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
‘Ralph is busy tonight,’ the head stew says to her as they pass in the aisle; the head stew is going back to tourist with a fresh supply of airsick bags. It is half-code, half-joke. Ralph is always busy on bumpy flights. The plane lurches, someone cries out softly, the stewardess turns a bit and puts out a hand to catch her balance, and looks directly into the staring, sightless eyes of the man in 1-A.
Oh my dear God he’s dead, she thinks. The liquor before he got on . . . then the bumps . . . his heart . . . scared to death.
The lanky man’s eyes are on hers, but they are not seeing her. They do not move. They are perfectly glazed. Surely they are the eyes of a dead man.
The stew turns away from that awful gaze, her own heart pumping away in her throat at a runaway rate, wondering what to do, how to proceed, and thanking God that at least the man has no seatmate to perhaps scream and start a panic. She decides she will have to notify first the head stew and then the male crew up front. Perhaps they can wrap a blanket around him and close his eyes. The pilot will keep the belt light on even if the air smooths out so no one can come forward to use the John, and when the other passengers deplane they’ll think he’s just asleep —
These thoughts go through her mind rapidly, and she turns back for a confirming look. The dead, sightless eyes fix upon hers . . . and then the corpse picks up his glass of club soda and sips from it.
Just then the plane staggers again, tilts, and the stew’s little scream of surprise is lost in other, heartier, cries of fear. The man’s eyes move then — not much, but enough so she understands that he is alive and seeing her. And she thinks: Why, I thought when he got on that he was in his mid-fifties, but he’s nowhere near that old, in spite of the graying hair.
She goes to him, although she can hear the impatient chime of call-buttons behind her (Ralph is indeed busy tonight: after their perfectly safe landing at O’Hare thirty minutes from now, the stews will dispose of over seventy airsick bags).
‘Everything okay, sir?’ she asks, smiling. The smile feels false, unreal.
‘Everything is fine and well,’ the lanky man says. She glances at the first-class stub tacked into the little slot on his seat-back and sees that his name is Hanscom. ‘Fine and well. But it’s a bit bumpy tonight, isn’t it? You’ve got your work cut out for you, I think. Don’t bother with me. I’m — He offers her a ghastly smile, a smile that makes her think of scarecrows flapping in dead November fields. ‘I’m fine and well.’
