It will come to you in time. All I can say now is that everything looks the way it should in Derry. Faced with such a grisly string of murders, people are doing all the things youd expect them to do, and most of them are the same things that went on while kids were disappearing and getting murdered back in 58. The Save Our Children Committee is meeting again, only this time at Derry Elementary School instead of Derry High. There are sixteen detectives from the State Attorney Generals office in town, and a contingent of FBI agents as wellI dont know how many, and although Rademacher talks big, I dont think he does, either. The curfews back in effect Oh yes. The curfew. Ben was rubbing the side of his neck slowly and deliberately. That did wonders back in 58. I remember that much. and there are Mothers Walker Groups to make sure that every child who goes to school, grades K through eight, is chaperoned home. The News has gotten over two thousand letters demanding a solution in the last three weeks alone. And, of course, the outmigration has begun again. I sometimes think thats the only way to really tell whos sincere about wanting it stopped and who isnt. The really sincere ones get scared and leave. People really are leaving? Richie asked. It happens each time the cycle cranks up again. Its impossible to tell just how many go, because the cycle hasnt fallen squarely in a census year since 1850 or so. But its a fairish number. They run like kids who just found out the house was haunted for real after all. Come home, come home, come home, Beverly said softly. When she looked up from her hands it was Bill she looked at, not Mike. It wanted us to come back. Why? It may want us all back, Mike said a little cryptically. Sure. It may. It may want revenge. After all, we balked It once before. Revenge ... or just to set things back in order, Bill said. Mike nodded. Things are out of order with your own lives, too, you know. None of you left Derry untouched ... without Its mark on you. All of you forgot what happened here, and your memories of that summer are still only fragmentary. And then theres the passingly curious fact that youre all rich. Oh, come on now! Richie said. Thats hardly Be soft, be soft, Mike said, holding his hand up and smiling faintly. Im not accusing you of anything, just trying to get the facts out on the table. You are rich by the standards of a smalltown librarian who makes just under eleven grand a year after taxes, okay? Rich shrugged the shoulders of his expensive suit uncomfortably. Ben appeared deeply absorbed in tearing small strips from the edge of his napkin. No one was looking directly at Mike except Bill. None of you are in the H. L. Hunt class, certainly, Mike said, but you are all welltodo even by the standards of the American uppermiddle class. Were all friends here, so fess up if theres one of you who declared less than ninety thousand dollars on his or her 1984 tax return, raise your hand. They glanced around at each other almost furtively, embarrassed, as Americans always seem to be, by the raw fact of their own successas if cash were hardcooked eggs and affluence the farts that inevitably follow an overdose of same. Bill felt hot blood in his cheeks and was helpless to stop its rise. He had been paid ten thousand more than the sum Mike had mentioned just for doing the first draft of the Attic Room screenplay. He had been promised an additional twenty thousand dollars each for two rewrites, if needed. Then there were royalties ... and the hefty advance on a twobook contract just signed .. how much had he declared on his 84 tax return? Just about eight hundred thousand dollars, right? Enough, anyway, to seem almost monstrous in light of Mike Hanlons stated income of just under eleven thousand a year. So thats how much they pay you to keep the lighthouse, Mike old kid, Bill thought. Jesus Christ, somewhere along the line you should have asked for a raise! Mike said Bill Denbrough, a successful novelist in a society where there are only a few novelists and fewer still lucky enough to be making a living from the craft. Beverly Rogan, whos in the rag trade, a field to which more are called but even fewer chosen. She is, in fact, the most soughtafter designer in the middle third of the country right now.  Oh, its not me, Beverly said. She uttered a nervous little laugh and lit a fresh cigarette from the smoldering stub of the old one. Its Tom. Toms the one. Without him Id still be relining skirts and sewing up hems. I dont have any business sense at all, even Tom says so. Its just ... you know, Tom. And luck. She took a single deep drag from her cigarette and then snuffed it. Methinks the lady doth protest too much, Richie said slyly. She turned quickly in her seat and gave him a hard look, her color high. Just whats that supposed to mean, Richie Tozier? Doan hits me, Miz Scawlett! Richie cried in a high, trembling Pickaninny Voiceand in that moment Bill could see with an eerie clarity the boy he had known; he was not just a superseded presence lurking under Rich Toziers grownup exterior but a creature almost more real than the man himself. Doan hits me! Lemme bring you anothuh mint joolip, Miz Scawlett! Youse goan drink hit out on de poch where its be a little bit cooluh! Doan whup disyere boy! Youre impossible, Richie, Beverly said coldly. You ought to grow up. Richie looked at her, his grin fading slowly into uncertainty. Until I came back here, he said, I thought I had. Rich, you may just be the most successful disc jockey in the United States, Mike said. Youve certainly got L.A. in the palm of your hand. On top of that there are two syndicated programs, one of them a straight topforty countdown show, the other one something called The Freaky Forty You better watch out, fool, Richie said in a gruff Mr. T Voice, but he was blushing. Ill make your front and back change places. Ill give you brainsurgery with my fist. Ill Eddie, Mike went on, ignoring Richie, youve got a healthy limousine service in a city where you just about have to elbow long black cars out of your way when you cross the street. Two limo companies a week go smash in the Big Apple, but youre doing fine. Ben, youre probably the most successful young architect in the world. Ben opened his mouth, probably to protest, and then closed it again abruptly. Mike smiled at them, spread his hands. I dont want to embarrass anyone, but I do want all the cards on the table. There are people who succeed young, and there are people who succeed in highly specialized jobsif there werent people who bucked the odds successfully, I guess everybody would give up. If it was just one or two of you, we could pass it off as coincidence. But its not just one or two; its all of you, and that includes Stan Uris, who was the most successful young accountant in Atlanta ... which means in the whole South. My conclusion is that your success stems from what happened here twentyseven years ago. If you had all been exposed to asbestos at that time and had all developed lung cancer by now, the correlative would be no less clear or persuasive. Do any of you want to dispute it? He looked at them. No one answered. All except you, Bill said. What happened to you, Mikey? Isnt it obvious? He grinned. I stayed here. You kept the lighthouse, Ben said. Bill jerked around and looked at him, startled, but Ben was staring hard at Mike and didnt see. That doesnt make me feel so good, Mike. In fact, it makes me feel sort of like a bugturd. Amen, Beverly said. Mike shook his head patiently. You have nothing to feel guilty about, any of you. Do you think it was my choice to stay here, any more than it was your choiceany of youto leave? Hell, we were kids. For one reason or another your parents moved away, and you guys were part of the baggage they took along. My parents stayed. And was it really their decisionany of them? I dont think so. How was it decided who would go and who would stay? Was it luck? Fate? It? Some Other? I dont know. But it wasnt us guys. So quit it.  Youre not ... not bitter? Eddie asked timidly. Ive been too busy to be bitter, Mike said. Ive spent a long time watching and waiting.... I was watching and waiting even before I knew it, I think, but for the last five years or so Ive been on what you might call red alert. Since the turn of the year Ive been keeping a journal. And when a man writes, he thinks harder ... or maybe just more specifically. And one of the things Ive spent time writing and thinking about is the nature of It. It changes; we know that. I think It also manipulates, and leaves Its marks on people just by the nature of what It isthe way you can smell a skunk on you even after a long bath, if it lets go its bag of scent too near you. The way a grasshopper will spit bugjuice into your palm if you catch it in your hand. Mike slowly unbuttoned his shirt and spread it wide. They could all see the pinkish scrawls of scar across the smooth brown skin of his chest between the nipples. The way claws leave scars, he said. The werewolf, Richie almost moaned. Oh Christ, Big Bill, the werewolf! When we went back to Neibolt Street! What? Bill asked. He sounded like a man called out of a dream. What, Richie? Dont you remember? No ... do you? I ... I almost do ... Looking both confused and scared, Richie subsided. Are you saying this thing isnt evil? Eddie asked Mike abruptly. He was staring at the scars as if hypnotized. That its just some part of the ... the natural order? Its no part of a natural order we understand or condone, Mike said, rebuttoning his shirt, and I see no reason to operate on any other basis than the one we do understand that It kills, kills children, and thats wrong. Bill understood that before any of us. Do you remember, Bill? I remember that I wanted to kill It, Bill said, and for the first time (and ever after) he heard the pronoun gain propernoun status in his own voice. But I didnt have much of a worldview on the subject, if you see what I meanI just wanted to kill It because It killed George. And do you still? Bill considered this carefully. He looked down at his spread hands on the table and remembered George in his yellow slicker, his hood up, the paper boat with its thin glaze of paraffin in one hand. He looked up at Mike. MMMore than ever, he said. Mike nodded as if this were exactly what he had expected. It left Its mark on us. It worked Its will on us, just as It has worked Its will on this whole town, day in and day out, even during those long periods when It is asleep or hibernating or whatever It does between Its more ... more lively periods. Mike raised one finger. But if It worked Its will on us, at some point, in some way, we also worked our will on It. We stopped It before It was doneI know we did. Did we weaken It? Hurt It? Did we, in fact, almost kill It? I think we did. I think we came so close to killing It that we went away thinking we had. But you dont remember that part either, do you? Ben asked. No. I can remember everything up until August 15th 1958 with almost perfect clarity. But from then until September 4th or so, when school was called in again, everything is a total blank. It isnt murky or hazy; it is just completely gone. With one exception I seem to remember Bill screaming about something called the deadlights. Bills arm jerked convulsively. It struck one of his empty beer bottles, and the bottle shattered on the floor like a bomb. Did you cut yourself? Beverly asked. She had halfrisen. No, he said. His voice was harsh and dry. His arms had broken out in gooseflesh. It seemed that his skull had somehow grown; he could feel (the deadlights) it pressing out against the stretched skin of his face in steady numbing throbs. Ill pick up the No, just sit down. He wanted to look at her and couldnt. He couldnt take his eyes off Mike. Do you remember the deadlights, Bill? Mike asked softly. No, he said. His mouth felt the way it did when the dentist