It jerked him forward as if he had been no more than a ragdoll. Its jaws snapped open. Bastard He thrust a thumb into one of Its eyes. It bellowed with pain, and one of those clawtipped paws ripped through his shirt. Ben sucked his stomach in, but one of the claws pulled a sizzling line of pain down his torso. Blood gushed out of him and splattered on his pants, his sneakers, the floor. The Werewolf threw him into the bathtub. He thumped his head, saw stars, struggled into a sitting position, and saw his lap was full of blood. The Werewolf whirled around. Ben observed with that same lunatic clarity that It was wearing faded Levi Strauss bluejeans. The seams had split open. A snotcaked red bandanna, the sort a trainman might carry, hung from one back pocket. Written on the back of Its blackandorange highschool jacket were the words DERRY HIGH SCHOOL KILLING TEAM. Below this, the name PENNYWISE. And in the center, a number 13. It went for Bill again. He had gotten to his feet and now stood with his back to the wall, looking at It steadily. Shoot It, Beverly! Richie screamed again. Beepbeep, Richie, she heard herself reply from roughly a thousand miles away. The Werewolfs head was suddenly there, in the wishbone. She covered one of Its green eyes with the cup and released. There was no shake in either of her hands; she fired as smoothly and naturally as she had fired at the cans in the dump on the day they had all taken turns to see who was the best. There was time for Ben to think Oh Beverly if you miss this time were all dead and I dont want to die in this dirty bathtub but I cant get out. There was no miss. A round eyenot green but dead blacksuddenly appeared high up in the center of Its snout she had aimed for the right eye and missed by less than half an inch. Its screaman almost human scream of surprise, pain, fear, and ragewas deafening. Bens ears rang with it. Then the perfect round hole in Its snout was gone, obscured by freshets of blood. It was not flowing; it gouted from the wound in a highpressure torrent. The freshet drenched Bills face and hair. Doesnt matter, Ben thought hysterically. Dont worry, Bill. Nobody will be able to see it anyway when we get out of here. If we ever do. Bill and Beverly advanced on the Werewolf, and behind them, Richie cried out hysterically Shoot It again, Beverly ! Kill It! Kill It! Mike screamed. Thats right, kill It! Eddie chimed in. Kill It! Bill cried, his mouth drawn down in a quivering bow. There was a whitishyellow streak of plaster dust in his hair. Kill It, Beverly, dont let It get away! No ammo left, Ben thought incoherently, were slugged out. What are you talking about, kill It? But he looked at Beverly and understood. If his heart had never been hers before that moment, it would have flown to her then. She had pulled the sling back again. Her fingers were closed over the cup, hiding its emptiness. Kill It! Ben screamed, and flopped clumsily over the edge of the tub. His jeans and underwear were soaked against his skin with blood. He had no idea if he was hurt badly or not. Following the original hot sizzle there hadnt been much pain, but there sure was an awful lot of blood. The Werewolfs greenish eyes flickered among them, now filled with uncertainty as well as pain. Blood poured down the front of Its jacket in sheets. Bill Denbrough smiled. It was a gentle, rather lovely smile ... but it did not touch his eyes. You shouldnt have started with my brother, he said. Send the fucker to hell, Beverly. The uncertainty left the creatures eyesIt believed. With lithe smooth grace, It turned and dived into the drain. As It went, It changed. The Derry High jacket melted into Its pelt and the color ran out of both. The shape of Its skull elongated, as if It had been made of wax which was now softening and beginning to run. Its shape changed. For one instant Ben believed he had nearly seen what shape It really was, and his heart froze inside his chest, leaving him gasping. Ill kill you all! a voice roared from inside the drainpipe. It was thick, savage, not in the least human. Kill you all ... kill you all ... kill you all . . . The words faded back and back, diminishing, washing out, growing distant ... at last joining the low throbbing hum of the pumping machinery floating through the pipes. The house seemed to settle with a heavy subaudible thud. But it wasnt settling, Ben realized; in some strange way it was shrinking, coming back to its normal size. Whatever magic It had used to make the house at 29 Neibolt Street seem bigger was now withdrawn. The house snapped back like an elastic. It was only a house now, smelling damp and a little rotten, an unfurnished house where winos and hobos sometimes came to drink and talk and sleep out of the rain. It was gone. In Its wake the silence seemed very loud. 10 WWWe guhgot to ggget owowout of this pplace, Bill said. He walked over to where Ben was trying to get up and grabbed one of his outstretched hands. Beverly was standing near the drain. She looked down at herself and that coldness disappeared in a flush that seemed to turn all her skin into one warm stocking. It must have been a deep breath indeed. The dim popping sounds had been the buttons on her blouse. They were gone, every single one of them. The blouse hung open and her small breasts were clearly revealed. She snatched the blouse closed. RuhRuhRichie, Bill said. Help me with BBBen. Hes hhh Richie joined him, then Stan and Mike. The four of them got Ben to his feet. Eddie had gone to Beverly and put his good arm awkwardly around her shoulders. You did great, he said, and Beverly burst into tears. Ben took two big staggering steps to the wall and leaned against it before he could fall over again. His head felt light. Color kept washing in and out of the world. He felt decidedly pukey. Then Bills arm was around him, strong and comforting. How bbbad ihihis it, HHHaystack? Ben forced himself to look down at his stomach. He found performing two simple actionsbending his neck and spreading apart the slit in his shirttook more courage than he had needed to enter the house in the first place. He expected to see half his insides hanging down in front of him like grotesque udders. Instead he saw that the flow of blood had slowed to a sluggish trickle. The Werewolf had slashed him long and deep, but apparently not mortally. Richie joined them. He looked at the cut, which ran a twisting course down Bens chest and petered out on the upper bulge of his stomach, then soberly into Bens face. It just about had your guts for suspenders, Haystack. You know it? No fake, Jake, Ben said. He and Richie stared at each other for a long, considering moment, and then they broke into hysterical giggles at the same instant, spraying each other with spittle. Richie took Ben into his arms and pounded his back. We beat It, Haystack! We beat It! WWWe dihdihdihdidnt beat It, Bill said grimly. We got IIlucky. Lets gget out bbbefore IhIhIt dddecides to come buhback. Where? Mike asked. The BuhBuhBarrens, Bill said. Beverly made her way over to them, still holding her blouse closed. Her cheeks were bright red. The clubhouse? Bill nodded. Can I have someones shirt? Beverly asked, blushing more furiously than ever. Bill glanced down at her, and the blood came into his own face, all in a rush. He turned his eyes away hastily, but in that instant Ben felt a rush of knowledge and dismal jealousy. In that instant, that one bare second, Bill had become aware of her in a way that only Ben himself had been before. The others had also looked and then looked away. Richie coughed against the back of his hand. Stan turned red. And Mike Hanlon dropped back a step or two as if actually frightened by the sideswell of that one small white breast, visible below her hand. Beverly threw her head up, shaking her tangled hair back behind her. She was still blushing, but her face was lovely. I cant help it that Im a girl, she said, or that Im starting to get big on top.... Now cant I please have someones shirt? Shshsure, Bill said. He pulled his white teeshirt over his head, baring his narrow chest, the visible rack of his ribs, his sunburned, freckled shoulders. HHHere. Thank you, Bill, she said, and for one hot, smoking moment their eyes locked directly. Bill did not look away this time. His gaze was firm, adult. WWWWelcome, he said. Good luck, Big Bill, Ben thought, and he turned away from that gaze. It was hurting him, hurting him in a deeper place than any vampire or werewolf would ever be able to reach. But all the same, there was such a thing as propriety. The word he didnt know; on the concept he was very clear. Looking at them when they were looking at each other that way would be as wrong as looking at her breasts when she let go of the front of her blouse to pull Bills teeshirt over her head. If thats the way it is. But youll never love her the way I do. Never. Bills teeshirt came down almost to her knees. If not for the jeans poking out from beneath its hem, she would have looked as if she were wearing a short slip. LLLets guhguhgo, Bill repeated. I duhdont nuhknow about you gguys, but Ive hhhad eeeeenough for wuhwuhone dday. Turned out they all had. 11 The passage of an hour found them in the clubhouse, both the window and the trapdoor open. It was cool inside, and the Barrens was blessedly silent that day. They sat without talking much, each lost in his or her own thoughts. Richie and Bev passed a Marlboro back and forth. Eddie took a brief snort from his aspirator. Mike sneezed several times and apologized. He said he was catching a cold. Thass the oney theeng you could catch, senhorr, Richie said, companionably enough, and that was all. Ben kept expecting the mad interlude in the house on Neibolt Street to take on the hues of a dream. Itll recede and fall apart, he thought, the way that bad dreams do. You wake up gasping and sweating all over, but fifteen minutes later you cant remember what the dream was even about. But that didnt happen. Everything that had happened, from the time he had forced his way in through the cellar window to the moment Bill had used the chair in the kitchen to break a window so they could get out, remained bright and clearly fixed in his memory. It had not been a dream. The clotted wound on his chest and belly was not a dream, and it didnt matter if his mom could see it or not. At last Beverly stood up. I have to go home, she said. I want to change before my mom gets home. If she sees me wearing a boys shirt, shell kill me. Keel you, senhorrita, Richie agreed, but she weel keel you slow.  Beepbeep, Richie. Bill was looking at her gravely. Ill return your shirt, Bill. He nodded and waved a hand to show that this wasnt important. Will you get in trouble? Coming home without it? NNo. They hhhardly nuhhotice when Im aaaround, anyway.  