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Billy woke up gasping. He was on the floor of his bedroom, shirtless, and his heart was pounding so fast he felt like he was about to die. He did die, he was torn to pieces, punched full of holes, his ribs caving in and his intestines torn out of him and blood, blood, blood hot and thick and everywhere and everything was pain and terror and fury and the burning, burning, burning determination to not let it pass because Max was watching, Max was there, Max was in danger, Max was—
Billy pushed himself upright. He curled up over his knees, heaving in breath after painful breath. He was in his room. He was in one piece. He was—he held up a hand and flexed his fingers, dug desperate claws into his thigh, dissolved into hysterical laughter from the giddy awful relief. He was alone in his body, alone in his mind, he was free, he might be dead but at least he was free.
After a little while he looked up. Looked around. There were shirts strewn on the bed. The clock on the dresser read 6:38. There was music playing, which he didn’t actually notice until he saw the cassette player was going. Scorpions, Rock You Like A Hurricane. The song ended while he stared at the spinning tape, and the next one kicked on. Billy Idol, Rebel Yell.
This was…this was the ‘getting nasty tonight’ mixtape. Billy looked around again, in growing bafflement. He was halfway through getting dressed. His hairspray was uncapped in front of the mirror.
He lurched suddenly to his feet and raced for the hallway, almost tripping over his feet in his haste. He half-fell onto the wall in front of the calendar, bile rising in his throat even before he saw the date.
June 29th.
He was getting dressed to meet Mrs. Wheeler at the Motel 6.
It could be wrong. It could. Only he knew his sainted fucking step-mother was downright neurotic about keeping the stupid calendar up to date, and anyway he remembered seeing the calendar flipped to July. He remembered things that hadn’t happened.
That wouldn’t happen.
Billy sank to the floor, turning as he did so his back was to the wall. It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t. None of it was real, anyway, there was no way any of it could be real. It was all just a fucked up…dream, or hallucination, maybe he slipped and hit his head and his brain misfired in every possible direction at once.
He didn’t feel for a lump or a bruise. He didn’t need to check. He was fine, anyway, he’d walked off plenty of bruises before. Just because this one came with a side order of sickening nightmare didn’t mean he had to be a pussy about it.
Billy shoved himself to his feet and went back to his room. He cranked up the volume. He got dressed. Not in the leather jacket he’d worn last ti—in the dream.
It was just a dream.
He got dressed. He fixed his hair. He put on cologne. He went to the car and gripped the steering wheel in the dark, hard enough his hands ached, and talked himself out of going back inside and hiding under the bed.
He turned the key in the ignition. He pulled out of the driveway. He drove to the motel. He took the long way, through downtown, instead of cutting through the woods and going past the abandoned steel mill. He was already late anyway.
The motel was deserted. Billy didn’t bother with the front desk, he just went straight around back to the pool. Mrs. Wheeler wasn’t there yet. He lit a cigarette and paced, weaving between the plastic lounge chairs, around and around the aquamarine glow of the pool.
Eventually he realized this was hardly the cool, sexy image he wanted to be portraying whenever Mrs. Wheeler turned up. He tossed the cigarette to the ground with a growl of frustration, stripped down to his boxers, and plunged into the pool.
He did laps. He did laps for a while. He lost track of time. By the time he dragged himself out of the pool, worn out and settled in his own skin from the exercise, he’d realized two things.
Firstly, Mrs. Wheeler wasn’t going to show. Whatever, fuck that bitch anyway. Secondly, it had just been a nightmare. Just a freaky, fucked-up nightmare. It wasn’t real. It didn’t matter.
So Billy went home. He cranked up the radio as high as it would go and bellowed along, loud enough to drown out his fears. And he took the short way, because he wasn’t crazy, and only crazy people let their stupid baseless fears control their lives like that.
Something leapt out at his car, cracking his windshield.
Billy swerved off the road and hit a tree. His head slammed against the wheel. Starbursts clouded his vision. The world swooped and spun around him.
Billy kicked the door open. “You want a fucking piece of me?” he roared into the night.
The night was silent. There weren’t even crickets. The air was heavy with the lingering heat of summer.
“I’m not scared of you,” Billy yelled. “You’re not real! You can’t fucking touch me!”
The night growled.
The funny thing was, it really did feel like being in a nightmare. Time moved strangely, sluggish and soupy. Sometimes Billy blinked and found that whole minutes had gone by—and he’d gone with them, getting dressed and getting food and getting in the car in strange snapshot stutters, as if only a few moments out of every hour were real.
He didn’t actually decide to go to work. He had the uncertain sense that he shouldn’t, that something bad would happen if he did. He found himself at the pool anyway.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t control himself. He wasn’t trapped in his mind while his body moved without him. He knew what that felt like, though he couldn’t remember why, and this wasn’t that. Yet.
He was just going through the motions of his own life without entirely choosing to. Dread was laced through every moment, disconnected from anything that was happening, and he was disconnected from the dread, acting as if it wasn’t there even as it grew so thick it felt like it was clogging his lungs.
He tried to fight it. He’d tried before, too. It wasn’t any easier the second time.
