Stephen King - It

“Come out, why don’t you,” he said in a low voice, and he had the not-quite-mad idea that his voice was floating along dark and dripping passageways, not dying out but continuing onward and onward, feeding on its own echoes, bouncing off moss-covered stone walls and long-dead machinery. He felt it float over still and sullen waters and perhaps issue softly from a hundred different drains in other parts of the city at the same time.

“Come out of there or we’ll come in and g-get you.”

He waited nervily for a response, crouched down with his hands between his thighs like a catcher between pitches. There was no response.

He was about to stand up when a shadow fell over him.

Bill looked up sharply, eagerly, ready for anything… but it was only a little kid, maybe ten, maybe eleven. He was wearing faded Boy Scout shorts which displayed his scabby knees to good advantage. He had a Freeze-Pop in one hand and a Fiberglas skateboard which looked almost as battered as his knees in the other. The Freeze-Pop was a fluorescent orange. The skateboard was a fluorescent green.

“You always talk into the sewers, mister?” the boy asked.

“Only in Derry,” Bill said.

They looked at each other solemnly for a moment and then burst into laughter at the same time.

“I want to ask you a stupid queh-question,” Bill said.

“Okay,” the kid said.

“You ever h-hear anything down in one of these?”

The kid looked at Bill as though he had flipped out.

“O-Okay,” Bill said, “forget I a-asked.”

He started to walk away and had gotten maybe twelve steps-he was headed up the hill, vaguely thinking he would take a look at the home place-when the kid called, “Mister?”

Bill turned back. He had his sportcoat hooked on his finger and slung over his shoulder. His collar was unbuttoned, his tie loosened. The boy was watching him carefully, as if already regretting his decision to speak further. Then he shrugged, as if saying Oh what the hell.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What did it say?”

“I don’t know. It talked some foreign language. I heard it coming out of one of those pumpin stations down in the Barrens. One of those pumpin stations, they look like pipes coming out of the ground-”

“I know what you mean. Was it a kid you heard?”

“At first it was a kid, then it sounded like a man.” The boy paused. “I was some scared. I ran home and told my father. He said maybe it was an echo or something, coming all the way down the pipes from someone’s house.”

“Do you believe that?”

The boy smiled charmingly. “I read in my Ripley’s Believe It or Not book that there was this guy, he got music from his teeth. Radio music. His fillings were, like, little radios. I guess if I believed that, I could believe anything.”

“A-Ayuh,” Bill said. “But did you believe it?”

The boy reluctantly shook his head.

“Did you ever hear those voices again?”

“Once when I was taking a bath,” the boy said. “It was a girl’s voice. Just crying. No words. I was ascared to pull the plug when I was done because I thought I might, you know, drownd her.”

Bill nodded again.

The kid was looking at Bill openly now, his eyes shining and fascinated. “You know about those voices, mister?”

“I heard them,” Bill said. “A long, long time ago. Did you know any of the k-kids that have been murdered here, son?”

The shine went out of the kid’s eyes; it was replaced by caution and disquiet. “My dad says I’m not supposed to talk to strangers. He says anybody could be that killer.” He took an additional step away from Bill, moving into the dappled shade of an elm tree that Bill had once driven his bike into twenty-seven years ago. He had taken a spill and bent his handlebars.

“Not me, kid,” he said. “I’ve been in England for the last four months. I just got into Derry yesterday.”

“I still don’t have to talk to you,” the kid replied.

“That’s right,” Bill agreed. “It’s a f-f-free country.”

He paused and then said, “I used to pal around with Johnny Feury some of the time. He was a good kid. I cried,” the boy finished matter-of-factly, and slurped down the rest of his Freeze-Pop. As an afterthought he ran out his tongue, which was temporarily bright orange, and lapped off his arm.

“Keep away from the sewers and drains,” Bill said quietly. “Keep away from empty places and deserted places. Stay out of trainyards. But most of all, stay away from the sewers and the drains.”

The shine was back in the kid’s eyes, and he said nothing for a very long time. Then: “Mister? You want to hear something funny?”

“Sure.”

“You know that movie where the shark ate all the people up?”

“Everyone does. J-J- Jaws”

“Well, I got this friend, you know? His name’s Tommy Vicananza, and he’s not that bright. Toys in the attic, you get what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“He thinks he saw that shark in the Canal. He was up there by himself in Bassey Park a couple of weeks ago, and he said he seen this fin. He says it was eight or nine feet tall. Just the fin was that tall, you get me? He goes, “That’s what killed Johnny and the other kids. It was Jaws, I know because I saw it.” So I go, “That Canal’s so polluted nothing could live in it, not even a minnow. And you think you saw Jaws in there. You got toys in the attic, Tommy.” Tommy says it reared right out of the water like it did at the end of that movie and tried to bite him and he just got back in time. Pretty funny, huh, mister?”

“Pretty funny,” Bill agreed.

“Toys in the attic, right?”

Bill hesitated. “stay away from the Canal too, son. You follow?”

“You mean you believe it?”

Bill hesitated. He meant to shrug. Instead he nodded.

The kid let out his breath in a low, hissing rush. He hung his head as if ashamed. “Yeah. Sometimes I think I must have toys in the attic.”

“I know what you mean.” Bill walked over to the kid, who glanced up at him solemnly but didn’t shy away this time. “You’re killing your knees on that board, son.”

The kid glanced down at his scabby knees and grinned. “Yeah, I guess so. I bail out sometimes.”

“Can I try it?” Bill asked suddenly.

The kid looked at him, gape-mouthed at first, then laughing. “That’d be funny,” he said. “I never saw a grownup on a skateboard.’

’I’ll give you a quarter,” Bill said.

“My dad said-”

“Never take money or c-candy from strangers. Good advice. I’ll still give you a q-quarter. What do you say? Just to the corner of Juh-Jackson Street.”

“Never mind the quarter,” the kid said. He burst into laughter again-a gay and uncomplicated sound. A fresh sound. “I don’t need your quarter. I got two bucks. I’m practically rich. I got to see this, though. Just don’t blame me if you break something.”

“Don’t worry,” Bill said. “I’m insured.”

He turned one of the skateboard’s scuffed wheels with his finger, liking the speedy ease with which it turned-it sounded like there was about a million ball-bearings in there. It was a good sound. It called up something very old in Bill’s chest. Some desire as warm as want, as lovely as love. He smiled.

“What do you think?” the kid asked.

“I think I’m g-gonna kill myself,” Bill said, and the kid laughed.

Bill put the skateboard on the sidewalk and put one foot on it. He rolled it back and forth experimentally. The kid watched. In his mind Bill saw himself rolling down Witcham Street toward Jackson on the kid’s avocado-green skateboard, the tails of his sport-coat ballooning out behind him, his bald head gleaming in the sun, his knees bent in that fragile way snowbunnies bend their knees their first day on the slopes. It was a posture that told you that in their heads they were already falling down. He bet the kid didn’t ride the board like that. He bet the kid rode