got a little too enthusiastic with the novocaine. You will. I hope to God I dont. You will anyway, Mike said. But for now... no. Not me, either. Do any of you? One by one they shook their heads. But we did something, Mike said quietly. At some point we were able to exercise some sort of group will. At some point we achieved some special understanding, whether conscious or unconscious. He stirred restlessly. God, I wish Stan was here. I have a feeling that Stan, with his ordered mind, might have had some idea. Maybe he did, Beverly said. Maybe thats why he killed himself. Maybe he understood that if there was magic, it wouldnt work for grownups. I think it could, though, Mike said. Because theres one other thing we six have in common. I wonder if any of you have realized what that is. It was Bills turn to open his mouth and then shut it again. Go on, Mike said. You know what it is. I can see it on your face. Im not sure I know, Bill replied, but I think wwere all childless. Is that ihit? There was a moment of shocked silence. Yeah, Mike said. Thats it. Jesus Christ Almighty! Eddie spoke up indignantly. What in the world does that have to do with the price of beans in Peru? What gave you the idea that everyone in the world has to have kids? Thats nuts! Do you and your wife have children? Mike asked. If youve been keeping track of us all the way you said, then you know goddam well we dont. But I still say it doesnt mean a damn thing. Have you tried to have children? We dont use birth control, if thats what you mean. Eddie spoke with an oddly moving dignity, but his cheeks were flushed. It just so happens that my wife is a little ... Oh hell. Shes a lot overweight. We went to see a doctor and she told us my wife might never have kids if she didnt lose some weight. Does that make us criminals? Take it easy, Eds, Richie soothed, and leaned toward him. Dont call me Eds and dont you dare pinch my cheek! he cried, rounding on Richie. You know I hate that! I always hated it! Richie recoiled, blinking. Beverly? Mike asked. What about you and Tom? No children, she said. Also no birth control. Tom wants kids... and so do I, of course, she added hastily, glancing around at them quickly. Bill thought her eyes seemed overbright, almost the eyes of an actress giving a good performance. It just hasnt happened yet. Have you had those tests? Ben asked her. Oh yes, of course, she said, and uttered a light laugh that was almost a titter. And in one of those leaps of comprehension that sometimes come to people who are gifted with both curiosity and insight, Bill suddenly understood a great deal about Beverly and her husband Tom, alias the Greatest Man in the World. Beverly had gone to have fertility tests. His guess was that the Greatest Man in the World had refused to entertain even for a moment the notion that there might be something wrong with the sperm being manufactured in the Sacred Sacs. What about you and your wife, Big Bill? Rich asked. Been trying? They all looked at him curiously .. because his wife was someone they knew. Audra was by no means the bestknown or the bestloved actress in the world, but she was certainly part of the celebrity coinage that had somehow replaced talent as a medium of exchange in the latter half of the twentieth century; there had been a picture of her in People magazine when she cut her hair short, and during a particularly boring stretch in New York (the play she had been planning to do Off Broadway fell through) she had done a weeklong stint on Hollywood Squares, over her agents strenuous objections. She was a stranger whose lovely face was known to them. He thought Beverly looked particularly curious. Weve been trying off and on for the last six years, Bill said. For the last eight months or so its been off, because of the movie we were doingAttic Room, its called. You know, we run a little entertainment syndie every day from fivefifteen in the afternoon until fivethirty, Richie said. Seein Stars, its called. They had a feature on that damned movie just last weekHusband and Wife Working Happily Together kind of thing. They said both of your names and I never made the connection. Funny, isnt it? Very, Bill said. Anyway, Audra said it would be just our luck if she caught pregnant while we were in preproduction and she had to do ten weeks of strenuous acting and being morningsick at the same time. But we want kids, yes. And weve tried quite hard. Had fertility tests? Ben asked. Uhhuh. Four years ago, in New York. The doctors discovered a very small benign tumor in Audras womb, and they said it was a lucky thing because, although it wouldnt have prevented her from getting pregnant, it might have caused a tubal pregnancy. She and I are both fertile, though. Eddie repeated stubbornly, It doesnt prove a goddam thing. Suggestive, though, Ben murmured. No little accidents on your front, Ben? Bill asked. He was shocked and amused to find that his mouth had very nearly called Ben Haystack instead. Ive never been married, Ive always been careful, and there have been no paternity suits, Ben said. Beyond that I dont think theres any real way of telling. You want to hear a funny story? Richie asked. He was smiling, but there was no smile in his eyes. Sure, Bill said. You were always good at the funny stuff, Richie. Your face and me own buttocks, boyo, Richie said in the Irish Cops Voice. It was a great Irish Cops Voice. Youve improved out of all measure, Richie, Bill thought. As a kid, you couldnt do an Irish Cop no matter how you busted your brains. Except once ... or twice ... when (the deadlights) was that? Your face and me own buttocks; just keep remembrin that compayrison, me foine bucko. Ben Hanscom suddenly held his nose and cried in a high quavering boyish voice Beepbeep, Richie! Beepbeep! Beepbeep! After a moment, laughing, Eddie held his own nose and joined in. Beverly did the same. Awright! Awright! Richie cried, laughing himself. Awright, I give up! Chrissake! Oh man, Eddie said. He collapsed back in his chair, laughing so hard he was almost crying. We gotcha that time, Trashmouth. Way to go, Ben. Ben was smiling but he looked a little bewildered. Beepbeep, Bev said, and giggled. I forgot all about that. We always used to beep you, Richie. You guys never appreciated true talent, thats all, Richie said comfortably. As in the old days, you could knock him offbalance, but he was like one of those inflatable Joe Palooka dolls with sand in the basehe floated upright again almost at once. That was one of your little contributions to the Losers Club, wasnt it, Haystack? Yeah, I guess it was. What a man! Richie said in a trembling, awestruck voice and then began to salaam over the table, nearly sticking his nose in his teacup each time he went down. What a man! Oh chillun, what a man! Beepbeep, Richie, Ben said solemnly, and then exploded laughter in a hearty baritone utterly unlike his wavering childhood voice. Youre the same old roadrunner. You guys want to hear this story or not? Richie asked. I mean, no big deal one way or the other. Beep away if you want to. I can take abuse. I mean, youre looking at a man who once did an interview with Ozzy Osbourne. Tell it, Bill said. He glanced over at Mike and saw that Mike looked happieror more at restsince the luncheon had begun. Was it because he saw the almost unconscious knittingtogether that was happening, the sort of easy fallingback into old roles that almost never happened when old chums got together? Bill thought so. And he thought, If there are certain preconditions for the belief in magic that makes it possible to use the magic, then maybe those preconditions will inevitably arrange themselves. It was not a very comforting thought. It made him feel like a man strapped to the nosecone of a guided missile. Beepbeep indeed. Well, Richie was saying, I could make this long and sad or I could give you the Blondie and Dagwood comicstrip version, but Ill settle for something in the middle. The year after I moved out to California I met a girl, and we fell pretty hard for each other. Started living together. She was on the pill at first, but it made her feel sick almost all the time. She talked about getting an IUD, but I wasnt too crazy about thatthe first stories about how they might not be completely safe were just starting to come out in the papers. We had talked a lot about kids, and had pretty well decided we didnt want them even if we decided to legalize the relationship. Irresponsible to bring kids into such a shitty, dangerous, overpopulated world ... and blahblahblah, babblebabblebabble, lets go out and put a bomb in the mens room of the Bank of America and then come on back to the crashpad and smoke some dope and talk about the difference between Maoism and Trotskyism, if you see what I mean. Or maybe Im being too hard on both of us. Shit, we were young and reasonably idealistic. The upshot was that I got my wires cut, as the Beverly Hills crowd puts it with their unfailing vulgar chic. The operation went with no problem and I had no adverse aftereffects. There can be, you know. I had a friend whose balls swelled up to roughly the size of the tires on a 1959 Cadillac. I was gonna give him a pair of suspenders and a couple of barrels for his birthdaysort of a designer trussbut they went down before then. All put with your customary tact and dignity, Bill remarked, and Beverly began to laugh again. Richie offered a large, sincere smile. Thank you, Bill, for those words of support. The word fuck was used two hundred and six times in your last book. I counted. Beepbeep, Trashmouth, Bill said solemnly, and they all laughed. Bill found it nearly impossible to believe they had been talking about dead children less than ten minutes ago. Press onward, Richie, Ben said. The hour groweth late. Sandy and I lived together for two and a half years, Richie went on. Came really close to getting married twice. As things turned out, I guess we saved ourselves a lot of heartache and all that communityproperty bullshit by keeping it simple. She got an offer to join a corporate lawfirm in Washington around the same time I got an offer to come to KLAD as a weekend jocknot much, but a foot in the door. She told me it was her big chance and I had to be the most insensitive male chauvinist oinker in the United States to be dragging my feet, and furthermore shed had it with California anyway. I told her I also had a chance. So we thrashed it out, and we trashed each other out, and at the end of all the thrashing and trashing Sandy went. About a year after that I decided to try and get the vasectomy reversed. No real reason for it, and I knew from the stuff Id read that the chances were pretty spotty, but I thought what the hell. You were seeing someone steadily then? Bill asked. Nothats the funny part of it, Richie said, frowning. I just woke up one day with this ... I dunno, this hobbyhorse about getting it reversed. You must have been nuts, Eddie said. General anesthetic instead of a local? Surgery? Maybe a week in the hospital afterward? Yeah, the doctor told me all of that stuff, Richie replied. And I told him I wanted to go ahead anyway. I dont know why. The doc asked me if I understood the aftermath of the operation was sure to be painful while the result was only going to be a cointoss at best. I said I did. He said okay, and I asked him whenmy attitude being the sooner the better, you know. So he says hold your horses, son, hold your horses, the first step is to get a sperm sample just to make sure the reversal operation is necessary. I said, Come on, I had the exam after the vasectomy. It worked. He told me that sometimes the vasa reconnected spontaneously. Yo mamma! I says. Nobody ever told me that. He said the chances were very smallinfinitesimal, reallybut because the operation was so serious, we ought to check it out. So I popped into the mens room with a Fredericks of Hollywood catalogue and jerked