You wont mind. You like to learn new things, dont cha? He reached for Ben. Ben ducked away. Hold him, you guys. Belch and Victor seized his arms. Ben squealed. It was a cowardly sound, rabbity and weak, but he couldnt help it. Please God dont let them make me cry and dont let them break my watch, Ben thought wildly. He didnt know if they would get around to breaking his watch or not, but he was pretty sure he would cry. He was pretty sure he would cry plenty before they were through with him. Jeezum, he sounds just like a pig, Victor said. He twisted Bens wrist. Dont he sound like a pig? He sure do, Belch giggled. Ben lunged first one way and then the other. Belch and Victor went with him easily, letting him lunge, then yanking him back. Henry grabbed the front of Bens sweatshirt and yanked it upward, exposing his belly. It hung over his belt in a swollen droop. Lookit that gut! Henry cried in amazed disgust. Jesuspleaseus! Victor and Belch laughed some more. Ben looked around wildly for help. He could see no one. Behind him, down in the Barrens, crickets drowsed and seagulls screamed. You just better quit! he said. He wasnt blubbering yet but was close to it. You just better! Or what? Henry asked as if he was honestly interested. Or what, Tits? Or what, huh? Ben suddenly found himself thinking of Broderick Crawford, who played Dan Matthews on Highway Patrolthat bastard was tough, that bastard was mean, that bastard took zero shit from anybodyand then he burst into tears. Dan Matthews would have belted these guys right through the fence, down the embankment, and into the puckerbrush. He would have done it with his belly. Oh boy, lookit the baby! Victor chortled. Belch joined in. Henry smiled a little, but his face still held that grave, reflective castthat look that was somehow almost sad. It frightened Ben. It suggested he might be in for more than just a beating. As if to confirm this idea, Henry reached into his jeans pocket and brought out a Buck knife. Bens terror exploded. He had been whipsawing his body futilely to either side; now he suddenly lunged straight forward. There was an instant when he believed he was going to get away. He was sweating heavily, and the boys holding his arms had greasy grips at best. Belch managed to hold on to his right wrist, but just barely. He pulled entirely free of Victor. Another lunge Before he could make it, Henry stepped forward and gave him a shove. Ben flew backward. The railing creaked more loudly this time, and he felt it give a little under his weight. Belch and Victor grabbed him again. Now you hold him, Henry said. You hear me? Sure, Henry, Belch said. He sounded a trifle uneasy. He aint gonna get away. Dont worry. Henry stepped forward until his flat stomach almost touched Bens belly. Ben stared at him, tears spilling helplessly out of his wide eyes. Caught! Im caught! a part of his mind yammered. He tried to stop ithe couldnt think at all with that yammering going onbut it wouldnt stop. Caught! Caught! Caught! Henry pulled out the blade, which was long and wide and engraved with his name. The tip glittered in the afternoon sunshine. Im gonna test you now, Henry said in that same reflective voice. Its exam time, Tits, and you better be ready. Ben wept. His heart thundered madly in his chest. Snot ran out of his nose and collected on his upper lip. His library books lay in a scatter at his feet. Henry stepped on Bulldozer, glanced down, and dealt it into the gutter with a sideswipe of one black engineer boot. Heres the first question on your exam, Tits. When somebody says Let me copy during finals, what are you going to say? Yes! Ben exclaimed immediately. Im going to say yes! Sure! Okay! Copy all you want! The Bucks tip slid through two inches of air and pressed against Bens stomach. It was as cold as an icecube tray just out of the Frigidaire. Ben gasped his belly away from it. For a moment the world went gray. Henrys mouth was moving but Ben couldnt tell what he was saying. Henry was like a TV with the sound turned off and the world was swimming ... swimming... Dont you dare faint! the panicky voice shrieked. If you faint he may get mad enough to kill you! The world came back into some kind of focus. He saw that both Belch and Victor had stopped laughing. They looked nervous... almost scared. Seeing that had the effect of a headclearing slap on Ben. All of a sudden they dont know what hes going to do, or how far he might go. However bad you thought things were, thats how bad they really are ... maybe even a little worse. You got to think. If you never did before or never do again, you better think now. Because his eyes say theyre right to look nervous. His eyes say hes crazy as a bedbug. Thats the wrong answer, Tits, Henry said. If just anyone says Let me copy, I dont give a red fuck what you do. Got it? Yes, Ben said, his belly hitching with sobs. Yes, I got it. Well, okay. Thats one wrong, but the biggies are still coming up. You ready for the biggies? I... I guess so. A car came slowly toward them. It was a dusty 51 Ford with an old man and woman propped up in the front seat like a pair of neglected department store mannequins. Ben saw the old mans head turn slowly toward him. Henry stepped closer to Ben, hiding the knife. Ben could feel its point dimpling his flesh just above his bellybutton. It was still cold. He didnt see how that could be, but it was. Go ahead, yell, Henry said. Youll be pickin your fuckin guts off your sneakers. They were close enough to kiss. Ben could smell the sweet smell of Juicy Fruit gum on Henrys breath. The car passed and continued on down Kansas Street, as slow and serene as the pace car in the Tournament of Roses Parade. All right, Tits, heres the second question. If I say Let me copy during finals, what are you going to say? Yes. Ill say yes. Right away. Henry smiled. Thats good. You got that one right, Tits. Now heres the third question how am I going to be sure you never forget that? I ... I dont know, Ben whispered. Henry smiled. His face lit up and was for a moment almost handsome. I know! he said, as if he had discovered a great truth. I know, Tits! Ill carve my name on your big fat gut! Victor and Belch abruptly began laughing again. For a moment Ben felt a species of bewildered relief, thinking it had all been nothing but makebelievea little shuckandjive the three of them had whomped up to scare the living hell out of him. But Henry Bowers wasnt laughing, and Ben suddenly understood that Victor and Belch were laughing because they were relieved. It was obvious to both of them that Henry couldnt be serious. Except Henry was. The Buck knife slid upward, smooth as butter. Blood welled in a bright red line on Bens pallid skin. Hey! Victor cried. The word came out muffled, in a startled gulp. Hold him! Henry snarled. You just hold him, hear me? Now there was nothing grave and reflective on Henrys face; now it was the twisted face of a devil. Jeezumcrow Henry dont really cut im! Belch screamed, and his voice was high, almost a girls voice. Everything happened fast then, but to Ben Hanscom it all seemed slow; it all seemed to happen in a series of shutterclicks, like action stills in a Lifemagazine photoessay. His panic was gone. He had discovered something inside him suddenly, and because it had no use for panic, that something just ate the panic whole. In the first shutterclick, Henry had snatched his sweatshirt all the way up to his nipples. Blood was pouring from the shallow vertical cut above his bellybutton. In the second shutterclick, Henry drew the knife down again, operating fast, like a lunatic battlesurgeon under an aerial bombardment. Fresh blood flowed. Backward, Ben thought coldly as blood flowed down and pooled between the waistband of his jeans and his skin. Got to go backward. Thats the only direction I can get away in. Belch and Victor werent holding him anymore. In spite of Henrys command, they had drawn away. They had drawn away in horror. But if he ran, Bowers would catch him. In the third shutterclick, Henry connected the two vertical slashes with a short horizontal line. Ben could feel blood running into his underpants now, and a sticky snailtrail was creeping down his left thigh. Henry leaned back momentarily, frowning with the studied concentration of an artist painting a landscape. After H comes E, Ben thought, and that was all it took to get him moving. He pulled forward a little bit and Henry shoved him back again. Ben pushed with his legs, adding his own force to Henrys. He hit the whitewashed railing between Kansas Street and the drop into the Barrens. As he did, he raised his right foot and planted it in Henrys belly. This was not a retaliatory act; Ben only wanted to increase his backward force. And yet when he saw the expression of utter surprise on Henrys face, he was filled with a clear savage joya feeling so intense that for a split second he thought the top of his head was going to come off. Then there was a cracking, splintering sound from the railing. Ben saw Victor and Belch catch Henry before he could fall on his ass in the gutter next to the remains of Bulldozer, and then Ben was falling backward into space. He went with a scream that was half a laugh. Ben hit the slope on his back and buttocks just below the culvert he had spotted earlier. It was a good thing he landed below it; if he had landed on it, he might well have broken his back. As it was, he landed on a thick cushion of weeds and bracken and barely felt the impact. He did a backward somersault, feet and legs snapping over his head. He landed sitting up and went sliding down the slope backward like a kid on a big green ChutetheChute, his sweatshirt pulled up around his neck, his hands grabbing for purchase and doing nothing but yanking out tuft after tuft of bracken and witchgrass. He saw the top of the embankment (it seemed impossible that he had just been standing up there) receding with crazy cartoon speed. He saw Victor and Belch, their faces round white Os, staring down at him. He had time to mourn his library books. Then he fetched up against something with agonizing force and nearly bit his tongue in half. It was a downed tree, and it checked Bens fall by nearly breaking his left leg. He clawed his way back up the slope a little bit, pulling his leg free with a groan. The tree had stopped him about halfway down. Below, the bushes were thicker. Water falling from the culvert ran over his hands in thin streams. There was a shriek from above him. Ben looked up again and saw Henry Bowers come flying over the drop, his knife clenched between his teeth. He landed on both feet, body thrown backward at a steep angle so he would not overbalance. He skidded to the end of a gigantic set of footprints and then began to run down the embankment in a series of gangling kangaroo leaps. In goin oo kill ooo, Its! Henry was shrieking around the knife, and Ben didnt need a U.N. translator to tell him Henry was saying Im going to kill you, Tits. In goin 00 huckin kill 000! Now, with that cold generals eye he had discovered up above on the sidewalk, Ben saw what he had to do. He managed to gain his feet just before Henry arrived, the knife now in his hand and held straight out in front of him like a bayonet. Ben was peripherally aware that the left leg of his jeans was shredded, and his leg was bleeding much more heavily than his stomach ... but it was supporting him, and that meant it wasnt broken. At least he hoped thats what it meant. Ben crouched slightly to maintain his precarious balance, and as Henry grabbed at him with one hand and swept the knife in a long flat arc with the other, Ben stepped aside. He lost his balance, but as he fell down he stuck out his shredded left leg. Henrys shins struck it, and his legs were booted out from under him with great efficiency. For a moment Ben gaped, his terror overcome with a mixture of awe and admiration. Henry Bowers appeared to be flying