RABBIT HOLE ― harrington

scene (00).

『 SCENE ZERO 』
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GIRL FROM
THE RABBIT HOLE

IT ALL STARTED ON A cold fall night in 1977 when the missing little girl emerged, bloody and bruised, from the rabbit hole.

She had been a curious little thing by nature, clever and wonder-filled, always yearning to take that one extra step towards the ledge. But that fateful day three months prior, that adventurous little girl must have taken just one step too far.

It had all happened so quickly.

They were in a park on their family day. The girl and her little sister had been so excited; she had been talking giddily about flying her red kite with their dad all week. It was all she could think about, all she would talk about on the car ride there. But as she stood trying to get her kite to lift off, their father had taken to chasing her little sister, leaving the girl on her own. Her parents had looked away from their eldest for just one second. Just one. But that was all it took.

There was no scream. No cry. No warning.

All there was left was a torn red kite hanging limp from a withered dead tree.

Just like that, in a blink of an eye, little Molly Hopper had vanished.

As a police officer, Jim Hopper knew far too well what it meant when a child went missing and none of their family was responsible for it. He thought he knew exactly what it meant. He didn't. But he would learn.

The guilt began to consume him. He thought he should have known better. He was a cop and that was his little girl, and he should've known better.

When the days turned into weeks, Jim couldn't help but think back to all the cases of missing children he had worked over the years. He thought of all the terrible things that could be happening to his baby girl, how she must've been so scared, how she must've been wondering where he was and why he wasn't there.

Then when the weeks turned into months, the Hoppers began to fear the worst. Their sweet ten year old kid who liked playing with plastic dinosaurs and running around in her favorite red sneakers was dead. Or something as good as. Maybe they would never truly know. The only clear thing was that the lanky clumsy girl with the towhead blonde hair and big blue eyes was never coming home.

But then something happened. Some kind of miracle. Some kind of mistake.

The little girl dug her fingernails into the muddy earth and she bared her teeth against the darkness and then she dragged herself out of the rabbit hole.

Plump pink lips had turned pale blue and big blue eyes were a dim grey.

Rain had taken the place of thunder, so roaringly loud as it pummeled the earth. The sky was a deep tar black, and no moon or stars acted like a lighthouse to guide her to safety, to guide Molly home.

Molly wasn't wearing shoes. Rocks and branches cut and scraped her tiny feet. Stitches lined the top of her newly shaved blonde head. A dirty, bloody hospital gown scraped against her shins. She was shivering, her hands were shaking, her head was dizzy. Her tears mixed in with the raindrops.

The woods around her began to lessen, the trees turning into brick buildings. When a car finally did stop to help, it was only because it had nearly hit her. When the police arrived and when she laid in a too clean of a hospital bed, Molly couldn't speak. All she did was stare at the clock on the white wall, watching it tick and tock until it stopped moving altogether. The doctors said it was because of the trauma, the fear, the shock.

Diane cried out in the hall.

Jim sat for hours by her hospital bed.

Sara did her best to comfort her.

But Molly wasn't the same.

The doctors said that whoever took her did something to her head, to her brain. It was like they rewired the little girl that was once silly and excitable and crazy. Now, suddenly she was cold and uncertain and reserved. It was like their little girl was a different person, even long after her light blonde hair grew back to cover the scars on her scalp.

The Hopper family began to crumble.

Diane pulled back within herself. She withdrew from her daughters, from her husband. Suddenly she couldn't figure out how to be a mother anymore - if she even wanted to be. Molly struggled to reconnect with existence. The kids in her elementary school grew afraid of her, avoiding her, driving her further into isolation. Sara was so confused about what had happened. The five year old just couldn't comprehend why her sister was suddenly different. She didn't understand where Molly went for those three months or why when she finally did come back, she didn't want to play with her anymore.

There was now something unworldly about Molly Hopper, something that made birds scatter and hair stand up on end.

So, the Hoppers pulled their preschooler and their fourth grader out of school and moved away from their hometown of Hawkins. They decided to try life in the big city, hoping to make a fresh start, hoping Molly could be normal, hoping to let it go.

But Jim couldn't let it go. He lost himself within the case until it practically consumed him. Maybe it was like some kind of penance for losing Molly in the first place. Maybe he was obsessed or maybe he was looking for revenge. Maybe Jim thought that if he found who took his baby girl, then maybe it would fix her. Maybe it would fix everything.

It wouldn't.

No matter how hard Molly tried to remember who took her and no matter how hard Jim worked to find them, the father and daughter weren't able to save little seven year old Sara from cancer. And on a night she would never forget, as she softly cried in a waiting room, swinging her tiny red sneakers, fingers twirling one of two blue hair ties, Molly Hopper became an only child.

Twelve year old Molly watched silently as her parents grew incapable of even looking at each other. When Diane left Jim for another man, she knew she wouldn't be able to handle the girl, wouldn't be able to look at her without seeing Sara, without seeing who Molly could have been if things hadn't have turned out so... wrong. So, Diane left her too. And then Jim Hopper and his strange little girl made their way back home, all alone in the world. Just them two.

But the small Indiana town did not accept the young girl who slowly grew into a teenager.

She was labelled, a freak, a weirdo, an outsider.

What happened to Molly Hopper all those years before was forgotten, passed off as urban legend or paltry gossip to be shared at the lockers or around the supper table. The threat of children disappearing was ignored. The memory of search parties and frantic mothers repressed.

And it wasn't until many years later in 1983, on a cold night in November, when the small town of Hawkins, Indiana was flipped upside down that some began to finally understand what it truly was to fall down a rabbit hole.