I… HAD TO MURDER MY BROTHER

They say blood is thicker than water. Family before all. Protect your own. These are the mantras my parents instilled in me since birth. I believed them once, clung to them like a shield when the world felt chaotic and uncertain. But that was before everything fell apart. That was before Henry changed.

And now, as I sit in this cold, sterile room with the weight of his blood on my hands, the words echo hollow. Blood may be thicker than water, but what do you do when the blood itself turns foul?

Henry and I were born three years apart, but we might as well have been twins. Where one went, the other followed. He was the fearless one, the ringleader of our childhood adventures, while I tagged along in awe of his confidence.

Our parents, ever busy with work, left us to our own devices in our small, aging house on the edge of the woods. Those woods were our kingdom, a labyrinth of towering trees and shadowy trails. We spent entire summers crafting forts, hunting imaginary beasts, and daring each other to explore its darkest corners.

Looking back, maybe we should’ve paid more attention to the warnings from the locals—the whispered tales of disappearances and strange sightings. But kids don’t listen to that kind of stuff. Not when adventure calls.

It started the summer Henry turned 15.

He’d always been lean and wiry, but that year, he shot up like a weed. His voice deepened, his shoulders broadened. Puberty hit him like a freight train, but it wasn’t just the physical changes that stood out. Henry grew…different.

At first, it was subtle. He started sleeping in later, skipping meals. His once boisterous laughter became rare, replaced by brooding silences. Mom and Dad brushed it off as teenage angst. But I knew my brother better than anyone. Something wasn’t right.

The first time I saw the real difference in Henry, it was late at night. I’d woken up thirsty and padded down to the kitchen for a glass of water. The house was quiet, save for the occasional creak of settling wood. But as I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw him.

Henry was standing in the middle of the living room, bathed in the faint glow of moonlight filtering through the window. He was shirtless, his pale skin almost luminous. His back was to me, but his head was tilted at an odd angle, as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear.

“Henry?” I whispered.

He didn’t move.

I stepped closer, my bare feet silent on the hardwood floor. That’s when I saw his hands. His fingers were flexing, twitching as if they had a mind of their own. And his nails…they looked longer, sharper.

“Henry?” I said again, louder this time.

He turned slowly, and my breath caught in my throat. His eyes…they weren’t his anymore. The warm brown I’d known my entire life was gone, replaced by something cold and unrecognizable. His pupils were pinpricks, and the whites of his eyes were stained red, like burst capillaries.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then he smiled—a slow, eerie curl of his lips that sent a chill down my spine.

“Go back to bed, Brandon,” he said, his voice lower than usual, almost a growl.

I didn’t argue.

From that night on, things only got worse. Henry withdrew from everyone, spending hours locked in his room or wandering the woods alone. He stopped eating at the dinner table, claiming he wasn’t hungry, yet I’d hear him rummaging through the kitchen late at night.

And then there were the noises.

At first, I thought they were nightmares. I’d hear low, guttural growls and whimpers coming from his room in the dead of night. But as the days passed, the sounds grew louder, more inhuman.

One night, I couldn’t take it anymore. I crept to his door and pressed my ear against it. What I heard chilled me to the bone—scratching, like claws against wood, and a low, wet snarling that made my stomach churn.

I knocked softly. “Henry? Are you okay?”

The sounds stopped abruptly.

“Go away,” came his muffled reply.

I should have listened.

Instead, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. The room was dark, the air thick with a strange metallic smell. Henry was crouched in the corner, his back to me. His shirt was torn, and his shoulders were heaving.

“Henry?” My voice trembled.

He turned slowly, and the sight nearly made me scream. His face was gaunt, his cheekbones sharp enough to cut. His lips were pulled back in a snarl, revealing teeth that looked…wrong. Sharper. Longer. And his eyes—they glowed faintly in the dark, like an animal’s caught in headlights.

“Get out!” he roared, his voice distorted and guttural.

I stumbled back, slamming the door shut behind me.

I tried to tell Mom and Dad, but they didn’t believe me. They chalked it up to teenage drama and overactive imagination. “Henry’s just going through a phase,” Dad said. “Give him some space.”

