Chapter 5: A Dream of Budweiser

Liam had called in sick, as Chloe suggested, though he spent the day pacing the house like a caged animal rather than resting. Every shadow seemed to harbor potential threats, every creak of the floorboards made him jump. The rational explanations Chloe offered – stress, exhaustion, adjustment disorder – felt increasingly hollow as the hours crawled by.

By evening, he was clinging to one last thread of hope: the memory of Dan's visit felt too real, too detailed to be a complete fabrication. The taste of the Budweiser, the specific FIFA match where Dan had scored that impossible goal from midfield, the way his brother had paused the game when he first heard the voice – all of it carried the weight of genuine experience.

There had to be a logical explanation. Maybe Dan was confused about the timeline. Maybe he'd forgotten about their impromptu gaming session in the stress of his work schedule. People forgot things all the time, especially casual weeknight visits.

Chloe was working late again – a pattern that was becoming disturbingly familiar – so Liam had the house to himself when he finally worked up the courage to make the call. He sat in the kitchen, staring at his phone for ten minutes before dialing his mother's number.

"Liam!" Her voice was warm with surprise. "Two calls in one week? I should buy lottery tickets."

"Hey, Mom. How are you doing?"

"Oh, you know. Your father's convinced the neighbor's dog is plotting against his roses, and I'm trying to talk him out of installing security cameras in the garden. The usual domestic drama." She paused. "But you didn't call to hear about Dad's flower wars. What's wrong? You sound tired."

"I'm fine. Just... settling into the new house." He took a breath, trying to sound casual. "Actually, I was wondering if you'd talked to Dan recently."

"Dan? Of course. He calls every Sunday like clockwork. Why?"

"When did you last talk to him?"

"This past Sunday, same as always. He and Sarah are thinking about taking a vacation to the coast this summer. Apparently, she's never seen the ocean, if you can believe that." His mother's voice took on the slightly gossipy tone she used when discussing his brother's relationship. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder what they taught kids in Oklahoma schools."

Liam's grip tightened on the phone. Sunday was yesterday. Which meant Dan had talked to their mother the day after his supposed visit, and hadn't mentioned coming over to see Liam at all.

"Did he... did he say anything about visiting me? Or maybe mention that we'd spent some time together recently?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. When his mother spoke again, her voice carried a note of concern that made Liam's stomach clench.

"Honey, Dan hasn't seen you in weeks. He mentioned it, actually – said he'd been meaning to call but work's been crazy. He was feeling guilty about not checking in on you and Chloe after the move."

The words hit him like physical blows. Not just the confirmation that Dan hadn't been there, but the casual way his mother delivered the information, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. No hesitation, no uncertainty – just the simple, devastating truth that his brother had been nowhere near the house two nights ago.

"Are you sure?" The question came out as barely a whisper.

"Of course I'm sure. Liam, what's this about? You're worrying me."

He closed his eyes, feeling the last of his rational explanations crumble away. The visit hadn't happened. The FIFA games, the Budweiser, the shared terror when they'd heard that voice calling from upstairs – all of it had been some kind of hallucination, a stress-induced break from reality that had felt completely authentic while it was happening.

"I'm fine, Mom. Just... mixed up about something. New house, new schedule, you know how it is."

"Maybe you should slow down a little. You've been pushing yourself pretty hard with the new mortgage and everything. There's no shame in taking a breather."

"Yeah, maybe you're right."

They talked for a few more minutes – safe, normal conversation about work and weather and family gossip – but Liam barely heard any of it. His mind was reeling, trying to process the implications of what he'd just learned. If Dan's visit had been a hallucination, what else wasn't real? The voice in the hallway? The thing he'd photographed? The entire supernatural explanation he'd been building for the house's strange behavior?

After he hung up, he sat in the kitchen for a long time, staring at the empty chair across from him. This was where Dan had sat, he could swear it. This was where his brother had cracked jokes and complained about Sarah's book club and promised to destroy him at FIFA. The memory felt so real he could almost see the indent in the cushion where Dan's weight had pressed down.

But memories, apparently, couldn't be trusted.

Liam was still sitting there, lost in thought, when he heard his name being called from upstairs.

"Liam?"

The voice was soft, questioning, carrying just a hint of concern. It sounded exactly like Dan – not the distorted mimicry he'd heard before, but his brother's actual voice, warm and familiar and completely impossible.

"Liam, you up there? I brought more beer."

The rational part of his mind screamed that this wasn't real, that he was having another episode, another stress-induced break from reality. Dan wasn't in the house. Dan had never been in the house. The conversation with his mother had confirmed that beyond any doubt.

