CHAPTER TEN

Stan was convinced. The other two, the boy and the girl who he had been with, moved off to the corner furthest away from us, murmuring to each other, and glancing over at us with increasing regularity. Certain words, like 'witchcraft' and 'killer,' seemed to be popping up often.

Stan and I had picked Bill up and set him down on a bench. We took a seat on either side of him, and stared at him as we talked.

"Why did he collapse?" Stan asked.

"I think it was just a drain of energy," I replied. "I think it take a lot out of you to be hypnotized for that long. Not to mention that it's been a very stressful few days."

Stan nodded silently. "Say, did you guys just rescue Eddie recently?" He asked, totally shocking me.

"How…how did you know that?"

He shook his head, looking unsure of himself, and more shocked then I felt. "There was something…it sounded like Bill. He told me to distract It while you saved Eddie. So that It wouldn't bother you. Your name is Sara, right?"

"Yes," I said. Although we had had no formal introduction, we both knew each other's names from the get-go.

He stopped talking for a while then, seemingly creeped out by Its death and his own intuition.

After about five minutes, the two that Stan had been sitting with earlier suddenly, as if on cue, stood up and ran outside.

"No!" Stan shouted. "If you go out then you're going to die!" But by the time he had finished his sentence, they were already out the door and running, his shoes thudding on the sidewalk, her skirt flapping slightly as she ran. And then there was a wet ripping noise, and the girl screamed. There was another rip then, a louder one, and her scream was cut short.

Stan slumped down on the bench again, and didn't say anything for a long, long time. Then, without warning, he looked up sharply and began speaking.

"I want to save them," he said. "I want to save them and everyone like them." He turned to face me, and looked me solidly in the eye for the first time since I'd met him. "I'm going back with you two."

I nodded gratefully, and then turned to Bill.

"I think we ought to wait here until he wakes up," I said. My head had stopped hurting, but I sensed that if I tried self-hypnosis again, then it would hit again, full force. Bill, when he awoke, would have a hell of a headache, but if he could go on, then so could I.

Another ten or fifteen minutes passed in solemn silence before Bill woke up. He turned his head and groaned. He tried to roll over, and nearly fell off of the bench, but Stan caught him.

"H-headache…" he mumbled, clutching his head, sitting up. He put his elbows on his legs and cradled his head. "S-Stan, you c-coming b-b-back with us?"

"Yes," Stan said. "But not now. You need some time to recuperate."

"He s-s-said something important," Bill said, looking at me with nearly wild eyes. "B-but only wh-when he w-was under." He looked up at me hopefully, as if begging me to understand; telling me with his eyes that he did not have the strength to expound any further. And suddenly, I did understand, and nodded the affirmative to him. Bill seemed satisfied, and lay down again and looked to be asleep in seconds.

"What was he talking about?" Stan asked. "Under…under what?"

"He was talking about a dream we had," I said. "One we shared. Well, not this part, I don't remember this part, but he told me about it in a dream, and confirmed it when I was awake."

"But what was he talking about?" Stan asked, totally mystified.

"He told me that I hypnotized you, and that you said something when you were. Something important," I said, looking up at him.

"So, so what? Are going to hypnotize me or something?" he asked with a shaky laugh, not seeming to take his own idea seriously. I just looked back at him, and did not smile. He saw my face and knew that I was serious about his idea. He sighed. "Alright, you can give it a shot."

I moved closer to him, but before I could do anything, he turned to face Bill.

"Is that going to happen to me if you can do this?" he asked nervously.

"How far is it, you think, from here to your clubhouse?" I asked him.

"'Bout an hour and a half, when walking. Why?"

"That's how long he was out. I tried it before, for just a minute, and nothing happened to him then. You will be fine."

"What if nothing happens? If I don't say anything, can I get back alone?"

"I don't know if it's possible for you to get back on your own," I said truthfully. "But I wont leave you under for more then few minutes."

Stan tugged his ear nervously, but nodded his consent. "Okay," he said. "Give it a shot, I guess. Please don't let that happen to me," he said, glancing nervously at Bill. Although Bill looked peacefully asleep now, I understood Stan's nervousness. Here he was, trusting his mind to a girl he'd only known for about an hour, who he only knew was okay because she was with a friend who'd dragged him into the sewers a few years back. For some reason, though, he did trust me enough to let me give it a shot.

