Game Night

Derry, Maine – January 13, 1985 – 7:12 p.m.

This evening the Losers gathered not in the vanished clubhouse of the Barrens, but in the old Hanlon farmhouse on the quiet edge of town—the one Mike had quietly bought back fifteen years earlier, when the weight of too many memories made it impossible to keep living in the small apartment above the library he still tended. The house stood on a wide, wooded lot, close enough to the heart of Derry that the streetlights from town could still be seen through the trees on clear nights, but private enough that no one would notice extra cars in the driveway at odd hours. It had always felt like a safe place: four bedrooms upstairs, a big open kitchen that smelled faintly of old coffee and cedar, a living room with deep couches and a stone fireplace Mike kept meticulously clean. No one else lived there. No one else was invited tonight.

Mike had arrived first, as always, and built a low fire in the hearth. The others trickled in carrying the same weight they’d carried for twenty-seven years, plus the newer, stranger weight of the past few nights.

Mike with his metal box of clippings and screenshots.

Bill with notebooks full of unwritten screenplays.

Richie loud and ironic in his faded hoodie.

Eddie with his flashlight and his ever-present inhaler.

Stan quiet and precise.

Ben with a thermos of real hot chocolate.

Beverly last, red hair loose, catching the firelight like copper.

They settled around the big oak table in the living room—plates of sandwiches and mugs of coffee pushed to the center, the fire crackling like it was trying to listen.

Mike broke the silence.

“You all saw them. The cartoons. The comics. The blue one.”

Bill rubbed his temples. “She’s… interfering with it. Taunting it. Saving kids. Guiding us back here. But why?”

Eddie’s voice was tight, almost sharp. “Exactly. Why? She’s wearing a clown suit. Same smile, same deadlights behind the eyes. Maybe she’s not saving them—she’s collecting them. Grooming them. Or us. We’re all here now, aren’t we? Nice and cozy. Easy pickings.”

Stan’s fingers drummed once on the table—precise, measured. “The comics feel targeted. Personal. They’re not just showing us history; they’re showing us her version of it. The daughter who lost her father to the thing in the suit. If that’s true, she could be grieving. Or she could be using that grief as bait. Either way, we don’t know what she wants when the show ends.”

Ben poured hot chocolate into mugs, steam curling like ghosts. “She’s been gentle with the kids. Hopping them home. Leaving those little cards with warnings. But gentleness can be a mask. We’ve seen that before.”

Beverly stared into the fire. Her voice was quiet, but steady. “She came to my shop. Held my hand. Helped with little things—thread, sunlight, coffee that never got cold. It felt… real. Like a child who’s been waiting a long time to be seen. My gut says she’s good—or at least she’s trying to be. But Eddie’s right. We don’t know if that child is still in there, or if something else is wearing her pain like a costume. So we stay careful. We watch each other’s backs.”

Then the air in the shadowed corner near the staircase thickened.

A small shape appeared.

Not with fanfare, not with light. Just there.

Child-sized. Blue suit rumpled. Hat tilted forward. Lavender ruffles wilted in the firelight.

And she was crying.

Soft, hiccupping tears that glinted like silver as they carved clean tracks through the white greasepaint.

“I just wanted to meet you… so I came here… and heard you say all those mean things about me…”

The circle froze.

Beverly moved first—slow, careful, the way she approached frightened children in her shop.

“Hey… it’s okay. We didn’t know you were here.”

The child’s shoulders shook. Another hiccup.

Then, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, reality folded differently.

Beverly was sitting again on the worn couch. And the child was on her lap—small, light, fitting there as though she had always belonged.

The clown suit and hat were gone. In their place: a simple knee-length dress the color of winter dusk, slightly faded at the hem. No wig. Just dark, straight hair in a childish bob.

Only the white greasepaint remained—stubborn, theatrical, the last mark of something other.

Arms looped loosely around Beverly’s neck. Cheek resting against her shoulder.

“Aw… Thank you for playing along,” she said joyfully.

Then she looked up, eyes bright with something like hope.

“I’m so happy to meet you all. I don’t have many friends… yet… but I thought maybe we could be friends!”

Mike leaned forward, voice gentle but firm—the same tone he used when helping a lost kid find their parents in the stacks.

“What do you want from us, little one? Really. No games for a second. Just the truth.”

She tilted her head against Beverly’s shoulder, considering the question like it was a hard math problem.

“You know… A performer can only grow if he listens to honest critiques. I know that, but Daddy might just be too old. Stuck in his ways…”

A pause. Small fingers played with a loose thread on Beverly’s coat.

“But we should still try to… help him… do better.”

Later still, she spoke again, nestling deeper.

“Last time you played with Daddy he was really grumpy. I think he still is. Then he becomes all mean to those around him. I think it’s because he never got along with his daddy, who liked his brother more than him. His daddy was all powerful and his brother… well, let’s just say he was a Testudine.”

For the barest instant her mouth stretched—wide, impossible, warping the air itself—directed at the darkness beyond the window where a single red balloon hovered.

