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
footed me right back down again. Someone landed his big shoe square on the back of my head and I saw stars. My nose mashed on that oiled floor and I snuffled up dirt and began to cough and sneeze at the same time. Someone else stepped on the small of my back. I felt a lady’s high heel slam down between the cheeks of my butt, and son, I never want another half-ass enema like that one. If the seat of my khakis had ripped, I believe I’d be bleedin down there to this day.
‘It sounds funny now, but I damn near died in that stampede. I was whopped, whapped, stomped, walked on, and kicked in so many places I couldn’t walk ‘tall the next day. I was screaming and none of those people topside heard me or paid any mind.
‘It was Trev saved me. I seen this big brown hand in front of me and I grabbed it like a drownin man grabs a life preserver. I grabbed and he hauled and up I came. Someone’s foot got me in the side of my neck right here — ‘
He massaged that area where the jaw turns up toward the ear, and I nodded.
‘ — and it hurt so bad that I guess I blacked out for a minute. But I never let go of Trev’s hand, and he never let go of mine. I got to my feet, finally, just as the wall we’d put up between the kitchen and the hall fell over. It made a noise like — floomp — the noise a puddle of gasoline makes when you light it. I saw it go over in a big bundle of sparks, and I saw the people running to get out of its way as it fell. Some of em made it. Some didn’t. One of our fellas — I think it might have been Hort Sartoris — was buried under it, and for just one second I seen his hand underneath all those blazing coals, openin and closin. There was a white girl, surely no more than twenty, and the back of her dress went up. She was with a college boy and I heard her screamin at him, beggin him to help her. He took just about two swipes at it and then ran away with the others. She stood there screamin as her dress went up on her.
It was like hell out where the kitchen had been. The flames was so bright you couldn’t look at them. The heat was bakin hot, Mikey, roastin hot. You could feel your skin going shiny. You could feel the hairs in your nose gettin crispy.
‘»We gotta break outta here!» Trev yells, and starts to drag me along the wall. «Come on!»
Then Dick Hallorann catches hold of him. He couldn’t have been no more than nineteen, and his eyes was as big as bil’ard balls, but he kept his head better than we did. He saved our lives. «Not that way!» he yells. «This way!» And he pointed back toward the bandstand . . . toward the fire, you know.
‘»You’re crazy!» Trevor screamed back. He had a big bull voice, but you could barely hear him over the thunder of the fire and the screaming people. «Die if you want to, but me and Willy are gettin’ out!»
‘He still had me by the hand and he started to haul me toward the door again, although there were so many people around it by then you couldn’t see it at all. I would have gone with him. I was so shell-shocked I didn’t know what end was up. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be baked like a human turkey.
‘Dick grabbed Trev by the hair of the head just as hard as he could, and when Trev turned back, Dick slapped his face. I remember seeing Trev’s head bounce off.the wall and thinking Dick had gone crazy. Then he was hollerin in Trev’s face, «You go that way and you goan die! They jammed up against that door, nigger!»
‘»You don’t know that!» Trev screamed back at him, and then there was this loud BA NG\ like a firecracker, only what it was, it was the heat exploding Marty Devereaux’s bass drum. The fire was runnin along the beams overhead and the oil on the floor was catchin.
‘»I know it!» Dick screams back. «I know it!»
‘He grabbed my other hand, and for a minute there I felt like the rope in a tug-o-war game. Then Trev took a good look at the door and went Dick’s way. Dick got us down to a window and grabbed a chair to bust it out, but before he could swing it, the heat blew it out for him. Then he grabbed Trev Dawson by the back of his pants and hauled him up. «Climb!» he shouts. «Climb, motherfucker!» And Trev went, head up and tail over the dashboard.
‘He boosted me next, and I went up. I grabbed the sides of the window and hauled. I had a good crop of blisters all over my palms the next day: that wood was already smokin. I come out headfirst, and if Trev hadn’t grabbed me I mighta broke my neck.
‘We turned back around, and it was like something from the worst nightmare you ever had, Mikey. That window was just a yellow, blazin square of light. Flames was shoo tin up through that tin roof in a dozen places. We could hear people screamin inside.
‘I saw two brown hands waving around in front of the fire — Dick’s hands. Trev Dawson made me a step with his own hands and I reached through that window and
