Impostor (2022)

On a fall morning a couple of years ago, I met up with Chris, who was my freshman roommate at the private university I attended just for that one year. We were both in-state residents, but neither of us knew anyone else who was going to the school. So we had just been randomly assigned one another through whatever process the school used to place roommates. We couldn't have been more different. I was majoring in theater.

and I spent most of my time outside of class, either in rehearsal or in the campus library. While he was majoring in something related to construction management, spent most of his free time drinking heavily at the numerous just-off-campus parties, and had been a barrel racer in high school, which he had had to explain to me was a horse-based activity and not one involving going down a river in a barrel faster than other barrels. Despite these differences, though,

We managed to become odd friends. He introduced me to the thrills and chills of ice hockey, and I think I introduced him to the idea of Shakespeare being valuable for something beyond just inspiring The Lion King. Like I said, I stopped attending after a year and I lost track of Chris. I think we were both bad at keeping in touch with people in that way that seems, unfortunately, really common for men in their early 20s.

He wasn't the first one I'd lost connection with, and unfortunately, he wasn't the last either. Years and years later, though, after I had settled down a little bit and started trying to take stock of my life and the people in it, On a lark one night, I reached out to him on Facebook. He didn't respond until the next evening, but when he did, he seemed genuinely pleased to hear from me.

We exchanged a few messages back and forth, and I found out he was back in his hometown, up in the mountains a few hours from me. He asked if I wanted to meet up halfway and get a drink or some coffee, and he named a day. Told him sure. Let's do it. The place where we met up on that fall afternoon was Bland and Focus Group.

In the way that so many coffee places seem to have started to become in these last few years, but the chai latte I ordered tasted fine, and the corner chair I occupied was surprisingly comfortable. When I had walked in, Chris had stood up and hugged me with a big smile crossing his tanned face. He looked healthy in a weekend hiker sort of way. And our conversation flowed naturally enough that I was surprised to realize...

Almost two hours had passed with us talking about the places we'd traveled, the discography of a post-rock band we'd both seen on tour, and the finer points of maintaining a backyard garden. I can't remember how he came up. But near the end of our time together, Chris's face had darkened after mentioning something about his brother Michael. I had actually met Michael before when he, along with their parents, had visited Chris for Thanksgiving that...

freshman year and insisted that I join them at the fancy restaurant they'd chosen. I had liked Michael in those hours we'd spent together. In a lot of ways, he was a lot closer to me in temperament and interests than Chris. We had never spoken after that, though. He was four or five years older than Chris or I, and he had seemed to be constantly busy with a career at a non-profit. With as much delicacy as I could manage, I had asked Chris if something had happened with Michael.

And Chris had said, no, not really. His brother was fine. And he trailed off. I tried to take the hint and tried to change the subject. Maybe start winding down the conversation, but... Chris had leaned in and looked at me with this intensity that I couldn't ever remember seeing in him before. After a long beat, he said, Something happened to Mike. He's different. I asked him what he meant. And he asked me if he could tell me something crazy. I said, sure. And Chris told me that...

Michael had done a solo hike to one of the more remote peaks in the state, and something had happened while on that hike. That's what he said. Something had happened. Something? I had probed lightly and Chris said, I don't think it's him. I think Michael is still on that mountain. What do you mean? Like...

Body snatchers? I had asked him without trying to sound like I was making fun of him, because I wasn't. It was just the first similar thing I could think of. I guess, he said, I have never seen it. It was like, he looks the same, he has all the same features and little details, and he sounds the same, but it's not him. I just kind of looked at Chris.

Eventually, I asked him, what do you think happened? But by then he had moved on. Maybe he was embarrassed he'd brought it up. I don't know, but the conversation wrapped up...

pretty quickly after that. He hugged me again when we got outside the cafe. It was a strong, genuine hug that somehow made me feel like this might be the last time we saw each other. I still had plenty of questions about his bizarre admission, but I didn't want to pry further at something that clearly was bothering him. Maybe it was that there was something going on between him and his brother interpersonally?

I couldn't begin to guess what. I also didn't know if this was a sign of some sort of mental illness Chris was experiencing, and I really just didn't know him well enough to suggest something like that. I drove home feeling kind of confused and helpless. Over the next few days, I couldn't get Chris's confession out of my head.

