It (61 page)

Richie turned around on his hands and knees and saw the terrified circle of his friend's upturned face in the square of the oversized cellar window through which a winter's load of coal had once been funnelled each October.

Bill was lying spreadeagled on the coal. His hands waved and clutched fruitlessly for the window frame, which was just out of reach. His shirt and jacket were rucked up almost to his breastbone. And he was sliding backward . . . no, he was being
pulled
backward by something Richie could barely see. It was a moving, bulking shadow behind Bill. A shadow that snarled and gibbered and sounded almost human.

Richie didn't need to see it. He had seen it the previous Saturday, on the screen of the Aladdin Theater. It was mad, totally mad, but
even so it never occurred to Richie to doubt either his own sanity or his conclusion.

The Teenage Werewolf had Bill Denbrough. Only it wasn't that guy Michael Landon with a lot of makeup on his face and a lot of fake fur. It was
real.

As if to prove it, Bill screamed again.

Richie reached in and caught Bill's hands in his own. The Walther pistol was in one of them, and for the second time that day Richie looked into its black eye . . . only this time it was loaded.

They tussled for Bill—Richie gripping his hands, the Werewolf gripping his ankles.

“G-G-Get out of h-here, Richie!”
Bill screamed.
“G-Get—”

The face of the Werewolf suddenly swam out of the dark. Its forehead was low and prognathous, covered with scant hair. Its cheeks were hollow and furry. Its eyes were a dark brown, filled with horrible intelligence, horrible awareness. Its mouth dropped open and it began to snarl. White foam ran from the corners of its thick lower lip in twin streams that dripped from its chin. The hair on its head was swept back in a gruesome parody of a teenager's d.a. It threw its head back and roared, its eyes never leaving Richie's.

Bill scrambled up the coal. Richie seized his forearms and pulled. For a moment he thought he was actually going to win. Then the Werewolf laid hold of Bill's legs again and he was yanked backward toward the darkness once more. It was stronger. It had laid hold of Bill, and it meant to have him.

Then, with no thought at all about what he was doing or why he was doing it, Richie heard the Voice of the Irish Cop coming out of his mouth, Mr. Nell's voice. But this was not Richie Tozier doing a bad imitation; it wasn't even precisely Mr. Nell. It was the Voice of every Irish beat-cop that had ever lived and twirled a billy by its rawhide rope as he tried the doors of closed shops after midnight:

“Let go of him, boyo, or I'll crack yer thick head! I swear to Jaysus! Leave go of him now or I'll serve ye yer own arse on a platter!”

The creature in the cellar let out an ear-splitting roar of rage . . . but it seemed to Richie that there was another note in that bellow as well. Perhaps fear. Or pain.

He gave one more tremendous tug, and Bill flew out of the window
and onto the grass. He stared up at Richie with dark horrified eyes. The front of his jacket was smeared black with coaldust.

“Kwuh-Kwuh-Quick!” Bill panted. He was nearly moaning. He grabbed at Richie's shirt. “W-W-We guh-guh-hotta—”

Richie could hear coal tumbling and avalanching down again. A moment later the Werewolf's face filled the cellar window. It snarled at them. Its paws clutched at the listless grass.

Bill still had the Walther—he had held on to the gun through all of it. Now he held it out in both hands, his eyes squinched down to slits, and pulled the trigger. There was another deafening bang. Richie saw a chunk of the Werewolf's skull tear free and a torrent of blood spilled down the side of its face, matting the fur there and soaking the collar of the school jacket it wore.

Roaring, it began to climb out of the window.

Moving slowly, dreamily, Richie reached under his coat and into his back pocket. He brought out the envelope with the picture of the sneezing man on it. He tore it open as the bleeding, roaring creature pulled itself out of the window, forcing its way, claws digging deep furrows in the earth. Richie tore the packet open and squeezed it.
“Git back in yer place, boyo!”
he ordered in the Voice of the Irish Cop. A white cloud puffed into the Werewolf's face. Its roars suddenly stopped. It stared at Richie with almost comic surprise and made a choked wheezing sound. Its eyes, red and bleary, rolled toward Richie and seemed to mark him once and forever.

