𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞:
𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬
Hardly ten minutes had gone by before Kayla shouted for the rest of the group a little more than ten yards from where they'd parked the car. Despite Stormi's constant reminder to stay together, it took a minute for all six individuals to surround the spot that had gotten their attention. Huddled like a football time at half-time, Dox, Stormi, Anna, Kayla, Evan, and Willow stood in a circle with all lights trained on the small, glimmering shape in the grass.
"Please tell me that isn't what I think it is," Stormi sighed as Evan bent down and took the object in his hands, wiping away the dew and mud from its surface. The shiny find was the size of Stormi's palm with a pin attached to the back, something that was supposed to be worn on a shirt or vest. It wasn't a surprise that the cops hadn't noticed it before; it was half-buried in the ditch surrounded by small shards of broken glass.
It was the sheriff's badge.
"Shit," Anna muttered, taking a deep breath and putting her hands on the top of her baseball cap, while everyone else shared similar reactions of mixed emotions. "This is not good, not good at all."
"She's nearby," Evan, the only person of the group to remain totally calm, spoke with confidence and slid the badge into his pocket. "We have to move now if we want to reach her in time." Red lights immediately began to flash in the babysitter's mind and she grabbed onto the back of the nearest kids' shirts - which so happened to be Kayla and Dox.
"Nope, not happening," There was no way in hell she was going to let these kids go after the sheriff by themselves, no matter how much crazy power Evan had in his arsenal. Her mother-instincts were kicking in at full-force and she was not going to deny them this time. "This isn't safe anymore, I'm taking you guys home and contacting the cops. Willow, grab the other two."
"I'm not touching Force-boy," Willow replied, but did manage to pick up Anna and sling her over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes before the girl could resist.
"Wait! Stormi, we have to stay!" Dox yelled in protest; Kayla struggled to break free as well, trying to unlock the teenage girl's grip with her lanky arms but failing to reach.
There was no discussing it; no way was she going to let these kids get into trouble again. She'd been stupid to bring them to the wreck site in the first place, and now she was going to have to wrangle them all into the backseat of her BMW without hurting them or getting one of her eyes poked out in the process. But at least they'd all be alive by tomorrow morning.
"Stormi..." As great as it was to have Willow hanging around these days, the tone in her voice was not a helpful one, therefore not worth Stormi's attention. If Willow was going to mock her for biting off more than she could chew, now was not the time or place. Though she did lighten her grip on the two kids a bit; Stormi had never been a "physical" kind of person with other people so this in itself was pushing her out of her comfort zone.
"Stormi-"
"I don't want to hear it, Willow," The high school student shouted over her shoulder. "You can make fun of my babysitting skills later."
"Stormi!"
She'd never spun her head around so fast. The pain that shot through her neck was like a snake-bite; it stabbed between her shoulder blades and soaked into her throat, up into her nasal passage and clawed the base of her skull. The resistance felt as if someone had put their hands on her temples and tried to hold her skull in place, looking straight ahead. Had she not been in such a frustrated mood, she wouldn't have been so hasty.
But all memory of the pain disappeared at the sight of Evan on his hands and knees, fingers digging into the soil and a dull humming sound beginning to vibrate across the ground.
Stormi released her grip on Dox and Kayla, though she made sure she stood between the two and whatever was happening with Evan. Willow set Anna down next to her as well; she also kept a grip on the girl's wrist in case she tried to do something crazy. At this point, there was no telling what any of these kids would do next.
"Evan-"
"Shhh!" Dox didn't hesitate to silence Kayla, who'd gone wide-eyed since Evan began this strange choice of action. The girl should've been used to his abilities after two years, but considering Kayla's relationship with Evan, no one held her wanting to make sure he was alright against her. Stormi understood completely.
If Evan had heard anything, he didn't show it. As Anna and Kayla began to shine their lights around the area once more, shadows danced across the grass where rocks, sticks, and general litter had begun to float in the air. The heavier objects remained closer to the earth, but the leaves and loose blades of grass reached well above their heads, skimming the branches above. The humming in the ground grew louder, harder, to the point where they could feel the vibrations through their shoes.
Though their lights could've just been playing tricks on them, Stormi could've sworn she saw something in Evan's eyes glowing. Like a blue ember buried beneath ash, it stuck out in the darkness just enough to leave her wondering if she'd even seen it in the first place.
And then all at once, it ended.