The smile vanished. She winked at Beverly, cheeky and conspiratorial.

“You probably shouldn’t play with him anymore for a while. If you feed him, make sure it’s green. Don’t want to tempt him.”

The balloon popped—soft, wet, like a sigh. Red fragments dissolved before they touched the ground.

Beverly’s arms tightened around her. Protective. Not afraid.

“Then we’ll feed him greens,” she murmured. “For a while.”

She rested her chin lightly on the child’s head.

The child smiled, small and sleepy.

“Oh… Would you play a game with me?”

A low wooden table appeared between the couches—old, weathered, never there a moment before. On it: a deck of oversized cards, crimson-backed, gilded edges.

She shuffled with quick, delighted hands—waterfall, cascade, fan.

“I know some great games.”

To Beverly, beaming: “We’ll team. I’ll teach you.”

The cards were circus-themed, but wrong in subtle, crawling ways: balloons above toothed drains, silver trays of children’s hands, smiles stretching too wide, a miserable Punywise with lettuce stuck to his face.

Suits: Balloons, Teeth, Greasepaint, Deadlights.

The game was called See What’s Really There.

The rules were simple, and mercilessly honest.

Each player drew a card. On every card was a single sentence fragment—half-formed, open-ended.

You played the card face-up, then said aloud whether the statement was true for you, and why. The more ways it was true, the more deeply it rang, the more points she awarded. She kept score with tiny glowing motes of light that drifted above the table like fireflies, brighter and warmer the truer the confession.

The first card Richie pulled:

“I laugh because I’m afraid of what happens when I stop.”

He read it. Laughed once—short, sharp—then went quiet.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “All the time. Because if I don’t fill the silence, the things I really think might crawl out. And I’m not sure anyone wants to hear them.”

Two motes flared bright. She clapped softly.

Eddie’s card:

“I carry medicine because I’m terrified of needing it and finding it gone.”

He stared at the card a long time. Then, very quietly:

“Every day. Every single day.”

Three motes. The brightest yet.

Beverly drew:

“I protect others because no one protected me when I needed it most.”

She didn’t hesitate.

“Yes,” she said simply. “And I’ll keep doing it until the world runs out of people who need protecting.”

Five motes rose, slow and golden, circling her head like a crown before drifting back to the girl.

Just like that, they played for hours. Cards slid across the table. Truths spilled out in quiet voices. Some hurt. Some made them laugh through tears. And as the confessions deepened—as each of them spoke the things they had buried under twenty-seven years of forgetting—the memories returned.

Not in a single flood. In soft, patient waves.

Georgie’s laugh echoing off water.

The smell of the Barrens after rain.

Blood oaths in the clubhouse.

The taste of fear like old pennies.

The promise they made to come back.

One by one the fog lifted inside their heads until the room felt lighter, clearer, as though the air itself remembered how to breathe.

By the time the last card lay face-up on the table, the glowing motes had gathered into a soft, steady dome above them, warm as candlelight, and every Loser sat a little straighter, eyes wide with recognition. They remembered everything. The summer. The ritual. The Turtle. The deadlights. The promise.

Eventually she grew quiet.

Her head grew heavier against Beverly’s shoulder.

Her breathing slowed—deep, even, trusting.

The greasepaint seemed thinner now, almost gone in the dying firelight. The orange flecks in her eyes dimmed to ordinary brown.

She looked… ordinary.

Just a tired child who had played too hard. Who had trusted too easily. Who had fallen asleep in the arms of people she barely knew.

Beverly looked down and something long-buried softened in her face.

“She’s asleep,” she whispered.

Mike leaned forward. “She looks… human.”

Richie, voice low: “Yeah. Just… a kid.”

Eddie: “She’s breathing. Actually breathing.”

Beverly shifted carefully, cradling her more securely.

“I’m taking her upstairs,” she said. No one argued.

She carried the small weight up the creaking stairs to the guest bedroom at the end of the hall—the one with the soft quilt and the window overlooking the dark pines. The room was warm, lit only by a small lamp on the dresser.

Beverly laid the girl down gently, pulling the quilt up to her shoulders. For a moment she simply stood there, watching the slow rise and fall of the child’s chest.

Then she kicked off her shoes, slipped under the covers beside her, and turned off the lamp.

In the darkness, the girl stirred—half-asleep, instinctive.

She turned, small arms reaching out, and wrapped them around Beverly’s waist.

Her face pressed against Beverly’s collarbone.

A sleepy, murmured whisper, so soft it was almost lost in the quiet:

“I’ve missed you so much…”

Then she sighed, relaxed completely, and continued sleeping.

Beverly’s breath caught—just once.

She pressed her lips to the top of the child’s dark head.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered back.

Downstairs, the fire burned low.

The Losers sat in silence, listening to the house settle around them—fully awake to every memory, every scar, every promise.

For the first time in decades, the old Hanlon farmhouse felt full.