closely later. Press releases were pasted into many of the pages. Soandso was expected at the Overlook next week, thusandsuch would be entertaining in the lounge (in Derwents time it had been the RedEye Lounge). Many of the entertainers were Vegas names, and many of the guests were Top Mark executives and stars. Then, in a clipping marked February 1, 1952 MILLIONAIRE EXEC TO SELL COLORADO INVESTMENTS Deal Made with California Investors on Overlook, Other Investments, Derwent Reveals By Rodney Conklin, Financial Editor In a terse communique yesterday from the Chicago offices of the monolithic Derwent Enterprises, it was revealed that millionaire (perhaps billionaire) Horace Derwent has sold out of Colorado in a stunning financial power play that will be completed by October 1, 1954. Derwents investments include natural gas, coal, hydroelectric power, and a land development company called Colorado Sunshine, Inc., which owns or holds options on better than 500,000 acres of Colorado land. The most famous Derwent holding in Colorado, the Overlook Hotel, has already been sold, Derwent revealed in a rare interview yesterday. The buyer was a California group of investors headed by Charles Grondin, a former director of the California Land Development Corporation. While Derwent refused to discuss price, informed sources  He had sold out everything, lock, stock, and barrel. It wasnt just the Overlook. But somehow  somehow  He wiped his lips with his hand and wished he had a drink. This would go better with a drink. He turned more pages. The California group had opened the hotel for two seasons, and then sold it to a Colorado group called Mountainview Resorts. Mountainview went bankrupt in 1957 amid charges of corruption, nestfeathering, and cheating the stockholders. The president of the company shot himself two days after being subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. The hotel had been closed for the rest of the decade. There was a single story about it, a Sunday feature headlined FORMER GRAND HOTEL SINKING INTO DECAY. The accompanying photos wrenched at Jacks heart the paint on the front porch peeling, the lawn a bald and scabrous mess, windows broken by storms and stones. This would be a part of the book, if he actually wrote it, toothe phoenix going down into the ashes to be reborn. He promised himself he would take care of the place, very good care. It seemed that before today he had never really understood the breadth of his responsibility to the Overlook. It was almost like having a responsibility to history. In 1961 four writers, two of them Pulitzer Prize winners, had leased the Overlook and reopened it as a writers school. That had lasted one year. One of the students had gotten drunk in his thirdfloor room, crashed out of the window somehow, and fell to his death on the cement terrace below. The paper hinted that it might have been suicide. Any big hotels have got scandals, Watson had said, just like every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go  Suddenly it seemed that he could almost feel the weight of the Overlook bearing down on him from above, one hundred and ten guest rooms, the storage rooms, kitchen, pantry, freezer, lounge, ballroom, dining room  (In the room the women come and go) ( and the Red Death held sway over all.) He rubbed his lips and turned to the next page in the scrapbook. He was in the last third of it now, and for the first time he wondered consciously whose book this was, left atop the highest pile of records in the cellar. A new headline, this one dated April 10, 1963. LAS VEGAS GROUP BUYS FAMED COLORADO HOTEL Scenic Overlook to Become Key Club Robert T. Leffing, spokesman for a group of investors going under the name of High Country Investments, announced today in Las Vegas that High Country has negotiated a deal for the famous Overlook Hotel, a resort located high in the Rockies. Leffing declined to mention the names of specific investors, but said the hotel would be turned into an exclusive key club. He said that the group he represents hopes to sell memberships to highechelon executives in American and foreign companies. High Country also owns hotels in Montana, Wyoming, and Utah. The Overlook became worldknown in the years 1946 to 1952 when it was owned by elusive megamillionaire Horace Derwent, who  The item on the next page was a mere squib, dated four months later. The Overlook had opened under its new management. Apparently the paper hadnt been able to find out or wasnt interested in who the key holders were, because no name was mentioned but High Country Investmentsthe most anonymoussounding company name Jack had ever heard except for a chain of bike and appliance shops in western New England that went under the name of Business, Inc. He turned the page and blinked down at the clipping pasted there. MILLIONAIRE DERWENT BACK IN COLORADO VIA BACK DOOR? High Country Exec Revealed to be Charles Grondin By Rodney Conklin, Financial Editor The Overlook Hotel, a scenic pleasure palace in the Colorado high country and once the private plaything of millionaire Horace Derwent, is at the center of a financial tangle which is only now beginning to come to light. On April 10 of last year the hotel was purchased by a Las Vegas firm, High Country Investments, as a key club for wealthy executives of both foreign and domestic breeds. Now informed sources say that High Country is headed by Charles Grondin, 53, who was the head of California Land Development Corp. until 1959, when he resigned to take the position of executive