Suddenly he could smell peanuts! Hot roasted peanuts! And vinegar! The white kind you put on your french fries through a hole in the cap! He could smell cotton candy and frying doughboys and the faint but thunderous odor of wildanimal shit. He could smell the cheery aroma of midway sawdust. And yet ... And yet under it all was the smell of flood and decomposing leaves and dark stormdrain shadows. That smell was wet and rotten. The cellarsmell. But the other smells were stronger. You bet I can smell it, he said. Want your boat, Georgie? Pennywise asked. I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager. He held it up, smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electricblue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore. Yes, sure, George said, looking into the stormdrain. And a balloon? Ive got red and green and yellow and blue. . . . Do they float? Float? The clowns grin widened. Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And theres cotton candy. . . . George reached. The clown seized his arm. And George saw the clowns face change. What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke. They float, the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held Georges arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or bolted out onto their porches. They float, it growled, they float, Georgie, and when youre down here with me, youll float, too Georges shoulder socked against the cement of the curb and Dave Gardener, who had stayed home from his job at The Shoeboat that day because of the flood, saw only a small boy in a yellow rainslicker, a small boy who was screaming and writhing in the gutter with muddy water surfing over his face and making his screams sound bubbly. Everything down here floats, that chuckling, rotten voice whispered, and suddenly there was a ripping noise and a flaring sheet of agony, and George Denbrough knew no more. Dave Gardener was the first to get there, and although he arrived only fortyfive seconds after the first scream, George Denbrough was already dead. Gardener grabbed him by the back of the slicker, pulled him into the street . . . and began to scream himself as Georges body turned over in his hands. The left side of Georges slicker was now bright red. Blood flowed into the stormdrain from the tattered hole where the left arm had been. A knob of bone, horribly bright, peeked through the torn cloth. The boys eyes stared up into the white sky, and as Dave staggered away toward the others already running pellmell down the street, they began to fill up with rain. 4 Somewhere below, in the stormdrain that was already filled nearly to capacity with runoff (there could have been no one down there, the County Sheriff would later exclaim to a Derry News reporter with a frustrated fury so great it was almost agony; Hercules himself would have been swept away in that driving current), Georges newspaper boat shot onward through nighted chambers and long concrete hallways that roared and chimed with water. For awhile it ran neckandneck with a dead chicken that floated with its yellowy, reptilian toes pointed at the dripping ceiling; then, at some junction east of town, the chicken was swept off to the left while Georges boat went straight. An hour later, while Georges mother was being sedated in the Emergency Room at Derry Home Hospital and while Stuttering Bill sat stunned and white and silent in his bed, listening to his father sob hoarsely in the parlor where his mother had been playing Fr Elise when George went out, the boat shot out through a concrete loophole like a bullet exiting the muzzle of a gun and ran at speed down a sluiceway and into an unnamed stream. When it joined the boiling, swollen Penobscot River twenty minutes later, the first rifts of blue had begun to show in the sky overhead. The storm was over. The boat dipped and swayed and sometimes took on water, but it did not sink; the two brothers had waterproofed it well. I do not know where it finally fetched up, if ever it did; perhaps it reached the sea and sails there forever, like a magic boat in a fairytale. All I know is that it was still afloat and still running on the breast of the flood when it passed the incorporated town limits of Derry, Maine, and there it passes out of this tale forever. CHAPTER 2 After the Festival (1984) 1 The reason Adrian was wearing the hat, his sobbing boyfriend would later tell the police, was because he had won it at the Pitch Til U Win stall on the Bassey Park fairgrounds just six days before his death. He was proud of it. He was wearing it because he loved this shitty little town! the boyfriend, Don Hagarty, screamed at the cops. Now, nowtheres no need for that sort of language, Officer Harold Gardener told Hagarty. Harold Gardener was one of Dave Gardeners four sons. On the day his father had discovered the lifeless, onearmed body of George Denbrough, Harold Gardener had been five. On this day, almost twentyseven years later, he was thirtytwo and balding. Harold Gardener recognized the reality of Don Hagartys grief and pain, and at the same time found it impossible to take seriously. This manif you want to call him a manwas wearing lipstick and satin pants so tight you could almost read the wrinkles in his cock. Grief or no grief, pain or no pain, he was, after all, just a queer. Like his friend, the late Adrian Mellon. Lets go through it again, Harolds partner, Jeffrey Reeves, said. The two of you came out of the Falcon and turned toward the Canal. Then what? How many times do I have to tell you idiots? Hagarty was still screaming. They killed him! They pushed him over the side! Just another day in Macho City for them! Don Hagarty began to cry. One more time, Reeves repeated patiently. You came out of the Falcon. Then what? 2 In an interrogation room just down the hall, two Derry cops were speaking with Steve Dubay, seventeen; in the Clerk of Probates office upstairs, two more were questioning John Webby Garton, eighteen; and in the Chief of Polices office on the fifth floor, Chief Andrew Rademacher and Assistant District Attorney Tom Boutillier were questioning fifteenyearold Christopher Unwin. Unwin, who wore faded jeans, a greasesmeared teeshirt, and blocky engineer boots, was weeping. Rademacher and Boutillier had taken him because they had quite accurately assessed him as the weak link in the chain. Lets go through it again, Boutillier said in this office just as Jeffrey Reeves was saying the same thing two floors down. We didnt mean to kill him, Unwin blubbered. It was the hat. We couldnt believe he was still wearing the hat after, you know, after what Webby said the first time. And I guess we wanted to scare him. For what he said, Chief Rademacher interjected. Yes. To John Garton, on the afternoon of the 17th. Yes, to Webby. Unwin burst into fresh tears. But we tried to save him when we saw he was in trouble ... at least me and Stevie Dubay did ... we didnt mean to kill him! Come on, Chris, dont shit us, Boutillier said. You threw the little queer into the Canal. Yes, but And the three of you came in to make a clean breast of things. Chief Rademacher and I appreciate that, dont we, Andy? You bet. It takes a man to own up to what he did, Chris.  So dont fuck yourself up by lying now. You meant to throw him over the minute you saw him and his fag buddy coming out of the Falcon, didnt you? No! Chris Unwin protested vehemently. Boutillier took a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and stuck one in his mouth. He offered the pack to Unwin. Cigarette? Unwin took one. Boutillier had to chase the tip with a match in order to give him a light because of the way Unwins mouth was trembling. But when you saw he was wearing the hat? Rademacher asked. Unwin dragged deep, lowered his head so that his greasy hair fell in his eyes, and jetted smoke from his nose, which was littered with blackheads. Yeah, he said, almost too softly to be heard. Boutillier leaned forward, brown eyes gleaming. His face was predatory but his voice was gentle. What, Chris? I said yes. I guess so. To throw him in. But not to kill him. He looked up at them, face frantic and miserable and still unable to comprehend the stupendous changes which had taken place in his life since he left the house to take in the last night of Derrys Canal Days Festival with two of his buddies at seventhirty the previous evening. Not to kill him! he repeated. And that guy under the bridge ... I still dont know who he was. What guy was that? Rademacher asked, but without much interest. They had heard this part before as well, and neither of them believed itsooner or later men accused of murder almost always drag out that mysterious other guy. Boutillier even had a name for it he called it the OneArmed Man Syndrome, after that old TV series The Fugitive. The guy in the clown suit, Chris Unwin said, and shivered. The guy with the balloons. 3 The Canal Days Festival, which ran from July 15th to July 21st, had been a rousing success, most Derry residents agreed a great thing for the citys morale, image ... and pocketbook. The weeklong festival was pegged to mark the centenary of the opening of the Canal which ran through the middle of downtown. It had been the Canal which had fully opened Derry to the lumber trade in the years 1884 to 1910; it had been the Canal which had birthed Derrys boom years. The town was spruced up from east to west and north to south. Potholes which some residents swore hadnt been patched for ten years or more were neatly filled with hottop and rolled smooth. The town buildings were refurbished on the inside, repainted on the outside. The worst of the graffiti in Bassey Parkmuch of it coolly logical antigay statements such as KILL ALL QUEERS and AIDS FROM GOD YOU HELLBOUND HOMOS!!was sanded off the benches and wooden walls of the little covered walkway over the Canal known as the Kissing Bridge. A Canal Days Museum was installed in three empty storefronts downtown, and filled with exhibits by Michael Hanlon, a local librarian and amateur historian. The towns oldest families loaned freely of their almost priceless treasures, and during the week of the festival nearly forty thousand visitors paid a quarter each to look at eatinghouse menus from the 1890s, loggers bitts, axes, and peaveys from the 1880s, childrens toys from the 1920s, and over two thousand photographs and nine reels of movie film of life as it had been in Derry over the last hundred years. The museum was sponsored by the Derry Ladies Society, which vetoed some of Hanlons proposed exhibits (such as the notorious trampchair from the 1930s) and photographs (such as those of the Bradley Gang after the notorious shootout). But all agreed it was a great success, and no one really wanted to see those gory old things anyway. It was so much better to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, as the old song said. There was a huge striped refreshment tent in Derry Park, and band concerts there every night. In Bassey Park there was a carnival with rides by Smokeys Greater Shows and games run by local townfolk. A special tramcar circled the historic sections of the town every hour on the hour and ended up at this gaudy and amiable moneymachine. It was here that Adrian Mellon won the hat which would get him killed, the paper tophat with the flower and the band which said IDERRY! 