IT [en]

    'It'll work,' Ben said. 'Hi, Mike.'

    'Want a cigarette?' Beverly asked. 'I got two left.'

    'No thank you.' Mike took a deep breath and said, 'I wanted to thank you all again for helping me the other day. Those guys meant to hurt me bad. I'm sorry some of you guys got banged up.'

    Bill waved his hand, dismissing it. 'D-D-Don't wuh-wuh-horry a-a-bout it. Th-they've h-had it i-i-in f-for us all y-y-year.' He sat up and looked at Mike with sudden starry interest. 'C-Can I a-ask you s-s-something?'

    'I guess so,' Mike said. He sat down gingerly. He had heard such prefaces before. The Denbrough kid was going to ask him what it was like to be a Negro.

    But instead Bill said: 'When L-L-Larsen pitched the n-no-h-hitter in the World S-Series two years ago, d-do you think that was just luh-luck?'

    Richie dragged deep on his cigarette and started to cough. Beverly pounded nun good-naturedly on the back. 'You're just a beginner, Richie, you'll learn.'

    'I think it's gonna fall in, Ben,' Eddie said worriedly, looking at the pegged square. 'I don't know how cool I am on the idea of getting buried alive.'

    'You're not gonna get buried alive,' Ben said. 'And if you are, just suck your damn old aspirator until someone pulls you out.'

    This struck Stanley Uris as deliciously funny. He leaned back on his elbow, his head turned up to the sky, and laughed until Eddie kicked his shin and told him to shut up.

    'Luck,' Mike said finally. 'I think any no-hitter's more luck than skill.'

    'M-M-Me t-too,' Bill said. Mike waited to see if there was more, but Bill seemed satisfied. He lay down again, laced his hands behind his head again, and went back to studying the clouds as they floated by.

    'What are you guys up to?' Mike asked, looking at the square of strings pegged just above the ground

    'Oh, this is Haystack's big idea of the week,' Richie said. 'Last time he flooded out the Barrens and that was pretty good, but this one's a real dinner-winner. This is Dig Your Own Clubhouse Month. Next month - '

    'Y-You don't nuh-nuh-need to put B-B-B-Ben d-duh-hown,' Bill said, still looking at the sky. 'It's going to be guh-guh-good.'

    'God's sake, Bill, I was just kidding.'

    'Suh-Sometimes you k-k-kid too much, Rih-Richie.'

    Richie accepted the rebuke silently.

    'I still don't get it,' Mike said.

    'Well, it's pretty simple,' Ben said. 'They wanted a treehouse, and we could do that, but people have a bad habit of breaking their bones when they fall out of treehouses - '

    'Kookie . . . Kookie . . . lend me your bones,' Stan said, and laughed again while' the others looked at him, puzzled. Stan did not have much sense of humor, and the bit he did have was sort of peculiar.

    'You ees goin loco, senhorr,' Richie said. 'Eees the heat an the cucarachas, I theenk.'

    'Anyway,' Ben said, 'what we'll do is dig down about five feet in the square I pegged out there. We can't go much deeper than that or we'll hit groundwater, I guess. It's pretty close to the surface down here. Then we'll shore up the sides just to make sure they don't cave in.' He looked significantly at Eddie here, but Eddie was worried.

    'Then what?' Mike asked, interested.

    'We'll cap off the top.'

    'Huh?'

    'Put boards over the top of the hole. We can put in a trapdoor or something so we can get in and out, even windows if we want - '

    'We'll need some hih-hih-hinges,' Bill said, still looking at the clouds.

    'We can get those at Reynolds Hardware,' Ben said.

    'Y-You guh-guh-guys have your a-a-allowances,' Bill said.

    'I've got five dollars,' Beverly said. 'I saved it up from babysitting.'

    Richie immediately began to crawl toward her on his hands and knees. 'I love you, Bevvie,' he said, making dog's eyes at her. 'Will you marry me? We'll live in a pine-studded bungalow - '

    'A what'?' Beverly asked, while Ben watched them with an odd mixture of anxiety, amusement, and concentration.

    'A bung-studded pinealow,' Richie said. 'Five bucks is enough, sweetie, you

and me and baby makes three - '

    Beverly laughed and blushed and moved away from him.

    'We sh-share the e-expenses,' Bill said. 'That's why we got a club.'

    'So after we cap the hole with boards,' Ben went on, 'we put down this heavy-duty glue - Tangle-Track, they call it - and put the sods back on. Maybe sprinkle it with pine needles. We could be down there and people - people like Henry Bowers - could walk right over us and not even know we were there.'

    'You thought of that?' Mike said. 'Jeez, that's great!'

    Ben smiled. It was his turn to blush.

    Bill sat up suddenly and looked at Mike. 'You w-w-want to heh-help?'

    'Well . . . sure,' Mike said. That'd be fun.'

    A look passed among the others - Mike felt it as well as saw it. There are seven of us here, Mike thought, and for no reason at all he shivered.

    'When are you going to break ground?'

    'P-P-hretty s-soon,' Bill said, and Mike knew - knew - that it wasn't just Ben's underground clubhouse Bill was talking about. Ben knew it, too. So did Richie, Beverly, and Eddie. Stan Uris had stopped smiling; 'W-We're g-gonna start this pruh-huh-hoject pretty suh-suh-soon.'

    There was a pause then, and Mike was suddenly aware of two things: they wanted to say something, tell him something . . . and he was not entirely sure he wanted to hear it. Ben had picked up a stick and was doodling aimlessly in the dirt, his hair hiding his face. Richie was gnawing at his already ragged fingernails. Only Bill was looking directly at Mike.

    'Is something wrong?' Mike asked uneasily.

    Speaking very slowly, Bill said: 'W-W-We're a cluh-club. Y-You can be in the club if you w-w-want, but y-y-you have to kee-keep our see-see-secrets.'

    'You mean, like the clubhouse?' Mike asked, now more uneasy than ever. 'Well, sure - '

    'We've got another secret, kid,' Richie said, still not looking at Mike. 'And Big Bill says we've got something more important to do this summer than digging underground clubhouses.'

    'He's right, too,' Ben added.

    There was a sudden, whistling gasp. Mike jumped. It was only Eddie, blasting off. Eddie looked at Mike apologetically, shrugged, and then nodded.

    'Well,' Mike said finally, 'don't keep me in suspense. Tell me.'

    Bill was looking at the others. 'I-Is there a-a-anyone who d-doesn't want him in the cluh-club?'

    No one spoke or raised a hand.

    'W-Who wants to t-tell?' Bill asked.

    There was another long pause, and this time Bill didn't break it. At last Beverly sighed and looked up at Mike.

    'The kids who have been killed,' she said. 'We know who's been doing it, and it's not human.'

 

 

3

 

They told him, one by one: the clown on the ice, the leper under the porch, the blood and voices from the drain, the dead boys in the Standpipe. Richie told about what had happened when he and Bill went back to Neibolt Street, and Bill spoke last, telling about the school photo that had moved, and the picture he had stuck his hand into. He finished by explaining that it had killed his brother Georgie, and that the Losers' Club was dedicated to killing the monster . . . whatever the monster really was.

    Mike thought later, going home that night, that he should have listened with disbelief mounting into horror and finally run away as fast as he could, not looking back, convinced either that he was being put on by a bunch of white kids who didn't like black folks or that he was in the presence of six authentic lunatics who had in some way caught their lunacy from each other, the way everyone in the same class could catch a particularly virulent cold.