Bright posters were tacked everywhere. Here was a good cartoon kid who had brushed his teeth until his mouth foamed like the muzzle of a mad dog; here was a bad cartoon kid who was smoking cigarettes (WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE SICK A LO T, JUST LIKE MY DAD, it said underneath); here was a wonderful photograph of a billion tiny pinpoints of light flaring in darkness. The motto beneath said:

ONE IDEA LIGHTS A THOUSAND CANDLES.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There were invitations to JOIN THE SCOUTING EX PERIENCE. A poster advancing the idea that THE GIRLS' CLUBS OF TODAY BUILD THE WOMEN OF TOMORROW. There were softball sign-up sheets and Community House Children's Theater sign-up sheets. And, of course, one inviting kids to JOIN THE SUMMER READING PROGRAM . Ben was a big fan of the summer reading

program. You got a map of the United States when you signed up. Then, for every book you read and made a report on, you got a state sticker to lick and put on your map. The sticker came complete with info like the state bird, the state flower, the year admitted to the Union, and what presidents, if any, had ever come from that state. When you got all forty-eight stuck on your map, you got a free book. Helluva good deal. Ben planned to do just as the poster suggested: 'Waste no time, sign up today.'

Conspicuous amid this bright and amiable riot of color was a simple stark poster taped to the checkout desk — no cartoons or fancy photographs here, just black print on white poster-paper reading:

REMEMBER THE CURFEW.

7 P.M.

DERRY POLICE DEPARTMENT

Just looking at it gave Ben a chill. In the excitement of getting his rank-card, worrying about Henry Bowers, talking with Beverly, and starting summer vacation, he had forgotten all about the curfew, and the murders.

People argued about how many there had been, but everyone agreed that there had been at least four since last winter — five if you counted George Denbrough (many held the opinion that the little Denbrough boy's death must have been some kind of bizarre freak accident). The first everyone was sure of was Betty Ripsom, who had been found the day after Christmas in the area of turnpike construction on Outer Jackson Street. The girl, who was thirteen, had been found mutilated and frozen into the muddy earth. This had not been in the paper, nor was it a thing any adult had spoken of to Ben. It was just something he had picked up around the corners of overheard conversations.

About three and a half months later, not long after the trout-fishing season had begun, a fisherman working the bank of a stream twenty miles east of Derry had hooked onto something he believed at first to be a stick. It had turned out to be the ha nd, wrist, and first four inches of a girl's forearm. His hook had snagged this awful trophy by the web of flesh between the thumb and first finger.

The State Police had found the rest of Cheryl Lamonica seventy yards farther downstream, caught in a tree that had fallen across the stream the previous winter. It was only luck that the body had not been washed into the Penobscot and then out to sea in the spring runoff.

The Lamonica girl had been sixteen. She was from Derry but did not attend school; three years before she had given birth to a daughter, Andrea. She and her daughter lived at home with Cheryl's parents. 'Cheryl was a little wild sometimes but she was a good girl at heart,' her sobbing father had told police. 'Andi keeps asking "Where's my mommy?" and I don't know what to tell her.'

The girl had been reported missing five weeks before the body was found. The police investigation of Cheryl Lamonica's death began with a logical enough assumption: that she had been murdered by one of her boyfriends. She had lots of boyfriends. Many were from the air base up Bangor way. 'They were nice boys, most of them,' Cheryl's mother said. One of the 'nice boys' had been a forty-year-old Air Force colonel with a wife and three children in New Mexico. Another was currently serving time in Shawshank for armed robbery.

A boyfriend, the police thought. Or just possibly a stranger. A sexfiend.

If it was a sexfiend, he was apparently a fiend for boys as well. In late April a junior-high teacher on a nature walk with his eighth-grade class had spied a pair of red sneakers and a pair of blue corduroy rompers protruding from the mouth of a culvert on Merit Street. That end of Merit had been blocked off with sawhorses. The asphalt had been bulldozed up the previous fall. The turnpike extension would cross there as well on its way north to Bangor.

The body had been that of three-year-old Matthew Clements, reported missing by his parents only the day before (his picture had been on the front page of the Derry News, a dark-haired little kid grinning brashly into the camera, a Red Sox cap perched on his head). The Clements family lived on Kansas Street, all the way on the other side of town. His mother, so stunned by her grief that she seemed to exist in a glass ball of utter calm, told police that Matty had been riding his tricycle up and down the sidewalk beside the house, which stood on the corner of Kansas Street and Kossuth Lane. She went to put her washing in the drier, and when she next looked out the window to check on Matty, he was gone. There had only been his overturned trike on the grass between the sidewalk and the street. One of the back wheels was still spinning lazily. As she looked, it came to a stop.

That was enough for Chief Borton. He proposed the seven o'clock curfew at a special session of the City Council the following evening; it was adopted unanimously and went into effect the next day. Small children were to be watched by a 'qualified adult' at all times, according to the story which reported the curfew in the News. At Ben's school there had been a special assembly a month ago. The Chief went on stage, hooked his thumbs into his gunbelt, and assured the children they had nothing at all to worry about as long as they followed a few simple rules: don't talk to strangers, don't accept rides with people unless you know them well, always remember that The Policeman Is Your Friend . . . and obey the curfew.

Two weeks ago a boy Ben knew only vaguely (he was in the other fifth-grade classroom at Derry Elementary) had looked into one of the stormdrains out by Neibolt Street and had seen what looked like a lot of hair floating around in there. This boy, whose name was either Frankie or Freddy Ross (or maybe Roth), had been out prospecting fo r goodies with a gadget of his own invention, which he called THE FABULOUS GUM-STICK. When he talked about it you could tell he thought about it like that, in capital letters (and maybe neon, as well). THE FABULOUS GUM – STICK was a birch branch with a big wad of bubble – gum stuck on the tip. In his spare time Freddy (or Frankie) walked around Derry with it, peering into sewers and drains. Sometimes he saw money — pennies mostly, but sometimes a dime or even a quarter (he referred to these latter, for some reason known only to him, as 'quay-monsters'). Once the money was spotted, Frankie-or-Freddy and THE FABULOUS GUM –STICK would swing into action. One downward poke through the grating and the coin was as good as in his pocket.

Ben had heard rumors of Frankie –or-Freddy and his gum stick long before the kid had vaulted into the limelight by discovering the body of Veronica Grogan. 'He's really gross,' a kid named Richie Tozier had confided to Ben one day during activity period. Tozier was a scrawny kid who wore glasses. Ben thought that without them Tozier probably saw every bit as well as Mr Magoo; his magnified eyes swam behind the thick lenses with an expression of perpetual surprise. He also had huge front teeth that had earned him the nickname Bucky Beaver. He was in the same fifth-grade class as Freddy-or-Frankie. 'Pokes that gum stick of his down sewerdrains all day long and then chews the gum from the end of it at night.'