#but I wanted to throw | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

metalhoops · 2 years ago

Text

Steve had always thought his house was haunted. It wasn’t until the bodies started showing up on the front porch that he suspected it was something more sinister.

The Harrington house had an air about it, with its elongated, hollow halls resembling gaping maws come sundown and all the familiar clicks and ticks that came with living in an enormous house alone. The pipes rattled like cuffed hands clapping when Steve stood beneath the shower spray. The wooden walls warped with the seasons, making all sorts of odd creeks. Then, of course, there was the wildlife, the shrieking of nightbirds and nocturnal creatures in the woods around the house.

He used to think the haunting was the extrapolation of an overactive imagination. It was the reanimated corpse of a broken home. Sometimes an open window would blow shut a downstairs door, letting Steve think for a moment his parents had returned, only to find a silent house at his feet.

After his first run-in with The Upside Down, he got paranoid. He slept with his bat by his bed, bolted the windows and checked the locks twice before going to sleep. Nothing ever happened. Each time the paranoia waned, another apocalypse would rear its ugly head, and he’d be back to the old routine.

March 1986 sent him over the edge with Vecna's disappearance, Max’s coma, and Eddie’s death. He made new sets of keys, figuring with Hawkins being the way it was, his parents would avoid the place like the plague. He borrowed one of Nancy’s guns and kept it in his bedside drawer. However, unlike in other years, the house was anything but empty.

He’d wake to the sound of slamming doors in the middle of the night and walk downstairs to find all the kitchen cupboards open and the front door ajar. Things escalated quickly. By mid-May, he was finding dead animals on his doorstep.

He’d held back vomit one morning when he’d stepped out onto the welcome mat to find his once pristine white Rebooks wedged between the ribs of a coyote. The creature was pallid to the point of purpling. The front yard was a crime scene, the neatly cut grass streaked with blood. It seemed like the blood was everywhere but within the animal. It’d gone cold and stiff in the night.

The next week it was a fox, the week after, a possum. Steve became more well-acquainted with death. He’d thrown house parties every week back in high school, and knew about deep cleaning, burying any trace of what a state the place had once been in.

At first, he’d tried to think rationally. He tried to make some excuse about the change in weather, bringing the creatures to his doorstep. He’d even mentioned it to Robin, who’d been appropriately disgusted but level-headed. After all, the town had almost been cracked into a hundred little pieces months before, and nature acting strangely was expected. Every other day a bird would take a nosedive into the video store window.

Steve became good at explaining these instances away until he found the final body on the floor of the living room. It wasn’t dead, but it should be.

The familiar sound of a slamming door roused Steve from his sleep. He grabbed the gun and headed downstairs only to find himself looking down at the familiar body of a boy, sprawled out on the living room carpet. His form was covered in fading scars, his pale skin ashen with the transparent sheen of death. It was Eddie. The boy Steve had watched die.

Steve saw the man’s chest rise and fall in languid gasps. He was dying at his feet all over again, and Steve was too used to strange things to question the authenticity of the sight before his eyes.

“Eddie?” Steve choked, disbelievingly watching as Eddie’s eyes sprung open. He’d known them as warm brown coco, but now they were gaping black pits, open yet unseeing.

“Stevie?” He echoed, sounding disorientated.

“It’s so freaking cold,” the boy huffed, attempting to sit. It was an echo of a conversation they’d had while Eddie was dying. Maybe Steve was dreaming.

He dropped the gun and helped pull Eddie into a sitting position, one hand on the back of the boy’s knee, the other on his shoulder blade. His hands were covered in blood, but Steve couldn’t see an injury.

“I was looking for you... thought you’d know what to do. Jesus Christ, you’re warm,” Eddie hissed through chattering teeth, his whole body leaning into Steve. They were on the cusp of summer and Steve was sweating, while Eddie was as cold as death.

Steve felt like he was standing on the edge of a steep cliff, being asked to jump. Something primal in the base of his brain was screaming for him to turn tail and run.

“You died, Eddie. I saw you, you shouldn’t be here,” Steve let out a string of incoherent ramblings. The boy couldn’t be alive.

Eddie curled further into himself, into Steve, a quiet groan escaping his lips.

“Can we save the crisis for later? I’m so damn hungry, man.” Steve nodded and pulled Eddie to his feet, leading him by the wrist to the kitchen.

He switched on the lights and watched Eddie wilt beneath them, using his hair to shield his face from the brightness. Steve, oh too familiar with migraines, flipped the lights back off, letting darkness swallow them.

He poured Eddie water from the sink and watched him inhale greedy gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing while a vein in his neck throbbed. Steve scraped together food from the fridge and watched as the man ate with the same frenzied fervour, before spinning on his heels and throwing up in the sink. Steve cringed but rubbed circles across the man’s back.

“I feel like I’m dying,” the boy groaned.

