The day Mike brought his fathers album down to the Barrens Stan had almost flipped out. Richie had, in fact, been nearly convinced that they wouldnt see Stan again and the Losers Club would become a sextet (a word Richie liked a lot, always with the emphasis on the first syllable). But Stan had been back the next day, and Richie had respected him all the more for that. You going to tell them today? Nuhnot ttoday, Bill said. You dont think theyll work, do you? Bill shrugged, and Richie, who maybe understood Bill Denbrough better than anyone ever would until Audra Phillips, suspected all the things Bill might have said if not for the roadblock of his speech impediment that kids making silver bullets was boysbook stuff, comicbook stuff.... In a word, it was crap. Dangerous crap. They could try it, yeah. Ben Hanscom might even be able to bring it off, yeah. In a movie it would work, yeah. But ... So? I got an iiiidea, Bill said. Simpler. But only if BehBehBeverly If Beverly what? Nehhever mind. And Bill would say no more on the subject. They came into the clearing. If you looked closely, you might have thought that the grass there had a slightly matted looka slightly used look. You might even have thought that there was something a bit artificialalmost arranged about the scatter of leaves and pine needles on top of the sods. Bill picked up a RingDing wrapperBens, almost certainlyand put it absently in his pocket. The boys crossed to the center of the clearing ... and a piece of ground about ten inches long by three inches wide swung up with a dirty squall of hinges, revealing a black eyelid. Eyes looked out of that blackness, giving Richie a momentary chill. But they were only Eddie Kaspbraks eyes, and it was Eddie, whom he would visit in the hospital a week later, who intoned hollowly Whos that triptrapping on my bridge? Giggles from below, and a flashlight flicker. Thees ees the rurales, senhorr, Richie said, squatting down, twirling an invisible mustache, and speaking in his Pancho Vanilla Voice. Yeah? Beverly asked from below. Lets see your badges. Batches? Richie cried, delighted. We doan need no stinkin batches! Go to hell, Pancho, Eddie replied, and slammed the big eyelid closed. There were more muffled giggles from below. Come out with your hands up! Bill cried in a low, commanding adult voice. He began to tramp back and forth across the sodcovered cap of the clubhouse. He could see the ground springing up and down with his backandforth passage, but just barely; they had built well. You havent got a chance! he bellowed, seeing himself as fearless Joe Friday of the L.A.P.D. in his minds eye. Come on out of there, punks! Or well come in SHOOTIN! He jumped up and down once to emphasize his point. Screams and giggles from below. Bill was smiling, unaware that Richie was looking at him wiselylooking at him not as one child looks at another but, in that brief moment, as an adult looks at a child. He doesnt know that he doesnt always, Richie thought. Let them in, Ben, before they crash the roof in, Bev said. A moment later a trapdoor flopped open like the hatch of a submarine. Ben looked out. He was flushed. Richie knew at once that Ben had been sitting next to Beverly. Bill and Richie dropped down through the hatch and Ben closed it again. Then there they all were, sitting snug against board walls with their legs drawn up, their faces dimly revealed in the beam of Bens flashlight. SSSo whwhats gggoing oon? Bill asked. Not too much, Ben said. He was indeed sitting next to Beverly, and his face looked happy as well as flushed. We were just Tell em, Ben, Eddie interrupted. Tell em the story! See what they think. Wouldnt do much for your asthma, Stan told Eddie in his best someonehastobepracticalhere tone of voice. Richie sat between Mike and Ben, holding his knees in his linked hands. It was delightfully cool down here, delightfully secret. Following the gleam of the flashlight as it moved from face to face, he temporarily forgot what had so astounded him outside only a minute ago. What are you talkin about? Oh, Ben was telling us a story about this Indian ceremony, Bev said. But Stans right, it wouldnt be very good for your asthma, Eddie. It might not bother it, Eddie said, soundingto his credit, Richie thoughtonly a little uneasy. Usually its only when I get upset. Anyway, Id like to try it. Try wwwhat? Bill asked him. The SmokeHole Ceremony, Eddie said. WWWhats ththat? The beam of Bens flashlight drifted upward and Richie followed it with his eyes. It tracked aimlessly across the wooden roof of their clubhouse as Ben explained. It crossed the gouged and splintered panels of the mahogany door the seven of them had carried back here from the dump three days agothe day before the body of Jimmy Cullum was discovered. The thing Richie remembered about Jimmy Cullum, a quiet little boy who also wore spectacles, was that he liked to play Scrabble on rainy days. Not going to be playing Scrabble anymore, Richie thought, and shivered a little. In the dimness no one saw the shiver, but Mike Hanlon, sitting shoulder to shoulder with him, glanced at him curiously. Well, I got this book out of the library last week, Ben was saying. Ghosts of the Great Plains, its called, and its all about the Indian tribes that lived out west a hundred and fifty years ago. The Paiutes and the Pawnees and the Kiowas and the Otoes and the Commanches. It was really a good book. Id love to go out there sometime to where they lived. Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah ... Shut up and tell about the SmokeHole Ceremony, Beverly said, elbowing him. Sure, he said. Right. And Richie believed his response would have been the same if Beverly had given him the elbow and said, Drink the poison now, Ben, okay? See, almost all those Indians had a special ceremony, and our clubhouse made me think of it. Whenever they had to make a big decisionwhether to move on after the buffalo herds, or to find fresh water, or whether or not to fight their enemiestheyd dig a big hole in the ground and cover it up with branches, except for a little vent in the top. The smuhsmuhsmokehole, Bill said. Your quick mind never ceases to amaze me, Big Bill, Richie said gravely. You ought to go on TwentyOne. Ill bet you could even beat ole Charlie Van Doren. Bill made as if to hit him and Richie recoiled, bumping his head a pretty good one on a piece of shoring. Ouch! You ddeserved it, Bill said. I keel you, rotten gringo sumbeesh, Richie said. We doan need no stinkin Will you guys stop it? Beverly asked. This is interesting.  And she favored Ben with such a warm look that Richie believed steam would start curling out of Haystacks ears in a couple of minutes. Okay, BBBen, Bill said. Go ooon. Sure, Ben said. The word came out in a croak. He had to clear his throat and start again. When the smokehole was finished, theyd start a fire down there. Theyd use green wood so it would be a really smoky fire. Then all the braves would go down there and sit around the fire. The place would fill up with smoke. The book said this was a religious ceremony, but it was also kind of a contest, you know? After half a day or so most of the braves would bug out because they couldnt stand the smoke anymore, and only two or three would be left. And they were supposed to have visions. Yeah, if I breathed smoke for five or six hours, Id probably have some visions, all right, Mike said, and they all laughed. The visions were supposed to tell the tribe what to do, Ben said. And I dont know if this part is true or not, but the book said that most times the visions were right. A silence fell and Richie looked at Bill. He was aware that they were all looking at Bill, and he had the feelingagainthat Bens story of the smokehole was more than a thing you read about in a book and then had to try for yourself, like a chemistry experiment or a magic trick. He knew it, they all knew it. Perhaps Ben knew it most of all. This was something they were supposed to do. They were supposed to have visions.... Most times the visions were right. Richie thought Illbet if we asked him, Haystack would tell us that book practically jumped into his hand. Like something wanted him to read that one particular book and then tell us about the smokehole ceremony. Becausetheres a tribe right here, isnt there? Yeah. Us. And, yeah, Iguess we do need to know what happens next. This thought led to another Was this supposed to happen? From the time Ben got the idea for an underground clubhouse instead of a treehouse, was this supposed to happen? How much of this are we thinking up ourselves, and how much is being thought up for us? In a way, he supposed such an idea should have been almost comforting. It was nice to imagine that something bigger than you, smarter than you, was doing your thinking for you, like the adults that planned your meals, bought your clothes, and managed your timeand Richie was convinced that the force that had brought them together, the force that had used Ben as its messenger to bring them the idea of the smokeholethat force wasnt the same as the one killing the children. This was some kind of counterforce to that other ... to (oh well you might as well say it) It. But all the same, he didnt like this feeling of not being in control of his own actions, of being managed, of being run. They all looked at Bill; they all waited to see what Bill would say. YYou nuhnuhknow, he said, that sounds rihreally nneat. Beverly sighed and Stan stirred uncomfortably ... that was all. Rihrihreally nuhneat, Bill repeated, looking down at his hands, and perhaps it was only the uneasy flashlight beam in Bens hands or his own imagination, but Richie thought Bill looked a little pale and a lot scared, although he was smiling. Maybe we could uuse a vihhision to tell us what to dddo about oour pruhpruhhoblem. And if anyone has a vision, Richie thought, it will be Bill. But about that he was wrong. Well, Ben said, it probably only works for Indians, but it might be flippy to try it. Yeah, well probably all pass out from the smoke and die in here, Stan said gloomily. Thatd be really flippy, all right. You dont want to, Stan? Eddie asked. Well, I sort of do, Stan said. He sighed. I think you guys are making me crazy, you know it? He looked at Bill. When? Bill said, WWell, nuhno ttime like the puhpuhpuhhresent, iis there? There was a startled, thoughtful silence. Then Richie got to his feet, straightarming the trapdoor open and letting in the muted light of that still summer day. I got my hatchet, Ben said, following him out. Who wants to help me cut some green wood? In the end they all helped. 