head, but the soft and squashy thudding sounds of a real
hammer slicing down and whacking into a spongy, muddy ruin. A
ruin that once had been-
"UNMASK!"
(-the Red Death held sway over all!)
With a miserable, rising scream, he turned away from the
clock, his hands outstretched, his feet stumbling against one
another like wooden blocks as he begged them to stop, to take
him, Danny, Wendy, to take the whole world if they wanted it,
but only to stop and leave him a little sanity, a little
light.
The ballroom was empty.
The chairs with their spindly legs were upended on tables
covered with plastic dust drops. The red rug with its golden
tracings was back on the dance floor, protecting the polished
hardwood surface. The bandstand was deserted except for a
disassembled microphone stand and a dusty guitar leaning
stringless against the wall. Cold morning light, winterlight,
fell languidly through the high windows.
His head was still reeling, he still felt drunk, but when he
turned back to the mantelpiece, his drink was gone. There were
only the ivory elephants... and the clock.
He stumbled back across the cold, shadowy lobby and through
the dining room. His foot hooked around a table leg and he
fell full-length, upsetting the table with a clatter. He
struck his nose hard on the floor and it began to bleed. He
got up, snufing back blood and wiping his nose with the back
of his hand. He crossed to the Colorado Lounge and shoved
through the batwing doors, making them fly back and bang into
the walls.
The place was empty... but the bar was fully stocked:. God be
praised! Glass and the silver edging on labels glowed warmly
in the dark.
Once, he remembered, a very long time ago, he had been angry
that there was no backbar mirror. Now he was glad. Looking
into it he would have seen just another drunk fresh off the
wagon: bloody nose, untucked shirt, hair rumpled, cheeks
stubbly.
(This is what it's like to stick your whole hand into the
nest.)
Loneliness surged over him suddenly and completely. He cried
out with sudden wretchedness and honestly wished he were dead.
His wife and son were upstairs with the door locked against
him. The others bad all left. The party was over.
He lurched forward again, reaching the bar.
"Lloyd, where the fuck are you?" he screamed.
There was no answer. In this well-padded
(cell)
room, his words did not even echo back to give the illusion
of company.
"Grady!"
No answer. Only the bottles, standing stiffly at attention.
(Roll over. Play dead. Fetch. Play dead. Sit up. Play dead.)
"Never mind, I'll do it myself, goddammit."
Halfway over the bar he lost his balance and pitched forward,
hitting his head a muffled blow on the floor. He got up on his
hands and knees, his eyeballs moving disjointed from side to
side, fuzzy muttering sounds coming from his mouth. Then he
collapsed, his face turned to one side, breathing in harsh
snores.
Outside, the wind whooped louder, driving the thickening snow
before it. It was 8:30 A. M.
STAPLETON AIRPORT, DENVER
At 8:31 A. M., MST, a woman on TWA's Flight 196 burst into
tears and began to bugle her own opinion, which was perhaps
not unshared among some of the other passengers (or even the
crew, for that matter), that the plane was going to crash.
The sharp-faced woman next to Hallorann looked up from her
book and offered a brief character analysis: "Ninny," and went
back to her book. She had downed two screwdrivers during the
flight, but they seemed not to have thawed her at all.
"It's going to crash!" the woman was crying out shrilly. "Oh,
I just know it is!"
A stewardess hurried to her seat and squatted beside her.
Hallorann thought to himself that only stewardesses and very
young housewives seemed able to squat with any degree of
grace; it was a rare and wonderful talent. He thought about
this while the stewardess talked softly and soothingly to the
woman, quieting her bit by bit.
Hallorann didn't know about anyone else on 196, but he
personally was almost scared enough to shit peachpits. Outside
the window there was nothing to be seen but a buffeting
curtain of white. The plane rocked sickeningly from side to
side with gusts that seemed to come from everywhere. The
engines were cranked up to provide partial compensation and as
a result the floor was vibrating under their feet. There were
several people moaning in Tourist behind them, one stew had
gone back with a handful of fresh airsick bags, and a man
three rows in front of Hallorann had whoopsed into his
National Observer and had grinned apologetically at the
stewardess who came to help him clean up. "That's all right,"
she comforted him, "that's how I feel about the Reader's
Digest."
Hallorann had flown enough to be able to surmise what had
happened. They had been flying against bad headwinds most of
the way, the weather over Denver had worsened suddenly and
unexpectedly, and now it was just a little late to divert for
someplace where the weather was better. Feets don't fail me
now.
