Staś, Lena, and Igor dare each other into the von Radow villa, where an old key, a hidden stairway, and a flicker of light suggest the house has been waiting for them.
Staś, Lena, and Igor walked the narrow path through the neglected park in silence, the dusk thickening around them. The last strip of sunlight slipped away behind the trees, and with it the easy confidence they had been carrying since school ended for the day.
They were eighteen. Old enough, they told themselves, to stop being afraid of stories that had followed the von Radow villa for years. Old enough to laugh at rumours about footsteps in empty halls and windows that glowed after midnight.
The villa stood at the end of the avenue like a shadow that had learned to hold its breath.
"No one lives here," Lena said, though her voice came out softer than she meant it to.
"Obviously," Igor replied, with the kind of certainty people used when they wanted to believe themselves. Staś reached for the door first. The handle was cold, the metal rough with rust. For a moment nothing happened, then the door shifted under his hand and opened with a slow, complaining creak.
The air inside smelled of damp wood, dust, and something older. Their torch beams slid over cracked walls, faded wallpaper, and portraits whose faces had been scratched almost beyond recognition. Every step they took sent a thin echo down the corridor, as if the villa was answering them from somewhere deep inside itself.
Staś was the first to notice the sound underfoot. He stopped, crouched, and lifted a narrow metal object from beneath a torn carpet.
A key.
Lena leaned closer. "What does it open?"
Before anyone could answer, the three of them moved farther in, drawn by the same uneasy curiosity. At the end of the corridor stood a heavy oak door, darker than the walls around it, its lock corroded but intact. Staś tried the key.
It fit.
The click was soft, almost polite. Lena took the key from him and turned it the rest of the way. The door opened onto a narrow stone staircase descending into blackness.
A faint murmur rose from below, too low to make out, too steady to mistake for the wind.
Igor froze. "Did you hear that?"
No one answered. They were all staring at the stairs now, where a strange pulsing light had just flashed once, sharp and sudden, from somewhere around the bend...