The Road to Maine is Bloody Part 29

“Stephen, what are you thinking, where are you going?” Ashley asked, her brow furrowing in puzzlement and thought through what he’d been saying. She stared into the empty hall, wondering where he went and was about to go after him, when he reappeared with a book and the sketch pad he’d shown her with the drawing of Pennywise.

Stephen sat down beside her again and put the sketch pad on the bed and opened the book, his first copy of IT before he revised it and changed a few things. “When I was writing IT, I’d get these premonitions of different things and they never made much sense because they weren’t about anyone I knew. I’d sit for hours staring at my typewriter, the page blank and Pennywise was right there, in my thoughts but I couldn’t bring him to life until I went for a walk in the woods behind the cabin where I write. I saw something I could never explain but when I walked up to it, I put my hand out and Ashley, I swear it was a tear, like when you rip a hole in the knee of a pair of jeans.”

It was a small round tear and when I tried to touch it, it shocked me. I couldn’t see anything but I heard music and children laughing and crying. The music sounded like a circus and I also heard your name.”

Someone was calling you, as if whatever was happening didn’t want me to know more, the sounds stopped and the hole vanished. He said and thumbed through the book, printed on white typewriter paper, held together by a blue loose leaf plastic binder that was falling apart, ripped along the seams.

Stephen found the page he was looking for and ran his index finger across the page, searching for the specific words he’d written so long ago. Then he found it and pointed it to Ashley and began to read it.

I couldn’t find the words to write my novel that would bring Pennywise to life so I decided to take a walk in the woods behind the small cabin I used for writing. When I wrote, I blasted the stereo with my big speakers, listening to the AC/DC album, Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt cheap, bouncing off the walls that weren’t exactly soundproof.