C H A P T E R 1 5

The Smoke-Hole

Richie Tozier pushes his glasses up on his nose (already the gesture feels perfectly familiar, although he has worn contact lenses for twenty years) and thinks with some amazement that the atmosphere has changed in the room while Mike recalled the incident with the bird out at the Ironworks and reminded them about his father's photograph album and the picture that had moved.

Richie had felt a mad, exhilarating kind of energy growing in the room. He had done cocaine nine or ten times over the last couple of years — at parties, mostly; coke wasn't something you wanted just lying around your house if you were a bigga-time disc jockey — and the feel was something like that, but not exactly. This feeling was purer, more of a mainline high. He thought he recognized the feeling from his childhood, when he had felt it every day and had come to take it merely as a matter of course. He supposed that, if he had ever thought about that deep-running aquifer of energy as a kid (he could not recall that he ever had), he would have simply dismissed it as a fact of life, something that would always be there, like the color of his eyes or his disgusting hammertoes.

Well, that hadn't turned out to be true. The energy you drew on so extravagantly when you were a kid, the energy you thought would never exhaust itself — that slipped away somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four, to be replaced by something much duller, something as bogus as a coke high: purpose, maybe, or goals, or whatever rah-rah Junior Chamber of Commerce word you wanted to use. It was no big deal; it didn't go all at once, with a bang. And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you don't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloons with the BurmaShave slogans on the sides. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you. You could go on wearing blue-jeans, you could keep going to Springsteen and Seger concerts, you could dye your hair, but that was a grownup's face in the mirror just the same. It all happened while you were asleep, maybe, like a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

No, he thinks. Not the Tooth Fairy. The Age Fairy.

He laughs aloud at the stupid extravagance of this-image, and when Beverly looks at him questioningly, he waves a hand at her. 'Nothing, babe, he says. 'Just thinkin me thinks. ' But now that energy is back. No, not all the way back — not yet, anyway — but coming back. And it's not just him; he can feel it filling the room. Mike looks okay to Richie for the first time since they all got together for that hideous lunch out by the mall. When Richie walked into the lobby and saw Mike sitting there with Ben and Eddie, he thought, shocked: There's a man who's going crazy, getting ready to commit suicide, maybe. But that look is gone now. Not just sublimated; gone. Richie has sat right here and watched the last of it slip out of Mike's face while he relived the experience of the bird and the album. He's been energised. And it is the same with all of them. Its in their faces, their voices, their gestures. Eddie pours himself 'another gin-and-prune juice. Bill knocks back some bourbon, and Mike cracks another beer. Beverly glances up at the balloons Bill has tethered to the microfilm recorder at the main desk and finishes her third screwdriver in a hurry. They have all been drinking pretty enthusiastically, but none of them are drunk. Richie doesn't know where that energy he feels is coming from, but its not out of a liquor bottle.

DERRY NIGGERS GET THE BIRD: Blue

THE LOSERS ARE STILL LOSING, BUT STANLEY URIS IS FINALLY AHEAD: Orange

Richie thinks, opening a fresh beer for himself, it isn't bad enough It can be any damn monster It wants to be, and it isn't bad enough that It can feed off our fears. It also turns out to be Rodney Dangerfield in drag.

It's Eddie who breaks the silence. 'How much do you think It knows about what we're doing now? ' he asks.

'It was here, wasn't It? ' Ben says.

'I'm not sure that means much, ' Eddie replies.

Bill nods. 'Those are just images, ' he says. 'I'm not sure that means It can see us, or know what we're up to. You can see a news commentator on TV, but he can't see you. '

'Those balloons aren't just images, ' Beverly says, and jerks a thumb over her shoulder at them. 'They're real. '

'That's not true, though, ' Richie says, and they all look at him. 'Images are real. Sure they are. They —

And suddenly something else clicks into place, something new: it clicks into place with such firm force that he actually puts his hands to his ears. His eyes widen behind his glasses. 'Oh my God! ' he cries suddenly. He gropes for the table, half-stands, then falls back into his chair with a boneless thud. He knocks his can of beer over reaching for it, picks it up, and drinks what's left. He looks at Mike while the others look at him, startled and concerned. 'The burning! ' he almost shouts. 'The burning in my eyes! Mike! The burning in my eyes —

Mike is nodding, smiling a little — 'R-Richie? ' Bill asks. 'What i-is it? '

But Richie barely hears him. The force of the memory sweeps through him like a tide, turning him alternately hot and cold, and he suddenly understands why these memories have come back one at a time. If he had remembered everything at once, the force would have been like a psychological shotgun blast let off an inch from his temple. It would have torn off the whole top of his head.

'We saw It come! ' he says to Mike. 'We saw It come, didn't we? You and me. . . or was it just me? ' He grabs Mike's hand, which lies on the table. 'Did you see it too, Mikey, or was it just me? Did you see it? The forest fire? The crater? '

'I saw it, ' Mike says quietly, and squeezes Richie's hand. Richie closes his eyes for a moment, thinking he has never felt such a warm and powerful wave of relief in his life, not even when the PSA jet he had taken from LA to San Francisco skidded off the runway and just stopped there — nobody killed, nobody even hurt. Some luggage had fallen out of the overhead bins and that was all. He had jumped onto the yellow emergency slide and helped a woman away from the plane. The woman had turned her ankle on a hummock concealed in the high grass. She was laughing and saying, 'I can't believe I'm not dead, I can't believe it, I just can't believe it. ' So Richie, who was half-carrying the woman with one arm and waving with the other to the firemen who were making frantic come-on gestures to the deplaning passengers, said: 'Okay, you're dead, you're dead, you feel better now? ' and they both laughed crazily. That had been relief-laughter. . . but this relief is greater. 'What are you guys talking about? ' Eddie asks, looking from one to the other.

Richie looks at Mike, but Mike shakes his head. 'You go ahead, Richie. I've had my say for the evening. '

'The rest of you don't know or maybe don't remember, because you left, ' Richie tells them.

'Me and Mikey, we were the last two Injuns in the smoke-hole. '

'The smoke-hole, ' Bill muses. His eyes are far and blue.

'The burning sensation in my eyes, ' Richie says, 'under my contact lenses. I felt it for the first time right after Mike called me in California. I didn't know what it was then, but I do now. It was smoke. Smoke that was twenty-seven years old. ' He looks at Mike. 'Psychological, would you say? Psychosomatic? Something from the subconscious? '

'I would say not, ' Mike answers quietly. 'I would say that what you felt was as real as those balloons, or the head I saw in the icebox, or the corpse of Tony Tracker that Eddie saw. Tell them, Richie. '

Richie says: 'It was four or five days after Mike brought his dad's album down to the Barrens. Sometime just after the middle of July, I guess. The clubhouse was done. But. . . the smoke-hole thing, that was your idea, Haystack. You got it out of one of your books. ' Smiling a little, Ben nods.

Richie thinks: It was overcast that day. No breeze. Thunder in the air. Like the day a month or so later when we stood in the stream and made a circle and Stan cut our hands with that chunk of Coke bottle. The air was just sitting there, waiting for something to happen, and later Bill said that was why it got so bad in there so quick, because there was no draft.