3 It took them about an hour to get ready. They cut four or five armloads of small green branches, from which Ben had stripped the twigs and leaves. Theyll smoke, all right, he said. I dont even know if well be able to get them going. Beverly and Richie went down to the bank of the Kenduskeag and brought back a collection of goodsized stones, using Eddies jacket (his mother always made him take a jacket, even if it was eighty degreesit might rain, Mrs. Kaspbrak said, and if you have a jacket to put on, your skin wont get soaked if it does) as a makeshift sling. Carrying the rocks back to the clubhouse, Richie said You cant do this, Bev. Youre a girl. Ben said it was just the braves that went down in the smokehole, not the squaws. Beverly paused, looking at Richie with mixed amusement and irritation. A lock of hair had escaped from her ponytail; she pushed out her lower lip and blew it off her forehead. I could wrestle you to a fall any day, Richie. And you know it. Dat doan mattuh, Miss Scawlett! Richie said, popping his eyes at her. You is still a girl and you is always goan be a girl! You sho aint no Injun brave! Ill be a bravette, then, Beverly said. Now are we going to take these rocks back to the clubhouse or am I going to bounce a few of them off your asshole skull? Lawksamussy, Miss Scawlett, I aint got no asshole in mah skull! Richie screeched, and Beverly laughed so hard she dropped her end of Eddies jacket and all the stones fell out. She scolded Richie all the time they were picking them up again, and Richie joked and screeched in many Voices, and thought to himself how beautiful she was. Although Richie had not been serious when he spoke of excluding her from the smokehole on the basis of her sex, Bill Denbrough apparently was. She stood facing him, her hands on her hips, her cheeks flushed with anger. You can just take that and stuff it with a long pole, Stuttering Bill! Im in on this too, or arent I a member of your lousy club anymore? Patiently, Bill said IIts not Ilike that, BBBev, and yyou nuhknow iit. Somebody has to stay uuhup here. Why? Bill tried, but the roadblock was in again. He looked at Eddie for help. Its what Stan said, Eddie told her quietly. About the smoke. Bill says that might really happenwe could pass out down there. Then wed die. Bill says thats what happens to most people in housefires. They dont burn up. They choke to death on the smoke. They Now she turned to Eddie. Well, okay. He wants somebody to stay up on top in case theres trouble? Miserably, Eddie nodded. Well, what about you? Youre the one with the asthma. Eddie said nothing. She turned back to Bill. The others stood around, hands in their pockets, looking at their sneakers. Its because Im a girl, isnt it? Thats really it, isnt it? BehBehBehBeh You dont have to talk, she snapped. Just nod your head or shake it. Your head doesnt stutter, does it? Is it because Im a girl? Reluctantly, Bill nodded his head. She looked at him for a moment, her lips trembling, and Richie thought she would cry. Instead, she exploded. Well, fuck you! She whirled around to look at the others, and they flinched from her gaze, so hot it was nearly radioactive. Fuck all of you if you think the same thing! She turned back to Bill and began to talk fast, rapping him with words. This is something more than some diddlyshit kids game like tag or guns or hideandgoseek, and you know it, Bill. Were supposed to do this. Thats part of it. And youre not going to cut me out just because Im a girl. Do you understand? You better, or Im leaving right now. And if I go, Im gone. For good. You understand? She stopped. Bill looked at her. He seemed to have regained his calm, but Richie felt afraid. He felt that any chance they had of winning, of finding a way to get to the thing that had killed Georgie Denbrough and the other kids, getting to It and killing It, was now in jeopardy. Seven, Richie thought. Thats the magic number. There has to be seven of us. Thats the way its supposed to be. A bird sang somewhere; stopped; sang again. AAll rright, Bill said, and Richie let his breath out. But suhsuhsomebody has to sstay tuhhopside. Who wwwants to ddo it? Richie thought Eddie or Stan would surely volunteer for this duty, but Eddie said nothing. Stan stood pale and thoughtful and silent. Mike had his thumbs hooked into his belt like Steve McQueen in Wanted Dead or Alive, nothing moving but his eyes. Cuhcuhcome oon, Bill said, and Richie realized that all pretense had gone out of the thing now; Bevs impassioned speech and Bills grave, tooold face had seen to that. This was a part of it, perhaps as dangerous as the expedition he and Bill had made to the house at 29 Neibolt Street. They knew it ... and no one was backing down. Suddenly he was very proud of them, very proud to be with them. After all the years of being counted out, he was counted in. Finally counted in. He didnt know if they were still losers or not, but he knew they were together. They were friends. Damn good friends. Richie took his glasses off and rubbed them vigorously with the tail of his shirt. I know how to do it, Bev said, and took a book of matches from her pocket. On the front, so tiny youd need a magnifying glass to get a really good look at them, were pictures of that years candidates for the title of Miss Rheingold. Beverly lit a match and then blew it out. She tore out six more and added the burned match. She turned away from them, and when she turned back the white ends of the seven matches poked out of her closed fist. Pick, she said, holding the matches out to Bill. The one who picks the match with the burned head stays up here and pulls the rest out if they go flippy. Bill looked at her levelly. ThThis is hhhow you wwant iit? She smiled at him then, and her smile made her face radiant. Yeah, you big dummy, this is how I want it. What about you? I luhluhlove you, BBBev, he said, and color rose in her cheeks like hasty flames. Bill did not appear to notice. He studied the matchtails sticking out of her fist, and at length he picked one. Its head was blue and unburned. She turned to Ben and offered the remaining six. I love you too, Ben said hoarsely. His face was plumcolored; he looked like he was on the verge of a stroke. But no one laughed. Somewhere deeper in the Barrens, the bird sang again. Stan would know what it was, Richie thought randomly. Thank you, she said, smiling, and Ben picked a match. Its head was unburned. She offered them to Eddie next. Eddie smiled, a shy smile that was incredibly sweet and almost heartbreakingly vulnerable. I guess I love you, too, Bev, he said, and then picked a match blindly. Its head was blue. Beverly now offered the four matchtails in her hand to Richie. Ah loves yuh, Miss Scawlett! Richie screamed at the top of his voice, and made exaggerated kissing gestures with his lips. Beverly only looked at him, smiling a little, and Richie suddenly felt ashamed. I do love you, Bev, he said, and touched her hair. Youre cool. Thank you, she said. He picked a match and looked at it, positive hed picked the burned one. But he hadnt. She offered them to Stan. I love you, Stan said, and plucked one of the matches from her fist. Unburned. You and me, Mike, she said, and offered him his pick of the two left. He stepped forward. I dont know you well enough to love you, he said, but I love you anyway. You could give my mother shoutin lessons, I guess. They all laughed, and Mike took a match. Its head was also unburned. I guess its yyyou aafter all, Bev, Bill said. Looking disgustedall that flash and fire for nothingBeverly opened her hand. The head of the remaining match was also blue and unburned. YYYou jihjigjiggered them, Bill accused. No. I didnt. Her tone was not one of angry protestwhich would have been suspectbut flabbergasted surprise. Honest to God I didnt. Then she showed them her palm. They all saw the faint mark of soot from the burned matchhead there. Bill, I swear on my mothers name! Bill looked at her for a moment and then nodded. By common unspoken consent, they all handed the matches back to Bill. Seven of them, their heads intact. Stan and Eddie began to crawl around on the ground, but there was no burned match there. I didnt, Beverly said again, to no one in particular. So what do we do now? Richie asked. We aaall go down, Bill said. Because thats wwhat wwwere suhsupposed to do. And if we all pass out? Eddie asked. Bill looked at Beverly again. IIf BBevs ttelling the truhtruth, and sshe iiis, wwe wont. How do you know? Stan asked. II jjust dddo. The bird sang again. 4 Ben and Richie went down first and the others handed the rocks down one by one. Richie passed them on to Ben, who made a small stone circle in the middle of the dirt clubhouse floor. Okay, he said. Thats enough. The others came down, each with a handful of the green twigs theyd cut with Bens hatchet. Bill came last. He closed the trapdoor and opened the narrow hinged window. ThThThere, he said. Ththeres our smuhsmokehole. Do we hhave any kihkihkindling? You can use this, if you want, Mike said, and took a battered Archie funnybook out of his hip pocket. I read it already. Bill tore the pages out of the funnybook one by one, working slowly and gravely. The others sat around the walls, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, watching, not speaking. The tension was thick and still. Bill laid small twigs and branches over the paper and then looked at Beverly. YYYou ggot the muhmatches, he said. She lit one, a tiny yellow flare in the gloom. Darn thing probably wont catch anyway, she said in a slightly uneven voice, and touched a light to the paper in several places. When the matchflame got close to her fingers, she tossed it into the center. The flames blazed up yellow, crackling, throwing their faces into sharp relief, and in that moment Richie had no trouble believing Bens Indian story, and he thought it must have been like this back in those old days when the idea of white men was still no more than a rumor or a tall tale to those Indians who followed buffalo herds so big they could cover the earth from horizon to horizon, herds so big that their passing shook the ground like an earthquake. In that moment Richie could picture those Indians, Kiowas or Pawnees or whatever they were, down in their smokehole, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, watching as the flames guttered and sank into the green wood like hot sores, listening to the faint and steady sssssss of sap oozing out of the damp wood, waiting for the vision to descend. Yeah. Sitting here now he could believe it all ... and looking at their somber faces as they studied the flames and the charring pages of Mikes Archie funnybook, he could see that they believed it, too. The branches were catching. The clubhouse began to fill up with smoke. Some of it, white as cotton smokesignals in a Saturdaymatinee movie starring Randolph Scott or Audie Murphy, escaped from the smokehole. But with no moving air outside to create a draft, most of it stayed below. It had an acrid bite that made eyes sting and throats throb. Richie heard Eddie cough twicea flat sound like dry boards being whacked togetherand then fall silent again. He shouldnt be down here, he thought ... but something else apparently felt otherwise. Bill tossed another handful of green twigs on the smoldering fire and asked in a thin voice that was not much like his usual speaking voice Anyone having aany vihvihvisions? Visions of getting out of here, Stan Uris said. Beverly laughed at this, but her laughter turned into a fit of coughing and choking. Richie leaned his head back against the wall and looked up at the smokeholea thin rectangle of mellow white light. He thought about the Paul Bunyan statue that day in March ... but that had only been a mirage, a hallucination, a (vision) Smokes killin me, Ben said. Whoo! So leave, Richie murmured, not taking his eyes off the smokehole. He felt as if he was getting a handle on this. He felt as if he had lost ten pounds. And he sure as shit felt as if the clubhouse had gotten bigger. Damn straight on that last. He had been sitting with Ben Hanscoms fat right leg squashed against his left one and Bill Denbroughs bony left shoulder socked into his right arm. Now he was touching neither of them. He glanced lazily to his right and left to verify that his perception was true, and it was. Ben was a foot or so to his left. On his right, Bill was even father away. Place is bigger, friends and neighbors, he said. He took a deeper breath and coughed hard. It hurt, hurt deep in his chest, the way a cough hurt when you had the flu or the grippe or something. For awhile he thought it would never pass; that he would just go on coughing until they had to pull him out. If they still can, he thought, but the thought was really too dim to be frightening. Then Bill was pounding him on the back, and the coughing fit passed. You dont know you dont always, Richie said. He was looking at the smokehole again instead of at Bill. How bright it seemed! When he closed his eyes he could still see the rectangle, floating there in the dark, but bright green instead of bright white. Whuhwhuhwhat do you mmean? Bill asked. Stutter. He paused, aware that someone else was coughing but not sure who it was. You ought to