Life became soundless and in the depths of the lack of sound, Billie's ears rang with the newfound solitude of helplessness. Her breathing must have stopped, because she heard none of it, even as her nostrils flared and shrunk, the only true feeling in her body as it was a movement happening right beneath her eyes.
Wide, she looked down but saw not the horror, yet the bright memory of a song named happiness.
October, 1985. She could recall, down to the dot, every sense of that day. She had been so nervous she started counting these senses, taking inventory of them. This Physics Test was a life and death type of matter back then. The classroom smelt, for example, more so like a lab than before, but the hallways were tinted in a pumpkin aroma from Darcy Taylor's pies, baked for some charity fair. Particularly in her seat, Billie smelt the disgusting scent of strawberry bubblegum, chewed by the guy behind her. He was going to score an F.
The test had been so difficult that even if it was raining outside and she wanted nothing more but to be grateful for the coziness of her sweater, Billie was sweating. Squirming, she started picking her nails, pulling on their edges, then scratching her pencil, bending the paper corners in her notebooks... Nothing was sufficient to allow her mind to escape the constant nagging of two instruments of torture: the knowledge that the test had been impossibly tough and the damn bubblegum scent.
The teacher passed her the graded paper back and moved on, even though her world had completely stopped.
She was new at Hawkins High and though she wished she cared a lot less about these things, her father's habits and antics were glued to her subconscious, making her well convinced that the first grade she gets in this school will determine just how well she'll handle her whole year here.
There was no room for "I am still adjusting", there was no "I will do better next time".
That paper before her eyes was going to decide her faith and oh, Billie remembered with how much joy she held it when the bell rang and she ran out of the classroom. Her sweaty hand crushed the paper in its fist and waved it up while stopping, carelessly, in the very middle of the busy hallway. Across from her, leaning against the wall, Austin had started smiling. He's been waiting for her there.
"I did it!" Billie exclaimed, making several people on the hallway roll their eyes as they had to go around. "Perfect score," she hit the paper and finally skipped her steps forward, towards Austin who mirrored her excitement in an instant.
He clapped his hands loud enough to temporarily cover the beginning of the break ruckus. Chatter was everywhere but he gave Billie a hug. "Had no doubt!" He laughed.
"Apart from the last bit," Billie did not linger in the hug and as a consequence of her words, Austin immediately took her paper, turning it around and narrowing his eyes shortly to focus. In less than ten seconds, he chuckled and nudged Billie for their walk with the crowd, outside.
"Sneaky, that last bit on the problem. You twisted it well and shortened the obvious answer by half."
"I wasn't going to sit around and write a whole page like he wanted me too," Billie raised her chin proudly then pointed at the paper. "But it worked and he liked it."
"Of course he did," Austin shook his head. "It may have been a bit rebellious in our world, but it was still smart."
She remembered pushing the door open for them before the memory went blank and she blinked. Instead of seeing reality as it was, her mind recalled again, from the depths of her soul where moments collected overtime, sediments to her emotions.
The peacefulness of a friendship was now embracing Billie, inside out on the warm October night she spent with Austin on the best star observation spot. There was supposed to be a meteor shower and they planned to watch for shooting stars until the sun was up. Talking about nothing and everything, all at once, their subjects spanned from what they've eaten in the morning to the vastness of the cosmos showing itself to them as a ghost of the past in the sky.
There were no drinks, no smoking, just the buzz of nature, of bugs and of each other's company of symphonic breaths harmonizing.
Billie recalled vividly that she had considered that night to tell Austin about Eddie Munson and her hanging out... to confess that she was in love with him and have her friend's aid on this.
She had opened her mouth.
"You're my first real friend, Billie," Austin confessed before she could say a thing. He looked at the infinity of stars and suddenly, his embarrassment of the fact he voice dissipated amongst the shine above.
She had closed her mouth, reducing herself to simply listening, looking at him, noticing the shake in his inhale.
"People never talked with me before you came along."
"Can't imagine why," Billie mumbled along, meaning to decrease the tension with a jest.
"Apparently," Austin took it seriously and began explaining, "I have a thing for talking with superiority to everyone. That, or they're disgusted by my alcoholic background. Which I understand. So am I. But acting superior..."
