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This has been the longest chapter I've ever written on over 10,000 words! Holy shit!
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Chapter 7: Speak of the Devil and he is sure to arrive
"Y-You guys m-m-made it." Denbrough breathed out in relief as they all spotted Richie and Cassie in the forest line carrying the snacks they had bought. Though Richie could not look any more enthusiastic about heading out to greet his friends and show them everything they had bought, Cassie was reluctant to make herself seen by the rest of them, despite that they were already acquainted. Her mother often described being the center of attention as 'the best feeling in the world', but Cassie wasn't so sure about that.
As Richie kept displaying his goods like he was the explorer of an entirely new country, Cassie placed the bag of her goods down next to his bike and headed up towards Denbrough, flashing him a greeting smile and nodded. She wasn't usually one for verbal greetings unless they contained some sort of curse word, something Richie didn't display very seldom. It was some of the things they shared in common, but Denbrough seemed like a decent fellow so she decided to skip the unpleasantries and at least try to be on her best behavior for today. She did at least want to try and become friends with them, as uncertain as that possibility seemed.
Denbrough smiled gregarious in return. "Y-You came."
She shrugged her shoulders. "I had some spare time today. Besides, I've never been here before."
"I-It's a cool p-place to h-h-hang out."
"I bet." She shifted her focus away from him and took a cautious step towards the edge, letting her eyes fall down to the water and perceive just how far it went before she would be able to reach it. Truth be told, she was never especially fond of heights, but not to a frantic level such as her father would reach. Her parents didn't lack the tendencies of exaggerating everything they either liked or disliked and it more than often irked her whenever the volumes of their voices would go well beyond the sanctuary roof of their house.
However, upon looking down there a second time, she came to realize that from her perspective, at least, it seemed a bit fun to be able to be able to crash into the cold water without regard for her safety. She wasn't suicidal, but she doubted the fall would kill her unless she landed flat on her stomach, in which case it would only hurt like hell. "So, let me get this straight," she said as she took a step back from the edge, looking back at the rest of them as they were beginning to undress down to their underwear alone. "We are supposed to jump down from here and into the water?" She gestured down to the bottom of the quarry.
"That's right," verified Kaspbrak. "It's not dangerous unless you're unfortunate enough to hit the side of the cliff." Cassie was able to notice how most of the boys avoided looking at her as they undressed, even going as far as to do it behind one of the bushes or the trees. She couldn't blame them for being bashful. Hell, she too felt quite inhibited if she was to ever undress to her underwear in front of a bunch of people of the opposite gender. Then again, the only she had gotten undressed in front of was Nathan back in Asheville one summer when they were bathing in the lake, and even then she had always been in her underwear. He hadn't as much as commented it before he too jumped into the water himself.
Scratching the back of her head, Cassie began to unbutton her shorts and pull off her shoes, putting her hat down next to them as she dragged her shirt off until she stood there in just her gray underwear and bra. Being only fourteen, she hadn't physically developed to the point where people usually noticed in public, but she still wore a cover over her cleavage just to feel an inch within the femininity her mother had told her to cherish when she first got her menstrual period. It wasn't much, but it was something.
When she put her clothes away to the side and looked up again, she could tell that some of the boys had been looking her way, but quickly shifted their heads around again when she looked at them and resumed with putting their own clothes away. Though initially feeling a little embarrassed about it, the fluster soon was exchanged with a mocking grin. "Perverts," she mumbled good-natured, not really defining them as such but still finding their reactions to that word to be worth remembering for a lifetime.
"Damn, Hayes," Richie suddenly said, gazing at her with his glasses still firmly attached to the bridge of his nose whereas the rest of him (except his underwear) was completely exposed. He looked at her from head to toe twice and placed a finger under his chin with a derogatory smirk. "I almost didn't think you were a girl there for a second."
Instead of acting like her mother and immediately speak out on how offended she felt, Cassie chose to play along and make him sorry that he let those words escape his lips. "Please, I'm less of a girl than you are, Tozier," she replied and flashed him a taunting grin, and he instantly flushed upon acknowledging her retort and took a dramatically long step back.
Both Kaspbrak and Uris began to hysterically laugh at her comeback and even Denbrough and Hanscom seemed to find it tempting to follow the pattern. Richie, on the other hand, merely stuck out his tongue to her and frowned like a defeated opponent. "Very funny, I'm laughing my ass off!" he shouted and his sarcasm did not avoid her detection.
She mockingly bowed before him and said with a deep and British accent, "Best in the business, my good fellow,"
"Yeah, right," he crossed his arms over his chest. "I can see that."
"Uhm, guys," Hanscom's interruption prevented both the Hayes girl and the Tozier boy's quarrel to continue, and all of them turned their focus onto him. "Do you think Beverly will show up?" There was a hint of disappointment and negativity creeping up on his tone like the answer had already been given to him on a silver plate. Despite being usually indifferent, Cassie walked over to him, placed her arm on his shoulders and said with a smile of both confidence and credence,
"Don't worry, Hanscom. I'm sure she'll show up. After all, who'd miss a moment to hang up with you guys?"
"Are you being sarcastic now?" Asked Uris with a deadpan look that she returned with a feigned expression of offense, patting her collarbone with her free hand.
"Look, I'm a bitch, but I'm not a lying bitch," She looked back Hanscom again and held the thumb of her free hand up. "Besides, if you ask me, Beverly doesn't seem like the girl to ditch someone like that." In spite of not having known the Hanscom boy for very long, Cassie instantly expressed fondness for him. He was big for his age, sure, but that didn't seem like a reason to ostracize him from the others. The memory of how utterly beat-up he looked like after his unfortunate run-in with the Bowers gang just proved how big of a bag of dicks some people could be because of bagatelles. It was pathetic, to say the least.
