chapter fifty-two
how to get away with murder
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( BEFORE YOU READ )
hey guys, it's me again. it's faye. i know y'all are sick of me and you just wanna read the chapter but i'm here to give you another content warning 😭💀 i was in a silly mood yk? i thought, "hey? why not make this book more fucked up than it already is?" so... here we are. i bet you guys hate me frrr💀💀
you guys know the drill at this point. this chapter contains blood, graphic gore & violence, body dysmorphia, non-consensual situations, death, mentions of death, ted wheeler, ricky maguire being hot, bad vibes, the kids need a break, rue needs a break, eddie munson is mentioned once, ruemax comforting each other, nancy get mad at rue if you squint, moonknight references, dustin still believes rue is the celestial, rucas crumbs, vecna is a little bitch, and this is all emilia's fault. i can't explain it but it just is.
haha that looks like the tags in ao3 ^^
it's a darker chapter than the last one, that's for sure. yeah lol. enjoy.
Love, to Rue, had always been an abstract concept. She knew that it existed, of course. She had seen it in the way couples looked at each other on the street, the way a mother would hold her child in the grocery store, the way friends would lean against each other and laugh in unison when they saw a funny figurine at the thrift store.
And while she's seen it, she's felt it too. Her gift of empathy was also a curse because it made it hard for her to distinguish between her feelings and someone else's. And when she was around someone in love, she was forced to feel it too. It was an overwhelming emotion, and it terrified her.
Rue, of course, has a fondness for stuff. She adored music, her new family, her friends, her clothes and makeup, and her father. But there's a distinction to be made between loving things and falling in love with someone.
She's always tried to deny it, ever since she felt the first glimpses of it, she knew her heart couldn't bear the heartbreak if it ever happened. But no matter how hard she tried to pretend those sentiments didn't exist, to replace them with someone else, to convert them into hatred, it was practically impossible.
All she knew was that she did love her. The moment her heart had broken and cracked and bled at the sight of her nearing the edge of the tightrope, seconds away from death, the moment she'd held her again and known that she would do anything to keep her safe, there was no doubt in her mind that what she felt was love.
And that scared the fuck out of her. More than Vecna closing in on her and her friends. More than the demons that lingered in the shadows. Because she had dealt with each of them before and had skills to help her solve them. But she had no idea how to deal with the feelings she had acknowledged.
"You're staring," The voice of Max Mayfield had torn Rue Newby out of her thoughts. The red-haired girl grinned as she pressed her cheek to her fist, her other hand holding onto a red crayon.
"I don't stare," Rue rolled her eyes and leaned back on her chair, crossing her arms.
They'd chosen to go back to the Wheeler's house and hang out upstairs rather than in the basement. Holly Wheeler had already sat at the breakfast table while her parents congregated around the kitchen island. Karen Wheeler was baking pancakes for at least a dozen people, and the fragrance made Rue's stomach rumble as she suffered from the munchies.
Max raised her brows at Rue's quick remark and looked at her in disbelief. "I can feel you burning holes into my head."
With a scowl, hoping to hide the fact she was embarrassed by being caught, she pointed at the headphones around Max's neck, "Shouldn't have those on? Y'know, to block out Vecna. It would suck if you started floating and slammed against the roof."
Holly, who was sitting by Rue's side and fiddling with her Lite Brite, looks up from her tablet with wide eyes. "Why would she start floating?"
"Floating from happiness!" Rue recovered swiftly, her voice rising to a higher pitch as she turned to face the six-year-old. Rue twisted Holly's blonde hair around her finger before lightly pinching her cheek, smirking as the girl groaned and pushed her hand away. "Ignore me, Holly. I say stupid things all the time." Rue told her, and then she pointed at the Lite Brite. "I like your bunny."
"Was that a stupid thing?" Holly asked.
Rue furrowed her brows in confusion, "What?"
"What you just said. About my bunny? You said you say stupid things all the time, did you mean that about my bunny, too?"
"No!" Her voice cracks as she shakes her head, "No, of course not. Your bunny's cute. It's the cutest glowing bunny I've ever seen- It's... I'm going to stop talking now."
"No, please continue," Max teased, "Listening to you ramble on for hours is music to my ears."
"You're such a..." Rue stops herself, remembering Holly was still at her side. She narrows her eyes at Max, who was grinning at her with teeth and all, and it was hard for Rue to feign her annoyance, "You're such a butt, Maxine."
Max rolls her eyes playfully, her smile widening when Holly snorts at Rue's remark. She puts on her headphones and presses the play button on the Walkman fastened to her hips. Running Up That Hill is blaring in her ears, and Rue can hear it from across the table. Max casts a restless glance at Rue, "Kate Bush is singing in my ears," she hums as she returns to her pages of red scribbled sketches. "Happy, Ruth?"
Rue smiles at her widely, her nose scrunching up, "Very much."
Rue couldn't tell if what had occurred behind the Wheeler's house had been a dream or reality. After mixing cannabis with her prescribed meds that morning, she questioned if it was all a figment of her imagination. Rue had to bite her tongue to keep from asking Max, "Did we really make out or was it just a dream?"
Because her lips were still swollen and the sensation of Max's mouth against her own lingered, she vowed not to say anything. She could still feel the wandering touches burn on her skin, and her fingertips had a delightful sting as she remembered feeling everything Max would let her touch to memorize the curve of her lips and the suppleness of her neck.
It was very much real.
Holy shit.
Rue slaps her palms against her cheeks and rubs them, seeking to calm herself down. She avoids looking at Max because she knows her heart will explode if she does, and she attempts to finish the sketch in front of her.
