David cringed. He shrunk back from the locker room doorway as the football players abruptly charged out. The practice had run late.
"Out of my way, punk!" said a young man with dark hair, blue eyes, and bulging muscles as he executed a block on him. His thin frame—without even a passable amount of muscle—careered back into the wall as the boy shoved him.
"Andy, let him be. Let's go to the Kegger," said another.
Angry and his head in pain, he glared at the football player until he caught the boy's gaze, then he lowered his head. The bully laughed and kept going.
"You're not invited, dweeb," said a third. "There will be girls there, and I don't want to scare them away with your ugly ass."
He slipped into the locker area to the dressing benches that smelled of sweat, even though it was new.
An addition built after the championship win added to the end of the field house—it gleamed like a prize—with oak entry doors under the Coke scoreboard. The boy's group showers already smelled of soap and moist yeast, and he imagined fungus spores in the grout lines. The glass windows of the new coach's office oversaw the area and the lights inside the office blazed brightly, but the coach rarely sat in the office. A radio left on in the office talked about Reaganomics, which caused rising deficits, cut social programs, fired air traffic controllers, and cut taxes for the wealthy. No mention of bullying.
Hawkins school employees did not lift a finger to stop it, so going to them and complaining proved both absurd and ineffective. So now he had a headache, and his gym bag must have been moved. Where was it?
His father—in a different state with a different woman—didn't involve himself in David's life. But if he did, it was only to blame him for his physical weakness. Apparently, it was his fault his muscles refused to grow. He was thin as a reed, an easy target. His mother, he knew, had complained to the school principal again and again, but nothing changed. But in Hawkins, why would things ever change?
And, dammit, where was his gym bag?
David ran his fingers over the lump on the back of his head from where it impacted the wall. Some blood coated his fingers, so perhaps there was a corner that cut him. Unfortunately, all scalp wounds bled a lot, so he found a paper towel and pressed it to his latest lump.
He looked for it, left and right.
"There you are," he said. He picked up his gym bag, but shivered. It chilled him in here. Cold. Why?
He heard indistinct voices and immediately started to cringe inside. But then two kids appeared from the far end. Not football players. He breathed again.
"PKEs are going up," said a boy wearing a foam-front baseball cap. "Over here."
A tall black boy, David recognized from the HHS Tigers basketball championship game, followed the baseball hat boy into the far side of the locker room. They went behind some benches. He remembered, maybe his name was…Lucas?
"It's cold here," Lucas said. "What's it reading now?"
"High," Dustin said. "And the temperature is dropping."
David humbly approached with the gym bag in his left hand and a bloody paper towel in his right. His bowl-cut blonde hair and fair skin, light-colored tight beige shirt and skinny light blue jeans helped complete his look. It was called: nearly invisible to the unaided eye.
"Hey bro," Dustin said. "Don't I know you?"
He swallowed. "David…from chess club. You're are Dustin and…?"
"Yeah, and I'm Lucas. Are you bleeding?" Lucas asked.
"No biggie. I'm a freak, it doesn't matter."
"Red One to Red Two," Lucas said into his citizen's band walkie-talkie.
A female voice said, "Red Two here, over."
"We've got activity in the boy's locker room, over."
"On our way, over," the girl's voice replied.
A faint boom sound came from an area of wall near Dustin. The room echoed with the thunderous rumble.
"That's not an earthquake," Dustin said.
"Oh sh*t," Lucas said. "You're bleeding. He's bleeding."
"Yeah, so?" David said. Lucas and Dustin looked knowingly at each other. Blood. It called to them.
Dustin reached into a first aid kit and pulled out a pad. "Here, put on the head tampon," he joked. "Hold it there."
"Yuk," David said. "I'm not that important…"
"Hold still," he said and attached a bandage by wrapping gauze around his head.
Again a boom reverberated in the tiled, long room. Some fine granules of concrete mortar fell on the floor along a section of wall and the lights flickered.
"Something's hitting that concrete wall," Lucas said.
"I don't like this," Dustin said.
"Maybe you're right."
Another louder boom reverberated from the wall, and cinderblocks slid forward. A bar of soap fell on the floor.
"The wall is going to crumble," Lucas said. "And I think I know what's coming through…"
"Come with us if you want to live!" Dustin said, then shouted into his radio. "Red Two! I got activity in locker room. Stay in the gym, over!"
Scrambling out of the locker room onto the basketball court, they stopped at the free-throw line as the doors on the school side burst open. Mike, El, Steve, Jonathon, and Will saw them. El gave the CB to Will.
"Dustin! Lucas! Random kid! Get over here!" Shouted Steve.
A *BOOM!* Echoed through the gymnasium. Then a crumbling sort of sound, like bricks falling on linoleum could be heard.
