HOPPER’S CABIN
HAWKINS, INDIANA
Jim Hopper tried to kill the smile he felt spreading across his face as he stood by the sink, arms immersed in hot, soapy water, watching through the kitchen window as the snow fell outside in huge, fist-sized clumps.
Christmas wasn’t a good time, not for him, not since…well, not for a long time. Not since Sara. He knew this, he accepted this, and for the six years—going on seven, now—he’d spent back in Hawkins, he had resigned himself to the growing feeling of misery and loss that steadily grew stronger and stronger as the holiday season approached.
Resigned himself? No, that wasn’t it, not quite. In truth, he had welcomed the feeling, allowing himself to be overwhelmed by it, because it was…easy. Comfortable.
And, strangely, safe.
At the same time, he hated himself for it, for giving in, for letting the seed of despair in his mind grow each and every year until it fully blossomed. And his hatred did nothing but drive him deeper into the darkness, and the whole cycle went on, and on, and on.
But not anymore. Not now.
Not this year.
This was the first year, really, where things were different. His life had changed, and that change had let him see how far he had fallen, to see what he had become.
All because of her. Jane, his adopted daughter. Legally, officially, his family.
Jane Hopper.
Eleven.
El.
Hopper felt the smile grow again, pulling insistently at the corners of his mouth. This time, he didn’t try to stop it.
Of course, having El around didn’t mean he had to forget the past—far from it. But it did mean he had new responsibilities. Once more, he had a daughter to raise. And that meant moving on. His past wasn’t gone, but, finally, he could let it sleep in the back of his mind.
Outside the snow continued to fall, the trees that surrounded the cabin now embedded a good two feet up their trunks in the soft white blanket. The radio had said it wasn’t a storm and there were no weather warnings, but the forecast Hopper had caught earlier in the afternoon now seemed a little optimistic. A generous dumping had been predicted over the whole county, but right now Hopper wondered if it had all landed in the few acres around his grandfather’s old cabin. If you had to travel, the weather report had said, just…don’t. Stay inside. Keep warm. Finish off the eggnog.
And that suited Hopper just fine.
El, on the other hand…
“Water’s cold.”
Hopper blinked out of his reverie and found El suddenly by his side at the sink. He looked down at her, her expression so intense, so interested, so concerned that he had been standing at the sink doing the dishes for so long that the water had gone cold. Then he looked down at his hands, lifting them from the dying foam. His fingertips had turned to prunes, and the stack of dishes from their post-Christmas leftover feast hadn’t gotten much smaller.
“Everything okay?”
Hopper glanced down at El again. Her eyes were wide, expectant. He found that smile growing again. Dammit, he just couldn’t help it.
“Yeah, everything’s okay,” he said. He reached over to ruffle her mop of dark curls, but she retreated with a grimace at the touch of his foam-covered hand. Hopper laughed, pulling his hand back and slipping the towel off the counter next to him. Drying his hands, he nodded back toward the den.
“You manage to raise Mike yet?”
El sighed—with perhaps a little too much drama, Hopper thought…but, then again, everything for her was still new and often, it seemed, a challenge. He watched as she headed back to the couch and picked up the hefty rectangle of her new walkie-talkie, holding it out to him, like he could somehow conjure up her friends out of the ether.
They looked at each other, then after a few moments El waggled the walkie-talkie impatiently.
“What am I supposed to do?” asked Hopper, slinging the kitchen towel over one shoulder. “Is it not working?” He took the device, and turned it over in his hands. “Can’t need a new battery already?”
“Nobody there.” El sighed again, her shoulders slumped.
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” said Hopper, recalling now that Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will were all out seeing extended family today; the whole gang was well out of range of El’s new walkie-talkie. El took the device back and fiddled with the controls, clicking the volume knob on and off, on and off, short bursts of static emanating from the speaker with each turn of the control.
“Careful,” said Hopper. “That was a very nice gift they got you.” Then he winced, realizing that his own efforts in that department—Hungry Hungry Hippos, of all things, a game far too young for El, the realization hitting him like a sledgehammer as soon as she had pulled the paper off it yesterday—paled in comparison to the walkie-talkie that the boys had pitched in together to buy.
It seemed he was well out of practice at fatherhood. He bought the game almost without thinking, because Sara had loved the game, and—
And El wasn’t Sara.
But El didn’t notice Hopper’s discomfort now, so intent was her focus on the device. Hopper walked back to the sink and turned the hot tap on, stirring the water in the sink with one hand. “And you had a nice time yesterday, right?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Right?”
El nodded, and stopped clicking the walkie-talkie.
“Right,” said Hopper. “And they’ll all be home tomorrow. In fact,” he said, turning the tap off, “you’ll probably be able to raise them on that thing later tonight.”
With the sink refilled, Hopper resumed his dish duty. Behind him, he heard El pad back into the kitchen. He glanced down as she appeared at his side again.
