The Man At the Door

I opened the door with mild irritation, expecting another interviewer—or perhaps a bright-eyed student selling chocolates or fruit to fund their next field trip. I’d already rehearsed my line, ready to tell them I didn’t need another wheel of cheese or a box of caramel delights.

“I hate to break the news to you,” I began, pulling the door halfway open, “but the last seller drained our funds earlier this week—”

My words died in my throat.

An elderly man stood before me, removing a black hat with deliberate care. Wisps of white hair framed his pale face, and though he smiled, there was something… unsettling about it.

I straightened instinctively. “Can I help you, sir?”

He was dressed too neatly for a casual call—pressed black suit, silk undershirt, crimson tie perfectly knotted. His posture was unnaturally rigid, like a marionette being held upright by unseen strings. One of his eyes was cloudy, the color of milk swirling in water.

“I believe you can,” he said softly. “You are the author—Josef Schroder, yes?”

I forced a chuckle, trying to sound casual. “Yes, you’ve found me. Are you here for an autograph? Or are you my two o’clock interview—just about four hours early?”

His smile widened. “You may want to clear your schedule for the next few weeks, Josef.”

My amusement faded. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but I don’t have time for games. State your business, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The smile didn’t falter, though his tone sharpened. “You’ll want to hear me out. You don’t know me… not directly. But I know you. I’ve known you since the day you were born.”

A cold prickle crawled up my neck.

“I’ve kept tabs on you,” he continued. “Watched from the edges until the right moment to step forward. And after the success of your novel—well, I must commend you. Though, some of your father’s… recollections were a touch biased.”

The mention of my father tightened something in my chest. “What do you know about my father’s work?”

He chuckled, then bent forward, overcome by a fit of coughing. The sound was wet and ragged. When he lowered his handkerchief, I caught a glimpse of crimson on the white cloth.

His expression had hardened. “Let’s just say I was there. Every word your father wrote was built on something I helped shape.”

I opened my mouth to demand an explanation, but the world tilted sharply. A stabbing pain shot up my arm and across my chest. My vision wavered—then tunneled.

“I… I think I’m—”

The floor rushed up to meet me.

Somewhere distant, Emilia screamed my name. Then—nothing.

---

When I woke, I was on the sofa, drenched in sweat beneath a thick comforter. The fire roared too hot in the hearth. I tore the blanket off and sat up, gasping. My shirt clung to me, soaked through.

Laughter drifted from the dining room—Emilia’s voice, light and familiar. But then came another—soft, airy, and unmistakably his.

My pulse quickened. I grabbed the iron poker from beside the fireplace.

The old man was in my house.

I stepped into the dining room to find them seated at the table, drinking tea and eating cakes. His coat hung neatly over a chair; his black hat rested on a small leather case by the wall. Emilia nearly dropped her cup when she saw me standing there, weapon raised.

“Josef!” she cried. “What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” I snapped. “The better question is—why is he here?”

Before she could respond, the old man lifted a frail hand. “Please. There’s no need for hostility.” His tone was calm, unshaken. “I came to talk. Nothing more.”

“Talk?” My grip tightened on the poker. “About what?”

“About your father’s story,” he said. “And what he left unfinished.”

I froze.

He gestured toward an empty chair. “Sit. There’s much to discuss, and time isn’t on our side.”

Emilia glanced at me, pleading silently for reason. I hesitated, then set the poker against the wall and took the seat opposite him.

“Thank you,” the man said, drawing a small leather journal from beneath the table. Its cover was worn smooth with age. “What I’m about to show you contains truths your father never told you. Details he omitted—for your protection.”

I leaned forward. “You keep talking in riddles. What truths?”

He opened the book slowly. The pages were brittle, the ink cracked and bleeding into yellowed fibers. “Your father’s version of events—what he recorded and what you later published—was… incomplete. The real story was far larger, darker, and still unresolved.”

“The vineyard outside Paris?” I asked cautiously.

His lips curled faintly. “Yes. That’s where it began. But what you’ve been told—that it was simply a refuge for resistance fighters—is only one layer. The truth is more intricate. More dangerous.”

