OPHIDIOPHOBIA - IT

SIX

After drying off and putting their clothes on, the group biked over to Ben's house, once there Ben sprinted off into his house. Alexa assumed something in his house wasn't meant to be seen by the public so she let him be.

On the outside, it was just a regular two-story with beige walls and burgundy accents with a porch.

Once inside the group followed a running Ben to his bedroom and saw an almost clean room with Ben leaning against his closet door

The room looked pretty normal, besides the many newspapers on the walls, all of them being of murders and just unpleasant topics.

Alexa let out an audible "Woah" at the sight of it.

The group besides Ben, who was now standing up straight, started to explore the room.

"Cool huh?" Ben asked the group, seeking the approval of his new friends.

"No, no no, nothing cool." Richie countered, looking around bewildered.

The other five seemed to tune Richie out and continued looking around. Beverly was on the wall closest to Ben's bed, Bill was by the window looking at something too small for Alexa to see, and Stan and Eddie had joined Richie at the wall opposite the door.

Alexa was at Ben's bed looking at the cutout newspapers sprawled out.

"What's that?" She heard Stan's voice to the right of her, she turned her head to see what got him interested.

She walked up to the wall and noticed a longer piece of paper that the words were so small, they were illegible.

"Oh, that?" Ben saw what they were looking at, "That's the charter for Derry Township."

"Nerd alert," Richie said, putting on his best "nerdy" voice. "No, actually, it's— it's really interesting."

"Derry started as a beaver trapping camp,"

"Still is am I right boys?" Richie interrupted, Alexa slowly put his hand down.

"91 people signed the Charter that made Derry, but later that winter they all disappeared without a trace." He continued.

"The entire camp?" Eddie asked, not believing it. Alexa felt goosebumps on her arm, even though it was pretty warm in the room.

"There are rumors of Indians, but no sign of an attack." His attention was now on a photograph of the town signing the charter. "Everyone thought it was a plague or something, but it's like everyone just woke up and left." The trio to the left of him felt even more uneasy.

"The only clue was a trail of bloody clothes leading to the well house."

"That's definitely not creepy," Alexa muttered, mysteries always intrigued and scared her. The group of 4 seemed entranced in their conversation they didn't see Ben turn around to Beverly closing his door to show his "New Kids On The Block" poster.

"Can we all agree that this shit is creepy and we shouldn't be learning about this like we're in a history class?" The only girl in the group of 4 asked the others, she didn't know how to feel knowing these photos were in someone's room.

"Maybe he's just trying to make some friends." Richie shrugged, Alexa slightly agreed with him but decided not to be rude and just stared at the wall in front of them.

"Wh-where was the well house?" Bill's voice interrupted their side conversation. Everyone turned to him, then to Ben for the answer. Ben shrugged, "I don't know, somewhere in town I guess." He stopped, "Why?"

"Nothing." Bill was staring at the wall with the multiple missing posters.

The group decided to split up and go home for the day, everyone having enough of the scary history of the town.