chapter xiii .
when faced with death
( meanwhile , somewhere
in alternate dimension )
VAL FLEW OUT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GATE and landed painfully on her back. A groan of agony escaped her lips, but her voice caught and faltered when she opened her eyes to take in the sight before her.
It looked like Hawkins—Lover's Lake, to be exact—but as if it had been flipped over, dried up, and splattered with the intestinal-looking vines Val had seen when under Vecna's curse. The hivemind, she figured, meant that everything in this so-called Upside Down was connected, so she had just moments ago been somewhere in the distance, fighting off her deranged biological father/an undead being with ugly veins all over its body. As one does.
All around her, in the empty pit that used to be the center of Lover's Lake, her friends were at war; battling malicious bat-like creatures with razor-sharp teeth and leathery wings. The monsters were vicious, snapping and biting at every inch of skin they could find. Val stumbled back, gasping in fear. To her right, Steve was being bombarded by a clan of bats, gnawing at his exposed stomach. To her left, Nancy and Robin were ripping apart one monster, Nancy clutching her arm.
Eddie burst through the gate a few moments after Val had been able to take in her surroundings. He looked around for a second, clearly paralyzed with fear, but when he realized evil, man-eating bats were attacking them, he screamed, "Jesus Christ!"
"Stop screaming and help us out here!" Val demanded as she rushed over to help Robin stabilize Nancy by the waist, who was gripping the tail of one of the creatures—and would have flown off with it if the other two girls hadn't weighed her down.
"Come on, come on! You little bastards!" Eddie charged into battle wielding nothing but his bare hands. He grabbed the tail end of a bat and flung it into the ground, screaming, and jumped backwards when the bat exploded. Guts splattered across his face. "Holy shit!"
Val turned at the sound of furious grunting. Steve had made it to his feet and began doing the same as Eddie had done with the bat—throwing it on the ground repeatedly, WWE style. His exposed stomach was a gnarly sight—gaping holes in either side of his torso and blood seeping down into the hem of his pants grotesquely. Val held back a gag.
When the bat had had enough, Steve stomped his bare foot onto its face and ripped it clean in two. The bat screeched in pain, then fell silent, blood and guts and leathery bat skin draped across Steve's foot. All it took was one wet squelch from the dead bat and Val was dry heaving behind a clump of vines.
"Steve, are you okay?" Nancy asked, rushing to his side. She began to inspect his wounds. "Jesus..."
"Val, how you doing?" came Eddie's voice, and Val felt a hand on her back, supporting her. She lifted her head weakly and held up a sardonic thumbs-up.
"Peachy," she replied, coughing. "Jesus, that was vile."
Eddie raised his eyebrows. "Haven't you seen worse?"
"Yeah, and I actually threw up at that." She pursed her lips. "Gotta weak stomach. It's not my best feature."
"I think it's funny."
"Of course you do, asshat."
"Uh, hey," Robin called, pulling Eddie and Val's attention back to the situation at hand. "Do you guys think these bats have, like, rabies, or something? It's just that rabies are, like, my number one greatest fear and I think we should probably get you to a doctor, like, really soon because once the symptoms set in, it's too late. You're already dead."
Before anyone could reply—or Val could give Robin a sarcastic remark—there came a loud chittering, the calling sounding just like the bats had. The group lifted their gaze to the sky to see an entire swarm making its way towards them. The creatures slowed to a stop and landed atop the gate, circling it protectively.
"We'll never be able to fight 'em off," Steve muttered.
"We don't need to," Val realized. "They're just protecting the gate. All we have to do is run."
The rest of them shared a glance. Steve shrugged, still breathless, and nodded in agreement. "Then... let's go."
And they burst off without further argument.
Running was the easy part, Val found—it was harder trying to duck and avoid the straggling bats still chasing them and the vines crawling towards their legs. Their group sprinted to the woods surrounding the lake, just since it could provide cover from above, and the lake was completely open from all sides. Val's side ached in a stitch, but she wasn't about to stop.
When they reached the woods, they slowed to a halt, all five of them crouching for cover beneath Skull Rock. Val still found it odd how this Upside Down was an exact replica of Hawkins—down to the vulgar vandalism on the boulder above her head.
After a moment of silence in which the bats flew off, clearly dejected, Robin exhaled a heavy sigh. "That was close."
"Too close," Eddie agreed.
As they stood and slowly made their way out of the crawlspace beneath the rock, Steve cursed, stumbling around and reaching out to balance himself.
"Steve, are you alright?" Nancy was quick to ask, rushing to his side. Val and Robin shared a tense, knowing glance, but Nancy missed it. "You're losing blood. We need to dress this."
Robin moved to crouch at Steve's side as Nancy ripped part of her shirt and began to wrap the wound on Steve's stomach. Robin stammered, beginning to warily interrogate Steve about whether or not he had any symptoms of rabies. Val puffed up her cheeks and stood up straight, taking slow steps out from beneath the rock to inspect the area.