She nodded, bit her full underlip, a girl of eleven who was tall for her age and simply beautiful. What happens next, Bill? I dddont nuhnuhknow. Its not over, is it? Bill shook his head. Ben said, Itll want us more than ever now. More silver slugs? she asked him. He found he could barely stand to meet her glance. I love you, Beverly . . . just let me have that. You can have Bill, or the world, or whatever you need. Just let me have that, let me go on loving you, and I guess itll be enough. I dont know, Ben said. We could, but ... He trailed off vaguely, shrugged. He could not say what he felt, was somehow not able to bring it outthat this was like being in a monster movie, but it wasnt. The mummy had looked different in some ways ... ways that confirmed its essential reality. The same was true of the Werewolfhe could testify to that because he had seen it in a paralyzing closeup no film, not even one in 3D, allowed, he had had his hands in the wiry underbrush of Its tangled pelt, he had seen a small, balefulorange firespot (like a pompom!) in one of Its green eyes. These things were ... well . . . they were dreamsmadereal. And once dreams became real, they escaped the power of the dreamer and became their own deadly things, capable of independent action. The silver slugs had worked because the seven of them had been unified in their belief that they would. But they hadnt killed It. And next time It would approach them in a new shape, one over which silver wielded no power. Power, power, Ben thought, looking at Beverly. It was okay now; her eyes had met Bills again and they were looking at each other as if lost. It was only for a moment, but to Ben it seemed very long. It always comes back to power. I love Beverly Marsh and shehaspower over me. She loves Bill Denbrough and so he has power over her. ButI thinkhe is coming to love her. Maybe it was her face, how it looked when she said she couldnt help being a girl. Maybe it was seeing one breast for just a second. Maybe just the way she looks sometimes when the light is right, or her eyes. Doesnt matter. But if hes starting to love her, shes starting to have power over him. Superman has power, except when theres Kryptonite around. Batman has power, even though he cant fly or see through walls. My mom has power over me, and her boss down in the mill has power over her. Everyone has some ... except maybe for little kids and babies. Then he thought that even little kids and babies had power; they could cry until you had to do something to shut them up. Ben? Beverly asked, looking back at him. Cat got your tongue? Huh? No. I was thinking about power. The power of the slugs. Bill was looking at him closely. I was wondering where that power came from, Ben said. IhIhIt Bill began, and then shut his mouth. A thoughtful expression drifted over his face. I really have to go, Beverly said. Ill see you all, huh? Sure, come on down tomorrow, Stan said. Were going to break Eddies other arm. They all laughed. Eddie pretended to throw his aspirator at Stan. Bye, then, Beverly said, and boosted herself up and out. Ben looked at Bill and saw that he hadnt joined in the laughter. That thoughtful expression was still on his face, and Ben knew you would have to call his name two or three times before he would answer. He knew what Bill was thinking about; he would be thinking about it himself in the days ahead. Not all the time, no. There would be clothes to hang out and take in for his mother, games of tag and guns in the Barrens, and, during a rainy spell the first four days of August, the seven of them would go on a mad Parcheesi jag at Richie Toziers house, making blockades, sending each other back with great abandon, deliberating exactly how to split the roll of the dice while rain dripped and ran outside. His mother would announce to him that she believed Pat Nixon was the prettiest woman in America, and be horrorstruck when Ben opted for Marilyn Monroe (except for the color of her hair, he thought that Bev looked like Marilyn Monroe). There would be time to eat as many Twinkies and RingDings and Devil Dogs as he could get his hands on, and time to sit on the back porch reading Lucky Starr and the Moons of Mercury. There would be time for all of those things while the wound on his chest and belly healed to a scab and began to itch, because life went on and at eleven, although bright and apt, he held no real sense of perspective. He could live with what had happened in the house on Neibolt Street. The world was, after all, full of wonders. But there would be odd moments of time when he pulled the questions out again and examined them The power of the silver, the power of the slugswhere does power like that come from? Where does any power come from? How do you get it? How do you use it? It seemed to him that their lives might depend on those questions. One night as he was falling asleep, the rain a steady lulling patter on the roof and against the windows, it occurred to him that there was another question, perhaps the only question. It had some real shape; he had nearly seen It. To see the shape was to see the secret. Was that also true of power? Perhaps it was. For wasnt it true that power, like It, was a shapechanger? It was a baby crying in the middle of the night, it was an atomic bomb, it was a silver slug, it was the way Beverly looked at Bill and the way Bill looked back. What, exactly what, was power, anyway? 12 Nothing much happened for the next two weeks. DERRY THE FOURTH INTERLUDE You got to lose You cant win all the time. You got to lose You cant win all the time, whatd I say? I know, pretty baby, I see trouble comin down the line. John Lee Hooker, You Got to Lose April 6th, 1985 Tell you what, friends and neighborsIm drunk tonight. Fuckdrunk. Rye whiskey. Went down to Wallys and got started, went to the greenfront down on Center Street half an hour before they closed and bought a fifth of rye. I know what Im up to. Drink cheap tonight, pay dear tomorrow. So here he sits, one drunk nigger in a public library after closing, with this book open in front of me and the bottle of Old Kentucky on my left. Tell the truth and shame the devil, my mom used to say, but she forgot to tell me that sometimes you cant shame Mr. Splitfoot sober. The Irish know, but of course theyre Gods white niggers and who knows, maybe theyre a step ahead. Want to write about drink and the devil. Remember Treasure Island? The old seadog at the Admiral Benbow. Well do em yet, Jacky! I bet the bitter old fuck even believed it. Full of rumor ryeyou can believe anything. Drink and the devil. Okay. Amuses me sometimes to think how long Id last if I actually published some of this stuff I write in the dead of night. If I flashed some of the skeletons in Derrys closet. There is a library Board of Directors. Eleven of them. One is a seventyyearold writer who suffered a stroke two years ago and who now often needs help to find his place on each meetings printed agenda (and who has sometimes been observed picking large dry boogers out of his hairy nostrils and placing them carefully in his ear, as if for safekeeping). Another is a pushy woman who came here from New York with her doctor husband and who talks in a constant, whiny monologue about how provincial Derry is, how no one here understands THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE and how one has to go to Boston to buy a skirt one would care to be seen in. Last time this anorexic babe spoke to me without the services of an intermediary was during the Boards Christmas party about a year and a half ago. She had consumed a pretty large amount of gin, and asked me if anyone in Derry understood THE BLACK EXPERIENCE. I had also consumed a pretty large amount of gin, and answered Mrs. Gladry, Jews may be a great mystery, but niggers are understood the whole world round. She choked on her drink, turned around so sharply that her panties were momentarily visible under her flaring skirt (not a very interesting view; would that it had been Carole Danner!), and so ended my last informal conversation with Mrs. Ruth Gladry. No great loss. The other members of the Board are the descendants of the lumber barons. Their support of the library is an act of inherited expiation they raped the woods and now care for these books the way a libertine might decide, in his middle age, to provide for the gaily gotten bastards of his youth. It was their grandfathers and greatgrandfathers who actually spread the legs of the forests north of Derry and Bangor and raped those greengowned virgins with their axes and peaveys. They cut and slashed and striptimbered and never looked back. They tore the hymen of those great forests open when Grover Cleveland was President and had pretty well finished the job by the time Woodrow Wilson had his stroke. These laceruffled ruffians raped the great woods, impregnated them with a litter of slash and junk spruce, and changed Derry from a sleepy little shipbuilding town into a booming honkytonk where the ginmills never closed and the whores turned tricks all night long. One old campaigner, Egbert Thoroughgood, now ninetythree, told me of taking a slatthin prostitute in a crib on Baker Street (a street which no longer exists; middleclass apartment housing stands quietly where Baker Street once boiled and brawled). I only realized after I spent mspunk in her that she was laying in a pool of jizzum maybe an inch deep. Stuff had just about gone to jelly. Girl, I says, aint you never cared for yself? She looks down and says, Ill put on a new sheet if you want to go again. Theres two in the cubud down the hall, I think. I knows pretty much what Im layin in until nine or ten, but by midnight my cunts so numb it mights well be in Ellsworth. So that was Derry right through the first twenty or so years of the twentieth century all boom and booze and balling. The Penobscot and the Kenduskeag were full of floating logs from iceout in April to icein in November. The business began to slack off in the twenties without the Great War or the hardwoods to feed it, and it staggered to a stop during the Depression. The lumber barons put their money in those New York or Boston banks that had survived the Crash and left Derrys economy to liveor dieon its own. They retreated to their gracious houses on West Broadway and sent their children to private schools in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York. And lived on their interest and political connections. Whats left of their supremacy seventysome years after Egbert Thoroughgood spent his love with a dollar whore in a spermy Baker Street bed are empty wildwoods in Penobscot and Aroostook Counties and the great Victorian houses which stand for two blocks along West Broadway ... and my library, of course. Except those good folks from West Broadway would take my library away from me in jig time (pun definitely intended) if I published anything about the Legion of Decency, the fire at the Black Spot, the execution of the Bradley Gang ... or the affair of Claude Heroux and the Silver Dollar. The Silver Dollar was a beerjoint, and what may have been the queerest mass murder in the entire history of America took place there in September of 1905. There are still a few oldtimers in Derry who claim to remember it, but the only account that I really trust is Thoroughgoods. He was eighteen when it happened. Thoroughgood now lives in the Paulson Nursing Home. Hes toothless, and his Saint Johns Valley FrancoDowneast accent is so thick that probably only another old Mainer could understand what he was saying if his talk were written down phonetically. Sandy Ives, the folklorist from the University of Maine whom I have mentioned previously in these wild pages, helped me to translate my audio tapes. Claude Heroux was, according to Thoroughgood, Un bat Cannuck sonofawhore widdin eye thatd roll adju like a marts in dem oonlight. (Translation One bad Canuck son of a whore with an eye that would roll at you like a mares in the moonlight.) Thoroughgood said that heand everyone else who had worked with Herouxbelieved the man was as sly as a chickenstealing dog . . . which made his hatchetwielding foray into the Silver Dollar all the more startling. It was not in character. Up until then, lumbermen in Derry had believed Herouxs talents ran more to lighting fires in the woods. The summer of 05 was long and hot and there had been many fires in the woods. The biggest of them, which Heroux later admitted he set by simply putting a lighted candle in the middle of a pile of woodchips and kindling, happened in Havens Big Injun Woods. It burned twenty thousand acres of prime hardwood, and you could smell the smoke of it thirtyfive miles away as the horsedrawn trollies breasted UpMile Hill in Derry. In the spring of that year there had been some brief talk about unionizing. There were four lumbermen involved in organizing (not that there was much to organize; Maine workingmen were antiunion then and are mostly antiunion now), and one of the four was Claude Heroux, who probably