by Stephen King
"It sure is," Jack said.
The window ran nearly the length of the sitting room, and beyond it the sun was poised directly between two sawtoothed peaks, casting golden light across the rock faces and the sugared snow on the high tips. The clouds around and behind this picture-postcard view were also tinted gold, and a sunbeam glinted duskily down into the darkly pooled firs below the timberline.
Jack and Wendy were so absorbed in the view that they didn't look down at Danny, who was staring not out the window but at the red-and-white-striped silk wallpaper to the left, where a door opened into an interior bedroom. And his gasp, which had been mingled with theirs, had nothing to do with beauty.
Great splashes of dried blood, flecked with tiny bits of grayish-white tissue, clotted the wallpaper. It made Danny feel sick. It was like a crazy picture drawn in blood, a surrealistic etching of a man's face drawn back in terror and pain, the mouth yawning and half the head pulverized--
(So if you should see something ... just look the other way and when you look back, it'll be gone. Are you diggin me?)
He deliberately looked out the window, being careful to show no expression on his face, and when his mommy's hand closed over his own he took it, being careful not to squeeze it or give her a signal of any kind.
The manager was saying something to his daddy about making sure to shutter that big window so a strong wind wouldn't blow it in. Jack was nodding. Danny looked cautiously back at the wall. The big dried bloodstain was gone. Those little gray-white flecks that had been scattered all through it, they were gone, too.
Then Ullman was leading them out. Mommy asked him if he thought the mountains were pretty. Danny said he did, although he didn't really care for the mountains, one way or the other. As Ullman was closing the door behind them, Danny looked back over his shoulder. The bloodstain had returned, only now it was fresh. It was running. Ullman, looking directly at it, went on with his running commentary about the famous men who had stayed here. Danny discovered that he had bitten his lip hard enough to make it bleed, and he had never even felt it. As they walked on down the corridor, he fell a little bit behind the others and wiped the blood away with the back of his hand and thought about
(blood)
(Did Mr. Hallorann see blood or was it something worse?)
(I don't think those things can hurt you.)
There was an iron scream behind his lips, but he would not let it out. His mommy and daddy could not see such things; they never had. He would keep quiet. His mommy and daddy were loving each other, and that was a real thing. The other things were just like pictures in a book. Some pictures were scary, but they couldn't hurt you. They ... couldn't ... hurt you.
Mr. Ullman showed them some other rooms on the third floor, leading them through corridors that twisted and turned like a maze. They were all sweets up here, Mr. Ullman said, although Danny didn't see any candy. He showed them some rooms where a lady named Marilyn Monroe once stayed when she was married to a man named Arthur Miller (Danny got a vague understanding that Marilyn and Arthur had gotten a DIVORCE not long after they were in the Overlook Hotel).
"Mommy?"
"What, honey?"
"If they were married, why did they have different names? You and Daddy have the same names."
"Yes, but we're not famous, Danny," Jack said. "Famous women keep their same names even after they get married because their names are their bread and butter."
"Bread and butter," Danny said, completely mystified.
"What Daddy means is that people used to like to go to the movies and see Marilyn Monroe," Wendy said, "but they might not like to go to see Marilyn Miller."
"Why not? She'd still be the same lady. Wouldn't everyone know that?"
"Yes, but--" She looked at Jack helplessly.
"Truman Capote once stayed in this room," Ullman interrupted impatiently. He opened the door. "That was in my time. An awfully nice man. Continental manners."
There was nothing remarkable in any of these rooms (except for the absence of sweets, which Mr. Ullman kept calling them), nothing that Danny was afraid of. In fact, there was only one other thing on the third floor that bothered Danny, and he could not have said why. It was the fire extinguisher on the wall just before they turned the corner and went back to the elevator, which stood open and waiting like a mouthful of gold teeth.
