Vanessa "Ness/Nessa" Mercer
Age: 19 Pronouns: she/her Occupation: unemployed; recently returned local. Echo sensitivity: medium
recent starter
Brief History in Hawkins:
Vanessa Mercer grew up in Hawkins right next door to the Byers'. She left Hawkins with her family shortly after the reappearance of Will Byers. Officially, it was for her dad's job. Unofficially, her parents were alarmed by the bad dreams and her sightings of weird 'things' in the forest. The kicker was when shadows started moving when they shouldn't. They believed that distance from Hawkins would quiet whatever was happening. For awhile, it seemed like it did. Vanessa has spent the last few years in a coastal town, smelling of salt and sunscreen. Now, her parents have separated. She is returning to Hawkins with her mother, carrying the quiet weight of her childhood. The reasoning is two-fold: her mom wanted something familiar; and, couldn't afford anything else. Now, Vanessa is tasked with relearning the streets that seem slightly off, trying to determine if the unease is memory or something worse.
Personality:
Vanessa is observant, curious, persistent, and empathetic. She watches â people, rooms, weather. Growing up, her parents dismissed her experiences to an overactive imagination, teaching her to manage her reactions. Yet, she doesn't doubt what she sees. She masks her fear with curiosity and deflects concern with quiet humor, appearing steady even when something shifts under the surface. Vanessa isn't someone who will let herself explore her feelings without being given the space. She journals almost obsessively the things she won't say out loud, documenting her experiences in attempt to make sense of it all. She's loyal to those she lets close and quietly protective. She hates feeling fragile and would prefer to absorb the weight herself than admit something is off â yet, beneath her composure is someone who wants to know she isn't alone in feeling the way she does.
Echo Profile:
Sensitivity â medium, potential to increase.
She starts to notice her reflections lagging in mirrors and surfaces before returning to Hawkins.
Experiences environmental "pressure" during distortions; most common are temperature drops and air density.
Later discovers whenever sheâs around a previous gate (lovers lake, trailer park, etc.) she experiences temporary sound compression
Emotional residue; feelings tied to events she did not witness
Hooks:
Her return sparks conversations of her being a familiar face from childhood, especially as not many people have been coming into Hawkins, her arrival is not missed - but why did she really leave?
As Ness walks down the street, a reflection in a store window lags behind her movements. She freezes.
She's caught sketching what she saw in the woods; not the trees, but something in between.
Big Hook:
Vanessa lived in Hawkins before things went wrong. She left when the town first started to run strange â and for years, her mind nearly went quiet. Then, a year before her parentsâ divorce, before she ever stepped foot back in Hawkins, they started again. No one knows. Not her mother. Not her father. Only her journal.
Potential* Connections:
The Byers Family: Quiet childhood familiarity and soft threads with Jonathan and Will, based on shared space as they were once neighbors. They weren't inseparable, just adjacent â the odd shared fence-line conversations and occasional bike rides. When Will disappeared, something shifted before anyone even told her what happened. Joyce would remember her family's disappearance as abrupt.
Teens: They were never close growing up, but Hawkins is small enough that proximity counts, being in the same classes. Memories are peripheral, social, not intimate. They would remember Nessa and her family disappearing quietly, no dramatic goodbye, later clocking how the timing was strange - leaving days after Will had returned in her sophomore year.
*wanted to leave it organic; open to chatting!
