Stephen King - The Shining

VIP免费

2024-12-04 0 0 766.32KB 342 页 5.9玖币

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

The Shining

Stephen King

This is for Joe Hill King, who shines on.

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (1 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

---------------

My editor on this book, as on the previous two,

was Mr. William G. Thompson,

a man of wit and good sense. His contribution

to this book has been large, and for it, my thanks

S.K.

Some of the most beautiful

resort hotels in the world

are located in Colorado, but

the hotel in these pages

is based on none of them.

The Overlook and the people

associated with it exist

wholly within

the author's

imagination.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood . . . a gigantic clock of

ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and

when . . . the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the

clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of

so peculiar a note 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 yet rang, it was

observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their

hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (2 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

echoes had fully ceased, a light 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, after the lapse of sixty minutes . . . there came yet

another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and

tremulousness and meditation as before.

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

-E. A. POE

"The Masque of the Red Death"

The sleep of reason breeds monsters.

GOYA

It'll shine when it shines

FOLK SAYING

P A R T O N E

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prefatory Matters

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<< 1 >>

JOB INTERVIEW

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (3 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.

Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissy speed that

seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair

was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring

your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it

spoke more curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in

the lapel, perhaps so that no one 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

there's your son, of course." He glanced down at the application in front of

him. "Daniel. Your wife isn't a bit intimidated by the idea?"

"Wendy is an extraordinary woman."

"And your son is also extraordinary?"

Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. "We like to think so, I suppose. He's quite

self-reliant for a five-year-old."

No returning smile from Ullman. He slipped Jack's application back into the

file. The file went into a drawer. The desk top was now completely bare except

for a blotter, a telephone, a Tensor lamp, and an in/out basket. Both sides of

the in/out were empty, too.

Ullman stood up and went to the file cabinet in the corner. "Step around the

desk, if you will, Mr. Torrance. We'll look at the floor plans."

He brought back five large sheets and set them down on the glossy walnut plain

of the desk. Jack stood by his shoulder, very much aware of the scent of

Ullman's cologne. All my men wear English Leather or they wear nothing at all

came into his mind for no reason at all, and he had to clamp 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 lunch.

"Top floor," Ullman said briskly. "The attic. Absolutely nothing up there now

but bric-a-brac. The Overlook has changed hands several times since World War II

and it seems that each successive manager has put everything they don't want up

in the attic. I want rattraps and poison bait sowed around in it. Some of the

third-floor chambermaids say they have heard rustling noises. I don't believe

it, not for a moment, but 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 world had a rat or two, held his

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (4 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

tongue.

"Of course you 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 actually think he would allow his son to goof

around in a rattrap attic full of junk furniture and God knew what else?

Ullman whisked away the attic floor plan and put it on the bottom of the pile.

"The Overlook has one hundred and ten guest quarters," he said in a scholarly

voice. "Thirty of them, all suites, are here on the third floor. Ten in the west

wing (including the Presidential Suite), ten in the center, ten more in the east

wing. All of them command magnificent views."

Could you at least spare the salestalk?

But he kept quiet. 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 ten singles. And on the first

floor, twenty of each. Plus three 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 end on the first. Questions?"

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

"Now. Lobby level: Here in the center is the registration desk. Behind it are

the offices. The lobby runs for eighty feet in either direction from the desk.

Over here in the west wing is the Overlook Dining Room and the Colorado Lounge.

The banquet and ballroom facility is in the east wing. Questions?"

"Only about the basement," Jack said. "For the winter caretaker, that's the

most important level of all. Where the action is, so to speak."

"Watson will show you all that. The basement floor plan is on the boiler room

wall." He frowned impressively, perhaps to show that as manager, he did not

concern himself with such mundane aspects of the Overlook's operation as the

boiler and the plumbing. "Might not be a bad idea to put some traps down there

too. 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 bold black script), tore it

off, and dropped it into the out basket. It sat there looking lonesome. The pad

disappeared back into Ullman's jacket pocket like the conclusion of a magician's

trick. Now you see it, Jacky-boy, now you don't. This guy is a real heavyweight.

