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If you called Eddie a psychic, he'd call you an asshole. Psychics were prick charlatans who took advantage of the bereaved, miserable and lost in order to snag a few bucks. No, Eddie was not , and never will be , a psychic.
But sometimes, he'll admit to...odd experiences. He's always had a fuzzy line of separation between what qualifies as bizarre and what's mundane, given his whole history. Shit like having a ridiculously good sense of direction is, he thinks, common sense.
Sometimes, though, he dreams.
He's not a fucking prophet or anything, but when he goes to bed, sometimes he gets glimpses of future conversations. Scenes from later in the day, or a few days, weeks, months ahead. Snippets, really. Nothing dramatic, just...odd.
The first time it happened, he was seven. He walked downstairs and knew exactly what Mr. Belfort was about to say on the newest episode of his mother's soap. He doesn't remember it exactly, but it was something so specific that it was impossible to guess. Something about the vase being an heirloom for seventeen generations or whatever. Like any seven-year-old thinking he was a wizard, he excitedly told his mom about it. He expected awe, or praise, or at least a, “huh, how interesting.”
Instead, he spent the next week in the hospital, busy with CAT scans, eye tests and follow-ups to make sure he didn't have a brain bleed.
Since then, he kept his trap shut about it. He always thought there was some sort of logical explanation, something he didn’t understand, but someone smart, like Bill, could probably figure out. He’d never tell him, though, in case it got back to his mom.
After the Summer of ‘89, he’d accept that it might be a bit more supernatural than he originally thought.
All that to say, he sees shit sometimes. Just weird enough for it to not be a coincidence.
That said, just a day or so prior, he got speared through the chest with the talon of an alien nightmare muncher who took the form of fucking Bozo. He's given up on what counts as weird.
And right now? He’s dreaming.
It’s not the same as when he gets snippets, it feels more… present.
Eddie opens his eyes and sees that he’s in a hospital bed. No, not in it. He was floating just above it, tethered to his body but only just. It would be surreal as fuck if he could muster up more emotion than just...numbness. Fuck, he felt numb, and he almost never felt numb. It should be weird, but…
Well. He couldn’t really care right now. Numb, remember?
If he wasn’t so sure that he literally died less than a day ago, the whole scenario would be rather nice. Not feeling any fucking fear.
In the chair next to his bed, he saw his mother, swimming in and out of focus. It was like she was made of static in the otherwise crystal clear room. Her face flickers every so often, revealing blond hair and hiding her glasses, and her eyes swapping from cold and hard to teary and anxious. Eddie finally, finally gets it. And he starts to Feel Something. And that Something is guilt, remorse, fear, nausea, anger at himself, at his mother, and regret. For himself and for Myra and for the lives they could have had if they didn’t find each other.
And he runs.
Or floats, rather. He scrambles out of the bed but he can’t touch the ground. He floats out, the gliding movement like second nature, and he gets out of the room as fast as he can. He floats down an empty hallway, phasing through a heavy-looking set of doors, and he halts as soon as he gets to the waiting room.
The Losers are there.
Stan, as well as a woman he doesn’t recognize, are sitting in the chairs by the end table. He’s got her hand in his, and Eddie can see bandages peeking out of a cozy-looking cardigan. He feels a rush of relief at knowing he’s alive, even with the morbid chill of knowing why those are there. But fuck, it's Stan , so much older and yet so recognizably him . Eddie fucking missed him so much it worms into his cold numb chest, and he forced himself to look elsewhere before he breaks down.
He sees Ben and Bev leaning into each other on the chairs opposite Stan and his wife. Bill is desperately trying to get the vending machine to accept his dollar. He keeps scrubbing his red-rimmed eyes, just out of sight of the Losers but in perfect view for Eddie. Mike is slumped forward, with his head in his hands, eyes squeezed shut. They’re all stuck in a tableau of grief.
Richie, though? He’s all movement.
He’s pacing back and forth, constantly looking up whenever a doctor or nurse passes by. Every so often, he’ll snap his fingers nervously, or wring his hands. Eddie half-expects Stan to get exasperated and tell him off like he used to, but he just sits and watches tiredly, occasionally murmuring softly to the woman beside him. Aside from that, though, the only sounds are the whirring of the ticking of a clock and music playing quietly from a speaker, both out of his line of sight.
The lyrics ring in his mind, conjuring images of a soft existence somewhere, where he and Myra don’t make each other miserable. A room lit only by strings of light, the smiling faces of all of his friends, mismatched furniture that he loves in its imperfections and contradictions. Unconditional safety. Warmth.
Love.
Then he blinks, all habit and no necessity, and the image dissolves into the waiting room. He sees seven people, all their exhaustion highlighted by the buzzing, too-bright fluorescent lights.
He floats somewhere between them, centred in the loose ring of Losers they made. He and Richie, surrounded by their friends.
