And when a man writes, he thinks harder . . . or maybe just more specifically. And one of the things I've spent time writing and thinking about is the nature of It. It changes; we know that. I think It also manipulates, and leaves Its marks on people just by the nature of what It is — the way you can smell a skunk on you even after a long bath, if it lets go its bag of scent too near you. The way a grasshopper will spit bug juice into your palm if you catch it in your hand.'

Mike slowly unbuttoned his shirt and spread it wide. They could all see the pinkish scrawls of scar across the smooth brown skin of his chest between the nipples.

'The way claws leave scars,' he said.

'The werewolf,' Richie almost moaned. 'Oh Christ, Big Bill, the werewolf! When we went back to Neibolt Street!'

'What?' Bill asked. He sounded like a man called out of a dream. 'What, Richie?'

'Don't you remember?

'No . . . do you?'

'I . . . I almost do . . . ' Looking both confused and scared, Richie subsided.

'Are you saying this thing isn't evil?' Eddie asked Mike abruptly. He was staring at the scars as if hypno tized. 'That it's just some part of the . . . the natural order?'

'It's no part of a natural order we understand or condone,' Mike said, rebuttoning his shirt, 'and I see no reason to operate on any other basis than the one we do understand: that It kills, kills children, and that's wrong. Bill understood that before any of us. Do you remember, Bill?'

'I remember that I wanted to kill It,' Bill said, and for the first time (and ever after) he heard the pronoun gain proper-noun status in his own voic e. 'But I didn't have much of a world –view on the subject, if you see what I mean — I just wanted to kill It because It killed George.'

'And do you still?'

Bill considered this carefully. He looked down at his spread hands on the table and remembered George in his yellow slicker, his hood up, the paper boat with its thin glaze of paraffin in one hand. He looked up at Mike.

'M-M-More than ever,' he said.

Mike nodded as if this were exactly what he had expected. 'It left Its mark on us. It worked Its will on us, just as It has worked Its will on this whole town, day in and day out, even during those long periods when It is asleep or hibernating or whatever It does between Its more . . . more lively periods.'

Mike raised one finger.

'But if It worked Its will on us, at some point, in some way, we aho worked our will on It. We stopped It before It was done — I know we did. Did we weaken It? Hurt It? Did we, in fact, almost kill It? I think we did. I think we came so close to killing It that we went away thinking we had.'

'But you don't remember that part either, do you?' Ben asked.

'No. I can remember everything up until August 15th 1958 with almost perfect clarity. But from then until September 4th or so, when school was called in again, everything is a total blank. It isn't murky or hazy; it is just completely gone. With one exception: I seem to remember Bill screaming about something called the dead-lights.'

Bill's arm jerked convulsively. It struck one of his empty beer bottles, and the bottle shattered on the floor like a bomb.

'Did you cut yourself?' Beverly asked. She had half-risen.

'No,' he said. His voice was harsh and dry. His arms had broken out in gooseflesh. It seemed that his skull had somehow grown; he could feel

(the deadlights)

it pressing out against the stretched skin of his face in steady numbing throbs.

'I'll pick up the — '

'No, just sit down.' He wanted to look at her and couldn't. He couldn't take his eyes off Mike.

'Do you remember the deadlights, Bill?' Mike asked softly.

'No,' he said. His mouth felt the way it did when the dentist got a little too enthusiastic with the novocaine.

'You will.'

'I hope to God I don't.'

'You will anyway,' Mike said. 'But for now . . . no. Not me, either. Do any of you?'

One by one they shook their heads.

'But we did something,' Mike said quietly. 'At some point we were able to exercise some sort of group will. At some point we achieved some special understanding, whether conscious or unconscious.' He stirred restlessly. 'God, [ wish Stan was here. I have a feeling that Stan, with his ordered mind, might have had some idea.'

'Maybe he did,' Beverly said. 'Maybe that's why he killed himself. Maybe he understood that if there was magic, it wouldn't work for grown-ups.'

'I think it could, though,' Mike said. 'Because there's one other thing we six have in common. I wonder if any of you have realized what that is.'

It was Bill's turn to open his mouth and then shut it again.

'Go on,' Mike said. 'You know what it is. I can see it on your face.'

'I'm not sure I know,' Bill replied, 'but I think w-we're all childless. Is that ih-it?'

There was a moment of shocked silence.

'Yeah,' Mike said. 'That's it.'

'Jesus Christ Almighty!' Eddie spoke up indignantly. 'What in the world does that have to do with the price of beans in Peru? What gave you the idea that everyone in the world has to have kids? That's nuts!'

'Do you and your wife have children?' Mike asked.

'If you've been keeping track of us all the way you said, then you know goddam well we don't. But I still say it doesn't mean a damn thing.'

'Have you tried to have children?'

'We don't use birth control, if that's what you mean.' Eddie spoke with an oddly moving dignity, but his cheeks were flushed. 'It just so happens that my wife is a little . . . Oh hell. She's a lot overweight. We went to see a doctor and she told us my wife might never have kids if she didn't lose some weight. Does that make us criminals?'

'Take it easy, Eds,' Richie soothed, and leaned toward him.

'Don't call me Eds and don't you dare pinch my cheek!' he cried, rounding on Richie. 'You know I hate that! I always hated it!'

Richie recoiled, blinking.

'Beverly?' Mike asked. 'What about you and Tom?'

'No children,' she said. 'Also no birth control. Tom wants kids . . . and so do I, of course,' she added hastily, glancing around at them quickly. Bill thought her eyes seemed overbright, almost the eyes of an actress giving a good performance. 'It just hasn't happened yet.'

'Have you had those tests?' Ben asked her.

'Oh yes, of course,' she said, and uttered a light laugh that was almost a titter. And in one of those leaps of comprehension that sometimes come to people who are gifted with both curiosity and insight, Bill suddenly understood a great deal about Beverly and her husband Tom, alias the Greatest Man in the World. Beverly had gone to have fertility tests. His guess was that the Greatest Ma n in the World had refused to entertain even for a moment the notion that there might be something wrong with the sperm being manufactured in the Sacred Sacs.

'What about you and your wife, Big Bill?' Rich asked. 'Been trying?' They all looked at him curiously . . . because his wife was someone they knew. Audra was by no means the best-known or the best-loved actress in the world, but she was certainly part of the celebrity coinage that had somehow replaced talent as a medium of exchange in the latter half of the twentieth century; there had been a picture of her in People magazine when she cut her hair short, and during a particularly boring stretch in New York (the play she had been planning to do Off Broadway fell through) she had done a week-long stint on Holly wood Squares, over her agent's strenuous objections. She was a stranger whose lovely face was known to them. He thought Beverly looked particularly curious.

'We've been trying off and on for the last six years,' Bill said. 'For the last eight months or so it's been off, because of the movie we were doing — Attic Room, it's called.'