It, Page 97

  But the blood pouring from the smashed leeches seemed real enough, the sound of their buzzing wings seemed real enough ... and his own terror seemed real enough.

  One of them fell down inside his shirt and settled on his chest. While he was beating frantically at it and watching the bloodstain spread above the place where it had taken its hold, another settled on his right eye. Patrick closed it, but that did no good; he felt a brief hot flare as the thing's sucker poked through his eyelid and began to suck the fluid out of his eyeball. Patrick felt his eye collapse in its socket and he screamed again. A leech flew into his mouth when he did and roosted on his tongue.

  It was all almost painless.

  Patrick went staggering and flapping up the path toward the junked cars. Parasites hung all over him. Some of them drank to capacity and then burst like balloons; when this happened to the bigger ones, they drenched Patrick with almost half a pint of his own hot blood. He could feel the leech inside his mouth swelling up and he opened his jaws because the only coherent thought he had left was that it must not burst in there; it must not, must not.

  But it did. Patrick ejected a huge spray of blood and parasite-flesh like vomit. He fell down in the gravelly dirt and began to roll over and over, still screaming. Little by little the sound of his own screams began to seem faint, faraway.

  Just before he passed out, he saw a figure step from behind the last of the junked cars. At first Patrick thought he was a guy, Mandy Fazio perhaps, and he would be saved. But as the figure drew closer, he saw its face was running like wax. Sometimes it began to harden and look like something--or someone--and then it would start to run again, as if it couldn't make up its mind who or what it wanted to be.

  "Hello and goodbye," a bubbling voice said from inside the running tallow of its features, and Patrick tried to scream again. He didn't want to die; as the only "real" person, he wasn't supposed to die. If he did, everyone else in the world would die with him.

  The manshape laid hold of his leech-encrusted arms and began to drag him away toward the Barrens. His bloodstained book-carrier bumped and thumped along beside him, its strap still twisted about his neck. Patrick, still trying to scream, lost consciousness.

  He awoke only once: when, in some dark, smelly, drippy hell where no light shone, no light at all, It began to feed.

  6

  At first Beverly was not entirely sure what she was seeing or what was happening ... only that Patrick Hockstetter had begun to thrash and dance and scream. She got up warily, holding the slingshot in one hand and two of the ballbearings in the other. She could hear Patrick blundering off down the path, still yelling his head off. In that moment, Beverly looked every inch the lovely woman she was going to become, and if Ben Hanscom had been around to see her just then, his heart might not have been able to stand it.

  She was standing fully upright, her head cocked to the left, her eyes wide, her hair done in braids that had been tied off with two small red velvet bows which she had bought in Dahlie's for a dime. Her posture was one of total attention and concentration; it was feline, lynxlike. She had shifted forward on her left foot, her body half-turned as if to go after Patrick, and the legs of her faded shorts had pulled up enough to show the edging on her yellow cotton panties. Below them, her legs were already smoothly muscled, beautiful in spite of the scabs, bruises, and smutches of dirt.

  It's a trick. He saw you and he knows he probably can't catch you in a fair chase, so he's trying to get you to come out. Don't go, Bevvie!

  But another part of her thought there was too much pain and fear in those screams. She wished she had seen whatever had happened to Patrick--if anything had--more clearly. She wished more than anything else that she had come into the Barrens a different way and missed the whole crazy shenanigans.

  Patrick's screams stopped. A moment later Beverly heard someone speak--but she knew that had to be her imagination. She heard her father say, "Hello and goodbye." Her father wasn't even in Derry that day: he had set off for Brunswick at eight o'clock. He and Joe Tammerly were going to pick up a Chevy truck in Brunswick. She shook her head as if to clear it. The voice didn't speak again. Her imagination, obviously.

  She walked out of the bushes to the path, ready to run the instant she saw Patrick charging at her, her reactions on triggers as delicate as a cat's whiskers. She looked down at the path and her eyes widened. There was blood here. Quite a lot of it.

  Fake blood, her mind insisted. You can buy a bottle of it at Dahlie's for forty-nine cents. Be careful, Bevvie!

