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Rainwater crawled along the sidewalks of Derry-like veins.
Not streams. Veins.
Thin silver lines slipping between cracked pavement and cigarette butts, soaking old newspapers and carrying them into gutters that seemed deeper than they should’ve been. The town always smelled faintly wet after dark. Mold in the walls. Iron in the pipes. Something sweet rotting underneath.
Stephanye noticed things like that.
Even as a child.
“Nini!”
Her mother’s voice rang through the evening air from the porch.
Little Stephanye looked up from the curb slowly, knees scraped raw through her stockings. Her dark purple hair stuck to her forehead from sweat and drizzle. One eye was swelling purple blue already, blood dripping lightly from her nose onto the collar of her yellow sweater.
Her mother, Flora Winchester nearly dropped the dish towel in her hands.
“Oh, my Lord- Nini, sweetheart!”
Steph blinked once.
Slowly.
As if waking from somewhere far away.
“I tripped,” she said. Her father, Benjamin Winchester, came down the porch steps quickly, crouching beside her. “Honey, that doesn’t look like a trip.”
“It was dark.”
“That doesn’t explain the black eye.”
Steph stared past him, toward the storm drain. Benjamin followed her gaze instinctively. Of course, Nothings there. Just rainwater disappearing into darkness. But Steph’s expression had changed.
Not fear. Recognition. Like she’d seen somebody she almost remembered.
“Nini?” Flora whispered carefully.
Steph finally looked away from the drain.
“There was someone down there,” she murmured.
Silence.
Then her father forced a smile immediately. Too quickly.
“Well, Derry’s full of weirdos.”
Her mother took Steph’s cold hands gently. “Come inside, baby.”
Steph obeyed.
But before stepping through the doorway, she glanced back one more time.
The drain looked deeper now.
. . . 🎈
Her mother cleaned her wounds carefully at the kitchen table.
The Winchester home smelled like cinnamon tea and laundry detergent. Warm lighting. Soft radio music. Her parents were kind people, genuinely kind, which somehow made everything worse.
Because terrible things weren’t supposed to happen to children who came from good homes.
Steph sat still while her mother dabbed blood from beneath her eye.
“You need to stop wandering near Main Street after dark,” Mrs. Winchester scolded gently.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You hear me, Nini?”
“Yes.”
Her father, Mr. Winchester leaned against the counter, watching her quietly.
Steph noticed adults watched her strangely sometimes.
Like they were waiting for her to say something wrong.
Like she made them nervous without trying.
“You’re pale,” her father muttered.
“I’m fine.”
Then suddenly,
Steph froze.
Her nose began bleeding again, a single droplet.
Blood spilled over her lips and onto the tablecloth.
Her mother gasped. “Oh, my goodness-”
Steph’s breathing hitched sharply.
Not here.
Not now.
The room blurred.
For one horrible second,
Fire.
She saw fire.
Heat swallowing the sky black.
Hands grabbing her wrists.
People screaming prayers.
The smell of burning skin.
Her skin.
Then another flash.
A man’s hands around her throat.
In a fog.
Winter outside, Freezing Landscapes.
Dark skin.
Terror.
She couldn’t breathe,
Steph jerked violently back into reality, knocking over the teacup.
Her father grabbed her shoulders. “Stephanye!”
The kitchen returned slowly.
The fire vanished.
The choking vanished.
Only the smell remained.
Smoke.
Steph touched her throat unconsciously.
“…I’m... Sorry.”
Her mother looked frightened now. Not of her. For her.
“You’ve been having those dreams again?”
Steph nodded weakly.
Neither parent understood nor do they know what The Shining was.
Because neither does Stephanye did, then.
They just thought their daughter had nightmares that bled into reality sometimes.
But Steph knew better even then.
Something was wrong with her.
Something ancient.
Something unfinished.
But even then, the Winchester Family had a great life together, as the years after that passed strangely.
Steph’s visions worsened. Nosebleeds. Dreams. Memories that did not belong to her, almost as if it were visions. Jonathan Winchester, her older brother noticed first.
Not because of psychic abilities. Because he paid attention.
“You keep staring at empty places,” he told Steph quietly one afternoon while developing photographs in the garage darkroom.
Steph sat nearby swinging her legs from a stool.
“What empty places?”
Jonathan frowned at one photograph hanging to dry.
A family portrait he’d taken last week, as he was inspecting it, Steph peek over as he’d show it to his little sister.
Though, at eighteen, Jonathan left Derry for college upstate. He promised he’d visit.
He never did.
═════════════════════════════════════════════════
Then came the year, where everything went downhill in the Winchester family.
Steph was fifteen. There had been a man.
A friend of Benjamin’s.
Trusted.
The kind of man adults defended automatically because he smiled politely in public.
Steph never told anybody the full story afterward, only her father.
Benjamin listened quietly while she spoke.
Did not interrupt. Did not ask if, she was sure. That the friend had attempted to do explicit stuff to her, inappropriate things, touching her in a way that would cause her to tell her father that, she was uncomfortable with it.
And somehow,
That was worse than anger.
Steph remembered him sitting at the kitchen table afterward staring silently at his folded hands for nearly ten minutes.
