'But you said you were scared. Why would George's ghost want to scare you, Bill?'

Bill put a hand to his mouth and wiped it. The hand was trembling slightly. 'H-He's probably muh-muh-mad at m-m-me. For g-getting him kin –hilled. It was my fuh-fuh –fault. I s-sent him out with the buh-buh-buh — ' He was incapable of getting the word out, so he rocked his hand in the air instead. Richie nodded to show he understood what Bill meant . . . but not to indicate agreement.

'I don't think so,' he said. 'If you stabbed him in the back or shot him, that would be different. Or even if you, like, gave him a loaded gun that belonged to your dad to play with and he shot himself with it. But it wasn't a gun, it was just a boat. You didn't want to hurt him; in fact' — Richie raised one finger and waggled it at Bill in a lawyerly way — 'you just wanted the kid to have a little fun, right?'

Bill thought back — thought desperately hard. What Richie had just said had made him feel better about George's death for the first time in months, but there was a part of him which insisted with quiet firmness that he was not supposed to feel better. Of course it was your fault, that part of him insisted; not entirely, maybe, but at least partly.

If not, how come there's that cold place on the couch between your mother and father? If not, how come no one ever says anything at the supper table anymore? Now it's just knives and forks rattling until you can't take it anymore and ask if you can be eh-eh-eh-excused, please.

It was as if he were the ghost, a presence that spoke and moved but was not quite heard or seen, a thing vaguely sensed but still not accepted as real.

He did not like the thought that he was to blame, but the only alternative he could think of to explain their behavior was much worse: that all the love and attention his parents had given him before had somehow been the result of George's presence, and with George gone there was nothing for him . . . and all of that had happened at random, for no reason at all. And if you put your ear to that door, you could hear the winds of madness blowing outside.

So he went over what he had done and felt and said on the day Georgie had died, part of him hoping that what Richie had said was true, part of him hoping just as hard it was not. He hadn't been a saint of a big brother to George, that much was certain. They had had fights, plenty of them. Surely there had been one that day?

No. No fight. For one thing, Bill himself had still been feeling too punk to work up a really good quarrel with George. He had been sleeping, dreaming something, dreaming about some

(turtle)

funny little animal, he couldn't remember just what, and he had awakened to the sound of the diminishing rain outside and George muttering unhappily to himself in the dining room. He asked George what was wrong. George came in and said he was trying to make a paper boat from the directions in his Best Book of Activities but it kept coming out wrong. Bill told George to bring his book. And sitting next to Richie on the steps leading up to the seminary, he remembered how Georgie's eyes lit up when the paper boat came out right, and how good

that look had made him feel, like Georgie thought he was a real hot shit, a straight shooter, the guy who could do it until it got done. Making him feel, in short, like a big brother.

The boat had killed George, but Richie was right — it hadn't been like handing George a loaded gun to play with. Bill hadn't known what was going to happen. No way he could.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath, feeling something like a rock — something he hadn't even known was there — go rolling off his chest. All at once he felt better, better about everything.

He opened his mouth to tell Richie this and burst into tears instead.

Alarmed, Richie put an arm around Bill's shoulders (after taking a quick glance around to make sure no one who might mistake them for a couple of fagolas was looking).

'You're okay,' he said. 'You're okay, Billy, right? Come on. Turn off the waterworks.'

'I didn't wuh-wuh-want h-him t –to g-g-get kuh-hilled!' Bill sobbed. 'TH-THAT WUH-WUH-WASN'T ON MY M-M-M –MIND AT UH-UH-ALL!'

'Christ, Billy, I know it wasn't,' Richie said. 'If you'd wanted to scrub him, you woulda pushed him downstairs or something.' Richie patted Bill's shoulder clumsily and gave him a hard little hug before letting go. 'Come on, quit bawlin, okay? You sound like a baby.'

Little by little Bill stopped. He still hurt, but this hurt seemed cleaner, as if he had cut himself open and taken out something that was rotting inside him. And that feeling of relief was still there.

'I-I didn't w-want him to get kuh –kuh-killed,' Bill repeated, 'and ih –if y-y-you t-tell anybody I w-was c-c-cryin, I'll b-b-bust your n-n-nose.

'I won't tell,' Richie said, 'don't worry. He was your brother, for gosh sake. If my brother got killed, I'd cry my fuckin head off.'

'Yuh-Yuh-You d-don't have a buh-brother.'

'Yeah, but if I did.'

'Y-You w-w-would?'

'Course.' Richie paused, fixing Bill with a wary eye, trying to decide if Bill was really over it. He was still wiping his red eyes with his snotrag, but Richie decided he probably was. 'All I meant was that I don't know why George would want to haunt you. So maybe the picture's got something to do with . . . well, with that other. The clown.'

'Muh-Muh-Maybe G-G-George d-d-doesn't nuh-nuh-know. Maybe h-he th-thinks — '

Richie understood what Bill was trying to say and waved it aside. 'After you croak you know everything people ever thought about you, Big Bill.' He spoke with the indulgent air of a great teacher correcting a country bumpkin's fatuous ideas. 'It's in the Bible. It says, "Yea, even though we can't see too much in the mirror right now, we will see through it like it was a window after we die." That's in First Thessalonians or Second Babylonians, I forget which. It means — '

'I suh-suh –see what it m-m-means,' Bill said.

'So what do you say?'

'Huh?'

'Let's go up to his room and take a look. Maybe we'll get a clue about who's killing all the kids.'

'I'm s-s-scared to.'

'I am too,' Richie said, thinking it was just more sand, something to say that would get Bill moving, and then something heavy turned over in his midsection and he discovered it was true: he was scared green.

4

The two boys slipped into the Denbrough house like ghosts.

Bill's father was still at work. Sharon Denbrough was in the kitchen, reading a paperback at the kitchen table. Th e smell of supper — codfish — drifted out into the front hall. Richie called home so his mom would know he wasn't dead, just at Bill's.

'Someone there?' Mrs Denbrough called as Richie put the phone down. They froze, eyeing each other guiltily. Then Bill called: 'M-Me, Mom. And R-R-R-R-R — '

'Richie Tozier, ma'am,' Richie yelled.

'Hello, Richie,' Mrs Denbrough called back, her voice disconnected, almost not there at all. 'Would you like to stay for supper?'

'Thanks, ma'am, but my mom's gonna pick me up in half an hour or so.'

Tell her I said hello, won't you?'

'Yes ma'am, I sure will.'

'C-Come on,' Bill whispered. 'That's enough s-small talk.'

They went upstairs and down the hall to Bill's room. It was boy-neat, which meant it would have given the mother of the boy in question only a mild headache to look at. The shelves were stuffed with a helter-skelter collection of books and comics. There were more comics, plus a few models and toys and a stack of 45s, on the desk. There was also an old Underwood office model typewriter on it. His folks had given it to him for Christmas two years ago, and Bill sometimes wrote stories on it. He did this a bit more frequently since George's death. The pretending seemed to ease his mind.