But it wasn’t a phase.

The animals in the woods started disappearing. First, it was the birds—silence replacing the usual morning chorus. Then we stopped seeing squirrels and rabbits. One evening, I found a trail of blood leading into the trees, but I didn’t dare follow it.

And Henry…Henry was getting worse.

His skin grew pale and mottled, veins dark against the surface. His nails were practically claws, and his teeth…God, his teeth. He barely spoke to me anymore, and when he did, his voice was barely human.

I started locking my door at night.

I don’t know what woke me that night. Maybe it was instinct, some primal sense of danger. My room was pitch black, the faint hum of the house settling the only sound.

Then I heard it—a soft, almost imperceptible click.

The door handle.

I froze, my heart hammering in my chest. The handle turned slowly, and the door creaked open.

“Brandon…”

It was Henry’s voice, but it sounded wrong—warped, distorted.

I reached for the baseball bat I kept under my bed, my fingers trembling.

“Stay back,” I warned, my voice shaking.

He stepped into the room, and the faint moonlight illuminated his figure. He was hunched over, his limbs elongated, his skin stretched tight over his bones. His eyes glowed, and his mouth was smeared with something dark.

Blood.

“I’m hungry,” he growled, taking another step forward.

“Henry, please—”

“I’m not Henry,” he snarled, and then he lunged.

Henry’s lunge wasn’t what I expected. He didn’t tackle me or swipe at me with those claw-like hands. Instead, he stopped just short of the bed, his head tilting unnaturally to one side. His breath came in slow, rasping hisses, and his eyes—the eerie, faintly glowing orbs—narrowed as if appraising me.

I gripped the baseball bat so tightly my knuckles turned white.

“You’re scared of me, aren’t you?” His voice was low, almost amused. It didn’t sound like him. Not my brother, not the boy who once dared me to climb trees and shared his candy when I’d scraped my knees.

“I’m not scared of you, Henry.”

“Liar,” he whispered.

I didn’t move. I didn’t even blink. The air in the room seemed to thicken, and the metallic smell that clung to him made my stomach churn.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice barely audible.

He cocked his head further, his lips twitching as if he were on the verge of laughing—or snarling. “Doing what?”

“Whatever this is! You’re…you’re not you anymore!”

His expression darkened, and for a moment, the glow in his eyes flickered, like embers in a dying fire. Then, just as suddenly, he stepped back into the shadows of the room.

“You’ll understand soon,” he murmured. And before I could respond, he was gone.

The next morning, I woke up to sunlight streaming through the curtains, but it brought no comfort. The events of the night before were as vivid as if they’d just happened.

I forced myself out of bed, every muscle in my body aching from tension. When I finally mustered the courage to leave my room, I saw the first sign that the darkness in Henry wasn’t just in my head.

Claw marks.

Deep, jagged scratches raked across the wooden frame of my bedroom door. They were unmistakable—too large for any animal I knew, and too precise to be random.

My stomach lurched.

“Brandon?” Mom’s voice called from downstairs.

I froze, my heart racing. “Y-yeah?”

“Come have breakfast!”

I hesitated, then threw on a hoodie and made my way downstairs. The kitchen smelled of burnt toast and coffee, as it always did on lazy Saturday mornings. Mom was by the stove, humming along to the radio, while Dad was reading the paper at the table.

And Henry?

He was sitting in his usual spot, staring at me.

“Morning,” I mumbled, avoiding his gaze.

“Sleep well?” he asked, his voice dripping with something I couldn’t quite place—mockery, maybe.

“Fine.”

He smirked, a slow, unsettling curve of his lips, before shoving a forkful of eggs into his mouth. For all appearances, he seemed normal, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me from inside him.

That evening, I followed him.

It wasn’t something I planned. I just couldn’t shake the need to know what he was doing—what he was.

Henry had been disappearing into the woods more and more frequently, sometimes for hours at a time. He always came back dirtied, disheveled, and more…wrong than before.

