Patrick, his moonface expressionless, turned Averys head so his face was pressed directly into the pillow. Avery made a snuffling noise and turned his head back to the side. Patrick observed this, and stood thinking about it while the snow melted off his yellow boots and puddled on the floor. Perhaps five minutes passed (quick thinking was not Patricks specialty), and then he turned Averys face into the pillow again and held it there for a moment. Avery stirred under his hand, struggling. But his struggles were weak. Patrick let go. Avery turned his head to the side again, made one snorting little cry, and then went on sleeping. The wind gusted, rattling the windows. Patrick waited to see if the one little cry would awaken his mother. It didnt. Now he felt swept by a great excitement. The world seemed to stand out in front of him clearly for the first time. His emotional equipment was severely defective, and in those few moments he felt as a totally colorblind person might feel if given a shot which enabled him to perceive colors for a short time ... or as a junkie who has just fixed feels as the smack rockets his brain into orbit. This was a new thing. He had not suspected it existed. Very gently, he turned Averys face into the pillow again. This time when Avery struggled, Patrick did not let go. He pressed the babys face more firmly into the pillow. The baby was making steady muffled cries now, and Patrick knew it was awake. He had a vague idea that it might tell on him to his mother if he stopped. He held it down. The baby struggled. Patrick held it down. The baby farted. Its struggles weakened. Patrick still held it down. It eventually became totally still. Patrick held it down for another five minutes, feeling that excitement crest and then begin to ebb the shot wearing off, turning the world gray again, the fix mellowing into an accustomed low doze. Patrick went downstairs and got himself a plate of cookies and poured himself a glass of milk. His mother came down half an hour later and said she hadnt even heard him come in, she had been that tired (you wont be anymore, mom, Patrick thought, dont worry, I fixed it). She sat down with him, ate one of his cookies, and asked him how school had been. Patrick said it was all right and showed her his drawing of a house and a tree. His paper was covered with looping meaningless scribbles made with black and brown crayon. His mother said it was very nice. Patrick brought home the same looping scrawls of black and brown every day. Sometimes he said it was a turkey, sometimes a Christmas tree, sometimes a boy. His mother always told him it was very nice ... although sometimes, in a part of her so deep she hardly knew it was there, she worried. There was something a little disquieting about the dark sameness of those big scribbled loops of black and brown. She didnt discover Averys death until nearly five oclock; until then she had simply assumed he was taking a very long nap. By then Patrick was watching Crusader Rabbit on their seveninch TV, and he went on watching TV through all the uproar that followed. Whirlybirds was on when Mrs. Henley arrived from next door (his screaming mother had been holding the babys corpse in the open kitchen door, believing in some blind way that the cold air might revive it; Patrick was cold and got a sweater out of the downstairs closet). Highway Patrol, Ben Hanscoms favorite, was on when Mr. Hockstetter arrived home from work. By the time the doctor arrived, Science Fiction Theater, with Your Host Truman Bradley, was just coming on. Who knows what strange things the universe may hold? Truman Bradley speculated while Patricks mother shrieked and struggled in her husbands arms in the kitchen. The doctor observed Patricks deep calm and unquestioning stare and assumed the boy was in shock. He wanted Patrick to take a pill. Patrick didnt mind. It was diagnosed as cribdeath. Years later there might have been questions about such a fatality, deviations from the usual infantdeath syndrome observed. But when it happened, the death was simply noted and the baby buried. Patrick was gratified that once things finally settled down his meals began to come on time again. In the madness of that afternoon and eveningpeople banging in and out of the house, the red lights of the Home Hospital ambulance pulsing on the walls, Mrs. Hockstetter screaming and wailing and refusing to be comfortedonly Patricks father came within brushing distance of the truth. He was standing numbly by Averys empty crib some twenty minutes after the body had been removed, simply standing there, unable to believe any of this had happened. He looked down and saw a pair of tracks on the hardwood floor. They had been made by the snow melting off Patricks yellow rubber boots. He looked at them, and a dreadful thought rose briefly in his mind like bad gas from a deep mineshaft. His hand went slowly to his mouth and his eyes widened. A picture began to form in his mind. Before it could come clear he left the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that the top of the frame splintered. He never asked Patrick any questions. Patrick had never done anything like that again, although he might have done so if the chance had presented itself. He felt no guilt, had no bad dreams. As time passed, however, he became more aware of what would have happened to him if he had been caught. There were rules. Unpleasant things happened to you if you didnt follow them ... or if you were caught breaking them. You could be locked up or stuck in the electrocution chair. But that remembered feeling of excitementthat feeling of color and sensationwas simply too powerful and too wonderful to give over entirely. Patrick killed flies. At first he only smacked them with his mothers flyswatter; later he discovered he could kill them quite efficiently with a plastic ruler. He also discovered the joys of flypaper. A long sticky runner of it could be purchased for two cents at the Costello Avenue Market and Patrick sometimes stood for as long as two hours in the garage, watching the flies land and then struggle to get free, his mouth ajar, his dusty eyes alight with that rare excitement, sweat running down his round face and his thick body. Patrick killed beetles, but if possible he captured them first. Sometimes he would steal a long needle from his mothers pincushion, impale a Japanese beetle on it, and sit crosslegged in the garden watching it die. His expression at these times was the expression of a boy who is reading a very good book. Once he had discovered a runover cat that was dying in the gutter on Lower Main Street and sat watching it until an old woman saw him pushing the squashed and mewing thing around with his foot. She whacked him with the broom she had been using to sweep her walk. Go on home! she had shouted at him. What are you, crazy? Patrick had gone on home. He wasnt mad at the old woman. He had been caught breaking the rules, that was all. Then, last year (it would not have surprised Mike Hanlon or any of the others at that point to have known that it was, in fact, on the same day that George Denbrough had been murdered), Patrick had discovered the rusty Amana refrigeratorone of the larger dumpoids in the belt surrounding the dump itself. Like Bev, he had heard the cautionary warnings about such abandoned appliances, about how thirtysquirty million kids got their stupid selves smoked in them each year. Patrick had stood looking at the refrigerator for a long time, idly playing pocketpool with himself. That excitement was back, stronger than it had ever been, except for the time he had fixed Avery. The excitement was back because, in the chilly yet fuming wastes that passed for his mind, Patrick Hockstetter had had an idea. The Luces, who lived three houses down from the Hockstetters, missed their cat, Bobby, a week later. The Luce kids, who couldnt remember a time when Bobby hadnt been there, spent hours combing the neighborhood for him. They even pooled their money and put an ad in the Derry News Lost and Found column. Nothing came of it. And if any of them had seen Patrick that day, bulkier than ever in his mothballsmelling winter parka (after the floodwaters receded in that fall of 57, it had come off bitterly cold almost at once), carrying a cardboard carton, they would have thought nothing of it. The Engstroms, a block over and almost directly behind the Hockstetter home, lost their cocker pup about ten days before Thanksgiving. Other families lost dogs and cats over the next six or eight months, and Patrick of course had taken them all, not to mention a dozen unremarked strays from the Hells HalfAcre area of Derry. He put them into the rusty Amana near the dump, one by one. Each time he brought another animal down, his heart thundering in his chest, his eyes hot and watery with excitement, he would expect to find that Mandy Fazio had pulled the Amanas latch or popped the hinges with his sledgehammer. But Mandy never touched that particular refrigerator. Perhaps he didnt realize it was there, perhaps the force of Patricks will kept him away ... or perhaps some other force did that. The Engstroms cocker lasted the longest. In spite of the singlenumber cold, it was still alive when Patrick came back for the third time in as many days, although it had lost all of its friskiness (it had been wagging its tail and lapping his hands frantically when he originally hauled it out of the box and stuffed it into the refrigerator). When he came back a day after putting it in, the puppy had damn near gotten away. Patrick had to chase it almost all the way to the dump before he was able to jump it and get hold of one rear leg. The puppy had nipped Patrick with its sharp little teeth. Patrick didnt mind. In spite of the nips, he had taken the cocker back to the refrigerator and bundled it back in. He had a hardon when he did it. This was not uncommon. On the second day the puppy had tried to get out again, but it moved much too slowly. Patrick shoved it back in, slammed the Amanas rusty door, and leaned against it. He could hear the puppy scratching against the door. He could hear its muffled whines. Good dog, said Patrick Hockstetter. His eyes were closed and he was breathing fast. Thats a good dog. On the third day the puppy could only roll its eyes toward Patricks face when the door opened. Its sides were heaving rapidly and shallowly. When Patrick returned the next day, the cocker was dead with a cake of foam frozen around its mouth and muzzle. This made Patrick think of coconut Popsicles, and he laughed quite hard as he hauled the frozen corpse from his killingbottle and thew it in the bushes. The supply of victims (which Patrick thought of, when he thought of them at all, as test animals) had been thin this summer. Questions of reality aside, his sense of selfpreservation was well developed, his intuition exquisite. He suspected he was suspected. By whom he was not sure Mr. Engstrom? Perhaps. Mr. Engstrom had turned around and given Patrick a long speculative look in the AP one day this spring. Mr. Engstrom had been buying cigarettes and Patrick had been sent for bread. Mrs. Josephs? Maybe. She sat in her parlor window with a telescope sometimes and was, according to Mrs. Hockstetter, a nosy parker. Mr. Jacubois, who had an ASPCA sticker on the back bumper of his car? Mr. Nell? Someone else? Patrick didnt know for sure, but his intuition told him he was suspected, and he never argued with his intuition. He had taken a few wandering animals from among the rotted tenements in the HalfAcre, picking only those that looked thin or diseased, but that was all. He discovered, however, that the refrigerator near the dump had gotten an oddly powerful hold over him. He began to draw pictures of it in school when he was bored. He sometimes dreamed of it at night, and in his dreams the Amana was perhaps seventy feet tall, a whited sepulchre, a ponderous