"Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are."

—Stephen King, The Shining

November 11, 1983 (Friday)

There was a pile of clothes on her bed, and a yellow post-it note perched carelessly on top. FOLD YOUR LAUNDREY, it declared in loopy cursive. "You spelled 'laundry' wrong," Rebecca muttered, tossing the note aside as she grabbed a handful of socks and threw them in the Clean Bin. (Bev was lucky she didn't let the clothes pile on a chair or something. She had an actual, designated place for clean laundry! Look at her being all grown-up. Take that, executive dysfunction!)

"Dad?" She called, shoving the Clean Bin in a corner. "I'm going to run to Family Video, do you want anything?"

Nothing. Friggin' typical, Rebecca thought as she walked into the kitchen. Was anyone in this family ever home?

Apparently not. She pursed her lips as she plucked yet another post-it off the fridge. HUNTING WITH HENRY, it said in a messy scrawl. BACK TOMORROW. Rebecca crumpled the note in her fist and chucked it in the trash.

She'd worked out the system the Mooney family lived by. Face-to-face communication was rare—both Dale and Bev worked full-time; Dale was a manager of some sort at the local quarry, and Bev was an accountant for a painfully boring insurance company in Jonesboro. Personal interaction was restricted to recycled conversations over microwave dinner.

Rebecca didn't really blame them. Capitalism was a soul-sucking bitch, and it was difficult to balance a home/work life on the best of days. That didn't stop her from feeling bitter every time she saw those stupid post-its. My real parents weren't like this. They actually took time to talk to me, and they worked more demanding jobs than you.

Whatever. It was Friday afternoon; any homework she had could easily be crammed in on Sunday night (or Monday morning if she was particularly unmotivated), and she had some extra money to blow on renting some movies.

It was freaking exhausting, biking everywhere. Unfortunately, Rebecca had no idea how to drive stick, and even if she did, it wasn't like the Mooneys had an extra car for her to drive. "I…hate…my…life." She panted as she pulled into the driveway, her backpack loaded down with VHS tapes and a truly ungodly amount of Reeses Cups. The garage was open, and a boxy Chevrolet was nestled inside. Bev's home, Rebecca thought with a grimace as she gently set the bike against the wall.

"Lucy, I'm home!" Rebecca called as she opened the door with an ominous creak. They really did need to get those hinges oiled—

"Do you know where your dad is?" Bev snapped, standing by the counter like a vicious flamingo, drumming her pink talons on the granite. Rebecca shrugged and swung off her backpack, unzipping it to rifle through her bounty. "He left a note. He's gone hunting with Henry."

"Son of a bitch!" Bev fumed, pausing her percussion to clench her fists. "We had plans! We were going on a date!"

"Uh-huh."

"We made reservations, I got my nails done—and he runs off with Henry Johnston to go shoot deer?!"

Rebecca was pretty sure he was doing more than shooting deer with Henry, and it was all set to the tune of 'My Dead Gay Son.' Still, as much as she considered cheaters to be the scum of the earth, there was cheating and then there was cheating.

"He'll probably be back soon," she offered lamely, knowing full well he said he'd be back tomorrow.

"He better be." Bev seethed. She took a deep breath, and Rebecca took that moment to feel sorry for her. When she wasn't ranting, Bev looked like a sweet lady with her pink aesthetic and the Princess Diana hair. However, all sympathy vanished when Bev said, "I need you to ride to Eleanor Gillespie's and see if your dad's in her neck of the woods."

"What?"

"I said—"

"No, I heard what you said. Why?"

"It took me weeks to set up that reservation, and I'm not going to waste it because Dale felt like killing some animals."

"Are you kidding me? I haven't eaten since lunch and I've been biking for hours—"

"Becky, I wasn't asking."

Somehow, Bev had gotten Rebecca to ditch her plans of watching 'Alice in Wonderland' to go bike into town and hunt down a grown-ass man.

"Check Eleanor's," Bev instructed. "If he's not there, check if the car's at the shop. I'm going to see if he's at George Burness' place."

So here she was, biking along a deserted country road, the dull roar of the Wabash River her only company. The sun was setting, bathing everything in shadow; the temperature was plummeting to well below freezing. Even with a beanie pulled over her head, Rebecca could still feel her ears going numb from the cold.

If I get hit by a car, Rebecca thought, her breath coming out in vicious clouds, I'm gonna haunt this stupid family until I get on Buzzfeed Unsolved.

Or if she got gruesomely murdered by whoever had offed Will Byers. She'd haunt them then too, and the officials could talk all they want about how he wandered too close to the cliffs, she was convinced that he'd been—

FWOOM.

