He had gotten his nickname because he was able to articulate belches of amazing length and loudnessat his best, he sounded like a cross between a bullfrog and a cicada. Sometimes he would pat a hand rapidly across his open mouth while belching, emitting a sound like a hoarse Indian. Belch had been big and not really fat, Eddie remembered now, but it was as if God had never really intended for a boy of twelve to attain such remarkable size; if he had not died that summer, he might have grown to sixsix or better, and might have learned along the way how to maneuver his outsized body through a world of smaller denizens. He might even, Eddie thought, have learned gentleness. But at twelve he had been both clumsy and mean, not retarded but almost seeming so because all his bodys actions seemed so amazingly graceless and lunging. He had none of Stanleys builtin rhythms; it was as if Belchs body did not talk to his brain at all but existed in its own cosmos of slow thunder. Eddie could remember the evening a long, slow fly ball had been hit directly to Belchs position in the outfieldBelch didnt even have to move. He stood looking up, raised his glove in an almost aimless punching gesture, and instead of settling into his glove, the ball had struck him squarely on top of the head, producing a hollow bonk! sound. It was as if the ball had been dropped from three stories up onto the roof of a Ford sedan. It bounced up a good four feet and came down neatly into Belchs glove. An unfortunate kid named Owen Phillips had laughed at that bonking sound. Belch had walked over to him and had kicked his ass so hard that the Phillips kid had run screaming for home with a hole in the seat of his pants. No one else laughed ... at least not on the outside. Eddie supposed that if Richie Tozier had been there, he wouldnt have been able to help it, and Belch probably would have put him in the hospital. Belch was similarly slow at the plate. He was easy to strike out, and if he hit a grounder even the most fumblefingered infielders had no trouble throwing him out at first. But when he got all of one, it went a long, long way. The two balls Eddie had seen Belch hit over the fence had both been wonders. The first had never been recovered, although more than a dozen boys had tramped back and forth over the steeply slanting slope which plunged down into the Barrens, looking for it. The second, however, had been recovered. The ball belonged to another sixthgrader (Eddie could not now remember what his real name had been, only that all the other kids called him Snuffy because he always had a cold) and had been in use for most of the late spring and early summer of 58. As a result, it was no longer the nearly perfect spherical creation of white horsehide and red stitching that it had been when it came out of the box; it was scuffed, grassstained, and cut in several places by its hundreds of bouncing trips over the gravel in the outfield. Its stitching was beginning to come unravelled in one place, and Eddie, who shagged foul balls when his asthma wasnt too bad (relishing every casual Thanks, kid! when he threw the ball back to the playing field), knew that soon someone would produce a roll of Black Cat friction tape and embalm it so they could get another week or so out of it. But before that day came, a seventhgrader with the unlikely name of Stringer Dedham tossed what he fancied a change of speed pitch to Belch Huggins. Belch timed the pitch perfectly (the slow ones were, you should pardon the pun, just his speed) and hit Snuffys elderly Spalding so hard that the cover came right off and fluttered down just a few feet shy of second base like a big white moth. The ball itself had continued up and up into a gorgeous twilit sky, unravelling and unravelling as it went, kids turning to follow its progress in dumb wonder; up and over the chainlink fence it went, still rising, and Eddie remembered Stringer Dedham had said Holy shit! in a soft and awestruck voice as it went, riding a track into the sky, and they had all seen the unwinding string, and maybe even before it hit, six boys had been monkeying up that fence, and Eddie could remember Tony Tracker laughing in an amazed loonlike way and crying That one would have been out of Yankee Stadium! Do you hear me? That one would have been out of fucking Yankee Stadium! It had been Peter Gordon who found the ball, not far from the stream the Losers Club would dam up less than three weeks later. What was left was not even three inches through the center; it was some kind of cockeyed miracle that the twine had never broken. By unspoken consent, the boys had brought the remains of Snuffys ball back to Tony Tracker, who examined it without saying a word, surrounded by boys who were likewise silent. Seen from a distance that circle of boys standing around the tall man with the big sloping belly might have seemed almost religious in its intentthe veneration of a holy object. Belch Huggins had not even run around the bases. He only stood among the others like a boy who had no precise idea of where he was. What Tony Tracker handed him that day was smaller than a tennis ball. Eddie, lost in these memories, walked from the place where home had been, across the pitchers mound (only it had never been a mound; it had been a depression from which the gravel had been scraped clean), and out into shortstop country. He paused briefly, struck by the silence, and then strolled on out to the chainlink fence. It was rustier than ever, and overgrown by some sort of ugly climbing vine, but still there. Looking through it, he could see how the ground sloped away, aggressively green. The Barrens were more junglelike than ever, and for the first time he found himself wondering why a stretch of such tangled and virulent growth should have been called the Barrens at all it was many things, but barren was not one of them. Why not the Wilderness? Or the Jungle? Barrens. It had an ominous, almost sinister sound, but what it conjured up in the mind were not tangles of shrubs and trees so thick they had to fight for sunspace; it called up pictures of sand dunes shifting away endlessly, or gray slate expanses of hardpan and desert. Barren. Mike had said earlier that they were all barren, and it seemed true enough. Seven of them, and not a kid among them. Even in these days of planned parenthood, that was bucking the odds. He looked through the rusty diamondshapes, hearing the faraway drone of cars on Kansas Street, the faraway trickle and rush of water down below. He could see glints of it in the spring sunshine, like flashes of glass. The bamboo stands were still down there, looking unhealthily white, like patches of fungus in all the green. Beyond them, in the marshy stretches of ground bordering the Kenduskeag, there was supposed to have been quickmud. I spent the happiest times of my childhood down there in that mess, he thought, and shivered. He was about to turn away when something else caught his eye a cement cylinder with a heavy steel cap on the top. Morlock holes, Ben used to call them, laughing with his mouth but not quite laughing with his eyes. If you went over to one, it would stand maybe waisthigh on you (if you were a kid) and you would see the words DERRY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS stamped in raised metal in a semicircle. And you could hear a humming noise from deep inside. Some sort of machinery. Morlock holes. Thats where we went. In August. In the end. We went into one of Bens Morlock holes, into the sewers, but after awhile they werent sewers anymore. They were ... were ... what? Patrick Hockstetter was down there. Before It took him Beverly saw him doing something bad. It made her laugh but she knew it was bad. Something to do with Henry Bowers, wasnt it? Yes, I think so. And He turned away suddenly and started back toward the abandoned depot, not wanting to look down into the Barrens anymore, not liking the thoughts they conjured up. He wanted to be home with Myra. He didnt want to be here. He... Catch, kid! He turned toward the sound of the voice and here came some sort of a ball, right over the fence and toward him. It struck the gravel and bounced. Eddie stuck out his hand and caught it. In his unthinking reflex the catch was so neat it was almost elegant. He looked down at what was in his hand and everything inside him went cool and loose. Once it had been a baseball. Now it was only a stringwrapped sphere, because the cover had been knocked off. He could see the string trailing away. It went over the top of the fence like a strand of spiderweb and disappeared into the Barrens. Oh Jesus, he thought. Oh Jesus, Its here, Its here with me NOW Come on down and play, Eddie, the voice on the other side of the fence said, and Eddie realized with a fainting sort of horror that it was the voice of Belch Huggins, who had been murdered in the tunnels under Derry in August of 1958. And now here was Belch himself, struggling up and over the bank on the other side of the fence. He wore a pinstriped New York Yankees baseball uniform that was flecked with bits of autumn leaves and smeared with green. He was Belch but he was also the leper, a creature hideously arisen from long years in a wet grave. The flesh of his heavy face hung in putrescent strings and runners. One eyesocket was empty. Things squirmed in his hair. He wore a mossslimed baseballglove on one hand. He poked the rotting fingers of his right hand through the diamonds of the chainlink fence, and when he curled them, Eddie heard a dreadful squirting sound which he thought might drive him mad. That one would have been out of Yankee Stadium, Belch said, and grinned. A toad, noxiously white and squirming, dropped from his mouth and tumbled to the ground. Do you hear me? That one would have been out of fucking Yankee Stadium! And by the way, Eddie, do you want a blowjob? Ill do it for a dime. Hell, Ill do it for free. Belchs face changed. The jellylike bulb of nose fell in, revealing two raw red channels that Eddie had seen in his dreams. His hair coarsened and drew back from his temples, turned cobwebwhite. The rotting skin on his forehead split open, revealing white bone covered with a mucusy substance, like the bleared lens of a searchlight. Belch was gone; the thing which had been under the porch at 29 Neibolt Street was here now. Bobby blows me for a dime, it crooned, beginning to climb the fence. It left little pieces of its flesh in the diamond shapes the crisscrossing wires made. The fence jingled and rattled with its weight. When it touched the climbing, vinelike weeds, they turned black. He will do it anytime. Fifteen cents for overtime. Eddie tried to scream. Nothing but a dry senseless squeak came out of him. His lungs felt like the worlds oldest ocarinas. He looked down at the ball in his hand and suddenly blood began to sweat up from between the wrapped strings. It pattered to the gravel and splashed on his loafers. He threw it down and took two lurching staggersteps backward, his eyes bulging from his face, rubbing his hands on the front of his shirt. The leper had reached the top of the fence. Its head swayed in silhouette against the sky, a nightmare shape like a bloated Halloween jackolantern. Its tongue lolled out, four feet long, perhaps six. It twined its way down the fence like a snake from the lepers grinning mouth. There one second ... gone the next. It did not fade, like a ghost in a movie; it simply winked out of existence. But Eddie heard a sound which confirmed its essential solidity a pop! sound, like a cork blowing out of a champagne bottle. It was the sound of air rushing in to fill the place where the leper had been. He turned and began to run, but before he had gone ten feet, four stiff shapes flew out from the shadows under the loadingbay of the abandoned brick depot. He thought at first they were bats and he screamed and covered his head. ... Then