My Son, Who Died 4 Years Ago, Called Me At 3:47 AM: “Dad, Open The Door. I’m So Cold.” Then I Saw…

The Ghost at the Door and the Secret Son

The grandfather clock in my study showed 3:47 a.m. when my phone rang. At 72 years old, you learned that calls at this hour never bring good news. My hand trembled as I reached for it, half asleep, half terrified.

The number was blocked. I spoke into the receiver.

“Hello?”

Silence, then breathing, ragged and desperate. A voice came through, weak, barely a whisper.

“Dad?”

The voice continued.

“Dad, please. I need you to open the door. I’m so cold.”

My blood turned to ice. That voice, I knew that voice better than my own. I whispered, my throat closing.

“Thomas? Thomas, is that you?”

The voice pleaded.

“Please, Dad, just open the door.”

The line went dead. I sat frozen in my leather chair, the phone still pressed against my ear. This wasn’t possible; this couldn’t be real.

Thomas had been dead for four years, four years, three months, and 16 days; I’d counted every single one. My son had died in a boating accident on Lake Superior, and they never found his body. The Coast Guard said the currents there were brutal and unforgiving.

They’d found his jacket, his wallet, and his shoes on the boat, but Thomas himself was gone, swallowed by that cold dark water. And now he was calling me, asking me to open the door. I stood slowly, my joints protesting.

The hardwood floor was cold beneath my bare feet as I walked toward the front of the house. Each step felt like I was walking through fog. This had to be a dream, or maybe my grief had finally broken something in my mind.

Four years of regret, of guilt, and of “what-ifs” were finally cracking me open. But when I reached the front door, my hand hovering over the deadbolt, I heard it. A knock, soft and hesitant.

The voice came through the wood, muffled but unmistakable.

“Dad?”

The voice continued.

“Please, I’m freezing out here.”

I unlocked the door with shaking hands and pulled it open. The porch light illuminated a figure standing in the rain. He looked young, maybe late 20s, soaked to the bone and shivering violently.

His dark hair was plastered to his forehead, and he was wearing clothes that hung on a too-thin frame. But it wasn’t Thomas. The face was similar, heartbreakingly so, with the same sharp cheekbones and the same deep-set eyes.

But this person was younger than Thomas had been. And when those eyes met mine, there was a desperation there that made my chest ache. The stranger said, voice breaking.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.”

He continued.

“They’re looking for me, and I’m so scared, and you’re the only family I have left.”

I managed to ask, though my voice sounded strange and distant.

“Who are you?”

He swallowed hard, rain streaming down his face.

“My name is Ethan. Ethan Morrison, and I think—I think I’m your grandson.”

Before we go further, tell me where are you watching from right now and what time is it there? I need to know I’m not alone in this. I stepped back, letting him in; what else could I do?

He collapsed onto my entryway floor, shaking so hard his teeth chattered. I grabbed blankets from the hall closet, wrapped them around his shoulders, and then went to make tea. My hands wouldn’t stop trembling as I filled the kettle.

A grandson. Thomas had never mentioned having a child, but then again, there was so much Thomas never told me. There was so much distance between us in those final years.

When I returned to the living room, Ethan had moved to the couch. He clutched the mug of tea like it was a lifeline, steam rising between us in the dim lamplight. I sat in the chair across from him.

“You need to tell me everything, from the beginning.”

Ethan took a shaky breath. He explained that he never knew about Thomas until six months ago. His mother, Rebecca Morrison, had died last year of cancer.

Before she passed, she told him the truth. She revealed that his father wasn’t the man who raised him, but that his real father was Thomas Bennett, and that he died before Ethan was born. The name Rebecca Morrison meant nothing to me.

I tried to place it in Thomas’s history but came up blank. Ethan continued, saying they met in Thunder Bay in the summer of 2000. She was working at a marina, and he was there with friends.

They had a brief relationship, and when she found out she was pregnant, Thomas was already gone. She tried to find him, but by then he had moved and changed his number. She eventually gave up, married someone else, and raised Ethan thinking that man was his father.

2000 would have been the summer before Thomas’s final year at university. He’d spent that summer up north, supposedly working at a fishing lodge. I remembered because it was one of the few times he seemed happy during those years.

It was one of the few times he called me regularly, excited about the wilderness and the freedom. I asked him why she didn’t tell him sooner. Ethan’s voice cracked as he explained.

“She wanted to.”

He continued, explaining that her husband, the man he called Dad, made her promise never to tell. He was controlling and cruel sometimes. After he died three years ago, she still kept the secret, perhaps out of shame or to protect him.

He set down the tea and pulled a photograph from his jacket pocket. It was water-damaged but still visible. He handed it to me, and my breath caught.

There was Thomas, younger than I’d seen him in years, standing on a dock with his arm around a pretty blonde woman. They were both laughing, the summer sun bright behind them. In Thomas’s eyes, there was something I hadn’t seen in a long time: joy.

Ethan said his mother kept this hidden in a box under her bed. She also kept letters Thomas sent that summer. He did care about her, but then he just stopped writing and stopped calling.

She never understood why, but I knew why. That fall, Thomas had started dating Vanessa, the beautiful and ambitious daughter from one of Toronto’s old-money families. She’d swept into his life like a hurricane, and suddenly everything else disappeared, including a woman named Rebecca in Thunder Bay.

I forced myself to focus and asked.

“You said someone’s looking for you. Who?”

Ethan’s face went pale.

“Vanessa and her brother Marcus.”