It

that had been the bases when the big kids played here.
They whirled and twirled in the still air; he had to duck to avoid one of them. They settled in the ir accustomed places all at once, kicking up little puffs of grit: home, first, second, third.
Gasping, his breath short in his throat, Eddie ran past home plate, his lips drawn back, his face as white as cottage cheese.
WHACK! The sound of a bat hitting a phantom ball. And then —
Eddie stopped, the strength going out of his legs, a groan passing his lips. The ground was bulging in a straight line from home to first, as if a gigantic gopher was tunneling rapidly just below the surface of the ground. Gravel rolled off to either side. The shape under the earth reached the base and the canvas flipped up into the air. It went up so hard and fast it made a popping sound — the sound a shoeshine kid makes when he’s feeling good and pops the rag. The ground began to ridge between first and second, racing and racing. Second base flew into the air with a similar popping sound and had barely settled back before the shape under the ground had reached third and was racing for home.
Home plate flew up as well, but before it could come down the thing had popped out of the ground like some grisly party-favor, and the thing was Tony Tracker, his face a skull to which a few blackened chunks of flesh still clung, his white shirt a mess of rotted linen strings. He poked out of the earth at home plate from the waist up, swaying back and forth like a grotesque worm.
‘Don’t matter how much you choke up on that ash-handle,’ Tony Tracker said in a gritty, grinding voice. Exposed teeth grinned in lunatic chumminess. ‘Don’t matter, Wheezy. We’ll get you. You and your friends. We’ll have a BAWL!’
Eddie shrieked and staggered away. There was a hand on his shoulder. He shrank away from it. The hand tightened for a moment, then gave way. He turned. It was Greta Bowie. She was dead. Half of her face was gone; maggots crawled in the churned red meat that was left. She held a green balloon in one hand.
‘Car crash,’ the recognizable half of her mouth said, and grinned. The grin caused an unspeakable ripping sound, and Eddie could see raw tendons moving like terrible straps. ‘I was eighteen, Eddie. Drunk and done up on reds. Your friends are here, Eddie.’
Eddie backed away from her, his hands held up in front of his face. She walked toward him. Blood had splashed, then dried on her legs in long splotches. She was wearing penny-loafers.
And now, beyond her, he saw the ultimate horror: Patrick Hockstetter was shambling toward him across the outfield. He too was wearing a New York Yankees uniform.
Eddie ran. Greta clutched at him again, tearing his shirt and spilling some terrible liquid down the back of his collar. Tony Tracker was pulling himself out of his man-sized gopher-run. Patrick Hockstetter stumbled and staggered. Eddie ran, not knowing where he was find ing the breath to run, but running somehow anyway. And as he ran, he saw words floating in front of him, the words that had been printed on the side of the green balloon Greta Bowie had been holding:
ASTHMA MEDICINE CAUSES LUNG CANCER ! COMPLIMENTS OF CENTER STREET DRUG
Eddie ran. He ran and ran and at some point he collapsed in a dead faint near McCarron Park and some kids saw him and steered clear of him because he looked like a wino to them like he might have some kind of weird disease for all they knew he might even be the killer and they talked about reporting him to the police but in the end they didn’t.
3
Bev Rogan Pays a Call
Beverly walked absently down Main Street from the Derry Town House, where she had gone to change into a pair of bluejeans and a bright yellow smock– blouse. She was not thinking about where she was going. Instead she thought this:
Your hair is winter fire,
January embers.
My heart bums there, too.
She had hidden that in her bottom drawer, beneath her underwear. Her mother might have seen it, but that was all right. The important thing was, that was one drawer her father never looked in. If he had seen it, he might have looked at her with that bright, almost friendly, and utterly paralyzing stare of his and asked in h is almost friendly way: ‘You been doing something you shouldn’t be doing, Bev? You been doing something with some boy?’ And if she said yes or if she said no, there would be a quick wham-bam, so quick and so hard it didn’t even hurt at first — it took a few seconds for the vacuum to dissipate and the pain to
fill the place were the vacuum had been. Then his voice again, almost friendly: ‘I worry