He turned back to the young woman, who was looking at him, puzzled.

'Is anything wrong?'

'No,' Ben said, smiling. 'I thought I heard something. I guess I'm more jet-lagged than I thought. What were you saying?'

'Well, actually you were saying. But I was about to add that if you had a card when you were a resident, your name will still be in the files,' she said. 'We keep everything on microfiche now. Some change from when you were a kid here, I guess.'

'Yes,' he said. 'A lot of things have changed in Derry . . . but a lot of things also seem to have remained the same.'

'Anyway, I can just look you up and give you a renewal card. No charge.'

'That's great,' Ben said, and before he could add thanks the voice cut through the library's sacramental silence again, louder now, ominously jolly: 'Come on tip, Ben! Come on up, youfat little fuck! This Is Your Life, Ben Hanscom!'

Ben cleared his throat. 'I appreciate it,' he said.

'Don't mention it.' She cocked her head at him. 'Has it gotten warm outside?'

'A little,' he said. 'Why?'

'You're — '

'Ben Hanscom did it!' the voice screamed. It was coming from above — coming from the stacks. 'Ben Hanscom killed the children! Get him! Grab him!'

' — perspiring,' she finished.

'Am I?' he said idiotically.

'I'll have this made up right away,' she said.

'Thank you.'

She headed for the old Royal typewriter at the corner of her desk.

Ben walked slowly away, his heart a thudding drum in his chest. Yes, he was sweating; he could feel it trickling down from his forehead, his armpits, matting the hair on his chest. He looked up and saw Pennywise the Clown standing at the top of the lefthand staircase, looking down at him. His face was white with greasepaint. His mouth bled lipstick in a killer's grin. There were empty sockets where his eyes should have been. He held a bunch of balloons in one hand and a book in the other.

Not he, Ben thought. It. I am standing here in the middle of the Derry Public Library's rotunda on a late-spring afternoon in 1985, I am a grown man, and I am face to face with my childhood's greatest nightmare. I am face to face with It.

'Come on up, Ben,' Pennywise called down. 'I won't hurt you. I've got a book for you! A book . . . and a balloon! Come on up!'

Ben opened his mouth to call back, You're insane if you think I'm going up there, and suddenly realized that if he did that, everyone he re would be looking at him, everyone here would be thinking, Who is that crazyman?

'Oh, I know you can't answer,' Pennywise called down, and giggled. 'Almost fooled you there for a minute, though, didn't I? "Pardon me, sir, do you have Prince Albert in a can? . . . You do? . . . Better let the poor guy out!" "Pardon me, ma'am, is your refrigerator running? . . . It is? . . . Then hadn't you better go catch it?'"

The clown on the landing threw its head back and shrieked laughter. It roared and echoed in the dome of the rotunda like a flight of black bats, and Ben was only able to keep from clapping his hands over his ears with a tremendous effort of will.

'Come on up, Ben,' Pennywise called down. 'We'll talk. Neutral ground. What do you say?'

I'm not coming up there, Ben thought. When I finally come to you, you won't want to see me, I think. We're going to kill you.

The clown shrieked laughter again. 'Kill me? Kill me?' And suddenly, horribly, the voice was Richie Tozier's voice, not his voice, precisely, but Richie Tozier doing his Pickaninny Voice: 'Doan kill me, massa, I be a good nigguh, doan kill thisyere black boy, Haystack!' Then that shrieking laughter again.

Trembling, white-faced, Ben walked across the echoing center of the adults' library. He felt that soon he would vomit. He stood in front of a shelf of books and took one down at random with a hand that trembled badly. His cold fingers flittered the pages.

'This is your one chance, Haystack!' the voice called from behind an d above him. 'Get out of town. Get out before it gets dark tonight. I'll be after you tonight . . . you and the others. You're too old to stop me, Ben. You're all too old. Too old to do anything but get yourselves killed. Get out, Ben. Do you want to see this tonight?'

He turned slowly, still holding the book in his icy hands. He didn't want to look, but it were as if there were an invisible hand under his chin, tilting his head up and up and up.

The clown was gone. Dracula was standing at the top of the lefthand stairway, but it was no movie Dracula; it was not Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee or Frank Langella or Francis Lederer or Reggie Nalder. An ancient man-thing with a face like a twisted root stood there. Its face was deadly pale, its eyes pur plish-red, the color of bloodclots. Its mouth dropped open, revealing a mouthful of Gillette Blue –Blades that had been set in the gums at angles; it was like looking into a deadly mirror-maze where a single misstep could get you cut in half.

'KEEE-RUNCH!' it screamed, and its jaws snapped closed. Blood gouted from its mouth in a red-black flood. Chunks of its severed lips fell to the glowing white silk of its formal shirt and slid down its front, leaving snail-trails of blood behind.

'What did Stan Uris see before he died?' the vampire on the landing screamed down at him, laughing through the bloody hole of its mouth. 'Was it Prince Albert in a can? Was it Davy

Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier? What did he see, Ben? Do you want to see it too? What did he see? What did he see?' Then that shrieking laughter again, and Ben knew that he would scream now himself, yes, there was no way to stop the scream, it was going to come. Blood was pattering down from the landing in a grisly shower. One drop had landed on the arthritis-bunched hand of an old man who was reading The Wall Street Journal. It was running down between his knuckles, unseen and unfelt.

Ben hitched in breath, sure the scream would follow, unthinkable in the quiet of this softly drizzling spring afternoon, as shocking as the slash of a knife . . . or a mouthful of razor-blades.

Instead, what came out in a shaky, uneven rush, spoken instead of screamed, spoken low like a prayer, were these words: 'We made slugs out of it, of course. We made the silver dollar into silver slugs.'

The gentleman in the driving-cap who had been perusing the de Vargas sketches looked up sharply. 'Nonsense,' he said. Now people did look up; someone hissed 'Shhh!' at the old man in an annoyed voice.

'I'm sorry,' Ben said in a low, trembling voice. He was faintly aware that his face was now running with sweat, and that his shirt was plastered to his body. 'I was thinking aloud — '

'Nonsense,' the old gentleman repeated, in a louder voice. 'Can't make silver bullets from silver dollars. Common misconception. Pulp fiction. Problem is with specific gravity — '

Suddenly the woman, Ms. Danner, was there. 'Mr Brockhill, you'll have to be quiet,' she said kindly enough. 'People are reading — '

'Man's sick,' Brockhill said abruptly, and went back to his book. 'Give him an aspirin, Carole.'

Carole Danner looked at Ben and her face sharpened with concern. 'Are you ill, Mr Hanscom? I know it's terribly impolite to say so, but you look terrible.'

Ben said, 'I . . . I had Chinese food for lunch. I don't think it's agreed with me.'

'If you want to lie down, there's a cot in Mr Hanlon's office. You could — ' 'No. Thanks, but no.' What he wanted was not to lie down but to get the hell out of the Derry Public Library. He looked up at the landing. The clown was gone. The vampire was gone. But tied to the low wrought-iron railing which surrounded the landing was a balloon. Written on its bulging skin were the words: HAVE A GOOD DAY! TONIGHT YOU DIE!