A/N: Will the IT Part 2 come out before this fic is completed? Maybe...
Suggested listening: Crystals by Of Monsters and Men
December 25th, 1988
Stan's peaceful Christmas afternoon, complete with TV and comics (not much else to do) was disturbed by a frantic banging on his front door. He couldn't have said why, but he knew immediately that something was wrong. His father's hollered order to ignore it, they weren't expecting visitors, went unheeded. Before Donald's last syllable had ceased to bounce off the walls, Stan had flung the front door wide. Stan's stomach went cold and hard and sank toward his intestines the instant he laid eyes on Bill. Bill had carelessly tossed his bike onto the snowy lawn, was wearing nothing over his sweater, and his hands and head were bare. His eyes were watery and his nose was red. Stan could already feel his skin shrinking on his bones. It must have been close to zero out.
"What's wrong?"
"I-i-it's Juh-juh-juh." Bill paused, grit his teeth. "Juh-Georgie."
Stan felt like he might puke, he wasn't ready for this.
Bill sniffed and rubbed at his nose, and Stan realized that his eyes and nose weren't just red from the cold. "Suh-s-s-suh-someone s-s-saw him. B-b-by the s-s-s-school."
"Bill, I…" Stan trailed off. How could he tell Bill that he wasn't ready to see Georgie's decomposing, frozen body dumped like trash at a location he visited five times a week, would never be ready?
"Alive. Th-th-they s-s-s-s-saw him w-with s-s-someone. A-alive."
Stan saw the world tilt, and gripped the front door a little tighter. "What? Are you sure?"
"Cuh-cuh-come on. G-g-get d-d-dressed!"
"Who saw him?"
"Juh-Jacobson."
"The janitor?" Stan cringed at the disbelief in his voice. It was well-known that Jacobson was often in the bottle, and tended to see questionable things on his nightly walks.
"Y-yes, cuh-come on!" Bill half-made to return to his bike.
"Stanley!" Donald's voice trumpeted through the house. "Who's there?"
"Just wait a second, okay?" Stan whispered. "Wait in here, warm up."
"I-I'll w-w-wait here."
"It's goddam freezing out, Bill. Get in."
Bill brushed past Stan and threw himself into one of the kitchen chairs hard enough to make it squeak a few inches across the linoleum. "H-hurry."
Stan trotted down the hallway to his father's study, silently, on the balls of his feet – Donald didn't allow running in the house. He took a second to compose himself before knocking on the door.
"Come in."
Using a commendable amount of control, Stan gently opened the door instead of busting through. Donald didn't look up from his desk, where he was scratching intently in his leather-bound journal. Stan pinched his earlobe, then consciously shoved his hand into his pocket. "Sir."
Donald's eyebrows arched above his glasses. "Yes?"
"Bill's here. We're going to go hang out. If that's alright with you."
Donald did look up then, frowning. "Bill's here on Christmas? Why isn't he with his family?"
"They're all meeting up later, I think." Stan felt a twinge at how easily the lie came.
"Hm. Don't make him late to his family."
"I won't."
Stan didn't dwell on the hot water he'd be in when Mr. Uris found out why he had hurried off with Bill – and Donald would find out, in this small town. Some things were more important than staying out of trouble with parents.
Although Stan hadn't exactly been expecting the school to be swarming with police, he was a little surprised to see only two squad cars parked on the side of the street. Their lights weren't even flashing. But Stan could just see yellow crime scene tape fluttering, across the street and through the chain link fence and past the field. Some passersby had stopped to look.
"Where are your parents?" Stan asked Bill.
"They'll be here."
Bill let his bike clatter to the sidewalk and jogged over to the fence. Stan carefully lowered his kickstand before following. Crime scene tape had been strung up on little wooden stakes, sectioning off the playground. One cop could be seen picking his way around the perimeter with a bloodhound, another was photographing the ground around the swings. Definitely no body.
Out of the corner of his eye, Stan saw Bill tap the man next to him. "Eh-eh-excuse me. D-d-do you nuh-know w-w-what th-they f-found?"
"Ayuh, Bowers was over here just a moment ago. Said it's strange. Footprints around the swings, one real massive set and one kiddy-size. No prints leading to or from the swings."
