It

a thick, cloudy goo that looked like a mixture of partially congealed eggwhite and snot. Blood was trickling slowly down the side of Beverly’s neck, and there was a fresh cut on Ben’s cheek. Richie slowly pushed his glasses up on his nose.
‘A-A-Are we all ruh-ruh-right?’ Bill asked hoarsely.
‘Are you, Bill?’ Richie asked.
‘Y-Y-Yeah.’ He turned to Eddie and hugged the smaller boy with fierce intensity. ‘You suh-suh-saved my luh-life, man.’
‘It ate your shoe,’ Beverly said, and uttered a wild laugh. ‘Isn’t that too bad.’
‘I’ll buy you a new pair of Keds when we get out of here,’ Richie said. He clapped Eddie on the back in the dark. ‘How did you do it, Eddie?’
‘Shot it with my aspirator. Pretended it was acid. That’s how it tastes after awhile if I’m having, you know, a bad day. Worked great.’
‘»I’m doing the Mashed Potatoes all over It and I GOT A BROKEN ARM,» Richie said, and giggled madly. ‘Not too shabby, Eds. Actually pretty chuckalicious, tell you what.’
‘I hate it when you call me Eds.’
‘I know,’ Richie said, hugging him tightly, ‘but somebody has to toughen you up, Eds. When you stop leading the sheltered igszistence of a child and grow up, you gonna, Ah say, Ah say you gonna find out life ain’t always this easy, boy!’
Eddie began to shriek with laughter. ‘That’s the shittiest Voice I ever heard, Richie.’
‘Well, keep that aspirator thing handy,’ Beverly said. ‘We might need it again.’
‘You didn’t see It anywhere?’ Mike asked. ‘When you lit the match?’
‘Ih-Ih-It’s g-g-gone,’ Bill said, and then added grimly: ‘But we’re getting close to It. To the pluh-hace where Ih-It stuh –stuh-stays. And I th-think we h-h-hurt Ih-hit th-that time.’
‘Henry’s still coming,’ Stan said. His voice was low and hoarse. ‘I can hear him back there.’
‘Then let’s move out,’ Ben said.
They did. The tunnel progressed steadily downward, and that smell — that low wild stench — grew steadily stronger. At times they could hear Henry behind them, but now his cries seemed far away and not at all important. There was a feeling in all of them — similar to that feeling of skew and disconnection they had felt in the house on Neibolt Street — that they had progressed over the edge of the world and into some queer nothingness. Bill felt (although he did not have the vocabulary to express what he knew) that they were approaching Derry’s dark and ruined heart.
It seemed to Mike Hanlon that he could almost feel that heart’s diseased, arrhythmic beat. Beverly felt a sense of evil power growing around her, seeming to enfold her, certainly trying to split her off from the others and make her alone. Nervously, she reached out on either side of herself and clasped Bill’s hand and Ben’s. It seemed to her that she had to reach too far, and she called out nervously: ‘Hang onto hands! It’s like we’re moving away from each other!’
It was Stan who first realized he could see again. There was a low, strange radiance in the air. At first he could only see hands — his, clasping Ben’s on one side and Mike’s on the other. Then he realized he could see the buttons on Richie’s muddy shirt and the Captain Midnight ring — just some junky cereal-box prize — that Eddie liked to wear on his little finger.
‘Can you guys see?’ Stan asked, coming to a stop. The others stopped, too. Bill looked around, first aware that he could see — a l i t t l e , anyway — and then that the tunnel had widened out amazingly. They were now in a curved chamber easily as big as the Sunnier Tunnel in Boston. Bigger, he amended as he looked around with a growing sense of awe.
They craned their necks back to see the ceiling, which was now fifty feet or more above them, and held up by outcurving buttresses of stone like ribs. Nets of dirty cobweb hung between them. The floor was now stone-flagged, but overlaid with such a drift of ancient dirt that the quality of their footfalls had never changed. The up-curving walls were easily fifty feet away on either side.
‘Waterworks must have really gone crazy down here,’ Richie said, and laughed uneasily.
‘Looks like a cathedral,’ Beverly said softly.
‘Where’s the light coming from?’ Ben wanted to know.
‘Coming r-right out of the w –w-walls, looks l-like,’ Bill said.
‘I don’t like it,’ Stan said.
‘Let’s guh-go. H-H-Henry’ll be breathing d-d-down our nuh –necks — ‘
A loud, braying cry split the gloom, and then the ruffling, heavy thunder of wings. A shape came cruising out of the dark, one eye glaring — the other was a dark lamp.
‘The bird!’ Stan screamed. ‘Look out, it’s the bird!’
It dived at them like an obscene fighter-plane, Its plated orange beak opening and closing to reveal the pink inner lining