Bill turned toward her; Richie dropped his sportcoat as he was taking it off the back of his chair; there was a crash of glass as Eddie's arm swept an empty gin bottle onto the floor.
Beverly was backing away from them, her hands held out, her face as white as good bond paper. Her eyes, deep in dusky-purple sockets, bulged. 'My hands!' She screamed. 'My hands!'
'What - ' Bill began, and then he saw the blood dripping slowly between her shaking fingers. He started forward and felt sudden lines of painful warmth cross his own hands. The pain was not sharp; it was more like the pain one sometimes feels in an old healed wound.
The old scars on his palms, the ones which had reappeared in England, had broken open and were bleeding. He looked sideways and saw Eddie Kaspbrak peering stupidly down at his own hands. They were also bleeding. So were Mike's. And Richie's. And Ben's.
'We're in it to the end, aren't we?' Beverly asked. She had begun to cry. This sound was also magnified in the library's still emptiness; the building itself seemed to be weeping with her. Bill thought that if he had to listen to that sound for long, he would go mad. 'God help us, we're in it to the end.' She sobbed, and a runner of snot depended from one of her nostrils. She wiped it off with the back of one shaking hand, and more blood dripped on the floor.
'Quh-Quh-hick!' Bill said, and seized Eddie's hand.
'What - '
'Quick?
He held out his other hand, and after a moment Beverly took it. She was still crying.
'Yes,' Mike said. He looked dazed - almost drugged. 'Yes, that's right, isn't it? It's starting again, isn't it, Bill? It's all starting to happen again.'
'Y-Y-Yes, I th-think - '
Mike took Eddie's hand and Richie took Beverly's other hand. For a moment Ben only looked at them, and then, like a man in a dream, he raised his bloody hands to either side and stepped between Mike and Richie. He grasped their hands. The circle closed.
(Ah Chüd this is the Ritual of Chüd and the Turtle cannot help us)
Bill tried to scream but no sound came out. He saw Eddie's head tilt back, the cords on his neck standing out. Bev's hips bucked twice, fiercely, as if in an orgasm as short and sharp as the crack of a .22 pistol. Mike's mouth moved strangely, seeming to laugh and grimace at the same time. In the silence of the library doors banged open and shut, the sound rolling like bowling balls. In the Periodicals Room, magazines flew in a windless hurricane. In Carole Banner's office, the library's IBM typewriter whirred into life and typed:
hethrusts
hisfistsagainst
thepostsandstillinsistshesees
theghostshethrustshisfistsagainstthe
The type-ball jammed. The typewriter sizzled and uttered a thick electronic belch as everything inside overloaded. In Stack Two, the shelf of occult books suddenly tipped over, spilling Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, Charles Fort, and the Apocrypha everywhere.
Bill felt an exalting sense of power. He was dimly aware that he had an erection, and that every hair on his head was standing up straight. The sense of force in the completed circle was incredible.
All the doors in the library slammed shut in unison.
The grandfather clock behind the checkout desk chimed once.
Then it was gone, as if someone had flicked off a switch.
They dropped their hands, looking at each other, dazed. No one said anything. As the sense of power ebbed, Bill felt a terrible sense of doom creep over him. He looked at their white, strained faces, and then down at his hands. Blood was smeared there, but the wounds which Stan Uris had made with a jagged piece of Coke bottle in August 1958 had closed up again, leaving only crooked white lines like knotted twine. He thought: That was the last time the seven of us were together . . . the day Stan made those cuts in the Barrens. Stan's not here; he's dead. And this is the last time the six of us are going to be together. I know it, I feel it.
Beverly was pressed against him, trembling. Bill put an arm around her. They all looked at him, their eyes huge and bright in the dimness, the long table where they had sat, littered with empty bottles, glasses, and overflowing ashtrays, a little island of light.
'That's enough,' Bill said huskily. 'Enough entertainment for one evening. We'll save the ballroom dancing for another time.'
'I remembered,' Beverly said. She looked up at Bill, her eyes huge, her pale cheeks wet. 'I remembered everything. My father finding out about you guys. Running. Bowers and Criss and Huggins. How I ran. The tunnel . . . the birds . . . It . . . I remember everything.'
'Yeah,' Richie said. 'I do, too.'
Eddie nodded. 'The pumping-station - '
Bill said, 'And now Eddie - '
'Go back now,' Mike said. 'Get some rest. It's late.'
'Walk with us, Mike,' Beverly said.
'No. I have to lock up. And I have to write a few things down . . . the minutes of the meeting, if you like. I won't be long. Go ahead.'
They moved toward the door, not talking much. Bill and Beverly were together, Eddie, Richie, and Ben behind them. Bill held the door for her and she murmured thanks. As she went out onto the wide granite steps, Bill thought how young she looked, how vulnerable . . . He was dismally aware that he might be falling in love with her again. He tried to think of Audra but Audra seemed far away. She would be sleeping in their house in Fleet now as the sun came up and the milkman began his rounds.
Derry's sky had clouded over again, and a low groundfog lay across the empty street in thick runners. Further up the street, the Derry Community House, narrow, tall, Victorian, brooded in blackness. Bill thought And whatever walked in Community House, walked alone. He had to stifle a wild cackle. Their footfalls seemed very loud. Beverly's hand touched his and Bill took it gratefully.
'It started before we were ready,' she said.
'Would we eh-eh-ever have been r-ready?'
'You would have been, Big Bill.'
The touch of her hand was suddenly both wonderful and necessary. He wondered what it would be like to touch her breasts for the second time in his life, and suspected that before this long night was over he would know. Fuller now, mature . . . and his hand would find hair when he cupped the swelling of her mons veneris. He thought: I loved you, Beverly . . . I love you. Ben loved you . . . he laves you. We loved you then . . . we love you now. We better, because it's starting. No way out now.
He glanced behind and saw the library half a block away. Richie and Eddie were on the top step; Ben was standing at the bottom, looking after them. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders were slumped, and seen through the drifting lens of the low fog, he might almost have been eleven again. If he had been able to send Ben a thought, Bill would have sent this one: It doesn't matter, Ben. The love is what matters, the caring . . . it's always the desire, never the time. Maybe that's all we get to take with us when we go out of the blue and into the black. Cold comfort, maybe, but better than no comfort at all.
'My father knew,' Beverly said suddenly. 'I came home one day from the Barrens and he just knew. Did I ever tell you what he used to say to me when he was mad?'
'What?'
'"I worry about you, Bevvie." That's what he used to say. "I worry a lot."' She laughed and shivered at the same time. 'I think he meant to hurt me, Bill. I mean . . . he'd hurt me before, but that last time was different. He was . . . well, in many ways he was a strange man. I loved him. I loved him very much, but - '
She looked at him, perhaps wanting him to say it for her. He wouldn't; it was something she was going to have to say for herself, sooner or later. Lies and self-deceptions had become a ballast they could not afford.