Mike looked at these, and then he looked down into the Canal. Black water flowed smoothly past. Runners of dirty yellow foam clung to the Canal's sides, sometimes breaking free to flow downstream in lazy loops and curves. For a moment — just a moment — two clots of this foam came together and seemed to form a face, a kid's face, its eyes turned up in an avatar of terror and agony.
Mike's breath caught, as if on a thorn.
The foam broke apart, became meaningless again, and at that moment there was a loud splash on his right. Mike snapped his head around, shrinking back a little, and for a moment he believed he saw something in the shadows of the outflow tunnel where the Canal resurfaced after its course under downtown.
Then it was gone.
Suddenly, cold and shuddering, he dug in his pocket for the knife he had found in the grass. He threw it into the Canal. There was a small splash, a ripple that began as a circle and was then tugged into the shape of an arrowhead by the current . . . then nothing.
Nothing except the fear that was suddenly suffocating him and the deadly certainty that there was something near, something watching him, gauging its chances, biding its time.
He turned, meaning to walk back to his bike — to run would be to dignify those fears and undignify himself — and then that splashing sound came again. It was a lot louder this second time. So much for dignity. Suddenly he was running as fast as he could, beating his buns for the gate and his bike, jamming the kickstand up with one heel and pedaling for the street as fast as he could. That sea-smell was all at once too thick . . . much too thick. It was everywhere. And the water dripping from the wet branches of the trees seemed much too loud.
Something was coming. He heard dragging, lurching footsteps in the grass.
He stood on the pedals, giving it everything, and shot out onto Main Street without looking back. He headed for home as fast as he could, wondering what in hell had possessed him to come in the first place . . . what had drawn him.
A n d t h e n he tried to think about the chores, the whole chores, and nothing but the chores. After awhile he actually succeeded.
And when he saw the headline in the paper the next day (MISSING BOY PROMPTS NEW FEARS), he thought about the pocket knife he had thrown into the Canal — the pocket knife with the initials EC scratched on the side. He thought about the blood he had seen on the grass.
And he thought about those grooves which stopped at the edge of the Canal.
CHAPTER 7
The Dam in the Barrens
1
Seen from the expressway at quarter to five in the morning, Boston seems a city of the dead brooding over some tragedy in its past — a plague, perhaps, or a curse. The smell of salt, heavy and cloying, comes off the ocean. Runners of early-morning fog obscure much of what movement would be seen otherwise.
Driving north along Storrow Drive, sitting behind the wheel of the black '84 Cadillac he picked up from Butch Carrington at Cape Cod Limousine, Eddie Kaspbrak thinks you can feel this city's age; perhaps you can get that feeling of age nowhere else in America but here. Boston is a sprat compared with London, an infant compared with Rome, but by American standards at least it is old, old. It kept its place on these low hills three hundred years ago, when the Tea and Stamp Taxes were unthought of, Paul Revere and Patrick Henry unborn.
Its age, its silence, and the foggy smell of the sea — all of these things make Eddie nervous. When Eddie's nervous he reaches for his aspirator. He sticks it in his mouth and triggers a cloud of revivifying spray down his throat.
There are a few people in the streets he's passing, and a pedestrian or two on the walkways of the overpasses — they give lie to the impression that he has somehow wandered into a Lovecrafty tale of doomed cities, ancient evils, and monsters with unpronounceable names. Here, ganged around a bus stop with a sign reading KENMORE SQUARE CITY CENTER, he sees waitresses, nurses, city employees, their faces naked and puffed with sleep.
That's right, Eddie thinks, now passing under a sign which reads TOBIN BRIDGE. That's right, stick to the buses. Forget the subways. The subways are a bad idea; I wouldn't go down there if I were you. Not down below. Not in the tunnels.
This is a bad thought to have; if he doesn't get rid of it he will soon be using the aspirator again. He's glad for the heavier traffic on the Tobin Bridge. He passes a monument works. Painted on the brick side is a slightly unsettling admonishment:
SLOW DOWN! WE CAN WAIT!
I'm scared, Eddie thinks. That was always what was at the bottom of it. Just being scared. That was everything. But in the en d I think we turned that around somehow. We used it. But how?
He can't remember. He wonders if any of the others can. For all their sakes he certainly hopes so.
A truck drones by on his left. Eddie has still got his lights on and now he hits his brights momentarily as the truck draws safely ahead. He does this without thinking. It has become an automatic function, just part of driving for a living. The unseen driver in the truck flashes his running lights in return, quickly, twice, thanking Eddie for his courtesy. If only everything
could be that simple and that clear, he thinks. He follows the signs to I-95. The northbound traffic is light, although he observes that the southbound lanes into the city are starting to fill up, even at this early hour. Eddie floats the big car along, pre-guessing most of the directional signs and getting into the correct lane long before he has to. It has been years — literally years — since he has guessed wrong enough to be swept past an exit he wanted. He makes his lane-choices as automatically as he flashed 'okay to cut back in' to the trucker, as automatically as he once found his way through the tangle of paths in the Derry Barrens. The fact that he has never before in his life driven out of downtown Boston, one of the most confusing cities in America to drive in, does not seem to matter much at all.
He suddenly remembers something else about that summer, something Bill said to him one day: 'Y-You've g-got a c-c-cuh-hompass in your head, E-E-Eddie.'
How that had pleased him! It pleases him again as the '84 'Dorado shoots back onto the turnpike. He slides the limo's speed up to a cop-safe fifty-seven miles an hour and finds some quiet music on the radio. He supposes he would have died for Bill back then, if that had been required; if Bill had asked him, Eddie would simply have responded: 'Sure, Big Bill . . . you got a time in mind yet?'
Eddie laughs at this — not much of a sound, just a snort, but the sound of it startles him into a real laugh. He laughs seldom these days, and he certainly did not expect to find many chucks (Richie's word, meaning chuckles, as in 'You had any good chucks today, Eds?') on this black pilgrimage. But, he supposes, if God is dirty-mean enough to curse the faithful with what they want most in life, He's maybe quirky enough to deal you a good chuck or two along the way.
'Had any good chucks lately, Eds?' he says out loud, and laughs again. Man, he had hated it when Richie called him Eds . . . but he had sort of liked it, too. The way he thought Ben Hanscom got to like Richie calling him Haystack. It was something . . . like a secret name. A secret identity. A way to be people that had nothing to do with their parents' fears, hopes, constant demands. Richie couldn't do his beloved Voices for shit, but maybe he did know how important it was for creeps like them to sometimes be different people .