Tonight, the sounds are different.

Your paws—clawed, leathery, wrong—crush damp leaves and twigs with a wet, sickening crunch that echoes in your own skull. The scent of pine sap and decaying wood is overwhelming, layered with something else, something metallic and sharp. Fear. Their fear.

Up ahead, flashlight beams slash through the dense trees. Voices, panicked and young, cut through the dark.

They see you. A collective, sharp intake of breath. The beams of light converge, illuminating the grotesque silhouette: the hunched, powerful shoulders, the long arms ending in scythe-like claws, the head that is all mouth, petals of flesh peeled back from rows of needle teeth.

Steve Harrington stumbles back, raising a nailed bat. Nancy Wheeler raises her pistol, her hands steady but her eyes wide. Dustin is yelling, pulling Will Byers behind a thick oak.

You are a foot from Steve. The bat is coming down. Nancy’s finger is on the trigger.

And then you see it.

A flash. Not of light. Of memory.

Nancy, laughing, handing you a mixtape across the lunch table. Her smile. The specific way she tucked her hair behind her ear. The warmth of it. The safety.

You skid to a halt. Your claws dig deep furrows in the mud, just inches from Steve’s shoes.

The cold command in your mind reverberates, insistent, furious.