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
Ben thought. Betty Ripsom, Cheryl Lamonica, that Clements kid, Eddie Corcoran (maybe), Ronnie Grogan . . . even Patrick Hockstetter. It kills kids, goddamit, kids!
‘I’ll go, Big Bill, ‘he said.
‘Shit, yeah,’ Beverly said.
‘Sure,’ Richie said. ‘You think we’re gonna let you have all the fun, mushmouth?’
Bill looked at them, his throat working, and then he nodded. He handed the tin box to Beverly.
‘Are you sure, Bill?’
‘Sh-Sh-Sure.’
She nodded, at once horrified by the responsibility and bewitched by his trust. She opened the box, took out the slugs, and slipped one into the right front pocket of her jeans. The other she socketed in the Bullseye’s rubber cup, and it was by the cup that she carried the slingshot. She could feel the ball tightly enclosed in her fist, cold at first and then warming.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, her voice not quite steady. ‘Let’s go before I chicken out.’
Bill nodded, then looked sharply at Eddie. ‘Cuh-Can you d-d-do this, Eh-Eh –Eddie?’
Eddie nodded. ‘Sure I can. I was alone last time. This time I’m with my friends. Right?’ He looked at them and grinned a little. His expression was shy, fragile, and quite beautiful.
Richie clapped him on the back. ‘Thass right, senhorr. Anywhunn tries to steal your assipirator, we keel heem. But we keel heem slow. ‘
That’s terrible, Richie,’ Bev said, giggling.
‘Uh-Uh-under the p-porch,’ Bill said. ‘A-A11 of you b-b-behind me. Then into the suh-suh-cellar.’
‘If you go first and that thing jumps you, what do I do?’ Beverly asked. ‘Shoot through you?’
‘If y-you have to,’ Bill said. ‘But I suh –suh –suggest y-y-you try guh –hoing a-around, first.’
Richie laughed wildly at this.
‘We’ll g-g-go through the whole puh-puh –place, if we have t-to.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe we won’t find be a-a-anything.’
‘Do you believe that?’ Mike asked.
‘No,’ Bill said briefly. ‘It’s h-h-here.’
Ben believed he was right. The house at 29 Neibolt Street seemed to be encased in a poisonous envelope. It could not be seen . . . but it could be felt. He licked his lips.
‘You ruh-ruh –ready?’ Bill asked them.
They all looked back at him. ‘Ready, Bill,’ Richie said.
‘Cuh-come on, th-then,’ Bill said. ‘Stay cluh-close behind me, B-Beverly.’ He dropped to his knees, crawled through the blighted rosebushes and under the porch.
8
They went this way: Bill, Beverly, Ben, Eddie, Richie, Stan, Mike. The leaves under the porch crackled and puffed up a sour old smell. Ben wrinkled his nose. Had he ever smelled fallen leaves like these? He thought not. And then an unpleasant idea struck him. They smelled the way he imagined a mummy would smell, just after its discoverer had levered open its coffin: all dust and bitter ancient tannic acid.
Bill had reached the broken cellar window and was looking into the cellar. Beverly crawled up beside him. ‘You see anything?’
Bill shook his head. ‘But that d-doesn’t m-m-mean nuh-huthin’s there. L-Look; there’s the c-coal-pile me and R-R-Richie used to get ow-out.’
Ben, who was looking between them, saw it. He was becoming excited as well as afraid now, and he welcomed the excitement, instinctively recognizing the fact that it could be a tool. Seeing the coal-pile was a little like seeing a great landmark about which you had only read or heard from others.
Bill turned around and slipped lithely through the window. Beverly gave Ben the Bullseye, folding his hand over the cup and ball nestled in it. ‘Give it to me the second I’m down,’ she said. ‘The second.’
‘Got you.’
She slipped down as easily and lithely as Bill had before her. There was — for Ben, at least — one heart-stopping instant when her blouse pulled out of her jeans and he saw her flat white belly. Then there was the thrill of her hands over his as he handed the slingshot down.
‘Okay, I’ve got it. Come on.’
Ben turned around himself and began to wriggle through the window. He should have forseen what happened next; it was really inevitable. He got stuck. His fanny bound up against the rectangular cellar window and he couldn’t go in any further. He started to pull himself out and realized, horrified, that he could do it, but was very apt to yank his pants — and perhaps his underpants as well — down to his knees when he did. And there he would be, with his extremely large ass practically in his beloved’s face.
‘Hurry up!’ Eddie said.
Ben pushed grimly with both hands. For a moment he still couldn’t move, and then his butt popped through the window-hole.