A part of Rue is still floating around in the air. Kissing Max Mayfield and holding her in her arms again was all Rue had ever wanted for the past three months.
While the other half of Rue stuck to the ground, dreadfully overthinking everything.
Things were less strained between the two after the kisses at the back of the Wheeler's house. But they weren't precisely normal. If there was such a thing as normal.
Max and Rue had never had the chance to be anything more than friends before the fallout, other than stealing kisses behind everyone's backs, and that only lasted two days. They both pretended as though the Battle of Starcourt had never happened. They knew they had feelings for each other, but it was impossible to even consider a relationship after what they'd seen.
On top of that, Rue was still the one who murdered Billy in front of Max. What else could have made things more complicated than they already were?
It was... strange.
They weren't just friends, but neither were they anything more. They teased each other with friendly fire (which is new, but Rue wasn't complaining), and neither of them were brought to tears by the sight of the other. Rue doubted they'd ever get close to discussing what they were until after Vecna was defeated, and she wondered whether everything would fall apart again by the time she returned to Lenora Hills.
The rushing footsteps of Nancy Wheeler and Dustin Henderson into the kitchen startled Rue out of her thoughts. She looks up from the half-coloured sunset drawing in front of her to see two people out of breath and blanched as if they've encountered a ghost. The two of them immediately calm down when she catches their gaze.
"Morning, guys!" Mrs. Wheeler grins at the two, piling the freshly made pancakes on a plate. She frowns, noticing their distressed state. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah." Nancy puffs out, slowly nodding as Max turns around in her chair. "Yeah, everything's okay."
Mrs. Wheeler hums as Nancy sits next to Max at the breakfast table, "I think it's so sweet that you guys are sticking together like this."
"Could try sticking together in a different house for a change," Ted Wheeler muttered, glancing over his newspaper to glare at Dustin.
The boy stood his ground, glaring back at the man while Mrs. Wheeler placed her hand on his shoulder, squeezing him into a side hug, "You know you're welcome anytime."
"Totally." Dustin nods, "You're like family," he smiles sweetly at the woman as he eyes the stacked pancakes on the counter. Dustin raises his brows and points to the food, "May I?"
Mrs. Wheeler was already one step ahead of him and held a plate in her hands for him to take. "Absolutely."
"Yeah, why not?" Mr. Wheeler grumbles, "Take us for all we're worth."
Cheekily, Dustin grins, "Okay." He says and begins to pile pancake after pancake on his plate, his smile growing and growing as Ted Wheeler stares at him with wide eyes.
"I don't see blood, no torn limbs," Nancy starts as she joins Rue, Max and Holly at the table.
"What?" Rue's heart stutters and skips several beats at her phrase for a split second. She stiffens and gives Dustin a few glances. Rue sees a flash of torn, lifeless people on the floor as she blinks. "What do you mean?"
Nancy glances at her as if it were obvious, which makes Rue even more nervous until she begins to chuckle. "You guys haven't ripped each other's heads off yet." Nancy implies, pointing between Max and Rue. "Should I be worried?" she asks, raising one eyebrow.
"Oh," Rue realizes she's been tapping the green crayon in her fists frantically against her drawing. Now there were green spots all across the sunset sky, and Holly's crayon was about to split in half. Rue sets it down and sighs, placing her hands under her chin. "Yeah, we're- we're cool."
Nancy is pleased to hear this, and she turns away from Rue to look at Max. As she reaches over to the girl and carefully slips the headphones from her ears, her voice softens into something more soothing. "You okay?"
"Couldn't sleep much," Max admits, and there's a faint grin on her face as she looks at Nancy, "People kept blasting music in my ears for some reason."
Nancy apologizes, knowing it was her fault that everyone had taken turns keeping an eye on Max and restarting the mixtape in her ears whenever it ended.
"But, Holly let me borrow some of her crayons." Max's voice is lighter, and she smiles at the youngest Wheeler, "We've been having fun, right, Holly?"
Holly hums, nodding softly as an answer while her attention remains on finishing her bunny. "Mmm-hmm."
Nancy looks down at the pages of red Max had scribbled. She pushes them apart to get a better look at everything and frowns, "Is this what you saw last night?"
"I mean, it's supposed to be," Max shrugs, "I thought it'd be easier to draw it out than to explain it, but... not so much."
Nancy takes a breath and raises one of the drawings. Rue frowns, unable to perceive what was scribbled on the page, and Nancy's eyes have a faint look of terror in them. She sets the paper down once more, mumbling, "Is that...?"
"It was like they were on display or something," Max explains, and she slides the drawing across the table so Rue could look at it too.
Rue rotates the page. She wasn't sure what she anticipated to see, but it wasn't two pillars with mutilated bodies hung from them, tangled between gory vines. Rue returns the drawing to Max, who examines the other sketches.
"And then there was this red fog everywhere," She motions to the other drawings, which all had the background scribbled and covered in red. Max sighs, "It was like a dream. A nightmare."
"Do you think Vecna's just trying to scare you?" Nancy asks.
"With Billy? Yeah. But when I made it here..." Max points to the pillars and shrugs again, "I dunno, something was different. He seemed surprised almost. Like he didn't want me there."
Dustin had joined the girls at the table, seated next to Rue. He places a dish piled high with pancakes, and slathered in syrup on the table. "Maybe you infiltrated his mind," He suggests, "He invaded your mind, right? Is it that big of a leap to suggest you somehow wound up in his?" Dustin begins to theorize, and his eyes light up, "Like Freddie Krueger's boiler room!"
Holly finally looks up from her Lite Brite and glances at Dustin, "Freddie Krueger?"