July 17th. Yes, that was it, that had been the day of the smoke-hole. July 17th, 1958, almost a month after summer vacation began and the nucleus of the Losers — Bill, Eddie, and Ben — had formed down in the Barrens. Let me look up the weather forecast for that day almost twenty-seven years ago, Richie thinks, and I'll tell you what it said before I even read it: Richard Tozier, aka the Great Mentalizer. 'Hot, humid, chance of thundershowers. And watch out for the visions that may come while you're down in the smoke-hole. . . '

It had been two days after the body of Jimmy Cullum was discovered, the day after Mr Nell had come down to the Barrens again and sat right on the clubhouse without knowing it was there, because by then they had capped it off and Ben himself had carefully overseen the replacement of the sods. Unless you got right down on your hands and knees and crawled around, you'd have no idea anything was there. Like the dam, Ben's clubhouse had been a roaring success, but this time Mr Nell didn't know anything about it.

He had questioned them carefully, officially, taking down their answers in his black notebook, but there had been little they could tell him — at least about Jimmy Cullum — and Mr Nell had gone away again, after reminding them once more that they were not to play in the Barrens alone. . . ever. Richie guessed that Mr Nell would have told them simply to get out if anyone in the Derry Police Department had really believed that the Cullum boy (or any of the others) had actually been killed in the Barrens. But they knew better; because of the sewer and stormdrain system, that was simply where the remains tended to finish up. Mr Nell had come on the 16th, yes, a hot and humid day also, but sunny. The 17th had been overcast.

'Are you going to talk to us or not, Richie? ' Bev asks. She is smiling a little, her lips full and a pale rose-red, her eyes alight.

'I'm just thinking about where to start, ' Richie says. He takes his glasses off, wipes them on his skirt, and suddenly he knows where: with the ground opening up at his and Bill's feet. Of course he knew about the clubhouse — so did Bill and the rest of them, but it still freaked him out, seeing the ground suddenly open on a slit of darkness like that.

He remembers Bill riding him double on the back of Silver to the usual place on Kansas Street and then stowing his bike under the little bridge. He remembers the two of them walking along the path toward the clearing, sometimes having to turn sideways because the brush was so thick — it was midsummer now, and the Barrens was at that year's apogee oflushness. He remembers swatting at the mosquitoes that hummed maddeningly close to their ears; he even remembers Bill saying (oh how clearly it all comes back, not as if it happened yesterday, but as if it is happening now), 'H-H-Hold it a s-s-s

— econd, Ruh-Richie. There's a damn guh-guh-hood one on the b-back of your neh-neck. ' 'Oh Christ, ' Richie said. He hated mosquitoes. Little flying vampires, that's all they were when you got right down to the facts. 'Kill it, Big Bill. ' Bill swatted the back of Richie's neck.

'Ouch! '

'Suh-suh-see? '

Bill held his hand in front of Richie's face. There was a broken mosquito body in the center of an irregular patch of blood. My blood, Richie thought, which was shed for you and for many. 'Yeeick, ' he said.

'D-Don't w-worry, ' Bill said. 'Li'l fucker'll neh-never dance the tuh-tuh-tango again. '

They walked on, slapping at mosquitoes, waving at the clouds of noseeums attracted by something in the smell of their sweat — something which would years later be identified as 'pheromones. ' Whatever they were.

'Bill, when you gonna tell the rest of em about the silver bullets? ' Richie asked as they approached the clearing. In this case 'the rest of them' meant Bev, Eddie, Mike, and Stan — although Richie guessed Stan already had a good idea of what they were studying up on down at the Public Library. Stan was sharp — too sharp for his own good, Richie sometimes thought. The day Mike brought his father's album down to the Barrens Stan had almost flipped out. Richie had, in fact, been nearly convinced that they wouldn't see Stan again and the Losers' Club would become a sextet (a word Richie liked a lot, always with the emphasis on the first syllable). But Stan had been back the next day, and Richie had — respected him all the more for that. 'You going to tell them today? ' 'Nuh-not t-today, ' Bill said.

'You don't think they'll work, do you? '

Bill shrugged, and Richie, who maybe understood Bill Denbrough better than anyone ever would until Audra Phillips, suspected all the things Bill might have said if not for the roadblock of his speech impediment: that kids making silver bullets was boys' book stuff, comic-book stuff. . . In a word, it was crap. Dangerous crap. They could try it, yeah. Ben Hanscom might even be able to bring it off, yeah. In a movie it would work, yeah. But. . .

'So? '

'I got an i-i-i-idea, ' Bill said. 'Simpler. But only if Beh-Beh-Beverly — '

'If Beverly what? '

'Neh-hever mind. '

And Bill would say no more on the subject.

They came into the clearing. If you looked closely, you might have thought that the grass there had a slightly matted look — a slightly used look. You might even have thought that there was something a bit artificial — almost arranged — about the scatter of leaves and pine needles on top of the sods. Bill picked up a Ring-Ding wrapper — Ben's, almost certainly — and put it absently in his pocket.

The boys crossed to the center of the clearing. . . and a piece of ground about ten inches long by three inches wide swung up with a dirty squall of hinges, revealing a black eyelid. Eyes looked out of that blackness, giving Richie a momentary chill. But they were only Eddie Kaspbrak's eyes, and it was Eddie, whom he would visit in the hospital a week later, who intoned hollowly: 'Who's that trip-trapping on my bridge? ' Giggles from below, and a flashlight flicker.

'Thees ees the rurales, senhorr, ' Richie said, squatting down, twirling an invisible mustache, and speaking in his Pancho Vanilla Voice. 'Yeah? ' Beverly asked from below. 'Let's see your badges. '

'Batches'? ' Richie cried, delighted. 'We dean need no stinkin batches! '

'Go to hell, Pancho, ' Eddie replied, and slammed the big eyelid closed. There were more muffled giggles from below.

'Come out with your hands up! ' Bill cried in a low, commanding adult voice. He began to tramp back and forth across the sod-covered cap of the clubhouse. He could see the ground springing up and down with his back-and-forth passage, but just barely; they had built well. 'You haven't got a chance! ' he bellowed, seeing himself as fearless Joe Friday of the LAPD in his mind's eye. 'Come on out of there, punks! Or we'll come in SHOOTIN! '

He jumped up and down once to emphasize his point. Screams and giggles from below. Bill was smiling, unaware that Richie was looking at him wisely — looking at him not as one child looks at another but, in that brief moment, as an adult looks at a child. He doesn't know that he doesn't always, Richie thought.

'Let them in, Ben, before they crash the roof in, ' Bev said. A moment later a trapdoor flopped open like the hatch of a submarine. Ben looked out. He was flushed. Richie knew at once that Ben had been sitting next to Beverly.

Bill and Richie dropped down through the hatch and Ben closed it again. Then there they all were, sitting snug against board walls with their legs drawn up, their faces dimly revealed in the beam of Ben's flashlight.

'S-S-So wh-what's g-g-going o-on? ' Bill asked.

'Not too much, ' Ben said. He was indeed sitting next to Beverly, and his face looked happy as well as flushed. 'We were just — '

'Tell em, Ben, ' Eddie interrupted. Tell em the story! See what they think. '

'Wouldn't do much for your asthma, ' Stan told Eddie in his best someone-has-to-bepractical-here tone of voice.

