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  Who? His mind would respond.

  He would look up, faintly puzzled, and shake his head. Some guy I used to know, he would think, and would dismiss vague unease by pushing his glasses up on his nose and turning to his homework again. Some guy I used to know a long time ago.

  Bill Denbrough put his hands on his hips, smiled sunnily, and said: "Wuh-wuh-well, h-here we a-a-are ... now wuh-wuh-wuh-what are w-we d-d-doing?"

  "Got any cigarettes?" Richie asked hopefully.

  11

  Five days later, as June drew toward its end, Bill told Richie that he wanted to go down to Neibolt Street and investigate under the porch where Eddie had seen the leper.

  They had just arrived back at Richie's house, and Bill was walking Silver. He had ridden Richie double most of the way home, an exhilarating speed-trip across Derry, but he had been careful to let Richie dismount a block away from his house. If Richie's mother saw Bill riding Richie double she'd have a bird.

  Silver's wire basket was full of play six-shooters, two of them Bill's, three of them Richie's. They had been down in the Barrens for most of the afternoon, playing guns. Beverly Marsh had shown up around three o'clock, wearing faded jeans and toting a very old Daisy air rifle that had lost most of its pop--when you pulled its tape-wrapped trigger, it uttered a wheeze that sounded to Richie more like someone sitting on a very old Whoopee Cushion than a rifleshot. Her specialty was Japanese-sniper. She was very good at climbing trees and shooting the unwary as they passed below. The bruise on her cheekbone had faded to a faint yellow.

  "What did you say?" Richie asked. He was shocked ... but also a little intrigued.

  "I w-w-want to take a l-look under that puh-puh-porch," Bill said. His voice was stubborn but he wouldn't look at Richie. There was a hard spot of flush high on each of his cheekbones. They had arrived in front of Richie's house. Maggie Tozier was on the porch, reading a book. She waved to them and called, "Hi, boys! Want some iced tea?"

  "We'll be right there, Mom," Richie said, and then to Bill: "There isn't going to be anything there. He probably just saw a hobo and got all bent out of shape, for God's sake. You know Eddie."

  "Y-Yeah, I nuh-know E-E-Eddie. B-But ruh-rememmember the pi-pi-picture in the a-album?"

  Richie shifted his feet, uncomfortable. Bill raised his right hand. The Band-Aids were gone now, but Richie could see circlets of healing scab on Bill's first three fingers.

  "Yeah, but--"

  "Luh-luh-histen to me-me," Bill said. He began to speak very slowly, holding Richie's eyes with his own. Once more he related the similarities between Ben's story and Eddie's ... and tied those to what they had seen in the picture that moved. He suggested again that the clown had murdered the boys and girls who had been found dead in Derry since the previous December. "A-And muh-muh-haybe not just t-them," Bill finished. "W-What about a-a-all the o-ones who d-disappeared ? W-What about E-E-Eddie Cuh-Cuh-Corcoran?" "Shit, his stepfather scared him off," Richie said.

  "W-well, m-maybe he d-d-did, and m-maybe he d-d-didn't," Bill said. "I knew him a l-lih-little bit, t-too, and I nuh-nuh-know his d-dad b-b-beat him. And I a-also k-know he u-u-used to stay out n-nuh-hights s-sometimes to g-get aw-way from h-h-him."

  "So maybe the clown got him while he was staying away," Richie said thoughtfully. "Is that it?"

  Bill nodded.

  "What do you want, then? Its autograph?"

  "If the cluh-cluh-cluh-hown killed the o-o-others, then h-he k-k-killed Juh-Georgie," Bill said. His eyes caught Richie's. They were like slate--hard, uncompromising, unforgiving. "I w-want to k-k-kill it."

  "Jesus Christ," Richie said, frightened. "How are you going to do that?"

  "Muh-my d-dad's got a pih-pih-pistol," Bill said. A little spittle flew from his lips but Richie barely noticed. "H-He doesn't nuh-know I know, but I d-d-do. It's on the top sh-shelf in his cluh-cluh-hoset."

  "That's great if it's a man," Richie said, "and if we can find him sitting on a pile of kids' bones--"

  "I poured the tea, boys!" Richie's mom called cheerily. "Better come and get it!"