saw his union activities as a chance to talk big and spend a lot of time drinking down on Baker and Exchange Streets. Heroux and the other three called themselves organizers; the lumber barons called them ringleaders. A proclamation nailed to the cooksheds in lumber camps from Monroe to Haven Village to Sumner Plantation to Millinocket informed lumbermen that any man overheard talking union would be fired off the job immediately. In May of that year there was a brief strike up near Trapham Notch, and although the strike was broken in short order, both by scabs and by town constables (and that was rather peculiar, you understand, since there were nearly thirty town constables swinging axehandles and creasing skulls, but before that day in May, there hadnt been so much as a single constable in Trapham Notchwhich had a population of seventynine in the census of 1900so far as anyone knew), Heroux and his organizing friends considered it a great victory for their cause. Accordingly, they came down to Derry to get drunk and to do some more organizing ... or ringleading, depending on whose side you favored. Whichever, it must have been dry work. They hit most of the bars in Hells HalfAcre, finishing up in the Sleepy Silver Dollar, arms around each others shoulders, pissingdownyourleg drunk, alternating union songs with bathetic tunes like My Mothers Eyes Are Looking Down from Heaven, although I myself think any mother looking down from there and seeing her son in such a state might well have been excused for turning away. According to Egbert Thoroughgood, the only reason anyone could figure for Herouxs being in the movement at all was Davey Hartwell. Hartwell was the chief organizer or ringleader, and Heroux was in love with him. Nor was he the only one; most of the men in the movement loved Hartwell deeply and passionately, with that proud love men save for those of their own sex who possess a magnetism that seems to approach divinity. Dawey Ardwell wadda main who walk lak e ohn heffa de worl an haddim a daylah on de resp, Thoroughgood said. (Translation Davey Hartwell was a man who walked like he owned half of the world and had him a deadlock on the rest.) Heroux followed Hartwell into the organizing business the way he would have followed him if he had decided to go for a shipbuilder up in Brewer or down in Bath, or building the Seven Trestles over in Vermont, or trying to bring back the Pony Express out west, for that matter. Heroux was sly and he was mean, and I suppose that in a novel that would preclude any good qualities at all. But sometimes, when a man has spent a life being distrusted and distrustful, being a loner (or a Loser) both by choice and by reason of societys opinions of him, he can find a friend or a lover and simply live for that person, the way a dog lives for its master. Thats the way it seems to have been between Heroux and Hartwell. Anyway, there were four of them who spent that night in the Brentwood Arms Hotel, which was then called the Floating Dog by the lumbermen (the reason why is lost in obscurity, as defunct as the hotel itself). Four checked in; none checked out. One of them, Andy DeLesseps, was never seen again. For all history tells, he might have spent the rest of his life living in pleasant ease in Portsmouth, but somehow I doubt it. Two of the other ringleaders, Amsel Bickford and Davey Hartwell himself, were found floating facedown in the Kenduskeag. Bickford was missing his head; someone had taken it off with the swipe of a woodsmans twohander. Both of Hartwells legs were gone, and those who found him swore that they had never seen such an expression of pain and horror on a human face. Something had distended his mouth, stuffing out his cheeks, and when his discoverers turned him over and spread his lips, seven of his toes fell out onto the mud. Some thought he might have lost the other three during his years working in the woods; others held the opinion that he might have swallowed them before he died. Pinned to the back of each mans shirt was a paper with the word UNION on it. Claude Heroux was never brought to trial for what happened in the Silver Dollar on the night of September 9th, 1905, so theres no way of knowing exactly how he escaped the fate of the others that night in May. We could make assumptions; he had been on his own a long time, had learned how to jump fast, had perhaps developed the knack some curdogs have of getting out just before real trouble develops. But why didnt he take Hartwell with him? Or was he perhaps taken into the woods with the rest of the agitators? Maybe they were saving him for last, and he was able to get away even while Hartwells screams (which would have grown muffled as they jammed his toes into his mouth) were echoing in the dark and scaring birds off their roosts. Theres no way of knowing, not for sure, but that last feels right to my heart. Claude Heroux became a ghostman. He would come strolling into a camp in the Saint Johns Valley, line up at the cookshed with the rest of the loggers, get a bowl of stew, eat it, and be gone before anyone realized he wasnt one of the topping gang. Weeks after that hed show up in a Winterport beerjoint, talking union and swearing hed have his revenge on the men that had murdered his friendsHamilton Tracker, William Mueller, and Richard Bowie were the names he mentioned the most frequently. All of them lived in Derry, and their gabled gambrelled cupolaed houses stand on West Broadway to this day. Years later, they and their descendants would fire the Black Spot. That there were people who would have liked Claude Heroux put out of the way cannot be doubted, particularly after the fires started in June of that year. But although Heroux was seen frequently, he was quick and had an animals awareness of danger. So far as I have been able to find out, no official warrant was ever sworn out against him, and the police never took a hand. Maybe there were fears about what Heroux might say if he was brought to trial for arson. Whatever the reasons, the woods around Derry and Haven burned all that hot summer. Children disappeared, there were more fights and murders than usual, and a pall of fear as real as the smoke you could smell from the top of UpMile Hill lay over the town. The rains finally came on September 1st, and it rained for a solid week. Downtown Derry was flooded out, which was not unusual, but the big houses on West Broadway were high above downtown, and in some of those big houses there must have been sighs of relief. Let the crazy Canuck hide out in the woods all winter, if thats what he wants, they might have said. His works done for this summer, and well get him before the roots dry next June. Then came September 9th. I cannot explain what happened; Thoroughgood cannot explain it; so far as I know, no one can. I can only relate the events which occurred. The Sleepy Silver Dollar was full of loggers drinking beer. Outside, it was drawing down toward misty dark. The Kenduskeag was high and silversullen, filling its channel from bank to bank, and according to Egbert Thoroughgood, a fallish wind was blowinthe kine dat allus fine de hole in ypaints and blow strayduppa cracka yo ais. The streets were quagmires. There was a card game going on at one of the tables in the back of the room. They were William Muellers men. Mueller was part owner of the GSWM rail line as well as a lumber potentate who owned millions of acres of prime timber, and the men who were playing poker in the Dollar that night were parttime lumbermen, parttime railroad bulls, and fulltime trouble. Two of them, Tinker McCutcheon and Floyd Calderwood, had done jailtime. With them were Lathrop Rounds (his nickname, as obscure as the Floating Dog Hotel, was El Katook), David Stugley Grenier, and Eddie Kinga bearded man whose spectacles were almost as fat as his gut. It seems very likely that they were at least some of the men who had spent the last two and a half months keeping an eye out for Claude Heroux.


It seems just as likelyalthough there is not a shred of proofthat they were in on the little cutting party ;n May when Hartwell and Bickford were laid low. The bar was crowded, Thoroughgood said; dozens of men were bellied up there, drinking beer and eating bar lunches and dripping onto the sawdustcovered dirt floor. The door opened and in came Claude Heroux. He had a woodsmans doublebitted axe in his hand. He stepped up to the bar and elbowed himself a place. Egbert Thoroughgood was standing on his left; he said that Heroux smelled like a polecat stew. The barman brought Heroux a schooner of beer, two hardcooked eggs in a bowl, and a shaker of salt. Heroux paid him with a twodollar bill and put his changea dollareightyfiveinto one of the flap pockets of his lumbermans jacket. He salted his eggs and ate them. He salted his beer, drank it off, and uttered a belch. More room out than there is in, Claude, Thoroughgood said, just as if half the enforcers in northern Maine hadnt been on the prod for Heroux all that summer. You know thats the truth, Heroux said, except, being a Canuck, what he probably said came out sounding more like You know dat da troot. He ordered himself another schooner, drank up, and belched again. Talk at the bar went on. Several people called to Claude, and Claude nodded and waved, but he didnt smile. Thoroughgood said he looked like a man who was half in a dream. At the table in back, the poker game went on. El Katook was dealing. No one bothered to tell any of the players that Claude Heroux was in the bar . . . although, since their table was no more than twenty feet away, and since Claudes name was hollered more than once by people who knew him, it is hard to know how they could have gone on playing, unaware of his potentially murderous presence. But that is what occurred. After he finished his second schooner of beer, Heroux excused himself to Thoroughgood, picked up his twohander, and went back to the table where Muellers men were playing fivecard stud. Then he started cutting. Floyd Calderwood had just poured himself a glass of rye whiskey and was setting the bottle back down when Heroux arrived and chopped Calderwoods hand off at the wrist. Calderwood looked at his hand and screamed; it was still holding the bottle but all of a sudden wasnt attached to anything but wet gristle and trailing veins. For a moment the severed hand clutched the bottle even tighter, and then it fell off and lay on the table like a dead spider. Blood spouted from his wrist. At the bar, somebody called for more beer and someone else asked the bartender, whose name was Jonesy, if he was still dyeing his hair. Never dyed it, Jonesy said in an illtempered way; he was vain of his hair. Met a whore down at Ma Courtneys who said what grows around your pecker is just as white as snow, the fellow said. She was a liar, Jonesy replied. Drop your pants and lets us see, said a lumberman named Falkland, with whom Egbert Thoroughgood had been matching for drinks before Heroux came in. This provoked general laughter. Behind them, Floyd Calderwood was shrieking. A few of the men leaning against the bar took a casual look around in time to see Claude Heroux bury his woodsmans axe in Tinker McCutcheons head. Tinker was a big man with a black beard going gray. He got halfway up, blood pouring down his face, then sat down again. Heroux pulled the axe out of his head. Tinker started to get up again, and Heroux slung the axe sideways, burying it in his back. It made a sound, Thoroughgood said, like a load of laundry being dropped on a rug. Tinker flopped over the table, his cards spraying out of his hand. The others players were hollering and bellowing. Calderwood, still shrieking, was trying to pick up his right hand with his left as his lifes blood ran out of his stump of a wrist in a steady stream. Stugley Grenier had what Thoroughgood called a clutchpistol (meaning a gun in a shoulderholster) and