They had resumed their original positions, Ullman behind the desk and Jack in

front of it, interviewer and interviewee, supplicant and reluctant patron.

Ullman folded his neat little hands on the desk blotter and looked directly at

Jack, a small, balding man in a banker's suit 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 gold letters.

"I'll be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Torrance. Albert Shockley is a powerful

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (5 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

man with a large interest in the Overlook, which showed a profit this season for

the first time in its history. Mr. Shockley also sits on the Board of Directors,

but he is not a hotel man and he would be the first to admit this. But he has

made his wishes in this caretaking matter quite obvious. He wants you hired. I

will do so. But if I had been given a free hand in this matter, I would not have

taken you on."

Jack's hands were clenched tightly in his lap, working against each other,

sweating. Officious little prick, officious

"I don't believe you care much for me, Mr. Torrance. I

little prick, officious--

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 one hundred and ten

people full-time; one 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'm a bit of a

bastard. They would be correct in their judgment of my character. I have to be a

bit of a bastard to run this hotel in the manner it deserves."

He looked at Jack for comment, and Jack flashed the PR smile again, large and

insultingly toothy.

Ullman said: "The Overlook was built in the years 1907 to 1909. The closest

town is Sidewinder, forty miles east of here over roads that are closed from

sometime in late October or November until sometime in April. A man named Robert

Townley Watson built it, the grandfather of our present maintenance man.

Vanderbilts have stayed here, and Rockefellers, and Astors, and Du Pouts. Four

Presidents have stayed in the Presidential Suite. Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt,

and Nixon."

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

Ullman frowned but went on regardless. "It 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 end of World War II, when it was purchased and completely

renovated by Horace Derwent, millionaire inventor, pilot, film producer, and

entrepreneur."

"I know the name," Jack said.

"Yes. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold . . . except the Overlook.

He funneled over a million dollars into it before the first postwar guest 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 you 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 be the finest roque court in

America."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Jack said gravely. A roque court, a topiary full of

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (6 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

hedge animals out front, what next? A life-sized Uncle Wiggly game behind the

equipment shed? He was getting very tired of Mr. Stuart Ullman, but he could see

that Ullman wasn't done. Ullman was going to have his say, every last word of

it.

"When he had lost three million, Derwent sold it to a group of California

investors. Their experience with the Overlook was equally bad. Just not hotel

people.

"In 1970, Mr. Shockley and a group of his associates bought the hotel and

turned its management over to me. We have also run in the red for several years,

but I'm happy to say that the trust of the present owners in me has never

wavered. Last year we broke even. And this year the Overlook's accounts were

written in black ink for the first time in almost seven decades."

Jack supposed that this fussy little man's pride was justified, and then his

original dislike washed over him again in a wave.

He said: "I see no connection between the Overlook's admittedly colorful

history and your feeling that I'm wrong for the post, Mr. Ullman."

"One reason that the Overlook has lost so much money lies in the depreciation

that occurs each winter. It shortens the profit margin a great deal more than

you might believe, Mr. Torrance. The winters are fantastically cruel. In order

to cope with the problem, I've installed a full-time winter caretaker to run the

boiler and to heat different parts of the hotel on a daily rotating basis. To

repair breakage as it occurs and to do repairs, so the elements can't get a

foothold. To be constantly alert to any and every contingency. During our first

winter I hired a family instead of a single man. There was a tragedy. A horrible

tragedy."

Ullman looked at Jack coolly and appraisingly.

"I made a mistake. I admit it freely. The man was a drunk."

Jack felt a slow, hot grin--the total antithesis of the toothy PR grin--

stretch across his mouth. "Is that it? I'm surprised Al didn't tell you. I've

retired."

"Yes, Mr. Shockley told me you no longer drink. He also told me about your

last job . . . your last position of trust, shall we say? You were teaching

English in a Vermont prep school. You lost your temper, I don't believe I need

to be any more specific than that. But I do happen to believe that Grady's case

has a bearing, and that is why I have brought the matter of your . . . uh,

previous history into the conversation. During the winter 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 will be sharing. He had a wife and two daughters. I had reservations,

the main ones being the harshness of the winter season and the fact that the

Gradys would be cut off from the outside world for five to six months."

