Author Archives: XYuriTT

Title: It
Author(s): Stephen King
Release year: 1986
Publisher: Viking Press

Why in Database: One of Stephen King’s more famous books, we have collected his other works in this note.

This is a book very rich in turtles, maybe not in terms of the number of scenes themselves – there are enough of them here that we are able to show all the turtle fragments – but it certainly stands out in terms of how important the turtle is in it.

This book has been adapted to live action two times, in a miniseries in 1990 in which there was no turtle element, and later, in form of two films, It released in 2017 and It Chapter Two – both movies had turtle elements.

The first piece is about Turtle Wax:

George sifted through the junk on the shelf as fast as he could — old cans of Kiwi shoepolish and shoepolish rags, a broken kerosene lamp, two mostly empty bottles of Windex, an old flat can of Turtle wax. For some reason this can struck him, and he spent nearly thirty seconds looking at the turtle on the lid with a kind of hypnotic wonder. Then he tossed it back . . . and here it was at last, a square box with the word GULF on it.

The second one is probably related to the turtle from the previous quote:

That turtle, George thought, going to the counter drawer where the matches were kept. Where did I see a turtle like that before? But no answer came, and he dismissed the question.

First mention of the turtle himself (the book has a dual chronology, with scenes from both timelines being presented in parallel):

‘The turtle couldn’t help us,’ he said suddenly. He said that quite clearly. She heard it. That inward look — that look of surprised musing — was still on his face, and it was starting to scare her.

Again the mention of the turtle that is unable to help them:

Once she had made an uneasy joke about deals with the devil. Stanley had laughed until he almost choked, but to her it hadn’t seemed that funny, and she supposed it never would.
The turtle couldn’t help us.
Sometimes, for no reason at all, she would wake up with this thought in her mind like the last fragment of an otherwise forgotten dream, and she would turn to Stanley, needing to touch him, needing to make sure he was still there.

Again:

Now she could remember running back down here, feet stuttering on the stair-levels, running for the phone, oh yes, oh sure, but who had she meant to call?
Crazily, she thought: I would call the turtle, but the turtle couldn’t help us.

The next four mentions are about the Voice of the Turtle:

What part? The watchman part, I suppose.
Or maybe it was the voice of the Turtle. Yes . . . I rather think it was that. I know it’s what Bill Denbrough would believe.

Part of me — the part Bill would call the voice of the Turtle — says I should call them all, tonight.

I am somehow convinced that they don’t remember any of it, because they don’t need to remember. I’m the only one that hears the voice of the Turtle, the only one who remembers, because I’m the only one who stayed here in Derry. And because they’re scattered to the four winds, they have no way of knowing the identical patterns their lives have taken.

Maybe I won’t have to do it. I hold on to the waning hope that I’ve mistaken the rabbity cries of my own timid mind for the deeper, truer voice of the Turtle. After all, what do I have?

Another mention of a turtle:

Somehow, for some reason, we’re the ones who have been elected to stop it forever. Blind fate? Blind luck? Or is it that damned Turtle again? Does it perhaps command as well as speak? I don’t know. And I doubt if it matters. All those years ago Bill said The Turtle can’t help us, and if it was true then it must be true now.

For a change, turtle used as a comparison:

Ben escaped it as fast as he could, hunching his neck down into his collar like a turtle drawing into its shell.

Typical turtle mention:

No. No fight. For one thing, Bill himself had still been feeling too punk to work up a really good quarrel with George. He had been sleeping, dreaming something, dreaming about some
(turtle)
funny little animal, he couldn’t remember just what, and he had awakened to the sound of the diminishing rain outside and George muttering unhappily to himself in the dining room.

Mention of Voice of the Turtle:

When the time comes, they will hear the voice of the Turtle.

Turtle Wax is mentioned again:

Then Richie Tozier, leaning back against the wall, grinned again and said: ‘Oh my, look at this — Bill Denbrough went for the chrome dome look. How long you been Turtle Waxing your head, Big Bill?’

Turtle as a drawing:

A word came to him suddenly, a word that meant nothing at all but which tightened his flesh: Chüd.
He looked down at the sidewalk and for a moment saw the shape of a turtle chalked there, and the world seemed to swim before his eyes. He shut them tightly and when he opened them saw it was not a turtle; only a hopscotch grid half-erased by the light rain.
Chüd.

