A/N: Sadness here, sorries ahead of time!!
Laycey Jones' house, the same time Bill takes off.
Laycey had been confined to her room for the past day and she was going fucking insane. She had been invited to hang out with the Loser's Club today downtown for the Independence Day Parade, but because of the concussion she sustained from Henry 'Fucking Piece of Shit Asshole' Bowers as she so-affectionately deemed him, she couldn't be around loud noises. She hasn't talked to Patrick, Belch, or Vic since then either, despite their obvious hesitance to leave her when Henry all but forced them to leave her.
Yeah, she was furious. As soon as she had the go ahead, she was going to rip them a new asshole.
And it hasn't helped that because she's limited, Laycey sees a lot more of her dad. Mr. Jones was not used to having his daughter at home this much. But it didn't bother him. In fact, he found that using his daughter as a punching bag after a long day of people screaming at him to get their orders was very therapeutic. He made sure to keep the evidence in usually clothed areas so no one really knew what he did unless you paid close attention to Laycey.
But the one good thing Laycey had going was Mike.
Ever since she pulled him away from Henry, he tried to come over at least once a day. He would bring her flowers, and sit on the living room floor and ramble about anything that came to his mind. Laycey would sit on the couch in front of him and just listen to him with a soft smile on her face.
He became the only peace in her life.
Lacyey was drawn out of her thinking of different methods of castration and her connection to Mike by the sound of kids outside. She gets up from her bed and sees a crazed Bill Denbrough pedal past her house. And she sees the rest of his friends on the far opposite side of her street chasing him down. Laycey can see their mouths moving, looking as if they were calling for Bill.
'Fuck this house arrest bullshit!' She tells herself before grabbing her skateboard and climbing out the window of her one-story house. She gets to the end of her driveway just as the group of teens are about to pass by.
"Hey you guys! Wait for me!", she says before slamming her skateboard on the ground. She gets ready to take off before she is stopped by a gentle hand on her arm. Mike had stopped her. The others have stopped impatiently as well to wait on him.
"You can't skateboard in your condition! You're not even supposed to be up and about right now! What are you thinking? I'll meet you there, guys. I'm going to get her back in the house." the dark-skinned teen frets, and he moves to shuffle her back in her house. But he gets cut off by her sarcastic laughter.
"Mikey you're cool and all, but I swear to fucking God if you make me go back in that fucking house, I will literally stab you in your sleep with a rusty broken spoon hunny-bun! I need out of my room, even if it's just for a of couple hours. I don't even care where we are going or what we are doing. If it will make you feel better, I'll just hitch a ride with you. Okay?" Laycey tells him sarcastically cheerful and continues on without giving him a chance to respond.
"Okay great! Let's go!"
And the blonde then hops on Mike's bike and settles in behind him. She wraps her arms around his midsection and gives it a secure squeeze, before turning to see all the others except for Beverly staring open mouthed at the two. She winks at Beverly.
"Hey Bevs!" she says cheerfully with a wave. The redhead just rolls her eyes playfully in response
"We don't have time for this, Mike just bring her along! Let's go!" Beverly states before pedaling off. The others stay right behind her.
*-*-*-*
A few minutes later, Neibolt Wellhouse.
Bill arrives at the house and throws his bike to the side. With one last breath to gain courage he walks up the sidewalk and gets on the front steps. He is on the front porch of the rundown house when the others arrive. He is confused and slightly nervous when he sees Laycey on the back of Mike's bike.
"Bill, you can't do this! This is crazy!" Bev begs him. Stan, Eddie, and Richie agree.
"Bill, listen! You know she wouldn't want you to get yourself killed!" Stan tried.
"Don't be a fucking idiot Bill!" Richie added. Eddie just nodded in agreement.
"I'm just here for a ride." Laycey shrugs. Bill looks at her oddly before turning to face everyone. Bill just shook his head at their begging expressions.
They just didn't understand.
