Chapter Seven: Recti Cultus Pectora Roborant
Billy falls into step next to me, adjusting the way his mullet falls over the collar of the coat. He's much calmer than he was this morning. I noticed it at breakfast and the drive to school in the way he couldn't stop fidgeting, scowling. The constant smoking was a bit of a giveaway too. Steve, somehow, has managed to quiet that storm, or at least siphon off some of the restive energy. "Where are you going?" he asks.
I turn left and step into the empty courtyard. The quiet wraps itself around me. Here, the growling of town cars and freight trucks is blocked by the cinderblocks, with nary a window to intrude on the privacy of the concrete strip. I close my eyes and breath in the cool, calm air, gentler than the icebox of the school. Hawkins High always manages to be a few degrees cooler than the outside during winter and a few degrees warmer during summer. I get the feeling the mildness won't last. This is the calm before another storm sets in. High above, the luminous clouds are starting to quicken and more featherlight tears are shed by the minute, beading on my eyelashes, my cheekbones. The silence sings the beauty of the world in my ear.
The door opens and thunks shut. "Hell," he mutters, coming up behind me. "It's freezing. What is wrong with you people?"
"Poor Californian boy," I croon. "Is the heartland too cold for you?"
"I prefer the coast."
"You know, I've never seen the ocean before."
There's a picnic table against one wall, the bench protected by the eaves. It's dry and not too cold, hidden from view by a row of ornamental holly trees in one of the planter boxes. I draw a star in the inch of snow on the table top. He doesn't sit yet. He's too outraged. This is the boy with the sea in his heart, after all.
"How can you not have seen the ocean?"
"Never had the opportunity. California is thirty hours away."
"You think I don't know that?" He wrinkles his nose. "New York's eleven. You could bus, or train."
"I suppose." I draw a wave in the snow, and another, and another. "I guess I've never thought about it. I like my prairie. When the snow is deep enough the wind pushes it into ripples. I imagine it's what the seabed looks like. Wait a few weeks, you'll see what I mean." Then I smile up at him. "Sit down. I'll find the ocean, don't worry about it."
After a moment, he does and of one mind we eat the sandwiches I made last night. Strips of ham, cheese, the very last of the greenhouse tomatoes and lettuce, set between Mrs Smith's delicious sourdough bread. I have one. Billy has three. We eat without speaking, same as breakfast, then I return to my drawing and he closes his eyes.
He leans back against the wall, arms folded, legs stretched out under the table and crossed at the ankles. For all intents and purposes he appears asleep. He has the darkest eyelashes I've ever seen on a boy. The carefully tousled hair, the sharpness of his jaw, the snub of his nose, these things I noticed the moment I laid eyes on him. The beauty of his face that he deforms with a glare and a cigarette.
He isn't scowling right now. There are no lines in his brow or twist to his lips. He's relaxed and, dare I say it, approachable, and less than a foot away, and I repeat my prayer. Lord, you take over, because I don't know what to do.
Eyes closed, he mutters, "Go in summer. It's the best time for the beach if you've never been."
"Hmm? We'll have graduated by then next year. Isn't that odd? Have you thought about what you'll do?"
"Car mechanic. Surf instructor. Seasonal work. Anything that lets me travel," he says gruffly. I can imagine him and his Camaro, flitting from one job to the next, never being tied down until he found somewhere he loved. Discovering himself, without the pressures of school and home. I can barely imagine how that freedom must taste. One day, though. One day I might find my own adventure, even if I have to do it alone.
Loneliness flares and I crush it down. I'm all right. I like my own company. I can be alone.
Besides, last time I tried to find people to share life with I found Jermaine and look how well that turned out. From now on, I'm going to let God bring the people to me and get on with my life.
"Lucky," I say, breathing a laugh. "I managed to wrangle a scholarship to Yale so I'm there for at least four years come August twenty-eighth. You see? I will be right by the beach." I add a moon to what's become a night time beachfront, complete with two people sitting under a single palm tree, looking out over the water to the endless horizon.
"Nantucket's not far from there."
