In spite of the terrible thing she was going to do, Wesley couldnt help feeling a little sorry for her, and he had an idea Robbie felt the same. The followup story theyd read about her in the Echo told a tale as familiar as it was sordid. Candace Candy Rymer, age fortyone, divorced. Three children, now in the custody of their father. For the last twelve years of her life shed been in and out of spindry facilities. According to an acquaintance (she seemed to have no friends), she had tried AA and decided it wasnt for her. Too much holyrolling. She had been arrested for DUI half a dozen times. She had lost her license after each of the last two, but in both cases it had been restored, the second time by special petition. She needed her license to get to her job at the fertilizer factory in Bainbridge, she told Judge Wallenby. What she didnt tell him was that she had lost the job six months previousand nobody checked. Candy Rymer was a boozebomb waiting to go off, and the explosion was now very close. The story hadnt mentioned her home address in Montgomery, but it didnt need to. In what Wesley considered a rather brilliant piece of investigative journalism (especially for the Echo), the reporter had retraced Candys final binge, from The Pot O Gold in Central City to The Broken Windmill in Eddyville to Bantys Bar in Hopson. There the bartender was going to try to take her keys. Unsuccessfully. Candy was going to give him the finger and leave, shouting Im done giving my business to this dive! back over her shoulder. That was at seven oclock. The reporter theorized that Candy must have pulled over somewhere for a short nap, possibly on Route 124, before cutting across to Route 80. A little further down 80, she would make her final stop. A fiery one. . Once Robbie put the thought in his head, Wesley kept expecting his alwaystrustworthy Chevrolet to die and coast to a stop at the side of the twolane blacktop, a victim of either a bad battery or the Paradox Laws. Candy Rymers taillights would disappear from view and they would spend the following hours making frantic but useless calls (always assuming their phones would even work out here in the williwags) and cursing themselves for not disabling her vehicle back in Eddyville, while they still had a chance. But the Malibu cruised as effortlessly as always, without a single gurgle or glitch. He stayed about half a mile behind Candys Explorer. Man, shes all over the road, Robbie said. Maybe shell ditch the damn thing before she gets to the next bar. Save us the trouble of slashing her tires. According to the Echo, that doesnt happen. Yeah, but we know the futures not cast in stone, dont we? Maybe this is another Ur, or something. Wesley didnt think it worked that way with UR LOCAL, but he kept his mouth shut. Either way, it was too late now. Candy Rymer made it to Bantys without going in the ditch or hitting any oncoming traffic, although she could have done either; God knew she had enough close calls. When one of the cars that swerved out of her way passed Wesleys Malibu, Robbie said Thats a family. Mom, Pop, three little kids goofin around in the back. That was when Wesley stopped feeling sorry for Rymer and started feeling angry at her. It was a clean, hot emotion that made his pique at Ellen feel paltry by comparison. That bitch, he said. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. That drunken whogivesashit bitch. Ill kill her if thats the only way I can stop her. Ill help, Robbie said, then clamped his mouth so tightly shut his lips nearly disappeared. . They didnt have to kill her, and the Paradox Laws stopped them no more than the laws against drinking and driving had stopped Candy Rymer on her tour of southern Kentuckys more desperate watering holes. The parking lot of Bantys Bar was paved, but the buckling concrete looked like something left over from an Israeli bombing raid in Gaza. Overhead, a fizzing neon rooster flashed on and off. Hooked in one set of its talons was a moonshine jug with XXX printed on the side. The Rymer womans Explorer was parked almost directly beneath this fabulous bird, and by its stuttering orangered glow, Wesley slashed open the elderly SUVs front tires with the butcher knife they had brought for that express purpose. As the whoosh of escaping air hit him, he was struck by a wave of relief so great that at first he couldnt get up but only hunker on his knees like a man praying. My turn, Robbie said, and a moment later the Explorer settled further as the kid punctured the rear tires. Then came another hiss. He had put a hole in the spare for good measure. By then Wesley had gotten to his feet. Lets park around to the side, Robbie said. I think we better keep an eye on her. Im going to do a lot more than that, Wesley said. Easy, big fella. What are you planning on? Im not planning. Im beyond that. But the rage shaking through his body suggested something different. . According to the Echo, she had called Bantys a dive in her parting shot, but apparently that had been cleaned up for family consumption. What she actually threw back over her shoulder was, Im done doing business with this shitpit! Only by this point she was so drunk the vulgarity came out in a slippery slur shippih. Robbie, fascinated at seeing the news story played out before his eyes right down to the upraised middle finger (which the Echo had primly referred to as an obscene gesture), made no effort to grab Wesley as he strode toward her. He did call Wait! but Wesley didnt. He seized the woman and commenced shaking her. Candy Rymers mouth dropped open; the keys shed been holding in the hand not occupied with birdflipping dropped to the cracked concrete tarmac. Leggo me, you bassard! Wesley didnt. He slapped her face hard enough to split her lower lip, then went back on her the other way. Sober up! he screamed into her frightened face. Sober up, you useless bitch! Get a life and stop fucking up other peoples! Youre going to kill people! Do you understand that? You are going to fucking KILL people! He slapped her a third time, the sound as loud as a pistolshot. She staggered back against the side of the building, weeping and holding her hands up to protect her face. Blood trickled down her chin. Their shadows, turned into elongated gantries by the neon bird, winked off and on. He raised his hand to slap a fourth timebetter to slap than to choke, which was what he really wanted to dobut Robbie grabbed him from behind and wrestled him away. Stop it! Thats enough! The bartender and a couple of goofylooking patrons were now standing in the doorway, gawking. Candy Rymer had slid down to a sitting position. She was weeping hysterically, her hands pressed to her swelling face. Why does everyone hate me? she sobbed. Why is everyone so goddam mean? Wesley looked at her dully, the anger out of him. What replaced it was a kind of hopelessness. You would say that a drunk driver who caused the deaths of at least eleven people had to be evil, but there was no evil here. Only a sobbing alkie sitting on the cracked, weedy concrete of a country roadhouse parking lot. A woman who, if the offandon light of the stuttering rooster did not lie, had wet her pants. You can get the person but you cant get the evil, Wesley said. The evil always survives. Isnt that a bitch. Just a total bitch. Yeah, Im sure, but come on. Before they get a really good look at you. Robbie was leading him back to the Malibu. Wesley went as docilely as a child. He was trembling. The evil always survives, Robbie. In all the Urs. Remember that. You bet, absolutely. Give me the keys. Ill drive. Hey! someone shouted from behind them. Why in the hell did you beat up that woman? She wasnt doing nothing to you! Come back here! Robbie pushed Wesley into the car, ran around the hood, threw himself behind the wheel, and drove away fast. He kept the pedal down until the stuttering rooster disappeared, then eased up. What now? Wesley ran a hand over his eyes. Im sorry I did that, he said. And yet Im not. Do you understand? Yeah, Robbie said. You bet. It was for Coach Silverman. And Josie too. He smiled. My little mousie. Wesley nodded. So where do we go? Home? Not yet, Wesley said. . They parked on the edge of a cornfield near the intersection of Route 139 and Highway 80, two miles west of Cadiz. They were early, and Wesley used the time to fire up the pink Kindle. When he tried to access UR LOCAL, he was greeted by a somehow unsurprising message THIS SERVICE NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Probably for the best, he said. Robbie turned toward him. Say what? Nothing. It doesnt matter. He put the Kindle back in his briefcase. Wes? What, Robbie? Did we break the Paradox Laws? Undoubtedly, Wes said. And with some satisfaction. At five to nine, they heard honking and saw lights. They got out of the Malibu and stood in front of it, waiting. Wesley observed that Robbies hands were clenched, and was glad he himself wasnt the only one still afraid that Candy Rymer might still somehow appear. Headlights breasted the nearest hill. It was the bus, followed by a dozen cars filled with Lady Meerkat supporters, all honking deliriously and flashing their high beams off and on. As the bus passed, Wesley heard young female voices singing We Are the Champions and felt a chill race up his back and lift the hair on his neck. He raised his hand and waved. Beside him, Robbie did the same. Then he turned to Wesley, smiling. What do you say, Prof? Want to join the parade? Wesley clapped him on the shoulder. That sounds like a damn fine idea. When the last of the cars had passed, Robbie got in line. Like the others, he honked and flashed his lights all the way back to Moore. Wesley didnt mind. VIIThe Paradox Police When Robbie got out in front of Susan and Nans (where LADY MEERKATS RULE had been soaped on the window), Wesley said, Wait a sec. He came around the front of the car and embraced the kid. You did good. Ungrammatical but appreciated. Robbie wiped at his eyes, then grinned. Does this mean I get a gift A for the semester? Nope, just some advice. Get out of football. Youll never make it a career, and your head deserves better. Duly noted, Robbie saidwhich was not agreement, as they both knew. See you in class? On Tuesday, Wesley said. But fifteen minutes later he had reason to wonder if anyone would see him. Ever again. . There was a car in the spot where he usually left the Malibu when he didnt leave it in Parking Lot A at