I knew I couldn't ask Chris for any more information or clarification just based on the look he'd had after telling me about it in the first place. And only having had one conversation with Michael, I couldn't try and talk to him about anything in a way that would give me a sense of if he'd become... different somehow I decided it was most likely that Chris was experiencing some sort of break with reality and I really fell for him

Imagine trying to tell someone this thing, this insane belief that someone you know isn't that person anymore, despite all appearances to the contrary. To this day, I... think Chris told me this because I wasn't a total stranger, but I also wasn't someone he was going to see again for a long time, possibly ever. And there was a freedom there, since our social webs didn't really overlap anymore.

But we still had some histories, so it was a step up from just saying that to someone you bumped into on the bus or in a grocery store line. Eventually, though, with no new information...

and things at work picking up, Chris and Michael started to fade from my mind again. A few months went by. I was having dinner with my grandmother like I did every week or two, making sure she was all right alone in her house. listening to her reminisce about people she had seen in unearthed photo albums. She had showed me a yellowed and desaturated Polaroid of a young man and a young woman leaning in front of a car, both of them dressed in the absolute peak of 1970s fashion.

This was her younger sister and that sister's ex-husband 50 or so years ago. What happened? I asked. And she said she ran away and they got divorced. Why did she run away? And my grandmother got a funny look and said, well, I was never clear on why exactly. She said that one day she realized he wasn't the same person. I felt a chill wash over me from my head down to my feet. As in, he'd changed? I asked, but she shook her head. My sister told me that it was sudden.

As if it was someone pretending to be her husband. Looking exactly the same, but acting out all the same ways of moving, saying the same words. But not him. I asked, did you see him after that? She said no, they had lived hours away, and she did everything with the divorce through lawyers, which was difficult back in those days.

She was staring at the photo. I think we all worry about that sometimes, she said. Someone being different? Being married to someone and then waking up and not recognizing them? Do you think that's what she was talking about? I asked. I'm not sure anymore. She looked at me with a strange half-smile and said, Life is so long. All kinds of things start to seem possible. That night, I was up late doing research on the internet.

Pretty quickly, I found out that the idea of loved ones being replaced by imposters, or changelings, as they're known, is fairly common in folklore, especially among Celtic peoples. Specifically, though... The most common people to be thought of as changelings in these stories were babies or young children. A parent would wake up one morning, pick up their baby, and feel deep...

inside on a level that surpassed knowledge, explanation, or reason that their child had been replaced. Stolen in the middle of the night and switched out with a replica. In a lot of the folklore, the ones making these switches are fairies or other mystical beings that live in the woods. Sometimes it's because these woods people can only grow if fed human milk.

Sometimes the impostors are actually the sick and dying of the woods people, and they're placed into a human family to receive love and care in their last days. It varies, as folklore does, but... There are also examples in even the last few centuries of people claiming that this had happened to them. I can't imagine that feeling. As a parent, you know your child better than anyone. You know their body, their smell, their...

voice, you can recognize them. And suddenly they're gone, but nobody else can tell. Nobody believes you. As a result, there are a number of changeling stories that have ended with...

a parent starving the child to death, or just killing them outright. After a little more research, I stumbled onto a paper in a scientific journal about Copgra delusion. A person with this disorder is convinced that someone in their life has been replaced by an imposter, usually a family member or close friend.

It's uncommon so it hasn't been studied enough to really pin down what causes it, but the research seemed to suggest it was often connected to schizophrenia, dementia, or brain injury of some kind. The French doctor who first noted it, Joseph Capgras, called it the illusion of doubles. He named it after treating a woman who suffered from the condition that he referred to in his paper as Madame Macabre.

She had insisted that her husband, children, and friends had all been replaced by imposters. There have been other cases since then, but most of them only had one or maybe two imposters. It's interesting, really. The same fear was explained two different ways at two different points in history. We had the folklore of changelings, and now we have a neurological disorder.

Before, we didn't know why the Changelings did what they did, and now we don't know what causes Kapkrat delusion or why. It's technically progress, just with less poetry.

I wonder how many other things are like that. I finally had to shut my computer and go to bed. I didn't want to read any more of this. Chris was suffering from a rare and bizarre neurological condition. It made total sense with what he had said, and my discomfort around Chris and his brother shifted from an uncanny feeling that something wasn't right to an anxious worry about what I could do, if anything, with this information.

