Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
WHEN Edward Moreda's eyes connected with the hole in the ground of Merrill's farm, they widened in fear. Slimy, dark vines circled around the hole, moving before his vision. He cautiously picked up his walkie, speaking into it with a stutter, "Ch – Chief?" He swallowed hard. "Chief, where are you?"
He got no response. Edward didn't know what to do, who to call. He knew something weird was going on with this investigation, but not something this weird. The moving vines looked like they came out of a horror movie. Edward pinched himself to find out if he was dreaming. He wasn't.
Edward's mustache tickled the speaker of the walkie. "There's no one here. I am standing before a ... hole ... covered in vines. They're moving." He sighed heavily. "I might shit my pants."
Suddenly, he saw a pair of headlights drive onto the scene. Edward cupped a hand over his eyes, noticing the familiar looking car pull up to Merrill's farm. Out walked Joyce Byers, a common resident of the police station all last year while her son had disappeared. Another man, whom Edward assumed to be her partner, sprinted with her.
"Joyce?" Edward called with a confused expression. "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same, Officer Moreda." She gulped down her worry, and Edward noticed it clearly. They both stood before the gaping, horrific hole in the ground as if it weren't there.
Edward was then staring at it. "Hopper asked me to come down here because he found something, but –" he tried to mask the fear in his voice "– this isn't what I was expecting."
"I don't have much time to explain," Joyce said, cupping her partner's hand, "but me and Bob needed to get down there. That's where Hopper is trapped."
"In the hole?"
Joyce nodded eagerly before stepping down inside the dug-out. She grabbed the lone shovel lying in the dirt and hit the curling vines with it. Suddenly, Edward watched the vines disperse like snakes. He blinked his eyes a few times, but the reality in front of him was too odd to believe.
"Officer Moreda, Bob – keep watch," she ordered while sliding herself inside the whole. "I'm going in."
Before Bob could argue against her decision, Joyce Byers was down the hole of the Upside Down. "She can't be down there alone," Bob thought aloud.
"Here," Edward handed Bob his large flashlight. "Go down there. I'll watch."
Bob nodded and took the flashlight with a grin. He moved towards the hole and carefully jumped inside, leaving Edward to wonder if the two would ever come back. This new discovery was too much for him to handle, and it was coming at him, all at once. He wasn't sure what to think. Edward turned to his right, noticing more cars flooding onto the scene. But these weren't police cards. Inscribed on the side was Hawkins' National Laboratory. Two children encased in Joyce's car ran out to help.
