In the evening, as the rain brushed the roof of the City Theatre, Lena cautiously descended into the basement. The renovation had dragged on for weeks, so the corridors were crawling with film, the smell of paint and wheezing silence. Mr Struzik, the night watchman, raised his torch and nodded to her from the shadowy gatehouse. Don't take the lift, it breaks down after midnight, the stairs will definitely be safer tonight. Lena scowled, but clutched the archive key in her pocket like a strange talisman. She was to record a sample of the silence of the hall after the storm, for a paper on the acoustics of old edifices. The sound archive was located at the end of the corridor, where the walls breathed the chill of the night. A neon number flashed above the door, as if counting each of her steps separately, stubbornly. The lock creaked and gave way; inside, bookcases, boxes and patient dust awaited. Lena lit the studio lamp, slipped in her headphones and switched on the old reel-to-reel tape recorder carefully. There was a request in the director's email: listen to the box marked Do Not Play. There was something crossed out on the inventory list and only an illegible initial near the margin. The box turned out to be heavier than it looked, stuffed with wax cylinders, numbered carefully by hand. Next to it lay a phonograph with a crank and instructions whose paper was as brittle as a leaf. She applied the needle, spun it until a noise like the breathing of an empty hall blossomed in the headphones. Then a whisper came out, too quiet at first to distinguish them accurately yet. The note grew, carried soft syllables that folded into her name suddenly. On each cylinder was the same hand, zigzags sure, the letter L double-wrapped. She stopped the crank and listened; nothing, just ventilation and the drumming of rain against the roof. She let go of the crank; the whispering returned, but now sounded like it was coming from the back row. She took off her headphones; the sound did not die down, it flowed from the corridor, quiet as a night bulb. The plug slipped out of the socket, yet the indicator vibrated and froze at three. The clock above the door clicked midnight, and a short, unpleasant buzzing came from the ceiling. The light hesitated twice, as if someone had walked past and shifted the air. Lena stood up, pushed back her chair and reached for the torch, though the lamps continued to shine. A third voice came from the corridor, like an echo that had decided to abandon physics altogether. A clear, soft voice said: Lena, please don't turn around - as if it knew her choices going forward. Lena felt the phone in her pocket vibrate, but the screen remained dark and nameless. Then something quietly rattled on the other side of the shelves, one time, another, then three. She thought of the diagrams she'd drawn in class and the pattern just coming back. She took half a step forward, and a voice right next to her ear added just one word: Now.