Chapter Text
She’d said she was going to spend the night at Tina’s.
This isn’t technically a lie.
The music is so loud that Chrissy can’t hear anyone else unless they shout to her, can’t even hear herself think…which is the way she likes it. All she has to do is dance, lost in a sea of people, and get swept away by the beat.
Tina’s parents had made the grave error of leaving town and not calling in Tina’s aunt to keep an eye on her. The invite had been extended to anyone willing to come out to Loch Nora on Friday night, which apparently is most of the school.
Chrissy hadn’t taken a whole lot of persuading. She’d made the cheerleading team, but even that hadn’t made her mom happy. Sometimes Chrissy thinks Laura would be happier if she could break Chrissy down into parts, lay out each segment on a table, and twist and carve it down to the daughter she really wants. Sometimes Chrissy thinks she seems to be trying anyway.
“I’m going to get a drink!” she shouts, gesturing to the kitchen. No one really acknowledges her except for Tina who just nods in return. Carol and Tommy disappeared half an hour ago and Chrissy’s pretty certain that they’re continuing the grand tradition of having sex on other peoples’ beds.
She pushes her way through the crowds of bodies, narrowly avoiding being elbowed in the head, and slips into the kitchen. The usual punch bowl is there, and she’s already figured out to avoid it. But she has the advantage of knowing where Tina’s family keep their spare sodas.
She ducks out of the back door, grateful for the cool air. Inside her skin had grown hot and slightly tacky, even in her little dress. The garage door is locked, but Chrissy easily finds the key, hidden on top of the door frame.
It’s still not completely quiet out here but at least she’s alone. The spare fridge hums quietly along the far wall, next to Mr Cline’s tools and hedge trimmer. Chrissy tugs open the door and grabs for a can of lemonade, the can blissfully cool. She’s drained almost half of it the second she’s cracked the tab.
From here she can still hear the music, and she wonders how the cops haven’t been called yet. But the Morrisons on the other side are elderly and might not notice the music so easily. And the local police usually let a party slide, unless they get numerous complaints.
She should go back in. She should let Jason dance with her, because he’s made it clear that he’s impatient being kept at arm’s length. It was fine to be linked together in middle school, to have a partner for school dances but now it feels serious. She doesn’t want to be like her mom - marrying her high school boyfriend, because it’s the only option, and letting the cage she chose make her more bitter and miserable with every passing year.
But when she emerges back outside, the September breeze lifting the curls around her shoulders, something catches her eye.
Chrissy stops. She just saw someone move inside the Morrisons’ front room.
The Morrisons have lived next to Tina for years. Mrs Morrison bakes oatmeal cookies and always encourages Chrissy to have another. Mr Morrison used to let them come over to use his grandson’s trampoline, until they got too old. Chrissy knows that the figure - young, slim, dark-haired - isn’t either one of the Morrisons.
It might be their son. But she’s met him, and he’s a man in his forties, with graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses. This isn’t him.
Something uncomfortable churns in her belly. Maybe there’s another reason why the Morrisons haven’t reported the party to the police.
She takes a look back at the house behind her. It’s filled with people and she should go get anyone of them to accompany her. Jason maybe, or Patrick. Even Tina would come with her, if she went back and asked.
But she doesn’t go back and ask. She strides down Tina’s drive and hops across the Morrisons lawn. Their drive is empty, Mr Morrison’s prized corvette tucked away in the garage. There’s a Beemer further down the street, something expensive and new, and she wonders if it belongs to someone at the party, who didn’t want to risk their car getting scratched.
The house is dark when she reaches the front door, which worries her further still. Surely they can’t be asleep with the noise next door? Maybe their hearing is that bad, or Mr Morrison misplaced his hearing aid again.
But she knocks on the door anyway, pounding loudly to be heard.
“Mr Morrison?” she calls. She feels slightly sick - she’s either about to disturb an old couple or there’s something seriously wrong here. “Mrs Morrison? It’s Chrissy Cunningham. I’m a friend of Tina’s?”
But there’s no answer. She peers around to look in the front windows and it occurs to her now that all of the curtains are open. She looks up to be sure and every single one is wide open.
Why would they leave all of their curtains open? Every other house on the street, save Tina’s, has them closed. And every other house has some form of lights on, a lamp, a porch light, something.
Unless someone didn’t want to risk being seen under bright lights. Like the person that Chrissy saw inside the house.
Chrissy takes a shaky step back, her legs suddenly threatening to give way. The feeling in her body is now screaming at her, telling her that every part of this is wrong. She needs to go back to Tina’s house to use the phone.
But before she can, there’s a sharp pain in her head, like someone has dug their fingers deep into her scalp. She shrieks and stumbles, her ankle giving way beneath her so that she lands on the grass. But none of that matters, because what she sees in front of her eyes isn’t the clouded night sky, or the quiet mausoleum of the Morrisons house.
