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
downtown, and then crossed to Main Street by way of Palmer Lane — and during his short ride down this little byway’s one-block length he passed the house where he would live as an adult. He did not look at it; it was just a small two-story dwelling with a garage and a small lawn. It gave off no special vibration to the passing boy who would spend most of his adult life as its owner and only dweller.
At Main Street he turned right and rode up to Bassey Park, still wandering, simply riding and enjoying the stillness of the early day. Once ni side the main gate he dismounted his bike, pushed down the kickstand, and walked toward the Canal. He was still, as far as he knew, impelled by nothing more than purest whim. Certainly it did not occur to him to think that his dreams of the night before ha d anything to do with his current course; he did not even remember exactly what his dreams had been — only that one had followed another until he had awakened at five o’clock, sweaty but shivering, and with the idea that he ought to eat a fast breakfast and then take a bike-ride into town.
Here in Bassey there was a smell in the fog he didn’t like: a sea-smell, salty and old. He had smelled it before, of course. In the early –morning fogs you could often smell the ocean in Derry, although the coast was forty miles away. But the smell this morning seemed thicker, more vital. Almost dangerous.
Something caught his eye. He bent down and picked up a cheap two-blade pocket knife. Someone had scratched the initials EC on the side. Mike looked at it thoughtfully for a moment or two and then pocketed it. Finders keepers, losers weepers.
He glanced around. Here, near where he had found the knife, was an overturned park bench. He righted it, setting its iron footings back into the holes they had made over a period of months or years. Beyond the bench he saw a matted place in the grass . . . and leading away from it, two grooves. The grass was springing back up, but those grooves were still fairly clear. They went in the direction of the Canal. ; And there wa s blood.
(the bird remember the bird remember the)
But he did not want to remember the bird and so he pushed the thought away. Dogfight, that’s all. One of ’em must have hurt the other one pretty bad. It was a convincing thought by which he was somehow not convinced. Thoughts of the bird kept wanting to come back — the one he had seen out at the Kitchener Ironworks, one Stan Uris never would have found in his bird-book.
But instead of getting out he followed the grooves. As he did he made up a li t t l e s t o r y i n his mind. It was a murder story. Here’s this kid, out late, see. Out past the curfew. The killer gets him. And how does he get rid of the body? Drags it to the Canal and dumps it in, of course! Just like an Alfred Hitchcock Presents!
The marks he was following could have been made by a dragging pair of shoes or sneakers, he supposed.
Mike shivered and looked around uncertainly. The story was somehow a little too real.
And suppose that it wasn’t a man who did it but a monster. Like out of a horror comic or a horror book or a horror movie or
(a bad dream)
a fairytale or something.
He decided he didn’t like the story. It was a stupid story. He tried to push it out of his mind but it wouldn’t go. So what? Let it stay. It was dumb. Riding into town this morning had been dumb. Following these two matted grooves in the grass was dumb. His dad would have a lot of chores for him to do around the place today. He ought to get back and start in or when the hottest part of the afternoon rolled around he would be up the barn loft pitching hay. Yes, he ought to get back. And that’s just what he was going to do.
Sure you are, he thought. Want to bet?
Instead of going back to his bike and getting on and riding home and starting his chores, he followed the grooves in the grass. There were more drops of drying blood here and there. Not much, though. Not as much as there had been in that matted place back there by the park bench he had set to rights.
Mike could hear the Canal now, running quiet. A moment later he saw the concrete edge materialize out of the fog.
Here was something else in the grass. My goodness, it’s certainly your day for finding things, his mind said with dubious geniality, and then
