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“Holy shit, look at this,” Eddie breathes, pausing his steps at the edge of the overgrown driveway. The sun has broken through the clouds for the first time in hours and is hanging low behind the forest, but a fine drizzle is still descending on them from overhead. It gives the whole scene a hazy and surreal look. The tall weeds in the once pristine front yard, the chipping facade and lopsided roof of the abandoned house. “This is perfect.”
Gareth, who has been grumbling about the weather since they set out from the motel, scowls and tugs his hood into his face.
“This is how you get pneumonia. But since we're here now, go ahead and do your thing. I don’t feel like tracking all the way here a second time.”
Eddie watches how he pulls his phone from his pocket and sets it up, making sure the angle is right and the house and driveway are well visible behind Eddie. Finally, he raises one hand, five fingers outstretched, and starts counting them down. Eddie straightens his shoulders, shakes the water from his hair, and puts on his toothy trademark grin.
“Greetings, fellow true crime freaks, mystery geeks, and lovers of lost places,” he bellows. “It's Eddie, coming to you with another episode, all the way from the idyllic, rural Midwest. That's right, folks. Today, we're in the cozy little small-town of Hawkins, Indiana, bringing you one of your most-requested stories. The murder mystery of the Harrington family. You ready to take a walk with me? Then let’s go.”
*
He rattles off the story he rehearsed while picking his way around the house and through the abandoned yard, glancing over his shoulder every now and then to speak into Gareths's camera.
“The year is nineteen-eighty-six, and Loch Nora here is one of the finest neighborhoods in sleepy little Hawkins. The afternoon our story happens might have been a lot like this one. It's spring break, and most of the neighborhood is deserted, the inhabitants off to their lake houses and holiday homes. It's just around sunset - seventeen minutes to ten o'clock - to be specific, when emergency services receive a call. You have the original recording, right?”
Gareth rolls his eyes.
“Great job, now I'll need to cut that stupid question out. Of course I have it, I played it to you, remember?”
Eddie does. Remembers the words echoing off the walls of their dingy motel room.
“Please. There’s something in the house, it’s - … Oh God, I think it killed them. Please, you need to hurry, I don’t know how long- … It’s coming up the stairs.”
The panic and terror crackling back at him over Gareth’s laptop speakers, raw and chilling even from four decades away. The way that young voice hitched around what would be the last words the world would ever hear from it.
“Help me.”
“Brilliant,” he grins. “We can play it along with some footage from around the place, it’ll be perfect. Be sure to take some close-ups of the broken windows and shit, and maybe we can find some old- … Oh, fuck, check this out!”
The pool gapes in the overgrown backyard like a decaying maw. The water has long been drained, and now all that is left is broken, graying tiles, weeds pushing out from between them, bugs crawling in the cracks. An old lounge set is still sitting by the far end, close to the house, sun-bleached plastic chairs lying on their sides like the skeletons of dead animals. Eddie barely manages to plaster a solemn face over his giddily excited grin as he positions himself by the pool's edge and gestures for Gareth to run the camera.
“The caller? Steven Richard Harrington, son of the home owners. Steve, as his peers call him, is sweet nineteen, and looking ahead at a bright future. Freshly out of highschool, the former swim team captain and heartthrob of many a Hawkins girl is set to follow into the sizeable footsteps of his father: Richard Harrington, successful businessman and shining figurehead of county politics. Together with his wife, Charlotte, a former beauty queen and well-respected member of the local woman’s club, Richard has built the perfect picture of small-town American life here in Loch Nora. A life that is brought to an abrupt and gruesome end on the night of our story.”
During his speech, Eddie has been rounding the empty pool to bring them closer to the house. They’ve been doing this long enough to get a feel for what’ll look good on camera, and he knows that the deserted building with its empty windows slowly looming closer in the fading daylight will look stunning. Gloomy and mysterious and foreboding, the perfect backdrop for the story that played out here.
“Emergency responders arrive at the scene a little more than ten minutes after Steve’s fateful call, and the sight that meets them is one that’ll haunt even the most seasoned of them for the rest of their days. Richard and Charlotte Harrington are dead. Both of them floating face-down in the pool, still fully dressed. The water has turned red.”
