“Was what, Dan?”
“I forget,” Danny said. He started to put his thumb in his mouth to suck it, but that was a baby trick. He put his hand back in his lap.
“Can you tell what your mom and dad are thinking, Danny?” Hallorann was watching him closely.
“Most times, if I want to. But usually I don't try.”
“Why not?”
“Well…” he paused a moment, troubled. “It would be like peeking into the bedroom and watching while they're doing the thing that makes babies. Do you know that thing?”
“I have had acquaintance with it,” Hallorann said gravely.
“They wouldn't like that. And they wouldn't like me peeking at their thinks. It would be dirty.”
“I see.”
“But I know how they're feeling,” Danny said. “I can't help that. I know how you're feeling, too. I hurt you. I'm sorry.”
“It's just a headache. I've had hangovers that were worse. Can you read other people, Danny?”
“I can't read yet at all,” Danny said, “except a few words. But Daddy's going to teach me this winter. My daddy used to teach reading and writing in a big school. Mostly writing, but he knows reading, too.”
“I mean, can you tell what anybody is thinking?”
Danny thought about it.
“I can if it's loud,” he said finally. “Like Mrs. Brant and the pants. Or like once, when me and Mommy were in this big store to get me some shoes, there was this big kid looking at radios, and he was thinking about taking one without buying it. Then he'd think, what if I get caught? Then he'd think, I really want it. Then he'd think about getting caught again. He was making himself sick about it, and he was making me sick. Mommy was talking to the man who sells the shoes so I went over and said, `Kid, don't take that radio. Go away. ' And he got really scared. He went away fast.”
Hallorann was grinning broadly. “I bet he did. Can you do anything else, Danny? Is it only thoughts and feelings, or is there more?”
Cautiously: “Is there more for you?”
“Sometimes,” Hallorann said. “Not often. Sometimes… sometimes there are dreams. Do you dream, Danny?”
“Sometimes,” Danny said, “I dream when I'm awake. After Tony comes.” His thumb wanted to go into his mouth again. He had never told anyone but Mommy and Daddy about Tony. He made his thumb-sucking hand go back into his lap.
“Who's Tony?”
And suddenly Danny had one of those flashes of understanding that frightened him most of all; it was like a sudden glimpse of some incomprehensible machine that might be safe or might be deadly dangerous. He was too young to know which. He was too young to understand.
“What's wrong?” he cried. “You're asking me all this because you're worried, aren't you? Why are you worried about me? Why are you worried about us?”
Hallorann put his large dark hands on the small boy's shoulders. “Stop,” he said. It's probably nothin. But if it is somethin… well, you've got a large thing in your head, Danny. You'll have to do a lot of growin yet before you catch up to it, I guess. You got to be brave about it.”
“But I don't understand thingsl” Danny burst out. “I do but I don't! People… they feel things and I feel them, but I don't know what I'm feeling!” He looked down at his lap wretchedly. “I wish I could read. Sometimes Tony shows me signs and I can hardly read any of them.”
“Who's Tony?” Hallorann asked again.
“Mommy and Daddy call him my `invisible playmate,'' Danny said, reciting the words carefully. “But he's really real. At least, I think he is. Sometimes, when I try real hard to understand things, he comes. He says, 'Danny, I want to show you something. ' And it's like I pass out. Only… there are dreams, like you said.” He looked at Hallorann and swallowed. “They used to be nice. But now… I can't remember the word for dreams that scare you and make you cry.”
“Nightmares?” Hallorann asked.
“Yes. That's right. Nightmares.”
“About this place? About the Overlook?”
Danny looked down at his thumb-sucking hand again. “Yes,” he whispered. Then he spoke shrilly, looking up into Hallorann's face: “But I can't tell my daddy, and you can't, either! He has to have this job because it's the only one Uncle Al could get for him and he has to finish his play or he might start doing the Bad Thing again and I know what that is, it's getting drunk, that's what it is, it's when he used to always be drunk and that was a Bad Thing to do!” He stopped, on the verge of tears.
“Shh,” Hallorann said, and pulled Danny's face against the rough serge of his jacket. It smelled faintly of mothballs. “That's all right, son. And if that thumb likes your mouth, let it go where it wants.” But his face was troubled.
He said: “What you got, son, I call it shinin on, the Bible calls it having visions, and there's scientists that call it precognition. I've read up on it, son. I've studied on it. They all mean seeing the future. Do you understand that?”
Danny nodded against Hallorann's coat.
“I remember the strongest shine I ever had that way… I'm not liable to forget. It was 1955. I was still in the Army then, stationed overseas in West Germany. It was an hour before supper, and I was standin by the sink, givin one of the KPs hell for takin too much of the potato along with the peel. I says, 'Here, lemme show you how that's done. ' He held out the potato and the peeler and then the whole kitchen was gone. Bang, just like that. You say you see this guy Tony before… before you have dreams?”
Danny nodded.
Hallorann put an arm around him. “With me it's smellin oranges. All that afternoon I'd been smellin them and thinkin nothin of it, because they were on the menu for that nightwe had thirty crates of Valencias. Everybody in the damn kitchen was smellin oranges that night.
