He was pulled past the Turtle and saw that its head had withdrawn into its shell; its voice emerged hollow and distorted, as if even the shell it lived in were a well eternities deep:

— not bad, son, but I'd finish it now; don't let It get away, energy has a way of dissipating, you know; what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again

The voice of the Turtle faded, faded, faded. There was only the rushing dark . . . and then the mouth of a cyclopean tunnel . . . smells of age and decay . . . cobwebs brushing at his face like rotted skeins of silk in a haunted house . . . moldering tiles blurring by . . . intersections, all dark now, the moon-balloons all gone, and It was screaming, screaming:

— let me go let me go I'll leave never come back let me GO IT HURTS IT HURTS ITHURRRRRRRRRR

'Thrusts his fists!' Bill screamed, nearly delirious now. He could see light ahead but it was fading, guttering like great candles which had at last burned low . . . and for a moment he saw himself and the others holding hands in a line, Eddie on one side of him and Richie on the other. He saw his own body, sagging, his head rolled back on his neck, staring up at the Spider, which twisted and whirled like a dervish, Its coarse, spiny legs beating at the floor, poison drip ping from Its stinger.

It was screaming in Its death-agony.

So Bill honestly believed.

Then he was slamming back into his body with all the impact of a line drive slamming into a baseball glove, the force of it tearing his hands loose from Richie's and Eddie's, driving him to his knees and skidding him across the floor to the edge of the web. He reached out for one of the strands without thinking, and his hand immediately went numb, as if it had been injected with a hypo full of novocaine. The strand itself was as thick as a telephone-pole guy-wire.

'Don't touch that, Bill!' Ben yelled, and Bill yanked his hand away in one quick jerk, leaving a raw place across his palm just below the fingers. It filled with blood and he staggered to his feet, eyes on the Spider.

It was scrabbling away from them, making Its way into the growing dimness at the back of the chamber as the light failed. It left puddles and pools of black blood behind as It went; somehow their confrontation had ruptured Its insides in a dozen, maybe a hundred places.

'Bill, the web!' Mike screamed. 'Look out!'

He stepped backward, craning his neck up, as strands of Its web came floating down, striking the stone-flagged floor on either side of him like the bodies of meaty white snakes. They immediately began to lose shape, to flow into the cracks between the stones. The web was falling apart, coming loose from its many moorings. One of the bodies, wrapped up like a fly, came plunging down to strike the floor with a sickening rotted-gourd sound.

'The Spider!' Bill yelled. 'Where is It?'

He could still hear It in his head, mewling and crying out in Its pain, and understood dimly that It had gone into the same tunnel It had thrown Bill into . . . but had It gone in there to flee back to the place where It had meant to send Bill . . . or to hide until they were gone? To die? Or escape?

'Christ, the lights!' Richie shouted. 'The lights're going out! What happened, Bill? Where did you go? We thought you were dead!'

In some confused part of his mind Bill knew that wasn't true: if they had really thought him dead, they would have run, scattered, and It would have picked them off easily, one by one. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that they had thought him dead, b ut believed him alive.

We have to make sure! If It's dying or gone back to where It came from, where the rest of It is, that's fine. But what if Ifs just hurt? What if It can get better? What —

Stan's shriek cut across his thoughts like broken glass. In the fading light Bill saw that one of the strands of webbing had come down on Stan's shoulder. Before Bill could reach him, Alike had thrown himself at the smaller boy in a flying tackle. He drove Stan away and the piece of webbing snapped back, taking a piece of Stan's polo shirt with it.

'Get back!' Ben yelled at them. 'Get away from it, it's all coming down!' He seized Beverly's hand and pulled her back toward the child –sized door while Stan struggled to his

feet, looked dazedly around, and the n grabbed Eddie. The two of them started toward Ben and Beverly, helping each other, looking like phantoms in the fading light.

Overhead, the spiderweb was drooping, collapsing on itself, losing its fearful symmetry. Bodies twirled lazily in the air like nightmarish plumb-bobs. Cross-strands fell in like the rotted rungs of some strange complex of ladders. Severed strands hit the stone flagging, hissed like cats, lost their shape, began to run.

Mike Hanlon wove his way through them as he would later weave his way through the opposing lines of nearly a dozen high-school football teams, head down, ducking and dodging. Richie joined him. Incredibly, Richie was laughing, although his hair was standing straight up on his head like the quills of a porcupine. The light grew dimmer, the phosphorescence that had coiled on the walls now dying away.

'Bill!' Mike shouted. 'Come on! Get the frock out of there!'

'What if It's not dead?' Bill screamed back. 'We got to go after It, Mike! We got to make sure!'

A snarl of webbing sagged outward like a parachute and then fell with a nasty ripping sound that was like skin being pulled apart. Mike grabbed Bill's arm and pulled him, stumbling, out of the way.

'It's dead!' Eddie cried, joining them. His eyes were febrile lamps, his breathing a chilly winter-whistle in his throat. Fallen strands of webbing had sizzled complex scars into the plaster of Paris of his cast. 'I heard It, It was dying, you don't sound like that if you're on your way to a sock hop, It was dying, I'm sure of it!'

Richie's hands groped out of the darkness, seized Bill, and pulled him into a rough embrace. He began to pound Bill's back ecstatically. 'I heard It, too — It was dying, Big Bill! It was dying . . . and you're not stuttering! Not at all! Howdja do it? How in the hell — ?'

Bill's brain was whirling. Exhaustion tugged at him with thick and clumsy hands. He could not remember ever feeling this tired . . . but in his mind he heard the drawling, almost weary voice of the Turtle: I'd finish it now; don't let It get away . . . what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again.

'But we have to be sure — '

The shadows were joining hands and now the darkness was almost complete. But before the light failed utterly, he thought he saw the same hellish doubt on Beverly's face . . . and in Stan's eyes. And still, as the last of the light gave way, they could hear the tenebrous whisper-shudder-thump of Its unspeakable web falling to pieces.

3

Bill in the Void / Late

— well here you are again, Little Buddy! but what's happened to your hair? you're just as

bald as a cueball! sad! what sad, short lives humans live! each life a short pamphlet written

by an idiot! tut-tut, and all that

I'm still Bill Denbrough. You killed my brother and you killed Stan the Man you tried to kill Mike. And I'm going to tell you something: this time I'm not going to stop until the job's done

— the Turtle was stupid, too stupid to lie. he told you the truth, Little Buddy . . . the time

only comes around once, you hurt me . . . you surprised me. never again. I am the one who

called you back. I.

You called, all right, but You weren't the only one

— your friend the Turtle . . . he died a few years ago. the old idiot puked inside his shell