Chapter Text
“Not too far, dear!” Sonia Kaspbrak warned nervously from the front porch as her son raced down the steps. “And be home before supper!”
“I will!” Eddie called over his shoulder. He could feel his mother’s eyes drilling into the back of his head the whole time he walked down the street, and only relaxed once he turned the corner and his house was out of sight. He looked down at the small map his mother had given him of their new town, before shoving it deep into his jacket pocket. He knew his mother just didn’t want him getting lost, but Eddie knew he wouldn’t. Even though they had only been in Derry for a few days, Eddie had already memorized some of the patterns of winding streets from his and his mother’s trips through the town. Turn right at his house, then left and the end of the block, keep going straight, and five minutes later you were at the town centre. From there, it wasn’t too hard to navigate his way through Derry.
Although the small, rundown community of Derry wasn’t much to look at- and as Eddie made his way down the streets, he came to the conclusion that there wasn’t much to do either- he couldn’t be happier. Back in New York, his mother would have never in a million years let Eddie wander around by himself. Too many cars , she would say. Everyone’s a reckless driver, did you hear about the person who got hit by a car driving onto the sidewalk? Too many creeps on the streets, did you hear about that boy who got taken from the park last week? Everything is filthy, you could get sick, did I tell you about my friend who touched a dirty pole on the subway-
Eddie shook his mother’s obsessive thoughts out of his head. No, he was going to have a nice day exploring the town, and he was not going to let his mother’s paranoia weigh him down anymore.
He spent all afternoon walking around Derry. He stopped at some of the stores that lined the main street, he visited the small park full of picnicking families in the town centre, and he even took a quick detour through the woods. He was having a great afternoon… until he started to realize that he wasn’t recognizing the streets he was walking down anymore. The houses looked unfamiliar, he didn’t recognize any of the street names, and worst of all, his map had fallen out of his pocket without him realizing. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had to come to terms with it: he was lost. He looked down and checked his watch- it was five-thirty, and he only had half an hour to find his way back home.
Stay calm, he reminded himself. You won’t get anywhere if you panic. And so, he continued walking, in the hopes that he would soon come across something familiar that would lead him back home. He walked for a while, and began to feel more and more anxious when kept turning down unfamiliar street after unfamiliar street. Eddie was contemplating knocking on one of the houses’ doors and asking the residents if he could use their telephone to call the police, when Eddie noticed something. To his right, the line of houses ended, and a large field stretched down the rest of the street. The field was enclosed by an old-fashioned iron gate, and on the inside, was populated with rows and rows of headstones.
It was a cemetery.
Eddie was planning on quickly by-passing the graveyard, when his eyes caught notice of something far over on the other side of the cemetery. From his spot on the street, Eddie could see the iron gate entrance on the other side, and past that entrance, was another street. And directly across the street from the graveyard was a house with its lawn fully occupied with Halloween decorations. Eddie realized with glee that he recognized those decorations- they were set up at the house just down the street from his own house. I’m almost home! he thought excitedly, I just need to get past the graveyard!
Eddie realized he had two choices: cut through the cemetery as a shortcut home, or try and find a longer route that took him around the graveyard. He knew that he should just stick to the real roads- his mother would not be very happy if she found out he had walked through the cemetery. But as he looked from side to side at the streets around him, he came to the conclusion that continuing on the roads would almost certainly make him even more lost.
If he went through the cemetery, he would definitely get home before his curfew. His shoes might get a little muddy, but he could just tell his mother he had taken a walk through the park, and that shouldn’t raise too much suspicion.
But… then he would have to walk through the cemetery.
Eddie took a breath. He didn’t believe in ghosts, not really. He didn’t believe in ghosts, or zombies, or vampires, or any of that. At least, he told himself he didn’t. But as he looked across the field of gravestones, growing darker as the sun began to set, he wasn’t sure if he was so confident in that anymore.
Eddie checked the time on his watch, and clenched his hand into a fist. It was almost six- if he didn’t cut through the cemetery, he would never make it home in time. When 6:01 rolled around and he wasn’t walking through his front door, his mother would be on the phone with the police organizing a search party. Come on , he told himself. You’re not scared of a stupid empty cemetery.
He took a step through the gates. Eddie knew it was just his imagination, just his mind trying to scare him more, but even from that first step inside, an icy chill surrounded him. He tried to ignore it, zipping his jacket up to his chin and shoving his hands into his pockets. He walked swiftly down the path, keeping his head lowered and keeping his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. He only glanced up every few seconds, to see how close he was to the other side. I’m halfway there , he thought. I’ll be there in a minute… Forty-five seconds… thirty… twenty…
“Hey there!” The voice was so loud, so cheerful, it completely broke the focus Eddie had built up. He nearly jumped out of his skin as he snapped his head up and turned around, looking behind him in the direction of the voice. The voice had scared him, but when Eddie saw no one behind him, just an empty cemetery, that frightened him more than anything.
His eyes moved across the graveyard, looking for the person who had called to him. Surely it was someone playing a prank- some kids who saw him enter the graveyard and decided to pull a prank on him. Yes, that was it. No ghost, just a practical joke that Eddie did not find funny in the slightest.
