It

  She came out of the bathroom and looked at Bill. "No," she said. "I don't want to go to the police. I think Eddie's right--something might happen to us. Something final. But that isn't the real reason." She looked at the four of them. "We swore it," she said. "We swore. Bill's brother ... Stan ... all the others ... and now Mike. I'm ready, Bill."

  Bill looked at the others.

  Richie nodded. "Okay, Big Bill. Let's try."

  Ben said, "The odds look worse. than ever. We're two short now."

  Bill said nothing.

  "Okay." Ben nodded. "She's right. We swore."

  "E-E-Eddie?"

  Eddie smiled wanly. "I guess I get another pigger-back down that ladder, huh? If the ladder's still there."

  "No one throwing rocks this time, though," Beverly said.

  "They're dead. All three of them."

  "Do we do it now, Bill?" Richie asked.

  "Y-Y-Yes," Bill said. "I th-think this is the t-t-time."

  "Can I say something?" Ben asked abruptly.

  Bill looked at him and grinned a little. "A-A-Any time."

  "You guys are still the best friends I ever had," Ben said. "No matter how this turns out. I just . . . you know, wanted to tell you that."

  He looked around at them, and they looked solemnly back at him.

  "I'm glad I remembered you," he added. Richie snorted. Beverly giggled. Then they were all laughing, looking at each other in the old way, in spite of the fact that Mike was in the hospital, perhaps dying or already dead, in spite of the fact that Eddie's arm was broken (again), in spite of the fact that it was the deepest ditch of the morning.

  "Haystack, you have such a way with words," Richie said, laughing and wiping his eyes. "He should have been the writer, Big Bill."

  Still smiling a little, Bill said: "And on that nuh-nuh-note--"

  5

  They took Eddie's borrowed limo. Richie drove. The groundfog was thicker now, drifting through the streets like cigarette smoke, not quite reaching the hooded streetlamps. The stars overhead were bright chips of ice, spring stars ... but by cocking his head to the half-open window on the passenger side, Bill thought he could hear summer thunder in the distance. Rain was being ordered up somewhere over the horizon.

  Richie turned on the radio and there was Gene Vincent singing "Be-Bop-A-Lula." He hit one of the other buttons and got Buddy Holly. A third punch brought Eddie Cochran singing "Summertime Blues."

  "I'd like to help you, son, but you're too young to vote," a deep voice said.

  "Turn it off, Richie," Beverly said softly.

  He reached for it, and then his hand froze. "Stay tuned for more of the Richie Tozier All-Dead Rock Show!" the clown's laughing, screaming voice cried over the finger-pops and guitar-chops of the Eddie Cochran tune. "Don't touch that dial, keep it tuned to the rockpile, they're gone from the charts but not from our hearts and you keep coming, come right along, come on everybody! We play aaaalll the hits down here! Aaallllll the hits! And if you don't believe me, just listen to this morning's graveyard-shift guest deejay, Georgie Denbrough! Tell em, Georgie!"

  And suddenly Bill's brother was wailing out of the radio.

  "You sent me out and It killed me! I thought It was in the cellar, Big Bill, I thought It was in the cellar but It was in the drain, It was in the drain and It killed me, you let It kill me, Big Bill, you let It--"

  Richie snapped the radio off so hard the knob spun away and hit the floormat.

  "Rock and roll in the sticks really sucks," he said. His voice was not quite steady. "Bev's right, we'll leave it off, what do you say?"

  No one replied. Bill's face was pale and still and thoughtful under the glow of the passing streetlamps, and when the thunder muttered again in the west they all heard it.

  6

  In the Barrens

  Same old bridge.

  Richie parked beside it and they got out and moved to the railing--same old railing--and looked down.

  Same old Barrens.

  It seemed untouched by the last twenty-seven years; to Bill the turnpike overpass, which was the only new feature, looked unreal, something as ephemeral as a matte painting or a rear-screen projection effect in a movie. Cruddy little trees and scrub bushes glimmered in the twining fog and Bill thought: I guess this is what we mean when we talk about the persistence of memory, this or something like this, something you see at the right time and from the right angle, image that kicks off emotion like a jet engine. You see it so clear that all the things which happened in between are gone. If desire is what closes the circle between world and want, then the circle has closed.

