Speaker 1: I came back because someone had to. The house was
still in the family's name, but no one else wanted
to touch it. My mother had passed away a few
weeks prior, quietly and asleep. My father was still alive technically,
but no longer capable. The stroke had taken most of
his speech and all of his warmth. He now lived
in a small care home three hours south. We hadn't
spoken in years. I told the solicitor I would handle
the clearing out. Thought it would take a weekend, thought
it would feel mechanical. But standing in the entry way
now I could already tell the house hadn't changed, not really.
It was clean, even dusted in places. Someone had been
tending it, probably my mother until the very end. I
hadn't stayed over nighteen years, but instead of sleeping in
the guest room, I chose my old bedroom the nursery,
the one we shared. Jamie's crib was still there, up
against the far wall. The other one sat beside it, untouched,
the blankets tucked in tight, a small stuffed lamb perfectly
aligned at the center of the mattress. The mobile above
the crib still spun when I opened the door, catching
the air just enough to turn. I stood there watching
it rotate in a slow, silent circle. I found a
sealed box in the closet, buried behind old blankets and
a yellowed wedding dress. The tape was brittle with age.
One side had peeled slightly, written in black marker across
the lid with five words Jamie dash, do not discard.
I don't remember the moment I've found out I was
supposed to be a twin. I think it was always there,
just beneath the surface, a truth worn smooth over years
of soft retellings. His name was Jamie. He died the
day we were born. That's what the doctor said. A
chord around the neck, no heart beat, nothing they could do,
but my parents never accepted it. They came home with
two of everything, two bassinets, two name plaques for the
nursery wall, hand painted in soft cursive, one for me,
one for Jamie. They told every one it had been
a mistake, that both babies were fine, a miracle, and
no one questioned it too deeply, not at first. There
are pictures in the old photo albums that still unsettle me,
and some it's just me, red faced and swaddled in others,
there's clearly been some editing, a second infant clumsily duplicated
or drawn in smudged at the edges. My father wasn't
much for computers. Most of the early ones were done
by hand, collage work, tape, and scissors. One even had
a second blanket with nothing in it next to me,
a shape outlined but empty. Jamie's crib was always kept pristine,
even after I moved into a proper bed. It was dusted, retucked.
The mobile was wound every night until its mechanism grew stiff.
The stuffed lamb was moved from head to foot, depending
on the weak, as if someone had been tending him.
My parents said things in passingal and habitual Tom, say
good night to your brother. Don't wake him. He's finally asleep.
Your brother's already eaten. When I was young, i'd play along.
I'd glance at the empty crib and whisper just in case.
But I always knew something was wrong with it, something
about the way the air settled over that side of
the room. And when I stopped responding to their remarks
and stopped pretending, I remember the look on my mother's
face She didn't look confused. She looked hurt, disappointed, as
if I had insulted someone who was standing right behind me.
I was raised to share everything, my room, my clothes,
my name, Even though Jamie never spoke, never moved, never grew.
We'd matching shoes by the front door. Mine usually scoffed his,
always clean. We had two tooth brushes in the cup
by the sink. I wasn't allowed to touch the blue one.
I was punished after I tried. I didn't try again.
There were rules. I wasn't to cross the center seam
of the rug in our bedroom. Jamie's side was to
remain undisturbed. I wasn't to move his toys. If one
of them ended up in my bed or under my desk,
it had to be placed back exactly where it had been.
And when things went wrong, the blame was mine. Tom.
Don't be cruel to your brother, my mother would say,
if the stuffed bear turned up face down, he doesn't
like it when he moves things. At first I thought
she was joking. I thought it was a way to
soften the loss, a story that stopped when things started
happening on their own. I go to bed with the
closet shut, squeeze, my eyes closed, listened to the creak
of the house settle into its bones. But around three
a m. Almost every night, the closet door would slide open, slow,
dragging against the carpet, just enough to show the dark.
Sometimes the mobile above the crib would be spinning when
I woke up, not fast, but turning. The air always
fell colder on that side of the room, stale, even
in summer. More than once I woke up to find
my blanket half way across the floor, not kicked or
bunched up at the foot of the bed, pulled neatly,
as if some one had taken it while I slept.