"But that's not really true, is it? There are telephones here, and probably a

citizen's band radio as well. And the Rocky Mountain National Park is within

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (7 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

helicopter range and surely a piece of ground that big must have a chopper or

two."

"I wouldn't know about that," Ullman said. "The hotel does have a two-way

radio that Mr. Watson will show you, along with a list of the correct

frequencies to broadcast on if you need help. The telephone lines between here

and Sidewinder are still aboveground, and they go down almost every winter at

some point or other and are apt to stay down for three weeks to a month and a

half. There is a snowmobile in the equipment shed also."

"Then the place really isn't cut off."

Mr. Ullman looked pained. "Suppose your son or your wife tripped on the stairs

and fractured his or her skull, Mr. Torrance. Would you think the place was cut

off then?"

Jack saw the point. A snowmobile running at top speed could get you down to

Sidewinder in an hour and a half . . . maybe. A helicopter from the Parks Rescue

Service could get up here in three hours . . . under optimum conditions. In a

blizzard it would never even be able to lift off and you couldn't hope to run a

snowmobile at top speed, even if you dared take a seriously injured person out

into temperatures that might be twenty-five below-or forty-five below, if you

added in the wind chill factor.

"In the case of Grady," Ullman said, "I reasoned much as Mr. Shockley seems to

have done in your case. Solitude can be damaging in itself. Better for the man

to have his family with him. If there was trouble, I thought, the odds were very

high that it would be something less urgent than a fractured skull or an

accident with one of the power tools or some sort of convulsion. A serious case

of the flu, pneumonia, a broken arm, even appendicitis. Any of those things

would have left enough time.

"I suspect that what happened came as a result of too much cheap whiskey, of

which Grady had laid in a generous supply, unbeknownst to me, and a curious

condition which the old-timers call cabin fever. Do you know the term?" Ullman

offered a patronizing little smile, ready to explain as soon as Jack admitted

his ignorance, and Jack was happy to respond quickly and crisply.

"It's a slang term for the claustrophobic reaction that can occur when people

are shut in together over long periods of time. The feeling of claustrophobia is

externalized as dislike for the people you happen to be shut in with. In extreme

cases it can result in hallucinations and violence--murder has been done over

such minor things as a burned meal or an argument about whose turn it is to do

the dishes."

Ullman looked rather nonplussed, which did Jack a world of good. He decided to

press a little further, but silently promised Wendy he would stay cool.

"I suspect you did make a mistake at that. Did he hurt them?"

"He killed them, Mr. Torrance, and then committed suicide. He murdered the

little girls with a hatchet, his wife with a shotgun, and himself the same way.

His leg was broken. Undoubtedly so drunk he fell downstairs."

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (8 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

Ullman spread his hands and looked at Jack self-righteously.

"Was he a high school graduate?"

"As a matter of fact, he wasn't," Ullman said a little stiffly. "I thought a,

shall we say, less imaginative individual would be less susceptible to the

rigors, the loneliness--"

"That was your mistake," Jack said. "A stupid man is more prone to cabin fever

just as he's more prone to shoot someone over a card game or commit a spur-of-

the-moment robbery. He gets bored. When the snow comes, there's nothing to do

but watch TV or play solitaire and cheat when he can't get all the aces out.

Nothing to do but bitch at his wife and nag at the kids and drink. It gets hard

to sleep because there's nothing to hear. So he drinks himself to sleep and

wakes up with a hangover. He gets edgy. And maybe the telephone goes out and the

TV aerial blows down and there's nothing to do but think and cheat at solitaire

and get edgier and edgier. Finally. . . boom, boom, boom."

"Whereas a more educated man, such as yourself?"