4 Im tired, John Webby Garton said. Like his two friends, he was dressed in unconscious imitation of Bruce Springsteen, although if asked he would probably call Springsteen a wimp or a fagola and would instead profess admiration for such bitchin heavymetal groups as Def Leppard, Twisted Sister, or Judas Priest. The sleeves of his plain blue teeshirt were torn off, showing his heavily muscled arms. His thick brown hair fell over one eyethis touch was more John Cougar Mellencamp than Springsteen. There were blue tattoos on his armsarcane symbols which looked as if they had been drawn by a child. I dont want to talk no more. Just tell us about Tuesday afternoon at the fair, Paul Hughes said. Hughes was tired and shocked and dismayed by this whole sordid business. He thought again and again that it was as if Derry Canal Days ended with one final event which everyone had somehow known about but which no one had quite dared to put down on the Daily Program of Events. If they had, it would have looked like this Saturday, 900 P.M. Final band concert featuring the Derry High School Band and the Barber Shop MelloMen. Saturday, 1000 P.M. Giant fireworks show. Saturday, 1035 P.M. Ritual sacrifice of Adrian Mellon officially ends Canal Days. Fuck the fair, Webby replied. Just what you said to Mellon and what he said to you. Oh Christ. Webby rolled his eyes. Come on, Webby, Hughess partner said. Webby Garton rolled his eyes and began again. 5 Garton saw the two of them, Mellon and Hagarty, mincing along with their arms about each others waists and giggling like a couple of girls. At first he actually thought they were a couple of girls. Then he recognized Mellon, who had been pointed out to him before. As he looked, he saw Mellon turn to Hagarty ... and they kissed briefly. Oh, man, Im gonna barf! Webby cried, disgusted. Chris Unwin and Steve Dubay were with him. When Webby pointed out Mellon, Steve Dubay said he thought the other fag was named Don somebody, and that hed picked up a kid from Derry High hitching and then tried to put a few moves on him. Mellon and Hagarty began to move toward the three boys again, walking away from the Pitch Til U Win and toward the carnys exit. Webby Garton would later tell Officers Hughes and Conley that his civic pride had been wounded by seeing a fucking faggot wearing a hat which said IDERRY. It was a silly thing, that hata paper imitation of a top hat with a great big flower sticking up from the top and nodding about in every direction. The silliness of the hat apparently wounded Webbys civic pride even more. As Mellon and Hagarty passed, each with his arm linked about the others waist, Webby Garton yelled out I ought to make you eat that hat, you fucking assbandit! Mellon turned toward Garton, fluttered his eyes flirtatiously, and said If you want something to eat, hon, I can find something much tastier than my hat. At this point Webby Garton decided he was going to rearrange the faggots face. In the geography of Mellons face, mountains would rise and continents would drift. Nobody suggested he sucked the root. Nobody. He started toward Mellon. Mellons friend Hagarty, alarmed, attempted to pull Mellon away, but Mellon stood his ground, smiling. Garton would later tell Officers Hughes and Conley that he was pretty sure Mellon was high on something. So he was, Hagarty would agree when this idea was passed on to him by Officers Gardener and Reeves. He was high on two fried doughboys smeared with honey, on the carnival, on the whole day. He had been consequently unable to recognize the real menace which Webby Garton represented. But that was Adrian, Don said, using a tissue to wipe his eyes and smearing the spangled eyeshadow he was wearing. He didnt have much in the way of protective coloration. He was one of those fools who think things really are going to turn out all right. He might have been badly hurt there and then if Garton hadnt felt something tap his elbow. It was a nightstick. He turned his head to see Officer Frank Machen, another member of Derrys Finest. Never mind, little buddy, Machen told Garton. Mind your business and leave those little gay boyos alone. Have some fun. Did you hear what he called me? Garton asked hotly. He was now joined by Unwin and Dubaythe two of them, smelling trouble, tried to urge Garton on up the midway, but Garton shrugged them away, would have turned on them with his fists if they had persisted. His masculinity had borne an insult which he felt must be avenged. Nobody suggested he sucked the root. Nobody. I dont believe he called you anything, Machen replied. And you spoke to him first, I believe. Now move on, sonny. I dont want to have to tell you again. He called me a queer! Are you worried you might be, then? Machen asked, seeming to be honestly interested, and Garton flushed a deep ugly red. During this exchange, Hagarty was trying with increasing desperation to pull Adrian Mellon away from the scene. Now, at last, Mellon was going. Tata, love! Adrian called cheekily over his shoulder. Shut up, candyass, Machen said. Get out of here. Garton made a lunge at Mellon, and Machen grabbed him. I can run you in, my friend, Machen said, and the way youre acting, it might not be such a bad idea. Next time I see you Im gonna hurtyou! Garton bellowed after the departing pair, and heads turned to stare at him. And if youre wearing that hat, Im gonna kill you! This town dont need no faggots like you! Without turning, Mellon waggled the fingers of his left handthe nails were painted ceriseand put an extra little wiggle in his walk. Garton lunged again. One more word or one more move and in you go, Machen said mildly. Trust me, my boy, for I mean exactly what I say. Come on, Webby, Chris Unwin said uneasily. Mellow out. You like guys like that? Webby asked Machen, ignoring Chris and Steve completely. Huh? About the bumpunchers Im neutral, Machen said. What Im really in favor of is peace and quiet, and you are upsetting what I like, pizza face. Now do you want to go a round with me or what? Come on, Webby, Steve Dubay said quietly. Lets go get some hot dogs. Webby went, straightening his shirt with exaggerated moves and brushing the hair out of his eyes. Machen, who also gave a statement on the morning following Adrian Mellons death, said The last thing I heard him say as him and his buddies walked off was, Next time I see him hes going to be in serious hurt.  6 Please, I got to talk to my mother, Steve Dubay said for the third time. Ive got to get her to mellow out my stepfather, or there is going to be one hell of a punchingmatch when I get home. In a little while, Officer Charles Avarino told him. Both Avarino and his partner, Barney Morrison, knew that Steve Dubay would not be going home tonight and maybe not for many nights to come. The boy did not seem to realize just how heavy this particular bust was, and Avarino would not be surprised when he learned, later on, that Dubay had left school at age sixteen. At that time he had still been in Water Street Junior High. His IQ was 68, according to the Wechsler he had taken during one of his three trips through the seventh grade. Tell us what happened when you saw Mellon coming out of the Falcon, Morrison invited. No, man, I better not. Well, why not? Avarino asked. I already talked too much, maybe. You came in to talk, Avarino said. Isnt that right? Well . . . yeah ... but ... Listen, Morrison said warmly, sitting down next to Dubay and shooting him a cigarette. You think me and Chick here like fags? I dont know Do we look like we like fags? No, but . . . Were your friends, Steveo, Morrison said solemnly. And believe me, you and Chris and Webby need all the friends you can get just about now. Because tomorrow every bleeding heart in this town is going to be screaming for you guyss blood. Steve Dubay looked dimly alarmed. Avarino, who could almost read this hairbags pussy little mind, suspected he was thinking about his stepfather again. And although Avarino had no liking for Derrys small gay communitylike every other cop on the force, he would enjoy seeing the Falcon shut up foreverhe would have been delighted to drive Dubay home himself. He would, in fact, have been delighted to hold Dubays arms while Dubays stepfather beat the creep to oatmeal. Avarino did not like gays, but this did not mean he believed they should be tortured and murdered. Mellon had been savaged. When they brought him up from under the Canal bridge, his eyes had been open, bulging with terror. And this guy here had absolutely no idea of what he had helped do. We didnt mean to hurt im, Steve repeated. This was his fallback position when he became even slightly confused. Thats why you want to get out front with us, Avarino said earnestly. Get the true facts of the matter out in front, and this maybe wont amount to a pisshole in the snow. Isnt that right, Barney? As rain, Morrison agreed. One more time, what do you say? Avarino coaxed. Well ... Steve said, and then, slowly, began to talk. 7 When the Falcon was opened in 1973, Elmer Curtie thought his clientele would consist mostly of busridersthe terminal next door serviced three different lines Trailways, Greyhound, and Aroostook County. What he failed to realize was how many of the passengers who ride buses are women or families with small children in tow. Many of the others kept their bottles in brown bags and never got off the bus at all. Those who did were usually soldiers or sailors who wanted no more than a quick beer or twoyou couldnt very well go on a bender during a tenminute reststop. Curtie had begun to realize some of these home truths by 1977, but by then it was too late he was up to his tits in bills and there was no way that he could see out of the red ink. The idea of burning the place down for the insurance occurred to him, but unless he hired a professional to torch it, he supposed he would be caught ... and he had no idea where professional arsonists hung out, anyway. He decided in February of that year that he would give it until July 4th; if things didnt look as if they were turning around by then, he would simply walk next door, get on a hound, and see how things looked down in Florida. But in the next five months, an amazing quiet sort of prosperity came to the bar, which was painted black and gold inside and decorated with stuffed birds (Elmer Curties brother had been an amateur taxidermist who specialized in birds, and Elmer had inherited the stuff when he died). Suddenly, instead of drawing sixty beers and pouring maybe twenty drinks a night, Elmer was drawing eighty beers and pouring a hundred drinks ... a hundred and twenty ... sometimes a hundred and sixty. His clientele was young, polite, almost exclusively male. Many of them dressed outrageously, but those were years when outrageous dress was still almost the norm, and Elmer Curtie did not realize that his patrons were just about almost exclusively gay until 1981 or so. If Derry residents had heard him say this, they would have laughed and said that Elmer Curtie must think they had all been born yesterdaybut his claim was perfectly true. Like the with the cheating wife, he was practically the last to know . . . by the time he did, he didnt care. The bar was making money, and while there were four other bars in Derry which turned a profit, the Falcon was the only one where rambunctious patrons did not regularly demolish the whole place. There were no women to fight over, for one thing, and these men, fags or not, seemed to have learned a secret of getting along with each other which their heterosexual counterparts did not know. Once he became aware of the sexual preference of his regulars, he seemed to hear lurid stories about the Falcon everywherethese stories had been circulating for years, but until 81 Curtie simply hadnt heard them. The most enthusiastic tellers of these tales, he came to realize, were men who wouldnt be dragged into the Falcon with a chainfall for fear all the muscles would go out of their wrists, or something. Yet they seemed privy to all sorts of information. According to the stories, you could go in there any night and see men closedancing, rubbing their cocks together right out on the dancefloor; men frenchkissing at the bar; men getting blowjobs in the bathrooms. There was supposedly a room out back where you went if you wanted to spend a little time on the