the college. Wesley could have parked behind it, but chose the other side of the street instead. Something about the car made him uneasy. It was a Cadillac, and in the glow of the arc sodium beneath which it was parked, it seemed too bright. The red paint almost seemed to yell Here I am! Do you like me? Wesley didnt. Nor did he like the tinted windows or the oversized gangsta hubcabs with their gold Cadillac emblems. It looked like a drug dealers car. If, that was, the dealer in question also happened to be a homicidal maniac. Now why would I think that? Stress of the day, thats all, he said as he crossed the deserted street with his briefcase banging against his leg. He bent down. Nobody was inside the car. At least he didnt think so. With the darkened windows, it was hard to be entirely sure. Its the Paradox Police. Theyve come for me. This idea should have seemed ridiculous at best, a paranoid fantasy at worst, but felt like neither. And when you considered all that had happened, maybe it wasnt paranoid at all. Wesley stretched out a hand, touched the door of the car, then snatched it back. The door felt like metal, but it was warm. And it seemed to be pulsing. As if, metal or not, the car were alive. Run. The thought was so powerful he felt his lips mouth it, but he knew running wasnt an option. If he tried, the man or men who belonged to the loathsome red car would find him. This was a fact so simple that it defied logic. It bypassed logic. So instead of running, he used his key to open the street door and went upstairs. He did it slowly, because his heart was racing and his legs kept threatening to give way. The door of his apartment stood open, light spilling onto the upstairs landing in a long rectangle. Ah, here you are, a notquitehuman voice said. Come in, Wesley of Kentucky. . There were two of them. One was young and one was old. The old one sat on his sofa, where Wesley and Ellen Silverman had once seduced each other to their mutual enjoyment (nay, ecstasy). The young one sat in Wesleys favorite chair, the one he always ended up in when the night was late, the leftover cheesecake tasty, the book interesting, and the light from the standing lamp just right. They both wore long mustardcolored coats, the kind that are called dusters, and Wesley understood, without knowing how he understood, that the coats were alive. He also understood that the men wearing them were not men at all. Their faces kept changing, and what lay just beneath the skin was reptilian. Or birdlike. Or both. On their lapels, where lawmen in a Western movie would have worn badges, both wore buttons bearing a red eye. Wesley thought these too were alive. Those eyes were watching him. How did you know it was me? Smelled you, the older of the two replied, and the terrible thing was this it didnt sound like a joke. What do you want? You know why were here, the young one said. The older of the two never spoke again at all until the end of the visit. Listening to one of them was bad enough. It was like listening to a man whose voicebox was stuffed with crickets. I suppose I do, Wesley said. His voice was steady, at least so far. I broke the Paradox Laws. He prayed they didnt know about Robbie, and thought they might not; the Kindle had been registered to Wesley Smith, after all. You have no idea what you did, the man in the yellow coat said in a meditative voice. The Tower trembles; the worlds shudder in their courses. The rose feels a chill, as of winter. Very poetic, but not very illuminating. What Tower? What rose? Wesley could feel sweat breaking on his forehead even though he liked to keep the apartment cool. Its because of them, he thought. These boys run hot. It doesnt matter, his younger visitor said. Explain yourself, Wesley of Kentucky. And do it well, if you would ever see sunshine again. For a moment Wesley couldnt. His mind was filled with a single thought Im on trial here. Then he swept it aside. The return of his angera pale imitation of what he had felt toward Candy Rymer, but real anger, just the samehelped in this regard. People were going to die. Almost a dozen. Maybe more. That might not mean much to fellows like you, but it does to me, especially since one of them happens to be a woman Im in love with. All because of one selfindulgent drunk who wont address her problems. And He almost said And we, but made the necessary coursecorrection just in time. And I didnt even hurt her. Slapped her a little, but I couldnt help myself. You boys can never help yourselves, the buzzing voice of the thing in his favorite chairwhich would never be his favorite chair againreplied. Poor impulse control is ninety per cent of your problem. Did it ever cross your mind, Wesley of Kentucky, that the Paradox Laws exist for a reason? I didnt The thing raised its voice. Of course you didnt. We know you didnt. Were here because you didnt. It didnt cross your mind that one of the people on that bus might become a serial killer, someone who might murder dozens, including a child who would otherwise grow up to cure cancer or Alzheimers Disease. It didnt occur to you that one of those young women might give birth to the next Hitler or Stalin, a human monster who could go on to kill millions of your fellow humans on this level of the Tower. It didnt occur to you that you were meddling in events far beyond your ability to understand! No, he had not considered those things at all. Ellen was what he had considered. As Josie Quinn was what Robbie had considered. And together they had considered the others. Kids screaming, their skin turning to tallow and dripping off their bones, maybe dying the worst deaths God visits on His suffering people. Does that happen? he whispered. We dont know what happens, the thing in the yellow coat said. Thats precisely the point. The experimental program you foolishly accessed can see clearly six months into the futurewithin a single narrow geographical area, that is. Beyond six months, predictive sight grows dim. Beyond a year, all is darkness. So you see, we dont know what you and your young friend may have done. And since we dont, theres no chance to repair the damage, if there was damage. Your young friend. They knew about Robbie Henderson after all. Wesleys heart sank. Is there some sort of power controlling all this? There is, isnt there? When I accessed UR BOOKS for the first time, I saw a tower. All things serve the Tower, the manthing in the yellow duster said, and touched the hideous button on its coat with a kind of reverence. Then how do you know Im not serving it, too? They said nothing. Only stared at them with their black, predatory birdeyes. I never ordered it, you know. I meanI ordered a Kindle, that much is true, but I never ordered the one I got. It just came. There was a long silence, and Wesley understood that his life was spinning inside it. Life as he knew it, at least. He might continue some sort of existence if these two creatures took him away in their loathsome red car, but it would be a dark existence, probably an imprisoned existence, and he guessed he would not retain his sanity for long. We think it was a mistake in shipping, the young one said finally. But you dont know for sure, do you? Because you dont know where it came from. Or who sent it. More silence. Then the older of the two said All things serve the Tower. He stood, and held out his hand. It shimmered and became a claw. Shimmered again and became a hand. Give it to me, Wesley of Kentucky. Wesley of Kentucky didnt have to be asked twice, although his hands were trembling so badly that he fumbled with the buckles of his briefcase for what felt like hours. At last the top sprang open, and he held the pink Kindle out to the older of the two. The creature stared at it with a crazed hunger that made Wesley feel like screaming. I dont think it works anymore, anyw The creature snatched it. For one second Wesley felt its skin and understood the creatures flesh had its own thoughts. Howling thoughts that ran along their own unknowable circuits. This time he did screamor tried to. What actually came out was a low, choked groan. This time were giving you a pass, the young one said. But if anything like this ever happens again... It didnt finish. It didnt have to. They moved to the door, the hems of their coats making loathsome liquid chuckling sounds. The older one went out, still holding the pink Kindle in its clawhands. The other paused for a moment to look back at Wesley. Do you understand how lucky you are? Yes, Wesley whispered. Then say thank you. Thank you. It was gone without another word. . He couldnt bring himself to sit on the sofa, or in the chair that had seemedin the days before Ellento be his best friend in the world. He lay down on his bed and crossed his arms over his chest in an effort to stop the shudders that were whipping through him. He left the lights on because there was no sense turning them off. He felt sure he would not sleep again for weeks. Perhaps never. Hed begin to drift off, then see those greedy black eyes and hear that voice saying Do you understand how lucky you are? No, sleep was definitely out. And with that, consciousness ceased. VIIIEllen Wesley slept until the musicbox tinkle of Pachelbels Canon in D woke him at nine oclock the next morning. If there were dreams (of pink Kindles, women in roadhouse parking lots, or low men in yellow coats), he did not remember them. All he knew was that someone was calling his cell, and it might be someone he wanted to talk to very badly. He ran into the living room, but the ringing ceased before he could get the phone out of his briefcase. He flipped it open and saw YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE. He accessed it. Hey, pal, Don Allmans voice said. You better check the morning paper. That was all. He no longer subscribed to the Echo, but old Mrs. Ridpath, his downstairs neighbor, did. He took the stairs two at a time, and there it was, sticking out of her mailbox. He reached for it, then hesitated. What if his deep sleep hadnt been natural? What if he had been anesthetized somehow, so he could be booted into a different Ur, one where the crash had happened after all? What if Don had called to prepare him? Suppose he unfolded the paper and saw the black border that was the newspaper worlds version of funeral crepe? Please, he whispered, unsure if it was God or that mysterious dark tower he was praying to. Please let it still be my Ur. He took the paper in a numb hand and unfolded it. The border was there, boxing in the entire front page, but it was blue rather than black. Meerkat blue. The photo was the biggest hed ever seen in the Echo; it took up half of the front page, under a headline reading LADY MEERKATS TAKE BLUEGRASS, AND THE FUTURE LIES AHEAD! The team was clustered on the hardwood of Rupp Arena. Three were hoisting a shiny silver trophy. Anotherit was Josiestood on a stepladder, twirling a net over her head. Standing in front of her team, dressed in the prim blue slacks and blue blazer she invariably wore on game days, was Ellen Silverman. She was smiling and holding up a handmade sign that read I LOVE YOU WESLEY. Wesley thrust his hands, one still holding the newspaper, over his head and let out a yell that caused a couple of kids on the other side of the street to look around. Wassup? one of them called. Sports fan! Wesley called back, then raced back upstairs. He had a call to make.


