For as long as I can remember, there was a room in my grandparent's house that I was not supposed to enter. We visited there often, they lived in a cottage near the riverside. Every summer vacation, every school holiday, my mom would take me there. I loved spending time with them. My grandma would teach me how to cook and bake family recipes, and my granddad would tell me all the names of the plants in the garden.

I never asked about the locked room. Nobody had told me not to go there, but I knew that I wasn't supposed to, because it was the only room that was locked. I also somehow knew that I wasn't supposed to ask, so I didn't. I had enough questions about other things, anyway. My granddad seemed to know everything - about the plants, the chirping and buzzing insects, and the birds whose calls resounded through the hot summer air.

But throughout the years, my curiosity grew. From time to time, I'd see my granddad unlock the door and sneak into the room late in the evening, when he thought I was asleep. I snuck up to the door sometimes, and pressed my ear against the old wood, and I could have sworn I heard him mumbling, but I couldn't make out clear words.

One day, granddad's keyring slipped from his pocket while gardening. I picked it up, and wanted to give it back, but then I hesitated. I traced my fingers over the keys. An old iron one for the gate to the garden. A brass one to unlock the front and back door. A small, silver one for the mailbox. And there it was. The key to the locked room.

Granddad looked for the keys all day, but when nightfall came, we decided to break off our search.

"Maybe you lost them in the garden. I'll help you look tomorrow."

The words tasted like bile on my tongue. It felt like a lie when I had never withheld anything from my grandparents. Then again, nothing that I had said wasn't true. It was more like how they never told me what was behind the door, but also never told me not to go there.

After everyone had gone to bed, and I heard my granddad's snoring echo through the old house, I tiptoed through the hallway to the door. The lock was quiet, as was the handle, despite their old and weathered look. I already knew the door wouldn't creak, because I had watched him in secret, opening it without a sound.

I took another deep breath and opened it.

I didn't know what I expected to find. Perhaps some dark and terrible secret. A room stashed with candy that he wanted to keep to himself. A room with gardening tools too dangerous for me to use. A room with magazines and books and stuff that he didn't want to share with grandma, like some of my friend's fathers had and kept from their wives. All of that seemed fairly terrible to my 12-year old mind and was about the worst I could imagine. But what I found there instead, was... nothing.

The room was empty, except for an old, weathered chair. Soft moonlight shone through a tiny window near the ceiling – too high to peer into the room from outside, I had tried that once – just bright enough to reveal that the chair had once been painted red. Now the paint was flaky, and the wood underneath looked brittle. The chair was facing the far wall, where a painting was hung.

I stepped closer, ever so careful not to make a sound on the creaking floorboards and investigated the picture. It looked like a life-sized oil painting of a middle-aged man, wearing the most fabulous clothes I had ever seen. A tricorne hat with a big, fluffy weather stuck to it, and a lucurious-looking velvet coat with ruffles near the collar and at the sleeves. There was some adornment on the right upper sleeve, a large ornamental embroidery, that reminded me the kinds of cuffs some officials wore to designate their ranks. His knee-length pants were made from leather, and he wore white socks – or were they called stockings, in that case? – and very pointy shoes.

He also sported the most impressive twirled moustache I had ever seen.

The man was depicted sitting cross-legged, leaning on the armrest of his chair and dozing. The background was nondescript, but seemed to be a dimly lit room, or perhaps it was a regular room that only appeared dimly lit because of the light in here.

As I stared at the painting, my racing heartbeat slowly calmed down again, and I tried to come up with a reason why my granddad would keep this painting locked up in here. Perhaps it was very expensive? But then why would he be so secretive about it? No, there was something strange about it. Something uncanny.

I took another step closer. The dozing man was hung not too high above the floor, but he was tall, so although he was sitting, I couldn't see his face clearly. So I carefully and as quietly as possible took the chair and pulled it over to the painting, and used it as a stepladder. Something about the painting was filling me with an inexplicable dread and anxiety, that made my limbs feel heavy like lead and numb. But there was still that curiosity stirring within me. I had to know - something. I didn't even know what I was looking for, but I leaned closer, scrutinizing the dozing man's face. Every hair of his moustache was painted with individual bush strokes. Ever wrinkle around his eyes. Every lash -

His eyes popped open.

I would have screamed, but the shock was so sudden that the sound got stuck in my throat. Instead, I toppled over backwards, tipped the chair, and together with it hit the hardwood floor with a loud thud. The pain didn't even register. I still stared at the painting, my gaze transfixed by that impossible gaze of the no-longer-dozing man, suddenly staring right back at me. And if that wasn't the most horrible and unimaginable thing already, he blinked.

