EDDIE'S LIMP BODY WAS FLUNG INTO A LARGE CRACK IN THE WALL. The horrible sight had Hayley using every single bit of energy and strength that she had to push herself to her feet and stumble alongside the others through the crack to check on him.

"Eddie!" she cried out, but her voice was drowned out by the yells of her friends around her.

He groaned as Ben and Bev sat him up against a rock, and Hayley couldn't stop the tears when she saw the state that he was in. Blood was dripping from his nose and mouth, and the giant hole in the middle on his chest was shooting out blood. He had to get out now if he was going to survive, but there was still the issue of the giant spider-clown waiting for them outside.

It banged on the sides of the hole, sticking his face in and shouting tauntingly. "Come out and play, Losers!"

"He's hurt," Richie pointed out, and coming from how shaky his voice was, he was in a tremendous amount of shock. He whipped his jacket off and pressed it to his friend's chest, trying to stop the bleeding. But there was so much of it that it hardly did anything. "He's hurt really badly. We gotta get him out of here."

"How are we supposed to do that, Richie," Bev asked. There was no way in hell they were getting out without making it past Pennywise, and he wasn't going to let them leave without a fight.

"I almost killed him," Eddie wheezed out, causing them all to turn to him. "The leper. My hands around his throat. I could feel him choking. I made him small. He seemed so weak. He seemed so weak."

That seemed to strike something in Mike's brain because his eyes widened like he had just realized something. "The Shokopiwah. All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit."

"Are we sure It is a living thing?" Hayley asked. The thing had been alive for forever, and it was obvious that he had some king of magic or something else on his side.

"Guys!" Ben shouted from where he was exploring. He stuck his head through a gap so that they could see him. "There's a passageway through here."

Realization struck Beverley then as well, and Hayley wondered when she would get her mission-saving intelligence. The redheaded woman said, "The tunnel. Pennywise has to make himself small to get through the entrance of the cavern, right? Okay, so, if we can get back there, we can force him down to size." Hayley nodded along, and if it weren't for the situation, she would be grinning ear to ear at how successful the plan sounded. "We make him small. Small enough that we can kill him.

"I can smell the stink of your fear," Pennywise sneered.

As he hit the sides of the small cave, rocks came tumbling down on them. Hayley knocked some away from Eddie's head before shouting to the others, "Guys, we gotta go!"

They were going to have to leave Eddie behind for now. There was no way to get him out without defeating Pennywise first. They would come back to him. The blonde woman leaned over and kissed him on the head before following everyone else through the passageway.

They came out on the other side, and they ducked behind a rock as they watched the clown try to claw his way into where they just were. Beverley turned to them, panting, and she silently counted them off with her fingers. When she ran out of fingers, they all took off toward the opening of the cavern.

It was not long before they were spotted, and Spider-wise was galloping over to them before they knew it. They were right in front of the entrance when he pounced in front of them, blocking them off. He grimaced, "You filthy little children."

"You got a plan B?" Ben asked, and Hayley grabbed Bill's and Hayley's arms, linking them together as she winced. If she was about to die, she would do it holding onto them. "What do we do now?"

"You die. That's what you do," Pennywise answered.

Hayley glanced over at Mike, praying that he could think of an answer, that he just remembered something from his ritual box. She almost cheered for joy when he started saying, "There's more than one way to make someone small."

"Make him believe that he is," Beverley replied.

"W-W-What?" Bill exclaimed, and at the same time, Hayley questioned, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Mike repeated, "Make him believe that he is. "As if that helped anything. Hayley was too terrified out of her mind to dissect whatever the hell they meant.

"Me? Small? I am the Eater of Worlds," Pennywise reminded them, crawling toward them slowly. If he really wanted to kill them, he probably should have done something by that point, but Hayley got the feeling that it was the thrill of the chase he was seeking.

"Not to us, you're not," Mike scoffed, and Hayley slowly realized what he was trying to do. He was doing what those cheerleading girls did to her all those years ago, what Henry Bowers did to all of them. "You're just a clown."

Pennywise's face dropped, and he jumped toward Beverley, growling in her face. But she shot back with, "You're a weak old woman."

"The Eater of Worlds," It repeated, and it reached to stab Ben. Hayley's breath caught in her throat, not wanting to witness the mutilation of another of her friends within the span of five minutes.

His words stopped it in its tracks. "A headless boy!"

"An imposter!" Bill added, causing the clown to snarl, almost as if It was in pain.

Hayley realized that it was her turn as Pennywise turned to her, and she gather up all of the courage she could and spat, "You're a little fucking bitch!"

"You're a mimic!"

"You're a fucking bully!"

"You're just a fucking clown!"

"A clown!" Richie joined in from where he was sitting with Eddie. "A dumb fucking clown!"

Every word, every insult made him shrink. He was now backing away from them, retreating to the circle of spikes, but they just kept going, spewing every mean thing they could. Years and years of anger fueled Hayley, and it felt so fucking good to do this to the clown that caused her so much fucking pain.

They finally stopped when he was a tiny, baby-sized Pennywise with sagging skin and a giant head. Richie appeared all of a sudden and ripped off one of his legs, the one that had stabbed Eddie. There was a loud pounding that could be heard as they grew silent, and Mike muttered, "A clown. With a scared, beating heart."

He let out one last snarl as Mike reached into his chest and pulled out his heart. It started beating faster and faster as each of them reached forward with one hand and wrapped it around Mike's, holding the heart together.

"Look at you," the baby clown wheezed, and it was literally the ugliest baby that Hayley had ever seen. "You're all grown up."

And then they crushed it — squeezed it until it liquified and dripped out of their hands, until the deadlights came spiraling down, until everything flaked up and evaporated. Once it was done, they all let out a sigh of relief, and Hayley turned to Bill with a smile.

"Eddie, Eddie," Richie reminded them, and their eyes widened. They shot in the direction of the man, and Richie crouched down in front of him. "Eddie, we killed him, man."

"No," Hayley breathed out, her voice breaking when she saw that Eddie's body was limp, his eyes closed, his face unresponsive.

She felt an arm wrap around her, and she let Bill pull her into his chest. She hugged him back, knowing that he needed this just as much as she did. Eddie had been his friend for so long, and to watch him die like that...

She remembered clearly now, that entire summer. She remembered Eddie stitching Ben up behind the drug store and holding his hand while he jumped off the cliff. She remembered his strict rules about everything and how he never sugarcoated anything. She remembered that despite all of his worries and fear, he fought for his friends.

"Richie, he's gone," Bill murmured.

"No, he's hurt. He's just hurt, all right? We gotta get him out of here," Richie repeated, shaking his head. He looked around desperately for someone to try and help him. "He's hurt, Ben. Bill, he's okay. We gotta get him out of here. Bev. Hayley, please. Come on."

"Richie, honey, he's dead," Beverley managed out, and a rumbling above them informed them that the place was falling apart. With the death of Pennywise came the death of his lair. "We gotta go now."

The place was falling apart, and Hayley detached from Bill to get ready to run. They had to get Richie to leave. They couldn't bring Eddie, not without risking death. Ben and Mike pried the Tozier man off of his friend's body, practically dragging him with them as they ran to the tunnel.

"Eddie!" he screamed as rocks flying in the wind almost knocked them over. They went up the ladder and through the water, climbed the well and ran through the house.

And just as they made it out, the entire place came down.