12 Jun The Death of Matthew Brahm

Subject: What Happened to Matthew Brahm: The Truth About His Death
Author: [Anonymous_User_86]

If you’re reading this, it means I finally worked up the courage to hit “post.” It’s taken me years to get here. I know what this will cost me, but some truths are too important to bury. My name doesn’t matter. What matters is that you know what happened to Matthew Brahm—and that you never let anyone tell you it was an accident.

Matthew was my best friend. You might know him from the EAA, where he was a mechanic, a pilot, and a guy everyone seemed to love. You couldn’t walk through the Warbirds area without seeing him grinning under the hood of some old fighter plane, grease on his hands and sleeves. He didn’t just love planes—he respected them, saw them as a bridge to the past, to the men and women who flew them in life-or-death battles. That was Matthew. Always looking to preserve something bigger than himself.

But that was before the government got their claws into him.

It started with a phone call, right after the airshow season ended in 2018. Matthew told me some big-shot recruiters had contacted him. Said they’d seen his work at the EAA and were impressed. They wanted him for a “special project.” Sounded vague, but the money they offered? It wasn’t just good; it was insane. Enough to make even the most grounded guy consider it.

Matthew was excited, sure, but I could tell something about the whole thing made him uneasy. He didn’t know who had recommended him—just that they were looking for people who could “think on their feet and solve problems under pressure.” When they offered to bring me onboard too, he pushed me to say yes. Said it’d be good to have someone he trusted in the mix.

The day we left, they flew us out of Milwaukee in a private jet. The first red flag should’ve been how they blindfolded us after we landed. They said it was standard for “high-security personnel” and promised we’d understand soon. They weren’t wrong about that part.

They took us to a facility in the middle of nowhere. I still couldn’t tell you where it was, even if I wanted to. All I know is, it wasn’t your average hangar or airbase. The air felt wrong—too still, like nature itself didn’t want anything to do with the place. The first time I saw what they had us working on, I understood why.

They called it “Project Mercury.” It was a craft, or maybe just a piece of one. It didn’t look like any plane or helicopter I’d ever seen. No rivets, no seams, no familiar materials. Just this smooth, matte surface that almost absorbed the light around it. They wouldn’t confirm it outright, but it was obvious this thing wasn’t man-made.

Our job was to reverse-engineer parts of the propulsion system. I’ll admit, I was out of my depth. The mechanics were alien in every sense of the word. Matthew, though? He threw himself into the work, even when it frustrated him. He started staying late, sketching diagrams and running calculations long after the rest of us called it a day.

That’s when things started to change.

The first sign was his sleep. Matthew always joked that he could crash on a hangar floor and sleep like a baby, but now he looked like hell every morning. Bloodshot eyes, dark circles, jumpy as hell. I caught him muttering once about “weird dreams” but he shut down when I pressed him. I didn’t want to push him too hard—he’d been under a ton of pressure—but I could tell he was scared.

Then there were the flights.

Matthew was the first one they trusted to test the experimental propulsion system, partly because of his technical knowledge and partly because of his flying skills. The first test seemed like a success, but when he landed, he looked pale as a ghost. He told me later he’d felt like someone—or something—was in the cockpit with him. Said he’d heard whispers he couldn’t understand, almost like static, coming through his headset.

“It’s probably just stress,” I told him.

He nodded, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.

A few days later, something happened that he couldn’t explain away.

Matthew had just finished a flight. I was in the observation room, watching him on the monitors. Everything looked normal at first, but then the radar picked up something we couldn’t see. A blip, matching his speed, flying alongside him.

“Do you see that?” I asked the technician next to me.

He shook his head. “Nothing’s out there.”

But I could see it on the screen. So could Matthew. I heard his voice crackle over the comms: “There’s something out here. It’s pacing me.”

We lost contact after that. For thirty full seconds, there was nothing but static. When his voice came back, he was screaming.

* * * * * *

 

After that flight, Matthew wasn’t the same.

