I don’t know if my brother came back from Alaska
I wasn’t expecting him.
Actually, I wasn’t even home when he first showed up.
My girlfriend had dragged me to one of those awful live-action Disney remakes that Saturday, and we’d planned to get dinner afterward. About halfway through the movie, my phone buzzed with a notification from my video doorbell.
I mumbled something about grabbing popcorn and slipped into the hallway. Anything was better than another two hours of corporate film slop.
I opened the camera feed.
For a second, I honestly thought I was looking at an old recording.
My twin brother, Lance, stood outside my front door.
Which made no sense. He was supposed to be in Alaska.
He was dressed entirely in white—a freshly pressed linen shirt and matching pants with no logo, no design, not even a wrinkle. He was barefoot.
Then I noticed what he was doing.
He was pounding on my front door with both fists so fast they blurred together. Every blow shook his shoulders. Even through the grainy camera feed, I could see the panic in his face. His eyes darted frantically up and down the hallway, like he was expecting someone to come around the corner at any second.
Like he was running from something.
I just stared.
Then his eyes landed on the doorbell camera.
Everything changed.
His fists stopped mid-swing. The panic vanished from his face so abruptly it didn’t fade—it simply ceased to exist. His breathing steadied. His shoulders relaxed. A thin, familiar smile spread across his face as he stepped closer to the camera and gave a small wave.
“Hey, Jason,” he said warmly. “Mind letting me in? I have so much to tell you.”
I stared at the screen for another second before pressing the microphone button.
“Lance? I’m not home. What are you doing here?”
He smiled directly into the lens.
“I have a lot to tell you,” he said. “A lot. Come home. Quick.”
I muttered something about a family emergency, apologized to my girlfriend, and left before the movie ended. The entire drive home I couldn’t stop replaying the footage in my head—the frantic pounding, the look of absolute terror, and the way it all disappeared the instant he realized he was being watched.
Twenty minutes later I pulled into my driveway.
Lance hadn’t moved.
He was still standing at my front door exactly where I’d left him, hands folded neatly in front of him. The moment he saw my car, that same thin smile spread across his face.
“Jason!” he called, waving as though we’d only been apart for a few days.
I hadn’t seen him in two years.
He looked different. People always said we were mirror images of eachother, but I never thought that. And now it was never more apparent to me. He was paler, a little hunched over. His medium brown hair was combed so straight back it looked like it was slicked with oil.
But the biggest thing I noticed was how wide his eyes were. His pupils were fully dilated, and his green irises looked…I’m not sure. Different.
“Lance?” I said.
I crossed the yard and wrapped him in a hug.
For a moment, he didn’t hug me back.
Then his arms closed around me.
He felt rigid, almost wooden.
“What are you wearing?” I asked with a laugh.
“Let’s go inside,” he said. “We have a lot to talk about.”
We spent the next couple of hours at my kitchen table catching up. At first, everything felt surprisingly normal. We laughed about old stories, talked about our parents, complained about work, and cracked open a couple of beers. For a little while, it almost felt like we’d never been apart.
I almost forgot he wasn’t supposed to be here.
We laughed, talked, drank beers, but every time I brought up Alaska or the trip—whatever excavation he’d been part of—his expression changed.
Lance used to love talking about that stuff. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t shut up about his work, the overachiever who’d turn any conversation into a breakdown of whatever project he was obsessed with. That’s how I always remembered him.
Not anymore.
Now he’d just glance toward the window, take a slow sip of his beer, and steer the conversation somewhere else entirely. After the third time, I stopped pushing it.
He had never been gone so long for a trip, so I just assumed he was adjusting. It was strange, sure, but I was just happy to have my brother back.
“Do you mind if I stay here for a while?” he asked during a lull in the conversation.
There was something desperate in his eyes.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll take the couch.”
He smiled.
It looked genuine.
Still, something underneath that smile didn’t sit right with me.
I kept wondering what had driven him all the way home. Had something happened on the expedition? Had he gotten fired? Was he hiding from someone?
