*22*

🔥CHAPTER 22🔥

*-*Merliah's POV*-*

The two girls begged me to have a sleep over with them, and after I just witness, I wouldn't wanna be alone, so I agreed.

I was laying on the floor in a sleeping bag, in Max's room, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about Billy and how differently he was acting, I just couldn't understand what happened to him, for his to suddenly act so differently all of a sudden.

"Liah, you okay?" Max asks from the bed, with comic books in her hands.

"Max, he seemed so different, I almost thought he had a twin we didn't know about." I say sadly.

"Don't worry about it, too much, for now. We'll try and figure that out tomorrow." She says, which I could only nod my head at their wasn't anything we could do right now.

Eleven came from the bathroom, climbing on the bed next to Max. "Which one?" The red hair girl asks her holding out two comic books to her.

"I don't know." Eleven says, clearly still bothered by the whole Heather thing.

"Hey, there's nothing to worry aboutanymore, okay?" Max states, but something told me she's very wrong about that.

"It doesn't make sense." Eleven says, conflicted.

"What doesn't make sense?" Max asks her confused.

"Heather. The blood. The ice." Eleven states.

"Heather had a fever, so she took a cold bath, but she's better now. That has to be it." Max says, which sounded like that's what she wanted to believe. "I don't know where that blood came from, but... we saw her. All three of us saw her. She's totally fine." She adds.

"You can't argue, both Billy and Heather was acting strange." I mutter sofly.

"Exactly, what about Billy?" Eleven asks.

"What about him?" Max shot a question back.

"He seemed wrong." Eleven says, I was glad to hear I wasn't the only one that thought that. "Wrong is kind of like his default, but it's nice to know he's not a murderer, because that would've totally sucked." Max says, after that they started talking about comics, I turned on my side, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

The following morning I got woken up by Max's walkie going off by my head. "Do you copy? This is a code red. I repeat, this is a code red. Max. Do you copy? This is a code red." I grabbed her walkie.

"We're trying to sleep, so shut up." I say grumpily putting the thing off, but that didn't help, because Max's house phone started ringing.

Max got out of her bed, clearly annoyed, and answered the phone.

"I'm sleeping. Go away." She says, about to hang up, but whoever was on the other end, stopped her.

"What are you talking about?" Max asks the person on the phone confused, which had both eleven and I sitting up straight looking at her.

"What?" Max asks.

"What did he say?" Eleven asks, once Max put the phone down. Max only told us that the boys wanted them to hurry over to Mike's house, and that they didn't explain why we needed to be there.

We got up, ate breakfast, and got dressed, and quickly drove our bicycles towards his house, to see what is so urgent.

"I didn't think it was anything at first. I mean, I think I just didn't want to believe it. The first time I felt it was at Day of the Dead." Will explains, as we sat around the Wheeler basement.

"Power went out that night, too." Mike states.

"And then I felt it again at the field near the Nelson farm the next day. Then again yesterday outside Castle Byers." Will says.

"What does it feel like?" Max asks him curiously.

"It's almost like... You know when you drop on a roller coaster?" Will asks.

"Sure."

"Yeah."

"No."

"It's like... everything inside your body is just sinking all at once, but... This is worse. Your body... It goes cold and... and you can't breathe. I've felt it before, whenever he was close.

"Whenever who was close?" Max asks.

"The Mind Flayer." Will says.

"I closed the gate." Eleven states as a reminder, looking at him confused.

"I know, but... what if he never left? What if we locked him out here with us?" Will asks her, I was starting to get very nervous.

"This is him." Will says, drawing this thing on a piece of paper. "All of him, but, that day on the field, a part of him attached itself to me. My mom got it out of me... And Eleven closed the gate, but the part that was still in me,what if it's still in our world? In Hawkins." Will explains, wiping his hand over the picture, making a handprint on the otherside of the paper.

"I don't understand. The Demodogs died when El closed the gate. If the brain dies, the body dies." Max states in confusion.

"We can't take any chances. We need to assume the worst. The Mind Flayer's back." Mike says.

"Yeah. And if he is, he'd want to attach himself to someone again.A new me." Will says.

"A new host." Lucas states.

"How would you be able to tell if someone is a host?" I ask, speaking up for the first time since we got here, thinking about Billy.

*🔥Unedited 🔥*