PRAISE FOR STEPHEN KING The most wonderfully gruesome man on the planet. USA Today An undisputed master of suspense and terror. The Washington Post [King] probably knows more about scary goingson in confined, isolated places than anybody since Edgar Allan Poe. Entertainment Weekly Hes the author who can always make the improbable so scary youll feel compelled to check the locks on the front door. The Boston Globe Peerless imagination. The Observer (London) FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS MASS MARKET EDITION, JULY 2012 Copyright  1977 by Stephen King Excerpt from Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. Copyright  2013 by Stephen King. Reprinted by permission of Simon  Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1977. Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Owing to limitations of space, permissions to reprint previously published material appear on this page. The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows King, Stephen. 1947 The shining  Stephen King.1st ed. 1. HotelkeepersFiction. 2. FamiliesFiction. I. Title. PZ4.K5227 Sh PS3561.l483 813.54 76024212 eISBN 9780385528863 www.anchorbooks.com Cover design and photograph Henry Steadman v3.1r1 Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Authors Note Epigraph Part One Prefatory Matters Chapter One Job Interview Chapter Two Boulder Chapter Three Watson Chapter Four Shadowland Chapter Five Phonebooth Chapter Six Night Thoughts Chapter Seven In Another Bedroom Part Two Closing Day Chapter Eight A View of the Overlook Chapter Nine Checking It Out Chapter Ten Hallorann Chapter Eleven The Shining Chapter Twelve The Grand Tour Chapter Thirteen The Front Porch Part Three The Wasps Nest Chapter Fourteen Up On the Roof Chapter Fifteen Down in the Front Yard Chapter Sixteen Danny Chapter Seventeen The Doctors Office Chapter Eighteen The Scrapbook Chapter Nineteen Outside 217 Chapter Twenty Talking to Mr. Ullman Chapter TwentyOne Night Thoughts Chapter TwentyTwo In the Truck Chapter TwentyThree In the Playground Chapter TwentyFour Snow Chapter TwentyFive Inside 217 Part Four Snowbound Chapter TwentySix Dreamland Chapter TwentySeven Catatonic Chapter TwentyEight It Was Her! Chapter TwentyNine Kitchen Talk Chapter Thirty 217 Revisited Chapter ThirtyOne The Verdict Chapter ThirtyTwo The Bedroom Chapter ThirtyThree The Snowmobile Chapter ThirtyFour The Hedges Chapter ThirtyFive The Lobby Chapter ThirtySix The Elevator Chapter ThirtySeven The Ballroom Part Five Matters of Life and Death Chapter ThirtyEight Florida Chapter ThirtyNine On the Stairs Chapter Forty In the Basement Chapter FortyOne Daylight Chapter FortyTwo MidAir Chapter FortyThree Drinks On the House Chapter FortyFour Conversations At the Party Chapter FortyFive Stapleton Airport, Denver Chapter FortySix Wendy Chapter FortySeven Danny Chapter FortyEight Jack Chapter FortyNine Hallorann, Going Up the Country Chapter Fifty Redrum Chapter FiftyOne Hallorann Arrives Chapter FiftyTwo Wendy and Jack Chapter FiftyThree Hallorann Laid Low Chapter FiftyFour Tony Chapter FiftyFive That Which Was Forgotten Chapter FiftySix The Explosion Chapter FiftySeven Exit Chapter FiftyEight Epilogue  Summer Excerpt from Doctor Sleep Acknowledgements About the Author Other Books by This Author This is for Joe Hill King, who shines on. My editor on this book, as on the previous two, was Mr. William G. Thompson, a man of wit and good sense. His contribution to this book has been large, and for it, my thanks. S.K. Some of the most beautiful resort hotels in the world are located in Colorado, but the hotel in these pages is based on none of them. The Overlook and the people associated with it exist wholly within the authors imagination. It was in this apartment, also, that there stood  a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when  the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause  to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly  and [they] smiled as if at their own nervousness  and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes  there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. But in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel  E. A. Poe The Masque of the Red Death The sleep of reason breeds monsters. Goya Itll shine when it shines. Folk saying PART ONE PREFATORY MATTERS CHAPTER ONE JOB INTERVIEW Jack Torrance thought Officious little prick. Ullman stood fivefive, and when he moved, it was with the prissy speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker. As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he probably could not have liked any man on that side of the deskunder the circumstances. Ullman had asked a question he hadnt caught. That was bad; Ullman was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental Rolodex for later consideration. Im sorry? I asked if your wife fully understood what you would be taking on here. And theres your son, of course. He glanced down at the application in front of him. Daniel. Your wife isnt a bit intimidated by the idea? Wendy is an extraordinary woman. And your son is also extraordinary? Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. We like to think so, I suppose. Hes quite selfreliant for a fiveyearold. No returning smile from Ullman. He slipped Jacks application back into a file. The file went into a drawer. The desk top was now completely bare except for a blotter, a telephone, a Tensor lamp, and an inout basket. Both sides of the inout were empty, too. Ullman stood up and went to the file cabinet in the corner. Step around the desk, if you will, Mr. Torrance. Well look at the hotel floor plans. He brought back five large sheets and set them down on the glossy walnut plane of the desk. Jack stood by his shoulder, very much aware of the scent of Ullmans cologne. All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all came into his mind for no reason at all, and he had to clamp his tongue between his teeth to keep in a bray of laughter. Beyond the wall, faintly, came the sounds of the Overlook Hotels kitchen, gearing down from lunch. Top floor, Ullman said briskly. The attic. Absolutely nothing up there now but bricabrac. The Overlook has changed hands several times since World War II and it seems that each successive manager has put everything they dont want up in the attic. I want rattraps and poison bait sowed around in it. Some of the thirdfloor chambermaids say they have heard rustling noises. I dont believe it, not for a moment, but there mustnt even be that oneinahundred chance that a single rat inhabits the Overlook Hotel. Jack, who suspected that every hotel in the world had a rat or two, held his tongue. Of course you wouldnt allow your son up in the attic under any circumstances. No, Jack said, and flashed the big PR smile again. Humiliating situation. Did this officious little prick actually think he would allow his son to goof around in a rattrap attic full of junk furniture and God knew what else? Ullman whisked away the attic floor plan and put it on the bottom of the pile. The Overlook has one hundred and ten guest quarters, he said in a scholarly voice. Thirty of them, all suites, are here on the third floor. Ten in the west wing (including the Presidential Suite), ten in the center, ten more in the east wing. All of them command magnificent views. Could you at least spare the salestalk? But he kept quiet. He needed the job. Ullman put the third floor on the bottom of the pile and they studied the second floor. Forty rooms, Ullman said, thirty doubles and ten singles. And on the first floor, twenty of each. Plus three linen closets on each floor, and a storeroom which is at the extreme east end of the hotel on the second floor and the extreme west end on the first. Questions? Jack shook his head. Ullman whisked the second and first floors away. Now. Lobby level. Here in the center is the registration desk. Behind it are the offices. The lobby runs for eighty feet in either direction from the desk. Over here in the west wing is the Overlook Dining Room and the Colorado Lounge. The banquet and ballroom facility is in the east wing. Questions? Only about the basement, Jack said. For the winter caretaker, thats the most important level of all. Where the action is, so to speak. Watson will show you all that. The basement floor plan is on the boiler room wall. He frowned impressively, perhaps to show that as manager, he did not concern himself with such mundane aspects of the Overlooks operation as the boiler and the plumbing. Might not be a bad idea to put some traps down there too. Just a minute  He scrawled a note on a pad he took from his inner coat pocket (each sheet bore the legend From the Desk of Stuart Ullman in bold black script), tore it off, and dropped it into the out basket. It sat there looking lonesome. The pad disappeared back into Ullmans jacket pocket like the conclusion of a magicians trick. Now you see it, Jackyboy, now you dont. This guy is a real heavyweight. They had resumed their original positions, Ullman behind the desk and Jack in front of it, interviewer and interviewee, supplicant and reluctant patron. Ullman folded his neat little hands on the desk blotter and looked directly at Jack, a small, balding man in a bankers suit and a quiet gray tie. The flower in his lapel was balanced off by a small lapel pin on the other side. It read simply STAFF in small gold letters. Ill be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Torrance. Albert Shockley is