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
It would call them and then kill them.
Only now that they were coming, the fear had returned. They had grown up, and their imaginations had weakened — but not as much as It had believed. It had felt an ominous, upsetting growth in their power when they joined together, and It had wondered for the first time if It had perhaps made a mistake.
But why be gloomy? The die was cast and not all the omens were bad. The writer was half –mad for his wife, and that was good. The writer was the strongest, the one who had somehow trained his mind for this confrontation over all the years, and when the writer was dead with his guts falling out of his body, when their precious ‘Big Bill’ was dead, the others would be Its quickly.
It would feed well . . . and then perhaps It would go deep again. And doze. For awhile.
4
In the Tunnels / 4:30 A.M.
‘Bill!’ Richie shouted into the echoing pipe. He was moving as fast as he could, but that wasn’t very fast. He remembered that as kids they had walked bent over in this pipe, which led away from the pumping-station in the Barrens. He was crawling now, and the pipe seemed impossibly tight. His glasses kept wanting to slide off the end of his nose and he kept pushing them up again. He could hear Bev and Ben behind him.
‘Bill!’ he bawled again. ‘Eddie!’
‘I’m here!’ Eddie’s voice floated back.
‘Where’s Bill?’ Richie shouted.
‘Up ahead!’ Eddie called. He was very close now, and Richie sensed rather than saw him just ahead. ‘He wouldn’t wait!’
Richie’s head butted Eddie’s leg. A moment later Bev’s head butted Richie’s ass.
‘Bill!’ Richie screamed at the top of his voice. The pipe channelled his shout and sent it back at him, hurting his own ears. ‘Bill, wait for us! We have to go together, don’t you know that?’
Faintly, echoing, Bill: ‘Audra! Audra! Where are you?’
‘Goddam you, Big Bill!’ Richie cried softly. His glasses fell off. He cursed, groped for them, and set them, dripping, back on his nose. He pulled in breath and shouted again: ‘You’llget lost without Eddie, you fucking asshole! Wait up! Wait up for us! You hear me, Bill? WAIT UP FOR US, DAMMIT!’
There was an agonizing moment of silence. It seemed that no one breathed. All Richie could hear was distant dripping water; the drain was dry this time, except for the occasional stagnant puddle.
‘Bill!’ He ran a trembling hand through his hair and fought the tears. ‘COME ON . . .PLEASE, MAN! WAIT UP! PLEASE!’
And, fainter still, Bill’s voice came back: ‘I’m waiting.’
Thank God for small favors,’ Richie muttered. He slapped Eddie’s can. ‘Go.’
‘I don’t know how long I can with just one arm,’ Eddie said apologetically.
‘Go anyway,’ Richie said, and Eddie began crawling again.
Bill, looking haggard and almost used-up, was waiting for them in the sewer-shaft where the three pipes were lined up like lenses on a dead traffic light. There was room enough here for them to stand up.
‘Over there,’ Bill said. ‘Cuh-Criss. And B-B-Belch.’
They looked. Beverly moaned and Ben put an arm around her. The skeleton of Belch Huggins, clad in moldering rags, seemed more or less intact. What remained of Victor was headless. Bill looked across the shaftway and saw a grinning skull.
There it was; there was the rest of him. Should have left it alone, guys,,
