Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  “Cheers,” Gloria said, taking it.

  Terry clinked her beer to the glass before they each drank.

  Other than a couple making out in the corner of the yard, their group was alone out here. Even Andrew was inside. Alice had work early the next day, and had planned to enjoy dressing up but leave early. Now she wanted to stay put as long as possible. Party inertia.

  “Tell me your favorite thing about biology,” Alice said to Gloria. “What made you study it?”

  “Ooh, I want to hear this, too,” Terry said, sitting down beside Ken. He’d been remarkably quiet all evening.

  “You probably expect me to say the cell or the miracle of life.” Gloria folded her hands together on the table.

  “I expect you to say comic books,” Terry said with a grin.

  “There are a lot of scientists in those,” Gloria said, “but they’re usually villains.”

  “And you are no villain,” Alice declared. It was obvious, but she said it anyway.

  “Thank you,” Gloria said. “Anyway, biology is how we all—and everything around us—works. So that was it at first, but not anymore.”

  “Well, what is it?” Terry asked.

  “This might sound silly,” Gloria said.

  “Never.” Alice meant it with her whole heart.

  “You can trust the people at this table,” Ken said.

  “All right.” But Gloria studied the night sky as she answered like she didn’t quite believe it. “People working together. Scientific progress can only happen when people use the same standards and share their findings. Personal differences don’t matter, when it’s working right. Only differences in the findings.”

  Alice wanted to swoon. “That’s beautiful.”

  Gloria smiled.

  Andrew wandered back out, steps meandering, and plopped down beside Alice. “What are you talking about?”

  “The magic of science.” Gloria didn’t give the declaration the grandeur it deserved, but Alice allowed it. “Good science, at least.”

  The making-out couple had disappeared sometime in the past few minutes, and Alice realized there wasn’t music inside anymore. Here she sat with the only people who might understand, and there was no driver to eavesdrop. No lab techs or doctors with machines she wanted to destroy and never repair.

  She hadn’t thought to say anything tonight. But, here, now, she could risk it.

  “Do any of you see the monsters?”

  The words slipped from her mouth softly enough for the night to swallow them. For a second, it seemed like maybe none of the others had heard.

  Terry shifted in her seat to fully face Alice. “The monsters?”

  Alice could back away from what she’d said. Keep the rest of it inside. Instead she kept talking.

  “I don’t mean Brenner and Parks and the rest of the staff. I’m talking about what I see in my sessions when he comes in and puts the shock on me. I get these flashes of monsters, and they’re ravenous and they won’t stop. It’s like looking through a hole in reality. It terrifies me.”

  Alice had barely breathed as she let it all out, as much as she could stand.

  “You’ve seen them more than once?” Terry asked.

  “Yes,” Alice said, refusing to try to decode their expressions, grateful for the dark. Glad that Terry’s tone of voice was neutral. “It’s probably just the drugs but…”

  “What do the monsters look like?” Ken put in.

  “You’re psychic, shouldn’t you know?” Alice snapped and then felt bad. “Sorry.”

  “You’re on edge. That’s not how it works for me,” he said.

  “They look like nightmares, horror movie stuff. Tall and gangly. Muscular. Covered in hide and scales and not like people. Well, except one of them walks like a person. Almost. I don’t see them for long. But I keep seeing them.”

  “When you say he shocks you…do you mean he’s using electroshock therapy on you?” Gloria’s voice was not neutral. It was angry.

  “Yes, he called it ‘the electricity.’ I think it’s because I like machines—I shouldn’t have let them know anything about me.”

  “I haven’t seen the monsters,” Terry said.

  Alice felt her stomach begin to plummet. She shouldn’t have said anything.

  Terry continued. “But I…I met a little girl at the lab. She calls Brenner ‘Papa.’ ”

  “When was this?” Ken asked.

  Gloria said, “I knew there was something else the other day.”

  “She wasn’t sure how to tell you,” Andrew said. “Babe, go on.”

  Alice leaned forward. She wasn’t the only one with a secret?

  “I—I was going to ask Brenner about calling the school and your family, but instead I found this child. Her name is Kali and she calls him Papa. She said she is a subject like we are—Andrew thinks maybe she’s sick or something.”

  “Have you only seen her the once?” Gloria asked.

  “He hasn’t left me alone again,” Terry said. “And she was in a wing with security—behind one of those keypads. It was luck that I got in there the first time.”

  “And Brenner tried to get you to plant a bug for him.” Gloria gave a low whistle.

  “He did what?” Alice demanded.

  Terry explained the assignment given under supposed hypnosis, how she and Gloria had worked together to complete the task without Terry having to betray her trust.

  “I can’t believe he asked you to do that,” Ken said.

  “I can. What have we gotten involved in?” Gloria asked. “That’s the question.”

  “I don’t know,” Terry said. “But I’m beginning to think…” She put her hands flat on the table, and seemed as sober as anything, as if she’d never had a drop to drink. “I’m beginning to think this entire thing is bad news. I couldn’t find a scrap on Brenner at the library. There has to be another way to get information…We need to find out as much as we can about what they’re doing.”

