over their beads. They came together in the middle, in front
of VI.
Danny espied tiny grooves in their sides, just below their
armpits. The axis bar slipped into these grooves and he heard
another small click. The cogs at either end of the bar began
to. turn. "The Blue Danube" tinkled. The dancers' arms came
down around each other. The boy flipped the girl up over his
head and then whirled over the bar. They were now lying prone,
the boy's head buried beneath the girl's short ballet skirt,
the girl's face pressed against the center of the boy's
leotard. They writhed in a mechanical frenzy.
Danny's nose wrinkled. They were kissing peepees. That made
him feel sick.
A moment later and things began to run backward. The boy
whirled back over the axis bar. He flipped the girl into an
upright position. They seemed to nod knowingly at each other
as their hands arched back over their heads. They retreated
the way they had come, disappearing just as "The Blue Danube"
finished. The clock began to strike a count of silver chimes.
(Midnight! Stroke of midnight!)
(Hooray for masks!)
Danny whirled on the chair, almost falling down. The ballroom
was empty. Beyond the double cathedral window he could see
fresh snow beginning to sift down. The huge ballroom rug
(rolled up for dancing, of course), a rich tangle of red and
gold embroidery, lay undisturbed on the floor. Spaced around
it were small, intimate tables for two, the spidery chairs
that went with each upended with legs pointing at the ceiling.
The whole place was empty.
But it wasn't really empty. Because here in the Overlook
things just went on and on. Here in the Overlook all times
were one. There was an endless night in August of 1945, with
laughter and drinks and a chosen shining few going up and
coming down in the elevator, drinking champagne and popping
party favors in each other's faces. It was a not-yet-light
morning in June some twenty years later and the organization
hitters endlessly pumped shotgun shells into the torn and
bleeding bodies of three men who went through their agony
endlessly. In a room on the second floor a woman lolled in her
tub and waited for visitors.
In the Overlook all things had a sort of life. It was as if
the whole place had been wound up with a silver key. The clock
was running. The clock was running.
He was that key, Danny thought sadly. Tony had warned him and
he had just let things go on.
(I'm just five!)
he cried to some half-felt presence in the room.
(Doesn't it make any deference that I'm just five?)
There was no answer.
He turned reluctantly back to the clock.
He had been putting it off, hoping that something would
happen to help him avoid trying to call Tony again, that a
ranger would come, or a helicopter, or the rescue team; they
always came in time on his TV programs, the people were saved.
On TV the rangers and the SWAT squad and the paramedics were a
friendly white force counterbalancing the confused evil that
he perceived in the world; when people got in trouble they
were helped out of it, they were fixed up. They did not have
to help themselves out of trouble.
(Please?)
There was no answer.
No answer, and if Tony came would it be the same nightmare?
The booming, the Tioarse and petulant voice, the blueblack rug
like snakes? Redrum?
But what else?
(Please oh please)
No answer.
With a trembling sigh, he looked at the clockface. Cogs
turned and meshed with other cogs. The balance wheel rocked
hypnotically back and forth. And if you held your head
perfectly still, you could see the minute hand creeping
inexorably down from XII to V. If you held your bead perfectly
still you could see that-
The clockface was gone. In its place was a round black hole.
It led down into forever. It began to swell. The clock was
gone. The room behind it. Danny tottered and then fell into
the darkness that had been biding behind the clockface all
along.
The small boy in the chair suddenly collapsed and lay in it
at a crooked unnatural angle, his head thrown back, his eyes
staring sightlessly at the high ballroom ceiling.
Down and down and down and down to-
-the hallway, crouched in the hallway, and he had made a
wrong turn, trying to get back to the stairs he had made a
wrong turn and now AND NOW-
-he saw he was in the short dead-end corridor that led only
to the Presidential Suite and the booming sound was coming
closer, the roque mallet whistling savagely through the air,
the head of it embedding itself into the wall, cutting the
silk paper, letting out small puffs of plaster dust.
(Goddammit, come out here! Take your)
But there was another figure in the hallway. Slouched
nonchalantly against the wall just behind him. Like a ghost.
No, not a ghost, but all dressed in white. Dressed in whites.
(I'll find you, you goddam little whoremastering RUNT!)
Danny cringed back from the sound. Coming up the main third-
floor hall now. Soon the owner of that voice would round the
corner.
(Come here! Come here, you little shit!)
The figure dressed in white straightened up a little, removed
a cigarette from the corner of his mouth, and plucked a shred
of tobacco from his full lower lip. It was Hallorann, Danny
saw. Dressed in his cook's whites instead of the blue suit he
had been wearing on closing day.
