It

a smell like exploded animals lying on the highway at midnight. As George’s mouth yawned, he could see things squirming around inside there. ‘It’s still down here, everything floats down here, we’ll float, Bill, we’ll all float — ‘
George’s fishbelly hand closed on Bill’s neck.
(HE SEES THE GHOSTS WE SEE THE GHOSTS THEY WE YOU SEE THE GHOSTS — )
George’s contorted face drifted toward Bill’s neck.
‘ — float — ‘
‘He thrusts his fists against the posts!’ Bill cried. His voice was deeper, hardly his own at all, and in a searing flash of memory Richie remembered that Bill only stuttered in his own voice: when he pretended to be someone else, he never did.
The George-thing recoiled, hissing, Its hand going to Its face in a warding-off gesture.
‘That’s it!’ Richie screamed deliriously. ‘You got It, Bill! Get It! Get It! Get It!’
‘He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts!’ Bill thundered. He advanced on the George-thing. ‘You’re no ghost! George knows I didn’t mean for him to die! My folks were wrong! They took it out on me and that was wrong! Do you hear me?’
The George-thing abruptly turned, squealing like a rat. It began to run and ripple under the yellow slicker. The slicker itself seemed to be dripping, running in bright blots of yellow. It was losing Its shape, becoming amorphous.
‘He thrusts his fists against the posts, you son of a bitch!’ Bill Denbrough screamed, ‘and still insists he sees the ghosts!’ He leaped at It and his fingers snagged in the yellow rainslicker that was no longer a rainslicker. What he grabbed felt like some strange warm taffy that melted under his fingers as soon as he had closed his fist around it. He fell to his knees. Then Richie yelled as the guttering match burned his fingers and they were plunged into darkness again.
Bill felt something begin to grow in his chest, something hot and choking and as painful as fiery nettles. He gripped his knees and drew them up to his chin, hoping it would stop the pain, or perhaps ease it; he was dimly thankful for the dark, glad that the others couldn’t see this agony.
He heard a sound escape him — a wavering moan. There was a second; a third. ‘George!’ he cried. George, I’m sorry! I never meant for anything b-b-b-bad to huh-huh-happen!’
Perhaps there was something else to say, but he could not say it. He was sobbing then, lying on his back with one arm over his eyes, remembering the boat, remembering the steady beat of the rain against his bedroom windows, remembering the medicines and the tissues on the nighttable, the faint ache of fever in his head and in his body, remembering George, most of all that: remembering George, George in his yellow hooded slicker.
‘George, I’m sorry!’ he cried through his tears. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, I’m suh-suh-SORRY — ‘
And then they were around him, his friends, and no one lit a match, and someone held him, he didn’t know who, Beverly maybe, or maybe Ben, or Richie. They were with him, and for that little while the darkness was kind.
10
Derry / 5:30 A.M.
By 5:30 it was raining hard. The weather forecasters on the Bangor radio stations expressed mild surprise and tendered mild apologies to all the people who had made plans for picnics and outings on the basis of yesterday’s forecasts. Tough break, folks; just one of those odd weather patterns that sometimes developed in the Penobscot Valley with startling suddenness.
On WZON, meteorologist Jim Witt described what he called an ‘extraordinarily disciplined’ low-pressure system. That was putting it mildly. Conditions went from cloudy in Bangor to showery in Hampden to drizzly in Haven to moderate rain in Newport. But in Derry, only thirty miles from downtown Bangor, it was pouring. Travellers on Route 7 found themselves moving through water that was eight inches deep in places, and beyond the Rhulin Farms a plugged culvert in a dip had covered the highway with so much water that the highway was actually impassable. By six that