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— Charles Dickens.

David Copperfield

June 4th, 1985

Bill came in about twenty minutes ago and brought me this book — Carole found it on one of the tables in the library and gave it to him when he asked for it. I thought Chief Rademacher might have taken it, but apparently he didn't want anything to do with it.

Bill's stutter is disappearing again, but the poor man has aged four years in the last four days. He told me he expects Audra to be discharged from Derry Home Hospital (where I myself yet tarry) tomorrow, only to take a private ambulance north to the Bangor Mental Health Institute. Physically she's fine — minor cuts and bruises that are already healing.

Mentally. . .

'You raise her hand and it stays up, ' Bill said. He was sitting by the window, twiddling a can of diet soda between his hands. 'It just floats there until someone puts it down again. Her reflexes are there, but very slow. The EEG they did shows a severely repressed alpha wave.

She's c-c-catatonic, Mike. '

I said, 'I've got an idea. Maybe not such a good one. If you don't like it, just say so. '

'What? '

'I'm going to be in here another week, ' I said. 'Instead of sending Audra up to Bangor, why don't you take her to my place, Bill? Spend the week with her. Talk to her, even if she doesn't talk back. Is she. . . is she continent? ' 'No, ' Bill said bleakly.

'Can you — I mean, would you — '

'Would I change her? ' He smiled, and it was such a painful smile that I had to look away for a moment. It was the way my father smiled the time he told me about Butch Bowers and the chickens. 'Yes. I think I could do that much. '

'I won't tell you to take it easy on yourself when you're obviously not prepared to do that, ' I said, 'but please remember that you yourself agreed that much or all of what's happened was almost certainly ordained. That may include Audra's part in this. ' 'I sh-should have kept my mouth shut about where I was g-going. ' Sometimes it's better to say nothing — so that's what I did.

'All right, ' he said at last. 'If you really mean it — '

'I mean it. They've got my housekeys down at the Patient Services Desk. There's a couple of Delmonico steaks in the freezer. Maybe that was ordained, too. '

'She's eating mostly soft foods and, uh, luh-liquids. '

'Well, ' I said, holding onto my smile, 'maybe there'll be cause for a celebration. There's a pretty good bottle of wine on the top shelf in the pantry, too. Mondavi. Domestic, but good. '

He came over and gripped my hand. 'Thank you, Mike. '

'Any time, Big Bill. '

He let go of my hand. 'Richie flew back to California this morning. '

I nodded. 'Think you'll stay in touch? '

'M-Maybe, ' he said. 'For awhile, anyway. But. . . 'He looked at me levelly. 'It's going to happen again, I think. ' 'The forgetting? '

'Yes. In fact, I think it's already started. Just little things so far. Details. But I think it's going to spread. ' 'Maybe that's best. '

'Maybe. ' He looked out the window, still twiddling his can of diet soda, almost surely thinking about his wife, so wide-eyed and silent and beautiful and plastic. Catatonic. The sound of a door slamming shut and locked. He sighed. 'Maybe it is. ' 'Ben? Beverly? '

He looked back at me and smiled a little. 'Ben's invited her to come back to Nebraska with him, and she's agreed to go, at least for awhile. You know about her friend in Chicago? '

I nodded. Beverly told Ben and Ben told me yesterday. If I may understate the case (grotesquely understate the case), Beverly's later description of her wonderful fantastic husband, Tom, was much truer than her original one. Wonderful fantastic Tom kept Bev in emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical bondage for the last four years or so. Wonderful fantastic Tom got here by beating the information out of Bev's only close woman friend.

'She told me she's going to fly back to Chicago the week after next and file a missingpersons report on him. Tom, I mean. '

'Smart enough, ' I said. 'No one's ever going to find him down there. ' Or Eddie either, I thought but did not say.

'No, I suppose not, ' Bill said. 'And when she goes back, I'm betting Ben will go with her.

And you know something else? Something really crazy? '

'What? '

'I don't think she really remembers what happened to Tom. ' I just stared at him.

