Array
(
[text] =>
024. 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗳𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿.
𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐈 𝐂𝐋𝐔𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐓𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃, her finger twirled around the cord. She was in Jonathan’s room— she assumed she was, by the band posters and photographs around the walls— leaning against the wall beside an old dresser where the phone was. The door was open, but she was at the end of the hall so nobody would hear.
There were drawings in here, too. The tunnels stretched out along the entire length of the house, in every room, on every wall. She was standing with her feet crossed at the ankles, one arm folded underneath the other as she held the phone— her eyes trailing around the room at said-tunnels. She squinted her eyes, as the ringing sounded in her ear, observing the sloppy crayon-drawn pictures taped to the ceiling, the floor, and all four walls. Like a maze.
“Hello?” Maureen’s voice sounded over the other line, cutting through her thoughts.
Lori immediately straightened, her eyes alert now on the floor, “Mom? It’s me,”
She felt some sort of comfort she’d never felt before, from hearing her mom’s voice after all that trauma.
“Lori?” her voice spiked in curiosity. “Where the hell are you calling from?” she said, and that curiosity quickly spewed into growing anger.
“Listen— I can’t tell you that, not right now, but,” she tried. She stopped twirling her finger in the cord when Maureen cut her off.
“Where are you?” Maureen pressed, sounding like she’d been wanting to ask the question for a while. “I’ve been worried sick! All night!”
“I’m safe, okay, I’m with Dustin,” Lori said, quickly. She lied through her teeth— about the being safe part.
She scoffed on the other line. “I told you, I made it clear! That if I came home and you weren’t here—”
“I’m with Dustin.” Lori repeated, sternly.
Maureen took a second to reply, because she knew what she said— family was the exception to the grounding. “Still. It is the middle of the night, Lorraine.”
“I know.” she said, sort of resentfully. “But he needed help with something, alright? I wanted to help,” that part hurt a little to say.
Maureen let out a long, aggravated sigh, “What kind of help does the kid need in the middle of the damn—”
“Listen, mom,” Lori said, delicately. “I’m fine. We’re fine. You don’t need to worry, okay?”
Lori was never someone that consoled somebody else, especially not her mom. But maybe just this once, it was okay. Lori was doing a lot of things she wasn’t used to doing tonight.
“Please don’t worry about me, I’m fine,” she repeated, and with every lie about how she was “safe” it got harder to breathe. “I don’t know when I’ll be home. Okay, but you can’t, mom, you can’t come looking for me — please tell me you won’t.”
Maureen sighed, beginning to protest, “Lorrai—”
“Please, promise me.” Lori said strongly, her voice more passionate than it’d ever been before. “Don’t leave the house, please, just stay home.”
Her voice was urgent, and fearful— because she didn’t want Maureen out in town when those things were loose. She didn’t even want to imagine her mother out looking for her in the middle of the night, while those creatures were on the prowl.
“Can you promise me?” Lori said. Her hand clutched the phone so tight it caused her knuckles to go white.
“You never make promises,” Maureen said skeptically, knowing her daughter well.
“Please.” Lori said, her voice falling short in a whisper. She’d never said please so many times before.
There was silence on the other line, and then a bit of a shuffle. A few long, lingering, stressful seconds passed.
Then Maureen let out a huff. “Alright.” she said, regretfully. “Okay, Lori. I promise.”
Lori felt relief wash over her shoulders. She knew her mom— if Maureen promised something, she wasn’t going to break it.
Lori composed herself. “Just — I’ll be home later, alright?” she said, sounding sure. “I can get Dustin on the phone to tell you the same thing—”
“It’s,” Maureen interrupted, taking a long breath, as if she were rubbing her forehead. “It’s fine. For now. I’m proud of you for calling.”
“You’re not mad?” Lori nearly gawked.
“Oh, I’m mad.” Maureen corrected. “And you better have a damn good explanation for this tomorrow. When you get home, you better explain every single detail abou—”
“Okay, yeah,” Lori nodded, and lied again. “I have to go, alright, I have to go now,”
Maureen sighed, slightly skeptical.
“Stay home.” Lori took a breath, and then exhaled slowly. She contemplated for a moment, bit her tongue and mustered up the words that were itching at her throat. “I love you.” she said, quieter than intended.
She didn’t wait for a response, she didn’t want to hear a response because it would make her chest hurt more than anything else did tonight. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said “I love you” to anybody at all.
As she placed the phone back down onto its holder, hanging up, she envisioned Maureen smiling to herself. Lori kept her hand on the phone for a moment, staring down as her words played over in her head.
After a long moment of contemplation, her hand slipped away from the phone, and she looked up at the tunnels. Slowly, she stepped towards the door, eyes always trailing around the drawings as they led her out the room, and down the hall. She exhaled sharply, shaking it off.