Emilia shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

He continued, voice low. “Your father wasn’t just preserving history. He was concealing it. And by publishing your book, Josef, you’ve drawn attention to forces that would have preferred the past remain buried.”

My mouth went dry. “What forces?”

He met my gaze with that pale, glassy eye. “The same ones that never truly lost the war.”

The room seemed to shrink around us.

He closed the journal with deliberate care. “I’m here because what began decades ago isn’t finished. You’ve already taken the first step without realizing it. Now, you must decide whether to see the rest—or walk away.”

Emilia stood abruptly. “I’ll make more tea.”

He nodded, almost solemnly. “That would be wise. This will be a long night.”

---

The teacups clinked softly in the other room as Emilia prepared a fresh pot. The quiet hum of the kettle filled the air, but it did little to ease the unease that now hung over the dining table.

The old man sat perfectly still, one hand resting atop the worn leather journal as though guarding it. The fire’s glow from the other room caught in his milky eye, giving him an almost spectral quality.

I didn’t know whether to speak first or wait for him to begin. Every second that passed stretched thin, like wire ready to snap.

Finally, he opened the journal.

The smell of aged paper and faint tobacco escaped its pages—familiar and wrong all at once. I caught sight of jagged handwriting, densely packed lines with occasional sketches in the margins.

“This account,” he began quietly, “was never meant to see daylight. It was kept hidden because the people involved wanted it that way. Your father was one of them.”

I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. “You keep saying that. Hidden from whom?”

He looked up, his good eye glinting in the dim light. “From everyone who still believes the war ended cleanly.”

The words settled in my mind like dust. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“History,” he said, almost whispering, “is a convenience. It tells you when something ended, but not what was left behind. You of all people should know that. You write stories about ghosts of the past, yet you’ve never considered that some ghosts still walk among us.”

He flipped a page. His long fingers trembled slightly as he traced a faded line of text. “Your father’s vineyard—do you remember the cellar beneath it?”

I nodded cautiously. “Of course. I visited it once as a boy. The smell of oak barrels and damp stone. He said it was where he stored the rare vintages.”

The old man gave a soft, humorless laugh. “Vintages, yes. That’s what he called them.”

The kettle whistled in the kitchen. Emilia’s footsteps approached, followed by the soft rattle of porcelain as she set the tray between us. She hesitated, eyes darting from me to the visitor, then back again. “Should I… leave you to talk?”

“No,” he said before I could respond. “You should stay. Some truths require witnesses.”

His tone left no room for debate.

He turned another page. The handwriting grew more erratic, words running together, ink smudged as though written in haste—or fear.

“Your father,” he said slowly, “and the doctor he mentioned in his notes… they weren’t simply sheltering resistance members. They were part of something else. An experiment. Something born in the dark and nurtured by desperation. It was meant to end the war, but it survived it instead.”

I leaned forward, pulse thudding in my ears. “What kind of experiment?”

He paused, eyes flicking toward Emilia before answering. “The kind that tests the boundaries of what makes a person human.”

A shiver ran through me. “You’re talking nonsense. My father wasn’t—”

“Wasn’t what?” he interrupted sharply. “Capable? Aware? Complicit?”

His sudden edge silenced me.

He drew a small folded photograph from between the journal’s pages and slid it across the table. The image was cracked and faded, but even beneath the wear I recognized the outline of my father—standing in front of the vineyard’s old barn, arm slung around another man’s shoulder. Both smiling. Both alive.

The other man’s face was… familiar. Unsettlingly so.

“Is that—?” I began.

The old man nodded before I could finish. “Yes. That was taken the day before the cellar was sealed.”

I turned the photo over. Scribbled on the back were a few words in my father’s unmistakable handwriting:

For H., in gratitude. Some doors are better left closed.

My mouth went dry.

“What doors?” I whispered.

The old man smiled faintly, the kind of smile that carried no joy. “The ones your father promised never to open again. Unfortunately for all of us, someone already has.”

The fire popped in the next room. The sound was sharp enough to make Emilia flinch.

“Who?” I asked, voice barely above a breath.

He closed the journal, the sound of the leather snapping shut like a verdict. “That, Josef, is what we must find out. But I fear the answer is already closer than you think.”

