Chapter 15: INDIANA SOIL
The "Welcome to Indiana" sign appeared at 2:17 PM, unremarkable green and white, just another state line on an endless highway.
I felt it the moment we crossed.
Something shifted in the air—not physically, but somewhere deeper. Like static before lightning, like the pressure drop before a storm. My fire stirred without permission, responding to something I couldn't see or name. Heat prickled along my forearms, and I had to consciously suppress it before Max noticed.
"You okay?" She was looking at me, frowning. "You tensed up."
"Just tired. Long drive."
"We're almost done. Another couple hours, right?"
"Right." I kept my voice level, my grip on the steering wheel steady. But inside, alarm bells were ringing.
The Gate was open. I'd known that intellectually—this was 1984, Will Byers had been to the Upside Down the year before, Eleven had escaped Hawkins Lab, the whole mess was ongoing. But knowing something and feeling it were different things.
I could feel it now. A wrongness in the land, something cold and dark buried beneath the surface of ordinary America. Every mile closer to Hawkins made it stronger.
Max went back to the radio, oblivious. Of course she was—she didn't have fire in her blood, didn't have whatever sensitivity the transmigration had given me. She just saw cornfields and small towns, the boring heartland she'd complained about for three days.
I saw a battlefield.
The farms rolled past, endless and identical. Corn mostly, some soybeans, the occasional house breaking the monotony. Normal. Ordinary. Exactly what you'd expect from rural Indiana.
But underneath—something else. Something that pulsed like a heartbeat, slow and patient and wrong.
My hands warmed against the steering wheel. I forced the heat down, concentrated on the road, on the simple mechanics of driving. The fire wanted to respond to whatever I was sensing. It took real effort to keep it contained.
"So," Max said, breaking the silence, "you ever been to Indiana before?"
"No."
"Me neither. Looks like a great place to die of boredom."
"Might surprise you."
She snorted. "Doubt it. What's the town even called again? Hawkins? Sounds like a cough syrup."
I couldn't argue with that. But the name meant something different to me than it did to her. To Max, Hawkins was just another stop on her family's wandering path—another town, another school, another place to feel like an outsider.
To me, it was ground zero. The epicenter of everything that was about to happen.
We stopped for gas about an hour from our destination. I pumped while Max ran inside for snacks and a bathroom break. The gas station was nothing special—two pumps, a small convenience store, a bored attendant reading a magazine behind the counter.
But even here, I could feel it. That pressure in the air. That wrongness that had nothing to do with the physical world and everything to do with what lay beneath it.
The Gate. Somewhere in Hawkins, probably under the lab, there was a hole between dimensions. A wound in reality that the Mind Flayer was using to reach into this world.
And I was driving toward it on purpose.
Max came back with Dr. Pepper and Twinkies. She tossed the Twinkies at my head. "For the black hole in your stomach."
"Thanks." I caught them one-handed, pocketed them for later. The hunger was manageable right now—I'd eaten a big lunch—but it would come back. It always did.
We got back on the road. The miles counted down: fifty, forty, thirty.
The wrongness intensified with each one.
I tried to analyze it, understand what I was sensing. The fire was reacting to something cold—that made sense, given what I knew about the Upside Down. The Mind Flayer was associated with cold, with ice, with temperatures that extinguished flame. Maybe my power was naturally opposed to whatever was leaking through the Gate.
Or maybe I was just going crazy from three days of highway driving and too many gas station snacks.
"Welcome to Hawkins," Max read as we passed the sign. "Population 30,000. Thriving metropolis."
"Bigger than it looks."
"Bigger than what? A postage stamp?" She stared out the window at Main Street—a diner, a hardware store, a small grocery, the usual small-town amenities. "This is it? This is what we drove three days for?"
I pulled the Camaro onto the residential streets, following the directions Susan had given us before we left. Left on Maple, right on Cherry, straight until you hit the dead end.
Our new house was a two-story on a quiet street, white siding with green shutters, front lawn that needed mowing. The rental truck was already in the driveway—Neil and Susan had made better time than expected, or maybe they'd just driven longer hours.
"Home sweet home," Max said without enthusiasm.
I killed the engine but didn't move to get out. Just sat there, hands on the wheel, feeling the wrongness pulse through the town like a second heartbeat.
"Billy?" Max was looking at me again. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." I forced a smile. "Just tired. It's been a long trip."
She didn't look convinced, but she let it go. That was the pattern we'd established—questions asked, partial answers given, space left for later.
We got out of the car. The Indiana air was different from California—more humid, more green, carrying the smell of cut grass and distant rain. Normal small-town smells. Normal small-town sounds: kids playing somewhere nearby, a dog barking, a lawn mower humming.
Normal.
Except for the thing I could feel pulsing beneath my feet, cold and patient and hungry.
The front door opened and Susan appeared, looking exhausted but happy. "You made it! How was the drive?"
"Long," Max said. "I'm going to find my room."
She pushed past Susan and disappeared into the house. I followed more slowly, taking in the details. Living room with outdated wallpaper. Kitchen visible through an archway. Stairs leading up to what would be bedrooms.
Neil was nowhere in sight. Probably upstairs, staying out of my way. Good.
"Your room is the second door on the left," Susan told me. "It's smaller than your California room, but it has a nice view of the backyard."
"Thanks."
I climbed the stairs. Found my room—small, like she'd said, with a single window overlooking a patch of lawn and the woods beyond. The boxes labeled with my name were stacked against one wall, waiting to be unpacked.
I ignored them. Walked to the window instead.
The woods stretched out behind the house, a wall of green that marked the edge of civilization. Somewhere in those woods—or beyond them, under them—was the source of what I'd been feeling. The cold thing. The wrong thing.
The Gate.
My hands warmed against the glass. I let the heat rise, just a little, just enough to feel the fire responding to my will.
This was it. The place where everything would happen. Will Byers was somewhere in this town, carrying the seed of the Mind Flayer's influence. Eleven was out there, probably in Hopper's cabin, hidden and scared. The lab was still operating, still covering up the disaster they'd created.
And I was here, with fire in my blood and knowledge of the future burning in my brain.
The wrongness pulsed again. Cold against my warm hands, darkness against my inner light.
"I feel you," I murmured to whatever was out there. "I know you're there."
No response. Of course not. The Mind Flayer wasn't sentient the way humans were—it was something else, something older, something that didn't communicate through words.
But it was aware. On some level, it knew that something had entered its territory.
Something that burned.
I pulled back from the window. Unpacking could wait. Food could wait. What I needed right now was to walk this town, learn its geography, understand where the danger would come from and where safety might be found.
I headed downstairs. Susan was in the kitchen, unpacking dishes. "Going out for a bit," I told her. "Need to stretch my legs after the drive."
"Don't be too long. I'm making dinner."
"I won't."
The front door closed behind me. The Hawkins air wrapped around me, humid and green and underneath it all, wrong.
I started walking. Past the houses with their trimmed lawns. Past the kids on bikes who stared at the stranger with the mullet and the California plates on his car. Past the corner store and the empty lot and the edge of the residential area where the trees began.
The woods called to me. Not literally—but the wrongness was stronger in that direction. Concentrated. Focused.
I stopped at the treeline. Looked into the green shadows between the trunks.
Somewhere in there, the Gate pulsed. The Mind Flayer waited. The future I'd been dreading and preparing for was finally about to begin.
I turned back toward the house. Not yet. Not today.
But soon.
The fire in my chest agreed.
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