nosleep

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ritaculous on 2024-10-13 23:51:44+00:00.

This weekend is a long weekend in the United states (Columbus Day, Indigenous People's Day, whichever), and so I, 20 F, invited some of my friends to my childhood home.

I grew up in a tiny town in the rural mountains Of Colorado. When I graduated highschool and went off to college, my parents moved but kept the place for family get-togethers and vacations. It was the perfect place to invite my friends.

I was super excited - not to sound lame, but this was literally the first time I'd ever had friends at the house. Growing up, I'd really struggled with being social. I had difficulty connecting, had done poorly in school, and had really just struggled. Going off to college had been such a fresh start for me, and the friends I'd made are very important to me.

So it was extra critical that this weekend be the best weekend ever, cementing my place as the 'fun' friend of the group.

We arrived early Saturday morning, a group of six all squeezed into Alexa's minivan. We all piled out, hauled our luggage up the porch, into the house, and I started unloading the groceries for the weekend.

"Wow, Kristy, this place is nice." Chelsea, our unofficial leader, took in the view from the loving room, before glancing back at us. "Hey, why didn't Ashley come?"

Maggie looked up from where she was helping me, "Oh, we decided she'd stay home this time. Sometimes rural areas can be kind of weird about identical twins, so one of us wouldn't go."

I winced when she said that. I hadn't even thought of that, and it was definitely going to be a mark against me, as far as being the hostess with the mostest went.

Alexa finished hauling in the last of her bags and dropped it, panting, right at the entryway. "This altitude is killing me. I swear I'm in such bad shape. Oh! Cute picture, Kristy."

I put down the box of pancake mix to help her move her stuff. Right to the entryway was a wall of pictures - all the school photos, family portraits, etc. Alexa was pointing to one of me, dressed in a Barbie from Rapunzel's Tale dress, holding a jack-o'-lantern.

"I thought you said you'd always had short hair," Maggie commented, having followed me over.

I shrugged. "I don't even remember that Halloween, to be honest."

I didn't remember the picture next to it either, of me standing in front of a piano in a sun-yellow dress, or the one of me at the park, smiling with my arm clearly in a cast. I rubbed my arm absentmindedly.

"Kristy, where's the bathroom?" One of my friends, Rosemara, called, and I turned away.

*

That night, I was mopping the kitchen. I had asked that my friends not bring alcohol - I hadn't exactly asked if I could borrow the cabin for the weekend, and I didn't want underage drinking to be added to my list of petty crimes. But when Alexa had brought out the beer she'd brought, how could I say no? Especially when everyone else had seemed so into it.

What I had seen though, had kind of talked me out ever drinking, and mopping up vomit while everyone else was sleeping stunk.

I took a break to go make sure I'd locked the front door, and why I was there, I stopped and stared at the picture wall. It was more than just not remembering a few of the pictures, I didn't remember any of the ones of me. Pictures of me at family reunions I hadn't attended, me with girls I hadn't been friends with, in clothes I didn't recognize -

I touched my arm again, staring at them. I hadn't said anything earlier, but I'd never broken a bone before. / Ever/.

I finally took that one, of me in a cast, off the wall, but when I did, I dropped it. Wincing and hoping I hadn't woken my friends with the noise, I squatted and picked it up. The back had popped off from the fall, and I noticed that there was another picture wedges into the back of the frame.

This was one I knew: me and my brother smiling and sitting on the back of a hayride.

I stared at it, and then started taking down all of the pictures.

Sure enough, behind each picture was one I knew, one I remembered being taken.

I squatted back on my heels, staring at all the pictures that surrounded me. What was going on? My memory has never been good - my brain had felt foggy my whole childhood - but to forget all this? And why had my family hidden all of the pictures that I knew? I could say, with certainty, that not only did I not remember these events, but I had never seen these photots before.

If there was really something weird going on, there had to be more to it than this. I'd started to stand when I saw it: a dim red light, blinking out from behind the fireplace mantle. I must have missed it in the daylight, but now, in the comparatively dim overhead light, it was much more obvious.

I already knew what it was before I started pulling down the decorations to get at it: a surveillance camera. And one that was bolted /into/ the mantle, that looked pretty expensive and pretty permanent. I mean, maybe my parents got it when we moved away, for security reasons, but it was pointed at the living room, not the door.

I smiled thinly, trying to think patient thoughts. I had asked that my friends not bring alcohol - I hadn't exactly asked if I could borrow the cabin for the weekend, and I didn't want underage drinking to be added to my list of petty crimes. But when Alexa had brought out the beer she'd brought, how could I say no? Especially when everyone else had seemed so into it. I knew it was recording me, and that probably my family knew that I was here without permission, and maybe they were even watching me now.

I felt like giving the camera the middle finger, but decided that I should spend that time looking for other weird stuff instead. Who knew if and when my family would show up?

The living room didn't reveal anything else, and neither did the kitchen. I tackled my room next, and found stuff immediately. It's hard to explain, vecause if I hadn't been looking for weirdness, I wouldn't have found anything, but now that I was alert, I couldn't miss it. My stuff wasn't right.

I always, always, folded my shirts so the logos showed, like they do at stores, but the shirts in my dresser weren't folded like that. My jewelry was moved, I had different stuffed animals on the bed, not the old ones I'd left when I'd gone off to college. The quilt on the bed was the same colors, but a different pattern. It was /almost/ my room, but not quite.

My brother's room and the guest room were where I'd put the girls, so I searched my parents room next. I wasn't finding anything, and the hours were ticking away. Suddenly, around 3 a.m., I heard tires crunching the gravel in the driveway, and I froze. There was no way anyone else just drove up here, our driveway was an easy mile long.

I glanced frantically around the room, and spotted it: the tell-tale red beep of a camera. It wasn't pointed at the door or the window, but at the closet.

This time, when I opened the closet, knees shaking, I realized that it was much shallower than the other one. Fumbling along the back wall, I felt a seam, and when I dug my fingers in and pulled, the whole back wall swung out smoothly.

Past it was dark, but I pulled out my phone, turned on the flashlight, and hurried down the hallway it had revealed.

If that was my family in the driveway, I needed to find out what was going on before they got to me.

Ahead of me, in the harsh light of my phone, was a hospital bed. It sat in a small room - this had probably once been a walk-in closet, before. It was surrounded by plastic bins and drawers, some with obvious medical equipment, and others full of clothes, toys, books, and other paraphernalia.

I stopped to read the labels: Kristen, Fall 2008. I recognized the rainbow jacket inside. The one next to it was labeled Krystal, Winter 2008-2009.

The bed was outfitted with restraints, and a respirator mask lay abandoned on the pillow. Filled with trepidation, I picked it up and tried it on.

Ever since I can remember, I've had this scar on the back of my neck. My parents told me it was just a raised birthmark I could feel, but now, putting the mask on, I could feel where the snaps would have lined up with it. It wasn't a scar, it was a callus. From wearing a respirator mask.

I turned and looked back at the room, at the stuff divided clearly between two girls, and I think I know why I haven't remembered most of my childhood.

I don't know what to do. I could call the police, but as Maggie said, we're rural.

Besides, I don't have service. I barely have enough connection to post.

If anyone has advice, please help. Because my family is here. And the bed I'm back up against is just my size.