The Shining by Stephen King, 1977 28 страница

sparkled brassiere, a man with a foxhead rising slyly out of

his evening dress, a man in a silvery dog outfit who was

tickling the nose of a woman in a sarong with the puff on the

end of his long tail, to the general amusement of all.

"No charge to you, Mr. Torrance," Lloyd said, putting the

drink down on Jack's twenty. "Your money is no good here.

Orders from the manager."

"Manager?"

A faint unease came over him; nevertheless he picked up the

martini glass and swirled it, watching the olive at the bottom

bob slightly in the drink's chilly depths.

"Of course. The manager." Lloyd's smile broadened, but his

eyes were socketed in shadow and his skin was horribly white,

like the skin of a corpse. "Later he expects to see to your

son's well-being himself. He is very interested in your son.

Danny is a talented boy."

The juniper fumes of the gin were pleasantly maddening, but

they also seemed to be blurring his reason. Danny? What was

all of this about Danny? And what was he doing in a bar with a

drink in his hand?

He had TAKEN THE PLEDGE. He had GONE ON THE WAGON. He had

SWORN OFF.

What could they want with his son? What could they want with

Danny? Wendy and Danny weren't in it. He tried to see into

Lloyd's shadowed eyes, but it was too dark, too dark, it was

like trying to read emotion into the empty orbs of a skull.

(It's me they must want... isn't it? I am the one. Not Danny,

not Wendy. I'm the one who loves it here. They wanted to

leave. I'm the one who took care of the snowmobile... went

through the old records... dumped the press on the boiler...

lied... practically sold my soul... what can they want with

ham?)

"Where is the manager?" He tried to ask it casually but his

words seemed to come out between lips already numbed by the

first drink, like words from a nightmare rather than those in

a sweet dream.

Lloyd only smiled.

"What do you want with my son? Danny's not in this.,. is

he?" He heard the naked plea in his own voice.

Lloyd's face seemed to be running, changing, becoming

something pestilent. The white skin becoming a hepatitic

yellow, cracking. Red sores erupting on the skin, bleeding

foul smelling liquid. Droplets of blood sprang out on Lloyd's

forehead like sweat and somewhere a silver chime was striking

the quarter-hour.

(Unmask, unmask!)

"Drink your drink, Mr. Torrance," Lloyd said softly. "It

isn't a matter that concerns you. Not at this point."

He picked his drink up again, raised it to his lips, and

hesitated. He heard the hard, horrible snap as Danny's arm

broke. He saw the bicycle flying brokenly up over the hood of

Al's car, starring the windshield. He saw a single wheel lying

in the road, twisted spokes pointing into the sky like jags of

piano wire.

He became aware that all conversation had stopped.

He looked back over his shoulder. They were all looking at

him expectantly, silently. The man beside the woman in the

sarong had removed his foxhead and Jack saw that it was Horace

Derwent, his pallid blond hair spilling across his forehead.

Everyone at the bar was watching, too. The woman beside him

was looking at him closely, as if trying to focus. Her dress

had slipped off one shoulder and looking down he could see a

loosely puckered nipple capping one sagging breast. Looking

back at her face he began to think that this might be the

woman from 217, the one who had tried to strangle Danny. On

his other hand, the man in the sharp blue suit had removed a

small pearl-handled. 32 from his jacket pocket and was idly

spinning it on the bar, like a man with Russian roulette on

his mind.

(I want-)

He realized the words were not passing through his frozen

vocal cords and tried again.

"I want to see the manager. I... I don't think he

understands. My son is not a part of this. He... "

"Mr. Torrance," Lloyd said, his voice coming with hideous

gentleness from inside his plague-raddled face, "you will meet

the manager in due time. He has, in fact, decided to make you

his agent in this matter. Now drink your drink."

"Drink your drink," they all echoed.

He picked it up with a badly trembling hand. It was raw gin.

He looked into it, and looking was like drowning.

The woman beside him began to sing in a flat, dead voice:

"Roll... out... the barrel... and we'll have,... a barrel...

of fun..."

Lloyd picked it up. Then the man in the blue suit. The dog-

man joined in, thumping one paw against the table

"Now's the time to roll the barrel-"

Derwent added his voice to the rest. A cigarette was cocked

in one corner of his mouth at a jaunty angle. His right arm

was around the shoulders of the woman in the sarong, and his

right band was gently and absently stroking her right breast.

He was looking at the dog-man with amused contempt as he sang.

"-because the gang's... all... here!"

Jack brought the drink to his mouth and downed it in three

long gulps, the gin highballing down his throat like a moving

van in a tunnel, exploding in his stomach, rebounding up to

his brain in one leap where it seized hold of him with a final

convulsing fit of the shakes.

