Chapter 1: The Hidden Girl
The alarm went off at six.
She turned it off before the second beep. She sat up. The mattress creaked. Gray light came through the curtains and landed on the floor in a thin strip. She stared at it for a moment, then looked away.
The apartment was small. One room, one window, one lock on the door. The walls were bare. There was a hotplate on the counter, a folding chair at a table that wobbled, and a box of Eggos in the freezer. That was enough.
She got dressed. Black jeans. Long sleeves. Always long sleeves.
She pulled the left cuff down over her wrist before she buttoned it. The tattoo sat underneath the fabric, hidden. Three numbers. Zero. One. One. She did not look at it. She did not need to.
Her name was Jane now. Jane Hopper. That was what the ID in her pocket said.
She took the bus to the factory at six forty-five. She stood on the line for eight hours. She did not talk to anyone. The women beside her had tried, at first. Small questions. Where are you from. Do you have family. She had smiled and shaken her head and they had stopped asking. That was better. Simple was better.
She came home at four. She made Eggos. She ate them standing at the counter.
Then she sat in the folding chair and waited.
The knock came at seven.
Three short. Two long. Pause. One short.
She opened the door.
Hopper stepped inside. He was bigger than the doorframe wanted him to be. He had a paper bag in one hand and his hat in the other. He looked tired. He always looked tired now.
"Hey, kid."
She stepped back. He came in. She locked the door behind him.
He set the bag on the counter. Inside was a sandwich, wrapped in foil, and a small carton of orange juice. He did that every time. She did not know why he kept buying orange juice. She did not like orange juice. But she never told him that.
"Work okay?" he asked.
"Fine."
"Nobody bothering you?"
"No."
He nodded. He sat down on the edge of her bed because there was only one chair. She sat in the chair. The room was quiet except for the traffic outside and the hum of the refrigerator.
"Hawkins," she said. "How is it?"
"Good. Quiet. Nothing happening."
"Joyce?"
"She's good. Will's good. Jonathan got a camera, walks around taking pictures of everything." He almost smiled. "Kid's weird but he's fine."
She looked at her hands.
"Mike," she said.
Something shifted in his face. It was fast. He caught it before it went anywhere, but she saw it.
"He's good," Hopper said. "He's fine, El. Getting on with things."
She did not say anything.
"You know how kids are," he said. "They bounce back. He's probably got his friends over every weekend, playing those games in the basement."
"Okay," she said.
She said it the way she always said it when she knew he was lying.
He stayed another twenty minutes. He talked about the drive, about the diner where he stopped for coffee, about a raccoon that had gotten into his cabin. She listened. She nodded in the right places. When he stood to go he put his hand on top of her head for a moment, heavy and warm, and then he picked up his hat and left.
The lock clicked.
She sat still for a moment.
Then she got up.
The radio was on the shelf beside the window. It was old. The dial was cracked and one of the knobs was held on with tape. She had found it at a thrift store two months ago and paid four dollars for it. It did not pick up any stations. That was not what she needed it for.
She set it on the floor in the middle of the room.
She sat down in front of it.
She turned the dial until the static came. White noise. Flat and constant. She closed her eyes and tied the blindfold around her head. It was a strip of black cloth. She had cut it from an old t-shirt.
She breathed in. She breathed out.
The static pulled her down.
The Void opened like a door with no hinges.
She was standing in nothing. The floor beneath her feet was a surface she could not see. The air was cold and still and smelled like nothing at all. Around her, darkness spread in every direction without end.
She thought of him.
She did not say his name out loud. She did not need to.
The image came slowly. Like a photograph developing. Shapes first. Then light.
A basement.
She knew it immediately. The low ceiling. The string lights. The posters on the walls, curling at the corners. The table with the campaign map still spread across it, figurines placed and forgotten. She had spent so many hours in that basement. It felt like another life. It felt like yesterday.
He was sitting on the couch.
He was not doing anything. Just sitting. His elbows were on his knees and he was staring at the floor. His hair was longer. He looked thin. There was a walkie-talkie on the cushion beside him and it was turned off.
She moved toward him.
She reached out her hand.
Her fingers touched static.
She pushed harder. The image rippled. He did not look up. He could not feel her. He never could anymore. She was behind glass, behind something she could not name, and she pressed her palm against it anyway because she did not know what else to do.
He exhaled slowly. His shoulders dropped. He picked up the walkie-talkie, looked at it, and set it back down.
She stood there and watched him.
Then the temperature dropped.
It was sudden. The Void did not have temperature, not really, but she felt it. A cold that came from behind her, from the edges of the darkness where the darkness got darker. The static in her ears changed. Lower. Wrong.
She heard an engine.
Distant at first. A deep, rolling growl that she knew. She had heard it before. On Starcourt's parking lot. In her nightmares. The sound of a V8 engine with a bad muffler and a driver who wanted you to hear him coming.
The darkness shifted.
She turned.
Something was moving at the edge of her vision. A shape. Tall. Broad-shouldered. It moved like it owned the space, like the space had already agreed to let it through.
"Hey, Princess."
She ripped the blindfold off.
She was in her apartment. The radio was in front of her. The walls were the same walls. The lock on the door was still locked. Everything was exactly where it had been.
Except for the ash.
It was falling from the ceiling. Slow and silent, like snow that had forgotten what color it was supposed to be. Black flakes drifting down and settling on the carpet, on the radio, on the backs of her hands.
She did not move.
She stared at her hands.
The ash kept falling.