"If there is trouble," Hallorann said, "you give a call. A
big loud holler like the one that knocked me back a few
minutes ago. I might hear you even way down in Florida. And if
I do, I'll come on the run. I'll come on the run. I'll come on
the-"
(Come now, then! Come now, come NOW! Oh Dick I need you we
all need)
"-run. Sorry, but I got to run. Sorry, Danny ole kid ole doc,
but I got to run. It's sure been fun, you son of a gun, but I
got to hurry, I got to run."
(No!)
But as he watched, Dick Hallorann turned, put his cigarette
back into the corner of his mouth, and stepped nonchalantly
through the wall.
Leaving him alone.
And that was when the shadow-figure turned the corner, huge
in the hallway's gloom, only the reflected red of its eyes
clear.
(There you are! Now I've got you, you fuck! Now I'll teach
you!)
It lurched toward him in a horrible, shambling run, the roque
mallet swinging up and up and up. Danny scrambled backward,
screaming, and suddenly he was through the wall and falling,
tumbling over and over, down the hole, down the rabbit hole
and into a land full of sick wonders.
Tony was far below him, also falling.
(I can't come anymore, Danny... he won't let me near you...
none of them will let me near you... get Dick... get Dick...)
"Tony!" he screamed.
But Tony was gone and suddenly he was in a dark room. But not
entirely dark. Muted light spilling from somewhere. It was
Mommy and Daddy's bedroom. He could see Daddy's desk. But the
room was a dreadful shambles. He had been in this room before.
Mommy's record player overturned on the floor. Her records
scattered on the rug. The mattress half off the bed. Pictures
ripped from the walls. His cot lying on its side like a dead
dog, the Violent Violet Volkswagen crushed to purple shards of
plastic.
The light was coming from the bathroom door, half-open. Just
beyond it a hand dangled limply, blood dripping from the tips
of the fingers. And in the medicine cabinet mirror, the word
REDRUM flashing off and on.
Suddenly a huge clock in a glass bowl materialized in front
of it. There were no hands or numbers on the clockface, only a
date written in red: DECEMBER 2. And then, eyes widening in
horror, he saw the word REDRUM reflecting dimly from the glass
dome, now reflected twice. And he saw that it spelled MURDER.
Danny Torrance screamed in wretched terror. The date was gone
from the clockface. The clockface itself was gone, replaced by
a circular black hole that swelled and swelled like a dilating
iris. It blotted out everything and he fell forward, beginning
to fall, falling, he was-
* * *
-falling off the chair.
For a moment he lay on the ballroom floor, breathing bard.
REDRUM.
MURDER.
REDRUM.
MURDER.
(The Red Death held sway over all!)
(Unmask! Unmask!)
And behind each glittering lovely mask, the as-yet unseen
face of the shape that chased him down these dark hallways,
its red eyes widening, blank and homicidal.
Oh, he was afraid of what face might come to light when the
time for unmasking came around at last.
(DICK!)
he screamed with all his might. His head seemed to shiver
with the force of it.
(!!! OH DICK OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE COME!!!)
Above him the clock he had wound with the silver key
continued to mark off the seconds and minutes and hours.
PART FIVE
Matters of Life and Death
FLORIDA
Mrs. Hallorann's third son, Dick, dressed in his cook's
whites, a Lucky Strike parked in the corner of his mouth,
backed his reclaimed Cadillac limo out of its space behind the
One-A Wholesale Vegetable Mart and drove slowly around the
building. Masterton, part owner now but still walking with the
patented shuffle he had adopted back before World War II, was
pushing a bin of lettuces into the high, dark building.
Hallorann pushed the button that lowered the passenger side
window and hollered: "Those avocadoes is too damn high, you
cheapskate!"
Masterton looked back over his shoulder, grinned widely
enough to expose all three gold teeth, and yelled back, "And I
know exactly where you can put em, my good buddy."
"Remarks like that I keep track of, bro."
Masterton gave him the finger. Hallorann returned the
compliment.
"Get your cukes, did you?" Masterton asked.
"I did."
"You come back early tomorrow, I gonna give you some of the
nicest new potatoes you ever seen."
"I send the boy," Hallorann said. "You comin up tonight?"
"You supplyin the juice, bro?"
"That's a big ten-four."
"I be there. You keep that thing off the top end goin home,
you hear me? Every cop between here an St. Pete knows your
name."
"You know all about it, huh?" Hallorann asked, grinning.
"I know more than you'll ever learn, my man."
"Listen to this sassy nigger. Would you listen?"
