"Good. I'll be just a second."

"Come back as quick as you can," Danny whispered. "Please." Hallorann nodded. He had trained the headlamp on the door and now he floundered through the snow, casting a long shadow in front of himself. He pushed the equipment shed door open and stepped in. The horseblankets were still in the corner, by the rogue set. He picked up four of them-they smelled musty and old and the moths certainly had been having a free lunch-and then he paused.

One of the rogue mallets was gone.

(Was that what he hit me with?) Well, it didn't matter what he'd been hit with, did it? Still, his fingers went to the side of his face and began to explore the huge lump there. Six hundred dollars' worth of dental work undone at a single blow. And after all (maybe he didn't hit me with one of those. Maybe one got lost. Or stolen. Or took for a souvenir. After all) it didn't really matter. No one was going to be playing rogue here next summer. Or any summer in the foreseeable future.

No, it didn't really matter, except that looking at the racked mallets with the single missing member had a kind of fascination. He found himself thinking of the hard wooden whack! of the mallet head striking the round wooden ball. A nice summery sound. Watching it skitter across the (bone. blood.) gravel. It conjured up images of (bone. blood.) iced tea, porch swings, ladies in white straw hats, the hum of mosquitoes, and (bad little boys who don't play by the rules.) all that stuff. Sure. Nice game. Out of style now, but... nice.

"d.i.c.k?" The voice was thin, frantic, and, he thought, rather unpleasant. "Are you all right, d.i.c.k? Come out now. Please!" ("Come on out now nigguh de ma.s.sa callin you all.") His hand closed tightly around one of the mallet handles, liking its feel.

(pare the rod, spoil the child.) His eyes went blank in the flickering, fire-shot darkness. Really, it would be doing them both a favor. She was messed up... in pain... and most of it (all of it) was that d.a.m.n boy's fault. Sure. He had left his own daddy in there to burn.

When you thought of it, it was d.a.m.n close to murder. Patricide was what they called it. Pretty G.o.ddam low.

"Mr. Hallorann?" Her voice was low, weak, querulous. He didn't much like the sound of it.

"d.i.c.k!" The boy was sobbing now, in terror.

Hallorann drew the mallet from the rack and turned toward the flood of white light from the snowmobile headlamp. His feet scratched unevenly over the boards of the equipment shed, like the feet of a clockwork toy that has been wound up and set in motion.

Suddenly he stopped, looked wonderingly at the mallet in his hands, and asked himself with rising horror what it was he had been thinking of doing. Murder?

Had he been thinking of murder?

For a moment his entire mind seemed filled with an angry, weakly hectoring voice: (Do it! Do it, you weak-kneed no-b.a.l.l.s n.i.g.g.e.r! Kill them! KILL THEM BOTH!) Then he flung the mallet behind him with a whispered, terrified cry. It clattered into the corner where the horseblankets had been, one of the two heads pointed toward him in an unspeakable invitation.

He fled.

Danny was sitting on the snowmobile seat and Wendy was holding him weakly. His face was shiny with tears, and he was shaking as if with ague. Between his clicking teeth he said: "Where were you? We were scared!"

"It's a good place to be scared of," Hallorann said slowly. "Even if that place burns flat to the foundation, you'll never get me within a hundred miles of here again. Here, Missus Torrance, wrap these around you. I'll help. You too, Danny. Get yourself looking like an Arab." He swirled two of the blankets around Wendy, fashioning one of them into a hood to cover her head, and helped Danny tie his so they wouldn't fall off.

"Now hold on for dear life," he said. "We got a long way to go, but the worst is behind us now." He circled the equipment shed and then pointed the snowmobile back along their trail. The Overlook was a torch now, flaming at the sky. Great holes had been eaten into its sides, and there was a red h.e.l.l inside, waxing and waning.

Snowmelt ran down the charred gutters in steaming waterfalls.

They purred down the front lawns their way well lit. The snowdunes glowed scarlet.

"Look!" Danny shouted as Hallorann slowed for the front gate. He was pointing toward the playground.

The hedge creatures were all in their original positions, but they were denuded, blackened, seared. Their dead branches were a stark interlacing network in the fireglow, their small leaves scattered around their feet like fallen petals.

"They're dead!" Danny screamed in hysterical triumph.

"Dead! They're dead!"

"Shhh," Wendy said. "All right, honey. It's all right."

"Hey, doc," Hallorann said. "Let's get to someplace warm. You ready?"

"Yes," Danny whispered. "I've been ready for so long-" Hallorann edged through the gap between gate and post. A moment later they were on the road, pointed back toward Sidewinder. The sound of the snowmobile's engine dwindled until it was lost in the ceaseless roar of the wind. It rattled through the denuded branches of the hedge animals with a low, beating, desolate sound. The fire waxed and waned. Sometime after the sound of the snowmobile's engine had disappeared, the Overlooks roof caved in-first the west wing, then the east, and seconds later the central roof. A huge spiraling gout of sparks and flaming debris rushed up into the howling winter night.