do the Voices, not me, Big Bill. You The coughing got louder. Suddenly the clubhouse was flooded with daylight, so sudden and so bright Richie had to squint against it. He could just make out Stan Uris, climbing and clawing his way out. Sorry, Stan managed, through his spasmodic coughing. Sorry, cant Its all right, Richie heard himself say. You doan need no stinkin batches. His voice sounded as if it were coming from a different body. The trapdoor slammed shut a moment later, but enough fresh air had come in to clear his head a little. Before Ben moved over a little to fill the space Stan had vacated, Richie became aware of Bens leg again, pressing his. How had he gotten the idea that the clubhouse had gotten bigger? Mike Hanlon threw more sticks on the smoky fire. Richie resumed taking shallow breaths and looking up at the smokehole. He had no sense of real time passing, but he was vaguely aware that, in addition to the smoke, the clubhouse was getting good and hot. He looked around, looked at his friends. They were hard to see, halfswallowed in shadowsmoke and still white summerlight. Bevs head was tilted back against a piece of shoring, her hands on her knees, her eyes closed, tears trickling down her cheeks toward her earlobes. Bill was sitting crosslegged, his chin on his chest. Ben was But suddenly Ben was getting to his feet, pushing the trapdoor open again. There goes Ben, Mike said. He was sitting Indianfashion directly across from Richie, his eyes as red as a weasels. Comparative coolness struck them again. The air freshened as smoke swirled up through the trap. Ben was coughing and dryretching. He pulled himself out with Stans help, and before either of them could close the trapdoor, Eddie was staggering to his feet, his face a deadly pale except for the bruisedlooking patches under his eyes and traced just below his cheekbones. His thin chest was hitching up and down in quick, shallow spasms. He groped weakly for the edge of the escape hatch and would have fallen if Ben had not grabbed one hand and Stan the other. Sorry, Eddie managed in a squeaky little whisper, and then they hauled him up. The trapdoor banged down again. There was a long, quiet period. The smoke built up until it was a thick still fog in the clubhouse. Looks like a peasouper to me, Watson, Richie thought, and for a moment he imagined himself as Sherlock Holmes (a Holmes who looked a great deal like Basil Rathbone and who was totally black and white), moving purposefully along Baker Street; Moriarty was somewhere near, a hansom cab awaited, and the game was afoot. The thought was amazingly clear, amazingly solid. It seemed almost to have weight, as if it were not a little pocketdaydream of the sort he had all the time (batting cleanup for the Bosox, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and there it goes, its up ... ITS GONE! Home run, Tozier ... and that breaks the Babes record!), but something that was almost real. There was still enough of the wiseacre in him to think that if all he was getting out of this was a vision of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, then the whole idea of visions was pretty overrated. Except of course it isnt Moriarty thats out there. Its out theresome Itand Its real. It Then the trapdoor opened again and Beverly was struggling her way out, coughing dryly, one hand cupped over her mouth. Ben got one hand and Stan grabbed her under the other arm. Halfpulled, halfscrambling under her own power, she was up and gone. IhIhIt iis bihigger, Bill said. Richie looked around. He saw the circle of stones with the fire smoldering within, fuming out clouds of smoke. Across the way he saw Mike sitting crosslegged like a totem carved from mahogany, staring at him though the fire with his smokereddened eyes. Except Mike was better than twenty yards away, and Bill was even farther away, on Richies right. The underground clubhouse was now at least the size of a ballroom. Doesnt matter, Mike said. Its gonna come pretty quick. Somethin is. YYYeah, Bill said. But I ... I ... I He began to cough. He tried to control it, but the cough worsened, a dry rattling. Dimly Richie saw Bill stumble to his feet, lunge for the trapdoor, and shove it open. GuhGuhGood luhIuhIuh And then he was gone, dragged up by the others. Looks like its you and me, ole Mikey, Richie said, and then he began to cough himself. I thought for sure that it would be Bill The cough worsened. He doubled over, hacking dryly, unable to get his breath. His head was thuddingwhackinglike a turnip filled with blood. His eyes teared behind his glasses. From far away, he heard Mike saying Go on up if you have to, Richie. Dont go flippy. Dont kill yourself. He raised a hand toward Mike and flapped it at him (no stinkin batches) in a negative gesture. Little by little he began to get the coughing under control again. Mike was right; something was going to happen, and soon. He wanted to still be here when it did. He tilted his head back and looked up at the smokehole again. The coughing fit had left him feeling lightheaded, and now he seemed to be floating on a cushion of air. It was a pleasant feeling. He took shallow breaths and thought Someday Im going to be a rockandroll star. Thats it, yes. Ill be famous. Ill make records and albums and movies. Ill have a black sportcoat and white shoes and a yellow Cadillac. And when I come back to Derry, theyll all eat their hearts out, even Bowers. I wear glasses, but what the fuck? Buddy Holly wears glasses. Ill bop till Im blue and dance till Im black. Ill be the first rockandroll star to ever come from Maine. Ill The thought drifted away. It didnt matter. He found that now he didnt need to take shallow breaths. His lungs had adapted. He could breathe as much smoke as he wanted. Maybe he was from Venus. Mike threw more sticks on the fire. Not to be outdone, Richie tossed on another handful himself. How you feeling, Rich? Mike asked. Richie smiled. Better. Good, almost. You? Mike nodded and smiled back. I feel okay. Have you been having some funny thoughts? Yeah. Thought I was Sherlock Holmes for a minute there. Then I thought I could dance like the Dovells. Your eyes are so red you wouldnt believe it, you know it? Yours too. Just a coupla weasels in the pen, thats what we are. Yeah? Yeah. You wanna say all right? All right. You wanna say you got the word? I got it, Mikey. Yeah, okay. They grinned at each other and then Richie let his head tilt back against the wall again and looked up at the smokehole. Shortly he began to drift away. No ... not away. Up. He was drifting up. Like (float down here we all) a balloon. Yuhyuhyou ggguys all riright? Bills voice, coming down through the smokehole. Coming from Venus. Worried. Richie felt himself thud back down inside himself. All right, he heard his voice, distant, irritated. All right, we said all right, be quiet, Bill, let us get the word, we wanna say we got the (world) word. The clubhouse was bigger than ever, floored now in some polished wood. The smoke was fogthick and it was hard to see the fire. That floor! Jesuscomepleaseus! It was as big as a ballroom floor in an MGM musical extravaganza. Mike looked at him from the other side, a shape almost lost in the fog. You coming, ole Mikey? Right here with you, Richie. You still want to say all right? Yeah... but hold my hand... can you catch hold? I think so. Richie held his hand out, and although Mike was on the far side of this enormous room he felt those strong brown fingers close over his wrist. Oh and that was good, that was a good touchgood to find desire in comfort, to find comfort in desire, to find substance in smoke and smoke in substance He tilted his head back and looked at the smokehole, so white and wee. It was farther up now. Miles up. Venusian skylight. It was happening. He began to float. Come on then, he thought, and began to rise faster through the smoke, the fog, the mist, whatever it was. 5 They werent inside anymore.


The two of them were standing together in the middle of the Barrens, and it was nearly dusk. It was the Barrens, he knew that, but everything was different. The foliage was lusher, deeper, savagely fragrant. There were plants he had never seen before, and Richie realized some of the things he had first taken for trees were really giant ferns. There was the sound of running water, but it was much louder than it should have beenthis water sounded not like the leisurely flow of the Kenduskeag Stream but more the way he imagined the Colorado River would sound as it cut its way through the Grand Canyon. It was hot, too. Not that it didnt get hot in Maine during the summer, and humid enough so that sometimes you felt sticky just lying in your bed at night, but this was more heat and more humidity than he had ever felt in his whole life. A low mist, smoky and thick, lay in the hollows of the land and crept around the boys legs. It had a thin acrid smell like burning green wood. He and Mike began to move toward the sound of the running water without speaking, pushing their way through the strange foliage. Thick ropy lianas lay between some of the trees like spidery hammocks, and once Richie heard something go crashing off through the underbrush. It sounded bigger than a deer. He stopped long enough to look around, turning in a circle, studying the horizon. He knew where the Standpipes thick white cylinder should have been, but it wasnt there. Neither was the railroad trestle going over to the trainyards at the end of Neibolt Street or the Old Cape housing developmentlow bluffs and red sandstone outcroppings of rock bulged out of thick stands of giant fern and pine trees where the Old Cape should have been. There was a flapping noise overhead. The boys ducked as a squadron of bats flapped by. They were the biggest bats Richie had ever seen, and for a moment he was more terrified than he had been even when Bill was trying to get Silver rolling and he had heard the werewolf closing in on them from behind. The stillness and the alienness of this land were both terrible, but its awful familiarity was somehow worse. No need to be scared, he told himself. Remember that this is just a dream, or a vision, or whatever you want to call it. Me and ole Mikey are really back in the clubhouse, goofed up on smoke. Pretty soon Big Bill is gonna get noivous from the soivice because were not answering anymore, and he and Ben will come down and haul us out. Its just like Conway Twitty saysonlymakebelieve. But he could see how one of the bats wings was so ragged the hazy sun shone through it, and when they passed beneath one of the giant ferns he could see a fat yellow caterpillar trundling across a wide green frond, leaving its shadow behind it. There were tiny black mites jumping and sizzling on the caterpillars body. If this was a dream, it was the clearest one he had ever had. They went on toward the sound of the water, and in the thick kneehigh groundmist, Richie was unable to tell if his feet were touching the ground or not. They came to a place where both the mist and the ground stopped. Richie looked, unbelieving. This was not the Kenduskeagand yet it was. The stream boiled and roiled through a narrow watercourse cut through that same crumbly rocklooking across to the far side, he could see ages cut into those stacked layers of stone, red and then orange and then red again. You couldnt walk across this stream on steppingstones; youd need a rope bridge, and if you fell in you would be swept away at once. The sound of the water was the sound of bitter foolish anger, and as Richie watched, slackjawed, he saw a pinkishsilver fish jump in an impossibly high arc, snapping at the bugs that made shifting clouds just above the surface of the water. It splashed down again, giving Richie just time enough to register its presence, and to realize he had never seen a fish exactly like that in his whole life, not even in a book. Birds flocked across the sky, squalling harshly. Not