It

  "Duh-duh-does ih-ih ... does ih-ih-ih--"

  "Shhh ..."

  It is not as it was with Ben; there is passion, but not the same kind. Being with Bill now is the best conclusion to this that there could be. He is kind; tender; just short of calm. She senses his eagerness, but it is tempered and held back by his anxiety for her, perhaps because only Bill and she herself realize what an enormous act this is, and how it must never be spoken of, not to anyone else, not even to each other.

  At the end, she is surprised by that sudden upsurge and she has time to think: Oh! It's going to happen again, I don't know if I can stand it--

  But her thoughts are swept away by the utter sweetness of it, and she barely hears him whispering, "I love you, Bev, I love you, I'll always love you" saying it over and over and not stuttering at all.

  She hugs him to her and for a moment they stay that way, his smooth cheek against hers.

  He withdraws from her without saying anything and for a little while she's alone, pulling her clothes back together, slowly putting them on, aware of a dull throbbing pain of which they, being male, will never know, aware also of a certain exhausted pleasure and the relief of having it over. There is an emptiness down there now, and although she is glad that her sex is her own again, the emptiness imparts a strange melancholy which she could never express ... except to think of bare trees under a white winter sky, empty trees, trees waiting for blackbirds to come like ministers at the end of March to preside over the death of snow.

  She finds them by groping for their hands.

  For a moment no one speaks and when someone does, it does not surprise her much that it's Eddie. "I think when we went right two turns back, we shoulda gone left. Jeez, I knew that, but I was so sweaty and frigged up--"

  "Been frigged up your whole life, Eds," Richie says. His voice is pleasant. The raw edge of panic is completely gone.

  "We went wrong some other places too," Eddie says, ignoring him, "but that's the worst one. If we can find our way back there, we just might be okay."

  They form up in a clumsy line, Eddie first, Beverly second now, her hand on Eddie's shoulder as Mike's is on hers. They begin to move again, faster this time. Eddie displays none of his former nervous care.

  We're going home, she thinks, and shivers with relief and joy. Home, yes. And that will be good. We've done our job, what we came for, now we can go back to just being kids again. And that will be good, too.

  As they move through the dark she realizes the sound of running water is closer.

  CHAPTER 23

  Out

  1

  Derry/9:00-10:00 A.M.