He pauses for a moment, allowing Gareth to pan over the expanse of the pool and back to him, leaving their audience time to conjure up the mental image.
“The autopsy will reveal that they both bled out from wounds to the neck. Not cuts, but bites. Something with a strength that far exceeds that of human teeth has ripped the Harrington parents’ throats clean out. It’s one of the most staggering mysteries of this case. Because to this day, nobody knows what exactly caused these injuries. Experts are unsure of what animal or weapon would be capable of doing so, and the only person who could possibly answer their questions was never …”
It takes Gareth a moment to realize that the pause is not for dramatic effect.
“What?” he asks, lowering the phone and turning to follow the direction of Eddie’s stare. “Why did you stop?”
Eddie shakes himself.
“Nothing. I just thought- … Nevermind, it must've been a bird or-”
But that's when it happens again. Movement, just at the corner of his vision. A flash of orange light, like the sun catching on glass. Eddie frowns and turns, and this time, he sees it.
“Eddie, no.” Gareth says, at the same time that he feels his face split into a grin. The whine in his voice is enough to tell him that he has spotted it, too. An open window, up on the first floor, conveniently close to the garage roof. “I don't wanna get into trouble with the cops again, and if someone's in there-”
Eddie, who is already dragging the old lounge table over to the garage wall, waves him off.
“Don't be such a baby, Gare. It was probably kids playing ghost hunters, and they'll be gone by now. I didn't see any cars or bikes out front.”
“We came on foot, didn't we?” Gareth scoffs, but he still pockets the phone and helps him carry the table the rest of the way.
The old plastic creaks dangerously when Eddie clambers up, but it doesn’t break. The drain pipe is rusty under his fingers, but it holds firm when he puts his weight on it. Eddie smiles down at Gareth's scowling face.
“What are you waiting for? Our followers will eat this shit up.”
*
The last sliver of sun is dipping out of sight behind the trees as they climb in through the window, and for a moment, Eddie stands and squints at the dark of the house while he waits for his eyes to adjust.
The first thing he sees is the wallpaper, faded and coming off in places, but still offensively checkered. While he's still cringing at the design choice, the rest of the room peels itself from the darkness. A lopsided framed picture of a car on the wall right next to him. A dusty dresser. A desk, still covered in forty-year-old school books and a half-finished paper. A bed against the far wall. Sloppily made, like it's just waiting for its owner to come back.
“Fuck,” Eddie whispers. The floorboards groan as he takes a few steps away from the window. “I think it's his room. This is so cool!”
Some silly little part of his hindbrain half expects the bedsheets to still be warm as he runs a hand over them. They're not, of course.
“Should we be in here?” Gareth asks. His eyes nervously roam the dark spots on the ceiling, where wind and rain have soaked through from the leaky roof. “It doesn’t look safe.”
“We've done more dangerous stuff,” Eddie says. The bed frame creaks as he sits on it. “And we'll be back outside in a few minutes. If you stop whining and start recording, that is.”
Gareth glares at him, but he does pull out the phone again, getting down on one knee to get eye-level with him. Eddie brackets his elbows on his knees, resting his chin on his stacked hands. With his hair falling around his face in the half-dark room, it'll be the perfect, sinister look for this part of the story. He can see the likes and comments rolling in already.
“The only question that's more baffling than what happened to the Harrington parents is what befell their son. Following the discovery of the bodies, the police officers enter the house. It's deadly quiet, and they half expect to find Steve’s body in a similar state. Except they don't. In fact, they don't find him at all.” He spreads his hands wide, making sure to let his rings catch what little light there is. “In the hallway, the receiver is dangling next to the phone. It must’ve been from here that Steve made his call to the emergency responders. The call that, to this day, remains the last sign of life from him.”
Something cracks, the sound like a whip in the eerie silence, and Gareth nearly drops the phone.
“Shit, what was that?”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Probably the old floorboards working. Or maybe it's the ghost of Steve Harrington, come to drag you to an untimely end.”
“That's not funny, you asshole.” Gareth’s voice is a hissed whisper, like he doesn’t dare speak any louder. “You know that some people believe he was the one who did it, right?”