And when it ebbs away she’s left panting, lying on her back on the front lawn. And for a second she wonders if she’s going mad, because she saw, crystal clear, two people breaking into the Morrisons’ back door. It was like she’d been there - she heard the lock break, just audible underneath the sound of the wind chimes. She saw one of them move around, quietly turning off lights. She saw both of them slipping upstairs, barely making a sound on the steps.
Chrissy pushes herself up on one elbow, even though this makes her head scream in agony. It’s almost tempting to lie back down, let her limbs sink into the coolness of the grass, but unless she’s crazy, someone really did break in.
If she’d had any of the punch, she might be more willing to believe she was seeing things. But she is painfully sober and has no such luxury.
She stumbles to her feet, wobbling on shaking legs. She doesn’t know how she saw it or why, just that it has a cost. She’s in no shape to help anyone but she has to try.
“Mr Morrison!” she shouts, and pounds her open palm on the door. She knows she’s not going to get an answer but she doesn’t know what else to do.
The dark shape that appears in the window next to her doesn’t even really look human.His face is twisted, with hard ridges across his nose and forehead, mouth slightly too wide like it was made to fit extra teeth. His eyes are the worst, gleaming bright yellow, like something from one of her brother’s video games.
Chrissy freezes - she can’t help it. Perhaps for the first time she understands what it’s like to be prey, fixed on the spot under the gaze of something hungry. She’s made a mistake by catching his attention.
Then he vanishes from the window and Chrissy jerks, as though she’s been released from a spell. She only has a second before panic sets in - he saw her. He saw her face. Even if she runs back to the party, it’s not like she can go anywhere. No one is in a fit state to drive her home.
But the door opens and the face she sees there isn’t the one she expects.
“Get in!” the school librarian hisses at her, holding out a hand urgently. Chrissy doesn’t move because something about this man has always given her the creeps. She avoids the school library as much as possible, preferring the large public one in town. Something about the dark stacks, the unusual leather-bound books he keeps behind the counter, even the dusty old suits he wears, all make her hair stand on end. And now he’s here, in the darkened doorway of her friends’ neighbors, at the same time as someone - something - terrifying.
“Hurry up!” he snaps and Chrissy moves forward, perhaps against her better judgment, into the stillness of the house.
Or maybe not that still.
The front room is still occupied by that man but a young woman has now joined him. Chrissy only has a moment to stare before Mr Bauman pulls her back, tucking her behind the banister of the stairs. There are two other figures there too, young and lanky, but they don’t hold her attention as much as the fight in the front room.
She knows this girl. They go to school together. She’s wearing combat boots, a sturdy jacket, and she ducks and dodges as the man tries to hit her. She’s fast on her feet, avoiding every swipe of his long, jagged nails. He tries to lunge for her, and misses, and she takes the opportunity to lash out. Her arm strikes, deadly and precise, driving a thick stake into the center of his chest. Chrissy stifles a shriek but his face only shows brief surprise before he fades into dust.
“Good shot,” Mr Bauman comments, as the girl brushes dust off her arm. She only looks vaguely annoyed, as though men turning to pieces of ash flaking gently on the Morrisons’ carpet is an everyday occurrence. “Even with the unexpected…interruptions.”
All too late, Chrissy realizes that he’s looking at her.
“They’re all too cocky,” the girl complains, nudging at the pile of dust with her toe. “Do we need to clean this up?”
“Is that part of our job now?” one of the boys asks, and when he moves out of the darkness behind the banister, Chrissy gets a better look at his face. She knows him too - it’s Jonathan Byers, from the school paper. “Cleaning up afterwards?”
“No, it is not,” Mr Bauman says, tensely. “We’ll let Hopper know…I’ll leave a message with the usual code. The better question is, why is a cheerleader here?”
“There’s a party next door,” another voice says, the final occupant. Chrissy doesn’t ask why two boys and a grown man were hiding behind the stairs, while a fifteen year old girl fights. They’re all carrying the same weapons, a heavy stake, sharpened to a point, except for the boy in front of her, who has a bat hanging from his fingers. It takes her a second to realize that her eyes aren’t tricking her, but the odd shape of the wood is from dozens of nails being driven into the end. “Tina’s thing.”
As if this night couldn’t get any weirder - Steve Harrington, King Steve, is staring at her like she doesn’t belong here.
“What just happened?” Chrissy asks and is a little surprised at how faint her voice sounds. Maybe the strange visions took that too. The four all look at each other and in that moment, Chrissy realizes a few things. That none of this is unusual for them, and that despite their various differences, they’re here working together.
“That,” the girl says, pointing down at the floor. “Was a vampire. We’ve been tracking him for a while. We were pretty sure that someone was working Loch Nora. Too many break ins lately. So I staked him.”
“Robin!” Mr Bauman says, looking put out. And a vague memory pushes itself to the front of Chrissy’s head. The Hawkins High band, in fresh green outfits and white gloves, a sea of faces…or perhaps not. Because the girl staring back at Chrissy, her gaze cool, is one of those people that she’s seen out of the corner of her eye on so many mornings.
