A/N: Uh so it's going to be a little more than four chapters. I have more to say than I thought. Oh well.
Art was, predictably, very upset. He spent a long time informing Georgie about dangerous partisan violence and how surely adding someone else they didn't know to a complex situation like this one would never end well.
"And really, it's just irresponsible of you to go around telling people about all this," he finished. Georgie rolled her eyes at him.
"I know, Art. But I told him, and we can't exactly un-tell him, and I think he cares enough to help us fight It."
"Who said anything about fighting It?" Art said. "We're finding the missing children, and we're telling the Gardai, and that's all."
"That does make sense," Aoife said slowly. "But … I don't think we have a choice any more. Either we kill It, or …"
"Or we all die," Tom finished, and Aoife looked at him sharply but didn't say anything.
"You could ask me how I feel about getting mixed up in all this," Joe said very pointedly, from his spot a few steps away from them. They all ignored him.
When Art was outnumbered, he gave up quickly. Three years on, he'd left Derry and gone on to brighter things without a word of protest about leaving his friends behind, because his parents wanted him to get a good education and he couldn't say no to them. It was the only time Georgie hadn't been able to convince him to go along with her when it really mattered.
Deciding to kill It was easy enough; the more difficult part was how.
"We don't even know what It is," Tom said.
"Whatever It is, a decent bomb or two will sort it out," Georgie said, with possibly unwarranted confidence. She looked at Joe, who put both his hands up.
"Don't look at me."
"We're not going to turn you in or anything," Georgie said hastily. "Any knowledge you have will help us."
"I have no fecking idea how to build a bomb," Joe said. When they looked at him incredulously, he continued: "I'm not some IRA tough, all right? I hang around with them sometimes, doesn't mean they tell me anything."
"No bombs, then," Georgie said. "Any gun-running contacts?"
"Oh, aye, I have a few friends from my church group who are in with all the smugglers," Tom said, and they both cackled while Art looked at them like they were all mad.
No matter how grim that year got, they had each other and they had a sense of humor. It meant something, that they could laugh even through everything. Sister Michael's sense of humor is about stretched to breaking point.
"I think, really, the best thing to do would be to organize the students to make and put up 'Missing' posters for their classmates," Father Peter says.
"Free labor and make them panic for no good reason. Perfect."
"Sister Michael, they're worried, and it's our duty as educators to reassure them that everyone will be all right."
"You are not a fecking educator," Sister Michael says. "You are a failure and a shame upon the Church, which is saying something considering how low the bar is for priests."
That makes Father Peter finally give up and walk out of her office dejected. Sister Michael gets her good whiskey out of the cupboard, never mind that it's eleven in the morning. Surely she shouldn't have to manage a clown who's made it his personal mission to destroy all she holds dear, and It as well. There ought to be a law against overworking a nun like this.
The whiskey just brings back more memories.
…
It feeds on fear.
Art said that a little bit too triumphantly, waving a book in the air. The librarian shushed him sternly, then turned her back on them again, and they all dragged the rickety library chairs closer together until their knees touched.
"It can change Its shape, but It feeds on fear. If no one fears It, It's weak and vulnerable."
"And your book says all that?" Georgie asked, pointing at it.
"Well, it says that if It's feared, It becomes more powerful. So it's probably true the other way around."
Georgie didn't trust tattered books that mostly contained astrology along with some vague notes about a murderous clown-like creature, but she'd stake her life on Art's word. She didn't love the "probably", but you took what you could get.
"We can't just stop being scared of It," Aoife pointed out. "I can try, but …" She shuddered.
"It can't be that terrifying," Joe said. Georgie and Art talked over each other for a minute trying to convince him otherwise, and he waved them off. "I'm not scared of anything. Blood? Hellfire? I can handle all that."
"It's not that easy," Tom said. He was staring at his knees, not looking at any of them. "It can read your thoughts. It knows all your deepest fears, and It can show you any of them."
"Tom, did you … see It?" Georgie asked carefully, and he nodded, still not looking at her.
"I think so."
"Clowns, right?" Art said. Tom's face was white. He nodded jerkily like a puppet on a string. "What did It do?"
"Talked to me," Tom said, and nothing more.
"Be more specific. If we understand what It can do –"
"Leave him alone, Art," Georgie said, putting a hand on Tom's shoulder. "He doesn't want to talk about it."
Art made a face at her, but he did stop asking. Aoife left soon after.
"I promised my ma I'd be home before dark," she said, glancing at the windows. "She's nervous, with everything happening."
The missing children and the paramilitaries and everything that could happen to a girl out on her own, but Aoife still looked more afraid of going home than of the world out there. Georgie looked at the bruises where the sleeves of Aoife's blouse had ridden up and curled her fingers into fists and reminded herself again and again that wrath was a sin.
Art decided they'd done enough research for the day, and they should really go home and get some sleep before they decided on a course of action, and Georgie took a few slow, deep breaths to calm herself down and agreed. Tom walked away from them when they left the library and she didn't tell him to stay with the group. Joe said his da would take a belt to him if he knew Joe was out getting into fights with Provo lads, and laughed in a way that meant it wasn't a joke at all, and Georgie bit her tongue and let him walk to his front door.
