You showed up just in time
The Upside Down, March 26, 1986
Though she had spent the better part of a week now hearing Lucas, Max, and Dustin talk emphatically about the Upside Down, Chrissy still wasn't prepared for the sight that met her when she and Eddie burst through the Watergate. Stale air filled her lungs when she inhaled from the long swim.
A dark sky loomed overhead, hefty storm clouds that glowed red with sporadic booms of thunder. The air was heavy as well as stale, feeling somehow humid and rank all at once.
"C'mon," was all Eddie said, helping haul Chrissy onto her feet. Rock-hard ground choked with grotesque, tree-root like… things… awaited them. When the bottom of Chrissy's foot skimmed over one and it writhed beneath her, her stomach gave a revolting lurch in response. These things beneath their feet were the same tentacle appendages she had seen from Vecna.
"Don't touch those." Her voice was all breath as she pointed out the tentacle roots. Eddie gave a curt nod and stepped gingerly over an especially large one.
Robin and Nancy weren't hard to find. They were a few yards from the gate, standing over an exact replica of Reefer Rick's boat. The same they had used to venture into the lake. Looking over her shoulder, Chrissy realized the gate itself was embedded in an outcropping of rock here in the Upside Down, just as it had been at the bottom of the real Lover's Lake. A circlet of evergreen trees stood sentries around the dry, alternate lake they currently stood in.
It was an exact replica of Hawkins, just like their friends had said.
"I see you all listen worse than my little sister," Nancy said by way of greeting. She plucked an oar from the boat, tossing one to Eddie and keeping one for herself. "We need to find Steve."
That proved to be an easy task. A sharp cry cut through the ever-rolling thunder from above, followed by a shriek that sent a shiver rushing down Chrissy's spine. It was harder to keep from touching the tentacles when they ran; Chrissy flinched every time her foot made contact. Obscenely, her mind was reminded of old schoolyard chants. Step on a crack, break your mother's back.
Steve Harrington was found writhing on the ground, being attacked by some hellish creatures that vaguely resembled bats. Feeling useless in her terror, Chrissy simply did her best to hunker as close to Eddie as she could while he, Robin, and Nancy made quick—if horrifying—work of the bat-things. When Eddie stabbed one with his now broken oar, blood as black and thick as pitch spurted from the creature.
"Jesus Christ. Jesus H. Christ!" Eddie exploded when the work was done, throwing his oar down in another show of petulance against their current circumstances. He rubbed a hand over his face and through his wet hair, peeking at Chrissy through his fingers to check on her.
"Fuck this," he told her, retrieving the snapped oar to press into her own hands. "In every sense of the word, and at least eight ways I haven't figured out yet. Are you good? Those things didn't touch you?"
"Golden." Chrissy managed the syllables of that single word before promptly turning from Eddie to vomit on the other side of one of the tentacles. Cursing again, Eddie hunched his shoulders around her and placed a hand on her back. Thankfully, Chrissy's show of weakness went unnoticed by Nancy and Robin. Nancy's attention was focused on Steve in the aftermath of his attack; Robin was rather taken up with their new friends.
"Uh, do you think these bats have, like, rabies?" She asked, face scrunched in disgust as she stood from inspecting one of the dead creatures.
Chrissy straightened herself, hastily wiping her mouth on her sweater sleeve and turning beneath Eddie's hand to look curiously at the other girl.
"It's just, rabies is, like, my number one greatest fear," Robin continued, "and I think we should probably get you to a doctor, like, really soon, because once the symptoms set in, that's it. It's too late. You're already, like, dead."
If anyone had managed to think of a reply to Robin's emphatic rabies speech, there was not time to give it. Screeching joined the sound of thunder once more as a new round of bats sluiced through the sky. Closing ranks, the teenagers crowded close together and tensed for a new round of battle only for these bats to swoop in, land, and begin shrieking.
"Alright, there's not that many." Six to their five, to be exact. Chrissy clutched the oar handle tighter in her hands. "We can take 'em. Right?"
