At last she turned and ran.
Panic beat darkly against her thoughts, but she would not give in to it entirely. She held the Bullseye in her left hand and looked back over her shoulder from time to time. There was still blood dappled brightly on the path and on the leaves of some of the bushes bordering it, as if Patrick had woven from side to side as he ran.
Beverly burst out into the area of the junked cars again. Ahead of her there was a bigger splash of blood, just beginning to soak into the gravelly earth. The ground looked disturbed, darker streaks of earth lined into the powdery-white surface. As if there had been a struggle there. Two grooves, about two and a half feet apart, led away from this spot.
Beverly halted, panting. She looked at her arm and was relieved to see that the flow of blood was finally slowing, although her lower forearm and the palm of her hand were streaked and tacky with it. The pain had begun now, a low steady throb. It felt the way her mouth felt about an hour after the dentist's, when the novocaine began to wear off.
She looked behind again, saw nothing, then looked back at those grooves leading away from the junked cars, away from the dump, and into the Barrens.
Those things were in the refrigerator. They got all over him-sure they did, look at all the blood. He got this far, and then
(hello and goodbye)
something else happened. What?
She was terribly afraid she knew. The leeches were a part of It, and they had driven Patrick into another part of It much as a panic-maddened steer is driven down the chute and into the slaughtering-pen.
Get out of here! Get out, Bevvie!
Instead she followed the grooves in the earth, holding the Bullseye tightly
in her sweating hand.
At least get the others!
I will... in a little while.
She walked on, following the grooves as the ground sloped down and became softer. She followed them into heavy foliage again. Somewhere a cicada burred loudly and then unwound into silence. Mosquitoes lighted on her blood-streaked arm. She waved them away. Her teeth were clenched on her lower lip.
There was something lying on the ground ahead. She picked it up and looked at it. It was a handmade wallet, the sort of thing a kid might make as a crafts project at Community House. Except it was obvious to Bev that the kid who made this hadn't been much of a craftsman; the wide plastic stitching was already coming unravelled and the bill compartment flapped like a loose mouth. She found a quarter in the change compartment. The only other thing in the wallet was a library card, made out in the name of Patrick Hockstetter. She tossed the wallet aside, library card and all. She wiped her fingers on her shorts.
Fifty feet farther on she found a sneaker. The underbrush was now too dense for her to be able to follow the grooves in the earth, but you didn't have to be the Pathfinder to follow the splashes and drips of blood on the bushes.
The trail wound down through a steep brake. Bev lost her footing once, slid, and was raked by thorns. Fresh lines of blood appeared on her upper thigh. She was breathing fast now, her hair sweaty and matted to her skull. The spots of blood led out onto one of the faint paths through the Barrens. The Kenduskeag was nearby.
Patrick's other sneaker, its laces bloody, lay marooned on the path.
She approached the river with the Bullseye's sling half-drawn. The grooves in the earth had reappeared. They were shallower now-that's because he lost his sneakers, she thought.
She came around a final bend and faced the river. The grooves went down the bank and led ultimately to one of those concrete cylinders-one of the pumping-stations. There they stopped. The iron cover capping the top of this cylinder was a little ajar.
As she stood above it, looking down, a thick and monstrous chuckle suddenly issued from beneath.
It was too much. The panic which had threatened now descended. Beverly turned and fled toward the clearing and clubhouse, her bloody left arm up to shield her face from the branches which whipped and slapped her.
Sometimes I worry too, Daddy, she thought wildly. Sometimes I worry a LOT.
7
Four hours later all of the Losers except Eddie crouched in the bushes near the spot where Beverly had hidden and watched Patrick Hockstetter go to the refrigerator and open it. The sky overhead had darkened with thunder-heads, and the smell of rain was in the air again. Bill was holding the end of a long length of clothesline in his hands. The six of them had pooled their available cash and bought the line and a Johnson's first-aid kit for Beverly. Bill had carefully affixed a gauze pad over the bloody hole in her arm.
"T-Tell your puh-puh-harents you g-got a scruh-hape when you were skuh-skuh-skating," Bill said.
"My skates!" Beverly cried, dismayed. She had forgotten all about them.
"There," Ben said, and pointed. They were lying in a heap not far away, and she went to retrieve them before Ben or Bill or any of the others could offer. She remembered now that she had put them aside before urinating. She didn't want any of the others over there.
