This time he sat on Stiles’ chest, one leg on either side of the still-dying man. Before finishing things, Ronnie grabbed Stiles’ left hand and took something from him—he’d always suspected that he might be able to choose what he took and what he didn’t, but he’d never tried before because with the kids, he wanted to take it all away.

With Stiles, he didn’t care if the man’s final moments were filled with Hurting.

Once he took what he wanted from Jimmy’s dad, Ronnie used his fingers like an ice-cream scoop and worked all the glop and blood and tissue and bone fragments out of the eye socket, and then placed the gleaming black Eight-ball over the chasm—which still wasn’t large enough.

Looking around, Ronnie spotted a brick lying amidst the junk back here, and he grabbed it, and—being careful not to shatter the Eight-ball—used it to tap, pound, and press the ball into place.

“Now that looks like an eight-ball hemorrhage,” he whispered to himself, and then laughed.

He found a hose and used it to wash the blood from his hands, then pulled off Stiles’ coat and—seeing that it hadn’t gotten too much blood on it, and it was black, anyway—decided to wear that. For good measure he went through the dead man’s pockets and took all of his cash—nearly five hundred dollars.

“You had plenty of money to buy him a gift,” he said to the corpse, and then kicked it.

As he was walking out of the alley, he stopped for a moment when he heard the laugher of several children.

—Is the party going good?

Oh, it’s wonderful, Ronnie, replied Suzanne. Jimmy is having the time of his life.

—That’s good. That’s real good.

Where are we going now?

—I don’t know yet. I have to go back to the motel and get my stuff.

Don’t dawdle, Ronnie. In a minute or two, Oz or one of his friends is going to come out into the alley looking for…you-know-who.

—I know. I’ll be quick.

Are you done hiding now? Are you done running away from the Hurting?

—Yeah, I guess so.

And he heard all the children shout: YAY! Uncle Ronnie’s back!

“I guess so,” he mumbled to no one in particular as he walked out of the alley and started toward the motel.

At least he had another way to make money now. Thanks to Jimmy’s dad.

* * *

Over the next six years, “Uncle Ronnie” claimed seventeen more victims, all of them between the ages of two and thirteen. He tried to search for a way not to take the Hurting away from the children, not to kill them, but the truth was that, even if he had killed those who had been inflicting such pain on them (as much as he’d enjoyed killing Jimmy’s dad, the opportunity to repeat that with someone else had not presented itself), the children themselves were ruined beyond hope, repair, or prayer: emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. They would never know a day without pain, without sadness, without dread or anger or heartbreak.