by Stephen King
"What's wrong?" he cried. "You're asking me all this because you're worried, aren't you? Why are you worried about me? Why are you worried about us?"
Hallorann put his large dark hands on the small boy's shoulders. "Stop," he said. "It's probably nothin. But if it is somethin ... well, you've got a large thing in your head, Danny. You'll have to do a lot of growin yet before you catch up to it, I guess. You got to be brave about it."
"But I don't understand things!" Danny burst out. "I do but I don't! People ... they feel things and I feel them, but I don't know what I'm feeling!" He looked down at his lap wretchedly. "I wish I could read. Sometimes Tony shows me signs and I can hardly read any of them."
"Who's Tony?" Hallorann asked again.
"Mommy and Daddy call him my 'invisible playmate,' " Danny said, reciting the words carefully. "But he's really real. At least, I think he is. Sometimes, when I try real hard to understand things, he comes. He says, 'Danny, I want to show you something.' And it's like I pass out. Only ... there are dreams, like you said." He looked at Hallorann and swallowed. "They used to be nice. But now ... I can't remember the word for dreams that scare you and make you cry."
"Nightmares?" Hallorann asked.
"Yes. That's right. Nightmares."
"About this place? About the Overlook?"
Danny looked down at his thumb-sucking hand again. "Yes," he whispered. Then he spoke shrilly, looking up into Hallorann's face: "But I can't tell my daddy, and you can't, either! He has to have this job because it's the only one Uncle Al could get for him and he has to finish his play or he might start doing the Bad Thing again and I know what that is, it's getting drunk, that's what it is, it's when he used to always be drunk and that was a Bad Thing to do!" He stopped, on the verge of tears.
"Shh," Hallorann said, and pulled Danny's face against the rough serge of his jacket. It smelled faintly of mothballs. "That's all right, son. And if that thumb likes your mouth, let it go where it wants." But his face was troubled.
He said: "What you got, son, I call it shinin on, the Bible calls it having visions, and there's scientists that call it precognition. I've read up on it, son. I've studied on it. They all mean seeing the future. Do you understand that?"
Danny nodded against Hallorann's coat.
"I remember the strongest shine I ever had that way ... I'm not liable to forget. It was 1955. I was still in the Army then, stationed overseas in West Germany. It was an hour before supper, and I was standin by the sink, givin one of the KPs hell for takin too much of the potato along with the peel. I says, 'Here, lemme show you how that's done.' He held out the potato and the peeler and then the whole kitchen was gone. Bang, just like that. You say you see this guy Tony before ... before you have dreams?"
Danny nodded.
Hallorann put an arm around him. "With me it's smellin oranges. All that afternoon I'd been smellin them and thinkin nothin of it, because they were on the menu for that night--we had thirty crates of Valencias. Everybody in the damn kitchen was smellin oranges that night.
"For a minute it was like I had just passed out. And then I heard an explosion and saw flames. There were people screaming. Sirens. And I heard this hissin noise that could only be steam. Then it seemed like I got a little closer to whatever it was and I saw a railroad car off the tracks and laying on its side with Georgia and South Carolina Railroad written on it, and I knew like a flash that my brother Carl was on that train and it jumped the tracks and Carl was dead. Just like that. Then it was gone and here's this scared, stupid little KP in front of me, still holdin out that potato and the peeler. He says, 'Are you okay, Sarge?' And I says, 'No. My brother's just been killed down in Georgia.' And when I finally got my momma on the overseas telephone, she told me how it was.
"But see, boy, I already knew how it was."
He shook his head slowly, as if dismissing the memory, and looked down at the wide-eyed boy.
"But the thing you got to remember, my boy, is this: Those things don't always come true. I remember just four years ago I had a job cookin at a boys' camp up in Maine on Long Lake. So I am sittin by the boarding gate at Logan Airport in Boston, just waiting to get on my flight, and I start to smell oranges. For the first time in maybe five years. So I say to myself, 'My God, what's comin on this crazy late show now?' and I got down to the bathroom and sat on one of the toilets to be private. I never did black out, but I started to get this feelin, stronger and stronger, that my plane was gonna crash. Then the feeling went away, and the smell of oranges, and I knew it was over. I went back to the Delta Airlines desk and changed my flight to one three hours later. And do you know what happened?"
