Bill and Eddie were looking at him, puzzled. Ben dropped to one knee. Look, he said. Boards here and here. You stick em in the streambed facing each other. Okay? Then, before the water can wash them away, you fill up the space between them with rocks and sand WuhWuhWe, Bill said. Huh? WuhWe do it. Oh, Ben said, feeling (and looking, he was sure) extremely stupid. But he didnt care if he looked stupid, because he suddenly felt very happy. He couldnt even remember the last time he felt this happy. Yeah. We. Anyway, if youwefill up the space in between with rocks and stuff, itll stay. The upstream board will lean back against the rocks and dirt as the water piles up. The second board would tilt back and wash away after awhile, I guess, but if we had a third board ... well, look. He drew in the dirt with a stick. Bill and Eddie Kaspbrak leaned over and studied this little drawing with sober interest You ever built a dam before? Eddie asked. His tone was respectful, almost awed. Nope. Then hhhow do you know thisll wwwork? Ben looked at Bill, puzzled. Sure it will, he said. Why wouldnt it? But hhow do you nuhnuhknow? Bill asked. Ben recognized the tone of the question as one not of sarcastic disbelief but honest interest. HHow can yyou tell? I just know, Ben said. He looked down at his drawing in the dirt again as if to confirm it to himself. He had never seen a cofferdam in his life, either in diagram or in fact, and had no idea that he had just drawn a pretty fair representation of one. OOkay, Bill said, and clapped Ben on the back. SSee you tuhhuhmorrow. What time? MMe and EhEddiell gget here by eheheightththirty or so If me and my mom arent still waiting at the Mergency Room, Eddie said, and sighed. Ill bring some boards, Ben said. This old guy on the next blocks got a bunch of em. Ill hawk a few. Bring some supplies, too, Eddie said. Stuff to eat. You know, like sanwidges, RingDings, stuff like that. Okay. You gggot any guhguhguns? I got my Daisy air rifle, Ben said. My mom gave it to me for Christmas, but she gets mad if I shoot it off in the house.  BBring it dddown, Bill said. Well play gguns, maybe. Okay, Ben said happily. Listen, I got to split for home, you guys. UhUs, too, Bill said. The three of them left the Barrens together. Ben helped Bill push Silver up the embankment. Eddie trailed behind them, wheezing again and looking unhappily at his bloodspotted shirt. Bill said goodbye and then pedaled off, shouting Hiyo Silver, AWAYYY! at the top of his lungs. Thats a gigantic bike, Ben said. Bet your fur, Eddie said. He had taken another gulp from his aspirator and was breathing normally again. He rides me double sometimes on the back. Goes so fast it just about scares the crap outta me. Hes a good man, Bill is. He said this last in an offhand way, but his eyes said something more emphatic. They were worshipful. You know about what happened to his brother, dont you? Nowhat about him? Got killed last fall. Some guy killed him. Pulled one of his arms right off, just like pulling a wing offn fly. Jeezumcrow ! Bill, he used to only stutter a little. Now its really bad. Did you notice that he stutters? Well ... a little. But his brains dont stutterget what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, I just told you because if you want Bill to be your friend, its better not to talk to him about his little brother. Dont ask him questions or anythin. Hes all frigged up about it. Man, I would be, too, Ben said. He remembered now, vaguely, about the little kid who had been killed the previous fall. He wondered if his mother had been thinking about George Denbrough when she gave him the watch he now wore, or only about the more recent killings. Did it happen right after the big flood? Yeah. They had reached the corner of Kansas and Jackson, where they would have to split up. Kids ran here and there, playing tag and throwing baseballs. One dorky little kid in big blue shorts went trotting selfimportantly past Ben and Eddie, wearing a Davy Crockett coonskin backward so that the tail hung down between his eyes. He was rolling a Hula Hoop and yelling Hooptag, you guys! Hooptag, wanna? The two bigger boys looked after him, amused, and then Eddie said Well, I gotta go. Wait a sec, Ben said. I got an idea, if you really dont want to go to the Mergency Room. Oh yeah? Eddie looked at Ben, doubtful but wanting to hope. You got a nickel? I got a dime. So what? Ben eyed the drying maroon splotches on Eddies shirt. Stop at the store and get a chocolate milk. Pour about half of it on your shirt. Then when you get home tell your mama you spilled all of it. Eddies eyes brightened. In the four years since his dad had died, his mothers eyesight had worsened considerably. For reasons of vanity (and because she didnt know how to drive a car), she refused to see an optometrist and get glasses. Dried bloodstains and chocolate milk stains looked about the same. Maybe ... That might work, he said. Just dont tell her it was my idea if she finds out. I wont, Eddie said. Seeya later, alligator. Okay. No, Eddie said patiently. When I say that youre supposed to say, After awhile, crocodile.  Oh. After awhile, crocodile. You got it. Eddie smiled. You know something? Ben said. You guys are really cool. Eddie looked more than embarrassed; he looked almost nervous. Bill is, he said, and started off. Ben watched him go down Jackson Street, and then turned toward home. Three blocks up the street he saw three alltoofamiliar figures standing at the bus stop on the corner of Jackson and Main. They were mostly turned away from Ben, which was damned lucky for him. He ducked behind a hedge, his heart beating hard. Five minutes later the DerryNewportHaven interurban bus pulled up. Henry and his friends pitched their butts into the street and swung aboard. Ben waited until the bus was out of sight and then hurried home. 8 That night a terrible thing happened to Bill Denbrough. It happened for the second time. His mom and dad were downstairs watching TV, not talking much, sitting at either end of the couch like bookends. There had been a time when the TV room opening off the kitchen would have been full of talk and laughter, sometimes so much of both you couldnt hear the TV at all. Shut up, Georgie! Bill would roar. Stop hogging all the popcorn and I will, George would return. Ma, make Bill give me the popcorn. Bill, give him the popcorn. George, dont call me Ma. Mas a sound a sheep makes. Or his dad would tell a joke and they would all laugh, even Mom. George didnt always get the jokes, Bill knew, but he laughed because everyone else was laughing. In those days his mom and dad had also been bookends on the couch, but he and George had been the books. Bill had tried to be a book between them while they were watching TV since Georges death, but it was cold work. They sent the cold out from both directions and Bills defroster was simply not big enough to cope with it. He had to leave because that kind of cold always froze his cheeks and made his eyes water. WWant to hhear a joke I heard today in ssschool? he had tried once, some months ago. Silence from them. On television a criminal was begging his brother, who was a priest, to hide him. Bills dad glanced up from the True he was looking at and glanced at Bill with mild surprise. Then he looked back down at the magazine again. There was a picture of a hunter sprawled in a snowbank and staring up at a huge snarling polar bear. Mauled by the Killer from the White Wastes was the name of the article. Bill had thought, I know where theres some white wastesright between my dad and mom on this couch. His mother had never looked up at all. Its about hhow many FFFrenchmen it takes to sccherew in a luhhhhightbulb, Bill plunged ahead. He felt a fine mist of sweat spring out upon his forehead, as it sometimes did in school when he knew the teacher had ignored him as long as she safely could and must soon call on him. His voice was too loud, but he couldnt seem to lower it. The words echoed in his head like crazy chimes, echoing, jamming up, spilling out again. DDDo you know hhhow muhmuhmany? One to hold the bulb and four to turn the house, Zack Denbrough said absently, and turned the page of his magazine. Did you say something, dear? his mother asked, and on Four Star Playhouse the brother who was a priest told the brother who was a hoodlum to turn himself in and pray for forgiveness. Bill sat there, sweating but coldso cold. It was cold because he wasnt really the only book between those two ends; Georgie was still there, only now it was a Georgie he couldnt see, a Georgie who never demanded the popcorn or hollered that Bill was pinching. This new version of George never cut up dickens. It was a onearmed Georgie who was palely, thoughtfully silent in the Motorolas shadowy whiteandblue glow, and perhaps it was not from his parents but from George that the big chill was really coming; perhaps it was George who was the real killer from the white wastes. Finally Bill had fled from that cold, invisible brother and into his room, where he lay face down on his bed and cried into his pillow. Georges room was just as it had been on the day he died. Zack had put a bunch of Georges toys into a carton one day about two weeks after he was buried, meaning them for the Goodwill or the Salvation Army or someplace like that, Bill supposed. Sharon Denbrough had spotted him coming out with the box in his arms and her hands had flown to her head like startled white birds and plunged themselves deep into her hair where they locked themselves into pulling fists. Bill had seen this and had fallen against the wall, the strength suddenly running out of his legs. His mother looked as mad as Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein. Dont you DARE take his things! she had screeched. Zack flinched and then took the box of toys back into Georges room without a word. He even put them back in exactly the same places from which he had taken them. Bill came in and saw his father kneeling by Georges bed (which his mother still changed, although only once a week now instead of twice) with his head on his hairy muscular forearms. Bill saw his father was crying, and this increased his terror. A frightening possibility suddenly occurred to him maybe sometimes things didnt just go wrong and then stop; maybe sometimes they just kept going wronger and wronger until everything was totally fucked up. DDuhDad Go on, Bill, his father said. His voice was muffled and shaking. His back went up and down. Bill badly wanted to touch his fathers back, to see if perhaps his hand might be able to still that restless heaving. He did not quite dare. Go on, buzz off. He left and went creeping along the upstairs hall, hearing his mother doing her own crying down in the kitchen. The sound was shrill and helpless. Bill thought, Why are they crying so far apart? and then he shoved the thought away. 9 On the first night of summer vacation Bill went into Georgies room. His heart was beating heavily in his chest, and his legs felt stiff and awkward with tension. He came to Georges room often, but that didnt mean he liked it in here. The room was so full of Georges presence that it felt haunted. He came in and couldnt help thinking that the closet door might creak open at any moment and there would be Georgie among the shirts and pants still neatly hung in there, a Georgie dressed in a rainslicker covered with red splotches and streaks, a rainslicker with one dangling yellow arm. Georges eyes would be blank and terrible, the eyes of a zombie in a horror movie. When he came out of the closet his galoshes would make squishy sounds as he walked across the room toward where Bill sat on his bed, a frozen block of terror If the power had gone out some evening while he sat here on Georges bed, looking at the pictures on Georges wall or the models on top of Georges dresser, he felt sure a heart attack, probably fatal, would