  "Cuh-Cuh-Come on," he said, and climbed over the railing. They followed him down the embankment in a scatter of scree and pebbles. When they reached the bottom Bill checked automatically for Silver and then laughed at himself. Silver was leaning against the wall of Mike's garage. It seemed Silver had no part to play in this at all, although that was strange, after the way it had turned up.

  "Tuh-Take us there," Bill told Ben.

  Ben looked at him and Bill read the thought in his eyes--It's been twenty-seven years, Bill, dream on--and then he nodded and headed into the undergrowth.

  The path--their path--had long since grown over, and they had to force themselves through tangles of thornbushes, prickers, and wild hydrangea so fragrant it was cloying. Crickets sang somnolently all around them, and a few lightning-bugs, early arrivals at summer's luscious party, poked at the dark. Bill supposed kids still played down here, but they had made their own runs and secret ways.

  They came to the clearing where the clubhouse had been, but now there was no clearing here at all. Bushes and lackluster scrub pines had reclaimed it all.

  "Look," Ben whispered, and crossed the clearing (in their memories it was still here, simply overlaid with another of those matte paintings). He yanked at something. It was the mahogany door they had found on the edge of the dump, the one they had used to finish off the clubhouse roof. It had been cast aside here and looked as if it hadn't been touched in a dozen years or more. Creepers were firmly entrenched across its dirty surface.

  "Leave it alone, Haystack," Richie murmured. "It's old."

  "Tuh-Tuh-Take us th-there, B-Ben," Bill repeated from behind them.

  So they went down to the Kenduskeag following him, bearing left away from the clearing that didn't exist anymore. The sound of running water grew steadily louder, but they still almost fell into the Kenduskeag before any of them saw it: the foliage had grown up in a tangled wall on the edge of the embankment. The edge broke off under the heels of Ben's cowboy boots and Bill yanked him back by the scruff of the neck.

  "Thanks," Ben said.

  "De nada. In the o-old d-days, you wuh-hould have puhpulled me ih-in a-a-after you. D-Down this wuh-way?"

  Ben nodded and led them along the overgrown bank, fighting through the tangles of bushes and brambles, thinking how much easier this was when you were only four feet five and able to go under most tangles (those in your mind as well as those in your path, he supposed) in one nonchalant duck. Well, everything changed. Our lesson for today, boys and girls, is the more things change, the more things change. Whoever said the more things change the more things stay the same was obviously suffering severe mental retardation. Because--

  His foot hooked under something and he fell over with a thud, nearly striking his head on the pumping-station's concrete cylinder. It was almost completely buried in a wallow of blackberry bushes. As he got to his feet again he realized that his face and arms and hands had been striped by blackberry thorns in two dozen places.

  "Make that three dozen," he said, feeling thin blood running down his cheeks.

  "What?" Eddie asked.

  "Nothing." He bent down to see what he had tripped over. A root, probably.

  But it wasn't a root. It was the iron manhole cover. Someone had pushed it off.

  Of course, Ben thought. We did. Twenty-seven years ago.

  But he realized that was crazy ev
en before he saw fresh metal twinkling through the rust in parallel scrape-marks. The pump hadn't been working that day. Sooner or later someone would have come down to fix it, and would have replaced the cover in the bargain.

  He stood up and the five of them gathered around the cylinder and looked in. They could hear the faint sound of dripping water. That was all. Richie had brought all the matches from Eddie's room. Now he lit an entire book of them and tossed it in. For a moment they could see the cylinder's damp inner sleeve and the silent bulk of the pumping machinery. That was all.

  "Could have been off for a long time," Richie said uneasily. "Didn't necessarily have to happen t--"

  "It's happened fairly recently," Ben said. "Since the last rain, anyway." He took another book of matches from Richie, lit one, and pointed out the fresh scratches.