  By ten past nine, Derry windspeeds were being clocked at an average of fifty-five miles an hour, with gusts up to seventy. The anemometer in the courthouse registered one gust of eighty-one, and then the needle dropped all the way back to zero. The wind had ripped the whirling cuplike device on the courthouse roof off its moorings and it flew away into the rainswept dimness of the day. Like George Denbrough's boat, it was never seen again. By nine-thirty, the thing the Derry Water Department had sworn was now impossible seemed not only possible but imminent: that downtown Derry might be flooded for the first time since August of 1958, when many of the old drains had clogged up or caved in during a freak rainstorm. By quarter of ten, men with grim faces were arriving in cars and pick-up trucks along both sides of the Canal, their foul-weather gear rippling crazily in the freight-train wind. For the first time since October of 1957, sandbags began to go up along the Canal's cement sides. The arch where the Canal went under the three-way intersection at the heart of Derry's downtown area was full almost to the top; Main Street, Canal Street, and the foot of Up-Mile Hill were impassable except by foot, and those who splashed and hurried their way toward the sandbagging operation felt the very streets beneath their feet trembling with the frenzied flow of the water, the way a turnpike overpass will tremble when big trucks pass each other. But this was a steady vibration, and the men were glad to be on the north side of downtown, away from that steady rumbling that was felt rather than heard. Harold Gardener shouted at Alfred Zitner, who ran Zitner's Realty on the west side of town, asked him if the streets were going to collapse. Zitner said hell would freeze over before something like that happened. Harold had a brief image of Adolf Hitler and Judas Iscariot handing out ice-skates and went on heaving sandbags. The water was now less than three inches below the top of the Canal's cement walls. In the Barrens the Kenduskeag was already out of its banks, and by noon the luxuriant undergrowth and scrub trees would be poking out of a vast shallow, stinking lake. The men continued to work, pausing only when the supply of sandbags ran out ... and then, at ten of ten, they were frozen by a great rending ripping sound. Harold Gardener later told his wife he thought maybe the end of the world had come. It wasn't downtown falling into the earth--not then--it was the Standpipe. Only Andrew Keene, Norbert Keene's grandson, actually saw it happen, and he had smoked so much Colombian Red that morning that at first he thought it had to be a hallucination. He had been wandering Derry's stormswept streets since about eight o'clock, roughly the same time that Dr. Hale was ascending to that great family medical practice in the sky. He was drenched to the skin (except for the two-ounce baggie of pot tucked up into his armpit, that was) but totally unaware of it. His eyes widened in disbelief. He had reached Memorial Park, which stood on the flank of Standpipe Hill. And unless he was wrong, the Standpipe now had a pronounced lean, like that fucked-up tower in Pisa that was on all the macaroni boxes. "Oh, wow!" Andrew Keene cried, his eyes widening even more--they looked as if they might be on small tough springs now--as the splintering sounds began. The Standpipe's lean was becoming more and more acute as he stood there with his jeans plastered to his skinny shanks and his drenched paisley headband dripping water into his eyes. White shingles were popping off the downtown side of the great round water-tower ... no, not exactly popping off; it was more like they were squirting off. And a definite crinkle had appeared about twenty feet above the Standpipe's stone foundation. Water suddenly began to spray out through this crinkle, and now the shingles weren't squirting off the Standpipe's downtown side; they were spewing into the windstream. A rending sound began to come from the Standpipe, and Andrew could see it moving, like the hand of a great clock inclining from noon to one to two. The baggie of pot fell out of his armpit and fetched up inside his shirt somewhere near his belt. He didn't notice. He was utterly fetched. Large twanging sounds came from inside the Standpipe, as if the strings of the world's biggest guitar were being broken one by one. These were the cables inside the cylinder, which had provided the proper balance of stress against the water-pressure. The Standpipe began to heel over faster and faster, boards and beams ripping apart, splinters jumping and whirling into the air. "FAAAR FUCKING OWWWWT!" Andrew Keene shrieked, but it was lost in the Standpipe's final crashing fall, and by the rising sound of one and three-quarters million gallons of water, seven thousand tons of water, pouring out of the building's ruptured spouting side. It went in a gray tidal wave, and of course if Andrew Keene had been on the downhill side of the Standpipe, he would have exited the world in no time. But God favors drunks, small children, and the cataclysmically stoned; Andrew was standing in a place where he could see it all and not be touched by a single drop. "GREAT FUCKING SPECIAL EFFECTS!" Andrew screamed as the water rolled over Memorial Park like a solid thing, sweeping away the sundial beside which a small boy named Stan Uris had often stood watching birds with his father's field glasses. "STEVEN SPIELBERG EAT YOUR HEART OUT!" The stone birdbath also went. Andrew saw it for a moment, turning over and over, pedestal for dish and dish for pedestal, and then it was gone. A line of maples and birches separating Memorial Park from Kansas Street were knocked down like so many pins in a bowling alley. They took wild spiky snarls of power lines with them. The water rolled across the street, beginning to spread now, beginning to look more like water than that mind-boggling solid wall that had taken sundial, birdbath, and trees, but i
t still had power enough to sweep almost a dozen houses on the far side of Kansas Street off their foundations and into the Barrens. They went with sickening ease, most of them still whole. Andrew Keene recognized one of them as belonging to the Karl Massensik family. Mr. Massensik had been his sixth-grade teacher, a real pooch. As the house went over the edge and down the slope, Andrew realized he could still see a candle burning brightly in one window, and he wondered briefly if he might be mentally highsiding it, if you could dig the concept. There was an explosion from the Barrens and a brief gout of yellow flame as someone's Coleman gas lantern ignited oil pouring out of a ruptured fuel-tank. Andrew stared at the far side of Kansas Street, where until just forty seconds ago there had been a neat line of middle-class houses. They were Gone City now, and you better believe it, sweet thing. In their places were ten cellar-holes that looked like swimming-pools. Andrew wanted to advance the opinion that this was far fucking out, but he couldn't yell anymore. Seemed like his yeller was busted. His diaphragm felt weak and useless. He heard a series of crunching thuds, the sound of a giant with his shoes full of Ritz crackers marching down a flight of stairs. It was the Standpipe rolling down the hill, a huge white cylinder still spouting the last of its water supply, the thick cables that had helped to hold it together flying into the air and then cracking down again like steel bull-whips, digging runnels in the soft earth that immediately filled up with rushing rainwater. As Andrew watched, with his chin resting somewhere between his collarbones, the Standpipe, horizontal now, better than a hundred and twenty-five feet long, flew out into the air. For a moment it seemed frozen there, a surreal image straight out of rubber-walled strait-jacketed toodle-oo land, rainwater sparkling on its shattered sides, its windows broken, casements hanging, the flashing light on top, meant as a warning for low-flying light planes, still flashing, and then it fell into the street with a final rending crash. Kansas Street had channelled a lot of the water, and now it began to rush toward downtown by way of Up-Mile Hill. There used to be houses over there, Andrew Keene thought, and suddenly all the strength ran out of his legs. He sat down heavily--kersplash. He stared at the broken stone foundation on which the Standpipe had stood for his whole life. He wondered if anyone would ever believe him.

