By midnight, the rain had returned.
It did not come down in sheets. It hung in the air as a fine watery dust that dampened hair and sleeves before a person realised they were getting wet. The pond behind the Room of Fear was almost black. By day, plastic bags, duckweed and empty bottles floated in it. At night, its surface became as smooth as the glass in the ticket-booth window.
Maya brought a torch. Varya brought a rope. Ilya wanted to say that no one was going into the water, but did not. After two nights in the Room, such remarks no longer sounded like caution but like an invitation for the place to prove him wrong.
The door did not open inside the attraction.
It appeared at the water's edge.
Old and green, with peeling paint and a sign reading "STAFF ENTRANCE". Beyond the door lay not a corridor but the same pond, only deeper. The bank descended into the water in steps that did not exist in the real park. A wet ticket lay on the bottom step.
Ilya bent down.
The ticket read:
Admission. One adult. Wasn't there.
The water rose by the width of a finger.
Maya said quietly:
"Say that again?"
"Don't," said Varya, too sharply.
But the rule had already woken.
A voice came from the water. Male, choking, but angry:
"I was there."
Ilya picked up the ticket between two fingers.
The water rose by another finger's width.
Circles appeared on the surface. In each was a brief image: a car by the pond at night, sacks of papers, two men in raincoats, a small park lamp someone had smashed with a stone. Then a man in a work jacket standing behind the bushes. He had seen too much and understood what he had seen too late.
"Is that your father?" Maya asked Varya.
Varya did not answer.
She stared at the man in the water as though trying to force his face into one she knew.
The image wavered. The man turned. It was not Andrei Gordeev.
Varya let out her breath.
Ilya could not tell whether it was relief or a fresh pain.
The voice in the water said:
"They didn't find me because I couldn't be found. If they'd found me, they'd have found the sacks. If they'd found the sacks, they'd have found the lists. If they'd found the lists…"
He did not finish.
Another voice answered from the darkness on the bank. Dry, old, unfamiliar:
"He wasn't there."
The water rose to the first step.
Maya turned.
No one.
The voice repeated:
"There was no man. There was no ticket. There was no pond on the books."
The water rose to the second step.
Varya threw the rope to Ilya.
"Round your waist."
"I'm not going in."
"You will if she asks you."
"Who?"
Varya was already making her way down to the water.
Ilya understood too late. What she had seen on the bottom step was not the drowned man's face. It was a small metal tag wedged between the stones. A number was stamped on it.
And the initials: A. G.
Andrei Gordeev.
Varya waded in up to her knees.
"Varya!"
"It isn't him," she said. "But it's his."
The voice from the darkness spoke again:
"Wasn't there."
The water rose to her waist.
Ilya jumped in after her without thinking. The cold struck his chest so hard it knocked the breath out of him. The rope jerked around his waist. Maya shouted something from above. The water was shallow and endless at once: his feet touched the steps, but his body was dragged down towards the wet papers below.
Varya reached the tag.
The water closed over her mouth.
Ilya caught hold of her jacket and pulled her back. For a second, it seemed he was pulling not a woman but the whole park: the ticket booth, the shop floor, the assembly, his grandfather's ledger, other people's envelopes, every "wasn't there" the town had uttered for decades until the words became water.
Maya and the rope hauled them onto the steps.
Varya coughed, clutching the tag to her chest.
Ilya lay beside her and listened to the water recede.
Not because the debt had been settled.
Because the Room had gained witnesses.
The wet ticket in his hand had stopped bleeding into a blur. A name appeared on the back:
Sergei Lomin. Drowned man. Unpaid.
And beside it, scratched in a fine line at the edge, was Andrei Gordeev's number.
Varya stared at the tag.
"He was here," she said.
"Yes," said Ilya.
"And your grandfather knew?"
Ilya did not answer.
That silence cost more than any answer.
Varya got up by herself. She did not take his hand. Not because she despised him. Because if she took it, she might not be able to stay angry.
Behind them, the door by the pond closed.
And in the ticket booth, far beyond the wet trees, something rang.
Not the till.
A telephone.
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