  "There's suh-suh-something uh-under it," Bill said as Ben shook out the match.

  "What?" Ben asked.

  "C-C-Couldn't tuh-tuh-tell. Looked like a struh-struh-strap. You and Rih-Richie help me t-t-turn it o-over."

  They grabbed the cover and flipped it like a giant coin. This time Beverly lit the match and Ben cautiously picked up the purse which had been under the manhole cover. He held it up by the strap. Beverly started to shake out the match and then looked at Bill's face. She froze until the flame touched the ends of her fingers and then dropped it with a little gasp. "Bill? What is it? What's wrong?"

  Bill's eyes felt too heavy. They couldn't leave that scuffed leather bag with its long leather strap. Suddenly he could remember the name of the song which had been playing on the radio in the back room of the leather-goods shop when he had bought it for her. "Sausalito Summer Nights." It was the surpassing weirdism. All the spit was gone out of his mouth, leaving his tongue and inner cheeks as smooth and dry as chrome. He could hear the crickets and see the lightning-bugs and smell big green dark growing out of control all around him and he thought It's another trick another illusion she's in England and this is just a cheap shot because It's scared, oh yes, It's maybe not as sure as It was when It called us all back, and really, Bill, get serious-how many scuffed leather purses with long straps do you think there are in the world? A million? Ten million?

  Probably more. But only one like this. He had bought it for Audra in a Burbank leather-goods store while "Sausalito Summer Nights" played on the radio in the back room.

  "Bill?" Beverly's hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Far away. Twenty-seven leagues under the sea. What was the name of the group that sang "Sausalito Summer Nights"? Richie would know.

  "I know," Bill said calmly into Richie's scared, wide-eyed face, and smiled. "It was Diesel. How's that for total recall?"

  "Bill, what's wrong?" Richie whispered.

  Bill screamed. He snatched the matches out of Beverly's hand, lit one, and then yanked the purse away from Ben.

  "Bill, Jesus, what--"

  He unzipped the purse and turned it over. What fell out was so much Audra that for a moment he was too unmanned to scream again. Amid the Kleenex, sticks of chewing gum, and items of makeup, he saw a tin of Altoid mints ... and the jewelled compact Freddie Firestone had given her when she signed for Attic Room.

  "My wuh-wuh-wife's down there," he said, and fell on his knees and began pushing her things back into the purse. He brushed hair that no longer existed out of his eyes without even thinking about it.

  "Your wife? Audra?" Beverly's face was shocked, her eyes huge.

  "Her p-p-purse. Her th-things."

  "Jesus, Bill," Richie muttered. "That can't be, you know th--"

  He had found her alligator wallet. He opened it and held it up. Richie lit another match and was looking at a face he had seen in half a dozen movies. The picture on Audra's California driver's license was less glamorous but completely conclusive.

  "But Huh-Huh-Henry's dead, and Victor, and B-B-Belch ... so who's got her?" He stood up, staring around at them with febrile intensity. "Who's got her?"

  Ben put a hand on Bill's shoulder. "I guess we better go down and find out, huh?"

  Bill looked around at him, as if unsure of who Ben might be, and then his eyes cleared. "Y-Yeah," he said. "Eh-Eh-Eddie?"

  "Bill, I'm sorry."

  "Can you cluh-climb on?"

  "I did once."

  Bill bent over and Eddie hooked his right arm around Bill's neck. Ben and Richie boosted him up until he could hook his legs around Bill's midsection. As Bill swung one leg clumsily over the lip of the cylinder, Ben saw that Eddie's eyes were tightly shut ... and for a moment he thought he heard the world's ugliest cavalry charge bashing its way through the bushes. He turned, expecting to see the three of them come out of the fog and the brambles, but all he had heard was the rising breeze rattling the bamboo a quarter of a mile or so from here. Their old enemies were all gone now.

