Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chrissy Cunningham was fucking levitating.

Eddie let out a scream and fell back against the wall, smacking into the radio. Faintly, he registered the sound of some twangy song coming on, but he couldn’t drag his away from the cheerleader with her eyes rolled up in her head who was approximately three feet off the ground. “Chrissy? Chrissy!” he shouted at her, trying to pull her back toward the ground, but it was like she was suspended in place. “Chrissy, I don’t like this!”

Chrissy’s body twitched in midair, as if something invisible was grabbing her. Eddie swatted around her body at the thin air, feeling stupid as he connected with nothing. Was this the kind of thing he was supposed to call the police for? Was this some kind of medical episode? Stupid, stupid, he cursed himself, people didn’t just float when they had a seizure.

All of a sudden, Chrissy’s body went limp and she collapsed directly on him, taking them both to the ground in a heap. “Chrissy?” Eddie demanded, shaking her and trying to get a look at her face to see if she was conscious. Those eyes – those pale blue eyes – were open and blinking away tears. “What happened? Are you okay?” Chrissy’s face crumpled and she launched herself against his chest and started sobbing. Eddie wrapped his arms awkwardly around her, patting her back gently. “Okay, let it out... You’re okay.”

It took a moment for Chrissy to pull herself together and extract herself from his arms. As soon as she pulled away, Eddie felt the strangest urge to wrap her up in a blanket and cradle her all over again. Chrissy looked small and... vulnerable in a way he was wholly unfamiliar with when it came to the image he had of her in his mind before today in the woods. The Queen Bee of Hawkins was nice to everyone, despite her questionable taste in boyfriends, but she always had that fake veneer on her that had seemed impenetrable. Now, shivering and smearing her mascara with her cheer uniform sleeve, she looked unfamiliar and raw. Eddie cast his eyes about the room and, unable to locate a blanket for her, settled for pulling off his own jacket and draping it around her shoulders. “Can I get you something to drink?” he offered. “I have beer and... water.”

“I’m sorry,” Chrissy sniffled, confusing Eddie. She wiped her eyes again. “You must think I’m a total mental case. I’m sorry for freaking out.”

Eddie glanced at the space where she had been hovering a few minutes before. “Uh... yeah, Chrissy, I wouldn’t really describe witnessing you floating in my living room as ‘mental case’ behavior, unless I’m the mental case in that scenario. Is that, like, normal for you?”

“Floating?” Chrissy blinked at him in confusion, temporarily shocked out of her tears.

“Yeah, you scared the shit out of me,” Eddie told her. “You couldn’t hear me when I was calling you, and your eyes rolled up in your head, and then you started floating in the air. You don’t know any of this? Were you just... unconscious?”

Chrissy shivered and shook her head. “N-no,” she said. “I was... Do you remember when I asked you if you felt like you were losing your mind?” Eddie nodded. “Well, I have been. I think. I don’t know. I’d almost rather be crazy than have it all be true because if what you said isn’t just messing with me...” she glanced at him with almost hopeful eyes.

“I swear on my mother’s grave, not messing with you,” Eddie insisted, holding his hands up. “Not about something like this.”

“Then I think I might be in danger,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.

Chrissy explained slowly as Eddie made them some coffee, taking breaks to collect herself. It had started about a week ago, apparently. First headaches, then nosebleeds, then nightmares. Then the hallucinations. Eddie listened as she described her experience in the school bathroom. “I was in the bathroom and this thing was trying to get in, rattling the lock over and over until it broke. I could see its feet and they were these... disgusting, burned things. And it was talking to me, it knew me and was saying all these horrible things...” Chrissy pulled his jacket tighter around her. “But tonight was different, it was the first time I’ve been totally somewhere else. I was in your trailer in one second and the next I was home, except everything was wrong. And my dad was there but he was dead, and all the food was rotten, and there were bugs on everything, and then the monster was chasing me around – I thought it was over for me. And then...”

Eddie poured her a mug and pressed it into her hands before sitting down next to her on the sofa. “Then?”

“I could hear the radio. It’s... it’s my favourite song,” Chrissy said, blushing a bit.

Eddie struggled to recall what song had been accidentally turned on. “As someone who bumped the radio in a panic and was paying more attention to the floating cheerleader in the room as opposed to the soundtrack, what song was it?”

“Landslide, Fleetwood Mac,” she said. “I know it’s probably not your taste. Or most of the cheer squad’s. But I like that stuff.”

“Well if it helped you not be killed in the nightmare world, I may have a new respect for the genre,” Eddie said. “So then what?”

“When the music started, I could hear you calling for me, too. It was like the real world came back a little bit. It like, jarred me out of the terror and then I ran – just ran toward your voice – out the front door of my house, and when I threw it open I was just... back here. On top of you. Sorry about that, too.” She took a sip of her coffee and let out a brittle laugh. “It sounds even crazier when I say it out loud.”

“It sounds like something was attacking you, honestly,” Eddie said. “But I’m just glad you were able to break free. I really thought you were going to die.” He shivered at the memory. Eddie didn’t like to look fragile, but the evening had been a whole trip. He didn’t know what would have happened if she’d been in that state a moment longer.

Chrissy’s eyes filled up with tears again and she set down her coffee. “You really believe me?” she asked. “You’re not just being nice?”

“I’m mean and scary, remember?” he teased. “I’d never lie to make you feel better. Look, Chrissy, if you’re in danger, I want to help you figure it out. And I know that going to the cops with ‘the local drug dealer says you were floating’ is not such a hot idea. But we can figure something out, and brainstorm, and make sure whatever was coming for you can’t get you in the morning. Okay?”

She nodded hesitantly. “Okay.”

“Excellent. Now, do you want me to drive you home?” Eddie didn’t want to see her leave, as shaken as she was, but he also couldn’t imagine her wanting to stay – the trailer wasn’t exactly fit for royalty like her.

Chrissy didn’t get up. She bit her lip. “Do you... would it be too much trouble if I stayed here?” As hard as it had been for her to ask, she then began to stumble over her words rapidly. “Only if it’s not any inconvenience. I don’t want to impose. I’m just... I usually have the nightmares where he shows up and I’m scared tonight it’ll be like it was earlier. But I can just go home, it’ll be fine, so forget I asked, it was stupid and –”

Eddie gripped her arms and Chrissy fell silent. “Hey, it’s no trouble. Let me, uh, find you something to sleep in. You can use the bathroom to get cleaned up if you need.”

Chrissy fucking Cunningham was in his fucking bathroom. The floating thing had been crazy, but the Queen Bee of Hawkins, getting ready for bed in his bathroom? Maybe he WAS just having a mental break. But on the off chance he wasn’t, there was no way he could let her see his room like this.

Eddie started throwing his dirty laundry into drawers and snatching up the scattered empties he’d left around until now. Why was he such a slob? How was he going to let Chrissy in here? Frantically, he tore the sheets off his bed and started replacing them with the only other set he kept around, then he reached over and cracked the window to let in some fresh night air. He had just thrown the comforter back on the bed when he heard a gentle knock on the door. Chrissy was watching him work from the door, a slight smile on her lips. “I can sleep on the couch, Eddie, you don’t have to go to any trouble,” she said, but he waved his hand.

“I love that couch,” he said. “We go way back. I don’t mind a reunion tour with it. You, on the other hand, would wake up sore in about ten different places. Trust me, the bed’ll get you down to only two.” He grinned at the sound of her laugh. So she was still capable of laughing after everything that had happened tonight. That was a relief. He took her in. She had washed her face in the bathroom, so all of her makeup was gone, leaving only her strawberry blonde hair that she’d let down from that high pony she always wore it in. She was wearing one of his oversized shirts now, a Black Sabbath shirt from one of the first shows he’d gone to. It fit him a little large, but on Chrissy hung down to brush her knees. Something inside Eddie twinged at the sight of it. He liked seeing Chrissy Cunningham wearing his shirt. Maybe it was just the weirdness of it all. Head cheerleader, dressed like a metal head. He couldn’t picture Chrissy headbanging.

“Um, if you really don’t mind, then... okay,” Chrissy said, breaking the silence. Eddie jolted out of his daydream and grabbed his spare pillow off the bed before heading for the living room. She didn’t move out of his way at the door, putting a hand on his chest. “Thanks again, Eddie,” she told him. “For believing me.”

“Hey, of course,” Eddie said. “You’re not alone, Chrissy. I’ll believe you, no matter how loony tunes you sound.” She gave a small laugh and looked down, stepping out of the way. “Just call if you need anything, okay? I’ll be right out there.”

Eddie headed back to the living room. Chrissy had hung his jacket up on a hook by the door – she was quite the polite house guest, he mused, noting that she’d cleared their coffee mugs to the sink as well while he was tidying up. He dropped his armful of empties from the bedroom into the recycling bin by the sink and turned off the radio at last before dropping onto the sofa.

It was unseasonably warm for Indiana in March, so he didn’t mind the lack of a blanket, but Eddie doubted he’d be falling asleep any time soon. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Chrissy lifting off the ground. What if he hadn’t come back in the room? What if she hadn’t escaped from her trance? What if it happened again, only the next time she couldn’t escape? What had gotten her out? And the nightmare she described... it sounded straight out of his D&D campaign. The monster that had been stalking her... was that what was causing all of this? He turned the thoughts over and over in his head.

After about ten minutes, the door to his room creaked open. “Eddie?” Chrissy called softly. “Are you still awake?”

He sprang up. “I don’t think I’ll be falling asleep tonight, to be honest. Is something wrong?” he asked, heading for the bedroom. She was hanging out the doorway, the blanket from the bed wrapped around her shoulders.

“Everything is fine,” she said. “I’m just, um, kind of scared to be alone. Could you stay with me until I fall asleep? If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Of course,” Eddie heard himself saying before his brain could process what he was agreeing to. Watching over Chrissy Cunningham while she slept? He wasn’t what most people pictured when they thought ‘guardian angel’. But it wasn’t like he was on the verge of exhaustion, either. If it made her feel a little less terrified... “It’s no trouble. I’ll just, uh, sit with you?” Why was he so uncomfortable? It was his bed!

Chrissy smiled at him, gratitude written all over her face, before climbing back into the bed. She watched him come around and sit carefully on top of the blankets, folding his arms across his chest to keep them from accidentally touching anything. “Thank you, Eddie,” she said, closing her eyes at last.

Eddie watched her for awhile, trying to decide if she’d fallen asleep yet. Then he would move back to the sofa, leave her peacefully dozing, and try to figure out what the hell would make a monster target sweet, kind Chrissy. A girl like her wasn’t supposed to have nightmares. As her shoulders rose and fell steadily, Eddie felt the day’s events start to catch up with him. It was going to be okay, at least for tonight, he told himself. Chrissy was safe, and certainly not having a possession related nightmare at that moment, anyway. He could allow himself to close his eyes for just a minute, and then he’d get up and go figure out how the hell he was going to keep Chrissy Cunningham from dying. 

Chapter Text

Chrissy woke up slowly, feeling well rested for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. For a minute she lay there in that gentle pink world between awake and asleep. She had slept so soundly, with blissfully no dreams at all in her head. Slowly, she became aware of the slightly sweet smell of the room, tinged with tobacco, and she realized she was in Eddie Munson’s bed, not her own. The events of last night came rushing back, and she sat up with a bolt, looking around at the room by the light of day. It wasn’t... tidy, exactly, but it wasn’t nasty, either. His walls were covered in posters for what she assumed were metal bands – they weren’t names she recognized, but the vibe was very much something she could guess. He had a carefully organized box of records shoved under a record player in the corner, and on the wall hung a guitar.

Eddie was nowhere to be seen, on the other hand. He must have gone back out to the living room, once she’d fallen asleep. Chrissy had the vague memory of curling up against someone in the night, but it must have been a dream – the side of the bed he’d been sitting on was pulled up tightly, unslept in. She blushed at the image, embarrassed at herself for even picturing it, and reached for her cheer skirt, pulling it on under the Black Sabbath shirt he’d loaned her. The shirt hung on her like a dress, but even so... it felt weird to walk around his house by light of day dressed only in his shirt. She tied the shirt up at her waist so it didn’t hang so long on her and cracked the door open, peeking out to see if Eddie’s uncle he’d mentioned was out there. She didn’t know if Eddie bringing home girls was normal or not for him, but it was still embarrassing to her to be seen at a boy’s house in the morning. Chrissy and Jason were waiting for marriage and the idea of someone misunderstanding what had happened between them made her run hot with shame. Her mother would call her the worst names if that were to happen...

Eddie’s uncle wasn’t in the living room, but Eddie was. He was at the kitchenette, cooking something on the stove, and looked up at the sound of the door. “Morning sleepy head,” he said, breaking out into a broad grin. “First thing’s first for killing other worldly monsters: chocolate chip pancakes. Sleep well?”

Chrissy came out of the bedroom and sat down at the table that was nestled behind the kitchenette counter. “Really well,” she said. “Thanks for staying with me until I fell asleep. I think it helped.”

Eddie’s ears turned red and he turned away quickly. “No problem,” he said, sounding a little odder than usual, though Chrissy supposed she had no idea what was normal for him. Eddie might not have been a freak, but he definitely had an odd side. “Glad to help. So, I was thinking today we could start at the Hawkins archives.” He gestured at the coffee pot. “Help yourself, by the way.”

“The archives?” Chrissy stepped to the coffee pot and poured herself a mug, then reached over and refilled Eddie’s where it sat next to the stove he was working at. “Those smell amazing,” she added, her stomach twisting in knots at the sight of Eddie’s pancakes. She leaned up against the stove and stared up at him. He hadn’t taken the time to fix his hair this morning and the normally shaggy, unkempt mane had taken on a whole new level of bird’s nest. It stuck up straight where she assumed it had probably been slept on in the back. The sight made her want to giggle.

“Well, I was trying to think how to approach this situation,” he said. “You know, figuring out what’s causing this thing to come after you. And, this may surprise you, as I’m the town’s widely assumed Satan worshipper, but I don’t actually have a lot of firsthand knowledge on demons or possession.” She did giggle then. “So I was thinking, if this has happened to anyone before, we might be able to get a lead, you know? Figure out what they did about it.”

“I mean, good idea, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything like that in the Hawkins Post,” Chrissy pointed out. “We’d be better off door knocking at the asylum.”

“Sure, but there’s some good conspiracy rags around,” Eddie said. “Maybe one of them’s got a story no one else believed.”

Chrissy shrugged, and since she had no better idea, brushed him away from the stove, taking over the spatula. “Let me help,” she said, “I can’t let you do everything.”