"Austin," Billie called and moved her head so she could look up at the stars again, "you easily outsmart the vast majority of Hawkins High. You don't act superior. You are that."
She had taken one glance to the side, absolutely shocked to find Austin staring at her, absolutely in awe. Billie laughed, feeling the void of the silence.
"Not outsmarting you though."
"Of course not," Billie grinned. "That's why we make such wonderful friends."
"Oh, Billie..."
Austin's laughter carried over her name was a song which distorted itself briefly. Billie blinked and the features of joy turned into a deformed jaw. Her reality was brutal on a painfully quiet night: Austin was there, on the ground, twisted in an unnatural shape. He was dead.
"Billie..."
Another blink did not make the image go away. There were no more memories for her to hide behind of and the night of terror was ready to welcome her right back to the midst of the pain. Billie became aware of her real senses again: it smelled like death, like a spring chill of a nature which has forgotten it is time to come back to life.
Perhaps she hoped this wasn't the end of this. That it was all just a bad dream. It wouldn't be the first time it happened... So why not believe she had a gram of luck left?
But now Billie started feeling the bruise of her knees, the coldness of the ground, the stain of the grass, the pressure on her arm.
That last detail unclogged her ears and restored her ability to look anywhere else but at the source of numbness.
Billie flinched to look back and she finally realized it was her brother calling her name earlier. "Devin?" It took her a moment to even comprehend her own voice, hoarse and scared. She had to physically shake her head to escape the strings of haze, of blurred terror.
A thousand nuances of why tried to be asked and Billie pushed everything aside, helping herself up through the shiver of her knees. Devin supported her, speechless and horrified by what he had stumbled into. He found her, but what else had he found?
"Good you're here," Billie's voice was normal now, though quiet. "You can help me."
"Help you... call the cops?"
She squinted, judging with every fiber in her body what Devin struggled to say. He got up with her but his hands were shaking and he was hunched forward from terror, from the urge to make himself small and hide behind his sister so he didn't have to see Austin's body. A jolt of pain flashed into his left arm. He was wincing silently.
"No," Billie almost rolled her eyes. "Help me carry the video equipment out of his house and back to ours, dummy."
"What?"
Billie turned around. She didn't want to hear his disbelief, his outraged reaction.
"Your best friend just died!"
Billie strained herself to go around the body without looking at it. She struggled not to hear a single thing. Her mind was on a leash, biting down on it so its screams did not shatter through.
"Make sure you don't touch anything directly," Billie warned Devin, completely ignoring his previous statement. She heard his footsteps after her, so it didn't matter whether or not he judged her. "We were never here."
Modern Talking blasted over one of Eddie's ears. The headphones of Billie's walkman sat sideways on his head. It was one of her old cassettes playing and even though it surely was no Black Sabbath, it quickly became a background which calmed his breathing pattern to a steady slow. There, in the darkness of the basement, some innocent slowness was all he needed.
Breath after breath, he felt sleepy again, naturally, but he could not allow himself the weakness of closing his eyes, not when Dustin was breaking into the high school and Billie was negotiating the lease of video equipment. Everyone he cared about was out there. He couldn't just sleep.
No, in fact, that was exactly why one ear of his was not concentrated on the music, but instead on the sounds of the basement and especially what would soon blast from the walkie-talkie in front of him if Dustin found anything about the next possible victim for Vecna.
Vecna. Eddie had to admit... What happened to Chrissy did seem pulled out of the most terrifying campaigns he played.
He wished he had his cigarettes with him though, or at least the drugs he was going to sell Chrissy that wretched night which, in the solitude of his stay in the Carter basement, he continuously felt the sting of. It would have made believing the world was filled with monsters and the demonic much easier, he was sure about it. But perhaps the love declarations sung in ballads by Thomas Anders was just as good of a high for now. He did also wish to be lucid, just in case anyone needed his help.
Guilt, impatience and fear were poisoning all of Eddie Munson, from bones to skin and from soul to thoughts, when the door to the basement opened and he slid a box in front of himself again, to conceal his exact location in that dark room now invaded by a fragment of light. The door slid open until its wooden frame hit the wall and the first creak of the stairs audibly joined.
