𝐈 𝐃𝗼𝐧𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 | Eddie Munson

Chapter Twenty Four

When we stand up and rub our hands across our clothes to get the dirt off I hear screaming, me and Eddie thrash our heads to the left where the screams are coming from, when I look though I see a bunch of bats in the sky, some of them coming towards us.

"Holy shit" Eddie whispers and ducks as they surrounds us. But they don't stay, they keep flying past us and to the right is where the screaming is coming from. When I look in that direction I see something on the ground, or someone.

I walk up to get a better look and Eddie follows, I get close enough to see Nancy fighting off the bats with a piece of wood i guess she found on the ground. We were dumb enough to leave our weapons in the trailer when we got on the boat because we didn't think we'd have to go in.

A bat comes flying at my face but I duck so it doesn't hit me. I see Robin stomping on bats on the ground, but when I look at the ground I see Steve laying there with the bats basically feeding off of him. There's vines pulling his legs and one wrapped around his neck so he has no way of defending himself.

I immediately reach for the vines around his legs and start pulling on it, whatever these are they're super slimy and cold. Its not budging so I stand up and start slamming my vans into the vine hoping that will help, it does a little but I need more. I look around on the ground and I find a stick, luckily this stick has a pointed end so I can stab it into something. That something is the vine.

I repeatedly stab the stick into the vine until it eventually breaks way, now one of his legs are free I move to the other one. "Angela behind you!" Robin yells at me and I turn around in just enough time to see the bat flying at me, but I swing my stick at it and it goes flying in the direction I hit it. Looking back I see Eddie fighting bats flying all around him, Robin is trying to free Steve's neck from the vines and Nancy is trying to get all the bats off of him.

I stab at the next vine on his other leg, eventually it comes undone and I stare at it as the vine hisses and moves away. Eddie comes up next to Steve, rips the bat of of him by tail and swings it back and forth like a wrecking ball until it stops moving then he throws it.

Steve sits up and gasps for air then we all make room for him as he stands and walks towards the trees where we are hidden a little. "What was that!" He yells as he grabs his throat still gasping for air "are you okay?" I ask him and I put my hands on his shoulders, "no Angela I don't think I'm actually okay right now" he doesn't look to me as he says it he's just facing the ground.

I step back from him and he throws up a little on the ground, Eddie was standing in front of him but he takes two steps back now that he threw up. "I know this is a bad time but are we sure he doesn't have rabies" we all turn to Robin "because rabies is like one of my biggest fears and we should probably get you checked because once the symptoms start showing your pretty much already dead" we just stare at her, Steve leaning one arm against the tree looking back at her.

A loud bang makes us all fall to the ground "here we go again" Eddie says through his teeth.
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"So is this place just Hawkins but with monsters and shit?" I ask. We walked around the lake until we found lovers rock so we're sitting under there trying to get some sort of shelter. "Pretty much yea" Eddie says. "Oh" I say

Over to left in the woods Nancy is wrapping some sort of gauze over Steve chest where he was bit, so its me, Robin and Eddie under the rock. "So what exactly do we do now?" I ask.
"I guess we find vecna" Robin says
Right after she says that Steve and Nancy come back to Rock, Steves lower chest area all wrapped up in gauze. "Okay now what" says Nancy

"We find Vecna?" Robin asks
"No! No way! Next step is we find a way out of here" Steve yells
"But thats why we came down here Steve!" Robin yells
"Well that's wasn't really planned now was it Robin? And also we don't have any weapons they're all at the trailer"
"He's right" Eddie says "we have to go back, there's no way we'll survive down here without something to defined ourselves with."

I tie my hair back up with my scrunchie, it feels all weird now after being in the water. "Well how do we get back there" Robin asks
Steve thinks about it for a while "we have Max and Dustin back out there, they ought to help us somehow"

"Yea how?" Robin asks
"Wait guys" Nancy interrupts "I actually do have a few weapons at home" we look at her confused "what do you mean?" I ask "guns, I have guns"
"You" Eddie says "Nancy wheeler have... Guns? In your house?"
"Yes but they're in my room and my house is ages away from here"
"Well who's house is closest?" Steve asks looking to all of us
"Probably mine" I say "well I don't know where you guys live but I am pretty close to lovers lake"

"Do you have a car?" Eddie asks
"My mom does yea"

Eddie looks around at everyone then back to me "lead the way" he says
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We've been walking for ten minutes "are you sure we're close?" Steve asks from behind me "yea it should right up this hill" I reply
Everyone is behind me as I lead them to my house, Eddie following closely behind me and everyone else farther away. We haven't seen anything again that could kill us so that's good.
This place is weird its cold and dark and its like the air is tinted blue, there's also tiny specs of who knows what floating in the air. But it looks like Hawkins, just different.

I see my house up the him aways "right up here guys" I yell back and when I start running they run after me. I get to the front door and then ask "nobody will be in here right? Its just us down here?" And Nancy says "no one else is stupid enough to come down here" and Steve says "no one knows this place exist except us"

"Really?" I ask
"Pretty much" Eddie says "but that's a story for another time"
"Where's the car?" Nancy says
"Um it should be in the garage" I point over the wall to the garage and we all walk over

There's a button attached to the wall only me and my mom know about cause its pretty much invisible to everyone else. I press it to open the door, and the door starts raising.

When the door comes up entirely there is a car in there but its not my moms "wait" I say "that's not my moms car" I look around the room and there's a lot of toys all on the floor, cans of food on the shelves. My mom only fills this room with cardboard boxes cause we don't have an attic, each box filled with things of my childhood. "None of this stuff is ours" I gesture to the walls

"What do you mean?" Eddie says
"None of it, none of this is mine or my- my moms, this is someone else's"
"Are you sure this is your house?" Steve asks
"Steve I know where I live! Of course this is my house... But none of this stuff is"

They all stare at me confused, I walk over to the shelf and grab one of the cans of food off the shelf, the expiration date reads 7/27/19. What. I look at more of them and they all say 2019 "these are all expired"
"Nothing in this room is recent"
"Angela what's going on?" Robin asks
"Look" I point to the can I'm holding "2019" I walk over to the car "and this is a 2015 Honda civic" I walk over to an old painting I found on the wall "this is from 2006"
"The highest date anything goes to is 2019, I was 15 that year and I swear my mom never owned this- wait" I stare at the car

I open the front door of the car which is magically unlocked and hanging from the mirror I see a pair of dice, the dive that my dad always had hanging from his mirror. And on the passenger seat, the green boa my dad left there when we went to the father daughter dance freshman year. He wore it the whole night.

I close the door and look back to the group "I- I think this is my dads car"