Then it began to sneeze.

It sneezed again and again and again. Ropy strings of saliva flew from its muzzle. Greenish-black clots of snot flew out of its nostrils. One of these splatted against Richie's skin and burned there, like acid. He wiped it away with a scream of hurt and disgust.

There was still anger in its face, but there was also pain—it was unmistakable. Bill might have hurt it with his dad's pistol, but Richie had hurt it more . . . first with the Voice of the Irish Cop, and then with the sneezing powder.

Jesus, if I had some itching powder too and maybe a joy buzzer I might be able to kill it,
Richie thought, and then Bill grabbed the collar of his jacket and jerked him backward.

It was well that he did. The Werewolf stopped sneezing as suddenly
as it had started and lunged at Richie. It was quick, too—incredibly quick.

Richie might have only sat there with the empty envelope of Dr. Wacky's sneezing powder in one hand, staring at the Werewolf with a kind of drugged wonder, thinking how brown its fur was, how red the blood was, how nothing was in black and white in real life, he might have sat there until its paws closed around his neck and its long nails pulled his throat out, but Bill grabbed him again and pulled him to his feet.

Richie stumbled after him. They ran around to the front of the house and Richie thought,
It won't dare chase us anymore, we're on the street now, it won't dare chase us, won't dare, won't dare—

But it was coming. He could hear it just behind them, gibbering and snarling and slobbering.

There was Silver, still leaning against the tree. Bill jumped onto the seat and threw his father's pistol into the carrier basket where they had carried so many play guns. Richie chanced a glance behind him as he flung himself onto the package carrier and saw the Werewolf crossing the lawn toward them, less than twenty feet away now. Blood and slobber mixed on its high-school jacket. White bone gleamed through its pelt about the right temple. There were white smudges of sneezing powder on the sides of its nose. And Richie saw two other things which seemed to complete the horror. There was no zipper on the thing's jacket; instead there were big fluffy orange buttons, like pompoms. The other thing was worse. It was the other thing that made him feel as if he might faint, or just give up and let it kill him. A name was stitched on the jacket in gold thread, the kind of thing you could get done down at Machen's for a buck if you wanted it.

Stitched on the bloody left breast of the Werewolf's jacket, stained but readable, were the words
RICHIE TOZIER
.

It lunged at them.

“Go, Bill!”
Richie screamed.

Silver began to move, but slowly—much too slowly. It took Bill so long to get going—

The Werewolf crossed the rutted path just as Bill pedaled into the middle of Neibolt Street. Blood splattered its faded jeans, and looking
back over his shoulder, filled with a kind of dreadful, unbreakable fascination that was akin to hypnosis, Richie saw that the seams of the jeans were giving way in places, and tufts of coarse brown fur had sprung through.

Silver wavered wildly back and forth. Bill was standing up, gripping the bike's handlebars from underneath, head turned up toward the cloudy sky, cords standing out on his neck. And still the playing cards were only firing single shots.

One paw groped for Richie. He screamed miserably and ducked away from it. The Werewolf snarled and grinned. It was close enough so Richie could see the yellowing corneas of its eyes, could smell sweet rotten meat on its breath. Its teeth were crooked fangs.

Richie screamed again as it swung a paw at him. He was sure it was going to take his head off—but the paw passed in front of him, missing by no more than an inch. The force of the swing blew Richie's sweaty hair back from his forehead.

“Hi-yo Silver AWAYYY!”
Bill screamed at the top of his voice.

He had reached the top of a short, shallow hill. Not much, but enough to get Silver rolling. The playing cards picked up speed and began to burr along. Bill pumped the pedals madly. Silver stopped wavering and cut a straight course down Neibolt Street toward Route 2.

Thank God, thank God, thank God,
Richie thought incoherently.
Thank—

The Werewolf roared again—
oh my God it sounds like it's RIGHT BESIDE ME
—and Richie's wind was cut off as his shirt and jacket were jerked back against his windpipe. He made a gargling, choking sound and managed to grip Bill's middle just before he was pulled off the back of the bike. Bill tilted backward but held on to Silver's handlebar grips. For one moment Richie thought the big bike would simply do a wheelie and spill both of them off the back. Then his jacket, which had been just about ready for the rag-bag anyway, parted down the back with a loud ripping noise that sounded weirdly like a big fart. Richie could breathe again.

