1
IN THE LAIR OF IT / 1958
It was Bill who held them together as that great black Spider raced down Its web, creating a noxious breeze that tousled their hair. Stan shrieked like a baby, his brown eyes bulging from their sockets, his fingers harrowing his cheeks. Ben backed slowly away until his ample ass struck the wall to the left of the door. He felt cold fire burn through his pants and stepped away again, but dreamily. Surely none of this could be happening; it was simply the world’s worst nightmare. He found he could not lift his hands. They seemed to have big weights tied to them.
Richie found his eyes drawn to that web. Hanging here and there, partially wrapped in silken strands that seemed to move as if alive, were a number of rotted half-eaten bodies. He thought he recognized Eddie Corcoran near the ceiling, although both of Eddie’s legs and one of his arms were gone.
Beverly and Mike clung to each other like Hansel and Gretel in the woods, watching, paralyzed, as the Spider reached the floor and scrabbled toward them, Its distorted shadow racing along beside It on the wall.
Bill looked around at them, a tall, skinny boy in a mud-and-sewage-splattered tee-shirt that had once been white, jeans with cuffs, mud-caked Keds. His hair lay across his forehead, and his eyes were blazing. He surveyed them, seemed to dismiss them, and turned back toward the Spider. And, incredibly, he began to cross the room toward It, not running but walking fast, his elbows cocked, his forearms corded, his hands fisted.
“Yuh-Yuh-You k-k-killed my bruh-hother!”
“No, Bill!” Beverly shrieked, struggling free of Mike’s embrace and running toward Bill, her red hair flying out behind her. “Leave him alone!” she screamed at the Spider. “don’t you touch him!”
Shit! Beverly! Ben thought, and then he was running too, stomach swaying back and forth in front of him, legs pumping. He was vaguely aware that Eddie Kaspbrak was running on his left, holding his aspirator in his good hand like a pistol.
And then It was rearing up over Bill, who was unarmed; It buried Bill in Its shadow, Its legs pawing at the air. Ben grabbed for Beverly’s shoulder. His hand slapped it, then slipped off. She turned toward him, her eyes wild, her lips drawn back from her teeth.
“Help him!” she screamed.
“How?” Ben screamed back. He wheeled toward the Spider, heard Its eager mewling, looked into Its timeless, evil eyes, and saw something behind the shape; something much worse than a spider. Something that was all insane light. His courage faltered… but it was Bev who had asked him. Bev, and he loved her.
“Goddam you, leave Bill alone!” he shrieked.
A moment later a hand swatted his back so hard he almost fell over. It was Richie, and although tears were running down his cheeks, Richie was grinning madly. The corners of his mouth seemed to reach almost to the lobes of his ears. Spit leaked out between his teeth. “Let’s get her, Haystack!” Richie screamed. “Chud! Chud!”
Her? Ben thought stupidly. Her, did he say?
Aloud: “Okay, but what is it? What’s Chud?”
“Frocked if I know!” Richie yelled, then ran toward Bill and into the shadow of It.
It had somehow squatted on Its rear legs. Its front legs pawed the air just over Bill’s head. And Stan Uris, forced to approach, compelled to approach in spite of every instinct in his mind and body, saw that Bill was staring up at It, his blue eyes fixed on Its inhuman orange ones, eyes from which that awful corpse-light spilled. Stan stopped, understanding that the Ritual of Chud-whatever that was-had begun.
2
BILL IN THE VOID / EARLY
–who are you and why do you come to Me?
I’m Bill Denbrough. You know who I am and why I’m here. You killed my brother and I’m here to kill You. You picked the wrong kid, bitch.
–I am eternal. I am the Eater of Worlds.
Yeah? That so? Well, you’ve had your last meal, sister.
–you have no power; here is the power; feel the power, brat, and then speak again of how you come to kill the Eternal. You think you see Me? You see only what your mind will allow. Would you see Me? Come, then! Come, brat! Come!
Thrown-
(he).
No, not thrown, fired, fired like a living bullet, like the Human Cannonball at the Shrine Circus that came to Derry each May. He was picked up and heaved across the Spider’s chamber. It’s only in my mind! he screamed at himself. My body’s still standing right there, eye to eye with It, be brave, it’s only a mind-trick, be brave, be true, stand, stand-
(thrusts)
Roaring forward, slamming into a black and dripping tunnel lined with decaying, crumbling tiles that were fifty years old, a hundred, a thousand, a million-billion, who knew, rushing in deadly silence past intersections, some lit by that twisting green-yellow fire, some by glowing balloons full of a ghastly white skull-light, others dead black; he was thrown at a speed of a thousand miles an hour past piles of bones, some human, some not, speeding like a rocket-powered dart in a wind-tunnel, now angling upward, but not toward light but toward dark, some titanic dark
(his fists)
and exploding outward into utter blackness, the blackness was everything, the blackness was the cosmos and the universe, and the floor of the blackness was hard, hard, it was like polished ebonite and he was skidding along on his chest and belly and thighs like a weight on a shuffleboard. He was on the ballroom floor of eternity, and eternity was black.
