Richie Tozier

Their room numbers. That was good. That saved time. 'Thanks, Be — '

But Belch was gone. The driver's seat was empty. There was only the New York Yankees baseball cap lying there, mold crusted on its bill. And some slimy stuff on the knob of the gearshift.

Henry stared, his heart beating painfully in his throat... and then he seemed to hear something move and shift in the back seat. He got out quickly, opening the door and almost falling to the pavement in his haste. He gave the Fury, which still burbled softly through its dual cherry-bomb mufflers (cherry-bombs had been outlawed in the State of Maine in 1962), a wide berth.

It was hard to walk; each step pulled and tore at his belly. But he gained the sidewalk and stood there, looking at the eight-floor brick building which, along with the library and the Aladdin Theater and the seminary, was one of the few he remembered clearly from the old days. Most of the lights on the upper floors were out now, but the frosted-glass globes which flanked the main doorway blazed softly in the darkness, haloed with moisture from the lingering groundfog.

Henry made his laborious way toward and between them, shouldering open one of the doors.

The lobby was wee-hours silent. There was a faded Turkish rug on the floor. The ceiling was a huge mural, executed in rectangular panels, which showed scenes from Derry's logging days. There were overstuffed sofas and wing chairs and a great fireplace which was now dead and silent, a birch log thrown across the andirons — a real log, no gas; the fireplace in the Town House was not just a piece of lobby stage dressing. Plants spilled out of low pots. The glass double doors leading to the bar and the restaurant were closed. From some inner office, Henry could hear the gabble of a TV, turned low.

He lurched across the lobby, his pants and shirt streaked with blood. Blood was grimed into the folds of his hands; it ran down his cheeks and slashed his forehead like warpaint. His eyes bulged from their sockets. Anyone in the lobby who had seen him would have run, screaming, in terror. But there was no one.

The elevator doors opened as soon as he pushed the UP button. He looked at the paper in his hand, then at the floor buttons. After a moment of deliberation, he pushed 6 and the doors closed. There was a faint hum of machinery as the elevator began to rise. Might as well start at the top and work my way down.

He slumped against the rear wall of the car, eyes half-closed. The hum of the elevator was soothing. Like the hum of the machinery in the pumping-stations of the drainage system. That day: it kept coming back to him. How everything seemed almost prearranged, as if all of them were just playing parts. How Vie and the ole Belcher had seemed... well, almost drugged. He remembered —

The car came to a stop, jolting him and sending another wave of griping pain into his stomach. The doors slid open. Henry stepped out into the silent hallway (more plants here, hanging ones, spiderplants, he didn't want to touch any of them, not those oozy green runners, they reminded him too much of the things that had been hanging down there in the dark). He rechecked the paper. Kaspbrak was in 609. Henry started down that way, running one hand along the wall for support, leaving a faint bloody track on the wallpaper as he went (ah, but he stepped away whenever he came close to one of the hanging spiderplants; he wanted no truck with those). His breathing was harsh and dry.

Here it was. Henry pulled the switchblade from his pocket, swashed his dry lips with his tongue, and knocked on the door. Nothing. He knocked again, louder this time.

'Whozit?' Sleepy. Good. He'd be in his 'jammies, only half-awake. And when he opened the door, Henry would drive the switchblade directly into the hollow at the base of his neck, the vulnerable hollow just below the adam's apple.

'Bellboy, sir,' Henry said. 'Message from your wife.' Did Kaspbrak have a wife? Maybe that had been a stupid thing to say. He waited, coldly alert. He heard footsteps — the shuffle of slippers.

'From Myra?' He sounded alarmed. Good. He would be more alarmed in a few seconds. A pulse beat steadily in Henry's right temple.

'I guess so, sir. There's no name. It just says your wife.'

There was a pause, then a metallic rattle as Kaspbrak fumbled with the chain. Grinning, Henry pushed the button on the switchblade's handle. Click. He held the blade up by his cheek, ready. He heard the thumb-bolt turn. In just a moment he would plunge the blade into the skinny little creep's throat. He waited. The door opened and Eddie

The Losers All Together / 1:20 P.M.

saw Stan and Richie just coming out of the Costello Avenue Market, each of them eating a Rocket on a push-up stick. 'Hey!' he shouted. 'Hey, wait up!'

They turned around and Stan waved. Eddie ran to join them as quickly as he could, which was not, in truth, very quickly. One arm was immured in a plaster-of-Paris cast and he had his Parcheesi board under the other.

'Whatchoo say, Eddie? Whatchoo say, boy?' Richie asked in his grandly rolling Southern Gentleman Voice (the one that sounded more like Foghorn Leghorn in the Warner Brothers cartoons than anything else). 'Ah say... Ah say... the boy's got a broken ahm! Lookit that, Stan, the boy's got a broken ahm! Ah say... be a good spote and carreh the boy's Pawcheeseh bo-wud for him!'

'I can carry it,' Eddie said, a little out of breath. 'How about a lick on your Rocket?'

'Your mom wouldn't approve, Eddie,' Richie said sadly. He began to eat faster. He had just gotten to the chocolate stuff in the middle, his favorite part. 'Germs, boy! Ah say... Ah say you kin get germs eatin after someone else!'

'I'll chance it,' Eddie said.

Reluctantly, Richie held his Rocket up to Eddie's mouth... and snatched it away quickly as soon as Eddie had gotten in a couple of moderately serious licks.

'You can have the rest of mine, if you want,' Stan said. 'I'm still full from lunch.'

'Jews don't eat much,' Richie instructed. 'It's part of their religion.' The three of them were walking along companionably enough now, headed up toward Kansas Street and the Barrens. Derry seemed lost in a deep hazy afternoon doze. The blinds of most of the houses they passed were pulled down. Toys stood abandoned on lawns, as if their owners had been hastily called in from play or put down for naps. Thunder rumbled thickly in the west.

'Is it?' Eddie asked Stan.

'No, Richie's just pulling your leg,' Stan said. 'Jews eat as much as normal people.' He pointed at Richie. 'Like him.'

'You know, you're pretty fucking mean to Stan,' Eddie told Richie. 'How would you like somebody to say all that made-up shit about you, just because you're a Catholic?'

'Oh, Catholics do plenty,' Richie said. 'My dad told me once that Hitler was a Catholic, and Hitler killed billions of Jews. Right, Stan?'

'Yeah, I guess so,' Stan said. He looked embarrassed.

'My mom was furious when my dad told me that,' Richie went on. A little reminiscent grin had surfaced on his face.' Absolutely fyoo-rious. Us Catholics also had the Inquisition, that was the little dealie with the rack and the thumbscrews and all that stuff. I figure all religions are pretty weird.'

'Me too,' Stan said quietly. 'We're not Orthodox, or anything like that. I mean, we eat ham and bacon. I hardly even know what being a Jew is. I was born in Derry, and sometimes we go up to synagogue in Bangor for stuff like Yom Kippur, but — ' He shrugged.

'Ham? Bacon?' Eddie was mystified. He and his mom were Methodists.

'Orthodox Jews don't eat stuff like that,' Stan said. 'It says something in the Torah about not eating anything that creeps through the mud or walks on the bottom of the ocean. I don't know exactly how it goes. But pigs are supposed to be out, also lobster. But my folks eat them. I do too.'

