Costume
Derry, Maine – January 9, 1985 – 9:21 p.m.
The night had turned bitter along the river path. Headlights from the occasional car on the bridge above swept across the frozen water like pale searchlights, but the path itself was empty now. Kyle Brenner had fled long ago—running until his chest burned, bursting back into the convenience store in a babble of clowns and salads until the manager threatened to call the police.
Down in the dark beneath the town, the clown remained exactly where the encounter had ended. The wicker basket still dangled from Its gloved fingers, half its contents scattered across the snow in bright, ridiculous patches of green and red. A few stubborn carrot shreds clung to the rows of sharp teeth. The deadlights had dimmed to a low, simmering orange, patient as embers waiting under ash.
Then the televisions woke.
Every screen in Derry—living-room sets behind drawn curtains, the grainy security monitor in the convenience store, the ancient CRT in the library break room where Mike Hanlon still lingered after hours—flickered to life with the same gentle xylophone jingle.
No title card.
Only a soft fade-in: a sunny meadow, a picnic blanket, and the ridiculous figure of Punywise sitting cross-legged, gnawing on a cartoonishly enormous steak. Red juice dripped down his painted chin. Red balloons drifted around him like curious, obedient pets.
A smaller shape hopped into frame—blue suit immaculate, hat slightly askew, carrying the same wicker basket. A single red balloon bobbed above it, tied to the handle like a cheerful flag.
She set the basket down with a determined thump.
“Punywise! I brought you something special. For Daddy.”
Punywise paused mid-bite. Looked at the basket. Looked at her. Then sneered, waving the steak like a scepter.
“I don’t want your stupid grass! Meat is power! Meat is—”
She didn’t let him finish.
A single crisp leaf of romaine flicked from her fingers and stuck to his greasepaint with a tiny splat.
Punywise blinked.
Then, slowly, deliberately, she upended the entire basket over his head.
Lettuce rained. Tomatoes burst. Carrots scattered like bright confetti. Vinaigrette dripped in slow golden threads.
Punywise froze, arms half-raised in useless protest.
She stepped back, clasped her hands behind her back, and tilted her head.
“There. Now you’re healthy.
Even if you don’t want to be.”
She dusted her palms once, twice, then hopped away through the meadow, popping every red balloon in her path with cheerful little bursts. The last and largest exploded in a shower of red confetti that drifted upward like dying fireworks.
The screen faded to soft lavender text:
Love means trying to make someone better.
Even when they’re stubborn.
Even when they’re hungry.
♡
The televisions went dark.
At the same moment, matching comic pages began to appear across town—slipped under doors, taped to lampposts, tucked into coat pockets, left on windshields. The art was bright, almost tender: the basket, the looping “for Daddy” note, the slow-motion cascade of salad, the determined little face dusting her hands, and finally Periwinkle hopping away with red balloon fragments drifting behind her like broken memories.
In the black chamber beneath the town, the clown still held the basket. A single lettuce leaf drifted from Its ruff and fell to the water.
It lifted the basket higher, studied the lavender ribbon, the scalloped note.
The deadlights pulsed once—slow, thoughtful.
Then the low purr returned. Deeper. Almost… fond.
It whispered into the empty dark, voice woven from every stolen throat and every child’s scream:
“…My little star.”
The basket dissolved from Its grip like smoke.
The clown stood motionless in the black water.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
Derry, Maine – January 10, 1985 – 4:45 p.m.
The Derry Public Library smelled the same as it always had: old paper, lemon polish, the faint metallic hiss of the radiator that never quite shut up. Late-afternoon light slanted through the high windows in dusty gold bars, catching motes that drifted like slow snow. The front doors had been locked at four; the sign flipped to CLOSED. Only the back research room light was still on.
Mike Hanlon sat at the same table as the morning before, legal pad open, notecards fanned like a losing poker hand. The Punywise Origins comic lay beside two newer pages: one showing Periwinkle hopping away with a child while Punywise dripped lettuce, the other the kinder short that had aired across town this morning—red-haired woman and small blue figure holding hands, mask peeled away to reveal a freckled, frightened child’s face, red balloon fragments raining like confetti as she ran.
