Rachel Holloway was the new girl to Derry High School and had only one friend, her friend Jamie. They were both considered to be weird girls for dressing shabby and playing video games like boys. Jamie also had short hair and dressed like a tomboy so many other kids made fun of her.
Rachel always wore sporty but bright clothes. She loved bright colors and her personality was bubbly but she could be deeply serious when she wanted to. She was also very pretty, with bright blue eyes and golden blonde hair, that was her mother's color that was born to her as well.
The popular girls in school hated both their guts and always made fun of them. Jamie would get mad. Rachel didn't notice the hurtful words because she ignored them, preferring to only think more about things she enjoyed and made her happy. She often had very narrow thoughts about things sometimes and got distracted. She was autistic. Sometimes she could blank out the whole world if she wanted to and only focus on one thing. That thing was usually drawing her favorite subjects from what she saw around her. She was very good at art, although she didn't think she had much talent. Jamie always told her she was her own worst critic.
Rachel and Jamie were walking in the hallway after the bell rang for school to be out one day. She bumped into Richie Tozier who was trying to hurry down the hallway with his friends who's names she didn't know yet. One of them might have been named Eddie. She thought he was cute. He seemed very paranoid about everything, including germs. Richie and him were usually always together.
"Coming through, one side!" Richie yelled out funny.
Rachel thought he was trying to hide his nervous with comedy and turns out that creepy Patrick Hocksettler was making sexual threats to him again. Gross.
"That boy Patrick is bad news with always hitting on everyone who doesn't like him," said Rachel walking up to Jamie who was pulling out her books from the locker and looking like she really wanted to get home fast.
"Of course no one would like him. He's a freak. He's also a disgusting pervert who will grope anyone, male or female. I even heard he sticks cute animals into a refrigerator in the dump and watches them suffocate. He has no soul."
"Everyone has a soul, Jamie. Even evil people. Theirs is just tainted by something bad that happened to them."
"He's still gross. Kind of hot though. With those tight pants." Jamie pushed up her very thick glasses onto her nose. Rachel stared at her questioningly. "You didn't hear me say that! Come on let's get out of here. I hate school."
The girls walked outside into the fresh air with the sun shining.
"Hey you should come to my house and play Super Mario Bros. 2, Rachel," Jamie said.
"You always want to play SMB2," Rachel said.
"I like it. It's called Doki Doki Panic in Japan."
"I have to do chores for my grandma first."
"She works you like a dog you know. You are a regular Cinderella."
"Not really. My grandma is nice."
"You're just saying that because you have Stockholm Syndrome."
"I do not!"
"Yeah."
"Well she's my only family after my parents died in the car crash when I was 5 years old."
"I know. But that doesn't change the fact that she's very controlling to you and you don't seem to see it." Jamie pretended to knock on her friend's head. "Sunny! With her head in the clouds all day long, where everything is fine and nothing is ever bad. I swear, you could find the silver lining in anyone, even Hitler."
Rachel laughed and pushed her friend's hand away. She reached up and smoothed her golden curls back into place. "That's not true. Not everyone. Just people I think have potential to be kind inside, deep down. Grandma is a good person inside. She's just very old and has many health problems."
"She probably knew Hitler personally back in the day."
"Gross! My grandma did not personally know Hitler."
"You're right. She's so old she probably personally knew Judas."
They both laughed.
"Okay, I've got to go then bye Jamie," said Rachel. She walked in a different direction as she waved goodbye to Jamie.
"Later, gater!" Jamie walked away down the street.
Rachel walked down the street to her house. Along the way she had to pass 29 Neibolt street. Every day she passed it and nothing ever happened.
But today something weird happened.
Today she saw a red balloon tied to the fence post. It wasn't even moving in the wind, which was really, really weird. That she didn't notice at first. When she did, she thought it was actually cool. She slowed down and stared at it.
"How is that even working?" Rachel looked around. The wind was obviously blowing. The balloon should have been wiggling in the wind. Nope. It remained perfectly still.
"What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck," she mused, smiling. "What kind of balloon does that?"
She walked over to it. The air seemed to be calling her name. Like the voices of little happy children were singing around but she couldn't see them. It was like she only heard them in her head.
"Oranges and lemons," they sang. "Say the bells of St. Clement's."
Weird, Rachel thought. She felt drawn to the Neibolt street house. It reminded her of a haunted house. She had heard rumors before that it was haunted. But she didn't think ghosts were evil. So she didn't think she was in any danger.