  She knelt and quickly touched the blood with her fingers. She looked at them closely. It wasn't fake blood.

  There was a flash of heat in her left arm, just below the elbow. She looked down and saw something that she first thought was some kind of burr. No--not a burr. Burrs didn't twitch and flutter. This thing was alive. A moment after that she realized it was biting her. She struck it hard with the back of her right hand and it spattered, spraying blood. She backed up a step, getting ready to scream now that it was over ... and then she saw that it wasn't over at all. The thing's featureless head was still on her arm, its snout buried in her flesh.

  With a shrill cry of disgust and fear, she picked it off and saw its proboscis come out of her arm like a small dagger, dripping with blood. She understood the blood on the path now, oh yes, and her eyes went to the refrigerator.

  The door had swung closed and latched again, but a number of the parasites had been left outside and were crawling sluggishly over the rusty-white porcelain. As Beverly looked, one of them unfurled its membranous fly-like wings and buzzed toward her.

  She acted without thinking, loading one of the steel ballbearings into the cup of the Bullseye and pulling the sling back. As the muscles of her left arm flexed smoothly, she saw loose blood squirt from the hole the thing had made in her arm. She let fly anyway, unconsciously leading the flying thing.

  Shit! Missed! she thought as the Bullseye snapped and the ballbearing flew, a glittering chunk of light in the hazy sun. And she would later tell the other Losers that she knew she had missed it, the same way a bowler knows he has missed the strike as soon as a bad ball leaves his hand. But then she saw the ballbearing curve. It happened in a split-second, but the impression was very clear: it had curved. It struck the flying thing and splattered it to mush. There was a shower of yellowish droplets which pattered on the path.

  Beverly backed up slowly at first, her eyes huge, her lips trembling, her face a shocked grayish-white. Her gaze was pinned to the front of the discarded refrigerator, waiting to see if any of the other things would smell or sense her. But the parasites only crawled slowly back and forth, like autumn flies drugged with the cold.

  At last she turned and ran.

  Panic beat darkly against her thoughts, but she would not give in to it entirely. She held the Bullseye in her left hand and looked back over her shoulder from time to time. There was still blood dappled brightly on the path and on the leaves of some of the bushes bordering it, as if Patrick had woven from side to side as he ran.

  Beverly burst out into the area of the junked cars again. Ahead of her there was a bigger splash of blood, just beginning to soak into the gravelly earth. The ground looked disturbed, darker streaks of earth lined into the powdery-white surface. As if there had been a struggle there. Two grooves, about two and a half feet apart, led away from this spot.

  Beverly halted, panting. She looked at her arm and was relieved to see that the flow of blood was finally slowing, although her lower forearm and the palm of her hand were streaked and tacky with it. The pain had begun now, a low steady throb. It felt the way her mouth felt about an hour after the dentist's, when the novocaine began to wear off.

  She looked behind again, saw nothing, then looked back at those grooves leading away from the junked cars, away from the dump, and into the Barrens.

  Those things were in the refrigerator. They got all over him--sure they did, look at all the blood. He got this far, and then

/>   (hello and goodbye)

  something else happened. What?

  She was terribly afraid she knew. The leeches were a part of It, and they had driven Patrick into another part of It much as a panic-maddened steer is driven down the chute and into the slaughtering-pen.

  Get out of here! Get out, Bevvie!

  Instead she followed the grooves in the earth, holding the Bullseye tightly in her sweating hand.

  At least get the others!

  I will ... in a little while.

  She walked on, following the grooves as the ground sloped down and became softer. She followed them into heavy foliage again. Somewhere a cicada burred loudly and then unwound into silence. Mosquitoes lighted on her blood-streaked arm. She waved them away. Her teeth were clenched on her lower lip.

  There was something lying on the ground ahead. She picked it up and looked at it. It was a handmade wallet, the sort of thing a kid might make as a crafts project at Community House. Except it was obvious to Bev that the kid who made this hadn't been much of a craftsman; the wide plastic stitching was already coming unravelled and the bill compartment flapped like a loose mouth. She found a quarter in the change compartment. The only other thing in the wallet was a library card, made out in the name of Patrick Hockstetter. She tossed the wallet aside, library card and all. She wiped her fingers on her shorts.