Tower of Powerthere was a big old fellow in a Nazi uniform back there who kept his arm greased most of the way to the shoulder and who would be happy to take care of you. In fact, none of these things were true. When folks with a thirst did come in from the bus station for a beer or a highball, they sensed nothing out of the ordinary in the Falcon at allthere were a lot of guys, sure, but that was no different than thousands of workingmens bars all across the country. The clientele was gay, but gay was not a synonym for stupid. If they wanted a little outrageousness, they went to Portland. If they wanted a lot of outrageousnessRamrodstyle outrageousness or Pecks Big Boystyle outrageousnessthey went down to New York or Boston. Derry was small, Derry was provincial, and Derrys small gay community understood the shadow under which it existed quite well. Don Hagarty had been coming into the Falcon for two or three years on the night in March of 1984 when he first showed up with Adrian Mellon. Before then, Hagarty had been the sort who plays the field, rarely showing up with the same escort half a dozen times. But by late April it had become obvious even to Elmer Curtie, who cared very little about such things, that Hagarty and Mellon had a steady thing going. Hagarty was a draftsman with an engineering firm in Bangor. Adrian Mellon was a freelance writer who published anywhere and everywhere he couldairline magazines, confession magazines, regional magazines, Sunday supplements, sexletter magazines. He had been working on a novel, but maybe that wasnt serioushe had been working on it since his third year of college, and that had been twelve years ago. He had come to Derry to write a piece about the Canalhe was on assignment from New England Byways, a glossy bimonthly that was published in Concord. Adrian Mellon had taken the assignment because he could squeeze Byways for three weeks worth of expense money, including a nice room at the Derry Town House, and gather all the material he needed for the piece in maybe five days. During the other two weeks he could gather enough material for maybe four other regional pieces. But during that threeweek period he met Don Hagarty, and instead of going back to Portland when his three weeks on the cuff were over, he found himself a small apartment on Kossuth Lane. He lived there for only six weeks. Then he moved in with Don Hagarty. 8 That summer, Hagarty told Harold Gardener and Jeff Reeves, was the happiest summer of his lifehe should have been on the lookout, he said; he should have known that God only puts a rug under guys like him in order to jerk it out from under their feet. The only shadow, he said, was Adrians extravagantly partisan reaction to Derry. He had a teeshirt which said MAINE AINT BAD BUT DERRYS GREAT! He had a Derry Tigers highschool jacket. And of course there was the hat. He claimed to find the atmosphere vital and creatively invigorating. Perhaps there was something to this he had taken his languishing novel out of the trunk for the first time in nearly a year. Was he really working on it, then? Gardener asked Hagarty, not really caring but wanting to keep Hagarty primed. Yeshe was busting pages. He said it might be a terrible novel, but it was no longer going to be a terrible unfinished novel. He expected to finish it by his birthday, in October. Of course, he didnt know what Derry was really like. He thought he did, but he hadnt been here long enough to get a whiff of the real Derry. I kept trying to tell him, but he wouldnt listen. And whats Derry really like, Don? Reeves asked. Its a lot like a dead strumpet with maggots squirming out of her cooze, Don Hagarty said. The two cops stared in silent amazement. Its a bad place, Hagarty said. Its a sewer. You mean you two guys dont know that? You two guys have lived here all of your lives and you dont know that? Neither of them answered. After a little while, Hagarty went on. 9 Until Adrian Mellon entered his life, Don had been planning to leave Derry. He had been there for three years, mostly because he had agreed to a longterm lease on an apartment with the worlds most fantastic riverview, but now the lease was almost up and Don was glad. No more long commute back and forth to Bangor. No more weird vibesin Derry, he once told Adrian, it always felt like thirteen oclock. Adrian might think Derry was a great place, but it scared Don. It was not just the towns tightly homophobic attitude, an attitude as clearly expressed by the towns preachers as by the graffiti in Bassey Park, but that was one thing he had been able to put his finger on. Adrian had laughed. Don, every town in America has a contingent that hates the gayfolk, he said. Dont tell me you dont know that. This is, after all, the era of Ronnie Moron and Phyllis Housefly. Come down to Bassey Park with me, Don had replied, after seeing that Adrian really meant what he was sayingand what he was really saying was that Derry was no worse than any other fairsized town in the hinterlands. I want to show you something, my love. They drove to Bassey Parkthis had been in midJune, about a month before Adrians murder, Hagarty told the cops. He took Adrian into the dark, vaguely unpleasantsmelling shadows of the Kissing Bridge. He pointed out one of the graffiti. Adrian had to strike a match and hold it below the writing in order to read it. SHOW ME YOUR COCK QUEER AND ILL CUT IT OFF YOU. I know how people feel about gays, Don said quietly. I got beaten up at a truckstop in Dayton when I was a teenager; some fellows in Portland set my shoes on fire outside of a sandwich shop while this fatassed old cop sat inside his cruiser and laughed. Ive seen a lot . . . but Ive never seen anything quite like this. Look over here. Check it out. Another match revealed STICK NAILS IN EYES OF ALL FAGOTS (FOR GOD)! Whoever writes these little homilies has got a case of the deepdown crazies. Id feel better if I thought it was just one person, one isolated sickie, but ... Don swept his arm vaguely down the length of the Kissing Bridge. Theres a lot of this stuff ... and I just dont think one person did it all. Thats why I want to leave Derry, Ade. Too many places and too many people seem to have the deepdown crazies. Well, wait until I finish my novel, okay? Please? October, I promise, no later. The airs better here. He didnt know it was the water he was going to have to watch out for, Don Hagarty said bitterly. 10 Tom Boutillier and Chief Rademacher leaned forward, neither of them speaking. Chris Unwin sat with his head down, talking monotonously to the floor. This was the part they wanted to hear; this was the part that was going to send at least two of these assholes to Thomaston. The fair wasnt no good, Unwin said. They was already takin down all the bitchin rides, you know, like the Devil Dish and the Parachute Drop. They already had a sign on the Bumper Cars that said closed. Wasnt nothing open but baby rides. So we went down by the games and Webby saw the Pitch Til U Win and he paid fifty cents and he seen that hat the queer was wearing and he pitched at that, but he kept missing it, and every time he missed he got more in a bad mood, you know? And Stevehes the guy who usually goes around saying mellow out, like mellow out this and mellow out that and why dont you fuckin mellow out, you know? Only he was in a real pissuparope mood because he took this pill, you know? I dont know what kind of a pill. A red pill. Maybe it was even legal.


But he keeps after Webby until I thought Webby was gonna hit him, you know. He goes, You cant even win that queers hat. You must be really wasted if you cant even win that queers hat. So finally the lady gives im a prize even though the ring wasnt over it, cause I think she wanted to get rid of us. I dont know. Maybe she didnt. But I think she did. It was this noisemaker thing, you know? You blow it and it puffs up and unrolls and makes a noise like a fart, you know? I used to have one of those. I got it for Halloween or New Years or some fuckin holiday, I thought it was pretty good, only I lost it. Or maybe somebody hawked it out of my pocket in the fuckin playyard at school, you know? So then the fairs closin and were walkin out and Steves still on Webby about not bein able to win that queers hat, you know, and Webby aint sayin much, and I know thats a bad sign but I was pretty faced, you know? So I knew I ought to like change the subject only I couldnt think of no subject, you know? So when we get into the parkin lot Steve says, Where you want to go? Home? And Webby goes, Lets cruise by the Falcon first and see if that queers around. Boutillier and Rademacher exchanged a glance. Boutillier raised a single finger and tapped it against his cheek although this doofus in the engineer boots didnt know it, he was now talking about firstdegree murder. So I goes no, I gotta get home, and Webby goes, You scared to go by that queerbar? And I go, Fuck no! And Steves still high or something, and he says, Lets go grease some queermeat! Lets go grease some queermeat! Lets go grease . . . 11 The timing was just right enough so that things worked out wrong for everyone. Adrian Mellon and Don Hagarty came out of the Falcon after two beers, walked up past the bus station, and then linked hands. Neither of them thought about it; it was just something they did. It was tentwenty. They reached the corner and turned left. The Kissing Bridge was almost half a mile upriver from here; they meant to cross Main Street Bridge, which was much less picturesque. The Kenduskeag was summerlow, no more than four feet of water sliding listlessly around the concrete pilings. When the Duster drew abreast of them (Steve Dubay had spotted the two of them coming out of the Falcon and gleefully pointed them out), they were on the edge of the span. Cut in! Cut in! Webby Garton screamed. The two men had just passed under a streetlight and he had spotted the fact that they were holding hands. This infuriated him ... but not as much as the hat infuriated him. The big paper flower was nodding crazily this way and that. Cut in, goddammit! And Steve did. Chris Unwin would deny active participation in what followed, but Don Hagarty told a different story. He said that Garton was out of the car almost before it stopped,and that the other two quickly followed. There was talk. Not good talk. There was no attempt at flippancy or false coquetry on Adrians part this night; he recognized that they were in a lot of trouble. Give me that hat, Garton said. Give it to me, queer. If I do, will you leave us alone? Adrian was wheezing with fright, almost crying, looking from Unwin to Dubay to Garton with terrified eyes. Just give me the fucker! Adrian handed it over. Garton produced a switchknife from the left front pocket of his jeans and cut it into two pieces. He rubbed the pieces against the seat of his jeans. Then he dropped them to his feet and stomped them. Don Hagarty backed away a little while their attention was divided between Adrian and the hathe was looking, he said, for a cop. Now will you let us al Adrian Mellon began, and that was when Garton punched him in the face, driving him back against the waisthigh pedestrian railing of the bridge. Adrian screamed, clapping his hands to his mouth. Blood poured through his fingers. Ade! Hagarty cried, and ran forward again. Dubay tripped him. Garton booted him in the stomach, knocking him off the sidewalk and into the roadway. A car passed. Hagarty rose to his knees and screamed at it. It didnt slow. The driver, he told Gardener and Reeves, never even looked around. Shut up, queer! Dubay said, and kicked him in the side of the face. Hagarty fell on his side in the gutter, semiconscious. A few moments later he heard a voiceChris Unwinstelling him to get away before he got what his friend was getting. In his own statement Unwin