a dozen or two dozen; for a moment the sky was so dark with birds that they blotted out the sun. Something else crashed through the bushes, and then more things. Richie wheeled, his heart thudding painfully in his chest, and saw something that looked like an antelope flash by, heading southeast. Somethings going to happen. And they know it. The birds passed, presumably alighting somewhere en masse farther south. Another animal crashed by them ... and another. Then there was silence except for the steady rumble of the Kenduskeag. The silence had a waiting quality about it, a pregnant quality Richie didnt like. He felt the hairs shifting and trying to stand up on the back of his neck and he groped for Mikes hand again. Do you know where we are? he shouted at Mike. You got the word? Jesus, yes! Mike shouted back. I got it! This is ago, Richie! Ago! Richie nodded. Ago, as in once upon a time, long long ago, when we all lived in the forest and nobody lived anywhere else. They were in the Barrens as they had been God knew how many thousands of years ago. They were in some unimaginable past before the ice age, when New England had been as tropical as South America was today ... if there still was a today. He looked around again, nervously, almost expecting to see a brontosaurus raise its cranelike neck against the sky and stare down at them, its mouth full of mud and dripping uprooted plants, or a sabertoothed tiger come stalking out of the undergrowth. But there was only that silence, as in the five or ten minutes before a vicious thundersquall strikes, when the purple heads stack up and up in the sky overhead and the light turns a queer, bruised purpleyellow and the wind dies completely and you can smell a thick aroma like overcharged car batteries in the air. Were in the ago, a million years back, maybe, or ten million, or eighty million, but here we are and somethings going to happen, I dont know what but something and Im scared I want it to end I want to be back and Bill please Bill please pull us out its like we fell into the picture some picture please please help Mikes hand tightened on his and he realized that now the silence had been broken. There was a steady low vibrationhe could feel it more than hear it, working against the tight flesh of his eardrums, buzzing the tiny bones that conducted the sound. It grew steadily. It had no tone; it simply was (the word in the beginning was the word the world the) a tuneless, soulless sound. He groped for the tree they stood near and as his hand touched it, cupped the curve of the bole, he could feel the vibration caught inside. At the same moment he realized he could feel it in his feet, a steady tingling that went up his ankles and calves to his knees, turning his tendons into tuning forks. It grew. And grew. It was coming out of the sky. Not wanting to but unable to help himself, Richie turned his face up. The sun was a molten coin burning a circle in the lowhanging overcast, surrounded by a fairyring of moisture. Below it, the verdant green slash that was the Barrens lay utterly still. Richie thought he understood what this vision was they were about to see the coming of It. The vibration took on a voicea rumbling roar that built to a shattering crescendo of sound. He clapped his hands to his ears and screamed and could not hear himself scream. Beside him, Mike Hanlon was doing the same, and Richie saw that Mikes nose was bleeding a little. The clouds in the west lit with a bloom of red fire. It traced its way toward them, widening from an artery to a stream to a river of ominous color; and then, as a burning, falling object broke through the cloud cover, the wind came. It was hot and searing, smoky and suffocating. The thing in the sky was gigantic, a flaming matchhead that was nearly too bright to look at. Arcs of electricity bolted from it, blue bullwhips that flashed out from it and left thunder in their wake. A spaceship! Richie screamed, falling to his knees and covering his eyes. Oh my God its a spaceship! But he believedand would tell the others later, as best he couldthat it was not a spaceship, although it might have come through space to get here. Whatever came down on that longago day had come from a place much farther away than another star or another galaxy, and if spaceship was the first word to come into his mind, perhaps that was only because his mind had no other way of grasping what his eyes were seeing. There was an explosion thena roar of sound followed by a rolling concussion that knocked them both down. This time it was Mike who groped for Richies hand. There was another explosion. Richie opened his eyes and saw a glare of fire and a pillar of smoke rising into the sky. It! he screamed at Mike, in an ecstasy of terror nownever in his life, before or after, would he feel any emotion so deeply, be so overwhelmed by feeling. It! It! It! Mike dragged him to his feet and they ran along the high bank of the young Kenduskeag, never noticing how close they were to the drop. Once Mike stumbled and went skidding to his knees. Then it was Richies turn to go down, barking his shin and tearing his pants. The wind had come up and it was pushing the smell of the burning forest toward them. The smoke grew thicker, and Richie became dimly aware that he and Mike were not running alone. The animals were on the move again, fleeing from the smoke, the fire, the death in the fire. Running from It, perhaps. The new arrival in their world. Richie began to cough. He could hear Mike beside him, also coughing. The smoke was thicker, washing out the greens and grays and reds of the day. Mike fell again and Richie lost his hand. He groped for it and could not find it. Mike! He screamed, panicked, coughing. Mike, where are you? Mike! MIKE! But Mike was gone; Mike was nowhere. richie! richie! richie! (!!WHACKO!!) richie! richie! richie, are you 6 all right? His eyes fluttered open and he saw Beverly kneeling beside him, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. The othersBill, Eddie, Stan, and Benstood behind her, their faces solemn and scared. The side of Richies face hurt like hell. He tried to speak to Beverly and could only croak. He tried to clear his throat and almost vomited. His throat and lungs felt as if they had somehow been lined with smoke. At last he managed, Did you slap me, Beverly? It was all I could think of to do, she said. Whacko, Richie muttered. I didnt think you were going to be all right, is all, Bev said, and suddenly burst into tears. Richie patted her clumsily on the shoulder and Bill put a hand on the back of her neck. She reached around at once, took it, squeezed it. Richie managed to sit up. The world began to swim in waves. When it steadied down he saw Mike leaning against a tree nearby, his face dazed and ashypale. Did I puke? Richie asked Bev. She nodded, still crying. In a croaking, stumbling Irish Cops Voice, he asked, Get any on ye, darlin? Bev laughed through her tears and shook her head. I turned you on your side. I was afraid ... aaafraid youd chchchoke on it. She began to cry hard again. NuhNuhNo ffair, Bill said, still holding her hand. IIIm the one who stuhhuhhutters aaround hhere. Not bad, Big Bill, Richie said. He tried to get to his feet and sat down again heavily. The world was still swimming. He began to cough and turned his head away, aware that he was going to retch again only a moment before it happened. He threw up a mess of green foam and thick saliva that mostly came out in ropes. He closed his eyes tight and croaked, Anyone want a snack? Oh shit! Ben cried, disgusted and laughing at the same time. Looks more like puke to me, Richie said, although, in truth, his eyes were still tightly shut. The shit usually comes out the other end, at least for me. I dunno about you, Haystack. When he opened his eyes at last, he saw the clubhouse about twenty yards away. Both the window and the big trapdoor were thrown open. Smoke, thinning now, puffed from both. This time Richie was able to get to his feet. For a moment he was quite sure he was going to retch again, or faint, or both. Whacko, he murmured, watching the world waver and warp in front of his eyes. When the feeling passed, he made his way over to where Mike was. Mikes eyes were still weaselred, and from the dampness on his pants cuffs, Richie thought that maybe ole Mikey had taken a ride on the stomachelevator, too. For a white boy you did pretty good, Mike croaked, and punched Richie weakly on the shoulder. Richie was at a loss for wordsa condition of exquisite rarity. Bill came over. The others came with him. You pulled us out? Richie asked. MMe and BuhBen. YYou were scuhscuhrheaming. BBoth of yyyou. BBBut He looked over at Ben. Ben said, It must have been the smoke, Bill. But there was no conviction in the big boys voice at all. Flatly, Richie said You mean what I think you mean? Bill shrugged. WWWhats ththat, RihRichie? Mike answered. We werent there at first, were we? You went down because you heard us screaming, but at first we werent there. It was really smoky, Ben said. Hearing you both screaming that way, that was scary enough. But the screaming ... it sounded ... well ... It sssounded very ffffar aaway, Bill said. Stuttering badly, he told them that when he and Ben had gone down, they hadnt been able to see either Richie or Mike. They had gone plunging around in the smoky clubhouse, panicked, scared that if they didnt act quickly the two boys might die of smoke poisoning. At last Bill had gripped a handRichies. He had given a huhhuhhell of a yuhyank and Richie had come flying out of the gloom, only about onequarter conscious. When Bill turned around he had seen Ben with Mike in a bearhug, both of them coughing. Ben had thrown Mike up and out through the trapdoor. Ben listened to all this, nodding. I kept grabbing, you know? Really not doing anything except jabbing my hand out like I wanted to shake hands. You grabbed it, Mike. Damn good thing you grabbed it when you did. I think you were just about gone. You guys make the clubhouse sound a lot bigger than it is, Richie said. Talking about stumbling around in it and all. Its only five feet on every side. There was a moments silence while they all looked at Bill, who stood in frowning concentration. It wwwas bbigger, he said at last. WWWasnt it, Ben? Ben shrugged. It sure seemed like it. Unless it was the smoke. It wasnt the smoke, Richie said. Just before it happenedbefore we went outI remember thinking it was at least as big as a ballroom in a movie. Like one of those musicals. