It was supposed to be a short trip—just me and my cousin Ryan. He’d gotten his pilot license last year and bought this old bush plane from a guy in Anchorage who “owed him a favor.” He always said crap like that—vague, slippery stuff that never added up.

I flew up to meet him with just a small pack and no idea what we were actually doing. “We’ll land on a riverbed, fish, chill, and fly back Monday,” he said, tossing me a Red Bull like we were still 17. That was two weeks ago.

Now, I’m sitting on cold gravel, my phone’s dead, and I’ve counted three different packs with women’s clothes inside—none of them mine. When I asked Ryan whose gear it was, he said: “Ah, leftover stuff from last summer.”

But something about that didn’t sit right. For one, Ryan didn’t even come out here last summer. I remembered because he’d been back home, broke, staying on his mom’s couch and complaining about how expensive plane fuel was. And two, the clothes didn’t look “leftover.” They weren’t weathered or moldy. They looked recent—like someone had folded them carefully and put them there not too long ago.

That night, I tried not to think about it. The wilderness already had a way of making me paranoid—every snapping branch felt like a bear, every gust of wind like someone creeping behind me. But then, while digging through one of the packs for a flashlight, I found a photograph.

It was a Polaroid. And it stopped me cold.

It was me. Sitting inside a tent I’d never seen before, smiling awkwardly like someone had just told me to “say cheese.” Same jacket I was wearing right now. Same haircut I’d gotten two weeks earlier. But the tent in the picture? I’d never been in it. Not once.

My stomach dropped. My first thought was that Ryan had taken it, maybe messing with me. He always had a twisted sense of humor. But the more I stared at it, the more something inside me whispered that this wasn’t a joke.

The next morning, I confronted him. I tried to keep it casual, holding up the Polaroid like it was no big deal. “Hey, when’d you take this?” I asked.

He looked at it for half a second, then shrugged. “Probably last time I was out here.”

“But I wasn’t out here,” I said. My voice cracked a little, because suddenly I wasn’t so sure of anything.

Ryan shoved a fishhook into his hat brim and grinned. “Guess you were, cuz. Maybe you just forgot.”

Forgot? How the hell do you forget an entire camping trip?

I pushed him, pressing harder, but he just kept giving those slippery half-smiles. The kind of smiles that said he was either lying or trying to keep me calm—or both.

That day, things started unraveling fast. I kept noticing weird little details: how Ryan always steered me away from certain parts of the campsite, how he got jumpy whenever I wandered too far, how there were tracks near the river that didn’t look like ours.

One evening, while Ryan was gutting fish, I slipped away. I followed the tracks through the underbrush until I stumbled across something I wasn’t supposed to see.

Another campsite. Hidden.

It was rough, just a tarp strung up between trees, but inside were more clothes, food wrappers, and a notebook. My hands shook as I opened it. The first page was filled with scrawled names—first names, last names, initials. Some had dates next to them. Some had “X” marks.

Halfway down the list, I saw my name. My full name. With today’s date next to it.

I dropped the notebook like it burned. My first thought was to run, but then I heard branches snapping behind me. Ryan. His voice came sharp through the trees. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

I spun around, heart hammering, and for a second I thought he was going to lunge at me. But instead, he just stared, his jaw tight.

“What is this?” I demanded.

He didn’t answer right away. Finally, he muttered, “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” I said, but my voice shook.

He sighed, running a hand over his face. “It’s not what you think. I—look, people come out here sometimes. Lost, running from something, whatever. I keep track. That’s all.”

“Why is my name in there?”

Ryan didn’t flinch. He just looked at me with something between pity and warning. “Because everyone forgets eventually.”

That night, I barely slept. I kept replaying his words over and over: everyone forgets eventually. What the hell did that mean?

The next morning, I woke up to find Ryan already by the plane, fueling it. “We’re heading back,” he said flatly.

I didn’t argue. I just grabbed my pack and climbed in, my hands sweating so badly I almost dropped the buckle.

The flight back felt endless. I kept expecting him to turn, to say something, to explain. But he didn’t. He just flew in silence, eyes fixed on the horizon.

When we finally landed on the dirt strip near Anchorage, I practically jumped out before the plane even stopped rolling. I told him I’d call him later, but he just nodded, like he knew I wouldn’t.

For days afterward, I couldn’t shake it. The photograph. The notebook. My name written with today’s date. It felt like I’d stepped into some version of my life that didn’t belong to me.

Then came the real twist.

A week later, I was unpacking my laundry when I found something stuffed into the pocket of my jacket. Another Polaroid.

This time, it wasn’t just me in the picture. It was Ryan too. Both of us sitting in that same tent I’d never slept in. And behind us, blurry but unmistakable, was a third figure. A woman.

The same woman whose clothes I’d found in the packs.

I froze, staring at it until my vision blurred. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped it on the floor.

That’s when I realized—I wasn’t forgetting anything. Something else was happening. Something Ryan hadn’t told me.

I didn’t go back to see him. But every once in a while, I still get the feeling I’ll find more Polaroids tucked into my stuff. And when I do, I wonder if I’ll recognize the places in them.

Sometimes, I even wonder if I’ll recognize myself.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned, though. The world is full of secrets, and sometimes even the people closest to us are carrying truths we’re not ready to hear. But no matter how unsettling it gets, you can’t look away. You can’t ignore the signs just because they scare you.

I still don’t know exactly what Ryan was doing out there in those woods, or why my name was in that notebook. But I do know this: trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is. And sometimes the scariest thing isn’t what you don’t know—it’s what you almost convince yourself to forget.

And if you’ve ever had a moment where your gut told you one thing but the world tried to tell you another, I’d love to hear your story. Share it. Because sometimes, speaking up is the only way we remind ourselves we’re not crazy after all.