Chapter Seventy-Six: What No One Else Can

"Her body, just like, lifted up into the air, and uh...and she just like hung there, in the air," Eddie recounted, "And her bones...uh, she..." 

He squeezed his eyes shut, and I wrapped an arm around him, rubbing his arm with my free hand. 

"I know." I whispered. 

"Her bones started to snap," He said, looking at the others with tear-filled eyes. I nodded, images of Chrissy filling my mind at a rapid rate. I tried to cancel them out by looking up at Steve, who was back on his feet and watching me intently while Robin, Max, and Dustin had their eyes glued to Eddie, "Her eyes, man. It-it was like there was something, like inside her head, pulling. I-I didn't know what to do, so I...I ran away. I left her there. You all think I'm crazy, right?"

"No. We don't think you're crazy." Dustin said sincerely. 

"Don't lie to me man, I know how this sounds!" 

"We're not lying to you." Max told him.

"We believe you." Robin said.

"Look," Dustin continued, "What I'm about to tell you might be a little...difficult to take. You know how people say Hawkins is...cursed? They're not...way off. There's another world..."

Another headache came over me, and suddenly I was seeing the burning car again. There was a boy in a blue sweater vest, slowly walking towards it. I thought I had recognized him as standing with Nancy at the basketball game, presumably someone from the school paper. 

"...A world hidden beneath Hawkins. Sometimes it...bleeds into ours."

"Like ghosts and crap?" Eddie questioned.

"There are some things...worse than ghosts."

The window of the car shattered and a bloody, battered boy clawed his way through it. He was shouting to the other boy begging him for help. The boy in the vest took a step backwards, going to run away, only to fall backwards into a deep hole. His back hit the ground, and it seemed like the impact was enough to jar my mind so that rather than the jarring, painful flashes of what this boy was seeing, I was laying right in that hole beside him, just like with Chrissy.

The boy looked to his left, screaming as he spotted a rotting corpse with spiders coming out of its eyes. He backed up against the wall of the grave, recovering his glasses from the ground and looking at me with wide, scared eyes. 

"Who are you?!" He exclaimed. "Where am I, what are you doing here-"

"I don't really have time to explain," I said, standing up and offering him my hand, "I need to know exactly where you are right now."

"I...I don't know...I just ran, I don't know where I am."

"These monsters from this other world," Dustin's voice floated into the grave, but it sounded fuzzy and distant, "We thought they were gone."

"Do you hear that?" I asked, pointing up at the sky. "That boy, talking, do you hear it?"

"No! I don't hear anything!" He said, starting to panic as he began clawing the side of the grave. "Somebody help us! Please, Nancy, Please!"

"Nancy?" I asked.

"...But they've come back before. And that's why we needed to find you. "

"If they're back again," Max's voice continued, "We need to know."

"Guys?!" I called, looking around the grave. "Guys, can you hear me?!"

"Who are you talking to?!" The boy exclaimed.

"Fred..." I froze, my heartrate spiking as I heard that same deep, gruesome voice that had spoken to Chrissy and I moments before her death. We both slowly turned around to see that the grave had opened up into a tunnel, and the creature was heading right for us.

"Fred, come here." I held my hands out, setting them up so that he could step into them and I could boost him out of the grave.

"What? I don't-"

"Now is not the time to argue with me, Fred! Do what I tell you if you want to live!" He nodded, putting his hands on my shoulders and his foot in my hands, stepping up into them. It wasn't like the kid was particularly heavy, but just as I began lifting him up to the edge of the grave, another one of those veiny tentacles from before wrapped around my ankle, pulling my legs out from beneath me. I dropped Fred and went sliding across the ground, kicking wildly as I tried to free myself from their grasp. "NO! FRED, DON'T LET IT TOUCH YOU! DON'T LET IT-"

The tentacles wrapped around my mouth, keeping me from talking as they pulled me to lay beside the dead, decaying body. I  strained my muscles, fighting against them as hard as I could, but the more I fought it seemed the tighter they became.

"That Night," Robin's voice floated in, "Did you see anything?"

"Dark particles, maybe?"

