Four friends rent attic rooms in an old guesthouse near Heather Mountain, but by night the house begins to answer them with sounds from a sealed corridor and a shadow that should not be there.
Maja, Lena, Adam, and Igor packed their backpacks back in town, counting down the days to the weekend they had promised themselves since spring. Heather Mountain had been a line on the horizon for months, all wild fields, dark forest, and that strange promise old places make when you have one foot already in adulthood. Renting rooms in Staśko's guesthouse felt reckless in exactly the right way.
The house stood at the edge of the village like it had been left there by another century. The porch boards complained under their shoes. Dust and dried lavender clung to the air. Staśko, broad-shouldered and grey-bearded, led them up a narrow staircase to two adjoining attic rooms and smiled without warmth.
"Best not to go down to the cellar after dark," he said, as if he were warning them about rain. "The steps are bad, and the pipes groan all night. Easy to lose your footing."
Adam laughed as if that settled it. The others were more interested in the terrace and the view beyond it, where the hills rolled away in blue layers under the evening light. Lena lingered by the window, though, because something about the ground floor had already begun to bother her. Beneath one of the windows hung a torn curtain, stiff with age, and under it the glass looked as if it had been touched from the inside.
"Probably nothing," Igor said when she pointed.
But nothing in the guesthouse moved the way nothing should.
By nightfall the village had gone dark, one window at a time, until the house felt stranded in the black. Even their whispers seemed too loud. Lena lay awake longer than the others, listening. Then, from somewhere in the corridor, came a soft, unmistakable sound, like a footstep trying not to be heard.
"Maja," she whispered. "Did you hear that?"
Maja was already sitting up.
Adam reached for the curtain. Igor had already crossed the room and closed the door properly. For one breathless second, everything stayed still. Then the handle began to turn slowly from the other side, and the door creaked open a fraction on its own.
No one moved.
From deeper in the corridor came the drag of something heavy across the floorboards, long and deliberate, as if someone were pulling a burden toward their rooms. The corridor light snapped on with a weak, yellow flicker.
Lena stared past the doorframe and saw a shadow stretch across the wall outside.
It was the shape of a person.
And there were only four of them in the room.