CHAPTER 1 9

In the Watches of the Night

1

The Derry Public Library / 1:15 A.M .

When Ben Hanscom finished the story of the silver slugs, they wanted to talk, but Mike told them he wanted them all to get some sleep. 'You've had enough for now,' he said, but Mike was the one who looked as if he had had enough; his face was tired and drawn, and Beverly thought he looked physically ill.

'But we're not done,' Eddie said. 'What about the rest of it? I still don't remember — '

'Mike's r-r-right,' Bill said. 'Either we'll remember or we w-won't. I think we w-will. We've remembered all that we nuh-need to.'

'Maybe all that's good for us?' Richie suggested.

Mike nodded. 'We'll meet tomorrow.' Then he glanced at the clock. 'Later today, I mean.'

'Here?' Beverly asked.

Mike shook his head slowly. 'I suggest we meet on Kansas Street. Where Bill used to hide his bike.'

'We're going down into the Barrens,' Eddie said, and suddenly shivered.

Mike nodded again.

There was a moment of quiet while they looked around at each other. Then Bill got to his feet, and the others rose with him.

'I want you all to be careful for the rest of the night,' Mike said. 'It's been here; It can be wherever you are. But this meeting has made me feel better.' He looked at Bill. 'I'd say it still can be done, wouldn't you, Bill?'

Bill nodded slowly. 'Yes. I think it still can be done.'

'It will know that, too,' Mike said, 'and It will do whatever It can to slug the odds in Its favor.'

'What do we do if It shows up?' Richie asked. 'Hold our noses, shut our eyes, turn around three times, and think good thoughts? Puff some magic dust in Its face? Sing old Elvis Presley songs? What?'

Mike shook his head. 'If I could tell you that, there would be no problem, would there? All I know is that there's another force — at least there was when we were kids — that wanted us to stay alive and to do th e job. Maybe it's still there.' He shrugged. It was a weary gesture. 'I thought two, maybe as many as three of you would be gone by the time we started our meet­ing tonight. Missing or dead. Just seeing you turn up gave me reason to hope.'

Richie looked at his watch. 'Quarter past one. How the time flies when you're having fun, right, Haystack?'

'Beep-beep, Richie,' Ben said, and smiled wanly.

'You want to walk back to the Tuh-Tuh-Townhouse with me, Beverly?' Bill asked.

'All right.' She was putting on her coat. The library seemed very silent now, shadowy, frightening. Bill felt the last two days catching up with him all at once, piling up on his back. If it had just been weariness, that would have been okay, but it was more: a feeling that he was cracking up, dreaming, having delusions of paranoia. A sensation of being watched. Maybe I'm really not here at all, he thought. Maybe I'm in Dr Seward's lunatic asylum, with

the Count's crumbling townhouse next door and Renfield just across the hall, him with his flies and me with my monsters, both of us sure the party is really going on and dressed to the nines for it, not in tuxedos but in strait-waistcoats.

'What about you, R-Richie?'

Richie shook his head. 'I'm going to let Haystack and Kaspbrak lead me home,' he said. 'Right, fellers?'

'Sure,' Ben said. He looked briefly at Beverly, who was standing close to Bill, and felt a pain he had almost forgotten. A new memory trembled, almost within his grasp, then floated away.

'What about you, M-M-Mike?' Bill asked. 'Want to walk with Bev and m-me?'

Mike shook his head. 'I've got to — '

That was when Beverly screamed, a high-pitched hurt sound in the stillness. The vaulted dome overhead picked it up, and the echoes were like the laughter of banshees, flying and flapping around them.

Bill turned toward her; Richie dropped his sportcoat as he was taking it off the back of his chair; there was a crash of glass as Eddie's arm swept an empty gin bottle onto the floor.

Beverly was backing away from them, her hands held out, her face as white as good bond paper. Her eyes, deep in dusky-purple sockets, bulged. 'My hands!' She screamed. 'My hands!'

'What — ' Bill began, and then he saw the blood dripping slowly between her shaking fingers. He started forward and felt sudden lines of painful warmth cross his own hands. The pain was not sharp; it was more like the pain one sometimes feels in an old healed wound.

The old scars on his palms, the ones which had reappeared in England, had broken open and were bleeding. He looked sideways and saw Eddie Kaspbrak peering stupidly down at his own hands. They were also bleeding. So were Mike's. And Richie's. And Ben's.

'We're in it to the end, aren't we?' Beverly asked. She had begun to cry. This sound was also magnified in the library's still emptiness; the building itself seemed to be weeping with her. Bill thought that if he had to listen to that sound for long, he would go mad. 'God help us, we're in it to the end.' She sobbed, an d a runner of snot depended from one of her nostrils. She wiped it off with the back of one shaking hand, and more blood dripped on the floor.

'Quh-Quh-hick!' Bill said, and seized Eddie's hand.

'What — '

'Quick?

He held out his other hand, and after a moment Beverly took it. She was still crying.

'Yes,' Mike said. He looked dazed — almost drugged. 'Yes, that's right, isn't it? It's starting again, isn't it, Bill? It's all starting to happen again.'

'Y-Y-Yes, I th-think — '

Mike took Eddie's hand and Richie took Beverly's other hand. For a moment Ben only looked at them, and then, like a man in a dream, he raised his bloody hands to either side and stepped between Mike and Richie. He grasped their hands. The circle closed.

(Ah Chüd this is the Ritual of Chüd and the Turtle cannot help us)

Bill tried to scream but no sound came out. He saw Eddie's head tilt back, the cords on his neck standing out. Bev's hips bucked twice, fiercely, as if in an orgasm as short and sharp as the crack of a .22 pistol. Mike's mouth moved strangely, seeming to laugh and grimace at the same time. In the silence of the library doors banged open and shut, the sound rolling like bowling balls. In the Periodicals Room, magazines flew in a windless hurricane. In Carole Banner's office, the library's IBM typewriter whirred into life and typed:

hethrusts

hisfistsagainst

thepostsandstillinsistshesees theghostshethrustshisfistsagainstthe

The type-ball jammed. The typewriter sizzled and utte red a thick electronic belch as everything inside overloaded. In Stack Two, the shelf of occult books suddenly tipped over, spilling Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, Charles Fort, and the Apocrypha everywhere.

Bill felt an exalting sense of power. He was dimly aware that he had an erection, and that every hair on his head was standing up straight. The sense of force in the completed circle was incredible.

All the doors in the library slammed shut in unison.

The grandfather clock behind the checkout desk chimed once.

Then it was gone, as if someone had flicked off a switch.

They dropped their hands, looking at each other, dazed. No one said anything. As the sense of power ebbed, Bill felt a terrible sense of doom creep over him. He looked at their white, strained faces, and then down at his hands. Blood was smeared there, but the wounds which Stan Uris had made with a jagged piece of Coke bottle in August 1958 had closed up again, leaving only crooked white lines like knotted twine. He thought: That was the last time theseven of us were together . . . the day Stan made those cuts in the Barrens. Stan's not here; he's dead. And this is the last time the six of us are going to be together. I know it, I feel it.