Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  “Hear me out,” Stacey said, lowering into a seat on the floor. “Roger Mudd is smoking hot.”

  “Ew, he’s like your dad’s age,” Dave countered.

  Stacey blew on her nails. “Doesn’t mean it’s a lie. What do you say, Ter?”

  “I don’t see it.” Terry half laughed.

  “What about you?” Stacey pressed Alice.

  “To each their own.” Alice’s voice was neutral.

  “So, Roger Mudd’s all mine. Anyone know how this works?” Stacey asked, ticking her head toward the TV.

  Mudd explained, as if he’d heard her. There was a big fishbowl filled with blue capsules that had been mixed up inside it. Each capsule contained a number, which corresponded to a certain day of the year. They’d be chosen one at a time, and then everyone with the corresponding birthday would know in what order they’d be called to report. First, last, somewhere in between.

  “They’re pulling the first number.” Andrew clamped Terry’s hand in his.

  A man chose a blue capsule and passed it to one of the people at the desks, who opened it. No one spoke as they waited for the verdict.

  “September fourteen…,” the man reading the slip said. “September fourteen is number zero-zero one.”

  Another person in the office moved to the board and wrote the date down as the next capsule was chosen. Terry couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know what to say. Andrew’s grip tightened and she squeezed back.

  “September fourteen? No September fourteens?” Dave asked. “I say we make this a drinking game. Drink if they don’t call your birthday.”

  “Then I’m going to have to drink, because my birthday is September fourteenth,” Andrew said. He slowly withdrew his hand from Terry’s. “It seems I’m the first-round draft pick.”

  The hush that descended could only be described as horror.

  “Dude,” Dave said and then he burst into tears.

  “Hey, man, it’s all right,” Andrew said, voice taut with strain.

  “No, it’s not!” Dave said.

  Terry got up and tugged Andrew with her. “Stacey, Alice, I’m going to take Andrew outside for a second. Can you help Dave get it together?”

  Everything seemed to be spinning around her, but she was an expert now. It wasn’t acid. It was her world crumbling.

  Andrew closed the door behind them and they stood on the landing, their breath making puffs of cold air.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” Terry said.

  They huddled together.

  “I know.”

  “We’re not sure exactly what it means…,” she tried.

  He shook his head, a half laugh. “We’re pretty sure. I have a couple of months, maybe. I’m out of school and I’ll be in the first group called up. I’d say we know enough.”

  Terry’s throat closed. She needed to talk to him, make it better somehow…

  But there was nothing to say that could.

  “Look,” he said, “we have now. We just have to focus on that.”

  She swallowed, nodding. “Shouldn’t I be comforting you?”

  “I can come up with some ideas about how.” He waggled his eyebrows.

  She gave him a little shove. “How can you be funny at a time like this?”

  He shrugged. “What good is it being anything else?”

  Fair enough—not that any of this was fair. They went back inside, and Dave only cried once more. Terry stayed over, her thoughts constantly returning to the question of how long they had left.

  2.

  Alice floated through space. She’d wondered if her feet needed to touch the ground in the Beneath, where the monsters lived and her friend screamed. They didn’t, of course. Feet weren’t how you navigated in a dream, especially an acid- and electricty-fueled one.

  She’d been hoping to conjure another vision of Terry, still unsure if it was hallucination, truth, or some sideways version of both…If she could see it again, maybe she could figure it out.

  But her mind wasn’t cooperating.

  Dry leaves drifted in the windless air like she did, surrounded by grabbing branches and overgrown vines tearing at crumbling walls. Everything was soft, hazy like being trapped in a dream…

  Or a trip, she thought.

  A door hanging, broken, cracked wood split in two like the pieces of a cartoon heart. Beyond it, an empty playground from somewhere she knew. School? Church? Then it, too, was gone. Indistinct images cycled behind through her head for a seemingly endless while. What did they mean? Nothing Alice understood…And no Terry.

  But there was a face she recognized.

  Brenner’s.

  She focused until he wasn’t so blurry. Lines at the corners of his eyes. Cruelty at the corners of his mouth.

  In front of him a rail-thin girl with brown hair clipped short as a boy’s in a hospital gown like the one Alice had on, a metallic helmet with wires running out of it on her head.

  What in the world?

  The girl tore off the cap of wires. Alice saw numbers on the girl’s forearm. 011.

  What was she witnessing? Yes, “witness” was the right word. She felt like a witness. Like someone intended to bear witness. An Indigo child, just like Terry had said. The girl had to be.

  Suddenly Alice was in a long hallway, and, far at the end, the girl lifted a filmy hand and flung a man in an orderly costume into the wall hard. How was that possible?

  The vision began to fade. And then it vanished.

  Alice opened her eyes to her own room at the lab, the machine that made the electricity being rolled away.

  “This place is evil,” she said, before she could swallow it. She thought of that young girl with the worst of the bad men. Brenner. What had he been doing to her? And was what she’d seen real?