As if the breath from his lungs had been sucked from his mouth, the psychedelic boy gasped and the scattered floating foliage fell back into the dirt with an unceremonious thump. But before anyone could ask the human-experiment if he was okay, Evan stood up, wiped the tears of blood from his eyes, and pointed into the woods.
"They took her that way."
***
They didn't have much of a choice but to go deeper into the dark, although Stormi made sure to retrieve some of the loot in her trunk from their last dangerous adventure.
"Why do you still have all this in here?" Willow questioned when Stormi pulled out her own personalized weapon - a lead pipe with hundreds of shards of broken metal welded to its top and sides. "If the cops pull you over someday and see that, you're screwed."
"Considering our background with the sheriff," Stormi started and handed Willow what appeared to be a lawn-mower blade converted into a sort of make-shift machete. The girl took one final puff of her cigarette before dropping it, putting it out with the bottom of her boot, and grabbing hold of the weapon with a low, impressed whistle. "I'm pretty sure we won't have too much of a problem."
"How the hell do you come up with this shit?" Willow questioned and gave the blade a few experimental swings. "I mean, I'm not complaining." It made a satisfying swish sound with each movement and Stormi grinned at her obvious amusement. She might regret giving the ex-bully a lethal weapon later, but she was down with it for now. Better to wish you hadn't done something than wish you had.
"What? You guys get machetes?" Anna whined as she and the other three kids peered into Stormi's trunk. "I want something bad-ass too." She huffed and folded her arms over her chest in protest.
"Hold your horses, cranky-pants," Stormi swiped the girl's cap from her head by its bill and pulled it down on top of her own before reaching back into the trunk for something else. "You guys get to be cool too, just in a different way." She grabbed a handful of clothes from the farthest corner of the compartment and tossed one shirt to each kid. Dox, Kayla, Anna, and Evan all exchanged questionable glances, but slid the shirts on none the less.
"And how exactly are these supposed to be bad-ass?" The shirts were long-sleeved dark-colored, streaked with dull reds and oranges in some areas, reminiscent of a volcano's surface where tiny streams of lava stretched out across the fabric. Anna couldn't see it, but the pieces had mentally fallen together for the others.
"Camouflage," Kayla stated.
Two months prior, Stormi and her charges dove head-first into a world that wasn't there own, a world the kids' science teacher explained to be a universe similar to theirs but different as well. A year ago when kids began to go missing in their little town, ripped from their reality and pulled into an opposing plane of existence, the middle-school girls had thought about the place for awhile before coming up with a title for it; the Aligned. (They'd argued for hours over whether to call it other names like 'the Counterpart', 'the Equivalent', or 'the Upside-Down', but Dox ended up winning when they finally resorted to thumb-wrestling to put their bickering to rest. A year later they all agreed that it had a certain ring to it, though Evan was still persistent with the idea of 'the Upside-Down'.)
The Aligned was a place of sweltering heat, like the inside of a furnace, and the nightmarish creatures that dwelt there thrived on the high temperatures. Although they'd only seen a small portion of the dimension, an assortment of catacomb tunnels lined with endless rock-like vines laced with glowing red, it wasn't hard to assume how the rest of the dimension would probably look.
"I would've had matching pants made but Christmas was coming and I needed the money for presents," Stormi explained and fished out one last thing before closing the trunk: a black duffel bag filled with squirt-guns. "I think you guys remember how to use these, right?" They'd been Anna's idea, using cold water as a defense against the demodogs (a name Anna had also come up with thanks to some imagination and an obsession with Dungeons and Dragons). The water had enough kick to make the creatures wriggled and writhe in pain; it was almost as effective as an actual gun.
"Thanks, Stormi," Dox grinned as he grabbed the biggest water-gun of the bunch, the Super-Sprayer 500, which contained almost an entire gallon of water on its own. The other three kids smiled their thanks as well as they loaded up on squirt-pistols and water-blasters.
"Before we do anything else," The metal rod-wielding teen scooped up a handful of mud and began to rub the dirt all over the kids' faces, starting with Anna first. The eighth-grader let out the longest 'Ewwww' Stormi had ever heard as she smeared the globs of brown on her cheeks and chin. "Willow, feel free to help."
"Don't need to ask me twice," Willow grinned evilly and started rubbing dirt all over Dox and Evan's noses and ears, despite their own groans of disgust and discomfort. "Gotta get everything covered, no clean spot left behind."