crypt iced in chilly moonlight. In these dreams the giant door would swing open and he would see huge eyes staring out at him. He would awake in a cold sweat, but he found he could not give up the joys of the refrigerator entirely. Today he had finally found out who had suspected. Bowers. Knowing that Henry Bowers held the secret of his killingbottle in his hands left Patrick as close to panic as he was ever apt to get. This was not very close at all, in truth, but he still found thisnot fear exactly, but mental unrestoppressive and unpleasant. Henry knew. Knew that Patrick sometimes broke the rules. His latest victim had been a pigeon he discovered on Jackson Street two days ago. The pigeon had been struck by a car and couldnt fly. Patrick went home, got his box out of the garage, and put the pigeon inside. The pigeon pecked the back of Patricks hand several times, leaving shallow, bloody digs. Patrick didnt mind. When he checked the refrigerator the next day, the pigeon had been quite dead, but Patrick hadnt removed the corpse then. Now, following Henrys threat to tell, Patrick decided he better get rid of the pigeons body right away. Perhaps he would even get a bucket of water and some rags and scrub out the interior of the refrigerator. It didnt smell very good. If Henry told and Mr. Nell came down to check, he might be able to tell that somethingseveral somethings, in facthad died in there. If he tells, Patrick thought, standing in the grove of pines and looking at the rusty Amana, Ill tell that he broke Eddie Kaspbraks arm. Of course they probably knew that already, but they couldnt prove anything because all of them said they had been playing out at Henrys house that day and Henrys crazy father had backed them up. But if he tells, Ill tell. Tit for tat. Never mind that now. What he had to do now was get rid of the bird. He would leave the refrigerator door open and then come back with the rags and the water and clean it up. Good. Patrick opened the refrigerator door on his own death. At first he was simply puzzled, unable to cope in any way with what he was seeing. It meant nothing to him at all. It had no context. Patrick merely stared, his head cocked to one side, his eyes wide. The pigeon was nothing but a skeleton surrounded by a ragged fall of feathers. There was no flesh left on its body at all. And around it, stuck on the refrigerators inner walls, hanging from the underside of the freezer compartment, dangling from the wire shelves, were dozens of fleshcolored objects that looked like big macaroni shells. Patrick saw that they were moving slightly, fluttering, as if in a breeze. Except there was no breeze. He frowned. Suddenly one of the shelllike things unfurled insectile wings. Before Patrick could do more than register the fact, it had flown across the space between the refrigerator and Patricks left arm. It struck with a smacking sound. There was an instant of heat. It faded and Patricks arm felt just like always again ... but the shelllike creatures pale flesh turned first pink, and then, with shocking suddenness, rosered. Although Patrick was afraid of almost nothing in the commonly understood sense of the word (its hard to be afraid of things that arent real), there was at least one thing that filled him with wretched loathing. He had come out of Brewster Lake one warm August day when he was seven to discover four or five leeches clinging to his stomach and legs. He had screamed himself hoarse until his father had pulled them off. Now, in a deadly burst of inspiration, he realized that this was some weird kind of flying leech. They had infested his refrigerator. Patrick began to scream and beat at the thing on his arm. It had swelled to nearly the size of a tennis ball. At the third blow it broke open with a sickening squtt sound. Bloodhis bloodsprayed his arm from elbow to wrist, but the things jellylike eyeless head held on. In a way, it was like a birds narrow head, ending in a beaklike structure, but this beak was not flat or pointed; it was tubular and blunt, like the proboscis of a mosquito. This proboscis was buried in Patricks arm. Still screaming, he pinched the splattered creature between his fingers and pulled it off. The proboscis came out cleanly, followed by a watery flow of blood mixed with some yellowishwhite liquid like pus. It had made a painless dimesized hole in his arm. And the creature, although exploded, was still twisting and moving and seeking in his fingers. Patrick threw it away, turned ... and more of them flew out of the refrigerator, lighting on him even as he groped for the Amanas handle. They landed on his hands, his arms, his neck. One touched down on his forehead. When Patrick raised his hand to pick it off, he saw four others on his hand, trembling minutely, turning first pink and then red. There was no pain ... but there was a hideous draining sensation. Screaming, whirling, beating at his head and neck with his leechencrusted hands, Patrick Hockstetters mind yammered It isnt real, its just a bad dream, dont worry, its not real, nothing is real But the blood pouring from the smashed leeches seemed real enough, the sound of their buzzing wings seemed real enough ... and his own terror seemed real enough. One of them fell down inside his shirt and settled on his chest. While he was beating frantically at it and watching the bloodstain spread above the place where it had taken its hold, another settled on his right eye. Patrick closed it, but that did no good; he felt a brief hot flare as the things sucker poked through his eyelid and began to suck the fluid out of his eyeball. Patrick felt his eye collapse in its socket and he screamed again. A leech flew into his mouth when he did and roosted on his tongue. It was all almost painless. Patrick went staggering and flapping up the path toward the junked cars. Parasites hung all over him. Some of them drank to capacity and then burst like balloons; when this happened to the bigger ones, they drenched Patrick with almost half a pint of his own hot blood. He could feel the leech inside his mouth swelling up and he opened his jaws because the only coherent thought he had left was that it must not burst in there; it must not, must not. But it did. Patrick ejected a huge spray of blood and parasiteflesh like vomit. He fell down in the gravelly dirt and began to roll over and over, still screaming. Little by little the sound of his own screams began to seem faint, faraway. Just before he passed out, he saw a figure step from behind the last of the junked cars. At first Patrick thought he was a guy, Mandy Fazio perhaps, and he would be saved. But as the figure drew closer, he saw its face was running like wax. Sometimes it began to harden and look like somethingor someoneand then it would start to run again, as if it couldnt make up its mind who or what it wanted to be. Hello and goodbye, a bubbling voice said from inside the running tallow of its features, and Patrick tried to scream again. He didnt want to die; as the only real person, he wasnt supposed to die. If he did, everyone else in the world would die with him. The manshape laid hold of his leechencrusted arms and began to drag him away toward the Barrens. His bloodstained bookcarrier bumped and thumped along beside him, its strap still twisted about his neck. Patrick, still trying to scream, lost consciousness. He awoke only once when, in some dark, smelly, drippy hell where no light shone, no light at all, It began to feed. 6 At first Beverly was not entirely sure what she was seeing or what was happening ... only that Patrick Hockstetter had begun to thrash and dance and scream. She got up warily, holding the slingshot in one hand and two of the ballbearings in the other. She could hear Patrick blundering off down the path, still yelling his head off. In that moment, Beverly looked every inch the lovely woman she was going to become, and if Ben Hanscom had been around to see her just then, his heart might not have been able to stand it. She was standing fully upright, her head cocked to the left, her eyes wide, her hair done in braids that had been tied off with two small red velvet bows which she had bought in Dahlies for a dime. Her posture was one of total attention and concentration; it was feline, lynxlike. She had shifted forward on her left foot, her body halfturned as if to go after Patrick, and the legs of her faded shorts had pulled up enough to show the edging on her yellow cotton panties. Below them, her legs were already smoothly muscled, beautiful in spite of the scabs, bruises, and smutches of dirt. Its a trick. He saw you and he knows he probably cant catch you in a fair chase, so hes trying to get you to come out. Dont go, Bevvie! But another part of her thought there was too much pain and fear in those screams. She wished she had seen whatever had happened to Patrickif anything hadmore clearly. She wished more than anything else that she had come into the Barrens a different way and missed the whole crazy shenanigans. Patricks screams stopped. A moment later Beverly heard someone speakbut she knew that had to be her imagination. She heard her father say, Hello and goodbye. Her father wasnt even in Derry that day he had set off for Brunswick at eight oclock. He and Joe Tammerly were going to pick up a Chevy truck in Brunswick. She shook her head as if to clear it. The voice didnt speak again. Her imagination, obviously. She walked out of the bushes to the path, ready to run the instant she saw Patrick charging at her, her reactions on triggers as delicate as a cats whiskers. She looked down at the path and her eyes widened. There was blood here. Quite a lot of it. Fake blood, her mind insisted. You can buy a bottle of it at Dahlies for fortynine cents. Be careful, Bevvie! She knelt and quickly touched the blood with her fingers. She looked at them closely. It wasnt fake blood. There was a flash of heat in her left arm, just below the elbow. She looked down and saw something that she first thought was some kind of burr. Nonot a burr. Burrs didnt twitch and flutter. This thing was alive. A moment after that she realized it was biting her. She struck it hard with the back of her right hand and it spattered, spraying blood. She backed up a step, getting ready to scream now that it was over ... and then she saw that it wasnt over at all. The things featureless head was still on her arm, its snout buried in her flesh. With a shrill cry of disgust and fear, she picked it off and saw its proboscis come out of her arm like a small dagger, dripping with blood. She understood the blood on the path now, oh yes, and her eyes went to the refrigerator. The door had swung closed and latched again, but a number of the parasites had been left outside and were crawling sluggishly over the rustywhite porcelain. As Beverly looked, one of them unfurled its membranous flylike wings and buzzed toward her. She acted without thinking, loading one of the steel ballbearings into the cup of the Bullseye and pulling the sling back. As the muscles of her left arm flexed smoothly, she saw loose blood squirt from the hole the thing had made in her arm. She let fly anyway, unconsciously leading the flying thing. Shit! Missed! she thought as the Bullseye snapped and the ballbearing flew, a glittering chunk of light in the hazy sun. And she would later tell the other Losers that she knew she had missed it, the same way a bowler knows he has missed the strike as soon as a bad ball leaves his hand. But then she saw the ballbearing curve. It happened in a splitsecond, but the impression was very clear it had curved. It struck the flying thing and splattered it to mush. There was a shower of yellowish droplets which pattered on the path. Beverly backed up slowly at first, her eyes huge, her lips trembling, her face a shocked grayishwhite. Her gaze was pinned to the front of the discarded refrigerator, waiting to see if any of the other