fear street 1994 in my stranger things au graphic series
When Robin hears about the so-called poolside slayings, she’s frankly not that surprised. It’s terrible, obviously. Horrific, really. But for Shadyside? Yeah, it’s not surprising. It seems like everything that can go wrong will in this town, and they can never go more than a few years without a serial killer or mass murderer or fucking fairytale freak like the Humpty Dumpty Killer reminding them that everything in Shadyside will always turn to shit. So when Billy Hargrove pulls on a pair of giant swim goggles and goes on a killing spree that ends with him shot dead with his knife still buried in Heather Holloway’s chest, well, it’s honestly sort of par for the course. At least the pool was about to close for the season with the school year starting anyway.
Still, everyone’s talking about it at school when Robin shows up the next day, both decorating Heather’s locker with pictures and notes and also dragging slashed CPR dummies through the hallways while cackling like a witch. Because yeah, apparently all those murders are the witch’s work. At least that’s what Steve says Dustin is saying when she meets up with him and Nancy at lunch. Things have been weird between the two of them since their breakup last year, but Steve’s new job as the assistant gym teacher after he graduated last year has them brokering a tentative peace, and when it comes to this, they’re on the same page: The witch did it.
Or, not really. They’re just joking. They don’t really buy into the whole we’re-all-fucking-doomed thing the same exact way Robin does, the same way Dustin fiercely believes that the witch is real. They’re just coping the same way everyone in this town seems to: by making it all one big joke. But at least they care. Deep down. The Sunnyvalers — the Sunnyvalers don’t even see any of them as real people. And they make that perfectly clear at the vigil for the victims Mayor Kline hosts before the big Shadyside-Sunnyvale game.
Robin doesn’t see any of that, though. She doesn’t hear the Sunnyvalers talking shit, doesn’t catch who threw the punch. No, Robin’s not on the field at all. Instead, she’s over by the bathrooms, lurking in the dark, waiting for Chrissy to show up so Robin can give her all of her stupid stuff back. She hadn’t been mad earlier, before the game, but when she’d seen Chrissy — when she’d seen Chrissy standing with her new boyfriend, the stupid football player’s hands all over Chrissy’s ass — her vision had gone red, and it had stayed that way, and it continues to stay that way as the sheriff breaks up the fighting, as Steve shepherds the Shadysiders back onto their bus, as Nancy whips everyone on the bus into a vengeful frenzy.
The haze only clears when the water cooler slips out of Robin’s hands and bounces off the windshield of Jason Carver’s car, sending him and his friends careening off the road and into the woods. Because Chrissy was in that car. And Robin had known that, had seen her sitting in the front passenger seat, and that had been part of what drove her anger hot enough to grab the water in the first place. She’d only wanted to piss Carver off, maybe get him to stop fucking following their bus all the way home. She’d meant to throw its contents, not the cooler itself, but when she loses her grip it’s almost like being doused in ice water herself, the burning rage from a moment ago extinguished in one panicked flash.
When Robin stumbles into the woods, it only takes a moment to follow the tracks and find the wreck, the car smashed against a rock with Carver and the other jocks still inside. It takes another moment, a longer moment to spot Chrissy, but then Robin sees her, in the dirt on her hands and knees, face pale and eyes far away, blood dripping from her nose and a gash on her temple.
After that, Robin thinks nothing in the world could tear her away from Chrissy. It doesn’t matter that they’ve broken up, that Chrissy is closeted, that she has a new boyfriend and a new life in Sunnyvale. Forget their fight, that Robin is a doomed Shadysider and Chrissy has literally moved out and moved on to better things. With Chrissy in the hospital, Robin is determined to make things right. Make this work. But it turns out, there is one thing that can stop her in her tracks: the stern voice of Laura Cunningham demanding that Robin stop calling, accusing her of ruining Chrissy’s life completely.
So Robin gives up, goes back to her life, accepts that it’s over. For real. At least until Carver shows up outside of her house wearing giant swim goggles and holding a knife. When he actually breaks into Steve’s house and starts cutting up his clothes, that means war, and before she knows it, Nancy and Steve and Dustin are waiting down the hall at the hospital while Robin goes to tell Chrissy to call her boyfriend off. Only when Carver shows up — when a knife suddenly juts out of his chest, blood dribbling out of his mouth — it becomes clear he really isn’t the one in the costume. Someone else is wearing it, someone else who wants them dead. Someone who looks suspiciously like Billy, the bullet hole still centered between his brows.
It doesn’t take long to realize that Chrissy is the one he’s after. That he’s not the only crazed killer after her. They’re all back, all of those claimed by the witch, and the curse is real, and the killers are determined to see Chrissy dead. Well, Robin’s not going to let that happen, and with Steve and Nancy and Dustin on their side, they’re all determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, to break the curse, to put the witch’s bones to rest. First, though — first, they’ll need to live long enough to do it.
ft. robin buckley as deena, chrissy cunningham as sam, jason carver as peter, nancy wheeler as kate, steve harrington as simon, dustin henderson as josh, heather holloway as heather, billy hargrove as ryan, eddie as martin, mayor kline as mayor goode