I scrambled to my feet and dragged the chair back to the middle of the room, and without another look back dashed out. I used my remaining wits to close the door quietly instead of slamming it shut. With shaky hands it took an eternity to lock the door again, but I managed. I pulled open the door in the kitchen and tossed the bundle of keys in a wide arc into the backyard.

As I lay back down in bed that night, I huddled under the blanket, as if it was a magical barrier that would protect me from all evil. My grandma had quilted it by hand, so most probably it was, but I really preferred not to have to find out the extent of its powers. I lay awake that night, and I wondered if the reason that granddad kept this door locked was that the man in the painting was dangerous.

Silly. It's just a painting, I thought.

But it opened its eyes.... I didn't imagine that, did I?

Maybe a trick of the light? Some sort of illusion?

My thoughts were running wild, and it was as if two voices were arguing back and forth. Eventually, I fell asleep to their quarrelling.

The next day, I would pretend to find the keys, between the radishes and beetroot, and handed them back to my granddad, who seemed oblivious to my nightly adventures. I wasn't sure if he really didn't know what I had done, but if he had any suspicions, he kept them to himself. At any rate, nothing changed after that. We spent the rest of my vacation there as always – gardening with granddad, cooking with grandma, going on long walks with both, and reading books and cuddling in the evening, until I would fall asleep. Eventually the memory of what I had seen that night began to fade, and soon it seemed like nothing but the distant recollection of a bad dream I once had.

It became part of a vast collection of vague memories of my childhood, where play-pretend games and made-up stories are mixed with real adventures in the woods. The scent of the old wisteria arching over my head brings some of those back, but it's like there's a haze covering it all. I trace my fingers over the keys again. The old iron one for the gate before me. The brass one for the door. The small one for the mailbox, now overflowing with papers and ads. Something feels odd about the keyring, and something tugs at a distant corner of my mind, but I can't quite remember.

With a heavy sigh I empty the mailbox first to bring the stack of papers inside. I guess I will have to sift through all of them, and see if there's still companies to inform, contracts to cancel, that sort of thing.

Inside, the cottage still looks the same. It smells of leather and polished wood and sun-kissed linen curtains, and a bit of dust. Nobody has been here in weeks. I haven't been here myself in years, but everything still is exactly as I remember it. Perhaps a bit less tidy. After grandma died, granddad tried his best to continue to live up to her housekeeping standards. The thought makes me smile, and then brings tears to my eyes that I quickly blink away.

I place the stack of papers on the kitchen table. There's a plate and fork next to the sink, washed and left there to dry. The tap is dripping a slow and steady beat to accompany my tedious task. I've never done anything like this before. When my mother died, my estranged maternal grandparents turned up and took care of the formalities. When grandma died, granddad was still there. Back then, I somehow thought, this must be it, there can't possibly be any more misery like that waiting for me. As if death was a resource that I felt like I had used up.

So I withdrew from the only person left of my family. It was paradoxical, that it would drive me away rather than closer to him. I was too scared to admit that watching the old man grow ever older reminded me of his mortality so much that I felt a lump in my throat whenever I saw him. Ignoring all that was a futile attempt to hold on the a version of him, of us, of happier days, a vain delusion that by neglecting the reality of this situations I could negate death itself and make him immortal somehow. And now, of course, I regretted that I didn't spent more time with him while I still could.

Absentminded as I was, I tipped over a stack of papers and they fell to the ground. With a sigh, I was just about to lean down to pick them up, when something caught my attention.

Amidst the papers, there was a key.

It was impossible for me to tell if it had been there all along or if I had brought it in among the papers. But slowly, the memory came back, bit by bit, like tiny drops from the dripping faucet behind me. The locked room. The red chair. And then, the water flowed: the painting, the dozing man, his ludicrous outfit, and his eyes, that intense stare –

No, that can't be right. How can I remember his eyes if he was pictured sleeping?

I pinch the bridge of my nose as conflicting memories begin to surface. I decide to take a break and check out the painting. Granddad kept it in a locked room, after all, so perhaps it's worth something after all.

The key turns awkwardly in the lock, and I wonder if it's from repeated use or lack of use. The room behind is just as I remember it. Empty, except for an old chair. Fifteen years later there's almost nothing of the red paint left any longer. This time, the later afternoon sun hits the tiny window just at the right angle to cast the room in enough light to see clear.

There, on the opposite wall, is the painting.

It's a bit shabbier than I remember, but its realism is still stunning. I wonder who painted the dozing man in his fancy clothes, and who he was. Perhaps there's a clue somewhere on the painting itself, an artist's signature or dedication. I decide to take it down to have a look at the backside too, so I pull the chair towards the wall. As I step on it, I find myself eye-to-closed-eye with the dozing man. Because funnily enough, I always used to be fairly tall compared to other kids my age, but unfortunately, I didn't really grow much more since I was twelve.

