It

Ben put one eye to a venthole but could see nothing. He could hear that drone, and water running down there someplace, but that was all. He took a breath, got a whiff of a sour smell that was both dank and shitty, and drew back with a wince. It was a sewer, that was all. Or maybe a combined sewer and drainage-tunnel — there were plenty of those in flood-conscious Derry. No big deal. But it had given him a funny sort of chill. Part of it was seeing the handiwork of man in all this overgrown jumble of wilderness, but he supposed part of it was the shape of the thing itself — that concrete cylinder jutting out of the ground. Ben had read H. G. Wells's The Time Machine the year before, first the Classics Comics version and then the whole book. This cylinder with its vented iron cap reminded him of the wells which lead down into the country of the slumped and horrible Morlocks.

He moved away from it quickly, trying to find west again. He got to a link clearing and turned until his shadow was as directly behind him as he could get it. Then he headed off in a straight line.

Five minutes later he heard more running water ahead, and voices. Kids' voices.

He stopped to listen, and that was when he heard snapping branches and other voices behind him. They were perfectly recognizable. They belonged to Victor, Belch, and the one and only Henry Bowers.

The nightmare was not over yet, it seemed.

Ben looked around for a place to go to earth.

10

He came out of his hiding place about two hours later, dirtier than ever, but a little refreshed. Incredible as it seemed to him, he had dozed off.

When he had heard the three of them behind him, coming after him still, Ben had come dangerously close to freezing up completely, like an animal caught in the headlamps of an oncoming truck. A paralytic drowsiness began to steal over him. The idea of simply lying down, curling up into a ball like a hedgehog, and letting them do whatever they felt they had to occurred to him. It was a crazy idea, but it also seemed like a strangely good idea.

But instead Ben began to move toward the sound of the running water and those other kids. He tried to untangle their voices and get the sense of what they were saying — anything to shake off that scary paralysis of the spirit. Some project. They were talking about some project. One or two of the voices were even a little familiar. There was a splash, followed by a burst of good-natured laughter. The laughter filled Ben with a kind of stupid longing, and made him more aware of his dangerous position than anything else had done.

If he was going to be caught, there was no need to let these kids in for a dose of his medicine. Ben turned right again. Like many large people, he was remarkably light-footed. He passed close enough to the boys to see their shadows moving back and forth between him

and the bright water, bu t they neither saw him nor heard him. Gradually their voices began to fall behind.

He came to a narrow path which had been beaten down to the bare earth. Ben considered it for a moment, then shook his head a little. He crossed it and plunged into the undergrowth again. He moved more slowly now, pushing bushes aside rather than stampeding through them. He was still moving roughly parallel to the stream the other kids had been playing beside. Even through the intervening bushes and trees he could see it was much wider than the one into which he and Henry had fallen.

Here was another of those concrete cylinders, barely visible amid a snarl of blackberry creepers, humming quietly to itself. Beyond, an embankment dropped off to the stream, and here an old, gnarled elm tree leaned crookedly out over the water. Its roots, half-exposed by bank erosion, looked like a snarl of dirty hair.

Hoping there wouldn't be bugs or snakes but too tired and numbly frightened to really care, Ben had worked his way between the roots and into a shallow cave beneath. He leaned back. A root jabbed him like an angry finger. He shifted his position a little and it supported him quite nicely.

Here came Henry, Belch, and Victor. He had thought they might be fooled into following the path, but no such luck. They stood close by him for a moment — any closer and he could have reached out of his hiding place and touched them.

'Bet them little snotholes back there saw him,' Belch said.

'Well, let's go find out,' Henry replied, and they headed back the way they had come. A few moments later Ben heard him roar: 'What the fuck you kids doin here?'

There was some sort of reply, but Ben couldn't tell what it was: the kids were too far away, and this close the river — it was the Kenduskeag, of course — was too loud. But he thought the kid sounded scared. Ben could sympathize.

Then Victor Criss bellowed something Ben hadn't understood at alclass="underline" 'What a fuckin baby dam!'

Baby dam? Baby damn? Or maybe Victor had said what a damn bunch of babies and Ben had misheard him.

'Let's break it!' Belch proposed.

There were yells of protest followed by a scream of pain. Someone began to cry. Yes, Ben could sympathize. They hadn't been able to catch him (or at least not yet), but here was another bunch of little kids for them to take out their mad on.

'Sure, break it,' Henry said.

Splashes. Yells. Big moronic gusts of laughter from Belch and Victor. An agonized infuriated cry from one of the little kids.

'Don't gimme any of your shit, you stuttering little freak,' Henry Bowers said. 'I ain't takin no more shit from nobody today.'

There was a splintering crack. The sound of running water downstream grew louder and roared briefly before quieting to its former placid chuckle. Ben suddenly understood. Baby dam, yes, that was what Victor had said. The kids — two or three of them it had sounded like when he passed by — had been building a dam. Henry and his friends had just kicked it apart. Ben even thought he knew who one of the kids was. The only 'stuttering little freak' he knew from Derry School was Bill Denbrough, who was in the other fifth-grade classroom.

'You didn't have to do that!' a thin and fearful voice cried out, and Ben recognized that voice as well, although he could not immediately put a face with it. 'Why did you do that?'

'Because I felt like it, fucknuts!' Henry roared back. There was a meaty thud. It was followed by a scream of pain. The scream was followed by weeping.

'Shut up,' Victor said. 'Shut up that crying, kid, or I'll pull your ears down and tie em under your chin.'

The crying became a series of choked snuffles.

'We're going,' Henry said, 'but before we do, I want to know one thing. You seen a fat kid in the last ten minutes or so? Big fat kid all bloody and cut up?'

There was a reply too brief to be anything but no.

'You sure?' Belch asked. 'You better be, mushmouth.'

'I-I-I'm sh-sh-sure,' Bill Denbrough replied.

'Let's go,' Henry said. 'He probably waded acrost back that way.'

'Ta –ta, boys,' Victor Criss called. 'It was a real baby dam, believe me. You're better off without it.'

Splashing sounds. Belch's voice came again, but farther away now. Ben couldn't make out the words. In fact, he didn't want to make out the words. Closer by, the boy who had been crying now resumed. There were comforting noises from the other boy. Ben had decided there was just the two of them, Stuttering Bill and the weeper.

He half-sat, half-lay where he was, listening to the two boys by the river and the fading sounds of Henry and his dinosaur friends crashing toward the far side of the Barrens. Sunlight flicked at his eyes and made little coins of light on the tangled roots above and around him. It was dirty in here, but it was also cozy . . . safe. The sound of running water was soothing. Even the sound of the crying kid was sort of soothing. His aches and pains had faded to a dull throb, and the sound of the dinosaurs had faded out completely. He would wait awhile, just to be sure they weren't coming back, and then he would make tracks.