Chapter Text
Eddie let out a sigh of relief as he opened the front door of his townhouse and saw the package waiting there, just as his email notification had said it would be. He felt a strange sense of near giddiness as he took the box inside to the kitchen, carefully opening it with a box cutter he had purchased solely to open packages, and he cleaned the tape residue off after each use. He was well aware that dull blades could be even more dangerous than a sharp one.
A tawny hardcover book fell into his hands, the cover portraying a bright red electric guitar propped up against an amplifier. There were several stickers with band logos covering both. At first glance, Eddie recognized the stickers on the guitar’s body for Firestarter, the Corporation, and Sweetbriar Rose. The long title was in bold black letters above the guitar, with the author’s name in small print like an afterthought in the bottom right corner.
We rock!-an in-depth look at the bands that shaped the path of alternative rock
By Carrie White
Eddie quickly scanned the table of contents and found that the chapter he was itching to read wasn’t until chapter seven. While he was usually a master of discipline, Eddie felt like he had done enough waiting in his lifetime to justify skipping forward six chapters of one book to read what he had been waiting two years to get his hands on. It wasn’t like he wasn’t going to go back and read the whole book later anyway. Feeling justified with his choice to skip ahead, Eddie grabbed the mug of tea he had been drinking and settled on a barstool at the kitchen island as he flipped to the correct page.
Chapter Seven: the Losers-an unexpected sound
Beneath the chapter title was a photo Eddie had seen so many times over his lifetime that it was burned into his brain. Sometimes when he looked at his friends, he still expected them to look like they did in the photograph, even though it was over twenty-five years old. Sometimes, even his own face in the mirror shocked him with how little it resembled the picture.
There were seven of them in the photograph, six boys and one girl. The photo was taken at their high school graduation, but after they had rid themselves of their caps and gowns. They were standing in front of the school gym in a messy tangle of limbs, arms thrown akimbo around each other. It was one of the few photos from the group’s youth where they were all smiling. The thought of having finished high school was too bright for anything to dampen their moods in that moment. The picture was taken back before Bev had let her hair grow back out a little, before Ben had slimmed down. It was when Mike still wore his flannel shirts buttoned to the throat, and Stan was in his ‘suspenders are cool’ phase. Eddie still hadn’t hit his final measly two-inch growth spurt, Bill was still more frail-looking than lean, and before they had burned Richie’s hula girl-patterned Hawaiian shirt.
In short, they looked like seven very awkward kids from the middle of nowhere with no taste, no talent, and no chance of surviving in the music world.
The year was 1995; Britpop had made its way stateside, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in Cleveland, Ohio, and seven teenagers from Derry, Maine, signed a record deal with Duma Records.
Eddie remembered that night well. Mostly, he remembered how dirty and gross he had felt the whole time they sat in Jack’s office in upper Manhattan. They had come to the office straight from the club, and Eddie still felt the sweat and grime coating his skin. He itched to return to their apartment so he could shower it off of him, but he managed to keep mostly still. He had twisted his hands so deeply into the long sleeves of his waistcoat that when it came time for him to sign the record deal, it took him ten seconds to untangle his shaking fingers from the cloth, the word ‘invincible’ echoing in his mind as he did.
The band’s music primarily focused on alternative rock with an emphasis on grunge. They are most distinguished for their philosophically cathartic lyrics, erratic stage personas, and melodic sensibilities.
He never admitted it to the rest of the group, but Eddie had never thought that their band would amount to anything. He had expected that they would move to New York City and play a handful of shows at bars or nightclubs. He had figured they would play for a year, maybe even two, until they grew bored and went their separate ways to college and marriage and 2.5 kids apiece. It was an inevitability he dreaded even long after they were signed.
The lure of their music cannot be pinned down to one thing; it encompasses everything. Who can say what was the most popular part of the Losers’ music? Was it Mike Hanlon’s distinctive vocal quality? Beverly Marsh’s hypnotic drumming and feminist anthems? Richie Tozier’s eccentric bass lines? The catchy guitar playing and backup vocals of Bill Denbrough and Ben Hanscom? Stanley Uris’s soaring keyboard tracks? Or the haunting melodies of Eddie Kaspbrak’s electric violin?
