Small Hours at the Overlook

The rebuilt Overlook stood at eleven thousand feet, and the air up here had a way of making everything sound closer than it was. Michael Torrance pulled into the empty parking lot at ten minutes to midnight, his headlights sweeping across fresh asphalt and a low stone wall that hadn't been there in the old photographs his father kept locked in the basement filing cabinet. The wall was new, as were the lodge-style porte-cochère and the pines crowding the edge of the lot—planted, spaced, nothing like the tangled treeline in the pictures.

He killed the engine and sat there. The rental car ticked as it cooled. Through the windshield, the hotel glowed warm against the dark, every window on the ground floor lit. Somewhere inside, the day manager—a nervous man named Holloway who'd interviewed Michael via video call and asked none of the questions Michael had expected—was waiting to hand over the keys and leave.

Michael checked his phone. Service was one bar, maybe two if he walked to the east corner of the lot. He'd been told that. He'd also been told the hotel had satellite internet in the staff office, that the landline worked, that the backup generator had been tested three times since September. The owners had prepared for everything.

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