Henry Bowers's Attack on Beverly Marsh

On a hot, overcast August afternoon in 1958, Beverly Marsh walked home from the Barrens after a morning of playing tag with her friends. She had no reason to expect danger on the familiar streets of Derry. But as she approached her apartment building on Lower Main Street, Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, and Belch Huggins emerged from cover and closed in on her. Henry carried a switchblade, its blade already exposed. He grabbed Beverly by her long red hair, pulled her back when she tried to run, and held the knife inches from her face. "Howyadoon, you little cunt?" he said. "I think I'll cut off your nose and make you eat it."

The Street-Corner Ambush

The attack unfolded in plain sight. An elderly woman driving a 1950 Ford pulled up to the curb and shouted at the boys to let Beverly go. Henry responded by dragging Beverly by the hair toward the car and stabbing at the passenger-side window; the blade skated across the glass. The woman, terrified, drove off in a series of jerks. Henry kicked out one of her taillights. Across the street, Herbert Ross, who had been sitting on his porch, got up, looked over the railing at the scene, then folded his newspaper and walked quietly back inside his house. No one else intervened. Beverly, desperate, kicked Henry squarely in the testicles. He dropped the knife and sank to his knees, and she ran for the Barrens.

The Flight into the Barrens

Beverly sprinted down the embankment, her hair tangled with leaves and twigs, her clothes smeared with garbage from an earlier escape from her father. She reached the hidden clubhouse—a camouflaged underground shelter the Losers had built—where Ben Hanscom was eating Junior Mints and reading an Archie comic. She told him Henry had a knife and was coming. Ben pulled the trapdoor shut and closed the slit window, plunging them into darkness. They could hear the three boys above them, walking on the sod-covered roof. Belch Huggins sat down heavily on the cap, and the supports groaned under his weight. A board cracked. Ben and Beverly held each other, stifling their laughter and terror as Belch let out a loud fart and then, at Henry's call, moved off. The roof held, but barely.

The Collapse of Safety

When Beverly and Ben emerged from the clubhouse, they found the clearing empty. They hurried toward Kansas Street to warn the others—Bill Denbrough, Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, Stan Uris, and Mike Hanlon—who were on their way back to the Barrens. Beverly told them what had happened: Henry was crazy, he had a knife, and he meant to kill her. The adults who had seen the attack had done nothing. Bill, his face pale and determined, understood that the town itself had become complicit. "Derry is It," he said. "Anyplace we go ... when It gets us, they won't see, they won't hear, they won't know." He led the seven of them down into the Barrens, not to hide, but to confront what was coming.

The Pursuit and the Descent

Henry, Victor, and Belch followed them into the Barrens, throwing rocks and shouting threats. The Losers ran along the bank of the Kenduskeag, past the fallen tree where Ben had hidden on the first day of summer, and reached a concrete pumping-station. Bill ordered them to lift the heavy iron cover. They heaved it aside, and one by one they climbed down into the dark cylinder, Eddie clinging to Bill's back because his arm was in a cast. Henry appeared at the rim, knife in hand, but the Losers taunted him until he backed off. Then they crawled into the inflow pipe, into the darkness under the city, with Henry's voice echoing behind them: "I'll get you! I'll get you all!" The attack on Beverly had driven them into the sewers, where the real battle was about to begin.