a powerful man with a large interest in the Overlook, which showed a profit this season for the first time in its history. Mr. Shockley also sits on the Board of Directors, but he is not a hotel man and he would be the first to admit this. But he has made his wishes in this caretaking matter quite obvious. He wants you hired. I will do so. But if I had been given a free hand in this matter, I would not have taken you on. Jacks hands were clenched tightly in his lap, working against each other, sweating. Officious little prick, officious little prick, officious I dont believe you care much for me, Mr. Torrance. I dont care. Certainly your feelings toward me play no part in my own belief that you are not right for the job. During the season that runs from May fifteenth to September thirtieth, the Overlook employs one hundred and ten people fulltime; one for every room in the hotel, you might say. I dont think many of them like me and I suspect that some of them think Im a bit of a bastard. They would be correct in their judgment of my character. I have to be a bit of a bastard to run this hotel in the manner it deserves. He looked at Jack for comment, and Jack flashed the PR smile again, large and insultingly toothy. Ullman said The Overlook was built in the years 1907 to 1909. The closest town is Sidewinder, forty miles east of here over roads that are closed from sometime in late October or November until sometime in April. A man named Robert Townley Watson built it, the grandfather of our present maintenance man. Vanderbilts have stayed here, and Rockefellers, and Astors, and Du Ponts. Four Presidents have stayed in the Presidential Suite. Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, and Nixon. I wouldnt be too proud of Harding and Nixon, Jack murmured. Ullman frowned but went on regardless. It proved too much for Mr. Watson, and he sold the hotel in 1915. It was sold again in 1922, in 1929, in 1936. It stood vacant until the end of World War II, when it was purchased and completely renovated by Horace Derwent, millionaire inventor, pilot, film producer, and entrepreneur. I know the name, Jack said. Yes. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold  except the Overlook. He funneled over a million dollars into it before the first postwar guest ever stepped through its doors, turning a decrepit relic into a showplace. It was Derwent who added the roque court I saw you admiring when you arrived. Roque? A British forebear of our croquet, Mr. Torrance. Croquet is bastardized roque. According to legend, Derwent learned the game from his social secretary and fell completely in love with it. Ours may be the finest roque court in America. I wouldnt doubt it, Jack said gravely. A roque court, a topiary full of hedge animals out front, what next? A lifesized Uncle Wiggily game behind the equipment shed? He was getting very tired of Mr. Stuart Ullman, but he could see that Ullman wasnt done. Ullman was going to have his say, every last word of it. When he had lost three million, Derwent sold it to a group of California investors. Their experience with the Overlook was equally bad. Just not hotel people. In 1970, Mr. Shockley and a group of his associates bought the hotel and turned its management over to me. We have also run in the red for several years, but Im happy to say that the trust of the present owners in me has never wavered. Last year we broke even. And this year the Overlooks accounts were written in black ink for the first time in almost seven decades. Jack supposed that this fussy little mans pride was justified, and then his original dislike washed over him again in a wave. He said I see no connection between the Overlooks admittedly colorful history and your feeling that Im wrong for the post, Mr. Ullman. One reason that the Overlook has lost so much money lies in the depreciation that occurs each winter. It shortens the profit margin a great deal more than you might believe, Mr. Torrance. The winters are fantastically cruel. In order to cope with the problem, Ive installed a fulltime winter caretaker to run the boiler and to heat different parts of the hotel on a daily rotating basis. To repair breakage as it occurs and to do repairs, so the elements cant get a foothold. To be constantly alert to any and every contingency. During our first winter I hired a family instead of a single man. There was a tragedy. A horrible tragedy. Ullman looked at Jack coolly and appraisingly. I made a mistake. I admit it freely. The man was a drunk. Jack felt a slow, hot grinthe total antithesis of the toothy PR grinstretch across his mouth. Is that it? Im surprised Al didnt tell you. Ive retired. Yes, Mr. Shockley told me you no longer drink. He also told me about your last job  your last position of trust, shall we say? You were teaching English in a Vermont prep school. You lost your temper, I dont believe I need to be any more specific than that. But I do happen to believe that Gradys case has a bearing, and that is why I have brought the matter of your  uh, previous history into the conversation. During the winter of 197071, after we had refurbished the Overlook but before our first season, I hired this  this unfortunate named Delbert Grady. He moved into the quarters you and your wife and son will be sharing. He had a wife and two daughters. I had reservations, the main ones being the harshness of the winter season and the fact that the Gradys would be cut off from the outside world for five to six months. But thats not really true, is it? There are telephones here, and probably a citizens band radio as well. And the Rocky Mountain National Park is within helicopter range and surely a piece of ground that big must have a chopper or two. I wouldnt know about that, Ullman said. The hotel does have a twoway radio that Mr. Watson will show you, along with a list of the correct frequencies to broadcast on if you need help. The telephone lines between here and Sidewinder are still aboveground, and they go down almost every winter at some point or other and are apt to stay down for three weeks to a month and a half. There is a snowmobile in the equipment shed also. Then the place really isnt cut off. Mr. Ullman looked pained. Suppose your son or your wife tripped on the stairs and fractured his or her skull, Mr. Torrance. Would you think the place was cut off then? Jack saw the point. A snowmobile running at top speed could get you down to Sidewinder in an hour and a half  maybe. A helicopter from the Parks Rescue Service could get up here in three hours  under optimum conditions. In a blizzard it would never even be able to lift off and you couldnt hope to run a snowmobile at top speed, even if you dared take a seriously injured person out into temperatures that might be twentyfive belowor fortyfive below, if you added in the wind chill factor. In the case of Grady, Ullman said, I reasoned much as Mr. Shockley seems to have done in your case. Solitude can be damaging in itself. Better for the man to have his family with him. If there was trouble, I thought, the odds were very high that it would be something less urgent than a fractured skull or an accident with one of the power tools or some sort of convulsion. A serious case of the flu, pneumonia, a broken arm, even appendicitis. Any of those things would have left enough time. I suspect that what happened came as a result of too much cheap whiskey, of which Grady had laid in a generous supply, unbeknownst to me, and a curious condition which the oldtimers call cabin fever. Do you know the term? Ullman offered a patronizing little smile, ready to explain as soon as Jack admitted his ignorance, and Jack was happy to respond quickly and crisply. Its a slang term for the claustrophobic reaction that can occur when people are shut in together over long periods of time. The feeling of claustrophobia is externalized as dislike for the people you happen to be shut in with. In extreme cases it can result in hallucinations and violencemurder has been done over such minor things as a burned meal or an argument about whose turn it is to do the dishes. Ullman looked rather nonplussed, which did Jack a world of good. He decided to press a little further, but silently promised Wendy he would stay cool. I suspect you did make a mistake at that. Did he hurt them? He killed them, Mr. Torrance, and then committed suicide. He murdered the little girls with a hatchet, his wife with a shotgun, and himself the same way. His leg was broken. Undoubtedly so drunk he fell downstairs. Ullman spread his hands and looked at Jack selfrighteously. Was he a high school graduate? As a matter of fact, he wasnt, Ullman said a little stiffly. I thought a, shall we say, less imaginative individual would be less susceptible to the rigors, the loneliness That was your mistake, Jack said. A stupid man is more prone to cabin fever just as hes more prone to shoot someone over a card game or commit a spurofthemoment robbery. He gets bored. When the snow comes, theres nothing to do but watch TV or play solitaire and cheat when he cant get all the aces out. Nothing to do but bitch at his wife and nag at the kids and drink. It gets hard to sleep because theres nothing to hear. So he drinks himself to sleep and wakes up with a hangover. He gets edgy. And maybe the telephone goes out and the TV aerial blows down and theres nothing to do but think and cheat at solitaire and get edgier and edgier. Finally  boom, boom, boom. Whereas a more educated man, such as yourself? My wife and I both like to read. I have a play to work on, as Al Shockley probably told you. Danny has his puzzles, his coloring books, and his crystal radio. I plan to teach him to read, and I also want to teach him to snowshoe. Wendy would like to learn how, too. Oh yes, I think we can keep busy and out of each others hair if the TV goes on the fritz. He paused. And Al was telling the truth when he told you I no longer drink. I did once, and it got to be serious. But I havent had so much as a glass of beer in the last fourteen months. I dont intend to bring any alcohol up here, and I dont think there will be an opportunity to get any after the snow flies. In that you would be quite correct, Ullman said. But as long as the three of you are up here, the potential for problems is multiplied. I have told Mr. Shockley this, and he told me he would take the responsibility. Now Ive told you, and apparently you are also willing to take the responsibility