Matt

Or it pretended to.

We drove home.

We dumped sand out of our boots and dust out of the truck.

We told people it had been a weird trip, without going into details.

We half-joked about it for a while, turning it into a story we could tell at parties, smoothing over the edges.

Miguel moved on from his breakup.

Ryan started planning the next trip, this time to the coast.

I went back to work, back to my apartment, back to my routines.

For a while, I convinced myself that what had happened was a combination of weird coincidences, bad navigation, and sun-fried brains.

That the voices had been illusions of sound.

That the Polaroids were some elaborate joke left by other campers.

That the tracks had been deformed by the wind.

The human mind is really good at building a fence between normal and unacceptable and locking the latter away.

Then the dream started.

I'd wake up on the floor of that hut, dirt in my mouth, the symbol carved into the wall pulsing like it was alive.

i'd hear my mom calling me from outside then my brother's voice then miguel's then my own overlapping and twisting until i couldn't tell which was which i'd dream i was sitting by the fire at our campsite only the chairs were all empty

I'd feel eyes on me from just beyond the light.

When I turned to look, there would be a camera where Ryan should have been, clicking on its own.

Snap, snap, snap.

Each time a Polaroid would slide out and drift toward the fire, curling in the heat.