“Hey,” he said, submerging a dish from the pile, “I know you’re bored, but bored is good, trust me.”
El frowned. “Bored is good?”
Hopper paused, hoping he was heading in the right direction with this piece of ad-lib parental wisdom. “Sure it is. Because when you’re bored, you’re safe. And when you’re bored, that’s when you get ideas. And ideas are good. You can never have enough ideas.”
“Ideas are good,” said El. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. Hopper looked at her again. He could almost see the cogs turning in her mind.
“Right,” he said. “And ideas lead to questions. Questions are also good.” Hopper looked out the window, hiding his frown from his daughter. Questions are also good? What the hell was he talking about? He wasn’t sure if he’d had too much leftover eggnog, or not enough.
El slinked out of the kitchen; a moment later Hopper heard the click of the TV. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw she was sitting on the couch, the TV well out of her reach but the channels cycling through in rapid succession anyway, the screen flickering from one wash of multicolored static to another.
“Yeah, it’s the weather. Sorry, the TV won’t be working for a while, I think. Hey, you want another game of Hungry Hungry Hippos?”
Hopper’s question was met with silence. He looked back over his shoulder again to see El twisted around on the couch, giving him a look that could only be described as…unamused.
Hopper laughed. “Just a suggestion. Go read a book, maybe.”
Hopper finished the dishes and pulled the plug from the sink. As the dishwater drained away, he dried his hands and looked up at the kitchen window. In the reflection, Hopper could see the couch and the still-on TV, with no sign of El.
Good, he thought. He couldn’t help the weather, but maybe it wasn’t so bad, being stuck in the cabin. They’d had a busy few days over Christmas, El spending time with her friends and Hopper taking the opportunity to spend some time with Joyce. She seemed to be holding up, and had enjoyed his company. Jonathan too.
Hopper turned and headed over to the red square table that sat against the wall on the other side of the kitchen counter, where the open Hungry Hungry Hippos box sat. Idly wondering if you could play against yourself, he pulled out a chair just as El reappeared from her bedroom. She looked at him, her expression so serious Hopper felt himself freeze, one hand still on the back of the chair.
“Ah…everything okay?”
El tilted her head, like a dog listening for a sound far beyond the range of human hearing, her eyes still fixed on Hopper.
“What is it?” asked Hopper.
“Why are you a cop?”
Hopper blinked, and let out a deep breath. The question had come out of the blue.
Where is she going with this?
“Well,” he said, running a still-damp hand through his hair, “that’s an interesting question—”
“You said questions were good.”
“Ah…yes, I did. And they are.”
“So?”
Hopper chuckled, and leaned on the back of the chair with his elbows.
“Sure. I mean, it’s a good question…I’m just not sure there’s a simple answer.”
“I don’t know about you,” said El. “You know about me.”
Hopper nodded. “That’s…actually, that’s true.”
Hopper swung around the chair and sat at the table. El pulled out the chair opposite and sat, leaning forward on her elbows.
Hopper considered. “I’m not sure I really wanted to be a cop,” he said. “It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Why?”
“Ah, well.” Hopper paused. He straightened his back a little and rubbed his unshaven chin with one hand. “Well, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I’d just come back from…” He paused again.
Ah, no, not yet. That’s a topic for another time.
He waved his hand dismissively in the air. “I wanted to do something. Change something. Help people, I guess. And I had some skills and experience I figured could be useful. So I became a cop.”
“And?”
Hopper frowned. “And what?”
“Did you change something?”
“Well—”
“Did you help people?”
“Hey, I helped you, didn’t I?”
El smiled. “Where were you?”
Hopper shook his head. “I’m not sure you’re ready for that story yet.” He suddenly felt a little tight in the chest, a small surge of adrenaline combining with the lingering effects of the last of the eggnog making him feel a touch of nausea.
Now it was El’s turn to shake her head. “Questions are good,” she repeated.
She was right, of course. He had taken her in, helped her, protected her. Together they had been through things people couldn’t even imagine, and now they were legally family…and yet, he realized that he was as much a mystery to her as she had been to him that night at Joyce’s house after he had found her and the boys in the scrapyard.
El lowered her chin and looked at him, her head tilted, a response clearly required by the young girl.
“Listen, kid, there are some things you’re not ready to hear, and some things I’m not ready to tell you about.”
El’s brow knitted in concentration. Hopper found himself watching her in fascination, wondering where her train of thought would take her next. “Vietnam?” she asked, sounding out the word as though she had never spoken it out loud.
Hopper raised an eyebrow. “Vietnam? Where did you hear that?”
El shook her head. “I read it.”
“You read it?”
“On a box. Under the floor.”
“Under the…” Hopper laughed. “You went exploring?”
El nodded.
“Okay, well, yes, you’re right. I’d come back from Vietnam. It’s another country, a long way from here.”