"What?" Danny whispered.
"Nothin!" Hallorann said, and laughed. He was relieved to see the boy smile a little, too. "Not one single thing! That old plane landed right on time and without a single bump or bruise. So you see ... sometimes those feelins don't come to anything."
"Oh," Danny said.
"Or you take the race track. I go a lot, and I usually do pretty well. I stand by the rail when they go by the starting gate, and sometimes I get a little shine about this horse or that one. Usually those feelins help me get real well. I always tell myself that someday I'm gonna get three at once on three long shots and make enough on the trifecta to retire early. It ain't happened yet. But there's plenty of times I've come home from the track on shank's mare instead of in a taxicab with my wallet swollen up. Nobody shines on all the time, except maybe for God up in heaven."
"Yes, sir," Danny said, thinking of the time almost a year ago when Tony had showed him a new baby lying in a crib at their house in Stovington. He had been very excited about that, and had waited, knowing that it took time, but there had been no new baby.
"Now you listen," Hallorann said, and took both of Danny's hands in his own. "I've had some bad dreams here, and I've had some bad feelins. I've worked here two seasons now and maybe a dozen times I've had ... well, nightmares. And maybe half a dozen times I've thought I've seen things. No, I won't say what. It ain't for a little boy like you. Just nasty things. Once it had something to do with those damn hedges clipped to look like animals. Another time there was a maid, Delores Vickery her name was, and she had a little shine to her, but I don't think she knew it. Mr. Ullman fired her ... do you know what that is, doc?"
"Yes, sir," Danny said candidly, "my daddy got fired from his teaching job and that's why we're in Colorado, I guess."
"Well, Ullman fired her on account of her saying she'd seen something in one of the rooms where ... well, where a bad thing happened. That was in Room 217, and I want you to promise me you won't go in there, Danny. Not all winter. Steer right clear."
"All right," Danny said. "Did the lady--the maiden--did she ask you to go look?"
"Yes, she did. And there was a bad thing there. But ... I don't think it was a bad thing that could hurt anyone, Danny, that's what I'm tryin to say. People who shine can sometimes see things that are gonna happen, and I think sometimes they can see things that did happen. But they're just like pictures in a book. Did you ever see a picture in a book that scared you, Danny?"
"Yes," he said, thinking of the story of Bluebeard and the picture where Bluebeard's new wife opens the door and sees all the heads.
"But you knew it couldn't hurt you, didn't you?"
"Ye--ess ..." Danny said, a little dubious.
"Well, that's how it is in this hotel. I don't know why, but it seems that all the bad things that ever happened here, there's little pieces of those things still layin around like fingernail clippins or the boogers that somebody nasty just wiped under a chair. I don't know why it should just be here, there's bad goings-on in just about every hotel in the world, I guess, and I've worked in a lot of them and had no trouble. Only here. But, Danny, I don't think those things can hurt anybody." He emphasized each word in the sentence with a mild shake of the boy's shoulders. "So if you should see something, in a hallway or a room or outside by those hedges ... just look the other way
, and when you look back, it'll be gone. Are you diggin me?"
"Yes," Danny said. He felt much better, soothed. He got up on his knees, kissed Hallorann's cheek, and gave him a big hard hug. Hallorann hugged him back.
When he released the boy he asked: "Your folks, they don't shine, do they?"
"No, I don't think so."
"I tried them like I did you," Hallorann said. "Your momma jumped the tiniest bit. I think all mothers shine a little, you know, at least until their kids grow up enough to watch out for themselves. Your dad ..."
Hallorann paused momentarily. He had probed at the boy's father and he just didn't know. It wasn't like meeting someone who had the shine, or someone who definitely did not. Poking at Danny's father had been ... strange, as if Jack Torrance had something--something--that he was hiding. Or something he was holding in so deeply submerged in himself that it was impossible to get to.
"I don't think he shines at all," Hallorann finished. "So you don't worry about them. You just take care of you. I don't think there's anything here that can hurt you. So just be cool, okay?"