“Of course.” Eddie leans back on the bed and merrily kicks his feet. “And some people believe the government is run by shape-shifting lizard people. Come on, Gare. The poor boy is dead as a doornail. One of these days, some unfortunate hiker is gonna find his sorry remains out in these woods and be traumatized for life. Now c'mon, let's get some shots of the place before we lose the light, and then we're outta-”
He stands and takes two steps towards the window, and that is when the floor gives out from under him.
It's one of those horrifying moments that goes way too fast to do anything about it, yet slowly enough to let the full reality of it settle in. He hears wood and mortar splinter under his feet, sees Gareth’s mouth open in a silent shout of alarm, feels his stomach give a violent lurch as gravity sucks him down.
And then he doesn’t feel anything for a while.
*
“Shhhh, it's alright.”
Eddie blinks the black fog from his vision. His head is strobing with pain. Something warm and sticky is trickling from his temple into his hair.
Above him, the hole in the ceiling looks like a frayed wound. He tries to lift his head, but his stomach churns and the world tilts, and he lets it thud back down. The ground is weirdly soft.
“There you go, I gotcha. That was a pretty nasty fall you took there.”
Oh, wait. That is not the ground. His head is lying in someone's lap, and fingers are carding through his hair. His first thought is that it must be Gareth. Gareth was with him, wasn’t he? But then again, that can’t be right, because Gareth’s fingers aren’t as long or as strong, and his nails aren’t as pointy as the ones scraping over his scalp, prickling like so many tiny needlepoints. Also, now that the ringing in his ears is going down, he can hear Gareth’s voice faintly floating to him from somewhere else in the house, calling his name. Eddie opens his mouth to call out to him, but his tongue is a heavy, wet clump of flesh in his mouth and feels like it isn't his own. The fingers in his hair tighten, just a bit.
“It's okay, don't overdo it. Just relax.”
A face hovers into view, upside down because the person is sitting behind him. The light falling in from the destroyed ceiling forms a ragged circle around it. A fading halo illuminating soft, caramel hair and gold-flecked eyes, an elegant face dotted in moles.
It is the most beautiful boy Eddie has seen in his life.
“Who-” Eddie croaks, wonder and pain and confusion all rolled into one sound, and lifts a shaking hand towards that perfect face. The boy smiles softly. He has the fullest, reddest, most kissable lips in the entire world. “Are you an angel?”
The boy huffs a startled laugh, sucking a finger into his mouth to stifle the sound. It's an odd gesture - unusual and weirdly obscene in its bashfulness - and all Eddie can do is stare, transfixed by the image of those plump, slick lips parting around the digit.
“Angel? That's a new one.” The finger slides free again, wet and shiny with spit, returning to Eddie’s hair. He can feel it against the skin of his scalp, warm and moist and a little rough. “Who knows? Maybe I am. Maybe I'm your guardian angel.”
Deft fingertips graze Eddie’s temple, and a sharp, white haze of pain settles over his vision.The boy mutters an apology, once again licking at his thumb before sliding it back into Eddie’s hair. He only catches sight of his tongue for a brief moment, red as those lips and so beautifully wet and nimble. He wonders what it would feel like against his skin. In his mouth. Sucking at his cock.
“In all honesty, I don’t know what you were even thinking. This is a dangerous place, has nobody told you that?”
Eddie grins dazedly. Somewhere at the edge of his awareness, someone is calling his name.
Oh yeah, he didn’t come here alone, did he? Someone is looking for him. He should answer, maybe. Should call out so they can find him before it’s too late. But then again, his head is all warm and fuzzy, and the pain has faded to a dull background thrum that’s almost pleasant, and the boy’s eyes are so, so beautiful.
“Like it a lil dangerous,” he mutters. It comes out a bit slurred. He must’ve hit his head pretty badly. “‘s part of the job.”
“Is that so?” The boy’s smile shifts. It's not so much a concrete thing. More like the way the air changes before a thunderstorm, going heavy and sharp in a way that you can almost taste but not really describe, making most people run for cover before the rain even starts. His thumb swipes at Eddie’s temple, dragging through the wet and sticky mess coating his skin and hair. When he lifts it back to his mouth, a thick droplet of red is glistening off the tip. “You’re a funny one. Maybe I should keep you, huh? Would you like that?”
