Chapter Text
The first thing she registered was the taste of dirt.
Grit against her teeth. Earth thick beneath her tongue, as if she had been trying to swallow the forest whole. A wet wind moved the branches overhead, and she could’ve sworn it whispered her name.
Holly rolled onto her back slowly, like her body had forgotten how joints were supposed to work. Her dress, she didn’t remember putting a dress on last night, was wrinkled, streaked with mud that climbed her legs as if something had been pulling her by the calves. Damp leaves clung to her knees, her elbows, her hair.
It was early morning, where the sun hadn’t quite reached the horizon. The sky was soft and bruised, and she was lying in the center of the wound.
She blinked. Her vision swam.
This wasn’t the first time.
Her fingers curled against the ground, and she felt it again, the packed grit pressed beneath each nail. Thick, compact. Like she had been clawing at something in her sleep. She turned her palms up toward the brittle light; thin half-moons of dirt framed her cuticles, dark and grimy.
What did I do?
The question arrived without shape, without voice. But it was there all the same, impossible to ignore.
Her breath clouded. There was no snow on the ground, but she could see it anyway. Little white flakes drifting through her memory, settling over faces she couldn’t quite recall, burying something she wasn’t sure she wanted to dig up.
She sat up.
The woods were quiet. Too quiet. No birdsong. No crunch of distant tires on a road. Just wind. Just the rustle of dead branches, creaking softly as they scraped against one another.
She tried to remember. Not just last night. Anything.
There were impressions - thin, fragile traces that she couldn’t fully hold onto. A low voice, quiet enough to feel more than hear. A hand on her spine. Skin pressed to hers, warm and wrong. Something like tenderness. Something like hunger.
And then nothing.
Blank, cruel nothing.
She exhaled shakily. Her breath came out as sob she hadn’t given permission to exist.
Trees surrounded her in a perfect, impossible ring, like she had chosen this place or had been placed there. She didn’t remember walking, but her knees ached and her throat stung like she had been screaming for hours.
The sunrise pushed a little higher, thinning the shadows across the ground. She stood, legs trembling beneath her weight, and tried to orient herself. There was a clearing, then a path …or maybe a hallway. Were the trees actually walls?
Her chest tightened.
She should go home.
If home was still real. If she was still herself.
Her pulse stuttered, fear rising with a strange sense of knowing she wished she didn’t have. She wiped her palms on her dress, streaks of mud smudged against the pale fabric, and started walking, fast enough to pretend she wasn’t afraid but slow enough to hear footsteps if they followed.
They didn’t.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that they might. That someone was waiting for her to turn around.
She reached the tree line by the time the sun fully broke. Light washed over her face, warm, and normal, and… wrong, so wrong. Like the world was pretending nothing had happened.
Her house was somewhere down the road, in a neighborhood beyond the wood’s edge. She recognized the bend of it. The mailbox. The yard that had always felt small, squeezed tight around their running feet like it never expected them to grow.
It should have felt safe.
It didn’t.
She paused with her hand hovering over her front door handle, dirt still clinging beneath her nails, a somber reminder of what she’d been through. Her reflection stared back at her from the window by the door, wide-eyed, pale, hair knotted and tangled with brambles.
She didn’t look like someone who had simply slept in the woods. She looked like someone who had survived something - hollowed out by it, as if the life had already been drained from her.
Holly pressed her hand flat against the glass, and for a moment, just a breath-long moment, she swore she saw another hand meet hers from the other side. Pale, elegant fingers. The silhouette of a wrist she knew without knowing.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She turned away, but couldn’t make herself close her eyes. Couldn’t stop looking.
She opened the door quietly, stepping inside, and the glass drew her gaze again.
Just Holly. Just her own reflection, trembling and small in the pale morning light.
Her bare feet made no sound on the hardwood floors; the stillness told her the house was still asleep.
She stepped into her room, shut herself inside, and finally sank to her knees beside the bed.
Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
She should tell someone.
Tell Mom. Tell Nancy. Tell Mike.
But they’d ask questions she didn’t want to answer, or worse, questions she couldn’t.
Because she didn’t know why she kept waking up in the woods.
She only knew this:
Every time she tried to grasp the dreams she couldn’t remember, all that lingered was the memory of a voice sliding through her mind. Gentle. Patient. Unmistakable.