Eddie had never wanted to learn how to play the violin, Eddie had just wanted to play soccer with Bill.
It was the summer before second grade, and Bill’s parents had signed him up for the children’s soccer league that played in the park three days a week. There weren’t enough kids in town to justify calling it a ‘league’; they only had enough for there to be two teams. They shifted the players around every few days to make things more interesting. Eddie longed to get to run and play with the other kids, and once Bill told him about how fun it was, the thought of it consumed Eddie’s every waking moment.
He had begged his mother to sign him up for the game, to let him play with the other kids, but she refused. She cited his asthma, his weak immune system, and his small stature as the reasons, and Eddie didn’t know yet not to believe her. He still felt the absence of his father like a physical thing in the house; not enough time had passed for his presence to have faded to distant memory. Without him there, his mother’s word was law, and her coddling had festered into full-on smothering.
Despite how it would seem in the years to come, Sonia Kaspbrak loved her son in her own horrifying, overbearing way. She noticed how despondent he became when he could not go outside to play with the other children. She knew that he needed something to distract him, to keep him from staring longingly out the window all the time.
Sonia was not about to let him go and run around outside, where who knew what horrible thing might happen to him (her mind kept her up at night with thoughts of kidnapping, broken bones, viral infections from such close proximity to so many other children). No, sports were simply out of the question. The best thing would be something that he could learn while he was still in the house, where she could keep a watchful eye on him. The options in Derry were quite limited, but she still managed to find an ad in the newspaper for a music teacher who would do house calls, and the very next week, he appeared at their door, two violins in hand.
In the very first note Eddie called from the small wooden instrument, Sonia realized she had made a grave mistake. She had not given her son the gift of a distraction, a way to pass the time until the long days of summer ended. She had just walked him into the arms of something that he might grow to love more than her.
There are certain instruments that one expects to hear in a rock band, but the electric violin is rarely one of them. Kaspbrak’s hypnotic violin and Uris’s uplifting keyboard tracks set the Losers’ sound apart from all other bands on the scene.
Falling in love with the violin was easier than he had expected, certainly easier than learning how to play it was. His mother’s plan worked, and Eddie was no longer filled with the thought of playing soccer or even of getting to go and run with the other kids. The music consumed his thoughts, his soul. It was easier to face the real world with the music in his head.
Some called it alternative rock, some called it ska, some called it funk. No matter how you classified their music, the genre-hybridizing band was soon well known and well loved. The uniqueness of their sound, combined with their utterly chaotic and contagious energy, quickly put the Losers at the forefront of the alternative rock scene.
He couldn’t remember the first song he wrote; he had been writing them for so long. He hid his songs in a notebook at Bill’s house, trusting that his friend wouldn’t read them more than he trusted his mother. Eddie had no plans of ever showing anyone his songs; he wrote them for himself and himself alone.
Somehow, that made it seem even more important to him that he wrote them.
He never had any real intention of anyone actually hearing them.
Not only were the members talented musicians, but they were all also gifted songwriters. Their lyrics were somehow both uplifting and self-deprecating; they could make you laugh and cry in the space of a verse. They sang about topics ranging from the uncertainty of new love to anti-bullying to childhood fears, all within a single album. No two songs sounded the same, and no song sounded like anything else on the radio. The Losers had a sound, and more importantly, a voice that was entirely their own.
One of the biggest skills Eddie had was his ability to bury things. He was very good at it. He would wrap a memory up in a tight little box and label it with a bright red ‘OPEN UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES’ sticker and toss it to the darkest, deepest recesses of his mind. But even with all his precautions and his repression, some things refused to be truly buried. And no matter how much burying he did, the fact was that the memories were still there, hidden in the crumbling foundation of his thoughts. Just because he didn’t think about them didn’t mean he truly got to forget. There were several things in Eddie Kaspbrak’s life that he longed to truly forget, but the events of the summer of 1989 were definitely at the top of the list.