“She just saw it,” Robin protests. “It’s not like we can hide it!”
“A little discretion might be advised,” Mr Bauman continues, looking tired. Chrissy kind of can’t blame him. She’s been involved in this mess for five minutes and she’s already exhausted. “It’ll do us no good if your position as the Slayer is revealed to the world by the school paper!”
“Chrissy’s okay,” Steve offers, thumping his bat against one of the mahogany side tables. “She won’t tell.”
“And we wouldn’t publish that anyway!” Jonathan says indignantly. Chrissy doesn’t stop to ask for any further detail - what is a Slayer anyway? - because she’s busy looking around. The rest of the house is quiet, no creaking of footsteps overhead.
“Where’s the other one?” she asks and is met by four very startled faces.
“What other one?” Steve asks, tilting his head.
“The other one,” Chrissy says and wraps her arms around herself. They’re all dressed sensibly, thick material prepared for the warmth and any oncoming attacks but she’s wearing a little black dress that brushes her thighs. “I saw…” she trails off, because she didn’t really see, did she? She never went around the back of the house.
Mr Bauman is looking at her with a strange expression. “And where exactly,” he inquires carefully. “Did you see that?”
“I don’t know,” Chrissy says weakly. “I was at the party and I noticed it was all dark over here. I knocked on the door and there was no answer.”
“Did you see two people?” Mr Bauman pushes. Chrissy licks her lips. She’s going to sound crazy…but what if she’s not? What if there really are two and there’s another vampire roaming free? There’s a party of kids next door, all too high on music and alcohol to be anything other than easy pickings.
“I saw two people come in the back door,” she says hesitantly. “They turned off all the lights and went upstairs…I can’t explain how I saw it but I swear, I-” Mr Bauman holds up a hand. There’s something oddly delighted about his face and she’s not sure she likes the satisfaction there.
“How interesting,” he says and moves across to her. “I thought your eyes looked a little bloodshot but I just thought that was from the party…does your head hurt? Eyes feel sensitive? Do you feel weak and disoriented?”
“What the fuck, Murray?” Steve asks, stalking across to where Murray is peering into Chrissy’s eyes. “Can we not dissect her?” But Murray has already taken a step back, looking triumphant.
“She’s a seer,” he says and Robin guffaws.
“She can’t be,” she says, looking back at Chrissy in disbelief. “She’s a cheerleader. I thought you said true seers are really rare…”
“Is it so hard to believe in Hawkins?” Mr Bauman asks, tucking his stake into his pocket. “She has all the signs. I don’t believe she went around the back of the house - chances are we would have seen her as we came in that way ourselves. And I doubt she was here much longer than a few minutes or the vampire would have found her sooner. So how did she see two vampires? And she has all the symptoms. It’s not an easy thing, receiving a vision. Excruciatingly painful, I’ve heard…and you definitely saw more than one?”
“There’s two,” Chrissy says, looking around at each skeptical face. She’s worried that they won’t believe her but they also just staked a vampire, so she finds that a touch unfair. “I saw two.”
“I fucking told you,” Steve says, sounding disgruntled. He sweeps his hair back from his face, a motion Chrissy must have seen hundreds of times. Normally he does it carefully, aimed at whatever girl has taken his fancy, but this is brisk, efficient.
“Well, sorr-ee,” Robin snaps back tensely. “I wasn’t expecting vampires to get a taste for rich people.”
“They’re vampires!” Steve says back incredulously, throwing out his arms. “They’re not picky!”
“Alright, children,” Mr Bauman snaps, effectively cutting off the argument. “That’s enough. We have bigger problems afoot here.”
Something about his tone is unsettling. She’s not sure what he’s doing here, like he’s leading three teenagers into battle. She gathers that Robin is something special, but the rest of the dynamics she hasn’t quite worked out yet. The loner, the misfit, and the jock, all here under the lead of the school librarian.
“I think she’s right,” Mr Bauman says, gesturing to Chrissy with the end of his stake. “It doesn't make sense otherwise. There would have been noise, some screaming. It wouldn’t be possible unless there were two.”
“Two for what?” Chrissy asks suspiciously and the room goes very quiet. Jonathan will no longer meet her eyes. Even Steve looks uncomfortable, an unhappy twist to his mouth. She takes off up the stairs before any of them can stop her, adrenaline pushing her legs to move faster than they ever have done before.
The terrible feeling earlier now made sense.
The Morrisons had gone to bed. They’re lying silently, side by side, Mr Morrison in pinstripes, Mrs Morrison in a flowered nightdress. They’re on their backs, faces still and peaceful like they hadn’t even known that they had died.
It was only the neat holes pierced in their necks, each one wearing a matching pair, blood beginning to dry and crust on their skin that gave away the truth.
The only consolation is that the music will ensure no one else hears her scream.