he saw that they were squares of canvasthe squares of canvas that had been the bases when the big kids played here. They whirled and twirled in the still air; he had to duck to avoid one of them. They settled in their accustomed places all at once, kicking up little puffs of grit home, first, second, third. Gasping, his breath short in his throat, Eddie ran past home plate, his lips drawn back, his face as white as cottage cheese. WHACK! The sound of a bat hitting a phantom ball. And then Eddie stopped, the strength going out of his legs, a groan passing his lips. The ground was bulging in a straight line from home to first, as if a gigantic gopher was tunneling rapidly just below the surface of the ground. Gravel rolled off to either side. The shape under the earth reached the base and the canvas flipped up into the air. It went up so hard and fast it made a popping soundthe sound a shoeshine kid makes when hes feeling good and pops the rag. The ground began to ridge between first and second, racing and racing. Second base flew into the air with a similar popping sound and had barely settled back before the shape under the ground had reached third and was racing for home. Home plate flew up as well, but before it could come down the thing had popped out of the ground like some grisly partyfavor, and the thing was Tony Tracker, his face a skull to which a few blackened chunks of flesh still clung, his white shirt a mess of rotted linen strings. He poked out of the earth at home plate from the waist up, swaying back and forth like a grotesque worm. Dont matter how much you choke up on that ashhandle, Tony Tracker said in a gritty, grinding voice. Exposed teeth grinned in lunatic chumminess. Dont matter, Wheezy. Well get you. You and your friends. Well have a BAWL! Eddie shrieked and staggered away. There was a hand on his shoulder. He shrank away from it. The hand tightened for a moment, then gave way. He turned. It was Greta Bowie. She was dead. Half of her face was gone; maggots crawled in the churned red meat that was left. She held a green balloon in one hand. Car crash, the recognizable half of her mouth said, and grinned. The grin caused an unspeakable ripping sound, and Eddie could see raw tendons moving like terrible.straps. I was eighteen, Eddie. Drunk and done up on reds. Your friends are here, Eddie. Eddie backed away from her, his hands held up in front of his face. She walked toward him. Blood had splashed, then dried on her legs in long splotches. She was wearing pennyloafers. And now, beyond her, he saw the ultimate horror Patrick Hockstetter was shambling toward him across the outfield. He too was wearing a New York Yankees uniform. Eddie ran. Greta clutched at him again, tearing his shirt and spilling some terrible liquid down the back of his collar. Tony Tracker was pulling himself out of his mansized gopherrun. Patrick Hockstetter stumbled and staggered. Eddie ran, not knowing where he was finding the breath to run, but running somehow anyway. And as he ran, he saw words floating in front of him, the words that had been printed on the side of the green balloon Greta Bowie had been holding ASTHMA MEDICINE CAUSES LUNG CANCER! COMPLIMENTS OF CENTER STREET DRUG Eddie ran. He ran and ran and at some point he collapsed in a dead faint near McCarron Park and some kids saw him and steered clear of him because he looked like a wino to them like he might have some kind of weird disease for all they knew he might even be the killer and they talked about reporting him to the police but in the end they didnt. 3 Bev Rogan Pays a Call Beverly walked absently down Main Street from the Derry Town House, where she had gone to change into a pair of bluejeans and a bright yellow smockblouse. She was not thinking about where she was going. Instead she thought this Your hair is winter fire, January embers. My heart burns there, too. She had hidden that in her bottom drawer, beneath her underwear. Her mother might have seen it, but that was all right. The important thing was, that was one drawer her father never looked in. If he had seen it, he might have looked at her with that bright, almost friendly, and utterly paralyzing stare of his and asked in his almost friendly way You been doing something you shouldnt be doing, Bev? You been doing something with some boy? And if she said yes or if she said no, there would be a quick whambam, so quick and so hard it didnt even hurt at firstit took a few seconds for the vacuum to dissipate and the pain to fill the place were the vacuum had been. Then his voice again, almost friendly I worry a lot about you, Beverly. I worry an awful lot. You got to grow up, isnt that so? Her father might still be living here in Derry. He had been living here the last time she had heard from him, but that had been ... how long ago? Ten years? Long before she had married Tom, anyway. She had gotten a postcard from him, not a plain postcard like the one the poem had been written on but one showing the hideous plastic statue of Paul Bunyan which stood in front of City Center. The statue had been erected sometime in the fifties, and it had been one of the landmarks of her childhood, but her fathers card had called up no nostalgia or memories for her; it might as well have been a card showing Gateway Arch in Saint Louis or the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Hope you are doing well and being good, the card read. Hope you will send me something if you can, as I dont have much. I love you Bevvie. Dad. He had loved her, and in some ways she supposed that had everything to do with why she had fallen so desperately in love with Bill Denbrough that long summer of 1958because of all the boys, Bill was the one who projected the sense of authority she associated with her father ... but it was a different sort of authority, somehowit was authority that listened. She saw no assumption in either his eyes or his actions that he believed her fathers kind of worrying to be the only reason authority needed to exist ... as if people were pets, to be both cosseted and disciplined. Whatever the reasons, by the end of their first meeting as a complete group in July of that year, that meeting of which Bill had taken such complete and effortless charge, she had been madly, headoverheels in love with him. Calling it a simple schoolgirl crush was like saying a RollsRoyce was a vehicle with four wheels, something like a haywagon. She did not giggle wildly and blush when she saw him, nor did she chalk his name on trees or write it on the walls of the Kissing Bridge. She simply lived with his face in her heart all the time, a kind of sweet, hurtful ache. She would have died for him. It was natural enough, she supposed, for her to want to believe it had been Bill who sent her the lovepoem ... although she had never gotten so far gone as to actually convince herself it was so. No, she had known who wrote the poem. And later onat some pointhadnt its author admitted this to her? Yes, Ben had told her so (although she could not now remember, not for the life of her, just when or under what circumstances he had actually said it out loud), and although his love for her had been almost as well hidden as the love she had felt for Bill (but you told him Bevvie you did you told him you loved) it was obvious to anyone who really looked (and who was kind)it was in the way he was always careful to keep some space between them, in the draw of his breath when she touched his arm or his hand, in the way he dressed when he knew he was going to see her. Dear, sweet, fat Ben. It had ended somehow, that difficult preadolescent triangle, but just how it had ended was one of the things she still couldnt remember. She thought that Ben had confessed authoring and sending the little lovepoem. She thought she had told Bill she loved him, that she would love him forever. And somehow, those two tellings had helped save all of their lives ... or had they? She couldnt remember. These memories (or memories of memories that was really closer to what they were) were like islands that were not really islands at all but only knobs of a single coral spine which happened to poke up above the waterline, not separate at all but one piece. Yet whenever she tried to dive deep and see the rest, a maddening image intervened the grackles which came back each spring to New England, crowding the telephone lines, trees and rooftops, jostling for places and filling the thawing lateMarch air with their raucous gossip. This image came to her again and again, foreign and disturbing, like a heavy radio beam that blankets the signal you really want to pick up. She realized with sudden shock that she was standing outside of the KleenKloze Washateria, where she and Stan Uris and Ben and Eddie had taken the rags that day in late Junerags stained with blood which only they could see. The windows were now soaped opaque and there was a handlettered FOR SALE BY OWNER sign taped to the door. Peering between the swashes of soap, she could see an empty room with lighter squares on the dirty yellow walls where the washers had stood. Im going home, she thought dismally, but walked on anyway. This neighborhood hadnt changed much. A few more of the trees were gone, probably elms felled by disease. The houses looked a little tackier; broken windows seemed slightly more common than they had been when she was a girl. Some of the broken panes had been replaced with cardboard. Some hadnt. And here she stood in front of the apartment house, 127 Lower Main Street. Still here. The peeling white she remembered had become a peeling chocolate brown at some point during the years between, but it was still unmistakable. There was the window which looked in on what had been their kitchen; there was the window of her bedroom. (Jim Doyon, you come out of that road! Come out right now, you want to get run over and killed?) She shivered, hugging her arms across her breasts in an X, cupping her elbows in her palms. Daddy could still be living here; oh yes he could. He wouldnt move unless he had to. Just walk on up there, Beverly. Look at the mailboxes. Three boxes for three apartments, just like in the old days. And if theres one which says MARSH, you can ring the bell and pretty soon therell be the shuffle of slippers down the hall and the door will open and you can look at him, the man whose sperm made you redheaded and lefthanded and gave you the ability to draw ... remember how he used to draw? He could draw anything he wanted. If he felt like it, that is. He didnt feel like it often. I guess he had too many things to worry about. But when he did, you used to sit for hours and watch while he drew cats and dogs and horses and cows with MOO coming out of their mouths in balloons. Youd laugh and hed laugh and then hed say Now you, Bevvie, and when you held the pen hed guide your hand and youd see the cow or the cat or the smiling man unspooling beneath your own fingers while you smelled his Mennen Skin Bracer and the warmth of his skin. Go on up, Beverly. Ring the bell. Hell come and hell be old, the lines will be drawn deep in his face and his teeththose that are leftwill be yellow, and hell look at you, and hell say Why its Bevvie, Bevvies come home to see her old dad, come on in Bevvie, Im so glad to see you, Im glad because I worry about you Bevvie, I worry a LOT. She walked slowly up the path, and the weeds growing up between the cracked concrete sections brushed at the legs of her jeans. She looked closely at the firstfloor windows, but they were curtained off. She looked at the mailboxes. Third floor, STARKWEATHER. Second floor, BURKE. First floorher breath caughtMARSH. But I wont ring. I dont want to see him. I wont ring the bell. This was a firm decision, at last! The decision that opened the gate to a full and useful lifetime of firm decisions! She walked down the path! Back to downtown! Up to the Derry Town