exactly like Superman over the fallen tree where Ben had stopped. His arms were straight out in front of him, the way George Reeves held his arms out on the TV show. Only George Reeves always looked like flying was as natural as taking a bath or eating lunch on the back porch. Henry looked like someone had shoved a hot poker up his ass. His mouth was opening and closing. A string of saliva was shooting back from one corner of it, and as Ben watched, it splatted against the lobe of Henrys ear. Then Henry crashed back to earth. The knife flew out of his hand. He rolled over on one shoulder, landed on his back, and slid away into the bushes with his legs splayed into a V. There was a yell. A thud. And then silence. Ben sat, dazed, looking at the matted place in the bushes where Henry had done his disappearing act. Suddenly rocks and pebbles began to bounce by him. He looked up again. Victor and Belch were now descending the embankment. They were moving more carefully than Henry, and hence more slowly, but they would reach him in thirty seconds or less if he didnt do something. He moaned. Would this lunacy never end? Keeping his eye on them, he clambered over the downed tree and began to scramble down the embankment, panting harshly. He had a stitch in his side. His tongue hurt like hell. The bushes were now almost as tall as Ben himself. The randy green smell of stuff growing out of control filled his nose. He could hear running water somewhere close, chuckling over stones and rilling between them. His feet slipped and here he went again, rolling and sliding, smashing the back of his hand against a jutting rock, shooting through a patch of thorns that hooked bluegray puffs of cotton from his sweatshirt and little divots of meat from his hands and cheeks. He slammed to a jarring halt sitting up, with his feet in the water. Here was a little curving stream which wound its way into a thick stand of secondgrowth trees to his right; it looked as dark as a cave in there. He looked to his left and saw Henry Bowers lying on his back in the middle of the stream. His halfopen eyes showed only whites. Blood trickled from one ear and ran toward Ben in delicate threads. Oh my God I killed him! Oh my God Im a murderer! Oh my God! Forgetting that Belch and Victor were behind him (or perhaps understanding they would lose all interest in beating the shit out of him when they discovered their Fearless Leader was dead), Ben splashed twenty feet upstream to where Henry lay, his shirt in ribbons, his jeans soaked black, one shoe gone. Ben was vaguely aware that there was precious little left of his own clothes and that his body was one big rattletrap of aches and pains. His left ankle was the worst; it had already puffed tight against his soaking sneaker and he was favoring it so badly that he was really not walking but lurching like a sailor on shore for the first time after a long sea voyage. He bent over Henry Bowers. Henrys eyes popped wide open. He grabbed Bens calf with one scraped and bloody hand. His mouth worked, and although nothing but a series of whistling aspirations emerged, Ben could still make out what he was saying Kill you, you fat shit. Henry was trying to pull himself up, using Bens leg as a pole. Ben pulled backward frantically. Henrys hand slipped down, then off. Ben flew backward, whirling his arms, and fell on his ass for a recordbreaking third time in the last four minutes. He also bit his tongue again. Water splashed up around him. A rainbow glimmered for an instant in front of Bens eyes. Ben didnt give a fuck about the rainbow. He didnt give a fuck about finding a pot of gold. He would settle for his miserable fat life. Henry rolled over. Tried to stand. Fell back. Managed to get to his hands and knees. And finally tottered to his feet. He stared at Ben with those black eyes. The front of his flattop now leaned this way and that, like cornhusks after a high wind has passed through. Ben was suddenly angry. Nothis was more than being angry. He was infuriated. He had been walking with his library books under his arm, having an innocent little daydream about kissing Beverly Marsh, bothering nobody. And look at this. Just look. Pants shredded. Left ankle maybe broken, badly sprained for sure. Leg all cut up, tongue all cut up, Henry goddam Bowerss monogram on his stomach. How about all that happy crappy, sports fans? But it was probably the thought of his library books, for which he was liable, that drove him to charge Henry Bowers. His lost library books and his mental image of how reproachful Mrs. Starretts eyes would become when he told her. Whatever the reasoncuts, sprain, library books, or even the thought of the soggy and probably illegible rankcard in his back pocketit was enough to get him moving. He lumbered forward, squashy Keds spatting in the shallow water, and kicked Henry squarely in the balls. Henry uttered a horrid rusty scream that sent birds beating up from the trees. He stood spraddlelegged for a moment, hands clasping his crotch, staring unbelievingly at Ben. Ug, he said in a small voice. Right, Ben said. Ug, Henry said, in an even smaller voice. Right, Ben said again. Henry sank slowly back to his knees, not so much falling as folding up. He was still looking at Ben with those unbelieving black eyes. Ug. Damn right, Ben said. Henry fell on his side, still clutching his testicles, and began to roll slowly from side to side. Ug! Henry moaned. My balls. Ug! Oh you broke my balls. Ugug! He was now beginning to gain a little force, and Ben started to back away a step at a time. He was sickened by what he had done, but he was also filled with a kind of righteous, paralyzed fascination. Ug!my fuckin sackugUG!oh my fuckin BALLS! Ben might have remained in the area for an untold length of timeperhaps even until Henry recovered enough to come after himbut just then a rock struck him above the right ear with such a deep, drilling pain that, until he felt warm blood flowing again, Ben thought he had been stung by a wasp. He turned and saw the other two striding up the middle of the stream toward him. They each had a handful of waterrounded rocks. Victor pegged one and Ben heard it whistle past his ear. He ducked and another struck his right knee, making him yell with surprised hurt. A third bounced off his right cheekbone, and that eye filled with water. He scrambled for the far bank and climbed it as fast as he could, grabbing onto protruding roots and hauling on handfuls of bushes. He made it to the top (one final stone struck his buttock as he pulled himself up) and took a quick look back over his shoulder. Belch was kneeling beside Henry while Victor stood half a dozen feet away, firing stones; one the size of a baseball clipped through the manhigh bushes beside Ben. He had seen enough; in fact, he had seen much more than enough. Worst of all, Henry Bowers was getting up again. Like Bens own Timex watch, Henry could take a licking and keep on ticking. Ben turned and smashed his way into the bushes, lumbering along in a direction he hoped was west. If he could cross to the Old Cape side of the Barrens, he could beg a dime off somebody and take the bus home. And when he got there he would lock the door behind him and bury these tattered bloody clothes in the trash and this crazy dream would finally be over. Ben thought of himself sitting in his chair in the living room, freshly tubbed, wearing his fuzzy red bathrobe, watching Daffy Duck cartoons on The Mighty Ninety and drinking milk through a strawberry FlavRStraw. Hold that thought, he told himself grimly, and kept lumbering along. Bushes sprang into his face. Ben pushed them aside. Thorns reached and clawed. He tried to ignore them. He came to a flat area of ground that was black and mucky. A thick stand of bamboolike growth spread across it and a fetid smell rose from the earth. An ominous thought (quicksand) slipped across the foreground of his mind like a shadow as he looked at the sheen of standing water deeper into the grove of bamboostuff. He didnt want to go in there. Even if it wasnt quicksand, the mud would suck his sneakers off. He turned right instead, running along the front of the bamboogrove and finally into a patch of real woods. The trees, mostly firs, were thick, growing everywhere, battling each other for a little space and sun, but there was less undergrowth and he could move faster. He was no longer sure what direction he was moving in, but still thought he was, on measure, a little ahead of the game. The Barrens were enclosed by Derry on three sides and bounded by the halffinished turnpike extension on the fourth. Sooner or later he would come out somewhere. His stomach throbbed painfully, and he pulled up the remains of his sweatshirt for a look. He winced and drew a whistle of air in over his teeth. His belly looked like a grotesque Christmastree ball, all caked red blood and smeared green from his slide down the embankment. He pulled the sweatshirt down again. Looking at that mess made him feel like blowing lunch. Now he heard a low humming noise from aheadit was one steady note just above the low range of his hearing. An adult, intent only on getting the hell out of there (the mosquitoes had found Ben now, and while nowhere near as big as sparrows, they were pretty big), would have ignored it, or simply not heard it at all. But Ben was a boy, and he was already getting over his fright. He swerved to his left and pushed through some low laurel bushes. Beyond them, sticking out of the ground, were the top three feet of a cement cylinder about four feet wide. It was capped with a vented iron manhole cover. The cover was stamped with the words DERRY SEWER DEPT. The soundthis close it was more a drone than a humwas coming from someplace deep inside. Ben put one eye to a venthole but could see nothing. He could hear that drone, and water running down there someplace, but that was all. He took a breath, got a whiff of a sour smell that was both dank and shitty, and drew back with a wince. It was a sewer, that was all. Or maybe a combined sewer and drainagetunnelthere were plenty of those in floodconscious Derry. No big deal. But it had given him a funny sort of chill. Part of it was seeing the handiwork of man in all this overgrown jumble of wilderness, but he supposed part of it was the shape of the thing itselfthat concrete cylinder jutting out of the ground. Ben had read H. G. Wellss The Time Machine the year before, first the Classics Comics version and then the whole book. This cylinder with its vented iron cap reminded him of the wells which lead down into the country of the slumped and horrible Morlocks. He moved away from it quickly, trying to find west again. He got to a little clearing and turned until his shadow was as directly behind him as he could get it. Then he headed off in a straight line. Five minutes later he heard more running water ahead, and voices. Kids voices. He stopped to listen, and that was when he heard snapping branches and other voices behind him. They were perfectly recognizable. They belonged to Victor, Belch, and the one and only Henry Bowers. The nightmare was not over yet, it seemed. Ben looked around for a place to go to earth. 