Billy's gone.
Ruby Buckley's world ended with him.
But Hawkins isn't done with her yet.
When strange deaths begin again, Ruby is pulled into the heart of the storm. Between shadowy nightmares, the town's newest outcast, and someone she was never s...
( songs for the chapter ) running up that hill (a deal with god) // kate bush heaven knows i'm miserable now // the smiths
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Everything is so dark.
The grass beneath their bodies has turned a dull gray, swallowed by a creeping fog that rolls low across the ground. It moves like a tide, slow, heavy, relentless, swallowing the air around them. It's the kind of fog that belongs in the deep, dark places of the ocean, where sunlight never reaches and sound doesn't carry.
It feels like a storm.
A terrible, merciless storm, and Ruby can feel herself sinking right through it.
It's as if the air has been ripped from her lungs, as if the tide itself has found her and wrapped its cold hands around her ankles, dragging her down. She fights, claws her way toward breath, toward light, but the weight only grows heavier. It presses on her chest, her ribs, her skull. It's like Neptune himself has placed a hand on her crown and is shoving her deeper, deeper, until she'll meet the ocean floor, where forgotten wrecks and discarded bones lie undisturbed.
She tries to swim, to surface, to survive.
But she isn't a ship lost at sea. She is a curse waiting for its clock to toll. Waiting for it to choose her moment. Her ending.
Beside her, Max trembles. Ruby can feel every tremor, every shiver running through the girl's hand where it grips her shoulder like an anchor. Like a plea.
Ruby can't drown. Max needs her.
"What's happening?" Max's voice quivers, thin and unsteady, barely slicing through the dark.
"I don't kno-" Ruby begins, forcing her tone steady, trying to be what Max can't, calm, sure, in control. But then-
"Max."
"Ruby."
The voices drift through the fog like a current, low and echoing, familiar and wrong all at once.
They freeze. Bodies pressed close, barely breathing.
That voice.
It carries through the graveyard like a siren song, coiling around their names with something sweet and poisonous. It wants them to listen. To follow. To obey.
The sound hums through the fog, patient, hungry.
Ruby's breath hitches. Max's grip tightens. Slowly, as if pulled by invisible strings, they turn toward the sound.
And then-
***
Steve rests one arm against the driver's side window, fingers tapping against the metal in uneven rhythm. His gaze flicks toward the hill where Max and Ruby still sit. He checks his watch, jaw tightening.
