Here are Parts I, II, III, and IV, in case you haven’t read them yet.

XXI: Eddie’s Bad Break

In the library, Eddie feels a sharp pain in his arm, a memory from back when he was a kid, and Henry and his gang attacked Eddie and broke his arm (page 987). This is not to say that he immediately remembers the cause of the break, of course–the pain is the result of repressed trauma rising back up to the surface of consciousness. Remembering Henry is something he just doesn’t want to do.

The pain has been triggered by all the childhood memories that the other adult Losers are bringing up in their conversations in the library. Trauma can resurface in the form of physical pain. What’s striking here about Eddie, though, is how, as a guy who’s normally neurotic in the extreme about germs and ill health, he thinks so little about the broken arm that he’s forgotten how he got it from Henry.

A little later, Bill remembers Eddie’s mother, and how she seemed a combination of crazy, miserable, furious, and frightened (page 990). Shortly after that, Eddie’s aspirator rolls across the table by itself. Then Ben points out the balloons, which read that “ASTHMA MEDICINE GIVES YOU CANCER!” (page 991). Eddie then remembers Mr. Keene, the owner of the Center Street Drug Store; he told Mike about the Bradley Gang shootout (section XVII, from Part IV). Mr. Keene was also the one to tell Eddie, when he was a kid, that the asthma medicine he’d been giving Eddie was just a placebo (page 1000).

Sitting in the back of the drug store and having ice cream with Mr. Keene, little Eddie learns that the placebo he’s getting is “head-medicine” for an asthma that is only in his mind, because his mother has been manipulating him into believing he really has it. This placebo cures his asthma in his head, too.

Now, the placebo is another example of the duality of good and bad in It. The placebo is good in how it “makes the patient feel better,” as Mr. Keene tells Eddie (page 1001). You can “see the harm,” though, the bad in a placebo, in how it is a lie. Specifically, it perpetuates Eddie’s mother’s lie that he needs it. As an emotionally abusive mother, she’s using Eddie’s “asthma” to control him, as a form of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.

Naturally, Eddie can’t accept the idea that his mother is deceiving him (page 1003). He’d rather believe that Mr. Keene is lying to him than that she is. What Eddie is doing here is using a defence mechanism called ‘turning around upon the subject’s own self.’ He’d rather be ‘sick’ than realize that the caregiver he, as a little kid, depends on to survive is trying to hurt him.

So again, in this defence mechanism, we see that duality of good and bad. Believing his mom’s lie about having asthma is ‘good’ because it relieves him of the anxiety of having to deal with an emotionally abusive mother, yet it’s also bad for obvious reasons.

After the drug store scene, Eddie gets bullied by Henry Bowers and his gang, this time including Victor Criss, “Moose” Sadler, and Patrick Hockstetter (page 1008). Henry wants revenge for the rockfight, naturally, and like a cowardly bully, with the help of his gang, he goes after the weakest kid, who is all alone.

Of course, Henry projects his cowardice and weakness onto Eddie by mocking his understandably tremulous words, “Leave me alone,” and waving his hands in mock terror (page 1010).

A nearby store owner named Mr. Gedreau intervenes (page 1011), trying to stop the gang from bullying Eddie, but Henry demonstrates further that he’s more than a mere bully–he’s an out-and-out psychopath. He gives the man “a good hard push,” knocking him down on the steps going up to the screen-door entrance of his store (page 1012). He sees “the light in Henry’s eyes” (which significantly reminds me of Its “deadlights“), and he threatens to call the cops; but Henry gives him a threat of his own, making to lunge at the man and making him flinch back.

Eddie sees his chance to escape and runs away, “Asthma or no asthma.” Of course, the gang chases after him. They get him, and Henry in his fury has the boy by the arm, it twists, and there’s a cracking sound, with a pain that’s “gray and huge” (page 1014). This breaking of little Eddie’s arm parallels the tearing-off of Georgie’s arm, thus reinforcing the closeness in identity between Henry and Pennywise.

The Bowers gang runs away after noting the approach of Mr. Nell (pages 1015-1017), the cop who earlier told the kids in the Barrens to get rid of their dam. Eddie is then taken to hospital. After receiving care from the doctor and nurses, Eddie sees his mother.

Significantly, he finds her eyes to be “almost predatory” (page 1021). There sees to be little difference between the Bowers gang and his mother as bullies. Her eyes also seem like those of the lecherous leper from the basement at 29 Neibolt Street, thus linking these bullies with Pennywise.

That his mother and the leper would be similar in the sexually predatory sense is in how Mrs. Kaspbrak exploits her son’s Oedipal feelings for her (later transferred onto his similarly overweight, overprotective wife, Myra, recall) so she can control him. Though such a relationship doesn’t involve actual physical incest, it is emotional incest, in that his mother uses him to fulfill emotional needs normally satisfied in a romantic relationship.

Since she’s overweight, she has obvious health problems that she won’t do the difficult work to overcome. It’s far easier for her to project health concerns onto her boy (via Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy) than to deal with her own health problems. Hence, her excessive worries about his physical well-being.

Ironically, she’s far more worried about the ‘bad’ influence of Eddie’s friends, the Losers, than about the bullies who broke his arm. So when the Losers come to the hospital to see him, she sends them all away, upsetting Eddie terribly (pages 1028-1029).

All of what Eddie’s been going through for the past twenty-four hours has been nothing less than overwhelming. Mr. Keene has planted a seed of doubt in the little boy’s mind as to what his mom’s true intentions are with the asthma medicine, mere water with an added medicine-like taste. Henry broke his arm, just after that revelation, and so before he’s even had time to process the emotional shock of it. And now, his controlling mother–reinforcing that original emotional shock–won’t let him see the small group of people he still trusts, those who can give him the real emotional soothing he so desperately needs.

This excess of shocks to his system, both in body and in mind, is the essence of trauma.

Though she acknowledges that it was Henry who broke Eddie’s arm, she stoops to victim-blaming to explain why the bully did it (he was provoked by the Losers, rather than he provoked them first, getting a rock-thrown reaction he deserved to suffer). Her attitude infuriates Eddie, making him tell her off good and proper, in spite of the weakness she’s imposed on him.

In his brief rant, he hits a nerve in her: she’s jealous of his friends out of a fear that they’ll take him away from her and leave her all alone (page 1031). Such jealousy is at the core of what the Oedipus complex represents: one narcissistically hogs another to oneself, never sharing one’s object, keeping him or her in a dyadic relationship, and other people threaten to compromise that one-on-one relationship. This is what she’s afraid of, and this is why she rejects the Losers.

She tries using tears to make him regret what he’s said (page 1031), but she’s shocked to find they are’t working the way they normally do. Eddie is standing firm in his bond with his friends.

She keeps trying to guilt-trip him with her tears, accusing him of hurting her, and calling the Losers “bad friends” (page 1033, King’s emphasis); but he won’t have her make him choose between her and them.

After more insisting from her that he give up his friends, he tells her what Mr. Keene told him. Though she maintains that Keene is lying about the medicine being just water, Eddie has accepted that it’s the truth. He has also accepted the truth that the asthma is all in his head (page 1035).