things would smell or sense her. But the parasites only crawled slowly back and forth, like autumn flies drugged with the cold. At last she turned and ran. Panic beat darkly against her thoughts, but she would not give in to it entirely. She held the Bullseye in her left hand and looked back over her shoulder from time to time. There was still blood dappled brightly on the path and on the leaves of some of the bushes bordering it, as if Patrick had woven from side to side as he ran. Beverly burst out into the area of the junked cars again. Ahead of her there was a bigger splash of blood, just beginning to soak into the gravelly earth. The ground looked disturbed, darker streaks of earth lined into the powderywhite surface. As if there had been a struggle there. Two grooves, about two and a half feet apart, led away from this spot. Beverly halted, panting. She looked at her arm and was relieved to see that the flow of blood was finally slowing, although her lower forearm and the palm of her hand were streaked and tacky with it. The pain had begun now, a low steady throb. It felt the way her mouth felt about an hour after the dentists, when the novocaine began to wear off. She looked behind again, saw nothing, then looked back at those grooves leading away from the junked cars, away from the dump, and into the Barrens. Those things were in the refrigerator. They got all over himsure they did, look at all the blood. He got this far, and then (hello and goodbye) something else happened. What? She was terribly afraid she knew. The leeches were a part of It, and they had driven Patrick into another part of It much as a panicmaddened steer is driven down the chute and into the slaughteringpen. Get out of here! Get out, Bevvie! Instead she followed the grooves in the earth, holding the Bullseye tightly in her sweating hand. At least get the others! I will ... in a little while. She walked on, following the grooves as the ground sloped down and became softer. She followed them into heavy foliage again. Somewhere a cicada burred loudly and then unwound into silence. Mosquitoes lighted on her bloodstreaked arm. She waved them away. Her teeth were clenched on her lower lip. There was something lying on the ground ahead. She picked it up and looked at it. It was a handmade wallet, the sort of thing a kid might make as a crafts project at Community House. Except it was obvious to Bev that the kid who made this hadnt been much of a craftsman; the wide plastic stitching was already coming unravelled and the bill compartment flapped like a loose mouth. She found a quarter in the change compartment. The only other thing in the wallet was a library card, made out in the name of Patrick Hockstetter. She tossed the wallet aside, library card and all. She wiped her fingers on her shorts. Fifty feet farther on she found a sneaker. The underbrush was now too dense for her to be able to follow the grooves in the earth, but you didnt have to be the Pathfinder to follow the splashes and drips of blood on the bushes. The trail wound down through a steep brake. Bev lost her footing once, slid, and was raked by thorns. Fresh lines of blood appeared on her upper thigh. She was breathing fast now, her hair sweaty and matted to her skull. The spots of blood led out onto one of the faint paths through the Barrens. The Kenduskeag was nearby. Patricks other sneaker, its laces bloody, lay marooned on the path. She approached the river with the Bullseyes sling halfdrawn. The grooves in the earth had reappeared. They were shallower nowthats because he lost his sneakers, she thought. She came around a final bend and faced the river. The grooves went down the bank and led ultimately to one of those concrete cylindersone of the pumpingstations. There they stopped. The iron cover capping the top of this cylinder was a little ajar. As she stood above it, looking down, a thick and monstrous chuckle suddenly issued from beneath. It was too much. The panic which had threatened now descended. Beverly turned and fled toward the clearing and clubhouse, her bloody left arm up to shield her face from the branches which whipped and slapped her. Sometimes I worry too, Daddy, she thought wildly. Sometimes I worry a LOT. 7 Four hours later all of the Losers except Eddie crouched in the bushes near the spot where Beverly had hidden and watched Patrick Hockstetter go to the refrigerator and open it. The sky overhead had darkened with thunderheads, and the smell of rain was in the air again. Bill was holding the end of a long length of clothesline in his hands. The six of them had pooled their available cash and bought the line and a Johnsons firstaid kit for Beverly. Bill had carefully affixed a gauze pad over the bloody hole in her arm. TTell your puhpuhharents you ggot a scruhhape when you were skuhskuhskating, Bill said. My skates! Beverly cried, dismayed. She had forgotten all about them. There, Ben said, and pointed. They were lying in a heap not far away, and she went to retrieve them before Ben or Bill or any of the others could offer. She remembered now that she had put them aside before urinating. She didnt want any of the others over there. Bill himself had tied one end of the clothesline to the handle of the Amana refrigerator, although they had all cautiously approached it together, ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. Bev had offered to give the Bullseye back to Bill; he had insisted she keep it. As it turned out, nothing had moved. Although the area on the path in front of the refrigerator was splattered with blood, the parasites were gone. Perhaps they had flown away. You could bring Chief Borton and Mr. Nell and a hundred other cops down here and it still wouldnt matter, Stan Uris said bitterly. Nope. They wouldnt see a frockin thing, Richie agreed. Hows your arm, Bev? Hurts. She paused, looking from Bill to Richie and back to Bill again. Would my mom and dad see the hole that thing made in my arm? I dddont ththink ssso, Bill said. Get rehready to ruhruhrun. Im gonna ttttie it uhuhon. He looped the end of the clothesline around the refrigerators rustflecked chrome handle, working with the care of a man defusing a live bomb. He tied a grannyknot and then stepped back, paying out the clothesline. He grinned a small shaky grin at the others when they had made some distance. Whooo, he said. GGlad thats ohover. Now, a safe (they hoped) distance from the refrigerator, Bill told them again to get ready to run. Thunder boomed directly overhead and they all jumped. The first scattered drops began to fall. Bill jerked the clothesline as hard as he could. His grannyknot popped off the handle, but not before it had pulled the refrigerator door open again. An avalanche of orange pompoms fell out, and Stan Uris uttered a painful groan. The others only stared, openmouthed. The rain began to come harder. Thunder whipcracked above them, making them cringe, and purplishblue lightning flared as the refrigerator door swung all the way open. Richie saw it first and screamed, a high, hurt sound. Bill uttered some sort of angry, frightened cry. The others were silent. Written on the inside of the door, written in drying blood, were these words Hail mixed with the driving rain. The refrigerator door shuddered back and forth in the rising wind, the letters painted there beginning to drip and run now, taking on the draggling ominous look of a horrormovie poster. Bev was not aware that Bill had gotten up until she saw him advancing across the path toward the refrigerator. He was shaking both fists. Water streamed down his face and plastered his shirt to his back. WWere going to kkkill you! Bill screamed. Thunder whacked and cracked. Lightning flashed so brightly that she could smell it, and not far away there was a splintering, rending sound as a tree fell. Bill, come back! Richie was yelling. Come back, man! He started to get up and Ben hauled him back down again.


You killed my brother George! You son of a bitch! You bastard! You whoremaster! Lets see you now! Lets see you now! Hail came in a spate, stinging them even through the screening bushes. Beverly held her arm up to protect her face. She could see red welts on Bens streaming cheeks. Bill, come back! she screamed despairingly, and another thundercrack drowned her out; it rolled across the Barrens below the low black clouds. Lets see you come out now, you fucker! Bill kicked wildly at the heap of pompoms that had spilled out of the refrigerator. He turned away and began to walk back toward them, his head down. He seemed not to feel the hail, although it now covered the ground like snow. He blundered into the bushes, and Stan had to grab his arm to keep him from going into the prickerbushes. He was crying. Thats okay, Bill, Ben said, putting a clumsy arm around him. Yeah, Richie said. Dont worry. Were not gonna chicken out. He stared around at them, his eyes looking wildly out of his wet face. Is there anyone here whos gonna chicken out? They shook their heads. Bill looked up, wiping his eyes. They were all soaked to the skin and looked like a litter of pups that had just forded a river. IhIts scuhscuhhared of uuus, you know, he said. I can fuhfeel ththat. I swear to GuhGod I cccan. Bev nodded soberly. I think youre right. HHHelp mmme, Bill said. PPPlPlease. HHHelp mmme.  We will, Beverly said. She took Bill in her arms. She had not realized how easily her arms would go around him, how thin he was. She could feel his heart racing under his shirt; she could feel it next to hers. She thought that no touch had ever seemed so sweet and strong. Richie put his arms around both of them and laid his head on Beverlys shoulder. Ben did the same from the other side. Stan Uris put his arms around Richie and Ben. Mike hesitated, and then slipped one arm around Beverlys waist and the other over Bills shivering shoulders. They stood that way, hugging, and the sleet turned back to driving pouring rain, rain so heavy it seemed almost like a new atmosphere. The lightning walked and the thunder talked. No one spoke. Beverlys eyes were tightly shut. They stood in the rain in a huddled group, hugging each other, listening to it hiss down on the bushes. That was what she remembered best the sound of the rain and their own shared silence and a vague sorrow that Eddie was not there with them. She remembered those things. She remembered feeling very young and very strong. CHAPTER 18 The Bullseye 1 Okay, Haystack, Richie says. Your turn. The redheads smoked all of her cigarettes and most of mine. The hour groweth late.  Ben glances up at the clock. Yes, its late nearly midnight. Just time for one more story, he thinks. One more story before twelve. Just to keep us warm. What should it be? But that, of course, is only a joke, and not a very good one; there is only one story left, at least only one he remembers, and that is the story of the silver slugshow they were made in Zack Denbroughs workshop on the night of July 23rd and how they were used on the 25th. Ive got my own scars,  he says. Do you remember? Beverly and Eddie shake their heads; Bill and Richie nod. Mike sits silent, his eyes watchful in his tired face. Ben stands up and unbuttons the workshirt he is wearing, spreading it open. An old scar in the shape of the letter H shows there. Its lines are brokenthe belly was much bigger when that scar was put therebut its shape still identifiable. The heavy scar depending downward from the crossbar of the H is much clearer. It looks like a twisted white hangrope from which the noose has been cut. Beverlys hand goes to her mouth. The werewolf! In that house! Oh Jesus Christ! And she turns to the windows, as if to see it lurking outside in the darkness. Thats right, Ben said. And you want to know something funny? That scar wasnt there two nights ago. Henrys old callingcard was; I know, because I showed it to a friend of mine, a bartender named Ricky Lee back in Hemingford Home. But this one He laughs without much humor and begins buttoning his shirt again. This one just came back. Like the ones on our hands. Yeah, Mike says as Ben buttons his shirt up again. The werewolf. We all saw It as the werewolf that time. Because thats how RRRichie saw IhIt before, Bill murmurs. Thats it, isnt it? Yes, Mike says. We were close, werent we? Beverly says. Her voice is softly marvelling. Close enough to read each others minds.  