Losers: Bill Denbrough x Reader

What Scares Us Most

The summer sun was beaming down on us as we stood in the alleyway, the sound of Richie attempting to play a band member's instrument in the background. Bill, Bev, Ben, Mike, Stan, and I were standing around and staring at the thick stack of missing posters that had been plastered to the brick. The most recent missing face staring back at us, Edward Corcran.

"They say they found part of his arm all chewed up at the sandpipe." Stan shrugged, squinting in the sunlight.

"He asked to borrow a pencil once." Ben said, looking down at his shoes.

Bill lifted up Edward's poster to reveal Betty Ripsom's missing poster, a scowl on his face. "I-I-its like she's been forgotten just because Corcran is m-m-mi-missing."

I didn't say anything, but I hoped he wouldn't continue to dig through those posters. I don't know how either of us could react with coming face to face with Georgie's missing poster. Georgie wasn't my brother, but I was still pretty close to him considering Bill and I had been best friends at the time, so it hit me pretty hard when Georgie went missing too.

"Is this ever going to end?" Stan asked, and I wasn't sure whether he meant the kids going missing or Bill constantly talking about the missing kids instead of just enjoying his summer.

Just then, Eddie rounded the corner with a vanilla ice cream cone in each hand. He took a lick off one and handed the other to Richie who had finally given up on playing the instrument. "What are you guys talking about?"

"What they always talk about." Richie rolled his eyes. Just because he hadn't seen anything he just wanted to sweep everything under the rug instead of facing the weird shit that's actually going on.

"I actually think it will end, for a little while at least." Ben nodded and I knew that he had been studying again. Give Ben a few weeks and an armful of books and he could probably give you all the answers to the universe.

"What do you mean?" Bev, who had been uncharacteristically quiet up until now, finally asked.

"So, I was going over all of my Derry research, and I charted out all the big events like the Ironworks in 1908, the Bradley Gang in '35, and the Black Spot in '62, and now kids being..." Ben glanced over at Bill not wanting to say 'kids being murdered' in front of him before continuing on, "I realized this stuff happens every-"

"Twenty seven years." Bill helped him finish.

Once we realized this was calling for a longer discussion, we hunted for a place to sit and eventually settled on a bench in the middle of an open area where they had performances being held for the festival. Stan sat on the back of the bench with his legs locked tightly together and his hands on his knees. Bev sat sideways on one side of him while Mike and Ben sat on the opposite side, with the rest of us sitting on our bikes that were propped up by kickstands.

"So let me get this straight. It comes out to eat kids for like a year and then what? It just goes into hibernation?" Eddie asked, trying to comprehend all the information Ben just dropped on us.

"Maybe it's like, what do you call it, cicadas? You know, the bugs that come out every 17 years?" Stan asked, trying tl find an easy to understand example for us to base Ben's findings off of.

"My grandfather thinks this town is cursed," Mike mumbled, getting all of our attention.

"A curse, seriously?" I asked. I mean, a loved a good ghost story just as much as the next guy, but I don't normally believe in them.

"He says that all the bad things that happen in this town are caused by ome thing," he paused, almost as if on purpose for a more dramatic effect, "An evil thing thay feeds off the people of Derry."