House! Packed! Cabbed! Flew! Told Tom to bug out! Lived successfully! Died happily! Rang the bell. She heard the familiar chimes from the living roomchimes that had always sounded to her like a Chinese name ChingChong! Silence. No answer. She shifted on the porch from one foot to the other, suddenly needing to pee. No one home, she thought, relieved. I can go now. Instead she rang again ChingChong! No answer. She thought of Bens lovely little poem and tried to remember exactly when and how he had confessed its authorship, and why, for a brief second, it called up an association with having her first menstrual period. Had she begun menstruating at eleven? Surely not, although her breasts had begun their first achy growth around midwinter. Why ... ? Then, intervening, a mental picture of thousands of grackles on phone lines and rooftops, all babbling at a white spring sky. Ill leave now. Ive rung twice; thats enough. But she rang again. ChingChong! Now she heard someone approaching, and the sound was just as she had imagined the tired whisper of old slippers. She looked around wildly and came very, very close to just taking to her heels. Could she make it down the cement walk and around the corner, leaving her father to think it had been nothing but kids playing pranks? Hey mister, you got Prince Albert in a can ... ? She let out a sudden sharp breath and had to tighten her throat because what wanted to come out was a laugh of relief. It wasnt her father at all. Standing in the doorway and looking out at her was a tall woman in her late seventies. Her hair was long and gorgeous, mostly white but shot through with lodes of purest gold. Behind her rimless spectacles were eyes as blue as the water in the fjords her ancestors had perhaps hailed from. She wore a purple dress of watered silk. It was shabby but still dignified. Her wrinkled face was kind. Yes, miss? Im sorry, Beverly said. The urge to laugh had passed as swiftly as it had come. She noticed that the old woman wore a cameo at her throat. It was almost certainly real ivory, surrounded by a band of gold so thin it was nearly invisible. I must have rung the wrong bell. Or rang the wrong bell on purpose, her mind whispered. I meant to ring for Marsh. Marsh? Her forehead wrinkled delicately. Yes, you see Theres no Marsh here,  the old woman said. But Unless ... you dont mean Alvin Marsh, do you? Yes! Beverly said. My father! The old womans hand rose to the cameo and touched it. She peered more closely at Beverly, making her feel ridiculously young, as if she should perhaps have a box of Girl Scout cookies in her hands, or maybe some tagssupport the Derry High School Tigers. Then the old woman smiled ... a kind smile that was nonetheless sad. Why you have fallen out of touch, miss. I dont want to be the one who tells you this, a stranger, but your father has been dead these last five years. But ... on the bell ... She looked again and uttered a small, bewildered sound that was not quite a laugh. In her agitation, in her subconscious but rocksolid certainty that her old man would still be here, she had read KERSH as MARSH. Youre Mrs. Kersh? she asked. She was staggered by this news of her father, but she also felt stupid about the mistakethe lady would think her little more than illiterate. Mrs. Kersh, she agreed. You ... did you know my dad? Very little did I know him, Mrs. Kersh said. She sounded a little like Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, and Beverly felt like laughing again. When had her emotions gone whipsawing so violently back and forth? The truth was she couldnt remember a time ... but she was dismally afraid she would before much longer. He rented the groundfloor apartment before me. We saw each other, me coming and him going, over a space of a few days. He moved down to Roward Lane. Do you know it? Yes, Beverly said. Roward Lane branched off from Lower Main Street four blocks farther down, where the apartment buildings were smaller and even more desperately shabby. I used to see him at the Costello Avenue Market sometimes, Mrs. Kersh said, and at the Washateria before they closed it. We passed a word from time to time. Wegirt, youre pale. Im sorry. Come in and let me give you tea. No, I couldnt, Beverly said weakly, but in fact she actually felt pale, like clouded glass that you could nearly look through. She could use tea, and a chair in which to sit and drink it. You could and you will, Mrs. Kersh said warmly. Its the least I can do for having told you such unpleasant news. Before she could protest, Beverly found herself being led up the gloomy hall and into her old apartment, which now seemed much smaller but safe enoughsafe, she supposed, because almost everything was different. Instead of the pinktopped Formica table with its three chairs, there was a small round table, really not much bigger than an endtable, with silk flowers in a pottery vase. Instead of the old Kelvinator refrigerator with the round drum on top (her father tinkered with it constantly to keep it going), there was a coppercolored Frigidaire. The stove was small but efficientlooking. There was an Amana RadarRange above it. Bright blue curtains hung in the windows, and she could see flowerboxes outside them. The floor, linoleum when she was a girl here, had been stripped to its original wood. Many applications of oil made it glow mellowly. Mrs. Kersh looked around from the stove, where she was placing a teapot. You grew up here? Yes, Beverly said. But its very different now ... so trim and tidy ... wonderful! How kind you are, Mrs. Kersh said, and her smile made her younger. It was radiant. I have a little money, you see. Not much, but with my Social Security I am comfortable. Once I was a girl in Sweden. I came to this country in 1920, a girl of fourteen with no moneywhich is the best way to learn the value of money, would you agree? Yes, Bev sad. At the hospital I worked, Mrs. Kersh said. Many yearsfrom 1925 I worked there. I rose to the position of head housekeeper. All the keys I had. My husband invested our money quite well. Now I have reached a little harbor. Look around, miss, while the water boils! No, I couldnt Please ... still I feel guilty. Look, if you like! And so she did look. Her parents bedroom was now Mrs. Kershs bedroom, and the difference was profound. The room seemed brighter and airier now. A large cedar chest, the initials R.G. inlaid into it, breathed its gentle aroma into the air. A gigantic surprisequilt lay on the bed. On it she could see women drawing water, boys driving cattle, men building haystacks. A wonderful quilt. Her room had become a sewing room. A black Singer machine stood on a wroughtiron table under a pair of starkly efficient Tensor lamps. A picture of Jesus hung on one wall, a picture of John F. Kennedy on another. A beautiful breakfront stood below the picture of JFKit was filled with books instead of china, but seemed none the worse for that. She went into the bathroom last. It had been redone in a rose color that was too low and pleasant to seem gaudy. All of the fixtures were new, and yet she approached the basin feeling that the old nightmare had gripped her again; she would peer down into that black and lidless eye, the whispering would begin, and then the blood She leaned over the sink, catching a glimpse of her pallid face and dark eyes in the mirror over the basin, and then she stared into that eye, waiting for the voices, the laughter, the groans, the blood. How long might she have stood there, bent over the sink, waiting for the sights and sounds twentyseven years gone, she didnt know; it was Mrs. Kershs voice that bid her return Tea, miss! She jerked back, the semihypnosis broken, and left the bathroom. If there had been dark magic somewhere down in that drain, it was gone now ... or was sleeping. Oh, you shouldnt have! Mrs. Kersh looked up at her brightly, smiling a little. O miss, if you knew how seldom company calls these days, youd not say so.


Why, I put on more than this for the man from the Bangor Hydro who comes to read my meter! Im making him fat! Delicate cups and saucers stood on the round kitchen table, a clean bonewhite edged with blue. There was a plate of small cakes and cookies. Beside the sweets a pewter teapot chuffed mild steam and pleasant fragrance. Bemused, Bev thought that the only things missing were the tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off auntsandwiches, shed thought them, always one word. Three main types of auntsandwiehescream cheese and olive, watercress, and egg salad. Sit down, said Mrs. Kersh. Sit down, miss, and Ill pour out. Im not a miss, Beverly said, and raised her left hand so that her ring would show. Mrs. Kersh smiled and pushed a hand through the airpshaw! the gesture said. I call all the pretty young girls miss, she said. Just a habit. Dont take offense. No, Beverly said, not at all. But for some reason she felt a feathertouch of unease there was something in the old womans smile that had seemed a little ... what? Unpleasant ? False? Knowing? But that was ridiculous, wasnt it? I love what youve done to the place. Do you? Mrs. Kersh said, and poured out. The tea looked dark, muddy. Beverly wasnt sure she wanted to drink it ... and suddenly she wasnt sure she wanted to be here at all. It did say Marsh under the doorbell, her mind whispered suddenly, and she was frightened. Mrs. Kersh passed her tea. Thank you, Beverly said. The look of it might have been muddy; the aroma, however, was wonderful. She tasted. It was fine. Stop jumping at shadows, she told herself. That cedar chest in particular is a wonderful piece. An antique, that one! Mrs. Kersh said, and laughed. Beverly noticed that the old womans beauty was flawed on only one score, and that was common enough here in the northlands. Her teeth were very badstronglooking, but bad all the same. They were yellow, and the front two had crossed each other. The canines seemed very long, almost like tusks. They were white ... when she came to the door she smiled and you thought to yourself how white they were. Suddenly she was not just a little frightened. Suddenly she wantedneededto be away from here. Very old, oh yes! Mrs. Kersh exclaimed, and drank her cup of tea off at a single gulp, with a sudden, shocking slurping sound. She smiled at Beverlygrtwted at herand Beverly saw that the womans eyes had changed, too. The corneas were now yellow, ancient, threaded with bleary stitches of red. Her hair was thinner; the braid looked malnourished, no longer silver shot with bright yellow but a dull gray. Very old, Mrs. Kersh reminisced over her empty cup, looking slyly at Beverly from her yellowed eyes. Her snaggle teeth showed in that repulsive, almost leering grin. From home with me it came. The RG carved into it? You noticed? Yes. Her voice came from far away, and a part of her brain yammered If she doesnt know youve seen the change perhaps youre still all right, if she doesnt know, doesnt see My father, she said, pronouncing it fadder, and Beverly saw that her dress had also changed. It had become a scabrous, peeling black. The cameo was a skull, its jaw hung in a diseased gape. His name was Robert Gray, better known as Bob Gray, better known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Although that was not his name, either. But he did love his joke, my fadder. She laughed again. Some of her teeth had turned as black as her dress. The wrinkles in her skin now cut deep. Her milkrose skin had gone a sickly yellow. Her fingers were claws. She grinned at Beverly. Have something to eat, dear. Her voice had risen half an octave, but the octave was cracked in this register, and her voice was the sound of a crypt door swinging mindlessly on hinges clogged with black earth. No, thank you, Beverly heard her mouth say in a childs high ohImustbegoing voice. The words did not seem to originate in her brain; rather they came out of her mouth and