El pulled herself up to the table.
“But…” Hopper paused. “Actually, no, this isn’t a good idea.”
“What?”
“Telling you about Vietnam.”
“Why not?”
Hopper sighed. Now there was a question.
But what was the answer?
The truth was, Hopper realized, that he didn’t want to talk about Vietnam, not because it was a trauma or a personal demon, but because it was ancient history—but more than that, it felt like part of some other person’s life. Although he hadn’t really stopped to consider it properly, he was aware of how he had compartmentalized his past in his own mind. So, yes, Vietnam had been difficult, and he had come back changed—as most people did, of course—but it just wasn’t relevant, not anymore. That wasn’t him, not now.
Because he had come to accept that there were really only two parts to his life.
Before Sara. After Sara.
And nothing else really mattered. Vietnam included.
He just wasn’t quite sure how he was going to explain that to El.
“Because,” said Hopper with a smile, “Vietnam was a long time ago. I mean, a really long time ago. And I’m not that person now.” He leaned forward on the table, resting on his elbows. “Look, I’m sorry, really. I can understand that you are curious. And I understand you want to know more about me. I’m your—”
He paused. El raised an eyebrow, cocked her chin again, waiting for the response.
Hopper sighed, happily.
“I’m your dad, now. And yes, there is a lot you don’t know about me. Vietnam included. One day I’ll tell you about it, when you’re older.”
El frowned. Hopper held up a hand, deflecting the retort he knew was coming.
“You’ll just have to trust me on this one,” said Hopper. “You’ll be ready one day, and so will I. But for the moment, we’ll have to take a pass. Okay, kid?”
El pursed her lips; then, finally, she gave a nod.
“Okay, good,” said Hopper. “Look, you’re bored, I know, and you have questions. That’s good. So maybe we can find something else to talk about, okay? Just let me get some coffee on.”
Hopper stood and headed into the kitchen and got to work on the coffee machine, a relic he had found in one of the cabinets that, remarkably, seemed to work just fine. As he began filling the reservoir with water, there was a heavy thud behind him.
El stood by the red table, dusting her hands on her jeans. On the table itself sat a large file box. On the side of the box were written two words:
NEW YORK
Hopper hadn’t seen that box for years, but he knew what it contained. He moved back to the table and pulled it toward him, then he looked at El.
“You know, I’m not sure—”
“You said find something else,” said El. She pointed at the box. “Something else.”
Hopper knew from the look in her eye, the tone in her voice, that she was not going to back down, not this time.
Okay. New York, New York. Hopper sat at the table and looked at the box. It was at least something a little more recent.
Was she ready for this?
Or, for that matter, was he?
As El sat across the table, Hopper flipped the lid open. Inside was a mess of files and documents, on top of which sat a fat manila folder, bound with two sets of red elastic bands.
Oh.
He reached in and, without taking the folder out, slid the bands off and opened the cover. A large black-and-white photograph now faced him—a picture of a dead body lying on a bed, the white shirt soaked to black with blood.
Hopper closed the folder, then closed the box, then sat back in his chair. He looked at El.
“This is not a good idea.”
“New York.”
“Look, El—”
That was when the lid of the file box flipped open all by itself. Hopper blinked, then looked at El. Her expression was firm, unmoving, determined.
Hopper rolled his neck. “Okay, fine. You want New York, you got New York.”
He pulled the box closer still, but this time he ignored the manila folder and pulled out the object underneath. It was a large white card, sealed inside a plastic bag, stapled at the corner to a single sheet of paper recording the particulars.
Hopper stared at the card—it was featureless—then turned it over, folding the paper sheet back around. On the reverse of the card was a single symbol, apparently hand-drawn in thick black ink: a hollow, five-pointed star.
“What’s that?”
Hopper looked up. El had stood, and was leaning over the box to get a look. Hopper pushed the box out of the way and held the card up.
“It’s just a card from a stupid game,” he said, laughing. Then the laugh died in his throat, and he looked back at the symbol. “Actually, it’s a game I think you’d be pretty good at.”
El sat back down. She looked at Hopper, and when he looked at her he saw a light in her eyes.
“A game?”
“We’ll get back to that,” said Hopper. He placed the card down in front of him, then lifted the file box and set it down on the floor next to his chair. Still ignoring the folder on top, he pulled out another pile of documents. The topmost form was a letter of commendation from the Chief of Detectives, NYPD.
Hopper read the date at the top: Wednesday, July 20, 1977.
He took a deep breath, then he looked up at El.
“Before I was chief of Hawkins police, I used to be a cop in New York City—a detective, working homicide.”
El mouthed the unfamiliar word.
“Ah, yeah,” said Hopper. “ ‘Homicide’ means murder.”
El’s eyes went wide.
Hopper sighed, wondering if he really had just opened Pandora’s box.
“Anyway, in the summer of 1977, something very strange happened…”