Richie sat between Mike and Ben, holding his knees in his linked hands. It was delightfully cool down here, delightfully secret. Following the gleam of the flashlight as it moved from face to face, he temporarily forgot what had so astounded him outside only a minute ago. 'What are you talkin about? '

'Oh, Ben was telling us a story about this Indian ceremony, ' Bev said. 'But Stan's right, it wouldn't be very good for your asthma, Eddie. ' 'It might not bother it, ' Eddie said, sounding — to his credit, Richie thought — only a little uneasy. 'Usually it's only when I get upset.

Anyway, I'd like to try it. '

Try w-w-what? ' Bill asked him.

'The Smoke-Hole Ceremony, ' Eddie said.

'W-W-What's th-that? '

The beam of Ben's flashlight drifted upward and Richie followed it with his eyes. It tracked aimlessly across the wooden roof of their clubhouse as Ben explained. It crossed the gouged and splintered panels of the mahogany door the seven of them had carried back here from the dump three days ago — the day before the body of Jimmy Cullum was discovered. The thing Richie remembered about Jimmy Cullum, a quiet little boy who also wore spectacles, was that he liked to play Scrabble on rainy days. Not going to be playing Scrabble anymore, Richie thought, and shivered a little. In the dimness no one saw the shiver, but Mike Hanlon, sitting shoulder to shoulder with him, glanced at him curiously.

'Well, I got this book out of the library last week, ' Ben was saying. 'Ghosts of the Great

Plains, it's called, and it's all about the Indian tribes that lived out west a hundred and fifty years ago. The Paiutes and the Pawnees and the Kiowas and the Otoes and the Comanches. It was really a good book. I'd love to go out there sometime to where they lived. Iowa,

Nebraska, Colorado, Utah. . . '

'Shut up and tell about the Smoke-Hole Ceremony, ' Beverly said, elbowing him.

'Sure, ' he said. 'Right. ' And Richie believed his response would have been the same if Beverly had given him the elbow and said, 'Drink the poison now, Ben, okay? '

'See, almost all those Indians had a special ceremony, and our clubhouse made me think of it. Whenever they had to make a big decision — whether to move on after the buffalo herds, or to find fresh water, or whether or not to fight their enemies — they'd dig a big hole in the ground and cover it up with branches, except for a little vent in the top. ' 'The smuh-smuh-smoke-hole, ' Bill said.

'Your quick mind never ceases to amaze me, Big Bill, ' Richie said gravely. 'You ought to go on Twenty-One. I'll bet you could even beat ole Charlie Van Doren. '

Bill made as if to hit him and Richie recoiled, bumping his head a pretty good one on a piece of shoring.

'Ouch! '

'You d-deserved it, ' Bill said.

'I keel you, rotten gringo sumbeesh, ' Richie said. 'We doan need no stinkin — '

'Will you guys stop it? ' Beverly asked. 'This is interesting. ' And she favored Ben with such a warm look that Richie believed steam would start curling out of Haystack's ears in a couple of minutes.

'Okay, B-B-Ben, ' Bill said. 'Go o-o-on. '

'Sure, ' Ben said. The word came out in a croak. He had to clear his throat and start again. 'When the smoke-hole was finished, they'd start a fire down there. They'd use green wood so it would be a really smoky fire. Then all the braves would go down there and sit around the fire. The place would fill up with smoke. The book said this was a religious ceremony, but it was also kind of a contest, you know? After half a day or so most of the braves would bug out because they couldn't stand the smoke anymore, and only two or three would be left. And they were supposed to have visions. '

'Yeah, if I breathed smoke for five or six hours, I'd probably have some visions, all right, ' Mike said, and they all laughed.

'The visions were supposed to tell the tribe what to do, ' Ben said. 'And I don't know if this part is true or not, but the book said that most times the visions were right. '

A silence fell and Richie looked at Bill. He was aware that they were all looking at Bill, and he had the feeling — again — that Ben's story of the smoke-hole was more than a thing you read about in a book and then had to try for yourself, like a chemistry experiment or a magic trick. He knew it, they all knew it. Perhaps Ben knew it most of all. This was something they were supposed to do.

They were supposed to have visions. . . Most times the visions were right.

Richie thought: I'll bet if we asked him, Haystack would tell us that book practically jumped into his hand. Like something wanted him to read that one particular book and then tell us about the smoke-hole ceremony. Because there's a tribe right here, isn't there? Yeah. Us. And, yeah, I guess we do need to know what happens next.

This thought led to another: Was this supposed to happen? From the time Ben got the idea for an underground clubhouse instead of a treehouse, was this supposed to happen? How much of this are we thinking up ourselves, and how much is being thought up for us? In a way, he supposed such an idea should have been almost comforting. It was nice to imagine that something bigger than you, smarter than you, was doing your thinking for you, like the adults that planned your meals, bought your clothes, and managed your time — and Richie was convinced that the force that had brought them together, the force that had used Ben as its messenger to bring them the idea of the smoke-hole — that force wasn't the same as the one killing the children. This was some kind of counterforce to that other. . . to

(oh well you might as well say it)

It. But all the same, he didn't like this feeling of not being in control of his own actions, of being managed, of being run.

They all looked at Bill; they all waited to see what Bill would say. 'Y-You nuh-nuh-know, ' he said, 'that sounds rih-really n-neat. ' Beverly sighed and Stan stirred uncomfortably. . . that was all.

'Rih-rih-really nuh-neat, ' Bill repeated, looking down at his hands, and perhaps it was only the uneasy flashlight beam in Ben's hands or his own imagination, but Richie thought Bill looked a little pale and a lot scared, although he was smiling. 'Maybe we could u-use a vihhision to tell us what to d-d-do about o-our pruh-pruh-hob-lem. '

And if anyone has a vision, Richie thought, it will be Bill. But about that he was wrong. 'Well, ' Ben said, 'it probably only works for Indians, but it might be flippy to try it. '

'Yeah, we'll probably all pass out from the smoke and die in here, ' Stan said gloomily.

That'd be really flippy, all right. '

'You don't want to, Stan? ' Eddie asked.

'Well, I sort of do, ' Stan said. He sighed. 'I think you guys are making me crazy, you know it? ' He looked at Bill. 'When? '

Bill said, 'W-Well, nun-no t-time like the puh-puh-puh-hresent, i-is there? '

There was a startled, thoughtful silence. Then Richie got to his feet, straight-arming the trapdoor open and letting in the muted light of that still summer day.

'I got my hatchet, ' Ben said, following him out. 'Who wants to help me cut some green wood? '

In the end they all helped.

It took them about an hour to get ready. They cut four or five armloads of small green branches, from which Ben had stripped the twigs and leaves. 'They'll smoke, all right, ' he said. 'I don't even know if we'll be able to get them going. '

Beverly and Richie went down to the bank of the Kenduskeag and brought back a collection of good-sized stones, using Eddie's jacket (his mother always made him take a jacket, even if it was eighty degrees — it might rain, Mrs Kaspbrak said, and if you have a jacket to put on, your skin won't get soaked if it does) as a makeshift sling. Carrying the rocks back to the clubhouse, Richie said: 'You can't do this, Bev. You're a girl. Ben said it was just the braves that went down in the smoke-hole, not the squaws. '

Beverly paused, looking at Richie with mixed amusement and irritation. A lock of hair had escaped from her pony-tail; she pushed out her lower lip and blew it off her forehead.