He had not slept much.
The phone had rung twice today—once from Bill (already on the road, voice tight: “I remembered the boat this morning. Just… the boat. I’m coming.”), once from Richie (half-joking, half-panicked: “Mikey, if this is real, I’m gonna need a bigger inhaler”). The others would follow. The pull was working.
A soft knock at the back door—three quick taps, then pause, then two more. Their old signal from 1958.
Mike rose, crossed the dim stacks, and opened the door.
Beverly stood there in her charcoal coat, red hair loose now, catching the hallway light like copper wire. She held a folded comic page in one gloved hand and a small paper bag in the other. Her eyes were steady, but there was something raw behind them—something that hadn’t been there yesterday.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
“Hey.”
He stepped aside. She came in, bringing the cold with her. Mike locked the door again.
They walked back to the research room in silence. Bev set the bag on the table—two paper cups from the diner, steam still curling from the lids—and the folded page beside his collection.
Mike gestured to the chair opposite his. She sat. For a moment neither spoke. The radiator hissed like it was listening.
Bev broke first.
“She came to my shop yesterday morning. Right after I opened. Before that kinder cartoon even aired. Just… appeared, out of thin air.”
Mike nodded once. He had suspected.
“A little girl… in an oversized clown costume. She took my hand, Mike. Warm. Real. She said… ‘I am who I want to be. No… who I need to be. Especially here…’”
She paused, fingers tracing the rim of her coffee cup.
“Then she was gone. But I still… sense her presence. Ever since yesterday she’s been helping. Silly small things—picking up things I drop, moving tools just a little closer right before I reach. And some bizarre things. Sunlight following me across the table like it was on a string. Even walking over here, the wind dropped the second I stepped outside. Like something was clearing the way.”
She unfolded her comic page—the kinder one—and slid it across to him.
Mike studied the page.
“I watched something else yesterday,” he said. “Right here. The TV came on by itself. Punywise Origins. The whole story—the father, the daughter, the black shape that ate him and wore his skin. Periwinkle watching it happen. Then the endless chase. The thing sitting alone in the rotting ring, still hungry.”
He tapped the legal pad.
“It felt targeted. Like it was showing me specifically. And on the back of the first comic someone wrote: ‘The show is changing, Mike. Want a ticket?’”
Bev exhaled slowly.
“So we’re both being played to.”
“Maybe,” Mike said. “She is interfering with it. But I’m not sure what to make of it yet. Maybe she’s giving us pieces so we see the cracks in the old one.”
“When she held my hand…” Bev said, “…it felt like holding a child who’s been waiting a long time. Not for food. For someone to see her. Really see her.”
Mike looked at her steadily.
“If the Origins cartoon is true… or even partly true…” He let the sentence hang for a beat. “Is she actually his daughter? A child of It?”
Bev didn’t flinch from the question.
“Or maybe she was his daughter once. Before the black shape took everything. And now she’s…”
Then the old CRT television in the corner turned on again.
No click. No hum of warming tubes. The screen simply woke, static crawling briefly before resolving into saturated color.
Purple letters melted slowly down the frame like dripping wax:
PERIWINKLE'S FALL
(From Star to Shadow)
A single violin drew a long, mournful note that soon warped into something broken.
On the screen, a young Periwinkle stood in the ruined circus ring, clutching an empty, crumpled clown suit to her chest. Her cartoon face crumpled with grief. Exaggerated tears fell in cyan arcs, pooling at her feet.
“Daddy… come back.”
Shadows thickened. Orange lights bloomed in the corners—swirling, hungry.
They reached. She looked up too late.
The lights swallowed her. Pulled. Twisted. Her eyes flared white, then orange, then black.
