slay 'em dead//Steve Harrington

5

Jonathan and I head back to his house. I'm surprised to see both his mom and dad sitting on the couch.

"Hey, kid," Lonnie greets.

"What's going on?" Jonathan asks.

"Your dad's, uh, gonna stay here tonight," Joyce tells him. "On the couch."

"Yeah, I'm here as long as you need me, okay?" Lonnie tells his son. "How are you holding up?"

I notice a tarp is hanging on the wall. Jonathan walks over and moves the tarp revealing a large hole in the wall.

"What happened?" I ask.

"Don't worry about that," Lonnie states.

"Mom..." Jonathan says. "That thing you saw before, did it come back?"

"Jonathan, that's enough," Lonnie tells him.

"Can we talk?" Jonathan asks his dad. "Alone?"

I wait for Lonnie to come out of Jonathan's room before I head inside. I sit down on the bed next to him.

"He thinks Mom is sick," Jonathan tells me.

"I mean you and I did until yesterday," I remind him. "Until we realized that Will is still out there somewhere."

"He thinks that I'm feeding into her hallucinations. He thinks I'm going to push her over the edge," Jonathan tells me.

I shake my head. "No. You're not. But the only way to help your mom is to find Will and bring him home."

Jonathan nods. "I know."

"Did you want me to stay?" I ask.

"I'm sure Lonnie would love that," Jonathan remarks.

I laugh lightly. "It's none of his business."

Jonathan nods. "Yeah."

Jonathan sits beside his parents at the funeral. I stand behind them with my own dad. My dad has known the Byers since before Jonathan or I were born.

"Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand," the priest reads.

"It's times like these that our faith is challenged. How, if He is truly benevolent could God take from us someone so young, so innocent? It would be easy to turn away from God, but we must remember that nothing, not even tragedy, can separate us from His love. We are here today to find comfort in the truth of scripture, and to surround Will and his family."

Jonathan and I slip away from the crowd with Nancy. The three of us are determined to find Will and Barb.

"This is where we know for sure it's been, right?" Jonathan says.

Nancy points to a post on the map. "So, that's. Steve's house."

"And that's the woods where they found Will's bike and that's my house," Jonathan says.

"It's all so close," I state.

"Yeah. Exactly," Jonathan says. "I mean, it's all within a mile or something. Whatever this thing is, it's... it's not traveling far."

"You want to go out there," Nancy states.

"We might not find anything," Jonathan offers.

"I found something," Nancy reasons.

"And if we do see it... then what?" I ask.

Jonathan sighs. "We kill it."

Jonathan opens the passenger's side door of Lonnie's car. He is trying to pick the lock on the glove compartment.