Bill jerked the clothesline as hard as he could. His granny-knot popped off the handle, but not before it had pulled the refrigerator door open again. An avalanche of orange pompoms fell out, and Stan Uris uttered a painful groan. The others only stared, open-mouthed.

The rain began to come harder. Thunder whipcracked above them, making them cringe, and purplish-blue lightning flared as the refrigerator door swung all the way open. Richie saw it first and screamed, a high, hurt sound. Bill uttered some sort of angry, frightened cry. The others were silent.

Written on the inside of the door, written in drying blood, were these words:

Hail mixed with the driving rain. The refrigerator door shuddered back and forth in the rising wind, the letters painted there beginning to drip and run now, taking on the draggling ominous look of a horror-movie poster.

Bev was not aware that Bill had gotten up until she saw him advancing across the path toward the refrigerator. He was shaking both fists. Water streamed down his face and plastered his shirt to his back.

'W-We're going to k-k-kill you!' Bill screamed. Thunder whacked and cracked. Lightning flashed so brightly that she could smell it, and not far away there was a splintering, rending sound as a tree fell.

'Bill, come back!' Richie was yelling. 'Come back, man!' He started to get up and Ben hauled him back down again.

'You killed my brother George! You son of a bitch! You bastard! You whoremaster! Let's see you now! Let's see you now!'

Hail came in a spate, stinging them even through the screening bushes. Beverly held her arm up to protect her face. She could see red welts on Ben's streaming cheeks.

'Bill, come back!' s he screamed despairingly, and another thundercrack drowned her out; it rolled across the Barrens below the low black clouds.

'Let's see you come out now, you fucker!'

Bill kicked wildly at the heap of pompoms that had spilled out of the refrigerator. He turned away and began to walk back toward them, his head down. He seemed not to feel the hail, although it now covered the ground like snow.

He blundered into the bushes, and Stan had to grab bis arm to keep him from going into the prickerbushes. He was crying.

'That's okay, Bill,' Ben said, putting a clumsy arm around him.

'Yeah,' Richie said. 'Don't worry. We're not gonna chicken out.' He stared around at them, his eyes looking wildly out of his wet face. 'Is there anyone here who's gonna chicken out?'

They shook their heads.

Bill looked up, wiping his eyes. They were all soaked to the skin and looked like a litter of pups that had just forded a river. 'Ih-It's scuh-scuh-hared of u-u-us, you know,' he said. 'I can fuh-feel th-that. I swear to Guh-God I c-c-can.'

Bev nodded soberly. 'I think you're right.'

'H-H-Help m-m-me,' Bill said. 'P-P-Pl-Please. H-H-Help m-m-me.'

'We will,' Beverly said. She took Bill in her arms. She had not realized how easily her arms would go around him, how thin he was. She could feel his heart racing under his shut; she could feel it next to hers. She thought that no touch had ever seemed so sweet and strong.

Richie put his arms around both of them and laid his head on Beverly's shoulder. Be n did the same from the other side. Stan Uris put his arms around Richie and Ben. Mike hesitated, and then slipped one arm around Beverly's waist and the other over Bill's shivering shoulders. They stood that way, hugging, and the sleet turned back to driving pouring rain, rain so heavy it seemed almost like a new atmosphere. The lightning walked and the thunder talked. No one spoke. Beverly's eyes were tightly shut. They stood in the rain in a huddled group, hugging each other, listening to it hiss down on the bushes. That was what she remembered best: the sound of the rain and their own shared silence and a vague sorrow that Eddie was not there with them. She remembered those things.

She remembered feeling very young and very strong.

CHAPTER 1 8

The Bullseye

1

'Okay, Haystack,' Richie says. 'Your turn. The redhead's smoked all of her cigarettes and most of mine. The hour groweth late.'

Ben glances up at the clock. Yes, it's late: nearly midnight. Just time for one more story, he thinks. One more story before twelve. Just to keep us warm. What should it be? But that, ofcourse, is only a joke, and not a very good one; there is only one story left, at least only one he remembers, and that is the story of the silver slugs — how they were made in Zack Denbrough's workshop on the night of July 23rd and how they were used on the 25th.

'I've got my own scars,' he says. 'Do you remember?'

Beverly and Eddie shake their heads; Bill and Richie nod. Mike sits silent, his eyes watchful in his tired face.

Ben stands up and unbuttons the work-shirt he is wearing, spreading it open. An old scar in the shape of the letter H shows there. Its lines are broken — the belly was much bigger when that scar was put there — but its shape still identifia ble.

The heavy scar depending downward from the cross-bar of the H is much clearer. It looks like a twisted white hangrope from which the noose has been cut.

Beverly's hand goes to her mouth. 'The werewolf! In that house! Oh Jesus Christ!' And she turns to the windows, as if to see it lurking outside in the darkness.

'That's right,' Ben said. 'And you want to know something funny? That scar wasn't there two days ago. Henry's old calling-card was; I know, because I showed it to a friend of mine, a bar-tender named Ricky Lee back in Hemingford Home. But this one — ' He laughs without much humor and begins buttoning his shirt again. This one just came back.'

'Like the ones on our hands.'

'Yeah,' Mike says as Ben buttons his skin up again. 'The werewolf. We all saw It as the werewolf that time.'

'Because that's how R-R-Richie saw Ih-It before,' Bill murmurs. 'That's it, isn't it?'

'Yes,' Mike says.

'We were close, weren't we?' Beverly says. Her voice is softly marvelling. 'Close enough to read each other's minds.'

'Ole Big Hairy damn near had your guts for garters, Ben,' Richie says, and he is not smiling as he says it. He pushes his mended glasses up on his nose and behind them his face looks white and haggard and ghostly.

'Bill saved your bacon,' Eddie says abruptly. 'I mean, Bev saved us all, but if it hadn't been for you, Bill — '

'Yes,' Ben agrees. 'You did, big Bill. I was, like, lost in the funhouse.'

Bill points briefly at the empty chair. 'I had some help from Stan Uris. And he paid for it. Maybe died for it.'

Ben Hansom is shaking his head. 'Don't say that, Bill.'

'But it's t-true. And if it's yuh-your f-fault, it's my fault, too, and e-e-everyone else's here, because we went on. Even after Patrick, an d what was written on that r-re-frigerator, we went on. It would be my fault m-most of all, I guess, because I wuh-wuh-wanted us to go on.

Because of Juh-George. Maybe even because I thought that if I killed whatever k-killed George, my puh-harents would have to luh-luh-luh — '

'Love you again?' Beverly asks gently.

'Yes. Of course. But I d-d-don't think it was a-a-anyone's fuh-hault, Ben. It was just the w-w-way Stan was built.'

'He couldn't face it,' Eddie says. He is thinking of Mr Keene's revelation about his asthma medicine, and how he could still not give it up. He is thinking that he might have been able to give up the habit of being sick; it was the habit of believing he had been unable to kick. As things had turned out, maybe that habit had saved his life.