This chapter gave me strong season one finale Stranger Things vibes, kill me please bc this hurt me to write. There's going to be a death in this chapter so you should probably prepare yourself. It's the saddest plot twist you never knew you needed.
And please listen to the song above because it fits this chapter perfectly.
"The clown got Bev."
Lyds felt as if she was going to faint. Beverly. The only girl she had ever been friends with, best friends with had been taken by that fucking clown. It had already taken everything else from her, her sanity, her father, her happiness, but Beverly too? There was a line and Pennywise had crossed it. There was going to be hell to pay.
"We have to go now." She spoke quietly, "Before your Mom realises I'm here. We can't let her die Eddie..."
Silently, Lyds tipped her head back to stop the tears from falling, she hit her lip and clenched her fists. She'd lose it if they couldn't save Bev in time.
"We're not gonna let her die." Eddie placed his hands on her shoulders, "Please believe me Lyds."
"I believe you Eddie." She said almost in a whisper
The Kaspbrak boy smiled and pressed a soft kiss to his crush's forehead. She leaned into his touch and the two held each other for a short moment before they headed hand in hand to the door.
"What are you doing in my house? I thought I told you to-" Mrs Kaspbrak glared, but then her eyes slowly fell on the children's conjoined hands, "Oh... Eddie, sweetie, you need to step away from Lyds."
"No Mom."
"What did you just say?
"I said no!"
"Eddie you might think this girl is your friend, but she let you get hurt. I am your mother, I'm your mother and I'm only trying to help-"
"I like her! And she likes me!" He outburst, "And we've been kissing, Mom!"
"You." The older women turned to Lyds, "You've been- infecting my son!"
"No she hasn't! We're leaving, so you don't need to say anything else."
Eddie pulled Lyds by the hand around his mother but she quickly threw her arm out across the door, once again blocking the two teens inside the house.
"And just where do you think you're off to?" She grabbed Eddie's other hand but Lyds protectively pulled him out of his mother's grasp.
"Out." He lightly pushed Lyds behind him, "With our friends."
"Sweetie, you can't go. You're getting over your sickness, remember?"
"My sickness? Ok, what-what sickness, ma?"
Mrs Kaspbrak only stayed silent, her eyes stared uneasily between Eddie's angry expression and the Greystone girl hiding uneasily behind her son. She had no words to say, no words because Eddie didn't have a sickness. He didn't need his pills like she'd told him he did so many years ago.
All he needed in that moment was to get away from his mother.
"You know what these are?" The Kaspbrak child reached into his fanny pack and pulled out two small orange bottles of pills.
"They're gazebos! They're bullshit!"
"Placebos Eds..." Lyds mumbled in his ear, a soft smile tainted her rosy lips
Sonia Kaspbrak turned her pink sweaty face to stare at the two young children, her eyes stuck unblinking and her meat like hands clenched into a pair of sweaty fists.
"They help you Eddie. I had to protect you."
"Protect me? By lying to me? By keeping me locked inside this hell hole?" Eddie yelled in pure anger, "I'm sorry but the only people actually trying to protect me were my friends and Lyds. And you made me turn my back on them when I really needed them. So we're going."
"Eddie, please!"
Faster than lighting, the brunette boy pushed past his mother and pulled himself and Lyds out of the door. As fast as he thought were humanly possible, he grabbed his crush by the hand and lifted her onto the back of his bike before he climbed on himself.
"I have to get something Eds." The blonde spoke as Eddie pedalled down the street
"What? Before we help Beverly?"
"My Dad kept a gun in the drawer in his bedroom. My Aunt hasn't let me in there since he died, but I know it's there and if we're going to fight this thing then we're gonna need it."
"Okay." He nodded.
"You can grab Ben from his house across the street whilst I get the gun."
Soon enough the two-more than-friends arrived at the Greystone household and Lyds immediately found herself climbing from Eddie's bike and running towards the porch without even a simple goodbye.
"Not even a kiss?" Eddie joked, his confidence growing.
"Not this time Kasp-bitch!"
Noiselessly, the freckled girl opened the porch door, tiptoed up the stairs and entered her Dad's bedroom. Her Aunt was nowhere in sight, which in itself was gift from God Because Lyds knew that if her Aunt was in the house then she was dead. There would be no way she was getting that gun.
"Thank god." She sighed in relief the minute her hand brushed the cold surface of the gun, hidden away in the drawer.
Slowly she pulled it out of the nightstand, careful not to make a noise and she wandered back downstairs. The living room door had been left wide open and so Lydia could smell what seemed like gunpowder spreading across the hall from where she stood.
She wandered quietly into the living space, only to find her Aunt slumped across the armchair with a gun in her own hand and a bullet hole in her head.
"No... This isn't happening."
Over and over again, the child shook her head and clenched her eyes shut, and she prayed that when she opened them that her Aunt wouldn't be in a bloody pile on the green chair. But she was, she was still there.
