Note: Phew, here we are! First, let me assure you that I did have a lot of guilt about not coming back to this at the back of my mind for the last months... but there was so much else going on that it was really hard to find the time to get to it. Seeing the second part of the film helped with reminding me of this and getting me back into it! I'm glad it was suggested to me to post that update promising to finish the chapter, because it kind of meant I was committed to it lol. Really sorry it took so long, I hope there are still people out there who are following this! I'll echo what I said before: thanks so much to everyone who has been reading along and leaving reviews, you're the reason I finally got around to updating and the reason I'll do my best to take this fic through to its conclusion (wherever that may be!). I hope this chapter lives up somewhat to your expectations, but I promise there's more to come (and that I'll try to make it not too long before it arrives heh). Do leave a review if you're so inclined, it's always great to know how people find each chapter :) Till next time!
As you turn to your mind and your thoughts they rewind
To old happenings and things that are done
You can't find what's passed, make that happiness last
Seeing from those eyes what you've become
What you've become
- Haunt, Bastille
"He-"
The spell that had fallen on the room, in the wake of being so close to pulling back the veil on their memories, shattered instantly as soon as the door opened. They all jumped, startled by the sudden change, as the wooden door swung open revealing a somewhat-sheepish George taking in the scene.
"Eh, sorry... did I interrupt something?" he asked, scratching his head in confusion.
"Only, we were about to figure out the key to defeating Pennywise!" Richie huffed in exasperation, crossing his arms. "Worse timing ever, Denbrough!"
George grimaced, entering the room and shutting the door behind him. The spell really was broken, and what had been momentarily seemingly within grasp was lost to the abyss. The room filled with late afternoon light again as Bev pulled back the curtains, everyone except George blinking in the sudden brightness.
"You're back," Ben said to George, glancing back at Bev. "You had us all a bit worried."
"Yeah, sorry," George said, feeling Bev's eyes settle on him. "I had this sudden urge to go back home, I needed to see the place."
"Did you find what you were looking for?" she prompted, sitting back on the edge of the bay window seat. While she was clearly relieved to see George, she seemed a bit annoyed still that he had gone off so suddenly without explanation. At least now he was willing to reveal where he had been.
"I'm not sure," George said, shrugging. "The family that lives there now is nice. It's a lot warmer of a house than it used to be..." He suddenly stopped. "Wait, the key to defeating Pennywise?"
"We've lost someone, George," Stan said quietly. "Pennywise took someone from us and none of us can remember who."
His words hung in the air, as George processed the implication of what Stan was saying. He shook his head, his mouth suddenly dry.
"That's ridiculous," he choked, his voice catching in his throat, knowing he was denying a feeling deep in his chest that had been there... forever. His subconscious had already buried the waves of memory trying to drown him at his house, but the feeling inside him remained. "How could-"
"Don't you feel it, though?" Beverly interrupted, her eyes hard. "If that's true, if Pennywise can take our memories like that, then how do we know any of this is real? How do we know any of our memories are what they should be? Maybe we were never friends at all, and this is all some trick of the stupid clown to send us in circles just to torture us."
"No," Eddie said firmly. "You all were... you are... real to me. There's no way that's fake."
"You guys said it yourselves, there was some power you had against the clown, right?" Andi prompted. George for the first time looked at her, the newcomer amongst them, with a curious expression on his face. This time, Mike jumped in before Andi could say anything to justify her presence.
"This is Andi," he said quickly, gesturing at her. "She's... going to help us fight Pennywise."
"Right..." George said warily, not unwisely suspicious of someone showing up suddenly with knowledge about the clown, when everyone else in the town had always turned a blind eye. "I'm sorry for asking this, but how do we know you're not a trick of Pennywise yourself?"
"Because if I was the clown, I'd probably be using magic to make you all less suspicious of me, or changing your memories so that you think I'm one of you, apparently," she answered curtly, clearly somewhat exasperated by his question. "You're going to need all the help you can get to take that bastard down, and I want in on it."
"Why?" George asked, surprised at her strong resolve to help them defeat Pennywise. "What's the clown to you?"
"Her uncle was almost a victim," Mike said, getting to his feet and saving Andi the effort of another half-true explanation. He resolved to ask her alone later to confirm his suspicions about her story, and find out what it was that she wasn't telling them. Andi nodded once without saying anything, and blinked in surprise when George held out his hand to her.
"I'm George," he said simply. "And you're right, we need all the help we can get."
She shook his hand, nodding again, with determination in her dark eyes.
