"A child blind from birth doesn't even know he is blind until someone tells him. Even then he has only the most academic idea of what blindness is; only the formerly sighted have a real grip on the thing." (p.210)
“The beat
did more than make him happy. It made him feel bigger, stronger, more there. There was power in that music (the
country’s rock and roll), a power which seemed to most rightful belong to all
the skinny kids, fat kids, ugly kids, shy kids – the world’s losers, in short.”
(page 702)
Seven children had the nightmare, the same one, and one of them is William Denbrough. Bill’s little brother got killed by a creature in yellow clown
suit then later they named It. The Clown called itself as Pennywise, has frequently terrorized and left the mark on the children. After the death of George Denbrough, there were several kids that were reported
missing. The bodies of children that they were found back then and now were not
sexually molested, not even precisely mutilated, but partially eaten. Missing
boys prompted new fears. Now, it was 1985, the seven kids were back home want to banish the
creature. They now had grown up to be somebody, and they were the Stuttering
William Denbrough, Beverly Marsh, Stanley Uris, Michael Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak,
Richie Tozier, and Ben Hanscom.
The 1376 pages long book was published by Hodder, in 2017, the original edition was in 1986. At the very first minute, the cover and volume had caught my eyes when the book sat at the bookstore. I thought it was a sci-fi one, but this novel is a horror book. No doubt, Mr. King’s works never fail his fans, and indeed, It is the best one of three books of his that I’ve read. The fiction has already in motion picture, but unfortunately I don't watch it yet. The narator is Michael Hanlon.
IT, A Horror Novel by Stephen King: summary
A small boy
in yellow slicker and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper
boat. The rain had not stopped, but it was finally slackening. George Denbrough
was six. His brother, William, known to most of the kids at Derry Elementary
School, younger brother of the Stuttering Bill, was at home, hacking out the
last of a nasty case of influenza.
In that autumn
of 1957, eight months before the real horrors began and twenty years before the
final showdown, Stuttering Bill was ten years old. Bill had made the boat beside which George now
ran. Water
sprayed
out from beneath from his galoshes in muddy sheets. Their buckles made jolly jingling
as George Denbrough ran toward his boat. He tried to catch it, he watched his
boat swing, and the disappeared. He got up and walked over to the storm drain.
A spooky
sound came up from below. There were yellow eyes in there, he was ready to run.
There was a clown in the storm drain. Then clown held a bunch of balloons, all
colors, like gorgeous ripe fruit in one hand. The clown seized his little hand.
George’s shoulder socked against the cement of the curb and Dave Gardener, who
stayed home from his job that day because of the flood, saw only a small boy in
a yellow slicker, a small boy who was screaming and writhing in the gutter.
Dave was the first got there, although he arrived only forty-five seconds after
the first scream, George was already dead.
The death of Adrian Mellon (1984)
Don
was the boyfriend of the late Adrian Mellon insisted that the boys had killed
him, but Officer Harold Gardner, the son of Dave Gardener, recognized Don’s
grief. It was hardly to call him a man, he was wearing lipstick and satin pants
so tight. In an interrogation room, two cops were speaking with John Garton,
eighteen and Steven Dubay, seventeen. They only pushed Adrian TO THE bank, and only
wanted to scare that gay boy, did not mean to kill him.
Don Hagarty
looked down and saw the clown- and it was the wild tufts of orange hair that
brought such comparisons to mind. The smile painted over the white pancake was
red, not orange, and the eyes were a weird shiny silver. He wore a baggy suit
big-orange pompon buttons; on his hands were cartoon gloves. The clown called
him by name.
The kids
threw Adrian Melon over the bridge and into the water then. Then Chris Unwin saw
the clown. The clown was dragging Adrian out on the far side with one arm; its balloon
were in its other hand. The clown twisted its head and grinned up at Chris.
Harold Gardener
kept his peace until months later, the time before John Garton and Steven Dubay
were to go on trial in Derry District Court for the murder of Adrian Mellon. He
wanted to talk about the clown, but nobody heard him. John Webber Garton was
convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to ten to twenty years in Thomaston
State Prison. Steven Bishoff Dubay was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and
sentenced to fifteen years in Shawshank State Prison. Don Hagarty and Chris
Unwin have left the town.
Stanley Uris
(present day, 1985)
Something was
wrong Stanley Uris showered early each morning and sometimes soaked late at
night. About three month before that terrible night, Stanley had discovered
that a childhood friend of his has turned to be a novelist. The name on the
book was William Denbrough, but he sometimes called him Stuttering Bill.
The book by
Denbrough – the one she tried to read
and then put aside- was about werewolves. She loved her man, she loved her
house. When she accepted Stanley’s engagement ring, her parents had been both
angry and unhappy. Patty met him at sorority party. He had come over to her
school from New York State University, where he was a scholarship student. Stanley’s
own parents had been equally concerned about the marriage.
Patty had
landed a job teaching shorthand and business English in a small town, forty
miles south of Atlanta. Her teaching gone well. Stanley got a job driving a
bakery truck. A big shopping center opened, he got a job with H & R Block
office. Years passed, he was quit and opened his own business. He was young,
personable, bright, apt. Corridor Video, was a pioneer in the nascent videotape
business. They gave the job to a young, bespectacled Jew. His work with
Corridor Video had brought him into contact with some of Atlanta’s richest and
most powerful men.
Stanley lay
with his back propped against the rear of the tub. His mouth hung open like a
sprung door. His expression was one abysmal, frozen horror. He had slit his
inner forearms open from wrist to the crook and the elbow. He had dipped his
right forefinger in his own blood had had written a single word on the blue
tiles above the tub, a staggering letters, but formed word IT . Patty began to
scream.
Richard
Tozier
He had
listened to Mike Hanlon told him, said all the right things, answered Mike’s
questions. He had no thought of Derry Town House in twenty-five years, and if
Mike had not called, he has supposed he might never have thought of it again in
his life. Rich and his family had moved away from Derry in the spring of 1960,
how fast all of their faces faded his gang, that pitiful bunch of loser with
their little clubhouse in what had been known to them then as the Barrens.
Hiding from the big kids. Hiding from Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, Belch Huggins,
Peter Gordon, Moose Sadler, and Patrick Hockstetter.
What a bunch
losers they had been – Stan Uris with his big Jew-boy nose, Bill Denbrough with
his stuttering, Beverly Marsh with her bruises and her cigarette rolled into
the sleeve of her blouse, Ben Hanscom who had been so big, Richie Tozier with
his thick glasses.
Ben
Hanscom
Although
Ben’s roots were in New England and he had gone to college in California, there
was more than a touch of the extravagant Texan about him. Mr. Hanscom might be
building a skyscraper in New York, a new art gallery in Redondo Beach, a
business building in Salt Lake City, but come Friday night he was home. Two
years ago he had been in London, first designing and then overseeing the
construction of the new BBC communications center.
The
architect had got bad news from home. He just had a call from an old friend,
Mike Hanlon. He had tried to forget everything about being a kid. He now
remembered Bevv and Bill. He was fat and poor.
Eddie
Kaspbrak
An extremely
large woman was climbing slowly to the second floor. Myra Kaspbrak was huge. She
had only been big when Eddie married her five years ago, but he sometimes
thought his subconscious had seen the potential for hugeness in her; God knew
his own mother had been a whopper. She looked badly frightened. He gathered his
clothes and medicine and said he had to go away. A telephone call had asked him
to go home.
He had never
driven Al Pacino before in his life, but Eddie had driven enough of
celebrities. He work for a limousine company. He now ran his own limousine business.
