꧁꧂
ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜰᴏʀᴛʏ-ᴏɴᴇ: ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ᴋɴᴏᴡ
Sat at the Wheeler's dining table, I fought for my life as I tried to hold back from falling asleep. Much harder than you'd think when you'd been up as late as I had been with Maxine.
"Morning guys." I jolted up, staring as I looked around. I'd definitely fallen asleep. Glancing around, I rubbed my eyes as I did so, trying to catch up with what was going on. Mrs Wheeler was cooking something; Mr Wheeler was reading his newspaper while Holly was doing whatever with her lightboard. Max, meanwhile, was... drawing.
"Oh..." I furrowed my eyebrows as I looked over at them.
"Everything okay?" Mrs Wheeler asks as both Nancy and Dustin stood there, breathing out what seemed to be a sigh of relief.
I furrowed my eyebrows over at Nancy as she stared at us both. "Yeah..." The girl says. "Yeah, everything's okay."
Max looks up at me, confused as I then gestured over at the two across the room. "I think it's so sweet that you guys are sticking together like this." If only she knew two sapphic couples had gotten together in the last few hours in the same house in one go.
"Could try sticking together at a different house for a change." We all heard Ted mutter from his newspaper. Okay, Ted, you try fighting a monster from an alternate dimension.
As I looked back down at the drawings, I found myself looking through each of them in detail. Not to say I was now worrying even more because of some artwork, but the last time someone had done drawings with crayons around me, the shadow monster was involved. I was panicking. Again. Yippee.
"Where're these..." I look over at Max as Nancy sat down beside me, causing the red head to tare off the headphones completely, along with turning off Kate Bush. "Hey, Nance..." I murmur with a teasing smile.
The older girl kicked my shin before turning to the red head next to me. "Hey... you okay?" She asks on a more serious level.
Maxine nodded, looking back at the multiple pages of drawings in front of us. "Just couldn't sleep..." She then looked over at me. "Someone kept insisting on Kate Bush on replay for some reason..."
I hummed in response; eyebrows raised for a second. "What a mystery..." I murmured, looking in all directions before we actually took in what was in front of us.
"But Holly let me borrow some of her crayons..." Max continued on. "We've been having a fun morning, right, Holly?" Max asked, getting a hum of a response from the youngest girl at the table as she didn't really look away from her lightboard.
"This is... what you saw." I say, looking between each drawing. "Last night?"
Max shrugged. "I mean... it's supposed to be." She said innocently. It's giving; I'm not an artist but- "I thought it'd be easier to draw it out than to explain it, but... not so much."
"Hey, it's fine." I tell her, eyebrows furrowed.
"Is that..." Nancy took one of the papers into the middle of all of us and my eyes went wide. Two bodies, bones broken, eyes no longer in their skulls.
"It was like they were on display or something..." Max explained, making me grimace slightly. Remind me not to invite Vecna to decorate my home. "And then there was this red fog everywhere..." She said, pointing out that each drawing's background being a shade of red depending on how much of the crayon had been used up. "It was like a dream... a nightmare."
"Do you think Vecna's just trying to scare you?" Nancy asks, while my eyes stuck to the image of the two bodies.
"With Billy? Yeah." Don't even get me started on that whole scenario. To say I now want to kill Vecna's ass for pulling such a stunt, is an understatement. "But when I made it here..." She said, gesturing to the red drawings and the bodies. "I dunno... something was different. He seemed... surprised, almost."
"What? Had he not expected you...?" I asked her, shaking my head in confusion.
"It was like he didn't want me there." Max then says. And when I say I never wanna deal with this Upside Down shit again? Then what?
As Max spoke, Dustin walked around to the side of the table that was free, sitting down his plate of pancakes. "Maybe you infiltrated his mind." The boy with the thinking cap says. Does this look like an X-Men comic to you? "He invaded your mind, right? Is it that big of a leap to suggest you somehow wound up in his?... Like Freddy Krueger's boiler room-!" The boy said excitedly.
"Freddy Krueger?" Holly then asked, all eyes on her. Oh fuck. Well this will be interesting.
Dustin thought for a moment. "He's a super burned-up dude with razors for fingers... and he kills you in your dreams-"
"Dustin." Nancy says, cutting him off quietly. "Seriously?"