"Weird, isn't it?" Eddie mused, his brow furrowed as he fell into place next to Val. "It's like we never left."
"It's freaky," she agreed. She twisted her lips to the side. "Are we gonna be able to get out of here?"
Eddie scoffed. "You're asking me?"
She managed an amused half-smile, shaking her head. "You're right. We're the most clueless people here right now, you realize that?"
"How could I not? Wheeler acts like she knows this place like the back of her hand. But I guess I get it—this place is exactly like Hawkins, but with monsters and nasty shit. So... basically home for people like us."
Val exhaled a short laugh. Her eyes landed on a tree in the distance—a familiar tree, that she couldn't quite put a finger on why it seemed so recognizable. Then she caught it: It was the very place where Vecna's grandfather clock had been when Val was cursed the first time. A shiver ran up her spine and she took an unconscious step backwards, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. Eddie caught the slight shift and turned to face her.
"Val?" he said, reaching out with a hesitant hand to place on the side of her upper arm. "You okay?"
She wet her lips, swallowing thickly. "Just spooked, is all."
His expression softened and he took a slight step closer. "Do you want to talk about it? What you saw?"
Her eyes hardened involuntarily. She shook her head, lowering her gaze to the ground and bringing a hand up to rub her eyes. "I... Jesus, it was horrible. It was just like Max said—he showed me my worst memories. He made me relive them. It was all a hundred times worse the second time, you know? It was the most scared I've ever been. But I think... I think the worst part was the fact that I was about to die."
Val dropped her head slightly, a cold feeling of shame spreading throughout her chest. "You know, I'd always thought I'd be okay with dying. I wanted it to happen. But when it became real—this fear, this paralyzing idea of actual death—it was the worst feeling ever. So I... I ran. Far as I could, fast as I could. I realized I didn't want to die. God, I didn't want to die at all. It was horrible, Eddie."
She drew in a deep breath, shaking her head, gaze still on the ground. "I thought about all of these weirdos. Max, Dustin, Steve.. all of them. And I thought... I thought about you. About your eyes, your guitar pick necklace, your messy hair. And somehow, even though I was trapped in my own mind and under a curse, you managed to save me. Even if you didn't realize it. So... thank you, Eddie. For saving my life."
When she finished, she lifted her eyes to meet his warm brown gaze. He had moved closer to her in the time between when she began speaking and when she finished. Their bodies were just a few inches apart, so that if Val leaned forward even slightly, she would be leaning against his chest. Her breath hitched. She watched his eyes dart beneath her own stare, to an area suspiciously close to her lips, then back to meet her gaze.
"That sounds horrible," he said, his voice lower than she'd ever heard it to be. "Val, I'm—"
"It's fine," she said dismissively, still not breaking their shared eye contact. "It's over now."
And then his face started coming closer to hers, and Val realized he was leaning in, bridging the gap between their bodies with his head.
Their lips were centimeters apart when they were interrupted.
"Hey, guys," Robin called, and Val and Eddie had just enough sense left in them to jump apart before Robin rounded the corner to find them standing an awkward six feet apart. Her gaze danced between the pair of them suspiciously, but altogether she decided to drop it. "We have to get going."
"Wh–where are we going?" Val managed, keeping her voice level, even though she wanted to slam Robin with all the curse words in her vocabulary.
"Nancy's house," she replied. "She has guns."
"She has guns?" Eddie repeated, looking to Val, surprised.
"She has guns," Robin confirmed. "In her bedroom."
"In her bedroom?" Val's eyebrows shot up on her forehead. "Jesus, full of surprises, isn't she?"
They headed back toward Nancy and Steve, but had barely made it two steps before their world began to shake. Val had never experienced one before, but it's pretty obvious when an earthquake is taking place—she cursed and reached out blindly to find anything she could stabilize herself with and immediately made contact with Eddie's hand. He pulled her into his chest and crouched low to the ground, using one hand to keep them upright by gripping the rock and the other to wrap his arm around Val and keep her close to him.
When the earthquake passed, all five teenagers waited a beat before warily standing back up. Robin emerged from beneath the rock she'd ducked under. Nancy had ended up in Steve's arms. Val turned her head and found herself face-to-face with Eddie once more. Both were breathless, shaken and panicked, and neither of them were letting go of the embrace.
"The hell was that?" Steve's voice said, drawing Eddie and Val apart from each other. A creature began to roar and snarl somewhere in the distance. Val recognized the flapping of the man-eating bats growing louder and louder.
"Yeah, so guns sound pretty good to me," Eddie said.
Val huffed, swallowing. "Yeah, me too."
"So what are we waiting for?" Steve said, flicking on his flashlight and starting off into the woods. Nancy and Robin both followed without a second thought. Eddie and Val kept behind for a moment, looking to each other in disbelief.
"Not a moment's pause in the Upside Down," Eddie said. "Shall we?"
Val drew in a breath, then exhaled a heavy sigh. "We shall. Not like I had much of a choice, though."