Just Call My Name (And I'll Hear You Scream): Chapter 3

A Stranger Things Fanfic

Trigger warning: mentions of child abuse

Eddie graduated.

He had finally done it. Finally made it out of this hellhole that sucked out six years of his life. His friends shouted from their various seats, his freshmen (Mayfield included) cheered, and Nancy and Robin waved and clapped from their place with the other graduates. It felt . . . good.

Then, on the way to the truck, Wayne clapped his hand over Eddie’s shoulder, still covered in that horrid robe, and muttered, “I’m proud of you, son.”

Eddie blinked away the tears in his eyes.

The news didn’t go over well.

“We’re leaving again?” Will whined. “We haven’t even been back that long.”

“Papa is dead,” El pointed out. “Why do we have to leave?”

“Brenner wasn’t the only one looking for you,” Hopper said from where he had sprawled back across the couch after hanging up on Owens. Joyce sighed. She had finally gotten Hopper back, and they were home (because Hawkins was home, no matter how much horrible stuff had happened) and they still couldn’t rest.

Jonathan folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “Yeah, El, remember the helicopters? Those weren’t Brenner’s people. And the people who shot up the house in California definitely weren’t worried about accidentally hurting you.”

Joyce flinched. She still couldn’t believe she had just left the kids to deal with all of that on their own. She had never even considered that they might be put in danger when she had gone.

“It’ll only be for a few weeks,” Hopper continued. Joyce had thought he was acting strangely calm about the whole situation, but it hit her suddenly how tired he looked. She wondered if he had been sleeping. “Besides, the place he’s got is probably nicer than this. Maybe we’ll actually have a little room to move around,” he finished.

“At least we’ll all be together.” Everyone turned as Joyce spoke for the first time. “I mean, that’s the important thing, right? We’ll all be together, and then we’ll be home in no time.”

Eddie had never been an organized person, but ever since his little chat with Nancy Wheeler, he’d given it a try. It worked for her, maybe it would work for him.

He didn’t have his own calendar or even a decent notebook to use (all his notebooks were already full of DnD notes and song lyrics), but he wrote little to-do lists for the day on whatever paper he could find, full of activities to keep him busy and in some semblance of a routine since school had ended. (He felt ridiculous trying it and he did his best to make sure Wayne never found those little scraps of paper.)

The problem was that his lack of organization applied to his room as well. (Except his collection of tapes. That was easier for some reason.) His little lists tended to slip through the cracks and fall into the hands of the little gremlins that collected stray coins, cigarettes, and single socks even before the morning was over, so he had to remember everything he’d written, which didn’t work nearly as well as he hoped, and often he discovered he had forgotten something important hours later.

Thursday, he lost his list in record time and spent the entire evening watching tv with Wayne, bouncing his leg, and feeling like he was forgetting something important.

Whatever he had forgotten, he was fairly sure being kidnapped by ghosts was not it.

When the knock came, he leapt up almost before he realized why. “I’ll get it.”

He swung the door open and looked up at the man on the step, then nearly fell over backwards because he had already seen one dead person come back to life, and he had hoped to go the rest of his life without seeing another.

“Hop–Hopper?” he stammered. “But you’re–”

“Dead?” the man finished. “Yeah, I thought so too.”

Eddie didn’t realize Wayne was behind him until he heard his uncle curse. “Jim . . . how?”

Hopper shook his head. “I can’t explain that, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t come to catch up either. I have to get out of town for a while and I need Eddie to come with me.”

“Wh–what? I can’t just leave.” He could. He had been dying to ever since he was old enough to understand why people stared. The protest had come out automatically, more because that had been the case for so long.

“Only for a few weeks, kid,” Hopper said. “Then you can come back. If you want.” That man knew him far too well.

“There any reason for this, Jim?” Wayne asked, folding his arms. “You disappear for nearly a year, we thought you were dead, and now suddenly you show up and try to take my boy who-knows-where.”

Hopper answered, but he directed it to Eddie. “It’s about that tattoo on your wrist.”

The man couldn’t have shocked him more if he’d dumped a large bucket of ice water over Eddie’s head. Eddie shivered and clutched his left wrist. No one was supposed to know about that. Hopper wasn’t supposed to know about that.

(Sure he might have seen it that first night, when Eddie ran into him in the woods, barefoot and in a hospital gown, begging for someone to tell him where Wayne Munson lived. That was before he learned to keep those little numbers covered, but the chief had been drunk out of his mind, so Eddie hadn’t thought he would remember.)

