Chapter 4

"That's Hopper's truck," Jonathan said as he and Sands approached his house. "I wonder what he's doing here."

"Who's Hopper?" But Jonathan had sped up at the sight of his house, and he was already opening the door and going inside. Sands followed him in. The first thing she noticed was the absurd number of strings of Christmas lights with unscrewed bulbs hung from the walls of the living room and hallway. One of the walls in the living room had an alphabet painted with large black letters in several rows. Strings of lights lined up with the alphabet rows, one light next to each letter.

Promising herself that she'd look around more if she had the chance, Sands quickly followed Jonathan into the kitchen, where she found a wild-eyed woman with wavy brown hair and a haggard-looking man with a day or two of stubble. Some of their appearance could be attributed to the late hour, but these were obviously very stressed people.

"Jonathan! Who's this?" asked the woman, who was clearly Joyce Byers, the mother of Jonathan and Will. She gestured with her cigarette, and Sands had to make an effort not to make a face at the smell.

"Mom! Oh, this is Sands, she's in town reporting for her school newspaper. But Mom, it wasn't Will's body we buried!"

"We know," Hopper said bluntly, breathing out some smoke from his own cigarette. "What made you change your mind? I thought you were sure it was him."

"You know?" Jonathan asked in surprise. He gave Sands a helpless look, unsure how to answer the question.

Sands mentally sighed and decided to bite the bullet. Fortunately, Koren wasn't here to keep herself from being thrown under the bus. "We heard you didn't think your son was dead, so my classmate decided it would be a good idea to dig up his grave and see for himself."

"You did what?" Hopper reflexively asked in a menacing tone. When he thought about it for another second, he relaxed back into his chair and muttered, "Not that I'm one to talk."

"Yeah, well, it wasn't actually his body, so it's not really disrespectful, is it?" Sands asked.

"Oh, I don't care," Joyce said, tone plaintive and dismissive all at once. "I just want my son back here, safe with me!"

"We'll help you all we can, I promise," Sands said.

Hopper scoffed. "Whatever's going on, it's dangerous. You kids should stay out of it."

"Mom, we can help!" Jonathan protested.

"No! You can stay out of it! I don't need to lose you too because you ran off and did something foolish!" Joyce exclaimed.

"Mom…"

"No!" This was the loudest yell yet. Silence followed as everyone tried to calm down. Sands was a little frustrated, but she understood. In any truly dangerous situation, her father and the other teachers back at Crossroads would have reacted the same way. And to these Bystanders, this monster was clearly very dangerous, so it was entirely reasonable for Joyce Byers not to want her son to get involved. The thing was, Sands was a Heretic, and she wasn't convinced the situation was actually dangerous for her, Scout, or Koren. Even if it was, they was probably better equipped to handle it than the adults in this town, but with the Bystander Effect, there was no way she could tell them that, so when Jonathan gave up the argument and retreated into the living room, she quietly followed and sat down on a couch across from him.

"So what's the story with these Christmas lights?"

"Mom said Will was here, that he could talk to her through the lights," Jonathan said quietly. "She got a phone call, and she said she could recognize him breathing, and then she said he could communicate with her by making the lights flash. So she painted an alphabet on the wall so he could spell out words to her. I thought she was crazy, but…when Nancy was in that other place through the hole in the tree, she said it was like running around in the same forest only creepier, and I could hear her yelling, but I couldn't see her anyway until she came back through the hole. So maybe…"

"Maybe Will was here, in the other place?" Sands finished.

"Yeah. I have no idea why Mom unscrewed all the light bulbs, though." They thought about that quietly for a second, and Sands looked around until she noticed something else weird.

"What's with the hole in the wall?" The front wall of the house had a ragged hole that had been partially patched over by wooden planks.

"Mom said Will was there, he was in the wall, but she couldn't get to him. And then he told her to run, and the monster came out, and when she came back, Will wasn't here anymore. Well, here in the other place. Whatever."

Sands got up to examine the hole more closely. It looked entirely natural, and opened up to the normal outside. "Do you think there was another…portal…here? Scout said the one in the tree closed up like it was never there."

"Yeah, the hole's not from that. My mom went a bit wild and tried to cut her way to Will with an axe. It didn't work."

"Obviously." They stood there quietly for a few more seconds before Sands said, "I'm going to go outside and take a look around from there, if that's okay."

"Yeah, sure," Jonathan said quietly.

Sands walked outside. Taking the PAWS from one of her pockets, she programmed it to scan the house, the shed in the back, and the property up to twenty feet out. Then, she started pacing, trying to think things through. After a few seconds of that, she returned to the inside of the house and asked Jonathan, "Scout said you were hunting the monster. What did you plan to do if you found it? Were you prepared to fight?"

Jonathan looked around furtively before pulling a small pistol out of his jacket. Sands couldn't help but think that, while it may have been good enough to kill Bystanders, it looked puny compared to the Heretic weapons she was used to. "Nancy had a baseball bat. We practiced a bit, and she was a better shot than me, so we switched while we were out there." After that, they were quiet for a few minutes, Jonathan silently thinking while Sands slowly walked around the room and looked around, more for something to do while she let her mind run than because she actually hoped to find anything.

