Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  Surveillance said the four adult subjects were getting closer, and that would bear watching. Alice would stay here eventually, when the electroshock reached a point of no return. He wasn’t sure about Terry and the others…But he’d never let the child go.

  “The opposite,” Brenner said. “We’ll want to increase her protocols next week, and every week after. We need to keep her close. Tell no one else of this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  5.

  Terry knew something upsetting had happened to Alice, too, the instant she saw her. She had a fidgety way about her, all wound up. She’d mess with the straps of her overalls, only to stop and stare down each hall they passed on the way back out to the van. It was late. Their trips had left them tired and reserved, all except Alice.

  “What’s up?” Terry asked her, keeping her voice down. She couldn’t wait for her feet to hit the ground outside. Even surrounded by chain link, she’d breathe easier once they left this place. An image of sunflowers and rainbows—and grasping shadows—came to her. How had Kali done that? And what was that dark place she’d somehow visited? The part of her trip that felt both impossible and real.

  The world was no longer the same as it had been when they’d arrived that morning.

  A thought of Andrew wormed its way through. She wondered what he was doing right now. Her heart stung as she remembered how soon he’d be gone…and what Brenner had implied. If he could send Andrew off to war, then what couldn’t he do?

  “Later,” Alice said.

  “Come on, ladies,” Ken said, and Terry realized they’d fallen behind the group. She looped her arm through Alice’s and marched them forward. Once they hit the outside, she inhaled the fresh air like it was perfume.

  Nothing more was said on the drive home as the landscape rolled by in a dark blur. Terry caught the orderly looking at her in the rearview mirror twice, and pretended to sleep. It wasn’t hard with fatigue weighing her down. Maybe she even drifted off.

  When they reached the campus parking lot, the driver hopped out and opened the door for them. They’d gotten back later than usual, and there weren’t even the usual few stray students buzzing around. Still, Terry didn’t want to risk the van returning if they tried to talk here.

  “We should go somewhere,” Alice said after it pulled away. “Andrew’s?”

  Terry shook her head. “I don’t want to put anything else on his plate.”

  “We could go to my parents’, but I’m afraid they wouldn’t leave us alone long enough to talk,” Gloria said. She glanced at Ken. “And Terry and I aren’t allowed to have men in the dorms.”

  “And I’m not allowed to have women,” Ken said.

  “Or any guests this late.” Terry searched for somewhere else.

  “We can go to my uncle’s garage,” Alice said. “I have a key.”

  No one objected. And so they made a caravan, Gloria, Terry, and Ken riding together in Gloria’s sedan, following Alice and her muscle car out past the edge of town.

  “Is Alice going to be okay?” Terry asked Ken.

  She desperately hoped he had an answer, and a positive one. If she was honest, the opportunity to ask was the main reason why she’d volunteered to ride over with Gloria and Ken.

  “I don’t know yet. I wish I did.”

  “Me too,” Gloria put in. “We’re here.”

  A giant, dinged-up metal sign at the end of a dirt driveway pronounced their arrival at JOHNSON’S HEAVY MACHINERY REPAIR, MAINTENANCE, AND SCRAP.

  Terry had never bothered to imagine the garage where Alice worked, but she’d expected something like where she took her car to be repaired. This was an enormous warehouse, surrounded outside by tractors and bulldozers in pieces and parts. Trucks with wheels that could crush her own car. Eerie, like a graveyard of machines in the quiet dark.

  She shook her head. You’re losing your grip. Get it together. Then again, maybe it was just the remnants of the day’s drugs. And the fact that she’d witnessed something impossible.

  Shadows draped the front of the warehouse, the lone security light no match for the evening. Alice must have known the way by heart, because she didn’t hesitate a step. Terry watched as she approached the building in front of them, and then moments later a broad door swung open and lights blazed inside.

  “After you,” Ken said.

  Terry and Gloria entered first—the door was wide enough for both—and Terry let out a low whistle. Inside were more of the behemoth machines, towering high, seeming even bigger with a roof over them. The cavernous workshop smelled of oil and grit and sweat.

  Alice fixed these. She worked on these. She truly was some kind of genius.

  “Alice, this is…This is really something,” Terry said.

  Alice had her arms folded nervously in on each other. “I know it’s not college, but…”

  “This is incredible,” Gloria said.

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Flattery is unnecessary.”

  Gloria shook her head. “There’s a science to this, too. A lot of it.”

  Alice nodded, at last releasing her hold on her arms. She must’ve been worried they’d poke fun at her. Their tough, fragile Alice. Affection for every single one of these strangers who’d become her friends surged through Terry. There was no one on earth like any of them.

  Terry, get yourself together.

  “Remind me: I’ve got a radio I need to you to fix,” Ken said and winked at Alice.

  Alice held up her thumb and forefinger and rubbed them together. “Sure…for ten bucks of filthy lucre, you got it.”

  The mood lightened a touch.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have many chairs to offer you.” Alice swept a gaze around the workshop, where Terry saw exactly none. “My uncle says they just encourage people to stick around and pry in your business.” She gestured to the concrete and sat, propped against the wheel of a bulldozer-like machine.

