-you must help yourself, son

But how? Please tell me! How? How? HOW?

He had reached the Turtle's heavily scaled back legs now; there was time enough to observe its titanic yet ancient flesh, time to be struck with the wonder of its heavy toenails-they were an odd bluish-yellow color, and he could see galaxies swimming in each one.

Please, you are good, I sense and believe that you are good, and I am begging you... won't you please help me?

-you already know, there is only Chud. and your friends.

Please oh please-

son, you've got to thrust your fists against the posts and still insist you see the ghosts... that's all I can tell you. once you get into cosmological shit like this, you got to throw away the instruction manual

He realized the voice of the Turtle was fading. He was beyond it now, bulleting into a darkness that was deeper than deep. The Turtle's voice was being overcome, overmastered, by the gleeful, gibbering voice of the Thing that had thrust him out and into this black void-the voice of the Spider, of It.

-how do you like it out here, Little Friend? do you like it? do you love it? do you give it ninety-eight points because it has a good beat and you can dance to it? can you catch it on your tonsils and heave it left and right? did you enjoy meeting my friend the Turtle? I thought that stupid old fuck died years ago, and for all the good he could do you, he might as well have, did you think he could help you?

no no no no he thrusts no he thuh-thuh-huh-huh-rusts no

-stop babbling! the time is short; let us talk while we still can. tell me about yourself, Little Friend... tell me, do you love all the cold dark out here? are you enjoying your grand tour of the nothingness that lies Outside? wait until you break through, Little Friend! wait until you break through to where I am! wait for that! wait for the deadlights! you'll look and you'll go mad... but you'll live... and live... and live... inside them... inside Me...

It screamed noxious laughter, and Bill became aware that Its voice was beginning both to fade and to swell, as if he was simultaneously drawing out of Its range... and hurtling into it. And wasn't that just what was happening? Yes. He thought it was. Because while the voices were in perfect sync, the one he was now rushing toward was totally alien, speaking syllables no human tongue or throat could reproduce. That's the voice of the deadlights, he thought.

-the time is short; let us talk while we still can

Its human voice fading the way the Bangor radio stations faded when you were in the car and travelling south. Bright, flaring terror filled him. He would shortly be beyond sane communication with It... and some part of him understood that, for all Its laughter, for all Its alien glee, that was what It wanted. Not just to send him out to whatever It really was, but to break their mental communication. If that ceased, he would be utterly destroyed. To pass beyond communication was to pass beyond salvation; he understood that much from the way his parents had behaved toward him after George had died. It was the only lesson their refrigerator coldness had had to teach him.

Leaving It... and approaching It. But the leaving was somehow more important. If It wanted to eat little kids out here, or suck them in, or whatever It did, why hadn't It sent them all out here? Why just him?

Because It had to rid Its Spider-self of him, that was why. Somehow the Spider-It and the It which It called the deadlights were linked. Whatever lived out here in the black might be invulnerable when It was here and nowhere else... but It was also on earth, under Derry, in a form that was physical. However repulsive It might be, in Derry it was physical... and what was physical could be killed.

Bill skidded through the dark, his speed still increasing. Why do I sense so much of Its talk is nothing but a bluff, a big shuck-and jive? Why should that be? How can that be?

He understood how, maybe... just maybe.

There is only Chud, the Turtle had said. And suppose this was it? Suppose they had bitten deep into each other's tongues, not physically but mentally, spiritually? And suppose that if It could throw Bill far enough into the void, far enough toward Its eternal discorporate self, the ritual would be over? It would have ripped him free, killed him, and won everything all at the same

-you're doing good, son, but very shortly it's going to be too late It's scared! Scared of me! Scared of all of us!

-skidding, he was skidding, and there was a wall up ahead, he sensed it, sensed it in the dark, the wall at the edge of the continuum, and beyond it the other shape, the deadlights-

-don't talk to me, son, and don't talk to yourself-it's tearing you loose, bite in if you care, if you dare, if you can be brave, if you can stand... bite in, son!

Bill bit in-not with his teeth, but with teeth in his mind.

Dropping his voice a full register, making it not his own (making it, in fact, his father's voice, although Bill would go to his grave not knowing this; some secrets are never, known, and it's probably better so), drawing in a great breath, he cried: "HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS NOW LET ME GO!"