Wayne spun around to look at him. “Did you get yourself into some kinda trouble?”

“Nothing he could help,” Hopper said quickly, and the distant thought occurred to Eddie that the man was being rather calm about the situation. “Eddie, we need to go now, so grab your things and lets move.” Eddie stumbled backwards to his room, still staring at the not-dead chief. “Hurry!” Hopper called again. “We’ll be waiting outside.”

We? floated through his still-dazed brain as he stared around the room, searching for some sort of bag. His eyes landed on his now-useless backpack, and he dumped everything out. He grabbed everything he could think of that he needed, then threw in a couple books and tapes. (Hopper would hate his music, but he might as well try.)

As he stood back up, his eyes caught on his guitar. A few weeks. A few weeks and he could come home. If you want.

He grabbed the guitar.

He started to follow Hopper out the door, then stopped when he saw Wayne, whose eyes fell on the guitar and softened. Eddie opened his mouth to say something, but what could he say? What could possibly match seven years of care, love, and being the only person who believed in him?

“Be careful,” Wayne said.

Eddie blinked back tears and hugged the older man. “Be careful yourself,” he muttered, trying to sound sarcastic, but meaning every word.

Leaving the trailer felt . . . anticlimactic considering it could very well be for the last time. The knowledge that he was leaving overshadowed by the new, exceptionally clean van sitting in front of the trailer and looking far too large for two, or even three people.

Hopper cracked open the window while he stood gaping and shouted, “Get in, we don’t have all day!” And there was the chief Eddie knew and loved.

He could see there was someone in the passenger seat, so he opened one of the side doors and found that, far form being too large, the van was nearly full. Joyce Byers sat in the passenger seat, and both her sons sat all the way in the back. An empty seat waited for him in the middle, and a girl near his freshmen’s age with short-cropped hair sat beside it, eyeing him curiously.

“Uhh . . .”

“Did you hear me, or has your music finally ruined your hearing? Get in!”

“Right, yeah, sorry.” He climbed in and stuffed his backpack between his feet, squished the guitar in beside it, and then shut the door and buckled his seatbelt. He bit his tongue and waited for them to get out of the trailer park before he turned to the girl.

“So, uh, who are you?”

“Jane.” Her matter-of-fact tone made it clear she thought this explained everything.

“Right . . .”

“She’s my daughter,” Joyce and Hopper said at the same time, then smiled at each other. A strangled sound escaped Eddie’s throat, which he tried to disguise a cough.

Sure it was the town’s worst-kept secret that the chief had been crushing on Joyce since they were in high-school (a fact that had often made Eddie feel slightly better about his own hopeless, long-time crush), but he was pretty sure he’d remember if they’d, you know, had a kid.

“You’re friends with Mike,” the girl said.

It wasn’t a question, but he felt like he should answer it anyway. “Uh, yeah, we hang out sometimes. How do you know Mike?”

The girl smiled. “He is my boyfriend.”

Oh. So this was the mysterious girlfriend back in California. Well, the Byers had moved to California, so that checked out, but there was still the little detail of where the kid had come from to consider.

(Also he thought these kids were way too young to date, a fact he only barely managed to restrain from mentioning whenever Dustin mentioned that Mormon girl he met at science camp, or whenever Sinclair stared at Mayfield from across the cafeteria.)

Jonathan leaned forwards against Eddie’s seat. “So, uh, not to be rude or anything,” he began, not sounding like he particularly cared if he was or not, “but why are you here?”

“He’s here because the same people that are after us might decide they want him too.” Hopper’s tone signaled the end of the discussion, and Eddie was grateful. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the Byers, it was just . . . well, okay, he didn’t trust them. In his defense, he didn’t trust many people.

The rest of Hopper’s explanation caught up to him, and he frowned. He had assumed that man (he refused to call him Papa anymore, and he had never learned another name for him) was the one they were running from, but what would he want with the Byers and Hopper?

“How long is it going to take to get to the safe house?” Will called up, leaning against Jane’s seat. They had a safe house now? Sure, why not.

Joyce frowned and pulled out a map, studying it for a long moment. “I don’t know exactly, but we’ll probably have to stay at a motel at least one night.”

Perfect. Staying at a cramped motel with this entire crazy family was exactly what he had wanted this summer.