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, something like that. I could barely see Mike against the other wall. Before you went out? Beverly asked. Well ... what I mean ... like ... She grabbed Richies arm. It happened, didnt it? It really happened! You had a vision, just like in Bens book! Her face was glowing. It really happened! Richie looked down at himself, and then at Mike. One of the knees of Mikes corduroy pants was out, and both the knees of his own jeans were torn. He could look through the holes and see bleeding scrapes on both his knees. If it was a vision, I never want to have another one, he said. I dont know about de Kingfish over there, but when I went down there, I didnt have any holes in my pants. Theyre practically new, for gosh sakes. My moms gonna give me hell. What happened? Ben and Eddie asked together. Richie and Mike exchanged a glance and then Richie said, Bevvie, you got a smoke? She had two, wrapped in a piece of tissue. Richie put one of them in his mouth and when she lit it the first drag made him cough so badly that he handed it back to her. Cant, he said. Sorry. It was the past, Mike said. Shit on that, Richie said. It wasnt just the past. It was ago. Yeah, right. We were in the Barrens, but the Kenduskeag was going a mile a minute. It was deep. It was fuckin wild. Sorry, Bevvie, but it was. And there were fish in it. Salmon, I think. MMy dddad ssays ththere havent been aaany fuhfish in the KKenduskkkeag for a lllong tuhhime. BBecause of the suhsewage. This was a long time, all right, Richie said. He looked around at them uncertainly. I think it was a million years ago, at least. A thunderstruck silence greeted this. Beverly broke it at last. But what happened? Richie felt the words in his throat, but he had to struggle to bring them out. It felt almost like vomiting again. We saw It come, he said at last. I think that was it. Christ, Stan muttered. Oh Christ. There was a sharp hissgasp as Eddie used his aspirator. It came out of the sky, Mike said. I never want to see anything like that again in my whole life. It was burning so hot you couldnt really look at it. And it was thowin off electricity and makin thunder. The noise ... He shook his head and looked at Richie. It sounded like the end of the world. And when it hit, it started a forest fire. That was at the end of it. Was it a spaceship? Ben asked. Yes, Richie said. No, Mike said. They looked at each other. Well, I guess it was, Mike said, and at the same time Ricie said No, it really wasnt a spaceship, you know, but They paused again while the others looked at them, perplexed. You tell, Richie said to Mike. We mean the same thing, I think, but theyre not getting it. Mike coughed into his fist and then looked up at the others, almost apologetically. I dont know just how to tell you, he said. TTTry, Bill said urgently. It came out of the sky, Mike repeated, but it wasnt a spaceship, exactly. It wasnt a meteor, either. It was more like ... well ... like the Ark of the Covenant, in the Bible, that was supposed to have the Spirit of God inside of it ... except this wasnt God. Just feeling It, watching It come, you knew It meant bad, that It was bad. He looked at them. Richie nodded. It came from . . outside. I got that feeling. From outside. Outside where, Richie? Eddie asked. Outside everything, Richie said. And when It came down ... It made the biggest damn hole you ever saw in your life. It turned this big hill into a doughnut, just about. It landed right where the downtown part of Derry is now. He looked at them. Do you get it? Beverly dropped the cigarette halfsmoked and crushed it out under one shoe. Mike said, Its always been here, since the beginning of time ... since before there were men anywhere, unless maybe there were just a few of them in Africa somewhere, swinging through the trees or living in caves. The craters gone now, and the ice age probably scraped the valley deeper and changed some stuff around and filled the crater in ... but It was here then, sleeping, maybe, waiting for the ice to melt, waiting for the people to come. Thats why It uses the sewers and the drains, Richie put in. They must be regular freeways for It. You didnt see what It looked like? Stan Uris asked abruptly and a little hoarsely. They shook their heads. Can we beat It? Eddie said in the silence. A thing like that? No one answered. CHAPTER 16 Eddies Bad Break 1 By the time Richie finishes, theyre all nodding. Eddie is nodding along with them, remembering along with them, when the pain suddenly races up his left arm. Races up? No. Rips through it feels as if someone is trying to sharpen a rusty saw on the bone in there. He grimaces and reaches into the pocket of his sportjacket, sorts through a number of bottles by feel, and takes out the Excedrin. He swallows two with a gulp of ginandprunejuice. The arm has been paining him off and on all day. At first he dismissed it as the twinges of bursitis he sometimes gets when the weather is damp. But halfway through Richies story, a new memory clicks into place for him and he understands the pain. This isnt Memory Lane were wandering down anymore, he thinks; its getting more and more like the Long Island Expressway. Five years ago, during a routine checkup (Eddie has a routine checkup every six weeks), the doctor said matteroffactly Theres an old break here, Ed.... Did you fall out of a tree when you were a kid? Something like that, Eddie agreed, not bothering to tell Dr. Robbins that his mother undoubtedly would have fallen down dead of a brain hemorrhage if she had seen or heard of her Eddie climbing trees. The truth was, he hadnt been able to remember exactly how he broke the arm. It didnt seem important (although, Eddie thinks now, that lack of interest was in itself very oddheis, after all, a man who attaches importance to a sneeze or a slight change in the color of his stools). But it was an old break, a minor irritation, something that happened a long time ago in a boyhood he could barely remember and didnt care to recall. It pained him a little when he had to drive long hours on rainy days. A couple of aspirin took care of it nicely. No big deal. But now it is not just a minor irritation; it is some madman sharpening that rusty saw, playing bonetunes, and he remembers that was how it felt in the hospital, especially late at night, in the first three or four days after it happened. Lying there in bed, sweating in the summer heat, waiting for the nurse to bring him a pill, tears running silently down his cheeks into the bowls of his ears, thinking Its like some kooks sharpening a saw in there. If this is Memory Lane, Eddie thinks, Id trade it for one great big brain enema a mental high colonic. Unaware he is going to speak, he says It was Henry Bowers who broke my arm. Do you remember that? Mike nods. That was just before Patrick Hockstetter disappeared. I dont remember the date.  I do,  Eddie says flatly. It was the 20th of July. The Hockstetter kid was reported missing on ... what? ... the 23rd? Twentysecond,  Beverly Rogan says, although she doesnt tell them why she is so sure of the date it is because she saw It take Hockstetter. Nor does she tell them that she believed then and believes now that Patrick Hockstetter was crazy, perhaps even crazier than Henry Bowers. She will tell them, but this is Eddies turn. She will speak next, and then she supposes that Ben will narrate the climax of that Julys events ... the silver bullet they had never quite dared to make. A nightmare agenda if ever there was one, she thinksbut that crazy exhilaration persists. When did she last feel this young? She can hardly sit still. The 20th of July,  Eddie muses, rolling his aspirator along the table from one hand to the other. Three or four days after the smokehole thing. I spent the rest of the summer in a cast, remember? Richie slaps his forehead in a gesture they all remember from the old days and Bill thinks, with a mixture of amusement and unease, that for a moment there Richie looked just like Beaver Cleaver. Sure, of course! You were in a cast when we went to the house on Neibolt Street, werent you? And later... in the dark... But now Richie shakes his head a little, puzzled. What, RRichie? Bill asks. Cant remember that part yet, Richie admits. Can you? Bill shakes his head slowly. Hockstetter was with them that day, Eddie says. It was the last time I ever saw him alive. Maybe he was a replacement for Peter Gordon. I guess Bowers didnt want Peter around anymore after he ran the day of the rockfight. They all died, didnt they? Beverly asks quietly. After Jimmy Cullum, the only ones who died were Henry Bowerss friends... or his exfriends. All but Bowers, Mike agrees, glancing toward the balloons tethered to the microfilm recorder. And hes in Juniper Hill. A private insane asylum in Augusta. Bill says, WWWhat about when they broke your arm, EEEddie? Your stutters getting worse, Big Bill,  Eddie says solemnly, and finishes his drink in one gulp. Never mind that,  Bill says. TTell us. Tell us, Beverly repeats, and puts her hand lightly on his arm. The pain flares there again. All right, Eddie says. He pours himself a fresh drink, studies it, and says, It was a couple of days after I came home from the hospital that you guys came over to the house and showed me those silver ballbearings. You remember, Bill? Bill nods. Eddie looks at Beverly. Bill asked you if youd shoot them, if it came to that... because you had the best eye. I think you said you wouldnt... that youd be too afraid. And you told us something else, but I just cant remember what it was. Its like Eddie sticks his tongue out and plucks the end of it, as if something were stuck there. Richie and Ben both grin. Was it something about Hockstetter? Yes,  Beverly says. Ill tell when youre done. Go ahead. It was after that, after all you guys left, that my mother came in and we had a big fight. She didnt want me to hang around with any of you guys again. And she might have gotten me to agreeshe had a way, a way of working on a guy, you know ... Bill nods again. He remembers Mrs. Kaspbrak, a huge woman with a strange schizophrenic face, a face capable of looking stony and furious and miserable and frightened all at the same time. Yeah, she might have gotten me to agree, Eddie says. But something else happened the same day Bowers broke my arm. Something that really shook me up. He utters a little laugh, thinking It shook me up, all right .... Is that all you can say? What goods talking when you can never tell people how you really feel? In a book or a movie what I found out that day before Bowers broke my arm would have changed my life forever and nothing would have happened the way it did ... in a book or a movie it would have set me free. In a book or a movie I wouldnt have a whole suitcase full of pills back in my room at the Town House, I wouldnt be married to Myra, I wouldnt have this stupid fucking aspirator here right now. In a book or a movie. Because Suddenly, as they all watch, Eddies aspirator rolls across the table by itself. As it rolls it makes a dry rattling sound, a little like maracas, a little like bones ... a little like laughter. As it reaches the far side, between Richie and Ben, it flips itself up into the air and falls on the floor. Richie makes a startled halfgrab and Bill cries sharply, Dont tttouch it! The balloons! Ben yells, and they all turn. Both balloons tethered to the microfilm recorder now read ASTHMA MEDICINE GIVES YOU CANCER! Below the slogan are grinning skulls. They explode with twin bangs. Eddie looks at this, mouth dry, the familiar sensation of suffocation starting to tighten down in his chest like locking bolts. Bill looks back at him. Who ttold you and wwwhat did they tell you? Eddie licks his lips, wanting to go after his aspirator, not quite daring to. Who knew what might be in it now? He thinks about that day, the 20th, about how it was hot, about how his mother gave him a check, all filled out except for the amount, and a dollar in cash for himselfhisallowance. Mr. Keene, he says, and his voice sounds distant to his own ears, without power. It was Mr. Keene. Not exactly the nicest man in Derry, Mike says, but Eddie, lost in his thoughts, barely hears him. Yes, it was hot that day, but cool inside the Center Street Drug, the wooden fans turning leisurely below the pressedtin ceiling, and there was that comforting smell of mixed powders and nostrums. This was the place where they sold healththat was his mothers unstated but clearly communicated conviction, and with his bodyclock set at halfpast eleven, Eddie had no suspicion that his mother might be wrong about that, or anything else. Well, Mr. Keene sure put an end to that, he thinks now with a kind of sweet anger. He remembers standing at the comic rack for awhile, spinning it idly to see if there were any new Batmans or Superboys, or his own favorite, Plastic Man. He had given his mothers list (she sent him to the drugstore as other boys mothers might send them to the corner grocery) and his mothers check to Mr. Keene; he would fill the order and then write in the amount on the check, giving Eddie the receipt so she could deduct the amount from her checking balance. This was all SOP for Eddie. Three different kinds of prescription for his mother, plus a bottle of Geritol because, she told him mysteriously, Its