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
kindly enough. ‘People are reading — ‘
‘Man’s sick,’ Brockhill said abruptly, and went back to his book. ‘Give him an aspirin, Carole.’
Carole Danner looked at Ben and her face sharpened with concern. ‘Are you ill, Mr Hanscom? I know it’s terribly impolite to say so, but you look terrible.’
Ben said, ‘I . . . I had Chinese food for lunch. I don’t think it’s agreed with me.’
‘If you want to lie down, there’s a cot in Mr Hanlon’s office. You could — ‘ ‘No. Thanks, but no.’ What he wanted was not to lie down but to get the hell out of the Derry Public Library. He looked up at the landing. The clown was gone. The vampire was gone. But tied to the low wrought-iron railing which surrounded the landing was a balloon. Written on its bulging skin were the words: HAVE A GOOD DAY! TONIGHT YOU DIE!
‘I’ve got your library card,’ she said, putting a tentative hand on his arm. ‘Do you still want it?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ Ben said. He drew a deep, shuddery breath. ‘I’m very sorry about this.’
‘I just hope it isn’t food-poisoning,’ she said.
‘Wouldn’t work,’ Mr Brockhill said without looking up from de Vargas or removing his dead pipe from the corner of his mouth. ‘Device of pulp fiction. Bullet would tumble.’
And speaking again with no foreknowledge that he was going to speak, Ben said: ‘Slugs, no t bullets. We realized almost right away that we couldn’t make bullets. I mean, we were just kids. It was my idea to — ‘
‘Shhhh!’ someone said again.
Brockhill gave Ben a slightly startled look, seemed about to speak, then went back to the sketches.
At the desk, Carole Danner handed him a small orange card with DERRY PUBLIC LIBRARY stamped across the top. Bemused, Ben realized it was the first adult library-card he had owned in his whole life. The one he’d had as a kid had been canary-yellow.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to lie down, Mr Hanscom?’
‘I’m feeling a little better, thanks.’
‘Sure?’
He managed a smile. ‘I’m sure.’
‘You do look a little better,’ she said, but she said it doubtfully, as if understanding that this was the proper thing to say but not really believing it.
Then she was holding a book under the microfilm gadget they used these days to record book-loans, and Ben felt a touch of almost hysterical amusement. It’s the book I grabbed offthe shelf when the clown started to do its Pickaninny Voice, he thought. She thought I wanted to borrow it. I’ve made my first withdrawal from the Demy Public Library in twenty-five years, and I don’t even know what the book is. Furthermore, I don’t care. Just let me out of here, okay? That’ll be enough.
‘Thank you,’ he said, putting the book under his arm.
‘You’re more than welcome, Mr Hanscom. Are you sure you wouldn’t like an aspirin?’
‘Quite sure,’ he said — and then hesitated. ‘You wouldn’t by any chance know what happened to Mrs Starrett, would you? Barbara Starrett? She used to be the head of the Children’s Library.’
‘She died,’ Carole Danner said. Three years ago. It was a stroke, I understand. It was a great shame. She was relatively young . . . fifty-eight or –nine, I think. Mr Hanlon closed the library for the day.’
‘Oh,’ Ben said, and felt a hollow place open in his heart. That’s what happened when you got back to your used-to-be, as the song put it. The frosting on the cake was sweet, but the stuff underneath was bitter. People forgot you, or died on you, or lost their hair and teeth. In some cases you found that they had lost their minds. Oh it was great to be alive. Boy howdy.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You liked her, didn’t you?’
‘All the kids liked Mrs Starrett,’ Ben said, and was alarmed to realize that tears were now very close.
‘Are you — ‘
If she asks me if I’m all right one more time, I really am going to cry, I think. Or scream. Or something.
He glanced at his watch and said, ‘I really have to run. Thanks for being so nice.’
‘Have a nice day, Mr Hanscom.’
Sure. Because tonight I die.
He tipped a finger her way and started back across the floor. Mr Brockhill glanced up at him once, sharply and suspiciously.
He looked up at the landing which topped the lefthand staircase. The balloon still
