Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  “We ready?” Ken asked from behind the wheel.

  “We are ready,” Terry said. And, as he gunned the motor, she said, “Bye, Hawkins. If we’re lucky, see you never!”

  Except when I come back for Kali.

  Terry had no intention of allowing Brenner to keep on with his monstrous work, but first she had to get Alice to safety. She had to see baby Jane into the world.

  Plan “Fake Alice’s Death and Bluff Our Way Out” had worked.

  9.

  They didn’t slow down until they’d left Hawkins far in the rearview mirror. They stopped off at Unionville’s Greyhound station, a little outside Bloomington, not far from Larrabee. After they’d released Alice from the trunk, Ken handed her the bus ticket he’d bought earlier.

  “I can’t believe you got me out of there.” Alice shook her head in wide-eyed wonder.

  “Me either.” Gloria mimed wiping her brow.

  Alice’s eyes got watery. “I’m going to miss you guys.”

  Terry couldn’t go down that road right now or she’d cry, too. “No tears, we did it. This is only until I can expose what he’s doing there. In the meantime, you’ll be safe. Do we need to check in with your folks?”

  Alice said, “My cousins will call them once I make it. I’ve come up with a code for them to use.”

  Alice would’ve made a great spy.

  “Good.” Terry nodded to Ken. “Suitcase.”

  He went back to the car and dragged out Terry’s big suitcase from the back seat. Gloria’d been wedged in beside it. Terry had packed it with the contents of the Disappearing Boxes, and left out a dress for Alice to change into. They were roughly the same size, so everything should fit. She pulled out the dress, in a see-through dry-cleaning bag. “Go change into this—no one will recognize you.”

  “I wish you’d told me we were updating her wardrobe,” Gloria said.

  Alice stuck her tongue out, but went into the depot.

  “Do we really think he’ll leave us alone?” Gloria asked.

  “Alice will be safe,” Ken said.

  “Then that’s enough for tonight,” Terry said. Though she caught Ken’s frown. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure…”

  “Then keep it to yourself.” Vague psychic pronouncements would not help Terry’s state of mind. Standing opposite Brenner, she’d been very aware that this could’ve ended another way.

  “Probably best.” Ken shrugged.

  Alice came out of the station with her coveralls over her arm, and ducked her head almost shyly. She had on a flowered dress, one of Terry’s—and Andrew’s—favorites, that stopped a few inches above the knee.

  And her work boots.

  “The shoes!” Terry said and reached into the trunk to find the pair of low black heels. “I almost forgot. You can carry your boots in the bag the dress came in.”

  “You look great,” Gloria said.

  Alice’s cheeks were flushed.

  “From dead to dolled-up,” Terry said.

  Alice took the shoes from Terry and walked over to the car to sit on the front passenger seat and change. “You don’t think I look silly? Like a little girl playing dress-up or something?”

  “No,” Terry said, scoffing, “you’re beautiful.”

  “I feel like Cinderella.”

  “Good thing it’s nowhere close to midnight, then,” Ken said.

  Terry hoped Alice did all right in Canada. It’s not forever. Hopefully.

  There were hugs then and tearful farewells. The bus pulled into the station and it was time for the real goodbye. Terry walked Alice over to the bus with a lump in her throat. She carried the bag with Alice’s boots.

  Alice lugged her suitcase and gave it to the porter to put under the bus. Alice watched him suspiciously and, after he finished, suggested they might want to adjust the bolt tightness on the door or it’d fall off at some point.

  Terry waited a few feet from the bus door. “I guess this is it for now,” Terry said.

  Alice hesitated, and Terry could see she was wrestling with herself.

  “Out with it, Alice.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve seen happen to you. In the future. Gloria said I should give you a choice, to know or not.” Alice shifted on her heels. Her expression was completely somber. Whatever she’d seen, it wasn’t good.

  “Tell me this—am I still fighting?” Terry asked. “Still trying to do what’s right?”

  Alice answered immediately. “Yes.”

  Good. “Then I don’t need to know.”

  Alice started to protest, but Terry said, “I’ll let you know if I change my mind. Okay?”

  This Alice accepted. “You’ll let me know immediately.”

  “Okay.” And Terry folded her into a hug, and watched her friend board the bus. She would never ask anyone to tell her the future again. Maybe.

  “All aboard!” Ken called to Gloria and Terry after the bus pulled out and Alice was on her way to Canada.

  They piled back in the car. Terry was content to let Ken keep driving.

  “I’m going to miss her,” Gloria said.

  Ken and Terry spoke at the same time: “Me too.”

  10.

  Brenner couldn’t believe the Johnson girl had died before they could discover her secrets. And with that electroshock stunt she’d handed Terry Ives a way to make him look weak. Kali, upset, had gone straight to sleep, helped by the sedative he’d given her. But he would still win the day.

  Dr. Parks would get over her fit of conscience. He’d given her the night off and a reminder of their confidentiality protocols. The body had apparently already been taken down to the morgue, so he assumed its secrets would be his.