The Hanscom boy, however, seemed to find her words consolating enough and he nodded at her. "Yeah, I know. I just hope she'll get here." It may have just been the sun, but she was vaguely able to catch a point of red peaking up from each of his cheeks at the mention of the Marsh girl. Romance and stuff truly weren't her field of qualifications, but Cassie knew crushes when she saw them. She recalled the look in Nathan's eyes whenever he spotted Emily Collins walking down the hallways of her old school in Asheville. The sight was bemusing to Cassie, but she felt happy on Nathan's behalf.
Her own love life, on the contrary, was pretty much existing on a nonexistent planet somewhere in the galactic atmosphere near a black hole. Even the night shone brighter than her love life. She had never been one for reciprocated crushes from someone else, but it felt like a dagger pointed at both ends. Whenever someone confessed to her, she would reject them, but whenever she confessed to someone else she had a crush on (as limited as it was), they would reject her in return. It was a cycle of silliness and the main reason why she never depended on lovers to keep her company. Friendships tended to be more reliable, not that she had a lot of those either.
"W-We can wait for her d-d-down there," Denbrough said and pointed over the edge into the water below. "S-She'll come."
All of the teenagers lined up beside one-another by the edge of the quarry, looking down with equally anxious eyes. It was clear that none of them were really looking forward to jumping, but none of them wanted to chicken out either. They were best friends, but they weren't above picking on each other for fun. Richie was the perfect example of that.
They were lined up to each other as follows from left to right; Richie, Cassie, Uris, Denbrough, Hanscom, and Kaspbrak.
Cassie looked over the edge again, feeling a little less confident than she did moments before, and she felt the uneasiness built itself up in her stomach again. Her father, being the acrophobic that he was, would have left there screaming like a frantic insane person being chased by a ten-feet-big bear in the woods, and that wasn't exaggerating it one bit. It was an underreaction. Her mother, on the hand, was a germaphobe, much like Kaspbrak was, and would scream like a maniacal housemaid if Cassie ever returned with dirt on her clothes. It was a pain, but that wasn't the sort of phobia Cassie had.
She was afraid of clowns, nothing more and nothing less, all thanks to damned Edgar Middleton in primary school.
And last she checked, there weren't any fucking clowns in Derry.
Cassie felt tempted to do it and was actually prepared to take the final step over the edge and prove that she wasn't the kind of girl who would back away from a challenge, especially since Richie was standing right next to her and would indubitably laugh his ass off if she chickened out.
Suddenly, Richie began making weird noises from her left. She turned around and was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, and just became the witness of his releasing a ball of salvia down into the water.
Cassie blinked. "What are you—"
And from her right this time, Uris released a ball of spit of his own over the edge, then Denbrough, then Hanscom, then lastly Kaspbrak. Was this was some sort of ritual for them to perform every single day? Eventually, not wanting to be left out, Cassie ignored her disgust, gathered a small amount of spit in her mouth and shot it out. Unfortunately, it didn't get very far. It didn't even hit the water.
"Oh my god," said Richie. "That was terrible. I win!"
"What are you talking about?" Asked Kaspbrak and Cassie in unison.
"It went the furthest! It's my destiny!" Richie exclaimed with victorious arrogance.
"If your destiny is to spit the furthest, then your future must be bleak, Richie," Cassie commented, trying to sound indifferent as always but failed miserably at letting the cynicism out. It was obvious that the Tozier boy's priorities in life were either low, not yet established, or just pathetic. Perhaps all of the above?
He snapped his eyes at her at the comment. "Says you! Yours didn't even hit the water."
"So what?"
"You're supposed to at least make an effort! You're not even trying!"
She felt tempted to just push him off the cliff and save herself the pain of having to endure his talking any further, and she was actually in the midst of placing a hand on his back and just fulfill the beneficial deed. Denbrough interrupted them, however, with a simplistic and short question which made every one of them turn their focus away from the spitting contest that had escalated into yet another argument between the Tozier boy and the Hayes girl.
"S-So who wants to go f-f-first?" Denbrough asked, but none of them indicated that they wanted to do it. They all cast their eyes over the edge again, which had seemed to have grown considerably larger in distance between the surface and them. Cassie refrained from knotting her fingers together in anxiety over how much further down in steemed now that they were actually about to do it.
"I'll go."
Everyone turned around and saw Beverly throwing her bike to the side with the rest of them. Her hair was noticeably much shorter than it was the other day, but they all could silently agree that it looked good on her, including Hanscom, whom faintly blushed again at the sight of her. Beverly unbuttoned her dress and took off her shoes, standing there with nothing but her underwear before she proceeded to sprint towards them and towards the edge.
"Sissies." She said with a benevolent taunt and, much to everyone's shock, leaped off the quarry without as much as a single halt in reluctance.
"What the fuck!" Richie shout echoed through the air with bewilderment as they all watched the Marsh girl leap off the edge and land down into the water with a large splash. It wasn't until a few moments later that she resurfaced and gestured for the others to join her down there. Cassie felt the uneasiness and anxiety roll of her shoulders as the dangers were gone from her list of problems. If the Marsh girl was able to survive the leap, so could she.
Richie was the first one to speak out of them all as their temporary silence wore off. "So, whose next?"
A cunning grin crept across her lips at the mention of this, and she placed a 'comforting' hand on his back, causing him to flinch at her touch. They both looked into each other's eyes, grayish blue into deep brown, and though her touch had caught him off-guard, he didn't abstain from it. He opened his mouth to ask her about what she was doing, but in doing so, he activated Cassie's innocent smile and she said, "Have a nice trip."
"What do you-" He was incapable of finishing his question as he felt a gust of air pass him by. It took him a couple of times before he was properly able to process the information that he had just been pushed, and as he eventually did so, his body crashed into the water. The sudden cold sent chills through his body and caused major goosebumps to radiate on his skin.
