Tuesday May 27, 1997 (Nighttime)
Winter hadn't seen the clown since It had taken Lily.
The clown was spending the rest of the night finding victims on the streets and in the homes in Derry.
Winter had felt desensitized, not able to feel the shock factors from the clown anymore, as she sat on the cold concrete floor. Every hour that passed, she was feeling sicker. It felt like mucus was building in her throat, her body temperature going really high and then really low, and she didn't know if the things she was seeing around her were real or hallucinations from a fever. Also, her scars on her stomach were in pain and the surrounding skin was green and yellow; It was definitely infected and making her fever worse.
"Do you want to play with me?" Lily said to her.
Winter slowly looked up from her lap towards the girl who was murdered a day ago. Half her face was missing and she had seaweed in her hair, as if she had been swimming in a swamp.
"Winter, I'm sorry I took your jacket..." she said sweetly.
Winter's lips trembled from the cold and her fever, "You're not real... You're dead..." Winter added guilty like it was her fault, "And I'm sorry about that."
Lily stared at her with the same transfixed look the clown would give her. Then her face turned into a skeleton as she put her face an inch away from Winter's.
Winter didn't move as she stared sickly at the skeleton of Lily.
"YOU LET ME DIE LIKE YOU LET GEORGIE DIE!"
And then she was gone. Disappeared from existence, although Winter knew it couldn't have been real. Was it the clown or was it the fever making her hallucinate her guilty thoughts into reality? She stared wide-eyed at where Lily was just in front of her, and Winter breathed in as deeply as she could, but even breathing was becoming harder to do with the mucus surrounding her lungs.
Winter shakily got up to her feet and walked over to the pile of stuff in the middle of the room.
'There's got to be a coat! There's got to be a coat!' she kept repeating in her head as she threw toys, kid jackets and junk to the side.
Winter grabbed a man's brown leather jacket from the pile. It looked really old and was deteriorating from the moistness in the sewers. There was a tag on the inside with the persons name who use to own the jacket.
'-c- -r-i-l, Der-y, M-ne, 1958' it read. The rest of the letters were washed away.
There was something that fell from the pocket and landed on the ground with a clunk. Winter looked down and picked up the object that belonged in the pocket. It was a pocket-knife. With a senesitve flick of the blade, it sliced the skin on her palm.
"OW!" Winter yelped and put the switchblade into her other hand. She looked at her shaking hand as it bled out. She could tell from the cut that it would need stitches, just like her stomach.
"Here... Take my bandana..." said a voice that came from beside her.
Winter jumped and dropped the jacket to the floor. She stared wide-eyed at a blond man in his early twenties. He wore a white t-shirt and dark blue jeans.
"You don't need to be scared of me. I'm just offering you a bandana. I'm never rude to a pretty girl," he said kindly.
It took a moment, but Winter decided to trust him and went over to him with her bloody hand. She didn't talk, she just stared at him as he wrapped her hand in a red bandana.
The guy looked up from her hand to her face, "You a mute?"
Winter blinked and said very hoarsely, "I'm sick."
'This guy is not real. This guy is not real.'
"Are you real?" Winter asked.
The man laughed, "I am very real. I've been trying to find my girlfriend since she went missing..." He looked into her eyes with his mouth gapped open while he made himself comfortable to start explaining, "She went missing the summer of 1958. I was full of so much anger over her disappearance that I taunted people and killed them. The clown told me that she would be fine as long as I did his dirty work. I thought I saw her one day on the train track, but it was the clown. The clown tricked me, and I was killed by the train."
Winter blinked at him, feeling the fear vibrating in her veins. She remembered this story was talked about in her History class she had with Henry last semester. It was about a psychotic man who was killed by the train. There was no mention of the clown.
"Ace Merrill?" Winter remembered and said out loud. It was the same name that was washed away on the jacket. She remembered the story, but she couldn't remember why he was such a big public figure in the town of Derry, except that he was an angry man.
He tiled his head questionably, "How did you know my name? Have you seen my girlfriend?" He got up to his feet defensively.
"No! I learned about you..." Winter said softly as she backed away while he walked towards her.
"WHO KNOWS ABOUT ME?!" Ace grabbed her throat with his hand and crushed her up against the wall. He let her throat go and grabbed onto her waist with his body pressing up against hers.
Winter tried to breath as she looked at him scared. She pleaded with her eyes to let her go.
The man with the blue eyes and stubbly cheeks changed the expression he had. It was first angry and full of rage to a longing, and he stared at her up and down. "It's been so long since I felt a nice wet pussy." Ace began to dry hump her as he held her tightly to the wall and putting his lips against her cheek.
He smelled like sewage and death.
"You're fucking sexy. I need my cock inside of you," his hand fell to her waist as he began unbuckling her belt.