  Now he called Langley to get ahead of the news. “Director, I wanted to be the first to give you a heads-up on a situation we had here this evening,” Brenner said.

  “I heard about some alarms,” the director said.

  News traveled fast.

  “False ones of a sort,” Brenner said. He related the details of Alice Johnson’s death—she’d increased the settings on an electroshock machine herself, triggering a heart attack—and told him that several of the other problem subjects had seen the body, and also set off the fire alarm and a gate code. The personnel were being debriefed and given a cover story about a drunk driver crashing through the fencing. By tomorrow, hardly anyone would know the truth, and soon enough everyone who did would forget it.

  They had medications to help with that, if anyone had trouble.

  “All in all, I say we’ve dodged a bullet,” Dr. Brenner said. “They’ll clean up our mess for us, for the illusion of being left alone. Let the girl’s family mourn. We won’t bother them. We’ll get what we can from the corpse, though the brain was fried by electricity.”

  Let Terry Ives think she had the upper hand for a brief moment.

  “But don’t we need the woman’s child?” the director asked.

  “I have that well in hand.”

  “See that you do.”

  All the approval he needed for the next phase of the evening. It would have been easier to accomplish here, but there was a certain novelty to rearranging his plans to accommodate a disruption, to stepping out into a spotlight and still managing to remain invisible. He gathered his credentials, some hospital scrubs, a fake badge, and got in his car. He shook his head at the torn chain-link gate as he left, a cleanup crew already half done with the mess. There was only one hospital near Larrabee, and it was simple enough to guess that was where Terry would end up before the night was through. The injection should start producing effects soon, if it hadn’t already.

  And so Brenner drove fast.

  11.

  Ken
parked Terry’s car in the yard and she yawned, sleepy after the events of the evening. Ken’s car was parked in the Ives’ driveway. He and Gloria had driven over together.

  “I’m wired,” Ken said. “I don’t know how you can be tired.”

  “I’m with her.” Gloria raised her hand in the back. “I no longer have a single fantasy about how glamorous and exciting and easy the lives of comic-book heroes are.”

  Terry laughed. “Do you guys want to come in?” A half-hearted invite she prayed they’d refuse, but would also be fine with if they said yes. In other words, real friendship. “There are still some brownies, I think.”

  “It’s been a big night,” Gloria said. “And you need your baby sleep.”

  “Baby sleep?” Terry asked.

  “It’s like beauty sleep, but for healthy babies.”

  “Ah.”

  “You too, Ken?”

  He stared off into space.

  “Earth to Ken,” Terry said. “Is there something you need to tell me, or are you ready to call it a night?”

  “There’s something, but I don’t know what it is.” He raised his hands. “Yes, I do know that’s annoying, you don’t have to tell me just because Alice is gone.”

  “All right, I’m going in.” Terry accepted her keys from Ken, who patted her car’s hood and said, “Well done, Nellie.” She didn’t bother to ask what that meant.

  She waved goodbye and let herself in the front door. She went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Or maybe milk. Were there brownies left?

  She deserved one. The night had gone as planned. Alice was safe. They were safe. Brenner would leave them alone if he was smart, and she’d find a way to get the word out about what he was doing.

  So…why did she feel like darkness gathered at the edges of her vision?

  Pain ripped through her entire body, centered at her waist. Water ran down her thighs.

  She grabbed the counter. “Oh,” she said. The baby. She screamed, “Becky, she’s coming!”

  A door slammed above and Becky ran down the stairs. “What—your water broke!” She paused. “She’s early.”

  “We have to go. Hospital.” Terry felt woozy. “Now.”

  * * *

  —

  Becky asked about the damage to the front of Terry’s car, and Terry had no explanation. “Just drive,” she said.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Becky said. “They do a good job at this place.”

  But they both knew it was the same hospital where their parents died.

  “Faster,” Terry said. Every contraction rattled her bones like lightning. Pain. Such pain. “Get there.”

  To her credit, Becky did go faster. She slammed on the brakes when they got to the ER drive-up, tossing on the hazards and helping Terry out.

  Terry barely knew where she was, she was in such pain. “She’s in labor!” Becky shouted.

  “Help me,” Terry said. “Save my baby.”

  Baby Jane has to be okay. Hang in there, baby Jane.

  Nurses and doctors swamped Terry, and steered her onto a gurney. They rushed her into the building, Becky jogging alongside and then disappearing. An IV drip was inserted in her arm and they said something about pain medicine. The sight of the monitor with the line of her heart spiking and down, spiking and down, was so familiar that for a moment she thought she might be back in the Hawkins lab.

  “This baby’s coming,” someone shouted. A team of people was around her, and the scene dissolved into scrubs and masks, beeps and the clatter of surgeon’s tools on a steel tray, the smell of disinfectant…Terry hung on to consciousness for dear life. Every contraction was a knife to the gut and she prayed for baby Jane and accepted the pain…

  “One more push,” a voice near her said, face behind a mask, and so she did. She pushed for all she was worth. There was a blaze of light in her vision and then she heard it—the most beautiful sound in heaven or on earth.