Bill himself had tied one end of the clothesline to the handle of the Amana refrigerator, although they had all cautiously approached it together, ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. Bev had offered to give the Bullseye back to Bill; he had insisted she keep it. As it turned out, nothing had moved.
Although the area on the path in front of the refrigerator was splattered with blood, the parasites were gone. Perhaps they had flown away.
"You could bring Chief Borton and Mr Nell and a hundred other cops down here and it still wouldn't matter," Stan Uris said bitterly.
"Nope. They wouldn't see a frockin thing," Richie agreed. "How's your arm, Bev?"
"Hurts." She paused, looking from Bill to Richie and back to Bill again. "Would my mom and dad see the hole that thing made in my arm?"
"I d-d-don't th-think s-s-so," Bill said. "Get reh-ready to ruh-ruh-run. I'm gonna t-t-t-tie it uh-uh-on."
He looped the cod of the clothesline around the refrigerator's rust-flecked chrome handle, working with the care of a man defusing a live bomb. He tied a granny-knot and then stepped back, paying out the clothesline.
He grinned a small shaky grin at the others when they had made some distance. "Whooo," he said. "G-Glad that's oh-over."
Now, a safe (they hoped) distance from the refrigerator, Bill told them again to get ready to run. Thunder boomed directly overhead and they all jumped. The first scattered drops began to fall.
Bill jerked the clothesline as hard as he could. His granny-knot popped off the handle, but not before it had pulled the refrigerator door open again. An avalanche of orange pompoms fell out, and Stan Uris uttered a painful groan. The others only stared, open-mouthed.
The rain began to come harder. Thunder whipcracked above them, making them cringe, and purplish-blue lightning flared as the refrigerator door swung all the way open. Richie saw it first and screamed, a high, hurt sound. Bill uttered some sort of angry, frightened cry. The others were silent.
Written on the inside of the door, written in drying blood, were these words:
[image of handwriting, in shaky capitals, with the words "STOP NOW BEFORE I KILL YOU ALL. A WORD TO THE WISE FROM YOUR FRIEND, PENNYWISE"]
Hail mixed with the driving rain. The refrigerator door shuddered back and forth in the rising wind, the letters painted there beginning to drip and run now, taking on the draggling ominous look of a horror-movie poster.
Bev was not aware that Bill had gotten up until she saw him advancing across the path toward the refrigerator. He was shaking both fists. Water streamed down his face and plastered his shirt to his back.
"W-We're going to k-k-kill you!" Bill screamed. Thunder whacked and cracked. Lightning flashed so brightly that she could smell it, and not far away there was a splintering, rending sound as a tree fell.
"Bill, come back!" Richie was yelling. "Come back, man!" He started to get up and Ben hauled him back down again.
"You killed my brother George! You son of a bitch! You bastard! You whoremaster! Let's see you now! Let's see you now!"
Hail came in a spate, stinging them even through the screening bushes. Beverly held her arm up to protect her face. She could see red welts on Ben's streaming cheeks.
"Bill, come back!" she screamed despairingly, and another thundercrack drowned her out; it rolled across the Barrens below the low black clouds.
"Let's see you come out now, you fucker!"
Bill kicked wildly at the heap of pompoms that had spilled out of the refrigerator. He turned away and began to walk back toward them, his head down. He seemed not to feel the hail, although it now covered the ground like snow.
He blundered into the bushes, and Stan had to grab bis arm to keep him from going into the prickerbushes. He was crying.
"That's okay, Bill," Ben said, putting a clumsy arm around him.
"Yeah," Richie said. "don't worry. We're not gonna chicken out." He stared around at them, his eyes looking wildly out of his wet face. "Is there anyone here who's gonna chicken out?"
They shook their heads.
Bill looked up, wiping his eyes. They were all soaked to the skin and looked like a litter of pups that had just forded a river. "Ih-It's scuh-scuh-hared of u-u-us, you know," he said. "I can fuh-feel th-that. I swear to Guh-God I c-c-can."
Bev nodded soberly. "I think you're right."
"H-H-Help m-m-me," Bill said. "P-P-Pl-Please. H-H-Help m-m-me."
"We will," Beverly said. She took Bill in her arms. She had not realized how easily her arms would go around him, how thin he was. She could feel his heart racing under his shut; she could feel it next to hers. She thought that no touch had ever seemed so sweet and strong.