But now that it seems that Eddie’s mom is about to fall apart from the possibility of losing his love, he says that maybe Mr. Keene was joking about the medicine-as-water, and the asthma as being only in Eddie’s head (page 1036). Eddie also, with considerable shrewdness, tells her he’ll still hang out with his friends…while also still using his aspirator.

She realizes that this decision of his is a form of blackmail: he’ll go along with the asthma b.s. and let her baby him the way she does…if he can still have his friends. She has no other choice but to let him have his way. She’s been manipulating him, and now she’s being manipulated by him. It’s called karma.

Though she has to accept her son’s conditions, she never wants to see Mr. Keene again, for having put her in this situation (page 1037).

The irony of all of this is that, through the escalation of all of these problems for Eddie, he’s found a way to stop his mother from being so domineering…by continuing to use the aspirator, in spite of knowing he’s never needed it. He’ll pretend to continue being controlled by her, though both of them know he’s on to her.

The resolving of this conflict is thus another example of the good/bad duality in the novel. It’s bad that Eddie got hurt, but it’s good that he has been able to use Mr. Keene’s shocking revelation to get his mom off his back and to keep his friends. He’s been brave, standing up to his mom like that, but he’s still “scared, so scared” (page 1038, King’s emphasis).

That evening, the Losers return to the hospital to see him. Now, he can get that emotional soothing he’s so desperately needed for so long…for unlike what his mother has insisted, these are good friends.

The Losers tell Eddie about their plan to melt down a silver dollar and make it into projectiles–two silver bullet-like balls–to shoot at It in Its werewolf form, if they see the werewolf at 29 Neibolt Street. They’ll use Bill’s Bullseye slingshot to fire the balls at It, and “Beverly Oakley” has proven herself to have the marksmanship skills to hit It (page 1040).

XXII: Another One of the Missing: The Death of Patrick Hockstetter

With the ending of Eddie’s story, he reminds Beverly of when she saw It kill Patrick Hockstetter. And now she has a story of her own to tell (page 1045).

When we consider the kinds of filthy habits, filthy to the point of being disturbing, that Patrick had (killing flies, collecting them in his pencil box, and displaying them to his classmates; his abuse of animals and keeping them in an abandoned fridge in the Barrens; his murder of his baby brother; and him giving Henry Bowers a hand job after they, Belch, and Victor were lighting their farts), we can see why Beverly would first remember her abusive father and “that smell, the one they made between them” (page 1049, King’s emphasis).

This smell she and her father made between them is yet another hint that she has trauma from sexual abuse inflicted by him, abuse repressed so far inside of her unconscious that she has no explicit memories of penetration, but rather those return to consciousness in unrecognizable forms (the smell, the blood in the yonic sink-hole, etc.). She also remembers how, back then, around when Patrick died, that she was beginning to fill out, to become a woman, to have the kind of shapely figure men like, something to inflame Al‘s lust and make him all the scarier to her. Patrick’s own perversity is triggering her traumatic memories of her dad.

Speaking of smells, she also remembers the smell of the Barrens, the smell of the smoke-hole, when she went by the clubhouse to practice shooting with Bill’s Bullseye Slingshot. It’s there that, again, speaking of smells, she–an innocent, pre-teen girl in the late 1950s–saw Henry, Victor, Belch, and Patrick with their pants down, lighting farts (pages 1049-1050).

Now, the sight was a combination of hilarious, perverse, disturbing, and terrifying for her; for if those boys had caught her seeing what they were doing, “God knows what would have happened then.” (page 1049, King’s emphasis). Again, we have the good/bad duality: good (funny and entertaining), and bad (scary and disturbing). She was lucky to have the underbrush and a car to hide behind. She had to keep herself from laughing, so they wouldn’t hear her, and if she’d tried to run away, they might have seen her.

After a while of lighting farts and burning asses, Victor and Belch had to leave, so Henry and Patrick would be alone together…or so they thought (page 1059). A little later, they stopped lighting farts, and Henry was receiving a hand job from Patrick, who was also touching himself (page 1062). As shocked as Bev was to see all of this,…”Still, she couldn’t look away.”

She thought about the male anatomy her otherwise innocent eyes were seeing, and she thought about Bill’s, imagining herself touching them. Again, we have the mix of good and bad: her horror and disgust at seeing the balls of her bullies, and the thought of handling those of a boy she really likes.

Her dad would be worrying a lot about her just then.

Patrick then offers to give Henry a blow job (page 1063).

There’s no way Henry’s going to go that far with homosexual activity, so in his predictable homophobia, he hits Patrick. The ironic thing about many homophobes is how they might be willing to open their minds to gay sexual acts, if not for disapproving mainstream society. Contemplating the implications of such open-mindedness is too much of a threat to the masculinity of someone like Henry, so he won’t go any further than hand-jobs.

Now, the homosexual acts here add to the creepiness of the scene not through homosexuality per se, but through a combination of our established dislike of Henry and his bullies, the very nature of Patrick’s mental disturbances, their all being underage, and especially the whole scene being witnessed by little Beverly. King may have sensed that this scene might be misinterpreted as disapproving of homosexuality in general, and so perhaps he added the scene of Adrian Mellon’s murder–right in Chapter Two, and as what may feel like an awkward interruption of the flow of the Losers’ story–to establish, from the outset, a sympathetic attitude toward gays, to offset this disturbing scene between Henry and Patrick.

Patrick insists, correctly, that Henry enjoyed the hand job, only further infuriating and threatening the latter. Significantly, and soon before Patrick’s death, Henry threatens to kill him if he tells anyone about the hand job. Patrick doesn’t seem deterred from squealing, so Henry also threatens to tell people about the fridge in which Patrick keeps his tortured animals (page 1069).

We understand that, shortly after Henry has left, Patrick stays in the junkyard, goes to his fridge, and is killed by It in the form of leeches flying out at him. Leeches were Patrick’s greatest fear, because when he was eight, after swimming in a lake and getting leeches on himself, he was screaming as his dad had to pull them off of his stomach and legs (page 1078). Pennywise always uses children’s fears as a weapon against them, since as I’ve said all along, It personifies trauma; but as with all the other killings in Derry, I believe Pennywise’s involvement in them is symbolic.

I believe Henry made good on his threat to kill Patrick, and the leeches flying onto the equally sociopathic victim were symbolic of his trauma. Henry had every motive in the world to kill Patrick. He had no guarantee that Patrick would keep his mouth shut about their homosexual activity, and Henry wouldn’t have been able to bear being thought a ‘queer’ throughout the town, so Patrick had to be silenced as soon as possible.

I suspect that the flying leech attack was really a hallucination. Leeches sucking his blood were really stab wounds from a knife. In his mind, Patrick said, “It isn’t real, it’s just a bad dream…” (page 1079, King’s emphasis). Patrick thought he saw a guy emerge from the junkyard cars, someone who dragged him towards the Barrens, symbol of the unconscious (page 1080). Beverly, watching the whole thing, wasn’t sure at first of what she was seeing. She only saw Patrick thrashing, dancing, and screaming (page 1081). I think it was Henry attacking him with a knife, maybe having hidden in or behind the fridge.

