I wanted to write something for Halloween. This is an It AU, so the story will be more rewarding if you have read the book. If not, that's no problem, but just read the book. It's good. I hope you think my story is good, too, though. But if you don't, I guess I'll have to take my normal pills.

In a large family such as Lincoln Loud's, certainties were ordinarily cherished little things for their rarity. But in this was a certain irony, in that there was also nothing Lincoln was more certain about than the fact that his sister was dead and never coming back.

Then followed the second fact: that when Lincoln found her killer, he'd make him dead, too.

He gazed down at the miniature walnut casket with a dispassionate gaze, as if he did not care for a single minute that his little sister was dead and in the process of being buried. Even little Lucy would not keep her façade for a moment longer, and had her face buried in a similarly disheveled Lynn's heaving chest.

Old Mr. Rutherford, a gay nineties relic sitting in the crowd, would beckon and whisper to his daughter, the thin and bucktoothed widow Mrs. Polkiss, that that Loud boy didn't seem to have a soul in him, because his eyes were dry and his face, normally filled to the edges with a goofball grin, was calm. She would agree before venomously replying, "I reckon the boy killed her."

But the Loud boy, as they called him, was not in any way unfeeling nor calm. Inside he was a tempest of emotions: anguish, fear, and a kind of hollowness. But above all in him was hatred for the killer, and it was a hatred that pulsed with the rhythm of his beating heart. Each beat filled in a bit of that hollowness in him with a purpose.

He'd make him dance. Maybe take his arm off, too.

2

Residents along Franklin Avenue were awakened early one morning at the sound of shouting. They listened to the shouting for a moment, rolled their eyes, and went back to sleep with their pillows wrapped around their heads. It was that dratted Loud family again, and if the volume was any indication, it was yet again their loudest resident, Luna.

There were a few brief and precious seconds of quiet, and then their eyelids snapped back open as the piercing sound of a poorly-played clarinet speared their eardrums through their pillows like they were made of paper.

"I told you to shut that off!" Lori charged back down the stairs, nearly bashing her side against the newel post in her haste. She cringed as she came into the sight of Luna Loud putting her soul and half a dying animal into that new clarinet she had gotten for her birthday.

Luna either could not hear her or did hear her but ignored her. Given the altercation that had just occurred, it was likely the latter.

"Shut it off!" Lori repeated, louder this time, and heard a series of faint "yea's!" coming down from up the stairs behind her. Luna stopped and glared at her. "Mom and Dad left me in charge, and I say you can't play your weird music at 8 in the morning. If you keep going I'll tell Dad. You know I will."

"Fashie punk," Luna muttered, but did not say anything more when Lori raised an eyebrow.

A rumbling sounded behind Lori, and she barely jumped out of the way before seven girls charged down the stairs. Each sported a face too cheerful for this early in the morning, spouting several "Morning's" and "Hey, everyone's."

They sat and lounged against the island, pulling out and eating whatever cold breakfast foods they could find. Luna sat on a swivel chair with her arms crossed and a dark look on her face.

"Say, where's Lincoln?" Lynn asked. "He was going to come with me to the pitch after this."

They all shrugged. Luna, her grievances suddenly forgotten, said, "Maybe he's moping with his weird friends again."

"Well, he better not forget," Lynn grumbled.

She gulped down the rest of her muffin, grabbed her bat and two mitts, and charged out the door in record time. She'd always be able to grab a ball someone left on the field, and with people like her lurking around, it was always wise to keep your balls of unraveling twine at home. Sure, she was about an hour early for when she was due at the mound, but she had always said that the early bird beats the later bird.

The morning air was cool, but carried that mellow undertone that promised a warmer noon. Her bat slung over her shoulder, Lynn set off towards town.

Lincoln and his weirdo friends. They had been like that for over a month now. Joined at the hip, their gazes worshipful, Lincoln always maintaining this sangfroid about himself.