And perhaps they might have felled those six had the skies not darkened further with the flapping wings of a proper hoard growing larger as they came in from the horizon. It was Nancy's quick thinking that saved them. "The woods! C'mon!"
Not unkindly, Eddie pushed Chrissy in front of him, so that she ran bracketed with Steve to the front and Eddie behind. She thought the oar she held might shatter and splinter against her palms, she was holding it so tightly in her terror. Never, not even that day in the bathroom when she heard Vecna's voice for the first time, had her heart beat so painfully in her chest. The roaring of her own blood dulled the rumbling thunder, the squawking bats, even Eddie's voice urging her to keep going, to make it to the trees.
Chrissy had been partially wrong. There was a forest just like in the real Hawkins, yes, but these trees had lost all sign of needles and leaves. Sharp, bare branches slapped at her arms and legs as she ran. It was harder, in the woods, to place her feet to fall around the tentacles. More than once, her foot landed right on top only for the appendage to squirm beneath her sole. It was hard to get a fortifying breath of the thick, rotten air. Each gasp left her throat raw regardless of whether it was an inhale or an exhale.
Nancy had suggested the woods, but it was Steve who steered the group to Skull Rock. The five of them hunkered down and hid beneath the boulder, waiting for the swarm of hellish bats to fly overhead. Though pressed between Eddie and Robin, Chrissy felt her shoulders shake as the adrenaline continued to wrack through her body.
"This place has always been below Hawkins?" Chrissy ventured, keeping her tone constrained to a hushed whisper. The bats had passed; their calls growing ever duller as they flew away.
"For at least fourteen or so years," Nancy amended. "Right? El's around fourteen, fifteen?"
"Yeah," Steve agreed. "Something like that."
They played it safe, waiting several minutes and ears straining for any hint of returned bats, before straying from the safety of the rock cover. Well, attempted to, at least. Steve didn't make it out, faltering and falling due to his wounds from the bats. Once again, Nancy and Robin were immediately at his rescue, but Eddie and Chrissy hung back.
"Sorry I threw up again," she said hollowly, eyes riveted on Nancy as she ripped the hem of her shirt to fashion bandages for Steve.
"Don't apologize for being freaked the fuck out by this place, Chris." Eddie's hand lighted on her back again, this time settling low on the small of it. She found herself leaning into his touch. Managing to look away from Steve, she instead looked up to study Eddie's face. His cheeks had taken on a bone-white pallor, making the fresh bruising on his eye stand out in stark contrast. Like a lopsided panda. Chrissy grit her teeth against the laughter that bubbled up at that ridiculous thought, worrying it would be edged in hysteria.
"Thanks for coming here with me?" Chrissy tried again, earning herself a smirk from the boy beside her.
"I will gladly accept gratitude for jumping into this hellhole." His thumb traced a short path along her spine. She returned Eddie's smile, though hers wavered on her lips.
"Is he good?" Eddie asked when Robin drew near. Soggy and more than a little panic-stricken, Robin nodded, her head bobbing aggressively atop her neck. "Alright. You two stay here, I'm gonna take a look."
With that, Eddie scrambled up a portion of Skull Rock and tentatively stood atop it to look out at the forest all around them. "So, uh, this place is like Hawkins but with monsters and nasty shit?"
"Pretty much," Nancy confirmed. Eddie made to slide down the rock, annoyingly disregarding that Chrissy had told him not to touch the ropy roots that intersected the ground, but Nancy intervened. "Don't touch the vines! It's all a hivemind."
"All the creepy crawlies around here, dude. They're, like, one or something. You step on a vine, you're stepping on a bat, you're stepping on Vecna."
"Is that what it is? Why they move?" Chrissy asked, tightening her grip on the oar again so that the wood grain bit painfully into her fingers. Panic clawed its way up her chest. "I stepped on some when we were running. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!"
