Haunted by Stephen King's It (Part 2)

*Disclaimer editing is a bit rough I am still learning*

The conclusion to Stephen King's It and a few of my thoughts on the book! Make sure to rate and review the podcast. Also Follow me on instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, and youtube at A haunted reader podcast! Email any questions or recommendations to ahauntedreader@gmail.com 

Transcript

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To Haunted Reader. I'm Elizabeth. Each week I'll sit down and tell you what book I'm haunted by. I'll give an in-depth summary of the book and some of my thoughts at the end. While I mostly read horror and thriller books, occasionally we'll have some fantasy and young adult books as well. Disclaimer that I forgot to add at the beginning of last week's episode. I am currently doing this podcast completely by myself, editing the intro, outro music, and recording. So I am aware that the editing might be a little rough. But bear with me, I'm learning as I go. Now, a reminder: the book that we're covering this week is the second part of Stephen King's It. And a disclaimer that this book contains violence, bullying. There's also a sex scene that's a little uncomfortable in this book at the end. And there might be a few other trigger warnings here that I'm forgetting. Now let's get back into Stephen King's It. If you remember where we last left off, they were starting to remember some things from their childhood and why they were called back to Derry to face it. And where we left off, Mike had just officially became part of the Losers Club. He was the last missing member. So let's get into it. Back in present day, the rest start showing up to the library, all with booze in hand. Together they began to remember that while they were digging out their clubhouse, Mike brought a photo album and memory started to click. Mike excuses himself to get a six-pack, and in opening the fridge, balloons tumble out and inside he finds Dan Euris' head. It as Dan tells Mike that they can't win without Stan, then starts to roll towards Mike. Richie calls for Mike, but Mike tells the others to come in. It flashes back to when they were all kids, and this flashback is when they hung out with Mike for the first time. About Pennywise and their plan to kill him, in which Mike tells them about seeing Pennywise himself. Mike tells them of his second meeting with It when Pennywise followed him on the 4th of July parade route and then tells them about seeing it as the giant bird. Bill and the others go to the library to do more research while Mike and Bev go home. A week later, Mike brings his father's photo album to the Barons and discuss some of the things that they will need to finish the clubhouse. After they were done, they sat down to look at the photo album. In the album, some of the pictures dated back a hundred years, but in the pictures, either in plain view or in the background, they spotted Pennywise in every photo, showing how long he'd been around. Suddenly, a picture from a parade in 1945 begins to move. They can actually hear the sounds that are in the photo as well. Ben touches the photo on top of the protective covering and Pennywise darts towards him. The plastic bulges and it takes the form of their different fears. After closing the book, they work to make Stan come to terms with it, being real. It flashes back to 1984, where Richie realized the burning in his eyes was related to the memory of when the losers did the smoke hole ritual. Ben explains he found it in a research, and Native Americans did it to help them make decisions on where to move their tribes. Make a smoke hole and burn green wood. Those who last it longest would have visions on what to do. They decided to try it. They prepared everything, and once ready to try it, is when they decide to tell Bev that she should be the lookout. Realizing this is because she's a girl, Bev forces them to play fair and draw matches to be the watch. Bev lights one and puts out and puts it out and into the bunch. They all pick unburnt matches and realize it means that they are all meant to do it. First out is Stan, then Ben, then Eddie, Bev, and last was Bill. Richie and Mike shared the vision. The hole appears bigger and they walk out into a clearing. They realize that they are in the barrens, in possibly prehistoric times. As they are walking, they hear and feel a large vibration. As it grows closer, they realize it's a spaceship. It crashes into the ground, and Mike and Richie run. They wake up to realize the others had pulled them out. The others explain they pull them out because it sounded like they were screaming from far away. Mike and Richie tell the others what had happened and how it had always been there. After this memory, it reminds them of when Henry Bowers broke Eddie's arm. Before they can dive into the memory, Eddie's inhaler rolls across the table and more balloons appear. Then he goes into the memory. He remembers how the local pharmacist tries