Sister Michael parks her DeLorean across from Saint Joseph's Church and waits. It's hardly an inconspicuous car for a stakeout, but it's the best she has. She stares at every passerby and stray pigeon as hard as she can, as if It can be revealed by the force of her gaze.
This is pointless fecking work. She knows It's back, and It knows she knows It's back, and sitting outside It's lair in broad daylight will do absolutely nothing except make her an easy target. Art was always concerned with gathering information, he was the sort who'd dither about investigating when he already knew what he had to do. Georgie wasn't. Sister Michael evidently is.
When she drives back to Our Lady Immaculate, she has to clamp her hands tightly about the steering wheel so they don't tremble.
…
Between them, they had two decent torches, one torch that had to be shaken to stay on half the time, four pairs of wellington boots, and a map of the Derry streets. It was far from sufficient gear to explore a sewer, but they weren't about to let that stop them.
Art took painstaking notes of which turns they took and where they doubled back, cross-referencing with the map. They found clue after clue: shoes and spectacles and books scattered about the tunnels, all on the same path. Enough were helpfully labeled with the names of the missing children that it started becoming suspicious.
"This isn't natural," Georgie said. "Someone planted all of this."
"Breadcrumbs," Tom said, dropping a broken doll back into the muck. "It's a trail."
"Who would do all this?" Aoife asked.
"Whatever's taking the children has their clothes and books," Georgie said slowly.
"Aye, and if It knows we're investigating –"
"It's trying to lure us here," Georgie finished. "And we're walking into a trap."
Something scuttled past them, at the edge of the torch beam, and Aoife screamed.
"Stay calm," Georgie said, as firmly as she could. "It's trying to scare us, remember?" In the faint, cold light of her torch, none of them looked very convinced.
"Let's get out of here," Tom said. Georgie wasn't inclined to argue.
Art led them back through the endless winding sewers very slowly, passing from old brick to marginally newer concrete and back again, frowning at his map and turning it in circles. At last, he stopped at an intersection, a pipe incoming from the right.
"We're supposed to go left here," he said. Tom looked at the blank wall to their left and shrugged.
"Right then, who brought the jackhammer?"
"Did you write something down wrong?" Georgie asked, and Art shook his head.
"I don't think so," he said weakly.
"Stop bickering," Aoife said, and they stopped, although by their standards it was hardly a disagreement. "I think there's a light over there."
"We might just be walking into another trap," Tom said as they walked towards the light. Aoife blanched, and Georgie shushed him. No use frightening her more.
As they approached, the light got brighter, orange-yellow and flickering.
"That doesn't look like daylight," Art said. It was getting brighter quickly now, more quickly than it should. When a tendril of flame reached around the corner, Georgie wasn't all that surprised. Daylight would have been far too easy.
"Other way!" Georgie shouted, and they began splashing back the way they came. The tunnel was bright enough now the flashlights hardly made a difference, and she could feel a touch of heat on her back.
"There's a manhole somewhere," Art said through wheezing breaths, "for maintenance access. There's a way out."
Tom stumbled and almost fell, and Georgie grabbed him by one arm and dragged him along with them. The tunnel was almost as bright as day, and she could hear the fire now, the soft rush of air toward it.
"Any idea where the manhole might be?" Georgie asked. Art shook his head.
They dove into a side passageway that was narrower than the previous one, which bought them a moment or two. They couldn't run forever.
"Ladder – over – there," Art wheezed, pointing ahead of them. Rusted metal rungs were set into the curved wall. They hardly looked strong enough to support someone's weight, but Georgie would rather take her chances on them than the fire.
Art had reached the bottom of the ladder, and was standing there, one hand braced on the wall.
"Climb, you idiot!" Georgie shouted at him, all tact gone, and he shook his head.
"You have to go up first. You're the only one strong enough to lift the cover."
Georgie said a few words she didn't care to repeat and stopped at the base of the ladder. She was dripping sweat from the run and the heat, and to know that everyone else was depending on her hardly made her feel better. She climbed upward, into the darkness, until her hand hit cold metal. She got a firmer grip on the rungs of the ladder and shoved as hard as she could. The manhole cover didn't give an inch.
Georgie promised that if she got out of this alive she'd never take the Lord's name in vain again, braced both knees against the wall, and took her other hand off the ladder. The cover moved an inch or so when she heaved at it with both hands, and she wedged her fingers into the gap and pulled. The daylight spilling through might as well have been manna from heaven.
Art came up the ladder next, then Aoife, and she grabbed them by the elbows and dragged them out. Tom had the fire nipping at his heels, and she flattened him onto the ground and beat at the cuffs of his trousers until the sparks on them were extinguished.