"Huh?" I glance at him and he's staring at me straight on, assessing, those brows furrowed and those blue eyes intense and I can't hold the look. I return to my drawing, adding a few more stars, pretending ease.
"It's got some of the best surfing on the eastern seaboard."
"Has it?"
Out the corner of my eye I see him open his mouth to speak and I slap my hand over his closest knee, digging my fingers in, and gesture for him to be quiet. In his incredulous silence, he hears it. Hushed voices coming from the alleyway leading to the field. Who could be out here right now? All the senior school is in the assembly, and the middle schoolers are still in class.
"I don't know what she knows! She said she was looking into Benny Hammond's death and she thinks El is connected."
"Do you know why?"
"Not at all. But did you ever see this?"
"Never. Where did she get it?"
"I don't know."
It's Nancy and Jonathan Byers and it doesn't take a genius to guess what they're talking about. Billy opens his mouth again and I slap my hand over it. Propriety be damned, I need to hear this. Nancy is panicky. Jonathan is soothing and harried. I was right, Nancy knows something about that girl and my digging into it has them rattled.
"What should we do?" asks Nancy.
"Get Mike to talk to this kid and make sure he doesn't tell Asher anything. We have to keep El safe."
"Obviously," Nancy snipes, "But that won't deter her. Asher was the best in the newspaper club. She'll keep digging until she gets the truth."
"We'll be fine, Nance. Murray thought El was a Russian spy and he investigated this for months."
"Murray was an outsider. Everyone here knows Ash, and they'll talk to her too. She'll put the pieces together."
"Now who's worrying too much," Jonathan chuckles. "We only believed in all this because you and my mom sawthe Demogorgon. El got rid of it and the Mind Flayer when she closed the gate, and she's safe and sound at Hopper's. See? Asher won't be able to find out a thing. Whatever she does find out won't make any sense. She'll give up eventually. Meanwhile we can relax and be normal teenagers for a while. No more shooting monsters for at least a year."
Nancy scoffs. "Normal is boring."
There's scuffing and footsteps crunching through powder as the couple retreats down alleyway, around the gym and out of earshot.
. . . What?
Billy's hand closes around my wrist and takes my hand from his lips. "Oh, sorry," I mumble, moving out of his personal space while thinking a mile a minute. I'm remembering a book that Kato used to read religiously, to the point where the front cover and its weird horned demon creature fell off the spine. "Demogorgons and Mind Flayers are monsters from Dungeons and Dragons," I say aloud.
Billy gazes at one of the holly trees, deep in thought. "Harrington was building a D&D box," he muses.
"Probably for Dustin Henderson, Mike Wheeler's friend."
He nods. "My sister was at Byers' house with that whole group. Harrington was there too."
I frown at him, thinking. "That was the same night Bob Newby died from the wolf attack." Pieces of the puzzle are starting to join together in my mind in half-formed pictures of pink dresses and D&D monsters and resurrected boys and khaki uniforms. Have I stumbled upon a conspiracy, one that uses D&D as a code or something? If so, then surely Mike Wheeler and his friends are at the heart of it. Last year they won best-dressed at Halloween, dressing as their different Dungeons and Dragons; the paladin, the cleric, the ranger, and the bard. And Nancy is going to send Mike to talk to Troy, I assume, and stop him from speaking, which means she'll be finding him at lunch and talking to the others in his gang and then they'll all be prepared against any questions I have for them. Darn it.
"I might need to talk to Hopper after all," I whisper, not expecting Billy to hear. But he does. And he rolls his eyes.
"'Course the chief's in on this. Because a small-town conspiracy ain't complete without the sheriff. Damn Demogorgons and dead kids coming back to life and loner girls getting killed by toxic waste from an department of energylab. You sure this ain't a movie? You're not a pod person, are you?" He clicks his fingers. "MK-Ultra. This town is all one big mind control experiment. I knew Hawkins was screwed up the moment I got here. Suicide my ass, I bet they drugged that guy who committed suicide. They did it to some scientist in Maryland, you know. He jumped out a window because he was so out of his mind."