Eddie grinned at her and hopped up to sit on the kitchenette counter. “Suit yourself. I’m not one to insist the lady just sits and looks pretty.” He started nibbling on one of the finished pancakes off the mountain he’d put together before she woke up. Chrissy flipped the last pancake to finish the batter off and slid it onto the top of the heap precariously before stepping over to the sink to start washing up the dishes. “Come eat before they get cold, I can take care of those later.”

Chrissy hesitated. She’d hoped he would let her get away with avoiding breakfast. “That’s okay,” she said, “I’ll just have coffee.”

“Seriously? You didn’t get a chance to eat after the game with everything that happened. You must be starving. Come on, I’ll clean, I ate like four pancakes while I was making them.” Eddie jumped down from the counter and was suddenly very close to her, almost chest to chest. He quickly took a step back, his ears turning pink again. “Go on, then.” Eddie made a shoo-ing gesture at her.

Chrissy nibbled on her lip. “The thing is... I’m not really supposed to have carbs,” she admitted. “My mom would kill me if she found out.”

Eddie snorted. “And she would be totally fine with you doing ketamine?” he asked in disbelief. “I think we’re a little outside the realm of what your mother would approve of, sweetheart. Have a pancake.”

Chrissy let out a short laugh at that, eyeing the stack of pancakes resentfully as he took over the dishes. The ketamine would have been easier to hide, though. Just one pancake would be fine, right? But it was never just one with her. She always had to have more, didn’t she? She tried to calculate how many sprints it would take to work off a single pancake. A bitter taste rose in the back of her throat. That would be easier than explaining to Eddie why she couldn’t really eat breakfast. She grabbed a plate and a fork.

“Fred, where is that print of Lucas Sinclair’s buzzer beater?” Nancy called. She looked up to see where her scrawny assistant editor had vanished off to now. He had been acting weirdly jumpy all day, which she had mostly written off as Fred being Fred, but now he’d disappeared again, leaving her to finish their front page spread on her own. The Weekly Streak published on Mondays, since the editorial staff liked being able to publish about Friday night events before the buzz wore off, but it meant working in the school on Saturday afternoons every now and then when a big game was scheduled. Normally, it wasn’t too much trouble, but with her total spaz of an assistant, it was proving to be a more trying day finishing the proofs than usual. “Fred?” she called again.

He didn’t reply, and she tossed down her page in annoyance. If he had just walked out because she wasn’t willing to tell him anything else about her and Jonathan, which was none of his business in the first place anyway, then he was going to get an earful about it the next time he showed his face in the club room. Nancy wandered into the hallway and yelled his name another time. This time, she heard a yelp. “Fred?” Nancy called, her heart suddenly beating faster. He probably just tripped, she told herself. Not everything that startles someone in this town is related to the upside down. But she couldn’t help but clench her fists and pick up the pace, wishing she’d worn more sensible shoes if she needed to run. She hurried around the corner and saw Fred standing motionless, facing the end of the hallway. “Fred, what are you doing?” she asked, hesitantly starting to approach. He didn’t reply, and only when she clapped her hand on his shoulder did he abruptly jump and spin around at her.

“Jeez, Nance, don’t sneak up on a guy like that,” Fred snapped.

“I’ve been calling your name for ages,” she said, and then asked, “Is something wrong?”

Something looked like it was wrong. Fred was sweating and pale, looking like he’d seen a ghost. He touched a hand to the scar on his face and then looked at his fingers in confusion. “Just... my mind playing tricks on me,” he laughed nervously. “I watched this horror movie last night after the game, it must be getting in my head.”

“Well, if you’re sure you’re okay,” Nancy said, eyeing him carefully. “You can tell me if something is going on, okay?”

But Fred was nodding enthusiastically. “Sure I would,” he said quickly. “I’m an open book, Nance. Unlike Jonathan, if I might add. Weren’t we talking about how he’s been so closed off recently?” He started pulling her back toward the newspaper club room, casting an anxious look over his shoulder as they went.

“I told you, we are done talking about Jonathan,” Nancy snapped, rolling her eyes. Of course it was just coming back to this. She should have known better than to be concerned. But... Overhead, the lights flickered faintly, and she glanced back to see if there was anything behind them where Fred was looking. It was only a smooth brick wall. “Let’s just finish this and get out of here, I want to be home in time for dinner.”

“Ooh, what’s Mrs. Wheeler making tonight?” Fred asked. “You should invite me over. Parents love me.”

“It’s her secret lasagna recipe, which means family only, sorry,” Nancy told him. “Maybe another time.” Over her dead body, she thought. Overhead, the lights flickered, and Nancy glanced around nervously. Fred had gotten under her skin. Bad wiring didn’t have to mean anything in particular. “Before you ran off, I was looking for that print of Lucas Sinclair. Where did you leave it?”

“I think it’s in the darkroom,” Fred said. “Pretty sure Monica hung the one we picked up to dry before she took off. I can go grab it, it should be good to go. Hey, can you give me a ride home tonight? My mom is working late.”

“Sure, no problem,” Nancy said. “I’ll be in the club room.” Fred took off down the hallway toward the darkroom, and Nancy watched him go with a chill running down her spine. Everything is fine, she told herself. The gate is closed. It’s just Fred being a weird guy, like always.

Thirty minutes later, and no sign of the buzzer beater print of Lucas or her absentee assistant editor. “That kid is going to kill me,” Nancy muttered. “If he’s just screwing around in the darkroom, he’s walking home.” Half of her wanted to keep waiting in the club room, where she was sure everything was fine, but a scared voice in the back of her head was saying, go see if he’s okay. Something’s not right. The voice won out at quarter to seven and Nancy headed out for the darkroom. “Fred, you better not be playing some weird prank,” she called, reaching for the doorknob. “I am so not in the...”

But no one was in the darkroom. The print of Lucas was still hung up on the line, along with a few other shots they had been deliberating over. The voice in Nancy’s head started to get more insistent. He’s not here. Something’s happening. She pulled the door shut and went back to the club room. Maybe he had been in the bathroom and she had just missed him? But he wasn’t there, either. Nancy stood outside the men’s room and called for Fred a few times before she was certain it was completely unoccupied.

The weekend janitor, Hank, was mopping up by the exit, and looked startled when she approached him. “A kid heading out?” he asked, scratching his chin. “Not the scrawny boy with a scar and glasses? I saw him head out the back door awhile ago. He smoke? Looked like he was headed up where all the kids sneak cigarettes in the forest.” Fred didn’t smoke, and Nancy’s gut twisted at the thought of having to search for him in the woods now that the sun was going down. Didn’t he live in the opposite direction anyway? She had dropped him off before, and it was a long walk – not to mention he had just asked her for a ride. Still, maybe he’d looped around and made it home by now... The timeline was long enough at this point he would have gotten back if the janitor had the time right.

She went back to the club room and noticed Fred’s bag was still sitting on the chair he’d dropped it on this morning. Her heart sank. Nancy grabbed the classroom phone and dialed Fred’s home phone number. Someone answered on the third ring. “Benson residence, who’s calling?” asked a young girl. It sounded like Fred’s little sister.

“Hi there, this is Nancy, I’m friends with Fred,” she said. “I just wanted to call and see if he was home yet, I think he forgot his books here. I can drop it off if he wants.” And then she’d chew him out, if he really was at home, for making her go crazy with worry, plus blowing her off without a word. Maybe something normal had happened to him and he just had a bad day.

“He’s not home yet,” the little girl said. “I’ll tell him you called when he gets back.”

Nancy hung up the phone and sat down with her head in her hands. There had to be a logical explanation. Fred went out to leave early, realized he forgot his stuff, and was doubling back now. Or maybe he’d decided to stop off for some food and that was why he was taking so long. She could wait a bit longer, maybe call again in a half hour, or he’d come back and... If only Hopper was here, he’d understand if she called him and asked him to look around the woods, even if it turned out to just be a bad feeling. Nancy dug in her bag and grabbed her flashlight out. There was nothing to do but go find him herself.

Chapter Text

Eddie propped up against the phone booth, waiting for Chrissy to finish calling her folks. “I’m on my way home now,” she was saying. “Sorry, I was with Amber and we lost track of time... I won’t let it happen again.” She dropped her voice low so he could no longer hear her talking, but Eddie was distracted by the pang in his chest he felt when he heard her lie about being with him. Of course Chrissy couldn’t just say she was with the school’s metalhead drug dealer, but he hadn’t expected it to feel so... bad when she did. “I already ate, so don’t wait for me to have dinner,” Chrissy was saying, which wasn’t true either, but maybe Chrissy just didn’t want to make her folks wait another thirty minutes for her to get home. “Nothing much, just some salad... no,” she added. It sounded like Chrissy was getting chewed out by her mom on the other end.

Eddie drummed on his legs and slid down the wall of the phone booth to a low squat, tuning out of Chrissy’s conversation. They’d been together all day, and the idea of letting her go home alone was harder than he’d thought it would be. He just liked to take people under his wing, maybe. Vulnerable people. It was why he hadn’t laughed her off when she’d asked if she could buy from him in the first place. Her earnest blue eyes were hard to read, but impossible to say no to. Their dives into the archives hadn’t proved terribly fruitful, as they had almost nothing to go off of besides the fact she’d been floating. There were a few alien abduction stories they’d found in the Weekly Watcher with floating victims, but the rest didn’t match at all – no nightmares, no visions.

Eddie had started getting a bad feeling that the reason they weren’t finding stories from survivors was for a reason, and it had put him in a sour mood that was only interrupted by Chrissy’s cheerful smile suggesting they take a little break and go for a drive. But the thought had remained in his head ever since then, turning over darkly as he had taken Chrissy out to the record store he liked in Indianapolis, and he’d been bad company for the hour long drive over to the city, preferring to blast music instead of talk. Chrissy had seemed content enough to stay quiet, watching out the window with those unreadable eyes as they blazed past empty cornfields yet to sprout up any signs of life, despite the warm spring.

The record store had an eclectic range broad enough to cater to metalheads and pop fans alike, with an orange shag rug floor and beaded curtain blocking the entrance to the backroom, where Eddie sometimes smoked weed with its aging hippie owner. Chrissy had been delighted by the decor (“It’s like time travelling to the last decade,” she had chirped at the sight) and had started digging through a box of tapes eagerly. He’d wanted her to like it, he realized, as his chest unclenched from the anticipation. He’d been guessing from the Fleetwood Mac song it’d be a hit, but he was relieved to see her waving a John Denver tape at him, excitement on her face (“I’ve been looking for this one!”). He’d been on the hunt for a different tape, but he’d felt his own tension easing now that they’d left Hawkins. Maybe Hawkins was the problem, he wondered. Maybe they needed to just run away from there to keep her safe. He could think of worse ideas.

Afterwards, they walked around the city for a little while, just talking. Once she graduated, Chrissy wanted to be a teacher, and was still waiting to hear back from the schools she’d applied to. “University of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois,” she’d listed off her applications.

“Nowhere too far,” he noted. “You’re a midwestern girl at heart? No big city dreams?”

Chrissy smiled shyly. “They have cities in Minnesota,” she said. “They’re big enough for me and my dreams.”

“But the cities in Indiana are all shit,” Eddie joked, gesturing around them at the streets of Indianapolis. “You didn’t want to stay close to home?” Didn’t Jason get scouted by Notre Dame? was what he really wanted to ask. But that would bring the real world back. He didn’t want to upset the balance that was forming between them.

She gnawed on her lip. “I just want to go a little further. I think I just need a little distance from home. It’ll be... good for me.” She didn’t elaborate, and Eddie sensed the topic was not up for further discussion. “What about you? You’re graduating, right?”

“With a little luck, and enough begging, I plan to,” he said, making her laugh again. “College probably isn’t in the cards, though. Even if I could afford it, I don’t think I’m the collegiate type. We’ll see if the boys want to try and do a tour with the band, actually make a name for ourselves outside of Hawkins.”

“You definitely could,” Chrissy said. “You’ve got stage presence.”

“Says the girl who hasn’t seen me perform since the middle school talent show,” Eddie pointed out.

“Not just on stage. All the time,” she had explained. “You make it hard for people not to take notice. Here or outside Hawkins, there’s no way you could be overlooked.”

He had grinned. “Hopefully that’s a good thing.”

“Of course it is,” Chrissy said, swatting his arm playfully. She seemed so much more relaxed out here. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who had felt the stress ease once they left Hawkins.

“How are you feeling, by the way?” he’d asked. “Any more visions today?”

She shook her head vehemently, making her strawberry blonde ponytail bounce. “Nothing yet,” she said. “I don’t know why. They don’t always come... regularly.” A haunted look passed over her face, and Eddie regretted bringing it up. “Maybe they’re gone now for good,” she added weakly.

“Maybe,” Eddie agreed. “But just in case, I figured I should probably be prepared, since if the music really is what made a difference, I doubt any of my Dio tracks are going to get through to you.” He held up the cassette he’d bought in the store. “I assume you’ve got a copy too, so we’ll both be prepared. Maybe I can burn the song you like on a tape so it’s just that on a long loop.”

Chrissy had gasped in delight. “Eddie, that’s so sweet of you,” she’d said at the sight of the Fleetwood Mac cassette. “You’re a genius!” Then Chrissy Cunningham had leaned up and kissed him on the cheek, and his brain had completely turned off for a moment.

“Words that have never been spoken before,” Eddie muttered as Chrissy took the tape held it close to her chest, walking a few steps ahead of him oblivious to his mini meltdown. He tried to recover quickly by calling, “Plus I figured I picked the music on the way down, you should get to pick on the way back.” He was going totally soft over this girl. He was going to let someone else play music in his van for over an hour. Everyone would say he was completely insane.

And so they had listened to it for the first leg of the drive back, until he stopped for gas and Chrissy had taken the opportunity to call her parents and let them know where she’d been, and lie about who she’d been with. Eddie tuned back in to hear her say, “No, I haven’t seen the news. What do you mean, have I heard?” He watched her face go white and lock eyes with him. “That’s horrible... That poor boy.” Chrissy was white knuckling the receiver. “Uh-huh. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’m sorry for making you worry. Okay, see you soon, Mom.”

“What happened?” Eddie asked as soon as she hung up the phone. “Is everything okay?”

Chrissy shook her head. “Apparently a boy who goes to Hawkins was found in the woods behind the school. He was dead... Nancy Wheeler found him.”

“That’s horrible,” Eddie said. “Do they know how?”

Chrissy shook her head again. “Just that it looked violent... they’ll know more tomorrow. The school is crawling with reporters right now. You don’t think...?”

“That it could be related?” Eddie asked. “Hard to say, but maybe. Maybe he was having nightmares as well? We could try asking Nancy tomorrow. I know her little brother.” Eddie realized Chrissy probably knew Nancy already, considering they were in the same grade. He didn’t associate with ninety percent of the class, but working with the Queen Bee probably offered some social connections he didn’t have access to when it came to classmates. “Or you could call her and ask.”