off into a Dixie cup Beepbeep, Richie, Beverly said. Yeah, youre right, Richie said. The part about the Fredericks catalogue is a lieyou never find anything that good in a doctors office. Anyway, the doc called me three days later and asked me which I wanted first, the good news or the bad news. Gimme the good news first, I said. The good news is the operation wont be necessary, he said. The bad news is that anybody youve been to bed with over the last two or three years could hit you with a paternity suit pretty much at will. Are you saying what I think youre saying? I asked him. Im telling you that you arent shooting blanks and havent been for quite awhile now, he said. Millions of little wigglies in your sperm sample. Your days of going gaily in bareback with no questions asked have temporarily come to an end, Richard. I thanked him and hung up. Then I called Sandy in Washington. Rich! she says to me, and Richies voice suddenly became the voice of this girl Sandy whom none of them had ever met. It was not an imitation or even a likeness, exactly; it was more like an auditory painting. Its great to hear from you! I got married! Yeah, thats great, I said. You should have let me know. I would have sent you a blender. She goes, Same old Richie, always full of gags. So I said Sure, same old Richie, always full of gags. By the way, Sandy, you didnt happen to have a kid or anything after you left L.A., did you? Or maybe an unscheduled d and c, or something? That gag isnt so funny, Rich, she said, and I had a brainwave that she was getting ready to hang up on me, so I told her what happened. She started laughing, only this time it was real hardshe was laughing the way I always used to laugh with you guys, like somebody had told her the worlds biggest bellybuster. So when she finally starts slowing down I ask her what in Gods name is funny. Its just so wonderful, she said. This time the jokes on you. After all these years the joke is finally on Records Tozier. How many bastards have you sired since I came east, Rich? I take it that means you still havent experienced the joys of motherhood? I ask her. Im due in July, she says. Were there any more questions? Yeah, I go. When did you change your mind about the immorality of bringing children into such a shitty world? When I finally met a man who wasnt a shit, she answers, and hangs up. Bill began to laugh. He laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks. Yeah, Richie said. I think she cut it off quick so shed really get the last word, but she could have hung on the line all day. I know when Ive been aced. I went back to the doctor a week later and asked him if he could be a little clearer on the odds against that sort of spontaneous regeneration. He said hed talked with some of his colleagues about the matter. It turned out that in the threeyear period 198082,the California branch of the AMA logged twentythree reports of spontaneous regeneration. Six of those turned out to be simply botched operations. Six others were either hoaxes or consguys looking to take a bite out of some doctors bank account. So ... eleven real ones in three years. Eleven out of how many? Beverly asked. Twentyeight thousand six hundred and eighteen, Richie said calmly. Silence around the table. So I went and beat Irish Sweepstakes odds, Richie said, and still no kid to show for it. That give you any good chucks, Eds? Eddie began stubbornly It still doesnt prove No, Bill said, it doesnt prove a thing. But it certainly suggests a link. The question is, what do we do now? Have you thought about that, Mike? Ive thought about it, sure, Mike said, but it was impossible to decide anything until you all got together again and talked, the way youve been doing. There was no way I could predict how this reunion would go until it actually happened. He paused for a long time, looking thoughtfully at them. Ive got one idea, he said, but before I tell you what it is, I think we have to agree on whether or not we have business to do here. Do we want to try again to do what we tried to do once before? Do we want to try to kill It again? Or do we just divide the check up six ways and go back to what we were doing? It seems as if Beverly began, but Mike shook his head at her. He wasnt done. You have to understand that our chances of success are impossible to predict. I know theyre not good, just as I know they would have been a little better if Stan was here, too. Still not real good, but better. With Stan gone, the circle we made that day is broken. I dont really think we can destroy It, or even send It away for a little while, as we did before, with a broken circle. I think It will kill us, one by one by one, and probably in some extremely horrible ways. As children we made a complete circle in some way I dont understand even now. I think that, if we agree to go ahead, well have to try to form a smaller circle. I dont know if that can be done. I believe it might be possible to think wed done it, only to discoverwhen it was too latewett ... that it was too late. Mike regarded them again, eyes sunken and tired in his brown face. So I think we need to take a vote. Stay and try it again, or go home. Those are the choices. I got you here on the strength of an old promise I wasnt even sure youd remember, but I cant hold you here on the strength of that promise. The results of that would be worse and more of it. He looked at Bill, and in that moment Bill understood what was coming. He dreaded it, was helpless to stop it, and then, with the same feeling of relief he imagined must come to a suicide when he takes his hands off the wheel of the speeding car and simply uses them to cover his eyes, he accepted it. Mike had gotten them here, Mike had laid it all neatly out for them ... and now he was relinquishing the mantle of leadership. He intended that mantle to go back to the person who had worn it in 1958. What do you say, Big Bill? Call the question. Before I do, Bill said, ddoes everyone understand the question? You were going to say something, Bev. She shook her head. All right; I gguess the question is, do we stay and fight or do we forget the whole thing? Those in favor of staying? No one at the table moved at all for perhaps five seconds, and Bill was reminded of auctions he had attended where the price on an item suddenly soared into the stratosphere and those who didnt want to bid anymore almost literally played statues; one was afraid to scratch an itch or wave a fly off the end of ones nose for fear the auctioneer would take it for another five grand or twentyfive. Bill thought of Georgie, Georgie who had meant no one any harm, who had only wanted to get out of the house after being cooped up all week, Georgie with his color high, his newspaper boat in one hand, snapping the buckles of his yellow rainslicker with the other, Georgie thanking him ... and then bending over and kissing Bills feverheated cheek Thanks, Bill. Its a neat boat. He felt the old rage rise in him, but he was older now and his perspective was wider. It wasnt just Georgie now. A horrid slew of names marched through his head Betty Ripsom, found frozen into the ground, Cheryl Lamonica, fished out of the Kenduskeag, Matthew Clements, torn from his tricycle, Veronica Grogan, nine years old and found in a sewer, Steven Johnson, Lisa Albrecht, all the others, and God only knew how many of the missing. He raised his hand slowly and said, Lets kill It. This time lets really kill It. For a moment his hand hung there alone, like the hand of the only kid in class who knows the right answer, the one all the other kids hate. Then Richie sighed, raised his own hand, and said What the hell. It cant be any worse than interviewing Ozzy Osbourne. Beverly raised her hand. Her color was back now, but in hectic patches that flared along her cheekbones. She looked both tremendously excited and scared to death. Mike raised his hand. Ben raised his.


Eddie Kaspbrak sat back in his chair, looking as if he wished he could actually melt into it and thus disappear. His face, thin and delicatelooking, was miserably afraid as he looked first right and then left and then back to Bill. For a moment Bill felt sure Eddie was simply going to push back his chair, rise, and bolt from the room without looking back. Then he raised one hand in the air and grasped his aspirator tightly in the other. Way to go, Eds, Richie said. Were really gonna have ourselves some chucks this time, I bet. Beepbeep, Richie, Eddie said in a wavering voice. 6 The Losers Get Dessert So whats your one idea, Mike? Bill asked. The mood had been broken by Rose, the hostess, who had come in with a dish of fortune cookies. She looked around at the six people who had their hands in the air with a carefully polite lack of curiosity. They lowered them hastily, and no one said anything until Rose was gone again. Its simple enough, Mike said, but it might be pretty damn dangerous, too. Spill it, Richie said. I think we ought to split up for the rest of the day. I think each of us ought to go back to the place in Derry he or she remembers best ... outside the Barrens, that is. I dont think any of us should go therenot yet. Think of it as a series of walkingtours, if you like. Whats the purpose, Mike? Ben asked. Im not entirely sure. You have to understand that Im going pretty much on intuition here But this has got a good beat and you can dance to it, Richie said. The others smiled. Mike did not; he nodded instead. Thats as good a way of putting it as any. Going on intuition is like picking up a beat and dancing to it. Using intuition is a hard thing for grownups to do, and thats the main reason I think it might be the right thing for us to do. Kids, after all, operate on it about eighty percent of the time, at least until theyre fourteen or so. Youre talking about plugging back into the situation, Eddie said. I suppose so. Anyway, thats my idea. If no specific place to go comes to you, just follow your feet and see where they take you. Then we meet tonight, at the library, and talk over what happened. If anything happens, Ben said. Oh, I think things will. What sort of things? Bill asked. Mike shook his head. I have no idea. I think whatever happens is apt to be unpleasant. I think its even possible that one of us may not turn up at the library tonight. No reason for thinking that... except that intuition thing again. Silence greeted this. Why alone? Beverly asked finally. If were supposed to do this as a group, why do you want us to start alone, Mike? Especially if the risk really turns out to be as high as you think it might be? I think I can answer that, Bill said. Go ahead, Bill, Mike said. It started alone for each of us, Bill said to Beverly. I dont remember everythingnot yetbut I sure remember that much. The picture in Georges room that moved. Bens mummy. The leper that Eddie saw under the porch on Neibolt Street. Mike finding the blood on the grass near the Canal in Bassey Park. And the bird ... there was something about a bird, wasnt there, Mike? Mike nodded grimly. A big bird. Yes, but not as friendly as the one on Sesame Street. Richie cackled wildly. Derrys answer to James Brown Gets Off A Good One! Oh chillun, is we blessed or is we blessed! Beepbeep, Richie, Mike said, and Richie subsided. For you it was the voice from the pipe and the blood that came out of the drain, Bill said to Beverly. And for Richie ... But here he paused, puzzled. I must be the exception that proves the rule, Big Bill, Richie said. The first time I came in contact with anything that summer that was weirdI mean really bigleague weirdwas in Georges room, with you. When you and I went back to your house that day and looked at his photo album. The picture of Center Street by the Canal started to move. Do you remember? Yes, Bill said. But are you sure there was nothing before that, Richie? Nothing at all? I Something flickered in Richies eyes. He said slowly, Well, there