On Halloween, three friends find an old ticket for a non-existent tram. Following the sound of the bell, they find themselves in an abandoned depot, where the headlights of a vehicle that shouldn't exist flash in the thick fog.
In Zakamarki, a town with a river full of fog and cobbled streets, Halloween was celebrated like the birthday of all the ghosts at once. Pumpkin lanterns blazed in the windows, paper bats fluttered in the breeze and the smell of roasting corn mingled with cinnamon and wet leaves. A brass band dressed as skeletons played in the town square, and no one was surprised when the town guard, wearing a vampire's cape, handed out reflective wristbands to children.
Lena adjusted her phosphorescent skull band so that it glowed evenly. She was eleven, with dark hair tied in a high ponytail and a jacket her mum called too thin for October, but Lena put it on anyway. Olek, her neighbourhood friend, carried a camera and a torch so powerful it could probably light up half a football pitch. Tymek, the lowest of the three, wrapped in a fur waistcoat and wearing oversized wolf ears, hopped from kerb to kerb as if testing the gravity of each tile.
Instead of fudge, they got something strange. Mr Zdzislaw slipped a small rust-coloured envelope into Lena's bag. It had a stamp on the corner with the number thirteen.
The envelope was light, as if empty, meanwhile something inside it rattled when Lena moved the bag. She sat down on the kerb and the boys stood next to her, leaning over to look together. Inside, she found a brown, crisp ticket with small letters. At the top was the inscription: "TRAM NUMBER 13". Underneath: "One-time course. Valid today only. Check-in: Upper Depot".
After all, we haven't had trams here for years,' Olek remarked, squinting. - Just these old rails, which are disappearing under the asphalt.
Maybe it's a joke? - Tymek moved his nose so close to the ticket that he brushed a strand of fur against it. - Or a puzzle in the style of a city game.
Before they could argue, the air was cut by a sound that everyone knew, but which no one in Zakamarki had heard for decades: the tram bell. Soft, metallic, like a smile turned into a sound. Once, a second time. It echoed through the market square, popped up on the walls of the town hall and died out somewhere by the river.
Lena felt a chill on the back of her neck, not from the wind, but from a thought that suddenly entered her head and refused to leave. She turned back to the boys.
'Shall we go to the depot? For a while. Just to see.
Just to see,' Olek repeated, as if repeating an incantation that would save them from trouble. - I have a torch. I... all in all, it sounds great.
They made a circle around the market, chose a less frequented street where the pumpkins in the windows glowed a little darker and the wind showed off more. With each step, the sound seemed closer - not louder, just closer, as if it was coming their way. The old tracks emerged from under the cracked tarmac in pieces, like fish skeletons sticking out of the sand. Lena brushed the metal, cold and smooth, with her shoe.
The Upper Depot stood at the edge of the former park, which was now more a cluster of bushes and poplars than a park. First they saw the roof - peeling from the paint, with chimneys sticking out like fingers pointing through the mist. Then a brick hall with wide gates. An inscription remained above the entrance, faded but still legible.
Have you seen it? - Tymek pointed to the clock above the gate. The clock was large, with black numerals and one cracked glass. The hands stood at 8:13 p.m., although their phones already showed almost nine o'clock.
'Maybe someone stopped it to match the name,' muttered Olek, but there was no sound of conviction in his voice.
For a while they stood in front of the gate, as if waiting for someone to invite them in. No one came, so Lena slipped the ticket into her pocket, breathed deeper and went in first. Olek shone a torch into the darkness. The light picked out rows of tracks in the middle of the hall, twisted like lines on a giant's hand. There were posters on the walls: about safety, about punctuality, about giving way to the elderly. Under one poster someone had left an old conductor's bell. On the floor was a timetable in which half the names of the stops had become blurred over the years.
'Think about it,' whispered Tymek. - How many people worked here, how many stories are left....
Secrets - Lena added and suddenly felt warm in her pocket. She pulled out a ticket. It didn't glow, of course, tickets don't glow after all. And yet, for a split second, she had the feeling that the brown paper pulsed like breath.
A draught ran through the hall and stirred something deep inside. It didn't sound like wind. More like the rustling of heavy materials remembering movement, though standing. Somewhere metal sounded. Olek picked up the conductor's bell and shook it gently. The sound answered him from afar, in a slightly different tone.
Instead of an answer, a mist crept in from the side of the farthest gate. It wasn't scary, rather curious, like a cat that wants to see what new has appeared in its territory. It rolled across the tracks, sat softly right next to their shoes and stopped, waiting.
The clock above the gate, with a tick that it shouldn't have, jumped a minute. It was now pointing at 20:14, although the hands had long since stopped. Lena swallowed her saliva.
They heard. First a deafening buzz, which might be electricity or the singing of a very low violin. Then a clatter, rhythmic, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, like footsteps in shoes you haven't put on yet. At the end - a bell. Closer this time. Much closer.
The light of Olek's torch danced across the walls, snagged a poster with a rubbing, and returned to the tracks, where the fog began to glow from underneath, as if someone had lit the night beneath it. And then they saw it: two circular spotlights in the depths of the hall, looking like eyes just waking up, and a narrow strip of light that glided along the polished steel of the rails. Along with the light came the familiar smell of grease, metal and ozone, like before a storm.
Lena wasn't sure she wanted anyone to believe. Her heart was pounding like crazy, but it didn't want to run away. It wanted to know. That's how she felt, even though her skin craved a warm blanket and cocoa.
The vehicle was not going fast. It slid, as if cautious, as if checking that the tracks still remembered its weight. The wagon was cream-coloured with a dark green stripe, with wooden slats, like in old photographs at grandma's house. On the front, the golden number 13 flicked as only something that used to be polished every day can flicker. Behind the glass flicked something orange - a row of miniature pumpkins on the windowsill, smiling unevenly, as if they had been carved by a hand that was in a hurry.
The tram stopped in front of them with a soft sigh that might as well have been steam escaping from the lungs of a large animal. The doors did not open immediately. First, unhurriedly, there was a clanging sound. A gloved hand slipped out of the darkness of the cabin - not bony, not menacing, a normal human hand in a navy blue glove - and pulled on the iron lever. Then, with a hiss, the sliding door swung open and let out a waft of cool, ozone-smelling air.
Lena, Olek and Tymek looked at each other. Lena felt the ticket in her hand grow heavier, as if it had suddenly become made of metal. She slipped it carefully between her fingers and lifted it. The voice, although not high-pitched, carried down the hall like a bell on a frosty morning.
The mist trembled, as if someone was smiling, though no face was visible. Somewhere far away, in the town, an orchestra played a new tune uncertainly, and the clock above the gate, the one that shouldn't work, vibrated for another five minutes. Olek took half a step forward, Tymek grabbed him by the sleeve, and Lena felt that if they didn't decide now, the bell would sound for the last time and away would go everything they could see, hear, learn about....
The tram bell struck again, louder, faster, and the light in the cab flicked on, as if someone was waiting for just one word.