He looks to Richie and notices that his lips are moving. His expression is still a bit distant, his eyes red and unfocused. For a second, Eddie wonders whether Richie decided to mouth something to himself, but when he turns to the others, he sees their faces open with shock, disbelief, anger. What the fuck?
Bill says something, his brow furrowed with incredulity for only a moment before it eases into something soothing. He raises his hands up to Richie, trying to reach for him, but Richie only backs up, pointing with accusation.
Stan stands up, pushing between them, as the other Losers look on in horror and grief. Eddie can’t help but balk at his friends. What the fuck could have turned the scene so quickly?!
He tries to focus on their lips, tries to strain his hearing, tries to do anything but stand like the helpless little ghost he seemed to be, but all he became aware of was a high-pitched ringing in his ears, overwhelming everything else. It is a single long and loud sound, and it makes Eddie fear for himself in a way he can’t quite understand. He squeezes his eyes shut, suddenly feeling pain for the first time since he got up from his bed.
When he opened them again, he saw that all the Losers were looking at him, their faces full of dawning realization and horror. No, he realized, they were looking beyond him, at the hallway just behind him, where blurs of blue and green scrubbed figures were running.
He turned back to his friends. He had just enough time to see Richie’s eyes well up before he felt something cool swipe across his chest and he was jolted out of consciousness.
Eddie wakes up at the quarry.
He must’ve dozed off while his friends were swimming; he loves to swim, but he guessed that he had enough for today. Maybe he took the time to sunbathe: it was so warm today, a sharp contrast to the chilly water below.
Just over the cliff, he heard their voices calling for him. Telling him that if he didn’t get in the water in under a minute, they were going to assume he was dead and divvy up his comic book collection at the clubhouse amongst themselves.
“No, you’re fucking not!” Eddie shouts down at them, grinning widely to himself. “I’m gonna jump, make room!” He hears them splash away, then looks down and checks his trajectory. All clear.
He holds his breath and jumps. Feels the air flying past him, feels the cold water of the quarry come up to meet him. He’s thirteen and he feels unstoppable.
Against his own better judgement, he opens his eyes and just admires the way the bright sun cuts through the bottle-green water, the streaks of neon that form as a result. He sinks all the way to the bottom; despite his asthma, he can hold his breath better than any of the Losers, so he isn’t worried. He lets himself feel the smoothed rocks and sediment under his feet.
Then, he sees a turtle.
It swims up towards him, something so small that it would fit in his palm. So he reaches out and cups it in his hands, then kicks up towards the surface.
When he’s gotten his breath back, he admires the creature. It watches him from where it’s perched on his fingers, seeming to indicate the palm of his left hand is smooth.
There isn’t a scar.
There should be a scar. He’s always had a scar.
He looks up for the Losers, but sees how he’s all by himself at the quarry. The sun is setting peacefully in the distance, the birds are chirping sweetly, none of this makes sense and Eddie is alone.
He feels a gentle tug at his thumb and looks back at his hands: still no scar, but they’re older. His nails are a little neater. His skin is less smooth and pliant, and he’s hairier.
“What the fuck?” He breathes. Even at such a low volume, he notices its low timber, a far cry from when he was a squeaky-voiced kid who never dreamed of having a voice above a fucking soprano. “What the fuck is going on?”
The turtle just looks up at him, and Eddie knows what to do. He gently lowers it back into the water, then follows its path to shore. As they both swim, Eddie comes to realize four things:
- The turtle is getting bigger, until it grows to the size of a Prius. He can easily keep up, because,
- He is swimming with much more power and finesse than he had when he was a kid. He knows this is true since —
- He is an adult. He’s been that way for a long time, up until …
- He died.
The turtle settles itself on the shore, waiting patiently for Eddie to sit on a rock next to it. Somehow, it conveys this desire right to his brain, which should strike Eddie as a huge red flag, but this thing seems...friendly. Benevolent. At the very least, it isn’t Pennywise.
Eddie stands nearby, not because he wants to obey. He never obeys anything, least of all mysterious wildlife. No, he does so because he wants answers .
The turtle immediately delivers.
I am your creator.
"So, what, are you Amphibian Jesus? God in a half-shell?"
Reptile swims up to the top of his mind, the tone of it (if a tone can really be described in a picture) fondly clarifying. Like the grandad Eddie never met, bouncing him on his knee and pointing out turtles in the encyclopedia. Then, Eddie feels himself start to question, and the scene turns to about as warm as an absentee father showing up for the first time at your graduation, after years of neglect and zero child support, only to say that he’s proud that you made valedictorian without any of his fucking help.
"Whatever, you're swimming and walking, you're basically an amphibian," Eddie scoffs. His mind finally lifts itself out of its nostalgic stupor and the cold wave of reality hits more potently than the water of the Quarry. Because, if his guesstimate is right, he was stabbed through the torso less than 24 hours ago. He’s already dead. He could give a shit about going to the Derry Bad Place for pissing off a deity that didn’t even reach his ankle less than ten minutes ago.