was the day Henry and his friends chased mebefore the end of school, this was, and I got away from them in the toy department of Freeses. I went up by City Center and sat down on a park bench for awhile and I thought I saw ... but that was just something I dreamed. What was it? Beverly asked. Nothing, Richie said, almost brusquely. A dream. Really. He looked at Mike. I dont mind taking a walk, though. Itll kill the afternoon. Views of the old homestead. So were agreed? Bill asked. They nodded. And well meet at the library tonight at ... when do you suggest, Mike? Seven oclock. Ring the bell if youre late. The libe closes at seven on weekdays until summer vacation starts for the kids. Seven it is, Bill said, and let his eyes range soberly over them. And be careful. You want to remember that none of us really knows what were dddoing. Think of this as reconnaissance. If you should see something, dont fight. Run. Im a lover, not a fighter, Richie said in a dreamy Michael Jackson Voice. Well, if were going to do it, we ought to get going, Ben said. A small smile pulled up the left corner of his mouth. It was more bitter than amused. Although Ill be damned if I could tell you right this minute where Im going to go, if the Barrens are out. That was the best of it for megoing down there with you guys. His eyes moved to Beverly, held there for a moment, moved away. I cant think of anyplace else that means very much to me. Probably Ill just wander around for a couple of hours, looking at buildings and getting wet feet. Youll find a place to go, Haystack, Richie said. Visit some of your old foodstops and gas up. Ben laughed. My capacitys gone down a lot since I was eleven. Im so full you guys may just have to roll me out of here. Well, Im all set, Eddie said. Wait a sec! Beverly cried as they began to push back from their chairs. The fortune cookies! Dont forget those! Yeah, Richie said. I can see mine now. YOU WILL SOON BE EATEN UP BY A LARGE MONSTER. HAVE A NICE DAY. They laughed and Mike passed the little bowl of fortune cookies to Richie, who took one and then sent it on around the table. Bill noticed that no one opened his or her cookie until each had one; they sat with the little hatshaped cookies either in front of them or held in their hands, and even as Beverly, still smiling, picked hers up, Bill felt a cry rising in his throat No! No, dont do that, its part of it, put it back, dont open it! But it was too late. Beverly had broken hers open, Ben was doing the same to his, Eddie was cutting into his with the edge of his fork, and just before Beverlys smile turned to a grimace of horror Bill had time to think We knew, somehow we knew, because no one simply bit into his or her fortune cookie. That would have been the normal thing to do, but no one did it. Somehow, some part of us still remembers ...everything. And he found that insensate underknowledge somehow the most horrifying realization of all; it spoke more eloquently than Mike could have about how surely and deeply It had touched each one of them ... and how Its touch was still upon them. Blood spurted up from Beverlys fortune cookie as if from a slashed artery. It splashed across her hand and then gouted onto the white napery which covered the table, staining it a bright red that sank in and then spread out in grasping pink fingers. Eddie Kaspbrak uttered a strangled cry and pushed himself away from the table with such a sudden revolted confusion of arms and legs that his chair nearly tipped over. A huge bug, its chitinous carapace an ugly yellowbrown, was pushing its way out of his fortune cookie as if from a cocoon. Its obsidian eyes stared blindly forward. As it lurched onto Eddies breadandbutter plate, cookie crumbs fell from its back in a little shower that Bill heard clearly and which came back to haunt his dreams when he slept for awhile later that afternoon. As it freed itself entirely it rubbed its thin rear legs together, producing a dry reedy hum, and Bill realized it was some sort of terribly mutated cricket. It lumbered to the edge of the dish and tumbled onto the tablecloth on its back. Oh God! Richie managed in a choked voice. Oh God Big Bill its an eye dear God its an eye a fucking eye Bills head snapped around and he saw Richie staring down at his fortune cookie, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a kind of sickened leer. A chunk of his cookies glazed surface had fallen onto the tablecloth, revealing a hole from which a human eyeball stared with glazed intensity. Cookie crumbs were scattered across its blank brown iris and embedded in its sclera. Ben Hanscom threw hisnot a calculated throw but the startled reaction of a person who has been utterly surprised by some piece of nasty work. As his fortune cookie rolled across the table Bill saw two teeth inside its hollow, their roots dark with clotted blood. They rattled together like seeds in a hollow gourd. He looked back at Beverly and saw she was hitching in breath to scream. Her eyes were fixed on the thing that had crawled out of Eddies cookie, the thing that was now kicking its sluggish legs as it lay overturned on the tablecloth. Bill got moving. He was not thinking, only reacting. Intuition, he thought crazily as he lunged out of his seat and clapped his hand over Beverlys mouth just before she could utter the scream. Here I am, acting on intuition. Mike should be proud of me. What came out of Beverlys mouth was not a scream but a strangled Mmmmph! Eddie was making those whistling sounds that Bill remembered so well. No problem there, a good honk on the old lungsucker would set Eddie right. Right as a trivet, Freddie Firestone would have said, and Bill wonderednot for the first timewhy a person had such weird thoughts at times like these. He glanced around fiercely at the others, and what came out was something else from that summer, something that sounded both impossibly archaic and exactly right Dummy up! All of you! Not one sound! Just dummy up! Rich wiped a hand across his mouth. Mikes complexion had gone a dirty gray, but he nodded at Bill. All of them moved away from the table. Bill had not opened his own fortune cookie, but now he could see its sides moving slowly in and outbulge and relax, bulge and relax, bulge and relaxas his own partyfavor tried to escape. Mmmmmph! Beverly said against his hand again, her breath tickling his palm. Dummy up, Bev, he said, and took his hand away. Her face seemed to be all eyes. Her mouth twitched. Bill ... Bill, did you see ... Her eyes strayed back to the cricket and then fixed there. The cricket appeared to be dying. Its rugose eyes stared back at her, and presently Beverly began to moan. QuhQuhQuit that, he said grimly. Pull back to the table. I cant, Billy, I cant get near that thi You can! You hhave to! He heard footsteps, light and quick, coming up the short hall on the other side of the beaded curtain. He looked around at the others. All of you! Pull up to the table! Talk! Look natural! Beverly looked at him, eyes pleading, and Bill shook his head. He sat down and pulled his chair in, trying not to look at the fortune cookie on his plate. It had swelled like some unimaginable boil which was filling with pus. And still it pulsed slowly in and out. I could have bitten into that, he thought faintly. Eddie triggered his aspirator down his throat again, gasping mist into his lungs in a long, thin screaming sound. So who do you thinks going to win the pennant? Bill asked Mike, smiling insanely. Rose came through the curtain just then, her face politely questioning. Out of the corner of his eye Bill saw that Bev had pulled up to the table again. Good girl, he thought. I think the Chicago Bears look good, Mike said. Everything is all right? Rose asked. FFine, Bill said. He cocked a thumb in Eddies direction. Our friend had an asthma attack. He took his medication. Hes better now. Rose looked at Eddie, concerned. Better, Eddie wheezed. You would like that I clear now? Very shortly, Mike said, and offered a large false smile. Was good? Her eyes surveyed the table again, a bit of doubt overlaying a deep well of serenity. She did not see the cricket, the eye, the teeth, or the way Bills fortune cookie appeared to be breathing. Her eye similarly passed over the bloodstain splotched on the tablecloth without trouble. Everything was very good, Beverly said, and smileda more natural smile than either Bills or Mikes. It seemed to set Roses mind at rest, convinced her that if something had gone wrong in here, it had been the fault of neither Roses service nor her kitchen. Girls got a lot of guts, Bill thought. Fortunes were good? Rose asked. Well, Richie said, I dont know about the others, but I for one got a real eyeful. Bill heard a minute cracking sound. He looked down at his plate and saw a leg poking blindly out of his fortune cookie. It scraped at his plate. 1 could have bitten into that, he thought again, but held onto his smile. Very fine, he said. Richie was looking at Bills plate. A great grayishblack fly was slowing birthing itself from the collapsing remains of his cookie. It buzzed weakly. Yellowish goo flowed sluggishly out of the cookie and puddled on the tablecloth. There was a smell now, the bland thick smell of an infected wound. Well, if I can help you in no way at this moment...  Not right now, Ben said. A wonderful meal. Most ... most unusual. I leave you then, she said, and bowed out through the beaded curtain. The beads were still swaying and clacking together when all of them pushed away from the table again. What is it? Ben asked huskily, looking at the thing on Bills plate. A fly, Bill said. A mutant fly. Courtesy of a writer named George Langlahan, I think. He wrote a story called The Fly. A movie was made out of itnot a terribly good one. But the story scared the bejesus out of me. Its up to Its old tricks, all right. That fly business has been on my mind a lot lately, because Ive sort of been planning this novelRoadbugs, Ive been thinking of calling it. I know the title sounds ppretty stupid, but you see Excuse me, Beverly said distantly. I have to vomit, I think. She was gone before any of the men could rise. Bill shook out his napkin and threw it over the fly, which was the size of a baby sparrow. Nothing so large could have come from something as small as a Chinese fortune cookie ... but it had. It buzzed twice under the napkin and then fell silent. Jesus, Eddie said faintly. Lets get the righteous fuck out of here, Mike said. We can meet Bev in the lobby. Beverly was just coming out of the womens room as they gathered by the cash register. She looked pale but composed. Mike paid the check, kissed Roses cheek, and then they all went out into the rainy afternoon. Does this change anyones mind? Mike asked. I dont think it changes mine, Ben said. No, Eddie said. What mind? Richie said. Bill shook his head and then looked at Beverly. Im staying, she said. Bill, what did you mean when you said Its up to Its old tricks? Ive been thinking about writing a bug story, he said. That Langlahan story had woven itself into my thinking. And so I saw a fly. Yours was blood, Beverly. Why was blood on your mind? I guess because of the blood from the drain, Beverly said at once. The blood that came out of the bathroom drain in the old place, when I was eleven. But was that really it? She didnt really think so. Because what had flashed immediately to mind when the blood spurted across her fingers in a warm little jet had been the bloody footprint she had left behind her after stepping on the broken perfume bottle. Tom. And (Bevvie sometimes I worry a lot) her father. You got a bug, too, Bill said to Eddie. Why? Not just a bug, Eddie said. A cricket. There are crickets in our basement. Twohundredthousanddollar house and we cant get rid of the crickets. They drive us crazy at night. A couple of nights before Mike called, I had a really terrible nightmare. I dreamed