She'd only caught flashes through the blackness that swept over her memories in a fog. No, no, she saw it. A creature tore at her leg, whipping its head like a dog shaking meat off a bone. Her kick glanced off its head, her own skull rattling as it struck her across the face to silence the shrill shrieks she could hear herself making.

She tried to crawl away when it paused, looked up, but it's face opened and bit at her - her arm, shoulder, breath stinking like tires and corpses left out in the sun to pop. Pain roared up through each wound, fire and deep needles that made existence itself something unknowable in its overwhelming starburst across her brain. For a long, sobbing stretch of time, she didn't know what her own name was, consumed by the agony of flesh being torn - eaten out of her in messy, ripping bites. Every breath was choked, smothering as blackness edged across her vision and squeezed her lungs.

Cold, cold. Everything was so cold.

She remembered the thing thrown from her in a flash of acrid green. Heard a chorus of snarls and the dark silhouettes of more of them cresting the pool's edge both flinching and puffing up in fury.

Saw a pair of green eyes descended from the sky, living energy crackling around claw-curled fingers. It's gaze paralyzed her, cold hooking up under her ribs and grasping far tighter than the visceral fear for survival.

She knew it. Some part of her deep and forgotten knew that shade of green.

She froze, lungs forgetting how to scream, watched it's human face bare teeth in an animal gesture, shoulders hunched, shadows skittering as the light it cast only grew.

Those eyes met her own - green and bottomless, shifting mercurial within a body far too still to be alive. The darkness in her memories knew and she could only feel fear.

—

And now those green eyes were lowered to the carpet, and she could feel the biting, cold, electric hum under her skin from where she'd felt it inside her. Not her body, or muscles, or anywhere that teeth could reach, but a deeper self that felt smothered and cold and terrified before she'd been able to use that fear to push it out. Too sure of her own death to do anything less than fight for every scrap of existence left.

"You said…. You could get back home."

She hardly recognized her own voice, creaking as it was. Still, that had to be the priority. If Will was convinced that this… whatever that was, looking like a person, was working against the thing that tried to eat her, she'd give his opinion a shot.

It wasn't like she had much of a choice, with half her body covered in itchy, pulling scabs that threatened to tear open with every move.

Will pushed her arm down, nodding when she turned to look at him.

"I don't know if it'll work or not, but whenever we light candles in here, it feels better, and it lets me listen to the real world a bit better." His face was so earnest, eyes wide in a way that let the whites gleam in the dim moonlight filtering in through the window.

Was that moonlight?
"And before you… uh, before Danny found you, there was this weak spot, where I could actually see into the real world, through this skin in the wall-" She zoned out without meaning to, his words turning fuzzy.

If not moonlight, what else would it be?

The more she tried to figure out where the light was coming from - the blinds were closed, lights off, Danny's glow barely illuminating his own skin, the more confusing it became.

"-What do you think?" She twitched, thoughts snapping back to Will's expectant face.

"I- what? I don't-..."

Green eyes narrowed slightly, and she shot the teen a glare.

"I mean, do you think torching one of the thin spots would work?"

Barb twitched a shoulder, scrambling to gather the fragments of ideas together to make sense.

"I- I guess, You've been here longer than me, so.."

His expression changed minutely. Confusion, surprise, realization, and a furrowed brow she recognized from Nancy's little brother that said he was uncomfortable with what he'd realized.

"Oh." He said, simply, quietly.

Danny spoke up at last.

"I'll help try to break it. If you're right about the barrier being thin, we might be able to brute force our way through. If that doesn't work, we can just head back to my place. I think I've seen what you're describing pop up in the hallway, so we can try again there."

Barb shivered, flexing her fingers.

Cold.

"So, we're just going to wait it out?"

"As long as your barrier holds."

"What barrier?"

Both of them looked at her, and she tucked her chin down, frowning.

"What barrier?" she repeated, and they looked at each other.

"The one keeping the monsters out." Will followed her gaze toward the window. "They-" He trailed off, climbing carefully to his feet and edging toward the window, peeking out into the darkness. He made a small noise of confusion, craning his head a bit to get a better view along down the front porch.

