Chapter 6: Pilgrimage to the Source

Six months later

The lies came easier than Leo had expected. Maybe that was what five years of marriage taught you—how to shape truth into something your loved one could bear to hear.

"Just a weekend trip," he told Sarah over breakfast, spooning scrambled eggs he couldn't taste into his mouth. "I need to clear my head, get some perspective on everything."

Sarah's spoon clinked against her coffee mug, the sound sharp in their small kitchen. Dark circles shadowed her eyes—the kind that came from months of being woken by a husband who thrashed and choked in his sleep, who sometimes spoke to invisible presences in languages that weren't entirely human.

"Where will you go?" she asked, though her tone suggested she already suspected the answer.

"Back home. To Tennessee." Leo couldn't meet her eyes. "Maybe visit Mom, see how James is doing."

The lie tasted like creek water on his tongue. Mom had moved to Florida after James got married, chasing warmer weather and the promise of grandchildren that would never come. The old house where they'd grown up sat empty now, another casualty of rural economic decline. But Sarah didn't need to know that Leo had already called the realtor, had gotten the lockbox code, had planned this pilgrimage to the place where everything went wrong.

"Leo." Sarah's hand covered his across the table, her wedding ring clicking against his. "Whatever's happening to you, we can face it together. You don't have to carry this alone."

For a moment, Leo almost broke. Almost told her about the brown-eyed boy who wore his face, about the way reality had cracked that day at the creek, about the growing certainty that he was living a life that belonged to someone else. But how do you explain to someone you love that you might not be real? That the man she married might be nothing more than an echo, a shadow that had crawled out of dark water to steal another's existence?

"I know," he said instead, squeezing her hand. "This will help. I promise."

The drive to Tennessee took eight hours, winding through mountains that grew more familiar with each mile. Leo had rented a car for the trip—Sarah would need theirs for work—and the anonymity of the rental felt appropriate somehow. A borrowed vehicle for a borrowed life, carrying him back to the place where the borrowing began.

The Cherokee National Forest looked smaller than he remembered, the mountains less imposing. Urban sprawl had crept closer to the borders over the years, subdivisions and strip malls eating away at the wilderness of his childhood. But once he turned onto the old dirt road that led to the family property, civilization fell away like a shed skin.

The house stood empty and haunted against the autumn sky, its windows dark as closed eyes. Someone had boarded up the front door, but Leo knew other ways in. He'd been a curious child, always finding gaps and forgotten entrances that adults missed.

The back door hung crooked on rusted hinges, yielding to his shoulder with a groan of protest. Inside, the air tasted of dust and mouse droppings and something else—something damp and cold that reminded him of underwater caves. His footsteps echoed in rooms stripped of furniture, their walls marked with water stains that formed patterns like desperate prayers.

Leo didn't linger. The house was just a way station, a place to leave his car and gather his courage for the real destination. He changed into hiking boots and old jeans, then stood at the kitchen window looking out at the forest that had once been his backyard playground.

The deer path was still there, barely visible beneath years of fallen leaves and encroaching undergrowth. Leo shouldered his small backpack—water, energy bars, a flashlight he probably wouldn't need in daylight—and stepped into the trees.

The Cherokee National Forest remembered him.

That was Leo's first thought as he followed the overgrown trail up the mountainside. Every step felt like walking deeper into a living memory, the forest pressing close around him with the intimate attention of something that had been waiting for his return. Trees that had been saplings in his childhood now towered overhead, their branches interlacing to block out most of the afternoon sun.

But it wasn't just the physical changes that unsettled him. The forest felt aware in a way that had nothing to do with the normal rustle of wildlife. Birds fell silent as he passed. Squirrels froze on tree trunks, watching him with eyes that held too much intelligence. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, as if the entire ecosystem knew why he'd come.

Twenty minutes into the hike, Leo heard the first whisper.

Leo.

His name, carried on a breeze that touched nothing else. Leo stopped, listening, but heard only the distant murmur of running water somewhere ahead. He shook his head and continued climbing, telling himself it was just imagination, just nerves playing tricks on his already strained psyche.

Leo. Come home.

This time the voice was clearer, definitely a child's voice, definitely his own voice from twenty years ago. Leo's hands began to shake as he gripped a low-hanging branch for support. The brown-eyed boy had never followed him outside before, never manifested anywhere except in the liminal space between sleep and waking. But then again, this wasn't just anywhere. This was the source, the place where everything had gone wrong.