I am. All right. Ill accept that, since I have little choice. But I would still rather have an unattached college boy taking a year off. Well, perhaps youll do. Now Ill turn you over to Mr. Watson, who will take you through the basement and around the grounds. Unless you have further questions? No. None at all. Ullman stood. I hope there are no hard feelings, Mr. Torrance. There is nothing personal in the things I have said to you. I only want whats best for the Overlook. It is a great hotel. I want it to stay that way. No. No hard feelings. Jack flashed the PR grin again, but he was glad Ullman didnt offer to shake hands. There were hard feelings. All kinds of them. CHAPTER TWO BOULDER She looked out the kitchen window and saw him just sitting there on the curb, not playing with his trucks or the wagon or even the balsa glider that had pleased him so much all the last week since Jack had brought it home. He was just sitting there, watching for their shopworn VW, his elbows planted on his thighs and his chin propped in his hands, a fiveyearold kid waiting for his daddy. Wendy suddenly felt bad, almost crying bad. She hung the dish towel over the bar by the sink and went downstairs, buttoning the top two buttons of her house dress. Jack and his pride! Hey no, Al, I dont need an advance. Im okay for a while. The hallway walls were gouged and marked with crayons, grease pencil, spray paint. The stairs were steep and splintery. The whole building smelled of sour age, and what sort of place was this for Danny after the small neat brick house in Stovington? The people living above them on the third floor werent married, and while that didnt bother her, their constant, rancorous fighting did. It scared her. The guy up there was Tom, and after the bars had closed and they had returned home, the fights would start in earnestthe rest of the week was just a prelim in comparison. The Friday Night Fights, Jack called them, but it wasnt funny. The womanher name was Elainewould at last be reduced to tears and to repeating over and over again Dont, Tom. Please dont. Please dont. And he would shout at her. Once they had even awakened Danny, and Danny slept like a corpse. The next morning Jack caught Tom going out and had spoken to him on the sidewalk at some length. Tom started to bluster and Jack had said something else to him, too quietly for Wendy to hear, and Tom had only shaken his head sullenly and walked away. That had been a week ago and for a few days things had been better, but since the weekend things had been working back to normalexcuse me, abnormal. It was bad for the boy. Her sense of grief washed over her again but she was on the walk now and she smothered it. Sweeping her dress under her and sitting down on the curb beside him, she said Whats up, doc? He smiled at her but it was perfunctory. Hi, Mom. The glider was between his sneakered feet, and she saw that one of the wings had started to splinter. Want me to see what I can do with that, honey? Danny had gone back to staring up the street. No. Dad will fix it. Your daddy may not be back until suppertime, doc. Its a long drive up into those mountains. Do you think the bug will break down? No, I dont think so. But he had just given her something new to worry about. Thanks, Danny. I needed that. Dad said it might, Danny said in a matteroffact, almost bored manner. He said the fuel pump was all shot to shit. Dont say that, Danny. Fuel pump? he asked her with honest surprise. She sighed. No, All shot to shit. Dont say that. Why? Its vulgar. Whats vulgar, Mom? Like when you pick your nose at the table or pee with the bathroom door open. Or saying things like All shot to shit. Shit is a vulgar word. Nice people dont say it. Dad says it. When he was looking at the bugmotor he said, Christ this fuel pumps all shot to shit. Isnt Dad nice? How do you get into these things, Winnifred? Do you practice? Hes nice, but hes also a grownup. And hes very careful not to say things like that in front of people who wouldnt understand. You mean like Uncle Al? Yes, thats right. Can I say it when Im grownup? I suppose you will, whether I like it or not. How old? How does twenty sound, doc? Thats a long time to have to wait. I guess it is, but will you try? Hokay. He went back to staring up the street. He flexed a little, as if to rise, but the beetle coming was much newer, and much brighter red. He relaxed again. She wondered just how hard this move to Colorado had been on Danny. He was closemouthed about it, but it bothered her to see him spending so much time by himself. In Vermont three of Jacks fellow faculty members had had children about Dannys ageand there had been the preschoolbut in this neighborhood there was no one for him to play with. Most of the apartments were occupied by students attending CU, and of the few married couples here on Arapahoe Street, only a tiny percentage had children. She had spotted perhaps a dozen of high school or junior high school age, three infants, and that was all. Mommy, why did Daddy lose his job? She was jolted out of her reverie and floundering for an answer. She and Jack had discussed ways they might handle just such a question from Danny, ways that had varied from evasion to the plain truth with no varnish on it. But Danny had never asked. Not until now, when she was feeling low and least prepared for such a question. Yet he was looking at her, maybe reading the confusion on her face and forming his own ideas about that. She thought that to children adult motives and actions must seem as bulking and ominous as dangerous animals seen in the shadows of a dark forest. They were jerked about like puppets, having only the vaguest notions why. The thought brought her dangerously close to tears again, and while she fought them off she leaned over, picked up the disabled glider, and turned it over in her hands. Your daddy was coaching the debate team, Danny. Do you remember that? Sure, he said. Arguments for fun, right? Right. She turned the glider over and over, looking at the trade name (SPEEDOGLIDE) and the blue star decals on the wings, and found herself telling the exact truth to her son. There was a boy named George Hatfield that Daddy had to cut from the team. That means he wasnt as good as some of the others. George said your daddy cut him because he didnt like him and not because he wasnt good enough. Then George did a bad thing. I think you know about that. Was he the one who put holes in our bugs tires? Yes, he was. It was after school and your daddy caught him doing it. Now she hesitated again, but there was no question of evasion now; it was reduced to tell the truth or tell a lie. Your daddy  sometimes he does things hes sorry for later. Sometimes he doesnt think the way he should. That doesnt happen very often, but sometimes it does. Did he hurt George Haffield like the time I spilled all his papers? Sometimes (Danny with his arm in a cast) he does things hes sorry for later. Wendy blinked her eyes savagely hard, driving her tears all the way back. Something like that, honey. Your daddy hit George to make him stop cutting the tires and George hit his head. Then the men who are in charge of the school said that George couldnt go there anymore and your daddy couldnt teach there anymore. She stopped, out of words, and waited in dread for the deluge of questions. Oh, Danny said, and went back to looking up the street. Apparently the subject was closed. If only it could be closed that easily for her She stood up. Im going upstairs for a cup of tea, doc. Want a couple of cookies and a glass of milk? I think Ill watch for Dad. I dont think hell be home much before five. Maybe hell be early. Maybe, she agreed. Maybe he will. She was halfway up the walk when he called, Mommy? What, Danny? Do you want to go and live in that hotel for the winter? Now, which of five thousand answers should she give to that one? The way she had felt yesterday or last night or this morning? They were all different, they crossed the spectrum from rosy pink to dead black. She said If its what your father wants, its what I want. She paused. What about you? I guess I do, he said finally. Nobody much to play with around here. You miss your friends, dont you? Sometimes I miss Scott and Andy. Thats about all. She went back to him and kissed him, rumpled his lightcolored hair that was just losing its babyfineness. He was such a solemn little boy, and sometimes she wondered just how he was supposed to survive with her and Jack for parents. The high hopes they had begun with came down to this unpleasant apartment building in a city they didnt know. The image of Danny in his cast rose up before her again. Somebody in the Divine Placement Service had made a mistake, one she sometimes feared could never be corrected and which only the most innocent bystander could pay for. Stay out of the road, doc, she said, and hugged him tight. Sure, Mom. She went upstairs and into the kitchen. She put on the teapot and laid a couple of Oreos on a plate for Danny in case he decided to come up while she was lying down. Sitting at the table with her big pottery cup in front of her, she looked out the window at him, still sitting on the curb in his bluejeans and his oversized dark green Stovington Prep sweatshirt, the glider now lying beside him. The tears which had threatened all day now came in a cloudburst and she leaned into the fragrant, curling steam of the tea and wept. In grief and loss for the past, and terror of the future. CHAPTER THREE WATSON You lost your temper, Ullman had said. Okay, heres your furnace, Watson said, turning on a light in the dark, mustysmelling room. He was a beefy man with fluffy popcorn hair, white shirt, and dark green chinos. He swung open a small square grating in the furnaces belly and he and Jack peered in together. This heres the pilot light. A steady bluewhite jet hissing steadily upward channeled destructive force, but the key word, Jack thought was destructive and not channeled if you stuck your hand in there, the barbecue would happen in three quick seconds. Lost your temper. (Danny, are you all right?) The furnace filled the entire room, by far the biggest and oldest Jack had ever seen. The pilots got a failsafe, Watson told him. Little sensor in there measures heat.