"They were just... "

"They might have given up for now, but they'll probably be back. They do that to me sometimes."

Will sank back down out of sight of the window, tucking his knees close to him.

"How'd that even work, anyway?"

Danny remained where he was, scratching at some of her blood drying into his shirt.

"Last-ditch hope, I suppose. Where I'm from, a Lair is where you know you belong, and you can kick others out by thinking hard about it. Since you said this is your house, I thought you might be able to claim it like that. Glad I was right."

"You didn't even know it would work?" Barb felt like she was watching a tennis match, bobbing her head back and forth between the two.

"I'd hoped. It does raise some interesting points though." Danny stood up, and Barb tensed without meaning to, watching him walk across the room and peer out the window over Will's head.

"That it worked means this place is a lot more like my world than yours." He tilted his chin and exhaled a slow breath, fernfrost curling across the glass in rapid translucent designs. He raised a finger to crush the crystals in its center. "And if we're playing by those rules, then the fact we're still here at all is a deliberate choice on the part of whoever created it."

"Who-ever?" Danny nodded to Will's small-voiced question, dragging his fingers through the frost.

"You both were dragged in by force. I found a portal that closed behind me. There have been… others, who come in through a rather large portal to the north - One that hasn't closed."

He finished the frowning face drawn in the ice, leaning against, cutting in again before Will could ask what was clearly on the tip of his tongue. "I didn't mention it because it's crawling with monsters. The only time I can get anywhere near there is when they're distracted by someone entering the portal."

The three of them fell silent for a few long moments, and Danny added angry eyebrows to the frosty face, humming a low tone to himself. She could see his gaze pinned on her in the window's reflection.

"But yeah, I guess we've just got to wait. You okay over there?"

Barb frowned. "I'm fine."

He just hummed again, sitting down next to Will. She tried not to notice how the kid relaxed, closing his eyes for the first time since she woke up. How was he able to be so comfortable around something that admitted to being inhuman? Who held her gaze with unsettling stillness until she looked away.

"So we're waiting?" She muttered.

Danny nodded with a noise of approval.

Barb shifted her leg, surprised when it didn't send bolts of pain. She glanced at the two boys, at the dark hallway leading to other rooms, and decided that'd be far too much work.

"Keep your eyes closed for a second, I want to get into dry pants."

Will lifted his hand in a thumb's up, and the green light flickered out as Danny closed his own.

It was an ordeal and a half, every movement delicate and cautious, alarm buzzing when the brain-numbing pain didn't return. Flexing her knee pulled a stitch, and she froze at a deep 'pop' feeling, and the itch of blood curling down the side of her thigh.. The expected pain didn't reach her.

Old science classes bubbled up - about shock and numbness and a body shutting down when put under too much stress. She bit her lip, shuffling out of the wet jeans and into softer sweatpants only slightly too big for her. Red bled through the fabric over her knee - only a tiny stripe that didn't spread any further than that.

Barb glanced back at Will, deeply hoping his plan would work - That she'd be able to get to a real doctor soon. She didn't want to panic anyone when they couldn't really DO anything about it. And...unless she was actively dying, she wasn't keen on letting… Whatever that was, get between her ribs again.

A faint tapping perked her ear as she fumbled to tie the sweatpant's string, and she noticed Will mouthing words silently.

"I'm done, you can open your eyes again."

Will nodded, but didn't open his, voice whispy as he continued to sing the lyrics of a song she only barely recognized.

Seeing nothing better to do in the meantime, Barb shuffled to a wall, leaning her head back against it.

Why wasn't she in pain? Why wasn't she bleeding everywhere? Weakness and coldness should have been the least of her worries.

What if Danny was the one keeping them there? He seemed so full of answers-

"This indecision's bugging me

If you don't want me, set me free

Exactly who'm I'm supposed to be?

Don't you know which clothes even fit me? "

She forced the sick feeling back, tried to close her eyes and think of home. Tried to listen to Will's soft breaths between the softly sung words, the rhythm he tapped out on the floor.

"Come on and let me know
Should I cool it or should I blow? "

She could still feel green eyes watching her from across the room.

And somewhere in the back of her head a cold, assessing darkness watched him back.