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"Crazy"
Crazy, for thinking that my love could hold you
I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying
- Patsy Cline
Joyce was sitting in the wreckage of her living room when car lights shining through the window woke her from the near-stupor she had fallen into, exhausted and riddled with guilt for having had to send Will away instead of being able to go in there—wherever there was—and fight that monster for him.
Hopper? she thought, squinting blearily in the light. Jonathan? Surely it was time for Jonathan to be coming home by now.
She pushed herself up off the floor and went outside in time to see a snazzy black car pull up. Joyce had never seen it before, but she recognized it anyway—it was Lonnie's. He always managed to have a cool black car, no matter how dire the rest of his circumstances might have been. His wife and children might be down to their last box of macaroni and cheese, but the car got taken care of.
The last thought flickered through her mind without emotion. Whatever Lonnie had done before, he was here now. He was Will's father, and Will was gone, and Lonnie had come.
"Hey. Babe." He came toward her now, concern written in his face. "What the hell happened?"
Without thinking Joyce reached out her arms and Lonnie held her. Being in his arms felt so familiar and safe. Lonnie always knew what to do. He would know what to do now. She could relax.
And with that thought, she fell apart, weeping against his shoulder as she had countless times before when things got to be too much. And as he always did, he kissed her hair and held her and promised her that everything would be all right, that he would take care of everything.
Too tired to do anything more, Joyce believed him, letting him lead her inside the house.
Hopper pulled up to the lab, near the woods, what the kids had called, what was it, Mirkwood?, and got out of the truck, bringing the big wire cutters with him. He cut the fence, slipping in with more noise than he would have liked. Might have to think about cutting down on the beer.
As he moved through the grounds, he was glad for his training—after his visit to their security room, he remembered most of the places their cameras covered, and could see some of the others, so he arrived at a side door undetected. Then he waited until two of the scientists came out so he could grab the door before it closed behind them, slipping in without need of a card to open the door.
It looked like an office. A bare, cold, uninviting office you would never want to work in, sure, but an office nonetheless. Normal.
Hopper moved quickly but cautiously down the halls. It was late enough at night that most people had left for the day, but there were still a few out and about who he had to avoid. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for until he found it: a hallway blocked off with plastic and marked with big yellow hazmat warning stickers.
Hazmat. Well, hell.
Nothing for it but to go in, and worry about the consequences later. Would anyone really notice if he grew a second head, anyway? He unzipped the plastic and stepped through the opening.
This hallway was much more clinical. No more wood paneling. This was all in white tile, with harsher, more industrial lighting.
It ended in a turn and a pair of doors that were locked against him. Only a card was getting him through these doors. Damn it.
Behind him, he heard the familiar click of a gun being cocked, and a security guard's voice saying "Hands up. Hands. Up."
He obediently put his hands up, turning around. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." Two of them, one the managerial type in a suit who had shown him around earlier. So he hadn't avoided all the cameras as well as he'd thought. Great.
Managerial type made that point, with a smirk that Hopper wanted to wipe right off his face.
But he couldn't, because he was busy trying to think of a plausible lie. "Look, Dr. Brenner asked for me specifically. Okay? How else do you think I got in here?"
Manager took one hand off his gun, reaching for the walkie at his belt. The uniform behind him looked confused. His gun was still up, but he was waiting for the suit to tell him what to do. "What's your name again?"
"It's Jim Hopper. Chief Jim Hopper," he said, as though they were idiots for not knowing. Honestly, they really were. You want to run something shady in a town, you get to know the people who might stumble on your operations so you know how to deal with them. Stepping forward, he positioned himself, and while the suit was talking into the walkie, Hopper decked him. He grabbed the gun while the suit was falling and had it pointed at the uniform before he could react. Pushing the uniform against the wall, Hopper grabbed his gun out of his outstretched hand. The walkie was burbling to itself on the floor, the suit's message having gotten through, at least partially, but Hopper was distracted by the card clipped to the uniform's shirt pocket. "Hey. You might if I borrow this thing?" He ripped it off the shirt. Still holding the gun on the uniform, he ran the card and stepped through the doors.
As soon as the door closed behind him, he shot the card reader on the inside, hoping that would buy him some time before they could get through after him.
Lonnie walked Joyce into the house with an arm around her shoulders. "Tell me everything. Tell me about our boy. I came as soon as I heard they found— What the hell?" He was looking around at the living room, the furniture tumbled here and there, the lights across the ceiling,
"He was here, Lonnie. He was here. The lights were blinking, one for yes and two for no, and then some … thing came through the wall at me." She gestured vaguely at the broken wall. "And then Will was in the wall, it was pink and I could see him, and the thing was coming and I—I told him to run. And now he's gone." Her face crumpled, but she was too tired and drained to cry anymore.
Frowning in confusion, Lonnie asked, "That was how he ended up in the quarry?"
"No. He was never in the quarry."
"But the body?"
"That's not Will. It's—they faked it, somehow, I don't know."