Another step followed, then a third.
They felt heavier than any sound Sam's little feet could make. That child had a growth deficiency for sure, Eddie had thought during his stay at the Carter's. Apparently he was in the same year as the unforgettable Erica Sinclair, but Eddie was pretty sure he appreciated correctly that Billie's brother was still shorter than the girl. Light as a feather too... Eddie sincerely considered blaming this on demons and monsters already.
No, these steps were definitely heavier than Sam's and since he didn't even hear the sound of the kid's voice nagging his father to not descend into the basement. Something was obviously wrong so, hooking just one finger around the corner of the box he hid behind, under that table, Eddie made himself a crack he could at whoever was coming.
It was the second time he had ever had Billie over in his trailer that she introduced him to the faces of her family, through a photo album she had sneaked out of her house with her. The Carter's most recent family picture was from August 1984. "We had a trip to Indiana Dunes," Billie had told him then and her voice was a vivid memory for Eddie to trust to always be there with him, even when his heart was unexplainably frightened to allow the body to draw his eye nearer to the crack he made in his hiding spot.
He tried to focus on the memory, on the feeling of her head on his chest, of her left leg lifted and resting over his. Eddie calmed his breath by thinking of her own breath that night, in the way he felt it by sneakily keeping his hand on her waist as if her shirt hadn't accidentally lifted a while ago and now his rough thumbs warmed her soft patch of skin they had access to. A smile threatened his lips remembering the scent of her shampoo she's been crazy about the day she found it at Bradley's Big Buy. "It's cherry flavored shampoo, Eddie! Can you believe it? I could eat my own hair."
A blink on another stair creak focused him right back on the memory and on the heaviness of the uncompleted photo album. They went through all the embarrassing pictures: the wedding of her parents, Barry's first picture, Devin's, her own... He sucked in every single detail Billie had given him that night, about traditions in her family, about the fun tales behind each picture.
It was not what he had expected, but that was mostly on him. He may have smoked one cigarette too much the day Billie told him he was going to meet his family. In a rush of panic, he actually cleaned himself up and wore his best pair of pants that night to maybe make it easier for her family to accept him as well as she did. He figured their approval meant a lot to her so he tried his best only to be faced by the least judgmental pictures he had ever seen.
"That's probably where dad got the idea of moving to Hawkins," Billie hummed. The photo album rested back on Eddie's lifted right knee. He wore his boots to bed, simply out of a careless hurry to just get in bed with her. He had tried to turn the page, only to see that everything after that were just blank pages.
"The little one is Sam," Billie finally moved her left hand away from where it had been resting for the past hundred of pictures: under his shirt, on his stomach. Sometimes, Eddie was shocked to discover she was even more shameless than him. "That one is Devin. You already know me..."
He nuzzled his nose to the side, into her hair. "Do I?"
"And that is Barry, my oldest brother. He should be about the same age as you."
"He looks far more serious than I will ever be," Eddie had joked, only taking a glimpse at Barry Carter. He never asked why they moved to Indiana, he never pressured Billie in sharing what her mother died of.
That glance and carelessness was enough for him to now recognize Billie's oldest brother come down the stairs of the basement, knife in hand.
"Munson!" The shout chilled Eddie to the bone.
He leant back from the crack he made in the box in an instant.
How the heck did Barry find out about him? Did Billie tell him? She wouldn't... Maybe Sam caved in. It was futile to even try to understand because he struggled to get himself further in the safe shadow of his hiding spot, only for his chains to dangle on the foot of the table.
"I know you're here, Eddie. And I know you've been seeing my sister," Barry's voice haunted him from the other side of the box. "All I need to know is where she is, man, because I swear," he laughed, "if she's in danger right now, I will make you wish you never met her."
Never going to happen, Eddie would have shouted back had he not first glimpsed at the knife Barry held when entering the basement. Whether he made a sound or not, it did not change the suddenness with which Barry kicked the box Eddie was hiding behind aside, then dug his arm down and grabbed a handful of Eddie's collar.
