water, it could not stand against that talismanic magical incantation: This is my body, take, eat; this is my blood, shed for you and for many.
No, he had never made the experiment.
“I guess all religions are weird,” Eddie said now. But powerful, his mind added, almost magical… or was that BLASPHEMY? He began to think about the thing they had seen on Neibolt Street, and for the first time he saw a crazy parallel-the Werewolf had, after all, come out of the toilet.
“Boy, I guess everybody’s asleep,” Richie said, tossing his empty Rocket-tube nonchalantly into the gutter. “You ever see it so quiet? What, did everybody go to Bar Harbor for the day?”
“H-H-H-Hey you guh-guh-guys!” Bill Denbrough shouted from behind them. “Wuh-Wuh-hait up!”
Eddie turned, delighted as always to hear Big Bill’s voice. He was wheeling Silver around the corner of Costello Avenue, outdistancing Mike, although Mike’s Schwinn was almost brand-new.
“Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYYY!” Bill yelled. He rolled up to them doing perhaps twenty miles an hour, the playing cards clothespinned to the fender-struts roaring. Then he back-pedalled, locked the brakes, and produced an admirably long skid-mark.
“Stuttering Bill!” Richie said. “Howaya, boy? M say… Ah say… how aw you, boy?”
“I’m o-o-okay,” Bill said. “seen Ben or Buh-Buh-heverly?” is Mike rode up and joined them. Sweat stood out on his face in little drops. “How fast does that bike go, anyway?”
Bill laughed. “I d-d-don’t nun-know, e-exactly. Pretty f-f-fast.”
“I haven’t seen them,” Richie said. “They’re probably down there, hanging out. Singing two-part harmony. “Sh-boom, sh-boom… yada-da-da-da-da-da… you look like a dream, shweetheart.’”
Stan Uris made throwing-up noises.
“He’s just jealous,” Richie said to Mike. “Jews can’t sing.”
“Buh-buh-buh-”
“Beep-beep, Richie,” Richie said for him, and they all laughed.
They started toward the Barrens again, Mike and Bill pushing their bikes. Conversation was brisk at first, but then it lagged. Looking at Bill, Eddie saw an uneasy look on his face, and he thought that maybe the quiet was getting to him, too. He knew Richie had meant it as a joke, but it really did seem that everyone in Derry had gone to Bar Harbor for the day… to somewhere. Not a car moved on the street; there wasn’t a single old lady pushing a carrier full of groceries back to her house or apartment.
“Sure is quiet, isn’t it?” Eddie ventured, but Bill only nodded.
They crossed to the Barrens side of Kansas Street, and then they saw Ben and Beverly, running toward them, shouting. Eddie was shocked by Beverly’s appearance; she was usually so neat and clean, her hair always washed and tied back in a pony-tail. Now she was streaked with what looked like every kind of gluck in the universe. Her eyes were wide and wild. There was a scratch on one cheek. Her jeans were caked with crap and her blouse was torn.
Ben fell behind her, puffing, his stomach wobbling.
“Can’t go down in the Barrens,” Beverly was panting. “The boys… Henry… Victor… they’re down there somewhere… the knife… he has a knife…”
“Sluh-slow down,” Bill said, taking charge at once in that effortless, almost unconscious way of his. He glanced at Ben as he ran up, his cheeks flushed bright, his considerable chest heaving.
“She says Henry’s gone crazy, Big Bill,” Ben said.
“Shit, you mean he used to be sane?” Richie asked, and spat between his teeth.
“Sh-Shut uh-up, Ruh-Richie,” Bill said, and then looked back at Beverly. “Teh-Tell,” he said. Eddie’s hand crept into his pocket and touched his aspirator. He didn’t know what all this was, but he already knew it wasn’t good.
Forcing herself to speak as calmly as possible, Beverly managed to get out an edited version of the story-a version that began with Henry, Victor, and Belch catching up to her on the street. She didn’t tell them about her father-she was desperately ashamed of that.
When she was finished Bill stood silent for a moment, hands in his pockets, chin down, Silver’s handlebars leaning against his chest. The others waited, throwing frequent glances at the railing that ran along the edge of the dropoff. Bill thought for a long time, and no one interrupted him. Eddie became aware, suddenly and effortlessly, that this might be the final act. That was how the day’s silence felt, wasn’t it? The feeling that the whole town had up and left, leaving only the deserted husks of buildings behind.
Richie was thinking about the picture in George’s album that had suddenly
come to life.
Beverly was thinking about her father, how pale his eyes had been.
Mike was thinking about the bird.
Ben was thinking about the mummy, and a smell like dead cinnamon.
Stan Uris was thinking of bluejeans, black and dripping, and hands as white
as wrinkled paper, also dripping.
“Cuh-Cuh-Come oh-oh-on,” Bill said at last. “W-We’re going d-d-down.”
“Bill-” Ben said. His face was troubled. “Beverly said Henry was really crazy. That he meant to kill-”
“Ih-It’s nuh-not theirs,” Bill said, gesturing at the green dagger-shaped slash of the Barrens to their right and below them-the underbrush, the choked groves of trees, the bamboo, the glint of water. “Ih-Ih-It’s not their pruh-pruh-hopperty,” He looked around at them, his face grim. “I’m t-t-tired of b-being scuh-schuh-hared by them. We b-b-beat them in the ruh-rockfight, and if we h-h-have to beat them a-a-again, we’ll duh-duh-do it.”
