It

with a sucking little half-sob, but this time he didn’t cry.
‘And you?’ she asked, looking at Stan Uris.
‘I — ‘
There was sudden silence, making them all start the way a sudden explosion might have done.
‘The wash is done,’ Stan said.
They watched him get up — small, economical, graceful — and open the washer. He pulled out the rags, which were stuck together in a clump, and examined them.
There’s a little stain left,’ he said, ‘but it’s not too bad. Looks like it could be cranberry juice.’
He showed them, and they all nodded gravely, as if over important documents. Beverly felt a relief that was similar to the relief she had felt when the bathroom was clean again. She could stand the faded pastel smear on the peeling wallpaper in there, and she could stand the faint reddish stain on her mother’s cleaning rags. They had done something about it, that seemed to be the important thing. Maybe it hadn’t worked completely, but she discovered it had worked well enough to give her heart peace, and brother, that was good enough for Al Marsh’s daughter Beverly.
Stan tossed them into one of the barrel-shaped dryers and put in two nickels. The dryer started to turn, and Stan came back and took his seat between Eddie and Ben.
For a moment the four of them sat silent again, watching the rags turn and fall, turn and fall. The drone of the gas-fired dryer was soothing, almost soporific. A woman passed by the chocked-open door, wheeling a cart of groceries. She glanced in at them and passed on.
‘I did see something,’ Stan said suddenly. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it, because I wanted to think it was a dream or something. Maybe even a fit, like that Stavier kid has. Any you guys know that kid?’
Ben and Bev shook their heads. Eddie said, The kid who’s got epilepsy?’
‘Yeah, right. That’s how bad it was. I would have rather thought I had something like that than that I saw something . . . really real.’
‘What was it?’ Bev asked, but she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. This was not like listening to ghost-stories around a camp –fire while you ate wieners in toasted buns and cooked marshmallows over the flames until they were black and crinkly. Here they sat in this stifling laundromat and she could see great big dust kitties under the washing machines (ghost-turds, her father called them), she could see dust-motes dancing in the hot shafts of sunlight which fell through the laundromat’s dirty plate –glass window, she could see old magazines with their covers torn off. These were all normal things. Nice and normal and boring. But she was scared. Terribly scared. Because, she sensed, none of these things were made – up storks, made-u p m o n s t e r s : B e n ‘ s m u m m y , Eddie’s leper . . . either or both of them
might be out tonight when the sun went down. Or Bill Denbrough’s brother, one-armed and implacable, cruising through the black drains under the city with silver coins for eyes.
Yet, when Stan did not answer immediately, she asked again: ‘What was it?’
Speaking carefully, Stan said: ‘I was over in that little park where the Standpipe is — ‘
‘Oh God, I don’t like that place,’ Eddie said dolefully. ‘If there’s a haunted house in Derry, that’s it.’
‘What? Stan said sharply. ‘What did you say?’
‘Don’t you know about that place?’ Eddie asked. ‘My mom wouldn’t let me go near there even before the kids started getting killed. She . . . she takes real good care of me.’ He offered them an uneasy grin and held his aspirator tighter in his lap. ‘You see, some kids have been drowned in there. Three or four. They — Stan? Stan, are you all right?’
Stan Uris’s face had gone a leaden gray. His mouth worked soundlessly. His eyes rolled up until the others could only see the bottommost curves of his irises. One hand clutched weakly at empty air and then fell against his thigh.
Eddie did the only thing he could think of. He leaned over, put one thin arm around Stan’s slumping shoulders, jammed his aspirator into Stan’s mouth, and triggered off a big blast.
Stan began to cough and choke and gag. He sat up straight, his eyes back in focus again. He coughed into his cupped hands. At last he uttered a huge, burping gasp and slumped back against his chair.
‘What was that?’ he managed at last.
‘My asthma medicine,’ Eddie said apologetically.
‘God, it tastes like dead dogshit.’
They all laughed at this, but it was nervous laughter. The others were looking nervously at Stan. Thin color now burned in his cheeks.
‘It’s pretty bad, all right,’ Eddie said with some pride.
‘Yeah, but is it kosher?’ Stan said, and they all laughed again, although none of them (including Stan) really knew what ‘kosher’ meant.
Stan stopped laughing