꧁꧂

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜰᴏʀᴛʏ-ꜰɪᴠᴇ: ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ᴋɴᴏᴡ

Once at the door to the Upside Down Wheeler home, Nancy opened it up, stepping in first while we held back momentarily, but Robin then followed. Unsurprisingly. The Wheeler home was covered, and I mean covered, in vines. It wrapped around the walls, the ceiling, each and every piece of furniture there, all of it was covered.

"Might be time to get a maid, Wheeler." Robin says. I'll cut Nance some slack; three kids lived in this house.

"Come on," Nancy seemed slightly out of it. "I don't want to stay here longer than we have to." While Eddie had just closed the door, Nancy and Robin began up the stairs, and I looked around, still. Something was off.

Nah. It's probably just the vines all around the house.

Eddie followed right after the two girls, and then Steve went after the boy. So, of course, there was no way I was just gonna stand there in the hallway of the Wheeler's home, in the Upside Down. No thank you.

Nearly stepping into Steve Harrington, I staggered back when he stopped at the turn of the staircase. Sir? Do you want to be murdered by Vecna? Before I could even start on him and his dumbass hair, I glanced over where he was looking with the singular flashlight we had as a group shining in the direction of the kitchen.

"Steve, what're you-" There was nothing there. What was he up to?

"Byers shut up." He tells me, still seeming out of it and concentrating. First time for Steve, obviously. I waited in the silence. Well, I thought it was silence.

But, then I heard it. Dustin's voice.

Oh my god.

Steve moved pass me while my eyes went wide, brain ticking away. How could we hear Dustin? We had never had connections from the Upside Down into the real world unless it was a Demogorgan, and it wasn't like we had the teeth, or the ability to open up our face.

"DUSTIN?" Steve shouted, looking around and shinning his flashlight around. So, if we could hear Dustin, that could mean that throughout the whole of Hawkins, Demogorgans could hear people, and where they were? Or was it just in certain areas? "DUSTIN?! DUSTIN?!"

I turned to the sound of multiple people now rushing down the stairs, now interested in why Steve was shouting so loudly. "CAN YOU HEAR ME? DUSTIN?!" Steve staggered around the kitchen as Nancy, Robin and Eddie turned the corner into the room. "DUST- HELLO?! HEL-HELLO?!"

The three of them stared at the boy like he had grown a head since they'd last seen him. "Maybe he really does have rabies..." Robin murmured.

"Steve- what are you doing?" Nancy asked, not believing that this was the same boy she had dated so long ago. How Steve was even alive after all of this shook me, really.

"HELLO-" Steve then turned at Nancy's voice, shinning the light on us all, also blinding the shit out of us. "HE'S HERE." Steve hadn't sounded so happy since realising he will never have to wear his Scoops Ahoy uniform again. "Henderson! That little shit, he's here! He's like- I don't know- Byers! Tell them!"

I felt all eyes on me as Steve looked over at me, so hopeful that I could back him up. "Yeah..." I nodded, glancing over at the other three teens. "We heard Dustin. And, I have no idea how, but it was definitely him."

"He's like... he's in the walls or some shit." Steve continued, trying to get me to agree. Okay, he needed to chill. Too much energy for me to deal with from one Steve Harrington.

"No..." I shook my head, confused.

"Shhhhh." He then tells me. "Shhh listen- listen." We waited for Dustin again, but there was nothing in return. Silence, now. "DUSTIN? DUSTIN!" Steve shouted around the room again, leaving the four of us staring at him, rather confused. "DUSTIN? CAN YOU HEAR ME?" It was quite obvious the answer was no, but we left him to it.

Just when I was about to walk away, feeling slight second-hand embarrassment, we then heard his voice. Dustin's. Again. All of us decided to join Steve's dumbass idea of shouting and looking for him. I still didn't get it, though. If Dustin was in the real world, which is what I was assuming here since it wasn't as though he turned up to our battle against the bats, why weren't we able to communicate back with him right now? And how the fuck was he communicating with us?

I thought more. When Will first went missing, things did start going on around the house. Mom was tearing the walls apart, hanging up Christmas lights in the house and even painting the alphabet on the wall-

"Alright, either this kid can't hear us or he's being a total douchebag." Steve comments, pissed off. The lights. OF COURSE. HOW COULD I FORGET. THE LIGHTS OH MY GOD.

"That's it." I say.