  Dr. Parks didn’t argue with her statement. She slid a finger around Alice’s wrist, a light circle tethering her to the here and now. “I’m going to take your pulse.”

  3.

  Terry hated coming to the lab this week, more than ever. She hated being away from Andrew when every moment felt like the last one. It wasn’t—he still had some time before he’d realistically be called to report for his physical and begin the process of enlisting, let alone be sent to Vietnam—but it felt that way.

  Brenner gave her a cup of bitter liquid, which she downed. She stuck her hand out for the usual tab of LSD and Brenner handed it over. She placed it on her tongue, ignoring the slightly chemical taste.

  “Something wrong?” Brenner asked. The concern in his voice like he cared. Right.

  Terry would ask him soon about the girl, about the children. Her heart was too wobbly this week, her brain too focused on Andrew. She didn’t feel strong enough for another battle, if the questions turned into one. She spat the tab out, and dropped it into the small garbage can provided.

  “Nothing I want to talk about.”

  She’d never been overly clingy. In high school, she’d mostly been someone who got serial crushes on boys she was convinced had hidden depths (they never did). The shocking thing about Andrew was that she’d expected him not to be interesting. Stacey had casually mentioned she thought they’d like each other. When she introduced them, Terry got even more skeptical. He was too pretty, with those long eyelashes and that brown mane of his, his impeccably clean car. His off-campus apartment. She’d expected him to turn out to have either an awful personality or a boring one. To be a groping, messy kisser or a snoozefest who only talked about himself.

  But Andrew talked about politics, the news, about books. About music. He asked Terry how she was. He listened to the answer. He cared about the world and he cared about her. He was an excellent kisser. She’d felt comfortable with him from the first minute.

  They’d never tal
ked marriage or long-term. A quiet understanding had built between them, though. The two of them together worked.

  They needed to have a bigger talk, about what this meant for them as a couple…Terry knew that. But she wasn’t ready and she wouldn’t force it on Andrew. She’d just sit here, taking a psychedelic journey, and obsess. Oh joy.

  “Lie down,” Brenner said, cutting into her thoughts like a knife.

  She did. She’d hardly slept the past few nights, every one of them spent at Andrew’s. When he asked if her dorm might notice and object, she’d laughed and said the lab could probably get her out of any trouble over it. So that’s where her head was.

  Not in a good place. At all.

  She was so tired that reclining on the cot seemed like the best suggestion of her day. She lay back and closed her eyes. Could you sleep through an LSD trip? She could try.

  A scraping sound on the floor disturbed her. She opened her eyes to find Brenner sitting in a chair he’d dragged over too close to the bed.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “We’re going to try something a little different today.” Brenner motioned for the orderly to come in. “Why don’t you go ahead and get her blood samples?”

  Terry sat up. “My blood?”

  “First session of the month, remember? We always want to check your levels. Make sure you’re healthy and fit, not having a bad reaction to anything.” Dr. Brenner made it sound reasonable. And she did remember them taking blood before.

  She nodded, her throat dry. The orderly brought three empty vials over and she watched the needle slip into her skin and the dark liquid seep out into the first one. He filled it and swapped in another. Her stomach flipped, then steadied.

  Weird. She never got queasy from a blood draw; that was Becky’s problem. Terry would hold her hand and talk to her, distract her, and still Becky would be about to faint by the time it was over. She couldn’t stand needles.

  Terry felt like she was channeling her sister. Whatever Brenner gave her this week must be a particularly strong batch. It usually took longer for the drugs to kick in. Pinwheels whirled at the edges of her vision.

  “Now, you have questions for me,” Dr. Brenner said. Terry heard a door open and close, presumably the orderly leaving. “Would you like to ask them?”

  Terry would, but her tongue was heavy. “Is this a trick?”

  “I don’t know, is it? What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what you’re doing here…What about…” Terry felt like he’d trapped her.

  “I’d spoil the experiment if I told you. I’m going to need you to take my word for it that our work her is crucial to the safety of our nation. It can’t be disrupted for any reason. You understand, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.” She’d answered honestly. Had she meant to? A frozen part of her went back to thinking about Andrew. Somehow that was almost less scary than whatever this was.

  “Your purpose is not to know, Terry,” Brenner continued. “Do you understand that, at least? There are consequences for your actions and you should remember that.” He paused and leaned in, putting a sheen of sympathy onto his expression. “I understand you’ve gotten some bad news about your young man.”

  Even through the spinning haze at the edges of her vision, what he was saying connected. He couldn’t know that…Not unless…

  “You did it.” Again the words slipped free without her meaning to say them.

  Brenner gazed at her steadily. “I bet you don’t know what you’d do without him. Say it. That you don’t know.”

  She couldn’t seem to stop herself. “I don’t know what I’d do without Andrew.”

  “You’re going to find out.” He smiled at her. “Now, close your eyes and go deeper like a good girl. I’m done with you…for today.”

  Her eyes slipped closed and she fell into a waking dream.