They sat in the middle of Fern Road, shaking, for a long time. When Georgie looked back into the hole they'd emerged from, it was dark as the grave. Not a trace of fire to be seen.
"That wasn't natural," Georgie said. Art frowned at her.
"Sewage decomposition produces methane among other flammable gases, so it's not out of the question –"
"We don't need a fecking treatise on the chemistry of shit right now, Art," Tom snapped.
"There's something – someone – that's taking children, that can make fire out of the air, that knows we're trying to stop it …" Georgie broke off and shuddered. "What the hell do we do against that?"
…
Sister Michael isn't fond of her aunt, but family ties don't break easily, and Moira's house needs a going-over once a month regardless of what awful fates are befalling the children of Derry. The drive is easy; even English soldiers don't treat nuns too badly. One of them swore in front of her and then apologized, which was immensely funny, so she's in a better mood than she has been for quite some time when she halts at the old stone cottage.
Sheila is out hanging laundry, and when she sees the car, she walks out to it, ragged white hair flying about in the wind.
"You shouldn't be up here, wee Georgie."
Sister Michael winces. Most of her family's dead, so Sheila and Moira are about the only people left who still call her Georgie. The name shouldn't surprise her the way it does.
"The devil's out this time of year, and you don't want him following you home."
"Lord knows we've enough troubles without the devil too," Sister Michael agrees. "All's well with you?"
"Oh, yes, that young lad from the village, the carpenter, came up yesterday to visit." The "young lad" is Cormac Sullivan, who must be almost sixty by now, but everyone's young to Sheila.
"Glad to hear you've got company," Sister Michael says. She makes her exit, making excuses about how she has to be back in Derry that night. Sheila is old and half-mad, she reminds herself, and sees devils in every shadow. She's bound to be right once in a while by chance alone.
Moira lives a mile down, in a house that was quite decent thirty years ago, when her mother brought her and Gabriel out for weekend visits, but is now grimy and overgrown with ivy.
"Come in!" Moira shouts when she knocks. Sister Michael doesn't bother taking off her shoes. The stacks of newspapers lining the front hall are taller than ever, almost to the ceiling.
"How are you, Aunt Moira?"
"Well enough," Moira grumbles from her armchair. "Do you want a cup of tea?"
"Tea would be lovely," Sister Michael says. She's parched from the drive.
"Aye, it would be. Go put the kettle on, Georgie. Milk and one sugar for me."
Sister Michael begins her task of sorting through the junk on Moira's kitchen table, while Moira sips tea with her feet up and directs her.
"Almanac from 1984?"
"Keep that, I'll be needing it," Moira says, and Sister Michael sighs and sets it back down.
"Here's a box of pencil stubs, surely I can –"
"No, you cannot," Moira barks. "Throwing away pencil stubs! You start with that, aye, and throwing away teabags after one use, and soon you're up to your knees in debt and having to sell the house to make ends meet."
Moira lives handsomely off her pension and her late husband's earnings, and is likely one of the richest women in the county, but it's no use telling her that. Sister Michael picks up a stack of holiday cards from twenty years ago, their edges nibbled by mice, and resigns herself to another afternoon of throwing away absolutely nothing.
When she drives away, head aching and struggling to keep her eyes open, Sheila is still standing at the side of the road. She looks like she hasn't moved since Sister Michael left her.
"Evening, Sheila," Sister Michael says when she stops. "How are you?" Sheila doesn't seem to hear her, or even notice the car. Her eyes are unfocused.
"Sheila, are you all right? Have you finally cracked?"
Sheila blinks and looks down at Sister Michael as if she's just woken up.
"There is some great evil here," she says.
"Aye, Moira's the same as ever. Why don't you go back inside, Sheila? You'll freeze out here."
"There is an evil with you, Georgie. Something is following you."
"Sheila, go inside and have some tea, you'll feel better."
"You have the strength of faith to defeat it," Sheila says with perfect confidence.
If what's needed is faith, Sister Michael may as well give up now and leave Derry to its own troubles. She's never had less faith in the Lord. It's a tempting thought, the same as it always is. Leaving and letting someone else deal with it. But Sister Michael is a Catholic, and she wasn't raised to believe she deserved an easy life.
"Thank you," she says, and goes back to Derry.
…
Art went back to the library, and when that failed he went out into the countryside, searching for old stories that might have some clue. Georgie thought looking for fairy stories was even less useful than mucking about in the sewers and praying, but Tom thought Art had a good idea. They had their first fight in a long time over it, and they both realized even then that it was rather pointless, but Tom went out with Art to listen to retirees, and Georgie stayed in town with Aoife.