(Buddy-boy, this is some fucked-up cavalry charge.)
The stewardess seemed to have succeeded in curbing the worst
of the woman's hysterics. She was snuffling and honking into a
lace handkerchief, but had ceased broadcasting her opinions
about the flight's possible conclusion to the cabin at large.
The stew gave her a final pat on the shoulder and stood up
just as the 747 gave its worst lurch yet. The stewardess
stumbled backward and landed in the lap of the man who had
whoopsed into his paper, exposing a lovely length of nyloned
thigh. The man blinked and then patted her kindly on the
shoulder. She smiled back, but Hallorann thought the strain
was showing. It had been one hell of a hard flight this
morning.
There was a little ping as the No SMOKING light reappeared.
"This is the captain speaking," a soft, slightly southern
voice informed them. "We're ready to begin our descent to
Stapleton International Airport. It's been a rough flight, for
which I apologize. The landing may be a bit rough also, but we
anticipate no real difficulty. Please observe the FASTEN SEAT
BELTS and NO SMOKING signs, and we hope you enjoy your stay in
the Denver metro area. And we also hope-"
Another hard bump rocked the plane and then dropped her with
a sickening elevator plunge. Hallorann's stomach did a queasy
hornpipe. Several people-not all women by any means-screamed.
"-that we'll see you again on another TWA flight real soon."
"Not bloody likely," someone behind Hallorann said.
"So silly," the sharp-faced woman next to Hallorann remarked,
putting a matchbook cover into her book and shutting it as the
plane began to descend. "When one has seen the horrors of a
dirty little war... as you have... or sensed the degrading
immorality of CIA dollar-diplomacy intervention... as I
have... a rough landing pales into insignificance. Am I right,
Mr. Hallorann? "
"As rain, ma'am," he said, and looked bleakly out into the
wildly blowing snow.
"How is your steel plate reacting to all of this, if I might
inquire?"
"Oh, my head's fine," Hallorann said. "It's just my stomach
that's a mite queasy."
"A shame." She reopened her book.
As they descended through the impenetrable clouds of snow,
Hallorann thought of a crash that had occurred at Boston's
Logan Airport a few years ago. The conditions had been
similar, only fog instead of snow had reduced visibility to
zero. The plane had caught its undercarriage on a retaining
wall near the end of the landing strip. What had been left of
the eighty-nine people aboard hadn't looked much different
from a Hamburger Helper casserole.
He wouldn't mind so much if it was just himself. He was
pretty much alone in the world now, and attendance at his
funeral would be mostly held down to the people he had worked
with and that old renegade Masterton, who would at least drink
to him. But the boy... the boy was depending on him. He was
maybe all the help that child could expect, and he didn't like
the way the boy's last call had been snapped off. He kept
thinking of the way those hedge animals had seemed to move...
A thin white hand appeared over his.
The woman with the sharp face had taken off her glasses.
Without them her features seemed much softer.
"It will be all right," she said.
Hallorann made a smile and nodded.
As advertised the plane came down hard, reuniting with the
earth forcefully enough to knock most of the magazines out of
the rack at the front and to send plastic trays cascading out
of the galley like oversized playing cards. No one screamed,
but Hallorann heard several sets of teeth clicking violently
together like gypsy castanets.
Then the turbine engines rose to a howl, braking the plane,
and as they dropped in volume the pilot's soft southern voice,
perhaps not completely steady, came over the intercom system.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have landed at Stapleton Airport.
Please remain in your seats until the plane has come to a
complete stop at the terminal. Thank you."
The woman beside Hallorann closed her book and uttered a long
sigh. "We live to fight another day, Mr. Hallorann."
"Ma'am, we aren't done with this one, yet."
"True. Very true. Would you care to have a drink in the
lounge with me?"
"I would, but I have an appointment to keep."
"Pressing?"
"Very pressing," Hallorann said gravely.
"Something that will improve the general situation in some
small way, I hope."
"I hope so too," Hallorann said, and smiled. She smiled back
at him, ten years dropping silently from her face as she did
so.
* * *
Because he had only the flight bag he'd carried for luggage,
Hallorann beat the crowd to the Hertz desk on the lower level.
Outside the smoked glass windows he could see the snow still
falling steadily. The gusting wind drove white clouds of it
back and forth, and the people walking across to the parking
area were struggling against it. One man lost his hat and
Hallorann could commiserate with him as it whirled high, wide,
and handsome. The man stared after it and Hallorann thought:
(Aw, just forget it, man. That homburg ain't comin down until
it gets to Arizona.)
