Nora Hoffman was cold, tired, and at a loss for words for the cat who seemed to have vanished into thin air.

After a morning spent with a panicking Claudia, who continued to hold down the fort at home while Dustin and Anna went off with a friend of theirs, Steve, likely to also look for Mews around town, Nora found herself back out in the chilly November air bright and early to do another round in the neighborhoods of Loch Nora. When she finally came to the realization that Mews had likely moved on from the area, and that she was just going in circles, she began working her way south, running through backyards, looking through stormdrains, and shaking the cat toy even long after the dull jingling sound of the bell made the woman want to slam her head against a wall.

She'd come to the conclusion that Mews Henderson was an escape artist, likely long gone by plane to a tropical island somewhere that Nora wished she could join. She envisioned the cat lounging on a pool chair overlooking the ocean, not worrying about the midwest's impending frozen winter temperatures, and if that was the case, Nora was on the next plane out of Indianapolis to go look for her there. She'd send Claudia and Jeremy each a postcard, as well as a third one to her boss at the diner back home to say farewell.

"Come on, Mews." Nora muttered as she drummed her hands against the steering wheel in an attempt to warm them up. "Help me out here, baby."

The sun had already set over the horizon, the last stretch of daylight long gone, and Nora had half a mind to call it a day and head back to her sister's house. However, she couldn't stand the thought of Claudia's heart breaking again at the news that Mews was lost for another night, so she kept driving, in a hurry to get to the next neighborhood to begin looking.

However, as she drove down Cherry Oak Street, an advertisement on the side of the road captured her attention. Pick Your Own Pumpkins at Merril's Farm! the sign read, and on it was a picture of a child in the middle of a pumpkin patch, and to the boy's right was a cat that Nora could only assume was their family pet. There was a lot of room to roam out at a pumpkin patch, Nora thought to herself as she continued down Cherry Oak, now moving in the direction of Mt. Sinai instead of turning into the next subdivision.

Merril's Farm was long closed for the evening, likely even for the season, Nora knew, but hopefully she'd be able to make a quick sweep of the place without anyone noticing from up at the house. She knew the odds of Mews being out here were slim to none, but it was at least one more spot she could cross off the search list before going back to her sister's house empty handed.

However, Nora's eyebrows furrowed together in confusion at the sight of a blue sports car sitting in the middle of the field, headlights on even though the vehicle wasn't running. The Camaro had a California license plate, and as she grew closer to the vehicle, Nora could see the headlights illuminating what appeared to be a massive hole in the ground. She slowed to a stop, killing the engine of her vehicle and reaching into the passenger seat for her flashlight.

Outside, surrounded by dozens of pumpkins that were long rotting into the ground, the car was empty, the driver of the vehicle long gone into what Nora assumed was the cavern in the earth, as a rope attached to the Camaro disappeared inside. "Hello?" Nora called out, hoping to gain the attention of whoever was inside, in case they needed help. "Is anyone down there? Hello?"

Nora didn't receive a response, instead being met by a cold feeling of dread beneath her, but at the thought of Mews possibly falling into the cavern and being stuck, or worse, or anyone else for that matter, she found herself testing the strength of the rope, to make sure it would hold.

"I must be out of my mind," Nora said, everything in her brain screaming at her to leave, to run up to the farmhouse and ask Mr. Merril to call the police. However, she couldn't shake the feeling in her gut that found her tossing her flashlight into the cavern below and holding on tight to the rope, bracing herself against it as she lowered herself into the earth.

She dropped down below into the dark cavern, landing on her feet with a sickening squelch. Instantly, Nora felt the temperature drop, an eerie chill spreading through her body at the feeling that she didn't belong here, that she needed to get back up to the surface. She quickly reached for her flashlight, studying the new terrain. Mucousy vines and webs covered the surface of what looked to be a stretch of tunnels, leading away on both sides before disappearing around corners in what appeared to be an endless maze, lit from within by some ethereal blue glow. White particles drifted through the air, as if ash was raining down around her, but instead of falling to the ground, they continued to float, defying the laws of gravity.

Wherever she'd found herself, Nora knew she needed to get in, find Mews, and get out.

