It

Page 59

She told them about the voices. About recognizing Ronnie Grogan's voice. She knew Ronnie was dead, but it was her voice all the same. She told them about the blood, and how her father had not seen it or felt it, and how her mother had not seen it this morning.
When she finished, she looked around at their faces, afraid of what she might
see there... but she saw no disbelief. Terror, but no disbelief.
Finally Ben said, "Let's go look."
7
They went in by the back door, not just because that was the lock Bev's key fitted but because she said her father would kill her if Mrs Bolton saw her going into the apartment with three boys while her folks were gone.
"Why?" Eddie asked.
"You wouldn't understand, numbnuts," Stan said. "Just be quiet."
Eddie started to reply, looked again at Stan's white, strained face and decided to keep his mouth shut.
The door gave on the kitchen, which was full of late-afternoon sun and summer silence. The breakfast dishes sparkled in the drainer. The four of them stood by the kitchen table, bunched up, and when a door slammed upstairs, they all jumped and then laughed nervously.
"Where is it?" Ben asked. He was whispering.
Her heart thudding in her temples, Beverly led them down the little hall with her parents" bedroom on one side and the closed bathroom door at the end. She pulled it open, stepped quickly inside, and pulled the chain over the sink. Then she stepped back between Ben and Eddie again. The blood had dried to maroon smears on the mirror and the basin and the wallpaper. She looked at the blood because it was suddenly easier to look at that than at them.
In a small voice she could hardly recognize as her own, she asked: "do you see it? Do any of you see it? Is it there?"
Ben stepped forward, and she was again struck by how delicately he moved for such a fat boy. He touched one of the smears of blood; then a second; then a long drip on the mirror. "Here. Here. Here." His voice was flat and authoritative.
"Jeepers! It looks like somebody killed a pig in here," Stan said, softly awed.
"It all came out of the drain?" Eddie asked. The sight of the blood made him feel ill. His breath was shortening. He clutched at his aspirator.
Beverly had to struggle to keep from bursting into fresh tears. She didn't want to do that; she was afraid if she did they would dismiss her as just another girl. But she had to clutch for the doorknob as relief washed through her in a wave of frightening strength. Until that moment she hadn't realized how sure she was that she was going crazy, having hallucinations, something.
"And your mom and dad never saw it," Ben marvelled. He touched a splotch of blood which had dried on the basin and then pulled his hand away and wiped it on the tail of his shirt. "Jeepers-creepers.
"I don't know how I can ever come in here again," Beverly said. "Not to wash up or brush my teeth or... you know."
"Well, why don't we clean the place up?" Stanley asked suddenly.
Beverly looked at him. "Clean it?"
"Sure. Maybe we couldn't get all of it off the wallpaper-it looks sorta, you know, on its last legs-but we could get the rest. Haven't you got some rags?"
"Under the kitchen sink," Beverly said. "But my mom'll wonder where they went if we use them."
"I've got fifty cents," Stan said quietly. His eyes never left the blood that had spattered the area of the bathroom around the wash-basin. "We'll clean up as good as we can, then take the rags down to that coin-op laundry place back the way we came. We'll wash them and dry them and they'll all be back under the sink before your folks get home."
"My mother says you can't get blood out of cloth," Eddie objected. "she says it sets in, or something."
Ben uttered a hysterical little giggle. "doesn't matter if it comes out of the
rags or not," he said. "They can't see it."
No one had to ask him who he meant by "they."
"All right," Beverly said. "Let's try it."
Chapter 9 CLEANING UP(III)
8
For the next half hour, the four of them cleaned like grim elves, and as the blood disappeared from the walls and the mirror and the porcelain basin, Beverly felt her heart grow lighter and lighter. Ben and Eddie did the sink and mirror while she scrubbed the floor. Stan worked on the wallpaper with studious care, using a rag that was almost dry. In the end, they got almost all of it. Ben finished by removing the light-bulb over the sink and replacing it with one from the box of bulbs in the pantry. There were plenty: Elfrida Marsh had bought a two-year supply from the Derry Lions during their annual light-bulb sale the fall before.
They used Elfrida's floorbucket, her Ajax, and plenty of hot water. They dumped the water frequently because none of them liked to have their hands in it once it had turned pink.
At last Stanley backed away, looked at the bathroom with the critical eye of a boy in whom neatness and order are not simply ingrained but actually innate, and told them: "It's the best we can do, I think."