"He's a super burned-up dude with razors for fingers," He explains, scoffing when he spots Rue take one of his pancakes from his plate for herself. "And he kills you in your dreams."
"Dustin!" Nancy scowls, and when he turns to her cluelessly, she shakes her head disapprovingly. "Seriously?"
"Sorry." Dustin mumbles and glances at Holly, "It's a movie. It's not real." He clears that up and returns to the situation with the drawings and Max's vision. "Just... think about it. What if you somehow unlocked a backdoor to Vecna's world?" He argues, picking up one of the few pages with a blur of colour to it other than red. "Like, maybe the answer we're looking for is somewhere in this incredibly vague drawing." He clicks his tongue and shakes his head, "God, we need Will."
Max scoffs, "No shit."
"Are you guys gonna lie to him to get him here, too?" Rue jests, taking a bite from one of Dustin's pancakes. When the three of them turn to her, sharing guilty yet tired glances, Rue looks down and returns to finishing her sunset drawing, "Sorry, bad joke."
"Well, Rue tried to call home this morning," Max steers the conversation back to its course, "and it was the same busy signal."
"It's been like that for the whole week at this point," Rue adds, "And it's weird because Joyce is usually the one who holds up the line with work, but she's in Alaska."
Nancy makes a face, "Why is she in Alaska?"
"Some job conference, I dunno," She shrugs, "something about the Britannicas."
"In Alaska?"
"Whatever!" Rue throws her hands in the air, "The point is, if Joyce isn't holding the line, it's me. But I'm not there, so I don't know. It's weird."
"Maybe it's Jonathan?" Dustin suggests.
Rue frowns and shakes her head, "I highly doubt that. He only has one friend and Argyle practically lives with us if he's not at work."
"Is this a window?" Nancy asks. She has taken the drawing from Dustin's hands and turned it upside down. She tilts her head, inspecting it closer.
"Yeah." Max nods.
"Stained glass with roses." Nancy points out.
Max leans back on her chair, "Yeah. See? I'm not so terrible after all." She casts a vile look at Rue and Dustin.
Dustin had returned her childish antics by sticking his tongue out and rolling his eyes.
"You should still stick to skateboarding," Rue teased.
"Wow," Max puffs out, "Okay, asshole."
"Well, it helps that I've seen it before..." Nancy begins to browse over the remaining papers. Then she's folding the pages, following the rough edges of Max's awful artwork. After that, Nancy starts to piece them together like a puzzle, forming a ghostly shape of a house. She takes a sharpie from Holly's pencil case and outlines the rest of the house, adding windows until she has completed a grand house.
Rue stares at the puzzle before her in disbelief, and she feels her face scrunch up as she gapes at it upside down. "How the fuck-? Knuckles... butt... uhm-?" Rue begins to mutter random words after Holly had looked up at her when she cursed. Rue shakes her head, "Uhm? What just happened?"
"It's pieces of a house..." Max says slowly.
"Not just any house." Nancy tells them, "It's Victor Creel's house."
She abruptly stood up, surprising everyone at the table as her chair slid loudly over the wooden floor. Nancy turned on her heels, making her way through the kitchen, breaking the ominous tension that had enveloped the small group.
"Where are you going?" Dustin called after her.
Nancy turns around for a split second to inform them that she is waking everyone else up. Max scrambles to her feet, following after Nancy and leaving Dustin and Rue on the breakfast table, bewildered.
"How did she put that together out of Max's blobs?" Rue wonders out loud, her eyes still drawn to the red puzzle of the grand house.
Dustin shrugs, "Beat's me."
Dustin brings his plate with him as the two begin to stand. They enter the kitchen carefully, and their brows wrinkled as they speculate. The first two to emerge from the basement were Ricky Maguire and Steve Harrington. They mumble short 'hellos' to Dustin and Rue as they move past them on their way to the living room. The two teenager's perplexity only grew.
"So, it's the Creel's house," Rue says, "The one where Vecna's first attack is dated back." She glances at Dustin, "Do you think Vecna's still hiding there?"
"Maybe." Dustin mutters and raises his brows before nudging her side playfully, "What do you suppose, Celestial? If we head over there, would it be the correct path?"
Rue shifts uneasily at the headline, and she turns to face forward. She's hesitant to accept she's the divine leader Dustin claims she is because a part of her still believes she's been corrupted, recalling flashes of murder in the back of her mind.
Your time has come. Let us feel your wrath, Celestial. Bring them all to their demise. My fist of vengeance, my fallen angel, you'll lead them all to their defeat.
"In your nightmares," Dustin begins, his voice becoming hushed. He politely reaches for her arm, halting her from stepping further forwards. They face each other, and Dustin has a look on his face that Rue doesn't quite comprehend. "You mentioned seeing a house, correct? Was it anything like this one?"
"I was in the house," Rue tells him, "I don't remember seeing it from the outside. And there's this one room. Just the one... and it's..."
She's cut off by loud static and Karen Wheeler's voice in the foreground. Dustin and Rue turn to see her conversing with her spouse. Ted Wheeler was fidgeting with the small radio on the kitchen counter next to him, blatantly ignoring his wife's complaints.
"Ted, give it up," Mrs. Wheeler sighs, "The radio's broken. Just go to the store and buy a new one."
"Why spend money on something that could be fixed?" Mr. Wheeler argues while he continues to press random buttons and change channels, resulting in more and more static.
"You're turning the wrong dial," Rue speaks before she can stop herself.
The two Wheelers stop in the middle of their disagreement and look at her. Rue's cheeks warm as they nonchalantly stare at her. Mr. Wheeler frowns, pushing his glasses higher up his nose. "Excuse me?"