"Hello?" Nora called out again, her voice echoing throughout the chamber as she fought to keep it steady. "Can anybody hear me? If you need help, please say something."

Nora wandered a little bit away from the rope, taking the tunnel to her left and rounding the corner. She held her flashlight out in front of her, holding tight to it as if it were her lifeline, the one thing separating her from the eerie darkness that seemed to lay a claim on Nora, as if it didn't want her to leave. "Mews?" Nora called out hopefully, scanning for any signs of life, hopefully that of her sister's cat alive and unharmed. "Mews, are you down here, baby?"

She wandered a little farther, even if every instinct screamed at her to run, to get back to the rope and back into her car. To drive until she was all the way back in Kansas, if not even venturing further away from the hellscape she'd found herself in that evening. "This is so stupid," Nora muttered under her breath. "What are you doing, Nora?"

When Nora finally conceded to the brain screaming back at her, ready to turn back and find the rope to her escape, a loud screeching sound echoed through the tunnels, stopping her instantly in her tracks. As if in response, the cavern began to shake violently, knocking Nora backward with a shriek as she dropped the flashlight. She scrambled for it, picking it up with shaky hands as she shot back up to her feet, taking off into a run as the tunnels stopped shaking.

Nora could hear shouting from up ahead, back in the direction of the rope, but before she could round the corner back towards her escape, the tunnel once again began to shake. However, unlike the earthquake from moments before, this shaking was accompanied by an endless sound of running footprints, and screeches unlike any creature she'd ever encountered. Rounding the corner in front of her poured an endless stream of gray monsters, almost the size of dogs, but with two key differences: rather than fur covering the surface of the creatures, their skin was a mottled gray color, and where a dog's face usually resided, the creatures racing towards her had none.

Nora let out a blood-curdling scream as the horde advanced on her, closing her eyes as she braced for impact, but to her surprise, it never came. Instead, the dog-creatures moved past her as if she weren't even there, shrieking back to one another as they raced ahead for something further down the cavern. She watched, shell-shocked and frozen in place as they moved out of eyesight, running impossibly fast around a corner further down, and Nora fought to catch her breath as her heart felt as if it were going to pound out of her chest.

"Anna, wait!" an unfamiliar voice called out from back in the direction of the rope, causing Nora to turn on her heel at the name that turned her blood to ice in her veins. "Anna, you don't know what it could be!"

"Steve, we have to help!" the unmistakable voice of her niece called back, just out of eyesight, and Nora raced forward, desperate to reach the source of the sound. "Someone could be-"

The words were cut off as Nora rounded the corner, nearly colliding with her niece in the process. Even under a bandana and a pair of goggles, it was unmistakably her Anna standing before her, watching her aunt with a terrified expression. To Nora's relief, Anna appeared unhurt, covered in grime from the tunnels that Nora had no doubt matched her own appearance, but she couldn't shake the shell-shocked look on Anna's face over seeing her aunt in the tunnels.

"Aunt Nora?" Anna asked finally, a horrified tone taking over her voice.

"Anna?" Nora asked, her face crumpling. "What the hell was that? What were those things?"

"Aunt Nora, what are you doing here?" Anna asked simply.

"Anna?" Dustin's voice joined the mix from behind her, a sickening feeling forming in the pit of Nora's stomach at the realization that the thirteen-year-old boy was with her as he rounded the corner along with a much taller boy who appeared to be around Anna's age, both of them also covered with bandanas and goggles. However, even beneath the goggles, Dustin's eyes grew wide at the sight of the woman standing next to his sister. "Aunt Nora?"

"Dusty?" Nora echoed.

"Steve," the other boy sighed in defeat, raising a hand in greeting as Anna elbowed him in the ribs in response, and only then did she recognize the boy under the sunglasses and bandana as another one of Anna's friends.

"Aunt Nora, what are you doing down here?" Anna asked again.

"I was looking for the damned cat!" Nora shrieked, hysterical. "I figured she might have found her way out here by the pumpkin patch, so I told your mom I'd go looking. When I got here, I saw a giant hole in the ground, along with a car and a rope, and I thought maybe Mews had fallen in, or someone needed help. I never expected to find anything like this," she said, angling her flashlight around the cavern. "What were those things? Does your mom know you both are down here?"

