The Ghost

"Watch it, Zombie Boy!"

"Trick or Treat, Freak!"

Will stumbled backwards and fell, Bob's camera slipping from his grip. The bullies' laughter faded out as he hit the ground, like a badly tuned radio. When he sat up, they were gone. But so was everyone else: where just moments ago kids had strolled around the street trick-or-treating, he was suddenly completely alone. Will's heart nearly stopped when he recognized the darkness and the twisting vines of the Upside Down. No. No! "Mike?" he called out hesitantly. His friend had been with him just moments ago.

There was no reply. The panic was starting to creep in. "Mike!" he called again, louder.

Something heard him. From within the woods, he heard a chittering, almost like laughter. A second one answered somewhere behind him, then another. Will spun on the spot, throwing panicked glances between the trees, but in the gloom he couldn't see anything. He put his hands over his ears in an attempt to shut out the growing noise. It brought back awful memories of the Demogorgon stalking him through the woods. It had made almost the same sound. But that thing had died; they said it had died. Eleven had killed it.

He turned to look at the house and saw someone standing there. It wasn't the monster; it was someone from the other side, an actual person, here in the Upside down. They were small, almost like a child, and they were staring back at him: They saw him. In his surprise, Will almost stumbled again. "Hey!" he shouted. "I'm here!"

The other one heard him. They started to wave their arms frantically, but if they said anything, Will couldn't hear it over the sudden low rumbling that now swept over the street. Even the chittering suddenly fell silent. Will slowly turned around, eyes wide with fear. It was coming from the other end of the street, right opposite to where the person was standing, but after a few hundred feet, everything in that direction was submerged in shadow. Will took a slow step backwards.

And then the shadow rose behind the trees. Like an enormous black cloud, it twisted and spread into the sky, until it towered over Hawkins.

Someone was shouting something at him. Will didn't comprehend it: the blood was pounding in his ears, he was frozen to the spot; paralyzed by fear. He could only watch as the shadow unfolded and spread into several black tendrils, reaching out and churning like smoke. Then something like a head emerged. There were no eyes, but Will felt the evil gaze fall on him, fixing him as it closed in. Pure panic took over and he ran, ran as fast as he could. He could feel the darkness right behind him.

There was the house, crawling with vines. The person was gone, almost like they had never been there at all. Will hid behind a wall and hugged his knees, praying that it would pass. He couldn't keep his body from shaking. Even with his eyes shut, he could feel it creeping closer; it reached out to him…

"Will!"

And suddenly Mike was there, shaking him by the shoulders. Shock was edged on his face: "Will! What's wrong? Are you hurt?!"

Will looked around in panic, but the monster was gone. Instead, his friends were all around him; Dustin, Lucas and Max, all looking worried. "Is he okay?" Lucas was saying.

"I don't know." Mike said. He never let go of Will: "I'm going to get you home, okay? Come on, I'm going to get you home…"

Will was too shaken to reply. He could still feel the shadow on his skin. He was aware that Dustin was saying something, but Mike seemed to brush him off and led Will away from the others. Will stumbled along with him. He didn't dare let go of his friend, afraid of being pulled back into the Upside Down at any moment.

Mike sat down in his little makeshift tent and took up his supercom. Maybe today… It took him a while before he began to speak: "It's day 353 today. I had a bad day. I don't know, I… I guess I wish you were here." He wished it more than he could possibly put into words, but he tried anyway. "I mean, we all do. If you're out there, just, please, give me a sign-"

"Mike."

He faltered and looked up from the walkie-talkie. He thought… "Eleven?" he whispered. There was no one to hear him, the room was empty- and yet it wasn't. Again he felt it; like she was almost close enough to touch, if he only reached out. She was there, only…

But of course she wasn't. She never was. This was pointless. Mike folded the antenna back in, holding back tears. He couldn't keep doing this. He wasn't Venkman; he couldn't really catch ghosts, no matter how much he wanted to. "I'm really going crazy." he muttered.

"Hmm?"

From the couch, Will was blinking at him sleepily. Mike looked away, feeling stupid. He hadn't meant to wake him. "Told you." he said bitterly. "Talking to ghosts."

"It's your job." Will yawned and tapped his Ghostbusters badge.

Mike couldn't laugh. "Yeah? Well, I'm not good at it."

Will was wide awake now, and he realized what his friend was talking about. He lowered his eyes: "I'm sorry."

Mike broke away. He felt so angry all of a sudden. "Sorry? Sorry for what? That you came back from the Upside Down and El didn't?! You're here, like- like a friend should be, but she's just…gone, yet I still keep seeing her, and I feel like she's out there, but she's just not talking to me…" He had become quieter with every word, until the last was barely a whisper.