Chrissy chewed on her lip. “Sure, I like Nancy. I... don’t know how to open that conversation. I mean, she must be totally freaking out right now. I don’t want to pile on that with my issues.” Chrissy wrapped her arms around herself and turned away. “It’s not her problem.”

“Look, sweetheart, sure, Nancy might be going through it right now, but you are too,” Eddie told her, grabbing her arm and pulling her back around to face him. “Screw it if it’s not her problem. If she’s a half decent person –”

“She totally is,” Chrissy interrupted.

“–then she’ll want to help you,” Eddie finished. “And if she saw anything that might give us a better idea if this is the same thing, or what we might be dealing with here, then we should at least try.” Even if he’d never spoken to her before. He had no issue with Nancy, but he never knew what to expect when it came to his classmates impressions of him. Like Chrissy had thought: he was mean and scary to them.

“Okay,” Chrissy agreed. “Tomorrow, then. I have to get home tonight. My mom is probably worried sick. When can I see you tomorrow?” She peered up at him hopefully.

He ran through his plans. “I have band practice in the morning, but I can skip it.” he said. The guys would be pissed, but this was also life and death.

“That’s okay,” Chrissy said. “I have church, and there’s no way my parents will let me skip it after going AWOL today. Maybe we can meet up after lunch and find Nancy. I’ve studied at her house before, we can try there.”

On the rest of the drive home, Chrissy turned the music off. It was her turn to be the unresponsive one, and Eddie let her sit in her thoughts. She was clearly worried. He was, too. However the kid from school had died had to be bad.

He didn’t like the thought of just dropping her off. When he’d woken up next to her that morning, he’d been embarrassed to have dozed off next to her, embarrassed by how much he liked waking up with her having kicked off the blankets in the night and thrown her leg over him. He’d tried not to let his gaze wander along her pale long leg as he gently extracted himself without waking her up. And he’d smoothed the blankets over so it didn’t seem like he’d been there all night, embarrassed what she might think of him for spending the night next to her. But the idea of not being next to her tonight... Of her being alone if she had another hallucination...

As they pulled up a block away from Chrissy’s house, where she’d instructed him to park out of sight, she gave him a tight, fearful smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Chrissy told him.

“Maybe I’ll have to sneak up to your window tonight to keep an eye on you,” he joked, though part of him was deadly serious. “You know what they say, the devil that you know...”

Chrissy laughed lightly, some of the tension leaving her face. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Eddie,” she repeated firmly. “Get some rest. Thanks for today. I still feel like I’m losing my mind, but it’s less scary having you around.”

“No one I’d rather be bat shit insane with,” he said, giving her a grin as she jumped out of the car. She had pulled her cheer sweater over his Black Sabbath shirt from this morning, but she fingered the collar of it. “I’ll wash the shirt and get it back to you tomorrow,” she promised. “Thanks again for the loaner.”

Eddie waved to her and left his lights on until he watched her head up the street and into the door of a large suburban house before tearing away from the cookie cutter neighborhood, headed back to home sweet trailer park.

When he got home, his uncle Wayne was reclining on the couch. “Hey,” he said, raising an empty beer at Eddie. Eddie took the cue to grab him another one along with a drink himself. “You hear about this dead boy? You know him?” Uncle Wayne gestured at the TV, which was blaring the nightly news.

Eddie plopped on the sofa next to him, cracking open a drink for Uncle Wayne before his own and looking at the photo. He recognized the kid from Hawkins, but hadn’t ever spoken with him. “Just by face,” he said. “What happened?”

Wayne rubbed his jaw. “It’s some Victor Creel copycat. Or maybe the old man got loose.”

“Creel?” Eddie asked, confused. “Who?”

“C’mon boy, you’re telling me you’ve never paid attention to the local bogeyman? I thought that satan music made you worship men like him,” Uncle Wayne deadpanned, swatting him with a pillow. Wayne chuckled at his own joke before taking a long swig of his new beer and explaining, “He’s that maniac from the 50s. Killed his whole family just like somebody did that boy tonight. Broken bones and missing eyes. Said the devil made him do it.”

“Devil, huh?” Eddie said. Now that Uncle Wayne mentioned it, he had remembered some headlines from the archives earlier that day about the Creel murders, but he’d brushed it off – no levitating was mentioned, just that Creel had claimed a demon was the real killer. But now that there was this dead kid... Maybe Creel’s demon theory hadn’t been total bunk. He wished he’d paid closer attention earlier today, but there had to be a connection between the demon story and whatever was stalking Chrissy. Maybe it was the same thing attacking Creel’s family as whatever attacked this kid... and it was what was going after Chrissy. He shuddered at the image Uncle Wayne had painted of the body and gripped the tape in his front pocket, rising from the couch. “I’ve got to take care of something.”

Chapter Text

This was not something Steve Harrington was ready to process. He had been secretly hoping that this whole thing was still their overactive, traumatized imaginations messing with them. He trusted Nancy’s instincts, and when she’d said she was sure it was the upside down again that got Fred killed, he believed they couldn’t just walk away from it. But everything in him had been praying that it was really just a freak accident this time, that Fred was just an unlucky kid who got mauled by a bear or something. When Max had suggested they see if his file in the counsellor’s office had any useful info on what might have been happening to him, since she knew he saw her too, he’d been hoping it would turn out that Fred just was getting bullied and that there were no signs of anything indicating he’d been encountering the upside down. But hearing that Max recognized his symptoms leading up to his death in herself...

Steve paced the counsellor’s office back and forth. “It might be a coincidence,” he said. “You can’t be sure the headaches, the nosebleeds, that it’s not just a crazy coincidence.”

“It’s not a coincidence, Steve,” Max bit out at him. “I’m having the exact same signs as Fred. Only difference is mine started a day later, which means I’m his next victim.” She put her head in her hands. “If it’s not coming for me next, how do you explain the hallucination?”

“Maybe you’re finally just cracking up,” he suggested. Max bit out a harsh laugh in response. “What? You’ve been through enough. You deserve a mental break.”

“C’mon, dude,” Dustin said, smacking him. “We need to problem solve, not deny the problem. We just need to figure out a way to break the curse today, and then...”

“There’s not enough time,” Max snapped. “What do we have right now? Nothing but the pattern that tells me I’m next. No other leads, no nothing.” She rose from the table. “I’m so screwed.”

Steve dug around the pile of files they’d pulled who had recently visited the counsellor frantically trying to find something useful. They couldn’t have nothing. He couldn’t accept that one of his babysitting charges was in actual, unstoppable, mortal danger. “If it’s not a coincidence, then explain to me why Chrissy Cunningham has the exact same symptoms in her file, and last I checked, didn’t die two days ago,” Steve demanded, slapping the file down on the table. “As far as we know,” he amended.

“What did you say?” Max demanded, spinning on her heel.

“That as far as we know, Chrissy Cunningham isn’t dead?”

Max rolled her eyes at him and snatched the file out of his hands, and Dustin joined her at the shoulder to read quickly. “Holy shit,” Max breathed. “Hers started the day before Fred’s, which means she should have died on Friday.”

“Well, has anyone seen her?” Dustin asked. “I mean, we know Barb was missing for awhile before anyone knew she died. Could she have died in the woods or something and they just haven’t found her yet?”

“You think if Queen Bee Chrissy goes missing there wouldn’t be search parties out within the hour?” Steve asked. “No way. She’s got the same problem and she’s fine. So you’re not doomed.”

“Yeah, or she figured out a way to stop it,” Max said. “I know she’s alive, or at least she was... I saw her on Saturday morning. She was at Eddie Munson’s trailer.”

“Eddie?” Dustin shouted, dropping his flashlight. The light bounced around the room crazily for a moment, making Steve jump a bit.

Steve was equally gobsmacked. “Chrissy Cunningham was at Eddie Munson’s trailer Saturday morning?”

“She actually came over after the game,” Max added.

“What?” Dustin yelled. “Our Eddie Munson? It’s the same guy? What would he be doing with her?”

Steve was inclined to ask the same thing. “Does Chrissy have a secret drug problem? Maybe the trick to surviving Vecna is to take a bunch of molly.”

Max was rubbing her jaw. “I didn’t think anything of it before, but I did hear Eddie yelling that night. But, y’know, I kind of figured it was just Eddie being Eddie the Freak. He’s always yelling weird shit when he’s high. And I saw them both leave the next morning, looking fine, so I didn’t really think twice.” Her face looked stuck between hoping and not wanting to believe it might be real.

“Maybe something did happen after all,” Steve said, trying to keep that spark of hope alive in her eyes. “Like they figured out how to snap her out of the curse. We’ve got to find Eddie or Chrissy.”

But Eddie wasn’t at home when they arrived at his trailer. His uncle was there instead, drinking beer in a lawn chair outside the trailer. “You just missed him,” the old man told them, looking nonplussed by the trio’s arrival. “He came home about an hour ago, watched the news with me for five minutes, fooled around in his room for a bit, then took off like a bat outta hell about ten minutes ago.” Beside him, Max deflated and Steve dropped a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Did he say where he was headed?” Steve demanded.

“No, but he said not to wait up,” Wayne replied, taking another sip of beer. “Which I would recommend to you three as well.”

“When he gets back, can you ask him to call us on this? It’s really urgent,” Dustin insisted, handing him his radio. “Tell him we need his help, and it’s about Chrissy.”

Wayne Munson raised his eyebrows and stared down at the portable radio. “That boy’s not in any kind of trouble, now, is he?” he asked finally.

“No more than the usual amount,” Steve said.

Wayne didn’t crack a smile. He shrugged and settled back in his chair. “I’ll pass it along.”

Chrissy was brushing her teeth with her headphones on, playing her song over and over. Since she said goodbye to Eddie in his van, it had been the only thing to keep her from jumping out of her skin. As soon as Eddie had left, she had immediately gotten this tingling feeling in her spine, like something was going to go wrong, she just didn’t know when. They were safer together, that was all she knew. Still, it felt good to clean her mouth out. She had thrown up in the library bathroom after breakfast, when they’d been browsing the archives to no avail, and all she’d had to freshen up were the mints she hid in her purse. And she hadn’t been able to brush her teeth last night, just rinse with some mouthwash in his bathroom. If Eddie had noticed her little bathroom episode, he certainly hadn’t remarked, although Chrissy always worried that she was so obvious about her nasty habit. In the end, she’d eaten three pancakes, and drank a glass of orange juice. It had made her sick how tight the skirt felt until she emptied her stomach in the bathroom. At least she could control that much about herself.

She’d been practically dizzy with hunger when she got home, but at least her mother was more distracted by her absence all day and the murdered boy than to ask what she’d been eating. Chrissy had caught the nine o’clock news re-capping the incident, and they warned the viewers about the graphic image before showing the body. That alone had made her want to run upstairs and puke again. Chrissy had turned off the TV and gone straight up to her bedroom after that, plugged into her headphones, and praying that she wasn’t going to end up like that next.

She spat her toothpaste out in the sink. There was blood in it. She was brushing too hard.

There was a tapping noise at the window. Chrissy jumped, then remembered the last thing Eddie had said to her. Maybe I’ll have to sneak up to your window tonight to keep an eye on you, he’d teased. She’d thought he was just kidding around, but at the thought of him waiting for her, her heart leapt. She quickly glanced at herself in the mirror. Well, he’d already seen her without any makeup on all day. And the pajamas were... they weren’t too juvenile, she told herself. They were just a matched pink tank top and shorts. What was she even thinking about that for? His shirt was under her pillow. She’d told herself she was just shoving it there to hide from her mother, but she’d be so embarrassed if he saw it there... Chrissy tore herself away from the mirror, pulling her headphones off and peeking out into her bedroom to see –

Jason was at the window.

A mixture of disappointment and relief washed over her. When he saw her, he smiled, but his face was tight. He was pissed she blew off the party probably, but he was a familiar face. And if Eddie had been so understanding and kind, surely her own boyfriend would be, too? Chrissy flung open the window. “What are you doing here?” she asked, moving aside so he could climb in. As he did, she reached for the lipgloss on her bedside table and quickly applied some while his back was turned.

“Looking for you,” Jason said. He was mad. “You didn’t show last night. C’mon, Chriss, it was the big game. You should have been there to celebrate with us after.”

“I know,” Chrissy said. “I’m really sorry. I was just feeling really messed up. Did you have fun?”

“I mean, it was a good time, but I was wondering where you were the whole night. Then when I come by today and your mom says she hasn’t heard from you aside that you were sleeping over at Amber’s, and Amber says you told her you were heading home to change before the party, I spent pretty much all day looking around town for you.” He sounded upset. Chrissy took a deep breath and turned back to face him. Jason’s handsome face was twisted with concern, but a flicker of annoyance flitted across his face. “And now you’re just here, in your pajamas, getting ready for bed? Didn’t even call? Where have you been?”

“I’m sorry,” Chrissy repeated. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about, but I didn’t want to be a distraction this week before the big game. But... I think something might really be wrong with me.” She felt her eyes welling up with tears. “Can you promise not tell anyone about this?”

Something creaked behind her. Chrissy jumped at the sound, but it must have just been the house settling. Older constructions like these did that, she told herself. But the memory of her dark house in her vision yesterday, running through the nightmare version of her home... it was hard to not see the decay and rot that had taken over even now, in the softly lit white room. “Of course,” Jason said. “What’s going on?”

“Not here,” she blurted out. “Can we just go for a drive or something?” If she told Jason, maybe he would make her feel better about the whole thing, and then she could face the thought of being in her bedroom alone again. But telling him about the nightmare inside the house where it had happened, that was too much for right now. Especially at night. She forced a chipper smile on her face. “How about we drive around Lover’s Lake?” Jason always wanted to do that.

His eyes lit up at the suggestion. “Sure,” he agreed easily. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

He hadn’t expected to see Jason Carver of all people.

But of course it made sense. Chrissy was dating the basketball captain – of course he would be there to support her. It was actually pretty freaking obvious that she’d want to be with Jason after a long, stressful day... He just hadn’t expected it to be such a gut punch.

You’re getting too attached, Munson, he told himself, watching as Chrissy wrapped a thin white sweater around her shoulders and climbed into the shotgun seat of Jason’s beamer, her boyfriend rounding the hood and hopping in to pull away from the curb. She’s not for you. He dropped the long tape of Landslide down in the center console of his car. She didn’t really need the tape that urgently, probably. He had just... wanted to make sure she was okay. So he’d spent the better part of an hour painstakingly recording the one song over and over until he filled up the blank cassette, just to feel like he was doing something that might help. Meanwhile, Jason Carver was picking her up to go for a drive together. Well, fuck that. He could give Chrissy the tape tomorrow, if she still wanted his help.

