chapter xv .
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                          MASON HAD NEVER STOLEN CANDY FROM A BABY, but taking Holly Wheeler's Lite-Brite straight out of her hands was practically one in the same. She could only let out a high-pitched, offended "Hey!" before Erica was shoving a candy bar into her hands.

     "For your understanding," she said hurriedly, then followed Dustin, Lucas, and Mason up the stairs to Nancy's bedroom.

     Mason threw the Lite-Brite onto the bed and Dustin began unpacking all its beads, shoving them into each individual hole so that the lights filled up the entire board. When he finished, Lucas rushed to the wall and plugged it in. It lit up immediately.

     "Okay, you guys seeing this?" Dustin shouted, seemingly to nobody.

     Mason was still on the verge of thinking this entire thing was a prank—Val being in 'the Upside Down', that whole crew being able to hear Dustin, communication through lights. It was all incredibly bizarre. But when certain portions of the Lite-Brite began to glow brighter than the others and energy began to thrum rhythmically, some part of Mason thought this was much too complex for it to be a prank.

     "Holy shit!" Erica exclaimed, and Dustin cackled loudly. Even Mason found himself breaking into a smile.

The lights began to dance around. Could the people on the other side see what Mason was seeing? Was it like some weird parallel ghost shit? He had no idea how the process worked, but he imagined Val and the others playing around with it, swirling their fingers through the lights.

"Okay, we're not moving it, but we're gonna unplug it!" Dustin called. He nodded to Lucas—he pulled the plug and immediately the lights went off. "Try it now!"

There came a moment in which absolutely nothing happened, and Mason was sure it had all been fake—a group hallucination. He was probably just going manic now that his sister was missing and he was hanging out with a bunch of Hellfire cultists. If it had come a moment later, Mason would have gotten up and left.

But suddenly, hesitantly, the Lite-Brite began to glow. It began with two lines—one horizontal and one vertical—and then another longways. H. The next was an I.

"Holy shit," Mason muttered, leaning closer to it. "That should be.. impossible."

"Hi," laughed Dustin, holding his head in disbelief. "Jesus, yeah, that worked!"

A moment later, more letters began to appear on the board. An S, a T, a U—and once those faded away, a C and a K. STUCK.

"They're stuck," Mason exhaled, peering at the screen with a furrowed brow. He scoffed lightly to himself. Minutes ago, he was pretty sure his sister was dead—and now here she was, speaking to him from an alternate universe on a child's Lite-Brite. "So they're stuck in this... Upside Down. Can't they come back through the way they came?"

Dustin looked to Mason, then glanced all around like he was waiting for a reply. "What happened to Watergate?"

                          "THE HELL'S A WATERGATE?" Steve muttered, brow furrowed at the board like it would provide an answer.

     "Because... it's in water," Robin pieced together, "and it's a gate."

     "Oh." Nancy's lips puckered in thought. "Um, no, it's..."

     She reached out to the glowing particles and began to spell out GUARDED. Only a few seconds later, Dustin's whimsically echoing voice flooded the room as he read aloud the letters Nancy was drawing.

     "Okay," Dustin called, "okay, yeah—we think we have a theory that can help with that!"

     "Genius child," Robin whispered.

     "That there's a gate at every murder site," Dustin's voice continued.

     Nobody said anything for a moment. Nancy looked around at the rest of them, blinking, forehead scrunched thoughtfully. She shook her head. "Does... anybody understand what he's talking about?"

     Val reached over Nancy's shoulder and drew a question mark in the glowing essences.

     "Seriously?" Dustin yelled. "How many times do I have to be right on the money before you just trust me?"

     "Jesus," Steve said, "this kid needs to get an ego check."

     "Okay," Nancy said, looking to Eddie, "so.. how far is your trailer?"

     "Seven miles."

     "Nancy," Robin said. "I know your house here is like, weirdly, creepily frozen in time and shit, but haven't you always had bikes?"

     Everybody looked to Nancy curiously. She raised a shoulder and frowned like it was a good idea. The rest of them moved to stand up and head for Nancy's garage, but Val stayed put.

     "Hang on a second," she muttered. She extended her fingers towards the light particles, twirling them around and spelling out a singular word. When she finished, she dropped her hand to her side and leaned in towards the glow, holding her breath. She heard Dustin sounding out the name in the other universe.

Then a moment later, Mason's voice came: "Yeah, I'm—I'm here, Val! I'm here."

She rolled back onto her heels, letting out a soft sigh of relief. She couldn't hold back the smile on her lips. "Thank God." She reached out traced one more thing into the lights, then waited impatiently for a reply.

                         MASON EXHALED A SHORT BREATH, sending a sideways glance to Dustin and Lucas. He scoffed lightly as if he found the whole ordeal ridiculous, but he couldn't hide the smile on his lips as he replied aloud, "Yeah, I love you, too, Val."