It was an old-fashioned extinguisher, a flat hose folded back a dozen times upon itself, one end attached to a large red valve, the other ending in a brass nozzle. The folds of the hose were secured with a red steel slat on a hinge. In case of a fire you could knock the steel slat up and out of the way with one hard push and the hose was yours. Danny could see that much; he was good at seeing how things worked. By the time he was two and a half he had been unlocking the protective gate his father had installed at the top of the stairs in the Stovington house. He had seen how the lock worked. His daddy said it was a NACK. Some people had the NACK and some people didn't.
This fire extinguisher was a little older than others he had seen--the one in the nursery school, for instance--but that was not so unusual. Nonetheless it filled him with faint unease, curled up there against the light blue wallpaper like a sleeping snake. And he was glad when it was out of sight around the corner.
"Of course all the windows have to be shuttered," Mr. Ullman said as they stepped back into the elevator. Once again the car sank queasily beneath their feet. "But I'm particularly concerned about the one in the Presidential Suite. The original bill on that window was four hundred and twenty dollars, and that was over thirty years ago. It would cost eight times that to replace today."
"I'll shutter it," Jack said.
They went down to the second floor where there were more rooms and even more twists and turns in the corridor. The light from the windows had begun to fade appreciably now as the sun went behind the mountains. Mr. Ullman showed them one or two rooms and that was all. He walked past 217, the one Dick Hallorann had warned him about, without slowing. Danny looked at the bland number-plate on the door with uneasy fascination.
Then down to the first floor. Mr. Ullman didn't show them into any rooms here until they had almost reached the thickly carpeted staircase that led down into the lobby again. "Here are your quarters," he said. "I think you'll find them adequate."
They went in. Danny was braced for whatever might be there. There was nothing.
Wendy Torrance felt a strong surge of relief. The Presidential Suite, with its cold elegance, had made her feel awkward and clumsy--it was all very well to visit some restored historical building with a bedroom plaque that announced Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt had slept there, but another thing entirely to imagine you and your husband lying beneath acreages of linen and perhaps making love where the greatest men in the world had once lain (the most powerful, anyway, she amended). But this apartment was simpler, homier, almost inviting. She thought she could abide this place for a season with no great difficulty.
"It's very pleasant," she said to Ullman, and heard the gratitude in her voice.
Ullman nodded. "Simple but adequate. During the season, this suite quarters the cook and his wife, or the cook and his apprentice."
"Mr. Hallorann lived here?" Danny broke in.
Mr. Ullman inclined his head to Danny condescendingly. "Quite so. He and Mr. Nevers." He turned back to Jack and Wendy. "This is the sitting room."
There were several chairs that looked comfortable but not expensive, a coffee table that had once been expensive but now had a long chip gone from the side, two bookcases (stuffed full of Reader's Digest Condensed Books and Detective Book Club trilogies from the forties, Wendy saw with some amusement), and an anonymous hotel TV that looked much less elegant than the buffed wood consoles in the rooms.
"No kitchen, of course," Ullman said, "but there is a dumbwaiter. This apartment is directly over the kitchen." He slid aside a square of paneling and disclosed a wide, square tray. He gave it a push and it disappeared, trailing
rope behind it.
"It's a secret passage!" Danny said excitedly to his mother, momentarily forgetting all fears in favor of that intoxicating shaft behind the wall. "Just like in Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters!"
Mr. Ullman frowned but Wendy smiled indulgently. Danny ran over to the dumbwaiter and peered down the shaft.
"This way, please."
He opened the door on the far side of the living room. It gave on the bedroom, which was spacious and airy. There were twin beds. Wendy looked at her husband, smiled, shrugged.
"No problem," Jack said. "We'll push them together."
Mr. Ullman looked over his shoulder, honestly puzzled. "Beg pardon?"
"The beds," Jack said pleasantly. "We can push them together."
"Oh, quite," Ullman said, momentarily confused. Then his face cleared and a red flush began to creep up from the collar of his shirt. "Whatever you like."
He led them back into the sitting room, where a second door opened on a second bedroom, this one equipped with bunk beds. A radiator clanked in one corner, and the rug on the floor was a hideous embroidery of western sage and cactus--Danny had already fallen in love with it, Wendy saw. The walls of this smaller room were paneled in real pine.