Rue hesitates, her foot sticking out to take a step toward the radio, "It's... Uhm," She stutters, awkwardly approaching the man while her eyes stay glued to the radio. "May I?"
"Yeah, sure," Mr. Wheeler slides the radio closer to her. "Go ahead, kid."
Before turning the radio around, Rue gives him a quick approving smile. She picks on a few wires and twirls the antenna before turning the fourth dial and hearing the daily news over the speakers. Rue beams happily at the sound and hands the radio back to Mr. Wheeler. "There you go."
He takes it and looks at her questioningly, "Where'd you learn that?"
Rue steps back until she's standing next to Dustin again, "My dad taught me."
"Right." Mrs. Wheeler hums, "Mr. Newby owned the RadioShack."
"I helped out sometimes," Rue tries to shrug it off, "learned a thing or two..."
She trails off, never finishing her sentence as her attention is drawn to the reporter speaking from the radio. "The ongoing claims of the devil living in the heart of Hawkins slowly start to feel like a reality." They say, and Rue feels Dustin step closer to her as they listen in. "This spring break is filled with endless slaughter. Just a few days ago when the first body was reported, chaos continued in what we used to call our sweet boring town Hawkins.
"In the past few days, two Hawkins High students were discovered dead in Forest Hills Trailer Park, and four people have gone missing and have yet to be recovered. And today, I fear having to add to the dreadful list. This morning, six more personnel were reported missing. There are no signs of break-ins or odd behaviour in the neighbourhoods they were taken from, and residents claim that the devil is taking his victims in their sleep.
"The kids are calling it the Boogeyman, but we're wondering if it's all the same deranged man causing mayhem. Chief Powell has yet to respond to any of this, and terror continues to spread throughout Hawk-"
Mrs. Wheeler then turns off the radio. She has a pale face as she does it, but she attempts to behave normally about the news while Dustin and Rue are still in the kitchen. "I never liked listening to the news in the first place." She makes an excuse.
"The chief doesn't know what he's doing," Mr. Wheeler shakes his head, and he returns to unfolding his newspaper and hiding his face behind it, "If he actually did his job, then all of this would've been over days ago."
"I can't believe this," Another voice said. Dustin and Rue had jumped at the sound of it, and they turned to find Nancy and Lucas standing behind them.
"Six people?" Lucas says, his eyes wide as he follows Nancy towards the living room. "Six?!"
"I know," Nancy mutters as Robin and Max come out of the basement. "It doesn't make sense... but if we go to... maybe we can..."
Their voices fade away as Rue slowly drowns with the knowledge that she had something to do with it. The nightmare repeats again; faceless bodies with broken bones and mangled limbs lying lifeless on an old house's wooden floor. The crisp air between the trees of the woods surrounding the house, and hence all of Hawkins. She remembers her broken Walkman, her damaged sweater, the clothes, the blood, and the sound of bones snapping that makes her feel like a family of spiders are crawling up her spine.
The faceless bodies. Yesterday, she woke up thinking of four. Today, there were more than four. "Ten," Rue says under her breath, her eyes glued to the tiled floor of the Wheeler's kitchen.
Dustin frowns, "What?"
Rue turns to look at him, her eyes desperate before she grabbed him by the arm and led him somewhere they could talk alone. "Four yesterday, six today," She tells him, her voice dropping to a rushed whisper. "Dustin, I'm telling you, there's something off about this. If we go to this house, I have a bad feeling that it won't just be the answer we'll find."
Realization eventually dawns on him. "Do you think the bodies are there?"
"I think it's more than that," Rue answers, "This whole time, I've felt this string pulling me somewhere. . . . I think Victor Creel's house is where it's leading me," she suggests, "It makes sense. This house is in my dreams, and now Max saw it too. It's all connected. And... Vecna... I'm not sure but... I feel like it's all been right in front of my face this whole time."
"There's only one way to find out, you know," Dustin reminds her, "But I'll only go on your cue. If you don't think that it's a good idea, or that if you sense some sort of threat. Tell us. Tell me. And we won't go."
Rue pauses and thinks. She's chewing on her lip, and she knows it but she can't stop herself. When she thinks there's only one thing that recovers in her mind.
My fallen angel, you'll lead them all to their defeat.
"There's no threat that can hurt you yet," She whispers. It's almost a warning. "And it's not Vecna I'm talking about."
He holds his breath, "Rue, you don't still think you're the-"
"We're about to find out, aren't we?" She cuts him off.
Dustin was concerned when she said the next words. He had clearly begun to question everything he believed in, and Rue didn't need to use her abilities to see that. He shifted anxiously, but he tried not to appear phased, not for himself, but to comfort Rue. To remind her that she is good and only good.
But she found no comfort within lies.
"Don't put too much faith in me," She told him, "I'll only disappoint you."
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The Creel House was a tragedy. What had once been a grand family home, with stunning blue paint with white edges and a porch facing the small park across the street, was now ruined, boarded up, and abandoned, hidden within the woods that encircled all of Hawkins to fall apart and rot, much like the family that had once lived there. It was a home built up with love. Designed to foster family growth and happiness. But it was now a dwelling without hope, an evil entity to be feared rather than cared for.
If it weren't for the sudden wave of fear that punched her in the gut, Rue would have waved it off as another old house that was no longer a home. But there was a pressure that it exerted. A physical thing that squeezed the air from her lungs and made her teeth ache.
There was that something again, along with the fear. The invisible string, tugging and tugging at her finger until it ached. It was here, wherever the thread was leading her. It was right here. This house is what it has been trying to lead her to all long.
And she realizes it wasn't only the house it was leading her to.
"He's there," she whispers.