Eleven wasn’t entirely sure what to think of their guest. Jonathan didn’t want him there, and Joyce was confused. Will was quiet, like he always was, and Dad wouldn’t tell them why Eddie was there.

As for the man himself . . . he just seemed nervous, which made sense for someone being chased by the government, except that she couldn’t imagine why the people looking for her would want Mike’s friend who played DnD and apparently guitar. (He had passed a guitar to Jonathan to put in the back of the van, so she assumed he played.)

He couldn’t seem to stay still or quiet. His knee just kept bouncing really fast, and though he wouldn’t speak, he hummed constantly. Eleven couldn’t understand why. (A memory of Papa came without permission. “013, please stop fidgeting, and 007, stop humming. We don’t want to disrupt the other children.")

She wasn’t sure how long they had been driving, but his leg hadn’t stopped moving, and it must hurt by now, right? “Are you okay?”

She hadn’t meant to startle him. He turned his wide eyes on her and he didn’t look like a man anymore, but a boy. “Uh, what?”

She looked at his knee, still bouncing, and he followed her gaze. His leg stopped moving, and he stayed perfectly still . . . for about five seconds, then his fingers tapped on the window. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you.”

Eleven frowned. “I thought you were bothered.”

“Oh, uh, no, I’m fine.” His other leg started moving.

“Hey, Mom? Could you play some music?” Will called.

“Just a second, sweetie.” Joyce pushed down her map and searched through a few tapes before popping one in.

The music started, and Eddie sighed and, as Eleven watched, he finally, finally started to relax.

The music wasn’t the sort Eddie typically chose to listen to, but it was loud (louder than Hopper wanted, apparently), and it had a heavy beat. He could still feel Jane’s eyes on him, but he ignored it as he leaned his head against the window.

He watched the trees and signs and other cars rush past and he wondered vaguely where this safe house was. It was ironic, really, that he was finally getting out of Hawkins, but he still wasn’t free because now he was being dragged along by people he barely knew.

His thoughts turned to Chrissy, and he wondered how she had felt leaving a town that (as far as he knew) had been her home her entire life.

He wished he knew where she was now.

The music must have helped him relax more than he realized, because he fell asleep or something, finding himself in that same dark emptiness his mind always supplied when he played guitar. Except . . . this time it wasn’t empty.

A big, neon motel sign stood in front of him. The O had gone out, and the rest of the lights flickered. He studied it, wondering what sort of weird dream this was. Something else caught his eye behind the sign–a door. He walked over, shoes splashing through water that didn’t soak through.

Peeling red paint covered the door, and scuff marks lined the edges. 204 was printed at the top. Curious, he opened it.

There was no room, no walls, just more of the black emptiness, broken only by a desk and a chair with a girl sitting in it. A girl with strawberry blond hair . . . .

He ran over, somehow not slipping in the water. “Chrissy?” She didn’t turn around. “Chrissy!” He touched her shoulder, and this time she did turn, eyes wide and staring straight through him. “Chrissy? What’s–”

He didn’t get to finish before she faded under his hand. “Chrissy!” He spun around, searching, but she was gone. The door and motel sign had disappeared as well.

“Eddie, wake up!”

His head shot up, and Jonathan pulled his hand from Eddie’s shoulder. “Come on,” Jonathan said. “We’re stopping here for lunch.”

Chrissy had never believed in ghosts. Of course, having died and come back to life herself made her want to keep more of an . . . open mind.

So when she felt what almost seemed to be a hand on her shoulder as she read, but turned back to see only an empty room, it occurred to her that maybe she wasn’t imagining it. She could almost hear someone say her name in her head.

And maybe she was just like the girl who always died first in a horror movie. Maybe she was stupid and should have grabbed her backpack, run, and never looked back, but instead she sighed and relaxed into her chair, because somehow she felt just a little less lonely.

Joyce asked for two rooms at the motel. When the lady at the desk said the price, Eddie saw her smile tighten. Not much, but it was a look he recognized. He glanced away, feeling guilty.

Joyce took the two keys and handed one to Hopper as they walked away. He leaned closer and whispered, loud enough for their whole group to hear, “Owens is paying.”

Joyce looked up, startled. “He is?”

“He is,” Hopper assured her, “because if he doesn’t, he’s going to regret it.” And despite all the weight he had lost and how he walked like everything hurt, his heavy tone left Eddie in no doubt that this was not an idle threat. He didn’t know who “Owens” was, but he did not want to be in his shoes.