ensue in the next ten seconds or so. But he went anyway. Warring with his terror of Georgetheghost was a mute and grasping needa hungerto somehow get over Georges death and find a decent way to go on. Not to forget George but somehow to find a way to make him not so fucking gruesome. He understood that his parents were not succeeding very well with that, and if he was going to do it for himself, he would have to do it by himself. Nor was it just for himself that he came; he came for Georgie as well. He had loved George, and for brothers they had gotten along pretty well. Oh, they had their pissy momentsBill giving George a good old Indian ropeburn, George tattling on Bill when Bill snuck downstairs after lightsout and ate the rest of the lemoncream frostingbut mostly they got along. Bad enough that George should be dead. For him to turn George into some kind of horrormonster ... that was even worse. He missed the little kid, that was the truth. Missed his voice, his laughtermissed the way Georges eyes sometimes tipped confidently up to his own, sure that Bill would have whatever answers were required. And one surpassingly odd thing there were times when he felt he loved George best in his fear, because even in his fearhis uneasy feelings that a zombieGeorge might be lurking in the closet or under the bedhe could remember loving George better in here, and George loving him. In his effort to reconcile these two emotionshis love and his terrorBill felt that he was closest to finding where final acceptance lay. These were not things of which he could have spoken; to his mind the ideas were nothing but an incoherent jumble. But his warm and desiring heart understood, and that was all that mattered. Sometimes he looked through Georges books, sometimes he sifted through Georges toys. He hadnt looked in Georges photograph album since last December. Now, on the night after meeting Ben Hanscom, Bill opened the door of Georges closet (steeling himself as always to meet the sight of Georgie himself, standing in his bloody slicker amid the hanging clothes, expecting as always to see one pallid, fishfingered hand come pistoning out of the dark to grip his arm) and took the album down from the top shelf. MY PHOTOGRAPHS, the gold script on the front read. Below, Scotchtaped on (the tape was now slightly yellow and peeling), the carefully printed words GEORGE ELMER DENBROUGH, AGE 6. Bill took it back to the bed Georgie had slept in, his heart beating heavier than ever. He couldnt tell what had made him get the photograph album down again. After what had happened in December... A second look, thats all. Just to convince yourself that it wasnt real the first time. That the first time was just your head playing a trick on itself. Well, it was an idea, anyway. It might even be true. But Bill suspected it was just the album itself. It held a certain mad fascination for him. What he had seen, or what he thought he had seen He opened the album now. It was filled with pictures George had gotten his mother, father, aunts, and uncles to give him. George didnt care if they were pictures of people and places he knew or not; it was the idea of photography itself which fascinated him. When he had been unsuccessful at pestering anyone into giving him new photos to mount he would sit crosslegged on his bed where Bill was sitting now and look at the old ones, turning the pages carefully, studying the blackandwhite Kodaks. Here was their mother when she was young and impossibly gorgeous; here their father, no more than eighteen, one of a trio of smiling rifletoting young men standing over the openeyed corpse of a deer; Uncle Hoyt standing on some rocks and holding up a pickerel; Aunt Fortuna, at the Derry Agricultural Fair, kneeling proudly beside a basket of tomatoes she had raised; an old Buick automobile; a church; a house; a road that went from somewhere to somewhere. All these pictures, snapped by lost somebodies for lost reasons, locked up here in a dead boys album of photographs. Here Bill saw himself at three, propped up in a hospital bed with a turban of bandages covering his hair. Bandages went down his cheeks and under his fractured jaw. He had been struck by a car in the parking lot of the AP on Center Street. He remembered very little of his hospital stay, only that they had given him icecream milk shakes through a straw and his head had ached dreadfully for three days. Here was the whole family on the lawn of the house, Bill standing by his mother and holding her hand, and George, only a baby, sleeping in Zacks arms. And here It wasnt the end of the book, but it was the last page that mattered, because the following ones were all blank. The final picture was Georges school picture, taken in October of last year, less than ten days before he died. In it George was wearing a crewneck shirt. His flyaway hair was slicked down with water. He was grinning, revealing two empty slots in which new teeth would never growunless they keep on growing after you die, Bill thought, and shuddered. He looked at the picture fixedly for some time and was about to close the book when what had happened in December happened again. Georges eyes rolled in the picture. They turned up to meet Bills own. Georges artificial saycheese smile turned into a horrid leer. His right eye drooped closed in a wink See you soon, Bill. In my closet. Maybe tonight. Bill threw the book across the room. He clapped his hands over his mouth. The book struck the wall and fell to the floor, open. The pages turned, although there was no draft. The book opened itself to that awful picture again, the picture which said SCHOOL FRIENDS 195758 beneath it. Blood began to flow from the picture. Bill sat frozen, his tongue a swelling choking lump in his mouth, his skin crawling, his hair lifting. He wanted to scream but the tiny whimpering sounds crawling out of his throat seemed to be the best he could manage. The blood flowed across the page and began to drip onto the floor. Bill fled the room, slamming the door behind him. CHAPTER 6 One of the Missing A Tale from the Summer of 58 1 They werent all found. No; they werent all found. And from time to time wrong assumptions were made. 2 From the Derry News, June 21st, 1958 (page 1) MISSING BOY PROMPTS NEW FEARS Edward L. Corcoran, of 73 Charter Street, Derry, was reported missing last night by his mother, Monica Macklin, and his stepfather, Richard P. Macklin. The Corcoran boy is ten. His disappearance has prompted new fears that Derrys young people are being stalked by a killer. Mrs. Macklin said the boy had been missing since June 19th, when he failed to return home from school after the last day of classes before summer vacation. When asked why they had delayed over twentyfour hours before reporting their sons absence, Mr. and Mrs. Macklin refused comment. Police Chief Richard Borton also declined comment, but a Police Department source told the News that the Corcoran boys relationship with his stepfather was not a good one, and that he had spent nights out of the house before. The source speculated that the boys final grades may have played a part in the boys failure to turn up. Derry School Superintendent Harold Metcalf declined comment on the Corcoran boys grades, pointing out they are not a matter of public record. I hope the disappearance of this boy will not cause unnecessary fears, Chief Borton said last night. The mood of the community is understandably uneasy, but I want to emphasize that we log thirty to fifty missingpersons reports on minors each and every year. Most turn up alive and well within a week of the initial report. This will be the case with Edward Corcoran, God willing. Borton also reiterated his conviction that the murders of George Denbrough, Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, Matthew Clements, and Veronica Grogan were not the work of one person. There are essential differences in each crime, Borton said, but declined to elaborate. He said that local police, working in close cooperation with the Maine State Attorney Generals office, are still following up a number of leads. Asked in a telephone interview last night how good these leads are, Chief Borton replied Very good. Asked if an arrest in any of the crimes was expected soon, Borton declined comment. From the Derry News, June 22nd, 1958 (page 1) COURT ORDERS SURPRISE EXHUMATION In a bizarre new twist to the disappearance of Edward Corcoran, Derry District Court Judge Erhardt K. Moulton ordered the exhumation of Corcorans younger brother, Dorsey, late yesterday. The court order followed a joint request from the County Attorney and the County Medical Examiner. Dorsey Corcoran, who also lived with his mother and stepfather at 73 Charter Street, died of what were reported to be accidental causes in May of 1957. The boy was brought into the Derry Home Hospital suffering from multiple fractures, including a fractured skull. Richard P. Macklin, the boys stepfather, was the admitting person. He stated that Dorsey Corcoran had been playing on a stepladder in the garage and had apparently fallen from the top. The boy died without recovering consciousness three days later. Edward Corcoran, ten, was reported missing late Wednesday. Asked if either Mr. or Mrs. Macklin was under suspicion in either the younger boys death or the older boys disappearance, Chief Richard Borton declined comment. From the Derry News, June 24th, 1958 (page 1) MACKLIN ARRESTED IN BEATING DEATH Under Suspicion in Unsolved Disappearance Chief Richard Borton of the Derry Police called a news conference yesterday to announce that Richard P. Macklin, of 73 Charter Street, had been arrested and charged with the murder of his stepson, Dorsey Corcoran. The Corcoran boy died in Derry Home Hospital of reported accidental causes on May 31st of last year. The medical examiners report shows that the boy was badly beaten, Borton said. Although Macklin claimed the boy had fallen from a stepladder while playing in the garage, Borton said the County Medical Examiners report showed that Dorsey Corcoran was severely beaten with some blunt instrument. When asked what sort of instrument, Borton said It might have been a hammer. Right now the important thing is the medical examiners conclusion that this boy was struck repeated blows with some object hard enough to break his bones. The wounds, particularly those in the skull, are not at all consistent with those which might be incurred in a fall. Dorsey Corcoran was beaten within an inch of his life and then dumped off at the Home Hospital emergency room to die. Asked if the doctors who treated the Corcoran boy might have been derelict in their duty when it came to reporting either an incidence of child abuse or the actual cause of death, Borton said, They will have serious questions to answer when Mr. Macklin comes to trial. Asked for an opinion on how these developments might bear on the recent disappearance of Dorsey Corcorans older brother, Edward, reported missing by Richard and Monica Macklin four days ago, Chief Borton answered I think it looks much more serious than we first supposed, dont you? From the Derry News, June 25th, 1958 (page 2) TEACHER SAYS EDWARD CORCORAN OFTEN BRUISED Henrietta Dumont, who teaches fifth grade at Derry Elementary School on Jackson Street, said that Edward Corcoran, who has now been missing for nearly a week, often came to school covered with bruises. Mrs. Dumont, who has taught one of Derrys two fifthgrade classes since the end of World War II, said that the Corcoran boy came to school one day about three weeks before his disappearance with both eyes nearly closed shut. When I asked him what happened, he said his father had taken him up for not eating his supper. When asked why she had not reported a beating of such obvious severity, Mrs. Dumont said, This isnt the first time Ive seen such a thing as this in my career as a teacher. The first few times I had a student with a parent who was confusing beatings with discipline, I tried to do something about it. I was told by the assistant principal, Gwendolyn Rayburn in those days, to stay out of it. She told me that when school employees get involved in cases of suspected child abuse, it always comes back to haunt the School Department at tax appropriation time. I went to the principal and he told me to forget it or I would be reprimanded. I asked him if a reprimand in a matter like that would go on my record. He said a reprimand did not have to be on a teachers record. I got the message.  