"Think you can stand it in here, doc?" Jack asked.
"Sure I can. I'm going to sleep in the top bunk. Okay?"
"If that's what you want."
"I like the rug, too. Mr. Ullman, why don't you have all the rugs like that?"
Mr. Ullman looked for a moment as if he had sunk his teeth into a lemon. Then he smiled and patted Danny's head. "Those are your quarters," he said, "except for the bath, which opens off the main bedroom. It's not a huge apartment, but of course you'll have the rest of the hotel to spread out in. The lobby fireplace is in good working order, or so Watson tells me, and you must feel free to eat in the dining room if the spirit moves you to do so." He spoke in the tone of a man conferring a great favor.
"All right," Jack said.
"Shall we go down?" Mr. Ullman asked.
"Fine," Wendy said.
They went downstairs in the elevator, and now the lobby was wholly deserted except for Watson, who was leaning against the main doors in a rawhide jacket, a toothpick between his lips.
"I would have thought you'd be miles from here by now," Mr. Ullman said, his voice slightly chill.
"Just stuck around to remind Mr. Torrance here about the boiler," Watson said, straightening up. "Keep your good weather eye on her, fella, and she'll be fine. Knock the press down a couple of times a day. She creeps."
She creeps, Danny thought, and the words echoed down a long and silent corridor in his mind, a corridor lined with mirrors where people seldom looked.
"I will," his daddy said.
"You'll be fine," Watson said, and offered Jack his hand. Jack shook it. Watson turned to Wendy and inclined his head. "Ma'am," he said.
"I'm pleased," Wendy said, and thought it would sound absurd. It didn't. She had come out here from New England, where she had spent her life, and it seemed to her that in a few short sentences this man Watson, with his fluffy fringe of hair, had epitomized what the West was supposed to be all about. And never mind the lecherous wink earlier.
"Young master Torrance," Watson said gravely, and put out his hand. Danny, who had known all about handshaking for almost a year now, put his own hand out gingerly and felt it swallowed up. "You take good care of em, Dan."
"Yes, sir."
Watson let go of Danny's hand and straightened up fully. He looked at Ullman. "Until next year, I guess," he said, and held his hand out.
Ullman touched it bloodlessly. His pinky ring caught the lobby's electric lights in a baleful sort of wink.
"May twelfth, Watson," he said. "Not a day earlier or later."
"Yes, sir," Watson said, and Jack could almost read the codicil in Watson's mind: ... you fucking little faggot.
"Have a good winter, Mr. Ullman."
"Oh, I doubt it," Ullman said remotely.
Watson opened one of the two big main doors; the wind whined louder and began to flutter the collar of his jacket. "You folks take care now," he said.
It was Danny who answered. "Yes, sir, we will."
Watson, whose not-so-distant ancestor had owned this place, slipped humbly through the door. It closed behind him, muffling the wind. Together they watched him clop down the porch's broad front steps in his battered black cowboy boots. Brittle yellow aspen leaves tumbled around his heels as he crossed the lot to his International Harvester pickup and climbed in. Blue smoke jetted from the rusted exhaust pipe as he started it up. The spell of silence held among them as he backed, then pulled out of the parking lot. His truck disappeared over the brow of the hill and then reappeared, smaller, on the main road, heading west.
For a moment Danny felt more lonely than he ever had in his life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE FRONT PORCH
The Torrance family stood together on the long front porch of the Overlook Hotel as if posing for a family portrait, Danny in the middle, zippered into last year's fall jacket which was now too small and starting to come out at the elbow, Wendy behind him with one hand on his shoulder, and Jack to his left, his own hand resting lightly on his son's head.
Mr. Ullman was a step below them, buttoned into an expensive-looking brown mohair overcoat. The sun was entirely behind the mountains now, edging them with gold fire, making the shadows around things look long and purple. The only three vehicles left in the parking lots were the hotel truck, Ullman's Lincoln Continental, and the battered Torrance VW.
"You've got your keys, then," Ullman said to Jack, "and you understand fully about the furnace and the boiler?"
