Chapter Text
Bill had been chasing a yellow-slickered George for fifteen minutes in the soaking, bone-chilling rain for fifteen minutes. Despite their age and size difference, Bill hadn’t made up a step on him.
“Just, slow down, Georgie, please!”
Georgie turned and stopped in their neighborhood streets up ahead. Bill hardened his determination, feet slamming into the pavement.
Georgie didn’t seem a step closer.
”It’s George, Bill.” He said in a cold, quiet tone that Bill had no trouble hearing in the pounding rain although he looked so far away.
All at once, a nearly mockingly cheerful clown appeared and swept Georgie away. Water pooled into the storm drain nearby. Bill screamed.
Bill was sitting in the attic, his friends, each one of them, locked in on a device. With the exception of Richie and Eddie, who were just missing in their entirety.
“I think we should check by the Barrens for Georgie.”
“We found your brat once this summer, Bill,” Mike replied flippantly, not breaking his stare on his phone.
“He’s probably in the attic again.” Ben muttered.
”…we’re in the attic.”
“Did you know the Met does free admission for students?” Bev asked Stan, who could not reply, because he was passionately making out with Patty on the bean bag chair.
“Hey, Bill,” Mike said cheerfully, finally breaking his gaze on his phone. Bill looked to him desperately, and Mike’s face stared back with no sign of human emotion, just an odd, stretched smile, “you know that haircut you’ve had for the last four years?”
“…yeah?”
“I fucking hate it!” Mike enthused.
Bill was trudging through the woods, flashlight in hand. He ambled over thick root and brush, far off the path. Richie and Eddie were supposed to be helping him look. They were holding hands somewhere behind him. He stopped giving a fuck.
Then, in a hurricane of screaming that both did, and entirely didn’t, sound like Eddie went flying past him.
He turned back, sick of the arguing, sick of the dismissiveness, sick of drama, ready to tear Richie apart.
Richie was holding hands with the same cheerful clown that grabbed Georgie, gleefully skipping in a merry-go-round. Bill fell back in a panic, scrambling backwards in a crab walk, hollering for Eddie. He turned and scraped his knees on his way to his feet, only to see the three of them, floating off in a hot-air balloon.
”Catch ya’ later, Billy!” The indistinguishable clown said in Richie’s anchor voice.
Bill screamed.
Bill was in gym class. They had to do hula hoops but the hula hoops were snakes.
Bill was in the high school cafeteria. Bev and Mike were sitting with their backs toward him, heads bent together conspiratorially. Ben was sitting cross-legged under the table for some reason. Bill made his way to the table, but the table wasn’t getting closer. Understanding the new physics of the new world as Bill seamlessly understood all things, he stepped over a few tables to get there.
”Sorry, man! With Patty joining and everything, I don’t think we’ve got the seats, buddy!”
Patty was not sitting at the table. It was Bev, Mike, and five clowns. They were all smiling at Bill.
Bill was on the roof. Of something. It was a roof. Clear as day. On the edge of the blue sky was Ben. With his back turned to Bill, his yells falling on the rushing wind, Ben opened his arms and fell in a swan dive off the roof.
Bill only started running once it was too late.
When Bill had made it to the edge, staring stories and stories down, he didn’t see Ben, just stretches of building that ended in hard pavement.
He looked up, and the clown had an arm looped around Ben, and they were floating, suspended by a red balloon as they floated past Bill.
On his distraught trip home, he found Stan. Finally, cool, rational Stan to explain to him what the fuck was going on.
But when Stan saw him, he grimaced. He avoided his eyes, and tried to reroute his steps. “Stan?” Bill called at his back.
”Stan!” Voice laden with fury, he charged at him, and grabbed his shoulder.
Bill knew his own strength pretty well, and he knew he did not saiyan smash Stan into the pavement. But that was what happened.
“Don’t hit me,” Stan cowered.
”Dude…. what?” Bill, at his wit’s ends, stood back, and watched as Stan almost unhumanly snapped to his feet. He started in a seat, with his feet on the ground, and then in a blink, he stood.
And then he turned, and he left.
”Dude, WHAT?!?” Bill screamed after him.
When Stan turned back, it was with the most alarming, sunny smile, that had never made it’s acquaintance with Stanley’s face. Never once.
”We replaced you with the clown, Billy!”
”…huh?” Bill inquired in a small voice.
Stan laughed. Bill took a step back. Stan laughed harder. Bill stumbled away from him, backwards, and turned to run in a full sprint home, and then realized he was already in front of your house.
”I wouldn’t go in there,” Stan taunted. When Bill turned back, it wasn’t Stan standing there, but Richie, who sneered at him. “That’s not YOUR FUCKING HOUSE!!”
”What?” Bill turned to look at his house.
It had been turned into a house of mirrors, and the reflections of everyone in his life. His mom, his dad, all of his friends, even Haggis was dressed in a tiny clown suit, skipping around merrily with the clown.
”No,” Bill whispered. “No!” He yelled, rushing into his house.
But he couldn’t find them. He couldn’t find a single one. He would chase a reflection and it would lead to a set of a million more. Eddie would smirk at him from a corner, and all Bill would find was dozens of teeth with lipstick smudges grinning at him.
Bill came to the reflection of his own bedroom door, hard wood glinting, sparkling in the glass of the mirror.
Bill reached out for the handle and felt it materialize in his palm.
He found his room on the other side. Exactly as it always had been. And outside the door, strolling down the street, kicking his feet as if he was humming a merry tune, was the clown.
Bill sent his computer crashing through his bedroom window and lept out behind it.
The clown made no attempt of escape as Bill chased it down, cursing loudly after it. It continued it’s merry skip, and as Bill neared, he heard the endless mutter of the little saying he was taught in speech therapy.
”He thrust his fists against the posts,” the clown skipped gleefully, “and still insists he sees the ghosts!”
Bill crashed into the clowns back, and the clown put up no fight, mirthfully giggling at Bill’s attempt to beat the shit out of it. Then it continued to chant his little saying.
”BEEP BEEP!!!” Bill screamed at it, grabbing it by the shoulder, “Shut the FUCK UP!!!” he roared as it flipped over.
Bill had nothing to look at but his own face, covered in clown makeup, grinning back at him.
Bill didn’t scream when he woke up. His eyes just opened on the first night he spent alone in his bedroom all summer. He wasn’t actually an idiot, he knew Richie and Eddie hadn’t wanted him there. He just wanted to see if he could get them to tell him no.
He immediately turned over for his phone, even with his heart rate out of control, his breathing shaking.
It was 6 a.m., and his phone was devoid of any notification at all. No late night group chat. No Mike, No Bev, No Ben, No Stan, No Richie, No Eddie.
Bill felt his heart sink in his chest. There was no color in his voice when he called in sick. There was no anything. He called, and lied, and said he threw up. And then when the call ended, he checked the barren group chat again. And when there was nothing there, he googled “circus song that goes dee dee deedalee deet deet doo doo” and clicked the first youtube result. Then he just let that play.