It

The section begins with a note stating that all of the Interludes are “drawn from Derry: An Authorized Town History” (147), written by Mike Hanlon.

The Interlude starts with the question: “Can an entire city by haunted?” (147). Mike gives one definition of haunt, when used as a noun, as “a feeding place for animals” (147). He writes that his memories started to come back as he was reading about the hearings of the boys who had killed Adrian Mellon. That is when he began “to know that Its time might be coming round again” (148).

Mike works in Derry as a librarian and does much of his research at the library: “Part of me—the part Bill would call the voice of the Turtle—says I should call them all, tonight” (149). He says that if he calls them, he does not believe that all of them will survive the call. Mike feels guilty about the potential calls because he is “the only one who remembers, because [he's] the only one who stayed in Derry” (150).

So far there is only Mellon and two dead children. Although Mike is not certain that It has returned yet, he writes that the cycles of violence in Derry start approximately every twenty-seven years, and the timeline fits these three new deaths: “To know what a place is, I really do believe one has to know what it was” (152). In the early spring of 1980 Mike went to see a man named Albert Carson, the head librarian for many years. He says that the visit to Mike was when the terror began for him again.

Carson gives him some reading suggestions for his research on Derry's history. Mike says that Derry “isn’t right” (153). Ben compares Derry to a house of locked rooms that are filled with terrible things, but that the keys can be found. “You may think you’ve stumbled on the worst of Derry’s secrets…but there is always one more. And one more” (153).

Mike reads the histories, and then begins speaking with Derry historians like Sandy Ives. Ives tells him that in 1741, 300 white settlers in Derry disappeared. The town had been deserted, with one home burned to the ground. Ives explains: “There is a kind of curtain of quiet which cloaks much of what has happened here, but people do talk” (155). Ives says that in 1958 he was doing the dishes when he heard a voice from the sink. It was his daughter Betty, screaming and laughing, and Betty had been murdered that winter, ripped open and found in the street.

Mike visits Carson again later, three months before Carson dies. Carson asks if he knows about the time cycles, and Mike confirms. Carson tells Mike to stop writing the history and reminds him that others have tried, and then committed suicide.

Mike writes several quick histories of deaths in Derry’s past, including a logging family that was found hacked to death and an explosion at the Derry Ironworks Easter Egg Hunt, which occurred in 1906. The explosion killed over 100 people, including 88 children: “The murder rate in Derry is six times the murder rate of any other town of comparable size in New England” (160). Over time, children disappear at the rate of forty to sixty per year. Mike prays that he won’t have to call the others and sits next to his telephone.