It

A gay man named Don Hagarty is crying, telling a police officer named Harold Gardener that his boyfriend Adrian Mellon was killed because of a hat he had been wearing, which he had won at the carnival in celebration of the weeklong Canal Days Festival. The Canal was finished in 1884 and opened the lumber trade to Derry. Hagarty maintains that Adrian was pushed off a bridge and explains that the hat read: “I Love Derry” (20).

Down the hall, officers are interrogating teenagers John Garton, Steve Dubay, and Christopher Unwin. Unwin says that they had just “wanted to scare him […] [and] didn’t mean to kill him” (18). The teens had thrown Adrian into the Canal, but then Unwin saw a guy in a clown suit under the bridge, holding a bunch of balloons: “I still don’t know who he was” (19).

Garton tells the officers that they saw Mellon and Hagarty kissing. Garton yelled to Adrian that he would make him eat the hat, to which Mellon retorted: “I can find you something much tastier to eat than my hat” (22). An officer named Machen overheard and stopped Garton before he could approach Mellon. Before leaving, Garton screamed that he was going to kill Mellon if he saw him again.

Dubay says they saw the couple leave a gay club called the Falcon later. A brief history of the Falcon, and its owner, Elmer Curtie, follows. Hagarty had started coming in with Mellon in 1984. Hagarty tells the officers that Mellon could never see what Derry was really like: “A dead strumpet with maggots squirming out of her cooze” (28).

After leaving the festival, the three teens drove by the Falcon. After seeing the couple walking and holding hands, they followed them in a car. They got out on the bridge and began beating the two men. Hagarty was knocked unconscious. When he came to, they were trying to throw Mellon over the bridge. Hagarty heard a small voice saying, “help,” and then giggling. That’s when he saw the clown. Unwin would later confirm that he had also seen a clown. The clown had offered Hagarty a balloon that read: “They float. Down here we all float; pretty soon your friend will float too” (33).

After throwing Mellon over, Unwin says he saw the clown dragging the body up onto the bank. It looked up at Unwin with silver eyes, and then knelt and bit into Mellon’s armpit, “[l]ike it wanted to eat his heart” (35). Hagarty says that the clown carried Mellon, and then squeezed him so hard that he heard ribs splintering while Mellon screamed. When Hagarty looked under the bridge, there were thousands of balloons that read: “I love Derry!” Hagarty maintains that was the moment he knew the clown was Derry itself.

Later, Gardener and Boutillier—the other officers on the case—argue about the clown. Gardener says that there was no way the two witnesses could be lying because they had no idea what the other was saying. Boutillier says that if they are introducing the information about the clown, the teenagers’ lawyers will get them off. He says that Mellon’s ribs had been broken, a chunk was missing from his armpit, and he had been stabbed in the testicles, but that the attackers did that, not the clown. They agree not to mention it.

Garton and Dubay are both sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. Unwin is young enough to do six months in a juvenile detention center. No one mentioned a clown at the trial.

Part 1, Chapter 3, Section 1 Summary: “Stanley Uris Takes a Bath”

Three months before what she calls a terrible night, Patricia's husband Stanley learns that a childhood friend, William Denbrough, had become a famous novelist. Patricia had tried to read one, but it was a horror novel, and too much for her to handle. It had been filled with children getting killed by monsters: “Patricia Uris later told her mother she should have known something was wrong” (40).

On the night in question, Patricia and Stanley were watching TV. She thinks about their courtship and life together, which has been happy more often than not. One night when they were debating about whether she should take a job as a teacher in Georgia, Stanley blurted out: “The turtle couldn’t help us” (45). When she asks what he is talking about, he says he doesn’t know, but she feels that he is being evasive.

Stanley had opened an accounting business and made a success of himself. Their only sadness is that they can’t conceive a child. They try for years. In 1976 they saw a doctor who told them that they were both problem-free and fertile. But Stanley told her that he knew it was his fault: “Sometimes I think I know why. Sometimes I have a dream, a bad dream, and I wake up and think ‘I know now. I know what’s wrong.’ Not just you not catching pregnant—everything. Everything that’s wrong with my life” (51). She doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but she knows that he has unpleasant dreams. He always claims that he can’t remember them.

