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
or It might be wounded so badly It would sleep for a hundred years, or a thousand, or ten thousand. They had faced It, seen It with Its final mask laid aside, and It had been horrible enough — oh, for sure! — but once seen, Its physical form was not so bad and Its most potent weapon was taken away from It. They all had, after all, seen spiders before. They were alien and somehow crawlingly dreadful, and he supposed that none of them would ever be able to see another one
(if we ever get out of this)
without feeling a shudder of revulsion. But a spider was, after all, only a spider. Perhaps at the end, when the masks of horror were laid aside, there was nothing with which the human mind could not cope. That was a heartening thought. Anything except
(the deadlights)
whatever had been out there, but perhaps even that unspeakable living light which crouched at the doorway to the macroverse was dead or dying. The deadlights, and the trip into the black to the place where they had been, was already growing hazy and hard to recall in his mind. And that wasn’t really the point. The point, felt but not grasped, was simply that the fellowship was ending . . . it was ending and they were still in the dark. That Other had through their friendship, perhaps been able to make them something more than children. But they were becoming children again. Bill felt it as much as the others.
‘What now, Bill?’ Richie asked, finally saying it right out.
‘I d-d-don’t nuh-nuh –know,’ Bill said. His stutter was back, alive and well. He heard it, they heard it, and he stood in the dark, smelling the sodden aroma of their growing panic, wondering how long it would be before somebody — Stan, most likely it would be Stan — tore things wide open by saying: Well, why don’t you know? You got us into this!
‘And what about Henry?’ Mike asked uneasily. ‘Is he still out there, or what?’
‘Oh, Jeez,’ Eddie said . . . almost moaned. ‘I forgot about him. Sure he is, sure he is, he’s probably as lost as we are and we could run into him any time . . . Jeez, Bill, don’t you have any ideas? Your dad works down here! Don’t you have any ideas at all?’
Bill listened to the distant mocking thunder of the water and tried to have the idea that Eddie — a l l o f t h e m — had a right to demand. Because yes, correct, he had gotten them into this and it was his responsibility to get them back out again. Nothing came. Nothing.
‘I have an idea,’ Beverly said quietly.
In the dark, Bill heard a sound he could not immediately place. A whispery little sound, but not scary. Then there was a more easily placed sound . . . a zipper. What — ? he thought, and then he realized what. She was undressing. For some reason, Beverly was undressing.
‘What are you doing? Richie asked, and his shocked voice cracked on the last word.
‘I know something,’ Beverly said in the dark, and to Bill her voice sounded older. ‘I know because my father told me. I know how to bring us back together. And if we’re not together we’ll never get out.’
‘What?’ Ben asked, sounding bewildered and terrified. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Something that will bring us together forever. Something that will show — ‘
‘Nuh-Nuh-No, B-B-Beverly!’ Bill said, suddenly understanding, understanding everything.
‘ — that will show that I love you all,’ Beverly said, ‘that you’re all my friends.’
‘What’s she t — ‘ Mike began.
Calmly, Beverly cut across his words. ‘Who’s first?’ she asked. ‘I think
8
In the Lair of It / 1985
he’s dying,’ Beverly wept. ‘His arm, It ate his arm — She reached for Bill, clung to him, and Bill shook her off.
‘It’s getting away again!’ he roared at her. Blood caked his lips and chin. ‘Cuh-Cuh-Come on! Richie! B-B-Ben! This tuh-time we’re g-g-going to fuh-hinish her!’
Richie turned Bill toward him, looked at him as you would look at a man who is hopelessly raving. ‘Bill, we have to take care of Eddie. We have to get a tourniquet on him, get him out of here.’
But Beverly was now sitting with Eddie’s head in her lap, cradling him. She had closed his eyes. ‘Go with Bill,’ she said. ‘If you let him die for nothing . if It comes back in another twenty-five years, or fifty, or even two thousand, I swear I’ll . . . I’ll haunt your ghosts. Go!’
Richie looked at her for a moment, indecisive. Then he became aware that her face was losing definition,
