Chapter Text
Saturday, June 3rd, 2000
Hawkins, Indiana
Up until this morning, Jim Hopper had never seen a ghost.
As someone who’s had his fair share of run-ins with supernatural beings and entities, he finds it almost odd— kids with superpowers and monsters made of human flesh are real, but the afterlife isn’t? According to his doctrine, the one he spent years upon terrifying years gathering evidence for, if strange things are true, it must mean stranger things are possible.
And he’s a realist, after all; he’s never been much of a science guy, but even he knows about the principles of energy conservation. Nothing is ever truly gone, right? The amount of energy the universe holds within it cannot change over time.
That must mean his kids are somewhere out there.
Sara, she’s the one he lost first. He’d held her tiny body as she drew in her first breath, just as he’d held her when she exhaled her last. Back then, after he had wept like a baby on the floor of a New York hospital room miles away from home, all he could think about for months was the principle of energy conservation. Sara’s gone, but nothing’s ever truly gone, which means she’s just around the corner somewhere. Waiting. Lurking in the dark to haunt him.
He couldn’t wait to be blissfully haunted by the ghost of his dead child.
But Jim Hopper had never seen a ghost, the ghost of his dead daughter included, which hadn’t stopped him from waiting for her to show up one day and demand he avenge her death.
He’d spent years imagining what he’d say to her, if her ghost ever stopped by. I missed you. I’ve taken your picture with me everywhere I went. On the day I got married again, my wife whispered to me that you were watching. Were you watching us? Are you angry with me? I’m sorry if I ever let you down. I love you. I love you. I love you.
She’ll never be back, he knows. Her ghost won’t haunt him because ghosts are unfortunately not real.
But when Steve died, he’d tried wishing for a ghost’s visit again.
He was already retired at the time, living off of his well-deserved hush money, so it only made sense he wasn’t allowed anywhere near the formal investigation, given he wasn’t the Chief of Police anymore. “You know how much I owe you, Hop,” Powell had told him back then, “but you and I both know it’s better if you sit out on this one. Trust me, Chief.”
He’d trusted Powell, he truly did, but he couldn’t let Steve down.
Ever since the day of Steve’s disappearance, the Hopper-Byers living room had become a fully functioning war room; maps of Hawkins were printed out and hung on the walls, detailing the timelines of Steve’s whereabouts, and the whole house was buzzing and bustling with activity. There was no dull moment or a single second of peace. No one was ever on their own, and it was okay. It was great, even. They all knew the moment they were alone, they’d shatter into thousands of tiny pieces, and the only person who would have known how to patch them up and make them whole again was missing.
They all knew everything circled back to Steve.
Everyone who could go out and search for him had been out all day, and those who couldn’t remained in the living room, calling and questioning anyone who might have known anything, staying up for days and taking shifts sleeping.
Jim had never taken a moment off; he’d roamed Hawkins by foot, calling out the name of his son in all but blood until his throat was sore and his voice was scratchy.
But the week of searching turned into two, then three, and Steve was nowhere to be found. No trail, no marks, no breadcrumbs for Jim to follow.
Until the Van. The body. The funeral.
“I don’t think he’s dead,” Eddie had told him, a few days after they’d buried Steve six feet under. The grave was still fresh. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know, kid,” Jim had confessed. “Doesn’t feel like he’s gone. And nothing’s ever truly gone, it’s science or some other shit. It must mean something.”
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Eddie’d looked up at him. He was young back then, barely even twenty-five, but his eyes had a kind of older sadness to them, the blank expression of someone who’d lost everything. Jim’s mind had wandered, landing on a terrifying thought: What if it had been Joyce’s funeral? What would he look like, if he had to bury the love of his life and wasn’t allowed to kiss her goodbye?
He’d be angrier than Eddie was, that’s for sure; he’d be thrashing and kicking and screaming, clawing his way to the justice she deserved. But no, not Eddie Munson. Eddie had stood in the funeral home with his back straight and eyes hollow, silent like a statue, thinking so loudly that the sound of his gears turning filled the whole room with noise. He’d looked like he couldn’t stop thinking, thinking, thinking, and how could Jim live with himself if he didn’t even try to give the boy a few answers?
So Jim had shrugged, knowing he doomed them both to living half a life for the rest of their days, searching for answers they were not likely to ever find. “I don’t know. Can’t say for sure without seeing a body. Did they let you see the body?”
