'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-buh-bones?'
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 l-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 slipped 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, mush mouth,' 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 l-l-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.