When Nancy hears Rue's voice, she hesitates to unlock the car. They're parked just in front of the house, staring at the mouldy concrete steps leading up to the mansion's front entrance. Nancy gradually begins to look over her shoulder, catching Robin's stare in the passenger seat before twisting in her seat to face Rue.
The girl was seated next to Max, and she didn't spare a glance at Nancy. She continued to look out the window, her attention drawn to the house that looms over them.
"Can you... you can feel him here?" Nancy asks slowly.
Rue hums, "Not exactly. But... the something is here."
"The something?" Now it was Steve's turn to speak. He sat in the back with Dustin and Lucas, and now Ricky, who had joined their group after Nancy informed him he couldn't drive back and forth from Reefer Ricks to the main road during the day since someone may see him and track Eddie down.
"What do you mean?"
Rue finally tears her gaze away from the house, and she realizes everyone had been staring at her. "There's just something. This energy or feeling. It's all over Hawkins, and it's coming from here."
"It's Vecna," Nancy reasons, and she finally unlocks the car and begins to climb out. Everyone follows her movements and shuts the doors behind them. "Hey, bug," Nancy walks up to Rue as she helps Max get out of the car.
"Yeah?"
"Are you going to be okay?" she asked, "you look like... I don't know. It's not pain but... whatever you say this something is, it's affecting you."
"I'm fine," Rue consoles her. Despite her concerns, she is confident that there is nothing in the house that might harm them. But Rue isn't aware of her fingers tapping against her leg in a frantic song rhythm. While her Walkman was broken in the depths of her backpack, this was the closest she could come to music. She frowns, "I wish you guys could feel it too... It's like an itch or a burn on my fingers. A tug."
"Don't let it get any stronger than that," Nancy tells her. "Try to ground yourself with something."
"Easier said than done," Rue tries to lighten the air with a bad joke. "I can't guarantee that whatever it is I'm feeling won't start having a greater effect on me."
"If it does, get out."
Nancy walks away before Rue can respond, thereby ending the conversation. Max follows Robin and Steve up the steps into the front yard of the house, while Dustin approaches Rue and Lucas and Ricky pass them.
"Say the word and we'll turn around," Dustin says.
Rue glances at him, "Not yet."
They joined the remainder of the group on the front lawn, where the grass appeared to be dying but was fighting to stay alive. They were all looking up at the house that towered over them. It seemed to taunt and belittle them as if they were insignificant, puny creatures daring to be swallowed whole by the monster.
The mansion's prominent features were dead, overgrown plants covering most of the house, peeling, rustic, blue paint, and boarded windows.
"Yeah," Steve began sarcastically. "That's not creepy,"
They proceeded through the old walkway that led to the house's front porch. The wooden boards beneath their feet creaked under their weight, and a still silence enveloped them once more, with nothing but the music playing from Max's headphones and their laboured breathing audible.
They notice that the door is not boarded up like the windows. A large wooden plank appeared to have been torn out of its place and now lay at their feet.
"That makes our job three times easier," Ricky mutters from Lucas and Dustin's side.
Max was staring at the stained glass on the door when Rue spotted her. It was a flower, possibly a rose, and if it hadn't been old and discoloured, it could have been a lovely addition to the house. Rue thought it was peculiar that a rose, a flower signifying innocence, was the first detail brought to the house.
If anything, it was ironic.
Then Steve grabs for the doorknob. He twists it in his palm, and Robin takes up a brick, expecting it to be locked and preparing to throw it through the window if necessary, but the door clicked and opened, much to her amazement, and pretty much everyone else's.
"It's unlocked," Nancy noted, and she sucked in a sharp breath before looking back at the rest of the group, "That's normal... right?"
"It's like he's expecting us," Ricky says. "Totally not creepy if you ask me."
The house's door opened slowly with a loud creak that made shivers crawl down everyone's spines. They paused on the porch, staring at the open door in front of them. Once they crossed that threshold, they were entering the demon's lair. A place where he would always have the advantage.
She took a deep breath. Dustin believed she was their divine leader, their guide. A prophecy set in stone.
And then Rue Newby stepped willingly into Hell.
The shift was immediate. Once she entered the house, the presence that she'd felt became almost overwhelming. But it wasn't what she had been expecting. It was all welcoming. As if this old, dusty house was her home.
She could almost hear the voice in the back of her head.
We've been waiting for you, Celestial.
A profound sense of wrong inked in her skin.
The light from outside illuminates the walls with peeling wallpaper and rotting paintings. Putting one foot in front of the other, she began to make her way into the foyer, deeper into the bowels of the building.
The door shut behind her, the rest of the group's footsteps echoing just after her own. When she glanced back, she found everyone passing flashlights to each other, gawking at the interior of the abandoned home. The stained glass flower looks brighter from the inside, red spilling from the glass like blood and reflecting on the wooden floor.
Lucas tries to switch on a lamp by the door while Max passes Rue a flashlight. The boy sighs and turns to face the rest of the group, "Looks like someone forgot to pay their electric bill."
Dustin then held up his flashlight, flicking on the switch to lighten the room, and everyone followed his actions.
Steve stares at the group dumbfoundedly, and he seemed to be the only one who had not packed a flashlight for himself, or even brought a bag with anything at all.
"Where'd everyone get those?"
Dustin turns to look at him, a look of incredulity on his face. "Do you need to be told everything? You're not a child."
Steve scoffs when Ricky snickers at Dustin's remark. "Thank you."
Dustin rolls his eyes, and he hands Steve his backpack. "Back pocket."
Rue fell quiet, her fingers brushing against the old wallpaper on the walls at her side. It leaves behind a thick layer of dust in her hands, and she rubs it off with her pants. Although the place was wrong and dangerous, it didn't seem to be posing a real threat to them. At least, not yet.