Eddie turned to continue his trek home, but quickly stopped in his tracks. In front of him, stood a boy. It took a moment for the boy to register in Eddie’s mind, but when it did, Eddie had to stop himself from screaming.
The boy was dead, that was obvious. His skin was sickly pale, with a bluish tint and slight transparency- Eddie could see the street at the other side of the cemetery through his body. He wore a graphic t-shirt and shorts, but the boy wearing summer clothes in the middle of October was not what caught Eddie’s attention- it was the way his clothes were ripped, torn into shreds and covered in something dark that Eddie really hoped was just mud, but highly doubted. But what really sent a shock of terror through Eddie was the boy’s face- it was something right out of one of those horror movies Eddie’s mother never let him watch. The boy wore a pair of large, thick-rimmed glasses with cracked lenses, but the eyes behind them were completely milky white. His lips were stitched together with black thread, but his mouth was spread into a smile. Large, bloody gashes were torn into his cheeks, and maggots squirmed around in them. Eddie felt sick to his stomach.
“Hey, didja hear me?” the boy said, stepping closer to Eddie- no, not stepping. Eddie looked down and realized he was floating . “I said hey! Didn’t your momma tell you it’s rude to ignore people?”
Eddie had heard the term “frozen in shock” before, but it wasn’t until that moment that Eddie finally knew what it felt like. As the boy got closer, all Eddie wanted to do was run. He wanted to run as fast as he could, as far away from the cemetery as possible, but his feet were glued to the ground.
“Helloooo… anyone in there?” the boy continued. Though his lips were sewn shut, he had no problem speaking. It wasn’t until the boy reached out, and poked a cold finger into Eddie’s chest, sending a pulse of ice through his entire body. That seemed to be the thing that broke through Eddie’s fear, and he suddenly remembered that he had a pair of working legs and he found his voice. Eddie let out the scream he had been holding back, and he closed his eyes and barged forward, running past the ghostly boy as fast as his legs would take him. He didn’t stop, not even when the ghost called out after him, “ I was only saying hi! ”
He kept running until he felt his feet move off of the soft ground of the cemetery and onto the concrete of the street. He turned right, and ran in the direction of his home until he physically couldn’t anymore. When his lungs felt like they were about to explode, he came to a stop and tried to control his breathing while he searched for his inhaler in the bag around his waist. While the puff of his inhaler made his lungs feel better, Eddie didn’t think there was any kind of medicine in the world that could make the rest of him feel better- not after what he just saw.
Eddie tried to make sense of it all. That couldn’t have been a ghost. It couldn’t have been- ghosts weren’t real! They were made up! It had to have been someone pulling a prank. It was almost Halloween after all. It was just someone, in a really good costume, trying to scare him. Yes, that was it. That was it.
Eddie stood in the street for a moment, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. He fought the urge to look over his shoulder, back over to the cemetery. While most of him was terrified, and wanted to go nowhere near that cemetery ever again, a small part of him was still curious. He convinced himself that the boy was just wearing a Halloween costume, but… Eddie had seen those maggots moving, and they were definitely inside his face. And he could have sworn that he was transparent. Eddie had seen really good special effects makeup before but… he didn’t think there was any such costume that could make a person see-through.
Eddie’s watch beeped loudly. He looked down at the watchface: it was six o’clock. Eddie sighed and tucked his inhaler back into his fanny pack. He ran the rest of the way home- if he didn’t get home in the next minute, that ghost boy in the graveyard would be the least of his worries.
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“What’s the matter, Eddie? You’ve barely touched your dinner.”
Eddie didn’t look at his mother, he only continued to push around the vegetables on his plate with his fork. He shrugged. “I’m not very hungry.”
“Well, what’s wrong?” his mother pressed, her tone concerned. “Do you feel sick? Is it your stomach? You know, I did hear that this town has unusually high rates of the flu, and you get sick so easily, I’ll call the doctor right now and book an appointment for tomorrow-”
“I’m not sick, Mommy,” Eddie said as his mother rose out of her seat to reach for the telephone. “I don’t have the flu. I think I’m still just tired from the move. Is it okay if I go to bed?”
His mother looked at him for a long time. At least, to Eddie, it felt like a long time. It felt like forever before she finally nodded and allowed him to leave the table. “ Right to bed,” she said sternly, stretching out her arms. “No comic books under the covers.” Eddie nodded, letting his mother give him a tight squeeze before he made his way upstairs to his bedroom.
It wasn’t a complete lie. He really wasn’t hungry, but it wasn’t because he was tired. It was because he couldn’t get the image of the dead boy out of his head. The maggots crawling in his face, the blood on his clothes and his cheeks and his lips, the icy cold touch of his finger that was still making Eddie shiver, even though it had happened almost an hour ago.
Eddie walked over to his bedroom window and opened the curtains. He couldn’t quite see the cemetery from his room, but he could see the pale glow of the graveyard lights from over the top of houses and trees. He wondered if the ghost boy was still there.