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The story changes depending on who’s telling it.
Some say Eddie Munson vanished into thin air that night—poof, like smoke sucked backward into a tailpipe. Others say he drove straight into Hell with the Devil riding shotgun, one hand on the wheel, the other resting gently on Eddie’s thigh. One girl swears she saw his van—his shitty black van—abandoned at Mile Marker 23, doors wide open, cassette deck hissing something warped and ugly through the speakers. Her cousin said he saw claw marks on the inside of the windshield.
It was a good story. Got better every time someone told it.
Steve Harrington didn’t believe a word of it.
He heard all of it—at school, at practice, at parties with too much cheap beer and not enough light. People passed the tale around like a joint, each hit hotter than the last. By the time Halloween rolled around, you couldn’t walk through the halls of Hawkins High without hearing about Eddie Munson, the freak who danced with the Devil.
Steve mostly rolled his eyes. He didn’t know Eddie well—just knew of him. Munson was a senior, supposed to graduate two years ago but didn’t. Wore all black, worshipped Metallica, and probably Satan too. Dealt a little weed, failed a lot of classes. Always mouthing off in the cafeteria. Laughed too loud. Didn’t shut up.
So when he went missing in October of ’86, Steve figured he finally just… took off. Ran. Got tired of bouncing between his uncle’s trailer and whatever couch would let him crash. Maybe he got caught doing something worse than usual and landed in juvie again. Maybe he skipped town. It wasn’t hard to imagine. Munson always had one foot out the door.
But the others—the freshmen with wide eyes and shaky voices, the theater kids who liked ghosts and glamor—they didn’t want to believe Eddie had just left. They needed it to be strange. Needed it to be dark. Because that was more fun. Because that was what Hawkins was good at: turning tragedy into tall tale.
And anyway, it wasn’t the first time a boy had disappeared.
The first was in 1943. Then again in ’57. ’64. ’72. The same month. The same marker.
October.
Mile Marker 23.
“Drive out to the crossroads,” people would say. “Play the tape. Make a deal.”
Steve didn’t believe in devils or crossroads or rituals on warped cassette tapes. He didn’t even believe in ghosts—not really. Whatever happened to those boys, whatever happened to Eddie Munson, had an explanation.
The rumors changed with the wind.
Some said Eddie was sacrificed by the Hellfire Club—his own little cult of misfits in the school basement. Others said he joined a real one, ran off with devil-worshippers out in the woods who wore animal skulls and carved Latin into their arms. A girl in gym class swore she saw him in her dreams, surrounded by fire, lips moving like he was chanting something backwards.
Most popular of all, though—the one that stuck—was that he made a deal. That he summoned something at Mile Marker 23. That he gave himself over willingly.
That he became the Devil’s boyfriend.
That one got the most laughs. The most nervous glances too.
They joked about it in the locker room. At parties. During lunch. Steve would hear Eddie’s name float past like smoke—“Munson,” always “Munson,” never “Eddie”—and someone would be smirking like it was still just a game.
But underneath the laughter, there was something else. A tension. A possibility they didn’t want to admit they believed.
Steve didn’t. Not really.
His life stayed the same. Practice, parties, girls. His parents gone half the time. Beer in the fridge. His reflection in the mirror every morning, same as every other, wondering if this was really it. If this was all there was. The same small town, the same plastic smile, the same path laid out for him like a goddamn trap.
But he didn’t think about that too hard.
Not until that night.
It was late—close to 1 a.m. He was driving home from Shelly Davis’s party, headlights cutting through the early October mist. The road out by the edge of town was quiet, empty, no lights but his. The world looked drained of color—just fog and asphalt and the rhythmic thud of tires on seams in the pavement.
He passed Mile Marker 23 without meaning to. Just a crooked metal sign, half-covered in rust and stickers. He barely noticed it.
But in the rearview mirror—
A shape.
Just for a second.
Someone standing at the edge of the road.
He tapped the brakes. Heart stuttering. Looked back.
