The town was quiet in a way that had weight to it.
Not peaceful quiet. Not early-morning quiet. The kind of quiet that sat in your chest and pressed.
Steve stood next to the car and looked up and down the street. Houses. The diner. A water tower visible over the rooftops. A few vehicles parked along the curb, one of them with its driver's door still hanging open like whoever got out had been in a hurry and never came back for it.
No people.
"Hello?" Dustin called out.
Steve's hand shot out and grabbed his shoulder. "Don't do that."
"Why—"
"Because in every single horror movie the first person to yell hello is the first person to die."
"This isn't a horror movie—"
"Dustin."
Dustin looked at the empty street. At the open car door. At the swing set with its dead-still swings.
"...Right."
El wasn't looking at the street.
She had walked a few feet from the car without anyone noticing and was standing at the edge of the road, facing the tree line. Both arms down at her sides. Head slightly tilted, like she was trying to catch a sound just out of range.
Mike was already beside her. He hadn't seemed to decide to move there. He just was.
"El," he said quietly. "What are you getting."
"Many people," she said. "Close. Watching us."
Steve looked at the houses. Curtains. Windows. All of them still and dark.
Watching.
Great.
"So they're hiding," Mike said.
"Yes."
"From us?"
She turned her head slowly toward the tree line instead of answering right away. When she did answer, she didn't look at him.
"...I don't think so. From something else."
The diner door opened.
A man stepped out first.
Broad shoulders, close-cropped hair, the way he held himself like someone who had gotten very used to watching every direction at once. He looked at the four of them — at the car, at El with her back to everyone, at Steve still gripping Dustin's shoulder — and his eyes moved the way you'd check a perimeter. Slow. Thorough. Missing nothing.
He came down the steps.
"Everyone who was in the vehicle?"
"Yeah," Steve said. "Just us. We were trying to find the highway and the road kept—"
"Bringing you back here." Flat. Like reading off a list. "No matter which direction."
"...Yeah."
"Before that. On the road. Wind, temperature drop, pressure change. Like something passed through the car."
Steve stared at him.
"...Yeah."
The man nodded once.
"Boyd," he said. Just his name. Like that was enough introduction.
This is not the first time they've had this conversation.
Not even close.
"Come inside," Boyd said. "All of you."
"What is this place?" Mike stepped forward. "Why can't we leave? Is it some kind of government thing — because we've dealt with Hawkins Lab before and if they have something to do with—"
"Mike," Steve said.
"—we know people, we could call—"
"Mike."
Mike stopped. Looked at Steve.
Steve looked at Boyd.
Boyd's face hadn't moved. Not at Hawkins. Not at Lab. Not at any of it. He just stood there with his arms loose at his sides while Mike talked, the way you stood when you were waiting for someone to finish saying something that wasn't going to change anything.
Mike saw it too.
His mouth closed.
"Come inside," Boyd said. "All of you."
The diner was warm.
Booths along one wall, counter along the other, coffee smell and the low hum of a refrigerator somewhere in the back. Normal. Completely, aggressively normal, which somehow made it worse.
El took the booth in the far corner — back to the wall, clear line to the door. Mike slid in next to her. Dustin sat across from them and immediately put his hat on the table and started turning it in circles. Steve stayed near the door.
Old habit.
Keep the exit in sight.
Boyd stood at the window, one hand on the frame, watching the street.
A door swung open from the back kitchen.
A girl came through it carrying four mugs, no tray, two in each hand, moving like she'd done it enough times that she didn't have to think about it anymore. Young — early twenties maybe, dark hair pulled back, wearing a diner apron over a flannel shirt. She set the mugs on the table one by one without asking what anyone wanted, without making eye contact, without saying anything.
Steve watched her.
She didn't look like someone who was scared. She looked like someone who had been scared for so long that it had just become the weather.
She turned to go back to the counter.
"Sara," Boyd said, without turning from the window.
She stopped.
"Tell them how long."
She turned around. For the first time she actually looked at them — at Steve near the door, at Dustin with his hat, at Mike and El in the corner booth. Something moved across her face that wasn't quite pity and wasn't quite recognition.
She pulled out a chair and sat down at the end of the table.
"How long since you turned onto that road," she said.
"Like two hours?" Steve checked his watch. Frowned at it. "Maybe three."
"You tried to drive out."
"Six times."
She nodded.
"Welcome to the town," she said. Not sarcastic. Not warm. Just delivered. "We don't have a name for it. You can't drive out. You can't walk out. The road always brings you back."
Dustin's mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened.
"How long have you been here," he said.
Sara and Boyd didn't look at each other. But Boyd's hand tightened once on the window frame.
"I've been here eleven months," Sara said. "Boyd's been here closer to two years."
The table went very quiet.
Two years.
Dustin had stopped spinning his hat. He was just holding it, thumbs pressed hard into the brim.
Across the booth, Mike had both elbows on the table, hands pressed to his mouth.