"Go on, get outta here fore I start throwin these lettuces."
"Go on an throw em. I'll take anything for free."
Masterton made as if to throw one. Hallorann ducked, rolled
up the window, and drove on. He was feeling fine. For the last
half hour or so he had been smelling oranges, but he didn't
find that queer. For the last half hour he had been in a fruit
and vegetable market.
It was 4:30 p. m., EST, the first day of December, Old Man
Winter settling his frostbitten rump firmly onto most of the
country, but down here the men wore open-throated shortsleeve
shirts and the women were in light summer dresses and shorts.
On top of the First Bank of Florida building, a digital
thermometer bordered with huge grapefruits was flashing 79ш
over and over. Thank God for Florida, Hallorann thought,
mosquitoes and all.
In the back of the limo were two dozen avocados, a crate of
cucumbers, ditto oranges, ditto grapefruit. Three shopping
sacks filled with Bermuda onions, the sweetest vegetable a
loving God ever created, some pretty good sweet peas, which
would be served with the entree and come back uneaten nine
times out of ten, and a single blue Hubbard squash that was
strictly for personal consumption.
Hallorann stopped in the turn lane at the Vermont Street
light, and when the green arrow showed he pulled out onto
state highway 219, pushing up to forty and holding it there
until the town began to trickle away into an exurban sprawl of
gas stations, Burger Kings, and McDonalds. It was a small
order today, he could have sent Baedecker after it, but
Baedecker had been chafing for his chance to buy the meat, and
besides, Hallorann never missed a chance to bang it back and
forth with Frank Masterton if he could help it. Masterton
might show up tonight to watch some TV and drink Hallorann's
Bushmill's, or he might not. Either way was all right. But
seeing him mattered. Every time it mattered now, because they
weren't young anymore. In the last few days it seemed he was
thinking of that very fact a great deal. Not so young anymore,
when you got up near sixty years old (ortell the truth and
save a lie-past it) you had to start thinking about stepping
out. You could go anytime. And that had been on his mind this
week, not in a heavy way but as a fact. Dying was a part of
living. You had to keep tuning in to that if you expected to
be a whole person. And if the fact of your own death was hard
to understand, at least it wasn't impossible to accept.
Why this should have been on his mind he could not have said,
but his other reason for getting this small order himself was
so he could step upstairs to the small office over Frank's Bar
and Grill. There was a lawyer up there now (the dentist who
had been there last year had apparently gone broke), a young
black fellow named McIver. Hallorann had stepped in and told
this McIver that he wanted to make a will, and could McIver
help him out? Well, McIver asked, how soon do you want the
document? Yesterday, said Hallorann, and threw his head back
and laughed. Have you got anything complicated in mind? was
McIver's next question. Hallorann did not. He had his
Cadillac, his bank account-some nine thousand dollars-a
piddling checking account, and a closet of clothes. He wanted
it all to go to his sister. And if your sister predeceases
you? McIver asked. Never mind, Hallorann said. If that
happens, I'll make a new will. The document had been completed
and signed in less than three hours-fast work for a
shyster-and now resided in Hallorann's breast pocket, folded
into a stiff blue envelope with the word WILL on the outside
in Old English letters.
He could not have said why he had chosen this warm sunny day
when he felt so well to do something he had been putting off
for years, but the impulse had come on him and he hadn't said
no. He was used to following his hunches.
He was pretty well out of town now. He cranked the limo up to
an illegal sixty and let it ride there in the left-hand lane,
sucking up most of the Petersburgbound traffic. He knew from
experience that the limo would still ride as solid as iron at
ninety, and even at a hundred and twenty it didn't seem to
lighten up much. But his screamin days were long gone. The
thought of putting the limo up to a hundred and twenty on a
straight stretch only scared him. He was getting old.
(Jesus, those oranges smell strong. Wonder if they gone
over?)
Bugs splattered against the window. He dialed the radio to a
Miami soul station and got the soft, wailing voice of Al
Green.
"What a beautiful time we had together,
Now it's getting late and we must leave each other..."
He unrolled the window, pitched his cigarette butt out, then
rolled it further down to clear out the smell of the oranges.
He tapped his fingers against the wheel and hummed along under
his breath. Hooked over the rearview mirror, his St.
Christopher's medal swung gently back and forth.
And suddenly the smell of oranges intensified and he knew it
was coming, something was coming at him. He saw his own eyes
in the rearview, widening, surprised. And then it came all at
once, came in a huge blast that drove out everything else: the
music, the road ahead, his own absent awareness of himself as
a unique human creature. It was as if someone had put a
psychic gun to his head and shot him with a. 45 caliber
scream.
