Richtofen glanced behind him. It was probably just the wind.
No there it was again.
The voices were supposed to have stopped, he put an end to that… and then there was his medication.
But it sounded just like…
"Who's there?" Richtofen called into the dirty grey sky. The response was a single red balloon that began to float above him.
He stood up to leave when he heard a different voice.
"Hello, Edward." It had been such a long time since anyone had called him by his first name that it nearly didn't register with him. He hesitated and slowly turned around to see a man. A man with a faded silver and orange striped suit. His hair a garish orange and his skin a ghastly white, stained with grease paint. In his right hand he held a bunch of red balloon.
"You are a strange one." The clown giggled. "You have no fear of blood or corpses or werewolves or mummies or birds or giants." The clown began to laugh insanely. "You like that Edward. Blood, blood and corpses." Richtofen began to slowly walk towards the clown, trying to figure out if the man had anything to do with Samantha or her father.
"I like blood too and corpses. I really like them."
"What are you?"
"The better question is who? I am Pennywise the Dancing Clown." The figure said proudly. This only frustrated the German.
"I know you have a knife in your pocket, Edward." Richtofen began to move steadily towards the clown, his mind set that he was going to bury that knife into this insane man's neck.
"I also know what happened on the 8th May 1901."
Richtofen froze.
"You are an insane man, Edward. Your mind is broken." A scowl began to form on Richtofen's lips. "If only you could see yourself."
It happened in a flash, not a ghostly transformation that you would expect. Richtofen looked down at the child sized figure before him, he felt the colour drain from his cheeks and for the first time in a long time did he feel fear. The child he recognised was his eight year old self. The boy held no sweet character that mothers adored, instead there was a look of pure hatred. The boys lips were drawn back into a tight scorn making him look several years older. His acid green eyes burned malice in the dying sunlight. In the boy's right hand he held a kitchen knife, the blade smeared in deep crimson.
"I HATE YOU!" The boy screamed. Richtofen remembered that, he remembered shouting that to his parents, that warm spring evening in May 1901. Richtofen ran, but he didn't get far until another figure appeared in front of him. The man was of a similar age to Richtofen, he was stout and wore long out of fashion clothing. He had a thick moustache above his lips and his hair was slicked to one side to hide growing bald patches. In his right hand he held a piece of paper. Edward knew what that document was and it made him feel sick to the core. "You are a freak, Edward!" The man screamed at Richtofen. The was a look of pure disgust as he stared at the being that crawled out of his wife's womb. "You are being sent to an Asylum, where we will never have to deal with your disgusting behaviour again!" The document in the man's hand suddenly caught alight. It flames travelled greedily, engulfing the man's hand then then his arm, then torso in less that a few seconds. But he carried on, as if wasn't there. "And all I can say is good riddance!" It sounded more like a gargle as the man's body burned, he began to walk towards Richtofen. With no second thoughts, Richtofen ran. He ran until he reached the steady flow of traffic that was Main Street and when he didn't look back he saw nothing, nothing but the placidity that was Derry.
He had forgotten about the 8th May 1901, but the memories came flooding back so quickly it hurt. He remembered in the shadows of the night, slitting his father's throat as he lay asleep. He remembered dousing the lower floor of the house in gasoline. He remembered standing on the front porch as he threw a match into the drenched hallway. He remembered running. He remembered how he felt pleasure at the thought of his acts - part of him hoping that his mother and sister may have got out alive, part of him not caring if they burned because they both desperately wanted to send him there. Tears began to slowly well up in his eyes. He tried not to cry, no he refused to, but his body wasn't listening. Small wet lines marked his face as Richtofen made his way home.