veep in the Chicago home office of Derwent Enterprises. This has led to speculation that High Country Investments may be controlled by Derwent, who may have acquired the Overlook for the second time and under decidedly peculiar circumstances. Grondin, who was indicted and acquitted on charges of tax evasion in 1960, could not be reached for comment, and Horace Derwent, who guards his own privacy jealously, had no comment when reached by telephone. State Representative Dick Bows of Golden has called for a complete investigation into  That clipping was dated July 27, 1964. The next was a column from a Sunday paper that September. The byline belonged to Josh Brannigar, a muckraking investigator of the Jack Anderson breed. Jack vaguely recalled that Brannigar had died in 1968 or 69. MAFIA FREEZONE COLORADO? By Josh Brannigar It now seems possible that the newest rr spot of Organization overlords in the U.S. is located at an outoftheway hotel nestled in the center of the Rockies. The Overlook Hotel, a white elephant that has been run lucklessly by almost a dozen different groups and individuals since it first opened its doors in 1910, is now being operated as a securityjacketed key club, ostensibly for unwinding businessmen. The question is, what business are the Overlooks key holders really in? The members present during the week of August 1623 may give us an idea. The list below was obtained by a former employee of High Country Investments, a company first believed to be a dummy company owned by Derwent Enterprises. It now seems more likely that Derwents interest in High Country (if any) is outweighed by those of several Las Vegas gambling barons. And these same gaming honchos have been linked in the past to both suspected and convicted underworld kingpins. Present at the Overlook during that sunny week in August were Charles Grondin, President of High Country Investments. When it became known in July of this year that he was running the High Country ship it was announcedconsiderably after the factthat he had resigned his position in Derwent Enterprises previously. The silvermaned Grondin, who refused to talk to me for this column, has been tried once and acquitted on tax evasion charges (1960). Charles Baby Charlie Battaglia, a 60yearold Vegas impresario (controlling interests in The Greenback and The Lucky Bones on the Strip). Battaglia is a close personal friend of Grondin. His arrest record stretches back to 1932, when he was tried and acquitted in the ganglandstyle murder of Jack Dutchy Morgan. Federal authorities suspect his involvement in the drug traffic, prostitution, and murder for hire, but Baby Charlie has only been behind bars once, for income tax evasion in 195556. Richard Scarne, the principal stockholder of Fun Time Automatic Machines. Fun Time makes slot machines for the Nevada crowd, pinball machines and jukeboxes (MelodyCoin) for the rest of the country. He has done time for assault with a deadly weapon (1940), carrying a concealed weapon (1948), and conspiracy to commit tax fraud (1961). Peter Zeiss, a Miamibased importer, now nearing 70. For the last five years Zeiss has been fighting deportation as an undesirable person. He has been convicted on charges of receiving and concealing stolen property (1958) and conspiracy to commit tax fraud (1954). Charming, distinguished, and courtly, Pete Zeiss is called Poppa by his intimates and has been tried on charges of murder and accessory to murder. A large stockholder in Scarnes Fun Time company, he also has known interests in four Las Vegas casinos. Vittorio Gienelli, also known as Vito the Chopper, tried twice for ganglandstyle murders, one of them the axmurder of Boston vice overlord Frank Scoffy. Gienelli has been indicted twentythree times, tried fourteen times, and convicted only once, for shoplifting in 1940. It has been said that in recent years Gienelli has become a power in the organizations western operation, which is centered in Las Vegas. Carl JimmyRicks Prashkin, a San Francisco investor, reputed to be the heir apparent of the power Gienelli now wields. Prashkin owns large blocks of stock in Derwent Enterprises, High Country Investments, Fun Time Automatic Machines, and three Vegas casinos. Prashkin is clean in America, but was indicted in Mexico on fraud charges that were dropped quickly three weeks after they were brought. It has been suggested that Prashkin may be in charge of laundering money skimmed from Vegas casino operations and funneling the big bucks back into the organizations legitimate western operations. And such operations may now include the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Other visitors during the current season include  There was more but Jack only skimmed it, constantly wiping his lips with his hand. A banker with Las Vegas connections. Men from New York who were apparently doing more in the Garment District than making clothes. Men reputed to be involved with drugs, vice, robbery, murder. God, what a story! And they had all been here, right above him, in those empty rooms. Screwing expensive whores on the third floor, maybe. Drinking magnums of champagne. Making deals that would turn over millions of dollars, maybe in the very suite of rooms where Presidents had stayed. There was a story, all right. One hell of a story. A little frantically, he took out his notebook and jotted down another memo to check all of these people out at the library in Denver when the caretaking job was over. Every hotel has its ghost? The Overlook had a whole coven of them. First