'That's weird,' Eddie said, and burst out laughing. 'I never heard of a religion that told you what you could eat. Next thing, they'll be telling you what kind of gas you can buy.'

'Kosher gas,' Stan said, and laughed by himself. Neither Richie nor Eddie understood what he was laughing about.

'You gotta admit, Stanny, it is pretty weird,' Richie said. 'I mean, not being able to eat a sausage just because you happen to be Jewish.'

'Yeah?' Stan said. 'You eat meat on Fridays?'

' 'Jeez, no!' Richie said, shocked. 'You can't eat meat on Friday, because — ' He began to grin a little. 'Oh, okay, I see what you mean.'

'Do Catholics really go to hell if they eat meat on Fridays?' Eddie asked, fascinated, totally unaware that, until two generations before, his own people had been devout Polish Catholics who would no more have eaten meat on Friday than they would have gone outside with no clothes on.

'Well, I'll tell you what, Eddie,' Richie said. 'I don't really think God would send me down to the Hot Place just for forgetting and having a baloney sandwich for lunch on a Friday, but why take a chance? Right?'

'I guess not,' Eddie said. 'But it seems so — ' So stupid, he was going to say, and then he remembered a story Mrs Portleigh had told the Sunday-school class when he was just a little kid — a first grader in Little Worshippers. According to Mrs Portleigh, a bad boy had once stolen some of the communion bread when the tray was passed and put it in his pocket. He took it home and threw it into the toilet bowl just to see what would happen. At once — or so Mrs Portleigh reported to her rapt Little Worshippers — the water in the toilet bowl had turned a bright red. It was the Blood of Christ, she said, and it had appeared to that little boy because he had done a very bad act called a BLASPHEMY. It had appeared to warn him that, by throwing the flesh of Jesus into the toilet, he had put his immortal soul in danger of Hell. Up until then, Eddie had rather enjoyed the act of communion, which he had only been allowed to take since the previous year. The Methodists used Welch's grape juice instead of wine, and the Body of Christ was represented by cut-up cubes of fresh, springy Wonder Bread. He liked the idea of taking in food and drink as a religious rite. But following Mrs Portleigh's story, his awe of the ritual darkened into something more potent, something rather dreadful. Simply reaching for the cubes of bread became an act which required courage, and he always feared an electrical shock... or worse, that the bread would suddenly change color in his hand, become a blood-clot, and a disembodied Voice would begin to thunder in the church: Not worthy! Not worthy! Damned to Hell! Damned to Hell! Often, after he had taken communion, his throat would close up, his breath would begin to wheeze in and out, and he would wait with panicky impatience for the benediction to be over so he could hurry into the vestibule and use his aspirator.

You don't want to be so silly, he told himself as he grew older. That was nothing but a story, and Mrs Portleigh sure wasn't any saint — Mamma said she was divorced down in Kittery and that she plays Bingo at Saint Mary's in Bangor, and that real Christians don't gamble, real Christians leave gambling for pagans and Catholics.

All that made perfect sense, but it didn't relieve his mind. The story of the communion bread that turned the water in the toilet bowl to blood worried at him, gnawed at him, even caused him to lose sleep. It came to him one night that the way to get this behind him once and for all would be to take a piece of the bread himself, toss it in the toilet, and see what happened.

But such an experiment was far beyond his courage; his rational mind could not stand against that sinister image of the blood spreading its cloud of accusation and potential damnation in the water, it could not stand against that talismanic magical incantation: This is my body, take, eat; this is my blood, shed for you and for many.

No, he had never made the experiment.

'I guess all religions are weird,' Eddie said now. But powerful, his mind added, almost magical... or was that BLASPHEMY? He began to think about the thing they had seen on Neibolt Street, and for the first time he saw a crazy parallel — the Werewolf had, after all, come out of the toilet.

'Boy, I guess everybody's asleep,' Richie said, tossing his empty Rocket-tube nonchalantly into the gutter. 'You ever see it so quiet? What, did everybody go to Bar Harbor for the day?'

'H-H-H-Hey you guh-guh-guys!' Bill Denbrough shouted from behind them. 'Wuh-Wuhhait up!'

Eddie turned, delighted as always to hear Big Bill's voice. He was wheeling Silver around the corner of Costello Avenue, outdistancing Mike, although Mike's Schwinn was almost brand-new.

'Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYYY!' Bill yelled. He rolled up to them doing perhaps twenty miles an hour, the playing cards clothespinned to the fender-struts roaring. Then he back-pedalled, locked the brakes, and produced an admirably long skid -mark.

'Stuttering Bill!' Richie said. 'Howaya, boy? M say... Ah say... how aw you, boy?'

'I'm o-o-okay,' Bill said. 'Seen Ben or Buh-Buh-heverly?' is Mike rode up and joined them. Sweat stood out on his face in little drops. 'How fast does that bike go, anyway?'

Bill laughed. 'I d-d-don't nun-know, e-exactly. Pretty f-f-fast.'

'I haven't seen them,' Richie said. 'They're probably down there, hanging out. Singing twopart harmony. "Sh-boom, sh-boom... yada-da-da-da-da-da... you look like a dream, shweetheart.'"

Stan Uris made throwing-up noises.

'He's just jealous,' Richie said to Mike. 'Jews can't sing.'

'Buh-buh-buh — '

'"Beep-beep, Richie,"' Richie said for him, and they all laughed. They started toward the Barrens again, Mike and Bill pushing their bikes. Conversation was brisk at first, but then it lagged. Looking at Bill, Eddie saw an uneasy look on his face, and he thought that maybe the quiet was getting to him, too. He knew Richie had meant it as a joke, but it really did seem that everyone in Derry had gone to Bar Harbor for the day... to somewhere. Not a car moved on the street; there wasn't a single old lady pushing a carrier full of groceries back to her house or apartment.

'Sure is quiet, isn't it?' Eddie ventured, but Bill only nodded.

They crossed to the Barrens side of Kansas Street, and then they saw Ben and Beverly, running toward them, shouting. Eddie was shocked by Beverly's appearance; she was usually so neat and clean, her hair always washed and tied back in a pony-tail. Now she was streaked with what looked like every kind of gluck in the universe. Her eyes were wide and wild. There was a scratch on one cheek. Her jeans were caked with crap and her blouse was torn. Ben fell behind her, puffing, his stomach wobbling.

'Can't go down in the Barrens,' Beverly was panting. 'The boys... Henry... Victor... they're down there somewhere... the knife... he has a knife... '

'Sluh-slow down,' Bill said, taking charge at once in that effortless, almost unconscious way of his. He glanced at Ben as he ran up, his cheeks flushed bright, his considerable chest heaving.

'She says Henry's gone crazy, Big Bill,' Ben said.

'Shit, you mean he used to be sane? ' Richie asked, and spat between his teeth.

'Sh-Shut uh-up, Ruh-Richie,' Bill said, and then looked back at Beverly. 'Teh-Tell,' he said. Eddie's hand crept into his pocket and touched his aspirator. He didn't know what all this was, but he already knew it wasn't good.

