I came back because of the dreams.
They're not nightmares in the usual sense. No monsters, no running from anything. Just? static. Flashes. Smoke. Someone screaming my name over and over until it turns into this high, metallic whine in my ears. Every time I wake up, I'm gasping, fists clenched so tight my nails dig crescent moons into my palms.
I've tried everything. Therapy, meds, sleeping with the TV on. But none of it sticks. Every night ends the same way: with the smell of burning pine in my nose and the weight of guilt I can't quite name.
The cabin was the last place I remembered being whole. Not happy, maybe, but real. We were a bunch of old friends trying to reconnect after college. Ben, Claire, Marcus, Jules, and me. It was meant to be a weekend off the grid: whiskey, weed, bad horror movies, and dumb arguments about who forgot to bring extra toilet paper.
But then? nothing.
The official story said there was a fire. Electrical. That I was lucky to survive, though no one could explain how I managed to crawl out when everyone else didn't. I woke up in a hospital with second-degree burns on my hands and a hole in my memory the size of a crater.
They ruled it an accident. I signed the release forms. Went home. Tried to move on.
But the thing is, guilt doesn't care about paperwork.
And lately, something inside me has started whispering that maybe I didn't just survive the fire.
Maybe I caused it.
The trail to the cabin reopened last fall.
Apparently the fire had done enough damage to the surrounding forest that the whole area was closed off for "regrowth and restoration." Which is bullshit for we don't want hikers finding charred bones and filing lawsuits.
I waited a few months before I went back. Told myself it was for closure. Some kind of therapeutic thing. You know, "face your demons." But deep down, I think I was hoping
the place would jog something loose. A memory. A truth.
It took me four hours to hike in. The trail was overgrown and hushed, like the trees were holding their breath. I didn't see a single person the whole way. No birds either.
Just a weird silence, like the forest knew I didn't belong.
When I finally got there, the cabin was worse than I imagined.
Just a blackened skeleton now. Charred beams collapsed in on themselves like broken ribs. The chimney was still standing, crooked and cracked like a gravestone. The place stank of wet ash, even after all these years. I didn't step inside at first. Just stood there for a long time, staring. Trying to see through the static in my head.
I don't know what made me start digging. Maybe I saw something glinting. Maybe something told me where to look.
Either way, I kicked through the debris near where the living room used to be. Pried up half-buried planks with a rusted fire poker I found in the dirt. And there, wedged beneath the floorboards, warped and half-melted, was a phone.
Not mine. Not any model I recognized.
But when I picked it up, I swear to God, it was warm.
Back home, I cleaned the phone the best I could. The screen was spiderwebbed, the casing half-melted, like someone had pressed a blowtorch to it. But when I plugged it in, using an old universal charger I had lying around, it buzzed.
Not a full power-up. Just a flicker of life. A glowing battery icon and then black.
I waited.
It buzzed again. The screen stayed dark, but I heard the faintest click. Then another. I don't know how else to describe it except? chewing. Like the phone was waking up hungry.
Eventually, the home screen blinked on. No wallpaper. No contacts. Just a single folder labeled "Fire".
I hesitated before opening it. My hands were shaking.
Inside the folder: one video. No date. No location tag. Just the default
filename;
VID_001.mp4.
I watched it.
At first, it was almost comforting. Us, sitting around the fire pit. Everyone laughing. Claire trying to tell some dumb ghost story she clearly forgot halfway through. Marcus with a blunt hanging off his lip. Ben filming it all, I think, judging by the voice behind the camera.
I smiled.
Then the camera jolted. A scream. The fire flared way too high, like someone dumped gasoline on it. People scrambling. A thud. Running footsteps.
And smoke, crawling across the lens like fingers.
Someone shouted, "Stop him! He's got the axe!"
The camera spun. Trees, fire, someone's legs and then it caught a face.
My face.
Wild eyes. Blood on my shirt. Smiling like I'd won something.
The video ended there. No fade-out. Just hard cut to black.
I dropped the phone.
