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
‘But he’s hurt! His arm — ‘
‘It’s the same as luh-luh –last t-t-time,’ Bill said. He got to his feet and held her by the arms, looking into her face. ‘Once we g– go outside . . . once w– w– w e i h – i n v – v-holve the t – t-town — ‘
They’ll arrest me for murder,’ Eddie said dully. ‘Or they’ll arrest all of us. Or they’ll detain us. Or something. Then there’ll be an accident. One of the special accidents that only happen in Derry. Maybe they’ll stick us in jail and a deputy sheriff will go berserk and shoot us all. Maybe we’ll all die of ptomaine, or decide to hang ourselves in our cells.’
‘Eddie, that’s crazy! That’s — ‘
‘Is it?’ he asked. ‘Remember, this is Derry.’
‘But we’re grownups now! Surely you don’t think . . . I mean, he came here in the middle of the night . . . attacked you . . . ‘
‘W-With what?’ Bill said. ‘Where’s the nuh-nuh –knife?’
She looked around, didn’t see it, and dropped on her knees to look under the bed.
‘Don’t bother,’ Eddie said in that same faint, whistly voice. ‘I slammed the door on his arm when he tried to stick me with it. He dropped it and I kicked it under the TV. It’s gone now. I already looked.’
‘B-B-Beheverly, c-call the others,’ Bill said. ‘I can spuh-splint E-E-Eddie’s arm, I th-hink.’
She looked at him for a long moment, then she looked down at the body on the floor again. She thought that the picture this room presented should tell a perfectly clear story to any policeman with half a brain. The place was a mess. Eddie’s arm was broken. This man was dead. It was a clear case of self-defense against a night-prowler. And then she remembered Mr Ross. Mr Ross getting up and loo king and then simply folding his newspaper and going back into the house.
Once we go outside . . . once we involve the town . . .
That made her remember Bill as a kid, his face white and tired and half– c r a z y , B i l l s a y i n g Derry is It. Do you understand me? . . . Any place we go . . . when It gets us, they won’t see, they won’t hear, they won’t know. Don’t you see how it is? All we can do is to try and finish what we started.
Standing here now, looking down at Henry’s corpse, Beverly thought: They’re both sayingwe’ve all become ghosts again. That it’s started to repeat. All of it. As a kid I could accept that, because kids almost are ghosts. But —
‘Are you sure?’ she asked desperately. ‘Bill, are you sure?’
He was sitting on the bed with Eddie, gently touching his arm. ‘A-A-Aren’t y-you?’ he asked. ‘After a-a-all that’s huh-happened t-today?’
Yes. All that had happened. The gruesome mess at the end of their reunion. The beautiful old woman who had turned into a crone before her eyes,
(my fodder was also my mudder)
the round of stories at the library tonight with the accompanying phenomena. All of those things. And still . . . her mind shouted at her desperately to stop this now, to spike it with sanity, because if she did not ht ey were surely going to finish up this night by going down to the Barrens and finding a certain pumping-station and —
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just . . . I don’t know. Even after everything that’s happened, Bill, it seems to me that we could call the police. Maybe.’
‘C-C-Call the uh –others,’ he said again. ‘We’ll s-s-see what they th-think ‘
‘All right.’
She called Richie first, then Ben. Both agreed to come right away. Neither asked what had happened. She found Mike’s telephone number in the book and dialed it. There was no answer; after a dozen rings she hung up.
‘T-T-Try the luh-luh –hibrary,’ Bill said. He had taken the short curtain rods down from the smaller of the two windows in Eddie’s room and was binding them firmly to Eddie’s arm with the belt of his bathrobe and the drawstring from his pyjamas.
Before she could find the number there was a knock at the door. Ben and Richie had arrived together, Ben in jeans and an untucked shirt, Richie in a pair of smart gray cotton trousers and his pyjama top. His eyes looked warily around the room from behind his glasses.
‘Christ, Eddie, what happened to — ‘
^Oh my God!’ Ben cried. He had seen Henry on the floor.
‘B-B-Be quh-hiet!’ Bill said sharply.
