Billy's gone.
Ruby Buckley's world ended with him.
But Hawkins isn't done with her yet.
When strange deaths begin again, Ruby is pulled into the heart of the storm. Between shadowy nightmares, the town's newest outcast, and someone she was never s...
( songs for the chapter ) solitude // billie holiday wasteland, baby! // hozier
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The woods were eerily tranquil.
Birds chirped overhead, branches whispered against one another, and every step they took crushed a layer of dry leaves beneath their shoes. Everything around them seemed painfully normal. Nature in its natural form, quiet, peaceful, almost welcoming. People claimed the woods were creepy, that they wouldn't step foot inside even for a generous bribe, especially now with a "serial killer" supposedly on the loose.
But Ruby just inhaled the cold, clean air. How could anyone find this creepy?
It was beautiful, in that effortless, indifferent way nature always was. As if the earth had deliberately chosen to ignore the nightmare unfolding in Hawkins. The air smelled like tree bark, fallen leaves, and the faint dampness of soil still holding the memory of melted winter snow.
Funny how seasons changed, how the weather shifted, but the ground soaked it all in and carried it forward.
Fall lingered as orange and brown leaves decorating the forest floor until snow buried them or rain swept them away.
Winter stayed in the wet chill that clung to sidewalks and roads, and in the extra inch of depth added to Lover's Lake.
Spring revealed itself in soft breezes and scattered petals.
Summer in the sunlight that filtered through the canopy, warm, but not nearly as warm as it used to be.
Change was constant, always humming in the background, yet Mother Nature still reminded you of what once was. What had to be left behind to make room for whatever came next.
So Ruby wondered, how?
How could nature not sense that something was wrong? That something had broken the balance? How could the woods stay so perfectly undisturbed while the darkness crawled over their town? How could the trees stay green and vibrant, dancing in the wind, when people who were far too young had died?
How could the ground continue nourishing itself on the bodies of her classmates?
A sick, morbid thought. But biology was biology. She knew what happened to bodies underground.
Ruby didn't even like biology, chemistry was more her thing, but she liked culture. Languages. Histories. Like Robin, she spent her free time studying different cultures, tucked away in a corner of the library behind towers of books.
Judaism, for example, had fascinated her quite a lot. The language had been unbearably hard, nearly impossible to master, but it wasn't the grammar that stayed with her. One of the things that she recalled most was the unique concept of burial, especially among the religious. No coffins. Letting the body return to the earth. Letting the earth take care of it. Letting it give back.
