Stephen King - It

(deadlights)

More than alive: it was full of a force-magnetism, gravity, perhaps something else. Richie felt himself lifted and dropped, swirled and pulled, as if he were shooting a fast throat of rapids in an innertube. He could feel the light moving eagerly over his face… and the light was thinking.

This is It, this is It, the rest of It.

–let me go, you promised to let me GO

I know but sometimes, honeychile, I lie-my mamma she beat me fo it but my daddy, he done just about give up

He sensed Bill tumbling and flailing toward one of the gaps in the wall, sensed evil fingers of light reaching for him, and with a final despairing effort, he reached for his friend.

Bill! Your hand! Give me your hand! YOUR HAND, GODDAMMIT” YOUR HAND!

Bill’s hand shot out, the fingers opening and closing, that living fire crawling and twisting over Audra’s wedding ring in runic, Moorish patterns-wheels, crescents, stars, swastikas, linked circles that grew into rolling chains. Bill’s face was overlaid with the same light, making him look tattooed. Richie stretched out as far as he could, hearing It scream and yammer.

(I missed him, oh dear God I missed he’s going to shoot through)

Then Bill’s fingers closed over Richie’s, and Richie clenched his hand into a fist. Bill’s legs flew through one of the gaps in the frozen wood, and for one mad moment Richie realized he could see all the bones and veins and capillaries inside them, as if Bill had shot halfway into the maw of the world’s strongest X-ray machine. Richie felt the muscles in his arm stretch like taffy, felt the ball-and-socket joint in his shoulder creak and groan in protest as the footpounds of pressure built up.

He summoned all of his force and shouted: “Pull us back! Pull us back or I’ll kill you! I… I’ll Voice you to death!”

The Spider screeched again, and Richie suddenly felt a great, snapping whiplash curl through his body. His arm was a white-hot bar of agony. His grip on Bill’s hand began to slip.

“Hold on, Big Bill!”

“I got you! Richie, I got you!”

You better, Richie thought grimly, because I think you could walk ten billion miles out here and never find a fucking pay toilet.

They whistled back, that crazy light fading, becoming a series of brilliant pinpoints that finally winked out. They drove through the darkness like torpedoes, Richie gripping Its tongue with his teeth and Bill’s wrist with one aching hand. There was the Turtle; there and gone in a single eyeblink.

Richie sensed them drawing closer to whatever passed for the real world (although he believed he would never think of it as exactly “real” again; he would see it as a clever canvas scene underlaid with a crisscrossing of support-cables… cables like the strands of a spiderweb). But we’re going to be all right, he thought. We’re going to get back. We -

The buffeting began then-the whipping, slamming, side-to-side flailing as It tried one final time to shake them off and leave them Outside. And Richie felt his grip slipping. He heard Its guttural roar of triumph and concentrated his being on holding… but he continued to slip. He bit down frantically, but Its tongue seemed to be losing substance and reality; it seemed to be becoming gossamer.

“Help!” Richie screamed. “I’m losing it! Help! Somebody help us!”

Eddie was half-aware of what was happening; he felt it somehow, saw it somehow, but as if through a gauzy curtain. Somewhere, Bill and Richie were struggling to come back. Their bodies were here, but the rest of them-the real of them-was far away.

He had seen the Spider turn to impale Bill with Its stinger, and then Richie had run forward, yelling at It in that ridiculous Irish Cop’s Voice he used to use… only Richie must have improved his act a hell of a lot over the years, because this Voice sounded eerily like Mr Nell from the old days.

The Spider had turned toward Richie, and Eddie had seen Its unspeakable red eyes bulge in their sockets. Richie yelled again, this time in his Pancho Vanilla Voice, and Eddie had felt the Spider scream in pain. Ben yelled hoarsely as a split appeared in Its hide along the line of one of Its scars from the last time. A stream of ichor, black as crude oil, sprayed out. Richie had started to say something else… and his voice had begun to diminish, like the fade at the end of a pop song. His head had rolled back on his neck, his eyes fixed on Its eyes. The Spider grew quiet again.

Time passed-Eddie had no idea just how much. Richie and the Spider stared at each other; Eddie sensed the connection between them, felt a swirl of talk and emotion somewhere far away. He could make out nothing exactly, but sensed the tones of things in colors and hues.

Bill lay slumped on the floor, nose and ears bleeding, fingers twitching slightly, his long face pale, his eyes closed.

The Spider was now bleeding in four or five places, badly hurt again, badly hurt but still dangerously vital, and Eddie thought: Why are we just standing around here? We could hurt It while It’s occupied with Richie! Why doesn’t somebody move, for Christ’s sake?

He sensed a wild triumph-and that feeling was dearer, sharper. Closer. They’re coming back! he wanted to shout, but his mouth was too dry, his throat too tight. They’re coming back!

Then Richie’s head began to turn slowly from side to side. His body seemed to ripple inside his clothes. His glasses hung on the end of his nose for a moment… then fell off and shattered on the stone floor.

The Spider stirred, its spiny legs making a dry clittering on the floor. Eddie heard It cry out in terrible triumph, and a moment later, Richie’s voice burst clearly into his head:

(help! I’m losing it! somebody help me!}

Eddie ran forward then, yanking his aspirator from his pocket with his good hand, his lips drawn back in a grimace, his breath whistling painfully in and out of a throat that now felt the size of a pinhole. Crazily, his mother’s face danced before him and she was crying: Don’t go near that Thing, Eddie! Don’t go near It! Things like that give you cancer!

“Shut up, Ma!” Eddie screamed in a high, shrieky voice-all the voice he had left. The Spider’s head turned toward the sound, Its eyes momentarily leaving Richie’s.

“Here!” Eddie howled in his fading voice. “Here, have some of this!”

He leaped at It, triggering the aspirator at the same time, and for an instant all his childhood belief in the medicine came back to him, the childhood medicine that could solve everything, that could make him feel better when the bigger boys roughed him up or when he was knocked over in the rush to get through the doors when school let out or when he had to sit on the edge of the Tracker Brothers” vacant lot, out of the game because his mother wouldn’t allow him to play baseball. It was good medicine, strong medicine, and as he leaped into the Spider’s face, smelling Its foul yellow stench, feeling himself overwhelmed by Its single-minded fury and determination to wipe them all out, he triggered the aspirator into one of Its ruby eyes.

He felt-heard Its scream-no rage this time, only pain, a horrid screaming agony. He saw the mist of droplets settle on that blood-red bulge, saw the droplets turn white where they landed, saw them sink in as a splash of carbolic acid would sink in; he saw Its huge eye begin to flatten out like a bloody egg-yolk and run in a ghastly stream of living blood and ichor and maggoty pus.

“Come home now, Bill!” he screamed with the last of his voice, and then he struck It, he felt Its noisome heat baking into him; he felt a terrible wet warmth and realized that his good arm had slipped into the Spider’s mouth.

He triggered the aspirator again, shooting the stuff right down Its throat this tune, right down Its rotten evil stinking gullet, and there was sudden, flashing pain, as clean as the drop of a heavy knife, as Its jaws closed and ripped his arm off at the shoulder.