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
hand touched his and Bill took it gratefully.
‘It started before we were ready,’ she said.
‘Would we eh-eh-ever have been r-ready?’
‘You would have been, Big Bill.’
The touch of her hand was suddenly both wonderful and necessary. He wondered what it would be like to touch her breasts for the second time in his life, and suspected that before this long night was over he would know. Fuller now, mature . . . and his hand would find hair
when he cupped the swelling of her mons veneris. He thought: I loved you, Beverly . . . I loveyou. Ben loved you . . . he laves you. We loved you then . . . we love you now. We better, because it’s starting. No way out now.
He glanced behind and saw the library half a block away. Richie and Eddie were on the top step; Ben was standing at the bottom, looking after them. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders were slumped, and seen through the drifting lens of the low fog, he might almost have been eleven again. If he had been able to send Ben a thought, Bill would have sent this one: It doesn’t matter, Ben. The love is what matters, the caring . . . it’s always the desire, never the time. Maybe that’s all we get to take with us when we go out of the blue and into the black. Cold comfort, maybe, but better than no comfort at all.
‘My father knew,’ Beverly said suddenly. ‘I came home one day from the Barrens and he just knew. Did I ever tell you what he used to say to me when he was mad?’
‘What?’
‘»I worry about you, Bevvie.» That’s what he used to say. «I worry a lot. «‘ She laughed and shivered at the same time. ‘I think he meant to hurt me, Bill. I mean . . . he’d hurt me before, but that last time was different. He was . . . well, in many ways he was a strange man. I loved him. I loved him very much, but — ‘
She looked at him, perhaps wanting him to say it for her. He wouldn’t; it was something she was going to have to say for herself, sooner or later. Lies and self-deceptions had become a ballast they could not afford.
‘I hated him, too,’ she said, and her hand bore down convulsively upon Bill’s for a long second. ‘I never told that to anyone in my life before. I thought God would strike me dead if I ever said it out loud.’
‘Say it again, then.’
‘No, I– ‘
‘Go on. It’ll hurt, but maybe it’s festered in there long enough. Say it.’
‘I hated my dad,’ she said, and began to sob helplessly. ‘I hated him, I was scared of him, I hated him, I could never be a good enough girl to suit him and I hated him, I did, but I loved him, too.’
He stopped and held her tight. Her arms went around him in a panicky grip. Her tears wet the side of his neck. He was very conscious of her body, ripe and firm. He moved his torso away from hers slightly, not wanting her to feel the erection he was getting . . . but she moved against him again.
‘We’d spent the morning down there,’ she said, ‘playing tag or something like that. Something harmless. We hadn’t even talked about It that day, at least not then . . . we usually talked about It every day, at some point, though. Remember?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘At some p-p-point. I remember.’
‘It was overcast . . . hot. We played most of the morning. I went home around eleven-thirty. I thought I’d have a sandwich and a bowl of soup after I took a shower. And then I’d go back and play some more. My parents were both working. But he was there. He was home. He
2
Lower Main Street / 11:30 A.M.
threw her across the room before she had even gotten all th e way through the door. A startled scream was jerked out of her and then cut off as she hit the wall with shoulder-numbing force. She collapsed onto their sagging sofa, looking around wildly. The door to the front hall banged shut. Her father had been standing behind it.
‘I worry about you, Bevvie,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I worry a lot. You know that. I tell you that, don’t I? You bet I do.’
‘Daddy what — ‘
He was walking slowly toward her across the living room, his face thoughtful, sad, deadly. She didn’t want to see that last, but it was there, like the blind shine of dirt on still water. He was nibbling reflectively on a knuckle of his right