Nothing.
Just dark trees and thicker fog.
He told himself it was a trick of the light. Or a tree. Or his imagination, stirred up by beer and too many ghost stories.
But he didn’t stop the car.
Didn’t slow down.
And when he got home, he locked the door behind him for the first time in months.
He didn’t believe in devils or monsters. But something had been there. Something was watching.
*************************************
By senior year, Steve Harrington had the kind of life most guys would kill for.
Popular. Good-looking. Captain of the basketball team. Girls still whispered about him. Teachers still gave him that indulgent smile. People still expected him to go somewhere. Do something. Make them proud.
He hated it.
It was like wearing a costume he couldn’t take off. A letterman jacket zipped up so tight it choked him. He went to parties and laughed at the right moments. He drank whatever was handed to him. Hooked up with girls he barely liked and never called them back. It was all expected. It was the script.
He was tired of pretending he didn’t notice how fake his smile felt. Tired of pretending he didn’t sometimes look at other boys when no one was watching. Tired of pretending the thought of Eddie Munson—loud, weird, unapologetic Eddie Munson—hadn’t stuck with him more than it should have.
People still joked about Eddie. Still made cracks about him being off in some demon dimension, giving the Devil blowjobs for concert tickets. But it had been a year. The punchline had softened. The laughter had faded into something uneasy.
The story had turned myth.
And myths, in Hawkins, had claws.
That October, it came back around.
They were at a party. Chris Sharman’s place. Too much weed, not enough air. Music pounding through blown speakers and beer soaking into the carpet. Someone started talking about Mile Marker 23. The tape. The deal. That weird urban legend vibe that always came around when the weather turned cold and the nights stretched longer.
Steve wasn’t even listening at first.
But then someone said his name.
“Bet Harrington wouldn’t do it.”
“He’s too scared.”
“Nah, he’s too smart.”
“Bullshit, he peaked two years ago. What’s he got to lose?”
That one stung a little. Because maybe it was true.
So Steve laughed, played along. Shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll go. Just tell me what I need.”
The crowd whooped, rowdy and gleeful. Someone clapped him on the back like he’d just scored the winning point at a game that didn’t matter. And then—like it had been waiting all night—someone pulled it from their coat.
A cassette tape. Black plastic, warped with heat. Label long peeled off. Just a smear of ink on the edge: PLAY BACKWARDS. MIDNIGHT.
It felt heavier than it should’ve when they dropped it into his hand.
Steve laughed again, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He pocketed the tape, cracked open another beer, and let the music drown out whatever thought had started to bubble up.
But later, when he was alone in his car with the windows fogged and his hands still sticky with beer, he looked at the tape again.
Held it up to the dashlight.
Something about it made his stomach twist. Like it was alive. Like it was waiting.
He should’ve thrown it out right then.
Instead, he checked the clock.
11:42.
He started the engine, the night stretching out ahead like an open mouth. The highway was empty. Just Steve, the dark, and the cassette. Mile Marker 23 came up quick. He almost passed it. Almost turned the wheel and went home.
But something in him wouldn’t let go.
He slowed, pulled over. Killed the lights. The engine ticked and cooled. Mist curled low across the road, hugging the tires like fingers.
The cassette slid into the deck with a soft click.
He hesitated, thumb hovering over the rewind button.
Then—clickwhirr. The tape spooled backward, slow and uneven, like the machine didn’t want to obey. Static broke in, then a sound like a scream slowed to syrup. Another click. A hiss. A low pulse that felt too rhythmic to be mechanical.
Steve frowned. Leaned forward.
The air changed.
That was the first thing.
It got heavy. Pressed in from every side, like the air was thickening into water. His ears popped. The fog outside thickened, swallowing the trees, the sky, the road behind him. The temperature dropped so fast his breath fogged the windshield.
The tape kept rewinding. A warped voice warbled through the speakers—high and childlike, then deep as thunder, then silence.
And then—movement.
Something crossed the mirror.
Steve jerked around.