He stood, moving toward the window, parting the curtain just enough to peer outside. For a fleeting second, I saw the color drain from his face.

“What is it?” I asked.

He didn’t turn. “A car,” he said quietly. “It’s been parked across the street since I arrived. The engine’s off, but the lights flicker every few minutes. Someone’s waiting.”

Emilia moved closer to the window, but he raised a trembling hand to stop her. “Don’t. They’ll see movement.”

The tension in the room thickened until it felt hard to breathe.

He let the curtain fall and turned back to us, his voice barely more than a whisper. “They know I’m here. Which means, Josef—they know about you, too.”

---

The old man—our uninvited guest—sat back down slowly, the journal before him like a sacred text. His fingers hovered over its cover as if it might burn him to touch it again.

Emilia stood frozen near the window, watching the stillness beyond the curtain. The car across the street hadn’t moved. Not a sound came from outside.

I wanted to believe it was all a misunderstanding—a coincidence. But the way the old man watched the glass, his body tense despite his frailty, told me otherwise.

He finally spoke. “We don’t have long before they send someone to the door. So listen carefully.”

He opened the journal once more, pages fluttering like nervous wings.

“The vineyard your father inherited wasn’t just a vineyard. Beneath it was something built long before the war—a network of rooms carved into the limestone. You’ve seen part of it, but not the lower levels.”

“There were no lower levels,” I said.

He smiled faintly. “You only saw what he wanted you to see.”

He turned the book toward me. Faded sketches filled the page: a crude map of underground corridors spiraling down into a chamber marked with a black circle. In the margins, my father’s handwriting appeared—quick notes and arrows. One line caught my eye:

Too deep. The air hums down here.

I felt my pulse quicken. “Where did you get this?”

“Your father gave it to me the day before the cellar was sealed.”

His words echoed, pulling at something long-buried in my mind. A memory surfaced—faint, fragmented.

I was eight years old, standing beside my father in the vineyard. The morning mist clung to the vines. He had been pale, distracted. When I’d asked why the workers were carrying barrels into the cellar so early, he’d said, “Because sometimes the earth wants things hidden.”

The old man’s voice broke the spell. “That chamber was not for wine, Josef. It was for what came before.”

“Before what?”

He met my eyes. “Before the war, before the vineyard, before you were even born. It started as a research facility—one funded under the guise of agricultural study. But it was never about grapes.”

He turned another page. This one was covered in strange symbols—shapes resembling circles within circles, mathematical notations running down the margins.

“Your father called it the resonance project. He believed certain frequencies could affect the human mind—make a person remember things that weren’t theirs, live experiences they never lived. The Germans wanted it for interrogation. Others… for something far worse.”

I shook my head. “No. That’s absurd.”

“Is it?” His cloudy eye caught the firelight, gleaming silver. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you? The dreams you can’t explain? The fragments that don’t belong to you?”

I hesitated.

He leaned closer. “Tell me. When you were writing your book—how much of it did you actually remember?”

The question hit me harder than expected. Because I had wondered that myself. The details had come too easily—faces I’d never seen, conversations that had no source. Sometimes when I re-read my own words, I didn’t recognize them.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“That your father passed on more than stories,” he said. “He passed on the echoes. And they’re starting to wake up.”

The journal lay open between us. The sketches seemed to shift under the light, as if the ink itself refused to stay still.

Emilia’s voice trembled. “This is insane. Josef, tell him to leave.”

He turned toward her, his expression softening. “I wish I could, my dear. But if I leave now, you’ll both be gone by morning.”

Her face went pale. “What do you mean—gone?”

He closed the journal carefully. “There are people who have waited decades for the contents of this book to resurface. They’ll come for it, and for anyone tied to it.”

He stood, joints creaking like old wood. “We’ll need to move before nightfall. There’s a place I can take you—somewhere they won’t think to look.”

I rose too. “You expect us to just go with you? To run?”

He turned toward the window again. The car across the street flickered once—headlights flashing faintly in the dusk.

“You don’t have a choice, Josef,” he said quietly. “They’ve already found you.”