Asked if the attitude in the Derry school system remained the same now, Mrs. Dumont said, Well, what does it look like, in light of this current situation? And I might add that I would not be speaking to you now if I hadnt retired at the end of this school year. Mrs. Dumont went on, Since this thing came out I get down on my knees every night and pray that Eddie Corcoran just got fed up with that beast of a stepfather and ran away. I pray that when he reads in the paper or hears on the news that Macklin has been locked up, Eddie will come home. In a brief telephone interview Monica Macklin hotly refuted Mrs. Dumonts charges. Rich never beat Dorsey, and he never beat Eddie, either, she said. Im telling you that right now, and when I die Ill stand at the Throne of Judgment and look God right in the eye and tell Him the same thing. From the Derry News, June 28th, 1958 (page 2) DADDY HAD TO TAKE ME UP CAUSE IM BAD, TOT TOLD NURSERY TEACHER BEFORE BEATING DEATH A local nurseryschool teacher who declined to be identified told a Newsreporter yesterday that young Dorsey Corcoran came to his twiceweekly nurseryschool class with bad sprains of his right thumb and three fingers of his right hand less than a week before his death in a purported garage accident. It was hurting him enough so that the poor little guy couldnt color his Mr. Do safety poster, the teacher said. The fingers were swelled up like sausages. When I asked Dorsey what happened, he said that his father (stepfather Richard P. Macklin) had bent his fingers back because he had walked across a floor his mother had just washed and waxed. Daddy had to take me up cause Im bad was the way he put it. I felt like crying, looking at his poor, dear fingers. He really wanted to color his poster like the other children, so I gave him some baby aspirin and let him color while the others were having Story Time. He loved to color the Mr. Do postersthat was what he liked bestand now Im so glad I was able to help him have a little happiness that day. When he died it never crossed my mind to think it was anything but an accident. I guess at first I thought he must have fallen because he couldnt grip very well with that hand. Now I think I just couldnt believe an adult could do such a thing to a little person. I know better now. I wish to God I didnt. Dorsey Corcorans older brother, Edward, ten, is still missing. From his cell in Derry County Jail, Richard Macklin continues to deny any part in either the death of his younger stepson or the disappearance of the older boy. From the Derry News, June 30th, 1958 (page 5) MACKLIN QUESTIONED IN DEATHS OF GROGAN, CLEMENTS Produces Unshakable Alibis, Source Claims From the Derry News, July 6th, 1958 (page 1) MACKLIN TO BE CHARGED ONLY WITH MURDER OF STEPSON DORSEY, BORTON SAYS Edward Corcoran Still Missing From the Derry News, July 24th, 1958 (page 1) WEEPING STEPFATHER CONFESSES TO BLUDGEON DEATH OF STEPSON In a dramatic development in the District Court trial of Richard Macklin for the murder of his stepson Dorsey Corcoran, Macklin broke down under the stem crossexamination of County Attorney Bradley Whitsun and admitted he had beaten the fouryearold boy to death with a recoilless hammer, which he then buried at the far end of his wifes vegetable garden before taking the boy to Derry Home Hospitals emergency room. The courtroom was stunned and silent as the sobbing Macklin, who had previously admitted beating both of his stepsons occasionally, if they had it coming, for their own good, poured out his story. I dont know what came over me. I saw he was climbing on the damn ladder again and I grabbed the hammer from the bench where it was laying and I just started to use it on him. I didnt mean to kill him. With God as my witness I never meant to kill him. Did he say anything to you before he passed out? Whitsun asked. He said, Stop daddy, Im sorry, I love you, Macklin replied. Did you stop? Eventually, Macklin said. He then began to weep in such a hysterical manner that Judge Erhardt Moulton declared the court in recess. From the Derry News, September 18th, 1958 (page 16) WHERE IS EDWARD CORCORAN? His stepfather, sentenced to a term of two to ten years in Shawshank State Prison for the murder of his fouryearold brother, Dorsey, continues to claim he has no idea where Edward Corcoran is. His mother, who has instituted divorce proceedings against Richard P. Macklin, says she thinks her soontobe exhusband is lying. Is he? I, for one, really dont think so, says Father Ashley 0Brian, who serves the Catholic prisoners at Shawshank. Macklin began taking instruction in the Catholic faith shortly after beginning his prison term, and Father OBrian has spent a good deal of time with him. He is sincerely sorry for what he has done, Father OBrian goes on, adding that when he initially asked Macklin why he wanted to be a Catholic, Macklin replied, I hear they have an act of contrition and I need to do a lot of that or else Ill go to hell when I die. He knows what he did to the younger boy, Father OBrian said. If he also did something to the older one, he doesnt remember it. As far as Edward goes, he believes his hands are clean. How clean Macklins hands are in the matter of his stepson Edward is a question which continues to trouble Derry residents, but he has been convincingly cleared of the other childmurders which have taken place here. He was able to produce ironclad alibis for the first three, and he was in jail when seven others were committed in late June, July, and August. All ten murders remain unsolved. In an exclusive interview with the News last week Macklin again asserted that he knows nothing of Edward Corcorans whereabouts. I beat them both, he said in a painful monologue which was often halted by bouts of weeping. I loved them but I beat them. I dont know why, any more than I know why Monica let me, or why she covered up for me after Dorsey died. I guess I could have killed Eddie as easy as I did Dorsey, but I swear before God and Jesus and all the saints of heaven that I didnt. I know how it looks, but I didnt do it. I think he just ran away. If he did, thats one thing Ive got to thank God for. Asked if he is aware of any gaps in his memoryif he could have killed Edward and then blocked it out of his mindMacklin replied I aint aware of any gaps. I know only too well what I did. Ive given my life to Christ, and Im going to spend the rest of it trying to make up for it. From the Derry News, January 27th, 1960 (page 1) BODY NOT THAT OF CORCORAN YOUTH, BORTON ANNOUNCES Police Chief Richard Borton told reporters early today that the badly decomposed body of a boy about the age of Edward Corcoran, who disappeared from his Derry home in June of 1958, is definitely not that of the missing youth. The body was found in Aynesford, Massachusetts, buried in a gravel pit. Both Maine and Massachusetts State Police at first theorized that the body might be that of the Corcoran boy, believing that he might have been picked up by a child molester after running away from the Charter Street home where his younger brother had been beaten and killed. Dental charts showed conclusively that the boy found in Aynesford was not that of the Corcoran youth, who has now been missing for nineteen months. From the Portland PressHerald, July 19th, 1967 (page 3) CONVICTED MURDERER COMMITS SUICIDE IN FALMOUTH Richard P.


Macklin, who was convicted of the murder of his fouryearold stepson nine years ago, was found dead in his small thirdfloor Falmouth apartment late yesterday afternoon. The parolee, who had lived and worked quietly in Falmouth since his release from Shawshank State Prison in 1964, was an apparent suicide. The note he left indicates an extremely confused state of mind, Assistant Falmouth Police Chief Brandon K. Roche said. He refused to divulge the notes contents, but a Police Department source said it consisted of two sentences I saw Eddie last night. He was dead. The Eddie referred to may well have been Macklins stepson, brother of the boy Macklin was convicted of killing in 1958. It was the disappearance of Edward Corcoran which eventually led to Macklins conviction for the beating death of Edwards younger brother, Dorsey. The elder boy has been missing for nine years. In a brief court proceeding in 1966 the boys mother had her son declared legally dead so she could enter into possession of Edward Corcorans savings account. The account contained a sum of sixteen dollars. 3 Eddie Corcoran was dead, all right. He died on the night of June 19th, and his stepfather had nothing at all to do with it. He died as Ben Hanscom sat home watching TV with his mother, as Eddie Kaspbraks mother anxiously felt Eddies forehead for signs of her favorite ailment, phantom fever, as Beverly Marshs stepfathera gent who bore, in temperament at least, a remarkable resemblance to Eddie and Dorsey Corcorans stepfatherlifted a highstepping kick into the girls derrire and told her to get out there and dry those goddam dishes like your mummer told you, as Mike Hanlon got yelled at by some highschool boys (one of whom would some years later sire that fine upstanding young homophobe John Webby Garton) passing in an old Dodge while Mike pulled weeds out of the garden beside the small Hanlon home out on Witcham Road, not far from the farm owned by Henry Bowerss crazy father, as Richie Tozier was sneaking a look at the halfundressed girls in a copy of Gem he had found at the bottom of his fathers socksandunderwear drawer and getting a regular good boner, and as Bill Denbrough was throwing his dead brothers photograph album across the room in horrified unbelief. Although none of them would remember doing so later, all of them looked up at the exact moment Eddie Corcoran died ... as if hearing some distant cry. The News had been absolutely right about one thing Eddies rankcard was just bad enough to make him afraid to go home and face his stepdad. Also, his mother and the old man were fighting a lot this month. That made things even worse. When they got going at it hot and heavy, his mother shouted a lot of mostly incoherent accusations. His stepdad responded to these first with grunts, then yells to shut up, and finally with the enraged bellows of a boar which has gotten a quiver of porcupine needles in its snout. Eddie had never seen the old man use his fists on her, though. Eddie didnt think he quite dared. He had saved his fists for Eddie and Dorsey in the old days, and now that Dorsey was dead, Eddie got his little brothers share as well as his own. These shouting matches came and went in cycles. They were most common at the end of the month, when the bills came in. A policeman, called by a neighbor, might drop by once or twice when things were at their worst and tell them to tone it down. Usually that ended it. His mother was apt to give the cop the finger and dare him to take her in, but his stepdad rarely said boo. His stepdad was afraid of the cops, Eddie thought. He lay low during these periods of stress. It was wiser. If you didnt think so, just look at what had happened to Dorsey. Eddie didnt know the specifics and didnt want to, but he had an idea about Dorsey. He thought that Dorsey had been in the wrong place at the wrong time the garage on the last day of the month. They told Eddie that Dorsey fell off the stepladder in the garageIf I told him