Eighteen Years of Night

Schönbrunn, the night of September 26–27, 2026

The wooden panel opposite the bed came loose from the wall with a crack. Leopold Arnitz raised his head. At first he took the sound for a piece of furniture shifting with the nighttime change in temperature. Then he saw the dark gap between the paneling and the molding. The panel leaned forward at an angle, its lower edge resting on the low cabinet.

Mara Vellner sat beside him in bed. She hadn’t fallen asleep yet. Earlier, she had taken his hand from her shoulder and pulled it beneath the covers; now she was holding that same hand while they both stared at the wall. Light from a courtyard lamp filtered through the closed window. In that narrow strip, Leopold could see that a screw had worked loose along the upper edge of the panel.

He switched on the bedside lamp and got up. The panel was heavy enough to damage the cabinet and the books on top of it. He wanted it down before it fell. Mara pulled on her pants and his cardigan while he buttoned his shirt and brought the toolbox from the adjoining workroom.

Leopold had lived in this apartment in a side section of Schönbrunn for six years. He knew the slow walk across the courtyard, the staircase where you inevitably lowered your voice after a long day, and the heavy apartment door that Mara still pulled shut with both hands even after several visits. He kept his books in the bedroom and had added a second lamp because light in the high-ceilinged rooms was never where he needed it. The wood paneling was older than his lease and younger than the walls. Until this moment, it had concerned him only in his work as a restorer.

He cleared the books from the cabinet. Mara held the panel while he loosened the remaining screws. When they lifted the wood aside together, a pale line of dust slid to the floor. Behind it there was neither brick nor plaster. A narrow dark door with a brass handle was set into the wall. An old key was in the lock below the handle.

Leopold put down his tools. Mara let go of the panel and the wood tipped against the cabinet. The impact was loud enough to make both of them flinch. Beyond the newly exposed door, everything stayed silent.

“Does that lead to the other apartment?” Mara asked.

Leopold shook his head. Two years earlier he had been on the other side of this wall when a pipe was inspected. There was a narrow service shaft there. He had seen the covered access himself. There was no room for a corridor, let alone a room.

Mara stepped closer and studied the frame. She bought and sold paintings, handled estates, and had entered more than one locked apartment in the course of her work. The door in front of them seemed to strike her as something else. She wasn’t looking at the wood but at the gap beneath it, as though she expected light to appear there.

Leopold turned the key and carefully pulled the handle. The door opened toward them into the bedroom. Its hinges were on the left; he drew it open only far enough to see through.

Through the gap he saw yellow light and a man just reaching for the edge of a table. From the far side of the room came three knocks.

Leopold recoiled and pushed the door shut. The knocking stopped. He kept one hand on the handle and heard Mara draw a breath behind him. Several seconds passed without another sound.

“There was light,” she said. “Not ours.”

Leopold opened the door again, wider this time. The door swung left into his bedroom and stopped in front of the cabinet they had moved. Beyond the threshold the floor dropped about eight inches to a worn carpet. A floor lamp lit a rectangular room. On the right stood a desk with a green leather chair; a shelving unit stood against the left wall. At the far end, perhaps sixteen feet away, there was a second door. Someone had wedged a small table against it. A chair stood crooked beside it.

The man’s hand reached the edge of the table now. Leopold had seen it still in motion before he shut the door, yet although the door had remained closed for several seconds, hardly any time seemed to have passed inside. The man braced himself against the table. He wore a white shirt and held his right leg away from his body. When another blow struck the far door, he let go of the tabletop to keep from falling and looked over his shoulder toward the opening into Leopold’s bedroom.

Leopold recognized him. Not first by his face, but by the way he tilted his head when he encountered something that made no sense and still tried to reason it out. Daniel Kreubach used to look at him like that when Leopold uncovered a painted-over number on a frame and then didn’t want to know anything more about it.

There was blood on Daniel’s temple. His face had not changed. He looked exactly as he had on the night in September 2008 when Leopold last saw him.

“Arnitz?” Daniel looked from him to Mara and back. “How did you get in there?”

Leopold didn’t answer. His eyes went to the pale scrape on the desk and the ashtray with a chip missing from its rim. This room had been part of Gregor Selm’s warehouse. It had not been in Schönbrunn.

Behind Daniel, the barricaded door shifted. For a moment a hand appeared through a gap beside the damaged lock, then disappeared again. A man’s voice came from the narrow passage beyond.

“Move the table, Daniel.”

Leopold knew that voice too. He hadn’t heard it in eighteen years. The man in the passage did not sound eighteen years older.

Mara touched Leopold’s back. “He’s hurt. I’m getting the phone.”

She went to the nightstand. Leopold remained in front of the open door. He could have told her he didn’t know the room. Daniel would have contradicted him immediately. The thought shamed him: even now he was still calculating which lie the others might allow him to keep.