When that passed off, he felt fine.

"Do it again, please," he said, and pushed the empty glass

toward Lloyd.

"Yes, sir," Lloyd said, taking the glass. Lloyd looked

perfectly normal again. The olive-skinned man had put his. 32

away. The woman on his right was staring into her singapore

sling again. One breast was wholly exposed now, leaning on the

bar's leather buffer. A vacuous crooning noise came from her

slack mouth. The loom of conversation had begun again, weaving

and weaving.

His new drink appeared in front of him.

" Muchas gracias, Lloyd," he said, picking it up.

"Always a pleasure to serve you, Mr. Torrance." Lloyd smiled.

"You were always the best of them, Lloyd."

"Why, thank you, sir."

He drank slowly this time, letting it trickle down his

throat, tossing a few peanuts down the chute for good luck.

The drink was gone in no time, and he ordered another. Mr.

President, I have met the martians and am pleased to report

they are friendly. While Lloyd fixed another, he began

searching his pockets for a quarter to put in the jukebox. He

thought of Danny again, but Danny's face was pleasantly fuzzed

and nondescript now. He had hurt Danny once, but that had been

before he had learned how to handle his liquor. Those days

were behind him now. He would never hurt Danny again.

Not for the world.

CONVERSATIONS AT THE PARTY

He was dancing with a beautiful woman.

He had no idea what time it was, how long he had spent in the

Colorado Lounge or how long he had been here in the ballroom.

Time had ceased to matter.

He had vague memories: listening to a man who had once been a

successful radio comic and then a variety star in TV', infant

days telling a very long and very hilarious joke about incest

between Siamese twins; seeing the woman in the harem pants and

the sequined bra do a slow and sinuous striptease to some

bumping-andgrinding music from the jukebox (it seemed it had

been David Rose's theme music from The Stripper); crossing the

lobby as one of three, the other two men in evening dress that

predated the twenties, all of them singing about the stiff

patch on Rosie O'Grady's knickers. He seemed to remember

looking out the big double doors and seeing Japanese lanterns

strung in graceful, curving arcs that followed the sweep of

the driveway-they gleamed in soft pastel colors like dusky

jewels. The big glass globe on the porch ceiling was on, and

night-insects bumped and flittered against it, and a part of

him, perhaps the last tiny spark of sobriety, tried to tell

him that it was 6 A. M. on a morning in December. But time had

been canceled.

(The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft

shurring sound/layer on layer...)

Who was that? Some poet he had read as an undergraduate? Some

undergraduate poet who was now selling washers in Wausau or

insurance in Indianapolis? Perhaps an original thought? Didn't

matter.

(The night is dark/ the stars are high/ a disembodied custard

piel is floating in the sky...)

He giggled helplessly.

"What's funny, honey?"

And here he was again, in the ballroom. The chandelier was

lit and couples were circling all around them, some in costume

and some not, to the smooth sounds of some postwar band-but

which war? Can you be certain?

No, of course not. He was certain of only one thing: he was

dancing with a beautiful woman.

She was tall and auburn-haired, dressed in clinging white

satin, and she was dancing close to him, her breasts pressed

softly and sweetly against his chest. Her white hand was

entwined in his. She was wearing a small and sparkly cat'seye

mask and her hair had been brushed over to one side in a soft

and gleaming fall that seemed to pool in the valley between

their touching shoulders. Her dress was full-skirted but be

could feel her thighs against his legs from time to time and

had become more and more sure that she was smoothand-powdered

naked under her dress,

(the better to feet your erection with, my dear)

and he was sporting a regular railspike. If it offended her

she concealed it well; she snuggled even closer to him.

"Nothing funny, honey," he said, and giggled again.

"I like you," she whispered, and he thought that her scent

was like lilies, secret and hidden in cracks furred with green

moss-places where sunshine is short and shadows long.

"I like you, too."

"We could go upstairs, if you want. I'm supposed to be with

Harry, but he'll never notice. He's too busy teasing poor

Roger."

The number ended. There was a spatter of applause and then

the band swung into "Mood Indigo" with scarcely a pause.

Jack looked over her bare shoulder and saw Derwent standing

by the refreshment table. The girl in the sarong was with him.

There were bottles of champagne in ice buckets ranged along

the white lawn covering the table, and Derwent held a foaming

bottle in his hand. A knot of people had gathered, laughing.

In front of Derwent and the girl in the sarong, Roger capered

grotesquely on all fours, his tail dragging limply behind him.