he was grabbing for it with no success whatsoever. Eddie King tried to get up and fell right out of his chair on his back. Before he could get up, Heroux was standing astride him, the axe slung up over his head. King screamed and held up both hands in a wardingoff gesture. Please, Claude, I just got married last month! King screamed. The axe came down, its head almost disappearing in Kings ample gut. Blood sprayed all the way up to the Dollars beamed roof. Eddie began to crawfish on the floor. Claude pulled the axe out of him the way a good woodsman will pull his axe out of a softwood tree, kind of rocking it back and forth to loosen the clinging grip of the sappy wood. When it was free he slung it up over his head. He brought it down again and Eddie King stopped screaming. Claude Heroux wasnt done with him, however; he began to chop King up like kindlingwood. At the bar, conversation had turned to what sort of winter lay ahead. Vernon Stanchfield, a farmer from Palmyra, claimed it would be a mild onefall rain uses up winter snow was his scripture. Alfie Naugler, who had a farm out on the Naugler Road in Derry (it is gone now; where Alfie Naugler once grew his peas and beans and beets, the Interstate extension now runs its 8.8mile, sixlane course), begged to disagree. Alfie claimed the coming winter was going to be a jeezer. He had seen as many as eight rings on some of the mohair caterpillars, he said, an unheardof number. Another man held out for ice; another for mud. The Blizzard of 01 was duly recalled. Jonesy sent schooners of beer and bowls of hardcooked eggs skidding down the bar. Behind them the screaming went on and the blood flowed in rivers. At this point in my questioning of Egbert Thoroughgood, I turned off my cassette recorder and asked him How did it happen? Are you saying you didnt know it was going on, or that you knew but you let it go on, or just what? Thoroughgoods chin sank down to the top button of his foodspotted vest. His eyebrows drew together. The silence in Thoroughgoods room, small, cramped, and medicinalsmelling, spun out so long that I was about to repeat my question when he replied We knew. But it didnt seem to matter. It was like politics, in a way. Ayuh, like that. Like town business. Best let people who understand politics take care of that and people who understand town business take care of that. Such things be best done if working men dont mix in. Are you really talking about fate and just afraid to come out and say so? I asked suddenly. The question was simply jerked out of me, and I certainly did not expect Thoroughgood, who was old and slow and unlettered, to answer it ... but he did, with no surprise at all. Ayuh, he said. Mayhap I am. While the men at the bar went on talking about the weather, Claude Heroux went on cutting. Stugley Grenier had finally managed to clear his clutchpistol. The axe was descending for another chop at Eddie King, who was by then in pieces. The bullet Grenier fired struck the head of the axe and ricocheted off with a spark and a whine. El Katook got to his feet and started backing away. He was still holding the deck he had been dealing from; cards were fluttering off the bottom and onto the floor. Claude came after him. El Katook held out his hands. Stugley Grenier got off another round, which didnt come within ten feet of Heroux. Stop, Claude, El Katook said. Thoroughgood said it appeared like Katook was trying to smile. I wasnt with them. I didnt mix in at all. Heroux only growled. I was in Millinocket, El Katok said, his voice starting to rise toward a scream. I was in Millinocket, I swear it on my mothers name! Ask anybody if you dont believe meeeee. . . . Claude raised the dripping axe, and El Katook sprayed the rest of the cards into his face. The axe came down, whistling. El Katook ducked. The axehead buried itself in the planking that formed the Silver Dollars back wall. El Katook tried to run. Claude hauled the axe out of the wall and poked it between his ankles. El Katook went sprawling. Stugley Grenier shot at Heroux again, this time having a bit more luck. He had been aiming at the crazed lumbermans head; the bullet struck home in the fleshy part of Herouxs thigh. Meantime, El Katook was crawling busily toward the door with his hair hanging in his face. Heroux swung the axe again, snarling and gibbering, and a moment later Katooks severed head was rolling across the sawduststrewn floor, the tongue popped bizarrely out between the teeth. It rolled to a stop by the booted foot of a lumberman named Varney, who had spent most of the day in the Dollar and who, by then, was so exquisitely slopped that he didnt know if he was on land or at sea. He kicked the head away without looking down to see what it was, and hollered for Jonesy to run him down another beer. El Katook crawled another three feet, blood spraying from his neck in a hightension jet, before he realized he was dead and collapsed. That left Stugley. Heroux turned on him, but Stugley had run into the outhouse and locked the door. Heroux chopped his way in, hollering and blabbering and raving, slobber falling from his jaws. When he got in, Stugley was gone, although the cold, leaky little room was windowless. Heroux stood there for a moment, head lowered, powerful arms slimed and splattered with blood, and then, with a roar, he flipped up the lid of the threeholer. He was just in time to see Stugleys boots disappearing under the ragged board skirting of the outhouse wall. Stugley Grenier ran screaming down Exchange Street in the rain, beshitted from top to toe, crying that he was being murdered. He survived the cutting party in the Silver Dollarhe was the only one who didbut after three months of listening to jokes about his method of escape, he quitted the Derry area forever. Heroux stepped out of the toilet and stood in front of it like a bull after a charge, head down, his axe held in front of him. He was puffing and blowing and covered with gore from head to foot. Shut the door, Claude, that shitpot stinks to high heaven, Thoroughgood said. Claude dropped his axe on the floor and did as he had been asked. He walked over to the cardstrewn table where his victims had been sitting, kicking one of Eddie Kings severed legs out of his way. Then he simply sat down and put his head in his arms. The drinking and conversation at the bar went on. Five minutes later more men began to pile in, three or four sheriffs deputies among them (the one in charge was Lal Machens father, and when he saw the mess he had a heart attack and had to be taken away to Dr. Shratts office). Claude Heroux was led away. He was docile when they took him, more asleep than awake. That night the bars all up and down Exchange and Baker Streets boomed and hollered with news of the slaughter. A righteous drunken sort of fury began to build up, and when the bars closed better than seventy men headed downtown toward the jail and the courthouse. They had torches and lanterns. Some were carrying guns, some had axes, some had peaveys. The County Sheriff wasnt due from Bangor until the noon stage the next day, so he wasnt there, and Goose Machen was laid up in Dr. Shratts infirmary with his heart attack. The two deputies who were sitting in the office playing cribbage heard the mob coming and got out of there fast. The drunks broke in and dragged Claude Heroux out of his cell. He didnt protest much; he seemed dazed, vacant. They carried him on their shoulders like a football hero; down to Canal Street they carried him, and there they lynched him from an old elm that overhung the Canal. He was so far gone that he didnt kick but twice, Egbert Thoroughgood said. It was, so far as the town records show, the only lynching to ever take place in this part of Maine. And almost needless to say, it was not reported in the Derry News. Many of those who had gone on drinking unconcernedly while Heroux went about his business in the Silver Dollar were in the necktie party that strung him up. By midnight their mood had changed. I asked Thoroughgood my final question had he seen anyone he didnt know during that days violence? Someone who struck him as strange, out of place, funny, even clownish? Someone who would have been drinking at the bar that afternoon, someone who had maybe turned into one of the rabblerousers that night as the drinking went on and the talk turned to lynching? Mayhap there was, Thoroughgood replied. He was tired by then, drooping, ready for his afternoon nap. It were a long time ago, mister. Long and long. But you remember something, I said. I remember thinkin that there must be a county fair up Bangor way, Thoroughgood said. I was having a beer in the Bloody Bucket that night. The Bucket was about six doors from the Silver Dollar. There was a fella in there . . . comical sort of fella . . . doing flips and rollovers . . . jugglin glasses . . . tricks . . . put four dimes on his forrid and theyd stay right there . . . comical, you know. . . . His bony chin had sunk to his chest again. He was going to sleep right in front of me. Spittle began to bubble at the corners of his mouth, which had as many tucks and wrinkles as a ladys changepurse. Seen him a few nown thens since, Thoroughgood said. Figure maybe he had such a good time that night . . . that he decided to stick around. Yeah. Hes been around a long time, I said. His only response was a weak snore. Thoroughgood had gone to sleep in his chair by the window, with his medicines and nostrums lined up beside him on the sill, soldiers of old age at muster. I turned off my taperecorder and just sat looking at him for a moment, this strange timetraveller from the year 1890 or so, who remembered when there were no cars, no electric lights, no airplanes, no state of Arizona. Pennywise had been there, guiding them down the path toward another gaudy sacrificejust one more in Derrys long history of gaudy sacrifices. That one, in September of 1905, ushered in a heightened period of terror that would include the Eastertide explosion of the Kitchener Ironworks the following year. This raises some interesting (and, for all I know, vitally important) questions. What does It really eat, for instance? I know that some of the children have been partially eatenthey show bitemarks, at leastbut perhaps it is we who drive It to do that. Certainly we have all been taught since earliest childhood that what the monster does when it catches you in the deep wood is eat you. That is perhaps the worst thing we can conceive. But its really faith that monsters live on, isnt it? I am led irresistibly to this conclusion food may be life, but the source of power is faith, not food. And who is more capable of a total act of faith than a child? But theres a problem kids grow up. In the church, power is perpetuated and renewed by periodic ritualistic acts. In Derry, power seems to be perpetuated and renewed by periodic ritualistic acts, too. Can it be that It protects Itself by the simple fact that, as the children grow into adults, they become either incapable of faith or crippled by a sort of spiritual and imaginative arthritis? Yes. I think thats the secret here. And if I make the calls, how much will they remember? How much will they believe? Enough to end this horror once and for all, or only enough to get them killed? They are being calledI know that much. Each murder in this new cycle has been a call. We almost killed It twice, and in the end we drove it deep in Its warren of tunnels and stinking rooms under the city. But I think It knows another secret although It may be immortal (or almost so), we are not. It had only to wait until the act of faith, which made us potential monsterkillers as well as sources of power, had become impossible. Twentyseven years. Perhaps a period of sleep for It, as short and refreshing as an afternoon nap would be for us. And when It awakes, It is the same, but a third of our lives has gone by. Our perspectives have narrowed; our faith in the magic, which makes magic possible, has worn off like the shine on a new pair of shoes after a hard days walking. Why call us back? Why not just let us die? Because we nearly killed It, because we frightened It, I think. Because It wants revenge. And now, now that we no longer believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Hansel and Gretel, or the troll under the bridge, It is ready for us. Come on back, It says. Come on back, lets finish our business in Derry. Bring your jacks and your marbles and your yoyos! Well play! Come on back and well see if you remember the simplest thing of all how it is to be children, secure in belief and thus afraid of the dark. On that one at least, I score a thousand percent I am frightened. So goddam frightened. PART 5 THE RITUAL OF CHD It is not to be done. The seepage has rotted out the curtain. The mesh is decayed. Loosen the flesh from the machine, build no more bridges. Through what air will you fly to span the continents? Let the words fall any way at allthat they may hit love aslant. It will be a rare visitation. They want to rescue too much, the flood has done its work William Carlos Williams, Paterson Look and remember. Look upon this land, Far, far across the factories and the grass. Surely, there, surely they will let you pass. Speak then and ask the forest and the loam. What do you hear? What does the land command? The earth is taken this is not your home.  