  Keep going, her brain said. Get as far away from him as you can.

  A space that was everywhere and nowhere rose around her. A pitch-black void. Her feet were in water.

  This felt real, not like the drugs. Not like memories.

  It was safer here, safer than where she’d been. Wasn’t it?

  A hand on her shoulder brought her back to the room where she really was. She expected Brenner, but instead it was Kali.

  Terry hinged upright and searched, wild-eyed, for Brenner. He wasn’t here.

  She touched Kali’s hand. The girl was real.

  “You never came to see me again,” Kali said.

  Terry did her best to process what had happened, what was happening. The edges of her vision spun like plates on fingers, whirling through the air…Don’t drop them…Don’t break…

  “What’s wrong with you?” Kali asked. “Are you sick?”

  “The man you call Papa—who is he?” Terry asked, searching for her questions. “Your father?”

  “He’s Papa,” Kali said, like the answer was obvious and the question dumb. She lowered her voice. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Oh no.

  “This is dangerous,” Terry said, though she couldn’t remember why. “I’ll find you again, but he can’t know you’re talking to me.”

  “He finds out everything.” The girl lifted one shoulder. “No secrets from Papa.”

  Terry shook her head. “There can be. He’s just a man. He can’t know everything.” She paused. “Does he hurt you? Papa?”

  Kali frowned, but she didn’t answer.

  “If he does…I can help you.” Terry had to make her understand.

  The little girl shook her head. “I don’t think so. I might be able to help you, though.”

  A field of yellow sunflowers grew up around them. A rainbow arcing over the golden tops.

  “It’s beautiful,” Terry said. She got up and turned in a circle, smiling. “How?”

  She looked over at Kali as the girl reached up to wipe away blood from her nostril. Kali squeezed her eyes shut.

  The sunflowers began to whip back and forth. The rainbow hurt Terry’s eyes.

  “I’m going to hurt you,” Kali said on the heave of a sob. “I have to go.”

  Terry lifted a hand to shield her eyes as the light brightened. Her heart thumped in her chest. This was unreal, but she knew it was happening. “It’s okay. What is this? How can you do that?”

  “It’s easy to do, but not to make it stop,” Kali said. “I have to go now.”

  “Wait!” Terry reached out for her.

  Kali pulled away, trembling, shadows replacing the bright lights. They crept around Kali and Terry, formless dark.

  “No,” the girl said.

  Terry could see in Kali’s eyes that she needed to go.

  “I can help you,” Terry said, no longer sure.

  Kali closed the door to the hall behind her.

  The shadows went with her.

  4.

  Brenner stood on the other side of dark glass and watched Eight with Terry. The sunflowers were a sentimental touch on Eight’s part. She could pretend she wasn’t drawn to Terry, but she’d revealed the crucial fact that she liked her with that one simple gesture. And then it had escalated beyond Kali’s control, as it always did.

  He had no better diversion to keep Eight occupied than this. In some ways, Terry had done him a favor…He’d let it play out as long as the benefits outweighed the risks. The children who were exposed to each other did much of the work of entertaining themselves. Eight, isolated, wanted nothing more than companions, a family. He’d promised her that.

  Brenner didn’t understand children, because he didn’t feel like he’d ever been a child.

  He’d considered kicking Terry out. But he’d invested too much effort and already she seemed more
malleable, the boyfriend soon to be off to war courtesy of the man in D.C. It’d be much more satisfying to break her when the time came. So instead he’d given her a new truth serum compound with her dosage today, to go with his quiet revelation that he’d been involved in Andrew’s drafting, and the mental push that she’d not deal well with her beau’s departure. Then, with some surprise, he’d allowed the visit from Eight, who’d snuck away from her minder. Again. He’d been alerted as soon as it was discovered, of course.

  A knock on the door behind him, and his orderly entered the small observation room. His bright eyes and the sheet of paper he carried telegraphed that there was some news.

  “What is it?” Brenner asked.

  “You’re not going to believe this.” He passed over the sheet.

  Brenner skimmed the results of Terry’s bloodwork. Everything looked normal; slightly elevated blood pressure, to be expected…

  Then he saw.

  “She’s pregnant,” he said with genuine wonder.

  And this is why you didn’t make hasty decisions like kicking someone out for showing the same spirit that made them a good candidate for the experiment in the first place. Now she might develop into a golden goose, in more ways than one.

  He congratulated himself on already having the father out of the way. Tonight he’d bring Eight a piece of cake. He’d tell her that his promise was going to come true. He was finally working on a friend for her. A special friend.

  His theory had always been that exceptional abilities could be encouraged under the right conditions. But he’d always had to work with available subjects, none of them clean slates. This child—he could start encouraging the development of this child’s abilities now. In utero. Every day of her life. He’d make sure she was special.

  “Will she have to leave?” His orderly was a good soldier, but not the smartest person he’d ever met. Potential: mediocre at best. But he did what he was told without question.