And though she could never remember the words when she woke, she remembered how wanted she felt.
And that terrified her more than anything.
The kitchen was loud in the way families were loud when they forgot to notice who was missing from the conversation. Holly sat cross-legged on her chair, cereal bowl pulled close, stirring the loops just to watch them spin. Her eyes flicked between her siblings, wishing she knew how to slip into their rhythm the way she used to.
Nancy was already dressed, hair curled just right, sleeve rolled up where she’d smudged ink while writing something private. Mike leaned against the counter, a waffle in one hand, shoelace untied, muttering about homework he definitely forgot he had. Their parents moved around the kitchen with distracted efficiency, a kiss on Mike’s head, a brief touch on Nancy’s shoulder, and good morning, sweetie spoken to Holly. It made her smile, though she wished there was just a little more to follow it.
For a moment she hesitated, then spoke before she could change her mind.
“You guys doing anything tonight?” she asked casually - or trying to be. “Like… maybe I could hang out with you?”
Mike paused mid-sip of orange juice. Nancy blinked once, surprised but thinking.
The moment stretched, a bubble where anything could happen.
Then Nancy smiled, warm but stretched thin. “I’ve got plans, Hol. Work, and then probably Jonathan.”
Mike stepped closer, tone genuine. “I’m grabbing dinner with the guys. We’ve been planning it for weeks.” He watched her face, searching for disappointment, softening his voice when he found it. “Next time? We’ll figure something out next time, okay?”
She nodded too quickly. “Yeah, no, totally. I wasn’t even asking to…like...I was just curious.” She swallowed her dejection down her throat with another bite of cereal.
She didn’t resent them. They weren’t cold or unkind. It was just that, when they spoke to each other, she could see how easily they understood one another - quick glances, unspoken words. When they spoke to her, it felt like she was always missing a piece, never quite catching what made their connection so easy.
Nancy brushed crumbs from her jeans, grabbing her bag. “See you later, Hol!”
Mike paused at the door long enough to ruffle her hair, soft, affectionate, hurried. Then he and Nancy were gone, matching footsteps fading down the walkway, leaving her with a half-finished bowl and the kitchen suddenly too quiet.
Holly rinsed her dish carefully, humming under her breath because someone should fill the silence, even if it was only her.
She wasn’t unhappy.
She just wished she was included too.
The walk to school was brisk and chilly, November wind rattling the bare branches against each other and sending dry leaves tumbling across the sidewalk. Holly kicked a rock along the curb for a whole block, naming it Gerald and racing it to the stop sign.
She watched a cloud shaped like a rabbit drift by, and a squirrel dragging a whole bagel across a yard.
That’s cool, she thought. Too bad there was no one else there to see them.
By the time she reached the school gates, her cheeks were pink, her fingers numb, and the crisp air had left her alert and oddly awake.
Holly hesitated at the entrance, adjusting her backpack straps, smoothing her hair, trying to craft herself into someone noticeable.
Maybe today she’d make a friend.
Maybe today someone would laugh at her jokes.
Maybe today she wouldn’t sit alone.
She stepped inside.
The hallway buzzed with students who seemed to fit effortlessly into their groups. Locker doors slammed, sneakers squeaked, backpacks thumped down the corridors in clusters. Holly wasn’t invisible, she was just easy to look past.
In science she knew the answer again. Her hand hovered halfway up, enough to be brave, not enough to demand attention. The teacher called on her anyway.
“Holly?”
The word startled her, and the answer tripped on her tongue. She started strong but tangled halfway through, words coming out wrong, meaning getting lost in the web. A couple students smirked, not malicious, just amused. The teacher moved on before she could fix it.
Holly stared at her notebook, cheeks warm. She could’ve gotten it right. In her head she had gotten it right. But in this world, where her voice trembled and her confidence faltered, knowing the answer just wasn’t enough.
She doodled in the margins. A boy holding an umbrella. A tiny dragon chewing the hem of her textbook. A raccoon wearing sunglasses. She shaded them carefully, refusing to look up, letting imagination fill the space where conversation didn’t.
By lunchtime, her earlier optimism had dulled.
The cafeteria was like the weather, loud, chaotic, uncontainable. Holly chose a spot at the far end of a table as always, unwrapping her sandwich carefully so it didn’t draw attention. A group of girls sat three seats away, close enough that she heard every joke, every secret, every muffled laugh. Close enough to watch them share fries, bump shoulders, lean toward each other with trust Holly couldn’t imagine being offered.
