It

'Why?' Eddie asked urgently. His breath had thinned; Bill remembered that high whistle as Eddie inhaled breath, and knew that he would soon be tooting on the old lung-sucker. 'What did we do?

The question hung there. Mike seemed to regard it . . . and at last he shook his head. 'You'll remember,' he said. 'In time you'll remember.'

'What if we don't?' Ben asked.

'Then God help us all.'

'Nine children dead this year,' Rich said. 'Christ.'

'Lisa Albrecht and Steven Johnson in late 1984,' Mike said. 'In February a boy named Dennis Torrio disappeared. A high-school boy. His body was found in mid-March, in the Barrens. Mutilated. This was nearby.'

He took a photograph from the same pocket into which he had replaced the notebook. It made its way around the table. Beverly and Eddie looked at it, puzzled, but Richie Tozier reacted violently. He dropped it as if it were hot. 'Jesus! Jesus, Mike!' He looked up, his eyes wide and shocked. A moment later he passed the picture to Bill.

Bill looked at it and felt the world swim into gray tones all around him. For a moment he was sure he would pass out. He heard a groan, and knew he had made the sound. He dropped the picture.

'What is it?' he heard Beverly saying. 'What does it mean, Bill?'

'It's my brother's school picture,' Bill said at last. 'It's Juh-Georgie. The picture from his album. The one that moved. The one that winked.'

They handed it around again then, while Bill sat as still as stone at the head of the table, looking out into space. It was a photograph of a photograph. The picture showed a tattered school photo propped up against a white background — smiling lips parted to exhibit two holes where new teeth had never grown (unless they grow in your coffin, Bill thought, and shuddered). On the margin below George's picture were the words SCHOOL FRIENDS 1957-58.

'It was found this year?' Beverly asked again. Mike nodded and she turned to Bill. 'When did you last see it, Bill?'

He wet his lips, tried to speak. Nothing came out. He tried again, hearing the words echo in his head, aware of the stutter coming back, fighting it, fighting the terror.

'I haven't seen that picture since 1958. That spring, the year after George died. When I tried to show it to Richie, it was g-gone.'

There was an explosive gasping sound that made them all look around. Eddie was setting his aspirator back on the table and looking slightly embarrassed.

'Eddie Kaspbrak blasts off!' Richie cried cheerfully, and then, suddenly and eerily, the Voice of the MovieTone Newsreel Narrator came from Rich's mouth: 'Today in Derry, a whole city turns out for Asthmatics on Parade, and the star of the show is Big Ed the Snothead, known all over New England as — '

He stopped abruptly, and one hand moved toward his face, as if to cover his eyes, and Bill suddenly thought: No — no, that's not it. Not to cover his eyes but to push his glasses up on his nose. The glasses that aren't even there anymore. Oh dear Christ, what's going on here?

'Eddie, I'm sorry,' Rich said. 'That was cruel. I don't know what the hell I was thinking about.' He looked around at the others, bewildered.

Mike Hanlon spoke into the silence.

'I'd promised myself after Steven Johnson's body was discovered that if anything else happened — if there was one more clear case — I would make the calls that I ended up not making for another two months. It was as if I was hypnotized by what was happening, by the consciousness of it — the deliberateness of it. George's picture was found by a fallen log less than ten feet from the Torrio boy's body. It wasn't hidden; quite the contrary. It was as if the killer wanted it to be found. As I'm sure the killer did.'

'How did you get the police photo, Mike?' Ben asked. That's what it is, isn't it?'

'Yes, that's what it is. There's a fellow in the Police Department who isn't averse to making a little extra money. I pay him twenty bucks a month — all that I can afford. He's a pipeline.

The body of Dawn Roy was found four days after the Torrio boy. McCarron Park. Thirteen years old. Decapitated.

'April 23rd of this year. Adam Terrault. Sixteen. Reported missing when he didn't come home from band practice. Found the next day just off the path that runs through the greenbelt behind West Broadway. Also decapitated.

'May 6th. Frederick Cowan. Two and a half. Found in an upstairs bathroom, drowned in the toilet.'

'Oh, Mike!' Beverly cried.

'Yeah, it's bad,' he said, almost angrily. 'Don't you think I know that?'

'The police are convinced that it couldn't have been — w e l l , s o m e k i n d o f a c c i d ent?' Bev asked.

Mike shook his head. 'His mother was hanging clothes in the back yard. She heard sounds of a struggle — heard her son screaming. She ran as fast as she could. As she went up the stairs, she says she heard the sound of the toilet flushing repeatedly — that, and someone laughing. She said it didn't sound human.'

'And she saw nothing at all?' Eddie asked.

'Her son,' Mike said simply. 'His back had been broken, his skull fractured. The glass door of the shower-stall was broken. There was blood everywhere. The mother is in the Bangor Mental Health Institute, now. My . . . my Police Department source says she's quite lost her mind.'

'No fucking wonder,' Richie said hoarsely. 'Who's got a cigarette?'

Beverly gave him one. Rich li t it with hands that shook badly.

'The police line is that the killer came in through the front door while the Cowan boy's mother was hanging her clothes in the back yard. Then, when she ran up the back stairs, he supposedly jumped from the bathroom window into the yard she'd just left and got away clean. But the window is only one of those half-sized jobs; a kid of seven would have to wriggle to get through it. And the drop was twenty-five feet to a stone-flagged patio. Rademacher doesn't like to talk about those things, and no one in the press — certainly no one at the News — has pressed him about them.'

Mike took a drink of water and then passed another picture down the line. This was not a police photograph; it was another school picture. It showed a grinning boy who was maybe thirteen. He was dressed in his best for the school photo and his hands were clean and folded neatly in his lap . . . but there was a devilish little glint in his eyes. He was black.

'Jeffrey Holly,' Mike said. 'May 13th. A week after the Cowan boy was killed. Torn open. He was found in Bassey Park, by the Canal.

'Nine days after that, May 22nd, a fifthgrader named John Feury was found dead out on Neibolt Street — '

Eddie uttered a high, quavering scream. He groped for his aspirator and knocked it off the table. It rolled down to Bill, who picked it up. Eddie's face had gone a sickish yellow color. His breath whistled coldly in his throat.

'Get him something to drink!' Ben roared. 'Somebody get him —

But Eddie was shaking his head. He triggered the aspirator down his throat. His chest heaved as he tore in a gulp of air. He triggered the aspirator again and then sat back, eyes half-closed, panting.

'I'll be all right,' he gasped. 'Gimme a minute, I'm with you.'

'Eddie, are you sure?' Beverly asked. 'Maybe you ought to lie down — '

'I'll be all right,' he repeated querulously. 'It was just . . . the shock. You know. The shock. I'd forgotten all about Neibolt Street.'

No one replied; no one had to. Bill thought: You believe your capacity has been reached, and then Mike produces another name, and yet another, like a black magician with a hatful of malign tricks, and you're knocked onyour ass again.