“His name is Daniel Kreubach,” he said. “He disappeared back then. I was there.”

Mara stopped with the phone in her hand. He could see that she wanted more. Then something struck the far door again. Daniel limped back to the table, planted both hands on the top, and pushed against it with his good leg.

Leopold looked at Mara. “Call for help. I’m getting him out.”

He steadied himself on the frame and stepped down over the threshold. When both feet were on the carpet, the smell of the room hit him: fresh cigarette smoke, paper, and the cognac Selm used to pour into heavy glasses. Mara remained behind him in the bedroom. He could hear her giving her name and location into the phone.

* * *

Leopold went around the left side of the desk to Daniel. The path to the barricaded door was clear. He set his hands beside Daniel’s on the table edge, and together they shoved the piece of furniture against the door. Something splintered near the damaged lock. Selm cursed in the passage and stopped pushing.

Daniel lowered himself onto the chair standing crooked beside the table. His pants were dark below the right knee. A trail of blood led across the carpet from there to the desk.

“He hit me with the bar,” Daniel said. He wiped his forehead and looked at Leopold again. “What happened to your hair?”

Leopold had no answer he could say out loud. He was fifty-two. Daniel looked thirty-four. Leopold had been that same age when Selm called him at night and offered him eight hundred euros to open this lock. Daniel had shouted for help from the other side. Leopold had put his tools to it anyway.

He crouched beside him. “You don’t have to go through that door. My apartment is behind us. I’ll get you across.”

Daniel looked past him at the open doorway. Mara stood in the bedroom with the phone to her ear, watching both men. Leopold couldn’t tell what she thought of what she was seeing. At least she was still there.

A slow scraping came from the passage. Selm was testing the old door. Leopold knew the lock; he had damaged it himself all those years ago, and he could see that the makeshift table barricade was the only thing still holding.

Daniel put his left hand on Leopold’s shoulder. “The case in the metal cabinet beside the desk. Take it with us.”

Leopold followed his gaze. On the bottom shelf of the small metal cabinet to the right of the desk sat a flat blue case. The cabinet door was open. It was no more than two steps out of the path they would have to take to reach the new door anyway.

“The copies are in there,” Daniel said. “That’s why he won’t let me go.”

Leopold nodded. He helped Daniel out of the chair and guided him away from the barricade, then along the side of the desk. Daniel could barely put weight on his injured leg. At the corner of the desk he braced himself while Leopold lifted the case from the open cabinet. It wasn’t heavy. Envelopes stuck out between lid and rim. Leopold pushed them back in and handed the case to Daniel, who clutched it against his body with his right arm.

They were already halfway across the room when the table at the old door tipped over. The crash made Daniel jerk. Leopold pulled Daniel’s arm back over his shoulder and kept moving. Mara had set the phone on the nightstand. She came to the threshold and reached both hands toward Daniel.

Selm stood in the old doorway. Behind him Leopold could see a short passage whose far door remained closed. Selm stepped over the fallen table leg and looked at Leopold. At first he seemed irritated rather than surprised. Then he noticed Leopold’s gray temples and stopped.

“Arnitz?”

Leopold used the moment. He got Daniel to the threshold into Schönbrunn. Mara caught Daniel’s right arm; the blue case was now wedged between Daniel’s chest and Leopold’s shoulder. Together they lifted him up the step. Daniel got his good leg onto the bedroom floor, let go of the case, and sank to his knees. Mara caught it and set it behind her beside the bed.

Leopold turned once more. Selm had reached the desk. He wore the same dark suit Leopold remembered, though his shirt had come untucked. In his right hand was a pistol. Through the open door he looked at Mara, the bed, and the lamp in Leopold’s apartment.

“This isn’t my warehouse,” he said.

Leopold backed toward the threshold. He had to lift his foot to clear the step. At that moment Selm reached him and grabbed the back of his shirt. The fabric tightened around Leopold’s throat. He lost his balance and struck his hip against the frame.

Mara pulled Daniel behind the open door. Leopold caught Selm’s wrist before the man could drag him farther back into the old room. The gunshot went off close to his ear. Wood splintered above his shoulder. A puff of plaster and dust burst from the bedroom wall beside the window.

After that Leopold heard only a high ringing. Selm still had hold of his shirt. Leopold saw the man’s mouth moving but couldn’t understand the words. He forced the gun arm down. Selm’s hand struck the edge of the frame. The pistol fell onto the carpet just behind their feet.

Leopold tried to get into the bedroom, but Selm still had his shirt. When Selm yanked, Leopold had to release his wrist to keep from falling. He heard someone shout as if through water. Turning his head, he saw Daniel’s outstretched hand.

Daniel had pulled himself upright against the doorframe. Both feet remained inside the bedroom; his right hand held the frame while his left reached for Leopold’s forearm. Mara stood immediately behind him. She grabbed Leopold’s shirt from the front and pulled too.

