It

seat on his Raleigh. Beverly came down Neibolt Street on her girl’s Schwinn, her red hair held back from her forehead by a green band. It streamed out behind her. Mike came by himself, and about five minutes later Stan and Eddie walked up together.
‘H-H-How’s your a-a-arm, Eh-Eh –Eddie?’
‘Aw, not too bad. Hurts if I roll over on that side while I’m sleeping. Did you bring the stuff?’
There was a canvas-wrapped bundle in Silver’s bike-basket. Bill took it out and unwrapped it. He handed the slingshot to Beverly, who took it with a little grimace but said nothing. There was also a tin Sucrets box in the bundle. Bill opened it and showed them the two silver balls. They looked at them silently, gathered close together on the balding lawn on 29 Neibolt Street — a lawn where only weeds seemed to grow. Bill, Richie, and Eddie had seen the house before; the others hadn’t, and they looked at it curiously.
The windows look tike eyes, Stan thought, and his hand went to the paperback book in his back pocket. He touched it for luck. He carried the book with him almost everywhere — it was M. K. Handey’s Guide to North American Birds. They look like dirty blind eyes. It stinks, Beverly thought. I can smell it — but not with my nose, not exactly.
Mike thought, It’s like that time out where the Ironworks used to be. It has the same feel . . . as if it’s telling us to step on in.
This is one of Its places, all right, Ben thought. One of the places like the Morlock holes, where It goes out and comes back in. And It knows we’re out here. It’s waiting for us to come in.
‘Yuh-yuh –you all still want to?’ Bill asked.
They looked back at him, pale and solemn. No one said no. Eddie fumbled his aspirator out of his pocket and took a long whooping gasp at it.
‘Gimme some of that,’ Richie said.
Eddie looked at him, surprised, waiting for the punchline.
Richie held out his hand. ‘No fake, Jake. Can I have some?’
Eddie shrugged with his good shoulder — an oddly disjointed movement — and handed it over. Richie triggered the aspirator and breathed deep. ‘Needed that,’ he said, and handed it back. He was coughing a little, but his eyes were sober.
‘Me too,’ Stan said. ‘Okay?’
So one after another they used Eddie’s aspirator. When it came back to him, Eddie jammed it in his back pocket, where the nozzle stuck out. They turned to look at the house again.
‘Does anybody live on this street?’ Beverly asked in a low voice.
‘Not this end of it,’ Mike said. ‘Not anymore. I guess there are still bums sometimes. Guys that come through on the freights.’
‘They wouldn’t see anything,’ Stan said. ‘They’d be safe. Most of them, anyway.’ He looked at Bill. ‘Can any grownups at all see It, do you think,
Bill?’
‘I don’t nuh-know,’ Bill said. ‘There must be suh-suh-some.’
‘I wish we could meet one,’ Richie said glumly. ‘This really isn’t a job for kids, you know what I mean?’
Bill knew. Whenever the Hardy Boys got into trouble, Fenton Hardy was around to bail them out. Same with Rick Brant’s dad in the Rick Brant Science Adventures. Shit, even Nancy Drew had a father who would show up in the nick of time if the bad guys tied her up and threw her into an abandoned mine or something.
‘Ought to be a grownup along,’ Richie said, looking at the closed house with hs peeling paint, its duty windows, its shadowy porch. He sighed tiredly. For a moment, Ben felt their resolution falter.
Then Bill said, ‘Cuh-cuh –home a-a-a-around h-here. Look at th-this.’
They walked around to the left side of the porch, where the skirting was torn off. The brambly, run-to-the-wild roses were still there . . . and those It had touched when It climbed out were still black and dead.
‘It just touched them and it did that? ‘ Beverly asked, horrified.
Bill nodded. ‘Are you guh-huys s-s-sure?
For a moment nobody replied. They weren’t sure; even though all of them knew by Bill’s face that he would go on without them, they weren’t sure. There was also a species of shame on Bill’s face. As he had told them before, George hadn’t been their brother.
But all the other kids,