10 He came out of his hiding place about two hours later, dirtier than ever, but a little refreshed. Incredible as it seemed to him, he had dozed off. When he had heard the three of them behind him, coming after him still, Ben had come dangerously close to freezing up completely, like an animal caught in the headlamps of an oncoming truck. A paralytic drowsiness began to steal over him. The idea of simply lying down, curling up into a ball like a hedgehog, and letting them do whatever they felt they had to occurred to him. It was a crazy idea, but it also seemed like a strangely good idea. But instead Ben began to move toward the sound of the running water and those other kids. He tried to untangle their voices and get the sense of what they were sayinganything to shake off that scary paralysis of the spirit. Some project. They were talking about some project. One or two of the voices were even a little familiar. There was a splash, followed by a burst of goodnatured laughter. The laughter filled Ben with a kind of stupid longing, and made him more aware of his dangerous position than anything else had done. If he was going to be caught, there was no need to let these kids in for a dose of his medicine. Ben turned right again. Like many large people, he was remarkably lightfooted. He passed close enough to the boys to see their shadows moving back and forth between him and the bright water, but they neither saw him nor heard him. Gradually their voices began to fall behind. He came to a narrow path which had been beaten down to the bare earth. Ben considered it for a moment, then shook his head a little. He crossed it and plunged into the undergrowth again. He moved more slowly now, pushing bushes aside rather than stampeding through them. He was still moving roughly parallel to the stream the other kids had been playing beside. Even through the intervening bushes and trees he could see it was much wider than the one into which he and Henry had fallen. Here was another of those concrete cylinders, barely visible amid a snarl of blackberry creepers, humming quietly to itself. Beyond, an embankment dropped off to the stream, and here an old, gnarled elm tree leaned crookedly out over the water. Its roots, halfexposed by bank erosion, looked like a snarl of dirty hair. Hoping there wouldnt be bugs or snakes but too tired and numbly frightened to really care, Ben had worked his way between the roots and into a shallow cave beneath. He leaned back. A root jabbed him like an angry finger. He shifted his position a little and it supported him quite nicely. Here came Henry, Belch, and Victor. He had thought they might be fooled into following the path, but no such luck. They stood close by him for a momentany closer and he could have reached out of his hiding place and touched them. Bet them little snotholes back there saw him, Belch said. Well, lets go find out, Henry replied, and they headed back the way they had come. A few moments later Ben heard him roar What the fuck you kids doin here? There was some sort of reply, but Ben couldnt tell what it was the kids were too far away, and this close the riverit was the Kenduskeag, of coursewas too loud. But he thought the kid sounded scared. Ben could sympathize. Then Victor Criss bellowed something Ben hadnt understood at all What a fuckin baby dam! Baby dam? Baby damn? Or maybe Victor had said what a damn bunch of babies and Ben had misheard him. Lets break it! Belch proposed. There were yells of protest followed by a scream of pain. Someone began to cry. Yes, Ben could sympathize. They hadnt been able to catch him (or at least not yet), but here was another bunch of little kids for them to take out their mad on. Sure, break it, Henry said. Splashes. Yells. Big moronic gusts of laughter from Belch and Victor. An agonized infuriated cry from one of the little kids. Dont gimme any of your shit, you stuttering little freak, Henry Bowers said. I aint takin no more shit from nobody today. There was a splintering crack. The sound of running water downstream grew louder and roared briefly before quieting to its former placid chuckle. Ben suddenly understood. Baby dam, yes, that was what Victor had said. The kidstwo or three of them it had sounded like when he passed byhad been building a dam. Henry and his friends had just kicked it apart. Ben even thought he knew who one of the kids was. The only stuttering little freak he knew from Derry School was Bill Denbrough, who was in the other fifthgrade classroom. You didnt have to do that! a thin and fearful voice cried out, and Ben recognized that voice as well, although he could not immediately put a face with it. Why did you do that? Because I felt like it, fucknuts! Henry roared back. There was a meaty thud. It was followed by a scream of pain. The scream was followed by weeping. Shut up, Victor said. Shut up that crying, kid, or Ill pull your ears down and tie em under your chin. The crying became a series of choked snuffles. Were going, Henry said, but before we do, I want to know one thing. You seen a fat kid in the last ten minutes or so? Big fat kid all bloody and cut up? There was a reply too brief to be anything but no. You sure? Belch asked. You better be, mushmouth. IIIm shshsure, Bill Denbrough replied. Lets go, Henry said. He probably waded acrost back that way. Tata, boys, Victor Criss called. It was a real baby dam, believe me. Youre better off without it. Splashing sounds. Belchs voice came again, but farther away now. Ben couldnt make out the words. In fact, he didnt want to make out the words. Closer by, the boy who had been crying now resumed. There were comforting noises from the other boy. Ben had decided there was just the two of them, Stuttering Bill and the weeper. He halfsat, halflay where he was, listening to the two boys by the river and the fading sounds of Henry and his dinosaur friends crashing toward the far side of the Barrens. Sunlight flicked at his eyes and made little coins of light on the tangled roots above and around him. It was dirty in here, but it was also cozy ... safe. The sound of running water was soothing. Even the sound of the crying kid was sort of soothing. His aches and pains had faded to a dull throb, and the sound of the dinosaurs had faded out completely. He would wait awhile, just to be sure they werent coming back, and then he would make tracks. Ben could hear the throb of the drainage machinery coming through the earthcould even feel it a low, steady vibration that went from the ground to the root he was leaning against and then into his back. He thought of the Morlocks again, of their naked flesh; he imagined it would smell like the dank and shitty air that had come up through the ventholes of that iron cap. He thought of their wells driven deep into the earth, wells with rusty ladders bolted to their sides. He dozed, and at some point his thoughts became a dream. 11 It wasnt Morlocks he dreamed of. He dreamed of the thing which had happened to him in January, the thing which he hadnt quite been able to tell his mother. It had been the first day of school after the long Christmas break. Mrs. Douglas had asked for a volunteer to stay after and help her count the books that had been turned in just before the vacation. Ben had raised his hand. Thank you, Ben, Mrs. Douglas had said, favoring him with a smile of such brilliance that it warmed him down to his toes. Suckass, Henry Bowers remarked under his breath. It had been the sort of Maine winter day that is both the best and the worst cloudless, eyewateringly bright, but so cold it was a little frightening. To make the tendegree temperature worse, there was a strong wind to give the cold a bitter cutting edge. Ben counted books and called out numbers; Mrs. Douglas wrote them down (not bothering to doublecheck his work even on a random basis, he was proud to note), and then they both carried the books down to the storage room through halls where radiators clanked dreamily. At first the school had been full of sounds slamming locker doors, the clacketyclack of Mrs. Thomass typewriter in the office, the slightly offkey choral renditions of the glee club upstairs, the nervous thudthudthud of basketballs from the gym and the scrooch and thud of sneakers as players drove toward the baskets or cut turns on the polished wood floor. Little by little these sounds ceased, until, as the last set of books was totted up (one short, but it hardly mattered, Mrs. Douglas sighedthey were all holding together on a wing and a prayer), the only sounds were the radiators, the faint whisshwhissh of Mr. Fazios broom as he pushed colored sawdust up the hall floor, and the howl of the wind outside.


Ben looked toward the book rooms one narrow window and saw that the light was fading rapidly from the sky. It was four oclock and dusk was at hand. Membranes of dry snow blew around the icy jungle gym and swirled between the teetertotters, which were frozen solidly into the ground. Only the thaws of April would break those bitter winterwelds. He saw no one at all on Jackson Street. He looked a moment longer, expecting a car to roll through the JacksonWitcham intersection, but none did. Everyone in Derry save himself and Mrs. Douglas might be dead or fled, at least from what he could see from here. He looked toward her and saw, with a touch of real fright, that she was feeling almost exactly the same things he was feeling himself. He could tell by the look in her eyes. They were deep and thoughtful and far off, not the eyes of a schoolteacher in her forties but those of a child. Her hands were folded just below her breasts, as if in prayer. Im scared, Ben thought, and shes scared, too. But what are we really scared of? He didnt know. Then she looked at him and uttered a short, almost embarrassed laugh. Ive kept you too late, she said. Im sorry, Ben. Thats okay. He looked down at his shoes. He loved her a tittlenot with the frank unquestioning love he had lavished on Miss Thibodeau, his firstgrade teacher ... but he did love her. If I drove, Id give you a ride, she said, but I dont. My husbands going to pick me up around quarter past five. If youd care to wait, we could No thanks, Ben said. I ought to get home before then. This was not really the truth, but he felt a queer aversion to the idea of meeting Mrs. Douglass husband. Maybe your mother could She doesnt drive, either, Ben said. Ill be all right. Its only a mile home. A miles not far when its nice, but it can be a very long way in this weather. Youll go in somewhere if it gets too cold, wont you, Ben? Aw, sure. Ill go into Costellos Market and stand by the stove a little while, or something. Mr. Gedreau doesnt mind. And I got my snowpants. My new Christmas scarf, too. Mrs. Douglas looked a little reassured ... and then she glanced toward the window again. It just looks so cold out there, she said. So... so inimical. He didnt know the word but he knew exactly what she meant. Something just happenedwhat? He had seen her, he realized suddenly, as a person instead of just a teacher. That was what had happened. Suddenly he had seen her face in an entirely different way, and because he did, it became a new facethe face of a tired poet. He could see her going home with her husband, sitting beside him in the car with her hands folded as the heater hissed and he talked about his day. He could see her making them dinner. An odd thought crossed his mind and a cocktailparty question rose to his lips Do you have children, Mrs. Douglas? I often think at this time of the year that people really werent meant to live this far north of the equator, she said. At least not in this latitude. Then she smiled and some of the strangeness either went out of her face or his eyehe was able to see her, at least partially, as he always had. But youll never see her that way again, not completely, he thought, dismayed. Ill feel old until spring, and then Ill feel young again. Its that way every year. Are you sure youll be all right, Ben? Ill be fine. Yes, I suppose you will. Youre a good boy, Ben. He looked back at his toes, blushing, loving her more than ever. In the hallway Mr. Fazio said Be careful of de frosbite, boy, without looking up from his red sawdust. I will. He reached his locker, opened it, and yanked on his snowpants. He had been painfully unhappy when his mother insisted he wear them again this winter on especially cold days, thinking of them as baby clothes, but he was glad to have them this afternoon. He walked slowly toward the door, zipping his coat, yanking the drawstrings of his hood tight, pulling on his mittens. He went out and stood on the snowpacked top step of the front