Then finally standing.
“Stay with your mother tonight,” he said softly.
“Dad-”
“It’s alright, Nini.”
His voice sounded distant.
Too calm.
“I’m just going hunting.”
The police report later claimed Benjamin Winchester murdered the man in an open field outside Derry during a bird hunting trip.
The newspapers described it grotesquely.
Animalistically. They said Benjamin attacked him with his bare hands.
That he tore out the man’s throat with his teeth.
People in town became fascinated immediately.
Not horrified.
Fascinated.
“The Cannibal of Derry, Maine.” That became Benjamin’s new name overnight.
Nobody cared why he did it.
Nobody asked.
And perhaps worst of all. Part of Steph understood him. Benjamin went to prison before winter ended.
Flora broke apart afterward. Not dramatically. Quietly.
Panic attacks started first. Then insomnia. Then fear.
Steph would wake some nights to hear her mother crying alone in the bathroom because she thought nobody could hear her.
Bills piled up.
The house grew colder.
Flora had spent years as a stay-at-home mother. Now she worked herself sick trying to keep the house alive.
Church became her only comfort.
Marge Tozier, their neighbour three houses down, began visiting almost daily.
She brought casseroles. Candles. Prayers.
Sometimes she simply sat beside Flora quietly while Steph pretended not to listen from the hallway.
“You cannot let darkness consume this house,” Marge told her gently once.
Flora smiled weakly. “I think it already has.”
Steph was eighteen when her mother died. Heart attack. Stress, doctors said.
Anxiety. Exhaustion.
As if grief itself had slowly strangled her from the inside.
After the funeral, the house became unbearably silent.
Jonathan never returned. Benjamin remained in prison.
And Steph, Stephanye stayed.
She never left the Winchester house.
Not because she loved Derry. Because leaving felt impossible.
Like the town itself had wrapped fingers around her ankles.
The only people who still checked on her regularly were Marge Tozier and her family.
Marge invited her to dinner often.
To church too.
Steph usually sat stiffly through sermons while stained-glass sunlight painted colors across the pews.
“Your mother would want peace for you,” Marge whispered kindly once.
Steph stared ahead quietly. The priest spoke about salvation.
But Steph kept thinking about the storm drain outside her childhood home.
About the thing she’d seen watching her all those years ago. Her dreams, and visions.
꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷
Years passed gradually.
Derry aged badly.
Stephanye aged strangely.
By 1988, she was no longer little Nini with scraped knees and missing teeth.
She was twenty-ish now. Quiet. Sharp-eyed. Introverted in the way wounded animals were introverted, cautious, observant, permanently tired.
Stephanye never left the Winchester house. Even after Flora died and the rooms became too quiet, she remained.
The wallpaper peeled. The pipes groaned in winter. Dust gathered in corners her mother used to clean every Sunday morning.
Yet Steph stayed. Partly because it was all she had left, and partly because leaving felt like abandoning the ghosts of the people she loved.
Every few weeks, she would drive to the prison to visit Benjamin. Their conversations were never particularly long. Sometimes they sat together discussing ordinary things, the weather, grocery prices, books. Sometimes neither spoke much at all.
But Steph always came back and stayed, as if it’s in her nature to do so.
No matter how difficult the visits became, she refused to let her father become another person stolen from her by Derry.
The walls sweated when it rained.
Sometimes she woke up with blood on her pillow from her nose. Sometimes she woke up speaking languages she didn’t know. Sometimes she remembered dying.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
A pilgrim woman screaming while flames consumed her dress.
A man choking her in a house, during winter.
Different names.
Different faces.
Always her.
Always death.
And every single memory ended the same way.
That night in January, Derry lost another child.
Steph heard the police sirens from her window.
The town ignored missing children with horrifying efficiency.
That was the first thing she’d learned about Derry.
People here forgot on purpose.
The second thing she learned, the town itself wanted them to.
Steph sat on her couch with a cigarette burning untouched between her fingers.
Thunder rattled outside.
Then came the voice.
“Stephy.”
Her entire body stiffened. No one ever called her that.
Well… not anyone, except IT.
The apartment lights flickered once.
Twice.
Then went out.
Darkness swallowed the room whole.
Steph closed her eyes slowly.
“…No.”
A wet chuckle echoed from somewhere nearby.
“Ohhh, don’t say it like that.”
The voice sounded amused. Playful. Mocking almost.
Like someone pretending to understand humour after reading about it in a book.
Steph stood immediately.
“You’re not real.”
“Oh, that hurts my feelings.”
The darkness moved.
Not through the room.
Inside it.
A tall silhouette unfolded impossibly from the corner ceiling, limbs bending wrong before straightening elegantly.
Then the clown stepped into view.
Pale face.
Orange-red hair.
Silver suit.
Eyes glowing yellow in the dark like animal headlights.
Pennywise smiled wider than a human jaw should allow.
“There she is.”
Steph’s breath caught. Not from fear. Recognition. And that terrified her more.
“You,” she whispered.
Pennywise tilted his head.
“Oh, wonderful. Usually it takes longer.”
His voice shifted strangely between sentences, theatrical one moment, ancient the next.