He looked around and stared directly into those muddy murderous eyes.

“Bill!”
He tried to howl it, but the word had no force, no sound.

Bill seemed to hear him anyway. He pedaled even harder, harder
than he ever had in his life. All his guts seemed to be rising, coming unanchored. He could taste thick coppery blood in the back of his throat. His eyeballs were starting from their sockets. His mouth hung open, scooping air. And a crazy, ineluctable sense of exhilaration filled him—something that was wild and free and all his own. A desire. He stood on the pedals; coaxed them; battered them.

Silver continued to pick up speed. He was beginning to feel the road now, beginning to fly. Bill could feel him go.

“Hi-yo Silver!”
he screamed again.
“Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYY!”

Richie could hear the fast rattle-thud of loafers on the macadam. He turned. The Werewolf's paw struck him above the eyes with stunning force, and for a moment Richie really did think the top of his head had come off. Things suddenly seemed dim, unimportant. Sounds faded in and out. The color washed out of the world. He turned back, clinging desperately to Bill. Warm blood ran into his right eye, stinging.

The paw swung again, striking the back fender this time. Richie felt the bike waver crazily, for a moment on the verge of tipping over, finally straightening out again. Bill yelled
Hi-yo Silver, AWAY!
again, but that was distant too, like an echo heard just before it dies out.

Richie closed his eyes and held on to Bill and waited for the end.

Bill had also heard the running steps and understood that the clown hadn't given up yet, but he didn't dare turn around and look. He would know if it caught up and knocked them flat. That was really all he needed to know.

Come on, boy,
he thought.
Give me everything now! Everything you got! Go, Silver! GO!

So once again Bill Denbrough found himself racing to beat the devil, only now the devil was a hideously grinning clown whose face sweated white greasepaint, whose mouth curved up in a leering red vampire smile, whose eyes were bright silver coins. A clown who was, for some lunatic reason, wearing a Derry High School jacket over its silvery suit with the orange ruff and the orange pompom buttons.

Go, boy, go—Silver, what do you say?

Neibolt Street blurred by him now. Silver was starting to hum good now. Had those running footfalls faded back a bit? He still didn't dare turn around to see. Richie had him in a deathgrip, he was pinching off his wind and Bill wanted to tell Richie to loosen up a little, but he didn't dare waste breath on that, either.

There, up ahead like a beautiful dream, was the stop-sign marking the intersection of Neibolt Street and Route 2. Cars were passing back and forth on Witcham. In his state of exhausted terror, this seemed somehow like a miracle to Bill.

Now, because he would have to put on his brakes in a moment (or do something
really
inventive), he risked a look back over his shoulder.

What he saw caused him to reverse Silver's pedals with a single snap-jerk. Silver skidded, laying rubber with its locked rear tire, and Richie's head smacked painfully into the hollow of Bill's right shoulder.

The street was completely empty.

But twenty-five yards or so behind them, by the first of the abandoned houses which formed a kind of funeral cortege leading up to the trainyards, there was a bright flick of orange. It lay close to a stormdrain cut into the curbing.

“Uhhhh . . .”

Almost too late, Bill realized that Richie was sliding off the back of Silver. Richie's eyes were turned up so Bill could only see the lower rims of the irises below his upper lids. The mended bow of his glasses hung askew. Blood was flowing slowly from his forehead.

Bill grabbed his arm, they both slipped to the right, and Silver overbalanced. They crashed to the street in a tangle of arms and legs. Bill barked his crazybone a good one and shouted with pain. Richie's eyes flickered at the sound.

“I am going to show you how to get to thees treasure, senhorr, but thees man Dobbs ees plenny dangerous,” Richie said in a snoring gasp. It was his Pancho Vanilla Voice, but its floating, unconnected quality scared Bill badly. He saw several coarse brown hairs clinging to the shallow head-wound on Richie's forehead. They were slightly kinky, like his father's pubic hair. They made him feel even more afraid, and he fetched Richie a strong smack upside the head.