The Shining

Then he was ahead and out of danger and suddenly aware that he had wet his pants.

In Hallora

(COME DICK PLEASE COME DICK PLEASE)

but it began to fade off the way a radio station will as you approach the limits of its broadcasting area. He became fuzzily aware that his car was tooling along the soft shoulder at better than fifty miles an hour. He guided it back onto the road, feeling the rear end fishtail for a moment before regaining the composition surface.

There was an A/W Rootbeer stand just ahead. Hallora

(Lord God!)

“May I help you?”

The voice startled him again, even though it wasn't the voice of God but that of a cute little carhop, standing by his open window with an order pad.

“Yeah, baby, a rootbeer float. Two scoops of vanilla, okay?”

“Yes, sir.” She walked away, hips rolling nicely beneath her red nylon uniform.

Hallora

But this had been much louder. Then the boy had only been playing a game with him. This had been pure panic, each word screamed aloud in his bead.

He looked down at his arms. Hot sunshine lay on them but they had still goosebumped. He had told the boy to call him if he needed help, he remembered that. And now the boy was calling.

He suddenly wondered how he could have left that boy up there at all, shining the way he did. There was bound to be trouble, maybe bad trouble.

He suddenly keyed the limo, put it in reverse, and pulled back onto the highway, peeling rubber. The waitress with the rolling hips stood in the A/W stand's archway, a tray with a rootbeer float on it in her hands.

“What is it with you, a fire?” she shouted, but Hallora

The manager was a man named Queems, and when Hallora

“Problems, Dick?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Queems, I guess so. I need three days off.”

There was a package of Kents in the breast pocket of Queems's sheer yellow shirt. He reached one out of the pocket without removing the pack, tweezing it out, and bit down morosely on the patented Micronite filter. He lit it with his desktop Cricket.

“So do I,” he said. “But what's on your mind?”

“I need three days,” Hallora

Queems's eyes dropped to Hallora

“I been divorced since 1964,” Hallora

“Dick, you know what the weekend situation is. We're full. To the gu

“Yes, sir,” Hallora

“Shot!” Queems said. He put his Kent down in an ashtray which bore the emblem of Ole Miss, of which he was a business admin graduate.

“Yes, sir,” Hallora

“Hunting accident?”

“No, sir,” Hallora

“How in hell did you find out? I thought you were buying vegetables.”

“Yes, sir, I was.” He had stopped at the Western Union office just before coming here to reserve an Avis car at Stapleton Airport. Before leaving he had swiped a Western Union flimsy. Now he took the folded and crumpled blank form from his pocket and flashed it before Queems's bloodshot eyes. He put it back in his pocket and, allowing his voice to drop another notch, said: “Jana sent it. It was waitin in my letterbox when I got back just now.”

“Jesus. Jesus Christ,” Queems said. There was a peculiar tight expression of concern on his face, one Hallora

“Yeah, okay, you get going,” Queems said. “Baedecker can take over for three days, I guess. The potboy can help out.”

Hallora

“I want to rebate back this week's pay,” Hallora

Queems's expression got tighter still it looked as if he might have a fishbone caught in his throat. “We can talk about that later. You go on and pack. I'll talk to Baedecker. Want me to make you a plane reservation?”

“No, sir, I'll do it.”

“All right.” Queems stood up, leaned sincerely forward, and inhaled a raft of ascending smoke from his Kent. He coughed heartily, his thin white face turning red. Hallora

“I'll do that.”

They shook hands over the desk.

Hallora

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

He recovered a little at a time and at last felt capable of climbing the outside stairs to his apartment. He kept the latchkey under the rush-plaited doormat, and when he reached down to get it, something fell out of his i

Then he turned it over and the word WILL stared up at him in the black spidery letters.

(Oh my God is it like that?)

He didn't know. But it could be. All week long the thought of his own ending had been on his mind like a… well, like a

(Go on, say it)

like a premonition,.

Death? For a moment his whole life seemed to flash before him, not in a historical sense, no topography of the ups and downs that Mrs. Hallora