12
The Upside down
El
El opened her eyes in the same dark hallway she had found herself in every night for the past month now. The same darkness all around her going on forever as normal. She started walking, the dark water under her feet freezing as she walked towards the sound of dripping water, the echo much less than normal. Almost like it wanted her to follow it easier.
After what felt like forever she finally turned a corner and found the hallway she always found with it's dark white peeling paint and rotten wooden floors.
"Elllll," a soft whisper reached her from the darkness as normal but this time she didn't panic. She didn't close her eyes or cover her ears like she had so many times before now. But simply kept walking down the long hall that never seemed to end, but she knew better now. It always ended, It always ended in the same thing, her waking up, scared and worried. But not tonight.
"Have you come to find us?" A voice said from somewhere in the dark, normally it would make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end but this time it was almost comforting, knowing that she was going the right way.
"Maybe," El said under her breath.
The light in the near distance started to flicker faster and faster as she reached the end of the hall, the cold hitting her full on.
Turning the corner she found the same dirty wall blocking her way. The words, "Save us before he finds you first!" written in a deep black ink.
She stepped forward as it slowly dripped down the wall and pooled on the floor, and started slowly making it's way down the hall towards her, and she wondered if this had always been the plan, to make her do it on her own.
She walked towards the wall slowly, edging around the pool of black carefully, never taking her eyes from it as it moved towards her, but this time she didn't give it the chance to grab her, no this time everything that was going to happen was her choice. She jumped over it and ran towards the wall full on.
She closed her eyes, the little part of her still believing she would run into a wall, but just like she had thought, she didn't.
She could never tell you how it felt to be in a room with four walls and a floor and then suddenly be in pitch black water the next.
The weird feeling of having your feet be suddenly in the air and then not even a breath later in water when you had been running a moment before that.
She opened her eyes to see nothing but a world of black ink. She felt herself start to sink, bubbles escaping her lips. On a normal night, she would fight to swim up which never did anything to help her so now she let herself fall a moment before she turned and started swimming down.
She remembered the words of the voice that spoke to her every night "You need to stop, you're not going to win!" Well she wasn't fighting tonight and a small part of her was panicking at that fact, but she needed to do this, this was the only thing she could think to do. It was this or she would end up killing herself just like Mike had said.
"So you're giving up then?" A deep voice asked from somewhere in the blackness. El kept swimming down, her chest starting to hurt from the lack of oxygen but she didn't stop.
"You're really going to abandon your friends like that? You know I'm not done going after them? You just left them alone."
El kept swimming down, her vision going blurry at the edges, not sure what was going to happen when she had to take a breath but suddenly her hand broke through something. She didn't have time to think about what the other side held for her, she simply swam up. El sucked in a breath as she broke through the service of the water. The world around her was still dark but at least she could breathe.
She coughed up water for a good second as she floated there, but when she could finally take a full breath she blinked the water out of her eyes to see she was at the Hawkings pool. It looked exactly the same but now abandoned to the world of the upside-down.
El swam over to the edge of the pool and pulled herself up and onto the sidewalk, the air cold on her wet skin, her breath fogging up in front of her. She stood up and looked around herself, ash rained down from the dark blue sky, what she could only say were vines crisscrossed the ground, looking dead. It looked like the same dead world from all the times she had seen it but the one thing she hadn't was water.
Looking back at the pool it looked almost normal, though she couldn't say why but like everything else here it felt off in one way or another.
She started to back away from the pool, the hair standing up on her neck before she turned away and jogged the side gate and opened it to leave the pool behind. She started down the sidewalk passing houses she knew, the world she knew. But now it was colder, darker, unnerving to be in.
"Where do you think you're going?" Billy asked, walking beside her from out of nowhere. "Have you come to join us?"
"You know I haven't," El answered, "I'm here to save you all. Just like you have been asking me to this whole time."
"I've never asked you to save me," Billy hissed from where he now stood in her face, his eyes pools of black that showed her pale face back to her.
El couldn't help the way her hands started to shake, or the nervous swallow before she spoke again. "That's because your not Bil-"
Her words were cut off suddenly as he reached out faster then her eyes could follow and wrapped around her neck. She let out a choked sound a second before she was picked up and slammed into the ground hard. She saw stars a moment before her vision cleared long enough to see Billy's face in front of her, veins of black spreading out across his face as he spoke. His words were hard and sent a chill down her spine.
"Don't act like you have any power here child, I could kill you anytime I want here! Don't act like just because you have won before that means anything because I'm simply keeping you alive to watch what you will try to do to save your life, save your friends. All simply because I'm bored."
El opened her mouth to try to speak but the only sound was more choking as she choked on her breath.
"Go ahead," Billy hissed into her ear as he lasted his grip.