once to stay offn it I told him sixty times, his stepdad had saidbut his mother wouldnt look at him except by accident... and when their eyes did meet, Eddie had seen a frightened ratty little gleam in hers that he didnt like. The old man just sat there silently at the kitchen table with a quart of Rheingold, looking at nothing from beneath his heavy lowering eyebrows. Eddie kept out of his reach. When his stepfather was bellowing, he was usuallynot always but usuallyall right. It was when he stopped that you had to be careful. Two nights ago he had thrown a chair at Eddie when Eddie got up to see what was on the other TV channeljust picked up one of the tubular aluminum kitchen chairs, swept it back over his head, and let fly. It hit Eddie in the butt and knocked him over. His butt still ached, but he knew it could have been worse it could have been his head. Then there had been the night when the old man had suddenly gotten up and rubbed a handful of mashed potatoes into Eddies hair for no reason at all. One day last September, Eddie had come in from school and foolishly allowed the screen door to slam shut behind him while his stepdad was taking a nap. Macklin came out of the bedroom in his billowy boxer shorts, hair standing up in corkscrews, cheeks grizzled with two days of weekend beard, breath grizzled with two days of weekend beer. There now, Eddie, he said, I got to take you up for slammin that fuckin door. In Rich Macklins lexicon, taking you up was a euphemism for beating the shit out of you. Which was what he then did to Eddie. Eddie had lost consciousness when the old man threw him into the front hall. His mother had mounted a pair of low coathooks out there, especially for him and Dorsey to hang their coats on. These hooks had rammed hard steel fingers into Eddies lower back, and that was when he passed out. When he came to ten minutes later he heard his mother yelling that she was going to take Eddie to the hospital and he couldnt stop her. After what happened to Dorsey? his stepdad had responded. You want to go to jail, woman? That was the end of her talk about the hospital. She helped Eddie into his room, where he lay shivering on his bed, his forehead beaded with sweat. The only time he left the room during the next three days was when they were both gone. Then he would hobble slowly into the kitchen, groaning softly, and get his stepdads whiskey from under the sink. A few nips dulled the pain. The pain was mostly gone by the fifth day, but he had pissed blood for almost two weeks. And the hammer wasnt in the garage anymore. What about that? What about that, friends and neighbors? Oh, the Craftsman hammerthe ordinary hammerwas still there. It was the Scotti recoilless which was missing. His stepdads special hammer, the one he and Dorsey had been forbidden to touch. If one of you touches that baby, he had told them the day he bought it, youll both be wearing your guts for earmuffs. Dorsey had asked timidly if that hammer was very expensive. The old man told him he was damn tooting. He said it was filled with ballbearings and you couldnt make it bounce back up no matter how hard you brought it down. Now it was gone. Eddies grades werent the best because he had missed a lot of school since his mothers remarriage, but he was not a stupid boy by any means. He thought he knew what had happened to the Scotti recoilless hammer. He thought maybe his stepfather had used it on Dorsey and then buried it in the garden or maybe thrown it in the Canal. It was the sort of thing that happened frequently in the horror comics Eddie read, the ones he kept on the top shelf of his closet. He walked closer to the Canal, which rippled between its concrete sides like oiled silk. A swatch of moonlight glimmered across its dark surface in a boomerang shape. He sat down, swinging his sneakers idly against the concrete in an irregular tattoo. The last six weeks had been quite dry and the water flowed past perhaps nine feet below the worn soles of his sneakers. But if you looked closely at the Canals sides, you could read the various levels to which it sometimes rose quite easily. The concrete was stained a dark brown just above the waters current level. This brown stain slowly faded to yellow, then to a color that was almost white at the level where the heels of Eddies sneakers made contact when he swung them. The water flowed smoothly and silently out of a concrete arch that was cobbled on the inside, past the place where Eddie sat, and then down to the covered wooden footbridge between Bassey Park and Derry High School. The bridges sides and plank footingeven the beams under the roofwere covered with an intaglio of initials, phone numbers, and declarations. Declarations of love; declarations that Soandso was willing to suck or blow; declarations that those discovered sucking or blowing would lose their foreskins or have their assholes plugged with hot tar; occasional eccentric declarations that defied definition. One that Eddie had puzzled over all this spring read SAVE RUSSIAN JEWS! COLLECT VALUABLE PRIZES! What, exactly, did that mean? Anything? And did it matter? Eddie didnt go into the Kissing Bridge tonight; he had no urge to cross over to the highschool side. He thought he would probably sleep in the park, maybe in the dead leaves under the bandstand, but for now it was fine just to sit here. He liked it in the park, and came often when he had to think. Sometimes there were people making out in the groves of trees which dotted the park, but Eddie left them alone and they left him alone. He had heard lurid stories in the playground at school about the queers that cruised in Bassey Park after sundown, and he accepted these stories without question, but he himself had never been bothered. The park was a peaceful place, and he thought the best part of it was right here where he was sitting. He liked it in the middle of summer, when the water was so low it chuckled over the stones and actually broke up into isolated streamlets that twisted and turned and sometimes came together again. He liked it in late March or early April, just after iceout, when he would sometimes stand by the Canal (too cold to sit then; your ass would freeze) for an hour or more, the hood of his old parka, now two years too small for him, pulled up, his hands plunged into his pockets, unaware that his skinny body was shivering and shaking. The Canal had a terrible, irresistible power in the week or two after the ice went out. He was fascinated by the way the water boiled whitely out of the cobbled arch and roared past him, bearing sticks and branches and all manner of human trash along with it. More than once he had envisioned walking beside the Canal in March with his stepdad and giving the bastard a great big motherfucking push. He would scream and fall in, his arms pinwheeling for balance, and Eddie would stand on the concrete parapet and watch him carried off downstream, his head a black bobbing shape in the middle of the unruly whitecapped current. He would stand there, yes, and he would cup his hands around his mouth and scream THAT WAS FOR DORSEY, YOU ROTTEN COCKSUCKER! WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO HELL TELL THE DEVIL THE LAST THING YOU EVER HEARD WAS ME TELLING YOU TO PICK ON SOMEBODY YOUR OWN SIZE! It would never happen, of course, but it was an absolutely grand fantasy. A grand dream to dream as you sat here by the Canal, a g A hand closed around Eddies foot. He had been looking across the Canal toward the school, smiling a sleepy and rather beautiful smile as he imagined his stepfather being carried off in the violent rip of the spring runoff, being carried out of his life forever. The soft yet strong grip startled him so much that he almost lost his balance and tumbled into the Canal. Its one of the queers the big kids are always talking about, he thought, and then he looked down. His mouth dropped open. Urine spilled hotly down his legs and stained his jeans black in the moonlight. It wasnt a queer. It was Dorsey. It was Dorsey as he had been buried, Dorsey in his blue blazer and gray pants, only now the blazer was in muddy tatters, Dorseys shirt was yellow rags, Dorseys pants clung wetly to legs as thin as broomsticks. And Dorseys head was horribly slumped, as if it had been caved in at the back and consequently pushed up in the front. Dorsey was grinning. Eddieeeee, his dead brother croaked, just like one of the dead people who were always coming back from the grave in the horror comics. Dorseys grin widened. Yellow teeth gleamed, and somewhere way back in that darkness things seemed to be squirming. Eddieeee... I came to see you Eddieeeeee.... Eddie tried to scream. Waves of gray shock rolled over him, and he had the curious sensation that he was floating. But it was not a dream; he was awake. The hand on his sneaker was as white as a trouts belly. His brothers bare feet clung somehow to the concrete. Something had bitten one of Dorseys heels off. Come on down Eddieeeee.... Eddie couldnt scream. His lungs didnt have enough air in them to manage a scream. He got out a curious reedy moaning sound. Anything louder seemed beyond him. That was all right. In a second or two his mind would snap and after that nothing would matter. Dorseys hand was small but implacable. Eddies buttocks were sliding over the concrete to the edge of the Canal. Still making that reedy moaning sound, he reached behind himself and grabbed the concrete edging and yanked himself backward. He felt the hand slide away momentarily, heard an angry hiss, and had time to think Thats not Dorsey. I dont know what it is, but its not Dorsey. Then adrenaline flooded his body and he was crawling away, trying to run even before he was on his feet, his breath coming in short shrieky whistles. White hands appeared on the concrete lip of the Canal. There was a wet slapping sound. Drops of water flew upward in the moonlight from dead pallid skin. Now Dorseys face appeared over the edge. Dim red sparks gleamed in his sunken eyes. His wet hair was plastered to his skull. Mud streaked his cheeks like warpaint. Eddies chest finally unlocked. He hitched in breath and turned it into a scream. He got to his feet and ran. He ran looking back over his shoulder, needing to see where Dorsey was, and as a result he ran smack into a large elm tree. It felt as if someonehis old man, for instancehad set off a dynamite charge in his left shoulder. Stars shot and corkscrewed through his head. He fell at the base of the tree as if poleaxed, blood trickling from his left temple. He swam in the waters of semiconsciousness for perhaps ninety seconds. Then he managed to gain his feet again. A groan escaped him as he tried to raise his left arm. It didnt want to come. Felt all numb and far away. So he raised his right and rubbed his fiercely aching head. Then he remembered why he had happened to run fulltilt into the elm tree in the first place and looked around. There was the edge of the Canal, white as bone and straight as string in the moonlight. No sign of the thing from the Canal . . . if there ever had been a thing. He continued turning, working his way slowly through a complete three hundred and sixty degrees. Bassey Park was silent and as still as a blackandwhite photograph. Weeping willows draggled their thin tenebrous arms, and anything could be standing, slumped and insane, within their shelter. Eddie began to walk, trying to look everywhere at once. His sprained shoulder throbbed in painful sync with his heartbeat. Eddieeeee, the breeze moaned through the trees, dont you want to see meeeee, Eddieeeee? He felt flabby corpsefingers caress the side of his neck. He whirled, his hands going up. As his feet tangled together and he fell, he saw that it had only been willowfronds moving in the breeze. He got up again. He wanted to run but when he tried another dynamite charge went off in his shoulder and he had to stop. He