The Shining

silver key. The clock was running. The clock was running.
He was that key, Danny thought sadly. Tony had warned him and he had just let things go on.
(I’m just five!)
he cried to some half-felt presence in the room.
(Doesn’t it make any deference that I’m just five?)
There was no answer.
He turned reluctantly back to the clock.
He had been putting it off, hoping that something would happen to help him avoid trying to call Tony again, that a ranger would come, or a helicopter, or the rescue team; they always came in time on his TV programs, the people were saved. On TV the rangers and the SWAT squad and the paramedics were a friendly white force counterbalancing the confused evil that he perceived in the world; when people got in trouble they were helped out of it, they were fixed up. They did not have to help themselves out of trouble.
(Please?)
There was no answer.
No answer, and if Tony came would it be the same nightmare? The booming, the Tioarse and petulant voice, the blueblack rug like snakes? Redrum?
But what else?
(Please oh please)
No answer.
With a trembling sigh, he looked at the clockface. Cogs turned and meshed with other cogs. The balance wheel rocked hypnotically back and forth. And if you held your head perfectly still, you could see the minute hand creeping inexorably down from XII to V. If you held your bead perfectly still you could see that-
The clockface was gone. In its place was a round black hole. It led down into forever. It began to swell. The clock was gone. The room behind it. Danny tottered and then fell into the darkness that had been biding behind the clockface all along.
The small boy in the chair suddenly collapsed and lay in it at a crooked unnatural angle, his head thrown back, his eyes staring sightlessly at the high ballroom ceiling.
Down and down and down and down to-
–the hallway, crouched in the hallway, and he had made a wrong turn, trying to get back to the stairs he had made a wrong turn and now AND NOW-
–he saw he was in the short dead-end corridor that led only to the Presidential Suite and the booming sound was coming closer, the roque mallet whistling savagely through the air, the head of it embedding itself into the wall, cutting the silk paper, letting out small puffs of plaster dust.
(Goddammit, come out here! Take your)
But there was another figure in the hallway. Slouched nonchalantly against the wall just behind him. Like a ghost.
No, not a ghost, but all dressed in white. Dressed in whites.
(I’ll find you, you goddam little whoremastering RUNT!)
Danny cringed back from the sound. Coming up the main third-floor hall now. Soon the owner of that voice would round the corner.
(Come here! Come here, you little shit!)
The figure dressed in white straightened up a little, removed a cigarette from the corner of his mouth, and plucked a shred of tobacco from his full lower lip. It was Hallorann, Danny saw. Dressed in his cook’s whites instead of the blue suit he had been wearing on closing day.
“If there is trouble,” Hallorann said, “you give a call. A big loud holler like the one that knocked me back a few minutes ago. I might hear you even way down in Florida. And if I do, I’ll come on the run. I’ll come on the run. I’ll come on the-”
(Come now, then! Come now, come NOW! Oh Dick I need you we all need)
“-run. Sorry, but I got to run. Sorry, Danny ole kid ole doc, but I got to run. It’s sure been fun, you son of a gun, but I got to hurry, I got to run.”
(No!)
But as he watched, Dick Hallorann turned, put his cigarette back into the corner of his mouth, and stepped nonchalantly through the wall.
Leaving him alone.
And that was when the shadow-figure turned the corner, huge in the hallway’s gloom, only the reflected red of its eyes clear.
(There you are! Now I’ve got you, you fuck! Now I’ll teach you!)
It lurched toward him in a horrible, shambling run, the roque mallet swinging up and up and up. Danny scrambled backward, screaming, and suddenly he was through the wall and falling, tumbling over and over, down the hole, down the rabbit hole and into a land full of sick wonders.
Tony was far below him, also falling.
(I can’t come anymore, Danny… he won’t let me near you… none of them will let me near you… get Dick… get Dick…)
“Tony!” he screamed.
But Tony was gone and suddenly he was in a dark room. But not entirely dark. Muted light spilling from somewhere. It was Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom. He could see Daddy’s desk. But the room was a dreadful shambles. He had been in this room before. Mommy’s record player overturned on the floor. Her records scattered on the rug. The mattress half off the