I woke up and my bed was full of crickets. I was trying to shoot them with my aspirator, but all it would do when I squeezed it was make crackling noises, and just before I woke up I realized it was full of crickets, too. The hostess didnt see any of it, Ben said. He looked at Beverly. Like your folks never saw the blood that came out of the drain, even though it was everywhere. Yes, she said. They stood looking at each other in the fine spring rain. Mike looked at his watch. Therell be a bus in twenty minutes or so, he said, or I can take four of you in my car, if we cram. Or I can call some cabs. Whatever way you want to do it. I think Im going to walk from here, Bill said. I dont know where Im going, but a little fresh air seems like a great idea along about now. Im going to call a cab, Ben said. Ill share it with you, if youll drop me off downtown, Richie said. Okay. Where you going? Richie shrugged. Not really sure yet. The others elected to wait for the bus. Seven tonight, Mike reminded. And be careful, all of you. They agreed to be careful, although Bill did not know how you could truthfully make a promise like that when dealing with such a formidable array of unknown factors. He started to say so, then looked at their faces and saw that they knew it already. He walked away instead, raising one hand briefly in farewell. The misty air felt good against his face. The walk back to town would be a long one, but that was all right. He had a lot to think about. He was glad that the reunion was over and the business had begun. CHAPTER 11 Walking Tours 1 Ben Hanscom Makes a Withdrawal Richie Tozier got out of the cab at the threeway intersection of Kansas Street, Center Street, and Main Street, and Ben dismissed it at the top of UpMile Hill. The driver was Bills religious fella, but neither Richie nor Ben knew it Dave had lapsed into a morose silence. Ben could have gotten off with Richie, he supposed, but it seemed better somehow that they all start off alone. He stood on the corner of Kansas Street and Daltrey Close, watching the cab pull back into traffic, hands stuffed deeply into his pockets, trying to get the lunchs hideous conclusion out of his mind. He couldnt do it; his thoughts kept returning to that blackgray fly crawling out of the fortune cookie on Bills plate, its veined wings plastered to its back. He would try to divert his mind from this unhealthy image, think he had succeeded, only to discover five minutes later that his mind was back at it. Im trying to justify it somehow, he thought, meaning it not in the moral sense but rather in the mathematical one. Buildings are built by observing certain natural laws; natural laws may be expressed by equations; equations must be justified. Where was the justification in what had happened less than half an hour ago? Let it alone, he told himself, not for the first time. You cant justify it, so let it alone. Very good advice; the problem was that he couldnt take it. He remembered that the day after he had seen the mummy on the icedup Canal, his life had gone on as usual. He had known that whatever it had been had come very close to getting him, but his life had gone on he had attended school, taken an arithmetic test, visited the library when school was over, and eaten with his usual heartiness. He had simply incorporated the thing he had seen on the Canal into his life, and if he had almost been killed by it ... well, kids were always almost getting killed. They dashed across streets without looking, they got horsing around in the lake and suddenly realized they had floated far past their depth on their rubber rafts and had to paddle back, they fell off monkeybars on their asses and out of trees on their heads. Now, standing here in the fading drizzle in front of a Trustworthy Hardware Store that had been a pawnshop in 1958 (Frati Brothers, Ben recalled, the double windows always full of pistols and rifles and straightrazors and guitars hung up by their necks like exotic animals), it occurred to him that kids were better at almost dying, and they were also better at incorporating the inexplicable into their lives. They believed implicitly in the invisible world. Miracles both bright and dark were to be taken into consideration, oh yes, most certainly, but they by no means stopped the world. A sudden upheaval of beauty or terror at ten did not preclude an extra cheesedog or two for lunch at noon. But when you grew up, all that changed. You no longer lay awake in your bed, sure something was crouching in the closet or scratching at the window ... but when something did happen, something beyond rational explanation, the circuits overloaded. The axons and dendrites got hot. You started to jitter and jive, you started to shake rattle and roll, your imagination started to hop and bop and do the funky chicken all over your nerves. You couldnt just incorporate what had happened into your life experience. It didnt digest. Your mind kept coming back to it, pawing it lightly like a kitten with a ball of string ... until eventually, of course, you either went crazy or got to a place where it was impossible for you to function. And if that happens, Ben thought, Its got me. Us. Cold. He started to walk up Kansas Street, not conscious of heading anyplace in particular. And thought suddenly What did we do with the silver dollar? He still couldnt remember. The silver dollar, Ben ... Beverly saved your life with it. Yours ... maybe all the others ... and especially Bills. It almost ripped my guts out before Beverly did... what? What did she do? And how was it able to work? She backed it off, and we all helped her. But how? A word came to him suddenly, a word that meant nothing at all but which tightened his flesh Chd. He looked down at the sidewalk and for a moment saw the shape of a turtle chalked there, and the world seemed to swim before his eyes. He shut them tightly and when he opened them saw it was not a turtle; only a hopscotch grid halferased by the light rain. Chd. What did that mean? I dont know, he said aloud, and when he looked around quickly to see if anyone had heard him talking to himself, he saw that he had turned off Kansas Street and onto Costello Avenue. At lunch he had told the others that the Barrens were the only place in Derry where he had felt happy as a kid ... but that wasnt quite true, was it? There had been another place. Either accidentally or unconsciously, he had come to that other place the Derry Public Library. He stood in front of it for a minute or two, hands still in his pockets. It hadnt changed; he admired its lines as much now as he had as a child. Like so many stone buildings that had been welldesigned, it succeeded in confounding the closely observing eye with contradictions its stone solidity was somehow balanced by the delicacy of its arches and slim columns; it looked both banksafe squat and yet slim and clean (well, it was slim as city buildings went, especially those erected around the turn of the century, and the windows, crisscrossed with narrow strips of iron, were graceful and rounded). These contradictions saved it from ugliness, and he was not entirely surprised to feel a wave of love for the place. Nothing much had changed on Costello Avenue. Glancing along it, he could see the Derry Community House, and he found himself wondering if the Costello Avenue Market was still there at the point where the avenue, which was semicircular, rejoined Kansas Street. He walked across the library lawn, barely noticing that his dress boots were getting wet, to have a look at that glassedin passageway between the grownups library and the Childrens Library. It was also unchanged, and from here, standing just outside the bowed branches of a weeping willow tree, he could see people passing back and forth. The old delight flooded him, and he really forgot what had happened at the end of the reunion lunch for the first time. He could remember walking around to this very same spot as a kid, only in the winter, plowing his way through snow that was almost hipdeep, and then standing for as long as fifteen minutes. He would come at dusk, he remembered, and again it was the contrasts that drew him and held him there with the tips of his fingers going numb and snow melting inside his green gumrubber boots. It would be drawingdowndark out where he was, the world going purple with early winter shadows, the sky the color of ashes in the east and embers in the west. It would be cold where he was, ten degrees perhaps, and chillier than that if the wind was blowing across from the frozen Barrens, as it so often did. But there, less than forty yards from where he stood, people walked back and forth in their shirtsleeves. There, less than forty yards from where he stood, was a tubeway of bright white light, thrown by the overhead fluorescents. Little kids giggled together, highschool sweethearts held hands (and if the librarian saw them, she would make them stop). It was somehow magical, magical in a good way that he had been too young to account for with such mundane things as electric power and oil heat. The magic was that glowing cylinder of light and life connecting those two dark buildings like a lifeline, the magic was in watching people walk through it across the dark snowfield, untouched by either the dark or the cold. It made them lovely and Godlike. Eventually he would walk away (as he was doing now) and circle the building to the front door (as he was doing now), but he would always pause and look back once (as he was doing now) before the bulking stone shoulder of the adult library cut off the sightline to that delicate umbilicus. Ruefully amused at the ache of nostalgia around his heart, Ben went up the steps to the door of the adult library, paused for a moment on the narrow verandah just inside the pillars, always so high and cool no matter how hot the day. Then he pulled open the ironbound door with the bookdrop slot in it and went into the quiet. The force of memory almost dizzied him for a moment as he stepped into the mild light of the hanging glass globes. The force was not physicalnot like a shot to the jaw or a slap. It was more akin to that queer feeling of time doubling back on itself that people call, for want of a better term, djvu. Ben had had the feeling before, but it had never struck him with such disorienting power; for the moment or two he stood inside the door, he felt literally lost in time, not really sure how old he was. Was he thirtyeight or eleven? Here was the same murmuring quiet, broken only by an occasional whisper, the faint thud of a librarian stamping books or overdue notices, the hushed riffle of newspaper or magazine pages being turned. He loved the quality of the light as much now as then. It slanted through the high windows, gray as a pigeons wing on this rainy afternoon, a light that was somehow somnolent and dozey. He walked across the wide floor with its redandblack linoleum pattern almost completely worn away, trying as he had always tried back then to hush the sound of his footfallsthe adult library rose up to a dome in the middle, and all sounds were magnified. He saw that the circular iron staircases leading to the stacks were still there, one on either side of the horseshoeshaped main desk, but he also saw that a tiny cagework elevator had been added at some point in the twentyfive years since he and his mamma had moved away. It was something of a reliefit drove a wedge into that suffocating feeling of djvu. He felt like an interloper crossing the wide floor, a spy from another country. He kept expecting the librarian at the desk to raise her head, look at him, and then challenge him in clear, ringing tones that would shatter the concentration of every reader here and focus every eye upon him You! Yes, you! What are you doing here? You have no business here! Youre from Outside! Youre from Before! Go back where you came from! Go back right