Ole Big Hairy damn near had your guts for garters, Ben,  Richie says, and he is not smiling as he says it. He pushes his mended glasses up on his nose and behind them his face looks white and haggard and ghostly. Bill saved your bacon, Eddie says abruptly. I mean, Bev saved us all, but if it hadnt been for you, Bill Yes, Ben agrees. You did, Big Bill. I was, like, lost in the funhouse.  Bill points briefly at the empty chair. I had some help from Stan Uris. And he paid for it. Maybe died for it.  Ben Hanscom is shaking his head. Dont say that, Bill. But its ttrue. And if its yuhyour ffault, its my fault, too, and eeeveryone elses here, because we went on. Even after Patrick, and what was written on that rrefrigerator, we went on. It would be my fault mmost of all, I guess, because I wuhwuhwanted us to go on. Because of JuhGeorge. Maybe even because I thought that if I killed whatever kkilled George, my puhharents would have to luhluhluh Love you again? Beverly asks gently. Yes. Of course. But I dddont think it was aaanyones fuhhault, Ben. It was just the wwway Stan was built. He couldnt face it, Eddie says. He is thinking of Mr. Keenes revelation about his asthma medicine, and how he could still not give it up. He is thinking that he might have been able to give up the habit of being sick; it was the habit of believing he had been unable to kick. As things had turned out, maybe that habit had saved his life. He was great that day, Ben says. Stan and his birds. A chuckle stirs through them, and they look at the chair where Stan would have been in a rightful sane world where all the good guys won all of the time. I miss him, Ben thinks. God, how I miss him! He says, You remember that day, Richie, when you told him you heard somewhere he killed Christ, and Stan says, totally deadpan, I think that was my father? I remember, Richie says in a voice almost too low to hear. He takes his handkerchief out of his back pocket, removes his glasses, wipes his eyes, then puts his glasses back on. He puts away the handkerchief and without looking up from his hands he says, Why dont you just tell it, Ben? It hurts, doesnt it? Yeah, Richie says, his voice so thick it is hard to understand him. Why, sure. It hurts. Ben looks around at them, then nods. All right, then. One more story before twelve. Just to keep us warm. Bill and Richie had the idea of the bullets No, Richie demurs. Bill thought of it first, and he got nervous first.  I just started to wuhwuhworry Doesnt really matter, I guess, Ben says. The three of us spent some heavy library time that July. We were trying to find out how to make silver bullets. I had the silver; four silver dollars that were my fathers. Then Bill got nervous, thinking about what kind of shape wed be in if we had a misfire with some kind of monster coming down our throats. And when we saw how good Beverly was with that slingshot of his, we ended up using one of my silver dollars to make slugs instead. We got the stuff together and all of us we went down to Bills place. Eddie, you were there I told my mother we were going to play Monopoly, Eddie says. My arm was really hurting, but I had to walk. Thats how pissed she was at me. And every time I heard someone behind me on the sidewalk Id whip around, thinking it was Bowers. It didnt help the pain. Bill grins. And what we did was stand around and watch Ben make the ammo. I think Ben rreally could have made sihsilver bullets.  Oh, Im not so sure of that, Ben says, although he still is. He remembers how the dusk was drawing down outside (Mr. Denbrough had promised them all rides home), the sound of the crickets in the grass, the first lightningbugs blinking outside the windows. Bill had carefully set up the Monopoly board in the dining room, making it look as if the game had been going on for an hour or more. He remembers that, and the clean pool of yellow light falling on Zacks worktable. He remembers Bill saying, We gotta be cc 2 careful. I dont want to leave a muhmuhmess. My dadll be He spat out a number of ps, and finally managed to say pissed off. Richie made a burlesque of wiping his cheek. Do you serve towels with your showers, Stuttering Bill? Bill made as if to hit him. Richie cowered, shrieking in his Pickaninny Voice. Ben took very little notice of them. He watched Bill lay out the implements and tools one by one in the light. Part of his mind was wishing that someday he might have such a nice worktable as this himself. Most of it was centered directly on the job ahead. Not as difficult as making silver bullets would have been, but he would still be careful. There was no excuse for sloppy workmanship. This was not something he had been taught or told, just something he knew. Bill had insisted that Ben make the slugs, just as he continued to insist that Beverly would be the one carrying the Bullseye. These things could have and had been discussed, but it was only twentyseven years later, telling the story, that Ben realized no one had even suggested that a silver bullet or slug might not stop a monsterthey had the weight of what seemed like a thousand horror movies on their side. Okay, Ben said. He cracked his knuckles and then looked at Bill. You got the molds? Oh! Bill jumped a little. HHHere. He reached into his pants pocket and brought out his handkerchief. He put it on the workbench and unfolded it. There were two dull steel balls inside, each with a small hole in it. They were bearing molds. After deciding on slugs instead of bullets, Bill and Richie had gone back to the library and had researched how bearings were made. You boys are so busy, Mrs. Starrett had said. Bullets one week and bearings the next! And its summer vacation, too! We like to stay sharp, Richie said. Right, Bill? RuhRuhRight. It turned out that making bearings was a cinch, once you had the molds. The only real question was where to get them. A couple of discreet questions to Zack Denbrough had taken care of that ... and none of the Losers were too surprised to find that the only machineshop in Derry where such molds might be obtained was Kitchener Precision Tool  Die. The Kitchener who owned and ran it was a greatgreatgrandnephew of the brothers who had owned the Kitchener Ironworks. Bill and Richie had gone over together with all the cash the Losers had been able to raise on short noticeten dollars and fiftynine centsin Bills pocket. When Bill asked how much a couple of twoinch bearing molds might cost, Carl Kitchenerwho looked like a veteran boozehound and smelled like an old horseblanketasked what a couple of kids wanted with bearing molds. Richie let Bill speak, knowing things would probably go easier that waychildren made fun of Bills stutter; adults were embarrassed by it. Sometimes this was surprisingly helpful. Bill got halfway through the explanation he and Richie had worked out on the way oversomething about a model windmill for next years science projectwhen Kitchener waved for him to shut up and quoted them the unbelievable price of fifty cents per mold. Hardly able to believe their good fortune, Bill forked over a single dollar bill. Dont expect me to give you a bag, Carl Kitchener said, eying them with the bloodshot contempt of a man who believes he has seen everything the world holds, most of it twice. You dont get no bag unless you spend at least five bucks. Thats oookay, suhsir, Bill said. And dont hang around out front, Kitchener said. You both need haircuts. Outside Bill said YYYou ever nuhhotice, RuhRichie, how guhguhgrownups wwwont sell you aaanything except ccandy or cuhcuhhomic books or mmaybe movie tttickets without first they wwant to know what yyou want it ffor? Sure, Richie said. WWhy? Why ihis that? Because they think were dangerous. YYeah? You thuhthuhthink sso? Yeah, Richie said, and then giggled. Lets hang around out front, want to? Well put up our collars and sneer at people and let our hair grow. Fuck yyou, Bill said. 3 Okay, Ben said, looking at the molds carefully and then putting them down. Good. Now They gave him a little more room, looking at him hopefully, the way a man with engine trouble who knows nothing about cars will look at a mechanic. Ben didnt notice their expressions. He was concentrating on the job. Gimme that shell, he said, and the blowtorch. Bill handed a cutdown mortar shell to him. It was a war souvenir. Zack had picked it up five days after he and the rest of General Pattons army had crossed the river into Germany. There had been a time, when Bill was very young and George was still in diapers, that his father had used it as an ashtray. Later he had quit smoking, and the mortar shell had disappeared. Bill had found it in the back of the garage just a week ago. Ben put the mortar shell into Zacks vise, tightened it, and then took the blowtorch from Beverly. He reached into his pocket, brought out a silver dollar, and dropped it into the makeshift crucible. It made a hollow sound. Your father gave you that, didnt he? Beverly asked. Yes, Ben said, but I dont remember him very well. Are you sure you want to do this? He looked at her and smiled. Yes, he said. She smiled back. It was enough for Ben. If she had smiled at him twice, he would gladly have made enough silver bearings to shoot a platoon of werewolves. He looked hastily away. Okay. Here we go. No problem. Easy as pie, right? They nodded hesitantly. Years later, recounting all of this, Ben would think These days a kid could just run out and buy a propane torch ... or his dad would have one in the workshop. There had been no such things in 1958, however; Zack Denbrough had a tankjob, and it made Beverly nervous. Ben could tell she was nervous, wanted to tell her not to worry, but was afraid his voice would tremble. Dont worry, he said to Stan, who was standing next to her. Huh? Stan said, looking at him and blinking. Dont worry. Im not. Oh. I thought you were. And I just wanted you to know this is perfectly safe. If you were. Worrying, I mean. Are you okay, Ben? Fine, Ben muttered. Gimme the matches, Richie. Richie gave him a book of matches. Ben twisted the valve on the tank and lit a match under the nozzle of the torch. There was a flump! and a bright blueorange glare. Ben tuned the flame to a blue edge and began to heat the base of the mortar shell. You got the funnel? he asked Bill. RRRight here. Bill handed over a homemade funnel that Ben had made earlier. The tiny hole at its base fit the hole in the bearing molds almost exactly. Ben had done this without taking a single measurement. Bill had been amazed almost flabbergastedbut did not know how to say so without embarrassing Ben. Absorbed in what he was doing, Ben could talk to Beverlyhe spoke with the dry precision of a surgeon addressing a nurse. Bev, you got the steadiest hands. Stick the funnel in the hole. Use one of those gloves so you dont get burned. Bill handed her one of his fathers work gloves. Beverly put the tin funnel in the mold. No one spoke. The hissing of the blowtorch flame seemed very loud. They watched it, eyes squinted almost shut. Wuhwuhwait, Bill said suddenly, and dashed into the house. He came back a minute later with a pair of cheap Turtle wraparound sunglasses that had been languishing in a kitchen drawer for a year or more. Better pput these uhon, HHHaystack. Ben took them, grinned, and slipped them on. Shit, its Fabian! Richie said. Or Frankie Avalon, or one of those Bandstand wops. Fuck you, Trashmouth, Ben said, but he started giggling in spite of himself. The idea of him being Fabian or someone like that was