He stayed in a frozen position beneath the water for what felt like eternities before he finally resurfaced, and he cast a glare up towards the grinning girl still at the edge of the quarry over them. "JUST WAIT 'TIL I GET YOU, HAYES!" He shouted up at her, more competitive and annoyed than truly infuriated. His mind was filled with the determination of beating her. It would be a victory he would cherish until the day he would die.
The Hayes girl continued to laugh at the sight of him, holding her stomach and bowing like she was suffering from stomachaches. However, the tables soon turned as Stan followed her example and pushed her down the edge as well, and her laughing was instantaneously replaced with resonating fearful cries until she finally hit the waters as well, disappearing from sight for a few moments before she got up, pushing her darkened hair away from her eyes and looking twice as enraged as Richie had done before.
"I'LL KICK YOUR ASS, URIS!" She bellowed with the vengeance to match a mythological Valkyrie, and Richie was vaguely able to spot traits of fearfulness in the curly-haired boy's eyes from up on the quarry. It was bemusing, but he currently had his focus fixated on someone else with his own revenge all planned out in his head.
Cassie didn't know what hit her until she felt herself get pulled beneath the water again, feeling the coldness of the water fill her mouth and vaguely get into her lungs. From beneath the water, she was able to see the blurred outlines of Richie holding her in a choking hold around her neck, not to a threatening point, though.
The challenge had been accepted. Although the Tozier boy had the upper hand at first, Cassie quickly shook herself out of his choking grip and quickly shifted around, grabbing him by his shoulders and firmly pushing him away. She swam up to the surface and took a deep breath, coughing a couple of times from the water that she had been unfortunate enough to swallow.
"What's the matter, Hayes?" she heard Richie shout from behind him with an underlying taunt. "Can't handle a little water?"
He did not just...
"Want a piece of me, Tozier?" She asked as soon as she regained her breathing under control, turning around with a dangerous glare. "You'll get it, alright."
"That's if you can reach me!" He taunted, waving both of his arms over his head.
Oh, he just did.
This meant war!
"Alright, you little shit!" She shouted and charged through the water and towards him, not saving the boy any mercy from her wrath.
Needless to say, Cassie was genuinely enjoying her afternoon with the gang of social misfits. It was perhaps the best moment with friends she had had for some time, whether or not it felt appropriate enough to address them as such. They waged war against each other in the water to the point where Cassie let Beverly get on top of her shoulders and try to wrestle against Richie, who was on top of Bill's shoulders as an opponent.
Beverly grabbed a hold of Richie's shoulders in an attempt to throw him off, but Richie was faster and was successfully able to throw Beverly back into the water, resulting in both of them sinking back into the coldness again.
The primary fights were between Richie and Cassie, who were never able to sign a truce and consistently continued trying to defeat each other. They were all laughing, having fun, enjoying the summer together like the teenagers they were supposed to be. It was, perhaps, the best day of summer Cassie had ever experienced her entire life. She missed her time with Nathan, but this made her feel like a kid again, as silly as it seemed.
"What was that? Something touched my foot!" Stan suddenly yelled and the others turned to look at him with furrowed eyebrows and confused expressions. It was clear that it was something startling him based on the frantic motions of his eyes, but as Bill ducked beneath the water and tried to see what it was, he came back up almost as soon as he had gone down.
There was nothing indicating danger plastered over his face, and it relieved the others that there was, in fact, nothing to be afraid of.
"What was it?" Cassie asked and swam over towards him and away from Richie, curiosity overwhelming her. "Was it a snake?"
"A SNAKE?" The Uris boy wasted no time getting out of the water and up on the shore where they had placed their stuff at the mention of a potential serpent in the water. The others too became somewhat unnerved by this. Cassie felt the urge to snicker at their reaction but refrained from doing so and shifted back to Bill again.
He shook his head at the suggestion. "It's a turtle."
Her eyes grew with inquisitiveness. "Really? A turtle? What kind?"
"I d-d-don't know. It went away as soon as I s-spotted it."
Disappointment surged through her. "Too bad. I'd like to see it."
"You like turtles?" Bill asked, mildly surprised.
She shrugged. "Somewhat."
"You're from North Carolina, right?" Eddie asked as they all got up from the water and began to munch on the snacks Richie and Cassie had bought before they got there. The sun was still blazing hot outside and it did not take them long to get dry on the shore-rocks where they had chosen to rest for a bit. Whereas the boys were sitting up, both Cassie and Beverly were lying down and tanning themselves in the heat, enjoying their youth to the fullest potential. The radio was turned on and both the girls were exchanging some snacks to chew off whenever they reached to get some.
Cassie's mother had told her that she was anemic, meaning that her body didn't produce the regular amount of red blood cells it was supposed to, hence her usual paleness. However, it didn't decrease her bodily functions in any way with the exception of restricted stamina when in motion and an increase in thirst. The latter wasn't much of a problem, but the former was the main reason why she loathed P.E. Despite this, she didn't mind tanning every once in a while when she had the occasion to do so.
"Yup," Cassie answered lazily and pulled her head over her face, shielding it from the sun. "I'm from a town called Asheville. It's a little bigger than Derry but no less loud."
"Why'd you move?" Stan asked curiously.
"Did your mother have an affair or something?" Richie inquired hastily, waiting for something dramatic to be said but earning himself nothing but sharp looks from the others and a clasp on the back from Eddie.
"Shut up, Richie," Eddie said, leaving a significant red mark where his hand had been.
"As amusing and preferable as that would be," Cassie answered, not moving an inch from her spot. "No. My dad got a job here. It's the same boring story."
"It would be preferable if one of your parents had an affair?" Beverly asked, pulling her sunglasses down to look at her with a questionable expression.
