It

by Stephen King

  They stood looking at him incredulously for a moment, and then they took after him. Stuttering Bill had watched the unequal race from its start to its preordained conclusion from his place against the side of the building. No sense getting involved; those three galoots would be just as happy to beat up on two kids for the price of one.

  Richie ran diagonally across the little-kids' playyard, leaping over the teetertotters and dodging among the swings, realizing he had run into a blind alley only when he struck the chainlink fence between the playyard and the park which abutted the school grounds. So he tried to go up the chainlink, all clutching fingers and pointing seeking sneaker-toes, and he was maybe two-thirds of the way to the top when Henry and Victor Criss hauled him back down again, Henry getting him by the back of the jacket and Victor grabbing the seat of his jeans. Richie was screaming when they peeled him off the fence. He hit the asphalt on his back. His glasses flew off. He reached for them and Belch Huggins kicked them away and that was why one of the bows was mended with adhesive tape this summer.

  Bill had winced and walked around to the front of the building. He had observed Mrs. Moran, one of the fourth-grade teachers, already hurrying over to break things up, but he knew they would get Richie hard before then, and by the time she actually arrived, Richie would be crying. Bawl-baby, bawl-baby, lookit-the-baby-bawl.

  Bill had only had minor problems with them. They made fun of his stutter, of course. An occasional random cruelty came with the jibes; one rainy day as they were going to lunch in the gym, Belch Huggins had knocked Bill's lunchbag out of his hand and had stomped it flat with one engineer boot, squishing everything inside.

  "Oh, juh-juh-gee!" Belch cried in mock horror, raising his hands and fluttering them about his face. "Suh-suh-sorry about your 1-1-lunch, fuh-huh-huck-face!" And he had strolled off down the hall toward where Victor Criss was leaning against the drinking fountain outside the boys'-room door, just about laughing himself into a hernia. That hadn't been so bad, though; Bill had cadged half a PB&J off Eddie Kaspbrak, and Richie was happy to give him his devilled egg, one of which his mother packed in his lunch about every second day and which made him want to puke, he claimed.

  But you had to stay out of their way, and if you couldn't do that you had to try and be invisible.

  Eddie forgot the rules, so they creamed him.

  He hadn't been too bad until the big boys went downstream and splashed across to the other side, even though his nose was bleeding like a fountain. When Eddie's snotrag was soaked through, Bill had given him his own and made him put a hand on the nape of his neck and lean his head back. Bill could remember his mother getting Georgie to do that, because Georgie sometimes got nosebleeds--

  Oh but it hurt to think about George.

  It wasn't until the sound of the big boys' buffalolike progress through the Barrens had died away completely, and Eddie's nosebleed had actually stopped, that his asthma got bad. He started heaving for air, his hands opening and then snapping shut like weak traps, his respiration a fluting whistle in his throat.

  "Shit!" Eddie gasped. "Asthma! Cripes!"

  He scrambled for his aspirator and finally got it out of his pocket. It looked almost like a bottle of Windex, the kind with the sprayer attachment on top. He jammed it into his mouth and punched the trigger.

  "Better?" Bill asked anxiously.

  "No. It's empty." Eddie looked at Bill with panicked eyes that said I'm caught, Bill!I'm caught!

  The empty aspirator rolled away from his hand. The stream chuckled on, not caring in the least that Eddie Kaspbrak could barely breathe. Bill thought randomly that the big boys had been right about one thing: it had been a real baby dam. But they had been having fun, dammit, and he felt a sudden dull fury that it should have come to this.

  "Tuh-tuh-take it easy, Eh-Eddie," he said.

  For the next forty minutes or so Bill sat next to him, his expectation that Eddie's asthma attack would at any moment let up gradually fading into unease. By the time Ben Hanscom appeared, the unease had become real fear. It not only wasn't letting up; it was getting worse. And the Center Street Drug, where Eddie got his refills, was three miles away, almost. What if he went to get Eddie's stuff and came back to find Eddie unconscious? Unconscious or

  (don't shit please don't think that)

  or even dead, his mind insisted implacably.

  (like Georgie dead like Georgie)

  Don't be such an asshole! He's not going to die!