stairs for a moment, listening as the door snicked closedand lockedbehind him. Derry School brooded under a bruised skin of sky. The wind blew steadily. The snaphooks on the flagpole rope rattled a lonesome tattoo against the steel pole itself. That wind cut into the warm and unprepared flesh of Bens face at once, numbing his cheeks. Be careful of de frosbite, boy. He quickly pulled his scarf up until he looked like a small, pudgy caricature of Red Ryder. That darkening sky had a fantastical sort of beauty, but Ben did not pause to admire it; it was too cold for that. He got going. At first the wind was at his back and things didnt seem so bad; in fact, it actually seemed to be helping him along. At Canal Street, however, he had to turn right and almost fully into the wind. Now it seemed to be holding him back ... as if it had business with him. His scarf helped a little, but not enough. His eyes throbbed and the moisture in his nose froze to a crackglaze. His legs were going numb. Several times he stuck his mittened hands into his armpits to warm them up. The wind whooped and screamed, sometimes sounding almost human. Ben felt both frightened and exhilarated. Frightened because he could now understand stories he had read, such as Jack Londons To Build a Fire, where people actually froze to death. It would be all too possible to freeze to death on a night like this, a night when the temperature would drop to fifteen below. The exhilaration was hard to explain. It was a lonely feelinga somehow melancholy feeling. He was outside; he passed on the wings of the wind, and none of the people beyond the brightly lighted squares of their windows saw him. They were inside, inside where there was light and warmth. They didnt know he had passed them; only he knew. It was a secret thing. The moving air burned like needles, but it was fresh and clean. White smoke jetted from his nose in neat little streams. And as sundown came, the last of the day a cold yellowyorange line on the western horizon, the first stars cruel diamondchips glimmering in the sky overhead, he came to the Canal. He was only three blocks from home now, and eager to feel the heat on his face and legs, moving the blood again, making it tingle. Stillhe paused. The Canal was frozen in its concrete sluice like a frozen river of rosemilk, its surface humped and cracked and cloudy. It was moveless yet completely alive in this harshly puritanical winterlight; it had its own unique and difficult beauty. Ben turned the other waysouthwest. Toward the Barrens. When he looked in this direction, the wind was at his back again. It made his snowpants ripple and flap. The Canal ran straight between its concrete walls for perhaps half a mile; then the concrete was gone and the river sprawled its way into the Barrens, at this time of the year a skeletal world of icy brambles and jutting naked branches. A figure was standing on the ice down there. Ben stared at it and thought There may be a man down there, but can he be wearing what it looks like hes wearing? Its impossible, isnt it? The figure was dressed in what appeared to be a whitesilver clown suit. It rippled around him in the polar wind. There were oversized orange shoes on his feet. They matched the pompom buttons which ran down the front of his suit. One hand grasped a bundle of strings which rose to a bright bunch of balloons, and when Ben observed that the balloons were floating in his direction, he felt unreality wash over him more strongly. He closed his eyes, rubbed them, opened them. The balloons still appeared to be floating toward him. He heard Mr. Fazios voice in his head. Be careful of de frosbite, boy. It had to be a hallucination or a mirage brought on by some weird trick of the weather. There could be a man down there on the ice; he supposed it was even technically possible he could be wearing a clown suit. But the balloons couldnt be floating toward Ben, into the wind. Yet that was just what they appeared to be doing. Ben! the clown on the ice called. Ben thought that voice was only in his mind, although it seemed he heard it with his ears. Want a balloon, Ben? There was something so evil in that voice, so awful, that Ben wanted to run away as fast as he could, but his feet seemed as welded to this sidewalk as the teetertotters in the schoolyard were welded to the ground. They float, Ben! They all float! Try one and see! The clown began walking along the ice toward the Canal bridge where Ben stood. Ben watched him come, not moving; he watched as a bird watches an approaching snake. The balloons should have burst in the intense cold, but they did not; they floated above and ahead of the clown when they should have been streaming out behind him, trying to escape back into the Barrens... where, some part of Bens mind assured him, this creature had come from in the first place. Now Ben noticed something else. Although the last of the daylight had struck a rosy glow across the ice of the Canal, the clown cast no shadow. None at all. Youll like it here, Ben, the clown said. Now it was close enough so Ben could hear the cludclud sound its funny shoes made as they advanced over the uneven ice. Youll like it here, I promise, all the boys and girls I meet like it here because its like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio and NeverNever Land in Peter Pan; they never have to grow up and thats what all the kiddies want! So come on! See the sights, have a balloon, feed the elephants, ride the ChutetheChutes! Oh youll like it and oh Ben how youll float And in spite of his fear, Ben found that part of him did want a balloon. Who in all the world owned a balloon which would float into the wind? Who had even heard of such a thing? Yes ... he wanted a balloon, and he wanted to see the clowns face, which was bent down toward the ice, as if to keep it out of that killer wind. What might have happened if the five oclock whistle atop the Derry Town Hall hadnt blown just then Ben didnt know ... didnt want to know. The important thing was that it did blow, an icepick of sound drilling into the deep winter cold. The clown looked up, as if startled, and Ben saw its face. The mummy! Oh my God its the mummy! was his first thought, accompanied by a swoony horror that caused him to clamp his hands down viciously on the bridges railing to keep from fainting. Of course it hadnt been the mummy, couldnt have been the mummy. Oh, there were Egyptian mummies, plenty of them, he knew that, but his first thought had been that it was the mummythe dusty monster played by Boris Karloff in the old movie he had stayed up late to watch just last month on Shock Theater. No, it wasnt that mummy, couldnt be, movie monsters werent real, everyone knew that, even little kids. But It wasnt makeup the clown was wearing. Nor was the clown simply swaddled in a bunch of bandages. There were bandages, most of them around its neck and wrists, blowing back in the wind, but Ben could see the clowns face clearly. It was deeply lined, the skin a parchment map of wrinkles, tattered cheeks, arid flesh. The skin of its forehead was split but bloodless. Dead lips grinned back from a maw in which teeth leaned like tombstones. Its gums were pitted and black. Ben could see no eyes, but something glittered far back in the charcoal pits of those puckered sockets, something like the cold jewels in the eyes of Egyptian scarab beetles. And although the wind was the wrong way, it seemed to him that he could smell cinnamon and spice, rotting cerements treated with weird drugs, sand, blood so old it had dried to flakes and grains of rust ... We all float down here, the mummyclown croaked, and Ben realized with fresh horror that somehow it had reached the bridge, it was now just below him, reaching up with a dry and twisted hand from which flaps of skin rustled like pennons, a hand through which bone like yellow ivory showed. One almost fleshless finger caressed the tip of his boot. Bens paralysis broke. He pounded the rest of the way across the bridge with the five oclock whistle still shrieking in his ears; it only ceased as he reached the far side. It had to be a mirage, had to be. The clown simply could not have come so far during the whistles ten or fifteensecond blast. But his fear was not a mirage; neither were the hot tears which spurted from his eyes and froze on his cheeks a second after being shed. He ran, boots thudding on the sidewalk, and behind him he could hear the mummy in the clown suit climbing up from the Canal, ancient stony fingernails scraping across iron, old tendons creaking like dry hinges. He could hear the arid whistle of its breath pulling in and pushing out of nostrils as devoid of moisture as the tunnels under the Great Pyramid. He could smell its shroud of sandy spices and he knew that in a moment its hands, as fleshless as the geometrical constructions he made with his Erector Set, would descend upon his shoulders. They would turn him around and he would stare into that wrinkled, smiling face. The dead river of its breath would wash over him. Those black eyesockets with their deep glowing depths would bend over him. The toothless mouth would yawn, and he would have his balloon. Oh yes. All the balloons he wanted. But when he reached the corner of his own street, sobbing and winded, his heart slamming crazed, leaping beats into his ears, when he at last looked back over his shoulder, the street was empty. The arched bridge with its low concrete sides and its oldfashioned cobblestone paving was also empty. He could not see the Canal itself, but he felt that if he could, he would see nothing there, either. No; if the mummy had not been a hallucination or a mirage, if it had been real, it would be waiting under the bridgelike the troll in the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Under. Hiding under. Ben hurried home, looking back every few steps until the door was safely shut and locked behind him. He explained to his motherwho was so tired from a particularly hard day at the mill that she had not, in truth, much missed himthat he had been helping Mrs. Douglas count books. Then he sat down to a dinner of noodles and Sundays leftover turkey. He stuffed three helpings into himself, and the mummy seemed more distant and dreamlike with each helping. It was not real, those things were never real, they came fully to life only between the commercials of the latenight TV movies or during the Saturday matinees, where if you were lucky you could get two monsters for a quarterand if you had an extra quarter, you could buy all the popcorn you could eat. No, they were not real. TV monsters and movie monsters and comicbook monsters were not real. Not until you went to bed and couldnt sleep; not until the last four pieces of candy, wrapped in tissues and kept under your pillow against the evils of the night, were gobbled up; not until the bed itself turned into a lake of rancid dreams and the wind screamed outside and you were afraid to look at the window because there might be a face there, an ancient grinning face that had not rotted but simply dried like an old leaf, its eyes sunken diamonds pushed deep into dark sockets; not until you saw one ripped and clawlike hand holding out a bunch of balloons See the sights, have a balloon, feed the elephants, ride the ChutetheChutes! Ben, oh, Ben, how youll float 12 Ben awoke with a gasp, the dream of the mummy still on him, panicked by the close, vibrating dark all around him. He jerked, and the root stopped supporting him and poked him in the back again, as if in exasperation. He saw light and scrambled for it. He crawled out into afternoon sunlight and the babble of the stream, and everything fell into place again. It was summer, not winter. The mummy had not carried him away to its desert crypt; Ben had simply hidden from the big kids in a sandy hole under a halfuprooted tree. He was in the Barrens. Henry and his buddies had gone