Before she could stop them, tears were streaming hotly down her cheeks. Her lungs constricted so that every breath she drew was searing and short lived. The edges of her vision were darkening when Eddie jumped from the boulder, landing heavily to his feet. When he made to take the oar from her hands, she let him. Just as she let him guide her to the ground, press her head between her knees.
"Breathe, Chrissy," he reminded her, a warm and reassuring hand splayed between her shoulder blades. She knew his hand was there as much in comfort and to ensure she was indeed trying to regulate her breathing.
"Is she gonna be okay?" Robin asked, hesitant sympathy coloring the words.
"She'd better be, we don't have time for this," Steve grumbled. Chrissy was vaguely aware of the damp strands of Eddie's hair brushing the top of her head when he turned sharply to face Steve.
"Chrissy's one of the people Vecna is interested in. You think everything's hunky-dory in her mind, man? Of course it fucking isn't." Though Chrissy couldn't see how Eddie glared at Steve, she appreciated his defense of her. "She's trying, okay? Her and Max are more fucking badass than either of us could ever hope to be, facing this creep head on, knowing what he could do to them."
Shuddering, Chrissy managed a truly deep breathe. The oxygen helped clear the panic from her mind. She took a few more steadying breaths before picking her head up. "I'm fine," she croaked out. "And I'm sorry. None of us slept last night. We were all waiting for something to happen. But I'm fine now, I promise."
Eddie helped haul her to her feet with a hand hooked beneath her arm. "I'm fine," she said again, unsure if she was trying to convince herself or everyone around her. Eddie, at least, had the common courtesy to nod in agreement with her.
"Everything from our world is still here, right?" Robin asked after a beat of awkward silence. It was easy to forget this was her first time in the Upside Down, too. "Except people?"
"As far as I understand it, yeah," Nancy concurred, keeping a wary eye on Chrissy. For her part, Chrissy hunched her shoulders and tried to hide herself behind Eddie's back. Embarrassment flamed in her cheeks. It wasn't as hard, being vulnerable in front of the younger kids. Nancy and Robin were her peers, however, and though the girls hadn't run in the same social circles in school, they had known of one another.
Queen Chrissy, Eddie had teasingly called her before. What did Robin and Nancy think, seeing that her popularity in the halls of Hawkins High was hiding a whole host of issues?
"So, theoretically, we could go to the police station and steal guns and grenades and whatever we need to blow up those bat things that are guarding the gate."
"Yeah, I highly doubt the Hawkins PD has grenades, Robin, but guns? Yeah, sure." Steve sounded exasperated. His expression was lost on Chrissy. She was too busy studying the pattern on the back of Eddie's denim vest.
"Well, we don't have to go all the way downtown for guns. I have guns in my bedroom," Nancy revealed. The revelation was more of a relief that all attention was off her than it was a hope they would have a way out of this terrible world for Chrissy.
"You, Nancy Wheeler, have guns—plural—in your bedroom?" Eddie asked, reaching behind him for Chrissy's hand. The squeeze he gave her fingers echoed the hope she couldn't bring herself to feel.
"A Russian Makarov and a revolver," Nancy confirmed. So it was decided: the Hawkins PD was out, the new destination was the Wheeler household. More specifically, Nancy's bedroom. This plan felt good. It at least gave them a sense of direction, a goal more concrete than avoiding the bats.
The confidence gained from this plan was immediately dashed, however, when the ground began to tremble violently beneath their feet. Steve grabbed hold of Nancy as the earthquake rocked them, pulling the girl to her chest. Eddie had the forethought to take both Chrissy and Robin with him, breaking their fall before pushing himself up to hover protectively over them. The ground was hard beneath Chrissy, as if the entire terrain was made up of rock. A sharp jolt of pain shot up her arm when she landed on her elbow.
Though the earthquake was short lived, the new terror it wrought in the five teenagers was not. When the ground ceased to shake, a horrendous growl cut through the air, portending some new beast that Chrissy was none too eager to meet. Chrissy huddled closer to Robin as the sound wore on, gladly accepting the other girl's outstretched hand.
