u/Round_Analyst9758

i dont really know how to start this so i'll just say it directly.

three weeks ago i heard my brother's voice in the forest calling my name. he was in a hospital bed unconscious 200 miles away. i know how that sounds. i knew how it sounded then too and i still went cold when i heard it.

my brother Karan says my name in this specific way. drops the ending slightly. he has done it since we were small kids and i never thought about it until that night when i heard it coming from the trees and my whole body just. stopped.so some context.

Karan had a car accident. bad one. head injury. the doctors were using careful words which as anyone who has sat in a hospital waiting room knows means the situation is not good and they dont want to say it plainly. that was six days before this happened. six days of hospitals and waiting rooms and coffee that tastes like nothing and trying to hold it together for my mum.

i drove to our family land without really planning to. we have this old property two hours outside the city. grandfather built a house there before any of us were born. nobody really uses it anymore. we just keep it because letting it go feels wrong somehow.i just needed to be somewhere quiet. somewhere that felt like family without the machines and the waiting.

i got there late. didnt even bother going inside. just sat on the porch steps in the dark and tried to breathe properly for the first time in almost a week.

maybe ten minutes later i heard my name.my first thought honestly was that i was cracking up. sleep deprivation does things. grief does things. i knew this. i told myself this very firmly.

then it called again and i stopped being able to explain it away.

because something was off about it and it took me a moment sitting there completely frozen to figure out what.

the voice was right. completely right. the pitch the rhythm that specific drop at the end. all of it exactly Karan.

but it was empty.

thats the only word i have for it. like someone had very carefully copied the outside of his voice but had no idea what was supposed to be inside it. no warmth. no impatience. no actual person behind it. just the shape of him with nothing living in it.

it called a third time and i actually stood up. took one step toward the tree line.

then i stopped.because i realized something.

it had called my name three times. just my name. nothing else. no hey or where are you or come look at this or any of the hundred things Karan would actually say. just my name repeated. because that was all it had. it knew what sound would make me move toward the dark without thinking. it just didnt know what came after.

i went inside and locked every door.it kept going for two hours.

i sat at the kitchen table with all the lights on and listened to my brothers voice outside moving through the trees. sometimes it sounded close. sometimes further away. at one point it shifted, got more urgent, and that was the worst moment honestly. the idea that it was trying different versions. testing. adjusting. figuring out which one would finally work on me.

just before 2am it went quiet.

then one last call directly outside the kitchen window. close enough that if someone had been standing there i would have seen them through the glass.i did not look.

i kept my eyes down and my hands flat on the table and i waited and after a long moment i heard something move away slowly through the undergrowth. unhurried. like it wasnt leaving because i had won. like it was just done for now.Karan woke up the next morning.

mum called while i was already on the road back. he opened his eyes at 6am asked for water asked where i was. i went to see him that afternoon. sat next to him. held it together okay.

at some point he told me he had a strange dream while he was unconscious.

i asked him what happened in it.

he said he was standing in trees somewhere calling my name and i wouldnt come. and something was standing right next to him the whole time just listening. and he had this feeling the whole dream that whatever was next to him was going to use his voice for something after he was finished with it.

he laughed. said it was probably the medication.

i laughed too because what else do you do.i havent gone back to the land.

i dont know what was in those trees. i dont know how it knew his voice specifically or how it knew that his voice would be the one thing that would make me walk into the dark without thinking first.

what i know is that sometimes now when my phone rings late and i see Karans name on the screen i let it ring twice before i pick up.

just to make sure i recognize what comes after my name.

so far it has been him.

so far.

— Shadow Kernel

u/Round_Analyst9758 — 9 days ago

▲ 4 r/u_Round_Analyst9758+2 crossposts

i'll try to explain this as clearly as i can but honestly my head is not in a good place right now so bear with me.

i do freelance video editing. boring stuff mostly. corporate promos, event coverage, sometimes security footage cleanup for small businesses who need timestamps corrected or clips compiled for insurance purposes. it pays okay. i work from my apartment, i keep weird hours, i dont interact with clients much beyond email. its a simple life and i liked it.

three weeks ago a new client contacted me. said he needed basic review and compilation work done on some security camera footage. nothing unusual. parking lots, elevator interiors, building hallways. the kind of footage that is so boring to watch that you develop a habit of only half paying attention while you work through it.

i was half paying attention when i saw myself.it was a clip from what looked like a shopping complex. glass doors at the entrance, people coming and going, timestamp reading 11.47pm on a tuesday. i was cleaning up the compression artifacts, just routine stuff, when something in the reflection of the glass caught my eye and i stopped.

there was a man standing behind the camera.

and the man was me.

not someone who looked vaguely like me. not similar height similar build. me. my face. my jacket, the grey one with the small tear on the left pocket that i have been meaning to fix for four months. standing completely still while everyone around him moved normally, looking directly at the camera with an expression i cant describe properly except to say it was my face making a look i dont think i have ever made.