now, before I call the police! She did look up, a young girl, pretty, and for one absurd moment it seemed to Ben that the fantasy was really going to come true, and his heart rose into his throat as her paleblue eyes touched his. Then they passed on indifferently, and Ben found he could walk again. If he was a spy, he hadnt been found out. He passed under the coil of one of the narrow and almost suicidally steep wroughtiron staircases on his way to the corridor leading to the Childrens Library, and was amused to realize (only after he had done it) that he had run down another old track of his childhood behavior. He had looked up, hoping, as he had hoped as a kid, to see a girl in a skirt coming down those steps. He could remember (now he could remember) glancing up there for no reason at all one day when he was eight or nine and looking right up the chino skirt of a pretty highschool girl and seeing her clean pink underwear. As the sudden sunlit glint of Beverly Marshs anklebracelet had shot an arrow of something more primitive than simple love or affection through his heart on the last day of school in 1958, so had the sight of the highschool girls panties affected him; he could remember sitting at a table in the Childrens Library and thinking of that unexpected view for perhaps as long as twenty minutes, his cheeks and forehead hot, a book about the history of trains open and unread before him, his penis a hard little branch in his pants, a branch that had sunk its roots all the way up into his belly. He had fantasized the two of them married, living in a small house on the outskirts of town, indulging in pleasures he did not in the least understand. The feelings had passed off almost as suddenly as they had come, but he had never walked under the stairway again without glancing up. He hadnt ever seen anything else as interesting or affecting (once a fat lady working her way down with ponderous care, but he had looked away from that sight hastily, feeling ashamed, like a violator), but the habit persistedhe had done it again now, as a grown man. He walked slowly down the glassedin passageway, noticing other changes now Yellow decals that said OPEC LOVES IT WHEN YOU WASTE ENERGY, SO SAVE A WATT! had been plastered over the switchplates. The framed pictures on the far wall when he entered this scaleddown world of blondewood tables and small blondewood chairs, this world where the drinking fountain was only four feet high, were not of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon but of Ronald Reagan and George BushReagan, Ben recalled, had been host of GE Theater in the year that Ben had graduated from the fifth grade, and George Bush would not have seen thirty yet. But That feeling of djvu swept him again. He was helpless before it, and this time he felt the numb horror of a man who finally realizes, after half an hour of helpless splashing, that the shore is growing no closer and he is drowning. It was story hour, and over in the corner a group of roughly a dozen little ones sat solemnly on their tiny chairs in a semicircle, listening. Who is that triptrapping upon my bridge? the librarian said in the low, growling tones of the troll in the story, and Ben thought When she raises her head Ill see that its Miss Davies, yes, itll be Miss Davies and she wont look a day older But when she did raise her head, he saw a much younger woman than Miss Davies had been even then. Some of the children covered their mouths and giggled, but others only watched her, their eyes reflecting the eternal fascination of the fairy story would the monster be bested ... or would it feed? It is I, Billy Goat Gruff, triptrapping on your bridge, the librarian went on, and Ben, pale, walked past her. How can it be the same story? The very same story? Am I supposed to believe thats just coincidence? Because I dont ... goddammit, I just dont! He bent to the drinking fountain, bending so far he felt like Richie doing one of his salamisalamibaloney routines.


I ought to talk to someone, he thought, panicked. Mike ... Bill ... someone. Is something really stapling the past and present together here, or am I only imagining it? Because if Im not, Im not sure I bargained for this much. I He looked at the checkout desk, and his heart seemed to stop in his chest for a moment before beginning to race doubletime. The poster was simple, stark ... and familiar. It said simply REMEMBER THE CURFEW. 7 P.M. DERRY POLICE DEPARTMENT In that instant it all seemed to come clear to himit came in a grisly flash of light, and he realized that the vote they had taken was a joke. There was no turning back, never had been. They were on a track as preordained as the memorytrack which had caused him to look up when he passed under the stairway leading to the stacks. There was an echo here in Derry, a deadly echo, and all they could hope for was that the echo could be changed enough in their favor to allow them to escape with their lives. Christ, he muttered, and scrubbed a palm up one cheek, hard. Can I help you, sir? a voice at his elbow asked, and he jumped a little. It was a girl of perhaps seventeen, her darkblonde hair held back from her pretty highschoolers face with barrettes. A library assistant, of course; theyd had them in 1958 too, highschool girls and boys who shelved books, showed kids how to use the card catalogue, discussed book reports and school papers, helped bewildered scholars with their footnotes and bibliographies. The pay was a pittance, but there were always kids willing to do it. It was agreeable work. On the heels of this, reading the girls pleasant but questioning look a little more closely, he remembered that he no longer really belonged herehe was a giant in the land of little people. An intruder. In the adults library he had felt uneasy about the possibility of being looked at or spoken to, but here it was something of a relief. For one thing, it proved he was still an adult, and the fact that the girl was clearly braless under her thin Westernstyle shirt was also more relief than turnon if proof that this was 1985 and not 1958 was needed, the clearly limned points of her nipples against the cotton of her shirt was it. No thank you, he said, and then, for no reason at all that he could understand, he heard himself add I was looking for my son. Oh? Whats his name? Maybe Ive seen him. She smiled. I know most of the kids. His name is Ben Hanscom, he said. But I dont see him here. Tell me what he looks like and Ill give him a message, if there is one. Well, Ben said, uncomfortable now and beginning to wish he had never started this, hes on the stout side, and he looks a little bit like me. But its no big deal, miss. If you see him, just tell him his dad popped by on his way home. I will, she said, and smiled, but the smile didnt reach her eyes, and Ben suddenly realized that she hadnt come over and spoken to him out of simple politeness and a wish to help. She happened to be a library assistant in the Childrens Library in a town where nine children had been slain over a span of eight months. You see a strange man in this scaleddown world where adults rarely come except to drop their kids off or pick them up. Youre suspicious ... of course. Thank you, he said, gave her a smile he hoped was reassuring, and then got the hell out. He walked back through the corridor to the adults library and went to the desk on an impulse he didnt understand ... but of course they were supposed to follow their impulses this afternoon, werent they? Follow their impulses and see where they led. The name plate on the circulation desk identified the pretty young librarian as Carole Danner. Behind her, Ben could see a door with a frostedglass panel; lettered on this was MICHAEL HANLON HEAD LIBRARIAN. May I help you? Ms. Danner asked. I think so, Ben said. That is, I hope so. Id like to get a library card. Very good, she said, and took out a form. Are you a resident of Derry? Not presently. Home address, then? Rural Star Route 2, Hemingford Home, Nebraska. He paused for a moment, a little amused by her stare, and then reeled off the Zip Code 59341. Is this a joke, Mr. Hanscom? Not at all. Are you moving to Derry, then? I have no plans to, no. This is a long way to come to borrow books, isnt it? Dont they have libraries in Nebraska? Its kind of a sentimental thing, Ben said. He would have thought telling a stranger this would be embarrassing, but he found it wasnt. I grew up in Derry, you see. This is the first time Ive been back since I was a kid. Ive been walking around, seeing whats changed and what hasnt. And all at once it occurred to me that I spent about ten years of my life here between ages three and thirteen, and I dont have a single thing to remember those years by. Not so much as a postcard. I had some silver dollars, but I lost one of them and gave the rest to a friend. I guess what I want is a souvenir of my childhood. Its late, but dont they say better late than never? Carole Danner smiled, and the smile changed her pretty face into one that was beautiful. I think thats very sweet, she said. If youd like to browse for ten or fifteen minutes, Ill have the card made up for you when you come back to the desk. Ben grinned a little. I guess therell be a fee, he said. Outoftowner and all. Did you have a card when you were a boy? I sure did. Ben smiled. Except for my friends, I guess that library card was the most important Ben, would you come up here? a voice called suddenly, cutting across the library hush like a scalpel. He turned around, jumping guiltily the way people do when someone shouts in a library. He saw no one he knew ... and realized a moment later that no one had looked up or shown any sign of surprise or annoyance. The old men still read their copies of the Derry News, the Boston Globe, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News  World Report. At the tables in the Reference Room, two highschool girls still had their heads together over a stack of papers and a pile of filecards. Several browsers went on looking through the books on the shelves marked CURRENT FICTIONSEVENDAYLOAN. An old man in a ridiculous drivingcap, a cold pipe clenched between his teeth, went on leafing through a folio of Luis de Vargas sketches. He turned back to the young woman, who was looking at him, puzzled. Is anything wrong? No, Ben said, smiling. I thought I heard something. I guess Im more jetlagged than I thought. What were you saying? Well, actually you were saying. But I was about to add that if you had a card when you were a resident, your name will still be in the files, she said. We keep everything on microfiche now. Some change from when you were a kid here, I guess. Yes, he said. A lot of things have changed in Derry ... but a lot of things also seem to have remained the same. Anyway, I can just look you up and give you a renewal card. No charge. Thats great, Ben said, and before he could add thanks the voice cut through the librarys sacramental silence again, louder now, ominously jolly Come on up, Ben! Come on up, you fat little fuck! This is Your Life, Ben Hanscom! Ben cleared his throat. I appreciate it, he said. Dont mention it. She cocked her head at him. Has it gotten warm outside? A little, he said. Why? Youre Ben Hanscom did it! the voice screamed. It was coming from abovecoming from the stacks. Ben Hanscom killed the children! Get him! Grab him! perspiring, she finished. Am I? he said idiotically. Ill have this made up right away, she said. Thank you. She headed for the old Royal typewriter at the corner of her desk. Ben walked slowly away, his heart a thudding drum in his chest. Yes, he was sweating; he could feel it trickling down from his forehead, his armpits, matting the hair on his chest. He looked up and saw Pennywise the Clown standing at the top of the lefthand staircase, looking down at him. His face was white with greasepaint. His mouth bled lipstick in a killers