"Shit!"
Dubiously enough, he had the same reaction as his bandmate Richie, Barry noted when Eddie simply shrugged off his vest and let Barry toss it across the basement in a heartbeat. He stumbled away from the crazy brother but one step was all his standing up lasted for, because with a force Eddie couldn't bring himself to explain, Barry shoved him into the middle consolidation pillar of the basement, where he put the knife to his throat.
"Wait, wait- Ah!" He had choked that beg to be listened to at least a dozen times before the blade sharpened itself too close to his life.
"Where's Billie?"
"I don't know what you think you know, but..."
Barry pushed his free hand in Eddie's shoulder so it hit back on the pillar. Dust fell from the ceiling, vibrating with the impact and with the grunt Munson was forced to let out. This was not the pain he expected. Heck, even Billie's walkman had fallen off, half broken somewhere on the ground, still playing "Brother Louie", which just then, caught a whole new meaning for him.
"I know everything," Barry accentuated his whisper through gritted teeth. "You can thank Richie for that."
"Isn't it Saturday?" Eddie almost stuttered. "I can bet you ten bucks Richie is as high as a kite-"
The next punch he received made him bow over and had Barry not been in need of him to talk, he would have been stabbed instead, meeting a bloody end rather than a fist to the stomach, just about enough to give an excess of saliva in his mouth, threatening to break out. Bary forced Eddie to straighten up against the pillar again.
"You've been dating my sister since-"
"Guilty and I wish you found out differently," Eddie hoped interrupting Barry on this one would fix everything. It did not. Barry's years in Japan, taking any jobs he could, spoke for itself: the time he spent as a butcher made it freakishly easy for him to throw Eddie on the ground.
His head hit the floor and all his thoughts turned into a ringing noise. Modern Talking was singing as distant as if he was listening to it through a keyhole. It got him to blink himself back at least halfly, this faint anchor.
It was enough to hear the rest of Barry's panicked shouts down at him though. "She's obviously been stupid to mess with a guy like you, but the things Richie told me about you two don't change a thing. You killed that cheerleader . And Billie must have finally realized what kind of guy you..." Barry's gaze momentarily dropped, to the deserted vest on the ground next to Eddie.
For the briefest of moments, his worry manifested in sadness, not the rageful shouts he's been accusing the intruder in their home with. Insomnia made the eldest Carter consider that perhaps he was hallucinating, but while he lost his trail of thought, Eddie took the chance to grab that very vest he was staring at and throw it at his face.
Barry dropped the knife to catch the vest, but even absolutely distracted by that piece of clothing, he pushed Eddie back down with a simple strong nudge when he tried to stand up.
"Where'd you get this from?" He changed his question. No, Barry Carter changed his whole demeanor, that through fear, Eddie realized his breath hitched and his hurting hand wanted to think that he was staring up at a completely different person, much closer to the brother Billie described to him through the photobook, not the one with killer instincts who did not hesitate to wipe the basement floor with him.
"Y-you like my vest-?"
"Not your vest!" Barry glared and showed Eddie the Michael Jackson pin on his vest. Billie's pin. "This. This isn't yours. It's Billie's. I..."
The world was filled with Michael Jackson pins, it was true, but even Eddie noticed, Billie's seemed so tacky it looked fake if you looked at it up-close. Back in those bright 1979 days, she was absolutely terrified of their dad finding out she listened to Off The Wall so much she learnt the lyrics, all of them, by heart.
Then, much like now, Barry remembered, Billie had a thing for hiding. Only she never hid from him. The cassettes, the dances when no one was home, the rocking out to the music she enjoyed at last, after those nasty piano lessons their dad forced her to attend... He hand painted that pin for her, in order to play her secrecy game. Sure, Anthony eventually found out, and that was part of why she got herself that acoustic guitar and the freedom to quit piano. But now, the pin decorated Eddie's vest and Barry's eyes were filled with tears of hesitant realization.
"I gave her that pin."
With a battlecry, wielding a bat he could barely swing, Sam hit the back of his brother's head from behind. For Barry, all light went out in an instant, though not permanently; his sight blurred for just about enough time that his body lost its balance and he fell on the ground. There, however, he groaned and already fidgeted on his side, to try and stand up, eyes closed.
