Eddie x Chrissy Alternate stories

Puppy - Part One

November 13th, 1976

Chrissy glanced up the sky. The dark clouds were right above her now. The rain started to pour down. She put her hood. On her bicycle, she was pedalling like mad, panting. She had to come back home quickly.

By the window of Naomi's house, she had seen the ominous clouds appearing and the sky turning dark far away. A thunderstorm was coming. And it terrorized her. It was a part of the long list of things which paralyzed her. She was scared of spiders, most insects, needles, the cellar of her Granpa' house, of swimming in so dark waters that she couldn't see her feet, and monsters and so on.

And she was scared of thunderstorms... She started at each flash of lightning. She was scared to be struck by the lightning, even if her father had explained her many times that there were few risks it happened. But what she hated the most was the sound of the thunder. Each time she heard it, she panicked, cried, shook like a leaf, hysterically screamed and was unable to move. In the worst case, she couldn't breathe and she fainted.

Obviously, she didn't want her friends see her like that. She was ashamed. So, she had found a bogus story to return home, said goodbye to everyone and left her friend's birthday party without delay.

It was raining cats and dogs now. The road was soaked. The water was running on her coat, her pants got wet. Drops of water annoyed her sight. That didn't bode well. The thunderstorm would break soon. She was at some blocks of her house. She had to hurry. She had to be at her home in few minutes. She pedaled even faster.

Suddenly, a flash surprised her. Instinctively, she closed her eyes and her hands tensed on the handlebars. She knew the thunder would rumble soon. Dreading the rumbling, she stayed still while her bike kept moving by itself.

She heard a car beeping the horn. Surprised, she opened her eyes and seeing the car driving opposite, swerved. Quickly, she hit the sidewalk, fell on the ground and she felt the weight of her bike on her right ankle. She couldn't help but groan.

She pulled herself out from beneath her bike. She quickly checked her body. Fortunately, the waterlooged earth had cushioned her fall but she had a bit of mud and some grass stains of her clothes. She stood up and when her right foot touched the ground, she felt a stabbing pain in her ankle. Bother, impossible to pedal or walk with her bike like that. She wouldn't be at her home before the storm would burst.

She looked around her. She was at Morehead Street. Except the Creel house, there was nothing. Her parents and her brother were at her aunt's house. If there were a phone booth nearby, she could have called them. But there wasn't. And no way for her to hitch. Her parents had banned her to talk to strangers or to get in their cars. She had to wait here, until the storm would end. She had no choice. What a hell...

She considered the old house. Its shadow was menacing, it gave her the creeps. She was scared of ghosts, haunted houses, cemeteries... She was between the devil and the deep blue sea. But she would rather be sheltered by a haunted house than wait to be struck by the lightning on the road. She let her bike on the side of the road and as fast as she could, she was walking with a limp to the house, gritting her teeth. She stopped when she saw him.

She hadn't expected that another kid was here, hunched up under the right corner of the porch. With the rain and the bush in front of the house, it was hard to see him from the road. Maybe he could help her to come back home, when the storm would be over. She wondered why he had deliberately chosen a such place to take shelter to the storm.

During the previous Halloween sleepover, her friends had related her the story of Victor Creel, the Hawkins' boogeyman. In that house, he had murdered all his family in a such atrocious way that it couldn't be described. It had happened in 1959 but his memory was still present in the town. Even adults were trembling hearing his name. The house was haunted and sometimes, you could hear his dead wife screaming. It was known.