It

foot. Henry tripped over it and went skidding over the footworn tiles like a shuffleboard weight. His head struck a leg of the table where the Losers had sat earlier that night, telling their tales. For a moment he was stunned; the knife hung loose in his hand.
Mike went after him, went after the knife. In that moment he could have finished Henry; it would have been possible to have planted the JESUS SAVES letter-opener which had come in the mail from his mother’s old church in the back of Henry’s neck and then called the police. There would have been a certain amount of official nonsense, but not too much of it — not in Derry, where such weird and violent events were not entirely exceptional.
What stopped him was a realization, almost too lightninglike to be conscious, that if he killed Henry, he would be doing Its work as surely as Henry would be doing Its work by killing Mike. And something else; that other look he had seen on Henry’s face, the tired, bewildered look of the badly used child who has been set on a poisonous path for some unknown purpose. Henry had grown up within the contaminated radius of Butch Bowers’s mind; surely he had belonged to It even before he suspected it existed.
So instead of planting the letter-opener in Henry’s vulnerable neck, he dropped to his knees and snatched at the knife. It twisted in his hand — s e e m i n gly of its own volition — and his ringers closed on the blade. There was no immediate pain; only red blood flowing down the first three fingers of his right hand and into his scarred palm.
He pulled back. Henry rolled away and grabbed the knife again. Mike got to his knees and the two of them faced each other that way, each bleeding: Mike’s fingers, Henry’s nose. Henry shook his head and droplets flew away into the darkness.
‘Thought you were so smart!’ he cried hoarsely. ‘Fucking sissies is all you were! We could have beat you in a fair fight!’
‘Put the knife down, Henry,’ Mike said quietly. ‘I’ll call the police. They’ll come and get you and take you back to Juniper Hill. You’ll be out of Derry. You’ll be safe.’
Henry tried to talk and couldn’t. He couldn’t tell this hateful jig that he wouldn’t be safe in Juniper Hill, or Los Angeles, or the rainforests of Timbuktu. Sooner or later the moon would rise, bone-white and snow-cold, and the ghost –voices would start, and the face of the moon would change into Its face, babbling and laughing and ordering. He swallowed slick-slimy blood.
‘You never fought fair!’
‘Did you?’ Mike asked.
‘You niggerboogienight-fighterjungle-bunnyapemancoon !’ Henry screamed, and leaped at Mike again.
Mik e leaned back to avoid his blundering, awkward rush, overbalanced, and went sprawling on his back. Henry struck the table again, rebounded, turned, and clutched Mike’s arm. Mike swept the letter-opener around and felt it go deep into Henry’s forearm. Henry screamed, but instead of letting go, he tightened his grip. He pulled himself toward Mike, his hair in his eyes, blood flowing from his ruptured nose over his thick lips.
Mike tried to get a foot in Henry’s side and push him away. Henry swung the switchblade in a glittering arc, and all six inches of it went into Mike’s thigh. It went in effortlessly, as if into a warm cake of butter. Henry pulled it out, dripping, and with a scream of combined pain and effort, Mike shoved him away.
He struggled to his feet but Henry was up more quickly, and Mike was barely able to avoid Henry’s next blundering rush. He could feel blood pouring down his leg in an alarming flood, filling his loafer. He got my femoral artery, I think. Jesus, he got me bad. Blood everywhere. Blood on the floor. Shoes won’t be any good, shit, just bought them two months ago —
Henry came again, panting and puffing like a bull in heat. Mike staggered aside and swept the letter-opener at him again. It tore through Henry’s ragged shirt and pulled a deep cut across his ribs. Henry grunted as Mike shoved him away again.
‘You dirty-fighting nigger!’ He wailed. ‘Look what you done!’
‘Drop the knife, Henry,’ Mike said.
There was a titter from behind them. Henry looked . . . and then screamed in utter horror, clapping his hands to his cheeks like an offended old maid. Mike’s gaze jerked toward the circulation desk. There was a loud, vibrating ka-spanggg! sound, and Stan Uris’s head popped up from behind the desk. A spring corkscrewed up and into his severed, dripping neck. His face was livid with greasepaint. There was a fever