"Bill, what's wrong?" Richie whispered.
Bill screamed. He snatched the matches out of Beverly's hand, lit one, and then yanked the purse away from Ben.
"Bill, Jesus, what-"
He unzipped the purse and turned it over. What fell out was so much Audra that for a moment he was too unmanned to scream again. Amid the Kleenex, sticks of chewing gum, and items of make-up, he saw a tin of Altoid mints... and the jewelled compact Freddie Firestone had given her when she signed for Attic Room.
"My wuh-wuh-wife's down there," he said, and fell on his knees and began pushing her things back into the purse. He brushed hair that no longer existed out of his eyes without even thinking about it.
"Your wife? Audra? Beverly's face was shocked, her eyes huge.
"Her p-p-purse. Her th-things."
"Jesus, Bill," Richie muttered. "That can't be, you know th-"
He had found her alligator wallet. He opened it and held it up. Richie lit another match and was looking at a face he had seen in half a dozen movies. The picture on Audra's California driver's license was less glamorous but completely conclusive.
"But Huh-Huh-Henry's dead, and Victor, and B-B-Belch... so who's got her?" He stood up, staring around at them with febrile intensity. Who's got her?"
Ben put a hand on Bill's shoulder. "I guess we better go down and find out, huh?"
Bill looked around at hull, as if unsure of who Ben might be, and then his eyes cleared. "Y-Yeah," he said. "Eh-Eh-Eddie?"
"Bill, I'm sorry."
"Can you cluh-climb on?"
"I did once."
Bill bent over and Eddie hooked his right arm around Bill's neck. Ben and Richie boosted him up until he could hook his legs around Bill's midsection.
As Bill swung one leg clumsily over the lip of the cylinder, Ben saw that Eddie's eyes were tightly shut... and for a moment he thought he heard the world's ugliest cavalry charge bashing its way through the bushes. He turned, expecting to see the three of them come out of the fog and the brambles, but all he had heard was the rising breeze rattling the bamboo a quarter of a mile or so from here. Their old enemies were all gone now.
Bill gripped the rough concrete lip of the cylinder and felt his way down, step by step and rung by rung. Eddie had him in a deathgrip and Bill could barely breathe. Her purse, dear God, how did her purse get here? Doesn't matter. But if You're there, God, and if You're taking requests, let her be all right, don't let her suffer for what Bev and I did tonight or for what I did one summer when I was a boy... and was it the clown? Was it Bob Gray who got her? If it was, I don't know if even God can help her.
"I'm scared, Bill," Eddie said in a thin voice.
Bill's foot touched cold standing water. He lowered himself into it, remembering the feel and the dank smell, remembering the claustrophobic way this place had made him feel... and, just by the way, what had happened to them? How had they fared down in these drains and tunnels? Where exactly had they gone, and how exactly had they gotten out again? He still couldn't remember any of that; all he could think of was Audra.
"I am t-t-too." He half-squatted, wincing as the cold water ran into his pants and over his balls, and let Eddie off. They stood shindeep in the water and watched the others descend the ladder.
Chapter 21 UNDER THE CITY
1
IT / AUGUST 1958
Something new had happened.
For the first time in forever, something new.
Before the universe there had been only two things. One was Itself and the other was the Turtle. The Turtle was a stupid old thing that never came out of its shell. It thought that maybe the Turtle was dead, had been dead for the last billion years or so. Even if it wasn't, it was still a stupid old thing, and even if the Turtle had vomited the universe out whole, that didn't change the fact of its stupidity.
It had come here long after the Turtle withdrew into its shell, here to Earth, and It had discovered a depth of imagination here that was almost new, almost of concern. This quality of imagination made the food very rich. Its teeth rent flesh gone stiff with exotic terrors and voluptuous fears: they dreamed of nightbeasts and moving muds; against their will they contemplated endless gulphs.
Upon this rich food It existed in a simple cycle of waking to eat and sleeping to dream. It had created a place in Its own image, and It looked upon this place with favor from the deadlights which were Its eyes. Derry was Its killing-pen, the people of Derry Its sheep. Things had gone on.
Then... these children.
Something new.
For the first time in forever.
