A/N: Not dead. Sorry for the long hiatus. Work and school are taking up most of my time, although hopefully I will be able to implement some changes into my schedule that will allow me to at least not go twenty years between updates to my fics. Can't make any promises, though.
I liked Chapter 2. Not sure yet how much of that will affect this fic, if anything. We'll have to see.
Hypnagogia - the experience of the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep
January 3rd, 1989
Bill skidded his bike to a stop on the wet sidewalk, his attention caught by a flash of yellow in a softening snowbank down the hill, adjacent to a thicket of skeletal trees and scruffy bushes. For a long moment he remained perched on Silver, breath puffing out in rapid white clouds. He stared at the patch of yellow until his eyes burned and his vision blurred. Then he gritted his teeth and stepped off the bike, letting it clatter to the cement. Bill's feet splashed through the slushy grass and he bent and swept away a half-melted swath of snow. Yellow rubber. Gasping, Bill dropped to his knees and scooped at the drift. A pass of his hand revealed a row of small buttons, another pass and Georgie's face was uncovered. Bill recoiled, his cry stuck in a throat clogged with horror. His younger brother's face was pale, half-frozen, the eyes open and greyed and deflated, the withered lips pulled back from his teeth in a final grimace of pain. The end of his nose and one cheek had been eaten away by decay. The stench hit Bill then, like something physical, a cloying stink like old garbage or roadkill or the dark dampness of an alley. The stench pressed over his face a fetid fog.
Bill woke with a sort of hissing groan. He rolled onto his back, shirt clinging to his sweaty body, and pushed his hair back from his damp forehead. He glared up at the ceiling, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. Stupid. The snow wasn't melting, anyway.
Underneath Derry, Pennywise licked Its lips, eyes half-lidded as It savored the tendrils of Bill's fear.
Mike was roused by three sharp raps on his bedroom door. He sat up before he could fall back asleep; Grandpa Leroy wouldn't knock a second time, and Mike would get his ass chewed if he wasn't started on his chores by five-thirty. He swung his legs over the side of his bed and took a moment to let his brain fog start to clear, goosebumps crawling their way up his legs and arms now that he was no longer in a cozy cocoon. He'd had a nightmare, he thought, although he couldn't remember hardly anything of it. There had been blood, frozen in blackish-red splotches in the snow and permeating the air with copper. But the rest eluded him. Mike blew out a breath and ran his hands down his face. Work on the farm had not inured him to gore, much to his grandpa's disappointment.
Grandpa Leroy was waiting by the kitchen table when Mike descended five minutes later, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. Leroy's boots were dusted with snow, he'd already been outside. "I found that missing lamb," he said, looking at Mike from under his brows. Mike suppressed a gulp at the older man's tone. Flat, no hint of cheer. There had been a lamb missing when they'd counted the babies the previous evening. It hadn't been found alive.
Mike sniffed, rubbed his eyes again, and went for his coat, hanging by the door.
"You can eat first, son," Grandpa Leroy said. He tapped his flashlight against his thigh.
"It's ok." Mike shrugged into his jacket. "I'm not hungry." He thought of blood frozen on the snow, filling his nostrils and coating the back of his throat.
The lamb was out at the far edge of the pasture, only a few feet from the fence. The forest loomed on the other side of the fence, dark and shadowed in the early morning grey, snow-laden branches absorbing sound. Grandpa Leroy's flashlight beam lit the grisly scene in bright sharpness. All that remained of the lamb was a tangled mass of bone and skin. Its fluffy hair was scattered in a wide radius around the corpse, its blood splashed across the snow in garnet splatters.
Mike took in a slow breath through his teeth and focused his gaze on the snow-laden trees beyond the field.
"Snow around here is all churned to hell," Leroy said, gesturing with his flashlight beam. "Critters been picking at it during the night. And it's too chewed up to see how it died." He spat to the side. "Coyotes, maybe. Or another sheep might've kicked it in the head."
"Has the mother been calling all night?" Mike asked. He himself could sleep through a bomb raid, but his grandpa had become fine-tuned to the sounds of his flock in distress.
Leroy clicked off the flashlight and turned to go. "No. Not a sound all night. I'll get a shovel and take care of this mess, you find that old nan and mark her."
Mike tore his gaze from the lamb's remains, swallowing bile. It was like the mother had known her baby was dead, known calling for it was futile.
He found her huddled with the rest of the flock, the only sheep with swollen udders and no accompanying lamb. She chewed her cud listlessly, head drooping. The ewe was eight years old; this lost lamb had been her last pregnancy before slaughter. Mike felt a tightening in his chest at the thought of a bolt going between the poor mother's eyes. He came up beside her and wiggled his fingers. The ewe did not acknowledge his presence.
