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
‘We will,’ Beverly said. She took Bill in her arms. She had not realized how easily her arms would go around him, how thin he was. She could feel his heart racing under his shut; she could feel it next to hers. She thought that no touch had ever seemed so sweet and strong.
Richie put his arms around both of them and laid his head on Beverly’s shoulder. Be n did the same from the other side. Stan Uris put his arms around Richie and Ben. Mike hesitated, and then slipped one arm around Beverly’s waist and the other over Bill’s shivering shoulders. They stood that way, hugging, and the sleet turned back to driving pouring rain, rain so heavy it seemed almost like a new atmosphere. The lightning walked and the thunder talked. No one spoke. Beverly’s eyes were tightly shut. They stood in the rain in a huddled group, hugging each other, listening to it hiss down on the bushes. That was what she remembered best: the sound of the rain and their own shared silence and a vague sorrow that Eddie was not there with them. She remembered those things.
She remembered feeling very young and very strong.
1
‘Okay, Haystack,’ Richie says. ‘Your turn. The redhead’s smoked all of her cigarettes and most of mine. The hour groweth late.’
Ben glances up at the clock. Yes, it’s late: nearly midnight. Just time for one more story, he thinks. One more story before twelve. Just to keep us warm. What should it be? But that, ofcourse, is only a joke, and not a very good one; there is only one story left, at least only one he remembers, and that is the story of the silver slugs — how they were made in Zack Denbrough’s workshop on the night of July 23rd and how they were used on the 25th.
‘I’ve got my own scars,’ he says. ‘Do you remember?’
Beverly and Eddie shake their heads; Bill and Richie nod. Mike sits silent, his eyes watchful in his tired face.
Ben stands up and unbuttons the work-shirt he is wearing, spreading it open. An old scar in the shape of the letter H shows there. Its lines are broken — the belly was much bigger when that scar was put there — but its shape still identifia ble.
The heavy scar depending downward from the cross-bar of the H is much clearer. It looks like a twisted white hangrope from which the noose has been cut.
Beverly’s hand goes to her mouth. ‘The werewolf! In that house! Oh Jesus Christ!’ And she turns to the windows, as if to see it lurking outside in the darkness.
‘That’s right,’ Ben said. ‘And you want to know something funny? That scar wasn’t there two days ago. Henry’s old calling-card was; I know, because I showed it to a friend of mine, a bar-tender named Ricky Lee back in Hemingford Home. But this one — ‘ He laughs without much humor and begins buttoning his shirt again. This one just came back.’
‘Like the ones on our hands.’
‘Yeah,’ Mike says as Ben buttons his skin up again. ‘The werewolf. We all saw It as the werewolf that time.’
‘Because that’s how R-R-Richie saw Ih-It before,’ Bill murmurs. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Mike says.
‘We were close, weren’t we?’ Beverly says. Her voice is softly marvelling. ‘Close enough to read each other’s minds.’
‘Ole Big Hairy damn near had your guts for garters, Ben,’ Richie says, and he is not smiling as he says it. He pushes his mended glasses up on his nose and behind them his face looks white and haggard and ghostly.
