The Shining: Chapters 8–14

Danny himself was more sanguine; if Daddy thought the bug would make this one last trip, then probably it would.

They were beautiful mountains but they were hard. She did not think they would forgive many mistakes. An unhappy foreboding rose in her throat.

With a punch of the clutch and a jerk, Jack shifted down to first gear and they labored upward, the bug’s engine thumping gamely.

He offered the same little bow, and for a bemused instant Wendy thought he would kiss her hand. She half-offered it and he did take it, but only for a moment, clasped in both of his.

The BankAmericard and Master Charge decals on it seemed jarringly anachronistic.

The clerk crossed back to the desk, where a dreadnought of a woman bundled into a long fur coat and what looked like a black feather boa was remonstrating loudly.

The clerk crossed back to the desk, where a dreadnought of a woman bundled into a long fur coat and what looked like a black feather boa was remonstrating loudly.

They watched him cross the lobby, touch Mrs. Brant’s elbow deferentially, and spread his hands and nod when she turned her tirade on him.

Mrs. Brant came out of the inner office looking vindicated. A few moments later two bellboys, struggling with eight suitcases between them, followed her as best they could as she strode triumphantly out the door.

“You got to be regular if you want to be happy,” Hallorann said, and pealed laughter at the coldpantry ceiling, where one old-fashioned light globe hung down on an iron chain...

Jack blinked. “Of course. Who’d want to put rat poison in the kitchen?” Hallorann laughed derisively.

Across the wide room was a double set of batwing doors, and over them an old-fashioned sign lettered in gilt script: The Colorado Lounge.

He turned to the Torrances as she strolled away, backside twitching pertly.

A few errant aspen leaves rattled and turned across the now mostly deserted asphalt, making Danny think momentarily of that night last week when he had wakened out of his nightmare and had heard—or thought he heard, at least—Tony telling him not to go.

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?”

Jack was over by the window just outside the restaurant, studying the view. He looked rapt and dreamy.

“Mr. Torrance,” Ullman called peremptorily. “Would you come over here, please?

“Doubtless,” Wendy murmured demurely, and Jack shot her a private glance.

“Of course not,” Ullman said, nettled. “All the rugs were shampooed just two days ago.”

“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.

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.

His pinky ring caught the lobby’s electric lights in a baleful sort of wink.

“Yes, sir,” Watson said, and Jack could almost read the codicil in Watson’s mind:...

And the progress of the third act, which he had been turning over in his mind when the wasp put an end to cogitation, was coming clearer all the time.

Phyllis had written back expressing interest and admonishing him to read O’Casey before sitting down to it.

He felt in a way that the play itself, the whole thing, was the roadblock, a colossal symbol of the bad years at Stovington Prep, the marriage he had almost totaled like a nutty kid behind the wheel of an old jalopy, the monstrous assault on his son, the incident in the parking lot with George Hatfield, an incident he could no longer view as just another sudden and destructive flare of temper.

Moving warily, he scrambled back down the slope of the roof on his hands and knees past the line of demarcation where the fresh green Bird shingles gave way to the section of roof he had just finished clearing.

They had been rendered sludgy and stupid by the fall temperatures, but Jack, who knew about wasps from his childhood, counted himself lucky that he had been stung only once.

When you unwittingly stuck your hand into the wasps’ nest, you hadn’t made a covenant with the devil to give up your civilized self with its trappings of love and respect and honor.

He was a fierce field contender but a lackadaisical, amused sort of student in the classrooms.

George became conversant, and he was just jingoist enough to honestly not care which side he was on—a rare and valuable trait, even in high-level debaters, Jack knew.

George became conversant, and he was just jingoist enough to honestly not care which side he was on—a rare and valuable trait, even in high-level debaters, Jack knew.

The souls of a true carpetbagger and a true debater were not far removed from each other; they were both passionately interested in the main chance.

The belligerent, I’m-sticking-up-for-my-rights way George was looking at him had sparked Jack’s own temper.