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
B-Ben,’ Bill repeated from behind them.
So they went down to the Kenduskeag following him, bearing left away from the clearing that didn’t exist anymore. The sound of running water grew steadily louder, but they still almost fell into the Kenduskeag before any of them saw it: the foliage had grown up in a tangled wall on the edge of the embankment. The edge broke off under the heels of Ben’s cowboy boots and Bill yanked him back by the scruff of the neck.
‘Thanks,’ Ben said.
‘De nada. In the o-old d-days, you wuh– hould have puh– pulled me ih-i n a-a-after you. D-Down this wuh-way?’
Ben nodded and led them along the overgrown bank, fighting through ht e tangles of bushes and brambles, thinking how much easier this was when you were only four feet five and able to go under most tangles (those in your mind as well as those in your path, he supposed) in one nonchalant duck. Well, everything changed. Our lesson for today, boys and girls, is themore things change, the more things change. Whoever said the more things change the more things stay the same was obviously suffering severe mental retardation. Because —
His foot hooked under something and he fell over with a thud, nearly striking his head on the pumping –station’s concrete cylinder. It was almost completely buried in a wallow of blackberry bushes. As he got to his feet again he realized that his face and arms and hands had been striped by blackberry thorns in two dozen places.
‘Make that three dozen,’ he said, feeling thin blood running down his cheeks.
‘What?’ Eddie asked.
‘Nothing.’ He bent down to see what he had tripped over. A root, probably.
But it wasn’t a root. It was the iron manhole cover. Someone had pushed it off.
Of course, Ben thought. We did. Twenty-seven years ago.
But he realized that was crazy even before he saw fresh metal twinkling through the rust in parallel scrape-marks. The pump hadn’t been working that day. Sooner or later someone would have come down to fix it, and would have replaced the cover in the bargain.
He stood up and the five of them gathered around the cylinder and looked in. They could hear the faint sound of dripping water. That was all. Richie had brought all the matches from Eddie’s room. Now he lit an entire book of them and tossed it in. For a moment they could see the cylinder’s damp inner sleeve and the silent bulk of the pumping machinery. That was all.
‘Could have been off for a long time,’ Richie said uneasily. ‘Didn’t necessarily have to happen t — ‘
‘It’s happened fairly recently,’ Ben said. ‘Since the last rain, anyway.’ He took another book of matches from Richie, lit one, and pointed out the fresh scratches.
‘There’s suh-suh-something uh-under it,’ Bill said as Ben shook out the match.
‘What?’ Ben asked.
‘C-C-Couldn’t tuh-tuh –tell. Looked like a struh-struh-strap. You and Rih-Richie help me t-t-turn it o-over.’
They grabbed the cover and flipped it like a giant coin. This time Beverly lit the match and Ben cautiously picked up the purse which had been under the manhole cover. He held it up by the strap. Beverly started to shake out the match and then looked at Bill’s face. She froze until the flame touched the ends of her fingers and then dropped it with a little gasp. ‘Bill? What is it? What’s wrong?’
Bill’s eyes felt too heavy. They couldn’t leave that scuffed leather bag with its long leather strap. Suddenly he could remember the name of the song which had been playing on the radio in the back room of the leather-goods shop when he had bought it for her. ‘Sausalito Summer Nights.’ It was the surpassing weirdism. All the spit was gone out of his mouth, leaving his tongue and inner cheeks as smooth and dry as chrome. He could hear the crickets and see the lightning –bugs and smell big green growing dark out of control all around him and he thought It’s another trick another illusion she’s in England and this is just a cheap shot because It’s scared, oh yes, It’s maybe not as sure as It was when It called us all back, and really, Bill, get serious — how many scuffed leather purses with long straps do you think there are in the world? A million? Ten million?