I stumbled to the bathroom and puked until my stomach was empty.
I didn't sleep that night.
I sat on the floor in my living room, knees pulled up to my chest, the phone still lying where I dropped it. The screen went dark again, like nothing had happened. Like it hadn't just ripped a hole in everything I believed about myself.
My first thought was "It's fake, it has to be fake."
Someone doctored it. Some sick prank. Deepfake shit. AI. I mean, it's 2025. People can make the Pope dance the Macarena with enough processing power.
But the blood on my shirt? the way I moved? it wasn't uncanny valley. It was me.
I remembered the shirt. A red flannel I used to wear all the time. And the trees in the video? I recognized them. The split pine by the fire pit. The weird boulder with the moss that looked like a smile.
It wasn't just some faked footage. It was there.
And my smile at the end?
That wasn't prank-face. That was something else. Something colder. I didn't tell anyone. Who would I tell? "Hey, long time no talk, I found a demon phone that says I murdered our college friend group. Wanna do brunch?"
I couldn't go to the cops either. Even if they believed me, which they wouldn't, they already closed the case. Filed it under "accidental fire." I'd read the report so many times I had parts of it memorized.
And still? I never once questioned it. Not until now.
Now, all I can think about is that one weird line in the report:
"The survivor was found with superficial injuries and no recollection of the escape route."
No mention of smoke inhalation. No concussion. Just memory loss. Neat little bow.
Too neat.
The next morning, the phone was gone.
I tore the apartment apart looking for it. Under the couch, behind the toilet, inside the fridge. I even checked the trash, like maybe I'd tossed it during a fugue state.
Nothing.
I stood in my living room, heart hammering, hands still smelling faintly of ash from the cabin. The charger cable lay on the floor, unplugged. Like something had unhooked itself.
For a while, I just stood there listening. Not for a sound, exactly. For a presence. You ever get that feeling like someone's behind you, but when you turn, there's no one there? That was the entire morning.
I finally convinced myself I'd imagined it all. That the video never happened. Trauma hallucination. A stress-induced delusion wrapped around my survivor's guilt.
Then my phone buzzed.
Not the melted one, but my actual phone. The one sitting on my kitchen counter.
Screen-side down.
I picked it up, already knowing what I was going to see.
New Message: Unknown Number
No preview. Just three words.
"You remember now."
I dropped it.
This time I didn't throw up. I just went numb. Sat on the floor for a long time staring at the cabinets, trying to remember where I kept my Xanax.
I didn't take any. If I was spiraling, I wanted to know. I didn't want a fog. I wanted facts.
That message was real.
And someone or something wanted me to keep digging.
I started looking through old photos that night.
Facebook. Instagram. Old group texts. Anything with a timestamp.
It was all still there. Photos of us at the cabin, two nights before the fire. Claire doing her "ghost face" pose with a marshmallow in each nostril. Ben trying to light a blunt with a half-dead citronella candle. Jules wrapped in a hoodie three sizes too big for her, making fun of Marcus for bringing "emergency Pop-Tarts."
We looked happy.
But I noticed something weird.
In every picture, I'm either behind the camera or turned away. Face partially obscured. Once, I'm in the mirror behind the group, holding my phone, but the reflection doesn't match. My mouth is closed, but the reflection is smiling.
I never saw that before. Never noticed.
I tried to shake it off, tell myself it was just coincidence. But it got under my skin. Like something had been wrong with me even then, and no one noticed. Or maybe they did, and they just didn't say anything.
That night, I tried to sleep with the lights on.
Didn't help.
Somewhere around 3:00 a.m., I smelled smoke again. Faint. Sweet. Like pine sap catching fire.
I got up, checked the stove. Nothing. Walked the apartment. Dry as a bone.
When I came back to my bedroom, there were muddy footprints on the carpet. Leading from the doorway to the side of my bed.
Just one set. Bare. Human.
They stopped inches from where I'd been sleeping.
No broken windows. No open doors. No signs of forced entry.