(!!! OH DICK OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE COME!!!)
The limo had just drawn even with a Pinto station wagon
driven by a man in workman's clothes. The workman saw the limo
drifting into his lane and laid on the born. When the Cadillac
continued to drift he snapped a look at the driver and saw a
big black man bolt upright behind the wheel, his eyes looking
vaguely upward. Later the workman told his wife that he knew
it was just one of those niggery hairdos they were all wearing
these days, but at the time it had looked just as if every
hair on that coon's head was standing on end. He thought the
black man was having a heart attack.
The workman braked hard, dropping back into a luckilyempty
space behind him. The rear end of the Cadillac pulled ahead of
him, still cutting in, and the workman stared with bemused
horror as the long, rocket-shaped rear taillights cut into his
lane no more than a quarter of an inch in front of his bumper.
The workman cut to the left, still laying on his horn, and
roared around the drunkenly weaving limousine. He invited the
driver of the limo to perform an illegal sex act on himself.
To engage in oral congress with various rodents and birds. He
articulated his own proposal that all persons of Negro blood
return to their native continent. He expressed his sincere
belief in the position the limo-driver's soul would occupy in
the afterlife. He finished by saying that he believed be had
met the limo-driver's mother in a New Orleans house of
prostitution.
Then he was ahead and out of danger and suddenly aware that
he had wet his pants.
In Hallorann's mind the thought kept repeating
(COME DICK PLEASE COME DICK PLEASE)
but it began to fade off the way a radio station will as you
approach the limits of its broadcasting area. He became
fuzzily aware that his car was tooling along the soft shoulder
at better than fifty miles an hour. He guided it back onto the
road, feeling the rear end fishtail for a moment before
regaining the composition surface.
There was an A/W Rootbeer stand just ahead. Hallorann
signaled and turned in, his heart thudding painfully in his
chest, his face a sickly gray color. He pulled into a parking
slot, took his handkerchief out of his pocket, and mopped his
forehead with it.
(Lord God!)
"May I help you?"
The voice startled him again, even though it wasn't the voice
of God but that of a cute little carhop, standing by his open
window with an order pad.
"Yeah, baby, a rootbeer float. Two scoops of vanilla, okay?"
"Yes, sir." She walked away, hips rolling nicely beneath her
red nylon uniform.
Hallorann leaned back against the leather seat and closed his
eyes. There was nothing left to pick up. The last of it had
faded out between pulling in here and giving the waitress his
order. All that was left was a sick, thudding headache, as if
his brain had been twisted and wrung out and bung up to dry.
Like the headache he'd gotten from letting that boy Danny
shine at him up there at Ullman's Folly.
But this had been much louder. Then the boy had only been
playing a game with him. This had been pure panic, each word
screamed aloud in his bead.
He looked down at his arms. Hot sunshine lay on them but they
had still goosebumped. He had told the boy to call him if he
needed help, he remembered that. And now the boy was calling.
He suddenly wondered how he could have left that boy up there
at all, shining the way he did. There was bound to be trouble,
maybe bad trouble.
He suddenly keyed the limo, put it in reverse, and pulled
back onto the highway, peeling rubber. The waitress with the
rolling hips stood in the A/W stand's archway, a tray with a
rootbeer float on it in her hands.
"What is it with you, a fire?" she shouted, but Hallorann was
gone.
* * *
The manager was a man named Queems, and when Hallorann came
in Queems was conversing with his bookie. He wanted the four-
horse at Rockaway. No, no parlay, no quinella, no exacta, no
goddam futura. Just the little old four, six hundred dollars
on the nose. And the Jets on Sunday. What did he mean, the
Jets were playing the Bills? Didn't he know who the Jets were
playing? Five hundred, seven-point spread. When Queems hung
up, looking put-out, Hallorann understood how a man could make
fifty grand a year running this little spa and still wear
suits with shiny seats. He regarded Hallorann with an eye that
was still bloodshot from too many glances into last night's
bourbon bottle.
"Problems, Dick?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Queems, I guess so. I need three days off."
There was a package of Kents in the breast pocket of Queems's
sheer yellow shirt. He reached one out of the pocket without
removing the pack, tweezing it out, and bit down morosely on
the patented Micronite filter. He lit it with his desktop
Cricket.
"So do I," he said. "But what's on your mind?"
"I need three days," Hallorann repeated. "It's my boy."
Queems's eyes dropped to Hallorann's left hand, which was
ringless.
"I been divorced since 1964," Hallorann said patiently.