She was halfway down the hall, sniffling, when Mike rushed around the corner and nearly knocked her over. He was followed close by Dustin, Max and Lucas, and finally Steve at the end of them— trying to keep up. He paused when he saw Lori, slowing his steps.
“How’d it go,” he asked, genuinely wanting to know.
She crossed her arms and shifted uncomfortably. “Fine.” she said with a small shrug, and then looked up to him. “What’s going on?”
“I dunno,” Steve admitted, shrugging. He pointed to where the kids had gone, running his other hand through his hair.
Lori turned on her heel and walked back down the hall, her arms crossed and eyebrows narrowed. She stepped up to the open door across from Jonathan’s room, stopping in the doorway.
She watched as Mike rushed to the other side of the room, Will’s room, grabbing a sheet of paper from a desk. He rushed back over to his friends, who were gathered in the middle.
Steve appeared behind Lori, and she could feel his body heat as he loomed over her for a moment— before stepping past carefully.
“The Shadow Monster,” Dustin said, as he took the paper from Mike.
“It got Will that day in the field.” Mike was quick to explain.
Lori stepped forward, into the room. “What day in the field?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at Mike.
Dustin cleared his throat. “Remember that time you were supposed to pick me up from school— but I told you to go home? From the end of the lot?” he said, speaking fast.
Lori knew instantly what he was talking about. “Yeah, that was the day I found my—” she paused, and glanced to Steve without even thinking of it. “My cassette.” she said, lowly. and looked away.
She thought of when she’d been waiting in the parking lot for Dustin, only for him to run outside and tell her to go home. He’d nearly thrown his shoulder out. She never got to know why that was, or what was going on— until now. And then she thought of the speeding green car that had nearly hit her on the way out— Joyce’s car. For Will. Pieces were slowly starting to fit together.
“It got him, in the field,” Mike said again. “The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him,” Mike explained.
Lori stepped forward, squeezing her way into the circle between Steve and Dustin. She grabbed the drawing from Dustin’s hands. “This thing got Will?” she asked.
It sent a chill down her spine, by the look of it.
They nodded quickly, in response.
“What— what do you mean it got him?” Lori questioned, speaking fast. “Like, it’s inside of him?”
“Precisely,” Dustin nodded.
She stared down at the drawing of the ‘Shadow Monster’, looking at its long, terrifying limbs drawn furiously in black crayon. “Shit,” she whispered, her eyes wide.
“And so this virus, it’s… connecting him to the tunnels?” Max asked, slowly.
“To the tunnels, to the monsters, to the upside down— everything,” Mike spoke fast.
“Whoa, slow down,” Steve interjected, putting his hands out. “Slow down.” he took the drawing from Lori’s hands.
“Okay, so— the Shadow Monster’s inside everything,” Mike started.
Lori leaned in close to Steve’s side to stare down at the drawing some more. “Let me see,” she urged him, scowling.
Her and Steve both looked up at Mike in unison.
“And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will,” Mike urged.
“And so does Dart,” Lucas added.
“Yeah. It’s like what Mr. Clarke taught us,” Mike turned to him. “The hive mind.”
“Hive mind?” Steve shook his head slightly in confusion.
“A collective consciousness,” Dustin explained. “It’s a super-organism.”
“And this is the thing that controls everything,” Mike pointed to the Shadow Monster. “It’s the brain.”
“The brain of the collective consciousness…” Lori said slowly, more as a statement than a question. “Is inside of that kid on the couch?”
Dustin stared forward, his eyes struck with revelation. “Like the Mindflayer,”
Lucas snapped his finger, and pointed to him. It was as if something stopped in the air.
“The what?” Steve, Lori, and Max said in unison.
They didn’t get an answer, because the three boys looked at each other for one second more before pushing past everything and rushing out the bedroom. The remaining three— the more clueless of the group— stayed standing in confusion.
“What’s going on, Hagar?” Lori spun around as Dustin sped past her.
“I need to find my manual!” he called back, as he rushed down the hallway.
With a glance to the two girls, Steve was quick to leave the room, glancing back to make sure she was following. Lori walked beside Max, slower than the rest. As they left the room, they could hear Mike urgently calling for everyone else to meet in the kitchen.
Lori stopped when they reached the end of the hall, as Nancy and Jonathan stepped away from the couch in the living room— everyone making their way to the kitchen table, curiously.
She didn’t even know she was staring at Will on the couch, until a voice came from behind her.
“How’d you get involved in this, kid.” it was Jim Hopper.
His voice was the same as when he’d shown up behind her at the pumpkin patch. The same, stern, brisk, demanding voice he’d used when he told her to go home.
