Read the Shining by Stephen King Online

  PRAISE FOR

STEPHEN King

"The nigh wonderfully gruesome man on the planet."

--USA Today

"An undisputed master of suspense and terror."

--The Washington Post

"[Male monarch] probably knows more near scary goings-on in confined, isolated places than anybody since Edgar Allan Poe."

--Amusement Weekly

"He's the author who can always make the improbable and so scary y'all'll feel compelled to check the locks on the front end door."

--The Boston Globe

"Peerless imagination."

--The Observer (London)

Outset Anchor BOOKS MASS Market place EDITION, JULY 2012

Copyright (c) 1977 by Stephen King

Excerpt from Dr. Sleep by Stephen King. Copyright (c) 2013 by Stephen King. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a segmentation of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Express, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the Us by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1977.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the writer'southward imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to bodily persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Owing to limitations of infinite, permissions to reprint previously published material appear on this page.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition every bit follows:

Male monarch, Stephen. 1947-

The shining / Stephen King.--1st ed.

i. Hotelkeepers--Fiction. 2. Families--Fiction. I. Championship.

PZ4.K5227 Sh PS3561.l483

813'.five'iv

76024212

eISBN: 978-0-385-52886-3

www.anchorbooks.com

Cover design and photograph: Henry Steadman

v3.1_r1

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author's Note

Epigraph

Part Ane: Prefatory Matters

Chapter 1: Job Interview

Chapter Two: Boulder

Affiliate Three: Watson

Chapter 4: Shadowland

Affiliate Five: Phonebooth

Affiliate Six: Night Thoughts

Chapter 7: In Another Chamber

Office Two: Closing Twenty-four hour period

Affiliate Viii: A View of the Overlook

Chapter Nine: Checking Information technology Out

Affiliate Ten: Hallorann

Affiliate Eleven: The Shining

Affiliate Twelve: The Grand Bout

Chapter Thirteen: The Front Porch

Part Three: The Wasps' Nest

Chapter 14: Upward On the Roof

Chapter 15: Downward in the Forepart Yard

Chapter Sixteen: Danny

Chapter Seventeen: The Dr.'s Part

Affiliate Eighteen: The Scrapbook

Chapter Nineteen: Exterior 217

Chapter Xx: Talking to Mr. Ullman

Affiliate Twenty-Ane: Night Thoughts

Chapter Twenty-Two: In the Truck

Chapter Twenty-Three: In the Playground

Affiliate Twenty-Four: Snow

Affiliate Twenty-Five: Inside 217

Part Four: Snowbound

Chapter Xx-Vi: Dreamland

Chapter Twenty-7: Catatonic

Chapter Twenty-Viii: "Information technology Was Her!"

Chapter Xx-Nine: Kitchen Talk

Chapter Thirty: 217 Revisited

Chapter Xxx-One: The Verdict

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Bedroom

Chapter Thirty-Three: The Snowmobile

Affiliate Thirty-Four: The Hedges

Affiliate Xxx-V: The Lobby

Chapter Thirty-Half-dozen: The Elevator

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Ballroom

Part 5: Matters of Life and Death

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Florida

Chapter 30-Nine: On the Stairs

Chapter Xl: In the Basement

Chapter Twoscore-One: Daylight

Chapter Xl-Two: Mid-Air

Affiliate Xl-3: Drinks On the House

Affiliate Forty-Four: Conversations At the Party

Chapter Xl-Five: Stapleton Airport, Denver

Chapter Xl-Half-dozen: Wendy

Chapter 40-Seven: Danny

Affiliate Xl-Eight: Jack

Chapter 40-Ix: Hallorann, Going Up the Country

Chapter Fifty: Redrum

Chapter Fifty-One: Hallorann Arrives

Chapter 50-Ii: Wendy and Jack

Affiliate Fifty-3: Hallorann Laid Depression

Chapter Fifty-4: Tony

Affiliate Fifty-V: That Which Was Forgotten

Chapter Fifty-Six: The Explosion

Affiliate Fifty-Seven: Exit

Chapter L-Viii: Epilogue / Summer

Excerpt from Doctor Sleep

Acknowledgements

Almost the Author

Other Books by This Author

This is for Joe Hill King, who shines on.

My editor on this volume, as on the previous two, was Mr. William G. Thompson, a human of wit and good sense. His contribution to this book has been big, and for it, my cheers.

S.One thousand.

Some of the about beautiful

resort hotels in the world

are located in Colorado, merely

the hotel in these pages

is based on none of them.

The Overlook and the people

associated with it exist

wholly inside

the author's

imagination.

It was in this flat, also, that at that place stood ... a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a ho-hum, heavy, monotonous clang; and when ... the hour was to exist stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was articulate and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, merely of so peculiar a notation and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause ... to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock nevertheless rang, information technology was observed that the giddiest grew stake, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows every bit if in confused reverie or meditation. Merely when the echoes had fully ceased, a calorie-free laughter at once pervaded the assembly ... and [they] smiled as if at their own nervousness ... and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, subsequently the lapse of sixty minutes ... there came yet another chiming of the clock, and and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation equally earlier.