'She's forgotten or forgetting, ' Bill said. 'And I can't remember what the doorway looked like anymore. The d-doorway into Its place. I try to think of it and the craziest thing happens — I get this ih-image of g-g-goats walking over a bridge. From that story " The Three Billy Goats Gruff. " Crazy, huh? '

'They'll trace Tom Rogan to Derry eventually, ' I said. 'He'll have left a paper trail a mile wide. Rent-a-car, plane tickets. '

'I'm not so sure of that, ' Bill said, lighting a cigarette. 'I think he might have paid cash for his plane ticket and given a phony name. Maybe bought a cheap car here or stole one. ' 'Why? '

'Oh, come on, ' Bill said. 'Do you think he came all this way to give her a spanking? '

Our eyes met for a long moment and then he stood up. 'Listen, Mike. . . '

'Too hip, gotta split, ' I said. 'I can dig it. '

He laughed at that, laughed hard, and when he had sobered he said: Thanks for the use of your place, Mikey. '

'I'm not going to swear to you it'll make any difference. It has no therapeutic qualities that I'm aware of. '

'Well. . . I'll see you. ' He did an odd thing then, odd but rather lovely. He kissed my cheek.

'God bless, Mike. I'll be around. '

Things may be okay, Bill, ' I said. 'Don't give up hope. They may be okay. '

He smiled and nodded, but I think the same word was in both of our minds: Catatonic.

June 5th, 1985

Ben and Beverly came in today to say goodbye. They're not flying — Ben's rented a great big Cadillac from the Hertz people and they're going to drive, not hurrying. There's something in their eyes when they look at each other, and I'd bet my pension-plan that if they're not making it now, they will be by the time they get to Nebraska.

Beverly hugged me, told me to get well quickly, and then cried.

Ben also hugged me, and asked for the third or fourth time if I would write. I told him I would indeed write, and so I will. . . for awhile, at least. Because this tune it's happening to me, as well.

I'm forgetting things.

As Bill said, right now it's only small things, details. But it feels like the sort of thing that's going to spread. It could be that in a month or a year, this notebook will be all I'll have to remind me of what happened here in Derry. I suppose the words themselves might begin to fade, eventually leaving this book as blank as when I first picked it up in the school-supplies department at Freese's. That's an awful thought and in the daytime it seems wildly paranoid. .

. but, do you know, in the watches of the night it seems perfectly logical.

This forgetting. . . the prospect fills me with panic, but it also offers a sneaking sort of relief. It suggests to me more than anything else that this time they really did kill It; that there is no need of a watchman to stand and wait for the cycle to begin again.

Dull panic, sneaking relief. It's the relief I'll embrace, I think, sneaking or not.

Bill called to say he and Audra had moved in. There is no change in her.

'I'll always remember you. ' That's what Beverly told me just before she and Ben left. I think I saw a different truth in her eyes.

June 6th, 1985

Interesting piece in the Derry News today, on page one. The story was headed: STORM CAUSES

HENLEY TO GIVE UP AUDITORIUM EXPANSION PLANS. The Henley in question is Tim Henley a multi-millionaire developer who came into Derry like a whirlwind in the late sixties — it was Henley and Zitner who organized the consortium responsible for building the Derry Mall (which, according to another piece on page one, is probably going to be declared a total loss). Tim Henley was determined to see Derry grow. There was a profit-motive, yes indeed, but there was more to it than that: Henley genuinely wanted to see it happen. His sudden abandonment of the auditorium expansion suggests several things to me. That Henley may have soured on Derry is only the most obvious. I think it's also possible that he's in the process of losing his shirt because of the destruction of the mall.

But the article also suggests that Henley is not alone; that other investors and potential investors in Derry's future may be rethinking their options. Of course, Al Zitner won't have to bother; God retired him when downtown collapsed. Of the others, those who thought like Henley are now facing a rather difficult problem — how do you rebuild an urban area which is now at least fifty percent underwater?

I think that, after a long and ghoulishly vital existence, Derry may be dying. . . like a nightshade whose time to bloom has come and gone.

Called Bill Denbrough late this afternoon. No change in Audra.

