Chapter 4

Glancing at Bill accusingly as she spoke, Maggie rubbed her wrist. “You have to forgive our ignorant friend. He has anger problems sometimes.”

Camilla nodded while Bill scowled at his clasped hands. He resided at the far end of the couch, hunched forward, elbows on his thighs, hands between his knees. Maggie perched at the edge of the next couch cushion over, an accusatory three-foot gap between them. Camilla sat huddled in the overstuffed chair.

“He’s an A-hole, too,” Maggie added defiantly. This made Gary chuckle, and Bill grunt disgustedly.

Gary had requisitioned the footstool from before Camilla’s chair and pushed it against the wall. He lounged on it, legs splayed before him, fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm either side. “So, who is this Stephen King person?” he questioned.

Ignoring Bill’s irritated snort, Camilla said: “It’s the pen name Bill took in 1966 to submit short stories for publication. He’d been submitting since 1964 and gotten rejected enough times under his real name, that he thought he’d give it a go under a name no one knew. It worked, he said, although he didn’t get accepted until 1967. I don’t remember the name of the story. I won’t tell you anything more than that, either. You told me not to, if the subject ever came up, Bill.” She grinned again at his irritated glance.

“Come on,” Gary said. “You have to admit something weird is going on here, Big Bill.”

Bill grunted: “Excuse me for saying this, Camilla—if that’s your real name—but--”

“—she’s delusional?” Gary cut in. He laughed at Bill’s resulting glare of irritation.

“I was going to say you probably suffered a head injury of some kind.” Maggie and Gary had delivered a synopsis of the afternoon’s events. “We really ought to take you upstairs to Gary’s mom and dad and let them handle this business.”

“Oh, great idea, Matie. First rate. Normally I’d recommend an idea of that caliber for the Queen’s Award for Excellence in Representational Thinking, but you know...” He shrugged, grinning. “I give it a lesser Raspberry Award, instead.”

Maggie gigged at his obscene rendering of a tremendous fart. “A-hole,” she said delightedly, then sobered at Bill’s withering look. “Maybe we should check her head,” she ventured. “That would be the sensible thing to do, given the circumstances. Not that I don’t believe you, Camilla,” she added hastily. “Because I do. I don’t know why, you know, but I do.” She shrugged apologetically.

“I didn’t hit my head. I don’t have any knots on it, either, because I checked it myself,” She turned to her first cousin, once removed. “Tell us about Derry, Bill.”

Bill tightened his shoulders, and the grip on his interleaved fingers. He grunted something unintelligible, and then glanced from one to the other, not meeting their eyes. His three companions stared at him questioningly, Gary and Maggie shooting Camilla the occasional, anxious glance.

“No way I believe you’re from 2019,” he said.

“You didn’t believe in IT either,” she responded evenly. “Even after you saw it.”

Bill looked at her sharply. Unlike before, however, he didn’t deny the beast’s existence.

“It took weeks, months even, before you finally believed the thing really existed. By then, of course, a bunch of kids were dead, weren’t they, Bill? Seven of them, is what you wrote in the book.” She’d guessed that her famous cousin would alter the names of IT’s 1957 and 1958 victims, as well as those of his friends and Marshall, New Hampshire; so, reciting the four names she remembered would do no good. “You don’t want anyone else to die, do you, Bill?”

She flinched at his reaction to her cheap shot but plowed on regardless. “Because that’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t stop denying what’s right in front of you and open your eyes!” She yanked up her legs and tucked her feet defensively beneath her as Bill launched off the couch, fists bunched in anger.

“That wasn’t my fault!” he hissed. “It wasn’t any of our faults! Who’d believe a monster out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales could exist in southern New Hampshire! Even when we did finally believe it, nobody in this town was gonna help us. It’s cursed! It’s always been cursed from that thing!”

“You mean the willingness of adults to look away when something horrible is happening right in front of their eyes?”

Though seething, Bill blinked at her unexpected insight into the failings of Marshall’s adult inhabitants.

“You’ve written about the battle, already, I bet. You hinted that you had when you came to my house in 2011 but wouldn’t come right out and admit it. All you said was that by the time IT reawakened in 1984, the 1958 parts of the book were finished. That’s why you were able to publish the story only two years later. Only...”

“Only what?” Gary said, sitting up, and cocking his head. A twinkle in his eye and a twist of his lips told Camilla that he had something to question her about, something contradictory to her claims.

“What?” she demanded.

“Uh-uh. Answer my question first, Camilla.”

Eyeing him uncertainly, she said: “It didn’t end in 1985 like you thought it did when you published the book, Bill. You and the others forgot again, and when the cycle of child-killings restarted in 2011, it caught you by surprise. You didn’t kill IT in 1985 like you thought you did. That’s why you came to my house in June 2011; you were on your way back to Marshall to face it a last time. You wanted someone other than you and the Misfits to know the truth. You came to me...” She blinked slowly. “ ... because I’m family, you said. Only, there’s more to it than that. For one thing, you never said anything about time travel, yet here I am in 1963.” She cocked her head. “What hole do you want to shoot in my story, Gary?”