'I . . . I won't lie, Daddy,' she said. 'What's wrong?' Her view of him was gradually shivering apart as the tears came.

'You been down there in the Bar'ns with a gang of boys?'

Her heart leaped; her eyes dropped to his mud-caked shoes again. That black, clingy mud. If you stepped into it too deep it would suck your sneaker or your loafer right off . . . and both Richie and Bill believe d that, if you went in all the way, it turned to quickmud.

'I play down there somet — '

Whap! the hand, covered with hard calluses, rocketing down again. She cried out hurt, afraid. That look on his face scared her, and the way he wouldn't look at her scared her, too. There was something wrong with him. He had been getting worse . . . What if he meant to kill her? What if

(oh stop it Beverly he's your FATHER and FATHERS don't kill DAUGHTERS)

he lost control, then? What if —

'What have you let them do to you?'

'Do? What — ' She had no idea what he meant.

'Take your pants off.'

Her confusion increased. Nothing he said seemed connected to anything else. Trying to follow him made her feel . . . seasick, almost.

'What . . . why . . . ?'

His hand rose; she flinched back. 'Take them off, Bevvie. I want to see if you are intact.'

Now there was a new image, crazier than the rest: she saw herself pulling her jeans off, and one of her legs coming off with them. Her father belting her around the room as she tried to hop away from him on her one good leg, Daddy shouting: I knew you wasn't intact! I knew it!I knew it!

'Daddy, I don't know what — '

His hand came down, not slapping this time but clutching. It bit into her shoulder with furious strength. She screamed. He pulled her up, and for the first time looked directly into her eyes. She screamed again at what she saw there. It was . . . nothing. Her father was gone. And Beverly suddenly understood that she was alone in the apartment with It, alone with It on this dozey August morning. There was not the thick sense of power and untinctured evil she had felt in the house on Neibolt Street a week and a half ago — It had been diluted somehow by her father's essential humanity — but It was here, working through him.

He threw her aside. She struck the coffee table, tripped over it, and went sprawling on the floor with a cry. This is how it happens, she thought. I'll tell Bill so he understands. It's everywhere in Derry. It just . . . It just fills the hollow places, that's all.

She rolled over. Her father was walking toward her. She skidded away from him on the seat of her jeans, her hair in her eyes.

'I know you been down there,' he said. 'I was told. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe my Bevvie would be hanging around with a gang of boys. Then I seen you myself this morning. My Bevvie with a bunch of boys. Not even twelve and hanging around with a bunch of boys!' This latter thought seemed to send him into a fresh rage; it trembled through his scrawny frame like volts. 'Not even twelve years old!' he shouted, and fetched a kick at her thigh that made her scream. His jaws snapped over this fact or concept or whatever it was to him like the jaws of a hungry dog worrying a piece of meat. 'Not even twelve! Not even twelve! Noteven TWELVE!'

He kicked. Beverly scrambled away. They had worked their way into the kitchen area of the apartment now. His workboot struck the drawer under the stove, making the pots and pans inside jangle.

'Don't you run from me, Bevvie,' he said. 'You don't want to do that or it'll be the worse for you. Believe me, now. Believe your dad. This is serious. Hanging around with the boys, letting them do God knows what to you — not even twelve — that's serious, Christ knows.' He grabbed her and jerked her to her feet by her shoulder.

'You're a pretty girl,' he said. 'There's plenty of people happy to roon a pretty girl. Plenty of pretty girls willing to be roont. You been a slutchild to them boys, Bevvie?'

At last she understood what It had put in his head . . . except part of her knew the thought might almost have been there all along; that It might only have used the tools that had been there just lying around, waiting to be picked up.

'No Daddy. No Daddy — '

'I seen you smoking!' he bellowed. This time he struck her with the palm of his hand, hard enough to send her reeling back in drunken strides to the kitchen table where she sprawled, a flare of agony in the small of her back. The salt and pepper shakers fell to the floor. The pepper shaker broke. Black flowers bloomed and disappeared before her eyes. Sounds seemed too deep. She saw his face. Something in his face. He was looking at her chest. She was suddenly aware that her blouse had come untucked, that some of the buttons had popped off, and that she wasn't wearing a bra . . . as of yet, she owned only one, a training bra. Her mind sideslipped back to the house at Neibolt Street, when Bill had given her his shirt. She ha d been aware of the way her breasts poked at the thin cotton material, but their occasional,

skittering glances had not bothered her; these had seemed perfectly natural. And Bill's look had seemed more than natural — it had seemed warm and wanted, if deeply dangerous.

Now she felt guilt mix with her terror. Was her father so wrong? Hadn't she had

(you been a slutchild to them)

thoughts? Bad thoughts? Thoughts of whatever it was that he was talking about?

It's not the same thing! It's not the same thing as the way

(you been a slutchild)

he's looking at me now! Not the same!

She tucked her blouse back in.

'Bevvie?'

'Daddy, we just play, that's all. We play . . . We . . . we don't do anything like . . . anything bad. We — '

'I seen you smoking,' he said again, walking toward her. His eyes moved across her chest and her narrow uncurved hips. He chanted suddenly, in a high schoolboy's voice that frightened her even more: 'A girl who will chew gum will smoke! A girl who will smoke will drink! And a girl who will drink, everyone knows what a girl like that will do!'

'I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!' she screamed at him as his hands descended on her shoulders. He was not pinching or hurting now. His hands were gentle. And that was somehow scariest of all.

'Beverly,' he said with the inarguable, mad logic of the totally obsessed, 'I seen you with boys. Now you want to tell me what a girl does with boys down in all that trashwood if it ain't what a girl does on her back?'

'Let me alone!' she cried at him. The anger flashed up from a deep well she had never suspected. The anger made a bluish– yellow flame in her head. It threatened her thoughts. All the times he had scared her; all the times he had shamed her; all the times he had hurt her. 'You just let me alone!'

'Don't talk to your daddy like that,' he said, sounding startled.

'I didn't do what you're saying! I never did!'

'Maybe. Maybe not. I'm going to check and make sure. I know how. Take your pants off.'

'No.'

His eyes widened, showing yellowed cornea all the way around the deep blue irises. 'What did you say?'

'I said no.' His eyes were fixed on hers and perhaps he saw the blazing anger there, the bright upsurge of rebellion. 'Who told you?'

'Bevvie — '

'Who told you we play down there? Was it a stranger? Was it a man dressed in orange and silver? Did he wear gloves? Did he look like a clown even if he wasn't a clown? What was his name?'

'Bevvie, you want to stop — '

'No: you want to sto p,' she told him.

He swung his hand again, not open but this time closed in a fist meant to break something. Beverly ducked. His fist whistled over her head and crashed into the wall. He howled and let go of her, putting the fist to his mouth. She backed away from him in quick mincing steps.