It

I a-asked.’
He started to walk away and had gotten maybe twelve steps — he was headed up the hill, vaguely thinking he would take a look at the home place — when the kid called, ‘Mister?’
Bill turned back. He had his sportcoat hooked on his finger and slung over his shoulder. His collar was unbuttoned, his tie loosened. The boy was watching him carefully, as if already regretting his decision to speak further. Then he shrugged, as if saying Oh what the hell.
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did it say?’
‘I don’t know. It talked some foreign language. I heard it coming out of one of those pumpin stations down in the Barrens. One of those pumpin stations, they look like pipes coming out of the ground — ‘
‘I know what you mean. Was it a kid you heard?’
‘At first it was a kid, then it sounded like a man.’ The boy paused. ‘I was some scared. I ran home and told my father. He said maybe it was an echo or something, coming all the way down the pipes from someone’s house.’
‘Do you believe that?’
The boy smiled charmingly. ‘I read in my Ripley’s Believe It or Not book that there was this guy, he got music from his teeth. Radio music. His fillings were, like, little radios. I guess if I believed that, I could believe anything.’
‘A-Ayuh,’ Bill said. ‘But did you believe it?’
The boy reluctantly shook his head.
‘Did you ever hear those voices again?’
‘Once when I was taking a bath,’ the boy said. ‘It was a girl’s voice. Just crying. No words. I was ascared to pull the plug when I was done because I thought I might, you know, drownd her.’
Bill nodded again.
The kid was looking at Bill openly now, his eyes shining and fascinated. ‘You know about those voices, mister?’
‘I heard them,’ Bill said. ‘A long, long time ago. Did you know any of the k-kids that have been murdered here, son?’
The shine went out of the kid’s eyes; it was replaced by caution and disquiet. ‘My dad says I’m not supposed to talk to strangers. He says anybody could be that killer.’ He took an additional step away from Bill, moving into the dappled shade of an elm tree that Bill had once driven his bike into twenty-seven years ago. He had taken a spill and bent his handlebars.
‘Not me, kid,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in England for the last four months. I just got into Derry yesterday.’
‘I still don’t have to talk to you,’ the kid replied.
‘That’s right,’ Bill agreed. ‘It’s a f-f-free country.’
He paused and then said, ‘I used to pal around with Johnny Feury some of the time. He was a good kid. I cried,’ the boy finished matter-of-factly, and slurped down the rest of his Freeze –Pop. As an afterthought he ran out his tongue, which was temporarily bright orange, and lapped off his arm.
‘Keep away from the sewers and drains,’ Bill said quietly. ‘Keep away from empty places and deserted places. Stay out of trainyards. But most of all, stay away from the sewers and the drains.’
The shine was back in the kid’s eyes, and he said nothing for a very long time. Then: ‘Mister? You want to hear something funny?’
‘Sure.’
‘You know that movie where the shark ate all the people up?’
‘Everyone does. J-J– Jaws’
‘Well, I got this friend, you know? His name’s Tommy Vicananza, and he’s not that bright. Toys in the attic, you get what I mean?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He thinks he saw that shark in the Canal. He was up there by himself in Bassey Park a couple of weeks ago, an d he said he seen this fin. He says it was eight or nine feet tall. Just the fin was that tall, you get me? He goes, «That’s what killed Johnny and the other kids. It was Jaws, I know because I saw it.» So I go, «That Canal’s so polluted nothing could live in it, not even a minnow. And you think you saw Jaws in there. You got toys in the attic, Tommy.» Tommy says it reared right out of the water like it did at the end of that movie and tried to bite him and he just got back in time. Pretty funny, huh, mister?’
‘Pretty funny,’ Bill agreed.
‘Toys in the attic, right?’
Bill hesitated. ‘Stay away from the Canal too, son. You follow?’
‘You mean you believe it?’
Bill hesitated. He meant to shrug. Instead he nodded.
The kid let out his breath in a low, hissing rush. He hung his head as if ashamed. ‘Yeah. Sometimes I think I must have toys in the attic.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Bill walked over to the kid, who glanced up at him solemnly but didn’t shy away this time. ‘You’re killing your knees on that board, son.’
The kid glanced down at his scabby knees and grinned. ‘Yeah, I guess so. I bail out sometimes.’
‘Can I try it?’ Bill asked suddenly.
The kid looked at him, gape-mouthed