Chapter Text
“You know this isn’t like one of our campaigns, right?” Lucas said, hollering to be heard over the rain. Mike pushed forward, swatting back a wet fir branch when the needles dragged across his cheek. Autumn leaves clung to his jeans, and mud sucked at his sneakers as he led the Party through the woods.
“Lucas is right,” said Dustin. He was a little farther back from the rest of them because he kept pausing to aim his flashlight at his compass. “I mean, if we find whoever took Will, it’s not like we can just cast fireball–”
“He could have a gun, Mike,” Lucas said, and then yelped as his foot slipped and he nearly went down in the muck. Mike could hear him catching himself against a tree, but he didn’t look back.
“Or knives,” Dustin said. “Or a flamethrower–”
“He’s not gonna have a flamethrower,” Lucas snapped. “You don’t kidnap kids with a flamethrower.”
“You don’t know!” said Dustin. “One of those Russian flamethrowers, with the toggle switch–”
Mike whirled on them. The hood of his rain slicker fell back, and in an instant his hair was soaked and raindrops were blinding him. His voice came out shrill and babyish as he shined his flashlight in their faces.
“Shut up!” he said. “Just – shut up, okay?”
Dustin held his hands up in the gesture of peace, but his expression said it all – he wasn’t apologetic, he just thought Mike was flipping out for no reason. The sight of it made Mike even angrier … but he tamped it down. He was losing them. He’d been losing them ever since he insisted they go to the woods to search for Will, and he lost them more and more with everything else that went wrong: the rain, the wind, the cold.
The fear.
Mike took a deep breath. He palmed water out of his eyes, his flashlight’s beam skittering over the trees and up into the night sky.
“It’s Will, okay?” he said wearily. “We’re not just gonna … let some psycho take him. He’s our friend.”
Dustin aimed his flashlight at the ground, avoiding Mike’s eyes. But Lucas didn’t look away. His chest rose and fell in a sigh, and Mike saw for the first time how poorly-dressed he was for the weather – a thin t-shirt, a windbreaker from last year that had grown too short in the sleeves. Lucas gave him a quiet nod, and the last of Mike’s anger drained away.
The last of his energy, too. He let Lucas pass him, taking the lead through the underbrush. It was thinner here, the grass tamped down. Maybe a deer run, but Mike wasn’t sure. He glanced his flashlight up and it caught a glimpse of white siding through the trees. Ahead of him, Lucas paused, and then his beam joined Mike’s and they could see not just siding but a window frame.
Lucas held up a closed fist, a gesture he’d learned from some war movie. The other boys halted.
“There’s a house,” Lucas said.
“Oh, thank God,” said Dustin. He hurried to catch up with them and only stopped when Mike grabbed him by the back of his coat. “Maybe they’ll give us a ride back to town.”
“Or maybe they’ve seen something,” Lucas suggested a little lamely, his eyes on Mike. Mike gave him a grimace-y smile, the best token of acknowledgment he could muster up. He’d bet his Millennium Falcon that what Lucas really wanted was to get dry and warm. Mike edged a little closer, fighting with a leaf-less bush and its thorny branches.
“Who even lives out here?” he whispered.
“Farmers?” Lucas suggested.
“Hermits,” Dustin said. Mike explored the forest floor with his flashlight, taking it inch by inch until he was sure of what he was seeing. The woods ended here; all that lay before them were a few overgrown hedges, and then the dead grass of somebody’s lawn.
“Maybe we can use their phone,” Lucas said.
“And their finest, fluffiest towels,” Dustin said. He shook his head like a wet dog, and water cascaded from his curls and hit Mike in the face. He pushed Dustin lightly, then shone his beam down the long driveway that curled past the woods.
“I don’t think they have a phone,” he said. “Look – no telephone pole.”
“So they’re Amish?” said Lucas, disappointed.
“Well, maybe we can borrow their carrier pigeon, then,” said Dustin. He whacked at the thorny bush and eased past Mike, stumbling out of the woods and onto the lawn. There was a wet squelch as his foot plunged right into a gopher tunnel. “Ugh!” He shook the mud from his shoe. “Are you dipshits gonna stand there all day?” he asked. “So what if they’re Amish? They gotta have a fireplace, don’t they? We can at least get warm.”
Mike thinned his lips. He looked at Lucas, each of them aiming their flashlights at each other’s chests so they could see the other boy’s face without blinding him. Lucas’s eyes were troubled, but there was clear longing written across his features – almost apologetic, but still there.
“Lucas,” said Mike in a whisper. His eyes were burning. “We can’t just give up…”
“It’s not giving up,” said Lucas softly. He was already edging away, his shoulders hunched. “It’s just … a break.”
He kept walking, half-turned to face Mike, like he was waiting for an argument, a protest. But in time he turned away completely and broke into a jog. Mike turned to look at the forest, so dark he couldn’t see a foot ahead of him.
Will was out there somewhere. Hiding in the hollow of a tree or trapped in an abandoned well, watching the rainwater rise. Somewhere, in miles of forest, all of it dark and cold and wet.
