Note: Well, here we are again with a much overdue chapter. It's been a crazy month! I apologise for the wait, and thank you heaps to all those who have left reviews - it's great to know that people are keen to find out what happens next in this different iteration of the Loser's Club :) To make up for the long wait, this is actually the longest chapter so far (not by much but anyway). I'll try to update more quickly in future, but can't promise anything, I seem to go from crazy time to crazy time lately :p Where this story goes next is slowly forming in my head, I still don't have an exact idea of how it all comes together but it's getting there! Meanwhile I'm maybe 4/5 through the actual book (finally) and might actually manage to finish it on my next flight. Exciting times! As always, please let me know what you think, and hope you enjoy the new chapter :D
"There's a light in the bedroom
But it's dark
Scattered around on the floor
All my thoughts..."
- Get Home, Bastille
"Damn, this place smells just as bad as it ever did."
In a familiar callback to their past selves, Eddie hovered near the entrance to the sewer reluctantly as Richie splashed through the murky water ahead of him, his voice bouncing hollowly off the tunnel walls. Eddie's nose wrinkled at the smell, years of his mother's paranoia still just inches beneath his seemingly calm exterior. As much progress as he'd made in the time since she'd passed, giving up most of his hang-ups and pseudo-drugs, old habits were so hard to shake and he often found himself blanching at the sight of anything remotely germ-infested.
"Oh, come on, Eds," Richie laughed. "You're not still scared of the grey water, are you?"
"No," Eddie said stubbornly, stepping into the sewer after him. He didn't like the way his shoes squelched on hidden soggy bits beneath the surface of the water, didn't like to think what those things might be. This was, after all, Pennywise's domain. Who knew what lurked beneath the surface? He realised he really didn't want to know the answer to that question.
"What are we going to find in here, honestly?" he pressed Richie in a low voice, glancing back longingly at the afternoon sunlight reflecting off the water outside, seemingly so close and so distant.
"Clues, duh," Richie shrugged. "Like that stupid tree outside..."
The fact that he couldn't place the initials they'd found obviously bothered Richie, a tangible piece of evidence that their memories weren't all right after all. It was one thing to vaguely suspect that there was a part of their past Pennywise was keeping hidden from them, and it was another thing to confirm it. That there had been another in their circle, and they just couldn't remember for the life of them who.
What traitors we are, Richie mused to himself. He kicked at the water below, splashing it ahead of him.
"Do you think we really forgot one of us?" Eddie murmured softly, voicing aloud Richie's own thoughts. "One of the Losers?"
"God, I sure hope not," Richie said, continuing to kick at the water as they proceeded along the tunnel. He jumped back as his foot connected with a small solid object that he'd sent clinking against the sewer wall. He immediately got his phone out, activating the light to find what it was that he'd kicked. With a grimace, he reached down and pulled a small rectangular object out of the shallow water.
Holding it up in front of Eddie, its surface illuminated by the harsh white phone light, Richie made a disgusted noise. It was a lighter, years and years old, and they both knew exactly who it belonged to. He turned off his phone light, returning them both to the washed-out darkness illuminated only slightly by the light beyond the sewer, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Patrick Hockstetter," Eddie said, giving sound to a name neither of them really liked to hear.
"That bastard," Richie muttered, remembering all too clearly the strange lackey of Henry Bowers. In a lot of ways, he had been far more scared of Hockstetter than Bowers as a kid. There'd always been a darkness in him that seemed dangerous in a way that even Bowers himself did not quite manage.
Absently, he flicked the lid back and ran his thumb along the rusted wheel, surprised when the lighter sparked to life, lighting the damp walls around them with its orange flickering glow.
"I can't believe it still works," Eddie said, sounding a bit in awe. "It really shouldn't after all this time."
