Presents

Derry, Maine – January 14, 1985 – 5:02 a.m.

Beneath the sleeping town, in the ancient spherical chamber of black water and dripping stone, the thing that wore the clown suit sat motionless.

The shallow pool lapped at the filthy hem of its red-and-white costume. Patches of wilted lettuce still clung to the ruff like faded decorations of war. Carrot shreds had lodged between the rows of needle teeth. Dark streaks of vinaigrette had dried into sticky trails across the white greasepaint, mingling with older blood and something blacker into patterns no human eye could name.

The deadlights behind the painted eyes burned low—narrow slits of sullen orange, turned inward. The conical hat cast its long shadow forward. The painted smile, though still torn at the corners and weeping black, had tightened into something quieter than theatricality. Contemplative.

For hours it had remained exactly like this: cross-legged, spine unnaturally rigid, gloved hands resting palm-up on its knees. No balloon. No hunt. No rage. Only patience—an old, cold patience older than the stone around it.

The air thickened.

A small weight settled suddenly onto its lap.

She appeared there—ordinary again. Dusk-blue dress faintly rumpled from sleep, dark hair falling forward across her face. No wig. No oversized hat. Only the stubborn traces of white greasepaint that still framed her eyes and mouth, refusing to be washed away completely.

Her small arms looped loosely around the filthy ruff. She rested her cheek against the torn fabric and spoke in the soft, tired murmur of a child who had only just woken.

“I met your friends, Daddy. They played with me too.”

A long silence followed. Pennywise did not twitch. The deadlights narrowed further, as though drinking the dim glow rather than giving it. The low, subsonic purr in its chest skipped once, then resumed—deeper, slower, listening.

She continued, voice barely above a whisper.

“I think, maybe, if you really try… they won’t be angry anymore. So be strong. Eat your salad.”

As the last word left her mouth, a simple white porcelain plate appeared between her small hands. On it lay another salad—fresh, defiant, almost mocking in its brightness. Crisp romaine leaves, halved cherry tomatoes, bright orange carrot shreds, cucumber slices arranged in a perfect flower. Golden vinaigrette glistened under the faint orange light of the deadlights.

She did not look at the clown.

She stared straight forward into the dripping darkness, eyes fixed on nothing.

Then her mouth moved.

The grin that spread across her face was slow. Deliberate. It stretched wider than any child’s mouth should allow—corners tearing upward in sharp, impossible arcs, splitting the remaining greasepaint, splitting the very air for the briefest instant. Reality flickered at the edges of that smile, bending like heat over summer asphalt, like the world briefly forgetting its own rules.

The grin was twisted.
Wrong.

Vast and amused and hungry beneath the little-girl mask.

It lasted only a second.

Then her face smoothed again—soft, sleepy, innocent. She sat quietly on its lap, holding the plate steady, staring ahead at nothing.

Pennywise still had not moved.

But the deadlights flared once—sharp, bright, searching—before narrowing again. The low purr grew wetter. Thoughtful.

One gloved hand lifted slowly from its knee. Longer than it had been a moment before. Fingers splayed. It hovered above her dark hair, as though deciding between stroking… or crushing.

The black water trembled, once, very faintly.

She spoke again, brighter now, encouraging, the way children cheer when someone is learning something new.

“You can do it, Daddy.”

Then she hopped off—light and effortless. Bare feet made no sound on the oily surface of the pool. She set the porcelain plate carefully in the center of its lap, right among the old lettuce patches, like an offering no one had asked for.

She turned.

She hopped once, twice, three times toward the rough-hewn tunnel that served as the chamber’s only exit. Each bounce was playful, almost skipping. The dusk-blue dress fluttered around her knees.

As she moved away, she began to sing.

Her voice was high, lilting, child-sweet—carrying through the dripping dark like a lullaby that had taken a wrong turn:

“The itsy bitsy spider ate a carrot round,
Up came the cucumber and he chomped it down.
Out came the lettuce and he munched it slow,

The itsy bitsy spider ate a salad, ho-ho-ho!”

She kept hopping, voice echoing off wet stone:

“The itsy bitsy spider found some broccoli trees,
Gobbled up the greens and said ‘Please sir, more peas!’
Tomatoes red and shiny, he popped them one by one,

The itsy bitsy spider said ‘Yum yum, this is fun!’”

Just before she reached the mouth of the tunnel, she paused.

She looked back over her shoulder.

And very softly, almost shyly, she asked in that same childish voice:

“If you want, we can play outside together?”

The question hung in the air like a soap bubble.

Then the last note of her song lingered—bright, teasing—as she stepped into the tunnel.

One heartbeat.

Another.

Her mouth stretched again—only for an instant—into that wide, reality-bending grin. The air warped. The black water rippled backward. The deadlights flickered like film skipping frames.

Then she was gone.

Not a fade.
Not a pop.

Just… absence.

The tunnel mouth stood empty.

The chamber was empty of everything except the clown, the untouched salad, and the slow drip-drip-drip from the unseen ceiling.

Pennywise did not move.

The porcelain plate rested on its lap. A single cherry tomato rolled gently to the edge and stopped. Vinaigrette pooled at the bottom like liquid gold.

One gloved finger lifted.

Traced the rim of the plate.

It did not eat.

It simply stared at the tunnel where she had disappeared.

The deadlights narrowed to slits.