If the heat falls below a certain point, it sets off a buzzer in your quarters. Boilers on the other side of the wall. Ill take you around. He slammed the grating shut and led Jack behind the iron bulk of the furnace toward another door. The iron radiated a stuporous heat at them, and for some reason Jack thought of a large, dozing cat. Watson jingled his keys and whistled. Lost your (When he went back into his study and saw Danny standing there, wearing nothing but his training pants and a grin, a slow, red cloud of rage had eclipsed Jacks reason. It had seemed slow subjectively, inside his head, but it must have all happened in less than a minute. It only seemed slow the way some dreams seem slow. The bad ones. Every door and drawer in his study seemed to have been ransacked in the time he had been gone. Closet, cupboards, the sliding bookcase. Every desk drawer yanked out to the stop. His manuscript, the threeact play he had been slowly developing from a novelette he had written seven years ago as an undergraduate, was scattered all over the floor. He had been drinking a beer and doing the Act II corrections when Wendy said the phone was for him, and Danny had poured the can of beer all over the pages. Probably to see it foam. See it foam, see it foam, the words played over and over in his mind like a single sick chord on an outoftune piano, completing the circuit of his rage. He stepped deliberately toward his threeyearold son, who was looking up at him with that pleased grin, his pleasure at the job of work so successfully and recently completed in Daddys study; Danny began to say something and that was when he had grabbed Dannys hand and bent it to make him drop the typewriter eraser and the mechanical pencil he was clenching in it. Danny had cried out a little  no  no  tell the truth  he screamed. It was all hard to remember through the fog of anger, the sick single thump of that one Spike Jones chord. Wendy somewhere, asking what was wrong. Her voice faint, damped by the inner mist. This was between the two of them. He had whirled Danny around to spank him, his big adult fingers digging into the scant meat of the boys forearm, meeting around it in a closed fist, and the snap of the breaking bone had not been loud, not loud but it had been very loud, HUGE, but not loud. Just enough of a sound to slit through the red fog like an arrowbut instead of letting in sunlight, that sound let in the dark clouds of shame and remorse, the terror, the agonizing convulsion of the spirit. A clean sound with the past on one side of it and all the future on the other, a sound like a breaking pencil lead or a small piece of kindling when you brought it down over your knee. A moment of utter silence on the other side, in respect to the beginning future maybe, all the rest of his life. Seeing Dannys face drain of color until it was like cheese, seeing his eyes, always large, grow larger still, and glassy, Jack sure the boy was going to faint dead away into the puddle of beer and papers; his own voice, weak and drunk, slurry, trying to take it all back, to find a way around that not too loud sound of bone cracking and into the pastis there a status quo in the house?saying Danny, are you all right? Dannys answering shriek, then Wendys shocked gasp as she came around them and saw the peculiar angle Dannys forearm had to his elbow; no arm was meant to hang quite that way in a world of normal families. Her own scream as she swept him into her arms, and a nonsense babble Oh God Danny oh dear God oh sweet God your poor sweet arm; and Jack was standing there, stunned and stupid, trying to understand how a thing like this could have happened. He was standing there and his eyes met the eyes of his wife and he saw that Wendy hated him. It did not occur to him what the hate might mean in practical terms; it was only later that he realized she might have left him that night, gone to a motel, gotten a divorce lawyer in the morning; or called the police. He saw only that his wife hated him and he felt staggered by it, all alone. He felt awful. This was what oncoming death felt like. Then she fled for the telephone and dialed the hospital with their screaming boy wedged in the crook of her arm and Jack did not go after her, he only stood in the ruins of his office, smelling beer and thinking) You lost your temper. He rubbed his hand harshly across his lips and followed Watson into the boiler room. It was humid in here, but it was more than the humidity that brought the sick and slimy sweat onto his brow and stomach and legs. The remembering did that, it was a total thing that made that night two years ago seem like two hours ago. There was no lag. It brought the shame and revulsion back, the sense of having no worth at all, and that feeling always made him want to have a drink, and the wanting of a drink brought still blacker despairwould he ever have an hour, not a week or even a day, mind you, but just one waking hour when the craving for a drink wouldnt surprise him like this? The boiler, Watson announced. He pulled a redandblue bandanna from his back pocket, blew his nose with a decisive honk, and thrust it back out of sight after a short peek into it to see if he had gotten anything interesting. The boiler stood on four cement blocks, a long and cylindrical metal tank, copperjacketed and often patched. It squatted beneath a confusion of pipes and ducts which zigzagged upward into the high, cobwebfestooned basement ceiling. To Jacks right, two large heating pipes came through the wall from the furnace in the adjoining room. Pressure gauge is here. Watson tapped it. Pounds per square inch, psi. I guess youd know that. I got her up to a hundred now, and the rooms get a little chilly at night. Few guests complain, what the fuck. Theyre crazy to come up here in September anyway. Besides, this is an old baby. Got more patches on her than a pair of welfare overalls. Out came the bandanna. A honk. A peek. Back it went. I got me a fuckin cold, Watson said conversationally. I get one every September. I be tinkering down here with this old whore, then I be out cuttin the grass or rakin that roque court. Get a chill and catch a cold, my old mum used to say. God bless her, she been dead six year. The cancer got her. Once the cancer gets you, you might as well make your will. Youll want to keep your press up to no more than fifty, maybe sixty. Mr. Ullman, he says to heat the west wing one day, central wing the next, east wing the day after that. Aint he a crazyman? I hate that little fucker. Yapyapyap, all the livelong day, hes just like one a those little dogs that bites you on the ankle then run around an pee all over the rug. If brains was black powder he couldnt blow his own nose. Its a pity the things you see when you aint got a gun. Look here. You open an close these ducks by pullin these rings. I got em all marked for you. The blue tags all go to the rooms in the east wing. Red tags is the middle. Yellow is the west wing. When you go to heat the west wing, you got to remember thats the side of the hotel that really catches the weather. When it whoops, those rooms get as cold as a frigid woman with an ice cube up her works. You can run your press all the way to eighty on west wing days. I would, anyway. The thermostats upstairs Jack began. Watson shook his head vehemently, making his fluffy hair bounce on his skull. They aint hooked up. Theyre just there for show. Some of these people from California, they dont think things is right unless they got it hot enough to grow a palm tree in their fuckin bedroom. All the heat comes from down here. Got to watch the press, though. See her creep? He tapped the main dial, which had crept from a hundred pounds per square inch to a hundred and two as Watson soliloquized. Jack felt a sudden shiver cross his back in a hurry and thought The goose just walked over my grave. Then Watson gave the pressure wheel a spin and dumped the boiler off. There was a great hissing, and the needle dropped back to ninetyone. Watson twisted the valve shut and the hissing died reluctantly. She creeps, Watson said. You tell that fat little peckerwood Ullman, he drags out the account books and spends three hours showing how we cant afford a new one until 1982. I tell you, this whole place is gonna go skyhigh someday, and I just hope that fat fucks here to ride the rocket. God, I wish I could be as charitable as my mother was. She could see the good in everyone. Me, Im just as mean as a snake with the shingles. What the fuck, a man cant help his nature. Now you got to remember to come down here twice a day and once at night before you rack in. You got to check the press. If you forget, itll just creep and creep and like as not you an your famblyll wake up on the fuckin moon. You just dump her off a little and youll have no trouble. Whats top end? Oh, shes rated for twofifty, but shed blow long before that now. You couldnt get me to come down an stand next to her when that dial was up to one hundred and eighty. Theres no automatic shutdown? No, there aint. This was built before such things were required. Federal governments into everything these days, aint it? FBI openin mail, CIA buggin the goddam phones  and look what happened to that Nixon. Wasnt that a sorry sight? But if you just come down here regular an check the press, youll be fine. An remember to switch those ducks around like he wants. Wont none of the rooms get much above fortyfive unless we have an amazin warm winter. And youll have your own apartment just as warm as you like it. What about the plumbing? Okay, I was just getting to that. Over here through this arch. They walked into a long, rectangular room that seemed to stretch for miles. Watson pulled a cord and a single seventyfivewatt bulb cast a sickish, swinging glow over the area they were standing in. Straight ahead was the bottom of the elevator shaft, heavy greased cables descending to pulleys twenty feet in diameter and a huge, greaseclogged motor. Newspapers were everywhere, bundled and banded and boxed. Other cartons were marked Records or Invoices or ReceiptsSAVE! The smell was yellow and moldy. Some of the cartons were falling apart, spilling yellow flimsy sheets that might have been twenty years old out onto the floor. Jack stared around, fascinated. The Overlooks entire history might be here, buried in these rotting cartons. That elevators a bitch to keep runnin, Watson said, jerking his thumb at it. I know Ullmans buying the state elevator inspector a few fancy dinners to keep the repairman away from that fucker. Now, heres your central plumbin core. In front of them five large pipes, each