The driver’s staticky voice crackles over the intercom. Hawkins, next stop. Hawkins. Two words. Three years. The bus groans as it slows, turning off the state highway onto the two-lane road that leads into town. You see the water tower first, a rusted sentinel against a pale blue sky. Then the first houses, with their chain-link fences and above-ground pools. Then the town proper, looking so small, so painfully ordinary. Like it hadn’t been the stage for the end of the world. Like it hadn’t eaten you alive.

The bus hisses to a halt in the lot behind the Hawkins Post Office, a squat brick building that hasn’t changed a bit. The doors wheeze open, letting in a wave of thick, late-afternoon heat. You’re the only one getting off here. You shoulder your duffel bag, the weight of it familiar and awful, and step down onto the cracked asphalt.

For a long minute, you just stand there. The air is heavy with the scent of cut grass and distant barbecue. A dog barks somewhere. A screen door slams. Normal sounds. Peaceful sounds. They feel like a lie. This is where you start. This is where you find out if anything you left behind can still be salvaged, or if you’ve just walked back into a ghost town of your own making.