They were brought out of their drowsy thoughts by the sound of Koren and Scout pulling up in the car outside. Sands suggested Jonathan try to get some sleep and went out to meet her classmates. She explained everything she had learned, using a small portable PAWS viewer to show images of the hole in the wall, the Christmas lights, and the painted alphabet.

When she had finished her explanation, Sands said, "I think we need to hunt the Stranger tonight. I think Will is probably still in this other realm where the Stranger is, and the other disappeared people might be too. The only way we know to get to the other realm is by these temporary portals the Stranger opens when it hunts, so we need to draw it out."

"If you're concerned enough about this missing kid to stay up even later, don't you think we should ask for help?" Koren asked.

"Yeah, you're right. Professor Dare doesn't sleep much anyways."

To their surprise, when they called in and explained the situation to Professor Dare, she had only heard of situations with some similarities, but nothing that matched entirely. She was especially interested in whatever was going on with the Bystander Effect, but she gave them a cryptic warning not to spread that information around too much because "certain unfriendly parties might be very interested in anything that threatened to weaken it." She promised to look in the library and ask around to see if anybody know more about this type of Stranger and praised them for their quick work and good plan ("You did get lucky, but in my experience, good luck and the skill to capitalize on it are both essential elements of success.") Now that there was a confirmed threat, she asked Risa Kohaku, the small Asian woman in charge of Crossroads' security, to keep an eye on them. The two adults used the Pathfinder building to open a temporary portal. Professor Kohaku stepped through it to Hawkins, and the girls handed over their PAWS recordings to Professor Dare so she could look them over for anything they missed. Although this was a school assignment and she didn't intend to help them more than necessary, she wasn't callous enough to use that as an excuse not to help protect innocents.

"I will try to find a way to duplicate these odd portals with magic," Professor Dare told the students, "but in the meantime, your plan to draw out the Stranger seems to be our best chance of rescuing the Bystanders who were taken. Good luck." Then she closed the Pathfinder-generated portal behind her. Professor Kohaku gave the students magical distress beacons for them to trigger if they needed immediate assistance and told them that, although she was going to be in the motel room they had rented, she would be able to respond almost immediately.

"The Stranger seems to attack only people by themselves, except for that one pair of hunters," Sands said as Koren drove the car back to where they started looking earlier. "But I don't think it's a good idea to split up, not when we might fall asleep. But maybe if only one person is awake at a time, it will still attack."

"I call not it for the first watch," Koren said. Scout volunteered because her increased stamina meant she was the least tired, and her enhanced hearing made her the best choice for a lookout. Unfortunately, it was too dark deep in the forest for her to see anything with her scope portals, but the Stranger only seemed to hunt at night, so she would just have to listen for it and rely on her (baseline-human) night vision to see it if it got too close. The girls grabbed blankets from the car to lie on, headed into the woods, and settled down for the night.

It was nearly 3:30, and Scout was getting ready to wake her sister up so she could get a few hours of sleep before dawn, when she heard something odd. It was a slight stretching sound, like rubber makes when it's been stretched to its limit. Then, there was a quiet tear, and a low, ominous growling. Scout quickly shook Sands and Koren awake, summoned Professor Kohaku, pulled out her sniper rifle, and listened carefully, pinpointing the direction the sounds had come from before aiming into the darkness. Professor Kohaku appeared and saw that Scout was aiming at something but that there was no immediate threat. "I will stay concealed and try to keep the portal open while you three handle the situation," Professor Kohaku said. The girls gave their assent with a nod, an "alright," and an "okay." A second later, and Professor Kohaku had turned herself invisible.

"I'll sneak to the side. You draw its attention with your flashlights while I go to the other side and find Will and the others," Sands said as she pulled on the backpack containing all their water and snacks.

Scout looked away from the darkness for a second and leaned in to her sister's ear. "Come back."

"I'll do my best, but I have to get the victims out. Just…maybe don't kill it until I'm back or until Professor Kohaku has found another way to open the portal, just in case."

Koren finished setting up her PAWS recorder to scan the whole area without traveling through any holes in trees, hoping Professor Dare would be able to figure something out from the recording. Then she said, "Yeah, sure, contain the Stranger without killing it, we've got this." It was clear she was trying to appear more confident that she was—after all, she'd only been in one real fight against Strangers in the first Hunt, which had been cut short. Still, there was no time for Sands to say anything reassuring (not that Koren would have accepted it, anyway), so she just jogged off to the side.

When Sands was far enough away, Koren used her left hand to shine a flashlight in the direction Scout was aiming. Her right hand held one of her four-bladed Hunga Munga. The flashlight beam didn't travel far enough to illuminate the Stranger fully, but it did change the near-complete darkness to a patchwork of light and shadow, in which a vague shadowy figure rose from near the ground. That was enough for Scout, who fired. Her first shot missed, as the Stranger happened to move out of the way, but the second one made contact in its shoulder region. The Stranger let out a cry that was just barely loud enough for Koren to hear. She shivered.