suicide, then the Mafia, what next? The next clipping was an angry denial of Brannigars charges by Charles Grondin. Jack smirked at it. The clipping on the next page was so large that it had been folded. Jack unfolded it and gasped harshly. The picture there seemed to leap out at him the wallpaper had been changed since June of 1966, but he knew that window and the view perfectly well. It was the western exposure of the Presidential Suite. Murder came next. The sitting room wall by the door leading into the bedroom was splashed with blood and what could only be white flecks of brain matter. A blankfaced cop was standing over a corpse hidden by a blanket. Jack stared, fascinated, and then his eyes moved up to the headline. GANGLANDSTYLE SHOOTING AT COLORADO HOTEL Reputed Crime Overlord Shot at Mountain Key Club, Two Others Dead SIDEWINDER, COLO (UPI)Forty miles from this sleepy Colorado town, a ganglandstyle execution has occurred in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The Overlook Hotel, purchased three years ago as an exclusive key club by a Las Vegas firm, was the site of a triple shotgun slaying. Two of the men were either the companions or bodyguards of Vittorio Gienelli, also known as The Chopper for his reputed involvement in a Boston slaying twenty years ago. Police were summoned by Robert Norman, manager of the Overlook, who said he heard shots and that some of the guests reported two men wearing stockings on their faces and carrying guns had fled down the fire escape and driven off in a latemodel tan convertible. State Trooper Benjamin Moorer discovered two dead men, later identified as Victor T.


Boorman and Roger Macassi, both of Las Vegas, outside the door of the Presidential Suite where two American Presidents have stayed. Inside, Moorer found the body of Gienelli sprawled on the floor. Gienelli was apparently fleeing his attackers when he was cut down. Moorer said Gienelli had been shot with heavygauge shotguns at close range. Charles Grondin, the representative of the company which now owns the Overlook, could not be reached for  Below the clipping, in heavy strokes of a ballpoint pen, someone had written They took his balls along with them. Jack stared at that for a long time, feeling cold. Whose book was this? He turned the page at last, swallowing a click in his throat. Another column from Josh Brannigar, this one dated early 1967. He only read the headline NOTORIOUS HOTEL SOLD FOLLOWING MURDER OF UNDERWORLD FIGURE. The sheets following that clipping were blank. (They took his balls along with them.) He flipped back to the beginning, looking for a name or address. Even a room number. Because he felt quite sure that whoever had kept this little book of memories had stayed at the hotel. But there was nothing. He was getting ready to go through all the clippings, more closely this time, when a voice called down the stairs Jack? Hon? Wendy. He started, almost guiltily, as if he had been drinking secretly and she would smell the fumes on him. Ridiculous. He scrubbed his lips with his hand and called back, Yeah, babe. Lookin for rats. She was coming down. He heard her on the stairs, then crossing the boiler room. Quickly, without thinking why he might be doing it, he stuffed the scrapbook under a pile of bills and invoices. He stood up as she came through the arch. What in the world have you been doing down here? Its almost three oclock! He smiled. Is it that late? I got rooting around through all this stuff. Trying to find out where the bodies are buried, I guess. The words clanged back viciously in his mind. She came closer, looking at him, and he unconsciously retreated a step, unable to help himself. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to smell liquor on him. Probably she wasnt even aware of it herself, but he was, and it made him feel both guilty and angry. Your mouth is bleeding, she said in a curiously flat tone. Huh? He put his hand to his lips and winced at the thin stinging. His index finger came away bloody. His guilt increased. Youve been rubbing your mouth again, she said. He looked down and shrugged. Yeah, I guess I have. Its been hell for you, hasnt it? No, not so bad. Has it gotten any easier? He looked up at her and made his feet start moving. Once they were actually in motion it was easier. He crossed to his wife and slipped an arm around her waist. He brushed aside a sheaf of her blond hair and kissed her neck. Yes, he said. Wheres Danny? Oh, hes around somewhere. Its started to cloud up outside. Hungry? He slipped a hand over her taut, jeansclad bottom with counterfeit lechery. Like ze bear, madame. Watch out, slugger. Dont start something you cant finish. Figfig, madame? he asked, still rubbing. Dirty peectures? Unnatural positions? As they went through the arch, he threw one glance back at the box where the scrapbook (whose?) was hidden. With the light out it was only a shadow. He was relieved that he had gotten Wendy away. His lust became less acted, more natural, as they approached the stairs. Maybe, she said. After we get you a sandwichyeek! She twisted away from him, giggling. That tickles! It teekles nozzing like Jock Torrance would like to teekle you, madame. Lay off, Jock. How about a ham and cheese  for the first course? They went up the stairs together, and Jack didnt look over his shoulder again. But he thought of Watsons words Every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go  Then Wendy shut the basement door behind them, closing it into darkness. CHAPTER NINETEEN OUTSIDE 217 Danny