Strange as IT Seems

Chapter 14: Size You Up

"Dustin you can't take what she said seriously," Lucas says skeptically.

The curly-haired member of the Party had ridden his bicycle up to Starcourt to meet his friends and also to say hi to Steve and Robin. Will, Mike, and Lucas were all standing at the entrance when Dustin pulled up; the girls had already disappeared inside to look at some clothes. He parked his bike and it was Will who noticed immediately that the usually most upbeat member of their team was quiet and even a bit pale.

"What's wrong?" Will had asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Dustin had hesitated to tell his friends what Suzie had told him; whether it was real or not, it had spooked him. It boggled his mind to think that places other than Hawkins had weird shit going on too. An embodiment of all evil or the devil himself, as his girlfriend had put it.

He pulls his friends into a quiet section of the mall and told them what Suzie had said.

None of them believed him; an embodiment of Satan's shadow sounded like a bunch of religious superstition to scare kids into being good or to keep people from moving there.

"Yeah," Mike agreed. "Don't you guys talk about fantasy stuff all the time? What if she just took something from one of those books?"

"Because she sounded deadly serious about. I've never heard Suzie talk like that. She sounded scared shitless guys... I know when she's scared; the only time that's ever happened was when someone at the camp told us the story of a man dressed in a suit who had no face and long tentacles coming out of his back who would grab children in the dark. Then we had to walk back to our cabins in the dark. That's the only time she was really scared then, and it was the first time we held hands. I heard it in her voice, and she was terrified to even be telling me this."

They begin walking through the mall towards the food court.

"She was probably just messing with you," Mike says shrugging it off. He glances around the mall, having lost interest in the story and wanted to look for where Eleven and Max had gone, but so far, he'd had no luck.

"She wasn't messing with me!" Dustin says firmly.

"Chill out Dustin," Lucas says. "Let's go to Scoops, provided that my worm of a sister isn't there."

However, the curly-haired Party member couldn't shake the dread that was still in his stomach. He decides against telling them about the weird transmission he'd gotten before turning off Cerebro. The creepy laugh and that one sentence about floating. What the hell could it mean? Maybe another code to crack, even though this time it was in English and didn't require Robin to translate and continually insult them for their lack of language skills. But again, Dustin is hesitant to tell Steve or Robin about it; it had taken them a hell of a long time for him to convince them the first time.

The group of boys reach the food court. Before entering the ice cream store, Lucas does a quick scan to ensure that his sister and her obnoxious friends weren't around. When the coast was clear, they enter.

Steve is working the counter when he sees the familiar group of faces approach.

Once they come to the front of the line, he smiles.

"What's up, Henderson?" Steve says a smile on his face when the boys enter Scoops. He holds his hand up, to which Dustin eagerly high fives.

"Nothing much. Talked to Suzie."

"Nice, how's she doing?"

"Good, overall, she misses me a lot."

"I can imagine," Steve nods. "Long distant relationships are hard."