A bundle of flaming shingles and a wad of hot flashing were wafted is through the open equipment shed door by the wind.

After a while the shed began to burn, too.

They were still twenty miles from Sidewinder when Hallorann stopped to pour the rest of the gas into the snowmobile's tank. He was getting very worried about Wendy Torrance, who seemed to be drifting away from them. It was still so far to go.

"d.i.c.k!" Danny cried. He was standing up on the seat, pointing. "d.i.c.k, look!

Look there!" The snow had stopped and a silver-dollar moon had peeked out through the raftering clouds. Far down the road but coming toward them, coming upward through a series of S-shaped switchbacks, was a pearly chain of lights. The wind dropped for a moment and Hallorann heard the faraway buzzing snarl of snowmobile engines.

Hallorann and Danny and Wendy reached them fifteen minutes later. They had brought extra clothes and brandy and Dr. Edmunds.

And the long darkness was over.

58 - Epilogue/Summer

After he had finished checking over the salads his understudy had made and peeked in on the home-baked beans they were using as appetizers this week, Hallorann untied his ap.r.o.n, hung it on a hook, and slipped out the back door. He had maybe forty-five minutes before he had to crank up for dinner in earnest.

The name of this place was the Red Arrow Lodge, and it was buried in the western Maine mountains, thirty miles from the town of Rangely. It was a good gig, Hallorann thought. The trade wasn't too heavy, it tipped well, and so far there hadn't been a single meal sent back. Not bad at all, considering the season was nearly half over.

He threaded his way between the outdoor bar and the swimming pool (although why anyone would want to use the pool with the lake so handy he would never know), crossed a greensward where a party of four was playing croquet and laughing, and crested a mild ridge. Pines took over here, and the wind soughed pleasantly in them, carrying the aroma of fir and sweet resin.

On the other side, a number of cabins with views of the lake were placed discreetly among the trees. The last one was the nicest, and Hallorann had reserved it for a party of two back in April when he had gotten this gig.

The woman was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, a book in her hands.

Hallorann was struck again by the change in her. Part of it was the stiff, almost formal way she sat, in spite of her informal surroundings-that was the back brace, of course. She'd had a shattered vertebra as well as three broken ribs and some internal injuries. The back was the slowest healing, and she was still in the brace... hence the formal posture. But the change was more than that. She looked older, and some of the laughter had gone out of her face. Now, as she sat reading her book, Hallorann saw a grave sort of beauty there that had been missing on the day he had first met her, some nine months ago. Then she had still been mostly girl. Now she was a woman, a human being who had been dragged around to the dark side of the moon and had come back able to put the pieces back together. But those pieces, Hallorann thought, they never fit just the same way again. Never in this world.

She heard his step and looked up, closing her book. "d.i.c.k! Hi!" She started to rise, and a little grimace of pain crossed her face.

"Hope, don't get up," he said. "I don't stand on no ceremony unless it's white tie and tails." She smiled as he came up the steps and sat down next to her on the porch.

"How is it going?"

"Pretty fair," he admitted. "You try the shrimp creole tonight. You gonna like it."

"That's a deal."

"Where's Danny?"

"Right down there." She pointed, and Hallorann saw a small figure sitting at the end of the dock. He was wearing jeans rolled up to the knee and a red- striped shirt. Further out on the calm water, a bobber floated. Every now and then Danny would reel it in, examine the sinker and hook below it, and then toss it out again.

"He's gettin brown," Hallorann said.

"Yes. Very brown." She looked at him fondly.

He took out a cigarette, tamped it, lit it. The smoke raftered away lazily in the sunny afternoon. "What about those dreams he's been havin?"

"Better," Wendy said. "Only one this week. It used to be every night, sometimes two and three times. The explosions. The hedges. And most of all... you know."

"Yeah. He's going to be okay, Wendy." She looked at him. "Will he? I wonder." Hallorann nodded. "You and him, you're coming back. Different, maybe, but okay. You ain't what you were, you two, but that isn't necessarily bad." They were silent for a while, Wendy moving the rocking chair back and forth a little, Hallorann with his feet up on the porch rail, smoking. A little breeze came up, pushing its secret way through the pines but barely ruffling Wendy's hair. She had cut it short.

"I've decided to take Al-Mr. Shockley-up on his offer," she said.

Hallorann nodded. "It sounds like a good job. Something you could get interested in. When do you start?"

