Little Helper

Derry, Maine – January 9, 1985 – 7:32 a.m.

The first real light of the day came thin and gray, slicing through the mist that still clung to Main Street like a reluctant ghost. Shops were just beginning to stir: coffee machines hissed behind fogged windows, neon "OPEN" signs blinked awake, metal gates clanked upward in slow rhythm.

Beverly Marsh had never truly left Derry.

She had tried—Portland for a handful of restless years, Boston for longer—but the town had a habit of setting hooks deep in the places people didn’t like to admit existed. Eventually they all came back, one way or another. She had come back sooner than most, after a marriage to an abusive man with a severe drinking problem.

Now she owned Marsh Threads, a narrow shop squeezed between the pharmacy and the shuttered movie theater on Lower Main. The sign above the door was hand-painted in careful silver script against deep burgundy: Marsh Threads – Bespoke & Repairs Since 1980. Inside, the air smelled of fresh cotton, hot iron, and the faint lavender she kept in shallow bowls to mask the old brick's musty breath.

At thirty-six she was still tall, still lean, red hair pulled into a practical ponytail that reached halfway down her back. The freckles across her nose and cheeks hadn’t faded; if anything they had sharpened with time. Faint laugh lines framed her eyes now, and a small pale scar curved above her left brow from a fall she never spoke about. She wore a charcoal-gray apron over a cream sweater and dark jeans, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Her hands—quick, scarred in places from needles and older fights—moved with the same sureness they had when she was eleven.

She was already at work when the town properly woke, pinning the hem of a heavy winter coat for Mrs. Abernathy’s nine o’clock appointment. The shop was quiet except for the soft hiss of the steam iron and the low murmur of a classic-rock station drifting from an old radio on the back counter.

She had not turned on the television that morning. She had not yet looked at her phone.

But the new Punywise comic was already there.

It had appeared sometime between 6:37 and 7:00—slid under the locked door, past the security chain, and left lying open on the worn welcome mat inside. She had found it when she arrived. She had not thrown it away.

Now it rested face-up on the cutting table, weighted down by a pair of heavy shears so the pages would not curl. The final panel stared up at her: the cyan spirit folding itself into the ruined blue costume, Periwinkle’s desperate cries twisting into its own voice.

Beverly’s fingers paused over the fabric she was pinning. She looked at the comic again, longer this time. Her breathing stayed even, controlled—the way it always became when she was thinking hard and fast.

One hand drifted, almost without thought, to the thin silver chain at her throat. The small pendant shaped like a paper boat turned slowly between her thumb and forefinger—a habit unbroken since she was eleven, though the memories it carried had only started surfacing again in the last few years. Flashes at first: a storm drain, a red balloon, seven kids swearing something in blood. Then more: the Barrens, the fear that tasted like rust, the thing that wore a clown's face. She hadn't told anyone except Mike, not really. Just quiet coffees in the library back room every few months, where he'd listen without pushing, and she'd leave feeling a little less like the past was a dream she'd invented.

She exhaled once, sharp through the nose, then picked up the iron again. Steam hissed louder as she pressed a seam flat. But every few seconds her eyes flicked back to the comic.

She had expected Mike’s call when it came this morning. She could feel it the way she used to feel storms rolling in from the Kenduskeag—low pressure, heavy air, the certainty that something was about to break.

At 7:22 the mist outside had thinned into something almost beautiful, soft gray light catching on the hanging spools of thread like scattered stars. The radio had moved on to a slow Tom Petty ballad.

Small things began to happen.

The box of glass-head pins she reached for slid smoothly across the table, stopping exactly beneath her fingers before she could stretch any farther.

A seam ripper slipped from her grasp and clattered toward the floor—only to halt mid-fall, hover for the barest instant, then rise and settle back into its ceramic cup.

The coffee mug she had left on the windowsill twenty minutes earlier—stone cold when she had touched it—was now hot, steam curling upward in lazy hazelnut-scented spirals.

And then the clouds, heavy and immovable, parted just enough for a single shaft of pale winter sunlight to slant through the window and fall directly across the cutting table, warming the fabric, warming her hands, making the silver thread glint like real metal. The beam stayed exactly there, stubborn and precise.

Beverly looked up at the window. The clouds had not moved. Yet the sunlight refused to be swallowed.

She set the coffee down very slowly.

Then, to the empty shop, voice low enough that the radio almost drowned it:

“…I know you’re here.”

