It understood vaguely that these children had somehow turned Its own tools against It - that, by coincidence (surely not on purpose, surely not guided by the hand of any Other), by the bonding of seven extraordinarily imaginative minds, It had been Drought into a zone of great danger. Any of these seven alone would have been Its meat and drink, and if they had not happened to come together, It surely would have picked them off one by one, drawn by the quality of their minds just as a lion might be drawn to one particular waterhole by the scent of zebra. But together they had discovered an alarming secret that even It had not been aware of: that belief has a second edge. If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one - probably a child - who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it. But a stake is only stupid wood; the mind is the mallet which drives it home.
Yet in the end It had escaped; had gone deep, and the exhausted, terrified children had elected not to follow It when It was at Its most vulnerable. They had elected to believe It dead or dying, and had retreated.
It was aware of their oath, and had known they would come back just as a lion knows the zebra will eventually return to the waterhole. It had begun to plan even as It began to drowse. When It woke It would be healed, renewed - but their childhoods would be burned away like seven fatty candles. The former power of their imaginations would be muted and weak. They would no longer imagine that there were piranha in the Kenduskeag or that if you stepped on a crack you might really break your mother's back or that if you killed a ladybug which lit on your shin your house would catch fire that night. Instead, they would believe in insurance. Instead, they would believe in wine with dinner - something nice but not too pretentious, like a Pouilly-Fuissé '83, and let that breathe, waiter, would you? Instead, they would believe that Rolaids consume forty-seven times their own weight in excess stomach acid. Instead, they would believe in public television, Gary Hart, running to prevent heart attacks, giving up red meat to prevent colon cancer. They would believe in Dr Ruth when it came to getting well fucked and Jerry Falwell when it came to getting well saved. As each year passed their dreams would grow smaller. And when It woke It would call them back, yes, back, because fear was fertile, its child was rage, and rage cried for revenge.
It would call them and then kill them.
Only now that they were coming, the fear had returned. They had grown up, and their imaginations had weakened - but not as much as It had believed. It had felt an ominous, upsetting growth in their power when they joined together, and It had wondered for the first time if It had perhaps made a mistake.
But why be gloomy? The die was cast and not all the omens were bad. The writer was half-mad for his wife, and that was good. The writer was the strongest, the one who had somehow trained his mind for this confrontation over all the years, and when the writer was dead with his guts falling out of his body, when their precious 'Big Bill' was dead, the others would be Its quickly.
It would feed well . . . and then perhaps It would go deep again. And doze. For awhile.
4
In the Tunnels / 4:30 A.M.
'Bill!' Richie shouted into the echoing pipe. He was moving as fast as he could, but that wasn't very fast. He remembered that as kids they had walked bent over in this pipe, which led away from the pumping-station in the Barrens. He was crawling now, and the pipe seemed impossibly tight. His glasses kept wanting to slide off the end of his nose and he kept pushing them up again. He could hear Bev and Ben behind him.
'Bill!' he bawled again. 'Eddie!'
'I'm here!' Eddie's voice floated back.
'Where's Bill?' Richie shouted.
'Up ahead!' Eddie called. He was very close now, and Richie sensed rather than saw him just ahead. 'He wouldn't wait!'
Richie's head butted Eddie's leg. A moment later Bev's head butted Richie's ass.
'Bill!' Richie screamed at the top of his voice. The pipe channelled his shout and sent it back at him, hurting his own ears. 'Bill, wait for us! We have to go together, don't you know that?'
Faintly, echoing, Bilclass="underline" 'Audra! Audra! Where are you?'
'Goddam you, Big Bill!' Richie cried softly. His glasses fell off. He cursed, groped for them, and set them, dripping, back on his nose. He pulled in breath and shouted again: 'You'll get lost without Eddie, you fucking asshole! Wait up! Wait up for us! You hear me, Bill? WAIT UP FOR US, DAMMIT!'
There was an agonizing moment of silence. It seemed that no one breathed. All Richie could hear was distant dripping water; the drain was dry this time, except for the occasional stagnant puddle.
'Bill!' He ran a trembling hand through his hair and fought the tears. 'COME ON . . . PLEASE, MAN! WAIT UP! PLEASE!'
And, fainter still, Bill's voice came back: 'I'm waiting.'
Thank God for small favors,' Richie muttered. He slapped Eddie's can. 'Go.'
'I don't know how long I can with just one arm,' Eddie said apologetically.
'Go anyway,' Richie said, and Eddie began crawling again.
Bill, looking haggard and almost used-up, was waiting for them in the sewer-shaft where the three pipes were lined up like lenses on a dead traffic light. There was room enough here for them to stand up.
'Over there,' Bill said. 'Cuh-Criss. And B-B-Belch.'
They looked. Beverly moaned and Ben put an arm around her. The skeleton of Belch Huggins, clad in moldering rags, seemed more or less intact. What remained of Victor was headless. Bill looked across the shaftway and saw a grinning skull.
There it was; there was the rest of him. Should have left it alone, guys,, Bill thought, and shivered.
This section of the sewer system had fallen into disuse; Richie thought the reason why was pretty clear. The waste-treatment plant had taken over. Sometime during the years when they were all busy learning to shave, to drive, to smoke, to fuck around a little, all that good shit, the Environmental Protection Agency had come into being, and the EPA had decided dumping raw sewage - and even gray water - into rivers and streams was a no-no. So this part of the sewer system had simply moldered, and the bodies of Victor Criss and Belch Huggins had moldered along with it. Like Peter Pan's Wild Boys, Victor and Belch had never grown up. Here were the skeletons of two boys in the shredded remains of tee-shirts and jeans that had rotted away to rags. Moss had grown over the warped xylophone of Victor's ribcage, and over the eagle on the buckle of his garrison-belt.
'Monster got em,' Ben said softly. 'Do you remember? We heard it happen.'
'Audra's d-dead.' Bill voice was mechanical. 'I know it.'
'You don't know any such thing!' Beverly said with such fury that Bill stirred and looked at her. 'All you know for sure is that a lot of other people have died, most of them children.' She walked across to him and stood before him with her hands on her hips. Her face and hands were streaked with grime, her hair matted with dirt. Richie thought she looked absolutely magnificent. 'And you know what did it.'
'I nuh-never should have t-t-told her where I was guh-going,' Bill said. 'Why did I do that? Why did I - '
Her hands pistoned out and seized him by the shirt. Amazed, Richie watched as she shook him.
'No more! You know what we came for! We swore, and we're going to do it! Do you understand me, Bill? If she's dead, she's dead . . . but It's not! Now, we need you. Do you get it? We need you!' She was crying now. 'So you stand up for us! You stand up for us like before or none of us are going to get out of here!'
He looked at her for a long time without speaking, and Richie found himself thinking, Come on, Big Bill. Come on, come on -
Bill looked around at the rest of them and nodded. 'Eh-Eddie.'