It

of a dream. It’ll recede and fall apart, he thought, the way that bad dreams do. You wake up gasping and sweating all over, but fifteen minutes later you can’t remember what the dream was even about.
But that didn’t happen. Everything that had happened, from the time he had forced his way in through the cellar window to the moment Bill had used th e chair in the kitchen to break a window so they could get out, remained bright and clearly fixed in his memory. It had not been a dream. The clotted wound on his chest and belly was not a dream, and it didn’t matter if his mom could see it or not.
At last Beverly stood up. ‘I have to go home,’ she said. ‘I want to change before my mom gets home. If she sees me wearing a boy’s shirt, she’ll kill me.’
‘Keel you, senhorrita,’ Richie agreed, ‘but she will keel you slow. ‘
‘Beep-beep, Richie.’
Bill was looking at her gravely.
‘I’ll return your shirt, Bill.’
He nodded and waved a hand to show that this wasn’t important.
‘Will you get in trouble? Coming home without it?’
‘N-No. They h-h-hardly nuh-hotice when I’m a-a-around, anyway.’
She nodded, bit her full underlip, a girl of eleven who was tall for her age and simply beautiful.
‘What happens next, Bill?’
‘I d-d-don’t nuh-nuh –know.’
‘It’s not over, is it?’
Bill shook his head.
Ben said, ‘It’ll want us more than ever now.’
‘More silver slugs?’ she asked him. He found he could barely stand to meet her glance. Ilove you, Beverly . . . just let me have that. You can have Bill, or the world, or whatever you need. Just let me have that, let me go on loving you, and I guess it’ll be enough.
‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘We could, but . . . ‘ He trailed off vaguely, shrugged. He could not say what he felt, was somehow not able to bring it out — that this was like being in a monster movie, but it wasn’t. The Mummy had looked different in some ways . . . ways that confirmed its essential reality. The same was true of the Werewolf — he could testify to that because he had seen it in a paralyzing close-up no film, not even one in 3-D, allowed, he had had his hands in the wiry underbrush of Its tangled pelt, he had seen a small, baleful-orange firespot (like a pompom!) in one of Its green eyes. These things were . . . well . . . they were dreams-made-real. And once dreams became real, they escaped the power of the dreamer and became their own deadly things, capable of independent action. The silver slugs had worked because the seven of them had been unified in their belief that they would. But they hadn’t killed It. And next time It would approach them in a new shape, one over which silver wielded no power.
Power, power, Ben thought, looking at Beverly. It was okay now; her eyes had met Bill’s again and they were looking at each other as if lost. It was only for a moment, but to Ben it seemed very long.
It always comes back to power. I love Beverly Marsh and she has power over me. She loves Bill Denbrough and so he has power over her. But — I think — he is coming to love her. Maybe it was her face, how it looked when she said she couldn’t help being a girl. Maybe it was seeing one breast for just a second. Maybe just the way she looks sometimes when the light is right, or her eyes. Doesn’t matter. But if he’s starting to love her, she’s starting to have power over him. Superman has power, except when there’s Kryptonite around. Batman has power, even though he can’t fly or see through walls. My mom has power over me, and her boss down in the mill has power over her. Everyone has some . . . except maybe for link kids and babies.