She ate slowly, a bite every couple minutes, stretching time like gum between fingers just to avoid finishing too soon and having nowhere else to be.
Someone walked past her, tray wobbling. Her old friend from last year, Jenna, brushed by, laughing with her group, eyes flicking toward Holly just long enough to make her heart catch, but then she was gone, swallowed up by the crowd.
Still, Holly wasn’t miserable. She found patterns in people’s shoelaces, counted freckles on her wrist, balanced grapes on her straw. She had a mind that stayed busy even when her world didn’t.
When the final bell rang, she walked out slower than everyone else, like she wasn’t quite sure where she was supposed to go now. She drifted toward the playground in the back, empty now that school was out.
She dropped her backpack in the dirt and climbed onto the left swing. The chain felt cold against her palms but the seat fit her like it remembered her weight.
She dragged her toe in the dirt, drawing a crooked heart out of habit, not meaning, just motion. The wind moved through the chains, a soft metallic groan.
Then, she pushed off gently.
Legs pumping.
Back and forth.
Slow, steady.
Breath matching rhythm.
Here, she could pretend she wasn’t waiting for someone to notice her.
Here, climbing towards the sky, she could imagine being braver, speaking without stuttering, grabbing someone’s sleeve and saying hey, want to hang out?
Here, she didn’t have to try.
She pushed herself just high enough to feel the faint lift in her stomach before she let the swing settle again. The sky was dull today, flat, winter-lighted, and the playground sat mostly empty. Kids laughed closer to the school building, but not here.
Here was quiet.
Footsteps approached, slow and precise, and she didn’t need to look to know who they belonged to. Nobody walked like Henry, like he was picking the exact place each foot should land.
She came to a steady stop as he stepped into her peripheral vision, hands folded behind his back, posture too straight for a man his age.
“Drawing something?” he asked, voice smooth as glass.
Holly glanced down, embarrassed to even be caught doing something so idle. “Just messing around.”
His gaze lingered on the skewed little heart.
“Is that for someone?”
She let out a breathy snort. “I barely talk to anyone. Who would it be for?”
Henry didn’t look away from the heart, not immediately. When he did, his eyes returned to her with a slow, deliberate shift.
“Not everyone needs to talk to be thought about,” he said.
An odd answer.
It left something buzzing in her chest… a prickling awareness. Like he knew something she didn’t. Like maybe he had someone in mind even if she didn’t.
Henry’s eyes slid toward the empty swing beside her. He didn’t sit immediately, he just looked at it for a moment, as if deciding whether it deserved him, then lowered himself with rigor. His movements were almost mechanical.
He didn’t start swinging. He just sat.
Holly kicked lightly, letting the momentum carry her a few inches forward and back. Henry stayed motionless, fingers resting on the cold metal chains like they belonged there.
“You seem upset,” he said.
His voice was gentle. Too gentle. Goosebumps rose along her arms.
She shrugged. “Everyone had plans today.”
“That bothers you.”
It wasn’t a question.
“A little,” she admitted. “Mike and Nancy never let me come along anymore. They won’t even tell me what they’re doing.”
Henry’s gaze flicked toward her, not warm, but focused. Sharpened.
“That must feel,” he paused, thinking deeply about something, “lonely.”
She nodded. He was right. He was always right, it was strange how often he put her thoughts into words before she even understood them herself.
“I’m used to it,” she said.
“You shouldn’t be.”
Something about the way he said it made her look at him fully.
His expression hadn’t changed, still perfectly still, lips a pale line, eyes unreadable. But there was something burning behind them. A hunger disguised as concern.
“You deserve attention,” Henry murmured. “More than they give you. People should see you. Should understand you.”
Holly paused for a second, not really knowing how to respond. The words burrowed under her ribs, warm and dangerous.
“No one really wants to be around me,” she whispered.
“I do.”
The swing chains creaked. Holly swallowed hard.
“You said that last time too.”
“Because it’s true.”
He didn’t smile. Not really. His mouth only twitched at the corners, like a smile was something he remembered from someone else and tried to mimic.
She found comfort in it anyway. She shouldn’t, some instinct deep down told her so, but she did.
Henry leaned forward just slightly.
“If you want,” he said soothingly, “I can be what they aren’t.”
