Wednesday May 28, 1997 (11:58AM):

The cold air and the darkness surrounded Winter. She sat frozen on the concrete ground, barely able to make out what was around her. She remembered that she ran into the sewers when her friend, Tiff, told her to follow her into the building at The Barrens that led into the storm drain.

Why Winter followed her into the storm drain and why Tiff led her into the drain was something she couldn't figure out.

Winter remembered earlier that day that Tiff was reported as a missing person in Derry. When she saw her the night of Sunday May 25th 1997, when Winter was walking home from Henry's house, Tiff told her that there was a circus at The Barrens. It didn't make sense to Winter, but when she saw Tiff after she had been reported as missing, she couldn't just let Tiff run off without knowing where she was going.

Everything else was a blur.

Winter had no recollection of what happened after she followed Tiff through the storm drain. She didn't even know how long she was down in the sewers for. She knew whatever happened in the past few hours was traumatizing and there were so many bright lights that followed her whenever she ran off too far into the tunnels - as if something was following her - trying to keep her in this one particular area of the sewer. It was the biggest room in the sewer, full of stuff you would find in someone's abandoned attic, and it was built up in a huge pile that went up for almost a couple of miles. If Winter didn't feel so sick and delirious, she would wonder if everything around her was real.

Winter remembered seeing Georgie Denbrough, with one arm, asking her how to get out. It was that day too that the police had reported Georgie was missing, and all they had of him was his arm that was found at the storm drain a couple of streets away from his house. There was also another kid, a little girl named Lily, and Winter recalled giving the little girl her jacket to wear in the cold sewer.

She looked down to her left arm and saw tiny fingernail scratches and a bruise of small fingers marked on her skin. As if it were only a dream, Winter kept seeing Lily gripping tightly onto her arm when the white lights swept the little girl away like a vacuum cleaner. Winter tried to hold onto her while Lily screamed for her life, but Winter felt too sick to figure out if it really happened or if it was a dream. Everything that had happened from the time she entered into the storm drain to that moment seemed unreal.

The clown. The clown took her.

Winter sat on that cold ground shivering, mumbling, coughing nonstop. She was sick, and she felt like she was becoming delirious. The cold shivers felt hot and cold and she was sweating. It was the worst flu she had every experienced in her life, but it wasn't a flu. She had become really sick from being trapped in the cold sewers without food or water and stuck within an atmosphere that so many types of bacteria lived. Plus the trauma that she could barely remember. Then the seizures began and her mouth would foam.

There was a clown that was almost seven feet tall. But then it was so big and looked half alien, and It went up to the ceiling of the drain. Then it was lights. Big, bright white lights that lit up the whole place and was blinding. Henry. I want to be with Henry. I want to be home. Am I going to die?

Her train of thoughts went from one place to another. Nothing was real, yet nothing was fake, and nothing made sense.

"Winter..." came the voice that had been taunting her for however long she was in the sewers for. The voice that came before another kid died in front of her.

Winter couldn't answer, she just shook on the ground, trying to keep herself from going into another seizure or falling asleep.

She slowly looked up above her where the voice came from, but the voice sounded like it came from every corner of the place.

"Get up."

Still shaking, Winter slowly and unsteadily got onto her feet. She wanted to faint, but she clutched onto the cold wall to keep her from falling over. She looked around, but couldn't see anything. The place was spinning. Winter didn't know if what she was seeing was really there anyway.

"Follow the light."

The bright light showed up at one of the tunnels. There were openings to tunnels everywhere in that space. She was too sick and too delusional to go against the command It was giving her. If it were a day ago or even a few hours ago, she would have ran another direction away from the light that the kids were disappearing into, but every ounce of energy was drained from her.

Winter clutched onto the walls as she slowly made her way toward the light that was leading into a tunnel. As she walked towards It, It kept moving at the same slow pace she was walking.

As she followed the light in front of her, she shivered and was mumbling things in-between her quivering lips. She didn't remember the things that she was mumbling, but she had a hunch she was mumbling lyrics to a song she performed with the her band at the Christmas concert. The soft singing was her way of coping while she was becoming sicker and sicker.

