shoved the door open. It came free of the swollen jamb with a brief grinding noise. “It’s a mooseblower! Just a mooseblower, that’s all, something to scare the crows!”
The room was an empty box. Lying on the floor was a Sterno can with both ends cut off. In the middle, strung tight and knotted outside holes punched in the can’s sides, was a waxed length of string. Although there was no breeze in the room-the one window was shut and indifferently boarded over, letting light pass only in chinks and rays-there could be no doubt that the buzzing was coming from the can.
Mike walked to it and fetched it a solid kick. The buzzing stopped as the can tumbled into a far corner.
“Just a mooseblower,” he said to the others, as if apologizing. “We put cm on the scarecrows. It’s nothing. Only a cheap trick. But I ain’t a crow.” He looked at Bill, not laughing anymore but smiling still. “I’m still scared of It-I guess we all are-but It’s scared of us, too. Tell you the truth, I think It’s scared pretty bad.”
Bill nodded. “I-I do, too,” he said.
They went down to the door at the end of the hall, and as Ben watched Bill hook his finger into the hole where the doorknob’s shaft had been, he understood that this was where it was going to end; there would be no trick behind this door. The smell was worse now, and that thundery feeling of two opposing powers swirling around them was much stronger. He glanced at Eddie, one arm in a sling, his good hand clutching his aspirator. He looked at Bev on his other side, white-faced, holding the slingshot up like a wishbone. He thought: If we have to run, I’ll try to protect you, Beverly. I swear I’ll try.
She might have heard his thought, because she turned toward him and offered him a strained smile. Ben smiled back.
Bill pulled the door open. Its hinges uttered a dull scream and then were silent. It was a bathroom… but something was wrong with it. Someone broke something in here was all that Ben could make out at first. Not a booze bottle… what?
White chips and shards, glimmering wickedly, lay strewn everywhere. Then he understood. It was the crowning insanity. He laughed. Richie joined him.
“Somebody must have let the granddaddy of all farts,” Eddie said, and Mike began to giggle and nod his head. Stan was smiling a little. Only Bill and Beverly remained grim.
The white pieces littered across the floor were shards of porcelain. The toilet-bowl had exploded. The tank stood drunkenly at an angle in a puddle of water, saved from falling over by the fact that the toilet had been placed in one corner of the room and the tank had landed kitty-corner.
They crowded in behind Bill and Beverly, their feet gritting on bits of porcelain. Whatever it was, Ben thought, it blew that poor toilet right to hell. He had a vision of Henry Bowers dropping two or three of his M-80s into it, slamming the lid down, then bugging out in a hurry. He couldn’t think of anything else short of dynamite that would have done such a cataclysmic job. There were a few chunks, but damned few; most of what was left were wicked-looking slivers like blowgun darts. The wallpaper (rose-runners and capering elves, as in the hall) was peppered with holes all the way around the room. It looked like shotgun blasts but Ben knew it was more porcelain, driven into the walls by the force of the explosion.
There was a bathtub standing on claw feet with generations of grimy toe-jam between each blunt talon. Ben peeked into it and saw a tidal-flat of silt and grit on the bottom. A rusty showerhead glared down from above. There was a basin and a medicine cabinet standing ajar above it, disclosing empty shelves. There were small rust-rings on these shelves, where bottles had once stood.
“I wouldn’t get too close to that, big Bill!” Richie said sharply, and Ben looked around.
Bill was approaching the mouth of the drainhole in the floor, over which the toilet had once sat. He leaned toward it… and then turned back to the others.
“I can h-h-hear the pub-pumping muh-muh-machinery… just like in the Buh-Buh-harrens!”
Bev drew closer to Bill. Ben followed her, and yes, he could hear it; that steady thrumming noise. Except, echoing up through the pipes, it didn’t sound like machinery at all. It sounded like something alive.
Th-Th-This is w-w-where It cuh-cuh-hame fr-from,” Bill said. His face was still deadly pale, but his eyes were alight with excitement. “This is w-where it cuh-hame from that d-d-day, and th-hat’s w-w-where it a-a-always comes fr-rom! The druh-druh-drains!”
Richie was nodding. “We were in the cellar, but that isn’t where It was-It came down the stairs. Because this is where It could get out.”
