Monday 26th March, 1984

It was a night like any other in Hawkins, Indiana. While all the houses were quiet, tiny stores dark and residents in slumber, nothing out of the ordinary should have been detected. Subsequently, all typical young boys should have been found safely dreaming in warm beds, of normal things like school and sports and maybe the occasional adventure with magic and superheroes.

Will Byers however, was not a typical young boy, at least, not anymore. No more fantastic adventures and happy go lucky dreams for Will Byers, no. Where he found himself, trapped in a recurring nightmare yet again, was atypical to all but him...

It was just like home, but darker…

Emptier…

A ubiquitous cold sucked every ounce of warmth from his body, left him immobile, unable to breathe. The Vale of Shadows, better known as the upside-down, with its sickly atmosphere and unknown substances covering everything. It was a world littered with creatures seeking to rip his insides out and feed on them, to use him as a host body…

From the ceiling the shadows grew, looming down towards him like the long, hairy legs of a giant black-widow spider. His asphyxiation grew, body convulsed, mouth opened barely to let out an inaudible scream…

Thrashing amongst tangled sheets in a cold sweat, Will pushed himself upwards with raspy breaths and the oh so familiar need to puke. "NO!" he cried out weakly, voice cracking as he struggled against the covers. "STOP!"

Not ten seconds later the bedroom door was thrown open to reveal the silhouette of a young man, his older brother Jonathan.

"Will! Are you okay, did something happen?" he called out into the darkness, waiting for the overhead light to flicker on permanently.

Jonathan scanned the room on entering, taking in the pallid boy and stripped bed with a confirming nod before pulling his small, shuddering figure into a half hug. "No danger buddy, just another bad dream right?"

"Y-y-yeah, just a n-nightmare." Will replied, wiping his eyes before getting up and heading for the bathroom with Jonathan trailing behind him.

Moonlight reflecting off the white sink basin lit the grimy mirror from below as he took in his washed out reflection. A twilight of their unlit bathroom showed him where to lean, for he couldn't bear to see the sick clearly as his body convulsed. The familiar black slug in dark green sludge crawled its way up his throat, immediately squirming its way toward the drain when he spit.

Jonathan could only stand by helplessly as he seemingly dry-retched, benighted to Will's troubles. He played his part on auto, waiting until the boy stopped with a mouth rinsed of imaginary vomit before leading him back to his own bedroom.

Dim lamp-light cast a warm glow across the room, highlighting boxes of vinyl and tape records and an eclectic assortment of books scattered across the table dragged to his bed, a pseudo-desk. The sweet sounds of Joy Division lulled the young boy as he enthralled in the inviting atmosphere.

Under his brother's covers, Will shut his eyes and curled up as close to the opposite side as possible, giving Jonathan room to resume absorbing his AP chemistry notes. "Need a glass of water or something?" Jonathan asked, bemoaning the schoolwork in favour of a procrastinate task.

"I'm okay." Will mumbled back, pulling the older boy to lie down with him. "You should sleep."

Jonathan chuckled tiredly, "Fine, as long as you do too."

Exhaustion seeped into her bones with every step alongside the 2am chill, as a weary-eyed Joyce made her way home. In a brisk walk from the pinto she scrabbled through her purse for the keys, hushing the howling Benny even before unlocking the front door.

"Down boy! You know it's me." Benny huffed as she pushed away his inquisitive wet snout, returning to his favourite spot on the living room couch timidly. Joyce sighed, "Not that I can blame you, I've been a stranger to this house lately…"

Joyce dropped her purse by the hound and made her way to Will's room. Not unusually, his bed was empty and the sheets were bundled up in a ball on the ground. She retraced her steps to the closed door over and knocked lightly, letting the soft music drift out of his room as she pushed it open and peeked in.

"Jonathan?"

Said boy heard his name being murmured in the familiar maternal tone and rolled over to face his mother. "Hey mom. How was your night?"