He was barking.

"Speak, boy, speak!" Harry Derwent cried.

"Rowf! Rowf!" Roger responded. Everyone clapped; a few of the

men whistled.

"Now sit up. Sit up, doggy!"

Roger clambered up on his haunches. The muzzle of his mask

was frozen in its eternal snarl. Inside the eyeholes, Roger's

eyes rolled with frantic, sweaty hilarity. He held his arms

out, dangling the paws.

"Rowf! Rowf!"

Derwent upended the bottle of champagne and it fell in a

foamy Niagara onto the upturned mask. Roger made frantic

slurping sounds, and everyone applauded again. Some of the

women screamed with laughter.

"Isn't Harry a card?" his partner asked him, pressing close

again. "Everyone says so. He's AC/DC, you know. Poor Roger's

only DC. He spent a weekend with Harry in Cuba once... oh,

months ago. Now he follows Harry everywhere, wagging his

little tail behind him."

She giggled. The shy scent of lilies drifted up.

"But of course Harry never goes back for seconds... not on

his DC side, anyway... and Roger is just wild. Harry told him

if he came to the masked ball as a doggy, a cute little doggy,

he might reconsider, and Roger is such a silly that he..."

The number ended. There was more applause. The band members

were filing down for a break.

"Excuse me, sweetness," she said. "There's someone I just

roust... Darla! Darla, you dear girl, where have you been?"

She wove her way into the eating, drinking throng and he

gazed after her stupidly, wondering how they had happened to

be dancing together in the first place. He didn't remember.

Incidents seemed to have occurred with no connections. First

here, then there, then everywhere. His head was spinning. He

smelled lilies and juniper berries. Up by the refreshment

table Derwent was now holding a tiny triangular sandwich over

Roger's head and urging him, to the general merriment of the

onlookers, to do a somersault. The dogmask was turned upward.

The silver sides of the dog costume bellowsed in and out.

Roger suddenly leaped, tucking his head under, and tried to

roll in mid-air. His leap was too low and too exhausted; he

landed awkwardly on his back, rapping his head smartly on the

tiles. A hollow groan drifted out of the dogmask.

Derwent led the applause. "Try again, doggy! Try again!" The

onlookers took up the chant-try again, try again- and Jack

staggered off the other way, feeling vaguely ill.

He almost fell over the drinks cart that was being wheeled

along by a lowbrowed man in a white mess jacket. His foot

rapped the lower chromed shelf of the cart; the bottles and

siphons on top chattered together musically.

"Sorry," Jack said thickly. He suddenly felt closed in and

claustrophobic; he wanted to get out. He wanted the Overlook

back the way it had been... free of these unwanted guests. His

place was not honored, as the true opener of the way; he was

only another of the ten thousand cheering extras, a doggy

rolling over and sitting up on command.

"Quite all right," the man in the white mess jacket said. The

polite, clipped English coming from that thug's face was

surreal. "A drink?"

"Martini."

From behind him, another comber of laughter broke; Roger was

howling to the tune of "Home on the Range." Someone was

picking out accompaniment on the Steinway baby grand.

"Here you are."

The frosty cold glass was pressed into his hand. Jack drank

gratefully, feeling the gin hit and crumble away the first

inroads of sobriety.

"Is it all right, sir?"

"Fine."

"Thank you, sir." The cart began to roll again.

Jack suddenly reached out and touched the man's shoulder.

"Yes, sir?"

"Pardon me, but... what's your name?"

The other showed no surprise. "Grady, sir. Delbert Grady."

"But you... I mean that..."

The bartender was looking at him politely. Jack tried again,

although his mouth was mushed by gin and unreality; each word

felt as large as an ice cube.

"Weren't you once the caretaker here? When you.., when..."

But he couldn't finish. He couldn't say it.

"Why no, sir. I don't believe so."

"But your wife... your daughters..

"My wife is helping in the kitchen, sir. The girls are

asleep, of course. It's much too late for them."

"You were the caretaker. You-" Oh say it! "You killed them."

Grady's face remained blankly polite. "I don't have any

recollection of that at all, sir." His glass was empty. Grady

plucked it from Jack's unresisting fingers and set about

making another drink for him. There was a small white plastic

bucket on his cart that was filled with olives. For soave

reason

they reminded Jack of tiny severed heads. Grady speared one

deftly, dropped it into the glass, and handed it to him.

"But you-"

"You're the caretaker, sir," Grady said mildly. "You've

always been the caretaker. I should know, sir. I've always

been here. The same manager hired us both, at the same time.

Is it all right, sir?"

