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"Carry On My Wayward Son"

Once I rose above the noise and confusion

Just to get a glimpse beyond the illusion

- Kansas

Joyce worried all the way to the police station. "What could Jonathan be thinking? He never gets in fights. He doesn't talk to people!"

"Don't have to talk to someone to hit 'em—or to want to hit 'em," Hopper offered.

She gave him an exasperated look. "He's not you, Hopper."

"Maybe not, but everybody gets mad sometimes."

"That's true. I almost hit Lonnie yesterday."

He glanced at her sharply. "Lonnie was here?"

She frowned, then remembered he hadn't been at the funeral because he'd been drugged by whoever ran Hawkins Lab. "He came for Will's funeral—at least, that's what he said. Really he came because some cheap lawyer convinced him he could get money suing the quarry. God, I can't believe I was so stupid I nearly fell for that!"

"I'm sorry I wasn't there."

"Yeah, me, too. Of course, you and Lonnie getting in another fight wouldn't have been quite the right tone for a funeral."

"Probably not. He's gone now, though, right?"

"Gone for good," Joyce confirmed. "Never again."

"Good."

They left the topic alone after that. Lonnie, and all their history around him, was a conversation for another time. If—no, when—they found Will.

Joyce was out of the car and on her way into the station almost before Hopper had the car in park, but Hopper wasn't far behind. The last thing Joyce needed was her older son going around and getting in fights, and he intended to get the kid alone and give him a piece of his mind.

They found Jonathan and a girl Hopper didn't recognize sitting at Powell's desk, both looking dejected.

"Hey! Jonathan? Jesus, wha—what happened?" Joyce gestured to the towel full of ice he was holding.

In Hopper's view, the kid looked pretty good. Nothing but a bruise on the cheekbone.

"I—I'm fine."

As Phil got up and came toward them, Joyce gestured at Jonathan's wrists. "Why is he wearing handcuffs?"

"'Cause your boy assaulted a police officer, that's why." Even Hopper didn't like Phil's condescending tone, and it positively enraged Joyce.

"Take them off," she demanded.

"I am afraid I cannot do that."

"Take them off!"

Hopper decided it was time for him to intervene. "You heard her. Take 'em off."

"Chief," Powell said, "I get everyone's emotional here, but … there's something you need to see."

The two of them led Hopper to Jonathan's car, parked behind the station, and popped the trunk. Inside was a box with a gun, ammunition, lighter fluid … and a bear trap. A bear trap? Last bear seen around here was five years ago, and those guys were probably drunk. It seemed like a pretty big coincidence that Jonathan's brother went missing, his mother saw a strange creature coming out of the wall, and Jonathan had a box of weapons in his car. This all had to be connected.

"Yeah, okay," he said to the two cops. "Leave this to me. I'll talk to them."

Both of them looked perfectly content to leave Jonathan—and Jonathan's mother—in Hopper's hands. He lifted the box out of the car and carried it into the building, dropping it on the desk in front of Jonathan and the girl.

"What is this?" Joyce asked, looking over the contents.

"Why don't you ask your son. We found it in his car."

"What?" Joyce asked.

Jonathan ignored her, his eyes blazing at Hopper. "Why are you going through my car?"

Hopper leaned over him. "Is that really the question you should be asking right now?" He held the kid's gaze for a moment. "I want to see you in my office."

"You won't believe me."

"Why don't you give me a try?"

They stared at each other, then Jonathan got to his feet, disbelief and distrust in the defiant way he refused to look at Hopper as he did so. Powell looked nearly as unhappy when Hopper gestured to him to uncuff the kid, but he did it.

The girl came, too, and so did Joyce. Hopper dropped his jacket and hat and leaned on the edge of the desk while everyone else took the chairs. "Now," he said, "start from the beginning."

Jonathan looked at his mother, who nodded. "It's okay, Jonathan. He knows everything."

"It started when Barbara went missing," the girl said.

"Barbara Holland?" Hopper remembered the report on his desk. So much had happened, he hadn't had time to chase it down, but he thought he remembered hearing the car had been found somewhere. "I thought she ran away."

"No. No, she didn't. She's—something happened to her. We were at a party and I left her alone, and … then she was gone."

"So your friend disappears, you decide to be Nancy Drew."

The girl crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "That's not funny."

"No, it's not."

"Hop, this is Nancy Wheeler," Joyce said. "Her brother Mike is one of Will's best friends."

He remembered Mike. "The less annoying one."

Nancy frowned. "That's one way to put it."

"Anyway, so you decided to go look for your friend. How's Jonathan come into this?"

"Because he was in the woods—" Nancy looked helplessly at Jonathan, clearly not wanting to get him in trouble.

"I was looking for Will, taking pictures, hoping to see something in the picture I couldn't with my eye. That happens sometimes. A lot," he amended.

