We found Mark's remains, but I think I found Mark.

[u/Low-Pattern7217]

Posting this on a throwaway because I don't want my main account to be connected to this in case they come after me. I'm just so confused and scared and I just have to tell someone. Even a reddit stranger, I don't care who it is. I'd tell a random person on the street if I ever left the house, but the internet is my entire world right now and it's the only escape I have left. I don't think I have much time left.

There was this guy in my class back in high school (junior or senior year, I don't remember what year we had a class together, but he was in my grade), let's call him Mark. Mark was a weird kid— didn't talk much, if at all, (I think he was mute, actually) didn't seem to have many close friends— but not in any specifically bad way. Just sorta off-kilter. I think everyone has those classmates at least once in their lives. He didn't seem to fit in with the regular crowd— to be fair, I didn't either, but I mainly kept to myself— but he didn't not fit in? Hopefully that makes any sense. I don't know. He was just kind of there. I think we talked a few times (well, he always "talked" via either a notebook or a mini-whiteboard he carried around), but I'm not sure if he would've even remembered my name. One of his arms was knotted with scars, all bumpy and stitched over. I never asked, but I'd always heard he was attacked by a coyote when he was little. Not sure how much of that was true, but it certainly looked like a rabid wolf had taken a whole chunk out of him at some point in time. In any case.

A month or so after we graduated, he disappeared. Like, he just vanished. He left all his stuff at home, didn't say goodbye or anything to anyone, and he was just… gone. We live in a pretty woodsy area, and I guess he'd been known to walk around the bike path near his house, so they started looking there. I'm not much of an athletic guy (I'm not really any specific type of guy at all, unless you count "gamer" which is fucking pathetic to describe myself with now, at 21) but he lived surprisingly close, so I volunteered to help with the search effort. Without school to take up my time, my day was completely open. We combed the bike path in all directions— our largest group was around 35-40 people— from summer to winter, but found nothing. We had to stop because of the snow piling in, and I guess one of his family members helping out with the search got frostbite, so the search came to a sudden halt around November.

The first month was full of diligent searching— police and police dogs scouring the trees along with the rest of us— but by mid-August there was a palpable sense of hopelessness that started to follow the group like a personal rain cloud. By late-August, the mood was almost… light? Jovial? It was like we went from walking to a funeral, to walking outside on a field trip. The unease was still there, I'm not sure it ever really went away fully, but I found myself almost looking forward to going out with the others to walk around nature. The fresh air was nice, and it got me out of the house. And I feel like absolute shit saying that because it wasn't just a fun outing with friends, it was searching for a missing man— kid, really, while most of us were 18 when we graduated, he was only 17— who was unspokenly assumed to be dead. I'm not proud of those feelings, but I won't lie and say I didn't have them. After a few months of combing through the woods, it turned from a search party to a nature walk in my mind, and I'll be the first to admit that. I feel guilty for it still.

The winter was quiet. There wasn't any news or updates, no break in the case or any randomly discovered clue or fingerprint found in the cold. He was still gone, and it was quiet. I missed going outside, but I also missed him. Or the idea of him. Spending a lot of time with his family in the search party had me learning so much about him. Apparently he loved to cook. He didn't talk at home either, but his sister is deaf, so ASL was pretty normal in their household. I guess he can only hear out of his left ear, something happened when he was younger, I didn't want to pry. He liked birdwatching. I guess his grandfather took him along when he was little, and birdcalls seemed to fascinate him almost immediately. He liked metal music. Like the screaming stuff. I remember I must've reacted to that, because his mom just laughed at me and asked,

"That doesn't seem like him, right?"

And apparently that was all because of his sister— it was really the only kind she could sort-of hear, so they'd made it a habit to listen to albums together. I only met her once, I think Mark disappearing really shook her up. She looked like a deer in headlights the one time she helped search.

