Beyond the grounds the highway had disappeared under an even blanket of white.

It was dusk.

The sky had been completely clouded over by two-thirty and it had begun to snow an hour later, and this time you didn't need a weatherman to tell you it was serious snow, no flurry that was going to melt or blow away when the evening wind started to whoop. At first it had fallen in perfectly straight lines, building up a snowcover that coated everything evenly, but now, an hour after it had started, the wind had begun to blow from the northwest and the snow had begun to drift against the porch and the sides of the Overlook's driveway.

They stood on the porch in the fading light, Jack in the middle, his left arm around Danny's shoulders and his right arm around Wendy's waist. Together they watched as the decision was taken out of their hands.

The hedge animals were also gone, but when Wendy and Danny had gotten home, she had commended him on the good job he had done. Do you think so? he had asked, and said no more. Now the hedges were buried under amorphous white cloaks.

So they went in together, leaving the wind to build to the low-pitched scream that would go on all night -- a sound they would get to know well. Flakes of snow swirled and danced across the porch. The Overlook faced it as it had for nearly three quarters of a century, its darkened windows now bearded with snow, indifferent to the fact that it was now cut off from the world. Or possibly it was pleased with the prospect. Inside its shell the three of them went about their early evening routine, like microbes trapped in the intestine of a monster.

"Will it ever be spring?" Wendy murmured.

Curiously, all of them were thinking different thoughts but feeling the same emotion: relief. The bridge had been crossed.

Jack squeezed her tighter. "Before you know it. What do you say we go in and have some supper? It's cold out here." She smiled. All afternoon Jack had seemed distant and… well, odd. Now he sounded more like his normal self. "Fine by me. How about you, Danny?"

"Sure."