There were still faint traces of blood on the wallpaper to the left of the sink, where the paper was so thin and ragged that Stanley had dared do no more than blot it gently. Yet even here the blood had been sapped of its former ominous strength; it was little more than a meaningless pastel smear.
Thank you," Beverly said to all of them. She could not remember ever having meant thanks so deeply. "Thank you all."
"It's okay," Ben mumbled. He was of course blushing again.
"Sure," Eddie agreed.
"Let's get these rags done," Stanley said. His face was set, almost stern. And later Beverly would think that perhaps only Stan realized that they had taken another step toward some unthinkable confrontation.
9
They measured out a cup of Mrs Marsh's Tide and put it in an empty mayonnaise jar. Bev found a paper shopping bag to put the bloody rags in, and the four of them went down to the Kleen-Kloze Washateria on the corner of Main and Cony Streets. Two blocks farther up they could see the Canal gleaming a bright blue in the afternoon sun.
The Kleen-Kloze was empty except for a woman in a white nurse's uniform who was waiting for her dryer to stop. She glanced at the four kids distrustfully and then went back to her paperback of Peyton Place.
"Cold water," Ben said in a low voice. "My mom says you gotta wash blood in cold water."
They dumped the rags into the washer while Stan changed his two quarters for four dimes and two nickels. He came back and watched as Bev dumped the Tide over the rags and swung the washer's door closed. Then he plugged two dimes into the coin-op slot and twisted the start knob.
Beverly had chipped in most of the pennies she had won at pitch for the frappes, but she found four survivors deep down in the lefthand pocket of her jeans. She fished them out and offered them to Stan, who looked pained. "Jeez," he said, "I take a girl on a laundry date and right away she wants to go Dutch."
Beverly laughed a little. "You sure?"
"I'm sure," Stan said in his dry way. "I mean, it's really breaking my heart to give up those four pence, Beverly, but I'm sure."
The four of them went over to the line of plastic contour chairs against the Washateria's cinderblock wall and sat there, not talking. The Maytag with the rags in it chugged and sloshed. Fans of suds slobbered against the thick glass of its round porthole. At first the suds were reddish. Looking at them made Bev feel a little sick, but she found it was hard to look away. The bloody foam had a gruesome sort of fascination. The lady in the nurse's uniform glanced at them more and more often over the top of her book. She had perhaps been afraid they would be rowdy; now their very silence seemed to unnerve her. When her dryer stopped she took her clothes out, folded them, put them into a blue plastic laundry-bag and left, giving them one last puzzled look as she went out the door.
As soon as she was gone, Ben said abruptly, almost harshly: "You're not alone."
"What?" Beverly asked.
"You're not alone," Ben repeated. "You see-"
He stopped and looked at Eddie, who nodded. He looked at Stan, who looked unhappy... but who, after a moment, shrugged and also nodded.
"What in the world are you talking about?" Beverly asked. She was tired of people saying inexplicable things to her today. She gripped Ben's lower arm. "If you know something about this, tell me!"
"Do you want to do it?" Ben asked Eddie.
Eddie shook his head. He took his aspirator out of his pocket and sucked in on it with a monstrous gasp.
Speaking slowly, picking his words, Ben told Beverly how he had happened to meet Bill Denbrough and Eddie Kaspbrak in the Barrens on the day school let out-that was almost a week ago, as hard as that was to believe. He told her about how they had built the dam in the Barrens the following day. He told Bill's story of how the school photograph of his dead brother had turned its head and winked. He told his own story of the mummy who had walked on the icy Canal in the dead heart of winter with balloons that floated against the wind. Beverly listened to all this with growing horror. She could feel her eyes widening, her hands and feet growing cold.
Ben stopped and looked at Eddie. Eddie took another wheezing pull on his aspirator and then told the story of the leper again, speaking as rapidly as Ben had slowly, his words tumbling over one another in their urgency to escape and be gone. He finished with a sucking little half-sob, but this time he didn't cry.
"And you?" she asked, looking at Stan Uris.
"I-"
There was sudden silence, making them all start the way a sudden explosion might have done.
"The wash is done," Stan said.
They watched him get up-small, economical, graceful-and open the washer. He pulled out the rags, which were stuck together in a clump, and examined them.
There's a little stain left," he said, "but it's not too bad. Looks like it could be cranberry juice."
