Beverly nods, and goes on. "The description of the ritual Bill read said that when you found a taelus, you bit its tongue, and it bit yours, and then you both told riddles, and the first one who laughed in spite of the pain lost. And if the taelus lost it had to go away for a hundred years, but if you lost, it ate you."

Which, really, was all a lot easier to talk and think about when it was just a story in a book and not the memory of Bill and the Spider.

"I think the thing about the tongues was sort of a metaphor. Bill just...it was like his body was with us, but the rest of him was just...somewhere else. I don't know where. I'm not sure I want to. And then the Spider started screaming and thrashing around like It was hurt. Like It was dying."