“For a minute it was like I had just passed out. And then I heard an explosion and saw flames. There were people screaming. Sirens. And I heard this hissin noise that could only be steam. Then it seemed like I got a little closer to whatever it was and I saw a railroad car off the tracks and laying on its side with Georgia aced South Carolina Railroad written on it, and I knew like a flash that my brother Carl was on that train and it jumped the tracks and Carl was dead. Just like that. Then it was gone and here's this scared, stupid little KP in front of me, still holdin out that potato and the peeler. He says, 'Are you okay, Sarge?' And I says, `No. My brother's just been killed down in Georgia' And when I finally got my momma on the overseas telephone, she told me how it was.
“But see, boy, I already knew how it was.”
He shook his head slowly, as if dismissing the memory, and looked down at the wide-eyed boy.
“But the thing you got to remember, my boy, is this: Those things don't always come true. I remember just four years ago I had a job cookin at a boys' camp up in Maine on Long Lake. So I am sittin by the boarding gate at Logan Airport in Boston, just waiting to get on my flight, and I start to smell oranges. For the first time in maybe five years. So I say to myself, 'My God, what's comin on this crazy late show now?' and I got down to the bathroom and sat on one of the toilets to be private. I never did black out, but I started to get this feelin, stronger and stronger, that my plane was gonna crash. Then the feeling went away, and the smell of oranges, and I knew it was over. I went back to the Delta Airlines desk and changed my flight to one three hours later. And do you know what happened?”
“What?” Danny whispered.
“Nothin!” Hallorann said, and laughed. He was relieved to see the boy smile a little, too. “Not one single thingl That old plane landed right on time and without a single bump or bruise. So you see… sometimes those feelins don't come to anything.”
“Oh,” Danny said.
“Or you take the race track. I go a lot, and I usually do pretty well. I stand by the rail when they go by the starting gate, and sometimes I get a little shine about this horse or that one. Usually those feelins help me get real well. I always tell myself that someday I'm gonna get three at once on three long shots and make enough on the trifecta to retire early. It ain't happened yet. But there's plenty of times I've come home from the track on shank's mare instead of in a taxicab with my wallet swollen up. Nobody shines on all the time, except maybe for God up in heaven.”
“Yes, sir,” Danny said, thinking of the time almost a year ago when Tony had showed him a new baby lying in a crib at their house in Stovington. He had been very excited about that, and had waited, knowing that it took time, but there had been no new baby.
“Now you listen,” Hallorann said, and took both of Danny's hands in his own. “I've had some bad dreams here, and I've had some bad feelins. I've worked here two seasons now and maybe a dozen times I've had… well, nightmares. And maybe half a dozen times I've thought I've seen things. No, I won't say what. It ain't for a little boy like you. Just nasty things. Once it had something to do with those damn hedges clipped to look like animals. Another time there was a maid, Delores Vickery her name was, and she had a little shine to her, but I don't think she knew it. Mr. Ullman fired her… do you know what that is, doc?”
“Yes, sir,” Danny said candidly, “my daddy got fired from his teaching job and that's why we're in Colorado, I guess.”
“Well, Ullman fired her on account of her saying she'd seen something in one of the rooms where… well, where a bad thing happened. That was in Room 217, and I want you to promise me you won't go in there, Danny. Not all winter. Steer right clear.”
“All right,” Danny said. “Did the lady-the maiden-did she ask you to go look?”
“Yes, she did. And there was a bad thing there. But… I don't think it was a bad thing that could hurt anyone, Danny, that's what I'm tryin to say. People who shine can sometimes see things that are gonna happen, and I think sometimes they can see things that did happen. But they're just like pictures in a book. Did you ever see a picture in a book that scared you, Danny?”
“Yes,” he said, thinking of the story of Bluebeard and the picture where Bluebeard's new wife opens the door and sees all the heads.
“But you knew it couldn't hurt you, didn't you?”
“Ye-ess…” Danny said, a little dubious.
“Well, that's how it is in this hotel. I don't know why, but it seems that all the bad things that ever happened here, there's little pieces of those things still layin around like fingernail clippins or the boogers that somebody nasty just wiped under a chair. I don't know why it should just be here, there's bad goings-on in just about every hotel in the world, I guess, and I've worked in a lot of them and had no trouble. Only here. But Danny, I don't think those things can hurt anybody.” He emphasized each word in the sentence with a mild shake of the boy's shoulders. “So if you should see something, in a hallway or a room or outside by those hedges… just look the other way and when you look back, it'll be gone. Are you diggin me?”
“Yes,” Danny said. He felt much better, soothed. He got up on his knees, kissed Hallorann's cheek, and gave him a big hard hug. Hallorann hugged him back.
When he released the boy he asked: “Your folks, they don't shine, do they?”
“No, I don't think so.”
“I tried them like I did you,” Hallorann said. “Your momma jumped the tiniest bit. I think all mothers shine a little, you know, at least until their kids grow up enough to watch out for themselves. Your dad…”
Hallorann paused momentarily. He had probed at the boy's father and he just didn't know. It wasn't like meeting someone who had the shine, or someone who definitely did not. Poking at Danny's father had been… strange, as if Jack Torrance had something-something-that he was hiding. Or something he was holding in so deeply submerged in himself that it was impossible to get to.
“I don't think he shines at all,” Hallorann finished. “So you don't worry about them. You just take care of you. I don't think there's anything here that can hurt you. So just be cool, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Danny! Hey, doc!”
