"This is it!" Ben announced
One by one, all of the losers dropped their bikes onto Ben's front lawn. It hadn't taken them very long to get there at all, surprisingly enough Ben actually lived on Lyds' street, something that had been unknown to her until that day. She couldn't believe she'd never noticed him before, neither could her friends.
"Dude, we live on the same street!" She told Ben.
"Yeah I know!" He called over his shoulder before he headed inside the house. How could she have never seen him before? She felt terrible.
The other losers followed him, but Lyds and Eddie stayed outside. With a kind hand, the brown eyed boy helped the older girl off the back of his bike, their hands woven together as her helped her to her feet.
Lyds feet met the ground, and before she realised it she had stumbled forwards, and then Eddie's hands were on her waist, holding her up straight.
The moment she saw their bodies pressed to one another, a strange feeling filled her, one that if she was asked she knew she'd never be able to explain what it meant.
Oh but it meant something alright...
"Uh-" she tucked her hair behind her ear, "Thanks Eds."
"It's no problem." He blushed, "We should go inside."
"Yeah..."
With their cheeks cherry red from blushing, and smiles on their faces so wide that they hurt, the two friends headed inside laughing and joking together, only to find their friends stood in silence in the middle of Ben's room.
"What the hell happened to you two?" Richie scoffed, "We're you sucking face out there or something?"
"Yeah, your Mom's face." Lyds rolled her eyes
That was when it became apparent to her that Ben's walls were covered with posters of missing kids, news articles on mass murders, and images of the explosion at the Derry Ironworks.
"Cool, huh?" Ben smiled to himself
"Not cool." Richie shook his head, "Nothing about this is cool. Oh, well this is cool right here- oh wait, no it's not."
"What's this?" Stan asked from where he stood
"That's the charter for Derry township."
"Nerd alert!"
"No actually, it's really interesting. Derry started of as a beaver-trapping camp-"
"Still is, am I right boys?" Richie lifted his arm for a high five, which Stan quickly pushed away.
"Ninety-One people signed the charter that made Derry, but later that winter they all went missing from the same place."
"The entire camp?" Eddie asked
"That's gotta be a lie, right?" Lyds furrowed her eyebrows, "Right Ben?"
"No. There were rumours of Indians, but no sign of an attack. Everybody just thought it was the plague or something, but it's like one day everybody just woke up and left. The only clue was a trail of bloody clothes leading to the Well House."
Ben stopped talking and allowed his friends to look around the rest of the room, but truth be told Lyds didn't want to take another look. Every single image in that room made her feel unnerved, all of the deaths and tragedies, but the one thing that really got to her was the news article hung in the very centre of the wall, of her father's death.
"W-Why do you have this?" She pulled it off the wall and held it tightly to her chest.
"What is it?" Beverly asked, "Lyds? Are you okay?"
But the blue eyed girl didn't speak, all she did was tremble. Gingerly, Billie took the sheet of paper from her hands and after taking one look at it he knew exactly why she was so upset.
"It's a news article..." He sighed, "On her Dad's death. She doesn't like to talk about it."
"I-I can't!" She choked out, "Get rid of it Billie! Get rid of it!"
Stan was the first person to reach her and as soon as he did he wrapped his arms around the crying girl's small frame.
"Lyds, it's okay. Breathe, you need to breathe."
"I cant S-Stan! I can't! Make it go away!" She begged, "Make it go away..."
Two years earlier, Lydia's father had died in a car crash, allegedly. That was what the cops told her, but even they weren't sure. There was too many ways he could've died, it could've been the impact of the crash, it could've been blunt force trauma from where he hit his head off the window, or it could've been when he had his arm torn off.
That's right. When the cops found her Dad's wrecked car, his body wasn't anywhere to be found, aside from the blood in the front seat and his mangled and chewed arm feet away on the forest floor, there were no signs of him. All the sad girl had to bury of her father was his left arm. The arm that It had chewed off.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know!" Ben cried out
"I-It's okay Ben." She leaned closer into Stanley, "You didn't know..."
It took another five minutes for Lyds to calm down, and in that time all of the losers joined her and Stan in a group hug. Each one of them cradled the girl until her broken pieces fell back into place, for a short while at least.
"I'm okay guys. I'm good."
"Are you sure?" Billie said
"I'm sure." She nodded.
Everyone let go, except for Eddie who couldn't bring himself to part from his broken best friend, and so he kept a protective arm around her shoulders.