When It had burst up into the house on Neibolt Street, meaning to kill them all, vaguely uneasy that It had not been able to do so already (and surely that unease had been the first new thing), something had happened which was totally unexpected, utterly unthought of, and there had been pain, pain, great roaring pain all through the shape it had taken, and for one moment there had also been fear, because the only thing It had in common with the stupid old Turtle and the cosmology of the macroverse outside the puny egg of this universe was just this: all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit. For the first time It realized that perhaps Its ability to change Its shapes might work against It as well as for It. There had never been pain before, there had never been fear before, and for a moment It had thought It might die-oh Its head had been filled with a great white silver pain, and it had roared and mewled and bellowed and somehow the children had escaped.
But now they were coming. They had entered Its domain under the city, seven foolish children blundering through the darkness without lights or weapons. It would kill them now, surely.
It had made a great self-discovery: It did not want change or surprise. It did not want new things, ever. It wanted only to eat and sleep and dream and eat again.
Following the pain and that brief bright fear, another new emotion had arisen (as all genuine emotions were new to It, although It was a great mocker of emotions): anger. It would kill the children because they had, by some amazing accident, hurt It. But It would make them suffer first because for one brief moment they had made It fear them.
Come to me then, It thought, listening to their approach. Come to me, children, and see how we float down here... how we all float.
And yet there was a thought that insinuated itself no matter how strongly It tried to push the thought away. It was simply this: if all things flowed from It (as they surely had done since the Turtle sicked up the universe and then fainted inside its shell), how could any creature of this or any other world fool It or hurt It, no matter how briefly or triflingly? How was that possible?
And so a last new thing had come to It, this not an emotion but a cold speculation: suppose It had not been alone, as It had always believed?
Suppose there was Another?
And suppose further that these children were agents of that Other?
Suppose... suppose...
It began to tremble.
Hate was new. Hun was new. Being crossed in Its purpose was new. But the most terrible new thing was this fear. Not fear of the children, that had passed, but the fear of not being alone.
No. There was no other. Surely there was not. Perhaps because they were children their imaginations had a certain raw power It had briefly underestimated. But now that they were coming, It would let them come. They would come and It would cast them one by one into the macroverse... into the deadlights of Its eyes.
Yes.
When they got here It would cast them, shrieking and insane, into the deadlights.
2
IN THE TUNNELS / 2:15 P.M.
Bev and Richie had maybe ten matches between them, but Bill wouldn't let them use them. For the time being, at least, there was still dim light in the dram. Not much, but he could make out the next four feet in front of him, and as long as he could keep doing that, they would save the matches.
He supposed the little light they were getting must be coming from vents in curbings over their heads, maybe even from the circular vents in manhole covers. It seemed surpassingly strange to think they were under the city, but of course by now they must be.
The water was deeper now. Three times dead animals had floated past: a rat, a kitten, a bloated shiny thing that might have been a woodchuck. He heard one of the others mutter disgustedly as that baby cruised by.
The water they were crawling through was relatively placid, but all that was going to come to an end fairly soon: there was a steady hollow roaring not too far up ahead. It grew louder, rising to a one-note roar. The drain elbowed to the right. They made the turn and here were three pipes spewing water into their pipe. They were lined up vertically like the lenses on a traffic light. The drain deadended here. The light was marginally brighter. Bill looked up and saw they were in a square stone-faced shaft about fifteen feet high. There was a sewer-grating up there and water was sloshing down on them in buckets. It was like being in a primitive shower.
Bill surveyed the three pipes helplessly. The top one was venting water which was almost clear, although there were leaves and sticks and bits of trash in it-cigarette butts, chewing-gum wrappers, things like that. The middle pipe was venting gray water. And from the lowest one came a grayish-brown flood of lumpy sewage.
"Eh-Eh-Eddie!"
Eddie floundered up beside him. His hair was plastered to his head. His cast was a soaking, drippy mess.
"Wh-Wh-Which wuh-wuh-one?" If you wanted to know how to build something, you asked Ben; if you wanted to know which way to go, you asked Eddie. They didn't talk about this, but they all knew it. If you were in a strange neighborhood and wanted to get back to a place you knew, Eddie could get you there, making lefts and rights with undiminished confidence until you were reduced simply to following him and hoping that things would turn out right... which they always seemed to do. Bill told Richie once that when he and Eddie first began to play in the Barrens, he, Bill, was constantly afraid of getting lost. Eddie had no such fears, and he always brought the two of them out right where he said he was going to. "If I g-g-got luh-lost in the Hainesville Woods and Eh-Eddie was with me, I wouldn't wuh-hurry a b-bit," Bill told Richie. "He just nuh-nuh-knows. My d-d-dad says some people, ih-hit's Hike they got a cuh-huh-hompass in their heads. Eddie's l-l-like that."