"Okay."
"Danny! Hey, doc!"
Danny looked around. "That's Mom. She wants me. I have to go."
"I know you do," Hallorann said. "You have a good time here, Danny. Best you can, anyway."
"I will. Thanks, Mr. Hallorann. I feel a lot better."
The smiling thought came in his mind:
(Dick, to my friends)
(Yes, Dick, okay)
Their eyes met, and Dick Hallorann winked.
Danny scrambled across the seat of the car and opened the passenger side door. As he was getting out, Hallorann said, "Danny?"
"What?"
"If there is trouble ... you give a call. A big loud holler like the one you gave a few minutes ago. I might hear you even way down in Florida. And if I do, I'll come on the run."
"Okay," Danny said, and smiled.
"You take care, big boy."
"I will."
Danny slammed the door and ran across the parking lot toward the porch, where Wendy stood holding her elbows against the chill wind. Hallorann watched, the big grin slowly fading.
I don't think there's anything here that can hurt you.
I don't think.
But what if he was wrong? He had known that this was his last season at the Overlook ever since he had seen that thing in the bathtub of Room 217. It had been worse than any picture in any book, and from here the boy running to his mother looked so small ...
I don't think--
His eyes drifted down to the topiary animals.
Abruptly he started the car and put it in gear and drove away, trying not to look back. And of course he did, and of course the porch was empty. They had gone back inside. It was as if the Overlook had swallowed them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE GRAND TOUR
"What were you talking about, hon?" Wendy asked him as they went back inside.
"Oh, nothing much."
"For nothing much it sure was a long talk."
He shrugged and Wendy saw Danny's paternity in the gesture; Jack could hardly have done it better himself. She would get no more out of Danny. She felt strong exasperation mixed with an even stronger love: the love was helpless, the exasperation came from a feeling that she was deliberately being excluded. With the two of them around she sometimes felt like an outsider, a bit player who had accidentally wandered back onstage while the main action was taking place. Well, they wouldn't be able to exclude her this winter, her two exasperating males; quarters were going to be a little too close for that. She suddenly realized she was feeling jealous of the closeness between her husband and her son, and felt ashamed. That was too close to the way her own mother might have felt ... too close for comfort.
The lobby was now empty except for Ullman and the head desk clerk (they were at the register, cashing up), a couple of maids who had changed to warm slacks and sweaters, standing by the front door and looking out with their luggage pooled around them, and Watson, the maintenance man. He caught her looking at him and gave her a wink ... a decidedly lecherous one. She looked away hurriedly. Jack was over by the window just outside the restaurant, studying the view. He looked rapt and dreamy.
The cash register apparently checked out, because now Ullman ran it shut with an authoritative snap. He initialed the tape and put it in a small zipper case. Wendy silently applauded the head clerk, who looked greatly relieved. Ullman looked like the type of man who might take any shortage out of the head clerk's hide ... without ever spilling a drop of blood. Wendy didn't much care for Ullman or his officious, ostentatiously bustling manner. He was like every boss she'd ever had, male or female. He would be saccharin sweet with the guests, a petty tyrant when he was backstage with the help. But now school was out and the head clerk's pleasure was written large on his face. It was out for everyone but she and Jack and Danny, anyway.
"Mr. Torrance," Ullman called peremptorily. "Would you come over here, please?"
Jack walked over, nodding to Wendy and Danny that they were to come too.
The clerk, who had gone into the back, now came out again wearing an overcoat. "Have a pleasant winter, Mr. Ullman."
"I doubt it," Ullman said distantly. "May twelfth, Braddock. Not a day earlier. Not a day later."
"Yes, sir."
Braddock walked around the desk, his face sober and dignified, as befitted his position, but when his back was entirely to Ullman, he grinned like a schoolboy. He spoke briefly to the two girls still waiting by the door for their ride, and he was followed out by a brief burst of stifled laughter.
Now Wendy began to notice the silence of the place. It had fallen over the hotel like a heavy blanket muffling everything but the faint pulse of the afternoon wind outside. From where she stood she could look through the inner office, now neat to the point of sterility with its two bare desks and two sets of gray filing cabinets. Beyond that she could see Hallorann's spotless kitchen, the big portholed double doors propped open by rubber wedges.
