It

burst into tears.
Richie patted her clumsily on the shoulder and Bill put a hand on the back of her neck. She reached around at once, took it, squeezed it.
Richie managed to sit up. The world began to swim in waves. When it steadied down he saw Mike leaning against a tree nearby, his face dazed and ashy-pale.
‘Did I puke?’ Richie asked Bev.
She nodded, still crying.
In a croaking, stumbling Irish Cop’s Voice, he asked, ‘Get any on ye, darlin?’
Bev laughed through her tears and shook her head. ‘I turned you on your side. I was afraid . . . a-a-afraid you’d ch-ch-choke on it.’ She began to cry hard again.
‘Nuh-Nuh-No f-fair,’ Bill said, still holding her hand. ‘I-I-I’m the one who stuh-huh –hutters a-around h-here.’
‘Not bad, Big Bill,’ Richie said. He tried to get to his feet and sat down aga in heavily. The world was still swimming. He began to cough and turned his head away, aware that he was going to retch again only a moment before it happened. He threw up a mess of green foam and thick saliva that mostly came out in ropes. He closed his eyes tight and croaked, ‘Anyone want a snack?’
‘Oh shit!’ Ben cried, disgusted and laughing at the same time.
‘Looks more like puke to me,’ Richie said, although, in truth, his eyes were still tightly shut. ‘The shit usually comes out the other end, at least for me. I dunno about you, Haystack.’ When he opened his eyes at last, he saw the clubhouse about twenty yards away. Both the window and the big trapdoor were thrown open. Smoke, thinning now, puffed from both.
This time Richie was able to get to his feet. For a moment he was quite sure he was going to retch again, or faint, or both. ‘Whacko,’ he murmured, watching the world waver and warp in front of his eyes. When the feeling passed, he made his way over to where Mike was. Mike’s eyes were still weasel-red, and from the dampness on his pants cuffs, Richie thought that maybe ole Mikey had taken a ride on the stomach-elevator, too.
‘For a white boy you did pretty good,’ Mike croaked, and punched Richie weakly on the shoulder.
Richie was at a loss for words — a condition of exquisite rarity.
Bill came over. The others came with him.
‘You pulled us out?’ Richie asked.
‘M-Me and Buh-Ben. Y-You were scuh-scuh-rheaming. B-Both of y-y-you. B-B-But — ‘ He looked over at Ben.
Ben said, ‘It must have been the smoke, Bill.’ But there was no conviction in the big boy’s voice at all.
Flatly, Richie said: ‘You mean what I think you mean?’
Bill shrugged. ‘W-W-What’s th-that, Rih –Richie?’
Mike answered. ‘We weren’t there at first, were we? You went down because you heard us screaming, but at first we weren’t there.’
‘It was really smoky,’ Ben said. ‘Hearing you both screaming that way, that was scary enough. But the screaming . . . it sounded . . . well . . . ‘
‘It s-s-sounded very f-f-f-far a-away,’ Bill said. Stuttering badly, he told them that when he and Ben had gone down, they hadn’t been able to see either Richie or Mike. They had gone plunging around in the smoky clubhouse, panicked, scared that if they didn’t act quickly the two boys might die of smoke poisoning. At last Bill had gripped a hand — Richie’s. He had given ‘a huh-huh-hell of a yuh-yank’ and Richie had come flying out of the gloom, only about one-quarter conscious. When Bill turned around he had seen Be n with Mike in a bear-hug, both of them coughing. Ben had thrown Mike up and out through the trapdoor.
Ben listened to all this, nodding.
‘I kept grabbing, you know? Really not doing anything except jabbing my hand out like I wanted to shake hands. You grabbed it, Mike. Damn good thing you grabbed it when you did. I think you were just about gone.’
‘You guys make the clubhouse sound a lot bigger than it is,’ Richie said. ‘Talking about stumbling around in it and all. It’s only five feet on every side.’
There was a moment’s silence while they all looked at Bill, who stood in frowning concentration.
‘It w-w-was b-bigger,’ he said at last. ‘W-W-Wasn’t it, Ben?’
Ben shrugged. ‘It sure seemed like it. Unless it was the smoke.’
‘It wasn’t the smoke,’ Richie said. ‘Just before it happened — before we went out — I remember thinking it was at least as big as a ballroom in a movie. Like one of those musicals. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, something like that. I could barely see Mike against the other wall.’. .
‘Before you went out?’ Beverly asked.
‘Well . . . what I mean . . . like . . . ‘
She grabbed Richie’s arm. ‘It happened, didn’t it? It really happened! You had a vision, just like in Ben’s book!’ Her face was glowing. ‘It really happened?
Richie looked down at himself,