Eddie
stuffed the aspirator into his mouth, and like a man, like a man miming
suicide, pulled the trigger. He had suffered from asthma since kid until now. Derry
memory had filled his head. He remembered his own boyhood at last, and how he
spent his summer vacation in that dim dead year of 1985.
Beverly
Rogan
He had met
her in a downtown Chicago singles bar four years ago. Conversation had been
easy enough, because they both worked in the same building. Tom worked in
public relation company, and Beverly Marsh was an assistant designer at a
famous label.
She had been
some kind of fine-looking, with dynamite body, and that gorgeous fall of red
wavy hair. She had tried to explain to her husband that she had a phone call from
a friend, there was had been some trouble back in her home town. Tom had bit
her as usual, he insisted his wife would meet his childhood boyfriend. They
were only kid back then, but Bill was a novelist now. All the fight promptly
went out of Tom Rogan.
She looked
around once, quickly, suspecting that she would never see her house again. She laughed
at the stars, frightened but free, her terror as sharp as pain, and as sweet as
a ripe October apple.
Bill
Denbrough
He had been
thinking about home a lately. His wife looked at him with her lovely eyes,
sitting there in a tatty leased house chair with her feet curled beneath the
hem of her gown. Here was a poor boy from the state of Maine who wanted to be a
New England version of Faulkner – he wanted to write novel about the grim lives
of the poor in blank verse. Bill
Denbroughs, meanwhile, has written one locked-room mystery tale, three science
fiction stories, and several horror tales.
The man who
was once known as Stuttering Bill has become a success at the age of
twenty-three. Three years later ad three thousand miles from northern New England,
he attains a queer a kind of celebrity by marrying a woman who is movie star
and five years his senior at Hollywood’s Church in the Pines. He has been hired
to do the screen play of his second novel. But, he has to go away, backed his childhood
home town, Maine. Mike Hanlon just called him.
Michael Hanlon
On one level
of his mind he was and am living with the most grotesque, capering horrors; on
another he had continue to live the mundane life of a small city librarian. He
was born in Derry hospital, attended Derry elementary School; went to junior
and high school in Derry too. He went to the University of Maine - aint in
Derry. He was a small town man living a small town life, one among millions. Derry
children disappeared unexplained and unfound the rate of forty to sixty a year.
Most are teenagers.
The
Loser’s Club
Ben Hanscom
was hated more than any of the other of the Loser’s club by Hendry Bowers not
only because of what had happened that day when he and Henry had shot the
chutes down into the Barrens from the street, but mostly because Ben did not
allowed Henry to copy during examinations.
Richie
Tozier had fooled Henry. Henry hated Stan for he was a Jew and Henry had once
washed Stan’s face with snow until it bled.
Bill
believed that Hendry hated him the most because he was skinny, because he
stuttered, and because he liked to dress well. He did hate all four of them,
but the boy in Derry who was number one was Michel Hanlon, who lived a quarter
of a mile down the road from the shirttail Bowers farm. Henry’s father, who was
every bit as crazy as he was reputed to be. Bowers’s senior filled his son’s
ears with a litany of hate and hard luck. Henry gave put the poisoned meat to
Mike’s dog.
While
Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, Belch Huggins, Peter Gordon, and a half-retarded
high-school boy named Steve Sadler were chasing a winded Mike Hanlon, Bill and
the rest of the Loser’s Club were still on the bank, pondering their nightmare.
Mr. Nell
He
simply stood there looking at him. He looked from Ben to the spreading pool
behind the dam, his face that of a man who can’t believe what he is seeing. He
was a burly Irishman, his hair a premature white, combed back in neat waves
beneath his peaked blue cap. He was a man no more medium height, but to the
five boys arrayed before him he looked at least eight feet tall.
Ben’s childhood
The sound of
the bell burring up and down the halls of Derry School, a big brick building which
stood on Jackson Street, and its sound the children in Ben Hanscom’s fifth grade
classroom raised spontaneous cheer - Mrs Douglas was the strictest of teachers,
made no effort to quell the children. Mrs Douglas was holding their report
cards in her hand.
Sally
Mueller convinced her friend Beverly Marsh, who sat in the next row that Bev
would pass. Sally was bright, pretty, bright and vivacious. Bev was also
pretty. Another girl sat near them was Greta Bowie. Sally and Greta both came
from rich family with houses on the elite complex while Bev came to school from
slummy apartment building. Ben would
sometimes look sideways at Beverly, stealing her face. He supposed he had a
crush on her, and his heart in love with her.
It was Henry
Bowers. Henry was in Ben’s fifth grade class instead of six grade with his
friends Belch Huggins and Victor Criss because he had been kept back the year
before. During the final test, Mrs Douglas had reseated them in random. Ben had
ended sitting up to Henry Bowers. Henry was a big boy even for twelve. He was
furious when Ben did not give him copy.
Someone
bumped him, he was Victor Criss. His hair combed back in an Elvis pompadour.
Ben, his heart still breathing rapidly, saw that Belch Huggins was standing across
the street. Berverly was a sweet dream; the candy was a sweet reality.
Ben loved library. He liked the smell of the book. There was the curfew poster for kids
since George Denrough’s death. Everyone agreed that there had been at least
five since last winter. Betty Ripsom had been found the day after Christmas in
the area of turnpike construction on Outer Jackson Street. The girl, who was
thirteen, had been found mutilated and frozen into muddy earth.
Ben’s mother
was a young woman still – only thirty-two but raising a boy by herself had put
mark on her. She worked forty hours a week in the spool and bale room at Starks’s
Mills. She sometimes cough so long and hard. She was a hard woman, he loved her
very much. Some crazy men preyed on little children out there. His mother did
not know he had no friends. A figure was standing in those tangle weeds and low
bushes. It held a clutch of balloons. He could not see the figure’s face, but
he could see the baggy suit. It was a clown. Ben loved poetry, and he sent a
poem to Bev.
Bill
Bill knew
who they were. They had beaten up on Richie. Henry, Belch, and Victor were just
about the worst kids in Derry school. The Barrens was no mystery to Bill. He had played there a lot with Richie, more frequently
with Eddie, sometimes by himself. And as always, once he was on Silver he became someone else. He stood on the pedals, his bicycle, Silver, was all the time with him on the street.
On the first
night of summer vacation Bill went to George’s room. He missed the little kid,
that was the truth. He opened the album now. It filled with pictures George had gotten his
mother, father, aunts, and uncles to give him. George’s eyes rolled in the
picture, his right eye drooped in a wink: See
you soon, Bill. The book struck the wall and fell. The pages turned. The
book opened itself to that awful picture again, and the picture which school
friend 1957-1958 beneath it. The blood flowed across the page and began to drip
onto the floor.
Missing
boy in 1958
Edward
L. Corcoran was reported missing. The missing boy was ten. His disappearance
has prompted new fears that Derry’s young people are being stalked by a killer. In a bizarre
new twist to disappearance of Eddie Corcoran. In June of 1958, the court
ordered the exhumation of Corcoran’s younger brother. Dorsey Corcoran, who also lived with his
mother and stepfather, died of what were reported to be accidental causes in
May 0f 1957. The boy has died suffering from multiple fracture including a
fractured skull. The boy’s stepfather was the admitting person. Dorsey had been
playing on a stepladder in the garage and apparently fallen from the top.
