Years passed. At school I learned that wine is made from grapes, after a long process of transformation, and not in cellars. But I also knew that my uncle had not lied to me. I was sure of that. And my cousin knew so many things about wine. All this remained strange and impossible to understand.
Eventually, I found an explanation. Helped by a friend of mine, a girl who was peculiar herself. She was very intelligent. I trusted her and I told her the whole story, starting with the cellar and the wine and my cousin. Everything. She smiled as if she had understood immediately. The day after, she came with a full bag of books. "You have to read these and then you'll know". So ... the solution was there ... maybe I had to be cautious. I put the bag aside and did not open it. Of course, when she asked me about the books, I miserably lied "Wow ... incredible, incredible". "You have to read them, I tell you, you have to read them", she kept saying, "if you want to understand what's going on under your uncle's house".
She was so certain that the books would reveal the answer. There was the solution. I opened the bag, spread the books on my bed and looked at the covers, which were golden and black with twisted faces and traces of red-blood. Lovecraft, Matheson ... these names did not tell me a thing. I selected one book and opened it and started to read. It took me all night and the next night to finish it. During the day, at school, I was dizzy because of the lack of sleep. But also because of what I had read. Then, I took a second book, and a third one. All the stories were similar. They were terrifying, but they were also very helpful to me. They were about big houses with huge black cold cellars, huge stairs that went deep under the earth and were inhabited by frightening creatures. Normal people like me or mum or my father disappeared in them. This was it. At that time, I was too young to understand what parallel worlds meant. And my uncle knew that, of course. He just told me what he could, that there was a mystery down there, under their house and that it was preferable not to know the secret. One in the family was enough, my cousin should know, period. This is why my uncle had warned me not to open the door. This is why he always asked his son to tell him about the wine. This was also why I should believe what he said about wine.