And no ashes on the floor.
Only thing left behind?
A dead lighter on my pillow.
I didn't call the cops.
What would I say? "Hi, someone broke into my apartment to leave muddy footprints and a dead lighter"? I could already hear the silence on the other end. That long pause before the operator switches from dispatch to mental health services.
Instead, I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, holding the lighter.
It was one of those cheap orange ones you can buy in packs of five. No markings. No initials. But when I flicked it, there was a trace of butane left. Just enough for a single spark.
Then nothing.
I put it in my desk drawer next to the old Polaroids I'd been too afraid to throw away.
As soon as I shut the drawer, I heard the ding.
My phone again. Another message from the same unknown number.
This time, just a name.
"Ben"
No punctuation. No context. Just that.
I hadn't said his name aloud in years. The official report said he'd died trying to get back inside the cabin after everyone else was already out. Heroic, they called it. But the video didn't show a hero.
It showed a victim.
And I'd been grinning.
I opened my contacts. Scrolled down, past names I hadn't touched in ages. Found Ben's old number.
Just for the hell of it, I texted him.
"If this is you, I need to talk."
Didn't expect anything.
But then the three dots appeared.
Typing.
I froze.
Then the reply came through:
"You were supposed to burn too."
Buckle up. Segment 8 coming hot.
I stared at the message for a full minute without blinking.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't even tell if my heart was beating. Just that ringing silence you get when your body forgets what it's supposed to do next.
Then the dots came back.
Typing.
"You left us."
My hands started shaking so bad I dropped the phone. It hit the floor with a soft thud, screen still glowing. I backed away from it like it might bite me.
I should've deleted it. Shut it off. Smashed it.
But instead I picked it up.
"Who is this?" I typed. "Is this a joke?"
A pause.
Then:
"You smiled the whole time."
I threw the phone across the room.
It bounced off the wall and landed screen-up on the rug, undamaged. Of course. The cursed shit never breaks.
I didn't sleep at all that night. Every sound felt amplified. Pipes creaking, the fridge kicking on, the distant hum of the street outside. I kept checking the hallway, certain I'd see those bare footprints again. But the carpet stayed clean.
Around 5 a.m., just before sunrise, I went back to the drawer.
Pulled out the lighter.
Held it in my palm and closed my eyes.Tried to picture that night, the one the fire took from me. All I got was flickers. The heat. The smell. Someone screaming my name. Only it wasn't a cry for help.
It was a warning.
I remembered a hand grabbing mine.
A voice whispering:
"Don't let him see your eyes."
I don't know whose voice that was.
But I remember the fear in it.
Like whoever said it wasn't afraid of the fire. They were afraid of me.
I spent the next day holed up in my apartment with every light on. Curtains drawn. TV
off. I wanted silence. Not peace, just stillness. I needed to hear myself think.
I kept replaying that video in my head. Not the footage itself. I didn't need to watch it again. It was burned into my brain now. Frame by frame.
The laughter.
The jolt.
The scream.
And my face.
The thing that eats at me the most isn't the blood. It's the expression. I wasn't panicking. I wasn't confused. I looked? satisfied.
Like I'd finally done something I'd been waiting to do.
There's a theory that people repress traumatic memories to protect themselves. But what if it's not protection? What if it's containment?
Like the brain locking a door it knows you'll try to open someday. A failsafe against the truth.
And maybe the dreams? the static? the smoke?
They weren't symptoms.
They were leaks.
That night, I heard footsteps above me.
Problem is, I live on the top floor.
They walked from one end of the ceiling to the other. Slow. Measured. Bare feet on wood.
Then I heard the creak of my hallway floorboards inside the apartment.
I grabbed the fire poker I'd taken from the cabin. Swung the door open.
No one there.
But something had been.
The smell of pine smoke was thick in the air.
And scratched into the paint on the wall, in blackened ash:
"Let's finish what you started."
I didn't leave my apartment for three days.
