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CHAPTER 1 3 The Apocalyptic Rockfight

1

Bill's there first. He sits in one of the wing-back chairs just inside the Reading Room door watching as Mike deals with the library's last few customers of the night — an old lady with a clutch of paperback gothics, a man with a huge historical tome on the Civil War, and a skinny kid waiting to check out a novel with a seven-day-rental sticker in an upper corner of its plastic cover. Bill sees with no sense of surprise or serendipity at all that it is his own latest novel. He feels that surprise is beyond him, serendipity a believed-in reality that has turned out to be only a dream after all.

A pretty girl, her tartan skirt held together with a big gold safety pin (Christ, I haven't seen one of those in years, Bill thinks, are they coming back?), is feeding quarters into the Xerox machine and copying an off print with one eye on the big pendulum clock behind the checkout desk. The sounds are library-soft and library-comforting: the hush-squeak of soles and heels on the red-and-black linoleum of the floor; the steady lock and tick of the clock dropping off dry seconds; the catlike purr of the copying machine.

The boy takes his William Denbrough novel and goes to the girl at the copier just as she finishes and begins to square up her pages.

'You can just leave that off print on the desk, Mary,' Mike says. 'I'll put it away.'

She flashes a grateful smile. 'Thanks, Mr Hanlon.'

'Goodnight. Goodnight, Billy. The two of you go right home.'

'The boogeyman will get you if you don't . . . watch . . . out!' Billy, the skinny kid, chants, and slips a proprietary arm around the girl's slim waist.

'Well, I don't think he'd want a pair as ugly as you two,' Mike says, 'but be careful, all the same.'

'We will, Mr Hanlon,' Mary replies, seriously enough, and punches the boy lightly on the shoulder. 'Come on, ugly,' she says, and giggles. When she does this she is transformed from a pretty mildly desirable high-school junior into the coltish not-quite-gawky eleven-year-old that Beverly Marsh had been . . . and as they pass him Bill is shaken by her beauty . . . and he feels fear; he wants to go to the boy and tell him earnestly that he must go home by well-lighted streets and not look around if someone speaks.

You can't be careful on a skateboard, mister, a phantom voice says inside his head, and Billsmiles a rueful grownup's smile.

He watches the boy open the door for his girl. They go into the vestibule, moving closer together, and Bill would have bet the royalties of the book the boy named Billy is holding under his arm that he has stolen a kiss before opening the outer door for the girl. More fool you if you didn't, Billy my man, he thinks. Now see her home safe. For Christ's sake see her home safe!

Mike calls, 'Be right with you, Big Bill. Just let me file this.' Bill nods and crosses his legs. The paper bag on his lap crackles a little. There's a pint of bourbon inside and he reckons he has never wanted a drink so badly in his life as he does right now. Mike will be able to supply water, if not ice — and the way he feels right now, a very little water will be enough.

He thinks of Silver, leaning against the wall of Mike's garage on Palmer Lane. And from that his thoughts progress naturally to the day they had met in the Barrens — all except Mike

— and each had told his tale again: lepers under porches; mummies who walked on the ice; blood from drains and dead boys in the Standpipe and pictures that moved and werewolves that chased small boys down deserted streets.

They had gone deeper into the Barrens that day before the Fourth of July, he remembers now. It had been hot in town but cool in the tangled shade on the eastern bank of the Kenduskeag. He remembers one of those concrete cylinders not far away, humming to itself the way the Xerox machine had hummed for the pretty high-school girl just now. Bill remembers that, and how, when all the stories were done, the others had looked at him.

They had wanted him to tell them what they should do next, how they should proceed, and he simply didn't know. The not knowing had filled him with a kind of desperation.

Looking at Mike's shadow now, looming large on the darkly paneled wall in the reference room, a sudden sureness comes to him: he hadn't known then because they hadn't been complete when they met that July 3rd afternoon. The completion had come later, at the abandoned gravel-pit beyond the dump, where you could climb out of the Barrens easily on either side — Kansas Street or Merit Street. Right around, in fact, where the Interstate overpass was now. The gravel-pit had no name; it was old, its crumbly sides crabby with weeds and bushes. There had still been plenty of ammunition there — more than enough for an apocalyptic rockfight.

But before that, on the bank of the Kenduskeag, he hadn't been sure what to say — what did they want him to say? What did he want to say? He remembers looking from one face to the next — Ben's; Bev's; Eddie's; Stan's; Richie's. And he remembers

music. Little Richard. 'Whomp-bomp-a-lomp-bomp . . . ' Music. Low. And darts of light in his eyes. He remembers the darts of light because.

2

Richie had hung his transistor radio over the lowermost branch of the tree he was leaning against. Although they were in the shade, the sun bounced off the surface of the Kenduskeag, onto the radio's chrome facing, and from there into Bill's eyes.

T-Take that th-hing d-d-d-own, Ruh –Ruh-Richie,' Bill said. 'It's gonna bun-blind m-m-me.'

'Sure, Big Bill,' Richie said at once, with no smartmouth at all, and removed the radio from the branch. He also turned it off, and Bill wished he hadn't done that; it made the silence, broken only by the rippling water and the vague hum of the sewage –pumping machinery, seem very loud. Their eyes watched him and he wanted to tell them to look somewhere else, what did they think he was, a freak?

But of course he couldn't do that, because all they were doing was waiting for him to tell them what to do now. They had come by dreadful knowledge, and they needed him to tell them what to do with it. Why me! he wanted to shout at them, but of course he knew that, too. It was because, like it or not, he had been tapped for the position. Because he was the idea-man, because he had lost a brother to whatever it was, but most of all because he had become, in some obscure way he would never completely understand, Big Bill.

He glanced at Beverly and looked away quickly from the calm trust in her eyes. Looking at Beverly made him feel funny in the pit of his stomach. Fluttery.

'We cuh-can't go to the p-p-police,' he said at last. His voice sounded harsh to his own ears, too loud. 'We c-ca-han't g-go to our puh-huh-harents, either. Unless . . . ' He looked hopefully at Richie. 'What a-a-about your m-mom and d-dad, four-eyes? They suh-heem p-pretty reh-reh-regular.'

'My good man,' Richie said in his Toodles the Butler Voice, 'you obviously have no understahnding whatsoevah of my mater and pater. They — '

'Talk American, Richie,' Eddie said from his spot by Ben. He was sitting by Ben for the simple reason that Ben provided enough shade for Eddie to sit in. His face looked small and pinched and worried — an old man's face. His aspirator was in his right hand.

'They'd think I was ready for Juniper Hill,' Richie said. He was wearing an old pair of glasses today. The day before a friend of Henry Bowers's named Card Jagermeyer had come up behind Richie as Richie left the Derry Ice Cream Bar with a pistachio cone. 'Tag, you're it!' this Jagermeyer, who outweighed Richie by forty pounds or so, screamed, and slammed Richie full in the back with both hands laced together. Richie flew into the gutter, losing his glasses and his ice-cream cone. The left lens of his glasses had shattered, and his mother was furious with him about it, lending very little credence to Richie's explanations.

'All I know is that it was a lot of fooling around,' she had said. 'Honestly, Richie, do you think there's a glasses-tree somewhere and we can just pull off a new pair of spectacles for you whenever you break the old pair?'

'But Mom, this kid pushed me, he came up behind me, this big kid, and pushed me — ' Richie wa s by then near tears. This failure to make his mother understand hurt much worse than being slammed into the gutter by Card Jagermeyer, who was so stupid they hadn't even bothered to send him to summer-school.

'I don't want to hear any more about it,' Maggie Tozier said flatly. 'But the next time you see your father come in looking whipped after working late three nights in a row, you think a little bit, Richie. You think about it.'

'But Mom — '

'No more, I said.' Her voice was curt and final — worse, it was near tears. She left the room then and the TV went on much too loud. Richie had been left alone sitting miserably at the kitchen table.

It was this memory that caused Richie to shake his head again. 'My folks are okay, but they'd never believe something like this.'

'W-What a-a-about other kih-kids?'

And they looked around, Bill would remember years later, as if for someone who wasn't there.

'Who?' Stan asked doubtfully. 'I can't think of anyone else I trust.'

'Just the suh-suh –same . . . ' Bill said in a troubled voice, and a little silence fell among them while Bill thought about what to say next.

3

If asked, Ben Hanscom would have told you that Henry Bowers hated him more than any of the others in the Losers' Club, because of what had happened that day when he and Henry had shot the chutes down into the Barrens from Kansas Street, because of what had happened the day he and Richie and Beverly escaped from the Aladdin, but most of all because, by not allowing Henry to copy during examinations, he had caused Henry to be sent to summerschool and incur the wrath of his father, the reputedly insane Butch Bowers.

If asked, Richie Tozier would have told you Henry hated him more than any of the others, because of the day he had fooled Henry and his two other musketeers in Freese's.

Stan Uris would have told you that Henry hated him most of all because he was a Jew (when Stan had been in the third grade and Henry the fifth, Henry had once washed Stan's face with snow until it bled and he was screaming hysterically with pain and fear).

Bill Denbrough believed that Henry hated him the most because he was skinny, because he stuttered, and because he liked to dress well ('L-L-Look at the f-f-f-fucking puh-puh-PANSY! ' Henry had cried when the Derry School had had Careers Day in April and Bill had come

wearing a tie; before the day was over, the tie had been ripped off and flung into a tree halfway down Charter Street).

He did hate all four of them, but the boy in Derry who was number one on Henry's personal Hate Parade was not in the Losers' Club at all on that July 3rd; he was a black boy named Michael Hanlon, who lived a quarter of a mile down the road from the shirttail Bowers farm.

Henry's father, who was every bit as crazy as he was reputed to be, was Oscar 'Butch' Bowers. Butch Bowers associated his financial, physical, and mental decline with the Hanlon family in general and with Mike's father in particular. Will Hanlon, he was fond of telling his few friends and his son, had had him thrown in the county jail when all of his, Hanlon's, chickens died. 'So's he could get the insurance money, don't you know,' Butch would say, eying his audience with all the baleful interrupt-if-you-dare pugnacity of Captain Billy Bones in the Admiral Benbow. 'He got some of his friends to lie him up, and that's why I had to sell my Merc'ry.'

'Who lied him up, Daddy?' Henry had asked when he was eight, burning at the injustice that had been done to his father. He thought to himself that when he was a grownup he would find liar-uppers and coat them with honey and stake them out over anthills, like in some of those Western movies they showed at the Bijou Theater on Saturday afternoons.

And because his son was a tireless listener (although, if asked, Butch would have maintained that was only as it should be), Bowers Senior filled his son's ears with a litany of hate and hard luck. He explained to his son that while all niggers were stupid, some were cunning as well — and down deep they all hated white men and wanted to plow a white woman's furrow. Maybe it wasn't just the insurance money after all, Butch said; maybe Hanlon had decided to lay the blame for the dead chickens at his door because Butch had the next produce stand down the road. He done it, anyway, and that was just as sure as shit sticks to a blanket. He done it and then got a bunch of white nigger bleeding hearts from town to lie him up and threaten Butch with state prison if he didn't pay that nigger off. 'And why not?' Butch would ask his round-eyed dirty-necked silent son. 'Why not? I was just a man who fought the Japs for his country. There was lots of guys like us, but he w a s t h e o n l y n i g g e r i n the county.'

The chicken business had been followed by one unlucky incident after another — his Deere tractor had blown a rod; his good harrow got busted in the north field; he got a boil on his neck which became infected, had to be lanced, then became infected again and had to be removed surgically; the nigger started using his foully gotten money to undercut Butch's prices so they lost custom.

In Henry's ears, it was a constant litany: the nigger, the nigger, the nigger. Everything was the nigger's fault. The nigger had a nice white house with an upstairs and an oil furnace while Butch and his wife and his son lived in what was not much better than a tarpaper shack. When Butch couldn't make enough money farming and had to go to work in the woods for awhile, it was the nigger's fault. When their well went dry in 1956, it was the nigger's fault.

Later that same year Henry, who was then ten years old, started to feed Mike's dog Mr Chips old stewbones and bags of potato-chips. It got so Mr Chips would wag his tail and come running when Henry called. When the dog was well used to Henry and Henry's treats, Henry one day fed him a pound of hamburger laced with insect poison. The bug-killer he found in the back shed; he had saved three weeks to buy the meat at Costello's.

Mr Chips ate half the poisoned meat and then stopped. 'Go on, finish your treat, Niggerdog,' Henry had said. Mr Chips wagged his tail. Since Henry had called him this from the beginning, he believed it was his other name. When the pains started, Henry produced a piece of clothesline and tied Mr Chips to a birch so he couldn't get away and run home. He then sat on a flat sun-warmed rock, put his chin in his palms, and watched the dog die. It took

a good long time, but Henry considered it time well spent. At the end Mr Chips began to convulse and a thin green foam ran from between his jaws.

'How do you like that, Niggerdog?' Henry asked it, and it rolled its dying eyes up at the sound of Henry's voice and tried to wag its tail. 'Did you like your lunch, you shitty mutt?'

When the dog was dead, Henry removed the clothesline, went home, and told his father what he had done. Oscar Bowers was extremely crazy by that time; a year later his wife would leave him after he beat her nearly to death. Henry was likewise frightened of his father and felt a terrible hate for him sometimes, but he also loved him. And that afternoon, after he had told, he felt he had finally found the key to his father's affections, because his father had clapped him on the back (so hard that Henry almost fell over), taken him in the living room, and given him a beer. It was the first beer Henry had ever had, and for all the rest of his years he would associate that taste with positive emotions: victory and love.

'Here's to a good job well done,' Henry's crazy father had said. They clicked their brown bottles together and drank them down. So far as Henry knew, the niggers had never found out who killed their dog, but he supposed they had their suspicions. He hoped they did.

The others in the Losers' Club knew Mike by sight — in a town where he was the only Negro child, it would have been strange if they had not — but that was all, because Mike didn't go to Derry Elementary School. His mother was a devout Baptist and Mike was therefore sent to the Neibolt Street Church School. In between geography, reading, and arithuaetic there were Bible drills, lessons on such subjects as The Meaning of the Ten Commandments in a Godless World, and discussion-groups on how to handle everyday moral problems (if you saw a buddy shoplifting, for instance, or heard a teacher taking the name of God in vain).

Mike thought the Church School was okay. There were times when he suspected, in a vague way, that he was missing some things — a wider communication with kids his own age perhaps — but he was willing to wait until high school for these things to happen. The prospect made him a little nervous because his skin was brown, but both his mother and father had been well treated in town as far as Mike could see, and Mike believed he would be treated well if he treated others the same way.

The exception to this rule, of course, was Henry Bowers.

Although he tried to show it as little as possible, Mike went in constant terror of Henry. In 1958 Mike was slim and well built, taller than Stan Uris but no t quite as tall as Bill Denbrough. He was fast and agile, and that had saved him from several beatings at Henry's hands. And, of course, he went to a different school. Because of that and the age difference, their paths rarely coincided. Mike took pains to keep things that way. So the irony was this: although Henry hated Mike Hanlon more than any other kid in Derry, Mike had been the least hurt of any of them.

Oh, he had taken his lumps. The spring after he had killed Mike's dog, Henry sprang out of the bushes one day while Mike was walking toward town to go to the library. It was late March, warm enough for bike-riding, but in those days Witcham Road turned to dirt just beyond the Bowers place, which meant that it was a quagmire of mud — no good for bikes.

'Hello, nigger,' Henry had said, emerging from the bushes, grinning.

Mike backed off, eyes flicking warily right and left, watching for a chance to get away. He knew that if he could buttonhook around Henry, he could outdistance him. Henry was big and Henry was strong, but Henry was also slow.

'Gonna make me a tarbaby,' Henry said, advancing on the smaller boy. 'You're not black enough, but I'll fix that.'

Mike cut his eyes to the left and twitched his body in that direction. Henry took the bait and broke that way — too fast and too far to pull himself back. Reversing with a sweet and natural speed, Mike took off to the right (in high school he would make the varsity football

team as a tailback his sophomore year, and was only kept from breaking the school's all-time scoring record by a broken leg halfway through his senior season). He would have made it easily past Henry but for the mud. It was greasy, and Mike slipped to his knees. Before he could get up, Henry was upon him.

'Niggerniggernigger!' Henry cried in a kind of religious ecstasy as he rolled Mike over. Mud went up the back of Mike's shirt and down the back of his pants. He could feel it squeezing into his shoes. But he did not begin to cry until Henry slathered mud across hi s face, plugging up both of his nostrils.

'Now you're black!' Henry had screamed gleefully, rubbing mud in Mike's hair. 'Now you're REEEELY black!' He ripped up Mike's poplin jacket and the tee-shirt beneath and slammed a poultice of mud down over the boy's bellybutton. 'Now you're as black as midnight in a MINESHAFT!' Henry screamed triumphantly, and slammed mudplugs into both of Mike's ears. Then he stood back, muddy hands hooked into his belt, and yelled: I ' killed your dog, black boy!' But Mike did not hear this because of the mud in his ears and his own terrified sobs.

Henry kicked a final sticky clot of mud onto Mike and then turned and walked home, not looking back. A few moments later, Mike got up and did the same, still weeping.

His mother was of course furious; she wanted Will Hanlon to call Chief Borton and have him out to the Bowers house before the sun went down. 'He's been after Mikey before,' Mike heard her say. He was sitting in the bathtub and his parents were in the kitchen. This was his second tub of water; the first had turned black almost the moment he had stepped into it and sat down. In her fury, his mother had lapsed into a thick Texas patois Mike could barely understand. 'You put the law on him, Will Hanlon! Both the dog an d the pup! You law em, hear me?'

Will heard, but did not do as his wife asked. Eventually, when she cooled down (by then it was that night and Mike two hours asleep), he refreshed her on the facts of life. Chief Borton was not Sheriff Sullivan. If Borton had been sheriff when the incident of the poisoned chickens occurred, Will would never have gotten his two hundred dollars and would have had to be content with that state of affairs. Some men would stand behind you and some men wouldn't; Borton was of the latter type. He was, in fact, a jellyfish.

'Mike has had trouble with that kid before, yes,' he told Jessica. 'But he hasn't had much because he's careful around Henry Bowers. This will serve to make him more careful.'

'You mean you're just going to let it go?'

'Bowers has told his son stories about his dealings with me, I guess,' Will said, 'and his son hates the three of us because of them, and because his father has also told him that hating niggers is what men are supposed to do. It all comes back to that. I can't change the fact that our son is a Negro any more than I can sit here and tell you that Henry Bowers is going to be the last one to take after him because his skin's brown. He's going to have to deal with it all the rest of his life, as I have dealt with it, and you have dealt with it. Why, right there in that Christian school you were bound he was going to go to the teacher told them blacks weren't as good as whites because Noah's son Ham looked at his father while he was drunk and naked and Noah's other two boys cast their eyes aside. That's why the sons of Ham were condemned to always be hewers of wood and drawers of water, she said. And Mikey said she was lookin right at him while she told that story to them.'

Jessica looked at her husband, mute and miserable. Two tears fell, one from each eye, and tracked slowly down her face. 'Isn't there ever any getting away from it?'

His reply was kind but implacable; it was a tune when wives believed their husbands, and Jessica had no reason to doubt her Will.

'No. There is no getting away from the word nigger, not now, not in the world we've been given to live in, you and me. Country niggers from Maine are still niggers. I have thought,

times, that the reason I came back to Derry was that there is no better place to remember that. But I'll have a talk with the boy.'

The next day he called Mike out of the barn. Will sat on the yoke of his harrow and patted a place next to him for Mike.

'You want to stay out of that Henry Bowers's way,' he said.

Mike nodded.

'His father is crazy.'

Mike nodded again. He had heard as much around town. His few glimpses of Mr Bowers had reinforced the notion.

'I don't mean just a little crazy,' Will said, lighting a home –rolled Bugler cigarette and looking at his son. 'He's t about three steps away from the boobyhatch. He came back from the war that way.'

'I think Henry's crazy too,' Mike said. His voice was low but firm, and that strengthened Will's heart . . . although he was, even after a checkered life whose incidents had included almost being burned alive in a juryrigged speakeasy called the Black Spot, unable to believe a kid like Henry could be crazy.

'Well, he's listened to his father too much, but that is only natural,' Will said. Yet on this his son was closer to the truth. Henry Bowers, either because of his constant association with his father or because of something else — some interior thing — was indeed slowly but surely going crazy.

'I don't want you to make a career out of running away,' his father said, 'but because you're a Negro, you're apt to be put upon a good deal. Do you know what I mean?'

'Yes, Daddy,' Mike said, thinking of Bob Gautier at school, who had tried to explain to Mike that nigge r could not be a bad word, because his father used it all the time. In fact, Bob told Mike earnestly, it was a good word. When a fighter on the Friday Night Fights took a bad beating and managed to stay on his feet, his daddy said, 'His head is as hard as a nigger's,' and when someone was really putting out at his work (which, for Mr Gautier, was Star Beef in town), his daddy said, 'That man works like a nigger.' 'And my daddy is just as much a Christian as your daddy,' Bob had finished. Mike remembered tha t, looking at Bob Gautier's white earnest pinched face, surrounded by the mangy fur of his hand-me –down snowsuit –hood, he had felt not anger but a terrible sadness that made him feel like crying. He had seen honesty and good intent in Bob's face, but what he had felt was loneliness, distance, a great whistling emptiness between himself and the other boy.

'I see that you do know what I mean,' Will said, and ruffled his son's hair. 'And what it all comes down to is that you have to be careful where you take your stand. You have to ask yourself if Henry Bowers is worth the trouble. Is he?'

'No,' Mike said. 'No, I don't think so.' It would be yet awhile before he changed his mind; July 3rd, 1958, in fact.

4

While Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, Belch Huggins, Peter Gordon, and a half-retarded high-school boy named Steve Sadler (known as Moose, after the character in the Archie comics) were chasing a winded Mike Hanlon through the trainyard and toward the Barrens about half a mile away, Bill and the rest of the Losers' Club were still sitting on the bank of the Kenduskeag, pondering their nightmare problem.

'I nun-know w-where ih-ih-it is, I think,' Bill said, finally breaking the silence.

'The sewers,' Stan said, and they all jumped at a sudden, harsh rattling noise. Eddie smiled guiltily as he lowered his aspirator back into his lap.

Bill nodded. 'I wuh-wuh-was a-asking my fuh-father about the suh-sewers a f-few nuh-hi-hights a-a-ago.'

'All of this area was originally marsh,' Zack told his son, 'and the town fathers managed to put what's downtown these days in the very worst part of it. The section of the Canal that runs under Center and Main and comes out in Bassey Park is really nothing but a drain that happens to hold the Kenduskeag. Most of the year those drains are almost empty, but they're important when the spring runoff comes or when there are floods . . . 'He paused here, perhaps thinking that it had been during the flood of the previous autumn that he had lost his younger son. ' . . . because of the pumps,' he finished.

'Puh-puh-pumps?' Bill asked, turning his head a little without even think ing about it. When he stuttered over the plosive sounds, spittle flew from his lips.

The drainage pumps,' his father said. 'They're in the Barrens. Concrete sleeves that stick about three feet out of the ground — '

'Buh-Buh-Ben H-H-H-Hanscom calls them Muh-Morlock h-holes,' Bill said, grinning.

Zack grinned back . . . but it was a shadow of his old grin. They were in Zack's workshop, where he was turning chair –dowels without much interest. 'Sump-pumps is all they really are, kiddo,' he said. They sit in cylinders about ten feet deep, and they pump the sewage and the runoff along when the slope of the land levels out or angles up a little. It's old machinery, and the city should have some new pumps, but the Council always pleads poverty when the item comes up on the agenda at budget meetings. If I had a quarter for every time I've been down there, up to my knees in crap, rewiring one of those motors . . . but you don't want to hear all this, Bill. Why don't you go watch TV? I think Sugarfoot's on tonight.'

'I d-d-do wuh-want to h-hear it,' Bill said, and not only because he had come to the conclusion that there was something terrible under Derry someplace.

'Why do you want to hear about a bunch of sewer-pumps?' Zack asked.

'Skuh-skuh-hool ruh –report,' Bill said wildly.

'School's Out.'

'N-N-Next year.'

'Well, it's a pretty dull subject,' Zack said. Teacher'll probably give you an F for putting him to sleep. Look, here's the Kenduskeag' — he drew a straight line in the light fall of sawdust on the table in which his handsaw was embedded — 'and here's the Barrens. Now, because downtown's lower than the residential areas — Kansas Street, say, or the Old Cape, or West Broadway — most of the downtown waste has to be pumped into the river. The waste from the houses flows down to the Barrens pretty much on its own. You see?'

'Y-Y-Yes,' Bill said, drawing a little closer to his father to look at the lines, close enough so that his shoulder was against his father's arm.

'Someday they'll put a stop to pumping raw sewage into the river and that'll be an end to the whole business. But for now, we've got those pumps in ht e . . . what did your buddy call em?'

'Morlock holes,' Bill said, with not a trace of a stutter; neither he nor his father noticed.

'Yeah. That's what the pumps in the Morlock holes are for, anyway, and they work pretty well except when there's too much rain and the streams overflow. Because, although the gravity drains and the sewers with the pumps were meant to be separate systems, they actually crisscross all over the place. See?' He drew a series of 'X's radiating out from the line which represented the Kenduskeag, and Bill nodded. 'Well, the only thing you need to know about water draining is that it will go wherever it can. When it gets high, it starts to fill up the drains as well as the sewers. When the water in the drains gets high enough to reach those pumps, it shorts them out. Makes trouble for me, because I have to fix them.'

'Dad, h-how big are the suh-sewers and drains?'

'You mean, what's the bore on them?'

Bill nodded.

The main sewers are maybe six feet in diameter. The secondaries, from the residential areas, are three or four, I guess. Some of them might be a little bigger. And believe me when I tell you this, Billy, and you can tell your friends: you never want to go into one of those pipes, not in a game, not on a dare, not for any reason.'

'Why?'

'A dozen different town governments have built on them since 1885 or so. During the Depression the WPA put in a whole secondary drain system and a tertiary sewer system; there was lots of money for public works back then. But the fellow who bossed those projects got killed in World War II, and about five years later the Water Department found out that the system blueprints were mostly gone. That's about nine pounds of blues that just disappeared sometime between 1937 and 1950. My point is that nobody knows where all the damned sewers and drains go, or why.

'When they work, nobody cares. When they don't, there's three or four sad sacks from Derry Water who have to try and find out which pump went flooey or where the plug-up is. And when they go down there, they damn well pack a lunch. It's dark and it's smelly and there are rats. Those are all good reasons to stay out, but the best reason is that you could get lost. It's happened before.'

Lost under Derry. Lost in the sewers. Lost in the dark. There was something so dismal and chilling about the idea that Bill was momentarily silenced. Then he said, 'But haven't they ever suh-suh –hent people down to map — '

'I ought to finish these dowels,' Zack said abruptly, turning his back and pulling away. 'Go on in and see what's on TV'

'B-B-But Dah-Dah-Dad — '

'Go on, Bill,' Zack said, and Bill could feel the coldness again. That coldness made suppers a kind of torture as his father leafed through electrical journals (he hoped for a promotion the following year), as his mother read one of her endless British mysteries: Marsh, Sayers, Innes, Allingham. Eating in that coldness robbed food of its taste; it was like eating frozen dinners that had never seen the inside of an oven. Sometimes, after, he would go up to his room and lie on his bed, holding his griping stomach, and think: He thrusts his fists againstthe posts and still insists he sees the ghosts. He thought of that more and more since Georgie had died, although his mother had taught him the phrase two years before. It had taken on a talismanic cast in his mind: the day he could walk up to his mother and simply speak that phrase without tripping or stuttering, looking her right in the eye as he spoke it, the coldness would break apart; her eyes would light up and she would hug him and say, 'Wonderful, Billy! What a good boy! What a good boy!'

He had, of course, told this to no one. Wild horses would not have dragged it from him; neither the rack nor the boot would have induced him to give up this secret fantasy, which lay at the very center of his heart. If he could say this phrase which she had taught him casually one Saturday morning as he and Georgie sat watching Guy Madison and Andy Devine in TheAdventures of Wild Bill Hickok, it would be like the kiss that awakened Sleeping Beauty from her cold dreams to the warmer world of the fairytale prince's love.

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

Nor did he tell it to his friends on that July 3rd — but he told them what his father had told him about the Derry sewer and drain systems. He was a boy to whom invention came easily and naturally (sometimes more easily than telling the truth), and the scene he painted was quite different from the scene in which the conversation had actually taken place: he and his old man had been watching the tube together, he said, having cups of coffee.

'Your dad lets you have coffee?' Eddie asked.

'Sh-sh-sure,' Bill said.

'Wow,' Eddie said. 'My mother would never let me have a coffee. She says the caffeine in it is dangerous.' He paused. 'She drinks quite a bit of it herself, though.'

'My dad lets me have coffee if I want it,' Beverly said, 'but he'd kill me if he knew I smoked.'

'What makes you so sure it's in the sewers?' Richie asked, looking from Bill to Stan Uris and then back to Bill again.

'E-E-Everything g-goes back t-to th-th-that,' Bill said. 'The v-voices Beh-he-heverly heard c-came from the d-d-drain. And the bluh-blood. When the c-c-clown ch-chased us, those o-orange buh-buh-buttons were by a suh-sewer. And Juh juh-George — '

'It wasn't a clown, Big Bill,' Richie said. 'I told you that. I know it's crazy, but it was a werewolf.' He looked at the others defensively. 'Honest to God. I saw it.'

Bill said: 'It was a werewolf for y-y-you.'

'Huh?'

Bill said, 'D-Don't you s-s-see? It was a wuh-wuh-were wolf for y-you because y-you saw that duh-humb movie at the A-A-A-Aladdin.'

'I don't get it.'

'I think I do,' Ben said quietly.

'I went to the l-l-library and l-looked it uh-uh-up,' Bill said. 'I think It's a gluh-gluh' — he paused, throat straining, and spat it out — 'a glamour.'

'Glammer?' Eddie asked doubtfully.

'G-G-Glamo ur,' Bill said, and spelled it. He told them about an encyclopedia entry on the subject and, a chapter he had read in a book called Night's Truth. Glamour, he said, was the Gaelic name for the creature which was haunting Derry; other races and other cultures at other times had different words for it, but they all meant the same thing. The Plains Indians called it a manitou, which sometimes took the shape of a mountain-lion or an elk or an eagle. These same Indians believed that the spirit of a manitou could sometimes enter them, and at these times it was possible for them to shape the clouds themselves into representations of those animals for which their houses had been named. The Himalayans called it a tallus or taelus, which meant an evil magic being that could read your mind and then assume the shape of the thing you were most afraid of. In Central Europe it had been called eylak, brother of the vurderlak, or vampire. In France it was le loup-garou, or skin-changer, a concept that had been crudely translated as the werewolf, but, Bill told them, le loup-garou (which he pronounced 'le loop-garoo') could be anything, anything at all: a wolf, a hawk, a sheep, even a bug.

'Did any of those articles tell you how to beat a glamour?' Beverly asked.

Bill nodded, but he didn't look hopeful. 'The H-H-Himalayans had a rih-hi-hitual to g-get rih-rid of i-i-it, but ih –it's pretty gruh-gruh-grue-some.'

They looked at him, not wanting to hear but needing to.

'I-I-It was cuh-called the R-R-Ritual of Chüh-Chüd,' Bill said, and went on to explain what that was. If you were a Himalayan holy-man, you tracked the taelus. The taelus stuck its tongue out. You stuck yours out. You and it overlapped tongues and then you both bit in all the way so you were sort of stapled together, eye to eye.

'Oh, I think I'm gonna puke,' Beverly said, rolling over on the dirt. Ben patted her back tentatively, then looked around to see if he had been observed. He hadn't been; the others were looking at Bill, mesmerized.

'What then?' Eddie asked.

'W-W-Well,' Bill said, 'this sounds cuh-cuh-crazy, b-but the book s-said that th-then y-you started telling juh– jokes and rih –riddles.'

'What? Stan asked.

Bill nodded, his face that of a correspondent who wants you to know — without coining right out and saying it — that he doesn't make the news but only reports it. 'R-Right. F-First the t –taelus monster would tell o-o-one, then y-y-you got to t-t-tell o-one, and y-you w– w-went o-on like thuh-that, t-tay-takin t-turns — '

Beverly sat up again, knees against her chest, hands linked around her shins. 'I don't see how people could talk with their tongues, you know, nailed together.'

Richie immediately ran out his tongue, gripped it with his fingers, and intoned: 'My father works in a shit-yard!' That broke them all up for awhile even though it was a baby joke.

'M-Maybe it was suh-suh-suhpposed to be tuh-telepathy,' Bill said. 'A-Anyway, i-if the h-h-human laughed f-f-first in spi-hite of the p-p-p-p — '

'Pain?' Stan asked.

Bill nodded.' — then the taelus g-got to k-k-kill h-him and e-e-e-eat him. His soul, I think. B-But i-if the muh-man c-c-ould make the t-taelus l-laugh f-f-first, it had to go away for a huh-huh –hundred y-years.

'Did the book say where a thing like that would come from?' Ben asked.

Bill shook his head.

'Do you believe any of it?' Stan asked, sounding as if he wanted to scoff but could not quite find the moral or mental force to do so.

Bill shrugged and said, 'I a-a-almost d-do.' He seemed about to say more, then shook his head and remained silent.

'It explains a lot,' Eddie said slowly. The clown, the leper, the werewolf . . . ' He looked.over at Stan. 'The dead boys, too, I guess.'

'This sounds like a job for Richard Tozier,' Richie said, in the MovieTone Newsreel Announcer's Voice. 'Man of a thousand jokes and six thousand riddles.'

'If we sent you to do it, we'd all get killed,' Ben said. 'Slowly. In great pain.' At this they all laughed again.

'So what do we do about it?' Stan demanded, and once again Bill could only shake his head . . . and feel he almost knew. Stan stood up. 'Let's go somewhere else,' he said. 'I'm getting fanny fatigue.'

'I like it here,' Beverly said. 'It's shady and nice.' She glanced at Stan. 'I suppose you want to do something babyish like going down to the dump and breaking bottles with rocks.'

'I like breaking bottles with rocks,' Richie said, standing up beside Stan. 'It's the j.d. in me, baby.' He flipped up his collar and began to stalk around like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. 'They hurt me,' he said, looking moody and scratching his chest. 'You know, like wow. My parents. School. So-SY-ety. Everyone. It's pressure, baby. It's — '

'It's shit,' Beverly said, and sighed.

'I've got some firecrackers,' Stan said, and they forgot all about glamours, manitous, and Richie's bad James Dean imitation as Stan produced a package of Black Cats from his hip pocket. Even Bill was impressed.

'J-Jesus Christ, Stuh-Stuh-han, w-where did you g-g-get thuh-hose?'

'From this fat kid that I go to synagogue with sometimes,' Stan said. 'I traded a bunch of Superman and Little Lulu funnybooks for em.'

'Let's shoot em off!' Richie cried, nearly apoplectic in his joy. 'Let's go shoot em off, Stanny, I won't tell any more guys you and your dad killed Christ, I promise, what do you say? I'll tell em your nose is small, Stanny! I'll tell em you're not circumcised!'

At this Beverly began to shriek with laughter and actually appeared to be approaching apoplexy before covering her face with her hands. Bill began to laugh, Eddie began to laugh, and after a moment even Stan joined in. The sound of it drifted across the broad shallow expanse of the Kenduskeag on that day before July 4th, a summer-sound, as bright as the sunrays darting off the water, and none of them saw the orange eyes staring at them from a

tangle of brambles and sterile blackberry bushes to their left. This brambly patch scrubbed the entire bank for thirty feet, and in the center of it was one of Ben's Morlock holes. It was from this raised concrete pipe that the eyes, each more than two feet across, stared.

5

The reason Mike ran afoul of Henry Bowers and his not-so-merry band on that same day was because the next day was the Glorious Fourth. The Church School had a band in which Mike played the trombone. On the Fourth, the band would march in the annual holiday parade, playing 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic,' 'Onward Christian Soldiers,' and 'America the Beautiful.' This was an occasion that Mike had been looking forward to for over a month. He walked to the final rehearsal because his bike had a busted chain. The rehearsal was not scheduled until two-thirty, but he left at one because he wanted to polish his trombone, which was stored in the school's music room, until it glowed. Although his trombone-playing was really not much better than Richie's Voices, he was fond of the instrument, and whenever he felt blue a half an hour of foghorning Sousa marches, hymns, or patriotic airs cheered hun right up again. There was a can of Saddler's brass polish in one of the flap pockets of his khaki shirt and two or three clean rags were dangling from the hip pocket of his jeans. The thought of Henry Bowers was the furthest thing from his mind. A glance behind as he approached Neibolt Street and the Church School would have changed his mind in a hurry, because Henry, Victor, Belch, Peter Gordon, and Moose Sadler were spread across the road behind him. If they had left the Bowers house five minutes later, Mike would have been out of sight over the crest of the next hill; the apocalyptic rockfight and everything that followed it might have happened differently, or not at all.

But it was Mike himself, years later, who advanced the idea that perhaps none of them were entirely their own masters in the events of that summer; that if luck and free will had played parts, then their roles had been narrow ones. He would point out a number of these suspicious coincidences to the others at their reunion lunch, but there was at least one of which he was unaware. The meeting in the Barrens that day broke up when Stan Uris produced the Black Cats and the Losers' Club headed toward the dump to shoot them off. And Victor, Belch, and the others had come out to the Bowers farm because Henry had firecrackers, cherry-bombs, and M-80s (the possession of these last would a few years hence become a felony). The big boys were planning to go down beyond the trainyard coalpit and explode Henry's treasur es.

None of them, not even Belch, went out to the Bowers farm under ordinary circumstances — primarily because of Henry's crazy father but also because they always ended up helping Henry do his chores: the weeding, the endless rock-picking, the lugging of wood, the toting of water, the pitching of hay, the picking of whatever happened to be ripe at the time of the season — peas, cukes, tomatoes, potatoes. These boys were not exactly allergic to work, but they had plenty to do at their own places without sweating for Henry's kooky father, who didn't much care who he hit (he had once taken a length of stovewood to Victor Criss when the boy dropped a basket of tomatoes he was lugging out to the roadside stand). Getting whopped with a chunk of birch was bad enough; what made it worse was that Butch Bowers had chanted 'I'm gonna kill all the Nips! I'm gonna kill all the fuckin Nips!' when he did it.

Dumb as he was, Belch Huggins had expressed it best: 'I don't fuck with crazy people,' he told Victor one day two years before. Victor had laughed and agreed.

But the siren-song of all those firecrackers had been too great to be withstood.

Tell you what, Henry,' Victor said when Henry called him up that morning at nine and invited him out. 'I'll meet you at the coalpit around one o'clock, what do you say?'

'You show up at the coalpit around one and I'm not gonna be there,' Henry replied. 'I got too many chores. If you show up at the coalpit around three, I will be there. And the first M-80 is going to go right up your old tan track, Vie.'

Vie hesitated, then agreed to come over and help with the chores.

The others came as well, and with the five of them, all big boys, working like fiends around the Bowers place, they got all the chores finished by early afternoon. When Henry asked his father if he could go, Bowers the elder simply waved a languid hand at his son. Butch was settled in for the afternoon on the back porch, a quart milk-bottle filled with exquisitely hard cider by his rocker, his Philco portable radio on the porch rail (later that afternoon the Red Sox would be playing the Washington Senators, a prospect that would have given a man who was not crazy a bad case of cold chills). An unsheathed Japanese sword lay across Butch's lap, a war souvenir which, Butch said, he had taken off the body of a dying Nip on the island of Tarawa (he had actually traded six bottles of Budweiser and three joysticks for the sword in Honolulu). Lately Butch almost always got out his sword when he drank. And since all of the boys, including Henry himself, were secretly convinced that sooner or later he would use it on someone, it was best to be far away when it made its appearance on Butch's lap.

The boys had no more than stepped out into the road when Henry spied Mike Hanlon up ahead. 'It's the nigger!' he said, his eyes lighting up like the eyes of a small child contemplating Santa Claus's imminent arrival on Christmas Eve.

'The nigger?' Belch Huggins looked puzzled — he had seen the Hanlons only rare l y — and then his dim eyes lit up. 'Oh yeah! The nigger! Let's get him, Henry!'

Belch broke into a thunderous trot. The others were following suit when Henry grabbed Belch and hauled him back. Henry had more experience than the others chasing Mike Hanlon, and he knew that catching him was easier said than done. That black boy could move.

'He don't see us. Let's just walk fast till he does. Cut the distance.'

They did so. An observer might have been amused: the five of them looked as if they were trying out for that peculiar Olympic walking competition. Moose Sadler's considerable belly joggled up and down inside his Derry High School tee-shirt. Sweat rolled down Belch's face, which soon grew red. But the distance between them and Mike closed — tw o hundred yards, a hundred and fifty yards, a hundred — and so far Little Black Sambo hadn't looked back. They could hear him whistling.

'What you gonna do to him, Henry?' Victor Criss asked in a low voice. He sounded merely interested, but in truth he was worried. Just lately Henry had begun to worry him more and more. He wouldn't care if Henry wanted them to beat the Hanlon kid up, maybe even rip his shut off or throw his pants and underwear up in a tree, but he was not sure that was all Henry had in mind. This year there had been several unpleasant encounters with the children from Derry Elementary Henry referred to as 'the little shits.' Henry was used to dominating and terrorizing the little shits, but since March he had been balked by them time and time again. Henry and his friends had chased one of them, the four –eyes Tozier kid, into Freese's, and had lost him somehow just when it seemed his ass was surely theirs. Then, on the last day of school, the Hanscom kid —

But Victor didn't like to think of that.

What worried him, simply, was this: Henry might go TOO FAR Just what TOO FAR might be was something Victor didn't like to think of . . . but his uneasy heart had prompted the question just the same.

'We're gonna catch him and take him down to that coalpit,' Henry said. 'I thought we'd put a couple of firecrackers in his shoes and see if he dances.'

'But not the M-80s, Henry, right?'

If Henry intended something like that Victor was going to take a powder. An M-80 in each shoe would blow that nigger's feet off, and that was much TOO FAR

'I've got only four of those,' Henry said, not taking his eyes off Mike Hanlon's back. They had closed the distance to seventy-five yards now and he also spoke in a low voice. 'You think I'd waste two of em on a fuckin nightfighter?'

'No, Henry. Course not.'

'We'll just put a couple of Black Cats in his loafers,' Henry said, 'then strip him bareass and throw his clothes down into the Barrens. Maybe he'll catch poison ivy going after them.'

'We gotta roll im in the coal, too,' Belch said, his formerly dim eyes now glowing brightly. 'Okay, Henry? Is that cool?'

'Cool as a moose,' Henry said in a casual way Victor didn't quite like. 'We'll roll im in the coal, just like I rolled im in the mud that other time. And . . . ' Henry grinned, showing teeth that were already beginning to rot at the age of twelve. 'And I got something to tell him. I don't think he heard when I told im before.'

'What's that, Henry?' Peter asked. Peter Gordon was merely interested and excited. He came from one of Berry's 'good families'; he lived on West Broadway and in two years he would be sent to prep school in Groton — or so he believed on that July 3rd. He was brighter than Vie Criss, but had not hung around long enough to understand how Henry was eroding.

'You'll find out,' Henry said. 'Now shut up. We're gettin close.'

They were twenty-five yards behind Mike and Henry was just opening his mouth to give the order to charge when Moose Sadler set o ff the first firecracker of the day. Moose had eaten three plates of baked beans the night before, and the fart was almost as loud as a shotgun blast.

Mike looked around. Henry saw his eyes widen.

'Get him!' Henry howled.

Mike froze for a moment; then he took off, running for his life.

6

The Losers wound their way through the bamboo in the Barrens in this order: Bill; Richie; Beverly behind Richie, walking slim and pretty in bluejeans and a white sleeveless blouse, zoris on her feet; then Ben, trying not to puff too loudly (although it was eighty-one that day, he was wearing one of his baggy sweatshirts); Stan; Eddie bringing up the rear, the snout of his aspirator poking out of his right front pants pocket. Bill had fallen into a 'jungle –safari' fantasy, as he often did when walking through this part of the Barrens. The bamboo was high and white, limiting visibility to the path they had made through here. The earth was black and squelchy, with sodden patches that had to be avoided or jumped over if you didn't want to get mud in your shoes. The puddles of standing water had oddly flat rainbow colors. The air had a reeky smell that was half the dump and half rotting vegetation.

Bill halted one turn away from the Kenduskeag and turned back to Richie. T-T-Tiger up ahead, T-T-Tozier.'

Richie nodded and turned back to Beverly. 'Tiger,' he breathed.

'Tiger,' she told Ben. :

'Man-eater?' Ben asked, holding his breath to keep from panting.

'There's blood all over him,' Beverly said.

'Man-eating tiger,' Ben muttered to Stan, and he passed the news back to Eddie, whose thin face was hectic with excitement.

They faded into the bamboo, leaving the path of black earth that looped through it magically bare. The tiger passed in front of them and all of them nearly saw it: heavy,

perhaps four hundred pounds, its muscles moving with grace and power beneath the silk of its striped pelt. They nearly saw its green eyes, and the flecks of blood around its snout from the last batch of pygmy warriors it had eaten alive.

The bamboo rattled faintly, a noise both musical and eerie, and then was still again. It might have been a breath of summer breeze . . . or it might have been the passage of an African tiger on its way toward the Old Cape side of the Barrens.

'Gone,' Bill said. He let out a pent-up breath and stepped out onto the path again. The others followed suit.

Richie was the only one who had come armed: he produced a cap-pistol with a friction-taped handgrip. 'I could have had a clear shot at him if you'd moved, Big Bill,' he said grimly. He pushed the bridge of his old glasses up on his nose with the muzzle of the gun.

'There's Wuh-Wuh-Watusis around h-h-here,' Bill said. 'C –C-Can't rih-risk a shot. Y-You w-want them down on t-t-top of us?'

'Oh,' Richie said, convinced.

B i l l m a d e a c o m e – on gesture with his arm and they were back on the path again, which narrowed into a neck at the end of the bamboo patch. They stepped out onto the bank of the Kenduskeag, where a series of stepping-stones led across the river. Ben had shown them how to place them. You got a big rock and plopped it in the water, then you got a second and plopped it in the water while you were stepping on the first, then you got a third and plopped it in the water while you were stepping on the second, and so on until you were all the way across the river (which here, and at this time of year, was less than a foot deep and shaled with tawny sandbars) with your feet still dry. The trick was so simple it was damn near babyish, but none of them had seen it until Ben pointed it out. He was good at stuff like that, but when he showed you he never made you feel like a dummy.

They went down the bank in single file and started across the dry backs of the rocks they had planted.

'Bill!' Beverly called urgently.

He froze at once, not looking back, arms held out. The water chuckled and rilled around him. 'What?'

'There's piranha fish in here! I saw them eat a whole cow two days ago. A minute after it fell in, there was nothing but bones. Don't fall off!'

'Right,' Bill said. 'Be careful, men.'

They teetered their way across the rocks. A freight-train charged by on the railway embankment as Eddie Kaspbrak neared the halfway point, and the sudden blast of its airhorn caused him to jiggle on the edge of balance. He looked into the bright water and for one moment, between the sunnxx1 ashes that darted arrows of light into his eyes, he actually saw the cruising piranhas. They were not part of the make-believe that went with Bill's jungle safari fantasy; he was quite sure of that. The fish he saw looked like oversized goldfish with the great ugly jaws of catfish or groupers. Sawteeth protruded between their thick lips and, like goldfish, they were orange. As orange as the fluffy pompoms you sometimes saw on the suits the clowns wore at the circus.

They circled in the shallow water, gnashing.

Eddie pin wheeled his arms. I'm going in, he thought. I'm going in and they'll eat me alive —

Then Stanley Uris gripped his wrist firmly and brought him back to dead center.

'Close call,' Stan said. 'If you fell in, your mother'd give you heck.'

Thoughts of his mother were, for once, the furthest things from Eddie's mind. The others had gained the fa r bank now and were counting cars on the freight. Eddie stared wildly into Stan's eyes, then looked into the water again. He saw a potato-chip bag go dancing by, but that was all. He looked up at Stan again.

'Stan, I saw — '

— 'What?'

Eddie shook his head. 'Nothing, I guess,' he said. 'I'm just a little

(but they were there yes they were and they would have eaten me alive)

' — jumpy. The tiger, I guess. Keep going.'

This western bank of the Kenduskeag — the Old Cape bank — was a quagmire of mud during rainy weather and the spring runoff, but there had been no heavy rain in Derry for two weeks or more and the bank had dried to an alien crack-glaze from which several of those cement cylinders poked, casting grim little shadows. About twenty yards farther down, a cement pipe jutted out over the Kenduskeag and spilled a steady thin stream of foul-looking brown water into the river.

Ben said quietly, 'It's creepy here,' and the others nodded.

Bill led them up the dry bank and back into the heavy shrubbery, where bugs whirred and chiggers chigged. Every now and then there would be a heavy ruffle of wings as a bird took off. Once a squirrel ran across their path, and about five minutes later, as they approached the low wrinkle of ridge that guarded the town dump's blind side, a large rat with a bit of cellophane caught in its whiskers trundled in front of Bill, passing along its own secret run through its own microcosmic wilderness.

The smell of the dump was now clear and pungent; a black column of smoke rose in the sky. The ground, while still heavily overgrown except for their own narrow path, began to be strewn with litter. Bill had dubbed this 'dump-dandruff,' and Richie had been delighted; he had laughed almost until he cried. 'You ought to write that down, Big Bill,' he said. 'That's really good.'

Papers caught on branches wavered and flapped like cut-rate pennants; here was a silver gleam of summer sun reflected from a clutch of tin cans lying at the bottom of a green and tangled hollow; there the hotter reflection of sunrays bouncing off a broken beer bottle. Beverly spied a babydoll, its plastic skin so brightly pink it looked almost boiled. She picked it up, then dropped it with a little cry as she saw the whitish-gray beetles squirming from beneath its moldy skirt and down its rotting legs. She rubbed her fingers on her jeans.

They climbed to the top of the ridge and looked down into the dump.

'Oh shit,' Bill said, and jammed his hands into his pockets as ht e others gathered around him.

They were burning the northern end today, but here, at their end, the dumpkeeper (he was, in fact, Armando Fazio, Mandy to his friends, and the bachelor brother of the Derry Elementary School janitor) was tinkering on the World War II D– 9 'dozer he used to push the crap into piles for burning. His shirt was off, and the big portable radio sitting under the canvas parasol on the 'dozer's seat was putting out the Red Sox — Senators pregame festivities.

'Can't go down there,' Ben agreed. Mandy Fazio was not a bad guy, but when he saw kids in the dump he ran them off at once — because of the rats, because of the poison he regularly sowed to keep the rat population down, because of the potential for cuts, falls, and burns . . . but mostly because he believed a dump was no place for children to be. 'Ain't you nice?' he would yell at the kids he spied who had been drawn to the dump with their .22s to plink away at bottles (or rats, or seagulls) or by the exotic fascination of d' ump –picking': you might find a toy that still worked, a chair that could be mended for a clubhouse, or a junked TV with the picture-tube still intact — if you threw a rock through one of these there was a very satisfying explosion. 'Ain't you kids nice?' Mandy would bellow (he bellowed not because he was angry but because he was deaf and wore no hearing-aid). 'Dintchore folks teach you to be nice? Nice boys and girls don't play in the dump! Go to the park! Go to the liberry! Go down to Community House and play box-hockey! Be nice! '

'Nope,' Richie said. 'Guess the dump's out.'

They all sat down for a few moments to watch Mandy work on his 'dozer, hoping he would give up and go away but not really believing he would: the presence of the radio suggested Mandy intended to stay all afternoon. It was enough to piss off the Pope, Bill thought. There was really no better place to come with firecrackers than the dump. You could put them under tin cans and then watch the cans fly into the air when the firecrackers went off, or you could light the fuses and drop them into bottles and then run like hell. The bottles didn't always break, but usually they did.

'Wish we had some M-80s,' Richie sighed, unaware of how soon one would be chucked at his head.

'My mother says people ought to be happy with what they have,' Eddie said so solemnly that they all laughed.

When the laughter died away, they all looked toward Bill again.

Bill thought about it and then said, 'I nuh-know a p-place. There's an old gruh-gruh-gravel-pit at the end of the Bun –Barrens by the t –t-trainyards — '

'Yeah!' Stan said, getting to his feet. 'I know that place! You're a genius, Bill!'

'They'll really echo there,' Beverly agreed.

'Well, let's go,' Richie said.

The s ix of them, one shy of the magic number, walked along the brow of the hill which circled the dump. Mandy Fazio glanced up once and saw them silhouetted against the blue sky like Indians out on a raiding party. He thought about hollering at them — the Barrens was no place for kids — and then he turned back to his work instead. At least they weren't in his dump.

7

Mike Hanlon ran past the Church School without pausing and pelted straight up Neibolt Street toward the Derry trainyards. There was a janitor at NCS, but Mr Gendron was very old and even deafer than Mandy Fazio. Also, he liked to spend most of his summer days asleep in the basement by the summer-silent boiler, stretched out in a battered old reclining chair with the Derry News in his lap. Mike would still be pounding on the door and shouting for the old man to let him in when Henry Bowers came up behind him and tore his freaking head off.

So Mike just ran.

But not blindly; he was trying to pace himself, trying to control his breathing, not ye t going all out. Henry, Belch, and Moose Sadler presented no problems; even relatively fresh they ran like wounded buffalo. Victor Criss and Peter Gordon, however, were much faster. As Mike passed the house where Bill and Richie had seen the clown — or the werewolf — he snapped a glance back and was alarmed to see that Peter Gordon had almost closed the distance. Peter was grinning cheerfully — a steeplechase grin, a full-out polo grin, a pip-pip –jolly –good-show grin, and Mike thought: I wonder if he'd grin that way if he knew what's going to happen if they catch me . . . Does he think they're just going to say 'Tag, you're it,' and run away?

As the trainyard gate with its sign — PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT VIOLATORS WILL B E PROSECUTED — loomed up, Mike wa s forced to let himself out to the limit. There was no pain — his breathing was rapid yet still controlled — but he knew everything was going to start hurting if he had to keep this pace up for long. The gate was standing halfway open. He snapped a second look back and saw that he'd pulled away from Peter again. Victor was perhaps ten paces behind Peter, the others now forty or fifty yards back. Even in that quick glance Mike could see the black anger on Henry's face.

He skittered through the opening, whirled, and slammed the gate closed. He heard the click as it latched. A moment later Peter Gordon slammed into the chainlink, and a moment after that, Victor Criss ran up beside him. Peter's smile was gone; a sulky, balked look had replaced it. He grabbed for the latch, but of course there was none: the latch was on the inside.

Incredibly, he said: 'Come on, kid, open the gate. That's not fair.'

'What's your idea of fair?' Mike asked, panting. 'Five against one?'

'Fair-up,' Peter repeated, as if he had not heard Mike at all.

Mike looked at Victor, saw the troubled look in Victor's eyes. He started to speak, but that was when the others pulled up to the gate.

'Open up, nigger!' Henry bawled. He began to shake the chainlink with such ferocity that Peter looked at him, startled. 'Open up! Open up right now!'

'I won't,' Mike said quietly.

'Open up!' Belch shouted. 'Open up, ya fuckin jigaboo!'

Mike backed away from the gate, his heart beating heavily in his chest. He couldn't remember ever being quite this scared, quite this upset. They lined their side of the gate, shouting at him, calling him names for nigger he had never dreamed existed — nightfighter, Ubangi, spade, blackberry, junglebunny, others. He was barely aware that Henry was taking something from his pocket, that he had popped a wooden match alight with his thumbnail — and then a round red something came over the fence and he flinched instinctively away as the cherry-bomb exploded to his left, kicking up dust.

The bang silenced them all for a moment — Mike stared unbelievingly at them through the fence, and they stared back. Peter Gordon looked utterly shocked, and even Belch looked stunned.

