Chapter Text
In the early morning of November 7th, 1983, when the fickle weather bakes residents during the day and sends a chill through their homes at night, and dew collects on the decaying grass under the twilight just before dawn, Jonathan Byers lies still and heavy in his bed.
The sunlight streaming through the blinds paints the brown walls of his bedroom in gold, and the small, almost indiscernible flower details on the outdated wallpaper shine in the soft glow. He peeks one eye open at a time, eyelids heavy with sleep and the secondhand haze of Purple Palm Tree Delight still clouding his room. Dust particles glittering in the sun mix with the film in the air, and Jonathan reaches a lazy hand out to feel the specks with his fingertips. Haphazardly-applied caulk around the window has started to weather after years of humid Indiana summers, and the wind whistles as it seeps through the cracks. Goosebumps spread across his exposed arm from the draft, and Jonathan can see his breath when he shudders from the bitter cold. He must have forgotten to tack the spare bedsheet back up last night.
Based on the muted red 6:00 on his alarm clock, he has a good twenty minutes before Will needs to wake up. With eyes half open, Jonathan feels around for the end of the never-ending mound of blankets he has cocooned himself with, and once freed he stumbles out of bed, a pilled, scratchy throw blanket wrapped tightly around one of his legs.
The window would have, at best, been cracked open for a couple hours, Jonathan having only been asleep since 3:00, but the wood floors are bitingly cold to the touch. Jonathan walks up to it and, despite the corner of the bedsheet hanging loosely, it is closed. And even if it weren’t, the heaters in the hallway aren't exactly brand new, but they should've kicked on overnight. Jonathan stills to listen, and yes, the heaters are on. Their distinctive rattle becomes white noise around this time of year, but Jonathan can still pick out the sound.
Jonathan riffles around in his dresser for some jeans and warm socks, throwing the pairs he chooses on his bed. Yawning every couple of seconds, he often has to stop his search to wipe his burning, watery eyes. His nicest jacket is still on the dining room table from where he left it last night, so he pulls on a complementary shirt and peeks into the hallway.
The front door is wide open.
"Jesus Christ," Jonathan mutters under his breath, his nose numb and teeth chattering. He shoves the edge of the sock bundle into his mouth while he shimmies into his jeans. The fabric is bitter and prickling between his lips. He attempts to zip up his fly as he shuffles toward the door.
He stumbles through stepping into his damp-around-the-cuff socks. Jonathan can see the dark sky turning orange out of the doorway as he walks closer, and the frigid breeze nips at his skin. Through thick wool Jonathan can feel the slick morning dew and tiny wood splinters covering the floor.
The door is bent and shoved into the wall, the handle leaving a hefty dent in the wood paneling behind it. Jonathan peeks his head outside and sees that the wooden area around the exterior lock is caved in, and claw marks have been scratched down the old white paint of the outside doorframe.
Jonathan attempts to pull the door out of the wall, and it nearly comes off its hinges at the force of his grip. He stumbles backwards and narrowly avoids taking the door down with him.
By no means is Jonathan extraordinarily strong. He grew out of his squat, boyish frame the fortunate summer after seventh grade, but natural brawn is not something his father passed down to him. Jonathan doesn’t even work out outside of the mandatory participation in P.E. class. The most lifting he does is putting grocery bags into the cars of old ladies at Melvald’s.
He almost doesn’t believe what he’s seeing, his hands braced on the floor behind him and his jeans starting to dampen from the wet floor.
The door is just… destroyed, completely, as if something had barreled through and crushed the handle and lock in its haste to get inside. Jonathan just blinks at the scene. He rubs his eyes and yup, still broken.
“Mom? Will?” he calls, a loud yawn crawling out of his mouth. He moves to stand, his limbs still heavy and slow. The tiny pieces of wood his jeans collected fall off of him like snow as he walks toward the hallway.
No response. Nothing but the whistling wind and running water. He wipes his hands across his pants in an effort to clean them off, his whole body starting to shiver as the cold seeps down to his bones. Distantly, Jonathan can see light spilling out from under the bathroom door.
“Mom?” he says a little louder as he rounds on the door. Raising a hand to knock, Jonathan is caught off guard, and misses being hit by the door by an inch when it suddenly swings open, revealing his mom getting ready for work.
Joyce pokes her head out, a toothbrush hanging from her mouth. She’s wearing basketball shorts, Jonathan's shirt, and a blue flannel, her wispy hair clasped in her hand to keep out of her face. Jonathan doesn’t know if she’s worn her own clothes since Lonnie left.
