i came back to the gunslinger 's world when salem 's lot was going badly ( `` the oracle and the mountains '' ) and wrote of the boy jake 's sad ending not long after i had seen another boy , danny torrance , escape another bad place in the shining in fact , the only time when my thoughts did not turn at least occasionally to the gunslinger 's dry and yet somehow gorgeous world ( at least it has always seemed gorgeous to me ) was when i was inhabiting another that seemed every bit as real c the post-apocalypse world of the stand .