Karl Shapiro, Travelogue for Exiles CHAPTER 19 In the Watches of the Night 1 The Derry Public Library  115 A.M. When Ben Hanscom finished the story of the silver slugs, they wanted to talk, but Mike told them he wanted them all to get some sleep. Youve had enough for now, he said, but Mike was the one who looked as if he had had enough; his face was tired and drawn, and Beverly thought he looked physically ill. But were not done, Eddie said. What about the rest of it? I still dont remember Mikes rrright, Bill said. Either well remember or we wwont. I think we wwill. Weve remembered all that we nuhneed to. Maybe all thats good for us? Richie suggested. Mike nodded. Well meet tomorrow. Then he glanced at the clock. Later today, I mean. Here? Beverly asked. Mike shook his head slowly. I suggest we meet on Kansas Street. Where Bill used to hide his bike. Were going down into the Barrens, Eddie said, and suddenly shivered. Mike nodded again. There was a moment of quiet while they looked around at each other. Then Bill got to his feet, and the others rose with him. I want you all to be careful for the rest of the night, Mike said. Its been here; It can be wherever you are. But this meeting has made me feel better. He looked at Bill. Id say it still can be done, wouldnt you, Bill? Bill nodded slowly. Yes. I think it still can be done. It will know that, too, Mike said, and It will do whatever It can to slug the odds in Its favor. What do we do if It shows up? Richie asked. Hold our noses, shut our eyes, turn around three times, and think good thoughts? Puff some magic dust in Its face? Sing old Elvis Presley songs? What? Mike shook his head. If I could tell you that, there would be no problem, would there? All I know is that theres another forceat least there was when we were kidsthat wanted us to stay alive and to do the job. Maybe its still there. He shrugged. It was a weary gesture. I thought two, maybe as many as three of you would be gone by the time we started our meeting tonight. Missing or dead. Just seeing you turn up gave me reason to hope. Richie looked at his watch. Quarter past one. How the time flies when youre having fun, right, Haystack? Beepbeep, Richie, Ben said, and smiled wanly. You want to walk back to the TuhTuhTown House with me, Beverly? Bill asked. All right. She was putting on her coat. The library seemed very silent now, shadowy, frightening. Bill felt the last two days catching up with him all at once, piling up on his back. If it had just been weariness, that would have been okay, but it was more a feeling that he was cracking up, dreaming, having delusions of paranoia. A sensation of being watched. Maybe Im really not here at all, he thought. Maybe Im in Dr. Sewards lunatic asylum, with the Counts crumbling townhouse next door and Renfield just across the hall, him with his flies and me with my monsters, both of us sure the party is really going on and dressed to the nines for it, not in tuxedos but in straitwaistcoats. What about you, RRichie? Richie shook his head. Im going to let Haystack and Kaspbrak lead me home, he said. Right, fellers? Sure, Ben said. He looked briefly at Beverly, who was standing close to Bill, and felt a pain he had almost forgotten. A new memory trembled, almost within his grasp, then floated away. What about you, MMMike? Bill asked. Want to walk with Bev and mme? Mike shook his head. Ive got to That was when Beverly screamed, a highpitched sound in the stillness. The vaulted dome overhead picked it up, and the echoes were like the laughter of banshees, flying and flapping around them. Bill turned toward her; Richie dropped his sportcoat as he was taking it off the back of his chair; there was a crash of glass as Eddies arm swept an empty gin bottle onto the floor. Beverly was backing away from them, her hands held out, her face as white as good bond paper. Her eyes, deep in duskypurple sockets, bulged. My hands! She screamed. My hands! What Bill began, and then he saw the blood dripping slowly between her shaking fingers. He started forward and felt sudden lines of painful warmth cross his own hands. The pain was not sharp; it was more like the pain one sometimes feels in an old healed wound. The old scars on his palm, the ones which had reappeared in England, had broken open and were bleeding. He looked sideways and saw Eddie Kaspbrak peering stupidly down at his own hands. They were also bleeding. So were Mikes. And Richies. And Bens. Were in it to the end, arent we? Beverly said. She had begun to cry. This sound was also magnified in the librarys still emptiness; the building itself seemed to be weeping with her. Bill thought that if he had to listen to that sound for long, he would go mad. God help us, were in it to the end. She sobbed, and a runner of snot depended from one of her nostrils. She wiped it off with the back of one shaking hand, and more blood dripped on the floor. QuhQuhQuick! Bill said, and seized Eddies hand. What Quick! He held out his other hand, and after a moment Beverly took it. She was still crying. Yes, Mike said. He looked dazedalmost drugged. Yes, thats right, isnt it? Its starting again, isnt it, Bill? Its all starting to happen again. YYYes, I ththink Mike took Eddies hand and Richie took Beverlys other hand. For a moment Ben only looked at them, and then, like a man in a dream, he raised his bloody hands to either side and stepped between Mike and Richie. He grasped their hands. The circle closed. (Ah Chd this is the Ritual of Chd and the Turtle cannot help us) Bill tried to scream but no sound came out. He saw Eddies head tilt back, the cords on his neck standing out. Bevs hips bucked twice, fiercely, as if in an orgasm as short and sharp as the crack of a .22 pistol. Mikes mouth moved strangely, seeming to laugh and grimace at the same time. In the silence of the library, doors banged open and shut, the sound rolling like bowling balls. In the Periodicals Room, magazines flew in a windless hurricane. In Carole Danners office, the librarys IBM typewriter whirred into life and typed hethrusts hisfistsagainst thepostsandstillinsistsheseestheghosts hethrustshisfistsagainstthe The typeball jammed. The typewriter sizzled and uttered a thick electronic belch as everything inside overloaded. In Stack Two, the shelf of occult books suddenly tipped over, spilling Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, Charles Fort, and the Apocrypha everywhere. Bill felt an exalting sense of power. He was dimly aware that he had an erection, and that every hair on his head was standing up straight. The sense of force in the completed circle was incredible. All the doors in the library slammed shut in unison. The grandfather clock behind the checkout desk chimed once. Then it was gone, as if someone had flicked off a switch. They dropped their hands, looking at each other, dazed. No one said anything. As the sense of power ebbed, Bill felt a terrible sense of doom creep over him. He looked at their white, strained faces, and then down at his hands. Blood was smeared there, but the wounds which Stan Uris had made with a jagged piece of Coke bottle in August 1958 had closed up again, leaving only crooked white lines like knotted twine. He thought That was the last time the seven of us were together ... the day Stan made those cuts in the Barrens. Stans not here; hes dead. And this is the last time the six of us are going to be together. I know it, I feel it. Beverly was pressed against him, trembling. Bill put an arm around her. They all looked at him, their eyes huge and bright in the dimness, the long table where they had sat, littered with empty bottles, glasses, and overflowing ashtrays, a little island of light. Thats enough, Bill said huskily. Enough entertainment for one evening. Well save the ballroom dancing for another time. I remembered, Beverly said. She looked up at Bill, her eyes huge, her pale cheeks wet. I remembered everything. My father finding out about you guys. Running. Bowers and Criss and Huggins. How I ran. The tunnel ... the birds ... It ... I remember everything.  Yeah, Richie said. I do, too. Eddie nodded. The pumpingstation Bill said, And how Eddie Go back now, Mike said. Get some rest. Its late. Walk with us, Mike, Beverly said. No. I have to lock up. And I have to write a few things down ... the minutes of the meeting, if you like. I wont be long. Go ahead. They moved toward the door, not talking much. Bill and Beverly were together, Eddie, Richie, and Ben behind them. Bill held the door for her and she murmured thanks. As she went out onto the wide granite steps, Bill thought how young she looked, how vulnerable.... He was dismally aware that he might be falling in love with her again. He tried to think of Audra, but Audra seemed far away. She would be sleeping in their house in Fleet now as the sun came up and the milkman began his rounds. Derrys sky had clouded over again, and a low groundfog lay across the empty street in thick runners. Farther up the street, the Derry Community House, narrow, tall, Victorian, brooded in blackness. Bill thought And whatever walked in Community House, walked alone. He had to stifle a wild cackle. Their footfalls seemed very loud. Beverlys hand touched his and Bill took it gratefully. It started before we were ready, she said. Would we ehehever have been rready? You would have been, Big Bill. The touch of her hand was suddenly both wonderful and necessary. He wondered what it would be like to touch her breasts for the second time in his life, and suspected that before this long night was over he would know. Fuller now, mature ... and his hand would find hair when he cupped the swelling of her mons veneris. He thought I loved you, Beverly ... I love you. Ben loved you ... he loves you. We loved you then ... we love you now. We better, because its starting. No way out now. He glanced behind and saw the library half a block away. Richie and Eddie were on the top step; Ben was standing at the bottom, looking after them. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders were slumped, and seen through the drifting lens of the low fog, he might almost have been eleven again. If he had been able to send Ben a thought, Bill would have sent this one It doesnt matter, Ben. The love is what matters, the caring ... its always the desire, never the time. Maybe thats all we get to take with us when we go out of the blue and into the black. Cold comfort, maybe, but better than no comfort at all. My father knew, Beverly said suddenly. I came home one day from the Barrens and he just knew. Did I ever tell you what he used to say to me when he was mad? What? I worry about you, Bewie. Thats what he used to say. I worry a lot.  