The sound of water grew louder as he climbed, shifting from a distant murmur to the familiar rush of the waterfall he'd known as a child. Leo's pace quickened despite himself, drawn by a gravity that felt almost physical. Part of him expected to find the swimming hole changed, diminished by time and adult perspective. But as he crested the final rise and saw the cascade tumbling down its rocky face, he realized it looked exactly the same.

Exactly the same, down to the dark pool at the bottom and the underwater cave entrance that yawned like a hungry mouth beneath the surface.

Jump.

The word hit him like a physical blow, so clear it might have been shouted directly into his ear. Leo stumbled backward, nearly losing his footing on the loose stones that bordered the pool. The voice had come from everywhere and nowhere, carried by the waterfall's mist and the rustle of leaves overhead.

Jump, Leo. Come home where you belong.

"No," Leo whispered, but even as he spoke, he found himself walking toward the edge of the pool. The water looked black in the afternoon shadows, its surface reflecting nothing but darkness. "I'm not going to—"

You know the truth now. You know what you are.

The voice was closer now, intimate as a lover's whisper. Leo could feel breath against his ear, cold and damp and smelling of pond water. But when he spun around, he saw only trees and shadows and the empty forest watching him with patient hunger.

You're the echo, Leo. The shadow. The thing that crawled out wearing my face. I've been waiting so long for you to understand.

Leo's knees buckled, and he found himself kneeling at the pool's edge, staring down into water so dark it might have been a window into space. His reflection wavered on the surface—green eyes wide with terror, face pale as winter moonlight. But for just a moment, the reflection seemed to move independently, lips forming words Leo couldn't hear.

I gave you twenty years of borrowed time. Twenty years to live a life that was never yours. But the debt has come due, Leo. Time to pay what you owe.

"I don't owe you anything," Leo said, but his voice came out as a croak. The truth was, he'd started to believe the brown-eyed boy's claims. Started to wonder if the drowning child had been the real Leo Morrison, and the survivor had been something else entirely. An imposter who'd stolen a life and spent two decades pretending it belonged to him.

Look at the water, Leo. Look and see the truth.

Against his better judgment, Leo leaned closer to the pool's surface. His reflection stared back, but now he could see deeper, past the wavering mirror of the surface into the dark depths below. There, in the underwater cave where he'd nearly drowned as a child, something pale moved in the shadows.

A boy. An eleven-year-old boy with Leo's face and Leo's hair and eyes that burned with twenty years of accumulated rage. He floated in the dark water like a drowned saint, his mouth open in a silent scream that sent bubbles streaming toward the surface in silver chains.

That's me, the voice whispered. That's who I really am. The boy who died so you could live. The soul you displaced when you clawed your way back to the surface.

Leo's reflection began to change as he watched, the green eyes shifting to brown, the face aging backward until he was looking at his eleven-year-old self. But this version of his child-self looked furious, betrayed, his mouth forming words that Leo could finally hear through the water's distortion.

Jump. Come home. Let me live.

The command hit Leo with the force of divine revelation. This wasn't madness or supernatural harassment—this was justice. Cosmic balance demanding correction. He had stolen this life from its rightful owner, and the only way to make things right was to return what he'd taken.

Leo stood on shaking legs, backing away from the pool until his shoulders hit the rocky cliff face behind him. Twenty feet below, the dark water waited with infinite patience. All he had to do was step forward, let gravity do the rest. One moment of falling, then the peace of the deep places where debts were finally settled.

That's right, the voice crooned, no longer trying to hide its satisfaction. Just one step. Just one small step, and everything will be as it should have been.

Leo thought of Sarah sleeping alone in their bed, wondering why her husband had needed to come back to this haunted place. He thought of his mother in Florida, who still sent him birthday cards signed "Love, Mom" in handwriting that seemed to grow more fragile each year. He thought of James with his impossible green eyes, living a normal life because he'd never been marked by whatever cosmic accident had created Leo's doppelganger.

They would mourn him, but they would move on. They would find ways to fill the Leo-shaped hole in their lives, never knowing they were mourning someone who'd never had the right to exist in the first place.

The voice was right. It had always been right. Leo Morrison the imposter had lived twenty years on borrowed time, and now the bill had come due.

He closed his eyes and stepped forward into empty air.