Another thing about leeches is that, of course, they suck, just as Patrick offered to suck Henry off. As sociopathic as Patrick was, he’d have had no trouble understanding how socially taboo fellatio between men was back in the late 1950s, as innocent little Beverly would have also understood it to be; and it’s with this socially conservative attitude that we find much of the content behind finding the masturbation scene so disturbing, not homosexuality in and of itself, as I said above.

So Patrick dying by seeing leeches sucking the blood and life out of his body, rather than Henry’s phallic knife ‘raping’ him, so to speak, is symbolic of him internalizing the especially virulent homophobia of his time…hence, I regard the death by flying leeches as a hallucination instead of taking it literally.

I’d say Beverly didn’t see Henry there at all, just Patrick thrashing about, screaming, and “blundering off down the path” (page 1081) because–just as with her trauma from her father’s sexual abuse–the shock of seeing his murder as it really happened was so intense that her mind, unable to process it, denied and repressed its very existence. Just a little while ago, as she’d watched the boys light their farts, then expose their genitals to her (however unwittingly), and the remaining two boys masturbating, she was terrified of Henry catching her watching them, then chase after her and and rape her (pages 1063-1064).

So it would have been too much for her to see Henry’s phallic knife stabbing into Patrick, ‘raping’ him. Instead, she just saw Patrick thrashing about and screaming.

Beverly ran, Bill’s slingshot in her hand, down the path where Patrick had gone. She saw drops of blood (pages 1083-1084). There were two grooves in the ground (his shoes), along with all the blood, leading from the junked cars to the Barrens, symbol of the unconscious.

She shared the understanding with Patrick that there were “things…in the refrigerator” (page 1084, King’s emphasis) that killed him, the leeches, and therefore It, but I suspect that It, being a metaphorical killer (according to my interpretation), had given her and Patrick a shared hallucination, because the two are sharing a trauma.

Eventually, she found Patrick’s wallet and sneakers (page 1085), the grooves in the ground no longer continuing. The second of the sneakers had blood on the laces. Surely the blood was reminding her of the blood in the sinkhole, a yonic symbol, recall, of her having been injured by her father’s phallic penetrations, something so horrific to her that she’d have repressed the memory of it so thoroughly that she imagined seeing the bullies’ genitals was her first time ever having seen them (page 1054).

It’s fitting in this connection that Beverly would recall her father’s words about her: “Sometimes I worry a LOT.” (page 1086, King’s emphasis). She also worries a lot, having seen such sexual perversity, indecency, and bloody violence. It’s just like what she’s seen at home with her dad. And it’s so awful that she has to repress and blot the worst parts out of her mind.

Several hours later, the other Losers (except Eddie) are with Beverly where she saw Patrick open the refrigerator. It starts raining (page 1087), suggestive of the apocalyptic, Deluge-like rainfall to be associated with the beginning of the story, with George’s death, and the climax, when the adult Losers finally kill It.

This association of the rain with the apocalypse is made stronger when, as it comes down harder, the refrigerator door swings open and the Losers see a message written in blood on the inside of the door. The clown warns them to stop, or he’ll kill them (page 1088). Hail is mixing with the rain, its hardness suggestive of rocks being pelted on the kids in an…apocalyptic…rockfight.

Bill isn’t scared. He’s angry, and he wants revenge for Georgie. He screams a threat to kill It, calling It a “son of a bitch” and a “bastard.”

With Bill’s guilt feelings over the death of George, based on his unconscious wish to be rid of his little brother, as I explained above, we see a sharp contrast with the unfeeling attitude of sociopathic Patrick toward the baby brother he actually killed (pages 1069-1071).

Bill senses that It is scared of them, and he wants his friends’ help to kill It (page 1088). The others promise they’ll help him, and that they won’t chicken out.

They all hug each other. This hugging represents their indispensable solidarity. The sleet fittingly switches back to rain, a weakening of the opposition, like Henry’s gang losing the rockfight.

XXIII: The Bullseye

In Mike’s library, the adult Losers continue telling their stories about their childhood experiences with It, and according to Richie, it’s Ben’s turn. He starts by unbuttoning his shirt and revealing the H that Henry carved in Ben’s belly (page 1091). Beverly immediately thinks of the werewolf in the house on Neibolt Street. It’s fitting that she would make such an association, since as I said above, Henry is the true teenage werewolf of this story.

It’s significant that Ben’s H, just like the cuts on all their hands from the childhood promise to return to Derry if It ever returned, has reappeared on his belly only recently, after years of having vanished (page 1092). These scars are symbolic of the repressed trauma that the Losers have forgotten for so long.

Since it’s the teenage werewolf (Henry, actually) that they have all remembered, now Ben is going to recount the story of melting the silver dollars to make projectiles to hit It with, fired by Bev, the best marksman of the group. Since the werewolf represents Henry, then the silver ‘bullets’ shot at It correspond to the rocks thrown at him, and this confrontation in the house on Neibolt Street is every bit, in its own way, as apocalyptic as the rockfight.

The adult Losers all remember their own personal, unbearable forms of pain. Bill remembers how badly he needed to kill It, to avenge Georgie and–as he’d hoped as a kid–to get his parents’ love, something little Bill had felt starved of. The adults contemplate how Stan killed himself because he couldn’t bear to face his traumas again (page 1093), and Eddie, in his mind, links this inability to face trauma with his own continuation to be ‘sick,’ to use the asthma medicine, even though he’d long known his asthma wasn’t real. The continuation wasn’t just blackmail on his mother, as explained above: it was also a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, a turning around against himself, to avoid confronting the ugly reality that his mother was abusing him.

After young Ben has expertly melted the silver dollars into projectile form, he and the other kids play Monopoly while the projectiles harden in the molds (page 1100). Stan wins the game, and being Jewish, feels free to joke about the money-making stereotype (page 1103). Ben, almost broke in the game, jokingly prays to Jesus to make him Jewish, getting laughs all around.

Bev has been worried about parental disapproval over her not coming home until later, but her father, also not coming home until late after work, won’t know, and her mom is reassured that she isn’t on a date or anything (page 1102).

What we see here, in the making of the silver projectiles and preparation for a confrontation with It-as-werewolf, is not a literal fight against the supernatural, but a symbolic confrontation with their fears and traumas. Bev has to deal with her abusive father. Stan has to deal with antisemites (including Henry) and their ideas about Jews ‘having all the money,’ and he does so by making fun of the stereotype.

The day the Losers all go to the house on Neibolt Street, armed with Bill’s Bullseye slingshot and the two silver projectiles that Ben made, is a hot day in late July (page 1106), just like the hot tension they’re all feeling. They look at the house. Stan thinks the windows look like eyes, presumably judgemental ones; he touches his bird book for good luck (page 1107). “They look like dirty blind eyes.” Eyes that don’t see, yet still seem to judge, something that defies logic to his mind, and is therefore offensive to him.

Beverly imagines the house to have a stink to it, but one you don’t smell with your nose. Again, as with Stan’s observation, the threats of the house don’t make logical sense: they give off a sense of trauma, reminding both of them of their respective traumas, yet there’s also the trauma of Lacan’s Real: not to be verbalized, not to be reasoned out, just uncanny.