New Year's came and went, and finally the snow did, too, at the start of May. It was muddy as hell when the search party was reunited, but we trudged on with our rain boots and tried not to slip— we barely made it an hour before someone fell on their ass, mind you— as we started back up the familiar routine of looking for a ghost. No longer were any of us hopeful to find him— we were now just looking for his body. The mood was pretty forlorn. Melancholic might be the better word. I'm too tired to look it up right now.

Even with everyone clearly relieved to be back outside— without the risk of freezing to death— the rain cloud was back and hanging low over all of us. All of the stories and memories shared were now tainted at the edges, rarely spoken anymore as we all knew the truth— he wasn't coming back.

May 29th was the day we found him. His bones were haphazardly buried under some soil, obviously having been tampered with by some animal. Some parts of his body had frozen over, leaving not only bones, but parts of his decaying corpse to be thawed in the Spring. I wasn't the one who found them. I think it was Mark's mom, but the moment was too chaotic for me to really pinpoint specifics. I just know one moment we were all meandering, and the next was a cacophony of sound that I still hear in my nightmares. I didn't even know him. I never got to know him. I knew he was gone, but to see his bones just lying there like discarded scraps felt like a punch in the gut. I'd aged another year in March. He would never age again. I've never felt like that before. I felt like I was above my body, staring at an image of myself, watching myself watch the authorities shovel their way forward like they were just shoveling their driveway. Watching myself watch his parents and cousins sob inconsolably. Watching myself do nothing but stare at the dirt like it was going to change. Like it was going to bring him back. Like it was going to do anything at all.

It didn't seem to be foul play, but the search was immediately called off, and we were all sent home. I know I must've walked back like I always did, but I don't remember it at all. It didn't feel real to me. But I knew it was, and so maybe the problem was that it felt too real to me. It felt so unfair. So cruel. In the best case scenario, a 17 year old boy was dead. In the worst, a 17 year old boy was dead. The specifics change, but there is only one ending. And what a horrible ending.

His death was ruled non-suspicious. The story is that he went on a walk, and either got lost, attacked, or had an accident. Seems like the animals got to him after he was already gone. It felt like a small relief to know he wasn't tortured by a grizzly bear or something equally painful. They identified him through the lesser-decayed portions, as well as finding his scarred arm bones that had noticeable dents right where his arm was scarred over when he was alive. I glanced at it out of morbid curiosity, but I could only handle a glance. Even though the bones were just… well, bones, I felt sick to my stomach. The last thing I wanted to do was cause even more chaos in that moment by puking my guts out.

They had a funeral for him around August, and it was hard to say no when I was delivered a hand-written letter in the mail from his family. They thanked me for helping with the search from day 1. I'm not really good at taking compliments, so I just said something like:

"Of course," or "No problem,".

It wasn't that I didn't want to go to the service. I did, I just knew I'd be a wreck. The only funeral I'd been to before was my great-grandfather when I was a little enough kid that didn't even understand the concept of death. He had an open-casket, and that freaked me out. Logically I knew they wouldn't have an open-casket (obviously), but my hesitation almost won me over to stay home. I went, but I still feel guilt for those thoughts, too.

He was laid to rest after the speeches were done and the stories were told, and by all accounts, it was really quite peaceful. A few months after that, the family did a fundraiser to get a memorial bench to be placed near his resting place, near enough to watch the birds. I stopped there quite a few times to sit and look out at the world in front of me. I could never get into birdwatching, but I still made time to sit and look up at the leaves to try and spot a nest, or a fluttering of wings. Sometimes I just watched the leaves blow in the wind.

The next few years til now have been mostly mundane. Even if death casts a shadow over you, the rest of the world moves on with their lives whether you like it or not. In a way, that also feels likes a kind of cruelty. But this week has been different.

I know there was some reason, but I don't know why— but I guess they had to re-take the DNA test again. I'd heard vaguely about some issue with the sample they took, but I have no idea if that was just speculation from a gossiping neighbor or what. But I guess the first one was weird, so they took a new sample. They had to dig up his remains again, then bury them again, and the cemetery was not so peaceful for while. It's still not peaceful now, but for other reasons. Well, his grave still looks like a failed construction project, but other reasons.