But in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel ...

Eastward. A. Poe

"The Masque of the Red Death"

The sleep of reason breeds monsters.

Goya

It'll shine when it shines.

Folk maxim

PART One

PREFATORY MATTERS

CHAPTER ONE

Task INTERVIEW

Jack Torrance idea: Officious footling prick.

Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the dainty speed that seems to exist the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark arrange was sober merely comforting. I am a homo y'all can bring your issues to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired assist information technology spoke more curtly: This had better be good, yous. There was a red carnation in the l

apel, perhaps then that no i on the street would mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.

As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he probably could not have liked any man on that side of the desk--under the circumstances.

Ullman had asked a question he hadn't caught. That was bad; Ullman was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental Rolodex for later consideration.

"I'm sorry?"

"I asked if your wife fully understood what you would be taking on here. And at that place's your son, of form." He glanced down at the awarding in front of him. "Daniel. Your wife isn't a flake intimidated by the thought?"

"Wendy is an extraordinary adult female."

"And your son is as well boggling?"

Jack smiled, a big wide PR smiling. "We like to remember so, I suppose. He's quite self-reliant for a five-year-quondam."

No returning grin from Ullman. He slipped Jack's awarding back into a file. The file went into a drawer. The desk meridian was now completely bare except for a blotter, a phone, a Tensor lamp, and an in/out basket. Both sides of the in/out were empty, as well.

Ullman stood upward and went to the file cabinet in the corner. "Step around the desk-bound, if yous will, Mr. Torrance. We'll await at the hotel floor plans."

He brought dorsum v large sheets and set them down on the sleeky walnut aeroplane of the desk. Jack stood past his shoulder, very much aware of the scent of Ullman's cologne. All my men wearable English language Leather or they vesture aught at all came into his heed for no reason at all, and he had to clench his tongue between his teeth to keep in a bray of laughter. Beyond the wall, faintly, came the sounds of the Overlook Hotel's kitchen, gearing down from dejeuner.

"Top floor," Ullman said briskly. "The cranium. Absolutely nix upwards there at present only bric-a-brac. The Overlook has inverse hands several times since World State of war II and it seems that each successive director has put everything they don't want upwardly in the attic. I want rattraps and poison bait sowed around in it. Some of the third-flooring chambermaids say they accept heard rustling noises. I don't believe it, not for a moment, simply there mustn't even be that one-in-a-hundred chance that a single rat inhabits the Overlook Hotel."

Jack, who suspected that every hotel in the globe had a rat or 2, held his tongue.

"Of course y'all wouldn't allow your son up in the attic under any circumstances."

"No," Jack said, and flashed the big PR smile again. Humiliating situation. Did this officious little prick really remember he would allow his son to goof around in a rattrap attic full of junk piece of furniture and God knew what else?

Ullman whisked away the attic flooring program and put information technology on the lesser of the pile.

"The Overlook has ane hundred and ten guest quarters," he said in a scholarly vocalism. "30 of them, all suites, are here on the tertiary floor. 10 in the west fly (including the Presidential Suite), ten in the center, ten more in the due east fly. All of them control magnificent views."

Could you at least spare the salestalk?

Merely he kept placidity. He needed the job.

Ullman put the third floor on the bottom of the pile and they studied the second floor.

"Forty rooms," Ullman said, "thirty doubles and x singles. And on the beginning floor, xx of each. Plus 3 linen closets on each floor, and a storeroom which is at the extreme east end of the hotel on the second floor and the extreme west terminate on the offset. Questions?"

Jack shook his head. Ullman whisked the second and first floors abroad.

"Now. Antechamber level. Hither in the eye is the registration desk. Behind it are the offices. The vestibule runs for eighty feet in either direction from the desk. Over here in the westward wing is the Overlook Dining Room and the Colorado Lounge. The feast and ballroom facility is in the east wing. Questions?"

"Only about the basement," Jack said. "For the wintertime caretaker, that'due south the virtually important level of all. Where the activeness is, so to speak."

"Watson volition evidence you all that. The basement floor programme is on the boiler room wall." He frowned impressively, mayhap to evidence that as manager, he did non concern himself with such mundane aspects of the Overlook's operation as the banality and the plumbing. "Might not exist a bad idea to put some traps downwards there as well. Just a minute ..."

He scrawled a note on a pad he took from his inner coat pocket (each sheet bore the legend From the Desk of Stuart Ullman in assuming black script), tore it off, and dropped it into the out basket. It sat in that location looking lonesome. The pad disappeared back into Ullman'southward jacket pocket similar the conclusion of a magician'south flim-flam. Now y'all run across information technology, Jacky-boy, at present yous don't. This guy is a real heavyweight.

They had resumed their original positions, Ullman behind the desk-bound and Jack in front of it, interviewer and interviewee, supplicant and reluctant patron. Ullman folded his neat picayune easily on the desk blotter and looked straight at Jack, a small-scale, balding man in a broker'due south arrange and a quiet gray tie. The flower in his lapel was balanced off by a small lapel pin on the other side. It read simply STAFF in small aureate letters.

