"I r-r-remember," Bill said grimly. "Eddie, listen to me. I want you to

12

THE BARRENS / 1:55 P.M.

g-g-go back and tell B-B-Ben to c-come up h-h-here."

"Okay," Eddie said, and dropped back at once. They were approaching the clearing now. Thunder rumbled in the overcast sky, and the bushes sighed in the rising breeze.

Ben joined him as they came into the clearing. The trapdoor to the clubhouse stood open, an improbable square of blackness in the green. The sound of the river was very clear, and Bill was suddenly struck by a crazy certainty: that he was experiencing that sound, and this place, for the last time in his childhood. He drew a deep breath, smelling earth and air and the distant sooty dump, fuming like a sullen volcano that cannot quite make up its mind to erupt. He saw a flock of birds fly off the railroad trestle and toward the Old Cape. He looked up at the boiling clouds.

"What is it?" Ben asked.

"Why h-h-haven't they tried to guh-guh-het u-us?" Bill asked. "They're th-there. Eh-Eh-Eddie was ruh-hight about that. I can fuh-fuh-heel them."

"Yeah," Ben said. "I guess they might be stupid enough to think we're going back into the clubhouse. Then they'd have us trapped."

"Muh-muh-maybe," Bill said, and he felt a sudden helpless fury at his stutter, which made it impossible for him to talk fast. Perhaps they were things he would have found impossible to say anyway-how he felt he could almost see through Henry Bowers's eyes, how he felt that, although on opposite sides, pawns controlled by opposing forces, he and Henry had grown very close.

Henry expected them to stand and fight.

It expected them to stand and fight.

And be killed.

A chilly explosion of white light seemed to fill his head. They would be victims of the killer that had been stalking Derry ever since George's death-all seven of them. Perhaps their bodies would be found, perhaps not. It all depended on whether or not It could or would protect Henry-and, to a lesser degree, Belch and Victor. Yes. To the outside, to the rest of this town, we'll have been victims of the killer. And that's right, in a funny sort of way that really is right. It wants us dead. Henry's the tool to get it done so It doesn't have to come out. Me first, I think-Beverly and Richie might be able to hold the others, or Mike, but Stan's scared, and so's Ben, although I think he's stronger than Stan. And Eddie's got a broken arm. Why did I lead them down here? Christ! Why did I?

"Bill?" Ben said anxiously. The others joined them beside the clubhouse. Thunder whacked again, and the bushes began to rustle more urgently. The bamboo rattled on in the fading stormy light.

"Bill-" It was Richie now.

"Shhh!" The others fell uneasily silent under his blazing haunted eyes.

He stared at the underbrush, at the path twisting away through it and back toward Kansas Street, and felt his mind suddenly go up another notch, as if to a higher plane. There was no stuttering in his mind; he felt as if his thoughts had been borne away on a mad flow of intuition-as if everything were coming to him.

George at one end, me and my friends at the other. And then it will stop

(again)

again, yes, again, because this has happened before and there always has to be some sacrifice at the end, some terrible thing to stop it, I don't know how I can know that but I do... and they... they...

'They luh-luh-let it happen," Bill muttered, staring wide-eyed at the ratty pigtail of path. "shuh-Shuh-Sure they d-d-do."

"Bill?" Bev asked, pleading. Stan stood on one side of her, small and neat in a blue polo shirt and chinos. Mike stood on the other, looking at Bill intensely, as if reading his thoughts.

They let it happen, they always do, and things quiet down, things go on, It... It...

(sleeps)

sleeps... or hibernates like a bear... and then it starts again, and they know... people know... they know it has to be so It can be.

"I luh-hih-luh-l-l-l-"

Oh please God oh please God he thrusts his fists please God against the posts let me get this out the posts and still insists oh God oh Christ OH PLEASE LET ME BE ABLE TO TALK!

"I l-led you d-down huh-here b-b-b-b-because nuh-nuh-noplace is s-s-safe," Bill said. Spittle blabbered from his lips; he wiped them with the back of one hand. "duh-Duh-Derry is It. D-D-Do you uh-uh-understand m-m-me?" He glared at them; they drew away a little, their eyes shiny, almost thanotropic with fright. "duh-herry is Ih-Ih-It! Eh-Eh-hennyp-p-place we g-g-go... when Ih-Ih-It g-g-g-gets uh-us, they w-w-wuh-hon't suh-suh-see, they w-w-won't huh-huh-hear, they w-w-won't nuh-nuh-know." He looked at them, pleading. "duh-don't y-y-you sub-see h-how it ih-ih-is? A-A-A11 we c-c-can duh-duh-do is to t-t-try and fuh-hinish w-what w-w-w-we stuh-harted."