Forcing herself to speak as calmly as possible, Beverly managed to get out an edited version of the story — a version that began with Henry, Victor, and Belch catching up to her on the street. She didn't tell them about her father — she was desperately ashamed of that. When she was finished Bill stood silent for a moment, hands in his pockets, chin down, Silver's handlebars leaning against his chest. The others waited, throwing frequent glances at the railing that ran along the edge of the dropoff. Bill thought for a long time, and no one interrupted him. Eddie became aware, suddenly and effortlessly, that this might be the final act. That was how the day's silence felt, wasn't it? The feeling that the whole town had up and left, leaving only the deserted husks of buildings behind.

Richie was thinking about the picture in George's album that had suddenly come to life.

Beverly was thinking about her father, how pale his eyes had been. Mike was thinking about the bird.

Ben was thinking about the mummy, and a smell like dead cinnamon. Stan Uris was thinking of bluejeans, black and dripping, and hands as white as wrinkled paper, also dripping.

'Cuh-Cuh-Come oh-oh-on,' Bill said at last. 'W -We're going d-d-down.'

'Bill — ' Ben said. His face was troubled. 'Beverly said Henry was really crazy. That he meant to kill — '

'Ih-It's nuh-not theirs,' Bill said, gesturing at the green dagger-shaped slash of the Barrens to their right and below them — the underbrush, the choked groves of trees, the bamboo, the glint of water. 'Ih-Ih-It's not their pruh-pruh-hopperty,' He looked around at them, his face grim. 'I'm t-t-tired of b-being scuh-schuh-hared by them. We b-b-beat them in the ruhrockfight, and if we h-h-have to beat them a-a-again, we'll duh-duh-do it.'

'But Bill,' Eddie said, 'what if it's not just them?

Bill turned to Eddie, and with real shock Eddie saw how tired and drawn Bill's face was - there was something frightening about that face, but it wasn't until much, much later, as an adult drifting toward sleep after the meeting at the library, that he understood what that frightening thing was: it was the face of a boy driven close to the brink of madness, a boy who was perhaps ultimately no more sane or in control of his own decisions than Henry was. Yet the essential Bill was still there, looking out of those haunted scarified eyes... an angry, determined Bill.

'Well,' he said, 'whuh-whuh-what if it's nuh-nuh-not?

No one answered him. Thunder boomed, closer now. Eddie looked at the sky and saw the stormclouds moving in from the west in black thunderheads. It was going to rain a bitch, as his mother sometimes said.

'Nuh-nuh-how I'll t-t-tell you what,' Bill said, looking at them. 'None of you have to guhguh-go w-with me if you d-don't want to. That's uh-uh-up to you.'

'I'll go along, Big Bill,' Richie said quietly.

'Me too,' Ben said.

'Sure,' Mike said with a shrug.

Beverly and Stan agreed, and Eddie last.

'I don't think so, Eddie,' Richie said. 'Your arm's not, you know, looking too cool.'

Eddie looked at Bill.

'I w-w-want h-him,' Bill said. 'You w-w-walk with muh-muh-me, Eh-Eh-Eddie. I'll keep an eye on yuh-you.'

'Thanks, Bill,' Eddie said. Bill's tired, half-crazy face seemed suddenly lovely to him —

lovely and well loved. He felt a dim sense of amazement. I'd die for him, I guess, if he told me to. What kind of power is that? If it makes you look like Bill looks now, it's maybe not such a good power to have.

'Yeah, Bill's got the ultimate weapon,' Richie said. 'BO bombs.' He raised his left arm and fluttered his right hand under the exposed armpit. Ben and Mike laughed a little, and Eddie smiled.

Thunder boomed again, close and loud enough this time to make them jump and huddle closer together. The wind was picking up, rattling trash around in the gutter. The first of the dark clouds sailed over the hazy ringed disc of the sun, and their shadows melted away. The wind was cold, chilling the sweat on Eddie's uncovered arm. He shivered. Bill looked at Stan and said a peculiar thing then.

'You got your b-b-bird-book, Stan?'

Stan tapped his hip pocket.

Bill looked at them again. 'Let's g-g-go down,' he said.

They went down the embankment single-file except for Bill, who stayed with Eddie as he had promised. He allowed Richie to push Silver down, and when they had reached the bottom, Bill put his bike in its accustomed place under the bridge. Then they stood together, looking around.

The coming storm did not produce a darkness; not even, precisely, a dimness. But the quality of the light had changed, and things stood out in a kind of dreamlike steely relief: shadowless, clear, chiselled. Eddie felt a sinking of horror and apprehension in his guts as he realized why the quality of this light seemed so familiar — it was the same sort of light he remembered from the house at 29 Neibolt Street.

A streak of lightning tattooed the clouds, bright enough to make him wince. He put a hand up to his face and found himself counting: One... two... three... And then the thunder came in a single coughing bark, an explosive sound, a sound like an M-80 firecracker, and they drew even closer together.

'Wasn't any rain forecast this morning,' Ben said uneasily. 'The paper said hot and hazy.'

Mike was scanning the sky. The clouds up there were black-bottomed keelboats, high and heavy, swiftly overrunning the blue haze that had covered the sky from horizon to horizon when he and Bill came out of the Denbrough house after lunch. 'It's comin fast,' he said.

'Never saw a storm come so fast.' And as if in confirmation, thunder whacked again.

'C-C-Come on,' Bill said. 'L-Let's put Eh-Eh-Eddie's Parchee-hee-si board in the cluh-cluhclubhouse.'

They started along the path they had beaten in the weeks since the incident of the dam. Bill and Eddie were at the head of the line, their shoulders brushing the broad green leaves of the shrubs, the others behind them. The wind gusted again, making the leaves on the trees and bushes whisper together. Farther ahead, the bamboo rattled eerily, like drums in a jungle tale.

'Bill?' Eddie said in a low voice.

'What?'

'I thought this was just in the movies, but... ' Eddie laughed a little. 'I feel like somebody's watching me.'

'Oh, they're th-th-there, all r-r-right,' Bill said.

Eddie looked around nervously and held his Parcheesi board a link tighter. He

Eddie's Room / 3:05 A.M.

opened the door on a monster from a horror comic.

A gore-streaked apparition stood there and it could only be Henry Bowers. Henry looked like a corpse which has returned from the grave. Henry's face was a frozen witch-doctor's mask of hate and murder. His right hand was cocked at cheek-level, and even as Eddie's eyes widened and he began to draw in his first shocked breath, the hand pistoned forward, the switchblade glittering like silk.

With no thought — there was no time; if he had stopped to think he would have died —

Eddie slammed the door closed. It struck Henry's forearm, deflecting the knife's course so that it swung in a savage side-to-side arc less than an inch from Eddie's neck. There was a crunch as the door pinched Henry's arm against the jamb. Henry uttered a muffled cry. His hand opened. The knife clattered to the floor. Eddie kicked it. It skittered under the TV.

Henry threw his weight against the door. He outweighed Eddie by over a hundred pounds and Eddie was driven back like a doll; his knees struck the bed and he fell on it. Henry came into the room and swept the door shut behind him. He twisted the thumb-bolt as Eddie sat up, wide-eyed, his throat already starting to whistle.