full of iron, Eddie, and women need more iron than men. Also, there would be his vitamins, a bottle of Dr. Swetts Elixir for Children... and, of course, his asthma medicine. It was always the same. Later he would stop in the Costello Avenue Market with his dollar and get two candybars and a Pepsi. He would eat the candy, drink the soda, and jingle his pocketchange all the way home. But this day was different; it would end with him in the hospital and that was certainly different, but it started being different when Mr. Keene called him. Because instead of handing him the big white bag full of cures and the receipt, admonishing him to put the receipt in his pocket so he wouldnt lose it, Mr. Keene looked at him thoughtfully and said, Come 2 back into the office for a minute, Eddie. I want to talk to you. Eddie only looked at him for a moment, blinking, a little scared. The idea that maybe Mr. Keene thought he had been shoplifting flashed briefly through his mind. There was that sign by the door that he always read when he came into the Center Street Drug. It was written in accusing black letters so large that he bet even Richie Tozier could read it without his glasses SHOPLIPTING IS NOT A KICK OR A GROOVE OR A GASSER! SHOPLIFTING IS A CRIME, AND WE WILL PROSECUTE! Eddie had never shoplifted anything in his life, but that sign always made him feel guiltymade him feel as if Mr. Keene knew something about him that he didnt know about himself. Then Mr. Keene confused him even further by saying, How about an icecream soda? Well Oh, its on the house. I always have one in the office around this time of day. Good energy, unless you need to watch your weight, and Id say neither of us do. My wife says I look like a stuffed string. Your friend there the Hanscom boy, hes the one who needs to have a care about his weight What flavor, Eddie? Well, my mother said to get home as soon as I You look like a chocolate man to me. Chocolate okay for you? Mr. Keenes eyes twinkled, but it was a dry twinkle, like the sun shining on mica in the desert. Or so Eddie, a fan of such Western writers as Max Brand and Archie Joceylen, thought. Sure, Eddie gave in. Something about the way Mr. Keene pushed his goldrimmed glasses up on his blade of a nose made him edgy. Something about the way Mr. Keene seemed both nervous and secretly pleased. He didnt want to go into the office with Mr. Keene. This wasnt about a soda. Nope. And whatever it was about, Eddie had an idea it wasnt such great news. Maybe hes going to tell me I got cancer or something, Eddie thought wildly. That kidcancer. Leukemia. Jesus! Oh, dont be so stupid, he answered himself back, trying to sound, in his own mind, like Stuttering Bill. Stuttering Bill had replaced Jock Mahoney, who played the Range Rider on TV Saturday mornings, as the great hero of Eddies life. In spite of the fact that he couldnt talk right, Big Bill always seemed to be on top of things. This guys a pharmacist, not a doctor, for cripes sake. But Eddie was still nervous. Mr. Keene had raised the countergate and was beckoning to Eddie with one bony finger. Eddie went, but reluctantly. Ruby, the countergirl, was sitting by the cash register and reading a Silver Screen. Would you make two icecream sodas, Ruby? Mr. Keene called to her. One chocolate, one coffee? Sure, Ruby said, marking her place in the magazine with a tinfoil gum wrapper and getting up. Bring them into the office. Sure. Come on, son. Im not going to bite you. And Mr. Keene actually winked, astounding Eddie completely. He had never been in back of the counter before, and he gazed at all the bottles and pills and jars with interest. He would have lingered if he had been on his own, examining Mr. Keenes mortar and pestle, his scales and weights, the fishbowls full of capsules. But Mr. Keene propelled him forward into the office and closed the door firmly behind him. When it clicked shut Eddie felt a warning tightness in his chest and fought it.


There would be a fresh aspirator in with his mothers things, and he could have a long satisfying honk on it as soon as he was out of here. A bottle of licorice whips stood on the corner of Mr. Keenes desk. He offered it to Eddie. No thank you, Eddie said politely. Mr. Keene sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk and took one. Then he opened his drawer and took something out. He put it down next to the tall bottle of licorice whips and Eddie felt real alarm course through him. It was an aspirator. Mr. Keene tilted back in his swivel chair until his head was almost touching the calendar on the wall behind him. The picture on the calendar showed more pills. It said SQUIBB. And and for one nightmare moment, when Mr. Keene opened his mouth to speak, Eddie remembered what had happened in the shoe store when he was just a little kid, when his mother had screamed at him for putting his foot in the Xray machine. For that one nightmare moment Eddie thought Mr. Keene would say Eddie, nine out of ten doctors agree that asthma medicine gives you cancer, just like the Xray machines they used to have in the shoe stores. Youve probably got it already. Just thought you ought to know. But what Mr. Keene did say was so peculiar that Eddie could think of no response at all; he could only sit in the straight wooden chair on the other side of Mr. Keenes desk like a nit. This has gone on long enough. Eddie opened his mouth and then closed it again. How old are you, Eddie? Eleven, isnt it? Yes, sir, Eddie said faintly. His breathing was indeed shallowing up. He wasnt yet whistling like a teakettle (which was how Richie put it Somebody turn Eddie off! Hes reached the boil!), but that might happen at any time. He looked longingly at the aspirator on Mr. Keenes desk, and because something else seemed required, he said Ill be twelve in November. Mr. Keene nodded, then leaned forward like a TV pharmacist in a commercial and clasped his hands together. His eyeglasses gleamed in the strong light thrown by the overhead fluorescent bars. Do you know what a placebo is, Eddie? Nervously, taking his best guess, Eddie said Those are the things on cows that the milk comes out of, arent they? Mr. Keene laughed and rocked back in his chair. No, he said, and Eddie blushed to the roots of his flattop haircut. Now he could hear the whistle creeping into his breathing. A placebo He was interrupted by a brisk double tap at the door. Without waiting for a comein call, Ruby entered with an oldfashioned icecreamsoda glass in each hand. Yours must be the chocolate, she said to Eddie, and gave him a grin. He returned it as best he could, but his interest in icecream sodas was at its lowest ebb in his entire personal history. He felt scared in a way that was both vague and specific; it was the way he felt scared when he was sitting on Dr. Handors examination table in his underpants, waiting for the doctor to come in and knowing his mother was out in the waiting room, taking up most of one sofa, a book (most likely Norman Vincent Peales The Power of Positive Thinking or Dr. Jarviss Vermont Folk Medicine) held firmly up to her eyes like a hymnal. Stripped of his clothes and defenseless, he felt caught between the two of them. He sipped some of his soda as Ruby went out, hardly tasting it. Mr. Keene waited until the door was shut and then smiled his dry sunonmica smile again. Loosen up, Eddie. Im not going to bite you, or hurt you. Eddie nodded, because Mr. Keene was a grownup and you were supposed to agree with grownups at all costs (his mother had taught him that), but inside he was thinking Oh, Ive heard that bullshit before. It was about what the doctor said when he opened his sterilizer and the sharp frightening smell of alcohol drifted out, stinging his nostrils. That was the smell of shots and this was the smell of bullshit and both came down to the same thing when they said it was just going to be a little prick, something you hardly felt at all, that meant it was going to hurt plenty. He tried another halfhearted suck on his soda straw, but it was no good; he needed all the space in his narrowing throat just to suck in air. He looked at the aspirator sitting in the middle of Mr. Keenes blotter, wanted to ask for it, didnt quite dare. A weird thought occurred to him maybe Mr. Keene knew he wanted it but didnt dare ask for it, that maybe Mr. Keene was (torturing) teasing him. Except that was a really stupid idea, wasnt it? A grownupparticularly a healthdispensing grownupwouldnt tease a little kid that way, would he? Surely not. It wasnt even to be considered, because consideration of such an idea might necessitate a terrifying reappraisal of the world as Eddie understood it. But there it was, there it was, so near and yet so far, like water just beyond the reach of a man who was dying of thirst in the desert. There it was, standing on the desk below Mr. Keenes smiling mica eyes. Eddie wished, more than anything else, that he was down in the Barrens with his friends around him. The thought of a monster, some great monster, lurking under the city where he had been born and where he had grown up, using the sewers and drains to creep from place to placethat was a frightening thought, and the thought of actually fighting that creature, of taking it on, was even more frightening ... but somehow this was worse. How could you fight a grownup who said it wasnt going to hurt when you knew it was? How could you fight a grownup who asked you funny questions and said obscurely ominous things like This has gone on long enough? And almost idly, in a kind of sidethought, Eddie discovered one of his childhoods great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought. It was no big deal, not a thought that came in a revelatory flash or announced itself with trumpets and bells. It just came and was gone, almost buried under the stronger, overriding thought I want my aspirator and I want to be out of here. Loosen up, Mr. Keene said again. Most of your trouble, Eddie, comes from being so tight and stiff all the time. Take your asthma, for instance. Look here. Mr. Keene opened his desk drawer, fumbled around inside, and then brought out a balloon. Expanding his narrow chest as much as possible (his tie bobbed like a narrow boat riding a mild wave), he huffed into it and blew it up. CENTER STREET DRUG, the balloon said. PRESCRIPTIONS, SUNDRIES, OSTOMY SUPPLIES. Mr. Keene pinched the balloons rubber neck and held the balloon out in front of him. Now pretend for just a moment that this is a lung, he said. Your lung. I should really blow up two, of course, but since I only had one left from the sale we had just after Christmas Mr. Keene, could I have my aspirator now? Eddies head was starting to pound. He could feel his windpipe sealing itself up. His heartrate was up, and sweat stood out on his forehead. His chocolate icecream soda stood on the corner of Mr. Keenes desk, the cherry on top sinking slowly into a goo of whipped cream. In a minute, Mr. Keene said. Pay attention, Eddie. I want to help you. Its time somebody did. If Russ Handor isnt man enough to do it, Ill have to. Your lung is like this balloon, except its surrounded by a blanket of muscle; these muscles are like the arms of a man operating a bellows, you understand? In a healthy person, those muscles help the lungs to expand and contract easily. But if the owner of those healthy lungs is always getting stiff and tight, the muscles begin to work against the lungs rather than with them. Look! Mr. Keene wrapped a bunched, bony, liverspotted hand around the balloon and squeezed. The balloon bulged over and under his fist and Eddie winced, trying to get ready for the pop. Simultaneously he felt his breathing stop altogether. He leaned over the desk and grabbed for the aspirator on the blotter. His shoulder struck the heavy icecreamsoda glass. It toppled off the desk and shattered on the floor like a bomb. Eddie heard that only dimly. He was clawing the top off the