  "Right there, Mom!" Richie called again, offering a big, false smile. It disappeared immediately as he turned back to Bill. "Because I wouldn't shoot a guy just because he was wearing a clown suit, Billy. You're my best friend, but I wouldn't do it and I wouldn't let you do it if I could stop you."

  "Wh-what i-if there r-really w-was a p-pile of buh-buhbones?"

  Richie licked his lips and said nothing for a moment. Then he asked Bill, "What are you going to do if it's not a man, Billy? What if it really is some kind of monster? What if there really are such things? Ben Hanscom said it was the mummy and the balloons were floating against the wind and it didn't cast a shadow. The picture in Georgie's album . . . either we imagined that or it was magic, and I gotta tell you, man, I don't think we just imagined it. Your fingers sure didn't imagine it, did they?"

  Bill shook his head.

  "So what are we going to do if it's not a man, Billy?"

  "Th-then wuh-wuh-we'll have to f-figure suh-homething e-else out."

  "Oh yeah," Richie said. "I can see it. After you shoot it four or five times and it keeps comin at us like the Teenage Werewolf in that movie me and Ben and Bev saw, you can try your Bullseye on it. And if the Bullseye doesn't work, I'll throw some of my sneezing powder at it. And if it keeps on coming after that we'll just call time and say, 'Hey now, hold on. This ain't getting it, Mr. Monster. Look, I got to read up on it at the library. I'll be back. Pawdon me.' Is that what you're going to say, Big Bill?"

  He looked at his friend, his head thudding rapidly. Part of him wanted Bill to press on with his idea to check under the porch of that old house, but another part wanted--desperately wanted--Bill to give the idea up. In some ways all of this was like having stepped into one of those Saturday-afternoon horror movies at the Aladdin, but in another way--a crucial way--it wasn't like that at all. Because this wasn't safe like a movie, where you knew everything would turn out all right and even if it didn't it was no skin off your ass. The picture in Georgie's room hadn't been like a movie. He had thought he was forgetting that, but apparently he had been fooling himself because now he could see those cuts whirling up Billy's fingers. If he hadn't pulled Bill back--

  Incredibly, Bill was grinning. Actually grinning. "Y-Y-You wuh-wanted m-me to take y-you to luh-luh-look at a p-picture," he said. "N-Now I w-want to t-take you to 1-look at a h-house. Tit for t-tat."

  "You got no tits," Richie said, and they both burst out laughing.

  "T-Tomorrow muh-muh-morning," Bill said, as if it had been resolved.

  "And if it's a monster?" Richie asked, holding Bill's eyes. "If your dad's gun doesn't stop it, Big Bill? If it just keeps coming?"

  "Wuh-wuh-we'll thuh-thuh-think of suh-homething else," Bill said again. "We'll h-h-have to." He threw back his head and laughed like a loon. After a moment Richie joined him. It was impossible not to.

  They walked up the crazy-paving to Richie's porch together. Maggie had set out huge glasses of iced tea with mint-sprigs in them and a plate of vanilla wafers.

  "Yuh-you w-w-want t-t-to?"

  "Well, no," Richie said. "But I will."

  Bill clapped him on the back, hard, and that seemed to make the fear bearable--although Richie was suddenly sure (and he was not wrong) that sleep would be long coming that night.

  "You boys looked like you were having a serious discussion out there," Mrs. Tozier said, sitting down with her book in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other. She looked at the boys expectantly.

  "Aw, Denbrough's got this crazy idea the Red Sox are going to finish in the first division," Richie said.

  "M-Me and my d-d-d-d-dad th-think t-they got a sh-shot at t-third," Bill said, and sipped his iced tea. "T-This is veh-veh-very go-good, Muh-Mrs. Tozier."

  "Thank you, Bill."

  "The year the Sox finish in the first division will be the year you stop stuttering, mushmouth," Richie said.

  "Richie!" Mrs.
Tozier screamed, shocked. She nearly dropped her glass of iced tea. But both Richie and Bill Denbrough were laughing hysterically, totally cracked up. She looked from her son to Bill and back to her son again, touched by wonder that was mostly simple perplexity but partly a fear so thin and sharp that it found its way deep into her inner heart and vibrated there like a tuning-fork made of clear ice.