When Georgie got home, Mrs. MacCool who lived down at the corner was in the parlor, talking with her ma. Georgie brought them tea, so her ma could rest after all that time on her feet, and she got a faded smile in thanks.
"Have a seat," her ma said, and Georgie poured herself a cup of tea and sat down. Her ma wasn't often angry, or at least she didn't let it show. It'd do Georgie some good to drink tea and listen to a harmless conversation and calm down a bit before she had to set the table with an empty place at Gabriel's chair.
"Where have you been?" her ma asked. Georgie mumbled something about the library. Her ma didn't look as though she believed her, but she nodded.
"Siobhan, I'd count my lucky stars if my girls were just out at the library," Mrs. MacCool said. "I don't even know what county they're in half the time. Our Sarah hasn't been home since yesterday."
Georgie's ma's wedding china shattered in her hands. She barely even felt the pain.
Another child gone.
…
Five absences. Five. Erin Quinn and her friends, all missing from a class.
Sister Francis shifts nervously on the other side of the desk. She's new, barely twenty and stick-thin, and she doesn't seem cut out for teaching.
"I know it's nothing, really, but I am supposed to report all absences to the administration –"
"Yes, you've reported them, well done," Sister Michael says brusquely. The young novitiates thrive on positive reinforcement, and Sister Francis is no exception, straightening her shoulders and smiling proudly.
"Will that be all, Sister Michael?"
"Go find them," Sister Michael says, and Sister Francis jumps. "Wherever the little delinquents are, I want them in front of my desk in an hour. Is that clear?"
"Well, Sister Michael, that seems a little harsh. They've only missed one class, after all –"
"Find them!" Sister Michael barks, and Sister Francis nods and backs out of the office.
Christ. Five girls.
"Are you getting off on taunting me, you psychopath?" she mutters, and reaches for the phone.
"Maybe this isn't about you, Georgie."
Sister Michael makes a very undignified squeak and flings the phone receiver at the corner of the room. It falls well short of the clown.
"What the hell are you doing here, then, if this isn't about me?"
"You're funny," the clown says, approaching her desk, It's head twisting until it's upside down. "Little Georgie, trying so hard to save the children. It's not going very well, is it?"
Sister Michael opens the second drawer of her desk and reaches into it for the knife. It's just a clown, here, and the knife is sharp enough. She can do some damage.
"You're scared, aren't you, Georgie?" The clown leans in until she can feel It's breath on her face. "Scared you'll end up like the rest of your friends."
Sister Michael plants the knife in It's forehead, then rips it out. Something too dark to be blood pours out of the wound, and It backs away.
"Get out of my school," Sister Michael tells It, and she knows exorcisms are superstitious nonsense but in that moment she feels as if her words have the power to banish It.
"You think you can save them?" The clown laughs, It's face distorting into another, horribly familiar shape.
"Could you save me, Georgie?" Tom asks, smiling. Sister Michael drops the knife with fingers too numb to hold it.
Tom looks like he did at fifteen, his dark hair long and glasses smudged. He always forgot to clean his glasses, and Georgie would pluck them off his face and wipe them clear on her shirt. He looked almost as young at his wake, barely grew up and never got to grow old.
"You couldn't even save me from myself," Tom says. "And I died because I was weak –"
"Tom wasn't weak," Sister Michael snarls, backing up, away from this thing that isn't Tom, it can't be him, it's another illusion.
"And what about you?" Tom asks. "Were you strong enough to save him? Strong enough to save any of them?"
The door opens.
"Sister Michael, sorry to bother you, but I thought I should ask before I did anything." Sister Francis makes her way into the office. Tom's gone, and Sister Michael's standing backed up against the window with tears streaming down her face, no doubt looking like a right fecking idiot.
"Is this a bad time?" Sister Francis asks.
"Next time, perhaps consider that before you come in." Sister Michael sits down at her desk, which makes her feel a bit more professional, and slides the knife to one side in hopes it'll be a bit less obvious.
"Of course Sister, sorry Sister. It's just, well, I found the girls."
A deeply humiliating sob of relief escapes Sister Michael's mouth.
"They're in their chemistry lesson, and I know you did say you wanted them in the office, but I didn't know if that was worth disrupting their education, Sister."
"God bless you, Sister Francis," Sister Michael says, with more feeling than she's ever put into the words before. Sister Francis smiles and looks politely nonplussed.
"Let the girls stay in their lesson," Sister Michael says. "And learn to knock," she adds as Sister Francis leaves, which gets another squeaky agreement.
Five girls miraculously, and she doesn't use that word lightly, unharmed. Four and the English lad, strictly, but Sister Michael isn't one to harp on technicalities. Five girls who could well have been taken.
It is bold enough to visit her in her own office, and powerful enough that being stabbed in the head barely slowed It down. Which shouldn't be the case.
She's afraid, Sister Michael realizes. She's alone and terrified and paralyzed into inaction, and It knows that.
Setting notes:
Is there a correct way to do possessive apostrophes when you're using "it" as a proper name? I've been going with "It's", which is correct for a proper name but when using "it" as a pronoun the possessive form is "its", and "it's" is exclusively a contraction of "it is". Irrelevant, I know, but I'm a little bit of a punctuation geek.