So when Mr Keene said, 'Hello, Billy Denbrough, can I help you?,' Bill took a folder advertising vitamins, turned it over, and wrote on the back: Eddie Kaspbrak and I were

playing in the Barrens. He's got a bad assmar attack, I mean he can hardly breath. Canyon give me a refill on his asspirador?

He pushed this note across the glass-topped counter to Mr Keene, who read it, looked at Bill's anxious blue eyes, and said, 'Of course. Wait right here, and don't be handling anything you shouldn't.'

Bill shifted impatiently from one foot to the other while Mr Keene was behind the rear counter. Although he was back there less than five minutes, it seemed an age before he returned with one of Eddie's plastic squeeze-bottles. He handed it over to Bill, smiled, and said, This should take care of the problem.'

'Th– th– th– thanks,' Bill said. 'I don't h– have a– any m-m– muh-m u h — '

'That's all right, son. Mrs Kaspbrak has an account here. I'll just add this on. I'm sure she'll want to thank you for your kindness.'

Bill, much relieved, thanked Mr Keene and left quickly. Mr Keene came around the counter to watch him go. He saw Bill toss the aspirator into his bike-basket and mount clumsily. Can he actually ride a bike that big? Mr Keene wondered. I doubt it. I doubt it very much. But the Denbrough kid somehow got it going without falling on his head, and pedaled slowly away. The bike, which looked to Mr Keene like somebody's idea of a joke, wobbled madly from side to side. The aspirator rolled back and forth in the basket.

Mr Keene grinned a little. If Bill had seen that grin, it might have gone a good way toward confirming his idea that Mr Keene wa s not exactly one of the world's champion nice guys. It was sour, the grin of a man who has found much to wonder about but almost nothing to uplift in the human condition. Yes — he would add Eddie's asthma medication to Sonia Kaspbrak's bill, and as always she would be surprised — and suspicious rather than grateful — at how cheap the medication was. Other drugs were so dear, she said. Mrs Kaspbrak, Mr Keene knew, was one of those people who believed nothing cheap could do a person much good. He could really have soaked her for her son's HydrOx Mist, and there had been times when he had been tempted . . . but why should he make himself a party to the woman's foolishness? It wasn't as though he were going to starve.

Cheap? Oh my, yes. HydrOx Mist (Administer as needed typed neatly on the gummed label he pasted on each aspirator bottle) was wonderfully cheap, but even Mrs Kaspbrak was willing to admit that it controlled her son's asthma quite well in spite of that fact. It was cheap because it was nothing but a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, with a dash of camphor added to give the mist a faint medicinal taste.

In other words, Eddie's asthma medicine was tapwater.

7

It took Bill longer to get back, because he was going uphill. In several places he had to dismount and push Silver. He simply didn't have the musclepower necessary to keep the bike going up more than mild slopes.

By the time he had stashed his bike and made his way back to the stream, it was ten past four. All sorts of black suppositions were crossing his mind. The Hanscom kid would have deserted, leaving Eddie to die. Or the bullies could have backtracked and beaten the shit out of both of them. Or . . . worst of all . . . the man whose business was murdering kids might have gotten one or both of them. As he had gotten George.

He knew there had been a great deal of gossip and speculation about that. Bill had a bad stutter, but he wasn't deaf — although people sometimes seemed to think he must be, since he spoke only when absolutely necessary. Some people felt that the murder of his brother wasn't related at all to the murders of Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, Matthew Clements, and

Veronica Grogan. Others claimed that George, Ripsom, and Lamonica had been killed by one man, and the other two were the work of a 'copy-cat killer.' A third school of thought held that the boys had been killed by one man, the girls by another.

Bill believed they had all been killed by the same person . . . if it was a person. He sometimes wondered about that. As he sometimes wondered about his feelings concerning Derry this summer. Was it still the aftermath of George's death, the way his parents seemed to ignore him now, so lost in their grief over their younger son that they couldn't see the simple fact that Bill was still alive, and might be hurting himself? Those things combined with the other murders? The voices that sometimes seemed to speak in his head now, whispering to him (and surely they were not variations of his own voice, for these voices did not stutter — they were quiet, but they were sure), advising him to do certain things but not others? Was it those things which made Derry seem somehow different now? Somehow threatening, with unexplored streets that did not invite but seemed instead to yawn in a kind of ominous silence? That made some faces look secret and frightened?

He didn't know, but he believed — as he believed all the murders were the work of a single agency — that Derry really had changed, and that his brother's death had signalled the beginning of that change. The black suppositions in his head came from the lurking idea that anything could happen in Derry now. Anything.

But when he came around the last bend, all looked cool. Ben Hanscom was still there, sitting besid e Eddie. Eddie himself was sitting up now, his hands dangling in his lap, head bent, still wheezing. The sun had sunk low enough to project long green shadows across the stream.

'Boy, that was quick,' Ben said, standing up. 'I didn't expect you for another half an hour.'

'I got a f-f-fast b-bike,' Bill said with some pride. For a moment the two of them looked at each other cautiously, warily. Then Ben smiled tentatively, and Bill smiled back. The kid was fat, but he seemed okay. And he had stayed put. That must have taken some guts, with Henry and his j.d. friends maybe still wandering around out there someplace.

Bill winked at Eddie, who was looking at him with dumb gratitude. 'H-Here you g-go, E– E-E-Eddie.' He tossed him the aspirator. Eddie plunged it into his open mouth, triggered it, and gasped convulsively. Then he leaned back, eyes shut. Ben watched this with concern.

'Jeez! He's really got it bad, doesn't he?'

Bill nodded.

'I was scared there for awhile,' Ben said in a low voic e. 'I was wonderin what to do if he had a convulsion, or something. I kept tryin to remember the stuff they told us in that Red Cross assembly we had in April. All I could come up with was put a stick in his mouth so he wouldn't bite his tongue off.'

'I think that's for eh-eh-hepileptics.'

'Oh. Yeah, I guess you're right.'

'He w– won't have a c– c– convulsion, anyway,' Bill said. 'That m– m– medicine will f– f i x h i m right up. Luh-Luh-Look.'

Eddie's labored breathing had eased. He opened his eyes and looked up at them.

'Thanks, Bill,' he said. 'That one was a real pisswah.'

'I guess it started when they creamed your nose, huh?' Ben asked.

Eddie laughed ruefully, stood up, and stuck the aspirator in his back pocket. 'Wasn't even thinking about my nose. Was thinking about my mom.'

'Yeah? Really?' Ben sounded surprised, but his hand went to the rags of his sweatshirt and began fiddling there nervously.

'She's gonna take one look at the blood on my shirt and have me down to the Mergency Room at Derry Home in about five seconds.'

'Why?' Ben asked. 'It stopped, didn't it? Gee, I remember this kid I was in kindergarten with, Scooter Morgan, and he got a bloody nose when he fell off the monkey bars. They took him to the Mergency Room, but only because it kept bleeding.'