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'It started alone for each of us, ' Bill said to Beverly. 'I don't remember everything — not yet — but I sure remember that much. The picture in George's room that moved. Ben's mummy. The leper that Eddie saw under the porch on Neibolt Street. Mike finding the blood on the grass near the Canal in Bassey Park. And the bird. . . there was something about a bird, wasn't there, Mike? ' Mike nodded grimly.

'A big bird. '

'Yes, but not as friendly as the one on Sesame Street. '

Richie cackled wildly. 'Derry's answer to James Brown Gets Off A Good One! Oh chillun, is we blessed or is we blessed! '

'Beep-beep, Richie, ' Mike said, and Richie subsided.

'For you it was the voice from the pipe and the blood that came out of the drain, ' Bill said to Beverly. 'And for Richie. . . ' But here he paused, puzzled.

'I must be the exception that proves the rule, Big Bill, ' Richie said. 'The first time I came in contact with anything that summer that was weird — I mean really big-league weird — was in George's room, with you. When you and I went back to your house that day and looked at his photo album. The picture of Center Street by the Canal started to move. Do you remember? '

'Yes, ' Bill said. 'But are you sure there was nothing before that, Richie? Nothing at all? '

'I — ' Something flickered in Richie's eyes. He said slowly, 'Well, there was the day Henry and his friends chased me — before the end of school, this was, and I got away from them in the toy department of Freese's. I went up by City Center and sat down on a park bench for awhile and I thought I saw. . . but that was just something I dreamed. ' 'What was it? ' Beverly asked.

'Nothing, ' Richie said, almost brusquely. 'A dream. Really. ' He looked at Mike. 'I don't mind taking a walk, though. It'll kill the afternoon. Views of the old homestead. ' 'So we're agreed? ' Bill asked.

They nodded.

'And we'll meet at the library tonight at. . . when do you suggest, Mike? '

'Seven o'clock. Ring the bell if you're late. The libe closes at seven on weekdays until summer vacation starts for the kids. '

'Seven it is, ' Bill said, and let his eyes range soberly over them. 'And be careful. You want to remember that none of us really knows what we're d-d-doing. Think of this as reconnaissance. If you should see something, don't fight. Run. '

'I'm a lover, not a fighter, ' Richie said in a dreamy Michael Jackson Voice.

'Well, if we're going to do it, we ought to get going, ' Ben said. A small smile pulled up the left corner of his mouth. It was more bitter than amused. 'Although I'll be damned if I could tell you right this minute where I'm going to go, if the Barrens are out. That was the best of it for me — going down there with you guys. ' His eyes moved to Beverly, held there for a moment, moved away. 'I can't think of anyplace else that means very much to me. Probably

I'll just wander around for a couple of hours, looking at buildings and getting wet feet. '

'You'll find a place to go, Haystack, ' Richie said. 'Visit some of your old food-stops and gas up. '

Ben laughed. 'My capacity's gone down a lot since I was eleven. I'm so full you guys may just have to roll me out of here. ' 'Well, I'm all set, ' Eddie said.

'Wait a sec! ' Beverly cried as they began to push back from their chairs. 'The fortune cookies! Don't forget those! '

'Yeah, ' Richie said. 'I can see mine now. YOU WILL SOON BE EATEN UP BY A LARGE

MONSTER. HAVE A NICE DAY. '

They laughed and Mike passed the little bowl of fortune cookies to Richie, who took one and then sent it on around the table. Bill noticed that no one opened his or her cookie until each had one; they sat with the little hat-shaped cookies either in front of them or held in their hands, and even as Beverly, still smiling, picked hers up, Bill felt a cry rising in his throat:

No! No, don't do that, its part of it, put it back, don't open it!

But it was too late. Beverly had broken hers open, Ben was doing the same to his, Eddie was cutting into his with the edge of his fork, and just before Beverly's smile turned to a grimace of horror Bill had time to think: We knew, somehow we knew, because no one simply bit into his or her fortune cookie. That would have been the normal thing to do, but no one did it. Somehow, some pan of us still remembers. . . everything.

And he found that insensate underknowledge somehow the most horrifying realization of all; it spoke more eloquently than Mike could have about how surely and deeply It had touched each one of them. . . and how Its touch was still upon them.

Blood spurted up from Beverly's fortune cookie as if from a slashed artery. It splashed across her hand and then gouted onto the white napery which covered the table, staining it a bright red that sank in and then spread out in grasping pink fingers.