Lonnie was silent, looking at her, and she braced for his skepticism. But instead, he led her to the couch. "Come on, why don't you sit down. You look exhausted." He picked up a blanket and draped it over her shoulders. "And you must be freezing. All right, you stay there and I'll get something to warm us up."
She wasn't surprised when he unerringly found the last bottle of vodka in the house and brought it over, pouring some into two glasses.
"Here. Drink this. It'll calm your nerves. And help you think straight, yeah?"
"I don't know what to do."
"I know. I know." He sounded like he really did know. Maybe this thing with Will had reminded him that he had a family, sons who needed him.
"This whole time, I … I could—I could feel him. He was, he was so close, he was right there." She gestured at the wall, remembering Will's small pale scared face through that pink wall. "I knew he was alive. Our hands—our hands were … almost touching. Now it's like I … Now it's like I can't feel him anymore." Like she had sent her little boy away from the only place he felt safe, and lost and alone out there that thing had caught him. She couldn't bear to think of it; she couldn't stop thinking of it.
Lonnie didn't respond, and she glanced at him, seeing that same long-suffering expression on his face that she had seen too much of in her life.
"Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like, how everybody's looking at me, like I'm out of my damn mind."
"Hey." He took her hand, his fingers warm on hers. "You're not going to like this, but I think you need to seriously consider the possibility that all this—it's in your head."
Joyce groaned. Of course he would say that.
"Remember your Aunt Darlene?"
"No. No. This is not that."
"When something like this happens, your mind makes up stuff. For you to cope, you know? I mean, Jesus, there's a funeral tomorrow for our little boy and you're saying his body's fake. He's in the wall. I mean, how do you explain that?"
Joyce didn't know how to explain it. What if he was right? What if Hopper had been right? What if she wanted Will, her boy, her artist, to be alive so badly she had made this all up?
"How do you explain that?" Lonnie continued. His voice was soft, reasonable.
He was trying to help. And maybe he was right. Maybe Will had never been in the lights, or in the wall. Maybe he was just a kid who had run off because he heard something in the woods and tripped and fell into a quarry, and now he was dead, and there was nothing strange about it. Strange was exhausting, and scary. Maybe grief would be … less scary.
"It doesn't make sense. It doesn't. At least go talk to a shrink or … what about Pastor Charles, or someone—"
That cut through the fog of misery closing around her. "They can't help." Joyce should know. She'd gone to Pastor Charles before, and come home with an earful of a wife's duty to her husband.
"Joyce, you just told me that Will is gone. What else is there to do?"
He was gone. Will was gone. Either she had lost him today when she sent him away, or earlier when he never came home, but there was no more Will. She had to live with that, even if she didn't know how to. She swallowed down the glass of vodka and poured herself another, and she and Lonnie sat there drinking as they had done so many nights before.
Beyond the locked doors, everything was dark and silent. No one worked here now, that much was clear. Hopper pulled the flashlight out of his pocket, shining it ahead of him, calling Will's name as he made his way through the shadowy halls.
One room held what must have been a child's bed, still neatly made up with blanket and stuffed animal sitting on it. A childish drawing was taped to the wall. Had Will been kept here? He must have been.
Feeling an urgency now, Hopper rushed through the halls, calling Will's name again and again.
He came to a pair of double doors, hearing some kind of alarm on the other side. Or possibly behind him, it was hard to say. He punched a button next to the doors, hoping it would open them.
Behind him, voices. They were catching up. They couldn't catch up until he had found Will, or at least what had happened to him. What Hopper would do after that, he couldn't have said, but that was a problem for later. For now, Will.
Behind him, the doors opened. It was an elevator. He ducked in as soon as the door was open far enough to do so, and punched the button on the wall. Not a lot of choice for floors.
Security came around the corner, shouting for him to stop, as the elevator doors closed.
When they opened again, he thought he was in a nightmare. The place was pitch black and dead silent, and something was floating in the air. Like snowflakes. Or ash.
The elevator doors closing behind him felt like they were cutting him off from everything. He could only imagine how Will must have felt if he had been down here. If he still was down here.
The floating things in the air grew thicker as he went farther, and it was getting harder to breathe.
And then he found it. Whatever it was. Whatever he had been looking for, no question this was it.
"What the hell," Hopper whispered, moving toward it.
The walls of the room were covered in slimy black vines of some kind, and in front of him more vines laced over an opening in the wall … an opening that looked like something out of a horror movie.
Jesus Christ. If this was real, if he was really standing here, then maybe Will had been talking to Joyce through the lights. Anything was possible.
Hopper moved closer, reaching out to touch the slimy ropes, like a really big, gross spiderweb, that covered the hole.
Behind him, something moved, and he whirled around, reaching for his gun, moving back through the room.
A person in a white hazmat suit was coming toward him, and Hopper backed away. Then a gloved hand was over his mouth, a sharp pain stabbed him in the neck … and blackness.