I peered into the Dunnings’ backyard. The bikes were gone. Most of the toys were still there

—a child’s bow and some arrows with suction-cup tips, a baseball bat with its handle wrapped in friction tape, a green Hula Hoop—but the Daisy air rifle was missing. Harry had taken it inside. He meant to bring it when he went out trick-or-treating as Buffalo Bob.

Had Tugga given him shit about that yet? Had his mother already said you take it if you want to, it’s not a real gun? If not, they would. Their lines had already been written. My stomach cramped, this time not from the twenty-four-hour bug that was going around, but because total realization—the kind you feel in your gut—had finally arrived in all its bald-ass glory. This was actually going to happen. In fact, it was happening already. The show had started.

I glanced at my watch. It seemed to me that I’d left the car in the church parking lot an hour ago, but it was only quarter to six. In the Dunning house, the family would be sitting down to supper

. . . although if I knew kids, the younger ones would be too excited to eat much, and Ellen would already be wearing her Princess Summerfall Winterspring outfit. She’d probably jumped into it as soon as she got home from school, and would be driving her mother crazy with requests to help her put on her warpaint.

I sat down with my back propped against the rear wall of the garage, rummaged in my bag, and brought out a Payday. I held it up and considered poor old J. Alfred Prufrock. I wasn’t so different, although it was a candybar I wasn’t sure I dared to eat. On the other hand, I had a lot to do in the next three hours or so, and my stomach was a rumbling hollow.

Fuck it, I thought, and unwrapped the candybar. It was wonderful—sweet, salty, and chewy.

I gobbled most of it in two bites. I was getting ready to pop the rest of it into my mouth (and wondering why in God’s name I hadn’t packed a sandwich and a bottle of Coke), when I saw movement from the corner of my left eye. I started to turn, reaching into the bag for the gun at the same time, but I was too late. Something cold and sharp pricked the hollow of my left temple.

“Take your hand out of that bag.”

I knew the voice at once. Should hope to smile n kiss a pig, its owner had said when I asked if he or any of his friends knew a fellow named Dunning. He had said Derry was full of Dunnings, and I verified that for myself not long after, but he’d had a good idea which one I was after right from the get-go, hadn’t he? And this was the proof.

The point of the blade dug a little deeper, and I felt a trickle of blood run down the side of my face. It was warm against my chilly skin. Almost hot.

“Take it out now, chum. I think I know what’s in there, and if your hand don’t come out empty, your Halloween treat’s gonna be eighteen inches of Jap steel. This thing’s plenty sharp. It’ll pop right out the other side of your head.”

I took my hand out of the bag—empty—and turned to look at No Suspenders. His hair tumbled over his ears and forehead in greasy locks. His dark eyes swam in his pale, stubbly face. I felt a dismay so great it was almost despair. Almost . . . but not quite. Even if it kills me, I thought again. Even if.

“There’s nothing in the bag but candybars,” I said mildly. “If you want one, Mr. Turcotte, all you have to do is ask. I’ll give you one.”

He snatched the bag before I could reach in. He used the hand that wasn’t holding the weapon, which turned out to be a bayonet. I don’t know if it was Japanese or not, but from the way it gleamed in the fading dusklight, I was willing to stipulate that it was plenty sharp.

He rummaged and brought out my Police Special. “Nothing but candybars, huh? This don’t look like candy to me, Mister Amberson.”

“I need that.”

“Yeah, and people in hell need icewater, but they don’t get it.”

“Keep your voice down,” I said.

He put my gun in his belt—exactly where I had imagined I’d put it, once I’d shoved through the hedge and into the Dunning backyard—then poked the bayonet toward my eyes. It took willpower to keep from flinching back. “Don’t you tell me what to—” He staggered on his feet. He rubbed first his stomach, then his chest, then the stubble-rough column of his neck, as if something were caught in there. I heard a click in his throat as he swallowed.

“Mr. Turcotte? Are you all right?”

“How do you know my name?” And then, without waiting for an answer: “It was Pete, wasn’t it? The bartender in the Sleepy. He told you.”

“Yes. Now I’ve got a question for you. How long have you been following me? And why?” He grinned humorlessly, revealing a pair of missing teeth. “That’s two questions.”

“Just answer them.”

“You act like”—he winced again, swallowed again, and leaned against the back wall of the garage—“like you’re the one in charge.”

I gauged Turcotte’s pallor and distress. Mr. Keene might be a bastard with a streak of sadism, but I thought that as a diagnostician he wasn’t too bad. After all, who’s more apt to know what’s going around than the local druggist? I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to need the rest of the Kaopectate, but Bill Turcotte might. Not to mention the continence pants, once that bug really went to work.

This could be very good or very bad, I thought. But that was bullshit. There was nothing good about it.

Never mind. Keep him talking. And once the puking starts—assuming it does before he cuts my throat or shoots me with my own gun—jump him.

“Just tell me,” I said. “I think I have a right to know, since I haven’t done anything to you.”

“It’s him you mean to do something to, that’s what I think. All that real estate stuff you’ve been spouting around town—so much crap. You came here looking for him. ” He nodded in the direction of the house on the other side of the hedge. “I knew it the minute his name jumped out of your mouth.”

“How could you? This town is full of Dunnings, you said so yourself.”

“Yeah, but only one I care about.” He raised the hand holding the bayonet and wiped sweat off his brow with his sleeve. I think I could have taken him right then, but I was afraid the sound of a scuffle might attract attention. And if the gun went off, I’d probably be the one to take the bullet.

Also, I was curious.

“He must have done you a hell of a good turn somewhere along the way to turn you into his guardian angel,” I said.

He voiced a humorless yap of a laugh. “That’s a hot one, bub, but in a way it’s true. I guess I am sort of his guardian angel. At least for now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s mine, Amberson. That son of a bitch killed my little sister, and if anyone puts a bullet in him . . . or a blade”—he brandished the bayonet in front of his pale, grim face—“it’s going to be me.”