'I could wrestle you to a fall any day, Richie. And you know it. '

'Dat doan mattuh, Miss Scawlett! ' Richie said, popping his eyes at her. 'You is still a girl and you is always goan be a girl! You sho ain't no Injun brave! '

'I'll be a bravette, then, ' Beverly said. 'Now are we going to take these rocks back to the clubhouse or am I going to bounce a few of them off your asshole skull? '

'Lawks-a-mussy, Miss Scawlett, I ain't got no asshole in man skull! ' Richie screeched, and Beverly laughed so hard she dropped her end of Eddie's jacket and all the stones fell out. She scolded Richie all the time they were picking them up again, and Richie joked and screeched in many Voices, and thought to himself how beautiful she was.

Although Richie had not been serious when he spoke of excluding her from the smokehole on the basis of her sex, Bill Denbrough apparently was.

She stood facing him, her hands on her hips, her cheeks flushed with anger. 'You can just take that and stuff it with a long pole, Stuttering Bill! I'm in on this too, or aren't I a member of your lousy club anymore? '

Patiently, Bill said: 'I-It's not l-like that, B-B-Bev, and y-you nun-know i-it. Somebody has to stay u-uh-up here. '

'Why?

Bill tried, but the roadblock was in again. He looked at Eddie for help.

'It's what Stan said, ' Eddie told her quietly. 'About the smoke. Bill says that might really happen — we could pass out down there. Then we'd die. Bill says that's what happens to most people in housefires. They don't burn up. They choke to death on the smoke. They — '

Now she turned to Eddie. 'Well, okay. He wants somebody to stay up on top in case there's trouble? '

Miserably, Eddie nodded.

'Well, what about you? You're the one with the asthma. '

Eddie said nothing. She turned back to Bill. The others stood around, hands in their pockets, looking at their sneakers.

'It's because I'm a girl, isn't it? That's really it, isn't it? '

'Beh-Beh-Beh-Beh — '

'You don't have to talk, ' she snapped. 'Just nod your head or shake it. Your head doesn't stutter, does it? Is it because I'm a girl? ' Reluctantly, Bill nodded his head.

She looked at him for a moment, her lips trembling, and Richie thought she would cry.

Instead, she exploded.

'Well, fuck you! ' She whirled around to look at the others, and they flinched from her gaze, so hot it was nearly radioactive. 'Fuck all of you if you think the same thing! ' She turned back to Bill and began to talk fast, rapping him with words. 'This is something more than some diddlyshit kid's game like tag or guns or hide-and-go-seek, and you know it, Bill. We're supposed to do this. That's part of it. And you're not going to cut me out just because I'm a girl. Do you understand? You better, or I'm leaving right now. And if I go, I'm gone. For good. You understand? '

She stopped. Bill looked at her. He seemed to have regained his calm, but Richie felt afraid. He felt that any chance they had of winning, of finding a way to get to the thing that had killed Georgie Denbrough and the other kids, getting to It and killing It, was now in jeopardy. Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.

A bird sang somewhere; stopped; sang again.

'A-A11 r-right, ' Bill said, and Richie let his breath out. 'But suh-suh-somebody has to sstay tuh-hopside. Who w-w-wants to d-do it? '

Richie thought Eddie or Stan would surely volunteer for this duty, but Eddie said nothing. Stan stood pale and thoughtful and silent. Mike had his thumbs hooked into his belt like Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive, nothing moving but his eyes.

'Cuh-cuh-come o-on, ' Bill said, and Richie realized that all pretense had gone out of the thing now; Bev's impassioned speech and Bill's grave, too-old face had seen to that. This was a part of it, perhaps as dangerous as the expedition he and Bill had made to the house at 29 Neibolt Street. They knew it. . . and no one was backing down. Suddenly he was very proud of them, very proud to be with them. After all the years of being counted out, he was counted in. Finally counted in. He didn't know if they were still losers or not, but he knew they were together. They were friends. Damn good friends. Richie took his glasses off and rubbed them vigorously with the tail of his shirt.

'I know how to do it, ' Bev said, and took a book of matches from her pocket. On the front, so tiny you'd need a magnifying glass to get a really good look at them, were pictures of that year's candidates for the title of Miss Rheingold. Beverly lit a match and then blew it out. She tore out six more and added the burned match. She turned away from them, and when she turned back the white ends of the seven matches poked out of her closed fist. 'Pick, ' she said, holding the matches out to Bill. 'The one who picks the match with the burned head stays up here and pulls the rest out if they go flippy. '

Bill looked at her levelly. 'Th-This is h-h-how you w-want i-it? '

She smiled at him then, and her smile made her face radiant. 'Yeah, you big dummy, this is how I want it. What about you? '

'I luh-luh-love you, B-B-Bev, ' he said, and color rose in her cheeks like hasty flames.

Bill did not appear to notice. He studied the match-tails sucking out of her fist, and at length he picked one. Its head was blue and unburned. She turned to Ben and offered the remaining six.

'I love you too, ' Ben said hoarsely. His face was plum-colored; he looked like he was on the verge of a stroke. But no one laughed. Somewhere deeper in the Barrens, the bird sang again. Stan would know what it was, Richie thought randomly.

'Thank you, ' she said, smiling, and Ben picked a match. Its head was unburned.

She offered them to Eddie next. Eddie smiled, a shy smile that was incredibly sweet and almost heartbreakingly vulnerable. 'I guess I love you, too, Bev, ' he said, and then picked a match blindly. Its head was blue.

Beverly now offered the four match-tails in her hand to Richie.

'Ah loves yuh, Miss Scawlett! ' Richie screamed at the top of his voice, and made exaggerated kissing gestures with his lips. Beverly only looked at him, smiling a little, and Richie suddenly felt ashamed. 'I do love you, Bev, ' he said, and touched her hair. 'You're cool. '

'Thank you, ' she said.

He picked a match and looked at it, positive he'd picked the burned one. But he hadn't.

She offered them to Stan.

'I love you, ' Stan said, and plucked one of the matches from her fist. Unburned.

'You and me, Mike, ' she said, and offered him his pick of the two left.

He stepped forward. 'I don't know you well enough to love you, ' he said, 'but I love you anyway. You could give my mother shoutin lessons, I guess. '

They all laughed, and Mike took a match. Its head was also unburned.

'I guess it's y-y-you a-after all, Bev, ' Bill said.

Looking disgusted — all that flash and fire for nothing — Beverly opened her hand.

The head of the remaining match was also blue and unburned.

'Y-Y-You jih-jig-jiggered them, ' Bill accused.

'No. I didn't. ' Her tone was not one of angry protest — which would have been suspect — but flabbergasted surprise. 'Honest to God I didn't. '

Then she showed them her palm. They all saw the faint mark of soot from the burned match-head there.

'Bill, I swear on my mother's name! '

Bill looked at her for a moment and then nodded. By common unspoken consent, they all handed the matches back to Bill. Seven of them, their heads intact. Stan and Eddie began to crawl around on the ground, but there was no burned match there. 'I didn't, ' Beverly said again, to no one in particular.

'So what do we do now? ' Richie asked.

'We a-a-all go down, ' Bill said. 'Because that's w-what w-w-we're suh-supposed to do. ' 'And if we all pass out? ' Eddie asked.

Bill looked at Beverly again. 'I-If B-Bev's t-telling the truh-truth, and s-she i-i-is, w-we won't. '

'How do you know? Stan asked.

