Winter opened her eyes from a long sleep. She felt weak and light-headed. As her eyes adjusted to the hospital room, her vision kept changing; One moment she would be in the safety of her hospital room and then the next moment she would be trapped in the part of the sewer that she spent most of her time. Where people floated all the way up to the ceiling and there were piles and piles of clothes, toys, and random antiques.

The clown's freezer.

She couldn't move, her whole body locked up as her mind took her to the sewers. She laid there on her back, in her hospital bed, her eyes wide open, paralyzed and barely able to move her lips.

As she continued to stare at the pile of things in the middle of the room, she noticed movement from the corner of her eyes, but she couldn't move her eyes or head to see what it was. As the movement got closer to the centre of her vision, she recognized the blond guy with the white t-shirt on with the smug smile on his face. It was Ace Merrill making a visit.

Winter felt her heart begin to pound, recalling the last memory she had of him pushing her up against the concrete wall and undoing her belt before she stabbed his switchblade into his head. The memory and his face made her wonder if she had his bandana wrapped around her wounded hand for the rest of the time she spent in the sewers. She had so much memory fog that she couldn't recall if she left the sewers with it on or if it was apart of the clown's mind-games.

Winter stared at Ace, unable to move as her muscles were locked up and her body went stiff.

He slowly walked up to her and continued to smile as she laid helpless.

"You look so sexy laying there..." Ace jumped on the bed and placed himself on top of her and looked into her frightened eyes, "Laying there so helpless."

Winter tried to make noises from her mouth, but nothing was coming out. Her body continued to feel locked up.

Ace grabbed his pocket knife and put it up to her cheek, "Have you ever orgasmed so hard that you cried for more?" He let the side of the blade slide against her cheek and down her body. She could feel the cold metal going from her cheek to her chest, "You might be scared of me now, but in a few minutes, you won't want me to stop fucking your soft pussy."

Winter shivered and could only let small sounds escape her lips.

All she could do was watch as his hands went down to his pants and he unzipped and removed his pants so quickly that she didn't even see him take them off. Then she realized as he began to touch her that she was only in a hospital gown.

'NO! NO! NO! NO!' she kept yelling in her head. 'WAKE UP, WINTER! WAKE UP!'

She felt him slide his cock into her pussy as she looked up to his turned on face. He began thrusting in and out as he held down her wrist with one hand and kept the knife close to her neck with the other. He was moaning as he went faster.

"Winter!" said a female voice by her ear.

'Who's voice was that?'

Winter's eyes filled up with tears as Ace fucked her in the sewers. This felt so real, but she thought it couldn't have been real.

He began to thrust even harder that her whole body started moving up and down from the force.

"WINTER!" the female voice yelled at her again.

Winter jumped up in her bed and inhaled deeply for air as her whole body shook from the realistic dream she just had.

'How was it a dream?! It was so real...'she thought, 'He was having sex with me... I felt it!'

She was continuing to try and catch her breath as her lungs restricted her from getting any air. She was in the hospital room again surrounded by nurses and her doctors. She inhaled deeply for air as she felt like she was drowning. Her lungs felt so weak.

What was the sewers just a moment ago with the huge stack of abandoned belongings that went as high to the ceiling was now just her hospital room and the stack of belongings was just a chair in the corner of the room.

"Winter, you need to relax. You're safe!" one of the nurses tried to keep her body from shaking more incase she began to go into another seizure.

"Her temperature spiked back up to 106F. We need to take her to the showers!" one of the doctors said.

'No... not the showers again... I'm too weak.'

Winter couldn't stop shaking. Her body was so hot and she had no control over her movements.

"Winter, we're going to strap your arms down so you don't fall off the bed," one nurse said to her as soothingly as she could, although it was easy to tell that she was only trying to mask her own panic.

Winter shook her head 'No' at her. She feared Ace was going to be able to take more advantage of her.

The nurses and doctors took the hospital bed out of the lock mode and was about to start moving her to the showers.

Winter looked up at the room. The empty chair that she had noticed when she woke up from her dream was not empty anymore.

There was Ace Merrill, sitting there with his legs crossed as he smiled at her as he zipped up his fly and then waved goodbye as the staff wheeled her bed out of the room.

Winter tried to scream, but only sharp noises escaped.

One of the doctors put the oxygen mask back on her as the panic Winter was showing was making her stop breathing; "Winter, the fever is making you see things. Whatever you're seeing is not there. You need to breathe."

Henry sat on the floor of the hallway that Winter's room was located with his blanket wrapped around him. When he noticed the staff open the door quickly, he saw the nurses and doctors rushing Winter's bed down the hallway in the opposite direction.

Henry got up to his feet and panicked, wondering what was going on as he could barely see Winter in her bed, but he could tell there was struggle as the nurses tried to keep her still.

