Note: Sorry I've been super busy! I've been trying to keep it updated every week, but I've been travelling a lot lately. This one is a little longer, so I hope it makes up for it. I've been trying to subtly imply what's revealed her, but I don't know if it really hits the mark. :P Anyway, this chapter features Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. Enjoy!

Rich pulled himself into the lowered driver seat of his car, flicking the ignition into life, and wasted no time in leaving the parking lot. His bed was calling and he figured he could consider the vacillating mess of his life after at least 12 hours of sleep.

The radio (and his foot tapping) was finishing out Michael Jackson's Beat It, as he made it onto the highway. He recognized the opening bass to Dreams, grinning as he remembered Stevie Nicks saying in an interview (not with him, of course, KLAD was a little more modern rock focused) that she never tired of singing Dreams.

Secretly, Rich never tired of hearing her sing it either, even if it was a bit on the esoteric side. He turned the dial a little more as it started the lead up to the first chorus

"listen carefully-y to the so-ound," he sang along, "Of your loneliness,"

His mind trailed to Eddie again. He found himself melancholic, as if he should be upset that Eddie no longer brought him to such crushing despair.

"Like a heartbeat, drives you ma-ad,"

The small, beautiful boy who grew into a strong, beautiful man… who left a small, washed-out corpse they couldn't even give the decency of a burial to. Didn't he deserve to be grieved?

"In the stillness of the memory of what you ha-ad," Rich's voice rose with the chorus proper as he blinked away some errant tears.

"And what you lost," Louder still, without much thought to the song itself, as if he could drown out the odd feeling in his chest.

Wait-was that right? Were they really unable to bring-bury him? But… why?

His mouth (Voice?) kept moving along without his mind as usual. Surely, they had buried him, right?

He would've wanted potted flowers. He remembered Eddie's pensive face, when Stan had murmured, "Why do you all use cut flowers? Are you trying to celebrate death with more death," after Eddie Corcoran's funeral (it was an empty casket though, wasn't it? Did they know where the bodies went when they disappeared at that point?).

Rich was sure it would've been a small service, small church, maybe in their hometown-what was it-Derry? Surely, Rich was invited-surely it was why he left to go back, right? Right?

He remembered feeling like it was a funeral when he left, but then… How would he know what Eddie's mature voice sounded like if he was already dead?

Rich choked while humming to the tune of the electric guitar and the song continued on without him.

What had happened in Derry?

It was right on the tip of his tongue, right at the forefront of his hindbrain, but still eluding him. Images from the back of his mind (the crypts, weren't they?) flooded his consciousness, yet he was unable to put them in order, put them back together.

As if to ground himself, he tuned back in to the music, startling at an accompanying knocking sound to the bass of the drums. Unsure of whether he was imagining such a small sound, he briefly glanced over the rearview mirror to the-wait! His eyes shot back to the mirror.

"I keep my visions to myself," Stevie Nicks sang, oblivious to Rich's plight.

The reflection in his rearview seemed warped as if it were bent, a dark blur in the middle of his backseat. He squinted through his glasses, not noticing a second voice softly joining the radio, until it grew louder.

"It's only me-e," the voice sung along, to his immediate right, "who wants to wrap around your dreams and,"

Finally sensing the new development, Rich ditched the mirror, jerking his head to stare at his passenger seat. Lounging there, as if it'd been in the car the entire time was the clown. Rich's heart froze in his chest at the slightly-amused expression. It cocked a highly-painted eyebrow.

"Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?"

Rich began hyperventilating as the clown lifted a hand to point ahead. He stared at the raised hand before suddenly realizing he was driving.

"Dreams of loneliness—" Rich tore his eyes from the still-singing clown and back to road, swerving out of the way of the barrier, "like a heartbeat, drives you ma-ad,"

One of the few drivers left on the road that late at night honked and flipped him off as they passed, but Rich had other things to worry about. If he didn't get off, he was going to crash, if he paid attention to the road, who knows what might happen with that thing in his front seat…

"In the stillness of remembering what you ha-ad," which, for the time being, seemed content to sing along with Dreams of all things.

But wasn't there something else in the back? The music seemed to die away under the deafeningly sound of his heart beat.

Rich's eyes flicked to the rearview as he futilely searched for an exit ramp, a shoulder, anything. The reflection continued to distort and his mind supplied that perhaps it was Eddie (Eddie? Why Eddie? That doesn't…), but the edges of whatever it was seemed to sharpen, become colored at the thought. It was much bigger than Eddie had ever been. A stubborn piece of disjointed memory and realization fell into place.

There're two, his scrambled mind provided before he could stop it-as if the thought would confirm itself. He felt the clamminess of his sweating palms when his hands twitched-felt the heat pulsing in his heart (run run RUN)-the ice in his veins. My neighbors, my countrymen, there were two.

