the Kenduskeag before any of them saw it: the foliage had grown up in a tangled wall on the edge of the embankment. The edge broke off under the heels of Ben’s cowboy boots and Bill yanked him back by the scruff of the neck.
“Thanks,” Ben said.
“De nada. In the o-old d-days, you wuh-hould have puh-pulled me ih-in a-a-after you. D-Down this wuh-way?”
Ben nodded and led them along the overgrown bank, fighting through the tangles of bushes and brambles, thinking how much easier this was when you were only four feet five and able to go under most tangles (those in your mind as well as those in your path, he supposed) in one nonchalant duck. Well, everything changed. Our lesson for today, boys and girls, is the more things change, the more things change. Whoever said the more things change the more things stay the same was obviously suffering severe mental retardation. Because -
His foot hooked under something and he fell over with a thud, nearly striking his head on the pumping-station’s concrete cylinder. It was almost completely buried in a wallow of blackberry bushes. As he got to his feet again he realized that his face and arms and hands had been striped by blackberry thorns in two dozen places.
“Make that three dozen,” he said, feeling thin blood running down his cheeks.
“What?” Eddie asked.
“Nothing.” He bent down to see what he had tripped over. A root, probably.
But it wasn’t a root. It was the iron manhole cover. Someone had pushed it off.
Of course, Ben thought. We did. Twenty-seven years ago.
But he realized that was crazy even before he saw fresh metal twinkling through the rust in parallel scrape-marks. The pump hadn’t been working that day. Sooner or later someone would have come down to fix it, and would have replaced the cover in the bargain.
He stood up and the five of them gathered around the cylinder and looked in. They could hear the faint sound of dripping water. That was all. Richie had brought all the matches from Eddie’s room. Now he lit an entire book of them and tossed it in. For a moment they could see the cylinder’s damp inner sleeve and the silent bulk of the pumping machinery. That was all.
“Could have been off for a long time,” Richie said uneasily. “didn’t necessarily have to happen t-”
“It’s happened fairly recently,” Ben said. “since the last rain, anyway.” He took another book of matches from Richie, lit one, and pointed out the fresh scratches.
“There’s suh-suh-something uh-under it,” Bill said as Ben shook out the match.
“What?” Ben asked.
“C-C-Couldn’t tuh-tuh-tell. Looked like a struh-struh-strap. You and Rih-Richie help me t-t-turn it o-over.”
They grabbed the cover and flipped it like a giant coin. This time Beverly lit the match and Ben cautiously picked up the purse which had been under the manhole cover. He held it up by the strap. Beverly started to shake out the match and then looked at Bill’s face. She froze until the flame touched the ends of her fingers and then dropped it with a little gasp. “Bill? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Bill’s eyes felt too heavy. They couldn’t leave that scuffed leather bag with its long leather strap. Suddenly he could remember the name of the song which had been playing on the radio in the back room of the leather-goods shop when he had bought it for her. “sausalito Summer Nights.” It was the surpassing weirdism. All the spit was gone out of his mouth, leaving his tongue and inner cheeks as smooth and dry as chrome. He could hear the crickets and see the lightning-bugs and smell big green growing dark out of control all around him and he thought It’s another trick another illusion she’s in England and this is just a cheap shot because It’s scared, oh yes, It’s maybe not as sure as It was when It called us all back, and really, Bill, get serious-how many scuffed leather purses with long straps do you think there are in the world? A million? Ten million?
Probably more. But only one like this. He had bought it for Audra in a Burbank leather-goods store while “sausalito Summer Nights” played on the radio in the back room.
“Bill?” Beverly’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Far away. Twenty-seven leagues under the sea. What was the name of the group that sang “sausalito Summer Nights’? Richie would know.
“I know,” Bill said calmly into Richie’s scared, wide-eyed face, and smiled. “It was Diesel. How’s that for total recall?”
“Bill, what’s wrong?” Richie whispered.
Bill screamed. He snatched the matches out of Beverly’s hand, lit one, and then yanked the purse away from Ben.
“Bill, Jesus, what-”
He unzipped the purse and turned it over. What fell out was so much Audra that for a moment he was too unmanned to scream again. Amid the Kleenex, sticks of chewing gum, and items of make-up, he saw a tin of Altoid mints… and the jewelled compact Freddie Firestone had given her when she signed for Attic Room.
“My wuh-wuh-wife’s down there,” he said, and fell on his knees and began pushing her things back into the purse. He brushed hair that no longer existed out of his eyes without even thinking about it.