Lori turned around and stared up at his bearded face.
“Did you know, all along?” he asked. And suddenly, Lori knew that he remembered her.
He did. Jim Hopper remembered Lori Philbin for one reason only. She was standing in the pumpkin patch that day when it was “poisoned”— and the look on her face made it clear that she was not looking for a pumpkin. She was looking for answers, and he knew that immediately. And then she’d tried to tell the Chief of Police that he was wrong. So, Jim Hopper did not forget Lori Philbin, or the fact that she was curious from the start.
And now here she was.
“No.” she replied, simply.
“So telling you to go home didn’t work, huh.” he said. It sounded like it was an attempt at a joke, but his face remained monotone.
“It never does,” Lori said, defensively. “And never will,”
“Your mom know you’re here?” he asked.
“Should she?” Lori rebutted.
Jim pressed his lips together.
“Now that I have the chance— what was wrong with that pumpkin patch, anyways?” she crossed her arms. “Did you ever find the person who poisoned it?” she cocked an eyebrow.
Hopper knew she was playing dumb. He shifted his mouth, unable to think of words.
“Or is that top secret information?” she said, her voice innocent. She was so obviously hinting at the stories about Hawkins being the top secret information.
“Yeah, you figured it out, kid,” Hopper said, regretfully. “Congratulations.”
For some reason, that didn’t feel as good as Lori hoped it would all this time. But she did get some satisfaction, she always did, when a man admitted he was wrong.
Lori dropped the act. “I’m only here to help my cousin.” she concluded, her voice stern.
That was all she said before turning on her heel, and stepping away— leaving Hopper standing there confounded. She adverted her eyes to Will on the couch for a moment, switching her mind to the Shadow Monster and trying to imagine how on earth did the poor boy get to this position.
She crossed her arms as the turned towards the kitchen, forgetting out Jim Hopper and focusing her attention on the issue at hand. Quietly, she took her place next to Steve at the table. Somehow, in every room and in every situation, they were always found next to one another. Maybe it was for comfort, or maybe it was because (unfortunately?) she’d spent the most time with him than anyone else. Although she wouldn’t admit to this, ever— Steve knew the most about her compared to everyone in this room, next to Dustin.
Everyone was standing around the table in a circle. She squinted her eyes to see in between Max and Lucas— noticing Dustin rushing up to the kitchen with a heavy book in hand.
He made his way around the table, the book open to a specific page, and squeezed between his cousin and Steve, separating them. Lori didn’t want to know if that was intentional, or if it wasn’t.
He slammed the book down onto the table.
“The Mindflayer.” he announced grandly.
“The hell is that,” Hopper dragged out, from outside the circle, unamused.
“It’s a monster from an unknown dimension,” Dustin replied. “It’s so ancient that it doesn’t even know its true home,” he looked to everyone, making sure he had full attention. “Okay— it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains, using its highly-developed psionic powers.”
“O–kay,” Lori said, sounding like she didn’t believe— that, that was enough.
“Oh my god, none of this is real,” Hopper drained. “This is a kid’s game.”
“No, it’s, it’s a manual,” Dustin stammered, speaking assuredly, “And it’s not for kids. So unless you know something that we don’t,” he pointed his finger to Hopper. “this is the best metaphor—”
“Analogy.” Lucas corrected.
Lori wanted to congratulate her cousin for being so stern. She could see then, how they were related.
“Analogy?” Dustin paused to stare at Lucas, “That’s what you’re worried about!— fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is,” he rose his voice.
Steve clenched his jaw and looked to the side, and Lori looked up to him.
“Okay— so this mind flamer… thing,” Nancy interjected, placing her hands on the table, and staring down at the manual.
“Flayer,” Dustin corrected, “Mind flayer.“
Nancy let out an aggravated sigh. “What does it want.” she said.
Lori stared at Nancy for a moment, really observing her. This was the first time she was seeing her this close, in the light. She was pretty, for sure. She caught herself trying to imagine the necklace around her neck, like it was supposed to be at this moment— and then scolded herself for thinking of something so immature while something so grave was at hand.
“To conquer us, basically.” Dustin said. “Y’know… it believes that it’s the master race.”
“Ah,” Steve stammered, and nudged Dustin’s shoulder. “Like the, like the Germans.” he said, confidently.
Lori rolled her eyes and reached behind Dustin to smack the back of Steve’s head.
“Uh,” Dustin stammered. “The Nazis?” he turned to Steve.
Steve panicked, and rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis…” he said quickly.
“Uh…” Dustin thought. “If the Nazis were from another dimension, to—totally.”
Hopper groaned and rubbed a hand down his forehead.