"Right after Labor Day. When Danny and I leave here, we'll be going right on to Maryland to look for a place. It was really the Chamber of Commerce brochure that convinced me, you know. It looks like a nice town to raise a kid in. And I'd like to be working again before we dig too deeply into the insurance money Jack left. There's still over forty thousand dollars. Enough to send Danny to college with enough left over to get him a start, if it's invested right." Hallorann nodded. "Your mom?" She looked at him and smiled wanly. "I think Maryland is far enough."

"You won't forget old friends, will you?"

"Danny wouldn't let me. Go on down and see him, he's been waiting all day."

"Well, so have L" He stood up and hitched his cook's whites at the hips. "The two of you are going to be okay," he repeated. "Can't you feel it?" She looked up at him and this time her smile was warmer. "Yes," she said. She took his hand and kissed it. "Sometimes I think I can."

"The shrimp creole," he said, moving to the steps. "Don't forget."

"I won't." He walked down the sloping, graveled path that led to the dock and then out along the weather-beaten boards to the end, where Danny sat with his feet in the clear water. Beyond, the lake widened out, mirroring the pines along its verge.

The terrain was mountainous around here, but the mountains were old, rounded and humbled by time. Hallorann liked them just fine.

"Catchin much?" Hallorann said, sitting down next to him. He took off one shoe, then the other. With a sigh, he let his hot feet down into the cool water.

"No. But I had a nibble a little while ago."

"We'll take a boat out tomorrow morning. Got to get out in the middle if you want to catch an eatin fish, my boy. Out yonder is where the big ones lay."

"How big?" Hallorann shrugged. "Oh... sharks, marlin, whales, that sort of thing."

"There aren't any whales!"

"No blue whales, no. Of course not. These ones here run to no more than eighty feet. Pink whales."

"How could they get here from the ocean?" Hallorann put a hand on the boy's reddish-gold hair and rumpled it. "They swim upstream, my boy. That's how."

"Really?"

"Really." They were silent for a time, looking out over the stillness of the lake, Hallorann just thinking. When he looked back at Danny, he saw that his eyes had filled with tears.

Putting an arm around him, he said, "What's this?"

"Nothing," Danny whispered.

"You're missin your dad, aren't you?" Danny nodded. "You always know." One of the tears spilled from the corner of his right eye and trickled slowly down his cheek.

"We can't have any secrets," Hallorann agreed. "That's just how it is." Looking at his pole, Danny said: "Sometimes I wish it had been me. It was my fault. All my fault." Hallorann said, "You don't like to talk about it around your mom, do you?"

"No. She wants to forget it ever happened. So do I, but-"

"But you can't."

"No..

"Do you need to cry?" The boy tried to answer, but the words were swallowed in a sob. He leaned his head against Hallorann's shoulder and wept, the tears now flooding down his face. Hallorann held him and said nothing. The boy would have to shed his tears again and again, he knew, and it was Danny's luck that he was still young enough to be able to do that. The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge.

When he had quieted a little, Hallorann said, "You're gonna get over this. You don't think you are right now, but you will. You got the shi-"

"I wish I didn't!" Danny choked, his voice still thick with tears. "I wish I didn't have it!"

"But you do," Hallorann said quietly. "For better or worse. You didn't get no say, little boy. But the worst is over. You can use it to talk to me when things get rough. And if they get too rough, you just call me and I'll come."

"Even if I'm down in Maryland?"

"Even there." They were quiet, watching Danny's bobber drift around thirty feet out from the end of the dock. Then Danny said, almost too low to be heard, "You'll be my friend?"

"As long as you want me." The boy held him tight and Hallorann hugged him.

"Danny? You listen to me. I'm going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. There's some things no six-year-old boy in the world should have to be told, but the way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. The world's a hard place, Danny. It don't care. It don't hate you and me, but it don't love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they're things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it's only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don't love you, but your momma does and so do I. You're a good boy. You grieve for your daddy, and when you feel you have to cry over what happened to him, you go into a closet or under your covers and cry until it's all out of you again. That's what a good son has to do. But see that you get on. That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on."

"All right," Danny whispered. "I'll come see you again next summer if you want... if you don't mind. Next summer I'm going to be seven."

"And I'll be sixty-two. And I'm gonna hug your brains out your ears. But let's finish one summer before we get on to the next."

"Okay." He looked at Hallorann. "d.i.c.k?"

"Hmm?"

"You won't die for a long time, will you?"

"I'm sure not studyin on it. Are you?"

"No, sir. I-"

"You got a bite, sonny." He pointed. The red and white bobber had ducked under. It came up again glistening, and then went under again.

"Hey!" Danny gulped.

Wendy had come down and now joined them, standing in back of Danny. "What is it?" she asked. "Pickerel?"

"No, ma'am," Hallorann said, "I believe that's a pink whale." The tip of the fishing rod bent. Danny pulled it back and a long fish, rainbow-colored, flashed up in a sunny, winking parabola, and disappeared again.

Danny reeled frantically, gulping.