Speaking of what, in relation to trauma, doesn’t make sense, Eddie goes for his aspirator, which as we know, he already knows he’s never needed. Adding to the senselessness, though, Richie then asks to use it; then Stan does, and so do all the others (pages 1107-1108). Sometimes we try to soothe ourselves in totally irrational ways, we’re so scared and desperate for comfort.

The kids wonder if any of the adults in Derry can see the supernatural phenomena. They’d love to have an adult who acknowledges It with them, to protect them, since this “isn’t a job for kids.” (page 1108). Sadly, though, few if any adults would acknowledge It, because their trauma is usually too repressed for such acknowledgement to exist.

The kids all go in the house, through the cellar window (pages 1110-1111), for cellars are also symbolic of the unconscious, and the mission to destroy It is, as I’ve said before, symbolic of Shadow Work, a making of the unconscious conscious, to confront and heal repressed trauma.

Richie, as usual, to deal with his own trauma, indulges in his tasteless humour and bad imitations of accents (page 1112). By page 1117, Ben has a better idea for how they can all cope with their fear and pain: they have to stay close together. He knows that It wants them to get lost, to get separated. Indeed, all people in power, sociopaths like It, try to maintain their power by keeping all those threatening their power separated and fighting with each other, when solidarity is key and indispensable to defeating said power structures.

The Losers get a number of scares as they go through the house, including one moment when Bill stutters repeatedly at Stan to use his bird book to ward It away (page 1120). At another point, they get a scare, Ben begging Bev to use the slingshot and shoot at what he thinks is a giant cricket buzzing behind a door (page 1122). It turns out that the noisemaker is just a mooseblower.

Finally, they see the Teenage Werewolf (page 1126). Bev has a silver projectile in the slingshot, ready to shoot, and Mike and Richie yell at her to shoot It (page 1127). She fires and misses. Recall that this werewolf represents Henry, and her firing the silver balls represents the rocks they all threw at him.

More connections between the Teenage Werewolf and Henry come when It attacks Ben, Its claws digging into his torso and spilling his blood all over his pants and sneakers (page 1129), the same way Henry’s knife dug an H into Ben’s belly. The Werewolf also throws Ben into a bathtub, which parallels his fall into the Barrens after Henry cut him.

Again, Richie screams at Beverly to shoot the Werewolf with her last silver projectile, but of course she has to save this shot for a perfect opportunity. She gets that opportunity and shoots, hitting It near Its right eye (page 1130). It screams in pain.

She’s out of silver projectiles, but she holds the slingshot as if she still has one. If It can use fear to gain power over the kids, then they can do the same thing to It. Indeed, the Werewolf’s eyes are full of uncertainty and pain (page 1131). It, too, has blood pouring out if It, like Ben.

It retreats into the drain, changing Its shape so It can fit inside. Its retreat is just like Henry’s when he lost the apocalyptic rockfight. Indeed, from inside the drainpipe, the Losers can hear It echo Henry’s words: “I’ll kill you all!” Such moments as these are significant, for they help prove my point that the real terror of Derry is Henry, the real Teenage Werewolf, and that Pennywise is merely metaphorical, a personification of everyone’s trauma…even Henry’s.

XXIV: Derry: The Fourth Interlude

On the night of April 6th, 1985, as Mike is writing about the history of Derry again, he’s getting drunk (page 1143). He’s thinking about drink and the devil; he even wants to write about it. He’s having rye whiskey. He’s in such a light-headed, high-spirited attitude, he actually refers to himself as “one drunk nigger in a public library after closing”.

This drunken spirit of levity, when he’s supposed to be seriously contemplating the history of Derry and how It has affected the town, is significant in how it reinforces the novel’s theme of adults looking the other way when evil strikes. This looking the other way is also important in the story Mike is about to relate, the massacre in 1905 in the Sleepy Silver Dollar, a beer joint (page 1149).

It’s so ironic that, after just hearing a story about the Losers confronting It in the form of the werewolf and defeating It with projectiles made from melted silver dollars, we now learn of a massacre totally ignored by the patrons of a beer joint called “the Silver Dollar.”

Indeed, Claude Heroux, an axe murderer who was responsible for the massacre, was never brought on trial for what he did there (page 1149). Heroux used his axe on five men who’d worked for William Mueller, who with Hamilton Tracker and Richard Bowie (page 1150) had murdered Heroux’s friends and fellow union organizers, so Heroux wanted revenge. One of the five attacked men escaped and survived, David “Stugley” Grenier.

The murder victims had been playing poker at a table in the back of the room. One of them was Eddie King, named after Stephen King’s middle name, Edwin. Heroux came in the Silver Dollar with a woodsman’s double-bitted axe in his hand (page 1151).

First, he chopped off, at the wrist, the hand of Floyd Calderwood after having poured himself a glass of rye whiskey (page 1152)…Mike’s drink, too, recall; Calderwood would later bleed to death. Then, Heroux stuck his axe in Tinker McCutcheon’s head (page 1153); the axe then went into his back. Eddie fell out of his chair, and Heroux’s axe went deep into his gut (page 1154). Then Heroux hacked off the head of Lathrop “El Katook” Rounds. Stugley had a gun and tried shooting at Heroux; instead, Stugley escaped to the outhouse.

As I said above, what’s striking about this massacre is how all other patrons looked the other way as the killing happened. “The drinking and conversation at the bar went on.” (page 1157) Heroux was led away, and a righteous fury built up over the killings, but this was only later. Heroux was then lynched, him being passive and hardly resisting at all. But why didn’t anyone at least try to stop him at the time, other than Stugley and his gun?

Thoroughgood, the man Mike has asked about the incident, says he saw someone that night near the Silver Dollar, who looked like a clown (page 1158). Thoroughgood saw him while having a beer in a place fittingly called the Bloody Bucket. Drink and the devil.

Mike ponders the idea that it is faith that It really eats (page 1159). It’s the faith of the children It kills that It eats. This is why the adults of Derry always look the other way when It attacks. A child is more capable of an act of faith than any adult, Mike reasons. By killing the faith of children, It can maintain Its power.

The rationalization the patrons of the Silver Dollar have for not even acknowledging the killings is that they wanted to stay out of the politics of the situation–after all, Heroux wanted to avenge the killings of friends who’d wanted to organize a union, which their capitalist bosses would never want. Still, it’s only with the solidarity of the people, the kind of solidarity we’ve seen among the Losers when they confront the werewolf in the house on Neibolt Street, that we can defeat evil of any kind, whether political or supernatural.

Kids like the Losers can have this kind of solidarity that too many adults lose, a solidarity based on faith that good will ultimately prevail. One imagines that Matthew 18:3 had such an idea in mind.

The people at the bar, like the adults of Derry in general, ignored the killings as they happened, but soon enough, their rage led to a lynching, without even any consideration for due process for Heroux, as was the case with the massacre of the Bradley Gang. The victimized Derry residents themselves become cold-blooded killers. The Derry adults go from one inappropriate extreme to another. Neither extreme does anything to solve the problem of It.

