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