"And I ended up with one of the pictures, and I asked Jonathan about ... some thing that was in it. We went out looking to see if we could find any sign of it, and … we did." Nancy shivered a little. "There was a deer. It was hurt, and—bleeding, and then … the thing was there. Eating it. Eating the deer. And then I thought—Barb had cut her hand, at the party. She went for a Band-Aid, but …"

"We think it's drawn to the blood," Jonathan added.

"Then we got separated and I was running from the thing. There was a hole in a tree that I went through, and on the other side … I don't know where I was. It was like I was still in the same forest but it was all cold and gray and misty, with things floating in the air."

Hopper and Joyce glanced at each other. Will's description of where he was; the basement of Hawkins Lab.

"How did you get back?" Joyce asked urgently.

"Back through the hole, just as it was closing."

"So if Will's there and he could find another hole …"

Jonathan put a hand on Joyce's arm. "Maybe." He looked at Nancy. "Show them the picture. It's pretty blown up, but … yeah, that's what we saw eating the deer."

Nancy pulled a picture out of the inside pocket of her jacket and handed it to Joyce, who gasped.

Jonathan and Hopper both looked at her. "That what you saw?"

Joyce nodded, handing the picture up to Hopper. "That's it."

It was pretty grainy, like the kid had said, but pretty scary for all that. Hopper wouldn't want to run into this thing in the dark—or see it coming through the wall of his house. He looked at the kids. "You say blood draws this thing?"

"We don't know."

"It's just a theory."

Joyce bit her lip, the story getting to her. To think all that time when she had been worried about Lonnie and off with Hopper, Jonathan had been out there risking his life chasing down this monster—chasing it down because she hadn't been strong enough to go after it. "Hop," she said suddenly. "Can we have a minute?"

He didn't look up from the picture. "Yeah. Take your time."

She tugged on Jonathan's shoulder, pulling him out into the hallway.

Jonathan didn't wait for her to start. "I'm sorry, Mom."

"You're sorry? You're—you're sorry? That is not good enough, Jonathan."

"I know."

"It's not even close, it's not even in the, in the ballpark."

"I wanted to tell you, I just …"

"What if this thing took you, too?" she asked him. "You risked your life! And Nancy's."

"I—I thought I could save Will. I still do."

"This is not yours to fix alone! You act like you're all alone out there in the world, but you're not! You're not alone."

"I know," he muttered.

She shoved him back. "Damn it, Jonathan."

"I know."

"Damn it!" She grabbed his jacket by the lapels, and reached up to put her arm around him. Her boy. Her responsible boy, who took care of his brother and took care of her and did it all without asking for anything. They held each other tight.

Shouting voices from the main office broke into the moment, and the door to Hopper's office flew open next to them.

"Stay here," he told them, heading down to see what the ruckus was about.

Some woman in a suit was facing off against his two cops. She had a kid with her, maybe 12 or 13 years old, with his arm in a sling.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Chief—" Phil started.

"These men are humiliating my son!"

"No, no, no, okay, that's not true."

"There was some kind of fight, Chief," Powell explained.

"A psychotic child broke his arm!" the woman shouted.

"A little girl, Chief. A little one." Phil gestured with his hand to indicate the size of the girl.

The woman whirled on him, jabbing a finger into the air in front of his face. "That tone! Do you hear that tone?"

"Honestly, I'm just trying to state a fact."

Hopper had heard enough. "I don't have time for this. Will you please take a statement?" Silently he mouthed "And get her out of here" while the woman's head was turned away from him.

As he walked away, Phil asked the kid what the girl had looked like.

Speaking up for the first time, the kid said, "She had no hair, and she was bleeding from her nose. Like a freak!"

No hair.

Hopper stopped walking and turned around. "What'd you just say?"

"I said she's a freak!"

"No, her hair. What'd you say about her hair?"

"Her head's shaved. She doesn't even look like a girl." The kid stared up at Hopper until he remembered something that made him look away. "And …"

"And what?"

"Tell the man, Troy," the kid's mom encouraged him, no longer shouting, which was a relief.

"She can—do things."

"What kind of things?"

"Like—make you fly. And piss yourself," he muttered.

"What?" Powell asked.

Hopper held up a hand for quiet. "Was she alone?"

The kid shook his head. "She always hangs out with those losers."

"Losers? What losers?"

"Mike Wheeler and those dorks."

Mike Wheeler. Hopper looked at Powell. "Get the statement." Then he turned on his heel and hurried back to his office. "You. Nancy. Your brother, he's got a new friend? A girl?"

"Mike and a girl? I don't think so."

"A bald kid. She doesn't look like a girl."

Nancy shook her head. "No. No one like that."

"Come on, we're going to go talk to him anyway."

"Mike? Mike doesn't know anything!"

"Yeah, let's find out."

He shepherded them all down the hall in front of him. Joyce hung back enough to whisper, "Is it her? The girl from the lab? Is it … Jane Ives?"

"I don't know, but it could be. Bald, and he said she could make you fly. And piss yourself."

Joyce raised her eyebrows. "She made Troy Walsh piss himself? I like her already."