And what did both extremes, in the case of Heroux, have in common? Drink and the devil. Getting drunk is a manic defence against facing the depressing–and sobering–reality that one must deal with one’s trauma head on–one must face one’s Shadow, as the faithful Loser kids did in the house on Neibolt Street.

And who is yet another adult, getting drunk on rye whiskey when he’s supposed to be focusing on writing out the history of Derry and Its terrorizing of the town? Mike, an adult Loser.

As Mike is drunkenly contemplating this adult fading-away of faith, he’s also thinking about making those phone calls to all the other adult Losers (page 1160). Will they all even remember their childhood traumas, let alone believe Mike when he tells them that It is back?

These are people who no longer believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or any of those old characters in children’s stories. Why would they still believe in Pennywise?

Pennywise, of course, still believes in the Losers, and It is ready for them (page 1160). It is ready to finish their business in Derry, and if they don’t remember, or believe, or if they even return, but can’t handle It, as the local adults can’t, Mike will be frightened.

XXV: In the Watches of the Night

Ben has finished telling his story about the silver dollar projectiles, and Mike decides the adult Losers should all leave the library, go to their respective accommodations, and get some sleep (page 1163). Their childhood memories are more or less restored.

They’re getting ready to leave, and Beverly screams, seeing blood on her hands, as do the others see on their own hands (page 1165). She wants to know if they’re all committed to defeating It, since the blood on their hands is a reminder of the cuts they had slashed on their hands as kids when they pledged to return as adults to Derry to defeat It. They all hold hands, the blood dripping from them, as they did when they were kids.

There are memories of the idea of the Ritual of Chüd and of the Turtle. The library’s typewriter stars churning out Bill’s “he thrusts his fists…” etc. Ironically, all of these things are elements leading to a defeat of their sources of trauma, elements of good, yet presented to them in a frighteningly supernatural way–bad. The duality of good and bad is appearing once again (pages 1166-1167).

Bill and Beverly leave the library together (page 1168). He’s thinking about Audra, not knowing how close she actually is to them, yet he’s also tempted to have Bev.

As she’s with him, she’s thinking about her father, and how he ‘worried about her a lot.’ (page 1169). She tells Bill of her love/hate relationship with Al, the Kleinian good and bad father all rolled into one…though as we know, that bad father was far more predominant, and only her Stockholm Syndrome/depressive position is making the good father at all visible…the good/bad duality in It appearing once again.

She has revived a memory of her confronting her pathologically jealous father, who suspected her, once again, of hanging around boys…this time, with the Losers, innocently playing tag, or something (page 1170). She went home, and Al was there, not at work.

He slapped her face hard (page 1171), then warned her if she lied, he’d beat her far worse (page 1172). She remembered a time when he’d bathed her. He knew she was in the Barrens with the Losers, but wouldn’t accept the idea that they were just innocently playing there.

He demanded she take her pants off (page 1173), so he could see if she was still “intact.” Now, him wanting to know if she was still a virgin seems to contradict my speculation that he has sexually abused her. One thing we must keep in mind, though, is that abusers are often in total denial of their abuse, and they’ll use projection and gaslighting to manipulate their victims into ‘forgetting’ that the abuse ever occurred. It’s far from impossible to believe Al has penetrated her, then manipulated her into thinking no penetration by him occurred…but by the Losers instead.

Anyone with a modicum of understanding of the concepts of psychoanalysis (nay: anyone with a modicum of common sense!) knows that a man who wants a girl to take her pants off so he can ‘inspect’ her vagina is doing so for one reason, and only for that reason. ‘Concern’ about her status as a virgin is the most transparent of rationalizations. For these reasons, I can conclude, even without any direct evidence, that Al must have sexually abused Beverly.

When “Beverly suddenly understood that she was alone in the apartment with It” (page 1173), she was alone with not only It as Pennywise, but It as a member of Al’s anatomy. She knew she had to defy him. She ran from him just as she’d run from Mrs. Kersh twenty-seven years later (page 1177), for just as Kersh represented Bev’s good and bad mother, so did Al represent her good and bad father…and she couldn’t afford to consider his good side now.

She ran from the man “who had washed her back and punched her in the gut and had done both because he worried about her, worried a lot” (page 1178), the “maleman of her life, delivering a mixed post, from that other sexual state…She saw It there.”

She ran outside, him chasing her, and she hid under a dumpster (page 1181). She had to put up with the “stink of exhaust and diesel fuel mixed with the smell of ripe meat” that gave her nausea (page 1182). One is reminded of that smell that she and her father made between them.

She had to rationalize her defiance of her father. She tried to remind herself that she loved him, that there was a good side to him (page 1184). Guilt over hating him for being this horrible man was making her remember the commandment to honour thy father and thy mother. She tried to reconcile herself to this monster by imagining that her pursuer wasn’t her real father…he was It.

This kind of thinking is the essence of traumatic bonding, Stockholm Syndrome, and a misplaced use of the depressive position. The truly terrifying thing that Beverly had to accept, but couldn’t accept, was that this was the real Al. Yes, he was that crazy. But for a helpless child like her, all she could do was turn it around against herself. It’s so much easier to displace the terror from Dad and put it on the clown, than to accept Dad as he really was.

She and Al weren’t the only ones losing it at that time–so was Henry, especially after having let Patrick touch him in the way he did (page 1185). Henry was seeing “a skeletal grinning face” in the moon. He was hearing ghost-voices from it, too. He was already the Teenage Werewolf for this story’s purposes. The voice, a merging of all the voices, was telling him to do things, and he’d know what to do next when the time came. Next, he heard a voice, not from the moon, but from the sewer, telling him to kill Beverly (page 1186). As we can see, it’s easy to link Pennywise with Henry.

All the adult Losers have left the library, so Mike is there alone, having cleaned up after their drinking (pages 1186-1187). After a while, though, he starts getting the feeling that he is not alone (pages 1190-1191). And soon enough, before Mike even needs to see his visitor in the light or hear his voice, he knows who his intruder is…Henry (page 1192).

Henry asks Mike if he ever hears voices from the moon (page 1193). Mike answers Henry by asking if he’s seen It, to which Henry replies by saying that It killed Victor and Belch.

In this moment, in spite of Henry’s repeatedly calling Mike “nigger,” and in spite of his obvious intention of murdering Mike, the two of them, in acknowledging the existence of It, of the personification of their traumas, are connecting, if only for the moment…here’s that good/bad duality again.

Of course, when Henry threatens to kill Mike and all the other Losers before It can get a chance to kill them Itself, he’s really just projecting his own murderous impulses onto this clown, this figment of everyone’s traumatized imagination. Mike himself implies that Henry and his gang were the true killers back in 1958, when he says, “Maybe you yo-yos did Its work” (page 1194).

Mike also reminds Henry that It, having killed his gang, may also go after Henry himself, perhaps in the form of Frankenstein’s monster, a werewolf, a vampire, the clown…or Henry. Hearing this really gets Henry upset.

Of course, Henry attacks Mike, and they fight (page 1194). Mike gets stabbed, and he’s bleeding to death; he tries calling for help on the phone, but though Henry has left the library, Pennywise’s voice, imitating Henry’s taunts and racial slurs, is making so much noise that Mike can’t hear anyone on the other end of the phone (pages 1199-1200).

