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It had been three years exactly. Three years since Will Byers was found in the quarry. Three years since he was declared dead. Three years since Mike lost his best friend.
Mike would remember. His wandering around trying to find Will landed him behind an ambulance as the paramedics pulled a waterlogged body out of the quarry. At first, Mike didn’t think it was Will. But then he saw the orange vest Will had worn the night he disappeared.
(“It was a seven,” Will had said solemnly, “The Demogorgon got me.”
Mike didn’t know that those would be the last words he would ever hear Will say.)
Mike remembered the funeral, the empty seats he sat next to in his classes for the rest of the school year, and the absence of Will’s name during roll call in the next. He remembered his volatile outbursts and crying to Nancy because she lost her best friend the same day, and no one seemed to care because they never found Barb but they found Will. He remembered Ms. Byers’ grief that seemed to spread over the entire town and the starving way she hugged him with tears in her eyes whenever he rode his bike over when he was feeling especially sad. Mike remembered the way his mom told him he couldn’t go over to the Byers anymore and soon after when Joyce and Jonathan moved away to sunny California.
Mike remembered it all. He could divide his life into three categories: before Will, Will, and after Will. Before Will was hazy and Mike barely thought it existed. During Will was joyful and happy, growing up together and playing D&D (Mike hadn’t touched the game in three years). After Will stretched for too long. It seemed like it had been 10 years instead of three.
Three was a significant number. Threes divided a lot of the world, and it was a number that made sense to Mike. Three was just as significant as five or ten or zero to Mike. The only number that could be more significant was seven.
Mike was fifteen. Fifteen is divisible by three. Twelve is divisible by three. Three is divisible by three. It all came full circle, it all made sense.
Mike did not want to go to school that day, but his mom would not let him stay home. So he pulled a similar stunt to three years ago (God, he had been so young and hopeful), and left the house with little fanfare, not bothering to go to school after.
He knew his mom would get a call sometime within the next couple of hours announcing his absence, but he couldn’t care less. Mike wandered around the town like a ghost. He didn’t know or care where he was going, just let his feet lead the way.
Eventually, he found himself in the woods. The trees were the same as three years ago, if a little thicker and taller. Mike didn’t know his way through the way he once had before he began to avoid it all like the plague, but he was impartial to being lost.
So Mike walked and wandered until he found himself in front of an achingly familiar landmark.
Castle Byers.
It was leaning to the left, and the wind had blown the tarp half off over the years. The wood in the non-tarped structure looked like it was rotting, bending a little too haphazardly in the middle. The sign that marked it as Castle Byers was nowhere to be found and the sheet that usually covered the front entrance was tattered.
Mike hadn’t been there since before Will died. The gravity of the visit hit Mike like a truck.
Tears pricked his eyes and his hands tangled in his hair, tugging at it in an attempt to bring himself back to Earth. Will was dead and his family was gone and someone else lived in his old house but Will still haunted Hawkins. Not for the first time, Mike wished his family had moved too, or that high school would end faster, so Mike could be anywhere but this stupid haunted town.
But then he would leave Will.
“FUCK,” Mike shouted into the silence. Tears wet his cheeks, but to hell if he cared. Ted always said that boys don’t cry, but to hell with that too. Mike’s best friend was dead and Hawkins wasn’t the same without him.
He growled at himself and kicked a tree.
It really hurt his toe, and wasn’t at all satisfying the way he expected it to be. A gasping sob forced its way out of his mouth, and all Mike could do was lean his forehead against the tree he kicked and cry until the world ended.
A shuffle from behind him seemed to echo.
Mike opened his eyes and turned around, wiping the tears from his cheeks. His vision was a little blurry, but he didn’t see anyone behind him. He was about to turn around, but then he remembered Castle Byers.
Something could be in there, some animal tainting Will’s space. Mike’s chest felt like a battleground, aching in both grief and righteous anger.
Mike took careful steps toward the leaning structure, careful not to crunch any leaves that hadn’t been soggied by early fall flurries. When he got close enough, he drew back the curtain, quick as a flash.
Inside, there was a person, curled up into mold and mildew-ridden blankets like they were the last hope in the world. Mike couldn’t see their face, but they wore worn and dirty clothes, ripped and torn but painstakingly repaired with mismatching patches. Their hair was long and as dirty as their clothes, curling at the ends around their neck with ash pieces perched on top. Their skin was almost unnaturally pale like they hadn’t seen the sunlight in years.
Mike’s stomach dropped, and he debated closing the curtain before he could disturb whoever that was, but this was Will’s space. Who was this person to disturb Will’s space? Castle Byers didn’t even make a passable shelter anymore, broken and torn apart by the elements as it was.