"Yeah," Richie agreed, staring at it, feeling a bit more horrified than awed. The last time it'd been in the possession of its owner was when Patrick had been chasing the slashed-up Ben, hoping to do who knew what to the bleeding fat kid. He'd only heard the story later from Ben and Eddie, but it had sounded pretty terrifying. Hiding in the sewers had occurred to them, of course, and it was lucky they hadn't. Patrick Hockstetter had entered the sewers believing that was their hiding place, and had never been seen again. He hoped with all his being that Hockstetter himself would not be the next thing to surface from the sewer water.
Swallowing the sudden lump in his throat, he abruptly snapped shut the lighter and pocketed it. The darkness greeted them once more, and it was not so welcome. Eddie hastily got his own phone out and turned the light on.
"Okay, a lighter, great, can we go now?" he said, his voice edgy. But the light from his phone had already illuminated something else floating on the surface nearby, something pink and papery. Richie knelt down next to it, examining the item with a puzzled look on his face. It was a cupcake wrapper, the kind usually seen at children's birthday parties filled with a tiny sponge cake and overly decorated with icing and sparkly sugar.
"I wonder if Pennywise had a birthday party down here," Richie mused aloud, knowing that the truth of this wrapper was far darker than that. Eddie leaned over him to look at the wrapper, a frown on his face.
"You know what this means, right?" Eddie said, looking again back towards the entrance to the sewer.
"No?"
"This tunnel is important, it's an entry and exit point for Pennywise," Eddie gestured ahead of them, towards the darkness. "I know last time we went down to the lair through the house of Neibolt street..."
He trailed off, the memories of that house painful in more ways than one.
"Well, anyway, maybe we'll have better luck coming this way," Eddie finished, suppressing the thoughts of the leper and the clown and the way his broken arm had dangled limply in front of him. "I can't explain why, I just have a feeling this tunnel will be important somehow."
Richie cocked his head to the side, looking at Eddie strangely for a moment. Eddie shifted uncomfortably under the gaze, not sure what was going through Richie's head. Finally, his friend spoke.
"I wonder if we'd all do a lot better listening to those inexplicable feelings more," Richie said cryptically. "Alright, Eddie-spaghetti, I think we've found all we're going to here. Let's head back to Mike's serial killer lair."
Eddie nodded with relief, the prospect of returning to the sunlight immediately winning over any curiosity he had about Richie's first statement.
They both turned and headed outside, unaware that they were being watched from the not-too-distant shadows of the sewer. If either of them had thought to glance back, even just once, they may have seen the dark shape of a figure staring after them in brooding silence, the realisation of being forgotten beginning to make its ugly truth known.
So they were alive, after all. It had all been a horrible prank played on him by Pennywise, watching them die again and again until he cried and begged for it to stop, for the torture to be inflicted on him instead. But then he'd come to that realisation himself eventually, hadn't he, that something wasn't quite right in the nightmarish prison the clown had built for him. And still, as bad as everything Pennywise had done to him had been, it was much easier than watching the people he loved most struck down in the worst ways. Even if they weren't real.
And yet... his friends, his allies, those he thought he could trust most in the world - they had forgotten all about him? They had left him behind and moved on with their lives, grown up, got older, never sparing a thought for the torture and pain he'd been subjected to at the hands of Pennywise... Had he placed his faith in the wrong bunch of losers after all? What was for them a foggy distant past was for him a brutal present, the echoes of their played-out deaths still fresh in his mind. It didn't seem so long ago that the seven of them were down in the cistern, watching Georgie's body float down from above. Realising that the quest had not been in vain after all, even though he'd begun to come to terms with the fact that Georgie was gone. Yes, it was still almost as vivid as this painful reality, where everything seemed too bright and too harsh to his shadowed eyes.
As he stared after who he easily recognised as Eddie and Richie, though so much older than he'd last seen them, he felt the flicker of a distant rage ignite within his chest as the pain of being left behind, in both space and time, began to consume him, as a faint darkness inside him grew that at once both scared and empowered him.