knew somehow that he should be getting over his fright by now, calling himself a stupid little baby who got spooked by a reflection or maybe fell asleep without knowing it and had a bad dream. That wasnt happening, though; quite the reverse, in fact. His heart was now beating so fast he could no longer distinguish the separate thuds, and he felt sure it would soon burst in terror. He couldnt run but when he got out of the willows he did manage a limping jogtrot. He fixed his eyes on the streetlight that marked the parks main gate. He headed in that direction, managing a little more speed, thinking Ill make it to the light, and thats all right. Ill make it to the light, and thats all right. Bright light, no more fright, up all night, what a sight Something was following him. Eddie could hear it bludgeoning its way through the willow grove. If he turned he would see it. It was gaining. He could hear its feet, a kind of shuffling, squelching stride, but he would not look back, no, he would look ahead at the light, the light was all right, he would just continue his flight to the light, and he was almost there, almost The smell was what made him look back. The overwhelming smell, as if fish had been left to rot in a huge pile that had become carrionslushy in the summer heat. It was the smell of a dead ocean. It wasnt Dorsey after him now; it was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The things snout was long and pleated. Green fluid dripped from black gashes like vertical mouths in its cheeks. Its eyes were white and jellylike. Its webbed fingers were tipped with claws like razors. Its respiration was bubbly and deep, the sound of a diver with a bad regulator. As it saw Eddie looking, its greenblack lips wrinkled back from huge fangs in a dead and vacant smile. It shambled after him, dripping, and Eddie suddenly understood. It meant to take him back to the Canal, to carry him down into the dank blackness of the Canals underground passage. To eat him there. Eddie put on a burst of speed. The arcsodium light at the gate drew closer. He could see its halo of bugs and moths. A truck went by, headed for Route 2, the driver working his way up through the gears, and it crossed Eddies desperate, terrified mind that he could be drinking coffee from a paper cup and listening to a Buddy Holly tune on the radio, completely unaware that less than two hundred yards away there was a boy who might be dead in another twenty seconds. The stink. The overwhelming stink of it. Gaining. All around him. It was a park bench he tripped over. Some kids had casually pushed it over earlier that evening, heading toward their homes at a run to beat the curfew. Its seat poked an inch or two out of the grass, one shade of green on another, almost invisible in the moondriven dark. The edge of the seat smacked Eddie in the shins, causing a burst of glassy, exquisite pain. His legs flipped out behind him and he thumped into the grass. He looked behind him and saw the Creature bearing down, its white poachedegg eyes glittering, its scales dripping slime the color of seaweed, the gills up and down its bulging neck and cheeks opening and closing. Ag! Eddie croaked. It seemed to be the only noise he could make. Ag! Ag! Ag! Ag! He crawled now, fingers hooking deep into the turf. His tongue hung out. In the second before the Creatures fishsmelling horny hands closed around his throat, a comforting thought came to him This is a dream; it has to be. Theres no real Creature, no real Black Lagoon, and even if there was, that was in South America or the Florida Everglades or someplace like that. This is only a dream and Ill wake up in my bed or maybe in the leaves under the bandstand and I Then batrachian hands closed around his neck and Eddies hoarse cries were choked off; as the Creature turned him over, the chitinous hooks which sprouted from those hands scrawled bleeding marks like calligraphy into his neck. He stared into its glowing white eyes. He felt the webs between its fingers pressing against his throat like constricting bands of living seaweed. His terrorsharpened gaze noted the fin, something like a roosters comb and something like a hornpouts poisonous backfin, standing atop the Creatures hunched and plated head. As its hands clamped tight, shutting off his air, he was even able to see the way the white light from the arcsodium lamp turned a smoky green as it passed through that membranous headfin. Youre . . . not . . . real, Eddie choked, but clouds of grayness were closing in now, and he realized faintly that it was real enough, this Creature. It was, after all, killing him. And yet some rationality remained, even until the end as the Creature hooked its claws into the soft meat of his neck, as his carotid artery let go in a warm and painless gout that splashed the things reptilian plating, Eddies hands groped at the Creatures back, feeling for a zipper. They fell away only when the Creature tore his head from his shoulders with a low satisfied grunt. And as Eddies picture of what It was began to fade, It began promptly to change into something else. 4 Unable to sleep, plagued by bad dreams, a boy named Michael Hanlon rose soon after first light on the first full day of summer vacation. The light was pale, bundled up in a low, thick mist that would lift by eight oclock, taking the wraps off a perfect summer day. But that was for later. For now the world was all gray and rose, as silent as a cat walking on a carpet. Mike, dressed in corduroys, a teeshirt, and black hightopped Keds, came downstairs, ate a bowl of Wheaties (he didnt really like Wheaties but had wanted the free prize in the boxa Captain Midnight Magic Decoder Ring), then hopped on his bike and pedaled toward town, riding on the sidewalks because of the fog. The fog changed everything, made the most ordinary things like fire hydrants and stopsigns into objects of mysterythings both strange and a trifle sinister. You could hear cars but not see them, and because of the fogs odd acoustic quality, you could not tell if they were far or near until you actually saw them come rolling out of the fog with ghosthalos of moisture ringing their headlamps. He turned right on Jackson Street, bypassing downtown, and then crossed to Main Street by way of Palmer Laneand during his short ride down this little byways oneblock length he passed the house where he would live as an adult. He did not look at it; it was just a small twostory dwelling with a garage and a small lawn. It gave off no special vibration to the passing boy who would spend most of his adult life as its owner and only dweller. At Main Street he turned right and rode up to Bassey Park, still wandering, simply riding and enjoying the stillness of the early day. Once inside the main gate he dismounted his bike, pushed down the kickstand, and walked toward the Canal. He was still, as far as he knew, impelled by nothing more than purest whim. Certainly it did not occur to him to think that his dreams of the night before had anything to do with his current course; he did not even remember exactly what his dreams had beenonly that one had followed another until he had awakened at five oclock, sweaty but shivering, and with the idea that he ought to eat a fast breakfast and then take a bikeride into town. Here in Bassey there was a smell in the fog he didnt like a seasmell, salty and old. He had smelled it before, of course. In the earlymorning fogs you could often smell the ocean in Derry, although the coast was forty miles away. But the smell this morning seemed thicker, more vital. Almost dangerous. Something caught his eye. He bent down and picked up a cheap twoblade pocket knife. Someone had scratched the initials E.C. on the side. Mike looked at it thoughtfully for a moment or two and then pocketed it. Finders keepers, losers weepers. He glanced around. Here, near where he had found the knife, was an overturned park bench. He righted it, setting its iron footings back into the holes they had made over a period of months or years. Beyond the bench he saw a matted place in the grass . . . and leading away from it, two grooves. The grass was springing back up, but those grooves were still fairly clear. They went in the direction of the Canal. And there was blood. (the bird remember the bird remember the) But he did not want to remember the bird and so he pushed the thought away. Dogfight, thats all. One of em must have hurt the other one pretty bad. It was a convincing thought by which he was somehow not convinced. Thoughts of the bird kept wanting to come backthe one he had seen out at the Kitchener Ironworks, one Stan Uris never would have found in his birdbook. Stop it. Just get out of here. But instead of getting out he followed the grooves. As he did he made up a little story in his mind. It was a murder story. Heres this kid, out late, see. Out past the curfew. The killer gets him. And how does he get rid of the body? Drags it to the Canal and dumps it in, of course! Just like an Alfred Hitchcock Presents! The marks he was following could have been made by a dragging pair of shoes or sneakers, he supposed. Mike shivered and looked around uncertainly. The story was somehow a little too real. And suppose that it wasnt a man who did it but a monster. Like out of a horror comic or a horror book or a horror movie or (a bad dream) a fairy tale or something. He decided he didnt like the story. It was a stupid story. He tried to push it out of his mind but it wouldnt go. So what? Let it stay. It was dumb. Riding into town this morning had been dumb. Following these two matted grooves in the grass was dumb. His dad would have a lot of chores for him to do around the place today. He ought to get back and start in or when the hottest part of the afternoon rolled around he would be up the barn loft pitching hay. Yes, he ought to get back. And thats just what he was going to do. Sure you are, he thought. Want to bet? Instead of going back to his bike and getting on and riding home and starting his chores, he followed the grooves in the grass. There were more drops of drying blood here and there. Not much, though. Not as much as there had been in that matted place back there by the park bench he had set to rights. Mike could hear the Canal now, running quiet. A moment later he saw the concrete edge materialize out of the fog. Here was something else in the grass. My goodness, its certainly your day for finding things, his mind said with dubious geniality, and then a gull screamed somewhere and Mike flinched, thinking again of the bird he had seen that day, that day just this spring. Whatever that is in the grass, I dont even want to look at it. And that was oh so very true, but here he was, already bending over it, hands planted just above his knees, to see what it was. A tattered bit of cloth with a drop of blood on it. The seagull screamed again. Mike stared at the bloody scrap of cloth and remembered what had happened to him in the spring. 