i have never been to that shopping complex. i am almost certain of that. almost.i told myself glitch. i told myself compression does strange things to reflections. i told myself i was tired and my brain was filling in familiar shapes where there werent any. i exported the clip, sent it to the client, went to bed.

the next batch of footage arrived two days later.i almost missed it in the second one. train station, 3.12am, nearly empty. man sitting alone on a bench in the far left corner. i only looked because the timestamp seemed odd for the location.

the man was me.

same face. different clothes this time, a shirt i actually own, sitting very still with my hands on my knees and my eyes on the floor. just sitting there at 3.12 in the morning in a train station i have never visited.

i went back to the first clip.

i looked at the timestamp. tuesday 11.47pm.

i checked my phone. tuesday i had been on a call with my sister until past midnight. i was in my apartment. i have the call log.

i was in my apartment and i was also standing behind a camera in a shopping complex reflection and i dont know how to make those two things make sense.the third clip showed me standing outside a house. just standing on the pavement looking at an upstairs window. for forty minutes according to the timestamps. not moving. just looking up.

i dont know whose house that is.

i dont know why i am looking at it like that.then my own life started coming apart at the edges.

small things first. photos on my phone i didnt take. not many, maybe six or seven, but pictures of streets and building exteriors and one of a door i dont recognize, all taken between 2am and 4am on nights i was asleep. or nights i thought i was asleep.

the woman at the cafe downstairs said good morning the usual when i came in for the first time. i had never been there before. i told her that. she laughed like i was joking. said i come in every day, always the same order, always sit by the window, always leave without finishing the coffee.

my neighbor knocked on my door last week to complain about the noise, said i had been coming home very late recently, past 3am, and could i please be quieter on the stairs. i sleep with my door locked and a habit of checking it twice. i have not been out past midnight in months.

i set up my laptop camera to record me sleeping.

the gaps showed up on the third night.

i am sitting there in the footage, asleep, and then there is a a moment where the image stutters. one second maybe two. and when it comes back i am still there still asleep but something is different and it took me four viewings to identify what.

my position had changed slightly. just slightly. the way you shift in your sleep.

except i had not been asleep during those seconds.

the camera had simply. stopped. seeing me.i traced the original footage back through the client contact details. took me longer than it should have because nothing was quite adding up, the address kept autocorrecting in my maps app, which has never happened to me before. but i found it eventually.

abandoned apartment building on the east side. third floor, end unit.

i dont know why i went. i want to say i was thinking clearly but i wasnt. i just needed to see it.

the door was unlocked.

inside there was almost no furniture. just equipment. recording equipment, hard drives, monitors, cables running along the walls. and footage. hundreds of files, all labeled the same way, all labeled with my name and a date.

going back three years.i sat down on the floor and opened the oldest files first and watched myself living a life i have no memory of. same face. same mannerisms. different choices. different places. like someone had been running a version of me parallel to the actual me and documenting all of it.

the most recent file had no date label.

just my name and the word FINAL.

i opened it.

i watched myself walk into the room i was currently sitting in. walk to the camera. look directly into it with that expression i had seen in the shopping complex reflection, the one i dont recognize on my own face.

and say, very quietly and very clearly:

"you're the copy. i've been fixing your mistakes."

i heard the door open behind mei have not turned around yet.

i am typing this on my phone because i need someone to know where i am and what i found and i dont know if the person standing behind me right now is going to let me leave and i dont know which one of us will walk out of this apartment and i dont know which one of us has been real this whole time and i am so.

— Shadow Kernel

u/Round_Analyst9758 — 9 days ago

▲ 3 r/u_Round_Analyst9758+1 crossposts

The last real conversation I had with my mother was an argument.

I say that first because everything after needs that context. We argued about something stupid. Money. Old family wounds. The kind of argument that feels enormous in the moment and meaningless the second someone is gone. I said things I cannot take back. She said things she probably didn't mean. I hung up.

She died four hours later.

Stroke. Sudden. The hospital called at 2AM and I sat on the edge of my bed holding my phone in the dark thinking about how the last thing I ever said to her was in anger and how I would carry that every single day for the rest of my life.

I had no idea how right I was.

It started three days after the funeral.

My phone rang at 11PM. Her name on the screen. Her number. I stared at it until it stopped ringing and told myself her phone was still active. Someone found it. Pocket dial. A hundred explanations that dissolve the moment you think them through because her phone was buried with her at her own request. She said she never wanted to be anywhere without it.

She called the next night at the same time. And the night after. Every single night without exception at exactly 11PM.

I never answered. I just sat and watched her name light up my screen and felt something I still cannot name accurately. Not fear. Not comfort. Something that lived in the space between them.

Month two I called the phone company. They told me her number had been deactivated three days after the funeral. Impossible to make calls from. Impossible to receive calls from.

My phone rang that same night at 11PM.

Her name. Her number.

Month three I answered.

I don't know why that night. Maybe exhaustion. Maybe I just needed it to be something explainable. I picked up and said nothing.

Silence. But not empty silence. Occupied silence. The kind you feel in a room when someone is standing just behind you.

Then breathing. Slow and slightly uneven in exactly the way my mother breathed when she was trying not to cry.

