eyes dark and fathomless. He looked as if he had lost weight.
Looking at the two of them together, Hallorann thought it was
the mother who looked younger, in spite of the terrible
beating she had taken.
(Dick-we have to go-run-the place-it's going to)
Picture of the Overlook, flames leaping out of its roof.
Bricks raining down on the snow. Clang of firebells... not
that any fire truck would be able to get up here much before
the end of March. Most of all what came through in Danny's
thought was a sense of urgent immediacy, a feeling that it was
going to happen at any time.
"All right," Hallorann said. He began to move toward the two
of them and at first it was like swimming through deep water.
His sense of balance was screwed, and the eye on the right
side of his face didn't want to focus. His jaw was sending
giant throbbing bursts of pain up to his temple and down his
neck, and his cheek felt as large as a cabbage. But the boy's
urgency had gotten him going, and it got a little easier.
"All right?" Wendy asked. She looked from Hallorann to her
son and back to Hallorann. "What do you mean, all right?"
"We have to go," Hallorann said.
"I'm not dressed... my clothes..."
Danny darted out of her arms then and raced down the
corridor. She looked after him, and as he vanished around the
corner, back at Hallorann. "What if he comes back?"
"Your husband?"
"He's not Jack," she muttered. "Jack's dead. This place
killed hire. This damned place." She struck at the wall with
her fist and cried out at the pain in her cut fingers. "It's
the boiler, isn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am. Danny says it's going to explode."
"Good." The word was uttered with dead finality. "I don't
know if I can get down those stairs again. My ribs... he broke
my ribs. And something in my back. It hurts."
"You'll make it," Hallorann said. "We'll all make it." But
suddenly he remembered the hedge animals, and wondered what
they would do if they were guarding the way out..
Then Danny was coming back. He had Wendy's boots and coat and
gloves, also his own coat and gloves.
"Danny," she said. "Your boots."
"It's too late," he said. His eyes stared at them with a
desperate kind of madness. He looked at Dick and suddenly
Hallorann's mind was fixed with an image of a clock under a
glass dome, the clock in the ballroom that had been donated by
a Swiss diplomat in 1949. The hands of the clock were standing
at a minute to midnight.
"Oh my God," Hallorann said. "Oh my dear God."
He clapped an arm around Wendy and picked her up. He clapped
his other arm around Danny. He ran for the stairs.
Wendy shrieked in pain as he squeezed the bad ribs, as
something in her back ground together, but Hallorann did not
slow. He plunged down the stairs with them in his arms. One
eye wide and desperate, the other puffed shut to a slit. He
looked like a one-eyed pirate abducting hostages to be
ransomed later.
Suddenly the shine was on him, and he understood what Danny
had meant when he said it was too late. He could feel the
explosion getting ready to rumble up from the basement and
tear the guts out of this horrid place.
He ran faster, bolting headlong across the lobby toward the
double doors.
* * *
It hurried across the basement and into the feeble yellow
glow of the furnace room's only light. It was slobbering with
fear. It had been so close, so close to having the boy and the
boy's remarkable power. It could not lose now. It must not
happen. It would dump the boiler and then chastise the boy
harshly.
"Mustn't happen!" it cried. "Oh no, mustn't happen!"
It stumbled across the floor to the boiler, which glowed a
dull red halfway up its long tubular body. It was huffing and
rattling and hissing off plumes of steam in a hundred
directions, like a monster calliope. The pressure needle stood
at the far end of the dial.
"No, it won't be allowed!" the manager/caretaker cried.
It laid its Jack Torrance hands on the valve, unmindful of
the burning smell which arose or the searing of the flesh as
the red-hot wheel sank in, as if into a mudrut.
The wheel gave, and with a triumphant scream, the thing spun
it wide open. A giant roar of escaping steam bellowed out of
the boiler, a dozen dragons hissing in concert. But before the
steam obscured the pressure needle entirely, the needle had
visibly begun to swing back.
"I WIN!" it cried. It capered obscenely in the hot, rising
mist, waving its flaming hands over its head. "NOT TOO LATE! I
WIN! NOT TOO LATE! NOT TOO LATE! NOT-"
Words turned into a shriek of triumph, and the shriek was
swallowed in a shattering roar as the Overlook's boiler
exploded.
* * *
Hallorann burst out through the double doors and carried the
two of them through the trench in the big snowdrift on the
porch. He saw the hedge animals clearly, more clearly than
before, and even as he realized his worst fears were true,
that they were between the porch and the snowmobile, the hotel
exploded. It seemed to him that it happened all at once,
although later he knew that couldn't have been the way it
happened.