An hour ago I put through another call, this one to Richie Tozier in California. His answering machine fielded the call, with Creedence Clearwater Revival music playing in the background. Those machines always fuck up my timing somehow. I left my name and number, hesitated, and added that I hoped he was able to wear his contact lenses again. I was about to hang up when Richie himself picked up the phone and said, 'Mikey! How you be? ' His voice was pleased and warm. . . but there was an obvious bewilderment there as well. He was wearing the verbal expression of a man who has been caught utterly flat-footed.

'Hello, Richie, ' I said. 'I'm doing pretty well. '

'Good. How much pain you having? '

'Some. It's going away. The itch is worse. I'll be damn glad when they finally decide to unstrap my ribs. By the way, I liked the Creedence. '

Richie laughed. 'Shit, that ain't Creedence, that's " Rock and Roll Girls, " from Fogarty's new album. Centerfield, it's called. You haven't heard any of it? ' 'Huh-uh. '

'You got to get it, it's great. It's just like. . . ' He trailed off for a moment and then said, 'It's just like the old days. '

'I'll pick it up, ' I said, and I probably will. I always liked John Fogarty. 'Green River' was my all-tune Creedence favorite, I guess. Get back home, he says. Just before the fade he says it.

'What about Bill? '

'He and Audra are keeping house for me while I'm in here. '

'Good. That's good. ' He paused for a moment. 'You want to hear something fucking bizarre, ole Mikey? '

'Sure, ' I said. I had a pretty good idea what he was going to say.

'Well. . . I was sitting here in my study, listening to some of the new Cashbox hot prospects, going over some ad copy, reading memos. . . there's about two mountains of stuff backed up, and I'm looking at roughly a month of twenty-five-hour days. So I had the answering machine turned on, but with the volume turned up so I could intercept the calls I wanted and just let the dimwits talk to the tape. And the reason I let you talk to the tape as long as I did — '

' — was because at first you didn't have the slightest idea who I was. '

'Jesus, that's right! How did you know that? '

'Because we're forgetting again. All of us this time. '

'Mikey, are you sure? '

'What was Stan's last name? ' I asked him.

There was silence on the other end of the line — a long silence. In it, faintly, I could hear a woman talking in Omaha. . . or maybe she was in Ruthven, Arizona, or Flint, Michigan. I heard her, as faint as a space-traveller leaving the solar system in the nosecone of a burnedout rocket, thank someone for the cookies.

Then Richie said, uncertainly: 'I think it was Underwood, but that isn't Jewish, it it? '

'It was Uris. '

'Uris! ' Richie cried, sounding both relieved and shaken. 'Jesus, I hate it when I get something right on the tip of my tongue and can't quite pick it off. Someone brings out a Trivial Pursuit game, I say " Excuse me but I think the diarrhea's coming back so maybe I'll just go home, okay? " But you remember, anyhow, Mikey. Like before. '

'No. I looked it up in my address book. '

Another long silence. Then: 'You didn't remember? '

'Nope. '

'No shit? '

'No shit. '

'Then this tune it's really over, ' he said, and the relief in his voice was unmistakable.

'Yes, I think so. '

That long-distance silence fell again — all the miles between Maine and California. I believe we were both thinking the same thing: it was over, yes, and in six weeks or six months, we will have forgotten all about each other. It's over, and all it's cost us is our friendship and Stan and Eddie's lives. I've almost forgotten them, you know it? Horrible as it may sound, I have almost forgotten Stan and Eddie. Was it asthma Eddie had, or chronic migraine? I'll be damned if I can remember for sure, although I think it was migraine. I'll ask Bill. He'll know.

'Well, you say hi to Bill and that pretty wife of his, ' Richie said with a cheeriness that sounded canned.

'I will, Richie, ' I said, closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead. He remembered Bill's wife was in Derry. . . but not her name, or what had happened to her.