'I-I j-just d-d-do. '

The bird sang again.

Ben and Richie went down first and the others handed the rocks down one by one. Richie passed them on to Ben, who made a small stone circle in the middle of the dirt clubhouse floor. 'Okay, ' he said. That's enough. '

The others came down, each with a handful of the green twigs they'd cut with Ben's hatchet. Bill came last. He closed the trapdoor and opened the narrow hinged window. ThTh-There, ' he said. 'Th-there's our smuh-smoke-hole. Do we h-have any kih-kih-kin-dling? ' 'You can use this, if you want, ' Mike said, and took a battered Archie funnybook out of his hip pocket. 'I read it already. '

Bill tore the pages out of the funnybook one by one, working slowly and gravely. The others sat around the walls, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, watching, not speaking.

The tension was thick and still.

Bill laid small twigs and branches over the paper and then looked at Beverly. 'Y-Y-You ggot the muh-matches, ' he said.

She lit one, a tiny yellow flare in the gloom. 'Darn thing probably won't catch anyway, ' she said in a slightly uneven voice, and touched a light to the paper in several places. When the matchflame got close to her fingers, she tossed it into the center.

The flames blazed up yellow, crackling, throwing their faces into sharp relief, and in that moment Richie had no trouble believing Ben's Indian story, and he thought it must have been like this back in those old days when the idea of white men was still no more than a rumor or a tall tale to those Indians who followed buffalo herds so big they could cover the earth from horizon to horizon, herds so big that their passing shook the ground like an earthquake. In that moment Richie could picture those Indians, Kiowas or Pawnees or whatever they were, down in their smoke-hole, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, watching as the flames guttered and sank into the green wood like hot sores, listening to the faint and steady ssssss of sap oozing out of the damp wood, waiting for the vision to descend.

Yeah. Sitting here now he could believe it all. . . and looking at their somber faces as they studied the flames and the charring pages of Mike's Archie funny book, he could see that they believed it, too.

The branches were catching. The clubhouse began to fill up with smoke. Some of it, white as cotton smoke-signals in a Saturday-matinee movie starring Randolph Scott or Audie Murphy, escaped from the smoke-hole. But with no moving air outside to create a draft, most of it stayed below. It had an acrid bite that made eyes sting and throats throb. Richie heard Eddie cough twice — a flat sound like dry boards being whacked together — and then fall silent again. He shouldn't be down here, he thought. . . but something else apparently felt otherwise.

Bill tossed another handful of green twigs on the smoldering fire and asked in a thin voice that was not much like his usual speaking voice: 'Anyone having a-any vih-vih-visions? '

'Visions of getting out of here, ' Stan Uris said. Beverly laughed at this, but her laughter turned into a fit of coughing and choking.

Richie leaned his head back against the wall and looked up at the smoke-hole — a thin rectangle of mellow white light. He thought about the Paul Bunyan statue that day in March. . . but that had only been a mirage, a hallucination, a (vision)

'Smoke's killin me, ' Ben said. 'Whoo! '

'So leave, ' Richie murmured, not taking his eyes off the smoke-hole. He felt as if he was getting a handle on this. He felt as if he had lost ten pounds. And he sure as shit felt as if the clubhouse had gotten bigger. Damn straight on that last. He had been sitting with Ben Hanscom's fat right leg squashed against his left one and Bill Denbrough's bony left shoulder socked into his right arm. Now he was touching neither of them. He glanced lazily to his right and left to verify that his perception was true, and it was. Ben was a foot or so to his left. On his right, Bill was even farther away.

'Place is bigger, friends and neighbors, ' he said. He took a deeper breath and coughed hard. It hurt, hurt deep in his chest, the way a cough hurt when you had the flu or the grippe or something. For awhile he thought it would never pass; that he would just go on coughing until they had to pull him out. If they still can, he thought, but the thought was really too dim to be frightening.

Then Bill was pounding him on the back, and the coughing fit passed.

'You don't know you don't always, ' Richie said. He was looking at the smoke-hole again instead of at Bill. How bright it seemed! When he closed his eyes he could still see the rectangle, floating there in the dark, but bright green instead of bright white. 'Whuh-whuh-what do you m-mean? ' Bill asked.

'Stutter. ' He paused, aware that someone else was coughing but not sure who it was. 'You ought to do the Voices, not me, Big Bill. You — '

The coughing got louder. Suddenly the clubhouse was flooded with daylight, so sudden and so bright Richie had to squint against it. He could just make out Stan Uris, climbing and clawing his way out.

'Sorry, ' Stan managed, through his spasmodic coughing. 'Sorry, can't — '

'It's all right, ' Richie heard himself say. 'You doan need no stinkin' batches. ' His voice sounded as if it were coming from a different body.

The trapdoor slammed shut a moment later, but enough fresh air had come in to clear his head a little. Before Ben moved over a little to fill the space Stan had vacated, Richie became aware of Ben's leg again, pressing his. How had he gotten the idea that the clubhouse had gotten bigger?

Mike Hanlon threw more sticks on the smoky fire. Richie resumed taking shallow breaths and looking up at the smoke-hole. He had no sense of real time passing, but he was vaguely aware that, in addition to the smoke, the clubhouse was getting good and hot.

He looked around, looked at his friends. They were hard to see, half-swallowed in shadowsmoke and still white summerlight. Bev's head was tilted back against a piece of shoring, her hands on her knees, her eyes closed, tears trickling down her cheeks toward her earlobes. Bill was sitting cross-legged, his chin on his chest. Ben was — But suddenly Ben was getting to his feet, pushing the trapdoor open again.

'There goes Ben, ' Mike said. He was sitting Indian-fashion directly across from Richie, his eyes as red as a weasel's.

Comparative coolness struck them again. The air freshened as smoke swirled up through the trap. Ben was coughing and dry-retching. He pulled himself out with Stan's help, and before either of them could close the trapdoor, Eddie was staggering to his feet, his face a deadly pale except for the bruised-looking patches under his eyes and traced just below his cheekbones. His thin chest was hitching up and down in quick, shallow spasms. He groped weakly for the edge of the escape hatch and would have fallen if Ben had not grabbed hand and Stan the other.

'Sorry, ' Eddie managed in a squeaky little whisper, and then they hauled him up. The trapdoor banged down again.

There was a long, quiet period. The smoke built up until it was a thick still fog in the clubhouse. Looks like a pea-souper to me, Watson, Richie thought, and for a moment he imagined himself as Sherlock Holmes (a Holmes who looked a great deal like Basil Rathbone and who was totally black and white), moving purposefully along Baker Street; Moriarty was somewhere near, a hansom cab awaited, and the game was afoot.

The thought was amazingly clear, amazingly solid. It seemed almost to have weight, as if it were not a little pocket-daydream of the sort he had all the time (batting cleanup for the Bosox, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and there it goes, it's up. . . ITS GONE! Home run,

Tozier. . . and that breaks the Babe's record! ), but something that was almost real.

There was still enough of the wiseacre in him to think that if all he was getting out of this was a vision of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, then the whole idea of visions was pretty overrated.

Except of course it isn't Moriarty that's out there. It's out there — some It — and It's real.