verified giving this warning. Hagarty could hear thudding blows and the sound of his lover screaming. Adrian sounded like a rabbit in a snare, he told the police. Hagarty crawled back toward the intersection and the bright lights of the bus station, and when he was a distance away he turned back to look. Adrian Mellon, who stood about fivefive and might have weighed a hundred and thirtyfive pounds soaking wet, was being pushed from Garton to Dubay to Unwin in a kind of triple play. His body jittered and flopped like the body of a rag doll. They were punching him, pummelling him, ripping at his clothes. As he watched, he said, Garton punched Adrian in the crotch. Adrians hair hung in his face. Blood poured out of his mouth and soaked his shirt. Webby Garton wore two heavy rings on his right hand one was a Derry High School ring, the other one he had made in shop classan intertwined brass DB stood out three inches from this latter. The letters stood for the Dead Bugs, a metal band he particularly admired. The rings had torn Adrians upper lip open and shattered three of his upper teeth at the gum line. Help! Hagarty shrieked. Help! Help! Theyre killing him! Help! The buildings of Main Street loomed dark and secret. No one came to helpnot even from the one white island of light which marked the bus station, and Hagarty did not see how that could be there were people in there. He had seen them when he and Ade walked past. Would none of them come to help? None at all? HELP! HELP! THEYRE KILLING HIM, HELP, PLEASE, FOR GODS SAKE! Help, a very small voice whispered from Don Hagartys left . . . and then there was a giggle. Bums rush! Garton was yelling now ... yelling and laughing. All three of them, Hagarty told Gardener and Reeves, had been laughing while they beat Adrian up. Bums rush! Over the side! Bums rush! Bums rush! Bums rush! Dubay chanted, laughing. Help, the small voice said again, and although the voice was grave, that little giggle followed againit was like the voice of a child who cannot help itself. Hagarty looked down and saw the clownand it was at this point that Gardener and Reeves began to discount everything that Hagarty said, because the rest was the raving of a lunatic. Later, however, Harold Gardener found himself wondering. Later, when he found that the Unwin boy had also seen a clownor said he hadhe began to have second thoughts. His partner either never had them or would never admit to them. The clown, Hagarty said, looked like a cross between Ronald McDonald and that old TV clown, Bozoor so he thought at first. It was the wild tufts of orange hair that brought such comparisons to mind. But later consideration had caused him to think the clown really looked like neither. The smile painted over the white pancake was red, not orange, and the eyes were a weird shiny silver. Contact lenses, perhaps . . . but a part of him thought then and continued to think that maybe that silver had been the real color of those eyes. He wore a baggy suit with big orangepompom buttons; on his hands were cartoon gloves. If you need help, Don, the clown said, help yourself to a balloon. And it offered the bunch it held in one hand. They float, the clown said. Down here we all float; pretty soon your friend will float, too. 12 This clown called you by name, Jeff Reeves said in a totally expressionless voice. He looked over Hagartys bent head at Harold Gardener, and one eye drew down in a wink. Yes, Hagarty said, not looking up. I know how it sounds. 13 So then you threw him over, Boutillier said. Bums rush. Not me! Unwin said, looking up. He flicked the hair out of his eyes with one hand and stared at them urgently. When I saw they really meant to do it, I tried to pull Steve away, because I knew the guy might get banged up.... It was like ten feet to the water.... It was twentythree. One of Chief Rademachers patrolmen had already measured. But it was like he was crazy. The two of them kept yelling Bums rush! Bums rush! and they picked him up. Webby had him under the arms and Steve had him by the seat of the pants, and . . . and . . . 14 When Hagarty saw what they were doing, he rushed back toward them, screaming No! No! No! at the top of his voice. Chris Unwin pushed him backward and Hagarty landed in a teethrattling heap on the sidewalk. Do you want to go over, too? he whispered. You run, baby! They threw Adrian Mellon over the bridge and into the water then. Hagarty heard the splash. Lets get out of here, Steve Dubay said. He and Webby were backing toward the car. Chris Unwin went to the railing and looked over. He saw Hagarty first, sliding and clawing his way down the weedy, trashlittered embankment to the water. Then he saw the clown. The clown was dragging Adrian out on the far side with one arm; its balloons were in its other hand. Adrian was dripping wet, choking, moaning. The clown twisted its head and grinned up at Chris. Chris said he saw its shining silver eyes and its bared teethgreat big teeth, he said. Like the lion in the circus, man, he said. I mean, they were that big. Then, he said, he saw the clown shove one of Adrian Mellons arms back so it lay over his head. Then what, Chris? Boutillier said. He was bored with this part. Fairytales had bored him since the age of eight on. I dunno, Chris said. That was when Steve grabbed me and hauled me into the car. But ... I think it bit into his armpit. He looked up at them again, uncertain now. I think thats what it did. Bit into his armpit. Like it wanted to eat him, man. Like it wanted to eat his heart. 15 No, Hagarty said when he was presented with Chris Unwins story in the form of questions. The clown did not drag Ade up on the far bank, at least not that he sawand he would grant that he had been something less than a disinterested observer by that point; by that point he had been out of his fucking mind. The clown, he said, was standing near the far bank with Adrians dripping body clutched in its arms. Ades right arm was stuck stiffly out behind the clowns head, and the clowns face was indeed in Ades right armpit, but it was not biting it was smiling. Hagarty could see it looking out from beneath Ades arm and smiling. The clowns arms tightened, and Hagarty heard ribs splinter. Ade shrieked. Float with us, Don, the clown said out of its grinning red mouth, and then pointed with one of its whitegloved hands under the bridge. Balloons floated against the underside of the bridgenot a dozen or a dozen dozens but thousands, red and blue and green and yellow, and printed on the side of each was IDERRY! 16 Well now, that surely does sound like a lot of balloons, Reeves said, and tipped Harold Gardener another wink. I know how it sounds, Hagarty reiterated in the same dreary voice. You saw those balloons, Gardener said. Don Hagarty slowly held his hands up in front of his face. I saw them as clearly as I can see my own fingers at this moment. Thousands of them. You couldnt even see the underside of the bridgethere were too many of them. They were rippling a little, and sort of bouncing up and down. There was a sound. A funny low squealing noise. That was their sides rubbing together. And strings. There was a forest of white strings hanging down. They looked like white strands of spiderweb. The clown took Ade under there. I could see its suit brushing through those strings. Ade was making awful choking sounds. I started after him ... and the clown looked back. I saw its eyes, and all at once I understood who it was. Who was it, Don? Harold Gardener asked softly. It was Derry, Don Hagarty said. It was this town. And what did you do then? It was Reeves. I ran, you dumb shit, Hagarty said, and burst into tears. 17 Harold Gardener kept his peace until November 13th, the day before John Garton and Steven Dubay were to go on trial in Derry District Court for the murder of Adrian Mellon. Then he went to see Tom Boutillier. He wanted to talk about the clown. Boutillier didntbut when he saw Gardener might do something stupid without a little guidance, he did. There was no clown, Harold. The only clowns out that night were those three kids. You know that as well as I do. We have two witnesses Oh, thats crap. Unwin decided to bring on the OneArmed Man, as in We didnt kill the poor little faggot, it was the onearmed man, as soon as he understood hed really gotten his buns into some hot water this time. Hagarty was hysterical. He stood by and watched those kids murder his best friend. It wouldnt have surprised me if hed seen flying saucers. But Boutillier knew better. Gardener could see it in his eyes, and the Assistant D.A.s ducking and dodging irritated him. Come on, he said. Were talking about independent witnesses here. Dont bullshit me. Oh, you want to talk bullshit? Are you telling me you believe there was a vampire clown under the Main Street Bridge? Because thats my idea of bullshit. No, not exactly, but Or that Hagarty saw a billion balloons under there, each imprinted with exactly the same thing as what was written on his lovers hat? Because that is also my idea of bullshit. No, but Then why are you bothering with this? Stop crossexamining me! Gardener roared. They both described it the same and neither knew what the other one was saying! Boutillier had been sitting at his desk, playing with a pencil. Now he put the pencil down, got up, and walked over to Harold Gardener. Boutillier was five inches shorter, but Gardener retreated a step before the mans anger. Do you want us to lose this case, Harold? No. Of course n Do you want those running sores to walk free? No! Okay. Good. Since we both agree on the basics, Ill tell you exactly what I think. Yes, there was probably a man under the bridge that night. Maybe he was even wearing a clown suit, although Ive dealt with enough witnesses to guess maybe it was just a stewbum or a transient wearing a bunch of castoff clothes. I think he was probably down there scrounging for dropped change or roadmeathalf a burger someone chucked over the side, or maybe the crumbs from the bottom of a Frito bag. Their eyes did the rest, Harold. Now is that possible? I dont know, Harold said. He wanted to be convinced, but given the exact tally of the two descriptions ... no. He didnt think it was possible. Heres the bottom line. I dont care if it was Kinko the Klown or a guy in an Uncle Sam suit on stilts or Hubert the Happy Homo. If we introduce this fellow into the case, their lawyer is going to be on it before you can say Jack Robinson. Hes going to say those two little innocent lambs out there with their fresh haircuts and new suits didnt do anything but toss that gay fellow Mellon over the side of the bridge for a joke. Hell point out that Mellon was still alive after he took the fall; they have Hagartys testimony as well as Unwins for that. His clients didnt commit murder, oh no! It was a psycho in a clown suit. If we introduce this, thats going to happen and you know it. Unwins going to tell that story anyhow. But Hagarty isnt, Boutillier said. Because he understands. Without Hagarty, whos going to believe Unwin? Well, theres us, Harold Gardener said with a bitterness that surprised even himself, but I guess were not telling. Oh, give me a break! Boutillier roared, throwing up his hands. They killed him! They didnt just throw him over the sideGarton had a switchblade. Mellon was stabbed seven times, including once in the left lung and twice in the testicles. The wounds match the blade. Four of his ribs were brokenDubay did that, bearhugging him. He was bitten, all right. There were bites on his arms, his left cheek, his neck. I think that was Unwin and Garton, although weve only got one clear match, and that ones probably not clear enough to stand up in court. And so all right, there was a big chunk of meat gone from his right armpit, so what? One of them really liked to bite. Probably even got himself a pretty good