was remembering the words of someone else who had worked at the Overlook during the season Her saying shed seen something in one of the rooms where  a bad thing happened. That was in Room 217 and I want you to promise me you wont go in there, Danny  steer right clear  It was a perfectly ordinary door, no different from any other door on the first two floors of the hotel. It was dark gray, halfway down a corridor that ran at right angles to the main secondfloor hallway. The numbers on the door looked no different from the house numbers on the Boulder apartment building they had lived in. A 2, a 1, and a 7. Big deal. Just below them was a tiny glass circle, a peephole. Danny had tried several of them. From the inside you got a wide, fisheye view of the corridor. From outside you could screw up your eye seven ways to Sunday and still not see a thing. A dirty gyp. (Why are you here?) After the walk behind the Overlook, he and Mommy had come back and she had fixed him his favorite lunch, a cheese and bologna sandwich plus Campbells Bean Soup. They ate in Dicks kitchen and talked. The radio was on, getting thin and crackly music from the Estes Park station. The kitchen was his favorite place in the hotel, and he guessed that Mommy and Daddy must feel the same way, because after trying their meals in the dining room for three days or so, they had begun eating in the kitchen by mutual consent, setting up chairs around Dick Halloranns butcher block, which was almost as big as their dining room table back in Stovington, anyway. The dining room had been too depressing, even with the lights on and the music playing from the tape cassette system in the office. You were still just one of three people sitting at a table surrounded by dozens of other tables, all empty, all covered with those transparent plastic dustcloths. Mommy said it was like having dinner in the middle of a Horace Walpole novel, and Daddy had laughed and agreed. Danny had no idea who Horace Walpole was, but he did know that Mommys cooking had begun to taste better as soon as they began to eat it in the kitchen. He kept discovering little flashes of Dick Halloranns personality lying around, and they reassured him like a warm touch. Mommy had eaten half a sandwich, no soup. She said Daddy must have gone out for a walk of his own since both the VW and the hotel truck were in the parking lot. She said she was tired and might lie down for an hour or so, if he thought he could amuse himself and not get into trouble. Danny told her around a mouthful of cheese and bologna that he thought he could. Why dont you go out into the playground? she asked him. I thought youd love that place, with a sandbox for your trucks and all. He swallowed and the food went down his throat in a lump that was dry and hard. Maybe I will, he said, turning to the radio and fiddling with it. And all those neat hedge animals, she said, taking his empty plate. Your fathers got to get out and trim them pretty soon. Yeah, he said. (Just nasty things  once it had to do with those damn hedges clipped to look like animals ) If you see your father before I do, tell him Im lying down. Sure, Mom. She put the dirty dishes in the sink and came back over to him. Are you happy here, Danny? He looked at her guilelessly, a milk mustache on his lip. Uhhuh. No more bad dreams? No. Tony had come to him once, one night while he was lying in bed, calling his name faintly and from far away. Danny had squeezed his eyes tightly shut until Tony had gone. You sure? Yes, Mom. She seemed satisfied. Hows your hand? He flexed it for her. All better. She nodded. Jack had taken the nest under the Pyrex bowl, full of frozen wasps, out to the incinerator in back of the equipment shed and burned it. They had seen no more wasps since. He had written to a lawyer in Boulder, enclosing the snaps of Dannys hand, and the lawyer had called back two days agothat had put Jack in a foul temper all afternoon. The lawyer doubted if the company that had manufactured the bug bomb could be sued successfully because there was only Jack to testify that he had followed directions printed on the package. Jack had asked the lawyer if they couldnt purchase some others and test them for the same defect. Yes, the lawyer said, but the results were highly doubtful even if all the test bombs malfunctioned. He told Jack of a case that involved an extension ladder company and a man who had broken his back. Wendy had commiserated with Jack, but privately she had just been glad that Danny had gotten off as cheaply as he had. It was best to leave lawsuits to people who understood them, and that did not include the Torrances. And they had seen no more wasps since. Go and play, doc. Have fun. But he hadnt had fun. He had wandered aimlessly around the hotel, poking into the maids closets and the janitors rooms, looking for something interesting, not finding it, a small boy padding along a dark blue carpet woven with twisting black lines. He had tried a room door from time to time, but of course they were all locked. The passkey was hanging down in the office; he knew where, but Daddy had told him he shouldnt touch that. And he didnt want to. Did he? (Why are you here?) There was nothing aimless about it after all. He had been drawn to Room 217 by a morbid kind of curiosity. He remembered a story Daddy had read to him once when he was drunk. That had been a long time ago, but the story was just as vivid now as when Daddy had read it to him. Mommy had scolded Daddy and asked what he was doing, reading a threeyearold baby