When he slipped out the back door that night, I waited a few moments before grabbing my flashlight and slipping on my sneakers. I stayed far enough behind that he wouldn’t notice me, my breath coming in quiet, shallow puffs as I trailed him into the dark.

The woods were silent. Too silent. No crickets, no rustling leaves, just the crunch of Henry’s footsteps and the distant rustle of something else.

He stopped suddenly, and I ducked behind a tree, my heart pounding.

“Did you think I wouldn’t hear you?”

His voice cut through the silence like a blade.

I froze, my fingers tightening around the flashlight.

“Come out, Brandon.”

I didn’t move.

“I said, come out.”

The command in his tone was sharp, and against my better judgment, I stepped out from behind the tree. Henry stood a few feet away, his face partially obscured by shadow.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I shot back, though my voice trembled.

He tilted his head, his eerie smile returning. “Do you really want to know?”

Before I could answer, he turned and continued walking. But this time, he motioned for me to follow.

The deeper we went into the woods, the stranger things became. The trees seemed taller, their branches gnarled and twisted like skeletal hands. The air grew colder, and the faint scent of rot tickled my nose.

“Henry, where are we going?”

He didn’t answer.

Finally, we reached a clearing. In the center was a large, blackened tree, its bark charred as if it had been struck by lightning. The ground around it was barren, the dirt cracked and dry despite the recent rains.

Henry stopped at the edge of the clearing, his shoulders tense.

“This is where it started,” he said softly.

“Where what started?”

He didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he crouched by the tree, his fingers brushing against the blackened bark.

“They showed me things,” he whispered, almost to himself.

“Who?”

“The ones in the dark.”

A chill ran down my spine.

“You’re scaring me, Henry.”

“Good.”

I stared at him, my fear warring with the urge to grab him and drag him back home. But before I could act, he turned to face me fully, his expression unreadable.

“I can feel it inside me, Brandon. Growing. Changing me. And it’s not going to stop.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but the words caught in my throat. Because at that moment, I saw it—something shifting beneath his skin, writhing like a living thing trapped inside him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, his voice cracking. “But I don’t think I can stop it.”

The days that followed were a blur of fear and confusion. Henry became more erratic, disappearing for longer periods and returning with fresh wounds he refused to explain.

One night, I woke to find him standing at the foot of my bed, his eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

“Henry?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached out, his claw-like hand brushing against my cheek.

“You have to stop me,” he whispered, his voice filled with something I couldn’t place—desperation, maybe. Or regret.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

And then he was gone again, leaving me alone in the suffocating darkness.

The days after that night were an agonizing blur. I couldn’t sleep; every creak of the house set my heart racing. I couldn’t eat; the thought of food made my stomach churn. But most of all, I couldn’t stop replaying Henry’s words in my mind.

“You have to stop me.”

I didn’t want to understand. I didn’t want to face the truth that had been clawing its way to the surface since the first time I saw his eyes change, the first time I heard that guttural growl in his throat. But deep down, I knew what he meant.

He wasn’t my brother anymore—not entirely.

Whatever was inside him, whatever was growing and changing and twisting, it was taking him away piece by piece. And if he couldn’t stop it…

Then I would have to.

The thought made me sick, but it wouldn’t leave me alone. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face—not the Henry I grew up with, but the Henry he’d become: pale and gaunt, his eyes like embers in the dark.

I spent hours pacing my room, wrestling with myself. How could I even consider doing something so unthinkable? He was my brother. My blood.

But the memory of his touch on my cheek, his whispered plea, haunted me. He knew what was happening to him. And he knew it wouldn’t end well.

Two nights later, it happened.

I woke to the sound of screaming. Not human screaming—something else. High-pitched, guttural, and raw. It was coming from the woods.

I bolted upright, my heart pounding.

Henry.

Without thinking, I grabbed the baseball bat from under my bed and crept downstairs. The house was silent, but the back door was wide open, the cool night air seeping in like a warning.

I stepped outside, the flashlight shaking in my hand as I followed the sound.

The woods were darker than ever, the trees casting twisted shadows under the faint moonlight. The smell of rot was stronger now, mixed with something metallic.

And then I saw it.