On the heels of that thought:
(If it's this bad in Denver, what's it going to be like west
of Boulder?)
Best not to think about that, maybe.
"Can I help you, sir?" a girl in Hertz yellow asked him.
"If you got a car, you can help me," he said with a big grin.
For a heavier-than-average charge he was able to get a
heavier-than-average car, a silver and black Buick Electra. He
was thinking of the winding mountain roads rather than style;
he would still have to stop somewhere along the way and get
chains put on. He wouldn't get far without them.
"How bad is it?" he asked as she handed him the rental
agreement to sign.
"They say it's the worst storm since 1969," she answered
brightly. "Do you have far to drive, sir?"
"Farther than I'd like."
"If you'd like, sir, I can phone ahead to the Texaco station
at the Route 270 junction. They'll put chains on for you. '
"That would be a great blessing, dear."
She picked up the phone and made the call. "They'll be
expecting you."
"Thank you much."
Leaving the desk, he saw the sharp-faced woman standing on
one of the queues that had formed in front of the luggage
carousel. She was still reading her book. Hallorann winked at
her as he went by. She looked up, smiled at him, and gave him
a peace sign.
(shine)
He turned up his overcoat collar, smiling, and shifted his
flight bag to the other hand. Only a little one, but it made
him feel better. He was sorry he'd told her that fish story
about having a steel plate in his head. He mentally wished her
well and as he went out into the howling wind and snow, he
thought she wished him the same in return
* * *
The charge for putting on the chains at the service station
was a modest one, but Hallorann slipped the man at work in the
garage bay an extra ten to get moved up a little way on the
waiting list. It was still quarter of ten before he was
actually on the road, the windshield wipers clicking and the
chains clinking with tuneless monotony on the Buick's big
wheels.
The turnpike was a mess. Even with the chains he could go no
faster than thirty. Cars had gone off the road at crazy
angles, and on several of the grades traffic was barely
struggling along, summer tires spinning helplessly in the
drifting powder. It was the first big storm of the winter down
here in the lowlands (if you could call a mile above sealevel
"low"), and it was a mother. Many of them were unprepared,
common enough, but Hallorann still found himself cursing them
as he inched around them, peering into his snow-clogged
outside mirror to be sure nothing was
(Dashing through the snow...)
coming up in the left-hand lane to cream his black ass.
There was more bad luck waiting for him at the Route 36
entrance ramp. Route 36, the Denver-Boulder turnpike, also
goes west to Estes Park, where it connects with Route 7. That
road, also known as the Upland Highway, goes through
Sidewinder, passes the Overlook Hotel, and finally winds down
the Western Slope and into Utah.
The entrance ramp had been blocked by an overturned semi.
Bright-burning flares had been scattered around it like
birthday candles on some idiot child's cake.
He came to a stop and rolled his window down. A cop with a
fur Cossack hat jammed down over his ears gestured with one
gloved hand toward the flow of traffic moving north on I-25.
"You can't get up herel" he bawled to Hallorann over the
wind. "Go down two exits, get on 91, and connect with 36 at
Broomfield!"
"I think I could get around him on the left!" Hallorann
shouted back. "That's twenty miles out of my way, what you're
rappin!"
"I'll rap your friggin head!" the cop shouted back. "This
ramp's closed!"
Hallorann backed up, waited for a break in traffic, and
continued on his way up Route 25. The signs informed him it
was only a hundred miles to Cheyenne, Wyoming. If he didn't
look out for his ramp, he'd wind up there.
He inched his speed up to thirty-five but dared no more;
already snow was threatening to clog his wiper blades and the
traffic patterns were decidedly crazy. Twenty-mile detour. He
cursed, and the feeling that time was growing shorter for the
boy welled up in him again, nearly suffocating with its
urgency. And at the same time he felt a fatalistic certainty
that he would not be coming back from this trip.
He turned on the radio, dialed past Christmas ads, and found
a weather forecast.
"-six inches already, and another foot is expected in the
Denver metro area by nightfall. Local and state police urge
you not to take your car out of the garage unless it's
absolutely necessary, and warn that most mountain passes have
already been closed. So stay home and wax up your boards and
keep tuned to-"
"Thanks, mother," Hallorann said, and turned the radio off
savagely.
WENDY
Around noon, after Danny had gone into the bathroom to use
the toilet, Wendy took the towel-wrapped knife from under her
pillow, put it in the pocket of her bathrobe, and went over to
the bathroom door.
"Danny?"