'Okay, fag,' Henry said. His eyes dropped momentarily to the floor, hunting for the knife. He didn't see it. Eddie groped on the nighttable and found one of the two bottles of Perrier water he had ordered earlier that day. This was the full one; he had drunk the other before going to the library because his nerves were shot and he had a bad case of acid-burn. Perrier was very good for the digestion.

As Henry dismissed the knife and started toward him, Eddie gripped the green pear-shaped bottle by the neck and smashed it on the edge of the nighttable. Perrier foamed and fizzed across it, flooding out most of the pill-bottles that stood there.

Henry's shut and pants were heavy with blood, both fresh and semi-dried. His right hand now hung at a strange angle.

'Babyfag,' Henry said, 'teach you to throw rocks.'

He made it to the bed and reached for Eddie, who still hardly realized what was happening. No more than forty seconds had elapsed since he had opened the door. Henry grabbed for him. Eddie thrust the ragged base of the Perrier bottle at him. It ripped into Henry's face, pulling open his right cheek in a twisted flap and puncturing Henry's right eye. Henry uttered a breathless scream and staggered backward. His slit eye, leaking whitishyellow fluid, hung loosely from its socket. His cheek sprayed blood in a gaudy fountain. Eddie's own cry was louder. He got off the bed and went toward Henry — to help him, perhaps, he wasn't really sure — and Henry lurched at him again. Eddie thrust with the Perrier bottle as if with a fencing sword, and this time the jagged points of green glass punched deep into Henry's left hand and sawed at his fingers. Fresh blood flowed. Henry made a thick grunting noise, the sound, almost, of a man clearing his throat, and shoved Eddie with his right hand.

Eddie flew back and struck the writing-desk. His left arm twisted behind him somehow and he fell on it heavily. The pain was a sudden sickening flare. He felt the bone go along the fault-line of that old break, and he had to clench his teeth against a scream of agony. A shadow blotted out the light.

Henry Bowers was standing over him, swaying back and forth. His knees buckled. His left hand was dripping blood on the front of Eddie's robe.

Eddie had held onto the stump of the Perrie r bottle and now, as Henry's knees came completely unhinged, he got it in front of him, jagged base pointing upward, the cap braced against his sternum. Henry came down like a tree, impaling himself on the bottle. Eddie felt it shatter in his hand and a fresh bolt of grinding agony shuddered through his left arm, which was still trapped under his body. Fresh warmth cascaded over him. He wasn't sure if this batch was Henry's blood or his.

Henry twitched like a landed trout. His shoes rattled an almost syncopated beat on the carpet. Eddie could smell his rotten breath. Then Henry stiffened and rolled over. The bottle protruded grotesquely from his midsection, capped end pointing toward the ceiling, as if it had grown there.

'Gug' Henry said, and said no more. He looked up at the ceiling. Eddie thought he might be dead.

Eddie fought off the waves of faintness that wanted to cover him over and drag him down. He got to his knees, and finally to his feet. There was fresh pain as his broken arm swung out in front of him and that cleared his head a little Wheezing, fighting for breath, he made it to the nighttable. He picked his aspirator out of a puddle of carbonated water, stuck it in his mouth, and triggered it off. He shuddered at the taste, then gave himself another blast. He looked around at the body on the carpet — could that be Henry? could it possibly be? It was. Grown old, his crewcut more gray than black, his body now fat and white and sluglike, it was still Henry. And Henry was dead. At long last, Henry was —

'Gug,' Henry said, and sat up. His hands clawed at the air, as if for holds which only Henry could see. His gouged eye leaked and dribbled; its bottom arc now bulged pregnantly down onto his cheek. He looked around, saw Eddie shrinking back against the wall, and tried to get up.

He opened his mouth and a stream of blood gushed out. Henry collapsed again. Heart racing, Eddie fumbled for the telephone and succeeded only in knocking it off the table and onto the bed. He snatched it up and dialed 0. The phone rang again and again and again.

Come on, Eddie thought, what are you doing down there, jacking off? Come on, please, answer the frigging phone!

It rang again and again. Eddie kept his eyes on Henry, expecting him to start trying to gain his feet again at any moment. Blood. Dear God, so much blood.

'Desk,' a fuzzy, resentful voice said at last.

'Ring Mr Denbrough's room,' Eddie said. 'Quick as you can.' With his other ear he was now listening to the rooms around him. How loud had they been? Was someone going to pound on the door and ask if everything was all right in there?

'You sure you want me to ring?' the clerk asked. 'It's ten after three.'

'Yes, do it!' Eddie nearly screamed. The hand holding the phone was trembling in convulsive little bursts. There was a nest of waspy, rotten-ugly singing in his other arm. Had Henry moved again? No; surely not.

'Okay, okay,' the clerk said. 'Cool your jets, my friend.'

There was a click, and then the hoarse burr of a room-phone ringing. Come on, Bill, come on, c —

A sudden thought, gruesomely plausible, occurred to him. Suppose Henry had visited Bill's room first? Or Richie's? Ben's? Bev's? Or had Henry perhaps paid a visit to the library?

Surely he had been somewhere else first; if someone hadn't softened Henry up, it would have been Eddie lying dead on the floor, with a switchblade growing out of his chest the way the neck of the Perrier bottle was growing out of Henry's gut. Or suppose Henry had visited all the others first, catching them bleary and half-asleep, as Henry had caught him? Suppose they were all dead? And that thought was so awful Eddie believed he would soon begin screaming if someone didn't answer the phone in Bill's room.

'Please, Big Bill,' Eddie whispered. 'Please be there, man.'

The phone was picked up and Bill's voice, uncharacteristically cautious, said: 'H-H-Hello?'

'Bill,' Eddie said... almost babbled. 'Bill, thank God.'

'Eddie?' Bill's voice grew momentarily fainter, speaking to someone else, telling the someone who it was. Then he was back strong. 'W-What's the muh-hatter, Eddie?'

'It's Henry Bowers,' Eddie said. He looked at the body on the floor again. Had it changed position? This time it was not so easy to persuade himself it hadn't. 'Bill, he came here... and I killed him. He had a knife. I think... ' He lowered his voice. 'I think it was the same knife he had that day. When we went into the sewers. Do you remember?'

'I r-r-remember,' Bill said grimly. 'Eddie, listen to me. I want you to

The Barrens / 1:55 P.M.

g-g-go back and tell B-B-Ben to c-come up h-h-here.'

'Okay,' Eddie said, and dropped back at once. They were approaching the clearing now. Thunder rumbled in the overcast sky, and the bushes sighed in the rising breeze. Ben joined him as they came into the clearing. The trapdoor to the clubhouse stood open, an improbable square of blackness in the green. The sound of the river was very clear, and Bill was suddenly struck by a crazy certainty: that he was experiencing that sound, and this place, for the last time in his childhood. He drew a deep breath, smelling earth and air and the distant sooty dump, fuming like a sullen volcano that cannot quite make up its mind to erupt. He saw a flock of birds fly off the railroad trestle and toward the Old Cape. He looked up at the boiling clouds.

'What is it?' Ben asked.