At first, I thought it was an animal—something large and hunched, tearing into a carcass on the ground. But as I got closer, my blood turned to ice.

It was Henry.

Or what was left of him.

His back was to me, his shoulders heaving as he tore into the body of a deer with his bare hands. His nails were like talons, glinting in the flashlight’s beam, and his skin was stretched so tight over his bones that I could see every rib.

“Henry,” I whispered, my voice shaking.

He froze.

Slowly, he turned to face me, and my knees nearly gave out.

His face was gaunt and hollow, his eyes burning with an unnatural light. Blood dripped from his mouth, staining his teeth and chin. But it was his expression that terrified me the most—not anger, not sadness, but hunger.

“Brandon,” he growled, his voice barely human.

I took a step back, gripping the bat so tightly my fingers ached.

“I told you not to follow me,” he said, his voice low and guttural.

“I had to,” I stammered.

He took a step toward me, his movements jerky and unnatural.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. His voice cracked, and for a moment, I thought I saw something human flicker in his eyes. “It’s getting harder…to stop it.”

I swallowed hard, my mind racing. “Henry, please…come back home. We can fix this. We can—”

“No!” he roared, his voice echoing through the trees. “You don’t understand! There’s nothing left to fix!”

He lunged at me, and I swung the bat on instinct.

The wood connected with his side, and he let out a guttural snarl, staggering back. But when he looked up at me again, his lips curled into a grin.

“You’re stronger than I thought,” he said, his voice a mocking growl.

I don’t know how long I ran. The trees blurred past me, branches scratching at my arms and face as I stumbled blindly through the woods. Behind me, I could hear Henry—his footsteps, his growls, the inhuman laughter that sent shivers down my spine.

When I finally reached the clearing, I tripped and fell to my knees. The baseball bat was still in my hands, but I could barely hold onto it.

“Brandon…”

His voice came from somewhere in the darkness, soft and almost tender.

“You can’t run forever.”

I scrambled to my feet, spinning around with the bat raised. The clearing was silent, but I could feel him watching me, circling me like a predator.

“Why are you doing this?” I shouted, my voice breaking.

“I’m not,” he replied, his voice coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “It is.”

And then he stepped into the clearing, his body hunched and twisted, his eyes glowing like coals.

“End it,” he whispered. “Before I can’t stop myself.”

My grip on the bat tightened.

“Please, Brandon,” he said, his voice cracking. “I don’t want to hurt you. But it’s…it’s so hungry.”

He lunged again, and this time, I didn’t run.

I swung the bat with every ounce of strength I had. It connected with his shoulder, sending him staggering back, but he didn’t stop.

He came at me again, faster this time, his claws swiping through the air. I ducked and swung again, this time hitting his leg. He fell to one knee, letting out a snarl of pain.

“Do it!” he roared, his voice a mixture of human and beast. “Do it now!”

Tears streamed down my face as I raised the bat one final time.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

And then I brought it down.

I don’t remember much after that. Just the sound of his body hitting the ground, the way his eyes dimmed as he looked up at me one last time.

When I finally stumbled back to the house, my parents were waiting. They didn’t say a word as I collapsed on the floor, covered in dirt and blood.

The police came the next morning. They found his body in the woods, but they couldn’t explain the state of it—the claw marks, the way his bones seemed to have warped.

They sent me to a hospital for evaluation. I told the doctors everything, but they didn’t believe me. They said it was trauma, that I’d invented a story to cope with what I’d done.

But I know the truth.

Henry wasn’t my brother anymore.

And whatever he’d become…it’s still out there, waiting.

The days after Henry’s death were a foggy blur. My parents refused to talk about it, about him. They buried him in a quiet ceremony, but the whispers from the few neighbors who attended followed us like shadows.

Everyone believed the same story: Henry had snapped. Maybe it was a psychotic break, they said, or maybe drugs. Some even suggested that I’d acted in self-defense when he attacked me.

But no one knew the truth.

Not the way I did.

The doctors at the hospital were relentless. They poked and prodded at my mind, asking the same questions over and over.

“Why did you kill your brother?”