  I don't understand either of them, she thought. Where they go, what they do, what they want ... or what will become of them. Sometimes, oh sometimes their eyes are wild, and sometimes I'm afraid for them and sometimes I'm afraid of them....

  She found herself thinking, not for the first time, that it would have been nice if she and Went could have had a girl as well, a pretty blonde girl that she could have dressed in skirts and matching bows and black patent-leather shoes on Sundays. A pretty little girl who would ask to bake cupcakes after school and who would want dolls instead of books on ventriloquism and Revell models of cars that went fast.

  A pretty little girl she could have understood.

  12

  "Did you get it?" Richie asked anxiously.

  They were walking their bikes up Kansas Street beside the Barrens at ten o'clock the next morning. The sky was a dull gray. Rain had been forecast for that afternoon. Richie hadn't gotten to sleep until after midnight and he thought Denbrough looked as if he had spent a fairly restless night himself; ole Big Bill was toting a matched set of Samsonite bags, one under each eye.

  "I g-got it," Bill said. He patted the green duffel coat he was wearing.

  "Lemme see," Richie said, fascinated.

  "Not now," Bill said, and then grinned. "Someone eh-eh-else might see, too. But 1-1-look what else I bruh-brought." He reached behind him, under the coat, and brought his Bullseye slingshot out of his back pocket.

  "Oh shit, we're in trouble," Richie said, beginning to laugh.

  Bill pretended to be hurt. "Ih-Ih-It was y-your idea, T-T-Tozier."

  Bill had gotten the custom aluminum slingshot for his birthday the year before. It had been Zack's compromise between the .22 Bill had wanted and his mother's adamant refusal to even consider giving a boy Bill's age a firearm. The instruction booklet said a slingshot could be a fine hunting weapon, once you learned to use it. "In the right hands, your Bullseye Slingshot is as deadly and effective as a good ash bow or a high-powered firearm," the booklet proclaimed. With such virtues dutifully extolled, the booklet went on to warn that a slingshot could be dangerous; the owner should no more aim one of the twenty ball-bearing slugs which came with it at a person than he would aim a loaded pistol at a person.

  Bill wasn't very good at it yet (and guessed privately he probably never would be), but he thought the booklet's caution was merited--the slingshot's thick elastic had a hard pull, and when you hit a tin can with it, it made one hell of a hole.

  "You doin any better with it, Big Bill?" Richie asked.

  "A luh-luh-little," Bill said. This was only partly true. After much study of the pictures in the booklet (which were labelled figs, as in fig 1, fig 2, and so on) and enough practice in Derry Park to lame his arm, he had gotten so he could hit the paper target which had also come with the slingshot maybe three times out of every ten tries. And once he had gotten a bullseye. Almost.

  Richie pulled the sling back by the cup, twanged it, then handed it back. He said nothing but privately doubted if it would count for as much as Zack Denbrough's pistol when it came to killing monsters.

  "Yeah?" he said. "You brought your slingshot, okay, big deal. That's nothing. Look what I brought, Denbrough." And from his own jacket he hauled out a packet with a cartoon picture on it of a bald man saying Ah-CHOO! as his cheeks puffed out like Dizzy Gillespie's. DR. WACKY'S SNEEZING POWDER, the packet said. IT'S A LAFF RIOT!

  The two of them stared at each other for a long moment and then broke up, screaming with laughter and pounding each other on the back.

  "W-W-We're pruh-prepared for a-a-anything," Bill said finally, still giggling and wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket.

  "Your face and my ass, Stuttering Bill," Richie said.

  "I th-th-thought it wuh-was the uh-uh-other way a-around," Bill said. "Now listen. W-We're g-gonna st-ha-hash y-your b-b-bike down in the B-Barrens. W-Where I puh-put Silver when we play. Y-You ride d-d-double b-behind me, in c-case w-we have to make a quih-hick g-g-getaway."

  Richie nodded, feeling no urge to argue. His twenty-two-inch Raleigh (he sometimes whammed his kneecaps on the handlebars when he was pedalling fast) looked like a pygmy bike next to the scrawny, gantrylike edifice that was Silver. He knew that Bill was stronger and Silver was faster.