  Jane squalled like a battle cry, ready to tell the world what she thought of it. Jane was here. She’s here.

  Someone was handing a man in scrubs her baby. She knew his eyes, those blue eyes. She had to stop him.

  That’s my girl. Consciousness slipped through her grasp. That’s my girl.

  * * *

  —

  Becky was sitting beside her hospital bed when she came to.

  “Where is she?” Terry demanded, fighting her way to a sitting position. “Where’s Jane?”

  The stillness in Becky before she answered spoke volumes. “I’m so sorry, Terry. There were complications and they weren’t able to save her…”

  “No, I heard her.” Terry fought the IV out of her arm and wrestled Becky to get to her feet. “You don’t understand. I saw him. He took her. He took Jane!”

  “Terry, no. There’s no baby. You have to listen to me.”

  But no one would listen to Terry.

  Her baby was alive. Alive.

  And she would find a way to prove it.

  “Just put her in it,” Dr. Brenner told the nurse who oversaw the child’s care.

  “You could— I could carry her,” she corrected, holding the baby as if he was a threat to it.

  “It’s best if I do this alone; could you wait outside in the hall while I’m in with them?” It wasn’t a dignified request, but neither was handling the child personally if she spit up or soiled herself. Babies did those things, no matter how much you wished they wouldn’t.

  The nurse ever-so-slowly lowered the baby into the stroller. Her mostly bald head, with its fuzz and slightly unfocused eyes, waggled around. When would she seem like a person?

  Patience, he thought, you’ll develop it now, one way or another. She’s making you.

  If anyone could, it would be this subject.

  To underscore who was in charge, he pushed the stroller forward, motioning for the nurse to open the door. She held it, fluttering her fingers at the child. As if a child so young could understand anything except its own biological imperatives…Sleep. Eat. Defecate. Sleep more. Eat more. Repeat.

  But someday…Someday she would be his crowning achievement.

  Eight had no idea, but the baby was kept only two locked doors away from her. One with a more sophisticated keypad, the other with only a simple lock, opening into a room outfitted as a nursery.

  She’d been desultory and throwing fits for months, and Brenner had stopped visiting her again, unless it was absolutely necessary. He had what he needed to bring her back around, and now, finally, it was time for them to meet. All would be forgiven.

  According to the nurse, the baby would be ready to play soon enough. That would be good for both girls. He’d already directed the nursery to be painted with bright colors that Eight would approve of.

  “This is it,” Dr. Brenner said, steering the wheels over the tile. The nurse opened the door to Eight’s room. When she started to follow him through, he said, “Wait in the hall, please.”

  She warily eyed the stroller, but remained where she was told.

  Eight was on the top bunk, staring at the ceiling. He noticed she’d drawn up there, a rainbow with her colored pencils. Maybe he’d suggest that for the playroom.

  She’d finally drawn something, at least. She’d stared at the ceiling far too much lately. Or so he’d been told.

  “Look what I’ve brought,” Brenner announced. “Your new baby sister.”

  The girl could move, he’d give her that. Eight tossed herself off the bed, landing on her feet, and raced to the edge of the stroller where she pulled up short. She looked down into it. Almost shy. Nervous.

  “This is Eleven,” Dr. Brenner said.

  “Eleven.” Eight considered, looking at her hands. “I’d have to count her on toes, too. Does that mean nine and t
en are here? Five and six? More?”

  “This is your friend, Eleven.” He frowned at her. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “She’s too little to be a friend.”

  “She’ll be bigger someday, and she’ll be like you.”

  Absorbing that, Eight leaned over the basket to examine the wriggling baby, and, at last, he heard her whisper: “I’ll watch over you, baby Eleven.”

  She looked up at him with a grin. “Can I help take care of her?”

  “Nurse can teach you how to play safely with her. Would you like that?”

  “We’ll be friend-family,” she sang. “Eight and Eleven! Sisters!”

  Of sorts, he thought. As long as it serves my purposes.

  He wondered if Terry Ives was still babbling to her sister and any reporter who’d listen about how he’d stolen her child.

  The child was his. She should’ve listened to him when he told her.

  * * *

  —

  Terry sat on the bench in the park and waited. It was a nice day, and Gloria had suggested the meeting place. Terry knew it was because she thought the fresh air would do her good. She’d spent a lot of time alone after the hospital, trying to convince Becky of what she knew. Calling reporters, trying to get more leads on who Brenner had been before he came here.

  Brenner had stolen her child. She knew it, but she couldn’t get anyone to listen.

  It had gotten hard to go outside, and she remembered why now. Sitting out here, it would be easy to forget the darkness that hid nearby. She wouldn’t walk in the light, not regularly, until she had her child at her side to walk with her.

  True to his word that night—other than stealing her baby—Brenner hadn’t summoned anyone back to his acid tests. She figured he had won, so why push his luck? She hadn’t been able to access the void since that night, no matter how hard she tried. Her abilities, whatever they were, seemed to have gone with her child.