They Call It the Forest of Forgotten Things

Everyone in Merrow knows to stay away from the forest once the mist rolls in. It doesn’t creep like ordinary fog. It coils. Slithers. Breathes. My brother, Caleb, thought that was just local folklore. He thought he was smarter than stories.

He went into the Forest of Forgotten Things last Tuesday.

He didn’t come back.

At first, no one panicked. People vanish in Merrow. Sometimes for days. But they always come back with missing time, hollow eyes, or a stubborn inability to remember their own name. But Caleb... Caleb was different. He was the anchor in my life. Sharp-minded, grounded. A skeptic in a town drunk on old legends.

I waited three days. Then I packed a bag and went in.

The forest is older than Merrow, older than maps. Even the birds avoid its canopy. Each step felt muffled, like I was walking in someone else’s dream. I passed things half-buried in moss—a typewriter, a red shoe, a child’s tricycle. All covered in time.

Forgotten things.

I almost turned back when I saw the camera.

It was Caleb’s. A cracked Nikon with our initials carved into the leather strap. I reached for it, but before I could touch it, a whisper brushed my ear.

"He remembered. That's why we took him."

I spun around. No one. Just trees. The air vibrated like a struck chord. I stuffed the camera in my bag and kept moving.

I found Caleb by a pond that shimmered like oil. He was sitting on a stone, his back straight, his eyes vacant. When I called his name, he turned slowly, like he hadn’t heard that name in years.

"Are you real?" he asked.

I ran to him. Hugged him. He didn’t hug back.

"They tried to make me forget," he said.

"Forget what?"

He reached into his coat and pulled out a yellowed notepad. Scribbles covered every inch. Words crossed out, rewritten, circled. Symbols I didn’t recognize. But one phrase repeated over and over:

**"Memory is a map. But the map is not the place."

"They live in the spaces people forget," Caleb murmured. "They feed on it. The more we forget, the stronger they become."

"Who?" I asked.

"The Hollow." He looked up. "Don’t say their name out loud. Names are anchors. They don't like being remembered."

I laughed nervously. "Is this a game? Some kind of immersive art experiment?"

He stared at me, cold and lucid. "Does this feel like a game to you?"

We walked for hours. Caleb refused to speak unless necessary. He avoided certain trees, whispered apologies to broken objects, and flinched every time I tried to ask about the Hollow.

As the sun faded, the forest came alive.

We saw others.

People, maybe. Faces with no features. Figures made of blur and shadow. They stood just beyond our vision, unmoving. Watching.

"Ignore them," Caleb whispered. "They're lost thoughts. Fragments. They want to be remembered so they can become real again. If you acknowledge them, they follow."

I closed my eyes. Walked faster.

We reached the edge of the forest just before dawn. I could see Merrow in the distance—the old radio tower blinking, the gas station lights flickering like a lifeline.

"We’re not done," Caleb said.

"We made it out."

"I didn’t. Not all of me. They kept something."

I opened my mouth to speak, but he handed me a small box. It pulsed with warmth.

"Bury this where no one will find it. And forget it ever existed."

"What is it?"

"A memory. My last one. They can’t feed on what’s sealed away."

He stepped back into the mist.

"Caleb, no!"

"I came out once," he said. "But not alone."

And then he was gone.

It’s been six months. I buried the box deep in the old cemetery, beneath the headstone of a man no one remembers. Sometimes I hear whispers in my sleep. Sometimes I dream of that forest and wake up with mud on my shoes.

But I never go back.

Some things are meant to be forgotten.

And some things remember you.