Joyce and Jane branched off to go to one room, and the boys followed Hopper to another. He flicked on the lights, and all four of them stared at the two (thankfully fairly large) beds, then at each other.

Eddie wondered if there were enough blankets for him to sleep on the floor.

He glanced over at the others to suggest this and realized he was interrupting . . . something. Jonathan and Will appeared to be having some sort of staring contest, except it wasn’t about blinking. After a few seconds, Jonathan raised both eyebrows and Will shrugged awkwardly. Jonathan jerked his head slightly towards Hopper, and Will dropped his bag and dug for pajamas.

Eddie had never been to a sleepover. He enjoyed spending time with his friends, sure, but the idea of all cramming into one room in their old pajamas to try to sleep was unappealing. He liked to have his own space, no matter how small.

When his bedroom developed a leak in the ceiling, he had shared Wayne’s room until he was able to fix it, but that was different. Wayne was family, and they already shared a cramped space. Plus that was five years ago and he had been significantly smaller.

He changed into his pajamas last and grimaced as he pulled on the too-small sweatpants that were fraying at the ends and the Black Sabbath T-shirt he had stained with tomato sauce. At least this group wouldn’t judge him for those.

He walked out of the bathroom and found that the sleeping arrangement had already been decided. So that’s what the staring contest had been about.

Hopper laid flat on his back on the left side of the first bed looking almost asleep already. It was not lost on Eddie that this was the closest spot to the door and, therefore, the first spot any intruder might pass. Will curled up tight with his back to the man, and Jonathan lay on the other bed, as close to Will as he could manage with the gap between the beds. They seemed to be having another silent conversation. That left the far spot for Eddie.

Will watched him as he climbed into the bed, then turned off the lamp. Eddie flopped over and faced the wall, moving as close to the edge as he could.

Sleeping . . . didn’t work so well. He covered his head with his pillow to drown out Hopper’s snoring and tried to remember the last time he had slept somewhere that wasn’t his bed. Wait, no, that wasn’t right. He’d slept plenty of other places, like in class (accidentally), in his van, outside, on the couch, on the floor, but he hadn’t' actually slept in a bed that wasn’t his in years.

The blankets slid off his feet and he stifled a groan. He hadn’t shared a bed in years–or maybe ever–either.

“Stop hogging the blankets,” he hissed, poking his head out from under the pillow.

“I’m not,” Jonathan whispered back.

“Uh, yeah, you are. My feet are sticking out, and they’re freezing.”

Jonathan groaned. “Then move them under the blankets.” He slammed his head into the pillow, clearly signaling end of discussion.

And okay, Eddie didn’t mean to put his ice-cold feet on Jonathan’s leg, but that was what happened, and he had to admit Jonathan’s subsequent gasp was very satisfying.

“I told you they were cold.”

He could hear the gears turning in the other boy’s head for a properly scathing response, but Hopper interrupted. “Boys. Shut. Up.”

Neither of them slept much that night, but they didn’t make any more noise either.

“How did everyone sleep?” Joyce asked bright and early the next morning after she and Jane knocked on the boys’s door bearing Poptarts. The group sat in a misshapen oval on the floor, eating over the wrappers so they didn’t drop crumbs into the carpet like some kind of weird family picnic.

Jonathan and Will gave her wide smiles and lied through their teeth. Eddie forced a smile and said nothing because the only answers he could think of were snarky, and this kind woman who brought him breakfast and didn’t mind him crashing their forced family vacation didn’t deserve that.

They finished breakfast, and the boys changed. (The girls had already showered, gotten dressed, and packed before showing up with breakfast. What time had they gotten up?). There wasn’t much to pack, and they grabbed their bags, returned the keys, and loaded back into the van.

If Joyce really wanted to know how they slept, she should have looked back at her boys, slumped over on each other in the back seat, already snoring twenty minutes into the drive. But she couldn’t because she was asleep as well, five minutes later. Eddie figured it made sense. Knowing there were people trying to hurt your family had to be terrifying, and riding in a van with them all, getting further and further away had to feel safer than staying in an unfamiliar motel with only your teenage daughter beside you and the rest of the family two doors away.

“Do you, uh, want me to drive a bit?” Eddie asked. He knew Hopper hadn’t slept much either. He’d fallen asleep quickly, but woke up several times, trying to hide the fact that he was crying. The third time, he stayed up, stepping out the door to smoke. Eddie had been tempted to join him.