"Dick, you know what the weekend situation is. We're full. To
the gunnels. Even the cheap seats. We're even filled up in the
Florida Room on Sunday night. So take my watch, my wallet, my
pension fund. Hell, you can even take my wife if you can stand
the sharp edges. But please don't ask me for time off. What is
he, sick?"
"Yes, sir," Hallorann said, still trying to visualize himself
twisting a cheap cloth hat and rolling his eyeballs. "He
shot."
"Shot!" Queems said. He put his Kent down in an ashtray which
bore the emblem of Ole Miss, of which he was a business admin
graduate.
"Yes, sir," Hallorann said somberly.
"Hunting accident?"
"No, sir," Hallorann said, and let his voice drop to a lower,
huskier note. "Jana, she's been livin with this truck driver.
A white man. He shot my boy. He's in a hospital in Denver,
Colorado. Critical condition."
"How in hell did you find out? I thought you were buying
vegetables."
"Yes, sir, I was." He had stopped at the Western Union office
just before coming here to reserve an Avis car at Stapleton
Airport. Before leaving he had swiped a Western Union flimsy.
Now he took the folded and crumpled blank form from his pocket
and flashed it before Queems's bloodshot eyes. He put it back
in his pocket and, allowing his voice to drop another notch,
said: "Jana sent it. It was waitin in my letterbox when I got
back just now."
"Jesus. Jesus Christ," Queems said. There was a peculiar
tight expression of concern on his face, one Hallorann was
familiar with. It was as close to an expression of sympathy as
a white man who thought of himself as "good with the coloreds"
could get when the object was a black man or his mythical
black son.
"Yeah, okay, you get going," Queems said. "Baedecker can take
over for three days, I guess. The potboy can help out."
Hallorann nodded, letting his face get longer still, but the
thought of the potboy helping out Baedecker made him grin
inside. Even on a good day Hallorann doubted if the potboy
could hit the urinal on the first squirt.
"I want to rebate back this week's pay," Hallorann said. "The
whole thing. I know what a bind this puttin you in, Mr.
Queems, sir."
Queems's expression got tighter still it looked as if he
might have a fishbone caught in his throat. "We can talk about
that later. You go on and pack. I'll talk to Baedecker. Want
me to make you a plane reservation?"
"No, sir, I'll do it."
"All right." Queems stood up, leaned sincerely forward, and
inhaled a raft of ascending smoke from his Kent. He coughed
heartily, his thin white face turning red. Hallorann struggled
hard to keep his somber expression. "I hope everything turns
out, Dick. Call when you get word."
"I'll do that."
They shook hands over the desk.
Hallorann made himself get down to the ground floor and
across to the hired help's compound before bursting into rich,
bead-shaking laughter. He was still grinning and mopping his
streaming eyes with his handkerchief when the smell of oranges
came, thick and gagging, and the bolt followed it, striking
him in the head, sending him back against the pink stucco wall
in a drunken stagger.
(!!! PLEASE COME DICK PLEASE COME COME
QUICK!!!)
He recovered a little at a time and at last felt capable of
climbing the outside stairs to his apartment. He kept the
latchkey under the rush-plaited doormat, and when he reached
down to get it, something fell out of his inner pocket and
fell to the second-floor decking with a flat thump. His mind
was still so much on the voice that had shivered through his
head that for a moment he could only look at the blue envelope
blankly, not knowing what it was.
Then he turned it over and the word WILL stared up at him in
the black spidery letters.
(Oh my God is it like that?)
He didn't know. But it could be. All week long the thought of
his own ending had been on his mind like a... well, like a
(Go on, say it)
like a premonition,.
Death? For a moment his whole life seemed to flash before
him, not in a historical sense, no topography of the ups and
downs that Mrs. Hallorann's third son, Dick, had lived
through, but his life as it was now. Martin Luther King had
told them not long before the bullet took him down to his
martyr's grave that he had been to the mountain. Dick could
not claim that. No mountain, but he had reached a sunny
plateau after years of struggle. He had good friends. He had
all the references he would ever need to get a job anywhere.
When he wanted fuck, why, he could find a friendly one with no
questions asked and no big shitty struggle about what it all
meant. He had come to terms with his blackness-happy terms. He
was up past sixty and thank God, he was cruising.
Was he going to chance the end of that-the end of him-for
three white people he didn't even know?
But that was a lie, wasn't it?
He knew the boy. They had shared each other the way good
friends can't even after forty years of it. He knew the boy
and the boy knew him, because they each had a kind of
searchlight in their heads, something they hadn't asked for,
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