Of all people, how could someone as sweet and kind as Chrissy Cunningham be dating Jason Carver? It was one of the many things about her that he couldn’t wrap his head around. She was an enigma in a lot of ways, quiet and reserved about so many things yet so ready to laugh at his jokes and give him that gentle smile.

“A pretty girl smiles at you and you lose your mind. Christ,” he muttered, turning the car back on and pulling away from the curb he’d parked at a safe distance from Chrissy’s house. He turned on the stereo and jerked back with a start. He’d mindlessly popped the Fleetwood Mac album he’d bought for Chrissy back in when he’d gotten into the car. “Not in the mood to think about her, thanks very much. Driving in silence, it is.”

Eddie pressed the eject button and flung the tape into the back of the van. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he circled the streets aimlessly. He didn’t feel like going home. His uncle had the night off again and, despite being pretty good company when Eddie wasn’t in a mood like this, would probably ask a few too many questions to tolerate right now. Same went for finding any of his boys – Jeff and Gareth were good friends, but he had no idea how to start to explain the last two days. Reefer Rick would have been the perfect person to not talk to while getting high together, but he was currently serving time and wouldn’t be out for awhile, so his place would be a lonely bust.

Maybe the Hideout would be a good place to cool off for a bit. They didn’t care about fake IDs, and there was usually a band playing loud enough to keep anyone from getting chatty with him.

This definitely meant she was doing okay, though, Eddie told himself. If she was having hallucinations again, or having another attack from that thing, she definitely wouldn’t be going out like this. So this was actually a good thing. So why didn’t his gut feel like it agreed?

It was probably just the fact that she was with Jason Carver that was annoying him, the more he thought about it. The idea that someone like Chrissy could get along with an asshole like Jason... well, it didn’t make sense to him. The sight of the blond bastard could set anyone’s temper off. Calling him a freak and all that, it didn’t matter to him. But he didn’t like how Jason treated the rest of his Hellfire kids. Someone like Eddie, who knew who he was and where he was going in life, he could laugh off an insult like that no problem. Kids like Henderson or Wheeler or Sinclair, they were still figuring themselves out. And Jason had no problem talking about what freaks the freshmen who hung out with Eddie were, and making others feel comfortable doing the same. It was what felt most fake about being popular to him – it was just people kicking anyone smaller down before they figured out they didn’t have to care, like him. The whole thing hung on everyone buying into the pecking order and then enforcing it ruthlessly.

Was Chrissy like that too, and he was just fooled by a sweet smile? He tried to sift back through his memories of Jason shouting insults at him, searching for memories of Chrissy. She never ate lunch in the cafeteria, as far as he could remember. The Queen Bee didn’t seem to hold court with her king very often. He couldn’t remember speaking to her personally before she’d sought him out Friday morning.

She’d been nervous, he could remember that much. She was waiting by his locker when he got there, chewing on her thumbnail, but dropped her hand when he approached – not before he could see that all her nails were ragged to the quick. “Hi,” she’d said, when he approached, and Eddie had realized she wasn’t waiting for whoever had the locker next to him. It had startled him so much he’d done a double take over his shoulder to make sure there wasn’t someone behind him. “You’re Eddie Munson, right?”

“Yes,” he’d said slowly, opening his locker to grab his calculus book. “That would be me.”

“I heard – from my friend – that you sell drugs?” she blurted out, and then turned slightly pink.

That had been a surprise. Chrissy Cunningham had a pretty uptight reputation. She had a promise ring and everything. Not once had he heard a rumour about her getting a little too sloppy at a party. But business was business, and hers was none of his. “At your service,” he said. “Are you buying?”

She had nodded, darting her eyes around the otherwise empty hallway. She’d been so anxious, and at the time Eddie had assumed it was a combination of not wanting to be seen with him and not wanting to be seen buying drugs, but now he had to wonder if even then she’d been hearing the monster stalking her. “How much to just... get out of my head for awhile?” she’d asked, not able to meet his eye.

“Not here,” he’d told her, slamming his locker and making her jump a bit. “After school in the woods behind the football field. There’s a picnic table, you can’t miss it.”He’d given her a sarcastic bow. “Until then.”

Chrissy had given him a half hearted weak grin at the time before waving and heading in the opposite direction from him. He wished he’d been nicer back then – it was obvious even before he knew what was going on that she just needed someone to talk to.

Eddie tightened his grip on the steering wheel and frowned at the empty road ahead of him. “She’s fine, so stop worrying, idiot,” he told himself, and hoped his gut was wrong.

Chrissy should have known Jason wouldn’t have taken this seriously. He’d wanted to tell her about the party she missed on their way to the lake, as if that could somehow matter to her at all after everything that she’d been through, as if hearing that Patrick had done a keg stand would somehow make her feel better. Chrissy didn’t even drink – partially because of the calories, and partially because having everything under control was the only thing keeping her together half of the time, and the idea of getting drunk and losing that control around all her friends or Jason was terrifying.

“Okay, so what’s going on?” Jason asked finally as he put the car in park by the lake. “What’s the big secret that had you missing all the fun?” He reached his arm out around her.

How was he going to react? Jason wasn’t easy to read at the best of times. He always was saying how he loved how amazing and perfect she was. What would he think when he found out that wasn’t anywhere near true? Chrissy took a deep breath. “It started about a week ago,” she told him. “At first it was just headaches and nosebleeds and nightmares but I’ve started... hearing things that aren’t there. And then I started seeing them, too.” She tried to read his face. His eyes did look concerned. “I thought I was going crazy at first.”

“What kinds of things?” Jason asked.

“Just... a voice telling me these horrible things. And there’s this monster that was, I don’t know, stalking me – in the nightmares it was chasing me, but in the visions it was just lurking around. All the time – at school sometimes. But you know how my mom can be,” she said, trying to laugh a little, because Jason didn’t know the half of how her mom could be. “I was thinking it was probably just stress, right? I just wanted to, you know, relax. And I’ve heard you could, you know, buy stuff from Eddie Munson –”

“Eddie the freak?” Jason interrupted in disbelief. “You took drugs with Eddie the freak?”

Chrissy pulled back. How was that the big takeaway from what she had just said? “Well, I didn’t actually wind up taking drugs, if you’d let me finish. And be nice, Jason, he’s not a freak, he’s been really helpful Friday and today...”

“You spent today with Eddie the freak Munson?” Jason cut her off again, starting to look pissed. “You blew me, your boyfriend, off to go get high with him? Chrissy, what the hell were you thinking?” The hand wrapped around her shoulder started to dig into her skin and Chrissy winced. He didn’t always know his own strength, but when Jason was upset he could accidentally leave bruises. “This had better be a joke. A guy like that is dangerous for a girl like you.”

“Jason, he was helping me,” she protested weakly.

“I’m supposed to be the one who helps you,” Jason said. “You can’t trust a guy like that, Chriss. God, you’re so naive. Did he make you do something for it? I bet a freak like that was salivating at the chance of having you all to himself at last. Did he touch you?”

“No,” Chrissy insisted. He was getting so angry, she wasn’t explaining herself clearly enough. His mood could change so fast sometimes, and once he got himself worked up... “It wasn’t like that, you’re not listening, please.”

Jason slammed his free hand against the driver’s side window, making her jump, and then shifted in his seat so he was suddenly looming over her, pinning her between him and the car door. “Oh, I’m listening,” he said, his voice suddenly deadly rough. “It sounds like you ditched me to get high alone with Eddie Munson. How’d you pay him, Chriss? Use up your allowance or just spread your legs like a slut?” He grabbed her by the jaw and slammed her head back against the car door. Stars exploded in her eyes and she struggled to keep herself from slipping into the lingering blackness at the edge of her field of vision.

It won’t last long, Chrissy told herself, blinking back the involuntary tears of pain springing to her eyes. Trying to argue now would just make it worse. Jason would burn himself out of rage and then he’d apologize and drive her home. He would buy her flowers in the morning and her mother would say what a nice boy he was. She wouldn’t bring it up again, and they could just move on like it never happened like when he’d lost his temper in the past.

Then she heard the clock chiming.

Panic rose up in her gut. She could hear herself let out a keening moan over the blood that was already pounding in her ears from the rattling blow to her head. The only instinct left in her head was to run. Chrissy started scrabbling a hand for the car door handle, and when Jason moved his hand from her jaw to try and grab her wrist, she flung out her free hand and sank her nails into his face, raking three bloody stripes along his cheek.

He reeled back, giving her the moment she needed to open the door, unceremoniously dumping herself down in the dirt. Chrissy scrambled back up to her feet and slammed the car door on Jason’s hand as he went to climb out after her. She barely heard him roaring in anger and pain as she started to run blindly for the trees, climbing up a steep hill and then tumbling down the slope behind it. When she picked herself up at the bottom, she grabbed frantically at the walkman still tucked in her satchel at her hip and shoved her headphones back on, pressing play before starting to tear along the trail again.

Jason was probably going to follow her, and she had to put as much distance between them as she could before he caught sight of her again because she might have been a sprinter, but he was a cross country star and would catch up with her easily when she got winded.

And he wasn’t the only thing hunting her anymore.

The monster’s low laugh bounced around the trees. Chrissy pressed her hands over her headphones, trying to drown him out, but it was like his voice was whispering directly in her ear. “You can’t keep me out forever,” he told her. “Eventually, you’ll join me.” She shook her head and raised the volume, starting to run for the road up ahead, hoping to follow it back toward town and toward Forest Hills. Eddie had helped her once before, if she could just find him he could help fix everything again. But she drew up short, squinting in the moonlight at a sign of motion from the road. Something looked like it was climbing out of the very asphalt itself.

Before her eyes, a disgusting burned man shape thing crawled up from cracked pavement and started lumbering right at her. It was the beast from her nightmares. Was she already in another hallucination, or was this the real world? Either way, she couldn’t let it catch her. Chrissy turned heel and ran back toward the trees, plunging deeper into the forest away from the lake where she’d fled from Jason. As she ran, twigs caught at her sweater and tore at her hands. Not headed to Hawkins then but instead maybe one of the other lake houses. If someone was home she could get help and maybe put some distance between whatever that thing was.

But just as she caught sight of the road where it split up ahead, one way leading toward Hawkins outskirts and the other toward the lake houses up ahead, she saw the grandfather clock from her previous visions again. It was set dead in the middle of the road, chiming back and forth on midnight. The horrible laugh started up again. Chrissy let out a choked sob. “You’re not real,” she screamed, clapping her hands over her ears. She veered for the other fork, with no idea where the nightmares were driving her now.

In the distance, she could hear Jason’s voice calling for her. He sounded far away, long lost. Should she call for his help? Even in a rage, maybe he could help keep her safe from whatever this was. “No one can help you now,” the monster growled in her ear, as if reading her mind. “You’re mine, Chrissy.” She shuddered. The monster didn’t sound so different from Jason when it said things like that. Better alone, then.

A bloody red mist started rolling over the forest floor, and Chrissy veered her path again to change course again, putting as much distance between her as possible. Again that horrible amused laugh came back. Was she not making any progress? It seemed like as much as she fled from its traps, the monster showed no signs of frustration or annoyance. It was like this was all a fun little game to it. It was like...

Chrissy’s blood ran cold. All that was happening was her paths being blocked. It was like it was trying to drive her somewhere, like a mouse in a maze. And what was waiting for her at the end of the route? The laugh broke out again, dancing around the trees over her heads, and she let out a frightened shriek again, taking off at a run.

If she stayed, it would catch her like last time. So what choice did she have but to keep running, even if she was heading into a trap?

Chapter Text

Chrissy didn’t know how long she’d been running.

The overcast sky had blotted out the stars, and only weak patches of moonlight filtered through it. That combined with the visions that kept popping up, driving her to God knew where, had kept her in a dizzying haze of frantic flights. The longer she went, the more confident she became that the monster was trying to force her somewhere. It wasn’t constantly chasing her, only when she seemed to divert from the path it had laid out for her. Any time she’d spotted a road and tried to follow it back to a familiar landmark, she’d be chased by something until she had no idea where she was again.

Now, she seemed to be walking on the right track toward whatever horrible fate was waiting for her once more. As she rewound the tape again (how many times could she play it before the cassette wore out? What if the tape jammed up and needed to be properly rewound?) she sung quietly under her breath, hoping that the memory of the song was enough to keep her going. “I saw my reflection... in the snow covered hills...”

Her ankle hurt. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, Chrissy was certain she had sprained it when she was first running away from the monster and Jason both. Her breath hitched at the memory. She had hurt Jason, actually left a mark on him. On his face, somewhere he couldn’t hide like she always did. All the times in the past he’d gotten rough, she had never struck back. It was... terrifying. It felt like the house of cards she’d been carefully holding together – her mom, her boyfriend, her entire life – was crumbling apart with one tiny gust of wind. People would know she had hit him, and what would she say when they asked why? There was no version of the truth or even a good lie that wouldn’t make people talk. Everything was starting to spiral out of control. At least when everything was a nightmare before, it was all kept under the lid of the boiling pot that was now bubbling over.

A tiny, tired part of her said, Good. At least it’s over. If everything fell apart, at least she wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep people from knowing what a mess she was. She was so tired from working so hard to fool everyone into thinking she was perfect. There wasn’t any going back from this one now. She was only a few months from graduation, from turning eighteen, and running for your life in the woods put a new spin on what really mattered in the grand scheme of it all. She might as well take the opportunity to let the entropy burn it all down and give up the lie at last.

Her mind turned back to Eddie. She never should have let him go home that night. She had been trying to pretend everything was normal still, that she could go home to two loving parents and go to church the next morning without a care in the world, and that she wasn’t being chased down by an evil demon creature. What a joke. All she wanted was to be curled up back in the last place she’d felt safe – his bed that morning, under his scratchy sheets, breathing in the scent of tobacco and patchouli that clung to his Black Sabbath shirt. To be joking around with him in the car on the way home from Indianapolis, before they found out about Fred and how he died, and how she was going to die like him next.

She had been too cowardly to even admit she was scared. To admit she needed him.

The tape finished rewinding once more – she had another three minutes of safety, hopefully – and Chrissy started wandering again. Up ahead, she thought she caught a glimpse of a streak of asphalt winding through the trees. There was a road sign, too. She tensed, even as her heart leapt at the chance to figure out where the hell she had wound up.

The last two times she spotted a road, the monster had started to materialize out of thin air and chase her, calling after her that she couldn’t run forever, that she was too fat to keep this up, that she was too weak to last much longer, and she was starting to agree. She was cold. She was hungry. She was exhausted. And she was wearing nothing but her pajamas and her white tennis shoes. Her cheer sweater that had already barely offered any protection against the cold had gotten lost – she didn’t know when. How much longer would she be able to keep running before something finally caught up?