There was a flat explosion, a sound that seemed to exist on
one low allpervasive note
(WHUMMMMMMMMM-)
and then there was a blast of warm air at their backs that
seemed to push gently at them. They were thrown from the porch
on its breath, the three of them, and a confused thought
(this is what superman must feel like)
slipped through Hallorann's mind as they flew through the
air. He lost his hold on them and then he struck the snow in a
soft billow. It was down his shirt and up his nose and he was
dimly aware that it felt good on his hurt cheek.
Then he struggled to the top of it, for that moment not
thinking about the hedge animals, or Wendy Torrance, or even
the boy. He rolled over on his back so he could watch it die.
* * *
The Overlook's windows shattered. In the ballroom, the dome
over the mantelpiece clock cracked, split in two pieces, and
fell to the floor. The clock stopped ticking: cogs and gears
and balance wheel all became motionless. There was a
whispered, sighing noise, and a great billow of dust. In 217
the bathtub suddenly split in two, letting out a small flood
of greenish, noxious-smelling water. In the Presidential Suite
the wallpaper suddenly burst into flames. The batwing doors of
the Colorado Lounge suddenly snapped their hinges and fell to
the dining room floor. Beyond the basement arch, the great
piles and stacks of old papers caught fire and went up with a
blowtorch hiss. Boiling water rolled over the flames but did
not quench them. Like burning autumn leaves below a wasps'
nest, they whirled and blackened. The furnace exploded,
shattering the basement's roofbeams, sending them crashing
down like the bones of a dinosaur. The gasjet which had fed
the furnace, unstoppered now, rose up in a bellowing pylon of
flame through the riven floor of the lobby. The carpeting on
the stair risers caught, racing up to the first-floor level as
if to tell dreadful good news. A fusillade of explosions
ripped the place. The chandelier in the dining room, a two-
hundred-pound crystal bomb, fell with a splintering crash,
knocking tables every which way. Flame belched out of the
Overlook's five chimneys at the breaking clouds.
(No! Mustn't! Mustn't! MUSTN'T!)
It shrieked; it shrieked but now it was voiceless and it was
only screaming panic and doom and damnation in its own ear,
dissolving, losing thought and will, the webbing falling
apart, searching, not finding, going out, going out to,
fleeing, going out to emptiness, notness, crumbling.
The party was over.
EXIT
The roar shook the whole facade of the hotel. Glass belched
out onto the snow and twinkled there like jagged diamonds. The
hedge dog, which had been approaching Danny and his mother,
recoiled away from it, its green and shadowmarbled ears
flattening, its tail coming down between its legs as its
haunches flattened abjectly. In his head, Hallorann heard it
whine fearfully, and mixed with that sound was the fearful,
confused yowling of the big cats. He struggled to his feet to
go to the other two and help them, and as he did so he saw
something more nightmarish than all the rest: the hedge
rabbit, still coated with snow, was battering itself crazily
at the chainlink fence at the far end of the playground, and
the steel mesh was jingling with a kind of nightmare music,
like a spectral zither. Even from here he could hear the
sounds of the close-set twigs and branches which made up its
body cracking and crunching like breaking bones.
"Dick! Dick!" Danny cried out. He was trying to support his
mother, help her over to the snowmobile. The clothes he had
carried out for the two of them were scattered between where
they had fallen and where they now stood. Hallorann was
suddenly aware that the woman was in her nightclothes, Danny
jacketless, and it was no more than ten above zero.
(my gad she's in her bare feet)
He struggled back through the snow, picking up her coat, her
boots, Danny's coat, odd gloves. Then he ran back to them,
plunging hip-deep in the snow from time to time, having to
flounder his way out.
Wendy was horribly pale, the side of her neck coated with
blood, blood that was now freezing.
"I can't," she muttered. She was no more than semiconscious.
"No, I... can't. Sorry."
Danny looked up at Hallorann pleadingly.
"Gonna be okay," Hallorann said, and gripped her again. "Come
on."
The three of them made it to where the snowmobile had slewed
around and stalled out. Hallorann sat the woman down on the
passenger seat and put her coat on. He lifted her feet up-they
were very cold but not frozen yet-and rubbed them briskly with
Danny's jacket before putting on her boots. Wendy's face was
alabaster pale, her eyes halflidded and dazed, but she had
begun to shiver. Hallorann thought that was a good sign.
Behind them, a series of three explosions rocked the hotel.
Orange flashes lit the snow.
Danny put his mouth close to Hallorann's ear and screamed
something.
