HAWKINS
The school bell ran overhead in Mr. Clarke's class, sending the kids sprawling for the door in a frenzy.
"Remember!" Mr. Clarke called over the shuffling of sneakers and closing notebooks. "Finish chapter twelve and answer twelve point three on the difference between and experiment and other forms of science investigation. This will be on the test, which will cover chapters ten through twelve." He sighed, voice trailing off as the students dissipated through the door. "It will be multiple choice with an essay section."
Last to pack up their belongings, Mike, Lucas and Dustin excitedly rushed the desk with wide grins.
"So, did it come?" Mike asked, antsy hands tapping on the desk.
"Sorry, boys," Mr. Clarke said, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but..." His solemn expression flipped to a grin. "It came. Go see."
The boys let out an excited gaggle, bolting out of the science lab and down the hall to the designated A/V room stacked with cool technology.
"Yes!" Mike whispered, taking a seat at the desk that bared a brand new, top of the line radio.
Following in close behind, Mr. Clarke's happiness only grew at the sight of kids genuinely being interested in science. "The Heathkit ham shack. Ain't she a beaut?"
Dustin wiggled one of the static knobs as Mike played with the headset. "I bet you can talk to New York on this thing."
Mr. Clarke grinned. "Think bigger."
"California?" Lucas asked.
"Bigger."
Having slid the headphones on, Mike's brows lifted with the volume of his voice. "Australia?"
Mr. Clarke's satisfied expression set the boys into triumphant laughter, turning their attention to the massive device.
"When Will sees this, he's totally gonna blow his shit!"
"Lucas!" Clarke reprimanded with folded arms.
"Sorry," he winced, his mistake backdropped by Dustin's laughter.
Mike leaned in to the microphone as he swung into a thick Australian accent. "Hello, this is Mike Wheeler, president of Hawkins Middle AV Club."
Dustin snatched the headphones, taking Mike's place with a wide grin. "Hello, this is Dustin, and this is the secretary and treasurer of Hawkins Middle AV Club," he said in a peppy Dundee accent. "Do you eat kangaroos for breakfast?"
As Lucas grappled for the headset, they were apprehended by the Principal entering the A/V room.
"Sorry to interrupt, but, uh, may I borrow Michael, Lucas and Dustin?" he asked, pointing out each of the boys.
With nothing they actively knew they had done wrong, they were hesitant to follow their Principal into the hall where Chief Hopper and one of his officers waited silently. The walk to the office was quiet on the adults' part while the boys hummed in soft concern and elbowing each other in the sides.
Told to dispose of their backpacks and take a seat on the sofa in the principal's office, they hesitantly followed suit while Hopper and Officer Callahan took a pair of chairs across from them.
"Boys," Chief Hopper began with a light gruff, holding his hat in his lap, "Will Byers didn't show up at home last night and his mother is under the impression that he's missing." He held up a finger to stop their immediate questions. "I've been told that you were the last ones to see him after some kind of game night last night. Can you walk me through that and how he gets home?"
And without direction, it was one of the worst requests he had ever made.
All three boys broke out into specific recountings of the night not only at top speed, but over one another without care of who was being heard.
Hopper's brows lifted mildly, sighing as he waved a hand. "Okay, okay, okay. One at a time, alright?" He made direct eye contact with Mike. "You. You said he takes what?"
"He takes Mirkwood."
"Mirkwood?" Jim glanced to Callahan, his officer taking down what notes he could. "Have you ever heard of Mirkwood?"
Callahan shook his head lightly. "I have not. That sounds made up to me."
"No, it's from Lord of the Rings," Lucas replied.
"Well," countered Dustin, "The Hobbit."
Lucas' nose scrunched, turning in. "It doesn't matter."
"He asked!" Dustin stressed.
"He asked," he mocked bitterly.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Hopper shouted over the growing argument. "What'd I just say? One at a damn time. You."
"Mirkwood," Mike spoke up, "it's a real road. It's just the name that's made up. It's where Cornwallis and Kerley meet."
Hopper leaned back in the chair, looking to Callahan. "Yeah, all right, I think I know –"
"We can show you, if you want," Mike offered.
"I said that I know it," Hop interrupted flatly.
"We can help look," he defiantly replied, backed by Dustin and Lucas.
"No. No. After school, you are all to go home. Immediately. That means no biking around looking for you friend, no investigating, no nonsense. This isn't some Lord of the Rings book."
"The Hobbit," Dustin bit back.
Lucas groaned, smacking Dustin over Mike. "Shut up!"
Mike's lips pursed as the others hit each other with him crammed in the middle, the fighting only ceasing as Hopper lowered his voice.
"Do I make myself clear?" He stood from his chair, striking fear into their hearts of being arrested and never getting to play another video game again. "Do I make myself clear?"
