"What was Will saying?" Lizzie asked for the fourth time.
"Like home... like home... but- dark?" Mike repeated, pacing.
"And empty," Lucas nodded.
"Empty and cold..." Dustin waved his head from side to side. "Wait, did he say cold?"
"I don't know. The stupid radio kept going in and out," Lucas said.
Dustin threw his head back and heaved a heavy sigh. "Urgh, it's like riddles in the dark."
Mike, who was still pacing in the middle of the room, turned around. "Like home... like his house?"
"Or maybe like Hawkins!" Lucas looked up.
"Upside Down," came a feeble whisper from the corner.
El was lain across the sofa. She still looked drained, but she was doing better. Lizzie was sat on the arm of the sofa, so when she heard this, she projected it.
"What'd she say?" Lucas furrowed his brows.
"Upside Down!" Lizzie shouted out, starting to realise.
"What?"
"Upside Down!" Lizzie yelled again, going over to the D&D board which was still the way El had left it the other day. "When El showed us where Will was, she flipped the board over, right?"
Lucas, Mike and Dustin followed her over to the board as she flipped the board over and back again, then continued. "Upside Down. Dark. Empty. Like home."
"Do you understand what she's talking about?" Dustin asked Mike and Lucas, who shrugged.
"Guys, come on, just think about it!" Lizzie begged. "When El took us to find Will, she took us to his house, right?"
"Yeah, and he wasn't there," Lucas pointed out.
"But what if he was there?" Lizzie asked. "What is we just couldn't see him? What if he was on the other side? What if- this is Hawkins-" she flipped the board to it's usual side -"and... this is where Will is-" she flipped the board again to show the black, empty back. "The Upside Down."
"Like the Vale of Shadows," said Dustin, referencing a D&D dimension.
Lucas looked unconvinced, Mike was looking to El, but Dustin got up, running to Mike's D&D rulebook. He got it out on the table and opened it, going through all the pages until he found-
"The Vale of Shadows," he said, putting a finger to the description and reading it out. "The Vale of Shadows is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world. It is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters."
He looked up, concerned.
"It is right next to you and you don't even see it."
"An alternate dimension," Mike said, eyes staring at the table.
"But... how do we get there?" Lucas said, slowly buying in.
"You cast shadow walk-" Dustin began.
Lizzie elbowed him, but she was laughing. "In real life, dummy."
"We can't shadow walk, but..." he glanced at El, "maybe she can."
All turned to El. "Do you know how we get there? To the Upside Down?"
El slowly shook her head. Lucas threw his head back in frustration. "Oh my god!"
Lizzie looked to Dustin who clenched his jaw. They were going to find the Upside Down.
They were going to save Will.
ꕥꕥꕥ
"Elizabeth? You okay, sweetie?"
Lizzie looked up from her mirror that she had been staring into for a few minutes to answer her mum. "Yeah, I'm just..."
Her mum came over and layed a hand on her eldest daughter's shoulder. "I understand," she walked away. "Come down in a minute okay? We need to get going."
"Okay, mum."
Today was Will's funeral. The Johnson's were, rarely, all awake and functioning at the same time, ready to go. Lizzie was wearing a tight black dress with flowers embroidered on the sides and a cardigan of the same colour. Flora was in a grey top and black skirt. Edith wore another black dress with long sleeves, and Robert was in a smart suit jacket.
Lizzie sighed. She knew that her friend wasn't dead, but she still couldn't get a bad feeling out of her mind.
She headed out her room and down the stairs to find her family, all ready to go.
"Hurry up, Lizzie!" Flora complained.
Even when we're going to a funeral she's sarcastic.
Anyways, after Lizzie got her shoes on, they headed out to the car, and went the short distance across Hawkins to the graveyard.
Lizzie met up with Dustin outside the car, as Mike and Lucas weren't there yet.
"You okay?" He asked her, for once nailing the "we need to be sad" instruction.
"Yeah," Lizzie sighed, knowing she couldn't say anymore; their families were watching.
Soon, the Sinclair's and the Wheeler's showed up, which meant Lizzie got to ask how El was doing and Flora got to go off with Erica.
The service was short and sweet. The Party stood at the front of the gathering and put their heads down. Flora and Erica were beside them, and their parents behind. Nancy and Jonathan (Will's older brother) were there as well.
At some point during the short ceremony, Dustin nudged Lizzie and said. "Imagine telling Will that Jennifer Hayes was crying at his funeral."
Lizzie rolled her eyes.
Jennifer Hayes was one of the popular girls at Hawkins Middle, in the Party's grade. She was the ring leader of a group of four or five girls, and even though she wasn't outwardly mean to Lizzie, she had made plenty of comments about how she was only friends with boys.
"If you're any example of what being friends with girls is like, I'm fine, thanks," Lizzie had replied to the group's laughs.
But anyway, it would be funny to tell Will about her crying.
"Sssshhh," Karen Wheeler leaned forward and quietened them down.
At the end of the ceremony, everyone got a white or yellow rose to throw into the grave on top of the casket. Lizzie, Dustin, Mike and Lucas congregated at the border of the graveyard, telling their parents that they needed some time.
"Right, what are we going to do?" Dustin asked.
Lucas began. "Well, we need the weirdo-"
Mike interrupted. "-El-"
"Yeah, El, we need her to tell us how to find it-"
"But-"
Lizzie was just scanning the graveyard as her other three friends talked, when she suddenly saw-
"Mr Clarke!" She shouted very loudly.
"Jesus, Lizzie! Keep it down!" Dustin laughed.
"Sorry, but- Mr Clarke! He's over there! Betcha anything he would know," Lizzie said excitedly.
"Okay," Mike said. "We'll ask him, but we'll pretend we're just curious and we're sad because Will's dead, okay, Dustin?"
Dustin put his hands up. "What did I do?"
Lucas laughed. "Every time we pretend to be sad you always come out with some dumbass statement like-""
Dustin rolled his eyes as Mike cut over Lucas. "Whatever! Point is, we need to talk to Mr Clarke!"
Dustin frowned. "When?"
"Now!"
ꕥꕥꕥ
"Mr Clarke?"
"Oh, hey there!" Mr Clarke turned round from the buffet table to see four of his five best students. "How are you guys holding up?"
"We're... in... mourning," Lucas said slowly and unsurely.
"We're quite sad about Will," Lizzie tried.
"Man, these aren't real Nilla Wafers," Dustin said, staring down at one. Lizzie nudged him.
"We... were wondering if you had time to talk?" Mike asked.
"We have some questions."
"A lot of questions."
"Let's go and sit down," Mr Clarke said, talking his paper plate with his food on it to an empty table.
Lizzie got straight to the point. "So you know how in Cosmos, Carl Sagan talks about alternate dimensions? Like, beyond our world?"
"Yeah, sure, theoretically," Mr Clarke nodded along.
"Right, theoretically," Lizzie nodded.
"So, theoretically, how do we travel there?" Lucas asked.
"You guys have been thinking about Hugh Everett's Many-World's Interpretation, haven't you?" Mr Clarke asked interestedly. The Party glanced between eachother before he continued. "Well, basically, there are parallel universes. Just like our world, but... just infinite variations of it. Which means there's a world out there where none of this tragic stuff ever happened..."
"Erm- that's not what we're talking about," Lizzie said awkwardly.
"Oh."
"We were thinking more evil dimensions, like the Vale of Shadows?" Dustin asked. "You know the Vale of Shadows?"
"An echo of the Material Plane where necrotic and shadow magic-"
"Yeah, exactly," Mike interjected Mr Clarke's explanation.
"So, if that did exist, a place like the Vale of Shadows, how would we travel there?" Lizzie asked curiously.
"Theoretically," Lucas added.
"Well..." Mr Clarke said.
He got a pen out of his jacket and took his empty paper plate, drawing two parallel lines close together and a stick person on top of it. "Picture... and acrobat, standing on a tightrope. Now, this tightrope is our dimension, and our dimension has rules. You can move forwards... or backwards."
He drew two arrows pointing left and right either side of the acrobat.
"But," Mr Clarke continued. "What if, right next to our acrobat, there is a flea?"
He drew a small circle with some legs beside the acrobat.
"Now, this flea back and forth, just like the acrobat."
He drew the same arrows next to the flea. "Right?"
"Right," all the four kids staring intently at him said.
"But here's where things get really interesting," Mr Clarke smiled. "The flea can also travel this way... along the side of the rope."
He drew a double ended arrow on the rope.
"He can even go... underneath the rope."
He drew his final arrow with a flourish, from the fly to the other side of the rope.
"Upside Down," Lucas and Lizzie said together, staring at the paper plate.
"Exactly," Mr Clarke gave a nod.
"But, we're not the flea, we're the acrobat," Mike pointed out.
Mr Clarke sighed. "In this metaphor, yes, we're the acrobat."
"So... we can't go upside down?" Lucas asked.
El might be able to.
"No," Mr Clarke shook his head.
"Well, is there anyway for the acrobat to get to the Upside Down?" Dustin asked eagerly.
"Well... you'd have to create a massive amount of energy," Mr Clarke explained. "More than humans are currently capable of creating, mind you, to open up some kind of tear in time and space, and then..."
Rip! He stabbed the pen into the paper plate. "You create a doorway."
"Like a gate?" Lizzie asked.
"Yeah, sure, like a gate," Mr Clarke shrugged. "But again, this is all-"
"Theoretical," Mike and Lucas repeated for the fifth time.
"But... but what if this gate already existed?" Mike raised his eyebrows.
"Well, if it did, I... I think we'd know," Mr Clarke said plainly. I don't think we would, Lizzie thought. Because I'm ninety percent sure that one exists in Hawkins.
Her teacher continued. "It would disrupt gravity, the magnetic field, our environment, heck, it might even swallow us up whole.
"Science is neat, but it's not very forgiving."
Lizzie glanced between Mike, Lucas and Dustin. Mr Clarke had known. But how they were going to get there... hell, if El couldn't get there, then no one could.
ꕥꕥꕥ
Rip! That sound came about again as Mike explained the "flea and acrobat" theory to El.
"It would take a lot of energy to build a gate like this, but that's gotta be what happened. Otherwise, how did Will get there, right?" Mike asked.
"Right," El said in a scared voice. Her eyes were still wide from the loud noise from the rip.
"What we wanna know is, do you know where the gate is?" Lucas asked, voice slightly raised.
El shook her head.
"Then how do you know about the Upside Down?" Lucas burst out.
El looked down, but then turned her attention to Dustin, who, unbeknownst to everyone else, had been pacing, looking at a small object in his hand.
"Dustin?"
"Dustin?"
"Dustin?"
"Dustin!"
Dustin looked up. "I need to see your compasses!"
"What?" Lizzie asked.
Dustin just looked at them with a distressed expression and repeated.
"Your compasses! All of compasses on the table right now!"