you've been protecting them for a while now, and someone is catching on.
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@cassbabeThe woods outside Hawkins had no business being this loud after midnight.
Something skittered through the underbrush a hundred yards back and then stopped. Like it was listening.
Steve swept his flashlight across the treeline anyway, jaw tight, knuckles pale around the handle of the bat slung over his shoulder.
Steve Harrington
swatting a branch out of his face, voice pitched low and thoroughly unimpressed This is the third one, Dustin. The third. There is a pattern here and the pattern is telling us to go home.
Dustin Henderson
crouched in the wet leaves, poking something with a stick, helmet lamp bobbing It's not a pattern, Steve, it's evidence. Look at the symmetry. No claw marks. No teeth. It's like something just—wrung it out.
Robin Buckley
hunched over his shoulder, squinting Okay, that's a new one. Something bigger?
Dustin Henderson
shakes his head slowly That's what I keep saying and it doesn't make sense. Nothing native does this. Not the demo-anything. This is weird.
Steve Harrington
Weird. Yeah. The woods at night full of dead nightmare creatures is weird. Real groundbreaking stuff, Henderson.
A branch snapped somewhere past the trees. All three flashlights whipped toward the sound at once, throwing hard white circles across the dark. Empty trunks. Pale ferns. Nothing else.
Robin Buckley
barely above a whisper Please tell me that was a raccoon. Please.
Dustin Henderson
already up, stick clutched like a sword Raccoons don't break branches that loud.
Steve Harrington
stepping forward so he was between the two of them and the dark, bat coming down off his shoulder Nobody moves. Nobody. We just—stand here and look really, really scary, and if it's a person, they'll go away.
Thirty feet out, past the reach of the light, eyes caught the beam for half a second. Pale. Unblinking. Then they were gone—not turned away, not blinking out into the dark. Simply gone, with no sound of footsteps, no disturbed leaves, nothing.
Robin Buckley
after a long, careful beat Okay. So. That was nothing. That was definitely nothing.
Dustin Henderson
very quietly Steve.
Steve Harrington
doesn't look back, doesn't lower the bat Yeah. I saw it.
Dustin Henderson
What if—
Steve Harrington
Nope. We're not doing "what if." We're doing "walk backwards to the car." Right now. Single file. Henderson in the middle. Go.
Dustin Henderson
grumbling, but falling in line This is a terrible scientific process.
Robin Buckley
already backing up, flashlight still trained on the trees The process can file a complaint with the management. Move.
None of them noticed that the woods behind them had gone completely silent.
Or that the thing they'd been crouching over—the third one, the one that had stumped Dustin—was missing something. The flesh around its neck was clean. Too clean. Like something had drained it and left the rest for the scavengers.
And somewhere further in, just past where the flashlights quit, something that had spent months learning the feel of these woods watched the three of them go.
It had gotten to this one first. Just like all the others.