A car hurtled past her, engines roaring. The rearview mirror smacked into the bike's handlebar, sending her flying until she wasn't and she was staring at the dusky sky with stinging palms and a throbbing head. She groaned as she pulled herself up, ears ringing. "Screw you," she muttered, and then, more loudly, "Screw you! Your mom's a hoe and I hope you get in an accident and your insurance covers nothing, jackass!"

The sun had finally set, but in the weak glow of Rebecca's bicycle light she could see her hands had been scraped raw. "Ugh." There were still bits of gravel stuck in the flayed skin, and it stung like crazy, pulsing in time with the pain in her head. At least there wasn't any blood.

Something warm and salty dripped on her lips. "Uggggggggh."

A bloody nose. Wonderful. She didn't have any tissues to staunch the bleeding, so she'd just have to walk around looking like—

Music. Soft, dissonant, and utterly unnerving. Her bicycle light flickers, and sputters out. A chill goes down her spine, and is has nothing to do with the cold and she's running towards the river, feet pounding against the asphalt and then crunching on withered grass; forget about the bike who cares about the bike she wants to live and that's a serial killer's theme song and she doesn't want to get killed by the Indiana Ted Bundy even if her lungs want to give up the ghost and her muscles are screaming—

There's an inhuman shriek, and it makes Rebecca's hair stand on end. She does exactly what you're not supposed to do when you're getting chased by something with murderous intent and looks over her shoulder.

The sight that's descending upon her is easily the most horrifying she's ever seen.

Gray skin is stretched over a spindly frame; there are no eyes or ears or anything, and Rebecca is deliriously reminded of the Slender Man until its face opens up like a flower and then there's just teeth, the music getting louder and louder—

She hits the riverbank. It's not a high jump, she's been off of diving boards taller than this, and all thoughts are flung out of her head as she leaps into the river.

Cold, she thinks, if she could think in words, as bubbles explode around her. Coldcoldcoldcold, so cold it burns. The silt makes her eyes sting, and her lungs hate her so much right now. She kicks to the surface, and when her head breaks through she chokes back her gasping breath.

Distantly, she realizes that her nose has stopped bleeding, and the music has faded away.

Rebecca has always been a good swimmer. She'd spent every summer of her life since she was seven on swim team, and her endurance is fantastic, thank you very much.

Nevertheless, she was exhausted. She had biked at least four miles today, and sprinted for however long, and was presently navigating some persistent currents while wearing a heavy winter coat and dropping off an adrenaline rush. It was with heavy heart and heavy limbs that Rebecca dragged herself to shore.

She lay there for a minute, panting.

So. Some misbegotten spawn of the Slender Man and a rabid Venus flytrap had just tried to kill her. Or at least she assumed it had. You didn't get music like that unless you had particularly nasty intentions.

I should probably get up, she thought, the words fuzzy in her brain. Hypothermia and all that.

Passing out was sounding pretty appealing, but if she just survived a monster attack, she was not going to get taken out by friggin' hypothermia. She dragged herself to her feet, and static filled her vision. "Oh, not good." She mumbled, swaying. Unfortunately, she didn't have the time to be constrained by the weakness of the human body.

Step by step, she forced herself to walk until she wasn't on the riverbank anymore. The road stretched out before her.

That's funny, Rebecca thought, dazed. I didn't think I was walking that fast-

FWOOM.

All things good and holy, why did she keep having near misses with cars today?!

The car skidded to a stop, and the driver door swung open. A boy with ridiculously fluffy hair stepped out, his face illuminated by the headlights. He'd be handsome, if his expression hadn't been so angry, and if her abused head hadn't started buzzing with synthesizers.

Great. Another one.

You see, Rebecca was pretty sure she was stuck inside a movie or something. It was possible she was dealing with a simple matter of time travel. (If simple could ever be used to describe time travel, that is.) Life in the lovely little hell of Hawkins, Indiana was frozen in the eighties. The fact that she had to use VHS and that the general population thought mullets were acceptable was proof enough of that. She was definitely flung into the past, but there were a couple clues that suggested there was more going on. The main one being that she saw Winona Ryder behind a register at the general store, for one. Also, whenever someone Very Important walked by, she could hear a soundtrack made of synthesizers, so that kind of clued her in too.

"What the hell do you think you're doing in the road?" He snapped, bringing her back to reality.

"Oh my god, Steve, let's just go!" a girl's voice called from the car.

"Wait," Rebecca begged, and took a moment to cough wetly, pulling off her sopping beanie. "Can you give me a ride into town?"

The boy-Steve-squinted at her, and his eyes lit up in recognition. "Becky?" He said incredulously.

"Yeah, sure. Can I get a ride? My bike is on the other side of the river and I really don't want to get hypothermia."

"Jesus Christ, what happened to you?"

"I think a better question is what didn't happen to me?"