chapter xvii .
put him in an early grave

IF MAX HAD THOUGHT VAL'S MUSIC TASTE WAS BAD, Val wondered what she was thinking about Eddie's—all Iron Maiden, Metallica, Black Sabbath. The only song Val recognized out of all the tapes she was throwing around was For Whom The Bell Tolls, and that was only because Mason had gone through a hard rock phase for a day and a half before he decided it was lame and gross. But despite her outward persona, Val was not the average hard rock enjoyer, and she found most of the names of the songs she was reading to be very morose and weird.

     "What exactly are we looking for here?" she asked, shuffling through as many tapes as she could. "What does Wheeler listen to? Anybody? Robin?"

     "Madonna, Blondie, Bowie, The Beatles?" Robin cried, throwing a bunch of tapes onto the bed and turning to Eddie. "Music! We need music!"

     Eddie picked up one of his Iron Maiden tapes and shoved it in Robin's face, screaming passionately, "THIS IS MUSIC!"

("i never even saw him get mad")

     Val dumped the rest of the tapes onto the floor and rushed back into the living room, staring up through the hole in the ceiling to where Steve was still shaking Nancy's shoulders and calling for her. Val cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, "How's she doing? How much time do we have?"

     "No fucking clue!" Steve yelled back, without taking his eyes off Nancy. "Just hurry!"

     She cursed to herself, turning to run back to Eddie's room—but before she could even hop off the mattress and take a step in the right direction, Steve exclaimed Nancy's name, and Val looked back up through the gate to see her collapsing into Steve's arms. She was breathless and looked scared out of her goddamn mind, but her bones were still intact, her eyes didn't have blood leaking out of them, and she wasn't dead. So Val counted it as a win.

                             A FEW HOURS LATER, silhouetted against the early traces of a morning sun peeking through the window and announcing morning, Nancy recounted everything she'd seen while under the curse. Her voice was shaky, and she hadn't quite caught her breath yet, but she was able to tell the rest of them everything. Val had to tune out for a few parts, finding herself unable to listen, to relive what she'd experienced under the curse.

     "He showed me things that haven't even happened yet," Nancy remembered, her voice hoarse. "I saw a dark cloud spreading over Hawkins. Downtown on fire. Dead soldiers. And this... this giant creature with.. a gaping mouth. And it wasn't alone. There were so many monsters. An army of them. And they were coming into Hawkins... into our neighborhoods. Our homes. And then... he showed me my mom, and Holly. Mike. And they were all..."

Her voice trailed off, tears welling up in her eyes. She shook her head and drew in a shaky breath. Everybody looked down. Nobody was waiting for her to go on—it was easy to understand what she'd been meaning.

"Okay," Steve began warily, "but he's just trying to scare you, Nance. Right? I mean, it's not.. real."

"Not yet," Nancy whispered. "But there.. there was something else. He showed me gates. Four of them. Spreading across Hawkins. And these gates, they looked like the one outside of Eddie's trailer. But.... they didn't stop growing. And this wasn't the Upside Down Hawkins—this was our Hawkins. Our home."

Val swallowed, her knee bouncing anxiously as she listened to Nancy's retelling. Her mind was flooding with fearful thoughts. Whatever Nancy had seen must have been some sort of premonition, a warning of what was to come. What was in store for Hawkins.

"Four chimes," Max said. "Vecna's clock—it always chimes four times. Four exactly."

"I heard them, too," Val breathed out, her gaze downcast.

"He's been telling us his plan this whole time." Max rolled her eyes, though Val could tell she was frightened. "Four kills. Four gates... The end of the world."

"If that's true," Dustin said, "he's only one kill away."

"But.." Val's brow furrowed. "If he only needed four kills, why curse five people? Chrissy, Fred, Max, Patrick, and.. me. It doesn't make any sense."

     "He'd thought he could take you as a replacement for Max," Dustin said, like it was common knowledge. "His fourth kill was a bust, so he narrowed in on the next runner-up: You. But, you know, you were a bust, too, so..."

     "So I was a goddamn second choice?" She scoffed. "That shouldn't hurt my feelings."

     Nancy sat up. "Max, try them again. Somebody's bound to pick up."

     The redhead rushed to the Munsons' phone, then frantically began to dial numbers on the keypad. Val had a faint idea of who she was calling—she'd received vague answers when Mason had asked the first time Max tried the Byers' home line—but she was still thoroughly confused as to how Jonathan and Will had any correlation to all of this Vecna shit.

     After a few seconds of Max anxiously tapping her foot, holding the phone to her ear, she put it back on its hook and shook her head. "Rang a few times, then went to a busy signal."

     "Maybe you punched it wrong," Steve suggested. "Try again."

     "I didn't punch it in wrong."

     "Well.. I don't know—"

     Mason chimed in, "Dude, I think she knows how to use a phone."

     "I'm just saying," Steve said emphatically, "she could've typed it in wrong."