Nothing there.
The fog shifted, parting just enough to show a shape on the shoulder of the road. A figure. Standing perfectly still.
Then it moved.
Not walked—moved—like film spliced wrong, a jolt of frames out of order. One moment it was standing outside.
The next, it was in the passenger seat.
Steve’s breath caught. His body locked.
Eddie Munson sat beside him, smiling.
“Miss me, Stevie?”
Steve stared.
Same denim vest. Same ripped jeans. Same halo of dark curls.
But— The teeth were too white. The smile too wide. The eyes too shiny, glassy, like mannequin eyes dipped in oil. The way he sat was too still, like he hadn’t moved at all to get there, like he’d always been there.
Something in Steve’s gut screamed wrong wrong wrong.
He fumbled for the door handle.
Pulled.
Nothing happened.
Yanked harder. The latch didn’t even budge.
“Going somewhere?” Eddie asked, casual. Friendly. His voice was perfect—too perfect. Like a recording playing back a second too slow.
Steve twisted in the seat, slammed his elbow into the driver’s side window. It didn’t crack.
Again. Harder.
Not even a scratch.
His heart thundered. He slammed his fist into the glass. Yanked at the door. Hit the horn. Nothing worked. Nothing responded. The car was dead metal, sealed shut.
Eddie just watched. Still smiling.
“You shouldn’t fight it, Steve,” he said softly, like they were sharing secrets in the dark. “You asked for this, remember?”
Steve turned on him, hands shaking. “You’re not him,” he said. “You’re not Eddie.”
Eddie’s smile twitched.
A flicker of something underneath.
“You don’t even know who Eddie was,” he said. His voice cracked—too high, then too low. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, they were pitch black.
The cassette deck clicked.
The tape started playing.
A low, slow voice oozed out of the speakers—indistinct words, backwards, but Steve swore he could almost understand them.
Eddie leaned closer.
“You want out, don’t you?” he whispered. “Out of this town. Out of your head. Out of that little cage you’ve built for yourself.”
Steve flinched as cold fingers brushed his wrist.
“You don’t have to lie anymore,” Eddie said, smiling with too many teeth. “I can give you everything.”
Steve jerked his arm away, heart pounding. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The thing that looked like Eddie laughed.
Not loud—quiet. Intimate. Like they were sharing a joke nobody else would get.
“Oh, Stevie,” it said, cocking its head. “Still playing the golden boy. Still pretending.”
Its voice lilted between mockery and affection, teasing with a sharp edge. “What would your friends say, huh? If they knew what you think about when you’re alone in your car? When you’re in the shower?”
Steve froze.
Eddie’s grin widened.
“You think about boys. Not just any boys. Me. The freak you pretended not to see. The one you couldn’t even look at in the hallway without blushing.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.” The voice cut clean through him. “You watched me. Wanted me. Hated yourself for it. You kept telling yourself it wasn’t real. That it was just curiosity. Just nothing. But it never was nothing.”
Eddie’s fingers drifted across the center console—pale, long, cold—and brushed the back of Steve’s hand.
Steve flinched.
But didn’t pull away this time.
The car filled with a thick, low hum. Not mechanical. Like the air was vibrating with something older, deeper. The tape kept playing backwards—slowed speech, reverse melodies, words that scraped against his spine like bone on bone.
“You’ve been lying to yourself for years,” the Eddie-thing said. “Trying so hard to be good. To be right. To be normal.”
It leaned in. Its breath smelled like rain on pavement, like heat and ozone and rust—metal struck in a storm. Something electric. Something old.
“Don’t you want to feel something real?” it whispered, like a secret Steve had never told but always known.
Steve couldn’t speak. His mouth had gone dry, tongue thick. His heart pounded like a trapped animal in his chest—fast, erratic, panicked.
Because he did want to feel something real.
And when Eddie touched him again—fingertips skimming up his forearm like static—Steve didn’t pull away this time. He let him.