"What?"
"I said do you need that?"
The boy was pointing at the red gascan that leaned at an
angle in the snow.
"I guess we do."
He picked it up and sloshed it. Still gas in there, he
couldn't tell how much. He attached the can to the back of the
snowmobile, fumbling the job several times before getting it
right because his fingers were going numb. For the first time
he became aware that he'd lost Howard Cottrell's mittens.
(i get out of this i gonna have my sister knit you a dozen
pair, howie)
"Get on!" Hallorann shouted at the boy.
Danny shrank back. "We'll freeze!"
"We have to go around to the equipment shed! There's stuff in
there... blankets... stuff like that. Get on behind your
mother!"
Danny got on, and Hallorann twisted his head so he could
shout into Wendy's face.
"Missus Torrance! Hold onto me! You understand? Hold on!"
She put her arms around him and rested her cheek against his
back. Hallorann started the snowmobile and turned the throttle
delicately so they would start up without a jerk. The woman
had the weakest sort of grip on him, and if she shifted
backward, her weight would tumble both her and the boy off.
They began to move. He brought the snowmobile around in a
circle and then they were traveling west parallel to the
hotel. Hallorann cut in more to circle around behind it to the
equipment shed.
They had a momentarily clear view into the Overlook's lobby.
The gasflame coming up through the shattered floor was like a
giant birthday candle, fierce yellow at its heart and blue
around its flickering edges. In that moment it seemed only to
be lighting, not destroying. They could see the registration
desk with its silver bell, the credit card decals, the old-
fashioned, scrolled cash register, the small figured throw
rugs, the highbacked chairs, horsehair hassocks. Danny could
see the small sofa by the fireplace where the three nuns had
sat on the day they had come up-closing day. But this was the
real closing day.
Then the drift on the porch blotted the view out. A moment
later they were skirting the west side of the hotel. It was
still light enough to see without the snowmobile's headlight.
Both upper stories were flaming now, and pennants of flame
shot out the windows. The gleaming white paint had begun to
blacken and peel. The shutters which had covered the
Presidential Suite's picture windowshutters Jack had carefully
fastened as per instructions in mid-October-now hung in
flaming brands, exposing the wide and shattered darkness
behind them, like a toothless mouth yawing in a final, silent
deathrattle.
Wendy had pressed her face against Hallorann's back to cut
out the wind, and Danny had likewise pressed his face against
his mother's back, and so it was only Hallorann who saw the
final thing, and he never spoke of it. From the window of the
Presidential Suite he thought he saw a huge dark shape issue,
blotting out the snowfield behind it. For a moment it assumed
the shape of a huge, obscene manta, and then the wind seemed
to catch it, to tear it and shred it like old dark paper. It
fragmented, was caught in a whirling eddy of smoke, and a
moment later it was gone as if it had never been. But in those
few seconds as it whirled blackly, dancing like negative motes
of light, he remembered something from his childhood... fifty
years ago, or snore. He and his brother had come upon a huge
nest of ground wasps just north of their farm. It had been
tucked into a hollow between the earth and an old lightning-
blasted tree. His brother had had a big old niggerchaser in
the band of his hat, saved all the way from the Fourth of
July. He had lighted it and tossed it at the nest. It had
exploded with a loud bang, and an angry, rising hum-almost a
low shriek-had risen from the blasted nest. They had run away
as if demons had been at their beels. In a way, Hallorann
supposed that demons had been. And looking back over his
shoulder, as he was now, he had on that day seen a large dark
cloud of hornets rising in the hot air, swirling together,
breaking apart, looking for whatever enemy had done this to
their home so that they-the single group intelligence-could
sting it to death.
Then the thing in the sky was gone and it might only have
been smoke or a great flapping swatch of wallpaper after all,
and there was only the Overlook, a flaming pyre in the roaring
throat of the night.
* * *
There was a key to the equipment shed's padlock on his key
ring, but Hallorann saw there would be no need to use it.
The door was ajar, the padlock hanging open on its hasp.
"I can't go in there," Danny whispered.
"That's okay. You stay with your mom. There used to be a pile
of old horseblankets. Probably all moth-eaten by now, but
better than freezin to death. Missus Torrance, you still with
us?"
"I don't know," the wan voice answered. "I think so."
"Good. I'll be just a second."
"Come back as quick as you can," Danny whispered. "Please."
Hallorann nodded. He had trained the headlamp on the door and
now he floundered through the snow, casting a long shadow in
front of himself. He pushed the equipment shed door open and
stepped in. The horseblankets were still in the corner, by the
rogue set. He picked up four of themthey smelled musty and old
and the moths certainly had been having a free lunch-and then
he paused.