A darker thought crossed my mind.
Drugs.
I dismissed it almost immediately. Lance had never touched the stuff. Then again, I’d never expected to find him barefoot on my front porch, pounding on my door like his life depended on it. I made a mental note to look into it later.
The conversation eventually died out. We sat in silence for a minute, the only sounds coming from the refrigerator and the occasional clink of a beer bottle against the table.
Without warning, Lance pushed back his chair and stood. The sudden movement made me jump. He didn’t say a word as he walked down the hallway, disappeared into my bedroom, and shut the door behind him.
A second later, I heard the lock click.
I frowned. We’d never locked doors from each other growing up. Hell, we barely knocked.
Then it hit me.
He hadn’t brought anything with him.
No backpack. No suitcase. No duffel bag. Not even a wallet.
If he’d really come straight from Alaska, where the hell was the rest of his life?
By the time I brushed my teeth and got settled onto the couch, it was pushing midnight. I could hear Lance moving around in my bedroom for a while—the floor creaked once or twice, a drawer opened, then closed. Eventually everything went quiet.
I must’ve fallen asleep almost immediately.
I woke to a scream.
It was so raw and panicked that I was on my feet before I was fully awake.
“Lance!”
I sprinted down the hallway and grabbed the bedroom doorknob.
Locked.
He kept screaming.
I threw my shoulder into the door. Once. Twice. On the third hit, the cheap plywood gave way with a crack.
He was sitting upright in bed, drenched in sweat. His breathing came in sharp, uneven gasps. His eyes were fixed on the corner of the room, impossibly wide, as though someone was standing there.
His lips were moving.
“Don’t make me do it…”
His voice was barely audible.
“No, no… please…”
I followed his stare.
The corner was empty.
“Lance?”
He flinched at the sound of my voice.
Slowly, he turned toward me. For a second, the terror stayed on his face.
Then it completely disappeared.
He blinked once, smiled apologetically, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“Sorry,” he said with a short, embarrassed laugh. “Guess I’m still adjusting to the time change.”
I looked back toward the corner. It was empty.
“Lance are you good man? Seriously?”
He smiled again.
“Completely.”
I wasn’t convinced but what was going to do? Drag him to an emergency room at 12am because he had a nightmare?
Still, before I went back to the couch, I made a mental note to find him a doctor in the morning as I drifted back into an uneasy sleep.
I wish I could tell you that was the last strange thing Lance did.
It wasn’t.
A couple of mornings later, we were eating breakfast before work when he looked up from his plate.
“Do you know why we don’t remember being born, Jason?”
I was halfway through shoveling oatmeal into my mouth. I glanced at the clock and gave him a distracted shrug.
“No idea.”
He nodded to himself, as though I’d given the only answer I could have.
“We remember.”
He poked absentmindedly at the scrambled eggs on his plate. I’d started noticing that was almost all he ever ate. Eggs in the morning. Eggs for dinner. Sometimes nothing else.
“We just aren’t allowed to.”
I frowned.
“What?”
He looked at me with a strange kind of pity.
“We were one, once. One soul.” He tapped a finger lightly against his temple. “It’s all still in there.”
“What are you talking about?”
His gaze drifted past me, settling on the kitchen window.
“They taught us the wrong things.” His voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “Before I was opened. I can show you.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
He didn’t answer.
A few seconds later he blinked, looked back at me, and smiled.
“So…” he said, as though he was in the middle of a different conversation. “You seeing Emily tonight?”
He smiled.
I finished my coffee, wished him a good day, and left without looking back.
Something about the way his eyes tracked me as I left made me walk a little faster to my car.
Over the next few days it got to the point I dreaded coming home. I know that sounds crazy, he’s my brother, but I found myself making excuses to stay at my girlfriend’s as much as possible.
On one of those nights he called me from the old landline in my apartment. I didn’t even realize it still worked.
“You coming home?” He asked immediately after I said hello.
“Nah, man. I think I’m gonna crash at Emily’s tonight. But, uh, more free space for you, huh?”