“Did Henry ever hurt you before that night?”

“Do you feel remorse for what you did?”

I tried to explain it to them—to tell them about the way Henry had changed, about the things in the woods, about the claw marks and glowing eyes. But every time I told the truth, they just scribbled notes on their clipboards and nodded with that practiced look of pity.

“It’s okay to process this through stories,” one of them said once, their voice soft and patronizing. “Sometimes the mind creates monsters to cope with tragedy.”

I stopped trying after that.

The nights were the worst.

Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the woods, the air thick with rot and Henry’s voice echoing all around me.

“You can’t run forever.”

I saw his face—gaunt and twisted, his eyes burning like embers in the dark. And sometimes, in the dreams, he didn’t lunge at me. Sometimes, he just stood there, watching me with that awful grin, as if he knew something I didn’t.

I started waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and gasping for air. The doctors called it PTSD. They gave me pills to help me sleep, but the dreams only got worse.

Because now, it wasn’t just Henry.

It started small—little things that could’ve been explained away.

The smell of rot in my hospital room, even though the staff swore the place was clean.

The claw marks I found one morning, etched into the wooden chair by my bed.

The faint sound of growling, low and guttural, coming from somewhere in the walls.

I told the doctors, but they just nodded and scribbled more notes. They didn’t believe me.

But I knew what was happening.

Henry was dead. I’d killed him. But whatever it was—the thing that had taken him—it wasn’t gone. It was still out there. And now, it was watching me.

One night, I woke to find someone sitting in the corner of my room.

At first, I thought it was one of the nurses, their silhouette faint in the moonlight. But as my eyes adjusted, I realized it wasn’t a nurse at all.

It was Henry.

Not the Henry I’d killed, but the Henry from before—the one I used to play video games with, the one who dared me to climb trees and shared his Halloween candy.

“Brandon,” he said softly, his voice just like I remembered it.

I sat up in bed, my heart pounding. “Henry?”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” he said, his expression unreadable.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I whispered, my throat tightening. “You told me to.”

His head tilted, and for a moment, his eyes seemed to glow faintly.

“Did I?”

I froze.

“Or did you just want to?”

The words hit me like a punch to the gut. I opened my mouth to argue, but he was gone, his form dissolving into the shadows of the room.

After that night, things escalated.

Everywhere I went, I felt like I was being watched. Shadows seemed to move on their own, slithering just out of sight.

One morning, I woke to find my bedsheets shredded, deep claw marks gouged into the mattress beneath me.

Another time, I heard his voice again, faint and distorted, coming from the vent above my bed.

“You can’t run forever.”

The doctors insisted I was hallucinating. They upped my dosage, scheduled more sessions. But nothing helped.

Because deep down, I knew the truth.

The last night in the hospital was the worst.

I woke to the sound of growling—low and guttural, like the growl Henry used to make when he wasn’t quite Henry anymore.

The room was pitch black, the air thick with the smell of rot.

And then I saw them.

Eyes.

Dozens of them, glowing faintly in the dark, watching me from every corner of the room.

I scrambled out of bed, my heart racing. “Who’s there?”

The growling grew louder, filling the room like a swarm of angry wasps.

And then, from the shadows, I heard his voice.

“You didn’t finish it.”

I turned, and there he was—Henry, or what was left of him. His body was twisted and gaunt, his eyes burning like coals.

“You didn’t stop it,” he snarled, his voice layered with something deeper, something inhuman. “Now it’s your turn.”

Before I could scream, the shadows swallowed me whole.

They found me the next morning, huddled in the corner of the room, my hands covered in scratches and my eyes wide with terror.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that.

They moved me to a different facility—a more secure one. The doctors said I’d had a psychotic break, that the stress of losing Henry had finally caught up with me.

But I know the truth.

Henry’s gone, but whatever it was—the thing in the woods, the thing that changed him—it’s still out there.

And now, it’s coming for me.

I hear it sometimes, late at night, when the world is quiet and the shadows grow long.

The faint sound of growling.

The soft scrape of claws against the walls.

And his voice, echoing in the darkness:

“You can’t run forever.”