She looks back into the mirror briefly, fixing her hair. Through a mouthful of light blue foam she mumbles, “What’s going on? It’s freezing in here. Why aren’t your pants buttoned?”
Right. He ducks his head as he fixes them.
She’s still staring at him when he picks his head back up, her brushing continued but slow. Jonathan hesitates, unable to put the situation into words. Actually, it feels like he can't put any thought into words. God, how much did he smoke last night? Maybe he should fake being sick so he doesn’t drive high with Will in the car.
Joyce snaps by his ear to pull him out of his thoughts. She throws up a hand and spins it to urge him to answer.
“The door… it’s broken. Like, bad,” he settles on. Smooth. She definitely won’t go through Jonathan’s room now.
Her eyebrows furrow. She spits out her toothpaste and snorts, “What do you mean it’s broken? Why are you acting weird? Are you sick? It’s so cold in here.”
At a loss for words again, Jonathan just looks between her and the end of the hallway. She puts her hands up in a placating gesture, then wipes her face with a towel. Jonathan waits patiently for her to finish, and she follows him out to the living room after turning the light off.
She freezes, her eyes widening and her jaw dropping at the state of their front door. “What… What am I even looking at?!”
Immediately, she’s in a flurry of panic. She starts pacing back and forth, dumbfounded at the situation. She grabs the broom out of the closet to sweep up the wood chips, but sets it down once she realizes the floor is slippery from the cold. The broom lands on the floor with a thunk as she spins to grab the paper towels out of the kitchen.
She sits on the floor and attempts to clean the mess. Jonathan kneels down to help, the wood poking through the canvas of his jeans. In her efforts, her arm hits the door and more wood splinters sprinkle onto the floor.
Sighing, her hands twist into her hair, her carefully curled bangs pushed this way and that. Suddenly, she picks her head up, snapping her fingers in thought and looking over both shoulders. “Jonathan, where’s the- where’s the dog?”
“I have no idea,” Jonathan says. The dog is oddly quiet.
Joyce shakes her head, standing up and walking back toward the hallway. “Will!”
Jonathan turns back to the door. Something big would’ve had to slam into the door for it to look like that. Maybe a black bear broke in. There's black bears in Indiana, right? Maybe it smelled whatever Joyce or Will ate when they got home last night. Or maybe it ate Chester. It’s about his time anyway.
“Where’s Will?” Joyce asks while rushing out of Will’s room, her voice steely and his blue backpack in her hand.
“He’s not in his room?” Jonathan deflects, dread starting to gather in his gut.
Joyce’s voice takes on a note of panic. “No! Where is he? He was supposed to come home last night!”
“Do you think a bear broke in?” Jonathan supplies unhelpfully.
His mom gasps, lightly pinching him on the arm. “Don’t insinuate your brother got eaten by a bear! What’s wrong with you?”
Jonathan raises his hands. “He’s probably still at the Wheeler’s, Mom. The door could just be a coincidence. Doesn’t rule out a bear. It could’ve eaten Chester.”
Joyce takes a deep breath. Stuttering in exasperation, she spits out, “What?! A bear didn’t eat your brother or the dog! Go see if his bike is in the yard. I’m going to check all of the rooms. If he’s hiding I’ll find him, and if he’s at Castle Byers his bike would be outside, right?”
“Right,” Jonathan agrees. She nudges Jonathan toward the broken door, and steps back down the hallway while shaking her head.
Jonathan lets his limp body rock at the contact before turning to grab his jacket off of the table. He slides on his mother’s worn slippers and braves the nipping fall air. He hadn’t seen Will’s bike when he had first stepped out of the house that morning, its usual spot vacant in his memory. He so badly wants to believe that Will is home and just hiding, so much so that before his eyes fully adjust to the brightness of the rising sun he, for a quick second, sees the red metal leaning against the front post of their deck.
Of course, no such color is there. No such bike is there. Nothing except a white post and autumn breeze.
Jonathan turns and sees his mother standing at the end of their hallway. The panic on her face overrides Jonathan’s blissful haze, and his bottom lip starts to quiver.
“Mom!” he calls, practically sprinting back into the house.
Joyce meets him halfway, wrapping him in her arms.
Jonathan doesn’t register his own mouth moving a mile a minute in an endless stream of hysteric word vomit until his mother’s calming shushes in his ear and careful touches on his back break through to him.
“He’s somewhere, okay? Lonnie has him. Or Karen or Sue or Claudia or someone. Okay? We’ll find him. He’s okay. He’s okay,” she says, running her fingers through Jonathan’s overgrown hair until the only thing he can sense is his mother’s cotton t-shirt and the smell of her perfume.