5 Each year during April and May the Hanlon farm woke up from its winter doze. Mike would let himself know that spring had come again not when the first crocuses showed under his moms kitchen windows or when kids started bringing immies and croakers to school or even when the Washington Senators kicked off the baseball season (usually getting themselves shellacked in the process), but only when his father hollered for Mike to help him push their mongrel truck out of the barn. The front half was an old ModelA Ford car, the back end a pickup truck with a tailgate which was the remainder of the old henhouse door. If the winter hadnt been too cold, the two of them could often get it going by pushing it down the driveway. The trucks cab had no doors; likewise there was no windshield. The seat was half of an old sofa that Will Hanlon had scrounged from the Derry dump. The stickshift ended in a glass doorknob. They would push it down the driveway, one on each side, and when it got rolling good, Will would jump in, turn on the switch, retard the spark, step down on the clutch, punch the shift into first gear with his big hand clamped over the doorknob. Then he would holler Put me over the hump! Hed pop the clutch and the old Ford engine would cough, choke, chug, backfire . . . and sometimes actually start to run, rough at first, then smoothing out. Will would roar down the road toward Rhulin Farms, turn around in their driveway (if he had gone the other way, Henry Bowerss crazy father Butch probably would have blown his head off with a shotgun), and then roar back, the unmuffled engine blatting stridently while Mike jumped up and down with excitement, cheering, and his mom stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and pretending a disgust she didnt really feel. Other times the truck wouldnt rollstart and Mike would have to wait until his father came back from the barn, carrying the crank and muttering under his breath. Mike was quite sure that some of the words so muttered were swears, and he would be a little frightened of his daddy then. (It wasnt until much later, during one of those interminable visits to the hospital room where Will Hanlon lay dying, that he found out his father muttered because he was afraid of the crank once it had kicked back viciously, flown out of its socket, and torn the side of his mouth open.) Stand back, Mikey, he would say, slipping the crank into its socket at the base of the radiator. And when the A was finally running, hed say that next year he was going to trade it for a Chevrolet, but he never did. That old AFord hybrid was still in back of the home place, up to its axles and henhouse tailgate in weeds. When it was running, and Mike was sitting in the passenger seat, smelling hot oil and blue exhaust, excited by the keen breeze that washed in through the glassless hole where the windshield had once been, he would think Springs here again. Were all waking up. And in his soul he would raise a silent cheer that shook the walls of that mostly cheerful room. He felt love for everything around him, and most of all for his dad, who would grin over at him and holler Hold on, Mikey! We gone wind this baby up! We gone make some birds run for cover! Then he would tear up the driveway, the As rear wheels spitting back black dirt and gray clods of clay, both of them jouncing up and down on the sofaseat inside the open cab, laughing like stark naturalborn fools. Will would run the A through the high grass of the back field, which was kept for hay, toward either the south field (potatoes), the west field (corn and beans), or the east field (peas, squash, and pumpkins). As they went, birds would burst up out of the grass before the truck, squawking in terror. Once a partridge flew up, a magnificent bird as brown as lateautumn oaks, the explosive coughing whirr of its wings audible even over the pounding engine. Those rides were Mike Hanlons door into spring. The years work began with the rock harvest. Every day for a week they would take the A out and load the bed with rocks which might break a harrowblade when the time came to turn the earth and plant. Sometimes the truck would get stuck in the mucky spring earth and Will would mutter darkly under his breath . . . more swears, Mike surmised. He knew some of the words and expressions; others, such as son of a whore, puzzled him. He had come across the word in the Bible, and so far as he could tell, a whore was a woman who came from a place called Babylon. He had once set out to ask his father, but the A had been in mud up to her coilsprings, there had been thunderclouds on his fathers brow, and he had decided to wait for a better time. He ended up asking Richie Tozier later that year and Richie told him his father had told him a whore was a woman who got paid for having sex with men. Whats having sex? Mike had asked, and Richie had wandered away holding his head.


On one occasion Mike had asked his father why, since they harvested rocks every April, there were always more of them the following April. They had been standing at the dumpingoff place near sunset on the last day of that years rock harvest. A beaten dirt track, not quite serious enough to be called a road, led from the bottom of the west field to this gully near the bank of the Kenduskeag. The gully was a jumbled wasteland of rocks that had been dragged off Wills land through the years. Looking down at this badlands, which he had made first alone and then with the help of his son (somewhere under the rocks, he knew, were the rotting remains of the stumps he had yanked out one at a time before any of the fields could be tilled), Will had lighted a cigarette and said, My daddy used to tell me that God loved rocks, houseflies, weeds, and poor people above all the rest of His creations, and thats why He made so many of them. But every year its like they come back. Yeah, I think they do, Will said. Thats the only way I know to explain it. A loon cried from the far side of the Kenduskeag in a dusky sunset that had turned the water a deep orangered. It was a lonely sound, so lonely that it made Mikes tired arms tighten with gooseflesh. I love you, Daddy, he said suddenly, feeling his love so strongly that tears stung his eyes. Why, I love you too, Mikey, his father said, and hugged him tight in his strong arms. Mike felt the rough fabric of his fathers flannel shirt against his cheek. Now what do you say we go on back? We got just time to get a bath each before the good woman puts supper on the table. Ayuh, Mike said. Ayuh yourself, Will Hanlon said, and they both laughed, feeling tired but feeling good, arms and legs worked but not overworked, their hands rockroughened but not hurting too bad. Springs here, Mike thought that night, drowsing off in his room while his mother and father watched The Honeymooners in the other room. Springs here again, thank You God, thank You very much. And turning to sleep, sinking down, he had heard the loon call again, the distance of its marshes blending into the desire of his dreams. Spring was a busy time, but it was a good time. Following the rock harvest, Will would park the A in the high grass back of the house and drive the tractor out of the barn. There would be harrowing then, his father driving the tractor, Mike either riding behind and holding on to the iron seat or walking alongside, picking up any rocks they had missed and throwing them aside. Then came planting, and following the planting came summers work hoeing . . . hoeing . . . hoeing. His mother would refurbish Larry, Moe, and Curly, their three scarecrows, and Mike would help his father put mooseblowers on top of each strawfilled head. A mooseblower was a can with both ends cut off. You tied a length of heavily waxed and rosined string tightly across the middle of the can and when the wind blew through it a wonderfully spooky sound resulteda kind of whining croak. Cropeating birds decided soon enough that Larry, Moe, and Curly were no threats, but the mooseblowers always frightened them off. Starting in July, there was picking as well as hoeingpeas and radishes first, then the lettuce and the tomatoes that had been started in the shedboxes, then the corn and beans in August, more corn and beans in September, then the pumpkins and the squash. Somewhere in the midst of all that came the new potatoes, and then, as the days shortened and the air sharpened, he and his dad would take in the mooseblowers (and sometime during the winter they would disappear; it seemed they had to make new ones each spring). The day after, Will would call Norman Sadler (who was as dumb as his son Moose but infinitely more goodhearted), and Normie would come over with his potatodigger. For the next three weeks all of them would work picking potatoes. In addition to the family, Will would hire three or four highschool boys to help pick, paying them a quarter a barrel. The AFord would cruise slowly up and down the rows of the south field, the biggest field, always in low gear, the tailgate down, the back filled with barrels, each marked with the name of the person picking into it, and at the end of the day Will would open his old creased wallet and pay each of the pickers cash money. Mike was paid, and so was his mother; that money was theirs, and Will Hanlon never once asked either of them what they did with it. Mike had been given a fivepercent interest in the farm when he was five years oldold enough, Will had told him then, to hold a hoe and to tell the difference between witchgrass and peaplants. Each year he had been given another one percent, and each year, on the day after Thanksgiving, Will would compute the farms profits and deduct Mikes share . . . but Mike never saw any of that money. It went into his college account and was to be touched under absolutely no other circumstances. At last the day would come when Normie Sadler drove his potatodigger back home; by then the air would have most likely turned gray and cold and there would be frost on the drift of orange pumpkins piled against the side of the barn. Mike would stand in the dooryard, his nose red, his dirty hands stuffed into his jeans pockets, and watch as his father drove first the tractor and then the AFord back into the barn. He would think Were getting ready to go to sleep again. Spring . . . vanished. Summer . . . gone. Harvesttime . . . done. All that was left now was the butt end of autumn leafless trees, frozen ground, a lacing of ice along the banks of the Kenduskeag. In the fields, crows would sometimes land on the shoulders of Moe, Larry, and Curly, and stay as long as they liked. The scarecrows were voiceless, threatless. Mike would not exactly be dismayed by the thought of another year endingat nine and ten he was still too young to make mortal metaphorsbecause there was plenty to look forward to sledding in McCarron Park (or on Rhulin Hill out here in Derrytown if you were brave, although that was mostly for big kids), iceskating, snowball fights, snowfort building. There was time to think about snowshoeing out for a Christmas tree with his daddy, and time to think about the Nordica downhill skis he might or might not get for Christmas. Winter was good . . . but watching his father drive the A back into the barn (spring vanished summer gone harvesttime done) always made him feel sad, the way the squadrons of birds heading south for the winter made him feel sad, or the way a certain slant of light could sometimes make him feel like crying for no good reason. Were getting ready to go to sleep again.... It was not all school and chores, chores and school; Will Hanlon had told his wife more than once that a boy needed time to go fishing, even if it wasnt fishing he was really doing. When Mike came home from school he first put his books on the TV in the parlor, second made himself some kind of snack (he was particularly partial to peanutbutterandonion sandwiches, a taste that made his mother raise her hands in helpless horror), and third studied the note his father had left him, telling Mike where he, Will, was and what Mikes chores werecertain rows to be weeded or picked, baskets to be carried, produce to be rotated, the barn to be swept, whatever. But on at least one schoolday a weekand sometimes twothere would be no note. And on these days Mike would go fishing, even if it wasnt really fishing he was doing. Those were great days . . . days when he had no particular place to go and consequently felt no urge to get there in a hurry. Once in awhile his father left him another sort of note No chores, one might say. Go over to Old Cape  look at trolley tracks. Mike would go over to the Old Cape area, find the streets with the tracks still embedded in them, and inspect them closely, marvelling to think of things like trains that had run right through the middle of the streets. That night he and his father might talk about