The boy goes to tuck into his breakfast before he then suddenly realised. "Sorry..." He continued to Holly. "It's a movie." He added on, like that helped a lot. "It's not real." He confirmed to her before looking back at us. "Just... think about it." Thought about it. Hate it.
"What if you somehow unlocked a backdoor to Vecna's world." Dustin says. "Like... uh... maybe the answer we're looking for is..." He picked up a sheet of paper. "Somewhere in this incredibly vague drawing." He took another look at it. "God, we need Will."
"Hey, leave off of my two artists." I muttered over to him. "The skill doesn't matter, but what does matter is that we have these to help..." I say, looking around at all of them. "Even if they are extremely bizarre..."
Nancy suddenly took the sheet off of Dustin. "Is this a window?" The girl asks Max, holding it up.
"Yeah..." Max says as if it were not obvious.
"Stained glass with roses..." Nancy says, now not taring her eyes off of the paper.
"Yeah." Max nodded proudly.
"See? Maybe Max isn't so terrible after all." I add on, glaring across the table at a certain curly haired boy. He sends me a look in return.
"Yeah, well, it helps that I've seen it before." Nancy then says. Wow, way to back up my point, Nance. The girl began to bend the pages around like it was a special piece of origami, one piece after the other for each and every page. I had never seen a jigsaw quite like it, and we've done a lot of a board game nights in the Byers house, Upside Down themed and not.
As we all watched, Nancy then began to draw out an outline of whatever she had just made with Max's art with a marker, making it more clear on what was going on. Holy shit... "It's pieces of a house..." Max said, reading my mind.
"Not just any house..." Nancy adds on, drawing a final line of a window before picking up the door of the first drawing with the stained glass rose. The girl placed it front and centre of the house drawing. "It's Victor Creel's house."
The girl then stood up, picking up the other drawings and such around it before walking away from the table. "Where are you going?" Dustin asks, mouthful of pancake.
"Waking the others." Nancy says before continuing away from us.
Taking one glance at Maxine, the girl nodded, hand out for me to take as we then rushed off after Nancy. "WHERE'RE YOU-" But we were notably too quick for Dustin to shout at. Whoopsies, catch up, Dusty-bun...
⊹˚˖⁺
Getting out of car, I stared up at the abandoned house. Nope. Maybe it would be better if we went elsewhere? I'm sure there's a restaurant just down the road-
Meanwhile, Max was the first to rush up the stairs, her Walkman playing Kate Bush loudly as she did so, being followed by both me and Robin, of who was then followed by the rest of them.
"So are we gonna talk about it-" I began, remembering this was our first time talking since 3AM. The girl shook her head at me, along with a glare, which told me all I needed to know. Teasing material for later, though.
The group of us took a moment to look at the house before walking up to the porch itself. Each window was barricaded up with boards of wood, and the paint was dried and chipping off all across the home. Bushes and trees had overgrown at the front and sides of the building, making itself at home all across it like mould on bread.
"Yeah..." Steve says after a moment. "That's not creepy."
The five of us awkwardly stood where we were as Nancy and Steve stood at the bordered-up door, pulling the nails off of it to reveal the door itself.
"What exactly are we supposed to be looking for in this shithole?" Steve asked, looking over at Nance as though we were not also all there. Steve, I wish I could tell you that Robin and Nancy- *shotgun*
"We're not sure." Nancy replied to the boy's question, still picking at the nail with her hammer. "We just know this house is important to Vecna."
"Because Max saw it in Vecna's red soup mind world?" Steve then asked, causing me to glare at the back of his head. Someone tell him to be serious.
"Basically." The girl confirmed.
"Great..." Steve then muttered.
"Maybe it will hold a clue to where this Vecna creep is." I say, trying to stay as positive as humanly possible.
"And, why he's back." Dustin offered, causing me to nod. "Why he killed the Creels."
"And how to stop his ass before he comes back for Max." I then added on.
"Wait..." Lucas then said as the wood fell onto Steve and Nancy's hands. "We don't think he's in here, do we?"
My eyes then went wide, and I felt the color drain from my face a little. Shit. We hadn't thought this through. "Guess we'll find out." Max tells the boy, hand reaching mine and squeezing it tightly. Right. We're gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. We're fine.