He showed them, and they all nodded gravely, as if over important documents. Beverly felt a relief that was similar to the relief she had felt when the bathroom was clean again. She could stand the faded pastel smear on the peeling wallpaper in there, and she could stand the faint reddish stain on her mother's cleaning rags. They had done something about it, that seemed to be the important thing. Maybe it hadn't worked completely, but she discovered it had worked well enough to give her heart peace, and brother, that was good enough for Al Marsh's daughter Beverly.
Stan tossed them into one of the barrel-shaped dryers and put in two nickels. The dryer started to turn, and Stan came back and took his seat between Eddie and Ben.
For a moment the four of them sat silent again, watching the rags turn and fall, turn and fall. The drone of the gas-fired dryer was soothing, almost soporific. A woman passed by the chocked-open door, wheeling a cart of groceries. She glanced in at them and passed on.
"I did see something," Stan said suddenly. "I didn't want to talk about it, because I wanted to think it was a dream or something. Maybe even a fit, like that Stavier kid has. Any you guys know that kid?"
Ben and Bev shook their heads. Eddie said, The kid who's got epilepsy?"
"Yeah, right. That's how bad it was. I would have rather thought I had something like that than that I saw something... really real."
"What was it?" Bev asked, but she wasn't sure she really wanted to know. This was not like listening to ghost-stories around a camp-fire while you ate wieners in toasted buns and cooked marshmallows over the flames until they were black and crinkly. Here they sat in this stifling laundromat and she could see great big dust kitties under the washing machines (ghost-turds, her father called them), she could see dust-motes dancing in the hot shafts of sunlight which fell through the laundromat's dirty plate-glass window, she could see old magazines with their covers torn off. These were all normal things. Nice and normal and boring. But she was scared. Terribly scared. Because, she sensed, none of these things were made-up storks, made-up monsters: Ben's mummy, Eddie's leper... either or both of them might be out tonight when the sun went down. Or Bill Denbrough's brother, one-armed and implacable, cruising through the black drains under the city with silver coins for eyes.
Yet, when Stan did not answer immediately, she asked again: "What was it?"
Speaking carefully, Stan said: "I was over in that little park where the Standpipe is-"
"Oh God, I don't like that place," Eddie said dolefully. "If there's a haunted house in Derry, that's it."
"What? Stan said sharply. "What did you say?"
"Don't you know about that place?" Eddie asked. "My mom wouldn't let me go near there even before the kids started getting killed. She... she takes real good care of me." He offered them an uneasy grin and held his aspirator tighter in his lap. "You see, some kids have been drowned in there. Three or four. They-Stan? Stan, are you all right?"
Stan Uris's face had gone a leaden gray. His mouth worked soundlessly. His eyes rolled up until the others could only see the bottommost curves of his irises. One hand clutched weakly at empty air and then fell against his thigh.
Eddie did the only thing he could think of. He leaned over, put one thin arm around Stan's slumping shoulders, jammed his aspirator into Stan's mouth, and triggered off a big blast.
Stan began to cough and choke and gag. He sat up straight, his eyes back in focus again. He coughed into his cupped hands. At last he uttered a huge, burping gasp and slumped back against his chair.
"What was that?" he managed at last.
"My asthma medicine," Eddie said apologetically.
"God, it tastes like dead dogshit."
They all laughed at this, but it was nervous laughter. The others were looking nervously at Stan. Thin color now burned in his cheeks.
"It's pretty bad, all right," Eddie said with some pride.
"Yeah, but is it kosher?" Stan said, and they all laughed again, although none of them (including Stan) really knew what "kosher" meant.
Stan stopped laughing first and looked at Eddie intently. "Tell me what you know about the Standpipe," he said.
Eddie started, but both Ben and Beverly also contributed. The Derry Standpipe stood on Kansas Street, about a mile and a half west of downtown, near the southern edge of the Barrens. At one time, near the end of the previous century, it had supplied all of Derry's water, holding one and three-quarter million gallons. Because the circular open-air gallery just below the Standpipe's roof offered a spectacular view of the town and the surrounding countryside, it had been a popular place until 1930 or so. Families would come out to tiny Memorial Park on a Saturday or Sunday forenoon when the weather was fine, climb the one hundred and sixty stairs inside the Standpipe to the gallery, and take in the view. More often than not they spread and ate a picnic lunch while they did so.