Be My Escape

Chapter Four

"Leave Hawkins?" Wayne looked over at his nephew, "Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?"

"I don't know, Uncle Wayne!" Eddie turned around, drying his hands with the dishrag before throwing it back on the counter. "I don't know. I don't know what the next course of action is, but we can't be here anymore. We can't stay in the trailer because it's way too dangerous for all of us. I can't have you in trouble because of me." His gaze went to his beat up white Reeboks, noticing they were considerably way dirtier than before. He didn't care anymore. He didn't care about anything anymore, just Wayne's safety. "I don't want anything to happen to you because of me. I can't have you harboring a fugitive. I would feel especially terrible because I know it'll be all my fault." The tears started up again, lining his tired eyes. "It sucks because all this happened and I don't even fully know why it did. All I know is this is all my fault because I decided to sell Chrissy Cunningham some weed to get more money so I can pay the payments on my van and I don't even have the van anymore because it's at Reefer Rick's shed in the middle of the woods and the basketball team slashed the tires because they're assholes and they want me dead!" The words were spilling out of him now. He couldn't stop talking, he couldn't stop sobbing. He just wanted this to be over. He wished he could go back in time, tell Chrissy no, walk away from her in the woods. Just sell the weed, tell her no to something stronger, and walk away. That's what he should have done. He will forever be kicking himself for it.

Wayne stood without a word and hugged Eddie, his arms tight around him as he consoled his sobbing nephew. He felt horrible, knowing this is how Eddie felt. He wished he knew what to do to make any of this better, to make any of it go away, but he didn't. He pulled away after a minute, only when he heard the boy's soft gasps and whimpers slow to a gradual stop. "Boy, you're going to listen to me and you're going to listen to me well. This is not your fault. There's some sort of divine force out there that put you in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it may seem like you did something wrong, but you didn't. I don't exactly approve of you selling drugs, but I know you did it to be self-sufficient. I know you didn't kill anybody. Your friends know you didn't kill anybody."

Eddie scoffed, adding a quiet, "What friends?"

"I was the loudest voice in town, preaching your innocence. I know people are quick to pin people different than themselves to be the bad guys, but you're not," Wayne continued, "Just because you don't listen to the top 40 radio or you play a game that actually requires imagination, or that..." He paused, glancing over at Billy, then back at Eddie, "If you don't particularly want to date girls. But you're my nephew, and I love you. I raised you since you were fourteen, and I'm glad I did. I'm glad you finally got out of that place with your, pardon my French, piece of shit parents. You were dealt a shitty hand in life, kid, but you have people on your side. You have me, and you have Billy, and your bandmates, and your club at school."

Eddie raised a finger at Wayne. "Okay, those 'friends' in Hellfire turned out to be major assholes," he corrected, "Dustin and his friends are the ones who left me to die. I got attacked and ripped open and they left me on the ground, bleeding out. Billy here is the one who found me. As far as I'm concerned, he's my only friend right now."

Wayne's face paled when he heard that, his eyes widening a little. "Was it Jason? That loudmouth started a damn angry mob. I'll kill him."

Billy glanced over at Eddie, earning a reluctant nod, before looking back over at Wayne. "It wasn't Jason. We're going to tell you everything that we know. It's going to sound made up, but I promise you, it's real. Eddie saw it himself, and I saw it. I lived it."

Eddie motioned to one of the chairs at the table. "You're going to want to sit down for this."

The two boys proceeded to tell Wayne about everything: the Upside Down, Vecna, the Mind Flayer, even the little girl with superpowers that opened the portal initially. They told Wayne of Hawkins Lab, of the experiments, of Billy being possessed and stuck in the Upside Down for a year and what actually caused the Starcourt Mall to burn down. Eddie told his uncle about the plan to stop Vecna, the way he performed 'the most metal concert in the history of the world' to Metallica's Master of Puppets, and how the demobats got him. He then told his uncle about how everybody left him there to die, Dustin crying over him before he passed out due to the pain, and how he woke up alone, scared, until Billy found him.