While my eyes lingered over our hands, the two dropped the wood to the floor, revealing the stained-glass window. The window was nothing like the colors of Max's drawing, like they had been drained over time.
The door rattled as Steve tried to open it by its handle. "It's locked." He said, in case it wasn't obvious. "Should I knock, see if anybody's home?" Yeah, let's let Vecna know we're coming for his ass.
"No need." I glanced over at Robin. The girl held up a brick, smiling as she looked over at it before back at all of us. "I found a key." Icon.
The brick flew through the stained-glass window, making a large thud sound on the floor. The taller boy reached through the window to open up the door to the abandoned house next, causing the door to creek loudly when it did open up.
While grabbing one of the many lights from Dustin, we all followed after Steve into the house, seeing just how creepy it was indoors. Creepy! While I noticed Lucas try the lamp at the front door, I followed right after Max as she walked straight ahead.
"Looks like someone forgot to pay their electric bill." Lucas remarked as we continued on.
"Does he really think a haunted, creepy-ass house like this will have the electrics paid for?" I asked, eyebrows furrowed as I shone the light around to where I looked.
"Do you need to be told everything?!" I heard Dustin ask, making me glance back at him and Steve. Uh oh. "You're not a child."
Feeling Maxine nudge me, I looked away from the two squabbling and back to her. There, in front of us, a grandfather clock stood. The hands no longer moving, the clock was still, and had looked like it had stood there just as long as the house had.
"Hey, you guys?!" I called, not actually looking away from the clock.
"You all see that, right?" Max confirmed, making sure it wasn't two lovers who were just slowly going insane, instead.
"Yeah..." We heard from the two boys, both at completely different times. The group of us just stared at it, not knowing what to say. Max was in a lock with staring at this clock.
"Is this what you saw?" Nancy asks the girl. "In your visions?"
Max nodded, still not looking away. "I mean..." Robin began. "It's... just a clock."
"Robin?" I begin. "You should know in these situations just a clock is a very vague term." I say to her, making her eyes go wide, worried. As no one dared to actually move forward after my words of wisdom, I decided right there and then was a good time to take one for the team, mainly because no one else had the balls, though.
Holding a hand up to the window in front of the grandfather clock's face, I wiped off some of the dust, seeing none of the hands move. Nothing happened when I stared at it for another moment. "In the wise words for Robin..." I murmured, turning back to the others. "Just a clock..."
"Why is this wizard obsessed with clocks?" Steve asks, shining the light over at the clock, nearly blinding me in the process as I moved out of the way. Thanks, Steve. "Maybe... he's, like, a clockmaker or something?"
I'm losing braincells. I'm really about to lose my braincells due to the boy.
"I think you cracked the case, Steve." Dustin says sarcastically.
"All I know is," Nancy says, bringing us back to the actual reason we're here. "the answers are here... somewhere." She thought for a moment. "Okay, everyone stay in groups of two or more." She then said. "Robin, upstairs." I raised an eyebrow when Robin saluted the girl, following after Nance. If I knew any better-
"Come on, Parker." Maxine grabbed my hand before I could tease to her about the two older girls, guiding me away into another room.
⊹˚˖⁺
The two of us crossed over to the next room as Running Up That Hill played in Maxine's Walkman, the volume on full-blast as she hung the headphones around her neck to keep talking and speaking to me.
"Okay, so are we gonna talk about how they're flirting in front of everyone or-" When I spoke up after our long silence, I heard the girl giggle at the subject of the two older teens. "No, but really, how long do you think it's gonna take Steve..."
The tape clicked suddenly and she looked down, clicking the rewind button as we both awkwardly stood there, with me shining my light over at the Walkman to help her out. When she glanced up at me, she just smiled and shook her head. "And so the staring continues..." I heard her mutter teasingly.
"I just kinda wish that the song was on a loop or something..." I say back to her.
"We have it on a loop for forty-six minutes, Parker." She reminded me, making me smile again. Yeah... but still- "Anyways, I think we have bigger concerns." She tells me, gesturing back to the room we were in.
"Right... like Robin and Nance-" I joked, making her nudge me and warn me with a glare.