Putting aside the fact that Billy Hargrove is a seemingly untapped well of US Government misadventure and old SciFi movies, I ask, "But why would Mike Wheeler be involved?"
"Because kids like that don't go to the police or their parents when they find something weird. They keep it to themselves until it gets too big and their parents find out and call the police, then it all gets hushed up by the authorities and the story gets rewritten for the press. Who's Murray?"
"That's probably Murray Beauman. Barbara Holland's parents hired him to investigate their daughter's disappearance. He broke the story of the chemical leak to Chicago."
Billy nods, satisfied. "See. He found out about this El chick, someone got wind of it, and they shut it down and made him rewrite history." He chuckles in the face of my disbelief. "I'm more than a pretty face."
That's when the gym door opens into the courtyard and Steve wanders out, peering around. He spots us behind the holly trees and grimaces. "Am I interrupting?"
"I'm always glad to see you, Stevie boy," calls Billy.
"Shut up, Miss Davidson said to check if you were out here. She wants to make sure you're okay."
"Do you like D&D?"
Steve scowls. "I told you, it's for a kid I know," he says. "Why?"
"You ever heard of a Demogorgon?"
Steve's eyes go wide. Hello sudden line of inquiry. Billy and I sit up as one.
"Or a Mind Flayer?" I add.
"What's that gate El closed?" asks Billy.
"Should I send a congratulations card to Hopper on his adoption?"
A predatory grin stretches over his lips. "Or should we ask Henderson about it?"
Steve coughs, laughs, runs a hand through his hair. "What the hell are you guys on about?" he asks. He can't hide the nervous hitch in his voice.
Billy and I look at each other and nod. "Let's ask Dustin," I say. "He'll tell us."
"That kid's a squealer if I ever saw one," Billy agrees.
"You guys are nuts." Steve tries for dismissive and fails utterly. Yup, he knows something. There's a reason Steve never continued acting after freshman year – I've seen first-hand how terrible he is at keeping in character.
I, however, can compartmentalise with the best of them, and I shuffle the fact that Nancy Wheeler will no doubt tell all the kids about me and the picture before I can get to them off to the back of my mind where it won't get in the way.
"Come on," I stage whisper to Billy. "If we go now, we can find them before Steve gets in the way."
Billy stands up and stretches, flexes, cracks his knuckles, putting on a show and I know his expressions well enough to see that he's loving the charade. Steve doesn't. He hasn't spent a weekend in close quarters, shared dinners and breakfasts and discussion about the future and conspiracies to understand when that twinkle in Billy's eye is from humour or anticipating savagery, as it was with Morell. Dustin Henderson is his friend and a kid.
"Bloody psycho," Steve mutters under his breath. He looks towards the middle school and grimaces. The internal battle plays out on his face. Whatever secret he's holding must be big, big enough for him to consider letting Billy get at Dustin Henderson.
There really must be a conspiracy in Hawkins. Whoa.
Steve groans and rolls his eyes to Heaven. "Fine! This is just because I don't want you messing with him, all right? They've all been through enough without Billy Hargrove interrogating them. You're mad, you do know that."
"Only for you, Harrington."
Save me from alpha males and their pseudo-sexual rituals. "Great!" I rub my hands to get some warmth back in them and step out from behind the picnic table. "I'm going to talk to the nurse and get Billy and I an exemption for the rest of the day. We can talk at my place."
"What about me?" says Steve.
"It's nothing to be scared of," Billy soothes. "Skipping a few classes won't kill you."
Steve levels a dead-eyed stare at him and Billy's mocking stops.
"You have no idea what I'm scared of, Hargrove."
.
Billy and Steve drive carefully, their town cars not built for winter, through a monochrome world. The moment we leave the tunnel of pine trees, a white and black world spreads out around us. The pines curve around the prairie as a black wall against the faceless sky, cut off by the southern farm fences, then thrust through again to cloak Hawkins College far on the other side of the snow-strewn tallgrass. Far, far north, the hills are misty and grey and smeared in white and vanish into the atmosphere.