"What?"
"I'm going down to make us some lunch. 'Kay?"
"Okay. Do you want me to come down?"
"No, I'll bring it up. How about a cheese omelet and some
soup?"
"Sure."
She hesitated outside the closed door a moment longer,
"Danny, are you sure it's okay?"
"Yeah," he said. "Just be careful."
"Where's your father? Do you know?"
His voice came back, curiously flat: "No. But it's okay." She
stifled an urge to keep asking, to keep picking around the
edges of the thing. The thing was there, they knew what it
was, picking at it was only going to frighten Danny more...
and herself. Jack had lost his mind. They had sat together on
Danny's cot as the storm began to pick up clout and meanness
around eight o'clock this morning and had listened to him
downstairs, bellowing and stumbling from one place to another.
Most of it had seemed to come from the ballroom. Jack singing
tuneless bits of song, Jack holding up one side of an
argument, Jack screaming loudly at one point, freezing both of
their faces as they stared into one another's eyes. Finally
they had heard him stumbling back across the lobby, and Wendy
thought she had heard a loud banging noise, as if he had
fallen down or pushed a door violently open. Since eightthirty
or so-three and a half hours now-there had been only silence.
She went down the short hall, turned into the main first
floor corridor, and went to the stairs. She stood on the
firstfloor landing looking down into the lobby. It appeared
deserted, but the gray and snowy day had left much of the long
room in shadow. Danny could be wrong. Jack could be behind a
chair or couch... maybe behind the registration desk...
waiting for her to come down,...
She wet her lips. "Jack?"
No answer.
Her hand found the handle of the knife and she began to go
down. She had seen the end of her marriage many times, in
divorce, in Jack's death at the scene of a drunken car
accident (a regular vision in the dark two o'clock of
Stovington mornings), and occasionally in daydreams of being
discovered by another man, a soap opera Galahad who would
sweep Danny and her onto the saddle of his snowwhite charger
and take them away. But she had never envisioned herself
prowling halls and staircases like a nervous felon, with a
knife clasped in one hand to use against Jack.
A wave of despair struck through her at the thought and she
had to stop halfway down the stairs and hold the railing,
afraid her knees would buckle.
(Admit it. It isn't just Jack, he's just the one solid thing
in all of this you can hang the other things on, the things
you can't believe and yet are being forced to believe, that
thing about the hedges, the party favor in the elevator, the
mask)
She tried to stop the thought but it was too late.
(and the voices.)
Because from time to time it had not seemed that there was a
solitary crazy man below them, shouting at and holding
conversations with the phantoms in his own crumbling mind.
From time to time, like a radio signal fading in and out, she
had heard-or thought she had-other voices, and music, and
laughter. At one moment she would hear Jack holding a
conversation with someone named Grady (the name was vaguely
familiar to her but she made no actual connection), making
statements and asking questions into silence, yet speaking
loudly, as if to make himself heard over a steady background
racket. And then, eerily, other sounds would be there, seeming
to slip into places-a dance band, people clapping, a man with
an amused yet authoritative voice who seemed to be trying to
persuade somebody to make a speech. For a period of thirty
seconds to a minute she would hear this, long enough to grow
faint with terror, and then it would be gone again and she
would only hear Jack, talking in that commanding yet slightly
slurred way she remembered as his drunk-speak voice. But there
was nothing in the hotel to drink except cooking sherry.
Wasn't that right? Yes, but if she could imagine that the
hotel was full of voices and music, couldn't Jack imagine that
he was drunk?
She didn't like that thought. Not at all.
Wendy reached the lobby and looked around. The velvet rope
that had cordoned off the ballroom had been taken down; the
steel post it had been clipped to had been knocked over, as if
someone had carelessly bumped it going by. Mellow white light
fell through the open door onto the lobby rug from the
ballroom's high, narrow windows. Heart thumping, she went to
the open ballroom doors and looked in. It was empty and
silent, the only sound that curious subaural echo that seems
to linger in all large rooms, from the largest cathedral to
the smallest hometown bingo parlor.
She went back to the registration desk and stood undecided
for a moment, listening to the wind howl outside. It was the
worst storm so far, and it was still building up force.
Somewhere on the west side a shutter latch had broken and the
shutter banged back and forth with a steady flat cracking
sound, like a shooting gallery with only one customer.
(Jack, you really should take care of that. Before something
gets in.)
What would she do if he came at her right now, she wondered.