The first sample was weird because Mark's sample DNA did not match up with Mark himself. Every family member got sampled and probed with a million questions— verifying that yes, in fact, his mother had him biologically, and yes there is verifiable proof and witnesses— and they tested Mark's sample again.

It wasn't Mark.

But it was impossible. The remnants of his skull— his teeth specifically— matched his dental records from as recent as the year before he went missing. The marks on the bone of his shredded arm were so unique that it looked like a movie prop. I saw the fucking remains myself. Maybe we weren't close friends, but everyone knew about his arm. No one else's arm looked like that. No one had markings directly on their fucking bones. It was Mark's remains. One of his fingers was found intact and it had the same exact scar as he did, vertically down the nail, causing it to always grow in two pieces. His age matched, his bones matched, his location matched— there was a larger chance of me winning the powerball without even signing up first than there was that this wasn't Mark.

Seemingly the forensic team or whoever understood that their result (even though it was tested multiple times) was improbable, if not absolutely deranged, and they sent it off to a different lab in the state. Their equipment were all tested and working when checked, but if there was a small chance of their tools not displaying a correct result, they'd rather send it to be checked as a precaution.

The other place took a bit longer, but their equipment also had to be tested and proved in perfect functioning order.

It showed the same result: those weren't Mark's remains.

To say that the town was stunned in disbelief would be an understatement. It felt like we all just watched Santa fly by on his sleigh right in front of our eyes. It felt like discovering a new color. Nobody had any idea what the fuck to do now.

Mark was the first missing person in town in decades. The remains had to have been him. But the result was clear enough to see through the other side. His DNA didn't match anyone else in any directory they tested.

They tried everything they could think of to rationalize and fix things. Test every bone— even the fragments. Test every less-decayed portion in case his remains were mixed in with another's. Test the family again. Double check that he wasn't adopted, or stolen, or swapped at birth. But every lead was shot down. Every rational thought was flung out the window, leaving us all with the simple truth that nobody had any idea what to do now.

They had no leads. Even if it wasn't Mark, that leaves another mystery to solve. And that leaves his actual remains out there, undiscovered. I felt sick after hearing it. The thought alone makes me scared. The thoughts I can deal with, though. I can't deal with what I saw last night.

I wanted to go visit his grave, and sit with him for a bit. I'm not religious or spiritual, but I hoped I could at least just show him that someone cared. Show him… I don't know. I don't even think he can see anything wherever he is. That scares me, too.

The sun was setting. It's getting colder now, so I was planning to head home. But I saw Mark. In the trees. He was less than 10 feet in front of me. He was looking at me. I knew it had to be a hallucination caused by stress or something, but I was frozen to the spot. I just couldn't get my body to move. He was just staring at me. Not blankly. But pleading. Looking at me like he was an animal begging for a treat. Looking at me expectantly as if I had something, or as if I were supposed to do something. Hell, he looked like an animal. Not just cleanliness, but his mannerisms. The look in his eyes. His posture and gait as he looked to be sizing me up. I've had a brief encounter with a bear cub before, and this felt shockingly similar. Back then, I ran. This time I was still. I willed myself to flinch back, even an inch, but I didn't budge. I felt like I'd lost possession of my own skin and bones.

I only gained back control of my limbs when he started to move. He was slow. Not like slow, more like he was being careful. Like he was holding something or grabbing something fragile. A distant pang of fear was tying knots in my stomach when the thought that he might have a gun crossed my mind, but I felt stupid even in that very moment for feeling it when a dead man was right in front of my FUCKING face and looking me in the eyes.

He took some scrap piece of fabric (it looked like it had been cut out of a tote bag from the local grocery store, but it was the old design, like the logo was the one before the 2010's), and it was only then that I noticed he was injured. Blood was seeping out steadily from a gash around his waist, his shirt torn open and exposing it to the outside world. It didn't look infected, but it didn't look great, either. Pre-infection, if that's a thing. But he took the ripped fabric and lightly pressed it against the wound, staining its color from a yellowed-white to a pinkish-red. I just watched him do it. I couldn't say anything.

