It

open. He shut it and said, ‘If you’re kidding, say so. I still . . . I still dream about that guy under the porch.’
‘It’s not a joke,’ Ben said, and began to tell the story. He told it slowly, beginning with his volunteering to help Mrs Douglas count and store books and ending with his own bad dreams. He spoke slowly, not looking at the others. He spoke as if deeply ashamed of his own behavior. He didn’t raise his head again until the story was over.
‘You must have dreamed it,’ Richie said finally. He saw Ben wince and hurried on: ‘Now don’t take it personal, Big Ben, but you got to see that balloons can’t, like, float against the wind — ‘
‘Pictures can’t wink, either,’ Ben said.
Richie looked from Ben to Bill, troubled. Accusing Ben of dreaming awake was one thing; accusing Bill was something else. Bill was their leader, the guy they all looked up to. No one said so out loud; no one needed to. But Bill was the idea man, the guy who could think of something to do on a boring day, the guy who remembered games the others had forgotten. And in some odd way they all sensed something comfortingly adult about Bill — perhaps it was a sense of accountability, a feeling that Bill would take the responsibility if responsi b i l i t y needed to be taken. The truth was, Richie believed Bill’s story, crazy as it was. And perhaps he didn’t want to believe Ben’s . . . or Eddie’s, for that matter.
‘Nothing like that ever happened to you, huh?’ Eddie asked Richie.
Richie paused, began to say something, shook his head, paused again, then said: ‘Scariest thing I’ve seen lately was Mark Prenderlist takin a leak in McCarron Park. Ugliest hogger you ever saw.’
Ben said, ‘What about you, Stan?’
‘No,’ Stan said quickly, and lo oked somewhere else. His small face was pale, his lips pressed together so tightly they were white.
‘W-W-Was there suh-homething, S-St-Stan?’ Bill asked.
‘No, I told you!’ Stan got to his feet and walked to the embankment, hands in his pockets. He stood watching the water course over the top of the original dam and pile up behind the second Watergate.
‘Come on, now, Stanley!’ Richie said in a shrill falsetto. This was another of his Voices: Granny Grunt. When speaking in his Granny Grunt Voice, Richie would hobble around with one fist against the small of his back, and cackle a lot. He still, however, sounded more like Richie Tozier than anyone else.
‘Fess up, Stanley, tell your old Granny about the baaaaad clown and I’ll give you a chocker-chip cookie. You just tell — ‘
‘Shut up!’ Stan yelled suddenly, whirling on Richie, who fell back a step or two, astonished. ‘Just shut up!’
‘Yowza, boss,’ Richie said, and sat down. He looked at Stan Uris mistrust fully. Bright spots of color flame d in Stan’s cheeks, but he still looked more scared than mad.
‘That’s okay,’ Eddie said quietly. ‘Never mind, Stan.’
‘It wasn’t a clown,’ Stanley said. His eyes flicked from one of them to the next to the next to the next. He seemed to struggle with himself.
‘Y-Y-You can t-tell,’ Bill said, also speaking quietly. ‘W –We d-d-did.’
‘It wasn’t a clown. It was — ‘
Which was when the carrying, whiskey– roughened tones of Mr Nell interrup ted, making them all jump as if they had been shot: ‘Jay-sus Christ on a jumped-up chariot-driven crutch! Look at this mess! Jaysus Christ!’

1
Richard Tozier turns off the radio, which has been blaring out Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ on WZON (a station which declares itself to be ‘Banger’s AM stereo rocker!’ with a kind of hysterical frequency), pulls over to the side of the road, shuts down the engine of the Mustang the Avis people rented him at Bangor International, and gets out. He hears the pull and release of his own breath in his ears. He has seen a sign which has caused the flesh of his back to break out in hard ridges of gooseflesh.
He walks to the front of the car and puts one hand on its hood. He hears the engine ticking softly to itself as it cools. He hears a jay scream briefly and then shut up. There are crickets. And as far as the soundtrack goes, that’s it.