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
She rolled over. Her father was walking toward her. She skidded away from him on the seat of her jeans, her hair in her eyes.
‘I know you been down there,’ he said. ‘I was told. I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe my Bevvie would be hanging around with a gang of boys. Then I seen you myself this morning. My Bevvie with a bunch of boys. Not even twelve and hanging around with a bunch of boys!’ This latter thought seemed to send him into a fresh rage; it trembled through his scrawny frame like volts. ‘Not even twelve years old!’ he shouted, and fetched a kick at her thigh that made her scream. His jaws snapped over this fact or concept or whatever it was to him like the jaws of a hungry dog worrying a piece of meat. ‘Not even twelve! Not even twelve! Noteven TWELVE!’
He kicked. Beverly scrambled away. They had worked their way into the kitchen area of the apartment now. His workboot struck the drawer under the stove, making the pots and pans inside jangle.
‘Don’t you run from me, Bevvie,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to do that or it’ll be the worse for you. Believe me, now. Believe your dad. This is serious. Hanging around with the boys, letting them do God knows what to you — not even twelve — that’s serious, Christ knows.’ He grabbed her and jerked her to her feet by her shoulder.
‘You’re a pretty girl,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty of people happy to roon a pretty girl. Plenty of pretty girls willing to be roont. You been a slutchild to them boys, Bevvie?’
At last she understood what It had put in his head . . . except part of her knew the thought might almost have been there all along; that It might only have used the tools that had been there just lying around, waiting to be picked up.
‘No Daddy. No Daddy — ‘
‘I seen you smoking!’ he bellowed. This time he struck her with the palm of his hand, hard enough to send her reeling back in drunken strides to the kitchen table where she sprawled, a flare of agony in the small of her back. The salt and pepper shakers fell to the floor. The pepper shaker broke. Black flowers bloomed and disappeared before her eyes. Sounds seemed too deep. She saw his face. Something in his face. He was looking at her chest. She was suddenly aware that her blouse had come untucked, that some of the buttons had popped off, and that she wasn’t wearing a bra . . . as of yet, she owned only one, a training bra. Her mind sideslipped back to the house at Neibolt Street, when Bill had given her his shirt. She ha d been aware of the way her breasts poked at the thin cotton material, but their occasional,
skittering glances had not bothered her; these had seemed perfectly natural. And Bill’s look had seemed more than natural — it had seemed warm and wanted, if deeply dangerous.
Now she felt guilt mix with her terror. Was her father so wrong? Hadn’t she had
(you been a slutchild to them)
thoughts? Bad thoughts? Thoughts of whatever it was that he was talking about?
It’s not the same thing! It’s not the same thing as the way
(you been a slutchild)
he’s looking at me now! Not the same!
She tucked her blouse back in.
‘Bevvie?’
‘Daddy, we just play, that’s all. We play . . . We . . . we don’t do anything like . . . anything bad. We — ‘
‘I seen you smoking,’ he said again, walking toward her. His eyes moved across her chest and her narrow uncurved hips. He chanted suddenly, in a high schoolboy’s voice that frightened her even more: ‘A girl who will chew gum will smoke! A girl who will smoke will drink! And a girl who will drink, everyone knows what a girl like that will do!’
‘I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!’ she screamed at him as his hands descended on her shoulders. He was not pinching or hurting now. His hands were gentle. And that was somehow scariest of all.
‘Beverly,’ he said with the inarguable, mad logic of the totally obsessed, ‘I seen you with boys. Now you want to tell me what a girl does with boys down in all that trashwood if it ain’t what a girl does on her back?’
‘Let me alone!’ she cried at him. The anger flashed up from a deep well she had never suspected. The anger made a bluish– yellow flame in her head. It threatened her thoughts. All the
