It

'Twas a bird,' he said. 'Right over the last of those runnin men. A hawk, maybe. What they call a kestrel. But it was big. Never told no one. Would have been locked up. That bird was maybe sixty feet from wingtip to wingtip. It was the size of a Japanese Zero. But I seen . . . seen its eyes . . . and I think . . . it seen me . . . '

His head slipped over to the side, toward the window, where the dark was coming.

'It swooped down and grabbed that last man up. Got him right by the sheet, it did xxxand I heard that bird's wings . . . The sound was like fire . . . and it hovered . . . and I thought, Birds can't hover . . . but this one could, because . because . . . '

He fell silent.

'Why, Daddy?' I whispered. 'Why could it hover?'

'It didn't hover,' he said.

I sat there in silence, thinking he had gone to sleep for sure this time. I had never been so afraid in my life . . . because four years before, I had seen that bird. Somehow, in some unimaginable way, I had nearly forgotten that nightmare. It was my father who brought it back.

'It didn't hover,' he said. 'It floated. It floated. There were big bunches of balloons tied to each wing, and it floated.'

My father went to sleep.

March 1st, 1985

It's come again. I know that now. I'll wait, but in my heart I know it. I'm not sure I can stand it. As a kid I was able to deal with it, but it's different with kids. In some fundamental way it's different.

I wrote all of that last night in a kind of frenzy — not that I could have gone home anyway. Derry has been blanketed in a thick glaze of ice, and although the sun is out this morning, nothing is moving.

I wrote until long after three this morning, pushing the pen faster and faster, trying to get it all out. I had forgotten about seeing the giant bird when I was eleven. It was my father's story that brought it back . . . and I never forgot it again. Not any of it. In a way, I suppose it was his final gift to me. A terrible gift, you would say, but wonderful in its way.

I slept right where I was, my head in my arms, my notebook and pen on the table in front of me. I woke up this morning with a numb ass and an aching back, but feeling free, somehow . . . purged of that old story.

And then I saw that I had had company in the night, as I slept.

The tracks, drying to faint muddy impressions, led from the front door of the library (which I locked; I always lock it) to the desk where I slept.

There were no tracks leading away.

Whatever it was, it came to me in the night, left its talisman . . . and then simply disappeared.

Tied to my reading lamp was a single balloon. Filled with helium, it floated in a morning sunray which slanted in through one of the high windows.

On it was a picture of my face, the eyes gone, blood running down from the ragged sockets, a scream distorting the mouth on the balloon's thin and bulging rubber skin.

I looked at it and I screamed. The scream echoed through the library, echoing back, vibrating from the circular iron staircase leading to the stacks.

The balloon burst with a bang.

PART 3 - GROWNUPS

'The descent made up of despairs and without accomplishment realizes a new awakening: which is a reversal of despair.

For what we cannot accomplish, what is denied to love,

what we have lost in the anticipation — a descent follows, endless and indestructible.'

— William Carlos Williams, Paterson

'Don't it make you wanta go home, now? Don't it make you wanta go home? All God's children get weary when they roam, Don't it make you wanta go home?'

— Joe South

CHAPTER 1 0 The Reunion

1

Bill Denbrough Gets a Cab

The telephone was ringing, bringing him up and out of a sleep too deep for dreams. He groped for it without opening his eyes, without coming more than halfway awake. If it had stopped ringing just then he would have slipped back down into sleep without a hitch; he would have done ti as simply and easily as he had once slipped down the snow-covered hills in McCarron Park on his Flexible Flyer. You ran with the sled, threw yourself onto it, and down you went — seemingly at the speed of sound. You couldn't do that as a grownup; it racked the hell out of your balls.

His fingers walked over the telephone's dial, slipped off, climbed it again. He had a dim premonition that it would be Mike Hanlon, Mike Hanlon calling from Derry, telling him he had to come back, telling him he had to remember, telling him they had made a promise, Stan Uris had cut their palms with a sliver of Coke bottle and they had made a promise —

Except all of that had already happened.

He had gotten in late yesterday afternoon — just before 6 P .M ., actually. He supposed that, if he had been the last call on Mike's list, all of them must have gotten in at varying times; some might even have spent most of the day here. He himself had seen none of them, felt no urge to see any of them. He had simply checked in, gone up to his room, ordered a meal from room service which he found he could not eat once it was laid out before him, and then had tumbled into bed and slept dreamlessly until now.

Bill cracked one eye open and fumbled for the telephone's handset. It fell off onto the table and he groped for it, opening his other eye. He felt totally blank inside his head, totally unplugged, running on batteries.

He finally managed to scoop up the phone. He got up on one elbow and put it against his ear. 'Hello?'

'Bill?' It was Mike Hanlon's voice — he'd had at least that much right. Last week he didn't remember Mike at all, and now a single word was enough to identify him. It was rather marvellous . . . but in an ominous way.

'Yeah, Mike.'

'Woke you up, huh?'

'Yeah, you did. That's okay.' On the wall above the TV was an abysmal painting of lobstermen in yellow slickers and rainhats pulling lobster traps. Looking at it, Bill remembered where he was: the Derry Town House on Upper Main Street. Half a mile farther up and across the street was Bassey Park . . . the Kissing Bridge . . . the Canal. 'What time is it, Mike?'

'Quarter of ten.'

'What day?'

'The 30th.' Mike sounded a little amused.

'Yeah. 'Kay.'

'I've arranged a little reunio n,' Mike said. He sounded diffident now.

'Yeah?' Bill swung his legs out of bed. They all came?'

'All but Stan Uris,' Mike said. Now there was something in his voice that Bill couldn't read. 'Bev was the last one. She got in late last evening.'

'Why do you say the last one, Mike? Stan might show up today.'

'Bill, Stan's dead.'

'What? How? Did his plane — '

'Nothing like that,' Mike said. 'Look, if it's all the same to you, I think it ought to wait until we get together. It would be better if I could tell all of you at the same time.'

'It has to do with this?'

'Yes, I think so.' Mike paused briefly. 'I'm sure it does.'

Bill felt the familiar weight of dread settle around his heart again — was it something you could get used to so quickly, then? Or had it been something he had carried all along, simply unfelt and unthought-of, like the inevitable fact of his own death?

He reached for his cigarettes, lit one, and blew out the match with the first drag.