something so horrible. The name of the story was Bluebeard. That was clear in his mind too, because he had thought at first Daddy was saying Bluebird, and there were no bluebirds in the story, or birds of any kind for that matter. Actually the story was about Bluebeards wife, a pretty lady that had corncolored hair like Mommy. After Bluebeard married her, they lived in a big and ominous castle that was not unlike the Overlook. And every day Bluebeard went off to work and every day he would tell his pretty little wife not to look in a certain room, although the key to that room was hanging right on a hook, just like the passkey was hanging on the office wall downstairs. Bluebeards wife had gotten more and more curious about the locked room. She tried to peep through the keyhole the way Danny had tried to look through Room 217s peephole with similar unsatisfying results. There was even a picture of her getting down on her knees and trying to look under the door, but the crack wasnt wide enough. The door swung wide and  The old fairy tale book had depicted her discovery in ghastly, loving detail. The image was burned in Dannys mind. The severed heads of Bluebeards seven previous wives were in the room, each one on its own pedestal, the eyes turned up to whites, the mouths unhinged and gaping in silent screams. They were somehow balanced on necks ragged from the broadswords decapitating swing, and there was blood running down the pedestals. Terrified, she had turned to flee from the room and the castle, only to discover Bluebeard standing in the doorway, his terrible eyes blazing. I told you not to enter this room, Bluebeard said, unsheathing his sword. Alas, in your curiosity you are like the other seven, and though I loved you best of all, your ending shall be as was theirs. Prepare to die, wretched woman! It seemed vaguely to Danny that the story had had a happy ending, but that had paled to insignificance beside the two dominant images the taunting, maddening locked door with some great secret behind it, and the grisly secret itself, repeated more than half a dozen times. The locked door and behind it the heads, the severed heads. His hand reached out and stroked the rooms doorknob, almost furtively. He had no idea how long he had been here, standing hypnotized before the bland gray locked door. (And maybe three times Ive thought Ive seen things  nasty things ) But Mr. HallorannDickhad also said he didnt think those things could hurt you. They were like scary pictures in a book, that was all. And maybe he wouldnt see anything. On the other hand  He plunged his left hand into his pocket and it came out holding the passkey. It had been there all along, of course. He held it by the square metal tab on the end which had OFFICE printed on it in Magic Marker. He twirled the key on its chain, watching it go around and around. After several minutes of this he stopped and slipped the passkey into the lock. It slid in smoothly, with no hitch, as if it had wanted to be there all along. (Ive thought Ive seen things  nasty things  promise me you wont go in there.) (I promise.) And a promise was, of course, very important. Still, his curiosity itched at him as maddeningly as poison ivy in a place you arent supposed to scratch. But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie. What was beyond that door would be no movie. (I dont think those things can hurt you  like scary pictures in a book ) Suddenly he reached out with his left hand, not sure of what it was going to do until it had removed the passkey and stuffed it back into his pocket. He stared at the door a moment longer, bluegray eyes wide, then turned quickly and walked back down the corridor toward the main hallway that ran at right angles to the corridor he was in. Something made him pause there and he wasnt sure what for a moment. Then he remembered that directly around this corner, on the way back to the stairs, there was one of those oldfashioned fire extinguishers curled up against the wall. Curled there like a dozing snake. They werent chemicaltype extinguishers at all, Daddy said, although there were several of those in the kitchen. These were the forerunner of the modern sprinkler systems. The long canvas hoses hooked directly into the Overlooks plumbing system, and by turning a single valve you could become a oneman fire department. Daddy said that the chemical extinguishers, which sprayed foam or CO2, were much better. The chemicals smothered fires, took away the oxygen they needed to burn, while a highpressure spray might just spread the flames around. Daddy said that Mr. Ullman should replace the oldfashioned hoses right along with the oldfashioned boiler, but Mr. Ullman would probably do neither because he was a CHEAP PRICK. Danny knew that this was one of the worst epithets his father could summon. It was applied to certain doctors, dentists, and appliance repairmen, and also to the head of his English Department at Stovington, who had disallowed some of Daddys book orders because he said the books would put them over budget. Over budget, hell, he had fumed to WendyDanny had been listening from his bedroom where he was supposed to be asleep. Hes just saving the last five hundred bucks for himself, the CHEAP PRICK. Danny looked around the corner. The extinguisher was there, a flat hose folded back a dozen times on itself, the red tank attached to the wall. Above it was an ax in a glass case like a museum exhibit, with white words printed on a red background IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS. Danny