Fred backed up against the wall of the grave, and I kept trying to scream at him through the tentacle wrapped around my mouth. He looked at me with wide eyes and I shook my head as much as I could, moving my wrists around as I tried to signal to him again not to let this creature touch him.

"It would almost look like dust. Swirling dust-"

"No, man, there was nothing you could see, or uh...or touch. You know, I tried to wake her man. She couldn't move. It was like she...she was in a trance or something."

"Or under a spell."

"A curse."

"Vecna's curse."

"What do you want?" Fred sobbed as the monster came to a slow, squelching stop in front of him. I screamed, jerking up against my bindings as tears streamed down my face.

"I want you," The creature answered, "To join me."

"Who's Vecna?"

"No, no, no, no..." The creature lifted his hands to Fred's face, and I started screaming.

"An undead creature of great power."

He dug his hands into Fred's face, jerking his head back and I let out a final sobbing cry, closing my eyes as images of his breaking bones filled my  mind.

"A spell caster."

"A dark wizard."

"Riley?"

"Oh gosh, is it happening again? Its happening again, isn't it?! Oh she's gonna die, all her bones are gonna snap-"

"No, guys, I think this...whatever's happening to Riley, I think its different. I mean, that creature she saw, the one she says killed Chrissy, didn't she mention it saying that she didn't belong there?"

"Yeah, but belong where?! We don't know where she's supposed to be or how she ended up there or-"

My eyes burst open, and I probably would've tumbled forward off of the table I was sitting on if Steve, who had been crouched on the floor in front of me, hadn't caught me with his hands on my arms.

"Riley, thank God." Robin said. I looked at all of them, my scattered, chaotic gaze finally coming to land on Steve again.

"What happened?" He asked, putting a hand on my knee. I shook my head.

