Chapter 5: The Forgetting Sickness

Chapter 5: The Forgetting Sickness

They fled the locker room in a state of shared, silent shock. Alex shoved the desiccated moth and the horrifying Polaroid into his pocket, the slick surface of the photo feeling like a patch of cold, dead skin against his leg. They didn't speak as they burst out of the gym's heavy doors, gulping in the humid afternoon air as if they’d been holding their breath for a year. The familiar, oppressive smell of Burberry felt like a reprieve.

“It’s just a trick,” Alex said finally, his voice thin and unconvincing. They were halfway down the block, their hurried steps just shy of an all-out run. “Louis must have set it up. A trick locker. He saw us go in, saw you put the card in, and swapped it for that other stuff.”

Jason didn't answer. He was pale, his gaze fixed on the cracked sidewalk ahead. He was clutching the empty plastic sleeve that had once held his Charmander, his knuckles white.

“It has to be,” Alex insisted, more for his own benefit than Jason’s. “The photo… it’s just some old picture of a kid who looks like you. A crazy coincidence.”

“He had my teeth,” Jason whispered, his voice trembling. “The gap. My mom calls it my ‘whistle-stop.’”

The childish name, spoken in a tone of utter dread, sent a fresh wave of ice through Alex’s veins. They walked the rest of the way to Jason’s house in a heavy, suffocating silence.

The change began the very next morning.

When Alex knocked on Jason’s door, his friend didn’t bound out with a comic book or a new video game strategy. He opened the door slowly, looking like he hadn’t slept. There were dark, bruised-looking circles under his eyes, and the usual spark of nerdy enthusiasm was gone, replaced by a dull, anxious haze.

“Hey,” Alex said, trying to sound normal. “Want to go down to the creek?”

“I guess,” Jason mumbled, not meeting his eyes.

The day felt wrong. Jason was quiet, withdrawn. He’d jump at small noises—a car backfiring, a dog barking—and would constantly be looking over his shoulder. The easy, comfortable chatter that had become the soundtrack to Alex’s summer was gone, replaced by long, awkward silences.

“I had a bad dream last night,” Jason said suddenly, as they sat on the muddy bank of the creek.

“Yeah?” Alex asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

“It was dark,” Jason said, his gaze distant. “I was in a small room. The walls were wet stone. And I could hear this sound… like… like paper being crumpled. Or dry leaves skittering.” He shivered despite the heat. “I was trying to scream, but no sound came out. I just kept screaming into the silence.”

Alex felt the cold weight of the Polaroid in his pocket. He didn’t need to see the picture to know that Jason was describing the room where the terrified boy—his double—had been cowering. The locker hadn’t just shown them a picture; it had planted a seed of that horror directly into Jason’s mind.

The true, insidious nature of the locker’s influence revealed itself two days later. They were in Alex’s room, trying to distract themselves with a stack of old Cosmic Crusaders comics.

“Man, this is the best one,” Alex said, holding up issue #37. “The Zorg reveal. I still can’t believe they made him Commander Comet’s brother.”

Jason squinted at the cover, a flicker of confusion on his face. “Commander who?”

Alex laughed, but it came out as a nervous bark. “Commander Comet? The main guy? Leader of the Crusaders? Your favorite?”

Jason’s brow furrowed in genuine concentration. “Oh. Right. Yeah… him.” He said the name with no recognition, like a word in a foreign language he’d just learned. He looked down at the comic, at the hero he had once been able to draw from memory, and his expression was completely blank.

A cold dread began to seep into Alex. “Jason, what’s Commander Comet’s catchphrase?”

It was a question with an answer so obvious it was laughable. They’d shouted it at each other a hundred times. Jason looked up, his eyes clouded with a frustrating fog. “I… I don’t remember.”

“‘To the stars and beyond the void!’” Alex said, his voice rising with a frantic edge. “Come on, man, you know that.”

“Yeah,” Jason said quietly, looking away. “I guess I just forgot.”

But it wasn’t forgetting. Forgetting was when a fact was misplaced, waiting to be found. This was different. This was a hole. A clean, empty space where something vital used to be. Alex watched in horror as the foundation of their friendship, their shared love for this silly, colorful world, crumbled into dust before his eyes.

The forgetting got worse. It was like a sickness, a slow, creeping blight that started at the edges of Jason’s life and began to work its way inward.

They went to the corner store for slushies, their usual ritual. Jason, who always got the same thing, stood staring at the machine, his face a mask of confusion.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.

“I don’t remember which one I like,” Jason said, his voice small and laced with a dawning panic.

“Blue Raspberry Blitz,” Alex said immediately. “You always get Blue Raspberry Blitz. You say it tastes like ‘victory.’”

“Oh.” Jason got the blue slushy, but he drank it without his usual glee. When Alex asked him how it was, he just shrugged. “It’s fine. Just cold and sweet.” The specific, treasured taste of his favorite treat, the memory of that simple joy, had been scooped out of him, leaving only a bland, generic sensation behind.

The breaking point came on a Thursday afternoon. Alex was trying desperately to anchor his friend, to fight the encroaching fog by reminding Jason of himself. He was talking about their bike race to Miller’s Pond, and a memory surfaced.

“Remember when you told me about learning to ride your bike?” Alex asked. “The one with the yellow streamers? You said your dad let go and you panicked and crashed right into Mrs. Henderson’s prize-winning roses.”

Jason smiled, a faint, watery version of his old grin. “Yeah… I remember that story.”

“You scraped your knee up real bad, but you were so proud you’d gone ten feet by yourself that you didn’t even cry.”

Jason’s smile faded. He looked down at his hands. “My dad told me that story,” he said quietly.

“No, man, you told me,” Alex insisted. “You remembered it.”

“I remember him telling me,” Jason clarified, his voice flat and detached. “I can picture him telling me in the kitchen. But… I can’t… I can’t feel it. I can’t remember the handlebars, or the feeling of the pedals, or the roses.” He looked up at Alex, and his eyes were filled with a terrifying, hollow emptiness. “It’s like… it’s a story about some other kid. A kid in a photo.”

Alex felt the world tilt. The locker wasn’t just stealing memories. It was stealing the feeling of them. It was turning Jason’s life into a collection of secondhand stories, draining the color and emotion until all that was left was a faded, black-and-white outline. It was erasing him, piece by piece, from the inside out. His personality, his joys, his fears, his very identity—all of it was being methodically consumed, fed to the silent, hungry thing in that numberless locker.

Alex stared at his friend—this stranger who looked like his friend—and the full, horrifying truth crashed down on him. This wasn't a curse you could break or a ghost you could fight. This was a meticulous, patient act of annihilation.

He thought of Louis Alistair’s knowing, predatory smile. He thought of Neil the janitor’s eyes, filled not with fear for himself, but with a terrible, helpless pity. Neil knew. Neil had seen this happen before.

A new resolve, cold and sharp as a shard of glass, formed in Alex’s gut. Denial was useless. Trying to remind Jason of who he was was like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. He needed answers. He needed a weapon. And there was only one person in this whole rotten town who might have them.

He had to find the janitor. He had to make him talk. Before there was nothing left of Jason to save.