to tell him his asthma isn't real, and after leaving the pharmacy and thinking about what he's told, Henry, Victor, a boy named Moose, and Patrick Hostetter spot him and chase him. The chase ends when Henry catches Eddie and breaks his arm. While in the hospital, he dreams of his mother chasing off his friends while Pennywise applauds her. When he awakes, Eddie tells his mother he knows his medication isn't real and that he will remain with his group of friends even if she doesn't like it. Later, his friends return. Bill tells Eddie the plan to make the silver coins into slugs, and that Bev will be the one to take the shot, since she at practice was the best one. Bev shares a memory she had of Patrick and Eddie after Eddie is done. It was the day after Eddie broke his arm. She had gone down to the dump to practice, and here she saw Henry, Belch, Victor, and Patrick. Here she decides to hide, but she peeks her head out to see what they are doing, and she realizes that they are standing in a circle lighting their farts on fire. After a while, Victor and Belch left. Patrick asked to show Henry something, and they got quiet. So Bev decided to look out. Warning here, it's a sexual situation. But Bev had seen Patrick was touching Henry and himself at the same time. Patrick asks Henry if he wants him to put his mouth on it, and that's when Henry snaps out of it and storms off. Patrick leaves the other way, and Bev decides to follow him. She follows him to an old refrigerator where he was trapping animals to kill them. What she doesn't see is that he is being attacked by leeches. She heard what she thought was her father saying hello and goodbye, and then Patrick was gone. Bev came out and saw a trail of blood, and leeches started coming towards her. She ran following the blood trail at first and then was out onto the street. Later she told the boys what happened, and they went down to the dump to open the fridge with caution, and inside found a note. Stop now before I kill you all. Award to the wise, your friend Pennywise. Pom-pom start tumbling out of the fridge. After Bev shared this her memory, Ben goes into his memory about making the silver slug. Two silver slug slugs together at Bill's house, and then the next day they return to the house on Neilbot Street. They went in through the window under the porch in a row. Bill, Bev, Ben, Eddie, Richie, Stan, and Mike. They enter the house and go upstairs. In the kitchen, they find a large rat that Bev almost shoots at. Walking through the house, they find a pinup magazine and as an adult reflecting on this memory, Bev realizes that the woman on the cover of the pinup magazine was Mrs. Kirsch. But she doesn't realize that at the moment as a child. Ben feels a voice begin to invade his mind and they enter a hallway that keeps changing. Bill breaks the wall to show them that the hallway isn't real. Then a door opens and they see a giant black monster come through the door. As they slam it, they begin to hear horrible screams. Mike realizes the screams are actually a moose blower that he has on the farm with his parents. They make their way to a bathroom. While here it comes up through a pipe in the form of a werewolf. It attacks Ben. Bev takes a shot but misses, and then the werewolf slashes Ben in the chest. Bev shoots again and hits it in the eye. Bev goes to fake a third shot, but it takes off back down the drain before she can. Ben thinks over where the power of the slugs comes from, and then one of my favorite lines in the book happens next. Nothing much else happened for the next two weeks. That brings us to the fourth interlude. Here Mike talks about the cycle in 1905 and the Claude Harrocks and the Silver Dollar Affair when Cloud brutally murders a few men in the silver dollar bar. After this, Mike says, This is when he knows it is time to make the calls, to bring them all back. Brings us to the final battle. This section, the paragraphs go back and forth between past and present, starting with the present. They are getting ready to leave the library when the old scar on their hands they made as kids opens up. Quickly they grab hands and make a circle. As they do this, a power flows through them, and the library starts to shake and the door slams shut. After it ended, they realize their memory fully has returned. They all leave. Bev and Bill leave together, and she tells him she remembers when her father found out her friends were boys. He begins to beat her and yell at her for hanging around with boys. And while this is happening, she realizes her father's eyes are empty and it had invaded his mind. She takes off and he chases her all the way down to a spot by the barons. She began her way to the barrens, not realizing Henry and his friends were following her, and Henry had found a new switchblade that morning after hearing a voice telling him to kill her. Back in the present, Mike is still in the library cleaning up when he feels like he is being watched. He begins to hear noises and calls out, but no