Richie put his arms around both of them and laid his head on Beverly's shoulder. Ben did the same from the other side. Stan Uris put his arms around Richie and Ben. Mike hesitated, and then slipped one arm around Beverly's waist and the other over Bill's shivering shoulders. They stood that way, hugging, and the sleet turned back to driving pouring rain, rain so heavy it seemed almost like a new atmosphere. The lightning walked and the thunder talked. No one spoke. Beverly's eyes were tightly shut. They stood in the rain in a huddled group, hugging each other, listening to it hiss down on the bushes. That was what she remembered best: the sound of the rain and their own shared silence and a vague sorrow that Eddie was not there with them. She remembered those things.
She remembered feeling very young and very strong.
Chapter 18 THE BULLSEYE
1
"Okay, Haystack," Richie says. "Your turn. The redhead's smoked all of her cigarettes and most of mine. The hour groweth late."
Ben glances up at the clock. Yes, it's late: nearly midnight. Just time for one more story, he thinks. One more story before twelve. Just to keep us warm. What should it be? But that, of course, is only a joke, and not a very good one; there is only one story left, at least only one he remembers, and that is the story of the silver slugs-how they were made in Zack Denbrough's workshop on the night of July 23rd and how they were used on the 25th.
"I've got my own scars," he says. "do you remember?"
Beverly and Eddie shake their heads; Bill and Richie nod. Mike sits silent, his eyes watchful in his tired face.
Ben stands up and unbuttons the work-shirt he is wearing, spreading it open. An old scar in the shape of the letter H shows there. Its lines are broken-the belly was much bigger when that scar was put there-but its shape still identifiable.
The heavy scar depending downward from the cross-bar of the H is much clearer. It looks like a twisted white hangrope from which the noose has been cut.
Beverly's hand goes to her mouth. "The werewolf! In that house! Oh Jesus Christ!" And she turns to the windows, as if to see it lurking outside in the darkness.
"That's right," Ben said. "And you want to know something funny? That scar wasn't there two days ago. Henry's old calling-card was; I know, because I showed it to a friend of mine, a bar-tender named Ricky Lee back in Hemingford Home. But this one-" He laughs without much humor and begins buttoning his shirt again. This one just came back."
"Like the ones on our hands."
"Yeah," Mike says as Ben buttons his skin up again. "The werewolf. We all saw It as the werewolf that time."
"Because that's how R-R-Richie saw Ih-It before," Bill murmurs. "That's it, isn't it?"
"Yes," Mike says.
"We were close, weren't we?" Beverly says. Her voice is softly marvelling. "Close enough to read each other's minds."
"Ole Big Hairy damn near had your guts for garters, Ben," Richie says, and he is not smiling as he says it. He pushes his mended glasses up on his nose and behind them his face looks white and haggard and ghostly.
"Bill saved your bacon," Eddie says abruptly. "I mean, Bev saved us all, but if it hadn't been for you, Bill-"
"Yes," Ben agrees. "You did, big Bill. I was, like, lost in the funhouse."
Bill points briefly at the empty chair. "I had some help from Stan Uris. And he paid for it. Maybe died for it."
Ben Hansom is shaking his head. "don't say that, Bill."
"But it's t-true. And if it's yuh-your f-fault, it's my fault, too, and e-e-everyone else's here, because we went on. Even after Patrick, and what was written on that r-re-frigerator, we went on. It would be my fault m-most of all, I guess, because I wuh-wuh-wanted us to go on. Because of Juh-George. Maybe even because I thought that if I killed whatever k-killed George, my puh-harents would have to luh-luh-luh-"
"Love you again?" Beverly asks gently.
"Yes. Of course. But I d-d-don't think it was a-a-anyone's fuh-hault, Ben. It was just the w-w-way Stan was built."
"He couldn't face it," Eddie says. He is thinking of Mr Keene's revelation about his asthma medicine, and how he could still not give it up. He is thinking that he might have been able to give up the habit of being sick; it was the habit of believing he had been unable to kick. As things had turned out, maybe that habit had saved his life.
"He was great that day," Ben says. "stan and his birds."
A chuckle stirs through them, and they look at the chair where Stan would have been in a rightful sane world where all the good guys won all of the time. I miss him, Ben thinks. God, how I miss him! He says, "You remember that day, Richie, when you told him you heard somewhere he killed Christ, and Stan says totally deadpan, "I think that was my father"?"
"I remember," Richie says in a voice almost too low to hear. He takes his handkerchief out of his back pocket, removes his glasses, wipes his eyes, then puts his glasses back on. He puts away the handkerchief and without looking up from his hands he says, "Why don't you just tell it, Ben?'