After what feels like milliseconds she pulls away, tears gathering in her eyes and her hands pressed together by her lips. “I’m going to call Karen. I need you to find the number for the school in case he biked there and forgot his bag. If I’m not off the phone I want you to check Castle Byers. Just because the bike- it doesn’t mean he’s not there. I’ll worry about Chester, okay?”
Jonathan nods. There’s about one million slips of paper stuck to the fridge with magnets and tape, all of them different sizes with different fonts, logos, and colors. Not to mention the plethora of drawings Will’s has made over the years stuck on every available inch of the bumpy plastic that doesn’t prevent the door from opening. The ones on the fridge are his “mediocre at best” works- the ones Will isn’t very fond of. The really good pieces, and all of them are good in Jonathan’s perspective, but specifically the ones even Will likes, are hung on the walls in neat little frames.
His mom greets Mrs. Wheeler as he searches. Jonathan imagines sorting through all of the little slips of paper and putting them in organized stacks with categories and shit when he finds the slip for the school and waves it at his mother in triumph.
“He’s not with you?” he hears her ask. Her voice waivers and she clasps a hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs. Jonathan wraps himself around her arm, placing his head on her shoulder. The leftover tears on his cheeks melt into her flannel.
“Did he go home with Claudia or Sue? No?” Joyce continues, “Okay. No, everything is fine. He must’ve just left early. Okay. Thank you, Karen.”
She hangs up and pats Jonathan on the cheek. Her eyes close when she kisses him on the forehead, and they don’t open when she speaks, “Change of plans. I need you to find Chester. I will get Will from Castle Byers because if I don’t I’m going to lose my mind.”
He sinks into her hold for a second. “Okay.”
Jonathan, he realizes quite quickly, doesn’t want his mom to check Castle Byers. He doesn’t want her to check Castle Byers because the little part of himself tucked into the back of his brain, the one that couldn’t shoot the rabbit or close the door quiet enough, knows that for people like Jonathan and Joyce and Will, catching a break is never in the cards. The little part that knows once she walks into the woods and doesn’t see his little brother tucked away and safe that she’ll never be the same- that none of them will ever be the same.
They both know that Will won’t be there. They knew it as soon as they saw Will’s backpack clutched in his mother’s hand.
But Joyce gets on her coat anyway. Well, Jonathan’s coat. She digs around for her boots and Lonnie’s hat and ignores the fact that the jacket Will wore to the Wheeler’s isn’t in the closet.
Jonathan solemnly pushes open the side door and it protests with a drawn out squeal. He can’t look at her face anymore, not when they both know.
Bizarrely, Chester is in the yard. The mangy old dog, for the first time in its life, is silent, staring solemnly at the shed. Jonathan grabs him by the collar and turns to tug the dog inside when he catches something out of the corner of his eye.
Blood. Red and so shiny it almost looks like painted metal. Right in front of the shed door. Not a significant amount, but blood nonetheless.
Stunned to silence, Jonathan lets Chester go and walks closer toward the shed. Chester starts to howl, a frantic and yipping sound. His mother’s slippers catch dirt that grinds under his heels. He can’t feel anything but the drying of his wide open eyes, the chill of the air mixing with the tear tracks on his cheeks, and the earth and wood sifting in between the gauges of his thick socks.
It’s just as damp and musty as Jonathan remembers, opening the door with shaking, cold fingers. Lonnie’s old shotgun is on the ground, shells surrounding it. And, to Jonathan’s horror, a shred of Will’s little, puffy coat is caught on a nail sticking out of the floorboards. Jonathan’s head swims.
“Mom! Mom!” he calls, his throat suddenly dry. He can’t be in there anymore. “Mom!”
Joyce rushes out of the house. “What? What is it?”
Jonathan shakes his head, running toward her and grabbing her by the shoulders, his fingers clutching the fabric of his own coat. They can’t pretend anymore.
“Call 911,” he pleads.
-
At 9:30 p.m. on November the 6th, twelve-year-old Will Byers left the Wheeler residence on his BMX bike, which he abandoned on the side of the road halfway through his estimated one-hour-long bike ride. It was here, at the intersection of Cornwallis and Kerley, sometime between the dark hours of 10:00 p.m. on November the 6th and 12:00 a.m. on November the 7th, where the young boy ran through the woods toward his home.
To the discretion of the Hawkins Police Department, the exact circumstances of the boy’s disappearance are elusive, but it is known that when Will Byers entered his residence between 12:00 and 6:00 a.m., he did not enter alone.