'Nuh-nuh –no,' Bill said, 'b-but I'm g-gonna.'

And with a sinking heart, Richie saw that he absolutely meant it. That gray light was back in Billy's eyes, shining steadily. There was a stony eagerness in the lines of his face that made him look older. Richie thought, I think he really does mean to kill it, if it's still there. Kill it

and maybe cut off its head and take it to his father and say, 'Look, this is what killed Georgie, now will you talk to me again at night, maybe just tell me how your day was, or who lost when you guys were flipping to see who paid for the morning coffee?'

'Bill — ' he said, but Bill was no longer there. He was walking around to the righthand end of the porch, where Eddie must have crawled under. Richie had to chase after him, and he almost fell over the trike caught in the weeds and slowly rusting its way into the ground.

He caught up as Bill squatted, looking under the porch. There was no skirt at all on this end; someone — some hobo — had pried it off long ago to gain access to the shelter underneath, out of the January snow or the cold November rain or a summer thundershower.

Richie squatted beside him, his heart thudding like a drum. There was nothing under the porch but drifts of moldering leaves, yellowing newspapers, and shadows. Too many shadows.

'Bill,' he repeated.

'Wh-wh-what?' Bill had produced his father's Walther again. He pulled the clip carefully from the grip, and then took four bullets from his pants pocket. He loaded them in one at a tune. Richie watched this, fascinated, and then looked under the porch again. He saw something else this tune. Broken glass. Faintly glinting shards of glass. His stomach cramped painfully. He was not a stupid boy, and he understood this came close to completely confirming Eddie's story. Splinters of glass on the moldering leaves under the porch meant tha t the window had been broken from inside. From the cellar.

'Wh-what?' Bill asked again, looking up at Richie. His face was grim and white. Looking at that set face, Richie mentally threw in the towel.

'Nothing,' he said.

'You cuh-cuh-homing?'

'Yeah.'

They crawled under the porch.

The smell of decaying leaves was a smell Richie usually liked, but there was nothing pleasant about the smell under here. The leaves felt spongy under his hands and knees, and he had an impression that they might go down for two or three feet. He suddenly wondered what he would do if a hand or a claw sprang out of those leaves and seized him.

Bill was examining the broken window. Glass had sprayed everywhere. The wooden strip which had been between the panes lay in two splintered pieces under the porch steps. The top of the window frame jutted out like a broken bone.

'Something hit that fucker wicked hard,' Richie breathed. Bill, now peering inside — or trying to — nodded.

Richie elbowed him aside enough so he could look, too. The basement was a dim litter of crates and boxes. The floor was earth and, like the leaves, it gave off a damp and humid aroma. A furnace bulked to the left, thrusting round pipes at the low ceiling. Beyond it, at the end of the cellar, Richie could see a large stall with wooden sides. A horse stall was his first thought, but who kept horses in the jeezly cellar? Then he realized that in a house as old as this one, the furnace must have burned coal instead of oil. Nobody had bothered to convert the furnace because no one wanted the house. That thing with the sides was a coalbin. To the far right, Richie could make out a flight of stairs going up to ground level.

Now Bill was sitting down . . . hunching himself forward . . . and before Richie could actually believe what he was up to, his friend's legs were disappear ing into the window.

'Bill!' he hissed. 'Chrissake, what are you doing? Get outta there!'

Bill didn't reply. He slithered through, scraping his duffel coat up from the small of his back, barely missing a chunk of glass that would have cut him a good one. A second later Richie heard his tennies smack down on the hard earth inside.

'Piss on this action,' Richie muttered frantically to himself, looking at the square of darkness into which his friend had disappeared. 'Bill, you gone out of your mind?

Bill's voice floated up: 'Y-You c-c-can stay up th-there if you w-want, Ruh-Ruh-Richie. S t-Stand g-g-guard.'

Instead he rolled over on his belly and shoved his legs through the cellar window before his nerve could go bad on him, hoping he wouldn't cut his hands or his stomach on the broken glass.

Something clutched his legs. Richie screamed.

'I-I-It's juh-juh –hust m-me,' Bill hissed, and a moment later Richie was standing beside him in the cellar, pulling down his shirt and his jacket. 'Wh-who d-did you th-think it w –was?'

'The boogeyman,' Richie said, and laughed shakily.

'Y-You g-go th-that w-way and I-I — I'll g-g-g — '

'Fuck that,' Richie said. He could actually hear his heartbeat in his voice, making it sound bumpy and uneven, first up and then down. 'I'm stickin with you, Big Bill.'

They moved toward the coalpit first, Bill slightly in the lead, the gun in his hand, Richie close behind him, trying to look everywhere at once. Bill stood beyond one of the coalpit's jutting wooden sides for a moment, and then suddenly darted around it, pointing the gun with both hands. Richie squinched his eyes shut, steeling himself for the explosion. It didn't come. He opened his eyes again cautiously.

'Nuh-nuh –nothin but c-c-coal,' Bill said, and giggled nervously.

Richie stepped up beside Bill and looked. There was still a drift of old coal piled up almost to the ceiling at the back of th e stall and trickling away to a lump or two by their feet. It was as black as a crow's wing.

'Let's — ' Richie began, and then the door at the head of the cellar stairs crashed open against the wall with a violent bang, spilling thin white daylight down the stairs.

Both boys screamed.

Richie heard snarling sounds. They were very loud — the sounds a wild animal in a cage might make. He saw loafers descend the steps. Faded jeans on top of them — swinging hands –

But they weren't hands . . . they were paws. Huge, misshapen paws.

'Cuh-cuh-climb the c-c-coal!' Bill was screaming, but Richie stood frozen, suddenly knowing what was coming for them, what was going to kill them in this cellar that stank of damp earth and the cheap wine that had been spilled in the corners. Knowing but needing to see. 'There's a wuh-wuh-window at the t-top of the c-coal!'

The paws were covered with dense brown hair that curled and coiled like wire; the fingers were tipped with jagged nails. Now Richie saw a silk jacket. It was black with orange piping — the Derry High School colors.

'G-G –Go!' Bill screamed, and gave Richie a gigantic shove. Richie went sprawling into the coal. Sharp jags and corners of it poked him painfully, breaking through his daze. More coal avalanched over his hands. That mad snarling went on and on.

Panic slipped its hood over Richie's mind.

Barely aware of what he was doing, he scrambled up the mountain of coal, gaining ground, sliding back, lunging upward again, screaming as he went. The window at the top was grimed black with coal-dust and let in next to no light at all. It was latched shut. Richie seized the latch, which was of the sort that turned, and threw all his weight against it. The latch moved not at all. The snarling was closer now.

The gun went off below him, the sound nearly deafening in the closed room. Gunsmoke, sharp and acrid, stung Richie's nose. It shocked him back to some sort of awareness and he realized that he had been trying to turn the thumb-latch the wrong way. He reversed the

direction of the force he was applying, and the latch gave with a protracted rusty squeal. Coaldust sifted down on his hands like pepper.