The fabric tore at the shoulder. Leopold stumbled backward over the step and for a moment crashed into Daniel, whose injured leg buckled. Mara shoved both men toward the bed and grabbed the door handle. The door was still standing open to the left. She forced it back toward the frame.

Selm came after them. His left hand slipped around the exposed edge. Leopold saw the fingers inches from his face and drove his shoulder into the wood. Mara pushed beside him. The door almost closed, hit Selm’s hand, and stopped.

The ringing in Leopold’s ears was still there. Even through it he heard Selm scream. The hand in the gap bent sideways. Two fingers lay flattened against the frame, the others curled around the edge. Leopold felt Mara put her weight against the door once more. Selm tore his hand free. A broad smear of blood remained on the edge, and the door slammed shut.

Leopold turned the key and pulled it out. He stood facing the wood with the key locked in his fist. Behind him Daniel sat on the floor. Mara kept both hands pressed against the door as if she still had to hold it closed.

No sound came from the old room.

* * *

Mara picked up the phone immediately. She said a shot had been fired, Daniel was injured in the leg, and an armed man was behind a locked door. She tried to explain nothing beyond that. Leopold brought towels from the bathroom while Daniel pulled himself onto the edge of the bed with both hands. Daniel took his old cell phone and his keys from his pants pocket, then removed a photograph of his mother from his wallet and set everything on the blanket in front of him. The small screen showed September 14, 2008, a little after two in the morning.

Mara ended the call and placed her phone beside it. September 27, 2026. Daniel looked from one display to the other, then at Leopold. “You can change a date.” Mara left her phone with him. “A date, yes,” she said. “Not eighteen years.” Daniel rubbed a hand over his mouth and picked up the photograph as though he needed to make sure at least that image still belonged to the world he had just come from.

Leopold looked at the locked door. The room and the short passage with Selm must have been trapped together inside that night; events moved forward only while the connection to his apartment stood open. When he turned back to Daniel and Mara, he told them about Selm’s phone call, the eight hundred euros, and Daniel’s warning. He said he had understood how serious the danger was and opened the lock anyway. Daniel had driven Selm back into the short passage with a lamp and barricaded the door again. Leopold had used that exact moment to leave the warehouse instead of getting help. Later he had put in writing that he had not seen Daniel that night.

Daniel listened without interrupting. Only when Leopold fell silent did he look at the photograph in his hand. “My mother was sixty-two. Today.” Leopold had no answer. “You had eighteen years,” Daniel said. Leopold nodded. “I didn’t.”

Mara knelt in front of Daniel and held a folded towel against his leg. When someone knocked at the apartment door, she put Daniel’s hand on the towel and went straight into the entryway. She let in the responders they had called, brought them to Daniel, and warned them about the locked wooden door. Two men took over his care. Leopold showed a policewoman the bullet strike beside the window and the blood on the frame, then went into his workroom for paper and a pen.

While the men treated Daniel’s leg, Leopold wrote down what he had avoided for eighteen years: that Daniel had asked him for help, that Selm had paid him, that he had knowingly opened the door and later lied about it. He signed his full name, set the old key on the nightstand, and placed his statement beside it. Daniel read the first lines and looked up at him. “I pulled you out because otherwise you would have stayed in there. That’s all.” Leopold said he knew. Daniel held his gaze. “Then don’t make it into anything else.”

Mara placed the blue case on the bed beside Daniel. He checked that his copies were complete while she photographed the top layer. Beneath them were older invoices and transport records from Selm’s files. The policewoman remained with Leopold. He gave her the key and his signed statement and repeated that the armed man was behind the narrow door. The responders helped Daniel to his feet. When Leopold took one step toward him, Daniel raised a hand.

“Not you.”

Leopold stopped. Mara accompanied Daniel into the entryway. The blue case remained open on the bed; while the documents were being checked, a single sheet had slipped onto the floor. Leopold picked it up. It was a receipt from the spring of 2008, a short list of transport runs and deliveries for Selm. Beneath one amount was a name he didn’t recognize: Rudolf Kres.

Mara came back for Daniel’s photograph, phone, and keys. When she saw the name on the receipt, she stopped. “What?” Leopold asked. She told him to wait, took out her own phone, and entered the name. Among the results she found a business page for transportation and deliveries in Vienna, last updated in September 2026. Beside the name was a photograph of an older man in a dark suit.

She carried the phone and the receipt to Daniel in the entryway; Leopold stayed in the bedroom doorway. Daniel studied the face on the screen and enlarged the image. “Older,” he said. “But that’s him. He worked for Selm. Runs, warehouses, hotels. Things that weren’t supposed to show up in the books.” Mara took back the phone. The listing gave an address in Leopoldstadt, two streets from Praterstern. She held the screen out to Leopold.

“The man hasn’t disappeared.”