Emily led the way as the group searched for Will. They had split up once again, so only Mike and Lucas came with her. They went outside while Dustin and Max searched inside the building. The first three found Will fairly quickly out in the field, where he was standing stock-still with his eyes rolling back in head, not responding to Mike saying his name. Emily found herself in so much fear that that she couldn't move or speak or even look at anyone or anything other than Will. This was worse than any panic attack she had ever had before this point.
"We just found him like this!" Mike called to whoever was approaching them. "I think he's having another episode!"
Emily saw Joyce grab Will by his shoulders and begin to plead with him to wake up. She wanted to help, to be able to speak and get Will to snap out of it because she knew something really bad was happening, but for whatever reason, she just couldn't. She could feel herself becoming light-headed and she knew if this didn't end soon, she was going to pass out.
Finally, Will awoke with a gasp, allowing Emily to regain her composure and begin to breathe normally again. This time, though, she didn't feel that sense of relief that she usually did. Somehow, she knew something terrible had happened in Will's episode, but neither twin had time to say anything, for Joyce was rushing to get them away from the school and back home.
"I can't remember," Will told Joyce in the kitchen of the Byers house after she asked him what had happened in his episode.
"I need you to try," Joyce said.
"I- I was on the field and... and then it... it all just went blank, and... and then you were there."
"Will, I need you to tell me the truth."
"I am."
Joyce got up from the table and went into the living room. When she came back, she set a piece of paper down in front of Will. On the paper was a drawing in scribbled blue crayon of what looked like a huge monster, sort of resembling a spider, as it had many long legs. Will stiffened up when he saw it.
"This shape, I saw it on the video tape from Halloween night," Joyce told him. "It's the same shape as- as your drawing."
Emily's eyebrows furrowed slightly out of confusion; she didn't know what drawing Joyce was talking about.
"These episodes that you're having, I think Dr. Owens is wrong," Joyce continued. "I think they're real. But I can't help you if I don't know what's going on. So, you have to talk to me. Please. No more secrets, okay?"
Will nodded, letting Joyce know that he would tell her the truth.
"Okay," Joyce said. "D-Did you see this thing again on the field?"
Will nodded again. "Yes," he said.
"What... what is it?"
Will's eyes began to well with tears. "I don't know. It's almost more like a- a feeling."
"Like the one you had that night at the arcade?"
Once again, Will nodded. "Yes."
"Wh-What does it want?"
"I don't know. It came for me, and... and I tried. I tried to make it go away. But it got me, Mom."
"Well, what does that mean?"
"I felt it... everywhere. Everywhere. I- I still feel it. I just want this to be over."
Joyce pulled her son into a hug as he began to cry, rubbing his back to try to comfort him. Emily felt tears begin to run down her face as she realized just how much her brother was going through. She quickly wiped away the tears, but her heart broke, because she knew nothing about how to help him.
"It's okay. It's okay. Hey," Joyce said, pulling away from Will and holding his face in her hands. "Listen. Look, look at me. I will never, ever let anything bad happen to you ever again. Whatever's going on in you, we're gonna fix it. I will fix it. I promise. I'm here."
She pulled Will back into her again and held him. Emily reached over and rubbed his back, silently letting him know that, like their mother, she would also do anything in her power to help him.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
The next morning, it was decided that Will and Emily would be skipping school that day after Will told Joyce that he was still feeling off because of the episode he had the day before. Emily took this opportunity to catch up on homework that she hadn't done the night before that would have been due that day had she gone to school. While at the time, with everything going on, homework seemed trivial and insignificant to her, it gave her something to do, so she figured she would take advantage of that.
She had been doing this for about a half hour when she heard a light knock on her doorframe. She looked up to see Joyce, who gave her a small smile before entering the room.
"Hey, Em," she said. "Are you busy? Do you have a second to talk?"
Emily glanced down at her math homework, which was nearly finished. "Yeah, sure," she answered, figuring she had all day to finish the assignment.
