Rusty Doors

Derry, Maine – January 24, 1985 – 4:37 p.m.

The Derry Public Library was empty except for the hum of the ancient furnace and the occasional creak of old wood settling. Mike Hanlon had claimed the small research room at the back of the second floor — the same cramped space he’d used since he was seventeen. The table was covered: yellow legal pads filled with dates and patterns, photocopied clippings from 1740–43, 1851, 1876–77, 1904–06, 1929–30, and the full run of 1958. Fresh notes from the past few weeks of January 1985 spilled across the edges. A single desk lamp threw a warm circle over the mess; the rest of the room stayed dim.

He was cross-referencing again — trying to map the new interruptions against every old cycle he could trace. The Punywise cartoons. The salad motifs. The cyan balloons. The way children who should have floated were walking home instead. He flipped back to the oldest files first — 1740, the Black Spot fire, whispers of a “blue light” in the smoke; 1851, the logging camp where a boy claimed a “lady in blue” pulled him from the river; 1877, a child found alive in the canal after three days, babbling about a “blue lady” who sang him home. Nothing conclusive, but echoes. Patterns that might mean something now.

He drew red circles on the current pad: January 11 (Maya Torres saved at the mill), January 17 (Theo Grayson and the black bird), January 20 (Henry Bowers returned broken to Juniper Hill). Then he connected them to 1958 — the summer the Losers thought they’d ended it for good.

Mike rubbed his eyes. The older cycles stared back at him like ghosts. If something like her had ever appeared before, it hadn’t lasted. Or maybe it had, and the town just forgot.

He leaned back in the creaking chair. The lamp flickered once, as though the room itself were listening.

In the margin he wrote one word in small, careful letters:

Stella.

He exhaled through his nose, rubbed his eyes, and leaned back in the wooden chair.

That was when he heard it.

A whisper — soft, intimate, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“She’ll eat you, Mikey… unless I eat you first.”

The voice was layered: clownish glee over something older, wetter, tasting every syllable like candy laced with rust.

Mike did not flinch. He closed the legal pad slowly. Set his pen down. Turned his head toward the sound.

The closet door at the far wall — narrow, always locked, used for old card catalogs no one had touched in decades — stood ajar.

Inside: darkness. And then a white face bloomed in it.

Pennywise crouched in the narrow space — knees bent backward, spine arched, conical hat brushing the top frame. The greasepaint was smeared with something dark; the ruff hung in wet tatters. Orange deadlights glowed low and hungry.

Mike met them without blinking.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he said quietly. “Not anymore.”

The clown’s smile stretched — wider, wider — corners tearing small wet rips in the white.

“Oh, but you will be.”

One gloved hand — too long, joints cracking — reached for the doorframe. The other pressed against the inside wall, pushing. The closet groaned; wood splintered faintly at the hinges. The deadlights flared brighter, orange light spilling across the floorboards like spilled paint.

Mike stood. Slowly. Hands loose at his sides.

Then — sudden as a snapped string — she was there.

Stella appeared between Mike and the closet — small, barefoot in her dusk-blue dress, dark hair loose. No sound. No swirl of air. Just presence.

She planted both hands against the closet door and pushed — hard, determined, tiny shoulders straining.

“Bad clown,” she said. Voice high, clear, almost cheerful — but edged with something unbreakable. “You don’t get to come out.”

Pennywise froze. The deadlights narrowed to furious slits.

Stella looked over her shoulder at Mike — eyes wide, brown, pleading in the most ordinary child way.

“Help me push?” she asked sweetly. “I think the door’s a bit rusty.”

Mike hesitated — only a heartbeat.

Then he stepped forward. Placed his palms beside hers on the wood. Pushed.

The door groaned louder. Hinges squealed. Pennywise snarled — low, wet, furious — but the opening shrank. The orange glow dimmed. The gloved hand clawed once at the narrowing gap, then withdrew.

With a final, protesting creak, the door slammed shut.

Silence.

Mike exhaled — long, shaky. He looked down at Stella.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he said quietly.

She turned to face him fully. Snow still clung to the hem of her dress — fresh, impossible.

“I wasn’t,” she answered simply.

They stood there a moment — the lamp’s circle catching dust motes between them.

Mike crouched so they were eye-level.

“You pushed him back,” he said. Not a question.

Stella nodded once. Small fists still clenched at her sides.

Mike studied her face — the faint freckles across her nose, the way her lower lip trembled just a little.

“You’re getting stronger,” he said carefully.

She tilted her head, gave a small, lopsided smile — almost mischievous.

“I ate my vegetables,” she said solemnly.

Mike blinked.

Then — despite everything — the corner of his mouth twitched.

Stella giggled — soft, real — but it faded fast.

“I’m trying to be good,” she added quieter. “Extra good. So the door stays shut.”

Mike nodded slowly.

He glanced once at the closet — still silent, still closed — then back to her.

“We’ve done this before,” he said. “All of us. Twenty-seven years ago. We faced him. We hurt him. We thought we won.”

