It

you always were, Big Bill. Our guts.’
‘Tom?’ Beverly said in a low, almost musing voice.
‘W-W-Who? Bill struck another match.
She was looking at him with a kind of desperate honesty. ‘Tom. My husband. He knew, too. At least, I think I mentioned the name of the town to him, the wa y you mentioned it to Audra. I . . . I don’t know if it took or not. He was pretty angry with me at the time.’
‘Jesus, what is this, some kind of soap opera where everybody turns up sooner or later?’ Richie said.
‘Not a soap opera,’ Bill said, sounding sick, ‘a show. Like the circus. Bev here went and married Henry Bowers. When she left, why wouldn’t he come here? After all, the real Henry did.’
‘No,’ Beverly said. ‘I didn’t marry Henry. I married my father.’
‘If he beat on you, what’s the difference?’ Eddie asked.
‘C-C-Come around me,’ Bill said. ‘Muh-muh-move in.’
They did. Bill reached out to either side and found Eddie’s good hand and one of Richie’s hands. Soon they stood in a circle, as they had done once before when their number was greater. Eddie felt someone put an arm around his shoulders. The feeling was warm and comforting and deeply familiar.
Bill felt the sense of power that he remembered from before, but understood with some desperation that things really had changed. The power was nowhere near as strong — it struggled and flickered like a candle –flame in foul air. The darkness seemed thicker and closer to them, more triumphant. And he could smell It. Down this passageway, he thought, and not so terribly far, is a door with a mark on it. What was behind that door? It’s the one thing I still can’t remember. I can remember making my fingers stiff, because they wanted to tremble, and I can remember pushing the door open. I can even remember the flood of light that streamed out and how it seemed almost alive, as if it wasn’t just light but fluorescent snakes. I remember the smell, like the monkey-house in a big zoo, but even worse. And then . . . nothing.
‘Do a-a-any of y-y-y-you rem-m-member what It really w-w-was?’
‘No,’ Eddie said.
‘I think . . . ‘ Richie began, and then Bill could almost feel him shake his head in the dark. ‘No.’
‘No,’ Beverly said.
‘Huh-uh.’ That was Ben. ‘That’s the one thing I still can’t remember. What It was . . . or how we foug ht It.’
‘Chüd,’ Beverly said. That’s how we fought it. But I don’t remember what that means.’
‘Stand by m-me,’ Bill said, ‘and I-I’ll stuh-stuh-hand by y-y-you guys.’
‘Bill,’ Ben said. His voice was very calm. ‘Something is coming.’
Bill listened. He heard dragging, shambling footsteps approaching them in the dark . . . and he was afraid.
‘A-A-Audra?’ he called . . . and knew already that it was not her.
Whatever was shambling toward them drew closer.
Bill struck a light.
8
Derry / 5:00 A.M.
The first wrong thing happened on that late-spring day in 1985 two minutes before official sunrise. To understand how wrong it was one would have to have known two facts that were known to Mike Hanlon (who lay unconscious in the Derry Home Hospital as the sun came up), both concerning the Grace Baptist Church, which had stood on the corner of Witcham and Jackson since 1897. The church was topped with a slender white spire which was the apotheosis of every Protestant church-steeple in New England. There were clock-faces on all four sides of the steeple – base, and the clock itself had been constructed and shipped from Switzerland in the year 1898. The only one like it stood in the town square of Haven Village, forty miles away.
Stephen Bowie, a timber baron who lived on West Broadway, donated the clock to the town at a cost of some $17,000. Bowie could afford it. He was a devout churchgoer and deacon for forty years (during several of those later years he was also president of Derry’s Legion of White Decency chapter). In addition, he was known for his devout layman sermons on Mother’s Day, which he always referred to reverently as Mother’s Sunday.
From the time of its installation until May 31st, 1985, that clock had faithfully chimed each hour