'Why h-h-haven't they tried to guh-guh-het u-us?' Bill asked. 'They're th-there. Eh-EhEddie was ruh-hight about that. I can fuh-fuh-heel them.'

'Yeah,' Ben said. 'I guess they might be stupid enough to think we're going back into the clubhouse. Then they'd have us trapped.'

'Muh-muh-maybe,' Bill said, and he felt a sudden helpless fury at his stutter, which made it impossible for him to talk fast. Perhaps they were things he would have found impossible to say anyway — how he felt he could almost see through Henry Bowers's eyes, how he felt that, although on opposite sides, pawns controlled by opposing forces, he and Henry had grown very close.

Henry expected them to stand and fight.

It expected them to stand and fight.

And be killed.

A chilly explosion of white light seemed to fill his head. They would be victims of the killer that had been stalking Derry ever since George's death — all seven of them. Perhaps their bodies would be found, perhaps not. It all depended on whether or not It could or would protect Henry — and, to a lesser degree, Belch and Victor. Yes. To the outside, to the rest of this town, we'll have been victims of the killer. And that's right, in a funny sort of way that really is right. It wants us dead. Henry's the tool to get it done so It doesn't have to come out. Me first, I think — Beverly and Richie might be able to hold the others, or Mike, but Stan's scared, and so's Ben, although I think he's stronger than Stan. And Eddie's got a broken arm. Why did I lead them down here? Christ! Why did I?

'Bill?' Ben said anxiously. The others joined them beside the clubhouse. Thunder whacked again, and the bushes began to rustle more urgently. The bamboo rattled on in the fading stormy light.

'Bill — ' It was Richie now.

'Shhh!' The others fell uneasily silent under his blazing haunted eyes. He stared at the underbrush, at the path twisting away through it and back toward Kansas Street, and felt his mind suddenly go up another notch, as if to a higher plane. There was no stuttering in his mind; he felt as if his thoughts had been borne away on a mad flow of intuition — as if everything were coming to him.

George at one end, me and my friends at the other. And then it will stop (again)

again, yes, again, because this has happened before and there always has to be some sacrifice at the end, some terrible thing to stop it, I don't know how I can know that but I do.

.. and they... they...

'They luh-luh-let it happen,' Bill muttered, staring wide-eyed at the ratty pigtail of path.

'Shuh-Shuh-Sure they d-d-do.'

'Bill?' Bev asked, pleading. Stan stood on one side of her, small and neat in a blue polo shirt and chinos. Mike stood on the other, looking at Bill intensely, as if reading his thoughts. They let it happen, they always do, and things quiet down, things go on, It... It... (sleeps)

sleeps... or hibernates like a bear... and then it starts again, and they know... people know... they know it has to be so It can be.

'I luh-hih-luh-l-l-l — '

Oh please God oh please God he thrusts his fists please God against the posts let me get this out the posts and still insists oh God oh Christ OH PLEASE LET ME BE ABLE TO

TALK!

'I l-led you d-down huh-here b-b-b-b-because nuh-nuh-noplace is s-s-safe,' Bill said. Spittle blabbered from his lips; he wiped them with the back of one hand. 'Duh-Duh-Derry is It. DD-Do you uh-uh-understand m-m-me?' He glared at them; they drew away a little, their eyes shiny, almost thanotropic with fright. 'Duh-herry is Ih-Ih-It! Eh-Eh-hennyp-p-place we g-ggo... when Ih-Ih-It g-g-g-gets uh-us, they w-w-wuh-hon't suh-suh-see, they w-w-won't huh- huh-hear, they w-w-won't nuh-nuh-know.' He looked at them, pleading. 'Duh-don't y-y-you sub-see h-how it ih-ih-is? A-A-A11 we c-c-can duh-duh-do is to t-t-try and fuh-hinish wwhat w-w-w-we stuh-harted.'

Beverly saw Mr Ross getting up, looking at her, folding his paper, and simply going into his house. They won't see, they won't hear, they won't know. And my father (take those pants off slutchild)

had meant to kill her.

Mike thought of lunch with Bill. Bill's mother had been off in her own dreamy world, seeming not to see either of them, reading a Henry James novel while the boys made sandwiches and gobbled them standing at the counter. Richie thought of Stan's neat but utterly empty house. Stan had been a little surprised; his mother was almost always home at lunch time. On the few occasions when she wasn't, she left a note saying where she could be reached. But there had been no note today. The car was gone, and that was all. 'Probably went shopping with her friend Debbie,' Stan said, frowning a little, and had set to work making egg-salad sandwiches. Richie had forgotten about it. Until now. Eddie thought of his mother. When he had gone out with his Parcheesi board there had been none of the usual cautions: Be careful, Eddie, get under cover if it rains, Eddie, don't you dare play any rough games, Eddie. She hadn't asked if he had his aspirator, hadn't told him what time to be home, hadn't warned him against 'those rough boys you play with.' She had simply gone on watching her soap-opera story on TV, as if he didn't exist.

As if he didn't exist.

A version of the same thought went through all of the boys' minds: they had, at some point between getting up this morning and lunch-time, simply become ghosts. Ghosts.

'Bill,' Stan said harshly, 'if we cut across? Through the Old Cape?'

Bill shook his head. 'I don't thuh-thuh-hink s-s-so. We'd g-g-get c-c-caught in the buh-buhbam-b-b-boo... the quh-quh-quick-m-mud... or there'd b-b-be ruh-ruh-real p-p-p-pirahna fuh-fuh-fish in the K-K-Kenduskeag... o-o-or suh-suh-homething e-e-else.'

Each had his or her own different vision of the same end. Ben saw bushes which suddenly became man-eating plants. Beverly saw flying leeches like the ones that had come out of that old refrigerator. Stan saw the mucky ground in the bamboo vomiting up the living corpses of children caught in there by the fabled quickmud. Mike Hanlon imagined small Jurassic reptiles with horrid sawteeth suddenly boiling out of the cleft of a rotten tree, attacking them, biting them to pieces. Richie saw the Crawling Eye oozing down on top of them as they ran under the railroad trestle. And Eddie saw them climbing the Old Cape embankment only to look up and see the leper standing at the top, his sagging flesh acrawl with beetles and maggots, waiting for them.

'If we could get out of town somehow... ' Richie muttered, then winced as thunder shouted a furious negative from the sky. More rain fell — it was still only squalling, but soon it would begin to come down seriously, in sheets and torrents. The day's hazy peace was now utterly gone, as if it had never been at all. 'We'd be safe if we could just get out of this fucking town.'

Beverly began: 'Beep-b — ' And then a rock came flying out of the shaggy bushes and struck Mike on the side of the head. He staggered backward, blood flowing through the tight cap of his hair, and would have fallen if Bill hadn't caught him.

'Teach you to throw rocks!' Henry's voice floated mockingly to them. Bill could see the others looking around, wild-eyed, ready to bolt in six different directions. And if they did that, it really would be over.

'B-B-Ben!' he said sharply.

Ben looked at him. 'Bill, we gotta run. They — '

Two more rocks flew out of the bushes. One struck Stan on the upper thigh. He yelled, more surprised than hurt. Beverly sidestepped the second. It struck the ground and rolled through the clubhouse trapdoor.