The windows began to fog, slow and steady, the way they did when breath met cold glass—but it was too uniform. Too deliberate. Like the car was being sealed off from the world. A capsule. A cocoon. A trap disguised as shelter.
Outside blurred into shadows and smoke, but in the car, the only thing that existed was the weight of Eddie’s stare—dark and knowing and impossibly deep. The heat curling low in Steve’s stomach. The shame burning just beneath it. The thrill wrapping tight around both.
And then Eddie leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn’t desperate. It wasn’t violent. It was slow.
Patient. Like he had all the time in the world. Like he’d done this before. Like he was remembering Steve.
Their mouths moved together with terrifying ease. Too perfect. Too right.
Steve’s breath hitched. His spine arched without meaning to. The tape in the deck hissed and whined, warbling in reverse—like a hymn spoken backward, like a spell unraveling itself in the dark.
When the kiss finally broke, Steve was in the back seat.
He didn’t remember getting there.
His head rested against the cold window, breath fogging the glass. The world around him pulsed—not with sound, but with sensation. A low thrum in the air, like he was being tuned to a different frequency.
Eddie was above him, knees on either side, eyes molten. His fingers skimmed over Steve’s throat, pausing over the pulse that fluttered like a moth’s wings.
Lips grazed his cheek, his jaw, the soft skin just beneath his ear.
Steve didn’t move. He couldn’t.
“Just say yes,” he whispered against Steve’s neck.
“Come with me.”
Steve’s mouth parted and his eyes fluttered closed. He didn’t say anything yet, but he didn’t say no.
The car was so warm now it felt like a fever. Eddie’s weight over him. Eddie’s breath on his ear. Eddie’s hands, cool but steady, framing his face like he was something precious.
Steve’s head tilted back, lips parted, eyes opening.
“Just say yes,” the voice cooed again—soft as prayer, sharp as a needle.
But, something made him look past it. Just a flicker at first, a shift in the glow. He turned his head, noticing the fog outside had thinned. Steve blinked. Figures stood in the road.
Dozens of them. Silent. Still. Watching.
Their clothes spanned decades—letterman jackets yellowed with age, flannel tucked into belted jeans, ripped stockings, army surplus, fishnets. Faded ghosts of decades, stitched together by time and tragedy.
Some looked like teenagers. Some were younger. Some had hollow eyes.
All of them had the same expression—yearning. A quiet ache that pierced Steve’s ribs from the outside in.
He sat up straighter, heart jackhammering.
Outside the passenger-side window, one figure stepped forward.
Tall. Leather jacket. Iron Maiden tee. Mess of curls like a halo. A face Steve had only really memorized after it disappeared from the hallways.
Eddie.
The real Eddie.
Not smiling. Not speaking. Just pressing one hand gently, almost reverently, to the fogged glass.
His lips moved.
“Be with me.”
Steve’s breath caught.
Behind him, the Eddie-thing shifted. Its hands moved to cradle his jaw. Too smooth. Too perfect.
“That’s not him,” Steve whispered.
“Isn’t it?” the thing purred. “Does it matter?”
The window fogged again, Eddie’s face fading. The fog curled back inward like a breath being held.
“You’ve been so lonely,” the thing said. “So tired. Of pretending. Of running. Of hiding behind girls and grins and whatever they told you you had to be.”
Its voice was honey-dipped sin now, rich and coaxing.
“I can make it all go away,” it whispered. “The guilt. The shame. The fear. You’ll be free. You’ll be loved.”
Steve’s hands curled into fists and his chest heaved.
He wanted it. God, he wanted it. Wanted to stop hurting. Wanted to stop lying. Wanted to be held, to be seen, to be chosen. He wanted Eddie. He wanted truth. Or peace. Or maybe both.
Outside, the crowd waited.
Their eyes were wide. Bright. Hollow.
Every one of them had stood where he was sitting now.
Every one of them had chosen.
Steve’s eyes flicked from the figure outside the window—Eddie—to the one inches from his face. The real, the unreal. Both impossible.
