36 - The Elevator

Jack awoke from a thin and uneasy sleep where huge and ill-defined shapes chased him through endless snowfields to what he first thought was another dream: darkness, and in it, a sudden mechanical jumble of noises-clicks and clanks, hummings, rattlings, snaps and whooshes.

Then Wendy sat up beside him and he knew it was no dream.

"What's that?" Her hand, cold marble, gripped his wrist. He restrained an urge to shake it off-how in the h.e.l.l was he supposed to know what it was? The illuminated clock on his nightstand said it was five minutes to twelve.

The humming sound again. Loud and steady, varying the slightest bit. Followed by a clank as the humming ceased. A rattling bang. A thump. Then the humming resumed.

It was the elevator.

Danny was sitting up. "Daddy? Daddy?" His voice was sleepy and scared.

"Right here, doc," Jack said. "Come on over and jump in. Your mom's awake, too." The bedclothes rustled as Danny got on the bed between them. "It's the elevator," he whispered.

"That's right," Jack said. "Just the elevator."

"What do you mean, just?" Wendy demanded. There was an ice-skim of hysteria on her voice. "It's the middle of the night. Who's running it?" Hummmmmmm. Click/clank. Above them now. The rattle of the gate accordioning back, the b.u.mp of the doors opening and closing. Then the hum of the motor and the cables again.

Danny began to whimper.

Jack swung his feet out of bed and onto the floor. "It's probably a short. I'll check."

"Don't you dare go out of this room!"

"Don't be stupid," he said, pulling on his robe. "It's my job." She was out of bed herself a moment later, pulling Danny with her.

"We'll go, too."

"Wendy-"

"What's wrong?" Danny asked somberly. "What's wrong, Daddy?" Instead of answering he turned away, his face angry and set. He belted his robe around him at the door, opened it, and stepped out into the dark hall.

Wendy hesitated for a moment, and it was actually Danny who began to move first. She caught up quickly, and they went out together.

Jack hadn't bothered with the lights. She fumbled for the switch that lit the four s.p.a.ced overheads in the hallway that led to the main corridor. Up ahead, Jack was already turning the corner. This time Danny found the switchplate and flicked all three switches up. The hallway leading down to the stairs and the elevator shaft came alight.

Jack was standing at the elevator station, which was flanked by benches and cigarette urns. He was standing motionless in front of the closed elevator door.

In his faded tartan bathrobe and brown leather slippers with the rundown heels, his hair all in sleep corkscrews and Alfalfa cowlicks, he looked to her like an absurd twentieth-century Hamlet, an indecisive figure so mesmerized by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its course or alter it in any way.

(jesus stop thinking so crazy-) Danny's hand had tightened painfully on her own. He was looking up at her intently, his face strained and anxious. He had been catching the drift of her thoughts, she realized. Just how much or how little of them he was getting was impossible to say, but she flushed, feeling much the same as if he had caught her in a masturbatory act.

"Come on," she said, and they went down the hall to Jack.

The hummings and clankings and thumpings were louder here, terrifying in a disconnected, benumbed way. Jack was staring at the closed door with feverish intensity. Through the diamond-shaped window in the center of the elevator door she thought she could make out the cables, thrumming slightly. The elevator clanked to a stop below them, at lobby level. They beard the doors thump open.

And...

(party) Why had she thought party? The word had simply jumped into her head for no reason at all. The silence in the Overlook was complete and intense except for the weird noises coming up the elevator shaft.

(must have been quite a party) (???WHAT PARTY???) For just a moment her mind had filled with an image so real that it seemed to be a memory... not just any memory but one of those you treasure, one of those you keep for very special occasions and rarely mention aloud. Lights... hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Lights and colors, the pop of champagne corks, a forty-piece orchestra playing Glenn Miller's "In the Mood." But Glenn Miller had gone down in his bomber before she was born, how could she have a memory of Glenn Miller?

She looked down at Danny and saw his head had c.o.c.ked to one side, as if he was hearing something she couldn't hear. His face was very pale.

Thump.

