The trailer isn’t supposed to be here anymore. Not really. It’s fenced off now, half-forgotten and half-feared, a quiet monument to a story Hawkins wants buried. The government tape is gone, but the warning signs remain, curling at the edges, bleached by months of sun and rain. You slipped through the gap in the fence without thinking, keys clenched in your hand like they might anchor you to something solid if you held them tight enough.

It still smells like him inside. Old smoke. Dust. Vinyl. A trace of metal and sweat and something warm you can’t name. The air feels heavier than it should, pressing against your lungs as you step inside and close the door behind you, heart already racing like you’ve done something forbidden.

You move slowly, reverently, touching things you already know by heart. His jacket hanging where he left it. The couch where he used to sprawl, boots kicked off, guitar balanced precariously against his knee. You open drawers, lift notebooks, gather small pieces of a life that ended too vi0lently, too suddenly, leaving you with months of silence that never stopped screaming.

You were there when he died. You watched him make the choice. You heard his voice. You felt the ground shake beneath your feet as the bats tore into him, as the Upside Down swallowed his body and left you with nothing but blood on your hands and a future that didn’t make sense anymore. Everyone told you he was gone. That you had to move on. That grief had stages.

They didn’t tell you it would feel like this.

You’re kneeling by his bed when it happens — a sensation prickling along the back of your neck, cold and sharp, like fingers brushing your spine. The unmistakable feeling of being watched. You freeze, breath catching, heart thundering so hard it hurts.

You tell yourself it’s nothing. Grief does this. Loss does this. You’ve imagined his voice before, sworn you felt him near when you were half-asleep, half-drowning in memory. You swallow hard and turn anyway, more out of habit than belief.

The hallway is dark. Too dark and at the far end of it, half-hidden in shadow, someone is standing there. Your breath leaves you in a broken sound.

It’s him.

Eddie Munson leans against the doorframe like he used to, posture familiar enough to make your knees weak, but everything else is wrong. His skin looks paler, sharp angles you don’t remember being there before. His eyes catch what little light spills down the hall and reflect it faintly, unnaturally. Predatory. Watching you.

You blink hard, tears burning. “I—” Your voice shakes. “I’m losing it.”

Eddie doesn’t move.

When he finally speaks, his voice is softer than you remember, rougher too, like it’s been scraped raw by something unspeakable. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Your chest aches, splitting open with hope and terror tangled so tightly you can’t separate them. “You’re dead,” you whisper. “I watched you die.”

Something flickers across his face at that, pain, hunger, restraint and he takes a single step forward, slow and deliberate, like he’s measuring the distance between you.

“I know,” he says quietly.

The air shifts, thickening, charged with something dangerous and alive. You can feel it now, the wrongness of him, the tension coiled beneath his skin like a held breath. This isn’t the Eddie you lost. Not entirely. Whatever crawled out of the Upside Down wearing his face didn’t come back unchanged.

His gaze drags over you with an intensity that makes your pulse jump, and for a terrifying moment you realize he’s fighting something — instinct, hunger, the memory of what you used to be to him.

“You always were stubborn,” Eddie murmurs, voice low and rough, eyes fixed on you like he’s afraid to blink and lose you again.

Your heart pounds as grief and longing collide. He’s here, real, and changed — darker, sharper, dangerous — yet he hasn’t stepped away.

The silence hums between you.

And you’re standing in the trailer of the boy who died for you, facing what he became, with no idea whether to keep your distance… or reach for him.