Both whispering the same word.
“Yes.”
The sound layered in his ears—slightly off from each other, one rough, one smooth. A harmony of hunger and promise.
The music on the tape bent with them. What had been distant warbles now pulsed, throbbed, breathed. The song behind the song. Like something alive under skin.
Neon-red light spilled from the dashboard, pulsing like a heartbeat. It colored the fog. It painted Eddie’s face. It bathed Steve in heat and danger and want.
Time buckled. Everything outside the car moved wrong—figures stuttering forward in slow, shivering frames. Some of them mouthed things. Others pressed palms to the glass. Their eyes weren’t hollow anymore.
They were hopeful.
The Eddie outside stepped closer again, so close his lips nearly brushed the glass.
“You could be with me,” he said. “Forever.”
The Eddie inside curled his fingers under Steve’s chin, tilting his face up with something like reverence.
And Steve—
He let go.
Of fear. Of guilt. Of the fake grin he wore like armor. Of the weight he couldn’t name until it started to lift.
He exhaled, eyes shining.
“Okay,” he whispered.
And then, firmer:
“Yes.”
The fog rushed inward.
It came like a wave, silent and sudden, smashing against the windows, bleeding through the vents, swallowing the heat and light and sound in an instant. Steve barely had time to breathe before the car was devoured—no sound but the static hiss of the tape, no light but a final flare of red.
Then—
Black.
*******************
That morning, mist still clung to the highway like a wound refusing to close, heavy and wet and wrong somehow—too still, like it was holding its breath.
Dawn barely cracked through the treetops, bleeding thin light across the asphalt. The world looked half-finished, caught in that liminal moment where everything feels both real and unreal, like a dream you can’t quite shake. The kind of morning that didn’t feel like a beginning, but something left over from the night before.
The sheriff’s deputy pulled off onto the shoulder. Tires crunched gravel. The cruiser’s headlights swept through the fog, carving shapes that didn’t move the way they should’ve.
He cut the engine. Stepped out.
The cold met him fast—sharp and damp, curling into the collar of his uniform like fingers. The air smelled like wet leaves and engine oil. Like iron.
And there it was.
Steve Harrington’s car.
Still idling. Still running. Still warm.
Headlights burning dim through the mist, casting a pale yellow glow that made the road look waterlogged. The driver’s side door hung ajar—just a sliver, like someone had stepped out and never planned to come back.
No blood. No broken glass. No skid marks.
Just… absence.
He approached slowly. One hand hovered near his holster, the other on the flashlight he didn’t bother to turn on. Didn’t want to break the quiet. Didn’t want to see more than he had to.
The interior of the car was fogged from the inside. Moisture clung to the windows. The rearview mirror dangled, cracked and useless. On the dash, the tape deck still glowed a sickly red, flickering like it was trying to die.
The 8-track was half-ejected, spewing melted black tape like a tongue—or entrails. Burned at the edges. Warped beyond repair.
The label barely legible beneath the scrawl of pen: PLAY BACKWARDS. MIDNIGHT.
He didn’t touch it.
Didn’t need to.
There was something off in the air now, something pressing against the back of his neck like a hand. Like breath. The kind of wrong you don’t write in a report. The kind you carry home and never speak aloud.
Steve Harrington. All-American boy. Varsity jacket still hanging in his locker. Prom king. Movie star smile. Every girl wishing to be with him and every boy wishing to be him.
Now?
Just another story.
By noon, the rumors would start—runaway, nervous breakdown, drugs maybe. Some would say he finally snapped. Others would call it a tragedy. A few might even suggest something darker.
But the old ones, the ones who’d lived through the missing boys before—who remembered names like Jeremy Fields, Sally Denton, and Eddie Munson—they would only shake their heads and mutter the same thing they’d always said.
Mile Marker 23 claimed another one.
***************
Somewhere, deeper in the trees.
Where the light didn’t just fail to reach—but wasn’t allowed. Where the roots twisted like veins beneath skin. Where the ground was too soft, too warm, as if it remembered every footstep it had ever swallowed.