"Run!" Sam threw the bat at Eddie panicked from the absolute rush of adrenaline his little body experience to find out that while he was worried to see his father off, his brother went down to the basement, hellbent on making Sam break his promise to their sister.
Eddie tried to open his mouth to argue, but Sam hurried to gather his vest, pry it out of Barry's hands, then shove it in his arms. "Come on, just go before Barry wakes up. I am sure there are other places to hide that Billie would know about too." He could think of one. A truly unconventional one. One she would probably hate him for. But she would know without much thought anyway.
By the time Barry's head stopped hurting for long enough that he gathered his strength to open his eyes to the thousand fireworks of colors which exploded to his consciousness all at once, Eddie was out of the basement, vest on and walkie talkie in hand. When Barry finally shook his head and articulated words, Eddie was running away from the house.
"You little prick!" Barry exhaled, getting up gradually. Sam took a nervous step back. "You could have killed me," he brought his hand up to the back of his head and thankfully, as he brought it right in front of his eyes and glasses, he was able to sigh relieved at the sight of no blood at all. "You know that could have killed me, right?"
"Didn't know you were enough of a wuss to get killed by the strength of an eleven year old holding a baseball bat for the first time-"
Sam's sass immediately earned him a slap on the back of his neck from Barry. Sam's shoulder raised to his ears and he sighed, "I deserved that, but at least Eddie's out where you cannot get him."
"You acted like I wanted to kill him," Barry sighed tiredly.
"Wasn't that your knife?" Sam pointed at the thing now deserted on the ground of the basement.
"I wanted to scare him."
"Well, you were scary plenty," Sam crossed his arms at his chest and looked up at his brother. "Made me think you were a demon for a second. That's why I went for the bat."
"A demon?"
"Oh...," the youngest looked regretful to have opened up the subject.
"Oh?" Barry raised his eyebrows, beginning to panic again just about enough for his hands to naturally rest themselves above his hips.
"Sam, come in!" Billie's voice buzzed through the walkie talkie carried by Sam, attached to his side.
Sam's eyes went wide in anticipation of what Barry's sudden gaze drop meant. There was no outsmarting his older brother and before Sam could react, Barry stole the walkie talkie and answered.
"You're in so much trouble. Over."
Billie dropped the bag she carried out of Austin's house on the sidewalk and looked with confused, narrowed eyes down at the walkie talkie, through the prism of a cold night which made her yawn one too many times not to become aware of just how much she missed her bed and pillow when they did not come with such a high possibility of nightmares.
"Barry?" She spoke into the walkie-talkie and waited for a moment before it buzzed again.
"You're supposed to say 'over' when you are done talking. Aren't you supposed to be one of the smart ones? Or did kissing Eddie Munson start killing off your intelligence?" He paused, perhaps to catch his breath after this much sarcasm cutting its way through as the splitting headache Sam gave him. "Over."
"Kissing Eddie Munson?" Devin dropped his own bag of video equipment down. Billie spun around, face flushing red and cheeks puffing in despair with her family and how much frustration these damn boys could give her.
"Say it any louder?" She glared. "Why don't you just shout it for the whole town to hear now, huh?"
"I thought he was just your drug dealer or something...," Devin uncomfortably shifted, then his expression morphed in a rather disgusted way. The memory of seeing Billie leave the pep rally with Eddie suddenly caught a different nuance and connotation and the very thought of it made the boy shiver and fight off the urge to gag.
She rolled her eyes at Devin and brought the walkie talkie back up to her lips. "You better not touch my boyfriend. Over."
"Too late for that," Barry answered rather cockily. "And do not curse on the line. Sam's with me. Over."
"You...," Billie swallowed the curse word into a sigh. The breathing helped her calm down and from there, she even caught a sense of her own rationality returning to the cracks of barely staying lucid with a second sunset preparing to rise. "I'm coming home in like ten minutes. Don't go anywhere. Over and out."
