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"If You Could Read My Mind"
If you could read my mind, love,
What a tale my thoughts could tell
- Gordon Lightfoot
Jonathan carried his little brother, still drugged into unconsciousness, into the shed, and Will's best friends tied him to a chair. Everything around them had been taped up, covered in plastic and cardboard, hidden in any way they could.
Hopper wondered if it would still be enough. Smell, the feel of the place, the very air made somewhere familiar to you. But that only mattered if Will was still in there. Everyone else seemed to think he was—but they had to. They couldn't imagine he might really be gone. Hopper knew better. He knew that it was completely possible to stand by and watch while something took your child, took them from the inside out, and not be able to stop it.
At last it was done. Hopper and Joyce had sent most of the kids inside and they stood there with Jonathan and Mike looking at Will, limp and silent in the middle of a circle of lights, as bright as they could get them. Hopper looked at Joyce. "All right. You ready?"
"Yeah."
He hoped she meant it. Taking a bottle of ammonia, he poured some out onto a cotton ball and held it under Will's nose.
It worked faster than he had expected it to, Will's eyes opening wide and his head snapping back as he gasped loudly with the shock of returning consciousness.
It took him a minute to orient himself, looking around at the lights and tugging at the ropes that held him. He squinted at Hopper, at the edge of the shadows. "What is this?" Then, with rising distress, "What is this? Why am I tied up?"
Joyce went to him. If he was still in there, if anyone could reach him, it would be her. "Will," she whispered, "we just want to talk to you. We're not gonna hurt you."
"Where am I?" Will demanded.
Hopper leaned in toward him, holding the picture of the monster thing, the Mind-Flayer. "Do you recognize this? Do you recognize this?"
Will shook his head.
"Hey," Joyce said. "We want to help you. But to do that, we have to understand how to kill it."
"Why am I tied up? Why am I tied up? Why am I tied up?" Will screamed the question into his mother's face over and over, the lights flickering as he wriggled in his bonds, his voice rising and rising.
Hopper held him down as best he could while Joyce repeated his name, trying to get through.
As Will switched to screaming "Let me go!" his voice changed, no longer that of a scared little boy, but something else, speaking through him. Or, at least, it seemed that way to Hopper, who held him as he fought against his bonds.
Joyce put her hand over her face. It was too much for her, Hopper thought. After Bob, after this whole year, it was too much. But this had been her idea, and it was the only one they had.
Will's screams faded into tired words, "Let me go," repeated again and again, as Hopper held the small body close and tried not to remember the last time he had had to hold a small body down as a child fought to get free of a tangle of wires.
When Will was quiet, too exhausted to go on, Hopper stepped back, and Joyce sat on the chair opposite her son, her face set and determined. She had wells of strength she didn't know she had, Hopper remembered. She'd always had them.
Joyce looked at her son for several seconds, looking for the little boy in the blank, pale face. Then she spoke, very quietly. "Do you know what March 22 is?" When there was no response, she answered for him. "It's your birthday. Your birthday. When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons. Do you remember that? It was a hundred and twenty colors. And all your friends, they got you Star Wars toys, and all you wanted to do was draw, with all your new colors. And you drew this big spaceship. But it wasn't from a movie—it was your spaceship. A rainbow ship, that's what you called it."
Will was staring at her, and Hopper could almost see life and personality coming back to his face. Maybe this would work. Maybe.
"And you, you must have used … every color in the box," Joyce went on. "And I, I took that with me to Melvald's and I put it up and I, I told everyone who came in 'My son drew this.' You were so embarrassed … but I was so proud." Her voice nearly broke on the last word. "I was so, so proud."
Behind her, Jonathan spoke up, tears in his voice. "Do you remember the day Dad left?"
Will looked from his mother to his brother, his eyes wide.
Jonathan hunkered down next to him. "We stayed up all night, building Castle Byers, just the way you drew it. And it took so long, because you were so bad at hammering. You missed the nail every time." Both Jonathan and Joyce laughed at the memory, and Hopper suddenly wished he had known them then. "And then it started raining, but we stayed out there anyway. We were both sick for like a week after that. But we just had to finish it, didn't we? We just had to."
Hopper tilted his head, noticing movement at Will's side, his hand twitching. He kept an eye on it, wondering if this was an attempt to get free while the rest of them were distracted looking at Will's face.
"Do you remember the first day that we met?"
Will looked up to see Mike standing at his other side.
"It was—it was the first day of kindergarten. I knew nobody; I had no friends. And—I just felt … so alone, and so scared." Tears were rolling down the kid's cheek as he fought to keep himself under control. "But, I saw you on the swings, and you were alone, too. You were just swinging by yourself. And … I just walked up to you, and I asked. I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes. You said yes," he repeated. "It was the best thing I've ever done."
Will's face was quivering. There was something there, something to reach, Hopper thought. If anything could, the love of these three people could. It had to.
Joyce reached forward. "Will. Baby. If you're in there, just … please. Please talk to us. Please, can you talk to me? Please? I love you so much."
The kid was fighting. Hopper could see his whole body tremble as he fought against whatever it was holding him in there.
And then he lost. His face stilled. "Let me go."
There was a collective exhale from the other three, all of them having believed so strongly that this would work.
Hopper had been watching that twitching hand on and off since it started, but it hadn't done more than twitch, so he'd thought it didn't mean anything. But it was still going. Not a twitch. A tap. Two fingers. Tapping. In a rhythm. He watched, memorizing, digging back in his memory.
"Stay here," he said to Jonathan. Someone needed to watch the kid. "Keep talking." He motioned to Joyce to come with him, hurrying into the house to grab a pen and a piece of paper.
Dustin demanded to know what had happened, but Hopper ignored him, sitting down to get the rhythm written down before he lost it.
"I think he's talking—just not with words." There it was. Dot-dot-dot-dot, dot-dash-dot, dot.
"What is that?" the Harrington kid asked, and nearly everyone around the table responded at once, "Morse code."
"H-E-R-E."
"Here," the kids said in unison.
"Will's still in there. He's talking to us." He looked up at Joyce, who nodded, rallying from the earlier disappointment.
So they took turns. Everyone talked and told Will stories and played music for him, and Hopper watched his fingers, sending the Morse code they tapped through the walkie back to the kids in the house.
And then the one thing they hadn't planned on, the one thing they hadn't considered, happened.
Inside the house, the phone rang, the sound crystal clear in the shed.
Will's head snapped up.
Someone in the house stopped the phone, but then it rang again. Only once, but that was too much. Will's eyes rolled back in his head, his breath coming faster.
Joyce reached for him. "Hey. Can you hear me?"
Hopper looked closely at the kid's face. Shit. "It knows. It knows where we are."
Without a moment's hesitation, Joyce got the meds they had taken from the lab and injected them into Will's shoulder. He sagged immediately, unconscious again, but it was too late.
Hopper ran out of the shed, and he heard them. Far away, but they were coming. And nothing could stop them.