The Flea and The Acrobat

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When Nancy and I got back to her house, Mike came upstairs, grabbed my hand and pulled me along with him.

"Sorry Nancy, I need to borrow Danielle for a sec!" Mike said before he slammed the basement door shut.

Dustin, Lucas, and El were already down there waiting.

"What did I miss?" I ask no one in particular.

"We got in contact with Will." Dustin said.

"And?" 

"Well sort of. It's like he was already talking to someone?" Mike cuts in.

"So now we need to figure out exactly where he's at." Lucas says, sitting on a chair.

"Wow." I say a little shocked. "What did Will say?"

"Like home... Like home... but dark?" Mike says confused as he now stands in the middle of the room.

"And empty." Lucas says

"Empty and cold. Wait, did he say cold?" Dustin says, now sitting on the stairs. 

"I don't know. The stupid radio kept going in and out." Lucas says.

"It's like riddles in the dark." Dustin sighs.

"Like home. Like his house?" I ask.

"Or maybe like Hawkins." Lucas says as he points at me.

"Upside down." El mumbles from the couch that she's laying on.

"What did she say?" Lucas asks.

"Upside down." Mike says.

"What?" 

"Upside down." Mike says as he walks over to the D&D playing table.

Mike sits down at the table and we do the same.

"When El showed us where Will was, she flipped the board over, remember?" Mike says as he flips the D&D board over.

"Upside down. Dark. Empty."

"Do you guys understand what he's talking about?" Lucas asks.

"No." Dustin says.

"Just continue Mike." I say while motioning for him to continue.

"Guys, come on, think about it. When El took us to find Will, she took us to his house, right?"

"Yeah. And he wasn't there." Lucas says.

"But what if he was there? What if we just couldn't see him? What if he was on the other side?"

Lucas looks at Dustin and I skeptically.

Mike flips the board back over to the front and says, "what if this is Hawkins and..." he flips it over to the dark side, "this is where Will is? The Upside Down."

"Like the Vale of Shadows." Dustin points out.

"What's the Vale of Shadows?" I ask.

"My young Padawan, let me show you." Dustin says as he gets up from the table.

He soon comes back with the D&D handbook. Dustin sits back down and opens it up to the Vale of Shadows page and starts reading. 

"The Vale of Shadows is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world. It is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters." 

Dustin looks up from the book and we all look at each other worryingly.  

"It is right next to you and you don't even see it." He finishes.

002 - Steve HarringtonWhere stories live. Discover now