Closing her eyes, gripping Bill's hand with all her strength, she asked again: "He might die? You're not just saying that to scare me? He really might die? Please tell me."

"He's very badly hurt. And if that doesn't scare you, miss, it ought to. Now I want to know who you are and why-"

As if in a dream she watched her hand float through space and drop the phone back into the cradle. She looked over at Henry and felt shock as keen as a slap from a cold hand. One of Henry's eyes had closed. The other one, the shattered one, oozed as nakedly as before.

Henry seemed to be winking at her.

4

Richie called the hospital. Bill led Beverly over to the bed, where she sat with Eddie, looking off into space. She thought she would cry, but no tears came. The only feeling she was strongly and immediately aware of was a wish that someone would cover Henry Bowers. That winky look was really not cool at all.

In one giddy instant Richie became a reporter from the Derry News. He understood that Mr Michael Hanlon, the town's head librarian, had been assaulted while working late. Did the hospital have any word on Mr Hanlon's condition?

Richie listened, nodding.

"I understand, Mr Kerpaskian-do you spell that with two k's? You do. Okay. And you are-"

He listened, now enough into his own fiction to make doodling motions with one finger, as if writing on a pad.

"Uh-huh... uh-huh... yes. Yes, I understand. Well, what we usually do in cases like this is to quote you as "a source." Then, later on, we can... uh-huh... right! Just right!" Richie laughed heartily and armed a film of sweat from his forehead. He listened again. "Okay, Mr Kerpaskian. Yes. I'll... yes, I got it, K-E-R-P-A-S-K-I-A-N, right! Czech-Jewish, is it? Really! That's... that's most unusual. Yes, I will. Goodnight. Thank you."

He hung up and closed his eyes. "Jesus!" he cried in a thick, low voice. "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" He made as if to shove the phone off the table and then simply let his hand fall. He took his glasses off and wiped them on his pyjama top.

"He's alive, but in grave condition," he told the others. "Henry sliced him up like a Christmas turkey. One of the cuts chopped into his femoral artery and he's lost all the blood a man can and still stay alive. Mike managed to get some kind of tourniquet on it, or he would have been dead when they found him."

Beverly began to cry. She did it like a child, with both hands plastered to her face. For a little while her hitching sobs and the rapid whistle of Eddie's breathing were the only sounds in the room.

"Mike wasn't the only one who got sliced up like a Christmas turkey," Eddie said at last. "Henry looked like he just went twelve rounds with Rocky Balboa in a Cuisinart."

"D-Do you still w-w-want to g-g-go to the p-p-police, Bev?"

There were Kleenex on the nighttable but they were a caked and sodden mass in the middle of a puddle of Perrier. She went into the bathroom, making a wide circle around Henry, got a wash-cloth, and ran cool water on it. It felt delicious against her hot puffy face. She felt that she could think clearly again-not rationally but clearly. She was suddenly sure that rationality would kill them if they tried to use it now. That cop. Rademacher. He had been suspicious. Why not? People didn't call the library at three-thirty in the morning. He had assumed some guilty knowledge. What would he assume if he found out that she had called him from a room where there was a dead man on the floor with a jagged bottle-neck planted in his guts? That she and four other strangers had just come into town the day before for a little reunion and this guy just happened to drop by? Would she buy the tale if the shoe were on the other foot? Would anyone? Of course, they could buttress their tale by adding that they had come back to finish the monster that lived in the drains under the city. That would certainly add a convincing note of gritty realism.

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. Ram 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 pan 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 puh-pulled 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 even 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 growing dark 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?"