"C'mere, old girl," Mike said, low.
She gave no sign that she heard.
In flashes, the dream returned to him, mingled with reality: Curly hair scattered across the snow and blowing on the breeze, puddles of blood frozen solid, copper in the air, bawling screams. "Sorry," he whispered. He spray painted a black patch onto her back.
Henry blew a cloud of smoke up to the pre-dawn sky, watching the wind sweep his grey breath into nothingness. His arm had fallen asleep under his head, pinned between his skull and the ice-cold hood of his Firebird, but he was too lazy to reposition himself, could hardly muster the energy to blink his stinging eyes, either—so overpowered with fatigue that he couldn't sleep. Vic lay next to him, head pillowed on his backpack. He'd smoked himself out, and simply held an unlit cigarette between his lips. Belch and Patrick had gone home hours before, bitching and moaning about Henry refusing to drive them home. Whatever, neither of them lived too far.
A raven alighted on the edge of the roof above them and let out a croaking caw, chest feathers ruffling. Vic jerked and inhaled sharply; he'd fallen asleep.
"Think it'll shit on us?" Henry mumbled.
Vic spat his sodden cigarette onto the road, coat rustling. "What?"
Henry sucked in another lungful of smoke. He'd heard his father talking about a missing kid the day before, not the Denbrough one, another one. The Denbrough's corpse hunt had been dropped to address this new child, some toddler or something, gone from their bed. Somewhat stiffly, he sat up and reached over the side of the car for another beer. He fumbled at the tab with half-frozen fingers for several seconds before popping it. Had Derry always been such a hotbed of kiddie abductions? He couldn't remember, couldn't say no for certain. Maybe it was all the work of this newcomer. Maybe he was some sort of serial child predator… child murderer. It chilled Henry's spine more than a little to know how close he had been to the man.
"Hey." Vic propped himself up on one arm, ruffling the mashed white-blonde hair on the back of his head. "I'm fuckin' freezin', man."
Henry grunted and swigged his beer.
Vic sucked his teeth and looked up to the lightening sky, watching a cloud of sparrows make their way overhead. He chose his words carefully. "Your old man… he'll be getting up soon."
Henry grunted again. Officer Bowers didn't like it when Henry stayed out late, let alone all night. For some reason, he couldn't bring himself to be too worried. So his dad might scream at him again, beat his ass again. So fucking what?
Vic was watching him from under heavy lids, face long with fatigue. Maybe once Henry got in his bed, sleep would come for him. Would he dream of missing kids? Would he dream of the lanky stranger? "You've been weird lately," Vic said. He wiped his runny nose on the sleeve of his coat. "You think we'll run into that creep again? Think he's still around?"
Sighing, Henry slid from the hood. "Let's go."
Vic didn't need to be told twice; he scrambled into the passenger seat of Henry's car with near comical eagerness, slipping a little in the snow.
Henry cranked the car, casting a sneering glare at the auto lot across the street before speeding off, tires squeaking and squelching down the winter road. The creepy weirdo would bump into Henry sooner or later.
A small blessing. Beverly's father was still deep in the sleep of the drunkard when she woke for school. She got ready quickly and quietly, and was out the door of their apartment without hearing his snoring hitch once. As she paused on the stairwell to catch her long, coppery hair up into a ponytail, a muscle twinged in her chest. A small sprain, remnants of the night previous, of her attempts to get her father's weight off her, his hands out of her hair. Unsuccessful attempts. Beverly yanked the hair tie painfully tight, driving the memories from her mind and shoving them down to some deep dark place where they couldn't make any noise.
Compared to how her evenings with her father sometimes went, the nightmares she'd been having were almost a relief. Voices in the pipes, tiny grey hands emerging from the drains in her sink and tub. The voices were children's voices, she thought. Maybe. She couldn't really remember. Either way, preferable to…
Beverly slipped a cigarette and lighter from her coat pocket, greedily sucking down smoke as she unchained her bike from the stairwell. So eager was she to get away from her apartment that she almost looked forward to school. Almost.
Ben rolled over and cracked an eye open. The sunlight filtering through his curtains was unusually bright. He looked at the clock on his bedside table. 6:55 AM. Cursing, he flung back his damp covers—he'd had the sweats, weird dreams all night—and jogged to the bathroom. So panicked was he that his face was still wet from washing as he pedaled away from his house, backpack slung over one shoulder.
Ben jogged into his first period class ten minutes late with a breathless, "Sorry, Mrs. Higgenbotham!"