Two years of trying everything.
And Boyd was still here.
That's what it meant.
"Two years," Mike said. Careful with it. "And you haven't found a way out."
"No."
"But there has to be—"
"Mike," El said.
He turned to look at her.
She wasn't looking back at him. She was looking at Boyd.
Boyd was looking at the street.
His jaw shifted once, like he was biting down on something, then went still again.
Mike closed his mouth.
"There are rules," Boyd said, without turning from the window. "You're going to learn them now."
"Rules," Steve said.
"The most important one." Boyd turned. He looked at each of them the same way he'd checked the perimeter outside — slow, making sure each person registered before moving to the next. "You do not go outside after dark."
Silence.
"Not for any reason," he said. "Not for a noise. Not for someone you see through the window. Not for someone calling your name." A beat. "Especially not for that."
"What happens after dark," Dustin said.
Boyd looked at him.
Just looked at him. For long enough that Dustin shifted in his seat.
"Things come out," he said.
That was it.
Things come out.
Dustin opened his mouth, looked at Boyd's face, and closed it again without saying a word. Which was probably the smartest thing he'd done all day.
"Every building has a talisman," Sara said, sliding a small carved stone across the table. "Hung by the door. You're safe inside. The moment you step out without one nearby, you're not."
Steve picked it up. Turned it over. A symbol he didn't recognize, the edges worn soft from handling.
"What is it."
"We don't know exactly."
"Who made them."
"We don't know that either."
Steve set it back down on the table.
He had about a hundred more questions lined up and he was starting to understand they were all going to land the same way.
"How many people are here," Mike asked. He'd dropped his hands from his face. They were flat on the table now, pressing down like he needed something solid under them.
"About forty," Sara said. "Split between here and Colony House on the other side of town."
"Forty people."
"All stuck."
"How far back do they go."
Sara paused before answering. "Victor's been here the longest." She picked up a mug, looked into it, set it down without drinking. "Decades."
Decades.
Nobody touched that word.
El hadn't moved since they sat down. Both hands around her mug, not drinking. Staring at the table. A dried line of blood still faint under her nose from before. Her shoulders had been pulling slowly inward for the last ten minutes, like she was trying to make herself smaller, and Steve had been watching it happen and waiting.
"El," he said.
She looked up. Her eyes were tired.
"What are you getting from this place."
A long pause.
"It is patient," she said.
Boyd turned from the window.
"It has been doing this for a very long time," El continued. She put the mug down and looked at her hands instead. "And it is—" She stopped. Her fingers curled slowly against the table. "...satisfied. That we are here."
Sara set her mug down with a small careful click.
She looked at El the way you looked at a bruise you'd been pressing on for months and finally heard someone else say ow.
"What are you," Boyd said. Not unkind. Just direct. "That you can feel that."
"I have abilities." El said it the same way she said everything. Flat. Just the facts. "Psychic. I can sense things. Move things." A pause. "Usually."
Boyd's chin lifted slightly. "Usually."
"This place is different." She looked at her hands again. "My abilities are quieter here. Like a radio that is not tuned correctly."
"Can you still use them."
"Some." Her thumbnail pressed into her palm. "Not all."
Boyd held her gaze for a moment. Then he looked away and out the window again. His hand went to the back of his neck — a quick press, fingers into the muscle — and dropped.
Outside, the light had changed.
Steve had been watching it through the window without meaning to. The shadows across the street had stretched. The quality of the light had gone from afternoon to something thinner and lower that he didn't like looking at.
He checked his watch.
Four thirty.
Boyd was already moving toward the door before Steve could say anything.
"You four are staying here tonight. Someone will bring what you need."
"We can go back to the car and grab our—"
"No." Boyd stopped at the door. Turned halfway. "The car stays until morning. Everything in it stays."
Steve thought about the cooler.
About Mrs. Wheeler's sandwiches wrapped in foil in there.
He let the thought go.
"Okay," he said.
Boyd's hand was on the door. He paused there for a second, looking at the four of them — at Steve near the entrance, at Dustin with his crushed hat, at Mike with his hands still flat on the table, at El with her thumbnail pressed into her palm.
He'd stood exactly where they were sitting right now.
He'd heard exactly what they'd just heard.
His hand pushed the door open.
"You'll have questions," he said. "Save them for morning. Tonight the only job is to still be here when the sun comes up."
He left.
The door swung shut.
The diner was warm and the coffee was going cold and outside the shadows were still getting longer and the four of them sat there and didn't say anything for a while.
Then Dustin, very quietly:
"We are so dead."
"We're not dead," Mike said.
"I'm just saying statistically—"
"We're not dead, Dustin."
El picked up her mug. Both hands. She looked out the window at the empty street, at the shadows reaching across the road, at the swing set where the swings still hadn't moved.
"Not yet," she said.
Steve looked at her.
Looked at the window.
Looked back.
He pulled out a chair and sat down.
END OF CHAPTER 2