CHAPTER NINE

I checked the time once before we left. Then the patch of light grew dim as we walked away. My eyes began the slow job of dilating. I stumbled along in the near-darkness.

I could see a few feet in front of me, there was still faint light streaming in at random intervals. But it was dark, still. The darkness seemed to be something physical, something caressing and clenching, something holding us firmly back.

There was something off in the sounds; something that I couldn't quite place for a few moments, until it suddenly hit me. There was music playing, not quite in my head, but not in reality either. I was caught somewhere in between.

The music was "Float on." I could just here the beat and rhythm reverberating around the walls.

'Go away,' I told it, trying to force it away, trying to get rid of it. It wouldn't go. It was trapped in my mind like a Chinese finger trap; the harder I tried…the more it stuck.

"Do you know which way to go?" Bill asked Eddie once we reached the first intersection, starting me out of my revelation. However, the music continued, and the steady bass and bizarre guitar sounds was an undertone to all the sounds.

"Where are we going?" Eddie asked dully.

"Directly under the city," Ben said. "The canal." Neither he nor Bill mentioned that they remembered the first pipe they took. This was a test.

Eddie looked at the three pipes for a minute, and then slowly, haltingly pointed to the middle one. Richie opened his mouth to say something, but Eddie shook his head and pointed to the one on the left.

"Wait, what?" I asked, the only one surprised by that. "Is that right? We're going into the shit pipe?"

"'Fraid so," Mike said, his mouth pressed into a thin line.

"It washes off," Stan said grimly. "Shit washes off."

The others nodded, in remembrance that I could feel but could not get at myself. I even felt a faint stirring in memory from Eddie.

So we stood in the intersection for a while, formed a loose circle. I looked again at the pipe that we'd be going through soon. My head started throbbing again from the night previous.

"C'mon," Bill said quietly. He turned and walked to the pipe, not bothering to turn and check and see if we were coming. He knew we were. I could read his emotions, now, just another thing that added on to my constantly growing cache of powers.

Bill knew that we would follow before he left. This made him feel manipulative and overall crummy. And yet, he pushed on anyways.

Eddie instinctively followed him, and I followed the pair, not wanting to be left behind, as Stan and I almost had before. I guess he was thinking something similar, because he followed closely behind me. I didn't watch, but I knew that Richie and Beverly and Ben and Mike followed close behind, too. No one wanted to be left alone in the dark and in the rank smell.

It smelled worse in the pipe, and I felt a light onset of claustrophobia in it. However, I could feel Eddie shuffling along ahead of me, and I heard Stan behind me. It was enough to keep me going.

There were many other junctions from that point, and after a while, the others could no long confirm if Eddie was choosing the right path. I felt their apprehension at first, at some of the choices he was making, but that was it. There was no steady panic, and there was an occasional recognition of things along the way. Among them, two dead bodies: one of someone who looked like he was working here when he died, and one of a boy that named "Patrick." Apparently, he hadn't been too good of a guy when he was alive. The rats had torn off a large chunk of his face.

I could check Stan's watch, just making out the numbers, for quite a while. But when Eddie started asking for a match to be lit when he was choosing which tunnel was the right one, I started checking the watch each time.

Another pipe. One of the many. Bill muttered something to Eddie, and I heard Bill standing up ahead of me, exiting the tunnel.

"What'd he say?" I asked Eddie, suspecting that it was something important. Eddie stood up, too, as he came into a new chamber.

"He said to watch out for the drop-off," Eddie replied as I fell face-first on the stone floor.

I swung my hands out, and rolled forwards as I landed, preventing further injury, but I did end up smacking my head pretty hard, and I felt the crusty scabs that had been forming break open again, allowing for blood to ooze out.

I slowly sat up, and surprised myself by starting to laugh.

"Thanks for the forewarning," I said, my laughter quickly tapering off as I realized that it really wasn't all that funny.

But it was something, dammit. It was something.

"Are you okay?" Ben asked seriously as Mike helped me to my feet.

"Yes," I said. "I'm alright. I think I cut my head open again, but it's not bleeding too badly."

I was tempted to feel the back of my head with my hands, but I decided that it wasn't such a good idea as I glanced down at my hands, now thoroughly covered in shit and grime and God knew what else. If my head wound would get infected, then it probably would regardless of what I did now…but all the same, I didn't want to take any unnecessary chances.

The absurdity of this thought came a second later, as I realized that I might well die today, here, in the sewers. I smiled, but it seemed to be swallowed up in the darkness. This depressing feeling took it off my face in a hurry.

"Shit," Eddie said, suddenly, forcefully. "I remember now. Bill, I remember it all now."

His words were filled with truth. I could feel the desperation of the need of his words to be acknowledged. I felt his memories flooding back in a tidal wave. I was worried about the force of them.

'Bill,' I said quietly in his mind, ready to warn him of the force of the memories that Eddie had not yet comprehended. Or maybe he had, because Eddie fell to his knees, clutching his head.

'I know,' he said, reading my mind in the same way I'd been able to his. 'Help me hold it back if you can.'

I started to, prepared myself to, but suddenly, the wall to my left ripped open.

Or so it first seemed.