Cassie shrugged but didn't pull the hat away from her eyes, thus she was unable to witness what each of them was doing or looked like. "My mom is mainly at home, doing nothing really, whilst my dad got a job as a member of the disciplinary committee, meaning that he's in charge of 'disciplining' delinquents such as Bowers and his bunch of assholes. However, from the look of it, he's doing a terrible job. Then again, no offense, but your town is full of shitty people."
"N-None t-t-taken," stuttered Bill in agreement, and the others nodded as well, with the exception of Beverly, who was still looking puzzled at her from the side.
"Are you close with your family?" Beverly's tone became suddenly very low, almost on the sympathetic or pitiful ground. Her question caught Cassie off-guard, and she sat straight up and pulled her hat off her face and revealed inscrutable expressions, neither of sadness nor apathy but at the same time an amalgamation of both. She already knew how to answer Beverly's question without hesitation.
"No, we're not." She wasn't feeling depressed or sad because of her lack of relations with her parents. It had grown on her like a natural development. As a child, her mother never seemed to truly view her as the child that she had been physically stuck with for nine whole months. She would either ignore her presence or become frustrated with her. Her father too didn't seem to acknowledge her existence like a loving father should have. It was as if they both stuck with her just because she was their offspring, nothing more. There were moments as a child where they would occasionally display affection towards her if she had achieved something like the spelling-competition in primary school and her mother had flashed her a true smile, but it was only temporarily. She knew it wasn't supposed to be like that.
She looked at the others and noticed that they were looking intently at her, both with curiosity and with empathy, for some reason the latter came from Richie and Bill the most, whereas the others were mostly just curious. Beverly, on the other hand, had her face painted with a range of emotions, none Cassie was able to distinguish. She didn't want some sort of pity from them for being someone with parental issues and shit, and at first, she wanted to avoid the subject, but the words slipped from her before she was able to stop them from coming.
"My mom and I... We don't really talk together. We talk more at each other. My dad... Our relationship is as much as nonexistent."
"They don't care?" Beverly asked, to which Cassie shrugged again.
"They do care, but not because they love me. They care because they have to." She paused and shook her head dismissively, smiling silly. "I'm probably just selfish. Just forget I said anything, okay?"
"M-M-My parents too are d-d-distant ssssometimes," Bill somberly spoke out of the sudden, and everyone turned their attention to him, Cassie included. "A-A-After what happened to Georgie, t-they shut me out. We rarely s-speak together now."
"I'm sorry," Cassie sympathized with his situation, feeling guilty for bringing down the mood with her own misery. She didn't want to turn everything into a pity party. "But, guys," she said, struggling to find her voice as if she had lost the habit of using it. She took a deep breath and exhaled, cursing herself for acting so stupid. "If anyone messes with you, whether it's Henry Bowers or someone else, I'll kill them for you." It felt unnatural for her to speak so emotionally and sentimental towards someone, especially a group she had just recently met. However, there was no doubt that Cassie had grown fond of them over the course of the week. If they were pissed on by someone, she would deal with them on her own. Just like she had with Greta Keene and Vic Criss. She was not afraid.
"You mean like you did with Vic Criss?" Richie asked her teasingly, and everyone looked first oddly at him and then at her.
"What'd y-you do?" Bill asked her, and though she didn't really feel like answering, she knew there was no avoiding the truth.
"I told him to piss off." Though it wasn't the entire truth, it was partially enough. However, the damned Tozier boy wouldn't let it go that easily.
"Don't leave out the good stuff. You beat him to the fucking ground." Richie exclaimed, and the temptation to get him to shut up was increasing drastically.
Instead, she refrained. "He was annoying me, not to mention that he was partially at fault for what happened to Ben."
The Hanscom boy looked at her with a sense of appreciation, one she certainly knew she didn't deserve. She could still see the bandage on his stomach from what had happened, and she doubted it would leave its existence without a trace. Scars like that tended to remain as a constant reminder of what didn't kill them. "You did that because of what they did to me?" He asked.
She shrugged and scratched the back of her head. "Little pissant was pissing me off. Besides, I figured he deserved it, though I doubt I'd be able to do it if he wasn't caught off-guard."
"Thanks, Cassie," Ben said, flashing her a shy but true smile. "You didn't have to."
Cassie felt herself growing faintly embarrassed and she turned her head around to avoid their eyes. "D-Don't mention it."
"But that means Bowers will just come for you after what you did to one of his friends," Eddie said with concern. "You won't live through the summer if he finds you."
She shrugged again, uninterested and unconcerned. "So what? I'll even dare him to step within the perimeter of my home when my mom's around. Besides, you guys are tolerable enough. If you're still alive then Bowers can't be that bad, right?"
"Why, Cassie," Richie said with a sweetened look in his eyes, grinning as if to brighten the mood again with his talkative gift. "Have you grown soft on us?"
She snorted but found herself eventually laughing, turning around to hide the fluster reaching to her cheeks. "Shut up, Richie,"
"You know you like me,"
"Grow a few inches taller then we'll see," She didn't really plan on saying that, but the words just rolled off her tongue. It didn't aid her getting out of the awkward situation.
"Challenge accepted." Was all Richie said that just as his eyes suddenly traveled down to Ben's bag and he began to scavage through it like a hungry fox in search of sustenance, not that intelligence and Richie really matched together as a pair. He seemed more like the kind of kid who would enter the area of a library on a dare or against his own will. "Newsflash, Ben, school's out for summa!" He impersonated someone none of them able to identify, but both Beverly and Cassie, as well as the rest of them, had turned towards them with a perked interest in what it was he was holding.
"Oh, that? That's not school stuff," Ben said just as Richie pulled out what looked like to be some kind of postcard from an unknown sender.
Richie shorted and turned it around, becoming a little too noisy with his newfound friend's business. "Who sent you this?"