I don’t just mean he was shaken—though he was, badly. He started avoiding the other pilots and mechanics, locking himself in his quarters when he wasn’t in the cockpit. He didn’t even talk to me anymore, not unless he had to. When I did manage to catch him alone, he just shook his head, muttered something about how I “wouldn’t understand.”

“You don’t see what I see up there,” he finally said one night, his voice barely above a whisper. “And I hope you never do.”

The rest of us were kept in the dark about what exactly he had seen. The higher-ups told us to focus on our work, said the radar glitch was just that—a glitch. But I knew better. Matthew was scared, and Matthew didn’t scare easily.

The next flight was different.

They’d made some tweaks to the propulsion system, something about “stabilizing energy output” or whatever jargon they were feeding us that day. Matthew didn’t want to do it. He told them flat-out he wasn’t comfortable taking that thing up again, but they leaned on him hard. Threatened to cut him loose if he didn’t follow through.

“You really think they’re gonna let you walk away?” I asked him later.

He didn’t answer, just looked at me with this hollow expression that made my stomach drop.

The morning of the flight, Matthew pulled me aside in the hangar. He handed me a notebook—a beat-up leather thing he always kept in his jacket pocket.

“Keep this,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Just keep it. And if anything happens to me…don’t give it to them.”

The flight itself started off normal enough. I was in the observation room again, watching him taxi onto the runway. His voice came through the comms, steady but flat:

“Control, this is Bravo-Two. All systems nominal. Requesting clearance for takeoff.”

“Bravo-Two, you are clear for takeoff. Good luck, Brahm.”

The engines roared to life, and the craft shot down the runway like a bullet. It was fast—too fast. Even with the adjustments, it moved in ways no plane should have been able to. Sharp, unnatural turns, almost like it was pulling him along instead of the other way around.

“Everything okay up there?” one of the techs asked over the comms.

For a few seconds, there was nothing but static. Then Matthew’s voice crackled through, tight and strained:

“There’s something…wrong with the controls. It’s not responding.”

“Abort the mission, Bravo-Two. Repeat, abort the mission.”

“I’m trying.”

The radar operator swore under his breath. “What the hell is he doing? He’s climbing.”

Sure enough, the craft was shooting upward, far beyond the altitude parameters we’d set. I watched the blip on the radar as it spiraled higher and higher, faster than anything should’ve been able to move.

Then, just like that, it was gone.

For a moment, no one said anything. The room was dead silent, everyone staring at the blank radar screen like it might somehow bring him back.

“Contact Bravo-Two,” someone finally said.

“Bravo-Two, this is Control. Do you copy?”

No response.

“Bravo-Two, this is Control. Respond immediately.”

Still nothing.

The room erupted into chaos. The project director stormed in, barking orders left and right. Half the team scrambled to recover telemetry data, while the rest sifted through the audio recordings for clues. But there was nothing—no wreckage, no distress signal, nothing to suggest he’d ever been there at all.

The official report listed it as a “mechanical failure resulting in the total loss of the craft and pilot.” A tragic accident, they called it.

But I knew better.

I didn’t say anything at first. I was too scared, too angry, too confused. But then, a few days after the crash, something strange happened.

The maintenance crew had been clearing out the hangar, getting rid of anything tied to the test flights. I’d gone in to grab my tools when I saw it—a fragment of the craft, sitting on one of the workbenches.

It shouldn’t have been there. The protocol was clear: anything from the test flights was supposed to be destroyed immediately. And yet, there it was.

I reached out to touch it, and the moment my fingers brushed the surface, I felt it. A jolt, like static electricity, followed by this…sound.

It wasn’t a noise, not really. More like a vibration in my skull, faint but insistent. It reminded me of the whispers Matthew had mentioned, though I couldn’t make out the words.

I yanked my hand back and stuffed the fragment into my pocket. I didn’t know why—I just knew I couldn’t leave it there.

That night, I finally opened Matthew’s notebook.

Most of it was just schematics and notes about the propulsion system, but toward the back, things got…weird. Sketches of symbols I didn’t recognize. Rambling, fragmented sentences like “It’s not the plane—it’s them” and “I can feel it watching me.”