"Where was the Well House?" Bill mumbled as the group of friends headed for the door.
"Somewhere in town I guess, why?"
"Nothing."
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Later that day, Eddie decided to leave his bike at Ben's and so he and Lyds walked home together. It was a sunny day, so neither one of them complained at all, they were just happy to be in one another's company, especially after what happened.
"Are you sure you're okay?" The freckled boy asked, "I hated to see you that way Lyds."
"I'm fine. You know I just don't like to think about what happened."
Eddie only nodded.
Silently, the pair crossed over onto Neibolt street where they continued to walk in a somewhat comfortable silence. With a smile on his lips, Eddie began to whistle using his thumbs which immediately brought a grin to Lydia's face.
(Shoutout to my best friend FarmerMegan2 for making this gif for me!)
"How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"That!" She pointed at his hands
"It's a secret." He winked, the brunette immediately rolled her eyes
For a while Eds continued to whistle and the older girl watched him wistfully, but he stopped the second they passed by the old abandoned house at the end of the street.
"That place gives me the creeps."
"Yeah, me too."
And it was just their luck, that at that very moment, when they were passing the house that gave both of them shivers down their spines, that Eddie's watch began to beep, telling him that he needed to take his next pill.
"Shit." He mumbled
"Jesus, just hurry up. I hate being around this place."
"Okay, Okay..."
Silently, the Kaspbrak boy unzipped his fanny pack, pulled his pill box from inside, which he then dropped on the ground, causing the pills to scatter in every direction.
"Fuck." He hissed as he began to collect them, "Lyds help me gather them up."
The two friends quickly picked up all of the pills and put them back into the pill box, both of them swearing beneath their breath as they did so. But it was just as Eddie was about to pick up the final pill that a third pair of hands reached out and picked it up.
"Do you think this will fix me Lyds?"
It was Eddie. Except it wasn't, because the real Eddie was on the ground beside her.
The pair of eyes staring into hers weren't his, not really. They were blood shot, to match his blood covered skin, the cut across his cheekbone and the guts spilling out of his stomach as he walked towards them. She was seeing it again, Eddie dying.
She hadn't dreamt it.
"What the fuck?" They both screamed
"Come on Eds!" Lyds was quickly on her feet and was dragging Eddie by the back of his shirt with her.
They both hastily ran, as fast as they could with their hands latched together and their palms sweaty. Never had Eddie felt so scared whilst holding onto Lydia's hand.
And then he was falling to the ground, and the demonic figure was coming closer, but just as quickly as he'd fallen he was running again, and this time he was the one dragging Lyds behind him.
"Fuck!"
This is it. They thought as they found themselves backed up against a fence and clinging onto one another for dear life, This is how we die.
The dying, evil, version of Eddie was nowhere to be seen, but in its place was a clown holding a huge bunch of big red balloons that covered its face.
And the two instantly held each other tighter, if that was even possible.
"Where are you going Eds?" The clown smiled demonically, "You and Lyds should really be getting home by now!"
"Come join the clowns Lyds, you and Eds can float down there! We all float down there! Yes we do!"
That was when it began to laugh, and the two of them both let out screams of terror at the mere sight.
"We're gonna die!" Lyds cried
"Come on L!"
Thankfully Eddie had found a gap in the fence and just as he had pulled Lyds through it, they heard the balloons pop behind them. The clown was gone.
The best friends lay on the ground together for a few seconds, neither one of them moved from the position that they had ended up in. Somehow, after Eddie had pulled Lyds through the gap in the fence, she had ended up partly on top of him, but neither of them cared. They only wrapped their arms around each other tighter.
"You saw it too?" He mumbled into her hair
"I saw the clown Eds. I saw it."
She pulled him to his feet and the pair began to walk away, faster than they ever had before.
"What about the leper?"
"Leper? What are you talking about?"
"You didn't see it? What was it you saw before the clown?"
That was when it all clicked in Lydia's mind. Eddie had seen his worst fear, a leper, a walking infection. And she had seen her own, not once but twice, and her worst fear just so happened to be him dying. Her worst fear was losing him.
"I- uh...."
And for some reason she wasn't ready for him to know that just yet.
"I saw- a uh- I saw a zombie. It was so horrible Eds. I thought it was gonna kill us."
"It's over." He pulled her into a soft hug, his fingered curled the tips of her hair between them.
"We're safe."
They weren't ever safe. They never would be again, and it was only a matter of time before they realised it.