"God, what's that smell?" Robin sputters as she stalks past another hall.
"The smell of death," Ricky teases, a laugh spilling from his lips as he walks past her, playfully knocking his shoulder against hers.
"That's not funny."
"It is."
"No, it's not. Not when we're literally knee-deep into a haunted house where Vecna is probably watching our every move, breath, and blink as we speak."
Rue can't help but roll her eyes as Ricky and Robin continue to argue until Nancy is threatening them to stop it or they'll wait for the rest of the group in the car.
They stop talking right after that.
Rue walks closely behind Max as the girl makes her way down the hallway. Their flashlights are the only things lighting the way as they step deeper into the house. They look at the old painting hung on the wall and swerve past a broken bench and toys left on the ground.
The two stop by the staircase, but Max's attention was somewhere else. She eyes the tall grandfather clock, it towers over her, and her hand is trembling when she shines her flashlight at the clock.
Max glances over her shoulder, her hair falling out of the scrunchie, and she lets out a breath of relief when she finds Rue standing right behind her. "You see it, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Hey, guys?" Max calls the rest of the group, and they all slowly join her and Rue by the clock. "You all see that, right?"
Dustin and Lucas nod, "Yeah."
Nancy and Robin were the last to unite with everyone else. "Is this what you saw? In your visions?"
Max nods, never taking her eyes away from it.
"I mean, it's... just a clock. Right?" Robin asks. And she steps around Max to wipe the dust from the glass of the grandfather clock. Robin stares at it for a moment before turning back around, "Like a normal old clock."
"Why is this wizard obsessed with clocks?" Steve wonders, and then he theorizes, "Maybe he's, like, a clockmaker or something?"
Dustin and Ricky share a knowing glance with each other before Dustin rolls his eyes again. "I think you cracked the case, Steve," he mutters sarcastically and high-fives Ricky when Steve scoffs.
"The answers are here," Nancy pauses to glance around the foyer and she sighs. "somewhere," she looks at Rue and raises her brows, "Right?"
Rue frowns. As much as she wants to agree, she can't help but feel that if they were to find anything in this house, she would be the one paying the price. Either way, she sucks in her pride and nods.
"Okay," Nancy starts, leading the way. "Everyone stay in groups of two," she instructs, "Robin. Upstairs."
Robin salutes her, squeezing past the group to follow Nancy up the stairs while the rest of the group partners up.
Max turns on her heels, tearing herself away from the clock and reaches for Rue's arm. "Come on," she says, already pulling her towards another hall, "Let's go."
After a few seconds of walking the hall spat them out into a living space. It was dusty and dark, and the chairs and couches were covered with grime. Cobwebs hung in the corners, just as abandoned and haunted as the house around them. Max let go of Rue's shirt to approach a large painting in the middle of the space, its gilded frame tarnished and scuffed. She stared at it for a long moment before speaking.
"This place gives me the creeps."
Slowly, Rue came to stand beside her and shone her flashlight on the portrait. It was a family painting, the Creels, Rue quickly realized. A white man, his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, all with bright blue eyes and blonde hair. The eyes were ablaze and seemed too lifelike to be part of a painting. It felt like it was watching him, judging them as they stood before it.
"It's like, they're watching us," Rue murmured.
Max's Walkman clicks, indicating that the cassette has reached its end. She lowers her headphones to rewind the tape, her fingers swift to find the button despite the rubbed-off labelling.
Rue grins when she notices, "I can't believe you kept that."
Max looks up and furrows her brows, "What?"
"The Walkman," Rue points to it with her flashlight. "It was already old when I gave it to you. And it had this stupid stickers on them. And yet... you still kept it."
"It was a sentimental gift," Max rolls her eyes, "Why would I throw it away? Besides, the stickers were cute," she shrugs, "it was too bad when they fell off. I tried replacing them, but it wasn't the same."
"They were from Portland," Rue snorts. "When I was, like, six."
"Even more adorable," Max smiles, "On top of that. This bad boy ended up saving my life, so... I can't throw it away now."
Rue turns the other way, and her cheeks burn from how much she was smiling. She pulls on the straps of her bag, kicking her foot around in the air. The sunlight from outside peeks its way into the room from the small spaces between the boarded windows.
Rue sighs, "Kate Bush saved your life. It could have come from any old Walkman."
"And I wouldn't have heard of Kate Bush if you never added her to Our Mixtape."
She freezes. Rue's looking up at the roof, covered with cobwebs and then she spins to glance at Max from over her shoulder. "You listened to it?"
Max scoffs, "Why are you so surprised? You literally gave it to me. What else was I supposed to do with it?"
"I dunno. M' just a little embarrassed," She admits.
Rue becomes silent once more. She comes up to a wall shelf, thinking it's the most fascinating thing in the world as her fingers skim over the old literature. She then finds herself tapping restlessly on the bookshelf to the same music.
"Is that your favourite song?" Max approaches her. She nudges her shoulder against Rue.
"Hmm?"
"Everybody Wants to Rule The World by Tears For Fears. Is that your favourite song? I notice you keep tapping stuff to the beat of that song. I was just curious."
Rue's brow furrows in surprise. She hadn't even realized she'd been doing it, regardless of the tune. "I guess so."
"It's a good song. It has this nostalgic vibe."
"Nostalgic vibe? Really?"
"Yeah, totally."
Max's Walkman clicks again, and the tape has finished rewinding to the beginning. "All done," Max says, pressing the play button on the music player. Kate Bush's voice fills the gap once more "This will continue for another 46 minutes. I'm hoping I don't get tired of it."
"I doubt you will."