She laughed and shivered at the same time. I think he meant to hurt me, Bill. I mean ... hed hurt me before, but that last time was different. He was ... well, in many ways he was a strange man. I loved him. I loved him very much, but She looked at him, perhaps wanting him to say it for her. He wouldnt; it was something she was going to have to say for herself, sooner or later. Lies and selfdeceptions had become a ballast they could not afford. I hated him, too, she said, and her hand bore down convulsively upon Bills for a long second. I never told that to anyone in my life before. I thought God would strike me dead if I ever said it out loud. Say it again, then. No, I Go on. Itll hurt, but maybe its festered in there long enough. Say it. I hated my dad, she said, and began to sob helplessly. I hated him, I was scared of him, I hated him, I could never be a good enough girl to suit him and I hated him, I did, but I loved him, too. He stopped and held her tight. Her arms went around him in a panicky grip. Her tears wet the side of his neck. He was very conscious of her body, ripe and firm. He moved his torso away from hers slightly, not wanting her to feel the erection he was getting ... but she moved against him again. Wed spent the morning down there, she said, playing tag or something like that. Something harmless. We hadnt even talked about It that day, at least not then ... we usually talked about It every day, at some point, though. Remember? Yes, he said. At some pppoint. I remember. It was overcast ... hot. We played most of the morning. I went home around eleventhirty. I thought Id have a sandwich and a bowl of soup after I took a shower. And then Id go back and play some more. My parents were both working. But he was there. He was home. He 2 Lower Main Street1130 A.M. threw her across the room before she had even gotten all the way through the door. A startled scream was jerked out of her and then cut off as she hit the wall with shouldernumbing force. She collapsed onto their sagging sofa, looking around wildly. The door to the front hall banged shut. Her father had been standing behind it. I worry about you, Bewie, he said. Sometimes I worry a lot. You know that. I tell you that, dont I? You bet I do. Daddy, what He was walking slowly toward her across the living room, his face thoughtful, sad, deadly. She didnt want to see that last, but it was there, like the blind shine of dirt on still water. He was nibbling reflectively on a knuckle of his right hand. He was dressed in his khakis, and when she glanced down she saw that his hightopped shoes were leaving tracks on her mothers carpet. Ill have to get the vacuum out, she thought incoherently. Vacuum that up. If he leaves me able to vacuum. If he It was mud. Black mud. Her mind sideslipped alarmingly. She was back in the Barrens with Bill, Richie, Eddie, and the others. There was black, viscous mud like the kind on Daddys shoes down there in the Barrens, in the swampy place where the stuff Richie called bamboo stood in a skeletal white grove. When the wind blew the stalks rattled together hollowly, producing a sound like voodoo drums, and had her father been down in the Barrens? Had her father WHAP! His hand rocketed down in a wide sweeping orbit and struck her face. Her head thudded back against the wall. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked at her with that expression of deadly disconnected curiosity. She felt a trickle of blood running warmly from the left corner of her lower lip. I have seen you getting big, he said, and she thought he would say something more, but for the time being that seemed to be all. Daddy, what are you talking about? she asked in a low trembling voice.


If you lie to me, Ill beat you within an inch of your life, Bevvie, he said, and she realized with horror that he wasnt looking at her; he was looking at the Currier and Ives picture over her head, on the wall above the sofa. Her mind sideslipped crazily again and she was four, sitting in the bathtub with her blue plastic boat and her Popeye soap; her father, so big and so well loved, was kneeling beside her, dressed in gray twill pants and a strappy teeshirt, a washcloth in one hand and a glass of orange soda in the other, soaping her back and saying, Lemme see those ears, Bevvie; your ma needs taters for supper. And she could hear her small self giggling, looking up at his slightly grizzled face, which she had then believed must be eternal. I ... I wont lie, Daddy, she said. Whats wrong? Her view of him was gradually shivering apart as the tears came. You been down there in the Barns with a gang of boys? Her heart leaped; her eyes dropped to his mudcaked shoes again. That black, clingy mud. If you stepped into it too deep it would suck your sneaker or your loafer right off ... and both Richie and Bill believed that, if you went in all the way, it turned to quickmud. I play down there somet Whap! the hand, covered with hard calluses, rocketing down again. She cried out, hurt, afraid. That look on his face scared her, and the way he wouldnt look at her scared her, too. There was something wrong with him. He had been getting worse.... What if he meant to kill her? What if (oh stop it Beverly hes your FATHER and FATHERS dont kill DAUGHTERS) he lost control, then? What if What have you let them do to you? Do? What She had no idea what he meant. Take your pants off. Her confusion increased. Nothing he said seemed connected to anything else. Trying to follow him made her feel ill ... seasick, almost. What ... why ... ? His hand rose; she flinched back. Take them off, Bevvie. I want to see if you are intact. Now there was a new image, crazier than the rest she saw herself pulling her jeans off, and one of her legs coming off with them. Her father belting her around the room as she tried to hop away from him on her one good leg, Daddy shouting I knew you wasnt intact! I knew it! I knew it! Daddy, I dont know what His hand came down, not slapping this time but clutching. It bit into her shoulder with furious strength. She screamed. He pulled her up, and for the first time looked directly into her eyes. She screamed again at what she saw there. It was ... nothing. Her father was gone. And Beverly suddenly understood that she was alone in the apartment with It, alone with It on this dozey August morning. There was not the thick sense of power and untinctured evil she had felt in the house on Neibolt Street a week and a half agoIt had been diluted somehow by her fathers essential humanitybut It was here, working through him. He threw her aside. She struck the coffee table, tripped over it, and went sprawling on the floor with a cry. This is how it happens, she thought. Ill tell Bill so he understands. Its everywhere in Derry. It just ... It just fills the hollow places, thats all. She rolled over. Her father was walking toward her. She skidded away from him on the seat of her jeans, her hair in her eyes. I know you been down there, he said. I was told. I didnt believe it. I didnt believe my Bewie would be hanging around with a gang of boys. Then I seen you myself this morning. My Bewie with a bunch of boys. Not even twelve and hanging around with a bunch of boys! This latter thought seemed to send him into a fresh rage; it trembled through his scrawny frame like volts. Not even twelve years old! he shouted, and fetched a kick at her thigh that made her scream. His jaws snapped over this fact or concept or whatever it was to him like the jaws of a hungry dog worrying a piece of meat. Not even twelve! Not even twelve! Not even TWELVE! He kicked. Beverly scrambled away. They had worked their way into the kitchen area of the apartment now. His workboot struck the drawer under the stove, making the pots and pans inside jangle. Dont you run from me, Bewie, he said. You dont want to do that or itll be the worse for you. Believe me, now. Believe your dad. This is serious. Hanging around with the boys, letting them do God knows what to younot even twelvethats serious, Christ knows. He grabbed her and jerked her to her feet by her shoulder. Youre a pretty girl, he said. Theres plenty of people happy to roon a pretty girl. Plenty of pretty girls willing to be roont. You been a slutchild to them boys, Bevvie? At last she understood what It had put in his head ... except part of her knew the thought might almost have been there all along; that It might only have used the tools that had been there just lying around, waiting to be picked up. No Daddy. No Daddy I seen you smoking! he bellowed. This time he struck her with the palm of his hand, hard enough to send her reeling back in drunken strides to the kitchen table, where she sprawled, a flare of agony in the small of her back. The salt and pepper shakers fell to the floor. The pepper shaker broke. Black flowers bloomed and disappeared before her eyes. Sounds seemed too deep. She saw his face. Something in his face. He was looking at her chest. She was suddenly aware that her blouse had come untucked, and that she wasnt wearing a braas of yet she owned only one, a training bra. Her mind sideslipped back to the house at Neibolt Street, when Bill had given her his shirt. She had been aware of the way her breasts poked at the thin cotton material, but their occasional, skittering glances had not bothered her; these had seemed perfectly natural. And Bills look had seemed more than naturalit had seemed warm and wanted, if deeply dangerous. Now she felt guilt mix with her terror. Was her father so wrong? Hadnt she had (you been a slutchild to them) thoughts? Bad thoughts? Thoughts of whatever it was that he was talking about? Its not the same thing! Its not the same thing as the way (you been a slutchild) hes looking at me now! Not the same! She tucked her blouse back in. Bewie? Daddy, we just play. Thats all. We play ... we ... we dont do anything like ... anything bad. We I seen you smoking, he said again, walking toward her. His eyes moved across her chest and her narrow uncurved hips. He chanted suddenly, in a high schoolboys voice that frightened her even more A girl who will chew gum will smoke! A girl who will smoke will drink! And a girl who will drink, everyone knows what a girl like that will do! I DIDNT DO ANYTHING! she screamed at him as his hands descended on her shoulders. He was not pinching or hurting now. His hands were gentle. And that was somehow scariest of all. Beverly, he said with the inarguable, mad logic of the totally obsessed, I seen you with boys. Now you want to tell me what a girl does with boys down in all that trashwood if it aint what a girl does on her back? Let me alone! she cried at him. The anger flashed up from a deep well she had never suspected. The anger made a bluishyellow flame in her head. It threatened her thoughts. All the times he had scared her; all the times he had shamed her; all the times he had hurt her. You just let me alone! Dont talk to your daddy like that, he said, sounding startled. I didnt do what youre saying! I never did! Maybe. Maybe not. Im going to check and make sure. I know how. Take your pants off. No.  