In June of
1958, the medical examiner’s report showed that Corcoran’s younger brother,
Dorsey Corcoran, was badly beaten. Henrietta Dumont, who teaches fifth grade at
Derry Elementary School on Jackson Street, said that Eddie Corcoran, who was
now been missing for nearly week, often came to school covered bruises. In a
dramatic development in the court trial of Richard Macklin, the stepfather, broke down under the county
attorney, ad admitted he had beaten the four-year-old boy to death with a
recoilless hammer, which he then buried at far end of his wife’ vegetable
garden before taking Dorsey to hospital. The stepfather, sentenced as the
murder of Dorsey, continued to claim he had no idea where Edward Concoran was.
In 1962, the
composed body of a boy about the age of Edward Corcoran, who disappeared from
his home in June of 1958, was definitely not that missing youth. The body was
found in Massachusetts, buried in a gravel pit. Richard Macklin, who was
convicted of the murder of his stepson nine years ago, was found dead in his
small apartment late yesterday afternoon.
Corcoran’s
grade were not the best because he had missed a lot since his mother’s
remarriage, but he was not stupid boy by any means. Edward walked closer to the
Canal, which rippled between its concrete sides like oiled silk. The water
flowed smoothly and silently out of a concrete arch, past the place where Eddie
sat, and the down covered wooden footbridge between Bassey Park and Derry High
School. The park was peaceful place, and he thought the best part of it was
right here where he was sitting.
The Canal
had a terrible, irresistible power in the week or two after the ice went out.
His was dropped open. He saw Dorsey. His dead brother called his name. It was
not Dorsey after him now; it was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Green
fluid dripped from black ashes like vertical mouths in its cheeks. Its eyes
were white and jellylike. It webbed fingers were tipped with claws like razors.
It take him to the Canal, carry him down into the dank blackness of the Canal’s
underground passage, To eat him there.
Mike
Unable to
sleep, plagued by bad dreams, a boy named Michael rose soon after the first
light on the first full day of summer vacation. Mike, dressed in corduroys, a
tee-shirt, and black high-topped Keds. He rode up to Bassey Park, still
wandering, simply riding, enjoying the stillness of the early day. He
dismounted his bike, pushed down the kickstand, and walked toward the Canal.
Something caught his eyes. The grass was springing back up, they went in the
direction of the Canal. There were blood.
Starting in
July, there was picking as well as hoeing – peas, radishes first, the lettuce,
and the tomatoes, the corn and beans in August, more corn and beans in
September, the pumpkins and the squash. Mike was paid, and so was his mother;
that money was theirs, and Mike’s father, Will Hanlon, never once asked them
what they did with it. At last day would come when Normie Sadler drove his
potatoes-digger back home; by then the air would have most likely turned gray
and cold and there would be frost and the drift orange pumpkins piled against
the side of the barn.
It was not
all school and chores, Will Hanlon told his wife more than one that the boy
needed time to go fishing. Mike looked around the sunwashed empty field. The
wind blew a low conch-note in his ears and another shadow cruised silently
across the field, like shadow of a giant bat or bird. The bird squalled again,
and suddenly the light at the end of the smokestack was blotted out.
The
five of them knocked off around four o’clock. They sat much higher on the bank
– the place where Bill, Ben, and Eddie had eaten lunch was now underwater. Following
that day the house at 29 Neibolt Street had taken a kind of glow in Eddie’s
imagination. His hand gripped his aspirator, but, oddly his asthma had not
closed down as it had on the day he fled from the hobo with rotted nose. The
hobo called his name. The leper was crawling out. It was wearing a clown suit.
Bill
They got out
of George’s room just in time. Bill showed them the album. Bill’s mother was a
voice at the foot of the stairs. They saw it was the clown pretending to be
George. The monsters were scary but not really dangerous.
Bill’s dad had
come to approach the kids on the dining table. He wore steel-rimmed a
pleasant-looking man with rather thin face. He looked at Richie and guessed the
boy just watched the horror movie.
Richie
The day was
sunny, breezy, and cool. Richie jived along toward the theater Alladin. Going
to the movies always made him feeling good. He saw a girl in a beige pleated
skirt and white sleeves blouse sitting on a bench outside of a drugstore. It
was Beverly Marsh. He liked Bev a lot. He admired her looks. Richie saw his
friend Ben Hanscom in theater, then he introduced him to her. He called him
Haystack, he liked Ben. It was his idol’s name, Haystack Calhoun, the wrestler.
Beverly sat between the boys.
Five days
later, as June drew toward its end, Bill told Richie that he wanted go down to
Neibolt Street and investigate under the porch where Eddie had seen the leper.
Biil was walking Silver, they had just arrived back at Richie’s house.
As here was
Neibolt Street. Derry Trainyards, a blue sign under the street-sign read. Bill’s
father said that a lot of trainmen had lived out this way until the end of
World War II – engineers, conductors, signalmen, yardworkers, baggage handlers.
A FOR SALE sign flapped forlornly from the porch of one.
Richie heard
a Voice of the Irish Cop, Mr. Nell’s voice (the druggist). The creature in the cellar let out an ear-splitting roar
of rage. The Werewolf was crossing the lawn toward them. There was Silver,
still leaning against the tree. Bill jumped onto the seat and threw his
father’s pistol into the carrier basket where they had carried so many play
guns. The boys screamed miserably and ran away.
Beverly
The bathroom
was at the back of their four-room apartment. The tubs was rustmarked, and the
toilet seat cracked. The was-basin was also water-stained. She gasp a voice. It
was from the drain, a voice of young child who had perhaps just learned to
talk. The voice was asking help. There were no really little kids in the
building.
The bathroom
door was firmly closed. The voice from the drain claimed his name was Matthew
Clements. He said the clown took him down there in the pipes and soon they
would come and take Beverly, Ben, Bill and Eddie. Then another voices came up
and declared they were Betty and Veronica. A gout of blood suddenly belched
from the drain, splattering the sink and the mirror and the wallpaper with its
frogs and-lily-pads pattern.
Her father,
Al Marsh, shocked to hear Bevv’s screaming. The big man did not see the blood.
He was still wearing his gray fatigue pants and his gray shirts. Al was a
janitor in Derry Hospital. He did not drink and he did not smoke. She saw her
father was washing his hands in the basin, she could see the blood in his
hands. His hand suddenly swung and spatted painfully against her buttocks.
Elfrida
Marsh was a small woman with graying hair and a grim look. She had changed into
her waitress uniform. One of the Bowers’
s gang, Bradley Donovan, called Beverly as the whore’s daughter. She cried out
in a shrill and furious voice her mother was not a whore, she was a waitress.
Eddie even did not understand what a whore was.
The boys in the Bevv's bathroom
They pooled
their money and discovered they had forty cents enough for two ice-creams from
the drugstores. Because old Mr Keene was a grouch and would not let kids under
twelve eat their stuff at soda fountain.
He looked
small, slim, and preternaturally neat – much too net for a kid who was just
barely eleven. She insisted that it was Ronnie’s voice, though she knew Ronnie
was dead. Bevv showed the boys the blood in her bathroom. All of them could see
the blood but her parents never saw it.
Stanley
asked them all to clean the blood, and he had fifty cents to get some rags.
They cleaned as good as they could. Stan worked for on the wallpaper with
studious care, Ben finished by removing the light-bulb over the sink. The four
of them went over to the line of plastic cantour chair.
The two more
disappearances in the past week - both children. One of them a sixteen-year-old
boy named Dennis Torrio, the other just five who was out sledding. They maybe
on the nightside of Derry, keeping company with folks like Betty Ripsom and
Patrick, Patrick Hockstetter and Eddie Corcoran.