One of the rogue mallets was gone.
(Was that what he hit me with?)
Well, it didn't matter what he'd been hit with, did it?
Still, his fingers went to the side of his face and began to
explore the huge lump there. Six hundred dollars' worth of
dental work undone at a single blow. And after all
(maybe he didn't hit me with one of those. Maybe one got
lost. Or stolen. Or took for a souvenir. After all)
it didn't really matter. No one was going to be playing rogue
here next summer. Or any summer in the foreseeable future.
No, it didn't really matter, except that looking at the
racked mallets with the single missing member had a kind of
fascination. He found himself thinking of the hard wooden
whack! of the mallet head striking the round wooden ball. A
nice summery sound. Watching it skitter across the
(bone. blood.)
gravel. It conjured up images of
(bone. blood.)
iced tea, porch swings, ladies in white straw hats, the hum
of mosquitoes, and
(bad little boys who don't play by the rules.)
all that stuff. Sure. Nice game. Out of style now, but...
nice.
"Dick?" The voice was thin, frantic, and, he thought, rather
unpleasant. "Are you all right, Dick? Come out now. Please!"
("Come on out now nigguh de massa callin youall.")
His hand closed tightly around one of the mallet handles,
liking its feel.
(pare the rod, spoil the child.)
His eyes went blank in the flickering, fire-shot darkness.
Really, it would be doing them both a favor. She was messed
up... in pain... and most of it
(all of it)
was that damn boy's fault. Sure. He had left his own daddy in
there to burn. When you thought of it, it was damn close to
murder. Patricide was what they called it. Pretty goddam low:
"Mr. Hallorann?" Her voice was low, weak, querulous. He
didn't much like the sound of it.
"Dick!" The boy was sobbing now, in terror.
Hallorann drew the mallet from the rack and turned toward the
flood of white light from the snowmobile headlamp. His feet
scratched unevenly over the boards of the equipment shed, like
the feet of a clockwork toy that has been wound up and set in
motion.
Suddenly he stopped, looked wonderingly at the mallet in his
hands, and asked himself with rising horror what it was he had
been thinking of doing. Murder? Had he been thinking of
murder?
For a moment his entire mind seemed filled with an angry,
weakly hectoring voice:
(Do it! Do it, you weak-kneed no-balls nigger! Kill them!
KILL THEM BOTH!)
Then he flung the mallet behind him with a whispered,
terrified cry. It clattered into the corner where the
horseblankets had been, one of the two heads pointed toward
him in an unspeakable invitation.
He fled.
Danny was sitting on the snowmobile seat and Wendy was
holding him weakly. His face was shiny with tears, and he was
shaking as if with ague. Between his clicking teeth he said:
"Where were you? We were scared!"
"It's a good place to be scared of," Hallorann said slowly.
"Even if that place burns flat to the foundation, you'll never
get me within a hundred miles of here again. Here, Missus
Torrance, wrap these around you. I'll help. You too, Danny.
Get yourself looking like an Arab."
He swirled two of the blankets around Wendy, fashioning one
of them into a hood to cover her head, and helped Danny tie
his so they wouldn't fall off.
"Now hold on for dear life," he said. "We got a long way to
go, but the worst is behind us now."
He circled the equipment shed and then pointed the snowmobile
back along their trail. The Overlook was a torch now, flaming
at the sky. Great holes had been eaten into its sides, and
there was a red hell inside, waxing and waning. Snowmelt ran
down the charred gutters in steaming waterfalls.
They purred down the front lawns their way well lit. The
snowdunes glowed scarlet.
"Look!" Danny shouted as Hallorann slowed for the front gate.
He was pointing toward the playground.
The hedge creatures were all in their original positions, but
they were denuded, blackened, seared. Their dead branches were
a stark interlacing network in the fireglow, their small
leaves scattered around their feet like fallen petals.
"They're dead!" Danny screamed in hysterical triumph.
"Dead! They're dead!"
"Shhh," Wendy said. "All right, honey. It's all right."
"Hey, doc," Hallorann said. "Let's get to someplace warm. You
ready?"
"Yes," Danny whispered. "I've been ready for so long-"
Hallorann edged through the gap between gate and post. A
moment later they were on the road, pointed back toward
Sidewinder. The sound of the snowmobile's engine dwindled
until it was lost in the ceaseless roar of the wind. It
rattled through the denuded branches of the hedge animals with
a low, beating, desolate sound. The fire waxed and waned.