  Fifty feet farther on she found a sneaker. The underbrush was now too dense for her to be able to follow the grooves in the earth, but you didn't have to be the Pathfinder to follow the splashes and drips of blood on the bushes.

  The trail wound down through a steep brake. Bev lost her footing once, slid, and was raked by thorns. Fresh lines of blood appeared on her upper thigh. She was breathing fast now, her hair sweaty and matted to her skull. The spots of blood led out onto one of the faint paths through the Barrens. The Kenduskeag was nearby.

  Patrick's other sneaker, its laces bloody, lay marooned on the path.

  She approached the river with the Bullseye's sling half-drawn. The grooves in the earth had reappeared. They were shallower now--that's because he lost his sneakers, she thought.

  She came around a final bend and faced the river. The grooves went down the bank and led ultimately to one of those concrete cylinders--one of the pumping-stations. There they stopped. The iron cover capping the top of this cylinder was a little ajar.

  As she stood above it, looking down, a thick and monstrous chuckle suddenly issued from beneath.

  It was too much. The panic which had threatened now descended. Beverly turned and fled toward the clearing and clubhouse, her bloody left arm up to shield her face from the branches which whipped and slapped her.

  Sometimes I worry too, Daddy, she thought wildly. Sometimes I worry a LOT.

  7

  Four hours later all of the Losers except Eddie crouched in the bushes near the spot where Beverly had hidden and watched Patrick Hockstetter go to the refrigerator and open it. The sky overhead had darkened with thunderheads, and the smell of rain was in the air again. Bill was holding the end of a long length of clothesline in his hands. The six of them had pooled their available cash and bought the line and a Johnson's first-aid kit for Beverly. Bill had carefully affixed a gauze pad over the bloody hole in her arm.

  "T-Tell your puh-puh-harents you g-got a scruh-hape when you were skuh-skuh-skating," Bill said.

  "My skates!" Beverly cried, dismayed. She had forgotten all about them.

  "There," Ben said, and pointed. They were lying in a heap not far away, and she went to retrieve them before Ben or Bill or any of the others could offer. She remembered now that she had put them aside before urinating. She didn't want any of the others over there.

  Bill himself had tied one end of the clothesline to the handle of the Amana refrigerator, although they had all cautiously approached it together, ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. Bev had offered to give the Bullseye back to Bill; he had insisted she keep it. As it turned out, nothing had moved. Although the area on the path in front of the refrigerator was splattered with blood, the parasites were gone. Perhaps they had flown away.

  "You could bring Chief Borton and Mr. Nell and a hundred other cops down here and it still wouldn't matter," Stan Uris said bitterly.

  "Nope. They wouldn't see a frockin thing," Richie agreed. "How's your arm, Bev?"

  "Hurts." She paused, looking from Bill to Richie and back to Bill again. "Would my mom and dad see the hole that thing made in my arm?"

  "I d-d-don't th-think s-s-so," Bill said. "Get reh-ready to ruh-ruh-run. I'm gonna t-t-t-tie it uh-uh-on."

  He looped the end of the clothesline around the refrigerator's rust-flecked chrome handle, working with the care of a man defusing a live bomb. He tied a granny-knot and then stepped back, paying out the clothesline.

  He grinned a small shaky grin at the others when they had made some distance. "Whooo," he said. "G-Glad that's oh-over."

  Now, a safe (they hoped) distance from the refrigerator, Bill told them again to get ready to run. Thunder boomed directly overhead and they all jumped. The first scattered drops began to fall.

  Bill jerked the clothesline as hard as he could. His granny-knot popped off the handle, but not before it had pulled the refrigerator door open again. An avalanche of orange pompoms fell out, and Stan Uris uttered a painful groan. The others only stared, open-mouthed.

  The rain began to come harder. Thunder whipcracked above them, making them cringe, and purplish-blue lightning flared as the refrigerator door swung all the way open. Richie saw it first and screamed, a high, hurt sound. Bill uttered some sort of angry, frightened cry. The others were silent.