She walked through the open gate, slowly, and across the path to the yard. There was sunflowers growing in the tall dead grass and weeds. Rachel liked the colors. They were very bright.
Her mom enjoyed sunflowers. That was how she got her nickname, Sunny. Only three people ever called her that. Her mom, her grandma, and Jamie. When she was only a toddler, she used to play in her mother's sunflower garden while her mother was gardening. Her mother used to sing songs. Rachel remembered them and felt a little sad.
"Sunny," the voice whispered.
She gasped and turned around. "Mom?" There was no way that could have been her mom's voice. But it sounded like it was. Now she got nervous. She saw another balloon tied to the house's open backdoor. The door was literally opening in front of her. It creeked. It was like it was saying "Come on in!"
"Holy shit, this house might really be haunted after all," Rachel said under her breathe.
Her legs wouldn't move backward. They only wanted to go closer. She couldn't resist. She slowly walked to the open doorway, staring at the perfectly stationary red balloon tied to the doorknob.
"Okay, this is stupid, yes, I know. But I can't stop."
It could have been a prank. Or maybe ghosts were real and they were playing with her.
Soon she began to smell something that made her shocked but happy. She smelled pizza. Not just any pizza, but her favorite kind. Pepperoni and anchovies from Papa Mario's, her favorite Italian restaurant. It had a very peculiar scent and that was totally it. She smelled it when she went through the doorway, though there was the scent of old wood and the house and dust beneath it. The pizza scent was very strong.
And then she saw a rat crawling on the nearby furniture and backed away.
"Gross. I would definitely not want to eat pizza from Papa Mario's in a place like this," she muttered. "It's dirty and infested. And besides, this is all in my head anyway. There's no way somebody has Papa Mario's pizza in here, plus no way it's going to be my favorite toppings."
The door slammed shut behind her. She jumped a little. She gasped and ran to the door. The knob wasn't moving the door locked somehow. Now she was stuck.
"Okay, let me out!" Rachel demanded. "This isn't funny."
Something fell in the distance. Rachel whipped her head around and turned to face it. She saw some little kid wearing a hooded white sweatshirt. It was a little boy, maybe 6 or 7 years old. He had blue eyes and bright orange hair. He was smiling at her, mischievously. He giggled. Then he ran away.
"Hey, wait!"
Rachel ran after him.
"Now I know somebody's messing with me," she said as she cautiously followed after the weird kid, feeling that she would end up bumping into some kids from school hanging out with their little brother and trying to have fun by pranking somebody out of boredom. "I swear, if this is a joke, it's not very funny. It's just really lame."
The little boy's voice giggled.
"You owe me five farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's."
There was the kid's voices singing, sounding more like they were echoing inside her head instead of being sung by children in the room.
The boy giggled again. Rachel heard footsteps going down some stairs. She hurried and followed them, seeing the boy jump into the nearby well in the bottom of the house's basement.
"Holy fuck, kid, don't!" Rachel practically screamed.
She was certain she just watched some poor little kid commit accidental suicide by trying to play hide and seek in a dangerous place.
She gasped and ran over to the well, peering down into it. It was black without any flashlight to see. But there was a rope and pulley that used to be where the bucket for the well was held, about a million years ago. It looked sturdy. She grabbed onto it. Maybe she could rescue him.
"Hello? Kid?"
"Hi."
Rachel looked down, squinting into the darkness. She saw a light in the tunnel. The kid was sticking his head out of it. He giggled again and waved up at her.
"What the heck are you doing down there? Don't you know that's dangerous!" Rachel gasped.
"Wanna come down and play with me?" the boy suggested.
"Are you crazy, kid? Down in the sewer? Here, how about you come up and we'll play outside, and maybe I'll escort you back to your parents," Rachel offered more sanely. "I'm sure they'd be worried sick about you if they knew you were messing around here."
"I don't have any parents," the little boy said plainly as he stuck one of his fingers into his mouth and sucked on it. "I'm all alone." He pouted. "I just wanted someone to play with." Then he withdrew back into the tunnel.
"Wait, kid! Don't go!" she called.
Rachel didn't know whether he was fibbing or not, but she kind of felt bad now for this kid. It wasn't really normal for a kid to be running around in an abandoned house or going down into a well that connected to some old sewer tunnels. Maybe she had hurt his feelings. Maybe he was a real orphan who only wanted to play and he didn't understand normal things. Sometimes she had a hard time understanding normal things and had to have her friend Jamie or Grandma explain them for them to make sense.
