On Halloween, Lena cancelled a club outing and went to her grandmother's house on the edge of town. She was to guard the pumpkin in the window, hand out candy and look for props for the school parade. The fog lay low, as if the street was wrapped in a scarf, and children in costume flashed like skylights. The wooden house crackled familiarly, smelling of dried apple and chalk from when it was a school. Lena liked the sound, but on this evening every whisper of the boards sounded like a breath getting used to her. She was going to look for props in the attic, where her grandmother kept boxes of amateur theatre. She pulled the cord, the flap came down and the ladder squeaked as if protesting. Dust lay on the beams, where old shoe marks and something that resembled drops of wax were visible. In the corner stood a box with the letters T.L. and a sticker: "Shadow Ball, 1979". When she lifted the lid, she found a programme of names, among them Sophia Rudnicka, her mother, although she never mentioned it. Inside lay four masks: the Comedian with a wide smile, the Sleeper with a half-closed eye, the Wanderer with a scratchy beard and the Mute, smooth as a sheet of milk. They smelled of paint, orange peel and something that resembled autumn dust. Beneath the masks lay a heavy bell, and in a velvet envelope rested a card: "Do not wear after dark. Rehearsal at midnight." Lena screeched, but the bell rang on its own, softly, as if to kindly introduce itself. The phone vibrated; the Night Procession group asked if she had lights and confetti. "I'll be right back," she wrote, snapping a photo of Nimego and sending it to the chat room. Immediately, a new contact appeared: Inspector, and the screen popped up: "Don't be late, Lena. Entry fourteen", with no icon and no number. She felt her neck stiffen; she turned the mask over and saw 'ZOFIA' scrawled on the inside. On the opposite wall stood a tarnished mirror, in which she briefly saw a row of silhouettes in identical masks lined up behind her back. She looked behind her, but the attic was empty, only dust swirling against the chest. The pumpkin flame by the stairs fluttered as if it was running out of air, and from below came a single, timid knock on the front door. The bell in the box clanged a second time, louder, and touched the wooden walls with a warm echo. Before she could close the lid, the Mute moved as if it had dropped a millimetre, and the mirror showed her already in a white mask, standing on stage under a heavy curtain. The phone vibrated again: "Curtain up. Now" - wrote the stage manager, and someone's light footsteps began to climb slowly into the loft. Reflexively, she reached for the bell and a smooth bonnet to have anything in her hands. Then the stairs groaned once more, and the flap from below vibrated, as if someone had quietly asked to enter.