"Her body just, like, lifted up into the air and, uh..." Eddie was beginning his explanation, but even at the start it seemed like this was becoming hard for him to do without choking up. He stares at the ground intently as I sit beside him, Dustin and the rest were in front of us. We all listen to him, "And she just, like, hung there. In the air." He paused a bit and then continued, "And her bones... Uh, she..." Eddie choked up again. He looked down covering his eyes a bit and sucking in the urge to cry. I looked over to Dustin who was kneeling in front. He didn't know what to say and neither did I.

      Eddie's hand was still in mine from before, every time his story became a bit more intense, he would squeeze harder. He looked in shock and wasn't staring at anyone in the eye. "Her bones started to snap." He looks up to Dustin, "Her eyes, man. It... It was like there was something, like, inside her head, pulling."

      No one knew how to respond, we hadn't seen anything like that being described and the way Eddie's voice trembled as he began to think about Chrissy's body being crushed, was a bit more of reassurance that I needed to know if Dustin was on the same boat with not having experienced a traumatic event as that.

      "I... I didn't know what to do, so I..." Eddie looked over to me now, hand squeezing a little harder, and his eyes looking desperate for someone to believe him. "I ran away. I left her there." He looked back and forth between Dustin, Robin, Max, and Steve and then back to me. "You all think I'm crazy, right?"

       "We don't think you're crazy at all." I interceded, but I think it just made him more pissed off that we might have been lying out of sympathy. "Don't bullshit me, (Y/n)! I know how this sounds!" I nodded my head a bit as I retrieved my hand from his. He needed some space, and I needed to give it to him. I could tell he noticed that his outburst had surprised me, because when my hand was fully on my lap, he looked at me, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

      "We're not bullshitting you."

       "We believe you."

       He looked away as Dustin began speaking to him, waiting for his attention to retrieve back to the original problem. "Look, what I'm about to tell you might be a little... difficult to take." My brother looked over to me and sighed, "(Y/n), you might want to pay attention to this too." I pursed my lips because all I could feel was a bit of betrayal from my own brother and friends, especially the fact that I didn't know any of this shit that was going on. It was understandable that our mother wouldn't know, that'd give her a goddamn heart attack, but me? Dustin's sister, who's always been supportive of his stupid ideas that seem like failures, but ended up encouraging them?

      It was all a bit upsetting, but I could see from the corner of my eye that they were waiting for a response from me to continue with this information dump, "Okay."

      "You know how people say Hawkins is...cursed?" We both looked up from looking at our hands, almost as if we were in sync with our thoughts, our emotions, our beliefs. "They're not way off."

      "There's another world. A world hidden beneath Hawkins." He gestures his hands into a division of worlds. One on top and one of the back of his hand, "Sometimes it bleeds into ours."

      "Like ghosts and shit?" I look over to Eddie and then to Dustin, "Dustin, you better not be bullshitting because right now that sounds like a whole lot of made-up fantasy—"

      "Shut up and let me finish will you!" He raised his hands at me, and I just looked away. Staying quiet as he asked, Max continues. "There are some things worse than ghosts."

      Eddie looks over at me for a second, but I'm too busy paying attention to the next words that my brother is saying to look at him and acknowledge his presence, "These monsters from this other world...we thought they were gone. But they've come back before." Eddie's leg slightly touches mine and I look down to see that he's slowly reaching out to pull my hand close to his. But Dustin is still on his story, "That's why we needed to find you."

      I look over to Steve, who's intently eyeing our hands, he looks at me and then decides to leave it be. He couldn't really say anything, especially when Eddie had a knife to his neck a couple minutes ago.

      "If they're back again, we need to know."

      "That night, did you see anything?" Max and Robin started the questioning, "Dark particles, maybe?"

      I looked at them confused, I knew they were talking to Eddie, but this all seemed a bit too familiar. Yes, there was a slight scare at the Family Video that what I "experienced," could've been true, but now Max is adding onto my curiosity. "It would almost look like dust, swirling dust."

      "No, man, there was nothing you could see or, uh..." Eddie and I looked at each other but for different reasons. He was making a simple response to the question, and I was realizing a lot more from my past than I ever did before. "You said there was dust? Like they were flying around and almost like ash, right?"

      Dustin looked toward to me in confusion, "Yeah."

      "Was it super dark, like everything seemed to be gone. Almost as if the sun was turned off." I sat up a bit and I could feel everyone's eyes on me. All of them nodded, while Eddie was just patiently looking at me until I finished. "And the lights—"

      This seemed to have ignite something in Dustin because his eyes widened, and he had looked back and forth between me and the others. "(Y/n), what lights? Like the house lights, my old lamp that doesn't work?" He started to grow impatient, and I didn't know why.

      "Everything, even your lamp that works horribly." It was all there. The pieces were fitting, and I was becoming fully aware of the fact that I may have been exposed to this "other world" that Dustin is referring to. "Was there anything else?" I looked up to see Steve a bit more intrigued into the conversation now.

      "Yeah, there was a dark figure. I never saw its details close up, but all I know is that it was there. Everything was dark. Ash was flying around weirdly." I looked down at my hands, "I was looking for Dustin one day, around the time that everyone thought Will was dead. I was scared that the same thing could happen to Dustin and when he wasn't coming home, the Wheelers didn't know where he was at, and Steve wasn't picking up his phone, I kind of went back to square one. That was our house." I pointed to both Dustin and I, "Everything had changed once I stepped back in, like almost immediately. I had been hearing mom scream your name and then as soon as I opened the door, it was gone."

      "Holy shit." Dustin takes off his cap to ruffle his hair in confusion, but also in shock. "You went there. None of us have, but you went there and saw things." He puts his hand on my shoulder and smiles a bit, "It's just good nothing happened too extreme. Right?"

      "Yeah, but this..." I gestured to Eddie, "This is a whole different thing, this is more serious. I mean, what the hell is going on Dustin?"

      Eddie intercepted, "You know, I tried to wake her, man. She couldn't move. It was like she... she was in a trance or something." I looked over to Max and Robin who were now silent. Dustin was quick when it came to his thinking, "Or under a spell." Eddie and I thought the same thing, stating to them that instead it could be a curse and us three knew what we were referencing to. We knew because we played this game. We knew because our campaign was developed over this monster, this had become an even bigger problem. We were in deep shit now and there was no going back to a normal, easy life.

      "Vecna's curse."