"Now what?" Richie prompted. "As fun as that trip down memory lane was, cheers for that Andi, I don't really feel like going back there, and while I agree that maybe we have some foggy memories about someone who was possibly with us at the time, no amount of trying to remember is going to cut through that fog. Not if it's Grade-A Derry Killer Clown Magic at play here."
The Losers all looked around the room, helplessness mirrored on each of their faces. The sun was already starting to get a bit low by now, even though it was the mid-afternoon. None of them said it out loud, but no one was particularly keen to go out after dark in Derry. Not as kids, and somehow even less as adults.
"Do... do we even have a game plan?" Eddie said shakily. "We're going to need to face off against this clown, memories or not, and I feel like we don't even have a plan yet."
"Oh!" Mike exclaimed suddenly, Eddie's words triggering something he'd nearly buried away, and he turned to his boxes of newspaper clippings and old missing posters. He rummaged around for a bit, and eventually pulled out a faded piece of paper with scribblings on it and a single word scrawled in big letters across the top: CHÜD.
"I spoke with everyone I could about Pennywise," Mike said, looking down solemnly at the piece of paper as if he could see directly back to the day he took the notes on it. "That was a lot of people, and most thought I was crazy. Some were too scared to talk to me, as if it would confirm something they'd been trying to deny their entire lives. Some seemed to think I was a herald of Pennywise, come to haunt them... most didn't want anything to do with the thought of Pennywise ever again, let alone conceive of the notion of trying to stop him."
He held up the paper, pointing at the word. "But I spoke to this one woman, an elderly woman with Native American heritage, she told me that there were stories carried down about a shape-shifting demon which preyed on fears and stole people away. Most of what we already know, really... except for Chüd. She said that you could defeat the demon not with power but will, but your collective will needed to be stronger than the creature's will. A group hoping to defeat it needs to be fully in tune with themselves, each other and their fears. And..." he trailed off, noticing the hopeful looks that had spread across the Losers' faces.
"...well, obviously no one has ever succeeded in the ritual. That too."
Their faces fell, as expected. Even Andi, who had mostly wore a skeptical expression as he described Chüd, looked a little disappointed at his stating of what he thought was obvious.
"That's why what Pennywise is hiding is so important," Mike continued. "Because we can't even try the ritual while we know that we don't have all the puzzle pieces going in, it would be... not good. Our memories are key to this, because what happened in the sewers that day, the person and events we've somehow forgotten... that's a part of us that we are missing."
"Okay, but let's take a step back here," Andi countered. "Can we not go down there properly weaponed-up and just blow the bastard to smithereens? A few well-placed explosives down in the sewers would surely go a long way."
"I'd like to believe that," Mike said, looking around at the rest of the Losers for confirmation. "But last time, I don't think that's what helped us almost beat it."
"Yeah, but she's got a point, we were just kids," Richie said. "What did we have, an air gun, some fence spikes, a bat? That's hardly a fearsome arsenal."
He turned to Andi, apparently excited at the thought of explosives. "You got anything good, or a good hook-up in town?"
"I brought a few things," she said simply. "And I know someone in town where we could get more."
"I don't know, I think Mike's right," Ben mused. "Pennywise can bend reality and make us see what we don't want to see... I don't know how weapons are going to work against something like that."
"But I'd really like to try," Bev added darkly, a small smile on her face, thinking back to her vow for vengeance against Pennywise at the dinner.
"Maybe we bring weapons, but we should also be prepared in case they don't work," George suggested, kind of liking the idea of hedging their bets against Pennywise. "And in any case, I don't think we should be rushing down there just yet until we have a better go at trying to remember what we've forgotten. Maybe it's also partly just time, and waiting a day probably wouldn't hurt."
Mike nodded slightly, agreeing with him. The day was mostly gone now and there was an unspoken agreement amongst them that heading towards the sewers now would be foolish, even though the light of day didn't really reach down there.
"I think we've done enough for today," Mike said finally. "Why don't we take the rest of the afternoon off, and regroup for dinner?"
The group looked fairly relieved at his suggestion, and it didn't take long for them to eagerly filter out. He caught fleeting comments between Eddie and Richie about a games room with a pool table and a showdown to decide who was best once and for all, and smiled to himself. It was good that some things didn't change, that would hopefully be a step along the path to giving them back the power they once had as children.
Andi didn't leave with the others, watching silently as Mike turned back to his materials.
"You're not taking the afternoon off, huh?" she said, knowing the answer as she asked it.
Mike smiled grimly.
"Haven't taken an afternoon off in the last 27 years, seems silly to start now."
She looked at him, her eyes showing mixed emotions. He recognised one emotion clearly because he saw it regularly as he passed through town, as a kid and even now.
Pity.