"What?" Nancy glanced over at me as I began around the house.

"WILL." I shout as I began to each light in the kitchen. Each switch, everything that had the chance of turning them on. "WHEN HE WAS IN THE UPSIDE DOWN, HE FOUND A WAY TO COMMUNICATE THROUGH THE LIGHTS."

"THE LIGHTS?!" Nancy shouted in realisation, agreeing with my thought.

"It's not fucking working-" I continued to curse at the lamp in the living area at it not turning on it any way. Of course, it wasn't working. There were so many reasons why it wasn't working. So why did it work for Will?

"Are we talking about those same scary Christmas lights you mentioned?" Robin clarified, with both her and Eddie following me. Poor old Eddie, I felt bad that he was now mixed up in all of this bullshit. He just wanted to sell drugs and play DnD.

"Yup. Those ones." I muttered, heading towards the main light switch, flicking it off and on, but there was still no chance. "Feel free to get a box if you need some for Christmas, we took them with us to Cali for reasons I cannot explain-"

"GUYS?!" Steve called from the opposite living area, closer to the kitchen. Well, hopefully that was that he found out something good, and not another problem. Making eye contact with Robin for a moment, the girl and I didn't hang around for Eddie to catch up with us while we rushed into the other room.

What the fuck was up with the chandelier?

A warm, orange light glowed around the chandelier in the Wheeler's living area. No, seriously, what the fuck was up with it?

Dustin's voice could be heard from afar, as he being in the real world wasn't the issue, but that he was just in one room over. Oh, this was fucking weird, man.

"Okay, I'm creeped out." I say. Maybe I just needed a really long sleep to cope with the fact I was in an alternate dimension, but I wasn't in the mood for haunted chandeliers. Nancy reached her hand out to it, and it only glowed brighter.

"Whoa..." Eddie murmured beside me. That's how Will had done it, then... As the four of them felt the weird light, oddly, and weirdly enjoying themselves in the queerest way possible, I finally brought up what I had first thought.

"Do any of you know Morse code?" In return, I got four sad, self-disappointed teenager's faces. Fuck. Well what were we gonna do with the lights now? Get Dustin write the alphabet on the wall?

"Wait does SOS count?" I glanced up at Eddie and stared at him.

⊹˚˖⁺

The group of us sat around Nancy's bed, waiting patiently for any light to appear. To be fair, the five of us seemed to be an impatient group, so leaving Dustin to do this didn't seem easy. If Max was there, chances are it would've been done much quicker.

"Seeing this?" We suddenly hear, a light beginning to appear on Nancy's bed as she reached out to it. Oh my god we actually could survive this. We heard the boy laugh proudly while I just raised my eyebrows. Okay. We were getting somewhere and had so far completely survived the Upside Down. "WE'RE NOT MOVING IT, BUT WE'RE UNPLUGGING IT. STAND BY." I then furrowed my eyebrows. Sir? How very dare you. Most of the light disappeared, then. "OKAY TRY IT NOW."

Nancy awkwardly sat there for a moment, thinking of what to do or say. "Uh- umm..." It would've been hilarious to me if she had drawn like a pair of scissors or something, but I held back that comment and watched as she drew the two letters: HI

"THAT WORKED!" We then heard after a moment of silence.

THANK FUCK. The five of us broke out into a little celebration, I won't lie to you. We were one step closer to home. One step closer to safety from the Upside Down.

After our momentary celebrations, Nancy reached out to the red glow, thinking of what to write or draw again.

S T U C K

"Mhm." I hear from Eddie behind us.

"Yes." Steve agrees. "Yes we are..."

After a second of waiting, we heard from Dustin. "Uh, you can't get back through Watergate?" I furrow my eyebrows at his words. Watergate...

"What the hell's Watergate?" Steve mutters over to us.

Oh my God. Watergate... Dustin needed new puns. "The gate we went through, it's in water and a gate. He obviously thinks he's hilarious."

"Oh..." Nancy pulled a face, underwhelmed.

"That's cute." Eddie commented.

"That he thinks he's funny or that he's decided to name a portal to another dimension?" I asked the curly haired boy, looking back at him.

Eddie thought for a second. "Both." He nodded in agreement with me.

"Um... no- okay- right- it's uh..." Nancy struggled with what to say next to Dustin, finally coming up with a word that described our situation best.