boneon while he was doing it. Im betting Garton, although well never prove it. And Mellons earlobe was gone. Boutillier stopped, glaring at Harold. If we let in this clown story well never bring it home to them. Do you want that? No, I told you. The guy was a fruit, but he wasnt hurting anyone, Boutillier said. So hihothedairyo, along come these three pusholes in their engineer boots and they steal his life. Im going to put them in the slam, my friend, and if I hear they got their puckery little assholes cored down there at Thomaston, Im gonna send them cards saying I hope whoever did it had AIDS. Very fiery, Gardener thought. And the convictions will also look very good on your record when you run for the top spot in two years. But he left without saying more, because he also wanted to see them put away. 18 John Webber Garton was convicted of firstdegree manslaughter and sentenced to ten to twenty years in Thomaston State Prison. Steven Bishoff Dubay was convicted of firstdegree manslaughter and sentenced to fifteen years in Shawshank State Prison. Christopher Philip Unwin was tried separately as a juvenile and convicted of seconddegree manslaughter. He was sentenced to six months at the South Windham Boys Training Facility, sentence suspended. At the time of this writing, all three sentences are under appeal; Garton and Dubay may be seen on any given day girlwatching or playing Penny Pitch in Bassey Park, not far from where Mellons torn body was found floating against one of the pilings of the Main Street Bridge. Don Hagarty and Chris Unwin have left town. At the major trialthat of Garton and Dubayno one mentioned a clown. CHAPTER 3 Six Phone Calls (1985) 1 Stanley Uris Takes a Bath Patricia Uris later told her mother she should have known something was wrong. She should have known it, she said, because Stanley never took baths in the early evening. He showered early each morning and sometimes soaked late at night (with a magazine in one hand and a cold beer in the other), but baths at 700 P.M. were not his style. And then there was the thing about the books. It should have delighted him; instead, in some obscure way she did not understand, it seemed to have upset and depressed him. About three months before that terrible night, Stanley had discovered that a childhood friend of his had turned out to be a writernot a real writer, Patricia told her mother, but a novelist. The name on the books was William Denbrough, but Stanley had sometimes called him Stuttering Bill. He had worked his way through almost all of the mans books; had, in fact, been reading the last on the night of the baththe night of May 28th, 1985. Patty herself had picked up one of the earlier ones, out of curiosity. She had put it down after just three chapters. It had not just been a novel, she told her mother later; it had been a horrorbook. She said it just that way, all one word, the way she would have said sexbook. Patty was a sweet, kind woman, but not terribly articulateshe had wanted to tell her mother how much that book had frightened her and why it had upset her, but had not been able. It was full of monsters, she said. Full of monsters chasing after little children. There were killings, and ... I dont know ... bad feelings and hurt. Stuff like that. It had, in fact, struck her as almost pornographic; that was the word which kept eluding her, probably because she had never in her life spoken it, although she knew what it meant. But Stan felt as if hed rediscovered one of his childhood chums. .. He talked about writing to him, but I knew he wouldnt. ... I knew those stories made him feel bad, too ... and ... and ... And then Patty Uris began to cry. That night, lacking roughly six months of being twentyeight years from the day in 1957 when George Denbrough had met Pennywise the Clown, Stanley and Patty had been sitting in the den of their home in a suburb of Atlanta. The TV was on. Patty was sitting in the loveseat in front of it, dividing her attention between a pile of sewing and her favorite gameshow, Family Feud. She simply adored Richard Dawson and thought the watchchain he always wore was terribly sexy, although wild horses would not have drawn this admission out of her. She also liked the show because she almost always got the most popular answers (there were no right answers on Family Feud, exactly; only the most popular ones). She had once asked Stan why the questions that seemed so easy to her usually seemed so hard to the families on the show. Its probably a lot tougher when youre up there under those lights, Stanley had replied, and it seemed to her that a shadow had drifted over his face. Everythings a lot tougher when its for real. Thats when you choke. When its for real. That was probably very true, she decided. Stanley had really fine insights into human nature sometimes. Much finer, she considered, than his old friend William Denbrough, who had gotten rich writing a bunch of horrorbooks which appealed to peoples baser natures. Not that the Urises were doing so badly themselves! The suburb where they lived was a fine one, and the home which they had purchased for 87,000 in 1979 would probably now sell quickly and painlessly for 165,000not that she wanted to sell, but such things were good to know. She sometimes drove back from the Fox Run Mall in her Volvo (Stanley drove a Mercedes diesetteasing him, she called it Sedanley) and saw her house, set tastefully back behind low yew hedges, and thought Who lives there? Why, Ido! Mrs. Stanley Uris does! This was not an entirely happy thought; mixed with it was a pride so fierce that it sometimes made her feel a bit ill. Once upon a time, you see, there had been a lonely eighteenyearold girl named Patricia Blum who had been refused entry to the afterprom party that was held at the country club in the upstate town of Glointon, New York. She had been refused admission, of course, because her last name rhymed with plum. That was her, just a skinny little kike plum, 1967 that had been, and such discrimination was against the law, of course, hardeharharhar, and besides, it was all over now. Except that for part of her it was never going to be over. Part of her would always be walking back to the car with Michael Rosenblatt, listening to the crushed gravel under her pumps and his rented formal shoes, back to his fathers car, which Michael had borrowed for the evening, and which he had spent the afternoon waxing. Part of her would always be walking next to Michael in his rented white dinner jackethow it had glimmered in the soft spring night! She had been in a pale green evening gown which her mother declared made her look like a mermaid, and the idea of a kike mermaid was pretty funny, hardeharharhar. They had walked with their heads up and she had not weptnot thenbut she had understood they werent walking back, no, not really; what they had been doing was slinking back, slinking, rhymes with stinking, both of them feeling more Jewish than they had ever felt in their lives, feeling like pawnbrokers, feeling like cattlecar riders, feeling oily, longnosed, sallowskinned; feeling like mockies sheenies kikes; wanting to feel angry and not being able to feel angrythe anger came only later, when it didnt matter. At that moment she had only been able to feel ashamed, had only been able to ache. And then someone had laughed. A high shrill tittering laugh like a fast run of notes on a piano, and in the car she had been able to weep, oh you bet, here is the kike mermaid whose name rhymes with plum just weeping away like crazy. Mike Rosenblatt had put a clumsy, comforting hand on the back of her neck and she had twisted away from it, feeling ashamed, feeling dirty, feeling Jewish. The house set so tastefully back behind the yew hedges made that better ... but not all better. The hurt and shame were still there, and not even being accepted in this quiet, sleekly welltodo neighborhood could quite make that endless walk with the sound of grating stones beneath their shoes stop happening. Not even being members of this country club, where the matre d always greeted them with a quietly respectful Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Uris. She would come home, cradled in her 1984 Volvo, and she would look at her house sitting on its expanse of green lawn, and she would oftenall too often, she supposedthink of that shrill titter. And she would hope that the girl who had tittered was living in a shitty tract house with a goy husband who beat her, that she had been pregnant three times and had miscarried each time, that her husband cheated on her with diseased women, that she had slipped discs and fallen arches and cysts on her dirty tittering tongue. She would hate herself for these thoughts, these uncharitable thoughts, and promise to do betterto stop drinking these bitter gallandwormwood cocktails. Months would go by when she did not think such thoughts. She would think Maybe all of that is finally past me. I am not that girl of eighteen anymore. I am a woman of thirtysix; the girl who heard the endless click and grate of those driveway stones, the girl who twisted away from Mike Rosenblatts hand when he tried to comfort her because it was a Jewish hand, was half a life ago. That silly little mermaid is dead. I can forget her now and just be myself. Okay. Good. Great. But then she would be somewhereat the supermarket, maybeand she would hear sudden tittering laughter from the next aisle and her back would prickle, her nipples would go hard and hurtful, her hands would tighten on the bar of the shopping cart or just on each other, and she would think Someone just told someone else that Im Jewish, that Im nothing but a bignose mockie kike, that Stanleys nothing but a bignose mockie kike, hes an accountant, sure, Jews are good with numbers, we let them into the country club, we had to, back in 1981 when that bignose mockie gynecologist won his suit, but we laugh at them, we laugh and laugh and laugh. Or she would simply hear the phantom click and grate of stones and think Mermaid! Mermaid! Then the hate and shame would come flooding back like a migraine headache and she would despair not only for herself but for the whole human race. Werewolves. The book by Denbroughthe one she had tried to read and then put asidewas about werewolves. Werewolves, shit. What did a man like that know about werewolves? Most of the time, however, she felt better than thatfelt she was better than that. She loved her man, she loved her house, and she was usually able to love her life and herself. Things were good. They had not always been that way, of coursewere things ever? When she accepted Stanleys engagement ring, her parents had been both angry and unhappy. She had met him at a sorority party. He had come over to her school from New York State University, where he was a scholarship student. They had been introduced by a mutual friend, and by the time the evening was over, she suspected that she loved him. By the midterm break, she was sure. When spring came around and Stanley offered her a small diamond ring with a daisy pushed through it, she had accepted it. In the end, in spite of their qualms, her parents had accepted it as well. There was little else they could do, although Stanley Uris would soon be sallying forth into a jobmarket glutted with young accountantsand when he went into that jungle, he would do so with no family finances to backstop him, and with their only daughter as his hostage to fortune. But Patty was twentytwo, a woman now, and would herself soon graduate with a B.A. Ill be supporting that foureyed son of a bitch for the rest of my life, Patty had heard her father say one night. Her mother and father had gone out for dinner, and her father had drunk a little too much. Shh, shell hear you, Ruth Blum said. Patty had lain awake that night until long after