He felt It scream in his mind, a scream of frustrated petulant rage... but it was also a scream of fear and pain. It was not used to not having Its own way; such a thing had never happened to It, and until the most recent moments of Its existence It had not suspected such a thing could.

Bill felt It writhing at him, not pulling but pushing-trying to get him away.

"THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS, I SAID!

"STOP IT!

"BRING ME BACK! YOU MUST! I COMMAND IT! I DEMAND IT!"

It screamed again, Its pain more intense now-perhaps partly because, while It had spent Its long, long existence inflicting pain, feeding on it, It had never experienced it as a part of Itself.

Still It tried to push him, to get rid of him, blindly and stubbornly insisting on winning, as It had always won before. It pushed... but Bill sensed that his outward speed had slowed, and a grotesque image came into his mind: Its tongue, covered with that living spittle, extended like a thick rubber band, cracking, bleeding. He saw himself clinging to the tip of that tongue by his teeth, ripping through it a little at a time, his face bathed in the convulsive ichor that was Its blood, drowning in Its dead stench, yet still holding on, holding on somehow, while It struggled in Its blind pain and towering rage not to let Its tongue snap back -

(Chud, this Chud, stand, be brave, be true, stand for your brother, your friends; believe, believe in all the things you have believed in, believe that if you tell the policeman you're lost he'll see that you get home safely, that there is a Tooth Fairy who lives in a huge enamel castle, and Santa Claus below the North Pole, making toys with his trove of elves, and that Captain Midnight could be real, yes, he could be in spite of Calvin and Cissy Clark's big brother Carlton saying that was all a lot of baby stuff, believe that your mother and father will love you again, that courage ts possible and words will come smoothly every time; no more Losers, no more cowering in a hole in the ground and calling it a clubhouse, no more crying in Georgie's room because you couldn't save him and didn't know, believe in yourself believe in the heat of that desire)

He suddenly began to laugh in the darkness, not in hysteria but in utter delighted amazement.

"OH SHIT, I BELIEVE IN ALL OF THOSE THINGS!" he shouted, and it was true: even at eleven he had observed that things turned out right a ridiculous amount of the tune. Light flared around him. He raised his arms out and above his head. He turned his face up, and suddenly he felt power rush through him.

He heard It scream again... and suddenly he was being drawn back the way he had come, still holding that image of his teeth planted deep in the strange meat of Its tongue, his teeth locked together like grim old death. He flew through the dark, legs trailing behind him, the tips of his mud-crusted sneaker laces flying like pennants, the wind of this empty place blowing in his ears.

He was pulled past the Turtle and saw that its head had withdrawn into its shell; its voice emerged hollow and distorted, as if even the shell it lived in were a well eternities deep:

-not bad, son, but I'd finish it now; don't let It get away, energy has a way of dissipating, you know; what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again

The voice of the Turtle faded, faded, faded. There was only the rushing dark... and then the mouth of a cyclopean tunnel... smells of age and decay... cobwebs brushing at his face like rotted skeins of silk in a haunted house... moldering tiles blurring by... intersections, all dark now, the moon-balloons all gone, and It was screaming, screaming:

-let me go let me go I'll leave never come back let me GO IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURRRRRRRRRR

"Thrusts his fists!" Bill screamed, nearly delirious now. He could see light ahead but it was fading, guttering like great candles which had at last burned low... and for a moment he saw himself and the others holding hands in a line, Eddie on one side of him and Richie on the other. He saw his own body, sagging, his head rolled back on his neck, staring up at the Spider, which twisted and whirled like a dervish, Its coarse, spiny legs beating at the floor, poison dripping from Its stinger.

It was screaming in Its death-agony.

So Bill honestly believed.

Then he was slamming back into his body with all the impact of a line drive slamming into a baseball glove, the force of it tearing his hands loose from Richie's and Eddie's, driving him to his knees and skidding him across the floor to the edge of the web. He reached out for one of the strands without thinking, and his hand immediately went numb, as if it had been injected with a hypo full of novocaine. The strand itself was as thick as a telephone-pole guy-wire.

"Don't touch that, Bill!" Ben yelled, and Bill yanked his hand away in one quick jerk, leaving a raw place across his palm just below the fingers. It filled with blood and he staggered to his feet, eyes on the Spider.