could read the word EMERGENCY, which was also the name of one of his favorite TV shows, but was unsure of the rest. But he didnt like the way the word was used in connection with that long flat hose. EMERGENCY was fire, explosions, car crashes, hospitals, sometimes death. And he didnt like the way that hose hung there so blandly on the wall. When he was alone, he always skittered past these extinguishers as fast as he could. No particular reason. It just felt better to go fast. It felt safer. Now, heart thumping loudly in his chest, he came around the corner and looked down the hall past the extinguisher to the stairs. Mommy was down there, sleeping. And if Daddy was back from his walk, he would probably be sitting in the kitchen, eating a sandwich and reading a book. He would just walk right past that old extinguisher and go downstairs. He started toward it, moving closer to the far wall until his right arm was brushing the expensive silk paper. Twenty steps away. Fifteen. A dozen. When he was ten steps away, the brass nozzle suddenly rolled off the fat loop it had been lying (sleeping?) on and fell to the hall carpet with a dull thump. It lay there, the dark bore of its muzzle pointing at Danny. He stopped immediately, his shoulders twitching forward with the suddenness of his scare. His blood thumped thickly in his ears and temples. His mouth had gone dry and sour, his hands curled into fists. Yet the nozzle of the hose only lay there, its brass casing glowing mellowly, a loop of flat canvas leading back up to the redpainted frame bolted to the wall. So it had fallen off, so what? It was only a fire extinguisher, nothing else. It was stupid to think that it looked like some poison snake from Wide World of Animals that had heard him and woken up. Even if the stitched canvas did look a little bit like scales. He would just step over it and go down the hall to the stairs, walking a little bit fast, maybe, to make sure it didnt snap out after him and curl around his foot  He wiped his lips with his left hand, in unconscious imitation of his father, and took a step forward. No movement from the hose. Another step. Nothing. There, see how stupid you are? You got all worked up thinking about that dumb room and that dumb Bluebeard story and that hose was probably ready to fall off for the last five years. Thats all. Danny stared at the hose on the floor and thought of wasps. Eight steps away, the nozzle of the hose gleamed peacefully at him from the rug as if to say Dont worry. Im just a hose, thats all. And even if that isnt all, what I do to you wont be much worse than a bee sting. Or a wasp sting. What would I want to do to a nice little boy like you  except bite  and bite  and bite? Danny took another step, and another. His breath was dry and harsh in his throat. Panic was close now. He began to wish the hose would move, then at last he would know, he would be sure. He took another step and now he was within striking distance. But its not going to strike at you, he thought hysterically. How can it strike at you, bite at you, when its just a hose? Maybe its full of wasps. His internal temperature plummeted to ten below zero. He stared at the black bore in the center of the nozzle, nearly hypnotized. Maybe it was full of wasps, secret wasps, their brown bodies bloated with poison, so full of autumn poison that it dripped from their stingers in clear drops of fluid. Suddenly he knew that he was nearly frozen with terror; if he did not make his feet go now, they would become locked to the carpet and he would stay here, staring at the black hole in the center of the brass nozzle like a bird staring at a snake, he would stay here until his daddy found him and then what would happen? With a high moan, he made himself run. As he reached the hose, some trick of the light made the nozzle seem to move, to revolve as if to strike, and he leaped high in the air above it; in his panicky state it seemed that his legs pushed him nearly all the way to the ceiling, that he could feel the stiff back hairs that formed his cowlick brushing the hallways plaster ceiling, although later he knew that couldnt have been so. He came down on the other side of the hose and ran, and suddenly he heard it behind him, coming for him, the soft dry whicker of that brass snakes head as it slithered rapidly along the carpet after him like a rattlesnake moving swiftly through a dry field of grass. It was coming for him, and suddenly the stairs seemed very far away; they seemed to retreat a running step into the distance for each running step he took toward them. Daddy! he tried to scream, but his closed throat would not allow a word to pass. He was on his own. Behind him the sound grew louder, the dry sliding sound of the snake slipping swiftly over the carpets dry hackles. At his heels now, perhaps rising up with clear poison dribbling from its brass snout. Danny reached the stairs and had to pinwheel his arms crazily for balance. For one moment it seemed sure that he would cartwheel over and go headforheels to the bottom. He threw a glance back over his shoulder. The hose had not moved. It lay as it had lain, one loop off the frame, the brass nozzle on the hall floor, the nozzle pointing disinterestedly away from him. You see, stupid? he berated himself. You made it all up, scaredycat. It was all your imagination, scaredycat, scaredycat. He clung to the stairway railing, his legs trembling in reaction. (It never chased you) his mind told him, and seized on that thought, and played it back. (never