She snorted. It seemed almost too soon, as to her Lincoln was still that cheerful and wimpy little brother she had always had, but it seemed as if he was finally growing up. A girl always liked a boy who had a lot of thoughts in his head, after all. But he was growing up in the wrong direction, like those boys in her class with the long hair and a love for James Joyce and Friederich Nietzsche; Jimmy Dean characters who didn't have a single cause to put under their name. And while he still dressed normal, those rings under his eyes and the very distinct lack of laughter certainly were not. If she was the sort of girl who was honest with herself, she would say that the weight on her chest felt very much like worry.

So lost was Lynn in her thoughts that she took a left on Miller Street without thinking about where she was going, and did not realize that her feet were carrying her towards the old and abandoned GM factory—the one that had always scared her when she was little, when she swore to her dad that she could hear the clanking of ghostly hammers decades since the last rivet had been struck and the last forge had been lit—until nearly half an hour later, when she found herself standing right before the wrought-iron gate surrounding the brick and glass structure. It was situated nearly five hundred yards East of the farthest and newest house, the current one belonging to Mr. and Mrs. James Turner, and was surrounded on all sides by green fields dotted black and white with grazing Holsteins. She wrinkled her nose when she realized how far from home she was, and turned to start looking for Lincoln again.

The sound of ungreased little wheels rolling on rough concrete and sandy gravel towards her forced her to stop. The hairs on her neck stood up, and she suddenly felt very exposed even with her bat. There was a strange sensation that she should not turn around, even if what was behind her might turn out to be something dangerous. And she really did not want to turn around. Though the morning sun had been pleasantly shining on her neck just moments prior, the air suddenly felt heavy with rain and choking on thunderbolts.

But she did, anyway, due to that human instinct of self-preservation at all costs. A large yellow and grey vehicle greeted her, sitting just in front of the gate.

She felt her breaths becoming shorter, and her vision blurred slightly as she stared at the iron lung that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She took a deep breath to force herself to remain calm, and exhaled. But the harsh and rapid breathing that she had exhibited moments prior did not stop, and only seemed to get louder, faster, more stochastic. It was not coming from her. The breathing was coming from the machine. Her hands shook. Sweat slid down the side of her face. She had no idea what to do. And then suddenly the machine popped open and out emerged…her.

Lynn gasped as she stared at herself. Gone was the thin and lithe figure she was so proud of. She was fat and sweaty, her formerly lush hair now thin and stringy, and she wore a stained and unwashed hospital shift that would have given Leni a reason to check in, too; but the most striking feature was her right leg, crooked and brown and as thin as her real arm. Her breaths suddenly became shorter once again. Polio, polio, a career killer…

She was starting to lose her control over her own limbs. Her knees felt wobbly and her arms grew slack. She heard in a distant part of her mind a solid thunk! of her bat hitting the concrete beneath her.

The other Lynn lurched forward, gurgling, "I'll rip off your legs, and you'll never run again!"

Lynn screamed and began running, bat and mitts forgotten. She could hear, over her harsh breathing and the violent beating of her own heart, that the other Lynn was laughing while giving chase, and that miraculously, the lame leg and large mass was no barrier at all to chasing her.

She did not care if that thing was no longer behind her. She ran and she ran and she ran, as quickly as she could, breaking her personal records along the way for the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, mile. It was a shame that she could not measure those speeds, and that at the same time she did not really care. She ran until she was suddenly back in town, in the business district, and she turned the corner only to bash her head against someone else's.

She groaned and rubbed her head, and turned her head behind her towards her attacker. The other Lynn was gone. She turned back around to see who her other attacker was, and smirked, her supernatural troubles suddenly forgotten, when her watery eyes landed on Lincoln, who was also rubbing his head in a similarly pained manner.

3

"Chandler nicked this from his dad?" Clyde asked incredulously.

Lincoln smirked. "Crazy what a nickel can do for you."

They were joined in the woods by three others, and what were they other than losers: Lincoln with his tall and thin build, and a mop of white hair hanging over his equally white forehead; his friend Clyde, who was black and a bit of a pansy; Zachary, with his A-averages and off-putting theories and facts; Liam, with his Southern accent and honest mien; and Rusty, with his bad freckles worse jokes and a face that just begged to be punched into new and exciting shapes. If you saw them then, this group of unremarkable boys at age eleven, you would have called them wimps.

