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
in breath and wished he hadn’t. The ole Belcher really had gone to seed. Henry was again reminded of tomatoes going quietly putrescent in some shadowy shed comer. His stomach roiled.
He remembered the end suddenly — the end for Belch and Vie, anyway. How something had come out of the darkness as they stood in a shaft with a sewer-grating at the top, w o n d e r i n g w h i c h w a y t o go next. Something . . . Henry hadn’t been able to tell what. Until Victor shrieked, ‘Frankenstein! It’s Frankenstein!’ And so it was, it was the Frankenstein monster, with bolts coming out of its neck and a deep stitched scar across its forehead, lurching along in shoes like a child’s blocks.
‘Frankensteinl’ Vie had screamed, ‘Fr — And then Vic’s head was gone, Vic’s head was flying across the shaftway to strike the stonework of the far side with a sour sticky thud. The monster’s watery yellow eyes had fallen on Henry, and Henry had frozen. His bladder let go and he felt warmth flood down his legs.
The creature lurched toward him, and Belch . . . Belch had . . .
‘Listen, I know I ran,’ Henry said. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. But . . . but . . . ‘
Belch only stared.
‘I got lost,’ Henry whispered, as if to tell the ole Belcher that he had paid, too. It sounded weak, like saying Yeah, I know you got killed, Belch, but I got one fuck of a splinter under my thumbnail. But it had been bad . . . really bad. He had wandered around in a world of stinking darkness for hours, and finally, he remembered, he had started to scream. At some point he had fallen — a long, dizzying fall, in which he had time to think Oh good in a minute I’ll be dead, I’ll be out of this — and then he had been in fast-running water. Under the Canal, he
supposed. He had come out into fading sunlight, had flailed his way toward the bank, and had finally climbed out of the Kenduskeag less than fifty yards from the place where Adrian Mellon would drown twenty-six years later. He slipped, fell, bashed his head, blacked out. When he woke up it was after dark. He had somehow found his way out to Route 2 and had hooked a ride to the home place. And there the cops had been waiting for h i m .
But that was then and this was now. Belch had stepped in front of Frankenstein’s monster and it had peeled the left side of his face down to the skull — so much Henry had seen before fleeing. But now Belch was back, and Belch was pointing at something.
Henry saw that they had pulled up in front of the Derry Town House, and suddenly he understood perfectly. The Town House was the only real hotel left in Derry. Back in ’58 there had also been the Eastern Star at the end of Exchange Street, and the Traveller’s Rest on Torrault Street. Both had disappeared during urban renewal (Henry knew all about this; he had read the Derry News faithfully every day in Juniper Hill). Only the Town House was left and a bunch of ticky-tacky little motels out by the Interstate.
That’s where they’ll be, he thought. Right in there. All of them that are left. Asleep in their beds, with visions of sugarplums — or sewers, maybe — dancing in their heads. And I’ll get them. One by one, I’ll get them.
He took the bottle of Texas Driver out again and bit off a snort. He could feel fresh blood trickling into his lap, and the seat was tacky beneath him, but the wine made it better; the wine seemed to make it not matter. He could have done with some good bourbon, but the Driver was better than nothing.
‘Look,’ he said to Belch, ‘I’m sorry I ran. I don’t know why I ran. Please . . . don’t be mad.’
Belch spoke for the first and only time, but the voice wasn’t his voice. The voice that came from Belch’s rotting mouth was deep and powerful, terrifying. Henry whimpered at the sound of it. It was the voice from the moon, the voice of the clown, the voice he had heard in his dreams of drains and sewers where water rushed on and on.
‘Just shut up and get them,’ the voice said.
‘Sure,’ Henry whined. ‘Sure, okay, I want to, no problem — ‘
He put the bottle back in the glove compartment. Its neck chattered briefly like teeth. And he saw a paper where the bottle had been. He took it out and unfolded it, leaving bloody fingerprints on the corners. Embossed across the top was this
