“Mr. Hallorann? Dick? Are you okay?”

“I don't know,” Hallorann said, and laughed weakly. “I honest to God don't. My God, boy, you're a pistol.”

“I'm sorry,” Danny said, more alarmed. “Should I get my daddy? I'll run and get him.”

“No, here I come. I'm okay, Danny. You just sit right there. I feel a little scrambled, that's all.”

“I didn't go as hard as I could,” Danny confessed. “I was scared to, at the last minute.”

“Probably my good luck you did… my brains would be leakin out my ears.” He saw the alarm on Danny's face and smiled. “No harm done. What did it feel like to you?”

“Like I was Nolan Ryan throwing a fastball,” he replied promptly.

“You like baseball, do you?” Hallorann was rubbing his temples gingerly.

“Daddy and me like the Angels,” Danny said. “The Red Sox in the American League East and the Angels in the West. We saw the Red Sox against Cincinnati in the World Series. I was a lot littler then. And Daddy was…” Danny's face went dark and troubled.

“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?”