of them wrapped in insulation and cinched with steel bands, rose into the shadows and out of sight. Watson pointed to a cobwebby shelf beside the utility shaft. There were a number of greasy rags on it and a looseleaf binder. That there is all your plumbin schematics, he said. I dont think youll have any trouble with leaksnever has beenbut sometimes the pipes freeze up. Only way to stop that is to run the faucets a little bit durin the nights, but theres over four hundred taps in this fuckin palace. That fat fairy upstairs would scream all the way to Denver when he saw the water bill. Aint that right? Id say thats a remarkably astute analysis. Watson looked at him admiringly. Say, you really are a college fella, arent you? Talk just like a book. I admire that, as long as the fella aint one of those fairyboys. Lots of em are. You know who stirred up all those college riots a few years ago? The hommasexshuls, thats who. They get frustrated an have to cut loose. Comin out of the closet, they call it. Holy shit, I dont know what the worlds comin to. Now, if she freezes, she most likely gonna freeze right up in this shaft. No heat, you see. If it happens, use this. He reached into a broken orange crate and produced a small gas torch. You just unstrap the insulation when you find the ice plug and put the heat right to her. Get it? Yes. But what if a pipe freezes outside the utility core? That wont happen if youre doin your job and keepin the place heated. You cant get to the other pipes anyway. Dont you fret about it. Youll have no trouble. Beastly place down here. Cobwebby. Gives me the horrors, it does. Ullman said the first winter caretaker killed his family and himself. Yeah, that guy Grady. He was a bad actor, I knew that the minute I saw him. Always grinnin like an eggsuck dog. That was when they were just startin out here and that fat fuck Ullman, he woulda hired the Boston Strangler if hedve worked for minimum wage. Was a ranger from the National Park that found em; the phone was out. All of em up in the west wing on the third floor, froze solid. Too bad about the little girls. Eight and six, they was. Cute as cutbuttons. Oh, that was a hell of a mess. That Ullman, he manages some honkytonky resort place down in Florida in the offseason, and he caught a plane up to Denver and hired a sleigh to take him up here from Sidewinder because the roads were closeda sleigh, can you believe that? He about split a gut tryin to keep it out of the papers. Did pretty well, I got to give him that. There was an item in the Denver Post, and of course the bituary in that pissant little rag they have down in Estes Park, but that was just about all. Pretty good, considerin the reputation this place has got. I expected some reporter would dig it all up again and just sorta put Grady in it as an excuse to rake over the scandals. What scandals? Watson shrugged. Any big hotels have got scandals, he said. Just like every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go. Sometimes one of em will pop off in his room, heart attack or stroke or something like that. Hotels are superstitious places. No thirteenth floor or room thirteen, no mirrors on the back of the door you come in through, stuff like that. Why, we lost a lady just this last July. Ullman had to take care of that, and you can bet your ass he did. Thats what they pay him twentytwo thousand bucks a season for, and as much as I dislike the little prick, he earns it. Its like some people just come here to throw up and they hire a guy like Ullman to clean up the messes. Heres this woman, must be sixty fuckin years oldmy age!and her hairs dyed just as red as a whores stoplight, tits saggin just about down to her belly button on account of she aint wearin no brassyear, big varycoarse veins all up and down her legs so they look like a couple of goddam roadmaps, the jools drippin off her neck and arms an hangin out her ears. And shes got this kid with her, he cant be no more than seventeen, with hair down to his asshole and his crotch bulgin like he stuffed it up with the funnypages. So theyre here a week, ten days maybe, and every night its the same drill. Down in the Colorado Lounge from five to seven, her suckin up Singapore slings like theyre gonna outlaw em tomorrow and him with just the one bottle of Olympia, suckin it, makin it last. And shed be makin jokes and sayin all these witty things, and every time she said one hed grin just like a fuckin ape, like she had strings tied to the corners of his mouth. Only after a few days you could see it was gettin harder an harder for him to grin, and God knows what he had to think about to get his pump primed by bedtime. Well, theyd go in for dinner, him walkin and her staggerin, drunk as a coot, you know, and hed be pinchin the waitresses and grinnin at em when she wasnt lookin. Hell, we even had bets on how long hed last. Watson shrugged. Then he comes down one night around ten, sayin his wife is indisposedwhich meant she was passed out again like every other night they was thereand hes goin to get her some stomach medicine. So off he goes in the little Porsche they come in, and thats the last we see of him. Next morning she comes down and tries to put on this big act, but all day shes gettin paler an paler, and Mr. Ullman asks her, sorta diplomaticlike, would she like him to notify the state cops, just in case maybe he had a little accident or something. Shes on him like a cat. Nonono, hes a fine driver, she isnt worried, everythings under control, hell be back for dinner. So that afternoon she steps into the Colorado around three and never has no dinner at all. She goes up to her room around tenthirty, and thats the last time anybody saw her alive. What happened? County coroner said she took about thirty sleepin pills on top of all the booze. Her husband showed up the next day, some bigshot lawyer from New York. He gave old Ullman four different shades of holy hell. Ill sue this an Ill sue that an when Im through you wont even be able to find a clean pair of underwear, stuff like that. But Ullmans good, the sucker. Ullman got him quieted down. Probably asked that bigshot how hed like to see his wife splashed all over the New York papers Wife of Prominent New York Blah Blah Found Dead with Bellyful of Sleeping Pills. After playing hidethesalami with a kid young enough to be her grandson. The state cops found the Porsche in back of this allnight burger joint down in Lyons, and Ullman pulled a few strings to get it released to that lawyer. Then both of them ganged up on old Archer Houghton, which is the county coroner, and got him to change the verdict to accidental death. Heart attack. Now ole Archers driving a Chrysler. I dont begrudge him. A mans got to take it where he finds it, especially when he starts gettin along in years. Out came the bandanna. Honk. Peek. Out of sight. So what happens? About a week later this stupid cunt of a chambermaid, Delores Vickery by name, she gives out with a helluva shriek while shes makin up the room where those two stayed, and she faints dead away. When she comes to she says she seen the dead woman in the bathroom, layin naked in the tub. Her face was all purple an puffy, she says, an she was grinnin at me. So Ullman gave her two weeks worth of walking papers and told her to get lost. I figure theres maybe fortyfifty people died in this hotel since my grandfather opened it for business in 1910. He looked shrewdly at Jack. You know how most of em go? Heart attack or stroke, while theyre bangin the lady theyre with. Thats what these resorts get a lot of, old types that want one last fling. They come up here to the mountains to pretend theyre twenty again. Sometimes somethin gives, and not all the guys who ran this place was as good as Ullman is at keepin it out of the papers. So the Overlooks got a reputation, yeah. Ill bet the fuckin Biltmore in New York City has got a reputation, if you ask the right people. But no ghosts? Mr. Torrance, Ive worked here all my life. I played here when I was a kid no oldern your boy in that wallet snapshot you showed me. I never seen a ghost yet. You want to come out back with me, Ill show you the equipment shed. Fine. As Watson reached up to turn off the light, Jack said, There sure are a lot of papers down here. Oh, youre not kiddin. Seems like they go back a thousand years. Newspapers and old invoices and bills of lading and Christ knows what else. My dad used to keep up with them pretty good when we had the old woodburning furnace, but now theyve got all out of hand. Some year I got to get a boy to haul them down to Sidewinder and burn em. If Ullman will stand the expense. I guess he will if I holler rat loud enough. Then there are rats? Yeah, I guess theres some. I got the traps and the poison Mr. Ullman wants you to use up in the attic and down here. You keep a good eye on your boy, Mr. Torrance. You wouldnt want nothing to happen to him. No, I sure wouldnt. Coming from Watson the advice didnt sting. They went to the stairs and paused there for a moment while Watson blew his nose again. Youll find all the tools you need out there and some you dont, I guess. And theres the shingles. Did Ullman tell you about that? Yes, he wants part of the west roof reshingled. Hell get all the forfree out of you that he can, the fat little prick, and then whine around in the spring about how you didnt do the job half right. I told him once right to his face, I said  Watsons words faded away to a comforting drone as they mounted the stairs. Jack Torrance looked back over his shoulder once into the impenetrable, mustysmelling darkness and thought that if there was ever a place that should have ghosts, this was it. He thought of Grady, locked in by the soft, implacable snow, going quietly berserk and committing his atrocity. Did they scream? he wondered. Poor Grady, feeling it close in on him more every day, and knowing at last that for him spring would never come. He shouldnt have been here. And he shouldnt have lost his temper. As he followed Watson through the door, the words echoed back to him like a knell, accompanied by a sharp snaplike a breaking pencil lead. Dear God, he could use a drink. Or a thousand of them. CHAPTER FOUR SHADOWLAND Danny weakened and went up for his milk and cookies at quarter past four. He gobbled them while looking out the window, then went in to kiss his mother, who was lying down. She suggested that he stay in and watch Sesame Streetthe time