Sometime after the sound of the snowmobile's engine had
disappeared, the Overlooks roof caved in-first the west wing,
then the east, and seconds later the central roof. A huge
spiraling gout of sparks and flaming debris rushed up into the
howling winter night.
A bundle of flaming shingles and a wad of hot flashing were
wafted is through the open equipment shed door by the wind.
After a while the shed began to burn, too.
* * *
They were still twenty miles from Sidewinder when Hallorann
stopped to pour the rest of the gas into the snowmobile's
tank. He was getting very worried about Wendy Torrance, who
seemed to be drifting away from them. It was still so far to
go.
"Dick!" Danny cried. He was standing up on the seat,
pointing. "Dick, look! Look there!"
The snow had stopped and a silver-dollar moon had peeked out
through the raftering clouds. Far down the road but coming
toward them, coming upward through a series of S-shaped
switchbacks, was a pearly chain of lights. The wind dropped
for a moment and Hallorann heard the faraway buzzing snarl of
snowmobile engines.
Hallorann and Danny and Wendy reached them fifteen minutes
later. They had brought extra clothes and brandy and Dr.
Edmunds.
And the long darkness was over.
EPILOGUE/SUMMER
After he had finished checking over the salads his understudy
had made and peeked in on the home-baked beans they were using
as appetizers this week, Hallorann untied his apron, hung it
on a hook, and slipped out the back door. He had maybe forty-
five minutes before he had to crank up for dinner in earnest.
The name of this place was the Red Arrow Lodge, and it was
buried in the western Maine mountains, thirty miles from the
town of Rangely. It was a good gig, Hallorann thought. The
trade wasn't too heavy, it tipped well, and so far there
hadn't been a single meal sent back. Not bad at all,
considering the season was nearly half over.
He threaded his way between the outdoor bar and the swimming
pool (although why anyone would want to use the pool with the
lake so handy he would never know), crossed a greensward where
a party of four was playing croquet and laughing, and crested
a mild ridge. Pines took over here, and the wind soughed
pleasantly in them, carrying the aroma of fir and sweet resin.
On the other side, a number of cabins with views of the lake
were placed discreetly among the trees. The last one was the
nicest, and Hallorann had reserved it for a party of two back
in April when he had gotten this gig.
The woman was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, a book
in her hands. Hallorann was struck again by the change in her.
Part of it was the stiff, almost formal way she sat, in spite
of her informal surroundings-that was the back brace, of
course. She'd had a shattered vertebra as well as three broken
ribs and some internal injuries. The back was the slowest
healing, and she was still in the brace... hence the formal
posture. But the change was more than that. She looked older,
and some of the laughter had gone out of her face. Now, as she
sat reading her book, Hallorann saw a grave sort of beauty
there that had been missing on the day he had first met her,
some nine months ago. Then she had still been mostly girl. Now
she was a woman, a human being who had been dragged around to
the dark side of the moon and had come back able to put the
pieces back together. But those pieces, Hallorann thought,
they never fit just the same way again. Never in this world.
She heard his step and looked up, closing her book. "Dick!
Hi!" She started to rise, and a little grimace of pain crossed
her face.
"hope, don't get up," he said. "I don't stand on no ceremony
unless it's white tie and tails."
She smiled as he came up the steps and sat down next to her
on the porch.
"How is it going?"
"Pretty fair," he admitted. "You try the shrimp creole
tonight. You gonna like it."
"That's a deal."
"Where's Danny?"
"Right down there." She pointed, and Hallorann saw a small
figure sitting at the end of the dock. He was wearing jeans
rolled up to the knee and a redstriped shirt. Further out on
the calm water, a bobber floated. Every now and then Danny
would reel it in, examine the sinker and hook below it, and
then toss it out again.
"He's gettin brown," Hallorann said.
"Yes. Very brown." She looked at him fondly.
He took out a cigarette, tamped it, lit it. The smoke
raftered away lazily in the sunny afternoon. "What about those
dreams he's been havin?"
"Better," Wendy said. "Only one this week. It used to be
every night, sometimes two and three times. The explosions.
The hedges. And most of all... you know."
"Yeah. He's going to be okay, Wendy."
She looked at him. "Will he? I wonder."
Hallorann nodded. "You and him, you're coming back.
Different, maybe, but okay. You ain't what you were, you two,
but that isn't necessarily bad."
They were silent for a while, Wendy moving the rocking chair
back and forth a little, Hallorann with his feet up on the
porch rail, smoking. A little breeze came up, pushing its
secret way through the pines but barely ruffling Wendy's hair.
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