The last page stopped me cold.

If you’re reading this, it means I didn’t make it back. They’ll tell you it was my fault, but you can’t believe them. It’s not about the technology. It’s about control. The craft wasn’t ours, and whatever’s inside it…doesn’t want to stay hidden.

* * * * * *

The next day, the fragment was gone.

I’d hidden it in my locker, wrapped in an old rag, but when I went back to check, it wasn’t there. The lock wasn’t broken, and no one else had the combination. It just…vanished.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t safe anymore.

Matthew’s death didn’t sit right with anyone who knew him, but the government’s story—the “mechanical failure”—kept most people quiet. Most people, except Kayla.

Kayla was Matthew’s girlfriend. They hadn’t been together long, maybe three or four months, but they clicked in a way that made you think they’d known each other their whole lives. She was a firefighter, tough as nails but with a warmth that made everyone feel like they mattered. Matthew adored her.

After his disappearance, she wasn’t just grieving—she was angry.

I didn’t hear from Kayla until about a week after Matthew’s crash. She called me out of the blue, her voice tight and shaking.

“Tell me what happened to him,” she said.

“I… I don’t know,” I stammered, already feeling the walls close in. “It’s classified. I can’t—”

“Don’t give me that NDA crap,” she snapped. “You were there, weren’t you? You saw what happened. What are they hiding?”

I hesitated. I wanted to tell her everything, to spill it all right then and there, but I couldn’t. Not over the phone.

“Meet me,” I said finally. “Somewhere quiet.”

* * * * * *

We met that night at a diner just outside the city. Kayla looked like she hadn’t slept in days—dark circles under her eyes, hair pulled into a messy ponytail. She barely touched the coffee in front of her, just kept staring at me, waiting.

I told her what I could. Not everything, but enough. About the project, the experimental craft, and how Matthew’s last flight didn’t make any sense. I left out the part about the fragment and the notebook.

When I finished, she sat back, arms crossed, her expression unreadable.

“So what you’re saying is,” she said slowly, “the government’s covering this up.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And you need to let it go. It’s dangerous, Kayla. For you, for me—for anyone who starts asking questions.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you’re so scared, why’d you agree to meet me?”

“Because you deserve to know. But I’m serious—you need to drop this.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, almost a whisper.

“I can’t do that. I need to know the truth.”

Over the next few weeks, I tried to keep tabs on her, but Kayla didn’t answer my calls or texts. I assumed she was grieving, maybe trying to process everything I’d told her. It wasn’t until I saw the news that I realized how far she’d gone.

The headline read: “Firefighter Found Dead in Suspected Arson.”

The article said Kayla had been trapped in a house fire while responding to a call. Witnesses claimed to have seen her exit the building, coughing but otherwise unharmed, only to vanish moments later. When her body was recovered, the autopsy showed no burns or smoke inhalation. The cause of death was listed as “undetermined trauma.”

I couldn’t believe it. The details didn’t add up, and I knew this wasn’t a coincidence.

* * * * * *

A few days later, I got a package in the mail. No return address, just a plain manila envelope with my name scrawled across the front.

Inside was a flash drive.

I plugged it into my laptop, and there she was—Kayla, sitting in what looked like her apartment, speaking directly to the camera.

“If you’re watching this, it means they got to me,” she began. Her voice was steady, but her eyes flicked toward the window behind her like she was expecting someone to barge in at any moment.

“I’ve been digging into Matthew’s disappearance, and I found some things. Things I can’t unsee.”

She went on to explain how she’d tracked down records of the project—leaked memos, procurement orders, even a photo of the craft itself, partially assembled in the hangar.

“There’s more,” she said, leaning closer to the camera. “The flight wasn’t an accident. They knew something was wrong with the propulsion system. They wanted to see what would happen.”

She paused, swallowing hard. “But it’s not just the tech. There’s something else—something they’re not telling us. I found reports, fragments of interviews with test pilots who worked on similar projects. They all described the same thing: shadows. Voices. Feeling like they were being…watched.”