Steve couldn’t tell him he wasn’t. He didn’t know what was happening to Eddie, but he knew he didn’t want to watch the guy die again.

Steve felt Eddie’s body trembling beneath his fingertips. He rubbed his hand down the length of Eddie’s arm, trying to warm him.

“I’m going to get you a blanket,” Steve spoke, backing away from Eddie, keeping his eyes on the boy until his back slammed into the doorframe.

By the time he gathered the sheets from the upstairs closet and returned to the kitchen, Eddie was gone. The only trace left of his visit was the open front door and the bloody handprint on the sink.

After that night, Steve stopped locking his doors. He didn’t tell anyone he’d seen Eddie. They’d think he was crazy. He thought he was crazy.

It would be weeks before Eddie woke him again. This time, Steve was startled by another body sliding into bed beside him. The room smelled of rotting fruit and iron. Sickly sweet and coppery. Steve rolled over, finding himself looking into the vacuous black eyes he’d come to know as Eddie’s.

“Are you real?” Steve murmured, almost certain he was dreaming.

“Last time I checked,” Eddie grumbled, still shivering.

“Are you the one leaving the animals on the porch?” Steve asked. He’d been doing a lot of thinking, and contrary to popular belief, if pushed, he could put two and two together.

Eddie didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His face spoke volumes.

“It works in horror movies,” Eddie grumbled.

“Did it work?” It surprised the both of them how non-judgemental Steve’s tone was, as though they were discussing the weather.

“No,” Eddie confessed.

Steve felt the same sinking sensation he had when Eddie first appeared, but he never was one for running from danger.

“Do you think something else might?” He tried to remain cool, but his heart was a kick drum in his chest. Steve was good at playing the martyr. That didn’t mean he wasn’t terrified each time he did it.

“Satanic Cult Leader Lays with Hawkins High King and Local Golden Boy, Luring Him into his Ranks Through Blood Sacrifice. That headline has a nice ring to it, huh?” Eddie teased, putting on his most dramatic news anchor voice, shattering the illusion as he stuttered the final words out through chattering teeth.

“It’s a little wordy, and ‘lay with’ are we five?” Steve grumbled, trying to help Eddie by moving closer to the boy.

“I didn’t mean to imply...” Eddie grumbled. Despite his decrepit state, he still managed to look like a deer caught in headlights.

Steve shook his head and sighed. “I didn’t care that you did. Do you still feel like you’re dying?”

Once more, Eddie’s silence spoke volumes. Steve knew he was about to do something stupid, but chose to do it anyway.

“I want you to try it,” Steve insisted. Instead of moving closer, Eddie shuffled further away, going to stand when Steve reached out, catching him before he could recreate his disappearing act.

“I know what happens to you in horror movies, Stevie,” Eddie whispered, shaking himself from the boy’s grip.

“Only the predictable ones,” Steve argued, sitting up in bed.

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“And I don’t want to watch you die again, so just hurry up and get it over with,” Steve hissed.

“Christ, you have a death wish,” Eddie grumbled but returned to the bed, sitting cross-legged opposite Steve.

The two boys sat, looking each other over for a moment, unsure how to proceed. Steve watched as Eddie’s eyes became darker. The moonlight from the window turned his skin the same silver, blue as the night. His lips purple. His cheeks hollow. The veins across his face appeared like a million little highway lines cutting across the map that was his skin.

“Can you hurry up?” Steve spoke, feeling his nerves stretched thin.

“Sorry, Harrington. S’not like they give you a manual on this shit,” Eddie complained, leaning over and gathering the gun from Steve’s bedside drawer, switching off the safety and placing it in Steve’s right hand. He took Steve’s free hand with a beat of hesitation.

“Here’s something I thought I’d never say. Harrington, I give you consent to shoot me if shit goes sideways.” Steve’s eyes swelled wide, but he nodded to show he understood.

The idea of something was always worse than the real thing. He shut his eyes and tried not to squeeze his finger on the trigger as a sharp spasm of pain shocked up his left arm. The sound was worse than the pain. He could block out the sensation as time went on. It was hard to ignore the intermittent slurps or smacking of lips. Just when the world started to blur around the edges, Steve felt Eddie pull back.

“Sorry, sorry.” Eddie apologised as he grabbed a shirt from Steve’s things, trying to wrap it around the wound.

Eddie’s face was a sight to behold. Blood painted it from nose to jaw, a pool coagulating at the corner of his lips. That was the thing that tipped him over the edge. Steve felt the world go dark.

He woke hours later. The curtains were drawn, and he felt a body by his side. A warm body. Steve rolled over, surprised to find Eddie’s face pressed into his side. The boy was deep in sleep. Steve glanced at his mangled wrist, finding it wrapped in gauze, unsure where Eddie had found it.

Steve supposed his life was never going to be normal anyway. He might as well let it happen. At least he wasn’t going to be alone in the house anymore. If Eddie was alive, Steve couldn’t be haunted.

223 notes · View notes