Jack nodded, feeling some real sympathy for Ullman. Everything was done for the season, the ball of string was neatly wrapped up until next May 12--not a day earlier or later--and Ullman, who was responsible for all of it and who referred to the hotel in the unmistakable tones of infatuation, could not help looking for loose ends.
"I think everything is well in hand," Jack said.
"Good. I'll be in touch." But he still lingered for a moment, as if waiting for the wind to take a hand and perhaps gust him down to his car. He sighed. "All right. Have a good winter, Mr. Torrance, Mrs. Torrance. You too, Danny."
"Thank you, sir," Danny said. "I hope you do, too."
"I doubt it," Ullman repeated, and he sounded sad. "The place in Florida is a dump, if the out-and-out truth is to be spoken. Busywork. The Overlook is my real job. Take good care of it for me, Mr. Torrance."
"I think it will be here when you get back next spring," Jack said, and a thought flashed through Danny's mind
(but will we?)
and was gone.
"Of course. Of course it will."
Ullman looked out toward the playground where the hedge animals were clattering in the wind. Then he nodded once more in a businesslike way.
"Good-bye, then."
He walked quickly and prissily across to his car--a ridiculously big one for such a little man--and tucked himself into it. The Lincoln's motor purred into life and the taillights flashed as he pulled out of his parking stall. As the car moved away, Jack could read the small sign at the head of the stall: RESERVED FOR MR. ULLMAN, MGR.
"Right," Jack said softly.
They watched until the car was out of sight, headed down the eastern slope. When it was gone, the three of them looked at each other for a silent, almost frightened moment. They were alone. Aspen leaves whirled and skittered in aimless packs across the lawn that was now neatly mowed and tended for no guest's eyes. There was no one to see the autumn leaves steal across the grass but the three of them. It gave Jack a curious shrinking feeling, as if his life force had dwindled to a mere spark while the hotel and the grounds had suddenly doubled in size and become sinister, dwarfing them with sullen, inanimate power.
Then Wendy said: "Look at you, doc. Your nose is running like a fire hose. Let's get inside."
And they did, closing the door firmly behind them against the restless whine of the wind.
PART THREE
THE WASPS' NEST
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
UP ON THE ROOF
"Oh you goddam fucking son of a bitch!"
Jack Torrance cried these words out in both surprise and agony as he slapped his right hand against his blue chambray workshirt, dislodging the big, slow-moving wasp that had stung him. Then he was scrambling up the roof as fast as he could, looking back over his shoulder to see if the wasp's brothers and sisters were rising from the nest he had uncovered to do battle. If they were, it could be bad; the nest was between him and his ladder, and the trap door leading down into the attic was locked from the inside. The drop was seventy feet from the roof to the cement patio between the hotel and the lawn.
The clear air above the nest was still and undisturbed.
Jack whistled disgustedly between his teeth, sat straddling the peak of the roof, and examined his right index finger. It was swelling already, and he supposed he would have to try and creep past that nest to his ladder so he could go down and put some ice on it.
It was October 20. Wendy and Danny had gone down to Sidewinder in the hotel truck (an elderly, rattling Dodge that was still more trustworthy than the VW, which was now wheezing gravely and seemed terminal) to get three gallons of milk and do some Christmas shopping. It was early to shop, but there was no telling when the snow would come to stay. There had already been flurries, and in some places the road down from the Overlook was slick with patch ice.
So far the fall had been almost preternaturally beautiful. In the three weeks they had been here, golden day had followed golden day. Crisp thirty-degree mornings gave way to afternoon temperatures in the low sixties, the perfect temperature for climbing around on the Overlook's gently sloping western roof and doing the shingling. Jack had admitted freely to Wendy that he could have finished the job four days ago, but he felt no real urge to hurry. The view from up here was spectacular, even putting the vista from the Presidential Suite in the shade. More important, the work itself was soothing. On the roof he felt himself healing from the troubled wounds of the last three years. On the roof he felt at peace. Those three years began to seem like a turbulent nightmare.