"WHAT'S GOING ON?!" Henry yelled as they were already turning the corner, and they were gone.

Henry punched the wall in frustration as no one would tell him anything, and it had been two days and they said that he still couldn't see her. He stayed the entire time doing homework on the floor in the Intensive Care hall, just a few feet from Winter's room.

He walked up to the nurses station and looked over to the first nurse he saw working on the computer, "What's happening with Winter?"

The nurse looked over at him and said empathetically, "She was having a seizure in her sleep. Her fever went back up, so they need to cool her down. I know it's hard to watch her go through this, but this is the highest fever we've ever dealt with here in this hospital, so we need to keep bringing her to the showers to cool her down while the medications and antibiotics start kicking in."

Henry placed his hand from the table to his forehead as he processed what was happening to Winter. He was so frightened for her.

"How come she was panicking?"

"Whatever caused the trauma in the sewers for her, it's causing her to have some Sleep Paralysis and the fever makes it worse..."

Henry shook his head frustrated, "Sleep - what?"

"So, when she's in a middle of a dream, her body will wake up but her mind will remain still in the dream, and her muscles will lock up, which is the Paralysis part of it. When her body wakes up, it's like her mind can't process where she is and her mind only sees what she was dreaming. Plus, with the fever, she's having a hard time knowing what's real and what's in her imagination at the moment."

Henry rubbed his forehead from anxiety. He sighed deeply into his hands, "Let me know any update."

He slowly walked back to his spot on the hallway floor against the wall and sat down. The staff had told him to sit a few feet away from the door incase of catching anything. They didn't want Henry sitting in the hallway to begin with, but he fought to remain as close to Winter as he could.

Throughout the two days he had spent in the hospital, he was told everything Winter was dealing with. After Doctor Martin told him the conditions and the treatments she was on, Henry asked one of the nurses at the nurses station to write it down for him so he could keep it with him incase his family or anyone who came to visit her wanted to know.

1. Beta-Hemolytic Streptococcus Pharyngitis - caused from bacteria getting into her wounds (Being treated with Penicillin and Cephalosporins)

2. Bacterial Pneumonia - caused from the same bacteria as the Streptococcus - (Being treated with IV fluids, antibiotics, acetaminophen, cough suppressant and anti-fever medications)

All conditioned affected her lungs and created a very furious fever that made her hallucinate.

Henry looked at what the nurse wrote for him on the piece of paper and tried to hold the tears back that were building behind his eyes. They still couldn't tell him if she was going to be okay or if her conditions were going to end up killing her. They had said the most minor long-term damage her conditions would do to her was keep her from singing again, as the damage to her lungs would be a long treatment to endure. She would probably need to take a puffer too for the rest of her life. It was something she was going to have in common with Eddie, except her puffer will actually be medicine where his is a placebo to please his Munchausen by Proxy mother.

In the showers, they strapped Winter down to a chair underneath one of the shower heads as they put her hospital gown on another chair. It was a bright room with many shower heads, but the one above her was the only one lightly running cool water down her hot body.

Her head was full of so much mental talk as the shower head ran above her and the sound amplified in her head. The sound of the shower reminded her of the water drains in the sewer. It wasn't just the running water that was amplified in her head, but she heard all the voices from the sewers echoing in the room as she sat there shaking as the nurses showered her body with soap and water.

"He took my boat... Bill is going to be so mad..."

"Georgie, don't fall asleep, okay? Just keep your eyes open, and if you have to, keep talking. If you don't know what to say, then sing. Just stay awake!"

"If you close your eyes and focus on the bracelet, you can feel the tingling."

Winter quickly glanced down at the beaded black bracelet still on her wrist as she heard Lily.

"I am older than the world itself. I am not a stupid, foolish, human in a clown costume. I am a cosmic energy that not even the most brilliant Astronomer could explain... I am the eater of worlds! I am the eater of children! Children are the easiest to scare and their fear tastes so much fresher than the fear of a pruned adult! And children taste so much better when they are afraid and alive!"

Winter shut her eyes tightly to stop the voices from echoing. She knew it was in her head. The fever was doing this to her. It was only the fever.

The sounds stopped and it was only the water coming down from the shower head.

Winter opened her eyes slowly.

The clown was in front of her and stared at her with the eyes of hunger and evil. It ran toward her like it did that day when It ran to Lily before It took her away from existence. This time It was screaming as It ran at her.

Winter shut her eyes and tried to scream as she was bouncing up and down in the chair that she was strapped down to in a panic to run away.

The nurses pushed her down and continued to call her name. They stuck a needle in her arm with a sedative.

She opened her eyes and it was just the nurses standing above her as they looked at her crying scared eyes.

"It's okay, honey. It's just us..." one of them said as she stroked her hair.

Winter cried throughout the rest of the shower, and tried to stay with reality until she dozed off.

