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CHAPTER FOUR
PAGING DOCTOR SLEEP
1
It was January of 2007. In the turret room of Rivington House, Dan’s space heater was running full
blast, but the room was still cold. A nor’easter, driven by a fifty-mile-an-hour gale, had blown down
from the mountains, piling five inches of snow an hour on the sleeping town of Frazier. When the
storm finally eased the following afternoon, some of the drifts against the north and east sides of the
buildings on Cranmore Avenue would be twelve feet deep.
Dan wasn’t bothered by the cold; nestled beneath two down comforters, he was warm as tea and
toast. Yet the wind had found its way inside his head just as it found its way under the sashes and
doorsills of the old Victorian he now called home. In his dream, he could hear it moaning around the
hotel where he had spent one winter as a little boy. In his dream, he was that little boy.
He’s on the second floor of the Overlook. Mommy is sleeping and Daddy’s in the basement, looking at old
papers. He’s doing RESEARCH. The RESEARCH is for the book he’s going to write. Danny isn’t supposed to
be up here, and he’s not supposed to have the passkey that’s clutched in one hand, but he hasn’t been able to stay
away. Right now he’s staring at a firehose that’s bolted to the wall. It’s folded over and over on itself, and it
looks like a snake with a brass head. A sleeping snake. Of course it’s not a snake—that’s canvas he’s looking at,
not scales—but it sure does look like a snake.
Sometimes it is a snake.
“Go on,” he whispers to it in this dream. He’s trembling with terror, but something drives him on. And
why? Because he’s doing his own RESEARCH, that’s why. “Go on, bite me! You can’t, can you? Because
you’re just a stupid HOSE!”
The nozzle of the stupid hose stirs, and all at once, instead of looking at it sideways, Danny is looking into
its bore. Or maybe into its mouth. A single clear drop appears below the black hole, elongating. In it he can see
his own wide eyes reflected back at him.
A drop of water or a drop of poison?
Is it a snake or a hose?
Who can say, my dear Redrum, Redrum my dear? Who can say?
It buzzes at him, and terror jumps up his throat from his rapidly beating heart. Rattlesnakes buzz like that.
Now the nozzle of the hose-snake rolls away from the stack of canvas it’s lying on and drops to the carpet
with a dull thud. It buzzes again and he knows he should step back before it can rush forward and bite him, but
he’s frozen he can’t move and it’s buzzing—
“Wake up, Danny!” Tony calls from somewhere. “Wake up, wake up!”
But he can wake up no more than he can move, this is the Overlook, they are snowed in, and things are
different now. Hoses become snakes, dead women open their eyes, and his father . . . oh dear God WE HAVE
TO GET OUT OF HERE BECAUSE MY FATHER IS GOING CRAZY.
The rattlesnake buzzes. It buzzes. It