They're ascared of him now, Mike thought suddenly, and a new voice spoke inside of him, perhaps for the first time, a voice that was disturbingly adult. They're ascared, but that won'tstop them. You got to get away, Mikey, or something's going to happen. Not all of them will want it to happen, maybe — not Victor and maybe not Peter Gordon — but it will happen anyway because Henry will make it ' happen. So get away. Get away fast.

He backed up another two or three steps and then Henry Bowers said: 'I was the one killed your dog, nigger.'

Mike froze, feeling as if he had been hit in the belly with a bowling ball. He stared into Henry Bowers's eyes and understood that Henry was telling the simple truth: he had killed Mr Chips.

That moment of understanding seemed nearly eternal to Mike — looking into Henry's crazed sweat-ringed eyes and his rage-blackened face, it seemed to him that he understood a great many things for the first time, and the fact that Henry was far crazier than Mike had ever dreamed was only the least of them. He realized above all that the world was no t kind, and it was more this than the news itself that forced the cry from him: 'You honky chickenshit bastard! '

Henry uttered a shriek of rage and attacked the fence, monkeying his way toward the top with a brute strength that was terrifying. Mike paused a moment longer, wanting to see if that adult voice that had spoken inside had been a true voice, and yes, it had been true: after the slightest hesitation, the others spread out and also began to climb.

Mike turned and ran again, sprinting across the trainyards, his shadow trailing squat at his feet. The freight which the Losers had seen crossing the Barrens was long gone now, and there was no sound but Mike's own breathing in his ears and the musical jingle of chainlink as Henry and the others climbed the fence.

Mike ran across one triple set of tracks, his sneakers kicking back cinders as he ran across the space between. He stumbled crossing the second set of tracks, and felt pain flare briefly in

his ankle. He got up and ran on again. He heard a thud as Henry jumped down from the top of the fence behind him. 'Here I come for your ass, nigger!' Henry bawled.

Mike's reasoning self had decided that the Barrens were his only chance now. If he could get down there he could hide in the tangles of underbrush, in the bamboo . . . or, if things became really desperate, he could climb into one of the drainpipes and wait it out.

He could do those things, maybe . . . but there was a hot spark of fury in his chest that had nothing to do with his reasoning self. He could understand Henry chasing after him when he got the chance, but Mr Chips? . . . killing Mr Chips? My DOG wasn't a nigger, you cheapshitbastard, Mike thought as he ran, and the bewildered anger grew.

Now he heard another voice, this one his father's. I don't want you to make a career out ofrunning away . . . and what it all comes down to is that you have to be careful where you take your stand. You have to ask yourself if Henry Bowers is worth the trouble . . .

Mike had been running a straight line across the trainyards toward the storage quonsets. Beyond them another chainlink fence divided the trainyards from the Barrens. He had been planning to scale that fence and jump over to the other side. Instead he veered hard right, toward the gravel-pit.

This gravel-pit had been used as a coalpit until 1935 or so — it had been a ' stoking-point for the trains which ran through the Derry yards. Then the diesels came, and the electrics. For a number of years after the coal was gone (much of the remainder stolen by people with coal-fired furnaces) a local contractor had dug gravel there, but he went bust in 1955 and since then the pit had been deserted. A spur railroad line still ran in a loop up to the pit and then back toward the switching-yards, but the tracks were dull with rust, and ragweed grew up between the rotting ties. These same weeds grew in the pit itself, vying for space with goldenrod and nodding sunflowers. Amid the vegetation there was still plenty of slag coal — the stuff people had once called 'clinkers.'

As Mike ran toward this place, he took his shirt off. He reached the run of the pit and looked back. Henry was coming across the tracks, his buddies spread out around him. That was okay, maybe.

M o v i n g a s q u i ckly as he could, using his shirt for a bindle, Mike picked up half a dozen handfuls of hard clinkers. Then he ran back toward the fence, swinging his shirt by the arms. Instead of climbing the fence when he reached it, he turned so his back was against it. He dumped the coal out of his shirt, stooped, and picked up a couple of chunks.

Henry didn't see the coal; he only saw that he had the nigger trapped against the fence. He sprinted toward him, yelling.

'This is for my dog, you bastard!' Mike crie d, unaware that he had begun to cry. He threw one of the chunks of coal overhand. It flew in a hard direct line. It struck Henry's forehead with a loud bonk! and then rebounded into the air. Henry stumbled to his knees. His hands went to his head. Blood se eped through his fingers at once, like a magician's surprise.

The others skidded to a stop, their faces stamped with identical expressions of disbelief. Henry uttered a high scream of pain and got to his feet again, still holding his head. Mike threw another chunk of coal. Henry ducked. He began to walk toward Mike, and when Mike threw a third chunk of coal, Henry removed one hand from his gashed forehead and batted the chunk of coal almost casually aside. He was grinning.

'Oh, you're gonna get such a surprise,' he said. 'Such a — OH MY GAWD!' Henry tried to say more, but only inarticulate gargling noises emerged from his mouth.

Mike had pegged another chunk of coal and this one had struck Henry square in the throat. Henry buckled to his knees again. Peter Gordon gaped. Moose Sadler's brow was furrowed, as if he were trying to figure out a difficult math problem.

'What are you guys waiting for?' Henry managed. Blood seeped between his fingers. His voice sounded rusty and foreign. 'Get him! Get the little cocksucker!'

Mike didn't wait to see if they would obey or not. He dropped his shirt and leaped at the fence. He began to pull himself up toward the top and then he felt rough hands grab his foot. He looked down and saw Henry Bowers's contorted face, smeared by blood and coal. Mike yanked his foot up. His sneaker came off in Henry's hand. He pistoned his bare foot down into Henry's face and heard something crunch. Henry screamed again and staggered backward, now holding his spouting nose.

Another hand — Belch Huggins's — snagged briefly in the cuff of Mike's leans, but he was able to pull free. He threw one leg over the top of the fence, and then something struck him with blinding force on the side of his face. Warmth trickled down his cheek. Something else struck his hip, his forearm, his upper thigh. They were throwing his own ammunition at him.

He hung briefly by his hands and then dropped, rolling over twice. The scrubby ground sloped downward here, and perhaps that saved Mike Hanlon's eyesight or even his life; Henry had approached the fence again and now looped one of his four M-80s over the top of the fence. It went off with a terrific CRRRACK! that echoed and blew a wide bare patch in the grass.

Mike, his ears ringing, went head– over– heels and staggered to his feet. He was now in high grass, on the edge of the Barrens. He wiped a hand down his right cheek and it came away bloody. The blood did not particularly worry him; he had not expected to come out of this unscathed.

Henry tossed a cherry-bomb, but Mike saw this one coming and moved away easily.

'Let's get him!' Henry roared, and began to climb the fence.

'Jeez, Henry, I don't know — ' This had gone too far for Peter Gordon, who had never encountered a situation that had turned so suddenly savage. Things were not supposed to get bloody — at least not for your team — when the odds were comfortably slugged in your favor.

'You better know,' Henry said, looking back at Peter from halfway up the fence. He hung there like a bloated poisonous spider in human shape. His baleful eyes stared at Peter; blood rimmed them on either side. Mike's downward kick had broken his nose, although Henry would not be aware of the fact for some time yet. 'You better know, or I'll come after you, you fucking jerk.'

The others began to climb the fence, Peter and Victor with some reluctance, Belch and Moose as vacantly eager as before.

Mike waited to see no more. He turned and ran into the scrub. Henry bellowed after him: 'I'll find you, nigger! I'll find you!'

8

The Losers had reached the far side of the gravel-pit, which was little more than a huge weedy pockmark in the earth now, three years after the last load of gravel had been taken out of it. They were all gathered around Stan, looking appreciatively at his package of Black Cats, when the first explosion came. Eddie jumped — he was still goofed up over the piranha fish he thought he had seen (he wasn't sure what real piranha fish looked like, but he was pretty sure they didn't look like oversized goldfish with teeth).

'Merrow down easy, Eddie-san,' Richie said, doing his Chinese Coolie Voice. 'Iss just other kids shooting off fireclackers.'

'That s-s-sucks the r-r-root, Rih-Rih –Richie,' Bill remarked. The others laughed.

'I keep trying, Big Bill,' Richie said. 'I feel like, if I get good enough, someday I'll earn your love.' He made dainty kissing gestures at the air. Bill shot him the finger. Ben and Eddie stood side by side, grinning.

'Oh I'm so young and you're so old,' Stan Uris piped up suddenly, doing an eerily accurate Paul Anka imitation, 'this my darling I've been told — '

'He can sayng!' Richie screeched in his Pickaninny Voice. 'Lawks– a– mussy, thisyere boy can sayng! ' And then, in the MovieTone Announcer's Voice: 'Want you to sign right here, boy, on this dotted line.' Richie slung an arm around Stan's shoulders and favored him with a gigantic gleaming smile. 'We're going to grow your hair out, boy. Going to give you a git-tar. Going to — '

Bill popped Richie twice on the arm, quickly and lightly. They were all excited at the prospect of shooting off firecrackers.

'Open them up, Stan,' Beverly said. 'I've got some matches.'

They gathered around again as Stan carefully opened the package of firecrackers. There were exotic Chinese letters on the black label and a sober caution in English that got Richie giggling again. 'Do not hold in hand after fuse is lit,' this warning read.

'Good thing they told me,' Richie said. 'I always used to hold them after I lit them. I thought that's how you got rid of your frockin hangnails.'

Working slowly, almost reverently, Stan removed the red cellophane and laid the block of cardboard tubes, blue and red and green, on the palm of his hand. Their fuses had been braided together in a Chinese pigtail.

'I'll unwind the — ' Stan began, and then there was a much louder explosion. The echo rolled slowly across the Barrens. A cloud of gulls rose from the eastern side of the dump, squalling and crying. They all jumped this time. Stan dropped the firecrackers and had to pick them up.

Was that dynamite?' Beverly asked nervously. She was looking at Bill, whose head was up, his eyes wide. She thought he had never looked so handsome — but there was something too alert, too strung-up, in the attitude of his head. He was like a deer scenting fire in the air.

'That was an M-80, I think,' Ben said quietly. 'Last Fourth of July I was in the park and there were these high-school kids that had a couple. They put one of them in a steel trash-can. It made a noise like that.'

'Did it blow a hole in the can, Haystack?' Richie asked.

'No, but it bulged out the side. Looked like there was some little guy inside who just stroked it one. They ran away.'

The big one was closer,' Eddie said. He also glanced at Bill.

'Do you guys want to shoot these off or not?' Stan asked. He had unbraided about a dozen of the firecrackers and had put the rest neatly back in the waxed paper for later.

'Sure,' Richie said.

'P-P-Put them a-a-away.'

They looked at Bill questioningly, a little scared — it was his abrupt tone more than what he had said.

'P-P-Puh-hut them a-a-a-away,' Bill repeated, his face contorting with the effort he was making to get the words out. Spit flew from his lips. 'S-S-Suh-homething's g-g-gonna h-h-happen.'

Eddie licked his lips, Richie shoved his glasses up the sweaty slope of his nose with his thumb, and Ben moved closer to Beverly without even thinking about it.

Stan opened his mouth to say something and then there was another, smaller explosion — another cherry-bomb.

'Ruh-Rocks,' Bill said.

'What, Bill?' Stan asked.

'Ruh-Ruh-Rocks. A-A-Ammo.' Bill began to pick up stones, stuffing them into his pockets until they bulged. The others stared at him as though he had gone crazy . . . and then Eddie felt sweat break on his forehead. All of a sudden he knew what a malaria attack felt like. He had sensed something like this on the day he and Bill had met Ben (except Eddie, like the others, was already coming to think of Ben as Haystack), the day Henry Bowers had casually bloodied his nose — but this felt worse. This felt like maybe it was going to be Hiroshima time in the Barrens.

Ben started to get rocks, then Richie, moving quickly, not talking now. His glasses slipped all the way off and clicked to the gravelly surface of the ground. He folded them up absently and put them inside his shirt.

'Why did you do that, Richie?' Beverly asked. Her voice sounded thin, too taut.

'Don't know, keed,' Richie said, and went on picking up rocks. 'Beverly, maybe you better, uh, go back toward the dump for awhile,' Ben said. His hands were full of rocks.

'Shit on that,' she said. 'Shit all over that, Ben Hanscom.' She bent and began to gather rocks herself.

Stan looked at them thoughtfully as they grubbed for rocks like lunatic farmers. Then he began to gather them himself, his lips pressed into a thin and prissy line.

Eddie felt the familiar tightening sensation as his throat began to close up to a pinhole.

Not this time, dammit, he thought suddenly. Not if my friends need me. Like Bev said, shit all over that.

He also began to gather rocks.

9

Henry Bowers had gotten too big too fast to be either quick or agile under ordinary circumstances, but these circumstances were not ordinary. He was in a frenzy of pain and rage, and these lent him an ephemeral unthinking physical genius. Conscious thought was gone; his mind felt the way a late-summer gr assfire looks as dusk comes on, all rose-red and smoke-gray. He took after Mike Hanlon like a bull after a red flag. Mike was following a rudimentary path along the side of the big pit, a path which would eventually lead to the dump, but Henry was too far gone to bother with such niceties as paths; he slammed through the bushes and the brambles on a straight line, feeling neither the tiny cuts inflicted by the thorns nor the slaps of limber bushes striking his face, neck, and arms. The only thing that matte red was the nigger's kinky head, drawing closer. Henry had one of the M-80s in his right hand and a wooden match in his left. When he caught the nigger he was going to strike the match, light the fuse, and stuff that ashcan right down the front of his pants.

Mike knew that Henry was gaining and the others were close on his heels. He tried to push himself faster. He was badly scared now, keeping panic at bay only by a grim effort of will. He had turned his ankle more seriously crossing the tracks than he had thought at first, and now he was limp –skipping along. The crackle and crash of Henry's go-for-broke progress behind him called up unpleasant images of being chased by a killer dog or a rogue bear.

The path opened out just ahead, and Mike more fell than ran into the gravel-pit. He rolled to the bottom, got to his feet, and was halfway across before he realized that there were kids there, six of them. They were spread out in a straight line and there was a funny look on their faces. It wasn't until al ter, when he'd had a chance to sort out his thoughts, that he realized what was so odd about that look: it was as if they had been expecting him.

'Help,' Mike managed as he limped toward them. He spoke instinctively to the tall boy with the red hair. 'Kids . . . big kids — '

That was when Henry burst into the gravel-pit. He saw the six of them and came to a skidding halt. For a moment his face was marked with uncertainty and he looked back over his shoulder. He saw his troops, and when Henry looked back at the Losers (Mike was now standing beside and slightly behind Bill Denbrough, panting rapidly), he was grinning.

'I know you, kid,' he said, speaking to Bill. He glanced at Richie. 'I know you, too. Where's your glasses, four-eyes?' And before Richie could reply, Henry saw Ben. 'Well, son of a bitch! The Jew and the fatboy are here too! That your girlfriend, fatboy?'

Ben jumped a little, as if goosed.

Just then Peter Gordon pulled up beside Henry. Victor arrived and stood on Henry's other side; Belch and Moose Sadler arrived last. They flanked Peter and Victor, and now the two opposing groups stood facing each other in neat, almost formal lines.

Panting heavily as he spoke and still sounding more than a little like a human bull, Henry said, 'I got bones to pick with a lot of you, but I can let that go for today. I want that nigger. So you little shits buzz off.'

'Right!' Belch said smartly.

'He killed my dog!' Mike cried out, his voice shrill and breaking. 'He said so!'

'You come on over here right now,' Henry said, 'and maybe I won't kill you.'

Mike trembled but did not move.

Speaking softly and clearly, Bill said: 'The B-Barrens are ours. You k-k-kids get out of h-here.'

Henry's eyes widened. It was as if he'd been slapped unexpectedly.

'Who's gonna make me?' he asked. 'You, horsefoot?'

'Uh-Uh-Us ,' Bill said. 'We're through t-t-taking your shit, B-B-Bowers. Get ow-ow-out.'

'You stuttering freak,' Henry said. He lowered his head and charged.

Bill had a handful of rocks; all of them had a handful except Mike and Beverly, who was only holding one. Bill began to throw at Henry, not hurrying his throws, but chucking hard and with fair accuracy. The first rock missed; the second struck Henry on the shoulder. If the third had missed, Henry might have closed with Bill and wrestled him to the ground, but it didn't miss; it struck Henry's lowered head.

Henry cried out in surprised pain, looked up . . . and was hit four more times: a little billet-doux from Richie Tozier on the chest, one from Eddie that ricocheted off his shoulder –blade, one from Stan Uris that struck his shin, and Beverly's one rock, which hit him in the belly.

He looked at them unbelievingly, and suddenly the air was full of whizzing missiles. Henry fell back, that same bewildered, pained expression on his face. 'Come on, you guys!' he shouted. 'Help me!'

'Ch-ch-charge them,' Bill said in a low voice, and not waiting to see if they would or not, he ran forward.

They came with him, firing rocks not only at Henry now but at all the others. The big boys were grubbing on the ground for ammunition of their own, but before they could gather much, they had been peppered. Peter Gordon screamed as a rock thrown by Ben glanced off his cheekbone and drew blood. He backed up a few steps, paused, threw a hesitant rock or two back . . . and then fled. He had had enough; things were not done this way on West Broadway.

Henry grabbed up a handful of rocks in a savage sweeping gesture. Most of them, fortunately for the Losers, were pebbles. He threw one of the larger ones at Beverly and it cut her arm. She cried out.

Bellowing, Ben ran for Henry Bowers, who looked around in time to see him coming but not in time to sidestep. Henry was off-balance; Ben was one hundred and fifty trying for one-sixty; the result was no contest. Henry did not go sprawling but flying. He landed on his back

and skidded. Ben ran toward him again and was only vaguely aware of a warm, blooming pain in his ear as Belch Huggins nailed him with a rock roughly the size of a golf ball.

Henry was getting groggily to his knees as Ben reached him and kicked him hard, his sneakered foot connecting solidly with Henry's left hip. Henry rolled over heavily on his back. His eyes blazed up at Ben.

'You ain't supposed to throw rocks at girls!' Ben shouted. He could not remember ever in his life feeling so outraged. 'You aint — '

Then he saw a flame in Henry's hand as Henry popped the wooden match alight. He touched it to the thick fuse of the M-80, which he then threw at Ben's face. Acting with no thought at all, Ben struck the ashcan with the palm of his hand, swinging at it as one would swing a racket at a badminton birdie. The M-80 went back down. Henry saw it coming. His eyes widened and then he rolled away, screaming. The ashcan exploded a split-second later, blackening the back of Henry's shirt and tearing some of it away.

A moment later Ben was hit by Moose Sadler and driven to his knees. His teeth clicked together over his tongue, drawing blood. He blinked around, dazed. Moose was coming toward him, but before he could reach the place where Ben was kneeling, Bill came up behind him and began pelting the big kid with rocks. Moose wheeled around, bellowing.

'You hit me from behind, yellowbelly!' Moose screamed. 'You fuckin dirtyfighter!'

He gathered himself to charge, but Richie joined Bill and also began to fire rocks at Moose. Richie was unimpressed with Moose's rhetoric on the subject of what might or might not constitute yellowbelly behavior; he had seen the five of them chasing one scared kid, and he didn't think that exactly put them up there with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. One of Richie's missiles split the skin above Moose's left eyebrow. Moose howled.

Eddie and Stan Uris moved up to join Bill and Richie. Beverly moved in with them, her arm bleeding but her eyes wildly alight. Rocks flew. Belch Huggins screamed as one of them clipped his crazy bone. He began to dance lumbersomely, rubbing his elbow. Henry got to his feet, the back of his shirt hanging in rags, the skin beneath almost miraculously unmarked. Before he could turn around, Ben Hanscom bounced a rock off the back of his head and drove him to his knees again.

It was Victor Criss who did the most damage to the Losers that day, partly because he was a pretty fair fastball pitcher, but mostly — paradoxically — because he was the least emotionally involved. More and more he didn't want to be here. People could get seriously hurt in rockfights; a kid could get his skull split, a mouthful of broken teeth, could even lose an eye. But since he was in it, he was in it. He intended to dish out some trouble.

That coolness had allowed him to take an extra thirty seconds and pick up a handful of good-sized rocks. He threw one at Eddie as the Losers re-formed their rough skirmish line, and it struck Eddie on the chin. He fell down, crying, the blood already starting to flow. Ben turned toward him but Eddie was already getting up again, the blood gruesomely bright against his pallid skin, his eyes slitted.

Victor threw at Richie and the rock thudded off Richie's chest. Richie threw back but Vie ducked it easily and threw one sidearm at Bill Denbrough. Bill snapped his head back, but not quite quickly enough; the rock cut his cheek wide open.

Bill turned toward Victor. Their eyes locked, and Victor saw something in the stuttering kid's gaze that scared the hell out of him. Absurdly, the words I take it back! trembled behind his lips . . . except that was nothing you said to a little kid. Not if you didn't want your buddies to start ranking you to the dogs and back.

Bill started to walk toward Victor now, and Victor began to walk toward Bill. At the same moment, as if by some telepathic signal, they began to throw rocks at each other, still closing

the distance. The righting flagged around them as the others turned to watch; even Henry turned his head.

Victor ducked and bobbed, but Bill made no such effort. Victor's rocks slammed him in the chest, the shoulder, the stomach. One clipped by his ear. Apparently unshaken by any of this, Bill threw one rock after another, pegging them with murderous force. The third one struck Victor's knee with a brittle chipping sound a nd Victor uttered a stifled groan. He was out of ammunition. Bill had one rock left. It was smooth and white, shot with quartz, roughly the size and shape of a duck's egg. To Victor Criss it looked very hard. Bill was less than five feet away from him.

'Y-Y-You g-get ow-out of h-h-here now,' he said, 'or I'm g-going to spuh-puh-lit your h-head o-o-open. I m-mean ih-ih –it.'

Looking into his eyes, Victor saw that he really did. Without another word, he turned and headed back the way Peter Gordon had gone.

Belch and Moose Sadler were looking around uncertainly. Blood trickled from the corner of the Sadler boy's mouth, and blood from a scalp – wound was sheeting down the side of Belch's face.

Henry's mouth worked but no sound came out. Bill turned toward Henry. 'G-G-Get out,' he said.

'What if I won't?' Henry was trying to sound tough, but Bill could now see a different thing in Henry's eyes. He was scared, and he would go. It should have made Bill feel good — triumphant, even — but he only felt tired.

'I-If you w-won't,' Bill said, 'w-w-we're g-going to muh-move i-in on y-you. I think the s– s-six of u-us can p-put you in the huh-huh –hospital.'

'Seven,' Mike Hanlon said, and joined them. He had a softball-sized rock in each hand. 'Just try me, Bowers. I'd love to.'

'You fucking NIGGER!' Henry's voice broke and wavered on the edge of tears. That voice took the last of the fight out of Belch and Moose; they backed away, their remaining rocks dropping from relaxing hands. Belch looked around as if wondering exactly where he might be.

'Get out of our place,' Beverly said.

'Shut up, you cunt,' Henry said. 'You — ' Four rocks flew at once, hitting Henry in four different places He screamed and scrambled backward over the weed-raddled ground, the tatters of his shirt flapping around him. He looked from the grim, old-young faces of the little kids to the frantic ones of Belch and Moose. There was no help there; no help at all. Moose turned away, embarrassed.

Henry got to his feet, sobbing and snuffling through his broken nose. 'I'll kill you all,' he said, and suddenly ran for the path. A moment later he was gone.

'G-G-Go on,' Bill said, speaking to Belch. 'Get ow-out. And d-don't c-c-come down h-here anymore. The B-B-Barrens are ow-ow-ours.

'You're gonna wish you didn't cross Henry, kid,' Belch said. 'Come on, Moose.'

They started away, heads down, not looking back.

The seven of them stood in a loose semicircle, all of them bleeding some where. The apocalyptic rockfight had lasted less than four minutes, but Bill felt as if he had fought his way through all of World War II, both theaters, without so much as a single time-out.

The silence was broken by Eddie Kaspbrak's whooping, whining struggle for air. Ben went toward him, felt the three Twinkies and four Ding-Dongs he had eaten on his way down to the Barrens begin to struggle and churn in his stomach, and ran past Eddie and into the bushes, where he was sick as privately and quietly as he could be.

It was Richie and Bev who went to Eddie. Beverly put an arm around the thin boy's waist while Richie dug his aspirator out of his pocket. 'Bite on this, Eddie,' he said, and Eddie took a hitching, gasping breath as Richie pulled the trigger.

'Thanks,' Eddie managed at last.

Ben came back out of the bushes, blushing, wiping a hand over his mouth. Beverly went over to him and took both of his hands in hers.

'Thanks for sticking up for me,' she said.

Ben nodded, looking at his dirty sneakers. 'Any time, keed,' he said.

One by one they turned to look at Mike, Mike with his dark skin. They looked at him carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. Mike had felt such curiosity before — there had not been a time in his life when he had not felt it — and he looked back candidly enough.

Bill looked from Mike to Richie. Richie met his eyes. And Bill seemed almost to hear the click — some final part fitting neatly into a machine of unknown intent. He felt ice-chips scatter up his back. We're all together now, he thought, and the idea was so strong, so right, that for a moment he thought he might have spoken it aloud. But of course there was no need to speak it aloud; he could see it in Richie's eyes, in Ben's, in Eddie's, in Beverly's, in Stan's.

We're all together now, he thought again. Oh God help us. Now it really starts. Please God, help us.

'What's your name, kid?' Beverly asked.

'Mike Hanlon.'

'You want to shoot off some firecrackers?' Stan asked, and Mike's grin was answer enough.

CHAPTER 1 4 The Album

1

As it turns out, Bill isn't the only one; they all bring booze.

Bill has bourbon, Beverly has vodka and a carton of orange juice, Richie a sixpack, Ben Hanscom a bottle of Wild Turkey. Mike has a sixpack in the little refrigerator in the staff lounge.

Eddie Kaspbrak comes in last, holding a small brown bag.

'What you got there, Eddie?' Richie asks. 'Za-Rex or Kool-Aid?'

Smiling nervously, Eddie removes first a bottle of gin and then a bottle of prune juice.

In the thunderstruck silence which follows, Richie says quietly: 'Somebody call for the men in the white coats. Eddie Kaspbrak's finally gone over the top.'

'Gin-and-prune juice happens to be very healthy,' Eddie replies defensively . . . and then they're all laughing wildly, the sound of their mirth echoing and re-echoing in the silent library, rolling up and down the glassed-in hall between the adult library and the Children's Library.

'You go head-on,' Ben says, wiping his streaming eyes. 'You go head-on, Eddie. I bet it really moves the mail, too.'

Smiling, Eddie fills a paper cup three-quarters full of prune juice and then soberly adds two capfuls of gin.

'Oh Eddie, I do love you,' Beverly says, and Eddie looks up, startled but smiling. She gazes up and down the table. 'I love all of you.'

Bill says, 'W-We love you too, B-Bev.'

'Yes,' Ben says. 'We love you.' His eyes widen a little, and he laughs. 'I think we still all love each other . . . Do you know how rare that must be?'

There's a moment of silence, and Mike is really not surprised to see that Rickie is wearing his glasses.

'My contacts started to burn and I had to take them out,' Richie says briefly when Mike asks. 'Maybe we should get down to business?'

They all look at Bill then, as they had in the gravel-pit, and Mike thinks: They look at Bill when they need a leader, at Eddie when they need a navigator. Get down to business, what a hell of a phrase that is. Do I tell them that the bodies of the children that were found back then and now weren't sexually molested, not even precisely mutilated, but partially eaten? Do I tell them I've got seven miner's helmets, the kind with strong electric lights set into the front, stored back at my house, one of them for a guy named Stan Uris who couldn't make the scene, as we used to say? Or is it maybe enough just to tell them to go home and get a good night's sleep, because it ends tomorrow or tomorrow night for good — either for It or us?

None of those things have to be said, perhaps, and the reason why they don't has already been stated: they still love one another. Things have changed over the last twenty-seven years, but that, miraculously, hasn't. It is, Mike thinks, our only real hope.

The only thing that really remains is to finish going through it, to complete the job of catching up, of stapling past to present so that the strip of experience forms some half-assed kind of wheel. Yes, Mike thinks, that's it. Tonight the job is to make the wheel; tomorrow we

can see if it still turns . . . the way it did when we drove the big kids out of the gravel-pit and out of the Barrens.

'Have you remembered the rest?' Mike asks Richie.

Richie swallows some beer and shakes his head. 'I remember you telling us about the bird . . . and about the smoke-hole.' A grin breaks over Richie's face. 'I remembered about that walking over here tonight with Bevvie and Ben. What a fucking honor-show that was —

'Beep-beep, Richie,' Beverly says, smiling.

'Well, you know,' he says, still smiling himself and punching his glasses up on his nose in a gesture that is eerily reminiscent of the old Richie. He winks at Mike. 'You and me, right, Mikey?'

Mike snorts laughter and nods.

'Miss Scawlett! Miss Scawlett!' Richie shrieks in his Pickaninny Voice. 'It's gettin a little wa'am in de smokehouse, Miss Scawlett!'

Laughing, Bill says, 'Another engineering and architectural triumph by Ben Hanscom.'

Beverly nods. 'We were digging out the clubhouse when you brought your father's photograph album to the Barrens, Mike.'

'Oh, Christ!' Bill says, sitting suddenly bolt –upright. 'And the pictures — '

Richie nods grimly. 'The same trick as in Georgie's room. Only that time we all saw it.'

Ben says, 'I remembered what happened to the extra silver dollar.'

They all turn to look at him.

'I gave the other three to a friend of mine before I came out here,' Ben says quietly. 'For his kids. I remembered there had been a fourth, but I couldn't remember what happened to it. Now I do.' He looks at Bill. 'We made a silver slug out of it, didn't we? You, me, and Richie. At first we were going to make a silver bullet — '

'You were pretty sure you could do it,' Richie agrees. 'But in the end — '

'We got c-cold fuh-feet.' Bill nods slowly. The memory has fallen naturally into its place, and he hears that same low but distinct click! when it happens. We're getting closer, he thinks.

'We went back to Neibolt Street,' Richie says. 'All of us.'

'You saved my life, Big Bill,' Ben says suddenly and Bill shakes his head. ' You did, though,' Ben persists, and this time Bill doesn't shake his head. He suspects that maybe he had done just that, although he does not yet remember how . . . and was it him? He thinks maybe Beverly . . . but that is not there. Not yet, anyway.

'Excuse me for a second,' Mike says. 'I've got a sixpack in the back fridge.'

'Have one of mine,' Richie says.

'Hanlon no drinkum white man's beer,' Mike replies. 'Especially not yours, Trashmouth.'

'Beep-beep, Mikey,' Rickie says solemnly, and Mike goes to get his beer on a warm wave of their laughter.

He snaps on the light in the lounge, a tacky little room with seedy chairs, a Silex badly in need of scrubbing, and a bulletin board covered with old notices, wage and hour information, and a few New Yorker cartoons now turning yellow and curling up at the edges. He opens the little refrigerator and feels the shock sink into him, bone-deep and icewhite, the way February cold sank into you when February was here and it seemed that April never would be. Blue and orange balloons drift out in a flood, dozens of them, a New Year's Eve bouquet of party-balloons, and he thinks incoherently in the midst of his fear, All we need is Guy Lombardo tootling away on 'Auld Lang Syne.' They waft past his face and rise toward thelounge ceiling. He's trying to scream, unable to scream, seeing what had been behind the balloons, what It had popped into the refrigerator beside his beer, as if for a late-night snack after his worthless friends have all told their worthless stones and gone back to their rented beds in this home town that is no longer home.

Mike takes a step backward, his hands going to his face, shutting the vision out. He stumbles over one of the chairs, almost falls, and takes his hands away. It is still there; Stan Uris's severed head beside Mike's sixpack of Bud Light, the head not of a man but of an eleven-year-old boy. The mouth is open in a soundless scream but Mike can see neither teeth nor tongue because the mouth has been stuffed full of feathers. The feathers are a light brown and unspeakably huge. He knows well enough what bird those feathers came from. Oh yes. Oh yes indeed. He had seen the bird in May of 1958 and they had all seen it in early August of 1958 and then, years later, while visiting his dying father, he had found out that Will Hanlon had seen it once, too, after his escape from the fire at the Black Spot. The blood from S tan's tattered neck has dripped down and formed a coagulated pool on the fridge's bottom shelf. It glitters dark ruby-red in the uncompromising glow shed by the fridge bulb.

'Uh . . . uh . . . uh . . . ' Mike manages, but no more sound than that can he make. Then the head opens its eyes, and they are the silver-bright eyes of Pennywise the Clown. Those eyes roll in his direction and the head's lips begin to squirm around the mouthful of feathers. It is trying to speak, perhaps trying to deliver prophecy like the oracle in a Greek play.

Just thought I'd join you, Mike, because you can't win without me. You can't win without me and you know it, don't you? You might have had a chance if all of me had shown up, but I just couldn't stand the strain on my all-American brain, if you see what I mean, jellybean. A il the six of you can do on your own is hash over some old times and then get yourselves killed. So I thought I'd head you off at the pass. Head you off, get it, Mikey? Get it, old pal? Get it, you fucking scumbag nigger?

You're not real! he screams, but no sound comes out; he is like a TV with the volume control turned all the way down.

Incredibly, grotesquely, the head winks at him.

I'm real, all right. Real as raindrops. And you know what I'm talking about, Mikey. What the six of you are planning to try is like taking off in a jet plane with no landing gear. There's no sense in going up if you can't get back down, is there? No sense in going down if you can't get back up, either. You'll never think of the right riddles and jokes. You'll never make me laugh, Mikey. You've all forgotten how to turn your screams upside-down. Beep-beep, Mikey, what do you say? Remember the bird? Nothing but a sparrow, but say-hey! it was a lulu, wasn't it? Big as a barn, big as one of those silly Japanese movie monsters that used to scare you when you were a little kid. The days when you knew how to turn that bird from your door are gone forever. Believe it, Mikey. If you know how to use your head, you'll get out of here, out of Derry, right now. If you don't know how to use it, it'll end up just like this one here. Today's guidepost along the great road of life is use it before you lose it, my good man.

The head rolls over on its face (the feathers in its mouth make a horrid crumpling sound) and falls out of the refrigerator. It thuks to the floor and rolls toward him like a hideous bowling ball, its blood-matted hair changing places with its grinning face; it rolls toward him leaving a gluey trail of blood and dismembered bits of feather behind, its mouth working around its clot of feathers.

Beep-beep, Mikey! it screams as Mike backs madly away from it, hands held out in a warding-off gesture. Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-fucking-beep!

Then there is a sudden loud pop — the sound of a plastic cork thumbed out of a bottle of cheap champagne. The head disappears (Real, Mike thinks sickly; there was nothing supernatural about that pop, anyway; that was the sound of air rushing back into a suddenly vacated space . . . real, oh God, real). A thin net of blood droplets floats up and then patters back down. No need to clean the lounge, though; Carole will see nothing when she comes in tomorrow, not even if she has to plow her way through the balloons to get to the hotplate and make her first cup of coffee. How handy. He giggles shrilly.

He looks up and yes, the balloons are still there. The blue ones say: DERRY NIGGERS GETTHE BIRD. The orange ones say: THE LOSERS ARE STILL LOSING , BUT STANLEY URIS IS FINALLY AHEAD

No sense going up if you can't get back down, the speaking head had assured him, no sense going down if you can't get back up. This latter makes him think again of the stored miner's helmets. And was it true? Suddenly he's thinking about the first day he went down to the Barrens after the rockfight. July 6th, that had been, two days after he had marched in the Fourth of July parade . . . two days after he had seen Pennywise the Clown in person for the first time. It had been after that day in the Barrens, after listening to their stones and then, hesit antly, telling his own, that he had gone home and asked his father if he could look at his photograph album.

Why exactly had he gone down to the Barrens that July 6th? Had he known he would find them there? It seemed that he had — and not just that they would be there, but where they would be. They had been talking about a clubhouse of some sort, he remembers, but it had seemed to him that they had been talking about that because there was something else that they didn't know how to talk about.

Mike looks up at the balloons, not really seeing them now, trying to remember exactly how it had been that day, that hot hot day. Suddenly it seems very important to remember just what had happened, what every nuance had been, what his state of mind had been.

Because that was when everything began to happen. Before that the others had talked about killing It, but there had been no forward motion, no plan. When Mike had come the circle closed, the wheel began to roll. It had been later that same day that Bill and Richie and Ben went down to the library and began to do serious research on an idea that Bill had had a day or a week or a month before. It had all begun to —

'Mike?' Richie calls from the Reference Room where the others are gathered. 'Did you di e in there?'

Almost, Mike thinks, looking at the balloons, the blood, the feathers inside the fridge.

He calls back: 'I think you guys better come in here.'

He hears the scrape of their chairs, the mutter of their voices; he hears Richie saying 'Oh Jesus, what's up now?' and another ear, this one in his memory, hears Richie saying something else, and suddenly he remembers what it is he has been searching for; even more, he understands why it has seemed so elusive. The reaction of the others when he stepped into the clearing in the darkest, deepest, and most overgrown part of the Barrens that day had been . . . nothing. No surprise, no questions about how he had found them, no big deal. Ben had been eating a Twinkie, he remembers, Beverly and Richie had been smoking cigarettes, Bill had been lying on his back with his hands behind his head, looking at the sky, Eddie and Stan were looking doubtfully at a series of strings which had been pegged into the ground to form a square of about five feet on a side.

No surprise, no questions, no big deal. He had simply shown up and been accepted. It was as if, without even knowing it, they had been waiting for him. And in that third ear, memory's ear, he hears Richie's Pickaninny Voice raised as it was earlier tonight: 'Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, here come

2

that black chile agin! Lawks-a-mussy, I doan know what thisyere Barrens is comin to! Look at that there nappy haid, Big Bill!' Bill didn't even look around; he just went on staring dreamily at the fat summer clouds marching across the sky. He was giving an important question his most careful consideration. Richie was not offended by the lack of attention,

however. He pushed onward. 'Jest lookin at that nappy haid makes me b'leeve I needs me another mint joolip! I'se gwinter have it out on the verandah, where it's be a little bit coolah — '

'Beep-beep, Richie,' Ben said from around a mouthful of Twinkie, and Beverly laughed.

'Hi,' Mike said uncertainly. His heart was beating a little too hard, but he wa s determined to go on with this. He owed his thanks, and his father had told him that you always paid what you owed — and as quick as you could, before the interest mounted up.

Stan looked around. 'Hi,' he said, and then looked back at the square of strings pegged into the center of the clearing. 'Ben, are you sure this is going to work?'

'It'll work,' Ben said. 'Hi, Mike.'

'Want a cigarette?' Beverly asked. 'I got two left.'

'No thank you.' Mike took a deep breath and said, 'I wanted to thank you all again for helping me the other day. Those guys meant to hurt me bad. I'm sorry some of you guys got banged up.'

Bill waved his hand, dismissing it. 'D-D-Don't wuh-wuh-horry a-a-bout it. Th-they've h-had it i-i-in f-for us all y-y-year.' He sat up and looked at Mike with sudden starry interest. 'C-Can I a-ask you s-s-something?'

'I guess so,' Mike said. He sat down gingerly. He had heard such prefaces before. The Denbrough kid was going to ask him what it was like to be a Negro.

But instead Bill said: 'When L-L-Larsen pitched the n-no-h-hitter in the World S-Series two years ago, d-do you think that was just luh-luck?'

Richie dragged deep on his cigarette and started to cough. Beverly pounded nun good-naturedly on the back. 'You're just a beginner, Richie, you'll learn.'

'I think it's gonna fall in, Ben,' Eddie said worriedly, looking at the pegged square. 'I don't know how cool I am on the idea of getting buried alive.'

'You're not gonna get buried alive,' Ben said. 'And if you are, just suck your damn old aspirator until someone pulls you out.'

This struck Stanley Uris as deliciously funny. He leaned back on his elbow, his head turned up to the sky, and laughed until Eddie kicked his shin and told him to shut up.

'Luck,' Mike said finally. 'I think any no-hitter's more luck than skill.'

'M-M-Me t-too,' Bill said. Mike waited to see if there was more, but Bill seemed satisfied. He lay down again, laced his hands behind his head again, and went back to studying the clouds as they floated by.

'What are you guys up to?' Mike asked, looking at the square of strings pegged just above the ground

'Oh, this is Haystack's big idea of the week,' Richie said. 'Last time he flooded out the Barrens and that was pretty good, but this one's a real dinner-winner. This is Dig Your Own Clubhouse Month. Next month — '

'Y-You don't nuh-nuh –need to put B-B-B-Ben d-duh-hown,' Bill said, still looking at the sky. 'It's going to be guh-guh –good.'

'God's sake, Bill, I was just kidding.'

'Suh-Sometimes you k-k-kid too much, Rih-Richie.'

Richie accepted the rebuke silently.

'I still don't get it,' Mike said.

'Well, it's pretty simple,' Ben said. 'They wanted a treehouse, and we could do that, but people have a bad habit of breaking their bones when they fall out of treehouses — '

'Kookie . . . Kookie . . . lend me your bones,' Stan said, and laughed again while' the others looked at him, puzzled. Stan did not have much sense of humor, and the bit he did have was sort of peculiar.

'You ees goin loco, senhorr,' Richie said. 'Eees the heat an the cucarachas , I theenk.'

'Anyway,' Ben said, 'what we'll do is dig down about five feet in the square I pegged out there. We can't go much deeper than that or we'll hit groundwater, I guess. It's pretty close to the surface down here. Then we'll shore up the sides just to make sure they don't cave in.' He looked significantly at Eddie here, but Eddie was worried.

'Then what?' Mike asked, interested.

'We'll cap off the top.'

'Huh?'

'Put boards over the top of the hole. We can put in a trapdoor or something so we can get in and out, even windows if we want — '

'We'll need some hih-h i h –hinges,' Bill said, still looking at the clouds.

'We can get those at Reynolds Hardware,' Ben said.

'Y-You guh –guh-guys have your a-a-allowances,' Bill said.

'I've got five dollars,' Beverly said. 'I saved it up from babysitting.' Richie immediately began to crawl toward her on his hands and knees. 'I love you, Bevvie,' he said, making dog's eyes at her. 'Will you marry me? We'll live in a pine-studded bungalow — '

'A what'?' Beverly asked, while Ben watched them with an odd mixture of anxiety, amusement, and concentration.

'A bung-studded pinealo w,' Richie said. 'Five bucks is enough, sweetie, you and me and baby makes three — '

Beverly laughed and blushed and moved away from him.

'We sh-share the e-expenses,' Bill said. 'That's why we got a club.'

'So after we cap the hole with boards,' Ben went on, 'we put down this heavy-duty glue — Tangle-Track, they call it — and put the sods back on. Maybe sprinkle it with pine needles. We could be down there and people — people like Henry Bowers — could walk right over us and not even know we were there.'

'You thought of that?' Mike said. 'Jeez, that's great!'

Ben smiled. It was his turn to blush.

Bill sat up suddenly and looked at Mike. 'You w-w-want to heh-help?'

'Well . . . sure,' Mike said. That'd be fun.'

A look passed among the others — Mike felt it as well as saw it. There are seven of us here, Mike thought, and for no reason at all he shivered.

'When are you going to break ground?'

'P-P-hretty s-soon,' Bill said, and Mike knew — knew — that it wasn't just Ben's underground clubhouse Bill was talking about. Ben knew it, too. So did Richie, Beverly, and Eddie. Stan Uris had stopped smiling; 'W-We're g-gonna start this pruh-huh-hoject pretty suh-suh –soon.'

There was a pause then, and Mike was suddenly aware of two things: they wanted to say something, tell him something . . . and he was not entirely sure he wanted to hear it. Ben had picked up a stick and was doodling aimlessly in the dirt, his hair hiding his face. Richie was gnawing at his already ragged fingernails. Only Bill was looking directly at Mike.

'Is something wrong?' Mike asked uneasily.

Speaking very slowly, Bill said: 'W-W-We're a cluh-club. Y-You can be in the club if you w-w-want, but y-y-you have to kee-keep our see-see-secrets.'

'You mean, like the clubhouse?' Mike asked, now more uneasy than ever. 'Well, sure — '

'We've got another secret, kid,' Richie said, still not looking at Mike. 'And Big Bill says we've got something more important to do this summer than digging underground clubhouses.'

'He's right, too,' Ben added.

There was a sudden, whistling gasp. Mike jumped. It was only Eddie, blasting off. Eddie looked at Mike apologetically, shrugged, and then nodded.

'Well,' Mike said finally, 'don't keep me in suspense. Tell me.'

Bill was looking at the others. 'I-Is there a-a-anyone who d-doesn't want him in the cluh-club?'

No one spoke or raised a hand.

'W-Who wants to t-tell?' Bill asked.

There was another long pause, and this time Bill didn't break it. At last Beverly sighed and looked up at Mike.

'The kids who have been killed,' she said. 'We know who's been doing it, and it's not human.'

3

They told him, one by one: the clown on the ice, the leper under the porch, the blood and voices from the drain, the dead boys in the Standpipe. Richie told about what had happened when he and Bill went back to Neibolt Street, and Bill spoke last, telling about the school photo that had moved, and the picture he had stuck his hand into. He finished by explainin g that it had killed his brother Georgie, and that the Losers' Club was dedicated to killing the monster . . . whatever the monster really was.

Mike thought later, going home that night, that he should have listened with disbelief mounting into horror and finally run away as fast as he could, not looking back, convinced either that he was being put on by a bunch of white kids who didn't like black folks or that he was in the presence of six authentic lunatics who had in some way caught their lunacy from each other, the way everyone in the same class could catch a particularly virulent cold.

But he didn't run, because in spite of the horror, he felt a strange sense of comfort. Comfort and something else, something more elemental: a feeling of coming home. There are seven of us here, he thought again as Bill finally finished speaking.

He opened his mouth, not sure of what he was going to say.

'I've seen the clown,' he said. :

'What?' Richie and Stan asked together, and Beverly turned her head so quickly that her pony-tail flipped from her left shoulder to her right.

'I saw him on the Fourth,' Mike said slowly, speaking to Bill mostly. Bill's eyes, sharp and utterly concentrated, were on his, demanding that he go on. 'Yes, on the Fourth of July . . . ' He trailed off momentarily, thinking: But I knew him. I knew him because that wasn't the first time I saw him. And it wasn't the first time I saw something . . . something wrong.

He thought of the bird then, the first time he'd really a lowed himself to think of it — except in nightmares — since May. He had thought he was going crazy. It was a relief to find out he wasn't crazy . . . but it was still a scary relief. He wet his lips.

'Go on,' Bev said impatiently. 'Hurry up.'

'Well, the thing is, I was in the parade. I — '

'I saw you,' Eddie said. 'You were playing the saxophone.'

'Well, it's actually a trombone,' Mike said. 'I play with the Neibolt Church School Band. Anyway, I saw the clown. He was handing out balloons to kids on the three-way corner downtown. He was just like Ben and Bill said. Silver suit, orange buttons, white makeup on his face, big red smile. I don't know if it was lipstick or make-up, but it looked like blood.'

The others were nodding, excited now, but Bill only went on looking at Mike closely. 'O-O-Orange tufts of h-h-hair?' he asked Mike, making them unconsciously over his own head with his fingers.

Mike nodded.

'Seeing him like that . . . it scared me. And while I was looking at him, he turned around and waved at me, like he'd read my mind, or my feelings, or whatever you call it. And that . . . like, scared me worse. I didn't know why then, but he scared me so bad for a couple of seconds I couldn't play my 'bone anymore. All the spit in my mouth dried up and I felt . . . ' He glanced briefly at Beverly. He remembered it all so clearly now, how the sun had suddenly seemed intolerably dazzling on the brass of his horn and the chrome of the cars, the music too loud, the sky too blue. The clown had raised one white-gloved hand (the other was full of balloon strings) and had waved slowly back and forth, his bloody grin too red and too wide, a scream turned upside-down. He remembered how the flesh of his testicles had begun to crawl, how his bowels had suddenly felt all loose and hot, as if he might suddenly drop a casual load of shit into his pants. But he couldn't say any of that in front of Beverly. You didn't say stuff like that in front of girls, even if they were the sort of girls you could say things like 'bitch' and 'bastard' in front of. ' . . . I felt scared,' he finished, feeling that was too weak, but not knowing how to say the rest. But they were nodding as if they understood, and he felt an indescribable relief wash through him. Somehow that clown looking at him, smiling his red smile, his white-gloved hand penduluming slowly back and forth . . . that had been worse than having Henry Bowers and the rest after him. Ever so much worse.

'Then we were past,' Mike went on. 'We marched up Main Street Hill. And I saw him again, handing out balloons to kids. Except a lot of them didn't want to take them. Some of the little ones were crying. I couldn't figure out how he could have gotten up there so fast. I thought to myself that there must be two of them, you know, both of them dressed the same way. A team. But then he turned around and waved to me again and I knew it was him. It was the same man.'

'He's not a man,' Richie said, and Beverly shuddered. Bill put his arm around her for a moment and she looked at him gratefully.

'He waved to me . . . and then he winked. Like we had a secret. Or like . . . like maybe he knew I'd recognized him.'

Bill dropped his arm from Beverly's shoulders. 'You reh-reh-rehrecognized him?'

'I think so,' Mike said. 'I have to check something before I say it's for sure. My father's got some pictures . . . He collects them . . . Listen, you guys play down here a lot, don't you?'

'Sure,' Ben said. 'That's why we're building a clubhouse.'

Mike nodded. 'I'll check and see if I'm right. If I am, I can bring the pictures.'

'O-O-Old pic-pictures?' Bill asked.

'Yes.'

'W-W-What else?' Bill asked.

Mike opened his mouth and then closed it again. He looked around at them uncertainly and then said, 'You'd think I was crazy. Crazy or lying.'

'D-Do y-y-you th-think we're cruh-cruh-crazy?'

Mike shook his head.

'You bet we're not,' Eddie said. 'I got a lot wrong with me, but I'm not bughouse. I don't think.'

'No,' Mike said. 'I don't think you're crazy.'

'Well, we-we won't th-think you're cruh-cruh . . . nuts, e-e-either,' Bill said.

Mike looked them all over, cleared his throat, and said: 'I saw a bird. Couple, three months ago. I saw a bird.'

Stan Uris looked at Mik e. 'What kind of a bird?'

Speaking more reluctantly than ever Mike said: 'It looked like a sparrow, sort of, but it also looked like a robin. It had an orange chest.'

'Well, what's so special about a bird?' Ben asked. 'There are lots of birds in Derry.' But he felt uneasy, and looking at Stan, he felt sure that Stan was remembering what had happened in the Standpipe, and how he had somehow stopped it from happening by shouting out the names of birds. But he forgot all about that and everything else when Mike spoke again.

'This bird was bigger than a housetrailer,' he said.

He looked at their shocked, amazed faces. He waited for their laughter, but none came. Stan looked as if someone had clipped him with a brick. His face had gone so pale it was the color of muted November sunlight.

'I swear it's true,' Mike said. 'It was a giant bird, like one of those birds in the monster-movies that are supposed to be prehistoric.'

'Yeah, like in The Giant Claw,' Richie said. He thought the bird in that had been sort of fake-looking, but by the time it got to New York he had still been excited enough to spill his popcorn over the balcony railing at the Aladdin. Foxy Foxworth would have kicked him out, but the movie was over by then anyway. Sometimes you got the shit kicked out of you, but as Big Bill said, sometimes you won one, too.

'But it didn't look prehistoric,' Mike said. 'And it didn't look like one of those whatdoyoucallums the Greeks and Romans made up stories about — '

'Ruh-Ruh-Rocs?' Bill suggested.

'Right, I guess so. It wasn't like those, either. It was just like a combination robin and sparrow. The two most common birds you see.' He laughed a little wildly.

'W-W-Where — ' Bill began.

'Tell us,' Beverly said simply, and after a moment to collect his thoughts, Mike did. And telling it, watching their faces grow concerned and scared but not disbelieving or derisive, he felt an incredible weight lift from his chest. Like Ben with his mummy or Eddie with his leper and Stan with the drowned boys, he had seen a thing that would have driven an adult insane, not just with terror but with the walloping force of an unreality too great to be explained away or, lacking any rational explanation, simply ignored. Elijah's face had been burned black by the light of God's love, or so Mike had read; but Elijah had been an old man when it happened, and maybe that made a difference. Hadn't one of those other Bible fellows, this one little more than a kid, actually wrestled an angel to a draw?

He had seen it and he had gone on with his life; he had integrated the memory into his view of the world. He was still young enough so that view was tremendously wide. But what had happened that day had nonetheless haunted his mind's darker corners, an d sometimes in his dreams he ran from that grotesque bird as it printed its shadow on him from above. Some of these dreams he remembered and some he did not, but they were there, shadows which moved by themselves.

How little of it he had forgotten and how greatly it had troubled him (as he went about his daily round: helping his father, going to school, riding his bike, doing errands for his mother, waiting for the black groups to come on American Bandstand after school) was perhaps measurable in only one way — the relief he felt in sharing it with the others. As he did, he realized it was the first time he had even allowed himself to think of it fully since that early morning by the Canal, when he had seen those odd grooves . . . and the blood.

4

Mike told the story of the bird at the old Ironworks and how he had run into the pipe to escape it. Later on that afternoon, three of the Losers — Ben, Richie, Bill — walked toward the Derry Public Library. Ben and Richie were keeping a close watch for Bowers and Company, but Bill only looked at the sidewalk, frowning, lost in thought. About an hour after

telling them his story Mike had left them, saying his father wanted him home by four to pick peas. Beverly had to do some marketing and fix dinner for her father, she said. Both Eddie and Stan had their own things to do. But before they broke up for the day they began digging what was to become — if Ben was right — their underground clubhouse. To Bill (and to all of them, he suspected), the groundbreaking had seemed an almost symbolic act. They had begun. Whatever it was they were supposed to do as a group, as a unit, they had begun.

Ben asked Bill if he believed like Hanlon's story. They were passing Derry Community House and the library was just ahead, a stone oblong comfortably shaded by elms a century old and as yet untouched by the Dutch Elm disease that would later plague and thin them.

'Yeah,' Bill said. 'I th-think it was the truh –hooth. C-C-Crazy, but true. What about you, Ruh-Ruh-Richie?'

Richie nodded. 'Yeah. I hate to believe it, if you know what I mean, but I guess I do. You remember what he said about the bird's tongue?

Bill and Ben nodded. Orange fluffs on it.

'That's the kicker,' Richie said. 'It's like some comic –book villain. Lex Luthor or the Joker or someone like that. It always leaves a trademark.'

Bill nodded thoughtfully. It was like some comic –book villain. Because they saw it that way? Thought of it that way? Yes, perhaps so. It was kid's stuff, but it seemed that was what this thing thrived on — kid's stuff.

They crossed the street to the library side.

'I a-a-asked Stuh-Stuh-Stan i-if he e-ever h-h-heard of a buh-bird l-like that,' Bill said. 'Nuh-nuh –not n-necessarily a b-b-big wuh-wuh-one, but j– just a-a-a — '

'A real one?' Richie suggested.

Bill nodded. 'H-He suh-said there m-m-might be a buh-bird like that in Suh-houth America or A-A-A-Africa, but nuh-nuh –not a-around h-h-here.'

'He didn't believe it, then?' Ben asked.

'H-H-He buh-believed i-i-it,' Bill said. And then he told them something else Stan had suggested when Bill walked with him back to where Stan had left his bike. Stan's idea was that nobody else could have seen that bird before Mike told them that story. Something else, maybe, but not that bird, because the bird was Mike Hanlon's personal monster. But now . . . why, now that bird was the property of the whole Losers' Club, wasn't it? Any of them might see it. It might not look exactly the same; Bill might see it as a crow, Richie as a hawk, Beverly as a golden eagle, for all Stan knew — but It could be a bird to all of them now. Bill told Stan that if that was true, then any of them might see the leper, the mummy, or possibly the dead boys.

'Which means we ought to do something pretty soon if we're going to do anything at all,' Stan had replied. 'It knows . . . '

'Wuh-What?' Bill had asked sharply. 'Eh-Everything we nuh-know?'

'Man, if It knows that, we're sunk,' Stan had answered. 'But you can bet It knows we know about It, I think It'll try to get us. Are you still thinking about what we talked about yesterday?'