Will moved over to him. He felt like he should say something, but he didn't know what.

Mike drew a deep breath: "I'm just- I'm just wondering, all the time, what I could have done differently, you know? She was always protecting us, even at the end, but maybe if I could have done something, stopped the Demogorgon, somehow…" He noticed Will staring at him and shook his head: "I know it's stupid. The best we could do was hitting it with tiny stones. Stupid."

Will wasn't really seeing his friend. Now that the shock of the encounter had died down, his mind had cleared and something had clicked into place at Mike's words. "I saw someone." he said slowly. "When I was in the Upside Down, before you snapped me out of it. I saw someone in the distance, and I- I think I heard them call my name. They knew me."

Mike's eyes grew wide. "Who? Who was it?"

"They were too far away." Will met his friend's look. He didn't want to give Mike false hope, but he had this feeling that he was right. "It could have been Eleven."

"Could have been?! Did she say something else, anything?"

"No. No, I'm sorry."

Mike felt like he had been punched in the gut. If Will had seen El, too, maybe he wasn't crazy. To think that she could be… But it was impossible, he thought. The hope that had flickered up in him dimmed just as fast. He desperately wanted it to be true, but it couldn't be. "No." he forced himself to say. "There is no way she could have survived in there this long. No one could."

"But what if?" The more Will thought about it, the surer he was. Who else could it have been? She had tried to warn him… And for a moment, Mike had sounded so hopeful… Will's hands balled into fists. He had to summon his courage to speak the next words: "Maybe- I don't know, I can look for her when I- when I go back there."

"No!" Mike looked at his friend, aghast. "You're not going there just for me; because I'm being stupid and I'm seeing things…"

"Oh shut up; it's going to happen anyway!" Will burst out. "I can't get out of this, you understand? Do you think I just want to shiver and hide all the time? Maybe I can actually do something when it happens, and not just- wait for it to get me!"

Mike drew back in surprise. He glanced at the ceiling, wondering whether his parents had heard that. When there was no noise from above, he said quietly: "That's the first time I remember you shouting."

Will realized he was panting. He didn't know where it had come from, he just felt so- angry and helpless. He sat down on the couch. Again the shadows of the Upside Down flashed behind his eyes. It just didn't leave him alone; it was like a nightmare that he had to live through again and again. Only- he had never seen another person there before. Maybe this was the reason this was happening to him; maybe he could finally return the favour to Eleven.

"Do you…do you really think you could find her?"

There was such hope in Mike's voice, even though he was trying to keep it out. Will bit his lip. Even though Mike almost never talked about her, it was obvious how much Eleven meant to him. He had never believed that she was dead, like all the others seemed to think. How could he, Will, not try everything he could to bring her back? She had done the same for him.

Eleven opened her eyes. The TV's static image switched back to an ad on Coca Cola, but she hardly noticed it: her breathing was going fast and her skin was covered in goose-bumps that had nothing to do with the autumn chill outside. She hugged herself in an effort to get warm again. Then she clicked through the channels until she found static and closed her eyes. Her thoughts were racing. She was afraid what she would find once she looked again, yet she was even more scared of not knowing.

She hadn't meant for anything to happen. It was Halloween night and all she had wanted to do was see her friend. She wasn't disobeying any of the rules: If she couldn't go trick-or-treating, she thought she could at least watch her friends going around the houses doing it. And so she watched, even though the pangs of envy were hard to ignore. It was almost a year now, and the desire to be out there had grown to be almost unbearable.

Her friend didn't look like he was enjoying it. She wanted to see him smile again; she liked his smile. But Mike was very quiet, like he so often was when she saw him by himself. Now he was with friends, though; El could hear their echoes close to him, and he was carrying a bag full of treats. He should be happy. She knew she would be happy if she were really there with them.

Walking invisibly by Mike's side was no real consolation, but it helped. After so long, she had become so familiar with him that she no longer had to strain to keep the connection. As the treat tour continued, she ran along with the group, watched them as they robbed the neighbours and exchanged their haul, and pretended to plunder Mike's bag for chocolate. He was just ringing another doorbell, and El was preparing to shout: "Trick or Treat!", when the image of Mike became distorted from one moment to the next. He dissolved into nothing and she was suddenly alone in the void. The words caught in her throat and she looked around, startled. What had happened? She concentrated harder, trying to bring the images back. The void responded only with silence.

And then suddenly a boy was there, but it wasn't Mike. He was short and thin and wore almost the same costume. She recognized him as Mike's friend, Will, the boy they had saved from the Upside Down. Surprised as she was, she was glad that he looked a lot better than when she had last seen him. But she was only focussing on Mike now; so he shouldn't be there.