Central in this, among the storm-snapped tallgrass and mounds of muhly grass and the collapsing flowers that lose their colour to the cold and the silence, is the tower of my home. The snow falling on the steep roofs and the chimneys has done nothing to integrate it into the landscape. It remains inviolate, out of place, and simply wrong. It's made blacker by all the white.
We come to the gravel drive and roll towards the monolith. It looms, taller and taller. The glass of the windows rising in lines up the front facade is opaque and staring. The front door hunkers in the shadows under the veranda, beckoning us into the madness of W.J. Morell. A flash of his grandson's words – "he needs my help. He's going to rebuild the world and he wants me to do it" – makes me tighten my fists in my lap.
It's okay. Morell is gone. There's no one inside. I repeat it over and over, to no effect.
It's Billy who eases my panic. "Do you think we could convince Harrington the place is haunted?" he mutters, casting disturbed eyes over the weatherboards. A laugh bursts out of my lips. It's going to be fine. Billy's here.
When the boys shut off their engines, the silence sweeps in and smothers us. It's eerie after the violence of last night's storm.
We get out. Steve is uneasy. "This is where Morell . . ."
"Sure is," Billy says lightly. "There's a noose hanging in the attic."
"You're joking." Steve asks me, "He's joking?"
"Yes." I'm distracted. Something in the snow has caught my eye. "What's that?"
A set of footprints are half-visible, almost covered up by fresh fall. They were made hours ago, heading up the drive to the shed. The snow is piled up where the shed door is swung open. The prints are accompanied by a thick, unbroken line on the way back out. The prints straddle the line at one point, and then there are no more footprints and the line disappears into one of the paths through the tallgrass towards Hawkins College.
"They stole my bike!" I cry, racing over to the shed. There should be two bikes here, a blue one for summer and another, with fat tyres and a bright green saddle and propped up against the spades. The fat bike isn't there. There's nothing except melting snow on bare dirt tracking from the door to the spades and back, and that line tracking out towards Hawkins College. Goosebumps ripple across my flesh
Morell's in custody. It's not him. Hopper's got him.
The thought doesn't steady me as much as it should, not when suspicions of grand conspiracies and police involvement are wheeling around my head. I can't afford to lose it. Not over a bike. Not in front of Steve Harrington.
So I groan, knowing Billy is behind me and can hear. "How am I supposed to get into town now?"
"Stop complaining," he snaps. "I'll drive you. If the chief learns I left you stranded out here, he'll have my neck."
"Ah, chivalry. How dead you are." I close the shed door. "I have to do grocery shopping. Mr Smith doesn't deliver in winter. And . . . it might mean staying the night a lot."
He looks heavenward. "Do you want my help or not?"
"Thanks."
He clicks the padlock on the shed door. It's the first time I've locked it since Kato left. "Don't mention it."
We meet Steve on our way around to the front of the house. "What's wrong?" he asks. He's dancing on the spot, rubbing his hands and blowing on them and flicking the snow out of his hair.
"Someone stole my bike."
"All the way out here? Which way did they go?"
"That way. Through the grass, away from town."
"I don't get it. Why not go for the house?" Then he begs, "Can we go inside now?" and the matter is dropped. He doesn't know Morell stole my bike before. I am not going to be the one to tell him, not when it might distract from the confession he's about to give us.
It's no warmer in the house. Billy heads straight to the kitchen, curses, and barges through the backdoor, hopefully to collect some firewood. Steve and I loiter in the entrance hall. Steve is in the centre of the stairwell, neck craned back. The stairs spiral up and up above his head towards the attic. "How old is this place?" he asks, voice strained by the position.
"It was built in 1882. This way," I say, steering the fascinated Steve past the staircase and the small toilet underneath it and into the kitchen. Gosh, it is weird to be home in the middle of a school day. For practical reasons, the idea of haring off from school and heading home whenever I want is not feasible, especially not in winter. Biking through snow is something I try to avoid, preferring to wait until the school day is over and hitching a ride from Jermaine. Also, Ditching School doth not a Yale Scholarship Make.
"Have you had lunch?"