'Yes.'

'I wish I could go with you.'

'Buh-Buh-Ben and Rih-Richie w-w-will. Ben's really s-s-smart, and Rih-Rih –Richie is, too, when he ih –isn' t fucking o-off.'

Now, standing outside the library, Richie asked Bill exactly what it was he had in mind. Bill told them, speaking slowly so he wouldn't stutter too badly. The idea had been circling in his mind for the last two weeks, but it had taken Mike's story of the bird to crystallize it.

What did you do if you wanted to get rid of a bird?

Well, shooting it was pretty goddam final.

What did you do if you wanted to get rid of a monster? Well, the movies suggested that shooting it with a silver bullet was pretty goddam final.

Ben and Richie listened to this respectfully enough. Then Richie asked, 'How do you get a silver bullet, Big Bill? Send away for it?'

'Very fuh-fuh –funny. We'll have to m-m-make it.'

'How?'

'I guess that's what we're at the library to find out,' Ben said. Richie nodded and pushed his glasses up on his nose. Behind them, his eyes were sharp and thoughtful . . . but doubtful, Bill thought. He felt doubtful himself. At least there was no foolishness in Richie's eyes, and that was a step in the right direction.

'You thinking about your dad's Walther?' Richie asked. The one we took to Neibolt Street?'

'Yes,' Bill said.

'Even if we could really make silver bullets,' Richie said, 'where would we ge t the silver?'

'Let me worry about that,' Ben said quietly.

'Well . . . okay,' Richie said. 'We'll let Haystack worry about that. Then what? Neibolt Street again?'

Bill nodded. 'Nee-Nee-Neibolt Street a-a-again. And then we buh-blow its fuckin g h– h-head o-off.'

The three of them stood there a moment longer, looking at each other solemnly, and then they went into the library.

5

'Sure an begorrah, it's that black feller again!' Richie cried in his Irish Cop Voice.

A week had passed; it was nearly mid July and the underground clubhouse was almost finished.

'Top o the mornin to ye, Mr O'Hanlon, sor! And a foine, foine day it promises to be, foine as pertaters a-growin, as me old mither used to — '

'So far as I know, noon is the top of the morning, Richie,' Ben said, popping up in the hole, 'and noon was two hours ago.' He and Richie had been putting in shoring around the sides of the hole. Ben had taken off his sweatshirt because the day was hot and the work was hard. His tee — shirt was gray with sweat and stuck to his chest and pouch of a stomach. He seemed remarkably unselfconscious of the way he looked, but Mike guessed that if Ben heard Beverly coming, he would be inside that baggy sweatshirt again before you could say puppy l o ve.

'Don't be so picky — you sound like Stan the Man,' Richie said. He had gotten out of the hole five minutes before because, he told Ben, it was time for a cigarette break.

'I thought you said you didn't have any cigarettes,' Ben had said.

'I don't,' Richie had replied, 'but the principle remains the same.'

Mike had his father's photograph album under his arm. 'Where is everybody?' he asked. He knew Bill had to be somewhere around, because he had left his own bike parked under the bridge near Silver.

'Bill and Eddie went down to the dump about half an hour ago to liberate some more boards,' Richie said. 'Stanny and Bev went down to Reynolds Hardware to get hinges. I don't know what the frock Haystack's up to down there — up to down there, ha-ha, you get it? — but it's probably no good. Boy needs someone to keep an eye on him, you know. By the way, you owe us twenty-three cents if you still want to be in this club. Your share of the hinges.'

Mike switched the album from his right arm to his left and dug into his pocket. He counted out twenty-three cents (leaving a grand total of one dime in his own personal treasury) and handed it over to Richie. Then he walked over to the hole and looked in.

Except it really wasn't a hole anymore. The sides had been neatly squared off. Each side had been shored up. The boards were all mongrels, but Ben, Bill, and Stan had done a good job of sizing them with tools from Zack Denbrough's shop (and Bill had been at great pains to make sure every tool was returned every night, and in the same condition as when it was taken). Ben and Beverly had nailed cross-pieces between the supports. The hole still made Eddie a little nervous, but that was Eddie's nature. Piled carefully to one side were squares of sod which would later be glued to the top.

'I think you guys know what you're doing,' Mike said.

'Sure,' Ben said, and pointed to the album. 'What you got?'

'My father's Derry album,' Mike said. 'He collects old pictures and clippings about the town. It's his hobby. I was looking through it a couple of days ago — I told you I thought I'd seen that clown before. And I did. In here. So I brought it down.' He was too ashamed to add that he had not dared to ask his father's permission to do this. Afraid of the questions to which such a request might lead, he had taken it from the house like a thief while his father planted potatoes in the west field and his mother hung clothes in the back yard. 'I thought you guys ought to take a look, too.'

'Well, let's see,' Richie said.

'I'd like to wait until everybody's here. It might be better.'

'Okay.' Richie was, in truth, not that anxious to look at more pictures of Derry, in this or any other album. Not after what had happened in Georgie's room. 'You want to help me and Ben with the rest of the shoring?'

'You bet.' Mike put his father's album down carefully, far enough from the hole so it wouldn't be pelted with flying dirt, and took Ben's shovel.

'Dig right here,' Ben said, showing Mike the spot. 'Go down about a foot. Then I'll set a board in and hold it flush against the side while you shovel the dirt back in.'

'Good plan, man,' Richie said sagely from where he sat on the edge of the excavation with his sneakers dangling down.

'Wha t's wrong with you ?' Mike asked.

'Got a bone in my leg,' Richie said comfortably.

'How's your project with Bill going?' Mike stopped long enough to strip off his shirt and then began to dig. It was hot down here, even in the Barrens. Crickets hummed sleepily like summer clocks in the brush.

'Well . . . not too bad,' Richie said, and Mike thought he flashed Ben a mildly warning look. 'I guess.'

'Why don't you play your radio, Richie?' Ben asked. He slipped a board into the hole Mike had dug an d held it there. Richie's transistor was hung by the strap in its accustomed place, on the thick branch of a nearby shrub.

'Batteries are worn out,' Richie said. 'You had to have my last twenty-five cents for hinges, remember? Cruel, Haystack, very cruel. After all the things I've done for you. Besides, all I can only get down here is WABI and they only play pansy rock.'

'Huh?' Mike asked.

'Haystack thinks Tommy Sands and Pat Boone sing rock and roll,' Richie said, 'but that's because he's ill. Elvis sings rock and roll. Ernie K. Doe sings rock and roll. Carl Perkins sings rock and roll. Bobby Darin. Buddy Holly. "Ah-ow Peggy . . . my Peggy Suh-uh-oo . . "'

'Please, Richie,' Ben said.

'Also,' Mike said, leaning on his shovel, 'there's Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Shep and the Limelights, La Verne Baker, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Hank Ballard

and the Midnighters, the Coasters, the Isley Brothers, the Crests, the Chords, Stick McGhee — '

They were looking at him with such amazement that Mike laughed.

'You lost me after Little Richard,' Richie said. He liked Little Richard, but if he had a secret rock-and –roll hero that summer it was Jerry Lee Lewis. His mom had happened to come into the living room while Jerry Lee was performing on American Bandstand. This was at the point in his act where Jerry Lee actually climbed onto his piano and played it upside down with his hair hanging in his face. He had been singing 'High School Confidential.' For a moment Richie believed his mom was going to faint. She didn't, but she was so traumatized by what she had seen that she talked at dinner that night about sending Richie to one of those military-type camps for the rest of the summer. Now Richie shook his hair down over his eyes and began to sing: 'Come on over baby all the cats are at the high school rockin — '

Ben began to stagger around the hole, grasping his large belly and pretending to puke. Mike held his nose, but he was laughing so hard tears squirted out of his eyes.

'What's wrong?' Richie demanded. 'I mean, what ails you guys? That was good! I mean, that was really good!'

'Oh man,' Mike said, and now he was laughing so hard he could barely talk. 'That was priceless. I mean, that was really priceless.'

'Negroes have no taste,' Richie said. 'I think it even says so in the Bible.'

'Yo mamma,' Mike said, laughing harder than ever. When Richie asked, with honest bewilderment, what that meant, Mike sat down with a thump and rocked back and forth, howling and holding his stomach.

'You probably think I'm jealous,' Richie said. 'You probably think I want to be a Negro.'

Now Ben also fell down, laughing wildly. His whole body rippled and quaked alarmingly. His eyes bulged. 'No more, Richie,' he managed. 'I'm gonna shit my pants. I'm gonna d-d-die if you don't stub-stop — '

'I don't want to be a Negro,' Richie said. 'Who wants to wear pink pants and live in Boston and buy pizza by the slice? I want to be Jewish like Stan. I want to own a pawnshop and sell people switchblades and plastic dog-puke and used guitars.'

Ben and Mike were now actually screaming with laughter. Their laughter echoed through the green and jungly ravine that was the misnamed Barrens, causing birds to take wing and squirrels to freeze momentarily on limbs. It was a young sound, penetrating, lively, vital, unsophisticated, free. Almost every living thing within range of that sound reacted to it in some way, but the thing which had tumbled out of a wide concrete drain and into the upper Kenduskeag was not living. The previous afternoon there had been a sudden driving thunderstorm (the clubhouse-to-be had not been much affected — since digging operations had begun, Ben had covered the hole carefully each evening with a ragged piece of tarpaulin Eddie had scrounged from behind Wally's Spa; it smelled painty but it did the job), and the stormdrains under Derry had run with violent water for two or three hours. It was that spate of water that had pushed this unpleasant baggage into the sun for the flies to find.

It was the body of a nine-year old named Jimmy Cullum. Except for the nose, his face was gone. There was a churned and featureless mess where it had been. This raw meat was dotted with deep black marks that perhaps only Stan Uris would have recognized for what they were: pecks. Pecks made by a very large beak.

Water rilled over Jimmy Cullum's muddy chino pants. His white hands floated like dead fish. They had also been pecked, although not as badly. His paisley shirt ballooned out and collapsed back, ballooned out and collapsed back, like a bladder.

Bill and Eddie, loaded down with boards scrounged from the dump, crossed the Kenduskeag by stepping-stones less than forty yards from the body. They heard Richie, Ben,

and Mike laughing, smiled a little themselves, and hurried past the unseen ruin of Jimmy Cullum to see what was so funny.

6

They were still laughing as Bill and Eddie came into the clearing, sweating under their load of lumber. Even Eddie, usually as pale as cheese, had some color in his face. They dropped the new boards on the almost depleted supply-pile. Ben climbed out of the hole to inspect them.

'Good deal!' he said. 'Wow! Great!'

Bill collapsed to the ground. 'Can I h-have my heart a-a-attack now or do I h-have to wuh-wait until luh-hater?'

'Have it later,' Ben said absently. He had brought a few tools of his own down to the Barrens and was now going over the new boards carefully, pounding out nails and removing screws. He tossed one aside because it was splintered. Rapping on another returned a dull punky sound in at least three places, and he also tossed that one aside. Eddie sat on a pile of dirt, watching him. He took a honk on his aspirator as Ben pulled a rusty nail from a board with the claw end of his hammer. The nail squealed like some small unpleasant animal that had been stepped on and didn't like it.

'You can get tetanus if you cut yourself on a rusty nail,' Eddie informed Ben.

'Yeah?' Richie said. 'What's titnuss? Sounds like a woman's disease.'

'You're a bird,' Eddie said. 'It's tetanus, not titnuss, and it means lock jaw. There's these special microbes that grow in rust, see, and if you cut yourself they can get inside your body and, um, fuck up your nerves.' Eddie went an even darker red and took another fast honk on his aspirator.

'Lock jaw, Jesus,' Richie said, impressed. 'That sounds mean.'

'You bet. First your jaw locks up so tight you can't open your mouth, not even to eat. They have to cut a hole in your cheek and feed you liquids through a tube.'

'Oh man,' Mike said, standing up in the hole. His eyes were wide, the corneas very white in his brown face. 'For sure?'

'My mom told me,' Eddie said. 'Then your throat locks up and you can't eat anymore an d you starve to death.'

They contemplated this horror in silence.

'There's no cure,' Eddie amplified.

More silence.

'So,' Eddie said briskly, 'I always watch out for rusty nails and shit like that. I had to have a tetanus shot once and it really hurt.'

'So why'd you go to the dump with Bill and bring all this crap back?' Richie asked.

Eddie glanced briefly at Bill, who was looking into the clubhouse, and there was all the love and hero-worship in that gaze needed to answer such a question but Eddie said softly, 'Some stuff has to be done even if there is a risk. That's the first important thing I ever found out I didn't find out from my mother.'

A further silence, not quite uncomfortable, followed. Then Ben went back to pounding out rusty nails, and after awhile Mike Hanlon joined him.

Richie's transistor, robbed of its voice (at least until Richie's allowance came in or he found a lawn to mow), swung from its low branch in a mild breeze. Bill had time to reflect upon how odd all this was, how odd and how perfect, that they should all be here this summer. There were kids he knew visiting relatives. Kids he knew who were off on vacations at Disney land in California or on Cape Cod or, in the case of one chum, an unimaginably

dis tant-sounding place with the queer but somehow evocative name of Gstaad. There were kids at church camp, kids at Scout camp, kids at rich-kid camps where you could learn to swim and play golf, camps where you learned to say 'Hey, good one!' instead of 'Fuck you!' when your opponent got a killer serve past you at tennis; kids whose parents had simply taken them AWAY. Bill could understand that. He knew some kids who wanted to go AWAY, frightened by the boogeyman stalking Derry this summer, but suspected there were more parents frightened by that boogeyman. People who had planned to take their vacations at home suddenly decided to go AWAY

(Gstaad? was that in Sweden? Argentina? Spain?)

instead. It was a little like the polio scare of 1956, when four kids who went swimming in the O'Brian Memorial Pool had gotten the disease. Grownups — word absolutely synonymous in Bill's mind with mothers and fathers — had decided then, as now, that AWAY was better. Safer. Anyone able to clear out had cleared. Bill understood AWAY, and he could muse over a word of such fabulous wonder as Gstaad, but wonder was cold comfort compared with desire; Gstaad was AWAY; Derry was desire.

And none of us have gone AWAY, he thought, watching as Ben and Mike pounded used nails out of used boards, as Eddie strolled off into the bushes to take a whiz (you had to go as soon as you could, in order to avoid seriously straining your bladder, he told Bill once, but you also had to watch out for poison ivy, because who needed a case of that on your pecker). We're all here in Derry. No camp, no relatives, no vacations, no AWAY. All right here. Present and accounted for.

'There's a door down there,' Eddie said, zipping his fly as he came back.

'Hope you shook off, Eds,' Richie said. 'If you don't shake off each time, you can get cancer. My mom told me so.'

Eddie looked startled, thinly worried, and then saw Richie's grin. He withered him (or tried to) with a babies-must-play look and then said, 'It was too big for us to carry. But Bill said if all of us went down we could get it up here.'

'Of course, you can never shake off completely,' Richie went on. 'You want to know what a wise man once told me, Eds?'

'No,' Eddie said, 'and I don't want you to call me Eds anymore, Richie. I mean, I'm sincere. I don't call you Dick, as in "You got any gum on ya, Dick?", so I don't see why — '

'This wise man,' Richie said, 'told me this: "No matter how much you squirm and dance, the last two drops go in your pants." And that's why there's so much cancer in the world, Eddie my love.'

'The reason there's so much cancer in the world is because nerds like you and Beverly Marsh smoke cigarettes,' Eddie said.

'Beverly is not a nerd,' Ben said in a forbidding voice. 'You just watch what you say, Trashmouth.'

'Beep-beep, you g-guys,' Bill said absently. 'And speaking of B-B-Beverly, she's pretty struh-struh-strong. She could h-h-help get that duh –door.'

Ben asked what kind of door it was.

'Muh-Muh-hogany, I th-hink.'

'Somebody threw out a mahogany door?' Ben asked, surprised but not unbelieving.

'People throw out everything,' Mike said. 'That dump? It kills me to go down there. I mean it kills me.'

'Yeah,' Ben agreed. 'A lot of that stuff could be fixed up easy. A nd there are people in China and South America with nothing. That's what my mother says.'

'There's people with nothing right here in Maine, Sunny Jim,' Richie said grimly.

'W-W-What's th-this?' Bill asked, noticing the album Mike had brought. Mike told him, saying he would show them the picture of the clown when Stan and Beverly got back with the hinges.

Bill and Richie exchanged a look.

'What's wrong?' Mike asked. 'Is it what happened in your brother's room,

'Bill?'

'Y-Yeah,' Bill said, and would say no more.

They took turns working on the hole until Stan and Beverly came back, each with a brown paper bag containing hinges. As Mike talked, Ben sat crosslegged, tailor-fashion, and made glassless windows that would swing open and shut in two of the long boards. Perhaps only Bill noticed how quickly and easily his fingers moved; how adept and knowing they were, like surgeon's fingers. Bill admired that.

'Some of these pictures go back a hundred years, my dad said,' Mike told them, holding the album on his lap. 'He gets them at those sales people have in their yards, and at secondhand shops. Sometimes he buys them or trades other collectors for them. Some of them are stereoscopes — there's two of them just the same on a long card, an d when you look at them through this thing like binoculars, it looks like one picture, only in 3-D. Like House of Wax or The Creature from the Black Lagoon.'

'Why does he like all that stuff?' Beverly asked. She was wearing ordinary Levi's but she had done something amusing to the cuffs, blousing them out with a bright paisley material for the final four inches so that they looked like pants out of some sailor's whimsy.

'Yeah,' Eddie said. 'Most of the time, Derry's pretty boring.'

'Well, I don't know for sure, but I think it's because he wasn't born here,' Mike said diffidently. 'It's like — I don't know — like it's all new to him, or like, you know, if you came in during the middle of a movie — '

'Sh-sh-sure, you'd want to see the s-start,' Bill said.

'Yeah,' Mike said. 'There's a lot of history lying around in Derry. I kind of like it. And I think some of it has to do with this thing — this It, if you want to call it that.'

He looked at Bill and Bill nodded, his eyes thoughtful.

'So I was looking through it after the Fourth of July parade because I knew I'd seen that clown before. I knew it. And look.'

He opened the book, thumbed through it, then handed it to Ben, who was sitting on his right.

'D-D-Don't t-t-touch the puh-puh-pages!' Bill said, and there was such ur gency in his voice that they all jumped. He had fisted the hand he had cut reaching into Georgie's album, Richie saw. Fisted it into a tight, protective knot.

'Bill's right,' Richie said, and that subdued, totally un-Richielike voice was a powerful convincer. 'Be careful. It's like Stan said. If we saw it happen, you guys could see it happen, too.'

'Feel it,' Bill added grimly.

The album went from hand to hand, each of them holding the book gingerly, by the edges, as if it were old dynamite sweating big beads of nitro.

It came back to Mike. He opened it to one of the first pages.

'Daddy says there's no way to date that one, but it's probably from the early or mid-seventeen-hundreds,' Mike said. 'He repaired a guy's handsaw for a box of old books and pictures. That was one of them. He says it might be worth forty bucks or even more.

The picture was a woodcut, the size of a large postcard. When Bill's turn came to look at it, he was relieved to see that Mike's father had the land of album where the pictures were under a protective plastic sheet. He looked, fascinated, and he thought: There. I'm seeing him — orIt. Really seeing. That's the face of the enemy.

The picture showed a funny fe low juggling oversized bowling pins in the middle of a muddy street. There were a few houses on either side of the street, and a few huts that Bill guessed were stores, or trading posts, or whatever they called them back then. It didn't look like Derry at all, except for the Canal. It was there, neatly cobbled on both sides. In the upper background, Bill could see a team of mules on a towpath, dragging a barge.

There was a group of maybe half a dozen kids gathered around the funny fellow. One of them was wearing a pastoral straw hat. Another had a hoop and a stick to roll it with. Not the sort of stick that would come with a hoop that you bought today in a Woolworth's; it was a branch from a tree. Bill could see the bare knobs on it where smaller branches had been lopped off with a knife or a hatchet. That baby wasn't made in Taiwan or Korea, he thought, fascinated by this boy who could have been him if he'd been born four or five generations before.

The funny fellow had a huge grin on his face. He wore no makeup (except to Bill his whole face looked like make-up), but he was bald except for two tufts of hair that stuck up like horns over his ears, and Bill had no trouble recognizing their clown. Two hundred years ago or more, he thought, and felt a crazy surge of terror, anger, and excitement rush through him. Twenty-seven years later, sitting in the Derry Public Library and remembering his first look into Mike's father's album, he realized he had felt the way a hunter might feel, coming upon the first fresh spoor of an old killer tiger. Two hundred years ago . . . that long, and only God knows how much longer. This led him to wonder just how long the spirit of Pennywise had been here in Derry — but he found that was a thought he did not really want to pursue.

'Gimme, Bill!' Richie was saying, but Bill held the album a moment longer, staring fixedly at the woodcut, sure it would begin to move: the bowling pins (if that's what they were) which the funny fellow was juggling would rise and fall, rise and fall, the kids would laugh and applaud (except maybe they wouldn't all laugh and applaud; some of them might scream and run instead), the mule –team pulling the barge would move beyond the borders of the picture.

It didn't happen, and he passed the book on to Richie.

When the album came back to Mike he turned some more pages, hunting. 'Here,' he said. This one is from 1856, four years before Lincoln was elected President.'

The book went around again. This was a color picture — a sort of cartoon — which showed a bunch of drunks standing in front of a saloon while a fat politician with muttonchop whiskers declaimed from a board that had been set between two hogsheads. He held a foamy pitcher of beer in one hand. The board upon which he stood was considerably bowed with his weight. Some distance off, a group of bonneted women were looking at this show of mingled buffoonery and intemperance with disgust. The caption below the picture read: POLITICSIS THIRSTY WORK, SEZ SENATOR GARNER!

'Daddy says pictures like this were really popular for about twenty years before the Civil War,' Mike said. 'They called them "foolcards," and people used to send them to each other. They were like some of the jokes in Mad, I guess.'

'Suh-suh-satire,' Bill said.

'Yeah,' Mike said. 'But now look down in the corner of this one.'

The picture was like Mad in another way — it had as many details and little side-jokes as a big Mort Drucker panel in a Mad magazine movie take– o f f . T h e r e w a s a g r i n n i n g f a t m a n pouring a glass of beer down a spotted dog's throat. There was a woman who had fallen on her prat in a mudpuddle. There were two street urchins slyly sticking sulphur –headed matches into the soles of a prosperous –looking businessman's shoes, and a girl swinging from her heels in an elm tree so that her underpants showed. But despite this bewildering intaglio of detail, none of them really needed Mike to point the clown out. Dressed in a loud checked vest-busting drummer's suit, he was playing the shell-game with a bunch of drunken loggers.

He was winking at a lumber jack who had, to judge by the gape-mouthed look of surprise on his face, just picked the wrong nutshell. The drummer/clown was taking a coin from him.

'Him again,' Ben said. 'What . . . a hundred years later?'

'Just about,' Mike said. 'And here's one from 1891.'

It was a clipping from the front page of the Derry News. HUZZAH! the headline proclaimed exuberantly. IRONWORKS OPENS! Just below this: 'Town Turns Out for Gala Picnic.' The pictur e showed a woodcut of the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Kitchener Ironworks; its style reminded Bill of the Currier and Ives prints his mother had in the dining room, although this was nowhere near as polished. A fellow tricked out in a morning coat and tophat was holding a large pair of open-jawed scissors above the Ironworks ribbon while a crowd of perhaps five hundred watched. Off to the left was a clown — their clown — turning a handspring for a group of children. The artist had caught him upside down, turning his smile into a scream.

He passed the book on quickly to Richie.

The next picture was a photograph under which Will Hanlon had written: 1933: Repeal in Derry. Although none of the boys knew much about either the Volstead Act or its repeal, the picture made the salient facts clear. The photo was of Wally's Spa down in Hell's Half-Acre. The place was almost literally filled to the rafters with men wearing open-collared white shirts, straw boaters, lumbermen's shirts, tee– shirts, banker's suits. All of them were holding glasses and bottles victoriously aloft. There were two big signs in the window. WELCOME BACK, JOHN BARLEYCORN! one read. The other said: FREE BEER TONIGHT. The clown, dressed like the biggest dandy you ever saw (white shoes, spats, gangster pants), had his foot on the running board of a Reo auto and was drinking champagne from a lady's high-heeled shoe.

'1945,' Mike said.

The Derry News again. The headline: JAPAN SURRENDERS — IT'S OVER! THANK GOD IT 'S OVER! A parade was snake-dancing its way along Main Street toward Up-Mile Hill. And there was the clown in the background, wearing his silver suit with the orange buttons, frozen in the matrix of dots that made up the grainy newsprint photo, seeming to suggest (at least to Bill) that nothing was over, no one had surrendered, nothing was won, nil was still the rule, zilch still the custom; seeming to suggest above all that all was still lost.

Bill felt cold and dry and scared.

Suddenly the dots in the picture disappeared and it began to move.

'That's what — ' Mike began.

'L-L-Look,' Bill said. The word dropped out of his mouth like a partially melted ice-cube. 'A-A –All of you luh-look at th-this!'

They crowded around.

'Oh my God,' Beverly whispered, awed.

'That's IT!' Richie nearly screamed, pounding Bill on the back in his excitement. He looked around at Eddie's white, drawn face and Stan Uris's frozen one. 'That's what we saw in George's room! That's exactly what we —

'Shhh,' Ben said. 'Listen.' And, almost sobbing: 'You can hear them — Christ, you can hear them in there.'

And in the silence that was only broken by the mild stir of the summer breeze, they all realized they could. The band was playing a martial marching tune, made faint and tinny by distance . . . or the passage of time . . . or whatever it was. The cheering of the crowd was like sounds that might come through on a badly tuned radio station. There were popping noises, also faint, like the muffled sound of snapping fingers.

'Firecrackers,' Beverly whispered, and rubbed at her eyes with hands that shook. 'Those are firecrackers, aren't they?'

No one answered. They watched the picture, their eyes eating up their faces.

The parade wiggled its way toward them, but just before the marchers reached the extreme foreground — at the point where it seemed they must march right out of the picture and into a world thirteen years later — they dropped from sight, as if on some kind of unknowable curve. The World War I soldiers first, their faces strangely old under their pie –plate helmets, with their sign which read THE DERRY VFW WELCOMES HOME OUR BRAVE BOYS, then the Boy Scouts, the Kiwanians, the Home Nursing Corps, the Derry Christian Marching Band, then the Derry World War II vets themselves, with the high-school band behind them. The crowd moved and shifted. Tickertape and confetti fluttered down from the second– and third –floor windows of the business buildings that lined the streets. The clown pranced along the sidelines, doing splits and cartwheels, miming a sniper, miming a salute. And Bill noticed for the first time that people were turning from him — but not as if they saw him, exactly; it was more as if they felt a draft or smelled something bad.

Only the children really saw him, and they shrank away.

Ben stretched his hand out to the picture, as Bill had done in George's room.

'Nuh-Nuh-Nuh-NO!' Bill cried.

'I think it's all right, Bill,' Ben said. 'Look.' And he laid his hand on the protective plastic over the picture for a moment and then took it back. 'But if you stripped off that cover — '

Beverly screamed. The clown had left off its antics when Ben withdrew his hand. It rushed toward them, its paint-bloody mouth gibbering and laughing. Bill winced ba ck but held onto the book all the same, thinking it would drop out of sight as the parade had done, and the marching band, and the Boy Scouts, and the Cadillac convertible carrying Miss Derry of 1945.

But the clown did not disappear along that curve that seemed to define the edge of that old existence. Instead, it leaped with a scary, nimble grace onto a lamppost that stood in the extreme left foreground of the picture. It shinnied up like a monkey on a stick — and suddenly its face was pressed against the tough plastic sheet Will Hanlon had put over each of the pages in his book. Beverly screamed again and this time Eddie joined her, although his scream was faint and blue-breathless. The plastic bulged out — later they would all agree they saw it. Bill saw the bulb of the clown's red nose flatten, the way your nose will flatten when you press it against a windowpane.

'Kill you all!' The clown was laughing and screaming. 'Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me! I'm the Gingerbread Man! I'm the Teenage Werewolf!'

And for a moment It was the Teenage Werewolf, the moon-silvered face of the lycanthrope peering out at them from over the collar of the silver suit, white teeth bared.

'Can't stop me, I'm the leper!'

Now the leper's face, haunted and peeling, rotting with sores, stared at them with the eyes of the living dead.

'Can't stop me, I'm the mummy!'

The leper's face aged and ran with sterile cracks. Ancient bandages swam halfway out of its skin and solidified there. Ben turned away, his face as white as curds, one hand plastered over his neck and ear.

'Can't stop me, I'm the dead boys!'

'No!' Stan Uris screamed. His eyes bulged above braised-looking crescents of skin — shockflesh, Bill thought randomly, and it was a word he would use in a novel twelve years later, with no idea where it had come from, simply taking it, as writers take the right word at the right time, as a simple gift from that outer space

(otherspace)

where the good words come from sometimes.

Stan snatched the album from his hands and slammed it shut. He held it closed with both hands, the tendons standing out along the inner surfaces of his wrists and forearms. He looked around at the others with eyes that were nearly insane. 'No,' he said rapidly. 'No, no, no.'

And suddenly Bill found he was more concerned with Stan's repeated denials than with the clown, and he understood that this was exactly the sort of reaction the clown had hoped to provoke, because . . .

Because maybe It's scared us . . . really scared for the first time in Its long, long life.

He grabbed Stan and shook him twice, hard, holding onto his shoulders. Stan's teeth clicked together and he dropped the album. Mike picked it up and put it aside in a hurry, not liking to touch it after what he had seen. But it was still his father's, and he understood intuitively that his father would never see in it what he had just seen.

'No,' Stan said softly.

'Yes,' Bill said.

'No,' Stan said again.

'Yes. Wea-a-all — '

'No.'

' — a-a-all suh –haw it, Stan,' Bill said. He looked at the others.

'Yes,' Ben said.

'Yes,' Richie said.

'Yes,' Mike said. 'Oh my God, yes.'

'Yes,' Bev said.

'Yes,' Eddie managed, gasping it out of his rapidly closing throat.

Bill looked at Stan, demanding with his eyes that Stan look back at him. 'Duh-don't let it g-g-get y-you, man,' Bill said. 'Yuh-you suh-saw it, t-t-too.'

'I didn't want to!' Stan wailed. Sweat stood out on his brow in an oily sheen.

'But y-y-you duh-duh-did.'

Stan looked at the others, one by one. He ran his hands through his short hair and fetched up a great, shuddering sigh. His eyes seemed to clear of that lowering madness that had so disturbed Bill.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes. Okay. Yes. That what you want? Yes.'

Bill thought: We're still all together. It didn't stop us. We can still kill It. We can still kill It . . . if we're brave.

Bill looked around at the others and saw in each pair of eyes some measure of Stan's hysteria. Not quite as bad, but there.

'Y-Y-Yeah,' he said, and smiled at Stan. After a moment Stan smiled back and some of that horrible shocked look left his face. 'That's what I wuh-wuh-wanted, you weh-weh-wet end.'

'Beep-beep, Dumbo,' Stan said, and they all laughed. It was hysterical screaming laughter, but better than no laughter at all, Bill reckoned.

'C-C-Come on,' he said, because someone had to say something. 'Let's f-f-finish the clubhouse. What do you s-s-say?'

He saw the gratitude in their eyes and felt a measure of gladness for them . . . but their gratitude did little to heal his own horror. In fact, there was something in their gratitude which made him want to hate them. Would he never be able to express his own terror, lest the fragile welds that made them into one thing should let go? And even to think such a thing wasn't really fair, was it? Because in some measure at least he was using them — using his friends, risking their lives — to settle the score for his dead brother. And was even that the bottom? No, because George was dead, and if revenge could be exacted at all, Bill suspected it could only be exacted on behalf of the living. And what did that make him? A selfish little shit waving a tin sword and trying to make himself look like King Arthur?

Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up. His resolve was still strong, but it was a bitter resolve. Bitter.

CHAPTER 1 5 The Smoke-Hole

1

Richie Tozier pushes his glasses up on his nose (already the gesture feels perfectly familiar, although he has worn contact lenses for twenty years) and thinks with some amazement that the atmosphere has changed in the room while Mike recalled the incident with the bird out at the Ironworks and reminded them about his father's photograph album and the picture that had moved.

Richie had felt a mad, exhilarating kind of energy growing in the room. He had done cocaine nine or ten times over the last couple of years — at parties, mostly; coke wasn't something you wanted just lying around your house if you were a bigga-time disc jockey — and the feel was something like that, but not exactly. This feeling was purer, more of a mainline high. He thought he recognized the feeling from his childhood, when he had felt it every day and had come to take it merely as a matter of course. He supposed that, if he had ever thought about that deep-running aquifer of energy as a kid (he could not recall that he ever had), he would have simply dismissed it as a fact of life, something that would always be there, like the color of his eyes or his disgusting hammertoes.

Well, that hadn't turned out to be true. The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself — that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you don't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloons with the Burma-Shave slogans on the sides. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you. You could go on wearing blue-jeans, you could keep going to Springsteen and Seger concerts, you could dye your hair, but that was a grownup's face in the mirror just the same. It all happened while you were asleep, maybe, like a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

No, he thinks. Not the Tooth Fairy. The Age Fairy.

He laughs aloud at the stupid extravagance of this-image, and when Beverly looks at him questioningly, he waves a hand at her. 'Nothing, babe, he says. 'Just thinkin me thinks.'

But now that energy is back. No, not all the way back — not yet, anyway — but coming back. And it's not just him; he can feel it filling the room. Mike looks okay to Richie for the first time since they all got together for that hideous lunch out by the mall. When Richie walked into the lobby and saw Mike sitting there with Ben and Eddie, he thought, shocked: There's a man who's going crazy, getting ready to commit suicide, maybe. But that look isgone now. Not just sublimated; gone. Richie has sat right here and watched the last of it slip out of Mike's face while he relived the experience of the bird and the album. He's been energised. And it is the same with all of them. Its in their faces, their voices, their gestures.

Eddie pours himself 'another gin-and-prune juice. Bill knocks back some bourbon, and Mike cracks another beer. Beverly glances up at the balloons Bill has tethered to the microfilm recorder at the main desk and finishes her third screwdriver in a hurry. They have

all been drinking pretty enthusiastically, but none of them are drunk. Richie doesn't know where that energy he feels is coming from, but its not out of a liquor bottle.

DERRY NIGGERS GET THE BIRD : Blue

THE LOSERS ARE STILL LOSING, BUT STANLEY URIS IS FINALLY AHEAD : Orange

Richie thinks, opening a fresh beer for himself, it isn't bad enough It can be any damn monster It wants to be, and it isn't bad enough that It can feed off our fears. It also turns out to be Rodney Dangerfield in drag.

It's Eddie who breaks the silence. 'How much do you think It knows about what we're doing now?' he asks.

'It was here, wasn't It?' Ben says.

'I'm not sure that means much,' Eddie replies.

Bill nods. 'Those are just images,' he says. 'I'm not sure that means It can see us, or know what we're up to. You can see a news commentator on TV, but he can't see you.'

'Those balloons aren't just images,' Beverly says, and jerks a thumb over her shoulder at them. 'They're real.'

'That's not true, though,' Richie says, and they all look at him. 'Images are real. Sure they are. They —

And suddenly something else clicks into place, something new: it clicks into place with such firm force that he actually puts his hands to his ears. His eyes widen behind his glasses.

'Oh my God!' he cries suddenly. He gropes for the table , half-stands, then falls back into his chair with a boneless thud. He knocks his can of beer over reaching for it, picks it up, and drinks what's left. He looks at Mike while the others look at him, startled and concerned.

'The burning!' he almost shouts. 'The burning in my eyes! Mike! The burning in my eyes — '

Mike is nodding, smiling a little —

'R-Richie?' Bill asks. 'What i-is it?'

But Richie barely hears him. The force of the memory sweeps through him like a tide, turning him alternately hot and cold, and he suddenly understands why these memories have come back one at a time. If he had remembered everything at once, the force would have been like a psychological shotgun blast let off an inch from his temple. It would have torn off the whole top of his head.

'We saw It come!' he says to Mike. 'We saw It come, didn't we? You and me . . . or was it just me?' He grabs Mike's hand, which lies on the table. 'Did you see it too, Mikey, or was it just me? Did you see it? The forest fire? The crater?'

'I saw it,' Mike says quietly, and squeezes Richie's hand. Richie closes his eyes for a moment, thinking he has never felt such a warm and powerful wave of relief in his life, not even when the PSA jet he had taken from LA to San Francisco skidded off the runway and just stopped there — nobody killed, nobody even hurt. Some luggage had fallen out of the overhead bins and that was all. He had jumped onto the yellow emergency slide and helped a woman away from the plane. The woman had turned her ankle on a hummock concealed in the high grass. She was laughing and saying, 'I can't believe I'm not dead, I can't believe it, I just can't believe it.' So Richie, who was half-carrying the woman with one arm and waving with the other to the firemen who were making frantic come-on gestures to the deplaning passengers, said: 'Okay, you're dead, you're dead, you feel better now?' and they both laughed crazily. That had been relief-laughter . . . but this relief is greater.

'What are you guys talking about?' Eddie asks, looking from one to the other.

Richie looks at Mike, but Mike shakes his head. 'You go ahead, Richie. I've had my say for the evening.'

'The rest of you don't know or maybe don't remember, because you left,' Richie tells them. 'Me and Mikey, we were the last two Injuns in the smoke-hole.'

'The smoke-hole,' Bill muses. His eyes are far and blue.

'The burning sensation in my eyes,' Richie says, 'under my contact lenses. I felt it for the first time right after Mike called me in California. I didn't know what it was then, but I do now. It was smoke. Smoke that was twenty-seven years old.' He looks at Mike. 'Psychological, would you say? Psychosomatic? Something from the subconscious?'

'I would say not,' Mike answers quietly. 'I would say that what you felt was as real as those balloons, or the head I saw in the icebox, or the corpse of Tony Tracker that Eddie saw. Tell them, Richie.'

Richie says: 'It was four or five days after Mike brought his dad's album down to the Barrens. Sometime just after the middle of July, I guess. The clubhouse was done. But . . . the smoke-hole thing, that was your idea, Haystack. You got it out of one of your books.'

Smiling a little, Ben nods.

Richie thinks: It was overcast that day. No breeze. Thunder in the air. Like the day a month or so later when we stood in the stream and made a circle and Stan cut our hands with that chunk of Coke bottle. The air was just sitting there, waiting for something to happen, and later Bill said tha t was why it got so bad in there so quick, because there was no draft.

July 17th. Yes, that was it, that had been the day of the smoke-hole. July 17th, 1958, almost a month after summer vacation began and the nucleus of the Losers — Bill, Eddie, and Ben — had formed down in the Barrens. Let me look up the weather forecast for that day almost twenty-seven years ago, Richie thinks, and I'll tell you what it said before I even read it: Richard Tozier, aka the Great Mentalizer. 'Hot, humid, chance of thundershowers. And watch out for the visions that may come while you're down in the smoke-hole . . . '

It had been two days after the body of Jimmy Cullum was discovered, the day after Mr Nell had come down to the Barrens again and sat right on the clubhouse without knowing it was there, because by then they had capped it off and Ben himself had carefully overseen the replacement of the sods. Unless you got right down on your hands and knees and crawled around, you'd have no idea anything was there. Like the dam, Ben's clubhouse had been a roaring success, but this time Mr Nell didn't know anything about it.

He had questioned them carefully, officially, taking down their answers in his black notebook, but there had been little they could tell him — at least about Jimmy Cullum — and Mr Nell had gone away again, after reminding them once more that they were not to play in the Barrens alone . . . ever. Richie guessed that Mr Nell would have told them simply to get out if anyone in the Derry Police Department had really believed that the Cullum boy (or any of the others) had actually been killed in the Barrens. But they knew better; because of the sewer and stormdrain system, that was simply where the remains tended to finish up.

Mr Nell had come on the 16th, yes, a hot and humid day also, but sunny. The 17th had been overcast.

'Are you going to talk to us or not, Richie?' Bev asks. She is smiling a little, her lips full and a pale rose-red, her eyes alight.

'I'm just thinking about where to start,' Richie says. He takes his glasses off, wipes them on his skirt, and suddenly he knows where: with the ground opening up at his and Bill's feet. Of course he knew about the clubhouse — so did Bill and the rest of them, but it still freaked him out, seeing t he ground suddenly open on a slit of darkness like that.

He remembers Bill riding him double on the back of Silver to the usual place on Kansas Street and then stowing his bike under the little bridge. He remembers the two of them walking along the path toward the clearing, sometimes having to turn sideways because the brush was so thick — it was midsummer now, and the Barrens was at that year's apogee oflushness. He remembers swatting at the mosquitoes that hummed maddeningly close to their ears; he even remembers Bill saying (oh how clearly it all comes back, not as if it happened yesterday, but as if it is happening now), 'H-H-Hold it a s –s-s

2

— econd, Ruh-Richie. There's a damn guh-guh –hood one on the b-back of your neh-neck.'

'Oh Christ,' Richie said. He hated mosquitoes. Little flying vampires, that's all they were when you got right down to the facts. 'Kill it, Big Bill.'

Bill swatted the back of Richie's neck.

'Ouch!'

'Suh-suh-see?'

Bill held his hand in front of Richie's face. There was a broken mosquito body in the center of an irregular patch of blood. My blood, Richie thought, which was shed for you and for many. 'Yeeick,' he said.

'D-Don't w-worry,' Bill said. 'Li'l fucker'll neh-never dance the tuh-tuh –tango again .'

They walked on, slapping at mosquitoes, waving at the clouds of noseeums attracted by something in the smell of their sweat — something which would years later be identified as 'pheromones.' Whatever they were.

' B i l l , w h e n y o u g o n n a t e l l t h e r e s t of em about the silver bullets?' Richie asked as they approached the clearing. In this case 'the rest of them' meant Bev, Eddie, Mike, and Stan — although Richie guessed Stan already had a good idea of what they were studying up on down at the Public Library. Stan was sharp — too sharp for his own good, Richie sometimes thought. The day Mike brought his father's album down to the Barrens Stan had almost flipped out. Richie had, in fact, been nearly convinced that they wouldn't see Stan again and the Losers' Club would become a sextet (a word Richie liked a lot, always with the emphasis on the first syllable). But Stan had been back the next day, and Richie had — respected him all the more for that. 'You going to tell them today?'

'Nuh-not t-today,' Bil l said.

'You don't think they'll work, do you?'

Bill shrugged, and Richie, who maybe understood Bill Denbrough better than anyone ever would until Audra Phillips, suspected all the things Bill might have said if not for the roadblock of his speech impediment: that kids making silver bullets was boys' book stuff, comic-book stuff . . . In a word, it was crap. Dangerous crap. They could try it, yeah. Ben Hanscom might even be able to bring it off, yeah. In a movie it would work, yeah. But . . .

'So?'

'I got an i-i-i-idea,' Bill said. 'Simpler. But only if Beh-Beh-Beverly — '

'If Beverly what?'

'Neh-hever mind.'

And Bill would say no more on the subject.

They came into the clearing. If you looked closely, you might have thought that the grass there had a slightly matted look — a slightly used look. You might even have thought that there was something a bit artificial — almost arranged — about the scatter of leaves and pine needles on top of the sods. Bill picked up a Ring-Ding wr apper — Ben's, almost certainly — and put it absently in his pocket.

The boys crossed to the center of the clearing . . . and a piece of ground about ten inches long by three inches wide swung up with a dirty squall of hinges, revealing a black eyelid. Eyes looked out of that blackness, giving Richie a momentary chill. But they were only Eddie Kaspbrak's eyes, and it was Eddie, whom he would visit in the hospital a week later, who intoned hollowly: 'Who's that trip-trapping on my bridge?'

Giggles from below, and a flashlight flicker.

'Thees ees the rurales, senhorr,' Richie said, squatting down, twirling an invisible mustache, and speaking in his Pancho Vanilla Voice.

'Yeah?' Beverly asked from below. 'Let's see your badges.'

'Batches'?' Richie cried, delighted. 'We dean need no stinkin batches!'

'Go to hell, Pancho,' Eddie replied, and slammed the big eyelid closed. There were more muffled giggles from below.

'Come out with your hands up!' Bill cried in a low, commanding adult voice. He began to tramp back and forth across the sod-covered cap of the clubhouse. He could see the ground springing up and down with his back-and –forth passage, but just barely; they had built well. 'You haven't got a chance!' he bellowed, seeing himself as fearless Joe Friday of the LAPD in his mind's eye. 'Come on out of there, punks! Or we'll come in SHOOTIN!'

He jumped up and down once to emphasize his point. Screams and giggles from below. Bill was smiling, unaware that Richie was looking at him wisely — looking at him not as one child looks at another but, in that brief moment, as an adult looks at a child.

He doesn't know that he doesn't always, Richie thought.

'Let them in, Ben, before they crash the roof in,' Bev said. A moment later a trapdoor flopped open like the hatch of a submarine. Ben looked out. He was flushed. Richie knew at once that Ben had been sitting next to Beverly.

Bill and Richie dropped down through the hatch and Ben closed it again. Then there they all were, sitting snug against board walls with their legs drawn up, their faces dimly revealed in the beam of Ben's flashlight.

'S-S-So wh-what's g-g-going o-on?' Bill asked.

'Not too much,' Ben said. He was indeed sitting next to Beverly, and his face looked happy as well as flushed. 'We were just — '

'Tell em, Ben,' Eddie interrupted. Tell em the story! See what they think.'

'Wouldn't do much for your asthma,' Stan told Eddie in his best someone-has-to-be-practical-here tone of voice.

Richie sat between Mike and Ben, holding his knees in his linked hands. It was delightfully cool down here, delightfully secret. Following the gleam of the flashlight as it moved from face to face, he temporarily forgot what had so astounded him outside only a minute ago. 'What are you talkin about?'

'Oh, Ben was telling us a story about this Indian ceremony,' Bev said. 'But Stan's right, it wouldn't be very good for your asthma, Eddie.' 'It might not bother it,' Eddie said, sounding — to his credit, Richie thought — only a little uneasy. 'Usually it's only when I get upset. Anyway, I'd like to try it.'

Try w-w-what?' Bill asked him.

'The Smoke-Hole Ceremony,' Eddie said.

'W-W-What's th-that?'

The beam of Ben's flashlight drifted upward and Richie followed it with his eyes. It tracked aimlessly across the wooden roof of their clubhouse as Ben explained. It crossed the gouged and splintered panels of the mahogany door the seven of them had carried back here from the dump three days ago — the day before the body of Jimmy Cullum was discovered. The thing Richie remembered about Jimmy Cullum, a quiet little boy who also wore spectacles, was that he liked to play Scrabble on rainy days. Not going to be playing Scrabble anymore, Richie thought, and shivered a little. In the dimness no one saw the shiver, but Mike Hanlon, sitting shoulder to shoulder with him, glanced at him curiously.

'Well, I got this book out of the library last week,' Ben was saying. 'Ghosts of the Great Plains, it's called, and it's all about the Indian tribes that lived out west a hundred and fifty years ago. The Paiutes and the Pawnees and the Kiowas and the Otoes and the Comanches. It

was really a good book. I'd love to go out there sometime to where they lived. Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah . . . '

'Shut up and tell about the Smoke-Hole Ceremony,' Beverly said, elbowing him.

'Sure,' he said. 'Right.' And Richie believed his response would have been the same if Beverly had given him the elbow and said, 'Drink the poison now, Ben, okay?'

'See, almost all those Indians had a special ceremony, and our clubhouse made me think of it. Whenever they had to make a big decision — whether to move on after the buffalo herds, or to find fresh water, or whether or not to fight their enemies — they'd dig a big hole in the ground and cover it up with branches, except for a little vent in the top.'

'The smuh-smuh-smoke-hole,' Bill said.

'Your quick mind never ceases to amaze me, Big Bill,' Richie said gravely. 'You ought to go on Twenty-One. I'll bet you could even beat ole Charlie Van Doren.'

Bill made as if to hit him and Richie recoiled, bumping his head a pretty good one on a piece of shoring.

'Ouch!'

'You d-deserved it,' Bill said.

'I keel you, rotten gringo sumbeesh,' Richie said. 'We doan need no stinkin — '

'Will you guys stop it?' Beverly asked. 'This is interesting.' And she favored Ben with such a warm look that Richie believed steam would start curling out of Haystack's ears in a couple of minutes.

'Okay, B-B-Ben,' Bill said. 'Go o-o-on.'

'Sure,' Ben said. The word came out in a croak. He had to clear his throat and start again. 'When the smoke-hole was finished, they'd start a fire down there. They'd use green wood so it would be a really smoky fire. Then all the braves would go down there and sit around the fire. The place would fill up with smoke. The book said this was a religious ceremony, but it was also kind of a contest, you know? After half a day or so most of the braves would bug out because they couldn't stand the smoke anymore, and only two or three would be left. And they were supposed to have visions.'

'Yeah, if I breathed smoke for five or six hours, I'd probably have some visions, all right,' Mike said, and they all laughed.

'The visions were supposed to tell the tribe what to do,' Ben said. 'And I don't know if this part is true or not, but the book said that most times the visions were right.'

A silence fell and Richie looked at Bill. He was aware that they were all looking at Bill, and he had the feeling — a g a i n — that Ben's story of the smoke – hole was more than a thing you read about in a book and then had to try for yourself, like a chemistry experiment or a magic trick. He knew it, they all knew it. Perhaps Ben knew it most of all. This was something they were supposed to do.

They were supposed to have visions . . . Most times the visions were right.

Richie thought: I'll bet if we asked him, Haystack would tell us that book practically jumped into his hand. Like something wanted him to read that one particular book and then tell us about the smoke-hole ceremony. Because there's a tribe right here, isn't there? Yeah. Us. And, yeah, I guess we do need to know what happens next.

This thought led to another: Was this supposed to happen? From the time Ben got the idea for an underground clubhouse instead of a treehouse, was this supposed to happen? How much of this are we thinking up ourselves, and how much is being thought up for us?

In a way, he supposed such an idea should have been almost comforting. It was nice to imagine that something bigger than you, smarter than you, was doing your thinking for you, like the adults that planned your meals, bought your clothes, and managed your time — and Richie was convinced that the force that had brought them together, the force that had used

Ben as its messenger to bring them the idea of the smoke-hole — that force wasn't the same as the one killing the children. This was some kind of counterforce to that other . . . to

(oh well you might as well say it)

It. But all the same, he didn't like this feeling of not being in control of his own actions, of being managed, of being run.

They all looked at Bill; they all waited to see what Bill would say.

'Y-You nuh –nuh-know,' he said, 'that sounds rih-really n-neat.'

Beverly sighed and Stan stirred uncomfortably . . . that was all.

'Rih-rih-really nuh-neat,' Bill repeated, looking down at his hands, and perhaps it was only the uneasy flashlight beam in Ben's hands or his own imagination, but Richie thought Bill looked a little pale and a lot scared, although he was smiling. 'Maybe we could u-use a vih-hision to tell us what to d-d-do about o-our pruh –pruh-hob-lem.'

And if anyone has a vision, Richie thought, it will be Bill. But about that he was wrong.

'Well,' Ben said, 'it probably only works for Indians, but it might be flippy to try it.'

'Yeah, we'll probably all pass out from the smoke and die in here,' Stan said gloomily. That'd be really flippy, all right.'

'You don't want to, Stan?' Eddie asked.

'Well, I sort of do,' Stan said. He sighed. 'I think you guys are making me crazy, you know it?' He looked at Bill. 'When?'

Bill said, 'W –Well, nun-no t-time like the puh –puh –puh-hresent, i-is there?'

There was a startled, thoughtful silence. Then Richie got to his feet, straight-arming the trapdoor open and letting in the muted light of that still summer day.

'I got my hatchet,' Ben said, following him out. 'Who wants to help me cut some green wood?'

In the end they all helped.

3

It took them about an hour to get ready. They cut four or five armloads of small green branches, from which Ben had stripped the twigs and leaves. 'They'll smoke, all right,' he said. 'I don't even know if we'll be able to get them going.'

Beverly and Richie went down to the bank of the Kenduskeag and brought back a collection of good-sized stones, using Eddie's jacket (his mother always made him take a jacket, even if it was eighty degrees — it might rain, Mrs Kaspbrak said, and if you have a jacket to put on, your skin won't get soaked if it does) as a makeshift sling. Carrying the rocks back to the clubhouse, Richie said: 'You can't do this, Bev. You're a girl. Ben said it was just the braves that went down in the smoke-hole, not the squaws.'

Beverly paused, looking at Richie with mixed amusement and irritation. A lock of hair had escaped from her pony-tail; she pushed out her lower lip and blew it off her forehead.

'I could wrestle yo u to a fall any day, Richie. And you know it.'

'Dat doan mattuh, Miss Scawlett!' Richie said, popping his eyes at her. 'You is still a girl and you is always goan be a girl! You sho ain't no Injun brave!'

'I'll be a bravette, then,' Beverly said. 'Now are we going to take these rocks back to the clubhouse or am I going to bounce a few of them off your asshole skull?'

'Lawks-a-mussy, Miss Scawlett, I ain't got no asshole in man skull!' Richie screeched, and Beverly laughed so hard she dropped her end of Eddie's jacket and all the stones fell out. She scolded Richie all the time they were picking them up again, and Richie joked and screeched in many Voices, and thought to himself how beautiful she was.

Although Richie had not been serious when he spoke of excluding her from the smoke-hole on the basis of her sex, Bill Denbrough apparently was.

She stood facing him, her hands on her hips, her cheeks flushed with anger. 'You can just take that and stuff it with a long pole, Stuttering Bill! I' m in on this too, or aren't I a member of your lousy club anymore?'

Patiently, Bill said: 'I-It's not l-like that, B-B-Bev, and y-you nun-know i-it. Somebody has to stay u-uh-up here.'

'Why?

Bill tried, but the roadblock was in again. He looked at Eddie for help.

'It's what Stan said,' Eddie told her quietly. 'About the smoke. Bill says that might really happen — we could pass out down there. Then we'd die. Bill says that's what happens to most people in housefires. They don't burn up. They choke to death on the smoke. They — '

Now she turned to Eddie. 'Well, okay. He wants somebody to stay up on top in case there's trouble?'

Miserably, Eddie nodded.

'Well, what about you? You're the one with the asthma.'

Eddie said nothing. She turned back to Bill. The others stood around, hands in their pockets, looking at their sneakers.

'It's because I'm a girl, isn't it? That's really it, isn't it?'

'Beh-Beh-Beh-Beh — '

'You don't have to talk,' she snapped. 'Just nod your head or shake it. Your head doesn't stutter, does it? Is it because I'm a girl?'

Reluctantly, Bill nodded his head.

She looked at him for a moment, her lips trembling, and Richie thought she would cry. Instead, she exploded.

'Well, fuck you!' She whirled around to look at the others, and they flinched from her gaze, so hot it was nearly radioactive. 'Fuck all of you if you think the same thing!' She turned back to Bill and began to talk fast, rapping him with words. 'This is something more than some diddlyshit kid's game like tag or guns or hide-and –go-seek, and you know it, Bill. We're supposed to do this. That's part of it. And you're not going to cut me out just because I'm a girl. Do you understand? You better, or I'm leaving right now. And if I go, I'm gone. For good. You understand?'

She stopped. Bill looked at her. He seemed to have regained his calm, but Richie felt afraid. He felt that any chance they had of winning, of finding a way to get to the thing that had killed Georgie Denbrough and the other kids, getting to It and killing It, was now in jeopardy. Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.

A bird sang somewhere; stopped; sang again.

'A-A11 r-right,' Bill said, and Richie let his breath out. 'But suh-suh-somebody has to s-stay tuh-hopside. Who w-w-wants to d-do it?'

Richie thought Eddie or Stan would surely volunteer for this duty, but Eddie said nothing. Stan stood pale and thoughtful and silent. Mike had his thumbs hooked into his belt like Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive, nothing moving but his eyes.