So I leaned in to him, and fell solidly into his mind. Although I knew what I was doing this time, unlike my first time with Bill, I couldn't reach far into his mind before he completely blocked me out. It wasn't like when Bill did, a slight snarl, but more like a mental attack. I drew back as quickly as I would have if I'd sat on a pincushion.

I did know what I was doing, but the fact was that Stan was a lot more solid in his beliefs, unlike the other 'Losers,' who could simply accept changes and move on with it, Stan stood firm on the things that he knew about. This was why he could not accept me into his mind, because he believed that I couldn't and didn't want me there anyways, even if I could.

"Stan," I said. "You have to relax and let me in."

He nodded, but his face was pale, and he was twitching slightly as adrenaline ran through his body.

So I tried again. This time, he did not attack me, but instead put up some kind of shield. I knew that I couldn't enter his mind without his full consent, and even if I couldn't, I shouldn't force my way in. So I backed off again.

"Are you going to let me in?" I asked dubiously.

"I'm trying," he snapped. I could tell that he was angry with me, angry for making his friends run away, angry for trying to break into his mind.

"Do you want to try again?" I asked quietly.

"No," he said firmly. So we waited for a long time, until Bill woke up again.

"Wh-what…" his question trailed off as his memories came back. He sat up suddenly and looked behind him. Its body was still there, and It was still dead.

"Y-you k-k-killed It," he said happily.

"One of them, Bill," I replied. "How's the headache?" My own had since ceased.

"It's g-going down. B-but it c-c-could come b-back anytime."

We sat in silence for a minute, then Bill spoke again.

"D-did Stan s-s-say something important?"

"I can't hypnotize him," I replied.

"Wh-why not?"

"He wont let me. He's trying, but it's just not working."

At this, Stan looked at the ground. Bill looked up at Stan.

"Y-you have t-t-to let her, St-Stan," Bill said, sounding like a teacher or parent scolding a child for being bad. "It's n-n-not fun, b-but all our lives m-m-might depend on it."

Stan sat in silence for a minute, sighed, and then looked at me. "Alright," he said, "give it another shot."

So I tried again, without much hopes of anything happening differently then the previous attempts. And at first, nothing was. But then Bill grabbed Stan's arm, and I felt Bill's power. Even when filtered through Stan, it was still shocking how much strength was stored in him. Stan then relaxed, but he seemed to somehow be forcing himself to be relaxed, ending up more tense then before. However, he somehow left me room to get in.

If hypnotizing Bill had been rappelling down a well-lit cavern, then hypnotizing Stan was like squirming my way through a tight, unlit tunnel, straight down, headfirst. Disconcerting, to say the least. However, he had left me enough room to get through to his subconscious, and he did not trap me, as I understood that he easily could, had he chosen to do so. I was completely at his mercy.

He let me in, and when I drew back, he was gone. His eyes held not one spark of life in them. Even Bill, when I had first hypnotized him, and had worried about maybe having killed him, had that one spark. But with Stan, there was nothing. He looked like a robot, standing there, his eyes glazed over so heavily that his brown eyes seemed several shades lighter.

We watched him for a few minutes, but he sat there and said nothing.

"Bill," I said, after a couple of long minutes had dragged by, "he asked me to pull him out if nothing happens after five minutes."

"J-just wait a m-m-minute," he said, as though he knew something was going to happen.

I tugged on my ear nervously; hardly aware that I was doing it, hardly aware that it was a trait that I had picked up from Stan.

"S-Stan," Bill said to him, "is th-there s-something that you're g-g-going to so say?"

But Stan continued to stare vacantly ahead, giving no sign that he had heard Bill, if he had at all.

"A-alright," Bill said quietly to me. "Puh-pull him out."

So I leaned in again, and found myself walking across the plane in the blank mind to free Stan. But something was different, this time. In a way, Stan was not trapped in his own mind, but held at bay by some force.

'Stan?' I asked. I felt my real jaw moving some million miles or so away, but I was certain that I was not actually saying anything aloud. But here, in Stan's mind, he heard me loud and clear.

'I know what it is now,' came Stan's voice, echoing loudly in my head, altogether too loudly, echoing and bouncing around in my mind, burning in my brain, causing an agony beyond words. I fell to my metaphorical knees, completely helpless just from hearing his voice in his own mind.

'Whatever planet It's from, It has one sort of tradition that it shares with us: It buries Its own dead. And It will take all day."

