'Me too,' Stan said quietly. 'We're not Orthodox, or anything like that. I mean, we eat ham and bacon. I hardly even know what being a Jew is. I was born in Derry, and sometimes we go up to synagogue in Bangor for stuff like Yom Kippur, but — ' He shrugged.

'Ham? Bacon?' Eddie was mystified. He and his mo m were Methodists.

'Orthodox Jews don't eat stuff like that,' Stan said. 'It says something in the Torah about not eating anything that creeps through the mud or walks on the bottom of the ocean. I don't know exactly how it goes. But pigs are supposed to be out, also lobster. But my folks eat them. I do too.'

'That's weird,' Eddie said, and burst out laughing. 'I never heard of a religion that told you what you could eat. Next thing, they'll be telling you what kind of gas you can buy.'

'Kosher gas,' Stan said, and laughed by himself. Neither Richie nor Eddie understood what he was laughing about.

'You gotta admit, Stanny, it is pretty weird,' Richie said. 'I mean, not being able to eat a sausage just because you happen to be Jewish.'

'Yeah?' Stan said. 'You eat meat on Fridays?'

' 'Jeez, no!' Richie said, shocked. 'You can't eat meat on Friday, because — ' He began to grin a little. 'Oh, okay, I see what you mean.'

'Do Catholics really go to hell if they eat meat on Fridays?' Eddie asked, fascinated, totally unaware that, until two generations before, his own people had been devout Polish Catholics who would no more have eaten meat on Friday than they would have gone outside with no clothes on.

'Well, I'll tell you what, Eddie,' Richie said. 'I don't really think God would send me down to the Hot Place just for forgetting and having a baloney sandwich for lunch on a Friday, but why take a chance? Right?'

'I guess not,' Eddie said. 'But it seems so — ' So stupid, he was go ing to say, and then he remembered a story Mrs Portleigh had told the Sunday-school class when he was just a little kid — a first grader in Little Worshippers. According to Mrs Portleigh, a bad boy had once stolen some of the communion bread when the tray was passed and put it in his pocket. He took it home and threw it into the toilet bowl just to see what would happen. At once — or so Mrs Portleigh reported to her rapt Little Worshippers — the water in the toilet bowl had turned a bright red. It was the Blood of Christ, she said, and it had appeared to that little boy because he had done a very bad act called a BLASPHEMY. It had appeared to warn him that, by throwing the flesh of Jesus into the toilet, he had put his immortal soul in danger of Hell.

Up until then, Eddie had rather enjoyed the act of communion, which he had only been allowed to take since the previous year. The Methodists used Welch's grape juice instead of wine, and the Body of Christ was represented by cut-up cubes of fresh, springy Wonder Bread. He liked the idea of taking in food and drink as a religious rite. But following Mrs Portleigh's story, his awe of the ritual darkened into something more potent, something rather dreadful. Simply reaching for the cubes of bread became an act which required courage, and he always feared an electrical shock . . . or worse, that the bread would suddenly change color in his hand, become a blood-clot, and a disembodied Voice would begin to thunder in the church: Not worthy! Not worthy! Damned to Hell! Damned to Hell! Often, after he had taken communion, his throat would close up, his breath would begin to wheeze in and out, and he would wait with panicky impatience for the benediction to be over so he could hurry into the vestibule and use his aspirator.

You don't want to be so silly, he told himself as he grew older. That was nothing but a story, and Mrs Portleigh sure wasn't any saint — Mamma said she was divorced down in Kittery and that she plays Bingo at Saint Mary's in Bangor, and that real Christians don't gamble, real Christians leave gambling for pagans and Catholics.

All that made perfect sense, but it didn't relieve his mind. The story of the communion bread that turned the water in the toilet bowl to blood worried at him, gnawed at him, even caused him to lose sleep. It came to him one night that the way to get this behind him once and for all would be to take a piece of the bread himself, toss it in the toilet, and see what happened.

But such an experiment was far beyond his courage; his rational mind could not stand against that sinister image of the blood spreading its cloud of accusation and potential damnation in the water, it could not stand against that talismanic magical incantation: This ismy body, take, eat; this is my blood, shed for you and for many.

No, he had never made the experiment.

'I guess all religions are weird,' Eddie said now. But powerful, his mind added, almost magical . . . or was that BLASPHEMY? He began to think about the thing they had seen on Neibolt Street, and for the first time he saw a crazy parallel — the Werewolf had, after all, come out of the toilet.

'Boy, I guess everybody's asleep,' Richie said, tossing his empty Rocket– tube n o n c h a l a n t l y into the gutter. 'You ever see it so quiet? What, did everybody go to Bar Harbor for the day?'

'H-H-H-Hey you guh-guh –guys!' Bill Denbrough shouted from behind them. 'Wuh-Wuh-hait up!'

Eddie turned, delighted as always to hear Big Bill's voice. He was wheeling Silver around the corner of Costello Avenue, outdistancing Mike, although Mike's Schwinn was almost brand-new.

'Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYYY!' Bill yelled. He rolled up to them doing perhaps twenty miles an hour, the playing cards clothespinned to the fender-struts roaring. Then he back-pedalled, locked the brakes, and produced an admirably long skid –mark.

'Stuttering Bill!' Richie said. 'Howaya, boy? M say . . . Ah say . . . how aw you, boy?'

'I'm o-o-okay,' Bill said. 'Seen Ben or Buh-Buh-heverly?' is Mike rode up and joined them. Sweat stood out on his face in little drops. 'How fast does that bike go, anyway?'

Bill laughed. 'I d-d-don't nun-know, e-exactly. Pretty f-f-fast.'

'I haven't seen them,' Richie said. 'They're probably down there, hanging out. Singing two-part harmony. "Sh-boom, sh-boom . . . yada-da-da-da-da-da . . . you look like a dream, shweetheart.'"

Stan Uris made throwing-up noises.

'He's just jealous,' Richie said to Mike. 'Jews can't sing.'

'Buh-buh-buh — '

'"Beep-beep, Richie,"' Richie said for him, and they all laughed.

They started toward the Barrens again, Mike and Bill pushing their bikes. Conversation was brisk at first, but then it lagged. Looking at Bill, Eddie saw an uneasy look on his face, and he thought that maybe the quiet was getting to him, too. He knew Richie had meant it as a joke, but it really did seem that everyone in Derry had gone to Bar Harbor for the day . . . to somewhere. Not a car moved on the street; there wasn't a single old lady pushing a carrier full of groceries back to her house or apartment.

'Sure is quiet, isn't it?' Eddie ventured, but Bill only nodded.

They crossed to the Barrens side of Kansas Street, and then they saw Ben and Beverly, running toward them, shouting. Eddie was shocked by Beverly's appearance; she was usually so neat and clean, her hair always washed and tied back in a pony-tail. Now she was streaked with what looked like every kind of gluck in the universe. Her eyes were wide and wild. There was a scratch on one cheek. Her jeans were caked with crap and her blouse was torn.

Ben fell behind her, puffing, his stomach wobbling.

'Can't go down in the Barrens,' Beverly was panting. 'The boys . . . Henry . . . Victor . . . they're down there somewhere . . . the knife . . . he has a knife . . . '

'Sluh-slow down,' Bill said, taking charge at once in that effortless, almost unconscious way of his. He glanced at Ben as he ran up, his cheeks flushed bright, his considerable chest heaving.