A/N
This story came to me in a dream. Actually, yeah, it did. I have yet to decide whether or not I should make it an ongoing series, or just a oneshot. It's funny though, I almost only read Stephen King, but I have never written or even thought about writing fanfic based on his stories. Maybe because they're too perfect as they are. "IT" was my first King and I am still in love with that book, even after eighteen years. True love and true horrors never die, I suppose.
Six months after the final horrors, Beverly Hanscom – formerly Beverly Rogan, born Beverly Marsh, woke up in the middle of the night, biting her teeth down hard around a scream. She stared into the darkness with pounding heart; for a moment the shadows moving on the wall had looked like a giant spider. That seemed to be relevant to her sudden fear, but she had no idea why. Something
(a memory?)
(a nightmare?)
(the memory of a nightmare?)
stirred inside her, floating
(everything floats down here…!)
up to her awakening brain, and she was still able to hold back the scream, but the horror she felt welling up inside of her was full and rich, like the full moon, and she didn't understand why. Not until a strangely familiar image appeared before her inner eye – a balloon. A balloon, and a grinning clown.
(IT!)
Bev put both her hands protectively at the bump on her stomach, where her child lay. She whimpered, and that was enough to wake her husband up.
"Bev? Honey, are you okay?" His hands joined hers over the baby bump, lacing their fingers together. Dear old Ben. He was so skinny nowadays, but it still seemed to Bev that there was a lot of him to cling to, and she was grateful for that. She needed someone to cling to.
"The baby", she whispered.
"Is there anything wrong with the baby?", Ben asked, his body tensing as if he was getting ready to bolt out of bed and call an ambulance.
"No. Nothing is wrong. It just wasn't supposed to be. Don't you remember?"
"I…" but he fell silent, failing to do just that – remember. It seemed they had forgotten a lot of things.
"We were sterile, Ben. All of us. Barren."
It was the word 'barren' that seemed to shake him back into the world of complete awareness.
"The Barrens. You don't seriously believe…" but he fell silent again. "Oh God."
"What else do you remember about Derry, Ben?" Her voice was shaking now.
"This isn't about our child, is it?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. But if it is, it has everything to do with it. What do you remember about Derry?"
"We… we went into the sewers…" he swallowed. There seemed to be no saliva left in his mouth, and in the back of his throat he felt a bitter taste, like pennies
(Pennywise, the dancing clown…)
And blood, and mud, rising, like an oncoming heartburn-induced belch
(belch, Huggins, Higgins, whatever his name was, that crazy fuck…)
And suddenly everything came back to him and he grasped for Bev in the dark, pulled her close and started to cry. He both surprised and didn't surprise her by doing so. He cried not like an adult, but like a little boy, sobbing loudly.
"We killed IT… I remember that much. But what if I didn't manage to kill all of ITs offsprings? What if just one of them got away?!"
Beverly was quiet. But her hands had found their way back to her belly, as if trying to give comfort to the unborn child she carried, and she thought:
Yes. What if?