Not out of fear, at least not the normal kind. It was like something had its hands around my reality and was squeezing. Twisting. Making everything just slightly off.
I stopped trusting mirrors. They always lagged a second too long when I moved. The power flickered whenever I stood too close to a light switch. And the air smelled? dry.
Flammable.
Every night I heard the footsteps. Always starting above me. Then across the ceiling.
Then, eventually inside.
No one ever came through the door.
They didn't have to.
On the third day, I checked the fire poker.
The tip was blackened. Charcoal black.
I hadn't used it. Not since the cabin. I kept telling myself it must've always been like that. But I knew. It was rusted when I first brought it home. Dry. Dead metal. Now it smelled like it had just come out of a fireplace.
I started dreaming again. Not static this time. Not fragments. But scenes. Whole memories stitched together wrong.
In one, Ben is staring at me across the firepit, eyes wide, saying, "This isn't you, man.
You're not you."
In another, I'm holding something heavy in my hands. Something soaked. Claire's voice, screaming in the distance. "Why are you smiling?"
And then there's the worst one. The one that wakes me up every time. The cabin's already burning. I'm outside, watching it collapse. There's movement in the flames. Someone crawling, almost out. But I step forward.
I push them back in.
I needed answers, and I knew where to get them.
There was one person who'd visited me in the hospital after the fire. Someone from the original group who didn't go on the trip. Jules' younger brother, Nick. He was supposed to come but bailed last minute. Family stuff. I remembered him sitting next to my bed, awkward, pale. Didn't say much.
I never followed up with him after that. I think I didn't want to be reminded that someone still knew me from before.
But now I needed to know what I'd said while I was still doped up on pain meds and half-conscious.
Nick was still living in town. I found his info online and showed up at his apartment the next morning.
He didn't open the door at first. Just called through it: "Who is it?"
"It's me," I said. "I was with Jules. At the cabin."
Silence.
Then:
"You shouldn't be here."
"I need to talk to you."
Another pause. Then the lock clicked.
He looked like he hadn't slept in a year. Pale, thinner than I remembered. His eyes darted behind me before he let me in, like he was making sure I hadn't brought something with me.
His place was clean, quiet, the blinds shut tight.
"You've been dreaming too, haven't you?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away.
Then he said: "You told me something in the hospital."
I waited.
He looked at the floor. "You said? 'I didn't want to do it. But he said I had to.'"
"Who?" I asked.
He looked up then. Eyes glassy. Voice barely a whisper.
"The man in the smoke."
I laughed when he said it.
Not because it was funny, but because I couldn't help it. That stupid, nervous bark you let out when something hits too close to the edge of what your mind can hold.
"The man in the smoke?" I said. "You seriously believe that?"
Nick didn't smile.
"You told me he was standing in the corner of the room," he said. "In the ICU. You kept saying, 'Don't let him talk. Don't let him talk.'"
I sat down. My legs were starting to shake.
"You said he follows people who survive fire," Nick went on. "And that if you listen too long, if you really hear him? he gets inside."
I didn't remember saying any of that.
But it didn't feel wrong.
"I've seen him too," Nick said, lowering his voice. "Three nights in a row now. He doesn't move. Just stands in the hallway. Watching me through the smoke."
"You weren't there that night," I said. "Why would he come after you?"
Nick didn't answer right away.
Then he reached under the coffee table and pulled out a box. Inside were four things: a fire-damaged journal, a burned Zippo lighter, a half-melted bracelet that used to belong to Jules, and the phone.
The phone.
The one I found in the cabin. The one that disappeared from my apartment.
"It showed up outside my door yesterday," Nick said. "In a shoebox. No note."
I stared at it. The same cracked screen. The same melted edge.
"Play the video," I said.
Nick shook his head. "It's different now."
My mouth went dry.
"What do you mean?"
He pushed the phone toward me.
"You're not in it anymore."
I didn't want to touch it.
But my hand moved anyway, like it already knew what it was supposed to do. The phone was cold. Colder than it had any right to be. Like it had been sitting in snow.