He hasn't. I put the leftover casserole in the microwave as Billy comes in with an armful of chair pieces and actual logs. He bypasses Steve in favour of tending to the fire. Steve watches him work and I make coffee and arrange Steve's lunch in front of him and it's nice and domestic and bizarre up until the point where Billy comes to sit at the vast kitchen table, full of gashes and gouges filled in with flour, and prompts, "Go on, Harrington. Amaze us."
Then it stops being nice and domestic.
.
"And we set fire to the tunnels, the Mind Flayer left Will, and then El closed the gate." Harrington reaches forward and snatches a shiny red apple from the wooden bowl. He brings it to his lips before hesitating. "Can I have this?"
Asher shoves away from the table and barrels through the kitchen door and across the yard and out onto the prairie, on and on and on, a small figure in green crunching along a path Billy cannot see until she vanishes behind a huge drift covering what had been an orb of bright pink muhly grass the day before. She does not reappear.
"Should we go after her?" asks Harrington, worry pooling in his eyes.
Billy ignores him and instead finds the box of random oddities he noticed that morning. It's tucked away beside the microwave, full of rubber bands and clothes pegs and keys and a pack of cards. He takes the cards and returns to the table. "What do you know?"
Harrington hesitates, wary. "Speed?"
Billy dies a little inside, shuffles, halves the deck, hands over Harrington's portion of cards. They shove the fruit bowl out of the way, come to an agreement on which card does what, and start to play. Harrington, to Billy's chagrin, is the better player. It's not much of an insult, though. If they were playing poker, this would be a different story.
"You believe in God?" queries Billy during their third game. Harrington falters and Billy slaps his hand down, "Speed!", and wins the round. They reshuffle, set out their cards. Start again.
"I never thought about it," Harrington replies. He finds an opening and starts turning the tide in his favour. "I guess there must be something out there."
"She believes in God," says Billy.
"Asher? How do you know?"
"She goes to church, she sings church songs while cooking, she has a Bible next to her bed. Do the math, Stevie boy. If you were her-"
"-Speed!" Harrington shouts, and the fifth game starts.
"-how would you take having your religion upended by that psycho story you just fed us?"
"It's the truth, dumbass."
"I know. Doesn't make it any less ridiculous."
"You think she's having, what, a crisis of faith?"
"Give the boy a prize. Speed!"
On game ten, six to three to Harrington, Harrington asks suspiciously, "How come you're taking this so well?"
It's not complicated. His mom dabbled in the occult when he was little. Held seances, trailed salt on windowsills, hung bags of spices above doors, that sort of thing. Drove his dad mad and eventually she stopped. Billy, in his childhood, thought it was normal to believe that spirits had to be appeased and crystals had healing properties and there was more to the world than meets the eye – more than you could find in a church, anyway.
As he grew and understood that most people didn't even care whether there was a God or spiritual realm or not, he shrugged and let the whole situation lie. Far as he was concerned, life was a mess and the best thing was to roll with the punches. Getting attached to a person or a place or a philosophy was a recipe for disappointment.
Then again, the story could be a grand hoax or Harrington could be nuts. Billy doesn't think so. It makes too much sense. Harrington answered Asher's questions about the deaths and the blackouts and the random girl who turns out to be a remnant of MK-Ultra – Billy tried not to grin at that, because he so called it– and the one who caused this whole bloody mess in the first place with a promptness that meant he's either rehearsed the story to a T – doubtful, Harrington isn't that smart – or it's true and the horror has seared itself into the grey matter of his goldfish brain.
So.
A parallel universe controlled by a giant shadow creature that possesses little boys and can be explained by D&D. What are the odds? It makes Billy wonder if the guys who created the game were in on the whole scheme.
If Billy was pressed, he'd say the biggest surprise is that Max knew and he never noticed she was carrying around a secret as big as this. He could have sworn he had a better handle on his step-sister. First she gets involved in paranormal horrors, then she gets his dad thrown in jail. What next? Dating Lucas Sinclair?
"I'm hard to surprise," says Billy. "You said Byers' brother had black veins when he was possessed, right?"
"Yeah? What of it?"
"Morell, that psycho who attacked Asher, he had the same thing. Black veins in his eyes. Black blood. Kept going on and on about being needed by someone, needing the rebuild, needing to go back."
