087 The Power of The Upside Down
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You have deciphered an Anomaly item — The Moribund Hypnosis Notebook.
The Moribund Hypnosis Notebook (004) — Documents experimental methods and recorded results of hypnotizing the dying, exploring the effect of suggestion on the boundary between life and death. Blindly stepping into unknown territory produces unpredictable consequences. The unknown generates fear, and fear of the unknown is inevitably accompanied by a despair that cannot be named.
After leaving Mrs. Tracy's basement, Richard sealed the notebook back into its original wooden box and handed it to Hopper. It would almost certainly end up in the same fire as the rest of her belongings. That was probably the right call.
What stayed with him was what he'd seen at the scene — or rather, what he hadn't. Mrs. Tracy's soul was gone, already moved on. But Ernest's was still there, and alongside it another presence Richard didn't recognize — an older energy, hostile and dense, the residue of someone who had died badly a very long time ago. Both of them were carrying the kind of weight that came from dying wrongfully, and both were carrying far more power than they should have been.
That was the part that didn't sit right.
New vengeful spirits — even ones formed from violent or unjust deaths — didn't start out this strong. The entities in his own house had taken months to develop into anything genuinely threatening, and they'd had the benefit of Hawkins' unusual atmospheric conditions the whole time. The town had always been a place where the membrane between this world and the Upside Down ran thin — thin enough that a sufficiently powerful psychic could punch through it, thin enough that dark energy from the other side seeped into the local environment like groundwater. That energy was good fuel for spiritual entities. It was part of why Hawkins produced more of them than anywhere Richard had ever read about.
But this strong, this fast? That wasn't natural accumulation. Something had given them a boost. Something active.
Eleven had described it as feeling like the Upside Down's power, which meant the other side was doing something it shouldn't be able to do yet. Henry had taken a serious hit a year ago — more than serious. Richard had watched Eleven grind a substantial portion of his projected consciousness into nothing. Recovery from that kind of damage wasn't quick, even for something like Henry.
So what was moving over there?
He didn't have an answer. He filed it and kept watching.
The shop had settled into a rhythm that was starting to look like an actual sustainable business.
Joyce had come around after some patient conversation about what the role would actually involve — not just counter work, but the kind of operational oversight that would let Richard and Steve step back eventually and focus on whatever came next. She was sharp, she was organized, and she had the particular quality of someone who'd been managing chaos for years without any of the formal credit for it. Trainee manager suited her. She'd be running the place inside of two months, Richard estimated.
Robin had already made herself indispensable, which surprised nobody who knew her.
Steve, for his part, had reached the specific plateau of financial comfort that occasionally made previously sensible people do slightly unhinged things. He wasn't reckless — but he'd looked at his bank account and his monthly revenue and his general situation and concluded, apparently, that what his relationship with Nancy needed was a sports car.
He'd presented it on their anniversary with the energy of someone who had thought very hard about this and was confident.
Nancy's response had moved through surprise, then genuine appreciation, then a kind of distressed discomfort that Steve had not anticipated and couldn't quite read. She wasn't ungrateful. She just couldn't accept it — something about the scale of it felt wrong to her, felt like it was pulling the relationship's weight off-balance in a direction she didn't know how to correct for.
Steve had pushed. Nancy had pushed back. By the time the Halloween party at school rolled around, they were the only couple in the building who weren't talking to each other, which in a gym full of teenagers was a specific kind of visible.
Steve found Richard during a break, up in the bleachers away from the noise. He dropped down beside him and stared at the court below for a moment before saying anything.
"I just wanted to make her happy," he said. "I don't understand how that turned into this."
Richard watched a pickup game running on the far end of the court. "Solidify was the word you used earlier. You said you wanted to solidify things."
Steve blinked. Then laughed, short and a little helpless. "Yeah, you caught that." He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "I've been feeling like something's off between us lately. Nothing she's said — just a feeling. She's been pulling back a little. Taking more time alone. I know she's dealing with the rejection letter and I wanted to help, but every time I try she kind of — deflects. And I started wondering if I'm the problem. If she's getting tired of where we are."
Richard listened without interrupting, which was sometimes the most useful thing he could offer.
"So I thought a gesture might help," Steve said. "Something that showed her I was serious about us. I just apparently picked the wrong gesture by about forty thousand dollars."
"Have you considered," Richard said, "just asking her what's actually going on?"
Steve looked at him. "What if she gets mad?"
"She's already mad. You got there anyway. At least if you ask directly you might find out something useful."
Steve was quiet for a moment. Then he pointed at him. "That's — okay, that's fair." He sat back. "Yeah. I'll talk to her tonight. Privately." He glanced over. "You know it's a little absurd that I keep coming to you for this stuff. You're literally the least romantically active person I know."
"Which is exactly why I have no personal stake in your outcomes and can give you an honest read," Richard said.
Steve laughed — a real one this time. He clapped Richard on the shoulder. "Best friend. I mean it."
Richard was about to respond when his focus shifted.
The pickup game below had gotten more physical. Billy Hargrove was at the center of it, moving with the particular energy of someone who was very good at something and wanted everyone in the room to be aware of that fact at all times. He was shirtless despite the fact that this was a school gymnasium and there was no obvious reason to be shirtless, which Richard suspected was also intentional.
Bang.
The ball came off a badly angled shot and launched into the bleachers at significant speed, aimed directly at Steve's face. Steve's hands came up instinctively but too late.
Richard's hand intercepted it. He caught it one-handed without standing up, the ball smacking into his palm hard enough to sting, and held it.
Billy jogged a few steps toward the bleachers and stopped, chewing gum, wearing the expression of someone performing an apology rather than offering one. "My bad."
"A stray shot from center court heading directly into the bleachers," Richard said pleasantly. "The basket's about forty feet in the other direction. That's impressive navigation for a stray shot. You doing okay, California?"
The gym went quiet in the specific way spaces go quiet when something lands.
Steve, who had been bracing for impact two seconds ago, exhaled and then laughed — the involuntary kind that comes out before you can decide whether it's appropriate. That set off a ripple through the students watching, attention sliding toward Billy with the helpless magnetism of a shared joke.
Billy's expression went flat. His jaw tightened. A couple of his usual crowd were visibly suppressing smiles, which was its own separate problem for him.
"You want to come down here and run with us?" he said, the invitation wrapped around an edge. "Or just keep watching?"
"I'm good up here," Richard said. "Here's your ball."
He threw it back.
The return was faster than the original shot — noticeably, significantly faster, the kind of speed that shouldn't come from someone sitting relaxed in bleachers and tossing casually. Billy processed this about a half-second too late to make a clean decision. Pride kept his feet planted when his instincts wanted to step back. He caught it chest-high, the impact driving through his arms and into his core, and had to lock his knees to stay upright. The guys behind him caught his shoulders.
He held it. Technically. With about twice the effort it should have taken.
When he looked back up at the bleachers, Richard and Steve were already walking toward the exit, their backs to the court, not looking back.
Not dismissive. Not performing. Just — done, and moving on, as though Billy Hargrove and his gym and his audience were simply not the most interesting thing available to them.
Which, for both of them, was true.
Billy stood in the middle of the court and held the basketball and said nothing.
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