Chapter Text
Henry Creel had tried.
He had tried so hard, in the cave, to say yes. To fight the evil presence that had stolen his life away, had turned him into a monster. He had screamed it in his mind, so close to breaking the trance. For the first time in a long time, he had seen through the alien’s illusion.
Yes, William, I want to help!
Henry had remembered. Remembered that he didn’t have to join it. He didn’t have to end everyone. There were still people like William out there, people with friends, people with lives. Happy people. If Henry took that away, he would be no better than it.
But little Henry Creel was no match for the ancient evil.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to be. Everyone that Henry had tried so hard to end, they had succeeded.
And now, he saw through his own eyes for the first time in a long time. He felt everything, his heart beating as his own, no matter how warped and monstrous it had become.
He was in the dead beast’s belly, that much he already knew. He tried to look around at the blobs of colour that made up William and his friends, but his head didn’t move. To Henry’s horror, he couldn’t move anything.
Maybe that was for the better. He didn’t have to see what he’d become, now that his mind was his own. Now that he could realise that his body had become a tangled mess of sickening, fleshy vines. He didn’t have to realise he was a monster, too.
Not yet.
“You fucked with the wrong family,” a clear, steely voice rang out.
No.
Joyce Byers. Always so determined, so protective.
No no no no no.
He was so close to freedom. The evil was gone. The knotted mess of flesh splayed across the bloodstreaked spike, no matter how inhuman it looked, was him. Henry. The real monster was gone.
Please. Don’t.
He tried to mouth the words, but his throat choked on the thick blood that flooded his esophagus. I’m not a monster. I promise. But he knew it wasn’t true. He had done things. So many awful things.
Just one chance.
But Joyce brought the axe down, the steel cleaving a path through the air. Burying itself straight into his useless throat.
Henry realised then that he didn’t have to worry any more. All the people he hurt, all of the people he could’ve saved, all of his pain would go away now. Maybe he’d end up in a better place, where none of this ever happened. Or maybe he’d end up in hell, like he deserved.
The axe came down again, driven by the force of a mother whose family had suffered for too long.
Henry gave up. He closed his eyes and waited. Waited for it all to be over.
…
The air was cold.
The grass prickled his exposed skin through the tatters of a white shirt that was stained with old blood and memories that felt far too fresh.
It was night, and he was in a field.
The field would be perfectly ordinary, except for Henry Creel it was anything but. The very fact that it was devoid of vines, floating particles, and a whisper in his ear was a shock. But no, as he opened his eyes he could see the full moon illuminating a grassy plain. He tried to sit up, but he felt so weak that he just laid there for a while.
Eventually, he mustered together what little energy he had to prop himself up onto shaking forearms.
He could see what looked like a farm of pumpkins nearby, on his right, and closer still was forest on his left.
It had been years since he had been outside, decades even. Not since before he was sent to hell, not since before he was sent to the lab. But he still remembered the town of Hawkins from his childhood; it was always hard to get lost in such a small place anyway. His eyes narrowed in on the woods.
He felt weak, so much so that his mind barely produced a thought, his body primarily moving on instinct. But as tired as he was, Henry knew that he couldn’t pass out in the open field for someone to find in the morning.
With a pained grunt, he began to crawl towards the forest using his forearms and knees, dragging himself through the grass. The blades scratched at his exposed skin, and stained his once-pristine white shirt with green splotches. He could feel the coarse dirt lodging under his fingernails, but he was too tired, too desperate to care as he hauled his wrecked body towards the thicket.
Once he had entered the woods, his next goal was to find shelter. He sloughed through the undergrowth, each movement of his arms and legs more sluggish than the last. He hadn’t made it very far into the forest, but through the dishevelled strands of hair hanging in front of his eyes he spied a fallen log, wide enough for him to hide behind so that he would be shielded from the prying eyes of people in the field.
With his last dregs of energy, he hauled his body to the fallen giant and slowly curled up into the fetal position, hugging his legs close to his chest. His eyelids grew heavy, and he let himself begin to succumb to slumber, his mind too devoid of energy to even process any of it. His transformation, the slaughters, the cave… the slice of silver in the belly of a beast.