Without even wanting to talk about how many drops of stress and anxiety were currently overflowing her emotional inner cup, Billie closed the station and turned to Devin. "Can you take this bag as well? You know Dustin Henderson right? He's wearing the Hellfire Club shirt tonight and it's kinda hard to miss his group, since they are probably the only brave idiots breaking into the high school on the first day of the spring break."
"Sure, but Billie-"
"Thank you," she smiled so charmingly that it was hard to preach the topic Devin thought they should have rather talked about. "Take care though, alright?" He became fooled by her bare minimum of gratitude and did not realize until too late that she deserted him in the middle of the road.
The lonelier her path got, the further she got from any sounds, the more anxious Billie became. A hurried walk turned into a full blown run. Soon, inexplicably, she felt like she was being watched and before she knew it, paranoia got her to look back over her shoulder into the night, almost expecting to see something horrific run after her. She reached her house breathlessly, only to find just Sam and Barry waiting for her at the set dinner table her father must have prepared, thinking the group of people truly were there to stay with the project.
"Where's Eddie?" Billie had run out of voice too. Too much had happened and the thought of him was what kept her focused, anchored...
"He left."
The light in her blue eyes vanished in an instant. Silence on her side made Barry sigh, "I would have told you, but you closed the line. Hey!" Barry got up seeing his sister turn her back on them with nothing but a short and tired sigh. "Where do you think you're going?"
"I need to find him."
"The heck you do in the middle of the fucking night!" Barry hurried to block the front door, just as Billie grabbed its handle.
"That was a curse word," Sam pointed out, enjoying his vegetables as much as the next kid who got just about hungry enough to eat anything.
Neither Billie nor Barry got a second glance at Sam though. In fact, Barry was having an active staring contest with sister. "I think we both know Eddie is old enough to take care of himself for a while. So why don't you start explaining yourself?"
"No."
"No?"
"Mom was a full blown fucking adult and it didn't help."
Sam's eyes widened, "Second curse word."
"Cover your ears then, you baby," Billie looked past Barry at her little brother.
"What does mom have to do with any of this?" Barry snapped her attention back to him by raising his tone.
Naturally, Billie yelled right back at him. "Everything! Fuck's sake, Barry, are you sure your glasses are still doing their damn job? Hawkins has a demon on the loose."
He opened his mouth, then closed it. He took a moment to understand her words better than took a step back. "A demon?" Barry questioned in disbelief.
"What else do you think could have done that to Chrissy? Because one thing I know for sure, Eddie didn't do it. Not just because he's my boyfriend and I trust him with my life, but because no human is capable of single handedly breaking someone like that. Literally." Billie watched with the slightest satisfaction how terror grew in Barry's eyes. "Then it killed Ben, now Austin..."
"You said the demon left!" Sam jumped from his seat, not even done chewing the food he stuffed in his mouth.
"Austin's dead?" Barry had his own concerns to address. He may have just found out about this apparently important relationship Billie had with Eddie, but the fact that she was good friends with Austin was no secret in this family. "Are you...?"
Billie didn't let her brother finish that heartbreakingly obvious question, "It's the same demon that killed mom. I know it."
Every bone in Sam's body wanted him to run upstairs and take Billie's teddy bear so he could hide in his bed, but he felt frozen on that spot, beside the table, compelled to just listen to what his older siblings would continue talking about anyhow.
"It can't be," Barry mumbled. He shook his head and took a slow step back. For the first time, Sam wanted Barry to be right and Billie wrong.
"It is!" Billie argued. "When it possessed this last time, I saw it... It talked with me like it knew me. And it explains why the nightmares have gotten worse lately, why I keep seeing things that aren't there and why it seems that I've made no progress whatsoever all of a sudden."
Sam felt sick from the very thought of what she was presenting.
"It's back."
"It can't be!" Barry repeated himself in a shout, right in Billie's face. "Because if it is then... Fuck!" His voice turned into a whisper he hoped to hide from his siblings at that moment. "I warned dad this would happen... But he wouldn't even tell you..." A puerile attempt.
"Tell us what?" Billie's own expression darkened. Sam had joined them by a few steps closer.