Winter breathed heavily with fear and mucus, but he thought it was her becoming turned on.
"Oh, fuck! You're such a sexy girl!" Ace took off her belt. "I'm going to fuck your brains out and shred your pussy... It'll be my pussy when I'm done with it."
Winter took the knife she had in her hand and stabbed the man in the head with his own weapon. He stumbled back and Winter fell to her knees and breathed hard to catch her breath. She looked up at the ghost who was about to rape her.
He stared at her as he fell to his knees. He pointed at her and laughed at her as hard as he could; A psychotic mans laugh.
Then he was gone. He disappeared into thin air.
Winter continued to shake as she got back up to her feet. She stared at the spot where Ace Merrill had disappeared.
As loud as her voice could manage, she screamed, "GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
A few moments of silence followed by the drain pipes pouring out water.
"Hello?" came the voice of a female from a drain pipe on the wall that had water pouring out of it. "Is someone there?"
Winter walked up to the drain. It led somewhere. It led to a sink or a shower or a toilet - it must have!
"Please help me!" Winter said into it.
It took a moment for the woman to answer, but she did. She sounded startled, "Who's down there?"
"My name is Winter Callaghan. I've been stuck in the sewer with a clown. It killed two children named George Denbrough and Lily. Please help me, I'm getting sick and I think I might die."
The woman on the other side went silent.
"Hello? Please don't leave!" Winter cried.
"Winter, you're going to be okay. You're going to be led out tomorrow morning and Jim Hopper is going to be there..." the woman paused as it sounded like she was tearing up, "And Henry's going to be there."
'Henry! Oh, poor Henry!'
Winter wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, "How do you know this?"
"Trust me, I just know, okay?" the woman hesitated, "You're really sick, so don't fall asleep. Just stay awake... like how you told Georgie... just sing and don't sleep... And don't blame yourself for Georgie or Lily, okay?"
Winter cried as she listened to the lady talking to her. She didn't know how she could know all this, unless it was the clown trying to put her hopes up.
"Okay..." Winter sobbed.
Winter went over to the corner of the sewer room and hugged her knees into her chest. She tried to sing as softly as she could without ruining her throat anymore than she had.
Henry sat at the stream in The Barrens as he took a few more shots from the bottle of Rum that Vic and Belch had given him. He skipped school again that day and spent the day searching for Winter.
According to the police, there were still no leads as to where she would have disappeared.
Henry stared at the water passing by, thinking of all the memories him and Winter shared together. His emotions would change from laughing at a memory to crying angrily and kicking or punching whatever was in front of him.
With one last swig of the bottle, he put the bottle back in his bag and got up on his feet and headed back to the roads.
Her face as he brushed the side of her cheek that last day in his bed kept repeating in his head...
"I'm going to protect you for the rest of my life..."
"I'm going to protect you for the rest of my life..."
"I'm going to protect you for the rest of my life..."
The same thought kept replaying and replaying. Henry smacked his hand to his head and screamed, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
"So much rage and guilt, Henry..."
Henry looked up to the road. There was a clown standing in the middle of the road, looking at him with evil in his eyes.
Henry was too drunk to know if he was scared, amused, confused or whatever emotion could come out of his surface.
"What the fuck do you want?" Henry said to him. "Who the Hell are you?"
The clown tilted It's head and smiled, "You don't remember me, Henry? I met you when you were just a little baby. Both you and your older brother. I've known you for a long time, Henry, and I've been waiting for this moment with you."
Henry stared confused at him, "Sorry, I don't know who you are. Can I get by, please? Or is there some fucking toll?" Henry was annoyed.
"What if I told you that Winter is alive, and I can bring her back to you?" the clown smiled.
Henry looked up at his face with interest and anger, "What the fuck do you know?" he asked seriously. "Where is she?!"
"She's safe... Sick, but unharmed..." the clown took a moment to reconsider, "Well... maybe a little bit harmed...But she's alive, Henry, and she will get better."
"LET ME SEE HER!" Henry yelled at him.
"She will be fine, but you need to do something for me, Henry. I need your help. That rage that's been boiling inside you, I need you to use it for me."
"Fine! What do you need me to do?" Henry asked.
"It's not time yet for you to know. You'll know soon. I've been connected to you since you were a baby, so you'll feel me inside your anger when the time has come," the clown smiled really big.
Henry stared at him questionably, not understanding what the clown was trying to get out, but he didn't care. He just wanted Winter back.
"Fine! It's a deal! Now bring Winter back!" Henry shouted.
"You'll see her soon!"
A car passed by, breaking Henry's concentration from the clown. Once the car was gone, the clown was too.
Henry stood in the middle of the road where the clown was and looked around.
"What? What the fuck?" Henry said out loud as he kept looking around, "WHAT THE FUCK?! WHERE THE FUCK IS WINTER?!" he cried out angrily.