He tried valiantly not to think about the deranged man in the clown costume who tried to kill him and his friends. The man, no the clown, who had hovered over him and his broken arm, his teeth snapping inches from his face until Richie and Beverly pulled him off of him. The clown who so easily told Bill that he had killed his little brother, Georgie. Who smiled when he told them the horrifying way he’d disposed of the body, which was the same thing he planned to do to them. Eddie mostly longed to forget the awful minute when they finally managed to stop him.
Eddie managed to block it out with significant success when he was awake. Sleeping was a whole different matter.
Nightmares kept him awake most nights long into adulthood.
Despite their whirlwind success, the Losers’ path to fame has been anything but conventional. The seven members of the band hail from a small town in upstate Maine that is most well-known for the disturbing number of unusual deaths that occur there. In the summer of 1989, sixteen children were murdered by a man who dressed in a clown costume and lured them into the sewer system.
He was eventually stopped when he attacked a group of children who managed to fend off his brutal attack. The man was killed in the altercation, and the children were not charged as they were clearly acting in self-defense. Due to their being underage, the names of the children involved were never released to the public. Several people believe the members of the Losers were those children, as there are heavy references to childhood trauma, clowns, and the summer of 1989 in their music. For years, the band never publicly addressed these rumors.
After the attack, after the hospital, and after the police report, Eddie did not see his friends again for eight long days.
It had nothing to do with their lack of trying. He heard them at the front door several times a day, asking his mother to see him. She refused to let them near him, claiming they were the reason her precious son was attacked and nearly taken from her. Eddie knew she was wrong, but he was too exhausted and horrified to challenge her. He longed to see his friends again, but more than anything, he just wanted to be able to close his eyes and not see a clown grinning back at him behind his closed eyelids.
Finally, on the morning of the eighth day, all six of them showed up together and flatly refused to leave her porch until they saw Eddie. They wanted proof that he was okay and alive.
Sonia hadn’t wanted to let any of them in, least of all Beverly, but in the end, Eddie crept down the hallway and was overcome with the need to see his friends again. To make sure they were alright, that it hadn’t all just been a bad dream. He knew this last one wasn’t true, no matter how much he wished it was. He had the cast to prove it after all.
“Let them in, Mommy,” Eddie whispered, his voice hoarse. It was the first thing he had said in days. “Please.”
Sonia let out a long-suffering sigh that was more familiar to Eddie than the sound of her voice, and she took a small step backwards, making everyone have to squeeze sideways through the small opening in the door to get past her.
“Keep your door open,” his mother said coldly, her icy eyes never leaving Beverly, who only looked at her with resignation to the fact that nothing she said or did would ever change his mother’s horrible opinion of her.
No one said anything as Eddie led them down the short hallway to his room, but the moment they were away from his mother’s hawk-like gaze, Richie was wrapping his arms around him and squishing him tight against his side.
“I thought I’d never see you again, Eds!” Richie cried in one of his Voices.
Eddie wiggled out of his grip and cast him a glare, “Don’t call me Eds!” he snapped before turning to look at the rest of the group with relief. They were all still there, all in one piece. Most of their bruises and cuts had faded, leaving Eddie’s broken arm the only visible reminder of their attack.
For a long moment, they stood in silence that was neither comfortable nor awkward; it just was. The only noise was the faint sound of the television in the other room. It was far quieter than it usually was, and Eddie knew his mother had turned it down in the obvious attempt to listen in on their conversation. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had been loitering in the hallway.
His friends clearly knew that too, and no one mentioned the attack or anything else as they all patted Eddie on the back or gave him slightly gentler hugs than Richie had. Eddie felt himself relaxing for the first time since it happened, and he was hit by a bone-deep exhaustion that made him slowly sink to the floor beside his bed. The others followed him down to the floor, and they looked around at each other before bursting into giggles that quickly blossomed into full-on laughter.
Nothing was funny, and yet everything was. They had faced down a murderer and survived, and yet they weren’t allowed to shut the door to Eddie’s bedroom.
