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
The vision of the birds, hundreds and thousands of them, descending on the roofpeaks of houses, on telephone wires, on TV aerials, intervenes again.
‘And poison ivy,’ she says aloud.
‘W-W-What?’ Bill asks.
‘Something about poison ivy,’ she says slowly, looking at him. ‘But it wasn’t. It just felt like poison ivy. Mike — ?’
‘Never mind,’ Mike says. ‘It will come. Tell us what you do remember, Bev.’
I remember the blue shorts, she would tell them, and how faded they were getting; how tight around my hips and butt. I had half a pack of Lucky Strikes in one pocket and the Bullseye in the other —
‘Do you remember the Bullseye?’ she asks Richie, but they all nod.
‘Bill gave it to me,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want it, but it . . . he . . . ‘ She smiles at Bill, a little wanly. ‘You couldn’t say no to Big Bill, that was all. So I had it and that’s why I was out by myself that day. To practice. I still didn’t think I’d have the guts to use it when the time came. Except . . . I used it that day. I had to. I killed one of them . . . one of the parts of It. It was terrible. Even now it’s hard for me to think of. And one of the others got me. Look.’
She raises her arm and turns it over so they can all see a puckery scar on the roundest part of her upper forearm. It looks as if a hot circular object about the size of a Havana cigar had been pressed against her skin. It is slightly sunken, and looking at it gives Mike Hanlon a chill. This is one of the parts of the story which, like Eddie’s unwilling heart –to-heart with Keene, he has suspected but never actually heard.
‘You were right about one thing, Richie,’ she says. ‘That Bullseye was a killer. I was scared of it, but I sorta loved it, too.’
Richie laughs and claps her on the back. ‘Shit, I knew that back then, you stupid skirt.’
‘You did? Really?’
‘Yeah, really,’ he says. ‘It was something in your eyes, Bevvie.’
‘I mean, it looked like a toy, but it was real. You could blow holes in things.’
‘And you blew a hole in something with it that day,’ Ben muses.
She nods.
‘Was it Patrick you — ‘
‘No, God no!’ Beverly says. ‘It was the other . . . wait.’ She crushes out her cigarette, sips her drink, and gets herself under control again. Finally she is. Well . . .