His eyes widened, showing yellowed cornea all the way around the deepblue irises. What did you say? I said no. His eyes were fixed on hers and perhaps he saw the blazing anger there, the bright upsurge of rebellion. Who told you? Bewie Who told you we play down there? Was it a stranger? Was it a man dressed in orange and silver? Did he wear gloves? Did he look like a clown even if he wasnt a clown? What was his name? Bewie, you want to stop No you want to stop, she told him. He swung his hand again, not open but this time closed in a fist meant to break something. Beverly ducked. His fist whistled over her head and crashed into the wall. He howled and let go of her, putting the fist to his mouth. She backed away from him in quick mincing steps. You come back here! No, she said. You want to hurt me. I love you, Daddy, but I hate you when youre like this. You cant do it anymore. Its making you do it, but you let It in. I dont know what youre talking about, he said, but you better get over here to me. I am not going to ask you no more. No, she said, beginning to cry again. Dont make me come over there and collect you, Bewie. Youre going to be one sorry little girl if I have to do that. Come to me. Tell me who told you, she said, and I will. He leaped at her with such scrawny catlike agility that, although she suspected such a leap was coming, she was almost caught. She fumbled for the kitchen doorknob, pulled the door open just wide enough so she could slip though, and then she was running down the hall toward the front door, running in a dream of panic, as she would run from Mrs. Kersh twentyseven years later. Behind her, Al Marsh crashed against the door, slamming it shut again, cracking it down the center. YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW BEVVIE! he howled, yanking it open and coming after her. The front door was on the latch; she had come home the back way. One of her trembling hands worked at the lock while the other yanked fruitlessly at the knob. Behind, her father howled again; the sound of an (take those pants off slutchild) animal. She turned the lockknob and the front door finally swept open. Hot breath plunged up and down in her throat. She looked over her shoulder and saw him right behind her, reaching for her, grinning and grimacing, his yellow horsey teeth a beartrap in his mouth. Beverly bolted out through the screen door and felt his fingers skid down the back of her blouse without catching hold. She flew down the steps, overbalanced, and went sprawling on the concrete walkway, erasing the skin from both knees. YOU GET BACK HERE NOW BEWIE OR BEFORE GOD ILL WHIP THE SKIN OFF YOU! He came down the steps and she scrambled to her feet, holes in the legs of her jeans, (your pants off) her kneecaps sizzling blood, exposed nerveendings singing Onward Christian Soldiers. She looked back and here he came again, A1 Marsh, janitor and custodian, a gray man dressed in khaki pants and a khaki shirt with two flap pockets, a keyring attached to his belt by a chain, his hair flying. But he wasnt in his eyesthe essential he who had washed her back and punched her in the gut and had done both because he worried about her, worried a lot, the he who had once tried to braid her hair when she was seven, made a botch of it, and then got giggling with her about the way it stuck out everyway, the he who knew how to make cinnamon eggnogs on Sunday that tasted better than anything you could buy for a quarter at the Derry Ice Cream Bar, the fatherhe, maleman of her life, delivering a mixed post from that other sexual state. None of that was in his eyes now. She saw blank murder there. She saw It there. She ran. She ran from It. Mr. Pasquale looked up, startled, from where he was watering his crabgrassy lawn and listening to the Red Sox game on a portable radio sitting on his porch rail. The Zinnerman kids stood back from the old Hudson Hornet which they had bought for twentyfive dollars and washed almost every day. One of them was holding a hose, the other a bucket of soapsuds. Both were slackjawed. Mrs. Denton looked out of her secondfloor apartment, one of her six daughters dresses in her lap, more mending in a basket on the floor, her mouth full of pins. Little Lars Theramenius pulled his Red Ball Flyer wagon quickly off the cracked sidewalk and stood on Bucky Pasquales dying lawn. He burst into tears as Bevvie, who had spent a patient morning that spring showing him how to tie his sneakers so they would stay tied, flashed by him, screaming, her eyes wide. A moment later her father passed, hollering at her, and Lars, who was then three and who would die twelve years later in a motorcycle accident, saw something terrible and inhuman in Mr. Marshs face. He had nightmares for three weeks after. In them he saw Mr. Marsh turning into a spider inside his clothes. Beverly ran. She was perfectly aware that she might be running for her life. If her father caught her now, it wouldnt matter that they were on the street. People did crazy things in Derry sometimes; she didnt have to read the newspapers or know the towns peculiar history to understand that. If he caught her he would choke her, or beat her, or kick her. And when it was over, someone would come and collect him and he would sit in a cell the way Eddie Corcorans stepfather was sitting in a cell, dazed and uncomprehending. She ran toward downtown, passing more and more people as she went. They staredfirst at her, then at her pursuing fatherand they looked surprised, some of them even amazed. But what was on their faces went no further. They looked and then they went on toward wherever they had been going. The air circulating in her lungs was growing heavier now. She crossed the Canal, feet pounding on cement while cars rumbled over the heavy wooden slats of the bridge to her right. To her left she could see the stone semicircle where the Canal went under the downtown area. She cut suddenly across Main Street, oblivious to the honking horns and squealing brakes. She went right because the Barrens lay in that direction. It was still almost a mile away, and if she was to get there she would somehow have to outdistance her father on the gruelling slope of UpMile Hill (or one of the even steeper sidestreets). But that was all there was. COME BACK YOU LITTLE BITCH IM WARNING YOU! As she gained the sidewalk on the far side of the street she snatched another glance behind her, the heavy weight of her red hair shifting over her shoulder as she did. Her father was crossing the street, as heedless of the traffic as she had been, his face a bright sweaty red. She ducked down an alley that ran behind Warehouse Row. This was the rear of the buildings which fronted on UpMile Hill Star Beef, Armour Meatpacking, Hemphill Storage  Warehousing, Eagle Beef  Kosher Meats. The alley was narrow and cobbled, made narrower still by the bunches of fuming garbage cans and bins set out here. The cobbles were slimy with God knew what offal and ordure. There was a mixture of smells, some bland, some sharp, some simply titanic ... but all spoke of meat and slaughter. Flies buzzed in clouds. From inside some of the buildings she could hear the bloodcurdling whine of bonesaws. Her feet stuttered unevenly on the slick cobbles. One hip struck a galvanized garbage can and packages of tripe wrapped in newspaper fell out like great meaty jungle blossoms. YOU GET RIGHT THE HELL BACK HERE BEWIE! I MEAN IT NOW! DONT MAKE IT ANY WORSE THAN IT ALREADY IS GIRL! Two men lounged in the loading doorway of the Kirshner Packing Works, munching thick sandwiches, open dinnerbuckets near at hand. You in a woeful place, girl, one of them said mildly. Looks like you goin in the woodshed with your pa. The other laughed. He was gaining. She could hear his thundering footfalls and heavy respiration almost behind her now; looking to her right she could see the black wing of his shadow flying along the high board fence there. Then he yelled in surprise and fury as his feet slipped out from under him and he thumped to the cobblestones. He was up a moment later, no longer bellowing words but only shrieking out his incoherent fury while the men in the doorway laughed and slapped each other on the back. The alley zigged to the left ... and Beverly came to a skittering halt, her mouth opening in dismay. A city dumpster was parked across the alleys mouth. There was not even nine inches of clearance on either side. Its motor was idling. Under that sound, barely audible, she could hear the murmur of conversation from the dumpsters cab. More men on lunchbreak. It lacked no more than three or four minutes of noon; soon the courthouse clock would begin to chime the hour. She could hear him coming again, closing in. She threw herself down and hooked her way under the dumpster, using her elbows and wounded knees. The stink of exhaust and diesel fuel mixed with the smell of ripe meat and made her feel a kind of giddy nausea. In a way, the ease of her progress was worse she was skidding greasily over a coating of slime and garbagey crud. She kept moving, once rising too high off the cobbles so that her back came in contact with the dumpsters hot exhaustpipe. She had to bite back a scream. Beverly? You under there? Each word separated from the last by an outofbreath gasp for air. She looked back and met his eyes as he bent and peered under the truck. Leave ... me alone! she managed. You bitch, he replied in a thick, spitchoked voice. He threw himself flat, keys jingling, and began to crawl after her, using a grotesque swimming stroke to pull himself along. Beverly clawed her way from under the trucks cab, grabbed one of the huge tiresher fingers hooked their way into a tread up to the second knuckleand yanked herself up. She banged her tailbone on the dumpsters front bumper and then she was running again, heading up UpMile Hill now, her blouse and jeans smeared with goop and stinking to high heaven. She looked back and saw her fathers hands and freckled arms shoot out from under the dumpsters cab like the claws of some imagined childhood monster from under the bed. Quickly, hardly thinking at all, she darted between Feldmans Storage and the Tracker Brothers Annex. This covert, too narrow even to be called an alley, was filled with broken crates, weeds, sunflowers, and, of course, more garbage. Beverly dived behind a pile of crates and crouched there. A few moments later she saw her father pound by the mouth of the covert and on up the hill. Beverly got up and hurried to the far end of the covert. There was a chainlink fence here. She monkeyed to the top, got over, and worked her way down the far side. She was now on Derry Theological Seminary property. She ran up the manicured back lawn and around the side of the building. She could hear someone inside playing something classical on an organ. The notes seemed to engrave their pleasant, calm selves on the still air. There was a tall hedge between the seminary and Kansas Street. She peered through it and saw her father on the far side of the street, breathing hard, patches of sweat darkening his workshirt under the arms. He was peering around, hands on hips. His keyring twinkled brightly in the sun. Beverly watched him, also breathing hard, her heart beating rabbitfast in her throat. She was very thirsty, and her simmering smell disgusted her. If I was drawn in a comic strip, she thought distractedly, thered be all those wavy stinklines coming up from me. Her father crossed slowly to the seminary side. Beverlys breath stopped. Please God, I cant run anymore. Help me, God. Dont let him find me. Al Marsh walked slowly down the sidewalk, directly past where his daughter crouched on the far side of the hedge. Dear God, dont let him smell me! He didntperhaps because, after a tumble in the alleyway and crawling under the dumpster himself, Al smelled as bad as she did. He walked on. She watched him go back down UpMile Hill until he was out of sight. Beverly picked herself up slowly. Her clothes were covered with garbage, her face was dirty, her back hurt where she had burned it on the exhaustpipe of the dumpster. These physical things paled before the confused swirl of her thoughtsshe felt that she had sailed off the edge of the world, and none of the normal patterns of behavior seemed to apply. She could not imagine going home; but she could not imagine not going home. She had defied her father, defied him She had to push that thought away because it made her feel weak and trembly, sick to her stomach. She loved