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Chapter 18

The Grave

Hopper watched the sun start setting in the rear view mirror of his car.

This is so stupid. He thought. What did I say to get myself here?

He rode down the long road to the cemetery, hating this place more and more as it creeps closer. How can he not hate this place? The is where his daughter was buried after she was murdered. He had only come here two other times. Once at the funeral and once a month after just to talk to her.

That day he went to talk to her, he felt her there with him. He never had that feeling before. It was warm and welcoming, like she was giving him a hug just to show she was there when he needed her. After that, he never needed to come back, because one night after talking to her in the cemetery, he went into her room and felt her there. And ever since then when ever he felt like he wanted to talk to her, he would go to her room.

Her room became a safe place while the cemetery became a darker place to go. Because going there would only remind him of what happened. If he wanted to be close to her, he would go to her room.

But now here he is, heading to the cemetery. With a shovel in the back of his car, and about to dig up her body from her grave.

He pulled into the cemetery and drove until he found her tombstone. He got out of the car and walked over to where it laid.

El Hopper, lovely daughter, perfect sister, amazing friend, it read. Hopper read it and sighed to himself.

He looked around making sure there was no one around. As he did, he noticed an cold, dead silence around him. He felt more alone than he ever had out here.

After seeing that the coast was clear, he walked back to his truck and retrieved the shovel. He closed the truck and made his way back of to the grave.

"I'm so sorry about this, El." He sighed looking down at her tombstone once again. Once again he felt alone. It was the exact opposite of the last time he came here almost eleven months ago. There was no El, she hadn't been with him in a long time. She disappeared from him and maybe went to Joyce. Maybe Joyce had felt her presence but added the voice in her head. Or was Joyce really right about this? He knew it was a long shot but it didn't stop a little string of hope forming in his heart.

"Okay, let's do this." He tried to motivate himself. "The sooner you get this done the sooner you get to go home."

And with that in mind, he stabbed his shovel inside the ground and got to work. He continued to turn up the soil and place it in a pile so he can easily fill the hole in the ground when this was all done.

He worked as the setting sun went behind the tress and soon leaving him in total darkness, which only made the cemetery creepier as he continued.

After an hour of shoveling, he uncovered her casket of most dirt other than a few piles on top of it.

"Here we go." Hopper sighed as he grabbed the lid and slowly opened it. He didn't look at it at first, he didn't want to see her corpse. But finally, after a minute of contemplation, he looked in the casket.

"What the hell?" He couldn't believe his eyes. What he saw was El, but not El. She was there, but not as he expected her to be. Instead of being decomposed like a normal human body should be like after being dead for a year, she looked exactly what she looked like when they placed her in the ground. Her skin was just as pale, her hair was the same, she even was just as skinny as she was a year ago. Nothing changed.

He placed a hand on her shoulder, this being the first time he touched her "dead body". Her skin didn't even feel real. It felt like rubber.

Holy shit. He thought to himself. Joyce was right, she's alive.

He got out of the hole and went to the passenger side of his truck and grabbed Jonathan's camera. He didn't go back into the hole. Instead, he took a quick picture from where he stood at the top. He felt his heart beating rapidly in his chest as he put the camera back in his car. He needed to get home quickly to tell Joyce what he found.

He went back into the hole to close the casket and basically jumped back out. He sloppily threw the soil back into the hole with the shovel suddenly not caring if anyone will see that her grave site as been tempered with. After deciding that it was good enough he jumped back into his car and headed to a place where he could print out the picture.

Let's just say, for a long story short, he found a place to a get the picture and after a few minutes of telling the lady at the front desk that "I am the chief of police" and the stuff he was working on was "a secret" the lady let him into a room to do the photo himself. After screwing up a few times, either taking it out of the red room too soon or fanning it hoping it would dry quicker, he finally had what he needed.

Now, he just needs to figure out the rest of the mystery. Or maybe someone will do that for him.

Authors note
I finally finished another chapter! Sorry about not posting a lot recently, I have been busy. But now I'm not so hopefully I can write more.

Love ya! ❤️❤️❤️