  He wondered if he believed it himself.

  2

  The Kill/10:02 A.M., May 31st, 1985

  Bill and Richie saw It turn toward them, Its mandibles opening and closing, Its one good eye glaring down at them, and Bill realized It gave off Its own source of illumination, like some grisly lightning-bug. But the light was flickering and uncertain; It was badly hurt. Its thoughts buzzed and racketed

  (let me go! let me go and you can have everything you've ever wanted--money,fame, fortune, power--I can give you these things) in his head.

  Bill moved forward empty-handed, his eyes fixed on Its single red one. He felt the power growing inside him, investing him, knotting his arms into cords, filling each clenched fist with its own force. Richie walked beside him, his lips pulled back over his teeth.

  (I can give you your wife back--I can do it, only I--she'll remember nothing as the seven of you remembered nothing)

  They were close, very close now. Bill could smell Its stinking aroma and realized with sudden horror that it was the smell of the Barrens, the smell they had taken for the smell of sewers and polluted streams and the burning dump ... but had they ever really believed those were all it had been? It was the smell of It, and perhaps it had been strongest in the Barrens but it had hung over all Derry like a cloud and people just didn't smell it, the way zookeepers don't smell their charges after awhile, or even wonder why the visitors wrinkle their noses when they come in.

  "Us two," he muttered to Richie, and Richie nodded without taking his eyes off the Spider, which now shrank back from them, Its abominable spiny legs clittering, brought to bay at last.

  (I can't give you eternal life but I can touch you and you will live long long lives--twohundred years, three hundred, perhaps five hundred--I can make you gods of the Earth--if you let me go if you let me go if you let me--)

  "Bill?" Richie asked hoarsely.

  With a scream building in him, building up and up and up, Bill charged. Richie ran with him stride for stride. They struck together with their right fists, but Bill understood it was not really their fists they were striking with at all; it was their combined force, augmented by the force of that Other; it was the force of memory and desire; above all else, it was the force of love and unforgotten childhood like one big wheel.

  The Spider's shriek filled Bill's head, seeming to splinter his brains. He felt his fist plunge deep into writhing wetness. His arm followed it in up to the shoulder. He pulled it back, dripping with the Spider's black blood. Ichor poured from the hole he had made.

  He saw Richie standing almost beneath Its bloated body, covered with Its darkly sparkling blood, standing in the classic boxer's stance, his dripping fists pumping.

  The Spider lashed at them with Its legs. Bill felt one of them rip down his side, parting his shirt, parting skin. Its stinger pumped uselessly against the floor. Its screams were clarion-bells in his head. It lunged clumsily forward, trying to bite him, and instead of retreating Bill drove forward, using not just his fist now but his whole body, making himself into a torpedo. He ran into Its gut like a sprinting fullback who lowers his shoulders and simply drives straight ahead.

  For a moment he felt Its stinking flesh simply give, as if it would rebound and send him flying. With an inarticulate scream he drove harder, pushing forward and upward with his legs, digging at It with his hands. And he broke through; was inundated with Its hot fluids. They ran across his face, in his ears. He snuffled them up his nose in thin squirming streams.

