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
‘And close th-the d-door!’
Richie did it, his eyes fixed on the body. ‘Henry?’
Ben took three steps toward the corpse and then stopped, as if afraid it might bite him. He looked helplessly at Bill.
Y-Y-You t-tell,’ he said to Eddie. ‘G-G-Goddam stuh-huh –hutter is g-getting wuh-wuh-worse all the t-t-time.’ Eddie sketched in what had happened while Beverly hunted up the number for the Derry Public Library and called it. She expected that perhaps Mike had fallen asleep there — he might even have a bunk in his office. What she did not expect was what happened: the phone was picked up on the second ring and a voice she had never heard before said hello.
‘Hello,’ she answered, looking toward the others and making a shushing gesture with one hand. ‘Is Mr Hanlon there?’
‘Who’s this?’ the voice asked.
She wet her lips with her tongue. Bill was looking at her piercingly. Ben and Richie had looked around. The beginnings of real alarm stirred inside her.
‘Who are you ?’ she countered. ‘You’re not Mr Hanlon.’
‘I’m Derry Chief of Police Andrew Rademacher,’ the voice said. ‘Mr Hanlon is at the Derry Home Hospital right now. He was assaulted and badly wounded a short time ago. Now who are you, please? I want your name.’
But she barely heard this last. Waves of shock rode through her, lifting her dizzily up and up, outside of herself. The muscles in her stomach and legs and crotch all went loose and numb, and she thought in a detached way: This must be how it happens, when people get so scared they wet their pants. Sure. You just lose control of those muscles —
‘How badly has he been hurt?’ she heard herself asking in a papery voice, and then Bill was beside her, his hand on her shoulder, and Ben was there, and Richie, and she felt such a rush of gratitude for them. She held her free hand out and Bill took it. Richie placed his hand over Bill’s and Ben put his over Richie’s. Eddie had come over, and now he put his good hand on top.
‘I want your name, please,’ Rademacher said briskly, and for a moment the skittering little craven inside of her, the one that had been bred by her father and cared for by her husband, almost answered: I’m Beverly Marsh and I’m at the Derry Town House. Please send Mr Nell over. There’s a dead man here who’s still half a boy and we’re all very frightened.
She said: ‘I . . . I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Not just yet.’
‘What do you know about this?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, shocked. ‘What makes you think I do? Jesus Christ!’
‘You just make a habit of calling the library every morning about three –thirty,’ Rademacher said, ‘is that it? Can the bullshit, young lady. This is assault, and the way the guy looks, it could be murder by the time the sun comes up. I’ll ask you again: who are you and how much do you know about this?’
Closing her eyes, gripping Bill’s hand with all her strength, she asked again: ‘He might die? You’re not just saying that to scare me? He really might die? Please tell me.’
‘He’s very badly hurt. And if that doesn’t scare you, miss, it ought to. Now I want to know who you are and why — ‘
As if in a dream she watched her hand float through space and drop the phone back into the cradle. She looked over at Henry and felt shock as keen as a slap from a cold hand. One of Henry’s eyes had closed. The other one, the shattered one, oozed as nakedly as before.
Henry seemed to be winking at her.
4
Richie called the hospital. Bill led Beverly over to the bed, where she sat with Eddie, looking off into space. She thought she would cry, but no tears came. The only feeling she was strongly and immediately aware of was a wish that someone would cover Henry Bowers. That winky look was really not cool at all.
In one giddy instant Richie became a reporter from the Derry News. He understood that Mr Michael Hanlon, the town’s head librarian, had been assaulted while working late. Did the hospital have any word on Mr Hanlon’s condition?
Richie listened, nodding.
‘I understand, Mr Kerpaskian — do you spell that with two k’s? You do. Okay. And you are — ‘
He listened, now enough into his own fiction to make doodling motions with one finger, as if writing on a pad.
‘Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . yes. Yes, I understand. Well, what we usually do in cases like this is to quote you as «a source.» Then, later on, we can . . . uh-huh . . . right! Just right!’ Richie laughed heartily and armed a film
