This book is gratefully dedicated to my children.
My mother and my wife taught me how to be a man. My children taught me how to be free.

Naomi Rachel King, at fourteen;

Joseph Hillstrom King, at twelve;

Owen Philip King, at seven.

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists

S.K.

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made out of a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood and the friends with whom he shared it.