But one emotion he saw there confused him a bit. It was... empathy? Familiarity? Hard to place it, but he felt like Andi could perhaps relate to him more than he had initially guessed.
"Might be good for me to see what you've collected over the years," she said finally, both an offer and a faint question.
"Sure," Mike said, feeling a bit comforted at the thought of having someone else to dig through things with. "That would be great."
She gave him a hesitant smile, and then cast her gaze on the various boxes which hadn't been unpacked and pinned around the room.
"Where do we start?"
George watched as Richie cheered his victory in a way-too-over-the-top fashion, pulling his shirt over his head and running around the pool table yelling like an injured cockatoo. Eddie just shook his head with a wry smile on his face, saying nothing about how Richie had actually sunk the white ball just after the black ball and thus conceded the victory to Eddie.
George turned back to Stan, who was looking out across the gardens of the inn with a clouded expression. They were sitting at one of the few tables scattered in a patio area outside the games room, the large glass doors leading to the games room open to let the breeze through. The room itself was largely underwhelming, and consisted of a time-worn pool table (though at least all the balls were there), a dart board with only a few darts pinned on it and a claw machine containing cheap knock-off soft toys and bouncy balls. There were no children to be seen though, and George honestly wasn't even sure there was anyone else staying in the Derry Inn besides their group.
"How're you feeling?" he asked, watching Stan carefully. Stan didn't reply at first, still looking off into the distance where they could just make out Ben and Beverly walking along the path. Then, he sighed and turned to George.
"I'm okay," he said. "In the daytime... everything seems simpler. Last night seems like something that happened in a far-away universe and I just end up feeling... stupid."
"You're not stupid," George said firmly. "We're all scared... for good reason. But you know we have to stick together if we have a chance at this."
Stan didn't say anything, but looked down at the metal lattice of the table they sat at. It was long past its heyday, and the white paint that might have once looked fancy had mostly flaked away to reveal rusting steel underneath.
"If Pennywise could take someone away from us like we think he has," Stan began, picking at the white paint and watching it fall to the ground. "Who knows what else he might have taken? How do we know we're still us, or that we have any control over our actions? How do we know if any of this is real?"
"I think there are rules," George said thoughtfully. "There must be, or wouldn't he have killed us all already? For all this power the clown has, it's not unchecked and something holds him back, I just wish I could figure out what that thing was. Why he comes and goes just to scare us."
"It's to make us taste better, isn't it," Stan said under his breath, eyes dark. "Because the more scared we are..."
He was right, George knew, that was definitely part of it. But something protected them as well. Like in the Neibolt house with Bev earlier, or how the Losers had managed to almost defeat it once. Maybe it was just their collective will, as Mike had put it - maybe that had been strong enough back then.
"I think there is more to it than that," George said, more to himself than to Stan.
There's more to everything than what you know.
He looked up, startled, at the voice that sounded like waves on the ocean, a voice that had suddenly been everywhere and nowhere. But it was gone, and Stan was just looking at him like he was crazy. He laughed a bit, rubbing his chin, deciding maybe he was just a bit tired after all their adventures that day.
"Wanna get a beer?" he offered to Stan.
"Hell yes."
Rage burned within Pennywise as he made his way back to the cistern with his latest cargo, still infuriated at the appearance of the Other meddling in his affairs. The unspoken agreement between them seemed to be breaking down and it enraged Pennywise. Why would that coward show its face after all this time? That self-imposed distance from universal affairs had always suited Pennywise, especially when it came to the humans. They were his playthings and he loathed interference. The Losers had been such a thorn in his side with all their interfering, and he was beginning to wonder why he didn't just kill them all back then, maybe it would have been simpler after all. But he would make them suffer though, oh yes he would. He would make them wish he'd killed them all those years ago...
Entering what should have been the cistern, Pennywise was surprised to find himself suddenly back in the Barrens. Had he been so distracted in his anger that he'd taken such a wrong turn?
No. This was the boy.
He narrowed his eyes, sensing a darkness nearby. He saw a shape sitting on a log in this false Barrens, realising with some unease that the boy had thrown him into the mindscape. He seemed... different. Not crying or defeated. Simply sitting there, with a mixed expression, staring at a puddle conjured entirely from his imagination. Pennywise sensed bitterness and regret inside him, and realised he must be coming to the conclusion that the Losers were alive after all. There were many paths the boy could take now but he was most useful to Pennywise if the darkness within him grew, that he recognised. He smirked to himself, seeing an opportunity here.
Bill looked up to see Beverly walking towards him, in her khaki overall shorts and red shirt. She was playing with the key around her neck, a knowing smile on her face.