After their mirth subsided, they fell back into a companionable silence, and Eddie slumped against Richie, who was sitting beside him, as the exhaustion began to take over him. It was suddenly a struggle just to keep his eyes open.
“I didn’t know you played the violin.” Ben’s soft voice dragged Eddie back from his near sleep, and he followed Ben’s gaze to where his violin case rested open on his desk. He had been playing the violin nearly nonstop for the past week. Its sound was the only thing louder than the memory of the clown’s laughter. Eddie hadn’t yet perfected the art of repressing.
“Eds is the next Mozart!” Richie declared in his British guy voice, mimicking the motion of running a bow against a phantom violin. Eddie was too tired to do more than cast him a weak glare.
“Would you play us something?” Mike asked curiously, standing up to grab the violin before Eddie was done nodding. He didn’t usually play for people other than his mom and his music teacher, but he could tell from their pale skin and faded demeanor that they had been sleeping about as well as he had. Maybe the music could drown out the clown for them, too.
Eddie sat up straight from where he’d been leaning against Richie and took the violin out of Mike’s hands. With all of them together, he couldn’t hear the clown as loudly, but that didn’t stop him from playing as loudly as he could get his violin to go without making it sound like it was screeching.
The members of the Losers first formed their band in 1991 under the name Clown Killers. The members have often cited Bill Denbrough as the ringleader behind the band's formation. When Denbrough himself is asked about this, he simply shrugs and says it was a group decision.
It was hard to say which one of them Henry Bowers hated most. If asked, he probably wouldn’t have known the answer himself; he hated all of them vehemently, violently, and loudly.
The only way to survive life in Derry was not get on Henry Bowers’s bad side, which was basically the entirety of Henry Bowers. If he had a good side, it was a very, very minuscule one, and it couldn’t even really be classified as good, only slightly less bad. He hated their group of friends so much that no one else in school was willing to risk his wrath by being nice to them. Some people even went out of their way to be mean to them (knocking over lunch trays, shoving them into walls, hiding fish in their lockers), all because it kept them even further away from Bowers’s radar.
They all fell victim to him more than once (most of them still had the physical scars to prove it), but they figured out quickly that they were safest when they moved as a group. They did everything they could together, the safety of their numbers protecting them more than anything else, including the adults in their lives. Would they have been friends under better circumstances, without the threat of Bowers and his goons? It was a thought that was not even worth considering. Their circumstances were what they were, and the close bonds of their friendship grew ever stronger with each taunt hurled their way, each punch thrown.
The group had taken to hanging out at Richie’s house after school, as his parents were rarely home, and it was the closest to the school. If they ran fast enough, they could usually beat the Bowers’ gang outside, and from there it was simply a deadly game of catch until they were all panting and safe behind the locked door of Richie’s house (or on the days he caught them, licking their wounds after they finally managed to escape).
Eddie had started to leave his violin at Richie’s house so he could practice after school. He didn’t dare bring it to school with him and risk it being broken at the hands of Bowers and co. His latest nightmare contained the clown trying to stab him with the shards of his violin neck.
The day had been a good one, Bowers had been stuck in detention, and without their ringleader, his gang wasn’t really interested in sprinting after them. They had actually gotten to walk to Richie’s that day instead of their usual desperate dash. They were lounging around Richie’s bedroom as Eddie was toying around with a melody he’d had stuck in his head for a few days. Even though the rest of the house was empty, they only ever hung out in there, like they weren’t welcome in the rest of the house.
The first time Eddie had come over, he had nearly had a panic attack at the sight of Richie’s messy room. As they became teenagers, it got even worse, but Richie started picking up after himself when he woke up during a sleepover to find Eddie scrubbing at his baseboard with a toothbrush. Now the room was still messy, but it was more of a lived-in messy. At the very least, it no longer made Eddie want to go bathe in disinfectant.
Eddie let the last note of his song stretch on as he tried to lock the sound away in his mind so he could play it back later. He had recently started to write his own melodies as well as the lyrics he kept in overflowing notebooks stuffed in the back corner of Bill’s closet.
