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__________ c h a p t e r f i f t y - s e v e n
After an entire night spent with Sam trying to coax herself to sleep and Steve trying his best to comfort her through her fears, Sam, now more sleep-deprived than ever, recounts exactly what she saw.
Once she was freed from Vecna's mind hell, the group decided to stay the night in Max's trailer, knowing all of their houses would be crawling with police and inquisitive parents.
They'd also made about 20 attempts to call the Byers' house, needing to get in touch with the rest of their friends, per Sam's frantic cries to "Call them now."
"He showed me everything," she shakes her head, eyes still teary as Steve softly rubs her knuckles.
"What do you mean?" Nancy asks, voice softer than she'd ever heard it.
"Vecna, he's Henry Creel. Victor's son. He went into a coma after he tried to kill his family, but um, that creepy doctor guy that took El, he took him too. He was the first."
"Wait, Vecna is Henry Creel?"
"And One?" Dustin adds.
"Yes," she nods. "And he... He killed every kid in the lab besides El. She stopped him, but it was too late. Everyone was gone. He also showed me his plan. It was... It was horrifying."
She lets in a sharp intake of breath at that, making Steve squeeze her hand. "It was like Hawkins was taken over by the Upside Down. This dark cloud was in the sky, and everything was dying. The flowers, the lake, it was all like the Upside Down. And you guys... You were dead. So was my entire family."
She continues slowly, gaining a bit more composure. "And there were so many monsters. Too many to count. Some we've seen, like the Demogorgon, and others, unlike anything even you could dream of. One was huge, with this, like, gaping mouth. We didn't stand a chance against them."
"Maybe..." Steve slowly blinks. "Maybe he was just trying to scare you, you know? Make you back down."
"I really wanna believe that. But it felt so real. Like I was watching our future play out in front of me," she rebuts. "And you know how a new gate forms when he kills? He showed me four. But they weren't like the one in Lover's Lake. They were huge, going through the entire town."
"Four chimes. Vecna's clock," Max comments. "It always chimes four times. Four exactly."
"Yeah, you're right. I always heard them at the beginning of my nightmares," Sam turns to her in realization.
"He's been trying to tell us his plan the entire time."
"Four kills. Four gates. End of the world."
"If that's true, he's only one kill away," Dustin points out.
