The Nightmare Architect

The Other Nathaniel

I broke every speed limit between Decatur and Eli's apartment building, phone pressed to my ear the entire drive, calling a number that rang and rang without ever going to voicemail. Dr. Shaw's book sat on the passenger seat, still open to the page she'd shown me, its diagrams catching the streetlights every time I ran one, her insistence on coming along still ringing in my ears from twenty minutes earlier.

He wasn't home. His car was still in the lot, keys and wallet sitting on the kitchen counter where he always left them, phone plugged into the charger by his bed with three missed calls from me lighting the screen. No sign of a struggle. No broken glass, no overturned furniture, nothing that looked like a fight.

Just an open door and an empty apartment.

I checked the bathroom, the closet, even the space under his bed, some part of me refusing to believe an empty apartment could actually be empty until I'd looked in every corner of it myself. His badge for the cafe sat propped against the coffee maker where he left it every morning before his shift, laminate catching the kitchen light. I picked it up and turned it over in my hand like it might tell me something his absence couldn't.

I called Marcus next, hands shaking hard enough that I dropped the phone once before I got it steady.

"He's not answering, and he's not home," I said. "Has anyone seen him at the tower?"

"Nate, slow down. Who?"

"Eli. My brother. He works the ground floor cafe, you know him, you've said hello to him a hundred times."

"Nate, I'm not messing with you right now. I need you to actually hear what I'm about to say."

"Just tell me."

A pause on the other end that lasted a half second too long. "Man, your brother doesn't work here. I would've mentioned that six months ago when you started."

The ground dropped out from under me.

"What are you talking about? He works the cafe on the ground floor. He's the one who got me this job in the first place."

"Nate." Marcus's voice had gone careful, the tone people use with someone they're worried might be cracking. "I've worked the front desk two years. There's no cafe on the ground floor. There never has been. There's a mail room and a fitness center. That's it. I don't know what you think you remember, but it isn't in this building."

I stood in the middle of my brother's apartment holding a phone that suddenly felt like it belonged to someone else's life, staring at a framed photo on the wall of the two of us at a Falcons game, his arm slung over my shoulder, both of us grinning like idiots. Real. Undeniably real. I could remember the smell of the stadium that day, the beer he spilled on my jacket, the way he'd argued with a stranger three rows down about a bad call, the whole ride home spent laughing about it.

None of that made sense next to what Marcus had just told me.

I pulled up my own texts with Eli, scrolling back months, years, every ordinary conversation about rent and groceries and our mother's birthday, all of it sitting right there in black and white with timestamps that couldn't have been faked overnight. I held the phone up like Marcus could see it through the line, then remembered he couldn't, and set it down again, hands still shaking.

"You're wrong," I said, quieter than I meant to. "You're wrong, or something's making you wrong."

"Nate, I need you to breathe for a second and think about what you're saying."

"I'm telling you I have a brother, Marcus. I've had a brother my entire life. You don't get to tell me that's not true because a badge and a paycheck don't line up with whatever you remember."

"I'm not telling you what's true. I'm telling you what I remember, and right now those two things don't match, and that scares the hell out of me too."

"Then help me find him instead of arguing with me about whether he exists."

"I'm trying. I swear to you I'm trying. Just tell me where you're headed and I'll meet you there."

My phone buzzed with a text before I could ask him anything else. Same unknown number from the night before, the Georgia area code neither of us recognized.

you keep looking for someone i already have. come to thirteen and i'll give him back the way you remember him. or don't, and i'll give the whole city a version of your brother that only exists in your head. see which one you can tell apart.

I read it three times before the words fully landed.

Somewhere behind that message, buried under threat and mockery both, was a question I couldn't answer standing alone in an empty apartment. If Marcus was right, if Eli had never worked in that building, then who had I been talking to every night for the last six months. Whose voice had been on the phone twenty minutes ago, warm and familiar, saying my name the exact way my brother always said it, with that same half exasperated warmth he'd had since we were kids. I tried to picture a version of my life without him in it and couldn't hold the image together for more than a second before it fell apart.

And if Eli was real, if the photo on the wall and the memory of that Falcons game and every conversation we'd ever had actually happened the way I remembered them, then something in that tower had just taken him and was daring me to prove which version of the truth I trusted more.

I called our mother next, hands still shaking, and made up some excuse about Eli's phone dying so she wouldn't panic before I knew anything worth panicking over. She asked if we were still coming to Sunday dinner. I told her we wouldn't miss it, and hated myself a little for how easy the lie came out, steady and calm, exactly the voice I used to use assuring investors a project was on schedule when it wasn't.

I grabbed my keys and headed for the door, phone still warm in my hand from the call I hadn't wanted to end.

Behind me, faint enough that I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it, Eli's phone lit up on the charger with an incoming call from a contact labeled simply: Nate.

I hadn't dialed it.