“We s-s-s-should start a b-b-band.” Bill suddenly mused from where he lay stretched out on the floor, staring up at the ceiling in thought.
“We’d be world famous rock stars overnight!” Richie crowed, looking up from the comic book he and Beverly were reading on the bed.
Eddie snorted from where he sat on the foot of the bed and knocked Richie’s foot away as he kept swinging it at his face.
“Your feet stink like onions.” Eddie gripped as he bent to place his violin back in its case.
“I’m s-s-s-serious, guys,” Bill said, propping himself up on his elbows to look at each of them.
Stan looked up from the game of checkers he was currently kicking Mike’s ass in. “What would we play?”
“Music,” Bill said immediately, which caused everyone to scoff at him. “It d-d-doesn't matter what we s-s-sound like. We’ll make our own s-s-sound.”
“No, I meant what instruments,” Stan explained as Mike kinged his fourth king in a row with a swear as Stan smirked.
“You’d play the keyboard, obviously,” Bev said, looking up from the comic book to smile at him. Stan had been playing the organ at the synagogue for the last two years since the previous organ player passed away in her sleep. “I’d play the drums.”
“You play the drums?” Ben asked curiously, looking up from the history book he was reading to look at her with interest. Of course, every time Ben looked at Beverly, it was with interest.
“No, but I could learn. Besides, I have the most rhythm out of any of us.” Beverly said, shrugging the best she could from where she lay on her stomach.
“Um, fuck you too.” Richie scoffed, sitting up to shove her shoulder playfully. “We both know I carried us in our lindy-hop performance! I have just as much rhythm as you!”
Eddie rolled his eyes at the memory of the pair's swing-dancing performance in the ninth-grade talent show. He was still surprised Richie didn’t break something during it, but he had to admit (if only just to himself) that Richie did have rhythm.
“You can play bass then. That’s just as important to the rhythm section.” Beverly said sagely, bumping Richie’s shoulder back.
“M-m-mike can s-s-sing.” Bill said, pushing himself up into a full sitting position as the idea fully took place. “B-ben and I b-both p-play guitar.” Bill had taken up guitar shortly after the attack by the clown, and Ben had been playing in the high school jazz band for the past year.
“And Eddie Spaghetti will rule the show with his famous violin!” Richie cried in a new Voice that Eddie very much did not care for, sitting up to throw his arms out in a grand, flourishing gesture that made Eddie roll his eyes so hard they hurt. The pleasure he felt at the compliment was lessened by his annoyance at the nickname and the Voice it had been said in.
“What kind of band has a violin in it?” Ben asked, not meanly, just curious.
“The best kind!” Richie said loudly, the volume of it making Eddie wince as Richie was leaning on his shoulder, and his mouth was way too close to Eddie’s ear for him to be speaking at that level. Eddie nodded along, but quietly, he agreed with Ben.
They all fell over themselves in excited chatter about the daydream of being famous rock stars one day, but Eddie hung back. He didn’t know of a single band with a violin in it that wasn’t an orchestra. If they were really serious about starting a band and actually trying to go somewhere with it, Eddie likely wouldn’t be in it for very long. He tried not worry about what that might mean for his friendships, but his nightmares were soon replaced by finding himself alone in the house on Neibolt street with the clown advancing on him, broken violin in hand, and no one else in sight.
While the vast majority of high school bands peter out, the Losers managed to stay together through what all have described as very difficult adolescent years, where they were often bullied and ridiculed at their school.
To his very great surprise, they really did form a band, and even more, they stuck with it. It took months for them to all reach a level of playing that didn’t make the others cringe or slap their hands over their ears. It took them nearly twice as long for them to actually play together without sounding like they were playing seven different songs. Through all their cringeworthy practices, they stuck with it, and by the time they were halfway through their junior year, they actually started to sound good.