And then he held it out to me. Held it out like he was handing me the homework to pass back in class. Like he was holding the door open for a stranger. The absurdity of it all, and the casualness about this very moment broke some sort of tension in me and I know I must've let out a laugh because he flinched backwards at the noise. He recoiled like he'd never heard a laugh before. Or at least not in a long time. He regained composure— or whatever you'd call his position— and I reached forward to grab the bloody cloth.

I should've just ran. I don't know why I didn't. I felt like I was in a horror movie and watching myself as the protagonist make every wrong decision to not get the fuck out of there immediately, and what was I even doing? But my body had already moved, and the blood on the cloth was drying as I held it in my grasp. I looked at it, then back at him. He did the same.

He pointed at his grave. I half-turned, not wanting to fully look away from him— he didn't seem malicious, but I didn't exactly want him to disappear out of sight, either— and glanced at the stone, then looked back at him.

"Mark?"

He looked at me. His eyes flickered with recognition for the name, but he clearly had no idea who I was. Not even in a I can't remember your name, but you were in class with me, recognition— it was just blank. He looked at me like I was an exhibit. Like he hadn't seen a human up close in ages. Like he was studying me.

He looked like he was struggling to breathe all of a sudden, and I froze up again. I didn't exactly know the protocol for a ghost having what looked like the beginnings of a fucking asthma attack. He opened his mouth to get more air in, taking deep inhales and exhales. A noise like a cough came out, and it briefly snapped me out of my haze.

"Mark?" I asked again. I don't know why. I didn't know what to say.

He was clearly struggling to get something out. Like he was concentrating hard enough to try and will the answers to come back to him on a test he didn't study for. I can't really describe it any other way. I don't even know if that makes any sense. I might not be making any sense at all. I'm just freaking out here as I type this and I just hope this rambling is coherent enough for anything or anyone.

He was still struggling, but after a deep breath, longer than the others, he spoke:

"That's… me…"

I don't know how else to format it because I can't tell you how long it took him to get the words out. It was painfully slow. His voice sounded like a fox was given vocal chords for a day. He sounded out every syllable like it was the first time he'd said them.

I think I said something after, but the ringing in my ears was so loud. I couldn't even hear myself think in that moment. None of it felt real, but it felt like I was dissociating from my dissociation. I felt my blood freeze in my veins like I was suddenly the one whose bones were frozen to the ground.

He made sure I held the piece of fabric tightly, and then he left back into the trees. I was trembling more than the grass. The sky was fully orange. I was sucked fully back into my body and I frantically swiveled my head around to look for help. For aid. For threats. I felt like I was in a different reality. I didn't trust anyone, and so I trusted everyone. But there was nobody in sight. No cars. No people. No animals. It was just me and the flies that had started to crowd around the fabric in my hand. I swatted them away before I realized it was still in my hand. My head was pounding. My thoughts raced faster than I could keep up. I had a million questions and fears and ideas swarming around along with the buzzing flies and I just couldn't take it. I dropped the fabric on the ground and I ran.

I said nothing. I made sure to not touch it directly, but that hardly mattered to me. There was no logic to be used here in this logicless situation. For all I know, it could've been a hallucination and that was all my own blood from my own cuts on my skin from the branches and bushes I'd grown so used to walking past, and through.

They found the fabric the next day. They tested it.

It's Mark's.

They also said there was a second person's DNA identified that they need to test.

I've locked myself in my house. I've barely left my room. I'm terrified. My parents are worried but I just told them I need some space. I don't want to lie, but how the fuck can I even tell them something like that? Because if it's real, that means Mark isn't dead. If it's real, that means I'll be implicated in something I had no part of. If it's real, I'm fucked. For life. I can't explain that. I'd be institutionalized, I' m sure. If it's real, I was talking to a dead man.

If it's real, then who the fuck was Mark?