Patrick Hockstetter
Patrick Hockstetter is one of the most profoundly disturbed children in Derry, a twelve-year-old whose emotional and moral development is catastrophically stunted. He is a sociopath, and by the summer of 1958, he may have become a full-fledged psychopath. He cannot remember a time when he believed other people—or any living creatures—were "real." This fundamental lack of empathy, combined with a low-normal IQ and a surface-level apathy that makes him easy for teachers to overlook, allows him to operate beneath the notice of adults while committing acts of escalating cruelty.
Childhood and the Murder of Avery Hockstetter
Patrick's first known act of murder occurs when he is five years old. His mother brings home a new baby, Avery, and Patrick resents the disruption to his routine and the attention the infant receives. Fearing that his parents might replace him with Avery, Patrick enters the baby's room one afternoon, turns Avery's face into his pillow, and holds him there until he suffocates. The death is diagnosed as crib death, and Patrick feels no guilt, only a profound excitement—a rare, almost drug-like rush of color and sensation. He never repeats the act, but the memory of that feeling becomes a powerful, addictive force in his life.
Escalating Cruelty: Animals and the Refrigerator
Unable to replicate the intensity of killing Avery without risking discovery, Patrick turns to smaller victims. He kills flies with a plastic ruler, watches them struggle on flypaper, and impales beetles on needles. He discovers a rusty Amana refrigerator near the town dump and uses it as a killing bottle. Over the course of months, he traps and suffocates numerous neighborhood pets—cats, dogs, and a cocker spaniel—in the refrigerator, deriving a sexualized excitement from watching them die. He is careful, but his intuition tells him he is suspected by adults in the neighborhood.
Association with Henry Bowers and the Fart-Lighting Incident
By July 1958, Patrick has attached himself to Henry Bowers's gang, serving as a replacement for Peter Gordon. He participates in the bullying of Eddie Kaspbrak, which results in Eddie's broken arm. On July 20th, he joins Henry, Victor Criss, and Belch Huggins in the dump, where they engage in lighting each other's farts with a cigarette lighter. During this episode, Patrick attempts to sexually gratify Henry, touching his genitals and offering to perform oral sex. Henry knocks him down and threatens him, revealing that he knows about Patrick's refrigerator and the animals he has killed there. Patrick, for the first time, feels a genuine threat to his secret world.
Death by the Flying Leeches
After the confrontation with Henry, Patrick returns to the refrigerator to dispose of the body of a pigeon he had placed inside. When he opens the door, he finds the pigeon reduced to a skeleton. The interior of the refrigerator is infested with dozens of flesh-colored, shell-like parasites that unfurl insectile wings. They fly at him, latching onto his skin with tubular proboscises and beginning to drain his blood. Patrick, who is terrified of leeches, screams and thrashes, but the creatures swarm him, attaching to his arms, neck, face, and even inside his mouth. One bursts on his tongue, and another collapses his eye. As he lies dying, a figure—the entity It—appears, its face running like wax, and drags him away into the Barrens. His body is later found in the sewers under Derry, partially eaten by rats, a grim testament to his complete consumption by the town's ancient evil.
