Something groped for his hand and he almost gave in to panic before realizing it was Lois. He laced his fingers through hers.
[“Ralph, come up a little bit! It’s better You can breathe.” He understood what she meant at once, and had to restrain himself, haul himself down, at the last moment. If he hadn’t, he would have shot up the ladder of perception like a rocket under full thrust.
The world wavered, and suddenly there seemed to be a little more light in this stinking hole and a little more room, too.
The smell didn’t go away, but it became bearable, Now it was like being in a small closed tent full of people with dirty feet and sweaty armpitsnot nice, but something you could live with, at least for awhile.
Ralph suddenly imagined the face of a pocket-watch, complete with hands that were moving too fast. It was better without the stench trying to pour down his throat and gag him, but this was still a dangerous place to be-suppose they came out of here tomorrow morning, with nothing left of the Civic Center but a smoking hole on Main Street? And it could happen. Keeping track of time down here-short time, long time, or all time-was impossible. He glanced at his watch, but it was meaningless.
He should have set it earlier, but he had forgotten.
Let it go, Ralph-you can’t do anything about it, so let it go.
He tried, and as he did, it occurred to him that Old Dor had been a hundred percent correct on the day Ed had crashed into Mr. West Side Gardeners’ pickup truck; it was better not to mess into long-time business. And yet here they were, the world’s oldest Peter Pan and the world’s oldest Wendy, sliding under a magic tree into some slimy underworld neither one of them wanted to see.
Lois was looking at him, her pale face lit with that sick red glow, her expressive eyes full of fright. He saw dark threads on her chin and realized it was blood. She had quit.just nibbling at her lower lip and had begun taking bites out of it.
[“Ralph, are you all right?”]
[“I get to crawl under an old oak tree with a pretty girl and you even have to ask? I’m fine, Lois. But I think we better hurry.
[“All right.” He felt around below him and placed his foot on a gnarled rootknuckle. It took his weight and he slid down the stony slope, squeezing beneath another root and holding Lois around the waist. Her skirt skidded up to her thighs and Ralph thought again, briefly, about Chuckle Engstrom and his Peekie Wand. He was both amused and exasperated to see Lois was trying to pull the skirt back down.
[“I know that a lady tries to keep her skirt down whenever possible, but I think the rule goes by the boards when you’re sliding down the staircases under old oak trees. Okay?”] She gave him an embarrassed, frightened little smile.
[“If I’d known what we were going to he doing, I would have worn slacks. I thought we were just going to the hospital.”] If I’d known what we were going to be doing, Ralph thought, I would have cashed in my bonds, developing softness in the market or not, and had us on a plane to Rio, my dear.
He felt around with his other foot, very aware that if he fell, he was probably going to end up in a place far beyond the reach of Derry Rescue. Just above his eyes, a reddish worm poked out of the earth, dribbling little crumbles of dirt down on Ralph’s forehead.
For what seemed like an eternity he felt nothing, and then his foot found smooth wood-not a root this time, but something like a real step.
He slid down, still holding Lois around the waist, and waited to see if the thing he was standing on would hold or snap under their combined weight.
It held, and it was wide enough for both of them. Ralph looked down and saw that it was the top step of a narrow staircase which curved down into the red-tinged dark. It had been built for-and perhaps by-a creature that was a lot shorter than they were, making it necessary for them to hunch, but it was still better than the nightmare of the last few moments.
Ralph looked at the ragged wedge of daylight above them, his eyes gazing out of his dirt-and sweat-streaked face with an expression of dumb longing. Daylight had never looked so sweet or so distant. He turned back to Lois and nodded to her. She squeezed his hand Itlci nodded back. Bending over, cringing each time a dangling root touched their necks or backs, they started down the staircase.
The descent seemed endless. The red light grew brighter, the stench of Atropos grew thicker, and Ralph was aware that they were both,going up” as they went down; it was either that or be flattened by the smell.
He continued telling himself that they were doing what they had to do, and that there must be a timekeeper on an operation this big-someone who would give them a poke if and when the schedule got too tight for comfort-but he kept worrying, just the same. Because there might not be a timekeeper, or an jump, or a team of refs in zebra-striped shirts. All bets are off, Clotho had said. just as Ralph was starting to wonder if the stairs went all the way down into hell itself, they ended. A short stone-lined corridor, no more than forty inches high and twenty feet long, led to an arched doorway. Beyond it, that red glow pulsed and flared like the reflected glow of an open oven.
[“Come on, Lois, but be ready for anything. Be ready for him.”]
She nodded, hitched at her wayward slip again, then walked beside him up the narrow passage. Ralph kicked something that wasn’t a stone and bent over to pick it up. It was a red plastic cylinder, wider at one end than at the other. After a moment he realized what it was: a jumprope handle. Three-six-nine, lion, the goose drank wine.
Don’t butt into what doesn’t concern you, Short-Time, Atropos had said, but he had butted in, and not just because of what the little bald doctors called ka, either. He had gotten involved because what Atropos was up to was his concern, whatever the little creep might think to the contrary. Derry was his town, Lois Chasse was his friend, and Ralph found within himself a sincere desire to make Doc #3 sorry he’d ever seen Lois’s diamond earrings.
He flipped the jumprope handle away and started walking again.
A moment later he and Lois passed under the arch and simply stood there, staring into Atropos’s underground apartment.
With their wide eyes and linked hands, they looked more like children in a fairy-tale than ever-not Peter Pan and Wendy now but Hansel and Gretel, coming upon the witch’s candy house after days spent wandering in the trackless forest.
[“Oh, Ralph. Oh my God, Ralph… do you see?”] [“shhh, Lois. shhh.” Directly ahead of them was a small, mean chamber which seemed to be a combination kitchen and bedroom. The room was simultaneously sordid and creepy. Standing in the center was a low round table which Ralph thought was the amputated top half of a barrel.
The remains of a meal-some gray, rancid gruel that looked like liquefied brains congealing in a chipped soup tureen-stood on it.
There was a single dirty folding chair. To the right of the table was a primitive commode which consisted of a rusty steel drum with a toilet-seat balanced on top of it. The smell rising from this was incredibly foul. The room’s only decoration was a full-length brassbordered mirror on one wall, its reflective surface so age-darkened that the Ralph and Lois captured within it looked as if they might have been floating in ten or twelve feet of water.
To the left of the mirror was a stark sleeping accommodation which consisted of a filthy mattress and a burlap sack stuffed with straw or feathers. Both pillow and mattress glowed and raved with the nightsweats of the creature who used them. The dreams inside, that burlap pillow would drive me insane, Ralph thought.
Somewhere, God only knew how much farther under the earth, water was dripping hollowly.