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Joyce went to bed late and woke up early. She’s made herself a cup of coffee and went out to drink it on the porch while she smoked a cigarette, taking in the stillness of the early morning, so different from the night before.
Once it wasn’t so frightfully early anymore she’d gone back inside and called Donald first, to let him know Will was sick and she wouldn’t be able to come into work. Then she’d called the middle school and called Will in sick.
Jonathan had woken up not long after that. Joyce had offered to let him stay home that day, too, but he’d said he wanted to go to school and check on Nancy. Joyce had made breakfast while he took a shower and got dressed. He’d hugged her tightly before he’d left, earlier than usual, and Joyce had stood and watched until his car disappeared behind the trees.
She sighs to herself. Will isn’t likely to wake up for a couple hours yet, so Joyce figures she might as well get started on cleaning up the shed out back.
But first she writes Will a note, letting her know where she is. She’s quiet as she steps into his room, placing the note on his nightstand where he’d easily see it if he were to wake up before she comes back in. She doesn’t want to risk disturbing his sleep, so doesn’t touch him, but she gives herself a minute just to watch him. He’s sleeping peacefully, chest rising and falling rhythmically. Even while that thing possessed him he’d been unconscious for most of the time, but he’d been restless and fitful.
Not now. Now he’s just a boy sleeping in his bed on a quiet Monday morning.
She leaves his door open as she steps out, leaves the back door open, too, to make it easier for her to hear him if he calls out.
The sky’s turned a pale blue, and the air feels crisp as she breathes it in.
She gets the door of the shed open and steps in.
Only to immediately stumble back as her mouth opens in shock.
There’s bound and gagged teenage boy in her shed.
His arms have been pulled loosely back, a scarf or something like it covering his mouth and tied at the back of his head.
He looks terrified as he stares up at her from his place on the floor, next to the chair they’d tied Will to.
Joyce’s first reaction is to want to run up to him and free him.
But Joyce quells that thought, because she’s been through enough strange shit to be a little more apprehensive. He might just look younger than he is.
Except, his eyes are starting to grow wet, and he’s starting to shake. Joyce takes another look at him, and thinks that his clothes don’t exactly scream danger . At most, they might scream ‘bad boy teenager’. She realises that other than just his hands being bound somehow - Joyce can’t see how - his ankles have been duct taped together.
His breath hitches, sounding odd and muted from behind the cloth, and Joyce manages to just catch the sigh of tears starting to stream down his cheeks before he ducks his head and oh. Oh, no, that is not something someone who’s a danger to her would do.
She rushes forward and the teen - because that’s what he is, Joyce is sure of it now - tries to scramble back but he’s already by the wall and he can’t really move well.
“Shh, shh,” Joyce tries to soothe him, feeling more like she’s talking to an injured animal than a teenager boy. She bends down and unties the cloth covering the lower part of his face.
It falls to his lap. His mouth falls open and he starts inhaling so quickly Joyce is worried he’s about to work himself into a panic attack, if he isn’t already there.
Joyce is about to try calming him down, or ask him what the hell he’s doing in her shed, when he starts mumbling. The words that leave him chill her to the bone and make her freeze.
“Please, please, please don’t kill me, please, I didn’t- I didn’t see anything, I promise, I won’t- Please, I didn’t see anything, please, I just- please, just let me take my sister and I’ll leave, I promise, you’ll never have to see us again-“
His sister? His… No. No, it can’t be-
“Billy?”
He lets out a strangled sound at that and Joyce’s stomach plummets. “ Please . Please, I don’t- Please.“
Jim drove the kids home last night. Then he came back and told her that once Max had been taken inside by her mother, her father had asked Jim if he’d seen his son who was supposed to go look for her. Jim hadn’t.
He hadn’t told him that he had seen his car, and that he’d assumed he and Steve had fought and Billy had wandered away to a friend to lick his wounds in peace. He’d had Nancy drive Billy’s car down to the school before he’d dropped her off at home.
Joyce doesn’t understand how Billy ended up where he is right now. “What are you doing in my shed?”
Billy doesn’t seem to have heard her. “Please, please, I didn’t see the monster, I promise I didn’t, please just let me go.”
“The mon-?” Joyce cuts herself off. The demodog. There’s a demodog in Joyce’s fridge. “Billy. Billy, what happened to you last night?”
Billy shakes his head and cries harder. “Please-“
“I won’t hurt you. Let me- God, I should’ve gone this earlier. I’ll be back in a second.”
She leaves him there to go lock for the slightly rusty pair of scissors she keeps in the shed, currently thrown somewhere in the pile in her yard outside the shed. It takes her a minute, but she finds them, reflecting the early morning sunshine.
Billy flinches when he sees the scissors, but Joyce just shushes him. She starts with his legs, in order to hopefully show she doesn’t mean any harm. She cuts the duct tape and pulls it off his jeans. He immediately pulls his legs up to his chest, doing his best to curl into a ball.
She moves the lamp behind the other chair towards the corner before turning it on, so as to avoid having it shining directly in his face like it had Will’s last night.
Billy blinks rapidly, trying to get his eyes used to the sudden brightness.
“Can I free your hands?” Joyce asks him, crouching down beside him again.
Billy looks warily at her. Tears are still trolling down his cheeks. Finally, he seems to find what he was looking for, because he nods and turns as much as he can.
Thanks to the light Joyce can see that his hands have been bound with the same rope they used for Will, the ends of it then duct taped to the chair’s leg.
