He got up and walked over to the stormdrain. He dropped to his knees and peered in. The water made a dank hollow sound as it fell into the darkness. It was a spooky sound. It reminded him of
Huh! The sound was jerked out of him as if on a string, and he recoiled.
There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in the basement. Its an animal, he thought incoherently, thats all it is, some animal, maybe a housecat that got stuck down in there
Still, he was ready to run would run in a second or two, when his mental switchboard had dealt with the shock those two shiny yellow eyes had given him. He felt the rough surface of the macadam under his fingers, and the thin sheet of cold water flowing around them. He saw himself getting up and backing away, and that was when a voice a perfectly reasonable and rather pleasant voice spoke to him from inside the stormdrain.
Hi, Georgie, it said.
George blinked and looked again. He could barely credit what he saw; it was like something from a made-up story, or a movie where you know the animals will talk and dance. If he had been ten years older, he would not have believed what he was seeing, but he was not sixteen. He was six.
There was a clown in the stormdrain. The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that George Denbrough was sure of what he was seeing. It was a clown, like in the circus or on TV. In fact he looked like a cross between Bozo and Clarabell, who talked by honking his (or was it her? George was never really sure of the gender) horn on Howdy Doody Saturday mornings Buffalo Bob was just about the only one who could understand Clarabell, and that always cracked George up. The face of the clown in the stormdrain was white, there were funny tufts of red hair on either side of his bald head, and there was a big clown-smile painted over his mouth. If George had been inhabiting a later year, he would have surely thought of Ronald McDonald before Bozo or Clarabell.
The clown held a bunch of balloons, all colors, like gorgeous ripe fruit in one hand.
In the other he held Georges newspaper boat.
Want your boat, Georgie? The clown smiled.
George smiled back. He couldnt help it; it was the kind of smile you just had to answer. I sure do, he said.
The clown laughed. I sure do. Thats good! Thats very good! And how about a balloon?
Well ... sure! He reached forward ... and then drew his hand reluctantly back. Im not supposed to take stuff from strangers. My dad said so.
Very wise of your dad, the clown in the stormdrain said, smiling. How, George wondered, could I have thought his eyes were yellow? They were a bright, dancing blue, the color of his moms eyes, and Bills. Very wise indeed. Therefore I will introduce myself. I, Georgie, am Mr. Bob Gray, also known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise, meet George Denbrough. George, meet Pennywise. And now we know each other. Im not a stranger to you, and youre not a stranger to me. Kee-rect?
George giggled. I guess so. He reached forward again ... and drew his hand back again. How did you get down there? Storm just bleeeew me away, Pennywise the Dancing Clown said. It blew the whole circus away. Can you smell the circus, Georgie?
George leaned forward. Suddenly he could smell peanuts! Hot roasted peanuts! And vinegar! The white kind you put on your french fries through a hole in the cap! He could smell cotton candy and frying doughboys and the faint but thunderous odor of wild-animal ****. He could smell the cheery aroma of midway sawdust. And yet ...
And yet under it all was the smell of flood and decomposing leaves and dark stormdrain shadows. That smell was wet and rotten. The cellar-smell.
But the other smells were stronger.
You bet I can smell it, he said.
Want your boat, Georgie? Pennywise asked. I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager. He held it up, smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore.
Yes, sure, George said, looking into the stormdrain.
And a balloon? Ive got red and green and yellow and blue...
Do they float?
Float? The clowns grin widened. Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And theres cotton candy...
George reached.
The clown seized his arm.
And George saw the clowns face change.
What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke.
They float, the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held Georges arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or bolted out onto their porches.
They float, it growled, they float, Georgie, and when youre down here with me, youll float, too
Georges shoulder socked against the cement of the curb and Dave Gardener, who had stayed home from his job at The Shoeboat that day because of the flood, saw only a small boy in a yellow rainslicker, a small boy who was screaming and writhing in the gutter with muddy water surfing over his face and making his screams sound bubbly.
Everything down here floats, that chuckling, rotten voice whispered, and suddenly there was a ripping noise and a flaring sheet of agony, and George Denbrough knew no more.
Dave Gardener was the first to get there, and although he arrived only forty-five seconds after the first scream, George Denbrough was already dead. Gardener grabbed him by the back of the slicker, pulled him into the street ... and began to scream himself as Georges body turned over in his hands. The left side of Georges slicker was now bright red. Blood flowed into the stormdrain from the tattered hole where the left arm had been. A knob of bone, horribly bright, peeked through the torn cloth.
The boys eyes stared up into the white sky, and as Dave staggered away toward the others already running pell-mell down the street, they began to fill up with rain.