The idea of taking some sort of action seemed almost impossible to me. Obviously I couldn't say anything to Chris, because I just didn't know him that well. And I didn't know anyone else in his family, even Michael, that well either. I... decided that the only hope was that he had some other support network, some other friends who he had confided in, who would do the same internet searches I had and would find the same info. What else could I do?

Once again, Chris and Michael started to fade from the list of things I thought about. Life moved on. Until about three weeks after my night of Googling.

I had just picked up groceries and I was getting gas at the station across the parking lot from the store. As I started filling up, I realized that the man on the other side of the pump was Michael. I froze for just a second. but it was long enough that he noticed me looking and his eyes met mine. There was a long moment of... Maybe it was just recognition, but it seemed like something more. Then he smiled and said my name confidently.

Oh, you remembered, I said, and we had a brief conversation about what we were up to these days, how we were doing. I mentioned that I had spoken to Chris a few weeks back, and he smiled again and... Made some pleasant remark. I can't even remember specifically what. But the conversation ended, and he finished fueling and got in his car. And I did the same. I saw him drive away, and I just...

could not shake the feeling that, yeah, he was different. I shook my head and I told myself, it's been years and years since you talked to this person. And you didn't even know him that well to begin with. Of course he's different. But I thought, no, not like that. Isn't there a quality, something intrinsic that makes a person's presence in the world?

distinct from other people's. Something that's there beneath the cosmetic, past affectation and behavior. It's in the eyes, maybe. But it doesn't change, even... even through aging and trauma and experience. Maybe you can call it the human spirit. Right? The person behind me honked and I looked up to see a green traffic light.

I stomped on the gas, jerking the car into motion again. The person behind me turned onto a side street within seconds. I decided that I had wanted to see something in Michael. I had been prompted by uncovering Chris's neurosis. That had to be it. Mind can conjure so many things, even alter what we see. But I was not.

convincing myself. Something had been off with Michael. I got home and I found myself digging through what I could of Michael's social media accounts, trying to find anything that would confirm my feeling. And Chris's feeling, I suppose, but I wasn't thinking about Chris at all by this point. After only a few minutes, I found a post about mountain climbing.

And through a conversation between Michael and one of his friends in the comments, I found the name of the specific peak where Michael had made that hike, the one that had triggered this change in Chris's mind. Now, I'm not a hiker. I used to be. years ago. Living within an hour of literally dozens of mountains led me to summit seven or eight peaks the summer I was 19. They all had trails up to the top and they didn't require any climbing prowess or equipment, just strong legs.

but then I had moved away for college, and I never picked it back up. Suddenly, though, I was pulling my old climbing boots out of my closet and trying to see how long the drive would be, if I could do it on a Saturday, or if I needed to take a day off from work.

I debated calling a friend of mine, who I knew would be game for anything outdoors related, but I immediately decided against it because it would have required explaining even a little bit of this, and I had absolutely no idea how I would go about that. Tulane Peak is one of the less popular mountains in the region, even by the standards of the super outdoors people. It's hard to get to, it's not one of the highest, it's not a particularly difficult ascent.

Its views aren't particularly beautiful or even worthwhile. It's just sort of there. So I couldn't find much advice online about this hike in particular. There was no information about trails, areas to stop along the way, anything like that. And I couldn't ask any friends who might know, obviously. So I decided I just had to do it. The drive out there took about three hours.

I left home right around sunrise on a Saturday morning, stocked full with probably even more survival gear than I needed. Water purifiers, flares, two separate GPSs, and a big hunting knife I had inherited from my grandfather and had just stashed in a drawer. As soon as I got on the road, I kept asking myself over and over what I was doing. What are you hoping to find? What do you think is going to happen? But I didn't turn around.

I thought that if I went out there and did this same uncommon hike as Michael had, maybe I would see what he had seen. If that's what had happened. The last 45 minutes or so of the drive were through dense forest on these barely paved roads that rattled my little car so much I was worried the axle might fall off. When I finally came to the end of the road, It widened out slightly into a gravel patch with a few feet of split rail fence and a worn trail marker on one side.

It was desolate, but it also seemed like the lot had been attended recently, since the weeds had been pulled and the plants on either side of the entrance to the trail weren't overgrown. I checked my phone, and I saw that I still had a cell signal. which was reassuring, so I put on sunscreen and a hat and I started up the trail. It was steep but even. Trees lining the trail made a picturesque canopy of leaves.

