(a whuppin)

to be punished.

Whatever purgatory this was, it was a smelly one. Water dripped and echoed. His shoes and pants were soaked. The little shitpots were somewhere up ahead in this maze of tunnels, and perhaps they thought

(Henry)

Tom and his friends would get lost, but the joke was on them

(ha-ha all over you! )

because he had another friend, oh yes, a special friend, and this friend had marked the path they were to take with . . . with . . .

(Moon-Balloons)

thingamajigs that were big and round and somehow lighted from within so that they shed a glow like that which falls mysteriously from oldfashioned streetlamps. One of these balloons floated and drifted at each intersection, and on the side of each was an arrow, pointing the way into the tunnel-branch he and

(Belch and Victor)

his unseen friends were to take. And it was the right path, oh yes: he could hear the others ahead, their splashing progress echoing back, the distorted murmurs of their voices. They were getting closer, catching up. And when they did . . . Tom looked down and saw that he still had the switchknife in his hand.

For a moment he was frightened — this was like one of those crazy astral experiences he sometimes read about in the weekly tabloids, when your spirit left your body and entered someone else's. The shape of his body felt different to him, as if he were not Tom but

(Henry)

someone else, someone younger. He began to fight his way out of the dream, panicked, and then a voice was talking to him, a soothing voice, whispering in his ear: It doesn't matter when this is, and it doesn't matter who you are. What matters is that Beverly is up there, she's with them, my good friend, and do you know what? She's been doing something one hell of a lot worse than sneaking smokes. You know what? She's been fucking her old friend Bill Denbrough! Yes indeed! She and that stuttering freak, going right at it! They —

That's a lie! he tried to scream. She wouldn't dare!

But he knew it was no lie. She had used a belt on his

(kicked me in the)

balls and run off and she now had cheated on him, the slutty

(child)

little roundheels bitch had actually cheated on him, and oh dear friends, oh good neighbors, she was going to get the whuppin of all whuppins — first her and then Denbrough, her novel-writing friend. And anyone who tried to get in his way, you could count them in for a piece of the action, too.

He stepped up his pace, although the breath was already whistling in and out of his throat. Up ahead he could see another luminous circle bobbing in the darkness — another Moon-Balloon. He could hear the voices of the people ahead of him, and the fact that they were childish voices no longer bothered him. It was as the voice said: it didn't matter where, when or who. Beverly was up there, and oh dear friends, oh good neighbors —

'Come on, you guys, move your asses,' he said, and it didn't even matter that his voice wasn't his own but the voice of a boy.

Then, as they approached the Moon-Balloon, he looked around and saw his companions for the first time. Both of them were dead. One was headless. The face of the other had been split open, as if by a great talon.

'We're moving as fast as we can, Henry,' the boy with the split face said, and his lips moved in two pieces, grotesquely out of sync with each other, and that was when Tom shrieked the dream to pieces and came back to himself, tottering on the brink of what felt like some great empty space.

He struggled to keep his balance, lost it, and tumbled to the floor. The floor was carpeted but the fall still sent a sickening burst of pain through his hurt knee and he Stifled another cry against his forearm.

Where am I? Where the fuck am I?

He became aware of a faint but clear white light, and for a frightening moment he thought he was back in the dream again, that it was light cast by one of those crazy balloons. Then he remembered leaving the bathroom door partially open and the fluorescent light in there on. He always left the light on when staying in a strange place; it saved you barking your shins if you had to get up in the night to pee.

That clicked reality into place. It had been a dream, all some crazy dream. He was in a Holiday Inn. This was Derry, Maine. He had chased his wife here, and, in the middle of a crazy nightmare, he had fallen out of bed. That was all; that was the long and the short of it.

That wasn't just a nightmare.

He jumped as if the words had been spoken beside his ear instead of inside his own mind. It didn't seem like his own interior voice at all — it was cold, alien . . . but somehow hypnotic and believable.

He got up slowly, fumbled a glass of water off the table beside the bed, and drank it down. He ran shaky hands through his hair. The clock on the table said ten past three.

Go back to sleep. Wait until morning.

That alien voice answered: But there will be people around in the morning — too many people. And besides, you can beat them down there this time. This time you can be first.

Down there? He thought of his dream: the water, the dripping dark.

The light suddenly seemed brighter. He turned his head, not wanting to but helpless to stop. A groan slipped out of his mouth. A balloon was tied to the knob of the bathroom door. It floated at the end of a string about three feet long. The balloon glowed, full of a ghostly white light; it looked like a will– o– t h e – wisp glimpsed in a swamp, floating dreamily between trees overhung with gray ropes of moss. An arrow was printed on the balloon's gently bulging skin, an arrow that was blood-scarlet.

It was pointing at the door leading out into the hall.

It doesn't really matter who I am, the voice said soothingly, and Tom realized now that it wasn't coming fr om either his own head or from beside his ear; it was coming from the balloon, from the center of that strange lovely white light. All that matters is that I am goingto see that everything turns out to your satisfaction, Tom. I want to see her take a whuppin; I want to see them all take a whuppin. They've crossed my path once too often . . . and much too late in the day for them. So listen, Tom. Listen very carefully. All together now . . . follow the bouncing ball . . .

Tom listened. The voice from the balloon explained.

It explained everything.

When it was done, it popped in one final flash of light and Tom began to dress.

2

Audra

Audra also had nightmares.

She awoke with a start, sitting bolt-upright in bed, the sheet pulled around he r waist, her small breasts moving with her quick, agitated breathing.

Like Tom's, her dreaming had been a jumbled, distressful experience. Like Tom, she had had the sensation of being someone else — or rather, of having her own consciousness deposited (and partially submerged) in another body and another mind. She had been in a dark place with a number of others around her, and she had been aware of an oppressive sensation of danger — they were going into the danger deliberately and she wanted to scream at them to stop, to explain to her what was happening . . . but the person with whom she had merged seemed to know, and to believe it was necessary.

She was also aware that they were being chased, and that their pursuers were catching up, little by little.

Bill had been in the dream, but his story about how he had forgotten his childhood must have been on her mind, because in her dream Bill was only a boy, ten or twelve years old — he still had all his hair! She was holding his hand, and was dimly aware that she loved him very much, and that her willingness to go on was based on the rock-solid belief that Bill would protect her and all of them, that Bill, Big Bill, would somehow bring them through this and back into the daylight again.