“The Immortal at My Door”

Journal Entry – October 12th, 2023

I am an old woman now. My hands shake as I write this, though I tell myself it is the chill of autumn and not the chill of memory. I swore I would never record what happened that night, but time has a way of gnawing at silence. My children are grown, my grandchildren scattered, and the story—our story—sits inside me like a stone.

Tonight, in the diner on Fifth Street, I saw him again. And that stone cracked.

He sat in the far corner, exactly as I remembered him, as though forty years had been nothing more than a dream between sips of coffee. His hair, still dark. His shoulders, still straight. His eyes, still the same unnatural silver. The waitress called him “sir,” as though he were any ordinary patron. But I knew better. I have always known better.

So I am writing this down at last, before my mind convinces me it never happened.

---

The Neighbor

Back then, I was only twenty-two. A young mother with a colicky baby, a husband who worked long shifts at the mill, and a nosy habit of watching the neighborhood through my curtains. That was how I first noticed Mr. Merlin.

He lived in the crooked house at the end of our street, the one half-swallowed by ivy and shadow. The house had belonged to someone else once, a family that vanished in a hurry after a fire. People whispered about it, but in small towns whispers often outlast the truth.

John kept to himself. He never joined block parties, never waved at the children playing hopscotch, never bought a pumpkin from the church fundraiser. He paid his bills, took in his mail, and walked each night after sunset with the steady tap-tap of his cane echoing on the pavement.

At first I pitied him. An old widower, I told myself. Lonely, harmless. But then I began to notice things I couldn’t explain.

The dogs. Strays prowled our neighborhood often, but none ever crossed into his yard. They would skirt his property, hackles raised, whining like whipped pups. Once I saw a mastiff break its leash rather than step on his sidewalk.

The shadows. When dusk came, they seemed to linger longer near his house, stretching across the lawn even when the streetlamps glowed bright. My husband laughed when I told him. “You’ve been reading too many of those gothic novels.”

But most of all, it was his eyes. When he did look at me—once when I caught him glancing toward our yard—it was as if the air thickened, and for a moment I could not breathe. Not cruel eyes. Not kind, either. Just… heavy. Like he had lived too long and carried too much.

I told myself it was imagination. Mothers of new babies are always tired. But then came that night.

---

The Night

It was October. The air smelled of burning leaves and woodsmoke. My daughter had just drifted to sleep when the world tore open.

I heard it first—a shriek that rattled the windows. Not human. Not animal. Something else. My husband leapt from his chair, but before he could reach the door, they came.

From the tree line, shapes moved. At first I thought it was a fire—glowing eyes, smoke swirling. But no. They were bodies. Twisted, pale bodies with wings that beat like broken shutters. Faces stretched into masks of hunger, teeth glistening in the moonlight.

Demons. Vampires. Names I had only seen in fairy tales—and yet here they were, crawling toward our home like ants toward spilled sugar.

The baby screamed. The smell of sulfur burned my throat. My husband grabbed a fireplace poker and shouted for me to stay back. But there were too many. They were everywhere—scratching at the windows, clawing at the doors, hissing and laughing in voices that sounded like bone grinding against stone.

And then—he appeared.

---

The Old Man

Mr. Merlin walked into the yard without his cane. No, not walked—moved, as though the ground itself bent to his will. His shoulders straightened, his body no longer hunched but towering. The night did not swallow him; it recoiled from him.

I saw him lift a hand, and the air quivered. The creatures hissed, their hunger turning to unease. His eyes blazed silver, brighter than the moon. And then he spoke words I did not understand—old words, older than any prayer I’d ever heard.

The effect was instant. The ground trembled. The monsters shrieked and clutched at their ears. Some burst into flame, their bodies folding in on themselves like paper. Others turned to flee, only to be dragged back by invisible claws of shadow.

John moved among them like a storm. His fists struck like thunder. His voice cracked like lightning. A single word from him split one in two, scattering its ashes across our porch.

I stood frozen, clutching my baby, certain I was watching the end of the world. My husband, to his credit, tried to shield us, but even he could only stare.

And then—silence.

The yard was littered with black ash that glowed faintly before vanishing into nothing. The stench of sulfur hung thick, but the creatures were gone.

John Merlin stood at the edge of the porch, his clothes torn, his skin steaming with something not quite blood. He looked at me. Not at my husband, not at the house—at me. And in that voice that was too deep to be mortal, he said: “You and yours are safe now.”

Then he was gone.

---

The Aftermath

The police claimed it was a gas explosion from an old line beneath the yard. Neighbors nodded. Easier to believe in faulty pipes than monsters. My husband told me to let it go, that we had survived, and that was all that mattered.

But I could not let it go.

For weeks, I woke in the night certain I smelled sulfur again. For years, I flinched at shadows near the trees. I never allowed my daughter to play near John's house. And though he never appeared on our street again, I would sometimes see him from afar—walking under lamplight, standing at the cemetery gate, always unchanged.

As decades passed, my memory blurred. I told myself it had been panic, exhaustion, madness. And yet, deep down, I knew.

---

The Return

Tonight, in that diner, I saw him again. Same silver eyes. Same broad shoulders. He sat in the corner, sipping black coffee as though nothing had happened.

For a long moment, his gaze lifted—and met mine.

I froze. Forty years crumbled in an instant. My heart thudded like it did when I was twenty-two, clutching my baby in the dark. He did not smile. He did not speak. He simply looked at me with those eyes that have never aged, never dimmed.

And I knew. He is still here. Watching. Waiting.

I cannot decide if I am grateful—or terrified.

— End of Entry