It was scrabbling away from them, making Its way into the growing dimness at the back of the chamber as the light failed. It left puddles and pools of black blood behind as It went; somehow their confrontation had ruptured Its insides in a dozen, maybe a hundred places.

"Bill, the web!" Mike screamed. "Look out!"

He stepped backward, craning his neck up, as strands of Its web came floating down, striking the stone-flagged floor on either side of him like the bodies of meaty white snakes. They immediately began to lose shape, to flow into the cracks between the stones. The web was falling apart, coming loose from its many moorings. One of the bodies, wrapped up like a fly, came plunging down to strike the floor with a sickening rotted-gourd sound.

"The Spider!" Bill yelled. "Where is It?"

He could still hear It in his head, mewling and crying out in Its pain, and understood dimly that It had gone into the same tunnel It had thrown Bill into... but had It gone in there to flee back to the place where It had meant to send Bill... or to hide until they were gone? To die? Or escape?

"Christ, the lights!" Richie shouted. "The lights're going out! What happened, Bill? Where did you go? We thought you were dead!"

In some confused part of his mind Bill knew that wasn't true: if they had really thought him dead, they would have run, scattered, and It would have picked them off easily, one by one. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that they had thought him dead, but believed him alive.

We have to make sure! If It's dying or gone back to where It came from, where the rest of It is, that's fine. But what if Ifs just hurt? What if It can get better? What -

Stan's shriek cut across his thoughts like broken glass. In the fading light Bill saw that one of the strands of webbing had come down on Stan's shoulder. Before Bill could reach him, Alike had thrown himself at the smaller boy in a flying tackle. He drove Stan away and the piece of webbing snapped back, taking a piece of Stan's polo shirt with it.

"Get back!" Ben yelled at them. "Get away from it, it's all coming down!" He seized Beverly's hand and pulled her back toward the child-sized door while Stan struggled to his feet, looked dazedly around, and then grabbed Eddie. The two of them started toward Ben and Beverly, helping each other, looking like phantoms in the fading light.

Overhead, the spiderweb was drooping, collapsing on itself, losing its fearful symmetry. Bodies twirled lazily in the air like nightmarish plumb-bobs. Cross-strands fell in like the rotted rungs of some strange complex of ladders. Severed strands hit the stone flagging, hissed like cats, lost their shape, began to run.

Mike Hanlon wove his way through them as he would later weave his way through the opposing lines of nearly a dozen high-school football teams, head down, ducking and dodging. Richie joined him. Incredibly, Richie was laughing, although his hair was standing straight up on his head like the quills of a porcupine. The light grew dimmer, the phosphorescence that had coiled on the walls now dying away.

"Bill!" Mike shouted. "Come on! Get the frock out of there!"

"What if It's not dead?" Bill screamed back. "We got to go after It, Mike! We got to make sure!"

A snarl of webbing sagged outward like a parachute and then fell with a nasty ripping sound that was like skin being pulled apart. Mike grabbed Bill's arm and pulled him, stumbling, out of the way.

"It's dead!" Eddie cried, joining them. His eyes were febrile lamps, his breathing a chilly winter-whistle in his throat. Fallen strands of webbing had sizzled complex scars into the plaster of Paris of his cast. "I heard It, It was dying, you don't sound like that if you're on your way to a sock hop, It was dying, I'm sure of it!"

Richie's hands groped out of the darkness, seized Bill, and pulled him into a rough embrace. He began to pound Bill's back ecstatically. "I heard It, too-It was dying, Big Bill! It was dying... and you're not stuttering! Not at all! Howdja do it? How in the hell-?"

Bill's brain was whirling. Exhaustion tugged at him with thick and clumsy hands. He could not remember ever feeling this tired... but in his mind he heard the drawling, almost weary voice of the Turtle: I'd finish it now; don't let It get away... what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again.

"But we have to be sure-"

The shadows were joining hands and now the darkness was almost complete. But before the light failed utterly, he thought he saw the same hellish doubt on Beverly's face... and in Stan's eyes. And still, as the last of the light gave way, they could hear the tenebrous whisper-shudder-thump of Its unspeakable web falling to pieces.

3

BILL IN THE VOID / LATE

-well here you are again, Little Buddy! but what's happened to your hair? you're just as bald as a cueball! sad! what sad, short lives humans live! each life a short pamphlet written by an idiot! tut-tut, and all that