It —

Then the trapdoor opened again and Beverly was struggling her way out, coughing dryly, one hand cupped over her mouth. Ben got one hand and Stan grabbed her under the other arm. Half-pulled, half-scrambling under her own power, she was up and gone.

'Ih-Ih-It i-is bi-higger, ' Bill said.

Richie looked around. He saw the circle of stones with the fire smoldering within, fuming out clouds of smoke. Across the way he saw Mike sitting cross-legged like a totem carved from mahogany, staring at him through the fire with his smoke-reddened eyes. Except Mike was better than twenty yards away, and Bill was even farther away, on Richie's right. The underground clubhouse was now at least the size of a ballroom.

'Doesn't matter, ' Mike said. 'It's gonna come pretty quick. Somethin is. '

'Y-Y-Yeah, ' Bill said. 'But I. . . I. . . I — '

He began to cough. He tried to control it, but the cough worsened, a dry rattling. Dimly Richie saw Bill stumble to his feet, lunge for the trapdoor, and shove it open.

'Guh-Guh-Good luh-luh-luh — '

And then he was gone, dragged up by the others.

'Looks like it's you and me, ole Mikey, ' Richie said, and then he began to cough himself. 'I thought for sure that it would be Bill — '

The cough worsened. He doubled over, hacking dryly, unable to get his breath. His head was thudding — whacking — like a turnip filled with blood. His eyes teared behind his glasses.

From far away, he heard Mike saying: 'Go on up if you have to, Richie. Don't go flippy.

Don't kill yourself. '

He raised a hand toward Mike and flapped it at him

(no stinkin batches) in a negative gesture. Little by little he began to get the coughing under control again. Mike was right; something was going to happen, and soon. He wanted to still be here when it did.

He tilted his head back and looked up at the smoke-hole again. The coughing fit had left him feeling light-headed, and now he seemed to be floating on a cushion of air. It was a pleasant feeling. He took shallow breaths and thought: Someday I'm going to be a rock-androll star. That's it, yes. I'll be famous. I'll make records and albums and movies. I'll have a black sportcoat and white shoes and a yellow Cadillac. And when I come back to Derry, they'll all eat their hearts out, even Bowers. I wear glasses, but what the fuck? Buddy Holly wears glasses. I'll bop till I'm blue and dance till Fm black. I'll be the first rock-and-roll star to ever come from Maine. I'll —

The thought drifted away. It didn't matter. He found that now he didn't need to take shallow breaths. His lungs had adapted. He could breathe as much smoke as he wanted. Maybe he was from Venus.

Mike threw more sticks on the fire. Not to be outdone, Richie tossed on another handful himself.

'How you feeling, Rich? ' Mike asked.

Richie smiled. 'Better. Good, almost. You? '

Mike nodded and smiled back. 'I feel okay. Have you been having some funny thoughts? ' 'Yeah. Thought I was Sherlock Holmes for a minute there. Then I thought I could dance like the Dovells. Your eyes are so red you wouldn't believe it, you know it? '

'Yours too. Just a coupla weasels in the pen, that's what we are. '

'Yeah? '

'Yeah. '

'You wanna say all right? '

'All right. You wanna say you got the word? '

'I got it, Mikey. ' 'Yeah, okay. '

They grinned at each other and then Richie let his head tilt back against the wall again and looked up at the smoke-hole. Shortly he began to drift away. No. . . not away. Up. He was drifting up. Like

(float down here we all) a balloon.

'Yuh-yuh-you g-g-guys all ri-right? '

Bill's voice, coming down through the smoke-hole. Coming from Venus. Worried. Richie felt himself thud back down inside himself.

'All right, ' he heard his voice, distant, irritated. 'All right, we said all right, be quiet, Bill, let us get the word, we wanna say we got the

(world) word. '

The clubhouse was bigger than ever, floored now in some polished wood. The smoke was fog-thick and it was hard to see the fire. That floor! Jesus-come-please-us! It was as big as a ballroom floor in an MGM musical extravaganza. Mike looked at him from the other side, a shape almost lost in the fog.

You coming, ale Mikey?

Right here with you, Richie.

You still want to say all right?

Yeah. . . but hold my hand. . . can you catch hold?

I think so.

Richie held his hand out, and although Mike was on the far side of this enormous room he felt those strong brown fingers close over his wrist. Oh and that was good, that was a good touch — good to find desire in comfort, to find comfort in desire, to find substance in smoke and smoke in substance —

He tilted his head back and looked at the smoke-hole, so white and wee. It was farther up now. Miles up. Venusian skylight.

It was happening. He began to float. Come on then, he thought, and began to rise faster through the smoke, the fog, the mist, whatever it was.

They weren't inside anymore.

The two of them were standing together in the middle of the Barrens, and it was nearly dusk.

It was the Barrens, he knew that, but everything was different. The foliage was lusher, deeper, savagely fragrant. There were plants he had never seen before, and Richie realized some of the things he had first taken for trees were really giant ferns. There was the sound of running water, but it was much louder than it should have been — this water sounded not like the leisurely flow of the Kenduskeag Stream but more the way he imagined the Colorado River would sound as it cut its way through the Grand Canyon.

It was hot, too. Not that it didn't get hot in Maine during the summer, and humid enough so that sometimes you felt sticky just lying in your bed at night, but this was more heat and more humidity than he had ever felt in his whole life. A low mist, smoky and thick, lay in the hollows of the land and crept around the boys' legs. It had a thin acrid smell like burning green wood.

He and Mike began to move toward the sound of the running water without speaking, pushing their way through the strange foliage. Thick ropy lianas lay between some of the trees like spidery hammocks, and once Richie heard something go crashing off through the underbrush. It sounded bigger than a deer.

He stopped long enough to look around, turning in a circle, studying the horizon. He knew where the Standpipe's thick white cylinder should have been, but it wasn't there. Neither was the railroad trestle going over to the trainyards at the end of Neibolt Street or the Old Cape housing development — low bluffs and red sandstone outcroppings of rock bulged out of thick stands of giant fern and pine trees where the Old Cape should have been.

There was a flapping noise overhead. The boys ducked as a squadron of bats flapped by. They were the biggest bats Richie had ever seen, and for a moment he was more terrified than he had been even when Bill was trying to get Silver rolling and he had heard the werewolf closing in on them from behind. The stillness and the alienness of this land were both terrible, but its awful familiarity was somehow worse.

No need to be scared, he told himself. Remember that this is just a dream, or a vision, or whatever you want to call it. Me and ole Mikey are really back in the clubhouse, goofed up on smoke. Pretty soon Big Bill is gonna get noivous from the soivice because we're not answering anymore, and he and Ben will come down and haul us out. It's just like Conway Twitty says — only make-believe.

But he could see how one of the bats' wings was so ragged the hazy sun shone through it, and when they passed beneath one of the giant ferns he could see a fat yellow caterpillar trundling across a wide green frond, leaving its shadow behind it. There were tiny black mites jumping and sizzling on the caterpillar's body. If this was a dream, it was the clearest one he had ever had.