to town in a small way on a couple of kids playing downstream because they hadnt been able to find Ben and go to town on him in a big way. Tata, boys. It was a real baby dam, believe me. Youre better off without it. Ben looked glumly down at his ruined clothes. His mother was going to give him sixteen different flavors of holy old hell. He had slept just long enough to stiffen up. He slid down the embankment and then began to walk along the stream, wincing at every step. He was a medley of aches and pains; it felt like Spike Jones was playing a fast tune on broken glass inside most of his muscles. There seemed to be dried or drying blood on every inch of exposed skin. The dambuilding kids would be gone anyway, he consoled himself. He wasnt sure how long hed slept, but even if it had only been half an hour, the encounter with Henry and his friends would have convinced Denbrough and his pal that some other placelike Timbuktu, maybewould be better for their health. Ben plugged grimly along, knowing if the big kids came back now he would not stand a chance of outrunning them. He hardly cared. He rounded an elbowbend in the stream and just stood there for a moment, looking. The dambuilders were still there. One of them was indeed Stuttering Bill Denbrough. He was kneeling beside the other boy, who was propped against the streambank in a sitting position. This other kids head was thrown so far back that his adams apple stood out like a triangular plug. There was dried blood around his nose, on his chin, and painted along his neck in a couple of streams. He had something white clasped loosely in one hand. Stuttering Bill looked around sharply and saw Ben standing there. Ben saw with dismay that something was very wrong with the boy propped up on the bank; Denbrough was obviously scared to death. He thought miserably Wont this day ever end? I wonder if yuhyuhyou could help mmme, Bill Denbrough said. HHis ahahahasppirator is ehhempty. I think he mmight be His face froze, turned red. He dug at the word, stuttering like a machinegun. Spittle flew from his lips, and it took almost thirty seconds worth of dddd before Ben realized Denbrough was trying to say the other kid might be dying. CHAPTER 5 Bill Denbrough Beats the Devil (I) 1 Bill Denbrough thinksIm damned near spacetravelling; I might as well be inside a bullet shot from a gun. This thought, although perfectly true, is not one he finds especially comfortable. In fact, for the first hour following the Concordes takeoff (or perhaps liftoff would be a better way to put it) from Heathrow, he has been coping with a mild case of claustrophobia. The airplane is narrowunsettlingly so. The meal is just short of exquisite, but the flight attendants who serve it must twist and bend and squat to get the job done; they look like a troupe of gymnasts. Watching this strenuous service takes some of the pleasure out of the food for Bill, although his seatmate doesnt seem particularly bothered. The seatmate is another drawback. Hes fat and not particularly clean; it may be Ted Lapidus cologne on top of his skin, but beneath it Bill detects the unmistakable odors of dirt and sweat. Hes not being very particular about his left elbow, either; every now and then it strikes Bill with a soft thud. His eyes are drawn again and again to the digital readout at the front of the cabin. It shows how fast this British bullet is going. Now, as the Concorde reaches its cruising speed, it tops out at just over mach 2. Bill takes his pen from his shirt pocket and uses its tip to tap buttons on the computer watch Audra gave him last Christmas. If the machometer is rightand Bill has absolutely no reason to think it is notthen they are busting along at a speed of eighteen miles per minute. He is not sure this is anything he really wanted to know. Outside his window, which is as small and thick as the window in one of the old Mercury space capsules, he can see a sky which is not blue but the twilight purple of dusk, although it is the middle of the day. At the point where the sea and the sky meet, he can see that the horizonline is slightly bowed. I am sitting here, Bill thinks, a Bloody Mary in my hand and a dirty fat mans elbow poking into my bicep, observing the curvature of the earth. He smiles a little, thinking that a man who can face something like that shouldnt be afraid of anything. But he is afraid, and not just of flying at eighteen miles a minute in this narrow fragile shell. He can almost feel Derry rushing at him. And that is exactly the right expression for it. Eighteen miles a minute or not, the sensation is of being perfectly still while Derry rushes at him like some big carnivore which has lain in wait for a long time and has finally broken from cover. Derry, ah, Derry! Shall we write an ode to Derry? The stink of its mills and its rivers? The dignified quiet of its treelined streets? The library? The Standpipe? Bassey Park? Derry Elementary School? The Barrens? Lights are going on in his head big kliegs. Its like hes been sitting in a darkened theater for twentyseven years, waiting for something to happen, and now its finally begun. The set being revealed spot by spot and klieg by klieg is not, however, some harmless comedy like Arsenic and Old Lace; to Bill Denbrough it looks more like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. All those stories I wrote, he thinks with a stupid kind of amusement. All those novels. Derry is where they all came from; Derry was the wellspring. They came from what happened that summer, and from what happened to George the autumn before. All the interviewers that ever asked me THAT QUESTION ... I gave them the wrong answer. The fat mans elbow digs into him again, and he spills some of his drink. Bill almost says something, then thinks better of it. THAT QUESTION, of course, was Where do you get your ideas? It was a question Bill supposed all writers of fiction had to answeror pretend to answerat least twice a week, but a fellow like him, who made a living by writing of things which never were and never could be, had to answer itor pretend tomuch more often than that. All writers have a pipeline which goes down into the subconscious, he told them, neglecting to mention that he doubted more as each year passed if there even was such a thing as a subconscious. But the man or woman who writes horror stories has a pipeline that goes further, maybe ... into the subsubconscious, if you like. Elegant answer, that, but one he had never really believed. Subconscious? Well, there was something down there all right, but Bill thought people had made much too big a deal out of a function which was probably the mental equivalent of your eyes watering when dust got in them or breaking wind an hour or so after a big dinner. The second metaphor was probably the better of the two, but you couldnt very well tell interviewers that as far as you were concerned, such things as dreams and vague longings and sensations like djvu really came down to nothing more than a bunch of mental farts. But they seemed to need something, all those reporters with their notebooks and their little Japanese taperecorders, and Bill wanted to help them as much as he could. He knew that writing was a hard job, a damned hard job. There was no need to make theirs harder by telling them, My friend, you might as well ask me Who cut the cheese? and have done with it.  He thought now You always knew they were asking the wrong question, even before Mike called; now you also know what the right question was. Not where do you get your ideas but why do you get your ideas. There was a pipeline, all right, but it wasnt either the Freudian or Jungian version of the subconscious that it came out of; no interior drainsystem of the mind, no subterranean cavern full of Morlocks waiting to happen. There was nothing at the other end of that pipe but Derry. Just Derry. And and whos that, triptrapping upon my bridge? He sits bolt upright suddenly, and this time its his elbow that goes wandering; it sinks deeply into his fat seatmates side for a moment. Watch yourself, buddy, the fat man says. Close quarters, you know. You stop whapping me with yours and Ill try to stop wuhwhapping you with mmine. The fat man gives him a sour, incredulous whatthehellyoutalkingabout look. Bill simply gazes at him until the fat man looks away, muttering. Whos there? Whos triptrapping over my bridge? He looks out the window again and thinks Were beating the devil. His arms and the nape of his neck prickle. He knocks back the rest of his drink in one swallow. Another of those big lights has gone on. Silver. His bike. That was what he had called it, after the Lone Rangers horse. A big Schwinn, twentyeight inches tall. Youll kill yourself on that, Billy, his father had said, but with no real concern in his tone. He had shown little concern for anything since Georges death. Before, he had been tough. Fair, but tough. Since, you could get around him. He would make fatherly gestures, go through fatherly motions, but motions and gestures were all they were. It was like he was always listening for George to come back into the house. Bill had seen it in the window of the Bike and Cycle Shoppe down on Center Street. It leaned gloomily on its kickstand, bigger than the biggest of the others on display, dull where they were shiny, straight in places where the others were curved, bent in places where the others were straight. Propped on its front tire had been a sign USED Make an Offer What actually happened was that Bill went in and the owner made him an offer, which Bill tookhe wouldnt have known how to dicker with the Cycle Shoppe owner if his life depended on it, and the pricetwentyfour dollarsthe man quoted seemed very fair to Bill; generous, even. He paid for Silver with money he had saved up over the last seven or eight monthsbirthday money, Christmas money, lawnmowing money. He had been noticing the bike in the window ever since Thanksgiving. He paid for it and wheeled it home as soon as the snow began to melt for good. It was funny, because hed never thought much about owning a bike before last year. The idea seemed to come into his mind all at once, perhaps on one of those endless days after George died. Was murdered. In the beginning, Bill almost did kill himself. The first ride on his new bike ended with Bill dumping it on purpose to keep from running smack into the board fence at the end of Kossuth Lane (he had not been so afraid of running into the fence as he had been of bashing right through it and falling sixty feet into the Barrens). He came away from that one with a fiveinch gash running between the wrist and elbow of his left arm. Not even a week later he had found himself unable to brake soon enough and had shot through the intersection of Witcham and Jackson at perhaps thirty five miles an hour, a little kid on a dusty gray mastodon of a bike (Silver was silver only by the most energetic reach of a willing imagination), playing cards machinegunning the spokes of the front and back wheels in a steady roar, and if a car had been coming he would have been dead meat. Just like Georgie. He got control of Silver little by little as the spring advanced. Neither of his parents noticed during that time that he was courting death by bicycle. He thought that, after the first few days, they had ceased to really see his bike at allto them it was just a relic with chipped paint which leaned against the garage wall oh rainy days. Silver was a lot more than some dusty old relic, though. He didnt look like much, but he went like the wind. Bills friendhis only real friendwas a kid named Eddie Kaspbrak, and Eddie was good with mechanical things. He had shown Bill how to get Silver in shapewhich bolts to tighten and check regularly, where to oil the sprockets, how to tighten the chain, how to put on a bike patch so it would stay if you got a flat. You oughtta paint it, he remembered Eddie