  No, probably not. But what if he came back and found Eddie in a comber? Bill knew all about combers; he had even deduced they were named after those great big waves guys surfed on in Hawaii, and that seemed right enough--after all, what was a comber but a wave that drowned your brain? On doctor shows like Ben Casey, people were always going into combers, and sometimes they stayed there in spite of all Ben Casey's ill-tempered shouting.

  So he sat there, knowing he ought to go, he couldn't do Eddie any good staying here, but not wanting to leave him alone. An irrational, superstitious part of him felt sure Eddie would slip into a comber the minute he, Bill, turned his back. Then he looked upstream and saw Ben Hanscom standing there. He knew who Ben was, of course; the fattest kid in any school has his or her own sort of unhappy notoriety. Ben was in the other fifth grade. Bill sometimes saw him at recess, standing by himself--usually in a corner--looking at a book and eating his lunch out of a bag about the size of a laundry sack.

  Looking at Ben now, Bill thought he looked even worse than Henry Bowers. It was hard to believe, but true. Bill could not begin to imagine the cataclysmic fight these two must have been in. Ben's hair stood up in wild, dirt-clotted spikes. His sweater or sweatshirt--it was hard to tell which it had started the day as and it sure as shit didn't matter now--was a matted ruin, smeared with a sicko mixture of blood and grass. His pants were out at the knees.

  He saw Bill looking at him and recoiled a bit, eyes going wary.

  "Duh-duh-duh-hon't g-g-go!" Bill cried. He put his empty hands up in the air, palms out, to show he was harmless. "W-W-We need some huh-huh-help."

  Ben came closer, eyes still wary. He walked as if one or both of his legs was killing him. "Are they gone? Bowers and those guys?"

  "Yuh-Yes," Bill said. "Listen, cuh-han y-y-you stay with my fruh-hend while I go get his muh-medicine? He's got a-a-a-a--"

  "Asthma?"

  Bill nodded.

  Ben came all the way down to the remains of the dam and dropped painfully to one knee beside Eddie, who was lying back with his eyes mostly closed and his chest heaving.

  "Which one hit him?" Ben asked finally. He looked up, and Bill saw the same frustrated anger he had been feeling himself on the fat kid's face. "Was it Henry Bowers?"

  Bill nodded.

  "It figures. Sure, go on. I'll stay with him."

  "Thuh-thuh-hanks."

  "Oh, don't thank me," Ben said. "I'm the reason they landed on you in the first place. Go on. Hurry it up. I have to be home for supper."

  Bill went without saying anything else. It would have been good to tell Ben not to take it to heart--what had happened hadn't been Ben's fault any more than it had been Eddie's for stupidly opening his mouth. Guys like Henry and his buddies were an accident waiting to happen; the little kids' version of floods or tornadoes or gallstones. It would have been good to say that, but he was so tightly wound right now it would have taken him about twenty minutes or so, and by then Eddie might have slipped into a comber (that was another thing Bill had learned from Drs. Casey and Kildare; you never went into a comber; you always slipped into one).

  He trotted downstream, glancing back once. He saw Ben Hanscom grimly collecting rocks from the edge of the water. For a moment Bill couldn't figure out what he was doing, and then he understood. It was an ammo dump. Just in case they came back.

  4

  The Barrens were no mystery to Bill. He had played here a lot this spring, sometimes with Richie, more frequently with Eddie, sometimes all by himself. He had by no means
explored the whole area, but he could find his way back to Kansas Street from the Kenduskeag with no trouble, and now did. He came out at a wooden bridge where Kansas Street crossed one of the little no-name streams that flowed out of the Derry drainage system and into the Kenduskeag down below. Silver was stashed under this bridge, his handlebars tied to one of the bridge supports with a hank of rope to keep his wheels out of the water.

  Bill untied the rope, stuck it in his shirt, and hauled Silver up to the sidewalk by main force, panting and sweating, losing his balance a couple of times and landing on his tail.

  But at last it was up. Bill swung his leg over the high fork.

  And as always, once he was on Silver he became someone else.

  5

  "Hi-yo Silver AWAYYY!"

  The words came out deeper than his normal speaking voice--it was almost the voice of the man he would become. Silver gained speed slowly, the quickening clickety-clack of the Bicycle playing cards clothespinned to the spokes marking the increase. Bill stood on the pedals, his hands clamped on the bike-grips with the wrists turned up. He looked like a man trying to lift a stupendously heavy barbell. Cords stood out on his neck. Veins pulsed in his temples. His mouth was turned down in a trembling sneer of effort as he fought the familiar battle against weight and inertia, busting his brains to get Silver moving.