'Cuh-cuh –come o-on,' Bill said, and Richie realized that all pretense had gone out of the thing now; Bev's impassioned speech and Bill's grave, too-old face had seen to that. This was a part of it, perhaps as dangerous as the expedition he and Bill had made to the house at 29 Neibolt Street. They knew it . . . and no one was backing down. Suddenly he was very proud of them, very proud to be with them. After all the years of being counted out, he was counted in. Finally counted in. He didn't know if they were still losers or not, but he knew they were

together. They were friends. Damn good friends. Richie took his glasses off and rubbed them v i g orously with the tail of his shirt.

'I know how to do it,' Bev said, and took a book of matches from her pocket. On the front, so tiny you'd need a magnifying glass to get a really good look at them, were pictures of that year's candidates for the title of Miss Rheingold. Beverly lit a match and then blew it out. She tore out six more and added the burned match. She turned away from them, and when she turned back the white ends of the seven matches poked out of her closed fist. 'Pick,' she said, holding the matches out to Bill. 'The one who picks the match with the burned head stays up here and pulls the rest out if they go flippy.'

Bill looked at her levelly. 'Th-This is h-h-how you w-want i-it?'

She smiled at him then, and her smile made her face radiant. 'Yeah, you big dummy, this is how I want it. What about you?'

'I luh-luh –love you, B –B-Bev,' he said, and color rose in her cheeks like hasty flames.

Bill did not appear to notice. He studied the match-tails sucking out of her fist, and at length he picked one. Its head was blue and unburned. She turned to Ben and offered the remaining six.

'I love you too,' Ben said hoarsely. His face was plum– colored; he looked like he was on the verge of a stroke. But no one laughed. Somewhere deeper in the Barrens, the bird sang again. Stan would know what it was, Richie thought randomly.

'Thank you,' she said, smiling, and Ben picked a match. Its head was unburned.

She offered them to Eddie next. Eddie smiled, a shy smile that was incredibly sweet and almost heartbreakingly vulnerable. 'I guess I love you, too, Bev,' he said, and then picked a match blindly. Its head was blue.

Beverly now offered the four match-tails in her hand to Richie.

'Ah loves yuh, Miss Scawlett!' Richie screamed at the top of his voice, and made exaggerated kissing gestures with his lips. Beverly only looked at him, smiling a little, and Richie suddenly felt ashamed. 'I do love you, Bev,' he said, and touched her hair. 'You're cool.'

'Thank you,' she said.

He picked a match and looked at it, positive he'd picked the burned one. But he hadn't.

She offered them to Stan.

'I love you,' Stan said, and plucked one of the matches from her fist. Unburned.

'You and me, Mike,' she said, and offered hi m his pick of the two left.

He stepped forward. 'I don't know you well enough to love you,' he said, 'but I love you anyway. You could give my mother shoutin lessons, I guess.'

They all laughed, and Mike took a match. Its head was also unburned.

'I guess it's y-y-you a-after all, Bev,' Bill said.

Looking disgusted — all that flash and fire for nothing — Beverly opened her hand.

The head of the remaining match was also blue and unburned.

'Y-Y-You jih-jig-jiggered them,' Bill accused.

'No. I didn't.' Her tone was not one of angry protest — which would have been suspect — but flabbergasted surprise. 'Honest to God I didn't.'

Then she showed them her palm. They all saw the faint mark of soot from the burned match-head there.

'Bill, I swear on my mother's name!'

Bill looked at her for a moment and then nodded. By common unspoken consent, they all handed the matches back to Bill. Seven of them, their heads intact. Stan and Eddie began to crawl around on the ground, but there was no burned match there.

'I didn't,' Beverly said again, to no one in particular.

'So what do we do now?' Richie asked.

'We a-a-all go down,' Bill said. 'Because that's w-what w-w-we're suh-supposed to do.' 'And if we all pass out?' Eddie asked.

Bill looked at Beverly again. 'I-If B-Bev's t-telling the truh-truth, and s-she i-i-is, w-we won't.' 'How do you know? Stan asked. 'I-I j-just d-d-do.' The bird sang again.

4

Ben and Richie went down first and the others handed the rocks down one by one. Richie passed them on to Ben, who made a small stone circle in the middle of the dirt clubhouse floor. 'Okay,' he said. That's enough.'

The others came down, each with a handful of the green twigs they'd cut with Ben's hatchet. Bill came last. He closed the trapdoor and opened the narrow hinged window. Th-Th –There,' he said. 'Th-there's our smuh-smoke-hole. Do we h-have any kih-kih –kin –dling?'

'You can use this, if you want,' Mike said, and took a battered Archie funnybook out of his hip pocket. 'I read it already.'

Bill tore the pages out of the funnybook one by one, working slowly and gravely. The others sat around the walls, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, watching, not speaking. The tension was thick and still.

Bill laid small twigs and branches over the paper and then looked at Beverly. 'Y-Y-You g-got the muh-matches,' he said.

She lit one, a tiny yellow flare in the gloom. 'Darn thing probably won't catch anyway,' she said in a slightly uneven voice, and touched a light to the paper in several places. When the matchflame got close to her fingers, she tossed it into the center.

The flames blazed up yellow, crackling, throwing their faces into sharp relief, and in that moment Richie had no trouble believing Ben's Indian story, and he thought it must have been like this back in those old days when the idea of white men was still no more than a rumor or a tall tale to those Indians who followed buffalo herds so big they could cover the earth from horizon to horizon, herds so big that their passing shook the ground like an earthquake. In that moment Richie could picture those Indians, Kiowas or Pawnees or whatever they were, down in their smoke-hole, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, watching as the flames guttered and sank into the green wood like hot sores, listening to the faint and steady ssssss of sap oozing out of the damp wood, waiting for the vision to descend.

Yeah. Sitting here now he could believe it all . . . and looking at their somber faces as they studied the flames and the charring pages of Mike's Archie funny book, he could see that they believed it, too.

The branches were catching. The clubhouse began to fill up with smoke. Some of it, white as cotton smoke-signals in a Saturday-matinee movie starring Randolph Scott or Audie Murphy, escaped from the smoke-hole. But with no moving air outside to create a draft, most of it stayed below. It had an acrid bite that made eyes sting and throats throb. Richie heard Eddie cough twice — a flat sound like dry boards being whacked together — and then fall silent again. He shouldn't be down here, he thought . . . but something else apparently felt otherwise.

Bill tossed another handful of green twigs on the smoldering fire and asked in a thin voice that was not much like his usual speaking voice: 'Anyone having a-any vih-v i h –visions?'

'Visions of getting out of here,' Stan Uris said. Beverly laughed at this, but her laughter turned into a fit of coughing and choking.

Richie leaned his head back against the wall and looked up at the smoke– h o l e — a t h i n rectangle of mellow white light. He thought about the Paul Bunyan statue that day in March . . . but that had only been a mirage, a hallucination, a

(vision)

'Smoke's killin me,' Ben said. 'Whoo!'

'So leave,' Richie murmured, not taking his eyes off the smoke-hole. He felt as if he was getting a handle on this. He felt as if he had lost ten pounds. And he sure as shit felt as if the clubhouse had gotten bigger. Damn straight on that last. He had been sitting with Ben Hanscom's fat right leg squashed against his left one and Bill Denbrough's bony left shoulder socked into his right arm. Now he was touching neither of them. He glanced lazily to his right and left to verify that his perception was true, and it was. Ben was a foot or so to his left. On his right, Bill was even farther away.

'Place is bigger, friends and neighbors,' he said. He took a deeper breath and coughed hard. It hurt, hurt deep in his chest, the way a cough hurt when you had the flu or the grippe or something. For awhile he thought it would never pass; that he would just go on coughing until they had to pull him out. If they still can, he thought, but the thought was really too dim to be frightening.

Then Bill was pounding him on the back, and the coughing fit passed.

'You don't know you don't always,' Richie said. He was looking at the smoke-hole again instead of at Bill. How bright it seemed! When he closed his eyes he could still see the rectangle, floating there in the dark, but bright green instead of bright white.

'Whuh-whuh –what do you m-mean?' Bill asked.

'Stutter.' He paused, aware that someone else was coughing but not sure who it was. 'You ought to do the Voices, not me, Big Bill. You — '

The coughing got louder. Suddenly the clubhouse was flooded with daylight, so sudden and so bright Richie had to squint against it. He could just make out Stan Uris, climbing and clawing his way out.

'Sorry,' Stan managed, through his spasmodic coughing. 'Sorry, can't — '

'It's all right,' Richie heard himself say. 'You doan need no stinkin' batches.' His voice sounded as if it were coming from a different body.

The trapdoor slammed shut a moment later, but enough fresh air had come in to clear his head a little. Before Ben moved over a little to fill the space Stan had vacated, Richie became aware of Ben's leg again, pressing his. How had he gotten the idea that the clubhouse had gotten bigger?

Mike Hanlon threw more sticks on the smoky fire. Richie resumed taking shallow breaths and looking up at the smoke-hole. He had no sense of real time passing, but he was vaguely aware that, in addition to the smoke, the clubhouse was getting good and hot.

He looked around, looked at his friends. They were hard to see, half-swallowed in shadowsmoke and still white summerlight. Bev's head was tilted back against a piece of shoring, her hands on her knees, her eyes closed, tears trickling down her cheeks toward her earlobes. Bill was sitting cross-legged, his chin on his chest. Ben was —

But suddenly Ben was getting to his feet, pushing the trapdoor open again.

'There goes Ben,' Mike said. He was sitting Indian-fashion directly across from Richie, his eyes as red as a weasel's.

Comparative coolness struck them again. The air freshened as smoke swirled up through the trap. Ben was coughing and dry-retching. He pulled himself out with Stan's help, and before either of them could close the trapdoor, Eddie was staggering to his feet, his face a deadly pale except for the bruised-looking patches under his eyes and traced just below his cheekbones. His thin chest was hitching up and down in quick, shallow spasms. He groped

weakly for the edge of the escape hatch and would have fallen if Ben had not grabbed hand and Stan the other.

'Sorry,' Eddie managed in a squeaky little whisper, and then they hauled him up. The trapdoor banged down again.

There was a long, quiet period. The smoke built up until it was a thick still fog in the clubhouse. Looks like a pea-souper to me, Watson, Richie thought, and for a moment he imagined himself as Sherlock Holmes (a Holmes who looked a great deal like Basil Rathbone and who was totally black and white), moving purposefully along Baker Street; Moriarty was somewhere near, a hansom cab awaited, and the game was afoot.

The thought was amazingly clear, amazingly solid. It seemed almost to have weight, as if it were not a little pocket-daydream of the sort he had all the time (batting cleanup for the Bosox, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and there it goes, it's up . . . ITS GONE! Home run,Tozier . . . and that breaks the Babe's record!), but something that was almost real.

There was still enough of the wiseacre in him to think that if all he was getting out of this was a vision of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, then the whole idea of visions was pretty overrated.

Except of course it isn't Moriarty that's out there. It's out there — some It — and It's real. It —

Then the trapdoor opened again and Beverly was struggling her way out, coughing dryly, one hand cupped over her mouth. Ben got one hand and Stan grabbed her under the other arm. Half-pulled, half-scrambling under her own power, she was up and gone.

'Ih-Ih-It i-is bi-higger,' Bill said.

Richie looked around. He saw the circle of stones with the fire smoldering within, fuming out clouds of smoke. Across the way he saw Mike sitting cross-legged like a totem carved from mahogany, staring at him through the fire with his smoke-reddened eyes. Except Mike was better than twenty yards away, and Bill was even farther away, on Richie's right. The underground clubhouse was now at least the size of a ballroom.

'Doesn't matter,' Mike said. 'It's gonna come pretty quick. Somethin is.'

'Y-Y-Yeah,' Bill said. 'But I . . . I . . . I — '

He began to cough. He tried to control it, but the cough worsened, a dry rattling. Dimly Richie saw Bill stumble to his feet, lunge for the trapdoor, and shove it open.

'Guh-Guh-Go od luh –luh –luh — '

And then he was gone, dragged up by the others.

'Looks like it's you and me, ole Mikey,' Richie said, and then he began to cough himself. 'I thought for sure that it would be Bill — '

The cough worsened. He doubled over, hacking dryly, unable to get his breath. His head was thudding — whacking — like a turnip filled with blood. His eyes teared behind his glasses.

From far away, he heard Mike saying: 'Go on up if you have to, Richie. Don't go flippy. Don't kill yourself.'

He raised a hand toward Mike and flapped it at him

(no stinkin batches)

in a negative gesture. Little by little he began to get the coughing under control again. Mike was right; something was going to happen, and soon. He wanted to still be here when it did.

He tilted his head back and looked up at the smoke-hole again. The coughing fit had left him feeling light-headed, and now he seemed to be floating on a cushion of air. It was a pleasant feeling. He took shallow breaths and thought: Someday I'm going to be a rock-and-roll star. That's it, yes. I'll be famous. I'll make records and albums and movies. I'll have a black sportcoat and white shoes and a yellow Cadillac. And when I come back to Derry,

they'll all eat their hearts out, even Bowers. I wear glasses, but what the fuck? Buddy Holly wears glasses. I'll bop till I'm blue and dance till Fm black. I'll be the first rock-and-roll star to ever come from Maine. I'll —

The thought drifted away. It didn't matter. He found that now he didn't need to take shallow breaths. His lungs had adapted. He could breathe as much smoke as he wanted. Maybe he was from Venus.

Mike threw more sticks on the fire. Not to be outdone, Richie tossed on another handful himself.

'How you feeling, Rich?' Mike asked.

Richie smiled. 'Better. Good, almost. You?'

Mike nodded and smiled back. 'I feel okay. Have you been having some funny thoughts?'

'Yeah. Thought I was Sherlock Holmes for a minute there. Then I thought I could dance like the Dovells. Your eyes are so red you wouldn't believe it, you know it?'

'Yours too. Just a coupla weasels in the pen, that's what we are.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'You wanna say all right?'

'All right. You wanna say you got the word?'

'I got it, Mikey.'

'Yeah, okay.'

They grinned at each other and then Richie let his head tilt back against the wall again and looked up at the smoke-hole. Shortly he began to drift away. No . . . not away. Up. He was drifting up. Like

(float down here we all)

a balloon.

'Yuh-yuh –you g-g-guys all ri-right?'

Bill's voice, coming down through the smoke-hole. Coming from Venus. Worried. Richie felt himself thud back down inside himself.

'All right,' he heard his voice, distant, irritated. 'All right, we said all right, be quiet, Bill, let us get the word, we wanna say we got the

(world)

word.'

The clubhouse was bigger than ever, floored now in some polished wood. The smoke was fog-thick and it was hard to see the fire. That floor! Jesus-come –please-us! It was as big as a ballroom floor in an MGM musical extravaganza. Mike looked at him from the other side, a shape almost lost in the fog.

You coming, ale Mikey?

Right here with you, Richie.

You still want to say all right?

Yeah . . . but hold my hand . . . can you catch hold?

I think so.

Richie held his hand out, and although Mike was on the far side of this enormous room he felt those strong brown fingers close over his wrist. Oh and that was good, that was a good touch — good to find desire in comfort, to find comfort in desire, to find substance in smoke and smoke in substance —

He tilted his head back and looked at the smoke-hole, so white and wee. It was farther up now. Miles up. Venusian skylight.

It was happening. He began to float. Come on then, he thought, and began to rise faster through the smoke, the fog, the mist, whatever it was.

5

They weren't inside anymore.

The two of them were standing together in the middle of the Barrens, and it was nearly dusk.

It was the Barrens, he knew that, but everything was different. The foliage was lusher, deeper, savagely fragrant. There were plants he had never seen before, and Richie realized some of the things he had first taken for trees were really giant ferns. There was the sound of running water, but it was much louder than it should have been — this water sounded not like the leisurely flow of the Kenduskeag Stream but more the way he imagined the Colorado River would sound as it cut its way through the Grand Canyon.

It was hot, too. Not that it didn't get hot in Maine during the summer, and humid enough so that sometimes you felt sticky just lying in your bed at night, but this was more heat and more humidity than he had ever felt in his whole life. A low mist, smoky and thick, lay in the hollows of the land and crept around the boys' legs. It had a thin acrid smell like burning green wood.

He and Mike began to move toward the sound of the running water without speaking, pushing their way through the strange foliage. Thick ropy lianas lay between some of the trees like spidery hammocks, and once Richie heard something go crashing off through the underbrush. It sounded bigger than a deer.

He stopped long enough to look around, turning in a circle, studying the horizon. He knew where the Standpipe's thick white cylinder should have been, but it wasn't there. Neither was the railroad trestle going over to the trainyards at the end of Neibolt Street or the Old Cape housing development — low bluffs and red sandstone outcroppings of rock bulged out of thick stands of giant fern and pine trees where the Old Cape should have been.

There was a flapping noise overhead. The boys ducked as a squadron of bats flapped by. They were the biggest bats Richie had ever seen, and for a moment he was more terrified than he had been even when Bill was trying to get Silver rolling and he had heard the werewolf closing in on them from behind. The stillness and the alienness of this land were both terrible, but its awful familiarity was somehow worse.

No need to be scared, he told himself. Remember that this is just a dream, or a vision, or whatever you want to call it. Me and ole Mikey are really back in the clubhouse, goofed up on smoke. Pretty soon Big Bill is gonna get noivous from the soivice because we're not answering anymore, and he and Ben will come down and haul us out. It's just like Conway Twitty says — only make-believe.

But he could see how one of the bats' wings was so ragged the hazy sun shone through it, and when they passed beneath one of the giant ferns he could see a fat yellow caterpillar trundling across a wide green frond, leaving its shadow behind it. There were tiny black mites jumping and sizzling on the caterpillar's body. If this was a dream, it was the clearest one he had ever had.

They went on toward the sound of the water, and in the thick knee-high groundmist, Richie was unable to tell if his feet were touching the ground or not. They came to a place where both the mist a nd the ground stopped. Richie looked, unbelieving. This was not the Kenduskeag — and yet it was. The stream boiled and roiled through a narrow watercourse cut through that same crumbly rock — looking across to the far side, he could see ages cut into those stacked layers of stone, red and then orange and then red again. You couldn't walk across this stream on stepping-stones; you'd need a rope bridge, and if you fell in you would be swept away at once. The sound of the water was the sound of bitter foolish anger, and as Richie watched, slack-jawed, he saw a pinkish-silver fish jump in an impossibly high arc,

snapping at the bugs that made shifting clouds just above the surface of the water. It splashed down again, giving Richie just time enough to register its presence, and to realize he had never seen a fish exactly like that in his whole life, not even in a book.

Birds flocked across the sky, squalling harshly. Not a dozen or two dozen; for a moment the sky was so dark with birds that they blotted out the sun. Something else crashed through the bushes, and then more things. Richie wheeled, his heart thudding painfully in his chest, and saw something that looked like an antelope flash by, heading southeast.

Something's going to happen. And they know it.

The birds passed, presumably alighting somewhere en masse farther south. Another animal crashed by them . . . and another. Then there was silence except for the steady rumble of the Kenduskeag. The silence had a waiting quality about it, a pregnant quality Richie didn't like. He felt the hairs shifting and trying to stand up on the back of his neck and he groped for Mike's hand again.

Do you know where we are? he shouted at Mike. You got the word? Jesus, yes! Mike shouted back. I got it! This is ago, Richie! Ago!

Richie nodded. Ago, as in once upon a time, long long ago, when we all lived in the forest and nobody lived anywhere else. They were in the Barrens as they had been God knew how many thousands of years ago. They were in some unimaginable past before the ice age, when New England had been as tropical as South America was today . . . if there still was a today. He looked around again, nervously, almost expecting to see a brontosaurus raise its cranelike neck against the sky and stare down at them, its mouth full of mud and dripping uprooted plants, or a saber-toothed tiger come stalking out of the undergrowth.

But there was only that silence, as in the five or ten minutes before a vicious thundersquall strikes, when the purple heads stack up and up in the sky overhead and the light turns a queer, bruised purple-yellow and the wind dies completely and you can smell a thick aroma like overcharged car batteries in the air.

We're in the ago, a million years back, maybe, or ten million, or eighty million, but here we are and something's going to happen, I don't know what but something and I'm scared I want it to end I want to be back and Bill please Bill please pull us out it's like we fell into the picture some picture please please help —

Mike's hand tightened on his and he realized that now the silence had been broken. There was a steady low vibration — he could feel it more than hear it, working against the tight flesh of his eardrums, buzzing the tiny bones that conducted the sound. It grew steadily. It had no tone; it simply was:

(the word in the beginning was the word the world the)

a tuneless, soulless sound. He groped for the tree they stood near and as his hand touched it, cupped the curve of the bole, he could feel th e vibration caught inside. At the same moment he realized he could feel it in his feet, a steady tingling that went up his ankles and calves to his knees, turning his tendons into tuning forks.

It grew. And grew.

It was coming out of the sky. Not wanting to but unable to help himself, Richie turned his face up. The sun was a molten coin burning a circle in the low-hanging overcast, surrounded by a fairy-ring of moisture. Below it, the verdant green slash that was the Barrens lay utterly still. Richie thought he understood what this vision was: they were about to see the coming of It.

The vibration took on a voice — a rumbling roar that built to a shattering crescendo of sound. He clapped his hands to his ears and screamed and could not hear himself scream. Beside him, Mike Hanlon was doing the same, and Richie saw that Mike's nose was bleeding a little.

The clouds in the west lit with a bloom of red fire. It traced its way toward them, widening from an artery to a stream to a river of ominous color; and then, as a burning, falling object broke through the cloud cover, the wind came. It was hot and searing, smoky and suffocating. The thing in the sky was gigantic, a flaming match-head that was nearly too bright to look at. Arcs of electricity bolted from it, blue bullwhips that flashed out from it and left thunder in their wake.

A spaceship! Richie screamed, falling to his knees and covering his eyes. Oh my God it's aspaceship! But he believed — and would tell the others later, as best he could — that it was not a spaceship, although it might have come through space to get here. Whatever came down on that long-ago day had come from a place much farther away than another star or another galaxy, and if spaceship was the first word to come into his mind, perhaps that was only because his mind had no other way of grasping what his eyes were seeing.

There was an explosion then — a roar of sound followed by a rolling concussion that knocked them both down. This time it was Mike who groped for Richie's hand. There was another explosion. Richie opened his eyes and saw a glare of fire and a pillar of smoke rising into the sky.

It ! he screamed at Mike, in an ecstasy of terror now — never in his life, before or after, would he feel any emotion so deeply, be so overwhelmed by feeling. It! It! It!

Mike dragged him to his feet and they ran along the high bank of the young Kenduskeag, never noticing how close they were to the drop. Once Mike stumbled and went skidding to his knees. Then it was Ric hie's turn to go down, barking his shin and tearing his pants. The wind had come up and it was pushing the smell of the burning forest toward them. The smoke grew thicker, and Richie became dimly aware that he and Mike were not running alone. The animals were on the move again, fleeing from the smoke, the fire, the death in the fire. Running from It, perhaps. The new arrival in their world.

Richie began to cough. He could hear Mike beside him, also coughing. The smoke was thicker, washing out the greens and grays and reds of the day. Mike fell again and Richie lost his hand. He groped for it and could not find it.

Mike! He screamed, panicked, coughing. Mike, where are you? Mike! MIKE!

But Mike was gone; Mike was nowhere.

richie! richie! richie!

(!!WHACKO!!)

'richie! richie! richie, are you

6

all right?'

His eyes fluttered open and he saw Beverly kneeling beside him, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. The others — Bill, Eddie, Stan, and Ben — stood behind her, their faces sole mn and scared. The side of Richie's face hurt like hell. He tried to speak to Beverly and could only croak. He tried to clear his throat and almost vomited. His throat and lungs felt as if they had somehow been lined with smoke.

At last he managed, 'Did you slap me, Beverly?'

|It was all I could think of to do,' she said.

'Whacko,' Richie muttered.

'I didn't think you were going to be all right, is all,' Bev said, and suddenly burst into tears.

Richie patted her clumsily on the shoulder and Bill put a hand on the back of her neck. She reached around at once, took it, squeezed it.

Richie managed to sit up. The world began to swim in waves. When it steadied down he saw Mike leaning against a tree nearby, his face dazed and ashy-pale.

'Did I puke?' Richie asked Bev.

She nodded, still crying.

In a croaking, stumbling Irish Cop's Voice, he asked, 'Get any on ye, darlin?'

Bev laughed through her tears and shook her head. 'I turned you on your side. I was afraid . . . a-a-afraid you'd ch-ch-choke on it.' She began to cry hard again.

'Nuh-Nuh-No f-fair,' Bill said, still holding her hand. 'I-I-I'm the one who stuh-huh –hutters a-around h-here.'

'Not bad, Big Bill,' Richie said. He tried to get to his feet and sat down aga in heavily. The world was still swimming. He began to cough and turned his head away, aware that he was going to retch again only a moment before it happened. He threw up a mess of green foam and thick saliva that mostly came out in ropes. He closed his eyes tight and croaked, 'Anyone want a snack?'

'Oh shit!' Ben cried, disgusted and laughing at the same time.

'Looks more like puke to me,' Richie said, although, in truth, his eyes were still tightly shut. 'The shit usually comes out the other end, at least for me. I dunno about you, Haystack.' When he opened his eyes at last, he saw the clubhouse about twenty yards away. Both the window and the big trapdoor were thrown open. Smoke, thinning now, puffed from both.

This time Richie was able to get to his feet. For a moment he was quite sure he was going to retch again, or faint, or both. 'Whacko,' he murmured, watching the world waver and warp in front of his eyes. When the feeling passed, he made his way over to where Mike was. Mike's eyes were still weasel-red, and from the dampness on his pants cuffs, Richie thought that maybe ole Mikey had taken a ride on the stomach-elevator, too.

'For a white boy you did pretty good,' Mike croaked, and punched Richie weakly on the shoulder.

Richie was at a loss for words — a condition of exquisite rarity.

Bill came over. The others came with him.

'You pulled us out?' Richie asked.

'M-Me and Buh-Ben. Y-You were scuh-scuh-rheaming. B-Both of y-y-you. B-B-But — ' He looked over at Ben.

Ben said, 'It must have been the smoke, Bill.' But there was no conviction in the big boy's voice at all.

Flatly, Richie said: 'You mean what I think you mean?'

Bill shrugged. 'W-W-What's th-that, Rih –Richie?'

Mike answered. 'We weren't there at first, were we? You went down because you heard us screaming, but at first we weren't there.'

'It was really smoky,' Ben said. 'Hearing you both screaming that way, that was scary enough. But the screaming . . . it sounded . . . well . . . '

'It s-s-sounded very f-f-f-far a-away,' Bill said. Stuttering badly, he told them that when he and Ben had gone down, they hadn't been able to see either Richie or Mike. They had gone plunging around in the smoky clubhouse, panicked, scared that if they didn't act quickly the two boys might die of smoke poisoning. At last Bill had gripped a hand — Richie's. He had given 'a huh-huh-hell of a yuh-yank' and Richie had come flying out of the gloom, only about one-quarter conscious. When Bill turned around he had seen Be n with Mike in a bear-hug, both of them coughing. Ben had thrown Mike up and out through the trapdoor.

Ben listened to all this, nodding.

'I kept grabbing, you know? Really not doing anything except jabbing my hand out like I wanted to shake hands. You grabbed it, Mike. Damn good thing you grabbed it when you did. I think you were just about gone.'

'You guys make the clubhouse sound a lot bigger than it is,' Richie said. 'Talking about stumbling around in it and all. It's only five feet on every side.'

There was a moment's silence while they all looked at Bill, who stood in frowning concentration.

'It w-w-was b-bigger,' he said at last. 'W-W-Wasn't it, Ben?'

Ben shrugged. 'It sure seemed like it. Unless it was the smoke.'

'It wasn't the smoke,' Richie said. 'Just before it happened — before we went out — I remember thinking it was at least as big as a ballroom in a movie. Like one of those musicals. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, something like that. I could barely see Mike against the other wall.'. .

'Before you went out?' Beverly asked.

'Well . . . what I mean . . . like . . . '

She grabbed Richie's arm. 'It happened, didn't it? It really happened! You had a vision, just like in Ben's book!' Her face was glowing. 'It really happened?

Richie looked down at himself, and then at Mike. One of the knees of Mike's corduroy pants was out, and both the knees of his own jeans were torn. He could look through the holes and see bleeding scrapes on both his knees.

'If it was a vision, I never want to have another one,' he said. 'I don't know about de Kingfish over there, but when I went down there, I didn't have any holes in my pants. They're practically new, for gosh sakes. My mom's gonna give me hell.'

'What happened?' Ben and Eddie asked together.

Richie and Mike exchanged a glance and then Richie said, 'Bevvie, you got a smoke?'

She had two, wrapped in a piece of tissue. Richie put one of them in his mouth and when she lit it the first drag made him cough so badly that he handed it back to her. 'Can't,' he said. 'Sorry.'

'It was the past,' Mike said.

'Shit on that,' Richie said. 'It wasn't just the past. It was ago.'

'Yeah, right. We were in the Barrens, but the Kenduskeag was going a mile a minute. It was deep. It was fuckin wild. Sorry, Bevvie, but it was. And there were fish in it. Salmon, I think.'

'M-My d-d-dad s-says th-there haven't been a-a-any fuh-fish in the K-Kendusk-k-keag for a l-l-long tuh-hime. B-Because of the suh-sewage.'

'This was a long time, all right,' Richie said. He looked around at them uncertainly. 'I think it was a million years ago, at least.'

A thunderstruck silence greeted this. Beverly broke it at last. 'But what happened?'

Richie felt the words in his throat, but he had to struggle to bring them out. It felt almost like vomiting again. 'We saw It come,' he said at last. 'I think that was it.'

'Christ,' Stan muttered. 'Oh Christ.'

There was a sharp hiss-gasp as Eddie used his aspirator.

'It came out of the sky,' Mike said. 'I never want to see anything like that again in my whole life. It was burning so hot you couldn't really look at it. And it was thowin off electricity and makin thunder. The noise . . . ' He shook his head and looked at Ric hie. 'It sounded like the end of the world. And when it hit, it started a forest fire. That was at the end of it.'

'Was it a spaceship?' Ben asked.

'Yes,' Richie said. 'No,' Mike said.

They looked at each other.

'Well, I guess it was,' Mike said, and at the same time Richie said: 'No, it really wasn't a spaceship, you know, but — '

They paused again while the others looked at them, perplexed.

'You tell,' Richie said to Mike. 'We mean the same thing, I think, but they're not getting it.'

Mike coughed into his fist and then looked up at the others, almost apologetically. 'I don't know just how to tell you,' he said.

'T-T-Try,' Bill said urgently.

'It came out of the sky,' Mike repeated, 'but it wasn't a spaceship, exactly. It wasn't a meteor, either. It was more like . . . well . . . like the Ark of the Covenant, in the Bible, that was supposed to have the Spirit of God inside of it . . . except this wasn't God. Just feeling It, watching It come, you knew It meant bad, that It was bad.'

He looked at them.

Richie nodded. 'It came from . . . outside. I got that feeling. From outside.'

'Outside where, Richie?' Eddie asked.

'Outside everything,' Richie said. 'And when It came down . . . It made the biggest damn hole you ever saw in your life. It turned this big hill into a doughnut, just about. It landed right where the downtown part of Derry is now.'

He looked at them. 'Do you get it?'

Beverly dropped the cigarette half-smoked and crushed it out under one shoe.

Mike said. 'It's always been here, since the beginning of time . . . since before there were m e n anywhere, unless maybe there were just a few of them in Africa somewhere, swinging through the trees or living in caves. The crater's gone now, and ht e ice age probably scraped the valley deeper and changed some stuff around and filled the crater in . . . but It was here then, sleeping, maybe, waiting for the ice to melt, waiting for the people to come.'

That's why It uses the sewers and the drains ,' Richie put in. They must be regular freeways for It.'

'You didn't see what It looked like?' Stan Uris asked abruptly and a little hoarsely.

They shook their heads.

'Can we beat It?' Eddie said in the silence. 'A thing like that?' No one answered.

CHAPTER 1 6 Eddie's Bad Break

1

By the time Richie finishes, they're all nodding. Eddie is nodding along with them, remembering along with them, when the pain suddenly races up his left arm. Races up? No. Rips through: it feels as if someone is trying to sharpen a rusty saw on the bone in there. He grimaces and reaches into the pocket of his sport jacket, sorts through a number of bottles by feel, and takes out the Excedrin. He swallows two with a gulp of gin-and-prune juice. The arm has been paining him off and on all day. At first he dismissed it as the twinges of bursitis he sometimes gets when the weather is damp. But halfway through Richie's story, a new memory clicks into place for him and he understands the pain. This isn't Memory Lane we're wandering down anymore, he thinks; it's getting more and more like the Long Island Expressway.

Five years ago, during a routine check-up (Eddie has a routine check –up every six weeks), the doctor said matter-of-factly: 'There's an old break here, Ed . . . Did you fall out of a tree when you were a kid?'

'Something like that,' Eddie agreed, not bothering to tell Dr Robbins that his mother undoubtedly would have fallen down dead of a brain hemorrhage if she had seen or heard of her Eddie climbing trees. The truth was, he hadn't been able to remember exactly how he broke the arm. It didn't seem important (although, Eddie thinks now, that lack of interest was in itself very odd — he is, after all, a man who attaches importance to a sneeze or a slight change in the color of his stools). But it was an old break, a minor irritation, something that happened a long time ago in a boyhood he could barely remember and didn't care to recall. It pained him a little when he had to drive long hours on rainy days. A couple of aspirin took care of it nicely. No big deal.

But now it is not just a minor irritation; it is some madman sharpening that rusty saw, playing bone-tunes, and he remembers that was how it felt in the hospital, especially late at night, in the first three or four days after it happened. Lying there in bed, sweating in the summer heat, waiting for the nurse to bring him a pill, tears running silently down his cheeks into the bowls of his ears, thinking It's like some kook's sharpening a saw in there.

If this is Memory Lane, Eddie thinks, I'd trade it for one great big brain enema: a mental high colonic.

Unaware he is going to speak, he says: 'It was Henry Bowers who broke my arm. Do you remember that?'

Mike nods. 'That was just before Patrick Hockstetter disappeared. I don't remember the date.'

'I do,' Eddie says flatly. 'It was the 20th of July. The Hockstetter kid was reported missing on . . . what? . . . the 23rd?'

'Twenty-second,' Beverly Rogan says, although she doesn't tell them why she is so sure of the date: it is because she saw It take Hockstetter. Nor does she tell them that she believed then and believes now that Patrick Hockstetter was crazy, perhaps even crazier than Henry Bowers. She will tell them, but this is Eddie's turn. She will speak next, and then she supposes that Ben will narrate the climax of that July's events . . . the silver bullet they had never quite

dared to make. A nightmare agenda if ever there was one, she thinks — but that crazy exhilaration persists. When did she last feel this young? She can hardly sit still.

'The 20th of July,' Eddie muses, rolling his aspirator along the table from one hand to the other. 'Three or four days after the smoke-hole thing. I spent the rest of the summer in a cast, remember?'

Richie slaps his forehead in a gesture they all remember from the old days and Bill thinks, with a mixture of amusement and unease, that for a moment there Richie looked just like Beaver Cleaver. 'Sure, of course! You were in a cast when we went to the house on Neibolt Street, weren't you? And later . . . i n the dark . . . ' But now Richie shakes his head a little, puzzled.

'What, R-Richie?' Bill asks.

'Can't remember that part yet,' Richie admits. 'Can you?' Bill shakes his head slowly.

'Hockstetter was with them that day,' Eddie says. 'It was the last time I ever saw him alive. Maybe he was a replacement for Peter Gordon. I guess Bowers didn't want Peter around anymore after he ran the day of the rockfight.'

'They all died, didn't they?' Beverly asks quietly. 'After Jimmy Cullum, the only ones who died were Henry Bowers's friends . . . or his ex-friends.'

'All but Bowers,' Mike agrees, glancing toward the balloons tethered to the microfilm recorder. 'And he's in Juniper Hill. A private insane asylum in Augusta.'

Bill says, 'W-W –What about when they broke your arm, E –E –Eddie?'

'Your stutter's getting worse, Big Bill,' Eddie says solemnly, and finishes his drink in one gulp.

'Never mind that,' Bill says. 'T-Tell us.'

'Tell us,' Beverly repeats, and puts her hand lightly on his arm. The pain flares there again.

'All right,' Eddie says. He pours himself a fresh drink, studies it, and says, 'It was a couple of days after I came home from the hospital that you guys came over to the house and showed me those silver ball-bearings. You remember, Bill?'

Bill nods.

Eddie looks at Beverly. 'Bill asked you if you'd shoot them, if it came to that . . . because you had the best eye. I think you said you wouldn't . . . that you'd be too afraid. And you told us something else, but I just can't remember what it was. It's like — ' Eddie sticks his tongue out and plucks the end of it, as if something were stuck there. Richie and Ben both grin. 'Was it something about Hockstetter?'

'Yes,' Beverly says. 'I'll tell when you're done. Go ahead.'

'It was after that, after all you guys left, that my mother came in and we had a big fight. She didn't want me to hang around with any of you guys again. And she might have gotten me to agree — she had a way, a way of working on a guy, you know . . . '

Bill nods again. He remembers Mrs Kaspbrak, a huge woman with a strange schizophrenic face, a face capable of looking stony and furious and miserable and frightened all at the same time.

'Yeah, she might have gotten me to agree,' Eddie says. 'But something else happened the same day Bowers broke my arm. Something that really shook me up.'

He utters a little laugh, thinking: It shook me up, all right . . . Is that all you can say? What good's talking when you can never tell people how you really feel? In a book or a movie what I found out that day before Bowers broke my arm would have changed my life forever and nothing would have happened the way it did . . . in a book or a movie it would have set me free. In a book or a movie I wouldn't have a whole suitcase full of pills back in my room at the Town House, I wouldn't be married to Myra, I wouldn't have this stupid fucking aspirator here right now. In a book or a movie. Because —

Suddenly, as they all watch, Eddie's aspirator rolls across the table by itself. As it rolls it makes a dry rattling sound, a little like maracas, a little like bones . . . a little like laughter. As it reaches the far side, between Richie and Ben, it flips itself up into the air and falls on the floor. Richie makes a startled half-grab and Bill cries sharply, 'Don't t –t-touch it!'

'The balloons!' Ben yells, and they all turn.

Both balloons tethered to the microfilm recorder now read ASTHMA MEDICINE GIVES YOUCANCER! Below the slogan are grinning skulls.

They explode with twin bangs.

Eddie looks at this, mouth dry, the familiar sensation of suffocation starting to tighten down in his chest like locking bolts.

Bill looks back at him. 'Who t –told you and w –w –what did they tell you?'

Eddie licks his lips, wanting to go after his aspirator, not quite daring to. Who knew what might be in it now?

He thinks about that day, the 20th, about how it was hot, about how his mother gave him a check, all filled out except for the amount, and a dollar in cash for himself — his allowance.

'Mr Keene,' he says, and his voice sounds distant to his own ears, without power. 'It was Mr Keene.'

'Not exactly the nicest man in Derry,' Mike says, but Eddie, lost in his thoughts, barely hears him.

Yes, it was hot that day but cool inside the Center Street Drug, the wooden fans turning leisurely below the pressed-tin ceiling, and there was that comforting smell of mixed powders and nostrums. This was the place where they sold health — that was his mother's unstated but clearly communicated conviction, and with his body-clock set at half-past eleven, Eddie had no suspicion that his mother might be wrong about that, or anything else.

Well, Mr Keene sure put an end to that, he thinks now with a kind of sweet anger.

He remembers standing at the comic rack for awhile, spinning it idly to see if there were any new Batmans or Superboys, or his own favorite, Plastic Man. He had given his mother's list (she sent him to the drugstore as other boys' mothers might send them to the comer grocery) and his mother's check to Mr Keene; he would fill the order and then write in the amount on the check, giving Eddie the receipt so she could deduct the amount from her checking balance. This was all SOP for Eddie. Three different kinds of prescription for his mother, plus a bottle of Geritol because, she told him mysteriously, 'It's full of iron, Eddie, and women need more iron than men.' Also, there would be his vitamins, a bottle of Dr Swett's Elixir for Children . . . and, of course, his asthma medicine.

It was always the same. Later he would stop in the Costello Avenue Market with his dollar and get two candy-bars and a Pepsi. He would eat the candy, drink the soda, and jingle his pocket-change all the way home. But this day was different; it would end with him in the hospital and that was certainly different, but it started being different when Mr Keene called him. Because instead of handing him the big white bag full of cures and the receipt, admonishing him to put the receipt in his pocket so he wouldn't lose it, Mr Keene looked at him thoughtfully and said 'Come

2

back into the office for a minute, Eddie. I want to talk to you. ' Eddie only looked at him for a moment, bunking, a little scared. The idea that maybe Mr Keene thought he had been shoplifting flashed briefly through his mind. There was that sign by the door that he always read when he came into the Center Street Drug. It was written in accusing black letters so

large that he bet even Richie Tozier could read it without his glasses: SHOPLIFTING is NOT A 'KICK' OR A 'GROOVE ' OR A 'GASSER'! SHOPLIFTING i s A CRIME, AND WEWILLPROSECUTE!

Eddie had never shoplifted anything in his life, but that sign always made him feel guilty — made him feel as if Mr Keene knew something about him that he didn't know about himself.

Then Mr Keene confused him even further by saying, 'How about an ice-cream soda?'

'Well — '

'Oh, it's on the house. I always have one in the office around this time of day. Good energy, unless you need to watch your weight, and I'd say neither of us do. My wife says I look like stuffed string. Your friend there, the Hanscom boy, he's the one who needs to have a care about his weight. What flavor, Eddie?'

'Well, my mother said to get home as soon as I — '

'You look like a chocolate man to me. Chocolate okay for you?' Mr Keene's eyes twinkled, but it was a dry twinkle, like the sun shining on mica in the desert. Or so Eddie, a fan of such Western writers as Max Brand and Archie Joceylen, thought.

'Sure,' Eddie gave in. Something about the way Mr Keene pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up on his blade of a nose made him edgy. Something about the way Mr Keene seemed both nervous and secretly pleased. He didn't want to go into the office with Mr Keene. This wasn't about a soda. Nope. And whatever it was about, Eddie had an idea it wasn't such great news.

Maybe he's going to tell me I got cancer or something, Eddie thought wildly. That kid-cancer. Leukemia. Jesus!

Oh, don't be so stupid, he answered himself back, trying to sound, in his own mind, like Stuttering Bill. Stuttering Bill had replaced Jock Mahoney, who played the Range Rider on TV Saturday mornings, as the great hero of Eddie's life. In spite of the fact that he couldn't talk right, Big Bill always seemed to be on top of things. This guy's a pharmacist, not a doctor, for cripe's sake. But Eddie was still nervous.

Mr Keene had raised the counter-gate and was beckoning to Eddie with one bony finger. Eddie went, but reluctantly.

Ruby, the counter-girl, was sitting by the cash register and reading a Silver Screen. 'Would you make two ice-cream sodas, Ruby?' Mr Keene called to her. 'One chocolate, one coffee?'

'Sure,' Ruby said, marking her place in the magazine with a tinfoil gum wrapper and getting up.

'Bring them into the office.'

'Sure.'

'Come on, son. I'm not going to bite you.' And Mr Keene actually winked, astounding Eddie completely.

He had never been in back of the counter before, and he gazed at all the bottles and pills and jars with interest. He would have lingered if he had been on his own, examining Mr Keene's mortar and pestle, his scales and weights, the fishbowls full of capsules. But Mr Keene propelled him forward into the office and closed the door firmly behind him. When it clicked shut Eddie felt a warning tightness in his chest and fought it. There would be a fresh aspirator in with his mother's things, and he could have a long satisfying honk on it as soon as he was out of here.

A bottle of licorice whips stood on the corner of Mr Keene's desk. He offered it to Eddie.

'No thank you,' Eddie said politely.

Mr Keene sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk and took one. Then he opened his drawer and took something out. He put it down next to the tall bottle of licorice whips and Eddie felt real alarm course through him. It was an aspirator. Mr Keene tilted back in his swivel cha ir until his head was almost touching the calendar on the wall behind him. The picture on the calendar showed more pills. It said SQUIBB. And —

— and for one nightmare moment, when Mr Keene opened his mouth to speak, Eddie remembered what had happened in the shoe store when he was just a little kid, when his mother had screamed at him for putting his foot in the X-ray machine. For that one nightmare moment Eddie thought Mr Keene would say: 'Eddie, nine out of ten doctors agree that asthma medicine gives you cancer, just like the X-ray machines they used to have in the shoe stores. You've probably got it already. Just thought you ought to know.'

But what Mr Keene did say was so peculiar that Eddie could think of no response at all; he could only sit in the straight wooden chair on the other side of Mr Keene's desk like a nit.

'This has gone on long enough.'

Eddie opened his mouth and then closed it again.

'How old are you, Eddie? Eleven, isn't it?'

'Yes, sir,' Eddie said faintly. His breathing was indeed shallowing up. He wasn't yet whistling like a tea-kettle (which was how Richie put it: Somebody turn Eddie off! He's reached the boil!'), but that might happen at any time. He looked longingly at the aspirator on Mr Keene's desk, and because something else seemed required, he said: 'I'll be twelve in November.'

Mr Keene nodded, then leaned forward like a TV pharmacist in a commercial and clasped his hands together. His eyeglasses gleamed in the strong light thrown by the overhead fluorescent bars. 'Do you know what a placebo is, Eddie?'

Nervously, taking his best guess, Eddie said: 'Those are the things on cows that the milk comes out of, aren't they?'

Mr Keene laughed and rocked back in his chair. 'No,' he said, and Eddie blushed to the roots of his flattop haircut. Now he could hear the whistle creeping into his breathing. 'A placebo — '

He was interrupted by a brisk double tap at the door. Without waiting for a come-in call, Ruby entered with an oldfashioned ice-cream-soda glass in each hand. 'Yours must be the chocolate,' she said to Eddie, and gave him a grin. He returned it as best he could, but his interest in ice-cream sodas was at its lowest ebb in his entire personal history. He felt scared in a way that was both vague and specific; it was the way he felt scared when he was sitting on Dr Handor's examination table in his underpants, waiting for the doctor to come in and knowing his mother was out in the waiting room, taking up most of one sofa, a book (most likely Norman Vincent Peak's The Power of Positive Thinking or Dr Jarvis's Vermont FolkMedicine) held firmly up to her eyes like a hymnal. Stripped of his clothes and defenseless, he felt caught between the two of them.

He sipped some of his soda as Ruby went out, hardly tasting it.

Mr Keene waited until the door was shut and then smiled his dry sun-on-mica smile again. 'Loosen up, Eddie. I'm not going to bite you, or hurt you.'

Eddie nodded, because Mr Keene was a grownup and you were supposed to agree with grownups at all costs (his mother had taught him that), but inside he was thinking: Oh, I've heard that bullshit before. It was about what the doctor said when he opened his sterilizer and the sharp frightening smell of alcohol drifted out, stinging his nostrils. That was the smell of shots and this was the smell of bullshit and both came down to the same thing: when they said it was just going to be a little prick, something you hardly felt at all, that meant it was going to hurt plenty.

He tried another half-hearted suck on his soda straw, but it was no good; he needed all the space in his narrowing throat just to suck in air. He looked at the aspirator sitting in the middle of Mr Keene's blotter, wanted to ask for it, didn't quite dare. A weird thought occurred to him: maybe Mr Keene knew he wanted it but didn't dare ask for it, that maybe Mr Keene was

(torturing)

teasing him. Except that was a really stupid idea, wasn't it? A grownup — particularly a health-dispensing grownup — wouldn't tease a little kid that way, would he? Surely not. It wasn't even to be considered, because consideration of such an idea might necessitate a terrifying reappraisal of the world as Eddie understood it.

But there it was, there it was, so near and yet so far, like water just beyond the reach of a man who was dying of thirst in the desert. There it was, standing on the desk below Mr Keene's smiling mica eyes.

Eddie wished, more than anything else, that he was down in the Barrens with his friends around him. The thought of a monster, some great monster, lurking under the city where he had been born and where he had grown up, using the sewers and drains to creep from place to place — that was a frightening thought, and the thought of actually fighting that creature, of taking it on, was even more frightening . . . but somehow this was worse. How could you fight a grownup who said it wasn't going to hurt when you knew it was? How could you fight a grownup who asked you funny questions and said obscurely ominous things like This has gone on long enough? And almost idly, in a kind of side-thought, Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought. It was no big deal, not a thought that came in a revelatory flash or announced itself with trumpets and bells. It just came and was gone, almost buried under the stronger, overriding thought: I want myaspirator and I want to be out of here.

'Loosen up,' Mr Keene said again. 'Most of your trouble, Eddie, comes from being so tight and stiff all the time. Take your asthma, for instance. Look here.'

Mr Keene opened his desk drawer, fumbled around inside, and then brought out a balloon. Expanding his narrow chest as much as possible (his tie bobbed like a narrow boat riding a mild wave), he huffed into it and blew it up. CENTER STREET DRUG, the balloon said. PRESCRIPTIONS, SUNDRIES, OSTOMY SUPPLIES. Mr Keene pinched the balloon's rubber neck and held the balloon out in front of him. 'Now pretend for just a moment that this is a lung,' he said. 'Your lung. I should really blow up two, of course, but since I only had one left from the sale we had just after Christmas — '

'Mr Keene, could I have my aspirator now?' Eddie's head was starting to pound. He could feel his windpipe sealing itself up. His heartrate was up, and sweat stood out on his forehead. His chocolate ice-cream soda stood on the corner of Mr Keene's desk, the cherry on top sinking slowly into a goo of whipped cream.

'In a minute,' Mr Keene said. 'Pay attention, Eddie. I want to help you. It's time somebody did. If Russ Handor isn't man enough to do it, I'll have to. Your lung is like this balloon, except it's surrounded by a blanket of muscle; these muscles are like the arms of a man operating a bellows, you understand? In a healthy person, those muscles help the lungs to expand and contract easily. But if the owner of those healthy lungs is always getting stiff and tight, the muscles begin to work against the lungs rather than with them. Look!'

Mr Keene wrapped a bunched, bony, liverspotted hand around the balloon and squeezed. The balloon bulged over and under his fist and Eddie winced, trying to get ready for the pop. Simultaneously he felt his breathing stop altogether. He leaned over the desk and grabbed for the aspirator on the blotter. His shoulder struck the heavy ice-cream-soda glass. It toppled off the desk and shattered on the floor like a bomb.

Eddie heard that only dimly. He was clawing the top off the aspirator, slamming the nozzle into his mouth, triggering it off. He took a tearing heaving breath, his thoughts a ratrun of panic as they always were at moments like this: Please Mommy I'm suffocating I can'tBREATHE oh my dear God oh dear Jesus meekandmild I can't BREATHE phase I don't want to die don't want to die oh please —

Then the fog from the aspirator condensed on the swollen walls of his throat and he could breathe again.

'I'm sorry,' he said, nearly crying. 'I'm sorry about the glass . . . I'll clean it up and pay for it . . . just please don't tell my mother, okay? I'm sorry, Mr Keene, but I couldn't breathe —

There was that double tap at the door again and Ruby poked her head in. 'Is everything — '

'Everything's fine,' Mr Keene said sharply. 'Leave us.'

'Well I'm saw –ry!' Ruby said. She rolled her eyes and closed the door.

Eddie's breath was starting to whistle in his throat again. He took another pull at the aspirator and then began his fumbling apology once more. He ceased only when he saw that Mr Keene was smiling at him — that peculiar dry smile. Mr Keene's hands were laced over his middle. The balloon lay on his desk. A thought came to Eddie; he tried to hold it back and couldn't. Mr Keene looked as if Eddie's asthma attack had tasted better to him than his half-finished coffee soda.

'Don't be concerned,' he said. 'Ruby will clean up the mess later, and if you want to know the truth, I'm rather glad you broke the glass. Because I promise not to tell your mother that you broke it if you promise not to tell her we had this little talk.'

'Oh, I promise that,' Eddie said eagerly.

'Good,' Mr Keene said. 'We have an understanding. And you feel much better now, don't you?'

Eddie nodded.

'Why?'

'Why? Well . . . because I had my medicine.' He looked at Mr Keene the way he looked at Mrs Casey in school when he had given an answer he wasn't quite sure of.

'But you didn't have any medicine,' Mr Keene said. 'You had a placebo. A placebo, Eddie, is something that looks like medicine and tastes like medicine but isn't medicine. A placebo isn't medicine because it has no active ingredients. Or, if it is medicine, it's medicine of a very special sort. Head-medicine.' Mr Keene smiled. 'Do you understand that, Eddie? Head-medicine.'

Eddie understood, all right; Mr Keene was telling him he was crazy. But through numb lips he said, 'No, I don't get you.'

'Let me tell you a little story,' Mr Keene said. 'In 1954, a series of medical tests on ulcer patients was run at DePaul University. One hundred ulcer patients were given pills. They were all told the pills would help their ulcers, but fifty of the patients really got placebos . . . They were, in fact, M&M's given a uniform pink coating.' Mr Keene uttered a strange shrill giggle — that of a man describing a prank rather than an experiment. 'Of those one hundred patients, ninety– three said they felt a definite improvement, and eighty – one showed an improvement. So what do you think? What conclusion do you draw from such an experiment, Eddie?'

'I don't know,' Eddie said faintly.

Mr Keene tapped his head solemnly. 'Most sickness starts in here, that's what I think. I've been in this business a long, long time, and I knew about placebos a mighty stretch of years before those doctors at DePaul University did their study. Usually it's old folks who end up getting the placebos. The old fellow or the old girl will go to the doctor, convinced that they've got heart disease or cancer or diabetes or some damn thing. But in a good many cases it's nothing like that at all. They don't feel good because they're old, that's all. But what's a doctor to do? Tell them they're like watches with wornout mainsprings? Huh! Not likely. Doctors like their fees too much.' And now Mr Keene's face wore an expression somewhere between a smile and a sneer.

Eddie just sat there waiting for it to be over, to be over, to be over. You didn't have any medicine: those words clanged in his mind.

The doctors don't tell them that, and I don't tell them that, either. Wh y bother? Sometimes an old party will come in with a prescription blank that will say it right out: Placebo, or 25 grains Blue Skies, which was how old Doc Pearson used to put it.'

Mr Keene cackled briefly and then sucked on his coffee soda.

'Well, what's wrong with it?' he asked Eddie, and when Eddie only sat there, Mr Keene answered his own question. 'Why, nothing! Nothing at all!

'At least . . . usually.

'Placebos are a blessing for old people. And then there are other cases — folks with cancer, folks with degenerative heart disease, folks with terrible things that we don't understand yet, some of them children just like you, Eddie! In cases like that, if a placebo makes the patient feel better, where is the harm? Do you see the harm, Eddie?'

'No sir,' Eddie said, and looked down at the splatter of chocolate ice cream, soda-water, whipped cream, and broken glass on the floor. In the middle of all this was the maraschino cherry, as accusing as a blood-clot at a crime scene. Looking at this mess made his chest feel tight again.

'Then we're like Ike and Mike! We think alike! Five years ago, when Vernon Maitland had cancer of the esophagus — a painful, painful sort of cancer — and the doctors had run out of anything effective they could give him for his pain, I came by his hospital room with a bottle of sugar-pills. He was a special friend, you see. And I said, "Vern, these are special experimental pain-pills. The doctor doesn't know I'm giving them to you, so for God's sake be careful an d don't tattle on me. They might not work, but I think they will. Take no more than one a day, and only if the pain is especially bad." He thanked me with tears in his eyes. Tears, Eddie! And they worked for him! Yes! They were only sugar-pills, but they killed most of his pain . . . because pain is here.'

Solemnly, Mr Keene tapped his head again.

Eddie said: 'My medicine does so work.'

'I know it does,' Mr Keene replied, and smiled a maddening complacent grownup's smile. 'It works on your chest because it works on your head. HydrOx, Eddie, is water with a dash of camphor thrown in to give it a medicine taste.'

'No,' Eddie said. His breath had begun to whistle again.

Mr Keene drank some of his soda, spooned some of the melting ice cream, and fastidiously wiped his chin with his handkerchief while Eddie used his aspirator again.

'I want to go now,' Eddie said.

'Let me finish, please.'