Once I left Jamie' stuffed lamb on the dresser before bed,
I found it tucked under his blanket in the morning.
When I mentioned any of it, my father grew distant.
My mother got stern, told me not to mock things
I didn't understand, told me Jamie had every right to
be here too. I stopped talking about it, but I
started watching, And the more I watched, the more I
was sure I was not alone in that room. I
wanted to believe I was normal, that this was typical
of a family, but school ruined that illusion. Other kids
asked questions I didn't know how to answer. When they
came over, their faces shifted in that quiet way children
do when something doesn't sit right. Not fear, not yet,
just discomfort, a feeling that the air wasn't moving right
in the hallway, that the second crib didn't belong. One girl,
I think her name was Rachel, asked who the other
bed was for. I told her the truth, at least
my mother's version. It's for Jamie. Here's my brother, but
he's not here. He is, I said, he's just quiet.
She looked at the crib, then back at me, and
something in her eyes went cold. I never saw her
again after that. Her mum called to say she didn't
want Rachel coming over any more. No reason was given.
Another time I tried to have a sleep over Matthew
from down the road. We played video games until late,
then got into our sleeping bags on the floor. He
kept glancing at the crib, said it was weird that
it was still up in the middle of the night.
I woke up to him shaking me. He looked pale
and sweaty. I heard some one whispering. He said, right
in my ear. I told him it was probably a
bad dream, the usual reason my parents told me when
I had the same thing happened to me. But he
was already stuffing his things into his back pack. He
left before sunrise. His parents never let him visit again.
I tried to ask my mom if Jamie could be quieter,
or if you could put some of his things away.
She just smiled and said, don't be rude to your brother.
He doesn't have much. When I said very carefully that
Jamie wasn't real, her hand tightened on my arm. Don't
ever say that, she said, do you understand? Never that
kind of talk hurts him. She looked over at my shoulder,
and then towards the nursery, not at me. Her face
changed softened, as if she was waiting for a sound
or listening for one. I never said it again. At school,
I stopped inviting people. I ate lunch alone. I didn't
tell stories about home. At home, I spoke carefully, stepped lightly.
I never crossed the seam in the rug. I didn't
understand the rules, only that they mattered, and breaking them
made the house worse. I wasn't supposed to go in
the hallway closet. It was one of the few rules
that stock that door always stayed. The key hung from
a small brass hook above the frame, just out of
reach for most of my childhood. When I finally got
tall enough, I waited for the right day. It was summer.
My parents were downstairs arguing quietly in the kitchen. I
stood on a chair, slid the key from the hook,
and opened the door. It wasn't anything exciting, just coats
and cardboard boxes, musty wool, and an old vacuum. I
remember being disappointed until I reached into the sleeve of
raincoats stuffed at the back. My hand brushed plastic. Something
zipped and crinkly, a freezer bag inside a pale blue
notebook with a frayed corner and fading silver stars on
the cover. There was no name on the front. I
knew it was my mother's the moment I opened it.
Her handwriting was neat at first, curved letters, tidy margins.
It looked like any baby book, milestones and feeding charts,
first steps, favorite lullabies, but the dates didn't match my memories.
The entries continued well past my first birthday, past my second,
past the point Jamie had ever existed, if he'd existed
at all, and they weren't just about me. At first,
it was framed sweetly. Jamie slept curled up next to
his brother. He's calm when Tom sings. They're so bonded already.
Then the tone changed. He won't eat unless they're in
the room. He cries when Tom leaves. He only sleeps
when they're together. I called Tom, staring at the mirror again,
he said he I saw her hand. I told him
not to lie. One page was half torn out. The
bottom edge looked scorched, as if it had been pressed
too close to a heater. The entries after that were shorter, slanted,
let us leaning into each other, as if she'd written
them quickly. The night terrors are back. I hear him
at the door. I think Jamie blames me. That was
the last thing she ever wrote, No signature, no date.
I sat on the closet floor, reading it over and
over until the hallway went dark. The argument downstairs had stopped.