"No," Anna shook her head. "Come on, we need to go."

"Not until you tell me what those things were." Nora insisted. "I thought they were dogs, but... did they even have faces?"

"No, but they have lots of teeth." Dustin said matter-of-factly.

"Dusty," Anna scolded before turning back to their aunt. "Aunt Nora, we really need to go, but I promise we'll explain everything when it's safe. Come on, our rope's back this way."

Nora nodded finally, letting Anna lead her and the others back over to the rope. To her surprise, where the hole leading into the tunnels met the open air outside, three more faces looked down from above them. The two boys Nora recognized as Dustin's friends, Mike Wheeler and Lucas Sinclair, but the redheaded girl next to them she'd never seen before. As they reached the rope, Steve knelt down, giving Dustin a boost up onto the rope before his friends helped him aboveground. After Dustin was up, Steve and Anna helped a shaky Nora up after him before climbing up themselves, leaving the tunnels behind.

Nora wandered away from the tunnels, pacing between her car and the Camaro in shock as the three other kids stared at her in awe. "When did she get down there?" she could hear one of them ask, but it almost sounded as if it were underwater as Nora continued to panic, her heart racing further as she forced herself to look away from the kids.

"This is crazy," Nora muttered. "I go looking for a cat, and I find six kids down in these tunnels along with dogs who don't have faces." she stopped short, realizing how nonchalant the rest of them looked, and whirled back around to look for any trace of a panic on their faces. Aside from looking somewhat stunned, their sense of urgency over the current predicament hardly seemed to match her own. "How does this seem so normal to all of you?" she pressed.

"We're kind of used to it, actually." Lucas said in an attempt to reassure her, but before Nora could respond, the headlights of both cars began to glow brighter, as if they could shatter at any moment.

Nora closed her eyes instinctively, trying to block out the light as she raised a hand to brace herself. However, after a moment, the lights faded back to black, as if nothing had ever happened, leaving them in a tense silence. The kids exchanged a look of understanding, causing a feeling of dread to spread over Nora as she waited for them to speak, to explain whatever the hell they were doing in the tunnels, or whatever had just happened to the lights.

"We should get going." Steve spoke up finally. "We should get back to Byers' before anyone else does."

Anna whirled back around to face her aunt, a new sense of urgency now in her niece's expression. "Aunt Nora, you have to go." she insisted. "You need to get back to the house."

"Not likely." she insisted. "I'm not going back to the house and facing your mother when I don't know what exactly found her kids in tunnels under the pumpkin patch with a bunch of monster dogs tonight." she looked over at Steve, giving the boy a grateful smile. "Byers' house, you say? Great. Dustin, Anna, I'll drive."

Anna looked as though she wanted to protest, but she knew better than to argue with her aunt once Nora's mind was set to something, so she instead looked back at Dustin, who nodded in response. "Alright," Anna said finally, pulling the Camaro keys from her pocket and tossing them to Steve. "We'll meet you guys there."

Nora led the kids back over to where the blue Honda waited, and once they were safely inside, with Anna in the passenger seat and Dustin in the back did Nora turn the key in the engine, revving it back to life. She let Steve and the other kids get settled into the Camaro before he pulled away from the pumpkin patch, and she maneuvered the vehicle into drive, following after the other car towards the Byers residence.

"So," Nora asked as she pulled onto the road, glancing at the other two with an intrigued expression. "Shall we get started?"

Anna took a deep breath. "I don't even know where to start." she confessed, looking back at Dustin in the rearview mirror, who shrugged in response. "Do you remember when Dusty's friend Will went missing last fall?"

"Yeah," Nora nodded. "He was lost in the woods, right?"

"Well, that's just the thing." Anna added. "He wasn't lost, necessarily. I mean, he was, just... not in these woods. He was taken to another world, one just like ours but different, I guess." Nora nodded as Anna continued. "It sounds crazy, believe me, I know. These monsters, we call them Demogorgons, they came from this other world, and one of them took Will back with it. It also took a girl from my school, Barb, one night while I was at a party at Steve and Becca's house.