After this scene, the novel quickly switches, mid-sentence, from Pennywise taunting adult Mike in the library to teen Henry taunting little Beverly just after she’s run away from Al and hid under the dumpster (page 1200). It’s significant that we’d switch so abruptly from Pennywise imitating adult Henry to teen Henry, since I’ve always interpreted the two, from the murderer’s perspective, to be virtually one and the same person.

We get another sense of Henry’s psychopathic disrespect for law or authority when an old lady comes by in a car to try to stop him from bullying Bev (pages 1200-1201). He runs at her car with a defiance similar to when he was bullying Eddie and broke his arm; Mr. Gedreau, recall, tried to stop Henry, and he got “a good hard push” (pages 1012). Henry was never your everyday bully.

And just as Eddie had experienced an overwhelming plethora of trauma on that day (his fake asthma, Henry breaking his arm, and his mother trying to keep him from his friends), so is Beverly being overwhelmed: like Eddie, she is being bullied and abused by a parent and Henry the psychopath.

After the old woman in the car has been scared off, Beverly kicks Henry in the balls and runs away (page 1202). This section ends as it begins, mid-sentence. Henry tells his gang that Bev has gone “down into the Barrens to be with her asshole…friends,” as adult Beverly finishes the sentence in the next section, which is her with Bill, walking together from Mike’s library at night, the two building feelings for each other.

It’s fitting how this transition shares similar themes. The sexual feelings that Bev is feeling for Bill are linked thematically with the sexual feelings her father was suggesting he had for her, as well as those feelings shared between Henry and Patrick…which she as a little girl witnessed.

Remember also in this connection the emotional incest between Eddie and his mom, which is to be connected with the physical incest implied between Bev and her father. There’s the abuse that Bev’s dad and Eddie’s mom inflicted on them, as well as the abuse Henry has inflicted on them. Even Bill’s lovemaking with Beverly is going to be a form of mistreatment. After all, he’s married.

This is not to say that Bill has completely forgotten about Audra, who recall is a lot closer to him geographically than any of them in Derry know. He totally has Audra on his mind as Bev is charming him. “Cheating. Cheating on my wife” (page 1204, King’s emphasis), Bill’s thinking. In fact, part of his guilt is causing him to see that Audra actually looks like Beverly (page 1203). Maybe this is why he chose Audra to be his wife–transference.

Guilt over Audra doesn’t mean he’s turned off being with Bev, though she’s wondering if he’s having second thoughts (page 1205). In fact, he’s so excited to be getting it on with Beverly that he’s worried he’ll ejaculate too soon, like a little kid. He’s imagining how he felt when the two of them were kids. As for her, she never has second thoughts about cheating on Tom Rogan because she hates the abusive, controlling bastard (page 1206), him also being a link between this section and the last one via Henry.

Bill and Bev make love, and when she climaxes, she suddenly remembers having made love to all of the Losers when they were kids (page 1208). So he has his sexual guilt feelings, and she’s had hers. He’s just betrayed Audra, and Beverly recalls for the first time in so many years having ‘betrayed’ her father by doing with the Losers the exact thing he’d ‘worried a lot’ that she’d do with a bunch of boys.

This realization of hers also ties this scene in with the one several scenes back, of her memory of having run away from her insanely jealous father.

Bev and Bill lie together in bed, in each other’s arms, and she falls asleep, running in a dream (page 1211). This dream of running segues, again mid-sentence, into the next section, which brings us back to her as a little girl, running from Henry and his gang and down into the Barrens to meet with the other Losers in the underground clubhouse (pages 1211-1212).

Though she’s been hoping to see Bill’s bike, Silver, and to meet with him, she finds Ben there instead. She knows Henry and his gang are close behind. She and Ben get in the underground clubhouse, him pulling the trapdoor shut (page 1213). Their closeness together here, though not a sexual one–as was the one with adult Bev and Bill–is nonetheless a parallel of that scene, since Ben has always had feelings for her as strong as Bill has had them.

Her need to feel safe with Ben from Henry also parallels adult Bev’s need to feel safe with adult Bill from It. And since I’ve been equating It with Henry throughout my analysis of this novel, the fact that adult Henry has attacked Mike in the library soon after Bill and Beverly left also strengthens these parallels.

And since the underground clubhouse in the Barrens represents the unconscious mind, adult Beverly’s dream of running segueing into child Beverly running to the clubhouse is also a seamless transition, because dreams are where the unconscious mind really lets itself out. An exploration of the unconscious mind can be therapeutic for trauma; so Bev in bed with Bill, drifting off to sleep, is symbolic of such soothing therapy. Her hiding in the clubhouse with Ben, so Henry can’t get her, is also symbolic of such healing. Getting a form of love from Ben and from Bill in this healing way is also an example of the parallels of both scenes.

Yet another link between, on the one hand, adult Bill and Bev making love, and on the other, Ben and Bev in the clubhouse ‘making love’ in an albeit non-literal sense, is her bringing up Ben’s poem (page 1217), which she calls a haiku, though it deviates a bit from the traditional syllables of five-seven-five in the three lines. At first, Ben is too embarrassed to admit that he’s the one who wrote it for her, fearing that she’d laugh at a fat boy writing romantically to her. Still, she’s touched by his poem, saying she “thought it was beautiful.”

The two of them leave the clubhouse and go up to Kansas Street, ready to run if they see Henry and his gang. She stumbles on a rock in the path and…we have another mid-sentence transition from this section to the next one, which gives us adult Henry on the seminary grounds on Kansas Street at 2:17 AM, just after his attack on Mike in the library (pages 1221-1222).

Apart from Kansas Street and the fall, what links these two sections can be described as dialectical. Instead of the prey falling (Bev), it’s the predator (Henry) who does; instead of day, it’s night. Both predator and prey have been affected by the trauma of It.

She and Ben come up from the Barrens and the clubhouse; adult Henry sees a sewer-grate, to one of the bars of which is tied a balloon (page 1222). As we know, all of these lower, underground places are symbolic of the unconscious, so all three characters are being affected by the Shadow.

Henry is gloating over how he’s hurt “the nigger” better than he got hurt by him. He starts remembering old music, like “Pipeline,” by the Chantays, and “Wipe Out,” the laugh at the beginning of which reminds Henry of Patrick Hockstetter’s, he whom Henry still thinks of as a “queerboy” (page 1223, King’s emphasis). He remembers Patrick having died, “Got greased himself,” and while he doesn’t remember having killed Patrick himself (as I have speculated–see above), his mind during this passage (pages 1222-1223) is so scatterbrained, incoherent, and unstable that one would expect him to omit that detail.

Indeed, he keeps hearing things (a “ka-spanggg sound,” page 1223) and seeing things (Victor’s head). The police go by in a car (page 1224), and he thinks they’ll catch him. He’s not sure if he’s killed Mike, for he notices that an ambulance is going to the library.

He remembers the day back in 1958, the one I just described, when he and his gang lost Bev in the Barrens, after she’d kicked him in the balls (page 1225)–this being yet another link between these two sections…and a link with the section about to come.

