IT'S - Chapter 1

"After the Flood, Before the Preface, and During the Intermission" - (Dan Culberson)

It was not exactly a dark and stormy night, but it was certainly a "real frog-strangler."

Danny Culberson knew that the term "frog-strangler" was not well known to his classmates in Boulder, but what did he care? He had learned it from his parents, both born and bred, or possibly even reared in Texas, where, perhaps, frogs really did get strangled from the water in gullywashers, which was another Texas term, and he was proud of his heritage. No, not the magazine! His background!

Section 1: "The Horror"

At any rate, Danny lay (laid?) in his bed and listened to the rain fall on the roof and drive against the panes in his bedroom windows, which didn't come anywhere near matching the pains in his heart.

Danny, you see, was suffering from love-sickness. The girl he had given his ring to -- the one he had bought at the corner drugstore for 50 cents just for the occasion -- Cherylann, had returned it to him at school that day and told him she could not go to the sock hop with him Saturday night. This was 1961, you see, when schools still had "sock hops" -- dances at the school gymnasium where everyone had to take his or her or its (if need be) shoes off in order to protect the basketball floor from shoe scuffs. Consequently, everyone danced in their (it is easier this way, isn't it?) socks and voila! "sock hop.".

(Danny imagined this new style of sentence-ending punctuation, which allows Americans, Brits and/or Canucks to choose the one they want.)

But I digress. Who am I, you may well ask, as well you may? Well, I am the omniscient narrator, who comes and goes like a bad dream, who sails in and out of stories like the Wandering Dutchman, the Flying Jew, the Great Bambino.

Wait a minute! you say? You thought omniscient narrators were omniscient third-person narrators! you say? Is that what you say? Well, I am an omniscient first-person narrator, I say. Or maybe not.

But I digress again.

Danny reclined in his bed, was supine, was stretched out on his back, his heart not literally broken, to coin a figurative figure of speech, and listened to the falling raindrops, wishing that he was well enough to go outside and write a song about raindrops falling on his head, so he could make a million dollars and never ever have to go to work for IBM.

He thought, he ruminated, he imagined, he let his imaginings go flying about the room and his head, but that slowed down the story, and he stopped thinking. Get on with the story, I yelled. People are waiting, time's a-wasting, and little children are starving in India!

"I thought they were starving in China," Danny said.

Whatever suits the times or dresses up the story.

But I digress again again.

Danny couldn't help but think about his best friends, who called themselves collectively The Winners Club, wondering what they were doing right now. Of course, their first argument had almost split them apart when they debated whether "Winners" should have an apostrophe, and, if so, should it be "Winner's" or "Winners'.". Danny had quieted them by saying, "Look, does it really matter? Isn't the point of our club to have fun? Is our friendship worth being lost over a stupid little punctuation mark?"

Danny's best friends in The Winners Club were a strange lot -- "strange" like in unique, not "strange" like in odd. They were odd, however, because they numbered nine. Also, because Johnny insisted that they capitalize the "The" in The Winners Club just like the "The" in The New York Times. "It's classy," Johnny had said, "and we could use some class." "CLASS!" Dave had cried. "Did I miss something in class?" "No, Dear," Delores had comforted him, as she always had done. "Now, please, everybody," she had added, "let Danny finish the story."

Evie was the only girl, except for Delores, of course, who joined the club after it had already been formed and named. Evie wasn't even born yet, but that was okay with the guys. They let her be a member of the club, anyway, and not because of any women's libber leanings, which had not yet even gained the momentum and respectability that it would in years to come, and it was a good thing they had, because that paved the way, greased the wheels, oiled the springs, and boiled the water for Delores to join, too. Even though Evie was the youngest, she could still fling words with the best and worst of them. Evie loved to solve problems and always said, "How can I make this do what I want it to do?" to which Danny always answered, "I don't know -- how can you?" They would repeat this routine ad nauseum until finally one of the other boys -- usually Lenbie -- would shout good naturedly, "Oh, shut up!" Evie also loved words; books; needlework; gardening; cooking, as long as someone else did the dishes; films; computers, even though they had just barely been invented; and music.

Lenbie was the cut-up, the droll troll. He was the only one shaving yet, even though he didn't have much of a beard to shave, and he loved to crack everybody up by talking with a foreign accent. He said he was going to live in Holland some day, even though he didn't even know what language they spoke in Holland. Lenbie collected spiders and loved bikes, languages, history, bookmarks, but especially he loved mordant parody, sarcasm, spiteful invective, irony, and pointed sticks. Actually, it was pointed mockery he loved, not pointed sticks, but if he had loved pointed sticks and had had the time and talent to write a sketch about pointed sticks, Lenbie might have had the honor to precede "Monty Python's Flying Circus," which, of course, no one had known about back then. Such is the tickleness of time, which flies like an arrow.

