Eddie suddenly got it. If ht ey came down, they would have to come one at a time. It was too high to jump, especially with the pumping machinery to land on, and here they were, the seven of them, waiting in a tight little circle.

'Cuh-cuh-home oh-on, H-Henry,' Bill said pleasantly. 'Wuh-wuh-what are you w– w-waiting for?'

'That's right,' Richie chimed in. 'You like to beat up little kids, right? Come on, Henry.'

'We're waiting, Henry,' Bev said sweetly. 'I don't think you'll like it when you get down here, but come on if you want to.'

'Unless you're chicken,' Ben added. He began to make chicken sounds. Richie joined him at once and soon all of them were doing it. The derisive clucking rebounded between the damp, trickling walls. Henry looked down at them, the knife clutched in his left hand, his face the color of old bricks. He put up with perhaps thirty seconds of it and then climbed out again. The Losers sent up catcalls and insults.

'O-O-Okay,' Bill said. He spoke in a lower voice. 'W-We gun-got to get ih-ih –into that druh-hain. Quh-quh-quick.'

'Why?' Beverly asked, but Bill was spared the effort of an answer. Henry reappeared at the rim of the pumping-station and dropped a rock the size of a soccer ball into the pipe. Beverly screamed and Stan pulled Eddie against the circular wall with a hoarse yell. The rock struck the pumping machinery's rusty housing and produced a musical bonggg! It ricocheted left and struck the concrete wall, missing Eddie by less than half a foot. A chip of concrete flicked painfully against his cheek. The rock fell into the water with a splash.

'Quh-quh-quick!' Bill shouted again, and they crowded around the pumping-station's inflow pipe. Its bore was about five feet in diameter. Bill sent them in one after another (a vague circus image — all the big clowns coming out of the little car — passed across his consciousness in a meteoric flash; years later he would use the same image in a book called The Black Rapids), and climbed in last, after ducking another rock. As they watched, more rocks flew down, most striking the pump housing and rebounding at crazy angles.

When they stopped falling, Bill looked out and saw Henry coming down the ladder again, as quick as he could. 'G-G-Get h-h-him!' he shouted to the others. Richie, Ben, and Mike floundered out behind Bill. Richie leaped high and grabbed Henry's ankle. Henry cursed and shook his leg as if trying to kick away a small dog with big teeth — a terrier, perhaps, or a Pekinese. Richie grabbed a rung, scrabbled up even higher, and actually did manage to sink his teeth into Henry's ankle. Henry screamed and pulled himself up quickly. One of his loafers came off and splashed into the water, where it sank with no ado at all.

'Bit me!' Henry was screaming. 'Bit me! Cocksucker bit me!'

'Yeah, good thing I had a tetanus shot this spring!' Richie flung at him.

'Bash them!' Henry was raving. 'Bash them, bomb them back to the stone age, bash their brains in!'

More rocks flew. The boys backed into the drain again quickly. Mike was struck on the arm by a small rock and he held it tight, wincing, until the pain began to abate.

'It's a standoff,' Ben said. 'They can't get down and we can't get up.'

'We're not s-supposed to get up,' Bill said quietly, 'and y-y-you all know it. W-We're nuh-hot e-ever supposed to g-g-get up a-again.'

They looked at him, their eyes hurt and afraid. No one said anything.

Henry's voice, fury masquerading as mockery, floated down: 'We can wait up here all day, you guys!'

Beverly had turned away and was looking back along the bore of the inflow pipe. The light grew diffuse quickly, and she could not see much. What she could see was a concrete tunnel, its lower third filled with rushing water. It was higher on her now than it had been when they first squeezed in here, she realized; that would be because this pump wasn't working and only some of the water was exiting on the Kenduskeag side. She felt claustrophobia touch her throat, turning the skin there to something that felt like flannel. If ht e water rose enough, they would drown.

'Bill, do we have to?'

He shrugged. It said everything. Yeah, they had to; what else was there? Be killed by Henry, Victor, and Belch in the Barrens? Or by something else — maybe something worse — in town? She understood his thought well enough now; there was no stutter in his shrug. Better for them to go to It. Have it out, like the showdown in a Western movie. Cleaner. Braver.

Richie said: 'What was that ritual you told us about, Big Bill? The one in the library book?'

'Ch-Ch-Chüd,' Bill said, smiling a little.

'Chüd.' Richie nodded. 'You bite Its tongue and It bites yours, right?'

'Ruh-ruh –right.'

'Then you tell jokes.'

Bill nodded.

'Funny,' Richie said, looking into the dark pipe, 'I can't think of a single one.'

'Me either,' Ben said. The fear was heavy in his chest, almost suffocating. He felt that the only thing keeping him from just sitting down in the water and blubbering like a baby — or just going crazy — was Bill's calm, sure presence . . . and Beverly. He felt he would rather die than show Beverly how afraid he was.

'Do you know where this pipe goes?' Stan asked Bill.

Bill shook his head.

'Do you know how to find It?'

Bill shook his head again.

'We'll know when we're getting close,' Richie said suddenly. He drew a deep, trembling breath. 'If we have to do it, then let's go.'

Bill nodded. 'I'll be f-f-first. Then Eh-Eddie. B-B-Ben. Bev. Stuh-han the M-M-Man. M-M-Mike. You luh-last, Rih-Richie. E-Everyone k-k-keep one h-h-hand on the shuh-houlder of the p-p-person in fruh-fruh-front of y-y-you. It's gonna be d-dark.'

'You coming out?' Henry Bowers shrieked down at them.

'We're gonna come out somewhere,' Richie muttered. 'I guess.'

They formed up like a procession of blindmen. Bill looked back once, confirming that each had a hand on the shoulder of the person ahead. Then, bending forward slightly against the rush of the current, Bill Denbrough led his friends into the dark where the boat he had made for his brother had gone almost a year before.

CHAPTER 2 0

The Circle Closes

1

Tom

Tom Rogan was having one fuck of a crazy dream. In it he was killing his father.

Part of his mind understood how crazy this was; his father had died when Tom was only in the third grade. Well . . . maybe 'died' wasn't such a good word. Maybe 'committed suicide' was actually the truth. Ralph Rogan had made himself a gin-and –lye cocktail. One for the road, you might say. Tom had been put in nominal charge of his brother and sisters, and then he began to receive 'whuppins' if anything went wrong with them.

So he couldn't have killed his father . . . except there he was, in this frightening dream, holding what looked like a harmless handle of some sort to his father's neck . . . only it wasn't really harmless, was it? There was a button in the end of the handle, and if he pushed it a blade would pop out and go right through his father's neck. I'm not going to do anything like that, Daddy, don't worry, his dreaming mind thought just before his finger jammed down on the button and the blade popped out. His father's sleeping eyes opened and stared up at the ceiling; his father's mouth opened and a bloody gargling sound came out. Daddy, I didn't do it! his mind screamed. Someone else —

He struggled to wake up and couldn't. The best he could do (and it turned out to be not very good at all) was to fade into a new dream. In this one he was splashing and slogging his way down a long dark tunnel. His balls hurt and his face stung because it was crisscrossed with scratches. There were others with him, but he could only make out vague shapes. It didn't matter, anyway. What mattered were the kids somewhere up ahead. They needed to pay. They needed