Strange as IT Seems

Chapter 4: The Gang's All Here

"Bill hurry up you're going to be late." His mother calls from the bottom of the stairs.

"C-Coming," he calls, packing his sketchbook in his bag along with his new school supplies. He hurries down the stairs to the kitchen, where a simple breakfast is waiting for them. Toast since that was the only appliance that was hooked up to the house. Georgie sits at the old dining room table eating his jam toast, while their father reads the morning paper while sipping a cup of coffee.

"Hawkins is certainly an interesting town," he muses as Bill takes a seat to eat his dry toast.

"What makes you say that?" his wife asks, as she packs paper bag lunches for her sons.

"Well, it has one of the last remaining national laboratories in North America, which sprung up just after World War Two."

Bill pauses, remembering the newspaper articles that he'd thrown away the night before, several mentioning the same laboratory.

"D-Do they say what they d-do there?" Bill asks.

"Not really, apparently after a nasty chemical leak killed a local teenager and caused strange hallucinations to other residents, it's been closed down and quarantined."

"What are hallucinations?" Georgie asks.

"They're images or thoughts that we think we can see but are not there," his father explains, deciding not to go into too much detail with his young son. "Often brought on by different chemicals."

"So that monster in my closet is a hallucination?" the six-year-old asks.

"Georgie there are no monsters in your closet," his mother says firmly. "You're just not used to the house yet."

"But I saw it, Mommy, I did!" he insists.

"There's no such thing as monsters' honey," she sighs.

"Yes, there is, there was one in Derry, the one that lived in the sewer right Bill?"

Bill doesn't know how to respond. His parents look at him, waiting for a response. His ears turn red in embarrassment. He eats more of his toast before saying anything else. There's no point in trying to convince his parents of anything. For some reason, the adults in Derry never saw It, why that was, no one could be sure, but what he and his friends had seen was most definitely a monster.

"T-There was s-something in the s-sewer," he finally manages to say.

"Probably just some animal, many of them get trapped in there," his father says. "Besides, there is something in the sewers, high levels of toxins."

Bill just finishes his toast and gets up. "Come on G-Georgie," he says. "We have to get going."

He grabs his lunch from his mother and goes to get his backpack, sidestepping the mountains of boxes. His little brother follows, suit, ready to start his first day of first grade.

"I got your bikes down from the roof," his father, Zack, calls out.

Their mother presses Bill's hair down flat and kisses each of them. "Please stay safe out there, we don't know what the traffic is like in this town."

"Okay," Bill says.

"Do you know where you're going?" she asks.

"W-We saw the school driving in-n," Bill nods. "I have to g-go meet the others anyway."

"Just be careful," Sharon Denbrough says, as both her sons go for their bikes. She stands on the front porch and waves as the two begin to ride once around the cul-de-sac before heading out towards the open streets.