I opened the folder. There was still just one video:
VID_001.mp4.
I hit play.
The fire crackled. Same setup. Same night. Everyone around the pit. Ben, Claire,
Marcus, Jules. Laughing, drinking. But the energy was off.
Like they knew something was coming.
The camera jolted. Same scream, same flaring heat, and then the chaos started. But this time, when the camera whipped around to catch the person with the axe.
It wasn't me.
It was someone else. A shape half-shrouded in smoke. Same blood-soaked shirt, same red flannel. But the face was wrong. Blurred. Like it had been scrubbed. Replaced.
Its eyes glowed faintly, and the smile was wide. Too wide.
It stared directly into the lens.
Nick paused the video.
"You see it too," he said.
I nodded slowly. "It's not me anymore."
"No," he said. "I think it never was."
Something cold dripped down the back of my neck. I wiped at it and looked at my hand.
Ash.
Fine and gray, clinging to my skin like dust from a long-dead fireplace.
"I think he uses people," Nick said. "Like vessels. Masks. You wore his face that night.
Now he's looking for another one."
The air shifted, almost as if the pressure dropped. That heaviness you feel before
lightning.
And then the smell hit us.
Smoke.
Strong. Closer than before.
Coming from inside the apartment.
I turned toward the hallway just as the bedroom door creaked open. Then a voice, low,
wrong and wet, whispered:
"You brought me back."
I grabbed Nick by the arm and yanked him toward the front door.
He didn't fight me. We were already coughing. The air had changed. Thicker, heavy with that sickening sweetness of burning sap. The hallway was filling with smoke, but nothing was on fire.
No flames.
Just smoke.
It poured from the bedroom like it was alive. Rolling out in low, deliberate waves, creeping along the walls. I swear it moved like it saw us.
We made it out into the stairwell. Bolted down three flights in record time and spilled out onto the street. The second we hit open air, it was like the pressure released.
Nick dropped to the sidewalk, hacking up black phlegm. I bent over, hands on my knees, heart punching holes in my chest.
Then I looked up at his apartment window.
Something was standing there.
Not a silhouette. Not a trick of the smoke.
A man, tall and too-thin, skin the color of scorched paper, eyes like dead coals. No expression. Just there.
Watching.
"You see him?" I asked.
Nick didn't look up. "He's in everything now," he said.
I took him to my place, though it didn't feel like mine anymore. The air was stale. Dead.
Like the smoke had followed us, but left its scent behind.
Nick curled up on the couch and didn't say much for hours.
I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the dead lighter I'd left in the drawer.
It wasn't dead anymore.
When I flicked it, the flame caught instantly.
And it whispered.
I couldn't make out the words.
But I swear it said my name.
I didn't tell Nick about the lighter talking.
I wanted to. I really did. But something told me not to. Like if I spoke it aloud, it would hear me. Like it would know I was finally listening.
So I kept quiet.
That night, Nick fell asleep on the couch. I tried to stay awake, but the smoke smell never left. It crept into my clothes, my sheets, my skin. Every time I blinked, I saw fire behind my eyelids.
At some point, I must've drifted off, because I woke up back in the woods.
Not dreaming.
Not really awake either.
The cabin was burning again, but I was standing outside of it. Only now, I wasn't alone.
There were people in the trees.
Not my friends.
Strangers.
Their faces were twisted, half-burned, all of them watching me with hollow sockets and cracked teeth. Silent. Judging.
And standing at the edge of the firelight was him.
The man in the smoke.
I couldn't see his face, just the red glow of his eyes and that smile. It wasn't made of
lips. It was made of heat. Of hunger. Like his whole body had been hollowed out and filled with fire.
"You remember now," he said.
His voice sounded like something burning slowly. Like wet logs in a dying hearth.
I tried to run, but the fire was everywhere. The forest twisted around me like it wanted to keep me in.
And then I woke upnto find Nick standing over me, crying.
"They're dead," he said. "They're all dead again. I saw it. You did it. You pushed her."