“Your wife? Audra? Beverly’s face was shocked, her eyes huge.
“Her p-p-purse. Her th-things.”
“Jesus, Bill,” Richie muttered. “That can’t be, you know th-”
He had found her alligator wallet. He opened it and held it up. Richie lit another match and was looking at a face he had seen in half a dozen movies. The picture on Audra’s California driver’s license was less glamorous but completely conclusive.
“But Huh-Huh-Henry’s dead, and Victor, and B-B-Belch… so who’s got her?” He stood up, staring around at them with febrile intensity. Who’s got her?”
Ben put a hand on Bill’s shoulder. “I guess we better go down and find out, huh?”
Bill looked around at hull, as if unsure of who Ben might be, and then his eyes cleared. “Y-Yeah,” he said. “Eh-Eh-Eddie?”
“Bill, I’m sorry.”
“Can you cluh-climb on?”
“I did once.”
Bill bent over and Eddie hooked his right arm around Bill’s neck. Ben and Richie boosted him up until he could hook his legs around Bill’s midsection.
As Bill swung one leg clumsily over the lip of the cylinder, Ben saw that Eddie’s eyes were tightly shut… and for a moment he thought he heard the world’s ugliest cavalry charge bashing its way through the bushes. He turned, expecting to see the three of them come out of the fog and the brambles, but all he had heard was the rising breeze rattling the bamboo a quarter of a mile or so from here. Their old enemies were all gone now.
Bill gripped the rough concrete lip of the cylinder and felt his way down, step by step and rung by rung. Eddie had him in a deathgrip and Bill could barely breathe. Her purse, dear God, how did her purse get here? Doesn’t matter. But if You’re there, God, and if You’re taking requests, let her be all right, don’t let her suffer for what Bev and I did tonight or for what I did one summer when I was a boy… and was it the clown? Was it Bob Gray who got her? If it was, I don’t know if even God can help her.
“I’m scared, Bill,” Eddie said in a thin voice.
Bill’s foot touched cold standing water. He lowered himself into it, remembering the feel and the dank smell, remembering the claustrophobic way this place had made him feel… and, just by the way, what had happened to them? How had they fared down in these drains and tunnels? Where exactly had they gone, and how exactly had they gotten out again? He still couldn’t remember any of that; all he could think of was Audra.
“I am t-t-too.” He half-squatted, wincing as the cold water ran into his pants and over his balls, and let Eddie off. They stood shindeep in the water and watched the others descend the ladder.
Chapter 21
UNDER THE CITY
1
IT / AUGUST 1958
Something new had happened.
For the first time in forever, something new.
Before the universe there had been only two things. One was Itself and the other was the Turtle. The Turtle was a stupid old thing that never came out of its shell. It thought that maybe the Turtle was dead, had been dead for the last billion years or so. Even if it wasn’t, it was still a stupid old thing, and even if the Turtle had vomited the universe out whole, that didn’t change the fact of its stupidity.
It had come here long after the Turtle withdrew into its shell, here to Earth, and It had discovered a depth of imagination here that was almost new, almost of concern. This quality of imagination made the food very rich. Its teeth rent flesh gone stiff with exotic terrors and voluptuous fears: they dreamed of nightbeasts and moving muds; against their will they contemplated endless gulphs.
Upon this rich food It existed in a simple cycle of waking to eat and sleeping to dream. It had created a place in Its own image, and It looked upon this place with favor from the deadlights which were Its eyes. Derry was Its killing-pen, the people of Derry Its sheep. Things had gone on.
Then… these children.
Something new.
For the first time in forever.
When It had burst up into the house on Neibolt Street, meaning to kill them all, vaguely uneasy that It had not been able to do so already (and surely that unease had been the first new thing), something had happened which was totally unexpected, utterly unthought of, and there had been pain, pain, great roaring pain all through the shape it had taken, and for one moment there had also been fear, because the only thing It had in common with the stupid old Turtle and the cosmology of the macroverse outside the puny egg of this universe was just this: all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit. For the first time It realized that perhaps Its ability to change Its shapes might work against It as well as for It. There had never been pain before, there had never been fear before, and for a moment It had thought It might die-oh Its head had been filled with a great white silver pain, and it had roared and mewled and bellowed and somehow the children had escaped.
But now they were coming. They had entered Its domain under the city, seven foolish children blundering through the darkness without lights or weapons. It would kill them now, surely.
It had made a great self-discovery: It did not want change or surprise. It did not want new things, ever. It wanted only to eat and sleep and dream and eat again.
