CHAPTER SIX
MIND FLAYER
The house is silent save for Jonathan's consoling whispers as he strokes Will Byers' hair and Hopper's side of his phone conversation. Will lays on the couch, he's been put to sleep because Will's eyes are no longer his own. His arms are no longer his own. His mind is no longer his own. There's something inside of him, Hopper and Mike had explained. There's something possessing him and stripping away Will's power. It's using him as a puppet, a way to spy into Hawkins, to make sure that no matter what, the thing inside of him wins.
Abby sits slumped at the small round table in the kitchen along with Alex, Max, Dustin, Lucas, and Mike. She gazes around at the house as she taps her fingers against the wooden surface. On any other occasion, Abby thinks that the house would be charming and cozy, but right now, this is anything but charming. Papers cover the walls, long, thick lines drawn across the surface of the paper, they all connect like a puzzle, an intricate kind of maze that covers almost every square surface of the house.
Steve wanders into the kitchen just as Hopper angrily hangs up the phone and turns toward the six teenagers that sit around the table in various positions. Alex glances over at Max every so often as the girl's eyes flit over the maze of papers. Dustin stands with his palms resting on the table while Lucas shifts in his seat every so often. Mike only stares forlornly at Hopper as he yells into the phone.
"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin asks.
"Who would?" Abby counters.
People only believe what they see, and sometimes even if the truth is right in front of them, people only see what they want to see. It's how it works when you get older, you get told that the things that you once believed are outlandish and childish and that it's time to grow up and face the real world. Childlike beliefs are lost as time passes and children morph into teenagers and then into young adults because they're only ever allowed to believe in facts. Everything needs to be rationalized, because if it isn't then everything that people have grown up knowing collapses underneath them and drives the world into insanity.
"Nobody," Alex agrees.
"We'll see," Hopper says.
"'We'll see?'" Mike repeats incredulously. "We can't just sit here while those things are loose!"
"Do you not remember the last time there was one Demogorgon loose in Hawkins?" Alex inquires. "Think about how it'll be with like a hundred on the loose. It'll only be worse if we don't do something."
"We are doing something," Hopper responds gruffly. "We are staying here, and we are waiting for help."
The kitchen succumbs to silence once more as Hopper turns and wanders further into the house. Abby rests her face in her palms, she can't help but let the utter hopelessness that fills the room wash over her. What else are they supposed to do? In the wake of the death of Bob Newby and the deaths of all the staff members of the lab, they are faced with still a bigger dilemma. They are powerless against whatever is contaminating Will, they don't even know what it is. They are running on nothing but the blind, false hope that maybe, just maybe help will come to them.
After a few moments of silence, Mike finally pushes himself up out of his seat and walks toward the coffee table that sits in the living room. He picks up the blue box tied with a white string that sits atop a stack of other puzzles and brain teasers. He holds it tightly in his hands and gazes down at it. Finally, he says, "Did you know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?"
"Really?" Lucas asks.
Mike turns back to face them. There's a bittersweet smile on his face despite the tears that glisten in his eyes. "He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fund-raiser for equipment." He begins to walk back toward them, the brain teaser still in his hands. "Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?"
"Yeah," the others chorus.
He sets the brain teaser down on the surface of the table in front of the others. Abby rests her chin in the palms of her hand and gazes at the blue cube. He takes a breath and looks around at his companions in the kitchen. "We can't let him die in vain."
"Well, what do you wanna do, Mike?" Dustin snaps. "The chief's right on this. We can't stop those demodogs on our own."
Max raises her eyebrows. "Demodogs?"
Abby shakes her head. "It's really not that important you don't need to—"
"Demogorgon, dogs," Dustin holds out a hand for each word before pressing them together. "Demodogs. It's like a compound. It's like a play on words—"
"Okay," Max interrupts before Dustin can continue on his tangent.
Dustin swallows and shakes his head. "I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe ..."
"But there's an army now," Lucas finishes.
"Precisely."
"His army," Mike murmurs. There's some sort of dawning realization that grows on his face as he continues to stare down at the table.
Steve, who hasn't said a word since they arrived at the Byers' house finally asks, "What do you mean?"
"His army," Mike repeats. He looked around at the teens gathered in the kitchen who all fix him with similar looks of confusion. "Maybe if we can stop him, we can stop his army too."
With a renewed determination, Mike dashes into the next room over and soon returns with a sheet of paper in his hands. He places it on the center of the table and Abby leans forward to get a better look at the illustration before her. Chills crawl up and down her spine as she studies the spider-like creature with its tall, towering legs of shadow. There's a storm depicted behind the creature on the paper, red-tinged lightning strikes through the sky, stormy clouds of black gather around the creature.
"What the hell is that?" Abby murmurs.
"It's the thing that's inside Will," Mike answers. He looks back up at his friends, the wheels are turning in his head, whirring and clicking, working to fit the pieces together. "It got Will that day on the field. The doctors said it was like a virus, it infected him."
"And this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asks.
"To the tunnels, to the monsters, to the Upside Down, everything," Mike answers.
"Whoa, slow down. Slow down," Steve interrupts raising his hands.
"Okay, so the shadow monster's inside of everything," Mike explains to Steve, who nods along. "And if the vines feel something like pain, so does Will."
Lucas nods. "And so does Dart."
