What was it

That many things were terrible, I knew. A shattered wreck, with no life visible, encountered floating listlessly on the ocean, is a terrible object, for it suggests a huge terror, the proportions of which are veiled. But it now struck me for the first time that there must be one great and ruling embodiment of fear, a King of Terrors to which all others must succumb. What might it be? To what train of circumstances would it owe its existence?

That there must be one Something more terrible than any other thing, I feel. I cannot attempt, however, even the most vague definition. I feel as if I could write a story like Hoffman to night, if I were only master of a literary style.

How sultry it is! Good night, Hammond. We parted, and each sought his respective chamber. I undressed quickly and got into bed, taking with me, according to my usual custom, a book, over which I generally read myself to sleep.

I opened the volume as soon as I had laid my head upon the pillow, and instantly flung it to the other side of the room. I resolved to go to sleep at once; so, turning down my gas until nothing but a little blue point of light glimmered on the top of the tube, I composed myself to rest. The room was in total darkness. The atom of gas that still remained lighted did not illuminate a distance of three inches round the burner.

I desperately drew my arm across my eyes, as if to shut out even the darkness, and tried to think of nothing. It was in vain. The confounded themes touched on by Hammond in the garden kept obtruding themselves on my brain. I battled against them. I erected ramparts of would-be blankness of intellect to keep them out. They still crowded upon me. While I was lying still as a corpse, hoping that by a perfect physical inaction I should hasten mental repose, an awful incident occurred.

A Something dropped, as it seemed, from the ceiling, plumb upon my chest, and the next instant I felt two bony hands encircling my throat, endeavoring to choke me. I am no coward, and am possessed of considerable physical strength. The suddenness of the attack, instead of stunning me, strung every nerve to its highest tension. My body acted from instinct, before my brain had time to realize the terrors of my position.

In an instant I wound two muscular arms around the creature, and squeezed it, with all the strength of despair, against my chest. In a few seconds the bony hands that had fastened on my throat loosened their hold, and I was free to breathe once more. Then commenced a struggle of awful intensity. At last, after a silent, deadly, exhausting struggle, I got my assailant under by a series of incredible efforts of strength.

Once pinned, with my knee on what I made out to be its chest, I knew that I was victor. I rested for a moment to breathe. I heard the creature beneath me panting in the darkness, and felt the violent throbbing of a heart. It was apparently as exhausted as I was; that was one comfort.

At this moment I remembered that I usually placed under my pillow, before going to bed, a large yellow silk pocket handkerchief, for use during the night. I felt for it instantly; it was there. I now felt tolerably secure. There was nothing more to be done but to turn on the gas, and, having first seen what my midnight assailant was like, arouse the household.

I will confess to being actuated by a certain pride in not giving the alarm before; I wished to make the capture alone and unaided. Never losing my hold for an instant, I slipped from the bed to the floor, dragging my captive with me. I had but a few steps to make to reach the gas-burner; these I made with the greatest caution, holding the creature in a grip like a vice. Quick as lightning I released my grasp with one hand and let on the full flood of light.

Then I turned to look at my captive. I cannot even attempt to give any definition of my sensations the instant after I turned on the gas. I suppose I must have shrieked with terror, for in less than a minute afterward my room was crowded with the inmates of the house. I shudder now as I think of that awful moment. I saw nothing! Yes; I had one arm firmly clasped round a breathing, panting, corporeal shape, my other hand gripped with all its strength a throat as warm, and apparently fleshly, as my own; and yet, with this living substance in my grasp, with its body pressed against my own, and all in the bright glare of a large jet of gas, I absolutely beheld nothing!

I do not, even at this hour, realize the situation in which I found myself. I cannot recall the astounding incident thoroughly. Imagination in vain tries to compass the awful paradox. It breathed. I felt its warm breath upon my cheek. It struggled fiercely.