G U A R D E D

"Guarded? Watergate's guarded." Hearing the echo of Dustin's voice, we nodded, agreeing with what he was saying like he could hear us back. Eddie, behind us still, was applauding Nancy's input right now, obviously scared shitless. "OKAY, we think we have a theory that can help with that!" We then hear from him.

"Genius child." We all were relieved, as you can tell, considering Robin was calling Dustin such a kind word.

Except, the next things he said was said far too quickly, and it was hard for us to understand as much. "only gate- murder site-"

Silence. "Does anybody understand what he's talking about?" Nancy asks, but he had said too much too fast. None of us had a goddamn clue what he was on about.

"Nope..." I shook my head with the other four.

"No idea...." When reaching out, Nancy drew a simple ? in the middle of the red glow. Which Dustin did not like... if you couldn't guess that would happen.

I grimaced as we heard him shout over at us through the dimensions. "SERIOUSLY? HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO BE RIGHT ON THE MONEY BEFORE YOU TRUST ME?!" Dustin Henderson needs anger management pass it on.

"Jesus Christ..." Steve begins. "This kind's gotta get his ego in check." I pull a face over at the boy and his words. Coming from you?

"It's his tone, right?" Eddie then added on, ducking over to look over at Steve as he spoke. Oh my God the Dungeon Master wanted to get involved too, Jesus take the wheel I'm out of here.

"I know-"

Meanwhile, Nancy, Robin and I were trying to get us out of here. "Okay..." Nancy tried to bring the two boys back to topic. "So... so how far is your trailer?" She asked, then glancing over at Eddie.

"Seven miles." Well there was no way we were going to survive a seven mile walk in the Upside Down if that's what Nance is thinking.

"Nancy?" Robin called for her attention slightly. "Uh, I know your house is, like, weirdly, creepily frozen in time and shit, but haven't you always had bikes?"

⊹˚˖⁺

Without much time to waste after that conversation, we booked it (or biked it, if you will) out the Wheeler's door. Next stop, Eddie Munson's trailer. And hopefully back to the overworld. Back to Max.

Riding on the back of Robin's bike, I kept a tight hold of her. The lights on any of our bikes' lights hardly worked, with Eddie's every now and then flickering at best. But it wasn't like we needed much lighting, considering the sky above us kept flashing with lightning and different colours of red.

Passing the forest by on the way to the trailer, we saw it. Victor Creel's house. It was swarmed with bats and other dimensional creatures that we had no business in meeting. It gave me the chills just thinking that some, if not all of those creatures could literally take bites out us and consider it to be an actual meal.

Turning another corner, we pulled into the trailer park. Not lots looked different, it was just obviously more deserted at covered in monster vines. As we threw the bikes onto the bare lawn (sorry to the Wheeler family...), Robin spoke up, looking around. "That's gotta be a Guinness World Record: most miles travelled interdimensionally."

We walked towards the entrance to Eddie's trailer as I then looked over at her quizzically. "Hey, Robin? Is that your biggest request right now? To be in the Guinness book of World Records?"

Steve behind me spat on the ground, coughing a little bit. Maybe he did have rabies. "I just inhaled a bunch of that crap- it's stuck in my throat."

The door to Eddie Munson's trailer in the Upside Down opened up and we all walked inside, noticing that what was definitely not there before, was now there. And I hadn't even been in here before.

There, also glowing a dark red way, was a large, unopened gate looming over us on the ceiling. "Goddamn..." Steve murmured, clicking off the flashlight in his hands.

It glowed and made a weird noise as if it were full of a liquid of some kind. Ew. "This is where Chrissy died..." Eddie murmured, no one daring to really take their eyes off of it just yet. Vines surrounded its edges, like that was the only way it was truly connected to its ceiling. "Like... right where she died."

A noise came from it, and I pulled a face, something in the distance of its red, horrible glow. "I think there's something in there." Robin says. We all still did nothing but stare.

Something poked through, but didn't fully break out from all the vines and goo that made up the red. "What the hell is that...?" Steve murmured, like any of us would know. We, as a group, was made up of a hairstylist, a journalist, two dumbass lesbians and a DnD nerd, so it wasn't like there was too many braincells between us.

After another moment of silence, the same thing that had been trying to poke through broke the goo, with what was there of it splattering down to the floor. The group of us five dumbasses jumped back with a yell, watching as a single stick broke what was there of small hanging vibes and leftover goo.