There was a clearing.
And a crowd.
Figures stood in a perfect circle, shoulder to shoulder, forming a silent perimeter around the heart of the woods. Their faces were soft with stillness. Too still. As if frozen mid-thought. Clothes from vanished decades clung to their frames:
A boy in a newsboy cap from ’43, coat buttoned up to his throat though the air was thick and damp. A girl in saddle shoes from ’57, knees together, hands clasped, smiling like she’d been told to. A teenager in a blood-dark letterman jacket from ’64, helmet clutched to his chest like a holy object. A punk from ’72 with smeared eyeliner and a slashed shirt, neck too long, grin too wide.
None of them blinked.
None of them breathed.
But their eyes—hungry. Fixed on the center.
Where Steve stood.
Chest heaving. Lip split. Eyes glassy.
He looked like he’d just run from something terrible—or toward something worse. His shirt clung to him with sweat. His fingers curled and uncurled at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them. Like they’d touched something they shouldn’t have and couldn’t stop remembering it.
And from the crowd, something moved.
A space opened without sound.
And through it stepped Eddie.
Not an imitation. Not a shadow.
The real Eddie Munson.
Same lopsided grin. Same too-long hair curling against his jaw. Same beat-up leather jacket, shoulders dusted with leaves. His boots made no sound on the ground. His eyes glinted with familiar mischief.
But something inside them had gone dark.
Not dead.
Just… changed.
Like a fire lit too long.
He walked like someone returning home. Calm. Certain. Like this had all happened before.
He held out a hand.
“Hey, Stevie,” he said, voice low and warm, like they were alone in a room instead of surrounded by silent ghosts. “I’m so glad you’ve joined us.”
Steve didn’t move.
The crowd leaned forward in perfect unison—so subtly it was barely perceptible. The trees bent in. A branch above cracked. But no wind blew.
The stillness deepened.
Eddie didn’t lower his hand.
He just tilted his head, and that smile… that goddamn smile was so Eddie it hurt.
But it was too clean. Too perfect. Like it had been polished since he disappeared. Like someone had sanded down the edges and slipped something else underneath.
Steve’s lip trembled. He looked down at his own hands. Still shaking.
Still his?
They felt lighter. Too light. Hollow like paper.
Eddie leaned in. Not rushed. Not insistent. Just… close. So close his voice went inside Steve’s head instead of through his ears.
He whispered something that shouldn’t have been words. But they unspooled inside Steve’s mind like old film, like déjà vu laced with the scent of blood and gasoline.
And the moment Eddie spoke, the crowd responded.
No applause. No cheers.
Just a subtle nod. All at once. Synchronized. Reverent.
Like they’d heard a sermon.
The ground vibrated beneath Steve’s feet. A low, impossible hum. Felt in the bones, behind the eyes, underneath thought. The trees creaked but didn’t sway. There was no wind. No birds. No breath.
And Steve—
He couldn’t help it.
He took Eddie’s hand.
His fingers closed around his like it was already decided.
And when he did, something shifted. Not the clearing. Not the crowd. But him.
Like a lock turning.
The air thickened with a pressure that wasn’t heat, wasn’t cold, wasn’t anything a body should be able to feel—but he felt it. Like he was standing in the mouth of something vast and unseen, something ancient, and it had just drawn him in with a single, wet breath.
Eddie’s smile widened.
Not cruel. Not fake. Pleased.
“See?” he murmured. “Don’t you feel better?”
Steve opened his mouth to answer, but no words came. Just a sound—a gasp or a sob or a laugh, he couldn’t tell.
All around them, the figures began to sway. A slow, unnatural rhythm. Not joyful. Not celebratory. But ritual.
The forest exhaled.
Above them, the forest swallowed the sky, folding the night into an endless shadow. And below, as the darkness claimed him, Steve Harrington faded—becoming just another forgotten name, another whispered story lost to the curse of Mile Marker 23.