This document is an excerpt from ‘It’, a horror novel by Stephen King, published by Hodder & Stoughton. The narrative begins in the fall of 1957, focusing on a small boy named George Denbrough who plays with a paper boat in a flooded street. The story sets the tone for the terror that will unfold over the next twenty-eight years in the town of Derry. Key themes include childhood innocence, the impact of fear, and the supernatural elements that haunt the characters. The document captures the atmospheric tension and vivid imagery characteristic of King’s writing. It serves as an introduction to the novel’s complex characters and the dark history of Derry, making it a compelling read for fans of horror literature.
Hodder & Stoughton
LONDON SYNDEY AUCKLAND TORONTO
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C H A P T E R 1
After the Flood (1957)
1
The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years — if it ever did end — began,
so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a
gutter swollen with rain.
The boat bobbed, listed, righted itself again, dived bravely through treacherous whirlpools,
and continued on its way down Witcham Street toward the traffic light which marked the
intersection of Witcham and Jackson. The three vertical lenses on all sides of the traffic light
were dark this afternoon in the fall of 1957, and the houses were all dark, too. There had been
steady rain for a week now, and two days ago the winds had come as well. Most sections of
Derry had lost their power then, and it was not back on yet.
A small boy in a yellow slicker and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper
boat. The rain had not stopped, but it was finally slackening. It tapped on the yellow hood of
the boy's slicker, sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof . . . a comfortable, almost cozy
sound. The boy in the yellow slicker was George Denbrough. He was six. His brother,
William, known to most of the kids at Derry Elementary School (and even to the teachers,
who would never have used the nickname to his face) as Stuttering Bill, was at home,
hacking out the last of a nasty case of influenza. In that autumn of 1957, eight months before
the real horrors began and twenty-eight years before the final showdown, Stuttering Bill was
ten years old.
Bill had made the boat beside which George now ran. He had made it sitting up in bed, his
back propped against a pile of pillows, while their mother played Für Elise on the piano in
the parlor and rain swept restlessly against his bedroom window.
About three-quarters of the way down the block as one headed toward the intersection and
the dead traffic light, Witcham Street was blocked to motor traffic by smudgepots and four
orange sawhorses. Stencilled across each of the horses was
DERRY DEPT
.
OF PUBLIC WORKS
.
Beyond them, the rain had spilled out of gutters clogged with branches and rocks and big
sticky piles of autumn leaves. The water had first pried fingerholds in the paving and then
snatched whole greedy handfuls — all of this by the third day of the rains. By noon of the
fourth day, big chunks of the street's surface were boating through the intersection of Jackson
and Witcham like miniature white-water rafts. By that time, many people in Derry had begun
to make nervous jokes about arks. The Public Works Department had managed to keep
Jackson Street open, but Witcham was impassable from the sawhorses all the way to the
center of town.
But, everyone agreed, the worst was over. The Kenduskeag Stream had crested just below
its banks in the Barrens and bare inches below the concrete sides of the Canal which
channelled it tightly as it passed through downtown. Right now a gang of men — Zack
Denbrough, George's and Bill's father, among them — were removing the sandbags they had
thrown up the day before with such panicky haste. Yesterday overflow and expensive flood
damage had seemed almost inevitable. God knew it had happened before — the flooding in
1931 had been a disaster which had cost millions of dollars and almost two dozen lives. That
was a long time ago, but there were still enough people around who remembered it to scare
the rest. One of the flood victims had been found twenty-five miles east, in Bucksport. The
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fish had eaten this unfortunate gentleman's eyes, three of his fingers, his penis, and most of
his left foot. Clutched in what remained of his hands had been a Ford steering wheel.
Now, though, the river was receding, and when the new Bangor Hydro dam went in
upstream, the river would cease to be a threat. Or so said Zack Denbrough, who worked for
Bangor Hydroelectric. As for the rest — well, future floods could take care of themselves.
The thing was to get through this one, to get the power back on, and then to forget it. In Derry
such forgetting of tragedy and disaster was almost an art, as Bill Denbrough would come to
discover in the course of time.
George paused just beyond the sawhorses at the edge of a deep ravine that had been cut
through the tar surface of Witcham Street. This ravine ran on an almost exact diagonal. It
ended on the far side of the street, roughly forty feet farther down the hill from where he now
stood, on the right. He laughed aloud — the sound of solitary, childish glee a bright runner in
that gray afternoon — as a vagary of the flowing water took his paper boat into a scale -model
rapids which had been formed by the break in the tar. The urgent water had cut a channel
which ran along the diagonal, and so his boat travelled from one side of Witcham Street to
the other, the current carrying it so fast that George had to sprint to keep up with it. Water
sprayed out from beneath his galoshes in muddy sheets. Their buckles made a jolly jingling
as George Denbrough ran toward his strange death. And the feeling which filled him at that
moment was clear and simple love for his brother Bill . . . love and a touch of regret that Bill
couldn't be here to see this and be a part of it. Of course he would try to describe it to Bill
when he got home, but he knew he wouldn't be able to make Bill see it, the way Bill would
have been able to make him see it if their positions had been reversed. Bill was good at
reading and writing, but even at his age George was wise enough to know that wasn't the only
reason why Bill got all A's on his report cards, or why his teachers liked his compositions so
well. Telling was only part of it. Bill was good at seeing.
The boat nearly whistled along the diagonal channel, just a page torn from the Classified
section of the Derry News, but now George imagined it as a FT boat in a war movie, like the
ones he sometimes saw down at the Derry Theater with Bill at Saturday matinees. A war
picture with John Wayne fighting the Japs. The prow of the newspaper boat threw sprays of
water to either side as it rushed along, and then it reached the gutter on the left side of
Witcham Street. A fresh streamlet rushed over the break in the tar at this point, creating a
fairly large whirlpool, and it seemed to him that the boat must be swamped and capsize. It
leaned alarmingly, and then George cheered as it righted itself, turned, and went racing on
down toward the intersection. George sprinted to catch up. Over his head, a grim gust of
October wind rattled the trees, now almost completely unburdened of their freight of colored
leaves by the storm, which had been this year a reaper of the most ruthless sort.
2
Sitting up in bed, his cheeks still flushed with heat (but his fever, like the Kenduskeag, finally
receding), Bill had finished the boat — but when George reached for it, Bill held it out of
reach. 'N-Now get me the p-p-paraffin.'
'What's that? Where is it?'
'It's on the cellar shuh-shuh-shelf as you go d-downstairs,' Bill said. 'In a box that says
Guh-Guh-hulf . . . Gulf. Bring that to me, and a knife, and a b-bowl. And a puh-pack of muh-
muh-matches.'
George had gone obediently to get these things. He could hear his mother playing the
piano, not Für Elise now but something else he didn't like so well — something that sounded
dry and fussy; he could hear rain flicking steadily against the kitchen windows. These were
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