just too weird. The flame wavered and he stopped laughing; his concentration narrowed to a point again. Two minutes later he handed the torch to Eddie, who held it gingerly in his good hand. Its ready, he said to Bill. Gimme that other glove. Fast! Fast! Bill gave it to him. Ben put it on and held the mortar shell with the gloved hand while he turned the vise lever with the other. Hold it steady, Bev. Im ready, dont wait for me, she rapped back at him. Ben tilted the shell over the funnel. The others watched as a rivulet of molten silver flowed between the two receptacles. Ben poured precisely; not a drop was spilled. And for a moment, he felt galvanized. He seemed to see everything magnified through a strong white glow. For that one moment he did not feel like plain fat old Ben Hanscom, who wore sweatshirts to disguise his gut and his tits; he felt like Thor, working thunder and lightning at the smithy of the gods. Then the feeling was gone. Okay, he said. Im gonna have to reheat the silver. Someone shove a nail or something up the spout of the funnel before the goop hardens in there. Stan did it. Ben clamped the mortar shell in the vise again and took the torch from Eddie. Okay, he said, number two. And went back to work. 4 Ten minutes later it was done. Now what? Mike asked. Now we play Monopoly for an hour, Ben said, while they harden in the molds. Then I clip em open with a chisel along the cutlines and were done. Richie looked uneasily at the cracked face of his Timex, which had taken a great many lickings and kept on ticking. When will your folks be back, Bill? NNNot until tuhten or tenthuhthuhhirty, Bill said. Its a double ffffeature at the UhUhUh Aladdin, Stan said. Yeah. And theyll stop in for a slice of pppizza after. They aalmost always ddo. So we have plenty of time, Ben said. Bill nodded. Then lets go in, Bev said. I want to call home. I promised I would. And dont any of you talk. He thinks Im at Community House and that Im getting a ride home from there. What if he wants to come down and pick you up early? Mike asked. Then, Beverly said, Im going to be in a lot of trouble. Ben thought Id protect you, Beverly. In his minds eye, an instant daydream unfolded, one with an ending so sweet he shivered. Bevs father started to give her a hard time; to bawl her out and all that (even in his daydream he did not imagine how bad all that could get with Al Marsh). Ben threw himself in front of her and told Marsh to lay off. If you want trouble, fat boy, you just keep protecting my daughter. Hanscom, usually a quiet bookish type, can be a ravening tiger when you get him mad. He speaks to Al Marsh with great sincerity. If you want to get to her, youll have to come through me first. Marsh starts forward ... and then the steely glint in Hanscoms eyes stops him. Youll be sorry, he mumbles, but its clear all the fight has gone out of him. Hes just a paper tiger after all. Somehow I doubt that, Hanscom says with a tight Gary Cooper smile, and Beverlys father slinks away. Whats happened to you, Ben? Bev cries, but her eyes are shining and full of stars. You looked ready to kill him! Kill him? Hanscom says, the Gary Cooper smile still lingering on his lips. No way, baby. He may be a creep, but hes still your father. I might have roughed him up a little, but thats only because when someone talks wrong to you I get a little hot under the collar. You know? She throws her arms around him and kisses him (on the lips! on the LIPS!). I love you, Ben! she sobs. He can feel her small breasts pressing firmly against his chest and He shivered a little, throwing this bright, terribly clear picture off with an effort. Richie stood in the doorway, asking him if he was coming, and Ben realized he was all alone in the workroom. Yeah, he said, starting a little. Sure I am. Youre goin senile, Haystack, Richie said as Ben went though the door, but he clapped Ben on the shoulder. Ben grinned and hooked an elbow briefly around Richies neck. 5 There was no problem with Beverlys dad. He had come home late from work, Bevs mother told her over the phone, fallen asleep in front of the TV, and waked up just long enough to get himself into bed. You got a ride home, Bewie? Yes. Bill Denbroughs dad is going to take a whole bunch of us home. Mrs. Marsh sounded suddenly alarmed. Youre not on a date, are you, Bewie? No, of course not, Bev said, looking through the arched doorway between the darkened hall where she was and the dining room, where the others were sitting down around the Monopoly board. But I sure wish I was. Boys, uck. But they have a signup sheet down here, and every night a different dad or mom takes kids home. That much, at least, was true. The rest was a lie so outrageous that she could feel herself blushing hotly in the dark. All right, her mom said. I just wanted to be sure. Because if your dad caught you going on dates at your age, hed be mad. Almost as an afterthought she added I would be, too. Yeah, I know, Bev said, still looking into the dining room. She did know; yet here she was, not with one boy but six of them, in a house where the parents were gone. She saw Ben looking at her anxiously, and she sketched a smiling little salute at him. He blushed but gave her the little salute right back. Are any of your girlfriends there? What girlfriends, Mamma? Um, Patty OHaras here. And Ellie Geiger, I think. Shes playing shuffleboard downstairs. The facility with which the lies came from her lips made her ashamed. She wished she were talking to her father; she would have been more scared but less ashamed. She supposed she really wasnt a very good girl. I love you, Mamma, she said. Same goes back to you, Bev. Her mother paused briefly and added Be careful. The paper says there may be another one. A boy named Patrick Hockstetter. Hes missing. Did you know him, Bewie? She closed her eyes briefly. No, Mom. Well ... goodbye, then. Bye. She joined the others at the table and for an hour they played Monopoly. Stan was the big winner. Jews are very good at making money, Stan said, putting a hotel on Atlantic Avenue and two more green houses on Ventnor Avenue. Everybody knows that. Jesus, make me Jewish, Ben said promptly, and everyone laughed. Ben was almost broke. Beverly glanced across the table from time to time at Bill, noting his clean hands, his blue eyes, the fine red hair. As he moved the little silver shoe he was using as a marker around the board, she thought, If he held my hand, I think Id be so glad Id probably die. A warm light seemed to glow briefly in her chest and she smiled secretly down at her hands. 6 The evenings finale was almost anticlimactic. Ben took one of Zacks chisels from the shelf and used a hammer to strike the molds on the cutlines. They opened easily. Two small silver balls fell out. In one they could faintly see part of a date 925. In the other, wavery lines Beverly thought were the remnants of Lady Libertys hair. They looked at them without speaking for a moment, and then Stan picked one up. Pretty small, he said. So was the rock in Davids sling when he went up against Goliath, Mike said. They look powerful to me. Ben found himself nodding. They did to him, as well. Were all dddone? Bill asked. All done, Ben said. Here. He tossed the second slug to Bill, who was so surprised he almost fumbled it. The slugs went around the circle. Each of them looked closely at both, marvelling at their roundness, weight, actuality. When they came back to Ben, he held them in his hand and then looked at Bill. What do we do with them now? GGGive them to BBeverly. No! He looked at her. His face was kind enough, but stern. BBBev, weve been thruhthrough this aaalready, and Ill do it, she said. Ill shoot the goddamned things when the time comes. If it comes. Ill probably get us all killed, but Ill do it. I dont want to take them home, though. One of my (father) parents might find them. Then Id be in dutch. Dont you have a secret hiding place? Richie asked. Criminy, I got four or five. Ive got a place, Beverly said. There was a small slit in the bottom of her boxspring where she sometimes stashed cigarettes, comic books, and, just lately, film and fashion magazines. But nothing Id trust for something like this. You keep them, Bill. Until its time, anyway, you keep them. Okay, Bill said mildly, and just then lights splashed into the driveway. Holy cruhcrow, theyre eeearly. LLets get out of hhere. They were just sitting down around the Monopoly board again when Sharon Denbrough opened the kitchen door. Richie rolled his eyes and mimed wiping sweat from his forehead; the others laughed heartily. Richie had Gotten Off A Good One. A moment later she came in. Your dads waiting for your friends in the car, Bill. OOOkay, MMom, Bill said. WWe were juhjust fffinishing, aanyway. Who won? Sharon asked, smiling brighteyed at Bills little friends. The girl was going to be very pretty, she thought. She supposed in another year or two the children would have to be chaperoned if there were going to be girls instead of just the regular gang of boys. But surely it was still too soon to worry about sex rearing its ugly head. StStan wuhwuhwon, Bill said. Juhjuhjews are very gggood at mmaking money. Bill! She cried, horrified and blushing ... and then she looked around at them, amazed, as they roared with laughter, Stan included. Amazement turned to something like fear (although she said nothing of this to her husband later, in bed). There was a feeling in the air, like static electricity, only somehow much more powerful, much more scary. She felt that if she touched any of them, she would receive a walloping shock. Whats happened to them? she thought, dismayed, and perhaps she even opened her mouth to say something like that. Then Bill was saying he was sorry (but still with that devilish glint in his eye), and Stan was saying that was all right, it was just a joke they laid on him from time to time, and she found herself too confused to say anything at all. But she felt relieved when the children were gone and her own puzzling, stuttering son had gone to his room and turned off the light. 7 The day that the Losers Club finally met It in facetoface combat, the day It almost had Ben Hanscoms guts for garters, was July 25th, 1958. It was hot and muggy and still. Ben remembered the weather clearly enough; it had been the last day of the hot weather. After that day, a long spell of cool and cloudy had come in. They arrived at 29 Neibolt Street around ten that morning, Bill riding Richie double on Silver, Ben with his ample buttocks spilling over either side of the sagging seat on his Raleigh. Beverly came down Neibolt Street on her girls Schwinn, her red hair held back from her forehead by a green band. It streamed out behind her. Mike came by himself, and about five minutes later Stan and Eddie walked up together. HHHows your aaarm, EhEhEddie? Aw, not too bad. Hurts if I roll over on that side while Im sleeping. Did you bring the stuff? There was a canvaswrapped bundle in Silvers bikebasket. Bill took it out and unwrapped it. He handed the slingshot to Beverly, who took it with a little grimace but said nothing. There was also a tin Sucrets box in the bundle. Bill opened it and showed them the two silver balls. They looked at them silently, gathered close together on the balding lawn on 29 Neibolt Streeta lawn where only weeds seemed to grow. Bill, Richie, and Eddie had seen the house before; the others hadnt, and they looked at it curiously. The windows look like eyes, Stan thought, and his hand went to the paperback book in his back pocket. He touched it for luck. He carried the book with him almost everywhereit was M. K. Handeys Guide to North American Birds. They look like dirty blind eyes. It stinks Beverly thought. I can smell itbut not with my nose, not exactly. Mike thought, Its like that time out where the Ironworks used to be. It has the same feel ... as if its telling us to step on in. This is one of Its