The low purr in its chest deepened—slowed—became something that might almost have been a chuckle, if chuckles could be made of centuries and teeth.

Somewhere far above, in a quiet house on Straphammer Street, seven people slept on, unaware.

The night was still.

The salad waited.

And the ancient thing in the clown suit sat alone in the dark, listening to the echo of a child’s song about vegetables… and smiling just a little wider than it had before.

Derry, Maine – January 14, 1985 – 7:12 a.m.

The first pale light of winter crept through the half-drawn curtains, turning the living room into something soft and unreal—gray shadows edged with gold. Snow had fallen silently through the night and stopped sometime before dawn. Outside, the world lay hushed beneath a fresh white shroud, every sound swallowed.

Beverly Marsh woke first.

She knew the child was gone before her eyes were fully open, before the room swam back into focus. The small, warm weight that had been pressed against her ribs all night had vanished. The quilt still held the shape of a tiny body, the cotton still radiated faint heat, but the space beside her was empty. No small fingers curled in the hem of her sweater. No gentle rise and fall of breath against her collarbone. Only the ghost of clean laundry and something sweeter—carnival popcorn, cotton candy, a dream that had slipped away while she slept.

She sat up slowly, the quilt pooling around her waist.

The others stirred in pieces: Richie first, mumbling curses into the crook of his elbow as he rubbed sleep from his eyes; Eddie already bolt upright, hair standing in wild tufts, looking around like a man expecting ambush; Bill blinking against the light, mouth half-open in the shape of a question he hadn’t yet voiced.

Richie’s voice cracked the quiet. “Where’s the kid? Did we… did we dream the whole damn thing?”

Eddie’s answer came fast, almost sharp. “She was here. We all saw her.”

Beverly said nothing. Her gaze had already found the small wooden coffee table that had not existed before last night’s impossible card game. It stood exactly where it had appeared—solid, ordinary, and utterly wrong.

On its surface, arranged in a careful semicircle, lay seven small packages. Each one was wrapped in plain brown kraft paper and tied with the same thin lavender ribbon. A tiny name tag dangled from every bow, the handwriting round and looping, unmistakably childlike—the same hand that had scrawled the salad note days before.

The tags read, one by one:

Mike
Bill
Richie
Eddie
Stan
Ben
Beverly

No one moved at first. The room held its breath.

Then Mike Hanlon stepped forward—slow, deliberate, the way he always moved when the world felt fragile. He lifted the package with his name. The ribbon came away easily. Inside lay a small, polished fragment of turtle shell, ancient and smooth as river stone, the size of a quarter. A thin leather cord had been threaded through it. Beside the shell hung a miniature silver charm: a turtle, head raised, tiny eyes glinting with knowing patience.

Mike’s voice was barely above a whisper. “The Turtle. Maturin.”

He looked up at the others, something soft and stunned in his expression. “She left us… luck charms.”

They opened them one at a time, almost reverently.

Bill’s gift was a silver keychain shaped like a paper boat, small enough to slip into a pocket. The edges were etched with faint protective runes that had never been there when they were children.

Richie received a tiny rubber chicken wearing miniature eyeglasses—an absurd, perfect joke, the kind of ward only he would recognize as serious magic.

Eddie found a small medicine bottle charm, empty and clean, sealed with a cork stopper. A silver turtle was embossed on the glass—protection against poison, against anything that tried to crawl inside and make a home there.

Stan’s package held a delicate silver birdcage pendant, no bigger than a dime. A single tiny sparrow sat inside, and when the morning light struck it just right, the bird seemed to shift, wings half-lifted, as though about to take flight. Freedom. Safety. The promise that birds always see what’s coming.

Ben opened his to reveal a miniature architect’s compass of silver. The needle trembled, then steadied, always pointing toward a tiny engraved turtle shell at the center. Home. Foundation. The thing that holds everything together.

Beverly was last.

Her fingers shook as she untied the lavender ribbon. The paper fell away to reveal a fine silver chain and, hanging from it, a star-shaped pendant of cyan amethyst. The stone caught the weak winter sun and scattered soft purple-blue sparks across the walls, the ceiling, the faces of her friends—like fragments of the night sky caught and made gentle.

She turned the pendant over.

On the back, scratched in the tiniest possible script, were the words:

For my favorite star

♡

Beverly’s breath hitched. She pressed the stone to her lips and held it there, eyes closed, for a long moment.

The room was very still.

Then Richie’s voice came, thick and rough. “She’s gone.”

Ben answered quietly. “But she left us… this.”

Mike’s gaze moved from gift to gift. “She left us reminders. That we’re not alone. That someone—something—still believes in us.”

Bill’s whisper barely carried. “She’s still out there.”

Stan nodded once. “And she’ll come back when she’s ready.”

Beverly said nothing at all.

She simply lifted the chain and fastened it around her throat. The cyan star settled cool against her skin, resting exactly over her heart.

It was only then that Bill noticed the small folded note tucked beneath Bev’s gift, half-hidden by the curling edge of brown paper. He reached for it. The handwriting was the same—big, round, unmistakably a child’s.

The message read:

Thank you for playing.

You should stay ‘safely’ here today

and spend some more time together.

♡

No one spoke after that.

Seven adults stood in a loose circle around a table that should not exist, each holding a small, strange, perfect gift from a child who had never quite been a child.

Outside, the snow glittered under the slowly rising sun.

Inside, something had changed.