"B-B-Beverly?" he stammered, again falling into the space between reality and the mindscape, between the past and the present. Pennywise's magic relied heavily on suspension of disbelief, and Bill's confused mind was so torn between reality and illusion that he suspended it immediately without a second thought.
"Bill," she said, shaking her head. "You know we were happy when you stayed down in the sewers right?"
His blood ran cold.
"W-w-w-what?"
"When Pennywise took you, it meant we were free," she smiled. "You deserved it, after all. You dragged us into all your messes trying to save Georgie. Pennywise only came after us because of you. It was all your fault... everything that happened to us."
Bill looked back down at the puddle, his eyes stinging. Her words hit hard because they echoed what he'd already felt for years. He'd risked the lives of his friends, people he'd grown up with, countless times that summer in the name of rescuing what everyone believed was the ghost of his little brother. There was some vindication in the fact that he'd been right about Georgie all along, but that didn't change the fact that he shouldn't have played games with their lives the way he had.
He looked up but now Richie was standing cross-armed in front of him.
"You suck, and I hate you," he blurted, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "I just wanted a normal summer and you nearly got me killed too many times to count. We were supposed to be friends, but all you cared about was Georgie and trying to prove everyone wrong."
Richie narrowed his eyes.
"If I'd died in your quest to save Georgie, I'm not sure you would have even noticed, Bill," he said in a level tone. "I don't think you cared about any of us."
"That's not t-t-t-true!" Bill insisted, even though somewhere in the echoes of his memories he acknowledged the truth in Richie's accusation, and the guilt that bubbled in him encouraged the darkness inside to spread.
"I really almost died in that house, Bill." Now Eddie stood before him, his tone hurt and his eyes dark. "Another minute and the clown would have had me. And the only thing you could think about was going after it, down that forsaken well. Did you even notice my arm? Did you even care when we all split up afterwards and none of us talked for all that time?"
Bill didn't answer, because he knew there was too much truth in Eddie's words. He didn't even try to protest this time. He'd sensed weakness in the clown that day, as it crawled away after Beverly jammed a spike through its head. And yet the spike was not even what had hurt it really, it was the fact that they'd managed to push their way through Pennywise's awful illusion of Betty Ripsom to get through to the other side. Bill remembered the surge of power he'd felt that day, even while terrified, and in his rush to make use of it, Eddie had become collateral damage.
"I'm glad Georgie was saved instead of you," Stan said coldly, his eyes empty and the blood from the clown's teeth marks oozing from the wounds on his face. "It's your fault he even went missing in the first place, from that stupid boat you built him just to get him to stop asking you to play with him. Your family fell apart without Georgie, but without you - everything moved on fine and nobody missed you. We don't miss you, Bill. We were better off without you."
"S-stop!" Bill cried, covering his face with his hands. It hurt too much to hear his friends say what he already feared, that the world without Bill Denbrough was not only continuing as normal, but had in fact been doing better as a result of his departure. That he could be lost to the ends of time and no one noticed, no one came looking, no one cared. That he was so meaningless, whereas the absence of Georgie had destroyed him and his parents, and stripped their family home of all its previous warmth.
"Billy."
He knew the voice, but he didn't want to see the face that belonged to it.
"You did this," the voice continued, soft and accusatory. Against his will, Bill peeked slightly through his fingers to see blood dripping down and pooled at the feet of a yellow-clad Georgie. His right arm hung at his side, severed, and his face was pale. Bill dropped his fingers from his face, clenching his fists in his lap as he stared at the decades-old ghost of his younger brother.
"You weren't even sick back then, were you, Billy?"
Bill felt his face flush, remembered the weeks and weeks of being sick. By that day, he had mostly recovered, but when Georgie said he wanted to go outside and play that day in the rain, when it was pouring outside... the regret and guilt he had harboured within himself about making the boat and leaving Georgie to sail it alone in the rain was almost too much to bear back then. Even now, it overpowered him.
"But I s-s-saved you," he whispered, eyes filling with tears as he looked at the unmoving face of Georgie, hazel eyes fixed on Bill with nothing but accusation and disdain.
"I wish I never had you as a brother," Georgie said icily. "I wiped you from my memory as soon as I could."
Bill watched as Georgie was joined by each of the Losers, all holding hands in a circle around him, surrounding him. Their eyes were filled with hatred as they looked at him, their mouths twisted in angry expressions. Each of them began to shout at him, about how much they hated him, about all the mistakes he'd made and all the lies he'd told and all the risks he'd brought to them, about how they were glad he was gone and they wish he was dead or worse, about how much better their lives had been once he'd been wiped from them.