'No! I want to go, you've got your money and I want to go!'

'Let me finish,' Mr Keene said, so forbiddingly that Eddie sat back in his chair. Grownups could be so hateful in their power sometimes. So hateful.

'Part of the problem here is that your doctor, Russ Handor, is weak. And pan of the problem is that your mother is determined you are ill. You, Eddie, have been caught in the middle.'

'I'm not crazy,' Eddie whispered, the words coming out in a bare husk.

Mr Keene's chair creaked like a monstrous cricket. 'What?'

'I said I'm not crazy!' Eddie shouted. Then, immediately, a miserable blush rose into his face.

Mr Keene smiled. Think what you like, that smile said. Think what you like, and I'll think what I like.

'All I'm telling you, Eddie, is that you're not physically ill. Your lungs don't have asthma; your mind does.'

'You mean I'm crazy.'

Mr Keene leaned forward, looking at him intently over his folded hands.

'I don't know,' he said softly. 'Are you?'

'It's all a lie!' Eddie cried, surprised the words came out so strongly from his tight chest. He was thinking of Bill, how Bill would react to such amazing charges. Bill would know what to say, stutter or not. Bill would know how to be brave. 'All a great big lie! I do have asthma, I do!'

'Yes,' Mr Keene said, and now the dry smile had become a weird skeletal grin. 'But who gave it to you, Eddie?'

Eddie's brain thudded and whirled. Oh, he felt sick, he felt very sick.

'Four years ago, in 1954 — the same year as the DePaul tests, oddly enough — Dr Handor began prescribing this HydrOx for you. That stands for hydrogen and oxygen, the two components of water. I have condoned this deception since then, but I will not condone it anymore. Your asthma medicine works on your mind rather than your body. Your asthma is the result of a nervous tightening of the diaphragm that is ordered by your mind . . . or your mother.

'You are not sick.'

A terrible silence descended.

Eddie sat in his chair, his mind whirling. For a moment he considered the possibility that Mr Keene might be telling the truth, bu t there were ramifi cations in such an idea that he could not face. Yet why would Mr Keene lie, especially about something so serious? ! Mr Keene sat and smiled his bright dry heartless desert smile.

I do have asthma, I do. The day that Henry Bowers punched me in the nose, the day Bill and I were trying to make a dam in the Barrens, I almost died. Am I supposed to think that my mind was just . . . just making all of that up?

But why would he lie? (It was only years later, in the library, that Eddie asked himself the more terrible question: Why would he tell me the truth?)

Dimly he heard Mr Keene saying: 'I've kept my eye on you, Eddie. I told you all this because you're old enough to understand, but also because I've noticed you've finally made some friends. They are good friends, aren't they?'

'Yes,' Eddie said.

Mr Keene tilted his chair back (it made that cricketlike noise again), and closed one eye in what might or might not have been a wink. 'And I'll bet your mother doesn't like them much, does she?'

'She likes them fine,' Eddie said, thinking of the cutting things his mother had said about Richie Tozier (He has a foul mouth . . . and I've smelled his breath, Eddie . . . I think hesmokes}, her sniffing remark not to loan any mone y to Stan Uris because he was a Jew, her outright dislike of Bill Denbrough and 'that fatboy.'

He repeated to Mr Keene: 'She likes them a lot.'

'Does she?' Mr Keene said, still smiling. 'Well, maybe she's right and maybe she's wrong, but at least yo u have friends. Maybe you ought to talk to them about this problem of yours. This . . . this mental weakness. See what they have to say.'

Eddie didn't reply. He was through talking to Mr Keene; that seemed safer. And he was afraid that if he didn't ge t out of here soon, he really would cry.

'Well!' Mr Keene said, standing up. 'I think that just about finishes us up, Eddie. If I've upset you, I'm sorry. I was only doing my duty as I saw it. I — '

But before he could say any more, Eddie had snatched up his aspirator and the white bag of pills and nostrums and had fled. One of his feet skidded in the ice-creamy mess on the floor and he almost fell. Then he was running, bolting from the Center Street Drug Store in spite of his whistling breath. Ruby stared after him over her movie magazine, her mouth open.

Behind him he seemed to sense Mr Keene standing in the doorway of his office and watching his graceless retreat over the prescription counter, gaunt and neat and thoughtful and smiling. Smiling that dry desert smile.

He paused outside on the three-way corner of Kansas, Main, and Center. He took another deep pull from his aspirator while sitting on the low stone wall by the bus-stop — his throat was now positively slimy with that medicinal taste

(nothing but water with some camphor thrown in)

and he thought that if he had to use the aspirator again today he would probably puke his guts.

He slipped it into his pocket and watched the traffic pass back and forth, headed up Main Street and down Up-Mile Hill. He tried not to think. The sun beat down on his head, blaringly hot. Each passing car threw bright darts of reflection into his eyes, and a headache was starting in his temples. He couldn't find a way to stay angry at Mr Keene, but he had no trouble at all feeling bad for Eddie Kaspbrak. He felt real bad for Eddie Kaspbrak. He supposed that Bill Denbrough never wasted time feeling sorry for himself, but Eddie just couldn't seem to help it.

More than anything else he wanted to do exactly what Mr Keene had suggested: go down to the Barrens and tell his friends everything, see what they would say, find out what answers they had. But he couldn't do that now. His mother would expect him home with her medicines soon

(your mind . . . or your mother)

and if he wasn't there

(your mother is determined you are ill)

trouble would follow. She would assume he had been with Bill or Richie or 'the Jewboy,' as she called Stan (insisting that she meant no prejudice by so calling him, but was simply 'slapping down the cards' — her phrase for truth-telling in difficult situations). And standing here on this corner, trying hopelessly to sort out his flying thoughts, Eddie knew what she would say if she knew one of his other friends was a Negro and another was a girl — a girl old enough to be getting bosoms.

He started slowly toward Up-Mile Hill, dreading the stiff climb in this heat. It felt almost hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. For the first time he found himself wishing fo r school to be in again, for a new grade and a new teacher's peculiarities to contend with. For this dreadful summer to be over.

He stopped halfway up the hill, not far from where Bill Denbrough would rediscover his bike Silver twenty-seven years later, and pulled his aspirator from his pocket. HydrOx Mist, the label said. Administer as needed.

Something else clicked home. Administer as needed. He was only a kid, still wet behind the ears (as his mother sometimes told him when she was 'slapping down the cards'), but even a kid of eleven knew that you didn't give someone real medicine and then write on the label Administer as needed. If it was real medicine, it would be too easy to kill yourself as you went happy-assholing around and administering as needed. He supposed you could kill yourself with plain old aspirin doing that.

He looked fixedly at the aspirator, unaware of the old lady who glanced curiously at him as she passed on down the hill toward Main Street with her shopping basket over her arm. He felt betrayed. And for one moment he almost cast the plastic squeezebottle into the gutter — better yet, he thought, throw it down that sewer– grating. Sure! Why not? Let It have it down there in Its tunnels and dripping sewer-pipes. Have a pla –cee-bo, you hundred-faced creep! He uttered a wild laugh and came within an ace of doing it. But in the end, habit was simply too strong. He replaced the aspirator in his right front pants pocket and walked on, hardly hearing the occasional blare of a horn or the diesel drone of the Bassey Park bus as it passed

him. He was likewise unaware of how close he was to discovering what being hurt — really hurt — was all about.

3

When he came out of the Costello Avenue Market twenty-five minutes later with a Pepsi in' one hand and two Payday candybars in the other, Eddie was unpleasantly surprised to see Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, Moose Sadler, and Patrick Hockstetter kneeling on the crushed gravel to the left of the little store. For a moment Eddie thought they were shooting craps; then he saw they were pooling their money on Victor's baseball shirt. Their summer-school text-books lay off to one side in an untidy heap.

On an ordinary day Eddie might have simply faded quietly back into the store and asked Mr Gedreau if he could leave by the back door but this had been no ordinary day. Eddie froze right where he was instead, one hand still holding the screen door with its tin cigarette signs (WINSTON TASTES GOOD , LIKE A CIGARETTE SHO ULD, TWENTY– ONE GREAT TOBACCOS MAKE TWENTY WONDERFUL SMOKES, the bellboy who was shouting CALL FOR PHILIP MORRIS), the other clutching the brown grocery bag and the white drugstore bag.

Victor Criss saw him and elbowed Henry. Henry looked up; so did Patrick Hockstetter. Moose, whose relays worked more slowly, went on counting out pennies for five seconds or so before the sudden silence sank into him and he also looked up.

Henry stood, brushing loose pieces of gravel from the knees of the biballs he was wearing. There were splints on the sides of his bandaged nose, and his voice had a nasal foghorning quality. 'Well I be go to hell,' he said. 'One of the rock-throwers. Where's your friends, asshole? They inside?'

Eddie was shaking his head numbly before he realized this was another mistake.

Henry's smile broadened. 'Well, that's okay,' he said. 'I don't mind taking you one by one. Come on down here, asshole.'

Victor stood beside Henry; Patrick Hockstetter trailed behind them, smiling in a porky vacant way Eddie was familiar with from school. Moose was still getting up.

'Come on, asshole,' Henry said. 'Let's talk about throwing rocks. Let's talk about that, you wanna?'

Now that it was too late Eddie decided it would be wise to go back into the store. Back in the store where there was a grownup. But as he retreated Henry darted forward and grabbed him. He pulled Eddie's arm, pulled hard, his smile turning into a snarl. Eddie's hand was ripped free of the screen door. He was pulled off the steps and would have crashed headlong into the gravel if Victor hadn't caught him roughly under the arms. Victor threw him. Eddie managed to keep on his feet, but only by whirling around twice. The four boys faced him now over a distance of about ten feet, Henry slightly ahead of the others, smiling. His hair stood up at the back in a cowlick.

Behind Henry and on his left was Patrick Hockstetter, a genuinely spooky kid. Eddie hadn't ever seen him with anyone else until today. He was just enough overweight so that his belly always hung slightly over his belt, which had a Red Ryder buckle. His face was perfectly round, and usually as pale as cream. Now he had a slight sunburn. It was heaviest on his nose, which was peeling, but it spread out toward either cheek like wings. In school, Patrick liked to kill flies with his green plastic SkoolTime ruler and put them in his pencil-box. Sometimes he would show his fly collection to some new kid in the playyard at recess, his heavy lips smiling, his gray-green eyes sober and thoughtful. He never spoke when he exhibited his dead flies, no matter what the new kid might say to him. That expression was on his face now.

'How ya doin, Rock Man?' Henry asked, advancing across the distance between them. 'Got any rocks on you?'

'Leave me alone,' Eddie said in a trembling voice.

"'Leave me alone,'" Henry mimicked, waving his hands in mock terror. Victor laughed. 'What are you going to do if I don't, Rock Man? Huh?' His hand flashed out, incredibly fast, and exploded against Eddie's cheek with a gunshot sound. Eddie's head rocked back. Tears began to pour from his left eye.

'My friends are inside,' Eddie said.

'"My friends are inside,"' Patrick Hockstetter squealed. 'Ooooh! Ooooh! Ooooh!' He began to circle to Eddie's right.

Eddie started to turn in that direction, Henry's hand flashed out again, and this time his other cheek flamed.

Don't cry, he thought, that's what they want, but don't you do it Eddie, Bill wouldn't do it, Bill wouldn't cry, and don't you cry, eith —

Vic tor stepped forward and gave Eddie a hard open-handed push in the middle of his chest. Eddie stumbled half a step backward and then fell sprawling over Patrick, who had crouched directly behind his feet. He thudded to the gravel, scraping his arms. There wa s a whoof! as the wind rushed out of him.

A moment later Henry Bowers was on top of him, his knees pinning Eddie's arms, his butt on Eddie's stomach.

'Got any rocks, Rock Man?' Henry raved down at him, and Eddie was more frightened by the mad light in Henry's eyes than he was by the pain in his arms or by his inability to get his breath back. Henry was nuts. Somewhere close by, Patrick Uttered.

'You wanna throw rocks? Huh? I'll give you rocks! Here! Here's some rocks!'

Henry swept up a handful of gravel and slammed it down into Eddie's face. He rubbed the gravel into Eddie's skin, cutting his cheeks, his eyelids, his lips. Eddie opened his mouth and screamed.

'Want rocks? I'll give you rocks! Here's some rocks, Rock Man! You want rocks? Okay! Okay! Okay!'

Gravel slammed into his open mouth, lacerating his gums, grinding against his teeth. He felt sparks fly against his fillings. He screamed again and spat gravel out.

'Want some more rocks? Okay? How about a few more? How about — '

'Stop that! Here, here! Stop that! You, boy! Quit on him! Right now! You hear me? Quit on him!'

Through half-lidded, tear-blurred eyes, Eddie saw a big hand come down and grab Henry by the collar of his shirt and the right strap of his biballs. The hand gave a yank and Henry was pulled off. He landed in the gravel and got up. Eddie rose more slowly. He was trying to scramble to his feet, but his scrambler seemed temporarily broken. He gasped and spat chunks of bloody gravel out of his mouth.

It was Mr Gedreau, dressed in his long white apron, and he looked furious. There was no fear in his face, although Henry stood about three inches taller and probably outweighed him by fifty pounds. There was no fear in his face because he was the grownup and Henry was the kid. Except this time, Eddie thought, that might not mean anything. Mr Gedreau didn't understand. He didn't understand that Henry was nuts.

'You get out of here,' Mr Gedreau said, advancing on Henry until he stood toe to toe with the hulking sullen-faced boy. 'You get out and you don't want to come back, either. I don't hold with bullying. I don't hold with four against one. What would your mothers think?'

He swept the others with his hot, angry eyes. Moose and Victor dropped their gazes and examined their sneakers. Patrick only stared at and through Mr Gedreau with that vacant

gray-green look. Mr Gedreau looked back at Henry and got just as far as 'You get on your bikes and — ' when Henry gave him a good hard push.

An expression of surprise that would have been comical in other circumstances spread across Mr Gedreau's face as he flew backward, loose gravel spurting out from under his heels. He struck the steps leading up to the screen door and sat down hard.

'Why you — ' he began.

Henry's shadow fell on him. 'Get inside,' he said.

'You — ' Mr Gedreau said, and this time he stopped on his own. Mr Gedreau had finally seen it, Eddie realized — the light in Henry's eyes. He got up quickly, apron flapping. He went up the stairs as fast as he could, stumbling on the second one from the top and going briefly to one knee. He was up again at once, but that stumble, as brief as it had been, seemed to rob him of the rest of his grownup authority.

He spun around at the top and yelled: 'I'm calling the cops!'

Henry made as if to lunge for him, and Mr Gedreau flinched back. That was the end, Eddie realized. As incredible, as unthinkable as it seemed, there was no protection for him here. It was time to go.

While Henry was standing at the bottom of the steps and glaring up at Mr Gedreau and while the others were staring, transfixed (and, except for Patrick Hockstetter, not a little horrified) by this sudden successful defiance of adult authority, Eddie saw his chance. He whirled, took to his heels, and ran.

He was halfway up the block before Henry turned, his eyes blazing. 'Get him!' he bellowed.

Asthma or no asthma, Eddie ran them a good race that day. There were spaces, some of them as long as fifty feet, when he couldn't remember if the soles of his P.P. Flyers had touched the sidewalk or not. For a few moments he even entertained the giddy notion that he might be able to outrun them.

Then, just before he reached Kansas Street and what might have been safety, a ilttle kid on a trike suddenly pedaled out of a driveway and right into Eddie's path. Eddie tried to swerve, but running full –out as he had been, he might have done better to jump over the kid (the kid's name, in fact, was Richard Cowan, and he would grow up, marry, and father a son named Frederick Cowan, who would be drowned in a toilet and then be partially eaten by a thing that rose up from the toilet like black smoke and then took an unthinkable shape), or at least to try.

One of Eddie's feet caught on the trike's back deck, where an adventurous little shit might stand and push the trike along like a scooter. Richard Cowan, whose unborn son would be murdered by It twenty-seven years later, barely rocked on his trike. Eddie, however, went flying. He struck the sidewalk on his shoulder, rebounded, came down again, and skidded ten feet, erasing the skin from his elbows and knees. He was trying to get up when Henry Bowers hit him like a shell from a bazooka and knocked him flat. Eddie's nose connected briskly with the concrete. Blood flew.

Henry did a quick side-roll like a paratrooper and was up again. He grabbed Eddie by the nape of the neck and by his right wrist. His breath, snorting through his swelled and splinted nose, was warm and moist.

'Want rocks, Rock Man? Sure! Shit!' He jerked Eddie's wrist halfway up his back. Eddie yelled. 'Rocks for the Rock Man, right, Rock Man?' He jerked Eddie's wrist up even higher. Eddie screamed. Behind him, dimly, he could hear the others approaching, and the little kid on the trike starting to bawl. Join the club, kid, he thought, and in spite of the pain, in spite of the tears and the fear, he brayed a huge donkeylike hee-haw of laughter.

'You think this is funny? ' Henry asked, sounding suddenly astounded rather than furious. 'You think this is funny?' And did Henry also sound scared? Years later Eddie would think Yes, scared, he sounded scared.

Eddie twisted his wrist in Henry's grip. He was slick with sweat and he almost got away. Perhaps that was w hy Henry shoved Eddie's wrist up harder this time than before. Eddie heard a crack in his arm like the sound of winterwood giving under an accumulated plate of ice. The pain that rolled out of his fractured arm was gray and huge. He shrieked, but the sound seemed distant. The color was washing out of the world, and when Henry let go of him and pushed, he seemed to float toward the sidewalk. It took a long time to get down to that old sidewalk. He had a good look at every single crack in it as he glided down. He had a chance to admire the way the July sun glinted off the flecks of mica in that old sidewalk. He had a chance to note the remains of a very old hopscotch grid that had been done in pink chalk on that old sidewalk. Then, for just a moment, it swam and looked like something else. It looked like a turtle.

He might have fainted then, but he struck on his newly broken arm, and this fresh pain was sharp, bright, hot, terrible. He felt the splintered ends of the greenstick fracture grind together. He b it his tongue, bringing fresh blood. He rolled over on his back and saw Henry, Victor, Moose, and Patrick standing over him. They looked impossibly tall, impossibly high up, like pallbearers peering into a grave.

'You like that, Rock Man?' Henry asked, his voice drifting down over a distance, floating through clouds of pain. 'You like that action, Rock Man? You like that jobba-nobba?'

Patrick Hockstetter giggled.

'Your father's crazy,' Eddie heard himself say, 'and so are you.'

Henry's grin afded so fast it might have been slapped off his face. He drew his foot back to kick . . . and then a siren rose in the still hot afternoon. Henry paused. Victor and Moose looked around uneasily.

'Henry, I think we better get out of here,' Moose said.

'I know damn well I'm getting out of here,' Victor said. How far away their voices seemed! Like the clown's balloons, they seemed to float. Victor took off toward the library, cutting into McCarron Park to get off the street.

Henry hesitated a moment longer, perhaps hoping the cop-car was on some other business and he could continue with his own. But the siren rose again, closer. 'You got lucky, fuckface,' he said. He and Moose took off after Victor.

Patrick Hockstetter waited for a moment. 'Here's a little something extra for you,' he whispered in his low, husky voice. He inhaled and spat a large green lunger into Eddie's upturned, sweating, bloody face. Splat. 'Don't eat it all at once if you don't want,' Patrick said, smiling his liverish unsettling smile. 'Save some for later, if you want.'

Then he turned slowly and was also gone.

Eddie tried to wipe the lunger off with his good arm, but even that little movement made the pain flare again.

Now when you started off for the drugstore, you never thought you'd end up on the Costello Avenue sidewalk with a busted arm and Patrick Hockstetter's snot running down your face, did you? You never even got to drink your Pepsi. Life's full of surprises, isn't it?

Incredibly, he laughed again. It was a weak sound, and it hurt his broken arm to laugh, but it felt good. And there was something else: no asthma. His breathing was okay, at least for now. A good thing, too. He never would have been able to get to his aspirator. Never in a thousand years.

The siren was very close now, whooping and whooping. Eddie closed his eyes and saw red under his eyelids. Then the red turned black as a shadow fell over him. It was the little kid with the trike.

'You okay?' the little kid asked.

'Do I look okay?' Eddie asked.

'No, you look terrible,' the little kid said, and pedaled off, singing 'The Farmer in the Dell.'

Eddie began to giggle. Here was the cop-car; he could hear the squeal of its brakes. He found himself hoping vaguely that Mr Nell would be in it, even though he knew Mr Nell was a foot patrolman.

Why in the name of God are you giggling?

He didn't know, any more than he knew why he should feel, in spite of the pain, such intense relief. Was it maybe just because he was still alive, that the worst he had suffered was a broken arm, and there were still some pieces to pick up? He settled for that, but years later, sitting in the Derry Library with a glass of gin and prune juice in front of him and his aspirator near at hand, he told the others he thought it was something more than that; he had been old enough to feel that something more, but not to understand or define it.

I think it was the first real pain I ever felt in my life, he would tell the others. It wasn't what I thought it would be at all. It didn't put an end to me as a person. I think . . . it gave me a basis for comparison, finding out you could still exist inside the pain, in spite of the pain.

Eddie turned his head weakly to the right and saw large black Firestone tires, blinding chrome hubcaps, and pulsing blue lights. He heard Mr Nell's voice then, thickly Irish, impossibly Irish, more like Richie's Irish Cop Voice than Mr Nell's real voice . . . but perhaps that was the distance:

'Holy Jaysus, it's the Kaspbrak bye!'

At this point Eddie floated away.

4

And, with one exception, stayed away for quite awhile.

There was a brief period of consciousness in the ambulance. He saw Mr Nell sitting across from him, tipping a drink from his little brown bottle and reading a paperback called The Jury. The girl on the cover had the biggest bosoms Eddie had ever seen. His eyes shifted past Mr Nell to the driver up front. The driver peered around at Eddie with a big leering grin, his skin livid with greasepaint and talcum powder, his eyes shiny as new quarters. It was Pennywise.

'Mr Nell,' Eddie husked.

Mr Nell looked up and smiled. 'How are you feelin, me bye?'

' . . . driver . . . the driver . . . '

'Yes, we'll be there in a jig,' Mr Nell said, and handed him the little brown bottle. 'Suck some of this. It'll make ye feel better.'

Eddie drank what tasted like liquid fire. He coughed, hurting his arm. He looked toward the front and saw the driver again. Just some guy with a crewcut. No clown.

He drifted off again.

Much later there was the Emergency Room and a nurse wiping blood and dirt and snot and gravel off his face with a cold cloth. It stung, but it felt wonderful at the same time. He heard his mother bugling and clarioning outside, and he tried to tell the nurse not to let her in, but no words would come out, no matter how hard he tried.

' . . . if he's dying, I want to know!' his mother was bellowing. 'You hear me? It's my right to know, and it's my right to see him! I can sue you, you know! I know lawyers, plenty of lawyers! Some of my best friends are lawyers!'

'Don't try to talk,' the nurse said to Eddie. She was young, and he could feel her bosoms pressing against his arm. For a moment he had this crazy idea that the nurse was Beverly Marsh, and then he drifted away again.

When he came back his mother was in the room, talking to Dr Handor at a mile –a-minute clip. Sonia Kaspbrak was a huge woman. Her legs, encased in support hose, were trunklike but weirdly smooth. Her face was pale now except for hectic flaring blots of rouge.

'Ma,' Eddie managed,' . . . all right . . . I'm all right . . . '

'You're not, you're not,' Mrs Kaspbrak moaned. She wrung her hands. Eddie heard her knuckles crack and grind. He began to feel his breath shorten up as he looked at her, seeing what a state she was in, how this latest escapade of his had hurt her. He wanted to tell her to take it easy or she'd have a heart attack, but he couldn't. His throat was too dry. 'You're not all right, you've had a serious accident, a very serious accident, but you will be all right, I promise you that, Eddie, you will be all right, even if we need to bring in every specialist in the book, oh Eddie . . . Eddie . . . your poor arm . . . '

She burst into honking sobs. Eddie saw that the nurse who had washed his face was looking at her without much sympathy.

All through this aria, Dr Handor had been stuttering, 'Sonia . . . please, Sonia . . . Sonia . . . ?' He was a skinny, limp-looking man with a little mustache that hadn't grown very well and which, in addition, had been clipped unevenly, so it was longer on the left side than on the right. He looked nervous. Eddie remembered what Mr Keene had told him that morning and felt a certain sorrow for Dr Handor.

At last, gathering himself, Russ Handor managed to say: 'If you can't control yourself, you'll have to leave, Sonia.'

She whirled on him and he drew back. 'I'll do no such thing! Don't you even suggest it! This is my son lying here in agony! My son lying here on his bed of pain!'

Eddie astounded them all by finding his voice. 'I want you to leave, Ma. If they're going to do something that'll make me yell, and I think they are, you'll feel better if you go.'

She turned to him, astonished . . . and hurt. At the sight of the hurt on her face, he felt his chest begin to tighten down inexorably. 'I certainly will not!' she cried. 'What an awful thing to say, Eddie! You're delirious! You don't understand what you're saying, that's the only explanation!'

'I don't know what the explanation is, and I don't care,' the nurse said. 'All I know is that we're standing here doing nothing while we should be setting your son's arm.'

'Are you suggesting — ' Sonia began, her voice rising toward the high, bugling note it took on when she was most upset.

'Please, Sonia,' Dr Handor said. 'Let's not have an argument here. Let's help Eddie.'

Sonia stood back, but her glowering eyes — the eyes of a mother bear whose cub has been threatened — promised the nurse that there would be trouble later. Possibly even a suit. Then her eyes misted, extinguishing the glower or at least hiding it. She took Eddie's good hand and squeezed it so painfully that he winced.

'It's bad, but you'll be well again soon,' she said. 'Well again soon, I promise you that.'

'Sure, Ma,' Eddie wheezed. 'Could I have my aspirator?'

'Of course,' she said. Sonia Kaspbrak looked at the nurse triumphantly, as if vindicated of some ridiculous criminal charge. 'My son has asthma,' she said. 'It's quite serious, but he copes with it beautifully. '

'Good,' the nurse said flatly.

His ma held the aspirator for him so he could inhale. A moment later Dr Handor was feeling Eddie's broken arm. He was as gentle as possible but the pain was still enormous. Eddie felt like screaming and gritted his teeth against it. He was afraid if he screamed his mother would scream, too. Sweat stood out on his forehead in large clear drops.

'You're hurting him,' Mrs Kaspbrak said. 'I know you are! There's no need of that! Stop it! There's no need for you to hurt him! He's very delicate, he can't stand that sort of pain!'

Eddie saw the nurse lock her furious eyes with Dr Handor's tired, worried ones. He saw the wordless conversation that passed between them: Send that woman out of here, doctor. And in the drop of his eyes: I can't. I don't dare.

There was great clarity inside the pain (although, in truth, this was not a clarity that Eddie would want to experience often: the price was too high), and in that unspoken conversation, Eddie accepted everything Mr Keene had told him. His HydrOx aspirator was filled with nothing more than flavored water. The asthma wasn't in his throat or his chest or his lungs but in his head. Somehow or other he was going to have to deal with that truth.

He looked at his mother, seeing her clear in his pain: each flower on her Lane Bryant dress, the sweat-stains under her arms where the pads she wore had soaked through, the scuff –marks on her shoes. He saw how small her eyes were in their pockets of flesh, and now a terrible thought came to him: those eyes were almost predatory, like the eyes of the leper that had crawled out of the basement at 29 Neibolt Street. Here I come, that's all right . . . it won't doyou any good to run, Eddie . . .

Dr Handor put his hands gently around Eddie's broken arm and squeezed. The pain exploded.

Eddie drifted away.

5

They gave him some liquid to drink and Dr Handor set the fracture. He heard Dr Handor telling his ma that it was a greenstick fracture, no more serious than any childhood break: 'It's the sort of break kids get falling out of trees,' he said, and Eddie heard his ma respond furiously: 'Eddie doesn't climb trees! Now I want the truth! How bad is he?'

Then the nurse was giving him a pill. He felt her bosoms against his shoulder again and was grateful for their comforting pressure. Even through the haze he could see that the nurse was angry and he thought he said, She's not the leper, please don't think that, she's only eating me because she loves me, but perhaps nothing came out because the nurse's angry face didn't change.

He had a faint recollection of being pushed up a corridor in a wheelchair and his mother's voice somewhere behind, fading: 'What do you mean, visiting hours) Don't talk to me about visiting hours, that's my son! '

Fading. He was glad she was fading, glad he was fading. The pain was gone and the clarity was gone with it. He didn't want to think. He wanted to drift. He was aware that his right arm felt very heavy. He wondered if they had put it in a cast yet. He couldn't seem to see if they had or not. He was vaguely aware of radios playing from rooms, of patients who looked like ghosts in their hospital johnnies walking up and down the wide halls, and that it was hot . . . so very hot. When he was wheeled into his room, he could see the sun going down in an angry orange boil of blood and thought incoherently: Like a great big clown-button.

'Come on, Eddie, you can walk,' a voice was saying, and he found that he could. He was slid between crisp cool sheets. The voice told him that he would have some pain in the night, but not to ring for a pain-killer unless it got very bad. Eddie asked if he could have a drink of water. The water came with a straw that had an accordion middle so you could bend it. It was cool and good. He drank it all.

There was pain in the night, a good deal of it. He lay awake in bed, holding the call-button in his left hand but not pressing it . A thunderstorm was going on outside, and when the

lightning flashed blue –white, he turned his head away from the windows, afraid he might see a monstrous, grinning face etched across the sky in that electric fire.

At last he slept again, and in his sleep he had a dream. In it he saw Bill, Ben, Richie, Stan, Mike, and Bev — his friends — arriving at the hospital on their bikes (Bill was riding Richie double on Silver). He was surprised to see that Beverly was wearing a dress — it was a lovely green, the color of the Caribbean in a National Geographic plate. He couldn't remember if he had ever seen her in a dress before; all he remembered were jeans and pedal-pushers and what the girls called 'school-sets': skirts and blouses, the blouses usually white with round collars, the skirts usually brown and pleated and hemmed at mid –shin, so that the scabs on their knees didn't show.

In the dream he saw them coming in for the 2:00 P.M. visiting hours and his mother, who had been waiting patiently since eleven, shouting so loudly at them that everyone turned to look at her.

If you think you're going to go in there, you've got another think coming! Eddie's mother shouted, and now the clown, who had been sitting here in the waiting room all along (but way back in one corner, with a copy of Look magazine held up in front of his face until now), jumped up and mimed applause, patting his white-gloved hands together rapidly. He capered and danced, now turning a cartwheel, now executing a neat back-over flip, as Mrs Kaspbrak ranted at Eddie's fellow Losers and as they shrank, one by one, behind Bill, who only stood there, pale but outwardly calm, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jeans (maybe so no one, including Bill himself, would be able to see if they were shaking or not). No one saw the clown except Eddie . . . although a baby who had been sleeping peacefully in his mother's arms awoke and began to cry lustily.

You've done enough damage! Eddie's ma shouted. I know who those boys were! They've been in trouble at school, they've even been in trouble with the police! And just because those boys have something against you is no reason for them to have something against him. I told him so, and he agrees with me. He wants me to tell you to go away, he's done with you, he never wants to see any of you again. He doesn't want your so-called friendship anymore! Any of you! I knew it would lead to trouble, and look at this! My Eddie in the hospital! A boy as delicate as he is . . .

The clown capered and jumped and did splits and stood on one hand. Its smile was real enough now, and in his dream Eddie realized that this was of course what the clown wanted, a nice big wedge to drive among them, splitting them apart and destroying any chance of concerted action. In a kind of filthy ecstasy, the clown did a double barrel-roll and burlesqued kissing his mother's cheek.

Th-Th-Those b –b-b-hoys who dih-did it — Bill began.

Don't you speak back to me! Mrs Kaspbrak shrieked. Don't you dare speak back to me! He's done with you, I say! Done!

Then an intern came running into the waiting room and told Eddie's ma she would have to be quiet or leave the hospital. The clown started to fade, started to wash out, and as it did it began to change. Eddie saw the leper, the mummy, the bird; he saw the werewolf, and a vampire whose teeth were Gillette Blue-Blades set at crazy angles like mirrors in a carnival mirror-maze; he saw Frankenstein, the creature, and something fleshy and shell-like that opened and closed like a mouth; he saw a dozen other terrible things, a hundred. But just before the clown washed out completely, he saw the most terrible thing of all: his ma's face.

Nol he tried to scream. No! No! Not her! Not my ma!

But no one looked around; no one heard. And in the dream's fading moments, he realized with a cold and wormy horror that they couldn't hear nun. He was dead. It had killed him and he was dead. He was a ghost.

6

Sonia Kaspbrak's sour-sweet triumph at sending Eddie's so-called friends away evaporated almost as soon as she stepped into Eddie's private room the next afternoon, on the 21st of July. She could not tell exactly why the feeling of triumph should fade like that, or why it should be displaced by an unfocused fear; it was something in her son's pale face, which was not blurred with pain or anxiety but instead bore an expression she could not remember ever having seen there before. It was sharp, somehow. Sharp and alert and set.

The confrontation between Eddie's friends and Eddie's ma had not occurred in the waiting room, as in Eddie's dream; she had known they would be coming — Eddie's 'friends,' who were probably teaching him to smoke cigarettes in spite of his asthma, his 'friends' who had such an unhealthy hold over him that they were all he talked about when he came home for the evening, his 'friends' who got his arm broken. She had told all of this to Mrs Van Prett next door. 'The time has come,' Mrs Kaspbrak had said grimly, 'to slap a few cards down on the table.' Mrs Van Prett, who had horrible skin-problems and who could almost always be counted upon to agree eagerly, almost pathetically, with everything Sonia Kaspbrak said, in this case had the temerity to disagree.

I should think you'd be glad he's made some friends, Mrs Van Prett said as they hung out their washes in the early-morning cool before work — this had been during the first week of July. And he's safer if he's with other children, Mrs Kaspbrak, don't you think so? With all that's going on in this town, and all the poor children that have been murdered?

Mrs Kaspbrak's only reply had been an angry sniff (in fact, she couldn't just then think of an adequate verbal response, although she thought of dozens — some of them extremely cutting — later on), and when Mrs Van Prett called her that evening, sounding rather anxious, to ask if Mrs Kaspbrak would be going to the Beano down at Saint Mary's with her like usual, Mrs Kaspbrak had replied coldly that she believed she would just stay home that evening and put her feet up instead.

Well, she hoped Mrs Van Prett was satisfied now. She hoped Mrs Van Prett saw now that the only danger abroad in Derry this summer wasn't the sex-maniac killing children and babies. Here was her son, lying on his bed of pain in Derry Home Hospital, he might never be able to use his good right arm again, she had heard of such things, or, God forbid, loose splinters from the break might work through his bloodstream to his heart and puncture it and kill him, oh of course God would never allow that to happen, but she had heard of it happening, so that meant God could allow such a thing to happen. In certain cases.

So she lingered on the Home Hospital's long and shady front porch, knowing they would show up, coldly determined to put paid to this so –called 'friendship,' this camaraderie that ended in broken arms and beds of pain, once and for all.

Eventually they came, as she had known they would, and to her horror she saw that one of them was a nigger. Not that she had anything against niggers; she thought they had every right to ride where they wanted to on the buses down south, and eat at white lunch-counters, and should not be made to sit in nigger heaven at the movies unless they bothered white

(women)

people, but she als o believed firmly in what she called the Bird Theory: Blackbirds flew with other blackbirds, not with the robins. Crackles roosted with grackles; they did not mix in with the bluebirds or the nightingales. To each his own was her motto, and seeing Mike Hanlon pedal up with the others just as if he belonged there caused her resolution, like her anger and her dismay, to grow apace. She thought reproachfully, as if Eddie were here and could listen to her: You never told me that one of your 'friends' was a nigger.

Well, she thought, twenty minutes later, stepping into the hospital room where her son lay with his arm in a huge cast that was strapped to his chest (it hurt her heart just to look at it), she had sent them packing in jig time . . . no pun intended. None of them except for the Denbrough boy, the one who had such a horrible stutter, had had the nerve to so much as speak back to her. The girl, whoever she was, had flashed a pair of decidedly slutty jade's eyes at Sonia — from Lower Main Street or someplace even worse, had been Sonia Kaspbrak's opinion — but she had wisely kept her mouth shut. If she had dared so much as to let out a peep, Sonia would have given her a piece of her mind; would have told her what sort of girls ran with the boys. There were names for girls like that, and she would not have her son associated, now or ever, with the girls who bore them.

The others had done no more than look down at their shuffling feet. That was about what she had expected. When she was done saying what she had to say, they had gotten on their bikes and ridden away. The Denbrough boy had the Tozier boy riding double behind him on a huge, unsafe-looking bike, and with an interior shudder Mrs Kaspbrak had wondered how many times her Eddie had ridden on that dangerous bike, risking his arms and his legs and his neck and his life.

I did this for you, Eddie, she thought as she walked into the hospital with her head firmly up. I know you may feel a bit disappointed at first; that's natural enough. But parents know better than their children; the reason God made parents in the first place was to guide, instruct . . . and protect. After his initial disappoint ment, he would understand. And if she felt a certain relief now, it was of course on Eddie's behalf and not on her own. Relief was only to be expected when you had saved your son from bad companions.

Except that her sense of relief was marred by fresh unease now, looking into Eddie's face. He was not asleep, as she had thought he would be. Instead of a drugged doze from which he would wake disoriented, dimwitted, and psychologically vulnerable, there was this sharp, watchful look, so different from Eddie's usual soft tentative glance. Like Ben Hanscom (although Sonia did not know this), Eddie was the sort of boy who would look quickly into a face, as if to test the emotional weather brewing there, and glance just as quickly away. But he was looking at her steadily now (perhaps it's the medication, she thought, of course that's it; I'll have to consult with Dr Handor about his medication), and she was the one who felt a need to glance aside. He looks like he's been waiting for me, she thought, and it was a thought that should have made her happy — a boy waiting for his mother must surely be one of God's most favored creations —

'You sent my friends away.' The words came out flatly, with no doubt or question in them.

She flinched almost guiltily, and certainly the first thought to flash through her mind was a guilty one — How does he know that? He can't know that! — and she was immediately furious with herself (and him) for feeling that way. So she smiled at him.

'How are we feeling today, Eddie?'

That was the right response. Someone — some foolish candy-striper, or perhaps even that incompetent and antagonistic nurse from the day before — had been carrying tales. Someone.

'How are we feeling?' she asked again when he didn't respond. She thought he hadn't heard her. She'd never read in any of her medical literature of a broken bone affecting the sense of hearing, but she supposed it was possible, anything was possible.

Eddie still didn't respond.

She came farther into the room, hating the tentative, almost timid feeling inside her, distrusting it because she had never felt tentative or timid around Eddie before. She felt anger as well, although that was still nascent. What right did he have to make her feel that way, after all she had done for him, after all she had sacrificed for him?

'I've talked to Dr Handor, and he assures me that you're going to be perfectly all right,' Sonia said briskly, sitting down in the straight-backed wooden chair by the bed. 'Of course if

there's the slightest problem, we'll go to see a specialist in Portland. In Boston, if that's what it takes.' She smiled, as if conferring a great favor. Eddie did not smile back. And still he did not reply.

'Eddie, are you hearing me?'

'You sent my friends away,' he repeated.

'Yes,' she said, dropping the pretense, and said no more. Two could play at that game. She simply looked back at him.

But a strange thing happened; a terrible thing, really. Eddie's eyes seemed to . . . to grow, somehow. The flecks of gray in them seemed actually to be moving, like racing stormclouds. She became aware suddenly that he was not 'in a snit,' or 'having a poopie,' or any of those things. He was furious with her . . . and Sonia was suddenly scared, because something more than her son seemed to be in this room. She dropped her eyes and fumbled her purse open. She began searching for a Kleenex.

'Yes, I sent them away,' she said, and found that her voice was strong enough and steady enough . . . as long as she wasn't looking at him. 'You've been seriously injured, Eddie. You don't need any visitors right now except for your own ma, and you don't need visitors like that, ever. If it hadn't been for them, you'd be home watching the TV right now, or building your soapbox racer in the garage.'

It was Eddie's dream to build a soapbox racer and take it to Bangor. If he won there, he would be awarded an all-expenses-paid trip to Akron, Ohio, for the National Soapbox Derby. Sonia was perfectly willing to allow him this dream as long as it seemed to her that completion of the racer, which was made out of orange crates and the wheels from a Choo-Choo Flyer wagon, was just that — a dream. She certainly had no intention of letting Eddie risk his life in such a dangerous contraption, not in Derry, not in Bangor, and certainly not in Akron, which (Eddie had informed her) would mean riding in an airplane as well as making a suicidal run down a steep hill in a wheeled orange crate with no brakes. But, as her own mother had often said, what a person didn't know couldn't hurt him (her mother had also been fond of saying 'Tell the truth and shame the devil,' but when it came to the recollection of aphorisms Sonia, like most people, could be remarkably selective).

'My friends didn't break my arm,' Eddie said in that same flat voice. 'I told Dr Handor last night and I told Mr Nell when he came in this morning. Henry Bowers broke my arm. Some other kids were with him, but Henry did it. If I'd been with my friends, it never would have happened. It happened because I was alone.'

This made Sonia think of Mrs Van Prett's comment about how it was safer to have friends, and that brought the rage back like a tiger. She snapped her head up. 'That doesn't matter and you know it! What do you think, Eddie? That your ma fell off a haytruck yesterday? Is that what you think? I know well enough why the Bowers boy broke your arm. That Paddy cop was at our house, too. That big boy broke your arm because you and your "friends" crossed him somehow. Now do you think that would have happened if you'd listened to me and stayed away from them in the first place?'

'No — I think that something even worse might have happened,' Eddie said.

'Eddie, you don't mean that.'

'I mean it,' he said, and she felt that power coming off him, coming out of him, in waves. 'Bill and the rest of my friends will be back, Ma. That's something I know. And when they come, you're not going to stop them. You're not going to say a word to them. They're my friends, and you're not going to steal my friends just because you're scared of being alone.'

She stared at him, flabbergasted and terrified. Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, wetting the powder there. 'This is how you talk to your mother now, I guess,' she said through her sobs. 'Maybe this is the way your "friends" talk to their folks. I guess you learned it from them.'

She felt safer in her tears. Usually when she cried Eddie cried, too. A low weapon, some might say, but were there really any low weapons when it came to protecting her son? She thought not.

She looked up, the tears streaming from her eyes, feeling both unutterably sad, bereft, betrayed . . . and sure. Eddie would not be able to stand against such a flood of tears and sorrow. That cold sharp look would leave his face. Perhaps he would begin to gasp and wheeze a little bit, and that would be a sign, as it was always a sign, that the fight was over and that she had won another victory . . . for him, of course. Always for him.

She was so shocked to see that same expression on his face — it had, if anything, deepened — that her voice caught in mid-sob. There was sorrow under his expression, but even that was frightening: it struck her in some way as an adult sorrow, and thinking of Eddie as adult in any way always caused a panicky little bird to flutter inside her mind. This was how sh e felt on the infrequent occasions when she wondered what would happen to her if Eddie didn't want to go to Derry Business College or the University of Maine in Orono or Husson in Bangor so he could come home every day after his classes were done, what would happen if he met a girl, fell in love, wanted to get married. Where's the place for me in any of that? the panicky bird-voice would cry when these strange, almost nightmarish thoughts came. Wherewould my place be in a life like that? I love you, Eddie! I love you! I take care of you and I love you! You don't know how to cook, or change your sheets, or wash your underwear! Why should you? I know those things for you! I know because I love you!

He said it himself now: 'I love you, Ma. But I love my friends, too. I think . . . I think you're making yourself cry.'

'Eddie, you hurt me so much,' she whispered, and fresh tears doubled his pale face, trebled it. If her tears a few moments ago had been calculated, these were not. In her own peculiar way she was tough — she had seen her husband into his grave without cracking up, she had gotten a job in a depressed job-market where it wasn't easy to get a job, she had raised her son, and when it had been necessary, she had fought for him. These were the fi rst totally unaffected and uncalculated tears she had wept in years, perhaps since Eddie had gotten the bronchitis when he was five and she had been so sure he would die as he lay there in his bed of pain, glowing bright with fever, whooping and coughing and gasping for breath. She wept now because of that terribly adult, somehow alien expression on his face. She was afraid for him, but she was also, in some way, afraid of him, afraid of that aura that seemed to surround him . . . which seemed to demand something of her.

'Don't make me have to choose between you and my friends, Ma,' Eddie said. His voice was uneven, strained, but still under control. 'Because that's not fair.'

'They're bad friends, Eddie!' she cried in a near-frenzy. 'I know that, I feel that with all my heart, they'll bring you nothing but pain and grief!' And the most horrible thing of all was that she did sense that; some part of her had intuited it in the eyes of the Denbrough boy, who had stood before her with his hands in his pockets, his red hair flaming in the summer sun. His eyes had been so grave, so strange and distant . . . like Eddie's eyes now.

And hadn't that same aura been around him as was around Eddie now? The same, but even stronger? She thought yes.

'Ma — '

She stood up so suddenly she almost knocked the straight-backed chair over. 'I'll come back this evening,' she said. 'It's the shock, the accident, the pain, those things, that make you talk this way. I know it. You . . . you . . . ' She groped, and found her original text in the flying confusion of her mind. 'You've had a bad accident, but you're going to be just fine. And you'll see I'm right, Eddie. They're bad friends. Not our sort. Not for you. You think it over and ask yourself if your ma ever told you wrong before. You think about it and . . . and . . . '

I'm running! she thought with a sick and hurtful dismay. I'm running away from my ownson! Oh God, please don't let this be!

'Ma.'

For a moment she almost fled anyway, scared of him now, oh yes, he was more than Eddie; she sensed the others in him, his 'friends' and something else, something that was beyond even them, and she was afraid it might flash out at her. It was as if he were in the grip of something, some dreadful fever, as he had been in the grip of the bronchitis that time when he was five, when he had almost died.

She paused, her hand on the doorknob, not wanting to hear what he might say . . . and when he said it, it was so unexpected that for a moment she didn't really understand it. When comprehension crashed down, it came like a loose load of cement, and for a moment she thought she would faint.

Eddie said: 'Mr Keene said my asthma medicine is just water.'

'What? What?' She turned blazing eyes on him.

'Just water. With some stuff added to make it taste like medicine. He said it was a pla –cee-bo.'

'That's a lie! That is nothing but a solid lie! Why would Mr Keene want to tell you a lie like that? Well, there are other drug-stores in Derry, I guess. I gue ss — '

'I've had time to think about it,' Eddie said, softly and implacably, his eyes never leaving hers, 'and I think he's telling the truth.'

'Eddie, I tell you he's not! ' The panic was back, fluttering.

'What I think,' Eddie said, 'is that it must be the truth or there would be some kind of warning on the bottle, like if you take too much it will kill you or at least make you sick. Even — '

'Eddie, I don't want to hear this!' she cried, and clapped her hands to her ears. 'You're . . . you're . . . you're just not yourself and that's all that it is!'

'Even if it's something you can just go in and buy without a prescription, they put special instructions on it,' he went on, not raising his voice. His gray eyes lay on hers, and she couldn't seem to drop her gaze, or even move it. 'Even if it's just Vicks cough syrup . . . or your Geritol.'

He paused for a moment. Her hands dropped from her ears; it seemed too much work to hold them up. They seemed very heavy.

'And it's like . . . yo u must have known that, too, Ma.'

'Eddie!' She nearly wailed it.

'Because,' he went on, as if she had not spoken at all — he was frowning now, concentrating on the problem, 'because your folks are supposed to know about medicines. Why, I use that aspirator five, sometimes six times a day. And you wouldn't let me do that if you thought it could, like, hurt me. Because it's your job to protect me. I know it is, because that's what you always say. So . . . did you know, Ma? Did you know it was just water?'

She said nothing. Her lips were trembling. It felt as if her whole face was trembling. She was no longer crying. She felt too scared to cry.

'Because if you did,' E d d i e s a i d , s t i l l f r o w n i n g , ' i f y o u did know, I'd want to know why. I can figure some things out, but not why my ma would want me to think water was medicine . . . or that I had asthma here' — he pointed to his chest — 'when Mr Keene says I only have it up here' — and he pointed to his head.

She thought she would explain everything then. She would explain it quietly and logically. How she had thought he was going to die when he was five, and how that would have driven her crazy after losing Frank only two years before. How she came to understand that you could only protect your child through watchfulness and love, that you must tend a child as you tended a garden, fertilizing, weeding, and yes, occasionally pruning and thinning, as

much as that hurt. She would tell him that sometimes it was better for a child — particularly a delicate child like Eddie — to think he was sick than to really get sick. And she would finish by talking to him about the deadly foolishness of doctors and the wonderful power of love; she would tell him that she knew he had asthma, and it didn't matter what th e doctors thought or what they gave him for it. She would tell him you could make medicine with more than a malicious meddling druggist's mortar and pestle. Eddie, she would say, it's medicine becauseyour mother's love makes it medicine, and in just that way, for as long as you want me and let me, I can do that. This is a power that God gives to loving caring mothers. Please, Eddie, please, my heart's own love, you must believe me.

But in the end she said nothing. Her fright was too great.

'But ma ybe we don't even have to talk about it,' Eddie went on. 'Mr Keene might have been joking with me. Sometimes grownups . . . you know, they like to play jokes on kids. Because kids believe almost anything. It's mean to do that to kids, but sometimes grownups do it.'

'Yes,' Sonia Kaspbrak said eagerly. 'They like to joke and sometimes they're stupid . . . mean . . . and . . . and . . . '

'So I'll kind of keep an eye out for Bill and the rest of my friends,' Eddie said, 'and keep right on using my asthma medicine. That's probably best, don't you think?'

She realized only now, when it was too late, how neatly — h o w c r u e l l y — she had been trapped. What he was doing was almost blackmail, but what choice did she have? She wanted to ask him how he could be so calculating, so manipulative. She opened her mouth to ask . . . and then closed it again. It was too likely that, in his present mood, he might answer.

But she knew one thing. Yes. One thing for sure: she would never never never set foot into Mr Nosy-Parker Keene's drugstore again in her life.

His voice, oddly shy now, interrupted her thoughts. 'Ma?'

She looked up and saw it was Eddie again, just Eddie, and she went to him gladly.

'Can I have a hug, Ma?'

She hugged him, but carefully, so as not to hurt his broken arm (or dislodge any loose bone-fragments so they could run an evil race around his bloodstream and then lodge in his heart — what mother would kill her son with love?), and Eddie hugged her back.

7

As far as Eddie was concerned, his ma left just in time. During the horrible confrontation with her he had felt his breath piling up and up and up in his lungs and throat, still and tideless, stale and brackish, threatening to poison him.

He held on until the door had snicked shut behind her and then he began to gasp and wheeze. The sour air working in his tight throat jabbed up and down like a warm poker. He grabbed for his aspirator, hurting his arm but not caring. He triggered a long blast down his throat. He breathed deep of the camphor taste, thinking: It doesn't matter if it's a pla-cee-bo,words don't matter if a thing works.

He lay back against his pillows, eyes closed, breathing freely for the first time since she had come in. He was scared, plenty scared. The things he had said to her, the way he had acted — it had been him and yet it hadn't been him at all. There had been something working in him, working through him, some force . . . and his mother had felt it, too. He had seen it in her eyes and in her trembling lips. He had no sense that this power was an evil one, but its enormous strength was frightening. It was like getting on an amusement-park ride that was really dangerous and realizing you couldn't get off until it was over, come what might.

No turning around, Eddie thought, feeling the hot, itchy weight of the cast that encased his broken arm. No one goes home until we get to the end. But God I'm so scared, so scared. And he knew that the truest reason for demanding she not cut him off from his friends was something he could never have told her: I can't face this alone.

He cried a little then, and then drifted off into a restless sleep. He dreamed of a darkness in which machinery — pumping machinery — ran on and on.

8

It was threatening showers again that evening when Bill and the rest of the Losers returned to the hospital. Eddie was not surprised to see them come filing in. He had known they would be back.

It had been hot all day — it was generally agreed later that that third week of July was the hottest of an exceptionally hot summer — and the thunderheads began to build up around four in the afternoon, purple-black and colossal, pregnant with rain, loaded with lightnings. People went about their errands quickly and a little uneasily, with one eye always cocked at the sky. Most agreed it would rain good and hard by dinnertime, washing some of the thick humidity out of the ear. Derry's parks and playgrounds, underpopulated all summer, were totally deserted that evening by six. The rain had still not fallen, and the 'swings hung moveless and shadeless in a light that was a queer flat yellow. Thunder rumbled thickly — that, a barking dog, and the low mutter of traffic on Outer Main Street were the only sounds that drifted in through Eddie's window until the Losers came.

Bill was first, followed by Richie. Beverly and Stan followed them, then Mike Ben came last. He looked excruciatingly uncomfortable in a white trurtleneck sweater.

They came to his bed, solemn. Not even Richie was smiling.

Their faces, Eddie thought, fascinated. Jeezum-crow, their faces!

He was seeing in them what his mother had seen in him that afternoon: that odd combination of power and helplessness. The yellow stormlight lay on their skins, making their faces seem ghost-like, distant, shadowy.

We're passing over, Eddie thought. Passing over into something new — we're on the border. But what's on the other side? Where are we going? Where?

'H-h-Hello, Eh-Eh –Eddie,' Bill said. 'How you d-d-doin?'

'Okay, Big Bill,' Eddie said, and tried to smile.

'Had a day yesterday, I guess,' Mike said. Thunder rumbled behind his voice. Neither the overhead light nor the bedside lamp was on in Eddie's room, and all of them seemed to fade in and out of the bruised light. Eddie thought of that light all over Derry right now, lying long and still across McCarron Park, falling through the holes in the roof of the Kissing Bridge in smudged lackadaisical rays, making the Kenduskeag look like smoky glass as ifcut its broad shallow path through the Barrens; he thought of seesaws standing at dead angles behind Derry Elementary as the thunderheads piled up and up; he thought of this thundery yellow light, and the stillness, as if the whole town had fallen asleep . . . or died.

'Yes,' he said. 'It was a big day.'

'My f-folks are g-going out to a muh-muh-movie the night a-a-after n-next,' Bill said. 'When the p-pic –hictures change. We're g-going to m-make them then. The suh –suh –suh — '

'Silver balls,' Richie said.

'I thought — '

'It's better this way,' Ben said quietly. 'I still think we could have made the bullets, but thinking isn't good enough. If we were grownups — '

'Oh yeah, the world would be peachy if we were grownups,' Beverly said. 'Grownups can make anything they want, can't they? Grownups can do anything they want, and it always comes out right.' She laughed, a jagged nervous sound. 'Bill wants me to shoot It. Can you feature that, Eddie? Just call me Beverly Oakley.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Eddie said, but he thought he did — he was getting some kind of picture, anyway.

Ben explained. They would melt down one of his silver dollars and make two silver balls a little smaller than ball-bearings. And then, if there really was a werewolf residing at 29 Neibolt Street, Beverly would put a silver ball into Its head with Bill's Bullseye slingshot. Goodbye werewolf. And if they were right about one creature who wore many faces, goodbye It.

There must have been some sort of expression on Eddie's face, because Richie laughed and nodded.

'I know how you feel, man. I thought Bill must have lost his few remaining marbles when he started talking about using his slingshot instead of his dad's gun. But this afternoon — ' He stopped and cleared his throat. This afternoon after your ma blew us out of the water was how he had been about to start, and that obviously wouldn't do. 'This afternoon we went down to the dump. Bill brought his Bullseye. Look.' From his back pocket Richie took a flattened can which had once held Del Monte pineapple chunks. There was a ragged hole about two inches in diameter through the middle of it. 'Beverly did that with a rock, from twenty feet away. Looks like a .38 to me. De Trashmouth was convinced. And when de Trashmouth is convinced, de Trashmouth is convinced.'

'Killing cans is one thing,' Beverly said. 'If it was something else . . . something alive . . . Bill, you should be the one. Really.'

'N-no,' Bill said. 'We a-a-all t-took turns. You suh-suh-saw how it w-w-went.'

'How did it go?' Eddie asked.