chased you, never chased you, never did, never did) It was nothing to be afraid of. Why, he could go back and put that hose right into its frame, if he wanted to. He could, but he didnt think he would. Because what if it had chased him and had gone back when it saw that it couldnt  quite  catch him? The hose lay on the carpet, almost seeming to ask him if he would like to come back and try again. Panting, Danny ran downstairs. CHAPTER TWENTY TALKING TO MR. ULLMAN The Sidewinder Public Library was a small, retiring building one block down from the towns business area. It was a modest, vinecovered building, and the wide concrete walk up to the door was lined with the corpses of last summers flowers. On the lawn was a large bronze statue of a Civil War general Jack had never heard of, although he had been something of a Civil War buff in his teenage years. The newspaper files were kept downstairs. They consisted of the Sidewinder Gazette that had gone bust in 1963, the Estes Park daily, and the Boulder Camera. No Denver papers at all. Sighing, Jack settled for the Camera. When the files reached 1965, the actual newspapers were replaced by spools of microfilm. (A federal grant, the librarian told him brightly. We hope to do 1958 to 64 when the next check comes through, but theyre so slow, arent they? You will be careful, wont you? I just know you will. Call if you need me.) The only reading machine had a lens that had somehow gotten warped, and by the time Wendy put her hand on his shoulder some fortyfive minutes after he had switched from the actual papers, he had a juicy thumper of a headache. Dannys in the park, she said, but I dont want him outside too long. How much longer do you think youll be? Ten minutes, he said. Actually he had traced down the last of the Overlooks fascinating historythe years between the gangland shooting and the takeover by Stuart Ullman  Co. But he felt the same reticence about telling Wendy. What are you up to, anyway? she asked. She ruffled his hair as she said it, but her voice was only halfteasing. Looking up some old Overlook history, he said. Any particular reason? No, (and why the hell are you so interested anyway?) just curiosity. Find anything interesting? Not much, he said, having to strive to keep his voice pleasant now. She was prying, just the way she had always pried and poked at him when they had been at Stovington and Danny was still a cribinfant. Where are you going, Jack? When will you be back? How much money do you have with you? Are you going to take the car? Is Al going to be with you? Will one of you stay sober? On and on. She had, pardon the expression, driven him to drink. Maybe that hadnt been the only reason, but by Christ lets tell the truth here and admit it was one of them. Nag and nag and nag until you wanted to clout her one just to shut her up and stop the (Where? When? How? Are you? Will you?) endless flow of questions. It could give you a real (headache? hangover?) headache. The reader. The damned reader with its distorted print. That was why he had such a cunt of a headache. Jack, are you all right? You look pale He snapped his head away from her fingers. I am fine! She recoiled from his hot eyes and tried on a smile that was a size too small. Well  if you are  Ill just go and wait in the park with Danny  She was starting away now, her smile dissolving into a bewildered expression of hurt. He called to her Wendy? She looked back from the foot of the stairs. What, Jack? He got up and went over to her. Im sorry, babe. I guess Im really not all right. That machine  the lens is distorted. Ive got a really bad headache. Got any aspirin? Sure. She pawed in her purse and came up with a tin of Anacin. You keep them. He took the tin. No Excedrin? He saw the small recoil on her face and understood. It had been a bitter sort of joke between them at first, before the drinking had gotten too bad for jokes. He had claimed that Excedrin was the only nonprescription drug ever invented that could stop a hangover dead in its tracks. Absolutely the only one. He had begun to think of his morningafter thumpers as Excedrin Headache Number Vat 69. No Excedrin, she said. Sorry. Thats okay, he said, thesell do just fine. But of course they wouldnt, and she should have known it, too. At times she could be the stupidest bitch  Want some water? she asked brightly. (No I just want you to GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!) Ill get some at the drinking fountain when I go up. Thanks. Okay. She started up the stairs, good legs moving gracefully under a short tan wool skirt. Well be in the park. Right. He slipped the tin of Anacin absently into his pocket, went back to the reader, and turned it off. When he was sure she was gone, he went upstairs himself. God, but it was a lousy headache. If you were going to have a visegripper like this one, you ought to at least be allowed the pleasure of a few drinks to balance it off. He tried to put the thought from his mind, more ill tempered than ever. He went to the main desk, fingering a matchbook cover with a telephone number on it. Maam, do you have a pay telephone? No, sir, but you can use mine if its local. Its long distance, sorry. Well then, I guess the drugstore would be your best bet. They have a booth. Thanks. He went out and down the walk, past the anonymous Civil War general. He began to walk toward the business block, hands stuffed in his pockets, head thudding like a leaden bell. The sky was also leaden; it was November 7, and with the new month the weather had become