SO, THAT HAD TO PERFORM A TRIBAL RITUAL TO GET RID OF IT. So, Mike woke them up at the crack of dawn to walk miles through town — why they couldn't drive most of the way, Hayley did not know — and into the woods. He could have honestly just murdered them all right then and there, and no one would know they were even missing.

"The Barrens," Hayley breathed out when they finally reached the spot he was talking about. Memories came back to her then, of them hanging out, of her and Bill sneaking out there for some alone time.

Mike reminded them, "This is where we went after the rock fight."

"The clubhouse," Ben said, and a whole new world of memories opened up. There was a clubhouse that Ben had built where they hung out nearly every day for the rest of that summer. It was shabby, but it was their own space away from bullies and parents.

Beverley nodded, hit him in the shoulder. "Yeah, you built that for us." Ben had been so excited to show them the clubhouse. Of course, Richie and some others made fun of it at first, but they all secretly loved it.

"Yeah, the hatch has got to be around here somewhere," Richie told them, and they all kind of panned out to look for it, closing their eyes as they tried to picture where exactly it was. Hayley was not unaware of Bill hovering behind her, but she chose to ignore it.

"You know what? I actually think the door was more like..." Ben trailed off and began stomping his feet on a spot. All of a sudden, he dropped into the ground, and they gasped. Everyone was still until they heard him call, "Found it! I'm okay! Come down!"

They all made their way down into the clubhouse, one-by-one, and as they did so, they were flooded with visions and feelings. Hayley remembered the first time they stepped inside, when Ben first showed it to them. She remembered them laughing together and decorating. She ran her fingers along the dusty walls, probably getting dozens of splinters, but the place gave her an immense feeling of home.

"Hey, losers!" That voice made her jump. That was something she wished she didn't remember. It was coming from the dark corner of the room, and she instinctively backed up toward Bill. He reached for her arm, just like he used to, ready to pull her back. They jumped again when the voice came. "Time to float."

But the sound of familiar laughter caused them all to roll their eyes as Richie stepped out of the darkness giggling to himself. They groaned, "Fuck, Richie."

Hayley walked right over to him and smacked him upside the head, and that just made him laugh too, reminding him of old times when she used to do that every time he said or did something stupid.

"Remember he used to say that shit? And he'd do the little dance," he chuckled out, mimicking Pennywise. But when everyone just stared at him, unimpressed, he scoffed, "Am I the only one who remembers this shit?"

"Are you gonna be like this the entire time we're home?" Eddie asked him.

Richie's shoulders dropped, and he shrugged before walking off. "All right. Just trying to add some levity to this shit. I'll go fuck myself."

Everybody else got back to exploring, and Hayley stopped in every corner, every nook and cranny. She thought about painting her nails with Bev and fighting about hammock time. She thought about the boys etching their heights into the poles to prove who was the tallest. Richie and Eddie fighting. Stan worrying about something or another. Mike trying to calm everyone down.

As she stopped by the door, she noticed a little bench tucked behind it, partly in the sun. As she stared at it, trying to remember what happened there, Bill came up behind her and reminded her.

"This is where you told me that you were going to be an award-winning actress and travel the world," he told her, gesturing to the bench.

Hayley chuckled, and she remembered that moment much clearer now. She and Bill had been sitting on the bench while the chaos happened around them, talking about their futures. She added, "I said I'd never get married."

"You said that while we were dating, by the way," he pointed out, making both of them laugh.

She leaned back against a wall once she was sure it wouldn't break and smiled, looking out at the clubhouse from an angle where she could see the whole thing. "We used to have sleepovers here."

"And we'd sneak out and lay up there and name the stars," he jumped in. God, it all seemed so young and corny now, but then, it was everything. When everything felt so complicated but was truly so simple.

She shook her head with a smile as she thought about those late nights, those moments between her and Bill. He was the dream, and she couldn't even remember why they broke up. "You named them all Hayley."

"Prettiest name I know," he replied, and she swore her heart stopped for a second. Know. She was probably reading too much into it, but the way he said it felt less nostalgic and more present. He leaned forward, and Hayley couldn't breathe. But his eyes weren't on her, they were on something behind her, and he lifted something off of the shelf before stepping away, calling to the others, "Hey, guys. This says Stan. 'For the use of the Losers only.'"

"Bill," Eddie said warningly as the Denbrough man opened the canister. They were all fully expecting there to be another one of those creatures from the Chinese restaurant, but instead, he pulled out a patterned shower cap.

Hayley breathed out a laugh, recalling when he had brought those to them so that they didn't get any spiders in their hair. Ben chuckled, "He was old before his time."

