"The magnetic field clearly isn't in chaos, so what exactly is going on?" After school, Richard took a compass and wandered around the town's woods. He even went to check the Creel family's abandoned mansion, but to his surprise, the compass pointed in the correct direction from beginning to end.
Being correct was what made it abnormal... Richard believed in Eleven's intuition. Since she said she felt the presence of the power of The Upside Down, then the power of The Upside Down must indeed be affecting the real world.
Because of this, Richard couldn't help but suspect that this series of anomalies in town might not be directly related to Henry. That 'vegetative man' might really be a vegetable right now, resting well, with neither the time nor the energy to mess with the real world.
So what on earth is it?
...Hopper put on his police hat, took a slip of paper with an address written on it, stepped out of his patrol car, and entered the secluded residence at 515 Larrabee Road.
Before entering the residence, one had to pass through an unkempt path. If it had rained today, this path would surely have been a muddy mess. On both sides of the path, flowers and grass grew wildly, and the courtyard was a shambles, with various domestic flowers and wild weeds savagely entangled. It was easy to imagine just how long the person living here had gone without tending to the front yard.
Walking up to the wooden house painted with white trim, Hopper took a deep breath and solemnly pressed the doorbell.
After the doorbell rang a few times, the sound of footsteps inside gradually approached, and a woman's voice came from within saying, "I'm coming to open the door."
The door opened, and a woman with curly hair as messy as the front yard's vegetation and eyes full of exhaustion entered Hopper's sight. The lingering sorrow between her brows added a few degrees of intuitive hardship to her impoverished attire. Seeing Hopper's sheriff uniform, the woman looked somewhat apprehensive and a bit puzzled, asking, "Is there something I can help you with, Officer?"
Hopper stared intently at the woman's face, still finding similarities to Eleven despite her poor complexion. His shoulders relaxed slightly before squaring again, and then he took out his ID and stated his identity: "Jim Hopper, deputy chief of the Hawkins Police Department. I'd like to ask you about your sister, Terry Ives."
Becky Ives froze for a moment, her expression becoming slightly tense. Seeing from Hopper's serious look that he wasn't joking, she invited him into the house.
Led by Becky, Hopper saw the Terry Ives he had mentioned—the madwoman who was now unable to care for herself, sitting in a rocking chair, only capable of repeating a few phrases over and over.
She had once been a promising researcher and was also a mother whose child had been snatched away. She was the biological mother Eleven thought of day and night, longing for her with every dawn and dusk.
Hopper had always known that Eleven's biological mother was still alive, but he hadn't had the courage to find her. It wasn't until recently, when Eleven became aware of the existence of a 'mother' and yearned for maternal love, that Hopper summoned the courage to seek out Terry Ives.
Regardless of whether Eleven's biological mother would eventually demand to take Eleven away, he wanted to meet her and speak his mind.
He just hadn't expected that Eleven's biological mother—the strong mother who once broke into Hawkins National Laboratory alone, the brave woman who dared to leak Hawkins Lab's dirty secrets to the media—would now be in such a catatonic state.
"...Three to the right, four to the left... four hundred and fifty..." Terry muttered on a loop, her words devoid of clear meaning.
Becky explained to Hopper with a face full of sorrow, "She's been like this ever since she said she couldn't get her daughter back. She performed some kind of experiment on herself that I can't understand, and then, my poor sister became like this."
Becky could no longer cry. She didn't know how many times she had grieved over this. Now the tears wouldn't come, but the sorrow still burned her heart like erupting magma.
"The Lab is gone," Hopper said somewhat quietly.
"I know," Becky sighed. "But it's all too late. And to this day, I still don't know if I really have a niece named 'Jane.' If I do, did she perish along with The Lab... But if that's the case, the truth might be too cruel for Terry."
"Have you talked to her about this?" Hopper asked.
"She still doesn't react," Becky shook her head. "Only when I occasionally mention the name Jane does her body perhaps move slightly, but she still methodically recites those words."
Becky showed a troubled expression. She actually didn't like mentioning the name "Jane" very much because she didn't want to fall into the same delusions as her sister. She was more inclined to believe that the "stolen child" her sister spoke of didn't actually exist.
Hopper was silent for a while, then said in a slightly raspy voice, "Jane exists... She is... she's my daughter now."
Hearing this, Becky was startled and stared blankly at Hopper. "What did you say?"
"I said, your sister, Terry Ives, did indeed have a daughter back then. Hawkins Lab did take her daughter away, and she is living with me now." Hopper looked at her and said seriously... Eleven listened to the radio emitting high-frequency static, her consciousness sinking into a dark space. She used her extrasensory perception to search for something within the town. This had already become a routine for Eleven, a way for her to pass the time and train her superpowers.
The training was effective. At least now she didn't need to rely on the help of a sensory deprivation tank; she could sense the situation of the entire Hawkins Town using her own abilities.
At this moment, Eleven was looking for things related to The Upside Down. Her astral form wandered aimlessly around the town, crossing mountains and diving to the bottom of lakes in an instant; her sensing ability was incredibly powerful.
She didn't want to be too bored at home alone while Mike and the others were at school, and she also wanted to help Richard and Hopper deal with matters related to The Upside Down. So, she often activated her powers while Hopper wasn't home.
After maintaining the activation for about thirteen minutes, Eleven couldn't hold on any longer. She stopped without having found anything, her face pale, surrounded by a pile of bloody, crumpled tissues.
Eleven wiped her nose and had to give up, deciding to continue after resting for a day. She gathered all the tissues used to wipe the nosebleeds, took them to the bathroom, and slowly flushed them down the toilet bit by bit.
She didn't dare throw these tissues directly into the trash can; Hopper would be angry if he found them.
Having cleaned up the scene, Eleven went back to her room and lay down. Looking at the ceiling, she muttered, "I didn't see anything. Could that thing be underground where it's hard for me to investigate with my powers?"
Richard thought so too. He had returned once again to the abandoned Hawkins Lab. Using a shovel, he forcefully broke through the concrete floor, which was at least three meters thick, and then jumped into the seemingly bottomless underground cavity using a rope.
Illuminated by a flashlight, the Gate to the Upside Down was now tightly closed, not even emitting a glimmer of light, leaving only an ordinary crack on the wall.
After descending twenty or thirty meters by rope, Richard finally felt his feet touch the ground.
"So, how about now?" Richard took the compass out of his pocket and found that the needle had finally undergone an abnormal deflection.
Well, now it's normal.