"Look, you don't have to go in there with me," he takes a deep breath, "but what happens when another Georgie goes missing? Or another Mark Matthews, or a Betty Ripsom, or another Lorie! Are you just going to pretend it isn't happening like everyone else in this town?" Bill takes another breath, "Because I can't. I go home, and all I see is that Georgie isn't there. I see his toys, his stupid stuffed animals too. But he isn't there. And walking around town, all I see is her! I can't go anywhere in town without a memory of Lorie and us together forcing its way into my mind! So walking into this house, to me it's better than walking into anywhere else in this fucking town." Bill finishes tearfully, before turning around to enter the house.
No one said anything for a moment, they were too in shock. Eddie mutters out a quiet "wow".
Richie nodded, "He didn't stutter once."
"Wait!" Beverly calls out to Bill once more, and her next words shock him.
"You don't have to go in there alone, I'll go with you!" She says and walks up the steps to the stuttering teen, much to Ben's horror. He didn't really want her to go in there, but he would be right by her side if she did. Stan would go for Bill, Richie wouldn't dare let a girl have bigger balls than he did, so he was going. Eddie would follow Richie and Mike didn't want to be left outside alone so he would follow his friends. Laycey just wanted to enjoy the sun so she honestly didn't give a fuck and plopped herself down on the grass and basked in the Vitamin D.
Bill nods to Beverly in gratitude and all but Laycey move to enter the house, before Stan freaks and quickly blurts out an excuse.
"Shouldn't some of us stay out here? I mean, to keep watch, and be able to run for help if needed?"
Everyone shrugs in agreement before Bill asks, "W-Who wants to s-stay out h-here?"
Bill and Beverly are the only ones to keep their hands down. Well Laycey kept hers down too, but she wasn't paying attention to the conversation. The boys look around, they slowly lower their hands.
"Shit." Richie curses. "Alright let's draw sticks, the shortest 3 have to go." He suggests and everyone agrees.
In the end, it was decided that Eddie, Richie, and Bill would go inside, and everyone else stayed outside. Stan, Mike, Ben, and Beverly plopped on the ground with Laycey, making small talk to help with the awkwardness.
The three best friends enter the house with a loud creak of the door opening. They slowly creep forward.
"You know, it's a good thing we weren't measuring dicks. Because you guys would've been in serious shit if we were." Richie snarks with an attitude to hide his fear.
"Yea but you still would have been here because even Beverly and Laycey both have longer dicks than you asswipe." Eddie quips back, before coughing and looking around,
"Shit this place smells so fucking gross."
"Hey Eddie, make sure you don't breathe through your mouth." Richie says out of nowhere. Eddie looks at him confused,
"Why?"
Richie smirks, "Because then you're eating it." he taunts. Eddie gags in disgust.
"S-S-Shut up g-guys." Bill hisses. There is a sudden gust of wind and a rustling sound to the left of the group. Richie sees a slightly crumpled piece of paper in the huge mass of cobwebs that has something printed on it. He flattens it out and to his horror it is a missing persons flyer, with today's date, and his name and face printed.
Richie's heart pounds as he immediately starts to panic. Eddie and Bill can see something was wrong when they see their friend's expression and walk towards him.
"R-Richie?" Bill asks.
"It says I'm missing. What the fuck is going on? Am I going to go missing? Am I missing? Lorie went missing. And she hasn't come back!" He frantically rambles out with his hands shaking so much the paper rattles. Once they get him to stop panicking for 2 seconds Bill tells him.
"Richie l-listen! T-This isn't r-real! F-Focus! You're not g-going m-missing. The c-clown is playing tricks on you!" Richie lets Bill's words sink in before he nods.
"Okay." They freeze when they hear a thump and a very familiar pain-filled voice cough out from somewhere upstairs.
"Boys? Is that you?"
All three boys gasp when they hear her voice. Richie's body froze, Eddie heaved a breath and had to take several puffs of his inhaler.
"L-Lorie?!" Bill whimpered out before bolting to the stairs. His abrupt movement caused Eddie and Richie to snap out of their stupor.
