Chapter I

Return to Derry

The bus was held up for several hours on the highway due to a popped tire. When we finally made it to the tiny town of Derry, the sun was just setting over the beautiful sky. It had just rained here and all along the streets were cluttered papers with numerous missing kids' faces. My boot caught one just as it was floating away. Adrian Mellon. His face painted every store window and light post.

He told me that the monster lived in the pipes beneath the town and I only had to find the entrance at the bottom of the bridge or the old house on Neibolt Street. I checked my watch and saw the time was 7:30pm. Perfect hunting time for him. The house was a few miles behind me anyway and the perfect place to find him was the sewers.

I approached the long now metal bridge that overlooked a rocky river front where the entrance to the sewers was in my view.

"We have a mission for you, Ariel."

He handed me a file of the beast in Derry that the children feared.

"Why hasn't anyone stopped him before?" I snapped. "He kills innocent children and you just let him go without punishment?"

"We have no control over free will, Ariel. However this has gotten out of hand and our very existence is in danger. Twenty seven years ago a group of kids discovered who he was and tried to destroy him. They know he's not human and they're going to find out more if we keep letting him kill. Kill him, Ariel. Kill him before our secret is exposed."

The pictures of the missing children from 27 years ago let imprints in my head as they explained what he did. Dragging them into the sewers to eat their souls and leave their bodies as treasures in his room of horrors. One child's picture caught my attention. George Denbrough. He was dragged into the sewers during a storm and killed after asking for his paper boat back. The brother to the leader of the kids who discovered the monster.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Do what you normally do. Kill him and bring the body back. Make sure all the bodies of the children are properly buried or found by their families. If those kids discover who you are… kill them too. We can't have any witnesses. That monster has gone on for far too long."

"Yes, sir."

My boot caught onto a rock and I almost tripped into a mud pile. The sky was getting dark and it became harder to see as I walked parallel to the small river. The entrance to his hunting grounds stood right in front of me, water drips echoing.

The sudden fear of terror ripped through my body like a knife as I took one step then two into the sewer. My boots were caked with mud and sewerage gunk. I could feel my heart pounding through my ears as I reached for my flashlight.

Farther into the pipeline turned into a nightmare I wanted to escape. He was a great hunter, better than the others at home. I'm sure he would kill me in a heartbeat after everything happened all those years ago. I had to save the children though.

The maze of pipes seemed to go on forever and not once was I approached by any creature of the night. My watched beeped 10pm when I began to grow tired of walking and looking. It was then that the small twinkling of a music box began to play. I looked down and saw a small spinning angel playing a tune my mother used to sing to me before she died. Water splashed behind me and I turned and saw the approach of a child carrying a red balloon.

"Have you come to float?" The child asked. It was that small George child. He found me.

"I'm too old to float, George."

My flashlight flickered until the light dimmed and died. The child vanished and that red balloon swayed in the dead air as it passed my line of sight to just behind me.

I gripped my flashlight and grabbed my silver dagger from its holder. My ears roared and my body shook as I turned and came face to face to the clown with red eyes.