It

They measured out a cup of Mrs Marsh's Tide and put it in an empty mayonnaise jar. Bev found a paper shopping bag to put the bloody rags in, and the four of them went down to the Kleen-Kloze Washateria on the corner of Main and Cony Streets. Two blocks farther up they could see the Canal gleaming a bright blue in the afternoon sun.

The Kleen-Kloze was empty except for a woman in a white nurse's uniform who was waiting for her dryer to stop. She glanced at the four kids distrustfully and then went back to her paperback of Peyton Place.

'Cold water,' Ben said in a low voice. 'My mom says you gotta wash blood in cold water.'

They dumped the rags into the washer while Stan changed his two quarters for four dimes and two nickels. He came back and watched as Bev dumped the Tide over the rags and swung the washer's door closed. Then he plugged two dimes into the coin-op slot and twisted the start knob.

Beverly had chipped in most of the pennies she had won at pitch for the frappes, but she found four survivors deep down in the lefthand pocket of her jeans. She fished them out and offered them to Stan, who looked pained. 'Jeez,' he said, 'I take a girl on a laundry date and right away she wants to go Dutch.'

Beverly laughed a little. 'You sure?'

'I'm sure,' Stan said in his dry way. 'I mean, it's really breaking my heart to give up those four pence, Beverly, but I'm sure.'

The four of them went over to the line of plastic contour chairs against the Washateria's cinderblock wall and sat there, not talking. The Maytag with the rags in it chugged and sloshed. Fans of suds slobbered against the thick glass of its round porthole. At first the suds were reddish. Looking at them made Bev feel a little sick, but she found it was hard to look away. The bloody foam had a gruesome sort of fascination. The lady in the nurse's uniform glanced at them more and more often over the top of her book. She had perhaps been afraid they would be rowdy; now their very silence seemed to unnerve her. When her dryer stopped she took her clothes out, folded them, put them into a blue plastic laundry-bag and left, giving them one last puzzled look as she went out the door.

As soon as she was gone, Ben said abruptly, almost harshly: 'You're not alone.'

'What?' Beverly asked.

'You're not alone,' Ben repeated. 'You see — '

He stopped and looked at Eddie, who nodded. He looked at Stan, who looked unhappy . . . but who, after a moment, shrugged and also nodded.

'What in the world are you talking about?' Beverly asked. She was tired of people saying inexplicable things to her today. She gripped Ben's lower arm. 'If you know something about this, tell me!'

'Do you want to do it?' Ben asked Eddie.

Eddie shook his head. He took his aspirator out of his pocket and sucked in on it with a monstrous gasp.

Speaking slowly, picking his words, Ben told Beverly how he had happe n e d t o m e e t B i l l Denbrough and Eddie Kaspbrak in the Barrens on the day school let out — that was almost a week ago, as hard as that was to believe. He told her about how they had built the dam in the Barrens the following day. He told Bill's story of how the school photograph of his dead brother had turned its head and winked. He told his own story of the mummy who had walked on the icy Canal in the dead heart of winter with balloons that floated against the wind. Beverly listened to all this with growing horror. She could feel her eyes widening, her hands and feet growing cold.

Ben stopped and looked at Eddie. Eddie took another wheezing pull on his aspirator and then told the story of the leper again, speaking as rapidly as Ben had slowly, his words tumbling over one another in their urgency to escape and be gone. He finished with a sucking little half-sob, but this time he didn't cry.

'And you?' she asked, looking at Stan Uris.

'I — '

There was sudden silence, making them all start the way a sudden explosion might have done.

'The wash is done,' Stan said.

They watched him get up — small, economical, graceful — and open the washer. He pulled out the rags, which were stuck together in a clump, and examined them.

There's a little stain left,' he said, 'but it's not too bad. Looks like it could be cranberry juice.'

He showed them, and they all nodded gravely, as if over important documents. Beverly felt a relief that was similar to the relief she had felt when the bathroom was clean again. She could stand the faded pastel smear on the peeling wallpaper in there, and she could stand the faint reddish stain on her mother's cleaning rags. They had done something about it, that seemed to be the important thing. Maybe it hadn't worked completely, but she discovered it had worked well enough to give her heart peace, and brother, that was good enough for Al Marsh's daughter Beverly.

Stan tossed them into one of the barrel-shaped dryers and put in two nickels. The dryer started to turn, and Stan came back and took his seat between Eddie and Ben.

For a moment the four of them sat silent again, watching the rags turn and fall, turn and fall. The drone of the gas-fired dryer was soothing, almost soporific. A woman passed by the chocked-open door, wheeling a cart of groceries. She glanced in at them and passed on.

'I did see something,' Stan said suddenly. 'I didn't want to talk about it, because I wanted to think it was a dream or something. Maybe even a fit, like that Stavier kid has. Any you guys know that kid?'

Ben and Bev shook their heads. Eddie said, The kid who's got epilepsy?'

'Yeah, right. That's how bad it was. I would have rather thought I had something like that than that I saw something . . . really real.'

'What was it?' Bev asked, but she wasn't sure she really wanted to know. This was not like listening to ghost-stories around a camp –fire while you ate wieners in toasted buns and cooked marshmallows over the flames until they were black and crinkly. Here they sat in this stifling laundromat and she could see great big dust kitties under the washing machines (ghost-turds, her father called them), she could see dust-motes dancing in the hot shafts of sunlight which fell through the laundromat's dirty plate –glass window, she could see old magazines with their covers torn off. These were all normal things. Nice and normal and boring. But she was scared. Terribly scared. Because, she sensed, none of these things were made – up storks, made-u p m o n s t e r s : B e n ' s m u m m y , Eddie's leper . . . either or both of them

might be out tonight when the sun went down. Or Bill Denbrough's brother, one-armed and implacable, cruising through the black drains under the city with silver coins for eyes.

Yet, when Stan did not answer immediately, she asked again: 'What was it?'

Speaking carefully, Stan said: 'I was over in that little park where the Standpipe is — '

'Oh God, I don't like that place,' Eddie said dolefully. 'If there's a haunted house in Derry, that's it.'

'What? Stan said sharply. 'What did you say?'

'Don't you know about that place?' Eddie asked. 'My mom wouldn't let me go near there even before the kids started getting killed. She . . . she takes real good care of me.' He offered them an uneasy grin and held his aspirator tighter in his lap. 'You see, some kids have been drowned in there. Three or four. They — Stan? Stan, are you all right?'

Stan Uris's face had gone a leaden gray. His mouth worked soundlessly. His eyes rolled up until the others could only see the bottommost curves of his irises. One hand clutched weakly at empty air and then fell against his thigh.

Eddie did the only thing he could think of. He leaned over, put one thin arm around Stan's slumping shoulders, jammed his aspirator into Stan's mouth, and triggered off a big blast.

Stan began to cough and choke and gag. He sat up straight, his eyes back in focus again. He coughed into his cupped hands. At last he uttered a huge, burping gasp and slumped back against his chair.