Bill explained, slowly and haltingly, while Beverly looked out the window with her lips pressed so tightly together they were white. She was, for reasons she could not explain even to herself, more than afraid: she was deeply embarrassed by what had happened today. On the way over here tonight she had argued again, passionately, that they try to make the bullets after all . . . not because she was any more sure than Bill or Richie that they would actually work when the time came, but because — if something did happen out at that house — the weapon would be in

(Bill's)

someone else's hands.

But facts were facts. They had each taken ten rocks each and shot the Bullseye at ten cans set up twenty feet away. Richie had gotten one out of ten (and his one hit was really only a nick), Ben had gotten two, Bill four, Mike five.

Beverly, shooting almost casually and appearing to aim not at all, had banged nine of the ten cans dead center. The tenth fell over when the rock she fired bounced off the rim.

'But first w-w-w-we g-gotta make the uh-uh-ammo.'

'Night after next? I should be out by then,' Eddie said. His mother would protest that . . . but he didn't think she would protest too much. Not after this afternoon.

'Does your arm hurt?' Beverly asked. She was wearing a pink dress (not the dress he had seen in his dream; perhaps she had worn that this afternoon, when Ma sent them away) on which she had appliquéd small flowers. And silk or nylon hose; she looked very adult but also somehow very childlike, like a girl playing dress-up. Her expression was dreamy and distant. Eddie thought: I bet that's how she looks when she's sleeping.

'Not too much,' he said.

They talked for awhile, their voices punctuated by thunder. Eddie did not ask them about what had happened when they came to the hospital earlier that day, and none of them mentioned it. Richie took out his yo –yo, made it sleep once or twice, then put it back.

Conversation lagged, and in one of the pauses there was a brief click that made Eddie look around. Bill had something in his hand, and for a moment Eddie felt his heart speed up in alarm. For that brief moment he thought it was a knife. But then Stan turned on the room's overhead, dispelling the gloom, and he saw it was only a ballpoint pen. In the light they all looked natural again, real, only his friends.

'I thought we ought to sign your cast,' Bill said. His eyes met Eddie's squarely.

But that's not it, Eddie thought with sudden and alarming clarity. It's a contract. It's acontract, Big Bill, isn't it, or the closest we'll ever get to one. He was frightened . . . and then ashamed and angry at himself. If he had broken his arm before this summer, who would have signed the cast? Anyone besides his mother, and perhaps Dr Handor? His aunts in Haven?

These were his friends, and his mother was wrong: they weren't bad friends. Maybe, he thought, there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends — maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who kelp you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

'Okay,' Eddie said, a little hoarsely. 'Okay, that'd be real good, Big Bill.'

So Bill leaned solemnly over his bed and wrote his name on the hillocky plaster of Paris that encased Eddie's mending arm, the letters large and looping. Richie signed with a flourish. Ben's handwriting was as narrow as he was wide, the letters slanting backward. They looked ready to fall over at the slightest push. Mike Hanlon's writing was large and awkward because he was lefthanded and the angle was bad for him. He signed above Eddie's elbow and circled his name. When Beverly bent over him, he could smell some light flowery perfume on her. She signed in a round Palmer-method script. Stan came last, and wrote his name in tight-packed little letters by Eddie's wrist.

They all stepped back then, as if aware of what they had done. Outside, thunder muttered heavily again. Lightning washed the hospital's wooden exterior in brief stuttering light.

That's it?' Eddie asked.

Bill nodded. 'C-C-Come oh-oh-over to my h-house a-after suh-hupper day a-a-after t-tomorrow if you c-c-can, o-okay?'

Eddie nodded, and the subject was closed.

There was another period of desultory, almost aimless conversation. Some of it was about the dominant topic in Derry that July — the trial of Richard Macklin for the bludgeon– murder of his stepson Dorsey, and the disappearance of Dorsey's older brother, Eddie Corcoran. Macklin would not break down and confess, weeping, on the witness stand for another two days, but the Losers were in agreement that Macklin probably had nothing to do with Eddie's disappearance. The boy had either run away . . . or It had gotten him.

They left around quarter of seven, and the rain still had not fallen. It continued to threaten until long after Eddie's ma had come, made her visit, and gone home again (she had been horrified at the signatures on Eddie's cast, and even more horrified at his determination to leave the hospital the following day — she had been envisioning a stay of a week or more in absolute quiet, so that the ends of the break could 'set together,' as she said).

Eventually the stormclouds broke apart and drifted away. Not so much as a drop of rain had fallen in Derry. The humidity remained, and people slept on porches and on lawns and in sleeping bags in back fields that night.

The rain came the next day, not long after Beverly saw something terrible happen to Patrick Hockstetter.

CHAPTER 1 7 Another One of the Missing:The Death of Patrick Hockstetter

1

When he finishes, Eddie pours himself another drink with a hand not completely steady. He looks at Beverly and says, 'You saw It, didn't you? You saw It take Patrick Hockstetter the day after you all signed my cast.'

The others lean forward.

Beverly pushes her hair back in a reddish cloud. Beneath it her face looks extraordinarily pale. She fumbles a fresh cigarette out of her pack — the last one — and flicks her Bic. She can't seem to guide the flame to the tip of her cigarette. After a moment Bill holds her wrist lightly but firmly and puts the flame where it's supposed to go. Beverly looks at him gratefully and exhales a cloud of bluish-gray smoke.

'Yeah,' she says. 'I saw that happen.'

She shivers.

'He was cruh-cruh-crazy,' Bill says, and thinks: Just the fact that Henry let a flako like Patrick Hockstetter hang around as that summer wore on . . . that says something, doesn't it? Either that Henry was losing some of his charm, some of his attraction, or that Henry's own craziness had progressed far enough so that the Hockstetter kid seemed okay to him. Both came to the same thing — Henry's increasing . . . what? degeneration? Is that the word? Yes, i n l i g h t of what happened to him, where he ended up, I think it is.

There's something else to support the idea, too, Bill thinks, but as yet he can onlyremember it vaguely. He and Richie and Beverly had been down at Tracker Brothers — early August by then, and the summer-school that had kept Henry out of their hair for most of the summer was just about to end — and hadn't Victor Criss approached them? A very frightened Victor Criss? Yes, that had happened. Things had been rapidly approaching the end by then, and Bill thinks now that every kid in Derry had sensed it — the Losers and Henry's group most of all. But that had been later.

'Oh yeah you got that right,' Beverly says flatly. 'Patrick Hockstetter was crazy. None of the girls would sit in front of him in school. You'd be sitting there, doing your arithmetic or writing a story or a composition, and all at once you'd feel this hand . . . almost as light as a feather, but warm and sweaty. Meaty.' She swallows, and there is a small click in her throat. The others watch her solemnly from around the table. 'You'd feel it on your side, or maybe on your breast. Not that any of us had much in the way of breasts back then. But Patrick didn't seem to care about that.

'You'd feel that . . . that touch, and you'd jerk away from it, and turn around, and there Patrick would be, grinning with those big rubbery lips. He had a pencil-box — '

'Full of flies,' Richie says suddenly. 'Sure. He'd kill em with this green ruler he had and then put em in his pencil-box. I even remember what it looked like — red, with a wavy white plastic cover that slid open and closed.'

Eddie is nodding.

'You'd jerk away and he'd grin and then maybe he'd open his pencil-box so you could see the dead flies inside,' Beverly says. 'And the worst thing-the horrible thing — was the way

he'd smile and never say anything. Mrs Douglas knew. Greta Bowie told on him, and I think Sally Mueller said something once, too. But . . . I think Mrs Douglas was scared of him, too.'

Ben has rocked back on the rear legs of his chair, and his hands are laced behind his neck. She still cannot believe how lean he is. 'I'm pretty sure you're right,' he says.

'Wh-What h-happened to h-h-him, Beverly?' Bill asks.

She swallows again, trying to fight off the nightmarish power of what she saw that day in the Barrens, her roller skates tied together and hung over her shoulder, one knee a stinging net of pain from a fall she had taken on Saint Crispin's Lane, another of the short tree-lined streets that dead-ended where the land fell (and still falls) sharply into the Barrens. She remembers (oh these memories, when they come, are so clear and so powerful) that she was wearing a pair of denim shorts — really too short, they came only to just below the hem of her panties. She had become more conscious of her body over the last year — over the last six months, actually, as it began to curve and become more womanly. The mirror was one reason for this heightened consciousness, of course, but not the main one; the main one was that her father seemed even sharper just lately, more apt to use his slapping hand or even his fists. He seemed restless, almost caged, and she was more and more nervous when she was around him, more and more on her mark. It was as if there was a smell they made between them, a smell that wasn't there when she was in the apartment alone, one that had never been there when they were in it together — not until this summer. And when Mom was gone it was worse. If there was a smell, some smell, then he knew it too, maybe, because Bev saw less and less of him as the hot weather wore on, partly because of his summer bowling league, partly because he was helping his friend Joe Tammerly fix cars . . . but she suspects it was partly that smell, the one they made between them, neither of them meaning to but mak ing it just the same, as helpless to stop it as either was helpless to stop sweating in July.

The vision of the birds, hundreds and thousands of them, descending on the roofpeaks of houses, on telephone wires, on TV aerials, intervenes again.

'And poison ivy,' she says aloud.

'W-W-What?' Bill asks.

'Something about poison ivy,' she says slowly, looking at him. 'But it wasn't. It just felt like poison ivy. Mike — ?'

'Never mind,' Mike says. 'It will come. Tell us what you do remember, Bev.'

I remember the blue shorts, she would tell them, and how faded they were getting; how tight around my hips and butt. I had half a pack of Lucky Strikes in one pocket and the Bullseye in the other —

'Do you remember the Bullseye?' she asks Richie, but they all nod.

'Bill gave it to me,' she says. 'I didn't want it, but it . . . he . . . ' She smiles at Bill, a little wanly. 'You couldn't say no to Big Bill, that was all. So I had it and that's why I was out by myself that day. To practice. I still didn't think I'd have the guts to use it when the time came. Except . . . I used it that day. I had to. I killed one of them . . . one of the parts of It. It was terrible. Even now it's hard for me to think of. And one of the others got me. Look.'

She raises her arm and turns it over so they can all see a puckery scar on the roundest part of her upper forearm. It looks as if a hot circular object about the size of a Havana cigar had been pressed against her skin. It is slightly sunken, and looking at it gives Mike Hanlon a chill. This is one of the parts of the story which, like Eddie's unwilling heart –to-heart with Keene, he has suspected but never actually heard.

'You were right about one thing, Richie,' she says. 'That Bullseye was a killer. I was scared of it, but I sorta loved it, too.'

Richie laughs and claps her on the back. 'Shit, I knew that back then, you stupid skirt.'

'You did? Really?'

'Yeah, really,' he says. 'It was something in your eyes, Bevvie.'

'I mean, it looked like a toy, but it was real. You could blow holes in things.'

'And you blew a hole in something with it that day,' Ben muses.

She nods.

'Was it Patrick you — '

'No, God no!' Beverly says. 'It was the other . . . wait.' She crushes out her cigarette, sips her drink, and gets herself under control again. Finally she is. Well . . . no. But she has a feeling it's the closest she's going to get tonight. 'I was roller-skating, you see, and I fell down and gave myself a good scrape. Then I decided I'd go down to the Barrens and practice. I went by the clubhouse first to see if you guys were there. You weren't. Just that smoky smell. You guys remember how long that place went on smelling of smoke?'

They all nod, smiling.

'We never really did get the smell out, did we?' Ben says.

'So then I headed down to the dump,' she says, 'because that's where we had the . . . the tryouts, I guess you'd call them, and I knew there'd be lots of things to shoot at. Maybe even, you know, rats.' She pauses. There's a fine misty sweat on her forehead now. 'That's what I really wanted to shoot at,' she says finally. 'Something that was alive. Not a seagull — I knew I couldn't shoot a gull — but a rat . . . I wanted to see if I could.

'I'm glad I came from the Kansas Street side instead of the Old Cape side, though, because there wasn't much cover over there by the railroad embankment. They would have seen me and God knows what would have happened then.'

'Who would have suh-suh-seen y-you?'

'Them,' Beverly says. 'Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, Belch Huggins, and Patrick Hockstetter. They were down in the dump and —

Suddenly, amazing all of them, she begins to giggle like a child, her cheeks turning rose-red. She giggles until tears stand in her eyes.

'What the hell, Bev,' Rickie says. 'Let us in on the joke.'

'Oh it was a joke, all right,' she says. 'It was a joke, but I think they might have killed me if they knew I'd seen.'

'I remember now!' Ben cries, and he begins to laugh, too. 'I remember you telling us!'

Giggling wildly, Beverly says, 'They had their pants down and they were lighting farts.'

There is an instant of thunderstruck silence and then they all begin to laugh — the sound echoes through the library.

Thinking of exactly how to tell them of Patrick Hockstetter's death, the thing she fixes on first is how approaching the town dump from the Kansas Street side was like entering some weird asteroid belt. There was a rutted din track (a town road, actually; it even had a name, Old Lyme Street) that ran from Kansas Street to the dump, the only actual road into the Barrens — the city's dump trucks used it. Beverly walked near Old Lyme Street but didn't take it — she had grown more cautious — she supposed all of them had — since Eddie's arm had been broken. Especially when she was alone.

She wove her way through the heavy undergrowth, skirting a patch of poison ivy with its reddish oily leaves, smelling the dump's smoky rot, hearing the seagulls. On her left, through occasional breaks in the foliage, she could see Old Lyme Street.

The others are looking at her, waiting. She checks her cigarette pack and finds it empty. Wordlessly, Richie tosses her one of his.

She lights up, looks around at them, and says: 'Heading toward the dump from the Kansas Street side was a little like

2

entering some weird asteroid belt. The dumpoid belt. At first there was nothing but the underbrush growing from the spongy ground underfoot, and then you would see your first dumpoid: a rusty can that had once contained Prince Spaghetti Sauce, maybe, or an S 'OK sodabottle crawling with bugs attracted by the sweet-sticky remains of cream soda or birch beer. Then there would be a bright wink of sun kicking off a scrap of tinfoil caught in a tree. You might see a bedspring (or trip over it, if you weren't watching where you were going) or a bone some dog had carried away, gnawed, dropped.

The dump itself wasn't so bad — was, in fact, sort of interesting, Beverly thought. What was nasty (and sort of creepy) was the way it had of spreading. Of creating this dumpoid belt.

She was getting closer now; the trees were bigger, mostly firs, and the bushes were thinning out. The gulls cheeped and cried in their shrill querulous voices, and the air was smudgy with the smell of burning.

Now, on Beverly's right, leaning at an angle against the base of a spruce tree, was a rusty Amana refrigerator. Beverly glanced at it, thinking vaguely of the state policeman who had visited her class when she had been in the third grade. He had told them that such things as discarded refrigerators were dangerous — a kid could climb into one while playing hide-and –go-seek, for instance, and smother to death inside. Although why anyone would want to get in a scroungy old —

She heard a shout, so close it made her jump, followed by laughter. Beverly grinned. So they were here. They had left the clubhouse because of the smoky smell and had come down here. They were maybe breaking bottles with rocks, maybe just dump-picking.

She began to walk a little faster, the nasty scrape she had gotten earlier now forgotten in her eagerness to see them . . . to see him, with his red hair so much like hers, to see if he would smile at her in that oddly endearing one-sided way of his. She knew she was too young to love a boy, too young to have anything but 'crushes,' but she loved Bill just the same. And she walked a little faster, her skates swinging heavily from her shoulder, the sling of his Bullseye beating soft time against her left buttock.

She almost walked into them before realizing it wasn't her gang at all, but Bowers's.

She walked out of the screening bushes and the dump's steepest side lay about seventy yards ahead, a twinkling avalanche of junk lying along the high angle of the gravel-pit. Mandy Fazio's bulldozer was off to the left. Much closer in front of her was a wilderness of junked cars. At the end of each month these were crushed and haule d off to Portland for scrap, but now there were a dozen or more, some sitting on bare wheel-rims, some on their sides, one or two lying on their roofs like dead dogs. They were arranged in two rows and Beverly walked down the rough trash-littered aisle between them like some punk bride of the future, wondering idly if she could break a windshield with the Bullseye. One of the pockets of her blue shorts bulged with the small ball-bearings that were her practice ammo.

The voices and laughter were coming from beyond the junked-out cars and to the left, at the edge of the dump proper. Beverly rounded the last one, a Studebaker with its entire front end missing. Her hail of greeting died on her lips. The hand she had put up to wave did not exactly fail back to her side; it seemed to wilt.

Her first furiously embarrassed thought was: Oh dear God, why are they all naked?

This was followed by the scary realization of who they were. She froze there in front of the half-Studebaker with her shadow stapled to the heels of her low-topped sneakers. For that one moment she was totally visible to them; if any of the four had looked up from the circle they were squatting in, he could not have missed her, a girl of slightly more than medium height, a pair of skates over one shoulder, the knee of one long coltish leg still oozing blood, her mouth slack-jawed, her cheeks scarlet.

Before darting back behind the Studebaker she saw that they weren't entirely naked after all; they had their shirts on, and their pants an d underpants were simply pulled down to their

shoetops, as if they had to Go Number Two (in her shock, Beverly's mind had automatically reverted to the euphemism she had been taught as a toddler) — except whoever heard of four boys Going Number Two at the same time?

Once out of sight again, her first thought was to get away — get away fast. Her heart was pumping hard, her muscles heavy with adrenaline. She looked around, seeing what she hadn't bothered to notice walking up here, when she had thought the voices she heard belonged to her friends. The row of junked cars on her left was really pretty thin — they were by no means packed in door to door as they would be in the week or so before the crusher came to turn them into rough blocks of twinkling metal. She had been exposed to the boys several times walking up to where she was now; if she retreated, she would be exposed again, and this time she might be seen.

Also, she felt a certain shameful curiosity: what in the world could they be doing?

Carefully, she peeked around the Studebaker.

Henry and Victor Criss were more or less facing in her direction. Patrick Hockstetter was on Henry's left. Belch Huggins had his back to her. She observed the fact that Belch had an extremely large, extremely hairy ass, and half-hysterical giggles suddenly bubbled up her throat like the head on a glass of ginger ale. She had to clap both hands over her mouth and withdraw behind the Studebaker again, struggling to hold the giggles in.

You've got to get out of here, Beverly. If they catch you —

She looked back down between the junked cars, still holding her hands over her mouth. The aisle was maybe ten feet wide, littered with cans, twinkling with little jigsaw pieces of Saf-T-Glas, scruffy with weeds. If she so much as made a sound, they might hear her . . . particularly if their absorption in whatever strange thing they were doing flagged. When she thought of how casually she had walked up here, her blood ran cold. Also . . .

What in the world can they be doing?

She peeked again, seeing more of the details this time. There was a careless scatter of books and papers nearby — schoolbooks. They had just come from their summer classes, then, what most of the kids called Dummy School or Make– up School. And, because Henry and Victor were facing her way, she could see their things. They were the first things she had ever seen in her life, other than pictures in a smudgy little book that Brenda Arrowsmith had showed her the year before, and in those pictures you really couldn't see very much. Bev observed now that their things were little tubes that hung down between their legs. Henry's was small and hairless, but Victor's was quite big, and there was a cloudy fuzz of fine black hair just over it.

Bill has one of those, she thought, and suddenly her whole body seemed to flush at once — heat rushed through her in a wave that made her feel giddy and faint and almost sick to her stomach. In that moment she felt much the way Ben Hanscom had felt on the last day of school, looking down at her ankle bracelet and observing the way it flashed in the sun . . . but he had not felt the intermixed sense of terror she felt now.

She looked behind her once more. Now the pathway between the cars leading to the shelt er of the Barrens seemed much longer. She was scared to move. If they knew she had seen their things, they would probably hurt her. And not just a little, they would hurt her badly.

Belch Huggins bellowed suddenly, making her jump, and Henry yelled: 'Three feet! No shit, Belch! It was three feet! Wasn't it, Vie?'

Vie agreed it was, and they all roared with troll-like laughter.

Beverly tried another look around the junked Studebaker.

Patrick Hockstetter had turned and half-risen so that his butt was nearly in Henry's face. In Henry's hand was a silvery, glinting object. After a moment's study she made it out as a lighter.

'I thought you said you felt one coming on,' Henry said.

'I do,' Patrick said. I'll tell you when. Get ready! . . . Get ready, it's coming! Get . . . now! '

Henry flicked the lighter. At the same moment there was the unmistakable ripping sound of a really good fart. There was no mistaking that sound; Beverly had heard it enough in her own house, usually on Saturday night, after the beans and franks. A regular bear for his beans was her father. As Patrick blew off and Henry flicked the lighter, she saw something that made her jaw drop. A bright blue jet of flame appeared to roar directly out of Patrick's bum. To Bev it looked like the pilot-light on a gasburner.

The boys roared their troll-like laughter and Beverly withdrew behind the sheltering car, stifling mad giggles again. She was laughing, but not because she was amused. In some very weird way it was funny, yes, but mostly she was laughing because she felt a deep revulsion accompanied by a sort of horror. She was laughing because she knew of no other way to cope with what she had seen. It had something to do with seeing the boys' things, but that was by no means all or even the great part of what she felt. She had known, after all, that boys had things, the same way she knew that girls had different things; this was only what you might call a confirmed sighting. But the rest of what they were doing seemed so strange, so ludicrous and yet at the same time so deadly-primitive that she found herself, in spite of the giggling fit, groping for the core of herself with some desperation.

Stop, she thought, as if this were the answer, stop, they'll hear you, so just you stop it, Bevvie!

But that was impossible. The best she could do was to laugh without engaging her vocal cords, so that the sounds came out of her in a series of almost inaudible chuffs, her hands pasted over her mouth, her cheeks as red as Mac apples, her eyes swimming with tears.

'Holy skit, that hurts!' Victor roared.

'Twelve feet! ' Henry bellowed. 'I swear to God, Vie, twelve fuckin feet! I swear it on my mother's name!'

'I don't care if it was twenty fuckin feet, you burned my ass off!' Victor howled, and there was more bellowing laughter; still trying to giggle silently from behind the sheltering car, Beverly thought of a movie she had seen on TV. Jon Hall had been in it. It was about this jungle tribe, they had a secret rite, and fi you saw it, you got sacrificed to their god, which was this big stone idol. This did not stop her giggles, but infused them with a nearly frantic quality. They were becoming more and more like silent screams. Her belly hurt. Tears streamed down her face.

3

Henry, Victor, Belch, and Patrick Hockstetter ended up in the dump lighting each others' farts on that hot July afternoon because of Rena Davenport.

Henry knew what resulted from consuming large amounts of baked beans. This result was perhaps best expressed in a little ditty he had learned at his father's knee when he was still in short pants: Beans, beans, the musical fruit! The more you eat, the more you toot! The more you toot, the better you feel! Then you're ready for another meal!

Rena Davenport and his father had been courting for nearly eight years. She was fat, forty, and usually filthy. Henry supposed that Rena and his father sometimes fucked, although he could not imagine anyone squashing his body down on Rena Davenport's.

Rena's beans were her pride. She soaked them Saturday nights and baked them over a slow fire all day Sunday. Henry supposed they were okay — they were something to shovel into your mouth and chew up, anyway — but after eight years anything lost its charm.

Nor was Rena content to make just a few beans; she cooked them in job lots. When she turned up Sunday evenings in her old green De Soto (a naked rubber babydoll hung from the

rearview mirror, looking like the world's youngest lynch-mob victim), she usually had the Bowerses' beans steaming on the seat beside her in a twelve-gallon galvanized-steel pail. The three of them would eat the beans that night (Rena raving about her own cooking all the while, crazy Butch Bowers grunting and mopping up bean juice with a piece of Sonny Boy bread or simply telling her to shut up if there was a ballgame on the radio, Henry just eating, staring out the window, thinking his own thoughts it was over a plate of Sunday-night beans that he had conceived the idea of poisoning Mike Hanlon's dog Mr Chips), and Butch would reheat a mess of them the next night. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays Henry would take a Tupperware box full of them to school. By Thursday or Friday, neither Henry or his father could eat any more. The house's two bedrooms would smell of stale farts in spite of the open windows. Butch would take the remains and mix them into the other slops and feed them to Bip and Bop, the Bowerses' two pigs. Rena would like as not show up the following Sunday with another steaming pail, and the cycle would start all over again.

That morning Henry had put up an enormous quantity of leftover beans, and the four of them had eaten the whole lot at noon, sitting out on the playground in the shade of a big old elm. They had eaten until they were nearly bursting.

It had been Patrick who suggested they go down to the dump, which would be fairly quiet in the middle of a working-day summer afternoon. By the time they arrived, the beans were doing their work quite nicely.

4

Little by little, Beverly got herself under control again. She knew she had to get out; beating a retreat was ultimately less dangerous than hanging around. They were absorbed in what they were doing, and even if worse came to worst, she could get a head-start (and in the back of her mind she had also decided that, if worst came to terrible, a few shots from the Bullseye might discourage them).

She was about to begin creeping away when Victor said, 'I gotta go, Henry. My dad wants me to help him pick com this afternoon.'

'Oh shit,' Henry said. 'He'll live.'

'No, he's mad at me. Because of what happened the other day.'

'Fuck him if he can't take a joke.'

Beverly listened more closely now, suspecting it might be the scuffle which had ended with Eddie's broken arm that they were talking about.

'No, I gotta go.'

'I think his ass hurts,' Patrick said.

'Watch your mouth, fuckface,' Victor said. 'It might grow on you.'

'I got to go too,' Belch said.

'Your father want you to pick corn?' Henry asked angrily. This was what might have passed for a jest in Henry's mind; Belch's father was dead.

'No. But I got a job delivering the Weekly Shopper. I gotta do that tonight.'

'What's this Weekly Shopper crap?' Henry asked, now sounding upset as well as angry.

'It's a job,' Belch said with ponderous patience. 'I make money. '

Henry made a disgusted sound, and Beverly risked another peek around the car. Victor and Belch were standing, buckling their belts. Henry and Patrick were still squatting with their pants down. The lighter glinted in Henry's hand.

'You're not chickening out, are you?' Henry asked Patrick.

'Nope,' Patrick said.

'You don't have to pick corn or go do some pussy job?'

'Nope,' Patrick said again.

'Well,' Belch said uncertainly, 'see you around, Henry.'

'Sure,' Henry said, and spat near one of Belch's clodhopping workshoes.

Vie and Belch started off together toward the two rows of wrecked cars . . . toward the Studebaker behind which Beverly was crouching. At first she could only cringe, frozen with fear like a rabbit. Then she slid around the left side of the Studebaker and backed down the gap between it and the battered, doorless Ford next to it. For a moment she paused, looking from side to side, hearing them approach. She hesitated, her mouth cottony-dry, her back itchy with sweat; a part of her mind was numbly wondering how she'd look-in a cast like Eddie's, with the Losers' names signed on it. Then she dived into the Ford on the passenger sid e. She curled up on the filthy floormat, making herself as small as possible. It was boiling hot inside the junked-out Ford, and it smelled so thickly of dust, rotting upholstery, and elderly rat-crap that she had to struggle grimly to keep from sneezing or coughing. She heard Belch and Victor pass close by, talking in low voices. Then they were gone.

She sneezed three times, quickly and quietly, into her cupped hands.

She supposed she could go now, if she was careful. The best way to do it would be to shift over to the driver's side of the Ford, sneak back to the aisle, and then just do a fade. She believed she could manage it, but the shock of almost being discovered had robbed her of her courage, at least for the time being. She felt safer here in the Ford. And maybe, now that Victor and Belch had gone, the other two would also go soon. Then she could go back to the clubhouse. She had lost all interest in target-shooting.

Also, she had to pee.

Come on, she thought. Come on, hurry up and go, hurry up and go, puh-LEEZE!

A moment later she heard Patrick roar with mixed laughter and pain.

'Six feet!' Henry bellowed. 'Just like a fuckin blowtorch! Swear to God!'

Silence then for awhile. Sweat trickling down her back. The sun beating ht rough the Ford's cracked windshield on the nape of her neck. Heaviness in her bladder.

Henry bellowed so loud that Beverly, who had been close to dozing in spite of her discomfort, almost cried out herself. 'Damn it, Hockstetter! You burned my frigging ass! What are you doing with that lighter?'

'Ten feet,' Patrick giggled (just the sound of it made Bev feel cold and revolted, as if she had seen a worm squirm its way out of her salad). 'Ten feet if it was an inch, Henry. Bright blue. Ten feet if it was an inch. Swear to God!'

'Gimme that,' Henry grunted.

Come on, come on, you stupidniks, go, get out!

When Patrick spoke again his voice was so low Bev could barely hear it. If there had been the slightest breath of wind on the air that baking afternoon, she would not have done.

'Let me show you something,' Patrick said.

'What?' Henry asked.

'Just something.' Patrick paused. 'It feels good.'

'What?' Henry asked again.

Then there was silence.

I don't want to look, I don't want to see what they're doing now, and besides, they might see me, in fact they probably will because you've used up all your luck today, girly-o. So just stay right here. No peeking . . .

But her curiosity had overcome her good sense. There was something strange in that silence, something a little bit scary. She raised her head inch by inch until she could look through the Ford's cracked cloudy windshield. She needn't have worried about being seen; both of the boys were concentrating on what Patrick was doing. She didn't understand what

she was seeing, but she knew it was nasty . . . not that she would have expected anything else from Patrick, who was just so weird.

He had one hand between Henry's thighs and one hand between his own. One hand wa s flogging Henry's thing gently; with his other hand Patrick was rubbing his own. Except he wasn't exactly rubbing it — he was kind of . . . squeezing it, pulling it, letting it flop back down.

What is he doing? Beverly wondered, dismayed.

She did n't know, not for sure, but it scared her. She didn't think she had been this scared since the blood had vomited out of the bathroom drain and splattered all over everything. Some deep part of her cried out that if they discovered she had seen this, whatever it was, they might do more than hurt her; they might actually kill her. Still, she couldn't look away.

She saw that Patrick's thing had gotten a little longer, but not much; it still dangled between his legs like a snake with no backbone. Henry's, however, had grown amazingly. It stood up stiff and hard, almost poking his bellybutton. Patrick's hand went up and down, up and down, sometimes pausing to squeeze, sometimes tickling that odd, heavy sac under Henry's thing.

Those are his balls, Beverly thought. Do boys have to go around with those all the time? God, I'd go crazy! Another part of her mind then whispered: Bill has those. On its own, her mind visualized her holding them, cupping them in her hand, testing their texture . . . and that hot fe eling raced through her again, sparking off a furious blush.

Henry stared at Patrick's hand as if hypnotized. His lighter lay on the rocky scree beside him, reflecting hot afternoon sun.

'Want me to put it in my mouth?' Patrick asked. His big, livery lips smiled complacently.

'Huh?' Henry asked, as if startled from some deep dream.

'I'll put it in my mouth if you want. I don't m — '

Henry's hand flashed out, half-curled, not quite a fist. Patrick was knocked sprawling. His head thudded on the gravel. Beverly dived down again, her heart crashing in her chest, her teeth locked against a little whimpering moan. After knocking Patrick down, Henry had turned and for a moment, just before she dropped back into her little huddled ball on the passenger side of the driveshaft hump, it seemed that her eyes and Henry's had locked.

Please God the sun was in his eyes, she prayed. Please God I'm sorry I peeked. Please God.

There was an agonizing pause then. Her white blouse was plastered to her body with sweat. Droplets like seed pearls gleamed on her tanned arms. Her bladder throbbed painfully. She felt that very soon she would wet her pants. She waited for Henry's furious crazy face to appear in the opening where the Ford's passenger door had been, sure it was going to happen — how could he have missed seeing her? He would drag her out and hurt her. He would —

A new and even more terrible thought now occurred to her, and once again she had to engage in a painful, crampy struggle to keep from wetting her pants. Suppose he did something to her with his thing) Suppose he wanted her to put it in her somewhere? She knew where it was supposed to go, all right; it seemed that knowledge had suddenly sprung into her mind full –blown. She thought that if Henry tried to put his thing in her she would go crazy.

Please no, please God don't let him have seen me, please, okay?

Then Henry spoke, and to her growing horror his voice was coming from someplace much closer. 'I don't go for that queer stuff.'

From farther off, Patrick's voice: 'You liked it.'

'I didn't like it!' Henry shouted. 'And if you tell anyone I did, I'll kill you, you fucking little pansy!'

'You got a boner,' Patrick said. He sounded like he was smiling. As much as she feared Henry Bowers, the smile would not have surprised Beverly. Patrick was crazy, crazier than Henry, maybe, and people that crazy weren't afraid of anything. 'I saw it.'

Footsteps crunched over the gravel — closer and closer. Beverly looked up, her eyes bulging. Through the Ford's old windshield she could now see the back of Henry's head. He was looking toward Patrick now, but if he turned around —

'If you tell anyone, I'll say you're a cocksucker,' Henry said. 'Then I'll kill you.'

'You don't scare me, Henry,' Patrick said, and giggled. 'But I might not tell if you gave me a dollar.'

Henry shifted restlessly. He turned slightly; Beverly could now see one-quarter of his profile instead of just the back of his head. Please God please God, she begged incoherently, and her bladder throbbed more strongly.

'If you tell,' Henry said, his voice low and deliberate, 'I'll tell what you've been doing with the cats. With the dogs, too. I'll tell them about your refrigerator. You know what'll happen, Hockstetter? They'll come and take you away and put you into the fucking-A loonybin.'

Silence from Patrick.

Henry drummed his fingers on the hood of the Ford Beverly was hiding in. 'Do you hear me?'

'I hear you.' Patrick sounded sullen now. Sullen and a little scared. He burst out: 'You liked it! You got a boner! Biggest boner I ever saw!'

'Yeah, I bet you seen a lot of em, you fuckin little homo faggot. You just remember what I said about the refrigerator. Your refrigerator. And if I see you around again, I'll knock your block off.'

More silence from Patrick.

Henry moved away. Beverly turned her head and saw him pass by the driver's side of the Ford. If he had looked to his left even a little bit, he would have seen her. But he didn't look. A moment later she heard him heading off the way Victor and Belch had gone.

Now there was just Patrick.

Beverly waited, but nothing happened. Five minutes dragged by. Her need to urinate was now desperate. She might be able to hold out for another two or three minutes, but no more. And it made her uneasy not to know for sure where Patrick was.

She peeked through the windshield again and saw him just sitting there. Henry had forgotten his lighter. Patrick had put his schoolbooks back into a small canvas carrier sack and had slung it around his neck like a newsboy's, but his pants and underpants were still down around his ankles. He was playing with the lighter. He would spin the wheel, produce a flame that was almost invisible in the bright day, snap the lighter closed, and then start all over again. He seemed hypnotized. A line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth to his chin, and his lips were swelling up on the right side. He seemed not to notice, and once again Beverly felt a squirmy sort of revulsion. Patrick was crazy, all right; she had never in her life wanted so badly to get away from someone.

Moving very carefully, she crawled backward over the Ford's driveshaft hump and squeezed under the steering wheel. She put her feet out on the ground and crept to the back of the Ford. Then she ran quickly back the way she had come. When she had entered the pines beyond the junked cars; she looked back over her shoulder. No one was there. The dump dozed in the sun. She felt the bands of tension around her chest and stomach loosen with relief, and all that was left was the need to urinate, so great that she now felt sick with it.

She hurried down the path a short way and then ducked off to the right. She had her shorts unsnapped almost before the underbrush had closed behind her again. She took a quick look around to make sure there was no poison ivy at hand; then she squatted, holding the tough trunk of a bush for balance.

She was pulling her shorts up again when she heard approaching footsteps from the dump. All she could see through the bushes were flashes of blue denim and the faded plaid of a school-shirt. It was Patrick. She ducked down, waiting for him to pass by toward Kansas Street. She was more sanguine about her position here. The cover was good, she no longer had to pee, and Patrick was off in his own cuckoo world. When he was gone she would double back and head for the clubhouse.

But Patrick didn't pass by. He stopped on the path almost directly opposite her and stood looking at the rusting Amana refrigerator.

Beverly could observe Patrick along a natural sight– line in the bushes without too much chance of being seen. Now that she was relieved, she found she was curious again — a n d i f Patrick did happen to see her, she felt certain she could outrun him. He wasn't as fat as Ben, but he was podgy. She pulled the Bullseye out of her back pocket, however, and put half a dozen steel pellets in the breast pocket of her old Ship 'n Shore. Crazy or not, a good one to the knee might discourage the likes of Patrick Hockstetter in a hurry.

She remembered the refrigerator well enough now. There were lots of discarded fridges at the dump, but it suddenly occurred to her that this was the only one she'd seen which Mandy Fazio hadn't disarmed by either tearing out the latching mechanism with pliers or simply removing the door altogether.

Patrick began to hum and sway back and forth in front of the rusty old refrigerator, and Beverly felt a fresh chill course through her. He was like a guy in a horror movie trying to summon a dead body out of a crypt.

What's he up to?

But if she had known that, or what was going to happen when Patrick finished his private ritual and opened the dead Amana's rusty door, she would have run away as fast as she could.

5

No one — not even Mike Hanlon — had the slightest idea of how crazy Patrick Hockstetter really was. He was twelve, the son of a paint salesman. His mother was a devout Catholic who would die of breast cancer in 1962, of ur years after Patrick was consumed by the dark entity which existed in and below Derry. Although his IQ tested out as low normal, Patrick had already repeated two grades, the first and third. He was taking summer classes this year so he would not have to repeat the fifth as well. His teachers found him an apathetic student (this several of them noted on the bare six lines of the Derry Elementary School's report cards reserved for TEACHER'S COMMENTS) and a rather disturbing one as well (which none noted — their feelings were too vague, too diffuse, to be expressed in sixty lines, let alone six). If he had been born ten years later, a guidance counsellor might have steered him toward a child psychologist who might (or might not; Patrick was far more clever than his lackluster IQ results indicated) have realized the frightening depths behind that slack and pallid moonface.

He was a sociopath, and perhaps, by that hot July in 1958, he had become a full-fledged psychopath. He could not remember a time when he had believed that other people — a n y other living creatures, for that matter — were 'real.' He believed himself to be an actual creature, probably the only one in the universe, but was by no means convinced that his actuality made him 'real.' He had no sense of hurting, exactly, and no real sense of being hurt (his indifference to being struck in the mouth by Henry in the dump was a case in point). But while he found reality a totally meaningless concept, he understood the concept of 'rules' perfectly. And while all of his teachers had found him odd (both Mrs Douglas, his fifth-grade teacher, and Mrs Weems, who had had Patrick in the third grade, knew about the pencil-box full of flies, and while neither of them totally ignored the implications, each had between

twenty and twenty-eight other students, each with problems of his or her own), none of them had serious disciplinary problems with him. He might turn in test papers that were utterly blank — or blank except for a large, decorative question-mark — a nd Mrs Douglas had discovered it was best to keep him away from the girls because of his Roman hands and Russian fingers, but he was quiet, so quiet that there were times when he might have been taken for a big lump of clay that had been crudely fashioned to look like a boy. It was easy to ignore a Patrick, who failed quietly, when you had to cope with boys like Henry Bowers and Victor Criss, who were actively disruptive and insolent, boys who would steal milk-money or happily deface school property if given a chance, and girls like the unfortunately named Elizabeth Taylor, who was epileptic and whose few poor brain-cells worked only sporadically and who had to be discouraged from pulling her dresses up in the playyard to show off a new pan: of panties. In other words, Derry Elementary School was the typical confused educational carnival, a circus with so many rings that Pennywise himself might have gone unnoticed. Certainly none of Patrick's teachers (or his parents, for that matter) suspected that, when he was five, Patrick had murdered his baby brother Avery.

Patrick had not liked it when his mother brought Avery home from the hospital. He didn't care (or so he at first told himself) if his parents had two kids, five kids, or five dozen kids, as long as the kid or kids didn't alter his own schedule. But he found that Avery did. Meals came late. The baby cried in the night and woke him up. It seemed that his parents were always hanging over its crib, and often when he tried to get their attention he found that he could not. For one of the few times in his life, Patrick became frightened. It occurred to him that if his parents had brought him, Patrick, home from the hospital, and if he was 'real,' then Avery might be 'real,' too. It might even be that, when Avery got big enough to walk and talk, to bring in his father's copy of the Derry News from the front step and to hand his mother the bowls when she baked bread, they might decide to get rid of Patrick altogether. It was not that he feared they loved Avery more (although it was obvious to Patrick that they did love him more, and in this case his judgment was probably correct). What he cared about was (1) the rules that were being broken or had changed since Avery's arrival, (2) Avery's possible reality, and (3) the possibility that they might throw him out in favor of Avery.

Patrick went into Avery's room one afternoon around two-thirty, shortly after the school-bus had dropped him off from his afternoon kindergarten session. It was January. Outside, snow was beginning to fall. A powerful wind boomed across McCarron Park and rattled the frosty upstairs storm windows. His mother was napping in her bedroom; Avery had been fussy all the previous night. His father was at work. Avery was sleeping on his stomach, his head turned to one side.

Patrick, his moonface expressionless, turned Avery's head so his face was pressed directly into the pillow. Avery made a snuffling noise and turned his head back to the side. Patrick observed this, and stood thinking about it while the snow melted off his yellow boots and puddled on the floor. Perhaps five minutes passed (quick thinking was not Patrick's specialty), and then he turned Avery's face into the pillow again and held it there for a moment. Avery stirred under his hand, struggling. But his struggles were weak. Patrick let go. Avery turned his head to the side again, made one snorting little cry, and then went on sleeping. The wind gusted, rattling the windows. Patrick waited to see if the one little cry would awaken his mother. It didn't.

Now he felt swept by a great excitement. The world seemed to stand out in front of him clearly for the first time. His emotional equipment was severely defective, and in those few moments he felt as a totally color-blind person might feel if given a shot which enabled him to perceive colors for a short time . . . or as a junkie who has just fixed feels as the smack rockets his brain into orbit. This was a new thing. He had not suspected it existed.

Very gently, he turned Avery's face into the pillow again. This time when Avery struggled, Patrick did not let go. He pressed the baby's face more firmly into the pillow. The baby was making steady muffled cries now, and Patrick knew it was awake. He had a vague idea that it might tell on him to his mother if he stopped. He held it down. The baby struggled. Patrick held it down. The baby farted. Its struggles weakened. Patrick still held it down. It eventually became totally still. Patrick held it down for another five minutes, feeling that excitement crest and then begin to ebb: the shot wearing off, turning the world gray again, the fix mellowing into an accustomed low doze.

Patrick went downstairs and got himself a plate of cookies and poured himself a glass of milk. His mother came down half an hour later and said she hadn't even heard him come in, she had been that tired (you won't be anymore, Mom, Patrick thought, don't worry, I fixed it). She sat down with him, ate one of his cookies, and asked him how school had been. Patrick said it was all right and showed her his drawing of a house and a tree. His paper was covered with looping meaningless scribbles made with black and brown crayon. His mother said it was very nice. Patrick brought home the same looping scrawls of black and brown every day. Sometimes he said it was a turkey, sometimes a Christmas tree, sometimes a boy. His mother always told him it was very nice . . . although sometimes, in a part of her so deep she hardly knew it was there, she worried. There was something a little disquieting about the dark sameness of those big scribbled loops of black and brown.

She didn't discover Avery's death until nearly five o'clock; until then she had simply assumed he was taking a very long nap. By then Patrick was watch i n g Crusader Rabbit on their seven-inch TV, and he went on watching TV through all the uproar that followed. Whirlybirds was on when Mrs Henley arrived from next door (his screaming mother had been holding the baby's corpse in the open kitchen door, believing in some blind way that the cold air might revive it; Patrick was cold and got a sweater out of the downstairs closet). HighwayPatrol, Ben Hanscom's favorite, was on when Mr Hockstetter arrived home from work. By the time the doctor arrived, Science Fiction Theater, with Your Host Truman Bradley, was just coming on. 'Who knows what strange things the universe may hold?' Truman Bradley speculated while Patrick's mother shrieked and struggled in her husband's arms in the kitchen. The doctor observed Patrick's deep calm and unquestioning stare and assumed the boy was in shock. He wanted Patrick to take a pill. Patrick didn't mind.

It was diagnosed as crib –death. Years later there might have been questions about such a fatality, deviations from the usua l infant-death syndrome observed. But when it happened, the death was simply noted and the baby buried. Patrick was gratified that once things finally settled down his meals began to come on time again.

In the madness of that afternoon and evening — people banging in and out of the house, the red lights of the Home Hospital ambulance pulsing on the walls, Mrs Hockstetter screaming and wailing and refusing to be comforted — only Patrick's father came within brushing distance of the truth. He was standing numbly by Avery's empty crib some twenty minutes after the body had been removed, simply standing there, unable to believe any of this had happened. He looked down and saw a pair of tracks on the hardwood floor. They had been made by the snow melting off Patrick's yellow rubber boots. He looked at them, and a dreadful thought rose briefly in his mind like bad gas from a deep mineshaft. His hand went slowly to his mouth and his eyes widened. A picture began to form in his mind. Before it could come clear he left the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that the top of the frame splintered.

He never asked Patrick any questions.

Patrick had never done anything like that again, although he might have done so if the chance had presented itself. He felt no guilt, had no bad dreams. As time passed, however, he became more aware of what would have happened to him if he had been caught. There were

rules. Unpleasant things happened to you if you didn't follow them . . . or if you were caught breaking them. You could be locked up or stuck in the electrocution chair.

But that remembered feeling of excitement — that feeling of color and sensation — was simply too powerful and too wonderful to give over entirely. Patrick killed flies. At first he only smacked them with his mother's flyswatter; later he discovered he could kill them quite efficiently with a plastic ruler. He also discovered the joys of flypaper. A long sticky runner of it could be purchased for two cents at the Costello Avenue Market and Patrick sometimes stood for as long as two hours in the garage, watching the flies land and then struggle to get free, his mouth ajar, his dusty eyes alight with that rare excitement, sweat running down his round face and his thick body. Patrick killed beetles, but if possible he captured them first. Sometimes he would steal a long needle from his mother's pincushion, impale a Japanese beetle on it, and sit cross-legged in the garden watching it die. His expression at these times was the expression of a boy who is reading a very good book. Once he had discovered a run-over cat that was dying in the gutter on Lower Main Street and sat watching it until an old woman saw him pushing the squashed and mewing thing around with his foot. She whacked him with the broom she had been using to sweep her walk. Go on home! she had shouted at him. What are you, crazy? Patrick had gone on home. He wasn't mad at the old woman. He had been caught breaking the rules, that was all.

Then, last year (it would not have surprise d Mike Hanlon or any of the others at that point to have known that it was, in fact, on the same day that George Denbrough had been murdered), Patrick had discovered the rusty Amana refrigerator — one of the larger dumpoids in the belt surrounding the dump itself.

Like Bev, he had heard the cautionary warnings about such abandoned appliances, about how thirty –squirty million kids got their stupid selves smoked in them each year. Patrick had stood looking at the refrigerator for a long time, idly playing pocket-pool with himself. That excitement was back, stronger than it had ever been, except for the time he had fixed Avery. The excitement was back because, in the chilly yet fuming wastes that passed for his mind, Patrick Hockstetter had had an idea.

The Luces, who lived three houses down from the Hockstetters, missed their cat, Bobby, a week later. The Luce kids, who couldn't remember a time when Bobby hadn't been there, spent hours combing the neighborhood for him. They even pooled their money and pu t an ad in the Derry News Lost and Found column. Nothing came of it. And if any of them had seen Patrick that day, bulkier than ever in his mothball-smelling winter parka (after the floodwaters receded in that fall of '57, it had come off bitterly cold almost at once), carrying a cardboard carton, they would have thought nothing of it.

The Engstroms, a block over and almost directly behind the Hockstetter home, lost their cocker pup about ten days before Thanksgiving. Other families lost dogs and cats over the next six or eight months, and Patrick of course had taken them all, not to mention a dozen unremarked strays from the Hell's Half-Acre area of Derry.

He put them into the rusty Amana near the dump, one by one. Each time he brought another animal down, his heart thundering in his chest, his eyes hot and watery with excitement, he would expect to find that Mandy Fazio had pulled the Amana's latch or popped the hinges with his sledgehammer. But Mandy never touched that particular refrigerator. Perhaps he didn't realize it was there, perhaps the force of Patrick's will kept him away . . . or perhaps some other force did that.

The Engstroms' cocker lasted the longest. In spite of the single-number cold, it was still alive when Patrick came back fo r the third time in as many days, although it had lost all of its original friskiness (it had been wagging its tail and lapping his hands frantically when he originally hauled it out of the box and stuffed it into the refrigerator). When he came back a day after putting it in, the puppy had damn near gotten away. Patrick had to chase it almost

all the way to the dump before he was able to jump it and get hold of one rear leg. The puppy had nipped Patrick with its sharp little teeth. Patrick didn't mind. In spite of the nips, he had taken the cocker back to the refrigerator and bundled it back in. He had a hard-on when he did it. This was not uncommon.

On the second day the puppy had tried to get out again, but it moved much too slowly. Patrick shoved it back in, slammed the Amana's rusty door, and leaned against it. He could hear the puppy scratching against the door. He could hear its muffled whines. 'Good dog,' said Patrick Hockstetter. His eyes were closed and he was breathing fast. 'That's a good dog.' On the third day the puppy could only roll its eyes toward Patrick's face when the door opened. Its sides were heaving rapidly and shallowly. When Patrick returned the next day, the cocker was dead with a cake of foam frozen around its mouth and muzzle. This made Patrick think of coconut Popsicles, and he laughed quite hard as he hauled the frozen corpse from his killing-bottle and threw it in the bushes.

The supply of victims (which Patrick thought of, when he thought of them at all, as 'test animals') had been thin this summer. Questions of reality aside, his sense of self-preservation was well developed, his intuition exquisite. He suspected he was suspected. By whom he was not sure: Mr Engstrom? Perhaps. Mr Engstrom had turned around and given Patrick a long speculative look in the A&P one day this spring. Mr Engstrom had been buying cigarettes and Patrick had been sent for bread. Mrs Josephs? Maybe. She sat in her parlor window with a telescope sometimes and was, according to Mrs Hockstetter, a 'nosy parker.' Mr Jacubois, who had an ASPCA sticker on the back bumper of his car? Mr Nell? Someone else? Patrick didn't know for sure, but his intuition told him he was suspected, and he never argued with his intuition. He had taken a few wandering animals from among the rotted tenements in the Half-Acre, picking only those that looked thin or diseased, but that was all.

He discovered, however, that the refrigerator near the dump had gotten an oddly powerful hold over him. He began to draw pictures of it in school when he was bored. He sometimes dreamed of it at night, and in his dreams the Amana was perhaps seventy feet tall, a whited sepulchre, a ponderous crypt iced in chilly moonlight. In these dreams the giant door would swing open and he would see huge eyes staring out at him. He would awake in a cold sweat, but he found he could not give up the joys of the refrigerator entirely.

Today he had finally found out who had suspected. Bowers. Knowing that Henry Bowers held the secret of his killing-bottle in his hands left Patrick as close to panic as he was ever apt to get. This was not very close at all, in truth, but he still found this — not fear exactly, but mental unrest — oppressive and unpleasant. Henry knew. Knew that Patrick sometimes broke the rules.

His latest victim had been a pigeon he discovered on Jackson Street two days ago. The pigeon had been struck by a car and couldn't fly. Patrick went home, got his box out of the garage, and put the pigeon inside. The pigeon pecked the back of Patrick's hand several times, leaving shallow, bloody digs. Patrick didn't mind. When he checked the refrigerator the next day, the pigeon had been quite dead, but Patrick hadn't removed the corpse then. Now, following Henry's threat to tell, Patrick decided he better get rid of the pigeon's body right away. Perhaps he would even get a bucket of water and some rags and scrub out the interior of the refrigerator. It didn't smell very good. If Henry told and Mr Nell came down to check, he might be able to tell that something — several somethings, in fact — had died in there.

If he tells, Patrick thought, standing in the grove of pines and looking at the rusty Amana, I'll tell that he broke Eddie Kaspbrak's arm. Of course they probably knew that already, bu t they couldn't prove anything because all of them said they had been playing out at Henry's house that day and Henry's crazy father had backed them up. But if he tells, I'll tell. Tit for tat.

Never mind that now. What he had to do now was get rid of the bird. He would leave the refrigerator door open and then come back with the rags and the water and clean it up. Good.

Patrick opened the refrigerator door on his own death.

At first he was simply puzzled, unable to cope in any way with what he was seeing. It meant nothing to him at all. It had no context. Patrick merely stared, his head cocked to one side, his eyes wide.

The pigeon was nothing but a skeleton surrounded by a ragged fall of feathers. There was no flesh left on its body at all. And around it, stuck on the refrigerator's inner walls, hanging from the underside of the freezer compartment, dangling from the wire shelves, were dozens of flesh-colored objects that looked like big macaroni shells. Patrick saw that they were moving slightly, fluttering, as if in a breeze. Except there was no breeze. He frowned.

Suddenly one of the shell-like things unfurled insectile wings. Before Patrick could do more than register the fact, it had flown across the space between the refrigerator and Patrick's left arm. It struck with a smacking sound. There was an instant of heat. It faded and Patrick's arm felt just like always again . . . but the shell-like creature's pale flesh turned first pink, and then, with shocking suddenness, rose-red.

Although Patrick was afraid of almost nothing in the commonly understood sense of the word (it's hard to be afraid of things that aren't 'real'), there was at least one thing that filled him with wretched loathing. He had come out of Brewster Lake one warm August day when he was seven to discover four or five leeches clinging to his stomach and legs. He had screamed himself hoarse until his father had pulled them off.

Now, in a deadly burst of inspiration, he realized that this was some weird kind of flying leech. They had infested his refrigerator.

Patrick began to scream and beat at the thing on his arm. It had swelled to nearly the size of a tennis ball. At the third blow it broke open with a sickening squtt sound. Blood — his blood — sprayed his arm from elbow to wrist, but the thing's jellylike eyeless head held on. In a way, it was like a bird's narrow head, ending in a beaklike structure, but this beak was not flat or pointed; it was tubular and blunt, like the proboscis of a mosquito. This proboscis was buried in Patrick's arm.

Still screaming, he pinched the splattered creature between his fingers and pulled it off. The proboscis came out cleanly, followed by a watery flow of blood mixed with some yellowish-white liquid like pus. It had made a painless dime-sized hole in his arm.

And the creature, although exploded, was still twisting and moving and seeking in his fingers.

Patrick threw it away, turned . . . and more of them flew out of the refrigerator, lighting on him even as he groped for the Amana's handle. They landed on his hands, his arms, his neck. One touched down on his forehead. When Patrick raised his hand to pick it off, he saw four others on his hand, trembling minutely, turning first pink and then red.

There was no pain . . . but there was a hideous draining sensation. Screaming, whirling, beating at his head and neck with his leech-encrusted hands, Patrick Hockstetter's mind yammered: It isn't real, it's just a bad dream, don't worry, it's not real, nothing is real —

But the blood pouring from the smashed leeches seemed real enough, the sound of their buzzing wings seemed real enough . . . and his own terror seemed real enough.

One of them fell down inside his shirt and settled on his chest. While he was beating frantically at it and watching the bloodstain spread above the place where it had taken its hold, another settled on his right eye. Patrick closed it, but that did no good; he felt a brief hot flare as the thing's sucker poked through his eyelid and began to suck the fluid out of his eyeball. Patrick felt his eye collapse in its socket and he screamed again. A leech flew into his mouth when he did and roosted on his tongue.

It was all almost painless.

Patrick went staggering and flapping up th e path toward the junked cars. Parasites hung all over him. Some of them drank to capacity and then burst like balloons; when this happened

to the bigger ones, they drenched Patrick with almost half a pint of his own hot blood. He could feel the leech inside his mouth swelling up and he opened his jaws because the only coherent thought he had left was that it must not burst in there; it must not, must not.

But it did. Patrick ejected a huge spray of blood and parasite-flesh like vomit. He fell down in the gravelly dirt and began to roll over and over, still screaming. Little by little the sound of his own screams began to seem faint, faraway.