He knew the kids hung out in the Barrens, but he never saw a treehouse there (page 1226); nor had Belch or Victor. He remembers searching for Beverly down the Kenduskeag, having picked up a rock and thrown it far down the river…and this is the mid-sentence transition between this and the next section, which brings us back to 1958, with Henry and Victor looking for Beverly in the Barrens.

What links these two sections, beyond the earlier one being adult Henry remembering his time at the river with Victor, and the later one being the time of the memory itself, is the fact that in both sections, Henry’s psychopathic lust for revenge on all the Losers is at an equal level of virulent intensity. He’s hearing the voice from the moon (pages 1227-1228) as a teen, just as he’s hearing that voice as an adult.

Teen Henry is bleeding in the crotch of his pants from Bev’s kick in the balls (page 1226), and adult Henry is bleeding in his gut from his fight with Mike (page 1197). When teen Henry hears the voice from the moon, he feels love. It’s significant that he’s described as having a “clownish smile” (page 1228), for it suggests what I’ve been saying all along–that Henry and Pennywise are one. The latter is a metaphorical mirror of the former.

Part of Henry’s psychopathy is his malignant narcissism. The wounds I referred to in the previous paragraph are symbolic of his narcissistic rage and injury. A psychopath can usually handle physical pain very well; it’s the humiliation he got from that kick in the balls…from a girl (consider 1950s preconceptions about female strength in this connection) that is so painful and intolerable for him. The clown in the moon, being Henry’s metaphorical mirror, is his ideal-I, to which he aspires by ‘killing them all’ (page 1231).

As Henry, Victor, and Belch are waiting for Bev to make an appearance, Henry is thinking about how he found a switchblade that morning (page 1228). He got it in the mail…in a mailbox full of balloons with the faces of all the kids “who had deviled him all this summer, the kids who seemed to mock him at every turn” (page 1229).

These balloons remind us of the one adult Henry sees on the bar of the sewer-grate (page 1222). Just as he as an adult has murderous designs on the Losers, so does he as a teen have those designs on the kid Losers. Pennywise is present during all these murders, either physically or in some symbolic sense, but it’s someone else (those who shot the Bradley gang, Heroux with his axe, etc.) who do the actual killing themselves. I believe it’s actually Henry who’s killed all these kids, and Pennywise just symbolizes the collective trauma of everyone in Derry.

Henry takes the switchblade from out of a package in the mailbox and takes it into his house, where he sees his father, Butch Bowers, lying in their bedroom (page 1229). He holds the switchblade at his dad’s neck for almost five minutes, then he hears the voice from the moon. Henry likes what he hears, so he pushes the button on the knife, making the blade stick “six inches of steel…though Butch Bowers’s neck (page 1230). As we can see, if Henry is crazy and vicious enough to murder his own father, he’s also capable of killing those kids.

He certainly wants to kill all those kids–the voices in his head keep telling him to do so. He and his gang see Ben and Bev coming out the trapdoor from the underground clubhouse, then going up to Kansas Street (page 1232).

Henry knows that It lives somewhere under the city, so in his mind there must be some kind of equivalence between those Losers he hates so much and the clown in the sewers. Though we readers see the former as the protagonists and the latter as the antagonist, it makes sense, from Henry’s point of view, to equate the Losers with It, instead of himself with It.

As I’ve said above, Pennywise in many ways represents the Shadow, or those repressed parts of the personality that, because of trauma, are rejected or disowned. The Shadow isn’t, however, necessarily evil, so equating the Losers with It isn’t all that far-fetched. Henry hates those kids so much because they represent aspects of himself that he hates: weakness, awkwardness, inadequacy, and being a social outcast. Henry thinks that by killing the kids, he’ll destroy and purge himself of similar personality traits in himself that he’ll never accept.

Henry, Victor, and Belch will follow Ben and Bev, but from farther off, so they won’t be seen (page 1233). As the three are following, Henry takes out his switchblade again, and…we come to yet another mid-sentence transition from 1958 to the mid-80s, at 2:30 AM, when adult Henry pushes the button on the switchblade, making the blade pop out (page 1233).

Just as teen Henry is with Belch and Victor when they’re following Ben and Bev, so is adult Henry with his now-dead buddies…in a way. A car pulls up to take Henry to the Derry Town House, the hotel where Bill, Ben, Eddie, Beverly, and Richie are staying (page 1241), and as it turns out, the ghost of Belch is driving the car (page 1235); Henry’s memories of Victor’s death are also there for the ride (page 1239).

The car Henry is being taken in is a 1958 Plymouth Fury, a red and white car that his dad wanted to own. It’s interesting how his father’s name was Butch, while the ghost driving the car is Belch. Henry isn’t just taking a trip to where he plans to be guilty of murder; he’s also going on a guilt trip.

Just as Henry is guilty of having murdered his father when he was a teen, he as an adult is reflecting on his guilt over having abandoned Belch and Victor in the sewers, where the two died, while chasing the Losers. His acknowledging his responsibility over the deaths of his two friends is a rare moment for this normally unfeeling psychopath. The fact that his memory of having murdered his father is being linked with his friends’ deaths is intensifying his guilt all the more.

As ghost-Belch is driving Henry to the Derry Town House, the latter is trying to apologize to the former for failing to help him (pages 1237-1240) in the sewers. Belch largely doesn’t reply, though. I’d say it’s safe to assume that Henry, in his delusional state, is just imagining the car and ghost-Belch as the driver. Since the Derry Town House is the only surviving hotel in the Derry area (page 1240), he can deduce that this is probably where at least some, if not all, of the adult Losers coming back for a visit are staying, so he knows where to go to strike next and continue getting his revenge.

With his urge to right the wrongs he feels have been done to him, though, also comes the sense that he himself has done his share of wrong. Hence his ride to the hotel comes in a car that his victim of patricide wanted, driven by a friend he shafted in the sewers. Here’s the good/bad duality again: it’s ‘good’ from his point of view that he’s getting a lift to the hotel; but it’s also ‘bad’ that his trip is a guilt trip. It’s also bad that getting to hotel, to continue his murder spree, has been made easier, but it’s also good that, on at least some level, he’s beginning to understand what a bad person he is.

When he arrives at the Derry Town House, the first of the Losers that he decides to attack is Eddie, who is in Room 609, up at the top, then he’ll work his way down (page 1242). At the door, Henry rings the bell and pretends to be a bellboy with a message from Eddie’s wife (page 1243). It’s ironic that Eddie’s potential killer has a message from overprotective Myra.

Henry has his knife ready, by his cheek, as Eddie is fumbling with the chain to unlock and open the door (page 1244). Henry’s ready to plunge the knife into Eddie’s throat. The door is opened and Eddie…another mid-sentence transition occurs here, and we’re transported back to 1958, and little Stan and Richie are each eating a ‘Rocket‘ on a push-up stick.