Scout fired again, this time specifically aiming for the shoulder to make sure she didn't hit anything vital. With another scream when it was shot a second time, the Stranger charged towards them. Scout fired again and again, careful not to hit anything vital, but as it came into the light, it became apparent that she probably didn't need to worry so much, as it was barely even bleeding. She shifted her fire to the bulkier chest area. With each shot that hit, the Stranger screeched louder and more blood came out, but it wasn't slowing down or turning away.

Koren placed the flashlight on the ridge of earth behind her so it continued to illuminate the charging Stranger and pulled her second four-bladed throwing axe into her left hand. She wanted nothing more than to throw her axes and keep the Stranger at a distance, but Scout only had her sniper rifle, which left Koren to tank. Koren resolved to have a talk with Sands when this is over, because they really should have taken each other's jobs. Then again, it was at least partially Koren's fault for being too tired to plan much before going to sleep.

Now that the Stranger had almost reached them, they could see what Nancy had meant with her "no face, but a mouth" description. Its head opened up, almost like a bunch of flower petals, if those petals had teeth. Scout swung her gun up to fire into its presumably vulnerable inner mouth, but with the Stranger this close, she panicked a little, and the shot went wide. Koren braced herself and swung her axes as hard as she could into the beast. They dug deep, drawing a loud scream, and gushes of blood, but Koren found herself barely able to hang on as several hundred pounds of monster slammed her several feet backwards, through a bush, and into the dirt slope behind them, knocking the flashlight away until it was pointing uselessly at a tree. Koren hurt everywhere, and she coughed up a little blood from what she was pretty sure was a broken rib, but the peridle healing would take care of it. She let out a cry of pain as the monster pulled itself back, forcing her to tense her muscles to hold onto her Hunga Munga as they ripped out of its thick, leathery skin. The monster screamed at her, hideous toothy petals opening up to a cavity filled with slime. It reached for her with a clawed hand, but Scout had taken the opportunity to climb up to the top of the small ridge, giving her a clear vantage point to shoot its hand. It turned up to face her for a second, then turned and ran into the darkness.

Scout quickly crouched down at Koren's side. "Okay?" she asked, inwardly cursing herself for having such a difficult time even asking if her classmate was alright.

Koren coughed up a little more blood before answering. "Just a broken rib and a few other bumps and bruises. I'm not a wuss; I'll be alright." Then she coughed up a bit more blood. Scout raised her gun up into a ready position and peered into the darkness, listening as the Stranger walked quietly through the forest. If it came back, she'd be ready, but first she needed to check up on her sister. She triggered her communicator pin and asked, "Sands?"

Sands ran in the direction her sister had been aiming, keeping her flashlight aimed low to the ground to avoid attracting the Stranger's attention. She saw a blur run past her and ran towards where it came from. As she heard the gunshots and the Stranger's squeal of pain, she tried not to worry too much for Scout. Both she and Koren were training to be Heretics, but Sands still couldn't shake the feeling that it was wrong to leave her sister to be defended by Koren while she went on the safer mission. (She hadn't even considered sending Scout through the portal, since she was the most vulnerable of them in a straight-up fight, and the Stranger might come back while she was still in there.) The problem was that, no matter how much Koren rubbed her the wrong way, Sands couldn't bring herself to send the girl to potentially be trapped in some strange alternate world. It offended her sense of human decency, and also there was what Flick had recently learned about the girl to consider.

Luckily, it wasn't hard to find the slimy hole in a tree that the Stranger had clearly come out of. Sands pulled out her Construction Mace and gestured with it, creating inch-thick metal walls all the way around the portal and in through the hole in the tree. Obviously, there was some magic happening here, so a physical reinforcement might not actually keep it from closing, but it probably couldn't hurt. Then, Sands pushed aside as much slime as she could, along with her disgust, and crawled through the hole. She was very thankful that she, unlike her sister and Koren, wore the pants version of the uniform, because she did not need to feel this slime on more of her skin than necessary.

Sands pulled herself to her feet and found herself in a cold, foggy version of the forest she came from, filled with strange, slimy-looking, root-like tendrils covering the trees and ground. There were ominous-looking spores floating through the air, which smelled and tasted weird as she breathed in. The peridle healing would probably take care of it if it was harmful, but she made a mental note to go to the medical center anyway when she was back at Crossroads. There was no telling what this stuff could do with prolonged exposure. She hoped Will and the others were alright, if they were even alive in here. It was time to start looking.

Sands had previously decided that it would probably be best to make her way to the Byers house and search from there. If Jonathan and his mom were correct, Will's last known location was his house, but in this world, before he apparently ran away from the monster, so that would likely be a good place to start.

She wasn't just forgetting about the other missing people, of course, but at least with Will, she had some evidence that he was still alive and in this place, so it made sense to start with him. "Will!" she yelled as she started walking. "Will Byers! Are you in here? I'm here to help! Your mom said she talked to you! Will, where are you?"