Just before he passed out, he saw a figure step from behind the last of the junked cars. At first Patrick thought he was a guy, Mandy Fazio perhaps, and he would be saved. But as the figure drew closer, he saw its face was running like wax. Sometimes it began to harden and look like something — or someone — and then it would start to run again, as if it couldn't make up its mind who or what it wanted to be.

'Hello and goodbye,' a bubbling voice said from inside the running tallow of its features, and Patrick tried to scream again. He didn't want to die; as the only 'real' person, he wasn't supposed to die. If he did, everyone else in the world would die with him.

The manshape laid hold of his leech-encrusted arms and began to drag him away toward the Barrens. His bloodstained book-carrier bumped and thumped along beside him, its strap still twisted about his neck. Patrick, still trying to scream, lost consciousness.

He awoke only once: when, in some dark, smelly, drippy hell where no light shone, no light at all, It began to feed.

6

At first Beverly was not entirely sure what she was seeing or what wa s happening . . . only that Patrick Hockstetter had begun to thrash and dance and scream. She got up warily, holding the slingshot in one hand and two of the ball-bearings in the other. She could hear Patrick blundering off down the path, still yelling h is head off. In that moment, Beverly looked every inch the lovely woman she was going to become, and if Ben Hanscom had been around to see her just then, his heart might not have been able to stand it.

She was standing fully upright, her head cocked to the left, her eyes wide, her hair done in braids that had been tied off with two small red velvet bows which she had bought in Dahlie's for a dime. Her posture was one of total attention and concentration; it was feline, lynxlike. She had shifted forward on her left foot, her body half-turned as if to go after Patrick, and the legs of her faded shorts had pulled up enough to show the edging on her yellow cotton panties. Below them, her legs were already smoothly muscled, beautiful in spite of the scabs, bruises, and smutches of dirt.

It's a trick. He saw you and he knows he probably can't catch you in a fair chase, so he's trying to get you to come out. Don't go, Bevvie.'

But another part of her thought there was too much pain and fear in those screams. She wished she had seen whatever had happened to Patrick — if anything had — more clearly. She wished more than anything else that she had come into the Barrens a different way and missed the whole crazy shenanigans.

Patrick's screams stopped. A moment later Beverly heard someone speak — but she knew that had to be her imagination. She heard her father say, 'Hello and goodbye.' Her father wasn't even in Derry that day: he had set off for Brunswick at eight o'clock. He and Joe Tammerly were going to pick up a Chevy truck in Brunswick. She shook her head as if to clear it. The voice didn't speak again. Her imagination, obviously.

She walked out of the bushes to the path, ready to run the instant she saw Patrick charging at her, her reactions on triggers as delicate as a cat's whiskers. She looked down at the path and her eyes widened. There was blood here. Quite a lot of it.

Fake blood, her mind insisted. You can buy a bottle of it at Dahlie's for forty-nine cents. Becareful, Bevvie!

She knelt and quickly touched the blood with her fingers. She looked at them closely. It wasn't fake blood.

There was a flash of heat in her left arm, just below the elbow. She looked down and saw something that she first thought was some kind of burr. No — not a burr. Burrs didn't twitch and flutter. This thing was alive. A moment after that she realized it was biting her. She struck it hard with the back of her right hand and it spattered, spraying blood. She backed up a step, getting ready to scream now that it was over . . . and then she saw that it wasn't over at all. The thing's featureless head was still on her arm, its snout buried in her flesh.

With a shrill cry of disgust and fear, she picked it off and saw its proboscis come out of her arm like a small dagger, dripping with blood. She understood the blood on the path now, oh yes, and her eyes went to the refrigerator.

The door had swung closed and latched again, but a number of the parasites had been left o u t s i d e a n d w e r e c r a w l i n g s l u g g i s h l y over the rusty-white porcelain. As Beverly looked, one of them unfurled its membranous fly-like wings and buzzed toward her.

She acted without thinking, loading one of the steel ball-bearings into the cup of the Bullseye and pulling the sling back. As the muscles of her left arm flexed smoothly, she saw loose blood squirt from the hole the thing had made in her arm. She let fly anyway, unconsciously leading the flying thing.

Shit! Missed! she thought as the Bullseye snapped and the ball-bearing fle w, a glittering chunk of light in the hazy sun. And she would later tell the other Losers that she knew she had missed it, the same way a bowler knows he has missed the strike as soon as a bad ball leaves his hand. But then she saw the ball-bearing curve. It happened in a split-second, but the impression was very clear: it had curved. It struck the flying thing and splattered it to mush. There was a shower of yellowish droplets which pattered on the path.

Beverly backed up slowly at first, her eyes huge, her lips trembling, her face a shocked grayish-white. Her gaze was pinned to the front of the discarded refrigerator, waiting to see if any of the other things would smell or sense her. But the parasites only crawled slowly back and forth, like autumn fl ies drugged with the cold.

At last she turned and ran.

Panic beat darkly against her thoughts, but she would not give in to it entirely. She held the Bullseye in her left hand and looked back over her shoulder from time to time. There was still blo od dappled brightly on the path and on the leaves of some of the bushes bordering it, as if Patrick had woven from side to side as he ran.

Beverly burst out into the area of the junked cars again. Ahead of her there was a bigger splash of blood, just beginning to soak into the gravelly earth. The ground looked disturbed, darker streaks of earth lined into the powdery-white surface. As if there had been a struggle there. Two grooves, about two and a half feet apart, led away from this spot.

Beverly halted, panting. She looked at her arm and was relieved to see that the flow of blood was finally slowing, although her lower forearm and the palm of her hand were streaked and tacky with it. The pain had begun now, a low steady throb. It felt the way her mouth felt about an hour after the dentist's, when the novocaine began to wear off.

She looked behind again, saw nothing, then looked back at those grooves leading away from the junked cars, away from the dump, and into the Barrens.

Those things were in the refrigerator. They got all over him — sure they did, look at all the blood. He got this far, and then

(hello and goodbye)

something else happened. What?

She was terribly afraid she knew. The leeches were a part of It, and they had driven Patrick into another part of It much as a panic-maddened steer is driven down the chute and into the slaughtering-pen.

Get out of here! Get out, Bevvie!

Instead she followed the grooves in the earth, holding the Bullseye tightly in her sweating hand.

At least get the others!

I will . . . in a little while.

She walked on, following the grooves as the ground sloped down and became softer. She followed them into heavy foliage again. Somewhere a cicada burred loudly and then unwound into silence. Mosquitoes lighted on her blood-streaked arm. She waved them away. Her teeth were clenched on her lower lip.

There was something lying on the ground ahead. She picked it up and looked at it. It was a handmade wallet, the sort of thing a kid might make as a crafts project at Community House. Except it was obvious to Bev that the kid who made this hadn't been much of a craftsman; the wide plastic stitching was already coming unravelled and the bill compartment flapped like a loose mouth. She found a quarter in the change compartment. The only other thing in the wallet was a library card, made out in the name of Patrick Hockstetter. She tossed the wallet aside, library card and all. She wiped her fingers on her shorts.

Fifty feet farther on she found a sneaker. The underbrush was now too dense for her to be able to follow the grooves in the earth, but you didn't have to be the Pathfinder to follow the splashes and drips of blood on the bushes.

The trail wound down through a steep brake. Bev lost her footing once, slid, and was raked by thorns. Fresh lines of blood appeared on her upper thigh. She was breathing fast now, her hair sweaty and matted to her skull. The spots of blood led out onto one of the faint paths through the Barrens. The Kenduskeag was nearby.

Patrick's other sneaker, its laces bloody, lay marooned on the path.

She approached the river with the Bullseye's sling half-drawn. The grooves in the earth had reappeared. They were shallower now — that's because he lost his sneakers, she thought.

She came around a final bend and faced the river. The grooves went down the bank and led ultimately to one of those concrete cylinders — one of the pumping-stations. There they stopped. The iron cover capping the top of this cylinder was a little ajar.

As she stood above it, looking down, a thick and monstrous chuckle suddenly issued from beneath.

It was too much. The panic which had threatened now descended. Beverly turned and fled toward the clearing and clubhouse, her bloody left arm up to shield her face from the branches which whipped and slapped her.

Sometimes I worry too, Daddy, she thought wildly. Sometimes I worry a LOT.

7

Four hours later all of the Losers except Eddie crouched in the bushes near the spot where Beverly had hidden and watched Patrick Hockstetter go to the refrigerator and open it. The sky overhead had darkened with thunder-heads, and the smell of rain was in the air again. Bill was holding the end of a long length of clothesline in his hands. Th e six of them had pooled their available cash and bought the line and a Johnson's first-aid kit for Beverly. Bill had carefully affixed a gauze pad over the bloody hole in her arm.

'T-Tell your puh-puh –harents you g-got a scruh-hape when you were skuh-skuh-skating,' Bill said.

'My skates!' Beverly cried, dismayed. She had forgotten all about them.

'There,' Ben said, and pointed. They were lying in a heap not far away, and she went to retrieve them before Ben or Bill or any of the others could offer. She remembered now that she had put them aside before urinating. She didn't want any of the others over there.

Bill himself had tied one end of the clothesline to the handle of the Amana refrigerator, although they had all cautiously approached it together, ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. Bev had offered to give the Bullseye back to Bill; he had insisted she keep it. As it turned out, nothing had moved.

Although the area on the path in front of the refrigerator was splattered with blood, the parasites were gone. Perhaps they had flown away.

'You could bring Chief Borton and Mr Nell and a hundred other cops down here and it still wouldn't matter,' Stan Uris said bitterly.

'Nope. They wouldn't see a frockin thing,' Richie agreed. 'How's your arm, Bev?'

'Hurts.' She paused, looking from Bill to Richie and back to Bill again. 'Would my mom and dad see the hole that thing made in my arm?'

'I d-d-don't th-think s-s-so,' Bill said. 'Get reh-ready to ruh-ruh-run. I'm gonna t-t-t-tie it uh-uh-on.'

He looped the cod of the clothesline around the refrigerator's rust-flecked chrome handle, working with the care of a man defusing a live bomb. He tied a granny-knot and then stepped back, paying out the clothesline.

He grinned a small shaky grin at the others when they had made some distance. 'Whooo,' he said. 'G-Glad that's oh-over.'

Now, a safe (they hoped) distance from the refrigerator, Bill told them again to get ready to run. Thunder boomed directly overhead and they all jumped. The first scattered drops began to fall.

Bill jerked the clothesline as hard as he could. His granny-knot popped off the handle, but not before it had pulled the refrigerator door open again. An avalanche of orange pompoms fell out, and Stan Uris uttered a painful groan. The others only stared, open-mouthed.

The rain began to come harder. Thunder whipcracked above them, making them cringe, and purplish-blue lightning flared as the refrigerator door swung all the way open. Richie saw it first and screamed, a high, hurt sound. Bill uttered some sort of angry, frightened cry. The others were silent.

Written on the inside of the door, written in drying blood, were these words:

Hail mixed with the driving rain. The refrigerator door shuddered back and forth in the rising wind, the letters painted there beginning to drip and run now, taking on the draggling ominous look of a horror-movie poster.

Bev was not aware that Bill had gotten up until she saw him advancing across the path toward the refrigerator. He was shaking both fists. Water streamed down his face and plastered his shirt to his back.

'W-We're going to k-k-kill you!' Bill screamed. Thunder whacked and cracked. Lightning flashed so brightly that she could smell it, and not far away there was a splintering, rending sound as a tree fell.

'Bill, come back!' Richie was yelling. 'Come back, man!' He started to get up and Ben hauled him back down again.

'You killed my brother George! You son of a bitch! You bastard! You whoremaster! Let's see you now! Let's see you now!'

Hail came in a spate, stinging them even through the screening bushes. Beverly held her arm up to protect her face. She could see red welts on Ben's streaming cheeks.

'Bill, come back!' s he screamed despairingly, and another thundercrack drowned her out; it rolled across the Barrens below the low black clouds.

'Let's see you come out now, you fucker!'

Bill kicked wildly at the heap of pompoms that had spilled out of the refrigerator. He turned away and began to walk back toward them, his head down. He seemed not to feel the hail, although it now covered the ground like snow.

He blundered into the bushes, and Stan had to grab bis arm to keep him from going into the prickerbushes. He was crying.

'That's okay, Bill,' Ben said, putting a clumsy arm around him.

'Yeah,' Richie said. 'Don't worry. We're not gonna chicken out.' He stared around at them, his eyes looking wildly out of his wet face. 'Is there anyone here who's gonna chicken out?'

They shook their heads.

Bill looked up, wiping his eyes. They were all soaked to the skin and looked like a litter of pups that had just forded a river. 'Ih-It's scuh-scuh-hared of u-u-us, you know,' he said. 'I can fuh-feel th-that. I swear to Guh-God I c-c-can.'

Bev nodded soberly. 'I think you're right.'

'H-H-Help m-m-me,' Bill said. 'P-P-Pl-Please. H-H-Help m-m-me.'

'We will,' Beverly said. She took Bill in her arms. She had not realized how easily her arms would go around him, how thin he was. She could feel his heart racing under his shut; she could feel it next to hers. She thought that no touch had ever seemed so sweet and strong.

Richie put his arms around both of them and laid his head on Beverly's shoulder. Be n did the same from the other side. Stan Uris put his arms around Richie and Ben. Mike hesitated, and then slipped one arm around Beverly's waist and the other over Bill's shivering shoulders. They stood that way, hugging, and the sleet turned back to driving pouring rain, rain so heavy it seemed almost like a new atmosphere. The lightning walked and the thunder talked. No one spoke. Beverly's eyes were tightly shut. They stood in the rain in a huddled group, hugging each other, listening to it hiss down on the bushes. That was what she remembered best: the sound of the rain and their own shared silence and a vague sorrow that Eddie was not there with them. She remembered those things.

She remembered feeling very young and very strong.

CHAPTER 1 8 The Bullseye

1

'Okay, Haystack,' Richie says. 'Your turn. The redhead's smoked all of her cigarettes and most of mine. The hour groweth late.'

Ben glances up at the clock. Yes, it's late: nearly midnight. Just time for one more story, he thinks. One more story before twelve. Just to keep us warm. What should it be? But that, ofcourse, is only a joke, and not a very good one; there is only one story left, at least only one he remembers, and that is the story of the silver slugs — how they were made in Zack Denbrough's workshop on the night of July 23rd and how they were used on the 25th.

'I've got my own scars,' he says. 'Do you remember?'

Beverly and Eddie shake their heads; Bill and Richie nod. Mike sits silent, his eyes watchful in his tired face.

Ben stands up and unbuttons the work-shirt he is wearing, spreading it open. An old scar in the shape of the letter H shows there. Its lines are broken — the belly was much bigger when that scar was put there — but its shape still identifia ble.

The heavy scar depending downward from the cross-bar of the H is much clearer. It looks like a twisted white hangrope from which the noose has been cut.

Beverly's hand goes to her mouth. 'The werewolf! In that house! Oh Jesus Christ!' And she turns to the windows, as if to see it lurking outside in the darkness.

'That's right,' Ben said. 'And you want to know something funny? That scar wasn't there two days ago. Henry's old calling-card was; I know, because I showed it to a friend of mine, a bar-tender named Ricky Lee back in Hemingford Home. But this one — ' He laughs without much humor and begins buttoning his shirt again. This one just came back.'

'Like the ones on our hands.'

'Yeah,' Mike says as Ben buttons his skin up again. 'The werewolf. We all saw It as the werewolf that time.'

'Because that's how R-R-Richie saw Ih-It before,' Bill murmurs. 'That's it, isn't it?'

'Yes,' Mike says.

'We were close, weren't we?' Beverly says. Her voice is softly marvelling. 'Close enough to read each other's minds.'

'Ole Big Hairy damn near had your guts for garters, Ben,' Richie says, and he is not smiling as he says it. He pushes his mended glasses up on his nose and behind them his face looks white and haggard and ghostly.

'Bill saved your bacon,' Eddie says abruptly. 'I mean, Bev saved us all, but if it hadn't been for you, Bill — '

'Yes,' Ben agrees. 'You did, big Bill. I was, like, lost in the funhouse.'

Bill points briefly at the empty chair. 'I had some help from Stan Uris. And he paid for it. Maybe died for it.'

Ben Hansom is shaking his head. 'Don't say that, Bill.'

'But it's t-true. And if it's yuh-your f-fault, it's my fault, too, and e-e-everyone else's here, because we went on. Even after Patrick, an d what was written on that r-re-frigerator, we went on. It would be my fault m-most of all, I guess, because I wuh-wuh-wanted us to go on.

Because of Juh-George. Maybe even because I thought that if I killed whatever k-killed George, my puh-harents would have to luh-luh-luh — '

'Love you again?' Beverly asks gently.

'Yes. Of course. But I d-d-don't think it was a-a-anyone's fuh-hault, Ben. It was just the w-w-way Stan was built.'

'He couldn't face it,' Eddie says. He is thinking of Mr Keene's revelation about his asthma medicine, and how he could still not give it up. He is thinking that he might have been able to give up the habit of being sick; it was the habit of believing he had been unable to kick. As things had turned out, maybe that habit had saved his life.

'He was great that day,' Ben says. 'Stan and his birds.'

A chuckle stirs through them, and they look at the chair where Stan would have been in a rightful sane world where all the good guys won all of the time. I miss him, Ben thinks. God, how I miss him! He says, 'You remember that day, Richie, when you told him you heard somewhere he killed Christ, and Stan says totally deadpan, "I think that was my father"?'

'I remember,' Richie says in a voice almost too low to hear. He takes his handkerchief out of his back pocket, removes his glasses, wipes his eyes, then puts his glasses back on. He puts away the handkerchief and without looking up from his hands he says, 'Why don't you just tell it, Ben?'

'It hurts, doesn't it?'

'Yeah,' Richie says, his voice so thick it is hard to understand him. 'Why, sure. It hurts.'

Ben looks around at them, then nods. 'All right, then. One more story before twelve. Just to keep us warm. Bill and Richie had the idea of the bullets — '

'No,' Richie demurs. 'Bill thought of it first, and he got nervous first.'

'I just started to wuh-wuh-worry — '

'Doesn't really matter, I guess,' Ben says. 'The three of us spent some heavy library time that July. We were trying to find out how to make silver bullets. I had the silver; four silver dollars that were my father's. Then Bill got nervous, thinking about what kind of shape we'd be in if we had a misfire with some kind of monster coming down our throats. And when we saw how good Beverly was with that slingshot of his, we ended up using one of my silver dollars to make slugs instead. We got the stuff together and all of us we went down to Bill's place. Eddie, you were there — '

'I told my mother we were going to play Monopoly,' Eddie says. 'My arm was really hurting, but I had to walk. That's how pissed she was at me. And every time I heard someone behind me on the sidewalk I'd whip around, thinking it was Bowers. It didn't help the pain.'

Bill grins. 'And what we did was stand around and watch Ben make the ammo. I think Ben r-really could have made sil-silver bullets.'

'Oh, I'm not so sure of that,' Ben says, although he still is. He remembers how the dusk was drawing down outside (Mr Denbrough had promised them all rides home), the sound of the crickets in the grass, the first lightning-bugs blinking outside the windows. Bill had carefully set up the Monopoly board in the dining room, making it look as if the game had been going on for an hour or more.

He remembers that, an d the clean pool of yellow light falling on Zack's worktable. He remembers Bill saying, 'We gotta be c –c-

2

careful. I don't want to leave a muh-muh-mess. My dad'll be — ' He spat out a number of 'p's, and finally managed to say 'pissed off.'

Richie made a burlesque of wiping his cheek. 'Do you serve towels with your showers, Stuttering Bill?'

Bill made as if to hit him. Richie cowered, shrieking in his Pickaninny Voice.

Ben took very little notice of them. He watched Bill lay out the implements and tools one by one in the light. Part of his mind was wishing that someday' he might have such a nice worktable as this himself. Most of it was centered directly on the job ahead. Hot as difficult as making silver bullets would have been, but he would still be careful. There was no excuse for sloppy workmanship. This was not something he had been taught or told, just something he knew.

Bill had insisted that Ben make the slugs, just as he continued to insist that Beverly would be the one carrying the Bullseye. These things could have and had been discussed, but it was only twenty-seven years later, telling the story, that Ben realized no one had even suggested that a silver bullet or slug might not stop a monster — they had the weight of what seemed like a thousand horror movies on their side.

'Okay,' Ben said. He cracked his knuckles and then looked at Bill. 'You got the molds?'

'Oh!' Bill jumped a little. 'H-H-Here.' He reached into his pants pocket and brought out his handkerchief. He put it on the workbench and unfolded it. There were two dull steel balls inside, each with a small hole in it. They were bearing molds.

After deciding on slugs instead of bullets, Bill and Richie had gone back to the library and had researched how bearings were made. 'You boys are so busy,' Mrs Starrett had said. 'Bullets one week and bearings the next! And it's summer vacation, too!'

'We like to stay sharp,' Richie said. 'Right, Bill?'

'Ruh-Ruh-Right.'

It turned out that making bearings was a cinch, once you had the molds. The only real question was where to get them. A couple of discreet questions to Zack Denbrough had taken care of that . . . and none of the Losers were too surprised to find that the only machine-shop in Derry where such molds might be obtained was Kitchener Precision Tool & Die. The Kitchener who owned and ran it was a great-great-grandnephew of the brothers who had owned the Kitchener Ironworks.

Bill and Richie had gone over together with all the cash the Losers had been able to raise on short notice — ten dollars and fifty-nine cents — in Bill's pocket. When Bill asked how much a couple of two-inch bearing molds might cost, Carl Kitchener — who looked like a veteran boozehound and smelled like an old horse-blanket — asked what a couple of kids wanted with bearing molds. Richie let Bill speak, knowing things would probably go easier that way — children made fun of Bill's stutter; adults were embarrassed by it. Sometimes this was surprisingly helpful.

Bill got halfway through the explanation he and Richie had worked out on the way over — something about a model windmill for next year's science project — when Kitchener waved for him to shut up and quoted them the unbelievable price of fifty cents per mold.

Hardly able to believe their good fortune, Bill forked over a single dollar bill.

'Don't expect me to give you a bag,' Carl Kitchener said, eying them with the bloodshot contempt of a man who believes he has seen everything the world holds, most of it twice. 'You don't get no bag unless you spend at least five bucks.'

That's o-o-okay, suh-sir,' Bill said.

'And don't hang around out front,' Kitchener said. 'You both need haircuts.'

Outside Bill said: 'Y-Y-You ever nuh-hotice, Ruh-Richie, how guh-guh-grownups w-w-won't sell you a-a-anything except c-candy or cuh-cuh-homic books or m-maybe movie t– t-tickets without first they w-want to know what y-you want it f-for?'

'Sure,' Richie said.

'W-Why? Why ih-is that?'

'Because they think we're dangerous.' 'Y-Yeah? You thuh-thuh-think s-so?'

'Yeah,' Richie said, and then giggled. 'Let's hang around out front, want to? We'll put up our collars and sneer at people and let our hair grow.' 'Fuck y-you,' Bill said.

3

'Okay,' Ben said, looking at the molds carefully and then putting them down. 'Good. Now — '

They gave him a little more room, looking at him hopefully, the way a man with engine trouble who knows nothing about cars will look at a mechanic. Ben didn't notice their expressions. He was concentrating on the job.

'Gimme that shell,' he said, 'and the blowtorch.'

Bill handed a cut-down mortar shell to him. It was a war souvenir. Zack had picked it up five days after he and the rest of General Patton's army had crossed th e river into Germany. There had been a time, when Bill was very young and George was still in diapers, that his father had used it as an ashtray. Later he had quit smoking, and the mortar shell had disappeared. Bill had found it in the back of the garage just a week ago.

Ben put the mortar shell into Zack's vise, tightened it, and then took the blowtorch from Beverly. He reached into his pocket, brought out a silver dollar, and dropped it into the makeshift crucible. It made a hollow sound.

'Your father gave you that, didn't he?' Beverly asked.

'Yes,' Ben said, 'but I don't remember him very well.'

'Are you sure you want to do this?'

He looked at her and smiled. 'Yes,' he said.

She smiled back. It was enough for Ben. If she had smiled at him twice, he would gladly have made enough silver bearings to shoot a platoon of werewolves. He looked hastily away. 'Okay. Here we go. No problem. Easy as pie, right?'

They nodded hesitantly.

Years later, recounting all of this, Ben would think: These days a kid could just run out andbuy a propane torch . . . or his dad would have one in the workshop.

There had been no such things in 1958, however; Zack Denbrough had a tank-job, and it made Beverly nervous. Ben could tell she was nervous, wanted to tell her not to worry, but was afraid his voice would tremble.

'Don't worry,' he said to Stan, who was standing next to her.

'Huh?' Stan said, looking at him and bunking.

'Don't worry,'

'I'm not. '

'Oh. I thought you were. And I just wanted you to know this is perfectly safe. If you were. Worrying, I mean.'

'Are you okay, Ben?'

'Fine,' Ben muttered. 'Gimme the matches, Richie.'

Richie gave him a book of matches. Ben twisted the valve on the tank and lit a match under the nozzle of the torch. There was a flump! and a bright blue-orange glare. Ben tuned the flame to a blue edge and began to heat the base of the mortar shell.

'You got the funnel?' he asked Bill.

'R-R-Right here.' Bill handed over a homemade fu n n e l t h a t B e n h a d m a d e e a r l i e r . T h e t i n y hole at its base fit the hole in the bearing molds almost exactly. Ben had done this without

taking a single measurement. Bill had been amazed — almost flabbergasted — but did not know how to say so without embarrassing Ben.

Absorbed in what he was doing, Ben could talk to Beverly — he spoke with the dry precision of a surgeon addressing a nurse.

'Bev, you got the steadiest hands. Suck the funnel in the hole. Use one of those gloves so you don't get burned.'

Bill handed her one of his father's work gloves. Beverly put the tin funnel in the mold. No one spoke. The hissing of the blowtorch flame seemed very loud. They watched it, eyes squinted almost shut.

'Wuh-wuh-wait,' Bill said suddenly, and dashed into the house. He came back a minute later with a pair of cheap Turtle wraparound sunglasses that had been languishing in a kitchen drawer for a year or more. 'Better p-put these uh-on, H-H-Haystack.'

Ben took them, grinned, and slipped them on.

'Shit, it's Fabian!' Richie said. 'Or Frankie Avalon, or one of those Bandstand wops.'

'Fuck you, Trashmouth,' Ben said, but he started giggling in spite of himself. The idea of him being Fabian or someone like that was just too weird. The flame wavered and he stopped laughing; his concentration narrowed to a point again.

Two minutes later he handed the torch to Eddie, who held it gingerly in his good hand. 'It's ready,' he said to Bill. 'Gimme that other glove. Fast! Fast!'

Bill gave it to him. Ben put it on and held the mortar shell with the gloved hand while he turned the vise lever with the other.

'Hold it steady, Bev.'

'I'm ready, don't wait for me,' she rapped back at him.

Ben tilted the shell over the funnel. The others watched as a rivulet of molten silver flowed between the two receptacles. Ben poured precisely; not a drop was spilled. And for a moment, he felt galvanized. He seemed to see everything magnified through a strong white glow. For that one moment he did not feel like plain fat old Ben Hanscom, who wore sweatshirts to disguise his gut and his tits; he felt like Thor, working thunder and lightning at the smithy of the gods.

Then the feeling was gone.

'Okay,' he said. 'I'm gonna have to reheat the silver. Someone shove a nail or something up the spout of the funnel before the goop hardens in there.'

Stan did it.

Ben clamped the mortar shell in the vise again and took the torch from Eddie.

'Okay,' he said, 'number two.'

And went back to work.

4

Ten minutes later it was done.

'Now what?' Mike asked.

'Now we play Monopoly for an hour,' Ben said, 'while they harden in the molds. Then I clip em open with a chisel along the cut-lines and we're done.'

Richie looked uneasily at the cracked face of his Timex, which had taken a great many lickings and kept on ticking. 'When will your folks be back, Bill?'

'N-N-Not until tuh –ten or ten-thuh-thuh-hirty,' Bill said. 'It's a double f-f-f-feature at the Uh-Uh-Uh — '

'Aladdin,' Stan said.

'Yeah. And they'll stop in for a slice of p-p-pizza after. They a-almost always d-do.'

'So we have plenty of time,' Ben said.

Bill nodded.

'Then let's go in,' Bev said. 'I want to call home. I promised I would. And don't any of you talk. He thinks I'm at Community House and that I'm getting a ride home from there.'

'What if he wants to come down and pick you up early?' Mike asked.

'Then,' Beverly said, 'I'm going to be in a lot of trouble.'

Ben thought: I'd protect you, Beverly. In his mind's eye, an instant daydream unfolded, one with an ending so sweet he shivered. Bev's father started to give her a hard time; to bawl her out and all that (even in his daydream he did not imagine how bad all that could get with Al Marsh). Ben threw himself in front of her and told Marsh to lay off.

If you want trouble, fatboy, you just keep protecting my daughter.

Hanscom, usually a quiet bookish type, can be a ravening tiger when you get him mad. He speaks to Al Marsh with great sincerity. If you want to get to her, you'll have to come through me first.

Marsh starts forward . . . and then the steely glint in Hanscom's eyes stops him.

You'll be sorry, he mumbles, but it's clear all the fight has gone out of him — He's just a paper tiger after all.

Somehow I doubt that, Hanscom says with a tight Gary Cooper smile, and Beverly's father slinks away.

What's happened to you, Ben? Bev cries, but her eyes are shining and full of stars. Youlooked ready to kill him!

Kill him? Hanscom says, the Gary Cooper smile still lingering on his lips. No way, baby.He may be a creep, but he's still your father. I might have roughed him up a little, but that's only because when someone talks wrong to you I get a little hot under the collar. You know?

She throws her arms around him and kisses him (on the lips! on the LIPS!). I love you, Ben! she sobs. He can feel her small breasts pressing firmly against his chest and —

He shivered a little, throwing this bright, terribly clear picture off with an effort. Richie stood in the doorway, asking him if he was coming, and Ben realized he was all alone in the workroom.

'Yeah,' he said, starting a little. 'Sure I am.'

'You're goin senile, Haystack,' Richie said as Ben went though the door, but he clapped Ben on the shoulder. Ben grinned and hooked an elbow briefly around Richie's neck.

5

There was no problem with Beverly's dad. He had come home late from work, Bev's mother told her over the phone, fallen asleep in front of the TV, and waked up just long enough to get himself into bed. 'You got a ride home, Bevvie?'

'Yes. Bill Denbrough's dad is going to take a whole bunch of us home.' Mrs Marsh sounded suddenly alarmed. 'You're not on a date, are you, Bevvie?' 'No, of course not,' Bev said, looking through the arched doorway between the darkened hall where she was and the dining room, where the others were sitting down around the Monopoly board. But I sure wish I was. 'Boys, uck. But they have a sign-up sheet down here, and every night a different dad or mom takes kids home.' That much, at least, was true. The rest was a lie so outrageous that she could feel herself blushing hotly in the dark.

'All right,' her mom said. 'I just wanted to be sure. Because if your dad caught you going on dates at your age, he'd be mad.' Almost as an afterthought she added: 'I would be, too.'

'Yeah, I know,' Bev said, still looking into the dining room. She did know; yet here she was, not with one boy but six of them, in a house where the parents were gone. She saw Ben looking at her anxiously, and she sketched a smiling little salute at him. He blushed but gave her the little salute right back.

'Are any of your girlfriends there?'

What girlfriends, Mamma?

'Um, Patty O'Hara's here. And Ellie Geiger, I think. She's playing shuffle –board downstairs.' The facility with which the lies came from her lips made her ashamed. She wished she were talking to her father; she would have been more scared but less ashamed. She supposed she really wasn't a very good girl.

'I love you, Mamma,' she said.

'Same goes back to you, Bev.' Her mother paused briefly and added: 'Be careful. The paper says there may be another one. A boy named Patrick Hockstetter. He's missing. Did you know him, Bevvie?'

She closed her eyes briefly. 'No, Mom. '

'Well . . . goodbye, then.'

'Bye.'

She joined the others at the table and for an hour they played Monopoly. Stan was the big winner.

'Jews are very good at making money,' Stan said, putting a hotel on Atlantic Avenue and two more green houses on Ventnor Avenue. 'Everybody knows that.'

'Jesus, make me Jewish,' Ben said promptly, and everyone laughed. Ben was almost broke.

Beverly glanced across the table from time to time at Bill, noting his clean hands, his blue eyes, the fine red hair. As he moved the little silver shoe he was using as a marker around the board, she thought, If he held my hand, I think I'd be so glad I'd probably die. A warm light seemed to glow briefly in her chest and she smiled secretly down at her hands.

6

The evening's finale was almost anticlirnactic. Ben took one of Zack's chisels from the shelf and used a hammer to strike the molds on the cut-lines. They opened easily. Two small silver balls fell out. In one they could faintly see part of a date: 925. In the other, wavery lines Beverly thought were the remnants of Lady Liberty's hair. They looked at them without speaking for a moment, and then Stan picked one up.

'Pretty small,' he said.

'So was the rock in David's sung when he went up against Goliath,' Mike said. 'They look powerful to me.'

Ben found himself nodding. They did to him, as well.

'We're all d-d-done?' Bill asked.

'All done,' Ben said. 'Here.' He tossed the second slug to Bill, who was so surprised he almost fumbled it.

The slugs went around the circle. Each of them looked closely at both, marvelling at their roundness, weight, actuality. When they came back to Ben, he held them in his hand and then looked at Bill. 'What do we do with them now?'

'G-G-Give them to B-Beverly.'

'No!'

He looked at her. His face was kind enough, but stern. 'B– B– Bev, we've been thruh– t h r o u g h this a-a-already, and — '

'Ill do it,' she said. 'I'll shoot the goddamned things when the time comes, If it comes. I'll probably get us all killed, but I'll do it. I don't want to take them home, though. One of my

(father)

parents might find them. Then I'd be in dutch.'

'Don't you have a secret hiding place?' Richie asked. 'Criminy, I got four or five.'

'I've got a place,' Beverly said. There was a small slit in the bottom of her box-spring where she sometimes stashed cigarettes, comic books, and, just lately, film and fashion magazines. 'But nothing I'd trust for something like this. You keep them, Bill. Until it's time, anyway, you keep them.'

'Okay,' Bill said mildly, and just then lights splashed into the driveway. 'Holy cruh-crow, they're e-e-early. L-Let's get out of h-here.'

They were just sitting down around the Monopoly board again when Sharon Denbrough opened the kitchen door.

Richie rolled his eyes and mimed wiping sweat from his forehead; the others laughed heartily. Richie had Gotten Off A Good One.

A moment later she came in. 'Your dad's waiting fo r your friends in the car, Bill.'

'O-O-Okay, M-Mom,' Bill said. 'W-We were juh-just f-f-finishing, a-anyway.'

'Who won?' Sharon asked, smiling bright-eyed at Bill's little friends. The girl was going to be very pretty, she thought. She supposed in another year or two the children would have to be chaperoned if there were going to be girls instead of just the regular gang of boys. But surely it was still too soon to worry about sex rearing its ugly head.

'St-Stan wuh-wuh-won,' Bill said. 'Juh-Juh –Jews are very g-g-good at m-making money.'

'Bill!' She cried, horrified and blushing . . . and then she looked around at them, amazed, as they roared with laughter, Stan included. Amazement turned to something like fear (although she said nothing of this to her husband later, in bed). There was a feeling in the air, like static electricity, only somehow much more powerful, much more scary. She felt that if she touched any of them, she would receive a walloping shock. What's happened to them? she thought, dismayed, and perhaps she even opened her mouth to say something like that. Then Bill was saying he was sorry (but still with that devilish glint in his eye), and Stan was saying that was all right, it was just a joke they laid on him from time to time, and she found herself too confused to say anything at all.

But she felt relieved when the children were gone and her own puzzling, stuttering son had gone to his room and turned off the light.

7

The day that the Losers' Club finally met It in face-to-face combat, the day It almost had Ben Hanscom's guts for garters, was July 25th, 1958. It was hot and muggy and still. Ben remembered the weather clearly enough; it had been the last day of the hot weather. After that day, a long spell of cool and cloudy had come in.

They arrived at 29 Neibolt Street around ten that morning, Bill riding Richie double on Silver, Ben with his ample buttocks spilling over either side of the sagging seat on his Raleigh. Beverly came down Neibolt Street on her girl's Schwinn, her red hair held back from her forehead by a green band. It streamed out behind her. Mike came by himself, and about five minutes later Stan and Eddie walked up together.

'H-H-How's your a-a-arm, Eh-Eh –Eddie?'

'Aw, not too bad. Hurts if I roll over on that side while I'm sleeping. Did you bring the stuff?'

There was a canvas-wrapped bundle in Silver's bike-basket. Bill took it out and unwrapped it. He handed the slingshot to Beverly, who took it with a little grimace but said nothing. There was also a tin Sucrets box in the bundle. Bill opened it and showed them the two silver balls. They looked at them silently, gathered close together on the balding lawn on 29 Neibolt Street — a lawn where only weeds seemed to grow. Bill, Richie, and Eddie had seen the house before; the others hadn't, and they looked at it curiously.

The windows look tike eyes, Stan thought, and his hand went to the paperback book in his back pocket. He touched it for luck. He carried the book with him almost everywhere — it was M. K. Handey's Guide to North American Birds. They look like dirty blind eyes. It stinks, Beverly thought. I can smell it — but not with my nose, not exactly.

Mike thought, It's like that time out where the Ironworks used to be. It has the same feel . . . as if it's telling us to step on in.

This is one of Its places, all right, Ben thought. One of the places like the Morlock holes, where It goes out and comes back in. And It knows we're out here. It's waiting for us to come in.

'Yuh-yuh –you all still want to?' Bill asked.

They looked back at him, pale and solemn. No one said no. Eddie fumbled his aspirator out of his pocket and took a long whooping gasp at it.

'Gimme some of that,' Richie said.

Eddie looked at him, surprised, waiting for the punchline.

Richie held out his hand. 'No fake, Jake. Can I have some?'

Eddie shrugged with his good shoulder — an oddly disjointed movement — and handed it over. Richie triggered the aspirator and breathed deep. 'Needed that,' he said, and handed it back. He was coughing a little, but his eyes were sober.

'Me too,' Stan said. 'Okay?'

So one after another they used Eddie's aspirator. When it came back to him, Eddie jammed it in his back pocket, where the nozzle stuck out. They turned to look at the house again.

'Does anybody live on this street?' Beverly asked in a low voice.

'Not this end of it,' Mike said. 'Not anymore. I guess there are still bums sometimes. Guys that come through on the freights.'

'They wouldn't see anything,' Stan said. 'They'd be safe. Most of them, anyway.' He looked at Bill. 'Can any grownups at all see It, do you think,

Bill?'

'I don't nuh-know,' Bill said. 'There must be suh-suh-some.'

'I wish we could meet one,' Richie said glumly. 'This really isn't a job for kids, you know what I mean?'

Bill knew. Whenever the Hardy Boys got into trouble, Fenton Hardy was around to bail them out. Same with Rick Brant's dad in the Rick Brant Science Adventures. Shit, even Nancy Drew had a father who would show up in the nick of time if the bad guys tied her up and threw her into an abandoned mine or something.

'Ought to be a grownup along,' Richie said, looking at the closed house with hs peeling paint, its duty windows, its shadowy porch. He sighed tiredly. For a moment, Ben felt their resolution falter.

Then Bill said, 'Cuh-cuh –home a-a-a-around h-here. Look at th-this.'

They walked around to the left side of the porch, where the skirting was torn off. The brambly, run-to-the-wild roses were still there . . . and those It had touched when It climbed out were still black and dead.

'It just touched them and it did that? ' Beverly asked, horrified.

Bill nodded. 'Are you guh-huys s-s-sure?

For a moment nobody replied. They weren't sure; even though all of them knew by Bill's face that he would go on without them, they weren't sure. There was also a species of shame on Bill's face. As he had told them before, George hadn't been their brother.

But all the other kids, Ben thought. Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, that Clements kid, Eddie Corcoran (maybe), Ronnie Grogan . . . even Patrick Hockstetter. It kills kids, goddamit, kids!

'I'll go, Big Bill, 'he said.

'Shit, yeah,' Beverly said.

'Sure,' Richie said. 'You think we're gonna let you have all the fun, mushmouth?'

Bill looked at them, his throat working, and then he nodded. He handed the tin box to Beverly.

'Are you sure, Bill?'

'Sh-Sh-Sure.'

She nodded, at once horrified by the responsibility and bewitched by his trust. She opened the box, took out the slugs, and slipped one into the right front pocket of her jeans. The other she socketed in the Bullseye's rubber cup, and it was by the cup that she carried the slingshot. She could feel the ball tightly enclosed in her fist, cold at first and then warming.

'Let's go,' she said, her voice not quite steady. 'Let's go before I chicken out.'

Bill nodded, then looked sharply at Eddie. 'Cuh-Can you d-d-do this, Eh-Eh –Eddie?'

Eddie nodded. 'Sure I can. I was alone last time. This time I'm with my friends. Right?' He looked at them and grinned a little. His expression was shy, fragile, and quite beautiful.

Richie clapped him on the back. 'Thass right, senhorr. Anywhunn tries to steal your assipirator, we keel heem. But we keel heem slow. '

That's terrible, Richie,' Bev said, giggling.

'Uh-Uh-under the p-porch,' Bill said. 'A-A11 of you b-b-behind me. Then into the suh-suh-cellar.'

'If you go first and that thing jumps you, what do I do?' Beverly asked. 'Shoot through you?'

'If y-you have to,' Bill said. 'But I suh –suh –suggest y-y-you try guh –hoing a-around, first.'

Richie laughed wildly at this.

'We'll g-g-go through the whole puh-puh –place, if we have t-to.' He shrugged. 'Maybe we won't find be a-a-anything.'

'Do you believe that?' Mike asked.

'No,' Bill said briefly. 'It's h-h-here.'

Ben believed he was right. The house at 29 Neibolt Street seemed to be encased in a poisonous envelope. It could not be seen . . . but it could be felt. He licked his lips.

'You ruh-ruh –ready?' Bill asked them.

They all looked back at him. 'Ready, Bill,' Richie said.

'Cuh-come on, th-then,' Bill said. 'Stay cluh-close behind me, B-Beverly.' He dropped to his knees, crawled through the blighted rosebushes and under the porch.

8

They went this way: Bill, Beverly, Ben, Eddie, Richie, Stan, Mike. The leaves under the porch crackled and puffed up a sour old smell. Ben wrinkled his nose. Had he ever smelled fallen leaves like these? He thought not. And then an unpleasant idea struck him. They smelled the way he imagined a mummy would smell, just after its discoverer had levered open its coffin: all dust and bitter ancient tannic acid.

Bill had reached the broken cellar window and was looking into the cellar. Beverly crawled up beside him. 'You see anything?'

Bill shook his head. 'But that d-doesn't m-m-mean nuh-huthin's there. L-Look; there's the c-coal-pile me and R-R-Richie used to get ow-out.'

Ben, who was looking between them, saw it. He was becoming excited as well as afraid now, and he welcomed the excitement, instinctively recognizing the fact that it could be a tool. Seeing the coal-pile was a little like seeing a great landmark about which you had only read or heard from others.

Bill turned around and slipped lithely through the window. Beverly gave Ben the Bullseye, folding his hand over the cup and ball nestled in it. 'Give it to me the second I'm down,' she said. 'The second.'

'Got you.'

She slipped down as easily and lithely as Bill had before her. There was — for Ben, at least — one heart-stopping instant when her blouse pulled out of her jeans and he saw her flat white belly. Then there was the thrill of her hands over his as he handed the slingshot down.

'Okay, I've got it. Come on.'

Ben turned around himself and began to wriggle through the window. He should have forseen what happened next; it was really inevitable. He got stuck. His fanny bound up against the rectangular cellar window and he couldn't go in any further. He started to pull himself out and realized, horrified, that he could do it, but was very apt to yank his pants — and perhaps his underpants as well — down to his knees when he did. And there he would be, with his extremely large ass practically in his beloved's face.

'Hurry up!' Eddie said.

Ben pushed grimly with both hands. For a moment he still couldn't move, and then his butt popped through the window-hole. His bluejeans dragged painfully up into his crotch, squashing his balls. The top of the window rucked his shin all the way up to his shoulderblades. Now his gut was stuck.

'Suck in, Haystack,' Richie said, giggling hysterically. 'You better suck in or we'll have to send Mike after his dad's chainfall to pull you out again.'

'Beep-beep, Richie,' Ben said through gritted teeth. He sucked his belly in as much as he could. He had never really realized just how big his stupid stomach was until this supremely embarrassing moment. He moved a little further, then stopped again.

He turned his head as far as he could, fighting panic and claustrophobia. His face had gone a bright sweaty red. The sour smell of the leaves was heavy in his nostrils, cloying. 'Bill! Can you guys pull me?'

He felt Bill grasp one of his ankles, Beverly the other. He sucked his belly in as far as he could. A moment later he came tumbling through the window. Bill grabbed him. Both of them almost fell over. Ben couldn't look at Bev. He had never in his life been as embarrassed as he was at that moment.

'Y-Y-You okay, m-m-man?'

'Yeah.'

Bill laughed shakily. Beverly joined him, and then Ben was able to laugh a little too, although it would be years before he could see anything remotely funny in what had happened.

'Hey!' Richie called down. 'Eddie needs help, okay?'

'O-O-Okay.' Bill and Ben took up positions below the window. Eddie came through on his back. Bill got his legs just above the knees.

'Watch what you're doing,' Eddie said in a querulous, nervous voice. 'I'm ticklish.'

'Ramon ees plenny teekeleesh, senhorr,' Richie's voice called down.

Ben got Eddie around the waist, trying to keep his hand away from the cast and the sling. The two of them manhandled Eddie through the cellar window like a corpse. Eddie cried out once, but that was all.

'Eh-Eh –Eddie?'

'Yeah,' Eddie said, 'okay. No big deal.' But large drops of sweat stood out on his forehead and he was breathing in quick rasps. His eyes darted around the cellar.

Bill stepped back again. Beverly stood near him, now holding the Bullseye by the shaft and the cup, ready to fire if necessary. Her eyes swept the cellar constantly. Richie came through next, followed by Stan and Mike. Both of the latter moved with a smooth grace that Ben deeply envied. Then they were all down, down in the cellar where Bill and Richie had seen It only a month before.

The room was dim, but not dark. Dusky light shafted in through the windows and pooled on the dirt floor. The cellar seemed very big to Ben, almost too big, as if he were witnessing an optical illusion of some sort. Dusty rafters crisscrossed overhead. The furnace-pipes were rusty. Some sort of duty white cloth hung from the water-pipes in dirty strings and strands. The smell was down here too. A dirty yellow smell. Ben thought: It's here, all right. Oh yeah.

Bill started toward the stairs. The others fell in behind him. He halted at their foot and glanced underneath. He reached under with one foot and kick-pawed something out. They looked at it wordlessly. It was a white clown-glove, now streaked with dirt and dust.

'Uh-uh-upstairs,' he said.

They went up and emerged into a dirty kitchen. One plain straight-backed chair stood marooned in the center of the humped hillocky linoleum. That was it for furniture. There were empty liquor bottles in one corner. Ben could see others in the pantry. He could smell booze — wine, mostly — and old stale cigarettes. Those smells were dominant, but that other smell was there, too. It was getting stronger all the time.

Beverly went to the cupboards and opened one of them. She screamed piercingly as a blackish-brown Norway rat tumbled out almost into her face. It struck the counter with a plop and glared around at them with its black eyes. Still screaming, Beverly raised the Bullseye and pulled the sling back.

'NO!' Bill roared.

She turned her pale terrified face toward him. Then she nodded and relaxed her arm, the silver ball unfired — but Ben thought she had been very, very close. She backed up slowly, ran into Ben, jumped. He put an arm around her, tight.

The rat scurried down the length of the counter, jumped to the floor, ran into the pantry, and was gone.

'It wanted me to shoot at it,' Beverly said in a faint voice. 'Use up half of our ammunition on it.'

'Yes,' Bill said. 'It's l-l-like the FBI training r-range at Quh-Quh-Quantico, in a w-w-way. They seh-send y-you down this f-f-hake street and p-pop up tuh-hargets. If you shuh –shoot any honest citizens ih-instead of just cruh-crooks, you l-lose puh-hoints.'

'I can't do this, Bill,' she said. 'I'll mess it up. Here. You.' She held the Bullseye out, but Bill shook his head.

'You h-h-have to, B-Beverly.'

There was a mewling from another cupboard.

Richie walked toward it.

'Don't get too close!' Stan barked. 'It might — '

Richie looked inside and an expression of sick disgust crossed his face. He slammed the cupboard shut with a bang that produced a dead echo in the empty house.

'A litter.' Richie sounded ill. 'Biggest litter I ever saw . . . anyone ever saw, probably.' He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. There's hundreds of them in there.' He looked

at them, his mouth twitching a little on one side. 'Their tails . . . they were all ta ngled up, Bill. Knotted together.' He grimaced. 'Like snakes.'

They looked at the cupboard door. The mewling was muffled but still audible. Rats, Ben thought, looking at Bill's white face and, over Bill's shoulder, Mike's ashy-gray one. Everyone's ascared of rats. It knows it, too.

'C-C-Come on,' Bill said. 'H-Here on Nuh-Nuh-Neibolt Street, the f-f-fun just neh-hever stops.'

They went down the front hall. Here the unlovely smells of rotting plaster and old urine were intermixed. They were able to look out at the street through dirty panes of glass and see their bikes. Bev's and Ben's were heeled over on their kickstands. Bill's leaned against a stunted maple tree. To Ben the bikes looked a thousand miles away, like things seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The deserted street with its casual patchings of asphalt, the faded humid sky, the steady ding-ding-ding of a locomotive running on a siding . . . these things seemed like dreams to him, hallucinations. What was real was this squalid hallway with its stinks and shadows.

There was a shatter of broken brown glass in one corner — Rheingold bottles.

In the other corner, wet and swelled, was a digest-sized girlybook. The woman on the cover was bent over a chair, her skirt up in the back to show the tops of her fishnet hose and her black panties. The picture did not look particularly sexy to Ben, nor did it embarrass him that Beverly had also glanced at it. Moisture had yellowed the woman's skin and moisture had humped the cover in ripples that became wrinkles on her face. Her salacious wink had become the leer of a dead whore.

(Years later, as Ben recounted this, Bev suddenly cried out, startling all of them — they were not so much listening to the story as reliving it. 'It was her!' Bev yelled. 'Mrs Kersh! It was her!')

As Ben looked, the young/old crone on the girlybook cover winked at him. She wiggled her fanny in an obscene come-on.

Cold all over, yet sweating, Ben looked away.

Bill pushed open a door on the left and they followed him into a vaultlike room that might once have been a parlor. A crumpled pair of green pants was hung over the light-fixture which depended from the ceiling. Like the cellar, this room seemed much too big to Ben, almost as long as a freight-car. Much too long for a house as small as this one had appeared from the outside —

Oh, but that was outside, a new voice spoke inside his mind. It was a jocular, squealing voice, and Ben realized with sudden numbing certainty that he was hearing Pennywise Itself; Pennywise was speaking to him on some crazy mental radio. Outside, things always looksmaller than they really are, don't they, Ben?

'Go away,' he whispered.

Richie turned to look at him, his face still strained and pale. 'You say something?'

Ben shook his head. The voice was gone. That was an important thing, a good thing. Yet

(outside)

he had understood. This house was a special place, a kind of station, one of the places in Derry, one of the many, perhaps, from which It wa s able to find its way into the overworld. This stinking rotted house where everything was somehow wrong. It wasn't just that it seemed too big; the angles were wrong, the perspective crazy. Ben was standing just inside the door between the parlor and the hallway and the others were moving away from him across a space that now looked almost as big as Bassey Park . . . but as they moved away, they seemed to grow larger instead of smaller. The floor seemed to slope, and —

Mike turned. 'Ben!' he called, and Ben saw alarm on his face. 'Catch up! We're losing you!' He could barely hear the last word. It trailed away as if the others were being swept off on a fast train.

Suddenly terrified, he began to run. The door behind him swept shut with a muffled bang. He screamed . . . and something seemed to sweep through the air just behind him, ruffling his shirt. He looked back but there was nothing there. That did not change his belief, however, that something had been.

He caught up with the others. He was panting, out of breath, and would have sworn he had run half a mile at least . . . but when he looked back, the parlor's far wall was not ten feet away.

Mike grasped his shoulder hard enough to hurt.

'You scared me, man,' he said. Richie, Stan, and Eddie were looking at Mike questioningly. 'He looked small,' Mike said. 'Like he was a mile away.'

'Bill!'

Bill looked back.

'We gotta make sure everybody stays close,' Ben panted. 'This place . . . it's like the funhouse in a carnival, or something. We'll get lost. I think It wants us to get lost. To get separated.'

Bill looked at him for a moment, lips thin. 'All right,' he said. 'We a-all stay cluh-cluh-hose. No s-s-stragglers.'

They nodded back, frightened, clustered outside the hall door. Stan's hand groped at the bird-book in his back pocket. Eddie was holding his aspirator in one hand, crunching it, loosening up, then crunching it again, like a ninety-eight-pound weakling trying to build up his muscles with a tennis ball.

Bill opened the door and here was another, narrower hall. The wallpaper, which showed runners of roses and elves wearing green caps, was falling away from the spongy plaster in draggling leaves. Yellow waterstains spread in senile rings on the ceiling overhead. A scummy wash of light fell through a dirty window at the end of the hall.

Abruptly the corridor seemed to elongate. The ceiling rose and then began to diminish above them like some weird rocket. The doors grew with the ceiling, pulled up like taffy. The faces of the elves grew long and became alien, their eyes bleeding black holes.

Stan shrieked and clapped his hands to his eyes.

'Ih-Ih-hit's not ruh-ruh-ruh-REAL!' Bill screamed.

'It is! ' Stan screamed back, his small closed fists plugging his eyes. 'It's real, you know it is, God, I'm going crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy —

'Wuh-wuh-WATCH!' Bill bellowed at Stan, at all of them, and Ben, his head reeling, watched as Bill bent down, coiled, and suddenly flung himself upward. His closed left fist struck nothing, nothing at all, but there was a heavy crr-rack ! sound. Plaster dust puffed from a place where there was no longer any ceiling . . . and then there was. The hallway was just a hallway again, narrow, low-ceilinged, dirty. But the walls no longer stretched up into forever. There was only Bill, looking at them and nursing his bleeding hand, which was floury with plaster-dust. Overhead was the clear mark his fist had made in the soft plaster of the ceiling.

'N-N-Not ruh-ruh-real,' he said to Stan, to all of them. 'Just a –ff-false f-fuh –face. Like a Huh-Huh-Huh-Halloween muh-muh-hask.'

'To you, maybe,' Stan said dully. His face was shocked and horrified. He looked around as if no longer sure where he was. Looking at him, smelling the sour reek coming out of his pores, Ben, who had been overjoyed at Bill's victory, got scared all over again. Stan was close to cracking up. Soon he would go into hysterics, begin to scream, perhaps, and what would happen then?

'To you ,' Sta n said again. 'But if I'd tried that, nothing would have happened. Because . . . you've got your brother, Bill, but I don't have anything.' He looked around — first back toward the parlor, which had taken on a somber brown atmosphere, so thick and smoggy they could barely see the door through which they had entered it, to this hall, which was bright but somehow dark, somehow filthy, somehow utterly mad. Elves capered on the decaying wallpaper under runners of roses. Sun glared on the panes of the window at the end of the hall, and Ben knew that if they went down there they would see dead flies . . . more broken glass . . . and then what? The floorboards spreading apart, spilling them into a dead darkness where grasping fingers waited to catch them? Stan was right, God, why had they come into Its lair with nothing but their two stupid silver slugs and a fucking slingshot?

He saw Stan's panic leap from one of them to the next to the next — like a grassfire driven by a hot wind, it widened in Eddie's eyes, dropped Bev's mouth into a wounded gasp, made Richie push his glasses up with both hands and stare around as if followed from close behind by a fiend.