grin. There were empty sockets where his eyes should have been. He held a bunch of balloons in one hand and a book in the other. Not he, Ben thought. It. I am standing here in the middle of the Derry Public Librarys rotunda on a latespring afternoon in 1985, I am a grown man, and I am face to face with my childhoods greatest nightmare. I am face to face with It. Come on up, Ben, Pennywise called down. I wont hurt you. Ive got a book for you! A book ... and a balloon! Come on up! Ben opened his mouth to call back. Youre insane if you think Im going up there, and suddenly realized that if he did that, everyone here would be looking at him, everyone here would be thinking, Who is that crazyman? Oh, I know you cant answer, Pennywise called down, and giggled. Almost fooled you there for a minute, though, didnt I? Pardon me, sir, do you have Prince Albert in a can? ... You do? ... Better let the poor guy out! Pardon me, maam, is your refrigerator running? ... It is? ... Then hadnt you better go catch it? The clown on the landing threw its head back and shrieked laughter. It roared and echoed in the dome of the rotunda like a flight of black bats, and Ben was only able to keep from clapping his hands over his ears with a tremendous effort of will. Come on up, Ben, Pennywise called down. Well talk. Neutral ground. What do you say? Im not coming up there, Ben thought. When I finally come to you, you wont want to see me, I think. Were going to kill you. The clown shrieked laughter again. Kill me? Kill me? And suddenly, horribly, the voice was Richie Toziers voice, not his voice, precisely, but Richie Tozier doing his Pickaninny Voice Doan kill me, massa, I be a good nigguh, doan kill thisyere black boy, Haystack! Then that shrieking laughter again. Trembling, whitefaced, Ben walked across the echoing center of the adults library. He felt that soon he would vomit. He stood in front of a shelf of books and took one down at random with a hand that trembled badly. His cold fingers flittered the pages. This is your one chance, Haystack! the voice called from behind and above him. Get out of town. Get out before it gets dark tonight. Ill be after you tonight ... you and the others. Youre too old to stop me, Ben. Youre all too old. Too old to do anything but get yourselves killed. Get out, Ben. Do you want to see this tonight? He turned slowly, still holding the book in his icy hands. He didnt want to look, but it was as if there were an invisible hand under his chin, tilting his head up and up and up. The clown was gone. Dracula was standing at the top of the lefthand stairway, but it was no movie Dracula; it was not Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee or Frank Langella or Francis Lederer or Reggie Nalder. An ancient manthing with a face like a twisted root stood there. Its face was deadly pale, its eyes purplishred, the color of bloodclots. Its mouth dropped open, revealing a mouthful of Gillette BlueBlades that had been set in the gums at angles; it was like looking into a deadly mirrormaze where a single misstep could get you cut in half. KEEERUNCH! it screamed, and its jaws snapped closed. Blood gouted from its mouth in a redblack flood. Chunks of its severed lips fell to the glowing white silk of its formal shirt and slid down its front, leaving snailtrails of blood behind. What did Stan Uris see before he died? the vampire on the landing screamed down at him, laughing through the bloody hole of its mouth. Was it Prince Albert in a can? Was it Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier? What did he see, Ben? Do you want to see it too? What did he see? What did he see? Then that shrieking laughter again, and Ben knew that he would scream now himself, yes, there was no way to stop the scream, it was going to come. Blood was pattering down from the landing in a grisly shower. One drop had landed on the arthritisbunched hand of an old man who was reading The Wall Street Journal. It was running down between his knuckles, unseen and unfelt. Ben hitched in breath, sure the scream would follow, unthinkable in the quiet of this softly drizzling spring afternoon, as shocking as the slash of a knife ... or a mouthful of razorblades. Instead, what came out in a shaky, uneven rush, spoken instead of screamed, spoken low like a prayer, were these words We made slugs out of it, of course. We made the silver dollar into silver slugs. The gentleman in the drivingcap who had been perusing the de Vargas sketches looked up sharply. Nonsense, he said. Now people did look up; someone hissed Shhh! at the old man in an annoyed voice. Im sorry, Ben said in a low, trembling voice. He was faintly aware that his face was now running with sweat, and that his shirt was plastered to his body. I was thinking aloud Nonsense, the old gentleman repeated, in a louder voice. Cant make silver bullets from silver dollars. Common misconception. Pulp fiction. Problem is with specific gravity Suddenly the woman, Ms. Danner, was there. Mr. Brockhill, youll have to be quiet, she said kindly enough. People are reading Mans sick, Brockhill said abruptly, and went back to his book. Give him an aspirin, Carole. Carole Danner looked at Ben and her face sharpened with concern. Are you ill, Mr. Hanscom? I know its terribly impolite to say so, but you look terrible. Ben said, I ... I had Chinese food for lunch. I dont think its agreed with me. If you want to lie down, theres a cot in Mr. Hanlons office. You could No. Thanks, but no. What he wanted was not to lie down but to get the hell out of the Derry Public Library. He looked up at the landing. The clown was gone. The vampire was gone. But tied to the low wroughtiron railing which surrounded the landing was a balloon. Written on its bulging skin were the words HAVE A GOOD DAY! TONIGHT YOU DIE! Ive got your library card, she said, putting a tentative hand on his arm. Do you still want it? Yes, thanks, Ben said. He drew a deep, shuddery breath. Im very sorry about this. I just hope it isnt foodpoisoning, she said. Wouldnt work, Mr. Brockhill said without looking up from de Vargas or removing his dead pipe from the corner of his mouth. Device of pulp fiction. Bullet would tumble. And speaking again with no foreknowledge that he was going to speak, Ben said Slugs, not bullets. We realized almost right away that we couldnt make bullets. I mean, we were just kids. It was my idea to Shhhh! someone said again. Brockhill gave Ben a slightly startled look, seemed about to speak, then went back to the sketches. At the desk, Carole Danner handed him a small orange card with DERRY PUBLIC LIBRARY stamped across the top. Bemused, Ben realized it was the first adult librarycard he had owned in his whole life. The one hed had as a kid had been canaryyellow. Are you sure you dont want to lie down, Mr. Hanscom? Im feeling a little better, thanks. Sure? He managed a smile. Im sure. You do look a little better, she said, but she said it doubtfully, as if understanding that this was the proper thing to say but not really believing it. Then she was holding a book under the microfilm gadget they used these days to record bookloans, and Ben felt a touch of almost hysterical amusement. Its the book I grabbed off the shelf when the clown started to do its Pickaninny Voice, he thought. She thought I wanted to borrow it. Ive made my first withdrawal from the Derry Public Library in twentyfive years, and I dont even know what the book is. Furthermore, I dont care. Just let me out of here, okay? Thatll be enough. Thank you, he said, putting the book under his arm. Youre more than welcome, Mr. Hanscom. Are you sure you wouldnt like an aspirin? Quite sure, he saidand then hesitated. You wouldnt by any chance know what happened to Mrs. Starrett, would you? Barbara Starrett? She used to be the head of the Childrens Library. She died, Carole Danner said. Three years ago. It was a stroke, I understand. It was a great shame. She was relatively young ... fiftyeight or nine, I think. Mr. Hanlon closed the library for the day. Oh, Ben said, and felt a hollow place open in his heart. Thats what happened when you got back to your usedtobe, as the song put it. The frosting on the cake was sweet, but the stuff underneath was bitter. People forgot you, or died on you, or lost their hair and teeth. In some cases you found that they had lost their minds. Oh it was great to be alive. Boy howdy. Im sorry, she said. You liked her, didnt you? All the kids liked Mrs. Starrett, Ben said, and was alarmed to realize that tears were now very close. Are you If she asks me if Im all right one more time, I really am going to cry, I think. Or scream. Or something. He glanced at his watch and said, I really have to run. Thanks for being so nice. Have a nice day, Mr. Hanscom. Sure. Because tonight I die. He tipped a finger her way and started back across the floor. Mr. Brockhill glanced up at him once, sharply and suspiciously. He looked up at the landing which topped the lefthand staircase. The balloon still floated there, tied by its string to lacy wroughtiron. But now the printing on its side read I KILLED BARBARA STARRETT! PENNYWISE THE CLOWN He looked away, feeling the pulse in his throat starting to run again. He let himself out and was startled by sunlightthe clouds overhead were coming unravelled and a warm lateMay sun was shafting down, making the grass look impossibly green and lush. Ben felt something start to lift from his heart. It seemed to him that he had left some insupportable burden behind in the library ... and then he looked down at the book he had inadvertently withdrawn and his teeth clamped together with sudden, painful force. It was Bulldozer, by Stephen W. Meader, one of the books he had withdrawn from the library on the day he had dived into the Barrens to get away from Henry Bowers and his friends. And speaking of Henry, the track of his engineer boot was still on the books cover. Shaking, fumbling at the pages, he turned to the back. The library had gone over to a microfilm checkout system; he had seen that. But there was still a pocket in the back of this book with a card tucked into it. There was a name written on each line of the card followed by the librarians returndate stamp. Looking at the card, Ben saw this And, on the last line of the card, his own childish signature, written in heavy pencilstrokes Stamped across this card, stamped across the books flyleaf, stamped across the thickness of the pages, stamped again and again in smeary red ink that looked like blood, was one word CANCEL. Oh dear God, Ben murmured. He did not know what else to say; that seemed to cover the entire situation. Oh dear God, dear God. He stood in the new sunlight, suddenly wondering what was happening to the others. 