The boys nodded, following with hesitant and quiet 'yes sir's as their hearts pounded in their chests.
Although they were scared, the boys were unsettled to think that Chief Hopper, former big city cop and now angry chief, seemed to have no interest in the curious case of Will Byers.
||
THE UPSIDE DOWN
Unlike home, there was no distinction between morning and evening.
There was only dark.
Will flipped over a sheathed bowie knife he'd been given in place of his rifle, turning it incessantly between his fingers as he followed in close pursuit next to whom he could respectively call 'Ten'.
If not for his watch, he wouldn't have been able to know what time it was.
And as it was nearing on two in the afternoon, there were still several unanswered questions. Questions of which Will had no idea how to ask.
Ten, wearing the same clothes she had been in when rescuing Will the night before, walked with a pure kind of confidence that Will had never seen before. Her backpack was re-racked with the matching set of tomahawks she seemed to favor and her impossibly long hair was tied up in a ponytail.
"Why did it go away last night?" he asked, breaking the silence that had followed them from the house into the main sector of town. "The Demogorgon."
She laughed softly at the name, glancing back to him. "The foul? It left because it was able to trap you here. He considered you his and then probably went back over to find more."
Will's brows lifted. "His?"
"His food," she said without pause, pushing through the heavy doors of the supermarket.
Like she had said the night before, there were a handful of freezer and refrigerators humming in the back of the store. The shelves were significantly different from that of the one he often went into with his mom, the shelves lacking what he always saw full. It was evident that the supply had been severely depleted.
"How can the foul travel between this Hawkins and the other Hawkins but we can't?"
"It knows where the weak spots are, I guess." She unfolded a large canvas bag that had been tucked under her arm, beginning to retrieve certain items from shelves that she knew like the back of her hand. "I don't really know what happened, honestly. It was like this whole place woke up last night. The foul, they're active, but this is something different. That's why I found you last night. I was just walking around the high school when the chatter started."
"Chatter?"
"You probably heard it when you first saw it," she said, loading up the bag as much as she could. "The noise they make that isn't quite a growl, but it's definitely not friendly. Like a chitter. They don't have eyes, so they use their sense to know where things are based upon their tones and inflection bouncing off of things around them."
"Like echo location?"
Ten nodded lightly. "Exactly. Normally I can go days without any of them being active or around me, but it changed last night. Like they woke up from a long nap."
"Was it because of me?"
"No, it was something else. Something just before that," she countered. "See, the worlds are supposed to be sealed off. Untouchable by one another. That foul that took you, it's like he's bouncing between realms. Out there to gather new food, back here to store it away. I think he considered you 'stored' once he brought you to this side, so he went back through whatever rifts or portals he's creating to go get more."
Although Will was hesitant to pick out things that he liked to eat, he finally caved at the thought of food and added his own items to the large grocery bag.
Having rounded everything up that would last a few more days, Ten glanced to Will as they exited the supermarket. "Doing okay, kid?" she asked mildly, leading the way to a relative 'home.'
"Yeah, I guess." With the knife's holster attached to a loop in his jeans, it softly tapped against his thigh as they walked along. He kept expecting there to be lights or cars or other people.
He couldn't remember a time he'd gone into town with his mom or Jonathan and there wasn't any movement at all.
"Do the cars work?" he asked as they passed a dormant Cadillac, a few of the streets and houses scattered with run down, dull cars.
"Some of them do. But that's also one of the triggers for the foul. They can definitely hear a car engine." Ten wedged open the door of the house they had slept in the night before, motioning for him to light the candle in the foyer. "I got tailed for thirty minutes all the way out of town before. They're definitely curious about cars."
Will's brows furrowed mildly as he struck a match and lit the candle, following behind Ten into the kitchen where she started to put away the groceries. "How old are you?"
Ten hesitated, pausing in the middle of setting away a bag of Doritos. "Fifteen, I think."
"You think?"
"What month is it?" she asked, attempting to brush off his confusion as she resumed unpacking.
"It's November," he told her, leaving his backpack at the base of the kitchen counter and hopping up onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. "Today is November seventh."
Ten nodded lightly, seemingly calm as she emptied the reusable grocery bag before tucking it by the fridge that didn't work. She clicked her tongue mildly as she rested her hands on her hips, meeting Will's intentional gaze as he waited for an answer. "What year is it?"
Will stared at her blankly for a moment as he registered her question, drawing back from his hunched position on his elbows. "What year is it?" he repeated loudly. "How do you not know what year it is?"
"I don't..." She laughed in panic, raising her shoulders. "I stopped counting after a while."
"It's nineteen eighty-three."
Her brows lifted, humming softly to herself. "I'm sixteen, then."
"You've been here for over a year?" he asked, astounded. A fear of himself having to remained crossed over him, unsettling the back of his neck as he recounting just a moment of running from the Demogorgon, let alone doing it for a year.