"Dusty and his friends were looking for Will out in the woods one night when they found this girl, Eleven." Anna continued. "She had these telekinetic powers, could move things with her mind, and she escaped from Hawkins Lab the night he went missing. She helped us find Will, and she killed the monster at the middle school last year. We thought that was it until this fall, around Halloween." Anna stopped short, looking at her brother expectantly. "Your turn," she said accusingly.

Dustin sighed. "Buckle up, Aunt Nora, this one's a doozy," he warned her. "On Halloween night, I heard something from out in the garbage. I thought it was Mews, but she was inside, so when I checked the garbage can, I found a creature eating out of the trash. I'd never seen anything like it and thought he was a groundbreaking scientific discovery, so like any rational person would, I brought him inside to study him. I named him D'Artagnan. He liked nougat and was growing at an unprecedented rate, so I really thought I was onto something. But then I came home one day and went to feed him, and I saw that his container glass was smashed. He broke out, and I found him, uh..." he trailed off uneasily before muttering something unintelligible under his breath.

"What was that?" Nora asked.

"He uh..." Dustin muttered unintelligibly again, but Nora looked back at him in the rearview mirror, giving him a pressing look. "He ate Mews, okay?" Dustin asked, finally speaking loud enough to be heard.

Nora nodded as Dustin continued with his story, about tracking down the monster with Anna and Steve before meeting up with the rest of their friends to try and trap them before making a plan to close a gate to this otherworldly dimension and save Will from a monster who'd managed to find its way to torment him, even out here, but his last words continued to echo in her brain, at the sentence that she knew would absolutely destroy her sister if she ever found out. Mews hadn't just wandered off from the house, and no amount of searching since making the drive up here would ever prove enough for Nora to find her to bring her back to Claudia. Her mission was doomed from the start, and now she needed to figure out a way to help them pick up the pieces and try to make things okay again.

By the time the story ended, Nora looked back at both of them with an unreadable expression, processing the weight of their words. While she knew both her niece and nephew had read one too many science fiction novels over the years, the presence of a tunnel system underneath Hawkins, as well as a horde of faceless monsters racing past her earlier that evening told her that, whatever world they'd come from, they were real, not simply words on a page. Somehow, monsters had found their way into Hawkins, and Dustin and Anna had found themselves right in the middle of that storm.

"Well, that's definitely not what I thought you were going to say." Nora said finally.

"What did you think we were going to say?" Dustin asked.

"I don't know," Nora admitted, chuckling humorlessly. "So you're telling me that Mews was eaten by a monster that you were keeping as a pet?"

"I thought he was a groundbreaking scientific discovery." Dustin defended. "Tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing in my shoes, Aunt Nora."

"Dustin, I love you, kid, but you and I have very different reactions to scientific discoveries." she said, shooting him an apologetic look in the rearview mirror.

"So, you don't think we're crazy?" Anna asked nervously.

"Oh, I think you're both absolutely insane." Nora assured her. "But tonight I was almost trampled by a group of..." she trailed off, looking back at Dustin in the rearview mirror. "Demodogs?" At his satisfied nod, she continued. "Demodogs, so I think I'd accept any explanation you had to give me."

"And you can't tell Mom," Anna pleaded. "Whoever knows about these things are in danger. She doesn't know what actually happened at the middle school last year, and she certainly doesn't know about this."

"I could fill an entire novel with things I've never told your mom." Nora deadpanned. "I don't even think she'd believe me if I did. Or worse, she might." She stopped for a moment, thinking. It hurt her to know her sister's kids had been so close to this danger, more than once, and unable to shake the feeling that it might not be the last time. "You just need to promise me the two of you won't go searching for more danger like you did tonight."

"No more," Anna promised her. "The gate's closed. Eleven and Chief Hopper should be back at Byers' any minute. It's over."

At the mention of his name, Nora stopped short, letting it echo in her brain for a moment. Although it'd been years since she'd heard it, it almost felt like only yesterday. She could suddenly smell the smoke from the campfire and his cigarette as he held it out in her direction, hear the clinking of beer bottles in a celebratory fashion, could almost feel the chill from the rain as she pulled his jacket closer over her shoulders that night, but she shrugged it away as she once again focused on the road ahead, glancing back over at her niece.

"Hopper's the chief these days?" she asked simply.

