which held the completed, messy first draft of a novel entitled Joanna, which would be published a year later?
Some of the above, all of the above, none of the above.
It didn't matter, really. The seventh was there, and in that one moment ht ey all felt it . . . and perhaps understood best the dreadful power of the thing that had brought them back. It lives, Bill thought, cold inside his clothes. Eye of newt, tail of dragon, Hand of Glory . . . whatever It was, It's here again, in Derry. It.
And he felt — suddenly that It was the seventh; that It and time were somehow interchangeable, that It wore all their faces as well as the thousand others with which It had terrified and killed . . . and the idea that It might be them was somehow the most frightening idea of all. How much of us was left behind here? he thought with sudden rising terror. How much of us never left the drains and the sewers where It lived . . . and where It fed? Is that why we forgot? Because part of each of us never had any future, never grew, never left Derry? Is that why?
He saw no answers on their faces . . . only his own questions reflected back at him.
Thoughts form and pass in a matter of seconds or milliseconds, and create their own time-frames, and all of this passed through Bill Denbrough's mind in a space of no more than five seconds.
Then Richie Tozier, leaning back against the wall, grinned again and said: 'Oh my, look at this — Bill Denbrough went for the chrome dome look. How long you been Turtle Waxing your head, Big Bill?'
And Bill, with no idea at all of what might come out, opened his mouth and heard himself say: 'Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Trashmouth.'
There was a moment of silence — and then the room exploded with laughter. Bill crossed to them and began to shake hands, and while there was something horrible in what he now felt, there was also something comforting about it: this sensation of having come home for good.
3
Ben Hanscom Gets Skinny
Mike Hanlon ordered drinks, and as if to make up for the prior silence, everyone began to talk at once. Beverly Marsh was now Beverly Rogan, it turned out. She said she was married to a wonderful man in Chicago who had turned her whole life around and who had, by some benign magic, been able to transform his wife's simple talent for sewing into a successful dress business. Eddie Kaspbrak owned a limousine company in New York. 'For all I know, my wife could be in bed with Al Pacino right now,' he said, smiling mildly, and the room broke up.
They all knew what Bill and Ben had been up to, but Bill had a peculiar sense that there had been no personal association of their names — Ben as an architect, himself as a writer — with people they had known as children until very, very recently. Beverly had paperback copies of Joanna and The Black Rapids in her purse, and asked him if he would sign them. Bill did so, noticing as he did that both books were in mint condition — as if they had been purchased in the airport newsstand as she got off the plane.
In like fashion, Richie told Ben how much he had admired the BBC communications center in London . . . but there was a puzzled son of light in his eyes, as if he could not quite reconcile that building with this man . . . or with the fat earnest boy who had showed them how to flood out half the Barrens with scrounged boards and a rusty car door.
Richie was a disc jockey in California. He told them he was known as the Man of a Thousand Voices and Bill groaned. 'God, Richie, your Voices were always so terrible.'
'Flattery will get you nowhere, mawster,' Richie replied loftily.
When Beverly asked him if he wore contacts now, Richie said in a low voice, 'Come a little closer, bay-bee. Look in my eyes.' Beverly did, and exclaimed delightedly as Richie tilted his head a little so she could see the lower rims of the Hydromist soft lenses he wore.
'Is the library still the same?' Ben asked Mike Hanlon.
Mike took out his wallet and produced a snap of the library, taken from above. He did it with the proud air of a man producing snapshots of his kids when asked about his family. 'Guy in a light plane took this,' he said, as the picture went from hand to hand. Tve been trying to get either the City Council or some well-heeled private donor to supply enough cash to get it blown up to mural size for the Children's Library. So far, no soap. But it's a good picture, huh?'
They all agreed that it was. Ben held it longest, looking at it fixedly. Finally he tapped the glass corridor which connected the two buildings. 'Do you recognize this from anywhere else, Mike?'
Mike smiled. 'It's your communications center,' he said, and all six of them burst out laughing.
The drinks came. They sat down.
That silence, sudden, awkward, and perplexing, fell again. They looked at
each other.
'Well?' Beverly asked in her sweet, slightly husky voice. 'What do we drink to?'
'To us,' Richie said suddenly. And now he wasn't smiling. His eyes caught Bill's and with a force so great he could barely deal with it, Bill remembered himself and Richie in the middle of Neibolt Street, after the thing which might have been a clown or which might have been a werewolf had disappeared, embracing each other and weeping. When he picked up his glass, his hand was trembling, and some of his drink spilled on the napery.
Richie rose slowly to his feet, and one by one the others followed suit: Bill first, then Ben and Eddie, Beverly, and finally Mike Hanlon. 'To us,' Richie said, and like Bill's hand, his voice trembled a little. To the Losers' Club of 1958.'
'The Losers,' Beverly said, slightly amused.
The Losers,' Eddie said. His face was pale and old behind his rimless glasses.
The Losers,' Ben agreed. A faint and painful smile ghosted at the corners of his mouth.