one answers. Then he sees a shadow. He pulls a letter opener out of the drawer. As the shape gets closer, he realizes it's Henry Bowers. Henry explains it, he calls it the Moon Voices, helped him get out, and he hitched his way there. Mike tries to tell him if they made it out in 1958, and so did Henry, that means it wants to end Henry as well. It reappears as Stan's head. Yellings kill him. Henry stabs Mike in the thigh, and Mike stabs Henry in the stomach. Henry stumbles out of the library. Mike calls 911. Pennywise tries yelling at Mike to keep him from making the call. Unsure if anyone on the phone can hear him, he starts asking for help. 1958, Henry is yelling to Bev and they begin to chase her. And Bev tries to flag down a car. It stops to help her, but Henry scares the woman away, and Bev kicks Henry in the balls and runs. Back in the present, Bill and Bev go back to the townhouse and they cheat on their spouses with each other. During this, Bev remembers she had slept with all of them when they were kids. Bill explains it was her way of getting them out of the tunnels. Back in the past, Bev runs into the barrens with Henry and them behind her and sees Ben is in the clubhouse. They hide in there as Henry and the rest run past them. Realizing they lost Bev and knowing they have a clubhouse nearby, Henry has Belch wait behind while they look on, not realizing he's standing right on top of their clubhouse. They are inside the clubhouse. Ben confesses to Beverly that he is the one who wrote the postcard for her. They're also talking and they realize that it is using Henry. And Ben tells her that the others are out and they should be coming back soon. That's when they decide Henry must be gone and they get out of the clubhouse. In the present, Henry and had crawled and hid in bushes. And remembers chasing Bev in the past. A voice had told him to wait and watch, so he told the other two boys to wait with him. While waiting, he remembers how he found the knife in his mailbox that morning with balloons with the faces of the losers club on them. The return address said Bob Gray. He threw the box and goes inside and uses the knife to kill his father before going with Victor and Belch. As he remembers this, Bev and Ben came out of the clubhouse. Henry says they will follow them to find the others. It drives Henry to the townhouse with a list of who's in what rooms, and heads he gets out of the car and heads to Eddie's room. Back in 1958, the losers all catch up to each other on the street, and Bev tells them they can't go down to the Barrens because Henry is down there, and Bill tells them that they are going there anyway. They start returning to the barrens. A huge storm begins to brew. Henry reaches Eddie's room and attacks Eddie as he opens the door. Henry rebreaks Eddie's arm and Eddie hits him with a glass water bottle, killing him. He calls Bill's room to tell him what happened. And then back in 1958, they reach the clearing. Bill realizes no place is safe because the town lets it take the kids. As they are talking about this, Henry and them come out and start throwing rocks at them. As they are running away, Bill tells Ben to lead them to the sewers. They reach the pump and open it and begin to climb in. They reach the bottom and wait for Henry to come down, but he sees they are waiting and goes back up and starts to throw rocks at them, pushing them further into the sewers. They realize it's time to face it and use the ritual of Chud and start making their way. Back in 1987, Tom has a dream in which he is Henry chasing the losers in the tunnel. He woke up realizing it was a crazy dream and then spots a balloon light up and leading to the door. Tom hears voices coming from it and he listens to them. Side note, I just realized earlier at some point I said 1985 instead of 1987, and I'm very sorry. End of side note. Audra also has a dream, but she is Bev in the tunnels. She wakes up and hears a voice in the bathroom. Frightened, she calls Bill's room out at the townhouse, but no one answers. After hanging up, it appears on her TV, and in a fright, she grabs her purse and runs out to her car. Once she reaches her car, Tom approaches her, the Eddie's room. After talking about what happened, Bev calls Ben and Richie, who agreed to come down. But when she tries to call Mike, a cop answers the phone and tells her he was injured. Bev hangs up and Richie calls the hospital pretending to be a doctor and tells the others Henry attacked Mike. They decided it was time to go and face it. They drive down to the barrens and get to the sewers and realize it's already open. They think it might be from when they opened it earlier as kids, but realize that has to be more recent because of the markings that were on top of it. As they look down, they find a purse underneath, and Bill recognizes it immediately as Audra's purse, and they begin to climb down. In 1958, we get things from its perspective. It talks about how it and the turtle are the oldest things in history. It