It was silent on the other end for a while.
“Well…” his voice drifted in vague disappointment. “It’s almost time.”
“Time for what?”
“I have to tell you a secret.”
That confused me, almost more than the other weird stuff. Secrets weren’t really a concept for us. I mean, it’s hard to describe to someone who’s never had a twin, but you basically share a brain.
“Lance, are you okay?”
He hung up.
I stared at the receiver for a while before setting it down.
My girlfriend was already talking about the movie, but I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever “almost time” meant, it had something to do with me.
The next day after work, I stood outside my front door for a while before going in. I don’t know why. I just needed a second.
Then I opened it.
Lance was sitting at the kitchen table with the landline in his hand. The cord was wrapped tightly around his wrist like a bandage, leaving a purple ring. It looked like he’d been there for hours.
His eyes lifted to mine.
“Jason!” he said. “I have so much to tell you.”
As I stepped inside, I noticed he was sweating heavily. The apartment was cold, but thick drops ran down his face and soaked into the collar of his white shirt. It also hit me then—he had put back on the same clothes he’d arrived in.
I sat down across from him slowly.
“…What’s going on?”
“We have to go,” he said immediately. “Pack your things.”
“Go where?”
“Alaska.” His eyes widened slightly, which seemed impossible given how dilated they already were. “I have so much I need to tell you. Secrets.”
That’s when I decided I’d had enough. No more games. Lance needed help.
I’m not sure I regret that decision or not in retrospect, but I couldn’t keep acting like my brother wasn’t delirious.
Whatever was going on, it wasn’t something I could ignore anymore.
“No,” I said, trying to shove as much authority as I could into my tone, “we’re seeing a doctor.”
I yanked out my phone and I began dialing my girlfriend. I wasn’t taking no for an answer.
He kept staring at me, but his smile fell. Eventually he stood up just as the line went through.
“Goodbye, Jason!” he said.
Then, without warning, he turned and walked out of the kitchen, opened the door, and disappeared down the stairwell.
I ran after him while still talking to Emily on the phone, but by the time I hit the hallway he was gone.
I took the stairs two at a time, but the parking lot was empty. No movement, no sign of him—just asphalt and headlights from passing cars.
That was the last time I saw my brother in person.
I tried calling the cops, but there isn’t much they can do when a grown adult leaves on their own. Still, I filed a missing person report and told them everything: drugs, psychosis, the story about Alaska, the expedition he was supposedly part of two years ago, and how he’d shown up at my apartment completely out of nowhere.
They listened, but I could tell none of it landed the way I needed it to. They said they’d contact the expedition team and follow up.
Then I waited.
A month later, I got a knock on my door.
When I opened it, a detective was standing there. I recognized him from the missing person report. He came inside and we sat at my kitchen table. He kept fidgeting with his hands before speaking, like the words didn’t sit right in his mouth.
“There’s no easy way to say this,” he said. “So I’m just going to say this.”
He breathed in.
“Your brother’s plane crashed four months ago in the Alaskan wilderness. Before you filed your report. Some supply run to Anchorage. Remote area. We’re only just now getting confirmation.”
I stared at him. Four months ago didn’t match anything. I knew he had to be mistaken.
“That’s not possible,” I said. “He was here. He stayed with me.”
The detective’s expression tightened.
“That’s why I’m here,” he said quietly. “There were no survivors.”
My heart sank.
“They recovered your brother’s body from the wreck.”
In the weeks that followed, they confirmed it with dental records.
They say you have to see something to believe it, but even resting my eyes on his unmistakable cold body in the morgue didn’t change anything for me.
There was a small funeral. I don’t remember most of it, or maybe I don’t trust my memory anymore. Because I know what I saw. I know who was in my apartment. And I know he looked me in the eye.
Every time I go to bed I hear his voice, whispering secrets to me with wild, green eyes. I listen but can’t understand.
I need answers, and if any of you have anything, please, I’m desperate.
I think I’m going to Alaska. I need to know who was in my apartment.
Because whatever came home wasn’t Lance.