  There was silence, and Alice waited to see what everyone would say.

  “I knew it,” Ken said.

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Sure you did.”

  “I did.”

  Gloria cut in. “No bickering. I told you what I love about science, and I wanted to learn more about how lab conditions work. I’ve already told Terry—nothing going on there is as it should be. Especially now that I know they’re electroshocking you, Alice. None of this should be going on. Maybe with all of us working together…we can get the answers Terry wants.”

  Alice was in for that, but it wasn’t her major concern. “The monsters I see…I think…What if they’re real somehow? Brenner could…If he finds out, he could use them. Use me.”

  Terry reached across and took Alice’s hands in her own. “That is not going to happen. I won’t let it.”

  “She won’t, kid sister,” Andrew said. “I can promise you that.”

  Alice didn’t believe that was something Terry or Andrew could promise. But she accepted it all the same.

  “Do you think they’re real?” Ken asked.

  “I don’t know.” That was the truth. It meant something that he’d even asked the question. Alice had begun to fear that they were, but she wasn’t certain. “So, if everyone’s in, what do we do?”

  “That’s a good question,” Terry said. “I need to think.”

  6.

  Brenner held out his hand and took an oversized towel one of the lab assistants had produced. This was Eight’s first time in the sensory deprivation tank and he’d given her a specific prompt—to attempt to create a sunny day outside in the room.

  Nothing had happened, and he could feel the relief in the restless movements around him. He’d hoped the tank would boost her gifts. The s
taffers present had probably been afraid of the same possibility.

  “Eight.” He leaned forward and spoke into a mic wired into her helmet. “You can stop trying now. We’ll get you out.”

  She would understand the disappointment in his tone. He’d promised her a reward if she delivered. And he had carefully considered what he might give her if she accomplished a controlled illusion—without encouraging her to continue questioning him.

  But there would be no reward for a lack of results.

  At his nod, an assistant opened the tank’s hatch and helped Eight out. She tore off the helmet, thrusting it at the lab worker. “Papa, I didn’t like that!”

  He saw the dark red line of blood from her nostril at the same moment the illusion began. Bright sunlight blinded him, and he squinted. He flinched back and so did the assistants.

  He forced himself to look, and a tempest of crashing waves surrounded them, arcing high overhead. He heard a cry to his right, the clattering feet of someone running….He’d have to find out who it was later.

  “Eight,” he said, soothing. Impressed.

  He hadn’t realized she’d ever seen an ocean, but it made sense. She was born across one, after all. Brenner simply watched as the waves rolled over them. The water didn’t exist, but it looked and sounded utterly convincing. He could barely make out the patterns of the walls and outlines underneath it.

  He stood, waiting in the maelstrom Eight created while she cried, harsh angry sobs.

  “The cupcakes,” he barked when she’d managed the illusion for several minutes. He held out his other hand for the reward. A scrambling beside him and a tech returned, breathing hard as she placed the Hostess package in his hand. Eight’s favorite. Something to satisfy her, temporarily, since she’d only gotten more insistent in her request for friends. Any break from that was welcome.

  The strength of her performance was an excellent revelation on which to end the week. Already he’d been encouraged by how swiftly Terry Ives had completed her assignment. She seemed none the wiser about his intention to rewire her brain, by suggestion, bit by bit, to prove it could be done.

  “Eight.” Brenner approached her carefully. The blood from her nostril trickled down to her mouth and it mixed with her tears. He put a hand on her arm. “I have something for you.”

  “No, no,” she wailed, and the waves crashed harder around them. “I can’t stop. I can’t.”

  He took the cupcake pack and put it in her hand, waiting. She gripped it, nearly crushing the sweets inside, and then collapsed to her knees. The illusion vanished.

  He kneeled to give her the towel. She ignored him, shaking as she ripped into the package and sank her little teeth into the chocolate, white filling oozing out. He should be teaching her more discipline, but this was what worked. She was getting stronger. And she was still cooperating…more or less.

  This was the status quo for now. Someday she’d manage to control it. He had to be patient.

  Eight chewed. Once she’d finished a whole cake, she asked, weakly, “When is the woman coming back to visit?”

  “Dr. Parks?” he asked, confused.

  He hadn’t realized she’d been visiting Kali, but it didn’t surprise him. Women and their softness. They couldn’t resist a child.

  “No,” Eight said.

  “Who?” He frowned.

  “I can’t say. It’s a secret.”

  Brenner took her arm and marched her back to her room, where he kept her awake for the next thirteen hours, refusing to let her sleep. She fought him as long as she could. But finally, she said, “The lady with the patient gown. She only came once. She told me she’d come again.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Pretty,” she said. “She was nice. It was a secret.”

  “You did the right thing, telling me,” Brenner said. “We don’t keep secrets, the two of us.”

  Eight looked at him with clear, judging eyes. Yes, we do, she was thinking; he could practically hear it. But she kept it inside and so he left her there, at last, to get some sleep. When he reached the control room, he ordered them to review every scrap of footage of Eight’s room, log every person who had come and gone since they’d been here.