His hands were shaking.
"I saw you, man. You wanted to."
I stood up too fast and the room tilted. My body felt like it was full of smoke. Slow, thick, damp.
"Nick, you're not thinking straight," I said.
But even as the words came out, I wasn't sure who I was talking to. Him? or me.
"I didn't want to see it either," he said. "I wanted to believe you. But he showed me. Last night. In the fire."
He pointed at the wall behind me.
I turned.
There was nothing there. Just blank drywall and the same cracks that had always been there from the shitty foundation. But then I noticed something new:
Burn marks.
Four parallel streaks of soot across the wall, like claw marks. Still fresh. Still warm.
Nick's voice dropped low. "He said you were the first."
"The first what?"
"To open the door."
My mouth went dry.
"I think that night at the cabin - " Nick swallowed hard, eyes flicking toward the window " - I think you invited him in."
I staggered back. "No. I didn't. I don't remember that."
"Exactly," he whispered. "He made you forget. Because if you remembered? you'd try to stop him."
I didn't want to hear anymore. I grabbed my coat, my keys. I was going back to the cabin. I needed to see the ruins again. Alone.
Nick didn't stop me.
He just said, "If you go back there, he won't let you leave a second time."
I looked at him.
"You think he's still there?"
Nick's eyes didn't blink. "No."
He nodded to the mirror behind me.
"I think he's here now."
I turned toward the mirror.
Just a glance.
But it was enough.
My reflection didn't move.
I stood there, frozen, breathing hard. My mirrored self stood still. Arms at his sides, eyes locked on mine. And that smile? spreading slowly, like it had been waiting for me to notice.
Then, the reflection tilted its head.
Not the way normal people do, curious or confused. More like watching a puppet tilt on an invisible string.
I backed away. It didn't.
"You see it now," Nick said quietly behind me.
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
The lights in the apartment flickered. A soft crackling sound started in the air, like dry branches catching a low flame. The room filled with warmth. Too much warmth. I didn't look at the mirror again.
I ran.
The trail back to the cabin was worse than I remembered.
Thicker brush. Trees too close together. Like the forest was trying to reclaim the path. But I didn't stop. I hiked for hours, heart pounding the whole way. Every now and then I'd hear something behind me. Branches snapping, footsteps that didn't match mine.
No birds. No wind.
Just breath in the trees.
When I finally reached the clearing, the cabin was? different.
Still a ruin. Still collapsed. But the ground looked disturbed. Like something had dug its way out from underneath.
Ash coated everything.
And in the center of the old firepit, burned down to its last black lump, was the phone.
Waiting.
Still warm.
Let's finish this.
I didn't want to touch it but my hands moved anyway.
The phone lit up as soon as I picked it up. No passcode, no hesitation. Just a single video waiting on the screen. Not the one I'd seen before. A new file.
VID_002.mp4
I tapped it.
The screen went black for a long moment.
Then static.
Then me.
Standing in the clearing. Just like I was now. Same clothes. Same dirt under my boots.
Same phone in my hand. Only in the video? I was smiling again.
Behind me, the cabin began to rebuild itself in reverse. Timbers rising, fire retreating, smoke curling backward into the walls. My friends appeared in flickers, Ben, Claire, Jules, laughing, drinking.
Then, screaming.
The video glitched. Jumped. And now they were burning again. Reaching for me. And I was watching. Still smiling.
And behind me, in the screen, the man was standing.
Close.
I turned around.
He was there.
Not in the flesh. Just the shape of him, tall and full of heat, coals for eyes, mouth
flickering like a furnace behind cracked lips. The trees didn't move, but the shadows bent toward him like they knew who was in charge.
"You came back," he said.
I couldn't speak.
"You carried me out," he whispered. "And now? it's time to go back in."
The air snapped. The firepit ignited, violent and sudden. I felt my skin blistering, the phone melting in my hands.
And just before I blacked out, I saw something in the flames:
Nick.
Screaming.
Not at me.
But as me.