Stella’s smile slipped a fraction.

Mike kept his voice even. “There’s a ritual. Old. Called Chüd. It’s… not easy. It’s dangerous. But it might be the only way to make sure he never comes back out again. Not in Derry. Not anywhere.”

She looked down at her bare feet. Toes curled against the cold floorboards.

“You want to open the cage,” she whispered.

Mike exhaled through his nose.

“We want him gone,” he corrected gently. “For good.”

Stella was quiet a long moment.

Then — slowly — the child posture changed.

Her shoulders straightened. Her head lifted. The wide-eyed innocence receded like water draining from a basin. When she spoke again, her voice was no longer high and bright.

It was layered.

Ancient.

A child’s timbre underneath an old woman’s rasp underneath something vast and metallic grinding against bone.

“If you take a bird out of his cage…”

She paused. The lamp flickered once — not from a power surge, but as though the room itself had inhaled.

“…send him away…”

Her eyes — still brown — held no child in them now. Only centuries.

“He may come back.”

Mike felt the air thicken. Not cold. Heavy.

“But will he go back into the cage?”

She stepped closer — one small barefoot step — and the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to lean in to listen.

“This town…” she continued, voice dropping to a near-whisper that somehow filled the entire library, “…this place… is his cage. Derry keeps him small. Keeps him here.”

A long, slow breath — not hers, but the room’s.

“If you cast him out — if Chüd burns the tether — he’ll be gone. For a while. But when he finds his way back, he’ll be on the other side of the bars.”

Her head tilted — not childlike curiosity, but something predatory remembering its own hunger.

“He will be… everywhere.”

Silence stretched between them.

The closet door remained shut.

Stella blinked — once, twice — and the ancient weight lifted. The child slipped back into her eyes like a mask settling into place.

She looked up at him — eyes wide, hopeful, but still carrying the echo of centuries.

“I like Derry,” she said softly. “It’s small. It’s safe. It has cocoa and snowmen and you guys.”

Mike smiled — small, real.

“Then we’ll keep it that way,” he told her. “One day at a time.”

She nodded — small, certain — then her lower lip pushed out in a dramatic pout. She crossed her arms tight across her chest.

“Let’s give Daddy some time to get used to his new diet,” she said, voice mulish. “But if he cheats… I’ll be real mad and he’ll be sorry.”

Mike raised an eyebrow, gentle.

“Real mad?” he asked.

Stella stomped one bare foot — tiny, theatrical — and pointed one small finger at the closed closet door like she was scolding a naughty puppy.

“Yeah! Super mad! And then…” She leaned in, voice dropping to a fierce whisper. “…he’ll be sorry.”

Mike exhaled slowly.

He crouched again — eye-level — and rested both hands on her shoulders.

“I’ve got you,” he said simply. “We all do.”

Stella’s face brightened — just a little — and she threw her arms around his neck in a sudden, fierce hug. Mike hugged her back — careful, steady.

When she pulled away, she was smiling again — brighter, but still a little sad.

“Can we go home now?” she asked. “I didn’t tell Bev I left. She’ll worry.”

Mike stood, squeezed her fingers.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

They walked out together — small hand in his large one — past the closed closet door.

It stayed shut.

But as they reached the top of the stairs, a single red balloon — faint, almost transparent — drifted past the hallway window.

It did not stop.

It simply floated upward — slow, deliberate — into the falling snow.

And vanished.

Derry, Maine – January 24, 1985 – 5:01 p.m.

They reached the farmhouse just as the front door flew open.

Bev stood there — wooden spoon in one hand, apron dusted with cocoa powder, cheeks flushed from the stove heat. Her eyes were wide with the kind of worry that had aged her ten years in twenty minutes.

“Stella—”

Stella let go of Mike’s hand and ran — bare feet kicking snow — straight into Bev’s arms.

Bev dropped to her knees on the threshold, hugging her tight, spoon clattering forgotten onto the porch boards.

“One moment we were cooking together,” Bev whispered, voice thick and shaking, “then you were gone. I turned around and… nothing. I thought—”

“I’m sorry,” Stella mumbled into her shoulder, small fists knotted in Bev’s sweater. “I wanted to play with Mike for a bit. I should have told you.”

Bev pulled back just enough to cup Stella’s face — thumbs brushing cold cheeks, searching her eyes.

“You scared me, little star,” she said softly. “Don’t do that again. Promise?”

Stella nodded — quick, earnest — then glanced up at Mike over Bev’s shoulder.

Mike stepped closer, voice low but steady.

“She saved me from It,” he said simply.

Bev froze for half a heartbeat. Her arms tightened around Stella again — protective, fierce.

Then she exhaled shakily, pressed a kiss to the top of Stella’s head.

“Inside,” she said. “Both of you. Cocoa’s still hot… and you’re getting seconds. Extra marshmallows.”

Stella’s face lit up — small, relieved — and she took Bev’s hand with one of hers, reaching back for Mike with the other.

The three of them stepped over the threshold together.

The door closed behind them — soft click.