midnight, dryeyed, alternately hot and cold, hating them both. She had spent the next two years trying to get rid of that hate; there was too much hate inside her already. Sometimes when she looked into the mirror she could see the things it was doing to her face, the fine lines it was drawing there. That was a battle she won. Stanley had helped her. His own parents had been equally concerned about the marriage. They did not, of course, believe their Stanley was destined for a life of squalor and poverty, but they thought the kids were being hasty. Donald Uris and Andrea Bertoly had themselves married in their early twenties, but they seemed to have forgotten the fact. Only Stanley had seemed sure of himself, confident of the future, unconcerned with the pitfalls their parents saw strewn all about the kids. And in the end it was his confidence rather than their fears which had been justified. In July of 1972, with the ink barely dry on her diploma, Patty had landed a job teaching shorthand and business English in Traynor, a small town forty miles south of Atlanta. When she thought of how she had come by that job, it always struck her as a littlewell, eerie. She had made a list of forty possibles from the ads in the teachers journals, then had written forty letters over five nightseight each eveningrequesting further information on the job, and an application for each. Twentytwo replies indicated that the positions had been filled. In other cases, a more detailed explanation of the skills needed made it clear she wasnt in the running; applying would only be a waste of her time and theirs. She had finished with a dozen possibles. Each looked as likely as any other. Stanley had come in while she was puzzling over them and wondering if she could possibly manage to fill out a dozen teaching applications without going totally bonkers. He looked at the strew of papers on the table and then tapped the letter from the Traynor Superintendent of Schools, a letter which to her looked no more or less encouraging than any of the others. There, he said. She looked up at him, startled by the simple certainty in his voice. Do you know something about Georgia that I dont? Nope. Only time I was ever there was at the movies. She looked at him, an eyebrow cocked. Gone with the Wind. Vivien Leigh. Clark Gable. I will think about it tomorrow, for tomorrow is anothah day. Do I sound like I come from the South, Patty? Yes. South Bronx. If you dont know anything about Georgia and youve never been there, then why Because its right. You cant know that, Stanley. Sure I can, he said simply. I do. Looking at him, she had seen he wasnt joking he really meant it. She had felt a ripple of unease go up her back. How do you know? He had been smiling a little. Now the smile faltered, and for a moment he had seemed puzzled. His eyes had darkened, as if he looked inward, consulting some interior device which ticked and whirred correctly but which, ultimately, he understood no more than the average man understands the workings of the watch on his wrist. The turtle couldnt help us, he said suddenly. He said that quite clearly. She heard it. That inward lookthat look of surprised musingwas still on his face, and it was starting to scare her. Stanley? What are you talking about? Stanley? He jerked. She had been eating peaches as she went over the applications, and his hand struck the dish. It fell on the floor and broke. His eyes seemed to clear. Oh, shit! Im sorry. Its all right. Stanleywhat were you talking about? I forget, he said. But I think we ought to think Georgia, babylove. But Trust me, he said, so she did. Her interview had gone smashingly. She had known she had the job when she got on the train back to New York.


The head of the Business Department had taken an instant liking to Patty, and she to him; she had almost heard the click. The confirming letter had come a week later. The Traynor Consolidated School Department could offer her 9,200 and a probationary contract. You are going to starve, Herbert Blum said when his daughter told him she intended to take the job. And you will be hot while you starve. Fiddledeedee, Scarlett, Stanley said when she told him what her father had said. She had been furious, near tears, but now she began to giggle, and Stanley swept her into his arms. Hot they had been; starved they had not. They were married on August 19th, 1972. Patty Uris had gone to her marriage bed a virgin. She had slipped naked between cool sheets at a resort hotel in the Poconos, her mood turbulent and stormylightningflares of wanting and delicious lust, dark clouds of fright. When Stanley slid into bed beside her, ropy with muscle, his penis an exclamation point rising from gingery pubic hair, she had whispered Dont hurt me, dear. I will never hurt you, he said as he took her in his arms, and it was a promise he had kept faithfully until May 28th, 1985the night of the bath. Her teaching had gone well. Stanley got a job driving a bakery truck for one hundred dollars a week. In November of that year, when the Traynor Flats Shopping Center opened, he got a job with the H  R Block office out there for a hundred and fifty. Their combined income was then 17,000 a yearthis seemed a kings ransom to them, in those days when gas sold for thirtyfive cents a gallon and a loaf of white bread could be had for a nickel less than that. In March of 1973, with no fuss and no fanfare, Patty Uris had thrown away her birthcontrol pills. In 1975 Stanley quit H  R Block and opened his own business. All four inlaws agreed that this was a foolhardy move. Not that Stanley should not have his own businessGod forbid he should not have his own business! But it was too early, all of them agreed, and it put too much of the financial burden on Patty. (At least until the pisher knocks her up, Herbert Blum told his brother morosely after a night of drinking in the kitchen, and then Ill be expected to carry them.) The consensus of inlaw opinion on the matter was that a man should not even think about going into business for himself until he had reached a more serene and mature ageseventyeight, say. Again, Stanley seemed almost preternaturally confident. He was young, personable, bright, apt. He had made contacts working for Block. All of these things were givens. But he could not have known that Corridor Video, a pioneer in the nascent videotape business, was about to settle on a huge patch of farmedout land less than ten miles from the suburb to which the Urises had eventually moved in 1979, nor could he have known that Corridor would be in the market for an independent marketing survey less than a year after its move to Traynor. Even if Stan had been privy to some of this information, he surely could not have believed they would give the job to a young, bespectacled Jew who also happened to be a damyankeea Jew with an easy grin, a hipshot way of walking, a taste for bellbottomed jeans on his days off, and the last ghosts of his adolescent acne still on his face. Yet they had. They had. And it seemed that Stan had known it all along. His work for CV led to an offer of a fulltime position with the companystarting salary, 30,000 a year. And that really is only the start, Stanley told Patty in bed that night. They are going to grow like corn in August, my dear. If no one blows up the world in the next ten years or so, they are going to be right up there on the big board along with Kodak and Sony and RCA. So what are you going to do? she asked, already knowing. I am going to tell them what a pleasure it was to do business with them, he said, and laughed, and drew her close, and kissed her. Moments later he mounted her, and there were climaxesone, two, and three, like bright rockets going off in a night sky ... but there was no baby. His work with Corridor Video had brought him into contact with some of Atlantas richest and most powerful menand they were both astonished to find that these men were mostly okay. In them they found a degree of acceptance and broadminded kindliness that was almost unknown in the North. Patty remembered Stanley once writing home to his mother and father The best rich men in America live in Atlanta, Georgia. I am going to help make some of them richer, and they are going to make me richer, and no one is going to own me except my wife, Patricia, and since I already own her, I guess that is safe enough. By the time they moved from Traynor, Stanley was incorporated and employed six people. In 1983 their income had entered unknown territoryterritory of which Patty had heard only the dimmest rumors. This was the fabled land of SIX FIGURES. And it had all happened with the casual ease of slipping into a pair of sneakers on Saturday morning. This sometimes frightened her. Once she had made an uneasy joke about deals with the devil. Stanley had laughed until he almost choked, but to her it hadnt seemed that funny, and she supposed it never would. The turtle couldnt help us. Sometimes, for no reason at all, she would wake up with this thought in her mind like the last fragment of an otherwise forgotten dream, and she would turn to Stanley, needing to touch him, needing to make sure he was still there. Twas a good lifethere was no wild drinking, no outside sex, no drugs, no boredom, no bitter arguments about what to do next. There was only a single cloud. It was her mother who first mentioned the presence of this cloud. That her mother would be the one to finally do so seemed, in retrospect, preordained. It finally came out as a question in one of Ruth Blums letters. She wrote Patty once a week, and that particular letter had arrived in the early fall of 1979. It came forwarded from the old Traynor address and Patty read it in a living room filled with cardboard liquorstore cartons from which spilled their possessions, looking forlorn and uprooted and dispossessed. In most ways it was the usual Ruth Blum Letter from Home four closely written blue pages, each one headed JUST A NOTE FROM RUTH. Her scrawl was nearly illegible, and Stanley had once complained he could not read a single word his motherinlaw wrote. Why would you want to? Patty had responded. This one was full of Moms usual brand of news; for Ruth Blum recollection was a broad delta, spreading out from the moving point of the now in an everwidening fan of interlocking relationships. Many of the people of whom her mother wrote were beginning to fade in Pattys memory like photographs in an old album, but to Ruth all of them remained fresh. Her concerns for their health and her curiosity about their various doings never seemed to wane, and her prognoses were unfailingly dire. Her father was still having too many stomachaches. He was sure it was just dyspepsia; the idea that he might have an ulcer, she wrote, would not cross his mind until he actually began coughing up blood and probably not even then. You know your father, dearhe works like a mule, and he also thinks like one sometimes, God should forgive me for saying so. Randi Harlengen had gotten her tubes tied, they took cysts as big as golfballs out of her ovaries, no malignancy, thank God, but twentyseven ovarian cysts, could you die? It was the water in New York City, she was quite sure of thatthe city air was dirty, too, but she was convinced it was the water that really got to you after awhile. It built up deposits inside a person. She doubted if Patty knew how often she had thanked God that you kids were out in the country, where both air and water but particularly the waterwere healthier (to Ruth all of the South, including Atlanta and Birmingham, was the country). Aunt Margaret was feuding with the power company again. Stella Flanagan had gotten married again, some people never learned. Richie Huber had been fired again. And in the middle of this chattyand often cattyoutpouring, in the middle of a paragraph, apropos of nothing