Drowning • Billy Hargrove

Chapter 18

I wake up in the back of Billy's car.
"Why me?" I can hear him whispering in the front seat. "Damn it!" He yells, hitting the steering wheel, causing me to jump and gasp.
Unfortunately, he hears me. He turns around and stares at me before cursing under his breath.
"What's going on." I say, but he ignores me.
He starts the car back up and drives. I recognize the area from yesterday. It was the place where we were attacked.
"Oh God." I say, putting two and two together. He must've gotten 'flayed' and possessed by the Mindflayer. "Billy please try and fight it! You don't have to do this!" I cry.
He shakes his head. "I can't! I'm trying. I'm sorry its too powerful and strong!" Billy says.
"Billy please!"
"Shut up!" The flayed Billy yells.
I start to cry and panic. I don't know what he was going to do to me but it wasn't good.
I wasn't going to go down without a fight, so I begin to kick the windows. He didn't have a door in the backseat so this was my only way of escape.
"Stop it!" He screams, stepping on the gas pedal, sending me flying back.
He stops the car and looks at me. I look around to see that we are surrounded by trees. In the middle of the trees is a small, abandoned building. It matched the description of what El saw perfectly.
"Get out." He yells.
"No." I say with tears streaming down my face.
He sighs and yanks me out of the car.
"Billy this isn't you!" I say, cupping his face. "Please stop!" I say quietly.
I know that the real Billy is deep down in there, but flayed Billy was drowning the real Billy out.
He grabs my wrist and walks me towards the building. He held on to my wrist with a grip that was stronger than usual. Still, I try to break loose from him.
I try falling to the ground, but that was no use because he just yanked me back up on to my feet. I tried to grab on to the side of the building, but that doesn't work because he just continues to pull me.
I start to scream as he drags me down a long set of stairs that leads to the ground floor of the building. My nightmare was coming true.
He stops midway down the set of stairs. He runs his free hand through his hair and sighs.
"Go." The real Billy says.
I sprint up the stairs, almost tripping several times. I run up the same dirt road that we ran yesterday.
I didn't know where to go from here, so I decided to go to Nancy's house.

I bang on the door until Mike answers it.
"Where is Nancy?" I say, pushing past him.
"Up in her room, why?"
"Code Red." I say, causing his mouth to drop.
He grabs his walkie talkie and turns it on. "Code Red! Code Red! Everybody come to my house."
I run up to Nancy's room and barge in to see Nancy and Jonathan sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Kate!" She says, a little shocked.
"It got Billy." I say, on the verge of tears.
"What?" They say in unison.
"The Mindflayer. It got Billy." I say, sitting down beside her.
I tell her the whole story. Starting from when he was late picking me up in the morning all the way to Billy letting me go.
"Shit." Nancy whispers.
"Nancy! Kate! We're all here!" Mike yells.
We head to the basement. I immediately look for El and Max. I let out a sigh of relief when I see them safe.
"Where's Dustin?" Lucas asks.
"I don't know. He hasn't been answering for the last couple of days." Will says.
"Anyways, what's the Code Red for?" Max asks, seeming annoyed.
I look at her and sigh. "It got Billy."
"What?"
I once again tell the whole story.
I look over at Max, she seems in disbelief.
"Are you sure he's flayed?" Mike asks.
"Yes! A hundred percent sure. Billy's not like that, thing." I say.
"El should look for him." Will says.
El nods her head. "I'll be back." She says, getting up to get a blindfold.
"This is a bad idea." I say.
"I agree." Mike says. "This is such a bad idea! She's going to end up getting hurt looking for Billy!"
"She can't get hurt." Lucas says.
"We don't know that! I just love her and I can't loose her again!" Mike says, causing all of us to gasp.
"Okay I'm ready." El says, emerging from the bathroom. Everybody took their attention off of Mike and put it on El.
El sits down and pulls the blindfold over her eyes.
I bite my lower lip, extremely nervous.
"I've got him." She says as her nose starts to bleed.
"Where is he?" I ask.
"I think he's at his house." She responds. "He's not doing anything. He's just sitting on his bed."
She stays quiet for a while.
"What's happening?" Jonathan asks.
"He sees me." She simply responds.
"Get out of there!" I yell.
She does as she's told and rips the blindfold off. I hand her a tissue and she wipes her nose.
"We have to make a plan! We've got to get it out of him!" Max says, with tears in her eyes.
"We'd have to burn it out of him, like they did for me." Will says.
"It's going to be a lot harder with a grown man." I say, receiving a few nods.
"He works at the pool, right?" Mike asks.
"Yeah."
"We could lock him in the sauna and burn it out of him from there!" Mike says.
"How would we get him in the sauna?" Nancy asks.
"We could lure him into there with the walkie talkies! He would think somebody's in there but in reality, nobody actually is." Lucas says.
"We should give it a shot." I say. "I want my boyfriend back."