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
‘Not bad,’ Rich said. He even smiled a little. This was bad, and it had admittedly knocked him for a loop, but he felt that he was going to be able to handle it. No sweat.
He began getting ready to go back home. And at some point during the next hour it occurred to him that it was as if he had died and had yet been allowed to make all of his own final business dispositions . . . not to mention his own funeral arrangements. And he felt as if he was doing pretty good. He tried the travel agent he used, thinking she would probably be on the freeway and headed home by now but taking a shot on the off-chance. For a wonder, he caught he r in. He told her what he needed and she asked him for fifteen minutes.
‘I owe you one, Carol,’ he said. They had progressed from Mr Tozier and Ms Feeny to Rich and Carol over the last three years — pretty chummy, considering they had never met face to face.
‘All right, pay off,’ she said. ‘Can you do Kinky Briefcase for me?’
Without even pausing — if you had to pause to find your Voice, there was usually no Voice there to be found — Rich said: ‘Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant, here — I had a fellow come in the other day who wanted to know what the worst thing was about getting AIDS.’ His voice had dropped slightly; at the same time its rhythm had speeded up and become jaunty — it was clearly an American voice and yet it somehow conjured up images of a wealthy British colonial chappie who was as charming, in his muddled way, as he was addled. Rich hadn’t the slightest idea who Kinky Briefcase really was, but he was sure he always wore white suits, read Esquire, and drank things which came in tall glasses and smelled like coconut– scented shampoo. ‘I told him right away — trying to explain to your mother how you picked it up from a Haitian girl. Until next time, this is Kinky Briefcase, Sexual Accountant, saying «You need my card if you can’t get hard.»‘
Carol Feeny screamed with laughter. ‘That’s perfect! Perfect. My boyfriend says he doesn’t believe you can just do those voices, he says it’s got to be a voice-filter gadget or something
— ‘
‘Just talent, my dear,’ Rich said. Kinky Briefcase was gone. W. C. Fields, top hat, red nose,
golf-bags and all, was here. ‘I’m so stuffed with talent I have to plug up all my bodily orifices to keep it from just running out like . . . well, just running out.’
She went off into another screamy gale of laughter, and Rich closed his eyes. He could feel the beginnings of a headache.
‘Be a dear and see what you can do, would you?’ he asked, still being W. C. Fields, and hung up on her laughter.
Now he had to go back to being himself, and that was hard — it got harder to do that every year. It was easier to be brave when you were someone else.
He was trying to pick out a pair of good loafers and had about decided to stick with sneakers when the phone rang again. It was Carol Feeny, back in record time. He felt an instant urge to fall into the Buford Kissdrivel Voice and fought it off. She had been able to get him a first-class seat on the American Airlines red-eye nonstop from LAX to Boston. He would leave LA at 9:03 P.M. and arrive at Logan about five o’clock tomorrow morning. Delta would fly him out of Boston at 7:30 A.M. and into Bangor, Maine, at 8:20. She had gotten him a full –sized sedan from Avis, and it was only twenty –six miles from the Avis counter at Bangor International Airport to the Derry town line.
Only twenty-six miles? Rich thought. Is that all, Carol? Well, maybe it is — in miles, anyway. But you don’t have the slightest idea how far it really is to Derry, and I don’t, either. But oh God, oh dear God, I am going to find out.
‘I didn’t try for a room because you didn’t tell me how long you’d be there,’ she said. ‘Do you — ‘
‘No — let me take care of that,’ Rich said, and then Buford Kissdrivel took over. ‘You’ve been a peach, my deah. A Jawja peach, a cawse.’
He hung up gently on her — always leave em laughing — and then dialed 207-555-1212 for State of Maine Directory Assistance. He wanted a number for the Derry Town House. God, there was a name from the past. He hadn’t thought of the Derry Town House in — what? — te n years? twenty? twenty-five years, even? Crazy as it seemed, he guessed it had been at least twenty-five years, and if Mike hadn’t called, he supposed he might never have thought of it again in his life. And yet there had been a time in his life when he had walked past that great red brick