then had to travel around to her ears before she was aware of what she had said. No? the witch asked, and grinned. Her claws scrabbled on the plate and she began to cram thin molasses cookies and delicate frosted slices of cake into her mouth with both hands. Her horrid teeth plunged and reared, plunged and reared; her fingernails, long and dirty, dug into the sweets; crumbs tumbled down the bony slab of her chin. Her breath was the smell of longdead things burst wide open by the gases of their own decay. Her laugh was now a dead cackle. Her hair was thinner. Scaly scalp showed in patches. Oh, he loved his joke, my fadder! This is a joke, miss, if you enjoy them my fadder bore me rather than my mutter. He shat me from his asshole! Hee! Hee! Hee! I ought to go, Beverly heard herself say in that same high wounded voicethe voice of a small girl who has been viciously embarrassed at her first party. There was no strength in her legs. She was dimly aware that it was not tea in her cup but shit, liquid shit, a little partyfavor from the sewers under the city. She had drunk some of that, not much but a sip, oh God, oh God, oh blessed Jesus, please, please The woman was shrinking before her eyes, thinning; it was now a crone with an appledolls face who sat across from her, giggling in a high, squealing voice and rocking back and forth. Oh my fadder and I are one, she said, just me, just him, and dear, if you are wise you will run, run back to where you came from, run quickly, because to stay will mean worse than your death. No one who dies in Derry really dies. You knew that before; believe it now. In slow motion Beverly gathered her legs under her. As if from outside she saw herself gaining her feet and backing away from the table and from the witch in an agony of horror and disbelief, disbelief because she realized for the first time that the neat little diningroom table was not dark oak but fudge. Even as she watched, the witch, still giggling, her ancient yellow eyes slanted slyly off into the corner of the room, broke a piece of it off and stuffed it avidly into the blackringed trap that was her mouth. The cups, she saw, were white bark that had been carefully looped with bluedyed frosting. The pictures of Jesus and John Kennedy were creations of nearly transparent spun sugar, and as she looked at them, Jesus stuck out His tongue and Kennedy dropped a stinky wink. Were all waiting for you! the witch screamed, and her fingernails scrabbled over the surface of the fudge table, drawing deep scars in its shining surface. Oh yes! Oh yes! The overhead lights were globes of hard candy. The wainscotting was caramel taffy. She looked down and saw that her shoes were leaving prints on the floorboards, which were not boards at all but slices of chocolate. The smell of candy was cloying. Oh God its Hansel and Gretel its the witch the one that always scared me the worst because she ate the children You and your friends! the witch screamed, laughing. You and your friends! In the cage! In the cage until the ovens hot! She screamed laughter, and Beverly ran for the door, but she ran as if in slow motion. The witchs laughter beat and swirled around her head, a cloud of bats. Beverly shrieked. The hall stank of sugar and nougat and toffee and sickening synthetic strawberries. The doorknob, mock crystal when she came in, was now a monstrous sugar diamond. I worry about you, Bevvie ... I worry a LOT! She turned, swirls of red hair floating around her face, to see her father staggering toward her down the hallway, wearing the witchs black dress and skull cameo; her fathers face hung with doughy, running flesh, his eyes as black as obsidian, his hands clenching and unclenching, his mouth grinning with soupy fervor. I beat you because I wanted to FUCK you, Bevvie, thats all I wanted to do, I wanted to FUCK you, I wanted to EAT you, I wanted to eat your PUSSY, I wanted to SUCK your CLIT up between my teeth, YUMYUM, Bevvie, oooohhhhh, YUMMY IN MY TUMMY, I wanted to put you in the cage ... and get the oven hot ... and feel your CUNT ... your plump CUNT ... and when it was plump enough to eat ... to eat ... EAT... Screaming, she grasped the sticky doorknob and bolted out onto a porch that was decorated with praline doodads and floored with fudge. Far away, dim, seeming to swim in her vision, she saw cars passing back and forth, and a woman pushing a cartful of groceries back from Costellos. I have to get out there, she thought, just barely coherent. Thats reality out there, if I can only get out to the sidewalk Wont do you any good to run, Bevvie, her father (my fadder) told her, laughing. Weve waited a long time for this. This is going to be fun. This is going to be YUMMY in our TUMMIES. She looked back again and now her dead father was not wearing the witchs black dress but the clown suit with the big orange buttons. There was a 1958style coonskin cap, the kind popularized by Fess Parker in the Disney movie about Davy Crockett, perched on its head. In one hand it held a bunch of balloons. In the other it held the leg of a child like a chicken drumstick. Written on each balloon was the legend IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. Tell your friends I am the last of a dying race, it said, grinning its sunken grin as it staggered and lurched down the porch steps after her. The only survivor of a dying planet. I have come to rob all the women ... rape all the men ... and learn to do the Peppermint Twist! It began to do a mad shuckandjive, balloons in one hand, severed, bleeding leg in the other. The clown costume writhed and flapped, but Beverly felt no wind. Her legs tangled in each other and she spilled to the pavement, throwing out her palms to take up the shock, which went all the way to her shoulders. The woman pushing the grocery cart paused and looked back doubtfully, then hurried on a little faster. The clown came toward her again, casting the severed leg aside. It landed on the lawn with an indescribable thud. Beverly only lay sprawled on the pavement for a moment, sure somewhere inside that she must wake soon, this couldnt be real, had to be a dream She realized that wasnt true a moment before the clowns crooked, longclawed fingers touched her. It was real; it could kill her. As it had killed the children. The grackles know your real name! she screamed at it suddenly. It recoiled, and it seemed to her that for a moment the grin on the lips inside the great red grin that had been painted on and around them became a grimace of hate and pain ... and perhaps of fear as well. It might only have been her imagination, and she certainly had no idea why she had said such a crazy thing, but it bought her an instant of time. She was on her feet and running. Brakes squealed and a hoarse voice, both mad and scared, yelled Why dont you look where youre going, you dumb quiff! She had a blurred impression of the bakery truck that had almost hit her when she bolted into the street like a child after a rubber ball, and then she was standing on the opposite sidewalk, panting, a hot stitch in her left side. The bakery truck went on down Lower Main. The clown was gone. The leg was gone. The house still stood there, but she saw now that it was crumbling and deserted, the windows boarded up, the steps leading up to the porch cracked and broken. Was I really in there, or did I dream it all? But her jeans were dirty, her yellow blouse smeared with dust. And there was chocolate on her fingers. She rubbed them on the legs of her jeans and walked away fast, her face hot, her back cold as ice, her eyeballs seeming to pulse in and out with the rapid thud of her heart. We cant beat It. Whatever It is, we cant beat It. It even wants us to tryIt wants to settle the old score. Cant be happy with a draw, I guess. We ought to get out of here ... just leave. Something brushed against her calf, light as a cats questing paw. She jerked away from it with a little shriek. She looked down and cringed, one hand against her mouth. It was a ballon, as yellow as her blouse. Written on the side of it in electric blue were the words THATS WIGHT, WABBIT. As she watched, it went bouncing lightly up the street, urged by the pleasant latespring breeze. 2 Richie Tozier Makes Tracks Well, there was the day Henry and his friends chased mebefore the end of school, this was.... Richie was walking along Outer Canal Street, past Bassey Park. Now he stopped, hands stuffed in his pockets, looking toward the Kissing Bridge but not really seeing it. I got away from them in the toy department of Freeses.... Since the mad conclusion of the reunion lunch, he had been walking aimlessly, trying to make his peace with the awful things which had been in the fortune cookies ... or the things which had seemed to be in the cookies. He thought that most likely nothing at all had come out of them. It had been a group hallucination brought on by all the spooky shit they had been talking about. The best proof of the hypothesis was that Rose had seen nothing at all. Of course, Beverlys parents had never seen any of the blood that came out of the bathroom drain either, but this wasnt the same. No? Why not? Because were grownups now, he muttered, and discovered the thought had absolutely no power or logic at all; it might as well have been a nonsense line from a kids skiprope chant. He started to walk again. I went up by City Center and sat down on a park bench for awhile and I thought I saw ... He stopped again, frowning. Saw what? ... but that was just something I dreamed. Was it? Was it really? He looked to the left and saw the big glassbrickandsteel building that had looked so modern in the late fifties and now looked rather antique and tacky. And here I am, he thought. Right back to fucking City Center. Scene of that other hallucination. Or dream. Or whatever it was. The others saw him as the Klass Klown, the Krazy Kutup, and he had fallen neatly and easily into that role again. Ah, we all fell neatly and easily back into our old roles again, didnt you notice? But was there anything very unusual about that? He thought you would probably see much the same thing at any tenth or twentieth highschool reunionthe class comedian who had discovered a vocation for the priesthood in college would, after two drinks, revert almost automatically to the wiseacre he had been; the Great English Brain who had wound up with a GM truck dealership would suddenly begin spouting off about John Irving or John Cheever; the guy who had played with the Moondogs on Saturday nights and who had gone on to become a mathematics professor at Cornell would suddenly find himself on stage with the band, a Fender guitar strapped over his shoulder, whopping out Gloria or Surfin Bird with gleeful drunken ferocity. What was it Springsteen said? No retreat, baby, no surrender ... but it was easier to believe in the oldies on the recordplayer after a couple of drinks or some pretty good Panama Red. But, Richie believed, it was the reversion that was the hallucination, not the present life. Maybe the child was the father of the man, but fathers and sons often shared very different interests and only a passing resemblance. They But you say grownups and now it sounds like nonsense; it sounds like so much bibblebabble. Why is that, Richie? Why? Because Derry is as weird as ever. Why dont we just leave it at that? Because things werent that simple, that was why. As a kid he had been a goofoff, a sometimes vulgar, sometimes amusing comedian, because it was one way to get along without getting killed by kids like Henry Bowers or going absolutely loonytunes with boredom and loneliness. He realized now that a lot of the problem had been his own mind, which was usually moving at a speed ten or twenty times that of his classmates. They had thought him strange, weird, or even suicidal, depending on the escapade in question, but maybe it had been a simple case of mental overdriveif