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
like this, because when she blinked her eyes it turned into a telephone handset, as black and as threatening as a snake.
‘May I help you, ma’am? Do you have a problem?’ the snake spat at her. Patty slammed it down in its cradle and stepped away, rubbing the hand which had held it. She looked around and saw she was back in the TV room and understood that the panic which had come into the front of her mind like a prowler walking quietly up a flight of stairs had had its way with her. Now s he could remember dropping the beer can outside the bathroom door and pelting headlong back down the stairs, thinking vaguely: This is all a mistake of some kind and we’lllaugh about it later. He filled up the tub and then remembered he didn’t have cigarettes and went out to get them before he took his clothes off —
Yes. Only he had already locked the bathroom door from the inside and because it was too much of a bother to unlock it again he had simply opened the window over the tub and gone down the side of the house like a fly crawling down a wall. Sure, of course, sure —
Panic was rising in her mind again — it was like bitter black coffee threatening to overflow the rim of a cup. She closed her eyes and fought against it. She stood there, perfectly still, a pale statue with a pulse beating in its throat.
Now she could remember running back down here, feet stuttering on the stair –levels, running for the phone, oh yes, oh sure, but who had she meant to call?
Crazily, she thought: I would call the turtle, but the turtle couldn’t help us.
It didn’t matter anyway. She had gotten as far as zero and she must have said something not quite standard, because the operator had asked if she had a problem. She had one, all right, but how did you tell that faceless voice that Stanley had locked himself in the bathroom and didn’t answer her, that the steady sound of the water dripping into the tub was killing her heart? Someone had to help her. Someone —
She put the back of her hand into her mouth and deliberately bit down on it. She tried to think, tried to force herself to think.
The spare keys. The spare keys in the kitchen cupboard.
She got going, and one slippered foot kicked the bag of buttons resting beside her chair. Some of the buttons spilled out, glittering like glazed eyes in the lamplight. She saw at least half a dozen black ones.
Mounted inside the door of the cupboard over the double-basin sink was a large varnished board in the shape of a key — one of Stan’s clients had made it in his workshop and given it to him two Christmases ago. The key– board was studded with small hooks, and swinging on these were all the keys the house took, two duplicates of each to a hook. Beneath each hook was a strip of Mystik tape, each strip lettered in Stan’s small, neat printing: GARAGE, ATTIC, D’STAIRS BATH, UPSTAIRS BATH, FRONT DOOR, BACK DOOR. Off to one side were ignition-key dupes labelled M-B and VOLVO .
Patty snatched the key marked UPSTAIRS BATH, began to run for the stairs, and then made herself walk. Running made the panic want to come back, and the panic was too close to the surface as it was. Also, if she just walked, maybe nothing would be wrong. Or, if there was something wrong, God could look down, see she was just walking, and think: Oh, good — Ipulled a hell of a boner, but I’ve got time to take it all back.
Walking as sedately as a woman on her way to a Ladies’ Book Circle meeting, she went up the stairs and down to the closed bathroom door.
‘Stanley?’ she called, trying the door again at the same time, suddenly more afraid than ever, not wanting to use the key because having to use the key was somehow too final. If God hadn’t taken it back by the time she used the key, then He never would. The age of miracles, after all, was past.
But the door was still locked; the deliberate plink . . . pause of dripping water was her only answer.
Her hand was shaking, and the key chattered all the way around the plate before finding its way into the keyhole and socking itself home. She turned it and heard the lock snap back. She fumbled for the cut –glass knob. It tried to slide through her hand again — not because the door was locked this tune but because her palm was wet with sweat. She firmed her grip and made it turn. She pushed the door open.
‘Stanley? Stanley?