All five of them stared down at a map of the plumbing complex lying beneath Royal Woods, given to them by Chandler. Lincoln would have never dreamt of associating with Chandler in any way a month ago, but he needed this map, and Chandler's dad was the perfect man to steal it from.

Ignoring the wary faces of his friends, Lincoln pointed his finger at the drain near the entrance of the school. "There's where they found Poppa Wheelie, just like Martin Gonzales and Girl Jordan. They're all near the sewers." He moved his finger over to the highway. "C'mon, I heard that's where it drains out."

They marched through the woods at a punishing pace, with Rusty cracking horrible jokes that never landed, and Liam turning each joke into a life lesson. Whether it was his intention or not, Liam's nagging discouraged Rusty from saying another word, and for that Lincoln was grateful. Before long, they had reached the highway, crossed it when there was not a car in sight, and slipped down a ragged slope towards the polluted river. Feeding into it was what Lincoln had been looking for: a massive entrance.

The stench emanating from this certain crevice was so horrible that even Lincoln nearly backed away. The others had all stepped back to a safer distance and had their noses covered with their shirts. Clyde was coughing something fierce.

But Lincoln had spent a nickel on this map, and he was going to make the most out of it if it was the last thing he did. Lily. He was doing it for Lily Loud. His resolve strengthened, he made to push his foot into the muck.

Ah, but he had to check something first. Chandler had said that the sewer would flush every half hour, and so if it was near 7:30, 8:00, or 8:30, they would have to back away before getting drenched in muck and filth. He glanced down at his Timex that had once belonged to Lori, something niggling him at the back of his mind, before gasping and coughing at what felt like a solid and nasty mass sliding into his lungs.

"Sorry guys, got to go. Lynn's meeting me in ten minutes!" he shouted, and before they could even say a word, he ran away towards the field as quickly as he could. He looked a bit odd, running so quickly with his arms stiffly in front of him, trying to fold the map without tearing it. If he went by the conventional route, he would never be able to get there on time. He would be a minute or two late, and with Lynn, that was absolutely unacceptable. But if he swung through the woods, he might be able to cut the journey down by five minutes. A surplus!

If only he had the bike! The ten of them had to share a single one, an old red Schwinn with a peeling seat and an insistent creaking noise that refused to disappear no matter how much it was oiled. Unfortunately, it was Lana's turn to use it, and she was trying to learn how to ride without falling over on her side.

He reached the field with barely a minute left, sweaty and entirely out of breath. He panted, doubled over, for nearly two minutes, and during that time Lynn still had not shown up.

Knowing Lynn, punctuality was simply a fact of life, so seeing her fail at achieving her own standards filled him briefly with a sense of smugness. This was quickly replaced with worry. What if Lynn was in trouble? What if It had gotten Lynn, too?

Lincoln was not ignorant of the nature of Lily's death, even if his parents and the other adults in the neighborhood started saying, with no evidence to support it whatsoever, that it was a coyote or a wolf that had bitten Lily's arm off. If it was a wolf, why did it not maul the rest of her? And more importantly, how and why did Lily even leave the house on her own in the first place?

Barely a week after Lily had died, he had been walking to school when he had suddenly heard a voice. There was something standing behind the trees lining the sidewalk, and while its voice overall was rather unremarkable, it made Lincoln highly uneasy.

He looked at the tree closely, but upon second glance there was nothing there. He thought that maybe both his eyes and his ears were playing tricks on him. He continued.

Then he heard it again, and he spun around to find a tall clown towering over him at an uncomfortably short distance. Its mouth bulged in an abnormal way and Its eyes glowed. Drool dripped from the corners of Its lips, and it smelled of something wretched.

"Heya, Lincoln. How about a little game, hmm?"

The clown grinned and revealed rows of razor sharp teeth.

Lincoln yelped in fear and ducked, so that the clown missed biting down on his head by mere inches. He could feel the snapping of Its jaw rustle his hair. He began sprinting towards school, the grating laughter of that clown echoing in his ears.