But also , Mike’s mind whispered, what if they are some psycho murderer and they really wanted to kill someone? We’re just right here. They could kill us.
(Then again, if he died, he would see Will again, hopefully. But he wasn’t twelve anymore, and he didn’t look over cliffs for fun.)
Mike’s voice was plotting against him and his brain, it seemed.
“Hello?”
Yup, this was it. Mike was going to die.
The person stirred and sat up, but didn’t look at Mike, rather they flinched away and curled up in the corner, face hidden. Mike could just barely make out some side features. The person looked more like a boy Mike’s general age, but he couldn’t really tell what with the dirt and grime. The more Mike thought about it, the more he realized the likelihood of this being a murderer was getting less and less likely.
So Mike did what he does best: run his damn mouth.
“Listen, man, you can’t be here. This is my… friend’s.”
(If Mike’s voice caught on “friend”, well, no one was there to hear it except the mysterious person.)
“And he really wouldn’t want anyone to be in here. I’m just visiting because. Because it’s been a while and I was wandering. But if you could get out. Like now. That would be fantastic.”
The person didn’t respond. Mike couldn’t even tell if they were listening.
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” Mike scolded, taking a different approach, “Answer me or get out.”
The person did not respond. Surprise, surprise .
“Are you deaf? Can you hear me? Listen, shithead I-”
Then the person looked up, Mike trailed off. It was a boy, definitely. Mike’s age, definitely. He looked familiar, so familiar it was strange. Then it clicked. But it couldn’t be. Because Will was dead, but here was someone wearing Will’s face, albeit a little older and much skinnier and dirtier.
“Will?” Mike gasped out.
The boy’s eyes widened.
“Mike?”
– – –
Will wasn’t sure how he got to Castle Byers.
Castle Byers in The Other Hawkins was destroyed years ago, from what little Will remembered; torn to shreds by whatever monster came to fetch him. He wasn’t quite sure what happened when he was captured either. All he knew of it was after, waking up halfway across town with a sore throat and burning chest, coughing up sludge and ashes.
Will remembered trembling, crawling into a random house to purge his chest or risk being noticed by another monster. As soon as he stopped coughing, he found his chest clearer than it had been in a week. The air didn’t feel as heavy as before.
There had been a whisper in his head. Something about joining someone. Will had disregarded it, thinking he was hallucinating as he fell into a restless sleep.
Somewhere between waking and sleeping, however, Will determined he didn’t want to run anymore. The next time he woke up, with an odd calm he hadn’t felt in over a week washing over him, he gathered all he could and set up a makeshift base inside the house he claimed.
It was small and manageable. The cabinets were stocked with once-fresh but now rotting food and loads of canned goods, so Will was doing well there. A cursory glance through drawers found him a can opener, and so Will had his first meal in a week: condensed tomato soup. The way it tasted heavenly struck Will as absolutely sinful, considering it was condensed and uncooked. Food was food, however, and Will was famished.
And so began the regular activity of building a fortress of sorts: scavenging, sleeping restlessly, taking kitchen scissors to his hair whenever it got too annoying, and moving on when he wasn’t safe. Will enjoyed the base building at first; it reminded him of Star Wars and the blanket forts he and Mike would build when they were younger. He would barricade the doors, block the windows, and find whatever he could in the house. A fucked up sleepover in an alternate dimension.
It quickly got old, but Will remembered.
Will remembered a lot of things about the next couple of years (or so he assumed they were years. The time passed it what felt like decades, but Will didn’t feel old enough for that). The voices that weren’t really there, the monsters, the feel of a rifle that reminded him of bruising hands and a drunk’s breath.
Will remembered a lot, but he didn’t remember how he got to Castle Byers.
At first, as he curled up in the half-rotted blankets, he assumed this was just another nightmare, or vision, or whatever, of Henry’s. It fell along what he would show Will: something he desperately wanted - his mom, his brother, his friends, his home - but could not achieve without joining Henry. Henry was ambitious and intelligent, from what Will observed, but he was pretty sure the spores of The Other Hawkins had fried his brain at some point.
That, or he was just born insane. One or the other. The dude was a little crazy.
But, whenever Henry showed Will visions the air still held the toxic quality that thickened in one’s lungs. Henry would show him different things, comforting sights, sounds, and smells shoveled into his senses, but the air would always feel and taste the same.
This air was clear. It felt like Will was breathing for the first time. Like he had been drowning for the past however many years and he was finally being resuscitated. The air didn’t have the almost metallic quality The Other Hawkins had; it tasted of nothing at all.
Either Henry had gotten better, or something had happened and Will was free.
Will hoped it was the latter.