They wandered the streets long after dark, Aoife with a torch and Georgie with a knife. More than one wandering child screamed and ran from them, hopefully to home and safety. That was, unfortunately, their only accomplishment.
"We should go home," Aoife said when five minutes of shaking the torch failed to revive it. "It's after midnight."
"What if It's out there looking for children?"
"Georgie, we're not going to accomplish anything by stumbling around in the dark," Aoife said. She took the next right, toward their neighborhood and home and safety, and Georgie followed her.
"We can't just go home and let It –"
"How are we going to stop It?" Aoife gestured at the knife in Georgie's hand. "You think that's enough to stop something like this? What the hell are we doing?"
Aoife stopped and took a deep breath. Georgie had never heard her swear before.
"Let's go home, Georgie," she said softly.
She was right, and it hurt to think about. Maybe there was nothing they could do. Maybe Gabriel was already dead, maybe all of them were dead, maybe the children taken were just part of the price of living in Derry.
There was a scuffle on the bridge ahead of them: four men, or boys maybe, in Ulster orange scarves and armbands, and a smaller boy dressed in black with blood coming down his face. As they watched, the boy fell to the ground.
"Let's go to the bridge by Saint Columba's," Aoife said, tugging at Georgie's arm, and Georgie shook her head.
"They'll kill him if we don't do anything."
"And they'll kill us if we – Georgie!"
Georgie was already striding towards the men, knife in hand. This was someone she could save.
"Leave him alone," she said. Her voice was softer than she wanted it to be. Two of the men did turn to look at her. Their faces were covered.
"Or what? Are you going to henpeck us to death?" The men laughed. The boy on the ground was curled in a fetal position, unmoving.
Georgie lifted the knife and they stopped laughing. She waited for one of them to take out a knife or something worse, or to make a move toward her. An excuse.
"Still four of us, and one of you," one of the men said. None of them moved.
These men weren't It. They hadn't taken Gabriel. They were partisans from the other side, hardly older than she was, who hadn't even brought knives. Georgie swallowed.
She'd been ready to kill them. She'd wanted to kill them, to take revenge for Gabriel on someone who had no part in her death.
"You're right," Georgie said. "I don't need this." She tossed the knife to one side, watched it fly over the bridge railing, and got into her best fighting stance.
They all rushed her at once. That meant they got in each other's way, but each one still got in a good punch or two before Georgie tossed them over her shoulder and into the cobbles. She stomped on a hand that reached towards her ankle and turned around. One of them went for Aoife, who kicked him in the shins. Another ran straight at Georgie, trying to grab her, and she put him in a joint lock easily.
"Go home, all of you," she growled at them. When none of them moved, she bent the man's wrist back until he screamed, then released him with a shove. They ran, this time, not looking back.
Georgie hurried toward the boy. He was already standing up, moving slowly and wincing with each raspy breath. It was hard to tell under all the blood, but he looked familiar.
"Are you all right?" she asked, and he shrugged.
"Been better. I know you, don't I? You keep wandering about in the wrong places." The boy from the alley pulled a battered cigarette out of his pocket and raised it to his lips. "You got a light?"
When Georgie's mother couldn't find matches, she got angry, and Georgie had learned how to stay on her good side. She took the matchbook out of her trouser pocket and tossed it to him.
"Georgie, we could all have been killed," Aoife said, right behind her, and she sounded so much like her old prefect self that Georgie laughed.
"We're all right," she said. Aoife looked at her skeptically.
"You're positively covered in blood."
"She's right," the boy said. "You look like a slaughtered pig."
"Flattering comparison," Georgie muttered, then stuck her hand out. "We might as well know each other's names. I'm Georgie."
"Joe." He shook her hand, transferring quite a bit of blood and grime onto it. "Why d'you keep ending up in Provo neighborhoods?"
Georgie looked at Aoife, then back at Joe. She barely knew him, she reminded herself, and she didn't like him, and she certainly didn't trust him. He was untrustworthy in the extreme. But four rule-following Catholic-school wains hadn't gotten very far on their own. Perhaps they needed someone like Joe.
She told him.
Setting notes:
The UK gradually switched from using the imperial system of measurement to the metric system between 1962 and 1980. This provides a convenient excuse for my inability to use consistent units: the characters aren't used to the metric system either. (If anyone with significant influence on the US government happens to be here: please let us switch to the metric system. We long for a system of measurement that actually makes sense.)
Methane or CH4 is a gas produced by anaerobic decomposition (decomposition without oxygen). It's often produced by landfills, sewers, and other areas where large amounts of organic matter decay without much of an oxygen supply. It is flammable, but in low concentrations it wouldn't produce the big, dramatic fire described here.