places, all right, Ben thought. One of the places like the Morlock holes, where It goes out and comes back in. And It knows were out here. Its waiting for us to come in. Yuhyuhyou all still want to? Bill asked. They looked back at him, pale and solemn. No one said no. Eddie fumbled his aspirator out of his pocket and took a long whooping gasp at it. Gimme some of that, Richie said. Eddie looked at him, surprised, waiting for the punchline. Richie held out his hand. No fake, Jake. Can I have some? Eddie shrugged with his good shoulderan oddly disjointed movementand handed it over. Richie triggered the aspirator and breathed deep. Needed that, he said, and handed it back. He was coughing a little, but his eyes were sober. Me too, Stan said. Okay? So one after another they used Eddies aspirator. When it came back to him, Eddie jammed it in his back pocket, where the nozzle stuck out. They turned to look at the house again. Does anybody live on this street? Beverly asked in a low voice. Not this end of it, Mike said. Not anymore. Just the bums that stay for awhile and then go out on the freights. They wouldnt see anything, Stan said. Theyd be safe. Most of them, anyway. He looked at Bill. Can any grownups at all see It, do you think, Bill? I dont nuhknow, Bill said. There must be suhsuhsome. I wish we could meet one, Richie said glumly. This really isnt a job for kids, you know what I mean? Bill knew. Whenever the Hardy Boys got into trouble, Fenton Hardy was around to bail them out. Same with Rick Brants dad Hartson in the Rick Brant Science Adventures. Shit, even Nancy Drew had a father who would show up in the nick of time if the bad guys tied her up and threw her into an abandoned mine or something. Ought to be a grownup along, Richie said, looking at the closed house with its peeling paint, its dirty windows, its shadowy porch. He sighed tiredly. For a moment, Ben felt their resolution falter. Then Bill said, Cuhcuhhome aaaaround hhere. Look at ththis. They walked around to the left side of the porch, where the skirting was torn off. The brambly, runtothewild roses were still there ... and those Eddies leper had touched when it climbed out were still black and dead. It just touched them and it did that? Beverly asked, horrified. Bill nodded. Are you guhhuys sssure? For a moment nobody replied. They werent sure; even though all of them knew by Bills face that he would go on without them, they werent sure. There was also a species of shame on Bills face. As he had told them before, George hadnt been their brother. But all the other kids, Ben thought. Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, that Clements kid, Eddie Corcoran (maybe), Ronnie Grogan ... even Patrick Hockstetter. It kills kids, goddammit, kids! Ill go, Big Bill, he said. Shit, yeah, Beverly said. Sure, Richie said. You think were gonna let you have all the fun, mushmouth? Bill looked at them, his throat working, and then he nodded. He handed the tin box to Beverly. Are you sure, Bill? ShShSure. She nodded, at once horrified by the responsibility and bewitched by his trust. She opened the box, took out the slugs, and slipped one into the right front pocket of her jeans. The other she socketed in the Bullseyes rubber cup, and it was by the cup that she carried the slingshot. She could feel the ball tightly enclosed in her fist, cold at first and then warming. Lets go, she said, her voice not quite steady. Lets go before I chicken out. Bill nodded, then looked sharply at Eddie. CuhCan you dddo this, EhEhEddie? Eddie nodded. Sure I can. I was alone last time. This time Im with my friends. Right? He looked at them and grinned a little. His expression was shy, fragile, and quite beautiful. Richie clapped him on the back. Thass right, senhorr. Anywhunn tries to steal your assipirator, we keel heem. But we keel heem slow. Thats terrible, Richie, Bev said, giggling. UhUhunder the pporch, Bill said. AAll of you bbbehind me.


Then into the suhsuhcellar. If you go first and that thing jumps you, what do I do? Beverly asked. Shoot through you? If yyou have to, Bill said. But I suhsuhsuggest yyyou try guhhoing aaround, first. Richie laughed wildly at this. Well gggo through the whole puhpuhplace, if we have tto. He shrugged. Maybe we wont find aaanything. Do you believe that? Mike asked. No, Bill said briefly. Its hhhere. Ben believed he was right. The house at 29 Neibolt Street seemed to be encased in a poisonous envelope. It could not be seen . . . but It could be felt. He licked his lips. You ruhruhready? Bill asked them. They all looked back at him. Ready, Bill, Richie said. Cuhcome on, ththen, Bill said. Stay cluhclose behind me, BBeverly. He dropped to his knees, crawled through the blighted rosebushes and under the porch. 8 They went this way Bill, Beverly, Ben, Eddie, Richie, Stan, Mike. The leaves under the porch crackled and puffed up a sour old smell. Ben wrinkled his nose. Had he ever smelled fallen leaves like these? He thought not. And then an unpleasant idea struck him. They smelled the way he imagined a mummy would smell, just after its discoverer had levered open its coffin all dust and bitter ancient tannic acid. Bill had reached the broken cellar window and was looking into the cellar. Beverly crawled up beside him. You see anything? Bill shook his head. But that ddoesnt mmmean nuhhuthins there. LLook; theres the ccoalpile me and RRRichie used to get owout. Ben, who was looking between them, saw it. He was becoming excited as well as afraid now, and he welcomed the excitement, instinctively recognizing that it could be a tool. Seeing the coalpile was a little like seeing a great landmark about which you had only read or heard from others. Bill turned around and slipped through the window. Beverly gave Ben the Bullseye, folding his hand over the cup and ball nestled in it. Give it to me the second Im down, she said. The second. Got you. She slipped down easily and lithely. There wasfor Ben, at leastone heartstopping instant when her blouse pulled out of her jeans and he saw her flat white belly. Then there was the thrill of her hands over his as he handed the slingshot down. Okay, Ive got it. Come on. Ben turned around himself and began to wriggle through the window. He should have foreseen what happened next; it was really inevitable. He got stuck. His fanny bound up against the rectangular cellar window and he couldnt go in any farther. He started to pull himself out and realized, horrified, that he could do it, but was very apt to yank his pantsand perhaps his underpants as welldown to his knees when he did. And there he would be, with his extremely large ass practically in his beloveds face. Hurry up! Eddie said. Ben pushed grimly with both hands. For a moment he still couldnt move, and then his butt popped through the windowhole. His bluejeans dragged painfully up into his crotch, squashing his balls. The top of the window rucked his shirt all the way up to his shoulderblades. Now his gut was stuck. Suck in, Haystack, Richie said, giggling hysterically. You better suck in or well have to send Mike after his dads chainfall to pull you out again. Beepbeep, Richie, Ben said through gritted teeth. He sucked his belly in as much as he could. He moved a little farther, then stopped again. He turned his head as far as he could, fighting panic and claustrophobia. His face had gone a bright sweaty red. The sour smell of the leaves was heavy in his nostrils, cloying. Bill! Can you guys pull me? He felt Bill grasp one of his ankles, Beverly the other. He sucked his belly in again, and a moment later he came tumbling through the window. Bill grabbed him. Both of them almost fell over. Ben couldnt look at Bev. He had never in his life been as embarrassed as he was at that moment. YYYou okay, mmman? Yeah. Bill laughed shakily. Beverly joined him, and then Ben was able to laugh a little too, although it would be years before he could see anything remotely funny in what had happened. Hey! Richie called down. Eddie needs help, okay? OOOkay. Bill and Ben took up positions below the window. Eddie came through on his back. Bill got his legs just above the knees. Watch what youre doing, Eddie said in a querulous, nervous voice. Im ticklish. Ramon ees plenny teekeleesh, senhorr, Richies voice called down. Ben got Eddie around the waist, trying to keep his hand away from the cast and the sling. He and Bill manhandled Eddie through the cellar window like a corpse. Eddie cried out once, but that was all. EhEhEddie? Yeah, Eddie said, okay. No big deal. But large drops of sweat stood out on his forehead and he was breathing in quick rasps. His eyes darted around the cellar. Bill stepped back again. Beverly stood near him, now holding the Bullseye by the shaft and the cup, ready to fire if necessary. Her eyes swept the cellar constantly. Richie came through next, followed by Stan and Mike, all of them moving with a smooth grace that Ben deeply envied. Then they were all down, down in the cellar where Bill and Richie had seen It only a month before. The room was dim, but not dark. Dusky light shafted in through the windows and pooled on the dirt floor. The cellar seemed very big to Ben, almost too big, as if he were witnessing an optical illusion of some sort. Dusty rafters crisscrossed overhead. The furnacepipes were rusty. Some sort of dirty white cloth hung from the waterpipes in dirty strings and strands. The smell was down here too. A dirty yellow smell. Ben thought Its here, all right. Oh yeah. Bill started toward the stairs. The others fell in behind him. He halted at their foot and glanced underneath. He reached under with one foot and kickpawed something out. They looked at it wordlessly. It was a white clownglove, now streaked with dirt and dust. Uhuhupstairs, he said. They went up and emerged into a dirty kitchen. One plain straightbacked chair stood marooned in the center of the humped hillocky linoleum. That was it for furniture. There were empty liquor bottles in one corner. Ben could see others in the pantry. He could smell boozewine, mostlyand old stale cigarettes. Those smells were dominant, but that other smell was there, too. It was getting stronger all the time. Beverly went to the cupboards and opened one of them. She screamed piercingly as a blackishbrown Norway rat tumbled out almost into her face. It struck the counter with a plop and glared around at them with its black eyes. Still screaming, Beverly raised the Bullseye and pulled the sling back. NO! Bill roared. She turned toward him, pale and terrified. Then she nodded and relaxed her arm, the silver ball unfiredbut Ben thought she had been very, very close. She backed up slowly, ran into Ben, jumped. He put an arm around her, tight. The rat scurried down the length of the counter, jumped to the floor, ran into the pantry, and was gone. It wanted me to shoot at it, Beverly said in a faint voice. Use up half of our ammunition on it. Yes, Bill said. Its 11like the FBI training rrange at QuhQuhQuantico, in a wwway. They sehsend yyou down this ffhake street and ppop up tuhhargets. If you shuhshoot any honest citizens ihinstead of just cruhcrooks, you tlose puhhoints. I cant do this, Bill, she said. Ill mess it up. Here. You. She held the Bullseye out, but Bill shook his head. You hhhave to, BBeverly. There was a mewling from another cupboard. Richie walked toward it. Dont get too close! Stan barked. It might Richie looked inside and an expression of sick disgust crossed his face. He slammed the cupboard shut with a bang that produced a dead echo in the empty house. A litter. Richie sounded ill. Biggest litter I ever saw ... anyone ever saw, probably. He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. Theres hundreds of them in there. He looked at them, his mouth twitching a little on one side. Their tails ... they were all tangled up, Bill. Knotted together. He grimaced. Like snakes. They looked at the cupboard door. The mewling was