And closer than the shadow of Bill Denbrough could have known, the Turtle despaired.
George was silent as they walked away from the Neibolt house, turning the paper boat over in his hands as Beverly watched helplessly through sideways glances, not knowing what to say. His eyes were clouded, and his thoughts were clearly far away even though his legs kept him walking alongside her.
Here it was, the boat that had led to George's abduction by the clown and months-long disappearance, worn and aged but still perfectly in tact. What did it mean that Pennywise has left it for them? Another of his tricks to be sure, but this one seemed to have hit George particularly hard.
"George," Bev pressed gently. "Are you okay?"
He didn't respond, walking slowly while still staring down at the boat in his hands. Finally, after several moments, he spoke.
"This boat..." He didn't lift his eyes from it. "It was the beginning of everything."
Somewhere in the back of his mind, unbeknownst to Bev, a little voice whispered: she, Georgie, we call boats she.
His vague words made her frown, not quite understanding what he meant. The boat was indeed what had led to George's disappearance, and based on what they knew, he had been the first to be taken by Pennywise that fall. But the words carried more weight than that, as if there were something more behind them. Based on the wavering confusion on George's face, she didn't think he had a very good idea of what the words meant either.
George, meanwhile, was caught in his memories, realising that there was a thick fog around his brain when it came to that day, that there was a pain in his chest he couldn't quite manifest, the feeling of a great loss which he had carried with him all his life. This boat was somehow a tangible metaphor for that loss, something which in the past he'd dismissed as the loss of his arm. Losing a part of him in such a way had always seemed so important. And yet now, seeing and holding the boat again and feeling the warm feelings rush through him at the sight of the boat's scraggly name, he knew it was more than that.
In an instant, he knew where he had to go.
"Sorry Bev," he said apologetically, turning away from her and changing the direction he was heading in. "I need to do something."
She followed after him, protesting.
"George, wait, what is it?" she said. "Can't we go together?"
"No, this is something I have to do myself," he said, finally looking up from the boat and meeting her blue eyes. "I'm sorry... I'll be back at the hotel soon. Tell the others, and don't worry, it'll be fine."
She frowned again, but saw the seriousness on his face and knew it was best to leave him be. If she stayed, she would only be getting in the way of something important, she could tell.
"Okay," she said reluctantly. "Be safe."
"You too," he said, turning and continuing down the road. He knew exactly where he needed to go, even if he didn't quite know why.
He was going home.
Ben and Stan were the first to arrive back at the hotel, the former clutching two fat yearbooks to his chest in an echo of his younger self who'd almost always been carrying around a couple of books from Derry Public Library. They found Mike in the hotel's restaurant, looking a little less pale while munching absently on a sandwich. They joined him and ordered for themselves, an order which came relatively quickly since it was already quite late for lunch and there was no one else around.
Mike, of course, was anxious to get back to the room, but too polite to urge them to hurry, so he just sat at the table watching them eat with a nervous look, which made the whole situation that much more awkward. Ben and Stan readily picked up on the not-so-subtle vibes from Mike and scoffed down the rest of their food.
They were joined by Eddie and Richie in the hallway, as they made their way back to the conference room. Richie seemed keen to share something they had found, but Mike shook his head quickly and gestured in the direction of the conference room. Keeping things under the radar was high on his agenda, and it would not be good to have random people overhear their conversation. Derry locals or not, it was sure to draw unwanted attention. Richie pouted, but accepted his reasoning.
There was the obvious absence of Beverly and George, and Mike reassured them that they would probably be along shortly. But the unspoken truth that the two had arguably gone to the most dangerous location of all remained in the air between them.
The five of them reached the conference door, and Mike suddenly stopped, face filled with worry.
"What, Mike?" Eddie asked. He followed Mike's gaze and saw what had made him stop so suddenly: the door which he had so carefully locked and double-checked was very slightly ajar.