“I’m good.”

Eddie nodded, pushing away the pain in his chest at Hopper’s firm tone. The man hadn’t meant to be mean, he knew, but he just felt so useless.

“I like your rings.”

Eddie started and turned to the only other conscious occupant of the van. “Huh?”

“Your rings,” Jane repeated, nodding at them. “They are . . . pretty.”

He blinked. No one had ever called his rings pretty before. Plenty of adjectives, but never pretty. “Uh, thanks.” He twisted his cross ring.

“Can I see?” she asked.

Well, okay. He held out his hand, and she grabbed his fingers, studying each one intently, and, well, this was awkward. He studied the rings too, paying probably more attention to them than he had in years. But then–

Her hand shifted and a black mark on her arm caught his eye, and suddenly he was the one grabbing her hand.

The little girl looked up, startled, but she didn’t pull away as he stared at the tattoo on her wrist. 011.

He swallowed hard, everything suddenly clicking into place: where she had come from, her stilted way of speaking, why the Byers-Hopper family had suddenly decided to skip town and drag him along . . . Dustin had even mentioned they had a friend with superpowers, but Eddie had still been freaking out over the discovery of the Upside-Down and had assumed they meant some kind of weird magic powers, not the white-room-lab-coat horror he’d been a part of as a kid.

He realized he was still holding the girl’s arm and most likely freaking her out. He dropped it. Jane’s–Eleven’s–oh, that’s why the kids called her El–eyebrows furrowed. He didn’t trust his voice to explain, so he pulled off his watch and stuck out his arm to exhibit the 007 tattooed there.

And Eddie–he couldn’t look at her face when she took his arm in her hand again, gentler than he could remember anyone ever touching him, and just held it there for a long time. He glanced up and noticed Hopper looking at them both in the rearview mirror. Eddie couldn’t read his expression, but the man looked back down, giving them some little bit of privacy.

“How did you leave?” she asked, finally dropping his arm.

“I could ask you the same question.” He put the watch back on. “I had help. I–it was actually because of you.”

She frowned. “Me?”

“Yeah. Uh, Eight–well, I feel bad I don’t know her real name–”

“Kali,” Eleven, no, El supplied.

Eddie blinked. “What? How–how did you know that?”

El grinned, a hint of mischief in the corners. “My sister.”

“Right, yeah.” He nodded, though his mind was racing. How on earth had Eight–Kali–found El when he hadn’t? He’d been in Hawkins for goodness' sake, and she was, well, who knew where!

He rubbed his arm. “Anyway, uh, you disappeared or something. I guess you hadn’t run away yet since, uh, he didn’t seem worried about it, but Kali freaked out and decided to leave, so we, uh, we worked together. We got out, she left, I found my uncle. I’ve been trying to avoid getting caught ever since, and I thought I was successfully keeping my secret.” He shot Hopper a glare the other man ignored.

“You did good, kid,” Hopper said. “I thought I had dreamed up the hospital gown and tattoo until I met El.”

Eddie twisted his ring. “When, uh, when the lab got destroyed two years ago, I, uh, I figured everyone must be–” he swallowed. “I thought you were gone.”

“They are dead,” El agreed softly. “He killed all of them.” Eddie squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to think about all those kids he had left behind.

Wait.

“Who killed them?” His first thought was the man who called himself Papa, but, horrible as he was, Eddie didn’t think he would have done that.

“One.”

Eddie frowned. “One? But One wasn’t in the lab. He, I don’t know, he died or was kept somewhere else or something.”

El shook her head. “He was in the lab. Papa made him not use his powers. He–he killed all of them, and then I tried to kill him, but I put him in the Upside-Down.”

Eddie shivered. This was all combining in a way he didn’t want to think much about. “So . . . is he still there?”

El frowned. “Dustin said you were there.” Eddie clenched his jaw. No, no, no. Oblivious to his churning stomach and his breath coming too fast, El continued. “I fought him with the piggyback,” –He wasn’t even going to try to figure out what that meant– “And Nancy, Steve, and Robin set him on fire.”

Eddie couldn’t breathe. Now he remembered Nancy saying something about Vecna being similar to their friend with superpowers, but he had been too focused on her apocalyptic prophesies to think too much about that.