muffled but still audible. Rats, Ben thought, looking at Bills white face and, over Bills shoulder, at Mikes ashygray one. Everyones ascared of rats. It knows it, too. CCCome on, Bill said. HHere on NuhNuhNeibolt Street, the fffun just nehhever stops. They went down the front hall. Here the unlovely smells of rotting plaster and old urine were intermixed. They were able to look out at the street through dirty panes of glass and see their bikes. Bevs and Bens were heeled over on their kickstands. Bills leaned against a stunted maple tree. To Ben the bikes looked a thousand miles away, like things seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The deserted street with its casual patchings of asphalt, the faded humid sky, the steady dingdingding of a locomotive running on a siding ... these things seemed like dreams to him, hallucinations. What was real was this squalid hallway with its stinks and shadows. There was a shatter of broken brown glass in one cornerRheingold bottles. In the other corner, wet and swollen, was a digestsized girlybook. The woman on the cover was bent over a chair, her skirt up in the back to show the tops of her fishnet hose and her black panties. The picture did not look particularly sexy to Ben, nor did it embarrass him that Beverly had also glanced at it. Moisture had yellowed the womans skin and humped the cover in ripples that became wrinkles on her face. Her salacious gaze had become the leer of a dead whore. (Years later, as Ben recounted this, Bev suddenly cried out, startling all of themthey were not so much listening to the story as reliving it. It was her! Bev yelled. Mrs. Kersh! It was her!) As Ben looked, the youngold crone on the girlybook cover winked at him. She wiggled her fanny in an obscene comeon. Cold all over, yet sweating, Ben looked away. Bill pushed open a door on the left and they followed him into a vaultlike room that might once have been a parlor. A crumpled pair of green pants was hung over the lightfixture which depended from the ceiling. Like the cellar, this room seemed much too big to Ben, almost as long as a freightcar. Much too long for a house as small as this one had appeared from the outside Oh, but that was outside, a new voice spoke inside his mind. It was a jocular, squealing voice, and Ben realized with sudden certainty that he was hearing Pennywise Itself; Pennywise was speaking to him on some crazy mental radio. Outside, things always look smaller than they really are, dont they, Ben? Go away, he whispered. Richie turned to look at him, his face still strained and pale. You say something? Ben shook his head. The voice was gone. That was an important thing, a good thing. Yet (outside) he had understood. This house was a special place, a kind of station, one of the places in Derry, one of the many, perhaps, from which It was able to find Its way into the overworld. This stinking rotted house where everything was somehow wrong. It wasnt just that it seemed too big; the angles were wrong, the perspective crazy. Ben was standing just inside the door between the parlor and the hallway and the others were moving away from him across a space that now looked almost as big as Bassey Park ... but as they moved away, they seemed to grow larger instead of smaller. The floor seemed to slope, and Mike turned. Ben! he called, and Ben saw alarm on his face. Catch up! Were losing you! He could barely hear the last word. It trailed away as if the others were being swept off on a fast train. Suddenly terrified, he began to run. The door behind him swept shut with a muffled bang. He screamed ... and something seemed to sweep through the air just behind him, ruffling his shirt. He looked back, but there was nothing there. That did not change his belief, however, that something had been. He caught up with the others. He was panting, out of breath, and would have sworn he had run half a mile at least ... but when he looked back, the parlors far wall was not ten feet away. Mike grasped his shoulder hard enough to hurt. You scared me, man, he said. Richie, Stan, and Eddie were looking at Mike questioningly. He looked small, Mike said. Like he was a mile away. Bill! Bill looked back. We gotta make sure everybody stays close, Ben panted. This place ... its like the funhouse in a carnival, or something. Well get lost. I think It wants us to get lost. To get separated. Bill looked at him for a moment, lips thin. All right, he said. We aall stay cluhcluhhose. No ssstragglers. They nodded back, frightened, clustered outside the hall door. Stans hand groped at the birdbook in his back pocket. Eddie was holding his aspirator in one hand, crunchng it, loosening up, then crunching it again, like a ninetyeightpound weakling trying to build up his muscles with a tennis ball. Bill opened the door and here was another, narrower hall. The wallpaper, which showed runners of roses and elves wearing green caps, was falling away from the spongy plaster in draggling leaves. Yellow waterstains spread in senile rings on the ceiling overhead. A scummy wash of light fell through a dirty window at the end of the hall. Abruptly the corridor seemed to elongate. The ceiling rose and then began to diminish above them like some weird rocket. The doors grew with the ceiling, pulled up like taffy. The faces of the elves grew long and became alien, their eyes bleeding black holes. Stan shrieked and clapped his hands to his eyes. IhIhhits not ruhruhruhREAL! Bill screamed. It is! Stan screamed back, his small closed fists plugging his eyes. Its real, you know it is, God, Im going crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy WuhwuhWATCH! Bill bellowed at Stan, at all of them, and Ben, his head reeling, watched as Bill bent down, coiled, and suddenly flung himself upward. His closed left fist struck nothing, nothing at all, but there was a heavy crrrack! sound. Plaster dust puffed from a place where there was no longer any ceiling ... and then there was. The hallway was just a hallway againnarrow, lowceilinged, dirty, but the walls no longer stretched up into forever. There was only Bill, looking at them and nursing his bleeding hand, which was floury with plasterdust. Overhead was the clear mark his fist had made in the soft plaster of the ceiling. NNNot ruhruhreal, he said to Stan, to all of them. Just a fffalse ffuhface. Like a HuhHuhHuhHalloween muhmuhhask. To you, maybe, Stan said dully. His face was shocked and horrified. He looked around as if no longer sure where he was. Looking at him, smelling the sour reek coming out of his pores, Ben, who had been overjoyed at Bills victory, got scared all over again. Stan was close to cracking up. Soon he would go into hysterics, begin to scream, perhaps, and what would happen then? To you, Stan said again. But if Id tried that, nothing would have happened. Because ... youve got your brother, Bill, but I dont have anything. He looked aroundfirst back toward the parlor, which had taken on a somber brown atmosphere, so thick and smoggy they could barely see the door through which they had entered it, to this hall, which was bright but somehow dark, somehow filthy, somehow utterly mad. Elves capered on the decaying wallpaper under runners of roses. Sun glared on the panes of the window at the end of the hall, and Ben knew that if they went down there they would see dead flies ... more broken glass ... and then what? The floorboards spreading apart, spilling them into a dead darkness where grasping fingers waited to catch them? Stan was right; God, why had they come into Its lair with nothing but their two stupid silver slugs and a frocking slingshot? He saw Stans panic leap from one of them to the next to the nextlike a grassfire driven by a hot wind, it widened in Eddies eyes, dropped Bevs mouth into a wounded gasp, made Richie push his glasses up with both hands and stare around as if followed from close behind by a fiend. They trembled on the brink of flight, Bills warning to stay together almost forgotten. They were listening to galeforce panicwinds blowing between their ears. As if in a dream Ben heard Miss Davies, the assistant librarian, reading to the little ones Who is that triptrapping upon my bridge? And he saw them, the little ones, the babies, leaning forward, their faces still and solemn, their eyes reflecting the eternal fascination of the fairystory would the monster be bested ... or would It feed? I dont have anything! Stan Uris wailed, and he seemed very small, almost small enough to slip through one of the cracks in the hallways plank flooring like a human letter. You got your brother, man, but I dont have anything! You duhduhduhdo! Bill yelled back. He grabbed Stan and Ben felt sure he was going to bust him one and his thoughts moaned, No, Bill, please, thats Henrys way, if you do that Itll kill us all right now! But Bill didnt hit Stan. He turned him around with rough hands and tore the paperback from the back pocket of Stans jeans. Gimme it! Stan screamed, beginning to cry. The others stood stunned, shrinking away from Bill, whose eyes now seemed to actually burn. His forehead glowed like a lamp, and he held the book out to Stan like a priest holding out a cross to ward off a vampire. You guhguhgot your bbbibirbir He turned his head up, the cords in his neck standing out, his adams apple like an arrowhead buried in his throat. Ben was filled with both fear and pity for his friend Bill Denbrough; but there was also a strong sense of wonderful relief. Had he doubted Bill? Had any of them? Oh Bill, say it, please, cant you say it? And somehow, Bill did. You got your BUHBUHBUHBIRDS! Your BUHBUHBIRDS! He thrust the book at Stan. Stan took it, and looked at Bill dumbly. Tears glimmered on his cheeks. He held the book so tightly that his fingers were white. Bill looked at him, then at the others. Cuhcuhhome on, he said again. Will the birds work? Stan asked. His voice was low, husky. They worked in the Standpipe, didnt they? Bev asked him. Stan looked at her uncertainly. Richie clapped him on the shoulder. Come on, Stankid, he said. Is you a man or is you a mouse? I must be a man, Stan said shakily, and wiped tears from his face with the heel of his left hand. So far as I know, mice dont shit their pants. They laughed and Ben could have sworn he felt the house pulling away from them, from that sound. Mike turned. That big room. The one we just came through. Look! They looked. The parlor was now almost black. It was not smoke, or any kind of gas; it was just blackness, a nearly solid blackness. The air had been robbed of its light. The blackness seemed to roll and flex as they stared into it, to almost coalesce into faces. Come ohohon. They turned away from the black and walked down the hall. Three doors opened off it, two with dirty white porcelain doorknobs, the third with only a hole where the knobs shaft had been. Bill grabbed the first knob, turned it, and pushed the door open. Bev crowded up next to him, raising the Bullseye. Ben drew back, aware that the others were doing the same, crowding behind Bill like frightened quail. It was a bedroom, empty save for one stained mattress. The rusty ghosts of the coils in a boxspring long departed were tattooed into the mattresss yellow hide. Outside the rooms one window, sunflowers dipped and nodded. Theres nothing Bill began, and then the mattress began to bulge in and out rhythmically. It suddenly ripped straight down the middle. A black sticky fluid began to spill out, staining the mattress and then running over the floor toward the doorway. It came in long ropy tendrils. Shut it, Bill! Richie shouted. Shut the fuckin door! Bill slammed it shut, looked around at them, and nodded. Come on. He had barely touched the knob of the second doorthis one on the other side of the narrow hallwhen the buzzing scream began behind the cheap wood. 9 Even Bill drew back from that rising, inhuman cry. Ben felt the sound might drive him mad; his mind visualized