“Sure, Dad.”

The VW labored up and up. The speedometer dropped to just above the five-milean-hour hashmark and was beginning to hitch when Jack pulled off the road

(“What's that sign, Mommy?” “SCENIC TURNOUT,” she read dutifully.)

and stepped on the emergency brake and let the VW run in neutral.

“Come on,” he said, and got out.

They walked to the guardrail together.

“That's it,” Jack said, and pointed at eleven o'clock.

For Wendy, it was discovering truth in a cliche: her breath was taken away. For a moment she was unable to breathe at all; the view had knocked the wind from her. They were standing near the top of one peak. Across from them-who knew how far?-an even taller mountain reared into the sky, its jagged tip only a silhouette that was now nimbused by the sun, which was beginning its decline. The whole valley floor was spread out below them, the slopes that they had climbed in the laboring bug falling away with such dizzying suddenness that she knew to look down there for too long would bring on nausea and eventual vomiting. The imagination seemed to spring to full life in the clear air, beyond the rein of reason, and to look was to helplessly see one's self plunging down and down and down, sky and slopes changing places in slow cartwheels, the scream drifting from your mouth like a lazy balloon as your hair and your dress billowed out…

She jerked her gaze away from the drop almost by force and followed Jack's finger. She could see the highway clinging to the side of this cathedral spire, switching back on itself but always tending northwest, still climbing but at a more gentle angle. Further up, seemingly set directly into the slope itself, she saw the grimly clinging pines give way to a wide square of green lawn and standing in the middle of it, overlooking all this, the hotel. The Overlook. Seeing it, she found breath and voice again.

“Oh, Jack, it's gorgeous!”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “Unman says he thinks it's the single most beautiful location in America. I don't care much for him, but I think he might be… Danny! Danny, are you all right?”

She looked around for him and her sudden fear for him blotted out everything else, stupendous or not. She darted toward him. He was holding onto the guardrail and looking up at the hotel, his face a pasty gray color. His eyes had the blank look of someone on the verge of fainting.

She knelt beside him and put steadying hands on his shoulders. “Danny, what's-”

Jack was beside her. “You okay, doc?” He gave Danny a brisk little shake and his eyes cleared.

“I'm okay, Daddy. I'm fine.”

“What was it, Danny?” she asked. “Were you dizzy, honey?”

“No, I was just… thinking. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.” He looked at his parents, kneeling in front of him, and offered them a small puzzled smile. “Maybe it was the sun. The sun got in my eyes.”

“We'll get you up to the hotel and give you a drink of water,” Daddy said.

“Okay.”

And in the bug, which moved upward more surely on the gentler grade, he kept looking out between them as the road unwound, affording occasional glimpses of the Overlook Ho:. tel, its massive bank of westward-looking windows reflecting back the sun. It was the place he had seen in the midst of the blizzard, the dark and booming place where some hideously familiar figure sought him down long corridors carpeted with jungle. The place Tony had warned him against. It was here. It was here. Whatever Redrum was, it was here.

9. Checking It Out

Ullman was waiting for them just inside the wide, old-fashioned front doors. He shook hands with Jack and nodded coolly at Wendy, perhaps noticing the way heads turned when she came through into the lobby, her golden hair spilling across the shoulders of the simple navy dress. The hem of the dress stopped a modest two inches above the knee, but you didn't have to see more to know they were good legs.

Ullman seemed truly warm toward Danny only, but Wendy had experienced that before. Danny seemed to be a child for people who ordinarily held W. C. Fields' sentiments about children. He bent a little from the waist and offered Danny his hand. Danny shook it formally, without a smile.

“My son Danny,” Jack said. “And my wife Winnifred.”

“I'm happy to meet you both,” Ullman said. “How old are you, Danny?”

“Five, sir.”

“Sir, yet.” Ullman smiled and glanced at Jack. “He's well mannered.”

“Of course be is,” Jack said.

“And Mrs. Torrance.” 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. His hands were small and dry and smooth, and she guessed that he powdered them.

The lobby was a bustle of activity. Almost every one of the old-fashioned high-backed chairs was taken. Bellboys shuttled in and out with suitcases and there was a line at the desk, which was dominated by a huge brass cash register. The BankAmericard and Master Charge decals on it seemed jarringly anachronistic.

To their right, down toward a pair of tall double doors that were pulled closed and roped off, there was an old-fashioned fireplace now blazing with birch logs. Three nuns sat on a sofa that was drawn up almost to the hearth itself. They were talking and smiling with their bags stacked up to either side, waiting for the check-out line to thin a little. As Wendy watched them they burst into a chord of tinkling, girlish laughter. She felt a smile touch her own lips; not one of them could be under sixty.

In the background was the constant hum of conversation, the muted ding! of the silver-plated bell beside the cash register as one of the two clerks on duty struck it, the slightly impatient call of “Front, please!” It brought back strong, warm memories of her honeymoon in New York with Jack, at the Beekman Tower. For the first time she let herself believe that this might be exactly what the three of them needed: a season together away from the world, a sort of family honeymoon. She smiled affectionately down at Danny, who was goggling around frankly at everything. Another limo, as gray as a banker's vest, had pulled up out front

“The last day of the season,” Ullman was saying. “Closing day. Always hectic. I had expected you more around three, Mr. Torrance.”

“I wanted to give the Volks time for a nervous breakdown if it decided to have one,” Jack said. “It didn't.”

“How fortunate,” Ullman said. “I'd like to take the three of you on a tour of the place a little later, and of course Dick Hallorann wants to show Mrs. Torrance the Overlook's kitchen. But I'm afraid-”

One of the clerks came over and almost tugged his forelock.

“Excuse me, Mr. Unman-”

“Well? What is it?”

“It's Mrs. Brant,” the clerk said uncomfortably. “She refuses to pay her bill with anything but her American Express card. I told her we stopped taking American Express at the end of the season last year, but she won't…” His eyes shifted to the Torrance family, then back to Ullman. He shrugged.

“I'll take care of it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ullman.” 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.

“I have been coming to the Overlook Hotel since 1955,” she was telling the smiling, shrugging clerk. “I continued to come even after my second husband died of a stroke on that tiresome roque court-I told him the sun was too hot that day-and I have never… I repeat: never… paid with anything but my American Express credit card. Call the police if you like! Have them drag me away! I will still refuse to pay with anything but my American Express credit card. I repeat:…”

“Excuse me,” Mr. Ullman said.

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. He listened sympathetically, nodded again, and said something in return. Mrs. Brant smiled triumphantly, turned to the unhappy desk clerk, and said loudly: “Thank God there is one employee of this hotel who hasn't become an utter Philistinel”