threatening. There had been a number of snow flurries. There had been snow in October too, but that had melted. The new flurries had stayed, a light frosting over everythingit sparkled in the sunlight like fine crystal. But there had been no sunlight today, and even as he reached the drugstore it began to spit snow again. The phone booth was at the back of the building, and he was halfway down an aisle of patent medicines, jingling his change in his pocket, when his eyes fell on the white boxes with their green print. He took one of them to the cashier, paid, and went back to the telephone booth. He pulled the door closed, put his change and matchbook cover on the counter, and dialed 0. Your call, please? Fort Lauderdale, Florida, operator. He gave her the number there and the number in the booth. When she told him it would be a dollar ninety for the first three minutes, he dropped eight quarters into the slot, wincing each time the bell bonged in his ear. Then, left in limbo with only the faraway clickings and gabblings of connectionmaking, he took the green bottle of Excedrin out of its box, pried up the white cap, and dropped the wad of cotton batting to the floor of the booth. Cradling the phone receiver between his ear and shoulder, he shook out three of the white tablets and lined them up on the counter beside his remaining change. He recapped the bottle and put it in his pocket. At the other end, the phone was picked up on the first ring. SurfSand Resort, how may we help you? the perky female voice asked. Id like to speak with the manager, please. Do you mean Mr. Trent or I mean Mr. Ullman. I believe Mr. Ullman is busy, but if you would like me to check I would. Tell him its Jack Torrance calling from Colorado. One moment, please. She put him on hold. Jacks dislike for that cheap, selfimportant little prick Ullman came flooding back. He took one of the Excedrin from the coutner, regarded it for a moment, then put it into his mouth and began to chew it, slowly and with relish. The taste flooded back like memory, making his saliva squirt in mingled pleasure and unhappiness. A dry, bitter taste, but a compelling one. He swallowed with a grimace. Chewing aspirin had been a habit with him in his drinking days; he hadnt done it at all since then. But when your headache was bad enough, a hangover headache or one like this one, chewing them seemed to make them get to work quicker. He had read somewhere that chewing aspirin could become addictive. Where had he read that, anyway? Frowning, he tried to think. And then Ullman came on the line. Torrance? Whats the trouble? No trouble, he said. The boilers okay and I havent even gotten around to murdering my wife yet. Im saving that until after the holidays, when things get dull. Very funny. Why are you calling? Im a busy Busy man, yes, I understand that. Im calling about some things that you didnt tell me during your history of the Overlooks great and honorable past. Like how Horace Derwent sold it to a bunch of Las Vegas sharpies who dealt it through so many dummy corporations that not even the IRS knew who really owned it. About how they waited until the time was right and then turned it into a playground for Mafia bigwigs, and about how it had to be shut down in 1966 when one of them got a little bit dead. Along with his bodyguards, who were standing outside the door to the Presidential Suite. Great place, the Overlooks Presidential Suite. Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, Nixon, and Vito the Chopper, right? There was a moment of surprised silence on the other end of the line, and then Ullman said quietly I dont see how that can have any bearing on your job, Mr. Torrance. It The best part happened after Gienelli was shot, though, dont you think? Two more quick shuffles, now you see it and now you dont, and then the Overlook is suddenly owned by a private citizen, a woman named Sylvia Hunter  who just happened to be Sylvia Hunter Derwent from 1942 to 1948. Your three minutes are up, the operator said. Signal when through. My dear Mr. Torrance, all of this is public knowledge  and ancient history. It formed no part of my knowledge, Jack said. I doubt if many other people know it, either. Not all of it. They remember the Gienelli shooting, maybe, but I doubt if anybody has put together all the wondrous and strange shuffles the Overlook has been through since 1945. And it always seems like Derwent or a Derwent associate comes up with the door prize. What was Sylvia Hunter running up there in 67 and 68, Mr. Ullman? It was a whorehouse, wasnt it? Torrance! His shock crackled across two thousand miles of telephone cable without losing a thing. Smiling, Jack popped another Excedrin into his mouth and chewed it. She sold out after a rather wellknown U.S. senator died of a heart attack up there. There were rumors that he was found naked except for black nylon stockings and a garter belt and a pair of highheeled pumps. Patentleather pumps, as a matter of fact. Thats a vicious, damnable lie! Ullman cried. Is it? Jack asked. He was beginning to feel better. The headache was draining away. He took the last Excedrin and chewed it up, enjoying the bitter, powdery taste as the tablet shredded in his mouth. It was a very unfortunate occurrence, Ullman said. Now what is the point, Torrance? If youre planning to write some ugly smear article  if this is some illconceived, stupid blackmail idea  Nothing of the sort, Jack said. I called because I didnt think you played square with me. And because Didnt play square? Ullman cried.