And so Lyds found herself slumped on the ground beside her, despite everything her Aunt had ever done to her the young girl still cried and rested her head on the woman's knee.
"I'm sorry that he died. I'm sorry that this happened to you." She may her own gun on the ground beside her
Lyds could think back to a time before her aunt hit her, to a time where she had been her favourite relative and she would always sit that way with her. Her head in her lap whilst the older woman would read stories to her. It was those memories that she missed most, and so to find her Aunt in such a manner, it brought everything rushing back.
"L-Lyds?" A second voice spoke. It was her Aunt.
But when Lyds looked up her Aunt was still dead.
"Lyds! Get away from that thing!"
Her eyes flickered to across the room where Kim stood, alive. How could it be possible?
"Come here!" The women yelled once again and grabbed her niece by the arm, pulling her into an embrace.
"It's not real." She told her, "You have to remember it's not real."
"It's real enough for Lyds. It was real enough for Charlie, it was real enough Charlie, it was real enough Charlie!" The corpse repeated, laughs left its throat every time it spoke.
"Come on!"
Frantically, Kim dragged Lyds up the stairs, all the while the clown chased them. Just when the Greystone child thought that it was all over, Kim threw her inside her Father's bedroom and she locked the door.
Miss Greystone didn't speak as she once again scooped up her niece and placed her inside the closet, where she proceeded to climb inside and lock the door once again.
"I know you won't believe me, but that thing- we need to get out of here Kim. It's not human, it killed Georgie and it killed Dad-
"I know."
"Y-You know?"
"I know." She nodded
That was the moment it became apparent to Lyds that the closet walls were covered with news clipping and images of the clown, ranging from the 16th century to the 20th. Her Aunt had known the entire time.
It wouldn't be true.
"How?"
"Twenty seven years ago. It came after your dad, our friends and I. All of the kids we knew went missing and we only lived because it couldn't destroy the power between twins... We knew it would come for you Lyds, we just didn't think it would be so soon.
Your dad wanted to prepare you, but when that thing came back he never got the chance... as for me it felt like there was nothing left anyway. Without him I'm dead."
"No you're not-"
"I only ever hurt you because you remind me of the life that I'm not going to get to live. A life without him... I'm so sorry."
"Despite everything you've done, I love you." Tears fell down Lyds' round cheeks, "But I don't forgive you. I'll never forgive you- you bitch! Why do you make me care about you?"
"I'm sorry." She cried once again
Suddenly a tapping at the closet door startled them both into a deep silence, it was the clown. They could see it's glowing yellow eyes through the crack in the door. The tapping only got louder and louder.
"Oh Lyds..." The clown breathed out, "Eddie's waiting for you, all you have to do is come outside..."
"What are you afraid of?" The blonde ignored the clown and instead turned towards her Aunt, who was no longer crying and instead was wiping the tears away.
"I was scared of dying." She climbed to her feet, "But not anymore."
With no fear left inside her, Kim opened the closet door and stepped out only to be greeted by the clown that had used to terrify her so much when she had been her niece's age. Kimberly Greystone had always been afraid of dying, but now she was only afraid of losing the closest thing left of her twin brother. Lyds.
And that was why, after so many years of fighting and hiding and feeling powerless, she gave herself up.
"Kim, no!" The blonde sobbed, "Please don't do this! Please..."
"Goodbye Lyds." She smiled softly and in the blink of an eye, both Kim and the clown were gone.
For a moment Lyds was left alone with her back pressed to the closet wall and her arms wrapped around her own body, sobbing and crying and choking on her own tears, her Aunt was dead. She had done it to save her.
"Lyds?" Eddie's voice echoed across the house
"L?" Ben called out
But they were only met with the sound of crying from upstairs. Eddie knew who it was immediately and so with no thought of to whether it was real or not, he ran upstairs to help Lyds.
"Lyds!" He yelled out the second he saw her brokenly sat on the closet floor, "What happened?"
Eddie raced over to her and without giving it a second thought he scooped her into his arms and into his lap. Instantly she began to sob into his chest, her small fists gripped his shirt in her hands.
"Lyds talk to me."
"She gave herself up for me. She's gone Eddie..."
"Who? Who's gone?"
"My Aunt... She's dead Eddie, she let the clown take her so I could live. She's dead."
And for a while, as Ben stood in the doorway and watched over the two lovers, Eddie held his soon to be first love and Lyds cried for her father, for Aunt, and for herself.
"Eddie?" She looked up at him, her bottom lip quivered and her ocean eyes were filled with tear, "Promise me something?"
"Anything."
"Promise you won't ever leave me?"
"I promise." He locked his finger with her own
But not all promises were made to be kept.
Sappy: dictionary definition,
When you feel both sad and happy.
Example: me, Biri and Meg when Kim died :(((((