But Eddie isn’t most people. Eddie has always loved dancing and twirling and skipping in the rain, head thrown back to catch the drops, laughing at the storm clouds rolling overhead and the lightning splitting the sky.
He thinks he’d very much like to be kept by this boy, this creature, who flutters its golden eyes shut and moans in pleasure as it licks his blood of its thumb - one long, languid drag of that red, red tongue from the root of its palm right to the black, pointed thumbnail.
“Yeah,” he breathes, and that mouth splits wide, a sharp-edged, too-bright, crimson-stained smile. “Yeah, take me.”
The creature splays a large hand against his chin, tilting his head up to expose his throat. He can feel its breath against his jugular as it leans down.
Eddie closes his eyes, and-
“Wake up! Holy fucking shit, please wake up!”
Someone slaps his face, hard. His head whips to the side, thunking against the hard floor tiles.
Eddie groans. His lids feel like they’re being held down by leaden weights, and the second he manages to open them, the lights and the sounds and the pain hit him like a freight train. Dust and debris are falling from the hole in the ceiling like snow, floating on the last of the dying daylight.
Gareth is looking down at him, face twisted with worry and anger and relief.
“Oh thank fuck, I thought you were dead!” he babbles, shucking off his hoody and bunching it up against Eddie’s bleeding temple, ignoring his moan of protest. “Can you try and get up? You probably need a doctor, but I’d like to get you to a hospital myself and make up some kind of story that doesn’t involve us trespassing on the scene of a forty-year-old cold case in the middle of bumfuck-”
“Where is he?”
Gareth, who has just pulled him into a sitting position, stops his babbling and casts anxious glances over his shoulders, like he’s afraid someone or something will ambush them from out of the shadows. It’s just the two of them, though. They’re on the ground floor, in the entrance hall of the house. The dim light falling in through the dusty glass pane of the front door bounces off dusty marble floor tiles and faded family photos lining the walls.
“Who?” Gareth asks. His voice is wobbly and on edge. “There’s nobody here but-”
“The- … The boy,” Eddie croaks, wobbling upright and gesturing jerkily at the spot where the boy was, only a few seconds ago. The motion makes his head spin and pound again, and Gareth hastily slips one of his arms over his shoulder to keep him upright. “He was right here with me, you must’ve seen him.”
Gareth is silent for a long moment. Eddie can’t really see his face, squashed together as they are, but he still hears the worry in his voice as he starts to walk them both towards the door.
“There was nobody with you when I found you. You must’ve dreamed or imagined- … c’mon, you’re probably concussed or something. We better get you to that doctor. And next time, you fucking listen to me when I’m telling you something’s too dangerous, do you hear me?”
Eddie nods, too tired to argue. He doesn’t know what tells him this, but he knows that what he saw wasn’t a dream. Maybe it’s the way he can still feel the lingering touch of the creature on his skin. Maybe it’s the way his insides are still tingling from the soft rumble of that voice, or the way he can still recall every detail of that face.
A face that looks back at him from one of the picture frames on the wall as Gareth fumbles to open the front door.
He’s standing next to his parents, stiff and uncomfortable like he doesn’t really want to be there. He’s smiling, but not with his eyes. Only with those perfect lips of his - pink, not red, but just as plump and pretty and shiny. It is, without any doubt, the same boy - right down to every lock of hair on his head, every mole on his face. The one who was kneeling on the floor, cradling Eddie’s head in his lap only a few minutes ago, the one who wiped Eddie’s blood away and licked it off his hands, moaning like it was the most delicious thing he ever tasted.
He hasn’t aged a day between the photo and now.
A photo that was taken forty years ago.
“Thank fuck,” Gareth mutters when the door finally clicks open, and then, before Eddie can protest, he’s being dragged away from the photo and out, down the porch steps and into the driveway. It has started to rain again, storm clouds rolling overhead and thunder rumbling in the distance. They are drenched in a matter of seconds, but Gareth doesn’t pause, just keeps dragging him away from the house like the devil himself is after them.
When Eddie casts one last look over his shoulder, the windows are dark, but behind one of them, on the top floor, he imagines he sees something. A shadow watching him leave. Watching him slip out of reach.
He has a feeling it won’t be for long.
He told it to take him, after all.