“No. And I wouldn't be here unless my business was as urgent as I say.”

“That so?” The driver shifted his stance companionably as if they were having a desultory chat on the back steps instead of standing in a blizzard halfway between hoot and holler, with Hallorann's car balanced three hundred feet above the tops of the trees below.

“Where you headed? Estes?”

“No, a place called the Overlook Hotel,” Hallorann said. “It's a little way above Sidewinder-”

But the driver was shaking his head dolefully.

“I guess I know well enough where that is,” he said. “Mister, you'll never get up to the old Overlook. Roads between Estes Park and Sidewinder is bloody damn hell. It's driftin in right behind us no matter how hard we push. I come through drifts a few miles back that was damn near six feet through the middle. And even if you could make Sidewinder, why, the road's closed from there all the way across to Buckland, Utah. Nope.” He shook his head. “Never make it, mister. Never make it at all.”

“I have to try,” Hallorann said, calling on his last reserves of patience to keep his voice normal. “There's a boy up there-”

“Boy? Naw. The Overlook closes down at the last end of September. No percentage keepin it open longer. Too many shit-storms like this.”

“He's the son of the caretaker. He's in trouble.”

“How would you know that?”

His patience snapped.

“For Christ's sake are you going to stand there and flap y'jaw at me the rest of the day? I know, I know! Now are you going to pull me back on the road or not?”

“Kind of testy, aren't you?” the driver observed, not particularly perturbed. “Sure, get back in there. I got a chain behind the seat.”

Hallorann got back behind the wheel, beginning to shake with delayed reaction now. His hands were numbed almost clear through. He had forgotten to bring gloves.

The plow backed up to the rear of the Buick, and he saw the driver get out with a long coil of chain. Hallorann opened the door and shouted: “What can I do to help?”

“Stay out of the way, is all,” the driver shouted back. “This ain't gonna take a blink,”

Which was true. A shudder ran through the Buick's frame as the chain pulled tight, and a second later it was back on the road, pointed more or less toward Estes Park. The plow driver walked up beside the window and knocked on the safety glass. Hallorann rolled down the window.

“Thanks,” he said. “I'm sorry I shouted at you.”

“I been shouted at before,” the driver said with a grin. “I guess you're sorta strung up. You take these.” A pair of bulky blue mittens dropped into Hallorann's lap. “You'll need em when you go off the road again, I guess. Cold out. You wear em unless you want to spend the rest of your life pickin your nose with a crochetin hook. And you send em back. My wife knitted em and I'm partial to em. Name and address is sewed right into the linin. I'm Howard Cottrell, by the way. You just send em back when you don't need em anymore. And I don't want to have to go payin no postage due, mind.”

“All right,” Hallorann said. “Thanks. One hell of a lot.”

“You be careful. I'd take you myself, but I'm busy as a cat in a mess of guitar strings.”

“That's okay. Thanks again.”

He started to roll up the window, but Cottrell stopped him.

“When you get to Sidewinder-if you get to Sidewinder-you go to Durkin's Conoco. It's right next to the li'brey. Can't miss it. You ask for Larry Durkin. Tell him Howie Cottrell sent you and you want to rent one of his snowmobiles. You mention my name and show those mittens, you'll get the cut rate.”

“Thanks again,” Hallorann said.

Cottrell nodded. “It's funny. Ain't no way you could know someone's in trouble up there at the Overlook… the phone's out, sure as hell. But I believe you. Sometimes I get feelins.”

Hallorann nodded. “Sometimes I do, too.”

“Yeah. I know you do. But you take care.”

“I will.”

Cottrell disappeared into the blowing dimness with a final wave, his engineer cap still mounted perkily on his head. Hallorann got going again, the chains flailing at the snowcover on the road, finally digging in enough to start the Buick moving. Behind him, Howard Cottrell gave a final good-luck blast on his plow's airhorn, although it was really unnecessary; Hallorann could feel him wishing him good luck.

That's two shines in one day, he thought, and that ought to be some kind of good omen. But he distrusted omens, good or bad. And meeting two people with the shine in one day (when he usually didn't run across more than four or five in the course of a year) might not mean anything. That feeling of finality, a feeling

(like things are all wrapped up)

he could not completely define was still very much with him. It was

The Buick wanted to skid sideways around a tight curve and Hallorann jockeyed it carefully, hardly daring to breathe. He turned on the radio again and it was Aretha, and Aretha was just fine. He'd share his Hertz Buick with her any day.

Another gust of wind struck the car, making it rock and slip around. Hallorann cursed it and hunched more closely over the wheel. Aretha finished her song and then the jock was on again, telling him that driving today was a good way to get killed.

Hallorann snapped the radio off.

He did make it to Sidewinder, although he was four and a half hours on the road between Estes Park and there. By the time he got to the Upland Highway it was full dark, but the snowstorm showed no sign of abating. Twice he'd had to stop in front of drifts that were as high as his car's hood and wait for the plows to come along and knock holes in them. At one of the drifts the plow had come up on his side of the road and there had been another close call. The driver had merely swung around his car, not getting out to chew the fat, but he did deliver one of the two finger gestures that all Americans above the age of ten recognize, and it was not the peace sign.

It seemed that as he drew closer to the Overlook, his need to hurry became more and more compulsive. He found himself glancing at his wristwatch almost constantly. The hands seemed to be flying along.

Ten minutes after he had turned onto the Upland, he passed two signs. The whooping wind had cleared both of their snow pack so he was able to read them. SIDEWINDER 10, the first said. The second: ROAD CLOSED 12 MILES AHEAD DURING WINTER MONTHS.

“Larry Durkin,” Hallorann muttered to himself. His dark face was strained and tense in the muted green glow of the dashboard instruments. It was ten after six. “The Conoco by the library. Larry-”

And that was when it struck him full-force, the smell of oranges and the thought-force, heavy and hateful, murderous:

(GET OUT OF HERE YOU DIRTY NIGGER THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS YOU NIGGER TURN AROUND TURN AROUND OR WE'LL KILL YOU HANG YOU UP FROM A TREE LIMB YOU FUCKING JUNGLE-BUNNY COON AND THEN BURN THE BODY THAT'S WHAT WE DO WITH NIGGERS SO TURN AROUND NOW)

Hallorann screamed in the close confines of the car. The message did not come to him in words but in a series of rebuslike images that were slammed into his head with terrific force. He took his hands from the steering wheel to blot the pictures out.

Then the car smashed broadside into one of the embankments, rebounded, slewed halfway around, and came to a stop. The rear wheels spun uselessly.

Hallorann snapped the gearshift into park, and then covered his face with his hands. He did not precisely cry; what escaped him was an uneven huh-huh-huh sound. His chest heaved. He knew that if that blast had taken him on a stretch of road with a dropoff on one side or the other, he might well be dead now. Maybe that had been the idea. And it might hit him again, at any time. He would have to protect against it. He was surrounded by a red force of immense power that might have been memory. He was drowning in instinct.