Winter followed the light for a long time, at least that's how it felt to her. They led her through different tunnels, but there was nothing that popped out of the corners like there was when she first got stuck in the sewers. No new voices, no children that were bleeding and cut up, no scary creatures she remembered from scary books, and no clowns.

Following the light felt kind of peaceful, as if she was surrendering to her fate. She wondered if it was the light leading her to the other side, because she couldn't figure out if she was still alive or dead at that moment.

As she clutched onto the wall and shakily followed the light, It had suddenly come to a halt. She stopped walking as well and starred at It, although her vision was blurry.

Without realizing when it happened, the light disappeared and Georgie appeared where It was hovering. He still only had one arm, and he didn't look or seem sick or deprived from food and water like she was. He seemed unreal. She saw Georgie when she arrived in the storm drain, and he was panicking and scared, and his life was draining out of him. He had been taken away by the bright light - the clown - when she was trying to figure out how to stop his arm from bleeding and how to keep him alive when he was losing so much blood.

But here he stood, as if he was standing on his front porch saying hi to her when she would go over to babysit him. There was no fear... and those eyes were not Georgie's.

He lifted his one arm and pointed down the rest of the tunnel.

There was a light. The light to the outside world.

"Keep walking and there are people waiting out there... they're looking for you," he said in his soft 6-year-old voice. Again, no trace of fear.

Winter opened her mouth, but words were barely able to come out of her; "Are you coming, Georgie?" she said, her voice quivering and horsed.

But you're not Georgie, are you?

Georgie stared at Winter for a couple of moments before he disappeared into thin air.

He was gone.

Winter's eyes went wide and her face was twisted in fear, but she could not make the sound that she wanted to. She wanted to scream and run towards the light at the end of the sewer that led to civilization, but she was too sick to do any of those things.

She pushed on the wall and walked down the tunnel. She could hear herself breathing heavier as she put more effort into each step as each step was closer to being free.

The closer she got to the exit, she could see shadows. People in police uniforms, but they couldn't see her yet because she was still too far away, still swallowed into the darkness of the sewer.

"Help me..." she mumbled hoarsely over and over again as she walked closer to the daylight.

Still, they couldn't hear her.

She was close enough now that she could hear them talking. She could see Officer Hopper, Henry's uncle, stop in his tracks as she mumbled out another "Help me..."

Winter's footsteps were starting to create an echo as she was closer to the end. She pushed herself away from the sewer wall and walked in the middle where the small stream of water was.

Officer Hopper could see her silhouette in the shadows walking out.

"Oh my God! It's Winter!" he shouted.

A group of officers came running towards her in the sewer. The first one to reach her was Officer Hopper.

He scooped her up in his arms right away as another police officer wrapped her up in a blanket. The officers ran out of the tunnel while Officer Hopper walked fast out into the daylight.

The daylight hurt Winter's eyes and she was having a hard time keeping them open as she shook in Officer Jim Hopper's arms. She was coughing into the blanket and sleepily looking around at the people standing around the storm drain. She barely had energy to recognize faces or to listen to what everyone around her was saying, but she was looking for Henry.

"Winter!" shouted a familiar voice from a small distance.

"Henry?" Winter mumbled softly, unaware that no one could hear her because her voice was so weak.

"Winter, you're safe, but don't fall asleep, okay? You're really sick and need a hospital," said Officer Hopper, some fear in his voice as he said it.

"How is she?" an officer asked.

"Her lips are blue and her hair has ice in it. Her clothes are wet and ripped open from weird claw marks, and she looks like she has a high fever," Jim Hopper said worriedly. "Shit! She's shaking like crazy too."

Jim put her onto an ambulance stretcher and she felt herself get lifted into an ambulance. The doors closed and she was faced with the paramedics. They were moving quickly to get oxygen into her lungs and to hook her up to the monitors and fluids.

Winter couldn't process anything that was happening. Everything was happening so fast and she didn't know what was going on.

There was a loud bang at the windows on the backdoors of the ambulance. It was a hand smacking against the doors angrily.

"LET ME IN! I'M HER BOYFRIEND! LET ME SEE HER!" Henry Bowers screamed angrily.

Officer Jim Hopper pulled him away from the ambulance as it started to drive away.

"Henry, calm down! I'm going to drive you to the hospital, okay?"