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
to go. This is no joke. People are dead, and I made a promise a long time ago — ‘
Tom heard little of this. He bellowed and ran at her with his head down, the belt swinging blindly. He hit her with it, driving her away from the doorway and along the bedroom wall. He cocked his arm back, hit her, cocked his arm back, hit her, cocked his arm back, hit her. Later that morning he would not be able to raise the arm above eye level until he had swallowed three codeine tablets, but for now he was aware of nothing but the fact that she was defying him. She had not only been smoking, she had tried to grab the belt away fromhim, and oh folks, oh friends and neighbors, she had asked for it, and he would testify before the throne of God Almighty that she was going to get it.
He drove her along the wall, swinging the belt, raining blows on her. Her hands were up to protect her face, but he had a clear shot at the rest of her. The belt made thick bull whip cracks in the quiet room. But she did not scream, as sh e sometimes did, and she did not beg
him to stop, as she usually did. Worst of all, she did not cry, as she always did. The only sounds were the belt and their breathing, his heavy and hoarse, hers quick and light.
She broke for the bed and the vanity table on her side of it. Her shoulders were red from the belt’s blows. Her hair streamed fire. He lumbered after her, slower but big, very big — he had played squash until he had popped an Achilles tendon two years ago, and since then his weight had gotten out of hand a little bit (or maybe ‘a lot’ would have been a better way to put it), but the muscle was still there, firm cordage sheathed in the fat. Still, he was a little alarmed at how out of breath he was.
She reached the vanity and he thought s he would crouch there, or maybe try to crawl under it. Instead she groped . . . turned . . . and suddenly the air was full of flying missiles. She was throwing cosmetics at him. A bottle of Chantilly struck him squarely between the nipples, fell to his feet, shattered. He was suddenly enveloped in the gagging scent of flowers.
‘Quit it!’ he roared. ‘Quit it, you bitch!’
Instead of quitting it, her hands flew along the vanity’s littered glass top, grabbing whatever they found, throwing it. He groped at his chest where the bottle of Chantilly had struck him, unable to believe she had hit him with something, even as other objects flew around him. The bottle’s glass stopper had cut him. It was not much of a cut, little more than a triangular scratch, but was there a certain red-haired lady who was going to see the sun come up from a hospital bed? Oh yes, there was. A certain lady who —
A jar of cream struck him above the right eyebrow with sudden, cracking force. He heard a dull thud seemingly inside his head. White light exploded over that eye’s field of vision and he fell back a step, mouth dropping open. Now a tube of Nivea cream struck his belly with a small slapping sound and she was — was she? was it possible? — yes! She was yelling at him!
‘I’m going to the airport, you son of a bitch! Do you hear me? I have business and I’m going! You want to get out of my way because I’M GOING!’
Blood ran into his right eye, stinging and hot. He knuckled it away.
He stood there for a moment, staring at her as if he had never seen her before. In a way he never had. Her breasts heaved rapidly. Her face, all flush and livid pallor, blazed. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth in a snarl. She had, however, denuded the top of the vanity table. The miss ile silo was empty. He could still read the fear in her eyes . . . but it was still not fear of him.
‘You put those clothes back,’ he said, struggling not to pant as he spoke. That would not sound good. That would sound weak. ‘Then you put the suitcase back and get into bed. And if you do those things, maybe I won’t beat you up too bad. Maybe you’ll be able to go out of the house in two days instead of two weeks.’
‘Tom, listen to me.’ She spoke slowly. Her gaze was very clear. ‘If you come near me again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand that, you tub of guts? I’ll kill you.’
And suddenly — maybe it was because of the utter loathing on her face, the contempt, maybe because she had called him a tub of guts, or maybe only because of the rebellious wa y her breasts rose and fell — the fear was suffocating him. It was not a bud or a bloom but a whole goddam garden, the fear, the horrible fear that he was not here.