Billy woke up gasping. He was on the floor of his bedroom, shirtless, and his heart was pounding so fast he felt like he was about to die. He did die, he was torn to pieces, punched full of holes, his ribs caving in and his intestines torn out of him and blood, blood, blood hot and thick and everywhere and everything was pain and terror and fury and the burning, burning, burning determination to not let it pass because Max was watching, Max was there, Max was in danger, Max was—
Billy pushed himself upright. He curled up over his knees, heaving in breath after painful breath. He was in his room. He was in one piece. He was—
Deja vu was its own form of dizziness. The precise inverse of thinking you’d reached the end of the stairs and finding nothing but air beneath you. But what was one more wrongness overlaid over the seemingly familiar world? What was one more nightmare nested within a nightmare?
Billy picked himself up off the floor eventually. He got dressed. He fixed his hair. He put on cologne. His eye caught on the calendar on his way to the car, and he shuddered.
He stood by the car a long time, one hand on the door, staring at the unbroken windshield.
He turned around and went back inside. He dug up a bottle of gin from the stash behind the loose panel in his closet. He drank himself to sleep.
Billy woke a little before dawn, parched and hungover and desperately in need of a piss. He’d had nightmares. Confused, formless things, all helpless terror and blood and fury and the horror of not even being able to look away.
It hadn’t been real. It couldn’t have been real.
Billy crept out of the house as the sun broke over the horizon. He drove aimlessly for a while, killing time until the first diners were open. It didn’t sate the restless jittering in his bones.
It hadn’t been real.
He ate at a diner. He ambled down the street, hands in his pockets, fighting down the itching urge to break into a run. He turned a corner and saw the mall, looming suddenly over everything in its shadow, and almost threw up.
That was around when he got angry. It hadn’t been real, none of it was fucking real, so what goddamn right did it have to be haunting him? Nightmares were supposed to dissipate in the dawn like mist.
Billy was used to anger. He welcomed it. He thrived on it. Nothing made him feel alive like fury thrumming through his veins, electric and wild. He wrapped himself up in the rage until it was a thick barrier between him and anything that ever dared to make him fear, and then he did what anger does best: he went looking for something to hit.
It wasn’t fucking real. He’d torch that whole goddamn building if he had to.
Billy woke up gasping. He was on the floor of his bedroom, shirtless, and his heart was pounding so fast he felt like he was about to die. He did die, he was torn to pieces, punched full of holes, his ribs caving in and his intestines torn out of him and blood, blood, blood hot and thick and everywhere and everything was pain and terror and fury and the burning, burning, burning determination to not let it pass because Max was watching, Max was there, Max was in danger, Max was—
This had happened before.
Billy pushed himself upright. He curled up over his knees, heaving in breath after painful breath. He was in his room. He was in one piece. He was fucking doomed, every single time it happened the exact same way, how many times would he have to watch his own hands doing unspeakable things, how many times did he have to fucking die—
Billy clawed his way up onto the bed and collapsed on the haphazard pile of shirts. He curled around the knot of horror in his gut and shook with silent sobs.
It had been years since Billy had cried himself to sleep, but he still remembered how to do it without making a sound.
Billy crept out of the house as the sun broke over the horizon. He drove aimlessly for a while, killing time until the first diners were open. It didn’t sate the restless jittering in his bones.
Alright, so it had been real. Maybe. Real enough, anyway. Real enough that he wouldn’t be going to the goddamn steel mill again, that was for sure. Which…would solve the problem, right? It had started at the abandoned steel mill every time.
No steel mill, no evil flesh monster. Easy as that.
Billy didn’t go to work. Called in sick, didn’t bother faking a cough. He was pretty sure that if he saw Heather right now, he’d puke. Or maybe punch her. Or maybe kill himself.
He got on the highway and gunned it for the horizon. He rolled the windows up and let the sun bake him through the windshield, and reveled in the stifling heat.
Billy stayed away from the abandoned steel mill. He stayed away from the pool—so what if he cut work for a few days, no one actually cared, and his wallet could take the hit. He stayed away from Heather. He stayed away from the mall.
He stayed away from Max. He still remembered her face, hard with hatred, as she told one of her stupid little friends to turn on the sauna and burn him.
He still remembered her crying as she watched him burn. He was pretty sure it was the first time he’d actually seen her cry.
Billy stayed away from all of it. He killed time cruising around town, drinking in the woods, and screaming down the highway with the radio as loud as it’d go when the restlessness got too bad.
After a couple days he could almost believe again that it wasn’t real. When he ran into some of the guys from the basketball team, he put on a smile and hung out for a while and almost didn’t feel like his skin didn’t fit right.
He was safe. Real or not, he was safe. He’d dodged it. He was alone in his own head and it was going to stay that way.
Still, when the guys decided to catch a movie at the mall, Billy begged off. Made up a lie that he forgot as soon as it fell from his lips, plastered on a picture-perfect grin to match it, and stuffed his hands in his pockets to hide the way they trembled.
It was a little gratifying how long it took to convince the guys that no, he really couldn’t go, they should just go without him. He’d worked hard for his spot as top dog in this shithole town, after all. But he leaned against his car and kept the grin on till the guys gave up and went, and then kept it on a little longer just in case.