Harrington absorbs this, growing more serious by the second. "Back where?" he asks. A hint of gritty resolution bleeds into his tone, born from experience. Billy heard the same thing in Byers' home, right before getting nailed in the face by the dude's knuckles. Harrington, for all his fluffy hair and his long, gangly limbs, has been through Hell of a sort and come out harder. Billy can relate.
"Hawkins College. Whoever stole Asher's bike was headed for it."
They both stop playing. Harrington's aghast. "We need to check it out," he exclaims, throwing down his cards.
"We wait for Asher first," Billy asserts, and he places a jack on a queen.
"We don't have time!" Harrington snatches the cards out of his hands.
Billy goes for Harrington's wrist, aborts the move, brings his fist down on the table instead. He can't use violence for everything. That's his dad's M.O., it can't be his anymore. A frustrated groan burbling out of his throat, he glares at Harrington like the guy holds all of life's problems. "We wait, all right?"
Harrington looks on the verge of exploding. "Why?"
"Chief's orders. I'm meant to keep an eye on her."
"Since when are you responsible?" Harrington snaps tartly.
Billy decides that his choices are A) hit Harrington and destroy whatever budding friendliness is between them and commit to being a violent bastard forever or B) smoke. He gets up and makes his way to the porch.
Three cigarettes later, the rumble of an old engine in need of a tune up cuts through the quiet moan of the increasing wind. Billy knows cars and he's heard this one a hundred of times – a V8 engine inside a Ford at least a decade old, badly maintained, probably a hand-me-down from father to some chump son who doesn't know the first thing about car mechanics. Teenage boys from the lower middle class drive them because their dad wanted to upgrade from the sedan they'd had since before the kid was born and that kid is happy to have it because it's a carbecause they sure as hell can't pay for one themselves.
When the rust bucket of a '70 Ford LTD turns into the drive and the headlights bear down on Billy, waiting on the porch steps, Billy smirks. The driver pulls up next to the white-coated Camaro and BMW – Billy needs to find a tarpaulin for his baby – and Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler get out, alternating between scowling at him and staring in horrified wonder at the house. Unexpected visitors. How lucky that he's here to welcome them.
He calls, "My condolences, Wheeler. What a shame that the night Harrington pops your cherry, your best mate goes and gets eaten by a monster. That had to be better than a cold shower." His smirk turns wicked. "Then again, I think Holland got the better deal."
Lookie here. Turns out Jonathan Byers has an vicious streak.
Harrington appears on the porch at the last second, stopping the brawl before it can become one. Asher rushes out and ushers Wheeler and Byers inside with a tight smile and an offer of tea and Billy's impressed. If she's having a crisis of faith like he supposed, she hides it well and even manages to roll her eyes at him before going to the kitchen.
Harrington closes the door on them, shutting the boys out in the cold.
"Can you not shoot your mouth off for one minute?" he groans. "It's pathological with you, isn't it?"
Billy stubs out his last cigarette and crunches over the gravel to his car. The handle is frozen and the interior isn't much better. He leans inside, starts up the engine, turns the heating on full.
"Oh, now you're going."
The snow brushes off easily and, lucky for him, there's no frost on the windscreen. "Shut it. Wheeler and Byers can watch her."
Harrington taps his foot in a restless tattoo, glancing at Billy, then the front door, and back to Billy. "We should ask for backup."
"Sure. Go on, ask your ex and her boyfriend."
"We're gonna get murdered," the teen grumbles under his breath as he stomps down the steps. Inside the Camaro he sucks in a breath through his teeth and shoves his hands against the slowly warming air vents. "Geez, it's freezing!"
"It's your shitty town."
"We should leave them a note."
"They'll figure it out."
"They won't –"
"Trust me. Asher will get it."
Harrington shuts his mouth. For a time. Long enough for Billy to traverse the drive and turn right at the main road. The black wall of pine trees creeps out of the white sheets of snow that, if Billy's not mistaken, have gotten denser as the day's gone by. The hills, once visible off to the north, are now entirely hidden.