Beverly saw Mr Ross getting up, looking at her, folding his paper, and simply going into his house. They won't see, they won't hear, they won't know. And my father

(take those pants off slutchild)

had meant to kill her.

Mike thought of lunch with Bill. Bill's mother had been off in her own dreamy world, seeming not to see either of them, reading a Henry James novel while the boys made sandwiches and gobbled them standing at the counter. Richie thought of Stan's neat but utterly empty house. Stan had been a little surprised; his mother was almost always home at lunch time. On the few occasions when she wasn't, she left a note saying where she could be reached. But there had been no note today. The car was gone, and that was all. "Probably went shopping with her friend Debbie," Stan said, frowning a little, and had set to work making egg-salad sandwiches. Richie had forgotten about it. Until now. Eddie thought of his mother. When he had gone out with his Parcheesi board there had been none of the usual cautions: Be careful, Eddie, get under cover if it rains, Eddie, don't you dare play any rough games, Eddie. She hadn't asked if he had his aspirator, hadn't told him what time to be home, hadn't warned him against "those rough boys you play with." She had simply gone on watching her soap-opera story on TV, as if he didn't exist.

As if he didn't exist.

A version of the same thought went through all of the boys" minds: they had, at some point between getting up this morning and lunch-time, simply become ghosts.

Ghosts.

"Bill," Stan said harshly, "if we cut across? Through the Old Cape?"

Bill shook his head. "I don't thuh-thuh-hink s-s-so. We'd g-g-get c-c-caught in the buh-buh-bam-b-b-boo... the quh-quh-quick-m-mud... or there'd b-b-be ruh-ruh-real p-p-p-pirahna fuh-fuh-fish in the K-K-Kenduskeag... o-o-or suh-suh-homething e-e-else."

Each had his or her own different vision of the same end. Ben saw bushes which suddenly became man-eating plants. Beverly saw flying leeches like the ones that had come out of that old refrigerator. Stan saw the mucky ground in the bamboo vomiting up the living corpses of children caught in there by the fabled quickmud. Mike Hanlon imagined small Jurassic reptiles with horrid sawteeth suddenly boiling out of the cleft of a rotten tree, attacking them, biting them to pieces. Richie saw the Crawling Eye oozing down on top of them as they ran under the railroad trestle. And Eddie saw them climbing the Old Cape embankment only to look up and see the leper standing at the top, his sagging flesh acrawl with beetles and maggots, waiting for them.

"If we could get out of town somehow... " Richie muttered, then winced as thunder shouted a furious negative from the sky. More rain fell-it was still only squalling, but soon it would begin to come down seriously, in sheets and torrents. The day's hazy peace was now utterly gone, as if it had never been at all. "We'd be safe if we could just get out of this fucking town."

Beverly began: "Beep-b-" And then a rock came flying out of the shaggy bushes and struck Mike on the side of the head. He staggered backward, blood flowing through the tight cap of his hair, and would have fallen if Bill hadn't caught him.

"Teach you to throw rocks!" Henry's voice floated mockingly to them.

Bill could see the others looking around, wild-eyed, ready to bolt in six different directions. And if they did that, it really would be over.

"B-B-Ben!" he said sharply.

Ben looked at him. "Bill, we gotta run. They-"

Two more rocks flew out of the bushes. One struck Stan on the upper thigh. He yelled, more surprised than hurt. Beverly sidestepped the second. It struck the ground and rolled through the clubhouse trapdoor.

"D-D-Do you r-r-ruh-remember the f-f-first duh-day you c-c-came d-down here?" Bill shouted over the thunder. "The d-d-d-day schuh-hool l-let ow-out?"

"Bill-" Richie shouted.

Bill thrust a shushing hand at him; his eyes remained fixed on Ben, pinning him to the spot.

"Sure," Ben said, miserably trying to look in all directions at once. The bushes were now wavering and dancing wildly, their motion nearly tidal.

"The druh-druh-drain," Bill said. "The p-p-pumping-stuh-hation. Thah-that's where we're suh-suh-hupposed to g-g-go. Take us there!"

"But-"

"Tuh-tuh-take us th-there!"

A fusillade of rocks whizzed out of the bushes and for a moment Bill saw Victor Criss's face, somehow frightened, drugged, and avid all at the same time. Then a rock smashed into his cheekbone and it was Mike's turn to keep Bill from falling down. For a moment he couldn't see straight. His cheek felt numb. Then sensation returned in painful throbs and he felt blood running down his face. He swiped at his cheek, wincing at the painful knob that was rising there, looked at the blood, wiped it on his jeans. His hair whipped wildly in the freshening wind.

"Teach you to throw rocks, you stuttering asshole!" Henry half-laughed, half-screamed.