aspirator, slamming the nozzle into his mouth, triggering it off. He took a tearing heaving breath, his thoughts a ratrun of panic as they always were at moments like this Please Mommy Im suffocating I cant BREATHE oh my dear God oh dear Jesus meekandmild I cant BREATHE please I dont want to die dont want to die oh please Then the fog from the aspirator condensed on the swollen walls of his throat and he could breathe again. Im sorry, he said, nearly crying. Im sorry about the glass ... Ill clean it up and pay for it ... just please dont tell my mother, okay? Im sorry, Mr. Keene, but I couldnt breathe There was that double tap at the door again and Ruby poked her head in. Is everything Everythings fine, Mr. Keene said sharply. Leave us. Well Im sawry! Ruby said. She rolled her eyes and closed the door. Eddies breath was starting to whistle in his throat again. He took another pull at the aspirator and then began his fumbling apology once more. He ceased only when he saw that Mr. Keene was smiling at himthat peculiar dry smile. Mr. Keenes hands were laced over his middle. The balloon lay on his desk. A thought came to Eddie; he tried to hold it back and couldnt. Mr. Keene looked as if Eddies asthma attack had tasted better to him than his halffinished coffee soda. Dont be concerned, he said. Ruby will clean up the mess later, and if you want to know the truth, Im rather glad you broke the glass. Because I promise not to tell your mother that you broke it if you promise not to tell her we had this little talk. Oh, I promise that, Eddie said eagerly. Good, Mr. Keene said. We have an understanding. And you feel much better now, dont you? Eddie nodded. Why? Why? Well ... because I had my medicine. He looked at Mr. Keene the way he looked at Mrs. Casey in school when he had given an answer he wasnt quite sure of. But you didnt have any medicine, Mr. Keene said. You had a placebo. A placebo, Eddie, is something that looks like medicine and tastes like medicine but isnt medicine. A placebo isnt medicine because it has no active ingredients. Or, if it is medicine, its medicine of a very special sort. Headmedicine. Mr. Keene smiled. Do you understand that, Eddie? Headmedicine. Eddie understood, all right; Mr. Keene was telling him he was crazy. But through numb lips he said, No, I dont get you. Let me tell you a little story, Mr. Keene said. In 1954, a series of medical tests on ulcer patients was run at DePaul University. One hundred ulcer patients were given pills. They were all told the pills would help their ulcers, but fifty of the patients really got placebos.... They were, in fact, MMs given a uniform pink coating. Mr. Keene uttered a strange shrill gigglethat of a man describing a prank rather than an experiment. Of those one hundred patients, ninetythree said they felt a definite improvement, and eightyone showed an improvement. So what do you think? What conclusion do you draw from such an experiment, Eddie? I dont know, Eddie said faintly. Mr. Keene tapped his head solemnly. Most sickness starts in here, thats what I think. Ive been in this business a long long time, and I knew about placebos a mighty stretch of years before those doctors at DePaul University did their study. Usually its old folks who end up getting the placebos. The old fellow or the old girl will go to the doctor, convinced that theyve got heart disese or cancer or diabetes or some damn thing. But in a good many cases its nothing like that at all. They dont feel good because theyre old, thats all. But whats a doctor to do? Tell them theyre like watches with wornout mainsprings? Huh! Not likely. Doctors like their fees too much. And now Mr. Keenes face wore an expression somewhere between a smile and a sneer. Eddie just sat there waiting for it to be over, to be over, to be over. You didnt have any medicine those words clanged in his mind. The doctors dont tell them that, and I dont tell them that, either. Why bother? Sometimes an old party will come in with a prescription blank that will say it right out Placebo, or 25 grains Blue Skies, which was how old Doc Pearson used to put it. Mr. Keene cackled briefly and then sucked on his coffee soda. Well, whats wrong with it? he asked Eddie, and when Eddie only sat there, Mr. Keene answered his own question. Why, nothing! Nothing at all! At least ... usually. Placebos are a blessing for old people. And then there are other casesfolks with cancer, folks with degenerative heart disease, folks with terrible things that we dont understand yet, some of them children just like you, Eddie! In cases like that, if a placebo makes the patient feel better, where is the harm? Do you see the harm, Eddie? No sir, Eddie said, and looked down at the splatter of chocolate ice cream, sodawater, whipped cream, and broken glass on the floor. In the middle of all this was the maraschino cherry, as accusing as a bloodclot at a crime scene. Looking at this mess made his chest feel tight again. Then were like Ike and Mike! We think alike! Five years ago, when Vernon Maitland had cancer of the esophagusa painful, painful sort of cancerand the doctors had run out of anything effective they could give him for his pain, I came by his hospital room with a bottle of sugarpills. He was a special friend, you see. And I said, Vern, these are special experimental painpills. The doctor doesnt know Im giving them to you, so for Gods sake be careful and dont tattle on me. They might not work, but I think they will. Take no more than one a day, and only if the pain is especially bad. He thanked me with tears in his eyes. Tears, Eddie! And they worked for him! Yes! They were only sugarpills, but they killed most of his pain ... because pain is here. Solemnly, Mr. Keene tapped his head again. Eddie said My medicine does so work. I know it does, Mr. Keene replied, and smiled a maddening complacent grownups smile. It works on your chest because it works on your head. HydrOx, Eddie, is water with a dash of camphor thrown in to give it a medicine taste. No, Eddie said. His breath had begun to whistle again. Mr. Keene drank some of his soda, spooned some of the melting ice cream, and fastidiously wiped his chin with his handkerchief while Eddie used his aspirator again. I want to go now, Eddie said. Let me finish, please. No! I want to go, youve got your money and I want to go! Let me finish, Mr. Keene said, so forbiddingly that Eddie sat back in his chair. Grownups could be so hateful in their power sometimes. So hateful. Part of the problem here is that your doctor, Russ Handor, is weak. And part of the problem is that your mother is determined you are ill. You, Eddie, have been caught in the middle. Im not crazy, Eddie whispered, the words coming out in a bare husk. Mr. Keenes chair creaked like a monstrous cricket. What? I said Im not crazy! Eddie shouted. Then, immediately, a miserable blush rose into his face. Mr. Keene smiled. Think what you like, that smile said. Think what you like, and Ill think what I like. All Im telling you, Eddie, is that youre not physically ill. Your lungs dont have asthma; your mind does. You mean Im crazy. Mr. Keene leaned forward, looking at him intently over his folded hands. I dont know, he said softly. Are you? Its all a lie! Eddie cried, surprised the words came out so strongly from his tight chest. He was thinking of Bill, how Bill would react to such amazing charges. Bill would know what to say, stutter or not. Bill would know how to be brave. All a great big lie! I do have asthma, I do! Yes, Mr. Keene said, and now the dry smile had become a weird skeletal grin. But who gave it to you, Eddie? Eddies brain thudded and whirled. Oh, he felt sick, he felt very sick. Four years ago, in 1954the same year as the DePaul tests, oddly enoughDr. Handor began prescribing this HydrOx for you. That stands for hydrogen and oxygen, the two components of water. I have condoned this deception since then, but I will not condone it anymore. Your asthma medicine works on your mind rather than your body. Your asthma is the result of a nervous tightening of the diaphragm that is ordered by your mind ... or your mother. You are not sick. A terrible silence descended. Eddie sat in his chair, his mind whirling. For a moment he considered the possibility that Mr. Keene might be telling the truth, but there were ramifications in such an idea that he could not face. Yet why would Mr. Keene lie, especially about something so serious? Mr. Keene sat and smiled his bright dry heartless desert smile. I do have asthma, I do. The day that Henry Bowers punched me in the nose, the day Bill and I were trying to make a dam in the Barrens, I almost died. Am I supposed to think that my mind was just ... just making all of that up? But why would he lie? (It was only years later, in the library, that Eddie asked himself the more terrible question Why would he tell me the truth?) Dimly he heard Mr. Keene saying Ive kept my eye on you, Eddie. I told you all this because youre old enough to understand, but also because Ive noticed youve finally made some friends. They are good friends, arent they? Yes, Eddie said. Mr. Keene tilted his chair back (it made that cricketlike noise again), and closed one eye in what might or might not have been a wink. And Ill bet your mother doesnt like them much, does she? She likes them fine, Eddie said, thinking of the cutting things his mother had said about Richie Tozier (He has a foul mouth ... and Ive smelled his breath, Eddie ... I think he smokes), her sniffing remark not to loan any money to Stan Uris because he was a Jew, her outright dislike of Bill Denbrough and that fatboy. He repeated to Mr. Keene She likes them a lot. Does she? Mr. Keene said, still smiling. Well, maybe shes right and maybe shes wrong, but at least you have friends. Maybe you ought to talk to them about this problem of yours. This ... this mental weakness. See what they have to say. Eddie didnt reply. He was through talking to Mr. Keene; that seemed safer. And he was afraid that if he didnt get out of here soon, he really would cry. Well! Mr. Keene said, standing up. I think that just about finishes us up, Eddie. If Ive upset you, Im sorry. I was only doing my duty as I saw it. I But before he could say any more, Eddie had snatched up his aspirator and the white bag of pills and nostrums and had fled. One of his feet skidded in the icecreamy mess on the floor and he almost fell. Then he was running, bolting from the Center Street Drug Store in spite of his whistling breath. Ruby stared after him over her movie magazine, her mouth open. Behind him he seemed to sense Mr. Keene standing in the doorway of his office and watching his graceless retreat over the prescription counter, gaunt and neat and thoughtful and smiling. Smiling that dry desert smile. He paused outside on the threeway corner of Kansas, Main, and Center. He took another deep pull from his aspirator while sitting on the low stone wall by the busstophis throat was now positively slimy with that medicinal taste (nothing but water with some camphor thrown in) and he thought that if he had to use the aspirator again today he would probably puke his guts. He slipped it into his pocket and watched the traffic pass back and forth, headed up Main Street and down UpMile Hill. He tried not to think. The sun beat down on his head, blaringly hot. Each passing car threw bright darts of reflection into his eyes, and a headace was starting in his temples. He couldnt find a way to stay angry at Mr. Keene, but he had no trouble at all feeling bad for Eddie Kaspbrak. He felt real bad for Eddie Kaspbrak. He supposed that Bill Denbrough never wasted time feeling sorry for himself, but Eddie just couldnt seem to help it. More than anything else he wanted to do exactly what Mr. Keene had suggested go down to the Barrens and tell his friends everything, see what they would say, find out what answers they had. But he couldnt do that now. His mother would expect him