Cautiously, Chrissy picked her way up the ravine at the edge of the road, approaching the sign. In the night, she had to stand practically against it to make out the letters. Hawkins High School, 0.5mi, it read. She had wound up this close to town? She knew this road, then. Amber drove her home after cheer practice along this way because she parked in the back lot. She wasn’t far from the football fields or the woods where she’d met Eddie to buy weed in what felt like another lifetime.

The moon peeked out from behind a cloud and Chrissy caught a glimpse of something up ahead in the road. Her heart jumped in her throat, but she couldn’t hear any of the telltale clock chiming or laughter that had been pursuing her for so long. Nothing moved. She crept towards it, ignoring her instincts to run – there wasn’t anywhere that was safe to run to, she told her brain, even as it screamed at her not to keep getting closer.

It was police tape, along with a barricade set up to block the road. Crime scene, do not cross. Yellow strips of plastic looped between two traffic barrels that blocked the road off. A sinking realization came to her. This was where Fred Benson died. She hadn’t known it was up here, on a road, but this was just behind the school and that... that lined up with what they’d said on the news. A morbid curiosity drew her closer. Had he seen the same things as her? Had he been running like her when it happened? She wished she could have spoken to him about it. Maybe they could have helped each other to both stay alive. Now Fred was dead, and she... she wasn’t sure if she was going to make it out of tonight, either. She tried to remember if they had ever spoken, about anything at all, and came up drawing a blank. She had seen his face before, but they were in different grades and... it didn’t really matter now. There wasn’t going to be a chance for a do-over.

She didn’t know what she’d expected. The road was blank, any evidence carefully cleared away by now. Not even a chalk outline of Fred’s body remained. Any sign that someone had died here was long gone. Would it be like that for her? Forgotten after a weekend? She gazed over the road, looking for any sign that proved he’d been here. Aside from a large gash in the pavement, like the asphalt had buckled in the heat and had yet to be filled in, nothing was disturbed. The forest was quiet. It was only her.

She had to keep moving to get to safety while she had the chance, and yet... Chrissy had been on this road, on the way home from practice with Amber on Thursday. A pothole that size would have made Amber practically drive off the road to avoid screwing up her axle. She knew it hadn’t been there three days ago and this weekend, while unseasonably warm for March in Indiana, had been nowhere near hot enough to crack the road open like that. So when had this gotten there? Had it shown up when Fred died? She started to approach it, hesitantly. The gash was overgrown with what looked like vines breaking out of the earth. Something like that couldn’t have formed naturally in a weekend. What was going on here?

The song ended again, and she drew up short to start rewinding her tape. “Not now,” she muttered. As the tape began to whir in reverse, she antsily danced from one foot to another, impatient to have what had begun to feel like a layer of armour back up around her once again.

Then something grabbed her ankle.

Chrissy’s legs were torn out from under her and she started sliding along the asphalt. She let out a scream, frantically trying to keep hold of her walkman, but it bounced out of her hand and clattered onto the pavement. Chrissy clawed around herself to try and find anything to keep herself from being pulled under, but the road was smooth and barren of any handholds. It was one of the vines, she realized, kicking at it where it had wrapped around her ankle like a vice. Now that it was gripping her she could feel it wasn’t woody plant vine at all, but warm and fleshy, like an appendage of some sort, a tentacle of a beast yet unseen. The realization made bile rise up in her throat as she thrashed, trying to get loose, but it was no use – she was being dragged toward the hole in the road.

With horror, Chrissy realized it wasn’t merely a pothole but a yawning mouth that disappeared into unseen depths below her. As her legs vanished into the pit, Chrissy managed to find a grip on the edge of the road, clinging desperately by her nails to the surface. She didn’t know if the monster was already waiting down there or if this was just the cobweb and she was about to be the fly caught in it awaiting her fate, but there was no question: this was the trap that she’d been led to all night. All of the dizzying running she’d been doing, the monster had been leading her here all along.

She gritted her teeth, lashing out with her free leg against the vine that had her in its grasp. It was showing no signs of struggling, just pulling with a long, steady determination. If she had her hands down there, maybe she would be able to tear it loose... Or cut it somehow. Chrissy’s gaze fell on a large broken off chunk of asphalt that looked like it had been knocked loose when the road was broken open. It had a jagged edge – not a proper blade, but something sharp enough that, with enough force, maybe she could cut through the thing holding her in place. It was within her arm’s reach, but if she lunged for it, she would have to give up her grip on the edge. She would be pulled through undoubtedly. There would be no second try.

Wait for your arms to give out and be pulled through with no weapon, or fail to get it and be pulled through with no weapon. It was an easy choice: she had to try. But it didn’t make it any easier to rebel against her instincts and stop clinging to the ledge to throw herself forward at the chunk of asphalt. Chrissy was exhausted, but she was strong from years of throwing cheerleaders in the air. She pushed herself forward as hard as she could and flung her hands out to grip the rock. She managed to get her fingertips on it as the vine started yanking her back and Chrissy let out a scream as she dug her nails in to keep the rock on her, dragging it with her as she was pulled back into the hole in the ground.

“What do you mean you didn’t find him?” Lucas demanded. He glanced at where Max had silently flung herself down at the desk in the corner of the Wheeler basement and was silently scribbling away, without looking up. He’d expected them to get back from the trailer park with news, a plan, anything but solemn faces and silence. The early morning sunlight streaming in through the basement’s high windows had him already on edge, warning him that they were running out of time already.

“We left him my walkie,” Dustin explained. “So once he gets back he can get in touch right away.”

“That’s not good enough,” Lucas argued. “We should go drive around and look for him. His van sticks out like a sore thumb, I bet we could spot him if we just rode around for a bit.”

Steve spun his car keys on his finger. “We already spent the better part of the night doing exactly that, but we could cover more ground if we tried to divide and conquer territory. You guys can take bikes and handle the neighborhoods, I can take Robin and hit the far parts of town, and Nancy can stay here with Max.”

Max did look up then. “I don’t need a babysitter,” she said. “Just go with them.” Her voice was stony. Lucas tried to catch her eyes, but she looked away from him. Suddenly he didn’t want to leave. What if when he came back, Max was dead? What if they split up now, and this was the last time he ever saw her? He didn’t want to leave on terms like this, without telling Max everything left he had to say. She was so cut off from them now, like she was already preparing for her own funeral.

“Someone should stay with you, just in case,” Nancy told her. “Maybe when Vecna attacked Fred, there was nothing he could do because he was alone, but Eddie and Chrissy were together, and she survived. If you get attacked, having someone there might be what makes a difference.”

“Yeah, Max, until we know more what we’re dealing with, you’re on full Max Lockdown,” Steve said. “Anything that tries to get its creepy claws on you is gonna have to get past Nancy, armed and dangerous.”

Max started to argue back, but Mrs. Wheeler opened the door at the top of the basement stair, making her drop silent and turn back to her papers. “Lucas, your mother’s on the phone,” she called down to them. “Can you come up and take the call?”

His mom? Lucas had never had an issue with dodging her before. She had cheerfully sent him out the door that morning when he told her he was sleeping over at the Wheeler’s, asking him to pass along a hello to Mike’s mom. He told the others, “I’ll be right back,” and ran upstairs, accepting the receiver from Mrs. Wheeler with a quick smile. “Hey, mom, what’s up?”

“Hi, Lucas, sorry to bother you first thing in the morning,” she said. “Hope I didn’t wake you boys up.” He checked his watch. Barely past seven thirty. If it had been a normal sleepover, they wouldn’t have been up yet. He didn’t think he’d closed his eyes the entire night as it was.

“No worries,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“I just wanted to let you know those basketball friends of yours just came by the house. They were hoping to pick you up.”

Basketball friends? Until he’d gotten the buzzer beater, Lucas was fairly sure none of the basketball team had any idea who he was besides Benchwarmer Sinclair. The party on Friday had been the first time most of them had spoken to him beyond what was necessary for practice, and despite their immediate overfamiliarity during the party, he certainly wouldn’t have expected them to drop by on a Sunday morning. “Did they say why?” he asked.

“They’re saying one of your classmates might be lost down by the lake,” she told him. “She didn’t come home last night. The basketball team is apparently volunteering to help find her. They’re organizing a search party and wanted me to let you know to meet them down there if you could. I said I’d pass along the word.”

Lucas tightened his grip on the phone. “Did they say who was missing?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the Cunningham girl. Do you know her?”

Chapter Text

“They’re over there, pull over,” Lucas said, catching a glimpse of the blue letterman jackets that his teammates wore like a uniform. The basketball team had already started their search by the water, but Steve pulled the car into the dirt parking lot near the shore he could see both Jason and Patrick talking together in low voices at the head of the trail. When Steve killed the engine, both of them looked up to watch as Lucas, Dustin, Max, and Steve piled out of the car.

Now that they were closer, Lucas could see Jason was in a state of disarray. He didn’t look like he had slept. His normally perfect blond hair was dishevelled, and his face had been badly scratched up. Three bloody gashes ran along his left cheek. Jason had put butterfly bandages on to hold them shut, but the red lines still stood out harshly against his tanned skin. Something about it churned his stomach. “Sinclair,” he greeted, his voice tense.

“Hey, I came as soon as my mom called,” he said. “I hope it’s cool I brought my friends. We were together when I heard the news and they wanted to help, too.”

Jason nodded. “Thanks for making it,” he told them, skipping his eyes over Max and Dustin as if they weren’t even there before landing on Steve. An eyebrow went up. “Harrington? What are you doing here?”

Steve gave an awkward smile. “I just, uh... wanted to help Chrissy,” he lied, badly. Lucas resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. If he and Max had still been talking, they would have been able to communicate with just a glance to each other: he is not fooling anyone. Lucas glanced over at Max. She wasn’t looking at him, just staring at the woods with an impassive expression.

Jason didn’t look convinced, but he shrugged. “Thanks, man,” he said, shaking Steve’s hand. “The more help we have, the sooner we can find her and get her home.”

“So what happened? When did she go missing?” Steve asked.

“It would have been around ten last night,” Jason said. “We were just out for a drive together. I think she took some drugs or something because she kept talking about Eddie Munson. You know Chrissy – she’s not used to that stuff, she doesn’t even drink. She must have been having a bad trip, because she started freaking out.” His hand went to his cheek, touching the scratches. “Not that I blame her,” he said quickly. “It wasn’t her fault. Munson must have dealt her something bad that made her act that way, she probably didn’t even know what she was doing.”

Of course Lucas knew that the Hellfire club leader dealt drugs, but the idea of him doing something to hurt Chrissy seemed a little farfetched. Dustin must have been thinking the same thing, because he opened his mouth and started to say, “Eddie wouldn’t –” but Max jabbed him in his side with an elbow, shutting him up before his loyal mouth could run faster than his stupid brain. Jason narrowed his eyes at Dustin in suspicion.

“And she just ran off after that?” Lucas asked quickly before Jason could prompt Dustin to finish.

Jason nodded and pointed up a hill. “She went that way. I tried to follow her, but it was dark, and I had no flashlight. She’s probably still out there.” He folded his arms. “I think she was hallucinating last night. She was acting afraid of me – she might not be remembering what happened correctly. Hopefully when she comes down from whatever she took she’ll be a bit calmer.” His tone was a little strange, and even as Patrick was nodding along beside him, Lucas found himself wondering how much Jason was covering up about what really took place between them. That uneasy feeling in his gut came back and Lucas found himself staring at Jason’s scratches again.

“Hallucinating what?” Dustin asked. Lucas held his breath. Maybe Jason had some idea of how to stop the hallucinations, even if he didn’t know what they were or what would happen. Maybe he’d seen something that could help anyway.

But Jason shrugged. “Didn’t say. One second things were fine and the next... she was taking off.”

“She’s been out all night without a flashlight,” Steve said. “She might have gotten kind of turned around by now and doubled back. Or she could have made it closer to Hawkins. Have you caught any signs that she might still be out here by the lake?”

Patrick and Jason exchanged looks and shook their heads. “Nothing yet,” Jason said.

“Why don’t we take the car and head further down the beach to check things out,” Steve suggested. “You guys probably have this area pretty thoroughly covered by now.” He grabbed Dustin by the collar before he could open his mouth again.

“Sure,” Jason agreed, nodding easily though he was watching them with a scrutinizing stare. “Do that.”

Back in the car, Dustin turned to Steve, annoyed. “We should be looking around where she vanished. Why do you want to go further down the water?”

“Because I’m not convinced she was running from Vecna,” Steve told him. “Did you see Jason’s face?”

“Yeah,” Dustin said, “so?”

“Well if it was Vecna attacking her, why would she attack him?” Steve asked. He backed out of the beach parking and pulled back onto the county road to town. “And if it was anything like what happened when Fred took off... they’d have found her body by now. You ask me, Jason is trying to get ahead of the story so that when she’s found, nobody believes what she has to say.” He glanced in the rear view mirror where Jason was shrinking in the distance and slid on his shades, scoffing. “Come on, Chrissy Cunningham on drugs? I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“Then why didn’t she come home?” Lucas argued. “If she really just fought with him, why didn’t she turn up at home by now?”

“No idea,” Steve said. “Maybe she really is lost. Just not at the lake. Any ideas?”

The car was quiet. “This is useless,” Max said finally. “I don’t want to spend my last day alive driving around in circles looking for someone who probably is already dead.”

“Whoa, whoa, enough of that talk. We’re going to find either Eddie or Chrissy and figure this whole curse thing out, okay?” Steve said. “Nancy and Robin are probably halfway to solving this whole thing by now.” As if in response, the walkie suddenly crackled in Dustin’s lap.

“Hey guys, you there?” Robin’s voice crackled over the walkie.

“What did I tell you?” Steve said as Dustin scrambled to respond.

“We copy, did you find Eddie?” Dustin demanded. Lucas held his breath.

“We know where he is,” Robin replied. “There’s just... one little problem.”

“For the last time, I didn’t sell Chrissy Cunningham any drugs,” Eddie snapped, sitting back in the hard folding chair of the interrogation room. He folded his arms to hide his clenched fists. Why were they even wasting his time asking him about this? The only thing he could imagine was that Chrissy and Jason had gotten pulled over on their drive, Jason had had something on him, and he blamed it on Chrissy, who gave his name to get out of trouble. It seemed out of character for Chrissy, who had been so kind to him, but maybe that was just how things went when she had her back against the wall like that. Maybe it was Jason who threw him under the bus, but either way, he was the one with his ass getting chewed out by the cops now, not them. “Not ketamine, not coke, not even the tiniest ounce of weed.”

