I Was My Twin’s Imaginary Friend

My parents never mentioned siblings. My childhood bedroom was quiet, with toys spread neatly across the shelves, untouched by another set of hands. I had no memories of playmates, no scuffles over toys, no shared birthday cakes. Just me. And the silence.

But for the past three months, I’d been dreaming about someone.

It started subtly. A feeling. A presence. I’d wake up with the sense that someone had just whispered my name. I brushed it off as stress. But then the dreams got more vivid.

In the dreams, I was in my childhood home. But it wasn’t exactly the same. The hallway was longer, darker. The doors didn’t lead where they should. And always, there was him. A boy who looked like me—but not quite. His eyes were deeper, almost sunken. His skin paler. He smiled like he knew something I didn’t.

“I’ve missed you,” he’d say, every time. “Why did you leave me?”

I’d wake drenched in sweat, my own voice caught in my throat.

I didn’t recognize him, but at the same time… I did.

It was on a rainy Sunday afternoon when I finally brought it up to my mother.

We were clearing out the attic of the house I grew up in. They were moving to a smaller place, and I was helping box up old memories.

“Did I ever have an imaginary friend?” I asked casually, brushing dust off an old board game.

She paused mid-reach. “What brought that up?”

I shrugged. “Been having weird dreams. There’s this boy… looks like me. He keeps saying I left him behind.”

She laughed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Kids make things up all the time. Maybe your mind’s just pulling from something you saw when you were little.”

But she changed the subject quickly. Too quickly.

I watched her walk to the far corner of the attic and open an old chest. Her hands trembled just slightly.

Later that night, after my parents went to bed, I went back to the attic alone.

The rain tapped against the roof like fingers. I clicked on the flashlight on my phone and returned to the chest.

Inside were photo albums. I flipped through them slowly. Birthdays. School plays. Vacations. My childhood was well-documented. I even found a photo of me in the backyard, blowing out the candles on a dinosaur-themed cake.

But as I turned the page, I froze.

There was a photograph—me, age six, at the zoo. Standing beside me… was him. The boy from my dreams.

Except his face was scratched out. Deep gouges where the photo had been scraped, as if someone had tried desperately to erase him.

My stomach turned.

I flipped frantically through the rest of the album. More scratched faces. Always beside me. Sometimes holding my hand. Sometimes looking at the camera. And in one, looking directly at me.

The next morning, I confronted my mother.

“I found the album. Who is he?”

She went pale.

“You weren’t supposed to find that,” she whispered. “We tried… to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” I demanded.

She sat down slowly at the kitchen table. Her hands clutched a mug she hadn’t yet poured. “You had a twin brother. His name was Eli.”

My head spun.

“He died when you were seven. It was… sudden. He was sick. There was nothing we could do.”

My heart raced. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“You… forgot him,” she said softly. “After the funeral, you stopped talking about him. It was like he disappeared from your mind completely. The therapist said it might be a way for your mind to protect itself. And we… we didn’t want to reopen the wound.”

“But I’m dreaming about him now,” I said. “He keeps saying I left him.”

She looked at me, her eyes full of tears. “He used to say that you were his imaginary friend. That he could only see you. That’s what scared us. Sometimes, we didn’t know if he was real or not.”

I sat down, stunned.

“Are you saying I… I was his imaginary friend?”

She nodded. “That’s why the therapist thought your mind erased it all. You switched roles in your head. You buried the trauma so deep, you forgot who you were.”

I barely slept that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him—Eli. Standing at the edge of the woods behind our childhood home.

“I waited for you,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you come?”

The next day, I returned to the house alone. My parents were out running errands. I felt drawn to the woods, like something inside me needed to go there.

The trees were skeletal in the early spring, their branches like claws scratching at the sky. I followed a barely visible path, the one I used to explore as a child. And then, I saw it—a small clearing, and in the center, a stone.

A gravestone.

Covered in moss and half-sunken into the earth.

Eli Thomas Graves

2000 – 2007

Beloved Son and Brother

I fell to my knees.

As I touched the stone, the air shifted. It got colder. The silence pressed in around me like a vacuum.

And then I heard it.

“I didn’t want to be alone.”

I turned. Eli stood at the edge of the clearing. He looked the same as in the dreams—pale, gaunt, eyes too deep.

“I waited,” he said. “Every day. I thought you’d come.”

“I didn’t remember,” I whispered. “They didn’t tell me. I didn’t know you were real.”

“You were my best friend,” he said. “But you left me. You forgot.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Eli. I didn’t mean to. I swear.”

He tilted his head. “It’s okay. You’re here now.”

And then he smiled. But it wasn’t right. It was too wide. Too sharp.

When I woke up, I was in the clearing, the gravestone beside me. It was dark. I checked my phone—10:27 PM. I’d lost nearly six hours.

I stumbled home, shaken to my core.

Over the next few weeks, the dreams got worse.

Eli no longer spoke. He stared. Watching me. Following me. I’d catch glimpses of him in mirrors, reflections in puddles, even in glass storefronts. He’d be standing behind me, unmoving.

Once, I woke to find muddy footprints on the floor leading from my bedroom window to the side of my bed.

I lived on the second floor.

I started researching childhood trauma, dissociative identity disorder, shared hallucinations. Nothing fit. No explanation gave me peace.

Then I got an idea.

I dug deeper into family records. Old hospital bills, insurance forms, even local news archives.

That’s when I found it.

A newspaper clipping from 2007. A tragic headline: “Boy Found Dead in Woods—Twin Brother Claims ‘He Wasn’t Real’”

The article described how Eli’s body had been discovered days after he went missing. No signs of trauma. The official cause: exposure. But the last paragraph chilled me.

“The surviving twin, whose name is being withheld, insisted that Eli was never real. ‘He was just someone I made up,’ the boy told authorities. ‘He came from the mirror.’”

I don’t remember saying that. I don’t remember any of it.

But I believe it now.

Eli wasn’t imaginary.

I was.

I think I was the part of him that kept him company. The voice in his head. The “twin” no one else could see. And somehow, when he died… I became real.

Or I thought I did.

Now, everything feels wrong.

Sometimes, I catch glimpses of myself in reflective surfaces… and I’m not quite me. My reflection smiles when I don’t. Moves when I stay still.

Last night, I saw Eli again. Only this time, he looked like me. Not just similar. Identical. He wore my clothes. Had my haircut. My scar on the eyebrow. And he whispered:

“It’s my turn now.”

This morning, I looked in the mirror.

And I didn’t recognize the person staring back.

He blinked after I did.

And smiled.