Six Fan Fics - 3. Beverly’s Secret is Exposed

From: It by Stephen King (The Ritual of Chüd)

Beverly’s Secret is Exposed

It was the morning of the tenth of August 1958. The town of Derry, Maine was sweltering in the summer heat and humidity. The morning was overcast, and so the town appeared duller than usual; there was an odd quality to the light, as until today the sun had shone unimpeded. The clouds had begun forming around eleven o’clock the previous night, and they were threatening rain.

Alvin Marsh had concealed himself in an area of quickmud and bamboo in the bizarrely named Barrens; which were anything but. The day before, Alvin Marsh had been told that his daughter had been seen running around with a group of boys, and he would not believe it unless he saw it for himself; he wouldn’t have believed it even if God Himself had appeared from a burning bushel and told him. He had even heard that she had been playing down here in the woods with those boys; there is no way Al Marsh’s daughter Beverly would be playing down here in all this trashwood with a group of boys. For her sake, she’d better not be, or she’ll find out just how bad ‘bad’ can get.

Al Marsh had slowly been getting worse over the course of the summer; he had always been aggressive when it came to disciplining his daughter, and he had always worried a lot about her; but over the past couple of months or so, he had been far quicker to slap her or punch her than previously. She couldn’t remember ever getting so many bruises, and in as quick a succession, as she has since May.

Oh, Al Marsh had left his daughter bruised before, and made no apologies for doing so; she had had at least one bruise a month by her father’s hand since the age of seven. But now! Now, she was being left bruised on an almost weekly basis; it seemed as soon as one bruise disappeared, she’d do something else to incur her father’s wrath, and then she’d be rewarded with a new bruise.

Something truly awful had happened to Alvin Marsh this morning. He felt as though he wasn’t in complete control of himself. He felt like someone or something was controlling him; that someone or something was whispering to him from within. Some how, some way, for some reason, Al Marsh had allowed It to enter his heart and his mind. It, Pennywise the Clown, Robert Gray, whatever you elect to call the demon that fed on Derry, was slowly working on him; trying to break down his mental defences, try to suppress what was left of the Alvin Marsh who truly loved his daughter.

“No sight of that slutchild. Where is that damned daughter of mine? Running around all this trashwood with a group of boys? Not even twelve years old and that daughter of mine is most likely lying on her back, doing what a slutchild does. Not even twelve!”

He had now been concealed in his hidey-hole for nearly twenty minutes when he heard the sound of the local radio station; Beverly and her friends had appeared, and Richie’s radio was the source of the music. Al Marsh lowered himself deeper into the quickmud to prevent his daughter or the boys from seeing him.

“You got any cigarettes, Richie?”

“Yeah, Bev,” he replied, pulling a packet out of his jeans pockets, handing her one, and taking one for himself. He lit them with a match and Bev inhaled. “I hawked an entire packet of Winston’s from my dad’s dresser drawer, so these should last us a few days.”

“Thanks, Richie. I smoked my last one a couple of days ago.” Bev exhaled the smoke from her first drag. “I needed that.”

“That slutchild’s smoking. No daughter of Alvin Marsh is ever going to smoke. When I see her at home later, I’m going to make her regret every drag.”

Richie and Bev plopped themselves down on the ground and smoked their cigarettes while they talked about the previous night’s episode of Highway Patrol; they were joined by Ben and Eddie who sat down next to them as they both loved the show as well. Bill, Stan and Mike were standing off by the clubhouse and seemed deep in discussion.

“Did you guys catch the mistake they made, where Dan Mathews was able to fire seven shots from his Smith and Wesson?” asked Bev, as she exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“Uh-huh,” Richie said, as he started coughing on his cigarette smoke. Bev good-naturedly patted him on the back.

“I like Highway Patrol, but I prefer Whirlybirds,” said Eddie.

“What’s wrong with you Eddie? You’re soft in the head,” Ben said laughing.

Eddie playfully gave Ben a shove; well tried to, since Ben outweighed him by about a hundred pounds.

“There’s nothing wrong with Whirlybirds.”

“Oh yes there is Eddie. Liking Whirlybirds is like enjoying getting spanked by your parents,” Bev said, getting in on the ribbing.

“I thought you were my friend, Bev.” Eddie looked at her making with the puppy dog eyes, and putting on his best sad face making it look as though he was about to start crying.

