Let’s kick off September properly with a good old horror Halloween based AU. I don’t have to very many of these, the only LEGIT one I think I have is Jeepers Creepers and Mad Father comes pretty close. And I guess Night in the Woods could count (it takes place around Halloween, kinda) and I guess *shudder* Lovely Bones...
ANYWAY! If you didn’t know, I got to see the midnight premier of the new movie IT by Stephen King. I was very pleased because I remember watching the old IT movie with Tim Curry and not being scared in the slightest. But this? Good lord, they upped the creepy. Just about all of us in the theater at some point were just going ‘nope nope nopenopenopenope!’ (Along with yelling at the kids to NOT go into the creepy place with the evil killer clown) So this is basically part 1 of this post since the new movie is split in two so let’s get started.
So we got our barrio fam and the barrio babs hanging around, but this barrio in particular isn’t as happy and heartwarming as the musical. The little town where they live is just...ominous in general, and people go missing, like A LOT. Tons of gruesome incidents had taken place there in the past, it’s like the town is cursed.
So to start off, I’m thinking Nina is gonna be our focus character here. Because she was directly affected by IT when it killed her brother, Lincoln. Her older brother had gone out during a rainstorm, and apparently fell into the sewer, along with tons of blood nearby. A year later, and they haven’t found any sign of him. Kevin and Camila have accepted by this point that their son is dead, but Nina refuses to give up since they found no body. So we got our main cast of barrio babs, Nina, Usnavi, Benny, Vanessa, Pete, and Carla. Oh also I forgot to mention that all the kids are between the ages of 11 and 14; Carla is the oldest at 14 and Pete is the youngest at 11. And Sonny? Well, he doesn’t exist yet; he’s not born yet in this AU, don’t worry, I have a reason (also I guess this technically makes this another Young!Sonny AU). So all the barrio babs have been seeing really weird shit lately and getting the shit scared out of them in the process, since what they’ve been seeing has to do with their fears. For example, Nina sees the ghost of Lincoln, telling her to come with him so ‘she’ll float too. We all float down here~’, Usnavi sees a man who is just about rotting from sickness and disease since his parents died of sickness, Vanessa has blood shoot out of her sink, and so on. I haven’t figured out what everyone would see yet. But with everything they see, they ALSO always see the clown. Nina and Carla do some research and they realize that every 15 years some giant incident happens in their town involving children dying. One time a factory exploded when a bunch of kids were having their annual Easter Egg Hunt; one time a camp full of children suddenly went missing without a trace. The kids realize that Abuela has been around for about two of these incidents so they go to her for help. Abuela doesn’t say much cause she doesn’t want these kids to get themselves killed because the fifteen years have passed and now IT is starting to kill children again, having started with Lincoln (Nina still denies that he’s dead). Abuela only tells them that this town is cursed, and that they should spend their summer together playing, and soon it will all pass. So after some planning, they trace the incidents back to this old creepy house and they go inside where they are met with creepy image after creepy image. After narrowly escaping and injuring the clown they all get into a fight since Nina wants to go back to the house so they can kill it and everyone else is fucking terrified and don’t want to die. So after a month, they go about their summer, trying to ignore the growing number of missing children, but they can’t. And shit REALLY hits the fan when Nina goes to Vanessa’s house only to find her mom dead and blood in Vanessa’s room. The monster took Vanessa. Nina rounds up the gang and they go to the house and go down a well in the basement, leading to a big underground thing in the sewers. They also realize that they have to stick together, as IT only preys on children when they’re alone, since that’s what makes their fear so prominent. They have a few close calls and they eventually find the monster’s lair as well as Vanessa, but she’s floating in the air and not moving. There’s also a giant pile of stuff that’s surrounded by the bodies of floating children that IT has killed over the years. The gang get Vanessa down, but her eyes are blank and she’s unresponsive. They manage to snap her out of it but the clown is here and they have a big showdown. They all beat it with the best of their ability, all of them facing their fears as they do until the monster is defeated. It scuttles away before they can finish it, but they’re pretty certain that it’s over and they won. Also, while down there, Nina finds the tattered remains of Lincoln’s raincoat, the last thing he was wearing before disappearing and finally cries over the loss of her brother. After that, summer goes on and things seem to be going good. Usnavi’s aunt has even given birth to a baby boy, (there’s Sonny for ya!) But the kids all vow that if the monster isn’t dead, that they’ll come back and finish it for good. That means in fifteen years, they’ll see each other again in that town if kids start dying again. This also gives Usnavi a new vigor to care for and protect his new baby cousin. He’s going to do whatever he can to get himself, his aunt, and Sonny out of Derry, because he is NOT going to let that monster touch Sonny.