saying one day, but Bill didnt want to paint Silver. For reasons he couldnt even explain to himself he wanted the Schwinn just the way it was. It looked like a real bowwow, the sort of bike a careless kid regularly left out on his lawn in the rain, a bike that would be all squeaks and shudders and slow friction. It looked like a bowwow but it went like the wind. It would It would beat the devil, he says aloud, and laughs. His fat seatmate looks at him sharply; the laugh has that howling quality that gave Audra the creeps earlier. Yes, it looked pretty shoddy, with its old paint and the oldfashioned package carrier mounted above the back wheel and the ancient oogahhorn with its black rubber bulbthat horn was permanently welded to the handlebars with a rusty bolt the size of a babys fist. Pretty shoddy. But could Silver go? Could he? Christ! And it was a damned good thing he could, because Silver had saved Bill Denbroughs life in the fourth week of June 1958the week after he met Ben Hanscom for the first time, the week after he and Ben and Eddie built the dam, the week that Ben and Richie Trashmouth Tozier and Beverly Marsh showed up in the Barrens after the Saturday matinee. Richie had been riding behind him, on Silvers package carrier, the day Silver had saved Bills life ... so he supposed Silver had saved Richies, too. And he remembered the house they had been running from, all right. He remembered that just fine. That damned house on Neibolt Street. He had raced to beat the devil that day, oh yeah, for sure, dont you just know it. Some devil with eyes as shiny as old deadly coins. Some hairy old devil with a mouthful of bloody teeth. But all that had come later. If Silver had saved Richies life and his own that day, then perhaps he had saved Eddie Kaspbraks on the day Bill and Eddie met Ben by the kickedapart remains of their dam in the Barrens. Henry Bowerswho looked a little bit like someone had run him through a Disposallhad mashed Eddies nose and then Eddies asthma had come on strong and his aspirator turned up empty. So it had been Silver that day too, Silver to the rescue. Bill Denbrough, who hasnt been on a bicycle in almost seventeen years, looks out the window of an airplane that would not have been creditedor even imagined, outside of a sciencefiction magazinein the year 1958. Hiyo Silver, AWAYYY! he thinks, and has to close his eyes against the sudden needling sting of tears. What happened to Silver? He cant remember. That part of the set is still dark; that klieg has yet to be turned on. Perhaps that is just as well. Perhaps that is a mercy. Hiyo. Hiyo Silver. Hiyo Silver 2 AWAYYY! he shouted. The wind tore the words back over his shoulder like a fluttering crepe streamer. They came out big and strong, those words, in a triumphant roar. They were the only ones that ever did. He pedaled down Kansas Street toward town, gaining speed slowly at first. Silver rolled once he got going, but getting going was a job and a half. Watching the gray bike pick up speed was a little like watching a big plane roll down the runway. At first you couldnt believe such a huge waddling gadget could ever actually leave the earththe idea was absurd. But then you could see its shadow beneath it, and before you even had time to wonder if it was a mirage, the shadow was trailing out long behind it and the plane was up, cutting its way through the air, as sleek and graceful as a dream in a satisfied mind. Silver was like that. Bill got a little downhill stretch and began to pedal faster, his legs pumping up and down as he stood forward over the bikes fork. He had learned very quicklyafter being bashed a couple of times by that fork in the worst place a boy can be bashedto yank his underpants up as high as he could before mounting Silver. Later that summer, observing this process, Richie would say, Bill does that because he thinks he might like to have some kids that live someday.


It seems like a bad idea to me, but hey! they might always take after his wife, right? He and Eddie had lowered the seat as far as it would go, and it now bumped and scraped against the small of his back as he worked the pedals. A woman digging weeds in her flowergarden shaded her eyes to watch him pass. She smiled a little. The boy on the huge bike reminded her of a monkey she had once seen riding a unicycle in the Barnum  Bailey Circus. Hes apt to kill himself, though, she thought, turning back to her garden. That bike is too big for him. It was none of her problem, though. 3 Bill had had more sense than to argue with the big boys when they broke out of the bushes, looking like illtempered hunters on the track of a beast which had already mauled one of them. Eddie, however, had rashly opened his mouth and Henry Bowers had unloaded on him. Bill knew who they were, all right; Henry, Belch, and Victor were just about the worst kids in Derry School. They had beaten up on Richie Tozier, who Bill sometimes chummed with, a couple of times. The way Bill looked at it, this was partly Richies own fault; he was not known as Trashmouth for nothing. One day in April Richie had said something about their collars as the three of them passed by in the schoolyard. The collars had all been turned up, just like Vic Morrows in The Blackboard Jungle. Bill, who had been sitting against the building nearby and listlessly shooting a few marbles, hadnt really caught all of it. Neither did Henry and his friends... but they heard enough to turn in Richies direction. Bill supposed Richie had meant to say whatever he said in a low voice. The trouble was, Richie didnt really have a low voice. Whatd you say, you little foureyes geek? Victor Criss enquired. I didnt say nothing, Richie said, and that disclaimeralong with his face, which looked quite sensibly dismayed and scaredmight have ended it. Except that Richies mouth was like a halftamed horse that has a way of bolting for absolutely no reason at all. Now it suddenly added You ought to dig the wax out of your ears, big fella. Want some blasting powder? They stood looking at him incredulously for a moment, and then they took after him. Stuttering Bill had watched the unequal race from its start to its preordained conclusion from his place against the side of the building. No sense getting involved; those three galoots would be just as happy to beat up on two kids for the price of one. Richie ran diagonally across the littlekids playyard, leaping over the teetertotters and dodging among the swings, realizing he had run into a blind alley only when he struck the chainlink fence between the playyard and the park which abutted the school grounds. So he tried to go up the chainlink, all clutching fingers and pointing seeking sneakertoes, and he was maybe twothirds of the way to the top when Henry and Victor Criss hauled him back down again, Henry getting him by the back of the jacket and Victor grabbing the seat of his jeans. Richie was screaming when they peeled him off the fence. He hit the asphalt on his back. His glasses flew off. He reached for them and Belch Huggins kicked them away and that was why one of the bows was mended with adhesive tape this summer. Bill had winced and walked around to the front of the building. He had observed Mrs. Moran, one of the fourthgrade teachers, already hurrying over to break things up, but he knew they would get Richie hard before then, and by the time she actually arrived, Richie would be crying. Bawlbaby, bawlbaby, lookitthebabybawl. Bill had only had minor problems with them. They made fun of his stutter, of course. An occasional random cruelty came with the jibes; one rainy day as they were going to lunch in the gym, Belch Huggins had knocked Bills lunchbag out of his hand and had stomped it flat with one engineer boot, squishing everything inside. Oh, juhjuhgee! Belch cried in mock horror, raising his hands and fluttering them about his face. Suhsuhsorry about your 11lunch, fuhhuhhuckface! And he had strolled off down the hall toward where Victor Criss was leaning against the drinking fountain outside the boysroom door, just about laughing himself into a hernia. That hadnt been so bad, though; Bill had cadged half a PBJ off Eddie Kaspbrak, and Richie was happy to give him his devilled egg, one of which his mother packed in his lunch about every second day and which made him want to puke, he claimed. But you had to stay out of their way, and if you couldnt do that you had to try and be invisible. Eddie forgot the rules, so they creamed him. He hadnt been too bad until the big boys went downstream and splashed across to the other side, even though his nose was bleeding like a fountain. When Eddies snotrag was soaked through, Bill had given him his own and made him put a hand on the nape of his neck and lean his head back. Bill could remember his mother getting Georgie to do that, because Georgie sometimes got nosebleeds Oh but it hurt to think about George. It wasnt until the sound of the big boys buffalolike progress through the Barrens had died away completely, and Eddies nosebleed had actually stopped, that his asthma got bad. He started heaving for air, his hands opening and then snapping shut like weak traps, his respiration a fluting whistle in his throat. Shit! Eddie gasped. Asthma! Cripes! He scrambled for his aspirator and finally got it out of his pocket. It looked almost like a bottle of Windex, the kind with the sprayer attachment on top. He jammed it into his mouth and punched the trigger. Better? Bill asked anxiously. No. Its empty. Eddie looked at Bill with panicked eyes that said Im caught, Bill!Im caught! The empty aspirator rolled away from his hand. The stream chuckled on, not caring in the least that Eddie Kaspbrak could barely breathe. Bill thought randomly that the big boys had been right about one thing it had been a real baby dam. But they had been having fun, dammit, and he felt a sudden dull fury that it should have come to this. Tuhtuhtake it easy, EhEddie, he said. For the next forty minutes or so Bill sat next to him, his expectation that Eddies asthma attack would at any moment let up gradually fading into unease. By the time Ben Hanscom appeared, the unease had become real fear. It not only wasnt letting up; it was getting worse. And the Center Street Drug, where Eddie got his refills, was three miles away, almost. What if he went to get Eddies stuff and came back to find Eddie unconscious? Unconscious or (dont shit please dont think that) or even dead, his mind insisted implacably. (like Georgie dead like Georgie) Dont be such an asshole! Hes not going to die! No, probably not. But what if he came back and found Eddie in a comber? Bill knew all about combers; he had even deduced they were named after those great big waves guys surfed on in Hawaii, and that seemed right enoughafter all, what was a comber but a wave that drowned your brain? On doctor shows like Ben Casey, people were always going into combers, and sometimes they stayed there in spite of all Ben Caseys illtempered shouting. So he sat there, knowing he ought to go, he couldnt do Eddie any good staying here, but not wanting to leave him alone. An irrational, superstitious part of him felt sure Eddie would slip into a comber the minute he, Bill, turned his back. Then he looked upstream and saw Ben Hanscom standing there. He knew who Ben was, of course; the fattest kid in any school has his or her own sort of unhappy notoriety. Ben was in the other fifth grade. Bill sometimes saw him at recess, standing by himselfusually in a cornerlooking at a book and eating his lunch out of a bag about the size of a laundry sack. Looking at Ben now, Bill thought he looked even worse than Henry Bowers. It was hard to believe, but true. Bill could not begin to imagine the cataclysmic fight these two must have been in. Bens hair stood up in wild, dirtclotted spikes. His sweater or sweatshirtit was hard to tell which it had started the day as and it sure as shit