anything about being in constant mental overdrive was simple. Anyway, it was the sort of thing you got under control after awhileyou got it under control or you found outlets for it, guys like Kinky Briefcase or Buford Kissdrivel, for instance. Richie had discovered that in the months after he had wandered into the college radio station, pretty much on a whim, and had discovered everything he had ever wanted during his first week behind the microphone. He hadnt been very good at first; he had been too excited to be good. But he had understood his potential not to be just good at the job but great at it, and just that knowledge had been enough to put him over the moon on a cloud of euphoria. At the same time he had begun to understand the great principle that moved the universe, at least that part of the universe which had to do with careers and success you found the crazy guy who was running around inside of you, fucking up your life. You chased him into a corner and grabbed him. But you didnt kill him. Oh no. Killing was too good for the likes of that little bastard. You put a harness over his head and then started plowing. The crazy guy worked like a demon once you had him in the traces. And he supplied you with a few chucks from time to time. That was really all there was. And that was enough. He had been funny, all right, a laugh a minute, but in the end he had outgrown the nightmares that were on the dark side of all those laughs. Or he thought he had. Until today, when the word grownup suddenly stopped making sense to his own ears. And now here was something else to cope with, or at least think about; here was the huge and totally idiotic statue of Paul Bunyan in front of City Center. I must be the exception that proves the rule, Big Bill. Are you sure there was nothing, Richie? Nothing at all? Up by City Center ... I thought I saw ... Sharp pain needled at his eyes for the second time that day and he clutched at them, a startled moan coming out of him. Then it was gone again, as quickly as it had come. But he had also smelled something, hadnt he? Something that wasnt really there, but something that had been there, something that made him think of (Im right here with you Richie hold my hand can you catch hold) Mike Hanlon. It was smoke that had made his eyes sting and water. Twentyseven years ago they had breathed that smoke; in the end there had just been Mike and himself left and they had seen But it was gone. He took a step closer to the plastic Paul Bunyan statue, as amazed by its cheerful vulgarity now as he had been overwhelmed by its size as a child. The mythical Paul stood twenty feet high, and the base added another six feet. He stood smiling down at the car and pedestrian traffic on Outer Canal Street from the edge of the City Center lawn. City Center had been erected in the years 195455 for a minorleague basketball team that had never materialized. The Derry City Council had voted money for the statue a year later, in 1956. It had been hotly debated both in the councils public meetings and in the letterstotheeditor columns of the Derry News. Many thought it would be a perfectly lovely statue, certain to become a tourist attraction of note. There were others who found the idea of a plastic Paul Bunyan horrible, garish, and unbelievably gauche. The art teacher at Derry High School, Richie remembered, had written a letter to the News saying that if such a monstrosity were actually to be erected in Derry, she would blow it up. Grinning, Richie wondered if that babes contract had been renewed. The controversywhich Richie recognized now as an utterly typical bigtownsmallcity tempest in a teapothad raged for six months, and of course it had been entirely meaningless; the statue had been purchased, and even if the City Council had done something as aberrant (especially for New England) as deciding not to use an item for which money had been paid, where in Gods name could it have been stored? Then the statue, not really sculpted at all but simply cast in some Ohio plastics plant, had been set in place, still shrouded in a whack of canvas big enough to serve as a clippership sail. It had been unveiled on May 13th, 1957, which was the incorporated townships onehundredandfiftieth birthday. One faction gave voice to predictable moans of outrage; the other to equally predictable moans of rapture. When Paul was revealed that day he was wearing his bib overalls and a redandwhitechecked shirt. His beard was splendidly black, splendidly full, splendidly lumberjacky. A plastic axe, surely the Godzilla of all plastic axes, was slung over one shoulder, and he grinned unceasingly at the northern skies, which on the day of the unveiling had been as blue as the skin of Pauls reputed companion (Babe was not present at the unveiling, however; the cost estimate of adding a blue ox to the tableau had been prohibitive). The children who attended the ceremonies (there were hundreds of them, and tenyearold Richie Tozier, in the company of his dad, had been among them) were totally and uncritically delighted by the plastic giant. Parents boosted toddlers up onto the square pedestal on which Paul stood, took photos, and then watched with mixed apprehension and amusement as the kids climbed and crawled, laughing, over Pauls huge black boots (correction huge black plastic boots). It had been March of the following year when Richie, exhausted and terrified, had finished up on one of the benches in front of the statue after eludingby the barest of marginsMessrs. Bowers, Criss, and Huggins in a chase that had led from Derry Elementary School across most of the downtown area. He had finally ditched them in the toy department of Freeses Department Store. The Derry branch of Freeses was a poor thing compared with the grand downtown department store in Bangor, but Richie had been far past caring about such thingsby then it was a case of any port in a storm. Henry Bowers had been right behind him and by then Richie had been flagging badly. He had dodged into the mouth of the department stores revolving door as a last resort. Henry, who apparently didnt understand the physics of such devices, had nearly lost the tips of his fingers trying to grab Richie as Richie trundled around and into the store. Pelting downstairs, shirttail flying out behind him, he had heard the revolving door give off a series of reports almost as loud as TV gunfire and understood that Larry, Moe, and Curly were still after him. He was laughing as he went down the stairs to the basement level but that was only a nervous tic; he was as full of terror as a rabbit caught in a wire snare. They really meant to beat him up good this time (he had no idea that in another ten weeks or so he would believe the three of them, Henry in particular, capable of anything short of murder, and he surely would have whitened with shock if he had known of the apocalyptic rockfight in July, when even that last qualification would disappear from his mind). And the whole thing had been so utterly, typically stupid. Richie and the other boys in his fifthgrade class had been filing into the gym. A sixthgrade class, Henry hulking among them like an ox among cows, had been coming out. Although he was still in the fifth grade, Henry went to gym with the older boys. The overhead pipes had been dripping again and Mr. Fazio hadnt yet gotten around to putting up his CAUTION! WET FLOOR! sign on its little easel. Henry had slipped in a puddle and had landed on his keister. Before he could stop it Richies traitor mouth had bugled Way to go, bananaheels! There had been an explosion of laughter from both Henrys classmates and Richies, but there had been no laughter on Henrys face as he picked himself uponly a dull flush the color of freshly fired brick. Later for you, foureyes, he said, and walked on. The laughter died at once. The boys in the hall looked at Richie as one already dead. Henry did not pause to check reactions; he simply walked off, head down, elbows red from catching the fall, a large wet place on the seat of his pants. Looking at that wet spot, Richie felt his suicidally witty mouth drop open again ... but this time he snapped it shut again, so fast he almost amputated the tip of his tongue with the falling gate of his teeth. Well, but hell forget, he told himself uneasily as he changed up for gym. Sure he will. Ole Hank just hasnt got that many memory circuits working. Every time he takes a shit he probably has to look up the directions in the instruction booklet, haha. Haha. Youre dead, Trashmouth, Vince Boogers Taliendo told him, pulling his jock up over a dork roughly the size and shape of an anemic peanut. He said it with a certain sad respect. Dont worry, though. Ill bring flowers. Cut off your ears and bring cauliflowers, Richie had come back smartly, and everyone laughed, even ole Boogers Taliendo laughed, why not, they could all afford to laugh. What, me worry? They would all be home watching Jimmy Dodd and the Mouseketeers on the Mickey Mouse Club or Frankie Lymon singing Im Not a Juvenile Delinquent on American Bandstand while Richie went shagging ass through ladies lingerie and housewares on his way to the toy department with sweat pouring down his back into the crack of his ass and his terrified balls strung up so high they felt like they might be hung over his bellybutton. Sure, they could laugh. Hardeharharhar. Henry hadnt forgotten. Richie had left by the door at the kindergarten end of the school building just in case, but Henry had stuck Belch Huggins there, also just in case. Hardeharharhar. Richie saw Belch first or there would have been no contest at all. Belch was looking out toward Derry Park, holding an unlit cigarette in one hand and dreamily picking the seat of his chinos out of his ass with the other. Heart pounding hard, Richie had walked quietly across the playground and was most of the way down Charter Street before Belch turned his head and saw him. He yelled for Henry and Victor, and since then the chase had been on. When Richie reached the toy department it had been utterly, horribly deserted. There wasnt even a sales clerk hanging outa welcome adult to put a stop to things before they got entirely out of hand. He could hear the three dinosaurs of the apocalypse closing in now. And he simply couldnt run anymore. Each breath produced a deep hurting stitch in his left side. His eye fixed on a door which read EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY! ALARM WILL SOUND! Hope kindled in his chest. Richie ran down an aisle crammed with Donald Duck jackintheboxes, United States Army tanks made in Japan, Lone Ranger cap pistols, windup robots. He reached the door and slammed the pushbar as hard as he could. The door opened, letting in cool midMarch air. The alarm went off with a strident bray. Richie immediately doubled back and dropped to his hands and knees in the next aisle over. He was down before the door could settle closed again. Henry, Belch, and Victor thundered into the toy department just as the door clicked shut and the alarm cut off. They raced for it, Henry in the lead, his face set and intent. A sales clerk finally appeared, coming on the run. He wore a blue nylon duster over a plaid sportcoat of excruciating ugliness. The rims of his spectacles were as pink as the eyes of a white rabbit. Richie thought he looked like Wally Cox in his Mr. Peepers role, and he had to slam his traitor mouth into the fat part of his forearm to keep from screaming out gales of exhausted laughter. You boys! Mr. Peepers exclaimed. You boys cant go out there! Thats an emergency exit! You! Hey! You boys! Victor glanced at him a little nervously, but Henry and Belch never turned from their course and Victor followed them. The alarm brayed again, longer this time as they charged into the alley. Before it stopped clanging Richie was on his feet and trotting back toward ladies lingerie. You boys