As Max goes to slip her headphones over her ears, an antiquity lamp by her side begins to light up. There's a faint thrumming sound coming from it, and as she gets closer, the flickering quickens to fast flashes.
"I promise I'm going to stop asking you this but... you're seeing that, right?"
Rue's breath shudders when she sighs.h "Yeah... I see it."
When Max approaches the lamp, it turns off again. They are once again surrounded by gloomy darkness until another lamp in the room turns on. They followed the light out of the room and to another area of the mansion, away from the rest of the group.
The Creel house is a living hateful thing, each doorway another mouth to swallow them, each hallway another artery pumping them closer and closer to the heart of it all. Letting Rue lead the way with her flashlight, they plunged deeper into the abyss.
Rue's fingers twitched as they found themselves in another short hallway. This one caught her off guard because the chandelier above them was flickering. The hallway has three doors, two on each side and one at the end.
There was a familiar buzz under her fingertips.
The chandelier dims and the lamp on the wall near the end of the hallway turns on. Rue interrupts Max as she attempts to follow it. She puts her hand on her shoulder and pulls her back.
"We should... we should go back," She whispers.
"What? Why?" Max asks, "This is leading us somewhere. I can feel it."
"Yeah, I feel it, too. That's why I think we should go back."
"Will it hurt us?"
"No, but-"
"Then I don't see why we can't keep going."
Max lifted Rue's hand from her shoulder, entwined her fingers with hers, and stepped into the hallway. The light glanced off the walls, the hallway widening the further they walked.
They came to a halt in front of the door and stared down at their feet. Dark red oozed from behind the door, and something rotten was on the other side. Max gagged as she rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater, a stench that made Rue's stomach churn.
Rue's sneaker had something hard under it. She moves her foot and notices a silver shimmer in the light of the flickering lamps. She instantly realizes it's one of the rings she'd lost, and Rue wastes no time kicking it under the small table next to them.
Then she finds the faint bloodied footprints on the floor. They match her shoes so closely that she feels dizzy.
The lamp on the wall kept flickering, brightening to the point where they had to squint at it. The light beckons the two to open the door, either to reveal something they will both regret or to flee like the cowards they were.
Max's headphones sat on her shoulders, and Rue could still hear Kate Bush sing the bridge of Running Up That Hill. And Max was squeezing her hand so hard that her fingers were nearly numb from the strain.
Max took a deep breath, ignoring Rue's protests as she set her hand on the knob. She twists it and pushes the door open.
They don't enter the room, and they don't have to. What they could see through the doorway was more than enough. The metallic stench of blood was nauseating. The dark red seemed to coat practically every inch and crevice of the room, and the sunshine through boarded windows cast a spotlight on the bodies sprawled on the floor.
Max screamed, utter horror tearing from her throat in a bloodcurdling scream. Her eyes are wide and petrified at the scene in front of her.
It was even more terrifying to see the room from her nightmares in reality. Rue trembled, her gaze drawn to the heaps of mutilated, ravaged corpses strewn on the ground, their blood dousing the dusty furniture.
Their eyes were frozen in time, dead and staring at nothing, while some were left with no eyes and one... one body doesn't even have a head.
There are chunks of crimson on the floor, and Rue isn't sure what they are. When she looks at the body of what used to be a girl her age, torn apart in heaps, and her shredded guts, like giant crawling snakes, her intestines had spilled all over the floor, pouring a dark green fluid that mixed with the blood, she gets an idea of what it could be.
There was a lot of blood. Rue had no idea how much of it was humanly doable. So many bodies were found on the ground. And now the faceless bodies from her visions have faces, making her feel like a monster as she's unable to tear her eyes away from the velvet bones peeking through bloodied flesh.
Max was crying now, which was understandable given what she had encountered inside the room. She was pressing her head against Rue's chest, her arms tightly wrapped around Rue's waist.
Rue was extremely slow to react. She felt as if her brain had become separated from her body, and she was seeing everything from outside of her body, looking down. Her return to consciousness was abrupt, and she winced. Rue hugged her back, and Max held her as if she were the only thing in the world.
There are echoing footsteps rushing in their direction. Rue's heart leapt to her throat as she embraced Max's crying frame.
She could feel tears welling up in her eyes, and they eventually dropped when she saw Steve and Dustin appear breathlessly at the other end of the hall.
"We heard screaming. Are you guys okay?" Steve asks and runs down the hallways towards Rue and Max. He places his hands on their shoulders first, his eyes wide as he watches Max tremble at Rue's side. "What's...?" He starts to say, but his breath is quickly stolen from his lungs when he spots the room filled with carnage from the corner of his eye. "Oh, my god."
"Holy shit," Dustin removes his cap from his head. He's running his hands through his curly hair, his distress erupting like sharp icicles. "Holy shit!" He starts to shriek. "Holy shit!"
The rest of the group ultimately finds them, and their reaction to the carnage is all the same. Nancy begins to push the children to the back of the group, and she shudders as she hears Lucas call out the name of one of his friends when he sees her laying dead on the ground, body mangled like the others, mutilated and crumbled to the floor.
The elder group was fighting before they knew it. Ricky was yelling about how they should never have brought the kids here and how he couldn't wrap his brain around the fact that they would have to live with this image in her mind for the rest of their childhood. Steve quickly agreed, leaving Nancy to defend herself because she claims she didn't expect to uncover something like this.
"Really? So you thought strolling into the home of a psychopathic wizard from another dimension would be like walking on air, Wheeler? Especially after what he did to Fred and Chrissy?"
"I didn't know! I was going out on a limb here! A shot in the dark! I didn't know!"