The door had slid shut down there. A humming whine as the elevator began to rise. She saw the engine housing on top of the car first through the diamond- shaped window, then the interior of the car, seen through the further diamond shapes made by the bra.s.s gate. Warm yellow light from the car's overhead. It was empty. The car was empty. It was empty but (on the night of the party they must have crowded in by the dozens, crowded the car way beyond its safety limit but of course it had been new then and all of them wearing masks) (????WHAT MASKS????) The car stopped above them, on the third floor. She looked at Danny. His face was all eyes. His mouth was pressed into a frightened, bloodless slit. Above them, the bra.s.s gate rattled back. The elevator door thumped open, it thumped open because it was time, the time had come, it was time to say (Goodnight... goodnight... yes, it was lovely... no, i really can't stay for the unmasking... early to bed, early to rise... oh, was that Sheila?... the monk?... isn't that witty, Sheila coming as a monk?... yes, goodnight... good) Thump.

Gears clashed. The motor engaged. The car began to whine back down.

"Jack," she whispered. "What is it? What's wrong with it?"

"A short circuit," he said. His face was like wood. "I told you, it was a short circuit."

"I keep hearing voices in my head!" she cried. "What is it? What's wrong? I feel like I'm going crazy!"

"What voices?" He looked at her with deadly blandness.

She turned to Danny. "Did you-?" Danny nodded slowly. "Yes. And music. Like from a long time ago. In my head." The elevator car stopped again. The hotel was silent, creaking, deserted.

Outside, the wind whined around the eaves in the darkness.

"Maybe you are both crazy," Jack said conversationally. "I don't hear a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing except that elevator having a case of the electrical hiccups. If you two want to have duet hysterics, fine. But count me out." The elevator was coming down again.

Jack stepped to the right, where a gla.s.s-fronted box was mounted on the wall at chest height. He smashed his bare fist against it. Gla.s.s tinkled inward.

Blood dripped from two of his knuckles. He reached in and took out a key with a long, smooth barrel.

"Jack, no. Don't."

"I am going to do my job. Now leave me alone, Wendy!" She tried to grab his arm. He pushed her backward. Her feet tangled in the hem of her robe and she fell to the carpet with an ungainly thump. Danny cried out shrilly and fell on his knees beside her. Jack turned back to the elevator and thrust the key into the socket.

The elevator cables disappeared and the bottom of the car came into view in the small window. A second later Jack turned the key hard. There was a grating, screeching sound as the elevator car came to an instant standstill. For a moment the declutched motor in the bas.e.m.e.nt whined even louder, and then its circuit breaker cut in and the Overlook went unearthly still. The night wind outside seemed very loud by comparison. Jack looked stupidly at the gray metal elevator door. There were three splotches of blood below the keyhole from his lacerated knuckles.

He turned back to Wendy and Danny for a moment. She was sitting up, and Danny had his arm around her. They were both staring at him carefully, as if he was a stranger they had never seen before, possibly a dangerous one. He opened his mouth, not sure what was going to come out.

"It... Wendy, it's my job." She said clearly: "f.u.c.k your job" He turned back to the elevator, worked his fingers into the crack that ran down the right side of the door, and got it to open a little way. Then he was able to get his whole weight on it and threw the door open.

The car had stopped halfway, its floor at Jack's chest level. Warm light still spilled out of it, contrasting with the oily darkness of the shaft below.

He looked in for what seemed a long time.

"It's empty," he said then. "A short circuit, like I said." He hooked his fingers into the slot behind the door and began to pull it closed... then her hand was on his shoulder, surprisingly strong, yanking him away.

"Wendy!" he shouted. But she had already caught the car's bottom edge and pulled herself up enough so she could look in. Then, with a convulsive heave of her shoulder and belly muscles, she tried to boost herself all the way up. For a moment the issue was in doubt. Her feet tottered over the blackness of the shaft and one pink slipper fell from her foot and slipped out of sight.

"Mommy!" Danny screamed.

Then she was up, her cheeks flushed, her forehead as pale and shining as a spirit lamp. "What about this, Jack? Is this a short circuit?" She threw something and suddenly the hall was full of drifting confetti, red and white and blue and yellow. "Is this?" A green party streamer, faded to a pale pastel color with age.