also says how it created dairy as a killing pen, but the losers club was something new because it couldn't kill because it couldn't kill them right away. And they caused it pain and how for the first time ever it was afraid. We also get its view in 1985 and that it is still afraid and disappointed Henry didn't kill Mike, but would send a nurse to do it in the morning. It was happy it had Audra trapped in its deadlights, last powerful thought before going comatose of Oh dear lord, it's female. But Tom had dropped dead of shock immediately. It thinks about how it goes after children because their fears are simpler than adults, but it can use adults to do its will. The Loser's Club also taught it that belief can work both ways and harm it. After their attack, it hid, but it was aware they made a pact to return. Bill takes off through the tunnels looking for Audra and the others follow. They find the bodies of Victor and Belch. They go a little further and find Patrick's body again and Audra's wedding ring. In 1958, they go further and find a sink sanitation worker's body, and hear Henry still following. Then a giant eye creature fills the tunnel. Eddie sprays it with his inhaler, saying it's battery acid, and hurts it, and the rest begin to attack it until it disappears. Further, and then a bird begins to attack them. Mike gets it with a knife while Stan yells what he believes in, and it takes off. They hear Henry again and move forward and find a door with a symbol and small bones. They all saw the symbol as their own fears, including Henry, who when he finds a door later, after Belch was killed, as a moon. Bill opens the door, and in 1987 they make their way to the door, and Bev realizes she thinks Tom brought Audra. As they are walking, they hear a dragging sound, who hears the town bell go off once, which was wrong, and the rest of the town also knew something was wrong. It goes back to the tunnels where they can hear the dragging sound getting closer. As they look, they see Georgie is coming towards them. Now Georgie is telling Bill that it is his fault that he died, and the others tell Bill that he needs to fight it. He begins to yell the phrase that he remembered from when he was a child, about he thrust his fist, and it recoils. While in the tunnels, an epic storm had started in Derry and it was destructing the town. Mike wakes up and calls for a nurse, and the nurse comes in to him. In the tunnels, the group all feel something is wrong with Mike and make a circle. Bill yells, send him our power. In the hospital, Mike is being attacked by the nurse, and he feels a surge of power and smashes a glass on the nurse's face. In the tunnels, they can feel that Mike is okay now. And they walk up to the door. They open it and see it is a giant spider and also realize that it is a female impregnant. Bill steps forward to start the ritual of Chud. In 1958, Bill steps up to It for the ritual of Chud, and Richie and Ben try to help. The ritual in 1958. Bill initiates the ritual but is thrown by It and into the void and runs into the turtle. The turtle won't help Bill, and Bill realizes there is another final other in this place, and that it is trying to throw him into another world. The turtle tells him he must help himself. Bill realizes he has to do Chud mentally and bites down into the tongue of it mentally. And in his father's voice, he yells, he thrusts his fist against the post and still insists he sees a ghost, and it screams. Bill commands him to bring him back. It slams Bill back into his body and begins to retreat. The lights start to die and the webbing begins to fall. Some of the web gets on stand, and they realize it'll hurt them if the webbing touches them. Bill wants to go after it, but they realize they need to get out. And then back in 1987, we have the ritual of 1987. Bill is back in the void and has thrown him and Bill goes to bite in and misses. The others realize something is wrong, so Richie steps in and manages to bite into its tongue, and it tries to shake him off, but he bites in harder and manages to find Bill. Richie starts to lose his grip and mentally yells out for help. Eddie steps up and sprays his inhaler into its eye, hurting it. He yells for Bill to come home and sprays the inhaler again into its mouth, and it bites Eddie's arm clear off, and Eddie collapses. As Eddie collapses, Bill and Richie come back, and right before and right as they get to Eddie, Richie jokingly calls him Ed's, and Eddie says, Richie, don't call me that and dies. Outside, the town of Derry is being destroyed by the storm and freak accidents. Back in 1958, the losers are trying to find their way out of the tunnels and realize Eddie has suddenly lost his sense of direction and everything was getting fuzzy. In their minds, that's part of this story that happened in 1958, made me a little uncomfortable to read, I'm not gonna lie. And it's because Stephen King probably went into way more detail than he should have, given the context that it is covering. But