Tuh-Take us there,' Bill told Ben.
Ben looked at him and Bill read the thought in his eyes - It's been twenty-seven years, Bill, dream on - and then he nodded and headed into the undergrowth.
The path - their path - had long since grown over, and they had to force themselves through tangles of thornbushes, prickers, and wild hydrangea so fragrant it was cloying. Crickets sang somnolently all around them, and a few lightning-bugs, early arrivals at summer's luscious party, poked at the dark. Bill supposed kids still played down here, but they had made their own runs and secret ways.
They came to the clearing where the clubhouse had been, but now there was no clearing here at all. Bushes and lackluster scrub pines had reclaimed it all.
'Look,' Ben whispered, and crossed the clearing (in their memories it was still here, simply overlaid with another of those matte paintings). He yanked at something. It was the mahogany door they had found on the edge of the dump, the one they had used to finish off the clubhouse roof. It had been cast aside here and looked as if it hadn't been touched in a dozen years or more. Creepers were firmly entrenched across its dirty surface.
'Leave it alone, Haystack,' Richie murmured. 'It's old.'
'Tuh-Tuh-Take us th-there, B-Ben,' Bill repeated from behind them.
So they went down to the Kenduskeag following him, bearing left away from the clearing that didn't exist anymore. The sound of running water grew steadily louder, but they still almost fell into the Kenduskeag before any of them saw it: the foliage had grown up in a tangled wall on the edge of the embankment. The edge broke off under the heels of Ben's cowboy boots and Bill yanked him back by the scruff of the neck.
'Thanks,' Ben said.
'De nada. In the o-old d-days, you wuh-hould have puh-pulled me ih-in a-a-after you. D-Down this wuh-way?'
Ben nodded and led them along the overgrown bank, fighting through the tangles of bushes and brambles, thinking how much easier this was when you were only four feet five and able to go under most tangles (those in your mind as well as those in your path, he supposed) in one nonchalant duck. Well, everything changed. Our lesson for today, boys and girls, is the more things change, the more things change. Whoever said the more things change the more things stay the same was obviously suffering severe mental retardation. Because -
His foot hooked under something and he fell over with a thud, nearly striking his head on the pumping-station's concrete cylinder. It was almost completely buried in a wallow of blackberry bushes. As he got to his feet again he realized that his face and arms and hands had been striped by blackberry thorns in two dozen places.
'Make that three dozen,' he said, feeling thin blood running down his cheeks.
'What?' Eddie asked.
'Nothing.' He bent down to see what he had tripped over. A root, probably.
But it wasn't a root. It was the iron manhole cover. Someone had pushed it off.
Of course, Ben thought. We did. Twenty-seven years ago.
But he realized that was crazy even before he saw fresh metal twinkling through the rust in parallel scrape-marks. The pump hadn't been working that day. Sooner or later someone would have come down to fix it, and would have replaced the cover in the bargain.
He stood up and the five of them gathered around the cylinder and looked in. They could hear the faint sound of dripping water. That was all. Richie had brought all the matches from Eddie's room. Now he lit an entire book of them and tossed it in. For a moment they could see the cylinder's damp inner sleeve and the silent bulk of the pumping machinery. That was all.
'Could have been off for a long time,' Richie said uneasily. 'Didn't necessarily have to happen t - '
'It's happened fairly recently,' Ben said. 'Since the last rain, anyway.' He took another book of matches from Richie, lit one, and pointed out the fresh scratches.
'There's suh-suh-something uh-under it,' Bill said as Ben shook out the match.
'What?' Ben asked.
'C-C-Couldn't tuh-tuh-tell. Looked like a struh-struh-strap. You and Rih-Richie help me t-t-turn it o-over.'
They grabbed the cover and flipped it like a giant coin. This time Beverly lit the match and Ben cautiously picked up the purse which had been under the manhole cover. He held it up by the strap. Beverly started to shake out the match and then looked at Bill's face. She froze until the flame touched the ends of her fingers and then dropped it with a little gasp. 'Bill? What is it? What's wrong?'
Bill's eyes felt too heavy. They couldn't leave that scuffed leather bag with its long leather strap. Suddenly he could remember the name of the song which had been playing on the radio in the back room of the leather-goods shop when he had bought it for her. 'Sausalito Summer Nights.' It was the surpassing weirdism. All the spit was gone out of his mouth, leaving his tongue and inner cheeks as smooth and dry as chrome. He could hear the crickets and see the lightning-bugs and smell big green growing dark out of control all around him and he thought It's another trick another illusion she's in England and this is just a cheap shot because It's scared, oh yes, It's maybe not as sure as It was when It called us all back, and really, Bill, get serious - how many scuffed leather purses with long straps do you think there are in the world? A million? Ten million?
Probably more. But only one like this. He had bought it for Audra in a Burbank leather-goods store while 'Sausalito Summer Nights' played on the radio in the back room.
'Bill?' Beverly's hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Far away. Twenty-seven leagues under the sea. What was the name of the group that sang 'Sausalito Summer Nights'? Richie would know.
'I know,' Bill said calmly into Richie's scared, wide-eyed face, and smiled. 'It was Diesel. How's that for total recall?'
'Bill, what's wrong?' Richie whispered.
Bill screamed. He snatched the matches out of Beverly's hand, lit one, and then yanked the purse away from Ben.
'Bill, Jesus, what - '
He unzipped the purse and turned it over. What fell out was so much Audra that for a moment he was too unmanned to scream again. Amid the Kleenex, sticks of chewing gum, and items of make-up, he saw a tin of Altoid mints . . . and the jewelled compact Freddie Firestone had given her when she signed for Attic Room.
'My wuh-wuh-wife's down there,' he said, and fell on his knees and began pushing her things back into the purse. He brushed hair that no longer existed out of his eyes without even thinking about it.
'Your wife? Audra? Beverly's face was shocked, her eyes huge.
'Her p-p-purse. Her th-things.'
'Jesus, Bill,' Richie muttered. 'That can't be, you know th - '
He had found her alligator wallet. He opened it and held it up. Richie lit another match and was looking at a face he had seen in half a dozen movies. The picture on Audra's California driver's license was less glamorous but completely conclusive.
'But Huh-Huh-Henry's dead, and Victor, and B-B-Belch . . . so who's got her?' He stood up, staring around at them with febrile intensity. Who's got her?'
Ben put a hand on Bill's shoulder. 'I guess we better go down and find out, huh?'
Bill looked around at hull, as if unsure of who Ben might be, and then his eyes cleared. 'Y-Yeah,' he said. 'Eh-Eh-Eddie?'
'Bill, I'm sorry.'
'Can you cluh-climb on?'
'I did once.'
Bill bent over and Eddie hooked his right arm around Bill's neck. Ben and Richie boosted him up until he could hook his legs around Bill's midsection.