Chapter 013: Spooky, Scary Demogorgons

(A/N: Woohoo, finally an update! I apologize for how long each chapter has been taking. I've been working on other projects to keep myself from getting burned out on this story, so thank you for being patient with me!)

I had turned the house upside down and inside out, and I couldn't find a single thing about my uncle's disappearance. His bedroom was untouched, his clothes still smelling of dryer sheets and laundry detergent. There were no notes, no suspicious objects, no indication of anything more than a normal day. I had noticed his car keys still hanging on the hook next to the front door, his work uniform still folded neatly at the edge of his bed. The garden sprinklers were still going off, but nothing had been tended to. He had always left a long list of care instructions for me to follow any time he had planned to go somewhere. Wherever he was, he hadn't planned on being there this long.

I dug through cabinets, closets, drawers, dressers, anything I could. There was nothing. I was starting to panic as I realized that my uncle was now, for sure, a missing person. Out of instinct, I started to make my way over to the phone, ready to call the police department with hopes that they would magically find him. Something stopped me though. I froze, phone in hand and my other outstretched to dial the number I knew so well. Something seemed off. I thought back to my phone call with Hopper yesterday. Don't call here again. My mind racing, I started thinking back to all of the strange things that had been happening this week. That phone call wasn't even the half of it. From the visions I had had to what I saw at Hawkins Lab, I wasn't sure who I could and couldn't trust anymore.

Before I even knew what I was doing, I had hung the phone up and dashed back into Jack's room, grabbing everything I could and tearing the place apart even more. I didn't know what had come over me, but I was so incredibly angry at myself for letting this happen. My emotions got the best of me as I ripped open his closet, throwing just about everything he owned all across the room. Angry tears were starting to well in my eyes as I let out a scream in hopes that it would make me feel just a little bit better. It didn't, and I started to feel even more helpless than I was in the first place. The only thing that brought me out of it was a small, plastic card that fell from the pocket of a white lab coat. When I picked it up, my breath hitched. Right on the card was my uncle's name, a picture to match, and a Hawkins Lab insignia right next to it.

"You never said what I was saying," Nancy said as she trailed behind Jonathan and me, her voice piercing right through the awkward silence.

"What," Jonathan asked.

"In the picture," she replied. "You said I was saying something, and that was why you took it."

He stammered for a moment, avoiding eye contact. "Oh, uh, I don't know," he lied. "My guess is that I saw this girl trying to be someone she isn't, but for a moment, it was like you were alone—or you thought you were, and you could just be yourself."

I had spent most of the trip drowning out their bickering with my own thoughts and worries, so I hadn't been able to read the room for a good minute, but when I saw Nancy roll her eyes and let out a venomous, "That is such bullshit," I knew things weren't going too smoothly.

"What," Jonathan stammered.

Nancy had now stepped in front of us, stopping and turning around so she was face to face with him as I lingered behind. "I'm not trying to be someone else," she exclaimed, "just because I'm dating Steve, and you don't like him." I couldn't help but roll my eyes at just the mention of his name.

Jonathan shook his head and started to storm off deeper into the woods, leaving me practically running after him. "You know what," he said. "Just forget it. I thought it was a good picture. That's it."

"You know, he's actually a good guy," Nancy said, now following right in his footsteps as if that were going to convince him.

"Okay," he stammered, finally looking over at me with a subtle eye roll and causing me to chuckle about it under my breath.

"The thing with the camera," she started, "he's not like that at all." I scoffed a little, earning a glare from her. "He was just being protective," she continued.

"Yeah, that's one word for it."

I swear I could cut the tension with a butter knife right now. It was like watching my own personal movie. "Oh, and what you did was okay?"

"No, I—I never said it was."

"He has every right to be pissed."

"Yeah, okay. Does that mean I have to like him?"

I smirked a little before catching myself and pretending to cover it up with a harsh cough. She stopped right in her tracks, giving me the dirtiest look she could before turning right back to Jonathan, who had now stopped and reared around. "Listen, don't take it so personally, okay? I don't like most people, and he's in the vast majority."

"To be fair," I finally said, all but startling the two after my long vow of silence, "I did nothing, and he was still a major douche to me."

"You know what," she finally blew. "I was actually starting to think you two were okay. I thought 'Jonathan Byers,' maybe he's not the pretentious creep that everyone says he is," she spat before turning towards me. "And you are so obsessed with him, you've spent every day following him around like a lost dog."

Just as I opened my mouth to fire back at her, Jonathan had cut me off. "Hey, you don't talk to her like that," he snarled. "You know, I was just starting to think you were okay too. I was thinking 'Nancy Wheeler,' she's not just another suburban girl who thinks she's rebelling by doing the exact same thing every other suburban girl does until that phase passes and she marries some boring one-time jock who now works in sales, and they live out a perfectly boring life at the end of the cul-de-sac. Exactly like their parents who they thought were just so depressing, but hey, they get it now."

My jaw just about dropped to the floor. If I wasn't feeling the heat before, I was definitely feeling it now. Jonathan brushed past me with a sour look on his face, leaving me and a stunned Nancy behind him. She looked over at me with a big ole pile of hurt. All I did was shrug my shoulders and leave to follow Jonathan. To be honest, I felt a lot of emotions towards her, but none of them were sympathetic.

"Jonathan," I whispered.

He glanced over at me for a split second, clearly confused. "Why are you whispering," he asked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Nancy perk up for a moment. Jesus, I wanted to kill him sometimes. "Will you shut up," I whisper-screamed. "I found something."

"What do you mean 'you found something'?"

I let out a heavy breath to steady my emotions. "I was looking through Jack's room, and a card fell out of his work coat."

"Jack still hasn't come home?"

I shook my head. "No, that's why I was snooping. Jonathan, I found a key card for Hawkins Lab."