  He was in the black again, up to his shoulders inside Its convulsing body. And in his clogged ears he could hear a sound like the steady whack-WHACK-whack-WHACK of a big bass drum, the one that leads the parade when the circus comes to town with its complement of freaks and strutting capering clowns.

  The sound of Its heart.

  He heard Richie scream in sudden pain, a sound that rose into a quick, gasping moan and was cut off. Bill suddenly thrust both fisted hands forward. He was choking, strangling in Its pulsing bag of guts and waters.

  Whack-WHACK-whack-WHACK--

  He plunged his hands into It, ripping, tearing, parting, seeking the source of the sound; rupturing organs, his slimed fingers opening and closing, his locked chest seeming to swell from lack of air.

  Whack-WHACK-whack-WHACK--

  And suddenly it was in his hands, a great living thing that pumped and pulsed against his palms, pushing them back and forth.

  (NONONONONONONO)

  Yes! Bill cried, choking, drowning. Yes! Try this, you bitch! TRY THIS ONE OUT! DO YOU LIKE IT? DO YOU LOVE IT? DO YOU?

  He laced his fingers together over the pulsing narthex of Its heart, palms spread apart in an inverted V--and brought them together with all the force he could muster.

  There was one final shriek of pain and fear as Its heart exploded between his hands, running out between his fingers in jittering strings.

  Whack-WHACK-whack-WHA

  The scream, fading, dwindling. Bill felt Its body clench around him suddenly, like a fist in a slick glove. Then everything loosened. He became aware that Its body was tilting, slipping slowly off to one side. At the same time he began pulling back, his consciousness leaving him.

  The Spider collapsed on Its side, a huge bundle of steaming alien meat, Its legs still quivering and jerking, caressing the sides of the tunnel and scraping across the floor in random scrawls.

  Bill staggered away, breathing in whooping gasps, spitting in an effort to clear his mouth of Its horrible taste. He tripped over his own feet and fell to his knees.

  And clearly, he heard the Voice of the Other; the Turtle might be dead, but whatever had invested it was not.

  "Son, you did real good."

  Then it was gone. The power went wit
h it. He felt weak, revulsed, half-insane. He looked over his shoulder and saw the dying black nightmare of the Spider, still jerking and quivering.

  "Richie!" He cried out in a hoarse, breaking voice. "Richie, where are you, man?"

  No answer.

  The light was gone now. It had died with the Spider. He fumbled in the pocket of his matted shirt for the last book of matches. They were there, but they wouldn't light; the heads were soaked with blood.

  "Richie!" he screamed again, beginning to weep now. He began to crawl forward, first one hand and then the other groping in the dark. At last one of them struck something which yielded limply to his touch. His hands flew over it ... and stopped as they touched Richie's face.

  "Richie! Richie!"

  Still no answer. Struggling in the dark, Bill got one arm under Richie's back and the other under his knees. He wobbled to his feet and began to stumble back the way they had come with Richie in his arms.

  3

  Derry/10:00-10:15 A.M.

  At 10:00 the steady vibration which had been running through Derry's downtown streets increased to a rumbling roar. The Derry News would later write that the supports of the Canal's underground portion, weakened by the savage assault of what amounted to a flash flood, simply collapsed. There were, however, people who disagreed with that view. "I was there, I know," Harold Gardener later told his wife. "It wasn't just that the Canal's supports collapsed. It was an earthquake, that's what it was. It was a fucking earthquake."

  Either way, the results were the same. As the rumbling built steadily up and up, windows began to shatter, plaster ceilings began to fall, and the inhuman cry of twisting beams and foundations swelled into a frightening chorus. Cracks raced up the bullet-pocked brick facade of Machen's like grasping hands. The cables holding the marquee of the Aladdin Theater out over the street snapped and the marquee came crashing down. Richard's Alley, which ran behind the Center Street Drug, suddenly filled up with an avalanche of yellow brick as the Brian X Dowd Professional Building, erected in 1952, came crashing down. A huge screen of jaundice-colored dust rose in the air and was snatched away like a veil.