Joyce came over and sat down on the bed. "So I was just running a warm bath for Will, you know, hoping that might help him feel better, but, uh... well, at first, he complained that the bath was too hot. So I went to check, and it really wasn't that hot at all. Then I told him that it needed to be a bit hot to be able to get his body temp back up, because it was a bit low, but then he said 'No, he likes it cold.' Do you have any idea what that means?"
Emily thought for a moment, a frown appearing on her face when she couldn't think of any reason why Will would say such a thing. "I don't know, Mom. I wish I could help you, but... I just- I don't know. Maybe that monster...?"
Joyce seemed to be thinking as well as she nodded. "Yeah. Maybe." She looked back at her daughter and frowned when she saw the distraught look on her face. "Hey, it's gonna be okay. I know it's scary right now, but we're going to figure this out and we're going to fix it. Okay?"
Emily nodded and gave a weak smile, still wishing she could do more to help. Joyce kissed her forehead before leaving her alone again.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Later on, Emily walked into Will's room with a blanket wrapped closely around her, since Joyce had all of the windows and doors in the house open in order to keep Will satisfied, since he apparently wanted to be cold. Without saying a word, she sat down next to him on his bed, both of their backs to the door. Something on the floor caught her eye, and she looked down to see what appeared to be a detailed drawing of their front lawn, except in the sky was what looked like a storm, colored in red, with the same monster from Joyce's drawing that she claimed she had seen in the video tape from Halloween, colored in black. Emily didn't have to ask to know that this was what Will had seen in his episode the night before Halloween, and that this was the drawing Joyce had been referring to the day before when she asked Will about his episode on the field. Before she could say anything, though, she heard the door to Will's room open the rest of the way after a light knock.
"Hey! Knock, knock," Joyce said in a gentle voice. "We have a visitor."
Will didn't bother to turn and look, but Emily did, and she gave Hopper and Joyce a small smile as they entered the room. Once the adults sat down, Emily and Joyce caught Hopper up on everything that he had missed and showed him both Will's and Joyce's drawings of the strange new monster.
"So this thing, this shadow thing," Hopper said to Will. "You told your mom it likes it like this. It likes it cold?"
Will nodded and said in a quiet voice that was almost a whisper, "Yeah."
"How do you know that?"
"I just know."
"Does he talk to you?"
"No. It's like... I don't have to think. I just know things now. Things I never did before."
Hopper got up from his seat beside Will on his bed and sat down at Will's desk chair. "And, uh... what else do you know?"
"It's hard to explain. It's like old memories in the back of my head, only... they're not my memories."
"Okay."
"I mean, I don't think they're old memories at all. They're... they're now-memories, happening all at once, now."
"Can you describe these now-memories?"
"I don't know. It's... it's hard to explain."
"I know it's hard but can you just... can you try?" Joyce asked. "For us?"
Tears began to form in Will's eyes again and Emily frowned.
"It's like..." Will began, "they're growing and spreading... killing."
"The memories?" Joyce questioned.
"I don't know." There was a pause as Will became increasingly upset. "I'm sorry."
"No, no, no. It's okay, sweetie," Joyce said, pulling him into her for a hug as he continued to cry. She continued to hold him for a few moments longer until her eyes wandered over to his drawings on his wall. "Hey, sweetie... what if you didn't have to use words?"
The other three stood back as Will sat down at his desk and began to scribble in crayon on a piece of paper. Emily watched for just a few moments before she heard the phone begin to ring out in the kitchen.
"I'll get it," she told Hopper and Joyce and then left the room. Picking up the phone, she said, "Hello?"
"Em? It's Mike," said Mike's voice from the other end.
"Mike? I thought you'd be at school."
"I am. It's recess."
"Oh." Emily looked over at the clock to check the time. "Yeah, it is. Is everything okay?"
"That's what I was about to ask you."
"Oh. Um... well... I mean, I'm okay, and my mom's okay, but Will's just... off. He's, uh... well, it's a lot to explain over the phone. Maybe you can come over after school?"