Jack gulped at his drink. His head was swirling. "Mr. Ullman

-"

"I know no one by that name, sir."

"But he-"

"The manager," Grady said. "The hotel, sir. Surely you

realize who hired you, sir."

"No," he said thickly. "No, I-"

"I believe you must take it up further with your son, Mr.

Torrance, sir. He understands everything, although he hasn't

enlightened you. Rather naughty of him, if I may be so bold,

sir. In fact, he's crossed you at almost every turn, hasn't

he? And him not yet six."

"Yes," Jack said. "He has." There was another wave of

laughter from behind them.

"He needs to be corrected, if you don't mind me saying so. He

needs a good talking-to, and perhaps a bit more. My own girls,

sir, didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them

actually stole a pack of my matches and tried to burn it down.

I corrected them. I corrected them most harshly. And when my

wife tried to stop me from doing my duty, I corrected her." He

offered Jack a bland, meaningless smile. "I find it a sad but

true fact that women rarely understand a father's

responsibility to his children. Husbands and fathers do have

certain responsibilities, don't they, sir?"

"Yes," Jack said.

"They didn't love the Overlook as I did," Grady said,

beginning to make him another drink. Silver bubbles rose in

the upended gin bottle. "Just as your son and wife don't love

it. not at present, anyway. But they will come to love it.

You must show them the error of their ways, Mr. Torrance. Do

you agree?"

"Yes. I do."

He did see. He had been too easy with them. Husbands and

fathers did have certain responsibilities. Father Knows Best.

They did not understand. That in itself was no crime, but they

were willfully not understanding. He was not ordinarily a

harsh man. But he did believe in punishment. And if his son

and his wife had willfully set themselves against his wishes,

against the things he knew were best for them, then didn't he

have a certain duty-?

"A thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth," Grady

said, handing him his drink. "I do believe that the manager

could bring your son into line. And your wife would shortly

follow. Do you agree, sir?"

He was suddenly uncertain. "I... but... if they could just

leave... I mean, after all, it's me the manager wants, isn't

it? It must be. Because-" Because why? He should know but

suddenly he didn't. Oh, his poor brain was swimming.

"Bad dog!" Derwent was saying loudly, to a counterpoint of

laughter. "Bad dog to piddle on the floor."

"Of course you know," Grady said, leaning confidentially over

the cart, "your son is attempting to bring an outside party

into it. Your son has a very great talent, one that the

manager could use to even further improve the Overlook, to

further.... enrich it, shall we say? But your son is

attempting to use that very talent against us. He is willful,

Mr. Torrance, Sir. Willful."

"Outside party?" Jack asked stupidly.

Grady nodded.

"Who?"

"A nigger," Grady said. "A nigger cook."

"Hallorann?"

"I believe that is his name, sir, yes."

Another burst of laughter from behind them was followed by

Roger saying something in a whining, protesting voice.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Derwent began to chant. The others around

him took it up, but before Jack could hear what they wanted

Roger to do now, the band began to play again-the tune was

"Tuxedo Junction," with a lot of mellow sax in it but not much

soul.

(Soul? Soul hasn't even been invented yet. Or has it?)

(A nigger... a nigger cook.)

He opened his mouth to speak, not knowing what might come

out. What did was:

"I was told you hadn't finished high school. But you don't

talk like an uneducated man."

"It's true that I left organized education very early, sir.

But the manager takes care of his help. He finds that it pays.

Education always pays, don't you agree, sir?"

"Yes," Jack said dazedly.

"For instance, you show a great interest in learning more

about the Overlook Hotel. Very wise of you, sir. Very noble. A

certain scrapbook was left in the basement for you to find-"

"By whom?" Jack asked eagerly.

"By the manager, of course. Certain other materials could be

put at your disposal, if you wished them... "

"I do. Very much." He tried to control the eagerness in his

voice and failed miserably.

"You're a true scholar," Grady said. "Pursue the topic to the

end. Exhaust all sources." He dipped his low-browed head,

pulled out the lapel of his white mess jacket, and buffed his

knuckles at a spot of dirt that was invisible to Jack.

"And the manager puts no strings on his largess," Grady went

on. "Not at all. Look at me, a tenth-grade dropout Think how

much further you yourself could go in the Overlooks

organizational structure. Perhaps... in time... to the very

top."

"Really?" Jack whispered.

"But that's really up to your son to decide, isn't it?" Grady

asked, raising his eyebrows. The delicate gesture went oddly

with the brows themselves, which were bushy and somehow

savage.

"Up to Danny?" Jack frowned at Grady. "No, of course not. I

wouldn't allow my son to make decisions concerning my career.

