'Do they know?'

'Mike said he called them all. He thinks they'll all come . . . except maybe for Stan. He said Stan sounded strange.'

'It all sounds strange to me. You're frightening me very badly, Bill.'

'I'm sorry,' he said, and kissed her. It was like getting a kiss from an utter stranger. She found herself hating this man Mike Hanlon. 'I thought I ought to explain as much as I could; I thought that would be better than just creeping off into the night. I suppose some of them may do just that. But I have to go. And I think Stan will be there, no matter how strange he sounded. Or maybe that's just because I can't imagine not going myself.'

'Because of your brother?'

Bill shook his head slowly. 'I could tell you that, but it would be a lie. I loved him. I know how strange that must sound after telling you I haven't thought of him in twenty years or so, but I loved the hell out of that kid.' He smiled a little. 'He was a spasmoid, but I loved him. You know?'

Audra, who had a younger sister, nodded. 'I know.'

'But it isn't George. I can't explain what it is. I . . . '

He looked out the window at the morning fog.

'I feel like a bird must feel when fall comes and it knows . . . somehow it just knows it has to fly home. It's instinct, babe . . . and I guess I believe instinct's the iron skeleton under all our ideas of free will. Unless you're willing to take the pipe or eat the gun or take a long walk off a short dock, you can't say no to some things. You can't refuse to pick up your option because there is no option. You can't stop it from happening any more than you could stand at home plate with a bat in your hand and let a fastball hit you. I have to go. That promise . . . it's in my mind like a fuh-fishhook.'

She stood up and walked herself carefully to him; she felt very fragile, as if she might break. She put a hand on his shoulder and turned him to her.

'Take me with you, then.'

The expression of horror that dawned on his face then — not horror of her but for her — was so naked that she stepped back, really afraid for the first time.

'No,' he said. 'Don't think of that, Audra. Don't you ever think of that. You're not going within three thousand miles of Derry. I think Derry's going to be a very bad place to be during the next couple of weeks. You're going to stay here and carry on and make all the excuses for me you have to. Now promise me that!'

'Should I promise?' she asked, her eyes never leaving his. 'Should I, Bill?'

'Audra — '

'Should I? You made a promise, and look what it's got you into. And me as well, since I'm your wife and I love you.'

His big hands tightened painfully on her shoulders. 'Promise me! Promise! P-Puh-Puh-Pruh-huh — '

And she could not stand that, that broken word caught in his mouth like a gaffed and wriggling fish.

'I promise, okay? I promise!' She burst into tears. 'Are you happy now? Jesus! You're crazy, the whole thing is crazy, but I promise!'

He put an arm around her and led her to the couch. Brought her a brandy. She sipped at it, getting herself under control a little at a time.

'When do you go, then?'

'Today,' he said. 'Concorde. I can just make it if I drive to Heathrow instead of taking the train. Freddie wanted me on-set after ranch. You go on ahead at nine, and you don't know anything, you see?'

She nodded reluctantly.

'I'll be in New York before anything shows up funny. And in Derry before sundown, with the right c-c-connections.'

'And when do I see you again?' she asked softly.

He put an arm around her and held her tightly, but he never answered her question.

'How many human eyes passage of years?'

had snatched glimpses of their secret anatomies, down the

— Clive Barker, Books of Blood

The segment below and all other Interlude segments are drawn from 'Derry: An Unauthorized Town History,' by Michael Hanlon. This is an unpublished set of notes and accompanying fragments of manuscript (which read almost like diary entries) found in the Derry Public Library vault. The title given is the one written on the cover of the looseleaf binder in which these notes were kept prior to their appearance here. The author, however, refers to the work several times within his own notes as 'Derry: A Look Through Hell's Back Door.'

One supposes the thought of popular publication had done more than cross Mr Hanlon's mind.

January 2nd, 1985 Can an entire city be haunted?

Haunted as some houses are supposed to be haunted?

Not just a single building in that city, or the corner of a single street, or a single basketball court in a single pocket-park, the netless basket jutting out at sunset like some obscure and bloody instrument of torture, not just one area

— but everything. The whole works.

Can that be?

Listen:

Haunted: 'Often visited by ghosts or spirits.' Funk and Wagnalls. Haunting: 'Persistently recurring to the mind; difficult to forget.' Ditto Funk and Friend. To haunt: 'To appear or recur often, especially as a ghost.' But — and listen!

— 'A place often visited: resort, den, hangout . . . ' Italics are of course mine.

And one more. This one, like the last, is a definition of haunt as a noun, and it's the one

that really scares me: '.A feeding place for animals.'

Like the animals that beat up Adrian Mellon and then threw him over the bridge?

Like the animal that was waiting underneath the bridge?

A feeding place for animals.

What's feeding in Derry? What's feeding on Derry?

You know, it's sort of interesting — I didn't know it was possible for a man to become as frightened as I have become since the Adrian Mellon business and still live, let alone function. It's as if I've fallen into a story, and everyone knows you're not supposed to feel this afraid until the end of the story, when the haunter of the dark finally comes out of the woodwork to feed . . . on you, of course.

On you.

But if this is a story, it's not one of those classic screamers by Lovecraft or Bradbury or Poe. I know, you see — not everything, but a lot. I didn't just start when I opened the Derry News one day last September, read the transcript of the Unwin boy's preliminary hearing, and realized that the clown who killed George Denbrough might well be back again. I actually started around 1980 — I think tha t is when some part of me which had been asleep woke up . . . knowing that Its time might be coming round again.

What part? The watchman part, I suppose.

Or maybe it was the voice of the Turtle. Yes . . . I rather think it was that. I know it's what Bill Denbrough would believe.

I discovered news of old horrors in old books; read intelligence of old atrocities in old periodicals; always in the back of my mind, every day a bit louder, I heard the seashell drone of some growing, coalescing force; I seemed to smell the bitter ozone aroma of lightnings-to-come. I began making notes for a book I will almost certainly not live to write. And at the same time I went on with my life. On one level of my mind I was and am living with the most

grotesque, capering horrors; on another I have continued to live the mundane life of a small-city librarian. I shelve books; I make out library cards for new patrons; I turn off the microfilm readers careless users sometimes leave on; I joke with Carole Danner about how much I would like to go to bed with her, and she jokes back about how much she'd like to go to bed with me, and both of us know that she's really joking and I'm really not, just as both of us know that she won't stay in a little place like Derry for long and I will be here until I die, taping torn pages in Business Week, s i t t i n g d o w n a t m o n t h l y a c q u i s i t i o n m e e t i n g s w i t h m y pipe in one hand and a stack of Library Journals in the other . . . and waking in the middle of the night with my fists jammed against my mouth to keep in the screams.