"I can't hear you!" Eddie shouted.
"I said wh-which one?
"Which one what? Eddie had his aspirator clutched in his good hand, and Bill thought he actually looked more like a drowned muskrat than a kid.
"Which one do we tuh-tuh-take?"
"Well, that all depends on where we want to go," Eddie said, and Bill could have cheerfully throttled him even though the question made perfect sense.
Eddie was looking dubiously at the three pipes. They could fit into all of them, but the bottom one looked pretty snug.
Bill motioned the others to move up into a circle. "Where the fuck is Ih-Ih-It?" he asked them.
"Middle of town," Richie said promptly. "Right under the middle of town.
Near the Canal."
Beverly was nodding. So was Ben. So was Stan.
"Muh-Muh-Mike?"
"Yes," he said. "That's where It is. Near the Canal. Or under it."
Bill looked back at Eddie. "W-W-Which one?"
Eddie pointed reluctantly at the lower pipe... and although Bill's heart sank, he wasn't at all surprised. "That one."
"Oh, gross," Stan said unhappily. That's a shit-pipe."
"We don't-" Mike began, and then broke off. He cocked his head in a listening gesture. His eyes were alarmed.
"What-" Bill began, and Mike put a finger across his lips in a Shhhh! gesture. Now Bill could hear it too: splashing sounds. Approaching. Grunts and muffled words. Henry still hadn't given up.
"Quick," Ben said. "Let's go."
Stan looked back the way they had come, then he looked at the lowest of the three pipes. He pressed his lips tightly together and nodded. "Let's go," he said. "shit washes off."
"Stan the Man Gets Off A Good One!" Richie cried. "Wacka-wacka-wa-"
"Richie, will you shut up?" Beverly hissed at him.
Bill led them to the pipe, grimacing at the smell, and crawled in. The smell: it was sewage, it was shit, but there was another smell here, too, wasn't there? A lower, more vital smell. If an animal's grunt could have a smell (and, Bill supposed, if the animal in question had been eating the right things, it could), it would be like this undersmell. We're headed in the right direction, all right. It's been here... and Its been here a lot.
By the time they had gone twenty feet, the air had grown rancid and poisonous. He squished slowly along, moving through stuff that wasn't mud. He looked back over his shoulder and said, "You fuh-fuh-follow right behind m-me, Eh-Eh-Eddie. I'll nuh-need y-you."
The light faded to the faintest gray, held that way briefly, and then it was gone and they were
(out of the blue and)
into the black. Bill shuffled forward through the sunk, feeling that he was almost cutting through it physically, one hand held out before him, part of him expecting that at any moment it would encounter rough hair and green lamplike eyes would open in the darkness. The end would come in one hot flare of pain as It walloped his head off his shoulders.
The dark was stuffed with sounds, all of them magnified and echoing. He could hear his friends shuffling along behind him, sometimes muttering something. There were gurglings and strange clanking groans. Once a flood of sickeningly warm water washed past and between his legs, wetting him to the thighs and rocking him back on his heels. He felt Eddie clutch frantically at the back of his shirt, and then the small flood slackened. From the end of the line Richie bellowed with sorry good humor: "I think we just been pissed on by the Jolly Green Giant, Bill."
Bill could hear water or sewage running in controlled bursts through the network of smaller pipes which now must be over their heads. He remembered the conversation about Berry's sewers with his father and thought he knew what this pipe must be-it was to handle the overflow that only occurred during heavy rains and during the flood season. The stuff up there would be leaving Derry to be dumped in Torrault Stream and the Penobscot River. The city didn't like to pump its shit into the Kenduskeag because it made the Canal stink. But all the so-called gray water went into the Kenduskeag, and if there was too much for the regular sewer-pipes to handle, there would be a dump-off... like the one that had just happened. If there had been one, there could be another. He glanced up uneasily, not able to see anything but knowing that there must be grates in the top arch of the pipe, possibly in the sides as well, and that any moment there might be -