"Tuh-Tuh-Take us!" Bill yelled. He understood now why he had sent Eddie back to get Ben; it was that pumping-station they were supposed to go to, that very one, and only Ben knew exactly which one it was-they ran along both banks of the Kenduskeag at irregular intervals. "Ih-ih-hit's the pluh-pluh-hace! The w-w-way ih-in! The wuh-wuh-wuh-way to It!"

"Bill, you can't know that!" Beverly cried.

He shouted furiously at her-at all of them: "I know!"

Ben stood there for a moment, wetting his lips, looking at Bill. Then he struck off across the clearing, heading toward the river. A brilliant bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, purplish-white, followed by a rip of thunder that made Bill reel on his feet. A fist-sized chunk of rock sailed past his nose and struck Ben's buttocks. He yipped with pain and his hand went to the spot.

"Yaah,fatboy!" Henry cried in that same half-laughing, half-screaming voice. The bushes rustled and crashed and Henry appeared as the rain stopped fooling around and came in a downpour. Water ran in Henry's crewcut, in his eyebrows, down his cheeks. His grin showed all his teeth. Teach you to throw r-"

Mike had found one of the pieces of scrapwood left over from building the clubhouse roof and now he threw it. It flipped over twice and struck Henry's forehead. He screamed, clapped one hand to the spot like a man who's just had one hell of a good idea, and sat down hard.

"Ruh-ruh-run!" Bill hollered. "A-After Buh-Buh-Ben!"

More crashings and stumblings in the bushes, and as the rest of the Losers ran after Ben Hanscom, Victor and Belch appeared, Henry stood up, and the three of them gave chase.

Even later, when the rest of that day had come back to Ben, he recalled only jumbled images of their run through the bushes. He remembered branches overloaded with dripping leaves slapping against his face, dousing him with cold water; he remembered that the thunder and lightning seemed to have become almost constant, and he remembered that Henry's screams for them to come back and fight seemed to merge with the sound of the Kenduskeag as they drew closer to it. Every time he slowed, Bill would whack him on the back to make him hurry up.

What if I can't find it? What if I can't find that particular pumping-station?

The breath tore in and out of his lungs, hot and bloody-tasting in the back of his throat. A stitch was sinking into his side. His buttocks sang where the rock had hit him. Beverly had said Henry and his friends meant to kill them, and Ben believed it now, yes he did.

He came to the Kenduskeag's bank so suddenly that he nearly plunged over the edge. He managed to get his balance, and then the embankment, undercut by the spring runoff, collapsed and he went tumbling over anyway, skidding all the way to the edge of the fast-running water, his shirt rucking up in the back, clayey mud streaking and sticking to his skin.

Bill piled into him and yanked him to his feet.

The others burst out of the bushes which overhung the bank one after the other. Richie and Eddie were last, Richie with one arm slung around Eddie's waist, his dripping specs clinging precariously to the end of his nose.

"Wuh-Wuh-Where?" Bill shouted.

Ben looked first left and then right, aware that the time was suicidally short. The river seemed higher already, and the rain-dark sky had given it a dangerous slate-gray color as it boiled its way along. Its banks were choked with underbrush and stunted trees, all of them now dancing to the wind's tune. He could hear Eddie sobbing for breath.

"Wuh-wuh-where?"

"I don't kn-" he began, and then he saw the leaning tree and the eroded cave beneath it. That was where he had hidden that first day. He had dozed off and when he woke up he had heard Bill and Eddie goofing around. Then the big boys had come... seen... conquered. Ta-ta, bays, it was a real baby dam, believe me.

"There!" he shouted. "That way!"

Lightning flashed again and this time Ben could hear it, a buzzing noise like an overloaded Lionel train-transformer. It struck the tree and blue-white electric fire sizzled its gnarly base into splinters and toothpicks sized for a fairytale giant. It fell toward the river with a rending crash, driving spray high into the air. Ben drew in a dismayed gasp and smelled something hot and punky and wild. A fireball rolled up the bole of the downed tree, seemed to flash brighter, and went out. Thunder exploded, not above them but around them, as if they stood in the center of the thunderclap. The rain sheeted down.

Bill thumped him on the back, awaking him from his dazed contemplation of these things. "Guh-guh-GO!"

Ben went, splashing and stumbling along the verge of the river, his hair hanging in his eyes. He reached the tree-the little root-cave beneath it had been obliterated-and climbed over it, digging his toes into its wet hide, scraping his hands and forearms.

Bill and Richie manhandled Eddie over, and as he stumbled off the tree-trunk, Ben caught him. They both went tumbling to the ground. Eddie cried out.

"You all right?" Ben shouted.