would pass fasterbut he shook his head firmly and went back to his place on the curb. Now it was five oclock, and although he didnt have a watch and couldnt tell time too well yet anyway, he was aware of passing time by the lengthening of the shadows, and by the golden cast that now tinged the afternoon light. Turning the glider over in his hands, he sang under his breath Skip to m Lou, n I dont care  skip to m Lou, n I dont care  my masters gone away  Lou, Lou, skip to m Lou  They had sung that song all together at the Jack and Jill Nursery School he had gone to back in Stovington. He didnt go to nursery school out here because Daddy couldnt afford to send him anymore. He knew his mother and father worried about that, worried that it was adding to his loneliness (and even more deeply, unspoken between them, that Danny blamed them), but he didnt really want to go to that old Jack and Jill anymore. It was for babies. He wasnt quite a big kid yet, but he wasnt a baby anymore. Big kids went to the big school and got a hot lunch. First grade. Next year. This year was someplace between being a baby and a real kid. It was all right. He did miss Scott and Andymostly Scottbut it was still all right. It seemed best to wait alone for whatever might happen next. He understood a great many things about his parents, and he knew that many times they didnt like his understandings and many other times refused to believe them. But someday they would have to believe. He was content to wait. It was too bad they couldnt believe more, though, especially at times like now. Mommy was lying on her bed in the apartment, just about crying she was so worried about Daddy. Some of the things she was worried about were too grownup for Danny to understandvague things that had to do with security, with Daddys selfimage, feelings of guilt and anger and the fear of what was to become of thembut the two main things on her mind right now were that Daddy had had a breakdown in the mountains (then why doesnt he call?) or that Daddy had gone off to do the Bad Thing. Danny knew perfectly well what the Bad Thing was since Scotty Aaronson, who was six months older, had explained it to him. Scotty knew because his daddy did the Bad Thing, too. Once, Scotty told him, his daddy had punched his mom right in the eye and knocked her down. Finally, Scottys dad and mom had gotten a DIVORCE over the Bad Thing, and when Danny had known him, Scotty lived with his mother and only saw his daddy on weekends. The greatest terror of Dannys life was DIVORCE, a word that always appeared in his mind as a sign painted in red letters which were covered with hissing, poisonous snakes. In DIVORCE, your parents no longer lived together. They had a tug of war over you in a court (tennis court? badminton court? Danny wasnt sure which or if it was some other, but Mommy and Daddy had played both tennis and badminton at Stovington, so he assumed it could be either) and you had to go with one of them and you practically never saw the other one, and the one you were with could marry somebody you didnt even know if the urge came on them. The most terrifying thing about DIVORCE was that he had sensed the wordor concept, or whatever it was that came to him in his understandingsfloating around in his own parents heads, sometimes diffuse and relatively distant, sometimes as thick and obscuring and frightening as thunderheads. It had been that way after Daddy punished him for messing the papers up in his study and the doctor had to put his arm in a cast. That memory was already faded, but the memory of the DIVORCE thoughts was clear and terrifying. It had mostly been around his mommy that time, and he had been in constant terror that she would pluck the word from her brain and drag it out of her mouth, making it real. DIVORCE. It was a constant undercurrent in their thoughts, one of the few he could always pick up, like the beat of simple music. But like a beat, the central thought formed only the spine of more complex thoughts, thoughts he could not as yet even begin to interpret. They came to him only as colors and moods. Mommys DIVORCE thoughts centered around what Daddy had done to his arm, and what had happened at Stovington when Daddy lost his job. That boy. That George Haffield who got pissed off at Daddy and put the holes in their bugs feet. Daddys DIVORCE thoughts were more complex, colored dark violet and shot through with frightening veins of pure black. He seemed to think they would be better off if he left. That things would stop hurting. His daddy hurt almost all the time, mostly about the Bad Thing. Danny could almost always pick that up too Daddys constant craving to go into a dark place and watch a color TV and eat peanuts out of a bowl and do the Bad Thing until his brain would be quiet and leave him alone. But this afternoon his mother had no need to worry and he wished he could go to her and tell her that. The bug had not broken down. Daddy was not off somewhere doing the Bad Thing. He was almost home now, putputting along the highway between Lyons and Boulder. For the moment his daddy wasnt even thinking about the Bad Thing. He was thinking about  about  Danny looked furtively behind him at the kitchen window. Sometimes thinking very hard made something happen to him. It made thingsreal thingsgo away, and then he saw things that werent there. Once, not long after they put the cast on his arm, this had happened at the supper table. They werent talking much to each other then. But they were thinking. Oh yes. The thoughts of DIVORCE hung over the kitchen table like a cloud full of black rain, pregnant, ready to burst. It was so bad he couldnt eat. The thought of eating with all that black DIVORCE around made him want to throw up. And because it had seemed desperately important, he had thrown himself fully into concentration and something had happened. When he came back to real things, he was lying on the floor with beans and mashed potatoes in his lap and his mommy was holding him and crying and Daddy had been on the phone. He had been frightened, had tried to explain to them that there was nothing wrong, that this sometimes happened to him when he concentrated on understanding more than what normally came to him. He tried to explain about Tony, who they called his invisible playmate. His father had said Hes having a Ha Loo Sin Nation. He seems okay, but I want the doctor to look at him anyway. After the doctor left, Mommy had made him promise to never do that again, to never scare them that way, and Danny had agreed. He was frightened himself. Because when he had concentrated his mind, it had flown out to his daddy, and for just a moment, before Tony had appeared (far away, as he always did, calling distantly) and the strange things had blotted out their kitchen and the carved roast on the blue plate, for just a moment his own consciousness had plunged through his daddys darkness to an incomprehensible word much more frightening than DIVORCE, and that word was SUICIDE. Danny had never come across it again in his daddys mind, and he had certainly not gone looking for it. He didnt care if he never found out exactly what that word meant. But he did like to concentrate, because sometimes Tony would come. Not every time. Sometimes things just got woozy and swimmy for a minute and then clearedmost times, in factbut at other times Tony would appear at the very limit of his vision, calling distantly and beckoning  It had happened twice since they moved to Boulder, and he remembered how surprised and pleased he had been to find Tony had followed him all the way from Vermont. So all his friends hadnt been left behind after all. The first time he had been out in the backyard and nothing much had happened. Just Tony beckoning and then darkness and a few minutes later he had come back to real things with a few vague fragments of memory, like a jumbled dream. The second time, two weeks ago, had been more interesting. Tony, beckoning, calling from four yards over Danny  come see  It seemed that he was getting up, then falling into a deep hole, like Alice into Wonderland. Then he had been in the basement of the apartment house and Tony had been beside him, pointing into the shadows at the trunk his daddy carried all his important papers in, especially THE PLAY. See? Tony had said in his distant, musical voice. Its under the stairs. Right under the stairs. The movers put it right  under  the stairs. Danny had stepped forward to look more closely at this marvel and then he was falling again, this time out of the backyard swing, where he had been sitting all along. He had gotten the wind knocked out of himself, too. Three or four days later his daddy had been stomping around, telling Mommy furiously that he had been all over the goddam basement and the trunk wasnt there and he was going to sue the goddam movers who had left it somewhere between Vermont and Colorado. How was he supposed to be able to finish THE PLAY if things like this kept cropping up? Danny said, No, Daddy. Its under the stairs. The movers put it right under the stairs. Daddy had given him a strange look and had gone down to see. The trunk had been there, just where Tony had shown him. Daddy had taken him aside, had sat him on his lap, and had asked Danny who let him down the cellar. Had it been Tom from upstairs? The cellar was dangerous, Daddy said. That was why the landlord kept it locked. If someone was leaving it unlocked, Daddy wanted to know. He was glad to have his papers and his PLAY but it wouldnt be worth it to him, he said, if Danny fell down the stairs and broke his  his leg. Danny told his father earnestly that he hadnt been down in the cellar. That door was always locked. And Mommy agreed. Danny never went down in the back hall, she said, because it was damp and dark and spidery. And he didnt tell lies. Then how did you know, doc? Daddy asked. Tony showed me. His mother and father had exchanged a look over his head. This had happened before, from time to time. Because it was frightening, they swept it quickly from their minds. But he knew they worried about Tony, Mommy especially, and he was careful about thinking the way that could make Tony come where she might see. But now he thought she was lying down, not moving about in the kitchen yet, and so he concentrated hard to see if he could understand what Daddy was thinking about. His brow furrowed and his slightly grimy hands clenched into tight fists on his jeans.