Note: I have my own theories of how/why Stan killed himself, but I don't really go into it here, just kind of skim by it. I drafted a comic on it, but I'm not sure I'll ever finish it. Anyway, we're heading into the climax of the story and I'm back to my usual updating schedule! (hopefully...) Enjoy!

Rich felt he was starting to lose whole days now. He had fractured memories of something (some things?) haunting him, but he couldn't always remember what it (It) was.

No one seemed to notice though and it made him feel even crazier if possible. Somehow, he was able to pull that face back together like he was ok every morning and everyone else seemed to fall for it. He had planned to wait until work died down to do anything about it, but it proved to be so difficult he wasn't sure he was going to make it.

Rich glanced around the studio as he thought. Here I am thinking I can make it another couple of weeks, can I even make it another day, another hour?

He dimly wondered if he should really get around to seeing a psychologist, but he knew no human on the planet could understand what he had been through so he kept his mouth shut and kept living…

Until his harrowing situation took another nosedive.

They all appeared to him that time and unlike before they left marks. A bruise on his forearm, a gash down his leg, a black eye, strangest of all a hickey behind his ear. While he was unsure of who dealt the injuries (by this point, he had realized there were actually different clowns, which seemed concrete his idea that this was all in his head because God above, if there was more than one), he was sure how the last one had come to be.

Eddie's shade had kissed him before-he still couldn't help feeling guilty about his… fantasies, as he called them-but the imaginings had never been quite so heated, at least not since he was a teenager. Rich would have been more embarrassed, but something about the whole encounter made him question whether it was imagined or not.

First, there were the marks of course. Nothing had really stayed behind before and this obviously held some unfortunate implications for Rich and his working hypothesis that he was going crazy.

There was something else though of course.

Eddie (and the clowns) had started this incident by once again mentioning they were waiting for him down below and Richie had been stupid enough to suggest that the "down below" they prattled on about was hell. This was met with laughter from Eddie and unfortunately anger from the clowns.

The pain from their blows felt real enough and after the moment had passed, they threatened that his situation would only get worse if he continued ignoring their warnings. They were waiting for him under Derry and if he didn't hurry up, they'd come to him when he was old-"until you're begging for death really,"-and keep him alive in the Outside. Forever.

They went on and on about the consequence of eternity, the consequence of crossing them.

It was enough complexity that he couldn't deny it came from a creature that didn't view time the same way that he did. It was also enough creativity that he wondered if it could've even come out of his own mind's imagination (he was still holding on to the possibility that his guilt was fueling these visions).

After a painfully long conversation about the stages of grief and madness Rich would experience, Eddie managed to convince them to back off-something else that expanded Rich's horizons of possible outcomes. One thing led to another and well, here he was. Of course, Rich was too terrified to really enjoy things as they were (unlike once upon a time), but he managed not to completely freak out.

He did not manage to stay conscious the entire time though and an intern-the same, stuttering, shaky intern-found him in the parking lot. Rich remembered feeling a tinge of affection for the intern-darkened by some nagging, unplaced regret-before the intern began yelling at the marks covering Rich's body. Fortunately, any awkward marks were well-hidden enough and after coming out to see what the noise was about, Steve finally took pity on him-convinced he'd been mugged after leaving work in the early hours (Rich made no attempt to deny that).

Rich got a few days off work and for a split second, considered going to see a psychiatrist. The phone was in his hand, the phonebook propped open on the table, when a scratch on one of his forearms caught his eye. He hadn't really had a chance to thoroughly examine the injuries left by what he was starting to doubt was a hallucination, so he catered to the passing whim to look at the extent of the mark.

Rich lifted his sleeve-crusty from his own blood (Steve had tried to insist he go to a doctor, but Rich had waved him off, saying he just wanted to sleep forever and then deal with it). He sucked in a breath as he reopened the wound where it had clotted into his clothing. He stopped breathing entirely when he realized the gashes vaguely resembled letters-words cut into his arms. 'D'-

A chubby, terrified child passed through his mind, screaming that someone had cut into him. Rich found himself crying as he continued pulling back his sleeves. 'D', 'O', 'Y'—the phone dropped.

'DO YOU WANT TO KNOW,'? spread across his left forearm. Rich couldn't remember them spending enough time to carve words into him. Did he want to know what? Whether he was crazy or this was an actual sign of the supernatural being he had helped kill? Whether It still planned to kill him or was actually dead?

His right forearm itched, almost like an answer to his question. Ben was shaking his head fervently in Rich's mind's eye, but Rich watched his arms move to lift the other sleeve. It was the same story there, the wound attempting to heal around his shirt sleeve. Rich carefully lifted the cloth in a piss-poor attempt to prevent reopening the wound, but really to give himself every chance to just stop. To call the psychiatrist or Bill or any one of the Seven to help him stop himself.

His hand lifted the clothing. He had a chance to finish reading-

'HOW THE JEW DIED?'

-before he abruptly lost 15 minutes.

For once, Richie was completely aware of the time he had lost and what had occurred during it. It was not something he wanted to think about or relive, but he immediately understood that this was not something that was going away on its own.

'IT.'

His hands had frozen in the last stroke of the 'T'. Richie stared at the word mirroring the one he had seen in his vision-spread across his living room wall. He knew if anyone besides the Seven (Five now, wasn't it? His heart seemed to shatter all over again) were to come to his home, they wouldn't see it. And if any of the Seve-Five (try not to think about it) had come to his home, they would immediately know all that he had experienced.

Richie promptly threw up everything he had eaten in the past half day.

As he lay there panting, pointedly avoiding gazing at the word marring his home, Richie knew it no longer mattered if this was something he was making up in his head. If it was affecting him this much-if he was somehow accessing the monster's memories (or worse making up his own) in his guilt-driven grief, it wouldn't go away until he satisfied it.

Feeling more exhausted than he had in a while, Richie dragged himself up and out of the house. He walked to the nearest payphone and called his travel agent for the second time in the span of a couple of months.

He was headed back to Derry. To where it all began.

This time to end it once and for all.