which had gone before or which came after, Ruth Blum had casually asked the Dreaded Question So when are you and Stan going to make us grandparents? Were all ready to start spoiling him (or her) rotten. And in case you hadnt noticed, Patsy, were not getting any younger. And then on to the Bruckner girl from down the block who had been sent home from school because she was wearing no bra and a blouse that you could see right through. Feeling low and homesick for their old place in Traynor, feeling unsure and more than a little afraid of what might be ahead, Patty had gone into what was to become their bedroom and had lain down upon the mattress (the box spring was still out in the garage, and the mattress, lying all by itself on the big carpetless floor, looked like an artifact cast up on a strange yellow beach). She put her head in her arms and lay there weeping for nearly twenty minutes. She supposed that cry had been coming anyway. Her mothers letter had just brought it on sooner, the way dust hurries the tickle in your nose into a sneeze. Stanley wanted kids. She wanted kids. They were as compatible on that subject as they were on their enjoyment of Woody Allens films, their more or less regular attendance at synagogue, their political leanings, their dislike of marijuana, a hundred other things both great and small. There had been an extra room in the Traynor house, which they had split evenly down the middle. On the left he had a desk for working and a chair for reading; on the right she had a sewing machine and a cardtable where she did jigsaw puzzles. There had been an agreement between them about that room so strong they rarely spoke of itit was simply there, like their noses or the wedding rings on their left hands. Someday that room would belong to Andy or to Jenny. But where was that child? The sewing machine and the baskets of fabric and the cardtable and the desk and the LaZBoy all kept their places, seeming each month to solidify their holds on their respective positions in the room and to further establish their legitimacy. So she thought, although she never could quite crystallize the thought; like the word pornographic, it was a concept that danced just beyond her ability to quantify. But she did remember one time when she got her period, sliding open the cupboard under the bathroom sink to get a sanitary napkin; she remembered looking at the box of Stayfree pads and thinking that the box looked almost smug, seemed almost to be saying Hello, Patty! We are your children. We are the only children you will ever have, and we are hungry. Nurse us. Nurse us on blood. In 1976, three years after she had thrown away the last cycle of Ovral tablets, they saw a doctor named Harkavay in Atlanta. We want to know if there is something wrong, Stanley said, and we want to know if we can do anything about it if there is. They took the tests. They showed that Stanleys sperm was perky, that Pattys eggs were fertile, that all the channels that were supposed to be open were open. Harkavay, who wore no wedding ring and who had the open, pleasant, ruddy face of a college grad student just back from a midterm skiing vacation in Colorado, told them that maybe it was just nerves. He told them that such a problem was by no means uncommon. He told them that there seemed to be a psychological correlative in such cases that was in some ways similar to sexual impotencythe more you wanted to, the less you could. They would have to relax. They ought, if they could, to forget all about procreation when they had sex. Stan was grumpy on the way home. Patty asked him why. I never do, he said. Do what? Think of procreation during. She began to giggle, even though she was by then feeling a bit lonesome and frightened. And that night, lying in bed, long after she believed that Stanley must be asleep, he had frightened her by speaking out of the dark. His voice was flat but nevertheless choked with tears. Its me, he said. Its my fault. She rolled toward him, groped for him, held him. Dont be a stupid, she said. But her heart was beating fastmuch too fast. It wasnt just that he had startled her; it was as if he had looked into her mind and read a secret conviction she held there but of which she had not known until this minute. With no rhyme, no reason, she feltknew that he was right. There was something wrong, and it wasnt her. It was him. Something in him. Dont be such a klutz, she whispered fiercely against his shoulder. He was sweating lightly and she became suddenly aware that he was afraid. The fear was coming off him in cold waves; lying naked with him was suddenly like lying naked in front of an open refrigerator. Im not a klutz and Im not being stupid, he said in that same voice, which was simultaneously flat and choked with emotion, and you know it. Its me. But I dont know why.  You cant know any such thing. Her voice was harsh, scoldingher mothers voice when her mother was afraid. And even as she scolded him a shudder ran through her body, twisting it like a whip. Stanley felt it and his arms tightened around her. Sometimes, he said, sometimes I think I know why. Sometimes I have a dream, a bad dream, and I wake up and I think, I know now. I know whats wrong. Not just you not catching pregnanteverything. Everything thats wrong with my life. Stanley, nothings wrong with your life! I dont mean from inside, he said. From inside is fine. Im talking about outside. Something that should be over and isnt. I wake up from these dreams and think, My whole pleasant life has been nothing but the eye of some storm I dont understand. Im afraid. But then it just ... fades. The way dreams do. She knew that he sometimes dreamed uneasily. On half a dozen occasions he had awakened her, thrashing and moaning. Probably there had been other times when she had slept through his dark interludes. Whenever she reached for him, asked him, he said the same thing I cant remember. Then he would reach for his cigarettes and smoke sitting up in bed, waiting for the residue of the dream to pass through his pores like bad sweat. No kids. On the night of May 28th, 1985the night of the baththeir assorted inlaws were still waiting to be grandparents. The extra room was still an extra room; the Stayfree Maxis and Stayfree Minis still occupied their accustomed places in the cupboard under the bathroom sink; the cardinal still paid its monthly visit. Her mother, who was much occupied with her own affairs but not entirely oblivious to her daughters pain, had stopped asking in her letters and when Stanley and Patty made their twiceyearly trips back to New York. There were no more humorous remarks about whether or not they were taking their vitamin E. Stanley had also stopped mentioning babies, but sometimes, when she didnt know he was looking, she saw a shadow on his face. Some shadow. As if he were trying desperately to remember something. Other than that one cloud, their lives were pleasant enough until the phone rang during the middle of Family Feud on the night of May 28th. Patty had six of Stans shirts, two of her blouses, her sewing kit, and her oddbutton box; Stan had the new William Denbrough novel, not even out in paperback yet, in his hands. There was a snarling beast on the front of this book. On the back was a bald man wearing glasses. Stan was sitting nearer the phone. He picked it up and said, HelloUrisresidence. He listened, and a frown line delved between his eyebrows. Who did you say? Patty felt an instant of fright. Later, shame would cause her to lie and tell her parents that she had known something was wrong from the instant the telephone had rung, but in reality there had only been that one instant, that one quick look up from her sewing. But maybe that was all right. Maybe they had both suspected that something was coming long before that phone call, something that didnt fit with the nice house set tastefully back behind the low yew hedges, something so much a given that it really didnt need much of an acknowledgment ... that one sharp instant of fright, like the stab of a quickly withdrawn icepick, was enough. Is it Mom?she mouthed at him in that instant, thinking that perhaps her father, twenty pounds overweight and prone to what he called the bellyache since his early forties, had had a heart attack. Stan shook his head at her, and then smiled a bit at something the voice on the phone was saying. You ... you! Well, Ill be goddamned! Mike! How did y He fell silent again, listening. As his smile faded she recognizedor thought she didhis analytic expression, the one which said someone was unfolding a problem or explaining a sudden change in an ongoing situation or telling him something strange and interesting. This last was probably the case, she gathered. A new client? An old friend? Perhaps. She turned her attention back to the TV, where a woman was flinging her arms around Richard Dawson and kissing him madly. She thought that Richard Dawson must get kissed even more than the Blarney stone. She also thought she wouldnt mind kissing him herself. As she began searching for a black button to match the ones on Stanleys blue denim shirt, Patty was vaguely aware that the conversation was settling into a smoother grooveStanley grunted occasionally, and once he asked Are you sure, Mike? Finally, after a very long pause, he said, All right, I understand. Yes, I ... Yes. Yes, everything. I have the picture. I ... what? ... No, I cant absolutely promise that, but Ill consider it carefully. You know that ... oh? ... He did? ... Well, you bet! Of course I do. Yes ... sure ... thank you ... yes. Byebye. He hung up. Patty glanced at him and saw him staring blankly into space over the TV set. On her show, the audience was applauding the Ryan family, which had just scored two hundred and eighty points, most of them by guessing that the audience survey would answer math in response to the question What class will people say Junior hates most in school? The Ryans were jumping up and down and screaming joyfully. Stanley, however, was frowning. She would later tell her parents she thought Stanleys face had looked a little offcolor, and so she did, but she neglected to tell them she had dismissed it at the time as only a trick of the tablelamp, with its green glass shade. Who was that, Stan? Hmmmm? He looked around at her. She thought the look on his face was one of gentle abstraction, perhaps mixed with minor annoyance. It was only later, replaying the scene in her mind again and again, that she began to believe it was the expression of a man who was methodically unplugging himself from reality, one cord at a time. The face of a man who was heading out of the blue and into the black. Who was that on the phone? No one, he said. No one, really. I think Ill take a bath. He stood up. What, at seven oclock? He didnt answer, only left the room. She might have asked him if something was wrong, might even have gone after him and asked him if he was sick to his stomachhe was sexually uninhibited, but he could be oddly prim about other things, and it wouldnt be at all unlike him to say he was going to take a bath when what he really had to do was whoops something which hadnt agreed with him. But now a new family, the Piscapos, were being introduced, and Patty just knew Richard Dawson would find something funny to say about that name, and besides, she was having the devils own time finding a black button, although she knew there were loads of them in the button box. They hid, of course; that was the only explanation.... So she let him go and did not think of him again until the creditcrawl, when she looked up and saw his empty chair. She had heard the water running into the tub upstairs and had heard it stop five or ten minutes later ... but now she realized she had never heard the fridge door open and close, and that meant he was up there without a can