My brother Bill was struck by lightning a few weeks ago. It happened right in front of me. My parent’s dog Luna is terrified of thunder, and when it cracked above us when my brother and I were bringing groceries in, Luna bolted out the door and into our field. Bill ran after her, screaming her name as the rain beat down and wrangled her from under the shed. She whimpered and came back to the house, where I stood calling her, holding the door open. I smelled ozone, sharp and chemical as Luna ran in past my legs.
Then the sky turned white. I saw a jagged white line that lit up the field like it was day. It looked like it was growing out of Bill’s back, reaching high into the clouds, and in that instant, the rain seemed to stop. It was something out of a dream, but then that booming CRACK shook my bones and struck my eardrums. I could feel the impact of the lightning and the tingle of the current, and in that instant, I knew Bill had been hit.
I ran into the plummeting rain to my brother’s crumpled form in the grass. I shivered in horror when I saw that smoke was wafting up from his hair. He’d been struck in the head.
Bill’s older than me by two years, taller too. I grunted and huffed as I dragged him by his armpits over the wet grass to the front door. I wanted to get him in in case it struck again. He was limp and cold in my arms. He looked dead.
I called 911. It was a blur of a nightmare and I followed their instructions as I waited for an ambulance to arrive. The operator walked me through how to make sure he was breathing. He wasn’t, and she calmly guided me through how to perform CPR.
30 compressions. Two breaths. 30 compressions, again and again. It felt like hours, but the flashing red lights eventually appeared in the driveway and paramedics rushed in and took over. I was taken aside and they explained everything as I wiped tears from my blurry eyes. They told me I’d done great, and that Bill was alive.
My mother met us at the hospital, and she hugged me so tight I thought my head would pop off. It was all very emotional waiting for news, but soon enough we were told that Bill was in stable condition. He suffered from some severe burns on his scalp and neck. He had signs of a severe brain injury including memory loss but was fully mobile and capable of speech. But, the first time I saw him, something felt wrong.
My mom greeted him with a Highlander joke saying “There can be only one!” after no response, her smile wilted and she said, “Just kidding.” The Highlander was Bill’s favorite movie. Bill then smiled too, but it was different than usual. His eyes lacked emotion, only his mouth formed a grin, which gave him a creepy appearance. His smile looked forced too, it was more like he was mimicking my mom than actually smiling.
I visited him after school the next few days and tried chatting about things, asking about Sherry (the girl he liked) and he just gave me a vacant stare. When I explained his obsessive crush, he nodded and gave me that same, strange smile.
“Just kidding,” Bill replied after a delay, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t. I found it increasingly difficult to make conversation with him during my visits. It felt as if he was lying in order to seem more knowledgeable than he was. The doctors told us privately that amnesia was a common result of a traumatic brain injury of this sort, but Bill didn’t seem to remember anything. He was instructed to keep a journal to record things to try to stimulate his memory.
My brother came back home after a few days of testing, and he did appear to be recalling the details that my mother had “reminded” him of, but after a few days, I knew. I just knew he was learning everything from scratch, as crazy as that sounds. I could see in his dark eyes that he was learning to mimic mannerisms. He’d watch people astutely to learn how to hold a pencil or open a door. He was doing the best he could to act like Bill, but I knew.
Two weeks after returning home Bill was given the opportunity to return to school. Bill seemed to pick everything up and fit right in, all the time wearing that smile that was so close to authentic but ever-so-slightly off. In the evenings, I’d notice the light under his door glowing at odd hours. I’d hear him coughing some awful retching sounds that turned my stomach. Then I found his journal.
Bill often scribbled in his notepad, an action meant to strengthen his neural pathways, so even I didn’t question it until I passed his room a few days ago. Bill’s door was slightly ajar, and I saw that notepad atop his desk when he was in the shower. His door was almost always closed, so this was a rare opportunity. Curiosity got the better of me, and I stepped in and picked up the journal. I flipped it open and my neck hairs stood on end at what I saw within.
There were hundreds of strange, branched scribblings that flowed from one fractal pattern to the next filling page after page of the book. I thought it to be some intricate design at first but soon noticed similar forking lines that appeared multiple times in various locations. They were different characters. It looked like a bizarre script the likes of which I’d never seen. I flipped through more pages of the strange writing and then found the grisly illustrations.
Drawn on some pages were internal organs; a liver, a kidney, part of a lung and more I couldn’t identify. They were not medical illustrations, however. It looked like they were drawn from life. Each was labeled in that bizarre, fractal script I’d never before seen. Then I heard footsteps rapidly approaching; Bill was out of the shower and coming back in.
I raced into the closet with a pounding heart and mostly closed the door behind me, leaving it cracked to not make a sound. I smelled the stink of rotting meat immediately. Something decomposing was in there with me.
I watched Bill through the crack as he entered the room and my blood ran cold. He pulled off his shirt to reveal the large pink fractal scar running down his neck and back caused by the lightning strike. It was bigger than when I’d seen it in the hospital, much bigger. I then watched in horror as the scar pattern moved; wiggling and branching, shifting as if there were a living organism beneath the skin.
Bill began to scribble that cryptic scrawling in his book. His face was lifeless and slack as if he relinquished control over the musculature when no one was present to maintain the facade for. The raised, vein-like branches just under his skin moved about instead. Eventually, he put down the notepad and finished getting dressed. My heart pounded as he then walked towards me and stood directly in front of the closet I hid within, inches from the door.
I felt a wave of ice spill down my back as he looked in the cracked door, directly at me. I saw a subtle smile lift the corners of his mouth. I heard his heavy breathing, labored and wet. I was positive he could see me in the shadows of the closet, and I was terrified.
My mother’s voice broke the silence, calling us to dinner, and he walked back out the door of his room, leaving me in the stinking darkness of his closet.
I haven’t told anyone about it because nobody would believe me. Bill is acting perfectly normal to everyone, but the way he looks at me when nobody is watching fills me with absolute dread. He looks at me like he knows I’m aware that Bill is not in there anymore. That something killed him and took over when that bolt of lightning struck his head. They are threatening looks, like he's deciding what to do about it.
I got a clear view of what was rotting in the corner of his closet after Bill left the room that day. They were decaying innards, the ones that he drew. I hear his muffled retching each night, and I think they were his. I think it removed them from Bill's body to make room to grow.