The capital-T Turtle, though, only laughs, the sound echoing in his mind and changing as it does so. If Eddie needed to put it into words, it was like a Windows screensaver, changing voice as it bounced off the inside of his skull. Once an old woman, then a child, then Bev, Ben, Mike, Bill, Stan, Richie. A man he only barely remembers, one with dark eyes and dark hair and a warm smile and an IV perpetually in his arm in the recesses of his memories.
Eddie sits on what should be damp and rocky sand -- and he expects some broken glass and trash if it's the same quarry he grew up with -- but all he can feel is its softness. The bizarreness of it hits him even though, logically, he knows he's dreaming. Just dreaming. Nothing metaphysical to see here.
"So, what now?" He gestured in the general direction of the town. "Pennywise is dead."
The Turtle assents, then answers his question.
Eddie’s vision blurs into a field of static and colours, swimming in and out of each other hypnotically. A grove of trees eventually materializes in his eyesight, where the quarry was moments ago. The trees are of varying sizes and degrees of health, but for the most part, it feels safe.
Then, a seed drops from the sky and craters into the earth. In a flash, Eddie sees a tree shooting out of the still smouldering earth. The tree twisted and rotten, blood red and ashy white, its branches sharp and reaching. It kills the trees in its vicinity with its mere presence, the roots stealing their water and pushing through their trunks. He sees time pass, with the tree only growing larger and more intimidating. Then it shrivels.
Eddie blinks, and he sees a plant sprouting from the Earth, right between the roots of the tree. It grows unevenly, leaves dying and growing back in intervals, before pushing upwards. The trunk twines with that of the other tree, the branches weaving into each other. The two trees were dependent on one another; see how they’re pushing each other towards the light. Even though the other tree is smaller, and growing awkwardly, it’s still made to be something by the demanding and domineering branches of the other tree.
Then, he sees an axe splintering through the older, bloodier tree. He sees IT waste away, sees IT’s bark pull apart and float away. The smaller tree makes one last reach towards the sun, then with each season it becomes smaller, more twisted, more pitiful. Eventually, it’s nothing but an empty husk, lifeless and hideous.
And then it hits him. IT isn’t fully responsible for Derry, but the people of Derry sure are grateful for IT. The town wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway, but without IT to justify their scapegoats? To attract tourists and young families looking for a quaint, New England town? It won’t last much longer. It’ll die off soon enough; the people who know better have and will continue to leave, and no one will feel the need to come in. The Turtle will make sure of it. The bullies and bigots will die off, without a legacy.
And you, Edward? You’re free.
It isn’t enough, though. "Yeah, thanks for the help, asshole. Have I mentioned that I got stabbed? With the equivalent of a finely tapered baseball bat?"
The Turtle seems to want to interject, but Eddie continues.
“And not only that, but I broke my fucking arm and nearly got eaten — ate? — eaten by a B-movie reject before I even hit my first growth spurt! And IT drooled on me! Do you have any fucking idea how gross that was? And then it fucking puked on me!! Fucking twice!! And!! And, my friend nearly died because of how fucking traumatized he was, and I swear on whatever is holding this universe together, even if it’s you, that if you blame him I’ll find a way to kill God. Are you fucking kidding me? And if you’re actually God or a god or whatever, why the fuck haven’t you answered me back when I was religious, huh? What, you were pissy I wasn’t using your real name, you vindictive fuck?! People have died! Kids have died, do you even give half of a shit?!”
He doesn't have to pant, he doesn't need air here, but it feels like the right thing to do. So he pants. It grounds him. The Turtle watches, it's beady little eyes patient and understanding. It doesn't apologize and it doesn't explain itself. Just sits and watches Eddie.
Do you miss them? It eventually offers.
"Of course I do. I just got them back, and now I’m fucking dead!"
You’re not dead .
“Bullshit, I’m not dead,” Eddie bites out, even though hope wells up in him. “How could I survive that?”
I intervened .
Eddie looks at the Turtle with incredulity.
You’re welcome , it teases, and Eddie can sense it’s mirth.
“When can I go back?” He asks instead, in a daze.
Anytime you wish . You’re healed now, after all.
Eddie once again gets the impression of the dark-eyed, dark-haired man. This time, though, there aren’t any IV tubes, no wires, no vestiges of illness. Only the warm smile he just barely remembered. He saw his friends, Stan Bev Ben Mike Bill Richie, all waiting for him to wake up.
"How long?" His voice cracks, which is a pain in the ass given the fact that he's supposed to be dreaming. You'd think that god or God or Amphibian Jesus would spare his dignity in his coma dreams.
A little over a month.
“I wanna go back now,” Eddie says. "Right now."
He could give a shit about any other answers; fuck Derry and fuck everything about it. He kept the Losers Club waiting long enough. He doesn't get a direct response, but he feels himself being pulled into consciousness as his vision blurs out and goes dark. With it comes a strange sense of calm.