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
White foam ran from the corners of its thick lower lip in twin streams that dripped from its chin. The hair on its head was swept back in a gruesome parody of a teenager’s d.a. It threw its head back and roared, its eyes never leaving Richie’s.
Bill scrambled up the coal. Richie seized his forearms and pulled. For a moment he thought he was actually going to win. Then the Werewolf laid hold of Bill’s legs again and he was yanked backward toward the darkness once more. It was stronger. It had laid hold of Bill, and it meant to have him.
Then, with no thought at all about what he was doing or why he was doing it, Richie heard the Voice of the Irish Cop coming out of his mouth, Mr Nell’s voice. But this was not Richie
Tozier doing a bad imitation; it wasn’t even precisely Mr Nell. It was the Voice of every Irish beat-cop that had ever lived and twirled a billy by its rawhide rope as he tried the doors of closed shops after midnight:
‘Let go of him, boyo, or I’ll crack yer thick head! I swear to Jaysus! Leave go of him now or I’ll serve ye yer own arse on a platter!’
The creature in the cellar let out an ear-splitting roar of rage . . . but it seemed to Richie that there was another note in that bellow as well. Perhaps fear. Or pain.
He gave one more tremendous tug, and Bill flew out of the window and onto the grass. He stared up at Richie with dark horrified eyes. The front of his jacket was smeared black with coal-dust.
‘Kwuh-Kwuh-Quick!’ Bill panted. He was nearly moaning. He grabbed at Richie’s shirt. ‘W-W-We guh-guh –hotta — ‘
Richie could hear coal tumbling and avalanching down again. A moment later the Werewolf s face filled the cellar window. It snarled at them. Its paws clutched at the listless grass.
Bill still had the Walther — he had held on to the gun through all of it. Now he held it out in both hands, his eyes squinched down to slits, and pulled the trigger. There was another deafening bang. Richie saw a chunk of the Werewolf s skull tear free and a torrent of blood spilled down the side of its face, matting the fur there and soaking the collar of the school jacket it wore.
Roaring, it began to climb out of the window.
Moving slowly, dreamily, Richie reached under his coat and into his back pocket. He brought out the envelope with the picture of the sneezing man on it. He tore it open as the bleeding, roaring creature pulled itself out of the window, forcing its way, claws digging deep furrows in the earth. Richie tore the packet open and squeezed it. ‘Git back in yer place, boyo!’ he ordered in the Voice of the Irish Cop. A white cloud puffed into the Werewolf s face. Its roars suddenly stopped. It stared at Richie with almost comic surprise and made a choked wheezing sound. Its eyes, red and bleary, rolled toward Richie and seemed to mark him once and forever.
Then it began to sneeze.
It sneezed again and again and again. Ropy strings of saliva flew from its muzzle. Greenish-black clots of snot flew out of its nostrils. One of these splatted against Richie’s skin and burned there, like acid. He wiped it away with a scream of hurt and disgust.
There was still anger in its face, but there was also pain — i t w a s u n m i s t a k a b l e . B i l l m i g h t have hurt it with his dad’s pistol, but Richie had hurt it more . . . first with the Voice of the Irish Cop, and then with the sneezing powder.
Jesus, if I had some itching powder too and maybe a joy buzzer I might be able to kill it, Richie thought, and then Bill grabbed the collar of his jacket and jerked him backward.
It was well that he did. The Werewolf stopped sneezing as suddenly as it had started and lunged at Richie. It was quick, too — incredibly quick.
Richie might have only sat there with the empty envelope of Dr Wacky’s sneezing powder in one hand, staring at the Werewolf with a kind of drugged wonder, thinking how brown its fur was, how red the blood was, how nothing was in black and white in real life, he might have sat there until its paws closed around his neck and its long nails pulled his throat out, but Bill grabbed him again and pulled him to his feet.
Richie stumbled after him. They ran around to the front of the house and Richie thought, Itwon’t dare chase us anymore, we’re on the street now, it won’t dare chase us, won’t dare, won’t dare —
But it was coming. He could hear