Sheriff Powell exchanged glances with the officer who had pulled him over that morning and brought him down to the station, on his way home from the Hideout where he’d slept in his van after getting considerably too drunk to make it home safely. Eddie’s head was pounding from the hangover and all he wanted to do was get showered off before he tried to go find Chrissy and drop off the tape at her house. Even if him getting brought in by the cops was somehow her fault... he was too much of a damn softie to not bring her the Landside tape. If there was a chance it could make a difference in keeping her alive, there was no question in his mind about giving it to her. Besides, he’d already recorded it. He could picture her face, making that soft sweet smile up at him and felt his heart clench. You are way too invested in a girl who might have given your name to the cops, Munson, he told himself.

“Well, that’s not what Jason Carver seems to think. Any reason you can think of that he might have a different version of the truth than you?” Sheriff Powell asked, taking a sip of his coffee. Eddie eyed the mug enviously. His headache had not improved, and he’d been denied the last three times he’d asked for a glass of water. When he got out of here, he’d be hard pressed to not just get home and have a hair of the dog to keep going. He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was late afternoon already. He’d long missed his time to meet with Chrissy and try to find Nancy Wheeler. Maybe she’d gone on her own. Did she know he was down here? He had to assume yes. While he’d been sweating out beer in the holding cell for a few hours before they got around to asking him any questions, they’d probably solved the whole thing together. At least, he hoped so. He would feel a lot better when he saw Chrissy in person, anyway. When he could hear her giggle again.

“Uh, yeah, Jason Carver’s a fucking moron,” Eddie snapped. “Make sure to put that in your report,” he added, pointing at his arresting officer, who dutifully started scribbling in his notepad.

Sheriff Powell put his hand on the officer’s notepad and frowned at his partner. “No, Phil,” he said. “Son, Jason Carver’s an upstanding citizen, and the preacher’s kid to boot. And you’re... well, forgive me for saying so, a slightly less reputable source of information. So I’m inclined to trust the boy when he says his girlfriend told him she got drugs from you. You aren’t in any trouble, we just need to know what she might have taken.”

That stung. Of course he knew when it came down to it, Jason’s word against his was going to always fall in Jason’s favour. Despite the fact that Jason himself had scored weed off of Eddie a few times before he developed his annoying little fixation on what a freak he was, somehow Eddie was the druggie liar and Jason was the golden boy. But they obviously didn’t have any evidence that he had dealt besides Jason’s word, because he knew he hadn’t dealt Chrissy any drugs. So how were they so certain?

“Well, forgive me for saying so, but Jason Carver has got his head so far up his ass it’s a miracle he can speak to claim I sold anyone drugs. Not to mention he hates my guts, so he’s got a pretty good reason to blame me for anything that goes bump in the night.” Eddie rubbed his forehead, which felt like it was going to split open. “What does Chrissy say about all this? Since I know she didn’t get any drugs from me and I know she’s an actually good person, I’d like to hear what her testimony about my involvement was.”

The sheriff and officer glanced at each other again and didn’t say anything. Eddie’s gut suddenly churned, and not from the alcohol he’d been drinking. “Well?” he insisted, a sinking feeling overtaking him.

“Son, the Cunningham girl is currently missing,” the sheriff said. Eddie’s mind stopped working. She was missing? He’d been sitting here all day wondering if she might have turned him in and she’d been missing? What had happened? She’d had the music, she’d had Jason. “Her boyfriend says she started seeing something that wasn’t there and that she’d mentioned trying to get drugs from you, then she ran off in the woods. We just need to know what she might have been taking, if it’s possible she had enough to overdose, and get a sense for how long it might be before she comes down so we know what the search parties should be expecting.” The sheriff droned on as Eddie processed his words. So she had been attacked. But they hadn’t found a body yet. That was good, right? They had found Fred Benson quickly. If Chrissy hadn’t been found, she was alive. She had to be alive. A vision of Chrissy’s body mangled like Fred Benson burst into his head and his stomach churned.

He buried his head in his hands. He never should have left her alone last night. This was all his fault. “Yeah, well, I had nothing to do with that, so why don’t you ask Jason Carver what imaginary drugs I apparently dealt her, since he knows so much,” he bit out. He had to get out of here. There was no way they could keep holding him if they had nothing to go on, but every minute suddenly felt like a thousand years. Chrissy was out there. Alone. Being chased by the monster again. And he was wasting his time talking with the fuzz who clearly just wanted someone to blame.

Someone cracked the door open. “Sheriff, someone is at the desk and wants to talk to you two,” the clerk from the front of the office said, goggling openly at Eddie. “Says she thinks she saw the Cunningham girl and wants to make a report.”

Both the idiot sheriff and his idiot partner rose. “Better check it out,” the officer said, flipping to a clean page in the notebook. “Anyway, we can pick up dinner on the way back afterward, eh?”

The sheriff nodded in agreement. “Sit tight, Munson,” the sheriff told him, as if Eddie had any choice in the matter. “Take an hour and think about how much better this will go for you to help us find her than be the reason she turns up drowned in the lake.” With that, the two headed out the door, leaving Eddie alone to sit in his guilt. She might not turn up drowned in a lake, but if Chrissy was dead, it would be all his fault.

He stared at the clock on the wall. It hadn’t even been a full forty eight hours since his life had turned upside down yet. Things had been such a blur since Friday after the game, when Chrissy Cunningham almost died in his trailer and then fell asleep nestled up against him. He should have kept her safe. He was the only one who knew how to help if it happened again and he had let her down, left her on his own.

The door creaked open a few inches, and Eddie glared up at it, expecting to see Officer Incompetency back for another round of repeating himself. Instead, he saw the face of the last person he ever would have guessed would show up: Robin Buckley, the bandgeek he occasionally sold pot to. Her head had poked just around the door Scooby Doo style, and she had a finger over her lips.

Was he the one who was hallucinating now? “Uh... hi?” he said.

“Nancy’s got them distracted,” she whispered, motioning at him. “This is a jailbreak, we need your help.”

“What?” Eddie asked, temporarily stunned. Nancy Wheeler? Robin Buckley? Jailbreak?

“We’re here about what happened to Chrissy,” she hissed, motioning more frantically. “Hurry the fuck up!”

Eddie jumped to his feet, scraping back his folding chair on the cement floor. He and Robin both froze, pausing to see if the conversation out front was interrupted. He could distantly hear the high voice of what he now could recognize was Nancy Wheeler, saying, “... it has to be her, right? She had on a cheer sweater and the ponytail. I just thought I had better report it just in case it was useful...” Robin gestured again, pointing the opposite direction down the hallway. “There’s a fire exit,” she breathed. They hurried out of the interrogation room and started walking quickly away from where Nancy was giving an apparently epic monologue to keep the cops distracted. Eddie prayed silently that they wouldn’t be spotted. Just a few more steps and...

“Hey!” someone shouted behind him.

“Run!” Robin yelled, and they both started to sprint. He slammed through the fire door, blinking at the late afternoon sunlight as it hit him in the face. Robin grabbed him by the wrist as he got his bearings and she pointed at a car parked around the side of the building. “Go go go!”

He beat feet across the parking lot toward the sedan, yanking open the backseat as Robin piled in shotgun. Nancy Wheeler was somehow already there, presumably having bolted from the front of the building when the commotion broke out. She jammed the keys into the ignition and slammed on the gas as the front door burst open with a stunned looking Sheriff Powell and tore away from the curb, leaving the smell of burnt rubber in the air.

Robin was holding a walkie talkie in her hand, like the kind Henderson liked to mess around with. “Dustin, we got him,” she shouted into the walkie.

A crackle of static later, and Dustin Henderson’s voice broke out over the speaker. “Thank god, finally! Eddie, there’s no time to explain, did Chrissy go into a trance on Friday night?”

Eddie’s jaw dropped open. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“Doesn’t matter now, how did you get her out of it?” Dustin demanded. “It’s a matter of life and death! Our friend is being attacked, right now.”

Robin Buckley was staring at him with her eyes wide, panic dancing in her pupils. Nancy Wheeler was watching him in the rear view mirror, her eyes darting from the road to his reflection. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Robin thrust the walkie at him insistently.

Eddie grabbed it. “It was mostly luck – her favourite song was on the radio. She said she could hear the song, and then she could – she could hear me calling her. We think it was the music. Does that help?”

“I hope so,” Dustin said, and then cut off.

“What the hell is going on?” Eddie demanded.

Robin snatched the radio back. “Dustin? Dustin, are you there? Is Max okay?”

There was no reply.

“I don’t think the cops are following us yet,” Nancy said, “but I’m going to get off the main road, just in case.” Eddie looked over his shoulder. Right. They were in the middle of a jailbreak. He had half forgotten with the sudden urgency of Dustin’s questions. Nancy abruptly exited off the highway onto a bumpy county road that looped back around and put some thick pine trees between them and the line of sight of any cops that might pass by. The sudden turn sent Eddie flying into the window on the opposite side of the car.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Who’s in danger? And how did you know to find me? I was going to look for you,” he added, pointing at Nancy.

“We broke into the counsellor’s office at school after Fred died,” Robin explained quickly, catching him up on their discovery of Chrissy and Fred’s symptoms and the timeline, along with their friend who had apparently realized she was next. “We’ve been trying to track you down pretty much since then. You’re a hard man to find when you don’t want to be found, by the way.” She grabbed the walkie. “And please, for the love of god, would one of these nerds come in on the radio and let us know that Max isn’t dead!” she shouted.

The radio crackled to life again, finally, after what must have only been minutes, but in the tense car could have lasted a decade. “We’re all here,” an unfamiliar voice said. “She’s okay. It worked.”

Nancy Wheeler said, “Thank god,” and Eddie thought he caught her wiping at her eye surreptitiously.

Robin buried her face in her hands and let out a huge exhale before grabbing the radio and saying, “Don’t ever keep us in suspense like that again, Harrington. You’re dead meat if you do. I was going to throw up.”

“Meet us back at Nancy’s,” the voice said again. “We can explain to you better what’s been going on, Eddie. Thanks for the save. You literally couldn’t have come a moment later. We owe you, big time.”

Robin turned back to Eddie. “He’s right,” she said. “We couldn’t have saved Max without you.”

“Well, thanks for the jailbreak,” he said. “And if you’re wondering how to repay me, you can start by explaining what the hell’s going on. And then you can help me find Chrissy. I know she’s not lost on drugs.”

Nancy nodded and met his eyes in the rear view mirror. “She’s not. And we’re not sure where she is, either. But we do know a bit more about what’s going on. It might be... easier to explain back at the house. There’s kind of a lot to catch you up on.” That sounded like an understatement. But if Nancy and Robin (and apparently Henderson?) had any clue what was making Chrissy float or stalking her, he was all ears. He was way past things that sounded too crazy to be true after this weekend.

“Can we stop by my place first?” Eddie asked. “I got picked up by the cops before I got home this morning. I could use a change of clothes.” Nancy nodded and started to make a U-turn. And a shower, he thought privately, but he would settle for a clean shirt and a chance to grab his utility knife. “So you haven’t seen Chrissy?” he asked hesitantly. “I was hoping... she might have found you already. We were going to try and find out more about if Fred had been hallucinating too. Didn’t occur to me to think to rob the counsellor’s notes, of course.”

Robin shook her head. “Jason’s got the basketball team out searching by Lover’s Lake,” she told him. “He said she was tripping out on something and ran off. No sign of her since then. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad,” she said at his crestfallen face. “She might just be hiding out. If the curse works anything like it did on Fred, her body probably would have been found by now if Vecna got her.”

“Vecna?” Eddie said, startled to hear the name of his campaign’s archlich pop out of the mouth of a non Hellfire member.

“Dustin and Lucas named the monster that,” Nancy said. “I guess you play D&D with them. My brother, too.” She let out a long breath. “I am so glad Mike is out of town this week. At least he’s safe from all this.”

They rode the rest of the way to his trailer in silence. Eddie left them in his living room while he headed into his room to get cleaned up quickly. There was a walkie talkie on his bed, with a note next to it in his uncle’s handwriting. Your friends stopped by and left this, said it was urgent. -W. He tossed the note into the waste bin and started to pull on a clean shirt, this time a plain black shirt with the sleeves cut off. He grabbed his utility knife off the dresser. What else should he take? Maybe a flashlight would be a good idea. Eddie dug under the bed, pushing aside his hidden stash of drugs in search of the heavy flashlight he knew he had kicked under there awhile ago.

Then he heard a low crackle of static, followed by a high, wobbling voice. “Well, I’ve been afraid of changing... ‘cause I’ve built my life around you...”

He knew that voice. He’d heard it singing along to the music in his van only a day ago. Eddie smacked his head on a crossbar in his frantic scramble to get out from under the bed. He stared at the radio laying on his bed, paralyzed for a moment.

“But time makes you bolder... even children get older... and I’m getting older too...”

It was definitely Chrissy. It was one hundred percent Chrissy singing, her voice fragile and weak, broken up by static, but irrefutably, undeniably, Chrissy Cunningham singing. He seized the radio and called out, “Chrissy, can you hear me? Are you there?” He slammed open the bedroom door and burst back into the living room, holding the walkie out for Robin and Nancy to see.

The voice came back, still singing quietly, “oh, I’m getting older, too...” Nancy covered her mouth and gasped.

“Chrissy, it’s me!” Eddie shouted into the walkie. “Why can’t she hear me?” he demanded to the girls.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Nancy replied, shaking her head. “Not if she’s in the Upside Down.”

The walkie turned to static and then died. Eddie stared at it in his hand, realizing that the on switch hadn’t even been flicked. There was no way it should have been able to receive any signal at all.

“Explain,” he said tersely. “Now.”

Chapter Text

Steve eyed Eddie Munson from across the Wheeler kitchen.

Eddie had taken their explanation about the Upside Down about as well as someone could have, he imagined. The metalhead had sat quietly through their entire stumbling explanation of what they knew, of El’s powers, and of what they had figured out so far about Vecna (which was unfortunately, a pretty short list), before he’d nodded and put Dustin’s silent walkie talkie on the table and asked, “So how do we find Chrissy?”

After hearing their current leads (none), he had retreated into himself, fidgeting with the radio in the corner as Lucas insisted Max explain again everything she had seen when she was attacked, only looking up when she talked about Vecna himself. Max had tried to explain the bizarre landscape, but she had gotten frustrated with her words (“it was fractured – but there was a door... and windows,” she had muttered), and Nancy had suggested they try to get some rest after a long day.

