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
of Its mouth, plush as a satin pillow in a coffin.
It went straight for Eddie.
Its beak raked his shoulder and he felt pain sink into his flesh like acid. Blood flowed down his chest. He cried out as the backwash of Its beating wings blew noxious tunnel air in his face. It wheeled back, Its eye glaring malevolently, rolling in Its socket, blurring only as Its nictitating eyelid jittered down momentarily to cover the eye with tissue-thin film. Its claws sought Eddie, who ducked, screaming. They razored through the back of his shirt, cutting it open, drawing shallow scarlet lines along his shoulderblades. Eddie yelled and tried to crawl away but the bird wheeled back again.
Mike broke forward, digging in his pocket. He came out with a one-blade Buck knife. As the bird dived on Eddie again, he swept it in a quick, tight arc across one of the bird’s talons. It cut deep, and blood poured out. The bird banked away and then came back, folding Its wings, diving in like a bullet. Mike fell to one side at the last moment, slashing upward with the Buck knife. He missed, and the bird’s claw hit his wrist with such force that his hand went numb and tingly — the bruise that later bloomed there went most of the way to his elbow. The Buck flew into the dark.
The bird came back, screeching triumphantly, and Mike rolled his body over Eddie’s and waited for the worst.
Stan walked forward toward the two boys huddled on the floor as the bird returned. He stood, small and somehow trim in spite of the dirt grimed into his hands and arms and pants and shirt, and suddenly held his hands out in a curious gesture — palms up, fingers down. The bird uttered another squawk and sheared off, bulleting by Stan, missing him by inches, lifting his hair and then dropping it in the buffeting wake of Its passage. He turned in a tight circle to face Its return.
‘I believe in scarlet tanagers even though I never saw one,’ he said in a high clear voice. The bird screamed a nd banked away as if he’d shot at it. ‘Same with vultures, and the New Guinea mudlark and the flamingos of Brazil.’ The bird screamed, circled, and suddenly flew on up the tunnel, squawking. ‘I believe in the golden bald eagle!’ Stan screamed after it. ‘AndI think there really might be a phoenix somewhere! But I don’t believe in you, so get the fuck out of here! Get out! Hit the road, Jack!’
He stopped then, and the silence seemed very large.
Bill, Ben, and Beverly went to Mike and Eddie; they helpe d Eddie to his feet and Bill looked at the cuts. ‘Nuh-not d-d-deep,’ he said. ‘But I b-bet they h-hurt like h-h-hell.’
‘It tore my shirt to pieces, Big Bill.’ Eddie’s cheeks glistened with tears, and he was wheezing again. The bellowing barbarian’s voice was gone; it was hard to believe it had ever been there. ‘What am I going to tell my mom?’
Bill smiled a little. ‘Why d-d-don’t we wuh-worry about that when we g-g-g-get out of here? Give yourself a bluh-hast, E-Eddie.’
Eddie did, inhaling deeply and then wheezing.
‘That was great, man,’ Richie told Stan. ‘That was just frockin greatl’
Stan was shivering all over. ‘There’s no bird like that, that’s all. There never has been and there never will be.’
‘We’re coming!’ Henry screamed from behind them. His voice was utterly demented. He was laughing and howling now. He sounded like something that has crawled out of a crack in the roof of hell. ‘Me’n Belch! We’re coming and we’ll get you little punks! You can’t get away!’
Bill shouted: ‘G-G –Get out, H-H Henry! W-W-While there’s still tuh-tuh-time!’
Henry’s response was a hollow, inarticulate scream. They heard a hustle of footsteps and in a burst of comprehension Bill understood Henry’s whole purpose: he was real, he was mortal, he could not be stopped by an aspirator or a bird-book. Magic would not work on Henry. He was too stupid.
‘C-C-Come oh-on. We guh-gotta stay a-a-ahead of h-h-him.’
They went on again, holding hands, Eddie’s tattered shirt flapping behind him. The light grew brighter, the tunnel ever huger. As it canted downward, the ceiling flew away above until they could barely see it. It now seemed to them that they were not walking in a tunnel at all but making their way through a titanic underground courtyard, the approach to some cyclopean castle. The light from the walls had become a running green-yellow fire. The smell was stronger,