The Party reformed in the middle of the gym. El, Will, Steve, Mike, and Jonathon met up with Dustin, Lucas, and their new bleeding acquaintance. Nancy and Max appeared at the doors.
A dark night filled the windows above the bleachers. Odd red flashes of light occasionally broke the darkness. Overhead lights sprayed the wood floor in artificial glare, but as the group met something dripped from above the lights…
El looked up. "There is no clear line between the real world and upside down anymore," she said. "Vines are growing in here." El moved slowly.
Drops of clear fluid fell from somewhere above the lights onto Dustin's hat as he frantically scanned the large room. He looked up.
"Vines on the ceiling!" Dustin said.
Eleven turned around. Her legs bent and she wobbled as the room spun. She took three deep breaths, holding her head in her hands. Way too dizzy. Why am I sweating? And I'm freezing cold.
"What weapons do we have?" Dustin asked. Steve took his bat out of a bag. Mike showed Dustin his length of steel pipe. Will carried road flares and mason jars of clear liquid. Lucas took out his Bowie knife. Jim had a sword. Nancy lifted up her shotgun. Max held an axe.
"Nancy? Max?" Dustin frowned. "Where did you come from?"
"We're covering your six," they said.
"Guys, I'm not feeling so…" El said.
"Stand back kids, Red Three is here." Jim Hopper said as he entered the basketball court and took over the center circle with his deputies. Phil Callahan, Glen Daniels, Calvin Powell, and Intern Joyce Byers took positions around the kids. They wore body armor, held shotguns, and carried shock batons and shields. Joyce smiled.
"Hey kids, stay back," she ordered. She slid the action on her shotgun and said, "Mommy's gonna kick some ass."
A loud crash shook the walls.
Snapping and shattering sounds poured out of the doorway marked Locker Room. The Party stood behind the Hawkins Police as they all looked toward the doorway. The doorway remained dark.
Silence fell. The lightning outside stopped, and no thunderclaps could be heard. Then the lights flickered, and the air itself seemed to shimmer—giving the impression of the Upside Down spreading outward into the real world.
Vines creeped and writhed along the walls of the gymnasium from the locker room, and bits of ash floated in the air. The walls seemed to age and leak liquid.
With a loud thump, all the lights went out. The group turned on all their flashlights quickly. Lights played in all directions as they peered about searching for monsters. The flashlights flickered.
"This is not ideal," Lucas said as cold sweat collected on his forehead. He looked around him and saw the wire bin of mostly basketballs.
Will said, "Here we go."
Above the suspended basketball hoop and glass backboard, the wall buckled in. Flashlights turned upward to see a massive Demogorgon that jumped down and caught itself on top of the backboard, and the metal support structure bent under the load. Quickly, it jumped forward with its arms extended far beyond human reach—half a court away—grasping for its prey.
"Jeezus," Dustin said.
The group gasped. Time seemed to slow for Eleven. The repulsiveness of the creature, as well as its immensity, forced her to take a step back as she raised her eyebrows.
This behemoth terrified even her.
The group of police marksmen opened fire with shotguns as the children held their ears. Muzzle flashes and sparks from metal impacts mixed with flashlight beams that followed the demonic horror as it fell toward the group. It made a screeching that gave the impression of a thousand house cats shrieking at once and forced all Jim's body hair to stand on end. It landed in front of the group spitting dark goopy blood. Wood crunched and splinters of floorboards winged and fluttered through the air. A steady beat of shotgun salvos and grisly, wet, thumping impacts reverberated as the law officers gave the beast a walloping of metal slugs.
It leaned backward as bullet upon bullet impact put holes in its thick hide. It wobbled like a 13-foot-tall Blair-Thing from the movie by John Carpenter, made of gray leather and dripping black slime.
To the horror of the officers, it reformed, seeming to inflate itself and heal, closing up wounds.
Jim beheld the sight. Some light appeared around its feet as it rebuilt itself. Must be drawing power from the Upside Down. *Great. Now what?*
The many guns clicked empty and the Demogorgon stood tall in a cloud of gun smoke. Jim dropped his gun and presented a long sword quickly swinging for its neck. The creature stood and its claws grabbed the sword by the blade. It opened its starfish-shaped jaws and hissed while pulling the sword from him and throwing it off into the room. It clattered harmlessly and slid across the polished wood floor.
Its huge scythe-like claws swung for Jim's head when suddenly a basketball thumped into its open mouth. It shook its head, popped the ball like a grape and threw it aside. Then another basketball hit it, bouncing off. Lucas threw two more that bounced off as the Demogorgon closed its mouth. It swung at the balls wildly.
"Awesome Lucas!" Jim said.
Eleven reached out with her hand splayed and the creature froze.
The lights flickered and buzzed. Several overhead lights burst in a snapping shower of sparks. She walked forward slowly and red lightning flashed like strobes through the windows, lighting her fierce expression.