Eddie Kaspbrak uttered a strangled cry and pushed himself away from the table with such a sudden revolted confusion of arms and legs that his chair nearly tipped over. A huge bug, its chitinous carapace an ugly yellow-brown, was pushing its way out of his fortune cookie as if from a cocoon. Its obsidian eyes stared blindly forward. As it lurched onto Eddie's breadand-butter plate, cookie crumbs fell from its back in a little shower that Bill heard clearly and which came back to haunt his dreams when he slept for awhile later that afternoon. As it freed itself entirely it rubbed its thin rear legs together, producing a dry reedy hum, and Bill realized it was some sort of terribly mutated cricket. It lumbered to the edge of the dish and tumbled onto the tablecloth on its back.

'Oh God! ' Richie managed in a choked voice. 'Oh God Big Bill it's an eye dear God it's an eye a fucking eye —

Bill's head snapped around and he saw Richie staring down at his fortune cookie, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a kind of sickened leer. A chunk of his cookie's glazed surface had fallen onto the tablecloth, revealing a hole from which a human eyeball stared with glazed intensity. Cookie crumbs were scattered across its blank brown iris and embedded in its sclera.

Ben Hanscom threw his — not a calculated throw but the startled reaction of a person who has been utterly surprised by some piece of nasty work. As his fortune cookie rolled across the table Bill saw two teeth inside its hollow, their roots dark with clotted blood. They raided together like seeds in a hollow gourd.

He looked back at Beverly and saw she was hitching in breath to scream. Her eyes were fixed on the thing that had crawled out of Eddie's cookie, the thing that was now kicking its sluggish legs as it lay overturned on the tablecloth.

Bill got moving. He was not thinking, only reacting. Intuition, he thought crazily as he lunged out of his seat and clapped his hand over Beverly's mouth just before she could utter the scream. Here I am, acting on intuition. Mike should be proud of me. What came out of Beverly's mouth was not a scream but a strangled 'Mmmmph! '

Eddie was making those whistling sounds that Bill remembered so well. No problem there, a good honk on the old lung-sucker would set Eddie right. Right as a trivet, Freddie Firestone would have said, and Bill wondered — not for the first time — why a person had such weird thoughts at times like these.

He glanced around fiercely at the others, and what came out was something else from that summer, something that sounded both impossibly archaic and exactly right: 'Dummy up! All of you! Not one sound! Just dummy up! '

Rich wiped a hand across his mouth. Mike's complexion had gone a dirty gray, but he nodded at Bill. All of them moved away from the table. Bill had not opened his own fortune cookie, but now he could see its sides moving slowly in and out — bulge and relax, bulge and relax, bulge and relax — as his own party-favor tried to escape.

'Mmmmmph! ' Beverly said against his hand again, her breath tickling his palm.

'Dummy up, Bev, ' he said, and took his hand away.

Her face seemed to be all eyes. Her mouth twitched. 'Bill. . . Bill, did you see. . . ' Her eyes strayed back to the cricket and then fixed there. The cricket appeared to be dying. Its rugose eyes stared back at her, and presently Beverly began to moan.

'Quh-Quh-Quit that, ' he said grimly. 'Pull back to the table. '

'I can't, Billy, I can't get near that thi — '

'You can! You h-have to! ' He heard footsteps, light and quick, coming up the short hall on the other side of the beaded curtain. He looked around at the others. 'All of you! Pull up to the table! Talk! Look natural! '

Beverly looked at him, eyes pleading, and Bill shook his head. He sat down and pulled his chair in, trying not to look at the fortune cookie on his plate. It had swelled like some unimaginable boil which was filling with pus. And still it pulsed slowly in and out. I could have bitten into that, he thought faintly.

Eddie triggered his aspirator down his throat again, gasping mist into his lungs in a long, thin screaming sound.

'So who do you think's going to win the pennant? ' Bill asked Mike, smiling insanely. Rose came through the curtain just then, her face politely questioning. Out of the corner of his eye Bill saw that Bev had pulled up to the table again. Good girl, he thought.

'I think the Chicago Bears look good, ' Mike said.

'Everything is all right? ' Rose asked.

'F-Fine, ' Bill said. He cocked a thumb in Eddie's direction. 'Our friend had an asthma attack. He took his medication. He's better now. ' Rose looked at Eddie, concerned. 'Better, ' Eddie wheezed.

'You would like that I clear now? '

'Very shortly, ' Mike said, and offered a large false smile.

'Was good? ' Her eyes surveyed the table again, a bit of doubt overlaying a deep well of serenity. She did not see the cricket, the eye, the teeth, or the way Bill's fortune cookie appeared to be breathing. Her eye similarly passed over the bloodstain splotched on the tablecloth without trouble.

'Everything was very good, ' Beverly said, and smiled — a more natural smile than either Bill's or Mike's. It seemed to set Rose's mind at rest, convinced her that if something had gone wrong in here, it had been the fault of neither Rose's service nor her kitchen. Girl's got a lot of guts, Bill thought.