They went on toward the sound of the water, and in the thick knee-high groundmist, Richie was unable to tell if his feet were touching the ground or not. They came to a place where both the mist and the ground stopped. Richie looked, unbelieving. This was not the Kenduskeag — and yet it was. The stream boiled and roiled through a narrow watercourse cut through that same crumbly rock — looking across to the far side, he could see ages cut into those stacked layers of stone, red and then orange and then red again. You couldn't walk across this stream on stepping-stones; you'd need a rope bridge, and if you fell in you would be swept away at once. The sound of the water was the sound of bitter foolish anger, and as Richie watched, slack-jawed, he saw a pinkish-silver fish jump in an impossibly high arc, snapping at the bugs that made shifting clouds just above the surface of the water. It splashed down again, giving Richie just time enough to register its presence, and to realize he had never seen a fish exactly like that in his whole life, not even in a book.

Birds flocked across the sky, squalling harshly. Not a dozen or two dozen; for a moment the sky was so dark with birds that they blotted out the sun. Something else crashed through the bushes, and then more things. Richie wheeled, his heart thudding painfully in his chest, and saw something that looked like an antelope flash by, heading southeast.

Something's going to happen. And they know it.

The birds passed, presumably alighting somewhere en masse farther south. Another animal crashed by them. . . and another. Then there was silence except for the steady rumble of the Kenduskeag. The silence had a waiting quality about it, a pregnant quality Richie didn't like. He felt the hairs shifting and trying to stand up on the back of his neck and he groped for Mike's hand again.

Do you know where we are? he shouted at Mike. You got the word? Jesus, yes! Mike shouted back. I got it! This is ago, Richie! Ago!

Richie nodded. Ago, as in once upon a time, long long ago, when we all lived in the forest and nobody lived anywhere else. They were in the Barrens as they had been God knew how many thousands of years ago. They were in some unimaginable past before the ice age, when New England had been as tropical as South America was today. . . if there still was a today. He looked around again, nervously, almost expecting to see a brontosaurus raise its cranelike neck against the sky and stare down at them, its mouth full of mud and dripping uprooted plants, or a saber-toothed tiger come stalking out of the undergrowth.

But there was only that silence, as in the five or ten minutes before a vicious thundersquall strikes, when the purple heads stack up and up in the sky overhead and the light turns a queer, bruised purple-yellow and the wind dies completely and you can smell a thick aroma like overcharged car batteries in the air.

We're in the ago, a million years back, maybe, or ten million, or eighty million, but here we are and something's going to happen, I don't know what but something and I'm scared I want it to end I want to be back and Bill please Bill please pull us out it's like we fell into the picture some picture please please help —

Mike's hand tightened on his and he realized that now the silence had been broken. There was a steady low vibration — he could feel it more than hear it, working against the tight flesh of his eardrums, buzzing the tiny bones that conducted the sound. It grew steadily. It had no tone; it simply was:

(the word in the beginning was the word the world the)

a tuneless, soulless sound. He groped for the tree they stood near and as his hand touched it, cupped the curve of the bole, he could feel the vibration caught inside. At the same moment he realized he could feel it in his feet, a steady tingling that went up his ankles and calves to his knees, turning his tendons into tuning forks.

It grew. And grew.

It was coming out of the sky. Not wanting to but unable to help himself, Richie turned his face up. The sun was a molten coin burning a circle in the low-hanging overcast, surrounded by a fairy-ring of moisture. Below it, the verdant green slash that was the Barrens lay utterly still. Richie thought he understood what this vision was: they were about to see the coming of

It.

The vibration took on a voice — a rumbling roar that built to a shattering crescendo of sound. He clapped his hands to his ears and screamed and could not hear himself scream. Beside him, Mike Hanlon was doing the same, and Richie saw that Mike's nose was bleeding a little.

The clouds in the west lit with a bloom of red fire. It traced its way toward them, widening from an artery to a stream to a river of ominous color; and then, as a burning, falling object broke through the cloud cover, the wind came. It was hot and searing, smoky and suffocating. The thing in the sky was gigantic, a flaming match-head that was nearly too bright to look at. Arcs of electricity bolted from it, blue bullwhips that flashed out from it and left thunder in their wake.

A spaceship! Richie screamed, falling to his knees and covering his eyes. Oh my God it's a spaceship! But he believed — and would tell the others later, as best he could — that it was not a spaceship, although it might have come through space to get here. Whatever came down on that long-ago day had come from a place much farther away than another star or another galaxy, and if spaceship was the first word to come into his mind, perhaps that was only because his mind had no other way of grasping what his eyes were seeing.

There was an explosion then — a roar of sound followed by a rolling concussion that knocked them both down. This time it was Mike who groped for Richie's hand. There was another explosion. Richie opened his eyes and saw a glare of fire and a pillar of smoke rising into the sky.

It! he screamed at Mike, in an ecstasy of terror now — never in his life, before or after, would he feel any emotion so deeply, be so overwhelmed by feeling. It! It! It!

Mike dragged him to his feet and they ran along the high bank of the young Kenduskeag, never noticing how close they were to the drop. Once Mike stumbled and went skidding to his knees. Then it was Richie's turn to go down, barking his shin and tearing his pants. The wind had come up and it was pushing the smell of the burning forest toward them. The smoke grew thicker, and Richie became dimly aware that he and Mike were not running alone. The animals were on the move again, fleeing from the smoke, the fire, the death in the fire. Running from It, perhaps. The new arrival in their world.

Richie began to cough. He could hear Mike beside him, also coughing. The smoke was thicker, washing out the greens and grays and reds of the day. Mike fell again and Richie lost his hand. He groped for it and could not find it.

Mike! He screamed, panicked, coughing. Mike, where are you? Mike! MIKE!

But Mike was gone; Mike was nowhere. richie! richie! richie!

(!! WHACKO!! )

'richie! richie! richie, are you

all right? '

His eyes fluttered open and he saw Beverly kneeling beside him, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. The others — Bill, Eddie, Stan, and Ben — stood behind her, their faces solemn and scared. The side of Richie's face hurt like hell. He tried to speak to Beverly and could only croak. He tried to clear his throat and almost vomited. His throat and lungs felt as if they had somehow been lined with smoke. At last he managed, 'Did you slap me, Beverly? ' |It was all I could think of to do, ' she said.

'Whacko, ' Richie muttered.

'I didn't think you were going to be all right, is all, ' Bev said, and suddenly burst into tears.

Richie patted her clumsily on the shoulder and Bill put a hand on the back of her neck. She reached around at once, took it, squeezed it.

Richie managed to sit up. The world began to swim in waves. When it steadied down he saw Mike leaning against a tree nearby, his face dazed and ashy-pale.

'Did I puke? ' Richie asked Bev.

She nodded, still crying.

In a croaking, stumbling Irish Cop's Voice, he asked, 'Get any on ye, darlin? '

Bev laughed through her tears and shook her head. 'I turned you on your side. I was afraid.

. . a-a-afraid you'd ch-ch-choke on it. ' She began to cry hard again.

'Nuh-Nuh-No f-fair, ' Bill said, still holding her hand. 'I-I-I'm the one who stuh-huh-hutters a-around h-here. '

'Not bad, Big Bill, ' Richie said. He tried to get to his feet and sat down again heavily. The world was still swimming. He began to cough and turned his head away, aware that he was going to retch again only a moment before it happened. He threw up a mess of green foam and thick saliva that mostly came out in ropes. He closed his eyes tight and croaked, 'Anyone want a snack? '

'Oh shit! ' Ben cried, disgusted and laughing at the same time.

