CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
THE MIND FLAYER

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LIZ WATCHED THE arguments like a tennis match as she stood next to Steve. The group was talking and arguing about when they last saw Will and Mike, and where they could possibly be, hopefully anywhere but in the lab with the monsters.

"The power's back," Nancy announced, interrupting and stopping the conversation between the two groups.

Jonathan immediately sprinted over to the white control booth that sat on the left side of the road, a few feet away from the large gate. He started jabbing at the button that was meant to open the gate, but nothing happened. He continued hastily jabbing at the button, confused at why it wasn't opening if the power was on.

"Let me try," Dustin says, going into the small control box with Jonathan.

"Hang on—"

Dustin pushed him out of the way, "Let me try, Jonathan!"

Dustin proceeded to do the same thing that Jonathan had done but just like before, the gate didn't budge, not even an inch. Liz sighed in frustration at not knowing if her friends were okay and not even being able to get to the place to check if they were.

Dustin groaned from inside the control booth, "Son of a bitch! You know what—"

Dustin proceeded to punch the buttons as if that would make any difference. Liz rolled her eyes and walked over to the entrance of the control booth, "Dustin, that's not gonna help. In fact, it might make break it or make it worse somehow."

"Liz, I know what I'm—" He started before the gate started sliding open. Liz raised her eyebrows in surprise while a huge smile made its way onto Dustin's face, "Hey! I got it! Told you!"

Almost as soon as the gate was opened, bullets were heard echoing in the inside of the building was heard on the outside which made Liz get chills all along her body. Growls and screeches were heard from both animals and people, and Liz was praying that everyone was okay.

"Guys?" Max said, her attention focused on the opening where the gate was. The engine of a car was heard speeding towards them and the headlights lit up Max's face. Liz quickly pulled her out of the way before she was hit as everyone else went to the side of the road to avoid being roadkill.

As soon as a truck pulled up next to them, Liz saw the words on the side which read, Hawkins Police Department. She sighed in relief once she saw Hopper in the front seat, "Let's go!"

They all hurried to get into the truck and Steve waited behind until all of the kids got in before he did. Liz sat beside Max and her eyes softened once she saw an unconscious Will in Joyce's arms. She was wearing a nurses scrubs that had some blood on them and Will was wearing a hospital gown. Liz's eyes widened but Joyce was quick to shake her head and put an arm on the girl's leg, "We gave him a sedative. He's okay."

"Why were you there?" Lucas questioned. "What happened to Will?"

"It's... it's a long story," Hopper answers for Joyce, who looked like she had just seen a ghost. "We'll explain when we get to Joyce's."

No one spoke another word as Hopper sped through Hawkins.

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As soon as they arrived at the Byers household, Hopper placed Will, who was still unconscious, on the couch. Jonathan and Nancy, who had arrived at about the same time as Hopper and the others, were kneeled down beside Will, holding his hand as Jonathan apologized to him. In the hallway, Hopper was standing by the phone on the wall, one hand held the phone up to his ear while the other was running through his hair in frustration. He was arguing with someone who clearly wasn't believing what had happened at Hawkins Lab not even an hour ago. Everything that happened had gotten explained to them the minute the arrived at that Byers household. Liz was sat at the table in the kitchen with the rest of the party, right beside Max, while Steve was leaning against one of the kitchen counters, while his infamous bat was next to him.

Eventually, Hopper hung up the phone, slamming it into the receiver with a sharp clash, alerting everyone that the people on the other line didn't believe him.

"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin questions, the only member of the party actually standing up, along with Steve who had now started pacing.

"We'll see."

Liz jumped slightly as Mike slammed his hands on the table, "We'll see? We can't just sit here while those things are loose!"

"We stay here," Hopper states sternly, "and we wait for help!" He left the room, going to find Joyce who was grieving in one of the bedrooms over her boyfriend, Bob. He had been killed trying to protect her. Liz had never met him but Will had talked about him before and she knew he was nice.

Liz toyed with her fingers in her lap and looked around at the house that was covered with drawings that were all apparently a part of the underground tunnels the Mind Flayer had created. She had nothing else to do besides study them and be disturbed at the fact that Will was only able to draw them, because of the thing inside him. Despite the threat of that, there was nothing they could do right now and they all knew that, but none of them liked it.

   Liz watched as Mike stood up, and picked up a small blue box, bringing it over to the table, "Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV? He petitioned the school to start it and everything. And then, he had a fundraiser for equipment. Mister Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?"

"Yeah." Liz, Dustin, and Lucas smiled in unison.

"We can't let him die in vain," Mike states.

"Well, what do you wanna do, Mike?" Dustin yells. "The Chief's right on this. We can't stop those Demodogs on our own."

Liz furrows her eyebrows, liking the name, as Max raises hers, "Demodogs?"

Dustin pauses before explaining the name with hand motions, "Demogorgon. Dogs." He moves his hands together. "Demodogs. It's like a compound. It's like a play on words, you know–"

"Okay!" Max answers, as the whole the group gives him strange looks, except for Liz who thought the name was good.

"I mean," Dustin began, looking at Mike to explain why they can't do anything. "when it was just Dart, maybe."

"But there's an army now," Lucas continued.

"Precisely." Dustin agreed.

"His army," Mike uttered.

That statement made Steve perk up, "What do you mean?"

"His army," Mike repeated, but still only received confused glances from the others. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too." He looked up towards the hallway leading to the bedrooms and then raced out of the kitchen, "Come on!"