2 Eddie Kaspbrak Makes a Catch Eddie got off the bus at the comer of Kansas Street and Kossuth Lane. Kossuth was a street that ran a quarter of a mile downhill before deadending abruptly where the crumbling earth sloped into the Barrens. He had absolutely no idea why he had chosen this place to leave the bus; Kossuth Lane meant nothing to him, and he had known no one on this particular section of Kansas Street. But it seemed like the right place. That was all he knew, but at this point it seemed to be enough. Beverly had climbed off the bus with a little wave at one of the Lower Main Street stops. Mike had taken his car back to the library. Now, watching the small and somehow absurd Mercedes bus pull away, he wondered exactly what he was doing here, standing on an obscure streetcorner in an obscure town nearly five hundred miles away from Myra, who was undoubtedly worried to tears about him. He felt an instant of almost painful vertigo, touched his jacket pocket, and remembered that he had left his Dramamine back at the Town House along with the rest of his pharmacopeia. He had aspirin, though. He would no more have gone out sans aspirin than he would have gone out sans pants. He chugged a couple dry and began to walk along Kansas Street, thinking vaguely that he might go to the Public Library or perhaps cross over to Costello Avenue. It was beginning to clear now, and he supposed he could even walk across to West Broadway and admire the old Victorian houses that stood there along the only two really handsome residential blocks in Derry. He used to do that sometimes when he was a kidjust walk along West Broadway, sort of casual, like he was on his way to somewhere else. There was the Muellers, near the corner of Witcham and West Broadway, a red house with turrets on either side and hedges in front. The Muellers had a gardener who always looked at Eddie with suspicious eyes until he had passed on his way. Then there was the Bowies house, which was four down from the Muellers on the same sideone of the reasons, he supposed, that Greta Bowie and Sally Mueller had been such great friends in grammar school. It was greenshingled and also had turrets ... but while the turrets on the Muellers house were squared off, those on the Bowies house were capped with funny coneshaped things that looked to Eddie like squatty duncecaps. In the summer there was always lawnfurniture on the side lawna table with a sporty yellow umbrella over it, wicker chairs, a rope hammock stretched between two trees. There was always a croquet game set up out back, too. Eddie knew this although he had never been invited over to Gretas house to play croquet. Walking by casually (like he was on his way to somewhere else) Eddie would sometimes hear the click of the balls, laughter, groans as someones ball was sent away. Once he had seen Greta herself, a lemonade in one hand and her croquet mallet in the other, looking slim and pretty beyond the words of all the poets (even her sunburned shoulders seemed wonderfully pretty to Eddie Kaspbrak, who had at that time been nine), going after her ball, which had been sent away; it had ricocheted off a tree and had thus brought Greta into Eddies view. He fell in love with her a little that dayher shining blonde hair falling to the shoulders of her culotte dress, which was a cool blue. She glanced around and for a moment he thought she had seen him, but that proved not to be so, because when he raised his hand in a timid hello, she did not raise hers in return but only whacked her ball back onto the rear lawn and then ran after it. He had walked on with no resentment at the unreturned hello (he genuinely believed she must not have see him) or at the fact that he had never been invited to attend one of the Saturdayafternoon croquet games why would a beautiful girl like Greta Bowie want to invite a kid like him? He was thinchested, asthmatic, and had the face of a drowned waterrat. Yeah, he thought, walking aimlessly back down Kansas Street, I should have gone over to West Broadway and looked at all those houses again... the Muellers, the Bowies, Dr. Hales place, the Trackers His thoughts broke off abruptly at that last name, becausespeak of the devil!here he was, standing in front of Tracker Brothers Truck Depot. Still right here, Eddie said aloud, and laughed. Son of a gun! The house on West Broadway which belonged to Phil and Tony Tracker, a pair of lifelong bachelors, was probably the loveliest of the large houses on that street, a spotlessly white midVictorian with green lawns and great beds of flowers that rioted (in a neatly landscaped way, of course) all the spring and summer long. Their driveway was freshly sealed each fall so that it always remained as black as a dark mirror, the slate shingles on the many slants of the roof were always a perfect mint green that almost exactly matched the lawn, and people sometimes stopped to take pictures of the mullioned windows, which were very old and quite remarkable. Any two men who bother keeping a house so nice must be queers, Eddies mother had once said in a disgruntled sort of way, and Eddie hadnt dared ask for clarification. The Truck Depot was the exact opposite of the Tracker house on West Broadway. It was a low brick structure; the bricks were old and crumbling in places, their dirtyorange hue shading to a sooty black at the buildings footings. The windows were uniformly filthy except for a small circular place on one of the lower panes of the starters office. This one pane had been kept spotlessly clean by kids before Eddie and those who came after, because the starter kept a Playboy calendar over his desk. No boy came to play scratch baseball in the back lot without first stopping to wipe at the glass with his ballglove and examine that months pinup. The depot was surrounded by a waste of gravel on three sides. Longdistance haulersJimmyPetes and Kenworths and Riosall painted with the words TRACKER BROS. DERRY NEWTON PROVIDENCE HARTFORD NEW YORK, sometimes stood here in tangled disordered profusion. Sometimes they were put together and sometimes there were just cabs or bodyboxes, standing silent on their rear wheels and supportstruts. The brothers kept their trucks out of the lot at the back of the building as much as they could, because they were both avid baseball fans and liked the kids to come and play. Phil Tracker drove freight himself so the boys rarely saw him, but Tony Tracker, a man with huge slab arms and a gut to match, kept the books and the accounts, and Eddie (who never playedhis mother would have killed him if she had heard he was playing baseball, racing around and getting dust in his delicate lungs, risking broken legs, concussions, and God alone knew what else) got used to seeing him. He was a summer fixture, his voice as much a part of the game to Eddie then as Mel Allens later became Tony Tracker, large but somehow ghostlike, his white shirt glimmering as summer dusk drew down and fireflies began to loom the air with their lace of lights, yelling You got to get under that bawl before you can catch it, Red! ... You took your eye offn the bawl, HalfPint! You cant hit the goddam thing, if you aint looking at it! ... Slide, Horsefoot! You get the soles of them Keds in that secondbasemans face, he aint never goan tag you out! Never called any of them by name, Eddie remembered. It was always hey Red, hey Blondie, hey FourEyes, hey HalfPint. It was never a ball, it was always a bawl. It was never a bat, it was always something Tony Tracker called an ashhandle, as in You aint never goan hit that bawl if you dont choke up on the ashhandle, Horsefoot. Grinning, Eddie walked a little closer ... and then the grin faded. The long brick building where orders had been processed, trucks repaired, and goods stored on a shortterm basis was now dark and silent. Weeds were growing up through the gravel, and there were no trucks in either side yard ... only a single box, its sides rusty and dull. Getting closer still, he saw that there was a realtors FOR SALE sign in the window. Trackers out of business, he thought, and was surprised at the sadness the thought carried with it ... as if someone had died. He was glad now he hadnt walked over to West Broadway. If Tracker Brothers could have gone underTracker Brothers, which had seemed eternalwhat might have happened on that street he had liked so much to walk down as a kid? He realized uneasily that he didnt want to know. He didnt want to see Greta Bowie with gray in her hair, her hips and legs thickened with much sitting and much eating and much drinking; it was bettersaferto just stay away. Thats what we all should have done, just stayed away. Weve got no business here. Coming back to where you grew up is like doing some crazy yoga trick, putting your feet in your own mouth and somehow swallowing yourself so theres nothing left; it cant be done, and any sane person ought to be fucking glad it cant ... what do you suppose happened to Tony and Phil Tracker, anyway? A heart attack for Tony, perhaps; he had been carrying maybe seventyfive extra pounds of meat on his bones. You had to watch out for what your heart might be up to. The poets might romance about broken hearts and Barry Manilow sing about them, and that was fine by Eddie (he and Myra had every album Barry Manilow had ever recorded), but he himself preferred a good solid EKG every year. Sure, Tonys heart had probably given it up as a bad job. And Phil? Bad luck on the highway maybe. Eddie, who made his living behind the wheel himself (or had; these days he only drove the celebs and spent the rest of his time driving a desk), knew about bad luck on the highway. Old Phil might have jackknifed a rig somewhere in New Hampshire or in the Hainesville Woods up north in Maine when the going was icy or maybe he had lost his brakes on some long hill south of Derry, heading into Haven in a driving springtime rain. Those things or any of the others you heard in those shitkicking country songs about truckdrivers who wore Stetson hats and had cheating on their minds. Driving a desk was sometimes lonely, but Eddie had been in the drivers seat himself more than once, his aspirator riding there with him on the dashboard, its trigger reflected ghostly in the windshield (and a bucketload of pills in the glove compartment), and he knew that real loneliness was a smeary red the color of the taillights of the car ahead of you reflected on wet hottop in a driving rain. Oh shit the time goes by, Eddie Kaspbrak said in a sighing sort of whisper, and was not even aware that he had spoken aloud. Feeling both mellow and unhappya state more common to him than he ever would have believedEddie skirted the building, Gucci loafers crunching in the gravel, to look at the lot where the baseball games had been played when he was a kidwhen, it seemed, ninety percent of the world had been made up of kids. The lot wasnt much changed, but a look was enough to convince him beyond doubt that the games had stoppeda tradition that had simply died out at some point in the years between, for reasons of its own. In 1958 the diamond shape of the infield had been defined not by limed basepaths but in ruts made by running feet. They had no actual bases, those boys who had played baseball here (boys who were all older than the Losers, although Eddie remembered now that Stan Uris had sometimes played; his batting was only fair, but in the outfield he could run fast and he had the reflexes of an angel), but four pieces of dirty canvas were always kept under the loadingbay behind the long brick building, to be ceremonially taken out when enough kids had drifted into the back lot to play ball, and just as ceremonially returned when the shades of evening had fallen thickly enough to end further play. Standing here now, Eddie could see no trace of those rutted basepaths. Weeds had grown up through the gravel in patchy profusion. Broken soda and beer bottles twinkled here and there; in the old days, such shards of broken glass had been religiously removed. The only thing that was the same was the chainlink fence at the back of the lot, twelve feet high and as rusty as dried blood. It framed the sky in droves of diamond shapes. That was homerun territory, Eddie thought, standing bemused with his hands in his pockets at the place where home plate had been twentyseven years ago. Over the fence and down into the Barrens. They used to call it The Automatic. He laughed out loud and then looked around nervously, as if it were a ghost who had laughed out loud instead of a guy in sixtydollar slacks, a guy as solid as ... well, as solid as ... as... Get off it, Eds, Richies voice seemed to whisper. You aint solid at all, and in the last few years the chucks have been few and far between. Right? Yeah, right, Eddie said in a low voice, and kicked a few loose stones away in a rattle. In truth, he had only seen two balls go over the fence at the back of the lot behind Tracker Brothers, both of them hit by the same kid Belch Huggins. Belch had been almost comically big, already six feet tall at twelve, weighing maybe a hundred and seventy.