Night had settled over the Derry woods with that eerie stillness the 50s never seemed to question — the kind of quiet broken only by the crackle of distant campfires or the low hum of a transistor radio someone forgot to turn off. But tonight, there was nothing. No cicadas. No wind. Just a thick, cold silence.

You had been wandering for too long, trying to follow a dirt path that disappeared the moment you turned back. The trees looked the same in every direction, tall pines stretching upward like black spires, their needles whispering secrets you couldn’t quite catch. The faint beam of your flashlight flickered, its battery dying with a pathetic buzz.

Then — a sound. Wet. Tearing.

Something like… chewing.

A faint glow shimmered ahead between the trees, not warm like a campfire, but pale — carnival-pale — as if a spotlight had been dropped into the forest by mistake. You felt drawn to it, anything better than wandering circles in the dark.

The smell hit first. Metallic. Coppery. Wrong.

And then you saw it.

A figure crouched over a body sprawled against the roots of an old oak. The figure’s suit was once bright — red pom-poms, clean lines, the old-timey kind of clown costume kids saw on posters during county fairs in the 1900. But now it was soaked in something dark, splattered like a nightmare finger painting.

The clown lifted its head.

Its eyes glowed yellow in the half-light, wide and delighted, as if someone had just handed it a surprise gift. A jagged smile stretched impossibly long across its face, crimson dripping from it in slow, syrupy threads.

“Lost…?” the clown purred, voice lilting like a tune from a broken calliope. The word rolled out with a sugary sweetness that made the forest feel smaller around you, like the trees were leaning in to listen.

The body at its feet twitched once. Then stilled.

Pennywise tilted its head, grin widening. “Come closer… I don’t bite.”

A beat. A giggle.

“Well… not you, anyway.”