'And if you're ever in LA, you got the number. We'll get together and mouth some chow. '

'Sure. ' I felt hot tears behind my eyes. 'And if you get back this way, the same thing goes. ' 'Mikey? '

'Right here. '

'I love you, man. '

'Same here. '

'Okay. Keep your thumb on it. '

'Beep-beep, Richie. '

He laughed. 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stick it in your ear, Mike. Ah say, in yo ear, boy. '

He hung up and so did I. Then I lay back on my pillows with my eyes shut and didn't open them for a long time.

June 7th, 1985

Police Chief Andrew Rademacher, who took over from Chief Borton in the late sixties, is dead. It was a bizarre accident, one I can't help associating with what has been happening in Derry. . . what has just ended in Derry.

The combination police-station — courthouse stands on the edge of the area that fell into the Canal, and while it didn't go, the upheaval — or the flood — must have caused structural damage of which no one was aware.

Rademacher was working late in his office last night, the story in the paper says, as he has every night since the storm and the flood. The Police Chiefs office has moved from the third to the fifth floor since the old days, to just below an attic where all sorts of records and useless city artifacts are stored. One of those artifacts was the tramp-chair I have described earlier in these pages. It was made of iron and weighed better than four hundred pounds. The building shipped a quantity of water during the downpour of May 31st, and that must have weakened the attic floor (or so the paper says). Whatever the reason, the tramp-chair fell from the attic directly onto Chief Rademacher as he sat at his desk, reading accident reports. He was killed instantly. Officer Bruce Andeen rushed in and found him lying on the ruins of his shattered desk, his pen still in one hand.

Talked to Bill on the phone again. Audra is taking some solid food, he says, but otherwise there is no change. I asked him if Eddie's big problem had been asthma or migraine. 'Asthma, ' he said promptly. 'Don't you remember his aspirator? ' 'Sure, ' I said, and did. But only when Bill mentioned it.

'Mike? '

'Yeah? '

'What was his last name? '

I looked at my address book lying on the nighttable, but didn't pick it up. 'I don't quite remember. '

'It was like Kerkorian, ' Bill said, sounding distressed, 'but that wasn't quite it. You've got everything written down, though. Right? ' 'Right, ' I said.

'Thank God for that. '

'Have you had any ideas about Audra? '

'One, ' he said, 'but it's so crazy I don't want to talk about it. '

'You sure? '

'Yeah. '

'All right. '

'Mike, it's scary, isn't it? Forgetting like this? '

'Yes, ' I said. And it is.

June 8th, 1985

Raytheon, which had been scheduled to break ground on its Derry plant in July, has decided at the last minute to build in Waterville instead. The editorial on page one of the News expresses dismay. . . and, if I read correctly between the lines, a little fright.

I think I know what Bill's idea is. He'll have to act quickly, before the last of the magic departs this place. If it hasn't already.

I guess what I thought before wasn't so paranoid after all. The names and addresses of the others in my little book are fading. The color and quality of the ink combine to make those entries look as if they were written fifty or seventy-five years before the others I've jotted in there. This has happened in the last four or five days. I'm convinced that by September their names will be utterly gone.

I suppose I could preserve them; I could just keep copying them. But I'm also convinced that each would fade in its turn, and that very soon it would become an exercise in futility — like writing I will not throw spit-balls in class five hundred times. I would be writing names that meant nothing for a reason I didn't remember.

Let it go, let it go.

Bill, act quickly. . . but be careful!

June 9th, 1985

Woke up in the middle of the night from a terrible nightmare I couldn't remember, got panicky, couldn't breathe. Reached for the call-button and then couldn't use it. Had a terrible vision of Mark Lamonica answering the bell with a hypo. . . or Henry Bowers with his switchblade.

I grabbed my address book and called Ben Hanscom in Nebraska. . . the address and number have faded still more, but they are still legible. No go, Joe. Got a recorded phonecompany voice telling me service to that number has been cancelled.

Was Ben fat, or did he have something like a club foot?

Lay awake until dawn.

June 10th, 1985

They tell me I can go home tomorrow.

I called Bill and told him that — I suppose I wanted to warn him that his time is getting shorter all the time. Bill is the only one I remember clearly and I'm convinced that I'm the only one he remembers clearly. Because we are both still here in Derry, I suppose.