"Well as long as I'm doing crazy things today," she said as she got on the rope and started to go down into the well. She might as well not stop there.
She went down the rope and got into the tunnel, walking down the dimly lit tunnel into the sewer. It was creepy and it smelled, but not as bad as she imagined it would have before she came down into there. The sound of dripping water was everywhere. A flashlight would have been perfect for this situation. Too bad she didn't have one.
Then she saw a balloon.
This one wasn't tied to anything. It was floating straight towards her, slowly, and steadily. It was weird that it was moving in illogical ways again, floating with no wind at all, directly toward her without stopping and at a set pace.
Rachel stared at it cautiously.
"Here comes a candle to light you to bed," sand the children, feeling like they were right in both of her ears.
Her heart began to beat rapidly as she heard the little boy's giggled behind her.
"And here comes a chopper to chop off your head."
The balloon popped, making her jump when she saw what was behind it that she now could plainly see, and she fell down into the dirty water on her hands and knees.
She grimaced. Her clothes were soaked in God only knew what, whatever the liquid in the sewer was made up of. She hoped it wasn't gray water, or worse, black water.
The mess on her clothes wasn't the worst part of this situation, no. She saw a clown suddenly standing there when the balloon popped.
A tall clown. Dressed in a silvery white suit with big red-orange pom pom buttons on the front, and frilly cuffs on the wrists and ankles. His hair was bright orange and curled up in swoops. His face was done up in white makeup with a painted red nose, red lips, and red marks going up along the corners of the lips and across the eyes. And his eyes were a bright yellow. Not a natural color.
"Chip chop chip chop the last man is dead," said Pennywise, making cutting motions with his left hand, and then he laughed. "Hi, Sunny. Thanks for coming to play." Drool spilled from between his red lips.
Rachel shuddered at first. What the hell was wrong with this guy? Was he even a human? He didn't look like it. He looked like a monster pretending to be a human dressed up as a clown. Nothing about this guy was normal from first sight, right away. Something screamed off in every way possible. What a bad disguise.
"Wh-who-who are y-y-ou?" Rachel stammered until she could get her words controlled. "Where's that kid?"
"I'm Pennywise," he said, and shook his head a little, making the sound of bells jingling. It looked like he was spazzing out or something. Or maybe he was just happy. "The dancing clown!"
"What the fuck are you doing in a sewer tunnel," Rachel wondered, he voice now sounding angry. Why the heck are you scaring the shit out of people for no reason, was what she wanted to say, but it was inside her head at this time. She put her hands on her hips. "And how did you know my special nickname?"
"I live here. And I know lots of things."
"Oh yeah? Do you know how close I am to kicking your ass?"
Pennywise giggled at the half-baked threat. Rachel recognized it as being the same as the little boy's, but in a different voice.
"Come float with us, Sunny," said the children's voices.
"I don't want to float!" Rachel screamed. "I want to get the fuck out of here and get home and change my clothes, which are now dirty, thanks a lot!"
"Float," the children sung in their mocking tones.
"We all float down here," said Pennywise.
He started to dance from one foot to the other in a silly way that looked like he wasn't trying all that hard to be good at it. It was mostly taunting.
"Fuck this, I am leaving!" Rachel stated firmly. She turned around and ran for the end of the tunnel and the rope leading up. She gasped when she saw the rope was gone. Somebody had pulled it back up. "Are you kidding me?"
She felt like crying.
She slowly turned around, knowing the weird clown guy would be right there, breathing down her neck.
There wasn't anyone there.
Rachel's heart stopped racing a mile a minute. She placed her hand over her chest and took some deep breaths.
"Okay, calm down. There's probably a rational explanation for all of this that I can't wrap my head around good enough yet," she said to herself, trying to remain calm. "I will eventually, though. I promise. Heck, it might be toxic sewer gas fumes that I've been breathing in that are causing me to hallucinate."
"Flooooooooooat," Pennywise's voice mocked from behind her.
"Nope," she said, not bothering to turn around. "You're not real. You're a bad hallucination."
"If I was a hallucination, could I do this?" the voice hissed at her, sounding like it was right by her ear, and slightly more pissed off than in laughing mood now. She felt fingers lightly poke her shoulder and gasped. "Look down. Hee hee!"
Rachel thought she might have just made the biggest mistake of her life as she looked down and saw several huge centipedes wiggling around her sneakers. Her face went pale while memories of a centipede crawling into her crib as a baby penetrated her head.
She screamed bloody murder and passed out.