It: Epilogue Summary & Analysis

Bill stands naked in Mike’s bedroom, looking at his aging adult body. He puts on his underpants and thinks of how he cannot remember what he and his old friends did that week, or how Audra ended up in a catatonic state. He finishes getting dressed and looks at himself in the mirror again. He thinks that he looks like a man nearing middle-age who is wearing children’s clothes. He leaves the room.

In the dreams that Bill will have in his later years, he sees himself leaving Derry alone at sunset. The town is deserted. He can hear the echo of his footfalls, and the other sound is water rushing through the storm drains.

Bill rolls Silver out of Mike’s garage. He oils the chain-and-sprocket and lightly squeezes the horn. Then, he goes back into the house and gets Audra. She does not move and her hand lies in his like warm wax. He leads her to Silver. He tells her to get on, but she does not move, and he helps her. As Bill mounts the bike, he prepares to reach for Audra’s hands to place them around his waist, but they creep around his middle, as though of their own accord. He calls to her, but there is still no answer. He tells his wife that they are going for a ride. He decides to go to Upper Main Street, which will run him downhill. He is initially reluctant to do this, but decides to let his child-self take over—the part of his being that just does things instead of counting the cost of his actions.

Bill tells Audra to hold on. He still has thoughts of falling in the street, causing both of their skulls to split open. He starts pedaling faster when he reaches Upper Main Street, then he cries out, “Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYYYY!” Audra’s hands tighten around his middle and he feels her stir. Bill cries out deliriously and feels, once again, that Derry is his place and that he is alive under a real sky. He feels overwhelmed by a feeling of desire and races down the hill on Silver, riding to “beat the devil.”

Bill feels himself driving away from memory, but not from desire. All the rest is darkness. Someone then calls for Bill to look out. He drags Silver hard to the left to avoid crash barriers. Audra awakens. Up ahead, he strikes a barrier that closes off a sidewalk at forty miles per hour. Bill yells out again, “Hi-yo Silver, AWAYYYYY!” He feels tears in his eyes. Audra cries out, with a mixture of fear and excitement, that he is going to kill them both. She asks him what is happening. She says that she can only remember getting off a plane at Bangor, but nothing after that. She asks if he is still stuttering, and Bill says that his stutter is gone, forever. Bill thinks of how he will write about all of this one day—or so he thinks, on those mornings in which he almost remembers his childhood and his old friends.