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The first time the doorbell rings, Neil ignores it. Today is one of the rare occasions he has the house to himself and he intends to enjoy the solitude. His favorite team is playing so he’s got the game on while he enjoys a few beers. It can’t be anyone important at the door, not in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. If he doesn’t answer they’ll leave.
Maxine is spending the weekend with her friend Jane, the police chief’s daughter. Susan is at a book club meeting, hosted by some of the other mothers in the area–Neil allowed her to go but he’s not sure how he feels about Susan being in a book club with the Byers woman, he’s heard about her and doesn’t want Susan getting any strange ideas.
Billy’s also out of the house today. Truthfully, Neil has no idea where his son is. It does worry him a bit, knowing how much trouble Billy is, but he’s trying to convince himself that he doesn’t care. Billy is an adult now, the shit he gets into himself is his own problem to get out of. Billy is headstrong, rebellious, and disrespectful. All traits he inherited from his mother. They’re traits Neil had thought he could train out of Billy’s mother, but it had proved harder than he thought.
He’s been trying for at least ten years to beat them out of Billy, and he hasn’t succeeded there either. At one time, Neil had believed that he could break Billy, tear him down in order to build him back into something right, something good. But years have passed and Neil has realized that it’s impossible. Billy is something defective. There is a darkness, an evil within the boy–something his good for nothing mother infected him with before she left–and there’s nothing Neil can do about it. All he can do is continue disciplining Billy, beating him into submission so that the rottenness inside him won’t spread to others.
The doorbell rings again, and Neil sighs. He turns down the volume on the tv and makes his way to the front door. He’ll just tell whoever it is that he’s not interested in whatever they want and then they’ll be on their way.
Neil’s not entirely sure who he expects to see when he opens the door, but it’s not a lone teenage girl.
“Hi,” the girl says, staring at him from behind her large round glasses, “you must be Mr. Hargrove, Billy’s… dad.”
There’s a pause before she says the last word, and her tone changes in a way Neil doesn’t quite understand.
Neil nods. “Billy’s not here at the moment.”
There’s no other reason he can think for this girl to be at their house, although, she’s not the kind Billy usually goes for. Billy’s type is small, petite, usually blonde. The kind of girl who wears too much makeup, lowcut shirts, and very short skirts. This girl standing in front of him is none of those things, with her short red hair and cream, slightly unevenly knit sweater.
“I’m not looking for Billy.” The girl pauses, cocks her head to the side, and for a moment, the light reflects on her glasses, making her eyes flash strangely. “I was actually hoping to speak to you.”
Neil fights a shiver as a breeze floats in through the open door, curling around his back and settling a chill at the base of his spine. There’s something strangely familiar about the girl even though he’s almost certain he hasn’t seen her before.
That, in itself is strange, considering how small Hawkins is. He recognizes most of the people in town, even if he’s never spoken to many of them before.
“I…” He starts to say, intending to tell the girl he doesn’t have time for whatever she has to say, but she’s already pushing past him into the house. With no other idea what to do, he follows her into the living room where she takes a seat on his couch. Neil returns to his recliner. “What do you need to talk about? Is it about Billy? What did that boy do this time?”
It has to be about Billy. It always is. He’s rotten, rotten to the core. This girl must have realized it too.
“Billy has done a lot of things, for a lot of different reasons.”
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Neil wonders, but he doesn’t ask. There’s something about this girl that makes him hesitant to speak.
“Have you ever heard anything about Lonnie Byers?”
“I don’t…” Neil has heard several things about the Byers. He knows Will is about Maxine’s age, Jonathan is about Billy’s age, and their mother Joyce is a firecracker, someone he doesn’t like Susan spending too much time with. He thinks maybe he’s heard Lonnie’s name before, but he’s not sure who he is.
“Lonnie was Joyce’s husband, the father of her two children. He left Hawkins years ago. He should have stayed gone, but he returned, to do nothing but bring more pain to those who once loved him.” The girl pauses and gives Neil a hard look.
Neil feels anger starting to bubble up inside him, but he keeps it hidden with a confused frown. “I don’t know what you think you’ve heard, but–”
“I know a lot of things about you Mr. Hargrove.” The girl interrupts. “I know what you are.”
She flashes a quick smile that makes his teeth clench. A tendril of unease curls in his belly. There’s something off in her expression. Something feral, predatory.
“Billy is a liar who needs to keep his stories to himself.” He shouldn’t have said that, but the words seem to come out before he’s even decided to speak.
The girl laughs. “I’ve never spoken to Billy. He doesn’t know me. But I know who he is.”