"There's no way I left it like that," Mike said in a hushed voice. "I checked..."
There was a long silence during which none of them dared move, because the first and most obvious thought that had occurred simultaneously to all of them was that there was a particular entity dressed in a clown suit waiting for then on the other side. Mike brought a finger to his lips, and edged silently forward towards the door, reaching out with a slightly trembling hand towards the handle. His movements seemed to take an age to the other four, who watched tensely. Was it even possible to sneak up on Pennywise?
"Well, are you coming in already?" prompted an impatient female voice.
They all started, shocked at a voice that definitely did not belong to Pennywise... unless he was hiding in the guise of another.
Mike pushed the door open, revealing a woman standing in front of his collection, one hand on her hip. She had dark brown hair, pulled back in a messy ponytail, and was dressed casually in jeans and a red hoodie. If he has to guess, Mike would have said she was partly of European descent, maybe Spanish or Italian, though not recently as her accent was flawlessly American. She cocked an eyebrow at them, her face lined with amusement. The mirth didn't quite reach her eyes though, which were hardened with emotions Mike couldn't really place.
"Well," said Richie, always the first to break an awkward silence. "Who the fuck are you?"
This caused her to laugh, shaking her head.
"You definitely live up to expectation, Richie Tozier," she said. Richie just stared back at her in a stunned silence, dumbfounded that she knew his name. He could tell it wasn't because she was a fan of his LA talk show. Mike was suddenly more on edge, wondering if this actually was a new game being played on them by Pennywise, who certainly knew their names.
"Oh, I know all of you," she clarified, seeing the look on his face. "I did my research."
"You... did?" Mike repeated, glancing back at the door that he knew he locked before going to get food. Clearly, whoever this person was, she had broken into the room. Which made her potentially dangerous.
"But really, who are you?" Stan asked, looking uncomfortable. "And why are you here?"
"Also - this is just some history we've been looking into," Eddie added hastily, waving at the documents behind her. "Nothing serious, you know."
She paused, her mouth drawn in a line as she seemed to contemplate what to say. Finally, she approached Mike, the closest to her, and held her hand out.
"Andi," she said simply. "Nice to meet you."
Mike grasped her hand and shook, warily.
"Michael Hanlon," he said, "but I guess you already know that." The slight shrug of her shoulders indicated he was correct.
"Let's get one thing clear," she said, stepping back from Mike and addressing all of them. "I know about the clown."
Her words hung in the room as the Losers stared back at this stranger who was somehow completely clued in to their plight. Should they play along, or was it safest to deny the existence of the clown? Hadn't they had a conversation way back when, trying to decide who they could trust with their stories of monsters in the darkness, ruling out the police, their parents, and even the other kids for some inexplicable reason none of them could put into words?
If anyone else had known about the clown then, they hadn't been talking about it. Or, the darker truth: they hadn't lived to tell the tale.
"Clown?" Eddie squeaked, seemingly coming down on the side of playing dumb.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Yes, clown," she said, sounding a bit exasperated. "You know, the messed-up fucker who likes eating children?"
Mike wasn't sure what it was about her, but he decided that it was best to just come clean and find out what she knew. And more importantly, how she knew it.
"Okay, let's put our cards on the table," he said, holding his hand up in a gesture of surrender. He indicated the other four standing near him. "They came here to Derry, at my request, to help me stop Pennywise. What about you?"
"I came here to destroy that soul-sucking dirtbag for good," she said simply. And she said it in such a matter-of-fact tone that it almost sounded believable. Ben found himself wanting to believe it, with all his heart - here was someone who seemed to know what they were doing, and maybe even knew how to stop Pennywise? Things had appeared rather hopeless after he and Stan visited the library, returning to the hotel with only a couple of yearbooks and a seeming dead-end. But now, he found himself wondering if maybe they could pull it off after all.
"So, you got a plan?" Richie challenged, arms crossed.