"I'll be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Torrance. Albert Shockley is a powerful human being with a large interest in the Overlook, which showed a turn a profit this season for the first time in its history. Mr. Shockley likewise sits on the Board of Directors, but he is not a hotel human being and he would exist the first to admit this. Simply he has made his wishes in this caretaking matter quite obvious. He wants yous hired. I will exercise so. But if I had been given a gratuitous mitt in this matter, I would not have taken you on."

Jack'due south hands were clenched tightly in his lap, working confronting each other, sweating. Officious petty prick, officious petty prick, officious--

"I don't believe you care much for me, Mr. Torrance. I don't care. Certainly your feelings toward me play no part in my own belief that you are not right for the job. During the season that runs from May fifteenth to September thirtieth, the Overlook employs 1 hundred and ten people full-time; i for every room in the hotel, you might say. I don't think many of them like me and I suspect that some of them think I'g a chip of a bastard. They would be correct in their judgment of my character. I have to be a chip of a bastard to run this hotel in the mode information technology deserves."

He looked at Jack for comment, and Jack flashed the PR grinning again, big and insultingly toothy.

Ullman said: "The Overlook was congenital in the years 1907 to 1909. The closest town is Sidewinder, forty miles east of here over roads that are closed from one-time in late Oct or November until sometime in Apr. A homo named Robert Townley Watson built it, the grandfather of our present maintenance man. Vanderbilts take stayed here, and Rockefellers, and Astors, and Du Ponts. Four Presidents accept stayed in the Presidential Suite. Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, and Nixon."

"I wouldn't be besides proud of Harding and Nixon," Jack murmured.

Ullman frowned but went on regardless. "Information technology proved too much for Mr. Watson, and he sold the hotel in 1915. It was sold again in 1922, in 1929, in 1936. It stood vacant until the finish of World State of war II, when it was purchased and completely renovated by Horace Derwent, millionaire inventor, pilot, motion-picture show producer, and entrepreneur."

"I know the name," Jack said.

"Yes. Everything he touched seemed to turn to golden ... except the Overlook. He funneled over a meg dollars into information technology earlier the first postwar invitee ever stepped through its doors, turning a decrepit relic into a showplace. It was Derwent who added the roque court I saw you admiring when yous arrived."

"Roque?"

"A British forebear of our croquet, Mr. Torrance. Croquet is bastardized roque. According to legend, Derwent learned the game from his social secretary and fell completely in love with it. Ours may exist the finest roque court in America."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Jack said gravely. A roque court, a topiary total of hedge animals out front, what next? A life-sized Uncle Wiggily game behind the equipment shed? He was getting very tired of Mr. Stuart Ullman, but he could come across that Ullman wasn't done. Ullman was going to take his say, every last word of it.

"When he had lost three million, Derwent sold it to a grouping of California investors. Their experience with

the Overlook was every bit bad. Just not hotel people.

"In 1970, Mr. Shockley and a grouping of his associates bought the hotel and turned its management over to me. We have likewise run in the red for several years, merely I'm happy to say that the trust of the present owners in me has never wavered. Final year we broke even. And this year the Overlook's accounts were written in blackness ink for the offset time in almost seven decades."

Jack supposed that this fussy piddling man'south pride was justified, and and so his original dislike done over him again in a wave.

He said: "I see no connection betwixt the Overlook'due south admittedly colorful history and your feeling that I'k wrong for the post, Mr. Ullman."

"One reason that the Overlook has lost and so much money lies in the depreciation that occurs each winter. It shortens the profit margin a great deal more than than you might believe, Mr. Torrance. The winters are fantastically vicious. In order to cope with the trouble, I've installed a full-time winter caretaker to run the banality and to heat different parts of the hotel on a daily rotating basis. To repair breakage equally it occurs and to do repairs, so the elements tin can't go a foothold. To exist constantly alert to any and every contingency. During our start winter I hired a family instead of a single human being. In that location was a tragedy. A horrible tragedy."

Ullman looked at Jack coolly and appraisingly.

"I fabricated a mistake. I acknowledge it freely. The human was a drunk."

Jack felt a slow, hot smile--the total antonym of the toothy PR grin--stretch across his mouth. "Is that it? I'm surprised Al didn't tell you. I've retired."

"Yeah, Mr. Shockley told me you no longer drink. He also told me well-nigh your last job ... your last position of trust, shall we say? You were didactics English in a Vermont prep school. You lot lost your temper, I don't believe I need to be any more specific than that. Only I do happen to believe that Grady's example has a bearing, and that is why I have brought the matter of your ... uh, previous history into the chat. During the wintertime of 1970-71, after we had refurbished the Overlook but before our first season, I hired this ... this unfortunate named Delbert Grady. He moved into the quarters you and your wife and son volition be sharing. He had a married woman and two daughters. I had reservations, the primary ones being the harshness of the winter season and the fact that the Gradys would be cutting off from the outside world for five to six months."

"Merely that'due south not actually true, is it? There are telephones here, and probably a citizen's band radio equally well. And the Rocky Mountain National Park is within helicopter range and surely a slice of footing that big must have a chopper or two."

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