'All right, ' he said. 'By tomorrow we'll be out of your hair. '

'You still got your idea? '

'Yeah. Looks like it's time to try it. '

'Be careful. '

He laughed and said something I both do and don't understand: 'You can't be c-c-careful on a skuh-hateboard, man. '

'How will I know how it turned out, Bill? ' 'You'll know, ' he said, and hung up.

My heart's with you, Bill, no matter how it turns out. My heart is with all of them, and I think that, even if we forget each other, we'll remember in our dreams.

I'm almost done with this diary now — and I suppose a diary is all that it will ever be, and that the story of Derry's old scandals and eccentricities has no place outside these pages. That's fine with me; I think that, when they let me out of here tomorrow, it might finally be time to start thinking about some sort of new life. . . although just what that might be is unclear to me.

I loved you guys, you know.

I loved you so much.

'I knew the bride when she used to do the Pony, I knew the bride when she used to do the Stroll.

I knew the bride when she used to wanna party,

I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll. '

— Nick Lowe

'You can't be careful on a skateboard man'

— some kid

Noon of a summer day.

Bill stood naked in Mike Hanlon's bedroom, looking at his lean body in the mirror on the door. His bald head gleamed in the light which fell through the window and cast his shadow along the floor and up the wall. His chest was hairless, his thighs and shanks skinny but overlaid with ropes of muscle. Still, he thought, it's an adult's body we got here, no question about that. There's the pot belly that comes with a few too many good steaks, a few too many bottles of Kirin beer, a few too many poolside lunches where you had the Reuben or the French dip instead of the diet plate. Your seat's dropped, too, Bill old buddy. You can still serve an ace if you're not too hung over and if your eye's in, but you can't hustle after the old Dunlop the way you could when you were seventeen. You got love handles and your balls are starting to get that middle-aged dangly look. There's lines on your face that weren't there when you were seventeen. . . Hell, they weren't there on your first author photo, the one where you tried so hard to look as if you knew something. . . anything. You're too old for what you've got in mind, Billy-boy. You'll kill both of you. He put on his underpants.

If we'd believed that, we never could have. . . have done whatever it was we did. Because he didn't really remember what it was they had done, or what had happened to turn Audra into a catatonic wreck. He only knew what he was supposed to do now, and he knew that if he didn't do it now, he would forget that, too. Audra was sitting downstairs in Mike's easy chair, her hair hanging lankly to her shoulders, staring with rapt attention at the TV, which was currently showing Dialing for Dollars. She didn't speak and would only move if you led her.

This is different. You're just too old, man. Believe it.

I won't.

Then die here in Derry. Big fucking deal.

He put on athletic socks, the one pair of jeans he had brought, the tank top he'd bought at the Shirt Shack in Bangor the day before. The tank was bright orange. Across the front it said WHERE THE HELL IS DERRY, MAINE? He sat down on Mike's bed — the one he had shared for the last week of nights with his warm but corpse-like wife — and put on his sneakers. . . a pair of Keds, which he had also bought yesterday in Bangor.

He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror again. He saw a man pressing middle age dressed up in a kid's clothes.

You look ludicrous.

What kid doesn't?

You're no kid. Give this up!

'Fuck, let's rock and roll a little, ' Bill said softly, and left the room.

In the dreams he will have in later years, he is always leaving Derry alone, at sunset. The town is deserted; everyone has left. The Theological Seminary and the Victorian houses on West Broadway brood black against a lurid sky, every summer sunset you ever saw rolled up into one.

He can hear his footfalls echoing back as they rap along the concrete. The only other sound is water rushing hollowly through the stormdrains

He rolled Silver out into the driveway, put him on the kickstand, and checked the tires again. The front one was okay but the back one felt a little mushy. He got the bike pump that Mike had bought and firmed it up. When he put the pump back, he checked the playing cards and the clothespins. The bike's wheels still made those exciting machine-gun sounds Bill remembered from his boyhood. Good deal.

You've gone crazy.

Maybe. We'll see.