When he had woken up, Eddie and Max had disappeared. Steve had half frantically dashed upstairs to make sure they hadn’t gone off alone after Vecna or something equally stupid, only to find Max sketching at the breakfast table with a set of crayons and Eddie sitting in the window with the walkie again, still trying to get a signal from the Upside Down. He hadn’t expected Munson to be so obsessed with finding Chrissy, but then Steve couldn’t really blame him. He knew how panicked and afraid he’d been seeing Max floating in the air. The thought of losing one of his little freshmen... He couldn’t imagine the survivor’s guilt he’d have if they hadn’t gotten her to safety. He grabbed the coffee pot and poured a fresh cup, bringing it over to Eddie.

Eddie took the coffee with a limp smile. “Cheers, dude,” he said, setting the radio aside.

“Hey, we’re gonna find her,” he said. Eddie didn’t meet his eye. “Henderson’s friend Will was missing for a lot longer, and he was only, like, eleven. Chrissy is going to be okay.”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Except I have no idea where to start looking, or how to contact her, and we have exactly zero ideas where to start.” He rubbed his jaw where stubble was beginning to poke out. “I just... I feel like I let her down, you know? Like I let this happen.”

“You couldn’t have known. None of us fully understand the Upside Down,” Steve told him. “And you did keep her alive before, with the music.”

Eddie scoffed, “That was a total fluke. I was practically pissing myself when she started floating and accidentally landed on the radio.”

“Well, that fluke kept both Chrissy and Max alive,” Steve said. “So I’m pretty damn glad you did it.”

Eddie stared out the window, nursing his coffee. “There’s no chance you could get some liquor for this, is there?” he asked finally.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna fly with Mrs. Wheeler,” Steve said, cracking a grin. “How come you and Chrissy were hanging out that night, anyway? You dealing to her?” He glanced over at the rest of the room. Nancy and Max were looking at her drawings with Dustin, Mrs. Wheeler was frying up enough pancakes to feed the small army of children that had taken over her kitchen, and Mr. Wheeler was surveying it all with narrowed eyes.

Eddie shrugged. “Kind of. That was supposed to be the plan. I guess that’s why she approached me... she thought she just needed to get high to forget about the hallucinations for a bit. I don’t know... it’s lucky we weren’t both high when we were dealing with all that.” He shot Steve a wry look. “I guess it’s obvious we wouldn’t have hung out for any other reason, huh?” Eddie sounded slightly reproachful about the fact, but he smiled anyway.

“Well, you’re not the two likeliest friends, but I hang out with a bunch of freshmen, so who am I to judge?” Steve said, scratching his head. “Anyway, Chrissy’s never been a jerk about not being seen with the less socially fortunate. I’ve always liked that about her. Back when I was on the basketball team, I noticed she was always supportive of even the benchwarmers. She has a big heart.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “makes me wonder how she ended up with a guy like Jason Carver.”

“Well, I’d be surprised if that lasts much longer,” Steve said. He thought back to the lake and the three scratches clawed into Jason’s face. “We’ll see what Chrissy says happened between them when we find her.”

“What do you mean by that?” Eddie asked. He sat up straighter.

Steve raised his eyebrows. “I guess you didn’t hear.” He let out a slow breath. It was hard to know how Eddie would take this. Steve got the impression the guy was pretty protective of the missing cheerleader. He didn’t want to set him off. “Jason is telling everyone Chrissy attacked him when she was on drugs. Except you and I both know she wasn’t on anything, just hearing Vecna. So why did she attack him?” Eddie’s eyes narrowed, and Steve hurried to add, “I mean, we don’t know anything for sure. It’s Chrissy’s story to tell. I just got a bad vibe off the situation when I saw him, that’s all.”

Eddie’s face flickered between anger, guilt, and sadness before settling back into the grim, set jaw look he’d been wearing all morning. “One of these days, that guy’s gonna get what’s coming to him,” was all he said, picking up the walkie again and resuming his fidgeting. Steve got the impression he was being dismissed.

Nancy lifted her head then from where she was looking at Max’s drawings and motioned the two of them over, her eyes darting to her two parents. Steve obliged immediately, moving to her hip, and Eddie followed closely behind. He was immediately hit with a whiff of Nancy’s lavender soap as he moved close. It was a little weird to stand right over her shoulder again – they had been through so much together now since they’d broken up, but he hadn’t been close enough to brush hands with her in... well, years.

Steve shoved his hands into his pockets instead and asked, “What’s up?” Nancy had folded Max’s drawings into some kind of composite piece of art – a long pillar had joined with a window that had joined with a door, stretching out into a full house, an older looking manor, probably built in the turn of the century. A piece of stained glass was set into the door with a flower on it.

“It’s that condemned house outside town,” Nancy said in a low voice. “I recognized the stained glass from a project I did on the historical houses in Hawkins, it’s Creel Manor. For some reason, Vecna was at that house in Max’s vision, it was just broken up for some reason. It must be significant to him, if we can just figure out why.”

“Creel?” Eddie asked. “As in Victor Creel?”

All eyes turned to him. Nancy asked, “Maybe, why?”

“He was the crazy killer from the fifties,” Eddie told them. “Chrissy and I were looking for info on what might have been happening in the archives and we saw an article about him claiming a demon killed his whole family.” He lowered his voice. “They were killed just like Fred. I didn’t realize it when we were there before because nobody had died yet, but my uncle said his name when it was on the news.”

“Yeah, well, maybe his demon theory wasn’t so far off,” Steve said. “This is good. We should check this out, maybe there’s something there we can use to put the rest of this together.”

“Is he still alive?” Nancy asked.

“Creel?” Eddie replied. “I think so. If I’m remembering right, he got life in Pennhurst Asylum. Why do you ask?”

Nancy’s eyes sparkled dangerously like they always did when she was forming a plan. Steve started to get a bad feeling. She was going to run off and do something idiotic and brave again, wasn’t she?

The sky had never lightened into dawn, but it occasionally rumbled with crackles of red lightning that sent eerie shadows across a permanently clouded night. Chrissy had lost track of time by now – without the sun rising, it was impossible to know how long she had been here now. She hadn’t seen another living soul yet: the houses were all empty, but as if their owners had simply stepped out and vanished off the face of the planet.

She was pretty sure this was Hell.

Chrissy went to church every Sunday, and though she couldn’t be described as the most devout girl in the pew, she certainly had the fear of God and hellfire and brimstone drilled into her since she could remember. And what better eternal torture than roaming the desolate facsimile of home, being hunted by a monster?

When she’d been pulled into the pit, things had been a blur. She had lashed out with her improvised rock blade and managed to smash the vine where it had gripped her ankle, severing the tentacle like appendage. The vines had temporarily reeled back, screeching, and that had been all the opportunity she had needed to run, run like hell from the trees. But it hadn’t taken long for her to realize she was no longer in the Hawkins she knew. She had started pounding on doors, begging for help – once she’d found she was near the school, it was easy to find her way back to the neighbourhoods where she’d assumed she might find salvation. Finally she had broken into a home that had been left unlocked in her desperation, and run from room to room searching for someone who could help her.

But she was utterly and finally alone.

At least the hallucinations had stopped, for now, but she was terrified to fall asleep for fear the monster would find her in her nightmares like he always did. She had considered going to her own home, but the vision of it she had seen when she was first attacked, with Eddie, still gave her pause. Would it be like that? Would her father be there, lips sewn shut, her mother the beast hunting her all this time? Could she risk it? As much as she wanted her own bed, she wanted to survive more.

Instead she had decided to walk. A short drive took who knew how long on foot, and her hurt ankle was screaming for rest, but she was more afraid of staying still than of making the injury worse, so she kept pushing forward. That was all that was left: fear of dying, will to survive. Hunger gnawed on her stomach. At least that was a familiar ache. She was used to ignoring certain suffering, used to stuffing down certain pain. She sometimes felt most in control when she was hurting, even as much as she wished it would all stop.

Finally Forest Hills Trailer Park was visible through the trees. Chrissy broke into a run at the sight of Eddie’s van. She slammed open the door into his trailer, praying it wouldn’t be a nightmare in here, too, that she could finally find some comfort and salvation.

She let out a sigh of relief. The trailer was largely the same – she immediately recognized the sofa she had sat on only a few days ago, well worn and broken in by years of use. Her eyes skipped over the kitchenette, which was much messier than it had been, and found the door to his bedroom. Her feet moved instinctively, like a homing pigeon making its way back to roost, and she pushed open the door.

The room was not right.

Chrissy blinked in confusion a few times. Eddie’s bedroom was full of boxes and suitcases stacked up on top of each other, haphazardly stuffing the room to the gills. There was no furniture to be seen. A guitar case was propped up in the corner of the room, but nothing else was familiar to her. She ran her fingers over one of the boxes, which had been scrawled on the side books, and pulled open the lid. Within were stacks of thick paperbacks – Fellowship of the Ring, Neuromancer, The Sword of Shannara – stuffed together and well loved, with dog eared pages and creased covers, as well as heavy hardcover books – Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Master’s Guide – that had been kept much more pristine. This was Eddie’s room, these were Eddie’s things, but why were they all boxed up like this?

Chrissy drifted back into the kitchenette and slumped down at the table. Her eyes wandered to a calendar on the wall featuring different classic cars. It was still hung up on November, a green Model A with a pinup girl leaning up against it. That, too, hadn’t been there before. Chrissy rose and pulled the calendar off the wall, flipping to see the front. It was a calendar from 1984.

So for whatever reason, this nightmare world was stuck two years in the past. She glanced around the trailer again, tossing the calendar on the table. Had Eddie not lived here with his uncle more than that? She wished she could ask him. They had been through so much the last few days that it struck her almost funny how little she still knew about Eddie. She had run right to the trailer because he made her feel safe, but she didn’t even know more than the most basic information about him. If she ever saw him again, she would insist on asking everything. What kind of food he liked, when his birthday was, why he lived with his uncle...

Chrissy wandered back out of the trailer and into the grass outside. She stared up at the black sky. A rumble of red lightning split it for a moment, illuminating the clouds. Were there stars behind the haze? Or was the sky an empty reflection of home, too?

Her gaze fell on Eddie’s van, still familiarly parked in the front of the trailer. He had parked in the same spot two (was it three now?) nights ago, when she’d come over for a drug deal. He’d called the place his castle, embarrassed and trying to lighten the mood between them. She tried the door handle and was relieved when it opened effortlessly, having been left unlocked. Chrissy climbed in the driver’s seat and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. It didn’t smell like Eddie. Nothing here really carried the familiar scents of home. It smelled stale and like mothballs, tinged with peat and rot. She was lost, maybe forever, and it was just a matter of time until she couldn’t keep getting away.

Hot tears seeped out from her closed eyes and she swiped at them angrily with the back of her hand for a moment before giving in and letting them fall freely. There was no one around to see, anyway. She had wanted a moment to be alone, to let the perfect mask drop, for so long – holding everything together with cheer squad and Jason and pageants and her mom – and here she was at last. Lost in a nightmare, by herself. What a monkey’s paw.

Then, faintly, she heard a voice.

“...waste of time,” someone was saying, simultaneously far away and yet, seemingly, right on top of her. She spun around in the car seat, searching for the speaker. “Could have been out looking for her, instead.” With a jolt, Chrissy realized the voice belonged to Eddie. He was looking for her. Wherever he was, he was trying to find her still.

“I’m here!” she shouted. “Eddie, I’m here!”

“Not true,” a man replied, sounding equally distant. “Whatever that weird surge was, it has to have been related to the way he connects to our world. We just need to figure out what effect it had besides making our flashlights explode.”

“Eddie!” Chrissy screamed, but it was useless. She realized they couldn’t hear her at all – however they were echoing through here, it was a one way connection. She screamed again, wordlessly letting out a burst of white hot rage and frustration, and slammed her hands against the dashboard. How could she have come so close and yet so far? The radio jolted on abruptly, blasting a twangy country song out at her, and she startled out of her fury to stare at the first piece of working electronics she’d seen since she got here.

“Don’t mess with my radio when I’m already cranky,” Eddie snapped.

“I didn’t touch it,” the man replied. “It’s got a mind of its own.”

Chrissy caught her breath. They couldn’t hear her, but the radio had turned on somehow, too. She reached her hand out for the tuning dial.

Chapter Text

Eddie was in a bad mood.

They had wasted the better part of the day searching the Creel House, only to turn up nothing but a pile of broken glass when all of their flashlights had shattered after some weird surge had gone off. They didn’t seem to have much more than when they’d broken in when it came to finding Chrissy or having any idea what they were dealing with. Steve Harrington was trying to keep him calm, and now the radio was acting up, and he didn’t have the money to fix that too, even though it was realistically the only problem on his to-do list that could be repaired. Everything else was starting to seem like a lost cause.

He reached a hand out to kill the music but jerked back when the song suddenly switched to static as the radio began to seek between stations. After a moment, a familiar song started to play on the radio. Eddie slammed on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel, trying to pull over as quickly as possible without sending them into the ravine beside the road. A semi blazed past on the road, horn blaring, but Eddie only had ears for the music.

“I took my love, I took it down...”

“That’s Chrissy’s – that’s her song,” Eddie said, turning to look at a confused Steve Harrington. “How’s it doing that? What’s happening?”

Steve replied slowly, “I’m not sure, but... it might be her, in the Upside Down.” His heart leapt. “When our friend was trapped there, he was able to use electronics to, you know, communicate. Not exactly like this, but... it could be her.”

“Can she hear us?” Eddie demanded. “Chrissy? Is that you?” he shouted into the speakers of the car like it was a microphone.

The song fizzed for a moment and his heart clenched. Had she gone away? Was that all they’d get? It was proof of life, barely, but he was desperate to know more. Then, a moment later, a more upbeat song started playing. “Uptown girl... she’s been living in her uptown world...”

A grin broke out over Eddie’s face. “It is her,” he breathed. She was alive still, somehow there but not there. He choked out a manic burst halfway between a laugh and a sob. “How do we find you, Chrissy?” he yelled.

“Is there a portal somewhere in Hawkins?” Steve added, leaning in to the radio as well.

The radio began to skip again, seeking a song on the airways. It landed on another jangly 70s song that Eddie knew she’d love. “Seein’ me and Julio down by the schoolyard...”

“School?” Eddie asked, confused. “Why school?” He had expected somewhere near Lover’s Lake.

“It’s where Fred was killed,” Steve said. “Maybe that’s got something to do with it. It’s pretty far from Lover’s Lake but... she could have got there on foot with enough time.”

Eddie chewed on his thumbnail nervously. There was so much he wanted to ask, so much he wanted to tell her, but he remembered the walkie talkie at his place cutting out unceremoniously after only a few minutes of communication – if you could call that one sided connection communication – and he scrambled to get the important questions out first. “Are you safe?” he shouted again. “Are you hurt?” Obviously, safe was somewhat relative at this point. He remembered the monsters they had told him about, lurking in the Upside Down. Demogorgons and mind flayers and whatever other nasties were in the Monster Manual, he assumed. Was there anywhere actually safe in Vecna’s lair?