"Not yet," she said. "But I will. And I want to know what you know."
"Hang on, but how do you even know about the clown?" Stan said, always the voice of reason, shaking his head. "Why should we trust you?"
She paused again, with the same look of weighing up options on her face.
"My uncle... he was targeted by Pennywise in the 1950s," she said finally, and Mike believed she was telling the truth. Not the whole truth, but the part she was willing to reveal to them. In all his time chatting to the residents of Derry trying to uncover as much as he could about the town's dark past, he'd become pretty good at reading people. But as for how much they could trust her... that wasn't yet clear to him.
"Did he-" Ben hesitated.
"No," she said. "Pennywise didn't get him. But he took one of his best friends. And my uncle never forgot how close he had come to becoming another of Derry's missing kids. So when I was a kid, he would warn me all the time to not play after dark and to avoid being alone. Everyone else in this god-forsaken town forgets... but he didn't. "
"Is he still around?" Mike asked, wondering if her grandfather might be a good source of information about Pennywise. She looked to be mid to late twenties, so it wasn't impossible.
"No," she said softly. "He died in some backwater in Indiana when I was a teenager..."
"Sorry," Mike apologised, feeling bad for letting his desire for knowledge dredge up bad memories. She wasn't going to elaborate, but it was clear it had affected her.
"It's fine," she said, the softness in her voice gone. "Look, will you tell me what you know or not? I think we can help each other."
"You seem to know a lot about us already," Stan pointed out.
"Yeah," she acknowledged. "I'm a private investigator by trade, and I set up notifications a while ago for anything suspicious concerning Derry. When I realised the clown had surfaced again, I started gathering intel on the last time he'd terrorised Derry. Your names, all of you... you stick out. The losers of Derry way back when, somehow the biggest successes in whatever field you chose to pursue, and arguably the prime targets of that Bowers kid. A family rivalry that led to dead chickens and a murdered dog, or bullying resulting in a broken arm and a trip to the hospital, for example..."
She looked pointedly at Mike and Eddie.
"Actually, my arm was Pennywise but we blamed it on Bowers," Eddie offered helpfully.
"Shut up, Eddie," Richie rolled his eyes.
"And Bowers himself," Andi continued. "Bowers, who mysteriously vanished that summer never to be seen again, his friends found dead in his car and his father a bloody mess in their family house. The papers pinned it on him, claiming that the murders of all those kids that year had driven him mad and so he'd taken his own life, but that never sat right with me. I was only a little kid at the time, so I never understood what had happened until later, but it doesn't take a genius to realise that there was more to the story than the papers wanted people to believe."
She grimaced.
"The worst part is, I don't even think the people who wrote the papers knew they were hiding the truth. I think they truly believed the trash they wrote, some epic form of denial. This town is really good at that. Anyway, I do mean it when I say I want to kill it. That clown needs to let Derry go... he's done too much damage."
"Say we believe you," Richie said. "Then what? We tell you info and you go off like a dragon slayer and bring back the clown's head? Are you the hero we deserve?"
"Maybe," she said without jest. "Provided you don't get in my way."
"I don't think Pennywise is something you can just cut the head off of," Ben said. "We got close last time, but none of us can remember how."
"Actually, I think I can help you with that," she said brightly. "I trained in memory retrieval and the cognitive interview process, it helps a lot with getting information from witnesses. People always know a lot more than they think. And if your memories help make it clearer how to kill the clown, or whatever it is, then we both win."
A flicker of hope filled Mike's chest, for the first time in a while. If they could get back their memories of the lost time, shrouded by Pennywise's magic, that would almost certainly reveal clues to how they might defeat him. The motivations and true story of this girl, Andi, if that was really her name at all, were still unclear, but if she could do what she said she could...
"Deal," Mike said, to the surprise of everyone around him.
"Wait, Mike, what?" Richie blinked.
"We don't even know who she is," hissed Stan at him under his breath.