  As always, it was worth the effort.

  Silver began to roll along more briskly. Houses slid past smoothly instead of just poking by. On his left, where Kansas Street crossed Jackson, the unfettered Kenduskeag became the Canal. Past the intersection Kansas Street headed swiftly downhill toward Center and Main, Derry's business district.

  Streets crossed frequently here but they were all stop-signed in Bill's favor, and the possibility that a driver might one day blow by one of those stop signs and flatten him to a bleeding shadow on the street had never crossed Bill's mind. It is unlikely he would have changed his ways even if it had. He might have done so either earlier or later in his life, but this spring and early summer had been a strange thundery time for him. Ben would have been astounded if someone were to ask him if he was lonely; Bill would have been likewise astounded if someone asked him if he was courting death. Of cuh-cuh-course n-not! he would have responded immediately (and indignantly), but that did not change the fact that his runs down Kansas Street to town had become more and more like banzai charges as the weather warmed.

  This section of Kansas Street was known as Up-Mile Hill. Bill took it at full speed, bent over Silver's handlebars to cut down the wind resistance, one hand poised over the cracked rubber bulb of his oogah-horn to warn the unwary, his red hair blowing back from his head in a rippling wave. The click of the playing cards had mounted to a steady roar. The effortful sneer had become a big goofball grin. The residences on the right had given way to business buildings (warehouses and meat-packing plants, most of them) which blurred by in a scary but satisfying rush. To his left the Canal was a wink of fire in the comer of his eye.

  "HI-YO SILVER, AWAYYYY!" he screamed triumphantly.

  Silver flew over the first curbing, and as they almost always did at that point, his feet lost contact with the pedals. He was freewheeling, now wholly in the lap of whatever god has been appointed the job of protecting small boys. He swerved into the street, doing maybe fifteen miles an hour over the posted speed of twenty-five.

  It was all behind him now: his stutter, his dad's blank hurt eyes as he puttered around his garage workshop, the terrible sight of the dust on the closed piano cover upstairs--dusty because his mother didn't play anymore. The last time had been at George's funeral, three Methodist hymns. George going out into the rain, wearing his yellow slicker, carrying the newspaper boat with its glaze of paraffin; Mr. Gardener coming up the street twenty minutes later with his body wrapped in a bloodstained quilt; his mother's agonized shriek. All behind him. He was the Lone Ranger, he was John Wayne, he was Bo Diddley, he was anybody he wanted to be and nobody who cried and got scared and wanted his muh-muh-mother.

  Silver flew and Stuttering Bill Denbrough flew with him; their gantry-like shadow fled behind them. They raced down Up-Mile Hill together; the playing cards roared. Bill's feet found the pedals again and he began to pump, wanting to go even faster, wanting to reach some hypothetical speed--not of sound but of memory--and crash through the pain barrier.

  He raced on, bent over his handlebars; he raced to beat the devil.

  The three-way intersection of Kansas, Center, and Main was coming up fast. It was a horror of one-way traffic and conflicting signs and stoplights which were supposed to be timed but really weren't. The result, a Derry News editorial had proclaimed the year before, was a traffic-rotary conceived in hell.

  As always, Bill's eyes flicked right and left, fast, gauging the traffic flow, looking for the holes. If his judgment was mistaken--if he stuttered, you might say--he would be badly hurt or killed.

  He arrowed into the slow-moving traffic which clogged the intersection, running a red light and fading to the right to avoid a lumbering portholed Buick. He shot a bullet of a glance back over his shoulder to make sure the middle lane was empty. He looked forward again and saw that in roughly five seconds he was going to crash into the rear end of a pick-up truck that had stopped squarely in the middle of the intersection while the Uncle Ike type behind the wheel craned his neck to read all the signs and make sure he hadn't taken a wrong turn and somehow ended up in Miami Beach.

