The Shining (The Shining, #1)

by Stephen King

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,

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 !)

(Now back the way you came. Turn off the kitchen lights. Go through the inner office. Through the desk gate, collect two hundred dollars.)

He had stopped drinking and it was not Jack who had made the decision to start again; there had been no liquor for him to start with…so where had it come from?

“The hotel caught Daddy.” He looked at Jack and groaned helplessly.

It might even be that in some unknown fashion it was Danny’s shine that was powering it, the way a battery powers the electrical equipment in a car…the way a battery gets a car to start.

Without Danny it was not much more than an amusement park haunted house, where a guest or two might hear rappings or the phantom sounds of a masquerade party, or see an occasional disturbing thing. But if it absorbed Danny… Danny’s shine or life force or spirit… whatever you wanted to call it… into itself—what would it be then?

She had been married to him for nearly seven years, he had lain on top of her countless times—in the thousands—but she had never realized how heavy he was.

“Here,” he said low, and brushed her trembling hands aside; his own were shaking almost as badly. He knocked the catch loose with the heel of his hand and the bolt drew back easily.

(Did he get out?)

The Overlook was coming to life around them.

When he got out of here, he was going to need his strength. All of it.

Award. John Torrance, man of letters, esteemed thinker, winner of the Pulitzer Prize at seventy for his trenchant book of memoirs, My Life in the Twentieth Century. All any of that shit boiled down to was living by your wits.

Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are.

He could begin to sympathize with his father.

The thing he’d never asked himself, Jack realized now, was exactly what had driven his daddy to drink in the first place.

Still, Daddy had tried to do right as he dragged her rotting corpse through life.

“Your wife would object to that very strongly, Mr. Torrance. And she appears to be…somewhat stronger than we had imagined. Somewhat more resourceful. She certainly seems to have gotten the better of you.” Grady tittered. “Perhaps, Mr. Torrance, we should have been dealing with her all along.”

Leaning against it was one of the roque mallets from the equipment shed.

(Keep your promise, Mr. Torrance.) “I will,” he said. He heard the fawning servility in his own voice but was unable to control it. “I will.”

“It’s funny. Ain’t no way you could know someone’s in trouble up there at the Overlook…the phone’s out, sure as hell. But I believe you. Sometimes I get feelins.” Hallorann nodded. “Sometimes I do, too.”

That’s two shines in one day, he thought, and that ought to be some kind of good omen.

And that was when it struck him full force, the smell of oranges and the thought-force, heavy and hateful, murderous: (GET OUT OF HERE YOU DIRTY NIGGER THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS YOU NIGGER TURN AROUND TURN AROUND OR WE’LL KILL YOU HANG YOU UP FROM A TREE LIMB YOU FUCKING JUNGLEBUNNY COON AND THEN BURN THE BODY THAT’S WHAT WE DO WITH NIGGERS SO TURN AROUND RIGHT NOW)

(Where’s the party? Don’t let me scare you away, you bunch of moldy sheets! Not one scared woman with a knife! Let’s have a little music around here! Let’s heave a little life!)

She stiffened, then remembered the clock on the mantel, the clock under glass. Jack or Danny must have wound it…or maybe it had wound itself up, like everything else in the Overlook.

It suddenly seemed wrong to move again until the clock had stilled. … eight…nine… (??Nine??) … ten… eleven… Suddenly, belatedly, it came to her. She turned back clumsily for the stairs, knowing already she was too late. But how could she have known? Twelve.

“Unmask!” the cry echoed. “Unmask! Unmask!”

leaving her alone again. No, not alone. She turned and he was coming for her. It was Jack and yet not Jack. His eyes were lit with a vacant, murderous glow; his familiar mouth now wore a quivering, joyless grin. He had the roque mallet in one hand.

“Now. Now, by Christ,” he said, grinning. He kicked the hassock out of his way. “I guess you’ll take your medicine now.”

Her terror deepened—she would not have believed that possible, but it was. It was a hundred times worse not to be able to see him or know how close he was getting.

The mallet came down against the door in a volley of booming blows that made her flinch and step back. How could he be doing that with a knife in his back? Where was he finding the strength? She wanted to shriek Why aren’t you dead? at the locked door.

Perhaps, she thought, it might be possible for her to inflict even more damage on it…kill it, perhaps.

There was nothing of the real Jack in that howling, maundering, petulant voice, though. It alternately whined in tones of self-pity and rose in lurid screams;

The mouth and cheeks and throat were lathered in blood, the single eye she could see was tiny and piggish and glittering.

(!! The medicine cabinet !!)

As it moved in again the cap spun free, releasing the pungent smell of the gasoline.

This is an Overlook where no one can ever come. No clocks work here. None of the keys fit them and they can never be wound up. The doors have never been opened and no one has ever stayed in the rooms. But you can’t stay long. Because it’s coming.”

(You brought yourself. Because you knew.) “Oh Tony, is it my daddy?” Danny screamed. “Is it my daddy that’s coming to get me?”

it was coming for him. It was hiding behind Daddy’s face, it was imitating Daddy’s voice, it was wearing Daddy’s clothes.

But it was not his daddy. It was not his daddy.

as if the Daniel Anthony Torrance that would someday be—was a halfling caught between father and son, a ghost of both, a fusion.

“You will remember what your father forgot.”

(Not real! False face! I know what you are! Take off your mask!)

From overhead, the restless booming sounds of the mallet as Jack Torrance looked for his son.

The thing that was after him screamed and howled and cursed. Dream and reality had joined together without a seam. It came around the corner.

In a way, what Danny felt was relief. It was not his father. The mask of face

and body had been ripped and shredded and made into a bad joke. It was not his daddy, not this Saturday Night Shock Show horror with its rolling eyes and hunched and hulking shoulde...

It stopped. For a moment it actually looked uncertain, as if not sure who or what it was. Then it began to walk again.

You’re it, not my daddy. You’re the hotel. And when you get what you want, you won’t give my daddy anything because you’re selfish. And my daddy knows that. You had to make him drink the Bad Stuff. That’s

the only way you could get him, you lying false face.”