'Don't touch that, Bill!' Ben yelled, and Bill yanked his hand away in one quick jerk, leaving a raw place across his palm just below the fingers. It filled with blood and he staggered to his feet, eyes on the Spider.
It was scrabbling away from them, making Its way into the growing dimness at the back of the chamber as the light failed. It left puddles and pools of black blood behind as It went; somehow their confrontation had ruptured Its insides in a dozen, maybe a hundred places.
'Bill, the web!' Mike screamed. 'Look out!'
He stepped backward, craning his neck up, as strands of Its web came floating down, striking the stone-flagged floor on either side of him like the bodies of meaty white snakes. They immediately began to lose shape, to flow into the cracks between the stones. The web was falling apart, coming loose from its many moorings. One of the bodies, wrapped up like a fly, came plunging down to strike the floor with a sickening rotted-gourd sound.
'The Spider!' Bill yelled. 'Where is It?'
He could still hear It in his head, mewling and crying out in Its pain, and understood dimly that It had gone into the same tunnel It had thrown Bill into . . . but had It gone in there to flee back to the place where It had meant to send Bill . . . or to hide until they were gone? To die? Or escape?
'Christ, the lights!' Richie shouted. 'The lights're going out! What happened, Bill? Where did you go? We thought you were dead!'
In some confused part of his mind Bill knew that wasn't true: if they had really thought him dead, they would have run, scattered, and It would have picked them off easily, one by one. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that they had thought him dead, b ut believed him alive.
We have to make sure! If It's dying or gone back to where It came from, where the rest of It is, that's fine. But what if Ifs just hurt? What if It can get better? What —
Stan's shriek cut across his thoughts like broken glass. In the fading light Bill saw that one of the strands of webbing had come down on Stan's shoulder. Before Bill could reach him, Alike had thrown himself at the smaller boy in a flying tackle. He drove Stan away and the piece of webbing snapped back, taking a piece of Stan's polo shirt with it.
'Get back!' Ben yelled at them. 'Get away from it, it's all coming down!' He seized Beverly's hand and pulled her back toward the child –sized door while Stan struggled to his
feet, looked dazedly around, and the n grabbed Eddie. The two of them started toward Ben and Beverly, helping each other, looking like phantoms in the fading light.
Overhead, the spiderweb was drooping, collapsing on itself, losing its fearful symmetry. Bodies twirled lazily in the air like nightmarish plumb-bobs. Cross-strands fell in like the rotted rungs of some strange complex of ladders. Severed strands hit the stone flagging, hissed like cats, lost their shape, began to run.
Mike Hanlon wove his way through them as he would later weave his way through the opposing lines of nearly a dozen high-school football teams, head down, ducking and dodging. Richie joined him. Incredibly, Richie was laughing, although his hair was standing straight up on his head like the quills of a porcupine. The light grew dimmer, the phosphorescence that had coiled on the walls now dying away.
'Bill!' Mike shouted. 'Come on! Get the frock out of there!'
'What if It's not dead?' Bill screamed back. 'We got to go after It, Mike! We got to make sure!'
A snarl of webbing sagged outward like a parachute and then fell with a nasty ripping sound that was like skin being pulled apart. Mike grabbed Bill's arm and pulled him, stumbling, out of the way.
'It's dead!' Eddie cried, joining them. His eyes were febrile lamps, his breathing a chilly winter-whistle in his throat. Fallen strands of webbing had sizzled complex scars into the plaster of Paris of his cast. 'I heard It, It was dying, you don't sound like that if you're on your way to a sock hop, It was dying, I'm sure of it!'
Richie's hands groped out of the darkness, seized Bill, and pulled him into a rough embrace. He began to pound Bill's back ecstatically. 'I heard It, too — It was dying, Big Bill! It was dying . . . and you're not stuttering! Not at all! Howdja do it? How in the hell — ?'
Bill's brain was whirling. Exhaustion tugged at him with thick and clumsy hands. He could not remember ever feeling this tired . . . but in his mind he heard the drawling, almost weary voice of the Turtle: I'd finish it now; don't let It get away . . . what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again.
'But we have to be sure — '
The shadows were joining hands and now the darkness was almost complete. But before the light failed utterly, he thought he saw the same hellish doubt on Beverly's face . . . and in Stan's eyes. And still, as the last of the light gave way, they could hear the tenebrous whisper-shudder-thump of Its unspeakable web falling to pieces.
3
Bill in the Void / Late
— well here you are again, Little Buddy! but what's happened to your hair? you're just as
bald as a cueball! sad! what sad, short lives humans live! each life a short pamphlet written
by an idiot! tut-tut, and all that
I'm still Bill Denbrough. You killed my brother and you killed Stan the Man you tried to kill Mike. And I'm going to tell you something: this time I'm not going to stop until the job's done
— the Turtle was stupid, too stupid to lie. he told you the truth, Little Buddy . . . the time
only comes around once, you hurt me . . . you surprised me. never again. I am the one who
called you back. I.
You called, all right, but You weren't the only one
— your friend the Turtle . . . he died a few years ago. the old idiot puked inside his shell
and choked to death on a galaxy or two. very sad, don't you think? but also quite bizarre,
deserves a place in Ripley's Believe It or Not, that's what I think, happened right around the same time you had that writer's block, you must have felt him go, Little Buddy
I don't believe that, either
— oh you'll believe . . . you'll see. this time, Little Buddy, I intend you to see everything, including the deadlights
He sensed Its voice rising, buzzing and racketing — at last he sensed the full extent of Its fury, and he was terrified. He reached for the tongue of Its mind, concentrating, trying desperately to recapture the full extent of that childish belief, understanding at the same time that there was a deadly truth in what It had said: last time It had been unprepared. This time . . . well, even if It had not been the only one to call them, It sure had been waiting.
But still —
He felt his own fury, clean and singing, as his eyes fixed on Its eyes. He sensed Its old scars, sensed that It had truly been hurt, and that It was still hurt.
And as It threw him, as he felt his mind swatted out of his body, he concentrated all of his being on seizing Its tongue . . . and missed his grip.
4
Richie
The other four watched, paralyzed. It was an exact replay of what had happened before — at first. The Spider, which seemed about to seize Bill and gobble him up, grew suddenly still. Bill's eyes locked with Its ruby ones. There was a sense of contact . . . a contact just beyond their ability to divine. But they felt the struggle, the clash of wills.