His eyelids drifted closed, too heavy to keep apart now that he was out of the open field. He curled up in the fetal position as a breeze drifted through the forest. The wind brushed against his body, which was drifting further and further away as he slipped into unconsciousness.
Just before he fell asleep, Henry Creel shivered at the cold.
…
The first thing I thought when I woke up on November 7th, 1987, was that I needed some fresh air.
I had always loved taking walks. No matter what was happening in my mind, no matter what thoughts had gotten tangled up in my brain, the trees near my cabin always stood guard over the forest path I plodded through now. They always remained calm, their thinnest branches swaying gently with the wind.
Be like the trees, I always thought.
When the wind tries to blow them over, they don’t try to stay still. If they did, they’d snap in half. No, the trees learn to adapt, to move with the wind. They survive because they know that if they tried to remain stationary, they’d have no chance. Trees know that sometimes, you have to embrace the turmoil in order to survive and move on.
I had taken El down this path many times over the years. I was sure that if I squinted hard enough, I could make out the crumbs of the Eggo waffles we’d brought with us on our walk a mere two days ago. To clear our minds before…
Before everything went to shit.
Tears welled in my eyes, and pain drove a stake through my heart.
I knew that we won, we beat the Mind Flayer. We saved Hawkins, saved the world.
But we all lost our best friend.
I took a deep breath in, the crisp air flooding my lungs and clearing my mind. I didn’t want to think about last night right now. I just wanted to exist, to take in the cool tones of the forest and feel the warm rays of sunlight as they began to filter through the trees. To hear the chirping of the birds as they wake up in their nests.
They have no idea, I thought bitterly, unable to help it. They could be dead right now, but they have no idea. No idea of any of it.
The memories crashed into me then, relentless and painfully clear.
The last gate.
A swirling storm as the Upside Down was sucked into the void, after years of taking. Years of tears. Years of pain. It should have been a celebration.
A girl standing. Waiting to be swept away.
El had never asked for any of it.
And then she was gone.
I shook my head vigorously, as if I could wring the thoughts out of my brain. I closed my eyes, just feeling the golden rays warm my eyelids, and suck in a deep breath. Let it out. Keep taking deep breaths until I’ve wiped my mind clear again. I slowly continue down the forest path.
I focussed on simply placing one foot in front of the other. Breathing in, breathing out. I continued like this until I’d lost track of time, and I thought of nothing. I just… existed.
This is the state I was in when I realised I was near good old Merril Wright’s pumpkin fields. They were just across from the expanse of grass that bordered the forest. I thought nothing of it, just continued quietly walking down the path, immersing my senses in the smells, sounds, and sights of the forest. Anything to help me keep my brain empty.
Until I heard a noise that definitely wasn’t native to the woods.
It sounded like a stifled sob. Like someone was on the edge of wailing, of crying out, but was clamping a hand around their mouth, trying to hold it in. But there was too much pain to contain in their body.
I froze in my tracks. At first I thought I’d hallucinated it. Maybe last night’s events made me go crazy. Post-traumatic stress disorder, right? But I was sure I had actually heard-
There it was again. To my left. Deliberately placed, hidden from eyes on the path and in the field. It was definitely someone crying.
My heart stopped. Could it be El? I don’t know how she could’ve made it, but-
My feet moved before I could think, stepping on a branch almost instantly.
Snap.
Shit.
The noise stopped mid-sob. Silence stretched across the forest, so thick I could hear my heart speeding.
“Hello?” My voice was hoarse, scratched from the strain of screaming last night. I could hear the echoes of me, Mike, Hopper, the whole crew, the cries ringing in my ears.
El, no! Please, you don’t have to-
“Is somebody there? E-” My voice broke, my eyes stinging as tears once again flooded my vision.
Silence.
I forced my feet to move, in the direction of the sound. Carefully, deliberately this time, as to not disturb the source of the heart-wrenching sobs.
I peered around the trees. Nothing. I took a few more steps, making my way closer to the field. I glanced around again. No-
Wait. A flash of dirty white on my left caught my eye. I could make out a small patch of fabric peeking out from a hole in a fallen tree trunk, grey but patchy in a way that you could tell was once white.