That was when he turned and looked directly at her. Eleven's eyes widened when she realized that he could see her. "Hey!" he shouted. Eleven didn't move. She was too puzzled to respond. How could he see her?

And then she had felt it: the crawling cold on her skin. It was exactly like the first time she had entered the Void: the presence of something from the other side, a presence that wanted to kill. But now it felt like it wasn't coming for her; it simply brushed over her, as if not even realizing she was there. Even this light touch made her shiver, as she felt something like a dark, concentrated will passing her by. And then she knew, she felt, that all its focus was on the boy in front of her, who seemed frozen to the spot. Finally, Eleven found her voice. She screamed at him to run. Whether he heard her or not, he did move and bolted, running directly towards her. For a second she could see the pure panic written on his face, before his figure, too, dissolved into mist and only the low growling of the monster chasing him remained. That was when she lost focus and awoke back in the hut.

In her nervousness it took her a long time to find them again. The fear of what had happened kept her in the here and now, unable to slip off into senselessness. Once she finally managed it and the image reappeared, she breathed an audible sigh of relief: Her friends were alive. They both looked okay, and the strange cold she had felt was gone; nothing was chasing them. Mike was walking with one arm around Will, he clearly knew something had happened, and he was trying to help. Will was barely responding to what he was saying. He kept looking over his shoulder, and El had to resist the impulse to hide, but now his wide-eyed looks were passing right through her; as everyone's usually did. She couldn't understand it: He was the first person to actually see her. Mike came close sometimes, but with Will, their eyes had locked for a short moment, and she hadn't even been focusing on him. It was very strange.

She accompanied them for half a mile before she had to break the connection: the effort along with the shock had left her exhausted. She turned off the TV and wiped the blood from her nose. Then, however, she had to face the question what she should do now: there was something powerful from the Upside Down in Hawkins, and it was targeting her friends- and had almost gotten one of them. She barely knew Will, but he was Mike's friend and he seemed kind- and the look on his face had reminded her far too much of her own horror when she was first thrown into the Upside Down. She didn't wish that on anybody. But she couldn't go outside to help them; Jim had told her again and again that she would only endanger her friends further if she did.

She glanced at her watch: 7:38. Jim was late, but he would be home soon; he had promised. Soon.

The word was one of the first she had learned from Jim Hopper, and she loathed it. At the beginning, it had been a good word: it spoke of a swift reunion with her friends and of a real life outside the lab. As the days passed and nothing happened, she liked it less and less. When the days stretched into months, she grew to hate it, and now she had come to realize how terribly long 'soon' could be. He would be home soon…

Eleven stood up abruptly. No more, she thought, throwing off her blanket. She couldn't keep doing this forever; just watching and never touching, like a ghost behind a window. She wasn't a ghost, and she could do something to help. She didn't know what yet, but sitting here any longer was impossible.

Something made her stop a few feet from the door. She could hear his voice telling her to be cautious and wait, like he always did, and suddenly she felt bad. "Com-promise." she said aloud. She remained unseen and Mike and the others would be safe; that was the promise Jim had made her, and what she had promised in return. You didn't break such promises.

But they weren't safe at all, not from what she had felt out there. She grimaced and took a step forward. Could she even do anything against what she had felt out there? She would never find out if she stayed in here. Another step. Jim would never approve of her risking everything. But it would never not be dangerous; she would be careful. Another step. It was simple: she would go to her friends and warn them. No one else would see her. She would go to Mike...

Her hand froze inches from the doorknob. The very thought made her almost afraid. It had been so long now. What would he say? He wanted her to come back, she knew that. But what could she say? How would she explain…

Her arm fell limp to her side. For a long while, El just stood there. Then she slowly turned away from the door and retreated, not without shattering a glass frame on the wall with one angry swing. She was angry at everything that had gotten her here, at Jim for being late, at the thing for threatening her friends; but even more she was frustrated with herself for being so cowardly. She tried to tell herself that it was just common sense not to do anything rash, though it didn't really convince her.

Lacking anything else to do, she grabbed one of the last boxes of eggos from the fridge and sat down on the couch. The curtains opened seemingly of their own accord and let in the cool night air. It made her feel a little better at least. As she chewed on the waffles, her eyes wandered to the clock: 7:51. Soon. Her anger ebbed a little. Jim would know what to do, she thought. He usually had an answer to most things. If she told him what she had seen, he would believe her. It hurt that he hadn't kept his promise, but she knew he would do anything to protect her and the others. And maybe, a part of her hoped, maybe he would tell Mike when this was all over.

Hope. That was a good word. It was a good feeling just to have someone she could talk to when she didn't know what to do. It was more than she had ever had before.