Another turtle element:

Then, for just a moment, it swam and looked like something else. It looked like a turtle.

Turtle sunglasses:

‘Wuh-wuh-wait,’ Bill said suddenly, and dashed into the house. He came back a minute later with a pair of cheap Turtle wraparound sunglasses that had been languishing in a kitchen drawer for a year or more. ‘Better p-put these uh-on, H-H-Haystack.’

Another turtle mention:

(Ah Chüd this is the Ritual of Chüd and the Turtle cannot help us)

Mention of the Voice of the Turtle:

Maybe I should have told them, he thought, putting the last of the magazines back in their places. But something spoke strongly against the idea — the voice of the Turtle, he supposed. Perhaps that was part of it, and perhaps that sense of circularity was part of it, too.

The first of the important references from which we learn about the turtle’s involvement in the creation of the universe:

Something new had happened.
For the first time in forever, something new.
Before the universe there had been only two things. One was Itself and the other was the Turtle. The Turtle was a stupid old thing that never came out of its shell. It thought that maybe the Turtle was dead, had been dead for the last billion years or so. Even if it wasn’t, it was still a stupid old thing, and even if the Turtle had vomited the universe out whole, that didn’t change the fact of its stupidity.
It had come here long after the Turtle withdrew into its shell, here to Earth, and It had discovered a depth of imagination here that was almost new, almost of concern.

Another turtle mention:

because the only thing It had in common with the stupid old Turtle and the cosmology of the macroverse outside the puny egg of this universe was just this: all living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit.

Reminder that the turtle puked up the universe:

And yet there was a thought that insinuated itself no matter how strongly It tried to push the thought away. It was simply this: if all things flowed from It (as they surely had done since the Turtle sicked up the universe and then fainted inside its shell), how could any creature of this or any other world fool It or hurt It, no matter how briefly or triflingly? How was that possible?

Turtle mention:

Now the mind of the writer’s wife was with It, in It, beyond the end of the macroverse; in the darkness beyond the Turtle; in the outlands beyond all lands.

The next four fragments are the most turtle-turtle, he appears in person!:

He rushed toward it and saw it was a great Turtle, its shell plated with many blazing colors. Its ancient reptilian head slowly poked out of its shell, and Bill thought he felt a vague contemptuous surprise from the thing that had cast him out here. The eyes of the Turtle were kind. Bill thought it must be the oldest thing anyone could imagine, older by far than It, which had claimed to be eternal.
What are you? —
I’m the Turtle, son. I made the universe, but please don’t blame me for it; I had a bellyache.
Help me! Please help me!
—I take no stand in these matters. My brother —
— has his own place in the macroverse; energy is eternal, as even a child such as yourself must understand
He was flying past the Turtle now, and even at his tremendous skidding speed, the Turtle’s plated side seemed to go on and on to his right. He thought dimly of riding in a train and passing one going in the other direction, a train that was so long it seemed eventually to stand still or even move backward. He could still hear It, yammering and buzzing, Its voice high and angry, not human, full of mad hate. But when the Turtle spoke, Its voice was blanked out utterly. The Turtle spoke in Bill’s head, and Bill understood somehow that there was yet Another, and that Final Other dwelt in a void beyond this one. This Final Other was, perhaps, the creator of the Turtle, which only watched, and It, which only ate. This Other was a force beyond the universe, a power beyond all other power, the author of all there was.
Suddenly he thought he understood: It meant to thrust him through some wall at the end of the universe and into some other place
(what that old Turtle called the macroverse)
where It really lived; where It existed as a titanic, glowing core which might be no more than the smallest mote in that Other’s mind; he would see It naked, a thing of unshaped destroying light, and there he would either be mercifully annihilated or live forever, insane and yet conscious inside Its homicidal endless formless hungry being.
Please help me! For the others —
—you must help yourself, son
But how? Please tell me! How? How? HOW?
He had reached the Turtle’s heavily scaled back legs now; there was time enough to observe its titanic yet ancient flesh, time to be struck with the wonder of its heavy toenails — they were an odd bluish-yellow color, and he could see galaxies swimming in each one.
Please, you are good, I sense and believe that you are good, and I am begging you . . . won’t you please help me?
—you already know, there is only Chüd. and your friends.
Please oh please —
son, you’ve got to thrust your fists against the posts and still insist you see the ghosts . . . that’s all I can tell you. once you get into cosmological shit like this, you got to throw away the instruction manual He realized the voice of the Turtle was fading. He was beyond it now, bulleting into a darkness that was deeper than deep. The Turtle’s voice was being overcome, overmastered, by the gleeful, gibbering voice of the Thing that had thrust him out and into this black void — the voice of the Spider, of It.
— how do you like it out here, Little Friend? do you like it? do you love it? do you give it ninety-eight points because it has a good beat and you can dance to it? can you catch it on your tonsils and heave it left and right? did you enjoy meeting my friend the Turtle? I thought that stupid old fuck died years ago, and for all the good he could do you, he might as well have, did you think he could help you?