'D-D-Do you r-r-ruh-remember the f-f-first duh-day you c-c-came d-down here?' Bill shouted over the thunder. 'The d-d-d-day schuh-hool l-let ow-out?'

'Bill — ' Richie shouted.

Bill thrust a shushing hand at him; his eyes remained fixed on Ben, pinning him to the spot.

'Sure,' Ben said, miserably trying to look in all directions at once. The bushes were now wavering and dancing wildly, their motion nearly tidal.

'The druh-druh-drain,' Bill said. 'The p-p-pumping-stuh-hation. Thah-that's where we're suh-suh-hupposed to g-g-go. Take us there!'

'But — '

'Tuh-tuh-take us th-there!'

A fusillade of rocks whizzed out of the bushes and for a moment Bill saw Victor Criss's face, somehow frightened, drugged, and avid all at the same time. Then a rock smashed into his cheekbone and it was Mike's turn to keep Bill from falling down. For a moment he couldn't see straight. His cheek felt numb. Then sensation returned in painful throbs and he felt blood running down his face. He swiped at his cheek, wincing at the painful knob that was rising there, looked at the blood, wiped it on his jeans. His hair whipped wildly in the freshening wind.

'Teach you to throw rocks, you stuttering asshole!' Henry half-laughed, half-screamed.

'Tuh-Tuh-Take us!' Bill yelled. He understood now why he had sent Eddie back to get Ben; it was that pumping-station they were supposed to go to, that very one, and only Ben knew exactly which one it was — they ran along both banks of the Kenduskeag at irregular intervals. 'Ih-ih-hit's the pluh-pluh-hace! The w-w-way ih-in! The wuh-wuh-wuh-way to It!'

'Bill, you can't know that!' Beverly cried.

He shouted furiously at her — at all of them: 'I know!'

Ben stood there for a moment, wetting his lips, looking at Bill. Then he struck off across the clearing, heading toward the river. A brilliant bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, purplish-white, followed by a rip of thunder that made Bill reel on his feet. A fist-sized chunk of rock sailed past his nose and struck Ben's buttocks. He yipped with pain and his hand went to the spot.

'Yaah,fatboy!' Henry cried in that same half-laughing, half-screaming voice. The bushes rustled and crashed and Henry appeared as the rain stopped fooling around and came in a downpour. Water ran in Henry's crewcut, in his eyebrows, down his cheeks. His grin showed all his teeth. Teach you to throw r — '

Mike had found one of the pieces of scrapwood left over from building the clubhouse roof and now he threw it. It flipped over twice and struck Henry's forehead. He screamed, clapped one hand to the spot like a man who's just had one hell of a good idea, and sat down hard.

'Ruh-ruh-run!' Bill hollered. 'A-After Buh-Buh-Ben!'

More crashings and stumblings in the bushes, and as the rest of the Losers ran after Ben Hanscom, Victor and Belch appeared, Henry stood up, and the three of them gave chase. Even later, when the rest of that day had come back to Ben, he recalled only jumbled images of their run through the bushes. He remembered branches overloaded with dripping leaves slapping against his face, dousing him with cold water; he remembered that the thunder and lightning seemed to have become almost constant, and he remembered that Henry's screams for them to come back and fight seemed to merge with the sound of the Kenduskeag as they drew closer to it. Every time he slowed, Bill would whack him on the back to make him hurry up.

What if I can't find it? What if I can't find that particular pumping-station?

The breath tore in and out of his lungs, hot and bloody-tasting in the back of his throat. A stitch was sinking into his side. His buttocks sang where the rock had hit him. Beverly had said Henry and his friends meant to kill them, and Ben believed it now, yes he did. He came to the Kenduskeag's bank so suddenly that he nearly plunged over the edge. He managed to get his balance, and then the embankment, undercut by the spring runoff, collapsed and he went tumbling over anyway, skidding all the way to the edge of the fastrunning water, his shirt rucking up in the back, clayey mud streaking and sticking to his skin. Bill piled into him and yanked him to his feet.

The others burst out of the bushes which overhung the bank one after the other. Richie and Eddie were last, Richie with one arm slung around Eddie's waist, his dripping specs clinging precariously to the end of his nose.

'Wuh-Wuh-Where?' Bill shouted.

Ben looked first left and then right, aware that the time was suicidally short. The river seemed higher already, and the rain-dark sky had given it a dangerous slate-gray color as it boiled its way along. Its banks were choked with underbrush and stunted trees, all of them now dancing to the wind's tune. He could hear Eddie sobbing for breath.

'Wuh-wuh-where?'

'I don't kn — ' he began, and then he saw the leaning tree and the eroded cave beneath it. That was where he had hidden that first day. He had dozed off and when he woke up he had heard Bill and Eddie goofing around. Then the big boys had come... seen... conquered. Ta-ta, bays, it was a real baby dam, believe me.

'There!' he shouted. 'That way!'

Lightning flashed again and this time Ben could hear it, a buzzing noise like an overloaded Lionel train-transformer. It struck the tree and blue-white electric fire sizzled its gnarly base into splinters and toothpicks sized for a fairytale giant. It fell toward the river with a rending crash, driving spray high into the air. Ben drew in a dismayed gasp and smelled something hot and punky and wild. A fireball rolled up the bole of the downed tree, seemed to flash brighter, and went out. Thunder exploded, not above them but around them, as if they stood in the center of the thunderclap. The rain sheeted down.

Bill thumped him on the back, awaking him from his dazed contemplation of these things.

'Guh-guh-GO!'

Ben went, splashing and stumbling along the verge of the river, his hair hanging in his eyes. He reached the tree — the little root-cave beneath it had been obliterated — and climbed over it, digging his toes into its wet hide, scraping his hands and forearms. Bill and Richie manhandled Eddie over, and as he stumbled off the tree-trunk, Ben caught him. They both went tumbling to the ground. Eddie cried out.

'You all right?' Ben shouted.

'I guess so,' Eddie shouted back, getting to his feet. He fumbled for his aspirator and almost dropped it. Ben grabbed it for him and Eddie gave him a grateful look as he stuffed it into his mouth and triggered it.

Richie came over, then Stan and Mike. Bill boosted Beverly up onto the tree and Ben and Richie caught her coming down on the far side, her hair plastered to her head, her blue jeans now black.

Bill came last, pulling himself onto the trunk and swinging his legs around. He saw Henry and the other two splashing down the river toward them, and as he slid off the fallen tree he shouted: 'Ruh-ruh-rocks! Throw rocks!'

There were plenty of them here on the bank, and the lightning-struck tree made a perfect barricade. In a moment or two all seven of them were chucking rocks at Henry and his pals. They had nearly reached the tree; the range was point-blank. They were driven back, yelling with pain and fury, as rocks struck their faces, their chests, their arms and legs.

'Teach us to throw rocks!' Richie shouted, and chucked one the size of a hen's egg at Victor. It struck his shoulder and bounced almost straight up into the air. Victor howled. 'Ah say... Ah say... go on an teach us, boy! We learn good!'

'Yeeeeh-aaaah!' Mike screamed. 'How do you like it? How do you like it?'