Richie felt like vomiting, like screaming, like fleeing from his car, but his body wouldn't move. His muscles twitched uselessly like a broken current with live wires, dangerously poised, yet unable to provide any benefit to his situation at hand.

He was going to crash, he was sure of it. But a pale hand not unlike a snake approached from his peripheral view, brushing his right arm. His body froze up, his right side tensing to the point of pain as the hand slide forward to grab hold of the wheel and straighten it.

A switch went off in his brain, upon realizing the present intent of the hand, and his body relaxed to a more manageable intensity. But there was still the issue of-oh, God above-the realization he had just made.

There were two. Memory seemed to be flooding back to him as he franticly glanced between the passenger seat and rearview, yet no apparent explanation made itself known.

He could remember that this was the source of his constant horror, the low thrumming dread that never seemed to go away these days. He hadn't ever connected that there were two separate clowns before, but more pieces fell into place. The one in the backseat-was it actually there? Or just in the reflection?

Could they both be here at the same time? And wasn't something missing?

As he began trying to look over his shoulder, something alerted him to the fact that yes, something was missing. But it was never long behind.

That something being a hand on his knee from below and a breathless voice adding on to Richie's Horrible Fun (RUN) Time Sing Along in the car.

"When the rain wash-hes you clean, you will kno-ow,"the third voice broke into vocals unaccompanied by Stevie Nicks or passenger seat clown. Richie's eyes were squeezed shut at the possibility that he was this fucked in his own car, yet he couldn't help cracking them open to peek when he heard tinkling laughter.

"I always get that part wrong. She only goes off like that during the last line, right, Mr. DJ?" Eddie asked. Rich stared in a mix of terror and astonishment. It always looked just like him-albeit a little pale, sounded just like him, this shade of his first love. Sometimes, Richie could even punish himself enough to imagine Eddie was still here…

"Definitely not my best entrance," Eddie continued, pulling himself up by his hold on Richie's knee. Eddie's other arm was prominently missing. Richie twitched, hands almost reaching out to help. "Tight as shit down here," Eddie huffed before settling half on Richie's lap as if he'd given up.

Haven't we sat like this before? Eddie's head in my lap, Richie thought, unable to control the emotions surging in his chest.

"You will know. O-oh, o-oh, o-oh, you'll know," Eddie sang the last lines along with the radio. As far as Rich could tell, passenger seat clown had lost interest (though he didn't dare check). "There! That's it! Knew I'd get it.

"This was always one of my favorite songs," Eddie said. "Myra's, too. We'd call in to the radio just to request anything from Rumours when we knew the other was waiting on a client. Although, maybe I was actually trying to somehow get through to some hotshot DJ on the other side of the country." Eddie laughed again, though the edge was a little harder this time.

"How'd you think that would work out?" Richie asked, his mouth moving without concern for consequence.

"Doesn't really matter. I'm talking to you now, aren't I?" Eddie looked up at him, his expression dark. "Although, I guess this is a little different than calling. And it doesn't seem like you've actually been listening to me."

Richie frowned, unsure if the conversation would steer toward its usual route, as Eddie seemed to shift up from under the steering wheel.

"You said once that you'd do anything for me. After everything I've done for you, you could at least honor my one request. Hell, I'll repeat it again so we can all be sure," Eddie said. Richie flinched, feeling a change in the atmosphere, but Eddie continued with a pleading expression. Was it that look in his eyes making Richie so anxious?

"Bring me out of the dark, Richie. Please. There's barely any light, no warmth, there's no one down here but me," Eddie begged, his hand clenched in Richie's shirt. Richie felt his own face crumple. "Please."

"B-but you're dead, Eddie, I-I can't—"

"Need I remind you, it was due to your own failings, that I basically died at your hands?" The hand on Richie's shirt reached higher.

"I-I know! But what dif—"

"Then make it right!" Eddie yelled, his hand around Richie's throat-not tight enough to hurt, but enough to imply a threat. "Take me out, make up for what you put me through!" The hand around Richie's throat relaxed, moving up to thread through his hair.

"Besides," Eddie gently forced Richie to tilt his head back. Above him, leaning over the head of his seat was the grinning face of one of the clowns. An errant, insane thought ran through Richie's head about where the other one was and who was even driving the car?

"We have something we'd like to show you," Eddie whispered into Richie's neck. Richie's eyes flitted down to Eddie than to the other clown's impossibly close face. A hand from behind Richie covered his eyes as teeth brushed

("So sharp!"

"Why, all the better to eat you with my dear.")

against his pounding jugular.

Oh, God, they're going to— Richie never did get to finish that thought.