'Stan the Man Gets Off A Good One!' Richie cried. 'Wacka-wacka-wa — '

'Richie, will you shut up?' Beverly hissed at him.

Bill led them to the pipe, grimacing at the smell, and crawled in. The smell: it was sewage, it was shit, but there was another smell here, too, wasn't there? A lower, more vital smell. If an animal's grunt could have a smell (and, Bill supposed, if the animal in question had been eating the right things, it could), it would be like this undersmell. We're headed in the rightdirection, all right. It's been here . . . and Its been here a lot.

By the time they had gone twenty feet, the air had grown rancid and poisonous. He squished slowly along, moving through stuff that wasn't mud. He looked back over his shoulder and said, 'You fuh-fuh –follow right behind m-me, Eh-Eh –Eddie. I'll nuh-need y-you.'

The light faded to the faintest gray, held that way briefly, and then it was gone and they were

(out of the blue and)

into th e black. Bill shuffled forward through the sunk, feeling that he was almost cutting through it physically, one hand held out before him, part of him expecting that at any moment it would encounter rough hair and green lamplike eyes would open in the darkness. The end would come in one hot flare of pain as It walloped his head off his shoulders.

The dark was stuffed with sounds, all of them magnified and echoing. He could hear his friends shuffling along behind him, sometimes muttering something. There were gurglings and strange clanking groans. Once a flood of sickeningly warm water washed past and between his legs, wetting him to the thighs and rocking him back on his heels. He felt Eddie clutch frantically at the back of his shirt, and then the small flood slackened. From the end of the line Richie bellowed with sorry good humor: 'I think we just been pissed on by the Jolly Green Giant, Bill.'

Bill could hear water or sewage running in controlled bursts through the network of smaller pipes which now must be over their heads. He remembered the conversation about Berry's sewers with his father and thought he knew what this pipe must be — it was to handle the overflow that only occurred during heavy rains and during the flood season. The stuff up there would be leaving Derry to be dumped in Torrault Stream and the Penobscot River. The city didn't like to pump its shit into the Kenduskeag because it made the Canal stink. But all the so-called gray water went into the Kenduskeag, and if there was too much for the regular sewer-pipes to handle, there would be a dump –off . . . like the one that had just happened. If there had been one, there could be another. He glanced up uneasily, not able to see anything but knowing that there must be grates in the top arch of the pipe, possibly in the sides as well, and that any moment there might be —

He wasn't aware he'd reached the end of the pipe until he fell out of it and staggered forward, pinwheeling his arms in a helpless effort to keep his balance. He fell on his belly into a semi-solid mass about two feet below the mouth of the pipe he'd just tumbled out of. Something ran squeaking over his hand. He screamed and sat up, clutching his tingling hand to his chest, aware that a rat had just run over it; he had felt the loathsome, plated drag of the thing's hairless tail.

He tried to stand up and rapped his head on the new pipe's low ceiling. It was a hard hit, and Bill was driven back to his knees with large red flowers exploding in the darkness before his eyes.

'Be c-c-careful!' He heard himself shouting. His words echoed flatly. 'It drops off here! Eh-Eddie! Where a-a-are yuh-you?'

'Here!' One of Eddie's waving hands brushed Bill's nose. 'Help me out, Bill, I can't see! It's — '

There was a huge watery ker-whasssh! Beverly, Mike, and Richie all screamed in unison. In the daylight, the almost perfect harmony the three of them made would have been funny; down here in the dark, in the sewers, it was terrifying. Suddenly all of them were tumbling out. Bill clutched Eddie in a bear-hug, trying to save his arm.

'Oh Christ, I thought I was gonna drown,' Richie moaned. 'We got doused — oh boy, a shit-shower, oh great, they ought to have a class trip down here sometime, Bill, we could get Mr Carson to lead it — '

'And Miss Jimmison could give a health lecture afterward,' Ben said in a trembling voice, and they all laughed shrilly. As the laughter was tapering off, Stan suddenly burst into miserable tears.

'Don't, man,' Richie said, putting a fumbling arm around Stan's sticky shoulders. 'You'll get us all cryin, man.'

'I'm all right!' Stan said loudly, still crying. 'I can stand to be scared, but I hate being dirty like this, I hate not knowing where I am — '

'D-Do y-y-you th-think a-a-any of the muh –matches are still a-a-any guh –good?' Bill asked Richie.

'I gave mine to Bev.'

Bill felt a hand touch his in the darkness and press a folder of matches into it. They felt dry.

'I kept them in my armpit,' she said. 'They might work. You can try them, anyway.'

Bill tore a match out of the folder and struck it. It popped alight and he held it up. His friends were huddled together, wincing at the brief bright flare of light. They were splashed and daubed with ordure and they all looked very young and very afraid. Behind them he could see the sewer-pipe they had come out of. The pipe they were in now was smaller still. It ran straight in both directions, its floor caked with layers of filthy sediment. And —

He drew in a quick hiss and shook the match out as it burned his fingers. He listened and heard the sounds of fast-running water, dripping water, the occasional gushing roar as the overflow valves worked, sending more sewage into the Kenduskeag, which was now God only knew how fa r behind them. He didn't hear Henry and the others — yet.

He said quietly, 'There's a d-d-dead bob-body on my r-r-right. About –t t-ten fuh-feet a-a-away from uh-us. I think it m-might be Puh-Puh-Puh — '

'Patrick?' Beverly asked, her voice trembling on the edge of hysteria. 'Is it Patrick Hockstetter?'

'Y-Y-Yes. Do you want me to luh-light a –a-another m-match?'

Eddie said, 'You got to, Bill. If I don't see how the pipe runs, I won't know which way to go.'

Bill lit the match. In its glow they all saw the green, swelled thing that had been Patrick Hockstetter. The corpse grinned at them in the dark with horrid chumminess, but with only half a face; sewer rats had taken the rest. Patrick's summer-school books were scattered around him, bloated to the size of dictionaries in the damp.

'Christ,' Mike said hoarsely, his eyes wide.

'I hear them again,' Beverly said. 'Henry and the others.'

The acoustics must have carried her voice to them as well; Henry bellowed down the sewer-pipe and for a moment it was as if he was standing right there.

'We'll getyouuuuuu — '

'You come on right ahead!' Richie shouted. His eyes were bright, dancing, febrile. 'Keep coming, banana-heels! This is just like the YMCA swimming pool down here! Keep — '

Then a shriek of such mad fear and pain came through the pipe that the guttering match fell from Bill's fingers and went out. Eddie's arm had curled around him and Bill hugged Eddie back, feeling his body trembling like a wire as Stan Uris packed close to him on the other side. That shriek rose and rose . . . and then there was an obscene, thick flapping noise, and the shriek was cut off.

'Something got one of them,' Mike choked, horrified, in the darkness. 'Something . . . some monster . . . Bill, we got to get out of here . . . please . . . '

Bill could hear whoever was left — one or two, with the acoustics it was impossible to tell — stumbling and scrabbling through the sewer-pipe toward them. 'Wuh-Which w-w-way, Eh –Eddie?' he asked urgently. 'D-Do you nuh-know?'