It had hands. They clutched me. Its skin was smooth, like my own. Richie also gets a full blast of the Deadlights in Chapter Two , instantly stopped dead in his tracks, he starts to float slack-jawed in the air. Once the connection is broken, however, Richie also recovers quickly, unlike Audra's in the novel, whose catatonic state lasts long after she and Bill return home after the battle with It.

For Richie, it's unlikely that there would be lingering fallout from seeing the deadlights like there was for Beverly since its influence seems to dissipate at the end of Chapter Two , allowing the Losers to remember each other this time.

As you probably would expect from a celestial creature, It's powers are not restricted to embodying your worst nightmare driving people insane with his space lights, but It is best known for Its shape-shifting abilities. Pennywise is only one of Its forms. In the film, we also see It become a mummy, Beverly's dad, Mike's burning parents, the creepy painting lady, a decapitated boy, a leper, and Georgie, and in the book, he takes many more forms, most famously, the classic Universal monsters.

But It can also appear as much grander and stranger spectacles. In the books, he attacks Mike as a giant bird, swooping through the remains of the Ironworks. Other forms include a swarm of piranhas, winged leeches, and of course, a giant spider laying her eggs in the Derry sewers. Muschiettie embraced that weirder side of Its manifestation in Chapter Two , where we saw the living foot Paul Bunyan statue, the nightmarish creatures that crawl out of the fortune cookies in Jade of the Orient, and the monstrous forms teased during the hallucinatory origin sequence.

It can also manipulate people into violent action, or sometimes, inaction that allows violence to continue.

We see this in the film when Henry Bowers murders his father and sets out to kill the Losers, when the car drives by and leaves Ben helpless during Henry's torment, and in the way It has spread through the town's history like a cancerous corruption.

In the book, Pennywise's evil deeds are writ large in histories, flashbacks, and knowledge passed down to Mike from his grandfather. In the first film, we get a glimpse of It's far-reaching influence through Ben, who takes over Mike's role as the resident history nerd. Ben explains Derry's dark history, telling us that people die or disappear at six times the national average in their town We also hear about the Black Spot, a night club created by and for local black soldiers that was burned to the ground by a hate group in in the book.

Ben also passes on the tale of the charter for Derry township, which started as a beaver trapping camp in the 18th century per the book. In B-1 and B-2 you've got two question forms - Did you say? Hello Rhitagawr First of all, as far as I know, In the case of "Think" verb, Native speakers say a sentence like this example What did you think it was? However, according to your reply, the case of "Say" verb, the under-mentioned two sentence are all right.. Secondly I don't mean I tried to combine two kinds of Direct questions.

Instead, I mean, What as Subject was it? That is What was it. You can see it is still same form to the direct question. Afterward, I mean to put this indirect question to another direct question as Object.

Thus, the results are as follows. But you mean Native speakers don't consider What as Subject in both of a direct questions and an indirect question. If so how about the under sentence? According to the line [Indirect question-3] What cannot take the position of subject in Indirect question?

Tae-Bbong-Ea said:. First of all, as far as I know, In the case of "Think" verb, Native speakers say a sentence like this example What did you think it was?

Click to expand I am still not clear about some points. The second sentence means, or could be taken to mean, Did a thought cross your mind? So the two thinks don't mean the same thing.

You could say Did you wonder what it was? Did a thought cross your mind? Your second B-1 and B-2 are incorrect and you are right to mark them with crosses. It could be possible? Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, and Tobias exist in my memory as real people who endured unspeakable horror. My heart! I could talk about all of this forever. The books are long out of print. These books were designed for that twelve-year-old, not for you.

They were made to be disposable. To be an Animorphs fan today is to witness for a cult religion that will never gain another convert. We live in a different world now, a world in which publishers pay a single author to write a handsome show horse of a hardcover once a year, rather than employing dozens of ghostwriters to crank out flimsy assembly-line paperbacks all day long.

It certainly deserves its own movie franchise. How did it happen that the Scholastic factory, grinding out book after book after book, squeezed out a diamond amidst the coal? The rest is alien technology.