"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter Fifty-Four: Zombie Boy And Ghost Boy
(Trick Or Treat, Freak, Pt. 6)
***
"It's... it's like I'm stuck," Will mumbled.
Alistair looked at his best friend, worry squirming inside him as he pressed closer to Will. On his other side Mike sat, wearing a similar look of worry and understanding on his face as Will spoke about his latest episode. An episode that still had Alistair's heart racing in terror as he remembered watching Will wander, then run, after he yelled at the mouth breathers who harassed him, running after Will and shouting his name before trying to shake him awake, Mike finding them and succeeding in shaking Will out of the episode where Alistair had failed, leading to trick and treating cut short and them sitting in Mike's basement. And while Alistair knew Will's episodes would be getting worse the closer they got to the day he went missing, it didn't stop tendrils of fear shooting down Alistair's spine. Didn't have him not want to make it all stop for Will.
"Like... like stuck in the Upside Down?" Mike asked, voice soft.
His friend swallowed and shook his head. "No. You know on a View-Master, when it gets, like—"
"Caught between two slides?" the other two boys questioned in unison. Will nodded.
"Yeah, yeah, like that. Like one slide's our world, and the other... the other slide is the Upside Down," Will explained. "And... and there was the noise, coming from everywhere. And then... I saw something."
"The Demogorgon?" Mike inquired, to which Will shook his head.
"No. It was like this huge shadow in the sky. Only, it was alive. And it was coming for me."
Those tendrils of fear constricted Alistair's spine, creeping through his bloodstream, especially when he heard the fear quavering in Will's words, saw how much Will was shaking and trying to hide it. Hugin shifted uneasily on his shoulder, sensing his fear.
Why can't it be over, why can't the Upside Down just be fucking done with Will?
"Is... is this all real? Or is it like the doctors say, all in your head?" Mike asked, looking at Will.
"I don't know. Just... just please don't tell the others, okay? They wouldn't understand," Will pleaded.
"Of course, Will," Alistair said without hesitation. Like he would say anything otherwise.
Will gave him a grateful look, and Alistair gave him a soft smile, placed a hand on his shoulder to squeeze comfortingly, to show he understood. He understood what it was like to see things you couldn't explain, that terrified you, that you knew were real, but everyone told you they weren't.
He understood.
"Eleven would," Mike murmured and Alistair felt his spine lock up as he looked at Mike, his friend not looking at him. Eleven. Her presence still held a gap between them, the gap that while Mike still seemed to believe she was still alive because Alistair couldn't see her ghost, Alistair had accepted she wasn't, that she simply moved on. And as much as Alistair wanted to breach the gap and mend his friendship with Mike, he couldn't as long as there was El, and Mike's belief she was still out there.