them, and his dad would show him pictures from his Derry album of the trolleys actually running a funny pole went from the roof of the trolley up to an electrical wire, and there were cigarette ads on the side. Another time he had sent Mike to Memorial Park, where the Standpipe was, to look at the birdbath, and once they had gone to the courthouse together to look at a terrible machine that Chief Borton had found in the attic. This gadget was called a trampchair. It was castiron, and there were manacles built into the arms and legs. Rounded knobs stuck out of the back and seat. It reminded Mike of a photograph he had seen in some booka photograph of the electric chair at Sing Sing. Chief Borton let Mike sit in the trampchair and try on the manacles. After the first ominous novelty of wearing the manacles wore off, Mike looked questioningly at his father and Chief Borton, not sure why this was supposed to be such a horrible punishment for the vags (Bortons word for them) that had drifted into town in the twenties and thirties. The knobs made the chair a little uncomfortable to sit in, sure, and the manacles on your wrists and ankles made it hard to shift to a more comfortable position, but Well, youre just a kid, Chief Borton said, laughing. What do you weigh? Seventy, eighty pounds? Most of the vags Sheriff Sully posted into that chair in the old days would go twice that. Theyd feel a bit oncomfortable after an hour or so, really oncomfortable after two or three, and right bad after four or five. After seven or eight hours theyd staat bellerin, and after sixteen or seventeen theyd staat cryin, mostly. And by the time their twentyfourhour tour was up, theyd be willin to swear before God and man that the next time they came riding the rods up New England way theyd give Derry a wide berth. So far as I know, most of em did. Twentyfour hours in the trampchair was a helluva persuader. Suddenly there seemed to be more knobs in the chair, digging more deeply into his buttocks, spine, the small of his back, even the nape of his neck. Can I get out now, please? he said politely, and Chief Borton laughed again. There was a moment, one panicked instant of time, when Mike thought the Chief would only dangle the key to the manacles in front of Mikes eyes and say, Sure Ill let you out ... when your twentyfour hours is up. Why did you take me there, Daddy? he asked on the way home. Youll know when youre older, Will had replied. You dont like Chief Borton, do you? No, his father had replied in a voice so curt that Mike hadnt dared ask any more. But Mike enjoyed most of the places in Derry his father sent or took him to, and by the time Mike was ten Will had succeeded in conveying his own interest in the layers of Derrys history to his son. Sometimes, as when he had been trailing his fingers over the slightly pebbled surface of the stand in which the Memorial Park birdbath was set, or when he had squatted down to look more closely at the trolley tracks which grooved Mont Street in the Old Cape, he would be struck by a profound sense of time . . . time as something real, as something that had unseen weight, the way sunlight was supposed to have weight (some of the kids in school had laughed when Mrs. Greenguss told them that, but Mike had been too stunned by the concept to laugh; his first thought had been, Light has weight? Oh my Lord, thats terrible!) ... time as something that would eventually bury him. The first note his father left him in that spring of 1958 was scribbled on the back of an envelope and held down with a saltshaker. The air was springwarm, wonderfully sweet, and his mother had opened all the windows. No chores, the note read. If you want to, ride your bike out to Pasture Road. Youll see a lot of tumbled masonry and old machinery out in the field on your left. Have a look around, bring back a souvenir. Dont go near the cellarhole! And be back before dark. You know why. Mike knew why, all right. He told his mother where he was going and she frowned. Why dont you see if Randy Robinson wants to go with you? Yeah, okay, Ill stop by and ask him, Mike said. He did, too, but Randy had gone up to Bangor with his father to buy seedling potatoes. So Mike rode his bike over to Pasture Road alone. It was a goodish ridea little over four miles. Mike reckoned it was three oclock by the time he leaned his bike against an old wooden slatfence on the left side of Pasture Road and climbed into the field beyond. He would have maybe an hour to explore and then he would have to start home again. Ordinarily, his mother would not be upset with him as long as he was back by six, when she put dinner on the table, but one memorable episode had taught him that wasnt the case this year. On that one occasion when he had been late for dinner, she had been nearly hysterical. She took after him with a dishrag, whopping him with it as he stood openmouthed in the kitchen entryway, his wicker creel with the rainbow trout in it at his feet. Dont you ever scare me like that! she had screamed. Dont you ever! Dont you ever! Evereverever! Each ever had been punctuated by another dishrag swat. Mike had expected his father to step in and put a stop to it, but his father hadnt done so.... Perhaps he knew that if he did she would turn her wildcat anger on him as well. Mike had learned the lesson; one whopping with the dishrag was all it took. Home before dark. Yes maam, righto. He walked across the field toward the titanic ruins standing in the center. This was, of course, the remains of the Kitchener Ironworkshe had ridden past it but had never thought to actually explore it, and he had never heard any kids saying that they had. Now, stooping to examine a few tumbled bricks that had formed a rough cairn, he thought he could understand why. The field was dazzlingly bright, washed by sun from the spring sky (occasionally, as a cloud passed before the sun, a great shutter of shadow would travel slowly across the field), but there was something spooky about it all the samea brooding silence that was broken only by the wind. He felt like an explorer who has found the last remnants of some fabulous lost city. Up ahead and to the right, he saw the rounded side of a massive tile cylinder rising out of the high field grass. He ran over to it. It was the Ironworks main smokestack. He peered into its bore, and felt a fresh chill worm up his spine. It was big enough so he could have walked into it if he had wanted. But he didnt want to; God knew what strange guck there might be, clinging to the smokeblackened inner tiles, or what nasty bugs or beasts might have taken up residence inside. The wind gusted. When it blew across the mouth of the fallen stack it made a sound eerily like the sound of the wind vibrating the waxed strings he and his dad put in the mooseblowers every spring. He stepped back nervously, suddenly thinking about the movie he and his father had watched last night on the Early Show. It had been called Rodan, and watching it had seemed like great fun at the time, his father laughing and shouting Git that bird, Mikey! every time Rodan made its appearance, Mike shooting with his finger until his mom popped her head in and told them to hush up before they gave her a headache with the noise. It didnt seem so funny now. In the movie Rodan had been released from the bowels of the earth by these Japanese coalminers who had been digging the worlds deepest tunnel. And looking into the black bore of this pipe, it was all too easy to imagine that bird crouched at the far end, leathery batlike wings folded over its back, staring at the small, round boyface looking into the darkness, staring, staring with its goldringed eyes.... Shivering, Mike pulled back. He walked aways down the smokestack, which had sunken into the earth to half of its circumference. The land rose slightly, and on impulse he scrambled his way up on top. The stack was a lot less scary on the outside, its tiled surface sunwarm. He got to his feet and strolled along, holding his arms out (the surface was really too wide for him to need to worry about falling off, but he was pretending he was a tightwirewalker in the circus), liking the way the wind blew through his hair. At the far end he jumped down and began to examine stuff more bricks, twisted molds, hunks of wood, pieces of rusty machinery. Bring back a souvenir, his fathers note had said he wanted a good one. He wandered closer to the mills yawning cellarhold, looking at the debris, being careful not to cut himself on the broken glass. There was a lot of it around. Mike was not unmindful of the cellarhold and his fathers warning to stay out of it; neither was he unmindful of the death that had been dealt out on this spot fiftyodd years before. He supposed that if there was a haunted place in Derry, this was it. But either in spite of that or because of it, he was determined to stay until he found something really good to take back and show his father. He moved slowly and soberly toward the cellarhold, changing his course to parallel its ragged side, when a warning voice inside whispered that he was getting too close, that a bank weakened by the spring rains could crumble under his heels and pitch him into that hole, where God only knew how much sharp iron might be waiting to impale him like a bug, leaving him to die a rusty twitching death. He picked up a windowsash and tossed it aside. Here was a dipper big enough for a giants table, its handle rippled and warped by some unimaginable flash of heat. Here was a piston too big for him to even budge, let alone lift. He stepped over it. He stepped over it and What if I find a skull? he thought suddenly. The skull of one of the kids who were killed here while they were hunting for chocolate Easter eggs back in nineteenwheneveritwas? He looked around the sunwashed empty field, nastily shocked by the idea. The wind blew a low conchnote in his ears and another shadow cruised silently across the field, like the shadow of a giant bat . . . or bird. He became aware all over again of how quiet it was here, and how strange the field looked with its straggling piles of masonry and its beached iron hulks leaning this way and that. It was as if some horrid battle had been fought here long ago. Dont be such a dip, he replied uneasily to himself. They found everything there was to find fifty years ago. After it happened. And even if they didnt, some other kidor grownupwould have found . . . the rest . . . since then. Or do you think youre the only person who ever came here hunting for souvenirs? No ... no, I dont think that. But ... But what? that rational side of his mind demanded, and Mike thought it was talking just a little too loud, a little too fast. Even if there was still something to find, it would have decayed long ago. So ... what? Mike found a splintered desk drawer in the weeds. He glanced at it, tossed it aside, and moved a little closer to the cellarhold, where the stuff was thickest. Surely he would find something there. But what if there are ghosts? Thats but what. What if I see hands coming over the edge of that cellarhold, and what if they start to come up, kids in the remains of their Easter Sunday clothes, clothes that are all rotted and torn and marked with fifty years of spring mud and fall rain and caked winter snow? Kids with no heads (he had heard at school that, after the explosion, a woman had found the head of one of the victims in a tree in her back yard), kids with no legs, kids flayed open like codfish, kids just like me who would maybe come down and play . . . down there where its dark ... under the leaning iron girders and the big old rusty cogs.... Oh, stop it, for the Lords sake! But a shudder wrenched its way up his back and he decided it was time to take somethinganythingand get the dickens out of here. He reached down, almost at random, and came up with a geartoothed wheel about seven inches in diameter. He had a pencil in