He abruptly stopped walking, Nancy nearly running right into him. "What," he asked at full volume.

"Could y—"

"Wait, shut up," Nancy suddenly interrupted.

"Excuse me," I scoffed.

"I heard something."

Sure enough, we had all heard the soft sound of something whimpering in the distance. The three of us looked between each other, unsure of what to do. Nancy was the first one to break eye contact, holding a flashlight in front of her as Jonathan and I followed closely behind. I wasn't sure what we were looking for, but whatever it was was definitely suffering. I had to keep telling myself that the chances of this thing being a big, scary monster were slim to none. Still, I was nervous about what we would find. Yeah, I don't think it's going to eat us exactly, but something just felt so off.

When we finally found the source of the sound, my heart dropped. Right in front of us was a tiny deer, its body covered head to toe in its own blood. "Oh no," Nancy murmured, kneeling down to get a better look at it. "It's been hit by a car," she said. Her eyes were starting to water, and for just a split second, I felt something other than complete spite for her. "We can't just leave it," she said, turning to Jonathan.

Oh no, it's fine. You can just continue to ignore me.

I watched the two exchange looks. I felt like I was intruding on some kind of moment between them. Jealousy was swarming inside of me, but I knew this wasn't the time. Nancy broke away from him, glancing down at the pistol she had been carrying. I watched her as she raised it towards the deer, her hands trembling as Jonathan followed along with heavy eyes. "I'll do it," he finally said, reaching for the gun. She hesitated for a second. "I'm not nine anymore," he continued.

Okay, so I guess we're just telling everybody about our childhood trauma now.

Jonathan took the gun from her and stood up, his shoulders broad but still filled with empathy. I followed suit, lingering just behind them like I was some kind of third wheel. That's when I felt the atmosphere shift. Oh, shit. There was that familiar feeling, the one I had gotten every time one of those grotesque monsters was about to show up. This time, it wasn't hunting me, but it was coming for something. The deer, I realized. Just as Jonathan was about to pull the trigger, I heard it approaching. I grabbed the backs of Nancy and Jonathan's jackets, pulling them back and towards the ground just seconds before the thing latched onto the dying deer and dragged it away from us.

The two of them began to let out terrified breaths, whereas I was basically too terrified to even speak. "What was that," Nancy asked between heavy breaths.

The three of us started searching around. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to find that thing, but anything that brought me another step closer to rescuing Will, or maybe even my uncle, wasn't something I was going to back away from. I closed my eyes in hopes that I would be able to feel something through the wind or the trees or literally anything, but there was nothing. I sighed and trudged on. There was no use. I was like a sitting duck. There was all this powerful energy just floating around in my fingertips, but I had absolutely no control over it. If I could just figure myself out, there's no doubt in my mind that Will would be home by now. Maybe I would actually be able to uncover what happened to my uncle, and more importantly, where he was.

As I kept searching, flashlight in hand, all of the trees were suddenly starting to look the same. I went to turn around and say something to the other two, and that was when I realized I had somehow gotten distracted and wandered off. Panic started to set it. My heart rate started to rise as I started frantically searching for at least one of them. The flashlight in my hand started to flicker, only making me panic even more. There was no way that I was doing that. Even though I had no control over myself, I still would've been able to feel my own energy. I knew what was about to happen, even if my nerves were overpowering my senses. The only other time that I had seen lights surge was when there was a monster coming for me. I braced myself, hoping and praying that I would magically be able to survive this thing just one more time. I held my hands to my face, but nothing came. The air thinned out. Just as I thought I was in the clear, I heard a distinct scream in the distance. I knew immediately who it was. Nancy.

"Shit," I muttered, now running full speed in the direction I had heard her. "Shit, shit, shit," I repeated over and over again. "Nancy, where are you," I shouted, but it was no use. She wasn't responding. "Na—" I went to shout again, but I was cut off by another person, my body falling straight to the ground from the impact.

"Daisy?"

I let out a sigh of relief once I realized it had been Jonathan that I ran into. "Thank God," I said, out of breath. He offered me an outstretched hand, pulling me up with one quick tug. "Where's Nancy?"

"I—I don't know," he answered.

"What? Weren't you just with her?"

"We got split up. Where were you?"

"Funny story, I don't know. But—uh—I felt one of those things nearby. I think it might've got her."

"Wh—what?" He now started panicking even more than I had been, taking off in a sprint in the same direction I had been going.

"Okay, great plan," I muttered sarcastically before I took off right behind him.

As the two of us continued to call out for her, we were eventually able to hear her voice drifting through. It sounded like she was extremely close, yet there was no other sign of her. That was until I was able to feel something pulling me away. It wasn't literally pulling me away, but it was like it was calling to me. I stopped right in my tracks as Jonathan kept moving. My eyes fell towards one of the trees beside me. Curious, I walked over, counting each step in an attempt to keep myself from freaking out again. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. That was when I noticed Nancy's jacket sitting right in front of what I could only describe as a hole in the tree. That wasn't the weirdest part though. That same black goo was stretched over it. Was this some kind of portal into the other world?

The last thing I wanted to do was crawl through that thing. Who knows if I'd be able to make it back out? There had to be another way. Actually, there was another way. If I could just faze into the other world somehow, I could find her. My heart continued to race, but I was determined to calm myself down and do this. If I let her die without even trying to save her, I would never be able to forgive myself, even if I could barely tolerate her. I remembered what Jack had told me about grounding myself. It had worked the last two times, so it seemed logical to give it another go. I sat down, crossing my legs and closing my eyes. I listened to the rustling of the leaves, breathing in their crisp scent as I started to feel each tiny strand of hair blowing gently in the wind. Slowly but surely, my heart rate started to drop, and in just a matter of seconds, I had done it.