𝟎𝟏𝟎 ᵐⁱᵏᵉ ʷʰᵉᵉˡᵉʳ ˣ ᵒᶜ

005

"MAYBE SHES THE MONSTER"

"What was Will saying?" Mike asked confused.

"Like home... but dark?" Delilah spoke quietly, she was confused as hell, her brother had gone from missing to dead to alive again all in a matter of days and she didn't know how to feel.

" And empty" Lucas sighed "Empty and cold. Wait, did he say cold?".

"I don't know. The stupid radio kept going in and out" Mike frowned.

"Like home. Like our house? Or maybe like Hawkins?" Delilah tried thinking hard.

"Upside down" El spoke making them all turn their heads.

"When El showed us where Will was, she flipped the board over, remember? Upside down. Dark. Empty" Mike got up.

"Do you guys understand what he's talking about?" Lucas asked.

"No" Dustin shook his head.

"Wait, when El took us to find Will, she took us to our house, right?" Delilah remembered, making eye contact with Mike who nodded his head.

"Yeah. And he wasn't there" Lucas shrugged.

"But what if he was there? What if we just couldn't see him? What if he was on the other side?" Mike asked.

"A colder, darker side of Hawkins? The upside down" Delilah nodded along with what he was saying "you might be on to something".

Delilah didn't expect to see her adopted father on the couch when she walked through the door, but then again she didn't ever expect that her brother would go missing and a weird girl they found in the woods would have to take them to another side of their town to find her, so it wasn't too much of a surprise.

"Hey, kid. What's going on?" He asked her, looking as rough as ever.

"Your dad's, uh, gonna stay here tonight. On the couch" Joyce stuttered.

"Yeah, I'm here as long as you need me, okay?" He assured.

"I don't" she turned from her dad back to her mom "I need to talk to you about Will".

"Delilah, that's enough" he sighed "Can we talk?Alone?".

"You need to leave" she told him, Delilah had held a grudge with her dad since he walked out on her and her brothers, leaving her with a missing piece, she needed a dad.

"Look, I know you're upset. We all are. But you need to listen to me. Your mother is sick. Really sick" he told her.

"You'll make things worse, you'll argue and then you'll leave again like always" Delilah clenched her jaw.

"She took down that wall with an axe. She said that Will was inside and that he's talking to her. I know you might be too young to understand, Del, but that's not right" he shook his head.

"What if he was talking to her?" Delilah asked.

"This isn't some kind of joke. Your mom was half frozen to death when I got here. Trembling, scared out of her mind. You come in here and you start feeding into her hallucinations or whatever the hell you want to call it, you're gonna push her right over the edge. You hear me?" He sighed before speaking again in a softer tone

"Look, I'm on your side. I'm here to help. I'm gonna make things better around here for all of us".

Delilah rolled her eyes "you left us".

"Del, just do me a favor. At the funeral tomorrow, behave yourself. Your mom told me you haven't been at home a lot. If things get too much, come out to the city" he leant on her bedroom doorframe but left when Delilah just turned her back on him.