The records of who made the island and when they abandoned it burnt down with the rest of the town. It was situated in the middle of a lake surrounded by a forest that had been a battleground so many times the wind through the trees still echoed with the screams of the dying, so few people were inclined to travel deep enough to reach the island.
The town itself was scorched but surprisingly intact, all the thatchwork long gone but the slate roofs and thick stone walls weren't much worse for it. Whatever bodies had been left behind when the island was finally abandoned were dust and memory, a very aware memory.
Sometimes the wind carried their voices across the lake and you'd catch little snippets of their final moments, which were mostly cries for help, the names of their loved ones or near incomprehensible screams of rage against whatever god had allowed such a tragedy to strike them all down.
The rare, brave souls who manage to make it through the forest's many haunts, cross the barren lake and set foot upon the burnt island all say the same thing - it hunts you to the shore's edge. They always seem to have a hard time saying exactly what it is, a distant and fearful look overtakes them and all the manage to describe is some kind of amalgamation of the dead.
Everyone who tried to survive the fire, limping and crawling to the docks to try and leave, all suffocating or generally succumbing along the way and none of them getting any farther than the the town centre. Seems like their bodies were all connected in death, sharing that same pain, those same feelings and now this same fate.
What used to be a Them is now an It and It can't remember anything other than Its final moments. They say It hunts like an animal, finding you by the scent of your fear and the warmth of your body. Diving into the lake is safest - the icy cold water scares It but you risk hypothermia.
Anyone who's been there and back says the hypothermia was nothing compared to what hunted them.
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