Daisies || Max Mayfield

21: The door

"Get out, get out fast!" Steve ordered, throwing the door open. We were at the Byer's house.

"Come on!" Nancy added, climbing out last and slamming the door shut. 

My hand had soaked all the bandages through, and I was getting a little woozy from all the blood.

"Jesus Christ-" Hopper groaned, looking at my hand.

"I'm fine." I muttered.

"Get inside!" Jonathan shouted. He was carrying Will over his shoulder, like he was unconscious. There was also Mike, and Will's mom, Joyce waiting by the door.

"Is he gonna be okay?!" Mike was panicking on the porch.

"Get inside!" Hopper repeated, shoving me and Max to the door.

"Shit!" 

Will was set up in the living room, with all the creepy vine drawings all over. Hopper was on the phone with some Sam Owens guy, and Mike, Joyce, and Jonathan were all hovering around Will in the living room.

Lucas and Dustin were sitting at the table, meanwhile Max had taken a spot on the table and was muttered about this shit.

I dropped my crowbar on the table with a loud thud.

"Dude." Steve groaned.

Hopper was shouting into the phone when Mike came back to the table. Hopper slammed it back on the hook, turning around.

"They didn't believe you." Dustin said.

"We'll see." He replied. "But now, we sit here, and wait."

"Wait?" Mike asked. "We can't just sit here and wait while those things are loose!"

"What do you mean things?" I asked, his face kind of blurring. "Are there more than two?"

"Yeah, a shit ton!"

"Shit."

Mike went on some rant about a dead guy. Bob Newby, apparently. I didn't know him, or have any clue who he was.

"What are we supposed to do, Mike. Chiefs right, we can't fight those demodogs on our own." Dustin complained.

"Demodogs?" Mike asked.

"Demogorgan dogs." He explained. "But maybe we could take them when it was just Dartt. But now there's a whole army of them."

"His army," Mike repeated. "His army! Maybe if we can stop him, we can stop his army too!" He reached behind him on the shelf and pulled out a drawing of a dark blob thing.

"The shadow monster," Dustin said. 

"Yes, it got Will, that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."

"So the virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asked.

"To the tunnels, to the monster,s to the upside down, to everything!" Mike exclaimed.  "The shadows monsters inside or something! If the vines feel something, like pain, so does Will. And so does Dartt. It's like a hive mind."

"Hive mind?" Steve asked.

"Collective consciousness. It's like a superorganism." Dustin said.

"This is the thing that controls everything. This is the brain!" Mike slammed the drawing into the center of the table, rattling the chandelier above.

"Like the mind flayer."

Dustin ran into another room and returned with a few dnd books. "The mind flayer. It's like a hive mind and the most powerful villain. It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It enslaves races by taking over their brains with some kind of psychic power."