Chapter eleven
Summer 2009 Derris, Maine
Over an hour before Tony arrived at the bridge then fled from it two other people were having waking nightmares of their own. Kim was the first to encounter IT on arriving back to Derris. She didn't bother renting a car after arriving in Bangor instead she took a cab far enough before she hitched a ride with an elderly couple returning from a craft fair.
She past by the bridge and was dropped off at the corner of Western broad and Treat street, she hadn't known when she asked to be dropped of their that she had any intention to turn right on Western broad and walk along the cracked pavements, strolling past the houses that had been run down even when she was eleven year old.
It hit her why she had came here when she stopped across the street from a run down converted Victorian house. It's windows had been boarded over in places while others simply left the cracked glass in it's place.
A cold dread worked it's way up Kim's back as she stared at the window on the first floor where she had spent many days looking out while her father and mother were at work. It was the same window she had looked out of when her mother told her the special way a man and woman- only a man and woman- should touch each other before her eyes flickered to the shed sitting on the corner of the small plot that surround the house.
Kim couldn't tear her eyes anymore then she could have stopped her self from walking down the street.
She clutched her bag tightly in her hand knowing she should run-as fast as she could- from the house where she had spent most of her childhood. But something was holding her there keeping her prisoner there.
"It hurts" a lone voice came from the drain that stood before the house, even back then the cover was cracked and sinking back into the darkness.
Kimmy looked to the drain and shook her head trying hard to pull legs back and start pumping them. But they wouldn't move.
"Do you have a band aid Kimmy… it hurts real bad" the voice had started out as Dickie Terence but soon it twisted and echoed into something more disturbing.
"Told you I would be seeing you soon darling… I didn't have to worry" Kim didn't know what it was- it wasn't Ollie's voice- but something about the idea of him squeezing through that small drain cover to hide in the darkness caused her to giggle. Before long she was howling at the thought of him pushing his sagging belly through the hole, his thick fingers clawing and scratching to get a hold to pull himself through.
Kimmy didn't even stop laughing when she heard her father yelling at her nor when her mother questioning if she knew that only men and women could touch each other in a special way.
She did start running stilling hitching her breath to laugh and breath when she heard the growl of pain, it wasn't Ollie or her father or her mother or Dickie. It was IT.
Kimmy didn't know why she was heading back along Western Broad all the way up town to the centre to the library all she knew was that she had to go there because it was a safe place.
She didn't stop running until the last remnants of IT's growl faded away from her hearing. She would later wished she just turned the other way and ran as fast as she could back out of town.