The Fire at
the Black Spot
There were
people who lived in Derry for twenty years, and there was a special barracks
for noncoms at the old Derry Army Air Corp Corps Base, a barracks that was a
good half a mile from the rest of the base.
One of the
soldiers who returned to Derry after his service tour came to an end in 1937
was Mike’s dad. He told him the story.
William
Hanlon was coming back with four of his buddies from Boston. A sergeant south
named Sergeant Wilson ran the barracks, the white man disked Hanlon. He pushed
hard on Mike’s father, so he did the double time.
There was
sixty people killed in that fire, it was set by Derry branch Maine Legion of
White Decency. Some kids Mike went to school with, their fathers struck that
lit the Black spot on fire. The Legion of White Decency was the Northerners’s version
Ku Klux Klan. They marched the same white sheets and they burned the same
cross, they wrote the same hate-notes to black folks. Mike’s father was not
sure they burned the Black Spot because of they were black. They did it because
of that soil. It seemed that bad things, hurtful things, did right well in the
soil of Derry.
There were
good folks in Derry too. When the funerals were held afterward, thousands of
people turned out, and they turned out for the blacks as well as the whites. He
left the army in 1937 with a disability pension. Because the disability money
he was able to marry his mother. They did not come to Derry, they moved to
Houston. He kept an eye on the ads announcing land for sale in the Derry News.
There were
kids at school who said Henry’s father was crazy. Butch Bowers was the Marines.
He was never right after he came back from Pacific. When Mike was fifteen, Mike’s
father told him the Black Spot fire. This time was in hospital bed in critical
situation.
The Derry
Army Base was a big patch of land in those days. The major gave the black
soldier their own club. It was dark, and smelly, full of old tools and boxes.
The floor was dirt and it had no electricity. Trev Dawson was pretty good jackleg
carpenter. Alan (Pop Snopes) was the oldest of them, ran an electric line. Will
Hanlon put a sign that said the Black Spot. It looked nice enough, the white
boys started grumble about it. They found a pretty decent band – cornet, drum,
piano, clarinet, saxophone, guitar, harmonica, juiceharp, or even just a comb
with waxed paper over it. The band got better and better. The white people
showed up, they brought their own booze. They did not just come from Derry,
either. They came from Bangor, Newport, and Haven. There was not room for
dance, so they had just sort of stand.
The band was
playing louder’s and a factory whistle. Everybody was whooping it up and having
a good time. Nobody inside knew anything was wrong unti Gerry McCrew, who was
playing assistant cook that night, opened the door and to the kitchen and damn
near blowtorched. Flames shot out and burned most of his hair. The flames was
so bright, the heat was bakin hot. Will Hanlon was saved by Trev. Some people
had gotten out, and then they started to jam up.
The door was
shut and they heard people screaming on the other side, they were burning. It
was Trev Dawson that made it so it was only eighty or so died instead of a
hundred or maybe two hundred. They saw the real ghosts, but nothing like men and
women in the fire. It was a hawk. Mike had forgotten about seeing the giant
bird when he was eleven.
Home Coming
Now Derry
Mall was on Bill’s left. When they had been kids all of this had been a great
long field full of long grasses and gigantic nodding sunflowers which marked on
north-eastern end of the Barrens.
Mike Hanlon
was in the lobby, sitting in a wicker chair with a huge flaring back. Before
him was a man who stood about five-seven. He was skinny. The hostess of the
restaurant guided them to the small private room. In brief moment it seemed to
him that none of them had grown up. Richie Tozier was rocked back in his chair
so that he was leaning against the wall, caught in the act of saying something
to Berverly Marsh. There was Eddie Kaspbrak, sitting on Beverly’s left, and in
front of him on the table.
Richie was
not wearing glasses. Beverly had become a stunningly beautiful woman. Eddie’s
face was prematurely line and made older still by rimless spectacles he wore. His
hair was short, worn in an out-of-date style that had been known as Ivy League
in the late fifties. The watch on one wrist was A Patek Philippe. Ben was the
one who had really changed, and looking at him again, Bill felt unreality was
easily over him. His face was the same, and his hair, although graying and longer.
Ben had gotten thin. Beverly in a short skirt which showed most of her long,
coltish legs.
There was a
moment of silence among the six of them that was beyond description. Stan was
not there. Beverly Marsh was now Beverly Rogan. She said she married to a
wonderful man in Chicago who turned her to be a successful dress business.
Eddie owned a limousine company in New York – Ben as an architect, Bill as a
writer. Richie was a di jockey in California. Mike Hanlon
produced a small notebook from his pocket. Disappearances of children, of whole
families, are recorded in old diary extracts. Nine children were dead this year.
Ben Hanscom
He
remembered that the day after he had seen the mummy on the iced- up Canal, his
life gone usual. Nothing much had changed on the Children Library. She did look
up, a young girl pretty, and for one absurd moment it seem to Ben that the
fantasy was really going to come true. He had looked up, hoping, as he had
hoped as a kid. As the sudden sunlit glint of Beverly’s ankle-bracelet had shot
arrow more primitive than simple love or affection through his heart on the last
day of school in 1958. That feeling of deja-vu swept him again.
The voice
screamed and it was coming from above. He looked up and saw Pennywise the Clown
standing at the top lefthand staircase, looking down at him. The clown shrieked
laughter again. The name plate on the circulation desk identified pretty young librarian
as Carole Danner. Ben was faintly aware his face now running with sweat, and
that his shirt was plastered to his body. Carole looked at Ben and her face
sharpened with concern. She asked him that if he needed to lie down, there was
a cot in Mr. Mike Hanlon’s office. He looked up at the landing, the clown was
gone.
Beverly
and Her Old Apartment
Her father
might still be living in Derry. She had gotten a postcard from him. Ten years
ago. He had loved her, and in some was she supposed that had everything to do
why she had fallen so desperately in love with Bill Denbrough that long summer
of 1958. She simply lived with his face in her heart all the time. She would
die for him, but she also liked the fat Ben.
Her apartment
was occupied by old lady and she told Beverly that her father has been dead last
five years. Mrs Kersh sounded like Yoda in The
Empire Strikes Back, and she let pale Beverly to come in. Her old apartment
seemed much smaller but safe enough. Her room was becoming a sewing room. She
smiled and the woman’s eyes had changed. She turned; her father’s face hung
with doughy, running flesh.
She tried to
run and looked again. Now her dead father was not wearing the witch’s black
dress but the clown suit with the big button. She was on feet running. Brakes
squealed and a horse voice. The clown was gone.
Richie
Tozier
That was a
show Richie really wanted to see, but he knew there was not a chance. His dad
was neutral on the subject of rock and roll and could perhaps had been swayed,
but Richie knew in his heart that his mother’s wishes would rule on the subject
- until he was seventeen – and by then, his mother was firmly convinced, the country’s
rock and roll mania would have passed.
And now here
he was again, a Richie who had finally all the rock and roll he had ever
wanted. His eyes went to the marque in front of City Center and saw the letter
which mocked him. Richie looked back at Paul Bunyan, patron saint of Derry. The
Statue Paul turned to be a giant. He had even began to think about the
possibility of hallucinations when the pain struck his eyes again.
He heard a
seam tear loose in the underarm of his sport coat. The clown looked at him. Its
eyes were widening, widening and in those black pupils, each as big as a softball.
A pretty young girl who had been walking ahead of him, asked his condition. He
lost his contact lenses. In the back of his head Richie seemed to hear the
clown laughing.