There’s something wrong with this scene. The house feels darker than it should, it’s colder than it should be for the end of June. And this girl. This strange, familiar girl who he’s never met before. Who seems to know about Billy, about what Neil has done. No one else has ever known. Every suspicion that has ever existed, Neil has been able to appease, but now this girl is staring at him with horrible, knowing eyes.
“Billy has suffered at the hands of a monster for years, Mr. Hargrove. He has experienced so much pain and hurt from someone meant to protect him.” The girl shifts, her coat making a squeaking sound against the leather couch. Neil hadn’t noticed before that her blue coat was soaking wet. There’s a small puddle forming on the floor from the water slowly dripping from the edge. He finds himself unable to look away from the slowly dripping water. In the dimness of the house, it looks almost black. The drips almost seem to hang suspended in the air for a moment before falling into the puddle, lingering on the surface for a moment before sinking in. It looks thick, strangely viscous.
“He’s also hurt many people himself. Let his own fear and anger spill over a time or two.” She sighs heavily. “He’s experienced so much violence it can’t be surprising that he can’t keep it contained inside him. You filled his life with pain, and he can’t help it from spilling over to others.”
“The boy is wrong.” Neil’s words spill out unbidden as he finds himself standing, glaring down at the girl. “All I’ve ever done is try to fix him! He’s fucked up, defective just like his whore mother! It’s not my fault his fucking poison spills out to infect those around him.”
“Billy should’ve never been forced to face one monster, but god I wish you were the only one he ever had to face.”
Neil finds himself advancing towards the girl, fists clenched at his side. “What kind of fucking bullshit are you–”
“Sit down, Mr. Hargrove!”
Almost before he’s processed her words, he finds himself back in his seat, his back sore as though it hit something with great force.
“Soon Billy will face a new monster, something with power you can only dream of. He will be forced to do terrible things, hurt and kill. Faced with the most powerful of forces, he will break free at the end, sacrificing himself and dying a hero. There’s nothing I can do to stop that monster, not a fucking thing I can do.” There are tears welling up in the girl’s eyes and she sounds frustrated and defeated, but then she looks up at Neil with her eyes burning. They catch the light of the tv and for a moment, they seem to reflect it, like the eyes of an animal, something big and deadly. “There is nothing I can do about that monster, but there is something I can do about you.”
“I… I’m not…”
The girl stands and steps forward until she’s right in front of Neil. She’s only a little taller than he is in his seat, but she seems to tower over him. When she speaks again, her voice is different, full of darkness and a promise of pain. “Hawkins is broken, there are powers at play to great to fight, but from you, from humans, Hawkins still protects her own. Billy will die for her, and until then, Hawkins will protect him.”
She stares down at him she a long moment before turning and walking to the door. As she reaches for the handle, she pauses and turns back, giving him a smile that makes his skin crawl. “You will leave him alone. I’ll be watching to be sure you do.”
She slips out the door and it clicks shut behind her. The house is silent save for Neil’s gasping breaths. He feels like he can’t get enough air. As though he were swimming and stayed under the water too long. His lungs are buring.
Neil has almost gotten his breathing under control when the front door flies open. He jumps and whips his head towards the door.
There’s silence for a long moment as he and Billy stare at each other, eyes wide. Neil sees a brief flicker of fear cross Billy’s face before it’s replaced with a blank mask of resignation. He knows he’s not supposed to slam the door open like that.
Billy has suffered at the hands of a monster for years. The girl’s words echo in his mind. Hawkins protects her own.
Neil stumbles to his feet and moves towards Billy. He doesn’t miss Billy’s flinch. You filled his life with pain.
He pushes passed Billy without a word and stumbles to his car, fumbling to pull out his keys. So much pain and hurt.
The car starts and he tears out of the driveway, driving the way he’s always scolded Billy for driving. From someone meant to protect him.
By the time Neil gets into town, he’s managed to calm himself down. The girl was just some random kid from the high school who suspected something; she has no proof about what he’s done. He imagined all the weird parts. He had too much to drink, that’s all. And he hasn’t eaten anything, so the alcohol just hit him too fast. He will die a hero.
He pulls up to the diner, intending to get some food, something to fill his stomach and settle his nerves. There are only a few people inside so he takes a seat at the bar top. The waitress is taking the order from another table, so he glances around the diner while he waits. There are a few decorations hung on the wall, everything seeming normal for a small-town diner, until his eyes land on the framed picture hanging on the wall. It looks almost like some kind of memorial. He stares at it, sweat beading on the back of his neck while something churns in his stomach.
