Danny flees from the hedge animals

Danny Torrance's flight from the hedge animals is a pivotal action sequence in which the Overlook Hotel's supernatural power manifests directly in the physical world, transforming the topiary into mobile predators that pursue him across the snow-covered grounds. This event marks the collapse of Danny's hope that the hotel's horrors are merely visions, and it forces the Torrance family to confront the reality that the Overlook is actively hunting them.

The Setting and Danny's State of Mind

On the afternoon of November 29, three days after Thanksgiving, Danny decides to go to the playground. He has been avoiding the topiary since Dick Hallorann warned him to "steer right clear" of certain places, but the hedge animals are buried under snowdrifts, showing only vague humps—the rabbit's head and the lions' tails—which look absurd rather than frightening. Danny straps on his snowshoes and makes his way downhill to the playground, which seems much nicer in the deep snow than it ever did during the autumn. The swing chains are frozen in strange positions, the jungle gym is an ice-cave guarded by dripping icicle teeth, and only the chimneys of the play-Overlook stick up over the snow. He crawls into one of the concrete rings, imagining himself as a secret agent on the run, but the game collapses when he realizes how closed in he feels. The far end is solidly blocked with snow, and he becomes acutely aware that he is under the snow, that hardly any light filters down, and that the Overlook does not like him. When a minor fall of snow clogs the opening, panic seizes him: he remembers his father's warning about old refrigerators at the dump—"You would die in the darkness"—and feels certain that something is in the tunnel with him. He hears the stealthy crackle of dead leaves as something comes for him on its hands and knees. That thought breaks his paralysis, and he claws his way out into the sunlight.

The Hedge Animals Reveal Themselves

As Danny sits by the jungle gym to catch his breath and readjust his snowshoes, he hears a soft thumping sound behind him. He turns toward the hotel and sees that a large clump of snow has fallen off the hedge dog, revealing it as an incongruous splash of green in all the whiteness. It is sitting up, as if to beg for a scrap. He tries to reassure himself that the sun simply melted enough snow off the dog, but then another soft thump comes from behind him. He turns and sees the head of one of the hedge lions sticking out of the snow, snarling at him. It is closer than it should be, almost up to the gate of the playground. Danny begins to walk out of the playground, concentrating on operating the snowshoes with slow, flat strides, but the snow is drifted high and he almost falls when his snowshoe catches on a fence post. From his right, more falling clumps of snow reveal the other two lions, clear of snow down to their forepaws, side by side about sixty paces away. The green indentations that are their eyes are fixed on him. The dog has turned its head. Danny's snowshoes cross and he plunges forward into the snow, struggling to get up while the panic gnaws at him like a rat behind his forehead.

The Chase Across the Snow

Danny gains his feet and stares over at the topiary. All three lions are now bunched together, not forty feet away. The dog has ranged off to their left, as if to block his retreat. They are bare of snow except for powdery ruffs around their necks and muzzles, and they are all staring at him. He begins to walk again, trying to regain the easy rhythm his father taught him, but he is exhausted by fear. Ahead, the Overlook seems mockingly distant, staring at him with its many windows as if this were some sort of contest. He looks back over his shoulder and sees the nearest lion only twenty feet behind, breasting through the snow like a dog paddling in a pond. The two others are to its right and left, pacing it like an army platoon on patrol, with the dog still off to their left as the scout. The closest lion has its head down, its shoulders bunched powerfully above its neck, its tail up as if it had been swishing back and forth. Danny thinks it looks like a great big housecat having a good time playing with a mouse before killing it. He pinwheels his arms madly and lunges ahead, snapping glances back over his shoulder. The world closes down to the dazzling snow, the green hedges, and the whispery sound of his snowshoes—and something else: a soft, muffled padding sound. When he looks back again, the point lion is only five feet behind. It is grinning. Its mouth is open, its haunches tensed down like a clockspring. Behind it and the others, he can see the rabbit, its head now sticking out of the snow, bright green, as if it has turned its horrid blank face to watch the end of the stalk.

The Final Sprint to Safety

On the Overlook's front lawn, between the circular drive and the porch, Danny lets the panic loose and begins to run clumsily in the snowshoes, not daring to look back now, tilting further and further forward, his arms out ahead of him like a blind man feeling for obstacles. His hood falls back, revealing his complexion—paste white giving way to hectic red blotches on his cheeks—and his eyes bulging with terror. The porch is very close now. Behind him, he hears the sudden hard crunch of snow as something leaps. He falls on the porch steps, screaming without sound, and scrambles up them on his hands and knees, snowshoes clattering and askew behind him. There is a slashing sound in the air and sudden pain in his leg. The ripping sound of cloth. Something else that might have been in his mind: a bellowing, angry roar, the smell of blood and evergreen. He falls full-length on the porch, sobbing hoarsely, the rich, metallic taste of copper in his mouth. His heart is thundering in his chest. There is a small trickle of blood coming from his nose. He has no idea how long he lies there before the lobby doors fly open and Jack runs out, wearing just his jeans and a pair of slippers, with Wendy behind him. Below the knee, Danny's snowpants are ripped open. Inside, his woolen ski sock has been ripped open and his calf has been shallowly scratched, as if he tried to push his way through a closely grown evergreen hedge and the branches clawed him. He looks over his shoulder. Far down the lawn, past the putting green, are a number of vague, snow-cowled humps: the hedge animals, between them and the playground, between them and the road. His legs give way. Jack catches him. He begins to cry.

Aftermath and Confrontation

Back in the lobby, Danny tells his parents everything except what happened in the concrete ring. He describes the soft sound of snow falling in clumps, the lion with its head and bunched shoulders working its way up and out of the snow to chase him, and how the rabbit turned its head to watch near the end. Jack builds a roaring blaze in the fireplace, and Danny sits bundled in a blanket on the small sofa, sipping hot noodle soup from a mug. Jack sits on the floor, his face growing more and more still and set as Danny tells his story. Twice he pulls his handkerchief out of his back pocket and rubs his sore-looking lips with it. When Danny finishes, Jack takes him to the window and asks him what he sees. Below, the snowfield is marred by two sets of tracks: one in a straight line from the porch to the playground, the other a long, looping line coming back up. The hedges are all covered with snow. Jack tries to convince Danny that he must have cut his leg on the crust of the snow, but Danny insists there is no crust—it is all powdery snow, and they tried to have a snowball fight and could not. Then Danny suddenly realizes that Jack knows he is telling the truth because Jack himself saw the hedge animals move. Jack slaps him across the face. The blow is flat, not dramatic, but Danny's head rocks back and the palmprint reddens on his cheek like a brand. Wendy cries out, and for a moment the three of them are still. Then Jack grabs for his son and says he is sorry, but Wendy calls him a bastard. Danny screams at them to stop pulling him, and collapses into tears between the sofa and the window. Later, after Danny is put to bed, Wendy tells Jack that he promised never to hit him again. Jack looks defeated, and says he always thought he could keep his promises. But he does not tell her about his own hallucination of the hedge animals moving on the day the first real snow came, nor does he admit that he threw the snowmobile's magneto away, trapping them all at the Overlook.