She glanced over her shoulder, lowering her voice. “If I’m right, this isn’t just a cover-up. It’s something much bigger. And if they know I’m saying this…”

The video cut off abruptly, mid-sentence.

I stared at the screen, my mind racing. She’d been right. Matthew’s death, the fire—it was all connected. And now, I had proof.

Or at least, I thought I did.

When I tried to copy the video, my laptop froze. The screen flickered, and then the file was gone. Deleted. Not just from the drive, but from my computer entirely.

I sat there, staring at the empty folder, feeling the weight of what I’d just seen.

They knew.

That night, I started noticing things.

A black SUV parked across the street, its windows tinted too dark to see inside. Strange clicks on the line whenever I made a phone call. Shadows moving in my peripheral vision that disappeared when I turned to look.

I knew I was being watched.

* * * * * *

After Kayla’s death, I knew I couldn’t stay silent any longer.

At first, I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my problem. I’d already told Kayla to stop digging, hadn’t I? But no matter how many times I told myself it wasn’t my fault, the guilt gnawed at me. I’d been the one to feed her the breadcrumbs. I’d given her just enough to follow the trail—and look where it had led her.

Then there was the flash drive. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had let it reach me on purpose. But why? Was it a warning? A taunt? Or something else entirely?

The paranoia set in fast.

The black SUV wasn’t the only car parked on my street for hours at a time anymore. There were new ones now—different makes and models, but always out of place. The kind of cars you notice once and then can’t unsee. I’d leave my apartment to get groceries and catch the faint click of a camera shutter. One night, I came home and found my door unlocked. Nothing was missing, but I couldn’t shake the sense that someone had been inside.

The worst part was the dreams.

At first, they were vague—just flashes of images I couldn’t quite piece together. A cockpit. A shadow moving just outside the window. Matthew’s voice, distant and distorted, calling my name. But over time, they got worse. More vivid. More real.

In one dream, I was in the hangar, standing in front of the propulsion system we’d worked on. It wasn’t running, but the air around it buzzed with energy. I reached out to touch it, and suddenly, I was flying—no plane, no cockpit, just me hurtling through empty sky.

That’s when I saw it.

The shadow. It was massive, impossible to describe—a void in the sky, darker than anything I’d ever seen. It moved like it was alive, like it was watching me. And then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone, leaving me alone in the silence.

I woke up drenched in sweat.

The next day, I went back to Matthew’s notebook.

I’d kept it hidden under the floorboards in my bedroom, wrapped in a plastic bag to keep it safe. When I pulled it out, I half-expected to find it blank, like the video file on Kayla’s flash drive. But it was all still there—the sketches, the notes, the frantic scrawl on the last page.

I read through it again, slower this time, letting the words sink in.

“It’s not the plane—it’s them.”
“I can feel it watching me.”
“The craft wasn’t ours, and whatever’s inside it…doesn’t want to stay hidden.”

One phrase stood out: “whatever’s inside it.”

At first, I’d assumed he was talking about the propulsion system, or maybe the strange symbols etched into the craft. But what if he meant something else? What if there really was something inside it—something alive?

The thought made my skin crawl, but the more I turned it over in my head, the more it made sense. The shadow I’d seen in my dreams, the whispers Matthew had described, the way the craft seemed to have a mind of its own—it all pointed to the same conclusion.

We hadn’t just been working on alien technology.

We’d been working on something alien.

That realization was the final straw.

I couldn’t keep this to myself any longer. Not after Matthew. Not after Kayla. People deserved to know the truth, even if it killed me.

I spent the next few days gathering everything I had: Matthew’s notebook, copies of the few emails I’d managed to save, and a detailed account of everything I’d seen and heard since the project began. I even wrote out the details of my own paranoia—the cars, the unlocked door, the dreams.

When I was done, I uploaded it all to an anonymous file-sharing site and started writing my post.

I hit “preview” just as my phone buzzed on the table.

It was an unknown number. I stared at it for a moment, debating whether to answer. Finally, I swiped to pick up.

“Hello?”

A low, static-filled voice crackled through the speaker. “We know what you’re doing.”