This is getting boring, I said. Are you going to spend this much time on everyone in The Winners Club?

"Wait a minute!" Danny cried out from his bed. "You're the one writing about my friends! You're the one slowing down the story!"

Oh, all right, then. Okay, just to speed things up, the rest of The Winners Club consisted of, comprised, and were composed of Bobby, Angus, Dave, Warwick, Delores, and Johnny. They will just have to wait their turn and chapter to be fleshed out -- so to speak -- before.

Before what?

... Well, just before.

Part 2: "The Thing"

Anyway, the nine friends had been inseparable that summer, but they knew it couldn't last. Childhood was not forever, just as love was never having to say you were sorry. They had to grow up. They had to spread their wings and leave the nest. They had to leave Boulder. They had to lead their own lives separate from The Winners Club(R). Danny had thought of the idea of registering their club name as a trademark, but Johnny had thought that was stupid. "Who's going to care, anyway?" he had said.

So, Danny lay in his bed listening to the rain and tried not to think of Cherylann, which he was having about as much success of doing as lying there trying not to think of a white elephant.

"How could she do that?" he thought. "How could she give me back my ring? How could she give me back my ring that I paid 50 cents for?"

"For which you paid 50 cents."

Danny froze. Had someone actually said that? Was he imagining an old woman's voice in his room coming from the dark? Were there really monsters under the bed and/or hiding in the closet?

"Never end a sentence with a preposition."

"Who is that?" Danny said, although his voice was muffled by the covers he had pulled over his head.

"No," the voice corrected. "'Who are you?' is proper. 'Who is that?' is improper."

Danny's heart was beating fast, faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. . . . It was racing faster than a stop watch. "Why do you start a stop watch?" Danny thought and wanted to laugh at the joke, but he was too scared. His heart raced on.

And so did Danny. He leaped out of bed and ran from the bedroom, slamming the door behind him in the vain chance that the "thing" would be trapped inside, that the "it," whatever IT was, would leave him alone, that he would never hear IT'S chilling voice again. Danny stopped alive in his tracks. "Should that be 'ITS'," he thought?

Danny wanted to run outside to escape IT, but that would have been silly. It was raining outside and he was in his pyjamas. Or, should that be "pajamas"? He could never remember, and that might have been why he stopped wearing them altogether and after he grew up slept in the altogether.

"What's the matter? Why are you running?"

Danny froze like a worn-out engine. He literally stopped like a nonrunning stopwatch. The voice was different, but it still shouldn't have been there. Danny was alone in the house -- except for any odd monsters, of course. His parents were out of town, having left right after his grandmother's death to attend her funeral. In other words, Danny was home alone, too.

"What's the matter?" Richie Evans asked again.

"Richie!" Danny almost shouted. "What are you doing here?"

"I came over to see if you wanted to go cruising for girls. I heard you got the shaft from Cherylann. I knocked on the door, but nobody answered, so I let myself in, 'cause I figured you'd be here if the door was unlocked."

"Richie! Something is in my bedroom!"

"Sure," Richie joked. "I've seen your bedroom. Lots of things are in it."

"No! No! I mean, some thing is in there! I heard a voice!"

"Hearing voices again, are we?" Richie joked. "That sort of thing is going to get you into trouble in the future."

"No! I mean it! I heard a woman's voice in my bedroom in the dark!"

"Oh? Say, you don't mess around, do you? You break up today with Cherylann and already you've got another woman in the bedroom with you. That's what I call moving!"

"That's what I call so far off base you're out in left field! I don't have a woman in there, and, besides, she's an old woman! At least, she sounds like an old woman, maybe even 30."

"Say no more! Say no more! Nudge, nudge! Wait until the guys hear this!"

"No!" Danny cried. "Don't tell anyone, okay, Richie? I mean it. I mean, 'I mean it there's something in my bedroom.' I was lying in the dark in my bed, and she read my thoughts. She answered my thoughts. She corrected my English!"

"Yeah, sure. Say, uh, you couldn't have been dreaming, could you?"

Danny thought.

"You couldn't have been asleep and dreamed that you heard a voice, could you?"

"But it was so real, I'm sure I was awake."

"You couldn't have been asleep and dreamed that you were awake and heard a voice, could you?"

Danny felt foolish.

