It

now that it had happened, now that the voice had come, Henry found that he was calm and unafraid. Relieved, even.
‘Henry,’ Victor said.
‘Vie!’ Henry cried. ‘What you doing under there?’
Benny Beaulieu snorted and muttered in his sleep. Jimmy’s neat nasal sewing-machine inhales and exhales paused for a moment. In the hall, the volume on Koontz’s small Sony was turned down and Henry Bowers could sense him, head cocked to one side, one hand on the TV’s volume knob, the fingers of the other hand touching the cylinder which bulged in the righthand pocket of his whites — the roll of quarters.
‘You don’t have to talk out loud, Henry,’ Vie said. ‘I can hear you if you just think. And they can’t hear me at all.’
What do you want, Vie? Henry asked.
There was no reply for a long time. Henry thought that maybe Vie had gone away. Outside the door the volume of Koontz’s TV went up again. Then there was a scratching noise from under the bed; the springs squealed slightly as a dark shadow pulled itself out from under. Vie looked up at him and grinned. Henry grinned back uneasily. Ole Vie was looking a little bit like the Frankenstein-monster himself these days. A scar like a hangrope tattoo circled his neck. Henry thought maybe that was where his head had been sewed back on. His eyes were a weird gray-green color, and the corneas seemed to float on a watery viscous substance.
Vie was still twelve.
‘I want the same thing you want,’ Vie said. ‘I want to pay em back.’
Pay em back, Henry Bowers said dreamily.
‘But you’ll have to get out of here to do it,’ Vie said. ‘You’ll have to go back to Derry. I need you, Henry. We all need you.’
They can’t hurt You, Henry said, understanding he was talking to more than Vie.
They can’t hurt Me if they only half-believe,’ Vie said. ‘But there have been some distressing signs, Henry. We didn’t think they could beat us back then, either. Bu t the fatboy got away from you in the Barrens. The fatboy and the smartmouth and the quiff got away from us that day after the movies. And the rockfight, when they saved the nigger — ‘
Don’t talk about that! Henry shouted at Vie, and for a moment all of the peremptory hardness that had made him their leader was in his voice. Then he cringed, thinking Vie would hurt him — surely Vie could do whatever he wanted, since he was a ghost — but Vie only grinned.
‘I can take care of them if they only half-believe,’ he said, ‘but you’re alive, Henry. You can get them no matter if they believe, half-believe, or don’t believe at all. You can get them one by one or all at once. You can pay em back.’
Pay em back, Henry repeated. Then he looked at Vie doubtfully again. But I can’t get out of here, Vie. There’s wire on the windows and Koontz is on the door tonight. Koontz is the worst. Maybe tomorrow night . . .
‘Don’t worry about Koontz,’ Vie said, standing up. Henry saw he was still wearing the jeans he ha d been wearing that day, and that they were still splattered with drying sewer-muck. ‘I’ll take care of Koontz.’ Vie held out his hand.
After a moment Henry took it. He and Vie walked toward the Blue Ward door and the sound of the TV. They were almost there when Jimmy Donlin, who had eaten his mother’s brains, woke up. His eyes widened as he saw Henry’s late-night visitor. It was his mother. Her slip was showing just a quarter-inch or so, as it always had. The top of her head was gone. Her eyes, horribly red, rolled toward him, and when she grinned, Jimmy saw the lipstick smears on her yellow, horsy teeth as he always had. Jimmy began to shriek. ‘No, Ma! No, Ma! No Ma!’
The TV went off at once, and even before the others could begin to stir, Koontz was jerking the door open and saying, ‘Okay, asshole, get ready to catch your head on the rebound. I’ve had it.’
‘No, Ma! No, Ma! Please, Ma! No, Ma — ‘
Koontz came rushing in. First he saw Bowers, standing tall and paunchy and nearly ridiculous in his johnny, his loose flesh doughy in the light spilling in from the corridor. Then he looked left and screamed out two lungfuls of silent spun glass. Standing by Bowers was a thing in a clown suit. It stood perhaps eight feet tall. Its suit was silvery. Orange pompoms ran down the front. There were oversized funny shoes on its feet. But its head was not that of a man or a clown; it was the head of a Doberman pinscher, the only animal on God’s green earth of which John Koontz was frightened. Its eyes were red. Its silky muzzle wrinkled back to show huge white teeth.
A cylinder of quarters fell from Koontz’s nerveless fingers and rolled across the floor and into the corner. Late the following day Benny Beaulieu, who slept through