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
or a father. Bill knew stuff to do. Places to go. Things to see. Bill was never up against it. When you ran with Bill you ran to beat the devil and you laughed . . . but you hardly ever ran out of breath. And hardly ever running out of breath was great, so fucking great, Eddie would tell the world. When you ran with Big Bill, you got your chucks every day.
‘Sure, kid, EV-ery day,’ he says in a Richie Tozier Voice, and laughs again.
It had been Bill’s idea to make the dam in the Barrens, and it was, in a way, the dam that had brought them all together. Ben Hanscom had been the one to show them how the dam could be built — and they had built it so well that they’d gotten in a lot of trouble with Mr Nell, the cop on the beat — but it had been Bill’s idea. And although all of them except Richie had seen very odd things — frightening things — in Derry since the turn of the year, it had been Bill who had first found the courage to say something out loud.
That dam.
That damn dam.
He remembered Victor Cris: ‘Ta-ta, boys. It was a real baby dam, believe me. You’re better off without it.’
A day later, Ben Hanscom was grinning at them, saying:
‘We could
‘We could flood
‘We could flood out the
2
whole Barrens, if we wanted to.’
Bill and Eddie looked at Ben doubtfully, and then at the stuff Ben had brought along with him: some boards (scrounged from Mr McKibbon’s back yard, but that was okay, since Mr McKibbon had probably scavenged them from someone else’s), a sledgehammer, a shovel.
‘I dunno,’ Eddie said, glancing at Bill. ‘When we tried yesterday, it didn’t work very good. The current kept washing our sticks away.’
‘This’ll work,’ Ben said. He also looked to Bill for the final decision.
‘Well, let’s g-give it a t-t-try,’ Bill said. ‘I c-called R-R-R-Richie Tozier this m-morning. He’s g-gonna be oh-over Mater, he s-said. Maybe him and Stuh-huh –hanley will want to h-help.’
‘Stanley who?’ Ben asked.
‘Uris,’ Eddie said. He was still looking cautiously at Bill, who seemed somehow different today — quieter, less enthusiastic about the idea of the dam. Bill looked pale today. Distant.
‘Stanley Uris? I guess I don’t know him. Does he go to Derry Elementary?’
‘He’s our age but he just finished the fourth grade,’ Eddie said. ‘He started school a year late because he was sick a lot when he was a little kid. You think you took chong yesterday, you just oughtta be glad you’re not Stan. Someone’s always rackin Stan to the dogs an back.’
‘He’s Juh-juh –hooish,’ Bill said. ‘Luh –lots of k-kids don’t luh-hike him because h-he’s Jewish.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Ben asked, impressed. ‘Jewish, huh?’ He paused and then said carefully: ‘Is that like being Turkish, or is it more like, you know, Egyptian?’
‘I g-guess it’s mo re like Tur –hur –hurkish,’ Bill said. He picked up one of the boards Ben had brought and looked at it. It was about six feet long and three feet wide. ‘My d-d-dad says most J-Jews have big nuh-noses and lots of m-m-money, but Stuh-Stuh-Stuh — ‘
‘But Sta n’s got a regular nose and he’s always broke,’ Eddie said.
‘Yeah,’ Bill said, and broke into a real grin for the first time that day.
Ben grinned.
Eddie grinned.
Bill