"You wanted to look bad-ass, right?" Stormi chuckled and wiped her hand across Kayla's forehead, the proceeded to 'baptize' her with the flecks of mud, causing a wave of laughter to rise up from the other kids.
Stormi still felt guilty for bringing them in the first place, but at least they'd be somewhat prepared now.
Grabbing a can of red spray paint from her trunk and sliding it into her back pocket, Stormi slammed the car shut.
***
𝙎𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨.
𝙎𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙛𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙝 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙨𝙬𝙚𝙖𝙩.
𝘿𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚.
𝙈𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩.
𝙁𝙡𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙧𝙢𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙠𝙞𝙘𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙡𝙚𝙜𝙨.
𝘿𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚.
𝙎𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢𝙨.
𝘾𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙥 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙮.
𝘿𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚.
𝙃𝙪𝙣𝙜𝙧𝙮.
𝙂𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜.
𝙒𝙖𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜.
𝙒𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜.
𝙊𝙣𝙚 𝙙𝙧𝙤𝙥.
𝙊𝙣𝙚 𝙙𝙧𝙤𝙥.
𝙊𝙣𝙚.
𝘿𝙧𝙤𝙥.
***
Jim Hopper always ran late.
It didn't matter what the occasion was, there was no possible way for the sheriff of Hawkins to ever be on time. He'd set timers, alarm clocks, he even just sat and did nothing until he thought the clock said the right time. But despite every last one of his efforts, Hopper was always the last person to arrive at an event, party, or date.
This time it was dinner. He'd promised El he'd be home by 7:00 and as he glanced at the clock on his truck radio, it was 7:45. There was no room for excuses; El was impossible to lie to when it came to things like this. In all honesty, he'd just forgotten about his commitment. She was going to be pissed, and there was no denying it.
"Shit..." He muttered under his breath as he drove, his headlights leading the way through the darkness and he put his foot on the gas. It wasn't like anyone was going to pull him over; he was the damn sheriff. Going a few miles faster wouldn't hurt anyone. At least, that's what he thought.
Until a woman walked out onto the road.
It was as if she'd come out of nowhere, appearing from thin air like a ghost. A sudden wave of adrenaline rushed through his veins and he slammed on the gas, barely managing to avoid the lady as she stumbled backwards into the nearby ditch. It was a miracle that he hadn't hit her, or rolled his truck in the process of avoiding her, but Jim wasn't in a mood to appreciate the positives.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing?" He shouted in rage as he parked his vehicle and got out, slamming the door behind him and began to make his way to the ditch. It wasn't uncommon for drunks to wander along streets; he could remember himself doing that a few times back in his younger days. But this deep into the woods, there was no good explanation for this person's behavior. Whether they were intoxicated or high, Jim didn't care. He was going to take this idiot back into town and put her in a cell for the night. At least now he'd have an actual excuse for missing dinner. "I could've hit you, dip-shit!"
With his flashlight in hand, Jim walked up to the staggering lady and put his hand on her shoulder. "Hey, I'm talking to you!"
What he got in return was a hard right-hook to the side of his head. His vision began to cloud and stars that weren't from the night sky shone in the corners of his eyes, reeling backwards by the force of her punch. "Jesus!" He yowled as he felt the wet drip of blood sliding down his temple. "I'm the sheriff, lady!" Yeah, he was pissed, but he was never going to hurt her. Just as she was about to go for another hit, he latched onto her wrist and dragged the tipsy woman to his truck, pinning her hands behind her back and fumbling for his cuffs.
"This night just gets better and better-" A bony elbow to his gut knocked the wind from his lungs and he faltered for a split second - it was enough for the drunk to grab him by his wrist and switch positions, pinning Jim to the hood of the truck instead of the other way around. "Hey, you are assaulting the sheriff of Hawkins, lady!" He never usually pulled that card, but people had bad days and he didn't think this woman genuinely realized what she was doing. That was his assumption up until she ripped his gun from its holster and pressed the barrel to his bleeding temple.
"If you're the sheriff, what the hell does that make me?"
All it took was one glance at his windshield and he knew he wasn't screwing around with a normal delinquent, at least not one from this world. Even in the darkness of night, he could read the patch on the side of her coat, see the insignia of the Hawkins Sheriff Department. At first he thought she'd stolen it, but the glowing red of her eyes said something else entirely.
"You're coming with me."
It was the last thing he heard before she brought the weapon down on his head harder than he would've liked and the world turned black.