“I was, until I found out you like Whirlybirds.”

The four of them started laughing in earnest, and Richie threw an arm around Bev’s shoulder and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

“That slutchild! Just look at her! Flaunting herself! Throwing herself at that boy. Just wait until she gets home. I bet she’s laid down with all these boys, the slutchild.”

Bill, Mike and Stan walked over to where Bev and the rest were sitting.

“So Mawster Denbrough sir, what is the plan for this morning?” Richie asked, as he stood up. He took one final drag on his cigarette and crushed it under his foot.

Bev, Ben and Eddie all got up as well and dusted themselves off; well, since Eddie’s arm was still in plaster he was helped up and Beverly dusted him off.

“How about a g-g-game of w-w-war? I can g-g-get our guns from w-w-where I’ve stashed them?”

Bev took one last deep drag of her cigarette and exhaled. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

So Bill, accompanied by Stan and Mike, went down to the bridge where Silver was tied up, to retrieve their toy guns.

“How you been Stan? I haven’t seen you in a few days.”

“I’ve been all right Eddie. We had a big family gathering in Augusta, as it was my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah.”

“What’s that?”

Stan proceeded to explain what a Bar Mitzvah was and what it meant for his cousin; although Stan only had a very basic knowledge of his own faith, since neither of his parent’s were very religious nor did they keep strictly kosher.

“He’s a Jew! That slutchild has been with a Jew! Are there no depths of depravity that that daughter of mine will sink to? She’ll not be happy until she’s made her way through every boy in this town. That slutchild is in for it when I see her at home.”

The Losers Club played their game of war for about an hour or so, when Eddie’s asthma started playing up. So they decided to take a break from that activity while Eddie had a couple of pulls on the ‘old lung sucker’ as Richie called it. After the camphor-laden vapour had entered Eddie’s respiratory tract, he began breathing easily once again; but since for him one attack a day was more than enough, he decided he was going to sit out any kind of physical activity for the rest of the day.

Ben had brought six cans of soda with him when he left the house, and he began sharing them out among his friends. Richie and Beverly lit another cigarette each, and this time both Bill and Ben tentatively asked for one as well.

They all sat around talking about their plans for what remained of their summer; none of them could still believe than not one of their folks had planned a summer vacation away somewhere. They talked about how amazing it was, that although they had really only been friends for seven short weeks, they would swear they had been friends all of their lives. They talked about the fact that if any of their folks had arranged a vacation somewhere, then the seven of them wouldn’t be this close and things would be turning out very differently.

It was Bill who yet again put forward the suggestion that perhaps because things were not supposed to have turned out differently than how they had, that was reason why there were no summer vacation plans for any of them. This was the closest they had come this morning to talking about It, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, Bob Gray and even that very bizarre coincidence, that up until school had broken up for the summer, with the exception of Bill and Eddie, none of them had been particularly close.

After taking a break, the others ran off for a game of tag, while Eddie sat and thought his thoughts. A few minutes later Beverly sat down with him, choosing to keep him company instead of leaving him all on his own; after all that’s when the really bad things in Derry start happening.

Alvin Marsh crept out of the place where he had been hiding, and faded quickly and quietly out of the Barrens and headed home to wait for his precious daughter. “That slutchild is going to get such a whupping from me when she gets home. She’ll be lucky if she’s able to leave her bedroom in time for when school starts back up.”

Beverly lit another cigarette and offered one to Eddie, who declined thinking of the holy hell it would raise with his asthma. The two of them talked about nothing of any consequence, and just as she crushed out her third cigarette of the morning, Bev’s tummy started rumbling. The others rejoined them after getting a really good work out playing tag, and they sat and took a breather.

As eleven o’clock came around, the seven of them were all getting pretty hungry so they decided it was time to head home for lunch; after all they had been playing down in the Barrens since seven and they’d eaten nothing in those four hours. So they headed to the bridge where their bikes were, untied them and climbed up the embankment.

After the Losers Club had gotten back up on Kansas Street, they all split up. Stan and Richie headed to Richie’s house on foot, Mike and Bill headed to Bill’s house on their bikes (since it was far too long a trek to the Hanlon’s farm just for lunch, and neither of them had the desire to come across either Henry or Butch Bowers), and Ben, Eddie and Beverly all walked to their own homes.