didnt matter nowwas a matted ruin, smeared with a sicko mixture of blood and grass. His pants were out at the knees. He saw Bill looking at him and recoiled a bit, eyes going wary. Duhduhduhhont gggo! Bill cried. He put his empty hands up in the air, palms out, to show he was harmless. WWWe need some huhhuhhelp. Ben came closer, eyes still wary. He walked as if one or both of his legs was killing him. Are they gone? Bowers and those guys? YuhYes, Bill said. Listen, cuhhan yyyou stay with my fruhhend while I go get his muhmedicine? Hes got aaaa Asthma? Bill nodded. Ben came all the way down to the remains of the dam and dropped painfully to one knee beside Eddie, who was lying back with his eyes mostly closed and his chest heaving. Which one hit him? Ben asked finally. He looked up, and Bill saw the same frustrated anger he had been feeling himself on the fat kids face. Was it Henry Bowers? Bill nodded. It figures. Sure, go on. Ill stay with him. Thuhthuhhanks. Oh, dont thank me, Ben said. Im the reason they landed on you in the first place. Go on. Hurry it up. I have to be home for supper. Bill went without saying anything else. It would have been good to tell Ben not to take it to heartwhat had happened hadnt been Bens fault any more than it had been Eddies for stupidly opening his mouth. Guys like Henry and his buddies were an accident waiting to happen; the little kids version of floods or tornadoes or gallstones. It would have been good to say that, but he was so tightly wound right now it would have taken him about twenty minutes or so, and by then Eddie might have slipped into a comber (that was another thing Bill had learned from Drs. Casey and Kildare; you never went into a comber; you always slipped into one). He trotted downstream, glancing back once. He saw Ben Hanscom grimly collecting rocks from the edge of the water. For a moment Bill couldnt figure out what he was doing, and then he understood. It was an ammo dump. Just in case they came back. 4 The Barrens were no mystery to Bill. He had played here a lot this spring, sometimes with Richie, more frequently with Eddie, sometimes all by himself. He had by no means explored the whole area, but he could find his way back to Kansas Street from the Kenduskeag with no trouble, and now did. He came out at a wooden bridge where Kansas Street crossed one of the little noname streams that flowed out of the Derry drainage system and into the Kenduskeag down below. Silver was stashed under this bridge, his handlebars tied to one of the bridge supports with a hank of rope to keep his wheels out of the water. Bill untied the rope, stuck it in his shirt, and hauled Silver up to the sidewalk by main force, panting and sweating, losing his balance a couple of times and landing on his tail. But at last it was up. Bill swung his leg over the high fork. And as always, once he was on Silver he became someone else. 5 Hiyo Silver AWAYYY! The words came out deeper than his normal speaking voiceit was almost the voice of the man he would become. Silver gained speed slowly, the quickening clicketyclack of the Bicycle playing cards clothespinned to the spokes marking the increase. Bill stood on the pedals, his hands clamped on the bikegrips with the wrists turned up. He looked like a man trying to lift a stupendously heavy barbell. Cords stood out on his neck. Veins pulsed in his temples. His mouth was turned down in a trembling sneer of effort as he fought the familiar battle against weight and inertia, busting his brains to get Silver moving. As always, it was worth the effort. Silver began to roll along more briskly. Houses slid past smoothly instead of just poking by. On his left, where Kansas Street crossed Jackson, the unfettered Kenduskeag became the Canal. Past the intersection Kansas Street headed swiftly downhill toward Center and Main, Derrys business district. Streets crossed frequently here but they were all stopsigned in Bills favor, and the possibility that a driver might one day blow by one of those stop signs and flatten him to a bleeding shadow on the street had never crossed Bills mind. It is unlikely he would have changed his ways even if it had. He might have done so either earlier or later in his life, but this spring and early summer had been a strange thundery time for him. Ben would have been astounded if someone were to ask him if he was lonely; Bill would have been likewise astounded if someone asked him if he was courting death. Of cuhcuhcourse nnot! he would have responded immediately (and indignantly), but that did not change the fact that his runs down Kansas Street to town had become more and more like banzai charges as the weather warmed. This section of Kansas Street was known as UpMile Hill. Bill took it at full speed, bent over Silvers handlebars to cut down the wind resistance, one hand poised over the cracked rubber bulb of his oogahhorn to warn the unwary, his red hair blowing back from his head in a rippling wave. The click of the playing cards had mounted to a steady roar. The effortful sneer had become a big goofball grin. The residences on the right had given way to business buildings (warehouses and meatpacking plants, most of them) which blurred by in a scary but satisfying rush. To his left the Canal was a wink of fire in the comer of his eye. HI YO SILVER, AWAYYYY! he screamed triumphantly. Silver flew over the first curbing, and as they almost always did at that point, his feet lost contact with the pedals. He was freewheeling, now wholly in the lap of whatever god has been appointed the job of protecting small boys. He swerved into the street, doing maybe fifteen miles an hour over the posted speed of twentyfive. It was all behind him now his stutter, his dads blank hurt eyes as he puttered around his garage workshop, the terrible sight of the dust on the closed piano cover upstairsdusty because his mother didnt play anymore. The last time had been at Georges funeral, three Methodist hymns. George going out into the rain, wearing his yellow slicker, carrying the newspaper boat with its glaze of paraffin; Mr. Gardener coming up the street twenty minutes later with his body wrapped in a bloodstained quilt; his mothers agonized shriek. All behind him. He was the Lone Ranger, he was John Wayne, he was Bo Diddley, he was anybody he wanted to be and nobody who cried and got scared and wanted his muhmuhmother. Silver flew and Stuttering Bill Denbrough flew with him; their gantrylike shadow fled behind them. They raced down UpMile Hill together; the playing cards roared. Bills feet found the pedals again and he began to pump, wanting to go even faster, wanting to reach some hypothetical speednot of sound but of memoryand crash through the pain barrier. He raced on, bent over his handlebars; he raced to beat the devil. The threeway intersection of Kansas, Center, and Main was coming up fast. It was a horror of oneway traffic and conflicting signs and stoplights which were supposed to be timed but really werent. The result, a Derry News editorial had proclaimed the year before, was a trafficrotary conceived in hell. As always, Bills eyes flicked right and left, fast, gauging the traffic flow, looking for the holes. If his judgment was mistakenif he stuttered, you might sayhe would be badly hurt or killed. He arrowed into the slowmoving traffic which clogged the intersection, running a red light and fading to the right to avoid a lumbering portholed Buick. He shot a bullet of a glance back over his shoulder to make sure the middle lane was empty. He looked forward again and saw that in roughly five seconds he was going to crash into the rear end of a pickup truck that had stopped squarely in the middle of the intersection while the Uncle Ike type behind the wheel craned his neck to read all the signs and make sure he hadnt taken a wrong turn and somehow ended up in Miami Beach. The lane on Bills right was full of a DerryBangor intercity bus. He slipped in that direction just the same and shot the gap between the stopped pickup and the bus, still moving at forty miles an hour. At the last second he snapped his head hard to one side, like a soldier doing an overenthusiastic eyesright, to keep the mirror mounted on the passenger side of the pickup from rearranging his teeth. Hot diesel from the bus laced his throat like a kick of strong liquor. He heard a thin gasping squeal as one of his bikegrips kissed a line up the coachs aluminum side. He got just a glimpse of the bus driver, his face paperwhite under his peaked Hudson Bus Company cap. The driver was shaking his fist at Bill and shouting something. Bill doubted it was happy birthday. Here was a trio of old ladies crossing Main Street from the New England Bank side to The Shoeboat side. They heard the harsh burr of the playing cards and looked up. Their mouths dropped open as a boy on a huge bike passed within half a foot of them like a mirage. The worstand the bestof the trip was behind him now. He had looked at the very real possibility of his own death again and again had found himself able to look away. The bus had not crushed him; he had not killed himself and the three old ladies with their Freeses shopping bags and their Social Security checks; he had not been splattered across the tailgate of Uncle Ikes old Dodge pickup. He was going uphill again now, speed bleeding away. Somethingoh, call it desire, that was good enough, wasnt it?was bleeding away with it. All the thoughts and memories were catching uphi Bill, gee, we almost lost sight of you for awhile there, but here we arerejoining him, climbing up his shirt and jumping into his ear and whooshing into his brain like little kids going down a slide. He could feel them settling into their accustomed places, their feverish bodies jostling each other. Gosh! Wow! Here we are inside Bills head again! Lets think about George! Okay! Who wants to start? You think too much, Bill. Nothat wasnt the problem. The problem was, he imagined too much. He turned into Richards Alley and came out on Center Street a few moments later, pedaling slowly, feeling the sweat on his back and in his hair. He dismounted Silver in front of the Center Street Drug Store and went inside. 6 Before Georges death, Bill would have gotten the salient points across to Mr. Keene by speaking to him. The druggist was not exactly kindor at least Bill had an idea he was notbut he was patient enough, and he did not tease or make fun. But now Bills stutter was much worse, and he really was afraid something bad might happen to Eddie if he didnt move fast. So when Mr. Keene said, Hello, Billy Denbrough, can I help you?, Bill took a folder advertising vitamins, turned it over, and wrote on the back Eddie Kaspbrak and I were playing in the Barrens. Hes got a bad assmar attack, I mean he can hardly breath. Can you give me a refill on his asspirador? He pushed this note across the glasstopped counter to Mr. Keene, who read it, looked at Bills anxious blue eyes, and said, Of course. Wait right here, and dont be handling anything you shouldnt. Bill shifted impatiently from one foot to the other while Mr. Keene was behind the rear counter. Although he was back there less than five minutes, it seemed an age before he returned with one of Eddies plastic squeezebottles. He handed it over to Bill, smiled, and said, This should take care of the problem. Ththththanks, Bill said. I dont hhave aany mmmuhmuh Thats all right, son. Mrs. Kaspbrak has an account here. Ill just add this on. Im sure shell want to thank you for your kindness. Bill, much relieved, thanked Mr. Keene and left quickly. Mr. Keene came around the counter to watch him go. He saw Bill toss the aspirator into his bikebasket and mount clumsily. Can he actually ride a bike that big? Mr. Keene wondered. I doubt it. I doubt it very much. But the Denbrough kid somehow got it going without falling on his head, and pedaled slowly away. The bike, which looked to Mr. Keene like somebodys idea of a joke, wobbled madly from side to side. The aspirator rolled back and forth in the basket. Mr. Keene grinned a little. If Bill had seen that grin, it might have gone a good way toward confirming his idea that Mr. Keene was not exactly one of the worlds champion nice guys. It was sour, the grin of a man who has found much to wonder about but almost nothing to uplift in the human condition. Yeshe would add Eddies asthma medication to Sonia Kaspbraks bill, and as always she would be surprisedand suspicious rather than gratefulat how cheap the medication was. Other drugs were so dear, she said. Mrs. Kaspbrak, Mr. Keene knew, was one of those people who believed nothing cheap could do a person much good. He could really have soaked her for her sons HydrOx Mist, and there had been times when he had been tempted... but why should he make himself a party to the womans foolishness? It wasnt as though he were going to starve. Cheap? Oh my, yes. HydrOx Mist (Administer as needed typed neatly on the gummed label he pasted on each aspirator bottle) was wonderfully cheap, but even Mrs. Kaspbrak was willing to admit that it controlled her sons asthma quite well in spite of that fact. It was cheap because it was nothing but a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, with a dash of camphor added to give the mist a faint medicinal taste. In other words, Eddies asthma medicine was tapwater. 