will be barred from the store! the clerk yelled after him. Looking back over his shoulder Richie squealed in his Granny Grunt Voice, Did anyone ever tell you you look just like Mr. Peepers, young man? And so he had escaped. And so he had finished up almost a mile from Freeses, in front of City Center ... and, he devoutly hoped, out of harms way. At least for the time being. He was spent. He sat down on a bench just to the left of the Paul Bunyan statue, wanting only a little peace while he got himself back together. In a bit he would get up and head home, but for now it felt too good to just sit here in the afternoon sun. The day had opened in a cold drizzly gloom, but now you could believe spring might actually be on the way. Farther up the lawn he could see the City Center marquee, which on that March day bore this message in large blue translucent letters HEY TEENS! COMING MARCH 28TH! THE ARNIE WOOWOO GINSBERG ROCK AND ROLL SHOW! JERRY LEE LEWIS THE PENGUINS FRANKIE LYMON AND THE TEENAGERS GENE VINCENT AND THE BLUE CAPS FREDDY BOOMBOOM CANNON AN EVENING OF WHOLESOME ENTERTAINMENT!! That was a show Richie really wanted to see, but he knew there wasnt a chance. His mothers idea of wholesome entertainment did not include Jerry Lee Lewis telling the young people of America we got chicken in the barn, whose barn, what barn, my barn. Nor, for that matter, did it include Freddy Cannon, whose Tallahassee lassie had a hifi chassis. She was willing to admit that she had done her share of screaming for Frank Sinatra (whom she now called Frankie the Snot) as a bobbysoxer, but, like Bill Denbroughs mother, she was death on rock and roll. Chuck Berry terrified her, and she declared that Richard Penniman, better known to his teen and subteen constituency as Little Richard, made her want to barf like a chicken. This was a phrase for which Richie had never asked a translation. His dad was neutral on the subject of rock and roll and could perhaps have been swayed, but Richie knew in his heart that his mothers wishes would rule on this subjectuntil he was sixteen or seventeen, anywayand by then, his mother was firmly convinced, the countrys rock and roll mania would have passed. Richie thought Danny and the Juniors were more right on that subject than his momrock and roll would never die. He himself loved it, although his sources were really only twoAmerican Bandstand on Channel 7 in the afternoon and WMEX out of Boston at night, when the air had thinned and the hoarse enthusiastic voice of Arnie Ginsberg came wavering in and out like the voice of a ghost called up at a seance. The beat did more than make him happy. It made him feel bigger, stronger, more there. When Frankie Ford sang Sea Cruise or Eddie Cochran sang Summertime Blues, Richie was actually transported with joy. There was power in that music, a power which seemed to most rightfully belong to all the skinny kids, fat kids, ugly kids, shy kidsthe worlds losers, in short. In it he felt a mad hilarious voltage which had the power to both kill and exalt. He idolized Fats Domino (who made even Ben Hanscom look slim and trim) and Buddy Holly, who, like Richie, wore glasses, and Screaming Jay Hawkins, who popped out of a coffin at his concerts (or so Richie had been told), and the Dovells, who danced as good as black guys. Well, almost. He would have his rock and roll someday if he wanted ithe was confident it would still be there for him when his mother finally gave in and let him have itbut that would not be on March 28th, 1958 ... or in 1959 ... or ... His eyes had drifted away from the marquee and then ... well ... then he must have fallen asleep. It was the only explanation that made sense. What had happened next could only happen in dreams. And now here he was again, a Richie Tozier who had finally gotten all the rock and roll he had ever wanted ... and who had found, happily, that it still wasnt enough.


His eyes went to the marquee in front of City Center and saw that, with a hideous kind of serendipity, those same blue letters spelled out JUNE 14TH HEAVY METAL MANIA!! JUDAS PRIEST IRON MAIDEN BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE OR AT ANY TICKETRON OUTLET Somewhere along the way they dropped the wholesome entertainment line, but as far as I can tell thats just about the only difference, Richie thought. And heard Danny and the Juniors, dim and distant, like voices heard down a long corridor coming out of a cheap radio Rock and roll will never die, Ill dig it to the end ... Itll go down in history, just you watch my friend.... Richie looked back at Paul Bunyan, patron saint of DerryDerry, which had come into being, according to the stories, because this was where the logs fetched up when they came downriver. There had been a time when, in the spring, both the Penobscot and the Kenduskeag would have been solid logs from one side to the other, their black bark hides glistening in the spring sun. A fellow who was fast on his feet could walk from Wallys Spa in Hells HalfAcre over to Rampers in Brewster (Rampers was a tavern of such horrible repute that it was commonly called the Bucket of Blood) without getting his boots wet over the third crossing of his rawhide laces. Or so it had been storied in Richies youth, and he supposed there was a bit of Paul Bunyan in all such stories. Old Paul, he thought, looking up at the plastic statue. What you been doing since Ive been gone? Made any new riverbeds coming home tired and dragging your axe behind you? Made any new lakes on account of wanting a bathtub big enough so you could sit in water up to your neck? Scared any more little kids the way you scared me that day? Ah, and suddenly he remembered it all, the way you will sometimes suddenly remember a word which has been dancing on the tip of your tongue. There he had been, sitting in that mellow March sunshine, drowsing a little, thinking about going home and catching the last half hour of Bandstand, and suddenly there had been a warm swash of air into his face. It blew his hair back from his forehead. He looked up and Paul Bunyans huge plastic face had been right in front of his, bigger than a face on a movie screen, filling everything. The rush of air had been caused by Pauls bending down ... although he did not precisely look like Paul anymore. The forehead was now low and beetling; tufts of wiry hair poked from a nose as red as the nose of a longtime drunkard; his eyes were bloodshot and one had a slight cast to it. The axe was no longer on his shoulder. Paul was leaning on its haft, and the blunt end of its head had crushed a trench in the concrete of the sidewalk. He was still grinning, but there was nothing cheery about it now. From between gigantic yellow teeth there drifted a smell like small animals rotting in hot underbrush. Im going to eat you up, the giant had said in a low rumbling voice. It was the sound of boulders rocking against each other during an earthquake. Unless you give me back my hen and my harp and my bags of gold, Im going to eat you right the fuck up! The breath of these words made Richies shirt flutter and flap like a sail in a hurricane. He shrank back against the bench, eyes bugging, hair standing out to all sides like quills, wrapped in a pocket of carrionstink. The giant began to laugh. It settled its hands on the haft of its axe the way Ted Williams might have laid hold of his favorite baseball bat (or ashhandle, if you prefer), and pulled it out of the hole it had made in the sidewalk. The axe began to rise into the air. It made a low lethal rushing sound. Richie suddenly understood that the giant meant to split him right down the middle. But he felt that he could not move; a logy sort of apathy had stolen over him. What did it matter? He was dozing, having a dream. Any moment now some driver would blow his horn at a kid running across the street and he would wake up. Thats right, the giant had rumbled, youll wake up in hell! And at the last instant, as the axe slowed to its apogee and balanced there, Richie understood that this wasnt a dream at all ... and if it was, it was a dream that could kill. Trying to scream but making no sound at all, he rolled off the bench and onto the raked gravel plot which surrounded what had been a statue and was now only a base with two huge steel bolts sticking out of it where the feet had been. The sound of the descending axe filled the world with its pressing insistent whisper; the giants grin had become a murderers grimace. Its lips had pulled back so far from its teeth that its plastic red gums, hideously red, gleamed. The blade of the axe struck the bench where Richie had been only an instant before. The edge was so sharp that there was almost no sound at all, but the bench was sheared instantly in two. The halves sagged away from each other, the wood inside the greenpainted skin a bright and somehow sickening white. Richie was on his back. Still trying to scream, he pushed himself with his heels. Gravel went down the collar of his shirt, down the back of his pants. And there was Paul, towering above him, looking down at him with eyes the size of manhole covers; there was Paul, looking down at one small boy cowering on the gravel. The giant took a step toward him. Richie felt the ground shudder when the black boot came down. Gravel spumed up in a cloud. Richie rolled over onto his stomach and staggered to his feet. His legs were already trying to run before he was balanced, and as a result he fell flat on his belly again. He heard the wind whoof out of his lungs. His hair fell in his eyes. He could see the traffic going back and forth on Canal and Main Streets as it did every day, as if nothing was happening, as if no one in any of those cars could see or care that Paul Bunyan had come to life and stepped down from its pedestal in order to commit murder with an axe roughly the size of a deluxe motor home. The sunshine was blotted out. Richie lay in a patch of shade that looked like a man. He scrambled to his knees, almost fell over sideways, managed to get to his feet, and ran as fast as he couldhe ran with his knees popping almost all the way up to his chest and his elbows pistoning. Behind him he could hear that awful persistent whisper building again, a sound that seemed to be not really sound at all but pressure on the skin and eardrums Swiiipppppp! The earth shook. Richies upper and lower teeth rattled against each other like china plates in an earthquake. He did not have to look to know that Pauls axe had buried itself haftdeep in the sidewalk inches behind his feet. Madly, in his mind, he heard the Dovells Oh the kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol When they do the Bristol Stomp.... He passed out of the giants shadow into sunlight again, and as he did he began to laughthe same exhausted laughter that had come from him when he bolted downstairs in Freeses. Panting, that hot stitch in his side again, he had at last risked a glance back over his shoulder. There was the statue of Paul Bunyan, standing on its pedestal where it always stood, axe on its shoulder, head cocked toward the sky, lips parted in the eternal optimistic grin of the mythhero. The bench which had been sheared in two was whole and intact, thank you very much. The gravel where Tall Paul (Hesa my all, Annette Funicello sang maniacally in Richies head) had planted his huge foot was raked and immaculate except for the scuffed spot where Richie had fallen off while he was (getting away from the giant) dreaming. There was no footprint, no axeslash in the concrete. There was nothing here but a boy who had been chased by other boys, bigger boys, and so had had himself a very small (but very potent) dream about a homicidal Colossus ... the Giant EconomySize Henry Bowers, if you pleased. Shit, Richie said in a tiny wavering voice, and then uttered an uncertain laugh. He stood there awhile longer, waiting to see if the statue would move