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
anymore. The B-B-Barrens are ow-ow-ours.
‘You’re gonna wish you didn’t cross Henry, kid,’ Belch said. ‘Come on, Moose.’
They started away, heads down, not looking back.
The seven of them stood in a loose semicircle, all of them bleeding some where. The apocalyptic rockfight had lasted less than four minutes, but Bill felt as if he had fought his way through all of World War II, both theaters, without so much as a single time-out.
The silence was broken by Eddie Kaspbrak’s whooping, whining struggle for air. Ben went toward him, felt the three Twinkies and four Ding-Dongs he had eaten on his way down to the Barrens begin to struggle and churn in his stomach, and ran past Eddie and into the bushes, where he was sick as privately and quietly as he could be.
It was Richie and Bev who went to Eddie. Beverly put an arm around the thin boy’s waist while Richie dug his aspirator out of his pocket. ‘Bite on this, Eddie,’ he said, and Eddie took a hitching, gasping breath as Richie pulled the trigger.
‘Thanks,’ Eddie managed at last.
Ben came back out of the bushes, blushing, wiping a hand over his mouth. Beverly went over to him and took both of his hands in hers.
‘Thanks for sticking up for me,’ she said.
Ben nodded, looking at his dirty sneakers. ‘Any time, keed,’ he said.
One by one they turned to look at Mike, Mike with his dark skin. They looked at him carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. Mike had felt such curiosity before — there had not been a time in his life when he had not felt it — and he looked back candidly enough.
Bill looked from Mike to Richie. Richie met his eyes. And Bill seemed almost to hear the click — some final part fitting neatly into a machine of unknown intent. He felt ice-chips scatter up his back. We’re all together now, he thought, and the idea was so strong, so right, that for a moment he thought he might have spoken it aloud. But of course there was no need to speak it aloud; he could see it in Richie’s eyes, in Ben’s, in Eddie’s, in Beverly’s, in Stan’s.
We’re all together now, he thought again. Oh God help us. Now it really starts. Please God, help us.
‘What’s your name, kid?’ Beverly asked.
‘Mike Hanlon.’
‘You want to shoot off some firecrackers?’ Stan asked, and Mike’s grin was answer enough.
1
As it turns out, Bill isn’t the only one; they all bring booze.
Bill has bourbon, Beverly has vodka and a carton of orange juice, Richie a sixpack, Ben Hanscom a bottle of Wild Turkey. Mike has a sixpack in the little refrigerator in the staff lounge.
Eddie Kaspbrak comes in last, holding a small brown bag.
‘What you got there, Eddie?’ Richie asks. ‘Za-Rex or Kool-Aid?’
Smiling nervously, Eddie removes first a bottle of gin and then a bottle of prune juice.
In the thunderstruck silence which follows, Richie says quietly: ‘Somebody call for the men in the white coats. Eddie Kaspbrak’s finally gone over the top.’
‘Gin-and-prune juice happens to be very healthy,’ Eddie replies defensively . . . and then they’re all laughing wildly, the sound of their mirth echoing and re-echoing in the silent library, rolling up and down the glassed-in hall between the adult library and the Children’s Library.
‘You go head-on,’ Ben says, wiping his streaming eyes. ‘You go head-on, Eddie. I bet it really moves the mail, too.’
Smiling, Eddie fills a paper cup three-quarters full of prune juice and then soberly adds two capfuls of gin.
