[Richie gazes up at Prior like a vision from above. He claps those fine boned cheeks in both hands, jest and gesture sincere in one.]
Baby I could kiss you right now. Is that your plan? Because I huh-ate this talk, nothing worse in the world and I've interviewed Ozzy Osbourne, so you know I'm not fooling around.
[He lets go, wiping at his own brow and fluffing his already too-wild hair. He's overdue for a snip, make a note to check for a barber tomorrow.]
It wasn't as if I had to contend with it my whole life. We forgot. When we moved out of town we all forgot, it slipped out of our heads like water through a sieve. It never seemed strange to me that I couldn't remember the summer of fifty-nine, I mean, who's got a play-by-play recollection of their baby years anyhow? But that was part of the trick, too. Some other force was keeping it out of the way. Then it woke up again, twenty seven years later — it's like some Grecian myth, I swear, it runs on this clock and takes its sacrifices for a year, it lives in this labyrinth of sewers under the city — legendary, am I right?
Anyway, twenty seven years later we all get a call from Mikey and things start coming back. I hucked up my lunch, breakfast, and dinner from the night before when I remembered what happened to Georgie. It wasn't until we got back to Derry that the locks started popping on all those closets, those trap doors. I didn't believe it even then. I didn't believe it when I popped a fortune cookie and there was an eyeball inside. It wasn't until I sat under that same statue in the square, and then I'm staring down a twenty foot clown that's bending over to waft the breath of death over my face. All it had to do was point, and my eyes — it was like being stabbed through to my fucking brain.
And nobody stopped to look. Not a one. There was a toddler, he started wailing when It called for me as I ran away chicken, but that's it. And Pry, there is a way to fight it. A ritual to kill it for good, but that part hasn't come back yet. We didn't get to finish the homecoming tour, the apocalypse came before that.
[He grips both of Prior's biceps. His supernatural strength is dead and gone by now but you wouldn't know it from the urgent curl of his boney fingers. His eyes are wide and desperate.]
So if it does wake here, you gotta promise me. If you see It, if it comes for you, don't you fight it. You run. It's not regular. We shot it once with a gun, and it did squat. My voice — you remember the alley? That's the kind of shit that does it, but it's not reliable. And I'm not sure anyone else can pull it off but the seven of us.
[He pauses.]
Six. [He grins.] Or maybe just one. I'm hoping not just one.
no subject
Baby I could kiss you right now. Is that your plan? Because I huh-ate this talk, nothing worse in the world and I've interviewed Ozzy Osbourne, so you know I'm not fooling around.
[He lets go, wiping at his own brow and fluffing his already too-wild hair. He's overdue for a snip, make a note to check for a barber tomorrow.]
It wasn't as if I had to contend with it my whole life. We forgot. When we moved out of town we all forgot, it slipped out of our heads like water through a sieve. It never seemed strange to me that I couldn't remember the summer of fifty-nine, I mean, who's got a play-by-play recollection of their baby years anyhow? But that was part of the trick, too. Some other force was keeping it out of the way. Then it woke up again, twenty seven years later — it's like some Grecian myth, I swear, it runs on this clock and takes its sacrifices for a year, it lives in this labyrinth of sewers under the city — legendary, am I right?
Anyway, twenty seven years later we all get a call from Mikey and things start coming back. I hucked up my lunch, breakfast, and dinner from the night before when I remembered what happened to Georgie. It wasn't until we got back to Derry that the locks started popping on all those closets, those trap doors. I didn't believe it even then. I didn't believe it when I popped a fortune cookie and there was an eyeball inside. It wasn't until I sat under that same statue in the square, and then I'm staring down a twenty foot clown that's bending over to waft the breath of death over my face. All it had to do was point, and my eyes — it was like being stabbed through to my fucking brain.
And nobody stopped to look. Not a one. There was a toddler, he started wailing when It called for me as I ran away chicken, but that's it. And Pry, there is a way to fight it. A ritual to kill it for good, but that part hasn't come back yet. We didn't get to finish the homecoming tour, the apocalypse came before that.
[He grips both of Prior's biceps. His supernatural strength is dead and gone by now but you wouldn't know it from the urgent curl of his boney fingers. His eyes are wide and desperate.]
So if it does wake here, you gotta promise me. If you see It, if it comes for you, don't you fight it. You run. It's not regular. We shot it once with a gun, and it did squat. My voice — you remember the alley? That's the kind of shit that does it, but it's not reliable. And I'm not sure anyone else can pull it off but the seven of us.
[He pauses.]
Six. [He grins.] Or maybe just one. I'm hoping not just one.