  Eight was getting stronger. He couldn’t risk anyone messing that up.

  1.

  The cafeteria’s main offerings that night had been sloppy joes and tater tots. The scent of both slightly burned meat and deep-fried potatoes lingered, mixed with the competing cologne, deodorant, and sweat of a packed crowd. The university had made viewing President Nixon’s scheduled address to the nation on Vietnam mandatory—as if that would do anything to stop the protestors.

  Terry thought they were fooling themselves, but she didn’t have a diner shift tonight and so here she was. Elbow to elbow with the people beside her, there wasn’t enough room to put her homework on the table. She couldn’t complain—not when at least a hundred other students had to sit cross-legged on the floor once the actual seats filled up. A TV so small almost no one would be able to see it had been wheeled to the front of the room.

  Andrew was supposed to meet her here, but he hadn’t showed. When she’d called him earlier on the dorm phone, Dave had been in full rant about how unfair it was for the school to decree they had to show respect for Nixon. Maybe Andrew meant to skip it in protest. Hopefully no one would notice.

  “Terry!” Stacey called out over the hum of conversation, fighting her way through. Instead of taking a spot at the back, she shimmied between Terry and the stranger beside her and sat on the table itself. “Andrew called,” she said, leaning forward, ignoring the dirty looks of those around them. “He said—”

  “Quiet, please,” an administrative type with a microphone said. The microphone was then placed in front of the TV, the volume cranked to maximum. Nixon appeared center screen in the Oval Office, big forehead, bulbous nose. “Good evening, my fellow Americans,” he said, the amplification scratchy and booming.

  Stacey whispered in Terry’s ear. “They’re coming. Here.”

  “Okay,” Terry said, not understanding the urgency in Stacey’s voice.

  “Shhh,” a boy on the floor in front of them said over his shoulder.

  Stacey made a face at the back of his head, but she quieted down.

  Nixon went on with an explanation of why they were still in Vietnam when he’d promised to get them out. The crowd watched restlessly.

  The doors at the front of the cafeteria burst open and three figures ran through them. Fear blazed through Terry when she saw they were wearing Halloween masks…Then she recognized one of them. Frankenstein. Another was Nixon himself. The third was Superman, the black curl over the forehead. All three of the men were wearing masks that had been left behind at Andrew’s party.

  Stacey raised her eyebrows at Terry. “Told you.”

  Pride and concern warred in her as the protesters made a line in front of the TV, arms linked. The administrator descended, telling them they had to leave and calling for security.

  “Don’t listen to him!” Dave shouted over Nixon. And then Andrew’s voice: “No more lies! End the war!”

  A few students shouted support and chanted, “End the war!” A few others shouted for them to let the president talk. Everyone was on their feet, jostling and unsettled. Terry tried to fight her way through the crowd to the front, but it was no use. Security made it first.

  No, not campus security. The local cops. The police were here.

  Andrew’s last shout before being handcuffed was a slogan he’d showed her in a photo of a rally in the Bay Area: “Frodo lives!”

  Terry shook her head. Pride flooded her.

  She loved him like the heroic fools they both were.

  * * *

  —

  Terry got to the
police station within thirty minutes after the speech ended. The administrator had said anyone who left early could join those who were arrested. Becky wouldn’t approve.

  So she’d waited, vaguely panicked, while Nixon claimed his policies represented a large silent majority of Americans, and that those who protested were a minority who hoped being loud would win the day. Then she’d gone home to get all the cash she had in case she needed bail for Andrew.

  And now she waited some more in the lobby of a place that reminded her of the Hawkins laboratory. Only less sparkling clean. People came and went, some in uniform.

  “Who were you here for?” The officer behind the desk had eyebrows so close together they resulted in permanent disapproval.

  Terry jumped to her feet, holding her purse to her stomach. “Andrew Rich.”

  “He’s been charged with disturbing the peace and trespassing. The university wants to throw the book at them.”

  She’d been afraid of that. He was already on probation. Focus on the immediate problem. “How much to get him out?”

  “A hundred dollars.”

  Shockingly high. Her bank’s reluctance to give a young single woman an account suddenly played in Terry’s favor. She had ready access to her money, which she kept in an envelope in her underwear drawer. It would take every dime she’d earned from Hawkins, but it was worth it.

  “I’ll pay cash.”

  “Good, because I’m not taking a check from a young woman without parental approval.”

  “My parents are deceased.”

  He had the grace to look down at his desk. “Sorry, miss.”

  Terry counted out the money and the officer accepted it. “You can sit and wait.”

  She hesitated. “I’d like a receipt.”

  The disapproving eyebrows shot up, but he wrote her one. He waved a hand toward the waiting area. “I’ll have someone bring him right out.”

  That turned out to not be exactly true. Terry sat for another half hour before a familiar figure emerged in the company of another officer. She didn’t care what they thought. She rushed forward to hug him.