'Gaaah! Nigger!' Henry screamed, clapping a hand over the protruding jag of blade. Blood poured through his fingers. He looked at it with bulging, unbelieving eyes. The head of the end of the creaking, dipping jack-in-the-box squealed and laughed. Mike, feeling sick and dizzy now, looked back at it and saw Belch Huggin's head, a human champagne cork wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap turned backward. He groaned aloud, and the sound was far away, echoey, in his own ears. He was aware that he was sitting in a pool of warm blood . . . his own. If I don't get a tourniquet on my leg, I'm going to die.
'Gaaaaaaaaaah! Neeeeeeegaaaa!' Henry screamed. Still holding his bleeding belly with one hand and the switchblade with the other, he staggered away from Mike and toward the library doors. He wove drunkenly from side to side, progressing across the echoing main room like a pinball in an electronic game. He struck one of the easy-chairs and knocked it over. His groping hand spilled a rack of newspapers onto the floor. He reached the doors, straight-armed one of them; and plunged out into the night.
Mike's consciousness was fading now. He worked at the buckle of his belt with fingers he could barely feel. At last he got it unhooked and managed to pull it free of its loops. He put it around his bleeding leg just below the groin and cinched it tight. Holding it with one hand, he began to crawl toward the circulation desk. The phone was there. He wasn't sure how he was going to reach it, but for now that didn't matter. The trick was just to get there. The world wavered, blurred, grew faint behind waves of gray. He stuck his tongue out and bit down on it savagely. The pain was immediate and exquisite. The world swam back into focus. He became aware that he was still holding the ragged haft of the letter-opener, and he tossed it away. Here, at last, was the circulation desk, looking as tall as Everest.
Mike got his good leg under him and pushed himself up, clutching at the edge of the desk with the hand that wasn't holding the belt tight. His mouth was drawn down in a trembling grimace, his eyes slitted. At last he managed to get all the way up. He stood there, storklike, and groped the telephone over to him. Taped to the side were three numbers: fire, police, and hospital. With one shaking finger that looked at least ten miles away, Mike dialed the hospitaclass="underline" 555-3711. He closed his eyes as the phone began to ring . . . and then they opened wide as the voice of Pennywise the Clown answered.
'Howdy nigger!' Pennywise cried, and then screamed laughter as sharp as broken glass into Mike's ear. 'What do you say? How you doon? I think you're dead, what do you think? I think Henry did the job on you! Want a balloon, Mikey? Want a balloon? How you doon? Hello there!'
Mike's eyes turned up to the face of the grandfather clock, the Mueller Clock, it was called, and saw with no surprise at ail that the clockface had been replaced with his father's face, gray and raddled with cancer. The eyes were turned up to show only bulging whites. Suddenly his father popped his tongue out and the clock began to strike.
Mike lost his grip on the circulation desk. He swayed for a moment on his good leg and then he fell down again. The phone swung before him at the end of its cord like a mesmerist's amulet. It was becoming very hard to hold onto the belt now.
'Hello dere Amos!' Pennywise cried brightly from the swinging telephone handset. 'Dis here's de Kingfish! I is de Kingish in Derry anyhow, and dat's de troof. Wouldn't you say so, boy?'
'If there's anyone there,' Mike croaked, 'a real voice behind the one I am hearing, please help me. My name is Michael Hanlon and I'm at the Derry Public Library. I am bleeding to death. If you're there, I can't hear you. I'm not being allowed to hear you. If you're there, please hurry.'
He lay on his side, drawing his legs up until he was in a fetal position. He took two turns around his right hand with the belt and concentrated on holding it as the world drifted away in those cottony, balloon-like clouds of gray.
'Hello dere, howyadoon?' Pennywise screamed from the dangling, swinging phone. 'Howyadoon, you dirty coon? Hello
4
Kansas Street / 12:20 P.M.
. . . there,' Henry Bowers said. 'Howyadoon, you little cunt?'
Beverly reacted instantly, turning to run. It was a quicker reaction than any of them had expected, and she might actually have gotten a running start . . . but for her hair. Henry snatched at it, caught part of its long flow, and pulled her back. He grinned into her face. His breath was thick and warm and stinking.
'Howyadoon?' Henry Bowers asked her. 'Where ya goin? Back to play with your asshole friends some more? I think I'll cut off your nose and make you eat it. You like that?'
She struggled to get free. Henry laughed and shook her head back and forth by the hair. The knife flashed dangerously in the hazy August sunshine.
Abruptly a car-horn honked - a long blast.
'Here! Here! What are you boys doing? Let that girl go!'
It was an old lady behind the wheel of a well-preserved 1950 Ford. She had pulled up to the curb and was leaning across the blanket-covered seat to peer out the passenger-side window. At the sight of her angry, honest face, the blank, dazed look left Victor Criss's eyes for the first time and he looked nervously at Henry. 'What - '
'Please!' Bev cried shrilly. 'He's got a knife! A knife!'
The old lady's anger now became concern, surprise, and fear as well. 'What are you boys doing? Let her alone!'
Across the street - Bev saw this quite clearly - Herbert Ross got out of the lawn-chair on his porch, approached the porch rail, and looked over. His face was as blank as Belch Huggins's. He folded his paper, turned, and went quietly into the house.
'Let her be!' the old lady cried shrilly.
Henry bared his teeth and suddenly ran at her car, dragging Beverly after him by the hair. She stumbled, went to one knee, was dragged. The pain in her scalp was excruciating, monstrous. She felt some of her hair rip out.
The old lady screamed and cranked the passenger side window frantically. Henry, still roaring, stabbed down, and the switchblade skated across glass. The woman's foot came off the old Ford's clutch-pedal and it went down Kansas Street in three big jerks, bouncing up over the curb, where it stalled. Henry went after it, still pulling Beverly along. Victor licked his lips and looked around. Belch pushed the New York Yankees baseball cap he was wearing up on his forehead and then dug at his ear in a puzzled gesture.
Bev saw the old woman's white, frightened face for one moment, and then saw her pawing at the door-locks, first on the passenger side, then on her own. The Ford's engine ground and caught. Henry lifted one booted foot and kicked out a taillight.
'Get outta here, you dried-up old bitch!'
The tires screamed as the old lady pulled back out in the street. An oncoming pickup truck swerved to avoid her; its horn blasted. Henry turned back toward Bev, beginning to smile again, and she hiked one sneakered foot directly into his balls.
The smile on Henry's face turned into a grimace of agony. The switchknife dropped from his hand and clattered onto the sidewalk. His other hand left its nesting-place in the tangle of her hair (pulling once more, terribly, as it went) and then he sank to his knees, trying to scream, holding his crotch. She could see strands of her own coppery hair on one hand, and in that instant all of her terror turned to bright hate. She drew in a great, hitching breath and hocked a remarkably large looey onto the top of his head.
Then she turned and ran.
Belch lumbered three steps after her and then stopped. He and Victor went to Henry, who threw them aside and then staggered to his feet, both hands still cupping his balls; it was not the first time that summer that he had been kicked there.