The House of the Secret (La maison des hommes vivants)

A first-person narrator suddenly experiences extreme, premature aging and, convinced death is imminent, composes a testament to warn others of a grave secret. The account links a routine military notice about severed telegraph lines to an isolated coastal battery with escalating anomalies: a heavy, intrusive presence, impaired senses, and progressive physical decline. The narrative shifts between administrative detail and urgent, intimate reflection as the narrator reconstructs the strange events surrounding an old, secretive house and the peril it poses to those who encounter it.