Biil
and Silver
He had
walked up Witcham Street and pause for some time where George met to the end on
that rainy in 1957. A little kid was about to stand up when a shadow feel over
him. He was watching him carefully, he was holding a fluorescent skate board. Bill
borrowed the skate board, and gave the boy some money. He walked to his old
house, but did not stop. There were people on the lawn – a mother in a chair, a
sleeping baby in her arms, watching two kids.
Then he
stopped at the antique shop. He stood staring at it with wide unbelieving eyes.
Silver was in the righthand window. The proprietor said the bike was too big
for eleven when Bill said it was his bike. Bill called Mike and rolled Silver
into Mike’s garage.
Henry
Bowers at the Criminally Insane Institution
On the day after Mike made
his calls, Henry Bowers began to hear voices. Voices talking to him all day
long. Actually all the patients at Juniper Hills were considered moderately
dangerous; it was for a facility for the criminally insane. Henry Bowers there
because he had been convicted of killing his father in the late fall of 1958.
It had been a famous year for the murder trial. He had killed Victor Criss, he
had killed Belch Huggins. He also had killed Veronica.
Beverly’s
friend, Kay McCall
The
doctor had been treated her in one of the little cubicles. Tom Rogan had called
around noon of the day after she had seen Beverly safely off, wanting to know
if Kay had been in touch with his wife. Kay told him she had not seen Beverly
in almost two weeks. Tom thanked her and hung up.
Around one
doorbell rang while she was writing her study. She went to the door. How stupid
she had been not realize the voice of the flower’s deliverer was Tom’s voice in
a bad falsetto. He was trying as going to kill her. She insisted not to tell
where Bev was, but crazy Tom almost killed him. After he got the address he
left without looking back. She rushed and grabbed the telephone. The directory
operator said that the number she really need was the Derry Police Department.
Rockfight
In Henry’s
ears, it was constant litany: he nigger, the nigger, the nigger. Everything was
the nigger’s fault. Later the same year Henry, who was then ten years old,
started to feed Mike’s dog, Mr Chips old stewbones and bag of potato-chips. Mr
Chips eat the half the poisoned meat and the stopped. Henry used insect poison,
he found it the back shed. When the dog was dead, Henry removed by the
clothesline, went home and told his father what he had done. His crazy father
saluted him and gave his son the first beer in his life.
The others
in Loser’s Club knew Mike by sight – in town where he was the only Negro child,
but he did do to Derry Elementary School. His mother was a devout Baptist and
Mike sent the Church School. He was missing a wider communication with kids
with his own age, but he was willing to wait until high school for these to
happen. His skin was brown, but Mike believed he would be treated well if he
treated others the same ways.
Mike was
slim and body builder, taller than Stan Uris, but not quite as tall as Bill
Denbrough. He was fast and agile, and that had saved him from several beatings
at Henry’s hands. Henry was big, strong, but also slow. Henry kicked a final sticky
cot of mud onto Mike. His mother was of course furious; she wanted Will Hanlon to
call Chief Borton and have him out to the Bowers house.
But Will
only said that Henry’s father was crazy, Henry had listened too much to his
father. While Henry Bowers, Victor Criss, Belch Huggins, Peter Gordon, and a
half-retarded high-schooled boy name Steve Sadler were chasing Mike Hanlon,
Bill and the rest of the Loser’s Club were still sitting on the bank of the
Kenduskeag, pondering their nightmare problem.
The reason
Mike ran afoul of Henry Bowers because the next day was the Glorious Fourth.
The Church School had a band which mike played trombone. None of Henry’s
friends, not even Belch, went to the Bowers farm under ordinary circumstances.
They ended up helping Henry did the chores: the weeding, the pitching of hay,
the picking peas, tomatoes, and potatoes. Those boys were not exactly allergic
to work, but they had plenty to do at their own places without seating from
Henry’s father.
The Loser’s
Club just tried the Black Cats, an explosion package on the river. Black Cats
was more like a dynamite. They gathered rocks to get smaller the explosion. But
they saw Mike was more fell than ran into the gravel pit. Henry saw the six of
them. Mike cried out and said Henry has killed his dog. Bill had a handful of
rocks, all of them had a handful except Mike and Beverly, who was holding one. Bill
began to throw at Henry. The seven of them stood in a loose semicircle, all of
them bleeding somewhere. The apocalyptic rockfight had lasted, it was like a
war for Bill. He said it was Mike Hanlon when Beverly asked his name.
Eddie
Eddie
had never shoplifting anything in his life, but that sign always made him feel
guilty -- made as if Mr Keene knew something about him that he did not know
about himself.
Ruby the
counter girl, was sitting by cash register. Something about the way Mr Keene
pushed his glasses up on his blade of a nose made him edgy. Something about the
way Mr Keene both seemed nervous and secretly pleased. He did not want to go
into the office with Mr Keene.
It was an
aspirator Mr Keene opened his drawer, fumbled around inside, and then brought
out the balloon. The old man demonstrated with the balloon how did the lungs work.
Eddie’s shoulder had struck the heavy ice-cream-soda glass. It toppled off the
desk and shattered on the floor like a bomb. He was suffocating, and he grabbed
the aspirator. Mr Keene tried to offer him a placebo. It looked like a medicine
but it was not medicine.
Eddie had
asthma. The day Henry Bowers punched him in the nose. The day Bill and he were
trying to make a damn in the Barrens. He almost died.
When he came
out with a Pepsi in one hand and two candy bars the other side, Eddie was unpleasant to see Henry Bowers, Victor Criss,
Moose Sadler and Peter Hockstetter knelling on the crushed gravel to the left
of little store. Henry swept up a handful of gravel and slammed it down into
Hendry’s face. It was Mr Gedreu, dressed in long apron, and he looked furious.
He did not understand that Henry was nuts. Eddie twisted his wrist in Henry’s
grip. Eddie’s arm has broken. The sirens was very close now.
When he came
back his mother was in the room of the hospital, talking to Dr Handor. Sonia
Kaspbrak was a huge woman. His mother held the aspirator for him so he could
inhale.
The confrontation
between Eddie’s friend and Eddie’s mother had not occurred in in waiting room,
as in Eddie’s dream. She had known they would be coming – Eddie’s friends, who
were probably teaching him to smoke cigarettes in spite of his asthma.
She would explain
it quietly and logically. How she had thought he was going to die when he was
five, and how that would have been driven her crazy after losing Frank only two
years before. She only wanted to protect her son.
The
Death of Patrick Hockstetter
No one – not
even Mike Hanlon – had the slighted idea of how crazy Patrick Hocksteeter really
was. He was twelve, the son of a paint sales. His mother was a devout Catholic
who would die of breast cancer on 1962, four years after Ptrick consumed by the
dark entity. Although his IO tested out as low normal, Patrick had already
repeated two grades. He was a sociopath. He believed himself to be an actual
creature, probably the only one in the universe. Certainly none of Patrick’s
teachers or his parents suspected that when he was five, Patrick had murdered
his baby brother Avery.
Patrick had
not liked it when his mother brought Avery home from hospital. After the baby
came to his house, meals came late. The baby cried in the night and woke him
up. Very gently, he turned Avery’s face into the pillow several times. His
mother did not discover Avery’s death nearly five o’clock; until then she had
simply assumed he was taking very long time nap.
As time
passed, however, he became more aware of what would happened to him if he had
been caught. The Engstorms, a block over and almost directly behind the
Hockstetter home, lost their cocker pup. Other families lost dogs and cats, and
Patrick of course had taken them all. He put them into old refrigerator, one by
one. He slammed the dog to the old refrigerator’s door.