"Bill! Stop! We gotta stick together!" They both screamed before tumbling after them.
"L-Lorie! Where are you!?" Bill calls out for her running up the steps two at a time.
"C-Come on! T-Tell me w-where you are." he mutters desperately. By this point he is at the top of the staircase trying to decide which direction to go. Richie and Eddie have caught up with him also, panting at the mad sprint they just did.
"Where is she? Did you find her?" Richie and Eddie fire at Bill, and then their prayers are answered.
"Richie! Bill! Eddie! Help me please!! Help me!" Her voice cries out to the left of them, making their heads whip to the direction of her voice. It doesn't register to the three teens how she called out to them. If they were able to stop and think, they would remember that Lorie never uses their names. She always used the nicknames she gave them. But Eddie, Richie, and Bill were too busy looking at the very end of the long hallway. They see a body and determine it to be Lorie. Her upper body is sprawled across the entrance with her muddy head turned awkwardly facing them.
"Help me!" she pleads before she is sharply pulled back into the room with a shrill scream.
"Shit." The boys flinch back in fear and shock.
Richie and Bill take a few steps forward, but Eddie is still frozen in shock. It takes Eddie a moment to snap back into reality, and goes to take a step forward, but is distracted by a sound coming from behind him. He turns around slowly to find out the origin of the sound, and he doesn't see anything, but he hears a low growling sound.
"Eddie, what are you looking for?"
"G-Guys, did you hear that?" He gasps out almost inaudibly. Richie and Bill were too far ahead, already almost to the room where they saw Lorie. When Eddie didn't get a response, he turned and saw his friends past the threshold of the door across the house.
"Guys!" He screams and runs to catch up to them. And just before he gets to the door, it slams shut, separating Eddie from Richie and Bill.
"Eddie!" Bill and Richie cry out, both pounding on the door to try and break it down.
"Richie help me!" Richie gets distracted when he hears Lorie's voice call out to him from behind. He looks and Lorie is peaking her head out of a door adjacent to the one Bill and he were in before slipping back into the dark room with a giggle. He stops his efforts on the door and heads to the other room, the pounding of Bill's fists frantically hitting the wooden door ringing out as background noise.
"L-Lorie?" Richie questions hesitantly.
"Guys open the door! Let me in!" Eddie bangs on the door and jiggles the door knob to try and get through, but it won't open. Because he is so focused on the door and trying to get it to open, he doesn't notice the floor beneath him start to collapse. Once he does, he jumps away from the door to prevent himself from falling. In his panicked state, he also doesn't hear the figure behind him creep up. He grips Eddie's shoulder.
"Time to take your pill Eddie." the person hisses in his ear.
Eddie turns to see the leper from before holding a small red pill pinched in his diseased fingers. Eddie takes one look at him and he starts to feel dizzy, with blackspots splotching his vision. The leper puts one finger on his forehead and pushes ever so slightly, sending the wheezing boy through the hole in the floor to land painfully on his arm on an unstable table. Eddie is knocked fully unconscious from the impact. After he falls, the floor patches itself back up, with no sign of it ever having a hole.
Bill is still trying to break the door down to get to Eddie when he realizes Richie is no longer by his side. He turns and looks for him, and finds Richie inside another room. As soon as that realization registers to him, the door slams shut, separating all three boys from one another. Bill runs to Richie's room and works on trying to open it.
"Richie! Open the f-fucking door!" He yells.
Meanwhile Richie is looking for Lorie inside a small room full of clown figurines. His attention is directed towards a coffin at the back of the room, that has Lorie's missing person's flyer taped to the top, with the word 'Found' painted on in blood.
"Shit shit shit." He chants to himself over and over before hesitantly walking towards it.
The coffin slams shut with a loud snap right before Richie gets to it to see who was laid in the coffin. The sarcastic teen jumps back startled, before taking a deep breath and tries again. His hand hovers over the latch for a moment, and then the coffin springs open.