  Written on the inside of the door, written in drying blood, were these words:

  Hail mixed with the driving rain. The refrigerator door shuddered back and forth in the rising wind, the letters painted there beginning to drip and run now, taking on the draggling ominous look of a horror-movie poster.

  Bev was not aware that Bill had gotten up until she saw him advancing across the path toward the refrigerator. He was shaking both fists. Water streamed down his face and plastered his shirt to his back.

  "W-We're going to k-k-kill you!" Bill screamed. Thunder whacked and cracked. Lightning flashed so brightly that she could smell it, and not far away there was a splintering, rending sound as a tree fell.

  "Bill, come back!" Richie was yelling. "Come back, man!" He started to get up and Ben hauled him back down again.

  "You killed my brother George! You son of a bitch! You bastard! You whoremaster! Let's see you now! Let's see you now!"

  Hail came in a spate, stinging them even through the screening bushes. Beverly held her arm up to protect her face. She could see red welts on Ben's streaming cheeks.

  "Bill, come back!" she screamed despairingly, and another thundercrack drowned her out; it rolled across the Barrens below the low black clouds.

  "Let's see you come out now, you fucker!"

  Bill kicked wildly at the heap of pompoms that had spilled out of the refrigerator. He turned away and began to walk back toward them, his head down. He seemed not to feel the hail, although it now covered the ground like snow.

  He blundered into the bushes, and Stan had to grab his arm to keep him from going into the prickerbushes. He was crying.

  "That's okay, Bill," Ben said, putting a clumsy arm around him.

  "Yeah," Richie said. "Don't worry. We're not gonna chicken out." He stared around at them, his eyes looking wildly out of his wet face. "Is there anyone here who's gonna chicken out?"

  They shook their heads.

  Bill looked up, wiping his eyes. They were all soaked to the skin and looked like a litter of pups that had just forded a river. "Ih-It's scuh-scuh-hared of u-u-us, you know," he said. "I can fuh-feel th-that. I swear to Guh-God I c-c-can."

  Bev nodded soberly. "I think you're right."

  "H-H-Help m-m-me," Bill said. "P-P-Pl-Please. H-H-Help m-m-me. "

  "We will," Beverly said. She took
Bill in her arms. She had not realized how easily her arms would go around him, how thin he was. She could feel his heart racing under his shirt; she could feel it next to hers. She thought that no touch had ever seemed so sweet and strong.

  Richie put his arms around both of them and laid his head on Beverly's shoulder. Ben did the same from the other side. Stan Uris put his arms around Richie and Ben. Mike hesitated, and then slipped one arm around Beverly's waist and the other over Bill's shivering shoulders. They stood that way, hugging, and the sleet turned back to driving pouring rain, rain so heavy it seemed almost like a new atmosphere. The lightning walked and the thunder talked. No one spoke. Beverly's eyes were tightly shut. They stood in the rain in a huddled group, hugging each other, listening to it hiss down on the bushes. That was what she remembered best: the sound of the rain and their own shared silence and a vague sorrow that Eddie was not there with them. She remembered those things.

  She remembered feeling very young and very strong.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Bullseye

  1

  "Okay, Haystack," Richie says. "Your turn. The redhead's smoked all of her cigarettes and most of mine. The hour groweth late. "

  Ben glances up at the clock. Yes, it's late: nearly midnight. Just time for one more story, he thinks. One more story before twelve. Just to keep us warm. What should it be? But that, of course, is only a joke, and not a very good one; there is only one story left, at least only one he remembers, and that is the story of the silver slugs--how they were made in Zack Denbrough's workshop on the night of July 23rd and how they were used on the 25th.

  "I've got my own scars, " he says. "Do you remember?"

  Beverly and Eddie shake their heads; Bill and Richie nod. Mike sits silent, his eyes watchful in his tired face.

  Ben stands up and unbuttons the work-shirt he is wearing, spreading it open. An old scar in the shape of the letter H shows there. Its lines are broken--the belly was much bigger when that scar was put there--but its shape still identifiable.

  The heavy scar depending downward from the cross-bar of the H is much clearer. It looks like a twisted white hangrope from which the noose has been cut.