Alex snaps her fingers excitedly. "Oh, so like that one thing that Mr. Clarke taught us, um, the uh ... hive mind."
"Hive mind?" Steve repeats.
"A collective consciousness," Dustin explains. "It's a superorganism."
Mike points down once again at the drawing. "It's the thing that controls everything. It's the brain."
Abby nods. "And everything else is the puppets."
"Exactly," Mike agrees.
"Like the Mind Flayer," says Dustin with a dawning realization as his head snaps up. Lucas snaps his fingers in recognition and Alex nods in understanding. Mike stares at him for a few moments, but he too seems to understand what connection Dustin has made.
"What?" Abby, Steve, and Max voice in unison having no prior knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons.
Dustin only lets out a sigh as he scrambles to locate Will's Dungeons and Dragons handbook. By the time he returns to the kitchen, Nancy, Jonathan, and Hopper have joined them. He slams it down onto the table with a loud thump as he announces, "The Mind Flayer."
"What the hell is that?" Hopper asks.
"It's a monster from an unknown dimension," Dustin answers. Abby leans in closer, captivated slightly by the boy's explanation. "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers.
Hopper throws his head back in exasperation. "Oh my god, none of this is real. This is a kid's game."
"No, it-it's a manual and it's not for kids," Dustin responds. There's a growing frustration in his voice as he clenches his jaw and stares back at Hopper. "And unless you know something we don't, this is the best metaphor—"
"Analogy," Lucas corrects.
"Analogy?" Dustin repeats. "That's what you're worried about? Fine. An analogy for understanding what the hell this is."
"Okay, so this mind flamer thing—" says Nancy as she peers over at the pages of the handbook.
"Flayer. Mind Flayer."
Nancy surpasses an exasperated sigh. "What does it want?"
"To conquer us, basically, it believes it's the master race."
Steve nods. "Like the ... Germans?"
"Dude," Alex groans as she punches her brother in the shoulder.
"Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin corrects.
Steve's cheeks are tinged pink as he averts his gaze and nods. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis."
"Uh ... if the Nazis were from another dimension, totally," Dustin responds. Abby glances over at Hopper to see the man pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers as he lets out a long sigh. Dustin takes no notice and continues, "Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself.
"It wants to spread and take over other dimensions," Mike adds.
"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it," Lucas jumps in.
Abby raises a hand to her forehead and rubs it letting out a sigh. She's not sure how much more bad news she can take before she cracks. Already, her reality has been muddled with monsters far beyond the conception of reality, she isn't ready for the weight of the world as she knows it to be added to the load that she already carries. She has to remind herself that although her world has been dramatically flipped around, there are still some good things that remain, that she can cling to and anchor herself with.
Steve throws up his hands and turns away from the table. "That's great. That's great. That's really great. Jesus!"
Nancy leans over the hand guide and picks up the book to get a closer picture of the mind flayer depicted on the page. "Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, the if we kill it ..."
"We kill everything it controls," Mike finishes with a nod.
"We win," Dustin confirms.
"Except ... this is all just a theory," Abby is quick to interject. "It may not be this simple—not that any of the stuff you just spit out was simple, to begin with."
"Theoretically, if we kill the Flayer, we'll kill the puppets," Lucas clarifies.
"Mhm," Alex nods. "This is all just a stab in the dark. For all we know, the Mind Flayer here is nothing like the one there."
"Great," Hopper says as he takes the book from Nancy. He squints at the pages and furrows his brows as he leafs through the handbook. "So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?"
"No," Dustin responds with a small laugh. "No. No, no fire—no fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army because ... because zombies, you know, they don't have brains, and the-the Mind Flayer, it ... it likes brains ..." he trails off. "It's just a game. It's a game."
Abby lets out a sigh and holds up a hand before Dustin can continue rambling. "As your babysitter, Curly-cue, I'm gonna have to tell you to shut up and let the adult talk."
Dustin nods softly. "Okay, yeah, okay. I'm okay with that."
"What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper slams the book down on the table with a groan.
"I thought we were waiting for your military backup."
"We are!"
"Well, even if they come, how are they gonna stop this?" Mike demands. "You can't just shoot this with guns!"
"You don't know that!" Hopper rebukes. "We don't know anything!"
"We know that it's already killed everyone in that lab," Mike says.
"And we know that the monsters are gonna molt again," Lucas adds.
"And we know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town," Dustin continues.
"And we know that if we're smart, we can pack a punch," Alex adds. "We'll be more prepared than last time. We know that there's more than one monster."
"They're right," a voice croaks from the hallway. There partially concealed by the shadows, still dressed in the blue hospital scrubs, with red-rimmed eyes and tousled hair stands Joyce Byers. Her arms hang limply at her sides, and dark shadows ring the outsides of her eyes. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."
Hopper steps forward and places a comforting hand on Joyce's shoulder. "Me too. Me too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."
"No," Mike agrees, stepping forward. "But he does." He walks toward the couch where Will still lays, peaceful with his eyes closed and his chest steadily rising and falling. "If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know his weakness."
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore," says Max. "That he's a spy for the Mind Flayer now."
"Yeah, but, he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."
author's note: i apologize for this monstrosity of a chapter. i detest dialogue-based scenes with a burning passion, but i hope that this did turn out okay!