Panicking, Lincoln began running towards town, hoping to find Lynn. For a man with the plan, he certainly did not have much of a plan in this case. He did not consider the possibility that he might not find Lynn in town, or that she was maybe not in trouble with It at all. All he felt was a pervasive and paralyzing fear that his sister was going to be taken from him.

He zipped through Custer and Powell, choosing to avoid the milling hoards of people on the sidewalks by running on the empty street. Old Mrs. Carver shook her head when she saw him and said to herself, "That Loud boy is going to get himself run over." Then she shrugged and went back to her business. What did it matter to her?

It truly did feel like divine providence of some kind when he bumped, quite literally, into Lynn. He groaned in pain and rubbed his offended forehead, doubled over, but stopped when he heard a familiar voice ask, "So what brings you here, Stinkoln?"

Eyes wide, Lincoln stared at Lynn before pulling her into a crushing hug that made her say, "Oof!" Due to the sweat that coated his body in unpleasant ways, he could almost ignore the sensation of her own. All he felt was relief, sweet relief that she had been alright this entire time.

Lynn blushed and rolled her eyes. She tried pulling him off, mindful of her sweat, but he wouldn't let go. "Yeah, yeah. Good to see you too. Now c'mon, let's—" Her eyes widened, and she stopped struggling, and Lincoln looked up from her neck to see her thousand-yard stare.

"What is it?" he asked. He could feel her shaking in his arms, a foreign feeling for anyone familiar with someone such as Lynn Loud, and he had an inkling of what it was. She had been fine just moments before, after all. It was like she had suddenly remembered something that had been troubling her, and seeing him had been the only thing that had stopped—though it was only temporary—that recollection. And come to think of it, where was her bat, or her mitts?

"I-It's nothing. Probably just a dream or something." Lynn smiled, but it was more like a grimace. Lincoln felt a chill settle in his bones. No, not her too.

But something about this felt right, and a great, swooping sensation traveled through his stomach. It was as if a great, otherworldly force had drawn them together, placing around them a ring that placed them above the others. They had a purpose, and were united in that purpose, in a way that Clyde and the others were not. They were other, just like everyone else in this town. But Lynn—Lynn was just like him.

"You saw It, didn't you?"

No further words were needed. She understood.

4

"Emergency sibling meeting, now!"

Lori placed down the catalogue she had been flipping through and raised an eyebrow. "Did Lynn break a window again?"

"Now!" Lynn shouted, Lincoln hot on her heels. They stomped up the stairs, straight towards the no man's land that was Lori's and Leni's room. It was only because of the frantic expressions on their faces that Lori relented and called them all in for this meeting. Luna had been teaching Leni and Lana how to ride the Schwinn outside, and they wandered in with a lethargy that could be found only in the early afternoon.

"What's the hurry? Is Lincoln's wife going into labor?" Luan asked, grinning, and Luna snorted.

"Emergency sibling meeting. Spread the word," said Lori with an eyeroll.

Lori and Leni's room was coated in a pale yellow wallpaper with green vertical pinstripes. It gave the impression of a very unfashionable, very wide shirt. They gathered around Lori's bed, and Lori banged her shoe on her desk once. Lynn immediately began stumbling into her story. "I was out looking for Lincoln, after we had breakfast—"

"—during which we nursed our ears back to good health," said Luan.

"Beats listening to that negro music," Luna sneered.

"And I guess there's never been a negro who's played the clarinet before, eh? Ever heard of a thing called jazz?" Luan smirked.

Luna sputtered. "I was playing Mozart!"

"We oughtn't say it like that," said Leni nervously. "Linky's got a friend who's is a nig—I mean, negro."

"Hey, that's right!" said Luan, grinning widely. "I've met him. Scotch-tape glasses, poofy hair, this tall. Yeah, I remember. I met him while outside the Kroger when he pointed a gun at me and said, 'Give me your money!' Ha-ha, nice guy." Her face and voice both turned serious. "Tell him to come over and clean up the table after we're done with supper, will ya?"

Even Lisa could not contain her snort.