"I'm right here, I can hear you," Andi said to Stan. "I told you why I'm here. That's the truth."
Mike looked at her, and the expression on her face. He knew, and probably the others did too, that there was more to her story than what she was revealing to them. But at the same time, he believed she did want to kill the clown, and that she could be a useful ally.
"We won't do anything till Beverly and George get back," he said, more for the benefit of the others than for Andi. "In the meantime, we can tell you what we know, and you do the same. It might help fill in some gaps for all of us."
She nodded, meeting his eyes. He knew this decision didn't really sit right with Richie or Stan, but right now, having spent the entire morning going in circles and getting nowhere, this seemed like a big leap forward.
Maybe the feat they had assigned themselves wasn't so insurmountable after all.
Maybe they could win.
George stood outside the house he had called home as a child, still holding the paper boat, filled with a surreal feeling of finally coming home even though he'd done that years ago. Without the boat though, and without his right arm, and without something much more important that he still couldn't figure out.
There was a black Corolla in the driveway, indicating someone was at home. Suddenly nervous, despite the certainty with which he had headed there, he approached the door trying to come up with what to say. He didn't know how to explain why he needed to be here to whoever answered the door, he didn't even understand it himself. When he reached the door, he hesitated, but finally knocked as loudly as he dared. Which wasn't really that loudly, if he was being honest.
A few moments passed before he heard light footsteps approach, and then the door swung open to reveal a young boy, maybe around eight years old, with an inquisitive look on his face. His strawberry-blond hair hung in a mop around his head, and he was dressed in clothes much more meant for summer than for the cooler weather of fall.
"Who is it, Sean?" called a woman's voice from further in the house.
"Dunno," the boy called back, shrugging at George and walking off. A woman carrying a half-asleep baby emerged from the back, looking surprised to have a visitor at this point in the afternoon.
"Can I help you?" she said, shifting the baby, which seemed placid enough in her arms.
"Uh..." George began, trying to think of a good story but ending up inevitably at the truth. Or part of it, anyway. "Actually... it's weird but, I used to live here with my family a long time ago."
"Oh?" she said, tilting her head as she examined him.
"I'm back in Derry visiting friends, and I got really curious about the old place," he said, somewhat truthfully. "I know it's strange but-"
"Do I know you from somewhere?" she interrupted. "I feel like I've seen you on something... something about science...?"
George's cheeks flushed red.
"Oh, heh, yeah," he admitted, never really knowing what to say in these circumstances. "I was a guest star on Mythbusters for a few episodes a while ago..."
Honestly, he was impressed this lady even remembered that. He only remembered feeling overwhelmed and a little awkward, as he tried his best to contribute useful science input to the few episodes he had been cast for. He couldn't even remember now how he'd gotten involved with it, probably the faculty had recommended him and he found himself unable to say no since it was considered such a privilege to be chosen, even though being in the spotlight had never been his thing.
"That's so cool!" exclaimed another boy, who'd just come down the stairs. He was older than the first boy, Sean, but not much. They looked very similar, but the older boy's hair was darker. "I love Mythbusters!"
"Please, come in," the woman said, opening the door. "I'm Margaret, and that's Alex. You used to live here?"
"Yeah, we moved out in the mid-nineties or so," he said. "But I grew up here."
"That's nice that you've come back to see friends," she said distractedly, as the baby stirred in her arms. "Is it what you remembered?"
I really don't know because I can't remember, he thought but didn't say.
"Some parts," he said. "I haven't been back for so long and my memory isn't as good as it used to be."
That caused her to laugh.
"You can't be much more than 30, and you're already complaining about your memory? Come back to me when you hit 40, hun."
He smiled sheepishly, enjoying a little just how normal this household seemed to be. It was at sharp contrast to what he did remember of his childhood, at least the part that came after Pennywise. His parents always seemed so worried and sad, and there was no warmth in the house like he remembered when he was younger. Afterwards... it was cold and almost empty here.