to spare you all the details, Beverly sleeps with each individual boy in the Loser's Club in order to make them closer as friends again, so they can find their way out of the tunnels. And Ben sees that its eggs are lying all over the ground, and he begins to crush them. You can feel they are chasing it and killing the eggs. Bev remembers what she did with them in the tunnels. Afterwards, Eddie's sense of direction comes back and they make their way out. In 1987, the town is in shatters. Bill and Richie find it and attack it. Richie gets severely injured, but Bill attacks until it's dead. After it dies, Bill looks for Richie and carries Richie out. Outside, downtown has completely collapsed. Bill yells for help and Ben comes to him. Richie begins to wake up, and Ben says he's got all of the eggs killed. They make their way back to the entrance and Bill picks up Audra. Richie wants to take Eddie's body, but they agree to leave it and begin to make their way out. As they go through the tunnels and see light, they realize the road above collapsed and climb out and see people standing on the street. They flag down an ambulance for Audra and take in their surroundings. It flashes back to them making a pact in 1958 to return if it ever returns to Derry. Which brings us to the last interlude after they kill it. Mike writes about how Ben and Bev leave Derry together, that Richie also leaves, but Bill stays because Audra is in a catatonic state. She can move, but she can't speak and is doll-like. They stay at Mike's while he's in the hospital. One day, Bill decides to take Audra out on silver and rides as fast as he can down to Main Street. As he gets close to Main Street, he yells, Hi ho silver away. And Audra snaps back. Mike talks about how they will all forget over time, as they are beginning to, including him this time. And there is the full summary of Stephen King's It. I absolutely love this book. I also love the movies, but I can see why it was such an issue trying to get all this context into one movie. I thought the first movie will always have a place in my heart, and it was well done. And again, the newer movie also really well done. But I see why things like The Turtle or the Other It were uh power were left out of these stories. It was hard, probably hard to find a place to fit everything and make it all cohesive without going into such great detail the way the book does. There were a few times that at first it was hard to follow while reading this book because of the constant going back, and I found myself checking which year I was on, especially towards the end. There was also uncomfortable topics in this book as well, such as abuse and what happened between the losers in the tunnel, which I'll be honest was probably the one thing that made me the most uncomfortable given that they're children. But overall, Stephen King does an amazing tell uh job at telling a story and world building and character building. And with this book, it's just so easy to lose yourself. I was finding myself up all hours of the night just reading. I think I finished this book in about three weeks. Which having two kids and a busy home life was surprising that I got to finish it that fast. And now I'll give you guys my rating scale, which I do one to five ghosties. One is the worst, five is the best. And I give this book a four rating, uh, four ghostie rating, mostly because I just found that the description that he gave and the tunnel scene between Bev and the Loser is doing what they were doing, kind of unnecessary. I'm aware that Stephen King was a lot on a lot of drugs at the time. I understand that. But even now he looks back on it and is kind of like, eh, maybe I shouldn't have done that. And that just took me a little too far out of my own comfort zone to be quite honest about that. The world of it was a mysterious place, and the losers were so lovable, and Henry was perfectly hateable, which is while at the same time you did feel bad for him, given his home life and his parents and how everything was there, which just made it even more of an enjoyable reading experience. I honestly to compare the books and the movies is kind of like comparing apples and oranges. You can't really do it because the movies in their own right are great, but the books will always be better because there's just so much detail that you can pack into a book that you can't pack into a movie. Well, that is my entire episode uh on it. Both sections. I hope you guys enjoyed them. I enjoyed reading it and getting to talk about it. So, with that being said, I hope you guys will take the time to please rate and review the podcast uh if you can. And also, I am now on YouTube. I managed to get the YouTube channel up and running. I'm on Instagram as well, and both accounts are under Haunted Reader Podcast. If you have any book recommendations or any tips or feedback that you'd like to send to me, you can email them to ahauntedreader at gmail.com. And until then, stay spooky and keep reading. Bye.