'Looks more like puke to me, ' Richie said, although, in truth, his eyes were still tightly shut. 'The shit usually comes out the other end, at least for me. I dunno about you, Haystack. ' When he opened his eyes at last, he saw the clubhouse about twenty yards away. Both the window and the big trapdoor were thrown open. Smoke, thinning now, puffed from both. This time Richie was able to get to his feet. For a moment he was quite sure he was going to retch again, or faint, or both. 'Whacko, ' he murmured, watching the world waver and warp in front of his eyes. When the feeling passed, he made his way over to where Mike was. Mike's eyes were still weasel-red, and from the dampness on his pants cuffs, Richie thought that maybe ole Mikey had taken a ride on the stomach-elevator, too.

'For a white boy you did pretty good, ' Mike croaked, and punched Richie weakly on the shoulder.

Richie was at a loss for words — a condition of exquisite rarity. Bill came over. The others came with him. 'You pulled us out? ' Richie asked.

'M-Me and Buh-Ben. Y-You were scuh-scuh-rheaming. B-Both of y-y-you. B-B-But — ' He looked over at Ben.

Ben said, 'It must have been the smoke, Bill. ' But there was no conviction in the big boy's voice at all.

Flatly, Richie said: 'You mean what I think you mean? '

Bill shrugged. 'W-W-What's th-that, Rih-Richie? '

Mike answered. 'We weren't there at first, were we? You went down because you heard us screaming, but at first we weren't there. '

'It was really smoky, ' Ben said. 'Hearing you both screaming that way, that was scary enough. But the screaming. . . it sounded. . . well. . . '

'It s-s-sounded very f-f-f-far a-away, ' Bill said. Stuttering badly, he told them that when he and Ben had gone down, they hadn't been able to see either Richie or Mike. They had gone plunging around in the smoky clubhouse, panicked, scared that if they didn't act quickly the two boys might die of smoke poisoning. At last Bill had gripped a hand — Richie's. He had given 'a huh-huh-hell of a yuh-yank' and Richie had come flying out of the gloom, only about one-quarter conscious. When Bill turned around he had seen Ben with Mike in a bear-hug, both of them coughing. Ben had thrown Mike up and out through the trapdoor.

Ben listened to all this, nodding.

'I kept grabbing, you know? Really not doing anything except jabbing my hand out like I wanted to shake hands. You grabbed it, Mike. Damn good thing you grabbed it when you did.

I think you were just about gone. '

'You guys make the clubhouse sound a lot bigger than it is, ' Richie said. 'Talking about stumbling around in it and all. It's only five feet on every side. '

There was a moment's silence while they all looked at Bill, who stood in frowning concentration.

'It w-w-was b-bigger, ' he said at last. 'W-W-Wasn't it, Ben? '

Ben shrugged. 'It sure seemed like it. Unless it was the smoke. '

'It wasn't the smoke, ' Richie said. 'Just before it happened — before we went out — I remember thinking it was at least as big as a ballroom in a movie. Like one of those musicals. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, something like that. I could barely see Mike against the other wall. '. .

'Before you went out? ' Beverly asked.

'Well. . . what I mean. . . like. . . '

She grabbed Richie's arm. 'It happened, didn't it? It really happened! You had a vision, just like in Ben's book! ' Her face was glowing. 'It really happened?

Richie looked down at himself, and then at Mike. One of the knees of Mike's corduroy pants was out, and both the knees of his own jeans were torn. He could look through the holes and see bleeding scrapes on both his knees.

'If it was a vision, I never want to have another one, ' he said. 'I don't know about de Kingfish over there, but when I went down there, I didn't have any holes in my pants. They're practically new, for gosh sakes. My mom's gonna give me hell. '

'What happened? ' Ben and Eddie asked together.

Richie and Mike exchanged a glance and then Richie said, 'Bevvie, you got a smoke? '

She had two, wrapped in a piece of tissue. Richie put one of them in his mouth and when she lit it the first drag made him cough so badly that he handed it back to her. 'Can't, ' he said. 'Sorry. '

'It was the past, ' Mike said.

'Shit on that, ' Richie said. 'It wasn't just the past. It was ago. '

'Yeah, right. We were in the Barrens, but the Kenduskeag was going a mile a minute. It was deep. It was fuckin wild. Sorry, Bevvie, but it was. And there were fish in it. Salmon, I think. '

'M-My d-d-dad s-says th-there haven't been a-a-any fuh-fish in the K-Kendusk-k-keag for a l-l-long tuh-hime. B-Because of the suh-sewage. '

'This was a long time, all right, ' Richie said. He looked around at them uncertainly. 'I think it was a million years ago, at least. '

A thunderstruck silence greeted this. Beverly broke it at last. 'But what happened? '

Richie felt the words in his throat, but he had to struggle to bring them out. It felt almost like vomiting again. 'We saw It come, ' he said at last. 'I think that was it. '

'Christ, ' Stan muttered. 'Oh Christ. '

There was a sharp hiss-gasp as Eddie used his aspirator.

'It came out of the sky, ' Mike said. 'I never want to see anything like that again in my whole life. It was burning so hot you couldn't really look at it. And it was thowin off electricity and makin thunder. The noise. . . ' He shook his head and looked at Richie. 'It sounded like the end of the world. And when it hit, it started a forest fire. That was at the end of it. '

'Was it a spaceship? ' Ben asked.

'Yes, ' Richie said. 'No, ' Mike said.

They looked at each other.

'Well, I guess it was, ' Mike said, and at the same time Richie said: 'No, it really wasn't a spaceship, you know, but — '

They paused again while the others looked at them, perplexed.

'You tell, ' Richie said to Mike. 'We mean the same thing, I think, but they're not getting it. ' Mike coughed into his fist and then looked up at the others, almost apologetically. 'I don't know just how to tell you, ' he said.

'T-T-Try, ' Bill said urgently.

'It came out of the sky, ' Mike repeated, 'but it wasn't a spaceship, exactly. It wasn't a meteor, either. It was more like. . . well. . . like the Ark of the Covenant, in the Bible, that was supposed to have the Spirit of God inside of it. . . except this wasn't God. Just feeling It, watching It come, you knew It meant bad, that It was bad. ' He looked at them.

Richie nodded. 'It came from. . . outside. I got that feeling. From outside. ' 'Outside where, Richie? ' Eddie asked.

'Outside everything, ' Richie said. 'And when It came down. . . It made the biggest damn hole you ever saw in your life. It turned this big hill into a doughnut, just about. It landed right where the downtown part of Derry is now. '

He looked at them. 'Do you get it? '

Beverly dropped the cigarette half-smoked and crushed it out under one shoe.

Mike said. 'It's always been here, since the beginning of time. . . since before there were men anywhere, unless maybe there were just a few of them in Africa somewhere, swinging through the trees or living in caves. The crater's gone now, and ht e ice age probably scraped the valley deeper and changed some stuff around and filled the crater in. . . but It was here then, sleeping, maybe, waiting for the ice to melt, waiting for the people to come. '

That's why It uses the sewers and the drains, ' Richie put in. They must be regular freeways for It. '

'You didn't see what It looked like? ' Stan Uris asked abruptly and a little hoarsely.

They shook their heads.

'Can we beat It? ' Eddie said in the silence. 'A thing like that? ' No one answered.

⇐ Предыдущая 45 46 47 48 495051 52 53 54 Следующая ⇒