"This creature...Vecna you called?" I asked, glancing at the others before meeting his eyes once more. "I think he just claimed his next victim."

~~~

Despite Eddie's very justified, and reasonable fear, the police were still looking for him and the kids would be expected home, so we ended up leaving him and the boat house late that night and heading back into town, promising to bring him provisions the following morning.

As soon as Steve and I got back to our apartment, I tuned into the police scanner and sat down on the couch, folding my legs beside me and staring blankly at the wall as yet another murder plagued my mind. A mug appeared in my field of vision, and I looked up to see that Steve was holding a cup of tea in front of my face. I slowly, cautiously, took it from him.

"Its that hot tea with honey that you mentioned making for El whenever she was having a tough night." He said, sitting down beside me. I nodded slowly, taking a sip and cradling the warm mug between my hands. "So you don't know exactly where this kid is?" 

"He was on the highway, I think," I replied, "But I don't know for sure. With Chrissy, where she was attacked looked completely different than where she actually was, so there's no telling if what I saw was even really happening."

"You think its in their mind or something?" He asked. I shrugged.

"I mean, Eddie didn't see any of the stuff that we did, he said she was in a trance," I said, "So clearly whatever he's making them see isn't happening in the real world. Its probably why these visions or whatever they are, come more easily when I'm asleep. There's more dormant space to occupy in my mind." I took another sip.

"So what...you can see into people's minds now?" He asked. I shook my head.

"I don't know, Steve. I'm grasping at any plausible explanation here."

"Ok...so Eddie said that you looked just like Chrissy when you were with that kid," He continued, "I get why he was so freaked out, I mean your eyes were fluttering but you weren't responding to anything we were saying or us touching you or anything."

"So what has been happened to me is exactly the same as what has been happening to the victims...but I'm not dying?"  I asked.

"And this...Vecna or whatever we're calling him, said that you weren't supposed to be there." He continued. I nodded.

"So its like, somehow, I'm...connected to this," I theorized, "Somehow, when he creates these mindscapes or whatever they are, I'm almost instantly transported into them."

"Do you think it has something to do with everything that's happened?" He questioned. I bit my lip.

"I mean I guess...I guess I was trapped in the Upside Down during a time when my neural development was most in flux...I guess its possible that being there for so long, while my brain was still developing somehow...modified my brain chemistry or something so that whatever this creature does on the surface-"

"You're instantly alerted to it," He finished for me, "Its the same as your chills whenever something Upside-Down related happens, only on a much more extreme scale." I nodded.

"I mean...it seems plausible, doesn't it?" I questioned. He shrugged, leaning back on the couch beside me.

"I mean...as plausible as anything in our lives can be." I nodded, taking another sip of tea before putting it on the coffee table and leaning back beside him. 

"What good is knowing, and seeing all of this if I'm powerless to stop it?" I whispered, glancing over at him, "I mean, I just...I just have to sit there, and watch them die. They're so scared, Steve, they're terrified out of their minds, and I can feel it. I feel their fear, and its like the harder I try to get to them and the more I try to intervene, the more impossible it gets for me to do so."

"Are you sure its their fear that you're feeling?" He asked. I met his eyes, his questions causing tears to well up in my own. His face fell as I broke down and he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me so that my legs were draped over his lap and the side of my face was laying on his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around my waist and leaned his head against mine.

"Its never going to end." I cried. "No matter how many times we think we've won or how happy we believe our lives are, there's always something bigger and scarier around the corner just waiting to tear it all down! I mean, why do we even try?! What's the point?!"

"Come on, Riley. Don't talk like that. You're always the optimistic, don't give up one, remember?" I sat up, pulling back to look at him.

"Yeah?" I asked. "Where has that gotten me?"

"Riley-"

"No, please, enlighten me Steve, where has all of this fighting landed me?!" I stood up from the couch, wrapping my arms around myself and beginning to pace. "Again, and again and again, evil arises in this town, and every single time I'm leading the charge to fight against it, and WHAT HAS THAT EVER GOTTEN ME?!" I tangled my hands in my hair, turning to look at him. "My-my Dad is dead, my sister is gone, and now, no to top it all off, I get to watch innocent people DIE every time I close my eyes, SO WHAT IS THE POINT OFF ANY OF IT?!" 

"Its not fair," Steve said, standing up and walking over to me, "Its not...its not fair that all of this stuff has happened to you, and you are perfectly justified in feeling that way."

"Oh, let me guess, there's a but though, because there always is." I said spitefully. "But you shouldn't give up, Riley, but you should keep fighting Riley, why, Steve? Please enlighten me why I shouldn't just throw in the towel and leave this stupid, insistent, DUMPSTER FIRE of a battle for SOMEONE ELSE to clean up?! Why shouldn't anyone else have to face these consequences after everything I've done for this stupid town?!"

He looked at me for a long moment, which made me slightly uncomfortable. I couldn't tell exactly what was in his eyes...it wasn't judgement, or disappointment...I guess the best way I could think to describe what I was seeing was...fear. Fear that I had finally snapped, fear that the girl he fell in love with was slowly disappearing, and all that was left in her place was a bitter, hollow husk-

"Because no one else can."

I stopped, his answer surprising me. He walked over, standing directly in front of me, but he didn't touch me as he often would have. He just stood there, staring at me with a look of complete and utter understanding.

"I..." I trailed off. He nodded.

"Trust me Riley, I would love nothing more than for someone to come along and take the entire world off of your shoulders," He said quietly, "And I would do it myself if I could, but I can't. Because as sucky, and unfair, and completely traumatizing as your life has been so far, its the life that's made you who you are right now, in this moment. Its what's made you strong and smart, and tough, and in spite of all the horror that you've seen, its made you one of the most caring and compassionate people that I have ever met, and it is because of those experiences, and the person that they have made you, that you are the only one who is equipped to fight this thing."

"I...I don't feel very equipped." I stated. He nodded, putting his hands on the sides of my neck.

"But you are," He continued, "And if I know Riley Hopper, which I believe that I do...she will never, ever let evil things continue to run rampant if she has the power to do something about it. And you...you have more power than you will ever understand, and I know its not fair but Riles...we need you." I sighed.

"You know...with your ability to give pep talks, its a wonder we didn't win a championship before now."

"Ok..." I laughed, reaching up and wiping the tears off of my face. "So...what are you gonna do?"

I bit my lip, reaching up and putting my hands on his wrist before meeting his eyes. I shrugged.

"What only I can," I answered, smiling confidently up at him, "Let's kill this thing."