Chapter Text
Hawkins, Indiana, November 6th 1983
There’s an old Diner just slightly outside town, not Benny’s, on the other side of Hawkins. The phone rings loudly through the almost empty kitchen. Annoyance written over the customers and cooks faces. “Doyle! Get the phone.” One of them screams.
It’s late, well past her usual work time, but she needs the money. The young woman emerges from the backdoor, bag in hand and jacket lazily draped over her shoulders, the pink apron and blouse ditched in her rusty old locker. “Got it. Got it.” She mumbles and pulls it to her ear. “Doyle. How may I help you?” She drawls exhausted.
“Oh Cora, this is Mrs. Wheeler. I just wanted to tell you that the boys just left for home.” Cora nodded to herself. The older Woman was putting on a far to cheery voice for this late of time. “Mmh. I was about to head out anyway. Thanks Mrs. Wheeler.” Telling her goodbye, she made her way to her little old green Gremlin AMC in the parking lot.
The night was peaceful while she drove down the streets of Hawkins. The wonderful voice of Donner Summers quietly in the back on the Radio and the darkness just ahead of her. She liked it, the night sky and the quiet.
The boys were out tonight, playing out a new campaign of D&D in Mikes basement. Usually she would be there, babysitting or driving them home but today wasn’t one of those days. She’s been babysitting the Party since they were ten, hanging around the little nerds and showing them games and books every once in a while. She liked them and they liked her. After all what other pretty girl would talk to them? She was the coolest in their eyes and she loved their adoration for her fantastical stories.
She crossed onto her road. Will was supposed to be home by now if he’d taken his bike. She doubted it tough, Johnathan was said to bring him home.
The lights of her car begun to Flicker as did the Radio, leaving static. She turned it off. Her breath stuttered, the hairs on her neck standing up, coldness seeping down her back as she passed the Byer home. The lights were off, no sound, no movement. She turned her head back straight onto the road. From the corner of her eyes, she looked into the rear-view mirror and saw a tall lanky shadow trotting trough the forest. With the blink of an eye it was gone and she moved on to drive to her own house, the strange yet familiar feeling never leaving her.
Concerned, she parked the car and walked up to the old dark wooden door to her small one-story house. Distant growling clawing at her mind. Throwing her keys onto the side table and leaving her jacket on the rack, she moved skilled through the darkness of her home. The lights all out, and all curtains drawn shut. “Grandma? Grandma, I’m home.” She called carefully in the direction of the living room, the only room the old Woman would go into while alone.
Her wheelchair was moved before the biggest window of their modest little home, the curtains ripped open carelessly. Cora moved with trained slowness to kneel beside her elder, her eyes were glazed over, her lip quivering as her frail bony finger pointed out their window into the direction of the looming woods. “Gone. Gone. Gone….” She was chanting in a whisper so quiet. T
he girl let her eyes wander between her and the trees, “Who’s gone?” She asked, her own voice a breathy whisper. “What did you see?” Dread filled her at the feeling that’s been following her. An all too known foreboding of something bad. Her grandmother kept on repeating her words, her hand falling in her lap. “It’s okay:” Cora said as she stood up and kissed her grandmother on the forehead.
The old Woman’s eyes turned up to her own, white hair glistening in the moonlight. Her frail finger poked the girls head slowly and moved on to drag down across her cheek like a falling tear. Cora nodded, eyes heavy as she left her alone in the dark and moved to the kitchen. She tried to work the lamps and phone but everything was dead, though nothing unusual in this old house. Moving to the front door, she took a flashlight and her keys, put on her jacket and slowly pulled the door closed.
Their junction box was at the back of the house, but she found it to be alright. Her flashlight moved around the perimeter of her grounds. Nothing there. The growling paired with that dreading feeling was still nagging at her mind, just louder and closer.
Half an hour later she stood back in her house, her grandmother had already moved to bed. She had checked the trees close to her house twice and found nothing, the feeling had ebbed away so she returned inside. It was Sunday after all, she was tired and it was past midnight, not much hours to sleep would be left when she’d go to bed.
It was cold, far to cold for November.
“Please!”
The air was stale and musty.
“Help!”
The heartbeat so loud you could feel it in your whole body.
“Where am I?”
So young,
“Please, somebody help me:”
So much fear.
*Growling*
The cries of a boy.
"Please! Please, Mom.”
Eternal darkness.
*Screeching*
A Man.
*Gun Shot*
A Girl.
“Cora”
Blood oozing out of a head wound. a Man falling, a corpse hitting the ground
“ Benny”
She wails for him, she cries for the life lost.
“Help!”
A hand shooting out of the darkness.
A beast calling out for her, for him?
An inhuman hand grabbing for her neck, ripping her upwards.
“HELP!!!”
Drenched in cold sweat does she shoot up in her bed. Heavily breathing, a hand going for the neck. Her cheeks wet.
Her hand blindly goes for the lamp on her bedside table. Red is all she sees, her long hair like a shield of fire surrounding her. Slowly does she stand up and moves to the mirror on the adjacent wall.
Her pupils are bloody red. Wet red and black tear tracks are running down her face, blood on her forehead from a wound not her own. She wipes it off as best she can. Her neck keeps bleeding, the cut not deep but still there. Her eyes slowly turn back to their usual dark green, confusion shining bright within them.
Never before. Never before did she see something like it. Never before could it touch her.
What happened? Had a curse befallen Hawkins or did man made Monsters come alive?
“HELP!”