The band gave them all a much-needed outlet to let off some steam and rage, and they quickly went from playing covers to writing their own songs. They kept what they were doing quiet, even after Henry Bowers was arrested for the murder of his father; they weren’t exactly popular kids. The bullying did let up a little; it was aimed more at humiliation now rather than violence, which was somehow no easier to live with; these new wounds took much longer to heal, even if they couldn’t be seen from the outside. No one saw any reason to give anyone any more ammo by letting them know about their one positive outlet.
They named the band the Clown Killers after their childhood battle, and every time they said it to each other, they laughed as though if they laughed often enough or loud enough, they could shake the memories from their minds. They had been playing in Bill’s garage for close to two years when Eddie was walking home from school alone one day, and he saw it.
There it was in the window of the pawn shop, its strings looking shiny and harsh, with several deep scratches on its body, but it was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Eddie had read about these in a magazine, but he had never seen one in person. He knew what the pickup by its string was for, just as he knew that the tiny amplifier next to it was meant to be sold together.
Eddie ran home and felt a surge of relief that his mother was out as he sprinted upstairs and pulled his life savings out of his snow boots in his closet and sprinted back to the pawn shop, certain that it would have sold in the ten minutes he had been gone. But there it was still shining like a beacon of hope in the window, a liferaft meant just for him.
Eddie spent every penny he had ever saved from every birthday card and pitiful allowance to buy the electric violin, but it felt like a small price to pay for his future. He took the violin straight to Richie’s house, not wanting his mother to find his new purchase. The boys spent hours wincing as Eddie learned the different ways to play his new violin until he was able to play it in a way that didn’t make unearthly sounds come from the amplifier.
Richie lay on his bed and watched as Eddie played through ‘Rock War!’, the song they had all written together a few weeks back. The song sounded entirely different coming from his new violin than it had when he had played it just the day before. As the last note faded into silence, Eddie met Richie’s eyes, not surprised to see he looked as stunned as Eddie felt.
“Whoa,” Richie whispered, a grin beginning to stretch at the corners of his mouth. Eddie nodded in agreement, staring down in wonder at the violin in his hands.
Maybe there would be a lasting place for him in this band after all.
Due to their vast unpopularity, the band was both surprised and excited when a fellow student asked them to play at their party.
Even without them telling anyone they were in a band, word had a way of getting around in a small town. Someone had overheard them practicing when they walked by the Denbrough’s garage one night, and by lunch the next day, the whole school knew. They dealt with a new onslaught of taunting as people ridiculed them for daring to dream of something they didn’t think outcasts such as them could ever succeed in.
After being teased and mercilessly bullied for so long about everything in their lives, it was easy to get used to being tormented about their music. When Greta Keene asked them to play a few songs at her party while her parents were out of town, Eddie assumed it was a cruel joke. He hadn’t forgotten the day she’d scrawled ‘LOSER’ across his cast. He had changed the word to say ‘LOVER’, but it still hurt to think about it.
But despite all of their misgivings, they had never been asked to do a show before, and the lure of having other people hear their music was too strong. Even though they all knew that it was likely a trap, the small sliver of hope they had that it wasn’t proved to be stronger. They borrowed Mike’s grandfather’s truck to carry their equipment and drove over to West Broadway and the big house where Greta lived.
Eddie had butterflies in his stomach the size of swans, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was nervous this was all a joke, or because he was anxious about playing in front of other people. In the end, it didn’t really matter why he was nervous. They went inside to see where they were supposed to set up their equipment and immediately realized that while they were there to be entertainment, it was not the kind they had been hoping for.
What was meant to be their first show turned out to be an elaborate ruse to get them all into one place away from adult supervision. No one has ever spoken explicitly about the events of that night other than to say that it was a traumatizing experience that bonded them closer than ever. That night, the Clown Killers ceased to exist, and the Losers took their place. Renaming the band with the taunt their classmates so often threw at them was a decision that would shape the rest of their careers.