Eddie had shaken his head.
“They didn’t let me see it either. I say we keep on looking. Whaddaya say?”
And even now, a full decade of searching later, Jim hasn’t seen Steve’s ghost just yet.
He’s certainly tried imagining it, but it was never quite right. He’d see Steve’s Beemer rolling down the street, but it was always either too red or not red enough. He would hear Steve’s laughter echoing in the walls of the cabin, but it was never the right pitch. He’d see his image reflected in the mirror some mornings, leaning on the bathroom’s door frame with a shit-eating grin, but things were always just a little bit off— his smile, his eyes, his height, his hair. He was never really there, never really Steve. Jim’s memory provided him with the ghost of a stranger when he had begged it for the ghost of his son.
Jim’s grown older now. The belly he’d lost when he was a Russian prisoner in the Eighties has made a glorious comeback, unlike his sight— he’s gained some, he’s lost some. He’s got three different pairs of glasses now: one for reading, one for driving, and another one he refuses to wear all the time in between reading and driving.
He alternates between all three on the morning of June 3rd, when he reads the message waiting on his shiny new computer’s E-Mail once, twice, thrice.
From: C/Supt Timothy M. Jones
To: Jim Hopper
Subject: RE: Missing Hawkins ManDear Jim Hopper,
I know it’s been a while since you last asked around about this missing person of yours, but I saw this photo in today’s newspaper, and the resemblance to the man from your case is quite uncanny.
Could this be him?
I would be more than willing to help in any way you need, just let me know.Cheers (and good luck!),
Timothy Jones
Chief Superintendent
Metropolitan Force
“Joyce,” he calls. It’s a slow Saturday morning. Birds are chirping away peacefully, and the sun hangs low in the sky as it’s lazily lighting up the garden he and Joyce spend most days tending to. She’s out there right now, planting a seedling of an herb he’d die before learning to differentiate from other herbs. She raises her head as she hears her name being called. “Joyce!”
His wife meets his eyes, and her brows furrow as she catches a glimpse of his face.
“Hop, are you okay?” She asks, her voice muffled by the window separating them.
His eyes dart back to the computer screen. Timmy attached a scan of a newspaper clipping to the E-Mail, an article about a car crash on London’s M25, dated June 1st. Above the article, there’s a picture of a white car that lies trashed upside down on the road, a few ambulances in the background.
Timmy also had the courtesy to circle a paramedic in the picture with a red marker. He’s loading a stretcher onto one of the ambulances, his look determined. The paramedic’s hair is neatly trimmed, close to his scalp but not fully shaved. His glasses reflect the lights of the ambulances around him. He seems to be moving as the picture is taken, only slightly blurred, but it’s Steve; the moles on his cheek, the scar around his neck, the way he stands.
He’s a ghost, but he doesn’t look like one.
Joyce drops her garden trowel on the ground and rushes into the computer room, looking at the screen over Jim’s shoulder.
“Holy shit,” she curses.
“Yeah. Holy fucking shit.”
“This is big.”
“I know.”
“You gotta tell the kids,” Joyce says, rubbing a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Jim gravely nods. “I know, I’m just… not sure how.”
Joyce plants a kiss on the crown of his head. “Need me to hold your hand?”
“Oh, shut up,” He says, but his trembling hand reaches out to hold hers anyway. He grabs the phone from where it’s seated on the desk, dialing the same number he’s been dialing at least once a week for the last decade, always the bearer of no news at all.
The line beeps a few times, like a timer counting down to the inevitable detonation of a bomb. Jim chews on his lower lip, fighting the cowardly urge to hang up with each beep.
The line stirs to life abruptly, cutting a beep before its time.
“Munson-Buckley residence, this is Eddie,” comes Eddie’s voice. He sounds awake enough.
Jim knows that Eddie’s life won’t be the same after he speaks, so he savors this moment, the dying breath of the normalcy they all have been struggling to maintain since 1990.
“Hello?”
“Ed, it’s Hopper,” he says. He closes his eyes and breathes in deep. Joyce squeezes his hand.
“Hey,” the kid clears his throat, “is everything okay? Did anything happen? You sound funky.”
“Eddie, I… I think I have a lead. I have a lead on Steve.”
Something shatters and breaks on the other side of the line. Something else heals.
