❛ 𝔦 𝔡𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔴𝔞𝔫𝔱 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔴𝔦𝔪 𝔣𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯, 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔦𝔱'𝔰 𝔠𝔬𝔩𝔡 𝔦'𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔬 𝔡𝔦𝔢. ❜
→ * . & ━━ a girl by the name
of sar, who can walk through dreams, finds
herself drawn to her hometown and into a
bigger m...
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"THE PEOPLE WHO WERE MISSING. It's Will Byers and Barbara Holland, right?" Steve and her were sitting on the mattress now. Sar was holding a notebook in her hand, jotting things down.
"Yeah," he said. "I don't know if anyone else has gone missing yet. We should check around. Maybe we'll find out there were more just out of town, or something like that."
Sar mumbled in agreement. "Well, Will is in that place. The opposite world." She was tapping her pen against her knee, a nervous habit. The girl was deep in thought. "If I can contact him like that, then I bet I can contact Barbara. This opposite world must be acting like some kind of megaphone, it's amplifying their thoughts and making me able to detect them."
"And what does this mean?"
"This means... I might be able to find them." Her blue eyes were hopeful.
"You think so?" Steve asked.
Sar shrugged. "Well if I can figure out where they are and where the portal is, then we can get to them. The only hard thing will be getting past the monster." Steve nodded at that. "Okay, so this girl you're dating — Nancy? — her friend was the girl that was taken? Barbara?"
"Barb, yeah. It was here, actually." He glanced out the window, Sar following his gaze. "We were having a party out back. Nance and I went upstairs and left Barb outside by the pool. The next day she was just gone." Steve crossed his arms over his chest. Then he raised a single hand to wipe underneath his nose. It was supposed to be nonchalant, but Sar knew how dishevelled he was. "We shouldn't have left her there." He was shaking his head.
"No, Steve, are you crazy? There is no possible way you could know there was a monster waiting to take her."
He was biting the inside of his cheek. "I was still an ass though."
Sar furrowed her eyebrows at that, but didn't quite know how to respond. She tapped her pen against the notebook. "Well, if the monster took her... why?"
Steve shrugged. "I don't know. She was a normal girl. Just Nance's friend. I guess it's the same as Will — just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone; could have been me." Sar could see how much that thought affected him. His knee was bouncing again.
Sar pursed her lips. "Was there anything odd that happened before? Did you notice anything?"
"Well, she cut her finger before we went up. It was bleeding. I don't know if that has anything to do with it."
"She cut her finger?"
"On a beer can," Steve clarified, "yeah."
"Okay." Sar placed the notepad on her knee and scribbled down the word 'BLOOD?' in scrawling writing. "So suppose — theoretically — this thing was attracted to blood... that means this thing is somewhere around here, right?" She turned her head so she was looking out into the forest behind Steve's backyard, and saw him doing the same.