He heard Chrissy’s bones snap over and over, and when he closed his eyes, he saw all those kids, eyes gone, limbs wrenched apart just like she had been. He felt cold and hot all over, and he wasn’t sure if he was actually shaking or if his heart was just pounding really hard.

“Whoa, whoa, hey. Are you okay?” Hopper looked back at him in the mirror, and Eddie shook his head. Hopper pulled the van over, and Eddie dragged open the door, only barely managing to stumble out before he threw up.

It had taken a while, but Eddie knew why that man collected him and the other kids, teaching them to use their . . . unnatural abilities. He wasn’t stupid. People wanted power, wanted control. It was the common theme running through his books, his campaigns. But knowing theoretically that he’d been wanted as a weapon was different from having watched Chrissy and Patrick die in front of him, bones snapping, eyes bursting, and knowing that, if that man had his way, that could have been Eddie killing someone like that.

“Are you okay?” He felt a small hand on his shoulder and realized El had knelt beside him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded. “I’m sorry,” she continued. Her apology sounded uncertain, as though she didn’t quite know what she was sorry for, but sincere all the same.

“Not–not your fault,” he choked.

Hopper opened the front door, but didn’t climb out. “You good?”

Eddie nodded and stood up, getting back in the car. “I, um, I didn’t sleep much last night, and I guess I just got motion sick.” It was a lie. A big, fat, obvious lie, but neither of them commented as El climbed in after him and Hopper pulled back onto the road, somehow without any of the others waking up.

They stayed at another motel that night. Joyce looked at the map and said that should be the last one. They should get to the house tomorrow night, though it might be late.

Eddie got a few hours of sleep before he woke with nightmares, so that was something at least.

This time, when he heard Hopper slip outside, he followed. The chief didn’t turn around, just blew a stream of smoke into the air in front of him. Eddie pulled out his own cigarette, preparing to ignore a lecture about how he was too young to ruin his lungs like that, but Hopper said nothing, barely acknowledged him, except to pull out a lighter and flick it into flame.

Eddie accepted the light, and the two men stood there in silence for a long time.

Eddie fell asleep in the van the next day and woke with a crick in his neck. He winced and blinked out the window as he tried to figure out what had woken him, then he realized they had stopped. El and Will climbed out, bickering about . . . something.

Eddie groaned and rubbed his neck, then climbed out as well. He deduced from the kids that they had stopped for a combination of gas, bathroom breaks, and to get more snacks, the last of which was the cause of the argument as they both had different opinions on the best snack.

Jonathan herded the two of them into the gas station where the cashier smiled at them. When she saw Eddie following, her look soured, smile twisting at the corners. He flashed his own bright smile he didn’t quite feel.

After buying a Mountain Dew, he decided to leave the other three to their bickering and escape the cashier’s side-eyed glances. He joined Joyce and Hopper outside, left his soda in his seat, and walked a few laps around the van to stretch his legs more.

Joyce decided to go in and check on the kids, and Eddie watched as a very relieved Jonathan came out a few minutes later, starting a conversation with Hopper that he tuned out automatically. He wondered where they were and looked around at the buildings and signs around. There wasn’t much. A little diner, pawnshop, motel–

He blinked, staring up at the flickering motel sign and the O that wouldn’t light up.

It–that wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. Motel signs (particularly this old and crappy) stopped working all the time, so it was just a coincidence. Purely a coincidence.

So why were his feet already moving?

“Eddie?” Jonathan called behind him. “Eddie, where are you going?”

He didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t even try to explain, because how could he?

Jonathan’s footsteps followed, along with Hopper’s shouts, but Eddie didn’t slow down because he knew Jonathan would try to stop him, and he had to try, he just had to, even though he knew it was stupid.

The road was nearly empty, so he didn’t have to worry about traffic as he ran across. He made it to the front of the motel and ran up the stairs to the second floor balcony, glancing at each red door. 201, 202, 203–

There. 204. Peeling paint. Scuff marks.

Not possible.

He knocked, hands shaking, and waited for someone to open it and yell at him for bothering them. A prank they’d call it, dashing his hopes forever.

“Eddie,” Jonathan panted, having finally caught up. “What did you do?” Eddie opened his mouth, but didn’t have a chance to answer before the door opened.

Chrissy Cunningham stood there, already big, blue eyes growing wider as she stared at them both. And then, before Eddie could wonder if he was still dreaming, she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.

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