Not afraid. Not accusing. Just certain.

She picked up the comic again, studied the final panel, folded the page once with care, and slipped it into the pocket of her apron.

The sunlight held.

The coffee stayed warm.

The shop felt—impossibly—like the safest place in Derry that morning.

But after a brief moment the air beside her simply changed.

No sound. No flicker. Only a gentle shift, like a window opening onto a season that had not yet arrived.

A small figure stood barely taller than her hip, the periwinkle suit hanging slightly loose on a child’s narrow frame, ruffles and conical hat oversized the way a little girl playing dress-up always looks. The white greasepaint face was small, round-cheeked; the orange deadlights had softened, almost gentle.

A gloved hand was suddenly in hers—warm, real, fingers curling around hers with shy certainty.

“You always were quick of mind,” the voice said. High, soft, unmistakably a child’s. Periwinkle’s voice from before everything went wrong.

Beverly did not pull away.

She looked down—really looked—taking in the small blue suit, the oversized hat, the eyes that glowed but did not burn.

Her free hand lifted slowly. Fingertips brushed the edge of the ruffled collar, testing reality.

“…Who are you, really?” she asked, voice low and rough with something she had not allowed herself to feel in years.

She did not let go.

The small fingers tightened once—gentle, just enough.

“I am who I want to be,” the child said.

A pause. The sunbeam brightened.

“No… who I need to be.”

Another breath.

“Especially here… it’s need rather than want.”

The words settled like stones in still water.

Then the small hand was gone.

Not a fade. Not a pop. Simply absence.

Beverly stared at the empty space. Her palm remained open, fingers half-curled, still expecting warmth.

She flexed them once. Twice.

The sunbeam stayed.

The coffee stayed hot.

The folded comic in her pocket felt heavier than paper should.

After that, the small helps continued—quiet, constant, almost shy.

A spool of silver thread rolled gently into place before she reached.

A hem she had pinned suddenly lay perfectly flat.

The radio cleared from static to crisp warmth mid-song.

A dropped button rose and settled back into its tin without rolling.

Beverly noticed every one.

She did not speak of them.

But the corner of her mouth lifted—just the smallest fraction—each time.

At 11:03 the screens across Derry woke again.

This time the animation was softer, kinder.

A slow piano lullaby.

A familiar clothing shop bathed in sunlight.

A red-haired woman pinning a coat.

A small blue figure helping—spools rolling, tools returning, coffee warming, sunlight following.

Then hands joined.

A long, quiet moment.

The child reached up—slowly, reluctantly—and peeled away the white greasepaint mask.

Beneath it: no monster. Just a pale, freckled child’s face, wide-eyed and afraid.

The woman’s cartoon eyes widened. She squeezed the small hand tighter.

The child’s face crumpled—grief, shame, fear.

She pulled free. Ran.

As she fled she swatted red balloons—pop, pop, pop—crimson fragments raining like broken promises.

The screen faded to white.

Simple purple text:

Sometimes help is all we can give.

Sometimes it’s all we need.

No address. No summons.

Just silence.

Matching comic pages appeared all over town—tucked into mailboxes, slipped beneath wipers, left beside Beverly’s still-hot coffee when she stepped into the back room.

She found the new one on the cutting table.

She studied the final panel for a long time—the small figure running into snow, mask clutched in one hand, red fragments drifting.

Her thumb brushed the unmasked face—light, almost reverent.

She kept the page.

She kept working.

Later, when Mrs. Abernathy had come and gone, when the shop was quiet again, Beverly leaned against the counter and spoke to the empty air.

“You’re not him.”

A pause.

“You’re not… the thing that took him, either.”

She looked around—at the glowing fabrics, the stubborn sunlight, the coffee that refused to cool.

“I don’t know what you are,” she said.

“But I’m not running from you.”

She straightened.

Took a slow sip of still-hot coffee.

Her thoughts drifted for a moment to the call from the police a few days earlier: her ex-husband had been found dead in an alley nearby. They believed he’d come looking for her, but got into a fight with someone instead. No suspects. Case closed. She had thanked them, hung up, and gone back to threading a needle. The news hadn’t surprised her. It hadn’t hurt, either. Not really.

Then she picked up the next alteration ticket and went back to work.

Outside, Derry moved on—school buses rumbling, snow glittering, a single red balloon drifting down the opposite sidewalk before turning a corner and disappearing.

Inside Marsh Threads the sunlight stayed.

The small helps continued.