Lena was seventeen years old and only pretended not to believe in village legends. Nevertheless, since the station at Jastrzębna had been closed, she listened more carefully than usual. It was said that the echo on the platform does not repeat the words, but anticipates them. It sounded like a cheap joke, perhaps viral with a short internet video. But one September evening Lena decided to check it out for herself, quietly and without witnesses. She took the recorder, a directional microphone and Bartek, who always kept an eye on the torch during evening outings. The platform smelled of rust, damp and old oil, like a forgotten workshop. The rails were overgrown with grass and the departures board hung crookedly, with a few letters broken off. Lena set up the equipment under the canopy, careful not to let the cable get caught in the gravel. - 'One, two, three,' she said calmly, looking at the signal level; echo test, platform one. The echo came back, but not as it should have, because the recording said a phrase that no one had ever said before. - 'Don't turn around,' whispered Lena to herself, though she stood still. Bartek furrowed his eyebrows as the phrase came a second before she whispered it. Then a crackling sound came from the loudspeaker, as if someone had picked up the telephone in the duty station. The board vibrated and began scrolling through the letters until they formed today's date and time from five minutes ago. A pale light was on in the checkout window, although the glass had long been boarded up. On the counter lay a ticket stamped for next Friday, with Lena and Bartek's names on it. - 'Someone's screwing us,' Bartek said, but checked the seal; it was intact. Lena put her ear to the grille and heard her own laughter, a little older. The recording displayed plummeting levels, as if someone was breathing right over the microphone. The door to the on-call room was chain-locked, but a sheet of paper was shoveling from inside. Bartek slipped his phone through the crack and snapped a picture, which showed a signature in graphite pencil. The signature read: handover protocol, 0:44 a.m., receipt: Lena L. On the back there was still an annotation, blurred but not random. Lena grabbed the chain, and when the metal rang, a chill blew from the tunnel. The low buzzing of the rails reached them, though the tracks ended in an overgrown parting. The light flicked on and stopped at the end of the platform, like a spotlight without a source. The recorder replayed their voices, but half a sentence before they had time to say them. - 'Run away,' sounded from the device, in exactly the tone Bartek intended to shout in a moment. The departures board began to rattle at a frantic pace, laying down strings of numbers, different every second. And from under the canopy came a soft, even step, as if someone was approaching straight towards them without haste.