Robin Buckley had gone silent, much to their amazement. She was staring at the room blankly and even risked entering there, smearing her white Adidas red with sticky blood.
Rue notices Dustin's knowing look. As he stood next to Lucas, his face was pale, and he leaned against the old wall with peeling wallpaper. She tries to avoid looking at him since his eyes make her anxious and sick. Dustin was the only one who knew what she was up to. Maybe he knew she had hurt people, but after seeing what had remained behind her wrath, he stares at Rue with horror in his eyes.
It makes her feel small. Her friend fears her.
And he had every right to.
Something is now pressing against the back of Rue's consciousness. It causes her to wince and her chest to bulge. She doesn't understand the sensation at first, and she gradually pulls Max's arms away from her.
Max looks up at her, startled, "What are you doing?"
Rue doesn't respond since she doesn't know what to say. Her gaze is drawn back to the flickering chandelier at the hall's entrance, and a sense of fear enters her heart. The pushing continues, and she half expects to hear someone call her, but all she hears are the whispers and noises of those around her.
Her stomach twists and curls, plummeting like a roller coaster. A shudder runs up her spine, and she trembles, goosebumps appearing on her warm skin. She recognizes this feeling is familiar, and she realizes nothing good ever comes from it.
Her fingertips were buzzing once more. The buzz becomes a scorching anguish that spreads from her hands throughout her entire body. She's gasping for air after the wind is knocked out of her.
Rue recalls Nancy's caution before they entered the house. That if anything happened, if she felt anything pull her from her thoughts, she should get the hell out of the house.
Get out.
But she couldn't. Not while a voice she's never heard before whispers her name in her ear, beckoning her to follow the lights.
Rue doesn't hear Max calling her name, and she can barely feel her gripping her shoulders and caressing her face, attempting to divert her attention away from the flickering light at the end of the hall.
Rue tries to push Max away again as her surroundings blur. She feels hot blood start to run down her nose as she eventually breaks free from Max's grasp and wanders to the flickering lights.
One lamp flickers to life after another, and Rue's grip on her flashlight is lethal as she stumbles up the staircase. The invisible string is tugging again, the thread hints to her that she's getting closer and closer.
The feeling of something stretched through every corner and crevice of her mind, the energy drawing her in. It's calling her. It's chanting her name and the lights are flickering faster and Rue is running through the halls of the old house. Her shoulders knock into the walls whenever she turns the corner, but she doesn't focus on the pain.
Not while she was suffering under this feeling. It felt like darkness, like evil. It felt like hatred, anger, someone seething with despair and waiting for their time to strike.
This was a monster, a predator, stalking its prey and waiting for the best moment to attack.
Rue finds herself stumbling into the attic of the house. The space was much like the rest of the house, it was dusty and dark, covered with dirt and filth. Cobwebs and nests of spiders hung in the corners, abandoned.
She's out of breath. A thin layer of sweat on her skin as she looks up at the single light bulb hanging from the roof of the attic. It's flickering and buzzing, much like every other light leading her there had been. Under the light was a small desk with jars and an old carpet.
Rue steps towards it, her heart thrashing against her chest. But then she feels a hand on her shoulder. She jumps and nearly screams at the feeling, and she almost expected to find that man again. Tall, blonde with terrifyingly bright blue crazed eyes, and a white jumpsuit splattered with blood.
But he wasn't there.
Instead, it was Lucas Sinclair who stood behind her, seemingly just as out of breath as she was as if he had chased after her the whole time.
Soon after, Max and Ricky emerge from the stairway, followed by the rest of the group. Nancy is enraged, and she opens her mouth, undoubtedly prepared to scold Rue for breaking the rules about being with the group and never wandering off on her own, especially after they came upon a room filled with the remains of Hawkins' missing people. But she comes to a halt when she notices the flickering light.
"It's like the Christmas lights," she whispers.
"Christmas lights?" Robin asks.
"Yeah, when Will was in the Upside Down, the lights... came to life."
"Vecna's here. In this house." Lucas mutters, "Rue was right. He's just on the other side."
"You led us to him," Dustin walks up to her. Whatever fear he once had in his eyes was gone and replaced with a proud smile, "You did it."
Rue wished to correct him. That she didn't lead them to Vecna because the flickering lights had lured her there. She was simply following the summons to see where they would take her. But suddenly she shook in dread as she realized it was Vecna who had been calling her all along. He was on the other end of the invisible string.
"Flashlights," Dustin whispers when he sees his spark to life on its own.
The group huddles closer to the hanging bulb, holding their flashlights together and watching them glow brightly. Vecna was right there.
The buzzing at her skin never ceases, nor does the blood running down her nose. Tears well up in her eyes and roll down her cheeks as she stares up at the light. Rue seems unfazed as the glass bulbs in everyone's flashlights shatter and burst. She could feel the little glass from her flashlight scratching the skin on her neck and chin, but she was too lost in her thoughts to care.
"I've been waiting for you, Celestial. And you've found your way home at once. I feel the pain inside of you, Ruth Davis. Your guilt. Your mind, I can feel it. Fractured. Broken. Most fascinating. It's perfect. Your strength has grown with every life you've consumed, and you've proved to me that you are the perfect candidate to be my fist of vengeance. As my fallen angel."
a/n: "what about ember?" rue ain't give 2 fucks about her rn 💀💀 she's got bigger problems, i can promise you that.
this felt like two whole different chapters but i don't want to keep breaking them. so now we have this massive chunk.
this is so weird, i don't have anything to say here. the author notes are usually stuffed with random rants i have but now i have none :( maybe the next one guys.
i'll just shamelessly plug my pinterest @parkersmaniaa and my tiktok @parkersmania
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