At first
Beverly was not entirely sure what she was seeing. Patrick had begun to trash
and dance and scream. Patrick’s scream stopped. A moment later she heard
someone spoke but she knew that had to be her imagination. There were blood,
she saw the refrigerator. Later she found the wallet, the only thing in it was
a library card, made out in the name of Patrick Hockstetter. Later she found
his sneaker.
The
Watches of the Night
When Ben Hanscome
finished the story of the silver slugs, they wanted to talk, but Mike told them
all to get some sleep. The old scars on Bill’s palms, the ones which reappeared
in England, had broken open and were bleeding, he looked sideways and saw Eddie
Kaspbrak peering stupidly down at his own hands. They were also bleeding.
Beverly told
her story to Bill about her father. They had not talked about It those day, the kids usually talked
about It. Beverly went home that day, her parents were both working. After she
took a shower, she found he was home. It
came to be his father, intimidated her and slapping her. She saw his face,
something was in his face. She suddenly aware that her blouse untucked. He as
jealous Bevv was with the boys. Bevvie was screaming and begging to her father
not to touch her. She knew that he was not her father. She ran from It.
Tom
Rogan
His father
had died when he was only in the third grade. But in his dream he was killing
his father. He struggled to wake up but could not. Water dripped and echoed. He
heard some voices. The sounds were produced by Henry, Victor, and Belch.
Audra
She went
home and called British Airways. She told the clerk she might be interesting in
reaching a small Maine city called Derry if it was possible. The plane landed
and she was the only passenger to deplane, and the others looked at her with a
kind of thoughtful curiosity. She recollected her single piece of luggage and
approached the rental-car booths as Tom Rogan would about an hour later.
Tom had
taken a room at the same street with Audra, The two motel were side by side,
their parking lots divided only by a raised concrete sidewalk. Both slept now.
Audra quietly on her side, tom Rogan on his back, snoring so heavily.
She also had
nightmares. Like Tom’s dreaming had been a jumbled, distressful experience. Bill
had been in her dream. She was so terrified. She found the number for the Derry
Town House, and dialed it, but the room does not answer. Audra snagged the
strap of her purse and ran barefooted for the door at the end of the corridor.
She was in a blind panic now, her only thought that she had to find the Derry
Town House, and Bill. She fled down the walkway and into the parking lot,
looking around wildly for her car. She could not find the keys in her purse. She
screamed loudly this time.
The hand, as hard as steel,
bit cruelly in and forced her around. The man’s front teeth had been broken. The
hand squeezed tighter, Tom Rogan whispered to her that seemingly he had seen
her in the movies.
Hotel’s Room
They had
been walking hand-in-hand, the silence between them companionable. He took her
hand and they walked to the rest of the way to Town House. The lobby was old,
festooned with plants, still possessed of a certain fading charm. He was cheating
on his wife.
Henry,
the killer
Here was a
sewer-grate. A balloon with a smiley-smile face was tied to one of its iron
bar. Henry got his feet again, one sticky hand pressed his belly. He closed his
eyes, shivering holding his arms on his belly, he thought the nigger was dead. The
voice had drifted up to him from the blackness inside. Victor and Belch seemed
o have gone to sleep with their eyes open. Henry stood on the porch, looking at
their mailbox. The box was decked with balloons. He opened the package, there
was a knife in it. He took it into the house.
His father
was lying on his pallet in the bedroom they shared. The voice from the moon
spoke to him. The steel drove through Butch’s neck. His father was dead.
Henry saw
that they had pulled up in front of the Derry Town House, and suddenly he
understood perfectly. The Town House was the only real hotel in Derry. He took
the bottle of Texas Driver out again and bit off a snort. The voice came from
Belch’s rotting mouth, but later he found it was the voice from the moon, the
voice of the clown. He saw a paper where the bottle had been. A memo from
Pennywise, carefully printed in capital letter about the name and the room
number of the five of the Loser's Club.
Belch was
gone. He lurched across the lobby, his pants and shirt streaked with blood. It
was 2.3 am. He was undercover as a bellboy who brought a message Myra, Eddie’s
wife. Henry made it to the bed and reached for Eddie, who still hardly realized
what was happening. Eddie thrust with
the bottle. He looked the body on the floor, Henry was grown old. His body now
fat, but it was still Henry. Henry was dead. Eddie rang the boys, later Richie
called the hospital for Mike.
In
Tunnels
The section
of sewer system had fallen into disuse. Here were the skeletons of two boys in
the shredded remains of tee-shirts and jeans that had rotten. Victor and Belch
never grown up. A gigantic Eye filled
the tunnel, the glassy black pupil two feet across, the iris a muddy russet
color. He felt the tentacles touch him, but tentatively.
Bill felt
something begin to grow in his chest, something hot and choking and as painful
as fiery nettles. He heard a sound escape him. He remembered George in his
yellow hooded slicker.
It was
raining hard. Mike awoke in his room at the hospital. He tried to move his
legs. He had settle down to write on his notebook and Henry had turned up. In
1985, a sixteen-year-old girl named Cheryl Lamonica had been killed in Derry,
killed by It. She had a fourteen-year-old brother named Mark and it was him.
Mark walked
into the room, as he stood at the foot of the bed, Mike saw with a hopeless
chill how blank Mark Lamonica’s eyes were. He took a syringe from his pocket. Mike
suddenly felt power wash into him. His eyes widened. Lamonica screamed and
staggered backward, dropping the syringe.
It was Bill
who held them together as that great black Spider raced down Its web, creating
a noxious breeze that tousled their hair. Roaring forward, slamming into a
black and dripping tunnel lined with decaying, crumbling tiles that were fifty
years old, a hundred, a thousand, a million-billion, who knew, rushing in
deadly silence past intersections, some lit by that twisting green-yellow fire,
some by glowing balloons full of a ghastly white skull-light, others dead
black; he was thrown at a speed of a thousand miles an hour past piles of
bones, some human, some not.
In some
confused part of his mind Bill knew that was not true. They knew he was dead,
but Stan was there. Stan and the boys killed the creature, and It was dead. Eddie
was half-aware of what was happening, he felt it. He had seen the Spider turn
to impale Bill with Its stringer. Beverly was now sitting with Eddie’s head in
her lap, cradling him. Ben was standing in back of the spiderweb, which had begun
to decay. Bill saw Audra, sagging as if in a very old and creaky elevator. They
had left Eddie back in the Spider’s lair, and that was something none of them
wanted to talk about. Eddie was dead, but Audra was still alive.
Bill’s
stutter was disappearing again, but the poor man had aged four years in the
last four days. Bill expected Audra to be discharged from hospital. Physically
she was fine, but mentally she was not. Ben and Beverly had already gone to
Nebraska, Ben’s place. Later she was going to fly back to Chicago the week
after next and file a missing-persons report on him. They would not found Tom’s
track in Derry since he had used fake name on his rent car and plane tickets.
Mike offered
his place for Bill and Audra. He rolled Silver out into the driveway. Bill led
his wife over to where Silver stood heeled over on his kickstand. Audra stood
beside the bike, looking serenely at the side of Mike’s garage. Instead of
braking he began to pedal again, urging the bike even faster. Here came the
crash barriers. He dragged Silver hard left, so close to the crash barriers
now. Barriers closed off what was left of the sidewalk, it severely undercut. Silver
struck the barrier, Audra cried out. She had just awakened from a deep sleep.