"Yeah. I wonder what he was like all grown up," Eddie sighed, and Hayley could picture him sitting at his kitchen table with his wife, playing chess or doing a puzzle.

"Probably what he was like as a kid. The best." They all looked over at Richie with surprise, confused as to why he was being nice and sweet. He clapped his hands together, interrupting the moment, though. "All right, Mike. What are we doing here?"

Mike announced, "The ritual. To perform it requires a sacrifice."

"I nominate Eddie," Richie cut in almost immediately. It was like it killed him to let someone else finish talking. But, to be fair, Mike was being very cryptic about the entire thing.

Hayley rolled her eyes, shaking her head. There was no way that any of them were letting anyone sacrifice someone. That was ridiculous. "We're not sacrificing Eddie."

"But he's little. He'll fit on a barbecue," Richie argued, and Hayley reached over and smacked him again as he tried to swat her hand away.

Eddie scoffed, "I'm 5'9". It's, like, average height in most of the world."

"It's not that kind of sacrifice, guys," Bill assured them as Eddie moved to sit down on the other side of Hayley, and the Kaspbrak man was clearly panicking a little bit at the idea of being sacrificed.

Once he was sure he would not be interrupted again, Mike continued, "The past is buried, but you're gonna have to dig it up piece-by-piece. All these pieces, these artifacts, that's why we're here. They are what you'll sacrifice. And since Stan isn't here to find his, I figured we should all be here together to find his artifact."

"I think Bill just did that," Eddie said, and they all looked over at him to see that he had pulled on one of the shower caps. Once they were all out of the clubhouse, he asked, "Okay, Mike, so where do we find our tokens?"

"Yeah, man, I gotta be honest, all due respect, but this is fucking stupid, all right? Why do we need tokes? We already remember everything — saving Bev, defeating It. I mean, we're caught up!" Richie ranted, not giving Mike a chance to respond.

"It's not everything," Mike countered, "We fought, but what happened after that? Before the house on Neibolt? Think."

Hayley closed her eyes, trying to remember the rest of that summer, but she couldn't. Everything that happened before the fight was hazy. She wasn't even sure how she started hanging out with the Losers in the first place. Bill stuttered out, "We c-can't remember, can we?"

"See, there's more to our story, what happened that summer," Mike explained to them. "All those blank spaces, like pages torn out of a book. That's what you need to find."

He was being so cryptic, like everything he said was scripted and thought out. Hayley looked up at him and sighed, "Mike, you talk like a narrator of a horror movie."

HAYLEY'S FIRST STOP WAS HER OLD HOUSE.

A big 'for sale sign was in the yard, but it was fraying. Her parents moved to New York as soon as she graduated. The house had been for sale for decades, but for some reason, no one wanted it. They never had a clue why because it was the perfect suburban house in the middle of a good neighborhood. But it never sold.

The front door was unlocked, surprisingly, and she stepped forward into her old foyer. Unlike most people, she did not have too many fond memories associated with her childhood home. They weren't bad memories, per say, but she had never felt truly loved there.

She walked through the halls and toward the basement, where anything that had been left in the house when they put it on the market would be. She turned the light on and climbed down slowly. As she approached the closet, she saw something poking out.

Her middle school cheerleading outfit fell out as soon as she opened the doors, and she crouched down to pick it up. She remembered then how she first began spending time with the Losers. It all started when she was wearing that outfit.

She had just found her best friend talking shit about her to her teammates in the locker room, and she was crying under the bleachers when Bill came. He invited her to hang out with him and his friends, and she accepted, glad that she didn't have to spend the summer alone. Little did she know everything that it would lead to.

A sound coming from the depths of the closet made her head shoot up. A hand, gross and wrinkled, grabbed the door from the inside and slowly pulled it open. Hayley was frozen in fear as she watched Shirley, her ex-best friend, climb out. Only, it wasn't Shirley. This girl had black god dripping from her mouth. Her teeth were sharp and her nails were long.

"Hayley," she sang in that voice she always used to use. It was childish and teasing, and it sent shivers down the Forbes woman's spine.

Then, she lunged. Hayley screamed and stumbled backwards on her hands and feet, desperately trying to get after from her. But Shirley was took quick, and she was so very tall.

She pinned Hayley to the ground and held her there, dripping black goo all over her face and torso. She leaned in, her razor-sharp teeth inches away from Hayley's face as she panted heavily, out of breath and terrified.

But just as soon as she appeared, she stopped and retreated back into the closet. Hayley lied there for a long moment, catching her breath as she realized that there was no goo on her at all, no scratches from Shirley's nails.

None of it had been real.