I hadn't realized how long I'd been sitting there. I
put the journal back in the bag, tucked it into
the coat sleeve again, and shut the door. Hung the
key back on the hook. I didn't tell anyone what
I had found, But from that night on I started
facing away from Jamie's crib when I slept, just in
case Jamie wanted to talk. I was eleven the night
I climbed into Jamie's crib. It wasn't a dare. No
one told me to do it. It was just me
in the dark, stewing in the quiet rules. I wasn't
allowed to question. Two tooth brushes, two chairs at the
little table. One name whispered with mine every bedtime, Good
night Jamie. That night, I sat on my bed, staring
across the room at his crib. The bars had been
repainted twice, were still splintered slightly at the base. The
mattress was thin and yellowing. Under the fitted sheet, A
stuffed elephant sat in the corner, perfectly upright. I told
myself it was just furniture. Then I got up and
stepped over. The mobile turned slowly when I brushed past it.
The little animals cast long, thin shadows across the ceiling.
I climbed in lay flat, crossed my arms like I
thought a dead kid might. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then I blinked. The light was gone. The air was tight,
something hard pressed into my spine. I was in the closet,
cramped between winter coats and a broken vacuum hose, curled
at the bottom, like had been stuffed there. The door
was latched from the outside. I sat up fast and
slammed my shoulder against it once twice my throat burned.
It opened, and the third hit. The mother came in,
not surprised, not angry, just tired. Her eyes moved from
mine to my lap, then back again. I looked down.
A baby one sea lay folded across my knees, not
one of mine, pale yellow, with a little embroidered bear
over the heart. It smelled faintly of fabric, softna and
something else, something older, damp wood, closed rooms. I hadn't
taken anything into the crib, I knew that, but there
it was. My mother said nothing for a long time.
Then finally she spoke, her voice quiet and even you
disrespected his face. She turned and walked away. I didn't answer,
I didn't follow. I sat there for a long time,
staring at the folds in the wanseia and the scratch
marks carved into the inside of the closet door, some shallow,
some deep, some trailing all the way down. I found
the tape while clearing out the attic, which behind an
old box of moth eaten photo albums and Christmas ornaments
that hadn't been touched in years. It was tucked inside
a shoe box with a cassette player, half covered in
lint and crumbling insulation. The tape was labeled in my
mother's handwriting, just one word bedtime. I took it downstairs,
sat cross legged on the nursery carpet, and set the
player between the cribs. The machine groaned a little when
I pressed play. Then her voice came through, softer than
I remembered, calmer. She was reading the velveteen Rabbit. That
part I recognized. Her tone was warm, almost musical, like
she was reading to a child. Then her second voice joined,
higher pitched, not a baby's voice, but definitely a child.
I know how I used to sound. The child interrupted
the story, whispered phrases that didn't match the text. Is
it real? If it hurts, I want to know what
it tastes like. Tell the rabbit to leave. Her reading
never paused, She just kept going steady and unbroken, as
if she didn't hear him. Near the end of the tape,
she stopped reading. The room and the recording fell quiet,
except for the faint creak of bedsprings and the rustle
of fabric. Then she whispered, say good night to your brother.
There was a pause, Then the child's voice replied, good
night Tom. The tape clicked to a stop. I didn't
breathe for a few seconds. I rewound it, handshaking, and
listened again. Every syllable landed colder than the last. The
voice wasn't scared, it wasn't sleepy. It sounded amused. I
left the tape in the player and backed out of
the room, one step at a time, until I was
out in the hall. The mobile above Jamie's crib was
spinning again. I hadn't touched it. I left the house
at eighteen, no dramatic goodbye, no big scene, just a
quiet drive to university with a back seat full of
boxes and a silence between me and my father that
neither of us had the vocabulary to fill. I chose
to school six hours away. No one questioned the distance,
no one offered to help me unpack. At first night
in the dawn. I slept straight through, no blankets pulled off,
no creaking doors, no footsteps around my bed. I remember
waking up in the morning, light leaking through the blinds,
and realizing how long it had been since I felt rested.
No Jamie, no closet dreams, no nursery whispers, just quiet.
I started telling myself that story a different way than
my childhood had been shaped by grief, not ghosts, that
what I remembered was trauma echoing in strange places. Ritual
turned into obsession, in obsession into fear, and it almost
worked until the phone call started, not often, once every
few months, always from my mother. He's quieter since you left,
she'd say, as if we were talking about a real boy.