Either way, Mike was standing in front of Will, and he wasn’t an apparition or figment of his imagination. Will almost couldn’t believe it.
Mike looked a lot different than Will remembered.
Of course, Will probably looked a lot different than Mike remembered too. From the brief glimpses he could catch in passing mirrors, he had changed a lot. Grown skinny, grown into his nose and body, leaner and packing what little muscle he could support on the food he scavenged. His hair had grown out, but his kitchen scissor cuts helped it from getting too long. He had gotten a lot better at even haircuts over the years. He knew he was dirty and probably stunk to high heaven. Clean water was scarce in The Other Hawkins.
So Will had changed, but Mike had changed more, if that was possible.
Last Will remembered, Mike sported a similar bowl cut Will once had that only highlighted the roundness of his face, was short for his age, and wore clothes Mrs. Wheeler would buy at the mall one town over.
This Mike, staring wide-eyed at Will, towered over him. He practically had to bend in half in order to even get a look inside Castle Byers. He had a curly (when did that happen?) mane of black hair that reached his shoulders. His cheekbones and the hard line of a jaw Will could just make out through his hair sharpened his face. And, on top of it all, he wore clothes Karen Wheeler probably hated with every fiber of her being: black converse, black jeans, black leather jacket.
He looked good , was the first thing Will thought.
He looked like he had been crying, was the second thing he thought, before he could process the first thing.
Before Will could get back to pondering the first thing, Mike threw himself into him. The other boy nearly curled himself around Will, shaking uncontrollably, grasping at Will’s shirt like it was the last thing holding him to the Earth. Will, for his part, held on just as tight. The first safe human in what felt like decades and Will could not get enough of it. Its existence almost stung, was almost too much from going to not being touched in years to being held in this capacity, but Will didn’t care. It was Mike , and he was real .
“God, please let this be real,” Mike whispered near Will’s ear as if he read Will’s thoughts.
“It’s real,” Will said, voice wavering with emotion, “I’m real. Are you real?”
Mike gave a laugh, choked by a sob.
“Yeah, I’m real.”
If it was even possible, Mike seemed to squeeze him harder. Will relished in the moment, clutching his best friend like he was due to fall apart at any moment. The loneliness and anxiety that had taken up space in his chest for the past however-long withered more with each second. In its place, pure contentment. Though the two of them were crumbled on the wet, cold ground, Will had never felt warmer.
“What happened Will? It’s been three years,” Mike whispered after a moment, careful, “We thought you were dead. There was a body and everything. We had a funeral.”
Will stiffened, paused. Three years? That didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would.
He pulled away from the hug, just enough so he could see Mike’s face. Mike was frowning, studying him.
“A body?”
Mike looked down and worried his lip.
“They found it in the quarry. They said you had probably gotten lost and scared and, you know,” Mike paused, sighing heavily, “accidentally ran off the cliff.”
Will rolled the idea over in his head. He supposed it wasn’t too far of a conclusion to jump to (and, no; he did not intend the pun). But the body they found hadn’t been him, he knew for certain.
“It had to have been someone else,” he said. Mike simply shook his head.
“Your mom and brother went to identify it. They wouldn’t just identify some random kid as you.”
“Fake body?”
Mike sighed from his nose.
“Weirder shit has happened,” he said with a shrug, and Will had to agree.
“But,” Mike continued, “and no offense, why would anyone want to fake your death? And you never said where you were.”
Will pulled away a little more, leaning away from Mike. Mike’s frown deepened.
Will looked into Mike’s eyes. They were the one part of him that remained unchanged; the same comforting, deep brown gaze Will remembered from the time they were five, just kids on the playground. So much had changed since then.
He needed to tell Mike about The Other Hawkins. He deserved to know, just the surface stuff. That Will had been there, and it was horrible, and perhaps a little detail to all the monsters that wandered there.
Henry was where he would draw the line. The voice that haunted Will shouldn’t have to worry Mike, because Will knew he would worry. And anyway, Henry could only do minor stuff in The Real Hawkins. Or at least Will thought that was all he could do. He certainly could not create a body to fake Will’s death. Will doubted the man could even speak to Will now that he was here.
“I was in Hawkins,” Will said finally.
Mike’s nose wrinkled in confusion (which was only sort of endearing) and he opened his mouth to protest before Will cut him off.
“But not this Hawkins. A different Hawkins. Other Hawkins.”
If anything, that seemed to make Mike more confused.
“What?”
In Mike’s defense, Will had explained it horribly.