I was simultaneously trying to concentrate on Stan and trying to block him out. I figured that if he talked for too long, then I would go crazy.

'You don't have to hypnotize Bill,' Stan continued in a gleeful tone (as though he understood that this was hurting me; this was payback for me struggling my way into his mind), 'and you can take me out of this. We can walk back. We have all day today to do so.'

I fought back unconsciousness (understanding that passing out in his head would be very bad indeed, for both of us) so I could find Stan and let him go. I understood now that not all of him had been free, only the parts of him that made intuition, empathy, understanding, and other tools that he had held at bay simply by disbelief. His rational, sane mind, the one that would remember none of this, had been stored away, and I let that part of him out.

And then, I was falling back, and I woke up, continued falling, and smacked my head hard on the bench. I had a headache again, but Stan seemed to be completely fine, save being a little freaked out.

"S-Sara?" Bill asked. "Are y-you alright?"

I nodded and sat up, holding my head. "I know what was so important," I said. "Stan went and told me, alright."

"I said something?" Stan asked, totally mystified.

"N-not out l-l-loud," Bill answered.

"Not out loud," I agreed. "It was in his mind, right before I woke him up."

"Wh-what'd he s-say?" Bill asked.

"It buries Its dead," I replied. "And it's going to take all day for the other two to do it. We just have to throw Its body out, and then the other two will be gone all day."

"W-we can g-get back, and get R-Richie and Mike w-with the r-rest of us," Bill continued. "We c-c-can finish r-regrouping today!"

I nodded. "But we need to throw It out, first," I said, glancing over at Its body. It's final form that It had died in looked somewhat like a spider.

"I don't want to touch It," Stan said. And I couldn't blame him. It was surrounded in a pool of Its own blood, and it clung to the hairs on Its legs.

"We need to get it out somehow," I said.

"L-let the other wuh-ones g-get It out," Bill said.

"How?" I asked. "None of them can get in here, right?

"T-tie it up," he said, nodding his head towards a coil of rope on the side of the church, "and we'll p-p-put out th-the other end wh-where They c-can reach it."

So Bill silently gathered the coil while I walked over to Its dead body, and Stan just watched. I considered the angles, and decided that maybe we should tie the rope around each of Its legs.

I bent down and put my left ring finger in Its pooled blood. I don't know why I did, maybe to be certain that Its blood wasn't acidic. At any rate, it was, or seemed to be. It burned like all out. I drew back my hand with a hiss, but when I wiped the blood off, my finger was fine. Its blood caused pain, but did not actually hurt me.

"Watch out," I said to Bill as he walked up with the rope, "Its blood burns."

He nodded, and then handed one end of the rope to me.

"So h-how do you th-think we should d-do this?" Bill asked.

"I think we should tie up each of Its legs with one end of the rope," I replied, "and leave the other end outside."

Bill and I got started, and as we worked, we talked. Not to each other, but to Stan. Catching him up on each of our stories, starting with Bills, because he was the leader, and then my story, simply because I was there. Then we told Ben and Bev's story, and last, Eddie's. As I was telling about how I had gotten Eddie back to the clubhouse without encountering It, except for at the end, what Stan had said about distracting It suddenly came back to me.

"Bill," I said, "Did you send out some kind of message to the others to keep us safe?"

"Y-yes," Bill said. "I c-could tell something w-was wrong, s-s-so I somehow sent a m-message to th-the others to k-keep it away f-f-from you two."

"Can you do it again?" I asked. "Get the others to get Mike while we look for Richie or vise versa? It would make things go quite a bit faster."

"I c-can try." Bill stood back, closed his eyes, and concentrated. His face scrunched up slightly, like it did when he stuttered.

He opened his eyes.

"I th-think they h-h-heard, but I'm n-not sure."

"Who are we going for?"

"W-we're going to f-find Richie."

"Okay," I said amiably as I tied the last knot. I walked to the door and threw a couple of feet of the rope out.

Almost immediately, invisible hands closed on the rope, and then began to pull on it. It was pulled out of Its blood, but It did not smear the blood, or continue bleeding. It left no trail as It left Its pool of blood with a slight popping sound.

"Creepy," Stan said quietly from his bench, sounding like he thought he was in a dream, and thus, totally calm.

I watched as the ropes dragged It out of the church, across the street a ways, and then down the drain.

"Wuh-one down," Bill said grimly.