"What's the deal with you two?" Harrington asks.
Shoot me now, thinks Billy. A heart to heart about girls with Steve Harrington? He'd prefer to drive straight into a tree, if he wasn't driving his Camaro. Byers' rust bucket LTD would crumple nicely. He visualises it, imagines the hood crumpling, the engine exploding through the steering wheel into the front seats, the sudden punching jerk of the stop. The tree would shake. Dislodged snow would thump onto the broken chassis and steam gently as the car clicked and cooled.
Billy drives under the bare canopy along a pale, snake-like road, and the dream fades with a new sense of unease that those sorts of fantasies have never brought before. He thinks about Asher seeing his thoughts. Feels ashamed.
"She's nice," growls Billy.
"Lots of girls are nice," Harrington points out. "Nancy's nice." Billy side-eyes him, sceptical. "What? She is."
"She dumped your ass."
"So? That doesn't mean she isn't nice. That was . . ."
"Word is she was cheating on you with Byers."
"Shut up."
"Touch a nerve?" Billy starts to leer, but his heart isn't in it and it fades into nothing. He doesn't have the energy to start another verbal war with this guy. They share the rest of Billy's pack for the drive, sucking down tar and courage in preparation for whatever awaits them.
At long last the trees retreat and Billy slows to avoid damaging the Camaro on the rough, broken-up cobbles of Hawkins College's old drive. Roots from the encroaching forest and from ornamental bushes that have, through neglect, time, and nature's pernicious desire to expand, flourished into ugly monstrosities, dig through the grouting and crack the stones and make the path up to the school the site of a miniature earthquake. The jutting faults and chasms make the Camaro shudder and bounce. They creep through the abandoned garden towards the college, Billy swearing every time he hears scraping and pinging of stones on metal.
There are probably flowers in the garden during the spring. In winter, it's become a menacing wonderland of shadows hiding in hollows and swallowed stone furniture that appears suddenly in the naked shrubbery. A fountain and its decapitated cherub hold court in the very centre of the chaos, near consumed by a rosebush that sweeps around the basin and up the statue. Its thorns dig into the tender flesh of the weird grey baby. Nature has easily turned what was once a triumph of human control into its personal laboratory, where it mixes together imported ornamentals with hardy natives into strange, twisted creations that any self-respecting gardener would rip up at the roots and throw on a fire. Long, trailing fingers scrape against the windows. Billy winces internally.
Watching over this bedlam is the gothic revivalist structure of Hawkins College. Billy whistles despite himself. While the garden might be caught in a frenzy of constant change, Hawkins College stands rigid against time. The building is at least six storeys tall, a centre structure with two wings added on either side that project back into the forest. Empty flagpoles stab up from the four corner towers of the central building. The iron clockface set above the entrance arch is stuck at seven fifteen.
But the garden has tried its best to absorb the college in its embrace. Densely established ivy dusted with confectioner's sugar climbs up the stone walls and into windows broken by vandals and drinking parties. Only the topmost floors are free of foliage, their grey blocks and white veins exposed to the air. The rest is submerged under a sea of leaves.
White quoins encase the corners, one of the few concessions to embellishment, and the same pale stone was used to build the grand archway over the central building's entrance. Billy pulls up in front of it. He and Harrington lean towards the passenger window, gazing up at the deeply recessed double doors atop the lichen-covered steps. A rusting padlock on a chain hangs around the handles, along with a limp piece of police tape that once warned people that Hawkins College is a CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. Since Morell was arrested, the police quickly packed up their things and left. Billy and Harrington have the place to themselves.
Billy wants to drive away. Put the car in gear and careen out of these, speeding down the winding country roads until Hawkins College is a mere dream that fades to nothing. Deep within him an instinct screams to run, flee, turn back. Nothing good can come of being here. It might be spiritual, it might be primal, he couldn't say. It's just bloody loud.
He's also acutely aware that doing so with Harrington here to see it is not an option. And Harrington has his jaw set in a way that says he's not backing down either.