"I meant... like... what if, by listening to this over and over..." Max continued on a more serious note, and I just listened. "I get sick of it, and suddenly it's not my favorite anymore?" Ma'am? I don't wanna hear this shit right now? "Will it still work? Or will Kate Bush... like, lose her magic power or something?"
I shook my head, shining the light in my face to show the shock and fake pain she had caused me by saying the last sentence. "Kate Bush? Never. The same days that pigs fly, Maxine Mayfield." I say to her. Not dramatic at all.
The girl gave me a look when she then spoke. "You're a Kate Bush fan?"
I thought for a moment. "Ever since we danced in your room. Yeah- I mean, she saved your life. Of course I'm a fan." I smiled, then glancing away. Wow. That was cheesy. Whoopsies. "And besides, we're gonna kick Vecna's ass before the pigs are even possible of flying." I move towards the old piano in the side of the room. "How much you wanna bet if we play a certain combination of keys, a bookshelf will move and it reveal a secret room?" I then asked her, starting to play certain keys after the other, doing my best to recall what I had heard in the past.
The girl giggled slightly as she now stood beside me. "What's that from?" She asked, knowing it was too good to be my own piece of work.
"Oliver..." I murmured, smiling also.
She shook her head, smiling so sweetly and genuinely I should've taken a picture. "You're such a dork, Parker..." HER DORK
"Not my fault Oliver is a good musical..." I continued to murmur while she looked over at me.
"Let me guess, you're one of the theatre kids at Cali, now." She added on. Ouch. Okay. So maybe she knows me too well? Who knows. Guess we'll never- "I'll take that silence as a yes." She continued on while I found myself staring again. If I had a dollar every time I stared at Max Mayfield on accident, I'd be rich.
"No, I just..." I thought for a second. "I just really really find the idea of sitting with a bunch of other sad, annoyed, angsty teens who love to have a good old sing-a-long every now and then super cool and fun. I am not a theatre kid though..." I added on, causing her to laugh again with that same sincere smile. Shit. WE'RE GOING DOWN. AGAIN. THE LAUGH- "I was thinking..." I say. "After all this shit, with Vecna, I'll see if I can stay. Like... full time."
"Why'd you wanna do that?" Max asks. "The theatre group in Cali not good enough for you?"
Although her teasing made me giggle for a moment, I shook my head. "No. Cali doesn't... doesn't have you in it... so..."
The tape clicked suddenly, letting us know it was ready to play again, and we came into this awkward fumble as she nodded, smiling a little weaker than before. "All done..." She says to me, clicking for it to play again. "Work your magic, Kate." As we go to move away, we both stop dead, seeing one of the lamp flicker across the room.
"Now, I didn't play any West Side Story on this piano..." I murmured; eyebrows now furrowed as it did so.
Max began towards the lamp slowly, with me following behind her. "I promise I'm gonna stop asking this," Maxine says. "but... you're seeing this, right?"
"Yeah..." I murmur back to her, not taking my eyes off of the lamp. Without another word spoken between us, the red head reached her hand out to the lamp slowly, going to touch it and see why it was acting this way. Just as her hand touched the lamp, it then went off completely.
As Kate Bush continued on the Walkman for us both to hear, I tore my eyes away as I heard electrical current from the hallway, seeing another lamp begin to light up. When Max started towards the lamp, I followed right behind, glancing around in multiple directions as we both did so.
As we entered the hallway, above us the lights then lit, also, then leading onto another light on a far wall before it ended up as one light on the ceiling, next to the backdoor. The two of us stared, knowing exactly what this could mean. Danger.
⊹˚˖⁺
The group of us stood above one of the chandelier-like lights as it flickered from a more powerful light to a dimmer one.
"It's like the Christmas lights..." Nancy murmured finally, breaking our silence. Nancy, out of everything you could chosen as an example, you wanna talk about good-old, holly jolly, Christmas lights that absolutely haunted me for the rest of that Christmas?
"The Christmas lights?" Robin confirmed, confused by what Nancy was saying.
"Yeah..." Nance says. "When Will was in the Upside Down... the lights... came to life." That's a horrible way to explain it, but we'll let it slide.