*****
8 pm
March 18,
2018
Sekapur
Sirih
Tidak ada
jenuhnya menikmati karya Stephen King, novel horor dan misteri ini telah dibuat
dalam bentuk film tahun lalu, namun sayang belum melihatnya. Ketika melihat
buku ini dipajang di toko buku sederet dengan novel best-seller lainnya, judulnya
berhasil menarik minat, awalnya terpikir bertema teknologi, IT, ternyata tema horor,
setelah dibaca tentu saja buku ini tidak kalah menariknya. Sengaja ingin menikmati
hari demi hari di bulan Maret 2018 ini dengan bacaan yang agak berat dalam
konteks isi cerita dan penyampaian; yah memang, secara fisik novel ini juga
sangat berat terdiri dari 1376 halaman diterbitkan Hodder tahun 2017 lalu,
sementara versi aslinya tahun 1986. Penggemar King dijamin akan menyukai fiksi ini.
Tujuh
sahabat dari kota kecil Derry tahun 1957, mengalami hal-hal ganjil, dan dua
puluh tujuh tahun kemudian mereka kembali ke kotanya, memenuhi janji mereka
menghancurkan makhluk jahat si Badut Pennywise, yang mereka namai It, kembali berulah.
Serangkaian peristiwa raibnya anak dan penemuan mayat di kota Derry memaksa ke
tujuh sahabat kembali ke kotanya, bukan reuni biasa, namun untuk misi menghentikan kehilangan dan
terbunuhnya sejumah anak di kota mereka bernama Derry, serta memecahkan misteri It. Si Gagap Bill, penulis best-seller,
Rich, seorang DJ di California, Ben, arsitek, Beverly, wanita disainer sukses, Mike kepala Perpustakaan Derry (satu-satunya yang tidak merantau), Eddie, pengusaha limosin di New York, Stan,
tewas bunuh diri di Atlanta.
Terjemahan
dalam Bahasa Indonesia, IT, Novel Horror dari Stephen King; resume
Kematian Adik Bill dan Badut di 1957
Hujan turun
dengan lebatnya berhari-hari hingga membuat banjir di sekitar sungai dan kanal
limbah kota. Sekelompok orang sibuk membuat benteng pasir membendung air yang
masuk ke kota.
William
Denbrough, si anak yang disebut si gagap Bill di kalangn temannya SD Derry,
terkena flu berat. Adiknya George sangat gembira dibuatkan kapal kertas, adiknya
itu bergegas ke depan rumah bermain kapal, sementara ibunya sedang memainkan
piano. Bill yang masih lemah telah mengingatkan adiknya agar tidak bermain jauh-jauh,
terutama ke arah kanal. Kapalnya menuju saringan air jalan raya, menghilang
masuk ke selokan bawah tanah.
Suara aneh
menyeruak dari bawah tanah, suara menakutkan, berbicara dan memanggil nama
George. Badut itu menyuruhnya mengambil balon di tangannya, si kecil George
telah berusaha menarik tangannya, andai saja ia berumur 10 tahun kayak kakaknya
Bill, tentu ia berhasil selamat.
Teriakan dan
rintihan anak berusia enam tahun itu didengar Dave. Sebelumnya ia melihat anak kecil dalam balutan jas hujan kuning, mengenakan
penutup kepalanya menangkis sisa gerimis. Langkah mungilnya mengikuti aliran air dan mengejar
kapalnya. Kapal kertas masuk ke lobang kanal, permainan membawanya pada
kematian. Bill merasa bersalah atas kehilangan adiknya.
Kematian Adrian
Mellon di tahun 1985, masa kini
Lelaki muda
tampilan gadis, dengan lipstick dan celana ketat marah dan meyakinkan polisi di
depannya. Harold Gardener salah satu dari empat putra Dave Gardener, memaklumi kepedihan Don
Haggarty. Kehilangan kekasihnya Adrian Mellon, ia menuding empat anak muda
telah membunuhnya.
Dua anak muda
tengan berada dalam ruang interogasi diseret menjadi tersangka atas kematian
Mellon, mereka hanya bermaksud menakut-nauti mendorong Mellon ke sungai. Chris
salah satu dari saksi melihat badut di bwah sungai, ia melihat menarik masuk
tangan Adrian.
Mike Hanlon
Mike Hanlon
anak berkulit hitam satu-satunya dalam geng masa kecilnya bekerja sebagai
pustakawan. Satu-satunya dari ketujuh sahabat yang tidak merantau. Dari lahir,
SD hingga SMA bersekolah di Derry, ia berkuliah di Universitas Maine walau
tidak persis di kotanya Derry. Dia adalah salah seorang dari jutaan orang kota
kecil yang tetap hidup di kota kecil.
Kasus kehilangan
anak dan kematian misterius telah banya terjadi di Derry. Kota kecil berhantu,
dan Mike sendiri sering mengalami sendiri kejadian aneh dan horor. Kematian
Mellon dan kasus kehilangan anak lainnya membuatnya menghubungi keenam sahabat
kecilnya. Dua puluh tujuh tahun silam, ketujuh sahabat sudah melalui hal horror
dan aneh, Mike menelpon mereka satu persatu.
Stan
Uris
Anak Jahudi
berkacamata meninggalkan Derry sejak remaja dan terakhir berkuliah di New York,
dengan jurusan akunting. Kampus telah mempertemukannya dengan gadis pujaannya, Patricia,
yang sekarang menjadi istrinya. Selulus kuliah Patty diterima mengajar di sebuah
sekolah kecil di Atlanta. Stan sendiri menyusul istrinya, dan karir pertamanya
bekerja sebagai supir truk pada usaha roti. Tak lama kemudian, ia mendapat
pekerjaan di efek domino dari sebuah mall yang baru dibuka, ia diterima bekerja
pada perusahaan video tape dan tidak bertahan lama dan memutuskan menjalankan usahanya
sendiri. Dari perusahan video tape, ia banyak mendapat kenalan orang-orang kaya
dan ternama dan telah membuat sejumlah kontrak kerja dengan beberapa orang dari
mereka.
Ben Hanscome
Semasa kecil
bertubuh gemuk dan miskin, tumbuh menjadi arsitek handal tinggal di rumah mewah
di New York. Dua tahun hidup di London dalam proyek pembuatan gedung BBC yang
baru. Namanya juga kerap diliput majalah arsitek. Ia sudah menutup kenangannya
dari Derry, kisah horror dan menakutkan. Kota masa kecilnya, teman-teman
gangnya muncul kembali. Mike meneleponnya, tidak menyangka, mimpi buruk dua
puluh tujuh tahun silam akan terjadi dan memakan korban. Dia pun segera bersiap
untuk pulang.
Richie
Tozier
Anak berkaca
mata tebal menjadi seorang DJ di California, menjalani hidup gemerlap kota
besar bertolak belakang dengan masa lalunya. Telepon dari Mike membuatnya
terkejut mengenang kejadian misterius dan pembunuhan terjadi lagi. Bergegas, ia
menyiapkan perjalanan ke kota masa kecilnya.
Eddie
Kaspbrak
Penyakit asma
yang dideritanya sejak kecil dibawa hingga kini, hanya saja, kemajuan teknologi
telah memudahkannya. Wanita gemuk dengan pakaian gaun malam keheranan melihat
Eddie mengemas barang-barangnya. Istrinya, kuatir Eddie akan sungguh-sungguh meninggalkannya.
Awal karirnya, Eddie adalah supir limosin, ia sudah biasa membawa selebritis
ternama, namun ia tidak pernah membayangkan akan membawa aktor Al Pacino. Kini
ia sudah menjalanan bisnis limosin sendiri.