     The heart drawn in the lights dimmed, and the four of them jumped to action. They hurried down the stairs again and burst down the hallway towards where they'd left Max with the cops. When they rounded the corner, Mason in the lead, he extended an arm to stop the rest of them from rushing into the room—they would have been walking into a trap. Max stood off to the side, headphones to her Walkman on, back facing the circle of adults that were all conversing about her interrogation.

     "Max!" Dustin hissed, loud enough to catch her attention. The boys and Erica gestured wildly. "Come on!"

     With a shifty glance over her shoulder at the gang of adults, Max decided they were all deep enough in conversation for her to be able to slip away with no one noticing. She ducked her head and tip-toed off, quickly as her feet could take her.

     "Hard part's over," Dustin said as he, Lucas, and Mason took the bikes off the racks hanging in the Wheelers's garage, handing Max and Erica their own, then passing out the last three amongst themselves. Dustin opened the garage door, and they were off.

Mason had barely made it out of the garage before he heard Officer Callahan shouting down at them from Nancy's bedroom window: "Hey! Excuse me! No, get back here!"

But the kids just pedaled faster, standing up on their bikes to gain as much traction as they could. Mason flipped Callahan off without even turning around.

"I guess this is just a minor misdemeanor," Erica said as she took a pocket knife and slashed a hole in the cop car parked in the driveway. Mason let out an exhilarating laugh, glancing back over his shoulder at all of the parents piling out the front door, trying to chase their kids with Arthritic joints and clogged arteries. Peter and Sarah were by far the fittest of the group, but even their somewhat impressive speed couldn't compare to a bunch of healthy teens on bikes.

"I don't know the last time I rode a bike," Mason panted as the crew sped down Cornwallis and made a sharp turn onto Kerley, leading towards the trailer park. "Actually, I don't know the last time I broke the rules like this."

"Feels good, huh?" Lucas grinned. Mason found himself returning a smile, shaking his head and laughing at himself.

     "Feels good."

     The Forest Hills trailer park was exactly as Mason remembered it from years of impractical prank-pulling on its inhabitants—toilet paper, caution tape, smashing beer bottles. Those days were, safe to say, far in his past. No more immature jokes. No more assholery.

     Mason's eyes flickered to Lucas a few times before he finally opened his mouth and said what had been stuck on his mind for a few minutes: "Hey, man. Look, I know I was an asshole. I could've been a better teammate. Y'know, when you play on the wrong team, you don't learn sportsmanship or good form or anything. I'm sorry for that. After this is all over, I'm gonna drop from the team. Work on getting a better attitude, y'know?"

     Lucas's attention stayed on the road in front of him, but he shot Mason a warm smile. "Well, you're on the right track. All the people we're with right now live by good form and sportsmanship. So.. consider this your formal induction. Welcome to the right team, Mason."

Mason offered him a relieved nod. "Thanks, man. Hey, what would you think about starting our own basketball team? We could give Jason a forever-ban, only let non-assholes in."

     "Yeah," Lucas laughed, "alright, man. Sounds like a plan."

     They were still chuckling by the time they all rolled to a stop in front of a trailer Dustin claimed to be Eddie's—he wasted no time in throwing his bike to the side and booking it straight into the house. The trailer was still surrounded with caution tape, and it took Mason a moment to reassure himself that he wouldn't be arrested for breaking into an active crime scene, but he ducked beneath the yellow tape and followed the rest of them in.

     Inside was something out of a nightmare. Looking beyond all the obvious stuff, Mason counted at least six empty beer bottles laying around, a few cigarette butts, dirty clothes strung over the back of chairs. It was a pigsty compared to how Mason lived.

     His eyes landed on the center of the living room and widened in horrified fear. The carpet was stained with some sort of dark liquid—something that looked a lot like blood. Mason swallowed. "Is th—"

     "Chrissy's," Dustin confirmed. He stared at Mason for a second, then offered, "Sorry about your loss."

     Mason's lips pursed. He shook his head. "Thanks, man. We were pretty close."

     "Holy shit," Erica said, her head facing the ceiling. When Mason looked up, he was baffled as to how he missed it: A glowing rip in the ceiling, like one through space and time. Vines curled around inside of it. The view of whatever was on the other side was blocked by the slithering veins inside.

     Dustin picked up a broom and began to stab at the thing—of which Mason presumed to be the gate everyone had been talking about—until, with a bit of force, he ripped a hole right in the middle of it.

     "Oh, shit," Mason said, peering through the hole. On the other side was a mirror-image of the trailer he was standing in—if a bit darker and scarier. Staring up at them were the five teenagers he had left on the side of Lover's Lake: Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, Nancy Wheeler, Eddie Munson, and Val.

     "No way," Steve muttered, peering up at the rest of them. "H-hey, guys!"

     Dustin was cackling with something like satisfaction or surprise. "Hi! Hi, guys! Hey, it's us! HA! Bada-bada-BOOM!"

two updates in one day
bc i love you guys🫶
and also
its an apology in advance for what's to come. 🤣🤣