"No one." Ben hissed and grabbed the postcard back, apparently holding some sort of personal value with it. Despite having his source of entertainment ripped away from him, Richie continued to search through the Hanscom boy's bag and eventually pulled out a file of newspapers and information.
"What's with the history project?" He asked and started sending the file across to the others, who were becoming just as intrigued.
"Well, when I first moved here, I didn't really have anyone to hang out with, so I just started spending time in the library," Ben explained just as Bill got a hold of the files and looked over the information.
Richie didn't seem to believe his ears when he told him this. "You went to the library? On purpose?"
"Hey," Cassie chuckled and went over to them with Beverly, wanting to read the files as well. "At least he has the capacity of getting smarter unlike you." They sat down beside Bill with Beverly in the middle of them as he showed them the pages. They were old newspapers and pictures that seemed to be decades old, going back to the 1960's.
"What's the Black Spot?" Stan asked them, and as if on cue, the three of them came across an old picture of what looked like to be a club of sorts.
"The Black Spot was a nightclub that was burned down years ago by that racist cult," Ben explained.
"Huh, you're never able to get away from racist assholes these days," Cassie commented and went over the pages as Beverly passed it to her. They were all dark and melancholic like misery and negativity were required qualifications they needed in order to make it to the folder. However, she began to notice something rather unusual about them all. They were about unfortunate events that had plagued the town. Murders and mysteries, kidnappings and disappearances. She wasn't aware that someone as soft as Ben was so interested in the macabre.
Bill suddenly turned to Beverly and said slowly, stuttering like he usually did but with a hint of nervousness this time. "Y-Y-Your hair..." However, he wasn't able to finish before Ben beat him to it.
"Your hair's beautiful, Beverly," he said, and the Denbrough boy looked down with embarrassment of being too slow.
"I agree, but my mom would kill me if I ever cut it short again," Cassie complimented her as well, flashing her a thumbs up. "But it suits you, Bev. Keep it like that if you want."
"Oh," Beverly brushed a few strands behind her ear and smiled shyly towards Ben, though there was an inevitable peak of despondency as she spoke. "Right, thanks."
Cassie narrowed her eyes at this but decided to ignore whatever triangle was happening between the three of them and handed the folder back to Bill, who continued to scroll through it with observant eyes like he was searching for something in particular. He didn't get far before Richie reached his arm forth and asked him to pass it back to him, which Bill did without much objection. Richie's eyes furrowed beneath his glasses as he continued to scroll through all the pages. "Why is it all murders and missing kids?"
"Derry's not like any town I've ever been in before," Ben spoke lowly with a subdued tone accompanying his words, and everyone looked back at him with an increase of uneasiness building itself up in every one of them. There was something about how he seemed to change into a more darker tone that made them grow nervous out of the sudden. If Cassie got to know that her parents had forced her to move to some kind of unfortunate town where it was inevitable that people either died or disappeared, then she would, nevertheless, be pissed enough to yell it straight in her mother's face.
"I did a study once, and it turns out..." He paused uneasily before he resumed. "People die or disappear here six times the national average."
With reasonable causes, Cassie felt a chill run up and down her spine. Nathan would just love to hear what kind of fucked-up town she had moved to and how much he would miss it, or her. If she disappeared traceless or ended up dead in the middle of the forest or something, she would curse whoever appointed her father to a disciplinary committee member in that god-forsaken town and throw a fit larger than even the rat did during the Black Plague. That was how irked she had become over the course of the minutes she had gotten to know more about it. "For real?"
"Yeah," he nodded.
"You read that?" Beverly asked.
He nodded again and continued. "And that's just grown-ups," his face paled somewhat. "And the kids are worse, way worse."
By then, all of them were exchanging nervous glances with each other.
"I've got more stuff if you wanna see it."
Only Eddie shook his head at the suggestion, whereas the others decided to come with the new boy to his home.
Ben's room was relatively average, or it would have been had it not been for all of the newspaper clips attached to his walls and the obvious fascination with the history of a dull town such as Derry. The boy seemed more intelligent than the rest of them did on several stages, especially Richie, who couldn't help to marvel everything in the room like 'nerd stuff'.
Cassie couldn't help but to find it interesting how much research he had done whilst staying in the town. He was either too into the subject or just had too much free time on his hands. She had a lot of that as well before befriending the group at first, but she could never imagine herself spending it on history and the likes of old facts about her new homeplace. It seemed too tedious for her liking, and Nathan would mock her to the day she died if that turned out to be the case.
"Wow, wow!" Richie exclaimed as they entered the room one after another. It was obvious that the Hanscom boy was attempting at hiding something away from the group, but his demeanor was too revealing to be taken seriously.
"So, Ben, where's the playboy magazines?" Cassie asked as her eyes traveled across the room, eyeing everything from the newspapers on the walls to the projector maps positioned on his desks. Quite frankly, she couldn't imagine someone as irreproachable as Ben to be hiding such perverse stuff, let alone look at them. She knew innocence when she saw it and that boy was the very manifestation of the term.
"Yeah, dude, where's the naughty pictures?" Richie joined in on the fun, but it was obvious that none of them found it amusing, Ben the least. Instead, said boy moved away from the awkward subject and asked as he saw his friends looking around in his room.
"Cool, huh?" His question was directed towards Richie as the latter had his eyes planted on the images on the walls.
"No, no, nothing cool, nothing cool," he breathed out as the majority of the groups all joined him and looked at the newspaper clips. Cassie currently had her own focus placed on the missing posters she found scattered across the room in unceremonious manners. They were of Betty Ripsom and some other children she was unable to identify.
Then it hit her. As she scanned through the posters one after another from the wall next to the window, it didn't come to her attention that the majority of them were just children. In fact, they were all just children. It had been going on since last year when Georgie Denbrough disappeared, and she could spot from her peripheral vision that Bill had a noticeable somber expression on his face. It couldn't be easy to lose someone you were once close to, especially family. That sensation wasn't an alien one for her, but the difference was that she still had a mother and father. She just didn't have a family.