But the voice was so perfect, so completely authentic, that for a moment Liam found himself wondering if he'd gotten the timeline wrong. Maybe the call to his mother had been about a different day. Maybe Dan really had come over, and all the confusion was just his exhausted mind playing tricks on him.

"Come on up, man. I've got something to show you."

Liam's feet were moving before he'd consciously decided to respond. The same compulsion that had driven him up the stairs that first night was back, but gentler now, more persuasive. This wasn't the urgent, primitive fear that had sent him racing toward the landing. This was the comfortable pull of brotherly affection, the promise of companionship and normalcy in a world that had become increasingly unhinged.

He climbed the stairs slowly, each step carrying him deeper into what he knew had to be another hallucination. But knowing didn't seem to matter. The voice was calling to him from the spare room, and every instinct he possessed was telling him to answer.

"In here," Dan's voice called as Liam reached the landing. "You're not going to believe what I found."

The spare room door was open, and warm light spilled out into the hallway. Liam could hear movement inside – the rustle of fabric, the soft clink of glass bottles being set down on a hard surface. All the sounds of human occupation that had been missing that morning when he'd found the room empty and pristine.

He stood in the doorway, looking in at a scene that should have been impossible.

Dan was sitting on the bed, a six-pack of Budweiser at his feet and that familiar grin on his face. He looked exactly as he had two nights ago – same clothes, same posture, same easy confidence that had always made Liam slightly envious. The only difference was his eyes, which seemed somehow deeper than Liam remembered, as if they were looking through him rather than at him.

"There you are," Dan said, patting the mattress beside him. "Come sit down. We need to talk."

"You're not real." The words came out flat, emotionless. "I called Mom. You haven't been here."

Dan's grin widened, but it didn't reach those too-deep eyes. "Does it matter? I'm here now. We can finish that conversation we started the other night."

"What conversation?"

"About what you saw on the stairs. About what's been watching you since you moved into this house." Dan leaned forward, his expression becoming serious. "You know it's not just in your head, right? You know there's something here that wants to get inside you, to become you?"

The words sent ice through Liam's veins, because they felt true in a way that transcended logic or sanity. Whatever was happening to him, whatever was causing these hallucinations, it was building toward something. Each encounter had been more intense than the last, more personal, more invasive.

"It's been learning," Dan continued, his voice taking on a hypnotic quality. "Studying you, figuring out how to get closer. First it was just sounds and movements, things you could dismiss as tricks of an old house. Then it started using voices you recognized, faces you trusted. And now..."

Dan's form flickered, just for a moment, like a television with bad reception. For a split second, Liam saw something else sitting on the bed – something tall and thin with too-long limbs and eyes that were perfectly round and utterly inhuman.

Then Dan was back, solid and real and smiling that easy smile.

"Now it's learned to make you doubt your own perceptions. Pretty clever, don't you think? Make you believe you're crazy, that nothing supernatural is happening, that all your experiences are just stress-induced hallucinations. That way, when it finally makes its move, you won't even trust yourself enough to fight back."

Liam's hands were shaking as he backed away from the doorway. This wasn't Dan. This had never been Dan. Whatever was in that room, wearing his brother's face and voice, it was the same thing that had called to him from the stairs, the same presence that had scratched at his bedroom door.

"Don't run," Dan said, and now his voice carried that same commanding edge that Chloe's had held the night before. "We're just getting started. I have so much more to show you."

But Liam was already moving, stumbling backward down the hallway toward the stairs. Behind him, he could hear Dan laughing – not the warm, familiar sound of his brother's amusement, but something colder and more calculating.

"You can't run from yourself forever, Liam," the voice called after him. "And that's all I am now – just another part of you. Another voice in your head. Another memory that might or might not be real."

Liam reached the top of the stairs and looked back. The spare room door was closed, and no light spilled from beneath it. The hallway was empty and silent, exactly as it had been that morning when he'd discovered Dan's absence.

But as he stood there, breathing hard and trying to process what he'd just experienced, one detail from the encounter stuck in his mind like a splinter.

Dan had mentioned a six-pack of Budweiser. The same beer they'd supposedly shared two nights ago, the same brand his brother always brought when they hung out.

But Liam had never told anyone about that detail. Not Chloe, not his mother, not even himself in his conscious thoughts. It was just a small, insignificant part of what he'd believed was a stress-induced hallucination.

So how had the thing wearing Dan's face known about the beer?

How had it known something that existed only in Liam's supposedly fabricated memory?