But Richie didn't open it, because Pennywise jumped out of the coffin and landed right in front of the vision impaired teen.
"Beep Beep Richie." Pennywise snarks out with a mean smirk, but he uses Lorie's voice to say it. Richie's fight or flight instinct kicks in and he runs to the door screaming with Pennywise hot on his tail. Bill had finally gotten the door to open yanked Richie out of the room and slammed the door shut.
"Holy fucking shit! Let's grab Eddie and get the fuck out of here!" Richie screams at Bill before turning to the door that led to the staircase. That's when they saw a new problem.
The one door that they came through had now been split into 3 doors, each one having their own label written in blood.
Not Scary At All
Scary
Very Scary
Bill and Richie glance at each other before they both sprint to the door that says 'Not Scary At All'. Bill rips the door open only for them to see nothing but darkness at first. Then they hear muffled screams coming from somewhere in the darkness, so Richie grabs the chain to the light and pulls it, clicking it on. Bill and Richie both gasp and whimper in horror at what was hanging in front of them.
"Oh my God."
Lorie Ann Sympox is hanging limply by chains, her feet just barely reaching the ground. Her body is covered in blood and cuts of different degrees of severity. Her head is lolled to the side to where she can see slightly, and she is trying to scream, but because her body was weak from malnutrition and her mouth was duct taped shut all that came out was muffled weak cries for help. And this time they know it's her because this feels too real not to be. Plus, the fact that the room was tinted gold helped, but they were too in shock to register that now.
And then Richie sees something familiar that confirms it. Richie remembers seeing that now almost completely stained purple and blue shirt on Lorie the last time he saw her a year ago. Pennywise never used that shirt when he took the form of her. Richie starts to mutter to himself in disbelief.
"Oh my fuck, it's her, Bill. It's really her!" His eyes widen and fill with tears and he turns to Bill.
"Dude, go find something to break these chains! Now!" Bill and Richie snap into action, Bill going to find something to use to get her down, and Richie runs to her and gently grabs her mud covered face and caresses her tear-stained cheeks. She is still slightly conscious, but her eyes are unfocused.
"Lorie? Sweets, can you hear me? Oh God. Come on Gorgeous. Give me something to work with." But there is no coherent response, all he gets is weak grunts and cries.
"We are going to get you out of here Sweets! You're gonna be ok! You have to be! And when you're all better, we can go get oreos and-and we can deep fry them like you were talking about doing. I'll even let you handle putting them in the oil. Sounds good right? We gotta get you out of here and get you better first though! I love you so much, please stay strong for me, Sunshine." Richie tearfully whimpers reassurances to her and to himself as he holds her extremely light body up for support.
"Bill! Hurry up!" Richie sobs. And as if God himself was listening, Bill runs back into the little closet-like room with a sledge hammer.
"R-Richie h-hold her back away f-from the hooks!" he tells Richie, who complies. As soon as they are out of swing range, he swings the hammer up to the ceiling with all his might. The chains explode apart, freeing Lorie from her bonds.
Richie sighs with depressed relief as he adjusts her in his arms as her head limply falls against his chest. He hugs her frail body to him, not one hundred percent sure she's really there, and it's really her.
"R-Richie we need to g-go! L-Let's grab Eddie and l-leave!" Bill screams, snapping Richie back to reality, gently but quickly tugging on his arm to lead him away. Lorie flinches at the volume of Bill’s voice and whines in discomfort.
When they leave the closet, they see the door they went through originally and didn't hesitate to rush through it and down the hall and to stairs. The two teens hear Eddie's screams of pain in a room downstairs and they follow the source of sound to see the murderous clown on top of Eddie about to eat his arm.
"Eddie! Bill, take Lorie. I’m going to check on him." Richie yells out before gently transferring Lorie to Bill, and tries to think of a way to get to his best friend. Pennywise snaps his attention to the two young men and his eyes narrowed into slits when they see his precious toy in their grasp. He shoves away from Eddie and stalks towards the duo. But, as Pennywise zoned in on Lorie, something made him stop. The could see himself as Bill and-
While Pennywise's attention is on Bill and Lorie, Richie decides to make a break for Eddie, knowing Bill has Lorie safe.
