Sure, with luck.

He left the apartment, locked the door behind him, put the key under the rush mat, and ran down the outside steps to his converted Cadillac.

Halfway to Miami International, comfortably away from the switchboard where Queems or Queems's toadies were known to listen in, Hallorann stopped at a shopping center Laundromat and called United Air Lines. Flights to Denver?

There was one due out at 6:36 P. m. Could the gentleman make that?

Hallorann looked at his watch, which showed 6:02, and said he could. What about vacancies on the flight?

Just let me check.

A clunking sound in his ear followed by saccharine Montavani, which was supposed to make being on bold more pleasant. It didn't. Hallorann danced from one foot to the other, alternating glances between his watch and a young girl with a sleeping baby, in a hammock on her back unloading a coin-op Maytag. She was afraid she was going to get home later than she planned and the roast would burn and her husband-Mark? Mike? Matt?-would be mad.

A minute passed. Two. He had just about made up his mind to drive ahead and take his chances when the cannedsounding voice of the flight reservations clerk came back on. There was an empty seat, a cancellation. It was in first class. Did that make any difference?

No. He wanted it.

Would that be cash or credit card?

Cash, baby, cash. I've got to fly.

And the name was-?

Hallorann, two l's, two n's. Catch you later.

He hung up and hurried toward the door. The girl's simple thought, worry for the roast, broadcast at him over and over until be thought he would go mad. Sometimes it was like that, for no reason at all you would catch a thought, completely isolated, completely pure and clear… and usually completely useless.

He almost made it.

He had the limo cranked up to eighty and the airport was actually in sight when one of Florida's Finest pulled him over.

Hallorann unrolled the electric window and opened his mouth at the cop, who was flipping up pages in his citation book.

“I know,” the cop said comfortingly. “It's a funeral in Cleveland. Your father. It's a wedding in Seattle. Your sister.

A fire in San Jose that wiped out your gramp's candy store. Some really fine Cambodian Red just waiting in a terminal locker in New York City. I love this piece of road just outside the airport. Even as a kid, story hour was my favorite part of school.”

“Listen, officer, my son is-”

“The only part of the story I can never figure out until the end,” the officer said, finding the right page in his citation book, “is the driver's-license number of the offending motorist/storyteller and his registration informationSo be a nice guy. Let me peek.”

Hallorann looked into the cop's calm blue eyes, debated telling his my-son-isin-critical-condition story anyway, and decided that would make things worse. This Smokey was no Queems. He dug out his wallet.

“Wonderful,” the cop said. “Would you take them out for me, please? I just have to see how it's all going to come out in the end.”

Silently, Hallorann took out his driver's license and his Florida registration and gave them to the traffic cop.

“That's very good. That's so good you win a present.”

“What?” Hallorann asked hopefully.

“When I finish writing down these numbers, I'm going to let you blow up a little balloon for me.”

“Oh, Jeeeesus!” Hallorann moaned. “Officer, my flight-”

“Shhhh,” the traffic cop said. “Don't be naughty.”

Hallorann closed his eyes.

He got to the United desk at 6:49, hoping against hope that the flight had been delayed. He didn't even have to ask. The departure monitor over the incoming passengers desk told the story. Flight 901 for Denver, due out at 6:36 EST, had left at 6:40. Nine minutes before.

“Oh shit,” Dick Hallorann said.

And suddenly the smell of oranges, heavy and cloying, he had just time to reach the men's room before it came, deafening, terrified:

(!!! COME PLEASE COME DICK PLEASE PLEASE COME!!!)

39. On the Stairs

One of the things they had sold to swell their liquid assets a little before moving from Vermont to Colorado was Jack's collection of two hundred old rock 'n' roll and r amp; b albums; they had gone at the yard sale for a dollar apiece. One of these albums, Danny's personal favorite, had been an Eddie Cochran double-record set with four pages of bound-in liner notes by Lenny Kaye. Wendy had often been struck by Danny's fascination for this one particular album by a manboy who had lived fast and died young… had died, in fact, when she herself had only been ten years old.

Now, at quarter past seven (mountain time), as Dick Hallorann was telling Queems about his ex-wife's white boyfriend, she came upon Danny sitting halfway up the stairs between the lobby and the first floor, tossing a red rubber ball from hand to band and singing one of the songs from that album. His voice was low and tuneless.

“So I climb one-two flight three flight four,” Danny sang, “five flight six flight seven flight more… when I get to the top, I'm too tired to rock…”

She came around him, sat down on one of the stair risers, and saw that his lower lip had swelled to twice its size and that there was dried blood on his chin. Her heart took a frightened leap in her chest, but she managed to speak neutrally.

“What happened, doc?” she asked, although she was sure she knew. Jack had hit him. Well, of course. That came next, didn't it? The wheels of progress; sooner or later they took you back to where you started from.

“I called Tony,” Danny said. “In the ballroom. I guess I fell off the chair. It doesn't hurt anymore. Just feels… like my lip's too big.”

“Is that what really happened?” she asked, looking at him, troubled.

“Daddy didn't do it,” he answered. “Not today.”

She gazed at him, feeling eerie. The ball traveled from one band to the other. He had read her mind. Her son had read her mind.

“What… what did Tony tell you, Danny?”

“It doesn't matter.” His face was calm, his voice chillingly indifferent.

“Danny-” She gripped his shoulder, harder than she had intended. But he didn't wince, or even try to shake her off.

(Oh we are wrecking this boy. It's not just Jack, it's me too, and maybe it's not even just us, Jack's father, my mother, are they here too? Sure, why not? The place is lousy with ghosts anyway, why not a couple more? Oh Lord in heaven he's like one of those suitcases they show on TV, run over, dropped from planes, going through factory crushers. Or a Timex watch. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Oh Danny I'm so sorry)

“It doesn't matter,” he said again. The ball went from hand to hand. “Tony can't come anymore. They won't let him. He's licked.”

“Who won't?”

“The people in the hotel,” he said. He looked at her then, and his eyes weren't indifferent at all. They were deep and scared. “And the… the things in the hotel. There's all kinds of them. The hotel is stuffed with them.”

“You can see-”

“I don't want to see,” he said low, and then looked back at the rubber ball, arcing from hand to hand. “But I can hear them sometimes, late at night. They're like the wind, all sighing together. In the attic. The basement. The rooms. All over. I thought it was my fault, because of the way I am. The key. The little silver key.”

“Danny, don't… don't upset yourself this way.”

“But it's him too,” Danny said. “It's Daddy. And it's you. It wants all of us. It's tricking Daddy, it's fooling him, trying to make him think it wants him the most. It wants me the most, but it will take all of us.”