Not at all. What do you take me for? "

"A dedicated man," Grady said warmly. "Perhaps I put it

badly, sir. Let us say that your future here is contingent

upon how you decide to deal with your son's waywardness."

"I make my own decisions," Jack whispered.

"But you must deal with him."

"I will."

"Firmly "

"I will."

"A man who cannot control his own family holds very little

interest for our manager. A man who cannot guide the courses

of his own wife and son can hardly be expected to guide

himself, let alone assume a position of responsibility in an

operation of this magnitude. He-"

"I said I'll handle him!" Jack shouted suddenly, enraged.

"Tuxedo Junction" had just concluded and a new tune hadn't

begun. His shout fell perfectly into the gap, and conversation

suddenly ceased behind him. His skin suddenly felt hot all

over. He became fixedly positive that everyone was staring at

him. They had finished with Roger and would now commence with

him. Roll over. Sit up. Play dead. If you play the game with

us, we'll play the game with you. Position of responsibility.

They wanted him to sacrifice his son.

(-Now he follows Harry everywhere, wagging his little tail

behind him-)

(Roll over. Play dead. Chastise your son.)

"Right this way, sir," Grady was saying. "Something that

might interest you."

The conversation had begun again, lifting and dropping in its

own rhythm, weaving in and out of the band music, now doing a

swing version of Lennon and McCartney's "Ticket to Ride."

(I've heard better over supermarket loudspeakers.)

He giggled foolishly. He looked down at his left hand and saw

there was another drink in it, half-full. He emptied it at a

gulp.

Now he was standing in front of the mantelpiece, the heat

from the crackling fire that bad been laid in the hearth

warming his legs.

(a fire?... in August?... yes... and no... all times are one)

There was a clock under a glass dome, flanked by two carved

ivory elephants. Its hands stood at a minute to midnight. He

gazed at it blearily. Had this been what Grady wanted him to

see? He turned around to ask, but Grady had left him.

Halfway through "Ticket to Ride," the band wound up in a

brassy flourish.

"The hour is at hand!" Horace Derwent proclaimed. "Midnight!

Unmask! Unmask!"

He tried to turn again, to see what famous faces were hidden

beneath the glitter and paint and masks, but he was frozen

now, unable to look away from the clock-its hands had come

together and pointed straight up.

"Unmask! Unmask!" the chant went up.

The clock began to chime delicately. Along the steel runner

below the clockface, from the left and right, two figures

advanced. Jack watched, fascinated, the unmasking forgotten.

Clockwork whirred. Cogs turned and meshed, brass warmly

glowing. The balance wheel rocked back and forth precisely.

One of the figures was a man standing on tiptoe, with what

looked like a tiny club clasped in his hands. The other was a

small boy wearing a dunce cap. The clockwork figures

glittered, fantastically precise. Across the front of the

boy's dunce cap he could read the engraved word FOOLE.

The two figures slipped onto the opposing ends of a steel

axis bar. Somewhere, tinkling on and on, were the strains of a

Strauss waltz. An insane commercial jingle began to run

through his mind to the tune: Buy dog food, rowf-rowf,

rowfrowf, buy dog food...

The steel mallet in the clockwork daddy's hands came down on

the boy's head. The clockwork son crumpled forward. The mallet

rose and fell, rose and fell. The boy's upstretched,

protesting hands began to falter. The boy sagged from his

crouch to a prone position. And still the hammer rose and fell

to the light, tinkling air of the Strauss melody, and it

seemed that he could see the man's face, working and knotting

and constricting, could see the clockwork daddy's mouth

opening and closing as he berated the unconscious, bludgeoned

figure of the son.

A spot of red flew up against the inside of the glass dome.

Another followed. Two more splattered beside it.

Now the red liquid was spraying up like an obscene rain

shower, striking the glass sides of the dome and running,

obscuring what was going on inside, and flecked through the

scarlet were tiny gray ribbons of tissue, fragments of bone

and brain. And still he could see the hammer rising and

falling as the clockwork continued to turn and the cogs

continued to mesh the gears and teeth of this cunningly made

machine.

"Unmask! Unmask!" Derwent was shrieking behind him, and

somewhere a dog was howling in human tones.

(But clockwork can't bleed clockwork can't bleed)

The entire dome was splashed with blood, he could see clotted

bits of hair but nothing else thank God he could see nothing

else, and still he thought he would be sick because he could

hear the hammerblows still falling, could hear them through

the glass just as he could hear the phrases of "The Blue

Danube." But the sounds were no longer the mechanical tink-

tink-tink noises of a mechanical hammer striking a mechanical

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