This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/phixl1 on 2026-05-13 21:54:07+00:00.

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Part 1 | Part 2

I didn’t clean it up right away.

I know that’s gross and that most people would have grabbed some paper towels and gotten rid of it immediately. But by that point I was done pretending that this was some small thing I could just wipe away and feel better about.

So I just stood there, staring at the dirt and at the bark as if waiting long enough would make them confess their misdeed, and finally explain their presence in my apartment.

But they didn't.

It was ironic. I had spent the whole previous day looking for tracks in the hallway, evidence of old shadows passing through and now there they were, just on the wrong side of the door.

So I took some pictures, pretending to be a detective ready to embark on a new case in which I was the victim, and in some way the perpetrator.

I got a freezer bag from the kitchen and scooped some of it up because that's what a true investigator would do. I wanted to keep some proof, something tangible, something solid.

Something I could later point the finger at and blame.

Or maybe just something to show my parents and finally tell them "I told you so".

Yeah. I did tell you so. Many years ago.

I barely slept again. Every time I started to drift off, I thought about the stain inside the door and felt the same rush in my chest all over again.

Without noticing at first, my eyes drifted again towards the flashlight. It was still mocking me from the table, silent observer of everything that had happened, from times that I could barely remember.

At some point I grabbed it with disdain and put it in a drawer. I was sick of looking at it.

A couple of minutes later I took it back out because suddenly I hated the idea of not knowing where it was.

By morning I had convinced myself that I was ready to confront my parents again.

Now that I had undeniable proof, they would be forced to tell me the truth, something they couldn't just smooth over.

I called my mother, before she could. Taking the initiative felt good.

She answered on the third ring.

“I was about to call you,” she said.

“I found bark inside my apartment last night.”I explained

I didn’t bother easing into it and I could tell she was taken aback by the revelation.

She was quiet for just a second too long.

“What do you mean, bark?” she said.

I looked up at the ceiling. I was scared my face would've given me away through the phone.

“I mean bark,” I said. “Like tree bark. I also found dirt, leaves. All inside the front door. Inside my apartment.”

“Maybe you tracked it in.”

She thought I was stupid.

“The hallway is carpeted. I would've left smudges and remains all over it. But guess what? Clean.”

She paused again. I couldn't tell if she believed me. That wasn't a new sensation.

“You should come home for a few days.”

That nearly made me laugh. Parents always know exactly which words will make you feel eight years old again.

“No.”

“You haven’t been sleeping.”

“I wonder why.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what? Ask why you sound less surprised than I am every time this gets worse?”

“I am surprised,” she said.

That was a lie, and we both knew it.

I sat down on one of the moving boxes. My fingers pressing against my forehead.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“Mom.”

I heard a cupboard close on her end. Then her voice came back, quieter.

“Honey, when you were little, you used to get fixated on things. If we reacted too strongly, it made it worse.”

I stared at the wall. There it was again, the old trick. Her trying to sidetrack, to move away from the issue at hand and turn towards something else. Something she knew she had control over.

Talking about my behavioral issues had always been her trump card.

It would always make me feel so small.

“So I’m imagining it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you saying?” I shouted.

“That you just moved out. You’re stressed. You found old things. You’ve been thinking about your brother.”

That word landed wrong. Not because she wouldn't even call him by name, I had accepted that at this point. But because she threaded around it too carefully for my taste, as if she didn't want to disturb the delicate harmony around it.

As if she had said it just a bit louder, the whole house of cards would've come crumbling down, and she was at the top of it.

“I’m always thinking about him,” I said. I wasn't different from her.

“No,” she said. “Not like this.”

That bothered me more than it should have. Because she was right.

Usually the version of Leo I carried wasn't really him. It wasn't his face, or his laugh. It wasn't the way he used to say things wrong just to annoy me. No. It was his essence: my brother. Him. Dead.

Like a book completely carved out, except for one page: the ending.

But there was something else, that I had trouble admitting to myself. Lately I'd been thinking more, and the more I thought, the more I started to fill in details.

Details that I thought were lost forever, and I didn't like what that was doing to me.

“Mom, please. I need you to tell me what happened that night,” I said.

“It was an accident.”

She answered too fast.

“That’s not what I asked.”

She went quiet. For a second I thought she had hung up.

But then, muffled, I heard my father in the background asking who it was.

My mother must have covered the phone, but not well enough, because I heard her say, “He’s asking again.”

What?

What did she mean by "He's asking again"? Had I already asked her? Was this not something new, but rather old ground that I had already walked, and then... what? Did I forget about it.

No, it isn't possible. I would've remembered it for sure.

The way I was feeling right now, the rage and the fear at the same time, the curiosity, weren't emotions that I could've easily forgotten.

When she came back on the line, her voice had changed. She was flat, closed off, as if protecting something small and fragile, something that could be broken just by staring at it the wrong way.

“You were eight,” she added. “You and Leo went out to the tree house when you weren’t supposed to. He fell. Your father found him in the yard.”

“That’s what you told the police.”

“It’s the truth.”

“No,” I said. “It’s the version you tell.”

She didn’t answer.

I should probably feel worse about what I asked next, but I don’t.

“Did you ever believe me?”

That got her, I know it did. Not enough for honesty, but it was enough for the moment.

“When you were little,” she said slowly, “you believed a lot of things.”

My stomach dropped.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you were traumatized.”

“You drugged me.”

“We medicated you.”

“You medicated me because I kept saying something in the yard took him.”

“We got you help because you stopped sleeping, you hurt yourself, you—”

She stopped.

“I what?”

Nothing.

“Mom, what?”

“You don’t remember that time clearly,” she said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

I laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.

“No,” I said. “That’s not all you’re saying.”

But she wouldn’t go any further. She had already said everything, at least what she was allowed to. She hung up and I sat there with the phone still against my ear for far too long after that.

I had convinced myself that what I had lived the previous night was enough for them to spill the beans, it wasn't the case. But that only meant that I had to find more proof.

So I started going through the boxes, there were still so many that I hadn't yet opened. Something had to be there, something that they maybe forgot to throw away and could help me unravel the situation.

It was my last resort.

Most of what they had sent with me was boring: clothes, old school stuff, random cables. Junk. But then something caught my attention.

In the closet there was a box full of folders and binders I hadn’t opened. Paperwork from your childhood never makes you feel better, but maybe this time it was different.

I started browsing through the pages and stopped every few seconds if I encountered something that seemed encouraging, but nothing.

Old school reports, insurance forms, prescription records, appointment summaries and drawings I barely remembered making.

I tore through all of it too fast.

No new evidence, except I had apparently been a very expensive child.

I took other pages, scanned them thoroughly this time: notes from teachers, recommendations for routines, a couple of evaluations written in language so careful it made me angry on sight and the drawing of something that it took me way too long to realize was a dog.

We never even had a dog.

Then I found the therapy notes.

Those weren't full session transcripts. Just summaries with dates and observations. Typed pages clipped together in uneven stacks. Some of those were copies, others had been folded and unfolded enough times they had gotten soft at the edges.

I sat down on the floor and started reading.

Most of it was the kind of language people use when they want to make a child sound manageable on paper.

Persistent sleep disruption.

Episodes of emotional dysregulation.

Violent outbursts difficult for parents to interrupt.

Recurring fixation on external nighttime figure.

Alternates between agitation and emotional flattening.

I don’t even know what I had expected. Maybe proof ...

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