"Hey, you remember what I said last year, right? We're Zombie Boy and Ghost Boy. I'm not ever gonna leave you."
"Promise?"
"One hundred percent."
***
In which Alistair fights the monster that possessed his friend alongside his friends, while trying...
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Chapter One: Grave (Yard) Conversations
(pre-Suzie, Do You Copy?)
***
The cemetery was cold.
Alistair supposed that was a given, considering it was January. Snow dusted the headstones and clumped in piles of white over the graves and aisles of the cemetery. A tree's bare branches rattled in the frostbitten wind, loud in the empty silence of the cemetery. No one else was here.
No one alive, that was.
Because the cemetery wasn't cold just because it was the middle of winter.
Alistair could feel it even now, the cold that cut straight to the bone, the cold that lingered in cemeteries and hospitals in a fog of ice, that had lingered in Hawkins Lab.
The cold of death.
Hugin cawed uneasily, feathers ruffled as his remaining eye stared at the cemetery—and the hazy shapes drifting around it.
"I know," Alistair murmured, patting the undead raven's head. "It still creeps me out, too. But we're not gonna be long, and then we'll be back inside, okay, buddy?"
Hugin looked at him, head tilted as he croaked and said through the bond, Give me seeds inside?
"You don't even eat, Hugin," Alistair reminded him.
Hugin croaked louder, flapping his wings as he tugged harshly on a curl.
"Ow! Okay, okay. I'll feed you some seeds. But don't come cawing to me when you can't have them, birdbrain," Alistair said, earning another tug and a flapping of feathers in his face. Alistair swatted them with his free hand as Hugin cawed before flying away—but not before digging sharp talons into his shoulder.
"Jesus Christ, that bird really forgets he's still somewhat dead, sometimes," Alistair muttered, glaring up at Hugin as he wheeled around before landing on a headstone with a caw. The look in his single eye and the feeling of irritation told Alistair what he thought of the comment. Alistair returned it with a roll of his eyes as he looked at the cemetery, at the ghosts lurking around, the cold weight of death that made everything in Alistair stand on end in discomfort, pressing down on him.
He could still turn around—head back to the gates, go inside and never come back out. Avoid this like he avoided the cemetery and hospital in Hawkins unless he had to. Turn right on his heel, waggle his fingers and say, Adios, dead people! I'll talk to you when I'm just as dead as you and this is my lovely new home!
It was an incredibly tempting thought.
But, he couldn't. As much as he wanted to be anywhere else, Alistair had to be here. He and Rowan had promised when agreeing to come here they'd train and get control of their powers—at least, more control than they already had. Being in cemeteries, in places of death, around ghosts... that was probably like one of the whole points of control. Not running away and packing away his problems with a suitcase and lovely trip to France and a hope to never see it again.