"You okay Ed?" Richie asked hastily, checking him over, frowning when he saw his broken arm. Eddie didn't answer Richie. In fact, he wasn't even looking at him. He was staring at Bill, and the body he was holding in disbelief and anxiety.
"R-R-Ru-Rich-" Eddie tries to wheeze out as he points a trembling finger to Lorie. Richie looks deep into Eddie's eyes and cries.
"Yeah, I know Eds. But it's her. It's really her. We are gonna try and get her out of here asap. But I need you to focus on breathing. We need you with a level head right now. She needs you. So focus, okay?" Richie asks the smaller teen. Eddie gives a shaky nod and a water smile.
"Oh-kay Richie. Let's bring her home."
Bill glares at the demonic clown and shuffles to the door slightly. But when he began to move, he heard two sounds. No, it was a weak grunt and then voice.
"Pri-incey?" The stuttering teen looks down and sees Lorie's tired blue eyes staring at him. When their eyes meet, the male can see tears spilling out of Lorie’s eyes. But her face looked like that of pure relief.
"H-Hey princess. Q-Quite the fuss you've m-made, hunh?" Bill teases tearfully. Lorie tries to smile, but it comes out more as a grimace. With the little strength Lorie seemed to have left, she raises a freshly bloodied hand to his face. Her fingers reach back to his ears and her thumb strokes his cheek, accidentally smearing her blood over the entire right side of his face.
"Princey. I'm sorry. I'm- so sorry." She coughs out through thick blood and tears. Her words confuse Bill, because he's not sure what she could be sorry about.
"What d-do you mean, S-Sunshine?" Bill asks, looking at her face to detect any change in expression. But he doesn't get a reply, because Lorie had fallen unconscious body too weak to stay awake.
"N-No! Come on P-Princess! W-Why are you sorry? C-Come back to me p-please! Don’t g-go! I l-love you." Bill cries in anguish. He gently shakes her to try and gain a reaction, but there is no change. But before he can decide what to do next, another voice cuts through the tense air.
"You know, I really don't like sharing my toys. Especially my favorite toy. Go ahead and hand her over and I will leave you here with no more injuries." Pennywise grounds out menacingly once he can focus again. He's not sure what happened, but it was as if he was going back in time.
For once, Bill wasn't afraid of him. In fact, he was angry and thought this dude was as stupid as they fucking come. The teen with the stutter looked at the demonic creature in disbelief.
"W-What? N-No! NO!", he shouts in defiance, tugging his love's broken body closer to him. Pennywise's glare darkens even further as his eyes flush red showing his fury.
"I wasn't asking Billy." He mocks angrily before he stalks the teen and ripped the love of 4 boy's life from Bill's arms with little difficulty giving Pennywise's supernatural strength. Once he had Lorie in his grasp, he tossed her aside like a sack of potatoes.
"NO!" The boys all watched in horror as Lorie's limp body flew through a wall into a pile of splintery wood. A soft scream left her body as a piece of wood pierced through her stomach, the tip protruding out the front of her body. Bill glares at Pennywise in hatred, Eddie cries out in anguish, and Richie freezes in horror, his nightmare forcefully coming to his mind. The three devastated boys snap back into reality by an abrupt movement and sound.
"Holy fucking shit!" Laycey screams out in terror.
Seconds after the clown throws Lorie, his head is impaled with a metal rod. Beverly, Ben, Mike, Laycey, and Stan all ran in right before Pennywise grabbed the broken girl. The demon freezes as his body takes in the assault. This momentary pause gives everyone except Stan and Bill a chance to crowd around Eddie. The other two rush to where Lorie was thrown, only for her body to not be there. Stan looked around confused, but Bill knew that this was the monsters doing. It was his fault Lorie was gone again.