  The rest of them eased off their feet. Terry chose crisscross applesauce, propping herself up with a hand to the cool floor at her side. Gloria stepped up and took the padded seat of a medium-sized tractor. Ken crossed his feet at the ankles alongside Terry.

  “Well,” Terry said, when no one spoke, “we’re here for a reason. Brenner knows something. He…threatened me. He made it sound like he had something to do with Andrew…”

  “He couldn’t have, though,” Alice said. “It was a random lottery.”

  Ken rubbed his lip. “The papers are already saying it wasn’t as random as it should’ve been.”

  “Like I said before,” Gloria said, “they’re people with resources.”

  A surge of emotion washed through Terry, overwhelming. “So it’s my fault?” she asked in horror.

  Gloria jumped in immediately. “No, no one is saying that. It’s definitely not your fault.”

  Cold comfort. “I have something else to tell you guys, but, Alice, do you want to go first?”

  Alice’s head bobbed. “I saw something that may be worse than the monsters.”

  “What?” Ken, with interest.

  “Brenner was with this little girl…” Alice recounted to them a story about Brenner and a young girl in a gown with a weird helmet on, a tattoo on her forearm that read 011. And then Alice had seen her using powers, throwing a man with just a gesture. “It looked like an experiment. I can’t be sure, but it seemed so real.”

  The 011 reminded Terry of the numbers on the files she had found in Brenner’s office. Did that mean Kali had a number, too?

  “Kali came to see me today. She has powers. There’s no other way to describe it.” Terry briefly outlined their encounter and the abilities she’d demonstrated. To Alice, she said, “I believe what you saw.”

  “Hmm,” Gloria said and tugged on her lip. “What did
your girl look like, Alice?”

  “Short brown hair—really short, like one of my brothers, or like it had been shaved and only just started to grow back. My aunt had cancer once…Maybe…She was too thin, but she looked healthy.” Alice shut her eyes and then reopened them. “Maybe around twelve or thirteen? Pale skin. Big, piercing eyes.”

  Terry frowned. She’d just assumed that Alice had seen a vision of Kali.

  “And your Kali?” Gloria asked.

  “No,” Terry said. “That’s not her. Can’t be. She’s younger.” She rolled onto her knees and held up her hand to roughly indicate Kali’s height. “Five, I’d say. Dark skin. Black hair to her shoulders. I guess this confirms that there’s more than one child there. How did you know to ask?” she asked Gloria.

  “The powers you’ve both described…Obviously I’ve never heard of anything like that really existing, but if they did…They don’t seem the same. Like the same person wouldn’t have both of those sets of powers.”

  “You got that from reading comic books,” Ken said.

  “So?” Gloria asked.

  “It’s odd that you saw the number 011,” Terry said, still puzzling over that. “I only remembering seeing files up to 010.”

  Gloria pointed out the obvious. “Maybe he’s still bringing in new subjects.”

  “We have to stop this,” Alice said with heat. “He’s using these kids. I know it.”

  “Agreed.” Terry felt like they were missing something crucial. “Alice, do you think you’re astral projecting?”

  “You think Alice saw this as it was happening,” Gloria said. “The girl and Brenner.”

  Alice shrugged helplessly. “It could be. I haven’t given enough thought to how it works.”

  “There’s only one thing to do.” Terry wished they understood how any of this worked. They were in uncharted territory. “We need to figure out how many children there are, find out what exactly Brenner is doing with them. Kali said Brenner doesn’t hurt her, but she’s only five. We may need to mount a rescue mission.”

  “We still don’t know that he isn’t ‘Papa,’ ” Ken said softly. “That would be kidnapping.”

  “I said maybe,” Terry said. “But fair point. In the meantime, Alice, you see what else you can see.”

  “I can’t control it,” Alice hedged.

  “Try. He’s got all the advantages. We need to use whatever we have.” Terry sounded more confident than she was. “He’s not going to make it easy for us to get answers.”

  Alice gave a short nod. She rose to her feet and put out a hand. “If we’re the Fellowship, I want to be Galadriel,” she declared.

  Terry got up, too. “Galadriel isn’t in the Fellowship.”

  “I don’t care,” Alice said. “There’re not that many women to choose from in the books. I want to be Galadriel.”

  Ken stood. “And Brenner’s the Enemy.”

  Gloria shook her head and hopped down to join them. “Am I the only one who hasn’t read these books, whatever they are?”

  “Yes,” Alice and Ken said together.

  Alice gave him an approving nod. For once. “Put your hands in, everyone…” Alice said.

  They did.

  “Now what?” Ken asked.

  “Now, on one,” Terry said, thinking back to high school football games and the huddle. “To the Fellowship of the Lab!”

  The laughter was uneasy. The kind of laughter that comes when nothing is actually funny.

  6.

  Terry closed her eyes a week later and waited patiently for the drugs to kick in. She’d been tired for a few more days, and then some sort of renewed energy had filled her during the past two. Almost like anticipation. Could she find the void like last time?