I stare at the painting for a moment. I feel like I can't even count the brush strokes used to draw the feather stuck to his hat. His funny moustache is just like I remember it. And the level of detail that went into painting his skin – did he have that many wrinkles the last time?

"Huh? Oh you're back! Finally!"

I scream, and just like fifteen years ago, I stumble backwards and trip over the chair. But when I hit the floor, I just stay there, sprawled on the ground, paralysed by the sight before me. This is not a nightmare. This is not a memory, distorted by long nights spent reading fantastic stories and days spent daydreaming in the hot summer sun.

This is reality. And this painting is staring down at me. And now it is also talking to me.

"What the-?"

I quickly recapitulate in my head what I ate and drank in the last 24 hours. I don't take any drugs, I didn't drink any alcohol, and there's virtually no chance that somebody slipped anything into my drinks or food. I touch my forehead, no fever.

Meanwhile, the man seems utterly unmoved. He yawns and stretches and continues to talk to me as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Sorry that I fell asleep, it's been a dreadfully long time that I spent alone here, and I didn't know when you'd come, so-"

"What the FUCK is going on?" I scream at him.

"-later than I had thought, considering-"

"What are you TALKING about? WHY are you talking?!"

"- have to come. Now. Your gran'dad is in grave danger."

I stare at him in disbelief.

"My granddad is DEAD, you... you..."

I try to come up with an insult that accurately reflects how upset I am, but it seems impossible. No words can express the feeling of having a man in an oil painting mock the death of a loved one.

"He is not. Not yet."

"He DIED and I have come to clear his house!" I shout back.

"He disappeared and was declared dead, there's a difference."

How does he even know about that? It hurts to even think about it. That there was no funeral. That I didn't have a chance to say goodbye. That I didn't have a chance to apologize for not visiting more often in the past years. All I got was a letter sent to me one day, informing me of his death and my inheritance, and including the keys to the cottage.

"Fuck you," I growl, "you insufferable, oily pri-"

"Calm down lass, I know this is a lot to take in. But if you'd like to throw a tantrum, I suggest you do it on the way. Time is of the essence here."

I press my lips together and shake my head in disbelief, and I feel the tears stream down my cheeks. I don't like being compared to a child. But in front of this man, hanging and odd two feet above the ceiling and staring down at me, I feel like one. I bury my face in my hands. Perhaps if I don't look, all of this will disappear.

"We've met before. Do you remember?" he asks, his voice now softer.

I nod.

"When I was a child, and stole the key to this room."

"Even before that."

I raise my head. My eyes are veiled with tears, but as I blink them away and my vision clears, I look at him in the light of day for the first time. He's leaning against the armrest of the chair again, one leg across the other, the pointy tip of his shoe waggling at a rhythm, his head cocked to the side as he looks at me with what seems like great curiosity and some amusement. There is something in the softness of his look, something in his dark brown eyes, that I hadn't noticed on that fateful night, and even now can't quite define. But he does seem familiar.

"Do you remember?"

"I-I.... I'm not sure..." I stutter.

"Your grandfather told me a lot about you. And that's why I believe you will be able to save him. But you will have to trust me, can you do that?"

The man in the painting suddenly gets up, and stretches his hand out, and for a second I almost expect it to pop out of the painting. Instead, I witness some weird distortion of perspective and depth, as he moves his hand closer towards me, but at the same time doesn't, because he is still confined to the 2D space of a canvas.

"I don't know. Can I?" I ask warily.

"For him?" he suggests.

Something about the way he looks at me calms my nerves. My heart is still racing, but the lump in my throat is starting to dissolve. I wipe the tears from my cheeks.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Come with me," he beckons, "And I'll explain."

"Come with-?"

I stare at his hand. That flat, oil-painted hand, on the flat, oil-painted canvas. I don't even question it anymore. I step up to the painting and swallow my fear.

"How do you even know him? Why are you here?" I ask, as I slowly raise my hand and move it towards the caves.

The man smiles, the twirled ends of his moustache seem to smile along with him.

"Because he is my father."

The next question gets stuck in my throat. The moment my fingertips make contact with the surface of the painting, I don't feel the sleekness of dried oil. I feel warmth and softness. I feel his hand. I look up at him, trying desperately to make sense of what is happening. The answer is right before me, and yet I cannot comprehend.

"Welcome home," he says, as he pulls me into the painting.

___

A.N.

I had a terrible night with tons of nightmares, but one of the less frightening and more curious dreams inspired this story. So the first thing I did this morning was to sit down and write - for the first time in ages! And I have to say, this went really well. From start to "finish" it took me about 2.5h (might still have some typos). I'll try to write down more of my ideas like this, just some warm-up/practice, with no word limit, goal, or pressure. Just to tell stories. Just for fun :)