And since there didn't seem to be even a little wind that day, it was totally still. It was silent, too. My breathing and the gravel crunching underneath my boots was all I could hear, and it was hypnotic. When I finally decided I should stop under some shade to drink some water, it had been 45 minutes. I sat down on some boulders and I drained one of my bottles and I looked up at the sky. I finally thought...

This is a bad idea. You're not in shape for this. You could probably make it to the top and be fine, but you didn't tell anyone where you're going. So if on the off chance something does happen, no one would know where to find you. Self-preservation had kicked in and that was what finally convinced me to turn around. The way back down was even quieter than the ascent. The downward slope made my breathing much quieter, so all I had were my footsteps.

I realized that both on the way up and now on the way down, I hadn't even heard any birds. The beginning of the trail is a series of three switchbacks, two of which are shrouded by trees. I came around the last one, which has a view of the parking area, and I saw my car a few hundred feet ahead. Then I saw that there was another car parked next to it. It was just an unremarkable dark blue sedan.

something you'd look at and forget immediately. I stopped, though, just looking ahead at the cars. It wasn't unreasonable to expect someone else to be there hiking, but I hadn't passed anyone, so they must have just arrived. I squinted to see if there was anyone in the other car, and Michael came around the switchback. He smiled at me and walked right up to me without breaking his stride, even for a moment. I stood there dumbly, totally caught off guard.

He stopped just past my arm's length. Hi, he said. I nodded at him. Neither of us said anything for 10, 15 seconds. I finally asked him, what are you doing out here? He nodded slightly as if confirming something. What are you doing? He replied. We both just stared again. Despite the sweat from the hike, I felt my hands going dry and the hair standing up on my arms. I took a deep breath and I said, Chris doesn't think you're you.

What do you think? he asked me. I told him, I don't know you that well. But you thought maybe he was right. And that's why you came out here. You wanted to see if you'd find my body, or something like that. I didn't say anything to this, and so Michael continued. You don't seem like a big hiking guy, and Tulane Peak is not at the top of anybody's list.

You're out here because you believed Chris on some level that his brother is an imposter. He said all this without a hint of accusation or passion. It was like he was describing the weather. I felt myself take a step away from Michael, totally unconsciously. But there was another pause, and neither of us moved again. Eventually, I said, Is Chris right about you? I don't know how long the pause was. We both stood there on this weirdly quiet trail, just staring at each other.

He looked like I remembered him, but now I was noticing details I never had before, but not because they weren't there before, I just hadn't looked at him. Or almost anyone this closely ever. I'm not supposed to be there, he said. Back in town, I'm not a person. He looked off into the woods and kept looking. Chris was right but only partly. I'm not his brother. But I never was. I just kept staring.

I wasn't thinking anything. I was just waiting for whatever he said next. The person he remembers was still me. I don't think he's ever met his actual brother. But then, I guess, since I'm the one he grew up with, I am. I swallowed. Then what did he see after you came out here a few months ago? Michael just looked at me, taking me in. There was no friendliness, but at the same time, there was no condemnation or contempt either. I don't know why I thought of this image, but...

It felt like he had weighed me on some balance whose measurements I could never grasp, and he had decided there was no judgment to be made of me.

Why did you come back here? I eventually asked him. You should go home, he said. Everything's okay. Just don't tell Chris. Why not? I asked. Just for your own sake. Trust me. Once again, we just stared at each other. But this time, before I could think of anything to say, he gave me a little smile, and he walked past me, up the trail.

The whole drive back, I kept trying to come up with reasons why I should mention this to Chris. But eventually, I just gave up. I got home around noon, and I went to sleep. Michael was reported missing two days later after his job called his family to ask where he was. After a week, somebody saw his car at the foot of Tulane Peak and reported it, and a rescue team combed the mountains for a few days.

All they ever found was a gray windbreaker that Michael's family said they thought he had owned at one point, but didn't know if he still did and couldn't tell if it was his. There was no note. There were no bank withdrawals. Nothing that suggested he was trying to disappear or die. Nobody will find anything of Michael's, ever. I know it.

I still haven't said anything to Chris. I don't think I will, because that last time we spoke, the look in his eyes is still one that I believe means he would go to Tulane Peak. and not leave until he found Michael or died trying. See, I don't think people like Chris and I could ever find where Michael went. This way, at least, Chris has a story he can tell himself about what happened that other people are telling themselves to. He doesn't have to be alone with the truth.

being the only one who knows something is terrible I think Michael knew that