I inched towards the log, cautiously.
“Hello?” I said again. Gently. I didn’t want to scare whoever was behind that log.
Suddenly, I felt a spike of fear turn my blood cold. I had no idea who the owner of the white fabric was. They could be anyone. It could be El, but it could also be an axe-murderer, and I was in the middle of the forest alone.
Despite all of my near-death experiences being with supernatural monsters, I wasn’t dumb enough to forget that threats on Earth didn’t have to have psychic powers to kill you.
But those sobs. I was pretty sure that axe-murderers didn’t curl up between fallen logs in a random patch of forest trying not to bawl their eyes out.
Fuck it.
I closed the distance between me and the log, stepping around the side to reveal…
Well, it definitely wasn’t El. My heart sank a little at the realisation, but I had little time to process it as I beheld the sight in front of me.
Pressed against the log, arms and legs straining to do so as I stood in front of him, was a man.
His eyes, red and puffy from crying, were wide and panicked as his pupils dashed across my face. His cheeks were stained with dirt and streaked with tears, his blonde hair matted and plastered to his forehead. His eyebrows stretched up in fear, his mouth trembling and opening slightly but no sound escaping. He wore a tattered white shirt and pants, ripped in most places and completely torn across his right shoulder, revealing pale, sickly skin underneath. What was left of the fabric was stained with grass and mud and… was that old blood?
“Who- who are you?” I breathed. His eyes darted around, frantic. He was looking for an escape.
Ignoring my better judgement, I carefully squatted down to meet his eye level and reached an arm out, an attempt to calm him down. His whole body was shaking with the effort of trying to lean away from me and into the log. He flinched hard, avoiding my touch. My arm froze.
“It’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you.” I said calmly, softly. I realised that I probably looked petrified too, so I relaxed my eyebrows and attempted to soften my gaze, meeting his eyes. They were a bright, piercing blue.
He stopped trying to press away, but his whole body remained tense. His breathing was shaky, his eyes still wide with fear.
What the fuck happened to this guy?
“Hey,” I said, still staring into his eyes. “It’s okay.”
I stretched my arm out again, this time meeting his left shoulder. His body relaxed a little under the gentle touch, and the air stilled. He was holding his breath.
“Hey,” I said again. “Breathe.”
The words fell on deaf ears.
“Breathe,” I said, a bit more forcefully, moving my hand forward to shake him a little. That seemed to snap him back to reality, and he released the contents of his lungs, shakily inhaling before settling back into a somewhat steady rhythm.
I fully sat down now, opposite him on the forest floor, retracting my arm from his shoulder. This made him tense up again.
“What happened to you?” I mumbled quietly. “Who hurt you so bad?”
A thought struck my mind. I whipped my head around, making sure that I kept the strange man in my peripheral vision while I rushed to unzip my backpack.
“You look like you need to eat something. Do you like muesli bars?” I asked, hands buried in my bag. No response. I located said muesli bar and shifted back around, bar outstretched before him.
He made no move to take it, just stared down at my hand. His eyes weren’t stretched wide any more, but his brows were still furrowed. Cautious.
“Come on, you have to eat. You look like you could pass out any second.”
I slowly reached for his hand from its position on the forest floor. Slow enough so that he had time to pull away, which he did at first. I persisted, though, pressing the bar into his hand so that he’d have no choice but to take it.
Warily, he brought it up closer to his face so he could open it, but his hands shook so violently that he had no chance.
“Here, let me do it.” I carefully took the bar back, unwrapping it quickly so I could return it to him before he pulled away.
He stared hard at it, making no move to bring it to his lips.
“You’re supposed to eat it, not try to light it on fire with your eyeballs,” I cracked, trying to lighten the mood. God, this was intense.
Very slowly, he raised it to his mouth, parting his lips slightly to take a small bite.
His face softened, ever so slightly but enough to make a palpable difference.
“See, it’s good! Those ones are my favourite,” I said. “I like when they’ve got little chocolate chips in them.”
Why did he need to know that.
I looked down and shook my head slightly to myself, grimacing a bit.