"Yeah, so guns seem like a pretty good idea to me." Eddie was the first to speak, laying a reassuring hand on each of the girls' shoulders.
This second hike through the woods was decidedly less fun than the one that morning. For one thing, Henderson wasn't there to unwittingly entertain him, making Eddie feel slightly less desolate with his current lot in life.
For another, it was dark and spooky as hell in this Upside Down. The thunder never really stopped. It roiled in the sky almost incessantly. The only true light in that dim, dank world was the flashes of red lightning that accompanied the thunder.
Well, and from the flashlight Robin had bequeathed to them as she proclaimed them the leaders of the Wheeler House Expedition.
"So, uh, since you helped save me from the demon bats, can I ask what happened to your face?" Steve asked from beside him. He wore Eddie's vest, now, covering some of his skin and his current wounds. The two of them walked ahead of the girls, who walked three abreast with Chrissy in the middle. Eddie glanced over his shoulder, confirming that Chrissy was more occupied with carefully stepping over vines than she was with what he was doing.
"I got in a fight with Jason Carver," Eddie divulged. The confession earned him a double take from his old classmate.
"No shit?" Steve asked. "Over Chrissy?"
"Not over her," Eddie snapped, bristling at the words. "Because the guy is a grade-A asshole to people. Including Chrissy. They, uh, broke up, by the way. After the fight."
In light of this information, the two of them fell silent for a few feet. "Thanks, by the way, for saving my ass back there."
"Shit. You saved your own ass, man. I mean, that was a real Ozzy move you pulled back there."
"Ozzy?"
"When he took a bite out of that bat? Ozzy Osbourne? Black Sabbath? He bit a bat's head off onstage." The reference was clearly evading Steve. "It's very metal, what you did. That's all I'm saying."
Steve nodded and the pair lapsed into silence again.
"It's 'very metal' to beat up douchebags who give girls a hard time, too." Steve bumped his shoulder against Eddie's. Unable to keep the bashful grin from his face, Eddie gave the other boy a playful shove. "You know, I never did like Jason. We were teammates, on the basketball team? He's always had his head up his ass."
Eddie laughed at that. From what he knew of the guy, Steve's assessment was pretty spot on. "Maybe you're as cool as Dustin drones on and on about you being, Harrington."
Another discontented growl put a pause on their conversation. The very world around them seemed displeased with their presence. Given what Wheeler had said about the vines being a hivemind, Eddie wouldn't have been surprised if Vecna himself were responsible for the sounds and continued tremors that ran beneath their feet.
"I'm sorry for earlier, too. When I was shitty about Chrissy. I know its not her fault, I just, um, kind of really hate being in the Upside Down. I hate all of this, honestly. I thought—really fucking hoped—Billy and the Mindflayer were the end of it."
Eddie started at that, turning to Steve with wide eyes. "Max's brother Billy? He was involved in all this shit, too?"
"Yeah, yeah, before Vecna was this thing we called the Mindflayer. It, um… possessed Billy? I guess that would be the word. He sacrificed himself so that the Mindflayer could be destroyed."
"Huh." Eddie turned this information over in his head. He hadn't known Billy Hargrove—had only heard that the guy was an asshole—but his death had obviously done a number on Max. "Poor Red. No wonder this Vecna creep is interested in her. That's not, like, a common thing down here, is it? Self-sacrifice for the greater good?"
"Not as eager to play the hero as you seem, Munson?" Steve teased.
"Um, fuck no." Eddie gave an emphatic shake of his head, littering Steve with stray droplets from his still damp hair. "Were it not for Chrissy back there, I would have turned tail and ran a long time ago. Fuck all of this—respectfully. And thank you for dealing with it now and before, but, uh, no. This very much goes against the Munson doctrine of mind your own business."
"Until pretty cheerleaders are involved, right?"
If it weren't for the hivemind vines, Eddie would have very much enjoyed pushing Steve and watching him fall.