"What's that?" Stan's voice caught her attention and she turned her focus to what the others were looking at.
"Oh, that? That's the charter for Derry's township." Ben explained.
Richie adjusted the brim of his glasses and muttered mockingly, "Nerd alert."
"Says how much you know, Richie," Cassie remarked and walked over towards the right side of the room, and soon found herself suddenly fixating on a rather old image hanging from the wall next to the closet door. It looked like it was from perhaps the 16th to 17th centuries or so. It had been drawn by someone in classic manners, displaying an image of looked like to be the original citizens of the town, discussing with one another about something she was incapable of telling for sure.
Her eyes traveled across the picture from each and every one of the men, until they suddenly landed on a very odd-looking person standing in the midst of the crowd, grinning in a very sinister way. It almost looked like a clown, and coming from Cassie, it was a terrifying image to look at. She took a step back from the wall as if distancing herself from it would shield her from any upcoming threats. It was childish, but she felt at ease by looking away. The chills, however, didn't stop crawling on her skin. Whatever that image suggested, it didn't make good for any comfort.
"It's really interesting," Ben said and she turned around to join the others. "Derry started as a beaver training camp."
"Still is! Am I right, boys?" Richie exclaimed and held his arm up, expecting a hive five from either Eddie or Stan, but none of them took the initiative of doing it.
Instead, Cassie looked at him with a deadpan look of annoyance. "Judging from you, I'd almost say I agree, Richie." She then turned to look at Ben and pointed at the image of the original citizens. "Who are these people?"
"Ninety-one people signed the charter that made Derry," he said, growing increasingly uneasy for some reason. "But later that winter, they all disappeared without a trace."
Cassie grew increasingly curious and edgy at the same time, not knowing which of them she would prefer to be the most.
"The entire camp?" Eddie asked.
"There were rumors of Indians, but no sign of an attack. Everyone just thought it was a plague or something?"
"But even so, a plague would leave corpses. Didn't they find any trace?" Cassie asked, her stomach sinking into the bottom of her abdomen as the seconds passed. She was growing faintly ill for unknown reasons, not out of fear. She wasn't afraid of anything, but there was something about that image that caused her nerves to spiral out of control. It felt like something was watching her, as cliched as that sounded. She didn't say anything though and just continued to listen to Ben as he escalated with his lecture.
"But it's like one day everyone just woke up and left. The only clue was a trail of bloody clothes leading down to the well-house."
"Jesus," Richie said, sounding genuinely shocked. "We should get Derry on Unsolved Mysteries."
"To do what?" Cassie inquired skeptically and crossed her arms, looking at Richie. "Get them to explore centuries of old history that may as well remain forgotten about? Not even I would waste my time with that."
"But wouldn't it be cool if they did?" Richie countered and threw his arms towards the newspapers. "Ben here could be the one with the valuable intel."
Whilst Cassie and Richie went on with an argument about why Unsolved Mysteries would even want to go to a boring town such as Derry to solve old history, the closet door in Ben's room was opened by Beverly and, much to his embarrassment, the girl he had a crush on found out about his dirty little secret.
"Besides," Cassie contended and gestured to Ben with her arm, not looking away from Richie. Ben, however, was too focused on Beverly at the moment to even listen to their bickering. "How would he even be able to get them here in the first place?"
"I don't know," Richie shook his shoulders. "Maybe he could be trying to make friends with them or something."
Then, for the first time since they arrived, Bill spoke up and looked away from the projector maps. "W-W-Where's the well-house?"
They all turned towards him as Ben shrugged with a lack of answers. "I don't know. Somewhere in town, I guess. Why?"
Bill went deep into thoughts at the mention of this, even looking away from his friends to a seemingly trance-like state, and his eyes traveled to the walls filled with missing posters of the kids that had yet to be found. "Nothing," he mumbled, but they all knew that he was thinking about something.
Everyone eventually left to get home before it became too late. They all surely had parents or families that worried about their safety, not to mention that the curfew only reached to 7 pm, which meant that they were obligated to return back to their houses or the police department would poke their noses into the matter about disregarding safety rules.
Richie and Cassie walked beside one-another on the way home since they were practically from the same neighborhood. They didn't say very much, but it was obvious that the silence soon became awkward and rather cumbersome to endure. Instead of continuing with said pattern of quietness, Cassie decided to try and conversate without allowing too many curse words to roll off her tongue. After all, she was technically his friend, at least to some degree. He was annoying as fuck, but that was something they shared in common.
"Today was fun, by the way," she said louder than she intended. "We should do this again sometime."
At first, Richie was puzzled, but then he started to laugh. "I swear, Hayes, you're becoming more and more gullible by the minute. I thought you didn't like me. Did my charms finally win you?"
"I said you'd have to get taller for that to even seem plausible, Tozier." She spoke back but eventually found herself laughing beside him. They talked together like that until they eventually went their separate ways and headed home. For the first time, Cassie actually admitted to herself that she was growing more and more fond of the Tozier boy's company by the moment. However, she doubted it would reach beyond that of an ordinary friendship. It was unattainable on her account, and she didn't possess the yearn for such relations yet. Whatever it was that they had in the present, she would cherish it as nothing but a good friendship.
Speaking of friends, she would have to call Nathan as soon as she got home. It had been a little while since she last spoke to him, and she was quite frankly beginning to wonder whether or not he was avoiding conversating with her on purpose. As she walked on the empty street towards her house, she kept debating with herself if Nathan genuinely did or did not avoid her. Had she done or said something to warrant his absence?
Just as she passed one of the numerous light poles in the neighborhood, Cassie came to notice that there was yet another missing poster attached to it. She didn't think much of it until she saw the picture and read the name beneath it.
