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
he thought, and in spite of the pain, in spite of the tears and the fear, he brayed a huge donkeylike hee-haw of laughter.
‘You think this is funny? ‘ Henry asked, sounding suddenly astounded rather than furious. ‘You think this is funny?’ And did Henry also sound scared? Years later Eddie would think Yes, scared, he sounded scared.
Eddie twisted his wrist in Henry’s grip. He was slick with sweat and he almost got away. Perhaps that was w hy Henry shoved Eddie’s wrist up harder this time than before. Eddie heard a crack in his arm like the sound of winterwood giving under an accumulated plate of ice. The pain that rolled out of his fractured arm was gray and huge. He shrieked, but the sound seemed distant. The color was washing out of the world, and when Henry let go of him and pushed, he seemed to float toward the sidewalk. It took a long time to get down to that old sidewalk. He had a good look at every single crack in it as he glided down. He had a chance to admire the way the July sun glinted off the flecks of mica in that old sidewalk. He had a chance to note the remains of a very old hopscotch grid that had been done in pink chalk on that old sidewalk. Then, for just a moment, it swam and looked like something else. It looked like a turtle.
He might have fainted then, but he struck on his newly broken arm, and this fresh pain was sharp, bright, hot, terrible. He felt the splintered ends of the greenstick fracture grind together. He b it his tongue, bringing fresh blood. He rolled over on his back and saw Henry, Victor, Moose, and Patrick standing over him. They looked impossibly tall, impossibly high up, like pallbearers peering into a grave.
‘You like that, Rock Man?’ Henry asked, his voice drifting down over a distance, floating through clouds of pain. ‘You like that action, Rock Man? You like that jobba-nobba?’
Patrick Hockstetter giggled.
‘Your father’s crazy,’ Eddie heard himself say, ‘and so are you.’
Henry’s grin afded so fast it might have been slapped off his face. He drew his foot back to kick . . . and then a siren rose in the still hot afternoon. Henry paused. Victor and Moose looked around uneasily.
‘Henry, I think we better get out of here,’ Moose said.
‘I know damn well I’m getting out of here,’ Victor said. How far away their voices seemed! Like the clown’s balloons, they seemed to float. Victor took off toward the library, cutting into McCarron Park to get off the street.
Henry hesitated a moment longer, perhaps hoping the cop-car was on some other business and he could continue with his own. But the siren rose again, closer. ‘You got lucky, fuckface,’ he said. He and Moose took off after Victor.
Patrick Hockstetter waited for a moment. ‘Here’s a little something extra for you,’ he whispered in his low, husky voice. He inhaled and spat a large green lunger into Eddie’s upturned, sweating, bloody face. Splat. ‘Don’t eat it all at once if you don’t want,’ Patrick said, smiling his liverish unsettling smile. ‘Save some for later, if you want.’
Then he turned slowly and was also gone.
Eddie tried to wipe the lunger off with his good arm, but even that little movement made the pain flare again.
Now when you started off for the drugstore, you never thought you’d end up on the Costello Avenue sidewalk with a busted arm and Patrick Hockstetter’s snot running down your face, did you? You never even got to drink your Pepsi. Life’s full of surprises, isn’t it?
Incredibly, he laughed again. It was a weak sound, and it hurt his broken arm to laugh, but it felt good. And there was something else: no asthma. His breathing was okay, at least for now. A good thing, too. He never would have been able to get to his aspirator. Never in a thousand years.
The siren was very close now, whooping and whooping. Eddie closed his eyes and saw red under his eyelids. Then the red turned black as a shadow fell over him. It was the little kid with the trike.
‘You okay?’ the little kid asked.
‘Do I look okay?’ Eddie asked.
‘No, you look terrible,’ the little kid said, and pedaled off, singing ‘The Farmer in the Dell.’
Eddie began to giggle. Here was the cop-car; he could hear the squeal of its brakes. He found himself hoping vaguely that Mr Nell would be in it, even though he knew Mr Nell was a foot patrolman.
Why in the name of God are you giggling?