"I thought I would take a few extra minutes and show you through the Hotel," Ullman said, and Wendy reflected that you could always hear that capital H in Ullman's voice. You were supposed to hear it. "I'm sure your husband will get to know the ins and outs of the Overlook quite well, Mrs. Torrance, but you and your son will doubtless keep more to the lobby level and the first floor, where your quarters are."
"Doubtless," Wendy murmured demurely, and Jack shot her a private glance.
"It's a beautiful place," Ullman said expansively. "I rather enjoy showing it off."
I'll bet you do, Wendy thought.
"Let's go up to third and work our way down," Ullman said. He sounded positively enthused.
"If we're keeping you--" Jack began.
"Not at all," Ullman said. "The shop is shut. Tout fini, for this season, at least. And I plan to overnight in Boulder--at the Boulderado, of course. Only decent hotel this side of Denver ... except for the Overlook itself, of course. This way."
They stepped into the elevator together. It was ornately scrolled in copper and brass, but it settled appreciably before Ullman pulled the gate across. Danny stirred a little uneasily, and Ullman smiled down at him. Danny tried to smile back without notable success.
"Don't you worry, little man," Ullman said. "Safe as houses."
"So was the Titanic," Jack said, looking up at the cut-glass globe in the center of the elevator ceiling. Wendy bit the inside of her cheek to keep the smile away.
Ullman was not amused. He slid the inner gate across with a rattle and a bang. "The Titanic made only one voyage, Mr. Torrance. This elevator has made thousands of them since it was installed in 1926."
"That's reassuring," Jack said. He ruffled Danny's hair. "The plane ain't gonna crash, doc."
Ullman threw the lever over, and for a moment there was nothing but a shuddering beneath their feet and the tortured whine of the motor below them. Wendy had a vision of the four of them bein
g trapped between floors like flies in a bottle and found in the spring ... with little bits and pieces gone ... like the Donner Party ...
(Stop it!)
The elevator began to rise, with some vibration and clashing and banging from below at first. Then the ride smoothed out. At the third floor Ullman brought them to a bumpy stop, retracted the gate, and opened the door. The elevator car was still six inches below floor level. Danny gazed at the difference in height between the third-floor hall and the elevator floor as if he had just sensed the universe was not as sane as he had been told. Ullman cleared his throat and raised the car a little, brought it to a stop with a jerk (still two inches low), and they all climbed out. With their weight gone the car rebounded almost to floor level, something Wendy did not find reassuring at all. Safe as houses or not, she resolved to take the stairs when she had to go up or down in this place. And under no conditions would she allow the three of them to get into the rickety thing together.
"What are you looking at, doc?" Jack inquired humorously. "See any spots there?"
"Of course not," Ullman said, nettled. "All the rugs were shampooed just two days ago."
Wendy glanced down at the hall runner herself. Pretty, but definitely not anything she would choose for her own home, if the day ever came when she had one. Deep blue pile, it was entwined with what seemed to be a surrealistic jungle scene full of ropes and vines and trees filled with exotic birds. It was hard to tell just what sort of birds, because all the interweaving was done in unshaded black, giving only silhouettes.
"Do you like the rug?" Wendy asked Danny.
"Yes, Mom," he said colorlessly.
They walked down the hall, which was comfortably wide. The wallpaper was silk, a lighter blue to go against the rug. Electric flambeaux stood at ten-foot intervals at a height of about seven feet. Fashioned to look like London gas lamps, the bulbs were masked behind cloudy, cream-hued glass that was bound with crisscrossing iron strips.
"I like those very much," she said.
Ullman nodded, pleased. "Mr. Derwent had those installed throughout the Hotel after the war--number Two, I mean. In fact most--although not all--of the third-floor decorating scheme was his idea. This is 300, the Presidential Suite."
He twisted his key in the lock of the mahogany double doors and swung them wide. The sitting room's wide western exposure made them all gasp, which had probably been Ullman's intention. He smiled. "Quite a view, isn't it?"