She regarded him over her spectacles, grey brows drawn down into a severe frown, wrinkled mouth pinched. "Kind of you to join us, Hanscom."
Ben plopped into his desk chair and fumbled in his backpack for his Algebra textbook. He was still panting when the boy seated behind him, whose name Ben could never remember, leaned forward and tapped Ben's shoulder. "Hey, piggy. Your shirt's on inside out."
Ben pretended he hadn't heard, he could hardly excuse himself right after coming in late.
"Hey, did ya hear me? Your ears aren't clogged with fat, are they?"
Ben's neck flushed, and he dipped his head close to his textbook, scribbling aimlessly at his notebook. Numbers, symbols, and letters swam before his eyes. He pressed hard enough to break his pencil lead.
Richie stifled a yawn, pointedly looking down at the small pile of comic books on Bill's bed and not at Bill himself. "Have you told your parents yet? About Georgie being abducted by a fuckin' clown?"
Bill gnawed his lip and wished that Richie would be a little quieter. His parents might not have fallen asleep yet. But he didn't want to chastise Richie; he hadn't been able to get any of his friends alone for more than a few minutes since their discovery at the Ironworks. They had been purposefully avoiding him, using New Years' and the return to school as excuses to avoid hanging out. Until Richie had shown up well past all their bedtimes to toss sticks and little pebbles at Bill's window, garbage bag full of comic books under one arm. It was his way of signaling that he was done processing, that he was ready to talk about it.
"Duh-duh-don't nuh-know." Bill shook his head. "How d-d-do I ev-even…"
Richie pushed his glasses up on his nose. "Tell your folks that there's a psychopathic clown running around Derry?"
"Sh-sh-sh-should I…? I hah-haven't-t ruh-really nuh-known wh-wh-where t-to b-begin." Bill bit down on his misbehaving tongue hard enough to taste copper.
"Eh." Richie shrugged, flipped through a Spider-Man issue. "Not really a lot to go on, is there?"
Bill blinked at Richie.
"I mean… What did we see, really? Some footprints."
"Ruh-ruh-Richie, I duh-duh-don't… yuh-you're n-n-not mah-making s-s-sense."
Richie threw the Spider-Man comic down with a slap. Bill winced and glanced toward the door.
"Like…" Richie huffed and ran his hands down his face, through his hair. He took his glasses off and cupped his hands over his eyes. "Maybe we didn't see what we thought we saw."
Brow furrowing, Bill asked, "Wuh-wuh-what-t?"
"Those could have been some other kids' prints. And clown shoes, what the fuck… those could have been smudges, scrapes, anything."
Bill gulped, took in a shaky breath, and fixed his gaze on his closet door.
"Bill, I'm not saying that Georgie can't still be out there somewhere. I'm just saying… I don't think we have anything to tell your parents, or the cops, or anyone right now."
Rolling his eyes to the ceiling to keep tears at bay, Bill muttered, "S-s-st-Stan ah-and Eh-Eddie agree?"
"Jesus," Richie whispered. "Look man, no one's trying to conspire or anything. But, yeah, we've talked. And yes, they think we might have overreacted back there."
"Uh-huh." Bill had the sudden, wild impulse to leap onto Silver and speed through the nighttime streets with a flashlight in his teeth, return to the Ironworks and check the prints for himself. There'd been no new snow, no melt. They'd still be there, assuming roving teenagers or wild animals hadn't disturbed them. But he was too scared. Of the Ironworks in the dark? Of discovering that Richie and Stan and Eddie were right, that they'd tricked themselves into seeing something that wasn't there? Of finding out that he was right, that there were clear, large, floppy slipper tracks, clown shoes?
Did this make him a bad brother?
For several moments, Bill and Richie sat in silence, in Bill's dark room, on Bill's bed, hands still on the puddle of comic books.
Richie laid a hand on Bill's shoulder. "We'll keep looking, man."
Bill nodded and rubbed at his wet eyes with the heel of his hand.
Richie muffled a yawn.
"I'll wuh-walk yuh-yuh-you d-d-down t-to th-the d-door."
Richie did not protest, a sign that he was truly exhausted. The pair began to gather the comics together and shove them into Richie's garbage bag.
"H-hey. Have yuh-you h-had n-n-nightm-mares?"
Richie paused with his hand inside the garbage bag. He did not answer for five full seconds. "No."
A/N: I thought it was about time to start sprinkling some of the rest of our characters in without devoting too much space to them just yet. Hopefully this chapter didn't hop around too much.
What did y'all think of Chapter 2?