home with her medicines soon (your mind ... or your mother) and if he wasnt there (your mother is determined you are ill) trouble would follow. She would assume he had been with Bill or Richie or the Jewboy, as she called Stan (insisting that she meant no prejudice by so calling him, but was simply slapping down the cardsher phrase for truthtelling in difficult situations). And standing here on this corner, trying hopelessly to sort out his flying thoughts, Eddie knew what she would say if she knew one of his other friends was a Negro and another was a girla girl old enough to be getting bosoms. He started slowly toward UpMile Hill, dreading the stiff climb in this heat. It felt almost hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. For the first time he found himself wishing for school to be in again, for a new grade and a new teachers peculiarities to contend with. For this dreadful summer to be over. He stopped halfway up the hill, not far from where Bill Denbrough would rediscover his bike Silver twentyseven years later, and pulled his aspirator from his pocket. Hydrox Mist, the label said. Administer as needed. Something else clicked home. Administer as needed. He was only a kid, still wet behind the ears (as his mother sometimes told him when she was slapping down the cards), but even a kid of eleven knew that you didnt give someone real medicine and then write on the label Administer as needed. If it was real medicine, it would be too easy to kill yourself as you went happyassholing around and administering as needed. He supposed you could kill yourself with plain old aspirin doing that. He looked fixedly at the aspirator, unaware of the old lady who glanced curiously at him as she passed on down the hill toward Main Street with her shopping basket over her arm. He felt betrayed. And for one moment he almost cast the plastic squeezebottle into the gutterbetter yet, he thought, throw it down that sewergrating. Sure! Why not? Let It have it down there in Its tunnels and dripping sewerpipes. Have a placeebo, you hundredfaced creep! He uttered a wild laugh and came within an ace of doing it. But in the end, habit was simply too strong. He replaced the aspirator in his right front pants pocket and walked on, hardly hearing the occasional blare of a horn or the diesel drone of the Bassey Park bus as it passed him. He was likewise unaware of how close he was to discovering what being hurtreally hurtwas all about. 3 When he came out of the Costello Avenue Market twentyfive minutes later with a Pepsi in one hand and two Payday candybars in the other, Eddie was unpleasantly surprised to see Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, Moose Sadler, and Patrick Hockstetter kneeling on the crushed gravel to the left of the little store. For a moment Eddie thought they were shooting craps; then he saw they were pooling their money on Victors baseball shirt. Their summerschool textbooks lay off to one side in an untidy heap. On an ordinary day Eddie might have simply faded quietly back into the store and asked Mr. Gedreau if he could leave by the back door but this had been no ordinary day. Eddie froze right where he was instead, one hand still holding the screen door with its tin cigarette signs (WINSTON TASTES GOOD, LIKE A CIGARETTE SHOULD, TWENTYONE GREAT TOBACCOS MAKE TWENTY WONDERFUL SMOKES, the bellboy who was shouting CALL FOR PHILIP MORRIS), the other clutching the brown grocery bag and the white drugstore bag. Victor Criss saw him and elbowed Henry. Henry looked up; so did Patrick Hockstetter. Moose, whose relays worked more slowly, went on counting out pennies for five seconds or so before the sudden silence sank into him and he also looked up. Henry stood, brushing loose pieces of gravel from the knees of the biballs he was wearing. There were splints on the sides of his bandaged nose, and his voice had a nasal foghorning quality. Well I be go to hell, he said. One of the rockthrowers. Wheres your friends, asshole? They inside? Eddie was shaking his head numbly before he realized this was another mistake. Henrys smile broadened. Well, thats okay, he said. I dont mind taking you one by one. Come on down here, asshole. Victor stood beside Henry; Patrick Hockstetter trailed behind them, smiling in a porky vacant way Eddie was familiar with from school. Moose was still getting up. Come on, asshole, Henry said. Lets talk about throwing rocks. Lets talk about that, you wanna? Now that it was too late Eddie decided it would be wise to go back into the store. Back in the store where there was a grownup. But as he retreated Henry darted forward and grabbed him. He pulled Eddies arm, pulled hard, his smile turning into a snarl. Eddies hand was ripped free of the screen door. He was pulled off the steps and would have crashed headlong into the gravel if Victor hadnt caught him roughly under the arms. Victor threw him. Eddie managed to keep on his feet, but only by whirling around twice. The four boys faced him now over a distance of about ten feet, Henry slightly ahead of the others, smiling. His hair stood up at the back in a cowlick. Behind Henry and on his left was Patrick Hockstetter, a genuinely spooky kid. Eddie hadnt ever seen him with anyone else until today. He was just enough overweight so that his belly always hung slightly over his belt, which had a Red Ryder buckle. His face was perfectly round, and usually as pale as cream. Now he had a slight sunburn. It was heaviest on his nose, which was peeling, but it spread out toward either cheek like wings. In school, Patrick liked to kill flies with his green plastic SkoolTime ruler and put them in his pencilbox. Sometimes he would show his fly collection to some new kid in the playyard at recess, his heavy lips smiling, his graygreen eyes sober and thoughtful. He never spoke when he exhibited his dead flies, no matter what the new kid might say to him. That expression was on his face now. How ya doin, Rock Man? Henry asked, advancing across the distance between them. Got any rocks on you? Leave me alone, Eddie said in a trembling voice. Leave me alone,  Henry mimicked, waving his hands in mock terror. Victor laughed. What are you going to do if I dont, Rock Man? Huh? His hand flashed out, incredibly fast, and exploded against Eddies cheek with a gunshot sound. Eddies head rocked back. Tears began to pour from his left eye. My friends are inside, Eddie said. My friends are inside,  Patrick Hockstetter squealed. Ooooh! Ooooh! Ooooh! He began to circle to Eddies right. Eddie started to turn in that direction, Henrys hand flashed out again, and this time his other cheek flamed. Dont cry, he thought, thats what they want, but dont you do it Eddie Bill wouldnt do it, Bill wouldnt cry, and dont you cry, eith Victor stepped forward and gave Eddie a hard openhanded push in the middle of his chest. Eddie stumbled half a step backward and then fell sprawling over Patrick, who had crouched directly behind his feet. He thudded to the gravel, scraping his arms. There was a whoof! as the wind rushed out of him. A moment later Henry Bowers was on top of him, his knees pinning Eddies arms, his butt on Eddies stomach. Got any rocks, Rock Man? Henry raved down at him, and Eddie was more frightened by the mad light in Henrys eyes than he was by the pain in his arms or by his inability to get his breath back. Henry was nuts. Somewhere close by, Patrick tittered. You wanna throw rocks? Huh? Ill give you rocks! Here! Heres some rocks! Henry swept up a handful of gravel and slammed it down into Eddies face. He rubbed the gravel into Eddies skin, cutting his cheeks, his eyelids, his lips. Eddie opened his mouth and screamed. Want rocks? Ill give you rocks! Heres some rocks, Rock Man! You want rocks? Okay! Okay! Okay! Gravel slammed into his open mouth, lacerating his gums, grinding against his teeth. He felt sparks fly against his fillings. He screamed again and spat gravel out. Want some more rocks? Okay? How about a few more? How about Stop that! Here, here! Stop that! You, boy! Quit on him! Right now! You hear me? Quit on him! Through halflidded, tearblurred eyes, Eddie saw a big hand come down and grab Henry by the collar of his shirt and the right strap of his biballs. The hand gave a yank and Henry was pulled off. He landed in the gravel and got up. Eddie rose more slowly. He was trying to scramble to his feet, but his scrambler seemed temporarily broken. He gasped and spat chunks of bloody gravel out of his mouth. It was Mr. Gedreau, dressed in his long white apron, and he looked furious. There was no fear in his face, although Henry stood about three inches taller and probably outweighed him by fifty pounds. There was no fear in his face because he was the grownup and Henry was the kid. Except this time, Eddie thought, that might not mean anything. Mr. Gedreau didnt understand. He didnt understand that Henry was nuts. You get out of here, Mr. Gedreau said, advancing on Henry until he stood toe to toe with the hulking sullenfaced boy. You get out and you dont want to come back, either. I dont hold with bullying. I dont hold with four against one. What would your mothers think? He swept the others with his hot, angry eyes. Moose and Victor dropped their gazes and examined their sneakers. Patrick only stared at and through Mr. Gedreau with that vacant graygreen look. Mr. Gedreau looked back at Henry and got just as far as You get on your bikes and when Henry gave him a good hard push. An expression of surprise that would have been comical in other circumstances spread across Mr. Gedreaus face as he flew backward, loose gravel spurting out from under his heels. He struck the steps leading up to the screen door and sat down hard. Why you he began. Henrys shadow fell on him. Get inside, he said. You Mr. Gedreau said, and this time he stopped on his own. Mr. Gedreau had finally seen it, Eddie realizedthe light in Henrys eyes. He got up quickly, apron flapping. He went up the stairs as fast as he could, stumbling on the second one from the top and going briefly to one knee. He was up again at once, but that stumble, as brief as it had been, seemed to rob him of the rest of his grownup authority. He spun around at the top and yelled Im calling the cops! Henry made as if to lunge for him, and Mr. Gedreau flinched back. That was the end, Eddie realized. As incredible, as unthinkable as it seemed, there was no protection for him here. It was time to go. While Henry was standing at the bottom of the steps and glaring up at Mr. Gedreau and while the others were staring, transfixed (and, except for Patrick Hockstetter, not a little horrified) by this sudden successful defiance of adult authority, Eddie saw his chance. He whirled, took to his heels, and ran. He was halfway up the block before Henry turned, his eyes blazing. Get him! he bellowed. Asthma or no asthma, Eddie ran them a good race that day. There were spaces, some of them as long as fifty feet, when he couldnt remember if the soles of his P.F. Flyers had touched the sidewalk or not. For a few moments he even entertained the giddy notion that he might be able to outrun them. Then, just before he reached Kansas Street and what might have been safety, a little kid on a trike suddenly pedaled out of a driveway and right into Eddies path. Eddie tried to swerve, but running fullout as he had been, he might have done better to jump over the kid (the kids name, in fact, was Richard Cowan, and he would grow up, marry, and father a son named Frederick Cowan, who would be drowned in a toilet and then be partially eaten by a thing that rose up from the toilet like black smoke and then took an unthinkable shape), or at least to try. One of Eddies feet caught on the trikes back deck, where an adventurous little shit might stand and push the trike along like a scooter. Richard Cowan, whose unborn son would be murdered by It twentyseven years later, barely rocked on his trike. Eddie, however, went flying.