     Max tried the line again, then hung it back on its hook with much more force than necessary. She spun around, throwing her hands in the air. "Same shit."

     "How is that possible?" Lucas said, shaking his head in disbelief.

     "I told you," Dustin said, "Joyce has this telemarketer job. She's always on the phone. Mike won't stop whining about it."

     "Okay, yeah," Max said, "but this line's been busy for, what, three days now? That's not Joyce. No way. Something's wrong."

     "She's right," Nancy agreed forlornly. "It can't be just a coincidence. It can't be. Whatever's happening in Lenora is connected to all of this. I'm sure of it. But Vecna can't hurt them... not if he's dead."

     She spun around to face everyone else, suddenly determined. "We have to go back in there. Back to the Upside Down."

     Steve exploded with declinations. "Woah, no, no, no. What?"

     Val's eyebrows shot up on her forehead. "What, you wanna go back to that hellhole?"

     Eddie shook his head decisively. "Nope. No. No."

     "Let's think this through," Steve insisted, standing from the couch and moving closer to Nancy.

     "What is there to think through?" Nancy said, her voice raising. "The only reason we were in trouble was because we weren't prepared. But this time, we will be. We'll get weapons and protection. We'll go through the gate, we'll find his lair, and we'll kill him."

     "Okay, you make it sound all easy and shit," Val said, standing from the couch, "but he'll kill us before we even make it ten paces towards his hideout. The only reason you survived is because he wanted you to, Wheeler. But Max and I know what it's like to go up against him—and I mean really fight him. He could take all of us out with a snap of his fingers. We can't run in there, guns a-blazing, all trigger-happy—we'd be dead on arrival. It's not a fair fight."

     "Then why fight fair?" Dustin mused. All eyes turned to him. "He's just like Eleven—same powers, same strengths—but that also means they have the same weaknesses. When El remote-travels—"

     "Woah, hang on a sec," Mason interrupted, waving his hands. "Who's El?"

     "Their little friend with superpowers," Val replied immediately. She hit his chest. "Keep up, dude."

     "Okay, yeah," Dustin continued, nodding, "so when she remote-travels, she goes into this sort of trance-like state. I bet the same is true of Vecna."

     Lucas lifted his head. "That would explain what he was doing in that attic!"

     "Exactly!" Dustin agreed. "When he attacks his next victim, I'll bet you he's back in that attic, physical body defenseless."

     "Defenseless, yeah, sure," Steve said, crossing his arms. "What about the army of bats?"

     "He raises a good point," Val said. "I do not want to be undead bat food. Horrible way to go out."

     "Well, we'll have to find a way past them," Dustin said. "Distract them, somehow."

     "How do we do that, exactly?" Eddie asked, standing from the couch.

     "No idea," Dustin replied. Eddie sat back down, lips pursed, while Dustin continued his rant. "But once they're gone, he doesn't stand a chance. It'll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his coffin."

     "That all sounds good in theory," Robin said, "but there is no pattern to Vecna's killings. I mean, at least not one that I can decipher. We don't know when he's gonna attack next. We don't even know who he's going to attack!"

     "Yeah, we do," Max said suddenly. Her arms were crossed as she leaned against the wall, eyes on the ground. "I can still feel him. I'm still marked. Cursed. I ditch Kate Bush, I draw his focus back to me."

     Lucas and Val immediately began to voice their concerns at the same time, but Max just shook her head. "I survived before. I can survive again."

     "No," Val said forcefully, glaring at Max. "Not happening. I've been cursed already, too. I have the mark. I'll be the bait. Not you."

     "Yeah, no," Eddie said, standing. "How about neither of you are the bait and we just draw Vecna's attention away using something else?"

     "Or.. we can both be the bait," Max said. Her brow was scrunched together in deep thought. "He'll be weaker if we both try to draw him into our minds at the same time."

"Absolutely not," Val said angrily, putting her hands on her hips. She looked to any of the elder teenagers for backup. "No, I'm not letting her put herself at risk. It's not happening."

"But she has a point," Nancy said, lifting her eyes to Val. "If you both direct his mental entity to different places, his physical being will be guarded even less. I hate to say it, Max, but I think you're right."

     "This is so stupid," Val said, rubbing her eyes. "It's way too risky! We don't even know if it'll work."

     "But if it does," Dustin said, "we'll never have to take him down again. This could be the end of Vecna."

"Besides," Max assured Val, "all we have to do is keep him busy long enough so that they can get into the attic. And then you can chop his head off. Stab him in the heart. Blow him up with some explosive Dustin cooks up. I honestly don't care how you pur this asshole in his grave. Just... whatever it is, whatever you do.. try not to miss."

Val's arms were crossed and she glared at Max, shaking her head in disbelief. Finally, she surrendered, exhaling a huff. "Fine. But, listen, Max. Vecna needs one more. He only needs one more kill before it's all over. He's either gonna take you, or he's gonna take me."

Max shrugged solemnly. "So what?"

"So if it comes down to it... I'm sure as hell not gonna let it be you."