Billy flinches when he feels the cool touch of the scissors against the skin of his arm. Joyce gives him a moment before moving the scissors and cutting him free.
He brings his arms to his lap slowly, rolling his shoulders and rubbing at his wrists. He hadn’t been bound tightly enough for it to leave marks, but he still must’ve spent hours in the same position.
“Billy?” Joyce waits for him to look up at her before continuing. God, he still looks so scared. Joyce’s heart aches.
His pupils are dilated, she realises. Did he takes some drugs? Is that why he seems so confused?
“Let’s get out of here, huh?”
He nods, but struggles to get up. Joyce ends up helping him, which is hard, since he’s so much taller than her.
It gets harder when Billy freezes outside the backdoor. He shakes his head. “No,” he whines. “No, no, please, please-“
“Hey, hey,” Joyce says. “Shh. It’s okay. You don’t want to go inside?”
Billy shakes his head again. “The-The monster…”
Oh. Joyce should’ve realised. Will’s drawings of the tunnels are still up, too, so it might not be the best environment to bring this scared and incoherent boy into.
She leads him around the house instead, to the porch in the front and up the step. Billy slides off her arm and down to the wooden floor. Joyce leaves him there while she hurries inside to grab a blanket off the couch. She shakes it out and drapes it over his shoulders.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Wait here, okay?”
Billy nods without looking at her. He seems to be in the process of trying to appear as small as possible.
Joyce is scared he’ll have left by the time she comes back out - although she doubts he’d be able to make it far - but he hasn’t. He’s still leaning against the wall of the house, the blanket wrapped tightly around him as he stares blankly out at the trees. Joyce hands him a mug of the hot chocolate she just made, holding her own, and sits down a foot or so away.
They sip their cocoa in silence for a couple minutes, while Joyce waits for Billy to calm down enough for her to repeat her question. “What happened last night, Billy?”
He shakes his head. “The mon-“
“I’ll tell you about the monster, I promise, sweetie. But what happened to you? ”
“I don’t- Max. Max sneaked out. Dad, he- They came home, and I didn’t know she was gone and they told me to go look for her. But Harrington- Harrington wouldn’t let me take her home. And we- We started fighting, and- and then- I don’t know. My head hurts. There was a monster. I don’t know. I don’t- I don’t remember, please, I don’t-“
“It’s okay,” Joyce quickly reassures when his breathing starts hitching again. “It’s okay. That’s alright. I’ll explain.”
She’s about to do that just as they hear a car approaching, and she turns to see Jonathan’s car coming up the driveway.
He parks haphazardly and hurries out of it, but stops when he sees Joyce out with Billy on the porch. “You found him.”
Joyce nods. “I did. Did you know he was here?”
Jonathan shakes his head. He glances at Billy then back to Joyce. “I think it might be best if we talk… inside.”
Joyce gives Billy a small reassuring smile and goes inside with Jonathan, closing the door.
“What’s going on? How did you find out he was here?”
“Max, she… She came from the middle school and found me, told me Billy and Steve had been fighting when Max injected him with one of Will’s sedatives. He stumbled into the fridge and the door opened and the demodog fell out. The kids, they, well. They dragged him out to the shed. She said they were about to leave for the tunnels and didn’t know what to do with him while they were gone, and then they all just. Forgot he was there. She’d just remembered that morning. I told one of my teachers that Will was sick and I’d started the feel the same way. She told me to go home.” He pauses. “I thought that maybe it was better if I told you before we told him.”
Joyce nods in agreement. She drags a hand over her face. God, what a mess.
“Okay. Okay, that’s… very bad. He’s so freaked out, Jonathan.” She’s gonna yell at all of Will’s friends the next time she sees them.
Jonathan looks toward the closed front door, as though trying to see through it to Billy on the other side. “Yeah, I bet. I can’t say I like him a lot from what I’ve heard at school, but… he didn’t deserve that.”
“I’m gonna have to tell him everything,” Joyce says.
Jonathan nods.
“Come on.”
“Where’s my car?” Billy asks as soon as she’s opened the front door and stepped back out. He sounds agitated, like the thought just hit him. “Where’s- Where’s my car? Where’s Max?”
“She’s at school. Your car is, too. I can- After I’ve explained everything, I can drive you home.”
To Joyce’s surprise that isn’t met with the happy or relived agreement she’d been expecting, but very acute distress. Billy shakes his head, so hard she worries he’ll give himself whiplash.
“No. No, please, I can’t- He’ll kill me.”
“What?”
“He’s gonna kill me. You don’t understand, you don’t know what he’s like, I didn’t- I didn’t bring her home last night, and that’s m-my responsibility, and then I didn’t come home, he’s gonna think- he’s gonna think I didn’t go look for her at all, he’s gonna kill me.”
“Mum,” Jonathan says. “Mum, are you…?”
“I am, Jonathan. I am,” Joyce says. “I’ll go call- Shit.” She has no working phone. “Can you go get Hopper? I think he needs to hear this.”
Jonathan nods.
She crouches down by Billy. “Billy. Billy, sweetheart, listen to me. I know you probably don’t trust me very much right now, but I promise you that you’re going to be okay. I promise. I won’t let anyone hurt you anymore. Okay?”
Slowly, Billy starts to nod.
Joyce isn’t sure if he really believes her, but it’s enough. She stands up and turns to Jonathan. “Go get Hopper, sweetie.”
He nods, gives her another hug, and goes to his car.
Joyce sits down next to Billy, expression determined. “This is what happened last night.”
And she tells him everything.