Eleven saw it move, first its hand, then its leg—resisting her control. She grimaced—concentrating harder—trying to hold it still with psychokinesis. It slowly began to step toward her. First one slow step, then another. In the next step, it would be able to reach her as she stood next to Hopper.
The room seemed transformed into the Upside Down, an expansion in the real world. Decay set in and otherworldly plants grew from cracks in the floorboards.
"Protect Jane!" Jim ordered. Callahan, Powell, Daniels, and Byers thrust their riot shields forward, creating a shield wall.
A basketball hit it hard in the head and it flinched. Lucas cheered.
El lifted both hands and leaned forward. But its size and power, perhaps the largest of them all, resisted her. Eleven's head spun, it was as if the dimension changes threw off her balance.
Secretly, the boy David worked his way towards the sword and picked it up…each step was a battle of will over his urge to bolt. He tiptoed around wood and glass debris, wondering why he wanted that sword back in Jim's hands. It's because that *thing* doesn't want him to have it, *that's* why. He must retrieve it!
The Demogorgon swung its claws and scraped the plastic shields. El's eyes grew large and she gasped.
"Back up, Jane! On three!" Jim shouted. "Cattle prods!"
The officers readied their prods behind their shields.
"One…"
It hissed at them.
"Two…"
It stepped forward.
"Three!"
A claw came at Joyce.
The police hit the monster with prods, and the claw missed as she ducked down.
David held the sword in his shaking hands and fought the urge to run away. He watched the creature tremble and spasm.
But broke free of the shock—as if it had no effect—and toppled over onto Jim and knocked him down.
"It didn't work!"
El funneled more energy and held it immobile with her mind, and then lifted it into the air, her nose bleeding.
Jonathon saw David holding the sword in trembling fingers. He knew what he had to do.
Jonathon grabbed the sword just as El lifted the creature higher to float above the group. Jonathon viciously hacked its neck. But it flung an arm at him and connected, sending him backward and onto the floor as a whoosh of air left his lungs.
El looked over to Lucas. The sword spun in the air over the Demogorgon as she levitated it and caused it to stop. Lucas looked back at her, eyes widening, as he began to float an inch off the floor. His eyes moved around as he caught on.
Lucas ran for the sword—stepping on invisible steps and jumping high up into the air as El guided his body. He grasped the sword firmly with both hands as he came down, swinging as hard as possible for the monstrosity's neck.
He grunted as it cut through, its head dropped to the floor with a wet-sounding thump and splattered black blood on the "TIGERS" lettering on the wood floor.
It finally ceased moving, and El let its body fall.
Lucas had landed and ran over to El who straightened up. He smiled a big broad sh*t-eating grin, and she smiled back. They high-fived each other, and Lucas's eyes grew wet.
"El," he said as Mike stood by her side. "I was wrong about you, again. That was the most fun I had in my entire life."
Jonathon arose coughing, as Joyce lifted him up.
"Wow, that thing is ooglay…" muttered David. "Hey Lucas, take a free throw…"
Lucas tilted his head, then ran over and picked up the head. As he did David went over to her control booth and reset the few lights still working. Lucas stood on the free throw line with the head—which had curled itself into a ball when it died. He took a few deep breaths as the group watched, and then he jumped as he through the heavy thing. It arced through the air and fell right into the net, its teeth getting caught in it. It stayed there, stuck.
The goal horn blasted and everyone applauded, as Lucas gave David the thumbs up. Dustin, Jonathon, Mike, El, and Will joined him jumping up and down in victory and hugging each other. David climbed out of the control booth.
"What was that?" David asked Joyce.
"A Demogorgon. It might be a blessing to not know. Hey, uh…"
"—David," he filled in.
"David, thanks for your help," Joyce said.
David nodded, then turned to wander off.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
"Huh?" David stopped to ask. "Nothing's wrong. This is just where you guys your way and I go home."
"Why?"
David gave Joyce a blank expression. "Because…that's what always happens. I don't belong."
"Sure you do," said Dustin.
"What?" David asked.
"Join us for a while. It's not safe out there," said Joyce.
"I don't care."
"You could get killed," Dustin said.
"So?" David said. "I…don't matter. I've never mattered."
Will approached David, saying "You matter to *us* David. We like you."
Jonathon and Dustin jogged up to David.
"Of course. All people matter. Even nerds like us"
"Father…" El came to him and sighed.
"What is it, Jane?" Jim asked.
"I'm sorry," she said and shook her head. "It's getting harder to fight these monsters."
Mike, Dustin, and Jim looked at each other.
"I think the oldest, biggest Demo's are stronger," said Dustin.
"It's just…I don't know."
"You'll find a way, Jane," Hop said. "You always do."