Ben heard Bill bellow: 'You k-k-killed my brother, you fuh-fuh-fucking BITCH!'
Then It was rearing up over Bill, burying Bill in Its shadow, Its legs pawing the air. Ben heard Its eager mewling, looked into Its timeless, evil red eyes . . . and for an instant did see the shape behind the shape: saw lights, saw an endless crawling hairy thing which was made of light and nothing else, orange light, dead light that mocked life.
The ritual began for the second time.
C H A P T E R 2 2
The Ritual of Chüd
1
In the Lair of It / 1958
It was Bill who held them together as that great black Spider raced down Its web, creating a noxious breeze that tousled their hair. Stan shrieked like a baby, his brown eyes bulging from their sockets, his fingers harrowing his cheeks. Ben backed slowly away until his ample ass struck the wall to the left of the door. He felt cold fire burn through his pants and stepped away again, but dreamily. Surely none of this could be happening; it was simply the world's worst nightmare. He found he could not lift his hands. They seemed to have big weights tied to them.
Richie found his eyes drawn to that web. Hanging here and there, partially wrapped in silken strands that seemed to move as if alive, were a number of rotted half-eaten bodies. He thought he recognized Eddie Corcoran near the ceiling, although both of Eddie's legs and one of his arms were gone.
Beverly and Mike clung to each other like Hansel and Gretel in the woods, watching, paralyzed, as the Spider reached the floor and scrabbled toward them, Its distorted shadow racing along beside It on the wall.
Bill looked around at them, a tall, skinny boy in a mud-and-sewage-splattered tee-shirt that had once been white, jeans with cuffs, mud-caked Keds. His hair lay across his forehead, and his eyes were blazing. He surveyed them, seemed to dismiss them, and turned back toward the Spider. And, incredibly, he began to cross the room toward It, not running but walking fast, his elbows cocked, his forearms corded, his hands fisted.
'Yuh-Yuh-You k-k-killed my bruh-hother!'
'No, Bill!' Beverly shrieked, struggling free of Mike's embrace and running toward Bill, her red hair flying out behind her. 'Leave him alone!' she screamed at the Spider. 'Don't you touch him!'
Shit! Beverly! Ben thought, and then he was running too, stomach swaying back and forth in front of him, legs pumping. He was vaguely aware that Eddie Kaspbrak was running on his left, holding his aspirator in his good hand like a pistol.
And then It was rearing up over Bill, who was unarmed; It buried Bill in Its shadow, Its legs pawing at the air. Ben grabbed for Beverly's shoulder. His hand slapped it, then slipped off. She turned toward him, her eyes wild, her lips drawn back from her teeth.
'Help him!' she screamed.
'How?' Ben screamed back. He wheeled toward the Spider, heard Its eager mewling, looked into Its timeless, evil eyes, and saw something behind the shape; something much worse than a spider. Something that was all insane light. His courage faltered . . . but it was Bev who had asked him. Bev, and he loved her.
'Goddam you, leave Bill alone!' he shrieked.
A moment later a hand swatted his back so hard he almost fell over. It was Richie, and although tears were running down his cheeks, Richie was grinning madly. The corners of his mouth seemed to reach almost to the lobes of his ears. Spit leaked out between his teeth. 'Let's get her, Haystack!' Richie screamed. 'Chüd! Chüd!'
Her? Ben thought stupidly. Her, did he say?
Aloud: 'Okay, but what is it? What's Chüd?'
'Frocked if I know!' Richie yelled, then ran toward Bill and into the shadow of It.
It had somehow squatted on Its rear legs. Its front legs pawed the air just over Bill's head. And Stan Uris, forced to approach, compelled to approach in spite of every instinct in his mind and body, saw that Bill was staring up at It, his blue eyes fixed on Its inhuman orange ones, eyes from which that awful corpse-light spilled. Stan stopped, understanding that the Ritual of Chüd - whatever that was - had begun.
2
Bill in the Void / Early
- who are you and why do you come to Me?
I'm Bill Denbrough. You know who I am and why I'm here. You killed my brother and I'm here to kill You. You picked the wrong kid, bitch.
- I am eternal. I am the Eater of Worlds.
Yeah? That so? Well, you've had your last meal, sister.
- you have no power; here is the power; feel the power, brat, and then speak again of how you come to kill the Eternal. You think you see Me? You see only what your mind will allow. Would you see Me? Come, then! Come, brat! Come!
Thrown -
(he).
No, not thrown, fired, fired like a living bullet, like the Human Cannonball at the Shrine Circus that came to Derry each May. He was picked up and heaved across the Spider's chamber. It's only in my mind! he screamed at himself. My body's still standing right there, eye to eye with It, be brave, it's only a mind-trick, be brave, be true, stand, stand -
(thrusts)
Roaring forward, slamming into a black and dripping tunnel lined with decaying, crumbling tiles that were fifty years old, a hundred, a thousand, a million-billion, who knew, rushing in deadly silence past intersections, some lit by that twisting green-yellow fire, some by glowing balloons full of a ghastly white skull-light, others dead black; he was thrown at a speed of a thousand miles an hour past piles of bones, some human, some not, speeding like a rocket-powered dart in a wind-tunnel, now angling upward, but not toward light but toward dark, some titanic dark
(his fists)
and exploding outward into utter blackness, the blackness was everything, the blackness was the cosmos and the universe, and the floor of the blackness was hard, hard, it was like polished ebonite and he was skidding along on his chest and belly and thighs like a weight on a shuffleboard. He was on the ballroom floor of eternity, and eternity was black.
(against the posts)
- stop that why do you say that? that won't help you, stupid boy and still insists he sees the ghosts!
- stop it.'
he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts!
- stop it! stop it! I demand, I command, that you stop it! Don't like that, do you?
And thinking: If I could only say it out loud, say it without stuttering, I could break this illusion -
- this is no illusion, you foolish little boy - this is eternity, My eternity, and you are lost in it, lost forever, never to find your way back; you are eternal now, and condemned to wander in the black . . . after you meet Me face to face, that is
But there was something else here. Bill sensed it, felt it, in a crazy way smelled it: some large presence ahead in the dark. A Shape. He felt not fear but a sense of overmastering awe; here was a power which dwarfed Its power, and Bill had only time to think incoherently: Please, please, whatever You are, remember that I am very small -
He rushed toward it and saw it was a great Turtle, its shell plated with many blazing colors. Its ancient reptilian head slowly poked out of its shell, and Bill thought he felt a vague contemptuous surprise from the thing that had cast him out here. The eyes of the Turtle were kind. Bill thought it must be the oldest thing anyone could imagine, older by far than It, which had claimed to be eternal.
What are you? -
I'm the Turtle, son. I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it; I had a bellyache.