But I couldn't reach the stairs. It got me. It pinned me over the elevator shaft. I bent back further and further so those tentacles couldn't rake my face. Those criss-cross insect eyes were cold as ice, emotionless. The barbs made ready to tear me to rags.
I shrieked and let myself fall. First I didn't think to save myself. Better a clean jolting death than those hundreds of needle-like cilea. But my hands grabbed involuntarily for something. They caught the cable, clung to it.
It was greasy. I went down fast. I wrapped my legs around it, which helped a little, straining to hold back. When I hit bottom I think every tooth in my head jarred loose. My legs collapsed under me like rubber. For a minute I blacked out.
The buzzing over my head snapped me up. I was a goner if I didn't move, but fast. Sobbing, I wrenched my legs to a crouching position, and leaped down off the elevator. I dove for the front door. Then I was outside, gulping air, running like billy-hell for the Lexington subway.
I didn't know what else to do, so having put half of Manhattan between me and It, I telephoned Alice. I needed the sound of her voice. I needed her to stop me from shuddering. My tic was slowly jerking my jaw out of alignment.
She listened patiently while I dumped in dimes.
"Max," she asked when I had finished. "Are you sure you haven't been eating benzedrine tablets?"
"No! And I'm not drunk!"
"Where are you now?"