The others followed him as he headed towards Will's bedroom. By the time they had entered Will's bedroom, Mike was already spinning around, a drawing clutched in his hands that Will had drawn.

"The Shadow Monster," Dustin states, grabbing the drawing out of Mike's hands.

"It got Will that day on the field," Mike explains to the group as Liz remembers that day. She was the one who found Will as he was running out of the school and then got posessed on the school field. That was when she knew that something was wrong. "The doctor said it was like a virus. It infected him."

"So this virus... it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max pieces together slowly, along with Liz who was starting to get a better understanding as well.

"To the tunnels, to the monster, to the Upside Down, to everything!" Mike lists.

"Woah, slow down, slow down." Steve interrupted from the back of the group.

"Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will." Mike explained to Steve.

"And so does Dart." Lucas adds.

"Yeah. It's like what Mister Clarke taught us: the hive-mind."

"Hive mind?" Steve questioned.

Dustin looks up at the boy, "A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism."

Mike tapped the paper, "And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain."

"Like the Mind Flayer," Dustin said, his eyes widening which made everyone else's eyes widen — except for Steve and Max, who were extremely confused. Lucas eyes widened as he smiled, and clicked his fingers into a point towards Dustin.

Liz smiled largely and they all started to scramble around the bedroom, looking for Will's D&D books. Steve was sent to fetch Nancy, Hopper, and Jonathan while the kids looked for all the stuff they needed. They met up at the kitchen table a few minutes later. Dustin slammed down a heavy book opened at one of the pages close to the middle as the group surrounded him.

"The Mind Flayer," he announced, referring to the small, drawn, black and white image of some sort of alien dressed in strange robes. It's head rather large, and it's mouth replaced with tentacle like structures.

"What the hell is that?" Hopper questioned from the other side of the table.

"It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient that it doesn't even know it's true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers." Dustin rushed out, not giving time for questions.

"Oh, my God," Hopper sighs, "None of this is real. This is a kids game."

"No, it—it's a manual," Dustin explained, quite annoyed that he wasn't being taken seriously. "And it's not for kids. And, unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor—"

"Analogy." Lucas corrected, interrupting Dustin's rant.

Dustin's head snapped in his direction, "Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" He yelled loudly, extremely annoyed. "Fine! An analogy for understanding what the hell this is."

"Guys, this is not the time," Liz sighs, rolling her eyes at their bickering.

"Okay, so this mind flamer thing—" Nancy starts.

"Flayer," Dustin cut in, correcting her. "Mind Flayer."

Nancy pursed her lips, and sighed, "What does it want?"

"To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race."

"Li—Like the Germans?" Steve adds, trying to be helpful, but only ended up receiving confused glances from the rest of the group.

"Uh... the Nazis?" Dustin asked.

"Ye—Yeah, the Nazis," Steve agreed, his cheeks turning slightly pink from the embarrassment of getting corrected by a fourteen-year-old. Liz cringed at her brother and patted his back.

"Uh... if the Nazis were from another dimension, totally." Dustin agreed sarcastically, before moving on. "Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."

"It wants to spread, and take over other dimensions," Mike added, Dustin nodding.

"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it," Lucas explained slowly, gesturing with his hand to emphasize his point.

"That's great. That's great. That's really great. Jesus!" Steve rushes out, panicking slightly as he pushed off the table, walking away from the group as he pushed a hand through his hair. Liz didn't blame him, everything at the moment was stressful.

"Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything," Nancy continued, lifting the book from the table into her arms, "then if we kill it..."

"We kill everything it controls," Mike concluded.

"We win," Liz adds.

"Theoretically." Lucas finishes.

Hopper rounds the table, taking the book from Nancy's arms, impatiently, "Right, so how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?"

"No, no." Dustin chuckled softly. "No fire—no fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because—" Liz shook her head slightly as Dustin started going quiet, noticing Hopper's unamused face. She sighed as he decided to continue talking. "Because zombies, you know—they don't—they don't have brains, and the Mind Flayer, it—it—it... likes... brains." There was a short pause before Dustin sighs, "It's just a game. It's a game."

"What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper sighs, as he closes the book and throws it down on the table, trudging out of the room.

"I thought we were waiting for your military backup!" Dustin snapped, holding his arms up dramatically.

Hopper span around, "We are!"

"And even if they come, how are they gonna stop this?" Mike yelled. "You can't just shoot this with guns!"

"You don't know that!" Hopper argues. "We don't know anything!"

"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab!" Mike yelled.

"We know the monsters are gonna molt again!" Lucas adds.

"And we know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town!" Dustin adds.

"And we know that it already has Will and who knows how long we have until Will is gone and all that's left is that monster!" Liz adds, all four of them always having each other's backs when it comes to defending each other.

"They're right," Joyce's croaky voice rang out from the hallway. "We have to kill it." Hopper started walking over to her slowly, his gaze suddenly soft. "I want to kill it."

"Me too. Me too, Joyce, okay, but how do we do that?" He questioned. "We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."

"No, but he does," Mike spoke up. Mike's gaze was focused on Will's unconscious body on the small couch in the room across from the kitchen. He started over to Will slowly as he spoke, "If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know it's weakness."

"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore," Max said. "That he's a spy for the Mind Flayer now."

"Yeah, but..." He started. "He can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."

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[ 2347 WORDS ]

shit is getting real.