  They got to the little bridge and Bill helped Richie stow his bike underneath. Then they sat down, and, with the occasional rumble of traffic passing over their heads, Bill unzipped his duffel and took out his father's pistol.

  "Y-You be goddam c-c-careful," Bill said, handing it over after Richie had whistled his frank approval. "Th-There's n-no s-s-safety on a pih-pihstol like that."

  "Is it loaded?" Richie asked, awed. The pistol, a PPK-Walther that Zack Denbrough picked up during the Occupation, seemed unbelievably heavy.

  "N-Not y-yet," Bill said. He patted his pocket. "I g-g-got some buh-buh-buh-bullets in h-h-here. But my d-d-dad s-says s-sometimes you 1-look a-and th-then, i-if the g-g-g-gun th-thinks y-you're not being c-c-careful, it l-loads ih-ih-itself. S-so it can sh-sh-hoot you." His face uttered a strange smile which said that, while he didn't believe anything so silly, he believed it completely.

  Richie understood. There was a caged deadliness in the thing that he had never sensed in his dad's .22, .30-.30, or even the shotgun (although there was something about the shotgun, wasn't there?--something about the way it leaned, mute and oily, in the corner of the garage closet; as if it might say I could be mean if I wanted to; plenty mean, you bet if it could speak). But this pistol, this Walther ... it was as if it had been made for the express purpose of shooting people. With a chill Richie realized that was why it had been made. What else could you do with a pistol? Use it to light your cigarettes?

  He turned the muzzle toward him, being careful to keep his hands far away from the trigger. One look into the Walther's black lidless eye made him understand Bill's peculiar smile perfectly. He remembered his father saying, If you remember there is no such thing as an unloaded gun, you'll be okay with firearms all your life, Richie. He handed the gun back to Bill, glad to be rid of it.

  Bill stowed it in his duffel coat again. Suddenly the house on Neibolt Street seemed less frightening to Richie ... but the possibility that blood might actually be spilled--that seemed much stronger.

  He looked at Bill, perhaps meaning to appeal this idea again, but he saw Bill's face, read it, and only said, "You ready?"

  13

  As always, when Bill finally pulled his second foot up from the ground, Richie felt sure that they would crash, splitting their silly skulls on unyielding cement. The big bike wavered crazily from side to side. The cards clothespinned to the fender-struts stopped firing single shots and started machine-gunning. The bike's drunken wavers became more pronounced. Richie closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable.

  Then Bill bellowed, "Hi-yo Silver, AWWAYYYYY!"

  The bike picked up more speed and finally stopped that seasick side-to-side wavering. Richie loosened his deathgrip on Bill's middle and held the front of the package carrier over the rear wheel instead. Bill crossed Kansas Street on a slant, raced down sidestreets at an ever-quickening pace, heading for Witcham as if racing down a set of geographical steps. They came bulleting out of Strapham Street and onto Witcham at an exorbitant rate of speed. Bill laid Silver damn near over on his side and bellowed "Hi-yo Silver!" again.

  "Ride it, Big Bill!" Richie screamed, so scared he was nearly creaming his jeans but laughing wildly all the same. "Stand on this baby!"

  Bill suited the action to the word, getting up and leaning over the handlebars and pumping the pedals at a lunatic rate. Looking
at Bill's back, which was amazingly broad for a boy of eleven-going-on-twelve, watching it work under the duffel coat, the shoulders slanting first one way and then the other as he shifted his weight from one pedal to the other, Richie suddenly became sure that they were invulnerable ... they would live forever and ever. Well ... perhaps not they, but Bill would. Bill had no idea of how strong he was, how somehow sure and perfect.

  They sped along, the houses thinning out a little now, the streets crossing Witcham at longer intervals.

  "Hi-yo Silver!" Bill yelled, and Richie hollered in his Nigger Jim Voice, high and shrill, "Hi-yo Silvuh, massa, thass raht! You is rahdin disyere bike fo sho! Lawks-a-mussy ! Hi-yo Silvuh AWWAYYY!"

  Now they were passing green fields that looked flat and depthless under the gray sky. Richie could see the old brick train station up ahead in the distance. To the right of it quonset warehouses marched off in a row. Silver bumped over one set of train tracks, then another.