They trembled on the brink of flight, Bill's warning to stay together almost forgotten. They were listening to gale –force panicwinds blowing between their ears. As if in a dream Ben heard Miss Davies, the assistant librarian, reading to the little ones: Who is that trip-trapping on my bridge? And he saw them, the little ones, the babies, leaning forward, ht eir faces still and solemn, their eyes reflecting the eternal fascination of the fairy-story: would the monster be bested . . . or would It feed?

'I don't have anything!' Stan Uris wailed, and he seemed very small, almost small enough to slip through one of the cracks in the hallway's plank flooring like a human letter. 'You got your brother, man, but I don't have anything?

'You duh-duh-duh-do!' Bill yelled back. He grabbed Stan and Ben felt sure he was going to bust him one and his thoughts moaned, No, Bill, please, that's Henry's way, if you do that It'll kill us all right now!

But Bill didn't hit Stan. He whirled him around with rough hands and tore the paperback from the back pocket of Stan's jeans.

'Gimme it!' Stan screamed, beginning to cry. The others stood stunned, shrinking away from Bill, whose eyes now seemed to actually burn. His forehead glowed like a lamp, and he held the book out to Stan like a priest holding out a cross to ward off a vampire.

'You guh-guh-got your b-b-bi-bir-bir —

He turned his head up, the cords in his neck standing out like cables, his adam's apple like an arrowhead buried in his throat. Ben was filled with both fear and pity for his friend Bill Denbrough; but there was also a strong sense of wonderful relief. Had he doubted Bill? Had any of them? Oh Bill, say it, please, can't you say it?

And somehow, Bill did. 'You got your BUH-BUH-BUH-BIRDS! Your BUH-BUH-BIRDS!'

He thrust the book at Stan. Stan took it, and looked at Bill dumbly. Tears glimmered on his cheeks. He held the book so tightly that his fingers were white. Bill looked at him, then at the others.

'Cuh-cuh-home on,' he said again.

'Will the birds work?' Stan asked. His voice was low, husky.

They worked in the Standpipe, didn't they?' Bev asked him.

Stan looked at her uncertainly.

Richie clapped him on the shoulder. 'Come on, Stan-kid,' he said. 'Is you a man or is you a mouse?'

'I must be a man,' Stan said shakily, and wiped tears from his face with the heel of his left hand. 'So far as I know, mice don't shit their pants.'

They laughed and Ben could have sworn he felt the house pulling away from them, from that sound. Mike turned. 'That big room. The one we just came through. Look!'

They looked. The parlor was now almost black. It was not smoke, nor any kind of gas; it was just blackness, a nearly solid blackness. The air had been robbed of its light. The blackness seemed to roll and flex as they stared into it, to almost coalesce into faces.

'Come oh-oh-on.'

They turned away from the black and walked down the hall. Three doors opened off it, two with dirty white porcelain doorknobs, the third with only a hole where the knob's shaft had been. Bill grabbed the first knob, turned it, and pushed the door open. Bev crowded up next to him, raising the Bullseye.

Ben drew back, aware that the others were doing the same, crowding behind Bill like frightened quail. It was a bedroom, empty save for one stained mattress. The rusty ghosts of the coils in a box-spring long departed were tattooed into the mattress's yellow hide. Outside the room's one window, sunflowers dipped and nodded.

'There's nothing — ' Bill began, and then the mattress began to bulge in and out rhythmically. It suddenly ripped straight down the middle. A black sticky fluid began to spill out, staining the mattress and then running over the floor toward the doorway. It came in long ropy tendrils.

'Shut it, Bill!' Richie shouted. 'Shut the fuckin door!'

Bill slammed it shut, looked around at them, and nodded. 'Come on.' He had barely touched the knob of the second door — this one on the other side of the narrow hall — when the buzzing scream began behind the cheap wood.

9

Even Bill drew back from that rising, inhuman cry. Ben felt the sound might drive him mad; his mind visualized a giant cricket behind the door, like something from a movie where radiation made all the bugs get big — The Beginning of the End, maybe, or The Black Scorpion, or that one about the ants in the Lo s Angeles stormdrains. He could not have run even if that buzzing rugose horror had splintered the panels of the door and begun caressing him with its great hairy legs. Beside him, he was dimly aware that Eddie was breathing in hacking gasps.

The scream rose in pitch, never losing that buzzing, insectile quality. Bill fell back another step, no blood in his face now, his eyes bulging, his lips only a purple scar below his nose.

'Shoot it, Beverly!' Ben heard himself cry. 'Shoot it through the door, shoot it before it can get us!' And the sun fell through the dirty window at the end of the hall, a heavy feverish weight.

Beverly raised the Bullseye like a girl in a dream as the buzzing scream rose louder, louder, louder —

But before she could pull the sling back, Mike was shouting: 'No! No! Don't, Bev! Oh gosh! I'll be dipped!' And incredibly, Mike was laughing. He pushed forward, grabbed the knob, turned it, and shoved the door open. It came free of the swollen jamb with a brief grinding nois e. 'It's a mooseblower! Just a mooseblower, that's all, something to scare the crows!'

The room was an empty box. Lying on the floor was a Sterno can with both ends cut off. In the middle, strung tight and knotted outside holes punched in the can's sides, was a waxed length of string. Although there was no breeze in the room — the one window was shut and indifferently boarded over, letting light pass only in chinks and rays — there could be no doubt that the buzzing was coming from the can.

Mike walked to it and fetched it a solid kick. The buzzing stopped as the can tumbled into a far corner.

'Just a mooseblower,' he said to the others, as if apologizing. 'We put cm on the scarecrows. It's nothing. Only a cheap trick. But I ain't a crow.' He looked at Bill, not laughing anymore but smiling still. 'I'm still scared of It — I guess we all are — but It's scared of us, too. Tell you the truth, I think It's scared pretty bad.'

Bill nodded. 'I-I do, too,' he said.

They went down to the door at the end of the hall, and as Ben watched Bill hook his finger into the hole where the doorknob's shaft had been, he understood that this was where it was going to end; there would be no trick behind this door. The smell was worse now, and that thundery feeling of two opposing powers swirling around them was much stronger. He glanced at Eddie, one arm in a sling, his good hand clutching his aspirator. He looked at Bev on his other side, white-faced, holding the slingshot up like a wishbone. He thought: If wehave to run, I'll try to protect you, Beverly. I swear I'll try.

She might have heard his thought, because she turned toward him and offered him a strained smile. Ben smiled back.

Bill pulled the door open. Its hinges uttered a dull scream and then were silent. It was a bathroom . . . but something was wrong with it. Someone broke something in here was all that Ben could make out at first. Not a booze bottle . . . what?

White chips and shards, glimmering wickedly, lay strewn everywhere. Then he understood. It was the crowning insanity. He laughed. Richie joined him.

'Somebody must have let the granddaddy of all farts,' Eddie said, and Mike began to giggle and nod his head. Stan was smiling a little. Only Bill and Beverly remained grim.

The white pieces littered across the floor were shards of porcelain. The toilet-bowl had exploded. The tank stood drunkenly at an angle in a puddle of water, saved from falling over by the fact that the toilet had been placed in one corner of the room and th e tank had landed kitty-corner.

They crowded in behind Bill and Beverly, their feet gritting on bits of porcelain. Whatever it was, Ben thought, it blew that poor toilet right to hell. He had a vision of Henry Bowers dropping two or three of his M-80s into it, slamming the lid down, then bugging out in a hurry. He couldn't think of anything else short of dynamite that would have done such a cataclysmic job. There were a few chunks, but damned few; most of what was left were wicked-looking slivers like blowgun darts. The wallpaper (rose-runners and capering elves, as in the hall) was peppered with holes all the way around the room. It looked like shotgun blasts but Ben knew it was more porcelain, driven into the walls by the force of the explosion.

There was a bathtub standing on claw feet with generations of grimy toe-jam between each blunt talon. Ben peeked into it and saw a tidal-flat of silt and grit on the bottom. A rusty showerhead glared down from above. There was a basin and a medicine cabinet standing ajar above it, disclosing empty shelves. There were small rust-rings on these shelves, where bottles had once stood.

'I wouldn't get too close to that, big Bill!' Richie said sharply, and Ben looked around.

Bill was approaching the mouth of the drainhole in the floor, over which the toilet had once sat. He leaned toward it . . . and then turned back to the others.

'I can h-h-hear the pub-pumping muh-muh-machinery . . . just like in the Buh-Buh-harrens!'

Bev drew closer to Bill. Ben followed her, and yes, he could hear it; that steady thrumming noise. Except, echoing up through the pipes, it didn't sound like machinery at all. It sounded like something alive.

T h –T h – This is w-w-where It cuh-cuh – hame fr –from,' Bill said. His face was still deadly pale, but his eyes were alight with excitement. 'This is w-where it cuh-hame from that d-d-day, and th-hat's w-w-where it a-a-always comes fr –rom! The druh-druh-drains!'

Richie was nodding. 'We were in the cellar, but that isn't where It was — It came down the stairs. Because this is where It could get out.'

'And It did this? ' Beverly asked.

'Ih-It was in a h-h-hurry, I th-think,' Bill said gravely.

Ben looked into the pipe. It was about three feet in diameter and dark as a mineshaft. The inner ceramic surface of the pipe was crusted with stuff he didn't want to know about. That thrumming sound floated up hypnotically . . . and suddenly he saw something. He did not see it with his physical eyes, not at first, but with one buried deep in his mind.

It was rushing toward them, moving at express-train speed, filling the throat of this dark pipe from side to side; It was in Its own form now, whatever that might be; It would take some shape from their minds when It got here. It was coming, coming up from Its own foul runs and black catacombs under the earth, Its eyes glowing a feral yellowish green, coming, coming; It was coming.

And then, at first like sparks, he saw Its eyes down in that darkness. They took shape — flaring and malignant. Over the thrumming sound of the machinery, Ben could now hear a new noise — Whoooooooo . . . A fetid smell belched from the ragged mouth of the drain-pipe and he fell back, coughing and gagging.

'It's coming!' He screamed. 'Bill, I saw It, It's coming!'

Beverly raised the Bullseye. 'Good,' she said.

Something exploded out of the drainpipe. Ben, trying to recall that first confrontation later, could only remember a silvery-orange shifting shape. It was not ghostly; it was solid, and he sensed some other shape, some real and ultimate shape, behind it . . . but his eyes could not grasp what he was seeing, not precisely.

Then Richie was stumbling backward, his face a scrawl of terror, screaming over and over again: 'The Werewolf! Bill! It's the Werewolf! The Teenage Werewolf.' And suddenly the shape locked into reality, for Ben, for all of them. Richie's It became their It.

The Werewolf stood poised over the drainpipe, one hairy foot on either side of where the toilet had once been. Its green eyes glared at them from Its feral face. Its muzzle wrinkled back and yellowish-white foam seeped through Its teeth. It uttered a shattering growl. Its arms pistoned out toward Beverly, the cuffs of Its high– school letter jacket pulling back f r o m Its fur-covered arms. Its smell was hot and raw and murderous.

Beverly screamed. Ben grabbed the back of her blouse and yanked so hard that the seams under the arms tore. One clawed hand swept through the air where she had been only a moment before. Beverly went stumbling backwards against the wall. The silver ball popped out of the cup of the Bullseye. For a moment it glimmered in the air. Mike, quicker than quick, snatched it and gave it back to her.

'Shoot it, baby,' he said. His voice was perfectly calm; almost serene. 'You shoot it right now.'

The Werewolf uttered a shattering roar that became a flesh-freezing howl, Its snout turned up toward the ceiling.

The howl became a laugh. It lunged at Bill as Bill turned to look at Beverly. Ben shoved him aside and Bill went sprawling.

'Shoot It, Bev!' Richie screamed. 'For God's sake, shoot It!'

The Werewolf sprang forward, and there was no question in Ben's mind, then or later, that It knew exactly who was in charge here. Bill was th e one It was after. Beverly drew and fired. The ball flew and again it was off the mark but this time there was no saving curve. It missed

by more than a foot, punching a hole in the wallpaper above the tub. Bill, his arms peppered with bits of porcelain and bleeding in a dozen pieces, uttered a screaming curse.

The Werewolf s head snapped around; its gleaming green eyes considered Beverly. Not thinking, Ben stepped in front of her as she groped in her pocket for the other silver slug. The jeans she wore were too tight. She had donned them with no thought of provocation; it was just that, like the shorts she had worn on the day of Patrick Hockstetter and the refrigerator, she was still wearing last year's model. Her fingers closed on the ball but it squirted away. She groped again and got it. She pulled it, turning her pocket inside out and spilling fourteen cents, the stubs of two Aladdin tickets, and a quantity of pocket-lint onto the floor.

The Werewolf lunged at Ben, who was standing protectively in front of her . . . and blocking her field of fire. Its head was cocked at the predator's deadly questing angle, its jaws snapping. Ben reached blindly for It. There seemed to be no room in his reactions now for terror — he felt a clear-headed sort of anger instead, mixed with bewilderment and a sense that somehow time had come to a sudden unexpected screech-halt. He snagged his hands in tough matted hair — the pelt, he thought, I've got Its pelt — and he could feel the heavy bone of Its skull beneath. He thrust at that wolvish head with all of his force, but although he was a big boy, it did no good at all. If he had not stumbled back and struck the wall, the thing would have torn his throat open with its teeth.

It came after him, Its greenish-yellow eyes flaring. It growled with each breath. It smelled of the sewer and something else, some wild yet unpleasant odor like rotten hazelnuts. One of Its heavy paws rose and Ben skittered aside as best he could. The paw, tipped with heavy claws, ripped bloodless wounds through the wallpaper and into the cheesy plaster beneath. He could dimly hear Richie bellowing something, Eddie howling at Beverly to shoot it, shoot it. But Beverly did not. This was her only other chance. It didn't matter; she intended that it be the only one she would need. A clear coldness she never saw again in her life fell over her sight. In it everything stood out and forward; never again would she see the three dimensions of reality so clearly denned. She possessed every color, every angle, every distance. Fear departed. She felt the hunter's simple lust of certainty and oncoming consummation. Her pulse slowed. The hysterical trembling grip in which she had been holding the Bullseye loosened, then firmed and became natural. She drew in a deep breath. It seemed to her that her lungs would never fill completely. Dimly, faintly, she heard popping sounds. Didn't matter, whatever they were. She tracked left, waiting for the Werewolfs improbable head to fall with cool perfection into the wishbone beyond the extended V of the drawn-back sling.

The Werewolfs claws descended again. Ben tried to duck under them . . . but suddenly he was in Its grip. It jerked him forward as if he had been no more than a ragdoll. Its jaws snapped open.

'Bastard — '

He thrust a thumb into one of Its eyes. It bellowed with pain, and one of those claw-tipped paws ripped through his shirt. Ben sucked his stomach in, but one of the claws pulled a sizzling line of pain down his chest and stomach. Blood gushed out of him and splattered on his pants, his sneakers, the floor. The Werewolf threw him into the bathtub. He thumped his head, saw stars, struggled into a sitting position, and saw his lap was full of blood.

The Werewolf whirled around. Ben observed with that same lunatic clarity that It was wearing faded Levi Strauss bluejeans. The seams had split open. A snot-caked red bandanna, the sort a train-man might carry, hung from one back pocket. Written on the back of Its silver and orange high school jacket were the words DERRY HIGH SCHOOL KILLING TEAM. Below this, the name PENNYWISE. And in the center, a number: 13.

It went for Bill again. He had gotten to his feet and now stood with his back to the wall, looking at It steadily.

'Shoot it, Beverly!' Richie screamed again.

'Beep-beep, Richie,' she heard herself reply from roughly a thousand miles away. The Werewolf's head was suddenly there, in the wishbone. She covered one of its green eyes with the cup and released. There was no shake in either of her hands; she fired as smoothly and naturally as she had fired at the cans in the dump on the day they had all taken turns to see who was the best.

There was time for Ben to think Oh Beverly if you miss this time we're all dead and I don't want to di e in this dirty bathtub but I can't get out. There was no miss. A round eye — not green but dead black — suddenly appeared high up in the center of Its snout: she had aimed for the right eye and missed by less than half an inch.

Its scream — an almost human scream of surprise, pain, fear and rage — was deafening. Ben's ears rang with it. Then the perfect round hole in Its snout was gone, obscured by freshets of blood. It was not flowing; it gouted from the wound in a high-pressure torrent. The freshet drenched Bill's face and hair. Doesn't matter, Ben thought hysterically. Don't worry,Bill. Nobody will be able to see it anyway when we get out of here. If we ever do.

Bill and Beverly advanced on the Werewolf, and behind them, Richie cried out hysterically: 'Shoot It again, Beverly! Kill it!'

'Kill It!' Mike screamed.

'That's right, kill It!' Eddie chimed in.

'Kill it!' Bill cried, his mouth drawn down in a quivering bow. There was a whitish-yellow streak of plaster dust in his hair. 'Kill It, Beverly, don't let it get away!'

No ammo left, Ben thought incoherently, we're slugged out. What are you talking about, kill it? But he looked at Beverly and understood. If his heart had never been hers before that moment, it would have flown to he r then. She had pulled the sling back again. Her fingers were closed over the cup, hiding its emptiness.

'Kill It!' Ben screamed, and flopped clumsily over the edge of the tub. His jeans and underwear were soaked against his skin with blood. He had no idea if he was hurt badly or not. Following the original hot sizzle there hadn't been much pain, but there sure was an awful lot of blood.

The Werewolf's greenish eyes flickered among them, now filled with uncertainty as well as pain. Blood poured down the front of Its jacket in freshets.

Bill Denbrough smiled. It was a gentle, rather lovely smile . . . but it did not touch his eyes. 'You shouldn't have started with my brother,' he said. 'Send the fucker to hell, Beverly.'

The uncertainty left the creature's eyes — It believed. With lithe smooth grace, It turned and dove into the drain. As It went, It changed. The Derry High jacket melted into its pelt and the color ran out of both. The shape of Its skull elongated, as if it had been made of wax which was now softening and beginning to run. Its shape changed. For one instant Ben believed he had nearly seen what shape It really was, and his heart froze inside his chest, leaving him gasping.

'I'll kill you all!' a voice roared from inside the drainpipe. It was thick, savage, not in the least human. 'Kill you all . . . kill you all . . . kill you all . . . ' The words faded back and back, diminishing, washing out, growing distant . . . at last joining the low throbbing hum of the pumping machinery floating through the pipes.

The house seemed to settle with a heavy sub-audible thud. But it wasn't settling, Ben realized; in some strange way it was shrinking, coming back to its normal size. Whatever magic It had used to make the house at 29 Neibolt Street seem bigger was now withdrawn. The house snapped back like an elastic. It was only a house now, smelling damp and a little rotten, an unfurnished house where winos and hobos sometimes came to drink and talk and sleep out of the rain.

It was gone.

In Its wake the silence seemed very loud.

10

'W-W-We guh-got to g-g-get ow-ow-out of this p-place,' Bill said. He walked over to where Ben was trying to get up and grabbed one of his outstretched hands. Beverly was standing near the drain. She looked down at herself and that coldness disappeared in a flush that seemed to turn all her skin into one warm stocking. It must have been a deep breath indeed. The dim popping sounds had been the buttons on her blouse. They were gone, every single one of them. The blouse hung open and her small breasts were clearly revealed. She snatched the blouse closed.

'Ruh-Ruh-Richie,' Bill said. 'Help me with B-B-Ben. He's h-h-h — '

Richie joined him, then Stan and Mike. The four of them got Ben to his feet. Eddie had gone to Beverly and put his good arm awkwardly around her shoulders. 'You did great,' he said, and Beverly burst into tears.

Ben took two big staggering steps to the wall and leaned against it before he could fall over again. His head felt light. Color kept washing in and out of the world. He felt decidedly pukey.

Then Bill's arm was around him, strong and comforting.

'How b-b-bad ih-ih-is it, H-H-Haystack?'

Ben forced himself to look down at his stomach. He found performing two simple actions — bending his neck and spreading apart the slit in his shirt — took more courage than he had needed to enter the house in the first place. He expected to see half his insides hanging down in front of him like grotesque udders. Instead he saw that the flow of blood had slowed to a sluggish trickle. The Werewolf had slashed him long and deep, but apparently not mortally.

Richie joined them. He looked at the cut which ran a twisting course down Ben's chest and petered out on the upper bulge of his stomach, then soberly into Ben's face. 'It just about had your guts for suspenders. Haystack. You know it?'

'No fake, Jake,' Ben said.

He and Richie stared at each other for a long, considering moment, and then they broke into hysterical giggles at the same instant, spraying each other with spittle. Richie took Ben into his arms and pounded his back. 'We beat It, Haystack! We beat It!'

'W-W-We dih-dih –dih –didn't beat It,' Bill said grimly. 'We got l-l-lucky. Let's g-get out b– b-before Ih-Ih-It d-d-decides to come buh-back.'

'Where?' Mike asked.

'The Buh –Buh-Barrens,' Bill said.

Beverly made her way over to them, still holding her blouse closed. Her cheeks were bright red. 'The clubhouse?'

Bill nodded.

'Can I have someone's shirt?' Beverly asked, blushing more furiously than ever. Bill glanced down at her, and the blood came into his own face, all in a rush. He turned his eyes away hastily, but in that instant Ben felt a rush of knowledge and dismal momentary jealousy. In that instant, that one bare second, Bill had become aware of her in a way that only Ben had himself been before.

The others had also looked and then looked away. Richie coughed against the back of his hand. Stan turned red. And Mike Hanlon dropped back a step or two as if actually frightened by the sideswell of that one small white breast, visible below her hand.

Beverly threw her head up, shaking her tangled hair back behind her. She was still blushing, but her face was lovely.

'I can't help it that I'm a girl,' she said, 'or that I'm starting to get big on top . . . now can't I please have someone's shirt?'

'Sh-sh-sure,' Bill said. He pulled his white –t shirt over his head, baring his narrow chest, the visible rack of his ribs, his sunburne d, freckled shoulders. 'H-H-Here.'

'Thank you, Bill,' she said, and for one hot, smoking moment their eyes locked directly. Bill did not look away this time. His gaze was firm, adult.

'W-W-W-Welcome,' he said.

Good luck, Big Bill, Ben thought, and he turned away from that gaze. It was hurting him, hurting him in a deeper place than any Vampire or Werewolf would ever be able to reach. But all the same, there was such a thing as propriety. The word he didn't know; on the concept he was very clear. Looking at them when they were looking at each other that way would be as wrong as looking at her breasts when she let go of the front of her blouse to pull Bill's t-shirt over her head. If that's the way it is. But you'll never love her the way I do. Nev er.

Bill's t-shirt came down almost to her knees. If not for the jeans poking out from beneath its hem, she would have looked as if she was wearing a slip.

'L-L-Let's guh-guh –go,' Bill repeated. 'I duh-don't nun-know about you g-guys, but I've h-h-had ee-ee-enough for wuh-wuh-one d-day.'

Turned out they all had.

11

The passage of an hour found them in the clubhouse, both the window and the trapdoor open. It was cool inside, and the Barrens were blessedly silent that day. They sat without talking much, each lost in his or her own thoughts. Richie and Bev passed a Marlboro back and forth. Eddie took a brief snort from his aspirator. Mike sneezed several times and apologized. He said he was catching a cold.

'Thass the oney theeng you could catch, senhorr,' Richie said, companionably enough, and that was all.

Ben kept expecting the mad interlude in the house on Neibolt Street to take on the hues of a dream. It'll recede and fall apart, he thought, the way that bad dreams do. You wake up gasping and sweating all over, but fifteen minutes later you can't remember what the dream was even about.

But that didn't happen. Everything that had happened, from the time he had forced his way in through the cellar window to the moment Bill had used th e chair in the kitchen to break a window so they could get out, remained bright and clearly fixed in his memory. It had not been a dream. The clotted wound on his chest and belly was not a dream, and it didn't matter if his mom could see it or not.

At last Beverly stood up. 'I have to go home,' she said. 'I want to change before my mom gets home. If she sees me wearing a boy's shirt, she'll kill me.'

'Keel you, senhorrita,' Richie agreed, 'but she will keel you slow. '

'Beep-beep, Richie.'

Bill was looking at her gravely.

'I'll return your shirt, Bill.'

He nodded and waved a hand to show that this wasn't important.

'Will you get in trouble? Coming home without it?'

'N-No. They h-h-hardly nuh-hotice when I'm a-a-around, anyway.'

She nodded, bit her full underlip, a girl of eleven who was tall for her age and simply beautiful.

'What happens next, Bill?'

'I d-d-don't nuh-nuh –know.'

'It's not over, is it?'

Bill shook his head.

Ben said, 'It'll want us more than ever now.'

'More silver slugs?' she asked him. He found he could barely stand to meet her glance. Ilove you, Beverly . . . just let me have that. You can have Bill, or the world, or whatever you need. Just let me have that, let me go on loving you, and I guess it'll be enough.

'I don't know,' Ben said. 'We could, but . . . ' He trailed off vaguely, shrugged. He could not say what he felt, was somehow not able to bring it out — that this was like being in a monster movie, but it wasn't. The Mummy had looked different in some ways . . . ways that confirmed its essential reality. The same was true of the Werewolf — he could testify to that because he had seen it in a paralyzing close-up no film, not even one in 3-D, allowed, he had had his hands in the wiry underbrush of Its tangled pelt, he had seen a small, baleful-orange firespot (like a pompom!) in one of Its green eyes. These things were . . . well . . . they were dreams-made-real. And once dreams became real, they escaped the power of the dreamer and became their own deadly things, capable of independent action. The silver slugs had worked because the seven of them had been unified in their belief that they would. But they hadn't killed It. And next time It would approach them in a new shape, one over which silver wielded no power.

Power, power, Ben thought, looking at Beverly. It was okay now; her eyes had met Bill's again and they were looking at each other as if lost. It was only for a moment, but to Ben it seemed very long.

It always comes back to power. I love Beverly Marsh and she has power over me. She loves Bill Denbrough and so he has power over her. But — I think — he is coming to love her. Maybe it was her face, how it looked when she said she couldn't help being a girl. Maybe it was seeing one breast for just a second. Maybe just the way she looks sometimes when the light is right, or her eyes. Doesn't matter. But if he's starting to love her, she's starting to have power over him. Superman has power, except when there's Kryptonite around. Batman has power, even though he can't fly or see through walls. My mom has power over me, and her boss down in the mill has power over her. Everyone has some . . . except maybe for link kids and babies.

Then he thought that even little kids and babies had power; they could cry until you had to do something to shut them up.

'Ben?' Beverly asked, looking back at him. 'Cat got your tongue?'

'Huh? No. I was thinking about power. The power of the slugs.'

Bill was looking at him closely.

'I was wondering where that power came from,' Ben said.

'Ih-Ih-It — ' Bill began, and then shut his mouth. A thoughtful, vague expression drifted over his face.

'I really have to go,' Beverly said. 'I'll see you all, huh?'

'Sure, come on down tomorrow,' Stan said. 'We're going to break Eddie's other arm.'

They all laughed. Eddie pretended to throw his aspirator at Stan.

'Bye, then,' Beverly said, and boosted herself up and out.

Ben looked at Bill and saw that he hadn't joine d in the laughter. That thoughtful expression was still on his face, and Ben knew you would have to call his name two or three times before he would answer. He knew what Bill was thinking about; he would be thinking about it himself in the days ahead. Not all the time, no. There would be clothes to hang out and take in for his mother, games of tag and guns in the Barrens, and, during a rainy spell the first four days of August, the seven of them would go on a mad Parcheesi jag at Richie Tozier's house, making blockades, sending each other back with great abandon, deliberating exactly how to

split the roll of the dice while rain dripped and ran outside. His mother would announce to him that she believed Pat Nixon was the prettiest woman in America, and be horror-struck when Ben opted for Marilyn Monroe (except for the color of her hair, he thought that Bev looked like Marilyn Monroe). There would be time to eat as many Twinkies and Ring-Dings and Devil Dogs as he could get his hands on, and time to sit on the back porch reading Lucky Starr and the Moons of Mercury. There would be time for all of those things while the wound on his chest and belly healed to a scab and began to itch, because life went on and at eleven, although bright and apt, he held no real sense of perspective. He could live with what had happened in the house on Neibolt Street. The world was, after all, full of wonders.

But there would be odd moments of time when he pulled the questions out again and examined them: The power of the silver, the power of the slugs — where does power like that come from? Where does any power come from? How do you get it? How do you use it?

It seemed to him that their lives might depend on those questions. One night as he was falling asleep, the rain a steady lulling patter on the roof and against the windows, it occurred to him that there was another question, perhaps the only question. It had some real shape; he had nearly seen it. To see the shape was to see the secret. Was that also true of power? Perhaps it was. For wasn't it true that power, like It, was a shape-changer? It was a baby crying in the middle of the night, it was an atomic bomb, it was a silver slug, it was the way Beverly looked at Bill and the way Bill looked back.

What, exactly what, was power, anyway?

12

Nothing much happened for the next two weeks.

'You got to lose

You can't win all the time.

You got to lose

You can't win all the time, what'd I say?

I know, pretty baby,

I see trouble comin down the line.'

— John Lee Hooker, 'You Got to Lose'

April 6th, 1985

Tell you what, friends and neighbors — I'm drunk tonight. Fuck-drunk. Rye whiskey. Went down to Wally's and got started, went to the greenfront down on Center Street half an hour before they closed, and bought a fifth of rye. I know what I'm up to. Drink cheap tonight, pay dear tomorrow. So here he sits, one drunk nigger in a public library after closing, with this book open in front of me and the bottle of Old Kentucky on my left. Tell the truth and shame the devil,' my mom used to say, but she forgot to tell me that sometimes you can't shame Mr Splitfoot sober. The Irish know, but of course they're God's white niggers and who knows, maybe they're a step ahead.

Want to write about drink and the devil. Remember Treasure Island? The old seadog at The Admiral Benbow. 'We'll do 'em yet, Jacky!' I bet the bitter old fuck even believed it. Full of rum — or rye — you can believe anything.

Drink and the devil. Okay.

Amuses me sometimes to think how long I'd last if I actually published some of this stuff I write in the dead of night. If I flashed some of the skeletons in Derry's closet. There is a library Board of Directors. Eleven of them. One is a seventy-year-old writer who suffered a stroke two years ago and who now often needs help to find his place on each meeting's printed agenda (and who has sometimes been observed picking large dry boogers out of his hairy nostrils and placing them carefully in his ear, as if for safe-keeping). Another is a pushy woman who came here from New York with her doctor husband and who talks in a constant, whiny monologue about how provincial Derry is, how no one here understands THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE and how one has to go to Boston to buy a skirt one would care to be seen in. Last time this anorexic babe spoke to me without the services of an intermediary was during the Board's Christmas party about a year and a half ago. She had consumed a pretty large amount of gin, and asked me if anyone in Derry understood THE BLACK EXPERIENCE. I had also consumed a pretty large amount of gin, and answered: 'Mrs Gladry, Jews may be a great mystery, but niggers are understood the whole world round.' She choked on her drink, whirled around so sharply that her panties were momentarily visible under her flaring skirt (not a very interesting view; would that it had been Carol Danner!), and so ended my last informal conversation with Mrs Ruth Gladry. No great loss.

The other members of the Board are the descendants of the lumber barons. Their support of the library is an act of inherited expiation; they raped the woods and now care for these books the way a libertine might decide, in his middle age, to provide for the gaily gotten bastards of his youth. It was their grandfathers and great-grandfathers who actually spread the legs of the forests north of Derry and Bangor and raped those green-gowned virgins with their axes and peaveys. They cut and slashed and strip –timbered and never looked back. They tore the hymen of those great forests open when Grover Cleveland was President and had pretty well finished the job by the time Woodrow Wilson had his stroke. These lace-ruffled ruffians raped the great woods, impregnated them with a litter of slash and junk spruce, and changed Derry from a sleepy little ship –building town into a booming honky-tonk where the ginmills never closed and the whores turned tricks all night long. One old campaigner, Egbert Thoroughgood, now ninety-three, told me of taking a slat-thin prostitute in a crib on Baker Street (a street which no longer exists; middle –class apartment housing stands quietly where Baker Street once boiled and brawled).

'I only realized after I spent m'spunk in her that she was laying in a pool of jizzum maybe an inch deep. Stuff had just about gone to jelly. "Girl," I says, "ain't you never cared for y'self?" She looks down and says, "I'll put on a new sheet if you want to go again. There's two in the cu'bud down the hall, I think. I knows pretty much what I'm layin in until nine or ten, but by midnig ht my cunt's so numb it might's well be in Ellsworth."'

So that was Derry right through the first twenty or so years of the twentieth century: all boom and booze and balling. The Penobscot and the Kenduskeag were full of floating logs from ice-out in April to ice-in in November. The business began to slacken off in the twenties without the Great War or the hardwoods to feed it, and it staggered to a stop during the Depression. The lumber barons put their money in those New York or Boston banks that had survived the Crash and left Derry's economy to live — or die — on its own. They retreated to their gracious houses on West Broadway and sent their children to private schools in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York. And lived on their interest and political connections.

What's left of their supremacy seventy-some years after Egbert Thoroughgood spent his love with a dollar whore in a spermy Baker Street bed are empty wildwoods in Penobscot and Aroostook Counties and the great Victorian houses which stand for two blocks along West Broadway . . . and my library, of course. Except those good folks from West Broadway would take 'my library' away from me in jig time (pun definitely intended) if I published anything about the Legion of Decency, the fire at the Black Spot, the execution of the Bradley Gang . . . or the affair of Claude Heroux and the Silver Dollar.

The Silver Dollar was a beerjoint, and what may have been the queerest mass murder in the entire history of America took place there in September of 1905. There are still a few old timers in Derry who claim to remember it, but the only account that I really trust is Thoroughgood's. He was eighteen when it happened.

Thoroughgood now lives in the Paulson Nursing Home. He's toothless, and his St John's Valley Franco/Downcast accent is so thick that probably only another old Mainer could understand what he was saying if his talk were written down phonetically. Sandy Ives, the folklorist from the University of Maine whom I have mentioned previo usly in these wild pages, helped me to translate my audio tapes.

Claude Heroux was, according to Thoroughgood, 'Un bat Canuck sonofa-whore widdin eye that'd roll adju like a mart's in dem oonlight.'

(Translation: 'One bad Canuck son of a whore with an eye that would roll at you like a mare's in the moonlight.')

Thoroughgood said that he — and everyone else who had worked with Heroux — believed the man was as sly as a chicken-stealing dog . . . which made his hatchet-wielding foray into the Silver Dollar all the more startling. It was not in character. Up until then, lumbermen in Derry had believed Heroux's talents ran more to lighting fires in the woods.

The summer of '05 was long and hot and there had been many fires in the woods. The biggest of them, which Heroux later admitted he set by simply putting a lighted candle in the middle of a pile of woodchips and kindling, happened in Haven's Big Injun Woods. It burned twenty thousand acres of prune hardwood, and you could smell the smoke of it thirty-five miles away as the horse-drawn trollies breasted Up-Mile Hill in Derry.

In the spring of that year there had been some brief talk about unionizing. There were four lumbermen involved in organizing (not that there was much to organize; Maine workingmen were anti-union then and are, for the large part, anti-union now), and one of the four was Claude Heroux, who probably saw his union activities mostly as a chance to talk big and spend a lot of time drinking down on Baker and Exchange Streets. Heroux and the other three called themselves 'organizers'; the lumber barons called them 'ringleaders.' A proclamation nailed to the cooksheds in lumber camps from Monroe to Haven Village to Sumner Plantation to Millinocket informed lumbermen that any man overheard talking union would be fired off the job immediately.

In May of that year there was a brief strike up near Trapham Notch, and although the strike was broken in short order, both by scabs and by 'town constables' (and that was rather peculiar, you understand, since there were nearly thirty 'town constables' swinging axe –

handles and creasing skulls, but before that day in May, there hadn't been so much as a single constable in Trapham Notch — which had a population of 79 in the census of 1900 — so far as anyone knew), Heroux and his organizing friends considered it a great victory for their cause. Accordingly, they came down to Derry to get drunk and to do some more 'organizing' . . . or 'ringleading,' depending on whose side you favored. Whicheve r, it must have been dry work. They hit most of the bars in Hell's Half-Acre, finishing up in The Sleepy Silver Dollar, arms around each other's shoulders, pissing-down-your-leg drunk, alternating union songs with bathetic tunes like 'My Mother's Eyes Are Looking Down from Heaven', although I myself think any mother looking down from there and seeing her son in such a state might well have been excused for turning away.

According to Egbert Thoroughgood, the only reason anyone could figure for Heroux bein g in the movement at all was Davey Hartwell. Hartwell was the chief 'organizer' or 'ringleader,' and Heroux was in love with him. Nor was he the only one; most of the men in the movement loved Hartwell deeply and passionately, with that proud love men save for those of their own sex who possess a magnetism that seems to approach divinity. 'Davvey Ardwell wadda main who walk lak e ohn heffa de worl an haddim a daylah on de resp,' Thoroughgood said.

(Translation: 'Davey Hartwell was a man who walked like he owned half of the world and had him a deadlock on the rest.')

'He wadda great main inniz way; no use sayn he woint. He haddim foce , he haddim some big dinnity iniz walk anniz talk. Ainno use sayin he wadda good main. Just trine dellya he wadda great un.'

Heroux followed Hartwell into the organizing business the way he would have followed him if he had decided to go for a shipbuilder up in Brewer or down in Bath, or building the Seven Trestles over in Vermont, or trying to bring back the Pony Express out west, for that matter. Heroux was sly and he was mean, and I suppose that in a novel that would preclude any good qualities at all. But sometimes, when a man has spent a life being distrusted and distrustful, being a loner (or a Loser) both by choice and by reason of society's opinions of him, he can find a friend or a lover and simply live for that person, the way a dog lives for its master. That's the way it appeared to have been between Heroux and Hartwell.

Anyway, there were four of them who spent that night in the Brentwood Arms Hotel, which was then called the Floating Dog by the lumbermen (the reason why is lost in obscurity — not even Egbert Thoroughgood remembers). Four checked in; none checked out. One of them, Andy DeLesseps, was never seen again; for all history tells he might have spent the rest of his life living in pleasant ease in Portsmouth. But somehow I doubt it. Two of the other 'ringleaders,' Amsel Bickford and Davey Hartwell himself, were found floating face­down in the Kenduskeag. Bickford was missing his head; someone had taken it off with the swipe of a woodsman's two-hander. Both of Hartwell's legs were gone, and those who found him swore that they had never seen such an expression of pain and horror on a human face. Something had distended his mouth, stuffing out his cheeks, and when his discoverers turned him over and spread his lips, seven of his toes fell out onto the mud. Some thought he might have lost the other three during his years working in the woods; others held the opinion that he might have swallowed them before he died.

Pinned to the back of each man's shirt was a paper with the word UNION on it.

Claude Heroux was never brought to trial for what happened in the Silver Dollar on the night of September 9th, 1905, so there's no way of knowing exactly how he escaped the fate of the others that night in May. We could make assumptions; he had been on his own a long time, had learned how to jump fast, had perhaps developed the knack some cur-dogs have of getting out just before real trouble develops. But why didn't he take Hartwell with him? Or was he perhaps taken into the woods with the rest of the 'agitators'? Maybe they were saving him for last, and he was able to get away even while Hartwell's screams (which would have

grown muffled as they jammed his toes into his mouth) were echoing in the dark and scaring birds off their roosts. There's no way of knowing, not for sure, but that last feels right to my heart.

Claude Heroux became a ghost-man. He would come strolling into a camp in the St John's Valley, line up at the cook-shed with the rest of the loggers, get a bowl of stew, eat it, and be gone before anyone realized he wasn't one of the topping gang. Weeks after that he'd show up in a Winterport beerjoint, talking union and swearing he'd have his revenge on the men that had murdered his friends — Hamilton Tracker, William Mueller, and Richard Bowie were the names he mentioned the most frequently. All of them lived in Derry, and their gabled gambrelled cupola-ed houses stand on West Broadway to this day. Years later, they and their descendants would fire the Black Spot.

That there were people who would have liked Claude Heroux put out of the way cannot be doubted, particularly after the fires started in June of that year. But although Heroux was seen frequently, he was quick and had an animal's awareness of danger. So far as I have been able to find out, no official warrant was ever sworn out against him, and the police never took a hand. Maybe there were fears about what Heroux might say if he was brought to trial for arson.

Whatever the reasons, the woods around Derry and Haven burned all that hot summer. Children disappeared, there were more fights and murders than usual, and a pall of fear as real as the smoke you could smell from the top of Up-Mile Hill lay over the town.

The rains finally came on September first, and it rained for a solid week. Downtown Derry was flooded out, which was not unusual, but the big houses on West Broadway were high above downtown, and in some of those big houses there must have been sighs of relief. Let the crazy Canuck hide out in the woods all whiter, if that's what he wants, they might have said. His work's done for this summer, and we'll get him before the roots dry next June.

Then came September 9th. I cannot explain what happened; Thoroughgood cannot explain it; so far as I know, no one can. I can only relate the events which occurred.

The Sleepy Silver Dollar was full of loggers drinking beer. Outside, it was drawing down toward misty dark. The Kenduskeag was high and silver-sullen, filling its channel from bank to bank, and according to Egbert Thoroughgood, a fallish wind was blowin — the kine dat alms fine de hole in y'paints and blow strayduppa cracka yo ais.' The streets were quagmires. There was a card game going on at one of the tables in the back of the room. They were William Mueller's men. Mueller was part owner of the GS&WM rail line as well as a lumber potentate who owned millions of acres of prime timber, and the men who were playing poker around an oilcloth-covered table in the Dollar that night were part-time lumbermen, part-time railroad bulls, and full time trouble. Two of them, Tinker McCutcheon and Floyd Calderwood, had done jail-time. With them were Lathrop Rounds (his nickname, as obscure as The Floating Dog Hotel, was El Katook), David 'Stugley' Grenier, and Eddie King — a bearded man whose spectacles were almost as fat as his gut. It seems very likely that they were at least some of the men who had spent the last two and a half months keeping an eye out for Claude Heroux. It seems just as likely — although there is not a shred of proof — that they were in on the little cutting party in May when Hartwell and Bickford were laid low.

The bar was crowded, Thoroughgood said; dozens of men were bellied up there, drinking beer and eating bar lunches and dripping onto the sawdust-covered dirt floor.

The door opened and in came Claude Heroux. He had a woodsman's double-bitted axe in his hand. He stepped up to the bar and elbowed himself a place. Egbert Thoroughgood was standing on his left; he said that Heroux smelled like a polecat stew. The barman brought Heroux a schooner of beer, two hard-cooked eggs in a bowl, and a shaker of salt. Heroux paid him with a two-dollar bill and put his change — a dollar-eighty-five — into one of the flap

pockets of his lumberman's jacket. He salted his eggs and ate them. He salted his beer, drank it off, and uttered a belch.

'More room out than there is in, Claude,' Thoroughgood said, just as if half the enforcers in northern Maine hadn't been on the prod for Heroux all that summer.

'You know that's the truth,' Heroux said, except, being a Canuck, what he probably said came out sounding more like 'You know dot da troot.'

He ordered himself another schooner, drank up, and belched again. Talk at the bar went on; there was no silence like the ones in the western movies when the good guy or the bad guy pushes his way through the batwings and makes his ominous way to the bar. Several people called to him. Claude nodded and waved, but he didn't smile. Thoroughgood said he looked like a man who was half in a dream. At the table in back, the poker game went on. El Katook was dealing. No one bothered to tell any of the players that Claude Heroux was in the bar . . . although, since their table was no more than twenty feet away, and since Claude's name was hollered more than once by people who knew him, it is hard to know how they could have gone on playing, unaware of his potentially murderous presence. But that is what occurred.

After he finished his second schooner of beer, Heroux excused himself to Thoroughgood, picked up his two-hander, and went back to the table where Mueller's men were playing five –card stud. Then he started cutting.

Floyd Calderwood had just poured himself a glass of rye whiskey and was setting the bottle back down when Heroux arrived and chopped Calderwood's hand off at the wrist. Calderwood looked at his hand and screamed; it was still holding the bottle but all of a sudden wasn't attached to anything but wet gristle and trailing veins. For a moment the severed hand clutched the bottle even tighter, and then it fell off and lay on the table like a dead spider. Blood spouted from his wrist.

At the bar, somebody called for more beer and someone else asked the bartender, whose name was Jonesy, if he was still dying his hair. 'Never dyed it,' Jonesy said in an ill-tempered way; he was vain of his hair.

'Met a whore down at Ma Courtney's who said what grows around your pecker is just as white as snow,' the fellow said.

'She was a liar,' Jonesy replied.

'Drop your pants and let's us see,' said a lumberman named Falkland, with whom Egbert Thoroughgood had been matching for drinks before Heroux came in. This provoked general laughter.

Behind them, Floyd Calderwood was shrieking. A few of the men leaning against the bar took a casual look around in time to see Claude Heroux bury his woodsman's axe in Tinker McCutcheon's head. Tinker was a big man with a black beard going gray. He got halfway up, blood pouring down his face in freshets, then sat down again. Heroux pulled the axe out of his head. Tinker started to get up again, and Heroux slung the axe sideways, burying it in his back. It made a sound, Thoroughgood said, like a load of laundry being dropped on a rug. Tinker flopped over the table, his cards spraying out of his hand.

The others players were hollering and bellowing. Calderwood, still shrieking, was trying to pick up his right hand with his left as his life's blood ran out of his stump of a wrist in a steady stream. Stugley Grenier had what Thoroughgood called a 'clutch-pistol' (meaning a gun in a shoulder-holster) and he was grabbing for it with no success whatsoever. Eddie King tried to get up and fell right out of his chair on his back. Before he could get up, Heroux was standing astride him, the axe slung up over his head. King screamed and held up both hands in a warding-off gesture.

'Please, Claude, I just got married last month!' King screamed.

The axe came down, its head almost disappearing in King's ample gut. Blood sprayed all the way up to the Dollar's beamed roof. Eddie began to crawfish on the floor. Claude pulled

the axe out of him the way a good woodsman will pull his axe out of a softwood tree, kind of rocking it back and forth to loosen the clinging grip of the sappy wood. When it was free he slung it up over his head. He brought it down again and Eddie King stopped screaming. Claude Heroux wasn't done with him, however; he began to chop King up like kindling-wood.

At the bar, conversation had turned to what sort of winter lay ahead. Veraon Stanchfield, a farmer from Palmyra, claimed it would be a mild one — fall rain uses up winter snow was his scripture. Alfie Naugler, who had a farm out on the Naugler Road in Derry (it is gone now; where Alfie Naugler once grew his peas and beans and beets, the Interstate extension now runs its 8.8 mile, six-lane course), begged to disagree. Alfie claimed the coming winter was going to be a jeezer. He had seen as many as eight rings on some of the mohair caterpillars, he said, an unheard-of number. Another man held out for ice; another for mud. The Buzzard of '01 was duly recalled. Jonesy sent schooners of beer and bowls of hardcooked eggs skidding down the bar. Behind them the screaming went on and the blood flowed in rivers.

At this point in my questioning of Egbert Thoroughgood, I turned off my cassette recorder and asked him: 'How did it happen? Are you saying you didn't know it was going on, or that you knew but you let it go on, or just what?'

Thoroughgood's chin sank down to the top button of his food-spotted vest. His eyebrows drew together. He said nothing for a long, long time. Outside it was winter, and I could hear — very faintly — the yells and laughter of the children sliding down the big hill in McCarron Park. The silence in Thoroughgood's room, small, cramped, and medicinal-smelling, spun out so long that I was about to repeat my question, when he replied: 'We knew. But it didn't seem to matter. It was like politics, in a way. Ayuh, like that. Like town business. Best let people who understand politics take care of that and people who understand town business take care of that. Such things be best done if working men don't mix in.'

'Are you really talking about fate and just afraid to come out and say so?' I asked suddenly. The question was simply jerked out of me, and I certainly did not expect Thoroughgood, who was old and slow and unlettered, to answer it . . . but he did, with no surprise at all.

'Ayuh,' he said. 'Mayhap I am.'

While the men at the bar went on talking about the weather, Claude Heroux went on cutting. Stugley Grenier had finally managed to clear his clutch-pistol. The axe was descending for another chop at Eddie King, who was by then in pieces. The bullet Grenier fired struck the head of the axe and richocheted off with a spark and a whine.

El Katook got to his feet and started backing away. He was still holding the deck he had been dealing from; cards were fluttering off the bottom and onto the floor. Claude came after him. El Katook held out his hands. Stugley Grenier got off another round, which didn't come within ten feet of Heroux.

'Stop, Claude,' El Katook said. Thoroughgood said it appeared like Katook was trying to smile. 'I wasn't with them. I didn't mix in at all.'

Heroux only growled.

'I was in Millinocket,' El Katook said, his voice starting to rise toward a scream. I ' was inMillinocket, I swear it on my mother's name! Ask anybody if you don't believe meeeee . . . '

Claude raised the dripping axe, and El Katook sprayed the rest of the cards into his face. The axe came down, whistling. El Katook ducked. The axe-head buried itself in the planking that formed the Silver Dollar's back wall. El Katook tried to run. Claude hauled the axe out of the wall and poked it between his ankles. El Katook went sprawling. Stugley Grenier shot at Heroux again, this time having a bit more luck. He had been aiming at the crazed lumberman's head; the bullet struck home in the fleshy part of Heroux's thigh.

Meantime, El Katook was crawling busily toward the door with his hair hanging in his face. Heroux swung the axe again, snarling and gibbering, and a moment later Katook's

severed head was rolling across the sawdust-strewn floor, the tongue popped bizarrely out between the teeth. It rolled to a stop by the booted foot of a lumberman named Varney, who had spent most of the day in the Dollar and who, by then, was so exquisitely slopped that he didn't know if he was on land or at sea. He kicked the head away without looking down to see what it was, and hollered for Jonesy to run him down another beer.

El Katook crawled another three feet, blood spraying from his neck in a high-tension jet, before he realized he was dead and collapsed. That left Stugley. Heroux turned on him, but Stugley had run into the outhouse and locked the door.

Heroux chopped his way in, hollering and blabbering and raving, slobber falling from bis jaws. When he got in Stugley was gone, although the cold, leaky little room was windowless. Heroux stood there for a moment, head lowered, powerful arms slimed and splattered with blood, and then, with a roar, he flipped up the lid of the three-holer. He was just in time to see Stugley's boots disappearing under the ragged board skirting of the outhouse wall. Stugley Grenier ran screaming down Exchange Street in the rain, beshitted from top to toe, crying that he was being murdered. He survived the cutting party in the Silver Dollar — he was the only one who did — but after three months of listening to jokes about his method of escape, he quitted the Derry area forever.

Heroux stepped out of the toilet and stood in front of it like a bull after a charge, head down, his axe held in front of him. He was puffing and blowing and covered with gore from head to foot.

'Shut the door, Claude, that shitpot stinks to high heaven,' Thoroughgood said. Claude dropped his ax e on the floor and did as he had been asked. He walked over to the card-strewn table where his victims had been sitting, kicking one of Eddie King's severed legs out of his way. Then he simply sat down and put his head in his arms. The drinking and conversation at the bar went on. Five minutes later more men began to pile in, three or four sheriffs deputies among them (the one in charge was Lal Machen's father, and when he saw the mess he had a heart attack and had to be taken away to Dr Shratt's office). Claude Heroux was led away. He was docile when they took him, more asleep than awake.

That night the bars all up and down Exchange and Baker Streets boomed and hollered with news of the slaughter. A righteous drunken sort of fury began to build up, and when the bars closed better than seventy men headed downtown toward the jail and the court-house. They had torches and lanterns. Sonic were carrying guns, some had axes, some had peavies.

The County Sheriff wasn't due from Bangor until the noon stage the next day, so he wasn't there, and Goose Machen was laid up in Dr Shratt's infirmary with his heart attack. The two deputies who were sitting in the office playing cribbage heard the mob coming and got out of there fast. The drunks broke in and dragged Claude Heroux out of his cell. He didn't protest much; he seemed dazed, vacant.

They carried him on their shoulders like a football hero; down to Canal Street they carried him, and there they lynched him from an old elm that overhung the Canal. 'He was so far gone that he didn't kick but twice,' Egbert Thoroughgood said. It was, so far as the town records show, the only lynching to ever take place in this part of Maine. And almost needless to say, it was not reported in the Derry News. Many of those who had gone on drinking unconcernedly while Heroux went about his business in the Silver Dollar were in the necktie party that strung him up. By midnight their mood had changed.

I asked Thoroughgood my final question: had he seen anyone he didn't know during that day's violent activities? Someone who struck him as strange, out of place, funny, even clownish? Someone who would have been drinking at the bar that afternoon, someone who had maybe turned into one of the rabble-rousers that night as the drinking went on and the talk turned to lynching?

'Mayhap there was,' Thoroughgood replied. He was tired by then, drooping, ready for his afternoon nap. 'It were a long time ago, mister. Long and long.'

'But you remember something,' I said.

'I remember thinkin that there must be a county fair up Bangor way,' Thoroughgood said. 'I was having a beer in the Bloody Bucket that night. The Bucket was about six doors from the Silver Dollar. There was a fella in there . . . comical sort of fella . . . doing flips and rollovers . . . jugglin glasses . . . tricks . . . put four dimes on his forrid and they'd stay right there . . . comical, you know . . . '

His bony chin had sunk to his chest again. He was going to sleep right in front of me. Spittle began to bubble at the corners of his mouth, which had as many tucks and wrinkles as a lady's change-purse.

'Seen him a few now' n thens since,' Thoroughgood said. 'Figure maybe he had such a good time that night . . . that he decided to stick around.'

'Yeah. He's been around a long time,' I said.

His only response was a weak snore. Thoroughgood had gone to sleep in his chair by the window, with his medicines and nostrums lined up beside him on the sill, soldiers of old age at muster. I turned off my tape-recorder and just sat looking at him for a moment, this strange time –traveller from the year 1890 or so, who remembered when there were no cars, no electric lights, no airplanes, no state of Arizona. Pennywise had been there, guiding them down the path toward another gaudy sacrifice — just one more in Derry's long history of gaudy sacrifices. That one, in September of 1905, ushered in a heightened period of terror that would include the Easter-tide explosion of the Kitchener Ironworks the following year.

This raises some interesting (and, for all I know, vitally important) questions. What does It really eat, for instance? I know that some of the children have been partially eaten — they show bite-marks, at least — but perhaps it is we who drive It to do that. Certainly we have all been taught since earliest childhood that what the monster does when it catches you in the deep wood is eat you. That is perhaps the worst thing we can conceive. But it's really faith that monsters live on, isn't it? I am led irresistibly to this conclusion: Food may be life, but the source of power is not food but faith. And who is more capable of a total act of faith than a child?

But there's a problem: kids grow up. In the church, power is perpetuated and renewed by periodic ritualistic acts. In Derry, power seems to be perpetuated and renewed by periodic ritualistic acts, too. Can it be that It protects Itself by the simple fact that, as the children grow into the adults, they become either incapable of faith or crippled by a sort of spiritual and imaginative arthritis?

Yes. I think that's the secret here. And if I make the calls, how much will they remember? How much will they believe? Enough to end this horror once and for all, or only enough to get them killed? They are being called — I know that much. Each murder in this new cycle has been a call. We almost killed It twice, and in the end we drove It deep in Its warren of tunnels and stinking rooms under the city. But I think It knows another secret: although It ma y be immortal (or almost so), we are not. It had only to wait until the act of faith, which made us potential monster-killers as well as sources of power, had become impossible. Twenty-seven years. Perhaps a period of sleep for It, as short and refreshing as an afternoon nap would be for us. And when It awakes, It is the same, but a third of our lives has gone by. Our perspectives have narrowed; our faith in the magic that makes magic possible, has worn off like the shine on a new pair of shoes after a hard day's walking.

Why call us back? Why not just let us die? Because we nearly killed It, because we frightened It, I think. Because It wants revenge.

And now, now that we no longer believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Hansel and Gretel, or the troll under the bridge, It is ready for us. Come on back, It says. Come on back,

let's finish our business in Derry. Bring your jacks and your marbles and your yo-yos! We'll play. Come on back and we'll see if you remember the simplest thing of all: how it is to be children, secure in belief and thus afraid of the dark. On that one, at least I score a thousand per cent: I am frightened. So goddam frightened.