I said Mom.

The breathing stopped.

The call disconnected.

I sat on my kitchen floor for two hours.

Month seven I started talking.

I would answer and just talk. My day. My sister. The garden she left behind that I was desperately trying to keep alive. I talked about the argument. I apologized the way I never got to in person. Everything I had been carrying for seven months I said out loud into that phone.

She never spoke. But she stayed on the line. Sometimes five minutes. Once for forty. Just that breathing, slow and present, while I emptied myself out.

It helped. I know how that sounds. It helped more than anything else did.

I started to feel like maybe this was healing. Like whatever this was it was giving me something I desperately needed.

I was stupid to feel safe.

Last night the phone rang at 11PM.

I answered immediately. I said hello the way I always do. Warm. Waiting.

The breathing started like always. Slow. Familiar. I closed my eyes and just listened to it the way you listen to rain when you are safe inside.

Then it changed.

Something shifted in the rhythm. Subtle at first. Slightly too fast. Slightly too deliberate. The way someone breathes when they are performing breathing rather than just breathing.I said Mom.

Silence.

I said it again.

And the voice that answered was my mother's voice. Exactly her voice. The pitch. The warmth. The slight hoarseness she always had in the evenings.

But the words were wrong.

She said: "She couldn't come tonight. She asked me to call so you wouldn't worry."

I couldn't speak.

It continued. Still her voice. Still that warmth. Like wearing someone's face."She wants you to know she forgives you. She wants you to feel better. She wants you to stop checking your phone at eleven and go live your life."

I found my voice. I asked who are you.

Silence for a long moment.

Then: "I've been listening to your conversations for seven months. You tell her everything. Every night. Every secret. Every fear."

The call disconnected

I don't know what my mother was. I don't know if it was really her calling all those months or something that found her number and learned her breathing and waited patiently in the dark while I talked and talked and gave it everything it needed to know about me.

I don't know what it wants.

What I know is this.

It called again tonight. Right on time. 11PM. Her name. Her number.

I didn't answer.

It called fourteen more times.

It is 3AM now and I am writing this because I need someone to know in case I stop posting.

My phone is ringing again.

It is not 11PM.

It is using a different number this time.

It is my number.

Something is calling me from my own phone while I hold it in my hands and watch the screen light up with my own name and I do not know how that is possible and I do not know what happens if I answer and I am so tired and it will not stop ringing and I just want my mother and I don't know what took her place but it has been listening to me for seven months and it knows everything

It knows everything about me.

— Shadow Kernel

reddit.com

u/Round_Analyst9758 — 16 days ago

▲ 585 r/RealHorrorExperience+2 crossposts

I wasn't supposed to be on campus that late.

It was around 2AM, end of semester, I'd fallen asleep in the library and woken up to empty chairs and flickering lights. The kind of silence that doesn't feel like peace. It feels like something just stopped moving right before you looked.

I packed my bag fast and headed for the side exit.

That's where I found Mr. Osei.

He was the overnight security guard. Big guy, quiet, the kind of man who nodded instead of spoke. I'd seen him maybe a hundred times over two years and we'd never had a real conversation. He'd check my ID, nod, move on. That was our entire relationship.

That night he was standing at the end of the corridor just staring at the door to the basement maintenance level. Not checking it. Not walking toward it. Just standing there, completely still, with his flashlight pointed at the floor.

I almost walked past him.

He spoke first.

"You feel that?"

I stopped. "Feel what?"

He didn't look at me. Still watching the basement door.

"Some buildings collect things," he said. "Not ghosts. Not like the movies. Just — weight. Bad moments that never finished happening. You ever walk into a room and feel like you interrupted something?"

I had. I didn't say so.

"This building does that," he continued. "Has since I started here eleven years ago. But lately it's different. Lately it feels like whatever is down there—" he paused, tilted his head slightly, like he was listening, "—is finished waiting."

I laughed. Nervous, short, embarrassed.

He finally looked at me. And I want to be careful about how I describe his expression because I've turned it over in my mind a thousand times since.

He didn't look frightened. He looked like a man who had already accepted something the rest of us hadn't been told yet.

"Go home," he said quietly. "Don't use the side exit after midnight anymore. Don't come back to this building after dark."

"Why?"

He looked back at the basement door.

"Because I've been watching that door for eleven years," he said. "And last Thursday it was open when I arrived. And it was open when I left. And I have never once unlocked it."

I left. Walked fast, didn't run, told myself he was just a strange old man who'd worked too many night shifts alone.

That was six weeks ago.

Mr. Osei hasn't been on campus since that night.

I asked the front desk. They said he left without notice. No forwarding contact. No explanation. Eleven years at the same job and he just didn't come back one morning.

I pass that building every day.

I have not used the side exit once.

And last week, walking past at dusk, I glanced at the small ground level window that looks into the basement.

The light was on down there.

Campus security told me that level has been decommissioned for years.

No one has the key.

— Shadow Kernel

reddit.com

u/Dont_lookbehind — 15 days ago