“And It did this?” Beverly asked.
“Ih-It was in a h-h-hurry, I th-think,” Bill said gravely.
Ben looked into the pipe. It was about three feet in diameter and dark as a mineshaft. The inner ceramic surface of the pipe was crusted with stuff he didn’t want to know about. That thrumming sound floated up hypnotically… and suddenly he saw something. He did not see it with his physical eyes, not at first, but with one buried deep in his mind.
It was rushing toward them, moving at express-train speed, filling the throat of this dark pipe from side to side; It was in Its own form now, whatever that might be; It would take some shape from their minds when It got here. It was coming, coming up from Its own foul runs and black catacombs under the earth, Its eyes glowing a feral yellowish green, coming, coming; It was coming.
And then, at first like sparks, he saw Its eyes down in that darkness. They took shape-flaring and malignant. Over the thrumming sound of the machinery, Ben could now hear a new noise- Whoooooooo… A fetid smell belched from the ragged mouth of the drain-pipe and he fell back, coughing and gagging.
“It’s coming!” He screamed. “Bill, I saw It, It’s coming!”
Beverly raised the Bullseye. “Good,” she said.
Something exploded out of the drainpipe. Ben, trying to recall that first confrontation later, could only remember a silvery-orange shifting shape. It was not ghostly; it was solid, and he sensed some other shape, some real and ultimate shape, behind it… but his eyes could not grasp what he was seeing, not precisely.
Then Richie was stumbling backward, his face a scrawl of terror, screaming over and over again: “The Werewolf! Bill! It’s the Werewolf! The Teenage Werewolf.” And suddenly the shape locked into reality, for Ben, for all of them. Richie’s It became their It.
The Werewolf stood poised over the drainpipe, one hairy foot on either side of where the toilet had once been. Its green eyes glared at them from Its feral face. Its muzzle wrinkled back and yellowish-white foam seeped through Its teeth. It uttered a shattering growl. Its arms pistoned out toward Beverly, the cuffs of Its high-school letter jacket pulling back from Its fur-covered arms. Its smell was hot and raw and murderous.
Beverly screamed. Ben grabbed the back of her blouse and yanked so hard that the seams under the arms tore. One clawed hand swept through the air where she had been only a moment before. Beverly went stumbling backwards against the wall. The silver ball popped out of the cup of the Bullseye. For a moment it glimmered in the air. Mike, quicker than quick, snatched it and gave it back to her.
“Shoot it, baby,” he said. His voice was perfectly calm; almost serene. “You shoot it right now.”
The Werewolf uttered a shattering roar that became a flesh-freezing howl, Its snout turned up toward the ceiling.
The howl became a laugh. It lunged at Bill as Bill turned to look at Beverly. Ben shoved him aside and Bill went sprawling.
“Shoot It, Bev!” Richie screamed. “For God’s sake, shoot It!”
The Werewolf sprang forward, and there was no question in Ben’s mind, then or later, that It knew exactly who was in charge here. Bill was the one It was after. Beverly drew and fired. The ball flew and again it was off the mark but this time there was no saving curve. It missed by more than a foot, punching a hole in the wallpaper above the tub. Bill, his arms peppered with bits of porcelain and bleeding in a dozen pieces, uttered a screaming curse.
The Werewolf s head snapped around; its gleaming green eyes considered Beverly. Not thinking, Ben stepped in front of her as she groped in her pocket for the other silver slug. The jeans she wore were too tight. She had donned them with no thought of provocation; it was just that, like the shorts she had worn on the day of Patrick Hockstetter and the refrigerator, she was still wearing last year’s model. Her fingers closed on the ball but it squirted away. She groped again and got it. She pulled it, turning her pocket inside out and spilling fourteen cents, the stubs of two Aladdin tickets, and a quantity of pocket-lint onto the floor.
The Werewolf lunged at Ben, who was standing protectively in front of her… and blocking her field of fire. Its head was cocked at the predator’s deadly questing angle, its jaws snapping. Ben reached blindly for It. There seemed to be no room in his reactions now for terror-he felt a clear-headed sort of anger instead, mixed with bewilderment and a sense that somehow time had come to a sudden unexpected screech-halt. He snagged his hands in tough matted hair-the pelt, he thought, I’ve got Its pelt-and he could feel the heavy bone of Its skull beneath. He thrust at that wolvish head with all of his force, but although he was a big boy, it did no good at all. If he had not stumbled back and struck the wall, the thing would have torn his throat open with its teeth.