'Fortunes were good? ' Rose asked.

'Well, ' Richie said, 'I don't know about the others, but I for one got a real eyeful. '

Bill heard a minute cracking sound. He looked down at his plate and saw a leg poking blindly out of his fortune cookie. It scraped at his plate.

I could have bitten into that, he thought again, but held onto his smile. 'Very fine, ' he said.

Richie was looking at Bill's plate. A great grayish-black fly was slowing birthing itself from the collapsing remains of his cookie. It buzzed weakly. Yellowish goo flowed sluggishly out of the cookie and puddled on the tablecloth. There was a smell now, the bland thick smell of an infected wound.

'Well, if I can help you in no way at this moment. . . '

'Not right now, ' Ben said. 'A wonderful meal. Most. . . most unusual. '

'I leave you then, ' she said, and bowed out through the beaded curtain. The beads were still swaying and clacking together when all of them pushed away from the table again.

'What is it? ' Ben asked huskily, looking at the thing on Bill's plate.

'A fly, ' Bill said. 'A mutant fly. Courtesy of a writer named George Langla-han, I think. He wrote a story called " The Fly. " A movie was made out of it — not a terribly good one. But the story scared the bejesus out of me. It's up to Its old tricks, all right. That fly business has been on my mind a lot lately, because I've sort of been planning this novel — Roadbugs, I've been thinking of calling it. I know the title sounds p-pretty stupid, but you see — ' 'Excuse me, ' Beverly said distantly. 'I have to vomit, I think. ' She was gone before any of the men could rise.

Bill shook out his napkin and threw it over the fly, which was the size of a baby sparrow. Nothing so large could have come from something as small as a Chinese fortune cookie. . . but it had. It buzzed twice under the napkin and then fell silent.

'Jesus, ' Eddie said faintly.

'Let's get the righteous fuck out of here, ' Mike said. 'We can meet Bev in the lobby. '

Beverly was just coming out of the women's room as they gathered by the cash register. She looked pale but composed. Mike paid the check, kissed Rose's cheek, and then they all went out into the rainy afternoon.

'Does this change anyone's mind? ' Mike asked.

'I don't think it changes mine, 'Ben said.

'No, ' Eddie said.

'What mind? ' Richie said.

Bill shook his head and then looked at Beverly.

'I'm staying, ' she said. 'Bill, what did you mean when you said It's up to Its old tricks? '

'I've been thinking about writing a bug story, ' he said. 'That Langlahan story had woven itself into my thinking. And so I saw a fly. Yours was blood, Beverly. Why was blood on your mind? '

'I guess because of the blood from the drain, ' Beverly said at once. 'The blood that came out of the bathroom drain in the old place, when I was eleven. ' But was that really it? She didn't really think so. Because what had flashed immediately to mind when the blood spurted across her fingers in a warm little jet had been the bloody footprint she had left behind her after stepping on the broken perfume bottle. Tom. And

(Bevvie sometimes I worry a lot) her father.

'You got a bug, too, ' Bill said to Eddie. 'Why? '

'Not just a bug, ' Eddie said. 'A cricket. There are crickets in our basement. Two-hundredthousand-dollar house and we can't get rid of the crickets. They drive us crazy at night. A couple of nights before Mike called, I had a really terrible nightmare. I dreamed I woke up and my bed was full of crickets. I was trying to shoot them with my aspirator, but all it would do when I squeezed it was make crackling noises, and just before I woke up I realized it was full of crickets, too. '

'The hostess didn't see any of it, ' Ben said. He looked at Beverly. 'Like your folks never saw the blood that came out of the drain, even though it was everywhere. ' 'Yes, ' she said.

They stood looking at each other in the fine spring rain.

Mike looked at his watch. 'There'll be a bus in twenty minutes or so, ' he said, 'or I can take four of you in my car, if we cram. Or I can call some cabs. Whatever way you want to do it. ' 'I think I'm going to walk from here, ' Bill said. 'I don't know where I'm going, but a little fresh air seems like a great idea along about now. ' 'I'm going to call a cab, ' Ben said.

'I'll share it with you, if you'll drop me off downtown, ' Richie said.

'Okay. Where you going? '

Richie shrugged. 'Not really sure yet. '

The others elected to wait for the bus.

'Seven tonight, ' Mike reminded. 'And be careful, all of you. ' They agreed to be careful, although Bill did not know how you could truthfully make a promise like that when dealing with such a formidable array of unknown factors.

He started to say so, then looked at their faces and saw that they knew it already.

He walked away instead, raising one hand briefly in farewell. The misty air felt good against his face. The walk back to town would be a long one, but that was all right. He had a lot to think about. He was glad that the reunion was over and the business had begun.

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