Steph backed away.
“You’re from the dreams.”
“Oh, Stephy…” He grinned. “Of course, I’m from the dreams. I was there to see you go through ALL of them.”
Silence filled the apartment.
Rain tapped softly against the windows.
Pennywise wandered around her home casually, inspecting objects with fake curiosity.
Steph gripped the lamp harder. “What are you?”
Pennywise looked genuinely delighted.
“Now that,” he said, “is a very rude question to ask somebody, who came over to comfort you.”
“Comfort me?”
“Yes! You’re all sad and lonely and existential.” He gestured dramatically. “I thought perhaps: Why not visit the reincarnating psychic woman tied to me beyond mortal understanding?”
Steph stared at him.
“…The what?”
Pennywise burst into laughter. Not normal laughter. Too loud.
Too layered.
Then he stopped. Almost immediately.
“Ohhh, you really don’t remember properly yet.”
He suddenly stood in front of her.
Too fast.
One second across the room.
Next second inches from her face.
Steph flinched despite herself.
Yellow eyes widened instantly.
“There it is.”
“…What?”
“Fear.”
His grin sharpened.
“You’ve been dying for a very long time, Stephy.”
Steph shoved him backward hard.
To her surprise-
He stumbled.
Pennywise blinked.
Then looked offended.
But soon he grinned once again.
“No.”
“Oh yes.” His voice became almost gentle. “Burned. Drowned. Choked. Torn apart. Sick. Old. Young. Again, and again and again.”
“Stop.”
“And every single time…”
His smile widened impossibly.
“…you’d come back to me.”
“No... You kill and eat people.”
“And?”
“You just admitted it.”
“And you people eat meat while smiling at cows in fields. We all have hobbies, Stephy.”
Steph should’ve screamed.
Should’ve run.
Instead-
She felt exhausted.
Deeply exhausted.
Like part of her had always known this moment would happen eventually.
Pennywise watched her carefully now.
Not with ‘normal’ affection.
It’s rather more to a complicated one.
Predatory patience disguised as fascination.
“You’ve been dying for a very long time,” he said once again quietly.
Steph’s expression faltered.
“I still don’t know or understand what you mean.”
“Oh, but you do... or else you wouldn’t be standing here right now, would you?”
His tone mocking, and almost amused as he added again.
“You always come back, and… stayed by my side.”
Steph’s nose started bleeding again.
Memories crashed into her violently, giving her a horrible, stabbing headache.
A shape with glowing deadlights watching her across lifetimes.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Steph falls to her knees.
“There we are again,” he whispered.
Steph pushed away weakly. “Leave me alone.”
His smile twitched slightly.
Something ugly moved underneath it.
“I can’t, we’re bound to be together forever, afterall.”
Steph’s eyes hardened immediately.
“No.”
Pennywise stared, as Stephanye winced before asking him.
“What do you want from me?”
Pennywise hummed.
For the first time since appearing,
He looked honest.
“Well... I need you to do a few things for me,”
That was somehow the scariest answer yet.
He tilted his head slightly.
“You’re the only thing that comes back and the thing that had kept me well-fed, Steph.”
Steph swallowed hard.
The room felt colder now.
“You torment me. Scare me. And you kill people.”
“Yes.”
“And you expect me to what. Accept this?!”
Pennywise thought for a moment.
“…Preferably.”
Steph laughed suddenly.
A sharp, tired laugh.
“You’re insane.”
She had finally calm down now.
Pennywise watched her closely then.
Almost for too long.
Because laughter sounded strange coming from Stephanye Winchester.
She carried exhaustion like another organ.
Ancient exhaustion.
And yet, there it was.
A tiny laugh.
Pennywise’s smile softened almost invisibly.
Then immediately sharpened again when he realized it had.
“You should get to sleep now,” he muttered.
Steph blinked. “What?”
“You’re bleeding all over the carpet.”
She looked down.
Blood stained her shirt from her nose again, as some dripped on the carpet.
“…Oh.”
Pennywise stared at the blood, that alone should’ve horrified her.
Instead, Steph just felt tired.
“So… what now?” she asked quietly.
Pennywise moved toward the window.
Rain distorted his reflection strangely.
“Now?” He smiled without looking at her. “I wait.”
“For what?”
He finally glanced back.
“For you to stop pretending you can be normal.”
Then he’d turn a nearby lamp on-
With a click, he’s gone.
Not dramatically.
No smoke.
No explosion.
One blink,
He’s Gone.
Leaving only the smell of wet circus tents and something rotting underneath Derry.
Steph stood alone in the apartment for a long time afterward.
The silence felt heavier now.
Like the room remembered him even after he left.
She finally sat on the couch slowly, pressing trembling fingers against her bleeding nose, grabbing some tissues, as she felt exhaustion crept in while she thought of what IT said to her.
Dependency.
Slow.
Rotting.
Like ivy strangling a house so gradually the walls mistake it for decoration.
Pennywise isolated her without touching her.
Made normal people feel distant.
Made himself feel inevitable.
And Stephanye,
Stephanye was so tired of being alone that she mistook understanding for safety.
- 𝕱𝖎𝖓.