Real professional.
"Say, you're that Denbrough kid, ain't yah? Older brother? I'm sorry for your loss, truly."
Stan looked over at Bill. Despite his glistening eyes, Stan saw the set in his jaw, the tension in his shoulders. Bill hadn't wanted to come alone, but he would have come without Stan, if he had to.
"Where are your parents?" Stan asked again.
Bill worked his jaw, but said nothing.
Stan knew then that Bill would never give up hope, never stop looking for Georgie. Not until he had his brother's corpse at his feet.
For hours after the damned janitor had spotted It and Georgie on the playground, It sulked in 29 Neibolt Street's basement, grumbling and growling to Itself in the dark and the dirt. Georgie sat in "his" room, stroking Silver's fur (the goat had gone strangely still and unresponsive, but Georgie hardly noticed). He listened to the wind blowing snow against the rickety roof and flinched at each bang and thud that echoed up from the basement. As far as Its tantrums went, this one was quite mild. A few kicked cans and knocked-over shelving was nothing compared to the heights Its wrath could reach. Dozens of Derry citizens had been wiped out over less.
Truthfully, It wasn't just angry (partly because the only thing It could blame was Itself, and It was never one for self-blame). A teeny, tiny part of It was scared. It had slipped. It had lost focus, hadn't noticed the drunk, stumbling fool make his way within a stone's throw of It and the boy. How had It not noticed? To dwell on how, why, steered It toward an unthinkable thought – that It was growing more than a bit soft, and in more ways than one. So It circled back to anger, which was shortly tamped out by the fear, and so on. It stewed in the basement, shimmering and slithering, melting from the clown into the spider, then the janitor, then some twitching horse abomination with sharp teeth and ink hair, then into a half-frozen and raven-pecked Georgie (cloudy eyes and all). Finally, It stopped. It could continue on this way for hours more. Days. What It needed to do was set this mental tangle aside for now. What It needed to do was eat.
Georgie didn't realize the ruckus downstairs had ceased until he jerked awake. The few rays of light filtering around the newspaper pasted to the window was strong. It was midday. He had slept for a while. He seemed to sleep more, lately.
Plop. A clod of snow fell from the roof to the ground below. So that was what had woken him.
Silver lay next to Georgie's ramshackle hay-and-blanket bed, staring at the wall and chewing his cud. Georgie reached out and scratched his back. The goat's tuft of a tail flapped.
Everything downstairs was quiet. Had It left the house? He was often left alone for long stretches of time, but he wanted to be sure he had the house to himself. If Pennywise was still pouting (and over what, he wasn't sure), then he would tread carefully so as not to draw Its anger. If Pennywise was gone, then he could do just about whatever he wanted. Maybe he could egg Silver into playing with him. Maybe he'd sleep. Maybe he'd use one of the rat-chewed rugs as a sled and slide across the kitchen floor.
Georgie sat up, brushed the hay and bits of dead leaf from the bottoms of his socks, and tugged on his sneakers. He and Pennywise had brushed most of the detritus from his room, but the rest of the house remained filthy and ever since Pennywise had begun keeping Georgie's room warm (the flickering shadows cast by the fireplace had started to give him nightmares, ones in which black spider arms reached for his legs and darkness swallowed him and he screamed for help in the cold wet black while his arm burned and buzzed with a pain he had never felt in his life and his blood ran down the back of his throat), puddles had been prone to forming in the kitchen underneath. So Georgie put on his sneakers and rose to go see if Pennywise was still pouting downstairs.
A gust of cold air hit him when he opened his bedroom door. He winced, and turned back to pull on another sweater. He tucked his bare hands into his armpits and scrunched his shoulders up to his ears. "See ya in a minute, Silver."
The goat continued to stare ahead and mouth his nonexistent cud.
No matter how quiet Georgie tried to be, his shoes still crunched on the leaves, twigs, bits of broken glass, and crumpled newspapers scattered around the floor. He quickly gave up trying to be stealthy; It always seemed to know everything that went on in this house anyway. It would know he was coming downstairs. Pausing on the landing, he held his breath and listened. No rough giggling or scuttling of crab feet came from below. Georgie descended the creaky stairs and peered around the entrance hall, the lounge, the living room. No clown. The kitchen, too, was empty. But he did hear something. A wet sort of chewing sound coming from the half-open door down to the basement.
