That’s when I saw the faded yellow envelope lying in the seat next to me.

I froze like I had just woken up next to a rattlesnake. I knew what it was without opening it. The similarity of the envelope was part of it—that same old, dried-out looking paper that looked like it had been sitting somewhere for decades before being delivered to me. But it was more than that. It was like I could sense or somehow dimly recall that there were more writings inside.

Forcing myself to pick up the envelope, I felt the shift of paper inside as I looked around the car for any sign of who might have left this while I slept. The only other passengers were a teenaged couple that were looking at something on the girl’s cell phone. Grasping the envelope tightly, I walked back to them, shifting my weight with the subtle sway of the rails as I went. They looked up at the same time, their expressions slightly frightened and wary as I asked them if they had seen anyone leave me the envelope.

The boy shook his head while the girl muttered no, they had not seen anything, and then they both went back to studying her phone. I wanted to ask more, but I could tell they were ignoring me out of some sort of anxiety, not rudeness, and I didn’t want to worry them more by being the strange man that kept bugging them with odd questions. So I reluctantly went back to my seat and opened up the envelope.

I recognized our handwriting right away. The tone, however, was much different this time. It was describing events that took place several days after the last entry from Alexi, and this time the writer identified himself as Brian. Much like me, he had mixed memories of both men, and much like me, he found himself increasingly unable to distinguish one from the other as his nightmares grew more real and vivid.

Unlike me, he’d had to watch as some of our friends were killed.

Shortly after Alexi’s last entry, military came into the town and began dividing people into groups. The first divide was between people that worked at the plant and those that didn’t. Brian, still appearing to be Alexi to everyone else, was placed in the plant worker group. This group was then divided into those that had participated in hunting parties for the monster or otherwise made official reports of seeing strange things, and those that hadn’t. This wasn’t said, of course, but Brian remembered enough of Alexi’s life to figure it out quickly.