Three friends wander into an abandoned tenement on Wiśniowa Street and find a pocket watch that hurls them into another time. Getting back may be the least of their problems.
The night was heavy and warm, carrying the sweet, almost cloying scent of cherry blossom down Wiśniowa Street. Under the pale pools of the old street lamps, the road looked emptied out of the present, as if someone had quietly folded time away and left only the shells of houses behind.
Marta, Krzysiek, and Lena were drifting along the pavement, pretending their summer evening had no destination. None of them wanted the meeting to end yet. None of them wanted to be first to say so.
Number 13 had always drawn their eyes. The tenement leaned into the street with a tired, watchful air, its windows dark and its facade peeling in long grey strips. Tonight, the front door stood slightly open.
Marta stopped, then looked at the others. Krzysiek gave the smallest shrug. Lena was already stepping forward.
Inside, the air smelled of dust, damp wood, and something older that none of them could name. Their footsteps rang up the stairwell and came back to them at half strength, as if the building was swallowing sound. A chandelier hung above the hall on a chain, trembling faintly in a draft they could not feel.
They moved through rooms crowded with broken furniture, yellowed books, and mirrors clouded so long they seemed to have forgotten every face they had ever held. In the farthest room, Lena knelt beside a heap of debris and reached under a fallen drawer.
Her fingers closed around something cold.
She lifted a small pocket watch, dark with age but intact, its lid engraved with a pattern of twisting branches. The second hand did not move.
Krzysiek took one step closer. "Let me see."
Lena opened her hand. The metal was colder than it should have been, sharp enough to sting her skin. Krzysiek touched the catch.
The watch clicked.
The room lurched.
The walls blurred, the floor tilted, and the air seemed to ripple backwards, dragging them with it. Marta grabbed the edge of a table that was no longer solid. For one dizzy instant, the tenement dissolved into flashing fragments: gaslight, brass handles, a woman in a long skirt turning her head as a carriage rattled past outside.
Then the world snapped still.
They were in the same room, in the same building, but nothing was the same.
Outside the window came the clatter of hooves on cobblestones, sharp and close. Voices rose from the street below, clipped and urgent. The signs hanging over the shops were painted in old-fashioned letters, and people passed the gate in coats and hats that belonged to another century.
Lena tightened her grip around the watch. The hands had not moved at all.
Marta swallowed. "Tell me you see this too."
Before anyone could answer, heavy boots sounded in the corridor outside. They stopped just beyond the door.
A man spoke in a low voice, tense and fast. "They're in there. They came through."
The handle turned.
The tenement door swung inward, and in the opening stood a figure in a dark cloak, his face hidden in shadow, his hand already lifting toward them.