On the night they are watching TV, the phone rings. Stanley answers the phone. Initially, he is excited, but then Patricia overhears him in the other room: “Are you sure, Mike? All right, I understand” (53). She can tell that he is being falsely cheerful on the phone for her benefit. When he hangs up, he tells Patricia that he is going to take a bath.

After the show, she goes upstairs to check on him. Stanley is dead in the bathtub. He has slashed his wrists with a razor. On the tiles above the tub, he has written “IT” (59) in his blood.

Part 1, Chapter 3, Section 2 Summary: “Richard Tozier Takes a Powder”

In Los Angeles, “Rich felt like he was doing pretty good until the vomiting started” (60) after his phone conversation with Mike Hanlon. When he is done vomiting, he realizes that he has told Mike that he will come back to Derry. He calls his travel agent and arranges for the trip. Rich is a professional comedian and radio DJ and his agent begs him to do some imitations for her. After, he calls a Derry Hotel. As he waits, he remembers the voices of bullies yelling at him as a child and being chased through the Derry streets. He reserves a room for three days.

He calls his program director, Steve, to tell him he won’t be in for a few days. His reason is: “Someone called me. Someone I used to know a long time ago. In another place. Back then something happened. I made a promise. We all promised that we would go back if the something started happening again. And I guess it has” (67). Steve agrees to rearrange his schedule: “The first real terror struck him then, and there was nothing at all supernatural about it. It was only a realization of how easy it was to trash your life” (69). He remembers his friends from Derry, and then “there were other things, things he hadn’t thought of in years, trembling just below the surface. Blood things” (70). He remembers the “stink of It” (70). He vomits again and begins to cry.

Part 1, Chapter 3, Section 3 Summary: “Ben Hanscom Takes a Drink”

Ben Hanscom is a famous architect. He is in a bar in Swedholm, Ohio, ordering a drink from a man named Ricky Lee. Ricky values Ben’s company and always looks forward to seeing him on Friday nights, even though Ben is constantly traveling the world on his own Learjet: “I think he’s the most God-awful lonely man I ever met in my life” (74).

Ben says he has “bad news from home” (75). Ricky notices that Ben’s hair is suddenly graying. Ben orders a stein of whiskey. He quickly drinks a third of it and begins telling Ricky that he used to be fat as a kid, and that he was bullied mercilessly by a kid named Henry Bowers. He opens his shirt and shows Ricky a scar: the letter H, which Henry had carved into his stomach with a knife. He drinks more of the whiskey in gulps and Ricky is worried that he is going to die of alcohol poisoning that night.

He gives Ricky three silver dollars and asks him to give the to his kids when he gets home: “There used to be four, but I gave one of them to Stuttering Bill and the others” (79). Ricky tells Ben that he is scaring him, to which Ben responds: “You’re not as scared as I am, Ricky Lee. Pray to Jesus you never are” (81). He tells Ricky he got a call from Mike Hanlon and has suddenly remembered everything. He says that he had an amnesia so complete that he didn’t know he had amnesia. He says that he’s going home to Derry. When he leaves, Ricky tells a waitress that he doesn’t think they will ever see Ben again.

Part 1, Chapter 3, Section 4 Summary: “Eddie Kaspbrak Takes His Medicine”

A list of the many pills in Eddie Kaspbrak’s medicine cabinet is given. He is packing pills into a bag. His wife, Myra, yells from downstairs, asking what he is doing. They have been married for five years. Myra is severely obese and has trouble coming up the stairs. Eddie tells her that he is leaving for a while. She demands to know who he was talking to on the phone. He remembers his mother telling him that when his feet got wet, he would get a cold, and he thinks about how much it rains in Derry.

He remembers his mother screaming at Coach Black in the Derry gymnasium, insisting that Eddie was too sick to ever take physical education class. The Coach replied that the doctor’s results had said Eddie was healthy, only small for his age.

Eddie looks at Myra and thinks that she resembles his mother. She also hovers, worries, and takes care of him like his mother had, even though he resents it. She also reminded in of childhood home: “But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this isn’t home, nor ever was—maybe home is where I have to go tonight. Home is the place where when you go there, you finally have to face the thing in the dark” (93).

