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
the booklet went on to warn that a slingshot could be dangerous; the owner should no more aim one of the twenty ball-bearing slugs which came with it at a person than he would aim a loaded pistol at a person.
Bill wasn’t very good at it yet (and guessed privately he probably never would be), but he thought the booklet’s caution was merited — the slingshot’s thick elastic had a hard pull, and when you hit a tin can with it, it made one hell of a hole.
‘You doin any better with it, Big Bill?’ Richie asked.
‘A luh-luh –little,’ Bill said. This was only partly true. After much study of the pictures in the booklet (which were labelled figs, as in fig 1, fig 2, and so on) and enough practice in Derry Park to lame his arm, he had gotten so he could hit the paper target which had also come with the slingshot maybe three times out of every ten tries. And once he had gotten a bullseye. Almost.
Richie pulled the sling back by the cup, twanged it, then handed it back. He said nothing but privately doubted if it would count for as much as Zack Denbrough’s pistol when it came to killing monsters.
‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘You brought your slingshot, okay, big deal. That’s nothing. Look what I brought, Denbrough.’ And from his own jacket he hauled out a packet with a cartoon picture on it of a bald man saying Ah-CHOO! as his cheeks puffed ou t like Dizzy Gillespie’s. DR WACKY’S SNEEZING POWDER, the packet said. IT’S A LAFF RIOT !
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment and then broke up, screaming with laughter and pounding each other on the back.
‘W-W-We’re pruh-prepared for a-a-anything,’ Bill said finally, still giggling and wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Your face and my ass, Stuttering Bill,’ Richie said.
‘I th-th-thought it wuh-was the uh-uh-other way a-around,’ Bill said. ‘Now listen. W-We’re g-gonna st-ha-hash y-your b-b-bike down in the B-Barrens. W-Where I puh-put Silver when we play. Y-You ride d-d-double b-behind me, in c-case w-we have to make a quih-hick g– g-getaway.’
Richie nodded, feeling no urge to argue. His twenty-two-inch Raleigh (he sometimes whammed his kneecaps on the handlebars when he was pedaling fast) looked like a pygmy bike next to the scrawny, gantry like edifice that was Silver. He knew that Bill was stronger and Silver was faster.
They got to the little bridge and Bill helped Richie stow his bike underneath. Then they sat down, and, with the occasional rumble of traffic passing over their heads, Bill unzipped his duffel and took out his father’s pistol.
‘Y-You be goddam c-c-careful,’ Bill said, handing it over after Richie had whistled his frank approval. ‘Th-There’s n-no s-s-safety on a pih-pihstol like that.’
‘Is it loaded?’ Richie asked, awed. The pistol, an SSPK-Walther that Zack Denbrough had picked up during the Occupation, seemed unbelievably heavy.
‘N-Not y-yet,’ Bill said. He patted his pocket. ‘I g-g-got some buh-buh-buh-bullets in h– h-here. But my d-d-dad s-says s-sometimes you l-look a-and th-then, i-if the g-g-g-gun th-thinks y-you’re not being c-c-careful, it l-loads ih-ih-itself. S-so it can sh-sh-hoot you.’ His face uttered a strange smile which said that, while he didn’t believe anything so silly, he believed it completely.
Richie understood. There was a caged deadliness in the thing that he had never sensed in his dad’s .22, .30-.30, or even the shotgun (although there was something about the shotgun, wasn’t there? — something about the way it leaned, mute and oily, in the corner of the garage closet; as if it might say I could be mean if I wanted to; plenty mean, you bet if it could speak). But this pistol, this Walther . . . it was as if it had been made for the express purpose of shooting people. With a chill Richie realized that was why it had been made. What else could you do with a pistol? Use it to light your cigarettes?
He turned the muzzle toward him, being careful to keep his hands far away from the trigger. One look into the Walther’s black lidless eye made him understand Bill’s peculiar smile perfectly. He remembered his father saying, If you remember there is no such thing asan unloaded gun, you’ll be okay with firearms all your life, Richie. He handed the gun back to Bill, glad to be rid of it.
Bill stowed it in his duffel coat again. Suddenly the house on Neibolt Street seemed less frightening to Richie . . . but the possibility that blood might actually be spilled — that seemed much stronger.
He looked at Bill, perhaps meaning
