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
back — thought desperately hard. What Richie had just said had made him feel better about George’s death for the first time in months, but there was a part of him which insisted with quiet firmness that he was not supposed to feel better. Of course it was your fault, that part of him insisted; not entirely, maybe, but at least partly.
If not, how come there’s that cold place on the couch between your mother and father? If not, how come no one ever says anything at the supper table anymore? Now it’s just knives and forks rattling until you can’t take it anymore and ask if you can be eh-eh-eh-excused, please.
It was as if he were the ghost, a presence that spoke and moved but was not quite heard or seen, a thing vaguely sensed but still not accepted as real.
He did not like the thought that he was to blame, but the only alternative he could think of to explain their behavior was much worse: that all the love and attention his parents had given him before had somehow been the result of George’s presence, and with George gone there was nothing for him . . . and all of that had happened at random, for no reason at all. And if you put your ear to that door, you could hear the winds of madness blowing outside.
So he went over what he had done and felt and said on the day Georgie had died, part of him hoping that what Richie had said was true, part of him hoping just as hard it was not. He hadn’t been a saint of a big brother to George, that much was certain. They had had fights, plenty of them. Surely there had been one that day?
No. No fight. For one thing, Bill himself had still been feeling too punk to work up a really good quarrel with George. He had been sleeping, dreaming something, dreaming about some
(turtle)
funny little animal, he couldn’t remember just what, and he had awakened to the sound of the diminishing rain outside and George muttering unhappily to himself in the dining room. He asked George what was wrong. George came in and said he was trying to make a paper boat from the directions in his Best Book of Activities but it kept coming out wrong. Bill told George to bring his book. And sitting next to Richie on the steps leading up to the seminary, he remembered how Georgie’s eyes lit up when the paper boat came out right, and how good
that look had made him feel, like Georgie thought he was a real hot shit, a straight shooter, the guy who could do it until it got done. Making him feel, in short, like a big brother.
The boat had killed George, but Richie was right — it hadn’t been like handing George a loaded gun to play with. Bill hadn’t known what was going to happen. No way he could.
He drew a deep, shuddering breath, feeling something like a rock — something he hadn’t even known was there — go rolling off his chest. All at once he felt better, better about everything.
He opened his mouth to tell Richie this and burst into tears instead.
Alarmed, Richie put an arm around Bill’s shoulders (after taking a quick glance around to make sure no one who might mistake them for a couple of fagolas was looking).
‘You’re okay,’ he said. ‘You’re okay, Billy, right? Come on. Turn off the waterworks.’
‘I didn’t wuh-wuh-want h-him t –to g-g-get kuh-hilled!’ Bill sobbed. ‘TH-THAT WUH-WUH-WASN’T ON MY M-M-M –MIND AT UH-UH-ALL!’
‘Christ, Billy, I know it wasn’t,’ Richie said. ‘If you’d wanted to scrub him, you woulda pushed him downstairs or something.’ Richie patted Bill’s shoulder clumsily and gave him a hard little hug before letting go. ‘Come on, quit bawlin, okay? You sound like a baby.’
Little by little Bill stopped. He still hurt, but this hurt seemed cleaner, as if he had cut himself open and taken out something that was rotting inside him. And that feeling of relief was still there.
‘I-I didn’t w-want him to get kuh –kuh-killed,’ Bill repeated, ‘and ih –if y-y-you t-tell anybody I w-was c-c-cryin, I’ll b-b-bust your n-n-nose.
‘I won’t tell,’ Richie said, ‘don’t worry. He was your brother, for gosh sake. If my brother got killed, I’d cry my fuckin head off.’
‘Yuh-Yuh-You d-don’t have a buh-brother.’
‘Yeah, but if I did.’
‘Y-You w-w-would?’
‘Course.’ Richie paused, fixing Bill with a wary eye, trying to decide if Bill was really over
