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
‘Yes,’ Beverly says. ‘I’ll tell when you’re done. Go ahead.’
‘It was after that, after all you guys left, that my mother came in and we had a big fight. She didn’t want me to hang around with any of you guys again. And she might have gotten me to agree — she had a way, a way of working on a guy, you know . . . ‘
Bill nods again. He remembers Mrs Kaspbrak, a huge woman with a strange schizophrenic face, a face capable of looking stony and furious and miserable and frightened all at the same time.
‘Yeah, she might have gotten me to agree,’ Eddie says. ‘But something else happened the same day Bowers broke my arm. Something that really shook me up.’
He utters a little laugh, thinking: It shook me up, all right . . . Is that all you can say? What good’s talking when you can never tell people how you really feel? In a book or a movie what I found out that day before Bowers broke my arm would have changed my life forever and nothing would have happened the way it did . . . in a book or a movie it would have set me free. In a book or a movie I wouldn’t have a whole suitcase full of pills back in my room at the Town House, I wouldn’t be married to Myra, I wouldn’t have this stupid fucking aspirator here right now. In a book or a movie. Because —
Suddenly, as they all watch, Eddie’s aspirator rolls across the table by itself. As it rolls it makes a dry rattling sound, a little like maracas, a little like bones . . . a little like laughter. As it reaches the far side, between Richie and Ben, it flips itself up into the air and falls on the floor. Richie makes a startled half-grab and Bill cries sharply, ‘Don’t t –t-touch it!’
‘The balloons!’ Ben yells, and they all turn.
Both balloons tethered to the microfilm recorder now read ASTHMA MEDICINE GIVES YOUCANCER! Below the slogan are grinning skulls.
They explode with twin bangs.
Eddie looks at this, mouth dry, the familiar sensation of suffocation starting to tighten down in his chest like locking bolts.
Bill looks back at him. ‘Who t –told you and w –w –what did they tell you?’
Eddie licks his lips, wanting to go after his aspirator, not quite daring to. Who knew what might be in it now?
He thinks about that day, the 20th, about how it was hot, about how his mother gave him a check, all filled out except for the amount, and a dollar in cash for himself — his allowance.
‘Mr Keene,’ he says, and his voice sounds distant to his own ears, without power. ‘It was Mr Keene.’
‘Not exactly the nicest man in Derry,’ Mike says, but Eddie, lost in his thoughts, barely hears him.