If he should pop up from behind the dark, varnished
registration desk with its pile of triplicate forms and its
little silver-plated bell, like some murderous jack-in-the-
box, pun intended, a grinning jack-in-the-box with a cleaver
in one hand and no sense at all left behind his eyes. Would
she stand frozen with terror, or was there enough of the
primal mother in her to fight him for her son until one of
them was dead? She didn't know. The very thought made her
sickmade her feel that her whole life had been a long and easy
dream to lull her helplessly into this waking nightmare. She
was soft. When trouble came, she slept. Her past was
unremarkable. She had never been tried in fire. Now the trial
was upon her, not fire but ice, and she would not be allowed
to sleep through this. Her son was waiting for her upstairs.
Clutching the haft of the knife tighter, she peered over the
desk.
Nothing there.
Her relieved breath escaped her in a long, hitching sigh.
She put the gate up and went through, pausing to glance into
the inner office before going in herself. She fumbled through
the next door for the bank of kitchen light switches, coldly
expecting a hand to close over hers at any second. Then the
fluorescents were coming on with minuscule ticking and humming
sounds and she could see Mr. Hallorann's kitchen-her kitchen
now, for better or worse-pale green tiles, gleaming Formica,
spotless porcelain, glowing chrome edgings. She had promised
him she would keep his kitchen clean, and she had. She felt as
if it was one of Danny's safe places. Dick Hallorann's
presence seemed to enfold and comfort her. Danny had called
for Mr. Hallorann, and upstairs, sitting next to Danny in fear
as her husband ranted and raved below, that had seemed like
the faintest of all hopes. But standing here, in Mr.
Hallorann's place, it seemed almost possible. Perhaps he was
on his way now, intent on getting to them regardless of the
storm. Perhaps it was so.
She went across to the pantry, shot the bolt back, and
stepped inside. She got a can of tomato soup and closed the
pantry door again, and bolted it. The door was tight against
the floor. If you kept it bolted, you didn't have to worry
about rat or mouse droppings in the rice or flour or sugar.
She opened the can and dropped the slightly jellied contents
into a saucepanplop. She went to the refrigerator and got milk
and eggs for the omelet. Then to the walk-in freezer for
cheese. All of these actions, so common and so much a part of
her life before the Overlook had been a part of her life,
helped to calm her.
She melted butter in the frying pan, diluted the soup with
milk, and then poured the beaten eggs into the pan.
A sudden feeling that someone was standing behind her,
reaching for her throat.
She wheeled around, clutching the knife. No one there.
(! Get ahold of yourself, girl!)
She grated a bowl of cheese from the block, added it to the
omelet, flipped it, and turned the gas ring down to a bare
blue flame. The soup was hot. She put the pot on a large tray
with silverware, two bowls, two plates, the salt and pepper
shakers. When the omelet had puffed slightly, Wendy slid it
off onto one of the plates and covered it.
(Now back the way you came. Turn off the kitchen lights. Go
through the inner office. Through the desk gate, collect two
hundred dollars.)
She stopped on the lobby side of the registration desk and
set the tray down beside the silver bell. Unreality would
stretch only so far; this was like some surreal game of
hideand-seek.
She stood in the shadowy lobby, frowning in thought.
(Don't push the facts away this time, girl. There are certain
realities, as lunatic as this situation may seem. One of them
is that you may be the only responsible person left in this
grotesque pile. You have a five-going-on-six son to look out
for. And your husband, whatever has happened to him and no
matter how dangerous he may be... maybe he's part of your
responsibility, too. And even if he isn't consider this: Today
is December second. You could be stuck up here another four
months if a ranger doesn't happen by. Even if they do start to
wonder why they haven't heard from us on the CB, no one is
going to come today... or tomorrow... maybe not for weeks. Are
you going to spend a month sneaking down to get meals with a
knife in your pocket and jumping at every shadow? Do you
really think you can avoid Jack for a month? Do you think you
can keep Jack out of the upstairs quarters if he wants to get
in? He has the passkey and one hard kick would snap the bolt.)
Leaving the tray on the desk, she walked slowly down to the
dining room and looked in. It was deserted. There was one
table with the chairs set up around it, the table they had
tried eating at until the dining room's emptiness began to
freak them out.
"Jack?" she called hesitantly.
At that moment the wind rose in a gust, driving snow against
the shutters, but it seemed to her that there had been
something. A muffled sort of groan.
"Jack?"
No returning sound this time, but her eyes fell on something
beneath the batwing doors of the Colorado Lounge, something
that gleamed faintly in the subdued light. Jack's cigarette
lighter.
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