"My wife and I both like to read. I have a play to work on, as Al Shockley

probably told you. Danny has his puzzles, his coloring books, and his crystal

radio. I plan to teach him to read, and I also want to teach him to snowshoe.

Wendy would like to learn how, too. Oh yes, I think we can keep busy and out of

each other's hair if the TV goes on the fritz." He paused. "And Al was telling

the truth when he told you I no longer drink. I did once, and it got to be

serious. But I haven't had so much as a glass of beer in the last fourteen

months. I don't intend to bring any alcohol up here, and I don't think there

will be an opportunity to get arty after the snow flies."

"In that you would be quite correct," Ullman said. "But as long as the three

of you are up here, the potential for problems is multiplied. I have told Mr.

Shockley this, and he told me he would take the responsibility. Now I've told

you, and apparently you are also willing to take the responsibility--"

"I am."

"All right. I'll accept that, since I have little choice. But I would still

rather have an unattached college boy taking a year off. Well, perhaps you'll

do. Now I'll turn you over to Mr. Watson, who will take you through the basement

and around the grounds. Unless you have further questions?"

"No. None at all."

Ullman stood. "I hope there are no hard feelings, Mr. Torrance. There is

nothing personal in the things I have said to you. I only want what's best for

the Overlook. It is a great hotel. I want it to stay that way."

"No. No hard feelings." Jack flashed the PR grin again, but he was glad Ullman

didn't offer to shake hands. There were hard feelings. All kinds of them.

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (9 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt

<< 2 >>

BOULDER

She looked out the kitchen window and saw him just sitting there on the curb,

not playing with his trucks or the wagon or even the balsa glider that had

pleased him so much all the last week since Jack had brought it home. He was

just sitting there, watching for their shopworn VW, his elbows planted on his

thighs and his chin propped in his hands, a five-yearold kid waiting for his

daddy.

Wendy suddenly felt bad, almost crying bad.

She hung the dish towel over the bar by the sink and went downstairs,

buttoning the top two buttons of her house dress. Jack and his pride! Hey no,

Al, I don't need an advance. I'm okay for a while. The hallway walls were gouged

and marked with crayons, grease pencil, spray paint. The stairs were steep and

splintery. The whole building smelled of sour age, and what sort of place was

this for Danny after the small neat brick house in Stovington? The people living

above them on the third floor weren't married, and while that didn't bother her,

their constant, rancorous fighting did. It scared her. The guy up there was Tom,

and after the bars had closed and they had returned home, the fights would start

in earnest--the rest of the week was just a prelim in comparison. The Friday

Night Fights, Jack called them, but it wasn't funny. The woman--her name was

Elaine--would at last be reduced to tears and to repeating over and over again:

"Don't, Tom. Please don't. Please don't." And he would shout at her. Once they

had even awakened Danny, and Danny slept like a corpse. The next morning Jack

caught Tom going out and had spoken to him on the sidewalk at some length. Tom

started to bluster and Jack had said something else to him, too quietly for

Wendy to hear, and Tom had only shaken his head sullenly and walked away. That

had been a week ago and for a few days things had been better, but since the

weekend things had been working back to normal--excuse me, abnormal. It was bad

for the boy.

Her sense of grief washed over her again but she was on the walk now and she

smothered it. Sweeping her dress under her and sitting down on the curb beside

him, she said: "What's up, doc?"

He smiled at her but it was perfunctory. "Hi, Mom."

The glider was between his sneakered feet, and she saw that one of the wings

had started to splinter.

"Want me to see what I can do with that, honey?"

Danny had gone back to staring up the street. "No. Dad will fix it."

"Your daddy may not be back until suppertime, doc. It's a long drive up into

those mountains."

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...g%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt (10 of 342)7/28/2005 9:09:52 PM

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20The%20Shining.txtTheShiningbyStephenKingThisisforJoeHillKing,whoshineson.file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Step...ng%20Books/Stephen%2King%20-%20The%20Shining.txt(1of342)7/28/20059:09:52PMfile:///E...

展开>> 收起<<

Stephen King - The Shining.pdf

共342页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Stephen King - The Shining

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: