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c h a p t e r f i f t y - s i x
The earth once again rumbles the further into the woods the teenagers get, making Sam drop to the ground, not prepared for the shakes.
"Goddamn it. Here we go again," Eddie rolls his eyes.
"Second on my list of least favorite things, earthquakes. Seriously, I'm unsteady enough as it is," Robin adds.
"Tell me about it," Sam stands up, just as Nancy starts to run off. "Nancy?"
"Where are you going? Nancy!" Robin gains her footing, pulling Sam to follow the brunette.
"Nancy, when people call your name, typically you're supposed to respond," Sam scolds, growing tired of running.
Finally, they stop, having caught up to Nancy staring into the distance. A grin forms on Sam's face at the sight of a dilapidated Maple Street, spotting her once-perfectly tan house now a dingy blue color on one end of the cul-de-sac, and Nancy's house at the other.
It's a quick trek to the basement door, which opens with ease, allowing them to look around the tentacle and slime-covered basement. Sam pinches her face up in disgust at the smell, already dreaming of the shower she'd be taking once they get back home.
"Might be time to get a maid, Wheeler."
"Come on, I don't want to stay here longer than we have to," Nancy urges them upstairs, where Steve hears a faint noise, stopping him in his tracks.
Sam, ever so attuned to his presence, stops as well, asking, "What's wrong?"
"Do you hear that?" he looks around, prompting her to listen closely, not hearing anything.
"No..." she furrows her eyebrows, touching his arm. "Come on, let's go get Nancy's guns."
She walks into the room, spotting Nancy flipping through a bunch of flashcards, and immediately sighs. "You cannot be serious right now."
"Yeah, I know you care about your grades, but can the studying wait until we get out of here?"
"These are from sophomore chemistry. Look, Sam, you were in that class," she hands her the cards, which makes Sam furrow her eyebrows.
"What..."
"And this?" Nancy points at the walls. "This wallpaper, this is old wallpaper."
"Yeah, it's very 1982," Sam shakes her head in disdain.
"Not the point. This mirror went to a yard sale. And you," she picks up a stuffed bear. "You're not supposed to be here. I gave you to Cousin Joanna two years ago."
"Wait, my house," Sam mumbles, making them turn to her. "My house is blue here, that dingy powder blue it's been since I was a kid. But my parents repainted it last summer, it should be light brown. Nancy, do you have a planner here or a diary? Something with dates?"
Nancy narrows her eyes at that, picking up her bedside diary, and flipping through the pages. "I think the reason that my guns aren't here is because they don't exist yet."
"They... don't exist?"
"Shh, she's onto something," Sam hushes him, staring down at Nancy's diary entry.
"This diary should be full of entries. The last one is November 6, 1983."
"That's the day Will went missing," Sam meets her eyes with wide ones. "AKA the day the gate opened, right?"
"Right. We're in the past."
"Dustin! Dustin!" Steve shouts from the hallway, pulling them from their harrowing realization.
They run out, expecting some sort of danger, only to see Steve aimlessly walking around the living room, shouting Dustin's name.
"Hey, babe, what are you doing?" Sam hesitantly asks, confusion in her tone.
"Maybe he does have rabies," Robin whispers, earning a hit in the arm from the brunette.
"Hello!" Steve shines his flashlight in their faces, frantically walking towards him. "He's here. Henderson, that little shit, he's here. He's in the walls or something. Just listen."
Surely enough, they do hear faint echoes of the boy's voice, making them gasp and immediately start calling his name.
After several calls of his name, Steve sighs. "Alright, either he can't hear us, or he's being a total douchebag."
"Wouldn't put it past him, you've given the kid an ego," Sam jokes.
"How is that my fault? You're the one always encouraging him and shit."
"You taught him how to talk to girls-"
"Will found a way," Nancy mutters, ending the lover's quarrel.
"What?"
"Will. He found a way to speak to Joyce through the lights," Nancy explains, walking over to the lamps, and trying to turn them on and off.
"Can one thing in our lives just be easy?" Sam groans.
"Apparently not," Nancy shares a tired smile with her.
"Guys," Steve points his flashlight at the ceiling light, which was now glimmering with a glittery fog. "You seeing this?"
Nancy puts her hand in the fog, moving her fingers around, which makes the lightbulb glow.
The rest of the group goes to join, looking in awe as the lights begin to glow. Sam giggles at the feeling of the fog, which very faintly touches the skin of her fingers.
"It tickles."
"It kinda feels good."
"Does anyone know Morse code?"
"No, I always zone out of that part of counselor training," Sam frowns, internally kicking herself for ignoring the many lessons at Tippecanoe.
"Wait, does SOS count?" Eddie asks genuinely, earning several looks. "Is that... good?"
"Well, go ahead," Sam crosses her arms, pointing at the light.
Just as they'd hoped, Dustin figures it out quickly, leading them upstairs to Nancy's room with a better method of communication.
"You guys seeing this?" they faintly hear, accompanied by more glowing fog right above the bed.
Nancy runs her hands through, eliciting smiles around the group. "We're not moving it, but we're gonna unplug it. Stand by."