And Mike had really been stupid enough to think that he could find him with a flashlight. He squeezed his eyes closed and turned to catch up with the others. Dustin had almost reached the door now; Lucas was quickly catching up, but halfway there, he slowed, his head swiveling to look at the house. Mike followed his gaze, but he was more focused on avoiding gopher holes, and he didn’t see what Lucas was staring at until he bumped right into him.
“Mike,” said Lucas quietly. “Look at the windows.”
“Guys?” said Dustin from the porch.
Mike ignored him. He picked his way over the untended lawn and leaned in, close enough to touch the siding. There was a ground-floor window right in front of his nose, but it was taped over with clear plastic. Duct tape held it in place, but the rain had softened the adhesive and now a corner had peeled up, letting the wind sneak in and flap the plastic with a rapping noise like thunder. Mike got his fingers in through that lifted corner and probed the emptiness behind the plastic sheet.
Nothing. No glass.
He retreated. Dustin was watching the two of them from the cover the porch provided, his head cocked.
“Are they all like that?” Mike asked.
Lucas aimed his flashlight upward, then to the side. The top floor’s windows had the same hazy, semi-transparent sheen to them. “I guess it’s abandoned,” he said.
“You sure?”
Lucas turned. His flashlight touched on the empty stable. Fence posts lined an old horse yard, but the chickenwire strung between those posts had collapsed. When Mike squinted, he could see the rusty glint of it in the dirt, buried by years of bad weather. Weeds had grown up through the holes in the wire, and had died there too, when the cold came.
“Guys!” Dustin called.
Lucas and Mike jumped. Dustin was squatting down by the front door, his hands busy with something near the jamb. He twisted his wrists and gave a satisfied grunt. As one, Mike and Lucas approached him, the porch creaking beneath their weight.
“What’re you doing?” Lucas asked.
“Well, since the two of you finally caught up and realized what I realized ten minutes ago…” Dustin said. He shunted his shoulder against the door and grunted again, then beamed in a smile. “I’m breaking in.”
“You did not realize before us,” Lucas said sourly.
“I can’t help that I’m the smartest person here,” said Dustin. He pushed his shoulder against the door again.
“You are not,” Lucas said. “You’re getting a D in English, and that’s like the easiest class in the world.”
“Yeah, so easy it’s boring–” Dustin tried one more time to slam the door open, but it didn’t budge. His fingers kept working at the crack in the jamb.
“What are you trying to do?” Mike asked.
“It’s a hook lock,” Dustin said. “I saw it through the crack. I’m trying to jostle the door enough so it jumps right out of the loop, but–”
Silently, Mike rummaged in his pockets and came up with a metal ruler. He slid it into Dustin’s palm.
“Why do you even have that?” Lucas asked.
“It was for measuring the distance we’ve covered on our map,” said Mike glumly. The map had lasted them all of ten seconds after the rain started, but at least the ruler would come in handy. Dustin shifted positions and eased the ruler in through the crack in the door. There was a metallic clink as he lifted the hook up and out.
“Got it!” he said triumphantly. He got to his feet in a clumsy, swaying shuffle, with both Lucas and Mike steadying him, and reached for the doorknob. “Gentlemen,” said Dustin proudly, “welcome to Chateau Henderson–”
“You do not get to name it,” Lucas protested.
“Can we just–” Mike started, and then the door whipped open before Dustin could turn the knob. He fell forward, slamming against the floor with a cry of pain. A cloud of dust should have kicked up around him – but there was no dust. The abandoned house was clean, its floor spotless. As Dustin got to his knees, Mike took a cautious step forward and peered inside. There was no one on the other side of the door, no clue to how it opened.
“Uh-uh,” said Lucas firmly. He’d retreated to the edge of the porch, his face hard. “No way. This place is haunted.”
“I think I broke my nose,” Dustin complained. He touched a cautious fingertip to his nostril, checking for blood. Mike stepped around him, trying to get a better look at the house’s interior.
The first thing he noticed was the woodstove. A warm orange glow lit up the glass door, a door stained with years of trapped smoke. Triangular cuts of firewood lined the wall on either side of the stove, dry and cured, waiting to be burned. All around Mike, wind tore at the plastic sheets over the windows, threatening to break through and steal the warmth away. He glanced at the nearest one, the one he’d seen outside with one corner peeled up, and that was when he noticed the second thing.
They weren’t alone. There was a kid in the house with them, a kid with wild brown curls and steely eyes and blood steadily dripping from her nose. She was in the shadows, her face almost impossible to make out, but when she saw Mike staring at her, she stepped forward and he could see the glare she was leveling at him.
Dangerous, Mike thought, and went still. He could still hear Dustin nursing his wounds, see Lucas hovering hesitantly at the entrance to the house – but it was like he was seeing them both through a veil. Far away, and blurry. The girl took another step forward, her chin lowered in a way that reminded Mike of wild dogs getting ready for a fight, protecting their throats. His mouth went dry.
He opened his mouth to warn the others, and that was when Lucas stumbled forward into the house with a yelp, like something had pushed him. The door clipped him as it slammed shut, and he fell to his knees beside Dustin – and then both of them sat straight up, their spines unnaturally stiff, their shoulders trembling. Mike moved to help them and felt his entire body – every muscle – lock in place.
“What are you doing here?” the girl said.