The radio scrambled again, the dial spinning frantically as Chrissy tried to answer him. The song that came on sent a chill down his spine despite the disco beat. “Under attack... I’m taking cover... he saw my track, my chasing lover...”

Steve grabbed his arm. “Stay calm,” he said, and Eddie wasn’t sure if Steve was talking to him or Chrissy at this point. His heart was pounding. “We’ll regroup with the others and go get her, okay?”

“Can you meet us at the portal?” Eddie asked. “If you can meet us there, we can regroup and get you out, okay?” They could do it, he thought. They had to. There simply was no other option besides saving Chrissy from the Upside Down. Because if they couldn’t... He wasn’t sure he could live with himself for failing her. “I’ll see you soon, okay, sweetheart?”

The radio was static and Eddie found himself holding his breath for a reply. Was she injured? Was she going to be able to meet them there? If she couldn’t move, how could she communicate her location? He doubted there were a lot of songs that listed street corners in Hawkins.

And then: “I’ll be there, when you arrive... the sight of you will prove to me I’m still alive...”

Eddie had never been so happy to hear ABBA in his life.

“She isn’t out here,” Jason insisted as Patrick rowed their boat further out into the middle of the lake before turning on the high beam spotlight Hawkins PD had loaned out to the basketball team. At some point, Patrick suspected, they had quietly shifted from ‘search and rescue’ resources to ‘search and recover’ resources, although he doubted that Jason was ready to process that fact yet. Their captain was already a wreck with his girlfriend missing – Patrick had no desire to be the one to help him come to terms with the fact they were now searching for Chrissy’s body. “We should be doing a shakedown of Munson’s trailer, make him talk if the police won’t,” he added.

Patrick let out a grunt and kept rowing. He didn’t really care one way or another about Munson, but Jason was worked up in a big way about him being the reason Chrissy had her freak out. That she lost it because of the drugs. His gaze slid from Jason’s eyes to his scratched up cheek. Part of him wondered... maybe Jason knew more about where Chrissy was than he was saying. Maybe he was trying to keep them from searching the lake for a reason. Patrick didn’t like to voice those concerns, though. He’d learned a long time ago that speaking up was rarely rewarded with belief and had a way of making things worse for himself at home, anyway.

Besides, Jason was crazy about Chrissy. The idea he’d hurt her... it had to be a misunderstanding, like he was saying. Patrick was probably just paranoid from the lack of sleep... and the nightmares. It had been a week since his migraine had settled in permanently, a bad hangover from hell. “She’s probably just lost in the woods,” Patrick agreed noncommittally, though he took the high beam spotlight and started casting it around in the water anyway. “Let’s just check to be sure, and then head back in, okay?” For a moment, Patrick thought his spotlight had landed on something moving, but after a second he realized it was just a submerged log. His mind was playing tricks on him again, another symptom of the lack of sleep, probably. Just what he needed – going completely crazy before graduation. His dad would kill him.

But Jason was getting worked up now. “If anything happened to her, I’ll kill the freak myself,” he was muttering to himself. “I’ll bash his head into the pavement.” He was getting a mean look in his eyes that had Patrick uneasy. Jason had a temper, sure, but it was usually on a much tighter leash than this. He had never seen his friend so... bloodthirsty. If Patrick’s girlfriend was missing, he didn’t think he’d be focusing on revenge.

“He won’t get away with this,” Patrick agreed idly, but his mind was drifting away. He was used to placating people with tempers – his dad was the same. When he got worked up, he was impossible to reason with, and it was easier to just take his side instead of getting in the path of his wrath if Patrick was lucky enough to not be the target of his rage. “Don’t let yourself think like that,” he added. “She’s going to be just fine.” He adjusted the beam off the spotlight. No sign of a body floating in the murky water. Maybe Chrissy really hadn’t drowned.

Then, in the distance, Patrick heard that familiar tick tock. He spun around, sending the high beam skittering across the waves. There was nothing on the shoreline that hadn’t been there before, he thought. It must have just been the night playing tricks on his mind. He really was starting to lose it. A clock started chiming, and he craned his neck to see where the sound was coming from. But no – that was impossible. The last time he’d heard the clock, he’d practically torn his car apart to find the source of the sound and come up empty. It had to be in his head. It had to be his imagination. He rubbed his tired eyes. The exhaustion must have been catching up to him. He just needed a break – from everything. To just close his eyes and have everything... stop for awhile. Maybe even forever. To be weak, he could hear his dad saying in the back of his mind.

“Patrick?” Jason asked. “Did you hear something?” A note of concern had crept into his voice. “You okay?” Patrick suddenly felt guilty for thinking Jason might have done something to Chrissy. It’s Jason, for god’s sake. He had known him pretty much his whole life. And lately, his friend had been the only thing that still made him feel like he wasn’t going insane. He straightened up and gave the shoreline one last glance, unable to stop himself from trying to spot the burned man from his nightmares amidst the pines. Keep it together a little longer, he told himself, forcing his eyes away. Don’t do this in front of Jason.

“Yeah,” Patrick said, “it must have been my imagination.”

He turned back around to face his friend and let out a frightened yell as he came face to face with the burned creature that had been haunting his nightmares.

The boat seemed to fall away and he was suddenly in the basement of his house – but it was different, grotesque. Rotting. Just like it had been in his nightmares. Patrick ran for the stairs and tore up to the door at the top, but it was locked. He slammed himself against it desperately, but it didn’t budge in the slightest. He whirled around to face the lurching creature as it sauntered toward him.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, he begged himself, squeezing his eyes shut and praying to reopen them in the boat with Jason. But he could hear the creature start to laugh as he felt himself lift off the ground. Patrick’s eyes snapped open and he struggled against the force pulling him into the air, but it was like an invisible vice, immovable in the face of his weak thrashing. He heard a whimper and realized it was coming from him.

“No,” the creature laughed, “it wasn’t your imagination.” It stepped closer, and Patrick tried to kick out to keep it back, but his legs, too, were immobilized. “Don’t worry, Patrick. I am going to take away all of the suffering. Soon, nothing will hurt at all.” The burned man’s face twisted into a facsimile of a grotesque smile.

Then it stretched out a hand for him.

Chapter Text

“You better be right about this, Henderson,” Eddie muttered under his breath, following on the heels of Nancy, Steve, and Robin. Certainly not a crew he’d ever imagined himself joining up with, but desperate times made for unlikely bedfellows and all that. They’d equipped themselves with compasses at the junior member of Hellfire’s insistence that the electromagnetic field disruption would point them straight toward the portal they were looking for once they got to the schoolyard like Chrissy had told them. Or what he hoped she had tried to tell them. He had no idea if the whole thing was a mistake. Maybe Chrissy had meant something else with her music messages, or maybe it hadn’t been Chrissy communicating with them, or maybe, maybe...

Harrington clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep it cool, man,” he said. “We’re almost there.” He nodded at Eddie’s improvised weapon of choice out of the Wheeler’s garage (a golf club with his utility knife duct taped on like a spear) and added, “Don’t let your guard drop. The Upside Down has some seriously nasty creatures.” Steve spun his own bat in his hand once.

Eddie tried to read Steve’s face. He had a light expression on, but there was a tension around his eyes that was unfamiliar to Eddie, even in the short and harrowing few days he’d gotten to known the man. Steve had experience with the Upside Down, something Eddie was seriously lacking. “How bad is it in there?” he asked quietly. “Is she... Is she going to be okay?”

Steve hesitated, and Eddie braced himself for a reassuring lie that would have had the exact opposite effect on him. To his surprise, Steve told him, “Probably not.” At least it was the truth, Eddie thought, though dismay settled into his gut. “Will Byers came back a little different. He’d always been quiet according to Nancy but... it’s not an easy place. It’ll change a person. If she comes out of this physically okay,” and Eddie bit his tongue to avoid asking if?, “Chrissy is still probably going to be in a tough place. Mentally.”

“And how’s Byers now?” Eddie asked. He had heard his little freshmen club members talk fondly about Will the Wise, the one who had moved to California before Eddie had gotten to meet him. “Mentally?”

Steve checked his compass again. It was still pointing the way they were walking, although judging by where the sun had set a few hours ago, Eddie was positive it wasn’t due north at all. “He’s better,” Steve settled on. “Anyway, their situations aren’t exactly the same.”

That was an evasive way to answer, but Eddie suspected he didn’t want to know more information right now.

Nancy drew in a sharp breath up ahead. “It’s not too far now,” she said. “It definitely is where Fred died. I... I remember the trees here. And that sign.” Robin lay a reassuring hand on Nancy’s shoulder as she reached out to point at a sign dimly lit by their flashlights. “He died just up... up ahead.” There was a faint red glow coming out of a disturbed pit in the road. Eddie drew up short behind Nancy and Robin, who had stopped dead in their tracks.

Beside him, Steve radioed back to their ‘base’ at the Wheeler house. “We found it,” he told the waiting freshmen. “The compasses led us right to it.”

After a moment of static, the line burst back with Henderson’s voice saying, “I told you so!” Steve and Eddie exchanged an annoyed look.

“The ego on that kid,” Steve muttered, before replying, “Yeah, yeah. We’ll check it out and let you know more as soon as we have a better idea what we’re dealing with.” He switched off the radio before Henderson could shoot back another smart mouth reply.

Eddie crept past Nancy and Robin, raising his golf club / spear in the air ready to strike. The road looked like it had crumbled in on itself, broken chunks of asphalt illuminated by an eerie red light. Long black shadows stretched along the road. Something caught his eye, abandoned in the middle of the wreckage, and he stepped carefully to reach it. It was a portable walkman. Before he had even opened the cassette tray to see what was inside, part of him knew, but the familiar album only confirmed it. Fleetwood Mac. “It’s Chrissy’s,” Eddie said numbly, stuffing the walkman into his jacket. He hadn’t considered that she had lost it somehow. He’d assumed when he heard her singing that she’d had the music to help keep away the hallucinations somehow... But that wasn’t the case at all. She was defenceless out there.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Nancy was saying. “We know she was alive after she lost it. Vecna might only attack people in the real world using his hallucinations.” Her voice was thin and Eddie knew she was trying to reassure herself as much as him.

But Nancy was right. Chrissy had communicated with him twice since losing the walkman. “We’ll just have to bring it back to her, then,” he said, trying to sound cheerier than he felt. Desperate to thrust the image of Chrissy alone and scared out of his mind, he turned back to studying the apparent portal to hell, or the Upside Down, or whatever it was.Vines seemed to twist out around the hole, looking half rotten, worn with age and time. They were otherworldly, he thought, prodding one with the tip of his utility knife spear. Alien. Fitting guardians for an entrance to a nightmare world. He turned back at the others. “Ready?” he asked.

A moment later, something gripped his ankle and pulled.

Eddie heard someone yell his name – Steve, he thought – as he swung wildly with his golf club, dimly realizing the creepy vines were what had grabbed him. Probably shouldn’t have stabbed it, he thought to himself as the vine yanked him over the edge of the hole. Gravity seemed to flip as he bounced along asphalt and he brought his knife up, sawing frantically at the vine where it had latched onto his leg. Another vine whipped around, this time seizing his hand, and Eddie was pulled away from his leg just before he could get it freed. He panicked, lashing out, but the vines were too strong to get loose from. He struggled, yelling out for help, and then a moment later Wheeler was standing over him with an axe, looking like a madwoman as she hacked into the vine restraining him. He rolled free and finished sawing off what was holding back his leg, just in time to see several black swarming bat like things flying around them. One dive bombed for Steve and Nancy lunged to his aid. Robin was keeping two at bay for now with intermittent swipes from her own bat.

Then from behind, something lashed around his neck – a leathery, rope like tail that dragged him to the ground. Instinctively he dropped his knife and grabbed to try and pull it off, but it was no use – the bat was strangling him with a vice like grip. Eddie punched around his head as he gasped for air, but he failed to connect with anything meaningful as he started to see spots at the edge of his vision.

Panic flared up in him. Was this really going to be the end of Eddie Munson? He’d assumed it would be dangerous, trying to save Chrissy, but he had always imagined he’d make it out alive, a coward like him. That he’d have a chance to cut and run if it got too serious. Dying had never even seemed plausible. This... this breathlessness, this dizzying, empty lunged fear... This felt like an end.

“Get off of him!” someone screamed, a high, frail voice, and a moment later he was sucking in cold, fresh, oxygen rich air once again, rolling to his feet on auto pilot and scrabbling for his spear. He whirled around to face whoever had pulled him out of death’s door and for a moment time stopped.

Chrissy Cunningham, in the flesh. More specifically, in pink pajamas and white tennis shoes. She looked like an avenging angel as she struggled with the demon bat she had yanked off of his head, flinging it to the ground and stomping into it, hard, with a sickening squelch. She was muddy, spattered in demon bat blood, had a blotchy bruise on one side of her face that blended into an impressive black eye, and she was probably the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. “Eddie,” she said, her voice full of relief.

Behind her, another bat started to swoop in. Eddie grabbed Chrissy and pulled her close, swinging his golf club spear at the thing, hard. It took the utility knife blade right in the outstretched, fangy mouth, going limp almost immediately. “Hey,” he said, wishing he could think of a cooler line. His mouth was suddenly very dry with her pressed up against his vest. He glanced around at the others, who had managed to kill their own nasty bats apparently. The world around them had fallen away as soon as he saw her – Eddie wouldn’t have been surprised to find he had missed Harrington getting his head bitten off. All the same, he was glad it hadn’t been. “I brought you something,” he told Chrissy, reaching into his jacket. Her eyes went wide as he handed her the walkman.

“You found it!” she exclaimed, clipping it back on the waistband of her pink shorts and pulling the headphones around her neck. “I dropped it when I got grabbed by the vine things.” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, a pink little flash before it was gone. It was the wrong time to be thinking about how sexy her tongue was. “Thank you, Eddie.”

“One more thing,” he said, and he pulled out the cassette he’d put together. “No more rewinding for forty five minutes. Nothing but you and Stevie Nicks.” He pressed it into her palm.

Her eyes did fill with tears then and she clutched the tape against her heart. “My hero,” she said softly.

“Uh, guys?” Steve interrupted then, drawing both their attention. He was pointing at a black cloud in the distance. “I don’t think we’re going to make it back out the same way we came. If I could suggest a quick venue change?” Eddie squinted into the distance. A rumble of thunder punctuated by a streak of red lightning illuminated the cloud. It wasn’t a cloud at all – it was a swarm of more of those bats, he realized. Headed straight for them.

He turned back to Chrissy. “Ready to run?” he asked, grabbing her hand. She gave him a determined nod before turning heel and heading back toward the treeline she had emerged from.