7 It took Bill longer to get back, because he was going uphill. In several places he had to dismount and push Silver. He simply didnt have the musclepower necessary to keep the bike going up more than mild slopes. By the time he had stashed his bike and made his way back to the stream, it was ten past four. All sorts of black suppositions were crossing his mind. The Hanscom kid would have deserted, leaving Eddie to die. Or the bullies could have backtracked and beaten the shit out of both of them. Or ... worst of all ... the man whose business was murdering kids might have gotten one or both of them. As he had gotten George. He knew there had been a great deal of gossip and speculation about that. Bill had a bad stutter, but he wasnt deafalthough people sometimes seemed to think he must be, since he spoke only when absolutely necessary. Some people felt that the murder of his brother wasnt related at all to the murders of Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, Matthew Clements, and Veronica Grogan. Others claimed that George, Ripsom, and Lamonica had been killed by one man, and the other two were the work of a copycat killer. A third school of thought held that the boys had been killed by one man, the girls by another. Bill believed they had all been killed by the same person ... if it was a person. He sometimes wondered about that. As he sometimes wondered about his feelings concerning Derry this summer. Was it still the aftermath of Georges death, the way his parents seemed to ignore him now, so lost in their grief over their younger son that they couldnt see the simple fact that Bill was still alive, and might be hurting himself? Those things combined with the other murders? The voices that sometimes seemed to speak in his head now, whispering to him (and surely they were not variations of his own voice, for these voices did not stutterthey were quiet, but they were sure), advising him to do certain things but not others? Was it those things which made Derry seem somehow different now? Somehow threatening, with unexplored streets that did not invite but seemed instead to yawn in a kind of ominous silence? That made some faces look secret and frightened? He didnt know, but he believedas he believed all the murders were the work of a single agencythat Derry really had changed, and that his brothers death had signalled the beginning of that change. The black suppositions in his head came from the lurking idea that anything could happen in Derry now. Anything. But when he came around the last bend, all looked cool. Ben Hanscom was still there, sitting beside Eddie. Eddie himself was sitting up now, his hands dangling in his lap, head bent, still wheezing. The sun had sunk low enough to project long green shadows across the stream. Boy, that was quick, Ben said, standing up. I didnt expect you for another half an hour. I got a fffast bbike, Bill said with some pride. For a moment the two of them looked at each other cautiously, warily. Then Ben smiled tentatively, and Bill smiled back. The kid was fat, but he seemed okay. And he had stayed put. That must have taken some guts, with Henry and his j.d. friends maybe still wandering around out there someplace. Bill winked at Eddie, who was looking at him with dumb gratitude. HHere you ggo, EEEEddie. He tossed him the aspirator. Eddie plunged it into his open mouth, triggered it, and gasped convulsively. Then he leaned back, eyes shut. Ben watched this with concern. Jeez! Hes really got it bad, doesnt he? Bill nodded. I was scared there for awhile, Ben said in a low voice. I was wonderin what to do if he had a convulsion, or something. I kept tryin to remember the stuff they told us in that Red Cross assembly we had in April. All I could come up with was put a stick in his mouth so he wouldnt bite his tongue off. I think thats for ehehhepileptics. Oh. Yeah, I guess youre right. He wwont have a ccconvulsion, anyway, Bill said. That mmmedicine will ffix him right up. LuhLuhLook. Eddies labored breathing had eased. He opened his eyes and looked up at them. Thanks, Bill, he said. That one was a real pisswah. I guess it started when they creamed your nose, huh? Ben asked. Eddie laughed ruefully, stood up, and stuck the aspirator in his back pocket. Wasnt even thinking about my nose. Was thinking about my mom. Yeah? Really? Ben sounded surprised, but his hand went to the rags of his sweatshirt and began fiddling there nervously. Shes gonna take one look at the blood on my shirt and have me down to the Mergency Room at Derry Home in about five seconds. Why? Ben asked. It stopped, didnt it? Gee, I remember this kid I was in kindergarten with, Scooter Morgan, and he got a bloody nose when he fell off the monkey bars. They took him to the Mergency Room, but only because it kept bleeding. Yeah? Bill asked, interested. Did he dddie? No, but he was out of school a week. It doesnt matter if it stopped or not, Eddie said gloomily. Shell take me anyway. Shell think its broken and I got pieces of bone sticking in my brain, or something. CCCan you get bones in your buhbuhbrain? Bill asked. This was turning into the most interesting conversation hed had in weeks. I dont know. If you listen to my mother, you can get anything. Eddie turned to Ben again. She takes me down to the Mergency Room about once or twice a month. I hate that place. There was this orderly once? He told her they oughtta make her pay rent. She was really P.O.d. Wow, Ben said. He thought Eddies mother must be really weird. He was unconscious of the fact that now both of his hands were fiddling in the remains of his sweatshirt. Why dont you just say no? Say something like Hey Ma, I feel all right, I just want to stay home and watch Sea Hunt. Like that. Awww, Eddie said uncomfortably, and said no more. Youre Ben HHHHanscom, rright? Bill asked. Yeah. Youre Bill Denbrough. YuhYes. And this is EhEhEhhehEhEh Eddie Kaspbrak, Eddie said. I hate it when you stutter my name, Bill. You sound like Elmer Fudd. Suhhorry. Well, Im pleased to meet you both, Ben said. It came out sounding prissy and a little lame. A silence fell amid the three of them. It was not an entirely uncomfortable silence. In it they became friends. Why were those guys chasing you? Eddie asked at last. Theyre aaalways chuhhasing ssomeone, Bill said. I hhate those fuckers. Ben was silent a momentmostly in admirationbefore Bills use of what Bens mother sometimes called The Really Bad Word. Ben had never said The Really Bad Word out loud in his whole life, although he had written it (in extremely small letters) on a telephone pole the Halloween before last. Bowers ended up sitting next to me during the exams, Ben said at last. He wanted to copy off my paper. I wouldnt let him. You must want to die young, kid, Eddie said admiringly. Stuttering Bill burst out laughing. Ben looked at him sharply, decided he wasnt being laughed at, exactly (it was hard to say how he knew it, but he did), and grinned. I guess I must, he said. Anyway, hes got to take summerschool, and he and those other two guys were laying for me, and thats what happened. YYou look like ttthey kuhhilled you, Bill said. I fell down here from Kansas Street. Down the side of the hill. He looked at Eddie. Ill probably see you in the Mergency Room, now that I think about it. When my mom gets a look at my clothes, shell put me there. Both Bill and Eddie burst out laughing this time, and Ben joined them. It hurt his stomach to laugh but he laughed anyway, shrilly and a little hysterically. Finally he had to sit down on the bank, and the plopping sound his butt made when it hit the dirt got him going all over again. He liked the way his laughter sounded with theirs. It was a sound he had never heard before not mingled laughterhe had heard that lots of timesbut mingled laughter of which his own was a part. He looked up at Bill Denbrough, their eyes met, and that was all it took to get both of them laughing again. Bill hitched up his pants, flipped up the collar of his shirt, and began to slouch around in a kind of moody, hoody strut. His voice dropped down low and he said, Im gonna killya, kid. Dont gimme no crap. Im dumb but Im big. I can crack walnuts with my forehead. I can piss vinegar and shit cement. My names Honeybunch Bowers and Im the boss prick round deseyere Derry parts. Eddie had collapsed to the streambank now and was rolling around, clutching his stomach and howling. Ben was doubled up, head between his knees, tears spouting from his eyes, snot hanging from his nose in long white runners, laughing like a hyena. Bill sat down with them, and little by little the three of them quieted. Theres one really good thing about it, Eddie said presently. If Bowers is in summer school, we wont see him much down here. You play in the Barrens a lot? Ben asked. It was an idea that never would have crossed his own mind in a thousand yearsnot with the reputation the Barrens hadbut now that he was down here, it didnt seem bad at all. In fact, this stretch of the low bank was very pleasant as the afternoon made its slow way toward dusk. SSSure. Its nneat. MMostly nnobody bbuhbothers uus down hhere. We guhguhhoof off a lot. BBBowers and those uhother gguys dont come ddown here ehehanyway. You and Eddie? RuhRuhRuh Bill shook his head. His face knotted up like a wet dishrag when he stuttered, Ben noticed, and suddenly an odd thought occurred to him Bill hadnt stuttered at all when he was mocking the way Henry Bowers talked. Richie! Bill exclaimed now, paused a moment, and then went on. Richie TTozier usually ccomes down, too. But hhim and his ddad were going to clean out their ahahah Attic, Eddie translated, and tossed a stone into the water. Plonk. Yeah, I know him, Ben said. You guys come down here a lot, huh? The idea fascinated himand made him feel a stupid sort of longing as well. PuhPuhPretty much, Bill said. WuhWhy ddont you cccome back down tuhhuhmorrow? MMe and EEEddie were tuhtrying to make a duhduhham. Ben could say nothing. He was astounded not only by the offer but by the simple and unstudied casualness with which it had come. Maybe we ought to do something else, Eddie said. The dam wasnt working so hot anyway. Ben got up and walked down to the stream, brushing the dirt from his huge hams. There were still matted piles of small branches at either side of the stream, but anything else theyd put together had washed away. You ought to have some boards, Ben said. Get boards and put em in a row ... facing each other ... like the bread of a sandwich.