“Like,” Will sighed, trying to figure out to explain the horror that was The Other Hawkins, “All the buildings are the same as they were the night I was taken. The sky is purple-ish. Sometimes it’s red, but other times it’s bluer. There’s-”
“-Is that where these came from?” Mike said, cutting Will off. Absentmindedly, he plucked one of the ash-like flakes out of Will’s hair.
Will was pretty sure the warmth in his face had nothing to do with Mike’s general proximity, but he had been wrong before. He shook the thought away.
“Yeah.”
Mike continued to pick the spores from Will’s hair. Will tried not to focus on it too much.
“I cut you off,” Mike said, apology in his tone. He looked, wide-eyed and sorry, to Will.
“It’s okay. I-uh. There were lots of monsters.”
“ Monsters ?” Mike exclaimed, “Like what?”
“They kind of looked like huge dogs. Or bears. It depended, but all of their faces opened up and it was just a mouth with layers and layers of teeth.”
To imitate the monsters, Will opened his hands like a flower blooming. Mike seemed to get the point because he blanched.
“That’s. Oh god,” Mike ran a hand through his hair, “You saw those things?”
“Kind of regularly.”
“Shit.”
Suddenly, Mike leaned into Will again, wrapping his arms around him. The hug was softer this time, less desperate.
“I’m so happy you’re okay,” Mike said into Will’s shoulder.
And Will didn’t want to lie. He really didn’t. But he didn’t remember how he got here and he had to have gotten to his old fort somehow.
“I am too,” he whispered.
They stayed like that for a moment. The hug was warm and welcome. Will was content to stay there until springtime. Soon, however, Mike spoke:
“Hey Will, you want a shower?”
A shower sounded like the most wonderful thing Will could dream of, actually. Instead of saying that, because no normal person dreams of a shower, Will said:
“Are you trying to tell me I smell?” for the first time in years, Will felt a laugh bubbling up in his throat.
“What? No!” there was a laugh in Mike’s voice too, though Will couldn’t see his face, “You are just kind of really dirty.”
“ Mhm . Okay, I believe you.”
Mike pulled back from the hug with a playfully (or, so Will assumed - it looked a little stupid) unimpressed look. The laugh bubbled up in his throat again.
“I could do with a shower,” Will finally admitted.
Mike grinned, funny look dropped, and Will couldn’t help but return a small one of his own. It stretched his face strangely, but not badly. It felt nice. The other boy stood up, having to bend in half to even get out the haphazard door of Castle Byers, before holding out a hand to help Will up.
“Nice,” Mike said, as soon as Will was standing, “We can go to my house. There shouldn’t be anyone there right now.”
Will nodded. Mike still hadn’t let go of Will’s hand, letting them hang, clasped, in between them. It was soft, pleasantly warm compared to Will’s hands of ice. Mike didn’t even seem to notice.
“Cool.”
“Cool,” Mike said. He smiled at Will again, and led the way to his house, still holding Will’s hand.
They had only walked for a couple of paces when an unnatural prickle ran down the back of Will’s neck. He froze in place, Mike’s warm hand falling out of his grasp.
“Will?”
You can not get away, William, not even beyond our realm. I will always be there. Henry’s voice echoed in the back of Will’s mind. The words send a full body chill straight through him. His hand automatically went to the back of his neck, as if to warm the supernatural cold.
“Will!”
Mike’s voice snapped him out of his stupor. Will looked up. Mike’s eyes were full of worry and perhaps even a touch of fear.
“Are you okay?” Mike asked as he caught Will’s attention. He put a hand on Will’s shoulder. Will remembered Mike being rather touchy when they were younger, but not this much.
But Mike had missed Will and Will Mike, so it wasn’t too far out of the realm of possibility for that to be the reason.
“I… yeah. I’m good.”
There was no sense worrying Mike about something he wouldn’t be able to fix, something Will couldn’t even control.
“You sure?”
Will nodded.
“Yes. I’m just tired.”
Mike didn’t look convinced, but it seemed he believed Will for the time being.
“Okay…” he checked over Will again, as if to see if he was hurt, before nodding slightly. “Let’s go. I wasn’t lying about you needing a shower.”
For the second time in the last hour, Will let himself smile and let Mike grab his hand. And so, Mike led him back to the Wheelers, hand in hand.
He tried not to think about Henry, about his threat, but it was near impossible.
It won’t be that much of a problem , he attempted to convince himself, he’s insane, and he can’t reach me here .
Because Mike’s smile was like the sun and he cared. Will didn’t know where his mom and brother were, but Mike, his best friend, was here. Henry was cold, but Mike’s hand was warm.
You underestimate me , Henry’s voice echoed once more. Will disregarded it, just like he had the first time.
It’s nothing, and Mike’s hand was warm , it’s nothing but a bluff. He can’t do anything.