"It closed because of a scandal in '32," he explains without prompting. The story spills from him easily, a town tale that all Hawkinites know. "It got out that the principal was abusing kids and the teachers and prefects were in on it. Rumour was that if you spoke about it, even to your parents, you'd be offed. Then some girls actuallydied, and it got shut down."
"That so," Billy murmurs.
"Morell's grandfather ran the place. He built Asher's home too," he continues.
It makes sense. If there was ever the school of a man who built a gothic tower of a house in the middle of an Indiana prairie, this is it. Question is, why in Hawkins?
Since Harrington is in a chatty mood, Billy asks him.
He shrugs. "Dunno. I think it was a boarding school for rich girls. They get sent out here, taught to act like proper ladies, and sent out to marry rich dudes and organise charities. Out here, they can't get in trouble at parties or anything."
"Like a prison."
"Pretty much. With skirts and death threats."
"Those girls probably killed themselves to get out of here. I would."
Harrington snorts. "I'd like to see you in their uniform."
"Keep dreaming, Harrington."
The banter eases the thick, heavy atmosphere that descended on the car the moment the College came into view. A surge of courage comes over them, and they get out of the car and ascend the steps to the front doors. Written in fancy scrollwork above the double doors is an arc of Latin - Recti Cultus Pectora Roborant.
Neither of them even tries to translate it. They go for the padlock instead.
The padlock, despite being rusty, is sturdy and impossible to break by hand. "Should have brought my bat," Harrington complains. "It's in the back of my car." Billy turns, intent on finding some other way into the school, and hits him in the chest with the back of an open hand. "Hey!" Harrington yelps. "Oh. Who's that?"
"Who do you think?"
Morell stands at the base of the steps, in front of the Camaro. The dude must be silent as a cat because Billy didn't hear him coming. He's in a hospital gown, deathly pale, skeletal limbs exposed and trembling in the cold. His bare feet are blue. His lips are purple. Huge, yellow eyes shot through with black stare at Billy and Harrington in a hungry glee.
"He needs you," Morell rasps and grey saliva drips from the corners of his mouth. His hands come up, grasping at them, and he ascends a step. And another. And another. He moves in a jerky, uncomfortable way, as anyone would if they were half-frozen and emaciated to the point of starvation. He keeps coming.
Billy wishes Harrington had brought his bat too.
"Was the Byers kid like that?" asks Billy. He crosses his arms, watching Morell approach.
"No, this guy's way worse," Harrington replies with impressive calm. "That's gotta be the Mind Flayer inside him."
Billy nods. "Thought so."
Morell makes it to the top of the steps, coming under the archway. "He will rebuild the world with you." His voice echoes around the recessed space.
Billy and Harrington move with one mind. They split up, dodging around the madman and heading for the car. Billy drags his keys out of his pocket, jumps, slides across his hood, and lands at the driver's side, when Morell screams and leaps, clearing the entire set of steps in one bound.
What the hell?
Harrington is unprotected on the passenger side. Before Billy can move, Morell is on him, grabbing him by his fluffy hair and slamming his skull against the wing mirror. Harrington slumps into the snow, arms flopping under the Camaro.
If Billy drives away, he'll run over Harrington and condemn the guy to being the next school memorial service. If he stays . . .
Morell grins at Billy and jumps – jumps – onto the Camaro roof, the whole chassis shuddering under his weight. Billy swears and runs into the garden at his back.
Branches snap at him, thorns dragging along his skin, long trailing vines catch him around the ankles and try to bring him down. He keeps going, bashing his way through. There has to be something he can use as a weapon in here – some broken stick or piece of statue or anything at all. Fear, thick and throbbing, drives him further, faster, makes him want to scream. He can hear Morell hoarse panting getting closer.
By the decapitated fountain in the centre of the garden, he catches sight of a mound of stone in the undergrowth. He lunges for it, tries to lift it. It's the cherub's head. Rose thorns stab into his palms as he wrestles with the plant. Branches snap and he stumbles at its release, using the momentum to swing the head like a hammer throw –
Morell's spindly arms come around his neck and yank him off his feet. Billy's head cracks on the edge of the fountain basin. The cherub head goes flying and thumps into a snow drift.
