On a November evening, when the fog lay over the town like a thick blanket, Lena finally opened the tin box of landmarks that had been dusting at the bottom of her wardrobe for a fortnight. It had been left behind by her grandfather Joseph, the last signalman at Birchwood station. Inside was a brass whistle, a thin checkered notebook written in an even slanted script, a long hand from the station clock and a heavy iron key with the abbreviation P0 stuck in its ear. She slipped her finger into the cold loop of the key and felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the November chill. There was still a sheet of paper folded in four at the bottom of the box. She unfolded it carefully, the way one unfolds old maps. It was not a map, but a sketch of the station plan - roughly outlined tracks, the station building and... something underneath, marked with a circle and signed with a short: Platform 0. Next to it, in my grandfather's tiny handwriting: "If the light's out at full, wait until seven o'clock after. And don't go down alone." "Platform zero?" - she muttered aloud. She tilted the sketch under the desk lamp. A previously invisible arrow led from a small side gate behind the fuel depot to a staircase running down. She thought it must be some old technical corridor, something only railway workers knew about. Something that, now that Birchwood station only received two night freight trains, only existed in such hidden papers. Before she had time to decide anything, she wrote to Kacper and Jagoda. Kacper wrote back after a minute: "The gate behind the warehouse? Where I always hear a strange echo as I pass with my dog. I take a torch and a recorder." Berry sent just an emoticon of an eye and a runner, and then: "I'm going. What time?" They met after eleven o'clock in a café opposite the station, where the girl behind the counter was bored over mugs of bitter tea. Through the windows they could see the black sheet of the tracks and one bright spot - the headlight of a shunting locomotive. Lena kept the key in her jacket pocket and checked every now and then to make sure it hadn't fallen out. Her grandfather's notebook was opened in the middle of the table. A few pasted-up newspaper scraps were stuck between the pages: a short article from the sixties about the rebuilding of the station, some clipping about the damaged clocks after a storm four years ago and a note in snakeskin that didn't let up: "Don't look straight ahead when the band appears." "What band?" - Jagoda asked, tucking her hair behind her ear. The neon letters of the café sign were reflected in her eyes. Kacper, who usually goggles everything at once, hid his phone this time. "Maybe it's about the light. About something that shifts like a belt. You know, like on old TV sets," - he said. Lena shrugged her shoulders. In her mind's eye, an image of her grandfather - in his work jacket, with his baseball cap tilted to one side, smiling half-heartedly as he spoke: "The railway wants everything to be equal. And the world is not equal." - mingled with the cool metal of the key. Suddenly she began to realise that if she didn't go, it would gnaw at her for the rest of the year and beyond. They finally emerged into a dingy street where the sodium lamps were the colour of honey. A freight train with containers approached from the distance, a rain of sparks sprinkled from under the wheels, but they were only tiny, fleeting flames. After the passage, the street became quiet again. They passed an old kiosk that used to sell monthly tickets and blueberries, and entered between warehouses. The fog was thicker, smelling of dampness and preservative on the sleepers. Behind the fuel depot, exactly where the arrow on the sketch indicated, they found a metal gate built into the brick wall. It looked long disused, but was not as overgrown as one might expect. A padlock hung by the handle, dinged but not broken. "Try it," Kacper said quietly. Lena slid the key into the lock. It fitted. She turned it, feeling the mechanism give way with resistance after years, rasping in the lowest register. The padlock let go, the wicket could be swung open enough to squeeze through one at a time. Behind it, the stairs immediately began - downwards, sharply, like the cellar where you keep things you hope you won't need anymore. The air was cool and dry, like in an archive where paper still remembers fingers. Someone had once, long ago, painted the walls cream-coloured, now peeling and yellowed. At the bend in the staircase hung an enamel plaque with blue lettering: "Level -1. Service aisle". Berry touched the letters and was surprised: the plate was warm, as if a cable ran in the wall. A bare bulb in a metal frame dangled from the ceiling. Lena pulled the chain - nothing. "I have a torch" - whispered Kacper, but at that moment a single knock sounded somewhere deeper. As if the metal had touched the glass. They went even lower, carefully, placing their feet on the centres of the steps that slipped under their shoes. The corridor below was narrow, tiled in light green, with a dark line near the floor. There stood the smell of grease and something else - salty, like a coastal breeze, although the sea was a long way away. On the walls, evenly every few steps, hung dusty old clocks. Most without glass and without hands. One, however, had a distinct gouge on its axis, as if it was asking for a missing piece. Lena reached into her pocket and removed a pointer from a tin can. It was heavier than it looked, cool, with a dark tarnish of time. "No," said Kacper immediately, but he didn't have time to finish. The pointer drew itself to the axis, clicking quietly, as if a magnet had sucked it in. The clock trembled. First they heard a high, almost inaudible ticking, then a second sound, lower, from inside the wall. On the dial, the Roman numerals were worn away, but a fleeting shadow of their former contours could be seen. The pointer moved forward, hesitated, then moved backwards, stopping at XII - and then a little more, as if dragging itself along after a long nap. "What time is it?" - Jagoda asked, looking at her phone. The screen flashed the numbers: 00:15. "Seventeen past," said Lena, feeling that now that sentence from her grandfather's card sounded different. Like a warning and a promise at the same time. Kacper dimmed the torch, covering it with his hand. The light dimmed to a pale, leaving them in a milky twilight. The corridor twisted once more, leading to a door. The door was of heavy steel, once painted black. In the middle, in greyed paint, someone had painted a circle and a number: 0. Underfoot, you could feel the rough tiles, on which dust was layered, like on old books. Only in one place were the footprints fresh - three prints, as if someone had recently walked here in soft soles, turned around and disappeared, as the fourth footprint was cut off just at the threshold. Lena touched the door handle with her hand. It was icy and smooth, smoothed by a thousand hands that were no longer here. In the silence they heard something that might have been the wind - a long, quiet inhale and exhale. But the wind shouldn't be here. "Do you hear?" - Kacper switched on the recorder. The LEDs glowed softly. Lena raised her head. From the other side of the door, as if beneath them, as if above them at the same time, along, across, sounded first a quiet buzzing, and then something that reminded them all of their childhood: a distant, rhythmic tapping, a little too slow, as if dreaming. The track. Wheels. A track without a train. Courage in such places rarely comes by leaps and bounds - rather, it oozes like water. Lena pulled the P0 key from the lock, turning it between her fingers as if checking its weight. The metal flashed narrowly in the torchlight, then dimmed again. "Someone's been here!" - Jagoda whispered, pointing to the prints. "Or there is" - added Kacper as quietly as possible, not looking at them but into the space into which the invisible wave had just rolled. 00:16 The clock on the wall vibrated and skipped a minute, with a tap that they felt somewhere under their skin. They took half a step back. Lena embraced the key with her whole hand. Then a light began to ooze from beneath the door. Not yellow, not white, but the kind of light they had never seen before: like a belt that flowed, jagged with thin gaps, as if there were still very thin blinds between it and them. She noticed how the dust in the air danced in a streak, arranging itself in even, trembling lines. "Don't look straight ahead," she recalled the words on the page and reflexively closed her eyes. Off to the side, somewhere behind her eyelids, she saw the line of light growing, framing the edges, trying to seep in through the gaps. At the same moment, the doorknob she was holding moved slightly - first as if she thought it would, then decisively. It was not she who had pressed. 00:17 Someone - or something - on the other side of the handle responded with the same