Patrick Hockstetter
15 years old
Description: 5'8 in height, 140 lbs, dark hair, white ethnicity,Last seen wearing a black blouse and white shirt, blue pants and a black belt adorned with spikes.
If found please contact Derry Police Department
800 - 131-0728
"Well, what do you know?" Cassie said to herself as she continued to study the poster. "Cocksucker really went missing after all. Guess Criss wasn't so full of bullshit after all." This was just one of the recent disappearances that had occurred in Derry, and it still didn't seem like people cared an ounce more. As much as it should have bothered her, Cassie feared more for her own safety than the fact that someone had just gone missing. Hockstetter was an asshole and she didn't care much for the fact that he was gone, in fact, she relished not having to see his ugly face again. But it didn't decrease her uneasiness over the fact that she could easily go missing too unless she had her guards up more cautiously from now.
Whatever bastard was responsible for these happenings sure didn't discriminate between innocent kids and douchebags like Hockstetter.
When she got home, she noticed that all the lights in the house except for the ones in the kitchen had been turned off. The place was completely empty of souls, and neither her parents were present, even when she called out to them in the dark. She went across the living room and there, on the counter in the kitchen, spotted a piece of paper attached to a box of cold pizza, and judging by the almost unreadable words written on there, she suspected that it was her father this time that had written her the note.
Will come home late
Mother's gone as well
Eat and go to bed
Lock the door
- Dad
It didn't come as a surprise that neither of her parents were home, but there were times when Cassie wondered where they both were at the time. Her father's work didn't really seem too demanding that he had to return home late every day, and God knew where her mother was at this hour. An affair seemed reasonable on either parts. Cassie knew that their love was as much as nonexistent between them, but there were those unfortunate nights where they weren't subtle about their yearn for the intimacy they craved from one another. Love wasn't the same as sex. It was more than often separate things.
Throwing the note into the trashcan beside her leg, Cassie opened the box to find already half of the pizza already eaten. Her father wasn't very generous when speaking of portions, she knew that as well as her mother did. He was a greedy man who put his needs before others at all times, something that her mother either didn't care about or seemed to follow the same principle by.
Cassie grunted to herself before grabbing a piece. "Respect your elders, my ass." She muttered sourly and opened her mouth to take a bite, but she didn't even as much graze the surface of the pizza when she started hearing strange noises coming from the piece in her hands. She looked down at it, and much to her shock, found the food crawling with maggots.
She instantly let out a disgusted yelp at the sight dropped the insect-infested piece on the floor, stomping at it as hard as she could until she spotted no more movements among the disgusting creatures. Her breathing increased to frantic point and she felt like her insides were about to force themselves up her throat. The maggots' squshed parts were hanging from the bottom of her shoes like slime, and the sight didn't do much to make her feel any less disgusted.
"What the actual fuck?" She couldn't recall spotting any of the maggots in the box at first, but then again, she may have just overlooked them. But it puzzled her how she was unable to spot any at first glance? Was she stupid or was she just ignorant? If so, then she was growing increasingly concerned about her physical health. She cast an engrossed look at the box still remaining on the kitchen counter and she felt the urge to grab it and throw it out of the window. Instead, she would let her own lazy father handle the mess he had indirectly caused.
"Lazy pig," she mumbled begrudgingly in her father's name and decided to walk upstairs to the room, but she didn't make it one step in the intended direction before she came to a halt. Her eyes widened at the sight of what floated above the doorframe and she could feel her heart skip of a few beats. Disbelief surged through her body like the natural blood pumping in her veins and she actually believed that she was just seeing things at first.
"No fucking way," was all she was able to breathe out.
The same red balloon from earlier was floating in the doorframe, waiting for her like it had a conscience of its own. Cassie felt frozen in her tracks like she had been placed in the freezer overnight. Just how the hell did the balloon from yesterday manage to get inside her house without her knowing it. Was this something her parents were cruelly pranking her with? Was this just another attempt to make her behave like some good girl? If so, then it was a truly pathetic attempt.
The balloon suddenly started making its way towards her.
Cassie scrambled back in retreat until she hit the wall furthest away, grabbing whatever she could find that could be used as a weapon. Unfortunately, there wasn't much around her except an emptied bottle of beer her father had been drinking off. For once in her life, Cassie actually thanked her father for being a lazy pig. She, however, didn't get too far with throwing it before the balloon suddenly popped.
She closed her eyes out of instinct to the loud noise and kept them like that, feeling the panic and nausea block every other nerve in every fiber of her being. She expected to at least hear something. Footsteps, breathing, even growls, anything. If it turned out that her house was haunted by the previous owners then she wouldn't hesitate to steal her mother's money and take the first plane from Maine.
However, there was nothing but silence.
That was until...
"Such sweet fear..."
It wasn't the sound of any human she had ever known, neither any animal. Cassie mustered the strength to open her eyes, and what she was caused her entire body to freeze with fear and confusion.
Her mother was suddenly standing where the balloon had previously been, looking just as deadpan and as unexpressive as she had recently become. In her hand was a knife that Cassie had witnessed her mother frequently use whenever she was making food in the kitchen. However, looking at her standing there like that with it caused Cassie to feel threatened. "Mom?" She said, barely surpassing a whisper.
"Why must you always be such a nuisance, Cassandra?" Claudia, or the one she thought was her mother, asked. Disappointment and disgust filled her voice to the brink. "Why can't you just die and save me the trouble of having to deal with you anymore?"
This was cruel, even for Claudia to be. Cassie knew that they had never been like a mother and daughter, but she had never told her outright to just die on her. Instead of crying like a weak-willed child would upon being rejected by their own parent, Cassie felt her anger surge through her and she asked, "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I never wanted you, you know?" Claudia said slowly. "You're just a problem I can't afford to deal with."
