drenched paisley headband dripping water into his eyes. White shingles were popping off the downtown side of the great round water-tower . . . no, not exactly popping off; it was more like they were squirting off. And a definite crinkle had appeared about twenty feet above the Standpipe's stone foundation. Water suddenly began to spray out through this crinkle, and now the shingles weren't squirting off the Standpipe's downtown side; they were spewing into the windstream. A rending sound began to come from the Standpipe, and Andrew could see it moving, like the hand of a great clock inclining from noon to one to two. The baggie of pot fell out of his armpit and fetched up inside his shirt somewhere near his belt. He didn't notice. He was utterly fetched. Large twanging sounds came from inside the Standpipe, as if the strings of the world's biggest guitar were being broken one by one. These were the cables inside the cylinder, which had provided the proper balance of stress against the water-pressure. The Standpipe began to heel over faster and faster, boards and beams ripping apart, splinters jumping and whirling into the air. 'FAAAR FUCKING OWWWWT!' Andrew Keene shrieked, but it was lost in the Standpipe's final crashing fall, and by the rising sound of one and three-quarter million gallons of water, seven thousand tons of water, pouring out of the building's ruptured spouting side. It went in a gray tidal wave, and of course if Andrew Keene had been on the downhill side of the Standpipe, he would have exited the world in no time. But God favors drunks, small children, and the cataclysmically stoned; Andrew was standing in a place where he could see it all and not be touched by a single drop. 'GREAT FUCKINGSPECIAL EFFECTS!' Andrew screamed as the water rolled over Memorial Park like a solid thing, sweeping away the sundial beside which a small boy named Stan Uris had often stood watching birds with his father's field glasses. 'STEVEN SPIELBERG EAT YOUR HEART OUT!' The stone birdbath also went. Andrew saw it for a moment, turning over and over, pedestal for dish and dish for pedestal, and then it was gone. A line of maples and birches separating Memorial Park from Kansas Street were knocked down like so many pins in a bowling alley. They took wild spiky snarls of power lines with them. The water rolled across the street, beginning to spread now, beginning to look more like water than that mind-boggling solid wall that had taken sundial, birdbath, and trees, but it still had power enough to sweep almost a dozen houses on the far side of Kansas Street off their foundations and into the Barrens. They went with sickening ease, most of them still whole. Andrew Keene recognized one of them as belonging to the Karl Massensik family. Mr Massensik had been his sixth-grade teacher, a real pooch. As the house went over the edge and down the slope, Andrew realized he could still see a candle burning brightly in one window, and he wondered briefly if he might be mentally highsiding it, if you could dig the concept. There was an explosion from the Barrens and a brief gout of yellow flame as someone's Coleman gas lantern ignited oil pouring out of a ruptured fuel-tank. Andrew stared at the far side of Kansas Street, where until just forty seconds ago there had been a neat line of middle-class houses. They were Gone City now, and you better believe it, sweet thing. In their places were ten cellar –holes that looked like swimming-pools. Andrew wanted to advance the opinion that this was far fucking out, but he couldn't yell anymore. Seemed like his yeller was busted. His diaphragm felt weak and useless. He heard a series of crunching thuds, the sound of a giant with his shoes full of Ritz crackers marching down a flight of stairs. It was the Standpipe rolling down the hill, a huge white cylinder still spouting the last of its water supply, the thick cables that had helped to hold it together flying into the air and then cracking down again like steel bullwhips, digging runnels in the soft earth that immediately filled up with rushing rainwater. As Andrew watched, with his chin resting somewhere between his collarbones, the Standpipe, horizontal now, better than a hundred and twenty-five feet long, flew out into the air. For a moment it seemed frozen there, a surreal image straight out of rubber-walled strait-jacketed toodle-oo land, rainwater sparkling on its shattered sides, its windows broken, casements hanging, the flashing light on top, meant as a warning for low-flying light planes,
still flashing, and then it fell into the street with a final rending crash. Kansas Street had channelled a lot of the water, and now it began to rush toward downtown by way of Up-Mile Hill. There used to be houses over there, Andrew Keene thought, and suddenly all the strength ran out of his legs. He sat down heavily — kersplash. He stared at the broken stone foundation on which the Standpipe had stood for his whole life. He wondered if anyone would ever believe him. He wondered if he believed it himself.
2
The Kill / 10:02 A.M ., May31st, 1985
Bill and Richie saw It turn toward them, Its mandibles opening and closing, Its one good eye glaring down at them, and Bill realized It gave off Its own source of illumination, like some grisly lightning-bug. But the light was flickering and uncertain; It was badly hurt. Its thoughts buzzed and racketed
(let me go! let me go and you can have everything you've ever wanted — money, fame, fortune, power — I can give you these things)
in his head.
Bill moved forward empty-handed, his eyes fixed on Its single red one. He felt the power growing inside him, investing him, knotting his arms into cords, filling each clenched fist with its own force. Richie walked beside him, his lips pulled back over his teeth.
(I can give you your wife back — I can do it, only I — she'll remember nothing as the seven of you remembered nothing)
They were close, very close now. Bill could smell Its stinking aroma and realized with sudden horror that it was the smell of the Barrens, the smell they had taken for the smell of sewers and polluted streams and the burning dump . . . but had they ever really believed those were all it had been? It was the smell of It, and perhaps it had been strongest in the Barrens but it had hung over all Derry like a cloud and people just didn't smell it, the way zoo-keepers don't smell their charges after awhile, or even wonder why the visitors wrinkle their noses when they come in.
'Us two,' he muttered to Richie, and Richie nodded without taking his eyes off the Spider, which now shrank back from them, Its abominable spiny legs Glittering, brought to bay at last.
(I can't give you eternal life but I ca n touch you and you will live long long lives — two hundred years, three hundred, perhaps five hundred — I can make you gods of the Earth — if you let me go if you let me go if you let me — )
'Bill?' Richie asked hoarsely.
With a scream building in him, building up and up and up, Bill charged. Richie ran with him stride for stride. They struck together with their right fists, but Bill understood it was not really their fists they were striking with at all; it was their combined force, augmented by the force of that Other; it was the force of memory and desire; above all else, it was the force of love and unforgotten childhood like one big wheel.
The Spider's shriek filled Bill's head, seeming to splinter his brains. He felt his fist plunge deep into writhing wetness. His arm followed it in up to the shoulder. He pulled it back, dripping with the Spider's black blood. Ichor poured from the hole he had made.