a giant cricket behind the door, like something from a movie where radiation made all the bugs get bigThe Beginning of the End, maybe, or The Black Scorpion, or that one about the ants in the Los Angeles stormdrains. He could not have run even if that buzzing rugose horror had splintered the panels of the door and begun caressing him with its great hairy legs. Beside him, he was dimly aware that Eddie was breathing in hacking gasps. The scream rose in pitch, never losing that buzzing, insectile quality. Bill fell back another step, no blood in his face now, his eyes bulging, his lips only a purple scar below his nose. Shoot it, Beverly! Ben heard himself cry. Shoot it through the door, shoot it before it can get us! And the sun fell through the dirty window at the end of the hall, a heavy feverish weight. Beverly raised the Bullseye like a girl in a dream as the buzzing scream rose louder, louder, louder But before she could pull the sling back, Mike was shouting No! No! Dont, Bev! Oh gosh! Ill be dipped! And incredibly, Mike was laughing. He pushed forward, grabbed the knob, turned it, and shoved the door open. It came free of the swollen jamb with a brief grinding noise. Its a mooseblower! Just a mooseblower, thats all, something to scare the crows! The room was an empty box. Lying on the floor was a Sterno can with both ends cut off. In the middle, strung tight and knotted outside holes punched in the cans sides, was a waxed length of string. Although there was no breeze in the roomthe one window was shut and indifferently boarded over, letting light pass only in chinks and raysthere could be no doubt that the buzzing was coming from the can. Mike walked to it and fetched it a solid kick. The buzzing stopped as the can tumbled into a far corner. Just a mooseblower, he said to the others, as if apologizing. We put em on the scarecrows. Its nothing. Only a cheap trick. But I aint a crow. He looked at Bill, not laughing anymore but smiling still. Im still scared of ItI guess we all arebut Its scared of us, too. Tell you the truth, I think Its scared pretty bad. Bill nodded. II do, too, he said. They went down to the door at the end of the hall, and as Ben watched Bill hook his finger into the hole where the doorknobs shaft had been, he understood that this was where it was going to end; there would be no trick behind this door. The smell was worse now, and that thundery feeling of two opposing powers swirling around them was much stronger. He glanced at Eddie, one arm in a sling, his good hand clutching his aspirator. He looked at Bev on his other side, whitefaced, holding the slingshot up like a wishbone. He thought If we have to run, Ill try to protect you, Beverly. I swear Ill try. She might have sensed his thought, because she turned toward him and offered him a strained smile. Ben smiled back. Bill pulled the door open. Its hinges uttered a dull scream and then were silent. It was a bathroom ... but something was wrong with it. Someone broke something in here was all that Ben could make out at first. Not a booze bottle ... what? White chips and shards, glimmering wickedly, lay strewn everywhere. Then he understood. It was the crowning insanity. He laughed. Richie joined him. Somebody must have let the granddaddy of all farts, Eddie said, and Mike began to giggle and nod his head. Stan was smiling a little. Only Bill and Beverly remained grim. The white pieces littered across the floor were shards of porcelain. The toiletbowl had exploded. The tank stood drunkenly at an angle in a puddle of water, saved from falling over by the fact that the toilet had been placed in one corner of the room and the tank had landed kittycorner. They crowded in behind Bill and Beverly, their feet gritting on bits of porcelain. Whatever it was, Ben thought, it blew that poor toilet right to hell. He had a vision of Henry Bowers dropping two or three of his M80s into it, slamming the lid down, then bugging out in a hurry. He couldnt think of anything else short of dynamite that would have done such a cataclysmic job. There were a few chunks, but damned few; most of what was left were tiny sharp slivers like blowgun darts. The wallpaper (roserunners and capering elves, as in the hall) was peppered with holes all the way around the room. It looked like shotgun blasts but Ben knew it was more porcelain, driven into the walls by the force of the explosion. There was a bathtub standing on claw feet with generations of grimy toejam between the blunt talons. Ben peeked into it and saw a tidalflat of silt and grit on the bottom. A rusty showerhead glared down from above. There was a basin and a medicine cabinet standing ajar above it, disclosing empty shelves. There were small rustrings on these shelves, where bottles had once stood. I wouldnt get too close to that, Big Bill! Richie said sharply, and Ben looked around. Bill was approaching the mouth of the drainhole in the floor, over which the toilet had once sat. He leaned toward it ... and then turned back to the others. I can hhhear the puhpumping muhmuhmachinery ... just like in the BuhBuhharrens! Bev drew closer to Bill. Ben followed her, and yes, he could hear it that steady thrumming noise. Except, echoing up through the pipes, it didnt sound like machinery at all. It sounded like something alive. ThThThis is wwwhere It cuhcuhhame frfrom, Bill said. His face was still deadly pale, but his eyes were alight with excitement. This is wwhere It cuhhame from that ddday, and thhats wwwhere It aaalways comes frrom! The druhdruhdrains! Richie was nodding. We were in the cellar, but that isnt where It wasIt came down the stairs. Because this is where It could get out. And It did this? Beverly asked. IhIt was in a hhhurry, I ththink, Bill said gravely. Ben looked into the pipe. It was about three feet in diameter and dark as a mineshaft. The inner ceramic surface of the pipe was crusted with stuff he didnt want to know about. That thrumming sound floated up hypnotically ... and suddenly he saw something. He did not see it with his physical eyes, not at first, but with one buried deep in his mind. It was rushing toward them, moving at expresstrain speed, filling the throat of this dark pipe from side to side; It was in Its own form now, whatever that might be; It would take some shape from their minds when It got here. It was coming, coming up from Its own foul runs and black catacombs under the earth, Its eyes glowing a feral yellowish green, coming, coming; It was coming. And then, at first like sparks, he saw Its eyes down in that darkness. They took shapeflaring and malignant. Over the thrumming sound of the machinery, Ben could now hear a new noiseWhoooooooo.... A fetid smell belched from the ragged mouth of the drainpipe and he fell back, coughing and gagging. Its coming! he screamed. Bill, I saw It, Its coming! Beverly raised the Bullseye. Good, she said. Something exploded out of the drainpipe. Ben, trying to recall that first confrontation later, could only remember a silveryorange shifting shape. It was not ghostly; it was solid, and he sensed some other shape, some real and ultimate shape, behind It ... but his eyes could not grasp what he was seeing, not precisely. Then Richie was stumbling backward, his face a scrawl of terror, screaming over and over again The Werewolf! Bill! Its the Werewolf! The Teenage Werewolf! And suddenly the shape locked into reality, for Ben, for all of them. The Werewolf stood poised over the drainpipe, one hairy foot on either side of where the toilet had once been. Its green eyes glared at them from Its feral face. Its muzzle wrinkled back and yellowishwhite foam seeped through Its teeth. It uttered a shattering growl. Its arms pistoned out toward Beverly, the cuffs of Its highschool letter jacket pulling back from Its furcovered arms. Its smell was hot and raw and murderous. Beverly screamed. Ben grabbed the back of her blouse and yanked so hard that the seams under the arms tore. One clawed hand swept through the air where she had been only a moment before. Beverly went stumbling backward against the wall. The silver ball popped out of the cup of the Bullseye. For a moment it glimmered in the air. Mike, quicker than quick, snatched it and gave it back to her. Shoot It, baby, he said. His voice was perfectly calm; almost serene. You shoot It right now. The Werewolf uttered a shattering roar that became a fleshfreezing howl, Its snout turned up toward the ceiling. The howl became a laugh. It lunged at Bill as Bill turned to look at Beverly. Ben shoved him aside and Bill went sprawling. Shoot It, Bev! Richie screamed. For Gods sake, shoot It! The Werewolf sprang forward, and there was no question in Bens mind, then or later, that It knew exactly who was in charge here. Bill was the one It was after. Beverly drew and fired. The ball flew and again it was off the mark but this time there was no saving curve. It missed by more than a foot, punching a hole in the wallpaper above the tub. Bill, his arms peppered with bits of porcelain and bleeding in a dozen places, uttered a screaming curse. The Werewolfs head snapped around; Its gleaming green eyes considered Beverly. Not thinking, Ben stepped in front of her as she groped in her pocket for the other silver slug. The jeans she wore were too tight. She had donned them with no thought of provocation; it was just that, as with the shorts she had worn on the day of Patrick Hockstetter and the refrigerator, she was still wearing last years model. Her fingers closed on the ball but it squirted away. She groped again and got it. She pulled it, turning her pocket inside out and spilling fourteen cents, the stubs of two Aladdin tickets, and a quantity of pocketlint onto the floor. The Werewolf lunged at Ben, who was standing protectively in front of her ... and blocking her field of fire. Its head was cocked at the predators deadly questing angle, Its jaws snapping. Ben reached blindly for It. There seemed to be no room in his reactions now for terrorhe felt a clearheaded sort of anger instead, mixed with bewilderment and a sense that somehow time had come to a sudden unexpected screechhalt. He snagged his hands in tough matted hairthe pelt, he thought, Ive got Its peltand he could feel the heavy bone of Its skull beneath. He thrust at that wolfish head with all of his force, but although he was a big boy, it did no good at all. If he had not stumbled back and struck the wall, the thing would have torn his throat open with Its teeth. It came after him, Its greenishyellow eyes flaring, growling with each breath. It smelled of the sewer and something else, some wild yet unpleasant odor like rotten hazelnuts. One of Its heavy paws rose and Ben skittered aside as best he could. The paw, tipped with heavy claws, ripped bloodless wounds through the wallpaper and into the cheesy plaster beneath. He could dimly hear Richie bellowing something, Eddie howling at Beverly to shoot It, shoot It. But Beverly did not. This was her only other chance. That didnt matter; she intended that it be the only one she would need. A clear coldness she never saw again in her life fell over her sight. In it everything stood out and forward; never again would she see the three dimensions of reality so clearly defined. She possessed every color, every angle, every distance. Fear departed. She felt the hunters simple lust of certainty and oncoming consummation. Her pulse slowed. The hysterical trembling grip in which she had been holding the Bullseye loosened, then firmed and became natural. She drew in a deep breath. It seemed to her that her lungs would never fill completely. Dimly, faintly, she heard popping sounds. Didnt matter, whatever they were. She tracked left, waiting for the Werewolfs improbable head to fall with cool perfection into the wishbone beyond the extended V of the drawnback sling. The Werewolfs claws descended again. Ben tried to duck under them, but suddenly he was in Its grip.