He moaned and curled up, shaking his head against their cries and shouts, feeling the darkness within him stir and build as despair and hopelessness began to give way to even darker feelings, to anger and bitterness and a craving for vengeance against the ones who had abandoned him and never even appreciated the sacrifice he made for then, never realised the years of torture he went through at the hands of Pennywise's nightmares. They all got to move on and grow up and he was stuck in a never-ending loop of pain, unable to distinguish reality from fiction, displaced from his timeline never to return. He didn't deserve this any more than any of them, and for them to hate him so despite what he gave up for them...
Their shouting rose and built and they began to circle him, still holding hands, blurring into each other as they sped up faster and faster until he couldn't even make out their faces anymore.
He screamed in pain, but also in anger, feeling a whirlwind build around him, feeling the darkness that he'd sensed within him begin to spread throughout his body. It scared him, but the same feeling he'd once felt in the Neibolt house of empowerment surged within him once more. In one huge gust, he felt the Losers shredded from existence around him, as the Barrens returned to the quiet tranquil place it had been before Beverly made her appearance.
You all deserve what's coming to you.
The worst part of that thought brushing through his mind was that, even though it had been whispering to him from the depths of his darkness before, for the first time he believed it. He embraced the feeling. He wanted to watch them all suffer for what they'd done to him, for the happy lives they'd gotten to lead at his expense.
Even Georgie.
Especially Georgie.
In defiance, his eyes flashed silver.
"Yep, I'm done for the day," Andi said, collapsing into one of the room's armchairs. They'd spent the last few hours pouring over Mike's documents, both strewn across the room and within the boxes he'd hauled to the inn, and while they'd had a lot of shared knowledge about things, she'd actually been quite impressed at the amount he'd managed to gather. Then again, he'd had a lot of time to do so, hadn't he?
With a somewhat inquisitive expression on her face, she watched him.
"You've really never left Derry?" she asked, an odd tone in her voice. "Not even once?"
"Not even once," he said wryly. "I thought about it plenty of times... but someone had to keep an eye on things. Someone had to stay. We never even talked about it and yet it just ended up naturally falling to me. So... I stayed."
"Wow," was all she said in response, shaking her head a bit. Mike didn't exactly sense pity in her voice this time, but instead almost a bit of genuine awe. He wondered sometimes himself how he'd stayed so long.
"We're planning to have dinner in the hotel restaurant soon, if you're interested?" he offered.
"Oh... I've actually got other plans," she said vaguely, getting up from the chair immediately as if suddenly realising she was late for something. Mike sensed she was evading something again but wasn't sure what. For a brief awkward moment, he wondered if he'd accidentally given the impression of hitting on her. He thought about bringing up her story and the background behind it, but decided it wasn't quite the right time, it had been a long enough day already. Meanwhile, she grabbed her bag, paused, then held out her hand.
He stared at her in confusion.
"Your phone," she stated.
"Oh, right," he said, unlocking it quickly and handing it over. She typed into it rapidly, then handed it back.
"I put my number in it, under Andi," she said. "Keep me in the loop about the clown, okay? I want to help."
"Will do," he promised. She nodded, hesitating again before speaking.
"Pennywise... he really did a number on you guys huh?"
"Don't I know it," Mike said. "Thanks for helping us try to remember what he took from us."
"No worries, I wish it had worked better," she said sincerely, giving him a half-smile. Then she left the room, closing the door behind her quietly. He was rather confused by this mysterious stranger still, especially since she'd fallen completely under his radar in all of his investigations. Someone who'd grown up in Derry? She must be related to someone he had talked to, but he had no guesses as to who. Maybe, with a bit more time, she'd trust them more and reveal whatever it was that she was hiding...
He glanced down at his phone and saw that it was almost half six, which was the time they'd agreed to meet in the restaurant. He cast a quick eye over his documents, made sure he had the key, triple-checked the lock this time as he closed up the room and starting making his way towards the restaurant, hoping for a nice quiet dinner that was nothing like their attempt at a meal at Jim's.
His hopes were dashed quite rapidly in the entrance hall, as Stan rushed up to him in a panic, looking terrified.
"Mike!" he near-shouted in a shaking voice, pale.
"What is it, Stan?" he asked carefully, knowing he wasn't going to like the answer. He also had since noticed that through the frosted stained-glass windows in the front doors, he could make out blue and red flashing lights.
"It's Georgie," Stan burst. Mike's stomach turned.
"Is he okay?"
Stan shook his head, still pale.
"There's another missing kid, Mike," he said, his voice barely there, still shaking his head as if he didn't want to believe what he was saying.
"The police... they think George did it."