Then the thing in the sky was gone and it might only have been smoke or a great flapping swatch of wallpaper after all, and there was only the Overlook, a flaming pyre in the roaring throat of the night.

There was a key to the equipment shed's padlock on his key ring, but Hallorann saw there would be no need to use it.

The door was ajar, the padlock hanging open on its hasp.

“I can't go in there,” Danny whispered.

“That's okay. You stay with your mom. There used to be a pile of old horseblankets. Probably all moth-eaten by now, but better than freezin to death. Missus Torrance, you still with us?”

“I don't know,” the wan voice answered. “I think so.”

“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 themthey 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.

“Dick?” The voice was thin, frantic, and, he thought, rather unpleasant. “Are you all right, Dick? Come out now. Please!”

(“Come on out now nigguh de massa callin youall.”)

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 damn boy's fault. Sure. He had left his own daddy in there to burn. When you thought of it, it was damn close to murder. Patricide was what they called it. Pretty goddam low:

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

“Dick!” 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-balls nigger! 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 hell 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.

“Dick!” Danny cried. He was standing up on the seat, pointing. “Dick, 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.