of beer. Someone had called him up and dropped a big fat problem in his lap, and had she offered him a single word of commiseration ? No. Tried to draw him out a little about it? No. Even noticed that something was wrong? For the third time, no. All because of that stupid TV showshe couldnt even really blame the buttons; they were only an excuse. Okayshed take him up a can of Dixie, and sit beside him on the edge of the tub, scrub his back, play Geisha and wash his hair if he wanted her to, and find out just what the problem was ... or who it was. She got a can of beer out of the fridge and went upstairs with it. The first real disquiet stirred in her when she saw that the bathroom door was shut. Not just partway closed but shut tight. Stanley never closed the door when he was taking a bath. It was something of a joke between themthe closed door meant he was doing something his mother had taught him, the open door meant he would not be averse to doing something the teaching of which his mother had quite properly left to others. Patty tapped on the door with her nails, suddenly aware, too aware, of the reptilian clicking sound they made on the wood. And surely tapping on the bathroom door, knocking like a guest, was something she had never done before in her married lifenot here, not on any other door in the house. The disquiet suddenly grew strong in her, and she thought of Carson Lake, where she had gone swimming often as a girl. By the first of August the lake was as warm as a tub ... but then youd hit a cold pocket that would shiver you with surprise and delight. One minute you were warm; the next moment it felt as if the temperature had plummeted twenty degrees below your hips. Minus the delight, that was how she felt nowas if she had just struck a cold pocket. Only this cold pocket was not below her hips, chilling her long teenagers legs in the black depths of Carson Lake. This one was around her heart. Stanley? Stan? This time she did more than tap with her nails. She rapped on the door. When there was still no answer, she hammered on it. Stanley? Her heart. Her heart wasnt in her chest anymore. It was beating in her throat, making it hard to breathe. Stanley! In the silence following her shout (and just the sound of herself shouting up here, less than thirty feet from the place where she laid her head down and went to sleep each night, frightened her even more), she heard a sound which brought panic up from the belowstairs part of her mind like an unwelcome guest. Such a small sound, really. It was only the sound of dripping water. Plink ... pause. Plink ... pause. Plink ... pause. Plink ... She could see the drops forming on the snout of the faucet, growing heavy and fat there, growing pregnant there, and then falling off plink. Just that sound. No other. And she was suddenly, terribly sure that it had been Stanley, not her father, who had been stricken with a heart attack tonight. With a moan, she gripped the cutglass doorknob and turned it. Yet still the door would not move it was locked. And suddenly three nevers occurred to Patty Uris in rapid succession Stanley never took a bath in the early evening, Stanley never closed the door unless he was using the toilet, and Stanley had never locked the door against her at all. Was it possible, she wondered crazily, to prepare for a heart attack? Patty ran her tongue over her lipsit produced a sound in her head like fine sandpaper sliding along a boardand called his name again. There was still no answer except the steady, deliberate drip of the faucet. She looked down and saw she still held the can of Dixie beer in one hand. She gazed at it stupidly, her heart running like a rabbit in her throat; she gazed at it as if she had never seen a can of beer in her whole life before this minute. And indeed it seemed she never had, or at least never one like this, because when she blinked her eyes it turned into a telephone handset, as black and as threatening as a snake. May I help you, maam? Do you have a problem? the snake spat at her. Patty slammed it down in its cradle and stepped away, rubbing the hand which had held it. She looked around and saw she was back in the TV room and understood that the panic which had come into the front of her mind like a prowler walking quietly up a flight of stairs had had its way with her. Now she could remember dropping the beer can outside the bathroom door and pelting headlong back down the stairs, thinking vaguely This is all a mistake of some kind and well laugh about it later. He filled up the tub and then remembered he didnt have cigarettes and went out to get them before he took his clothes off Yes. Only he had already locked the bathroom door from the inside and because it was too much of a bother to unlock it again he had simply opened the window over the tub and gone down the side of the house like a fly crawling down a wall. Sure, of course, sure Panic was rising in her mind againit was like bitter black coffee threatening to overflow the rim of a cup. She closed her eyes and fought against it. She stood there, perfectly still, a pale statue with a pulse beating in its throat. Now she could remember running back down here, feet stuttering on the stairlevels, running for the phone, oh yes, oh sure, but who had she meant to call? Crazily, she thought I would call the turtle, but the turtle couldnt help us. It didnt matter anyway. She had gotten as far as 0 and she must have said something not quite standard, because the operator had asked if she had a problem. She had one, all right, but how did you tell that faceless voice that Stanley had locked himself in the bathroom and didnt answer her, that the steady sound of the water dripping into the tub was killing her heart? Someone had to help her. Someone She put the back of her hand into her mouth and deliberately bit down on it. She tried to think, tried to force herself to think. The spare keys. The spare keys in the kitchen cupboard. She got going, and one slippered foot kicked the bag of buttons resting beside her chair. Some of the buttons spilled out, glittering like glazed eyes in the lamplight. She saw at least half a dozen black ones. Mounted inside the door of the cupboard over the doublebasin sink was a large varnished board in the shape of a keyone of Stans clients had made it in his workshop and given it to him two Christmases ago. The keyboard was studded with small hooks, and swinging on these were all the keys the house took, two duplicates of each to a hook. Beneath each hook was a strip of Mystik tape, each strip lettered in Stans small, neat printing GARAGE, ATTIC, DSTAIRS BATH, UPSTAIRS BATH, FRONT DOOR, BACK DOOR. Off to one side were ignitionkey dupes labelled MB and VOLVO. Patty snatched the key marked UPSTAIRS BATH, began to run for the stairs, and then made herself walk. Running made the panic want to come back, and the panic was too close to the surface as it was. Also, if she just walked, maybe nothing would be wrong. Or, if there was something wrong, God could look down, see she was just walking, and think Oh, goodpulled a hell of a boner, but Ive got time to take it all back. Walking as sedately as a woman on her way to a Ladies Book Circle meeting, she went up the stairs and down to the closed bathroom door. Stanley? she called, trying the door again at the same time, suddenly more afraid than ever, not wanting to use the key because having to use the key was somehow too final. If God hadnt taken it back by the time she used the key, then He never would. The age of miracles, after all, was past. But the door was still locked; the deliberate plink ... pause of dripping water was her only answer. Her hand was shaking, and the key chattered all the way around the plate before finding its way into the keyhole and socking itself home. She turned it and heard the lock snap back. She fumbled for the cutglass knob. It tried to slide through her hand againnot because the door was locked this time but because her palm was wet with sweat. She firmed her grip and made it turn. She pushed the door open. Stanley? Stanley? St She looked at the tub with its blue shower curtain bunched at the far end of the stainless steel rod and forgot how to finish her husbands name. She simply stared at the tub, her face as solemn as the face of a child on her first day at school. In a moment she would begin to scream, and Anita MacKenzie next door would hear her, and it would be Anita MacKenzie who would call the police, convinced that someone had broken into the Uris house and that people were being killed over there. But for now, this one moment, Patty Uris simply stood silent with her hands clasped in front of her against her dark cotton skirt, her face solemn, her eyes huge. And now the look of almost holy solemnity began to transform itself into something else. The huge eyes began to bulge. Her mouth pulled back into a dreadful grin of horror. She wanted to scream and couldnt. The screams were too big to come out. The bathroom was lit by fluorescent tubes. It was very bright. There were no shadows. You could see everything, whether you wanted to or not. The water in the tub was bright pink. Stanley lay with his back propped against the rear of the tub. His head had rolled so far back on his neck that strands of his short black hair brushed the skin between his shoulderblades. If his staring eyes had still been capable of seeing, she would have looked upside down to him. His mouth hung open like a sprung door. His expression was one of abysmal, frozen horror. A package of Gillette Platinum Plus razor blades lay on the rim of the tub. He had slit his inner forearms open from wrist to the crook of the elbow, and then had crossed each of these cuts just below the Bracelets of Fortune, making a pair of bloody capital Ts. The gashes glared redpurple in the harsh white light. She thought the exposed tendons and ligaments looked like cuts of cheap beef. A drop of water gathered at the lip of the shiny chromium faucet. It grew fat. Grew pregnant, you might say. It sparkled. It dropped. Plink. He had dipped his right forefinger in his own blood and had written a single word on the blue tiles above the tub, written it in two huge, staggering letters. A zigzagging bloody fingermark fell away from the second letter of this wordhis finger had made that mark, she saw, as his hand fell into the tub, where it now floated. She thought Stanley must have made that markhis final impression on the worldas he lost consciousness. It seemed to cry out at her Another drop fell into the tub. Plink. That did it. Patty Uris at last found her voice. Staring into her husbands dead and sparkling eyes, she began to scream. 2 Richard Tozier Takes a Powder Rich felt like he was doing pretty good until the vomiting started. He had listened to everything Mike Hanlon told him, said all the right things, answered Mikes questions, even asked a few of his own. He was vaguely aware that he was doing one of his Voicesnot a strange and outrageous one, like those he sometimes did on the radio (Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant was his own personal favorite, at least for the time being, and positive listener response on Kinky was almost as high as for his listeners alltime favorite, Colonel Buford Kissdrivel), but a warm, rich, confident Voice. An ImAllRight Voice. It sounded great, but it was a lie. Just like all the other Voices were lies. How much do you remember, Rich? Mike asked him. Very little, Rich said, and then paused. Enough, I suppose. Will you come? Ill come, Rich said, and hung up. He sat in his study for a moment, leaning back in the chair behind his desk, looking out at the Pacific Ocean. A couple of kids were down on the left, horsing around on their surfboards, not really riding them. There wasnt much surf to ride. The clock on the deskan expensive L.