'86, Baby!

004

"Dustin, do you copy?" Robin says into the walkie talkie as we run out of the front doors of the library. "Yeah, I copy." He responds. Robin explains everything we found to him, justifying Nancy's shot in the dark. "Okay, that's totally bonkers, but I can't really talk right now." Dustin replies. "Wait, what? We just spent two hours looking through all of this old shit, and this is how you respond?" I say angrily snatching the walkie talkie from Robin's hand as we get towards Nancy's car. "What are you doing?" She says to Dustin, grabbing it back from me and shooting me a look.  "Breaking and entering school to retrieve confidential and extremely personal files." Dustin says nonchalantly. Robin and Nancy turn and look at me, confused. I look back at them with my eyes wide and shrug my shoulders in confusion. Static comes through the walkie, "Can you repeat that?" Robin asks. "Just get your ass over here, stat. We'll explain everything." He says, turning off his walkie. They turn and look at me once more. "What were they even supposed to be doing?" I ask, confused on why they're breaking into the school. "Thought they were talking to Ms. Kelley?" Nancy says, annoyed. I shrug my shoulders and turn to Robin. "We leave them alone for two hours." She says, rolling her eyes and getting into Nancy's car. 

We quickly drive over to Hawkins High and park in the lot next to Steve. We run in, flash lights in hand, to find them all standing behind Max in the hallway. "Max?" I question, walking up behind them. Dustin shushes me and turns back to Max. "It was right here..." She says, choking back tears. "A grandfather clock?" Nancy questions, confused. "It was so real..." Max breathes out. "And then, when I got closer, suddenly I just..." She stops. "I woke up." She finishes. "It was like she was in a trance or something." Dustin says, turning towards us. I gasp when I hear him say that, remembering back to when Eddie and I found Chrissy in her trance. 

"Time to wake up. Hello? Can you hear me? Wake up, Chrissy. Chrissy, wake up! I don't like this, Chrissy! Wake up!" Eddie yells, more frantic now then before. We both watch as her body lifts up in the air. "What the fuck?!" We both yell, looking at each other in shock. Her bones begin to snap, her jaw drops open and her eyes start to bleed. All of the sudden the lights stop flickering as her body drops to the floor. Eddie and I both scream, running out the door of his trailer. 

Everyone turns and looks at me as I let out an audible shiver. "Exactly what Eddie said happened to Chrissy." Dustin says, putting his hand on my shoulder. "That's not even the bad part. Fred and Chrissy, they both came to Miss Kelley for help. Uh, they both were having headaches, bad headaches that wouldn't go away. And then... Then the nightmares. Trouble sleeping. They'd wake up in a cold sweat. Then they started seeing things. Bad things. From their pasts. These visions, they just... They kept on getting worse and worse, until eventually... Everything ended." Max pauses. "Vecna's curse." Robin says quietly.  Max goes on, "Chrissy's headache started a week ago. Fred's, six days ago. I've been having them for five days. I don't know how long I have. All I know is that, for Fred and Chrissy, they both died less than 24 hours after their first vision." She pauses.  "And I just saw that goddamn clock, so...looks like I'm gonna die tomorrow." She says, choking down her tears. 

We all turn and look at each other, fear in our eyes. We hear a clang coming from the hallway. We stop in our tracks. Steve picks up a lamp and walks out into the hallway. "I don't think a lamp is going to save us, Steve..." I whisper as he turns and flips me off. We all wander out into the hallway, turning our flashlights on. As we move further down the hallway, the noise gets louder. Someone is running towards us. I freeze, thinking it's either the police or Vecna. Rounding the corner comes Lucas, panting and out of breath. We all simultaneously scream as he pops out from around the corner of the wall.

"It's me!" He screams, putting his hands up. "Lucas?" We all yell. "Sorry, guys. Sorry. I was... I was biking for eight miles. Give me a second. Shit. We've got a code red." He pants, trying to catch his breath. He goes onto tell us that Jason and his goons are looking for Dustin in connection to Eddie. As horrible as this sounds, all I can think about is Eddie. I need to get to him, warn him that Jason is coming for him, tell him to hide better or somewhere else, anything. "All right. Yeah, that definitely sucks, but we've got bigger problems than Jason now." Dustin says, rolling his eyes.