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
Richie all the time they were picking them up again, and Richie joked and screeched in many Voices, and thought to himself how beautiful she was.
Although Richie had not been serious when he spoke of excluding her from the smoke-hole on the basis of her sex, Bill Denbrough apparently was.
She stood facing him, her hands on her hips, her cheeks flushed with anger. ‘You can just take that and stuff it with a long pole, Stuttering Bill! I’ m in on this too, or aren’t I a member of your lousy club anymore?’
Patiently, Bill said: ‘I-It’s not l-like that, B-B-Bev, and y-you nun-know i-it. Somebody has to stay u-uh-up here.’
‘Why?
Bill tried, but the roadblock was in again. He looked at Eddie for help.
‘It’s what Stan said,’ Eddie told her quietly. ‘About the smoke. Bill says that might really happen — we could pass out down there. Then we’d die. Bill says that’s what happens to most people in housefires. They don’t burn up. They choke to death on the smoke. They — ‘
Now she turned to Eddie. ‘Well, okay. He wants somebody to stay up on top in case there’s trouble?’
Miserably, Eddie nodded.
‘Well, what about you? You’re the one with the asthma.’
Eddie said nothing. She turned back to Bill. The others stood around, hands in their pockets, looking at their sneakers.
‘It’s because I’m a girl, isn’t it? That’s really it, isn’t it?’
‘Beh-Beh-Beh-Beh — ‘
‘You don’t have to talk,’ she snapped. ‘Just nod your head or shake it. Your head doesn’t stutter, does it? Is it because I’m a girl?’
Reluctantly, Bill nodded his head.
She looked at him for a moment, her lips trembling, and Richie thought she would cry. Instead, she exploded.
‘Well, fuck you!’ She whirled around to look at the others, and they flinched from her gaze, so hot it was nearly radioactive. ‘Fuck all of you if you think the same thing!’ She turned back to Bill and began to talk fast, rapping him with words. ‘This is something more than some diddlyshit kid’s game like tag or guns or hide-and –go-seek, and you know it, Bill. We’re supposed to do this. That’s part of it. And you’re not going to cut me out just because I’m a girl. Do you understand? You better, or I’m leaving right now. And if I go, I’m gone. For good. You understand?’
She stopped. Bill looked at her. He seemed to have regained his calm, but Richie felt afraid. He felt that any chance they had of winning, of finding a way to get to the thing that had killed Georgie Denbrough and the other kids, getting to It and killing It, was now in jeopardy. Seven, Richie thought. That’s the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
A bird sang somewhere; stopped; sang again.
‘A-A11 r-right,’ Bill said, and Richie let his breath out. ‘But suh-suh-somebody has to s-stay tuh-hopside. Who w-w-wants to d-do it?’
Richie thought Eddie or Stan would surely volunteer for this duty, but Eddie said nothing. Stan stood pale and thoughtful and silent. Mike had his thumbs hooked into his belt like Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead or Alive, nothing moving but his eyes.
‘Cuh-cuh –come o-on,’ Bill said, and Richie realized that all pretense had gone out of the thing now; Bev’s impassioned speech and Bill’s grave, too-old face had seen to that. This was a part of it, perhaps as dangerous as the expedition he and Bill had made to the house at 29 Neibolt Street. They knew it . . . and no one was backing down. Suddenly he was very proud of them, very proud to be with them. After all the years of being counted out, he was counted in. Finally counted in. He didn’t know if they were still losers or not, but he knew they were
together. They were friends. Damn good friends. Richie took his glasses off and rubbed them v i g orously with the tail of his shirt.
‘I know how to do it,’ Bev said, and took a book of matches from her pocket. On the front, so tiny you’d need a magnifying glass to get a really good look at them, were pictures of that year’s candidates for the title of Miss Rheingold. Beverly lit a match and then blew it out. She tore out six more and added the burned match. She turned away from them, and when she turned back the white ends of the seven matches poked out of her closed fist. ‘Pick,’ she said, holding the matches out to Bill. ‘The one who picks the match with the burned head stays up here and pulls the rest out if they go flippy.’
Bill looked at her levelly. ‘Th-This is h-h-how you w-want i-it?’
She smiled at him then,
