Three adult men literally sitting around a campfire telling scary stories. Like boys trying to one-up each other, but a lot more half-assed and self-conscious because these are men in their late forties now, their college days—when they met—so miniscule in the rear view mirror as to be nonexistent. Three men who crossed paths decades ago, stumbled upon one another chasing women, booze and drugs and more booze and more drugs, just barely passing classes, you know how it is. Still stay in touch, meet up every few years to go camping, car camping usually, nothing too intense these days, harder to coordinate schedules from different states, harder to find the time with wives and kids and stalled careers and houses that shouldn’t be falling apart this soon but are.

“My grandpa swore this was true. He lived at a military base when he was a kid, his family did, in Montana, I want to say. Or Wyoming? Middle of nowhere, basically, is the point. This was the Great Depression, when FDR had been setting up all those projects, whatever they were called, it’s an acronym…”

“CCC.”

“Civilian Conservation Corps.”

“That’s it. They established one near their base, I guess.” He’s rushing the story. This is embarrassing, right? To be this old and doing shit like this? A pathetic attempt to, what, recapture lost youth? He can’t even make eye contact with the other two while he’s telling it, that’s how ridiculous this feels.

“Anyway there were these two guys in charge of setting it up, living in a couple cabins—shacks basically—kind of out in the mountains a few miles from the base, making trails for state parks or something. That was supposed to be their job. They’d been routing supplies through their camp, and I guess one day the soldiers realized they hadn’t heard anything from these guys in a while, so they went to check on them.” He stops for a dramatic pause in the form of a sober drink of non-alcoholic beer, while the other two are drinking beer beer. Rehab was a whole, torturous thing for him. This is the first of these camping trips he’s had to do clean.

“So they finally get out to check on them and find both of these guys dead in their cabins. They’d starved, pretty much, or I guess died of thirst first. And for no reason, is the thing. Doors unlocked, unobstructed. They could have left at any time to get more supplies, food, water, like they’d been doing. They just straight up didn’t leave for some reason. Or thought they couldn’t.”

“So what happened?”

“Nobody ever figured it out. Except they found two notes, one in each cabin. On one piece of paper one of the guys had written: He’s out there. And the other note the other guy had written: He’s in here.”

“Creepy shit.”

“Right? He’s out there; he’s in here. What does it mean? Total mystery, never solved.”

They’re all a little embarrassed now, clearing their throats, eager to move on. There’s no cell signal. They didn’t bring enough beer, non-alcoholic or otherwise. They’ve already spent the last two days catching up. There’s nothing else to catch up about.

“I’ve got a weird one.”

“Let’s hear it, man.”

“So you remember that photo we took of ourselves in college? We put a camera on a timer and set it on the hood of a car, so it’s kinda tilted. We’re like standing in front of our house. We got it printed and framed and hung it on the wall, like idiots.”

“Yep.”

“I remember.”

“Okay so five or six months ago I was going through an old box of stuff in the closet looking for something, and I found that picture,” he pulls out his phone, scrolling. “But, I don’t know, it’s fucked up. Okay, here it is. I swear I didn’t manipulate this in any way, or do anything to it. And I didn’t send it to you at the time because honestly it creeped me out and I wasn’t in the right headspace to figure out what the deal was.”

He shows them the photo of the photo. Everything is exactly how they remember it: Three 21-year-old shitheads, disheveled with bad haircuts, ratty clothes, ugly macho postures, posing in front of their semi-dilapidated house with shockingly cheap rent. Except there’s a fourth guy this time, in between them, his arms hung around their shoulders.

“I’m not losing my mind, right? This guy was not in the picture we took.”

“Who the hell is he?” They’re squinting hard in the dark. He just looks like another one of them, to put it plainly. Like he could have been a fourth roommate. But there was no fourth roommate. It was always just the three of them.

“I have absolutely no memory of this dude. I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

It’s quiet for a few beats before the third one, the only one who hasn’t told a story yet says, “I have, actually.” It’s immediately clear to the other two, looking at him, that he’s unsettled, maybe even terrified, maybe sick to his stomach. He might even be shaking, or it could be a trick of the dancing flames. “I’ve seen this man two times before tonight.”

He clicks his tongue, stalling, and then. “I’ve never told anybody this story but one time when I was a kid, just old enough that my folks could start leaving me home alone, I looked out the back window and there was a man just standing in the yard behind our house. He didn’t necessarily appear… menacing or anything, but there was something not good about him, and I could just… strongly sense, I guess? Like I knew that if I stopped looking at him, if I let him out of my field of vision at all, he would come into our house and hurt me. So we just stared at each other—me and this stranger in my backyard—without moving for, like, hours.” He knocks back a gulp of beer, empties the bottle.

“When my parents got home he was gone, vanished, but I’d pissed myself and I was starving. But I couldn’t explain any of this to them, I didn’t know how. I was just a boy. God as my witness, it’s that same guy in the photo. I don’t know how, but that’s him. That’s one hundred percent him.”

“Bullshit.”

“I swear it.” All three of them turn back to the photo on the phone. The crackle of the shifting fire, an owl hooting in the distance. The stranger staring back at them. In his mind, whenever he remembers that day at his house, the man in the yard was as old as his father was. But looking at him again now, all these years later, he was basically just a kid. They were all just kids, reckless, selfish, having fun. How can both things be true?

They turn back to the storyteller. “Ok, so what was the second time?”

He swallows hard, looks up at the stars. “That’s the thing: I already told you.”

“Fuck off. You said you saw this guy two times before. So, once in your backyard, and then what’s the second.”

“You weren’t listening. I already told you. It’s in the story. He’s in there. Right there. Think about it.”

The three middle-aged men sit in silence, thinking about it, their thoughts gradually unwinding, becoming shapeless, dissipating into the night one by one. They go through the story in their minds over and over, searching, trying to solve something unsolvable, like lost little boys trying to remember how they got here. Their families back home, responsibilities, bills, expectations, routines, all of it slipping from them. There is nothing to hold onto.

The fire eventually goes out. The sun rises to reveal no car, no tents, no them, no evidence they were ever there at all. The beginning and ending of this story lose their definition until only an ever-present middle remains, echoing soundlessly into the wilderness.