On the thirty-first of October, the town by the river smelled of smoke and baked apples. Pumpkins twinkled from the doorsteps and paper ghosts on strings were hung in the market square. Nina, a nineteen-year-old ethnography student, had returned to her grandmother's house for the long weekend. Her mother and her aunts were bustling around in the kitchen, preparing strucchts and tea with cloves. The cousins were trying on witches' hats and gluing on fake moustaches. Nina promised to help, but curiosity won out when her grandmother mentioned the mysterious boxes in the attic. She took a torch, moved the flap and climbed up the narrow ladder. The attic greeted her with the smell of old apples, cedar and dust that rose with every step. In the corner stood a chest with her great-grandmother's initials on it, and a metal lantern, heavy and cool. A leaf motif was engraved on the glass, and a note stitched with white thread was attached to the inside. Nina read the slanted writing: You light when you want to hear the silent. Don't light up when the stairs are empty. Below, someone had drawn a tiny triangle and a wave, like the sign of a river. The girl felt a tickle of anxiety, and at the same time the same fascination she had written about in her class notes. She found the remnant of a candle, slid it inside and scraped the match against the metal. The flame burst into a cool blue light that did not evaporate, but rang out like a sound. Grandma's cat, Pesto, ran along the beams and stopped, staring down the stairs. Drums and laughter came from the market; a torchlight procession to the old cemetery was beginning. Nina rolled up a note, put it in her jacket pocket and lifted the lantern. The words of warning sounded in her head like a rhyme, the meaning of which no one remembers anymore. She stopped at the door, strained her hearing and stepped down onto the porch. The street was full of light and sound, but Nina's lantern shone differently, deeper and quieter. Jas, a neighbour from years gone by, wearing a long coat and a fox mask, noticed it. "This is no ordinary lantern," he muttered, walking past. "We're going to the Quiet House, just for a little while." The Quiet House stood by the cemetery wall, overgrown with wild vines, with a porch gnawed away by time. Children ran around the square, adults sang an old song, and an elderly gentleman told of letters that never arrived in this house. "We're not going inside," said Johnny gravely. "We'll look in from the threshold and come back." Nina nodded, though her fingers were already clenching tighter on the handle. The porch creaked as they stood in front of the open door; beyond the threshold the wooden staircase piled up, empty and black. Nina placed the lantern on the first step and moved her hand away. Blue light oozed upwards, like mist climbing up the railing. Letters pricked up on the wall, as if someone had written in plaster with a nail: HEAR. "Do you hear something?" whispered Johnny, tilting his head. A barely perceptible whisper came from deep inside the house, similar to the movement of breathing under the window. The flame wavered and touched the glass, drawing today's date and a tiny wave on it. "Don't light it when the stairs are empty," Nina repeated almost silently. Then a single, very distinct footstep answered from above.