  Bill gripped the rough concrete lip of the cylinder and felt his way down, step by step and rung by rung. Eddie had him in a deathgrip and Bill could barely breathe. Her purse, dear God, how did her purse get here? Doesn't matter. But if You're there, God, and if You're taking requests, let her be all right, don't let her suffer for what Bev and I did tonight or for what I did one summer when I was a boy .. and was it the clown? Was it Bob Gray who got her? If it was, I don't know if even God can help her.

  "I'm scared, Bill," Eddie said in a thin voice.

  Bill's foot touched cold standing water. He lowered himself into it, remembering the feel and the dank smell, remembering the claustrophobic way this place had made him feel ... and, just by the way, what had happened to them? How had they fared down in these drains and tunnels? Where exactly had they gone, and how exactly had they gotten out again? He still couldn't remember any of that; all he could think of was Audra.

  "I am t-t-too." He half-squatted, wincing as the cold water ran into his pants and over his balls, and let Eddie off. They stood shin-deep in the water and watched the others descend the ladder.

  CHAPTER 21

  Under the City

  1

  It/August 1958

  Something new had happened.

  For the first time in forever, something new.

  Before the universe there had been only two things. One was Itself and the other was the Turtle. The Turtle was a stupid old thing that never came out of its shell. It thought that maybe the Turtle was dead, had been dead for the last billion years or so. Even if it wasn't, it was still a stupid old thing, and even if the Turtle had vomited the universe out whole, that didn't change the fact of its stupidity.

  It had come here long after the Turtle withdrew into its shell, here to Earth, and It had discovered a depth of imagination here that was almost new, almost of concern. This quality of imagination made the food very rich. Its teeth rent flesh gone stiff with exotic terrors and voluptuous fears: they dreamed of nightbeasts and moving muds; against their will they contemplated endless gulphs.

  Upon this rich food It existed in a simple cycle of waking to eat and sleeping to dream. It had created a place in Its own image, and It looked upon this place with favor from the deadlights which were Its eyes. Derry was Its killing-pen, the people of Derry Its sheep. Things had gone on.

  Then ... these children.

  Something new.

  For the first time in forever.

  When It had burst up into the house on Neibolt Street, meaning to kill them all, vaguely uneasy that It had not been able to do so already (and surely that unease had been the first new thing), something had happened which was totally unexpected, utterly unthought of, and there had been pain, pain, great roaring pain all through the shape it had taken, and for one moment there had also been fear, because the only thing It had in common with the stupid old Turtle and the cosmology of the macroverse outside the puny egg of this universe was just this: all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit. For the first time It realized that perhaps Its ability to change Its shapes might work against It as well as for It. There had never been pain before, there had n
ever been fear before, and for a moment It had thought It might die--oh Its head had been filled with a great white silver pain, and it had roared and mewled and bellowed and somehow the children had escaped.

  But now they were coming. They had entered Its domain under the city, seven foolish children blandering through the darkness without lights or weapons. It would kill them now, surely.

  It had made a great self-discovery: It did not want change or surprise. It did not want new things, ever. It wanted only to eat and sleep and dream and eat again.

  Following the pain and that brief bright fear, another new emotion had arisen (as all genuine emotions were new to It, although It was a great mocker of emotions): anger. It would kill the children because they had, by some amazing accident, hurt It. But It would make them suffer first because for one brief moment they had made It fear them.

  Come to me then, It thought, listening to their approach. Come to me, children, and see how we float down here . . . how we all float.

  And yet there was a thought that insinuated itself no matter how strongly It tried to push the thought away. It was simply this: if all things flowed from It (as they surely had done since the Turtle sicked up the universe and then fainted inside its shell), how could any creature of this or any other world fool It or hurt It, no matter how briefly or triflingly? How was that possible?

  And so a last new thing had come to It, this not an emotion but a cold speculation: suppose It had not been alone, as It had always believed?

  Suppose there was Another?

  And suppose further that these children were agents of that Other?

  Suppose... suppose . . .

  It began to tremble.

  Hate was new. Hurt was new. Being crossed in Its purpose was new. But the most terrible new thing was this fear. Not fear of the children, that had passed, but the fear of not being alone.