Some of it dripped onto the Munson trailer floor as we neared closer to it, trying to see what was actually going on. When we did, though, my eyes went wide and the whole of my body took a moment to relax.

There, staring down, or up, at us, was Dustin, Lucas, Erica and Max. I don't understand the full physics behind it, considering I'm better at biology, but it was trippy, to say the least.

The curly haired boy laughed and waved down at us. "Hi." I just smiled up at them, more specifically at the girl with her hair braided. It had been a long day.

⊹˚˖⁺

Waiting patiently, the four of them got to work, finding something for us to land on as we were basically going to 'fall' back into the overworld.

Above us, Max and Lucas dropped a mattress on the ground. It looked as though it had never been cleaned since it had been bought... "Those stains are, uh..." Me, Nancy and Robin all looked over at Eddie as he tried to defend his case. "I don't know what those stains are..."

Dustin came into view before I could find myself to tease or bully Eddie for his... uh... mattress stains. "Not quite sure how these physics work." Dustin tells us honestly. "But, uh... here goes nothing." The boy threw us a long rope of knotted shirts and clothes together.

To my surprise, it stayed put, hanging in mid air between the two worlds. What the fuck... Dustin then let go from his side, and left it to levitate right there. Forget physics, this is quite literally magic, now.

"ALRIGHT, PULL ON IT!" He shouted at us. "SEE IF IT HOLDS!"

To my unexpected surprise, all eyes turned to me, the smallest, lightest, and the youngest of the group. "So, what, if it doesn't I'm the one who looks like an idiot?" I murmured, yet already grabbing onto the DIY rope.

After a second, I let all my weight onto this rope, and found that it hardly even moved. Holy shit. Cheering from the other end of the gate became present while I stared in pure disbelief, smiling as I looked around at the others, of who were seeming to just be full of relief.

Without actually thinking twice, I then continued to pull on the rope, one arm reaching further out and pulling the rest of my body before repeating with the next. I continued on as the four moved out of my way, only halfway through this realising I had left them hardly any time to move off the mattress.

Once back in the over world I then just let go, letting out a little yell of joy as I fell onto the 'landing pad'.

"Oh my GOD-" I sat up, slightly dazed before a girl then perched in front of me. Her red hair slightly messier than from when I'd last seen her, headphones around her ears in case of an emergency, while she smiled sweetly. Her freckles no different from a few hours ago from when I'd last seen them, her jacket slightly dirtier and her eyes still that perfect dark ocean blue. Yeah, that was my Maxine.

The girl pulled me off of the mattress, our arms entangled as I just found myself staring. "You really need to get that staring thing sorted out." The girl teases me with a single eyebrow raised. "You've got dirt on your face."

"Why do you sound surprised?" I then asked in return. Was I talking about the dirt or the staring? "I've been in a different dimension for far too long..." Before any of this could continue, though, something that we really, really didn't want to hear, was heard:

"NANCY? STAY WITH ME? NANCY? HEY?" 

"Vecna..." It didn't take us long to start trashing the whole of Eddie Munson's cabin. From his own bedroom to each and every cabinet that could've stored music. Unfortunately for us, Eddie had a very different music taste to Nancy Wheeler. Nancy was the type of person to listen to Abba and Cindi Lauper. Eddie, meanwhile, listened to bands like Metalica... And if you've ever listened to Metalica- yeah, you can tell the differences...

"STEVE SAYS TO HURRY UP." Erica shouted, rushing into he bedroom.

"YEAH, NO SHIT." Dustin shouted back at the girl.

"WE'RE TRYING." I shouted from a cabinet.

"WE CAN'T FIND ANYTHING." Max added on from beside me, looking back at the younger girl. If we couldn't find a secret stash of music by Elvis Presley or a-ha we were going to be in serious trouble.

"SERIOUSLY, WHAT IS ALL THIS SHIT?!" Robin shouted over at the curly haired boy, of who was now slightly offended. Slightly.

"I MEAN, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN LOOKING FOR?" He asked back at her, voice just as loud as Erica awkwardly stood at the doorway still.

"MADONNA, BLONDIE, BOWIE, BEATLES?" Robin only named a few as she held up a few of the boy's rock tapes. "MUSIC, WE NEED MUSIC!"

Eddie then took one of the tapes out of her hands, holding it up as he shouted again. "THIS IS MUSIC."