Lori chuckled. "Okay, guys—heh—back to the subject at hand—"

"Put a couple of almonds on his face and you get a candy bar. Eh, no massuh. Doan eat me. Po' white trash like yoseff could lose yo teeth. "

"Guys!" Lori shouted.

It was Lincoln who began this time, to much greater success. "We think we know what killed Lily."

What had been a generally cheery atmosphere evaporated instantly, and a horrible hush came down upon the room. Even Luan looked uneasy.

"Why would you bring that up, Linky?" Lola asked, her voice trembling. Luna placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Explain, now." Lori's voice offered no compromises.

"When I was walking to school, there was this voice that spoke to me behind the trees, and then a great big clown came up behind me. It had sharp teeth and It was drooling, and It definitely was not human. I was scared straight, and I started running. I swore Its head snapped right where my head was second earlier, and I heard It laugh when I ran away." He motioned to Lynn.

"I was looking for Lincoln after breakfast to play ball, and I ended up at the GM factory. I started heading back, but I heard a squeaking noise, like a rusty wheel. And there was an iron lung right outside the factory, but I swear there wasn't one before. Then it opened up and it turns out that I was lying in it, but I was all fat and sweaty and I had polio. Then It started chasing me and laughing, too, and I ran away and bumped into Lincoln."

Lincoln spoke next. "I think this thing, whatever It is, is what killed Lily. I am almost completely sure. It's definitely not a coyote, and maybe not even a person. From what we can tell, it can change shapes. I need you all to be careful when you're outside, or you'll end up like her, too."

After he finished, there was a long, ugly, and heavy silence, before Lola and Lana burst into tears.

"Look what your stupid joke did!" Lori said angrily, before ushering the two crying girls out.

Lisa shook her head and muttered, "You foolish, foolish Homo sapiens."

"We're serious!" Lynn cried, almost desperately.

Luna shook her head. "I don't know where you got all those ideas about witchcraft and voodoo magic, but it's unnatural and it's got to go. You're both coming to church with me this Sunday." She left the room too.

"I would congratulate you on telling a good joke, but bringing Lily into this was too much," Luan snapped before walking out, too.

"Leni, you believe us, right?" Lincoln implored.

But Leni just shook her head, tears in her eyes, before walking out too.

"Dammit!" Lynn screamed, kicking Lori's bed. "They'll get themselves killed!"

"You forgot me," said a voice from behind them, and they both screamed and jumped a solid foot into the air.

"Lucy!" Lincoln cried. "Oh, you believe us, right? You have to believe us!" Both he and Lynn stood with baited breath, awaiting her reaction.

To their great relief, Lucy nodded sagely. "I saw It, too. You think It killed Lily?"

Just as it had when Lincoln had hugged Lynn, a sudden feeling of rightness washed over the three of them, as if the world, or perhaps something even beyond it, was pushing them together like chess pieces. Lucy was yet another member who was in, as much as Clyde and Rusty and the rest of them were definitively out.

They nodded, and Lucy sighed. Just as Pharaoh's heart grew hard, theirs' grew heavy.

Oh, what it was to be young, and still scared of the dark.

5

Lincoln had promised Rusty and Zachary that they would catch the werewolf picture at the Empire, a multiplex theater and the only one in town, but he had arrived early. The sound of "Rockin' Robin" wafted out of the ticket box as surely as the smell of popcorn. A couple of older boys he recognized from school hung around outside the cinema, waiting for who knows what, standing around and smoking. They looked like the sort his mom had warned them all about: pompadours slick with brylcreem, leather jackets, bucked teeth, and a general air of not having any inclination of which way to go in life other than wherever gravity took them; more often than not this meant the garage or the beat-down and struggling Standard Oil just down the road.

There was that tall Jap girl wrapped in a too-large and worn jacket, Estella, sitting on her own by the large sign that read, Gigi, 35¢ , and rolling in her hands what looked like a couple of brand new shiny metal jacks.

