After the booth, the park grew quieter.
Not emptier. Quieter.
Even the red tape across the entrance rustled more cautiously. Maya Kraeva arranged for someone to cover her evening shift, but did not leave. She sat down in the old booth, closed the incident log and said she would keep separate notes by hand.
"Why by hand?" asked Ilya.
"Because if I put this into the system, the system will pretend I've fallen ill."
Varya stood at the doors of the Room of Fear, looking at her father's surname in the ledger. All day she spoke only about the work. Wires, main switch, tape, key. Not one question about Andrei Gordeev. Ilya did not hurry her. For the first time he understood that trust in a place like this was not built with words. Here, trust sometimes meant simply keeping your hands out of a fresh wound.
Roman Zuev arrived that evening.
He brought not a threat, but a portable floodlight, two fire extinguishers and temporary "NO ENTRY" signs. He set everything by the gates and said:
"Since you aren't going to leave anyway, at least don't let anyone die stupidly."
Ilya waited for the catch.
The catch was that the help was genuine.
Roman Zuev knew how to be useful at precisely the moment it made him more dangerous. He did not pressure Varya after her refusal. He did not argue with Maya. He merely photographed the red tape, noted the time and said that tomorrow the town would learn of a new violation.
"What violation?" asked Ilya.
"Unauthorised access to a closed site involving an elderly witness."
"You mean Nina?"
"I mean responsibility. You call it truth, Ilya. On paper it will be the exploitation of a vulnerable person inside an unsafe pavilion. Paperwork doesn't know how to fear ghosts. But it is very good at fearing criminal charges."
He left before midnight.
And almost at once, a bugle sounded in the park.
Not the shift bell. Not the till. A high Young Pioneer bugle, so clear and cheerful that it chilled them more than any creak. The Room of Fear opened its main entrance. Behind the door there was no shop floor and no booth. There was a school assembly.
The asphalt was wet. A red flag hung motionless from the flagpole. Children in white shirts stood on either side of the path. Their faces could not be seen. Only the backs of heads, wet collars and red neckerchiefs hanging too heavily, as though they had just been pulled from the water.
Maya Kraeva stepped forward first.
"If this is staged for a video, I'm going to hit someone with my report pad."
"People staging videos usually scream louder than this," said Varya.
Ilya listened to the bugle.
There was no breath behind it. The note held steady, but behind it was a child's fear compressed into a single sound.
A teacher stood on the assembly ground. Her face was badly drawn, like an old educational poster: smile, eyes, rosy cheeks. But her hands were real. She held an attendance register in them.
"Detachment," she said in a voice with no adult in it. "Roll call."
The first surname.
Silence.
The second.
Silence.
The third.
Somewhere in the ranks, a wet neckerchief trembled.
Maya said:
"There's no one here."
The teacher turned her head towards her. The paper smile stayed in place.
"Then answer for the absent."
Varya whispered:
"Don't."
Maya had already opened her mouth.
Ilya managed to cover the register with his palm. Not because he understood the rule completely. He simply knew, after the shop floor, that if the Room asked for a name, you could not answer with someone else's.
The bugle cut off.
Words appeared on the first page of the register:
You cannot answer for the absent.
The teacher began the roll call again.
This time Ilya did not try to read everything. He listened. After every surname, a small sound appeared in the air: a drop striking asphalt, the creak of a bus door, the tap of a heel, a short breath. Each absent child had left a trace of their own.
Then came the name:
Olya Melnik.
And an adult woman's voice answered from the end of the ranks:
"Present."
All the children turned their heads at once.
Where a child should have stood was an elderly woman in an everyday coat. Not a ghost. Alive. A wet red neckerchief lay over her coat, and she had the face of someone who had been waking inside this assembly every night for many years.
Maya breathed:
"Klava Sinitsyna."
The woman covered her mouth with both hands, as though the answer had escaped against her will.
The teacher's smile widened.
"Answer accepted."
Klava Sinitsyna lost her voice.
She tried to speak, but only a child's whisper came from her throat. Not hers. The girl's, whom she had once answered for.
The register turned its own page.
The new page bore the stamp of a commission which, according to Maya, had never existed in the town archive.
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