“But Bill,” Eddie said, “what if it’s not just them?
Bill turned to Eddie, and with real shock Eddie saw how tired and drawn Bill’s face was-there was something frightening about that face, but it wasn’t until much, much later, as an adult drifting toward sleep after the meeting at the library, that he understood what that frightening thing was: it was the face of a boy driven close to the brink of madness, a boy who was perhaps ultimately no more sane or in control of his own decisions than Henry was. Yet the essential Bill was still there, looking out of those haunted scarified eyes… an angry, determined Bill.
“Well,” he said, “whuh-whuh-what if it’s nuh-nuh-not?
No one answered him. Thunder boomed, closer now. Eddie looked at the sky and saw the stormclouds moving in from the west in black thunderheads. It was going to rain a bitch, as his mother sometimes said.
“Nuh-nuh-how I’ll t-t-tell you what,” Bill said, looking at them. “None of you have to guh-guh-go w-with me if you d-don’t want to. That’s uh-uh-up to you.”
“I’ll go along, Big Bill,” Richie said quietly.
“Me too,” Ben said.
“Sure,” Mike said with a shrug.
Beverly and Stan agreed, and Eddie last.
“I don’t think so, Eddie,” Richie said. “Your arm’s not, you know, looking too cool.”
Eddie looked at Bill.
“I w-w-want h-him,” Bill said. “You w-w-walk with muh-muh-me, Eh-Eh-Eddie. I’ll keep an eye on yuh-you.”
“Thanks, Bill,” Eddie said. Bill’s tired, half-crazy face seemed suddenly lovely to him-lovely and well loved. He felt a dim sense of amazement. I’d die for him, I guess, if he told me to. What kind of power is that? If it makes you look like Bill looks now, it’s maybe not such a good power to have.
“Yeah, Bill’s got the ultimate weapon,” Richie said. “BO bombs.” He raised his left arm and fluttered his right hand under the exposed armpit. Ben and Mike laughed a little, and Eddie smiled.
Thunder boomed again, close and loud enough this time to make them jump and huddle closer together. The wind was picking up, rattling trash around in the gutter. The first of the dark clouds sailed over the hazy ringed disc of the sun, and their shadows melted away. The wind was cold, chilling the sweat on Eddie’s uncovered arm. He shivered.
Bill looked at Stan and said a peculiar thing then.
“You got your b-b-bird-book, Stan?”
Stan tapped his hip pocket.
Bill looked at them again. “Let’s g-g-go down,” he said.
They went down the embankment single-file except for Bill, who stayed with Eddie as he had promised. He allowed Richie to push Silver down, and when they had reached the bottom, Bill put his bike in its accustomed place under the bridge. Then they stood together, looking around.
The coming storm did not produce a darkness; not even, precisely, a dimness. But the quality of the light had changed, and things stood out in a kind of dreamlike steely relief: shadowless, clear, chiselled. Eddie felt a sinking of horror and apprehension in his guts as he realized why the quality of this light seemed so familiar-it was the same sort of light he remembered from the house at 29 Neibolt Street.
A streak of lightning tattooed the clouds, bright enough to make him wince. He put a hand up to his face and found himself counting: One… two… three… And then the thunder came in a single coughing bark, an explosive sound, a sound like an M-80 firecracker, and they drew even closer together.
“Wasn’t any rain forecast this morning,” Ben said uneasily. “The paper said hot and hazy.”
Mike was scanning the sky. The clouds up there were black-bottomed keelboats, high and heavy, swiftly overrunning the blue haze that had covered the sky from horizon to horizon when he and Bill came out of the Denbrough house after lunch. “It’s comin fast,” he said. “Never saw a storm come so fast.” And as if in confirmation, thunder whacked again.
“C-C-Come on,” Bill said. “L-Let’s put Eh-Eh-Eddie’s Parchee-hee-si board in the cluh-cluh-clubhouse.”
They started along the path they had beaten in the weeks since the incident of the dam. Bill and Eddie were at the head of the line, their shoulders brushing the broad green leaves of the shrubs, the others behind them. The wind gusted again, making the leaves on the trees and bushes whisper together. Farther ahead, the bamboo rattled eerily, like drums in a jungle tale.
“Bill?” Eddie said in a low voice.
“What?”
“I thought this was just in the movies, but… ” Eddie laughed a little. “I feel like somebody’s watching me.”
“Oh, they’re th-th-there, all r-r-right,” Bill said.
Eddie looked around nervously and held his Parcheesi board a link tighter. He
11
EDDIE’S ROOM / 3:05 A.M.
opened the door on a monster from a horror comic.
A gore-streaked apparition stood there and it could only be Henry Bowers. Henry looked like a corpse which has returned from the grave. Henry’s face was a frozen witch-doctor’s mask of hate and murder. His right hand was cocked at cheek-level, and even as Eddie’s eyes widened and he began to draw in his first shocked breath, the hand pistoned forward, the switchblade glittering like