She was normally alone at school, sitting at lunch by herself very much like she did now, but from the few words that they had exchanged, Lincoln thought that she seemed alright. She was smart and snappy and had cigarettes hidden up her sleeves. The other girls didn't like her much, and Lincoln thought it was probably because she was both a Jap and prettier than a lot of the other girls in the class who didn't have to live in the slums of Upper Main Street. Her face held what was to him, and he was sure to most of the other boys at school, an exotic sort of beauty, if Lincoln could understand really what made a woman beautiful.

Now at any ordinary time, Lincoln would have said that he had no interest in meeting any Jap girl of any height, thank you very much, but at age eleven, and what with the boys surrounding you at school making much ado about the color of Patty Jacobs' underwear that they got to see around the back of the school for twelve cents, a Jap girl of any stature suddenly seemed to be very much of interest.

"Around the world tensies?" Lincoln called.

Estella raised her head and looked at him, her eyes narrowed. Then she threw the jacks she had in her hand on the ground, and emptied out her pocket of eight more. The eight that had not been in her hand before were notably worn and old, and not at all like the two new ones. From her other pocket she drew a pink ball. Kneeling, she threw the ball up, and swiped all the jacks up in her hand and twirled it around the falling ball once before it could hit the ground a second time.

Lincoln whistled, suitably impressed. Sure, Lynn had pulled off the same trick last week, but that was Lynn, for crying out loud.

"What's a boy like you know about jacks?" Estella grinned.

Lincoln ignored the audible snickering of the boys near the theater, who threw their cigarette butts on the ground and entered the theater. "Nine sisters, and you're sure to pick on a few things. I could only ever get up to eightsies, and I was never able to pull that off a second time."

Estella pulled back the long sleeves of her jacket, which were surprisingly dry given the heat, and pulled out a cigarette. She offered it to him, and he took it with a smile. He sat beside her on the concrete ledge, squinting at the text wrapping around near the butt.

"Now, what's a girl like you got to do with smokes?" he mocked, and they laughed.

She pulled a matchbox out from those seemingly fathomless pockets, and struck one on the concrete. She lit both of theirs and raised a brow when Lincoln didn't cough.

He grinned. "There are some questions too big to be answered, my lady."

She pouted, but still looked very pleased. "Keep going on like that and you'll hurt my feelings, Lincoln Loud."

"Darling, your feelings are the last thing you should be worried about." He exhaled. "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should," he announced, despite not knowing a thing about whether this or that kind of tobacco tasted good.

"Winston burns hot like a cigarette ought."

They sat together in a pleasant silence for several minutes. A crowd slowly began to gather as people—mostly high school boys and their sweethearts, both near Luna's age, and with violent flares of acne all around—waited for the same werewolf picture that Lincoln was going to see. It was no small source of pride for him that he was here at around two-thirds their age, and still brave enough to endure what he was sure would be a real fright.

"You going to catch the show?" Lincoln broke the silence as he spotted the top of Rusty's head, about four blocks away. He remained seated and crushed the butt of his cigarette beneath his shoe.

Estella sighed. "I don't have the money. I just don't want to head back home just yet."

Lincoln's pocket money was not anything spectacular, but he was getting along rather well with her, and he certainly had the spare dimes to afford her a ticket. And most importantly, she was looking prettier, not that he was looking, the longer they sat there together. But there was a sense in his head, just like the one that had emerged when he had been hugging Lynn and talking with Lucy, that there was some otherworldly force afoot and active in his life. Only now, unlike with Lynn and Lucy, there was an overwhelming sense of wrongness that permeated everything.

Don't let her get any closer. She's not like you or Lynn or Lucy. She's not one of you, it said.

And so, with great reluctance, he stood once he could make out Rusty's dark freckles. People were starting to filter into the theater. "I really wish you could. Meeting you here was a treat."

"Okay." She sounded sad.

"I would pay for you if I could."

"I know."

As he paid curt Henry Marshall of eleventh grade the three quarters and a nickel needed for admission, with Rusty and Zachary standing on either side of him, Lincoln turned and looked at where he had sat happily with Estella for those brief moments that could almost shut out everything else that was going wrong in his life. She sat there staring at the jacks in her hand, lost in thought. He turned back around and entered the cinema without waving goodbye.