In earlier days, Georgie would have quailed at the thought of going into the basement. The one at his old house (which he could recall only vaguely, and then only in dreams or when he concentrated very hard) had always frightened him, and that was before he knew that immortal, shapeshifting, children-eating clowns existed. But Georgie had changed quite a bit in two months, and he had learned that there are things more frightening than the dark. He had also learned that the clown was always aware of what was in the house and could leap to his aid within moments.
Georgie's hand trembled only a little as he reached out to push the door wide. It was even colder in the basement, he could feel it from where he stood. The chewing did not hesitate at the squeaking of the basement door's hinges. "Hello?"
The chewing did pause, then.
"Pennywise?"
"Heya there, Georgie. Care to join me?" Its voice was strange, rough and wet.
Georgie edged down one step into the darkness, two. "I can't see, I'll fall."
"Well, we can't have that, now can we?"
A pair of yellow-orange globes, like anglerfish lures, blinked into existence at the foot of the stairs and bobbed there. They cast a soft glow that reminded Georgie of candlelight. He picked his way down the rotting wooden steps. His shoes pressed into the soft dirt of the basement. He felt the damp seeping into his clothes, frizzing his hair and chilling his lungs. The lights floated onward, and he followed them. He stepped around a smashed paint can, several splintered boards, a shredded rug. In a few places, the floor was scored with deep slashes from Its claws. Finally, the soft light fell upon the clown. It was crouched next to a stone well like the kinds Georgie had seen in picture books, back to him. It was gnawing on something. Slowly, It twisted around. Its chin and frilly collar were smeared with blood. Its jagged fangs were visible through Its parted lips. A giraffe-like tongue snaked out and swirled around Its mouth. For a long moment, It fixed Its yellow, slitted eyes on Georgie and said nothing. Georgie stared back.
"Ya hungry, kid?"
As if on command, Georgie's stomach clenched painfully. He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten, or what it had been (remembering things was getting hard these days). A dry granola bar? A bruised apple? A chicken thigh starting to go a little slimy? He nodded.
Pennywise jerked Its head. Georgie came closer. It turned to face him fully, and he saw that clenched between Its fingers was a dripping, torn hunk of raw meat that stained Its gloves crimson. It patted the ground next to It; Georgie's eyes followed the dirt that clung to Its wet hand. Obediently, he knelt down next to the clown.
The strange lights bobbed above them, drawing long shadows under Its jaw and sweeping hair. Its eyes were still yellow, but the pupils had rounded out. The meat dripped onto the ground. Georgie could see a shard of bone gleaming in the dim light. Pennywise frowned down at him, painted mouth pursed ever so slightly. Georgie looked up at It. He realized that It did not breathe. He felt a little floaty in the brain. Maybe it was the hunger, or the cold, or the weird light down in the basement, or something else entirely.
It extended the chunk of flesh. Georgie took it, grasping it between his hands. It was quite warm and felt pleasant on his cold fingers. He turned it this way and that, studied it. Then he sank his teeth into the raw red meat, the taste of copper and something like tender pork filling his mouth. Blood dribbled from his chin. He expected It to laugh, but It was silent.
Unbeknownst to Georgie, It was thinking about a good many things. The foremost being what should be done in light of the janitor spotting them and alerting the police. A great deal of Its power lied in the fact that Its existence was unknown, of course. On this topic, It decided that It would allow Derry to more or less remember the janitor's tale. The resulting goose chase and inevitable loss of morale would be funny.
The second being this whole kid thing. The hassle, the affect it might be having on It (the playground blunder being a clear example). How much further could this experiment go, really? What else was there? But yet again, Georgie had proven that he was still full of surprises. The moment his incisors touched the meat (which came from Molly Kane's thigh), his future was secure, at least for the time being.
As Georgie swallowed and clamped his teeth down on the thigh again, It reached over and pressed a bloody finger against the tip of Georgie's nose. He wrinkled his nose in response, a half-playful growl working around the meat. Its finger left a red spot, like a seal, or the crimson on Its own face.