"Do you want a drink or anything?" she asked, walking towards the kitchen. He followed, but didn't really feel like imposing too much on her hospitality. He tried to hide the boat under his arm, as he had no way of explaining it without sounding crazy. If she had noticed it already, Margaret had politely decided to play dumb.
"I'm okay, thank you," he said, his eyes drawn to the back porch. He remembered sprawling there in the summer, when it was too hot to do anything except minimise body movement in an attempt to stay cool. This place... there were so many memories here. And yet they all felt incomplete, like he was missing something important about them.
"Actually, could I see one of the rooms?" he asked, hoping it didn't sound too weird. "It was... my bedroom back then."
He felt bad lying to her, but he couldn't think of any good reason for why he needed to see what had been the spare room, where his mother would sometimes sit and sew. Really, it should have meant nothing more to him than that and yet somehow it did, he knew that he had waved to someone up in this window. His mother, maybe? If he saw the room, maybe he would understand better what it meant.
The faintest trace of concern passed across Margaret's face, and in that microsecond he felt all the anxiety of being labelled crazy, and feared she would kick him out of the house. But then she just smiled.
"Sure, it's Alex's room now. You know the way, I'll bet," she said. "Alex honey, your room isn't too much of a wreck is it?"
"No, Mum," came a drawl from the living room, and George could hear in the background the sounds of some kind of video game.
"Go ahead then, uh-"
With another flush, he realised he hadn't actually introduced himself.
"Sorry, George," he said quickly. "George Denbrough."
He excused himself, still hiding the boat from her view as much as possible, and headed upstairs to the room. A lot had changed in the house, small things but still noticeable. There was a carpet liner on the stairs that never used to be there, and the walls had been given a fresh coat of paint in the not-too-distant past. Places where his family photos had once hung along the stairs were now empty, and even the pin-holes that had marked their presence had been filled in and painted over.
He found his way to the room which faced the driveway, and pushed open the half-closed door gently to reveal a room filled with all the things you'd expect for a 10 year old just learning about all the cool things the world had to offer. A self-painted solar system model made out of foam balls hanging from the ceiling with Blu-Tack, a collection of small models of exotic animals on the window sill, kids books about ancient history and the building of the Pyramids and the first explorers strewn across the desk. The bed was covered with a quilt featuring some sort of popular cartoon characters, George wasn't quite sure which but he vaguely recognised the summer-camp style artwork and the title painted on the wooden sign at the bottom which read "Gravity Falls".
But despite all this, despite everything that clearly marked the room now as belonging to a 10-year-old boy named Alex, he had the strong feeling it had once belonged to another. Had he remembered so badly, and this was actually his room from all those years ago? Being back here, he certainly felt like he had spent a lot of time in the room, more than he'd realised before. And although it wasn't, of course it wasn't, how could that be physically possible - but somehow the paper boat felt slightly warm in his hands, as if it had been freshly waxed. In that moment he knew for certain that this boat, the boat which clearly was so important to the past that he was trying to remember, had been folded in this exact room, had been painted and waxed and marked S.S. Georgie right here.
We call boats she.
And the ache in his heart that he'd always felt in the years after his return from the sewer, the feeling and sense of a great loss, was so strongly amplified in this room that it burned within his chest, made his head pound with a sudden intensity, and he stumbled to the edge of the bed to sit there, his vision suddenly a little hazy. He felt like he was so close to remembering, that the memories which Pennywise had hidden from him were on the verge of spilling over and perhaps consuming him in all their power and pain. For he knew, certainly, they were painful. And what hurt even more was the feeling of knowing the memories were there, of knowing they were important and just on the edge of his brain, and yet still being unable to retrieve them.
He breathed in deeply, and heavily, not liking the way his breath shuddered.