his pocket and he used it, quickly, to dig the dirt out of the teeth. Then he slipped his souvenir in his pocket. He would go now. He would go, yes But his feet moved slowly in the wrong direction, toward the cellarhold, and he realized with a dismal sort of horror that he needed to look down inside. He had to see. He gripped a spongy supportbeam leaning out of the earth and swayed forward, trying to see down and inside. He couldnt quite do it. He had come to within fifteen feet of the edge, but that was still a little too far to see the bottom of the cellarhold. I dont care if I see the bottom or not. Im going back now. Ive got my souvenir. I dont need to look down into any crummy old hole. And Daddys note said to stay away from it. But the unhappy, almost feverish curiosity that had gripped him would not let go. He approached the cellarhold step by queasy step, aware that as soon as the wooden beam was out of his reach there would be no more grabholds, also aware that the ground here was indeed squelchy and crumbly. In places along the edge he could see depressions, like graves that had fallen in, and knew that they were the sites of previous caveins. Heart thudding in his chest like the hard measured strides of a soldiers boots, he reached the edge and looked down. Nested in the cellarhold, the bird looked up. Mike was not at first sure what he was seeing. All the nerves and pathways in his body seemed frozen, including those which conducted thoughts. It was not just the shock of seeing a monster bird, a bird whose breast was as orange as a robins and whose feathers were the unremarkable fluffy gray of a sparrows feathers; most of it was the shock of the utterly unexpected. He had expected monoliths of machinery halfsubmerged in stagnant puddles and black mud; instead he was looking down into a giant nest which filled the cellarhold from end to end and side to side. It had been made out of enough timothy grass to make a dozen bales of hay, but this grass was silvery and old. The bird sat in the middle of it, its brightly ringed eyes as black as fresh, warm tar, and for an insane moment before his paralysis broke, Mike could see himself reflected in each of them. Then the ground suddenly began to shift and run out from beneath his feet. He heard the tearing sound of shallow roots giving way and realized he was sliding. With a yell he threw himself backward, pinwheeling his arms for balance. He lost it and thumped heavily to the littered ground. Some hard, dull chunk of metal pressed painfully into his back, and he had time to think of the trampchair before he heard the whirring, explosive sound of the birds wings. He scrambled to his knees, crawled, looked back over his shoulder, and saw it rising out of the cellarhold. Its scaly talons were a dusky orange. Its beating wings, each more than ten feet across, blew the scraggy timothy grass this way and that, patternlessly, like the wind generated by helicopter rotors. It uttered a buzzing, chirruping scream. A few loose feathers slipped from its wings and spiraled back down into the cellarhold. Mike gained his feet again and began to run. He pounded across the field, not looking back now, afraid to look back. The bird did not look like Rodan, but he sensed it was the spirit of Rodan, risen from the cellarhold of the Kitchener Ironworks like a horrible birdinthebox. He stumbled, went to one knee, got up, and ran on. That weird chirruping buzzing screech came again. A shadow covered him and when he looked up he saw the thing it had passed less than five feet over his head. Its beak, dirty yellow, opened and closed, revealing a pink lining inside. It whirled back toward Mike. The wind it generated washed across his face, bringing a dry unpleasant smell with it attic dust, dead antiques, rotting cushions. He jigged to his left, and now he saw the fallen smokestack again. He sprinted for it, running allout, his arms pumping in short jabbing strokes at his sides. The bird screamed, and he heard its fluttering wings. They sounded like sails. Something slammed into the back of his head. Warm fire traced its way up the nape of his neck. He felt it spread as blood began to trickle down the back of his shirtcollar. The bird whirled around again, meaning to pick him up with its talons and carry him away like a hawk with a fieldmouse. Meaning to carry him back to its nest. Meaning to eat him. As it flew at him, swooping down, its black, horribly alive eyes fixed on him, Mike cut sharply right. The bird missed himbarely. The dusty smell of its wings was overpowering, unbearable. Now he was running parallel to the fallen smokestack, its tiles blurring by. He could see where it ended. If he could reach the end and buttonhook to the left, get inside, he might be safe. He thought the bird was too big to squeeze inside. He came very close to not making it. The bird flew at him again, pulling up as it closed in, its wings flapping and pushing air in a hurricane, its scaly talons now angled toward him and descending. It screamed again, and this time Mike thought he heard triumph in its voice. He lowered his head, put his arm up, and rammed straight forward. The talons closed and for a moment the bird had him by the forearm. The grip was like the clutch of incredibly strong fingers tipped with tough nails. They bit like teeth. The birds flapping wings were a thunder in his ears; he was dimly aware of feathers falling around him, some brushing past his cheeks like phantom kisses. The bird rose then, and for just a moment Mike felt himself pulled upward, first straight, then on tiptoe . . . and for one freezing second he felt the toes of his Keds lose contact with the earth. Let me GO! he screamed at it, and twisted his arm. For a moment the talons held on, and then the sleeve of his shirt ripped. He thumped back down. The bird squalled. Mike ran again, brushing through the things tailfeathers, gagging at that dry smell. It was like running through a showercurtain of feathers. Still coughing, eyes stinging from both tears and whatever vile dust coated the birds feathers, he stumbled into the fallen smokestack. There was no thought now of what might be lurking inside. He ran into the darkness, his gasping sobs taking on a flat echo. He went back perhaps twenty feet and then turned toward the bright circle of daylight. His chest was rising and falling in quick jerks. He was suddenly aware that, if he had misjudged either the size of the bird or the size of the smokestacks muzzle, he had killed himself as surely as if he had put his fathers shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. There was no way out. This wasnt just a pipe; it was a blind alley. The other end of the stack was buried in the earth. The bird squalled again, and suddenly the light at the end of the smokestack was blotted out as it lighted on the ground outside. He could see its yellow scaly legs, each as thick as a mans calf. Then it cocked its head down and looked inside. Mike found himself again staring into those hideously bright freshtar eyes with their gold weddingrings of iris. The birds beak opened and closed, opened and closed, and each time it snapped shut he heard an audible click, like the sound you hear in your own ears when you snap your teeth together hard. Sharp, he thought. Its beak is sharp. I guess I knew birds had sharp beaks, but I never really thought about it until now. It squawked again. The sound was so loud in the tile throat of the stack that Mike clapped his hands to his ears. The bird began to force itself into the mouth of the stack. No! Mike cried. No, you cant! The light faded as more of the birds body pressed its way into the stacks bore (Oh my Lord, why didnt I remember it was mostly feathers? Why didnt I remember it could squeeze?). The light faded . . . faded . . . was gone. Now there was only an inky blackness, the suffocating atticsmell of the bird, and the rustling sound of its feathers. Mike fell on his knees and began to grope on the curved floor of the smokestack, his hands spread wide, feeling. He found a piece of broken tile, its sharp edges furred with what felt like moss. He cocked his arm back and pegged it. There was a thump. The bird uttered its buzzing, chirruping sound again. Get out of here! Mike screamed. There was silence . . . and then that crackly, rustling sound began again as the bird resumed forcing itself into the pipe. Mike felt along the floor, found other pieces of tile, and began to throw one after another. They thumped and thudded off the bird and then clinked to the tile sleeve of the smokestack. Please, God, Mike thought incoherently. Please God, please God, please God It came to him that he ought to retreat down the smokestacks bore. He had run in through what had been the stacks base; it stood to reason that it would narrow as he backed up. He could retreat, yes, and listen to that low dusty rustle as the bird worked its way in after him. He could retreat, and if he was lucky he might get beyond the point where the bird could continue to advance. But what if the bird got stuck? If that happened, he and the bird would die in here together. They would die in here together and rot in here together. In the dark. Please, God! he screamed, and was totally unaware that he had cried out aloud. He threw another piece of tile, and this time his throw was more powerfulhe felt, he told the others much later, as if someone were behind him at that moment, and that someone had given his arm a tremendous push. This time there was no feathery thud; instead there was a splatting sound, the sound a kids hand might make slapping into the surface of a bowl of halfsolidified JellO. This time the bird screamed not in anger but in real pain. The tenebrous whirr of its wings filled the smokestack; stinking air streamed past Mike in a hurricane, flapping his clothes, making him cough and gag and retreat as dust and moss flew. Light appeared again, gray and weak at first, then brightening and shifting as the bird retreated from the stacks muzzle. Mike burst into tears, fell to his knees again, and began grubbing madly for more pieces of tile. Without any conscious thought, he ran forward with both hands full of tiling (in this light he could see the pieces were splotched with bluegray moss and lichen, like the surface of slate gravestones), until he was nearly at the mouth of the stack. He intended to keep the bird from coming back in if he could. It bent down, cocking its head the way a trained bird on a perch will sometimes cock its head, and Mike saw where his last shot had struck home. The birds right eye was nearly gone. Instead of that glittering bubble of fresh tar, there was a crater filled with blood. Whitishgray goo dripped from the corner of the socket and trickled along the side of the birds beak. Tiny parasites wriggled and squirmed in this pussy discharge. It saw him and lunged forward. Mike began to throw chunks of tile at it. They struck its head and beak. It withdrew for a moment and then lunged again, beak opening, revealing that pink lining again, revealing something else that caused Mike to freeze for a moment, his own mouth dropping open. The birds tongue was silver, its surface as crazycracked as the surface of a volcanic land which has first baked and then slagged off. And on this tongue, like weird tumbleweeds that had taken temporary root there, were a number of orange puffs. Mike threw the last of his tiles directly into that gaping maw and the bird withdrew again, screaming its frustration, rage, and pain. For a moment Mike could see its reptilian talons.... Then its wings ruffled the air and it was gone. A moment later he lifted his facea face that was graybrown under the dirt, dust, and bits of moss that the birds windmachine wings had blown at himtoward the clicking sound of its talons on the tile. The only clean places on Mikes face were the tracks that had been washed clean by his tears.