"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 Thirty-Seven: Death And Resurrection
(The Battle Of Starcourt, Pt. 8)
***
Alistair gasped as his eyes flew open.
He lurched up, coughing as he pounded on his chest, trying to get air into his lungs, trying to breathe.
Except... except his lungs weren't working. And as he thumped on his chest, Alistair realised with growing horror he couldn't feel his heartbeat.
"What the fuck?" he whispered, before he remembered—the Mind Flayer, El in front of it, Billy stopping it from getting her, the second tentacle, Alistair rushing to protect her...
And being impaled through the chest by the tentacle.
Horror churned in Alistair and he wanted to throw up but he couldn't, every function of his living body switched off.
"I'm dead," he whispered, voice shaking as he gripped his curls. "I'm dead."
Phantom tears burned in Alistair's eyes as he dry-sobbed, crouching on the ground.
He was dead. The Mind Flayer had killed him.
He was dead.
At least El's alive, a thought whispered, but Alistair could find little comfort in it, that he had died protecting her.
Holding himself, Alistair jerkily got to his feet—noticing that the hole in his chest was gone—as he finally registered his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was that he wasn't in Starcourt. He hadn't come back as a ghost, which made sense—his ancestors had told him Graveswoods with his gifts didn't come back as ghosts.
The second thing was that it was fully black. An eternal void of darkness, like the one in his nightmares he had been falling in—the dreams that had predicted his death.
And the third thing he noticed was that he couldn't feel Hugin.
A yawning chasm of grief opened in Alistair of not feeling the undead raven—Hugin, who'd stayed by his side ever since he died, who Alistair had brought halfway back to life by joining his spirit with his body and thus bonding them forever, Hugin who had always been there, Hugin who was now gone.
It made Alistair want to sob again, at how in death he'd lost his raven, just as he lost his life, his family, his friends. That he had lost Will.
No. He couldn't cry. He had to accept it—he was dead. He'd died, he'd protected El, he sacrificed himself for her. She was alive because of him. And how Alistair saw the Mind Flayer die before he did, that meant his aunt—he would never be hugged by Aunt Aco again, never have her pancakes and hot cocoa again, never see her again—Joyce and Hopper had done it.