Barry helplessly looked up at Billie after gazing at the carpet for a moment too long. "I tried to convince him that we should be moving to Japan, that I could help provide for the family better there... But he wouldn't listen. He wouldn't listen to me that they would find us easily in America."
"You're scaring me," Sam mumbled and his hand searched to hold Billie's. She allowed him to take her hand and she squeezed ever so lightly, but her eyes never left Barry's.
"Tell us what?" she repeated, slowly.
"Remember when the church told us we invited the inhuman spirit in the house and that we are to blame for what happened there?" Barry brought out the memories Billie wanted to turn her back onto, yet both her and Sam nodded. "And dad couldn't figure out how we could have invited the demon... Well, we didn't. He got the help of a medium and..."
All his hesitation enraged Billie so in a tired act, she shouted, "Spit it out already!"
"We were cursed, Billie."
Silence fragmented their conversation and the three Carters looked amongst each other, through each other and at nothing at all.
"Cursed?" Billie repeated in disbelief.
"You've heard about the Disciples of the Ram, right?" Barry's very mouth went dry at the thought of it. "Well, these people call themselves the Harbingers of Beyond. They're the ones who cursed us, for some ritual."
"Why?" she breathed out, holding onto Sam's hand tighter than she had wanted to. "Why us?"
"There is no why," Barry smiled ironically, shaking his head to the question he's been obsessed with too, for at least two months after their mother died. "Reasons are unimportant to people like them. It doesn't matter for them who dies as long as the sacrifice is made and their worshiped demons are satisfied enough to grant them their need. You see, after the medium died, dad got paranoid, that the Harbingers were unsatisfied with the soul they took. They may have needed someone younger..."
His gaze dropped momentarily to Sam and the child felt his heart skip its need to beat properly. He was straight up hugging Billie's arm now, in order to not kick Barry into stopping his scary talk.
"He moved us across the country in hopes of running away from them, Billie," Barry continued, looking at his sister now. "So no, the demon cannot be back, because if it is, then not only was I right, but the Harbingers found us and we'll have to pack our bags and run while we still can."
"I'm not running." Billie didn't know what had gotten into her to blurt out so quickly, but the words sounded and she only found their meaning later, hidden in her heart, riddled in all which still kept her going. "I like Hawkins. And I am happy with Eddie-"
"Then we'll take him with us. Leave the country while he's still not publicly wanted for murder," Barry started offerring solutions. Both his older siblings were speaking of things that scared Sam that night.
"No," Billie shook her head. "If we run again, we are letting them win for a second time and then Austin..." The strength of her speech faded while Anthony Carter had finally just found the right moment to speak up.
"I've been waiting for two hours, chief!" He exclaimed, absolutely enraged, at the tired Chief Powell, finally catching his five minute break in his chair.
"My apologies, Mr. Carter," Powell yawned.
Alas, though the apology was much appreciated, Anthony continued breathlessly, "My sons are missing."
"Which ones?"
"The eldest and-"
"Barry?" Powell's tired eyes suddenly widened. "But I just saw him this morning."
"You did?"
Powell confirmed with a nod, something which should have come as a relief to Anthony Carter, a father concerned with the whereabouts of his children. But it did not. Because deep down, a bad feeling seethed and grew its thorns as a warning he never would have listened to anyhow. Just like he never paid attention to the headaches, to the nosebleeds, to the distant hallucinations and sounds, to the nightmares which tried to tell him something bad was about to happen.
No, Anthony Carter was a skeptical dad.
author's note: sweet, sweet 6k words 😭🙏
gotta love how the aesthetic of this book is basically characters' memories coming to be their downfall or their salvation and yES this chapter ending means next chapter we gon see some more about Billie's dad.
this chapter just hit hard... idk how to explain it, between billie not allowing herself to mourn and eddie being saved technically by her pin, idk, man, it just HIT
how are we feeling about the harbingers? y'all think the carter's are right about this or soooo wrong? is it a demon or is it vecna?
AND QUICK, before I forget I need this for my notes: what's your favorite detail about billie carter? any detail, can be anything about her character so far.
OKAY, now this is the end of the note hehe
THANK YOU FOR STICKING WITH ME AND SUPPORTING THIS 💖💕