Hallorann battles the hedge lion

Dick Hallorann, the Overlook Hotel's cook, had driven from Florida to Colorado after receiving a telepathic cry for help from Danny Torrance. Now, on the snowbound road to the hotel, he faced a nightmare made real. The headlamp of his snowmobile picked out a shape in the road ahead: a hedge lion, its features a mask of black shadow and powdered snow, its haunches wound tight to spring. It was one of the topiary animals that had stood harmlessly on the hotel's lawn during the summer season, but now it was alive and hunting.

The Attack and the Struggle

The hedge lion sprang, and Hallorann screamed. He twisted the handlebars hard right and ducked low, but scratching, ripping pain scrawled across his face, his neck, and his shoulders. The ski mask was torn open down the back. He was hurled from the snowmobile and hit the snow, rolling over. He could feel it coming for him, and in his nostrils there was a bitter smell of green leaves and holly. A huge hedge paw batted him in the small of the back, sending him flying ten feet through the air, splayed out like a rag doll. He saw the snowmobile, riderless, strike the embankment and rear up, its headlamp searching the sky, before it fell over with a thump and stalled. The hedge lion was on him again, its stiff twig-like claws raking across the front of the parka, shredding it. Hallorann screamed at it, "You're not there! You're not there at all!" He struggled to his feet and made it halfway to the snowmobile before the lion lunged again, batting him across the head with a needle-tipped paw. Silent, exploding lights filled his vision. He muttered, "Not there," but it was a fading sound. His knees unhinged and dropped him into the snow. He crawled for the snowmobile, the right side of his face a scarf of blood. The lion struck him again, rolling him onto his back like a turtle, and roared playfully.

The Turning Point: Fire

Hallorann struggled to reach the snowmobile, knowing what he needed was there. The lion was on him again, ripping and clawing. He reached the overturned machine and freed the gas can held onto the back by elastic straps. The lion struck again, rolling him over on his back. He saw it again, only a shadow in the darkness and falling snow, as nightmarish as a moving gargoyle. Hallorann twisted at the can's cap as the moving shadow stalked him, kicking up snowpuffs. As it moved in again, the cap spun free, releasing the pungent smell of the gasoline. He gained his knees, and as it came at him, low-slung and incredibly quick, he splashed it with the gas. There was a hissing, spitting sound, and it drew back. "Gas!" Hallorann cried, his voice shrill and breaking. "Gonna burn you, baby! Dig on it awhile!" The lion came at him again, still spitting angrily. Hallorann splashed it again, but this time the lion didn't give. It charged ahead. Hallorann sensed rather than saw its head angling at his face and threw himself backward, partially avoiding it. Yet the lion still hit his upper rib cage a glancing blow, and a flare of pain struck there. Gas gurgled out of the can, which he still held, and doused his right hand and arm, cold as death. Now he lay on his back in a snow angel, to the right of the snowmobile. The hissing lion was a bulking presence to his left, closing in again. Hallorann thought he could see its tail twitching. He yanked Cottrell's mitten off his right hand, tasting sodden wool and gasoline. He ripped up the hem of the parka and jammed his hand into his pants pocket. Down in there, along with his keys and his change, was a very battered old Zippo lighter he had bought in Germany in 1954. The lighter was out. He clicked the hood back. The lion rushed at him, a growl like ripping cloth. His finger flicked the striker wheel. Spark. Flame. His gasoline-soaked hand suddenly ablaze, the flames running up the sleeve of the parka. The lion shied from the torch suddenly blazing in front of it, a hideous flickering hedge sculpture with eyes and a mouth, shying away, too late. Wincing at the pain, Hallorann drove his blazing arm into its stiff and scratchy side.

The Aftermath

In an instant the whole creature was in flames, a prancing, writhing pyre on the snow. It bellowed in rage and pain, seeming to chase its flaming tail as it zigzagged away from Hallorann. He thrust his own arm deep into the snow, killing the flames, unable to take his eyes from the hedge lion's death agonies for a moment. Then, gasping, he got to his feet. The arm of the parka was sooty but unburned, and that also described his hand. Thirty yards downhill from where he stood, the hedge lion had turned into a fireball. Sparks flew at the sky and were viciously snatched away by the wind. For a moment its ribs and skull were etched in orange flame, and then it seemed to collapse, disintegrate, and fall into separate burning piles. Hallorann picked up the gas can and struggled over to the snowmobile. His consciousness seemed to be flickering in and out, offering him cuttings and snippets of home movies but never the whole picture. In one of these he was aware of yanking the snowmobile back onto its tread and then sitting on it, out of breath and incapable of moving for a few moments. In another, he was reattaching the gas can, which was still half-full. His head was thumping horribly from the gas fumes and in reaction to his battle with the hedge lion, and he saw by the steaming hole in the snow beside him that he had vomited, but he was unable to remember when. The snowmobile, the engine still warm, fired immediately. He twisted the throttle unevenly and started forward with a series of neck-snapping jerks that made his head ache even more fiercely. At first the snowmobile wove drunkenly from side to side, but by half-standing to get his face above the windscreen and into the sharp, needling blast of the wind, he drove some of the stupor out of himself. He opened the throttle wider, knowing the other hedge animals might still be waiting, but at least he wouldn't be caught unaware again.