againperhaps wink, perhaps shift its axe from one shoulder to the other, perhaps come down and have at him again. But of course none of those things happened. Of course. What, me worry? Hardeharharhar. A doze. A dream. No more than that. But, as Abraham Lincoln or Socrates or someone like that had once observed, enough was enough. It was time to go home and cool out; to make like Kookie on 77 Sunset Strip and just lay chilly. And although it would have been quicker to cut through the City Center grounds, he decided not to. He didnt want to get close to that statue again. So he had gone the long way around and by that evening he had nearly forgotten the incident. Until now. Here sits a man, he thought, here sits a man dressed in a mossygreen sportcoat purchased at one of the best shops on Rodeo Drive; here sits a man with Bass Weejuns on his feet and Calvin Klein underwear to cover his ass; here sits a man with soft contact lenses resting easily on his eyes; here sits a man remembering the dream of a boy who thought an Ivy League shirt with a fruitloop on the back and a pair of SnapJack shoes was the height of fashion; here sits a grownup looking at the same old statue, and hey, Paul, Tall Paul, Im here to say youre the same in every way, you aint aged a motherfucking day. The old explanation still rang true in his mind a dream. He supposed he could believe in monsters if he had to; monsters were no big deal. Hadnt he sat in radio studios at one time or another reading news copy about such fellows as Idi Amin Dada and Jim Jones and that guy who had blown away all those folks in a McDonalds just down the road apiece? Shitfire and save matches, monsters were cheap! Who needed a fivebuck movie ticket when you could read about them in the paper for thirtyfive cents or hear about them on the radio for free? And he supposed if he could believe in the Jim Jones variety, he could believe in Mike Hanlons version, at least for awhile; It even had Its own sorry charm, because It came from Outside and no one had to claim responsibility for It. He could believe in a monster that had as many faces as there are rubber masks in a novelty shop (if youre gonna have one, you might as well have a pack of em, he thought, cheaper by the dozen, right, gang?), at least for the sake of argument ... but a thirtyfoothigh plastic statue that stepped off its pedestal and then tried to carve you up with its plastic axe? That was just a little too ripe. As Abraham Lincoln or Socrates or someone had also said, Ill eat fish and Ill eat meat, but there is some shit I will not eat. It just wasnt That sharp needling pain struck his eyes again, without warning, jerking a dismayed cry from him. This was the worst yet, going deeper and lasting longer, scaring the bejesus out of him. He clapped his hands to his eyes and then groped instinctively for the bottom lids with his forefingers, meaning to pop his contacts out. Its maybe some kind of infection, he thought dimly. But Jesus it hurts! He pulled the lids down and was ready to give the single practiced blink that would send them tumbling out (and he would spend the next fifteen minutes grovelling myopically for them in the gravel surrounding the bench but Jesus God who gave a shit, right now it felt like there were nails in his eyes), when the pain disappeared. It did not dwindle; it just went. One moment there, the next moment gone. His eyes teared briefly and then stopped. He lowered his hands slowly, his heart running fast in his chest, ready to blink them out the instant the pain started again. It didnt. And suddenly he found himself thinking about the only horror movie that had ever really scared him as a kid, possibly because he had taken so much shit about his glasses and had spent so much time thinking about his eyes. That movie had been The Crawling Eye, with Forrest Tucker. Not very good. The other kids had laughed themselves into hysterics over it, but Richie had not laughed. Richie had been rendered cold and white and dumb, for once with not a single Voice to command, as that gelatinous tentacled eye came out of the manufactured fog of some English movie set, waving its fibrous tentacles in front of it. The sight of that eye had been very bad, the embodiment of a hundred notquiterealized fears and disquiets. On some night not long after, he had dreamed of looking at himself in a mirror and bringing a large pin up and sticking it slowly into the black iris of his eye and feeling a numb, watery springiness as the bottom of his eye filled up with blood. He rememberednow he rememberedwaking up and discovering that he had wet the bed. The best indicator of how gruesome that dream had been was that his primary feeling had been not shame at his nocturnal indiscretion but relief; he had embraced the warm wet patch with his body and blessed the reality of his sight. Fuck this, Richie Tozier said in a low voice that was not quite steady, and started to get up. He would go back to the Derry Town House and take a nap. If this was Memory Lane, he preferred the L.A. Freeway at rushhour. The pain in his eyes was probably no more than a signal of exhaustion and jetlag, plus the stress of meeting the past all at once, in one afternoon. Enough shocks; enough exploring. He didnt like the way his mind was skittering from one subject to the next. What was that Peter Gabriel tune? Shock the Monkey. Well, this monkey had been shocked enough. It was time to catch some zs and maybe gain a little perspective. As he rose his eyes went to the marquee in front of City Center again. All at once the strength ran out of his legs and he sat down again. Hard. RICHIE TOZIER MAN OF 1000 VOICES RETURNS TO DERRY LAND OF 1000 DANCES IN HONOR OF TRASHMOUTHS RETURN CITY CENTER PROUDLY PRESENTS THE RICHIE TOZIER ALLDEAD ROCK SHOW BUDDY HOLLY RICHIE VALENS THE BIG BOPPER FRANKIE LYMON GENE VINCENT MARVIN GAYE HOUSE BAND JIMI HENDRIX LEAD GUITAR JOHN LENNON RHYTHM GUITAR PHIL LINOTT BASS GUITAR KEITH MOON DRUMS SPECIAL GUEST VOCALIST JIM MORRISON WELCOME HOME RICHIE! YOURE DEAD TOO! He felt as if someone had whopped all the breath out of him ... and then he heard that sound again, that sound that was half pressure on the skin and eardrums, that keen homicidal whispering rushSwiipppp! He rolled off the bench onto the gravel, thinking So this is what they mean by djvu, now you know, youll never have to ask anybody again He hit on his shoulder and rolled, looking up at the Paul Bunyan statueonly it was no longer Paul Bunyan. The clown stood there instead, resplendent and evident, fantastic in plastic, twenty feet of DayGlo colors, its painted face surmounting a cosmic comic ruff. Orange pompom buttons cast in plastic, each as big as a volleyball, ran down the front of the silvery suit. Instead of an axe it held a huge bunch of plastic balloons. Engraved on each were two legends ITS STILL ROCK AND ROLL TO ME and RICHIE TOZIERS ALLDEAD ROCK SHOW. He scrambled backward, using his heels and his palms. Gravel went down the back of his pants. He heard a seam tear loose in the underarm of his Rodeo Drive sportcoat. He rolled over, gained his feet, staggered, looked back. The clown looked down at him. Its eyes rolled wetly in their sockets. Did I give you a scare, mman? it rumbled. And Richie heard his mouth say, quite independently of his frozen brain Cheap thrills in the back of my car, Bozo. Thats all. The clown grinned and nodded as if it had expected no more. Red paintbleeding lips parted to show teeth like fangs, each one coming to a razor point. I could have you now if I wanted you now, it said. But this is going to be too much fun. Fun for me too, Richie heard his mouth say. The most fun of all when we come to take your fucking head off, baby. The clowns grin spread wider and wider. It raised one hand, clad in a white glove, and Richie felt the wind of the movement blow the hair off his forehead as it had on that day twentyseven years ago. The clowns index finger popped out at him. It was as big as a beam. Big as a bea, Richie thought, and then the pain struck again. It drove rusty spikes into the soft jelly of his eyes. He screamed and clutched at his face. Before removing the mote from thy neighbors eye, attend the beam in thine own, the clown intoned, its words rumbling and vibrating, and Richie was again enveloped in the sweet stink of its carrion breath. He looked up, and took half a dozen hurried steps backward. The clown was bending down, its gloved hands on its gaily pantalooned knees. Want to play some more, Richie? How about if I point at your pecker and give you prostate cancer? Or I could point at your head and give you a good old brain tumoralthough Im sure some people would say that would only be adding to what was already there. I can point at your mouth and your stupid flapping tongue will turn into so much running pus. I can do it, Richie. Want to see? Its eyes were widening, widening, and in those black pupils, each as big as a softball, Richie saw the mad darkness that must exist over the rim of the universe; he saw a shitty happiness that he felt would drive him insane. In that moment he understood It could do any of these things and more. And yet again he heard his mouth, but this time it was not his voice, or any of his created Voices, past or present; it was a Voice he had never heard before. Later he would tell the others, hesitantly, that it was a kind of Mr. Jiveass Nigger Voice, loud and proud, selfparodying and screechy. Git off mah case you big ole honky clown! he shouted, and suddenly he was laughing again. No shit an no shine, muhfuh! I got dwalk, I got dtalk, and I got dbig boppin cock! I got dtime, I got dmine, Im a man wit a plan an if you doan shit, you goan git! You hear me, you whiteface bunghole? Richie thought the clown recoiled, but he did not stick around to find out for sure. He ran, elbows pumping, sportcoat flying out in wings behind him, not caring that a father who had stopped so his toddler could admire Paul was now staring warily at him, as if he had gone crazy. As a matter of fact, folks, Richie thought, I feel like Ive gone crazy. Oh God do I ever. And that had to have been the shittiest Grandmaster Flash imitation in history but somehow it did the trick, somehow And then the clowns voice thundered after him. The father of the little boy did not hear it, but the toddlers face suddenly pinched in upon itself and he began to wail. The dad picked his son up and hugged him, bewildered. Even through his own terror, Richie observed this little sideshow closely. The voice of the clown was perhaps angrily gleeful, perhaps just angry Weve got the eye down here, Richie ... you hear me? The one that crawls. If you dont want to fly, dont wanna say goodbye, you come on down under this here town and give a great big hi to one great big eye! You come down and see it anytime. Just any old time you like. You hear me, Richie? Bring your yoyo. Have Beverly wear a big full skirt with four or five petticoats underneath. Have her wear her husbands ring around her neck! Get Eddie to wear his saddleshoes! Well play some bop, Richie! Well play AAALLLL THE HITS! Reaching the sidewalk, Richie dared to look back over his shoulder, and what he saw was in no way comforting. Paul Bunyan was still gone, and now the clown was gone, too. Where they had stood there was now a twentyfoothigh plastic statue of Buddy Holly. He was wearing a button on one of the narrow lapels of his plaid sportcoat. RICHIE TOZIERS ALLDEAD ROCK SHOW, the button read. One bow of Buddys glasses had been mended with adhesive tape. The little boy was still crying hysterically; his father was walking rapidly back toward downtown with the weeping child in his arms. He gave Richie a wide berth. Richie got walking (feets dont fail me now) trying not to think about (well play AAALLLL THE HITS!) what had just happened. All he wanted to think about was the monster jolt of Scotch he was going to have in the Derry Town House bar before he went up to take that nap. The thought of a drinkjust your ordinary gardenvariety drinkmade him feel a little better. He looked over his shoulder one more time and the fact that Paul Bunyan was back, grinning at the sky, plastic axe over his shoulder, made him feel better still. Richie began to walk faster, making tracks, putting distance between himself and that statue. He had even begun to think about the possibility of hallucinations when the pain struck his eyes again, deep and agonizing, causing him to cry out hoarsely. A pretty young girl who had been walking ahead of him, looking dreamily up at the breaking clouds, looked back at him, hesitated, then hurried over. Mister, are you all right? Its my contacts, he said in a strained voice. My damned contact leoh my God that hurts! This time he got his forefingers up so quickly he almost jabbed them into his eyes. He pulled down the lower lids and thought, I wont be able to blink them out, thats whats going to happen, I wont be able to blink them out and its just going to go on hurting and hurting and hurting until I go blind go blind go bl But one blink did it as one blink always had. The sharp and defined world, where colors stayed inside the lines and where faces that you saw were clear and obvious, simply fell away. Wide bands of pastel fuzz took their place. And although he and the highschool girl, who was both helpful and concerned, searched the paving of the sidewalk for almost fifteen minutes, neither could find even a single lens. In the back of his head Richie seemed to hear the clown laughing. 