He went back into Mike's garage again, got the 3-in-l, and oiled the chain and sprocket. Then he stood up, looked at Silver, and gave the bulb of the oogah-horn a light, experimental squeeze. It sounded good. He nodded and went into the house.

and he sees all those places again, intact, as they were then: the hulking brick fort of Derry Elementary, the Kissing Bridge with its complex intaglio of initials, high-school sweethearts ready to crack the world open with their passion who had grown up to become insurance agents and car salesmen and waitresses and beauticians; he sees the statue of Paul Bunyan against that bleeding sunset sky and the leaning white fence which ran along the Kansas Street sidewalk at the edge of the Barrens. He sees them as they were, as they always will be in some part of his mind. . . and his heart breaks with love and honor.

Leaving, leaving Derry, he thinks. We are leaving Derry, and if this was a story it would be the last half-dozen pages or so; get ready to put this one up on the shelf and forget it. The sun's going down and there's no sound but my footfalls and the water in the drains. This is the time of

Dialing for Dollars had given way to Wheel of Fortune. Audra sat passively in front of it, her eyes never leaving the set. Her demeanor did not change when Bill snapped the TV off.

'Audra, ' he said, going to her and taking her hand. 'Come on. '

She didn't move. Her hand lay in his, warm wax. Bill took her other hand from the arm of

Mike's chair and pulled her to her feet. He had dressed her that morning much as he had dressed himself — she was wearing Levis and a blue shell top. She would have looked quite lovely if not for her wide-eyed vacant stare.

'Cuh-come on, ' he said again, and led her through the door, into Mike's kitchen and, eventually, outside. She came willingly enough. . . although she would have plunged off the back porch stoop and gone sprawling in the dirt if Bill had not put an arm around her waist and guided her down the steps.

He led her over to where Silver stood heeled over on his kick-stand in the bright summer noonlight. Audra stood beside the bike, looking serenely at the side of Mike's garage.

'Get on, Audra. '

She didn't move. Patiently, Bill worked at getting her to swing one of her long legs over the carrier mounted on Silver's back fender. At last she stood there with the package carrier between her legs, not quite touching her crotch. Bill pressed his hand lightly to the top of her head and Audra sat down.

He swung onto Silver's saddle and put up the kickstand with his heel. He prepared to reach behind him for Audra's hands and draw them around his middle, but before he could do it they crept around him of their own accord, like small dazed mice.

He looked down at them, his heart beating faster, seeming to pump in his throat as much as in his chest. It was the first independent action Audra had taken all week, so far as he knew. . . the first independent action she had taken since It happened. . . whatever It had been.

'Audra? '

There was no answer. He tried to crane his neck around and see her but couldn't quite make it. There were only her hands around his waist, the nails showing the last chips of a red polish that had been put on by a bright, lively, talented young woman in a small English town.

'We're going for a ride, ' Bill said, and he began to roll Silver forward toward Palmer Lane, listening to the gravel crunch under the tires. 'I want you to hold on, Audra. I think. . . I think I may go sort of f-f-fast. ' If I don't lose my guts.

He thought of the kid he had met earlier during his stay in Derry, when It had still been happening. You can't be careful on a skateboard, the kid had said.

Truer words were never spoken, kid.

'Audra? You ready? '

No answer. Had her hands tightened the tiniest bit across his middle? Probably just wishful thinking.

He reached the end of the driveway and looked right. Palmer Lane ran straight to Upper Main Street, where a left turn would take him onto the hill running downtown. Downhill.

Picking up speed. He felt a tremor of fear at the image, and a disquieting thought

(old bones break easy, Billy-boy) ran through his mind almost too quickly to read and was gone. But. . .

But it wasn't all disquiet, was it? No. It was desire as well. . . the feeling he'd had when he saw the kid walking along with the skateboard under his arm. The desire to go fast, to feel the wind race past you without knowing if you were racing toward or running away from, to just go. To fly.

Disquiet and desire. All the difference between world and want — the difference between being an adult who counted the cost and a child who just got on it and went, for instance. All the world between. Yet not that much difference at all. Bedfellows, really. The way you felt when the roller-coaster car approached the top of the first steep grade, where the ride really begins.

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