It

  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. "You've 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 we're not done," Eddie said. "What about the rest of it? I still don't remember--"

  "Mike's r-r-right," Bill said. "Either we'll remember or we w-won't. I think we w-will. We've remembered all that we nuhneed to."

  "Maybe all that's good for us?" Richie suggested.

  Mike nodded. "We'll 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."

  "We're 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. "It's been here; It can be wherever you are. But this meeting has made me feel better." He looked at Bill. "I'd say it still can be done, wouldn't 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 there's another force--at least there was when we were kids--that wanted us to stay alive and to do the job. Maybe it's 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 you're having fun, right, Haystack?"

  "Beep-beep, Richie," Ben said, and smiled wanly.

  "You want to walk back to the Tuh-Tuh-Town 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 I'm really not here at all, he thought. Maybe I'm in Dr. Seward's lunatic asylum, with the Count's 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 strait-waistcoats.

  "What about you, R-Richie?"

  Richie shook his head. "I'm 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, M-M-Mike?" Bill asked. "Want to walk with Bev and m-me?"

  Mike shook his head. "I've got to--"

  That was when Beverly screamed, a high-pitched 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 Eddie's 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 dusky-purple 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 Mike's. And Richie's. And Ben's.

  "We're in it to the end, aren't we?" Beverly said. She had begun to cry. This sound was also magnified in the library's 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, we're 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.

  "Quh-Quh-Quick!" Bill said, and seized Eddie's 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 dazed--almost drugged. "Yes, that's right, isn't it? It's starting again, isn't it, Bill? It's all starting to happen again."

  "Y-Y-Yes, I th-think--"

  Mike took Eddie's hand and Richie took Beverly's 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 Chud this is the Ritual of Chud and the Turtle cannot help us)

  Bill tried to scream but no sound came out. He saw Eddie's head tilt back, the cords on his neck standing out. Bev's hips bucked twice, fiercely, as if in an orgasm as short and sharp as the crack of a .22 pistol. Mike's 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 Danner's office, the library's IBM typewriter whirred into life and typed:

  hethrusts

  hisfistsagainst

  thepostsandstillinsistsheseestheghosts

  hethrustshisfistsagainstthe

  The type-ball 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. Stan's not here; he's 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.

  "That's enough," Bill said huskily. "Enough entertainment for one evening. We'll 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 f
ather 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 pumping-station--"

  Bill said, "And how Eddie--"

  "Go back now," Mike said. "Get some rest. It's 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 won't 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.

  Derry's 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. Beverly's hand touched his and Bill took it gratefully.

  "It started before we were ready," she said.

  "Would we eh-eh-ever have been r-ready?"

  "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 it's 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 doesn't matter, Ben. The love is what matters, the caring ... it's always the desire, never the time. Maybe that's 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.' That's 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 ... he'd 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 wouldn't; it was something she was going to have to say for herself, sooner or later. Lies and self-deceptions had become a ballast they could not afford.

  "I hated him, too," she said, and her hand bore down convulsively upon Bill's 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. It'll hurt, but maybe it's 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.

  "We'd spent the morning down there," she said, "playing tag or something like that. Something harmless. We hadn't 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 p-p-point. I remember."

  "It was overcast ... hot. We played most of the morning. I went home around eleven-thirty. I thought I'd have a sandwich and a bowl of soup after I took a shower. And then I'd go back and play some more. My parents were both working. But he was there. He was home. He

  2

  Lower Main Street/11:30 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 shoulder-numbing 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, don't I? You bet I do."

  "Daddy, what--"

  He was walking slowly toward her across the living room, his face thoughtful, sad, deadly. She didn't 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 high-topped shoes were leaving tracks on her mother's carpet. I'll 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 Daddy's 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, I'll beat you within an inch of your life, Bevvie," he said, and she realized with horror that he wasn't 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 tee-shirt, 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 won't lie, Daddy," she said. "What's wrong?" Her view of him was gradually shivering apart as the tears came.

  "You been down there in the Bar'ns with a gang of boys?"

  Her heart leaped; her eyes dropped to his mud-caked 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 wouldn't 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 he's your
FATHER and FATHERS don't 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 wasn't intact! I knew it! I knew it!

  "Daddy, I don't 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 ago--It had been diluted somehow by her father's essential humanity--but 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. I'll tell Bill so he understands. It's everywhere in Derry. It just ... It just fills the hollow places, that's 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 didn't believe it. I didn't 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!"