Henry continued to sit in the hallway in the Intensive Care Unit. He kept his head down in his arms as he had his knees up to his chest. His mind couldn't stop thinking. One moment he would be thinking about Winter and him making love in her bed, holding each other in school and then to them holding hands in the mall. He hated it when Winter would drag him to one of her favourite clothing stores and he would have to go through the pain of waiting for her for an hour as she tried on clothes and would still not buy anything. He smiled weakly at the memory, because he would have done anything to have her dragging him to her favourite clothing shops and making him wait for an hour right now.

"Hey, Bowers!" said a familiar voice as he kicked Henry's foot.

Henry looked up from his arms with his tired sad eyes.

It was those two guys he had met a few nights ago - Vic and Belch. They were still wearing their 1950's bad-boy getups.

"What are you guys doing here?" Henry asked weakly, not really caring that they were there.

"Just got a wig-chop!" Vic ran his hands through his newly cut hair, "Then we decided to show up here."

'Wig-chop?'Henry repeated in his head, 'Who says that?'

Henry rolled his eyes in annoyance at them, "Cool... What do you want?"

"We heard they found your girl."

"Yeah! The Goonies found your girl!" Belch laughed; Vic responded by laughing as well.

Henry felt annoyed by these two dummies, "You mean Winter's friends?"

"More like the Losers Club," Vic joked, hitting Belch's shoulder jokingly as he laughed. "Those kids are crusin' for a brusin'."

"And a knuckle-sandwich," Belch laughed.

"Don't you agree, Henry?" Vic smiled.

Henry didn't care about what they were talking about anymore with their 1950's slang. His mind was on Winter. "Sure... Whatever..." He looked back up at them, "I'm kind of distracted. Can you make this quick?"

"Take a cig. You look like you need one," Vic threw a Marlboro cigarette and a box of matches onto Henry's lap. "It's not time yet. We'll be back soon when you need our help, Daddy-O. Don't forget your deal with Mr. Bob Gray, Henry. We gotta burn rubber!"

Henry looked down to the other end of the hallway where they had taken Winter into the showers. He slowly turned his head back towards Vic and Belch; "What do you mean by that..."

They were gone.

'Who the fuck is Bob Gray?'

Henry stared down the long hallway that they would have gone down. He couldn't understand how they walked away within a couple of seconds of him looking away. Henry rubbed his temples and then rubbed his eyes. It must have been the lack of sleep.

Henry got back up onto his feet and grabbed the cigarette and box of matches. He thought that maybe it would make him feel less stressed out since it seemed to help out adults who were stressed.

He went out to the main entrance of the hospital and watched as the cars drove by in front of the building in the night as he lit up the cigarette and began to smoke it.

Henry's mind went back to that night he was searching for Winter when the clown was there in the middle of the road. He barely remembered much as he was drunk when he encountered the odd being. The yellow eyes the clown had and the animal-life energy about him went through his mind and how he had a dream with the clown the night Winter went missing flashed in his mind as well as he smoked.

"Hey, Henry."

Henry turned towards the voice and saw Robert walking up to him. It was almost nine in the evening. His mom and dad would have driven him so he wouldn't be walking out at night by himself.

Henry looked at the cigarette and tried to hide it thinking his parents were going to be there as well.

Robert saw the cigarette in between Henry's fingers, "Your dad drove me here, but he's staying in the parking lot. He just wanted me to check up on you. I won't tell him you're smoking."

Henry nodded and continued to smoke the cigarette, "I'm glad he didn't come with you... I'm not ready to see him." He still blamed him for the night Winter went missing.

Robert stood beside him and leaned his body against the railing and watched the cars pass by with Henry, "He figured. He's letting you cool down over that before he comes to see you."

"Yeah... Well, I don't think I'll get over it anytime soon," Henry blew out smoke in the air.

Robert looked over at him, "How is she?"

Henry scratched his head, "They still won't let me see her. They had some investigators go into her room to take photos of her scars before they stitched them up. She had a huge claw scratch on her stomach, like a bear or a wild animal clawed her. There was a cut on her hand that they fixed. Then there's scratch marks on her arm. They think it was from a little kid..."

Robert shook his head in disbelief, "I don't understand what could've happened when she was down there."

Henry didn't answer. He continued to smoke his cigarette and watch the action of Derry in front of him.

Robert looked at the side of his face as he remained quiet and smoked, "I've been taking care of the turtle. He's been really active in his aquarium. It's like he knows you're not home and is missing you."

Henry looked at him and nodded, "Thanks. I appreciate your help."

After a few moments of silence, Robert straightened himself back up from the railing. "I should get going, but your dad wanted you to have some change so you can call us when you have anymore updates." He handed Henry a handful of coins.

"See you around, Robert."

"You too, Henry."