Right after, the fog gets dimmer, and he commands, "Try it now."
Nancy then writes out "H-I," just to test if it worked.
"That worked!"
"Yes!" they all cheer, and she continues to draw out letters, spelling "STUCK."
"You can't get back through Watergate?"
"What the hell's Watergate?" Steve questions incredulously.
"Cause it's in water and it's a gate," Robin theorizes, making Sam snicker.
"Oh."
"That's cute."
"Right."
"Such a Dustin move."
"Um, no. It's..." she begins writing, spelling, "GUARDED."
"Okay, guarded. Watergate's guarded. We have a theory for that. We think Watergate isn't the only gate. That there's a gate at every murder site."
"What?" Sam mumbles.
"Does anyone understand what he's talking about?" Nancy asks the group.
"Nope."
"No idea."
"When do I ever?" Sam leans against the bed.
"Seriously? How many times do I have to be right on the money before you guys just trust me!" he shouts.
"Jesus Christ, this kid's gotta get his ego in check," Steve scoffs.
"Seriously," Sam shakes her head.
"It's his tone, right?" Eddie adds.
"I know," the couple responds in unison.
"How far is your trailer?"
"Seven miles," Eddie answers all too quickly.
"Why do you know that?" Sam furrows her eyebrows with an amused smile, making him open and close his mouth in attempts to come up with a lie.
"Nancy? Uh, I know your house here, is like, weirdly, creepily frozen in time and shit, but haven't you always had bikes?" Robin voices.
"Only 2."
"We can stop at the other houses, all of the kids had one by this point," Sam leads them downstairs before her face falls. "Except Bianca. Hers was broken."
"Wait, your skateboard. Would that work?"
"As long as we aren't going uphill, yeah," she nods.
"You skateboard?" Eddie whips his head to her.
"Keep up, Munson," she shakes her head with a proud grin, leading them downstairs.
_____
Eventually, they make it to the trailer park, each exhausted from the trip, especially Sam, who lets out a sigh as she gets off the board.
"That's gotta be a Guinness World Record. Most miles traveled interdimensionally."
"Just inhaled a bunch of that crap," Steve coughs. "It's stuck in my throat."
Sam pats his back, as Eddie opens the trailer door. They walk in to see a gate in the ceiling, giving them relieved smiles.
"This is where Chrissy died. Like, right where she died," Eddie frowns.
"I think there's something in there."
The gate then bulges out, making them all look on in disgusted fascination, before jumping back when it pops open. Confused, they get into defensive stances, Steve slowly approaching it.
"No way," he gasps, as the group is met with Dustin, Dawn, Max, Lucas, and Erica waving back at them.
"Holy shit, this is trippy."
Immediately, they get to work making a landing pad, bringing in Eddie's mattress while Dustin makes a rope out of sheets.
"Those stains are uh..." Eddie tries to explain, avoiding the judgmental looks of his peers. "I don't know what those stains are."
"I don't want to know," Sam holds a hand up, disgust evident in her expression.
"Here goes nothing," Dustin tosses the sheet through, and by some miracle, it doesn't fall, perfectly holding itself up. "Pull it, see if it holds!"
Robin does so, shocked to see it remain sturdy. "Guess I'm the guinea pig."
She then climbs up, successfully falling through the other side. Eddie goes next, followed by Nancy.
Sam grabs onto the rope, suddenly thankful for those tiresome days climbing the rope in sophomore gym class as she glides up with ease. Before she can fully reach safety, however, she lands on the dirt ground instead of the mattress, grunting in pain as the cool breeze hits her.
"What..?" She slowly gets up, looking around to review her surroundings, which seemed to be the Hawkins Elementary School playground, but different.
White particles floating everywhere.
Dead foliage instead of the beautiful spring flowers blooming.
Tentacles wrapped around the play structures.
"Vecna," she lets out a breath, fears rising through her body as she spots a girl sitting on the swing set, looking down at a purple sketchbook as she sniffles.
She had long black hair pulled into two French braids and continuously pushes her too-large glasses up her nose every five seconds. Just from the sight of her shaking form, Sam knew exactly who she was: herself.
But not the one that stared back at her in the mirror everyday. The one that she'd hid deep within herself, hoping that one day, she'd just disappear.
Slowly, she approaches her, startled as the girl snaps her head up, revealing an almost corpse-like face staring back at her.
"Remember me, Sam?" she taunts, standing up. "You have spent your entire life trying to bury me. Trying to change yourself so you never have to be me again. Weak, stupid, the outsider. But did you really think you could be anything better?"
"This isn't real," Sam fights the urge to believe what the figure is saying, shaking her head as her breathing quickens.
"We're not so different, you and I," the girl's voice shifts into a much deeper, more sinister voice, taking a step forward, which makes Sam take one back. "You were not like the others, Sam. That's why they hated you, just like me. We both want power, right? And we'll do anything to get it. Even kill."
"I haven't killed anyone," she argues, getting teary-eyed.