(against the posts)
–stop that why do you say that? that won’t help you, stupid boy and still insists he sees the ghosts!
–stop it.”
he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts!
–stop it! stop it! I demand, I command, that you stop it! Don’t like that, do you?
And thinking: If I could only say it out loud, say it without stuttering, I could break this illusion-
–this is no illusion, you foolish little boy-this is eternity, My eternity, and you are lost in it, lost forever, never to find your way back; you are eternal now, and condemned to wander in the black… after you meet Me face to face, that is
But there was something else here. Bill sensed it, felt it, in a crazy way smelled it: some large presence ahead in the dark. A Shape. He felt not fear but a sense of overmastering awe; here was a power which dwarfed Its power, and Bill had only time to think incoherently: Please, please, whatever You are, remember that I am very small -
He rushed toward it and saw it was a great Turtle, its shell plated with many blazing colors. Its ancient reptilian head slowly poked out of its shell, and Bill thought he felt a vague contemptuous surprise from the thing that had cast him out here. The eyes of the Turtle were kind. Bill thought it must be the oldest thing anyone could imagine, older by far than It, which had claimed to be eternal.
What are you?-
–I’m the Turtle, son. I made the universe, but please don’t blame me for it; I had a bellyache.
Help me! Please help me!
–I take no stand in these matters. My brother-
–has his own place in the macroverse; energy is eternal, as even a child such as yourself must understand
He was flying past the Turtle now, and even at his tremendous skidding speed, the Turtle’s plated side seemed to go on and on to his right. He thought dimly of riding in a train and passing one going in the other direction, a train that was so long it seemed eventually to stand still or even move backward. He could still hear It, yammering and buzzing, Its voice high and angry, not human, full of mad hate. But when the Turtle spoke, Its voice was blanked out utterly. The Turtle spoke in Bill’s head, and Bill understood somehow that there was yet Another, and that Final Other dwelt in a void beyond this one. This Final Other was, perhaps, the creator of the Turtle, which only watched, and It, which only ate. This Other was a force beyond the universe, a power beyond all other power, the author of all there was.
Suddenly he thought he understood: It meant to thrust him through some wall at the end of the universe and into some other place
(what that old Turtle called the macroverse)
where It really lived; where It existed as a titanic, glowing core which might be no more than the smallest mote in that Other’s mind; he would see It naked, a thing of unshaped destroying light, and there he would either be mercifully annihilated or live forever, insane and yet conscious inside Its homicidal endless formless hungry being.
Please help me! For the others-
–you must help yourself, son
But how? Please tell me! How? How? HOW?
He had reached the Turtle’s heavily scaled back legs now; there was time enough to observe its titanic yet ancient flesh, time to be struck with the wonder of its heavy toenails-they were an odd bluish-yellow color, and he could see galaxies swimming in each one.
Please, you are good, I sense and believe that you are good, and I am begging you… won’t you please help me?
–you already know, there is only Chud. and your friends.
Please oh please-
son, you’ve got to thrust your fists against the posts and still insist you see the ghosts… that’s all I can tell you. once you get into cosmological shit like this, you got to throw away the instruction manual
He realized the voice of the Turtle was fading. He was beyond it now, bulleting into a darkness that was deeper than deep. The Turtle’s voice was being overcome, overmastered, by the gleeful, gibbering voice of the Thing that had thrust him out and into this black void-the voice of the Spider, of It.
–how do you like it out here, Little Friend? do you like it? do you love it? do you give it ninety-eight points because it has a good beat and you can dance to it? can you catch it on your tonsils and heave it left and right? did you enjoy meeting my friend the Turtle? I thought that stupid old fuck died years ago, and for all the good he could do you, he might as well have, did you think he could help you?
no no no no he thrusts no he thuh-thuh-huh-huh-rusts no
–stop babbling! the time is short; let us talk while we still can. tell me about yourself, Little Friend… tell me, do you love all the cold dark out here? are you enjoying your grand tour of the
