Will Byers

The poor kid had it rough for the past year and so. He had disappeared one uneventful night, and it got the whole town into a tizzy. His concerned mother overwhelmed herself, constantly searching for him, while his brother believed the worst had happened. Will could see them from the Upside-Down realm, but there were complications whenever he would try to contact them. The monster was hunting him, so he had to hide often. His mother saw the signs and put up a way for him to communicate with her, where he saw the Christmas lights strewn over the wall in the living room. From there, he signaled to her that he was alive by spelling out the words. The search drew in his brother, and from there, the family never stopped looking for him. Discoveries were made, such as the body being a clone designed by the Hawkins Laboratory, and that what took him was no ordinary creature from their world. Finally, after much turmoil by the lab and the monster dubbed the Demogorgon, they found Will in its nest. However, upon returning to the world, things were not quite right, and Will noticed it when he puked out a live slug much like those from the Demogorgon’s nest. Had it bred with him? Concerned for his safety because of the lab, he never told the family. It was bad enough his friends had lost a loved one, someone they called Eleven. He didn’t want to add to it.

After some time, his episodes where he would see the Upside-Down were becoming uncontrollable. His mother noticed the shift in his behavior and took him to the lab, where new scientists strived to earn the family’s trust after the previous had tarnished the lab’s reputation. Will began noticing a large, unidentifiable creature watching him in the other realm. Fear kept him from facing it, until his mother’s boyfriend convinced him to try. When he was pulled into the other realm again, he made the mistake of confronting the entity, and it drove into him. As Finn pulled him back into their world, he felt normal. However, as time passed, his behavior began to drastically change. He avoided the heat, doing his best to stay cold. One day, shortly after the incident in the Upside-Down, his mother drew him a bath because she thought he was running a high fever. It was his words that got her to realize something wasn’t right with her son. “It likes the cold.” From that moment on, the gang began to realize that the shadow monster, as they called it at the time, had possessed him. How, they weren’t quite sure of yet, but they would work to free their friend from the creature’s grasp. All hope was lost when he started to get worse, until one fateful night, Eleven showed up to save the gang in time as Demo-dogs tried to kill them for burning the tunnels. Will, possessed by the creature, ran away.