"Are you okay?" Margaret's voice pierced his thoughts. The baby was no longer in her arms, presumably put to bed in a cot somewhere. The concern which had flickered across her face only briefly before was now etched there, but it seemed less concern that he was crazy and more that he was maybe fundamentally not okay and needed help. Which wasn't so far from the truth, really.
"Yes, sorry," he said, running a hand absently through his hair. "Just a lot of memories being here, you know."
That particular lie felt incredibly ironic, since it was not the memories which affected him but the lack of them. He almost laughed at the thought but knew that would put him back on track to being classified as crazy.
He stood up, with a forced smile.
"Thanks for letting me come here, I know it's a bit odd," he said. "But I just had this strong feeling of needing to see the place again."
"I understand," she said, smiling back. "Nostalgia hits you hard sometimes."
He nodded, and she turned back to lead him to the front door. He followed, but as he reached the door, he suddenly had the compulsion to turn around, and in a flash that wasn't real (but boy did it feel real), he was no longer looking at Alex's room but instead a different one, a familiar one, a room lined with posters from famous 1980s movies and a spinning globe next to a green plastic dinosaur on the desk and faded tartan wallpaper and ironically a similar kind of terribly-constructed model solar system, and on the desk a half-opened rectangle of Gulf Wax.
He blinked, his vision swimming again, and it was gone. Alex's room returned. He shook his head a little, as if to clear it, and then turned back to follow Margaret to the door. She held it open for him.
"Thanks again," he said. "It's super nice of you to humour me."
"Well, you can do one favour for me," she winked, nodding at Alex in the living room, who bashfully came forward with a Mythbusters book.
"Could you sign my book, mister?" he said shyly. George was taken aback (he'd really only ever been a tangential component of the show), but flattered all the same.
"Sure," he smiled. He took the pen from Alex, knelt down and opened the book to the inside cover, scrawling a quick message and signing it at the bottom.
To Alex,
Always follow your curiosity, you never know what cool places it will take you!
All the best,
George Denbrough
He handed it back and Alex beamed at him, running upstairs to return the book to its usual home on his bookshelf, but with more of a pride of place than ever before. The signed book was now infinitely more special than the others.
"Thanks, George," Margaret said warmly. "Feel free to drop by again while you're in town. I hope your reunion with your friends goes well."
"Thanks." He turned from the house.
"It floats." The statement was half a question. He turned back in confusion, suddenly unnerved. But her eyes were on the boat in his hand. She had probably seen it from the beginning, but only now chose to acknowledge it.
"Oh," he said, lifting it. "Yes, it does."
"It looks old. Did one of your friends keep it for you?"
One of my friends. George laughed in his mind at the thought of who had been keeping the boat for him.
"Yeah," he lied again.
"Well, there's a nice river by the canal you could float it on, see if she still goes," Margaret smiled.
"She?" George felt cold inside.
"Yeah, sure, you know people refer to boats as a she, right?"
"Oh, I guess..." He smiled weakly and turned away again. "See you around, Margaret."
She watched him go, and then when he was at the end of the driveway, he heard the door close softly. And once more, he turned back to look at the house he had called home, at the porch and the windows and the roof which hadn't changed as much as he'd expected, somehow.
But then his heart stopped.
In the window of the "spare" room, the room which somehow was connected to the boat, and to his lost memories, he saw a familiar figure standing, watching him with mocking silver eyes. Orange pom poms in a line down the chest of an old faded jester suit, the same colour as the vibrant orange hair. Blood-red lips twisted in a grin, which widened as George's blood ran cold.
Pennywise raised one hand and waved slowly, merrily. He felt goosebumps raise on his arms, even though the sun was shining on him. The clown somehow embodied pure terror, and he could not help but feel afraid as he looked up at the entity which had tortured them for so long. Especially since he knew the clown wasn't really there - couldn't be - that no one else but him could see Pennywise... the worst kind of monster in the night.
With a shiver, he turned from the house again, and this time he did not look back.