"Tell that to her. But we differ in one way. A strong person wouldn't change. A strong person would have gotten their revenge. But then again, Sam, when have you ever been strong? Everyone around you has made a real impact in the fight against me, but what do you do besides stand there and accept the glory when the fight is done?"
"I am not weak and I am nothing like you."
"You may not be killing anyone, Samantha, but let's face it, you are more than willing to leave people for dead. You don't care about anyone but yourself. It's admirable."
"That's not true."
"Then why didn't you check on Chrissy more? Was it because you didn't know or because you didn't care enough?"
"I didn't-"
"You let Billy beat Steve nearly to death because you were too afraid of what he might do to you instead."
"That's not true!"
"You wanted him and Robin to get caught that day in the mall, because, well, better them than you, right?" she continues to mock, grinning as tears run down her face.
"You're lying! I would never- I didn't- I'm not weak!" she shouts. "I tried to help them all. I came back for them."
"But you know they won't be coming back for you."
"Shut up!" she shouts and grabs a rock from beside her, knocking young her in the head before running into the school.
Instead of the familiar interior of the school hallways, she finds herself in some sort of dreamscape, in fact, the exact one Max described the day prior.
A sea of red filled with destroyed pieces of the Creel House that almost seemed neverending. Hopeless, she would say.
"You and your friends think you're so smart, trying to look for me. I admit, you got so close. So close to the truth. I bet you loved old, blind, dumb, Victor."
"What do you want?"
"I don't particularly like being rushed, Samantha. I've been meaning to check back in, but I've been busy. And you, you've found some tricks to keep me away. But you can't hide from me forever. Obviously," he disappears, revealing Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick's dead bodies.
She recoils at the sight of her friends' corpses, hoping by some miracle that Steve would get her out of this. That maybe Eddie had an old Cyndi Lauper tape lying around, waiting for this moment. But the more cynical part of her couldn't stop thinking of the last thing Vecna said to her before tonight: "Don't worry, Sam, I'm saving you for last."
And well, that was more than enough to kill her spirits, because truthfully, Vecna didn't seem like the type to go back on a promise.
"You want to know why? Why you? Why me? Well, open your eyes and you'll see," he adds, before disappearing, only to reveal the front door to the Creel House.
She feels drawn to open it, knowing she probably shouldn't but what other choice did she have?
As she walks in, it immediately gets brighter, and she gets a firsthand show of what exactly went down with the Creels.
The new house, the visions, their odd, almost sinister son. He felt off to her, like she should be afraid, even if he was a child, and in this case, not real.
His obsession with spiders, and his apparent hatred for his family, all of it trickled down into the most shocking reveal of the night. That boy was responsible for all of it, including the deaths.
And that boy? He was Vecna. Henry Creel was Vecna. And he was also 001. Dr. Brenner's first guinea pig.
Meanwhile, Steve continues to try and shake Sam awake, heart racing at the fact that it seemed like they had no way out of this one. The Walkman was long gone, along with her favorite song, and judging by the group's frantic cries, Eddie did not have a single thing to her taste.
Her eyes widen at the revelation, making her back into the door of the lab, no longer wishing to be privy to Brenner's work as a tattoo artist.
It's then that he turns to her, eyes fully white as he smiles. "Your turn, Samantha."
Taking this as her sign to finally get the fuck out of there, she sprints down the hall, trying not to vomit at the sight of a bunch of dead kids in the hallways.
It was almost unbelievable that he could commit such a heinous crime, killing all these innocent kids for the sake of creating a humanity that he deemed acceptable, but she brushes that off, knowing she'd have time to dwell in the traumatizing imagery he'd shown her once she gets the hell out.
She ends up at the end of a long hallway, letting out a sob at the boarded-up door in her way. She takes in a sharp breath, breaking the boards down the best she can as she tries to ignore the footsteps approaching her.
"Oh Sam, come on. You know it's not time for you to leave yet."
"I'm not dying tonight," she mumbles to herself, ripping off more of the barricade, eventually breaking through, only to end up in an enclosed room.
"You're right, Samantha. I have much bigger plans. But I want you to be a messenger of sorts for now," he approaches. "Now sit down."
Without any force of her own will, she ends up tied in a chair in the middle of the room, crying as he gets closer.
"You got to know where it all started and now you get to see where you will end," he gets in her face. "And I want you to tell El everything."
"Please, don't," she sobs as his clawed hand hovers over her face. "Please, I can't."
"You can and you will. Tell her everything," he continues, hand getting closer as her eyes roll back, vision being filled with flashing images of a destroyed Hawkins, death and destruction.
Her entire family, dead.
Four gaps in the town.
A monster so big, so terrifying that it didn't even seem possible.
More monsters, everywhere. Killing, and destroying everything they knew. Everything they loved. Turning it into something unrecognizable.
And then... it goes black and suddenly, she's in Steve's arms, gasping for breath as he caresses her face.
"Sam? Luz, look at me, it's okay. I'm here. I'm right here."
She should find comfort in that like she always did. But right now, all she could think about was the fact that none of them would be here soon if Vecna's plan went through.
None.