It

over, he felt hot and cold chills chasing each other up his back, and still he couldn’t stop laughing.
‘You should have seen him, Big Bill, clumsy as ever, still can’t get out of his own frockin way — ‘
Henry’s head appeared in the circular opening at the top. Scratches from branches and brambles crisscrossed his cheeks. His mouth was working, and his eyes blazed.
‘Okay,’ he shouted down at them. His words had a flat resonance inside the concrete cylinder, not quite an echo. ‘Here I come. Got you now.’
He swung one leg over, felt for the topmost rung with his foot, found it, swung the other one over.
Speaking loud, Bill said: ‘W-When h-h-he guh-gets d-d-down cluh-hose e-e-enough, w– w-we all gruh-gruh-grab h-him. P-P-Pull h-him d-d-down. Duh-Duh-Duck him uh-under. G– G-Got i-it?’
‘Right-o, guv’nor,’ Richie said, and snapped a salute with one trembling hand.
‘Got you,’ Ben said.
Stan tipped a wink at Eddie, who didn’t understand what was going on — except it seemed to him that Richie had gone crazy. He was laughing like a loon while Henry Bowers — the dreaded Henry Bowers — prepared to come down and kill them all like rats in a rain-barrel.
‘All ready for him, Bill!’ Stan cried.
Henry froze three rungs down. He looked down at the Losers over his shoulder. His face seemed, for the first time, doubtful.
Eddie suddenly got it. If ht ey came down, they would have to come one at a time. It was too high to jump, especially with the pumping machinery to land on, and here they were, the seven of them, waiting in a tight little circle.
‘Cuh-cuh-home oh-on, H-Henry,’ Bill said pleasantly. ‘Wuh-wuh-what are you w– w-waiting for?’
‘That’s right,’ Richie chimed in. ‘You like to beat up little kids, right? Come on, Henry.’
‘We’re waiting, Henry,’ Bev said sweetly. ‘I don’t think you’ll like it when you get down here, but come on if you want to.’
‘Unless you’re chicken,’ Ben added. He began to make chicken sounds. Richie joined him at once and soon all of them were doing it. The derisive clucking rebounded between the damp, trickling walls. Henry looked down at them, the knife clutched in his left hand, his face the color of old bricks. He put up with perhaps thirty seconds of it and then climbed out again. The Losers sent up catcalls and insults.
‘O-O-Okay,’ Bill said. He spoke in a lower voice. ‘W-We gun-got to get ih-ih –into that druh-hain. Quh-quh-quick.’
‘Why?’ Beverly asked, but Bill was spared the effort of an answer. Henry reappeared at the rim of the pumping-station and dropped a rock the size of a soccer ball into the pipe. Beverly screamed and Stan pulled Eddie against the circular wall with a hoarse yell. The rock struck the pumping machinery’s rusty housing and produced a musical bonggg! It ricocheted left and struck the concrete wall, missing Eddie by less than half a foot. A chip of concrete flicked painfully against his cheek. The rock fell into the water with a splash.
‘Quh-quh-quick!’ Bill shouted again, and they crowded around the pumping-station’s inflow pipe. Its bore was about five feet in diameter. Bill sent them in one after another (a vague circus image — all the big clowns coming out of the little car — passed across his consciousness in a meteoric flash; years later he would use the same image in a book called The Black Rapids), and climbed in last, after ducking another rock. As they watched, more rocks flew down, most striking the pump housing and rebounding at crazy angles.
When they stopped falling, Bill looked out and saw Henry coming down the ladder again, as quick as he could. ‘G-G-Get h-h-him!’ he shouted to the others. Richie, Ben, and Mike floundered out behind Bill. Richie leaped high and grabbed Henry’s ankle. Henry cursed and shook his leg as if trying to kick away a small dog with big teeth — a terrier, perhaps, or a Pekinese. Richie grabbed a rung, scrabbled up even higher, and actually did manage to sink his teeth into Henry’s ankle. Henry screamed and pulled himself up quickly. One of his loafers came off and splashed into the water, where it sank with no ado at all.
‘Bit me!’ Henry was screaming. ‘Bit me! Cocksucker bit me!’
‘Yeah, good thing I had a tetanus shot this spring!’ Richie flung at him.
‘Bash them!’ Henry was raving. ‘Bash them, bomb them back to the stone age, bash their brains in!’
More rocks flew. The boys backed into the drain again quickly. Mike was struck on the arm by a small rock and he held it tight, wincing, until the pain began to abate.
‘It’s a standoff,’ Ben said. ‘They can’t get down and we can’t get up.’
‘We’re not s-supposed to get up,’ Bill said quietly, ‘and y-y-you all know it.