He turned away and came face to face with Tommy Hagan. He and his girlfriend—Cassie? Candy?—were leaning against each other and watching him with matching smirks. Billy flinched at the sight of them. He puffed up his chest at once, daring Tommy to say a fucking word.
Tommy just held up a little ziploc bag full of weed. “Wanna go get stoned at Benny’s?”
“Fuck, yes.” It came out a little too heartfelt, but Billy couldn’t find it in himself to care.
Candy popped her bubblegum and grinned.
The husk of Benny’s Diner was empty in summer, with no championship games to celebrate or essays to dodge. They had the place entirely to themselves.
The girlfriend giggled and jumped and generally made a spectacle out of pulling out a joint and flinging herself on the couch. Her top was cut very low and her shorts were miniscule. Billy paused halfway across the room to enjoy the show.
Tommy got him from behind with a pipe to the head.
Billy woke on the floor of the steel mill, trussed up and helpless. He screamed, and screamed, and it did no good at all.
Billy woke up gasping. He was on the floor of his bedroom, shirtless, and his heart was pounding so fast he felt like he was about to die. He did die, he walked calmly to the abandoned steel mill and walked calmly down the stairs into the dark and walked calmly toward the huge monstrous spider of squelching flesh and his steps never faltered even as everyone in front of him burst, collapsing into bubbling piles of gore that oozed forward in awful spurts, dragging their bones along with them.
He’d watched it dispassionately, knowing the same thing was about to happen to him and serenely unconcerned. This was right. This was what was meant to happen. He’d walked calmly until the simmering wrongness in his bones boiled over and he dissolved into something that wasn’t capable of walking anymore, and after that, mercifully, he remembered no more.
Billy pushed himself upright. He curled up over his knees, heaving in breath after painful breath. Maybe he should just leave Hawkins. Put this whole shithole in his rearview mirror and floor it. He was legally an adult. His dad couldn’t technically stop him.
Not that his dad had ever worried about petty little things like laws before, not when it came to parenting. Still, a life spent looking over his shoulder would be better than dying in the thrall of that… thing.
Billy clawed his way up onto the bed and collapsed on the haphazard pile of shirts. He turned to lay on his back and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. Tears slipped slowly down his temples and soaked into the bedsheets.
He fell asleep eventually, and drifted fitfully from nightmare to memory to nightmare again, all of it blurring into one awful smear of wrongness. He woke with Max’s face hauntingly stark in his mind’s eye, crying as she watched him burn. That hadn’t happened last time, but it had happened every time before that, every time he was the monster’s first…the first.
She’d known what he was. She and her stupid friends had lain a trap for him, for it, and they’d done it in the sauna because they’d known he would burn.
They’d known. They’d known.
Billy surged from the bed. He was going to slam Max against the wall and shake her until some fucking answers fell out. How had she known, what did she and those little snots have to do with all this, why was this fucking happening to him, why did he keep fucking dying—
Billy opened his bedroom door silently, and he ghosted down the hallway on cautious feet. He knew better than to make noise while his dad was asleep. He’d learned that lesson so long ago that it wasn’t a conscious decision anymore, just ingrained habit. He didn’t even notice he was doing it till he was standing at Max’s door, one hand on the knob.
The realization froze him in his tracks. If his dad woke up and found him in Max’s room…
All Max would have to do was scream.
He stood in the doorway, vibrating with frustrated wrath. There were answers right there on the other side of this fucking door. That little shit knew what was going on.
And she’d tried to kill him over it. Or—was going to try. Billy’s hand tightened on the doorknob. She was going to lock him in a sauna and burn him alive, and then when it didn’t work, that girl would—
A memory of fear lanced down Billy’s spine and turned his blood to ice. He’d forgotten till just now about that girl. But it wasn’t just in the nightmares that she’d crushed him in midair and thrown him through a wall. Those were memories. Those were real. That girl—whatever she was, the thing in Billy had recognized her. Had feared her, loathed her, relished the taste of her pain and the prospect of her death. She wasn’t human. She couldn’t be human. She was…
She was Max’s friend. She and Max were working together. And sure, they were working against that thing, but that didn’t mean they’d bat an eye before killing Billy to make sure it stayed dead. Max had cried, seeing him burn. No one else in that room had shed a tear.
Maybe Max and the girl weren’t actually close. Maybe Billy could corner Max and demand answers, and the girl wouldn’t find out about it, wouldn’t hunt him down. But even if that were true, that fucker Harrington had rammed Billy with a car, and Nancy Wheeler had fired a pistol at his head. There was no shortage of people who were, it turned out, ready and willing to put Billy in the ground. All Max would have to do was ask.
And if he’d ever had any doubt that Max would do it, that doubt had died six months ago, when she jabbed him with a tranquilizer and then stood over him with a nail-studded bat, ready to maim him with it or worse.
She’d cried while he burned, but she’d burned him anyway.
Billy let go of the doorknob. He slipped silently down the hall back to his room. He gently shut the door.
He was going to have to be smart about this.