"You liar!" El hissed back at him. "You have no real power here because if you did I would be dead because that's what you have been after this whole time ever since I was that little girl in the lab and touched the Demogorgon, the monster you made this summer failed. So you sent ghosts after me but of course, you forget the most important thing about humans, because your not one."
She watched as his eyes got angrier and angrier, "What do you mean!"
But she didn't answer because he had loosened his grip and that's all she had needed. A second later she threw out her arm and he was sent flying backward into a fence.
She got up and looked where the fence had been broken inward and found nothing. Billy wasn't there. El backed off slowly before she started to run away. She looked back once again but saw nothing. No one was following after her this time. It wasn't until the next street did she finally hear something.
"Even if you think you have a chance here your friends sure don't. Or did you forget that I can still hurt the people you love?" a voice said from nowhere.
El felt her heart drop to the bottom of her stomach as she realized what he meant and where Billy had gone. "No," she breathed before another sound caught her attention.
Looking up El felt her eyes go wide with horror. A cloud of blackbirds, maybe ravens, though they looked wrong like everything else here, like they had two sets of wings not just the one normal birds did and beaks they flowered outwards with teeth. They flue above her in a large circle, blocking out the dark blue sky. She heard them cry out suddenly before they started for her.
She backed away before she swung out an arm. Half of them were knocked to the side, black ink raining down from them, but still the others flue right for her, a mindlessness in their eyes, the only thing they were there for was her blood.
Again she swung out. Over and over she swatted at them like flies but it didn't matter what she did because the ones that still could fly got back up and flue right for her again. She felt the warmth of blood drip down her nose as she realized that there was no way to stop them and that the only thing left to do was run.
She started to back off then and with one last burst of power to send the next wave of them flying back she started to run. Knowing she didn't have much time she ducked into an all too familiar place. Melvald's General Store.
El took a moment just to take a breath, she wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, the blood a deep red before she wiped it off on her t-shirt. She looked up and saw the store was empty of anything to use that would be helpful, but at least she had escaped for the moment.
She stepped further into the large room wondering what had happened here, it almost looked like people had gone through it before…. But that was impossible because they were the only ones to have ever been to the upside-down, sure the Russians had tried but they never made it….right?
She shook her head of the thought and focused on what she was going to do next.
She knew where she was going but to get there now was harder with the birds but as she reached the back of the store and opened the door to the back an idea hit her. The loading door let out to a small back alley and then right into the flower shop's back alley and then that led right into the next store and so on and so on. It would take her longer to get to where she was going and it wouldn't last the whole way to where she was headed, but at least it would get her away from those birds.
She reached out for the bottom to open the door when the sound of broking glass made her turn back to the open door that led to the back room and what she saw made her heart stop. A Demogorgon stood in the doorway. This one was much bigger than the one she had seen all those years ago. A moment later the sounds of flying wings joined it.
El knew if she stayed and fought she wouldn't win, her powers already on the weak side and it didn't help that there were so many of the birds. She turned back to the door and didn't even bother with the button, simply ripped the door from its frame and jumped down into the alley and ran for the flower shop not looking back.
She ran around the back and found the door to the backroom and without even thinking she put out an arm and not even a moment later the door was blown back falling to the floor. She jumped over it and ran through the smaller building, the sounds of the Demogorgon behind her. As she ran she looked around herself for anything to use as a weapon but only saw boxes, and at this point, she would use anything.
She flicked her head to the side and the boxes fell over making what she hoped was at least a small speed bump for it.
She made it into the front room then and felt a little relief as she saw the side door behind the cash register but it only lasted a second as her foot caught on a broken flower pot. It sent her to the ground on her stomach and a moment later she heard the Demogorgon.
El turned onto her back just in time to find the monster standing right over her. It opened its mouth slowly before it let out a scream. El turned her face away from it but she wasn't the same little girl from two years ago.
As it raised it's clawed hand above her she focused on it with everything she had and watched as it slowly started to split in half. Unlike before it didn't disappear into ash, instead, it's black inky blood rained down on her legs, leaving her once blue jeans ruined as the monster fell to either side of her.
El pulled herself away from it before she stood up not wanting to slip again. She looked at the remains for only a moment before she turned away and headed for the door hearing the sounds of wings from the other room and knew it was only a matter of time before they found her.
As she kicked the door open and started to run again to the next building she hoped that Mike and the others were okay.
An
So I've decided to make the chapters shorter for now and have only one POV at a time. That way you won't have to wait for weeks on end to get a chapter but instead a shorter one everyday for the next week or two. As always thanks for reading, it means a lot to me. If you want to review and give me your thoughts and or any criticism on what I could do better please feel free, it always helps. I hope your all doing well as you can be right now. Wishing all the best 3