"And this?" She tossed it out and it came to rest on the blue-black jungle carpet, a black silk cat's-eye mask, dusted with sequins at the temples.

"Does that look like a short circuit to you, Jack?" she screamed at him.

Jack stepped slowly away from it, shaking his head mechanically back and forth. The cat's-eye mask stared up blankly at the ceiling from the confetti- strewn hallway carpet.

37 - The Ballroom

It was the first of December.

Danny was in the east-wing ballroom, standing on an over-stuffed, high-backed wing chair, looking at the clock under gla.s.s. It stood in the center of the ballroom's high, ornamental mantelpiece, flanked by two large ivory elephants.

He almost expected the elephants would begin to move and try to gore him with their tusks as he stood there, but they were moveless. They were "safe." Since the night of the elevator he had come to divide all things at the Overlook into two categories. The elevator, the bas.e.m.e.nt, the playground, Room 217, and the Presidential Suite (it was Suite, not Sweet; he had seen the correct spelling in an account book Daddy had been reading at supper last night and had memorized it carefully)-those places were "unsafe." Their quarters, the lobby, and the porch were "safe." Apparently the ballroom was, too.

(The elephants are, anyway.) He was not sure about other places and so avoided them on general principle.

He looked at the clock inside the gla.s.s dome. It was under gla.s.s because all its wheels and cogs and springs were showing. A chrome or steel track ran around the outside of these works, and directly below the clockface there was a small axis bar with a pair of meshing cogs at either end. The hands of the clock stood at quarter past XI, and although he didn't know Roman numerals he could guess by the configuration of the hands at what time the clock had stopped. The clock stood on a velvet base. In front of it, slightly distorted by the curve of the dome, was a carefully carved silver key.

He supposed that the clock was one of the things he wasn't supposed to touch, like the decorative fire-tools in their bra.s.s-bound cabinet by the lobby fireplace or the tall china highboy at the back of the dining room.

A sense of injustice and a feeling of angry rebellion suddenly rose in him and (never mind what t' m not supposed to touch, just never mind. touched me, hasn't it? played with me, hasn't it?) It had. And it hadn't been particularly careful not to break him, either.

Danny put his hands out, grasped the gla.s.s dome, and lifted it aside. He let one finger play over the works for a moment, the pad of his index finger denting against the cogs, running smoothly over the wheels. He picked up the silver key.

For an adult it would have been uncomfortably small, but it fitted his own fingers perfectly. He placed it in the keyhole at the center of the clockface.

It went firmly home with a tiny click, more felt than heard. It wound to the right, of course; clockwise.

Danny turned the key until it would turn no more and then removed it. The clock began to tick. Cogs turned. A large balance wheel rocked back and forth in semicircles. The hands were moving. If you kept your head perfectly motionless and your eyes wide open, you could see the minute hand inching along toward its meeting some forty-five minutes from now with the hour hand. At XII.

(And the Red Death held sway over all.) He frowned, and then shook the thought away. It was a thought with no meaning or reference for him.

He reached his index finger out again and pushed the minute band up to the hour, curious about what might happen. It obviously wasn't a cuckoo clock, but that steel rail had to have some purpose.

There was a small, ratcheting series of clicks, and then the clock began to tinkle Strauss's "Blue Danube Waltz." A punched roll of cloth no more than two inches in width began to unwind. A small series of bra.s.s strikers rose and fell.

From behind the clockface two figures glided into view along the steel track, ballet dancers, on the left a girl in a fluffy skirt and white stockings, on the right a boy in a black leotard and ballet slippers. Their hands were held in arches over their beads. They came together in the middle, in front of VI.

Danny espied tiny grooves in their sides, just below their armpits. The axis bar slipped into these grooves and he heard another small click. The cogs at either end of the bar began to turn. "The Blue Danube" tinkled. The dancers' arms came down around each other. The boy flipped the girl up over his head and then whirled over the bar. They were now lying p.r.o.ne, the boy's head buried beneath the girl's short ballet skirt, the girl's face pressed against the center of the boy's leotard. They writhed in a mechanical frenzy.

