(the reality of the world. 'Pipeline.' Chantays. Remember 'Pipeline'? 'Pipeline' was pretty much okey-dokey. 'Wipe-Out.' Crazy laugh there at the start. Sounded like Patrick Hockstetter. Fucking queerboy. Got greased himself and as far as I)

he was concerned that was a

(fuck of a lot better than okey-dokey, that was just FINE, that was JUST AS FINE AS PAINT

(okay Pip eline shoot the line don't back down not my boys catch a wave and

(shoot

(shootshootshoot

(a wave and go sidewalk surfin with me shoot

(the line shoot the world but keep)

an ear inside his head: it kept hearing that k a-spanggg sound; an eye inside his head: it kept seeing Victor's head rising on the end of that spring, eyelids and cheeks and forehead tattooed with rosettes of blood.

Henry looked blearily to his left and saw that the houses had been replaced with a tall, black stand of hedge. Looming above it was the narrow, gloomily Victorian pile of the Theological Seminary. Not a window shone light. The Seminary had graduated its last class in June of 1974. It had closed its doors that summer, and whatever walked there now walked alone . . . and only by permission of the chattering women's club that called itself the Derry Historical Society.

He came to the walk which led up to the front door. It was barred by a heavy chain from which a metal sign hung: NO TRESPASSIN THIS ORDER ENFORCED BY DERRY POLICE DEPT.

Henry's feet tangled on this track and he fell heavily again — whap! — to the sidewalk. Up ahead, a car turned onto Kansas Street from Hawthorne. Its headlights washed down the street. Henry fought the dazzle long enough to see the lights on top: it was a fuzzmobile.

He crawled under the chain and crabbed his way to the left so he was behind the hedge. The night-dew on his hot face was wonderful. He lay face down, turning his head from side to side, wetting his cheeks, drinking what he could drink.

The police car floated by without slowing.

Then, suddenly, its bubble-lights came on, washing the darkness with erratic blue pulses of light. There was no need for the siren on the deserted streets, but Henry heard its null suddenly crank up to full revs. Rubber blistered a startled scream from the pavement.

Caught, I'm caught, his mind gibbered . . . and then he realized that the police-car was heading away from him, up Kansas Street. A moment later a hellish warbling sound filled the night, heading toward him from the south. He imagined some huge silky black cat loping through the dark, all green eyes and silky flexing pelt, It in a new shape, coming for him, coming to gobble him up.

L i t t l e b y l i t t l e ( a n d o n l y as the warbling began to veer away) he realized it was an ambulance, heading in the direction the fuzz-mobile had gone. He lay shuddering on the wet grass, too cold now, struggling

(fuzzit cousin buzzit cousin rock it roll it we got chicken in the barn what bam whose barn my)

not to vomit. He was afraid that if he vomited, all of his guts would come up . . . and there were five of them still to get.

Ambulance and police car. Where are they heading? The library, of course. The nigger. But they're too late. I greased him. Might as well turn off your sireen, boys. He ain't gonna hear it. He's just as dead as a fencepost. He —

But was he?

Henry licked his peeling lips with his arid tongue. If he was dead, there would be no warbling siren in the night like the cry of a wounded panther. Not unless the nigger had called them. So maybe — just maybe — the nigger wasn't dead.

'No,' Henry breathed. He rolled over on his back and stared up at the sky, at the billions of stars up there. It had come from there, he knew. From somewhere up in that sky . . . It

(came from outer space with a lust for Earthwomen came to rob all the women and rape all the men say Frank don't you mean rob all the men and rape all the women whoth running this show, thilly man, you or Jesse? Victor used to tell that one and that was pretty much)

came from the spaces between the stars. Looking up at that starry sky gave him the creeps: it was too big, too black. It was all too possible to imagine it turning blood-red, all too possible to imagine a Face forming in lines of fire . . .

He closed his eyes, shivering and holding his arms crossed on his belly, and he thought: The nigger is dead. Someone heard us fighting and sent the cops to investigate, that's all.

Then why the ambulance?

'Shut up, shut up,' Henry groaned. He felt the old baffled rage again; he remembered how they had beaten him again and again in the old days — old days that seemed so close and so vital now — how, every time, when he believed he had them, they had somehow slipped through his fingers. It had been like that on the last day, after Belch saw the bitch running down Kansas Street toward the Barrens. He remembered that, oh yes, he remembered that clearly enough. When you got kicked in ht e balls, you remembered it. It had happened to him again and again that summer.

Henry struggled to a sitting position, wincing at the deep dagger of pain in his guts.

Victor and Belch had helped him down into the Barrens. He had walked as fast as he could in spite of the agony that griped and pulled at his groin and the root of his belly. The time had come to finish it. They had followed the path to a clearing from which five or six paths radiated like strands of a spider-web. Yes, there had been kids playing around there; you didn't have to be Tonto to see that. There were scraps of candy-wrapper, the curled tail of a shot– off roll of Bang caps, red and black. A few boards and a fluffy scatter of sawdust, as if something had been built there.

He remembered standing in the center of the clearing and scanning the trees, looking for their baby treehouse. He would spot it and then he would climb up and the girl would be cowering there, and he would use the knife to cut her throat and feel her titties nice and easy until they stopped moving.

But he hadn't been able to see any treehouse; neither had Belch or Victor. The old familiar frustration rose in his throat. He and Victor left Belch to guard the clearing while they went down the river. But there had been no sign of her there, either. He remembered bending over and picking up a rock and

8

The Barrens / 12:55 P.M.

heaving it far down the stream, furious and bewildered. 'Where the fuck did she go?' he demanded, wheeling toward Victor.

Victor shook his head slowly. 'Don't know,' he said. 'You're bleeding.'

Henry looked down and saw a dark spot, the size of a quarter, on the crotch of his jeans. The pain had withdrawn to a low, throbbing ache, but his underpants felt too small and too tight. His balls were swelling. He felt that anger inside him again, something like a knotted rope around his heart. She had done this.

'Where is she?' he hissed at Victor.

'Don't know,' Victor said again in that same dull voice. He seemed hypnotized, sunstruck, not really there at all. 'Ran away, I guess. She could be all the way over to the Old Cape by now.'

'She's not,' Henry said. 'She's hiding. They've got a place and she's hiding there. Maybe it's not a treehouse. Maybe it's something else.'

'What?'

'I . . . don't . . . know!' Henry shouted, and Victor flinched back.

Henry stood in the Kenduskeag, the cold water boiling over the tops of his sneakers, looking around. His eyes fixed on a cylinder poking out of the embankment about twenty feet downstream — a pumping– station. He climbed out of the water and walked down to it, feeling a sort of necessary dread settle into him. His skin seemed to be tightening, his eyes widening so that they were able to see more and more; it seemed he could feel the tiny hairs in his ears stirring and moving like kelp in an underwater tidal flow.