The rain tapped insistently against the cabin window, a relentless Morse code that Daniel had long since stopped trying to decipher. He sat in his worn leather armchair, the only piece of furniture that felt like it belonged to the man he used to be, staring at the photograph on the mantelpiece. Alex grinned back at him, wind-tousled hair and that boyish smile that could light up the darkest trail. Their arms were slung around each other’s shoulders, captured forever at the summit overlook just hours before the accident. Five years ago. Five years of this.

Daniel’s fingers trembled as he lifted the frame, tracing the glass over Alex’s face. ‘Brother,’ he whispered, the word heavy with the weight of unspoken apologies. The hike had been their annual tradition, a pilgrimage to shake off the city’s grime. Laughing, shoving each other playfully on the narrow path. Then the storm hit, sudden and vicious. The rocks turned slick underfoot. Alex had slipped, his hand reaching out—desperate, trusting. Daniel lunged, fingers grazing but not grasping. The scream echoed long after Alex vanished into the ravine below.

He closed his eyes, but the memory played unbidden, vivid as fresh blood. Why hadn’t he held tighter? Why had his grip faltered at the critical second? Guilt was a living thing inside him now, coiling in his gut, whispering in the quiet hours. It had driven him here, to this remote cabin in the Cascades, far from prying eyes and pitying condolences. The job at the firm? Quit after six months of numbness. Friends? They stopped calling when the invitations went unanswered. Now it was just him, the rain, and the ghosts.

Mornings began the same: coffee black as his mood, brewed on the old percolator that hissed like accusations. He’d stare out at the dripping pines, willing the day to pass without incident. But incidents came anyway. A shadow in the corner of his eye on the trail. A laugh on the wind that sounded like Alex’s. Daniel shook it off as grief’s cruel tricks. ‘It’s normal,’ the therapist had said before he stopped going. ‘Your mind is processing.’

But processing felt like unraveling. Nights were worse. Dreams where Alex climbed back up, dripping mud and blood, eyes accusatory. ‘You let go, Dan. Why?’ He’d wake sweating, heart hammering, convinced he’d heard the words aloud. One night, he rose and rifled through the closet for their old hiking gear. Alex’s jacket hung there, untouched, smelling faintly of pine and sweat. Daniel buried his face in it, inhaling the past. A scrap of paper fell out—Alex’s handwriting: ‘Can’t wait for the summit beer! Love, Bro.’ Simple, innocent. Tears came then, hot and unbidden.

Days stretched into weeks, the isolation seeping into his bones. He hiked shorter trails now, avoiding the big cliff. But compulsion gnawed. One gray afternoon, he gave in, driving to the trailhead where it happened. The path was overgrown, nature reclaiming the wound. At the edge, the ravine yawned, shrouded in mist. Daniel peered down, pulse thundering. For a moment, he saw movement—a figure scrambling up. Alex? He blinked, and it was gone. ‘Hallucination,’ he muttered, backing away. But doubt lingered, a splinter in his mind.

Back at the cabin, anomalies multiplied. The photograph on the mantel—had Alex’s smile always been so strained? The journal from the hike: entries in Daniel’s hand describing Alex’s ‘recklessness.’ Had he written that? Memory flickered: an argument that morning over directions, Alex teasing him about being lost. Petty, forgotten until now. Nights brought voices, soft at first, then insistent. ‘You could have saved me. You chose not to.’ Daniel plugged his ears, but they came from inside.

He stopped eating properly, body thinning, mirrors avoided. The cabin felt smaller, walls pressing in with claustrophobic weight. Paranoia bloomed: was someone watching? Footprints in the mud that weren’t his? He barricaded the door, gun from the safe at his side. Sleep fragmented into fever dreams where he replayed the fall in slow motion. This time, his hand pulled away deliberately. Alex’s eyes widened not in fear, but betrayal. Daniel screamed himself awake.

It built to a crescendo one stormy night mirroring the accident. Thunder rattled the windows as he paced, journal clutched like a talisman. Pages blurred through tears. An entry from days before: ‘Alex knows about the money. He can’t.’ Money? The firm embezzlement he’d buried deep. No, that was after. Or was it? Timeline fractured. He smashed the journal against the wall, pages scattering like confetti of deceit.

Dawn broke weak and watery. Resolution crystallized: end it at the cliff, join Alex. He packed the jacket, the photo, drove through sheets of rain. The trail sucked at his boots, heart a drumbeat of finality. At the overlook, wind howled, mist swirling. Daniel stepped to the edge, rope uncoiling from his pack—not for climbing, but dropping. ‘I’m coming, brother,’ he said to the void.

Then, the world tilted. Pain exploded in his skull, not from fall, but memory’s floodgate bursting. He wasn’t at the cabin. No five years. The rain poured, path slick. Alex’s hand reached—’Dan!’—and Daniel’s fingers slipped because he’d yanked back in rage, mid-argument over theembezzlement Alex had discovered. No rescue, no cabin. They both tumbled, but Daniel landed on ledge, Alex below.

Now, the mist cleared in his mind’s eye. He lay bruised on that ledge, watch stopped at 3:17 PM—the accident time, same as the cabin clock that never moved. Alex’s broken body sprawled twenty feet down, eyes glassy. Seconds, not years. The cabin, the isolation, the unraveling guilt—all invention of a dying brain, clinging to a false reality where he grieved instead of murdered by neglect.

Sirens wailed distant—hikers found him? Too late. Daniel smiled faintly at the rain. ‘Sorry, bro.’ Darkness swallowed the lie.