PARANORMAL | ❝Nothing is stranger than believing...❞
Cath knows a thing or two about Will Byers. Daphne, on the other hand, knows virtually nothing about Tonya McCarthy. Still, none of that changes the fact that both of them have up and vanishe...
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MONDAY 7th NOVEMBER, 1983
THIS is not what Cath had in mind when she pictured a night home alone. It was hard to believe almost two hours ago, she was blubbering about being shut into the house by herself with nothing to console her except for Ringo and the trashy nighttime TV. But instead, she'd somehow wound up in Mike Wheeler's basement with a total stranger who both terrified her and intrigued her.
The ride to Mike's house was a horror movie in itself. Having been the only one without a bike, Cath had no choice but to perch on the back of one of the boy's bikes — "Without a helmet?!", she'd cried — and since Dustin's bike was apparently too ragged and Mike's already occupied with their find in the woods, she'd ended up awkwardly sitting herself behind Lucas Sinclair, hooking her arms around his chest as her only seatbelt. Her eyes had been clenched shut the entire time, so hard that she felt the strained muscles around her eyes, and could only hope her petrified shrieks every time he turned a corner were drowned out by the thunder.
Still buzzing from the ride (and she had to stress, in the worst way possible), Cath had blindly followed them through a back entrance and down a flight of creaky stairs, and it wasn't until the aroma of musty wood hit her that she came to her senses.
Cath had always thought of basements as dark, creepy places where she couldn't bear being for more than two minutes — but there was something surprisingly homely about Mike Wheeler's basement. The instantly noticeable thing was the large lampshade hanging stilted over a table, where four chairs were messily drawn out around it. The remnants of a board game lay untouched on the table — Dungeons & Dragons, she read on the box, which Cath had no idea how to play — littered with loose sheets and dice. She almost felt intrusive, like she'd walked in on someone's private space. Either way, the basement seemed comfortable enough, even with the stranger sitting opposite them. The anomaly.
Thunder claps and illuminates the peculiar girl in a sharp flash of lightning that aches in her retinas. Shadows streak the raindrops still trickling down the girl's shaven head, her chest heaving with distressed breaths as her alarmed, deep brown eyes stare fixated at a point in the distance. Cath can only stare in perplexed curiosity with the boys and wonder where on earth she's come from.
"Is there a number we can call for your parents?" Mike finally asks, after a long period of touchy silence.
It's the starting gun for a rapid succession of questions, Cath adding on, "Do you remember how you ended up in the woods?"
"Where's your hair?" Dustin pries. His eyes suddenly grow twice the size and his jaw drops. "Do you have cancer?" he asks in an awestruck whisper.