  Brenner had been smug and solicitous and given her a complement of vitamins to take home. That was new. “Some of the drugs we’re testing may have side effects…abdominal swelling or nausea. Let me know if they do—don’t visit your usual doctor, because they won’t know what to do. At any rate, these should help your brain recover from the paces we put it through here.”

  “Uh, thanks?” she’d said, and bit her tongue on asking why they were being put through the paces and whether the gifted children he had here got vitamins, too. Maybe they got those new Flintstones ones. Whatever the case, she’d throw them away as soon as she got home.

  Now he might have been telling her to go deeper, but Terry’s concentration was such that it didn’t penetrate. She actively didn’t listen to the sound of his parody of a soothing voice. She breathed and she looked inside herself and then she imagined going further…further…

  She traveled over a desert that turned into the tile of the hallway outside, and then into ice that made her feet so cold she shivered. The first water she reached belonged to a beach, sand between her toes, an ocean from a vacation one summer. They’d shared a motel a block from the waves with one of her dad’s soldier buddies and his family. Terry had eavesdropped on the mothers, sitting with their heads together at the outside tables at night while the kids exhausted themselves on the diving board. They hardly remembered that Terry wasn’t a diver, and so she could linger and catch snatches of conversation.

  “Nightmares?”

  “Yes, sometimes so bad he doesn’t sleep for days…”

  “Does he take it out on you? On the girls?”

  These formed a large part of her idea of adulthood. Now, wandering through an acid test, she decided that yes, she’d been right, but it was also far weirder.

  That was when the the darkness she’d been seeking surrounded her. The nowhere-everywhere. How long it had taken to get there, she didn’t know. But memories, that yearning in them, somehow she thought memory and the void were similar. A space that connected people.

  No smell, no taste.

  There was nothing here, nothing but Terry.

  Until she saw a face in front of her.

  Gloria. A light in the darkness.

  The other woman sat with her eyes closed. “Gloria, wake up,” Terry whispered.

  She gave no indication of seeing or hearing Terry. And then she was gone between one breath and the next.

  Terry kept walking, feet splashing in the water. But nothing else came. She was alone.

  Eventually, Terry opened her eyes and pretended to tell Dr. Brenner the secrets of her past on cue. The less he knew about this newfound ability of hers, whatever it was, the better.

  He never left the room, and so there was no way of getting to Kali again.

  7.

  The oven made the small kitchen at home overly warm and completely cozy. The radio blared big band Christmas music and, for once, Terry was okay with that.

  “Don’t do it,” Andrew teased. “Don’t kill again!”

  Terry plucked a still-warm gingerbread man off the baking sheet, held it aloft, and bit off its head.

  “Poor Mr. Bread.” Andrew shook his head sadly.

  “Mr. Bread?” she asked around the mouthful.

  “First name Ginger. Last name Bread. Or it was, until he died via the sudden loss of his head.”

  Terry cracked up.

  Even the Hawkins lab took a break for the holidays. They’d had two weeks off, and while Terry itched to get back to the investigation, she luxuriated in not going there. Andrew had to go home to his folks’ for the holiday tomorrow, but they had this Christmas Eve together at Becky’s. Speaking of…

  “Are you two kissing?” her sister called. “Or is it safe?”

  “I can’t kiss and laugh at the same time,” Terry said.

  “You could with practice.” Andrew leaned over and kissed her nose.

  “I’m coming in there,” Becky said. “I need to start the potatoes.”

  Becky was in a
better mood than normal, too. The first few holidays without their parents had been devastating. She’d had to try to put on a good show for Terry, but neither of them wanted it. Having Andrew here—even with his looming draft call—made the house feel less empty. She and Becky had already agreed to go to the movies tomorrow to stay busy. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was playing. Becky had a serious thing for Robert Redford.

  “Hey, come in here for a sec,” Andrew said, pulling Terry into the living room. The artificial tree lights winked, the same angel they’d had as long as she could remember at the top. There was a sparse scattering of gifts underneath.

  “I want to give you one of your presents alone.” Andrew hunted and came up with a medium-sized box he’d brought that day.

  She knew if she turned it over there would be a smooshed mess of wrapping paper and tape on the bottom. He’d wrapped it himself. But it looked nice from this angle.

  “Oh?” Terry said, accepting it.

  “Go on.”

  She did love opening a present. She ripped into it with gusto and gasped in complete surprise. “A Polaroid camera? This is too much!”

  “It’ll come in handy, though, on your mission.” He ducked his head, a little shy. “And, you know, if you send me letters you could include pictures sometimes. So I can see you when I’m gone.”

  Tears burned at the edges of Terry’s eyes and her throat tightened. “I don’t want you to go.”

  “Me neither.”

  It was a good present, even if it wasn’t what either of them wanted most.

  1.

  Alice waited in the dark by the door inside the garage. An anxiousness built inside her, but it didn’t have the negative tinge it usually did. She’d puzzled out an idea over the break of how she might be able to use her visions to help, and was convinced it was worth a shot. And she was excited to see her friends en masse. They had agreed it might be good to gather the night before their first post-holiday trip to the lab.