"Well, I didn't see any familiar names on the register. So it was good… was he sick again?" she inquired, leaning over to stroke her youngest sons hair back. "Yeah, not as bad as last week though… with the fits. He went straight back to sleep this time. You look really tired Mom, there's dinner in the microwave and I can come make you coffee before you go down." Jonathan offered, his hushed whispers leaving the slumbering boy undisturbed.

Joyce shook her head fondly. "Stay there, you know I'll nod off right after eating. Thanks again for watching him." She took in the mirrored features of her sons one last time, mahogany bowl cuts already in desperate need of trimming again, limpid eyes against pale faces turned in parallel towards her, before backing out again.

Bird-like hands shook as she leaned against the kitchen counter, away from the humming microwave. Her face scrunched up in deep thought, she didn't notice the ding of reheated spaghetti while mulling over the banal events of that night at her second job, and more importantly, the ways in which her sons could be kept safe, healthy and happy.

She'd done what she had to, the skeleton shifts as a hospital-receptionist congruent with her day-job at the general store. It meant a healthy income that kept her family afloat, time freed to Jonathan so he could focus on school...

And it meant the medical bills for Will's mysterious and recurring illnesses were covered, as they sought to figure out what was wrong with him.

Joyce was prepared for her youngest to come back with a chip on his shoulder, several chips even. But a huge chunk of pain and desecration in place of the second sweet soul she still marvelled at having borne returned, one that could only be healed with time and love in abundance.

They loathed to figure out, two months on from their journey to the alternate dimension and successful retrieval mission, that the trauma would take more than simple time and love to mend.

He'd tried to hide it at first, the retching, the glimpses of another world. But it revealed itself late one night when she came home to find him collapsed on the bathroom tiles in a state of hysteria.

The small circle of confidants from that harrowing week in November last year were far from over the ordeal, Joyce knew this for sure. She couldn't be the only one still suffering, even if her personal past, plagued with anxiety and emotional disarray, elevated her own dysfunction.

Her sons trauma was in a whole other league though, one that passed the boundaries of her own experience and left her and Jonathan bereft of what to do. Sometimes he'd be too sick to leave the house for school, glued to his bed in paralysis as her or her oldest dragged numerous physicians, one time even a catholic priest, to diagnose him for clues to a cure.

Upon waking of his own volition to bated breaths released by his family, Will got to listen with them as each doctor explained that physically, there was nothing wrong with him. And what he was experiencing was more of the psychiatric nature… not that they weren't already aware, of both things.

He refused to speak to a psychologist though, and Joyce couldn't disagree with that, because what he'd experienced… well, no doctor could ever stomach his story without prescribing a heavy dosage of diazepam and lecture on mastering one's own mind, triggering Joyce as she recalled her own time with the shrink.

Joyce wondered with growing disheartenment what they could possibly do now to make things better. Short of a time machine, reverting her family back to a period six months ago when all they had was a deadbeat ex/father and a few measly bills on their plate seemed an impossibility...

This time, he got to experience Jonathan's bedroom come to death. Noxious fumes coated the back of his throat as he curled up in a corner and suffocated from the atmosphere. Nightmarish creatures looped around the broken bed frame and out of the shattered windows draped in tattered rags.

The biting cold chilled his fingers into clumsy numbness, cold seeped into his toes and spread painfully throughout his feet as if they lay on ice rather than snug in the thick socks he swore he put on before bed. He lost all sense of time here, had it been minutes or hours since he closed his eyes? Was it time to open them and stop pretending to be asleep yet?

The frigid yet stale air continued to nip at him as he curled up even tighter in his lonely corner. The shrieks of hunting predators and shadows loomed past the gaping holes in Jonathan's sham of a bedroom. Echoes Will wished so dearly to return to the source of bounced off the walls, calling to him. Jamming his arms over his head, he screamed at them "SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!"

"GO AWAY, I HATE YOU, I HATE THIS PLACE!"

"I want to sleep… let me die..." he silently begged the voices, his friends and family, the merciful gods above to pull him out of this hell.