It

“The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.”

These are Mike’s opening lines of his Derry history. By the end of the novel, the reader is reasonably assured that It is dead, but as Mike writes, he shows that he still has his suspicions. Given the ultimate nature of It in the void, his suspicions are not without merit. Mike has studied Derry’s history and knows that the terror began before George’s boat, so he is only referring to the terror of him and his friends.

“‘They float,’ the clown said. ‘Down here we all float; pretty soon your friend will float too.’” 

Pennywise uses his catchphrase for the second time, this time on Hagarty. It is signaling that he lives beneath Derry, in the sewers, and that when It takes someone, they will also go down into the drains with It. Later, when Audra is in the spiderweb, she appears to be floating.

“Maybe this isn’t home, nor ever was—maybe home is where I have to go tonight. Home is the place where when you go there, you finally have to face the thing in the dark.”

As he drives towards Derry, what Eddie has thought of as his home—his life with Myra—feels less real than Derry, even though he has forgotten most of what happened to him there. The concept of home is usually presented as a source of comfort and familiarity. For the members of the Losers’ Club, home has always been a dark force, filled with fear.