He only plays in your room now. Then a few
years later she called me distressed. He won't stop crying.
It's every day. Please play with him. I didn't answer
when she called. After that, whatever lived in that house,
whether it was grief or something else, I'd left it behind,
or maybe he just stayed with her. I didn't go
back after I left, not for holidays, not for birthdays,
not even when Dad called asking if i'd stop by
when I was in town. Though I never was. I
almost went back when my father had a stroke and
left him in need of care, which my mother took
on herself. But each time I was ready to go,
I didn't. I just stopped to the front door, held
the handle, then quietly unpacked, telling myself it was a
bad time. I told myself I needed the distance, that
it was healthier not to look back for a while.
It was true. I slept better, I worked hard, I
let the past become something vague and far away. Then
the call came. It happened fast, a blood clot. They
said she was gone before they reached the hospital. Not
much was said on the phone, just that someone needed
to handle the house. My father was being moved into
assisted living permanent this time. I hadn't seen it in years,
not since I left for university. The drive back felt
longer than I remembered. When I unlocked the door, the
air inside was stale, but still held that faint antiseptic scent.
I couldn't place. Everything was as I left it, furniture
frozen in place, family photos untouched, no signs of a
life winding down, only a life paused. I made my
way to the nursery. It was clean. The crib stood
exactly where it always had, the same folded blanket, the
same mobile above, faintly trembling when I opened the door.
No dust, no neglect, not a thread out of place.
She'd been maintaining it, even after all this time. A
small envelope waited on the desk, yellowed slightly at the edges,
but sealed neatly, my name on the front, written in
her hand. Beneath it, five words in faded ink, for
when you come home. I opened the envelope with a
strange sense of calm. Maybe I already knew what was inside.
Maybe I didn't want to admit it until I held
the paper in my hands. It was a torn page
from the old baby journal, the same handwriting I remembered
from years ago, but it had changed. The neat script
had grown unsteady, heavier toward the end, like the pen
had been pressed too hard into the paper. I tried
to separate you. I tried to tell myself it was
never real. But I heard you both, even when you
weren't speaking. He cries when you leave, He never cries
for me. He only settles when you're near. He needs
a brother, and I can't give him another one, only you.
A second page was tucked behind it, a glossy photograph,
curled slightly at the corners. I didn't recognize it at first.
A hospital room, a bassinet, two newborns, one red faced
and howling, the other was lying still, two still, eyes closed,
lips parted just enough to show the faintest shadow of gums.
At the bottom was a timestamp, five hours after Jamie's
official time of death. I didn't remember this photo. I shouldn't.
I was in it, but I wasn't alone. As soon
as I put the letter down, a sound burst from
the far room, crying, loud and shrill. I didn't jump
to any theories. I knew exactly who it was Jamie.
I crept over, easing towards the bedroom I'd avoided for
well over a decade, and as I approached, the sound
softened hicks between the loud sobs, as if listening to
my approaching footsteps. As soon as my hand braced the
door off, the sobbing all but vanished. And when I
opened the door and looked inside, I was greeted by
pure silence. Some of the toys had moved from when
I first looked in the room. The blanket that was
previously neatly placed was thrown aside, like from a child
throwing a tantrum. But my mother was right. When I
was around, he stopped crying. I made the bed in
the nursery before it got dark. I sat in the
chair by the window, wrapped in one of the old
blankets from the closet, the kind that still smelt faintly
of powder and time. Around midnight, the mobile above the
second crib began to spin. No music, just a slow
creaking turn. The temperature in the room dropped, not a breeze,
just as still sinking cold, the kind that settles behind
your eyes. I walked to the crib. It was empty,
but the sheets were warm. The closet door, the same
one I once woke up inside all those years ago,
eased open with a soft groan, no rush, just the
quiet insistence of a door used to being open from
the inside. A small hand, pale and steady, reached out
around the frame. I didn't flinch, didn't scream. I just
looked down at the hand and said, O kay. I
sat down carefully and just held his little hand for
a while. His skin was ice cold. That was all
he needed. The next morning, the nursery was still no footprints,
no open doors, just a maid bed and dust dancing
in the light. The house was silent. I think she
was right. He does just need her brother