Then, Cassie screamed as she watched her mother slit her own throat with the blade she had been holding from left to right, leaving nothing but a stream of blood behind. From her self-inflicted wound and onto the floor, the entire ground became filled with crimson liquid. Tears streamed down from Cassie's eyes at the sight and she felt like throwing up then and there. She was trembling, breathing like she had just run a marathon, and she dropped the bottle to the floor and grasped her hands around her mouth in an effort to keep herself from screaming any further.
The blood continued to soak the floor well beyond what felt like five liters, passing the bottoms of her shoes like slithering serpents. She didn't move, still frozen in shock over what she had just witnessed. Her mother's body laid face down on the ground, neither moving nor doing anything but what was expected from a corpse. This felt too real to be just some twisted game her imagination was playing on her. A part of her wanted to believe that it was just a nightmare, just a phantasm, but another part knew that she didn't have the mind to make up something so morbid.
Her sobs turned into insane laughs, and as the tears continued to rush down her eyes to her cheeks, she covered her face with both of her hands and shielded herself from the sight. "This is... This cannot be... Fucking Cassie... You're just nuts... This isn't..." She felt like she was losing her mind.
"Are you nuts, Cassie? We can still be nuts together if you want to?" A stranger's voice spoke up, and just for a second, Cassie pulled her hands away from her eyes and looked up.
A clown. There stood a clown in her living room where she balloon had previously been. It was dressed in a rather old clown costume, and the eyes... The eyes were in a sinister yellow that she for some reason was able to recall from somewhere else. The eyes were directed straight at her, and she felt her heart drop to her stomach as the clown's smile spread to an inhumane length, revealing glistening white teeth.
Her mother's corpse was still on the floor, neither moving nor doing anything which indicated that she was still alive. The clown bent down to pick the bloodied body by the neck, and, before Cassie's very eyes, ripped her head off. A sickening gurgling sound came her mother's neck as her head was severed by the clown's hands alone, and she watched as he laughed with devious delight and tossed the head towards her. It rolled towards her until it finally stopped, and her mother's head was directly facing up at her with dead, dark eyes.
Cassie covered her mouth and forced herself to suppress the nausea. She looked away from the head and up at the clown again, who was deliberately beginning to approach her. For each step he took, she would take one away to the side, circling away from it whilst avoiding stepping over her mother's head.
"W-Who are you?" She found her voice again, and the clown seemed all too happy with answering her question.
"I'm Pennywise the dancing clown, my dear," He said, shaking his head at the 'dancing'. "I'm here to take you away from this place. You'll float too."
"Float?" She took a couple of more cautious steps to the side, only a few feet away from the door leading out of there.
"Yes, float. We all float in the end." He said, laughing like a maniac at the mention of the floating.
As soon as she reached the door, Cassie ran out of the living room and slammed the entrance door open, thinking that she was free, but only to find the clown waiting there with sharp teeth, smiling at her pathetic attempt at escaping.
"Why are you leaving me, Cassie? Don't you want a balloon?" He asked her, but the same time, all lightness was gone from its tone and was replaced with sheer and utter darkness and evil. Before she was able to turn around and run up the stairs, the clown grasped her by the throat with one hand alone and held her several feet above ground, grinning sadistically as he watched her struggle in his grasp.
Cassie tried everything from kicking him to scratching his hands, but nothing seemed to work. His grasp around her was as firm as ever and she was having trouble with breathing. If this was how she was supposed to die, at the hands of a fucking clown, then there didn't seem like there were much boundaries in the world anymore
However, out of the sudden, the clown's grin turned into a severely dark frown and she felt like it was going to kill her then and there. "That scent." The clown pulled her down towards him and inhaled deeply from the crook of her neck, and the frown shifted back into a murderous grin again, thrice as terrifying as before. It dropped her on the ground and started laughing hysterically. "That old fool hasn't changed!" He yelled out and held his stomach with his hands, as if guts were threatening to spill out if he let go. It didn't seem like a too macabre comparison considering the circumstances. Cassie scrambled away from it until her back reached the bottom of the stairs, but she still didn't stop trying to get away.
The yellow eyes shifted back to her again, but the clown didn't move any closer. His eyes lingered on a point which reminded her of insatiable hunger, like an animal in the zoo that hadn't been fed for long. Cassie held her breath for what felt like hours, just expecting him to do something, anything.
Instead, he just stood there and continued to laugh at her like she was the clown in the house. He then took a step to the side, granting her free passage through the door, and without hesitating, Cassie got to her feet and ran as fast as she could out of there past the clown and didn't turn around until she reached the main road.
The clown was still standing there, waving his hand to her from the porch, grinning with sharp shark-like teeth. "See you later, Cassie. Say 'hi' to the Turtle for me!"
It didn't even take more than a couple of seconds before Cassie ran down the street in panic and reached the only house she knew she could stay at. There were a lot of things happening in her mind, few of which she could exploit words to describe. There was no way any of that had been real. It defied everything of law and nature. There were no evil demonic clowns in Maine, her mother hadn't slit her own throat whilst her daughter watched. None of it were real! It couldn't be!
But she was still afraid to return.
As soon as she reached the house which was her destination, she headed up to the porch and knocked frantically on the door, not even waiting before knocking again until the door finally opened, revealing a tired-looking still Richie in his pajamas. He narrowed his eyes as soon as he acknowledged that it was her and asked uncertainly, "Cassie?"
She was breathing like an animal, having been emptied of air since she came there. Panic still stuck to her like glue and she couldn't explain it to him why that was the case. She just couldn't. She didn't know how to do it without sounding like she had just escaped the insane asylum. All she knew was just that she couldn't stay in her own house, not with that thing still lurking around. She felt like a burglar in the night like that but there was no one else close by she could rely on.
"Can I... Come in?"I