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
When, Richie wonders, did it become too late to turn back? When he and Stan showed up and pitched in, helping to build the dam? When Bill told them how the school picture of his brother had turned its head and winked? Maybe . . . but to Rich Tozier it seems that the dominoes really began to fall when Ben Hanscom stepped forward and said’ I showed them
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how to do it. It’s my fault.’
Mr Nell simply stood there looking at him, lips pressed together, hands on his creaking black leather belt. He looked from Ben to the spreading pool behind the dam and then back to Ben again, his face that of a man who can’t believe what he is seeing. He was a burly Irishman, his hair a premature white, combed back in neat waves beneath his peaked blue cap. His eyes were bright blue, his nose bright red. There were small nests of burst capillaries in his cheeks. He was a man of no more than medium height, but to the five boys arrayed before him he looked at least eight feet tall.
Mr Nell opened his mouth to speak, but before he could. Bill Denbrough had stepped up beside Ben.
‘Ih-Ih-Ih-It w-wuh-wuh-was m-my i-i-i-i-idea,’ he finally managed to say. He heaved in a gigantic, gulping breath and as Mr Nell stood there regarding him impassively, the sun tossing back imperial flashes from his badge, Bill managed to stutter out the rest of what he needed to say: it wasn’t Ben’s fault; Ben just happened to come along and show them how to do better what they were already doing badly.
‘Me too,’ Eddie said abruptly, and stepped up on Ben’s other side.
‘What’s this «me too»?’ Mr Nell asked. ‘Is that yer name or yer address, buckaroo?’
Eddie flushed brightly — the color went all the way up to the roots of bis hair. ‘I was with Bill before Ben even came,’ he said. ‘That was all I meant.’
Richie stepped up next to Eddie. The idea that a Voice or two might cheer Mr Nell up a little, get him thinking jolly thoughts, popped into his head. On second thought (and second thoughts were, for Richie, extremely rare and wonderful things), maybe a Voice or two might only make things worse. Mr Nell didn’t look like he was in what Richie sometimes thought of
as a chuckalicious mood. In fact, Mr Nell looked like maybe chucks were the last thing on his mind. So he just said, ‘I was in on it too,’ in a low voice, and then made his mouth shut up.
‘And me,’ Stan said, stepping next to Bill.
Now the five of them were standing before Mr Nell in a line. Ben looked from one side to the other, more than dazed — he was almost stupefied by their support. For a moment Richie thought ole Haystack was going to burst into tears of gratitude.
‘Jaysus,’ Mr Nell said again, and although he sounded deeply disgusted, his face suddenly looked as if it might like to laugh. ‘A sorrier bunch of boyos I ain’t nivver seen. If yer folks knew where you were, I guess there’d be some hot bottoms tonight. I ain’t sure there won’t be anyway.’
Richie could hold back no longer; his mouth simply fell open and then ran away like the gingerbread man, as it so often did.
‘How’s things back in the auid country, Mr Nell?’ it bugled. ‘Ah, yer a sight for sore eyes, sure an begorrah, yer a lovely man, a credit to the auld sod — ‘
‘I’ll be a credit to the seat of yer pants in about three seconds, my dear little friend,’ Mr Nell said dryly.
Bill turned on him, snarled: ‘For G-G-God’s s-sake R-R-Richie shuh-shuh-hut UP!’
‘Good advice, Master William Denbrough,’ Mr Nell said. ‘I’ll bet Zack doesn’t know you’re down here in the Bar’ns playing amongst the floating turdies, does he?’
Bill dropped his eyes, shook his head. Wild roses burned in his cheeks.
Mr Nell looked at Ben. ‘I don’t recall your name, son.’
‘Ben Hanscom, sir,’ Ben whispered.
Mr Nell nodded and looked back at the dam again. ‘This was your idea?’
‘How to build it, yeah.’ Ben’s whisper was now nearly inaudible.
‘Well, yer a hell of an engineer, big boy, but you don’t know Jack Shit about these here Bar’ns or the Derry drainage system, do you?’
Ben shook his head.
Not unkindly, Mr Nell told him, ‘There’s two parts to the system. One part carries solid human waste — shit, if I’d not be offendin yer tender ears. The other part carries gray water — water flushed from toilets or run down the drains from sinks and washin-machines and showers; it’s