The story raced forward in cruel montage: the blue suit tearing at the seams as something inside her grew wrong. Confinement in a cartoon asylum with candy-cane bars and balloon-headed doctors. Fast-forward aging—child to teenager to woman to elder—rocking in restraints, whispering, then screaming desperate calls for a father, a circus, a light that had devoured her.
The asylum doors eventually opened.
An old woman stepped out. Wrinkled. Hunched. Name tag reading MRS. KERSH.
But the eyes glowed faint orange. The smile stretched too wide. Too many teeth.
She flickered between kindly old lady and bloated, clawed thing with a ruffled collar.
In the final frame, her old blue costume lay abandoned in a sewer grate—filthy, forgotten.
A cyan spirit drifted down from the storm clouds. Ethereal. Star-shaped.
It touched the suit.
Absorbed it.
The desperate, endless cries of Periwinkle’s soul flowed into the spirit like smoke.
The spirit inflated. Took shape. Became a smirking cyan balloon with a black face.
It floated upward, whispering in her stolen voice:
“…Play with me, Daddy.”
The screen faded to black.
Purple crayon text crawled upward:
The lights take everything.
Even the stars.
The television snapped off.
In that very moment new pages bloomed across Derry like mold after rain.
Stuck to fogged car windows. Taped over missing-child posters. Slipped into morning newspapers as inserts no printer remembered running.
Crude crayon art. Bright blues bleeding into violent oranges. Shaky but deliberate lines.
The same story in panels: grief over the empty suit… the evil lights swallowing her… corruption in the asylum… aging… release as Mrs. Kersh, face splitting into monstrous grins mid-frame…
And finally, the cyan spirit finding the costume. Absorbing the soul’s endless cries.
A speech bubble rose from the balloon:
“I’ve missed you… Daddy.”
For a moment they sat in silence, the afterimage of the cartoon still burning behind their eyes.
Bev spoke first, voice barely above a whisper.
“That’s who she was. Or… that was her. The little girl holding the empty suit. The one who looked into the lights and got swallowed.”
Mike rubbed his temples, eyes still on the blank screen.
“Swallowed, corrupted, locked away for decades. Then the costume gets dumped in a sewer grate like trash… and this blue spirit—origin unknown—drifts down, touches it, absorbs the screams, and becomes her. Or puts her on. Like it had put on the father.”
Bev looked at the darkened TV.
“The way the cartoon shows it, the spirit takes the suit and the endless crying. Like it drank what was left of her soul. But if that’s true… then who’s been helping me? Who took my hand yesterday?”
Mike exhaled through his nose.
“Option one: she’s still the daughter. Whatever got put inside her in the asylum didn’t erase everything—just twisted it. The grief survived. The love survived. Enough that when the spirit—or whatever force—found the costume, it re-ignited what was left of her instead of overwriting it completely.”
Bev nodded slowly.
“Option two: the spirit is something else. It found the abandoned suit, heard the trapped cries, and decided to wear them. To become the daughter. Same way he became the clown. A new performer stepping into an old role.”
She gave a small, tired laugh that held no humor.
“Either way she’s calling him Daddy. Either way she’s fighting him in weird and childish ways. Spit-melt cartoons. Hopping away with kids like it’s a game of tag.”
Mike glanced at the kinder comic again—the freckled face under the peeled mask, wide-eyed and terrified.
“If it’s option one, then maybe some part of her really is still in there. A kid who never stopped wanting her father back.”
Bev met his eyes.
“And if it’s option two… then she’s playing a very long con. Wearing the daughter’s pain like a perfect disguise. Getting close to him. Getting close to us. And when the moment’s right—”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
Mike finished it for her, voice low.
“—she pulls the strings. Or he does.”
“Either way,” he added after a beat, “she’s changing the rules. The other one isn’t hunting the way it used to. It’s being held back. Distracted. Maybe even embarrassed. And that might make It more dangerous—not less.”
They sat a while longer, drinking cooling coffee while the winter dark pressed against the windows. Somewhere outside, a single red balloon drifted past the glass—slow, almost curious—then kept going.
Inside, the radiator hissed on.