Eddie managed to successfully bury the nine minutes they were inside the Keene house from his memory. He remembered walking through the front door, and he remembered Richie pulling him over the side of the pickup as their classmates hurled things at them while shouting, ‘Losers! Losers! Losers! ’ at a volume that in any other town would have had the neighbors calling the cops. But this was Derry, and the only people who were going to look out for them were them. The nine minutes in between those two moments would forever remain blissfully, blessedly, blank.
Mike sped the truck down the road as the rest of them huddled in the back of the pickup among the shards of their broken equipment and what fragile remains were left of their dignity. The only instrument that had survived the night was Eddie’s violin, which had managed to go unnoticed where it sat on the floor of the cab of the truck. The pieces of everyone else’s instruments lay scattered in broken heaps around them.
The truck went over a bump that made the broken neck of Ben’s guitar poke into Eddie’s thigh, and he winced, not from the pain but from the sudden guilt that his instrument had come out of all this unscathed. As if he could sense his thoughts, Ben reached over and pulled the broken bit of his guitar away from Eddie before gently squeezing his knee, silently reminding him that it wasn’t his fault. Eddie took shallow breaths through his mouth and tried to convince himself that it was true. He had known they were walking into a trap; they all had. They had known, but the thought of a dream had been too luring to pass up. Eddie knew now that this, this, was the price for wanting things he wasn’t supposed to have.
All of them stunk so badly that even in the open air of the pickup bed, Eddie could smell them. He didn’t know how Mike hadn’t had to pull over to throw up yet, locked as he was in the cab of the truck. The backs of Eddie’s knees were stuck together, and they made a squelching noise as Eddie moved, trying to dislodge another piece of Beverly’s broken drum kit from underneath him. It was easier for him to focus on the broken instruments than the foul foreign substances coating his body. They were all covered in sticky red blood, which Eddie desperately hoped wasn’t human, and other matter he tried very hard not to think of.
He forced himself to take shallow breaths through his mouth and focused on not vomiting on everyone and adding to the filth. They drove in silence to the quarry, and despite the incredible stupidity of jumping off the rocks in the dark, especially in the coldness of early April, they all threw themselves off the ledge and plummeted to the dark water below. In that moment, there was likely very little any of them wouldn’t do to clean their bodies of the filth.
The others had all jumped so easily, without a single thought of what was waiting for them below. They all knew it was better than what was up here. Despite his desire to be clean, Eddie found himself frozen by the ledge, looking down into the darkness. He could just make out the reflection of the moon in the water far below them. Had it always been that far down, or was the darkness playing tricks on him?
“Let’s go, Eds,” Richie said tensely, egging him on. They were the last two left to jump, and Eddie knew Richie was waiting to make sure Eddie jumped before he did, or there was a very high chance Eddie might not jump at all, filth or no filth.
“Don’t call me Eds.” Eddie snapped, his hands curling into fists in annoyance. He rolled his shoulders as his disgust with what was covering him began to win out over his fear at the jump. He had done this jump countless times over the years, but something about doing it in the dark made it seem as daunting as it had the first time he had jumped. He simply could not get his feet to move. Another minute of Eddie trying to talk his body into cooperating and it stubbornly refusing passed before Richie sighed and stepped forward to take Eddie’s disgusting hand in his own equally disgusting hand.
“Let’s go,” Richie repeated before turning and running towards the edge, not giving Eddie a moment to think it through as he followed Richie at a run right off the edge of the world.
The water they landed in was so cold that it, far more than the length of their drop, knocked Eddie’s breath away. He let himself sink as deep as he dared through the waters, suddenly alone as he had lost Richie’s hand upon impact with the unforgiving water. Eddie opened his eyes and had just enough time to panic at the darkness before a hand gripped his, and Richie pulled him up to the surface.
They all shone in the moonlight, water droplets sparkling on them even though the mess was still not yet completely gone from their skin. Eddie looked into each of their faces, and he knew in that moment with sudden startling clarity that something vast had shifted inside each of them. Any love any of them might have been harboring for Derry had shriveled up, leaving nothing but a vast aching emptiness inside of them waiting to be filled.
The Clown Killers died inside of Greta Keene’s house that night.
In the dark freezing waters of the quarry, the Losers were born.