Suddenly, Nora watched as the blue Camaro in front of her turned onto a gravel driveway leading to Joyce Byers's house, and Nora followed suit, trailing after them in the Honda. As they pulled up to the house, Nora noticed a handful of other cars parked in the yard, and illuminated by the outside light stood a lone figure on the porch, smoking a cigarette. Although his hair had begun to gray over the years, and a more serious air had settled over the man, it was unmistakably the boy who'd once sat across from her at a bonfire in another lifetime.

He watched intently as the unfamiliar car followed after the Camaro, and while he looked relieved for a moment at the sight of the Henderson kids climbing out of the vehicle, his gaze almost instantly locked back on Nora, studying the newcomer as she wandered up the drive towards the house with Dustin and Anna in tow.

"I should've known you were in charge here," Nora said accusingly in Hopper's direction, though she crossed her arms over her chest as she looked back at him with a teasing look.

"Nora Yount," Jim Hopper mused, a look of familiarity spreading over his features as he looked back at her with a curious expression, and Nora could see off to the side as Anna looked back and forth between the two of them, confused.

"It's Hoffman now," she corrected, causing the two siblings next to her to exchange a glance.

"This is awkward," she could hear Dustin mutter before Steve appeared in the doorway with another friend of Anna's, Landon Roberts, and between them stood another teenage boy Nora didn't recognize.

Bringing up the rear of the group was the same redheaded girl from before, along with a blonde girl Nora would recognize anywhere. Becca Harrington was her mother's identical twin, with the same sense of humor as her father and a spitfire attitude to match. Looking at her was like looking through a time machine from twenty-five years ago, of Nora's endless sleepovers with Marcie where the two girls were up laughing until her father scolded them to go to sleep, could almost hear her recounting her tales of encounters she'd had with Denny Harrington in the halls at school. Although it'd been eleven years since Marcie and Denny's car crash, when she looked at their daughter standing on the porch and pulling Anna into a bone-crushing hug, it was as if it were only yesterday.

"The kids told me you closed the gate?" Nora finally spoke, looking back at Hopper as he nodded with a curious expression, his eyes never once leaving her.

"El did," Hopper confirmed, nodding. "She's..." he trailed off before shaking his head warily. "It's not important. How did you-?"

"The kids told me in the car." she explained. "I ran into them down in those tunnels, at Merril's. Long story." she chuckled humorlessly.

"I don't know if I want to know what you were doing down there." he said skeptically. "I also hope they told you that you can't tell anyone. El being here, alone, along with all the other stuff. It's dangerous, Nora, you don't want to mess with these people." he insisted. "Believe me, everyone inside that house right now has all learned the hard way."

"Secret's safe with me." she promised him. "Is he okay? Will, I mean. The way Dustin talked about in the car, it sounded..."

"He'll be fine," Hopper assured her. "He's inside with Joyce. She's having a rough night. They got the monster out of Will, but earlier tonight we were trapped inside Hawkins Lab, with dozens of those things. Bob was with us, but he... he didn't make it."

Nora looked back at Jim's solemn expression, her eyebrows furrowing together in confusion and disbelief. "Bob?" she asked. "Bob Newby?"

Jim nodded, and Nora felt a crushing feeling inside her chest. She hadn't known Bob Newby very well, hadn't seen him since she moved away the summer before her senior year, but everyone knew Bob "The Brain" around Hawkins High School, the techy guy who ran a radio show in his free time. While they hadn't been close, her heart ached for the guy who'd lost his life trying to save the others that evening.

"And those things," Nora continued. "The ones from down in the tunnels, the ones that killed Bob, they're all dead?"

Hopper nodded again. "If the brain dies, the body dies. When El closed the gate, they all went with it. It's over."

Nora nodded, but the relieved look on her face didn't quite reach her eyes. The monster was gone, the horror in the tunnels all behind them as Anna and her friends managed to save the town from any destruction the creatures from the other world wanted to cause. However, a sinking feeling in Nora's stomach told her that, while the gate may have been closed, other problems were only just beginning.

She no longer knew the town she'd grown up in, the one she'd viewed as an escape from the outside world when she'd come on her doomed mission to look for Mews. Instead, she'd wandered into an entirely separate world from the one she knew, and she had an unsettling feeling that it was a one-way-trip.