Juniper Hill
Juniper Hill is the state mental institution in Augusta, Maine, where Henry Bowers is confined after being convicted of murdering his father, Butch Bowers, and others in the late fall of 1958. The facility houses the criminally insane, and Henry is placed there after being found guilty of multiple killings, including those of his friends Victor Criss and Belch Huggins, as well as the disappearances of Patrick Hockstetter and Veronica Grogan. He spends twenty-seven years at Juniper Hill, much of that time under physical and chemical restraint, before the entity Pennywise manipulates him into escaping to Derry to kill the Losers' Club.
Nature and Structure
Juniper Hill is a facility for the criminally insane, where patients are classified by ward according to their perceived level of danger. Henry is initially placed in the Red Ward, where he receives shock treatments, and is later transferred to the Blue Ward, which houses inmates considered only moderately dangerous. The institution is staffed by guards called "counsellors" who carry rolls of quarters in their pockets to use as weapons, as billyclubs are illegal. Among the most violent of these counsellors are Fogarty, Adler, and Koontz, who regularly strike patients in the back of the neck with their rolls of quarters. Henry's fellow inmates include George DeVille, who murdered his wife and four children; Jimmy Donlin, who killed and partially ate his mother; Benny Beaulieu, a pyromaniac who constantly sings a line from the Doors; Franklin D'Cruz, a serial rapist; and Arlen Weston, who has been beaten into a near-catatonic state by the counsellors.
Henry Bowers's Confinement
Henry is sent to Juniper Hill after confessing to killing his father, Victor Criss, Belch Huggins, Patrick Hockstetter, and Veronica Grogan, though he did not commit all of these murders. The Derry News declares "The End of Derry's Long Night" in a front-page editorial following his conviction. At Juniper Hill, Henry is kept in a ward where he requires a nightlight to sleep, believing it protects him from the things that come in the dark. He has only run into trouble once at the institution, when a fellow patient tried to turn off his nightlight. Henry's nightlights over the years include Donald Duck, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Oscar the Grouch, and Fozzie Bear. He measures out his years of incarceration with burned-out nightlights instead of coffee-spoons.
Escape and Return to Derry
On the day after Mike Hanlon makes his phone calls to the Losers' Club, Henry begins hearing voices from the moon, which he believes are the voices of his old friends Victor Criss and Belch Huggins, as well as the other children he tormented. The voices taunt him about his failures and his confinement, and the moon itself changes into the face of the clown, which tells him he must go back to Derry and kill them all. That night, Henry's nightlight goes out, and Victor Criss appears to him from under the bed, telling him he must escape. Victor leads Henry to the Blue Ward door, where the counsellor Koontz is on duty. When Koontz enters the ward, he sees Henry standing with a thing in a clown suit that has the head of a Doberman pinscher, the only animal of which Koontz is frightened. The clown attacks Koontz, and Henry escapes. He spends the following day hiding in the bushes beside Route 9, watching police cruisers slide by, and when dark falls, he hitchhikes back to Derry.
Final Confrontation and Death
Henry arrives at the Derry Town House and attacks Eddie Kaspbrak in his room with a switchblade, the same knife he had used to kill his father. Eddie slams the door on Henry's arm, causing him to drop the knife, and then stabs Henry with a broken Perrier bottle. Henry dies on the floor of Eddie's room. His body is later found by Bill Denbrough and Beverly Rogan, who note that he does not look old, despite being thirty-nine. Henry's death marks the end of his role as Pennywise's instrument, and his body is left behind as the remaining Losers descend into the sewers for their final confrontation with the entity.