I mean, I guess it couldn’t hurt to try and make small talk?
Shut up, do I need to remind you he could literally be an axe murderer?
I sighed, and his eyes snapped to mine. Defensive again, walls up.
“Nothing! Um, I was just thinking, sorry,” I rushed. He looked back down, taking another small bite of the muesli bar.
We sat there in silence briefly until it was interrupted by my stomach rumbling. My eyes widened in embarrassment. Of course. I hadn’t made any breakfast before going out here into the woods.
My hands returned to my backpack again, searching for another bar, but I groaned in frustration when I realised I’d only brought the one.
I turned back around to find an outstretched hand offering me a torn-off half of a muesli bar.
His eyes met mine again, but without panic this time. His eyebrows were relaxed and his head lowered slightly so that he was gazing up at me with a solemn expression.
“Thanks,” I said quietly, slowly reaching for it. I looked away as I took the food from his hand, but when my gaze returned to his face I found him still staring at me. I took a bite of the bar, a little more urgently than he’d done, breaking eye contact. My eyebrows furrowed as a thought passed through my mind again.
Who the hell is this guy?
But as the question formed, a nagging itch wormed its way through my thought process. I knew him from somewhere. Recognised him faintly, somehow.
We both finished off our food. I noticed his fingers didn’t shake as violently as he delicately picked the last few crumbs off his hand.
I should take him back home.
The thought snuck into the forefront of my mind, sudden and unexpected. I was a bit taken aback with myself. This guy, who I just met in the middle of the forest, wearing a ripped-up, filthy uniform and not able to speak a word. Whose shirt was splattered with dried blood despite him having no obvious injuries. I wanted to take him back to my house?
I liked to think I was logical. Smart, even. But before I could stop myself, reason properly, the words escaped my mouth.
“You should come back to my house.”
He once again met my gaze. His head tilted to the side ever so slightly. Curiously.
“Well, you look like you definitely need a bath or a shower and a change of clothes. And a proper meal too, not just half a muesli bar.” The words tumbled out. God, what was I saying?
“My house isn’t exactly close, but you could wait here while I run back and I can grab my car. I can drive around near the field and it’ll be a lot less distance to walk.”
Girl, shut up!
He considered it for a moment. His eyes brightened slightly, as if about to confirm, but then a shadow flickered across his face. His eyes drooped, the edges of mouth curled vaguely downwards in a depressing line, chin trembling. Tears threatened to spill over his eyelashes. His lips parted ever so slightly.
“No.”
His voice came out in a borderline whisper, hoarse and strained. Like he hadn’t spoken in years.
Oh, so he can talk.
“O-Oh. Umm, well…” I was a bit taken aback. Did he want me to just… leave him here? Trembling, half-starved, in the middle of nowhere? It was absurd to say the least. I knew I really shouldn’t stick my head where it didn’t belong, but I was already past thinking reasonably now.
“You know what. No. You are coming with me whether you like it or not.” I said, my voice kind but firm. “I’m not leaving you out here to starve out in the woods.
“I trust that you won't run off while I grab my car. I mean, I doubt you can get anywhere like this. Hence why you’re coming with me.” I insisted, as his face went slack with confusion.
I rose to my feet.
What are you doing?!
“I’ll be right back, okay? Here, you can have my backpack. It’s got some water in it, you should drink some.” He just stared as I slung my backpack off my shoulders and before him, a dumbfounded expression on his face. His mouth was slightly open in surprise.
I gave him a small smile.
“I’m Jessie, by the way.”
I didn’t bother asking his name. I knew he wouldn’t answer.
But I had a dreadful itch, one I buried deep down in the depths of my stomach. I had the distinct feeling that I knew exactly what his name was.
I turned around and headed off, walking a bit back to the path and then breaking out into a quick jog. As I rushed back home, my mind raced.
I knew that he was volatile. That much was obvious. I had no idea what his intentions were, or what he was capable of. And if that awful suspicion was correct…
But all I knew was that when I peered past the fallen tree and saw him curled up against the log, I didn’t see a terrifying axe murderer.
I just saw a scared, crying little boy, lost in the forest all alone.
And I knew that the only thing I could do was help.