My blood ran cold. “Who is this?”

“You need to stop,” the voice said. “Or we’ll make you stop.”

The line went dead.

I didn’t sleep that night.

Every creak of the floorboards, every gust of wind outside my window made me jump. I kept the lights on, clutching Matthew’s notebook like it was some kind of shield.

By the time morning rolled around, I’d made up my mind. I wasn’t going to let them scare me into silence.

They’d already taken Matthew. They’d already taken Kayla.

I wasn’t going to let them win.

I posted the file later that day, on a forum I knew would get attention. It wasn’t the most reputable site, but that was the point. I wanted it to spread.

Within minutes, the comments started pouring in. Some people called me a liar, a conspiracy nut. Others claimed to have seen or heard similar things.

But one comment stood out:

“You shouldn’t have told them. We’re coming for you next.”

* * * * * *

Posting the file should have felt like a victory. Instead, it felt like a death sentence.

For hours after I hit “submit,” I sat in my apartment, staring at the screen. The comments kept rolling in, some of them supportive, others dismissive or downright cruel. But that one reply—”You shouldn’t have told them. We’re coming for you next.”—was the one I couldn’t shake.

It was just a troll, I told myself. Just someone trying to scare me. But deep down, I knew better.

That night, the dreams came back.

This time, I was in the cockpit. The controls were cold and slick under my hands, like they were covered in some kind of fluid. The sky outside was dark, a void stretching endlessly in every direction.

I felt it before I saw it—the shadow. It moved closer, wrapping around the plane like a predator circling its prey. I tried to steer away, but the controls wouldn’t respond.

Then the whispers started.

They weren’t words, exactly, just fragments of sound that burrowed into my skull. I clamped my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help. The noise was inside me, growing louder and louder until it was all I could hear.

I woke up gasping, my head pounding.

The next morning, I decided to leave.

I threw some clothes into a duffel bag, grabbed Matthew’s notebook, and headed for the door. But when I opened it, there was a man standing there.

He was tall, dressed in a plain black suit with no tie. His face was pale, almost waxy, and his eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

I froze.

“We’d like to have a word with you,” he continued, stepping inside before I could stop him.

Two more men followed, identical in appearance, closing the door behind them.

“Who are you?” I managed to ask, my voice shaking.

The first man smiled—a cold, mechanical gesture that didn’t reach his eyes.

“We’re here to discuss your…recent activities,” he said. “You’ve been very busy.”

They sat me down at my own kitchen table, one of them standing by the door while the other two flanked me.

“We understand you’ve been sharing some…sensitive information,” the first man said.

I didn’t respond.

“It’s in everyone’s best interest if you stop,” he continued. “Now.”

“What if I don’t?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

The man leaned closer, his smile fading. “Then we’ll have to take further action. And trust me—you don’t want that.”

I glanced toward the duffel bag by the door, my heart racing. If I could just get to it, maybe I had a chance.

The man followed my gaze and shook his head. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

They left after that, but the message was clear.

I waited until I was sure they were gone, then grabbed the bag and bolted.

I drove for hours, taking back roads and side streets, constantly checking my mirrors. Every time I saw a black car, my stomach clenched.

Eventually, I stopped at a motel on the edge of town. It was the kind of place where nobody asks questions, and that’s exactly what I needed.

I paid in cash, checked into a room, and locked the door behind me. Then I sat on the bed and opened Matthew’s notebook.

The more I read, the more convinced I became that he’d been right. The craft wasn’t just a piece of technology. It was alive, in some way we couldn’t understand.

But it wasn’t just the craft that scared me. It was what Matthew had written about the people running the project.

“They know what it is,” one entry read. “They know, and they don’t care. They’re not trying to control it. They’re trying to make a deal.”

A deal.

The thought made my skin crawl. What could they possibly offer to something like that? And what would they get in return?

* * * * * *

The next day, I tried to call someone—anyone—who might believe me. I started with a journalist I knew, a guy who’d covered government corruption for years. But as soon as I mentioned the project, the line went dead.

I tried again. Same result.

