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
on his white tunic.
The power left as suddenly as it had come. Mike looked dully at the shards of broken glass on the bed and his hospital johnny and his own bleeding hand. He heard the quick, light sound of crepe-soled shoes in the hall, approaching.
Now they come, he thought, Oh yes, now. And after they’re gone, who’ll show up? Who’ll show up next?
As they burst into his room, the nurses who had sat calmly on station as his call-bell rang frantically, Mike closed his eyes and prayed for it to be over. He prayed his friends were somewhere under the city, he prayed they were all right, he prayed they would end it.
He didn’t know exactly Who he prayed to . . . but he prayed nonetheless.
13
Under the City / 6:54 A.M.
‘He’s a-a-all ruh –right,’ Bill said presently.
Ben didn’t know how long they had stood in the darkness, holding hands. It seemed to him that he had felt something — something from them, from their circle — go out and then come back. But he did not know where that thing — if it existed at all — had gone, or done.
‘Are you sure, Big Bill?’ Richie asked.
‘Y-Y-Yes.’ Bill released Richie’s hand and Beverly’s. ‘But we h-have to finish this as kwuh-quick as we c-can. C-Come oh-oh-on.’
They went on, Richie or Bill periodically lighting matches. We don’t have so much as apea-shooter among us, Ben thought. But that’s part of it, too, isn’t it? Chüd. What does that mean? What was It, exactly? What was Its final face? And even if we didn’t kill It, we hurt It. How did we do that?
The chamber they walked through — it could no longer be called a tunnel — grew larger and larger. Their footfalls echoed. Ben remembered the smell, that thick zoo smell. He became aware that the matches were no longer necessary — there was light now, light of a sort: a ghastly effulgence that was growing steadily stronger. In that marshy light, his friends all looked like walking corpses.
‘Wall up ahead, Bill,’ Eddie said.
‘I nuh-nuh –know.’
Ben felt his heart begin to pick up speed. There was a sour taste in his mouth and his head had begun to ache. He felt slow and frightened. He felt fat.
‘The door,’ Beverly whispered.
Yes, here it was. Once, twenty-seven years before, they had been able to pass through that door by doing no more than ducking their heads. Now they would have to duck-walk their way through, or crawl on hands and knees. They had grown; here was final proof, if final proof were needed.
The pulse-points in Ben’s neck and wrists felt hot and bloody; his heart had picked up a light and rapid flutter that was close to arrhythmia. Pigeon-pulse, he thought randomly, and licked his lips.
Bright greenish-yellow light flooded out from under the door; it shot through the ornate keyhole in a twisting shaft that looked almost thick enough to cut.
The mark was on the door, and again they all saw something different in that strange device. Beverly saw Tom’s face. Bill saw Audra’s severed head with blank eyes that stared at him in dreadful accusation. Eddie saw a grinning skull poised over two crossed bones, the symbol for poison. Richie saw the bearded face of a degenerate Paul Bunyan, eyes narrowed to killer’s slits. And Ben saw Henry Bowers.
‘Bill, are we strong enough?’ he asked. ‘Can we do this?’
‘I duh-hon’t nuh –nuh –know,’ Bill said.
‘What if it’s locked?’ Beverly asked in a small voice. Tom’s face mocked her.
‘Ih-It’s not,’ Bill said. ‘Pluh –haces like this are n-never luh-luh –locked.’ He placed the tented fingers of his right hand on the door — he had to bend over to do it — and pushed. It swung open on a flood of sick yellow-green light. That zoo smell wafted out at them, the smell of the past become the present, horribly alive, obscenely vital.
Roll, wheel, Bill thought randomly, and looked around at them. Then he dropped to his hands and knees. Beverly followed, then Richie, then Eddie. Ben came last, his flesh crawling at the feel of the ancient grit on the floor. He passed through the portal, and as he straightened up in the weird glow of fire crawling up and down the dripping stone walls in snakes of light, the last memory socked home with the force of a psychic battering ram.
He cried out, staggering back, one hand going to his head, and his first