The answer was not much. They retreated until they were out of range and huddled together. A moment later they climbed the bank, slipping and stumbling on the slick wet earth, which was already honeycombed with little running streamlets, holding onto branches to stay upright.

They disappeared into the underbrush.

'They're gonna go around us, Big Bill,' Richie said, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

'That's oh-oh-okay,' Bill said. 'G-Go on, B-B-Ben. We'll fuh-fuh-follow y-you.'

Ben trotted along the embankment, paused (expecting that Henry and the others would burst out into his face at any moment), and saw the pumping-station twenty yards farther down the streambed. The others followed him to it. They could see other cylinders on the opposite bank, one fairly close, the other forty yards upstream. Those two were both shooting torrents of muddy water into the Kenduskeag, but only a trickle was coming from the pipe sticking out of the embankment below this one. It wasn't humming, either, Ben noticed. The pumping machinery had broken down.

He looked at Bill thoughtfully... and with some fright.

Bill was looking at Richie, Stan, and Mike. 'W-W-We g-guh-hotta get the l-l-lid oh-oh-off,'

he said. 'H-H-Help m-m-me.'

There were handholds in the iron, but the rain had made them slippery and the lid itself was incredibly heavy. Ben moved in next to Bill, and Bill shifted his hands a little to make room. Ben could hear water dripping inside — an echoey, unpleasant sound, like water dripping into a well.

'Nuh-nuh-NOW!' Bill shouted, and the five of them heaved in unison. The lid moved with an ugly grating sound.

Beverly grabbed on beside Richie and Eddie pushed with his good arm.

'One, two, three, push! ' Richie chanted. The lid grated a little farther off the top of the cylinder. Now a crescent of darkness showed.

'One, two, three, push! '

The crescent fattened.

'One, two, three, push! '

Ben shoved until red spots danced in front of his eyes.

'Stand back!' Mike shouted. 'There it goes, there it goes!'

They stood away and watched as the big circular cap overbalanced, then fell. It dug a slash in the wet earth and landed upside down, like an oversized checker. Beetles scurried off its surface and into the matted grass.

'Uck,' Eddie said.

Bill peered inside. Iron rungs descended to a circular pool of black water, its surface now pocked with raindrops. The silent pump brooded in the middle of this, half-submerged. He could see water flowing into the pumping-station from the mouth of its inflow pipe, and with a sinking in his guts he thought: That's where we have to go. In there.

'Eh-Eh-Eh-Eddie. G-Grab on to m-m-me.'

Eddie looked at him, uncomprehending.

'Like a puh-puh-pigger-back. Hold on with y-your g-g-good ah-ah-arm.' He demonstrated. Eddie understood but was reluctant.

'Quick!' Bill snapped. 'Th-Th-They'll b-b-be here!'

Eddie grabbed on around Bill's neck; Stan and Mike boosted him up so he could hook his legs around Bill's midsection. As Bill swung clumsily over the lip of the cylinder, Ben saw that Eddie's eyes were tightly shut.

Over the rain, he could hear another sound: whipping branches, snapping twigs, voices. Henry, Victor, and Belch. The world's ugliest cavalry charge.

Bill gripped the rough concrete lip of the cylinder and felt his way down, step by careful step. The iron rungs were slippery. Eddie had him in what was almost a deathgrip, and Bill supposed he was getting a pretty graphic demonstration of what Eddie's asthma was really all about.

'I'm scared, Bill,' Eddie whispered.

'I-I-I am, too.'

He let go of the concrete rim and grabbed the topmost rung. Although Eddie was nearly choking him and felt as if he had already gained forty pounds, Bill paused a moment, looking at the Barrens, the Kenduskeag, the racing clouds. A voice inside — not a frightened voice, just a firm one — had told him to take a good look, in case he never saw the upper world again.

So he looked, then began to descend with Eddie clinging to his back.

'I can't hold on much longer,' Eddie managed.

'You w-w-won't have to,' Bill said. 'We're almost duh-hown.'

One of his feet went into chilly water. He felt for the next rung and found it. There was another below that and then the ladder ended. He was standing in knee-deep water beside the pump.

He squatted, wincing as the cold water soaked his pants, and let Eddie off. He drew a deep breath. The smell wasn't so hot, but it was great not to have Eddie's arm wrapped around his throat.

He looked up at the cylinder's mouth. It was about ten feet over his head. The others were grouped around the rim, looking down. 'C-C-Come on!' he shouted. 'Wuh-one at a t-t-time!

Be quick!'

Beverly came first, swinging easily over the rim and grabbing the ladder, and Stan next. The others followed. Richie came last, pausing to listen to the progress of Henry and friends. He thought, from the sound of their blundering progress, that they would probably pass a little to the left of this pumping-station, but almost certainly not by enough to make a difference.

At that moment Victor bellowed: 'Henry! There! Tozier!'

Richie looked around and saw them rushing toward him. Victor was in the lead... and then Henry pushed him aside so savagely that Victor skidded to his knees. Henry had a knife, all right, a regular pigsticker. Drops of water were falling from the blade. Richie glanced into the cylinder, saw Ben and Stan helping Mike off the ladder, and swung over himself. Henry understood what he was doing and screamed at him. Richie, laughing crazily, slammed his left hand in the crook of his right elbow and stuck his forearm skyward, his hand fisted in what may be the world's oldest gesture. To be sure Henry got the point, he popped his middle finger up.

'You'll die down there!' Henry shouted.

'Prove it!' Richie shouted, laughing. He was terrified of going into this concrete throat, but he still couldn't stop laughing. And in his Irish Cop's Voice he bugled: 'Sure an begorrah, the luck of the Irish never runs out, me foine lad!'

Henry slipped on the wet grass and went sprawling on his butt less than twenty feet from where Richie stood, his feet on the top rung of the ladder bolted to the inner curve of the pumping-station, his head and chest out.

'Hey, banana-heels!' Richie shouted, delirious with triumph, and then scooted down the ladder. The iron rungs were slick and once he almost fell. Then Bill and Mike grabbed him and he was standing up to his knees in water with the rest of them in a loose circle around the pump. He was trembling all over, he felt hot and cold chills chasing each other up his back, and still he couldn't stop laughing.

'You should have seen him, Big Bill, clumsy as ever, still can't get out of his own frockin way — '

Henry's head appeared in the circular opening at the top. Scratches from branches and brambles crisscrossed his cheeks. His mouth was working, and his eyes blazed.

'Okay,' he shouted down at them. His words had a flat resonance inside the concrete cylinder, not quite an echo. 'Here I come. Got you now.'

He swung one leg over, felt for the topmost rung with his foot, found it, swung the other one over.

Speaking loud, Bill said: 'W-When h-h-he guh-gets d-d-down cluh-hose e-e-enough, w-wwe all gruh-gruh-grab h-him. P-P-Pull h-him d-d-down. Duh-Duh-Duck him uh-under. G-GGot i-it?'

'Right-o, guv'nor,' Richie said, and snapped a salute with one trembling hand.

'Got you,' Ben said.