“It views other races, like us, as inferior to itself.” Dustin continued.
“It wants to spread, and take over other dimensions.” Mike added.
“We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it,” Lucas said, really adding emphasis to that.
Steve leaned one hand on the table and clenched his jaw. “That’s great, that’s great,” he waved his hand and turned away. “That’s really great.” he said, in disbelief. He took a few steps away from the table and ran his hands through his hair stressfully. “Jesus!” he whisper-shouted.
“And you’re telling us, that this isn’t bullshit?” Lori looked at Dustin, seriously. “This is really what’s happening?”
He didn’t answer to that.
Nancy leaned forward and turned to book towards herself. “Okay, so, if this… thing is like a brain that’s controlling everything,” she picked the book up, and walked to where Steve had been standing, taking his spot. “Then if we kill it…”
Mike finished her sentence. “Then we kill everything it controls.”
Lori placed her head in her hands, and shut her eyes. She groaned silently.
“Then, we win.” Dustin finished.
“Theoretically.” Lucas added, somberly.
“Alright, great, so how do you kill this thing,” Hopper stepped up to the table and grabbed the book from Nancy. “Shoot it with fireballs or something?”
“No, no.” Dustin chuckled, and then regained his composure. “N— no fireballs.” he said, quietly, as if he didn’t know what to say next. “You summon an undead army, uh, because… zombies, they don’t, they don’t have brains,” he stammered through an uncomfortable laugh.
Everyone blinked at him.
“And the, uh, the Mindflayer, it… it… it likes brains,” he paused, and exhaled sharply. “It’s just a game. It’s a game.” he admitted.
Lori placed her head back in her hands, groaning loudly as everyone sighed and scoffed.
“What are we doing here,” Hopper slammed the book shut and walked away.
“I thought we were waiting for your military backup!” Dustin rebutted.
“We are in such deep shit.” Lori said, lowly, and turned away from the table with tense limbs.
“We are!” Hopper shouted back.
Lori crossed her arms to keep them from shaking, and walked up to Steve who was still pacing. He stopped pacing when his eyes met hers.
They didn’t have to say anything to know what they were thinking. She looked down, swallowing hard, and he observed her for a moment. He resumed his pacing, running his hands through his hair. She stood with him by the sink, leaning her butt against it and breathing out slowly as Mike and Hopper argued.
“You don’t know that! We don’t know anything!” Hopper shouted.
Mike swung his arm out to the side, “We know that it’s already killed everybody in that lab!”
Lori gulped.
“And we know the monsters are gonna molt again!” Lucas said.
“And we know that it’s only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town.” Dustin said, as sort of a concluding statement.
Just when Lori was about to make a comment, someone spoke before her.
“They’re right,” the voice was weak, tired, and quivery.
Everyone looked to the kitchen entryway. There was Joyce, standing in front of all of them, still wearing the scrubs from the lab. Her face was stained with tears.
“We have to kill it.” she said, through a shaky voice. Then she said, slowly, “I want to kill it.”
Hopper approached her. “Me too. Me too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don’t exactly know what we’re dealing with here.”
Lori shifted her eyes to Mike, as he slowly stepped away from the group. “No.” he said. “But he does.” he walked into the living room, his eyes focused. “If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it’s Will.”
Lori slowly stood up from leaning against the sink.
“He’s connected to it, he’ll know his weakness,” Mike said, inching closer to a revelation.
“I thought we couldn’t trust him anymore,” Max said, confusedly. “That he’s a spy for the Mindflayer now?”
By now, everyone was following Mike into the living room, all eyes on Will.
“Yeah,” Mike said, and then his eyes grew wide. “But he can’t spy if he doesn’t know where he is.”
It was silent after those words. Mike turned around.
“So, what the hell do we do,” Hopper tilted his chin up.
“We have to make him think that he doesn’t know where he is,” Lori spoke out loud. “It’s like plying hide and seek in a place you don’t know— I used to do it all the time,” When eyes turned to her, she regretted speaking. But she turned to face Joyce, as an idea came to mind, “Joyce, hi. Do you have, uh, like a, like a shed, or something? Or a cellar,”
“Yeah, a shed, out back.” Jonathan answered, sort of skeptically.
Once this registered, Hopper turned on his heel and headed straight for the back door, leaving everyone confused.
“Wait— let me get one thing straight.” Lori said, before anyone could move or follow him. She put her hands out.
All eyes were on her, and she didn’t like the feeling.
“If the Mindflayer doesn’t know where he is,” she said, slowly, speaking the word as if it were foreign to her. “Then, he can’t send those things after us, right?”
Nobody answered at first.
And then Dustin spoke up, from in front of her. “Only one way to find out.”
[text_hash] => 3d77007e
)