Danny's nose wrinkled. They were kissing peepees. That made him feel sick.

A moment later and things began to run backward. The boy whirled back over the axis bar. He flipped the girl into an upright position. They seemed to nod knowingly at each other as their hands arched back over their heads. They retreated the way they had come, disappearing just as "The Blue Danube" finished. The clock began to strike a count of silver chimes.

(Midnight! Stroke of midnight!) (Hooray for masks!) Danny whirled on the chair, almost falling down. The ballroom was empty.

Beyond the double cathedral window he could see fresh snow beginning to sift down. The huge ballroom rug (rolled up for dancing, of course), a rich tangle of red and gold embroidery, lay undisturbed on the floor. s.p.a.ced around it were small, intimate tables for two, the spidery chairs that went with each upended with legs pointing at the ceiling.

The whole place was empty.

But it wasn't really empty. Because here in the Overlook things just went on and on. Here in the Overlook all times were one. There was an endless night in August of 1945, with laughter and drinks and a chosen shining few going up and coming down in the elevator, drinking champagne and popping party favors in each other's faces. It was a not-yet-light morning in June some twenty years later and the organization hitters endlessly pumped shotgun sh.e.l.ls into the torn and bleeding bodies of three men who went through their agony endlessly. In a room on the second floor a woman lolled in her tub and waited for visitors.

In the Overlook all things had a sort of life. It was as if the whole place had been wound up with a silver key. The clock was running. The clock was running.

He was that key, Danny thought sadly. Tony had warned him and he had just let things go on.

(I'm just five!) he cried to some half-felt presence in the room.

(Doesn't it make any deference that I'm just five?) There was no answer.

He turned reluctantly back to the clock.

He had been putting it off, hoping that something would happen to help him avoid trying to call Tony again, that a ranger would come, or a helicopter, or the rescue team; they always came in time on his TV programs, the people were saved. On TV the rangers and the SWAT squad and the paramedics were a friendly white force counterbalancing the confused evil that he perceived in the world; when people got in trouble they were helped out of it, they were fixed up. They did not have to help themselves out of trouble.

(Please?) There was no answer.

No answer, and if Tony came would it be the same nightmare? The booming, the tioa.r.s.e and petulant voice, the blueblack rug like snakes? Redrum?

But what else?

(Please oh please) No answer.

With a trembling sigh, he looked at the clockface. Cogs turned and meshed with other cogs. The balance wheel rocked hypnotically back and forth. And if you held your head perfectly still, you could see the minute hand creeping inexorably down from XII to V. If you held your bead perfectly still you could see that- The clockface was gone. In its place was a round black hole. It led down into forever. It began to swell. The clock was gone. The room behind it. Danny tottered and then fell into the darkness that had been biding behind the clockface all along.

The small boy in the chair suddenly collapsed and lay in it at a crooked unnatural angle, his head thrown back, his eyes staring sightlessly at the high ballroom ceiling.

Down and down and down and down to- -the hallway, crouched in the hallway, and he had made a wrong turn, trying to get back to the stairs he had made a wrong turn and now AND NOW- -he saw he was in the short dead-end corridor that led only to the Presidential Suite and the booming sound was coming closer, the roque mallet whistling savagely through the air, the head of it embedding itself into the wall, cutting the silk paper, letting out small puffs of plaster dust.

(G.o.ddammit, come out here! Take your) But there was another figure in the hallway. Slouched nonchalantly against the wall just behind him. Like a ghost.

No, not a ghost, but all dressed in white. Dressed in whites.

(I'll find you, you G.o.ddam little wh.o.r.emastering RUNT!) Danny cringed back from the sound. Coming up the main third-floor hall now.

Soon the owner of that voice would round the corner.

(Come here! Come here, you little s.h.i.t!) The figure dressed in white straightened up a little, removed a cigarette from the corner of his mouth, and plucked a shred of tobacco from his full lower lip.

It was Hallorann, Danny saw. Dressed in his cook's whites instead of the blue suit he had been wearing on closing day.