"Yeah, over a year, I'd say," she responded quietly, averting her attention from him.
"Ten, how long have you been here?"
Grudgingly meeting his eyes, her mouth opened and closed twice before she could get the words out. "I got here in July..."
Will's eyes narrowed as he raised from his seat. "What year?"
Ten bit her lip, wincing. "Nineteen eighty."
Although he had been waiting for another number to follow, that's what he was left with.
July, 1980
His lips parted, eyes aghast as he searched Ten for some kind of joke, some kind of smile that would give it all away. That it was all just a dream, that he would wake up home, safe in bed.
But it wasn't a joke.
"Three years," he said to himself. "You've been here for three years?"
"Not just in Hawkins," she offered, able to see that she was losing him. "Like I said with the car, I was followed thirty minutes out of town. I've driven all the way to California and back."
"You've had plenty of time to do it!" Will barked, snagging his backpack from the ground and forcing his way out of the kitchen.
"Will, wait!" she called, grabbing the candle as she followed after him. "Will, please."
Will swung open the front door as he slid his backpack over his shoulders, heart pounding. "I can't just wait around here," he snapped. "I don't want to be here for three years. I don't want to be here for three days! I want to go home!"
Before Ten could reach the door, it was slammed in her face with Will on the opposite side.
With the commotion he had caused, there was no doubt that there would be interest in their location.
Ten swore mildly to herself, jogging upstairs with the candle in hand and stocking up with more weaponry from the display. She grabbed a thigh holster for daggers, strapping it over her jeans to add three daggers to her artillery. Retreating downstairs, she slid a water bottle into each of the side pockets of her backpack before heading out the front door, blowing out the candle and leaving it behind.
"I should have told him sooner," she grumbled to herself, setting off to the only place she imagined that he would have gone.
Albeit having only been to the Byers property once while simply passing by years before when mapping the area and once intentionally the night before while following the guttural sound of the active foul, she had no difficulty in tracing the path that Will was on maybe five minutes ahead.
The world around her was breathing in the normal, nearly silent way it always had, but an overhanging pulse of energy made her unsettled.
For once, when she had considered this false home tamed by her ability to live within it, the parameters changed.
The night before, at least an hour before she found the first person she had seen in three years, she had been painting at the high school studio without much care or thought as she often did. With her backpack to the side and armed with only a paintbrush, the sensation of chills ran down her spine, drawing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up.
She remembered that feeling – the uncomfortable realization that something was gravely wrong.
It wasn't long before she found Will, following the chitters of the once dormant foul all the way to the Byers' house.
Ten stopped short of the driveway, the air around her spiking in a tone of distant activity. She drew her tomahawks from her bag, rolling them over on her wrists with precision as she took quiet steps towards the home.
After years of hardship and fending for her life, her body had granted her the ability to sense the foul – small or large – within her vicinity.
And she had no doubt that the little boy who had just wanted to return home was being stalked.
Will's figure flashed across the living room window, wandering around the house in distress, and it was in her moment of assuring his location that hers was given away.
As her boot scuffed to harshly against the dirt driveway, an unnerving chitter came from the dense foliage surrounding the property. Her brows drew low as the bushes rustled, sound crashing in close as a guttural scream emitted, a dark entity bursting from its cover.
The front door swung open in time with Ten's tomahawks, Will's eyes growing wide as a slightly smaller version of his original attacker flew back from the brunette with dark blood spattering around it.
"Inside!" she barked, not taking a pause to look towards Will as slammed down her tomahawks onto the beast's throat, slicing it open but careful not to sever its head from the neck. She let out a puff of air to blow a loose wave of hair from her face as she straightened up, the medium sized foul ceasing to writhe in agony.
As she looked to the house, Will slipped behind the cracked door and out of sight, unable to follow her first direction and instead witnessing it all.
Ten's deep brown eyes closed softly, holding the bloody blades at her side as she walked up to the house, scraping her shoes on the porch before stepping through the slightly open front door. "Will?"
"Was that coming for me?"
Shutting the door behind her, she shook her head softly as Will appeared from behind the false security of the kitchen. "It doesn't matter. It's dead."
"You didn't seem scared."
Ten laughed to herself, retrieving a ratty towel from her bag and wiping the tomahawks before replacing them in the slots on her backpack. "Like you said earlier, I've had plenty of time. There are few things that scare me anymore, unfortunately."
Will took in a short, staggered breath, glancing around himself mildly before letting his eyes fall on Ten. "I don't want to be here for three years."
"I know," she quietly replied. "Trust me, I do. And maybe together we can figure this out. But until then, I need to make sure you're safe. That means you can't run off from me like that. I know I haven't done a good job of making sure you trust me, but other than me, there's no one else you can trust here."
"Then make me trust you."