“Can I help you?” The waitress’ voice breaks through to him. Her tone sounds slightly annoyed, as though she’s already asked and he didn’t respond.
“What… what’s that?” He points at the picture with a shaking hand.
The waitress looks over at it and frowns. “It’s a memorial for Frank’s niece. She disappeared a couple years ago, and then a few months back we learned she died from some crazy government experiment or something.”
He can’t breathe as he stares at the imagine of the teen girl with her short, red hair and round glasses.
“Hey, are you okay?”
He pushes away from the bar, standing so fast that the stool he was sitting on tumbles over.
“Hey, wait!”
He’s out the door before the waitress can say anything else. He has to get out of there. Has to leave. Hawkins protects her own.
He has to get out of Hawkins. Has to get far, far away.
The tires screech on the pavement as he accelerates towards the closest exit to the town. You will leave him alone.
He drives into the growing darkness. There are trees all around him. He should slow down; the road is winding and unfamiliar. It’s not safe. But it’s not safe to stay either. I’ll be watching to be sure you do.
He rounds a tight corner, glancing in his rearview mirror, half expecting to see someone, something, following him.
There’s nothing. He’s safe.
He glances back again.
Something crashes into the front of his car and he screams as he loses control, the car spinning wildly across the road.
It seems to go on for a lifetime, and eternity, only a moment.
The car comes to an abrupt halt and his head slams into the window.
His vision is fuzzy as he staggers out of the car, squinting up at the tall building before him. If there is a sign, he can’t make it out, but he does see lights shining from the walls. He stumbles towards the building, hoping he’ll be able to find a phone inside.
For years, Hawkins was nothing more than a normal, quiet town. Nothing exciting or particularly dangerous ever happened there. Some might have called it boring, but it was good. Not everything was perfect, sometimes there was pain, sadness, or tragedy, but no more than anywhere else. Hawkins was good. Nothing truly bad ever happened there until it did.
As Billy goes to sleep that night, he wonders where his dad went. He had acted strange when Billy got home from work. It was strange that he left and stranger still that he never came back. When Susan got back from her book club, she had been confused as well. It wasn’t like Neil Hargrove to disappear without warning. Since their marrage he rarely went anywhere except work unless Susan went too.
When several days pass and Neil doesn’t return, the entire family is confused. Billy and Susan debate for some time as to what to do. They decide to give it a week before talking to the police. Both are worried what Neil would say if he came back to find the police involved in his life.
Billy is on edge. He can’t say he’s upset that his dad’s not home, but it’s just so odd. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
Billy continues to go to work like normal, but he’s preoccupied with thoughts of his dad. Normally, Billy would have responded to Karen Wheeler’s heavy gaze and obvious posing. In fact, he had a whole plan to get her to meet him at the motel just outside town. The plan has completely escaped his mind.
Billy doesn’t notice the day that Wheeler shows up in her fancy new swimsuit with matching makeup. Billy returns home that night without driving past the old steel mill.
Once, there was nothing bad, nothing evil in Hawkins. Perhaps it was because of this that Hawkins was chosen. Terrible, horrible things were done which cracked the very foundation of reality. It was through these cracks that the evil seeped in. It spread, slow and sticky like syrup, growing like mold.
For years, Hawkins had protected her people, but as the evil grew and spread, it soon became too strong. The once good and safe place grew fragile. The creeping, spreading evil grew to be too much for her to stand.
Hawkins protects her own, but she couldn’t not from that.
There is void, an empty place between life and death. The void is dark. There is no light in the void. Most of the void is nothing, it’s not warm or cold, there is no smell or sound or taste. The void is nothing.
But there is one pocket that is not. It’s still dark. There is no light in the void. It cannot be anything but dark. It’s dark, but unlike the rest of the void, it is not nothing. It is warm there, a soft, comforting warmth which makes the darkness feel safe. Inside the pocket, the darkness doesn’t feel empty. Instead, it feels inviting. Encouraging those who find it to come in and rest.
In this pocket of darkness there is a teenage girl. She is alone, but she finds herself smiling.
The evil is too much to be stopped by her, but there where little things she could do. She couldn’t stop the evil, but she hoped she could give Billy a few days of rest. A brief reprieve before the horrors to come.
Only, somehow, by chance, it seems she’s saved him.
Barb lays back and closes her eyes. Soon many will die. There is no changing that but they will not be lost in emptiness of the void. They will be enveloped in the comforting warmth. She can’t save everyone but does what she can. Hawkins protects her own.