5 Bill Denbrough Sees a Ghost Bill did not see Pennywise that afternoonbut he did see a ghost. A real ghost. So Bill believed then, and no subsequent event caused him to change his mind. He had walked up Witcham Street and paused for some time by the drain where George met his end on that rainy October day in 1957. He squatted down and peered into the drain, which was cut into the stonework of the curbing. His heart was beating hard, but he looked anyway. Come out, why dont you, he said in a low voice, and he had the notquitemad idea that his voice was floating along dark and dripping passageways, not dying out but continuing onward and onward, feeding on its own echoes, bouncing off mosscovered stone walls and longdead machinery. He felt it float over still and sullen waters and perhaps issue softly from a hundred different drains in other parts of the city at the same time. Come out of there or well come in and gget you. He waited nervily for a response, crouched down with his hands between his thighs like a catcher between pitches. There was no response. He was about to stand up when a shadow fell over him. Bill looked up sharply, eagerly, ready for anything ... but it was only a little kid, maybe ten, maybe eleven. He was wearing faded Boy Scout shorts which displayed his scabby knees to good advantage. He had a FreezePop in one hand and a Fiberglas skateboard which looked almost as battered as his knees in the other. The FreezePop was a fluorescent orange. The skateboard was a fluorescent green. You always talk into the sewers, mister? the boy asked. Only in Derry, Bill said. They looked at each other solemnly for a moment and then burst into laughter at the same time. I want to ask you a stupid quehquestion, Bill said. Okay, the kid said. You ever hhear anything down in one of these? The kid looked at Bill as though he had flipped out. OOkay, Bill said, forget I aasked. He started to walk away and had gotten maybe twelve stepshe was headed up the hill, vaguely thinking he would take a look at the home placewhen the kid called, Mister? Bill turned back. He had his sportcoat hooked on his finger and slung over his shoulder. His collar was unbuttoned, his tie loosened. The boy was watching him carefully, as if already regretting his decision to speak further. Then he shrugged, as if saying Oh what the hell. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. What did it say? I dont know. It talked some foreign language. I heard it coming out of one of those pumpin stations down in the Barrens. One of those pumpin stations, they look like pipes coming out of the ground I know what you mean. Was it a kid you heard? At first it was a kid, then it sounded like a man. The boy paused. I was some scared. I ran home and told my father. He said maybe it was an echo or something, coming all the way down the pipes from someones house. Do you believe that? The boy smiled charmingly. I read in my Ripleys Believe It or Not book that there was this guy, he got music from his teeth. Radio music. His fillings were, like, little radios. I guess if I believed that, I could believe anything. AAyuh, Bill said. But did you believe it? The boy reluctantly shook his head. Did you ever hear those voices again? Once when I was taking a bath, the boy said. It was a girls voice. Just crying. No words. I was ascared to pull the plug when I was done because I thought I might, you know, drownd her. Bill nodded again. The kid was looking at Bill openly now, his eyes shining and fascinated. You know about those voices, mister? I heard them, Bill said. A long, long time ago. Did you know any of the kkids that have been murdered here, son? The shine went out of the kids eyes; it was replaced by caution and disquiet. My dad says Im not supposed to talk to strangers. He says anybody could be that killer. He took an additional step away from Bill, moving into the dappled shade of an elm tree that Bill had once driven his bike into twentyseven years ago. He had taken a spill and bent his handlebars. Not me, kid, he said. Ive been in England for the last four months. I just got into Derry yesterday. I still dont have to talk to you, the kid replied. Thats right, Bill agreed. Its a fffree country. He paused and then said, I used to pal around with Johnny Feury some of the time. He was a good kid. I cried, the boy finished matteroffactly, and slurped down the rest of his FreezePop. As an afterthought he ran out his tongue, which was temporarily bright orange, and lapped off his arm. Keep away from the sewers and drains, Bill said quietly. Keep away from empty places and deserted places. Stay out of trainyards. But most of all, stay away from the sewers and the drains. The shine was back in the kids eyes, and he said nothing for a very long time. Then Mister? You want to hear something funny? Sure. You know that movie where the shark ate all the people up? Everyone does. JJJaws.  Well, I got this friend, you know? His names Tommy Vicananza, and hes not that bright. Toys in the attic, you get what I mean? Yeah. He thinks he saw that shark in the Canal. He was up there by himself in Bassey Park a couple of weeks ago, and he said he seen this fin. He says it was eight or nine feet tall. Just the fin was that tall, you get me? He goes, Thats what killed Johnny and the other kids. It was Jaws, I know because I saw it. So I go, That Canals so polluted nothing could live in it, not even a minnow. And you think you saw Jaws in there. You got toys in the attic, Tommy. Tommy says it reared right out of the water like it did at the end of that movie and tried to bite him and he just got back in time. Pretty funny, huh, mister? Pretty funny, Bill agreed. Toys in the attic, right? Bill hesitated. Stay away from the Canal too, son. You follow? You mean you believe it? Bill hesitated. He meant to shrug. Instead he nodded. The kid let out his breath in a low, hissing rush. He hung his head as if ashamed. Yeah. Sometimes I think I must have toys in the attic. I know what you mean. Bill walked over to the kid, who glanced up at him solemnly but didnt shy away this time. Youre killing your knees on that board, son. The kid glanced down at his scabby knees and grinned. Yeah, I guess so. I bail out sometimes. Can I try it? Bill asked suddenly. The kid looked at him gapemouthed at first, then laughing. Thatd be funny, he said. I never saw a grownup on a skateboard. Ill give you a quarter, Bill said. My dad said Never take money or ccandy from strangers. Good advice. Ill still give you a qquarter. What do you say? Just to the corner of JuhJackson Street. Never mind the quarter, the kid said. He burst into laughter againa gay and uncomplicated sound. A fresh sound. I dont need your quarter. I got two bucks. Im practically rich. I got to see this, though. Just dont blame me if you break something. Dont worry, Bill said. Im insured. He turned one of the skateboards scuffed wheels with his finger, liking the speedy ease with which it turnedit sounded like there was about a million ballbearings in there. It was a good sound. It called up something very old in Bills chest. Some desire as warm as want, as lovely as love. He smiled. What do you think? the kid asked. I think Im ggonna kill myself, Bill said, and the kid laughed. Bill put the skateboard on the sidewalk and put one foot on it. He rolled it back and forth experimentally. The kid watched. In his mind Bill saw himself rolling down Witcham Street toward Jackson on the kids avocadogreen skateboard, the tails of his sportcoat ballooning out behind him, his bald head gleaming in the sun, his knees bent in that fragile way snowbunnies bend their knees their first day on the slopes. It was a posture that told you that in their heads they were already falling down. He bet the kid didnt ride the board like that. He bet the kid rode (to beat the devil) like there was no tomorrow. That good feeling died out of his chest. He saw, all too clearly, the board going out from under his feet, shooting unencumbered down the street, an improbable fluorescent green, a color that only a child could love. He saw himself coming down on his ass, maybe on his back. Slow dissolve to a private room at the Derry Home Hospital, like the one they had visited Eddie in after his arm had been broken. Bill Denbrough in a full bodycast, one leg held up by pullies and wires. A doctor comes in, looks at his chart, looks at him, and then says You were guilty of two major lapses, Mr. Denbrough. The first was mismanagement of a skateboard. The second was forgetting that you are now approaching forty years of age. He bent, picked the skateboard back up, and handed it back to the kid. I guess not, he said. Chicken, the kid said, not unkindly. Bill hooked his thumbs into his armpits and flapped his elbows. Buckbuckbuck, he said. The kid laughed. Listen, I got to get home. Be careful on that, Bill said. You cant be careful on a skateboard, the kid replied, looking at Bill as if he might be the one with toys in the attic. Right, Bill said. Okay. As we say in the movie biz, I hear you. But stay away from drains and sewers. And stay with your friends. The kid nodded. Im right near home. So was my brother, Bill thought. Itll be over soon, anyway, Bill told the kid. Will it? the kid asked. I think so, Bill said. Okay. See you later ... chicken! The kid put one foot on the board and pushed off with the other. Once he was rolling he put the other foot on the board as well and went thundering down the street at what seemed to Bill a suicidal pace. But he rode as Bill had suspected he would with lazy hipshot grace. Bill felt love for the boy, and exhilaration, and a desire to be the boy, along with an almost suffocating fear. The boy rode as if there were no such things as death or getting older. The boy seemed somehow eternal and ineluctable in his khaki Boy Scout shorts and scuffed sneakers, his ankles sockless and quite dirty, his hair flying back behind him. Watch out, kid, youre not going to make the corner! Bill thought, alarmed, but the kid shot his hips to the left like a breakdancer, his toes revolved on the green Fiberglas board, and he zoomed effortlessly around the corner and onto Jackson Street, simply assuming no one would be there to get in his way. Kid, Bill thought, it wont always be that way.