A promise made twenty-eight years ago calls seven adults to reunite in Derry, Maine, where as teenagers they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Unsure that their Losers Club had vanquished the creature all those years ago, the seven had vowed to return to Derry if IT should ever reappear. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that summer return as they prepare to do battle with the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers once more.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
again.’
‘He called me a queer!’
‘Are you worried you might be, then?’ Machen asked, seeming to be honestly interested, and Garton flushed a deep ugly red.
During this exchange, Hagarty was trying with increasing desperation to pull Adrian Mellon away from the scene. Now, at last, Mellon was going.
‘Ta –ta, love!’ Adrian called cheekily over his shoulder.
‘Shut up, candy-ass,’ Machen said. ‘Get out of here.’
Garton made a lunge at Mellon, and Machen grabbed him.
‘I can run you in, my friend,’ Machen said, ‘and the way you’re acting, it might not be such a bad idea.’
‘Next time I see you I’m gonna hurt you!’ Garton bellowed after the departing pair, and heads turned to stare at him. ‘And if you’re wearing that hat, I’m gonna kill you! This town don’t need no faggots like you!’
Without turning, Mellon waggled the fingers of his left hand — the nails were painted cerise — and put an extra little wiggle in his walk. Garton lunged again.
‘One more word or one more move and in you go,’ Machen said mildly. ‘Trust me, my boy, for I mean exactly what I say.’
‘Come on, Webby,’ Chris Unwin said uneasily. ‘Mellow out.’
‘You like guys like that?’ Webby asked Machen, ignoring Chris and Steve completely. ‘Huh?’
‘About the bum-punchers I’m neutral,’ Machen said. ‘What I’m really in favor of is peace and quiet, and you are upsetting what I like, pizza face. Now do you want to go a round with me or what?’
‘Come on, Webby,’ Steve Dubay said quietly. ‘Let’s go get some hot dogs.’
Webby went, straightening his shirt with exaggerated moves and brushing the hair out of his eyes. Machen, who also gave a statement on the morning following Adrian Mellon’s death, said: ‘The last thing I heard him say as him and his buddies walked off was, «Next time I see him he’s going to be in serious hurt.»‘
6
‘Please, I got to talk to my mother,’ Steve Dubay said for the third time. ‘I’ve got to get her to mellow out my stepfather, or there is going to be one hell of a punching-match when I get home.’
‘In a little while,’ Officer Charles Avarino told him. Both Avarino and his partner, Barney Morrison, knew that Steve Dubay would not be going home tonight and maybe not for many nights to come. The boy did not seem ot realize just how heavy this particular bust was, and Avarino would not be surprised when he learned, later on, that Dubay had left school at age sixteen. At that time he had still been in Water Street Junior High. His IQ was 68, according to the Wechsler he had taken during one of his three trips through the seventh grade.
‘Tell us what happened when you saw Mellon coming out of the Falcon,’ Morrison invited.
‘No, man, I better not.’
‘Well, why not?’ Avarino asked.
‘I already talked too much, maybe.’
‘You came in to talk,’ Avarino said. ‘Isn’t that right?’
‘Well . . . yeah . . . but . . . ‘
‘Listen,’ Morrison said warmly, sitting down next to Dubay and shooting him a cigarette. ‘You think me and Chick here like fags?’
‘I don’t know — ‘
‘Do we look like we like fags?’
‘No, but . . . ‘
‘We’re your friends, Steve-o,’ Morrison said solemnly. ‘And believe me, you and Chris and Webby need all the friends you can get just about now. Because tomorrow every bleeding heart in this town is going to be screaming for you guys’s blood.’
Steve Dubay looked dimly alarmed. Avarino, who could almost read this hairbag’s pussy little mind, suspected he was thinking about his stepfather again. And although Avarino had no liking for Derry’s small gay community — like every other cop on the force, he would enjoy seeing the Falcon shut up forever — he would have been delighted to drive Dubay home himself. He would, in fact, have been delighted to hold Dubay’s arms while Dubay’s stepfather beat the creep to oatmeal. Avarino did not like gays, but this did not mean he believed they should be tortured and murdered. Mellon had been savaged. When they brought
him up from under the Canal bridge, his eyes had been open, bulging with terror. And this guy here had absolutely no idea of what he had helped do.
‘We didn’t mean to hurt ‘im,’ Steve repeated. This was his fall-back position when he became even slightly confused.
‘That’s why you want to get out front with us,’ Avarino said earnestly. ‘Get the true facts of the matter out in front, and this maybe won’t amount to a pisshole in