"You mean, I was dreaming I was awake, and I heard a voice in my dream that I thought was in my awake and it scared me awake out of my dream? But, what if I was dreaming I was dreaming I was awake and I heard a voice in my awake? Would I really be awake? Or would I still be dreaming? Nevermind. I guess you're right."

"Of course, I'm right. You just had a bad dream, brought on, no doubt, by the unfortunate experience of breaking up with Cherylann. And I can see that you are in no condition to go cruising for girls -- that is to say, in your pajamas -- so I'll just go on home. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah, you're right. I'll see you tomorrow."

Richie waved and left by the front door. Danny never saw him again.

Piece 3: "The Blob"

Now, here Richie was, walking through the rain down the left side of Mapleton Avenue. He was walking fast but the water was going faster, and a leaf that he was watching was pulling ahead. He heard a deepening roar and saw that 50 yards farther down the hill the water in the gutter was cascading into a stormdrain that was still open. It was a long dark hole cut into the curbing, and as Richie watched in the dim light of the streetlamp, the leaf, a golden aspen leaf glistening with foolish hope for the future in a personification sort of way, shot into the stormdrain's maw. It hung on the edge for a moment and then slipped down inside. The glistening, the hope, the personification, and the leaf was no more.

"Oh bugger!" he yelled, using a term he had picked up from one of his favorite movies, a British comedy about the carryings on of doctors and nurses.

He put on speed, and for a moment he thought he could save the leaf. Then one of his feet slipped and he went sprawling, skinning one knee and crying out in pain. From his new pavement-level perspective he watched another aspen leaf swing around twice, momentarily caught in another whirlpool, and then disappear.

"Oh bugger!" he yelled again, "And bloody hell!" He slammed his fist down on the pavement. That hurt, too, and he began to cry a little. What a stupid thing to do!

Richie got up and walked over to the stormdrain. He dropped to his knees, favoring the one that was skinned and throbbing, 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 through his slit throat, and he recoiled.

There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in his basement. It's an animal, he thought incoherently, that's all it is, some animal, somebody's cat that got stuck down in there--.

"Hi, Richie."

Richie blinked and looked again. He could barely believe what he saw; it was like something from one of Danny's made-up stories, or a movie where you know the monsters are not real, but you are frightened, anyway.

There was a little old woman in the stormdrain, and she was made up to look like a clown. The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that Richard Evans was sure of what he was seeing. He was looking down into a dark stormdrain at a little old lady dressed up like a clown, a clown in the circus or on TV.

And she was holding a bunch of balloons, all colors, like blazing Crayola-colored, bulging apostrophes, commas, and single quotation marks in one hand.

In the other she held the aspen leaf.

"Want the leaf?" She smiled.

Richie smiled back. He couldn't help it; it was the kind of smile you just had to answer. "Not really," he said.

The clown laughed. "'Not really.' That's good! That's very good! Want a balloon?"

"Well. . . sure!" He reached forward... and then drew his hand reluctantly back. "Why do those balloons look like punctuation marks?"

"Very wise of you," the woman made up like a clown in the stormdrain said, smiling. How, Richie wondered, could I have thought her eyes were yellow? They were a bright dancing blue, the color of a Colorado mountain sky on a clear summer's day. "Very wise, indeed. Now let me introduce myself. I, Richie, am Miss Thistlebottom, also known as Poundfoolish the Laughing Clown. Miss Thistlebottom, meet Richie Evans. Richie Evans, meet Miss Thistlebottom. And now we know each other. Kee-rect?"

Richie giggled, even though he didn't want to. "I guess so." He reached forward for one of the balloons, not knowing if it was a comma, an apostrophe, or a quotation mark. . . and suddenly drew his hand back again. "How did you get down there?"

"Storm just bleeeew me away," Miss Thistlebottom said. "It blew the whole circus away. It blew the whole kit-and-kaboodle schoolroom away. Can you smell the schoolroom, Richie?"

Richie leaned forward. Suddenly he could smell chalkdust! Dusty chalky chalkdust! And erasers! The kind you clapped together to create chalkdust when you tried to be a teacher's pet and stayed after school to try to earn some brownie points or extra credit, or just a teacher's smile. He could smell dusty chalkboards and musty classrooms and the faint but striking odor of little boys and girls peeing in their pants and panties when they are not prepared for the teacher's questions and she unexpectantly calls on them. He could smell the flag in the corner. 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. Or, should that be the basement-smell?

"Whatever," Miss Thistlebottom said, answering his thought.

Richie started. "You bet I can smell it. Say, can you read minds?"