her father. Wasnt one of the Ten Commandments Honor thy mother and father that thy days may be long upon the earth? Yes. But he hadnt been himself. Hadnt been her father. Had, in fact, been someone completely different. An impostor. It Suddenly she went cold as a terrible question occurred to her Was this happening to the others? Or something like it? She ought to warn them. They had hurt It, and perhaps now It was taking steps to assure Itself they would never hurt It again. And, really, where else was there to go? They were the only friends she had. Bill. Bill would know what to do. Bill would tell her what to do, Bill would supply the what next. She stopped where the seminary walk joined the Kansas Street sidewalk and peered around the hedge. Her father was truly gone. She turned right and began to walk along Kansas Street toward the Barrens. Probably none of them would be there right now; they would be at home, eating their lunches. But they would be back. Meantime, she could go down into the cool clubhouse and try to get herself under some kind of control. She would leave the little window wide open so she could have some sunshine, and perhaps she would even be able to sleep. Her tired body and overstrained mind grasped eagerly at the thought. Sleep, yes, that would be good. Her head drooped as she plodded past the last bunch of houses before the land grew too steep for houses and plunged down into the Barrensthe Barrens where, as incredible as it seemed to her, her father had been lurking and spying. She certainly did not hear footfalls behind her. The boys there were at great pains to be quiet. They had been outrun before; they did not intend to be outrun again. They drew closer and closer to her, walking catsoft. Belch and Victor were grinning, but Henrys face was both vacant and serious. His hair was uncombed and snarly. His eyes were as unfocused as Al Marshs had been in the apartment. He held one dirty finger pressed over his lips in a shhh gesture as they closed the distance from seventy feet to fifty to thirty. Through that summer Henry had been edging steadily out over some mental abyss, walking on a bridge that had grown relentlessly more and more narrow. On the day when he had allowed Patrick Hockstetter to caress him, that bridge had narrowed to a tightrope. The tightrope had snapped this morning. He had gone out into the yard, naked except for his ragged, yellowing undershorts, and looked up into the sky. The ghost of last nights moon still lingered there, and as he looked at it the moon had suddenly changed into a skeletal grinning face. Henry had fallen on his knees before this face, exalted with terror and joy. Ghostvoices came from the moon. The voices changed, sometimes seemed to merge together in a soft babble that was barely understandable ... but he sensed the truth, which was simply that all these voices were one voice, one intelligence. The voice told him to hunt up Belch and Victor and be at the comer of Kansas Street and Costello Avenue around noon. The voice told him he would know what to do then. Sure enough, the cunt had come bopping along. He waited to hear what the voice would tell him to do next. The answer came as they continued to close the distance. The voice came not from the moon, but from the sewergrating they were passing. The voice was low but clear. Belch and Victor glanced toward the grating in a dazed, almost hypnotized way, then back at Beverly. Kill her, the voice from the sewer said. Henry Bowers reached into the pocket of his jeans and brought out a slim nineinchlong instrument with imitationivory inlays along its sides. A small chromium button glittered at one end of this dubious objet dart. Henry pushed it. A sixinch blade popped out of the slit at the end of the handle. He bounced the switchblade on his palm. He began to walk a little faster. Victor and Belch, still looking dazed, increased their own walking speed to keep up with him. Beverly did not hear them, precisely; that was not what made her turn her head as Henry Bowers closed the distance. Bentkneed, shuffling, a frozen grin on his face, Henry was as silent as an Indian. No; it was simply a feeling, too clear and direct and powerful to be denied, of 3 The Derry Public Library 155 A.M. being watched. Mike Hanlon laid his pen aside and looked across the shadowy inverted bowl of the librarys main room. He saw islands of light thrown by the hanging globes; he saw books fading into dimness; he saw the iron staircases making their graceful trellised spirals up to the stacks. He saw nothing out of place. All the same, he did not believe he was alone in here. Not anymore. After the others were gone, Mike had cleaned up with a care that was only habit. He was on autopilot, his mind a million milesand twentyseven yearsaway. He dumped ashtrays, threw away the empty liquor bottles (putting a layer of waste over them so that Carole wouldnt be shocked), and the returnable cans in a box behind his desk. Then he got the broom and swept up the remains of the gin bottle Eddie had broken. When the table was clean, he went into the Periodicals Room and picked up the scattered magazines. As he did these simple chores, his mind sifted the stories they had toldconcentrating the most, perhaps, on what they had left out. They believed they remembered everything; he thought that Bill and Beverly almost did. But there was more. It would come to them ... if It allowed them the time. In 1958 there had been no chance for preparation. They had talked endlesslytheir talk interrupted only by the rockfight and that one act of group heroism at 29 Neibolt Streetand might, in the end, have done no more than talk. Then August 14th had come, and Henry and his friends had simply chased them into the sewers. Maybe I should have told them, he thought, putting the last of the magazines back in their places. But something spoke strongly against the ideathe voice of the Turtle, he supposed. Perhaps that was part of it, and perhaps that sense of circularity was part of it, too. Maybe that last act was going to repeat itself, in some updated fashion, as well. He had put flashlights and miners helmets carefully by against tomorrow; he had the blueprints of the Derry sewer and drain systems neatly rolled up and held with rubber bands in that same closet. But, when they were kids, all their talk and all their plans, halfbaked or otherwise, had come to nothing in the end; in the end they had simply been chased into the drains, hurled into the confrontation which had followed. Was that going to happen again? Faith and power, he had come to believe, were interchangeable. Was the final truth even simpler? That no act of faith was possible until you were rudely pushed out into the screaming middle of things like a newborn child skydiving chutelessly out of his mothers womb? Once you were falling, you were forced to believe in the chute, into existence, werent you? Pulling the ring as you fell became your final statement on the subject, one way or the other. Jesus Christ, its Fulton Sheen in blackface, Mike thought, and laughed a little. Mike cleaned, neatened, and thought his thoughts, while another part of his brain expected that he would finish and find himself tired enough to go home and sleep for a few hours. But when he finally did finish, he found himself as wide awake as ever. So he went to the single closed stack behind his office, unlocking the wire gate with a key from his ring and letting himself in. This stack, supposedly fireproof when the vaulttype door was closed and locked, contained the librarys valuable first editions, books signed by writers long since dead (among the signed editions were Moby Dick and Whitmans Leaves of Grass), historical matter relating to the town, and the personal papers of a few of the few writers who had lived and worked in Derry. Mike hoped, if all of this ended well, to persuade Bill to leave his manuscripts to the Derry Public Library. Walking down the third aisle of the stack beneath tinshaded lightbulbs, smelling the familiar library scents of must and dust and cinnamony, aging paper, he thought When I die, I guess Ill go with a library card in one hand and an OVERDUE stamp in the other. Well, maybe theres worse ways. He stopped halfway down this third aisle. His dogeared steno notebook, which contained the jotted tales of Derry and his own troubled wanderings, was tucked between Frickes Old DerryTown and Michauds History of Derry. He had pushed the notebook so far back it was nearly invisible. No one would stumble across it unless he was looking for it. Mike took it and went back to the table where they had held their meeting, pausing to turn off the lights in the closed stack and to relock the wire mesh. He sat down and flipped through the pages he had written, thinking what a strange, crippled affidavit it was part history, part scandal, part diary, part confessional. He had not logged an entry since April 6th. Have to get a new book soon, he thought, thumbing the few blank pages that were left. He thought bemusedly for a moment of Margaret Mitchells first draft of Gone with the Wind, written in longhand in stacks and stacks and stacks of school composition books. Then he uncapped his pen and wrote May 31st two lines below the end of his last entry. He paused, looking vaguely across the empty library, and then began to write about everything that had happened during the last three days, beginning with his telephone call to Stanley Uris. He wrote quietly for fifteen minutes, and then his concentration began to come unravelled. He paused more and more frequently. The image of Stan Uriss severed head in the refrigerator tried to intrude, Stans bloody head, the mouth open and full of feathers, falling out of the refrigerator and rolling across the floor toward him. He banished it with an effort and went on writing. Five minutes later he jerked upright and looked around, convinced he would see that head rolling across the old blackandred tiles of the main floor, eyes as glassy and avid as those in the mounted head of a deer. There was nothing. No head, no sound except the muffled drum of his own heart. Got to get ahold of yourself, Mikey. Its the jimjams, thats all. Nothing else to it. But it was no use. The words began to get away from him, the thoughts seemed to dangle just out of reach. There was a pressure on the back of his neck, and it seemed to grow heavier. Being watched. He put his pen down and got up from the table. Is anyone here? he called, and his voice echoed back from the rotunda, giving him a jolt. He licked his lips and tried again. Bill? ... Ben? Billillill ... Benenen ... Suddenly Mike decided he wanted to be home. He would simply take the notebook with him. He reached for it ... and heard a faint, sliding footstep. He looked up again. Pools of light surrounded by deepening lagoons of shadow. Nothing else ... at least nothing he could see. He waited, heart beating hard. The footstep came again, and this time he pinpointed the location. The glassedin passageway that connected the adult library to the Childrens Library. In there. Someone. Something. Moving quietly, Mike walked across to the checkout desk. The double doors leading into the passageway were held open by wooden chocks, and he could see a little way in. He could see what looked like feet, and with sudden swooning horror he wondered if maybe Stan had come after all, if maybe Stan was going to step out of the shadows with his bird encyclopedia in one hand, his face white, his lips purple, his wrists and forearms cut open. I finally came, Stan would say. It took me awhile because I had to pull myself out of a hole in the ground, but I finally came.... There was another footstep and now Mike could see shoes for sureshoes and ragged denim pantlegs. Faded blue strings hung down against sockless ankles. And in the darkness almost six feet above those ankles, he could see glittering eyes.