The Wheeler house, when they finally reached it, was infested with the vines. They crisscrossed the floor, the walls, the ceiling—even the furniture wasn't safe.
"Might be time to get a maid, Wheeler," Robin joked, looking all around just as the others were.
"Come on. I don't want to stay here longer than we have to."
Though Eddie was holding her hand again, Chrissy felt far from safe. A shiver wracked down her spine as they climbed the stairs. He knows, she thought, though she couldn't force the words past her lips. He knows we're here.
Nancy's guns were not in their hiding spot. Her room was not as it should have been; instead, it was frozen—as far as could be told—in 1983. November 6th, 1983, to be exact.
"The day Will went missing," Nancy explained to the confused faces of Eddie, Robin, and Chrissy. "The day the gate opened. We're in the past."
A clock chime gave Chrissy a start. None of the others reacted, save Eddie, who turned to her immediately when he felt her jolt. "Y-you don't happen to have a grandfather clock in your house, do you?"
Nancy didn't have time to answer the question, for Steve Harrington's voice grabbed all their attention. "Dustin! Dustin!"
They all ran back downstairs, toward the sound of Steve's calling, but Eddie did so while looking over his shoulder at Chrissy. "The clock?"
"You didn't hear it? It ch-chimed, when Nancy said we're stuck in the past here." Chrissy blinked back a new onslaught of tears, swallowed hard against the rising panic in her throat. She found herself drawn to Eddie's side when the group converged in the living room, watching Steve seemingly trying to get the attention of the dust-filled air around them.
Dustin Henderson was not there.
"Maybe he really does have rabies." Robin mused.
"Steve, what are you doing?"
"Henderson, he's here. That little shit, he's here. He's like… he's in the walls or something, just listen. Dustin? Dustin! Dustin! Can you hear me?" Nothing—Dustin Henderson or otherwise—responded to Steve's shouting. But in the quiet that followed, faintly and muffled as if the voice truly were coming from the walls, Dustin could be heard talking.
That brings us to the question you first raised. How and why is there a gate at Lover's Lake? Let's analyze. What do Eleven and Vecna have in common?
"See!" Steve shouted in his validation. "He's here! I just can't figure out where."
They set about looking through the living room and adjacent kitchen and dining room, but Dustin was not Chrissy's main concern. "He's too close," she whispered to Eddie.
"As in, here in the house?" He whispered back, flinging a curtain aside to check behind it.
"No, but… h-he, he knows we're here. Maybe because I stepped on those vines earlier, I don't know, but—"
"Chrissy." Eddie pulled her into the hallway, taking her by the shoulders and crouching slightly to look her in the face. "Listen to me. If Vecna does know we're here, that is not your fault. This is his world. He knows it better than we ever could, okay? You cannot go blaming yourself. Okay? I'm here, we're all here, we can keep you safe. Do not let yourself fall into that headspace."
What happened next, neither of them expected. Chrissy flung herself at Eddie, burying her face in his chest. Surprised into stillness, Eddie belatedly wrapped his arms around her. Beneath his hand, her back rose and fell in shaking breaths. He smelled of lake water and woods, but he was warm and solid and here. Those facts alone were enough to bolster Chrissy.
"You're going to be okay, Chrissy," Eddie promised when she broke apart from him. He took her face in his hands, thumb wicking away an errant tear rolling down her cheek. Sincerity shone in his eyes. "Okay? I'm not gonna let anything happen to you down here, I promise."
A tenuous smile managed to form on her lips. She nodded, face still held in his hands.
"Hey, uh, as much as I just love being the fifth wheel here, and as much as I hate to interrupt, Nance has an idea on how to get Dustin's attention. So, if you lovebirds would kindly follow me…?"
They both gave a start at Robin's words, yet neither of them broke apart from the other. Rather, Eddie simply glared at the girl overtop of Chrissy's head before letting a hand skim down over Chrissy's shoulder and arm, taking her hand in his again.
"Lead the way, Buckley."