Even burner phones weren’t safe.

That’s when I realized I couldn’t run. Not forever.

They’d find me eventually, just like they’d found Kayla. The only thing I could do was make sure the truth got out before they silenced me for good.

I went back to the file-sharing site and posted an update:

“They’re watching me. If anything happens, you know why.”

Then I uploaded scans of Matthew’s notebook, every page in full detail.

By the time night fell, I was exhausted. I lay down on the bed, clutching the notebook, and closed my eyes.

The whispers started almost immediately.

They weren’t coming from the dream this time. They were real, faint but unmistakable, echoing from somewhere outside the room.

I sat up, my heart pounding, and listened.

The whispers grew louder, closer, until they were right outside the door.

Then came the knock.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

The knock came again, louder this time.

“Open the door,” a voice said. It wasn’t loud, but it was firm, commanding.

I stayed frozen, clutching the notebook like a lifeline.

The door rattled, the handle twisting.

“We know you’re in there,” the voice continued. “You can’t run forever.”

The lights flickered, and for a moment, everything was silent. Then the door burst open, and the last thing I saw was a shadow—impossibly large, impossibly dark—engulfing the room.

The thread didn’t last long.

When I checked the forum the next morning, my post was gone—scrubbed clean, as if it had never existed. The files, the notebook scans, the comments, all of it erased. Even the users who’d engaged with it were gone. Their accounts didn’t show as banned or deleted. They just…weren’t there anymore.

But it didn’t matter. Copies of the post had already started popping up on other sites, spreading like wildfire across obscure corners of the internet. The truth was out there now. And so was I.

* * * * * *

Three days later, the news broke:

“Man Found Dead in Motel Room Under Mysterious Circumstances.”

They didn’t name me in the article, but I knew it was me. The description was too perfect—the motel, the room, the state of the body. The reporter called it a “medical anomaly.” No signs of injury, no apparent cause of death. Just a look of terror frozen on the face of the deceased.

But I was still here, writing this.

It didn’t make sense at first. How could I be dead and alive at the same time? I chalked it up to paranoia, exhaustion, maybe even grief. But then I started noticing the gaps.

Time didn’t move the way it should. Minutes stretched into hours, and whole days disappeared without warning. My reflection in the mirror didn’t always move with me. And the whispers… the whispers were back, louder than ever.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed something strange.

A few of my friends reached out, people I hadn’t spoken to in years. They said they’d been dreaming about me—dreams so vivid they thought I was standing in their bedrooms, watching them. One of them swore she’d seen me on the street last week, even though I hadn’t left my apartment in days.

“You looked…off,” she said. “Like it wasn’t really you.”

I checked the forums again, hoping to find some trace of my post, but everything was gone. Even the backups I’d made on my own hard drive had vanished. It was as if the entire internet had been scrubbed clean of my existence.

That’s when I found the reply.

It wasn’t on the original thread—it couldn’t have been—but it was written in the same cold, precise language:

“You shouldn’t have told them. You don’t belong here anymore.”

* * * * * *

The last piece of the puzzle came a week later, in the form of an email.

The sender’s address was nothing but a string of random characters, and the subject line was blank. Against my better judgment, I opened it.

Inside was a single image: a photo of Matthew’s face, staring directly into the camera. But it wasn’t the Matthew I remembered. His eyes were dark, hollow pits, and his mouth was twisted into something between a smile and a scream.

Beneath the photo was a single sentence:

“It’s not about the plane—it’s about the pilot.”

I don’t know what that means, exactly. Maybe Matthew wasn’t the only one they wanted. Maybe the project wasn’t about testing technology, but about seeing who—or what—would come back.

I’d like to think I’m still me, but I’m not so sure anymore. The gaps in time are getting longer. The whispers are louder. And sometimes, when I look in the mirror, the person staring back isn’t me.

If you’re reading this, I hope it means the truth survived, even if I didn’t. I hope someone, somewhere, is putting the pieces together.

And if they come for you next—if you start hearing the whispers—don’t run. It won’t save you.

Nothing will.