"Vecna's here..." Lucas then says. Shit. Shit. Shit. Let me at him- "In this house." Hide in seek! But if you catch Vecna you get to kill him! "Just on the other side." Gonna need a gate to the Upside Down, ASAP!
We all stared up at the chandelier before it suddenly had all energy cut off, all of its light dying from it. "I think he just left the room..." Robin says after a second of awkward silence.
We all stood there in the silence, waiting for a light to flash again, but nothing. "Did he hear us?" Max asked, confused.
"I don't think he can even see us..." I murmured, eyebrows furrowed as I shone my flashlight around. I then nudged Maxine when I noticed. "Headphones, please for the love of God." The girl didn't even think of arguing, taking her headphones off of her neck and onto her ears.
"Wait- wait-" Nancy spoke up, brain probably going double the speed any of ours was. "Everyone, turn off your flashlights and spread out." Max clicked on Kate Bush as the girl spoke, throwing a hand out to mine and dragging me away as I turned my own flashlight off. I am not complaining.
"We're not gonna be able to see if we turn off our flash..." We were all gone but Steve tried his best to protest against Nancy's new plan. "lights."
We walked around for a moment, moving from room to room but getting nothing. Maybe Vecna had left the building? Or was that too dumb of a thought? Of course you can count on my dumbass to come up with those kind of thoughts.
"I GOT HIM." Hearing Robin's shout from across the house, the whole group of us found us rushing over to where we'd heard her. "GOT HIM. I GOT HIM." When turning a corner, I saw as the girl held up the flashlight as it flickered, then turning off as she brought the light back down. "I..." Robin seemed disappointed. "I had him..."
Then, Steve's light flickered, next. "Oh-" He began, staring down at it in his hands. "Whoa-" The boy stepped forward as it flickered, with the boy commentating to us like it wasn't obvious enough. "Oh- I think he's moving- he's moving- he's moving." OKAY, STEVE, WE COULDN'T TELL BY THE WAY WE WERE ALL MOVING.
We followed as we went around the house, up the staircase as the light in Steve's hands continued to flicker on and off, repeatedly. Just as we got to the top of the stairs, I then heard the boy curse. "Shit..." He says, still holding up the torch. "I lost him."
"No, you didn't." Max stepped through our little crowd of idiots, walking towards a door on the side, opening it up to reveal light in the distance. I would've been fine with it, too, if it were not a fucking creep-ass attic. No one moved and we stared, worried before Maxine went to go first, with my worried-as-shit-ass following on right behind her.
"It's an attic... of course it's an attic..." I heard Robin mutter while we all filed up the stairs. Max's headphones continued to blast Kate Bush as we were halfway up the stairs, with Dustin then calling out.
"Hold up, guys! What if he's leading us into a trap?!" He asked us. Thank you, paranoia. Respectfully choosing to ignore Dustin's words, as I didn't want to even think about it, we carried on up the stairs and into the attic. Sorry, not sorry, Dustin, I'm really really not in the mood.
Electricity was heard buzzing as we stepped into the attic itself, with one singular bulb shining and flickering to a dimmer power and back to a brighter one lowly in the middle of the loft. Now, not to say that this immediately made me assume that we were all in danger but-
The seven of us all watched the light as we crowded around it, few more confused than others. What was Vecna doing in the attic? Looking through old photo albums?
Suddenly, as he got closer, Dustin's own flashlight began to flicker. Shit. "Flashlights." He says to us all, with the whole group looking down at them to see the lights in their hands flicker, getting closer to where the light hung.
As the group watched, glancing from our flashlights and up to the singular bulb, Steve then spoke up. "Okay..." The boy nervously said. "what's happening?!" He asks, still quiet. One by one, from Dustin, to Max, to me and so on through the group, the light in our hands would brighten before dimming back down again. Seriously, what the fuck...
It continued to circulate between us before something changed. At first, it was Steve's flashlight that smashed. The glass that covered his light's bulb shattering into tiny pieces. Then, the same happened to Robin, moving on to Nancy, then Lucas and Dustin before me and Max. After the final bulb in our hands had shattered, the final light in the room then did the same, above us, the bulb broke to thousands of pieces, sending itself all over us and onto the floor. What the fuck...
a/n- i have returned.