"Whre the f-fuck is she?! What did you do to her? Give her back!" In a fit of rage, Bill throws himself at the clown.
"Layce, help me grab him!" Mike and Laycey grab the angered boy with a stutter before he can get to Pennywise, but that doesn't stop him from trying to wriggle out of their firm hold.
"You fucking a-asshole! W-What did s-she do to y-you? She is kind and s-sweet! Give her b-back!" he thrashes about.
Everyone else looks on with sadness at the sight of their fallen love and friend.
"I told you Billy, I don't like sharing my toys. But I guarantee you, she misses you. I'll tell her you said hello!" He childishly laughs out and with that he turns towards the basement. As he turns, he sees Ben slightly off to the side. The clown claws his stomach, creating large laceration lines along his abdomen.
"Don't let him get away!" Bill shouts desperately, finally gotten free from Mike's and Laycey's hold. He immediately dashes after the clown, completely ignoring his friends' terrified calls for him to come back.
He gets to the basement and watches the clown sink into the well. They make eye contact and Pennywise smirks and Bill clenches his jaw. He knows that he couldn't take him on alone so he reluctantly runs back up to his friends.
Richie and Stan, who have tears streaming down their faces, are on either side of sobbing Eddie, Stan about to snap Eddie's arm back in place despite his protests. Stan and Richie share a secret glance and Richie grabs the smaller teen's jaw softly, to keep his attention on him.
"Focus on me Eds. Keep your eyes on me dude." Richie continues to talk to him, his hand on his jaw the entire time. Eddie did as told and when Stan snapped his arm in place, it hurt, but it was bearable for now.
"Richie, was it really her?" Eddie croaks out with a sob. Stan tenses and freezes his actions of tending to Eddie's arm and looks at Richie out of the corner of his eye. Richie sobs a little himself before looking off to the side. Richie found it too hard to meet Eddie's gaze as he answered the question.
"Yeah Eds, it was. And even covered all that mud and shit, she still looked beautiful. She didn't say any words, I'm not even sure she knew we had her." Richie cries.
"We had her, and she slipped from our fingers. And-And you saw the wood, she got stabbed! She's as good as dead now."
Stan just silently cries crumpling into a heap beside Eddie, while the young germaphobe bawls loudly.
Bill stares on with muffled weeps. He was tired of losing the ones he loved. He wondered if the suffering would ever end.
"Sh-She did." Bill mumbles, gaining the attention of the group. He looks at Richie and. The other three sniffle and look at him with faces full of despair and slight confusion.
"While you were t-talking to Eddie. She s-sp-spoke." Bill croaked. The teen brought his hand up to wipe his tears away with the top of it, only for it to catch his eyes as he lowered his hand. Bright and old clumpy blood coated his hand. Her blood. Bill began to breathe shallowly, the force of this event finally taking its toll.
"What did she say Bill?" Stan asked, walking over to his sou- Bill. He hugged the teen to him and urged him on. Bill shoved his head into Stan’s neck taking a breath in, smelling his soap before moving out to finish talking.
"S-She said my n-name. S-She called me Princey. An-and told me she w-was s-sorry. I don't kn-know w-what she could b-be sorry f-for Stan. W-Why w-was she sorry?!" Bill screamed through his tears, collapsing to the ground, taking Stan with him as they grieved the loss of their girl.
The other four crowd around the destroyed boys and give them their love and support, knowing this was extremely hard for them to have their best friend so close, only to have her ripped horrifically from them again.
They are going to need all the support they can get. And the others were going to do anything they could to be there for the boys.
A/N:
Sooooooo!! Yea that happened... I feel so bad for them. They need good hugs!! #JusticeforLosersClub
First off, Laycey is officially my favorite person to write about because she's such a sarcastic badass!! And I'm loving her connection with Bev and Mike!!
Then I wanna talk about the sadness if this chapter. It was so sad for them to have Lorie and then not so quickly!! This chapter made me tear up actually tear up! My poor babies!
All my love,
Savannahxx
Edited 8/9/21