Her pulse skittered.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you don’t have to be alone.”
His gaze held hers, unblinking, intent, like he was threading his voice into her thoughts, weaving himself in gently, delicately, intentionally.
“You have me,” he said.
A promise.
Holly felt her chest warm, her stomach twist with something like relief and fear tangled together.
“I like being around you,” she confessed.
A flicker crossed his face, not joy, but satisfaction.
“I know.”
Henry stood in one smooth motion, posture still perfect, hands slipping calmly into his suit pants pockets.
“Come find me again,” he said.
Not if you want.
Not maybe.
Just a command, soft but fixed.
And Holly, without thinking, nodded.
“Okay.”
She would go to him again.
She already knew that.
Holly sat on the living room couch, knees pulled to her chest, hair unbrushed, wrapped in one of the blankets that smelled like home. Her mother had left that morning with a worried hand on Holly’s forehead and a too-long look, You’re warm. You should rest.
Sick, or something like it.
Holly wasn’t convinced it was anything but exhaustion, but she didn’t argue. Staying home meant silence. Staying home meant space. And space was safer than school.
Soft, afternoon light slanted through the half-closed blinds, too gentle for how sharp everything in her felt. Her mug sat on the coffee table, steam long gone, tea the color of old pennies. She couldn’t remember making it. She couldn’t remember drinking it. The hours between morning and now felt erased, like someone had cut them out with scissors.
She blinked.
Just once.
Everything around her stayed calm, but her thoughts surfaced anyway, dark and uninvited.
How many times had she taken comfort in a voice that was never gentle for the right reasons? How many times had she gone willingly to someone who wanted to hollow her out?
She pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth, embarrassed even in the empty room.
A pathetic kind of love.
How stupid.
No, not stupid.
Desperate.
And that was somehow worse.
She hated that she’d let him matter. Hated that she had missed him. Hated that part of her still did.
Her stomach twisted, a sour churn of memory and revulsion. She saw flashes when she didn’t want to: the way he sat too still, spoke too softly. How safe he once felt. How wrong it was now to remember that warmth and know it was bait.
She whispered, just to break the silence,
“What’s wrong with me?”
Her voice cracked, small and rebelling against itself.
Because she should have known.
Should have run. Should have screamed. Should have told someone before all of it, before the Upside Down, before the tube in her throat, before the walls of rotting tendrils that had wrapped around her body like living rope.
Outside, life went on. A truck rumbled past. A sprinkler tick-tick-ticked across the neighbor’s lawn like a clock. Somewhere, a dog barked three times, loud, mechanical. She wondered how many people could hear it. A street of houses. A town. A whole world humming, oblivious to the fact that monsters had crawled on the other side of reality.
She wanted to scream that they had no idea.
Instead she breathed. Shallow. Controlled. Barely a person. Barely a sound.
Sometimes she wished she could tear the memories out of her like weeds.
Other times she was terrified to let them go, because they were the only proof she wasn’t crazy.
That he was real.
That what he did was real.
That she didn’t imagine the way his voice threaded through her thoughts, so understanding, so… meticulous.
Her eyes drifted to the framed photos on the wall, birthdays, vacations, smiles so easy they felt like fiction. Had she really been that happy once?
She thought of Will. He had survived, but his life had been twisted and battered ever since. They shared a wound, but not the same one. He never loved the thing that took him. He never wondered if he deserved the hurt. He never woke with dirt beneath his fingernails and kisses on his hair.
He would tell her none of it was her fault.
She didn’t think she would believe him.
The blanket slipped off one shoulder, pooling at her waist. Bumps prickled up her arm. She didn’t pull it back up. The cold grounded her better than warmth ever could.
She wanted someone to sit beside her without asking questions. Someone to hold the pieces together when she couldn’t.
She wanted someone who wasn’t him.
She wanted him.
The shame was thick. The betrayal heavier.
Because he hadn’t just hurt her.
He had made her feel loved.
She didn’t cry, not because she was strong, but because she felt wrung dry, like tears were a luxury she no longer produced.
The room hummed with afternoon light.
Unmoving.
Too calm.
Cruel in its normality.
Holly sat inside it, fractured but breathing, aware that a part of her was now gone forever.
She wasn’t safe.
She wasn’t healed.
She was just… here, and the sadness of that alone felt endless.