They started away, heads down, not looking back.

The seven of them stood in a loose semicircle, all of them bleeding some where. The apocalyptic rockfight had lasted less than four minutes, but Bill felt as if he had fought his way through all of World War II, both theaters, without so much as a single time-out.

The silence was broken by Eddie Kaspbrak's whooping, whining struggle for air. Ben went toward him, felt the three Twinkies and four Ding-Dongs he had eaten on his way down to the Barrens begin to struggle and churn in his stomach, and ran past Eddie and into the bushes, where he was sick as privately and quietly as he could be.

It was Richie and Bev who went to Eddie. Beverly put an arm around the thin boy's waist while Richie dug his aspirator out of his pocket. 'Bite on this, Eddie,' he said, and Eddie took a hitching, gasping breath as Richie pulled the trigger.

'Thanks,' Eddie managed at last.

Ben came back out of the bushes, blushing, wiping a hand over his mouth. Beverly went over to him and took both of his hands in hers.

'Thanks for sticking up for me,' she said.

Ben nodded, looking at his dirty sneakers. 'Any time, keed,' he said.

One by one they turned to look at Mike, Mike with his dark skin. They looked at him carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. Mike had felt such curiosity before — there had not been a time in his life when he had not felt it — and he looked back candidly enough.

Bill looked from Mike to Richie. Richie met his eyes. And Bill seemed almost to hear the click — some final part fitting neatly into a machine of unknown intent. He felt ice-chips scatter up his back. We're all together now, he thought, and the idea was so strong, so right, that for a moment he thought he might have spoken it aloud. But of course there was no need to speak it aloud; he could see it in Richie's eyes, in Ben's, in Eddie's, in Beverly's, in Stan's.

We're all together now, he thought again. Oh God help us. Now it really starts. Please God, help us.

'What's your name, kid?' Beverly asked.

'Mike Hanlon.'

'You want to shoot off some firecrackers?' Stan asked, and Mike's grin was answer enough.

CHAPTER 1 4

The Album

1

As it turns out, Bill isn't the only one; they all bring booze.

Bill has bourbon, Beverly has vodka and a carton of orange juice, Richie a sixpack, Ben Hanscom a bottle of Wild Turkey. Mike has a sixpack in the little refrigerator in the staff lounge.

Eddie Kaspbrak comes in last, holding a small brown bag.

'What you got there, Eddie?' Richie asks. 'Za-Rex or Kool-Aid?'

Smiling nervously, Eddie removes first a bottle of gin and then a bottle of prune juice.

In the thunderstruck silence which follows, Richie says quietly: 'Somebody call for the men in the white coats. Eddie Kaspbrak's finally gone over the top.'

'Gin-and-prune juice happens to be very healthy,' Eddie replies defensively . . . and then they're all laughing wildly, the sound of their mirth echoing and re-echoing in the silent library, rolling up and down the glassed-in hall between the adult library and the Children's Library.

'You go head-on,' Ben says, wiping his streaming eyes. 'You go head-on, Eddie. I bet it really moves the mail, too.'

Smiling, Eddie fills a paper cup three-quarters full of prune juice and then soberly adds two capfuls of gin.

'Oh Eddie, I do love you,' Beverly says, and Eddie looks up, startled but smiling. She gazes up and down the table. 'I love all of you.'

Bill says, 'W-We love you too, B-Bev.'

'Yes,' Ben says. 'We love you.' His eyes widen a little, and he laughs. 'I think we still all love each other . . . Do you know how rare that must be?'

There's a moment of silence, and Mike is really not surprised to see that Rickie is wearing his glasses.

'My contacts started to burn and I had to take them out,' Richie says briefly when Mike asks. 'Maybe we should get down to business?'

They all look at Bill then, as they had in the gravel-pit, and Mike thinks: They look at Bill when they need a leader, at Eddie when they need a navigator. Get down to business, what a hell of a phrase that is. Do I tell them that the bodies of the children that were found back then and now weren't sexually molested, not even precisely mutilated, but partially eaten? Do I tell them I've got seven miner's helmets, the kind with strong electric lights set into the front, stored back at my house, one of them for a guy named Stan Uris who couldn't make the scene, as we used to say? Or is it maybe enough just to tell them to go home and get a good night's sleep, because it ends tomorrow or tomorrow night for good — either for It or us?

None of those things have to be said, perhaps, and the reason why they don't has already been stated: they still love one another. Things have changed over the last twenty-seven years, but that, miraculously, hasn't. It is, Mike thinks, our only real hope.

The only thing that really remains is to finish going through it, to complete the job of catching up, of stapling past to present so that the strip of experience forms some half-assed kind of wheel. Yes, Mike thinks, that's it. Tonight the job is to make the wheel; tomorrow we

can see if it still turns . . . the way it did when we drove the big kids out of the gravel-pit and out of the Barrens.

'Have you remembered the rest?' Mike asks Richie.

Richie swallows some beer and shakes his head. 'I remember you telling us about the bird . . . and about the smoke-hole.' A grin breaks over Richie's face. 'I remembered about that walking over here tonight with Bevvie and Ben. What a fucking honor-show that was —

'Beep-beep, Richie,' Beverly says, smiling.

'Well, you know,' he says, still smiling himself and punching his glasses up on his nose in a gesture that is eerily reminiscent of the old Richie. He winks at Mike. 'You and me, right, Mikey?'

Mike snorts laughter and nods.

'Miss Scawlett! Miss Scawlett!' Richie shrieks in his Pickaninny Voice. 'It's gettin a little wa'am in de smokehouse, Miss Scawlett!'

Laughing, Bill says, 'Another engineering and architectural triumph by Ben Hanscom.'

Beverly nods. 'We were digging out the clubhouse when you brought your father's photograph album to the Barrens, Mike.'

'Oh, Christ!' Bill says, sitting suddenly bolt –upright. 'And the pictures — '

Richie nods grimly. 'The same trick as in Georgie's room. Only that time we all saw it.'

Ben says, 'I remembered what happened to the extra silver dollar.'

They all turn to look at him.

'I gave the other three to a friend of mine before I came out here,' Ben says quietly. 'For his kids. I remembered there had been a fourth, but I couldn't remember what happened to it. Now I do.' He looks at Bill. 'We made a silver slug out of it, didn't we? You, me, and Richie. At first we were going to make a silver bullet — '

'You were pretty sure you could do it,' Richie agrees. 'But in the end — '

'We got c-cold fuh-feet.' Bill nods slowly. The memory has fallen naturally into its place, and he hears that same low but distinct click! when it happens. We're getting closer, he thinks.

'We went back to Neibolt Street,' Richie says. 'All of us.'

'You saved my life, Big Bill,' Ben says suddenly and Bill shakes his head. ' You did, though,' Ben persists, and this time Bill doesn't shake his head. He suspects that maybe he had done just that, although he does not yet remember how . . . and was it him? He thinks maybe Beverly . . . but that is not there. Not yet, anyway.