Eddie’s running up to catch up with them, and he wants a lick on Richie’s Rocket. We can see a link between the sections in how, on the one hand, adult Eddie is expecting a message from Myra, his ‘sweet’ wife, while on the other, little Eddie is expecting a taste from Richie’s sweet food. In the end, adult Eddie is about to get a “push-up stick” of a surprising kind and little Eddie–with his broken arm–is going to join the other Losers in confronting Henry and his gang to protect their underground clubhouse.

Stan offers Eddie the rest of his Rocket, and when Richie says, “Jews don’t eat much,” this begins a discussion among the three about religion, about Judaism as contrasted with Catholicism, in particular (pages 1245-1248), and what’s odd about religions in general.

There’s a comparison between Jews being forbidden to eat the flesh of pigs (though Stan and his family eat it, anyway), and Catholics being forbidden to eat meat on Fridays (page 1246). This leads to a discussion about a bad Catholic boy who stole some of the communion bread and took it home. He threw it into the toilet bowl, and the water turned as red as blood (page 1247), the Blood of Christ, meaning what the boy had done was an act of blasphemy, and his immortal soul was now in danger of Hell.

This story is Eddie’s, and ever since hearing it, he’s never enjoyed communion. Blood in the toilet, of course, reminds us of the blood in the bathroom sinkhole in Beverly’s home. We also see in Eddie’s story that good/bad duality: Christ’s blood is good in itself, but a frighteningly unnatural thing to see in a toilet bowl.

Then Bill and Mike arrive on their bikes (page 1248). Bill is wondering if any of them has seen Ben or Beverly. They all go over to the Barrens (page 1249). They see Ben and Bev running toward them and shouting (page 1250).

Eddie is shocked at how filthy she looks, not knowing about her hiding under a dumpster so her father wouldn’t find her. There’s no way she’ll tell them about what her father was doing (recall in this connection the association between the blood in the toilet and in the sinkhole), but she has to warn them about Henry, his gang, and his new knife. In this, again, we see a connection between this section and the last one (i.e., Henry about to stab adult Eddie in his hotel room).

As they all are contemplating the danger of facing Henry again, they each think about a traumatic incident associated with It: Richie, the moving photo of George; Bev, her dad and the wildness in his eyes; Mike, the bird; Ben, the mummy; etc. (page 1251) Still, Bill insists they all go down and defend the clubhouse.

What’s interesting is that, as the kids are about to go down to the clubhouse, a thunderstorm is beginning on a day when, according to what Ben has seen in the newspaper, it was supposed to be “hot and hazy” (page 1253). This storm suggests association with the flooding rain at the beginning of the story, and the Deluge-like, destructive storm at the end. Once again, the Losers’ confrontation with Henry and his gang will be…apocalyptic.

As the kids are going down, Eddie starts getting the feeling that they’re being watched (page 1259). He looks around nervously. He…and another mid-sentence transition takes us from 1958 back to the mid-1980s, with adult Eddie opening his hotel door to see “a monster from a horror comic”–adult Henry. It’s hardly necessary to explain how this section is linked to the last one.

Eddie slams the door shut, hitting Henry’s forearm and making the knife fall to the floor (page 1255). Eddie kicks it away, so it goes under the TV. Henry uses his weight to shove the door open, making Eddie, of a much lighter build, fall back on the bed. Henry is calling him “fag” and “babyfag,” with revenge on his mind for a rockfight he still hasn’t forgotten about.

So a struggle ensues, and Eddie throws a Perrier bottle at Henry’s face, cutting into his right cheek and right eye (page 1256), then he uses the jagged edge of the bottle to cut Henry’s left hand. Later, Henry falls on the bottle, impaling himself on it.

Henry dies, and Eddie goes for the telephone for help. It’s ironic how “babyfag” has won the fight against the bully, with no help from anybody else. Once again, we’re reminded of how bullies like Henry are the real weaklings and cowards, projecting their inadequacies onto their victims, who often show surprising amounts of strength when they need to. In spite of his ‘mama’s boy’ upbringing, Eddie can kick ass.

He calls the desk clerk of the hotel and asks to be connected with Bill (page 1258). Bill answers his phone with a stammer. He tells Bill about the fight with Henry, and that he had the same knife as he’d used on that day when they, as kids, went into the sewers. Bill replies with another mid-sentence transition back to 1958, in the Barrens, with young Bill finishing the sentence, telling Eddie to get Ben (page 1259).

They can hear the thunder in the sky, and they’ve found the trapdoor to the clubhouse open, not the way Ben and Bev left it. Bill senses that Henry expects them to fight, and to be killed by him. By imagining that both Henry and It expect the Losers to stand and fight, Bill is implying he understands that Henry and It are one and the same, at least from a murderer’s point of view (page 1260).

Bill says they should all go to the pumping station, then he sees Victor, and a number of rocks are thrown all at once at the kids (page 1264). Bill gets a rock in the cheek. Henry is happy to get his revenge for the rockfight.

Bill insists that the pumping station is the way in, the way to It. Ben knows where to go, and he must take the Losers there (page 1265). The others are hesitating to go, but Henry et al are throwing rocks at them. A crack of thunder and a flash of lightning give them all a scare, Bill is running to the river, and a rock almost hits his face, but hits Ben in the ass instead. Henry gets a good laugh from that. The rain is coming down hard now.

After Mike throws a piece of scrapwood, hitting Henry on the forehead with it, all the Losers run to find the pumping station (page 1266). The Kenduskeag’s water seems higher, the rain-dark sky looks dangerously grey, and lightning is flashing again (page 1267).

With Henry’s gang chasing them, they reach the pumping station, and struggle to get the lid off (page 1269). They get inside and go down to where the sewers are, where George’s boat went almost a year before (page 1277), led by Bill, with Henry’s gang not far behind, Henry having warned them that they’ll die down there (page 1272). The Losers are also thinking about the ritual of Chüd (page 1276).

What’s interesting about the Losers’ current predicament is how they’re all running away from Henry’s gang, yet they’re also running straight into Its lair. I’ve been equating the murderous intent of Henry with that of It. What Bill is leading his friends into seems foolish on the surface, but looked at more deeply, his intentions start to make more sense, especially if you equate Henry with It the way I do.

The only way the kids will be free of their trauma, personified by Pennywise, is if they face It. Henry and his gang of bullies know themselves so slenderly that they’ll never be able to face their own traumas and therefore be freed of them. Bill is not only getting his friends into a situation where, if they’re successful, they can be freed of their trauma, but also they can wipe out at least some of their bullies.

Bill is luring Henry, Victor, and Belch into a trap, from which the latter two won’t get out alive, and from which Henry won’t get out sane. Bill is probably not even the slightest bit conscious of what this chase into the sewers will do to the Losers’ tormentors (after all, as I’ve said all along, the sewers are among those subterraneous places that symbolize the unconscious mind in this novel), but this is exactly what it will do, nonetheless.

In selfishly wanting his friends to risk their lives helping him get revenge for the murder of his little brother, the murder he feels so guilty about, Bill is also–in wiping out Henry’s gang–selflessly and heroically saving the town from a group of violent psychopaths. This is yet another example of the good/bad duality of It. Bill’s self-centered lust for revenge is leading to the greater good of all.

Please wait for Part VI.

Stephen King, It, New York, Pocket Books, 1986