It

to his left and saw that the houses had been replaced with a tall, black stand of hedge. Looming above it was the narrow, gloomily Victorian pile of the Theological Seminary. Not a window shone light. The Seminary had graduated its last class in June of 1974. It had closed its doors that summer, and whatever walked there now walked alone . . . and only by permission of the chattering women’s club that called itself the Derry Historical Society.
He came to the walk which led up to the front door. It was barred by a heavy chain from which a metal sign hung: NO TRESPASSIN THIS ORDER ENFORCED BY DERRY POLICE DEPT.
Henry’s feet tangled on this track and he fell heavily again — whap! — to the sidewalk. Up ahead, a car turned onto Kansas Street from Hawthorne. Its headlights washed down the street. Henry fought the dazzle long enough to see the lights on top: it was a fuzzmobile.
He crawled under the chain and crabbed his way to the left so he was behind the hedge. The night-dew on his hot face was wonderful. He lay face down, turning his head from side to side, wetting his cheeks, drinking what he could drink.
The police car floated by without slowing.
Then, suddenly, its bubble-lights came on, washing the darkness with erratic blue pulses of light. There was no need for the siren on the deserted streets, but Henry heard its null suddenly crank up to full revs. Rubber blistered a startled scream from the pavement.
Caught, I’m caught, his mind gibbered . . . and then he realized that the police-car was heading away from him, up Kansas Street. A moment later a hellish warbling sound filled the night, heading toward him from the south. He imagined some huge silky black cat loping through the dark, all green eyes and silky flexing pelt, It in a new shape, coming for him, coming to gobble him up.
L i t t l e b y l i t t l e ( a n d o n l y as the warbling began to veer away) he realized it was an ambulance, heading in the direction the fuzz-mobile had gone. He lay shuddering on the wet grass, too cold now, struggling
(fuzzit cousin buzzit cousin rock it roll it we got chicken in the barn what bam whose barn my)
not to vomit. He was afraid that if he vomited, all of his guts would come up . . . and there were five of them still to get.
Ambulance and police car. Where are they heading? The library, of course. The nigger. But they’re too late. I greased him. Might as well turn off your sireen, boys. He ain’t gonna hear it. He’s just as dead as a fencepost. He —
But was he?
Henry licked his peeling lips with his arid tongue. If he was dead, there would be no warbling siren in the night like the cry of a wounded panther. Not unless the nigger had called them. So maybe — just maybe — the nigger wasn’t dead.
‘No,’ Henry breathed. He rolled over on his back and stared up at the sky, at the billions of stars up there. It had come from there, he knew. From somewhere up in that sky . . . It
(came from outer space with a lust for Earthwomen came to rob all the women and rape all the men say Frank don’t you mean rob all the men and rape all the women whoth running this show, thilly man, you or Jesse? Victor used to tell that one and that was pretty much)
came from the spaces between the stars. Looking up at that starry sky gave him the creeps: it was too big, too black. It was all too possible to imagine it turning blood-red, all too possible to imagine a Face forming in lines of fire . . .
He closed his eyes, shivering and holding his arms crossed on his belly, and he thought: The nigger is dead. Someone heard us fighting and sent the cops to investigate, that’s all.
Then why the ambulance?
‘Shut up, shut up,’ Henry groaned. He felt the old baffled rage again; he remembered how they had beaten him again and again in the old days — old days that seemed so close and so vital now — how, every time, when he believed he had them, they had somehow slipped through his fingers. It had