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
with her shadow stapled to the heels of her low-topped sneakers. For that one moment she was totally visible to them; if any of the four had looked up from the circle they were squatting in, he could not have missed her, a girl of slightly more than medium height, a pair of skates over one shoulder, the knee of one long coltish leg still oozing blood, her mouth slack-jawed, her cheeks scarlet.
Before darting back behind the Studebaker she saw that they weren’t entirely naked after all; they had their shirts on, and their pants an d underpants were simply pulled down to their
shoetops, as if they had to Go Number Two (in her shock, Beverly’s mind had automatically reverted to the euphemism she had been taught as a toddler) — except whoever heard of four boys Going Number Two at the same time?
Once out of sight again, her first thought was to get away — get away fast. Her heart was pumping hard, her muscles heavy with adrenaline. She looked around, seeing what she hadn’t bothered to notice walking up here, when she had thought the voices she heard belonged to her friends. The row of junked cars on her left was really pretty thin — they were by no means packed in door to door as they would be in the week or so before the crusher came to turn them into rough blocks of twinkling metal. She had been exposed to the boys several times walking up to where she was now; if she retreated, she would be exposed again, and this time she might be seen.
Also, she felt a certain shameful curiosity: what in the world could they be doing?
Carefully, she peeked around the Studebaker.
Henry and Victor Criss were more or less facing in her direction. Patrick Hockstetter was on Henry’s left. Belch Huggins had his back to her. She observed the fact that Belch had an extremely large, extremely hairy ass, and half-hysterical giggles suddenly bubbled up her throat like the head on a glass of ginger ale. She had to clap both hands over her mouth and withdraw behind the Studebaker again, struggling to hold the giggles in.
You’ve got to get out of here, Beverly. If they catch you —
She looked back down between the junked cars, still holding her hands over her mouth. The aisle was maybe ten feet wide, littered with cans, twinkling with little jigsaw pieces of Saf-T-Glas, scruffy with weeds. If she so much as made a sound, they might hear her . . . particularly if their absorption in whatever strange thing they were doing flagged. When she thought of how casually she had walked up here, her blood ran cold. Also . . .
What in the world can they be doing?
She peeked again, seeing more of the details this time. There was a careless scatter of books and papers nearby — schoolbooks. They had just come from their summer classes, then, what most of the kids called Dummy School or Make– up School. And, because Henry and Victor were facing her way, she could see their things. They were the first things she had ever seen in her life, other than pictures in a smudgy little book that Brenda Arrowsmith had showed her the year before, and in those pictures you really couldn’t see very much. Bev observed now that their things were little tubes that hung down between their legs. Henry’s was small and hairless, but Victor’s was quite big, and there was a cloudy fuzz of fine black hair just over it.
Bill has one of those, she thought, and suddenly her whole body seemed to flush at once — heat rushed through her in a wave that made her feel giddy and faint and almost sick to her stomach. In that moment she felt much the way Ben Hanscom had felt on the last day of school, looking down at her ankle bracelet and observing the way it flashed in the sun . . . but he had not felt the intermixed sense of terror she felt now.
She looked behind her once more. Now the pathway between the cars leading to the shelt er of the Barrens seemed much longer. She was scared to move. If they knew she had seen their things, they would probably hurt her. And not just a little, they would hurt her badly.
Belch Huggins bellowed suddenly, making her jump, and Henry yelled: ‘Three feet! No shit, Belch! It was three feet! Wasn’t it, Vie?’
Vie agreed it was, and they all roared with troll-like laughter.
Beverly tried another look around the junked Studebaker.
Patrick Hockstetter had turned and half-risen so that his butt was nearly in Henry’s face. In Henry’s hand was a silvery, glinting object. After a moment’s study she made it out as a lighter.
‘I thought you said you felt one coming on,’