Eddie is a professional chauffeur and was scheduled to drive Al Pacino. When he tells Myra that she’ll have to do it, she begins protesting until he yells at her to stop. His cab honks the horn outside. He tells her that an old friend has called and that he will tell her everything when he gets back. He says that if he had a choice he wouldn’t go, and that he doesn’t want to go. They kiss good-bye. He wonders how she would react if he told her the truth: “I got a call from Mike Hanlon tonight and we talked for a while, but everything we said boiled down to two things. ‘It’s started again,’ Mike said; ‘Will you come?’” (101).

After he gets on an Amtrak, Eddie remembers seeing the decomposing face of a boy named Patrick Hockstetter in 1958. He can still smell the odor so many years later on the train. Then he remembers that Henry Bowers thought the moon talked to him and thinks that he heard Henry had been put in an asylum: “I am remembering my own boyhood at last” (103).

Part 1, Chapter 3, Section 5 Summary: “Beverly Rogan Takes a Whuppin”

Beverly Rogan is in bed with her husband Tom when the phone rings. She takes the phone out of the room and Tom wonders whom she is talking to. He thinks he is going to have to remind her who is in charge.

They had met four years earlier in a bar. She had been an assistant designer for Delia Fashions. He had sensed how vulnerable she was and learned as much as he could about her before beginning to seduce her: “She was weak… weak somehow” (107).

He follows her, intending to shout at her to hang up, but then he sees her face. She looks “fearless but unpredictable” (108) and she is packing a suitcase while she talks. She is smoking even though she had told him that she quit. Tom is enraged. He thinks about the first two times he had slapped her, and the thought excites him. The fight had been over cigarettes. After he hit her, she had told him she would never smoke again without his permission. They had married three months later.

He takes a leather belt off the door where it is hanging. He thinks about how often his mother would beat him with a belt. When she looks at him, she is defiant. She tells him that an old friend called and that she won’t smoke, but she has to go. When she keeps talking, he whips her arm with the belt. He keeps hitting her and she begins throwing anything she can reach at him. She hits him in forehead with a heavy jar of face cream and he stumbles. She says that if he comes near her again, she’ll kill him. When he stumbles again, she tips the vanity over on him and the mirror shatters. She hears Mike’s voice saying: “It’s come back, Beverly. It’s come back… and you promised” (121). She takes the belt from Tom as he tries to get up.

He rushes her, and she hits him in the mouth with the belt, breaking one of his teeth. He falls and she hits him as hard as she can with the belt on the testicles. Beverly finishes packing while he gasps and then she runs outside. When she looks up at the stars, she starts to laugh.

Part 1, Chapter 3, Section 6 Summary: “Bill Denbrough Takes Time Out”

Bill tells his wife Audra that he has to leave, and she asks who was on the phone. He remembers going to university for a writing program. All he ever wanted to do was write stories, although he was never taken seriously in his classes, given his love of science fiction and horror. By the time he’s 23, he’s sold his first horror novel. He marries Audra, a movie star.

Bill sits her down and asks her to tell him what she knows about him. She knows that he is from Maine, and that his brother George died when he was young. She recounts the way they met—she was an actress in a movie called Black Rapids that he was writing the screenplay for—and what she loves about him. Then she says he cries and talks when he is dreaming. Bill is startled. He does not think he dreams: “So now you know how fear tastes. Time you found out, considering all you’ve written on the subject” (135).

He tells her that George was murdered, and that the killer pulled his arm off. But he explains that he doesn’t know why he didn’t tell her. He says he hadn’t even thought of George in twenty years and doesn’t understand why: “It isn’t just George that’s been in that black hole. I haven’t thought of Derry itself in twenty years” (137). He shows her a scar on his palm and says it is from when he and his childhood friends cut their palms with glass and swore to come back to Derry if they needed to. He and Audra both know the scar was not there the day before. He says it came back when Mike called and asked him to come back and stop it. Bill explains that he also had never stuttered as badly as he would come to until George died. It stopped almost as soon as he left Derry: “I feel like a bird must feel when fall comes and it knows… somehow it knows it has to fly home” (143). He makes her promise that she won’t follow him to Derry, and she does.