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Bill didn't reply. He slithered through, scraping his duffel coat up from the small of his back, barely missing a chunk of glass that would have cut him a good one. A second later Richie heard his tennies smack down on the hard earth inside.
"Piss on this action," Richie muttered frantically to himself, looking at the square of darkness into which his friend had disappeared. "Bill, you gone out of your mind?
Bill's voice floated up: "Y-You c-c-can stay up th-there if you w-want, Ruh-Ruh-Richie. St-Stand g-g-guard."
Instead he rolled over on his belly and shoved his legs through the cellar window before his nerve could go bad on him, hoping he wouldn't cut his hands or his stomach on the broken glass.
Something clutched his legs. Richie screamed.
"I-I-It's juh-juh-hust m-me," Bill hissed, and a moment later Richie was standing beside him in the cellar, pulling down his shirt and his jacket. "Wh-who d-did you th-think it w-was?"
"The boogeyman," Richie said, and laughed shakily.
"Y-You g-go th-that w-way and I-I-I'll g-g-g-"
"Fuck that," Richie said. He could actually hear his heartbeat in his voice, making it sound bumpy and uneven, first up and then down. "I'm stickin with you, Big Bill."
They moved toward the coalpit first, Bill slightly in the lead, the gun in his hand, Richie close behind him, trying to look everywhere at once. Bill stood beyond one of the coalpit's jutting wooden sides for a moment, and then suddenly darted around it, pointing the gun with both hands. Richie squinched his eyes shut, steeling himself for the explosion. It didn't come. He opened his eyes again cautiously.
"Nuh-nuh-nothin but c-c-coal," Bill said, and giggled nervously.
Richie stepped up beside Bill and looked. There was still a drift of old coal piled up almost to the ceiling at the back of the stall and trickling away to a lump or two by their feet. It was as black as a crow's wing.
"Let's-" Richie began, and then the door at the head of the cellar stairs crashed open against the wall with a violent bang, spilling thin white daylight down the stairs.
Both boys screamed.
Richie heard snarling sounds. They were very loud-the sounds a wild animal in a cage might make. He saw loafers descend the steps. Faded jeans on top of them-swinging hands-
But they weren't hands... they were paws. Huge, misshapen paws.
"Cuh-cuh-climb the c-c-coal!" Bill was screaming, but Richie stood frozen, suddenly knowing what was coming for them, what was going to kill them in this cellar that stank of damp earth and the cheap wine that had been spilled in the corners. Knowing but needing to see. "There's a wuh-wuh-window at the t-top of the c-coal!"
The paws were covered with dense brown hair that curled and coiled like wire; the fingers were tipped with jagged nails. Now Richie saw a silk jacket. It was black with orange piping-the Derry High School colors.
"G-G-Go!" Bill screamed, and gave Richie a gigantic shove. Richie went sprawling into the coal. Sharp jags and corners of it poked him painfully, breaking through his daze. More coal avalanched over his hands. That mad snarling went on and on.
Panic slipped its hood over Richie's mind.
Barely aware of what he was doing, he scrambled up the mountain of coal, gaining ground, sliding back, lunging upward again, screaming as he went. The window at the top was grimed black with coal-dust and let in next to no light at all. It was latched shut. Richie seized the latch, which was of the sort that turned, and threw all his weight against it. The latch moved not at all. The snarling was closer now.
The gun went off below him, the sound nearly deafening in the closed room. Gunsmoke, sharp and acrid, stung Richie's nose. It shocked him back to some sort of awareness and he realized that he had been trying to turn the thumb-latch the wrong way. He reversed the direction of the force he was applying, and the latch gave with a protracted rusty squeal. Coaldust sifted down on his hands like pepper.
The gun went off again with a second deafening bang. Bill Denbrough shouted, "YOU KILLED MY BROTHER, YOU FUCKER!"
For a moment the creature which had come down the stairs seemed to laugh, seemed to speak-it was as if a vicious dog had suddenly begun to bark out garbled words, and for a moment Richie thought the thing in the high-school jacket snarled back, I'm going to kill you too.
"Richie!" Bill screamed then, and Richie heard coal clattering and falling again as Bill scrambled up. The snarls and roars continued. Wood splintered. There were mingled barks and howls-sounds out of a cold nightmare.
Richie gave the window a tremendous shove, not caring if the glass broke and cut his hands to ribbons. He was beyond caring. It did not break; it swung outward on an old steel hinge flaked with rust. More coal-dust sifted down, this time on Richie's face. He wriggled out into the side yard like an eel, smelling sweet fresh air, feeling the long grass whip at his face. He was dimly aware that it was raining. He could see the thick stalks of the giant sunflowers, green and hairy.
The Walther went off a third time, and the beast in the cellar screamed, a primitive sound of pure rage. Then Bill cried: "It's g-got me, Richie! Help! It's g-g-got me!"
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 coal-dust.
"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, gill 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.