It came after him, Its greenish-yellow eyes flaring. It growled with each breath. It smelled of the sewer and something else, some wild yet unpleasant odor like rotten hazelnuts. One of Its heavy paws rose and Ben skittered aside as best he could. The paw, tipped with heavy claws, ripped bloodless wounds through the wallpaper and into the cheesy plaster beneath. He could dimly hear Richie bellowing something, Eddie howling at Beverly to shoot it, shoot it. But Beverly did not. This was her only other chance. It didn’t matter; she intended that it be the only one she would need. A clear coldness she never saw again in her life fell over her sight. In it everything stood out and forward; never again would she see the three dimensions of reality so clearly denned. She possessed every color, every angle, every distance. Fear departed. She felt the hunter’s simple lust of certainty and oncoming consummation. Her pulse slowed. The hysterical trembling grip in which she had been holding the Bullseye loosened, then firmed and became natural. She drew in a deep breath. It seemed to her that her lungs would never fill completely. Dimly, faintly, she heard popping sounds. Didn’t matter, whatever they were. She tracked left, waiting for the Werewolfs improbable head to fall with cool perfection into the wishbone beyond the extended V of the drawn-back sling.
The Werewolfs claws descended again. Ben tried to duck under them… but suddenly he was in Its grip. It jerked him forward as if he had been no more than a ragdoll. Its jaws snapped open.
“Bastard-”
He thrust a thumb into one of Its eyes. It bellowed with pain, and one of those claw-tipped paws ripped through his shirt. Ben sucked his stomach in, but one of the claws pulled a sizzling line of pain down his chest and stomach. Blood gushed out of him and splattered on his pants, his sneakers, the floor. The Werewolf threw him into the bathtub. He thumped his head, saw stars, struggled into a sitting position, and saw his lap was full of blood.
The Werewolf whirled around. Ben observed with that same lunatic clarity that It was wearing faded Levi Strauss bluejeans. The seams had split open. A snot-caked red bandanna, the sort a train-man might carry, hung from one back pocket. Written on the back of Its silver and orange high school jacket were the words DERRY HIGH SCHOOL KILLING TEAM. Below this, the name PENNYWISE. And in the center, a number: 13.
It went for Bill again. He had gotten to his feet and now stood with his back to the wall, looking at It steadily.
“Shoot it, Beverly!” Richie screamed again.
“Beep-beep, Richie,” she heard herself reply from roughly a thousand miles away. The Werewolf’s head was suddenly there, in the wishbone. She covered one of its green eyes with the cup and released. There was no shake in either of her hands; she fired as smoothly and naturally as she had fired at the cans in the dump on the day they had all taken turns to see who was the best.
There was time for Ben to think Oh Beverly if you miss this time we’re all dead and I don’t want to die in this dirty bathtub but I can’t get out. There was no miss. A round eye-not green but dead black-suddenly appeared high up in the center of Its snout: she had aimed for the right eye and missed by less than half an inch.
Its scream-an almost human scream of surprise, pain, fear and rage-was deafening. Ben’s ears rang with it. Then the perfect round hole in Its snout was gone, obscured by freshets of blood. It was not flowing; it gouted from the wound in a high-pressure torrent. The freshet drenched Bill’s face and hair. Doesn’t matter, Ben thought hysterically. Don’t worry, Bill. Nobody will be able to see it anyway when we get out of here. If we ever do.
Bill and Beverly advanced on the Werewolf, and behind them, Richie cried out hysterically: “shoot It again, Beverly! Kill it!”
“Kill It!” Mike screamed.
“That’s right, kill It!” Eddie chimed in.
“Kill it!” Bill cried, his mouth drawn down in a quivering bow. There was a whitish-yellow streak of plaster dust in his hair. “Kill It, Beverly, don’t let it get away!”
No ammo left, Ben thought incoherently, we’re slugged out. What are you talking about, kill it? But he looked at Beverly and understood. If his heart had never been hers before that moment, it