Stan tipped a wink at Eddie, who didn't understand what was going on — except it seemed to him that Richie had gone crazy. He was laughing like a loon while Henry Bowers — the dreaded Henry Bowers — prepared to come down and kill them all like rats in a rain-barrel.

'All ready for him, Bill!' Stan cried.

Henry froze three rungs down. He looked down at the Losers over his shoulder. His face seemed, for the first time, doubtful.

Eddie suddenly got it. If they came down, they would have to come one at a time. It was too high to jump, especially with the pumping machinery to land on, and here they were, the seven of them, waiting in a tight little circle.

'Cuh-cuh-home oh-on, H-Henry,' Bill said pleasantly. 'Wuh-wuh-what are you w-wwaiting for?'

'That's right,' Richie chimed in. 'You like to beat up little kids, right? Come on, Henry.'

'We're waiting, Henry,' Bev said sweetly. 'I don't think you'll like it when you get down here, but come on if you want to.'

'Unless you're chicken,' Ben added. He began to make chicken sounds. Richie joined him at once and soon all of them were doing it. The derisive clucking rebounded between the damp, trickling walls. Henry looked down at them, the knife clutched in his left hand, his face the color of old bricks. He put up with perhaps thirty seconds of it and then climbed out again. The Losers sent up catcalls and insults.

'O-O-Okay,' Bill said. He spoke in a lower voice. 'W-We gun-got to get ih-ih-into that druh-hain. Quh-quh-quick.'

'Why?' Beverly asked, but Bill was spared the effort of an answer. Henry reappeared at the rim of the pumping-station and dropped a rock the size of a soccer ball into the pipe. Beverly screamed and Stan pulled Eddie against the circular wall with a hoarse yell. The rock struck the pumping machinery's rusty housing and produced a musical bonggg! It ricocheted left and struck the concrete wall, missing Eddie by less than half a foot. A chip of concrete flicked painfully against his cheek. The rock fell into the water with a splash.

'Quh-quh-quick!' Bill shouted again, and they crowded around the pumping-station's inflow pipe. Its bore was about five feet in diameter. Bill sent them in one after another (a vague circus image — all the big clowns coming out of the little car — passed across his consciousness in a meteoric flash; years later he would use the same image in a book called The Black Rapids), and climbed in last, after ducking another rock. As they watched, more rocks flew down, most striking the pump housing and rebounding at crazy angles. When they stopped falling, Bill looked out and saw Henry coming down the ladder again, as quick as he could. 'G-G-Get h-h-him!' he shouted to the others. Richie, Ben, and Mike floundered out behind Bill. Richie leaped high and grabbed Henry's ankle. Henry cursed and shook his leg as if trying to kick away a small dog with big teeth — a terrier, perhaps, or a Pekinese. Richie grabbed a rung, scrabbled up even higher, and actually did manage to sink his teeth into Henry's ankle. Henry screamed and pulled himself up quickly. One of his loafers came off and splashed into the water, where it sank with no ado at all.

'Bit me!' Henry was screaming. 'Bit me! Cocksucker bit me!'

'Yeah, good thing I had a tetanus shot this spring!' Richie flung at him.

'Bash them!' Henry was raving. 'Bash them, bomb them back to the stone age, bash their brains in!'

More rocks flew. The boys backed into the drain again quickly. Mike was struck on the arm by a small rock and he held it tight, wincing, until the pain began to abate.

'It's a standoff,' Ben said. 'They can't get down and we can't get up.'

'We're not s-supposed to get up,' Bill said quietly, 'and y-y-you all know it. W-We're nuhhot e-ever supposed to g-g-get up a-again.'

They looked at him, their eyes hurt and afraid. No one said anything. Henry's voice, fury masquerading as mockery, floated down: 'We can wait up here all day, you guys!'

Beverly had turned away and was looking back along the bore of the inflow pipe. The light grew diffuse quickly, and she could not see much. What she could see was a concrete tunnel, its lower third filled with rushing water. It was higher on her now than it had been when they first squeezed in here, she realized; that would be because this pump wasn't working and only some of the water was exiting on the Kenduskeag side. She felt claustrophobia touch her throat, turning the skin there to something that felt like flannel. If the water rose enough, they would drown.

'Bill, do we have to?'

He shrugged. It said everything. Yeah, they had to; what else was there? Be killed by Henry, Victor, and Belch in the Barrens? Or by something else — maybe something worse

— in town? She understood his thought well enough now; there was no stutter in his shrug. Better for them to go to It. Have it out, like the showdown in a Western movie. Cleaner. Braver.

Richie said: 'What was that ritual you told us about, Big Bill? The one in the library book?'

'Ch-Ch-Chüd,' Bill said, smiling a little.

'Chüd.' Richie nodded. 'You bite Its tongue and It bites yours, right?'

'Ruh-ruh-right.'

'Then you tell jokes.'

Bill nodded.

'Funny,' Richie said, looking into the dark pipe, 'I can't think of a single one.'

'Me either,' Ben said. The fear was heavy in his chest, almost suffocating. He felt that the only thing keeping him from just sitting down in the water and blubbering like a baby — or just going crazy — was Bill's calm, sure presence... and Beverly. He felt he would rather die than show Beverly how afraid he was.

'Do you know where this pipe goes?' Stan asked Bill.

Bill shook his head.

'Do you know how to find It?'

Bill shook his head again.

'We'll know when we're getting close,' Richie said suddenly. He drew a deep, trembling breath. 'If we have to do it, then let's go.'

Bill nodded. 'I'll be f-f-first. Then Eh-Eddie. B-B-Ben. Bev. Stuh-han the M-M-Man. MM-Mike. You luh-last, Rih-Richie. E-Everyone k-k-keep one h-h-hand on the shuh-houlder of the p-p-person in fruh-fruh-front of y-y-you. It's gonna be d-dark.'

'You coming out?' Henry Bowers shrieked down at them.

'We're gonna come out somewhere,' Richie muttered. 'I guess.'

They formed up like a procession of blindmen. Bill looked back once, confirming that each had a hand on the shoulder of the person ahead. Then, bending forward slightly against the rush of the current, Bill Denbrough led his friends into the dark where the boat he had made for his brother had gone almost a year before.

C H A P T E R 2 0

The Circle Closes

Tom

Tom Rogan was having one fuck of a crazy dream. In it he was killing his father. Part of his mind understood how crazy this was; his father had died when Tom was only in the third grade. Well... maybe 'died' wasn't such a good word. Maybe 'committed suicide'

was actually the truth. Ralph Rogan had made himself a gin-and-lye cocktail. One for the road, you might say. Tom had been put in nominal charge of his brother and sisters, and then he began to receive 'whuppins' if anything went wrong with them.

So he couldn't have killed his father... except there he was, in this frightening dream, holding what looked like a harmless handle of some sort to his father's neck... only it wasn't really harmless, was it? There was a button in the end of the handle, and if he pushed it a blade would pop out and go right through his father's neck. I'm not going to do anything like that, Daddy, don't worry, his dreaming mind thought just before his finger jammed down on the button and the blade popped out. His father's sleeping eyes opened and stared up at the ceiling; his father's mouth opened and a bloody gargling sound came out. Daddy, I didn't do it! his mind screamed. Someone else —

Дата добавления: 2015-10-26