It was an ordinary Thursday evening. Rain tapped rhythmically on the windows of my small cottage nestled on the edge of Blackfern Woods. I sat curled up with a book, wrapped in a blanket, and sipping ginger tea, while the fireplace whispered its usual lullabies in crackles and pops.
That’s when the knock came.
Not loud. Not soft.
Just… deliberate.
I froze.
No one ever came out this far. My nearest neighbor lived two miles away, and visitors always called before arriving. But this knock wasn’t uncertain like someone seeking help—it was steady, almost rehearsed.
I placed the cup down and approached the door. A strange chill wrapped around my spine. As I reached for the handle, something in me screamed don’t. But curiosity, as it always does in stories like these, won.
I opened the door.
There stood a man in a raincoat that dripped endlessly despite the fact the rain had just slowed to a drizzle. He looked no older than thirty, yet his eyes… they held centuries.
“Evening,” he said with a strange politeness. His voice was calm, like velvet over broken glass. “May I come in?”
“Who are you?” I asked, instinctively tightening the blanket around myself.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out… a photo. Faded, wrinkled, but I recognized it instantly. It was of me and my younger brother, Jake, taken fifteen years ago.
The day before he vanished.
My breath caught.
“Where did you get this?” My voice trembled.
He held the photo between two fingers and stepped forward. “It’s time,” he said, “to know the truth.”
Against all logic, I let him in.
---
He removed his coat and hung it by the door as if he’d lived here his whole life. His boots made no sound as he walked across the wooden floor.
“I’ve waited a long time to meet you,” he said. “To explain.”
I didn’t respond. I only stared at him and then at the photo still clenched in my hand.
“I know where Jake is,” he said simply.
“Alive?” I whispered.
“Yes. In a way.”
He reached into his coat again and this time pulled out a small metallic cube. It pulsed with a faint blue light.
“What is that?”
“A memory vault. Ancient. Lost to time. Like your brother.”
I laughed nervously. “Is this a prank? A really elaborate, cruel prank?”
He placed the cube on the table. “Touch it.”
“No.”
“Touch it,” he repeated gently, “and you'll understand.”
Something about the cube drew me in. Against all logic, again, I reached out. My fingertips brushed its cold surface.
And suddenly—
I wasn’t in the room anymore.
---
I stood in the middle of a vast field under a violet sky. Giant moons hung low, casting silver light on the grass that shimmered like crystal. In the distance, I saw him.
Jake.
Still twelve. Still in his red hoodie. Exactly as he was the day he disappeared.
He turned and smiled. “You finally came.”
Tears filled my eyes. “Where… what is this?”
“A memory,” he said, running toward me. “Well, more than that. It’s a fragment of the place I went. The Stranger saved me.”
The man in the raincoat appeared beside us.
“He fell through,” the man explained. “An accident. A tear in the fabric between worlds. He wasn’t meant to survive. But he did. Because he’s... special.”
I looked between them. “Why didn’t he come back?”
“I tried,” Jake said. “But the moment I left this realm, I began to… fade. It’s like I was woven into this world’s threads.”
“You’re saying he’s trapped in another world?”
“Not trapped,” the man corrected. “Chosen. He has become something… more.”
Suddenly, the field began to dissolve.
“Time’s up,” Jake said, his voice already distant. “But now you know. Don’t forget me.”
---
I jolted back into my body, gasping.
The man stood across the room, the cube back in his coat.
“What—was—that?” I asked, dazed.
“A truth most people never get,” he replied. “A gift. A goodbye.”
I sat down, overwhelmed.
“You were right to open the door,” he said.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why now?”
“Because time is thinning again,” he said. “And more may fall through. We need someone who remembers. Someone who believes. Someone like you.”
“What are you asking me to do?”
“Help us. Learn. Prepare.”
He handed me a card. On it, a symbol like a tree with roots that spiraled into galaxies. No words.
“What is this?”
“The beginning,” he said, putting on his coat.
And just like that, he walked out the door and into the rain. Except… the rain wasn’t falling on him. It parted around him, like even nature respected what he was.
I never saw him again.
But I kept the card. And sometimes, when I held it under moonlight, the tree pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
Now, years later, I watch the sky with eyes wide open.
Because I know something others don’t.
When a stranger knocks at your door, it is never just a simple sound—it's a ripple through the calm surface of your world, a summons from shadows you didn’t know existed, a quiet warning that the ordinary is ending and something far older, far darker, is waiting to step inside—and in that moment, whether you want to or not, you stop everything and listen with every fiber of your being, because some knocks are not just heard... they are felt deep in the bones, echoing in the silence before the storm.
The End
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