"Can you read minds?" she answered literally, appreciating her own little joke and mocking him as her face slowly turned into a horrible, heart-stopping, terrible mask."WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE? A "GYPSY"?"

The voice was terrifying. It roared out of the stormdrain like World War III. It thundered through him like a nuclear blast, the kind that melted the skin off the skeleton, leaving little bits of melting flesh dangling from the grinning skull, like a popular Steven Spielberg movie from the future come back to the past to haunt you.

"Want a balloon, Richie?" Miss Thistlebottom asked. "I only repeat myself, because you really do not seem that eager." She held them up, smiling. She was wearing a tweed suit with sensible shoes, all of which were anachronistically shined and polished and pressed even though being drenched with rainwater. But she was wearing a big red nose, and her face was painted with white greasepaint, and her lips were bright red, although she had missed the outline of her lips just enough to make her look foolish. More foolish than she already looked, that is. Maybe that was the "foolish" part of her Poundfoolish name, Richie thought.

"Yeah, sure," Richie said, looking into the stormdrain.

"Which one? I've got red and green and yellow and blue..."

"Do they float?"

"Float?" The clown-teacher's grin widened. "Oh, yes, indeed they do. They float! Indeedy deed they do."

Richie reached with his left arm.

The clown seized his downstretched arm.

And Richie saw the teacher's face change as she began to lecture him.

"Call me Miss Thistlebottom, Mr. Language Person, anything you want. Only know this: I am your worst insecurity. I am everything you dreaded in school. I am the term paper you put off until the last minute. I am the last essay question at the end of an easy true-false test. I am your worst language fear. Don't quibble with me, Boy, or I'll suck your eyes out. I'll chew off your wienie. I'll e-mas-cu-late you."

She drew out the word at the proper hyphenation points, savoring each syllable, tasting each vowel.

What he saw then was horrible enough to make his worst nightmares seem like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one ripping stroke.

"They float," The Thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice, "but before you can have one, you must answer me a question. They float," It growled, "they float, Richie, but before you may have one, you must take a test."

"Pop quiz!" she cackled, and Richie peed in his pants.

Richie tried to pull his arm free, but each pull caused excruciating pain to shoot through his whole body like electricity on the loose, like a baby being born, which, of course, Richie could only imagine.

"Everything down here floats," that chuckling rotten voice whispered, "but first, answer me this: Can the word 'author' be used as a verb?"

"That's a trick question," Richie whispered. "It depends on which dictionary you use."

"WRONG!" Miss Thistlebottom laughed as she tore Richie's arm off.

"Wrong!" the clown chuckled as she crushed the severed arm in her hand.

"Wrong," she whispered as Richie's lifeless body sank in the gutter.

Segment 4: "Them"

J.P. Howard was the first to get there, and although he arrived only 45 seconds after the first scream, Richie Evans was already dead. J.P. grabbed him by the back of his jacket, pulled him into the street  . . . and began to scream himself as Richie's body turned over in his hands. The left side of Richie's jacket was now bright red. Blood flowed into the stormdrain from the jagged hole where the left arm had been. A knob of bone, horribly bright, terribly brilliant, peeked through the torn cloth like a death's-head skull grinning out from under a medieval hood in an Ingmar Bergman movie.

The boy's eyes stared up into the velvet sky, and as J.P. held the lifeless body in my arms, moaning with pain, Richie's sightless eyes began to fill up with rain.

"Howdy Doody, J.P." Miss Thistlebottom said. "Come to join the party? Have a balloon."

J.P. jumped, and Richie's body fell into the stormdrain, lying broken in the water at the clown's feet. He saw the terrible, terrifying, frightening, scary (FEAR), awful, beastly, frightful (INFERIORITY) apparition looking up at him, and he froze.

"How do you spell ITS, Jaypee? Hmmm? How do you spell IT'S?"

"I- I- I --," J.P. stammered, too frightened to know if he was actually trying to spell it or just referring to himself.

"TOO LATE!" Miss Thistlebottom roared again. "YOU LOSE!"

And before J.P. could offer a feeble protest, the clown-dressed-like-a-schoolteacher's or schoolteacher's-made-up-like-a-clown long, brightly painted fingernail talons tore off his face.

J.P. didn't even see the other people running down the hill toward him. He didn't hear his scream fill the wet, night air. He didn't know that his last thought went unfinished. He didn't know that he would never be able to tell his story or tell the others.

He didn't know that the story would continue, that it would not end, that it's not over.

Table of Contents - Top Of Page - Chapter 2 -
Off The Wall - Callahan's Saloon