  The lane on Bill's right was full of a Derry-Bangor inter-city bus. He slipped in that direction just the same and shot the gap between the stopped pick-up and the bus, still moving at forty miles an hour. At the last second he snapped his head hard to one side, like a soldier doing an over-enthusiastic eyes-right, to keep the mirror mounted on the passenger side of the pick-up from rearranging his teeth. Hot diesel from the bus laced his throat like a kick of strong liquor. He heard a thin gasping squeal as one of his bike-grips kissed a line up the coach's aluminum side. He got just a glimpse of the bus driver, his face paper-white under his peaked Hudson Bus Company cap. The driver was shaking his fist at Bill and shouting something. Bill doubted it was happy birthday.

  Here was a trio of old ladies crossing Main Street from the New England Bank side to The Shoeboat side. They heard the harsh burr of the playing cards and looked up. Their mouths dropped open as a boy on a huge bike passed within half a foot of them like a mirage.

  The worst--and the best--of the trip was behind him now. He had looked at the very real possibility of his own death again and again had found himself able to look away. The bus had not crushed him; he had not killed himself and the three old ladies with their Freese's shopping bags and their Social Security checks; he had not been splattered across the tailgate of Uncle Ike's old Dodge pick-up. He was going uphill again now, speed bleeding away. Something--oh, call it desire, that was good enough, wasn't it?--was bleeding away with it. All the thoughts and memories were catching up--hi Bill, gee, we almost lost sight of you for awhile there, but here we are--rejoining him, climbing up his shirt and jumping into his ear and whooshing into his brain like little kids going down a slide. He could feel them settling into their accustomed places, their feverish bodies jostling each other. Gosh! Wow! Here we are inside Bill's head again! Let's think about George! Okay! Who wants to start?

  You think too much, Bill.

  No--that wasn't the problem. The problem was, he imagined too much.

  He turned into Richard's Alley and came out on Center Street a few moments later, pedaling slowly, feeling the sweat on his back and in his hair. He dismounted Silver in front of the Center Street Drug Store and went inside.

  6

  Before George's death, Bill would have gotten the salient points across to Mr. Keene by speaking to him. The druggist was not exactly kind--or at least Bill had an idea he was not--but he was patient enough, and he did not tease or make fun. But now Bill's stutter was much worse, and he really was afraid something bad might happen to Eddie if he did
n't move fast.

  So when Mr. Keene said, "Hello, Billy Denbrough, can I help you?," Bill took a folder advertising vitamins, turned it over, and wrote on the back: Eddie Kaspbrak and I were playing in the Barrens. He's got a bad assmar attack, I mean he can hardly breath. Can you give me a refill on his asspirador?

  He pushed this note across the glass-topped counter to Mr. Keene, who read it, looked at Bill's anxious blue eyes, and said, "Of course. Wait right here, and don't be handling anything you shouldn't."

  Bill shifted impatiently from one foot to the other while Mr. Keene was behind the rear counter. Although he was back there less than five minutes, it seemed an age before he returned with one of Eddie's plastic squeeze-bottles. He handed it over to Bill, smiled, and said, "This should take care of the problem."

  "Th-th-th-thanks," Bill said. "I don't h-have a-any m-m-muh-muh--"

  "That's all right, son. Mrs. Kaspbrak has an account here. I'll just add this on. I'm sure she'll want to thank you for your kindness."

  Bill, much relieved, thanked Mr. Keene and left quickly. Mr. Keene came around the counter to watch him go. He saw Bill toss the aspirator into his bike-basket and mount clumsily. Can he actually ride a bike that big? Mr. Keene wondered. I doubt it. I doubt it very much. But the Denbrough kid somehow got it going without falling on his head, and pedaled slowly away. The bike, which looked to Mr. Keene like somebody's idea of a joke, wobbled madly from side to side. The aspirator rolled back and forth in the basket.

  Mr. Keene grinned a little. If Bill had seen that grin, it might have gone a good way toward confirming his idea that Mr. Keene was not exactly one of the world's champion nice guys. It was sour, the grin of a man who has found much to wonder about but almost nothing to uplift in the human condition. Yes--he would add Eddie's asthma medication to Sonia Kaspbrak's bill, and as always she would be surprised--and suspicious rather than grateful--at how cheap the medication was. Other drugs were so dear, she said. Mrs. Kaspbrak, Mr. Keene knew, was one of those people who believed nothing cheap could do a person much good. He could really have soaked her for her son's HydrOx Mist, and there had been times when he had been tempted... but why should he make himself a party to the woman's foolishness? It wasn't as though he were going to starve.