It

after Bill with only the tongue of this unspeakable monster left to connect him to his own world, even with the pain of Its poisonous fangs suffusing his mind like a red fog, it was pretty goddamned funny. Check it out, folks. You’ll believe a disc jockey can fly.
He was flying, all right.
Richie was in greater darkness than he had ever known, than he had ever suspected might exist, travelling at what felt like the speed of light, and being shaken as a terrier shakes a rat. He sensed that there was something up ahead, some titanic corpse. The Turtle he had heard Bill lamenting in his fading voice? Must be. It was only a shell, a dead husk. Then he was past, rushing on into the darkness.
Really steaming now, he thought, and felt that wild urge to cackle again.
bill! bill, can you hear me?
— he’s gone, he’s in the deadlights, let me go! LET ME GO!
(richie?)
Incredibly distant; incredibly far out in the black. bill! bill! here I am! catch hold! for God’s sake catch hold
— he’s dead, you’re all dead, you’re too old, don’t you understand that? now let
me GO!
hey bitch, you’re never too old to rock and roll
— LET ME GO!
take me to him and maybe I will Richie
— closer, he was closer now, thank God —
here I come, Big Bill! Richie to the rescue! Gonna save your old cracked ass! Owe you one
from that day on Neibolt Street, remember?
— let me GOOOO!
It was hurting badly now, and Richie understood how completely he had caught It by
surprise — It had believed It had only Bill to deal with. Well, good. Good ‘miff. Richie didn’t care about killing It right now; he was no longer sure It could be killed. But Bill could be killed, and Richie sensed that Bill’s time was now very, very short. Bill was closing in on some large nasty surprise out here, something best not thought about.
Richie, no! Go back! It’s the edge of everything up here! The deadlights!
souns like what you turn on when you drivinn you hearse at midnie, senhorr . . . and where is you, honey chile? smile, so I can see where you is!
And suddenly Bill was there, skidding along on
(the left? right? there was no direction here)
one side or the other. And beyond him, coming up fast, Richie could see/sense something that finally dried up his laughter. It was a barrier, something of a strange, non-geometrical shape that his mind could not grasp. Instead his mind translated it as best it could, as it had translated the shape of It into a Spider, allowing Richie to think of it as a colossal gray wall made of fossilized wooden stakes. These stakes went forever up and forever down, like the bars of a cage. And from between them shone a great blind light. It glared and moved, smiled and snarled. The light was alive.
(deadlights)
More than alive: it was full of a force — magnetism, gravity, perhaps something else. Richie felt himself lifted and dropped, swirled and pulled, as if he were shooting a fast throat of rapids in an innertube. He could feel the light moving eagerly over his face . . . and the light was thinking.
This is It, this is It, the rest of It.
— let me go, you promised to let me GO
I know but sometimes, honeychile, I lie — my mamma she beat me fo it but my daddy, he
done just about give up
He sensed Bill tumbling and flailing toward one of the gaps in the wall, sensed evil fingers of light reaching for him, and with a final despairing effort, he reached for his friend.
Bill! Your hand! Give me your hand! YOUR HAND, GODDAMMIT’ YOUR HAND!
Bill’s hand shot out, the fingers opening and closing, that living fire crawling and twisting over Audra’s wedding ring