Berverly
Rogan
Wanita
cantik itu bertemu dengan suaminya Tom tidak terelakkan, keduanya bekerja dalam
sebuah gedung perkantoran. Tom Rogan sendiri sebagai MC ternama dan Bevv adalah
asisten disainer tersohor. Keduanya pun terbakar api cinta dan menikah. Pasangan
itu hidup tanpa anak, perangai buruk suaminya semakin lama semakin parah.
Pukulan kasar sering diterima Bevv. Tom sangat curiga dengan istri cantiknya
atas tuduhan perselingkuhan. Walau telah berkali-kali dijelaskan bahwa Bill hanyalah
teman masa kecil, tidak lebih. Novelis ternama yang menjadi sumber
pertengkaran, padahal baginya hubungannya dengan Bill hanyalah cinta monyet di
masa remaja.
Sebelum terlepas
dari sangkarnya wanita berambut emas itu dibelasah habis-habisan oleh suaminya.
Sahabat Bevv sudah sering mengingatkan agar secepatnya meninggalkan Tom dan tempramentalnya. Kini dia berani melawan, hingga berhasil keluar rumahnya. Wajahnya dan tubuh membiru dan tampilan acak-acakan seolah tidak mengeringkan niatnya keluar dari kenyamanan dan kemewahannya selama ini. Telepon dari temanya Mike menuntunnya pulang
kampung ke Derry, tidak mudah percaya, Tom tetap menaruh curiga pada istrinya. Istrinya pulang kampung untuk sang novelis.
Bill
Denbrough
Tidak ada
yang menyangka anak gagap seperti Bill bisa menjadi novelis terkenal dan beberapa novelnya sudah difilmkan, semua diraihnya sejak usia muda, 23 tahun. Dunia Hollywood
mempertemukannya dengan gadis cantik, dan sudah belasan tahun dinikahinya.
Audra adalah seorang aktris ternama. Baru saja Bill dihubungi agennya, satu judul novelnya kembali akan difilmkan, sayang dia harus menunda, panggilan pulang lebih utama. Ia harus bergegas kembali ke Derry setelah mendapat
telepon dari Mike.
Penulis Bill menutup rapat kisah masa kecilnya termasuk pada istrinya Audra. Media
pun menuliskan asal-usulnya dari New England, bukan Derry. Akhirnya, ia menceritakan berterus-terang kisah gagap dan kematian ganjil adiknya. Kematian George membuat keluarga
Denbrough trauma, setahun sejak nestapa itu, keluarga Bill memilih pindah
ke New England. Terapi rutin telah meluruhkan gagap yang dideritanya.
Reuni
Enam dari tujuh sahabat akhirnya
bertemu di sebuah restauran, suasana santai saling melepas rindu dan mengenang
kembali masa kecil mereka. Tampak terlukis, satu sama lain sulit memercayai
versi tua sahabatnya. Kematian Stan sempat membuat mereka berkabung, kepergian
yang tak terduga. Sayatan di tangan, dan meninggalkan tulisan IT dengan
darahnya sendiri di dinding samping pemandian meyakinkan Mike bahwa kematian
Stan tidak sekedar bunuh diri, pelakunya adalah IT, si badut pembunuh yang
membunuh anak-anak di kampungnya.
Bill sangat kuatir perbincangan masuk ke hal-hal yang sangat pribadi, dia merasa tidak nyaman karena sosoknya yang paling tersohor dan kaya apalagi beristri cantik dan terkenal seperti Audra. Dia juga tidak ingin dihakimi dan dinasehati masalah anak, ia dan istrinya telah berusaha keras untuk memiliki anak. Ia berangkat ke kampung halaman, Audra berangkat ke Inggris untuk pembuatan film barunya.
Pertemuan keenam sahabat dipenuhi suka cita dan keheranan melihat fisik teman-temannya. Semua
setuju si gendut Ben kini berubah menjadi lelaki kaya dan trendi. Bevv wanita
cantik dengan rambutnya yang terurai indah, dan kegagapan Bill sangat berkurang dibandingkan
ke masa lalu, ditambah lagi dia menjadi novelis
terkenal, sering di review di majalah dan koran.
Saling bertukar kisah terkini, semuanya lebih nyaman mengenang kenakalan mereka dua puluh tujuh
tahun silam. Tawa mengingat kekonyolan mereka menghadapi anak yang lebih besar, geng Henry Bowers.
Dengan sedih Mike membuka bicara, Bowers kini dirawat di rumah sakit jiwa, ia membunuh ayahnya.
Bill
dan yang lain memiliki pikiran yang sama, kecurigaan mendasar dan menduga itu
adalah perbuatan Badut Pennywise. Kisah duka itu terpecah, suara Richie memecahkan kesenyapan. Wajah cantik Bevv sontak kaget saat sanjungan dilemparkan oleh Richie
padanya, sikap dewasanya berusaha menutupi pernikahannya yang rapuh dan bahkan niatnya
meninggalkan Tom. Ben kekasihnya masih menyimpan rasa padanya, apalagi Bill sangat
mengagumi pesona dan kepribadian Bevv. Disainer bertubuh tinggi itu berusaha
mengubur masalahnya dan ia kira tidak perlu mengakui apapun tentang kegagalan pernikahannya.
Ia melontarkan kalimat indah dan membuat kesan suaminya adalah orang baik, dan semua kesuksesan
yang dinikmatinya berasal dari suaminya.
Mike sempat
heran melihat gaya Richie, remaja tadinya berkaca mata tebal sekarang tampil dengan gaya modis, ia kenakan lensa kontak. Berbeda dengan Mike, pustakawan tampil dengan seadanya, membuatnya merasa paling
kurang dari mereka semua. Kenangan masa kecilnya yang tidak mudah, menjadi keluarga
kulit hitam satu-satunya di kota itu, beruntunglah Bevv dan yang lain mau
menerimanya sebagai teman. Pertemanan mereka sepulang sekolah, karena Mike pergi sekolah yang murah dan tidak terlalu rasis.
Henry Bowers dan
gengnya kerap merundung Mike kecil, satu-satunya anak berkulit hitam di kampung, ditambah akar permusuhan dan
kebencian dari ayahnya terhadap ayah Mike. Bersama komplotan kulit putihnya, ayah Henry membakar dan membunuh ternak ayam keluarga Mike, mengantarkan ayah Henry hidup di penjara. Polisi yang memproses kala itu berlaku cukup adil.
Richie berkaca
mata tebal, Bill dengan gagapnya, Stan Yahudi satu-satunya, selalu dituduh sebagai kaum pembunuh Kristus, Eddie dengan
asmanya, Bevv cantik pecandu rokok, ditambah ibunya yang dipanggil pelacur
oleh kelompok Bowers. Walau teman gengnya sudah meyakinkan Bevv kecil bahwa pelayan bar dan sering pulang malam bukanlah pelacur. Si gendut Ben yang miskin dan tidak percaya diri, Bowers dan teman-temannya memanggil geng Bill dengan kelompok the Loser (pecundang).
Pertengkaran
antar geng hingga perang batu pun menghiasi masa anak-anak mereka. Tantangan Bill dan kawan-kawannya tidak hanya melawan keusilan geng Bowers, namun juga mencari dan menaklukkan badut pembunuh yang sering muncul
dalam mimpi mereka. Badut Pennywise menjadi mimpi buruk mereka, berbagai bentuk teror dan nyata. Eddie melihat
penderita lepra di depan rumahnya, hanya ia yang dapat melihat. Beverly melihat
darah di kamar mandi rumahnya, ayahnya sendiri tidak melihatnya. Ibunya selalu meyakinkan Bevv, ketakutannya muncul karena terlalu sering menonton film horor.
*****
18 Maret
2018