"Yeah, I can do that. To be honest, that's what I was gonna do anyway if no one picked up the phone."
Emily let out a light laugh. "Okay, well, see you then."
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
"This is more of the same," Joyce said, bringing out more papers covered in what seemed to be scribbles of many different colors into the living room, where Hopper and Emily were looking at all of them, trying to figure out what they were supposed to be.
"It's nothing. It's just scribbles," Hopper said in a defeated tone.
"It's something," Emily said. "It has to be." She continued to sift through the pile of papers she had in her hand until she noticed that the black lines on a few of them lined up. "Hold on... see, these lines. They connect." She showed her discovery to her mother and Hopper before getting up from the couch. "You're welcome." Leaving them to do with this information as they saw fit, she went into Will's room to collect more papers. "How many more of these things are there?" she asked him.
"I don't know," he answered, sliding yet another paper off of his desk and onto the floor. Emily sighed, picked up all of the papers on the floor, and went back to the living room.
When she got back, all of the furniture had been pushed to the walls in order to make more room on the living room floor, and Joyce and Hopper were arranging the papers so that the black lines lined up. Emily joined in, and the three of them spent the next two hours taping the papers together, making them run all across the floor, into other rooms, and even up on some walls and furniture.
"Does this mean anything to you?" Hopper asked.
"No," Emily said simply, her expression lost as she looked at the complete mess they had made of the house.
"Not to me, either," Joyce said, also very confused. "Is it some sort of maze or a road? I-It's sort of forking and branching like... like lightning."
"You think it's that storm?" Hopper suggested.
"No. The storm didn't look anything like this," Emily said, remembering Will's drawing of said storm. "Besides, he used red for that. None of this is red."
"Maybe it's roots," Joyce said, racking her brain for answers. "'Cause remember, he was saying it was spreading and-"
"Killing," Hopper finished her sentence. "He said they were killing." Emily watched him closely; she could tell by his expression that he knew something. "Vines." He went over to the door and grabbed his coat and hat, putting both on. "He's drawing vines."
As the door closed behind him, Joyce and Emily exchanged a look.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
With nothing else to do after Hopper left, Emily kept her eyes on the clock, waiting for the time that school ended so that she would know that Mike was on his way. Finally, the time came, and she began to pace in front of the door anxiously.
"Em?" Joyce said in a questioning tone, entering the living room after she heard her daughter's pacing footsteps from Will's room. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," Emily answered. "I'm just waiting for Mike." Joyce looked confused, and that was when Emily realized she hadn't had time to tell Joyce that Mike was coming over after she got off of the phone with him. "I never told you, did I?"
"No, you did not."
"Oh... well, Mike's coming over. Sorry, I probably should've checked with you first."
"That's fine, it's just... are you sure anyone should be coming over right now?"
"He already knows everything, Mom, and he wants to help. Besides, having him over might help Will feel a bit better."
"Okay. That's fine, then."
There was a short pause as Joyce considered the question she wanted to ask.
"Em?" she said, once again stopping the girl's pacing.
"Yeah?" Emily responded.
"Is there something going on... between you and Mike?"
Emily's eyes widened, not expecting this question and not sure how she wanted to go about answering it. "Um..."
Thankfully, a knock on the door and Mike announcing his arrival saved her from having to explain anything to her mother. She quickly unlocked the door and opened it.
"Mike," she said, a smile appearing on her face as she hugged him, happier to see him than she expected to be. This confirmed Joyce's suspicions. When the two kids pulled away from the hug, Emily let Mike into the house, and Joyce greeted him kindly as Emily shut and locked the door behind him. The trails of papers lining the house immediately grabbed Mike's attention, and seeing this, Emily said, "This is what I couldn't tell you over the phone."
"Did Will draw these?" Mike questioned; he already knew the answer before either of them told him.
[word count: 2497]
[written: 1/3/21]
[published: 1/3/21]