There is only Chüd, the Turtle had said. And suppose this was it? Suppose they had bitten deep into each other’s tongues, not physically but mentally, spiritually? And suppose that if It could throw Bill far enough into the void, far enough toward Its eternal discorporate self, the ritual would be over? It would have ripped him free, killed him, and won everything all at the same
— you’re doing good, son, but very shortly it’s going to be too late It’s scared! Scared of me! Scared of all of us!
— skidding, he was skidding, and there was a wall up ahead, he sensed it, sensed it in the dark, the wall at the edge of the continuum, and beyond it the other shape, the deadlights —
— don’t talk to me, son, and don’t talk to yourself — it’s tearing you loose, bite in if you care, if you dare, if you can be brave, if you can stand . . . bite in, son!

He was pulled past the Turtle and saw that its head had withdrawn into its shell; its voice emerged hollow and distorted, as if even the shell it lived in were a well eternities deep:
— not bad, son, but I’d finish it now; don’t let It get away, energy has a way of dissipating, you know; what can be done when you’re eleven can often never be done again
The voice of the Turtle faded, faded, faded. There was only the rushing dark . . . and then the mouth of a cyclopean tunnel . . . smells of age and decay . . . cobwebs brushing at his face like rotted skeins of silk in a haunted house . . . moldering tiles blurring by . . . intersections, all dark now, the moon-balloons all gone, and It was screaming, screaming:

Bill’s brain was whirling. Exhaustion tugged at him with thick and clumsy hands. He could not remember ever feeling this tired . . . but in his mind he heard the drawling, almost weary voice of the Turtle: I’d finish it now; don’t let It get away . . . what can be done when you’re eleven can often never be done again.

It talks about the turtle:

— the Turtle was stupid, too stupid to lie. he told you the truth, Little Buddy . . . the time only comes around once, you hurt me . . . you surprised me. never again. I am the one who called you back. I.
You called, all right, but You weren’t the only one
— your friend the Turtle . . . he died a few years ago. the old idiot puked inside his shell and choked to death on a galaxy or two. very sad, don’t you think? but also quite bizarre, deserves a place in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, that’s what I think, happened right around the same time you had that writer’s block, you must have felt him go, Little Buddy

Another mention of a turtle:

And somewhere, faintly, from some unimaginable distance, he heard Bill scream . . . and the words, although meaningless, were crystal-clear and full of sickening
(the Turtle is dead oh God the Turtle really is dead)
despair.

Confirmation of turtle’s fate:

Richie was in greater darkness than he had ever known, than he had ever suspected might exist, travelling at what felt like the speed of light, and being shaken as a terrier shakes a rat. He sensed that there was something up ahead, some titanic corpse. The Turtle he had heard Bill lamenting in his fading voice? Must be. It was only a shell, a dead husk. Then he was past, rushing on into the darkness.

Mention of a turtle:

They whistled back, that crazy light fading, becoming a series of brilliant pinpoints that finally winked out. They drove through the darkness like torpedoes, Richie gripping Its tongue with his teeth and Bill’s wrist with one aching hand. There was the Turtle; there and gone in a single eyeblink.

Last mention of the turtle:

And clearly, he heard the Voice of the Other; the Turtle might be dead, but whatever had invested it was not.

Author: XYuriTT